Republicans in the Senate, the SAVE Act, and Thune

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “HC68” wrote this (the first sentence is a quote from me):

I have never been able to understand the thought processes that would lead someone to stay home to punish those who are generally on that person’s side and enable those who want to destroy whatever policy that person is advocating.

— neo

Not to defend them, I 99% agree with everything you said, but I do see a human nature basis for it.

Why punish someone who is 75% on your side and in so doing reward somebody totally against you?

Imagine Joe Smith. He’s married to Jane Smith. Joe has an enemy named Darla Jones who has spent decades making his life harder.

Jane Smith has a brief affair on a business trip and Joe finds out and divorces her. He spends a great deal of time and effort to do as much damage to her as he can in the divorce proceedings, trying to get the kids, the cars, the dog, and the house, and gets a lot of it. He and his lawyer manage to really mess Jane over.

A bystanders asks Joe: “Joe, Jane was faithful and loving to you for years, she only cheated once. But you spent ten times as much energy sticking it to her as you ever did to Darla. Why?”

Well, most of us understand why Joe would do that, though we might or might not agree that it was wise or best.

Because of the sense of betrayal.

I think, in a more generalized, irrational level, that this same impulse drives people to be harsher to ‘their own side’ over disagreement. I don’t think it’s the only reason or even necessarily the main reason, but I think it’s in play.

Broken human nature again.

HC68 makes a good point. However, a spouse having an affair is of a different category than politics; it is personal and almost inevitably highly emotional and hits right in the gut. If people feel towards their elected representatives the way they feel about their spouses, they will be perpetually angry because not getting what you want is pretty inevitable in politics.

What’s more, if you react with that intensity of feeling at not getting what you want, don’t say you’re acting on logic and not on emotion unless it’s crystal clear someone has lied to you and betrayed you purposely, rather than merely been unable to achieve the desired result.

Take the hatred of Thune on the right; it’s been going on for quite some time, and a great deal of it centers on his handling of the SAVE Act although it’s hardly limited to it. I’ve written many times before about the SAVE Act. I’m not at all sure that most people who are so very critical of Thune and the entire GOP on this actually remember the progression of events and who on the GOP side voted against it, or how much it actually could have accomplished.

For example, see this post of mine. An excerpt:

The online chatter is that the GOP doesn’t want to pass it. I think it’s much more accurate to say that a certain minority of them don’t, but they hold a lot of power because of the tiny margin the GOP has in terms of numbers.

But I am convinced that – although I strongly support the bill – people are exaggerating what it would accomplish in this election cycle, if passed. There would be immediate court challenges that would probably tie it up so that it couldn’t be implemented prior to the 2026 election. …

I think the whole thing hinges on 2028, not now. And yet everyone is so fired up about this that a failure to pass it could have the result of many voters on the right punishing the GOP in the midterms. That would be a real self-own, IMHO.

I made that prediction last March. And it certainly turned out to be a big element on the 2026 election debacle.

I’d like you to take a look at this, too. When Thune brought the SAVE Act up for a vote (I think the last time he tried, although I’m not sure), four Republicans voted against it. Do you recall that, and who they were? Here are the four: Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Mitch McConnell (R-KY). No real surprises there. The Senate’s GOP majority was small, which made it possible for the four to sabotage what I believe the rest for of the GOP senators actually wanted to pass. This has often been the case with the GOP (starting with the FDR years), which has tended either to not have a majority or to have a small one.

So why is Thune to blame for not passing the SAVE Act? Perhaps he ought to have somehow twisted their arms more forcibly. Would that have worked? Also, many people assume that the Democrats would have managed to twist holdout Democrats’ arms had they been in that position. I’m not at all sure that’s these particular four would have changed their minds no matter how much their arms were twisted. Nor did the Democrats accomplish what they wanted when Sinema and Manchin were in the Senate and the Democrat majority was small; they managed to block the Democrats’ strong desire to nuke the filibuster, to pass their own voting “reform” act, to pack the Court, and to add a few solidly blue states.

It’s not that I love Thune and think he’s done great things; not at all. But I don’t think he could have worked that miracle and I don’t know who could have. Plus, there’s something else: not a lot of people want the job of Majority Leader. It’s a somewhat thankless task because you don’t get much credit ordinarily for what does pass, but you get a lot of blame for what doesn’t. Back when he ran for Leader in 2024, who opposed him? Why, Cronyn of Texas and Rick Scott. They didn’t have the votes to win, but had either done so, would he have done better? I very much doubt it.

