McConnell then began to lay out how Republicans will respond if the filibuster is eliminated. Via Daily Wire:

“They are arguing for a radically less stable and less consensus-driven system of government. Forget about enduring laws with broad support. Nothing in federal law would ever be settled.

“Does anyone really believe the American people were voting for an entirely new system of government by electing Joe Biden to the White House and a 50-50 Senate?

“This is 50-50 Senate. There was no mandate to completely transform America by the American people on November 3.” //

McConnell said the notion that the filibuster is the only thing that stands in the way of Democrats ramming through their entire agenda is false.

“So, let me say this very clearly for all 99 of my colleagues: Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like.

“None of us have served one minute in a Senate that was completely drained of comity and consent. This is an institution that requires unanimous consent to turn the lights on before noon.”

Given the 50-50 split, McConnell reminded Democrats that the vice president does not break ties in determining a quorum.

“I want our colleagues to imagine a world where every single task, every one of them, requires a physical quorum. […] Everything that Democratic Senates did to Presidents Bush and Trump… everything the Republican Senate did to President Obama… would be child’s play compared to the disaster that Democrats would create for their own priorities if they break the Senate.” //

McConnell listed the following, as noted by The Daily Wire:

Nationwide right-to-work for working Americans.
Defunding Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities on day one.
A whole new era of domestic energy production.
Sweeping new protections for conscience and the right to life of the unborn.
Concealed-carry reciprocity in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Massive hardening of security on our southern border.
Tough talk. Would he follow through?

Democrats want to use stimulus money to make you into the people populating Disney's cartoon 'Wall-E.' Instead, turn it into a weapon for antifragility.
By Joy Pullmann

tsar becket adams
@BecketAdams
you all are missing the real story re: WaPo's correction of its Trump/Ga. investigations chief "scoop."

the real scandal is that a bunch of newsrooms claimed at the time they “confirmed” the details of the "scoop" with their own anon sourcing.
Audio shows the media got the Trump-Georgia story all wrong
washingtonexaminer.com //

That’s incredibly significant, and not just from a media malfeasance perspective (but that’s, of course, part of it). Here’s why: it was reported in January that Georgia State officials didn’t think a recording of the call existed, which is presumably why WaPo took bad quotes from a source they wouldn’t name but who was familiar with the conversation. They wanted the story and didn’t have the recording, so they reported what they were told. Not particularly impressive journalism.

That was readily apparent after the Wall Street Journal got their hands on the recording and published it last week, proving that the anonymous source essentially made up quotes and attributed them to the former president. And where was this recording discovered? In the trash folder on a device belonging to the lead investigator in the Secretary of State’s office, the very person Trump called.

Earlier this week an all-star group of energy and climate scholars published a scientific article in a prestigious journal pointing out that a Stanford professor’s proposal for powering the United States entirely on renewable energy sources rests upon a gigantic lie.

Over the last several years, Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo and many politicians have pointed to Stanford scientist Mark Jacobson’s modeling as proof that we can quickly and cheaply transition to 100 percent renewables.

What is the lie? That we can increase the amount of power from U.S. hydroelectric dams ten-fold. According to the U.S. Department of Energy and all major studies, the real potential increase is just one percent of that.

Without all that additional hydroelectricity, Jacobson’s entire house of cards falls apart. That’s because there’s no other way to store all of that unreliable solar and wind energy, given the shortcomings of current battery technologies.

The authors diplomatically call Jacobson’s lie an “error,” but it is in fact a lie and everyone — Jacobson included — knows it.

In his response, Jacobson writes, “Increasing hydropower's peak instantaneous discharge rate was not a ‘modeling mistake’ but an assumption.”

What is an assumption? It is “a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof” [emphasis added].

But what have Jacobson, Gore, DiCaprio and politicians around the world been insisting for years? That Jacobson’s study proves not only that we can power the world with renewables-alone, but also that doing so would be cheaper and more environmentally friendly.

Upon the big lie rest others.

For example, around the world, politicians and renewables advocates seeking to close nuclear plants justify their actions by claiming Jacobson’s work proves that nuclear plants are not needed as an alternative to fossil fuels.

Jacobson himself told the audience during our debate at UCLA last year that California would replace our last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon, entirely with renewables — and at a lower cost than keeping the plant running.

Jacobson says these things even though he knows perfectly well that everywhere in the world nuclear plants are closed, fossil fuels are burned instead.

