Mad Hatters, Cinnabar and B-Movies

 

Ten Bears' recent post just released a flood of information-associations for me, and in typical aneurotypical fashion, I'm treating you all to an infodump. I share because I love. 

There's good reason to think mercury could be a cause of endemic psychological dysfunction--methyl mercury was the sad story behind the character of the "Mad Hatter" in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Mercury poisoning can cause depression, anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain and personality changes, and there's good reason to believe that people turn to substance abuse to self-medicate. It would not surprise me that low level organic mercury poisoning could result in a pattern of alcoholism and other substance use. After all, we know very well that there is a link between lead exposure and criminal activity and substance abuse. And we know that as exposure to lead has gone down, so has crime. 

I think I first became aware that mercury was a problem because of cinnabar--I collect jewelry and the idea that certain jewelry could be mildly toxic fascinated me. It also reminded me of the deadliness of lead used in ancient cosmetics--and it bothered me that mercury poisoning is associated with fish because I eat rather a lot of it--tinned fish is a protein go-to when you work long hours and don't have a lot of time for cooking. And I adore sushi. 

There Will Be No New Normal

 

At least five people have been found dead in Italy following violent storms in the north and wildfires in Sicily.

The government is considering declaring a state of emergency in the hardest-hit regionshttps://t.co/5JRVjmA9jv pic.twitter.com/sWzTqYBRHV

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) July 26, 2023

I've been to Sicily a couple of times and it is fiercely beautiful. I am heartbroken for what is happening. The temperature in Palermo a couple of days ago was 47°C, which is astonishing not only because it is a local record, but because it is a record likely to be demolished soon. 

(Giorgia Meloni has said fine things about environmentalism that she certainly doesn't believe because the fascisti attitude is ne me frego.)

Algeria is facing wildfires and temperatures of about 120° F. The heat index at the Persian Gulf airport in Iran reached 152° F. These are conditions that suggest an unlivable future. 

Scientists are saying that there is no "new normal"--the term is a lie. We won't really have time to acclimate to anything we are seeing because it will just change faster than we can get used to it. I've been staring at this idea unable to strike another mode than elegiac. Or at least poetic. I don't want to succumb to "doomerism". The problem is that I understand enough of biology to know that if ocean temps are over 100° F this is very bad for cold-blooded things. And then, warm-blooded things. It's like feeling a mass disturbance in the Force. 

But back to the presentiment of doom--I don't know how we walk back tipping points we might have already crossed. The idea that the Gulf Stream collapses during my lifetime is not something I have words for. Poetic or otherwise.

Those things are hard to fathom (though we need to figure out how to), but in the meantime, if we value eating, if we value culture, if we value any of the standard of living we associate with civilization, we need to reckon with the idea that some sacrifices must be made now to prevent the losses of things beyond price. Not for the sake of our great-grandchildren. I'm talking about the intolerable conditions we will spend what we have of our old age in. 

Climate Sunday: We Need To Stop Electing Stupid People

 

From the staggering intellect that brought us "Jewish Space Lasers", we now have the super-genius observation that climate change is a hoax because the planet is spinning. No climate change scientist in the history of ever knew about that, Marge. Thanks for your Nobel Prize-level contribution to the fucking dialog. We'll be sending you a participation trophy tout suite for that fucking revelation that no one ever knew before. The Earth spins and revolves around the sun. 

Wow. The tides go in and the tides go out. How does that fucking work? 

Now you know, and I know, this is "speaking jive."  She doesn't know how climate change works or even care. She just wants to fill up the empty space in her and her followers' heads with words that sort of make climate change not seem real. In the meanwhile, she doesn't realize that climate change is happening all around her and threating national security and food security and so much else. 

Now, it might feel like I'm picking on Rep. Greene, and I totally am! She is a dumbass who does not know what she does not know, and also says disgraceful and disgusting things because she really doesn't care what is or is not true. But she isn't alone in being a climate dumbass who never should have been elected to office because she doesn't know her ass from an adding machine. These dipshits are everywhere. 

