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I grew up in the land of the TVA in East Tennessee. While the TVA is famous for hydroelectric power, it also built several coal-fired generators and nuclear power plants.     A couple miles from our house was the Bull Run steam plant, a coal-fired plant. Its iconic smokestack was visible for miles. Recently the plant was closed and dismantled as part of TVA’s move away from coal. Some of my Oak Ridge peeps were sorry to see it go. I wasn’t. But that move has stalled. The TVA board voted unanimously to keep two coal plants operating for the foreseeable future, a move applauded by Trump. It’s a lifeline for the dying coal industry in the US, but accelerates the death march to global warming. During the same meeting, the board allowed the company xAI, owned by Elon Musk, to double the amount of power it draws from the grid. Sad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk1QPo0am4M

“ The justices, divided 6-3 held that Trump's aggressive approach to tariffs on products entering the United States from across the world was not permitted under a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).” *snip* “ The decision does not affect all of Trump's tariffs, leaving in place ones he imposed on steel and aluminum using different laws, for example. But it upends his tariffs in two categories. One is country-by-country or “reciprocal” tariffs, which range from 34% for China to a 10% baseline for the rest of the world. The other is a 25% tariff Trump imposed on some goods from Canada, China and Mexico for what the administration said was their failure to curb the flow of fentanyl. “Trump could seek to reimpose the tariffs, using other laws.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-strikes-trumps-tariffs-major-blow-president-rcna244827

Josh Marshall has an interesting piece in TPM on George Washington. It’s the second of two commentaries on Presidents Day. Presidents Day was originally celebrated as George Washington’s Birthday. When the effort to declare Abraham Lincoln’s birthday a national holiday failed, due to opposition from white Southern politicians, Presidents Day replaced Washington’s birthday. In the earlier commentary, Marshall (who has a PhD in American History from Brown University) argues for a separate Lincoln’s Birthday because the consequences of his presidency far outweigh those of Washington. In the second essay, he elaborates further: “ Washington wasn’t terribly creative. He wrote nothing of note. He didn’t have terribly original ideas. He wasn’t even always that good of a general. But the people around him pretty universally held him in a sort of awe. Almost all the craftier and more notable members of the Revolutionary generation had great confidence in his presence, the fact that he was aroun...

This article is over 30 years old, but Cuba still has a socialist authoritarian government. After the collapse of the USSR, its primary benefactor. After the death of Fidel Castro and the retirement of Raul Castro. Decades of US boycotts and saber-rattling have failed to elicit regime change. That’s because the US never trusted American capitalism. What we should have done is love bomb Cuba with tourism and trade. Far from propping up Castro, it would have reminded Cubans daily of what they were missing. And by abandoning military threats, we would have dissolved the glue that holds many dictatorships together—the external threat. “Cuban leaders have long experience in administering repression and adjusting to hardship. What they do not know how to deal with is openness and peace . . . the United States should . . .  stop assisting Cuba’s censorship of information: allow A.T.&T.’s telephone link on a commercial basis; permit the sale of fax machines and other communication...

“ Henry VIII dissolved monasteries and executed wives because the machinery of monarchy allowed it, and challenging him risked the entire structure. The Romanovs died because saving them threatened coalitions that mattered more than five lives in a basement. Kennedy’s death formalized distance because proximity had become a procedural risk. And Sarajevo exploded not because of two bullets, but because every system that might have absorbed the crisis had already chosen self-preservation over adaptability.   “The assassination in Sarajevo is often described as the moment Europe’s old world collapsed. In truth, it was the moment that world revealed it had already hollowed itself out. The institutions were still standing. The palaces were still full. The procedures were still followed. But the capacity for human judgment, for weighing a life against a system, for choosing courage over continuity, had quietly bled out over decades.   “The shots were loud. The failure that gave them...

How many euphemisms are there for TACO? “Carve-out.” “Step-backs.” “Exclusions.” “Price relief.” How about “advancing to the rear?” Trump’s tariffs are turning out to be fairy tales told to children. Trump wrote that his tariffs are unleashing “an American economic miracle, and we are quickly building the greatest economy in the history of the world.”   Meanwhile,  manufacturing jobs have fallen by 86,000 over the past year, while broader blue-collar jobs are down 166,000.   To paraphrase Hans Christian Andersen, the clothes have no emperor. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trumps-potential-steel-aluminum-rollback-would-be-latest-tariff-reversal-amid-broader-affordability-push-185956950.html