The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

A massive store devoted to President Donald Trump gear and other MAGA merch is closing, and it’s because even deep in a deep red state, fans are just not that into him anymore.

Slate recently visited the Trump Superstore just outside of Knoxville, Tenn., and found everything on sale at 50% off or more as the shop prepares to shut down.

“We’re not busy anymore,” one employee told Slate.

The Knoxville News Sentinel reported last month that the store was closing in part because its owner was moving to Florida. But owner Bill Hays laughed at that.

“The girl that reported that did not know what she was talking about,” Hays told Slate, adding that he’s not retiring or moving. “I don’t think she wanted to say we were closing for lack of business, but that’s why we’re closing.” 

An employee named Dan was even more blunt, telling Slate that Trump “really is dwindling, dwindling, dwindling.”

When asked whether he meant Trump’s health or his popularity, Dan said the latter.

“You can see more and more Republicans are not happy with their life situation,” Dan said. “People really are saying, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to do a full load of groceries or I’m going to put my electric bill on a credit card this month.’”

Trump’s overall approval rating has plunged to historic lows, and affordability is a key reason. His approval rating on affordability specifically is now 43 percentage points underwater, according to The Economist’s poll tracker.

Even in Tennessee, where Trump once enjoyed massive popularity, his numbers are falling: Trump entered office with his approval rating 24 percentage points above water. Now, the latest polls show his approval at 47% and disapproval at 45% in the state, just 2 percentage points above water, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. 

Rest easy, MAGAts!  The thing you elected twice, your cult leader, is doing just fine with his unprecedented graft, crypto businesses, pardons-for-payoffs, and other grifts he's been running to enrich himself to the tune of $2 billion since 2025.  He has also asked that you STFU about "affordability," and high gas and grocery prices, and his endless war of choice with Iran.  Thank you for your attention to this matter!

The bad:

The water level at Lake Powell, the United States’ second-largest reservoir, has fallen to a record low, heightening concerns about the ongoing crisis in the Colorado River system.

The alarming milestone at Lake Powell, reached Saturday, comes about a week after the river’s other major reservoir, Lake Mead, also hit a historic low. Plummeting water levels pose a major threat to the Colorado River Basin, which is a key resource for wildlife, hydropower and more than 40 million people in seven U.S. states.

The historic lows come as the federal government and states that rely on the river — California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado — struggle to reach agreement on a long-term management plan for the dwindling resource. Persistent overuse combined with a record-dry winter and rising temperatures have been depleting both Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Lake Powell’s elevation dropped to 3,519.91 feet (1072.9 meters) above sea level on Saturday, dropping just slightly below a previous record set in April 2023, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The lake is more than 20 feet (6.10 meters) lower than it was at the start of the year, USBR data shows.

The reservoir is now about 30 feet (9.1 meters) away from the point at which turbines would stop producing hydroelectric power. Federal officials warned in April that a “major intervention” would be necessary to avoid reaching that threshold by the end of this year.

USBR in July proposed a 10-year plan that includes major potential water cuts for Arizona, California and Nevada.

The crisis has been in the making for years. Both reservoirs are at the lowest they have been in nearly seven decades, and levels may continue to drop, USBR data shows.

The last time their combined storage was this small was in May 1957 when Glen Canyon Dam that holds back Powell was being built, according to a recent paper published by a group of academics and retired water officials. Powell began to fill in 1963.

The depletion has also impacted Lake Powell’s substantial tourism industry, forcing marinas in the reservoir to adapt. Boat ramps have closed or moved, new ones are being added and marinas have been temporarily relocated to deeper waters.

The southwestern US is experiencing a megadrought that has lasted since 2000, exacerbated by climate change (a term you don't see in the article above).  With an incompetent, vindictive, and corrupt Malignant Fascist administration in Washington, DC, as a party to reaching a resource management plan, we can only say, "Good luck with that!"

The ugly: 

In 2022, Assistant Chief Adam Glueck, of the Cape Girardeau Police Department in southeastern Missouri, purchased electric shock gloves for his officers after learning about them at a trade show. And his employees, he said, couldn’t get enough of them. “If I try to take away the gloves from those officers at this point I think we may have a mutiny on our hands,” Glueck joked on a podcast interview a couple of years later. “They’ve grown really attached.” 

The shock gloves, he went on to explain, allow their wearer to inflict pain without leaving the sort of marks that could look bad to witnesses or leave an officer vulnerable to lawsuits. 

“In today’s society, you know, everybody’s filming everything, everybody has a cell phone,” Glueck said. If an officer punches someone on camera, that can go viral in an instant; even a standard taser leaves puncture wounds. But “the glove is low optic, and it looks better on camera, and it looks better to those witnesses. With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars.” [Ed.: yeah, you wouldn't want to have your brutality have any negative consequences for you!]

