July 1,
2022:
Having listened to the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson and two dozen other
witnesses in the January 6 hearings, GOP Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (no
relation) makes clear. As far as Mr. Trump, he says on CBS Mornings,
“I will not be supporting him for 2024, he acted irresponsibly during that
time, he was a risk to the nation, absolutely.”
*
The U.S. Treasury Department notifies Heritage Trust, based in Delaware that it is freezing more than $1 billion in assets linked to sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov.
If you are wondering why a fat cat Russian with close ties to Vladimir Putin might have $1 billion in assets in the United States, you are not alone. That particular trust was formed in July 2017. Kerimov was first sanctioned in 2018, related to charges of money laundering and tax evasion, both in Europe and the United States.
So far, international efforts have led to a freeze of more than $30 billion in Russian oligarch’s ill-gotten gains.
___
7/2/22: Well, thank goodness, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states can ban all abortions if they want – up to and including being raped by aliens. According to the Indianapolis Star, just hours after Ohio passed a law banning all abortions after six weeks, “Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio.
The doctor “had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.”
Bernard agreed to help, and the little girl was soon on the way to Indiana, where an abortion in her situation is still legal.
For now.
*
Meanwhile, I have landed on the mailing lists for @win.donaldtrump.com.
How cool is that
Today, Don Jr. sent me a personal greeting.
So honored, right! The missive reads:
John,
It’s time we stand up against the WOKE, DESTRUCTIVE LEFT.
They’ve attacked OUR values, destroyed OUR economy, put AMERICA LAST day after
day, and are doing everything in their power to FUNDAMENTALLY change our
Nation.
Democrats won’t
stop until AMERICA IS UNRECOGNIZABLE.
My father just launched a new elite group, the Official America First Freedom
Defenders, and he’s requesting YOU join his team IMMEDIATELY.
He can’t SAVE
AMERICA without YOU, John.
All you need to do is contribution $25, and you
will automatically join the ranks and go down in history with us.
My father wants to know which Patriots stepped up by MIDNIGHT. Can I tell him
YOU were the first?
Well,
let me think. I mean, I do want to SAVE AMERICA, but I think we need to save it
from the Trumps.
___
7/3/22: Rep. Liz Cheney, tells a reporter that there is a very real chance that former-President Trump will be indicted for the role he played in the January 6 riot.
Meanwhile, I get an email from Trump himself, promising, “I have something for you,” in the subject line.
I don’t
know what. I guess I have to contribute to find out what it might be. Anyway,
my good pal Don wants me to know:
John,
I’m ready to SAVE AMERICA from Joe Biden, but I can’t do it alone… I
need YOUR help.
Making sure we have enough resources to STOP the Left from destroying my
America First agenda is vital - especially when their allies in the Fake News
media and Big Tech companies are working overtime to SILENCE me.
Then he adds:
I need you right now, John.
This is where we step up and show the Left-wing MOB that REAL
Americans
are REJECTING Joe Biden’s corrupt agenda.
I’m pretty stoked to think that the president and I are on a first-name basis, and happy to feel needed.
I’ll donate just as soon as I finish climbing Mt. Everest in my underwear, carrying Don Jr. on my back.
I also got an email asking me to vote on which of four membership cards I’d like, assuming I donated to his bail fund.
I will say, I can’t make up my mind. The one of Trump, looking kind of Colonel Sanders on a bucket of chicken is my favorite for now.
*
We don’t learn this until today, but last December, the Inspector General for the Department of Transportation recommended that former Secretary Elaine Chao be investigated for misuse of her office.
Among her alleged sins, Chao is said to have used staff to perform personal tasks. For example: promoting a shipping business owned by Chao’s father and sisters – who do extensive business with China. The IG also found that Chao “directed the department’s public affairs staff to assist her father in the marketing of his personal biography and to edit his Wikipedia page, and used staff to check on repairs of an item at a store for her father.”
Yes, you taxpayer dopes!
You paid for staffers at the Department of Transportation to run private errands for Elaine Chao, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s wife.
Mr. and Mrs. McConnell are estimated to be
worth at least $150 million dollars. So you can see why they never paid someone
else to run errands when they could stick us ordinary folk with the tab.
___
7/4/22: Ex-President Blubber lashes out at Rep. Cheney.
Warmongering
and despicable human being Liz Cheney, who is hated by the great people of
Wyoming (down 35!), keeps saying, over and over again, that HER Fake Unselect
Committee may recommend CRIMINAL CHARGES against a President of the United
States who got more votes than any sitting President in history.
We don’t
have a fair system of ‘Justice’ in this Country anymore. The way they are
treating me & my supporters, compared to what happens to those ‘on the
other side,’ is like day & night.
He wasn’t done
yet, of course, and decided to get in another one of his thousands of attacks
on the free press:
It has been
this way for a long time, but never like it is today! All semblance of a ‘FAIR
& BALANCED’ Media to look over, study, and report on what is going on in
our Country is GONE! Fight on, America, Fight On! (Oh, I’m sorry. By using the
word FIGHT, they will say I am inciting an Insurrection. Apologies!).
Yeah. They might say that.
They might.
And that
is how Blubber celebrates Independence Day.
POSTSCRIPT: Sen.
Mitt Romney weighs in on the Fourth with a warning. “President Joe
Biden is a genuinely good man,” he admits, “but he has yet been
unable to break through our national malady of denial, deceit, and distrust. A
return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it
incurable.”
___
7/5/22: There has been some talk that Rejected-President Blubber may declare this summer that he is making another run for the presidency in 2024. Why the urgency? Rumor has it that Trump believes a declaration would help his defense in the face of a number of legal challenges.
That is, he can say the witch hunters are after him again – because the Democrats and other haters can’t beat him any other way.
Plus, it you don’t remember, should Trump win the presidency again, he could pardon himself and all his other feloniously inclined, anti-democratic, fuck-the-rule-of-law pals. I mean, if you don’t keep track of all the crooks orbiting Rejected-President Blubber, you need to get out more.
Stop watching Fox News. Stop binging on QAnon conspiracy theories. Get some fresh air. Go for a walk and exercise.
Don’t be
a Lev Parnas.
Lev, if you don’t know, used to work cheek to jowl with Rudy Giuliani, in a noble effort to “clean up corruption” in Ukraine. Remember? Lev and Rudy and Igor Fruman – the Three Musketeers of Justice. Searching high and low for Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Well, Lev just got sentenced to twenty months in prison, which we can all agree is a terrible look for any corruption fighter. Or, as the Department of Justice puts it, Parnas will be spending the next chapter of his life in the slammer, as a result of “conspiring to make political contributions by a foreign national along with solicitation and aiding and abetting the making of the same, conspiring to make straw donations, participating in a wire fraud conspiracy, and making false statements and falsifying records.”
And just whose money was Lev funneling to U.S. politicians? Not just tainted cash from, say, Canadians.
No.
Russian money. Andrey Muraviev’s Russian money to be exact.
Yes. Lev was a really shitty corruption fighter. And as part of his sentence, he must cough up $2,322,500 in restitution.
So, to recap. Lev is going to jail. Igor Fruman will be out first, having been sentenced to 366 days in prison for similarly larcenous acts. Two lesser lights in the scheme, Andrey Kukushkin and David Corriea are also having their living expenses footed by the federal government, as they, too, have been sentenced to a year and a day behind bars. Muraviev, however, remains free – having decided to hunker down in Russia, beyond the reach of the long arm of U.S. law.