More on Thune and the SAVE act, from Google AI:

Senate Majority Leader John Thune did allow votes on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, with the Senate voting on the legislation multiple times (including at least five to six separate votes), though the bill failed to advance because it did not reach the 60 votes required to overcome the legislative filibuster.
Key details regarding Thune and the SAVE Act include:
• Multiple Votes Held: John Thune permitted floor votes and debate on the SAVE Act, noting that the measure was the pending business on the Senate floor for over two weeks and voted on six times.
• Lack of Democratic Support: All 47 Senate Democrats voted against the legislation each time, and Republicans did not have the 60 votes necessary to pass it or the votes to eliminate the legislative filibuster.

Do you think it was all theater and someone like Collins would have voted for it but Thune didn’t actually want her to? I certainly don’t think so.

The real remedy for all of this would be to have voted for more Republicans in 2026 and to have a larger margin in the Senate, and then you wouldn’t need Collins or Murkowski. I often think some portion of the “uniparty” accusers who purport to be on the right, and the ones who scream “betrayal,” are Democrat operatives – because of course voter apathy will harm the GOP and help the Democrats. Duh.

And yes, they re-elected Thune as Minority Leader this time. I keep reading what a betrayal that is, how awful, how it proves the GOP senators don’t want to accomplish anything. But perhaps the job of Minority Leader is a thankless one and no one else wanted it; Thune ran unopposed.

NOTE: I fully expect many people to disagree with me on this.

News roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) First, a disclaimer. I knew nothing about Jensen Huang until the current scandal broke. And even now I only know the bare outlines. But the thing about the story that interests me most is this: why would he risk so much? Was the sex that good? Somehow I doubt it, but it must have been good enough for him to assume the risk. After all, as Kissinger said, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Huang probably was quite accustomed to assuming a certain amount of risk or he wouldn’t have secured the career position he occupied – plus he probably (and foolishly) felt immune from exposure for whatever reason.

(2) Some people in Maine are waking up to the fact that Susan Collins was able to get a great many financial advantages for Maine, and when she leaves office her replacement, Troy Jackson, will almost certainly lack the same clout. Too late, folks. You should have thought of that sooner.

Maine is not a rich state, either. As Google AI says:

• Maine ranks near the bottom (around 44th) for forward-looking economic outlook and low in real gross domestic product (GDP) growth, largely due to an aging population and a declining base in traditional manufacturing and timber.

• Financial Hardship (ALICE): While standard poverty numbers look moderate, about 40% of Maine households fall below the ALICE threshold (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed), meaning many working families struggle to afford basic housing, utilities, child care, and food.

(3) And speaking of Maine, they will have Paul LePage to kick around some more. LePage is an ex-governor of the state, an outspoken Republican who was an embarrassment and a scourge to its liberals. He has now managed to do the nearly-impossible in this election: he flipped a Congressional district from blue to red, and now bears the honor of being the sole Republican in Congress from all of New England.

LePage will be representing Maine’s 2nd Congressional district, which covers the huge northern and more rural part of the state (see this). As with much of New England, the northern part of Maine is more conservative than the southern part, but state population clusters in the southern part. More:

It is the largest district by area east of the Mississippi River, and the 24th largest overall. It is the second-most rural district in the United States, with 72% of its population in rural areas, and it has the second-highest proportion of non-Hispanic White residents (90.9%); only Kentucky’s 5th congressional district exceeds it in the two categories.

(4) France is not known for freedom of speech. Just ask author Michel Houellebecq, who is being investigated for saying mean things about Islam. And it’s not the first time, either:

The French novelist Michel Houellebecq — author of Whatever and Atomised among other books, and a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature — has been placed under formal investigation in France for “complicity in provocation to discrimination, hatred or violence against a group of people because of their origin”.

This is the second time Houellebecq has faced prosecution over his opinions. In 2002, he was tried on charges of racial hatred after calling Islam “the dumbest religion”. The charges did not stick. Now, though, he has been indicted over various comments he made in 2022 to Popular Front about Muslims in France.

“The wish of the native French population,” Houellebecq said, “is not that Muslims assimilate but that they stop robbing and assaulting them. Or, another solution, that they leave.” “When entire territories come under Islamist control,” he predicted, “I think acts of resistance will take place. There will be attacks and shootings in mosques, in cafés frequented by Muslims, in short, Bataclans in reverse.” Finally, Houellebecq claimed that the “great replacement” theory “[is] not a theory, it’s a fact. It’s statistical evidence.”

