059 The Erickson Report for August 11 to 24

059 The Erickson Report for August 11 to 24

Episode 59 of The Erickson Report
- takes A Longer Look at the "Inflation Reduction Act," including some of what's in it, the real cause for Joe Manchin's about-face, and the disastrous "side-deal" that secured it;
- presents two Clown Awards;
- has RIPs for Bill Russell and Vin Scully; and
- reminds us something that must never be forgotten.

The Erickson Report is produced and presented by Larry Erickson, a long-time political activist and proud member of "the woke mob." It is what's known as "advocacy journalism," dealing in facts and logic while never denying it has a point of view.

Comments and reactions are welcome.

045 The Erickson Report for December 29 to January 12, Page 3: A Year of Stupid: Clowns of the Year

045 The Erickson Report for December 29 to January 12, Page 3: A Year of Stupid: Clowns of the Year

We are going to skip the Two Weeks of Stupid this time - which in a way is too bad because we had a good one for Clown: Candace Owens, the right-wing talk show host who got owned by Tweetie-pie about vaccines on her own show and then tried to whine it away by tweeting that he's an old guy from before the time people could "do their own research."

Instead, as this is the last show of the year, it's a good time for one of those yearly wrap-ups. So I'm going to use the occasion to give out awards for Clown of the Year and Outrage of the Year. This was a shortened year for various personal reasons so we don't have as many nominees as we normally would, but we still have some worthy winners.

For Clown, there are two categories: Basic Stupid and Total Jackassery. And in the category of Basic Stupid, the Clown of the Year is the man who put the "gomer" in Gohmert - Representative Louis Gohmert of Texas.

At a June 8th hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee he put this question to Jennifer Eberlin, the assistant deputy chief of the National Forest System, quote:

"I was informed by the immediate past director of NASA that they found that the Moon's orbit is changing slightly and so is the Earth's orbit around the Sun. We know there's been significant solar flare activities and so is there anything the National Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management can do to change the course of the Moon's orbit or the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Obviously that would have a profound effect on our climate."

And apparently this is not sarcastic; he was serious about this. Louis Gomer was actually raising the idea of changing the orbit of the Earth in order to deal with climate change. He is hands down the Clown of the Year, Basic Stupid category.

A quick science aside here because this is just the thing to demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect, where in effect the less you know about something the more you think you know.

It is true the Moon's orbit is changing slightly. That has to do with interaction with the tides on Earth. It's also true that the Earth's orbit is subject to some for lack of a better term wobbling and those cyclical shifts in the Earth's motion and the resulting change in its position relative to the Sun can be a driver of long-term climate change, including things like triggering the beginning or the end of glaciation periods or ice ages.

The thing is, those cycles run on time frames ranging from 24,000 to over one hundred thousand years and the warming we are now seeing is from a time frame of maybe one hundred-fifty years. Those cycles and the warming we're seeing now have absolutely nothing to do with each other and Louis Gohmert really really really is a Clown

Okay, moving to the Total Jackassery category, we have another clear winner: smug transphobe Dave Chappelle.

Chappelle released a new special the beginning of October and got flak over the offensive transphobia it included, up to and including a walkout by some employees of Netflix, where it was streamed.

He responded by claiming he is the actual victim, saying "You said you want a safe working environment at Netflix. Well, it seems like I'm the only one that can't go to the office anymore."

Then, at the November 22 screening of his new documentary, Chappelle tossed around the "f-word," made jokes about people’s use of various pronouns, and pretended to identify as a woman to get a cushier prison cell, proving to one and all that he has learned nothing and doesn't intend to.

Which actually had been clear from the start. Back in October, he supposedly offered to meet with members of the transgender community, but, he said, "You will not summon me. I am not bending to anybody's demands." But he'd meet - under certain conditions. Quoting:

"You cannot come if you have not watched my special from beginning to end. You must come to a place of my choosing at a time of my choosing." (In other words, "You will not summon me; I will summon you.") "And thirdly, you must admit that Hannah Gadsby" - another comedian and a member of the LGBTQ+ community - "is not funny."

An "offer" which doesn't even attempt to hide the fact that is neither serious nor sincere.

You'd think that growing up as a black person in the US Chappelle had to deal with some issues of personal identity, so he'd be able to have some understanding of the feelings of others dealing with a similar sort of question. But he doesn't and he won't - because he finds it easier and more profitable to punch down with cheap shots. Dave Chappelle is a Total Jackass.

041 The Erickson Report, Page 5: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]

041 The Erickson Report, Page 5: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]

Now for a regular feature, Two Weeks of Stupid, Clowns and Outrages. And we start, as usual, with the Clowns.

Our first Clown this time out is President Joe Coal Baron Manchin. After his event at the Economic Club of DC on October 26, three climate hunger strikers confronted him on his demand to cut climate provisions from the reconciliation package.

Manchin replied by asserting “the United States has done more than any other country. All the emissions are coming from Asia.”

So apparently all that West Virginia coal from which he gains a million a bucks a year from investments is being used for what, doing artists' sketches?

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Next there is Texas Republican state Rep. Matt Krause, who has a 16-page list of roughly 850 books and he intends to "investigate" to see if Texas school libraries might be harboring any of them.

Krause has used his position as chair of the House Committee on General Investigating to dispatch a letter wanting school districts to report whether they have any copies of any of the named books and if so, to report how many of them and how much money the district spent to get them.

Beyond such titles as The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the list, not at all oddly, seems obsessed with LGBTQ+ titles and ones about reproduction.

A peek under Krause's mattress might be interesting.

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Then there is the case of a reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch uncovering a flaw in the website of Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that left the Social Security numbers for 100,000 staff members vulnerable. The information was contained in the html source code for the site.

The paper notified the agency and held the story until the agency had a chance to correct the error.

But it seems true that no good deed goes unpunished, because Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, apparently jealous of all the other GOPpes who've been awarded The Order of Big Red Nose, is vowing to prosecute the staff of the paper, charging they are "hackers" who "decoded" the source code to uncover the data. He claimed such an investigation would cost taxpayers $50 million.

Now, not only is that figure manifestly absurd, the thing is, the source code for a website is easily available to anyone with at most a couple of clicks because your own computer must have access to that information in order to display the web page correctly. Try it. Look for the Tools menu in your web browser, where you should find something listed like "View source code." In fact, if your browser is Firefox, just do control-u.

In other words, all this proves is that Mike Parson has absolutely no idea what hacking is.

I love this one because it gets back to the true meaning of Clown.

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But finally, sometimes it's hard to say if something is a Clown or an Outrage, it straddles the line between. Here's an example.

It's an unnamed teacher at Ridgefield Memorial High School in Ridgefield, New Jersey.