The gloves, manufactured by a company called Compliant Technologies, have been used by police, sheriffs, jail wardens, and even school resource officers for years. They’ve been described by groups like Amnesty International as “readily misused for torture.” And this week, ICE published a plan to order $20 million worth of them. 

The device is called a GLOVE, which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter. It looks like a regular padded black utility glove, but when the wearer presses a small button on the glove’s wrist, it produces a painful electric shock. 

“We have a saying: Feeling is believing,” Compliant Technologies CEO Jeff Niklaus said in one 2022 YouTube video. In promotional clips, you can see people losing control of their limbs, falling to the ground, and crying out in pain after a light touch from the GLOVE. In 2022, the company called it a “weapon” in Instagram posts. Since then, though, it’s downgraded the language to “a Conductive Distraction and De-escalation device,” branding the technology on its website as “humane.”...  (our emphasis) 

In a better, more just world, everyone involved with these "de-escalation" torture devices should spend time in prison, from the Torquemadas at the company, to the local law enforcement seeking to cover up brutality, to ICE leadership who ordered $20 million worth of them, to every goon that uses them.  But here we are... for now.  That's the slippery slope to fascist America that we're on.

Destroying 21st Century America, Cont.

 

Some brief news items this morning offering further evidence of the Malignant Fascist's and his toady Republican MAGAts' determination to destroy the emerging 21st Century America, with its “principles of justice, liberty and perfect humanity equality.” 

Republican gerrymandering goons

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) announced Thursday that the FBI had accepted his request to track down Democratic state lawmakers from Texas who left home in order to block a redistricting plan that heavily favors the GOP.

Cornyn had asked the FBI to step in earlier in the week to arrest the Democrats; his statement Thursday said the agency agreed to “assist state and local law enforcement in locating” them. It is not clear precisely what role the FBI will play.

The Texas Democrats have spread out to states led by other Democrats, particularly Illinois, where a bomb threat forced them to evacuate from a hotel just one day ago.

ICE goons

Early Wednesday morning, masked ICE agents barrelled out of a Penske truck to raid a Los Angeles Home Depot for immigrants.

Videos shared across social media and Fox News show the people scattering across the street as camouflaged agents pursue them.

A federal judge issued an order last month halting racial profiling and the use of roving patrols to target immigrants, but now that seems to be thrown to the wayside. According to the U.S. Border Patrol El Centro Sector Chief Greg Bovino, they’re “not leaving.”

The Penske truck attack was dubbed “Operation Trojan Horse” by Bovino and resulted in the arrest of 16 immigrants.

“For those who thought immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again,” Bill Essayli, acting U.S. attorney for Central California, posted on X. “The enforcement of federal law is not negotiable, and there are no sanctuaries from the reach of the federal government.”

But Penske decried the use of their vehicles after videos began to go viral.  [snip]

Regardless of lower judicial orders, the Department of Justice is doubling down on its attack against sanctuary cities like Los Angeles. 

On Tuesday, the DOJ announced a list of 35 “sanctuary” jurisdictions, vowing to bring lawsuits against states, counties, and cities that limit local cooperation with ICE agents...

Human rights

Leaked drafts of the State Department’s long-delayed annual human rights reports indicate that the Trump administration intends to dramatically scale back U.S. government criticism of certain foreign nations with extensive records of abuse.

The draft human rights reports for El Salvador, Israel and Russia, copies of which were reviewed by The Washington Post, are significantly shorter than the ones prepared last year by the Biden administration. They strike all references to LGBTQ+ individuals or crimes against them, and the descriptions of government abuses that do remain have been softened.

The draft report for El Salvador — which, at the Trump administration’s urging, has agreed to incarcerate migrants deported from the United States — states that the country had “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in 2024. The State Department’s previous report for El Salvador, documenting 2023, identified “significant human rights issues” there — including government-sanctioned killings, instances of torture, and “harsh and life-threatening prison conditions.”...

Global climate change

The Trump administration is moving to shut down two NASA missions that monitor a potent greenhouse gas and plant health, potentially shutting off an important source of data for scientists, policymakers and farmers.

President Donald Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 includes no money for the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, which can precisely show where carbon dioxide is being emitted and absorbed and how well crops are growing.

NASA said in an emailed statement Wednesday that the missions were “beyond their prime mission” and being terminated “to align with the President’s agenda and budget priorities.”

But the missions — a free-flying satellite launched in 2014 and an instrument attached to the International Space Station in 2019 that include technology used in the Hubble Space Telescope — still are more sensitive and accurate than any other systems in the world, operating or planned, and a “national asset” that should be saved, said David Crisp, a retired NASA scientist who led their development...

Union busting

The Department of Veterans Affairs is terminating collective bargaining agreements with several key government unions representing its employees.

In an announcement Wednesday, the VA said the move is in response to an executive order President Donald Trump signed in March that nixed collective bargaining rights for many federal workers in the name of national security.