If we want to save the planet, we need to stop electing stupid people. By we, I mean the people who elect the stupids. And I also get that stupid people are probably elected by people way more ignorant than they ought to be. And I am sick of the way we act like this choice is anything to be proud about, and yes, ignorance is a choice. (Yeah, I'm bagging on the astroturf freedom-mommies again because once again, no one called them on being a bunch of self-satisfied and dark money funded weirdo busybodies who are executing the freedom to parent other folks' children.)  Anyone who wants to deny alternative POV's and restrict the capacity for critical thinking is no one's friend. 

Voters--educate yourselves against the babble-ons. People like MTG should be figuratively pilloried for this level of shameless nonsense-peddling. And also too, should not be allowed to stay in office--should be recognized before getting into office and be just all the hell stopped ideally--but wow. When they are this dumb, how do they stay? 

Things You See on Twitter About Foreign Policy

 

I just screen capped a thing you can click to embiggen, which is pretty much the state of the stupid horseshoe fringe--Ann Coulter re-tweeting Max Blumenthal fluffing RFK Jr. because he's excoriating US policy supporting Ukraine's self-defense against the Russian invasion, because of course Kennedy is wrong because he's full of himself and of course Blumenthal is a useful idiot who spouts Russian propaganda anymore and Ann Coulter is, and always has been, an utter bitch. 

I used to wonder what happened to Max Blumenthal. Did he experience a conversion experience because he wanted in Rania Khalek's pants or WTF? I used to speculate. How do you hate Israel apartheid and also think maybe Bashar Al-Assad is misunderstood? He was a good journalist for a whole minute. But look at Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He used to be a credible-ish environmentalist. Now he's an anti-science crackpot who sucks up to the dictators of petrostates and basically has the worst opinions in existence. 

RFK Jr. talks in front of cultists who think maybe his cousin JFK Jr, is a five o'clock shadow dipshit with a porkpie hat who has no resemblance other than white and brown haired. This does not seem to faze him. 

I have never wondered what happened to Ann Coulter. Oh, no. I never, ever, ever have. She's her own thing, all daddy issues and GOP manly hero-worship aside. If she has a Putin fetish I would not wonder at it for a second. 

Anyway, Ann Coulter, Max Blumenthal, and RFK, Jr, and for what it's worth Dennis Kucinich, can all go autocopulate until they are desperately chafed. Their weird fringe "bold" controversial, contrarian opinions are only relevant to their wankery, not to anything happening in the actual world we live in, where Russia is trying to commit genocide and Ukraine is fighting against that because of course they are, and being a democratic nation that has some kind of morals, the US should oppose that. 

People who don't understand that basic calculus flunk my tolerance right now. If you don't know Russia is the bad guy and more than diplomacy is required (like making Russia bleed because bullies only know that language) you are wasting our time with wishful thinking. There is no negotiation that is not some degree of surrender, and a pass for future violence.  Fuck off Tinkerbells. Ask not for who I clap, it is not the entire fuck for you. Who have shitty opinions with no stake at all, at all. 

Climate Sunday: Water Everywhere, Except Where We Want it

 

The UN convened a global conference on water--which is something absolutely basic to life on earth. I shouldn't actually have to say something as dull as "Water is important to life" but apparently, this kind of true thing isn't obvious to everyone. I have it top of mind at the moment because thousands of gallons of latex-related chemicals just got dumped into the Delaware Rive late Friday and we are finding out now that we probably want to drink bottled water here in Philadelphia. 

Water is necessary to the entire food chain, and we threaten to tip weird chemicals into it all the time. Even from fracking and oil spills and whatnot. And that's a real problem, Because we're already overtaxing our aquifers, and have been for a while. And we really can't afford to fuck up our drinking water.

So says the CSO of PepsiCo. They bottle a lot of water and soft drinks and looking at a timeline of TWO THE FUCK YEARS! for half the world to be in scarcity for drinking water is very uncomfortable. It's their business, and they are looking at the logistics of transporting water to where it isn't. 

