Category: Climate Change

Time To Learn About Project 2025

The Daily Escape:

Mollidgewock campground, Erol, NH – July 2024 photo by Amber Lavaliee. Wrongo and Ms. Right lived in NH for 12 years. This is a quintessential scene.

With all the hot air about Biden’s “will he or won’t he” moment, the subject of the Conservative right’s Project 2025 has not truly been covered by the media. From Judd Legum:

“Project 2025 is a radical blueprint for a potential second Trump administration, spearheaded by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. The plan calls for withdrawing approval for the abortion pill, banning pornography, slashing corporate taxes, abolishing the Department of Education, replacing thousands of experienced federal workers with political appointees, imposing a “biblically based… definition of marriage and families,” and placing the Justice Department and other independent agencies under the direct control of the president.”

From Rick Wilson:

“Project 2025 is Trump’s roadmap, written by Trump loyalists and embraced by Trump’s constellation of sycophants, fellow travelers, hangers-on, and job seekers. It will be the driving force of what Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts boasted was “…a second American revolution.” (Also, in keeping with all things MAGA, Roberts dropped an unsubtle threat into the statement, adding the revolution would be “bloodless if the left allows it to be.”)”

This lefty doesn’t plan to let its adoption be “bloodless”.

While Trump has recently disavowed knowledge of the Project or its authors, of the 38 people responsible for writing and editing Project 2025, 31 were appointed or nominated to positions in the Trump administration and transition. So Trump’s claim that he has “nothing to do” with the people who created Project 2025 is another lie: Over 81% had formal roles in his first administration. When Trump denies something, you should always take it as a full confession of his absolute guilt.

Trump’s name appears in Project 2025 312 times. That’s a yuuge coincidence, since he says he doesn’t know anything about it. More from Rick Wilson:

“I was able to confirm late last week that this decision by Trump to condemn Project 2025 was a deliberate effort prepared by campaign strategist Chris LaCivita and Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio after research came back showing that Project 2025 is poisonous with groups outside the hardest core of the MAGA base. The same research led the Trump campaign to demand that the RNC remove the national abortion ban plank (and other policy statements) from the 2024 GOP Platform.”

And just like that, the GOP 2024 platform won’t include abortion. From the WaPo:

“Republican delegates adopted presumptive nominee Donald Trump’s proposed convention platform at a meeting in Milwaukee on Monday, abandoning long-held positions on abortion and same-sex marriage while embracing new plans for mass deportation and a new opposition to changing the retirement age for Social Security.”

The strategy is to bury what Republicans plan to do by having the plausible deniability of the GOP platform.

Back to Project 2025. From Navigator Research, who says that when people know more about it their opposition to it grows:

“Opposition to Project 2025 grows as people learn more about the plan. After reading 19 proposed policies for Project 2025, opposition grows from 49% to 63% (net +14) while support for the plan declines from 31% to 24% (net -7%).”

Now the report is over 900 pages long, so it’s gonna take some time to digest. Here’s a chart:

Still, given the media’s focus on trying to drive Biden out of the presidential race, very few Americans know much about Project 2025. Here’s what Navigator found:

From Navigator:

“Seven in ten Americans have not heard enough to have an opinion about Project 2025, but after hearing about it, two in three Americans become opposed. 71% initially don’t know enough to have an opinion of Project 2025….Additionally, nearly four in five Americans report not having heard anything about Project 2025 either when described as “a series of conservative policy proposals aimed at reshaping the executive branch of the federal government if a Republican is elected president in 2024”

Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Democrats are most likely to have heard “a lot” or “some” about Project 2025, though fewer than two in five have actually heard about it (30%, 39%, and 33%, respectively).

Navigator grouped the Project 2025 policies by what percent, in the view of survey participants, would “hurt the country” and which were “strongly opposed” by survey participants. They found that eight of the nineteen polices were the most unpopular and harmful:

The list of the most unpopular policies includes:

  • Stopping overtime pay
  • Eliminating pre-existing conditions from health insurance
  • Adding new taxes on health insurance
  • Ending drug price negotiations
  • Eliminating head start
  • Cutting Social Security
  • Monitoring pregnancies by the states
  • Eliminating NOAA (the federal agency that tracks hurricanes) called the NWS above

But check out the policies that are just below those in the above chart. There are some beauties there as well.