*
If you are doing the math, the Three Musketeers have now been cut down by 66.666%. And the way Rudy is going lately, he might be cut down next. A Georgia grand jury has just subpoenaed Mr. Giuliani, in an investigation into efforts to steal the last presidential election, wrap it in a red, white and blue bow, and hand it over to Rejected-President Blubber, so that he might serve a second, undeserved term in office and pardon Rudy and many of his other pals.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, and a witness in the January 6 hearings has testified under oath that Giuliani pursued the idea of a pardon in the dying days of Donald J. Trump’s time in office. “America’s Mayor” has denied that he ever asked for such a boon, but seems to have undercut his denial, when he assured reporters that Ms. Hutchinson was “a reckless liar,” and “was never present when I asked for a pardon.”
Poor choice of words, maybe, but considering the track record of the Three Musketeers, where legalities are involved, you kind of go with Ms. Hutchinson’s word over Rudy’s.
Rudy might feel a little better knowing that he’s not alone in being subpoenaed by the Georgia folks. Also sent legal missives today were the Seven Dwarfs of Insurrection, namely: Rudy, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jacki Pick Deason. All are suspected of pushing “stolen election lies, and conspiring to pressure Georgia officials to overturn the fair vote of that state in the 2020 presidential election.
In fact, early evidence seems to indicate that the Dwarfs had a plan to stir up chaos on January 6. Both the former Attorney General Bill Barr, and the then Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, had told the president by late December 2020, that there was no evidence of significant voter fraud, enough to change the election results. Yet, Trump and the Dwarfs kept right on pushing the stolen election lie. In one known email exchange, Eastman admitted that a legal challenge to the vote in Wisconsin, aimed at the U.S. Supreme Court, was unlikely to yield results. Four justices had to agree to take the case (and only Justice Clarence Thomas had so far shown a propensity for acting like a legal nut). “So the odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices’ spines,” Eastman suggested, “and I understand that there is a heated fight underway.”
Chesebro was no more optimistic about the case, based on merits, but saw another path to election success. Five days after Trump had called upon supporters to descend on the nation’s capital and make it “wild,” Chesebro saw reason for hope. The “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”
So: that was a part of the plan. Scare the U.S.
Supreme Court into action – and if it took the threat of a riot to
accomplish it, fine.
___
7/7/22: In Detroit, a police officer who confronts a man armed with an AR-15 is out-gunned and gunned down.
A second officer then manages to kill the killer.
In America today, “only two good guys with ordinary guns can stop a bad guy with a weapon of war.”
(I think Wayne LaPierre said that.)
*
In Cloud Cuckoo Land, where Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene lives, she has a new theory about the July 4 shootings. Just too many guns in too many hands?
Nope.
In a
podcast she explains:
“Here’s
what I have to say. I mean. Two shootings on July 4: one in a rich white
neighborhood and the other at a fireworks display. It almost sounds like it’s
designed to persuade Republicans to go along with more gun control. I mean,
after all, we didn’t see that happen at all the pride parades in the month of
June,” Greene said.
“But as
soon as we hit the MAGA month,” she continued, “as soon as we hit the month
that we’re all celebrating, loving our country, we have shootings on July 4. I
mean, that’s ... oh, you know, that would sound like a conspiracy theory,
right?”
Right, Marjorie. You sound like you’re both clueless and nuts. See, for example: shootings at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket frequented by black patrons, at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, police gunned down while investigating domestic abuse calls, children shot and killed by their own parents, road rage shootings, the Pulse Nightclub massacre, and the Parkland High shooting, etc.
Greene went on to suggest that guns weren’t really the problem. The problem was anti-depressant drugs.
Or, as
the NRA would say: “Only a good pharmacist with a prescription pad can stop a
bad guy with an AR-15.”
*
Vanity Fair has already compiled a list of imaginary problems cited by right-wing types to explain why so many Americans like to go out and shoot all kinds of other random Americans, or even family members and friends. So now we add anti-depressants to that mix.
If you missed it, the list includes
Too many doors. Not enough God. Unarmed teachers. Marijuana. Video games. Women being nags. Roe v. Wade. A
lack of “trip wires” and “mantraps.” This is just a small sampling of the things
that conservatives have attempted to blame mass shootings on over the last few
months, a list that, as of Wednesday evening, now includes “spiritual
problems,” the solution to which is, according to one Fox News guest,
exorcisms.
Yes, on
Wednesday former secretary of education Bill Bennett appeared
on the network to explain that we don’t need gun control, we need to drive the
demons out of would-be mass shooters. “I’m not sure we’re going deep enough.
Yeah, I think you need police. You need parents for sure. You need schools, you
need to clean up social media…. But you know, you may need an exorcist too,”
Bennett, who served both the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush
administrations, said. “Before your audience shakes its head on that: If you
look at these boys, these men, these young men, they have deeply spiritual
problems. Deeply.”
Bennett, of
course went on. “If you go into the labyrinthine caves of the internet—way down
and I don’t recommend it—it’s ugly stuff. These guys dwell there. They live
there. They drench themselves in it. And it’s as ugly and evil as it gets.
Where are the ministers? Where are the rabbis? The priests? Look, I don’t want
to suggest something that would seem farcical to a lot of your audience…. It’s
a deeply spiritual void, I think that these men have in their hearts and their
souls. And I think it needs to be addressed. And I don’t think we get at it
frankly with these externalities, as important as some of them may be. And they
may be. We need to do it all but we need to do more.”
So, there you are. Less anti-depressants,
more exorcisms, and keep buying more ammo and guns.
Next headline you may see: “Depressed shooter,
armed with AR-15, kills 3, and wounds 6 at his own exorcism.”
*
The New York Times has a story about a recent deadly glacier collapse in Italy, focusing on the effects of climate change.
Days before
a glacier in the Italian Dolomites broke off with the force of a collapsing
skyscraper, crushing at least 10 hikers under an avalanche of ice, snow and
rock, Carlo Budel heard water running under the ice.
“I heard
what sounded like a river’s torrent,” said Mr. Budel, who lives in an isolated
refuge next to the glacier on the 11,000-foot Marmolada mountain. At the
mountain’s base, he watched a yellow helicopter fly overhead searching for
signs of life, or remains.
Mr. Budel
recalled that when he first scaled the glacier at the end of summer, not even a
decade ago, he hardly needed ropes, there was so much snow.
“The difference between now and then is scary,” he said. “At this point we are on another path.”
In 2021, drought-stricken Greece was swept by massive forest fires. Germany was hit by torrential rains, sweeping down from the high mountains, and turning valleys into paths of death. Along the Po River, this summer, signs Italy’s worst drought in 70 years are abundant.
“‘These kinds of events, they are getting more and more frequent, and they will be more frequent with enhanced global warming,’ said Susanna Corti, the coordinator of the Global Change unit of Italy’s National Research Council.”
Glaciers in the Alps may eventually disappear, something not seen for a million years. “Dr. Corti said glaciers needed to be monitored more carefully, because ‘the risk of this kind of event is increasing’ and because things ‘won’t go back to the way they were.’”
Ten are dead, and
one person is missing.
They were
victims of what Prime Minister Mario Draghi called “the deterioration of the
environment and the climate situation.” Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella,
speaking in Mozambique on Tuesday, said it was a “symbol of what climate
change, if not governed, is producing around the world.”
“There is no
hope without everyone’s cooperation,” Mr. Mattarella said.
Between 2005 and 2014, scientists knew the glacier that collapsed had shrunk by 30 percent. So the problem is growing. Experts warn that by 2050, over half the glaciers in the Alps will have disappeared, “and a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this year predicted irreversible loss of glaciers by the end of this century.”
“The retreating of the glaciers,” the Times notes, “has
sometimes exposed the remains of soldiers” killed in World War I.