On October 18, Mohammed Zubi, A Muslim Arab-American senior at the school, asked for an extension on completing a math assignment. The teacher responded with 'We don't negotiate with terrorists."

Shortly after making the comment, the teacher supposedly told Zubi he did not “mean it like that.”

Excuse me, teacher person, but just how the hell did you mean it?

A supporting Clown award goes to the school administration which initially dismissed it as a “personal matter.” Only after the incident became known through social media did school board members take it seriously. In a statement a couple of days later, the district said it is conducting a full investigation and that the teacher in question has been suspended until further notice.

033 The Erickson Report for March 11 to 25, Page 1: Continuing Climate Change

033 The Erickson Report for March 11 to 25, Page 1: Continuing Climate Change

I start by telling you about something you may never have heard of but affects you every day, particularly if you live in the eastern parts of the US, and could have a major impact on you with the next few decades and even more on your descendents before the end of the century - a date when, let's recall, that a US child born today has a good shot at seeing.

It's called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. It's part of a worldwide system of ocean currents distributing heat around the planet

Because the equator receives a lot more solar energy than the polar regions, heat builds up in the tropics. There is a principle in physics called thermodynamic equilibrium, which essentially means everything wants to be the same temperature as everything else. It's why your hot coffee cools off, because the heat energy in it is distributed to the surrounding air so that eventually the coffee and the air are the same temperature, have the same level of heat energy. That is true of the world just as it is for your coffee.

So the differing levels of heat energy in different parts of the ocean create currents that constantly carry warmer and cooler water in a conveyor belt of currents across and around the oceans. The warmer currents are in red, the cooler ones in blue. Warm water is less dense than cold water, so the warm currents are shallow ones, hear the surface of the water, while the dense, cooler, currents are deep ones - which is why the current can cross paths without interacting.

The point is, this system of currents has a major influence on both the long-term of climate and the short-term weather. It affects the wind patterns and how storms form - why for example, hurricanes often form more towards Africa and move westward across the Atlantic.

That warm current also explains why south and southwest England have mild enough weather that winter snow is rare in London and you can find palm trees in Torquay even though London is at about the same latitude as the mouth of the St. Lawrence River between Newfoundland and Labrador.

Why do I bring all of this up? To see why, let's look more locally. Because this is a entire belt of currents, we could start at any point, but for what is relevant to us at the moment we'll start in the Caribbean, with warm water being brought along the southeast US coast before cutting across the Atlantic to Great Britain and then heading for Greenland.

As the water reaches the area around Greenland, it has cooled enough - become dense enough - to sink to deeper water, with that deep current propelled by the force of the water sinking behind it.

What keeps this system going is that the tropics continue to get more solar energy than the polar regions, so that differential in heat driving the system still exists. Also, water in polar regions is saltier than that in the tropics because ice is essentially fresh water, so the amount of it locked up in ice can't contain any of the salt. Saltier water is denser than fresher water, and that difference in density also helps propel the system. The relevance of all that will become obvious in a moment or two.

The news here is that a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience reports that this current is now moving more slowly than it has in at least 1,600 years and the belief is that this is directly related to climate change.

How? Because a warming climate will do two things: One, because polar regions are warming faster than the tropics the difference in heat energy between the two regions - one of the things driving the current - is being reduced. Second, melting polar ice puts fresh water into the oceans, reducing the salinity of polar oceans and therefore the difference in density between the warmer and cooler parts of the current, impacting another driver. A combined effect big enough and there isn't enough energy to drive the system - and the current breaks down, throwing global climate patterns into disarray, marked by storms and heat waves, along with effects such as faster sea level rise along parts of Europe, stronger hurricanes hitting the southeastern United States, and reduced rainfall across the Sahel.

Those effects can be so wide-ranging - North America to Europe to northern Africa - because, as years of research have made clear, the Atlantic portion of the world conveyor belt - the AMOC - is the engine that drives it, moving water at 100 times the flow of the Amazon river.

But that circulation has slowed down by at least 15% since 1950, something the new study calls "unprecedented in the past millennium." The specific suspected culprit is melting Arctic ice and the reduced salinity of polar oceans that results. The effects on weather patterns can already be detected.

The deeper concern is that if warming is not halted, the circulation may slow by 34% to 45% by the end of the century, by which time we may have already passed the tipping point, the point beyond which even if all warming was stopped entirely, it would be too late to prevent the circulation from slowing to a stop with catastrophic impacts.

Here it's necessary to note that, no, this is not the movie The Day After Tomorrow, the impacts would not be instantaneous, but over years and decades, yes, they would be devastating.

Realize that this is not a new concern. I wrote about this possibility, about this concern, 17 years ago. The difference is that then it was a longer-term concern about a serious but still hypothetical possibility. Now we have evidence that it is happening and that once again, we humans - especially we humans in advanced industrialized societies - are to blame.

This does not mean things are hopeless.

For one thing, a new report from Ember, a London-based environment think tank, found that in 2020, for the first time, the 27 countries of the European Union generated more electricity with renewables - wind, solar, and hydro - than with fossil fuels, continuing a shifting pattern developing over the past 10 years.

What's more, a study from late 2018 found that at that point, generating utility-level electricity through solar and wind was already cheaper than coal and new natural gas plants - without subsidies or a price on carbon.

The study from the financial firm Lazard Ltd. applied a Levelized Cost of Energy, or LCOE, analysis, which looks at the cost of power from a plant averaged over its entire lifetime. It found - over two years ago - that the cost of renewables had dropped so much that in many areas, building and running new renewables was already cheaper than just continuing to run existing coal and nuclear plants.

In other words, the economics are clearly in favor of a clean energy future.

Then there is the fact that according to the Peoples' Climate Vote, the largest survey of public opinion on climate change and policy solutions ever conducted, nearly 2/3 of people around the world, including 65% of those in the US, think it's a global emergency that warrants a serious response.

Survey data was gathered from 1.2 million respondents in 50 high-, middle-, and low-income countries covering 56% of the world's population. People between the ages of 14 and 18 expressed the greatest level of concern, with nearly 70% saying there is a climate emergency, but even 58% of those aged 60 and over agreed.

And then there is President Joe Blahden, who whatever his faults is more concerned about climate change than any previous president.

On his first day in office he canceled the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, the one intended to carry highly-polluting tar sands from Alberta to Texas. He has rejoined the Paris Accords, issued an executive order suspending new oil and gas leases on public lands, directed federal agencies to purchase electric cars by the thousands, and urged Congress to end some fossil-fuel subsidies.

And he has proposed to eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by 2035 while proposing to invest $2 trillion over four years to transform to a clean energy economy. I'll note in passing that much of this would not have happened were it not for Bernie Sanders representatives on that unity task force, but the important thing here is that it happened.