This makes it clear that the threat to our nation is Trump and his minions, not Biden’s health. Maybe more people will pay attention to what Project 2025is, now that Trump is denying he knows anything about it. He’s drawn attention to it, by his denial, and it’s getting more widely known. Let’s hope the more people learn about it, the more they will see it’s horror.

The very public navel-gazing by the media and Democrats over Biden’s capacity for the last couple of weeks has overshadowed the social media attacks on Project 2025. Project 2025 means to lobotomize government agencies by replacing career civil servants with far-right ideologues loyal to Dear Leader. Michael Lewis in his book “The Fifth Risk” wrote that government manages a portfolio of risks that requires “mission-driven” careerists, experts with a dedication to the work, not to making big money from it. Donald Trump’s 2016 administration came to Washington DC to upend that system, to exploit it for profit. They abandoned data collection on anything Trumpers opposed, the NYT review explained:

“…like climate change or food safety regulations, or that they didn’t care about, like poverty, or stuff that they assumed were government boondoggles, which was most everything not involving the Pentagon.”

Look at it this way: If you decide to vote FOR the people pushing Program 2025, Trump will assume you’re all for it. And it will become the law of the land. You will NEVER regain the Rights you will lose in that process! If you vote against P-2025, you can still have your Rights as Americans which have been fought for over the past 250 years.

Now, can somebody please help the Biden campaign re-write their weak tea warning about Project 2025 on the Biden campaign website? (https://joebiden.com/project2025/) The headline is almost a paragraph long. The introduction is boring and wordy. All the truly frightening points about Project 2025 are listed so far below, few visitors will scroll down that far.

The Navigator does a great service by highlighting not only what’s in the text of Project 2025, they’ve shown it to Americans and have learned just how badly people think about it once they learn what’s in there.

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Democrats Need New Messaging

The Daily Escape:

Cholla Cactus at sunrise, Joshua Tree NP – November 2023 photo by Michelle Strong

Yesterday’s column described how confusing current polling data is with less than a year to go before the 2024 presidential election. We can easily overdose on polls, but in general, they seem to be pointing toward a very difficult re-election for Biden.

At the risk of contributing to the OD, here’s another example of terrible poll for Biden. It comes from Democratic stalwarts Democracy Corps, run by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg:

“President Biden trails Donald Trump by 5 points in the battleground states and loses at least another point when we include the independent candidates who get 17% of the vote. Biden is trying to win these states where three quarters believe the country is on the wrong track and 48% say, “I will never vote for Biden.”

What to make of all this? Wrongo thinks it’s time to take a different approach to the Democrat’s messaging. Let’s start with a quick look at the NYT’s David Leonhardt’s new book, “Ours Was the Shining Future”. Leonhardt’s most striking contention is based on a study of census and income tax data by the Harvard economist Raj Chetty: Where once the great majority of Americans could hope to earn more than their parents, now only half are likely to. From The Atlantic:

“Of Americans born in 1940, 92% went on to earn more than their parents; among those born in 1980, just 50% did. Over the course of a few decades, the chances of achieving the American dream went from a near-guarantee to a coin flip.”

As we said yesterday, the American Dream is fading. Leonhardt says that the Democrats have largely abandoned fighting for basic economic improvements for the working class. Some of the defining progressive triumphs of the 20th century, from labor victories by unions and Social Security under FDR to the Great Society programs of LBJ, were milestones in securing a voting majority. More from The Atlantic:

“Ronald Reagan took office promising to restore growth by paring back government, slashing taxes on the rich and corporations…gutting business regulations and antitrust enforcement. The idea…was that a rising tide would lift all boats. Instead, inequality soared while living standards stagnated and life expectancy fell behind…peer countries.”

Today, a child born in Norway or the UK has a far better chance of out-earning their parents than one born in the US. More context from The Atlantic: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“From the 1930s until the late ’60s, Democrats dominated national politics. They used their power to pass…progressive legislation that transformed the American economy. But their coalition, which included southern Dixiecrats as well as northern liberals, fractured after…Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” exploited that rift and changed the electoral map. Since then, no Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the white vote.”

