Excessive-heat warnings stretch from Texas and Louisiana to Wisconsin and Minnesota, including the entire states of Iowa and Missouri. Cities under excessive-heat warnings include Des Moines, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Dallas and Little Rock. Combinations of heat and humidity will lead to feels-like values of 110 to 120 degrees across much of the Midwest and South, with some spots even surpassing those marks.
Mostly Monday Reads: Martyrdom Syndrome vs Real Suffering
Posted: August 21, 2023 Filed under: Climate change, Climate/Inflation Package | Tags: Floods in Southern California, heat dome, Hurriquake Southern California, Maui Fires, Republican agenda of shaming and plunderingder 8 Comments
Northeaster, Winslow Homer,1895
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
New Orleans got some much-needed rain this morning! It was too late for several homeless folks in the city who were overcome by heat exhaustion and stroke. They are not alone, as there are victims throughout the Southern United States with similar fates.
President Biden will visit the site of the Maui Fires, which will take unprecedented federal resources to return many people to a new normal situation. Having been part of a diaspora and major disaster–Hurricane Katrina–I can attest to the remaining devastation here and the impact on the psyche of its victims that never entirely goes away. We’re just beginning to get information on the flooding and storms that have damaged cities like Palm Springs. National resources, Charitable funds, and ordinary citizens will come to the rescue with basic needs as well as much-needed hugs and comfort.
Prairie Meadows Burning, on the Missouri, George Catlin, 1852
These climate-change-related disasters are on the minds of concerned Americans who are reaching out with grace and resources to make their fellow citizens whole again. Scanning the headlines, I notice that a specific group of Americans doesn’t appear to be part of the massive acts of neighborly love that will begin so many paths to healing and restoration. Hurricane Ida is still an issue down here. Resources are still finding their way to those just trying to get back to some kind of routine. The only thing I can find on the Maui fires and Trump is a fake video telling his acolytes he visited there during the fires. This was obviously not true. The other headline is him lambasting President Biden for a “disgraceful” response. This after his response to Puerto Rico’s American citizens after a hurricane was to toss paper towels at them and appear surprised they were actually tax-paying and voting U.S. Citizens. Trump delayed $2 billion in aid. No word about the California Hurriquake from His Orange Assholines yet.
So, what kind of person isn’t focused on helping their neighbors during these multiple disasters? Well, you know, but I’m going there anyway. This is from Sidney Blumenthal, writing at The Guardian. “Trump’s legal woes are part of his quasi-religious mythology of martyrdom. These criminal entanglements are not only means but ends – not a sideshow, but the heart and soul of Trump’s campaign.?” Yes, it’s his continual refrain of “poor, poor pitiful me.
Even more than during the gripping performance of his various indictments, the theatre of his trials will subsume politics. There will not be another campaign, some semblance of a normal campaign of the past, a fantasy campaign, separate from Trump’s trials. The scenes from courtroom to courtroom will overlap with the primaries – the final ones taking place on 4 June 2024 – only intensifying the zeal of his base. And then Trump’s battle with the law will engulf the general election.
The trials are a continuous spectacle, featuring an all-star cast in far-flung locations. Political reporters are barely heard from, while legal analysts fill the airwaves. Every twist and turn, every motion, every argument is the breathless lead story. Everyone, from prosecutors to co-conspirators, named and unnamed, indicted and unindicted, are characters in Trump’s new reality show – part violent action movie (the insurrection), part sleazy porn flick (Stormy Daniels), part conspiracy thriller (Mar-a-Lago), and part mafia drama (the fake elector racket).
But the Trump trials are more than his means; they are his ends. The trials are not the sideshow, but the heart and soul of Trump’s campaign. They have become his essential fundraising tool to finance his defense, his platform for whipping up his followers into a constant state of excitement, and his instrument for dominating the media to make himself the center of attention and blot out coverage of anyone else.
The trials are the message. They are the drama around which Trump plays his role as the unjustly accused victim, whose rights are trampled and who is the martyr for his oppressed “deplorables”. He is taking the slings and arrows for them. The narcissist is the self-sacrificing saint. The criminal is the angel. The liar is the truth-teller. If any Republican lapses in faithfulness, they are more than a mere doubter or skeptic, but a betrayer and traitor. Trump’s trials are the rigorous trial of his followers’ faith. Rejection of temptation in an encounter with an impertinent fact that might raise a qualm shows purity of heart. Seduction by fact must be resisted. The siren song of critical thinking must be cast out as sin. Trump’s convictions are the supreme test of his followers’ strength of conviction.