And it's certainly doable, considering that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released a draft version of a report which argues that $2 trillion over 10 years would be enough to build an economy that is not only net-zero but would "also build a more competitive economy, increase high-quality jobs, and help address social injustice in the energy system."

Meanwhile, earlier this month the latest version of the federal CLEAN Future Act was introduced in the House of Representatives, an event greeted with applause by environmental groups such as Earthjustice and the NRDC.

This latest version aims to achieve US carbon neutrality by 2050 with an interim goal of reducing pollution by 50% from 2005 levels by 2030.

It all sounds so good, even allowing for the inevitable political hurdles and opposition from fat cats, corporations, and corporate-funded interests. It still sounds so good and so hopeful.

And it is, it is - as far as it goes.

Which is the problem: It doesn't go far enough.

For one thing, Blahden's order to suspend new oil and gas leases didn't prevent 31 new leases from being issued during his in 1st month in office.

For another, praise for the CLEAN Future Act was hardly universal. Groups like Friends of the Earth and Food & Water Watch said the legislation is fundamentally and dangerously lacking.

My own objection is that the bill treats fracking as a clean energy. But fracking is designed to increase production of natural gas. The whole point of it is not to move away from fossil fuels but to enable us to continue to rely on them. A climate program that embraces fracking is not serious. As Lukas Ross, program manager at Friends of the Earth put it, "A clean energy standard that qualifies fracked gas is a joke."

Meanwhile, Mitch Jones, policy director at Food & Water Watch, called the bill "a Green New Dud" because "it fails to grasp the fundamental truth of fighting climate change: We must stop extracting and burning fossil fuels as soon as possible. We should not waste time creating credit schemes and offsets markets, or prop up fossil fuels with carbon capture fantasies."

And we shouldn't. When I was preparing this piece, I kept thinking "if this was a war." But that's silly, because this is a war. A war we are waging on ourselves, on the climate, a war we are waging on the life networks and patterns of this planet and our collective future.

On January 27, Nature published a report saying that an analysis of ocean surface temperatures shows that the planet is hotter now than at any time in the preceding 12,000 years, and that it may actually be warmer than at any point during the last 125,000 years.

Each of the past four decades has been hotter than the one before. 2020 tied for the hottest year on record and the past seven years have been the seven hottest.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, more than 32,000 species are now threatened with extinction from human impacts like deforestation, pollution, and climate change; 500 of them could disappear in two decades. One critically endangered species is the North Atlantic right whale, of which fewer than 250 survive - and the greatest dangers facing them are collisions with boats and drowning from getting entangled in fishing nets, deaths which are on the increase because climate change is driving their food source, krill, further north, drawing the whales out of their protected areas.

No "natural cycle" or other BS is going to explain any of that that away.

It's not enough. Even the grand-sounding promises and solemnly-intoned pledges at international conferences are not enough.

According to new findings published in December by the United Nations Environment Program, if nations are to meet a central goal of the Paris agreement of holding the Earth's warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, they will have to “roughly triple” their current emissions-cutting pledges. If they are to keep heating below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), they would need to increase their targets at least fivefold - to make five times the cuts they are pledging.

And despite all the pledges, global greenhouse gas emissions, on average, have risen about 1.4 percent annually over the past decade. The world remains on a trajectory to see the temperature increase about 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) this century - a level that climatologists say would be catastrophic.

What we're doing - collectively - is simply not enough. And I mean the world, particularly the industrialized world, at large, not just the US. But if I've seemed a times to concentrate on the US, that's because I have. First off because it's us, it's the one we have the most control over. And we are the world's second largest producer of greenhouse gases and we have one of the if not the most carbon-intensive lifestyle. The carbon footprint of the average American is about 17.6 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents a year, about double the footprint of a person living in the EU or the UK, and almost 10 times that of the average citizen of India.

So yes, the world needs to do more and particularly we here need to do more and dammit yes, it will affect your lifestyle, yes, you might have to do without a few hi-tech goodies, yes, you might have to live with a little less convenience, you might have to take the train instead of flying everywhere, you might have to ride the bus to work instead of driving, you might have to make a lot of changes, some of them more significant than others.

But I'm going to ask you to think back a few decades - if you're as old as me, think back to the '60s. I want you to think back and ask yourself, I've asked this before but I'm asking it again and I want you to think seriously about it. I'm not considering how issues of poverty or bigotry or physical limitations might have affected you personally for this, just consider how the average, the typical, American lived then, the level of technology, the level of convenience, available at that time. And ask yourself: Was that way of living so terrible that you would sacrifice a world for yourself and your children rather than live that way again.

Because right now, yes, we are engaged in a war. And the problem is, we're winning.

033 The Erickson Report for March 11 to 25

 

The Erickson Report for March 11 to 25

This episode:

Recent news on climate change
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-atlantic-ocean-gulf-stream-system-amoc-weakest-1600-years/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2004/03/warm-up-to-main-event.html
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/01/26/president-biden-us-capable-too-europe-generates-more-electricity-renewables-fossil
https://thinkprogress.org/forget-coal-both-solar-and-wind-are-now-cheaper-than-new-natural-gas-plants-e281f5485e5f/
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/01/27/largest-ever-climate-poll-shows-64-global-public-believes-warming-planet-emergency
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-28/biden-s-early-climate-blitz-goes-faster-further-than-expected?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/3/2013746/-Scientists-say-2-trillion-investment-can-decarbonize-energy-by-2050-paid-for-with-a-carbon-tax
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/03/02/green-new-dud-progressives-warn-house-climate-bill-fails-grasp-fundamental-truth
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/01/28/climate-campaigners-say-listen-science-new-study-shows-earth-now-warmer-any-time
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3061/2020-tied-for-warmest-year-on-record-nasa-analysis-shows/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/12/09/carbon-footprints-climate-change-rich-one-percent/

Updates on attacks on LGBTQ+ rights
https://19thnews.org/2021/02/wave-of-anti-trans-bills-are-hitting-statehouses/
https://19thnews.org/2021/02/36-anti-lgbtq-religious-freedom-measures-are-in-covid-church-bills/
https://www.rawstory.com/republicans-anti-lgbtq-bills/
https://www.them.us/story/virginia-ban-anti-lgbtq-panic-defense-danica-roem
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/25/us-house-equality-act-lgbtq-americans-discrimination

Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [Clowns]
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-early-childhood-education-education-boise-bills-581517bc89b86666887396ae8ecce4ce
https://www.koco.com/article/oklahoma-house-passes-bill-allowing-legislature-to-declare-federal-laws-unconstitutional/35661454
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-school-chivalry-assignment_n_6041bfc6c5b660a0f387697e

Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [Outrages]
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/02/26/syria-bombing-biden-airstrikes-mark-test-us-role-worlds-police/6831034002/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/26/syria-bombings-biden-airstrikes-deliver-message-more-than-damage/6834550002/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50998065
https://apnews.com/article/biden-retreats-saudi-arabia-sanctions-khashoggi-killing-d91d31edece5db07112d1c2d4dd3be33

030 The Erickson Report for January 21 to February 3, Page 2: Good News

030 The Erickson Report for January 21 to February 3, Page 2: Good News

We start, as I always like to do when I can, with some Good News.