The Atlantic makes another great point: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The civil-rights revolution also changed white Americans’ economic attitudes. In 1956, 65% of white people said they believed the government ought to guarantee a job to anyone who wanted one and to provide a minimum standard of living. By 1964, that number had sunk to 35%.”

America’s mid-century economy could have created growth and equality, but racial suppression and racial progress led to where we remain today.

Leonhardt argues that what Thomas Piketty called the “Brahmin left” must stop demonizing working-class people who do not share its views on cultural issues such as abortion, immigration, affirmative action and patriotism. From Leonhardt:

“A less self-righteous and more tolerant left could build what successfully increased access to the American Dream in the past: a broad grass-roots movement focused on core economic issues such as strengthening unions, improving wages and working conditions, raising corporate taxes, and decreasing corporate concentration.”

Can the Dems adapt both their priorities and messaging to meet people where they are today?

The priorities must change first. What would it take to establish the right priorities for the future? Stripping away the wedge issues that confuse and divide us, America’s priorities should be Health, Education, Retirement and Environment (“HERE”). It’s an acronym that sells itself: “Vote Here”.

(hat tip to friend of the blog, Rene S. for the HERE concept.)

Wrongo hears from young family members and others that all of the HERE elements are causing very real concerns. Affordable health care coverage still falls short. Regarding education, college costs barely seem to be worth shouldering the huge debt burdens that come with it.

Most young people think that they have no real way to save for retirement early in their careers when there’s the most bang for the buck. They also feel that Social Security won’t be there for them. From the NYT:

“In a Nationwide Retirement Institute survey, 45% of adults younger than 27 said they didn’t believe they would receive any money from the program.”

Today, only about 10% of Americans working in the private sector participate in a defined-benefit pension plan, while roughly 50% contribute to 401(k)-type, defined-contribution plans.

Finally, people today feel that their elders have created an existential environmental threat that will be tossed into their laps. A problem for which there may not be a solution.

As Leonhardt argues, these HERE problems should have always been priorities for Democrats. But for decades, the Party hasn’t been willing to pay today’s political price for a long term gain in voter loyalty. That is, until Biden started working on them in 2020.

But every media outlet continues to harp on inflation and the national debt. Much of what would be helpful in creating a HERE focus as a priority for Democrats depends at least somewhat on government spending. No one can argue that our national debt is high. It is arguable whether it can safely go higher or if it must be reigned in at current levels.

To help you think about that, we collected $4.5 trillion in taxes in 2022, down half a $trillion vs. what we collected in 2021. Estimates are that the Trump tax cuts cost about $350 billion in lost revenue/year.

Looking at tax collections as a percentage of GDP, it’s less than 17% in the US, well below our historical average of 19.5%. There are arguments to keep taxes low, but if you compare the US percentage to other nations, Germany has a ratio of 24%, while the UK’s is 27% and Australia’s is 30%.

If we raised our tax revenue to 24% of GDP, which is where Germany is now, we would eliminate the US deficit.

There’s a great deal of tension in the electorate between perception and reality. And it’s not caused by partisanship: Democrats and independents are also exhibiting a disconnect, too.

Democrats have to return to being the party of FDR and LBJ. They need to adopt the HERE priorities and build programs around them.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 16, 2023

The WaPo has an excellent briefing on Biden’s new border policy. If you’ve wondered why there’s no longer mass chaos at the southern border since Title 42 was lifted, it’s because the Biden administration has completely transformed how migrants, asylum-seekers, and those who enter illegally are treated.

You have to apply to enter the US legally by making an appointment using an app. It can take up to six weeks to get the appointment, but once you do, you are interviewed, photographed, and released to a social service agency that helps migrants, or a relative or sponsor who has registered with the feds. (Plus the app uses GPS to track your movements.) You then wait for your application for asylum to be processed and your claim adjudicated.

If you enter illegally, you are sent to a massive tent city to be fed and given necessities. You get your health checked out. And then you are sent back over the border with instructions on how to apply legally via the app.