Becket Adams wrote a piece that illustrates a part of what I’m talking about. He noted how so many newsrooms claimed to have “verified” the fake Trump quotes while they ran to repeat them.

The natural question is how you can verify something that is objectively false. The obvious answer is that you can’t. That means that NBC News, ABC News, CNN, and others who hid behind fake verification claims so they could repeat this false report did so knowing that they had no proof for what they were actually putting out there. They simply made it up, or they all got duped by the same source.

On that note, let me say this. If the Post and all these other outlets aren’t going to reveal who the lying source was, then I have no choice but to assume their “source” simply doesn’t exist and that they all made it up as a partisan political attack. There is no ethical reason to protect a source that provides false information. In fact, it’s unethical to print a false story and then refuse to even reveal how you came into the possession of that false story. I say that to mean when media flacks try to claim that the Post was lied to but that they didn’t lie by repeating it, you owe them zero benefits of the doubt. If they were lied to, then they should tell us who lied. If they won’t, then it’s logical to conclude that source doesn’t actually exist. //

Regardless, ask yourself this. How many times has this been done in the past? Yes, the Post got caught this time just like CNN got caught when they printed false claims about James Comey’s then-future. The Atlantic’s “suckers and losers” story also comes to mind. But for every time these outlets get caught, you have to assume they’ve gotten away with it hundreds of times. After all, how exactly can you disprove an anonymous source who doesn’t actually provide evidence of anything? You typically can’t. This latest case was an exception because audio happened to exist to directly contradict the account.

The UK's Rolls-Royce and Estonia's Fermi Energia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to study the potential for the deployment of small modular reactors in the Baltic country. The study will cover all aspects of deployment, including grid suitability, cooling, emergency planning, human resources, licensing feasibility, economics and the supply chain.

GE Steam Power announced today that it has designed and manufactured the largest-ever (75-inch) last-stage blade for its Arabelle low-pressure rotor. The blade will enable the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant under construction in Somerset, England to produce 3.2 GWe of CO2 free power, GE said. Once completed, this Arabelle steam turbine will be the most powerful nuclear steam turbine in operation. It was tested at GE's factory in Belfort, France. //

Inserted into a balancing pit specifically designed for large turbines, the 8-meter wide bladed module was rotated at a speed of 1500 revolutions per minute, similar to its future site conditions.

"This major turbine part is a first quarter 2021 milestone for Hinkley Point C achieved on time, despite the pandemic," said Guillaume Callewaert, EDF HPC programme director. "This large component will be delivered to site and support the mechanical and electrical ramp-up phase of our project in the coming months."

Last-stage blades are part of the low-pressure module in a steam turbine generator which converts steam into electricity in a nuclear power plant. Longer blades increase efficiency of a steam turbine and allow to further optimise backpressure, all of which contribute to greater power output from the nuclear power plant, GE Steam Power said.

[I]n California, Biden beat Trump by 5± million votes (2020), whereas Clinton beat Trump by 4± million (2016). Doing the arithmetic, the contrast is 833,843 votes. (Statisticians call this the Difference of the Differences, or DoD.) Note that Trump increased his California vote total [from 2016 to 2020] by 1.5± million votes. However, Biden increased the Democrat candidate’s vote total by 2.3± million [from 2016]. Where did California find 3.8± million more votes in 2020 than in 2016? Easy, you say: California’s population has increased.

That’s a good thought, but between 2016 and 2020, the Census Bureau says that the population of California increase by less than 700,000 people. (Note that this includes children not old enough to vote, non-citizens, non-registered citizens, etc.). However, as mentioned above, the 2020 vote total for the Democrat candidate increased by 2.3± million votes. On the face of it, that significant vote increase does not appear to be logically explainable. //

Trump did better than expected in Ohio and Florida while also improving over 2016 in Louisiana, Alabama, and Utah, each of which counted their absentee ballots BEFORE Election Day (no counting of absentee votes afterward). In other words, whatever transpired during “the Great Pause” in counting “new” Biden votes was precluded from happening in those five states. Is that just a coincidence?
New York lost over 304,000 residents from 2016 to 2020, yet the state provided approximately 300,000 more votes for Biden in 2020 than expected. How is that possible when Trump increased his vote totals in 2020 by over 461,000 from 2016? //

California gained 700,000± in population from 2016 to 2020, but gained 6,000,000± registered voters. Not bloody likely no matter how big of a voter registration drive there was.