*
Over at Fox News, recently, Tucker Carlson was hosting a climate change denier and howling about green energy. According to Carlson (and his guest naturally agreed), the collapse of the government in Sri Lanka was all a result of “green energy schemes thought up by morons.”
That gave Carlson a chance to bash Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez again – and had he thrown in Hunter Biden’s laptop, no one would have been surprised. This blogger is convinced that Mr. Carlson has a fetish for Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, the attractive leftist lawmaker from New York. He mentions her every chance he has, and one begins to suspect he lusts after her in his right-wing heart.
As the Daily Beast explained, this exchange followed:
“We are
watching countries around the world… collapsing and entering into a state of
revolution because these morons tampered with their energy grids. But they
don’t care,” Carlson said. “They are going to continue doing it unless someone
stops them – until exactly the same thing happens here.”
Marc Morano,
a global warming denier whom Carlson did not introduce as such,
had a similar point of view.
“I think
green energy and this whole war on agriculture…the voters cannot support this
anymore,” Morano said.
“We are
seeing what’s happening in Sri Lanka, we are seeing what’s happening in the
Netherlands, there are protests in other countries growing, [and] Canada is
following the same line with fertilizer. This is a war against modern
civilization,” he added, reminiscent of past criticisms of Ocasio-Cortez’s proposals from Fox
figures.
“It is a war
against people,” Carlson chimed in. Life expectancy will “drop to the floor” if
decision makers even so much as “tamper with” fossil fuels, which are “our
greatest blessing,” he added.
“How do we
allow people like [Ocasio-]Cortez and [Joe] Biden, who do not know what a
carburetor is, to lecture us about something as complex as energy policy? Like,
this is insane,” Carlson huffed.
Morano
responded by blaming individuals in the World Economic Forum and U.S. climate
envoy John Kerry, who “can go to the CEOs of major corporations and get them to
sign a climate pledge, which then commits them to all of these green goals.”
“They believe that us, the unwashed masses,
if left to our own devices, will create inequity, racism, environmental
destruction, [and] the climate crisis,” Morano claimed. “They literally want to
regulate not just our farming but every aspect of our lives, and that is really
what the World Economic Forum and the United Nations is after here, is
controlling humans.”
It was typical Carlson – whipping up hysteria – terrifying his viewers – “we’re all gonna’ die” hack reporting.
No one in Italy, where ten are dead, and another missing, or Mozambique, where the nations of the world were gathering, or Sri Lanka, where a corrupt leader had fled the country, or anywhere else wants to control our lives. They want to control theirs.
Joe Biden doesn’t want to control your life, either. But we do face a growing threat and the nations of the world all know it, and Biden knows it, and this poor, simple blogger knows it, even if Tucker’s viewers don’t.
Because they listen to the real moron.
Meanwhile, most
of the western half of the U.S. is in the midst of a prolonged drought that has
nothing to do with green energy, or the Jolly Green Giant. Bans on certain
types of fertilizer aren’t the problem, either. Changing weather patterns
around a warming earth are the issue.
___
7/8/22: Fox News has another story to ignore today. The jobs report for June was strong again: 372,000 jobs added. Unemployment remains at 3.6%.
The Labor Participation Rate is little changed, at 62.2 percent.
The May job numbers were adjusted down slightly to 384,000; but as it stands now, starting in February 2021, under Mr. Biden, 8,963,000 jobs have been recovered or added to the U.S. economy.
You can
look it all up.
*
Meanwhile, Ex-President Blubber says that “the greatest mayor in New York City history, Rudy Giuliani,” is in the hospital “with a big heart problem.” “Can you believe it, what they put Rudy through,” he continued, blaming Giuliani’s health problems on people on the Left, such as this blogger.
Well, best
wishes and speedy recovery, Mayor, and remember at least you have Obamacare
coverage.
___
7/10/22: It’s pretty exciting to end up on Donald J. Trump’s email lists. I feel like he’s my new email buddy.
Today I got this email, which included two different links you could click to send Donald some dollars.
John,
I asked, will you answer?
I want YOU to become an ULTRA MAGA
MEMBER.
You've always stood with me
- will you still?
President
Trump is inviting YOU. You have 1 HOUR TO ACCEPT.
I don’t
know. I don’t think I’m really going to donate. Unless the Fulton County,
Georgia grand jury returns an indictment against Donald, and it turns out he
needs some extra bail money.
___
7/11/22: The problem with Donald Trump, and the problem with his MAGA loyalists is that if you really listen to what he’s saying, he will make you dumber, and his loyalists hang on every word.
At another one of his endless political rallies – this time in
Alaska – he mocks the idea of climate change. “You can worry about nuclear warming but you can’t worry about
the global warming,” he said. “They said the other day that the oceans are
going to rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 300 years. We have bigger
problems than that. We’ll have a little bit more beachfront property,” he said
with his patented smirk.
“That’s not the worst thing in the world,” he added, to a roar
of “knowing” laughter from the crowd.
Sadly, the laugh is on them. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and six other government agencies warn that waters along the U.S. coasts are expected to rise by 0.25 to
0.3 meters, or roughly 10-12 inches in the next thirty years. Trump ran the
U.S. government for four years – and to my knowledge never mentioned NOAA once.
Scientists who worked on the report also warn that the worst results will
become apparent after 2100, long after Trump is gone. But not so far ahead for
any babies born today.
In fact, Anchorage (and Alaska) have seen temperatures rise more
than most parts of the U.S. The average high in the city in the 1960s was 5.8°C.
In the 80s, it was 6.4°C. In the 2010s it was 7.5°C.
That would translate to an increase from 42.44°F in the 60s, to 45.5°F
in the decade just ended.
Not enough to boil Trump’s brains, but an accelerating problem.
*
Speaking of the ill-informed, former White House aide Peter Navarro appears on Newsmax to talk about the January 6 hearings, and his related problems. Navarro has been indicted for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. So you figure he’s more than a little miffed by what he’s been watching.
This “miffery”
causes Navarro to explode in a bizarre and potentially dangerous rant. He tells his host he believes Vice President
Pence committed treason:
The reason why I think Pence is guilty of
treason, to at least President Trump and perhaps to this country, is that he
acted on the basis of a flawed legal opinion concocted by his own general
counsel that he did not share with either the president or with the president’s
White House legal counsel. Due process plus duty to the commander in chief
required you to do that.
This idea – that you can commit treason to the president is stupid enough. It’s even stupider when Trump’s former Chief White House Counsel Pat Cipollone testifies before the select committee.
He tells
lawmakers investigating the attack, that he agreed with Mr. Pence’s position.
In fact, he believed Pence deserved a “Presidential Medal of Freedom,” although
obviously not for Donald J. Trump.
___
7/12/22: Tucker Carlson loves to rail against the Democrats’ “green energy” plans whenever he has a chance – because he likes to rail about Democrats doing anything. And to make his screeds more palatable, he needs to deny climate change as often as possible. His latest guest to comment on the matter was Steve Koonin, a physicist – in other words a real scientist! He told Carlson exactly what Carlson wanted to hear, and what Carlson wanted his gullible viewers to hear.
Climate change?
“It’s a fiction of the media,” Koonin claimed. “And the politicians who like to promote that notion.”
Koonin also said he wished other scientists would stand up to the politicians and tell the people the truth, just like himself. Carlson cocked his head slightly, and nodded as if deep in cogitation.
For context, consider the other scientists who discovered that glacier ice from the last 2,000 years has all melted on Mt. Everest (see: 2/3/22), and the collapsing glaciers in the Italian Alps (see: 7/7/22). For variety, you can consider the climate change warnings from NASA (see: 1/31/22), the warnings from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (see: 2/15/22) consider the slow death of the Great Salt Lake, and record temperatures in Great Britain (see: 7/19/22).