The two processes illustrate the extent to which the Biden administration has transformed the way asylum seekers and migrants are processed along the southern border. As a result, illegal crossings have dropped by close to 70% since early May. Yes, 43,000 asylum-seekers get into the US every month. But until Congressional Republicans agree to a sensible immigration policy, controlling the influx in this manner seems to be the best alternative. On to cartoons.

What the GOP cares about:

We won’t fight climate change, so you’ll have to:

The GOP’s latest tangent:

The GOP decides the FBI is liberal:

It’s ironic that the GOP wants to defund the FBI which has always been a Republican bastion. And if the Elephant wants help with his minor surgery, Wrongo’s happy to assist. It’s doubtful that the FBI is about to start prosecuting illegal corporate activities with the same eagerness they showed when chasing after BLM and Occupy Wall Street.

Trump’s latest delay tactic:

Hollywood’s on strike:

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We’re In Hot Water

The Daily Escape:

Harbor Seals hauling out on a buoy in Petersburg, AK. Wrongo and Ms. Right were passing by in a zodiac – July 2023 photo via the cruise line

It seems like it’s going to stay hot for a long while, and nobody wants to do anything about it. Temperatures are rising both on land and at sea, with climate experts ringing alarm bells about unprecedented sea surface temperatures:

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in late June warned that half of the world’s oceans may experience marine heat wave conditions by September.”

And it’s hitting close to home:

“Not only is Florida sizzling in record-crushing heat, but the ocean waters that surround it are scorching, as well. The unprecedented ocean warmth around the state — connected to historically warm oceans worldwide — is further intensifying its heat wave and stressing coral reefs, with conditions that could end up strengthening hurricanes.”

The NYT reported that the water temperature around Florida hit 90° yesterday.

And while it’s possible to score cheap political points on their governor DeSantis who would rather fight with Mickey Mouse and whatever “Woke” means this week while ignoring climate change, Wrongo won’t stoop to that. He’s sure that Floridians love their governor’s priorities. Just last week, as insurance companies were pulling out of Florida, DeSantis was saying not to worry, the insurers will return to Florida after the hurricane season.

As Pogo said many years ago: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Primarily, the enemy is the Republican politician who continues to vote against efforts to bring the world’s CO2 levels under some semblance of control. The fixes to climate change that will have the most impact involve changes in public policy that will never happen as long as Republicans hold enough votes to block them.

But the big idea is that we’re not going back to where we were heat-wise, no matter what we do to cut further CO2 emissions. As NYT journalist Jeff Goodell said on NPR: (brackets by Wrongo)

“We are moving into a different world, and we need to grasp that idea….the planet is heating up…because we’re putting CO2 into the atmosphere…..It is essentially permanent when we put it [CO2] up there….And the warming will not stop until we stop emitting CO2 and burning fossil fuels….And even if we stop [adding more] CO2, we are stuck with that warming planet for a very long time.”

So, even if at this moment we made huge changes, we would always be on this part of the temperature scale, unless we figure out how to take quite a bit of that CO2 out of the atmosphere.

A few red state legislatures are considering following South Carolina’s lead and simply banning all mention of global warming or climate change in official documents or state-funded research. They think the only real way to deal with the climate problem is to ignore it.

Worse, nobody has a good model for what happens when all that warm water sits and gets warmer. Some meteorologists have pointed out that if the Caribbean got hot enough, it could spawn a continuous series of Category 5 hurricanes, say, once a week from May to October.

Which would resolve the problem of insuring Florida’s oceanfront properties pretty quickly.

It’s becoming evident that we live in a world designed for a climate that no longer exists. What’s really sobering is that the climate that now exists won’t resemble the one that will exist a generation from now.

How our societies and political systems deal with this is the central question of the 21st century.

Wrongo and Ms. Right moved back to New England from California partly because of climate. We were concerned about how scarce water would become in Los Angeles, and we knew that Connecticut would have more water for longer. This week, several of our roads and bridges closed because we had too much rain, causing the Housatonic River to overflow its banks.

This shows that there are no longer any places that can be marked safe from climate change. It has become impossible to predict the future climate/weather anywhere based on the past. And we’re still not coming to terms with just how hot and dangerous things are becoming. Or how fast it’s happening.

