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Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
Alexander C. Kaufman and Chris D’Angelo at HuffPost write—Demand For Oil Has Plummeted, But Industry Keeps Building New Infrastructure Anyway:
[…] On Monday, oil prices plunged below $0 as the world ran out of places to store what’s already been pumped. You’d be forgiven for wondering, then, whether the oil industry exists in a different reality.
Instead of retreating, the American oil and gas sector has plowed ahead at full speed during one of the worst pandemics in a century, even as demand for its product tanked because of the COVID-19 economic downturn. The industry’s efforts continued in no small part because federal and state regulators deemed fossil fuel work “essential” during the pandemic.
In Texas, oil companies won permits to expand drilling, with 1,175 new wells in March alone, pushing the tally for the first three months of this year 30% higher than for the same period in 2019.
In Massachusetts, crews went to work building a controversial new facility to send fracked natural gas to Canada. In Montana and West Virginia, the resumption of stalled pipeline projects has stirred up old fights with environmentalist foes. […]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
“As if a man’s soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play; until here they are at forty, with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and not one thought to rub against another, while they wait for the train.”
~~Robert Lewis Stevenson, “An Apology for Idlers,” 1877
At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—”Partial Truth Abortion”:
Many people hate the term “framing.” I understand at least one of their fears: framing can turn into an excuse to substitute marketing for principles. In other words, instead of a technique to get a right-on message across, framing can dilute the message, contaminate and weaken the principle. In order to be more persuasive, what we’re trying to be more persuasive about gets partially junked. It’s a reasonable worry.
Other people, of course, argue that framing is merely a euphemism for marketing, which is a euphemism for manipulation, and no way in hell should progressive politics be marketed because to do so means selling out to the perniciously unprogressive idea that people should be manipulated into accepting any point of view.
Who can argue that we shouldn’t manipulate people? Manipulation implies lying, and nothing could be less progressive than that.
However, framing or marketing, or whatever you prefer to call it, doesn’t have to be manipulative. In this world of blurbs and rapid-fire images, it seems to me we progressives are compelled to find not only the right message but the right way to deliver our message, or we might as well stick to our echo chambers. Sometimes that means quick and dirty. The Freeway Blogger knows this. As does any good political consultant.
Rightwingers have beaten us silly for decades with terms like “Tax and spend” Democrats. “Weak on defense” Democrats. And it seems to have taken us an interminably long time to learn how to effectively return fire. Last election cycle, we did this with great effect by means of “rubber-stamp Republicans.”
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Falling into the “Tea Party” trap, the media exaggerate the protests all over again. US as a “failed state.’ Does TB vaccination help? “COVID toes,” now? Joan McCarter on the PPP tap-out, “Round 3.5” & the latest cruel twist keeping help from the needy.
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