Republicans are not prisoners of Trump’s narcissistic rage. They don’t reject it. They don’t regret it. They don’t apologize. They mirror it. They mimic it. They exult in it. It is the gratification they receive for passing through the ordeal of belief. His rage is their reward. It is their cheap vicarious defiance of the evil-doers: the establishment, the globalists, the Fauciists, the FBI, the Barbie movie. As Trump has received target letters, so judges, district attorneys, the special counsel, and their wives, too, must be targets. Fair game is fair play. Hallelujah!
After the Hurricane Bahamas, Winslow Homer, 1899
Yup, it’s all about him, and whatever it is they developed in terms of connecting their own little grievances to him. Even getting airplay in Trumpland requires a little sumpin’ sumpin’. Every Republican has a grievance about somebody else interfering with their KKK cosplay. “Republican candidate told associates Newsmax tried to make him pay for coverage.” It’s one big grift in Trumplandia, especially for the propagandists. This is from Salon. Meanwhile, the USA drowns, burns, and melts.
If Vivek Ramaswamy wants to appear on Newsmax, he should pay to do it.
That was the message that network chief Chris Ruddy delivered to the Republican presidential candidate during a private call earlier this summer, according to two people to whom the candidate described the conversation. Ramaswamy had complained that the right-leaning network was sticking him in little-watched midday slots or ignoring him outright.
Ruddy also suggested a solution, Ramaswamy told associates: buy more television ads on the network. Ruddy, Ramaswamy told them, noted that such a transaction had helped Republican businessman Perry Johnson, a gadfly candidate who has thus far garnered only passing attention among mainstream and even conservative outlets covering the 2024 presidential cycle.
In a statement, Newsmax spokesperson Bill Daddi told Semafor that the insinuation “that Newsmax is asking candidates to advertise in order to ensure coverage as some quid pro quo … is categorically untrue and incorrect. Newsmax would take an assertion such as that very seriously. There is no correlation between advertising and editorial visibility for any candidate on Newsmax.”
“If candidates want to reach our audience outside of our programming, then, of course, advertising would be a good way for them to do this. That is the basis of all political advertising,” he said.
Tornado over Kansas, John Steuart Curry.1929
And all that time, the League of Woman Voters could’ve been collecting booty for the Voter’s Guides. But wait, there’s the House of Representatives that’s supposed to really care about the people, right? This is from Axios. “House Freedom Caucus fires warning shot over government shutdown.” Just as we need Federal resources to handle all these natural disasters, why shouldn’t we just close all of it down? What could be more important than helping our citizens in desperate need?
Members of the House Freedom Caucus are making it harder for leadership to avoid a government shutdown, announcing on Monday that they’ll oppose a stopgap funding bill unless it caves to their terms.
Driving the news: The HFC is demanding more funding for border enforcement, cuts to the Department of Justice and FBI, and an end to “woke” policies at the Department of Defense.
- “We refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden Administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities,” they said in a statement.
- “Any support for a ‘clean’ Continuing Resolution would be an affirmation of the current FY 2023 spending level grossly increased by the lame-duck December 2022 omnibus spending bill that we all vehemently opposed just seven months ago.”
The big picture: Congress is unlikely to complete its work on appropriations bills by the deadline on Sept. 30, with leadership calling for a continuing resolution to provide themselves with more time.
- “If you think we’re going to come in and in three weeks, three partial weeks in September and get the appropriations bills done — that seems unlikely, given the extent to which there was a total failure in settings, spending levels where they needed to be set in order to get to 218,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told Axios.
What’s next: Some members have discussed potentially attempting to block a continuing resolution on legislation from reaching the House floor unless it meets their criteria, upping the likelihood of a government shutdown if Democrats don’t vote for the measure.
The Gulf Stream, Winslow Homer, 1899
So, I guess the “basic” responsibilities don’t include rebuilding anything after a natural disaster. Just let them eat dust and fire-rotted logs! Who needs schools? Food? Water? This is from NBC. “Freedom Caucus rebels against a short-term funding bill with new demands. The new list of policy changes sought by the ultraconservative House lawmakers drew immediate pushback from Democratic leaders, who warned it would cause a shutdown.” So, they have the ability and want laws to shame people but have no shame themselves. Got it!
In a statement Monday, the Freedom Caucus said its official position was that the group’s members would oppose any bill unless it includes their preferred language on border security, new laws to address what they call the “weaponization” of the Justice Department and FBI and a shift in some of the Pentagon’s policies — although they didn’t detail all the changes they want.
Yup, more hypocrisy.
