The Republican party is entirely responsible for giving us Donald Trump. They may worry about what he is doing to their party but he used the nasty racist and xenophobic and misogynistic climate they created to ride to power. Now some of them are trying to dodge the blame. One of them is Republican pollster Frank Luntz who has been the person they went to to craft all their divisive messaging for the past two decades.
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Pakistan is bracing for its full supreme court to issue its final verdict in the case of the blasphemy charges brought against the woman known Aasia Bibi after a three judge panel ruled that the charges against her had not been proven and that she should be released. The right-wing Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) party has been leading the protests. Meanwhile, Bibi’s lawyer has had to flee the country out of fear of being killed.
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There are 31 new Republican members of the House of Representatives and 40 new Democrats. How do they compare in terms of diversity? I think this one emoji-based representation pretty much captures the difference.
A new report issued by the administration of Donald Trump has come out that issues a stark warning of the major costs that the US will incur if climate change is allowed to continue unchecked. The report is pretty stark. You can read the full report of the Fourth National Climate Assessment here and below is a key excerpt from its summary findings.
Communities, governments, and businesses are working to reduce risks from and costs associated with climate change by taking action to lower greenhouse gas emissions and implement adaptation strategies. While mitigation and adaptation efforts have expanded substantially in the last four years, they do not yet approach the scale considered necessary to avoid substantial damages to the economy, environment, and human health over the coming decades.
…In the absence of significant global mitigation action and regional adaptation efforts, rising temperatures, sea level rise, and changes in extreme events are expected to increasingly disrupt and damage critical infrastructure and property, labor productivity, and the vitality of our communities. Regional economies and industries that depend on natural resources and favorable climate conditions, such as agriculture, tourism, and fisheries, are vulnerable to the growing impacts of climate change. Rising temperatures are projected to reduce the efficiency of power generation while increasing energy demands, resulting in higher electricity costs. The impacts of climate change beyond our borders are expected to increasingly affect our trade and economy, including import and export prices and U.S. businesses with overseas operations and supply chains. Some aspects of our economy may see slight near-term improvements in a modestly warmer world. However, the continued warming that is projected to occur without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century, especially in the absence of increased adaptation efforts. With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century—more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states.
My former institution Case Western Reserve University has not been spared the rise of neo-Nazi propaganda that has been seen nationwide. Within the last few weeks, there have been incidents of swastikas drawn of bathroom walls, one of which houses the office of multicultural affairs and then today the Plain Dealer reports that flyers advertising a neo-Nazi website were found around the campus.
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Thanks to a sustained effort, the idea of Medicare for All as a way to introduce universal health care coverage has become part of the mainstream conversation. It is no longer seen as the fringe issue it was portrayed as when Bernie Sanders spoke in favor of it just a few years ago during his campaign for the presidency. It played a big role in the congressional elections and Lee Fang and Nick Surgey have obtained a document that outlines how the health industry is gearing up to launch a fight against it.
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Donald Trump’s attack on a federal judge who ruled against him as being an ‘Obama judge’ and thus acting in a biased way resulted in an unusual rebuke from US Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts who decried adding labels to federal judges once they are on the bench, declaring that they should be presumed to be above partisan interests. To no one’s surprise, Trump did not take Robert’s comments lying down and has issued a new series of tweets against the judiciary.
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An Indian village council has created a stir by banning women from wearing ‘nighties’ in public, with the threat of a fine for the women who do and a reward for informants who snitch on them.
Village elder Balle Vishnu Murthy told a visiting colleague from BBC Telugu that the ban was to stop women from exposing their bodies. “It is okay to wear nighties at home but wearing them outdoors could attract attention and cause trouble for the wearer,” he said.
Westerners might be forgiven for thinking of the ‘nightie’ as some kind of flimsy revealing item of nightwear that one sees in stores like Victoria’s Secret. Far from it. It is a one-piece tunic along the lines of a long smock that is slipped over the head and covers the body from the neck to the ankles. It is far more functional than the traditional sari for doing chores and getting around. It did originate as nightwear but expanded its role as its comfort and utility became more widely recognized, pretty much like how sweatpants and yoga pants are now commonly seen in public in the US.
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To no one’s surprise, Donald Trump has sided with Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. All that Trump required was a denial by bin Salman and his father the king to feel that the there was sufficient uncertainty to prevent his taking any meaningful steps. Of course, in these days, there is no amount of evidence that can be produced that he could not dismiss by saying that it was fake news, so this was a foregone conclusion.
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Mississippi is going to have a run-off election on November 27 to decide its senate seat. This should have been an easy win for the incumbent Republican senator Cindy Hyde-Smith against her Democratic opponent Mike Espy. But Hyde-Smith, who was appointed to the seat to replace Thad Cochran who had to retire due to ill health, had managed to make the race more competitive by various bone-headed moves such as wearing a confederate cap and praising a secessionist general from the civil war, suggesting that suppressing the votes of liberals would be a good idea, and worst of all, saying that she would gladly be in the front row for a lynching. The last was particularly egregious given that state’s history of public lynchings and the fact that her opponent is black.
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