This isn't just about thirst-quenching, though--it's about agriculture. Right now, Argentina is having an insane drought. Just a total loss on all major crops, with devastating effects for feeding livestock (this is a glimpse from last year). Some can say there's no obvious relationship to global climate change, but some areas have gotten wetter--like the floods of Pakistan, and the barrage of atmospheric rivers that have buffeted California. And it is devastating. In California, crops are wiped out by flooding and a whole lake appears where once was farmland.  So while we lose a Lake Mead in one place, and a Lake Tulare comes back--but no one can plan for that happening in a whole minute!

It's really no joke--the Great Salt Lake is not so much, and the Great Lakes themselves are becoming Meh Lakes. And the solutions to this problem aren't going to be easy at all.

Combine this with the realization that increased CO2 isn't actually going to be the monster bonus to global greening, and you have a potential agricultural nightmare. Some crops never start, some drown. And don't get me started on what is happening to our pollinators, because if I start thinking about the problems of the birds and the bees, I won't sleep tonight. 

Anyway--we should probably ship chemicals very carefully, use fossil fuels less, conserve water religiously and not be greedy arseholes as a society. It's literally life and death. Like, literally.  Because you can't drink oil and you can't eat coal. 

While We Wait for Trump's Arrest, The IPCC Report is Dire

 

I never wanted to spend my senior years on a dying planet, but that's what it looks like to me. The supposed leadership of the most industrialized countries are doing the very least to curb global warming, and have even decided, it seems, to promote the short-term benefits of fossil fuel usage for their electoral cycle (yes, I'm criticizing Biden over the Willow project). 

We're looking at the results of climate change in the eye all the time--take the weird winter of California's discontent: that isn't some freak global cooling, but a predictable weirding of the weather because patterns are disrupted. But we are still stuck with the effects of warming in the usually cooler places. We can see the devastation of our ecosystems in the deaths of fish due to heat waves in Australia. The southern hemisphere has been through it this past season. 

Climate change isn't predicting the future, but describing our present, now. And we are still jaded and in denial. Lives will be lost if action is not taken, but a look around social media indicates that loads of people still believe climate science is some kind of hoax. A conspiracy theory. 

I'm just a D-list blogger--I don't expect what I say to gain any traction and actually, my climate-related posts aren't even the ones that do any numbers. But what I do know is, changing people's POV via messaging and "flooding the zone" can be done--because the denialists have been doing it all this time. Solutions exist and funding them (like actually just fully comping changeover to solar energy or heat pumps) are within the reach of government actions. (Programs totally exist and are inadequate for many homeowners.) 

We can do more, and more aggressively. The political will has to be there, and the idea that the fossil fuel industry and the denialist-propagandist complex (like Fox News, who are known liars) needs to be called out for being the problem that they are. 

I think we still have the opportunity to make a better future. But that opportunity can't be pissed away--it must be vigorously and intelligently seized. 

Climate Sunday: Rough Winds do Shake the Early Buds of...February?

 

At some point this past week, I exited my car for the half-block walk from the parking lot to my office building without a jacket at all, because it was well and truly warm enough. I even ran the fan in my car on my commute home because it got warm in the parking lot sun. And there have been a few days like this--in February. This isn't usual--my early remembrances of February here in the upper Mid-Atlantic is it snows and gets really freaking cold.

It did not do that here. Well, not yet, but as we mosey into March and advance into April, while I know we've had bad storms in these months, I feel like the ghost of winter starts to vanish--and maybe it isn't a good augur for those of us aware of climate change. Spring has been springing early for a while--as if some areas aren't getting the winter we've been used to. 

Now, California--they are having a winter! That's also not a great sign.

Both of these scenarios feed into the denialist vortex in that they create possible "debunking" narratives: either mild winters in the NE aren't so bad, or blizzards in California prove there's no climate change at all. I guess the question is: when does weird weather get weird enough for the jaded and denialist mind to see it? 

And how do changing weather patterns affect wildlife? When crops and flowers start to habitually bloom too early, and the actual wild of winter bullshit starts a bit too late? 

The rhythm we expected from nature is thrown off, and the dancers can't pick up the pace when it too rapidly changes. This will affect crops we eat and animals like wild fish we rely upon for food. We will notice higher prices for foods--at first, because most people don't understand the relationship between nature and what's at the end of their fork. Then we will be scared. 