The agency’s decision comes after a federal appellate court lifted a lower court ban on the ending of union contracts on Friday, although the Trump administration previously issued guidance that agencies should not terminate any collective bargaining agreements until litigation challenging the order is over...

It's going to be an overwhelming challenge to someday right the wrongs of these evil times.  But when we have our moment, we need to seize it and spare nothing to make sure these wrongs are reversed and those who perpetrated them are crushed.

Stats Of The Day -- The Antarctica Heat Wave

 

While we indulge in our self-absorption, our fate and that of the planet is being sealed:

Ground temperatures in East Antarctica have soared more than 50 degrees (28 Celsius) above normal in the second major heat wave to afflict the region in the past two years. This historic warm spell could persist for another 10 days and is an ominous example of the major temperature spikes this polar climate could experience more frequently in a warming world.

“This heat wave is a near-record (or record) event for the region of Antarctica it’s having the biggest impact on,” Edward Blanchard, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, said in an email. “The heat wave’s large footprint is also remarkable,” as it covers a large section of East Antarctica, which makes up most of the continent.

The heat wave comes in the middle of the Antarctic winter, so temperatures are still hovering around minus-4 (minus-20 Celsius). Still, the Antarctic temperature anomaly is the largest on the globe, according to weather models...

But keep electing those fossil fuel industry coin- operated, climate change denying Republican MAGAts, though!

(Photo:  Sergio Pitamitz/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

 

DeSantis: What Climate Change?

 

Climate change is already impacting Florida, both onshore and off (pdf).  With Bootsie DeSantis and his fellow Republican coin- operated fossil fuel industry shills in charge, Floridians will be getting even more of the dystopian governance they keep voting for:

Florida will eliminate climate change as a priority in making energy policy decisions, despite the threats it faces from powerful hurricanes, extreme heat and worsening toxic algae blooms.

On Wednesday, the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the legislation, which is set to go into effect on July 1. The measure also removes most references to climate change in state law, bans offshore wind turbines in state waters and weakens regulations on natural gas pipelines.  [snip]

Supporters say the new law helps the state prioritize a concern of Floridians — energy affordability, which they say is threatened by excessive regulation. But some climate advocates said the measure is largely symbolic and would have little effect on Florida’s shift toward renewable energy. Solar power is booming in the state and, despite Republican lawmakers’ desire to curb construction of wind turbines, Florida isn’t windy enough to have piqued the wind industry’s interest.

Rather, environmentalists said the new law is the latest example of DeSantis’s eagerness to use climate change as a culture war issue such as abortion and transgender rights to bring national attention to himself and hit the right notes with right-wing voters.  [snip]

In addition to removing the term climate change, the new law would make affordability and reliability the focus of the state’s energy policy — an echo of conservative talking points that seek to portray renewable power as too expensive and untrustworthy.

“It feels like we’ve taken a major step backward and are no longer recognizing the dangers of greenhouse gases," said Raymer Maguire, director of campaigns and policy for the Miami-based CLEO Institute, a climate activism nonprofit that supports clean energy.

The measure also removes language giving state officials the authority to set goals for increasing renewable energy in Florida. It ends requirements that government agencies consult a “climate-friendly” products list before making purchases, hold meetings in hotels that meet the state’s “green lodging” requirements or that agencies prioritize fuel efficiency when buying new vehicles... (our emphasis)

How out of sync with Floridians is this?

... The latest survey by Florida Atlantic University found that 90 percent of Floridians accept that climate change is happening and 69 percent support state action to address it. Many of the survey’s respondents also reported negative experiences with flooding and high winds from tornadoes and hurricanes, which may explain why Floridians report being more concerned than Americans nationally...  (our emphasis)

But, because a majority of Florida voters seem to be more concerned with voting against all those scary "woke" bugaboos that Republicans have ginned up over the past many decades, you get a governor like Bootsie and a legislature that would rather perform tricks for its frothing MAGAt base than to do something positive and potentially life- saving for the people they were elected to serve (though with these corrupt nihilists, they are serving their constituencies --the fossil fuel industry, gun lobby, forced- birth crackpots, etc.).  

BONUS:  Bootsie may need higher boots in the future --

 

(Photos:  top, Bootsie sends his thoughts and prayers -- "Sorry about your houses!"/ 30AETS, Flickr;  bottom two,  via Twitter/X)

 

 

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

On Monday in Manhattan criminal court, a prosecutor and a defense attorney are set to offer their opening statements in Trump’s trial for allegedly falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment, and then the district attorney’s office will begin presenting witnesses and evidence to make its case for convicting the 45th president of the United States.

• On Tuesday, the judge will take a quick break from witnesses to hold a hearing on whether Trump — the presumptive Republican nominee for president — should be found in contempt of court for allegedly violating his gag order.