Whether or not you agree with all those sentiments is not the point. The point is whether he should be prosecuted for them. Also, in describing retaliatory attacks on Moslems, he is making a prediction rather than advocating such violence.

And by the way, in case you’re wondering, there have indeed been quite a few prosecutions in France of people who have made anti-Semitic remarks.

(5) From Homan, on keeping the border secure:

The bottom line is, again, we got the most secure border in the history of this nation. Congress may be more blue. Texas may be more blue. But the White House is red. Bright red. And again, President Trump created the most secure border in history. These caravans can come to the border all they want. They’re not to be released into the United States. They’re going to be turned around, or, be prosecuted, then turned around, because we will charge them with a crime. So they can sit in jail, serve their sentence before they’re deported. But we’re not giving one inch on this border. This is the most secure border in history, we’re going to keep it secure, because we got President Trump in the White House, who’s not going to let this border become chaotic again. And neither will I.

Time will tell.

Fatal shooting in DC

The New Neo Posted on by

Terrible. As far as I can tell, the shooter was an ER physician who’s been slowly flipping out into what ended up being a murderous rage, and the subject matter was black mold in his condo.

Ace covers the story here.

Trump takes Vance off the Iran case

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not sure why Vance was ever assigned to Iran in the first place, except that Trump may have felt that Vance would be perceived by the Iranians as more willing to deal than, say, Rubio. Trump wanted to Give Peace a Chance.

But at this point, Trump doesn’t seem any too pleased with Vance’s attitude towards that conflict, or to Trump’s handling of it:

Trump has tasked Vance to put his “complete and total attention” on corruption in Democrat-run states, which Trump insists is a much higher priority than negotiating with Iran. In fact, Trump declared in the same post that we don’t need a deal with Iran at all …

Vance has chaired Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud for the last several months, which has mainly focused on Democrat-run states and cities anyway. Trump’s order for Vance to focus exclusively on this effort is new, and it follows Vance’s public criticism of Trump’s approach to Iran and Israel.

It also follows a last-ditch effort by Vance to cut a deal …

Vance has said that the Iran war was the reason for the midterm debacle. It certainly was part of the reason. But the Democrats’ brilliant plan to emphasize “affordability” (with the help of the MSM, and without needing to describe their supposed solutions) was more important, according to polls. Also, what element of the Iran war were people annoyed with? Wasn’t it that we dithered around trying to negotiate with those who cannot be trusted to negotiate? Wasn’t that Vance’s department?

This difference between Trump and Vance represents a very real split on the right. It’s between the Iran hawks and the isolationists, and it’s nothing new. However, it’s been fueled by the likes of the neo-Buchananesque Tucker wing. It’s hard to estimate that wing’s size, but I believe it’s consequential. Make no mistake about it, Vance is on that side, as has been apparent for quite some time. That he doesn’t necessarily buy into all the Jew-hating doesn’t mean he isn’t basically aligned with that wing on a foreign policy level.

[NOTE: I will add that I believe that one reason Republican turnout was down in this election was the influence of the Tucker wing. He explicitly told his listeners he cannot vote for the GOP this round; he started saying this back in June:

Carlson asked how any American “could support a political party that’s not loyal to the United States.”

“It’s not possible to vote for people like that and I’m not going to,” he said. “I voted Republican my entire life, I worked at Fox News … I’ve been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party, but there’s no defending this because it’s immoral.” …

“And if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out, too.”

Yes, a lot of his follower are bots or foreigners. But there are a lot of real voters in the US who listen to him and whom he influences, too. He wanted them to stay home, and they did.]

[NOTE II: I had hoped to publish that piece on the midterms and the GOP Congress and Thune today. I’m going to postpone it, though; too many other chores I have to do. However, I really do think I’ll be publishing it tomorrow.]

On the topic of election fraud in 2026

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “physicsguy” writes:

… [H]ere’s a very interesting article giving some POSSIBLE reasons for the statistically anomalous 20 million increase in Democrat votes last week. I know Neo abhors any idea of conspiracy in voting fraud, but this is worth a read:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/11/it-was-a-coup/

First, just to clear something up: I don’t abhor the idea of conspiracy in voting fraud, although of course I abhor fraud if and when it occurs. I’ve written a huge number of posts on the subject of voting fraud and I believe several things about it. The first is that of course it sometimes occurs. The second is that it tends to occur in geographic areas dominated by blue cities offsetting redder rural areas. The third is that much of the supposed “statistical” evidence for it is weak. The fourth (and perhaps most important) is that if it’s done well it’s almost impossible to detect.