First, some truly rare Good News on cars and the 4th amendment. On December 22, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Pennsylvania police can no longer search cars without a warrant unless there is both probable cause to believe a crime occurred and emergency circumstances that require immediate action. That reverses a decision from just five years ago that cleared the way for warrantless searches based on nothing more than a claimed belief that contraband is present.

A little over a year before the new decision, an analysis by the Philadelphia Inquirer found that Philly cops, using the old standard, were performing an average of more than 2,000 warrantless car searches a month. You won't be surprised to learn that about 80% of them involved Black drivers.

Before, the excuse often was a claim by a cop that they smelled marijuana. I wonder what will be the go-to excuse now.

My entirely justified cynicism aside, this is still good news in light of the fact that courts, both state and federal, have often treated cars as a place where the 4th-amendment does not apply.

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Even in the midst of a resurgence of violent overt white supremacy, we can still see signs that yes, over time, things have gotten better. Just consider that the state of Georgia has just sent a black man and a Jew to the US Senate.

Okay, this example isn't about racism, it's about homophobia. But still embrace it for what encouragement it offers.

On December 23, New York’s Second Department Supreme Court - New York's state-level equivalent to a federal Circuit Court of Appeals - ruled that being accused of being a homosexual can no longer be considered defamation per se. Per se, as I expect you know, means "in and of itself," so what the ruling is saying is that acceptance of LGBTQ folks has come to the point where falsely saying "so-and-so is gay" is not itself defamatory.

And this is by no means the only case or the only court to say so.

At one time and not so long ago, the very idea of being LGBTQ was thought to be so shameful and such a disgrace that falsely accusing someone of it legally could be likened to falsely accusing them of a heinous crime or having a "loathsome disease," something so bad that you didn't have to prove you suffered any damages as a result in order to win a suit; the accusation itself was enough.

Now, the general trend courts have followed is to rule that such an accusation is no longer defamation per se. You can still sue, but you have to show actual damage, such as losing a job as a result.

As it's said, the moral arc of the universe may be long but it does bend toward justice. So don't ever give up the struggle, because subjected to the pressure of persistence and time, things can get better.

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Two years ago, Tweetie-pie was frustrated after federal courts blocked his attempt to illegally force a question about citizenship into the census forms. So he demanded that the Census Bureau prepare a separate report on the number of undocumented immigrants in the US, intending to use it as a basis for an executive order removing those people from the count for reapportionment of Congressional seats - to the benefit of GOPpers and non-Hispanic whites.

That order would be illegal, too, as the Constitution clearly gives the role of overseeing those matters to Congress. There have been several suits over the prospect of the order, but the Supreme Court has said they are premature.

Now, however, that won't matter because te project won't even be finished. On January 13, Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham ordered Bureau staff to "stand down and discontinue their data reviews," putting an end to the attempts by the Tweetie-pie thugs to change the rules to their own benefit.

Dillingham was facing demands he resign for buckling to Tweetie-pie's demands and agreeing to the data review in the first place. So maybe he just said "the hell with it, he's out in a week and my term ends in just over two weeks; I have better things to do with my life than deal with this crap."

Or maybe he decided to do the right thing. Whyever, the effort to turn undocumented immigrants into constitutional non-persons has failed. Again.

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On January 15, the NRA announced that it is leaving New York, where it has been incorporated since its founding in 1871, and heading for Texas, where it intends to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in an attempt to evade the civil suit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James charging large-scale financial corruption and looking to dissolve the group.

James' response to the announcement was to say that "The NRA's claimed financial status has finally met its moral status: bankrupt," adding that "we will not allow the NRA to evade accountability and my office’s oversight."

You go, girl.

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A quick one just for fun: On January 17, Betty White turned 99. The day before, she said she was going to celebrate by having a hot dog and french fries for dinner and then staying up late.

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Finally for now, an Obama-era rule, the Clean Power Plan, was about limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The Tweetie-pie gangsters wanted to replace it with what they called the Affordable Clean Energy rule, based on an interpretation of the Clean Air Act under which emission controls would have to be imposed plant by plant - every one of which could be challenged, producing years and potentially decades of litigation and delay.

On January 19, Tweetie-pie's last full day in office, the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously threw out the new rule and remanded the matter back to the EPA - which is of course now in an administration which says it will prioritize climate change.

I'd call that a nice going-away present.

The Erickson Report for January 15-28

The Erickson Report for January 15-28

Back to the grind after our Thanksgiving and Christmas-New Year's episodes, The Erickson Report for January 15-28 looks at media coverage of the Iran crisis and the White House lies before running though some interesting items Noted in Passing and, of course, Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages.

Corrections
https://www.indy100.com/article/trump-us-election-2020-president-five-terms-rally-speech-8923291
https://www.indy100.com/article/trump-twitter-us-president-executive-power-mueller-investigation-9003321
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-insists-constitution-allows-do-whatever-want-1444235


Iran and the media
https://us20.campaign-archive.com/?e=20cc5fa835&u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=748e115148
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/03/corporate-media-turns-warhawks-including-former-bush-officials-beat-drums-war-iran
https://presswatchers.org/2020/01/what-the-press-needs-to-do-to-stop-the-march-to-war-in-iran/
https://www.mediamatters.org/washington-post/after-afghanistan-papers-we-need-skeptical-media-cover-iran
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/3/21048079/trump-pompeo-iran-lies
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/12/21062399/trump-iran-esper-o-brien-four-embassies-why-soleimani-killed
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/11/1910826/-Evolution-of-a-lie-from-imminent-attack-to-four-embassies-with-no-facts-in-between
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/01/13/trump-doesnt-really-matter-if-there-was-an-imminent-threat-from-soleimani/23899962/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-authorized-soleimani-s-killing-7-months-ago-conditions-n1113271
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/middleeast/soleimani-strike-legality-doubts-us-iran-intl/index.html
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/8/21057344/trump-congress-iran-intelligence-briefing-soleimani
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/u-s-sending-thousands-more-troops-mideast-after-baghdad-attack-n1110081
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-01-10/with-hundreds-of-sanctions-on-iran-trump-adds-a-few-more?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fpolitics+%28L.A.+Times+-+Politics%29
https://www.thedailybeast.com/netanyahu-distances-from-soleimani-slaying-says-israel-shouldnt-be-dragged-into-it-report
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-plane-crash-ukraine-airliner-crashes-iran-kills-all-onboard-today-2020-01-08/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-11/iran-says-it-accidentally-shot-down-ukraine-plane-isna
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/navy-1988-iranian-jet/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/war-powers-resolution-house-votes-to-limit-trumps-ability-act-against-iran/
https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/war-powers-act