In a different New York courtroom, a court will weigh the state attorney general’s challenge to Trump’s $175 million bond on Monday. That’s important because the bond in question allows him to pursue an appeal and delay paying a nearly half a billion dollar civil judgment for misstating Trump company assets.

Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments about Trump’s claim that he cannot be prosecuted for allegedly trying to block the results of the 2020 presidential election. Whatever the outcome for Trump personally, the case may force the highest court in the land to draw new, clearer lines about the limits of presidential power...

In courts that aren't run by Republicans in robes, the Malignant Loser/ Rip van Stinkle/ The Godfarter is facing accountability for his criminality.  In the process, he's dealing with stress that he's likely never felt before, as the situations he faces are largely out of his control.  He's all damaged, narcissistic id and this is torture for him.  Good.

The bad:

... The planet is experiencing a horrifying streak of record-breaking heat, with March marking the 10th month in a row that the average global temperature has been the highest ever recorded.

It would be shocking if it wasn't so predictable. Despite everything we know about the effects of burning fossil fuels, humanity is still going in the wrong direction with self-destructive abandon. Last year greenhouse gas pollution climbed to a new high, a 1.1% increase over the prior year.

If 10 months of record heat isn't enough to jolt world leaders into crisis mode, it's hard to say what will.

It should be a flashing, red warning light that we are entering dangerous new territory and need to change course. We have the renewable energy technology, but it's being adopted at a pace that's too slow to protect people, animals and plants from unacceptable levels of suffering.  [snip]

One of the most important things Americans can do right now is to exercise their political power at the ballot box, by demanding that leaders at all levels of government deliver serious climate action or stay out of office.

The stakes are especially high this year. A former president who has arguably the worst climate record in U.S. history, having rolled back more than 100 environmental protections, is polling neck and neck with a president who has done more to fight climate change than anyone before him, even if it's still not enough.

Still, the choice should be clear if we want to stop setting records, month after month and year after year.

On this election year Earth Day, let's dedicate ourselves once again to vote down those Christofascist MAGAt Republicans -- starting with the Malignant Loser -- who are the Earth's despoilers and an existential threat not just to America, but to the planet on which we live.

The ugly: 

Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, called some of his fellow lawmakers “scumbags” on Sunday as GOP infighting has reached new heights in the House.

Gonzales, appearing on CNN’s "State of the Union," was asked whether he believes House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will survive an effort to remove him from his leadership post. The House was effectively frozen for weeks last year after a handful of Republican rebels voted alongside Democrats to remove then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has threatened to try to do the same to Johnson.

Gonzales had some sharp words to say about his colleagues: most notably, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.

"It's my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags," Gonzales said, alleging that Matt Gaetz sexually assaulted minors "at drug parties."

In 2021, the Justice Department opened an investigation into Gaetz over alleged cash payments made in exchange for sex, including to an underage girl.

The department in 2023 dropped charges against Gaetz after prosecutors said there were credibility issues with two key witnesses. He is still under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.  [snip]

The Texas lawmaker also criticized Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., for supporting his Republican opponent, Brandon Herrera, a gun rights activist. Gonzales alleged that Herrera is a "known neo-Nazi" and referred to the Ku Klux Klan.

It was not immediately clear what Gonzales was referencing. Jewish insider reported earlier this month that Herrera has posted videos online featuring Nazi imagery. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider...

It's ugly, but he's right.  They are scumbags, and there are many, many, many more scumbags in his Christofascist MAGAt Republican Party/ cult who fall into the same category, too many to mention (but starting with the cult leader himself, of course).

The Outlook For The Climate In 2024

 

Record heat and catastrophic climate events marked 2023, and according to climate scientists across the world, 2024 will probably exceed those dangerous records. The New York Times' Raymond Zhong reports:

"Earth is finishing up its warmest year in the past 174 years, and very likely the past 125,000.

Unyielding heat waves broiled Phoenix and Argentina. Wildfires raged across Canada. Flooding in Libya killed thousands. Wintertime ice cover in the dark seas around Antarctica was at unprecedented lows.

This year’s global temperatures did not just beat prior records. They left them in the dust. From June through November, the mercury spent month after month soaring off the charts. December’s temperatures have largely remained above normal: Much of the Northeastern United States is expecting springlike conditions this week.

That is why scientists are already sifting through evidence — from oceans, volcanic eruptions, even pollution from cargo ships — to see whether this year might reveal something new about the climate and what we are doing to it.

One hypothesis, perhaps the most troubling, is that the planet’s warming is accelerating, that the effects of climate change are barreling our way more quickly than before. 'What we’re looking for, really, is a bunch of corroborating evidence that all points in the same direction,' said Chris Smith, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds. 'Then we’re looking for causality. And that will be really interesting.'” (our emphasis)

Scientists are looking at El Niño impacts to help gauge how much acceleration in warming there will be in 2024, and also at the distribution of extreme heat across the globe to measure human causality. In any event, no one is expecting the advent of a new ice age, with the impact of burning fossil fuels continuing to shroud the Earth in greenhouse gases. We may have already passed the point of no return in terms of curbing the warming climate, but we have to keep pushing for the reduction in carbon emissions and for the adoption of clean energy alternatives and energy conservation to level off these annual spikes in temperature.