Let’s close the week with a wake up tune. Here’s “The Effects of Climate Change on Densely Populated Areas” by People Under The Stairs, a hip hop group from LA formed in 1997:

Sample Lyric:

Hundred degrees at midnight for the third day in a row
Nobody sleepin’ well and I can feel the tension growin’
LA wth rollin’ brownouts, rollin’ papers and rollin’ sixties
Heat exhaustion increasing caution across the city
Some people hit the mall, they’re tryin’ to stay cool
Some people call the cops; “there’s black children in the pool”
Everybody’s lookin’ sideways, we’re ragin’ on the highways
I hate it, I’m tryin’ to stay hydrated and faded but my way Is blocked
By road construction like a scene from “Falling Down”
Cops, they tryin’ to function but it seems they takin’ down us
Brown people at will People get hot and then killed
As the sun begins to set it’s hotter, no-one can chill
Everybody’s windows open there’s not a moment of silence
Alcohol heatin’ frustration that’s increasing domestic violence
9-1-1 is overwhelmed, homie, guess you on your own
The hills are still on fire, I recommend you stay at home

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Saturday Soother – June 10, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Peony, Fields of Wrong, CT – June 2023 photo by Wrongo

(There will not be a Sunday Cartoons column this weekend. Wrongo and Ms. Right are attending a memorial service for family member Bob W.’s mom.)

The week ended with a ton of political news. First, as Mark Joseph Stern reported in Slate:

“The Supreme Court’s 5–4 decision in Allen v. Milligan on Thursday, which found that Alabama’s congressional map violates the Voting Rights Act’s ban on racial vote dilution, sends two clear messages. First, a bare majority of the court—Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the three liberals—believes that the VRA still plays a meaningful role in maintaining a multiracial democracy (or is willing to defer to Congress’ judgment on the matter). Second, that same majority of the court does not look kindly upon red states’ race to shred decades of precedent in an effort to wipe out the voting power of Black Americans.”

The good news is that the decision means that Alabama must create a second Congressional district in which the voting power of Black voters is not diluted by gerrymandering. It is likely that Alabama will add a second Democratic representative to its Congressional delegation.

Even better, Democracy Docket says that the holding in Allen v. Milligan will likely result in a net gain of six Democratic seats (five in other states) in the House in 2024.

Second, Trump is being indicted in Florida. He, along with a staff member at Mar-a-Lago, are facing 37 felony charges related to the mishandling of classified documents. This good news is offset by learning that judge Aileen Cannon is again assigned to hear the DOJ’s case that Trump wrongly held classified documents, failed to return all of them, and then obstructed the efforts of the National Archives and the FBI to recover them. Here’s a link to the indictment.

Mega millions of words will be written about this before there’s a trial or a guilty plea. Hold off on a victory lap until Trump is convicted. About a quarter of the classified/national security documents seized from Mar-a-Lago were found in Trump’s office. It will be difficult for Trump to persuade a jury that he didn’t know about the documents and chose not to return them.

Also, the Trump lawyers who were the front men for this indictment have quit the case. The attorneys, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, did not explain in detail why they had resigned.

Does MAGA now stand for: Make Attorneys Go Away? Or possibly, Make Attorneys Get Attorneys? Although it appears the parting was amicable, it would be irresponsible not to speculate! And it’s difficult to believe that the lead attorney’s last name is Trusty.

But Trump wasn’t the only MAGA mishandling secrets this week. The HuffPo reported that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) made an eyebrow raising claim during a TV interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox:

“Greene said she read a document inside a SCIF ― a sensitive compartmented information facility ― related to bribery allegations Republicans have made against Biden…Then, she described that document while speaking to Laura Ingraham on Fox News”

Wrongo has experience with reading documents in SCIFs. NOBODY takes notes on what they’ve read. It’s a violation of national security regulations. When you enter a SCIF, you check all electronic devices before entering, and can’t take notes while inside. And usually, information revealed in the SCIF can’t be repeated outside of it. But Greene held up her notes to the camera.

