Pruitt Resigned! Now what?

EDIT: Pruitt is being replaced by his deputy, Andrew Wheeler. More on him soon.

Living in the Trump era has made me more than a little paranoid. I think it’s a good thing that Pruitt is out, but I do not trust that he left for the obvious reasons. I would very much like to be wrong, but I doubt this will mean an end to Pruitt’s agenda, or to deliberate waste of resources. Twenty years ago, I think we could expect that Pruitt’s resignation would be followed by his incarceration, and some level of contrition from his defenders. Ten years ago, I would expect Pruitt to be replaced by somebody who is much more boring, and will push ahead the exact same agenda with less flambouyant corruption.

Now? Now I’m not so sure. For all I know, the “new normal” is escalation, and the next person will be Charles or David Koch, or Joe Barton.

This could be a victory, but I think it’s far too soon for celebration.

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Trumphotels.org – another example of Trump’s incompetence

You may be shocked to hear it, but Trump’s record of half-assing everything and cutting every corner possible means that neither he, nor anyone around him thought to buy www.Trumphotels.org. Fortunately, some kindly person bought it for him, and filled it with high-quality pictures of Trump’s latest endeavor in the hospitality industry. Coming soon to an ICE facility near you!

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“I am confused and afraid” – Police violence and police lies.

This is a message that bears repeating – the reason this stuff is in the news more is that it’s so easy to catch cops on video. It was happening before, and ignoring it for all those years has given us a police force that views it as acceptable practice to torture people for not following instructions perfectly, and to shoot people who are running away, and to deliberately try to inflict brain trauma on people by repeatedly punching them in the head even while they’re restrained. And more and more, this is happening to white people too.

First they brutalized the black community and I said nothing because I was not black…

I AM NOT WHAT YOU THINK!

I am confused and afraid
I wonder what path I will take
I hear that there’s only two ways out
I see mothers bury their sons
I want my mom to never feel that pain
I am confused and afraid

I pretend all is fine
I feel like I’m suffocating
I touch nothing so I believe all is fine
I worry that it isn’t, though
I cry no more
I am confused and afraid

I understand people believe I’m just a statistic
I say to them I’m different
I dream of life getting easier
I try my best to make my dream true
I hope that it does
I am confused and afraid

-Antwon Rose Jr. July 12, 2000-June 19, 2018

 

Are you legally prepared for the coming rollback of your rights?

Copied and pasted. Good advice:

As an attorney, I strongly urge all LGBTQI folks to get your legal affairs in order NOW. We’ve had a good few years of being able to legally marry, and in many states to be able to adopt children (often adopting our OWN children), be foster parents, inherit a lease from our deceased partners, and so many other hard-won equalities.

THERE ARE PEOPLE CHEERING NOW FOR OUR LIVES TO BE DESTROYED.

Please do your wills, adopt your kids if you haven’t already, create guardianship affidavits, GET PASSPORTS for everyone in your family, get your name/gender markers corrected, confirm that your life insurance policies, investments, houses, cars, bank accounts, even your leases have the correct people on them as owners or beneficiaries.

I’ve created a clause that I suggest should be added to your wills (and any other document dependent upon marriage). Please feel free to take it for your own use:

“The term “wife” or “husband” or “spouse” as used herein means *insert your spouse’s appropriate legal name here*, whose rights, responsibilities, or benefits under this will shall not be affected regardless of whether the legal validity of my marriage to the above-named person is ever nullified by Supreme Court decision or Constitutional Amendment.”

People in our lives who voted for Trump, but say you love us: go fuck yourself with a cactus

“…Wrapped in a flag, and carrying a cross.”

Just saw this from Michael Stone over at Patheos.

Dangerous Catholic extremist: Amy Coney Barrett, a leading candidate for a soon-to-be-vacant Supreme Court seat, claims the Bible precedes the Constitution.

Barrett, a dangerous religious extremist who believes her religious faith comes before the law, and claims that the Bible precedes the U.S. Constitution, was confirmed for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit last year after a controversial and contentious Senate confirmation process. [Read more…]

Sun Day: A good refresher on how the sun relates to the current global warming

In the spirit of having a basic understanding of climate science, I like to periodically re-visit good articles and videos on the subject. Peter Sinclair has been a pretty consistent source of well-crafted, well-explained videos. This one gives a solid overview of both the misinformation, and the actual info on how the sun has been interacting with our climate over the past few decades. I couldn’t find a transcript, but the auto-generated captions are actually on point for this one:

 

If you found this post useful or enjoyable, please share it, and please consider becoming a patron over at my Patreon page. Your donations make this blog possible, and even as little as one dollar per month adds up to make a difference. If you feel you can afford more than that, you can get access to all sorts of other content and perks! Your patronage allows me to put more of my time and energy into making this blog a useful resource. Thanks for reading!

 

Mercury in Permafrost: The waking giant has poisonous breath

The anti-vaccination crowd has a tradition of freaking out over Thiomersol, a mercury compound, being in vaccines. It’s another example of how well-crafted misinformation capitalizes on a partial truth combined with general ignorance. What has been interesting to note is that the same people don’t put nearly as much effort into reducing mercury emissions from coal-fire power plants, even though that’s a mercury compound known to be dangerous, and we’re all exposed to far greater amounts of mercury from those emissions than from vaccines.

Well, here’s an opportunity for them to show a renewed commitment to their fight against mercury exposure: [Read more…]

Preparing for the future

The suite of problems facing American politics is starting to remind me of climate change. A few bad actors with vast resources have screwed everybody over with the silent consent of a majority of the country. To be sure, it’s not like we had managed to unscrew the country the way most of White America seemed to think, but we have been moving slowly in that direction, and had a glimpse of what it might be like to live up to our high-minded ideals. The 21st century could have been a monument to human rights and human ingenuity. At the moment, I don’t think that’s a possibility anymore.

It seems likely, with Trump on the verge of appointing another “Justice” to the supreme court, that we’re over the edge. Just as we have no realistic chance of avoiding catastrophic warming based on where we’re at right now, we may not have any realistic chance at preventing an American slide into full-on authoritarianism.

I suppose November will show us just how screwed we are, but in the meantime I think it’s time to really delve into how to keep working for justice under an oligarchy or something like that. [Read more…]

Termites in the Support Beams: Ecosystem services and biodiversity loss

The chaos of the Trump administration has given us some insight to what it will be like to deal with the escalating crises of climate change. There is so much going on that a lot is getting lost in the desperate attempts of our media to report on everything. It seems to be an effective way to confuse public opinion, and could well be the soundtrack for the downfall of our attempt at something like a liberal democracy.

Likewise, as the planet warms, more and more attention will rightly be paid to big events – storms that push the rising seas farther inland than ever before, or killer heat waves, or the troubles of climate refugees, or the wars sparked by climate-driven desperation. As all of that is happening, however, there will be other problems with more subtle effects. We are surrounded by plants and animals most people never think about, and some of them play important roles in our lives without any direct interaction. [Read more…]