2023 Archives

So, yeah, let’s take seriously the existential threat a GOP president represents to our nation, the nations of the world, and all life on Earth. The stakes have literally never been higher... Every day that goes by, even with yesterday’s newest indictment, looks more and more like Donald Trump will be the GOP’s standard bearer in 2024. After all, his popularity stood at 44 percent when NY DA Alvin Bragg indicted him; it then rose to 49 percent when he was indicted in the documents crime; following his conviction for raping E. Jean Caroll it rose to 54 percent among Republicans. But even if he’s not the candidate, Republican primary voters will demand a candidate with the same affection for Putin and other dictators; the same disdain for racial, religious, and gender minorities; the same abusive attitude toward women and girls; the same faux embrace of Confederate and hillbilly values and hatred of city-dwellers and college graduates; the same cavalier attitude toward guns and fossil fuels. There’s also the growing possibility that Trump or another MAGA Republican could win the White House. Yesterday, both the New York Times and CNN reported on polls showing that Trump and Biden are right now at a dead heat.

When Barbie has more integrity than six Republican members of the US Supreme Court, you know American democracy is in a crisis… Sam Alito wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week that: “No provision in the Constitution gives them [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.” He’s deeply, profoundly, and constitutionally wrong: in fact, the constitution requires Congress to regulate the Supreme Court. I’ll get to that in a second, but first the important stuff: Barbie! Louise and I went to see the new Barbie movie Friday afternoon. Sitting in the theater, we both nearly choked on our popcorn when, in the first few minutes of the movie, one of the Barbies said: “In Barbieland, corporations are not people, and money is not considered protected free speech!” Wow! I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that Barbie has more common sense than Sam Alito, but there it is.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — New charges, “The boss wants it deleted.” — More evidence the Russians created the whole Hunter Biden laptop thing for the GOP. — Did giant health insurer Cigna flip off hundreds of thousands of claims, spending less than two seconds evaluating each? — In Florida now, it turns out, the state is requiring teachers to tell students that Black Americans shared the blame for their own massacres. — Is Bidenomics working? — Is Gen Z about to take the 2024 electoral baton and, if so, what will that mean? — The major automakers are building a new nationwide vehicle charging network! — Crazy Alert! Fox “News” guest flips out over “super diverse” movies. — Conservative of the Day: Example of “narcissistic collapse” as rightwing TV host freaks out over Giuliani’s confession that he lied about the election being stolen.

Are the Great Conveyor Belt and the “Clathrate Gun Hypothesis” about to throw the planet into an existential crisis? You may remember the 2004 disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow, in which large parts of Europe and the American East Coast suddenly freeze up? The plot device is that the Great Conveyor Belt — also known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — which brings heat from the south Pacific around the southern tip of Africa and up the east coast of the Americas (we call it the Gulf Stream) into the North Atlantic and Europe shuts down. The AMOC and the heat it brings to the North Atlantic ocean is the main reason why London (at the same latitude as Calgary) has a relatively temperate climate year-round, instead of being snowbound six months out of the year.