 

The COP28 Cop Out

COP28, the much ballyhooed U.N.-sponsored climate change conference in Dubai (of all places), has circulated a draft international climate agreement that contains many suggestions for curbing fossil fuels use, but stops short of calling for phasing out fossil fuels.  From the linked article:

"A new draft of a COP28 agreement, published by the United Arab Emirates' presidency of the summit, proposed various options but did not refer to a 'phase out' of all fossil fuels, which had been included in a previous draft.

The draft deal listed eight options that countries 'could' use to cut emissions, including by: 'reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050'.

Other actions listed included tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, 'rapidly phasing down unabated coal' and scaling up technologies including those to capture CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere." (our emphasis)

Now, what could possibly be behind the hesitance to call for fossil fuel's phase out? 

"A coalition of more than 100 countries including oil and gas producers the United States, Canada and Norway, as well as the European Union and climate-vulnerable island nations, wanted an agreement that included language to phase out fossil fuels, a feat not achieved in 30 years of the U.N. summits.

Sources familiar with the discussions said the UAE had come under pressure from Saudi Arabia to drop any mention of fossil fuels from the text.

Negotiators and observers inside the COP28 talks told Reuters that Saudi Arabia, de facto leader of the OPEC oil producers' group, was among the main opponents of a deal to phase out oil and gas." (our emphasis)

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin "Bone Saw" Salman loves those petrodollars (and his undue influence) too much to push a total phase out of fossil fuels. But we're sure the guests at the conference were treated to the best food, drink and entertainment the Saudis could buy. 

(photo: Conference President Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber [UAE] / Getty Images)

 

QOTD -- Hot Times On The Old Planet

 

"The Earth just endured its hottest 12 months in the modern era, and probably the hottest in 125,000 years, according to an analysis published Thursday.

"That means nearly 3 in 4 people experienced more than a month’s worth of heat so extreme, it would have been unusual in the past, but became at least three times more likely because of human-caused climate change, scientists at Climate Central found.

"And it means that the planet is closer than ever to a global warming benchmark that scientists have predicted could irreversibly damage, if not destroy, entire ecosystems — 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial norms. Data shows a surge of warming this year has pushed average planetary temperatures 1.3 to 1.4 degrees Celsius above 19th-century levels..." -- Scott Dance in the Washington Post, reporting on the climate change that all but ensures next year will continue a trend that's developed over decades.  It's hard not to relate the clichéd allegory of the frog slowly boiled to death before it's aware of the danger to the fate of humanity.  But here we are.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

The day of the school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Tex., last year, Averie Bishop posted a TikTok video, sobbing. “These things happen all the time and nothing changes,” she said.

After the Supreme Court overturned abortion rights, following her home state’s own restrictions, she posted again: “When you live in Texas and all you wanted was a hot girl summer, but now you have a ‘no reproductive rights’ summer.”

In March, she posted about the need for comprehensive sex education and mourned the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the abortion precedent abandoned by the court. In May, she posted videos touting the need for affordable health and reproductive care.

The fact that Bishop has professed her liberal views on race, abortion, immigration, voting, same-sex marriage, school shootings and comprehensive sex education — which Texas public schools don’t require — may not be surprising considering she’s 26.

What is startling is that Bishop has spoken out while competing for, and as, Miss Texas. The perch has normally been occupied by apolitical women, but in Bishop’s case, the pageant queen has used it to push back against the far-right policies supported by Texas’s White male leaders...

Her platform — diversity and inclusion — represents much of what Texas has been outlawing. In June alone, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed laws banning diversity offices and training at state universities, “sexually explicit” books at public schools, drag shows and gender-affirming care for youths.

The first Asian contestant to win the crown in the pageant’s 85 years, Bishop is an avatar for a rapidly diversifying state, one that despite its historic image is now majority minority, a change that is remaking cities, rural areas and political alliances, if not state leadership...

She's got a law degree, too.  Run, Averie, run!

The bad:

...As Earth's climate continues to change from heat-trapping gases spewed into the air, ever fewer people are out of reach from the billowing and deadly fingers of wildfire smoke, scientists say. Already wildfires are consuming three times more of the United States and Canada each year than in the 1980s and studies predict fire and smoke to worsen.

While many people exposed to bad air may be asking themselves if this is a “new normal,” several scientists told The Associated Press they specifically reject any such idea because the phrase makes it sound like the world has changed to a new and steady pattern of extreme events.

“Is this a new normal? No, it’s a new abnormal,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said. “It continues to get worse. If we continue to warm the planet, we don’t settle into some new state. It’s an ever-moving baseline of worse and worse.”