I don't want to wait until we are scared about where our food is coming from to get concerned about climate change. It's bad enough we tolerate the growing threat of disease and violence. We should not be so stupid we forget that we need to eat. 

Trains and Gaslight

 

new: OH officials appear to have relied solely on prelim H20 sampling conducted by a rail contractor to initially declare water in East P. safe

Ind. experts called sampling "sloppy" & "amateur"—initial batch not collected in accordance w/ EPA standardshttps://t.co/ZbpzrlnmZY

— Chris D'Angelo (@c_m_dangelo) February 18, 2023

It's difficult to wrap my head around how we do things in this country when it comes to potential corporate malfeasance: we take their word for things. If the rail company is responsible for a chemical disaster, why would we take their word for whether the water and soil are ok? If the rail company advocates for a release of toxic chemicals to be burnt in the first place (which cleared the tracks for more trains to come through) certain governors will just accept that advice. Even though there are hundreds of train derailments every year, and they many times do involve chemical spills and even explosions, we still listen to lobbyists on behalf of those companies who want less, not more regulation. 

And certain presidential administrations have even agreed with them. 

I've noticed that this particular accident and subsequent health concerns has become fodder for the right wing to demonstrate something about the Biden Administration. Whether it's when DeWine has finally requested federal assistance or whether FEMA even really is the agency that aid would come from seem like a weird muddying to me of who is responsible for what and creates a space for conspiracy theory and resentment to grow. 

When the rail company is just living in 1899 with the robber barons just enjoying cover from the partisans and trying to get people to sign away their future settlement rights for a pittance. It's what they've come to expect. They have a history. 

Now, Trump says he's going to make an appearance in East Palestine to basically be as useful as a cottage cheese dildo while additionally fanning the flames of conspiracy and (white) resentment. And we wouldn't expect anything less.

Climate Sunday: The Riskiest?

The riskiest places aren't always obvious, but some of them have already demonstrated vulnerability in the face of storms they have already experienced. And fire and drought also matter. You would not understand how the places most subject to experiencing climate change are also the places most likely to vote against politicians who would not do  anything for climate change unless you understood the saturation of political propaganda. 

Investing in fossil fuels is jobs and money and success and capitalism and why would you not want these things, you Commie? 

But it's dumb. We sometimes use the idea of a frog in boiling water. The frog doesn't know how fucked he is because it's slow and steady--and the damage climate change is doing is mostly slow and steady. 

Climate Sunday: The Die-Off Horror Show

 

We have a problem in the sea with our crustaceans.  It isn't a local thing--it is happening elsewhere as well.  I've long worried that the worst of the current extinction event would focus on the sea, because land-based humans don't understand the seriousness of the nautical ecosystem to their existence. 

But it is real, and necessary. And parts of our necessary aquaculture are dying. 

A lot of this is about dumping waste into the ecosystem. And this is something we could easily stop doing. But we are in an extinction event currently we didn"t even plan to be in,  and have only so many ways to sort ourselves out of. I am 50 years old and know that half the world's species have stopped being viable in my lifetime. 

We need to become more mindful custodians of the planet we live on. I don't think we can survive any other way. 

Murder Built into the Margin

 

For years, Exxon sowed doubt about climate change. But its scientists were projecting warming with remarkable accuracy. https://t.co/EXegkcp1kp

— NYT Science (@NYTScience) January 14, 2023

I've been aware that Exxon knew about climate change and covered it up for some time (they weren't alone in this--they just fought admitting it harder) but every time I think about the missed opportunity, something tightens in my stomach: 

They could have invested in renewable energy early on and cornered valuable tech markets, putting themselves in a position to not just continue profiting from fossil fuels while the environment suffered, but to capitalize on saving it. Instead, they went on as if they weren't contributing to disasters, extinctions, death. And they lied about it.

It was as if they could not consider the possibility of making money without throwing anyone under the bus. As if the idea of using the foresight they were granted to do the right thing was unthinkable. Knowing, and doing nothing differently, feels like more than depraved indifference. It feels like the allowance of death and devastation were built into the business model. 

I try to be cynical and I'm not getting any younger, but if it doesn't still knock the wind out of me a bit when I consider it.