See also a study by Curtis Deutsch, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University, and co-author Justin L. Penn, “Avoiding Ocean Mass Extinction From Climate Warming.”
They warn that at the current rate of heating, we could face a catastrophe in our oceans, similar to the one known as “The Great Dying,” which wiped out the dinosaurs 252 million years ago.
As The New York Times explains:
The ocean has
long acted as a quiet safeguard against climate change, absorbing vast amounts
of the carbon dioxide and trapped heat as people burned fossil fuels and razed
forests. But that service has come at a cost. Last year, the ocean reached
its highest temperature and lowest oxygen content since humans started keeping track. Changes to the ocean’s chemistry are already threatening fish. Coral reefs are in steep decline.
“‘How screwed
are we?’ I get that all the time,” Dr. Deutsch said. “If we don’t do anything,
we’re screwed.”
Since Tucker trotted out his physicist, let’s
include a third scientist, from just this one story in the Times. Pippa
Moore, a professor of marine science at Newcastle University in England, had
this to say about the work of Deutsch and Penn:
This paper
adds to the huge body of evidence that unless more is done to curb our greenhouse
gas emissions, our marine systems are on course to see a massive shift in where
marine species live and, as shown in this paper, significant extinction events
that could rival previous mass extinction events.
Cut to
Carlson’s show again – where the unhinged Mike Lindell, of MyPillow, is trying
to sell his wares.
___
7/13/22: With hospitals overwhelmed by waves of sick people during the pandemic, there was a surge in antibiotic-resistant “superbug” infections in hospitals. Healthcare facilities had been making progress in combating the problem in recent years.
Deaths
from drug-resistant bacteria rose by 15 percent in 2020, compared with the
previous year.
___
7/14/22: Okay.
No doubt about it, inflation sucks, hitting 9.1% in June, year over year. And
the stock market drop also sucks. (This blogger’s stock funds are down more
than $100,000 on the year.) That doesn’t mean I’m nuts when I still insist,
Donald Trump should never be allowed inside the White House again.
Mr.
Biden’s poll numbers are atrocious; and Democrats could get clobbered in the
midterms. But ANY OTHER Republican would be better than Trump in 2024. Okay,
not Sen. Ted Cruz. He’s craven. What the hell, bring back Bob Dole, if you
want. (Wait. Is he still alive?)
___
TEN-YEAR-OLD RAPE VICTIM ARRESTED…INCLUDE…
7/15/22: Former
White House lawyer Ty Cobb, who helped defend President Trump during the Russia
investigation, has, like many thinking Americans, now had his fill and more of
Ex-President Blubber.
In a
recent interview on NBC, speaking of his old client, Cobb did not hold back.
“He is a disaster for the Republican Party
for which he prevented a Senate majority in 2020 and, as time will demonstrate,
has already done the same for 2022 with his endorsements of unelectable
candidates all based on their loyalty or his own driving desire for revenge,”
Cobb said. “The Big Lie has been good only for Trump and has brought him
millions in donations, which some evidence suggests may have been mishandled.
The Big Lie, and the related violence, election interference and other
perceived misconduct, was and is an affront to this nation and its first
principles. It has permanently soiled the history pages and deepened the abyss
that divides our country and continues to expand due to the delusions and lack
of accountability of politicians in both parties.”
Trump,
he continued, might be the Democrats best weapon in the coming midterm
election:
“One thing the Democrats know for certain is
that Trump’s uncontrolled ego is his own worst enemy. They are praying they are
able to goad him into an announcement for a 2024 presidential run,” Cobb said.
“A 2024 declaration of his candidacy serves no interest but his self-defeating
and overwhelming need for relevance, attention and money. Such an announcement
also does not inoculate him from criminal investigation.”
As for
Trump’s Big Lie – that is, the last Big Lie of his presidency, the one he
repeats endlessly to this day – that the election was stolen – and therefore
his poor duped fans should keep denying Joe Biden is a legit president, Cobb
was blunt.
“It
should be disqualifying for Trump and his political acolytes, and would have
been at any other time in our history. To modify a well known Seinfeld
quote—SANITY NOW! The country needs desperately to move on with new and actual
leadership from a younger generation,” Cobb said.
___
7/18/22: Well,
it’s official. The funerals for the 21 victims of the massacre at Robb
Elementary School have all been buried.
Gov.
Greg Abbott decided he had better ways to spend his time than attending any of
those sad gatherings.
That man
just loves his guns. Hug your AR-15s tonight when you put them to bed, governor
and all your fans. No one is really coming to take your guns away…And, hey, as
long as your kids aren’t the ones who get slaughtered, what do you care?
___
7/19/22: You
can argue about climate change all you want. You can call it a hoax, as did President
Trump. Or you can stop being stupid, and look at the giant pile of evidence. On Tuesday, Great Britain
recorded its new all-time highest temperature: 104.5° F. In a part of the world
where air conditioning is rare, and heretofore rarely needed, it should be
another wake-up call.
The
previous record, set in 2019, was 101.7°. For the first time, Tuesday, the government
issued a “red alert” warning for the entire population. Extreme heat posed a
risk, not just to people with underlying conditions, but to “fit and healthy”
persons, as well.
Ben Clarke, a
researcher in extreme weather attribution at the University of Oxford, said in
a statement that "the most extreme heat wave events have become far more
likely and intense due to climate change – the heat on Monday and Tuesday
was extremely rare before significant human emissions of greenhouse gases, and
I would estimate, based on past attribution studies, that it has been made
hundreds to thousands of times more likely – probably at least ten times as
likely in just the past 20 years."
*
In related news, the Great Salt Lake, in Utah, may soon be
known as the Puny Salt Lake, as continued drought, exacerbated by…climate
change…continues to shrink that iconic body of water.
It’s size, in recent years, has been reduced
by two-thirds, and it’s still slowly vanishing.
Ecologists who have been watching this
climate change-induced trend told ABC News that the dry-up is already affecting
Utah’s fauna, flora and human populations, and the problem is only going to get
worse without outside help.
“I don’t know how much time we have,” Joel
Ferry, the director of Utah’s Department of Natural Resources, told ABC News.
…Kyle Stone, a wildlife biologist for the
state of Utah, told ABC News that animals and plants near the lake are already
bearing the burden of the dry-up.
As the water goes down, its salinity goes up
which kills algae, a food source for brine shrimp, he said. The shrimp is food
to more than 10 million birds that depend on the lake during migrations,
according to Stone.
For
added “fun,” mining waste, long sunk to the bottom of the lake, now dries in
the sun, turns to dust, and blows over Salt Lake City on windy days. Among the
toxic wastes now released: arsenic.
The Utah
state legislature has passed a $40 million plan to try to reverse the decline
in the lake. It’s going to be a tough go.
Someone
should call up Mar-a-Lago and explain all of this (really slowly) to Rejected-President
Trump.
POSTSCRIPT: I
continue to get emails from my pal, Donald J. Trump. Now, if I will contribute
$45 or more, I can get this “iconic Trump rally shirt.” Boy, call me “tempted!”
And when
I decide not to buy, because I’m not some dumb schlub, and click to close the
email, this warning pops up on screen:
Meanwhile, Trump has finally found a few people who invaded the Capitol that he can really hate. A film crew from Stephen Colbert’s show managed to gain entry to the halls of Congress after hours. No doors or windows were smashed. No police were clubbed or sprayed with mace.
None of the members of the crew wanted to overturn any election, and no one wanted to hang Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi.