Mark Zaid, an attorney who specializes in national security, tweeted:

“Hey @FBI, if this information was classified sounds to me like the Congresswoman is admitting to a crime. And if it was not, @SpeakerMcCarthy should remove her privileges for violating the trust she was afforded as a Member of Congress to review sensitive information.”

— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) June 9, 2023

But McCarthy won’t do anything. The GOP is building a wall around Trump, and minimizing the mishandling of documents by Greene will just be part of the play. To be a Republican in 2023 is to love Trump. They no longer love him for a particular reason: He’s what the Party has become.

There was plenty of orange air outside of the Mansion of Wrong this week. So, let’s pray for brighter skies while we settle into our Saturday Soother, where we try to forget the political news and the impending climate disaster. Let’s try to relax for a few moments. This week, George Winston died. He was a composer who became the signature style of New Age music in the 1980s. Wrongo was mildly interested in him at the time but came to admire and respect his work in the past few years.

Here’s Winston in 2020 playing Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”:

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About The Energy Grid

The Daily Escape:

Coyote Gulch, Escalante, UT – May 2023 photo by Chirag A. Patel

Wrongo and Ms. Right watched the Knicks vs. Miami and Ted Lasso rather than dipping into the political rally for Trump held by CNN. But other news outlets reported on it. Apparently, the live audience gave him a standing ovation as he entered the set. They laughed when he called E. Jean Carroll “a whack job” and belittled her claim of sexual assault:

Trump suggested that the US should default on its debt if Biden didn’t agree to the cuts that House Republicans want. He pledged to pardon many of those convicted in the Jan. 6 attempted coup. He refused to back Ukraine in its war against Russia.

For those who think that there’s an opening in 2024 among GOP partisans to either vote for someone other than Trump or gasp!, vote for a Democrat, you are sadly mistaken.

A big part of the press (obviously including CNN) just can’t bring itself to admit the truth about the current state of the Republican Party. And they don’t really see it as their job to engage in such denunciations, even to protect the nation.

America is chockfuckingfull of Republicans who are, as Hillary said, “deplorables”. And they’re not all in New Hampshire. It’s way past time for the press to acknowledge this sad fact.

But today, let’s talk about the US energy grid. Our transition from fossil fuels to a green energy future will require a huge investment in our current electric grid. This probably means we’ve understated the costs of America’s energy transition. From Haley Zaremba, at OilPrice: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In order to keep up with the expansion of renewable energy production capacity, the United States will have to more than double the current size of the electric grid. Stimulus from both the public and private sectors are hitting their intended mark, and the clean energy sector is booming. However, much of the potential environmental benefits of electrification will be completely wasted if we don’t have the power lines and grid capacity to transmit that power from where it’s being produced to where the demand is concentrated.”

Zaremba quotes McKinsey, who say that building sufficient wind and solar farms to power the clean energy transition will require overcoming three major hurdles: Finding enough land at an affordable price, building up the power grid to support the influx of electricity, and fixing the archaic and inefficient permitting process that governs these processes.

America needs massive investment in our national energy simply to stand still, regardless of the source of electricity.

But it’s important to identify today the key energy sources of the future because that determines how we specify and build the upgraded grid. A grid based on renewable sources requires a denser network and more long distance direct current lines, while conventional grids need a relatively small number of very high capacity short distance alternating current lines (i.e. from a cluster of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) to the nearest city).

Either option is expensive and each brings its own set of regulatory issues. Zaremba notes that:

“Building power lines alone is an enormous bureaucratic hurdle that can take years to gain approval. The  average review of renewable energy projects takes about 3.5 years, but there are cases in which a single transition line took over a decade to be completed…”

According to the US DOE, the country will need 47,300 gigawatt-miles of new power lines by 2035. That represents a 57% expansion of the existing grid. And the real issue is the glacial pace of the bureaucratic review processes which underlie permitting and oversight of clean energy projects as well as grid expansion.

Zaremba closes with:

“Fixing the presently nightmarish permitting and approval system will be integral to decarbonizing the US economy…and making sure that the efforts already underway to decarbonize the nation’s energy mix are not squandered. It’s great that wind and solar capacity are being added at a record-breaking rate, but it’s all a waste if, once completed, there’s no permit allowing them to plug into the grid – or if there’s no grid at all.”