It's so bad that perhaps the term “wildfire” also needs to be rethought, suggested Woodwell Climate Research Center senior scientist Jennifer Francis.

“We can’t really call them wildfires anymore,” Francis said. “To some extent they’re just not, they’re not wild. They’re not natural anymore. We are just making them more likely. We’re making them more intense.”

Several scientists told the AP that the problem of smoke and wildfires will progressively worsen until the world significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which has not happened despite years of international negotiations and lofty goals..

The ugly:

Another bus carrying dozens of migrants from Texas arrived Saturday afternoon at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, courtesy of the governor and taxpayers of the Lone Star State.

The 41 asylum seekers arrived about 12:40 p.m. and were received by the L.A. Welcomes Collective, a network of nonprofit, faith and immigrant rights groups, officials said in a statement. The migrants are from Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Belize and Nicaragua.

“With great love and dignity, we extend a warm welcome to our newly arrived brothers and sisters in Los Angeles,” said Martha Arevalo, executive director of American Resource Center-Los Angeles (CARECEN), one of the groups providing resources and support. 

A temporary welcome center was set up at nearby St. Anthony Croatian Catholic Church.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that her office learned about the bus Friday and immediately began coordinating with the collective, as well as with city and county departments, to assist the migrants upon their arrival.

“The City of Los Angeles believes in treating everyone with respect and dignity and will do so,” Bass said.

The migrants were recently paroled by the Border Patrol and voluntarily boarded the bus in Brownsville, Texas, for the 1,600-mile journey, officials said. This is the second bus to arrive from the Texas-Mexico border in just over two weeks, after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Los Angeles as the latest Democrat-run city to which his state will bus migrants...

At least they'll be treated like human beings in California, unlike in Christofascist p.o.s. Gov. Gregg Abbott's Texass.

 

Great Salt Lake Rising

 

From the WaPo:

Just three months ago scientists issued a report with a dire warning: Utah’s Great Salt Lake, after decades of drying that had only accelerated in recent years, was on track to disappear in five years. Now a record snowpack, fueled by more than 800 inches of snow during the season in some locations, offers a glimmer of hope for the Western Hemisphere’s largest salt water lake and an important economic driver for the state.

The Great Salt Lake reached its record low in November when it dipped to 4,188.6 feet above sea level, having lost more than 70 percent of its water since 1850 according to the report published in January by researchers at Brigham Young University. As of Wednesday, however, the lake had risen three feet in a little more than five months, primarily because of snow and rain dumped directly into the lake by a season-long series of water-loaded storms. Salt Lake City has seen its seventh snowiest season on record and among the most snow of any major U.S. city, with 87.3 inches.

The rising lake level is cause for both celebration and caution.

“While we celebrate our progress, we must continue to prioritize water conservation efforts and make sustainable water management decisions for the future of this vital ecosystem and for water users throughout the basin,” said Candice Hasenyager, director of the Utah Division of Water Resources, in an email.  [snip]

Despite its recent rise, the lake is still six feet below what is considered “the minimum acceptable elevation for the lake’s ecological and economic health,” according to Abbott. The snowpack, and what happens to its runoff, holds the key to whether the lake can make relatively quick progress toward that six-foot level. With an above-average snowpack, the lake level can increase 3 to 4 feet, according to Utah’s Division of Water Resources...

The unprecedented weather this year, with record snow and rainfall in the West (and an active tornado season in the Plains and South), is a direct result of global climate change.  In the short run, the record precipitation has caused misery and death, but also carried with it new life and hope for environments like the Great Salt Lake and Colorado River which have been ravaged by years of drought.  It's not right that a price has been paid in order for these ecosystems to see a rebound.  But the circumstances have given us a window of time to make positive, long- term changes in the way water resources are managed in the West (and elsewhere for that matter) and to reduce loss of life from ever more violent weather, if we're smart enough to see and utilize it.  

(Photo:  "Snow and water pool on a stretch of exposed lakebed on the southern end of the Great Salt Lake in Magna, Utah on Thursday."/ James Roh for the Washington Post)

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

Search for Jim Inhofe on Google, and you’ll immediately see pictures of the Republican senator from Oklahoma proudly holding a snowball on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Inhofe’s career in elected office spans nearly six decades, but the snowball is perhaps his most famous stunt — one of pure, unabashed climate idiocy that will follow him long after he vacates his senate seat.

Inhofe, 87, will retire in early January after nearly three decades in the Senate. He leaves behind a legacy of climate denial that might be laughable if it weren’t so embarrassing and dangerous. There are few members of Congress who have done more to sow public doubt about the mounting, deadly impacts of fossil fuel-driven planetary warming, or to block policies and regulations meant to confront the threat.