Even more important, perhaps, is something I’ve written many many times: when voting security is lax – and in particular with the use of computers rather than hand-counting of paper ballots, as well as universal or widespread mail-in ballots – trust in the integrity of the voting process becomes fatally flawed whether there is significant fraud or not. That’s happened in the US; trust is very much broken. Once that happens, each side tends to think an election where they lost was stolen by the other side.

I read the piece physicsguy linked, and I’m unimpressed by it. For example, I’ve read previously that in many elections the results actually do seem to occur almost everywhere and to a similar degree – for example, let’s say we’re talking about a 5% swing to Democrats, or close races breaking uniformly to Democrats. Same is true for election years in which Republicans tend to get the breaks. The latter occurred, for example, in 2024. I remember the maps; do you? Here’s one, for example.

Now, it the author of that article had done a detailed comparison to the election of 2024 and compared the swings to the GOP back then to the swings to the Democrats this time, I’d be much more interested. In fact, I haven’t seen anyone claiming fraud in the 2026 election doing that sort of analysis (if you find something of that sort, please give me a link). The bank-and-forth cries out for explanation, if the Democrats could commit such widespread and influential fraud in 2020 and 2026, why were they asleep at the wheel in 2024? Surely they hated Trump and the Democrats just as much.

I suggest that anyone who hasn’t read my analysis of the 2026 results in the state of New Hampshire, please do so (here’s the link). When I looked at those results, in a state (NH) with enormous election security and which previously was controlled by the GOP at the state level, and saw the enormity of the swing to Democrats (with one anomaly: the Republican governor hung on), I became more convinced than ever that the 2026 election results were basically bona fide and represent an actual trend that holds for most of the nation.

That trend is the thing to which the right needs to be paying attention. Claims of fraud without sufficient evidence not only serve as an excuse, but they are counterproductive in that they can further depress turnout on the right. If everything is fixed, then there’s no hope and no reason to go to the polls. If low turnout on the right was the problem in this election – and I think there is strong evidence that was the case – then the claim of fraud everywhere is highly likely to depress that turnout further.

NOTE: I’m open to changing my mind about the 2026 election and fraud if I see an argument and evidence that is convincing and that explains what happened in 2024. So far I haven’t seen it.

News roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Twice-deported illegal alien gets on a flight from Newark to New Orleans and makes a bomb threat:

The New York Post reported that the bomb threat turned out to be a hoax. Local authorities also confirmed that Gomez-Alberto changed into all-black before making his run for the cockpit to lend credence to his threat.

As of Tuesday, Gomez-Alberto is in jail without bail. He is a Honduran illegal alien who spent over a decade repeatedlycrossing into the United States, being arrested, and then receiving either deportation or temporary release.

(2) Republican House member Massie’s attempt to impeach Hegseth has failed. But it is nearly certain that, when the new Congress is sworn in, a new and Democrat-led attempt will succeed.

Massie will be gone; he was defeated in the primary by Republican Ed Gallrein, who went on to win the general. It’s nice to see Massie go, but it doesn’t matter all that much because the Democrats now will have such a huge majority.

(3) And House members such as Mississippi Republican French Hill might just take Massie’s place in the sense of voting to impeach Hegseth:

A Republican congressman who narrowly won a seventh House term in deep-red Arkansas refused Sunday to rule out voting to impeach War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“I want to hear the debate on it to see if it merits impeachment versus some other disciplinary action or action by the president, if he’s not getting the job done in leading the Department of War,” Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) told CBS News’ “Face The Nation.”

I’d love to hear his definition of “getting the job done.”

(4) This article is not a spoof, I’m afraid. It’s all too real, all too ironic (a mild word for it), and all too typical of the UN:

“The UN General Assembly just elected the murderous Islamic Republic of Iran to its Committee for Program and Coordination, the main body shaping the world organization’s priorities on Women’s Rights, Human Rights, Disarmament, and Counter-Terrorism,” [UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer] wrote on X/Twitter after the vote was announced.

(5) Back in the 1940s James Thurber had a cartoon series called The War Between Men and Women. You can find a great many of the cartoons at this site. For example, there’s this:

He saw women as inherently more aggressive in these skirmishes. It’s certainly not universally true, but it definitely sometimes is the case, and now that women are so prominent in politics (compared to the 1940s, it’s night and day) we see this sort of thing with increasing frequency. By “this sort of thing” I mean the continual claiming of the mantle of victimhood while simultaneously advocating the oppression of men:

I know so many women who complain and complain about men in a kind of kneejerk way, much as they complain about the US.