As if on cue, on Wednesday Biden signed on to Sen. Manchin’s (D-WVA) plan to speed the approval of some fossil fuel projects and to hasten the construction of new transmission lines. The NYT quotes John Podesta, Biden’s senior adviser for clean energy innovation:

“Right now, the permitting process for clean energy infrastructure, including transmission, is plagued by delays and bottlenecks…”

Manchin’s bill has some holding their noses because it is so pro-fossil fuel. But should it become law, perhaps the US government will be able to speed up approval for at least some of the green energy projects.

In summary, there’s lots to do and no sure way to get it all done.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 19, 2023

(Wrongo and Ms. Right are sending healing thoughts to friend and blog reader Gloria R.)

There was a small article in the NYT saying that European gas prices had dropped to pre-Ukraine war levels:

“On Friday, the European benchmark price of gas fell below 50 euros ($53) per megawatt-hour for the first time since late 2021. Prices spiked above €300 per megawatt-hour in mid-2022, as Russia curtailed gas exports to Europe after its invasion of Ukraine.”

This isn’t what economists forecasted as the mid-winter energy situation in Europe, which all of a sudden has too much natural gas. It seems Russian gas isn’t indispensable to Europe. Natural gas is, but not necessarily Russian gas. Of course, the mild European winter was a big factor. And regional natural-gas inventories, which are at about 65% capacity, on average, are at their highest levels in years, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

Russia and its gas company Gazprom spent decades building the European (and specifically) the German market. The cost was the building of massive infrastructure to move their gas to Europe. Then Russia pissed it all away last February.

At great cost, they’ll eventually build new infrastructure to move all that gas to Asia and elsewhere. On to cartoons.

America has been reduced to this:

Or is it this?

Nikki says we need younger politicians:

Why the balloon story doesn’t go away:

More about America’s sickness:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 13, 2022

While we were focusing on the midterms, Biden flew to Egypt to appear at the COP27 climate conference where he took a brief victory lap before heading to Cambodia and then to Bali for the G20 summit (which Putin is skipping).

This particular climate conference is largely focused on what, if anything, the industrialized countries owe to poor nations that are suffering climate disasters which they did little to cause. The catch phrase for this is “Climate Reparations”.

It’s hard for America to be a global leader on climate given our internal political issues. We’re always going to be just a few Electoral College votes away from electing a climate denier. So the world can’t count on us. But America will never pay climate reparations. We must at least TRY to get clean water in US cities first.

Even after 157 years, we won’t really consider paying reparations to the descendants of our fellow citizens for the sin of slavery. The political will to pay reparations to brown skinned folks on the other side of the world will never be a majority view in America.

There was both good news and bad news about the 2022 midterms. The good news is that the outcomes were not as catastrophic as predicted. The bad news is that they were bad enough. While all the races aren’t finished and all the votes aren’t counted, we know the Senate will be controlled by the Democrats. It’s likely that the GOP will control the House. Still, it’s very clear there’s a very large segment of American voters who fail to read the writing on the wall about the threat of an authoritarian takeover of American democracy. Even though that writing is in large, blinking neon letters. On to cartoons.

The authoritarians are pensive:

The incredibly shrinking authoritarians:

The Georgia runoff doesn’t mean what you think it means:

The MAGA celebration ended early:

MAGA is still with us:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 2, 2022

Hurricane Ian should remind us of one thing: We’re all in this life together. It’s easy to let your partisan flag fly with “gotchas” since we’re talking about Florida.

We could be smug watching Republicans like Governor DeSantis, who happily stoked outrage about “government tyranny” over vaccines and masks, getting frustrated when his constituents fail to follow evacuation orders.

We could go for the schadenfreude when watching the up-by-your-bootstraps types in Florida line up for government assistance from FEMA. Or what was the best part? Watching DeSantis, whose entire MO is trolling Biden and the Democrats, happily accepting help from Dark Brandon and the federales.

JVL says it best:

“But here’s the thing: We’re not talking about debating points. We’re talking about human beings…. Who’ve had tragedy visited on them. And the only responses should be empathy, charity, and love.”

On to cartoons.