Noted in Passing
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/01/01/2020s-new-laws-gender-neutral-x-licenses-stronger-id-wear-your-hair-the-way-you-want/23890932/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/01/03/united-methodist-church-is-expected-split-over-gay-marriage-disagreement-fracturing-nations-third-largest-denomination/
=
https://theconversation.com/for-linguists-it-was-the-decade-of-the-pronoun-128606
=
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2229238-a-lazy-fix-20-years-ago-means-the-y2k-bug-is-taking-down-computers-now/
=
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/07/puerto-rico-earthquake/2830673001/
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/01/11/magnitude-59-shock-rocks-quake-stunned-puerto-rico/23899082/
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/8/1910216/-Red-alert-from-World-Health-Organization-6-000-dead-in-Congo-measles-outbreak
https://www.afro.who.int/news/deaths-democratic-republic-congo-measles-outbreak-top-6000
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/11/1052321
https://apnews.com/0cd4deb8141742b5903fbef3cb0e8afa
https://www.who.int/csr/don/26-november-2019-measles-global_situation/en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles_resurgence_in_the_United_States
=
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/12/1910962/-Taal-Volcano-erupts-in-the-Philippines-Now-at-Alert-Level-4
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/matthewchampion/taal-volcano-lava-philippines
=
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/bushfires
=
https://theconversation.com/wtf-slurs-offend-young-adults-more-than-swearing-125193
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyBH5oNQOS0


Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages - the Clowns
https://morningconsult.com/2020/01/08/can-you-locate-iran-few-voters-can/?fbclid=IwAR0e40DoAUi3WgTLmyPLAXAklAw8XcVy3fk4Uae1D6Njgtau0YcSQE_zqWk
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https://www.instagram.com/p/B67J4TTlnDn/
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/6/1909727/-Don-Jr-shows-off-custom-assault-rifle-with-white-supremacist-imagery-and-image-of-Hillary-Clinton#read-more
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/us/navy-seals-edward-gallagher-trump.html
https://www.salon.com/2020/01/02/eddie-gallagher-isnt-a-lifestyle-brand-story-its-a-story-about-the-rights-violent-nihilism/
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/4/1909453/-eponymous-ground-meat-dish-calls-Nobel-Prize-recipient-brainwashed
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/meat-loaf-greta-thunberg-climate-change-australia-bushfire-sharon-a9270246.html


Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages - the Outrages
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/after-monsey-will-jews-go-underground/604219/
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/3/21039446/anti-semitism-anti-orthodox-farrakhan-conspiracy-theories-bipartisan
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/anti-semitic-attacks-more-violent-hate-crimes-new-york-n1110036
https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Antisemitism/Ilhan-Omar-voted-2019s-antisemite-of-the-year-613308
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-un-confiscations-demolitions-of-palestinian-homes-rose-by-45-percent-in-2019-1.8347116
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-israel-s-un-envoy-calls-ilhan-omar-anti-semite-of-the-year-1.8369471
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Danon
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-accused-of-disgraceful-abdication-of-duty-for-proposal-to-neuter-landmark-environmental-law/
https://blog.ucsusa.org/kathleen-rest/kathleen-hartnett-white-nomination-spells-trouble-for-the-magna-carta-of-environmental-law-nepa

The Erickson Report, Page 2: Five Things Noted in Passing

The Erickson Report, Page 2: Five Things Noted in Passing

We have here the first appearance of another occasional feature, this one called Five Things Noted in Passing, five things worth noting, each of which will be addressed in no more than about a minute. In the course of two weeks, there are always a multitude of things that I simply will not have any time to address. This way I can at least mention some of them.

Okay, Number One: Scientists in Iceland are installing a plaque to memorialize the nation’s first glacier lost to climate change. It will be installed next month at the site of the now-extinct Okjökull glacier in Borgarfjörður and will include a “letter to the future” reminding humans to do better at tackling global warming.

Number Two: Sens. Ted Cruz and Bill Cassidy have introduced a resolution to would brand the loose coalition of anti-fascist groups collectively known as Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.

However, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism found that domestic extremists killed at least 50 people in 2018, making it fourth-deadliest for extremist attacks in the last 50 years. And "every single" one of those 50 "had a link to right-wing extremism."

Also according to the ADL, over the past 10 years, the far right has killed hundreds of people and accounted for about three-quarters of extremist murders in the US. Number connected to Antifa: 0

Number Three: Speaking to Chris Wallace on Faux News, presidential advisor and repeat winner of “Who Wants to be a Zombie” Stephen Miller said “I think the term ‘racist’ has become a label deployed by left/Democrats in this country to try to silence and punish and suppress people they disagree with, speech that they don’t want to hear.”

Quite true. Because “go back to where you came from” and “send her back” is speech that no decent person would want to hear.

The plaque

Number Four: On July 20, hundreds of activists rallied in Lawton, Oklahoma to demand Tweetie-pie stop imprisoning asylum-seeking children. Lawton is the site of Fort Sill, where the government intends to stick up to 1400 migrant children, starting next month.

Fort Sill was also the place where members of the Apache nation were imprisoned in the 1890s as their children were taken away and subjected to forced “assimilation” at the fort’s boarding school.

More recently, it is where 700 Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II.

And Number Five: Finally, just a thought: There have been increasing attacks on Medicare for All, Medicare for All being defined here as universal health coverage that is not simply a minor extension of the ACA combined with increased subsidies for the private insurance industry disguised as “premium support.” A primary basis for these attacks has been the claim that polls say people are happy with their current coverage.

But here’s the thing: Are those people really happy with their insurance? Are they happy with the premiums, the co-pays, the deductibles, the medically-necessary procedures put on hold until you find out if “insurance will cover it,” the not being able to choose your doctor because they are “out of network?” Or are they just happy that they have insurance?

Put another way, are these polls really about public sentiment or are they truly trial balloons trying to determine which lies would be the most effective in scaring people away from universal coverage?

Heroes and Villains: climate change

I had a fall during the taping of Episode 4 of The Erickson Report, delaying production for a week. So I thought I would post a couple of things intended for that show but which will not be used now.

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Heroes and Villains: climate change

Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg is a 16-year-old Swedish activist who, in August 2018 at age 15, began an on-going solitary protest outside the Swedish parliament about the need for immediate action to combat climate change and has since become an outspoken climate activist.