No
matter. Trump cranked up the hate:
___
7/21/22: Thursday evening, Lee Zeldin, Republican candidate for governor of New York was attacked while speaking onstage.
If you see a sentence that begin, “Man attacks…” You have to assume the target of the attack deserves sympathy, as Mr. Zeldin does. Republicans immediately began complaining, however, when the attacker was released under bail rules in New York they considered lax and an abomination. On Fox News, Andy McCarthy insisted this was proof of “everything” that was wrong with New York. “This is how crazy the law is in New York.” Well, he scoffed, in New York the law works for criminals, but not the law-abiding types.
Also, what a scumbag, President Biden was, for not declaring this attack heinous, the moment Zeldin was dragged down by his attacker, but fortunately not otherwise hurt. I failed to make a note, but some poor dunce on Twitter – Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene or Sen. Marsha Blackburn – insisted Mr. Biden deserved to be sent to Guantanamo and waterboarded, at least. Brietbart News jumped on the Beat Up Biden Bandwagon, call the condemnation the president did make, describing it as “lackluster.” Biden also failed, they said, to address the “weak bail laws” in New York – which is interesting, since the federal government has no control over bail laws in state courts.
What
exactly did Mr. Biden say?
I condemn the attack on Congressman Zeldin
in the strongest terms. As I’ve said before, violence has absolutely no place
in our society or our politics. I am especially grateful for the courage of
those who immediately intervened, and that he is unharmed and was able to
continue his speech. I also want to thank law enforcement officers who quickly
took action and are investigating this attack that defies our fundament
democratic values.
As for New York State bail laws, changes
were made in 2019, when lawmakers realized poor defendants, who lacked cash,
often ended up spending time in jail for crimes the courts eventually ruled
they did not commit. On any given day, the state housed 24,000 individuals in
its jails, 70% of whom had not been convicted, and simply awaited trial. The
egregious failure of the justice system in the case of Kalief Browder, stood out. Poor Browder “was
held as a teenager for three years pre-trial after being unable to post a $3,000 bail after
being accused of stealing a backpack. His robbery charges were later dropped
because of a lack of evidence.”
Democrats in
the New York Assembly pushed through changes to eliminate cash bail and pre-trial
detention in nearly all misdemeanor and non-violent felony cases.
Since
Zeldin’s attacker was drunk, and claimed he didn’t know who Zeldin was, and
since Zeldin was unhurt, the attacker was charged under state law with “attempted assault,” which is not a
felony.
Since
hyperbole is a second language most politicians now speak, especially on
Twitter, Nick Langworthy, chair of the New York Republican Party let rip.
“Only in [Gov.] Kathy Hochul’s New York could a
maniac violently attack a candidate for Governor and then be released without
bail. This is what happens when you destroy the criminal justice system.”
It can be
interesting to do a little digging, whenever politicians start spouting
simplistic statements. In 2019, for example, the State of New York ranked #26
in rates of violent crime. Maine was #1 for lowest violent crime rates, followed
by New Hampshire and Connecticut.
Red states with
tough crime laws often scored worse
than New York. Texas was #35. Oklahoma was #37. Even low-population red states
sometimes scored poorly: Montana at #32, and Kansas at #34.
In fact, seven
of the bottom eight states were red: Missouri (43), Alabama (44), South
Carolina (45), Louisiana (46), Arkansas (47), Tennessee (48), and Alaska (50).
Only New Mexico, at #49, broke the trend.
Speaking of
red states, Oklahoma plans to resume executions next month. Twenty-five prisoners are now scheduled to suffer the death
penalty. Cause and effect in matters of crime are always complicated. Maine,
for example, abolished the death penalty in 1887. Connecticut followed suit, you could say, in 2012. New Hampshire abolished the death penalty in 2019.
So, one would
expect the murder rate to soar – assuming one were ignorant and ill-informed.
FUN FACT – VOTER FRAUD: Your
friendly local blogger will continue to pursue any and all leads on voter fraud
and report same. Today we have honest-to-god voter fraud,
straight out of blue-state Colorado!
Yes, Trump fans, Barry Morphew plead guilty
today to filling out and mailing his dead wife’s ballot.
And, so, he voted twice for Jo…
Uh.
He voted twice for Donald J. Trump!
(We should also note that Mr. Morphew is a suspect
in the disappearance of his wife, Suzanne. Charges against him were dropped,
however, “without prejudice,” since investigators have been unable to find a
body.)
___
7/22/22: This week the people of Maryland woke up to the fact that the Republican candidate for governor in the November election will be Dan Cox. Mr. Cox is a GOP politician of the more interesting variety. Among his novel ideas, we can include these:
He thinks former Vice President Mike Pence should be tried for “treason” because he refused to help Donald J. Trump steal a second term in office.
He explained in December 2020, that Trump was still “the only president I can recognize.”
He thinks Joe Biden stole the election.
He wants to audit the Maryland election results from 2020, even though Trump lost the state by 33 points.
He spoke at a QAnon convention recently.
He wanted the Republican governor of the state, Larry Hogan, to be impeached because Hogan criticized Trump.
He chartered three buses and loaded them up with other poor dopes and off they went, singing, “The wheels on the bus go round and round, we’re headed for Washington D.C. and we’re going to tear the place down.” They were there in time to enjoy the January 6 festivities.
Cox is
such a whack job, Democratic groups spent $1.1 million on ads boosting his candidacy,
hoping to run against him in the fall.
*
If one whack job is one too many, two is a trend. Throw in three, four, or more whack jobs running for, or holding public office, and you have the makings of a whack job political party on your hands. Our second whack job is Michael Peroutka, GOP choice to be Maryland’s next attorney general. For a sample of some of the ideas rattling around in his head, we include these:
Public schools are a communist plot.
Abortion and gay marriage violate God’s law.
The idea of “separation of church and state” is a “great lie.”
 |
Before "separation of church and state:" One religious group could execute members of another. |
This is interesting, since the colony of Maryland was founded to provide Catholics a home in America, at a time when Puritan colonies in New England entirely banned “Papists,” as Catholics were called. New York’s first state constitution, written in 1777, banned Catholics from holding office.
Peroutka has also insisted that American leaders “take a biblical worldview and apply it to civil law and government.”
Again, we’ve tried biblical rule in America before. In Massachusetts, Baptists were publicly whipped for refusing to baptize their children soon after birth, as the Puritans insisted dogma required. Quakers were executed for their preaching. Most of the Thirteen Colonies limited office-holding and/or voting to church members. In Virginia, a heretic could be executed, and everyone had to pay taxes to support the Anglican Church. If a young couple was found to have engaged in premarital sex, in some colonies they could be forced to marry. Witchcraft trials were in vogue – based on Biblical truths – until the early 1700s. And blasphemy was not lightly tolerated. A hot iron through the tongue was often suggested as the remedy.
In fact, when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison helped convince Virginia lawmakers pass the Virginia Act for Establishing Freedom of Religion, they intended it to protect members of all the various religions from each other. Jefferson wrote that the new law was “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew, the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”
As for Mr. Peroutka and the dreaded mask mandates – which had led to the government trampling on our right to sneeze on passersby, he made it clear he would have none of that nonsense were he to be elected in November. “A constitutional God-fearing attorney general of Maryland can do something about that,” he promised voters.
“He can empanel grand juries, he can bring prosecutions against the people who violated your rights.”
As a bonus, he has said that he is “still angry” because, in 1861, Maryland was blocked from seceding from the Union.
 |
Secessionists dancing on the American flag - 1860. |
*
And the whack jobs keep coming! We know where Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stands on the issue of religion. We’d all be better off if we just followed the policies that she thinks are best.