Inhofe’s views go far beyond skepticism about the magnitude of the global threat. He’s dismissed global warming as “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and called for climate scientists to be criminally prosecuted. He’s accused the Environmental Protection Agency of “brainwashing our kids” with “propaganda” about climate change. And he’s characterized carbon dioxide — the main driver of planetary warming — as nothing more than “a form of fertilizer to grow things.”

That "Senator Snowball" is removing his carcass from the Senate, where he was the most faithful servant of the fossil fuel industry, is the good news.  The bad news is that he's being replaced by another MAGA clown equally beholden to the same climate- change- denying industry, because Oklahoma is a deep red, drill baby drill state and that's what they do (see "The ugly," below).  Speaking of the climate ...

The bad:

A powerful atmospheric river drenched Northern and Central California on New Year’s Eve, knocking out power to tens of thousands of customers, trapping people in flooded vehicles and prompting Sacramento County to warn some residents to evacuate ahead of “an imminent levee failure.”

The storm unloaded copious amounts of lowland rain and mountain snow. San Francisco posted its second-wettest day in more than 170 years because of this fire hose of tropical moisture. It was the latest in a line of storm systems to affect the Golden State; at least two more are on the way in 2023’s opening week.

Late Saturday, Sacramento County officials advised some residents of the town of Wilton to evacuate “due to an imminent levee failure in that area on the Cosumnes River. Residents have been advised to seek higher ground immediately.” The town will remain under a flash flood warning through Sunday evening, according to the National Weather Service.  [snip]

Flash flood warnings were issued Sunday afternoon for southern Sacramento County as local waterways swelled. “It is expected that the flooding from the Cosumnes River and the Mokelumne River is moving southwest toward I-5 and could reach these areas in the middle of the night,” officials from the Sacramento County Office of Emergency Services tweeted.

Dan Quiggle, deputy fire chief for operations for Cosumnes Community Service District Fire Department, told the Sacramento Bee newspaper that crews had rescued three to four dozen people from Highway 99. Crews used boats and helicopters to ferry people away from “swirling floodwaters,” the newspaper reported.

A reporter with KCRA, an NBC affiliate station, tweeted that local fire department crews searching along a highway found a submerged vehicle with a man inside who had died. Officials from the department weren’t immediately available when contacted for comment...

The wild winter weather continues to hammer the continental U.S.  What's that term for when extreme weather patterns become more frequent and severe...

The ugly:

There are many possible explanations for why the GOP is going so dark, most of which revolve around the fact that the party's authoritarian base voters and its big-money donors have a lot more influence than potentially winnable independent voters do. But the unnecessary, gratuitous viciousness of so much of this stuff — seriously, no one asked Ron DeSantis to relitigate the pandemic! — makes that kind of bloodless explanation seem unsatisfying. It's time to ask a different question: Is it possible that GOP leadership is composed of the same unhinged sadists as their voting base? 

In rational terms, it doesn't make a ton of sense for Republican leaders to lean even harder into MAGA nonsense. Both Abbott and DeSantis won re-election easily, but the overall trend-lines suggest that most voters are grossed out by overt cruelty. As David Graham at the Atlantic wrote last month, cumulative polling data suggests "the emergence of a big anti-MAGA coalition that started in the 2018 midterm."

That's exactly what is driving much of this GOP ugliness, I would argue. It's an angry reaction to the growing realization that most Americans think they're nuts. It's not rational at all — it's just vengeful. Since at least the days Ronald Reagan, Republicans have embraced the idea that they're the rightful rulers of the U.S., and that any Democratic win is a fluke or the result of some kind of cheating. (As Heather Digby Parton has repeatedly pointed out in Salon, Trump's Big Lie is just an expansion of the long Republican history of seeing any and all electoral defeats as proof of "voter fraud" conspiracy theories.) That sense of entitlement, however, is running headlong into a mountain of evidence that most Americans flat-out don't like Republicans and don't agree with their views...

It's all about the privileged entitlement that, as Marcotte describes in the piece, is driving the raw Republican ugliness we see every day everywhere.  They've convinced themselves, from the toxic males and their penis compensators to the election- denying careerists in and outside elective office, that they are the "rightful rulers of America."  If it weren't so existentially dangerous, it would be laughable.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

The results of the midterm elections may have dampened hopes for additional action on climate change at the federal level, with Republicans expected to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the next two years. 

But wins for Democrats in state legislative and governor races could lay the groundwork for even stronger action on climate change at the state level, which is exactly where a lot of the hard work of reducing greenhouse gas emissions — and spending the federal climate funding made available through landmark legislation over the past two years — needs to happen. 

Tuesday’s election cemented Democratic ​“trifectas,” or control of both the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislature, in Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan and Minnesota, opening the door to more aggressive climate policies in those states. And across the country, 17 governors who support climate policies that could collectively yield an 80 percent reduction in their state greenhouse gas emissions won election or reelection, according to nonprofit advocacy group Evergreen Action. 