She initiated the school strike for climate movement in November 2018. On March 15 of this year, an estimated 1.4 million students in 112 countries around the world staged strikes and protests. Another event involving students from 125 countries took place on May 24.

She is of course not alone but she is a symbol of a movement becoming more assertive about the need for immediate action on climate, a movement that is coming to embrace nonviolent direct action, as mass protests over the weekend of June 22-23 showed.

For just one example, on June 22 in Germany, hundreds of activists under the slogan "We are unstoppable - another world is possible!" stormed an open-pit coal mine in Germany while thousands of others maintained separate blockades of the nation's coal infrastructure.

Greta Thunberg

Meanwhile, in New York City police arrested 70 environmental protesters outside the New York Times headquarters who laid down in the street and climbed onto the building to demand the newspaper start referring to climate change as a climate emergency.

The same day in Bath, Maine at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works, where some of the Navy's most advanced warships are built, 22 people were arrested for civil disobedience calling for Congress to "Fund Climate Solutions, Not Endless War"

And on July 2, the day this is being recorded, a UK group called Extinction Rebellion is staging a die-in, putting an independent edge to the opening of the London's city-organized, officially-sanctioned Climate Action Week.

Again, Greta Thunberg is not alone, but she still is a symbol of a movement that is no longer content to wait until the corporations and the politicians decide action is in their own interest. And for that she is a Hero.

The villain here may come as something of a surprise. It is Phil Goldberg, director of the Center for Civil Justice at the Progressive Policy Institute, an allegedly progressive organization - I mean, it's right in the name and all - connected to the Dimocratic Party.

Phil Goldberg

Various mayors around the country have been filing lawsuits against fossil fuel corporations for their pollution and contribution to global warming, arguing that "we did what the law required" is inadequate as a defense when they knew for a fact that those standards were inadequate. They failed to exercise due diligence, the argument goes, to exercise appropriate care, and thus can be held liable.

Phil Goldberg, who apparently needs to look up just what "justice" means, has been, precisely because of his association with PPI, an industry-useful leading point person denouncing such lawsuits. You know the game: He becomes "proof" that "even the lefties are against this."

In fact, this "lefty" is a former lobbyist for coal giant Peabody Energy and serves as special counsel to the National Association of Manufacturers in its fight against climate litigation besides having recently worked for Grow America’s Infrastructure Now, a front group funded by several oil and gas trade associations, helping prepare a report on how tort law can be used to go after what the authors call “anti-pipeline activism.”
  
That's why he's the guy writing that the cities' "copycat lawsuits" are "ineffective political stunts" that "strike at the heart of our way of life" because they don't "balance" environmental concerns with the climate destroying fossil fuel production on which his bosses' profits depend.

That's why he's the guy doing it. That he's doing it under the cover of supposedly being progressive and supposedly concerned with civil justice, that's why he's our villain.

The Erickson Report, Page 2: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Otrages - the Outrages

Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages - the Outrages

Okay, switching over, some Outrages for you.

1. Pia Klemp, is German and 35 and also something of a rarity: She is a ship's captain and a member of Sea-Watch, a non-governmental organization that rescues asylum-seekers in the Mediterranean who are trying to reach Europe by boat.

She's also facing 20 years in prison in Italy for the heinous crime of not letting people drown.

Human traffickers in Libya extort thousands of dollars from migrants who arrive in the country desperately trying to reach Europe. As Klemp notes, those migrants risk the crossing of the Mediterranean "because there are no legal entry routes" and they keep coming because "there are so many reasons to flee."

But the ships used by the traffickers often are not seaworthy or are deliberately sabotaged, forcing humanitarian vessels such as Klemp's to either rescue the migrants or let them drown. Over the years, Klemp has rescued, by her estimate, at least 1000 people. For that, she has become a target of Italy’s extreme right-wing Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who has promised harsh penalties for so called "illegal" migrants which has led to rescue workers like Klemp being branded as criminals.

This despite the facts not only that seeking asylum is a human right but that Article 98 of the 1982 UN Law of the Sea says that:

“Every State shall require the master of a ship flying its flag, in so far as he can do so without serious danger to the ship, the crew or the passengers, to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost.”

Despite that, cases against Klemp and others are being pursued even as there is no proof of any substantial violation of law by any rescue vessel operated by any NGO.

Pia Klemp

Journalist Rula Jebreal summed it up: "Italy's fascists are using this case as a showcase to deter others from aiding migrants. They would prefer to let people drown in the Mediterranean."

2. Continuing on immigration outrages, they want them to drown in the sea; we lean toward letting them die in the desert.

According to a report in Politico from two weeks ago, Tweetie-pie is considering sweeping restrictions on asylum that would effectively block Central American migrants from entering the US.

If they are put into place, those seeking asylum will be found ineligible if they have entered or attempted to enter the US after failing to apply for asylum or other protections in any country that isn’t their country of origin that they went through to get to the US.

In other words, people fleeing El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, who make up the bulk of those seeking asylum at the southern US border, would be barred from applying because they walked through Mexico to get here.

In other words, the choices for asylum seekers are apply for asylum from within your home country, just sit there in the poverty, the crime, the violence, all the things you are seeking to flee, and see what the people who regard you as coming from shithole countries and say you are riddled with drugs and criminals and terrorists and don't want you in the first place will say about your case, or stay in Mexico - just don't bother us.

It really is like they aren't even pretending anymore. The bigotry, the hatred, the xenophobia is right out there for all to see.

3. Speaking of immigration, the Immigration and Nationality Act is a federal law passed in 1952 that stipulates that any child born abroad to a married US citizen parent is granted birthright American citizenship. The reference to "married" was largely to deal with situations where only one of the parents was a US citizen. "You're a citizen, your spouse is not, doesn't matter, the kid's a citizen."

But the State Department interprets the law to mean that a child born abroad must be biologically related to a US citizen parent and what's more, a child born to a same-sex couple through assisted reproductive technology, which is not mentioned in the law and barely existed at the time, is born "out of wedlock" and thus, it's claimed, is not a birthright citizen.

The Immigration and Nationality Act makes no reference to biology in determining birthright citizenship, giving the policy little textual support in law. But the State Department doesn't care, which has plunged same-sex couples into a legal nightmare, as the State Department in effect says they are not really married, that they're not really "married US citizen parents."

In February, a federal judge ruled in a suit brought by one same-sex couple that the Department’s imposition of a biological requirement is a "strained interpretation” of immigration law, and dismissed attempts to institute a biological testing standard as “unilateral.”

But the State Department has appealed that ruling and has fought to summarily dismiss a suit brought by another same-sex couple, so the fight - and the Outrage - continue.

Oh, a footnote to all this: The policy was adopted in 2014 - under Obama.