Here’s some of the latest on the Maui Fires. This is from the New York Times. “Maui Knew Dangerous Wildfires Had Become Inevitable. It Still Wasn’t Ready. As President Biden arrives to survey the damage with state and local officials, shock and grief are giving way to anger and questions about the government’s preparation.” The photos are shocking.
Here’s some of the latest on the damage caused by Hurricane Hilary. This is from CBS News. “Video, pictures of Hilary aftermath in Palm Springs show unprecedented flooding and rain damage from storm.” Again, more shocking photos.
This is from the Washington Post. “Record central U.S. heat wave delivers ‘life-threatening’ conditions. Heat indexes topped 130 in Kansas on Sunday. Several days of similar heat are on the way.” This isn’t your grandfather’s August Summer Days.
More than a third of Americans are under heat alert early this week as a monster heat dome stifles a huge swath of territory across the central United States, threatening the hottest temperatures of summer. As officials warn of “life-threatening” conditions, numerous records in parts of the Midwest could be reached as the heat continues to pummel the South.
That already happened Sunday, with heat indexes in numerous locations topping 120, focused on Kansas, Iowa and Missouri.
More than 200 long-period record highs were set since Friday alone, including an all-time high of 112 degrees in College Station, Tex. Another all-time high was reached in Alexandria, La., where it reached 110 on Saturday. August records were set in Abilene, Tex., at 111, and in Stephenville, Tex., at 110.
But, hey, the majority party in the House of Representatives believes we need to stop responding to public health emergencies and start paying more attention to making Trump’s indictments about politics and not his crime spree. That sounds about right. It’s their idea of our priorities.
What’s on your blogging and reading lists today?
Let us know how you’re making out from the heat, the hurriquake, the fires, and the overall Republican plan to turn us into victims of their shame and plunder policies.
Thursday Reads: Extreme Heat and Other News
Posted: July 13, 2023 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, birth control, Climate change, just because | Tags: Chris Wray, cocaine in White House, extreme heat, Floods, heat dome, heat wave, House Judiciary Committee, January 6 prosecutions, Justice Department, Oath Keepers prison sentences, over the counter birth control pill, Secret Service, surfing sea otter, weather 11 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Extreme Heat, by Ronda Breen
Today will be another boiling hot day for millions of people in the U.S. and Europe. There has also been record flooding in many places in recent days.
We’ve had a relatively cool summer here in New England, until recently. Now we are also experiencing an extended period 90+ degree heat, pouring rain, and floods.
Is this extreme weather the new normal, as Dakinikat has suggested? I’ve been looking around this morning to see what experts are saying about this situation.
The Heat Wave and What it Means
Fortune Magazine: More than 1 in 3 Americans are under heat alert as there’s no relief in sight for the apocalyptic summer weather.
It’s hardly revelatory that summer is hot, but the summer of 2023 is standing out as records fall and thermometers push their breaking points. If you’re hoping for some sort of relief, it’s not coming anytime soon.
The South and Southwest will continue to face record temperatures for as much as the coming two weeks, forecasters have warned. A heat dome (another term for a ridge of high pressure) over Arizona, Nevada and parts of California could trap the hot air in place. Heat.gov, the government’s heat portal, says over 113 million Americans are under heat alerts. Given that the 2020 census put America’s population at about 331.5 million people, this heat alert means that you have a one in three chance of being under heat alert as an American this July.
It’s oppressive everywhere, but some areas are especially noteworthy. Phoenix has reported temperatures of over 110 degrees for 12 consecutive days. In the coming days, forecasters say that could climb to 118—and there’s no end in sight. Death Valley, Calif., meanwhile, is forecast to hit 123 degrees later this week.
Another heat dome over the South is keeping temperatures close to the 100-degree mark, with high humidity making it feel hotter. Heat indexes in the Lower Mississippi valley, for instance, are expected in the 110-115 range Thursday. That hazardous heat, in some regions, could last through July 20, forecasters say.
This is unreal news from Florida. Live Science: Florida waters now ‘bona fide bathtub conditions’ as heat dome engulfs state.
Coastal waters around Florida have reached alarming temperatures of 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) with no sign of cooling off anytime soon, experts say.
The Sunshine State is in the midst of its hottest year in modern history, with temperatures over land averaging in the mid 90s F (35 C) — 3 to 5 F (1.7 to 2.8 C) above normal for this time of year. Ocean waters have absorbed much of this heat, causing sea temperatures to soar to record highs, which could spell trouble for marine ecosystems and strengthen storms and hurricanes.
Józef Chełmoński, Indian Summer, 1875
“It’s an astounding, prolonged heat wave even for a place that’s no stranger to sultry weather,” Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, told the Washington Post. “It’s not something we like to see near land simply because it would allow a storm to maintain a high intensity right up to landfall or rapidly intensify as it approaches landfall.” [….]