(6) I have a long post in draft form on the topic of Thune, the SAVE Act, anger at the GOP members of Congress, and this past election. I’d hoped to get it ready today (I still have quite a bit to do on it), but I have had a lot of obligations to deal with today connected with chores involving my ex-husband.

I think I’ll get the post out tomorrow. I wanted to mention that I’m not ignoring the topic, which I think is huge. And you may find what I have to say on it to be different than what most people are saying.

Veterans Day; Armistice Day

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]

Yes, indeed, I am that old—old enough to just barely remember when Veterans Day was called Armistice Day. The change in names occurred in 1954, when I was very small, in order to accommodate World War II and its veterans.

Since then, the original name has largely fallen out of use—although it remains, like a vestigial organ, in the timing of the holiday, November 11th, which commemorates the day the WWI armistice was signed (eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month).

I’m also old enough – and had a teacher ancient enough – to have been forced to memorize that old chestnut “In Flanders Fields” in fifth grade – although without being given much historical context for it, I think at the time I assumed it was about World War II, since as far as I knew that was the only real war.

You can find the story of the poem here [well, you could when the post was first written, but the link is dead now]. It was written by a Canadian doctor who served in the European theater. It’s not necessarily great poetry, but it was great propaganda to encourage America’s entry into what was known at the time as the Great War.

The poem’s first line “In Flanders fields the poppies blow” introduces that famous flower that later became the symbol of Armistice – and later, Veterans—Day. Why the poppy?

Wild poppies flower when other plants in their direct neighbourhood are dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, but only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will sprout.

There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his poem, around him bloodred poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before.

But in this poem the poppy plays one more role. The poppy is known as a symbol of sleep. The last line We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields might point to this fact. Some kinds of poppies are used to derive opium from, from which morphine is made. Morphine is one of the strongest painkillers and was often used to put a wounded soldier to sleep. Sometimes medical doctors used it in a higher dose to put the incurable wounded out of their misery.

Now a day to honor those who have served in our wars, Veterans Day has an interesting history in its original Armistice Day incarnation. It was actually established as a day dedicated to world peace, back in the early post-WWI year of 1926, when it was still possible to believe that WWI had been the war fought to end all wars.

The original proclamation establishing Armistice Day as a holiday read as follows:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

After the carnage of World War II, of course, the earlier hope that peaceful relations among nations would not be severed had long been extinguished. By the time I was a young child, a weary nation sought to honor those who had fought in all of its wars in order to secure the peace that followed – even if each peace was only a temporary one.

And isn’t an armistice a strange (although understandable) sort of hybrid, after all; a decision to lay down arms without anything really having been resolved? Think about the recent wars that have ended through armistice: WWI, which segued almost inexorably into WWII; the 1948 war following the partition of Palestine; the Korean War; and the Gulf War. All of these conflicts exploded again into violence – or have continually threatened to – ever since.

So this Veterans/Armistice Day, let’s join in saluting and honoring those who have fought for our country. The hope that some day war will not be necessary is a laudable one – and those who fight wars hold it, too. But that day has clearly not yet arrived – and, realistically but sadly, most likely it never will.

The refinery issue

The New Neo Posted on by

Please watch this; the part I’ve cued up is just two minutes long:

This isn’t something I’ve researched much yet, but my sense is that it’s more complicated than that.

It’s not as though Trump was unaware of the problem. But it’s been rough going. That article I just linked is from early September, 2026:

U.S. President Donald Trump told oil producers and refiners that he wants lower gasoline prices, immediately, at a meeting at the White House this week.

As gasoline prices remain above $4 per gallon on average across the United States and drivers are heading for the most expensive Labor Day weekend gas prices on record, President Trump urged executives from Chevron, Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy, and PBF Energy, among others, to raise refining capacity to increase fuel availability.

This topic is way outside my field of expertise, and at the moment I don’t have time to do a deep dive on it. But apparently this has been going on for a long long time:

At the White House meeting, the executives reportedly discussed efforts to boost existing capacity and, most of all, the Renewable Fuel Standard. Some refiners criticized the blending targets as unattainable, which are driving up gasoline costs, sources with knowledge of the closed-door meeting told Bloomberg.