4. Next, this type of intellectual corruption is pretty commonplace these days, but still it’s outrageous.

William Happer

In mid-June the Environmental Defense Fund released emails between William Happer, a member of the National Security Council, and policy advisers with the Heartland Institute. The emails dated from 2018 and 2019 and were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act filing.

The emails show that Happer, who has claimed that carbon dioxide is good for humans and that carbon emissions have been demonized like "the poor Jews under Hitler," actively sought the help of the Heartland Institute, a notorious and brazen liar about climate change, in seeking to discredit the scientific reports on the subject coming out of NASA.

In the words of Matthew Nisbet, a professor of environmental communication and public policy at Northeastern University, "It's equivalent to formulating anti-terrorism policy by consulting with groups that deny terrorism exists."

5. One final outrage. Ryan Kirkpatrick is a student at West Park Elementary School in Napa, California. He's 9 years old.

On June 10, it was reported that after learning that some kids cannot afford lunch at school and have to take on debt, he used his saved-up allowance money to pay off those debts for his entire third-grade class - because, according to his mother, he wanted to make a difference. The total came to $74.50.

So why is this an outrage?

Ryan Kirkpatrick

Because why should he have to? Why is it acceptable for some kids to be too poor to afford a school lunch? Why should any child or their family have to depend on private charity - which is exactly what this is - to afford a meal?

Make no mistake, Ryan Kirkpatrick did a good and kind thing. The Outrage is not in what he did - it's in the fact that such an act is ever necessary.

And bear in mind that this comes at the same time that the federal minimum wage has passed an ignominious milestone: It has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since July 24, 2009 - and as of June 16 it had gone the longest time without an adjustment since the program was enacted in 1938. In fact, the purchasing power of the minimum wage has been declining since it hit its peak in February 1968 - that's a 51-year long decline in purchasing power.

A majority of states now have minimums above the federal level, but even in those, only three now have minimums above $11.50 an hour - a figure which offers purchasing power slightly below that of the federal minimum those 51 years ago. It's 51 years to get exactly nowhere.

Meanwhile, in 21 states the paltry, miserly, federal minimum is still the standard.

And we're all supposed to believe our economic lords and masters when they tell us the economy is doing great.

32.1 - Harvey, Irma, and global warming

Harvey, Irma, and global warming

The big news of late, at least in the US, has been the twin hits of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The economic cost of the devastation is estimated to exceed $200 billion. Some 106 were killed in the US plus at least 44 more dead in Caribbean, which was devastated particularly by Irma.

There are multiple ways to assist the victims, both in the US and the Caribbean and I urge you to explore them.

But I also have to mention the gorilla in room, which actually did get mentioned sometimes in the coverage of the storms, but which needs to be slammed home: anthropogenic global warming - or climate change, call it what you will, they mean the same thing.

Now, this does need to be noted at the top: You can't say that Harvey or Irma were caused by global warming in the sense that they would not have happened in the absence of global warming. We can't say that. Hurricanes are caused by weather conditions.

Hurricane Harvey

But here's the point: Hurricanes draw their strength from warm waters. So as the climate warms, as the oceans warm, there is more energy for storms to draw on.

So what we can say is that climate change makes storms like Harvey and Irma more likely. That is, we can't say that there will be more hurricanes - that actually is regarded as one of the weaker predictions of climate change - but we can say that the hurricanes we see are more likely to be stronger and more destructive: Remember that  Irma was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the open Atlantic (that is, outside the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico).

Which leads directly to the next point: Despite the claims of the nanny-nanny naysayers to the contrary, we can say it is possible to attribute some extreme weather events to climate change.

Not necessarily individual storms, but extreme weather patterns - such as drought, heat waves, and floods - can in at least some cases can be attributed directly to climate change.

That's one of several significant findings in a climate change report by the staff of 13 federal agencies, which found that average temperatures in the United States have risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, that recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1500 years, and Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now.

The authors note that thousands of studies, conducted by tens of thousands of scientists, have documented climate changes on land and in the air that have been confirmed by many lines of evidence which together demonstrate that human activities are the primarily cause.

And people know it. Not just around the world, where we've come to expect that people are aware of the dangers and the need for action, but even in the US.

According to the latest survey from Morning Consult/Politico, two-thirds of registered voters are concerned about climate change, with 41 percent "very concerned" and another 26 percent "somewhat concerned."

But this is one really got me and shows how far perceptions have changed. A few months ago, the New York Times reported a survey finding that 69 percent of Americans support limiting global-warming-creating carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal-fired power plants. But more than that, more than that, a majority of adults in every single congressional district in the country agreed. Even in deep coal country in places like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky, a majority said yes, limit the emissions.

But still the nanny-nanny naysayers and their corporate backers drive Congress and the White House. That report from those 13 agencies was for the next National Climate Assessment, due in 2018. The draft was to be submitted on August 18. On August 20, TheRump disbanded the federal advisory panel overseeing the report.

This supposedly will not affect the current assessment, the one due next year, but it does mean that absent future action, it will be the last one as the determination of the nanny-nanny naysayers in and out of government to ignore reality grows even more determined and strident.

And our time is running out.

Link for the Pope Francis quote:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pope-francis-climate-change-denial-stupid_us_59b6ed8ae4b09be416574f72

What's Left #32

What's Left
for the week of September 15-21, 2017

This week:

Harvey, Irma, and global warming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Harvey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irma
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurricane-irma-record-atlantic-ocean-category-5-track-forecast-path/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/climate/climate-change-drastic-warming-trump.html
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/6/1696441/-Scientist-on-climate-change-That-s-not-so-much-a-future-projection-but-an-observational-reality
http://shaperssurvey2017.org/
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trumps-administration-denies-climate-change-exists-americans-concerned-664222?yptr=yahoo
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/21/climate/how-americans-think-about-climate-change-in-six-maps.html
http://bangordailynews.com/2017/08/20/news/trump-administration-disbands-federal-advisory-committee-on-climate-change/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pope-francis-climate-change-denial-stupid_us_59b6ed8ae4b09be416574f72

Clown Award: Nigel and Sally Rowe
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/8/31/1694892/-Mark-Levin-just-made-possibly-the-most-hilarious-climate-denial-argument-ever
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/349431-candidate-for-charlotte-mayor-puts-white-among-qualifications
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kimberley-barnette-white-mayor_us_59af342ae4b0b5e53101d60d
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/349623-opinion-sen-rand-paul-pay-for-the-emergency-funds-with
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-says-sanders-did-lasting-damage-in-her-new-book-according-to-report/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4858922/Hillary-s-latest-targets-blame-women-marchers-Lauer.html
http://nypost.com/2017/09/06/cluelessness-thy-name-is-hillary-clinton/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/christian-parents-sue-school-allowed-wear-dress-uniform-transphobia-church-enland-a7938926.html?S2ref=906656