In a recent podcast she insisted, “Republicans need to prove to the American people that we are the party of American nationalism. And Christian nationalism. I’m a Christian. I have no problem saying I’m a Christian nationalist. And I think that’s an identity we need to embrace, because those are the policies that serve every single American, regardless of how they vote.” Democrats, progressives, all of us would benefit if the government followed Christian nationalism, American nationalism, and America First policies, Greene said, because those “are the right policies.”
Gay people? You can’t get married – but, hey, it will serve you in the end if you can’t. And we can bring back the anti-sodomy laws, too. Raped by your uncle and pregnant. Well, life begins at conception, just as no one in the Bible ever said. And why not ban divorce, as the Catholic church would suggest? That’s “Christian,” too, correct? We could even go back to stoning adulterers.
Solving the
Donald J. Trump problem once and for all.
*
Last, but never least, we come to the King of the Whack Jobs, Donald J. Trump himself. It has been a slow learning process for many of his staunchest supporters – but we can hope they are not impervious to logic in the end. For instance: Rupert Murdoch, master of Fox News, owner of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. In a pair of editorials, editors at both papers have now trashed Donald J. Trump. Many Trump supporters will never watch the January 6 hearings – and Trump himself will only lambast the witnesses, who testify under oath. But Murdoch is finally figuring it out.
As evidence has piled up in the January 6 hearings (delivered almost entirely by Republican witnesses, including multiple members of the Trump administration), the truth has become impossible to ignore.
The editorial board at the Post explains:
As his followers
stormed the Capitol, calling for his vice president to be hanged, President
Donald Trump sat in his private dining room, watching TV, doing nothing.
For three hours,
seven minutes.
There has been
much debate over whether Trump’s rally speech on Jan. 6, 2021, constituted
“incitement.” That’s somewhat of a red herring. What matters more – and has
become crystal clear in recent days – is that Trump didn’t lift a finger to
stop the violence that followed.
And he was the
only person who could stop what was happening. He was the only one the crowd
was listening to. It was incitement by silence.
Trump only wanted
one thing during that infamous afternoon: to pressure Vice President Mike
Pence to decertify the election of Joe Biden.
He thought the
violence of his loyal followers would make Pence crack, or delay the vote
altogether.
To his eternal shame,
as appalled aides implored him to publicly call on his followers to go home, he
instead further fanned the flames by tweeting: “Mike Pence didn’t have the
courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our
Constitution.”
His only focus
was to find any means – damn the consequences – to block the peaceful transfer
of power.
There is no
other explanation, just as there is no defense, for his refusal to stop the
violence.
It’s
up to the Justice Department to decide if this is a crime. But as a matter of
principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be
this country’s chief executive again.
The Wall Street Journal reinforced that idea on its own editorial page.
“Mr. Trump took an oath to defend the Constitution, and he had a duty as Commander in Chief to protect the Capitol from a mob attacking it in his name. He refused. He didn’t call the military to send help. He didn’t call [then-Vice President Mike Pence] to check on the safety of his loyal VP. Instead he fed the mob’s anger and let the riot play out.”
“Character is revealed in a crisis,” the editorial board added, “and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.”
The
board stopped short of saying President Trump had broken the law in his twisted
effort to gain a second, undeserved term. The Journal did admit that the
work done by the January 6 Committee so far should give any informed citizen cause
for concern. “The facts it is laying out in hearings are sobering.”
POSTSCRIPT: At least one former member of the Trump administration, Garrett Zeigler, once aide to Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro, has listened to the witnesses and drawn a different conclusion. In a 27-minute tirade, Zeigler erupted after being forced to appear and give testimony. He claimed he was singled out because of his race, and blasted the investigative process as “a Bolshevistic anti-White campaign.” He said he was targeted because he was “a young Christian” who investigators thought they could “basically scare.” “And so, today was just a lot of saying that I invoke my right to silence,” he admitted, while also insisting he was “the least-racist person that many of you have ever met, by the way. I have no bigotry.”
His case for being the least bigoted person any of us might know was not helped when he used language considered by some to be anti-Semitic code, or when he called two young female former White House aides who had testified, and had no need to plead the Fifth a pair of “Total Hoes.”
He went on to suggest that the members of the Committee
were all Bolsheviks, “so they probably do hate America.”
___
7/23/22: Trump fans won’t worry about this story – because Trump fans will:
A.
Never see it on the news outlets they love.
B.
Don’t believe scientists, anyway.
C.
Would label it “Fake News” if they stumbled upon
it in any other venue.
D.
Already believe Ex-President Blubber, who has repeatedly
referred to climate change as a “hoax,” and couldn’t tell the difference
between weather and climate if you gave him a calendar.
In the last few days, a satellite snapping photos of Greenland, as part of the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation program, has sent back a series of startling images. Melting ice in Greenland is creating bright blue rivers. In just three days, July 15-17, an estimated 18 billion tons of water, in the form of melted ice, ran off the island and into the ocean, enough to cover the entire state of West Virginia in water. Temperatures hovered near 60° F, or ten degrees warmer than normal. Then the melting accelerated. From July 20 through July 23, another 8-10 billion tons of melted ice water poured into the sea. Scientists have seen plenty of warning signs before and fear the damage from climate change is growing.
In 2019, for instance, they estimated that 532 billion tons of ice melted, the worst loss ever recorded in one year.
FUN FACT- FOX NEWS SHILLING: On Fox News, recently, they ran another segment attacking Al Gore, because the former vice president believes in science. The blonde Fox babe who hosted warned that those who consider climate change a threat really want us to throw away our air conditioners.
So, add this to a catalogue of fictitious
worries Fox has peddled in an effort to befuddle viewers. Liberals were coming
for their Christmas trees (“War on Christmas”), the Green New Deal meant no one
could eat hamburgers, and Obamacare would create “death panels for granny.”
FUN FACT – SCARY LIBERALS: The latest right-wing trick is to attack any policy they don’t like, or spread fear by adding “woke” to a sentence. The U.S. military is failing because of “woke” training. “Woke government run schools” are indoctrinating our children. According to Sen. Rick Scott we even have “woke” government-run healthcare, “woke” government-run media, and, for good measure, “woke” government-run everything.
I am thinking: “Woke” funeral parlors? “Woke” NFL games? “Woke” swimming pools and Fed Ex trucks and plumbing repairmen?
Woke, f**king everything!!!
FUN FACT – HALLUCINOGENS: On a recent podcast, Steve Bannon assured Alex Jones that was one of the greatest political thinkers since the Founding Fathers. “You are one of the great thinkers of this. That’s very rare. You have to go almost back to the revolutionary generation to see that,” Bannon said. And Jones nodded. Someone had clearly been ingesting hallucinogens.
FUN FACT – CREEPY CONGRESSMAN: Rep. Matt Gaetz explained why he supported bans on abortion, up to and including forcing minors to carry pregnancies to full term, even if victims of rape. His logic? He thought mocking women who believed in abortion rights would be great. “Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions?” he asked. “Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”
Nobody wants to
have sex with a creep, either Matt, and you can’t always rely on finding minors
who will have sex with you if you pay.
___
7/24/22: Call me a skeptic in terms of religion. In New York City, Bishop Lamor Whitehead and his wife were robbed during a life-streamed Sunday service – which is not the part of the story that makes me skeptical.
While the robbery was brazen, I’m not sure the three guys with the guns were as brazen as the bishop and his wife.
Police report that the bandits made off with jewelry worth $1 million. They fled on foot and then hopped into a white Mercedes.
Bishop Whitehead was miffed to find out that in reports of the robbery, he was being described as “flashy.”