Moreover, U.S. refiners are not even entertaining the idea of building new refineries to ease potential similar supply crunches in the long term. …

Despite the deep pockets and the blockbuster profits this year, oil companies are unwilling to sink billions of U.S. dollars into a costly new construction venture that may not even be too profitable when it starts up in about five years, as fuel demand is expected to level off and even decline.

Why is it expected to decline?

More here:

A review of EIA refinery shutdown data indicates that approximately 2.6 million barrels per day of individual U.S. refinery capacity has been shuttered since 2001. Meanwhile, surviving refineries have been expanded, debottlenecked and made substantially more productive.

In other words, America did not simply shrink its refining system. America concentrated it.

We closed numerous facilities while investing heavily in the survivors. The result is fewer physical refineries, larger individual plants and less geographic redundancy in portions of the country. EIA’s 2026 data show 128 operating refineries and two idle facilities. That distinction matters when something goes wrong.

A barrel of Gulf Coast refining capacity is not necessarily a substitute for a barrel of lost West Coast refining capacity. Pipelines, ports, product specifications, transportation costs and refinery configurations matter. …

COVID provided an extraordinary stress test.

U.S. refining capacity fell 4.5% in a single year, to approximately 18.1 million barrels per day at the beginning of 2021. Six refineries closed during 2020. EIA attributed the closures to several causes, including collapsing petroleum demand, poor refinery economics and plans that in some cases predated the pandemic. Some facilities subsequently converted to renewable-fuel production.

This is where discussions of refinery closures can become too political too quickly. Not every refinery closed because of government policy. Some were old. Some were uneconomic. Some suffered accidents. COVID destroyed demand. Some companies preferred investing their capital elsewhere. Some refineries were converted to renewable diesel. Environmental compliance requirements and changing federal and state policies also influenced capital decisions.

Regardless of the explanation, capital allocation decisions ultimately depend on expected risk-adjusted returns. Capital asks a simpler question: What return am I likely to earn if I put another billion dollars here? If the expected return is inadequate relative to the risk, the money flows somewhere else.

Much more at the link, including this: “But refining is not like turning up the thermostat. A refinery already operating near its practical limit cannot magically process another 100,000 barrels tomorrow. Nor can a gasoline-oriented configuration instantaneously maximize diesel production.”

NOTE: As I said, there’s much much more at the link. I haven’t had time to read all of it, and at the moment I have some obligations that I need to tend to – however, I plan to read it a bit later today and perhaps add something more to this post. In the meantime, I have little doubt that some of you readers are a lot more up to speed on this than I am.

This type of ed is special, all right

The New Neo Posted on by

Special education teacher Dana Zentgraf has some advice for women, and she wanted to share it with the world:

It’s your son too. It’s all of them,” Zentgraf wrote in a Facebook post under her online name, “Da Graf.” “They are all menace[s] to society and we need to stop giving birth to them.”

“I have news for the mothers of boys who believe they raised their sons ‘right’: In the world we live in, raising a boy right at home does not guarantee that he will be seen or treated right outside those doors,” she continued. “You can do everything in your power to raise him to be a good man … But once he steps outside your home, he enters a patriarchal world that has taught men, in ways both subtle and overt, that they hold power over women.”

“If it’s too late to abort, raise him like your life depends on it because it does. All of our lives depend on it.”

If she indeed posted that, should this woman be teaching anyone? Of course not. She’s free to express such thoughts, but she shouldn’t be employed as a teacher or in any field in which she interacts with the public. And yet – at least as far as I can tell – she still holds her position.

But this post isn’t really about Zentgraf. It’s about the prevalence of this sort of unhinged rage, whether against men or any other group, and the somewhat-puzzling fact that so many teachers and others in the so-called helping professions think it’s perfectly okay to express such thoughts. It was (and still is, actually) a widespread phenomenon after the murder of CEO Brian Thompson and in particular after the murder of Charlie Kirk. We saw it after 10/7. We see it and see it and see it.

It’s not a totally new phenomenon. But what is relatively new is that the internet – and especially social media – give it a perfect chance to spread widely and to be normed. A person gets used to reading this sort of thing and seeing it get attention and approval from like-minded people who have found each other in online forums, and over time the expression of such thoughts seems more and more acceptable. Politicians, comedians (Dave Chapelle is a recent example), and other celebrities add to the din of the baying hounds.

Sometimes if a person goes too far there are consequences; sometimes not. But the Overton Window of what is “too far” has certainly shifted. And I don’t think we’re going back any time soon, or perhaps never.