They absolutely knew climate change was happening, and threw their money into denial, not into trying to ameliorate it. Like knowing one might be selling poisonous candy to babies and just changing one's marketing to make the candy more desireable--shouldn't there be a penalty? 

It's a Gas, Gas, Gas!

 

So, the freakout on the right today was a panic that The Man was coming for your gas stoves because the avocado green of your best-loved steak-cooking appliance wasn't green enough for the uncanny valley of our future dystopia. Or something like that. 

This is a thing that isn't happening. Jack-booted Bidenistas are not going to confiscate people's kitchen appliances. What the whole entire heck? 

But no, there was much ado:

So much signifying. They'd rather fight than switch, etc.--which no one was asking them to do. People just wanted to look into the idea that maybe gas ranges were giving kids asthma. I am so sorry that one's ability to properly sear pork chops is more important to them than whether their kids have asthma, but I guess I have to respect your deeply held Maillard-reaction traditions and pass the Albuterol. 

Now because I am class-conscious, I get that one is not always at cause over one's kitchen appliances. You might just rent, for example.  I have a thirty-something year old Magic Chef gas stove that my husband complains about because he can't get a proper flame from it. I hate it personally because the oven doesn't work right and cleaning it is gross. One of the burners goes out occasionally and I am 50 years old and still light a pilot like I want to duck and cover.

Take my gas oven you fucks! Give me a nice clean new induction chrome MF than makes me feel like a real woman! Why can't the government interfere in my kitchen just this once? 

But look, if you right-wingers want to get misty over the blue flame of freedom, you just go on ahead and follow Catturd's example:

Turn on all the burners.  Don't turn them off. Leave them going as an eternal flame for all the things they took from you. Your guns. Your Bibles, Hot teachers who didn't have temporary hair colors and piercings. Breast milk cheese. Um, Burgers with real meat. Movies where white dudes are the only good guys and are definitely virile and like, getting it. Make a shrine. Put up drapes around your gas stove, which is totally all burners going at once. Rip out that carbon monoxide detector. It's a green new deal fink. Gather the children in to see your spectacle and make them take deep breaths of freedom. 

Now you're really cooking with gas, friends. Look! I'm shedding real tears! You win!

UPDATE: I guess it could be stupider, like if right wing world got riled up over whether the M&Ms were sexy enough, and not obese feminist candies or whatevs.  Or, like, if Dr. Suess got unironically cancelled for wokeness after conservatives got all pompous about how woke was censorship over actually--Dr. Suess. No really. Totally a serious political movement and not a bunch of slackjaws trying to figure out where the cool kids table is. 

Keystone Problems

 

U.S. pipeline regulator reviewing special permits after Keystone oil spills -source https://t.co/QOLs8JNV2O pic.twitter.com/Ghi2ZJkKLk

— Reuters (@Reuters) December 21, 2022

This is the third spill in five years. It's spilling into Kansas Mill Creek. 

Operators were alerted to an issue with the pipeline on Dec. 7. As of Friday morning, TC Energy says, 4,125 barrels of oil from the creek have been recovered of the estimated 14,000 barrels (about 588,000 gallons) reportedly lost in the spill.

Aerial footage of the leak from Nebraska Public Media shows the leak has affected a nearby pasture and residents' farmland.

Many initial details, like the cause for the spill, are still not clear. What is known is the type of oil that was being transported through the pipeline: tar sands oil, also called diluted bitumen.

Because it's tar sands oil, it's thick and hard to clean up. (It's not easy to convert to gasoline for this reason, too.)

Republicans have been blaming Biden for cancelling further work on the project and claiming it had anything to do with higher energy costs this year (it doesn't--at all)--but this hammers home why this kind of pipeline is a problem: we don't eat or drink oil, and this kind of spill can damage farmland and poison water. For years, my objection to it has been that it runs too close to the Ogallala aquifer, right in the nation's breadbasket. 

Anyway, when Republicans want to start in on Keystone XL--the pipeline that runs through the US to ship Canadian oil for export and complain that Democrats hate cheap energy, I think my response is something along the lines of what my dad told me when he despaired of the sloppy condition of my room. He said, "Only a sick animal shits where it eats." 