“It’s not about me being flashy,” he grumbled. “It’s about me purchasing what I want to purchase. If I worked hard for it, I can purchase what I want to purchase.”
Yes. Just as Jesus once said.
___
7/25/22: Texas lawmakers keep making it easier and easier to get guns and Texans keep shooting up more and more places. On Monday, a 37-year-old woman entered a bathroom at Dallas Love Field Airport, changed clothes for some reason, and exited with pistol drawn.
After firing several shots into the ceiling. An officer on
the scene shot her in the lower extremities, and she was placed under arrest
and carted off to a hospital.
*
In other news, the three hosts of the podcast “5-4” dish on the U.S. Supreme Court, which they insist “sucks.”
Opinion,
of course, but humorous, as The New York Times explains:
In
conversation, as on the show, the hosts are a bottomless well of sardonic
judicial analysis. In a video interview last Wednesday, they debated which of
the nine justices is most worthy of contempt (unanimous: Clarence Thomas),
whose opinions are the most painful to read (Liroff: Brett Kavanaugh “writes
like if you gave a talented law student a concussion”) and pet ideas for reform
(all want to expand the court by a minimum of four justices; Liroff suggested
the regular appointment of an additional justice every two years).
The Times does note that criticism of the high court has been a feature of political discourse in this country from the start. “Thomas Jefferson, a frequent antagonist of the federal judiciary, maligned its unelected judges as ‘a subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working underground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric.’”
As always, I go down another internet rabbit hole or two, first starting with the link provided, hoping to find the full quote. I find several.
First: a
fuller version of the Jefferson quote given by the Times:
The Judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of
sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations
of our confederated fabric. They are construing our Constitution from a
coordination of a general and special Government to a general and supreme one
alone.
On the idea that the Court could have final say
on which laws were unconstitutional, Jefferson said this:
The
Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the
Judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. It should
be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in
any Government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only at first, while
the spirit of the people is up, but in practice as fast as that relaxes.
Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are
inherently independent of all but moral law.
And this:
Our Judges
are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same
passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim
is, boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [it is good judgment to extend the
jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous, as they are in office for
life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective
control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that, to
whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members
would become despots.
See: June 23, 1861, letter to the editor, signed:
“PILOT.”
___
7/26/22: The people of Maryland woke up last week (see: 7/22/22) to find themselves stuck with a crazy man as GOP candidate for attorney general. This week, and last, and this year, and last, and last, and last, the people of multiple states found themselves in the iron grip of the worst drought in their region in the last twelve …centuries.
Climate change has exacerbated the situation – although if you live in any of those western states, or Maryland, for that matter, and watch Fox News – you know climate change isn’t real.
The drought, however, is painfully real.
In this case, states in the Colorado River
Basin, are watching the river run drier and drier every year. The four “upper
basin” states, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming and the three “lower
basin” states, California, Arizona and Nevada must all come to an agreement to
cut water use or face disaster, particularly the lower basin three. Two
reservoirs on the Colorado, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, have fallen so low, that
unless drastic measures are implemented, water will soon cease to flow through
pipes which supply drinking water to cities like Las Vegas, or pass through the
dams that hold back the lakes, supplying water for irrigation. Arizona farmers
have already seen water allotments reduced.
The problem is simple to explain. Snowpack across much of the region, which normally feeds the streams and tributaries that feed the Colorado in the spring and summer, has been abnormally low for several years. Rainfall, always sparse in the region, has been sparser across much of the West.
Now those seven states face severe water reductions, starting in 2023, unless they agree on a framework for cuts. These cuts, experts warn, would once have been “unthinkable.”
Agriculture,
which uses three-quarters of the water from the Colorado, is likely to take a
severe hit.
*
Across all fifty states and the District of Columbia, Americans woke up to declining prices at the pump – but not fast enough.
Meanwhile,
Big Oil reported record high profits, $50 billion, in the second
quarter of the year. Just as the Gods of Capitalism and the Republicans always
wanted. (For more on climate change, see: 6/10/22, 6/29/22, 7/7/22, 7/11/22,
7/12/22, 7/19/22, 7/23/22 and 7/26/22.)
___
7/27/22: The line continues to grow, as yet another former member of the Trump administration confirms what almost all of us with good hearing already knew. The president was (and remains) a prolific liar.
In defense of his conduct on January 6, as the hearings in the House of Representatives continue to batter his reputation, Trump insisted this week that he had ordered the National Guard – or the Boy Scouts – to have 10,000 – or was it 20,000 – troops standing by to protect the Capitol.
And it was fucking Nancy Pelosi’s fault that the troops weren’t deployed to stop the rioters – who Trump also described as “very fine people.”
Asked about the matter, Trump’s own former Secretary of Defense – the third one, anyway, after the first two resigned in disgust – Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller begged to differ.
“I was never given any direction
or order or knew of any plans of that nature,” Miller told investigators.
As CNN notes, Miller later added, “There was no direct, there was no order from the President.”
“We obviously had plans for activating more folks,” he continued, “but that was not anything more than contingency planning. There was no official message traffic or anything of that nature.”
And, as previously noted, the President of the United States, on that most disastrous day never called anyone, all afternoon, to get troops to the Capitol and get the situation back under control.
___
7/28/22: I realized, after the eighth January 6 Committee hearing, that Stephen Colbert’s monologue following that hearing was a sign of democratic health. You could say the same about Fox News, being able to criticize Barack Obama daily, for eight years, and talk about Hunter Biden’s laptop ever since.
Praising Trump, nonstop for four years, was not so healthy.
In any case, to cite Mel Brooks (not Rep. Mo Brooks, the insurrectionist-inclined lawmaker who helped stir the mob on January 6), “Comedy is revenge through ridicule.” In Russia, Putin would have Colbert arrested. In Egypt, he’d be jailed and held without trial. When a journalist criticized Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, he was grabbed and cut up with a bone saw.
___
7/29/22: Saw an
interesting meme on Twitter yesterday, but you always have to check. What did
Ronald Reagan say about assault rifles? Snopes, one of the best fact-checking
sites, provides the answer:
On 17 January
1989, 24-year-old Patrick Purdy returned to the Cleveland Elementary School in
Stockton, California, he had once attended as a child. After parking his
station wagon behind the school and setting the car afire with a
gasoline-filled beer bottle, Purdy walked to the school playground with a
(legally bought) version of an AK-47 assault rifle and, shooting from behind a
portable building, sprayed the area with an estimated 106 rounds in the span of
three minutes, killing five children and wounding thirty others before fatally
shooting himself in the head with a pistol.
On February 6, Mr. Reagan attended a 78th birthday celebration thrown at USC. In a 22-minute address he offered thoughts on a variety of topics, including the recent school massacre.
An Associated Press account reported that, the former president earned “extended applause” when he said, “I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.”
Snopes notes that Reagan erred in referring to Purdy’s weapon as a “machine gun,” but the point is the same. The killer was armed with a battlefield-type weapon.
In fact, the people at Snopes went above and beyond, citing a
letter sent to the U.S. House of Representatives, signed by three former
presidents, Reagan, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter.
We are writing to urge your support for a ban on the domestic manufacture of
military-style assault weapons. This is a matter of vital importance to the
public safety. …
Every major law enforcement organization in
America and dozens of leading labor, medical, religious, civil rights and civic
groups support such a ban. Most importantly, poll after poll shows that the
American public overwhelmingly support a ban on assault weapons. A 1993 CNN/USA
Today/Gallup Poll found that 77% of Americans support a ban on the manufacture,
sale, and possession of semi-automatic assault guns, such as the AK-47.