The current bath-like conditions are consistent with a “severe” marine heat wave, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The agency defines marine heat waves as “prolonged periods of anomalously high sea surface temperature” that can impact “a broad range of marine life.”
This includes coral bleaching, as reefs are “extremely sensitive to slight changes (just a few degrees) in water [temperature],” Berardelli wrote. NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch has designted an “Alert Level 1” area off the coast of Florida — the second-highest warning on the scale — with “significant bleaching likely.”
NBC News: Heat wave scorches millions as relief efforts strive to keep up.
Across a wide swath of the U.S. from Texas to Nevada, a major heat wave that is threatening to break temperature records continued to bake parts of the South and Southwest on Wednesday, sending people scrambling for relief and adding to what has become a series of weather extremes that researchers say fit the pattern of a warming environment.
Temperatures well into the triple digits are expected this weekend from California to Texas to Florida, with parts of Nevada forecast to reach 116 degrees Fahrenheit and cities in Arizona expected to hit a staggering 118 F.
“Today is Day 12 of 110-plus, and the exclamation on this event is yet to come,” said David Hondula, who directs the Phoenix Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, which was gearing up for a weekend spike in temperatures.
Last month was the warmest June globally since at least 1850, when record-keeping began, according to a new report by Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit research organization that focuses on climate data analysis. The report found that June 2023 broke the previous record, set last year, by a “large margin,” putting the planet on track for one of the warmest years on record — if not the warmest….
Hondula said his primary concern was the city’s population of people experiencing homelessness.
“We know there will be hundreds of people living on the street during this heat event and at much, much higher risk than everybody else,” Hondula said.
Last year, heat played a role in 425 deaths in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is, according to a report released this June. About 56% of the heat deaths involved people experiencing homelessness.
My god. Imagine being homeless and spending day after day outdoors in this heat!
One more article on the likely meaning of this heat wave from Sarah Kaplan at The Washington Post: Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink.
The world is hotter than it’s been in thousands of years, and it’s as if every alarm bell on Earth were ringing.
The warnings are echoing through the drenched mountains of Vermont, where two months of rain just fell in only two days. India and Japan were deluged by extreme flooding.
Heat Stroke, by Weshon Hornsby
They’re shrilling from the scorching streets of Texas, Florida, Spain and China, with a severe heat wave also building in Phoenix and the Southwest in coming days.
They’re burbling up from the oceans, where temperatures have surged to levels considered “beyond extreme.”
And they’re showing up in unprecedented, still-burning wildfires in Canada that have sent plumes of dangerous smoke into the United States.
Scientists say there is no question that this cacophony was caused by climate change — or that it will continue to intensify as the planet warms. Research shows that human greenhouse gas emissions, particularly from burning fossil fuels, have raised Earth’s temperature by about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Unless humanity radically transforms the way people travel, generate energy and produce food, the global average temperature is on track to increase by more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit), according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — unleashing catastrophes that will make this year’s disasters seem mild.
The only question, scientists say, is when the alarms will finally be loud enough to make people wake up.
“This is not the new normal,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the Imperial College London. “We don’t know what the new normal is. The new normal will be what it is once we do stop burning fossil fuels … and we’re nowhere near doing that.”
The arrival of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and the return of the El Niño weather pattern, which tends to raise global temperatures, are contributing to this season of simultaneous extremes, Otto said. But the fact that these phenomena are unfolding against a backdrop of human-caused climate change is making these disasters worse than ever before.
What might have been a balmy day without climate change is now a deadly heat wave, she said. What was once a typical summer thunderstorm is now the cause of a catastrophic flood.
And a day that is usually warm for the planet — July 4 — was this year the hottest ever recorded. Earth’s global average temperature of more than 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 Fahrenheit) may well have been the hottest it has gotten in the last 125,000 years.
When will governments and corporations begin to take climate change seriously?
Other News – Odds and Ends
New this morning from The New York Times: F.D.A. Approves First U.S. Over-the-Counter Birth Control Pill.
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a birth control pill to be sold without a prescription for the first time in the United States, a milestone that could significantly expand access to contraception.
Summertime, by Mary Cassatt, 1804
The medication, called Opill, will become the most effective birth control method available over the counter — more effective at preventing pregnancy than condoms, spermicides and other nonprescription methods. Experts in reproductive health said its availability could be especially useful for young women, teenagers and those who have difficulty dealing with the time, costs or logistical hurdles involved in visiting a doctor to obtain a prescription.