That probably won't make a dent in the hard heads of people who doubled-down on "Drill here, drill now" after the Deepwater Horizon spill. But I don't know how much more obvious the keystone problems have to be.

Climate Change is Terror

 

I have never seen climate carnage on the scale of the floods here in Pakistan.

As our planet continues to warm, all countries will increasingly suffer losses and damage from climate beyond their capacity to adapt.

This is a global crisis. It demands a global response. pic.twitter.com/5nqcJIMoIA

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) September 10, 2022

 I know this is a hell of a message to send on the 21st anniversary of 9/11, but I can't hear the skirling bagpipes deliver "Amazing Grace" one more time without thinking about the future pressures of what colonialism and global commodification of the planet will mean for future generations. We've been looking at the war on terror as about a lot of things, but about oil and water, not so much--maybe we should. About self-determination, and the world corporations would leave us to--not so much. Maybe we should.  We were lost, but will we be found? We were blind, but will we see? 

We tend to want to put a face on our terrors and consider the villain as "the other". Nature, in its raw power and inexorableness, seems to us to act in ways so removed from our capability to harness it--but we harnessed the atom. We can make use of the energies of water and wind and even capture lightning in a bottle and the sun in a mirror. I think we should be able to understand that over 30 million people are displaced and maybe thousands have died or will, and a third of a large country is under water, destroying crops and homes and livelihoods, because for over a hundred years, we, humanity, did something to the atmosphere that made storms more potent and the future more uncertain. 

Once Again, Not One Republican

 

Given the opportunity to participate in delivering an economic package that invests in preserving our climate, keeping health care costs affordable, ameliorating inflation and reducing the deficit, the House Republicans chose to say "Thanks, but no thanks." 

Here's what that means: they would have been in favor of higher insurance premiums. They would have been in favor of higher drug costs, especially for seniors. I've already explained what Senate Republicans shamefully did regarding failure to assist millions of Americans reliant on insulin to live.  The GOP preferred to lie about this bill over supporting a reduction in the deficit--that means they just aren't fiscally responsible. They don't care that this bill curbs inflation--they would rather we had runaway inflation, if it only meant they had a better electoral position. 

That's an astonishing disgrace, isn't it?  Depending upon what party is in power, you can't hardly rely on Republicans to ever do the right thing, they will just do the politically convenient thing. Take a look at  their old president, who they still support in rigid lockstep, as if unable to entertain what anyone with critical intelligence and a functioning ability to connect the dots would have realized--he's just not any good. 

They have done more to support Trump than they have done to support this country, in roughly the way Trump has done more to protect his tax returns than he has ever done for presidential records. 

They are a benighted and useless party, an infected appendix of the body politic. They need to be voted out before they become septic.  All the more reason for anyone who cares about the future to vote Democratic. 

Republicans Don't Care About Our Veterans

 

55-42: Senate BLOCKS the House-passed bill expanding access to VA healthcare and disability benefits for veterans exposed to toxins during their military service (PACT Act) from advancing to final passage. 60 votes were needed. pic.twitter.com/JEn6hOZMs5

— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) July 27, 2022

It really looks like Senate Republicans blocked a bill expanding health care coverage to veterans sickened by toxins they were exposed to in the course of their service as a part of a nasty snit-fit because Democrats worked out a climate bill. And I mean, they can cite any other "concern" they pretend to have, but frankly, I think it boils to they are hopping mad Democrats ever have the nerve to be effective. And to be even more frank, this isn't the first time the GOP has screwed vets over. They like the uniforms and the flags and the pomp and the circumstance, but they do not like the accountability of what happens to our soldiers during or after the wars.

I put this in the same category as Republicans not supporting our families or Republicans not supporting women and children.  Republicans have no sense that they should be doing the right thing because it's right, they will easily not do right if they think there is a political benefit in it. They will simply obstruct doing the right thing to "own the libs". 

That's a very suspect way to use one's time in office, and I think it should mean Republicans should not be in any office. That's right--every single Republican needs to be understood as part of the problem because they actively reject responsibility for being part of the solution. 