The 1989 import ban resulted in an impressive
40% drop in imported assault weapons traced to crime between 1989 and 1991, but
the killing continues. Last year, a killer armed with two TEC9s killed eight
people at a San Francisco law firm and wounded several others. During the past
five years, more than 40 law enforcement officers have been killed or wounded
in the line of duty by an assault weapon.
While we recognize that assault weapon
legislation will not stop all assault weapon crime, statistics prove that we
can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals.
We urge you to listen to the American public and to the law enforcement
community and support a ban on the further manufacture of these weapons.
Snopes, as always,
provides sources, if you need them.
*
In other news,
scientists report increased levels of “forever chemicals” are
turning up in Antarctica – thousands of miles from most sources. These “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS),” are
showing up in U.S. drinking water, and have been banned since 2016.
“These findings are a sobering
reminder that our industrial activities have global consequences,” said
co-author Anna Jones of the British Antarctic Survey.
“Antarctica, so remote from
industrial processes, holds this next signal of human activity arising from
emissions thousands of miles away. The snow and ice of Antarctica are critical
archives of our changing impact on our planet.”
PFAS’s are bad for human health and bad for penguins and krill. And Donald Trump is clueless. He spends this day golfing, and bragging about golfing, telling reporters, “there’s no other president that can hit it like I can.”
Sadly, he has not faced up to the fact that he is not the president. In fact, he’s using the Presidential Seal to decorate his golf course, where he’s holding a tournament sponsored by Saudi financiers.
(That’s a violation of the law, by the way. Only the president can display the Presidential Seal.)
Trump has also defended holding a Saudi-backed tournament at one of his courses, insisting that “nobody has ever gotten to the bottom of 9/11.”
Dear Donald:
It was the Saudis.
Sincerely,
The Blogger.
This is in keeping with the cluelessness we
have come to expect from Ex-President Blubber. He was also convinced
that Prince Mohammed bin Salman had nothing to do with the bone-saw murder of
Jamal Khashoggi.
___
7/30/22: In assessing stories about American politics it is always a good idea
to keep an open mind.
For example: If a headline reads, “Man
arrested for sending bomb threat…” sympathy automatically flows to the
recipient of said threat, and some criminal prosecution should result.
Soon after the January 6, 2021, riot, James
W. Clark, 38, of Falmouth, Massachusetts sent a bomb threat to Arizona
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who had said the 2020 election was fairly
decided. Clark faces two felony charges, and could, in theory, spend twenty
years behind bars.
A second bomb threat involves Rep. Matt Gaetz – the recipient,
not the sender. I might consider Gaetz to be one of the most objectionable
members of Congress (and not exactly a shining member of the human race, more generally).
But he’s the recipient. You want the person sending the threat to pay – if
convicted. Eugene Huelsman, 59, of Thousand Oaks,
California, was convicted last April in a similar crime, after saying he
planned to “put a bullet” in Congressman Gaetz. He has been sentenced to six
months of home confinement. I thought that sounded like pretty light punishment
– then noticed that he had been fined $10,000 and will spend the next five
years reporting to a probation officer.
So, stay safe, Rep. Gaetz.
You’re still a horrible lawmaker, and you make disgusting comments about other
Americans; but no one should threaten your life, just because you’re a dick.
For a similar story involving
a plot to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh feel free to check out the following link. I made it clear during
Senate hearings, that I didn’t believe he belonged on the Supreme
Court.
But a plot to kill him? Nope.
The plotter deserves to go to jail – again, assuming conviction.
FUN FACT – CORPORATE GREED: We know the conservative mantra: Government bad.
Businesspeople good.
That simplistic construct
takes another hit (one of gazillions) when U.S. Bank (one of two banking institutions
this blogger patronizes) gets socked – after a five-year investigation.
Employees were incentivized to open up checking and credit card accounts, without asking account holders’ permission. This damaged
credit scores in many cases, and unsuspecting customers got stuck paying fees
for accounts they had never been asked to open. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is
fining U.S. Bank $37.5 million. All unlawful fees, plus interest, must also be
returned to customers who were harmed.
If this
reminds you of the Wells Fargo scandal, only smaller, it should. In that case,
the bank was fined…$3 billion.
FUN FACT – FELONS: A reasonably informed citizen would not
require additional proof to show that the Trump administration and the Trump
circle of friends were rife with disreputable characters. Long before he ever
entered politics, and on up until this day, Donald J. Trump surrounded himself
with sleazy characters and was comfortable with them around. Recently revealed video from a conversation between Roger Stone, seven-time convicted felon,
and Rep. Matt Gaetz, allows us to catch another glimpse of what went under the
rocks, when the creepy crawlers thought no one would see what they did in the
dark. At an event at a Trump property in October 2019, Stone tells Gaetz he’s
worried about going to jail.
After all, he’s
going to stand trial, accused of seven felonies, which are a lot – even by
Trumpian standards. In a 37-second clip (the Washington Post has been
allowed to listen to a 25-minute tape in possession of Dutch film makers, who
plan to do a movie about January 6) Gaetz is reassuring. “Well, you’re fucked,”
he admits, which momentarily sets Stone aback. But the congressman sans scruples
continues, “Well, on the trial. I still don’t think you’ll do a day.”
Stone says it
remains to be seen, then sends a signal of sorts. “I won’t fold, that you can
bet. They [prosecutors] already tried that.”
Gaetz sends a
signal of his own: “And, and the boss still has a very favorable view of you.”
“He sends
that message from time to time,” Stone admits.
Gaetz’s next response
is incomplete. He replies, “He said it directly [inaudible]. He knows you’re
[inaudible].
“It would
have been easy to make this go away,” Stone agrees, “but I couldn’t live with
myself.”
What, exactly,
Rep. Gaetz said, we may never know. Perhaps: “He knows you’re going to lie and
cover up, and he wants to give you a big wet kiss if you do.”
We do know
this. A jury convicted Stone on all seven charges, including one for witness tampering.
President Trump did commute his sentence – and Roger never spent a day in jail.
How many seven-time
felons can ever say that?
And, after
Gaetz was implicated in a sex-trafficking case, involving a minor, and after he helped Trump
try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, we know Rep. Gaetz also sought a blanket pardon from Trump, before the president waddled one
last time out the White House door.
___
7/31/22: Arizona Speaker of the
House Rusty Bowers may be defeated in the Republican primary tomorrow, mainly
because he testified under oath and told the truth, as he saw
it.
What he said, under oath, is simple enough.
The minions of Donald J. Trump pressured him, in the days after the 2020
election, to help them overturn Arizona’s vote. Bowers testified before the
January 6 Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. He said he swore to
uphold his oath to the U.S. Constitution. And there was an end to the matter.
Now, he told Jonathan Karl, during an ABC interview, people have walked up to him on the street and told him he’s a traitor – and death is the punishment for that. Karl asked him if he had ever considered going along with the requests (from people like Rudy Giuliani) to help upend the vote?
“If we want to base a party and an authority and move people to solve problems, you can’t base it on a lie. Ultimately, that falls apart,” he said.
“I said, this is new to me. The idea of throwing out the election
of the president is like, okay, so what part of Jupiter do I get to land on and
colonize?” he added.
Now, he says, he’ll never vote for Donald Trump again.
POSTSCRIPT: You know Trump knows the
January 6 Committee hearings are drawing blood. During a recent rally, he lashed out. “Rusty Bowers is a
RINO coward who participated against the Republican Party in the totally
partisan unselect committee of political thugs and hacks the other day and
disgraced himself, and he disgraced the state of Arizona,” the ex-president
howled.
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