Uncle Sam does his job, regardless of politics:

Some say that stronger hurricanes aren’t an indication that the climate is changing:

Has DeSantis seen the light?

How to win elections:

The Former Guy gets inspiration for next time:

Putin now has fewer options:

Did hitting the asteroid give us any ideas?

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Monday Wake Up Call – September 19, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Willard Beach, South Portland, ME – September 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo

Last week, Wrongo wrote about how if you know a little about politics, your issues are guns, abortion, and taxes. We need to think about adding immigration to that list. Blog reader Craig G. asked, “when is enough, enough?” in response to Wrongo’s column on DeSantis sending immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

It’s a great question. We tend to think of immigration as an American/Mexican border problem, but it is much, much worse than that. The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees reported in May 2022, that the world, for the first time in history, had 100 million forcibly displaced people either in camps or on the move.

Of those who were on the move, “conflict and violence” accounted for 14.4 million, and “weather-related events” accounted for 23.7 million. The distinction between these numbers is often hard to understand. The civil war in Syria for example, produced large numbers of refugees. In 2021, more than 6.8 million refugees were from Syria, more than any other country in the world. At the same time, another 6.9 million people were displaced within Syria. The Syrian civil war followed the most profound drought ever recorded in what used to be the Fertile Crescent.

About 100 million migrants is huge, more than the population of Germany, Turkey or, Vietnam. But it could get worse as the impacts of climate change broaden throughout the 3rd world. The International Organization for Migration has predicted that we could see 1.5 billion people forced from their homes by 2050.

These numbers are staggering. Now couple them with America’s declining birth rate. Econofact reports that the US birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007. They say the decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. So, what if it continues while the number of people knocking on America’s doors continues to grow?

As Craig G. implies, there could come a time when all Americans will agree to limit immigration. Otherwise, a smaller, aging America will be asking what some on the Right are asking today: Who are the “real” Americans? What do we owe recent immigrants?

The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1 says:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

How will we adjust when the majority of our population are from different cultures, different races and speak different languages? The children of first-generation immigrants generally are well-adapted to the broad American culture; for the most part, they sound and act like Americans. If they were born here they ARE Americans. But the first generation migrant has an understandably difficult time.

This has caused the Right and specifically, the Christian nationalists on the right to be stingy about who they say is a true American, despite when many kids of immigrants are born here in America.The 14th Amendment doesn’t require any ideological, racial or language prerequisite.

Our low birth rates mean we can’t replace our population, so our economic growth will slow. If we replace our population with immigrants, we’ll have economic growth, but our culture will inexorably change.

Our history gives us some pointers. Immigration to the US peaked in the 19th century in the decade 1880-89 when it reached 5,248,568. The first decade of the 20th century saw another record with 8,202,388 people entering the country. In 1910, 75% of the population of New York, Chicago, Detroit and Boston consisted of first and second generation immigrants.

Remember that the US population was 62,979,766 in 1890, an increase of 25.5% percent since the prior census in 1880.  Contrast that with today. Stastia says that 710,000 legal immigrants arrived here in 2021, and that we had 11.39 million illegal immigrants living in the US at year end 2018. We’re five times larger today.

Think about it: In 1890, our foreign-born population was 9.2 million. The total US population was 62.9 million. 5.2/62.9 = 14.6% of our population were immigrants. In 2018, out foreign-born population is 44.8 million. 44.8/320 million in US = 14.0%. Is our problem worse today?

Time to wake up America! A tsunami of immigrants will try to move from the 3rd world to the developed world. The numbers will be staggering, beyond anything experienced so far by Europe or the US. Our ability to cope with so many people in motion in some even modestly humane fashion will determine the character of our country over the next century.

To help you wake up, listen to John Moreland perform “Ugly Faces” from his 2022 album “Birds in the Ceiling”.

Sample Lyric:

You’re seeing ugly faces in your dreams
Let me know what it means
We told ourselves we’d tell it true
But I learned how to lie, watching you
This dirty place don’t want you here
Looks like you’re stuck another year
You close your eyes, a scene rolls by
A strip mall under sunburst sky
My back was to a corner, lonely in a crowd
I couldn’t hear you calling, the bullshit was so loud

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