News on voter suppression
http://www.pfaw.org/blog-posts/federal-judge-kobach-repeatedly-misled-court-in-voting-rights-case/
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/8/1697032/-It-took-the-Washington-Post-one-hour-to-debunk-Kris-Kobach-s-ridiculous-voter-fraud-claims-in-NH
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/09/08/election-integrity-commission-members-accuse-new-hampshire-voters-of-fraud/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/09/08/election-integrity-commission-members-accuse-new-hampshire-voters-of-fraud/
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/8/1697038/-Kris-Kobach-alleges-voter-fraud-in-New-Hampshire-because-he-can-t-read
https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/09/08/right-wing-medias-new-voter-fraud-proof-even-more-asinine-usual/217887
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/trump-voter-fraud-panel-to-push-debunked-new-hampshire-claims
http://gizmodo.com/jeff-sessions-was-lobbied-to-exclude-democrats-from-tru-1804006784/amp
https://twitter.com/CharlesPPierce/status/907754056139059202
https://twitter.com/dellcam/status/907722857203077121
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/supreme-court-texas-electoral-maps_us_59b8d9a7e4b02da0e13d674b

Good News: Senate committee overturns abortion gag rule
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/07/senate-votes-against-administration-on-anti-abortion-global-gag-rule/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/22/trumps-mexico-city-policy-or-global-gag-rule
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale

Good News: Medicare for All bill introduced
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/12/1698079/-15-Senators-will-introduce-a-Medicare-for-All-bill-tomorrow-Is-your-senator-among-them

Good News: Martin Shkreli in jail
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crime-shkreli/shkreli-ordered-jailed-after-online-bounty-on-hillary-clintons-hair-idUSKCN1BO2T8

Outrages of the Week
http://thehill.com/regulation/healthcare/345411-fight-over-right-to-sue-nursing-homes-heats-up?amp
https://www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/lgbt-nondiscrimination-protections/president-trump-and-attorney-general-sessions
https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/charlie-craig-and-david-mullins-v-masterpiece-cakeshop-united-states

27.2 - Good News: EPA can't delay methane leak rule

Good News: EPA can't delay methane leak rule

Another bit of Good News, this one on the environment.

On July 3, a three judge panel of the Court of Appeals for Washington, DC, ruled that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt had overstepped his authority in trying to delay implementation of an Obama-era rule requiring oil and gas companies to monitor and reduce methane leaks.

Pruitt had announced in April that he would delay by 90 days the deadline for oil and gas companies to follow the rule, so that the agency could reconsider the measure. He then said in June that he was going to extend that delay for an additional two years.

Scott P-U-itt

In a split decision, the court disagreed with Pruitt’s contention that industry groups had not had sufficient opportunity to comment before the 2016 rule was enacted and also said that he had no authority to make the “unreasonable,” “arbitrary,” and “capricious” decision to delay the rule from taking effect.

The reason the decision is important is that methane is by volume about 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide is and environmental groups contend that actual methane emissions from leaks and intentional venting at fossil-fuel operations are far greater than what is now reported.

Environment-hater and fossil-fuel-industry-lapdog Scott P-U-itt has been trying as hard as he can to undo the gains of the past several decades. This time, at least, he got smacked down hard. And that is Good News.

What's Left #27

What's Left
for the week of July 7-13, 2017

Sorry for being late with this. I had some "I really, really, really hate computers" days this week, something with which we call can identify.

This week:

Good News: House Appropriations Committee votes to repeal AUMF
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-panel-approves-amendment-that-would-strip-trumps-war-authorization-powers/
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/340066-lawmakers-applaud-after-panel-approves-language-revoking-war-authority
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/340132-republicans-say-war-authorization-amendment-was-out-of-order

Good News: EPA can't delay methane leak rule
http://powersource.post-gazette.com/powersource/policy-powersource/2017/07/04/DC-federal-appeals-court-blocks-Environmental-Protection-Agency-s-effort-to-suspend-Obama-era-methane-pollution-rule/stories/201707040055

Good News: German parliament votes for same-sex marriage
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/30/534970093/german-lawmakers-approve-same-sex-marriage

Not Good News: Texas Supreme Court says states can deny benefits to same-sex couples
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/lgbt/2017/06/30/texas-supreme-court-rules-gay-couples-notguaranteedspousal-benefits
https://www.texastribune.org/2017/06/30/texas-supreme-court-ruling-houston-same-sex-marriage-benefits/

Clown Award: TheRump supporters
https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/chris-christie-beach/532536/
http://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-president-donald-trump-health-care-republican-gop-were-all-gonna-die-629883?utm_source=internal&utm_campaign=most_read&utm_medium=most_read1
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-fans-throw-conniption-fit-after-npr-tweets-out-declaration-independence
http://gizmodo.com/trump-supporters-cry-bias-after-npr-tweets-the-declarat-1796633566

Outrage of the Week: war crimes in Yemen

Thoughts prompted by the Fourth

24.9 - Outrage of the Week: TheRump quits Paris Accord

Outrage of the Week: TheRump quits Paris Accord

Now for our other regular feature, the Outrage of the Week - and this week, you're probably not surprised, it's TheRump's withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement in a statement chock full of nonsense and lies about the environment, global warming, and the economy and in a decision opposed by the American public by better than 2-1.

Burt rather than dwell on his inanity, I want instead to note two things: One is that much of the world reacted pretty much along the lines of "the heck with you and no, we are not going to 'renegotiate' this" and that domestically, many local governments are prepared to pick up the ball that TheRump fumbled so badly.

There is a growing list of at last count 289 mayors and 10 governors who have denounced the decision to withdraw and more importantly, have vowed to ignore TheRump's decision and to continue to abide by the federal Clean Power Plan and the Paris accord, including looking to meet the goal of reducing emissions to 26%-28% below 2005 levels, in their own cities and states.

Three states - California, New York, and Washington - created the United States Climate Alliance to serve as a way for states to coordinate efforts to deal with climate change. As one small sign of what can be done, those three states together make up about a fifth of the US population and a fifth of the US GDP - but produced just 11 percent of US emissions in 2014.

As of June 8, a total of 12 states and Puerto Rico, representing together a third of the US population and a third of the US GDP, had joined.

And this doesn't even address the many businesses and corporations that have realized how much of a threat global warming is to their bottom lines and so have committed to continue to do at least something to avoid the worst effects.

So the bottom line is that most of the world and at least a good part of the US are saying to TheRump, "screw you, keep peddling your fantasies about coal jobs that are never coming back and we'll get on with saving the world without you."

And that is definitely not an outrage.