“In states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania [and] New Mexico, voters delivered a clear mandate on climate by electing governors who campaigned on climate action,” Jamal Raad, Evergreen Action’s executive director, said in a Thursday press conference. 

That’s important, because state-level actions could make or break the country’s trajectory toward cutting greenhouse gas emissions quickly enough to forestall the greatest harms of global warming. State lawmakers and regulators are the key actors in setting mandates for utilities to close down fossil-fuel-fired power plants and increase the share of zero-carbon resources such as wind and solar power, for example. That’s a vital step in reducing the carbon-intensity of grid power needed for electric vehicles, heating and cooling in buildings, industrial processes and other fossil-fueled parts of the economy — all sectors where states have their own roles to play as well...

The bad:

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy served further notice Sunday that his potential speakership will be politically volatile, saying he will try to keep three high-profile Democrats off of certain committees.

Democrats said McCarthy will do whatever his right wing wants him to do because he still lacks the votes to land the speaker's job.

In stumping for the position, McCarthy has targeted Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., members of the House Intelligence Committee.

McCarthy and other Republicans have for months said these members' past statements and actions regarding issues like Israel, China and Russia should keep them off these committees.

"I'll keep that promise" to remove them, McCarthy told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures."

Schiff and other Democrats said McCarthy is trying to court support from hard-right conservatives like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. – who was expelled from committees during a 2021 vote of the full House because of her incendiary statements about Democrats.

"I suspect he will do whatever Marjorie Taylor Greene wants him to do," Schiff said on ABC's "This Week." "He is a very weak leader of his conference, meaning that he will adhere to the wishes of the lowest common denominator. And if that lowest common denominator wants to remove people from committees, that’s what they’ll do."...

The ugly:

... The striking absurdity of this World Cup rose along Al Shamal Road, a main highway that cuts out of Doha and through the desert, past rubble and excavators and nothingness, and up to Al Khor. The landscape gets more barren as you go — until, in the distance, a massive Bedouin tent-style structure, the Al Bayt Stadium, appears through miles of smog and dust.

It was built by people, migrants, who aren’t here anymore; and for other people, Qataris, who crawled in SUVs down the highway toward it on Sunday. Which is why this World Cup has been so scandalous. But for better or worse, on a cool, windy evening, it began.  [snip]

There were also the inescapable reminders of the inequality that underpins both Qatar and this World Cup. There were hundreds of migrants, mostly South Asians, standing outside one entrance for hours — as they waited to work concessions. Meanwhile, there were men on camelback and horseback lining another entrance to greet FIFA president Gianni Infantino and the Emir, among others. Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman joined them in a luxury box.

All around the cavernous stadium, there were probably 40,000 Qataris out of the 67,372 announced in attendance — and they were not at all representative of the nation they came to salute. Spend a week in Doha, in any non-downtown district, and you’ll meet the Indians, Nepalis, Kenyans, Ugandans and more who come to work. Migrants and the children of migrants comprise almost 90% of the Qatari population. The wealthy sliver of Qatar that is actually Qatari — the ones who enjoy the exclusive benefits of citizenship, which is almost impossible for non-natives to obtain — is, compared to most countries in the world, razor thin...

The Qatari team lost it's first game, the first World Cup hosts to lose the opening game.  Meanwhile, we can think of a more appropriate box for Mohammed bin "Bone Saw" Salman.

World Meteorological Org: Climate Worsening

he World Meteorological Organization today issued a warning as global leaders are about to meet to discuss combating global warming: things are bad now, and are getting worse. From the Associated Press:

"Earth’s warming weather and rising seas are getting worse and doing so faster than before, the World Meteorological Organization warned Sunday in a somber note as world leaders started gathering for international climate negotiations.

'The latest State of the Global Climate report is a chronicle of climate chaos,' United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. 'We must answer the planet’s distress signal with action -- ambitious, credible climate action.'

In its annual state of the climate report, the United Nations’ weather agency said that sea level rise in the past decade was double what it was in the 1990s and since January 2020 has jumped at a higher rate than that. Since the decade began, seas are rising at 5 millimeters a year (.2 inches) compared to 2.1 millimeters (.08 inches) in the 1990s.

The last eight years have been the warmest on record, the WMO said in a report that didn’t break new ground but was a collection of recent weather trends, data and impacts in one central place."  (our emphasis)

The report notes that the only reason records weren't broken over the last several years was an unprecedented 3-year La Niña weather system that modulated the temperatures.

Beginning today and going through November 18, over 120 heads of state from around the world will be meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt (COP 27) to discuss how to turn the rise in carbon emissions around from their present course. Sadly, many of the heads of state are addicted to fossil fuels or have economies that are tied to petrodollars and will only be paying lip service to "goals" and "targets" at best. 

(image: Depiction of a future Lower Manhattan flooded. American Society of Mechanical Engineers)