They would not for all the world reject a photo op involving folks in uniform to be seen as patriotic, but right here, they went out of their way to say sick vets are not their concern, because what about the damn Democrats, trying to do something about the environment on the planet we all share. The nerve of them!

Also, maybe they will decide LGBT folks have less rights because still owning libs due to a case of the mads. Exactly how mature adults who are responsible for the laws of a country would work--on Bizzarro world. 

It looks bad because Republicans are bad. Not a single one should stay in office. Not a single one. 

Nothing trivial, I hope.

 

An oil facility directly responsible for the flow of #Russian oil to Europe is on fire in #Bryansk, #Russia. Next to it, just a few km away, a Russian military base is on fire.

Glory to #Ukraine✊🏻🇺🇦.

No typo this time.

Videos below. pic.twitter.com/jVQbahezgx

— Canadian Ukrainian Volunteer 🇺🇦🇨🇦✊🏻 (@CanadianUkrain1) April 25, 2022

Lest I sound flip, obviously such fires are very bad for the envoronment. There are also forest fires in Siberia, but for some reason, the usual firefighters are not on hand to put them out. I think they should be re-deployed, but what do I know? 

 UPDATE: Moscow's ambassador to the US says that further arms supplies to Ukraine from the US are going to escalate the conflict and in other news, when I was small and wanted things I wasn't going to get, my dad would ask me "What's it like to want?" Russia is going to escalate from killing women and babies and flattening cities to what? Has escalating even done anything for them so far?

UPDATE: Lavrov wants people to know he thinks NATO is involved in a proxy war and nukes aren't off the table. I'd like to ask him who he thinks started the war and whether he's aware if anyone else has them. No one is as afraid of Russia as a conventional power as they were before they decided to engage in a short bloody little going on months-long war in which they've lost as much as other counties have (yes, like the US) in wars nearly twenty years long. It lacks a certain punch. 

OK, Carlson, You Got Me

 

Is this not a recipe for man-parts melanoma? (or other calamity)  I asked myself, agape and aghast at the genital microwaving (this link is cursed) I saw displayed. I mean, dudes looking to procreate wear loose boxers and try to give their boys air if they are having some difficulties, so treating your hotdog to the convenience store lamp treatment in order to boost vitamin "D" seems entirely counterintuitive (read: stupid as fuck). Frankly, the best things you can do to boost test (non-pharma) are get good sleep, eat good food, move your ass, and don't be stressed out as all fuck. You know what else boosts test? Winning at actual stuff, instead of being the kind of guy who obsesses over whether you are manly or not. 

Gronk gets it. Beckham does, too. You are more than the sum of your hormones or social drag. 

I am not going to ask myself if the intro cut was homoerotic, because worrying about that is far more the Dan White Society's president's problem than mine. And I find I do not care what Pee Wee Better in the Original German thinks about gender stuff, since he once described beating up a gay person in a men's room, and it sort became a thing conservatives worry about in bathrooms now, and want to persecute non-gender conforming people about in public restrooms because ack!--weird when people need to pee, right? Because maybe sex stuff? (Actually, not really. It just gets talked about.) 

This man is so insecure he needs a passcode to grab his own dick in the john. This man is so insecure he supports pedophilia so long as it's the straight, very religiously-perversely-defended kind. (And women who own their own sexuality are whores. That's another extremely insecure thing.) 

So yes, I find I need to mock Carlson because wow, this thing was so needy and so totally about his own toxic masculine gender conflict, but it feels like he totally laid it out as bait so gender-wise hipsters would skewer him and martyr his poor UV rayed in effigy man-bits with opprobrium that he could then point to the mean-ass libs as the witches who were stealing his penis? 

Shut up you guys, I'm just a feminist asking questions.  And yes, I did the cock-robbin'. In the rest room with the lead pipe, And I would do it again! 

Speaking of A Hostile Work Environment....

 

Activists with Sunrise Movement confronted Joe Manchin this morning outside of his yacht on his way to the Capitol, in protest of his opposition to the Build Back Better social spending bill.