The pill’s manufacturer, Perrigo Company, based in Dublin, said Opill would most likely become available from stores and online retailers in the United States in early 2024.
The company did not say how much the medication would cost — a key question that will help determine how many people will use the pill — but Frédérique Welgryn, Perrigo’s global vice president for women’s health, said in a statement that the company was committed to making the pill “accessible and affordable to women and people of all ages.” Ms. Welgryn has also said the company would have a consumer assistance program to provide the pill at no cost to some women.
“Today’s approval marks the first time a nonprescription daily oral contraceptive will be an available option for millions of people in the United States,” Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. “When used as directed, daily oral contraception is safe and is expected to be more effective than currently available nonprescription contraceptive methods in preventing unintended pregnancy.”
Read more at the NYT.
It looks like the right wing nuts will be able to continue ranting about the cocaine that was found in the White House. CNN: Secret Service concludes cocaine investigation, no suspect identified.
The Secret Service has concluded its investigation into the small bag of cocaine found at the White House and has been unable to identify a suspect, two sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.
Secret Service officials combed through visitor logs and surveillance footage of hundreds of individuals who entered the West Wing in the days preceding the discovery and were unable to identify a suspect, one of the sources said.
Investigators were also unable to identify the particular moment or day when the baggie was left inside the West Wing cubby near the lower level entrance where it was discovered.
The second source said that the leading theory remains that it was left by one of the hundreds of visitors who entered the West Wing that weekend for tours and were asked to leave their phones inside those cubbies.
The cubbies where the small bag of cocaine was found is a blind spot for surveillance cameras, according to a source familiar with the investigation. While there’s surveillance around where the bag was found, cameras are not trained directly on the West Wing cubbies near the lower-level entrance where it was discovered, the source said, making it difficult to identify who left the bag behind.
So Republicans will be able to continue creating insane conspiracy theories about this.
Extreme Heat by LENA
The DOJ wants Oath Keepers who were convicted of seditious conspiracy to receive longer sentences. Politico: Justice Department appeals Jan. 6 prison sentences for Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers.
The Justice Department on Wednesday appealed the sentences handed down to seven members of the Oath Keepers — including founder Stewart Rhodes — for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, a signal that prosecutors are not satisfied with the severity of the jail terms delivered by the federal judge overseeing the case.
U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Rhodes to 18 years in prison — the harshest sentence for any Jan. 6 defendant — reflecting his leadership of what Mehta characterized as a dangerous criminal conspiracy aimed at violently derailing the transfer of presidential power.
Nevertheless, the sentence for the Yale Law School graduate and disbarred attorney was seven years shorter than the 25-year prison term prosecutors recommended and four years below an agreed-upon “guidelines range” based upon Rhodes’ conduct.
In a series of filings, prosecutors also signaled they were appealing the sentences — all delivered by Mehta, an appointee of President Barack Obama — of several other defendants convicted for their own role in Rhodes’ alleged conspiracy.
Many of Rhodes’ coconspirators faced sentences that similarly fell below the guidelines ranges for their conduct — in some cases by several orders of magnitude. Among those who, like Rhodes, were convicted of seditious conspiracy:
- Florida Oath Keeper leader Kelly Meggs received a 12-year term; DOJ sought 21 years.
- Roberto Minuta of New York was sentenced to 4.5 years; DOJ sought 17 years.
- Joseph Hackett of Florida received a 3.5-year sentence; DOJ sought 12 years.
- Ed Vallejo of Arizona received a 3-year sentence; DOJ sought 17 years.
- David Moerschel of Florida was sentenced to three years: DOJ sought 10 years.
DOJ also appealed the conviction of two Oath Keepers acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted of conspiring to obstruct Congress:
- Jessica Watkins of Ohio, who was sentenced to 8.5 years in jail; DOJ sought 18 years.
- Kenneth Harrelson of Florida, who was sentenced to 4 years; DOJ sought 15.
The sentences reflected the fact that Mehta viewed Rhodes as the key driver of the conspiracies. During sentencing hearings, several of the defendants similarly pointed to Rhodes, claiming they were manipulated and ginned up by him to participate in the attack on the Capitol.
Apparently, it’s unusual for DOJ to appeal the length of sentences. I wonder if they are anticipating asking for long sentences for Trump and his January 6 Conspirators? Read the whole thing at Politico.
Yesterday, the crazies on Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee got their opportunity to attack Trump-appointed FBI Director Chris Wray. Here’s what happened:
Aaron Blake at The Washington Post: ‘Insane,’ ‘ludicrous,’ ‘absurd’: FBI’s Wray shows teeth to GOP critics.
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