They followed him to his car, and then surrounded his car too. Some images: pic.twitter.com/IvDuEyXu0H

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) November 4, 2021

Just recently, Sen. Manchin referred to his relationship with his colleagues on the Hill as a "hostile work environment" due to all of the partisanship. I seem to recall back in January there was a situation where the work environment was really hostile, and extremely partisan, and well, Manchin's reaction to that was "Why can't we all just get along?" or similar. 

So while I think he's completely wrong, I guess I'd give him points for consistency? As in "consistently wrong about what to do about all this". He's been complaining about how he really wants to see his party come down and do more negotiating (they have come down--they have negotiated!) and wants to see the impact of legislation on the debt and inflation and all this.... 

But when I see him and Sen. Sinema huddled with Mitch McConnell, the partisan motherfucker who denied President Obama a SCOTUS appointment and for a whole year and started ramming through Trump's pick in weeks, well....I think back to times when things were so much more bipartisan. (If there were such times, they were not ever in my lifetime, and I was born in Nixon's first term.) 

Anyway, I have been at times critical of the tactics of the Sunrise Movement because I think they might not be especially persuasive in their tactics and I sometimes question who and how they confront--because generally Democrats are trying to do something about the environment, but it's the GOP that really obstructs meaningful structural change. And as you can see in the above confrontation.... 

Joe Manchin has a really, really nice car.

How Not to Lose

 

A lot of digital ink has been spilled this week over Nina Turner's loss to Shontel Brown and what it means regarding progressive and "establishment" Democrats, but I'm going to just say that this primary had a lot to do with some critical errors on the part of the candidate with all the name recognition and quite a lot of money and doesn't really say anything about the direction of the party. It says something about how to campaign and be part of a team. 

Nina Turner is unquestionably part of a team. The Squad and many "name" progressives supported her. But politics is local and parties are national. And somehow, Turner failed to sort out how to manage either the local politics or the national politics. She got told to stop running a negative campaign against her rival by local clergy. She left tv money on the table despite her fundraising from small-dollar donors. And she had already pissed off Hillary Clinton voters by supporting Jill Stein in 2016 and Joe Biden supporters by scatologically deriding his candidacy in 2020. She also ran afoul of the CBC by calling Rep. James Clyburn "stupid".  

Which made her opponent look pleasant and trustable in comparison. It isn't deep. People saw her grievances, and lost sight of what she could do for them, and her campaign didn't turn that impression around. 

But keeping in mind that tomorrow....exists, how Turner has chosen to lose is also very puzzling, because the faults that lost her the race are how she's going to stick her impression. Like, just what were her comments about "evil money" supposed to mean when she also had some really good fundraising? And if she wants to talk about corporate money, well, okay then, let's do that. And why is she saying that her loss is about how the establishment does progressive candidates specifically dirty when she earned her retaliation by specifically pissing on the establishment in the first place? It feels to me like she could have gotten backing with her name recognition if she didn't start off on the entirely wrong foot. 

Also, now that we are are well past the 2020 Democratic primary, I'm just going to say it--Bernie Sanders has questionable taste.  Regardless of whether any fundraising has fossil fuel money behind it, Brown's priorities per her website generally support the Green New Deal, and she says she would be a vote for Medicare for All if it ever came to the floor.  That's not a candidate who is not progressive, that's a candidate who is, but just doesn't have Turner's progressive connections. Which reminds me that Sanders  also had David Sirota, who was a great communicator that blocked a shit-ton of liberals on Twitter and also seems to hate the MSM, as one of his press folks and had Shaun King as a surrogate. It isn't necessary or helpful to defend Turner's primary loss as having a damn thing to do with corporate money when there is a general election to be won, no matter how much of a guaranteed D district it is. 

Sometimes a personality just isn't a fit for a job. And taking a loss without any grace, and by deriding the process as being at fault instead of showing any introspection, basically pulling a Trump, isn't a great look or demonstrating that any lessons were learned. This is how not to lose. It isn't winning, because it precludes the possibility of figuring out how to win. It doesn't help anybody, 

I'm not saying Turner is a very bad candidate, just that she wasn't the best candidate for right there and then, and needs to see a direction away from that loss that is positive and meaningful. Her initial response was anything but.