Yearly Archives: 2019

Part of an occasional series examining President Trump’s progress against Candidate Trump’s promises.

The promise: Candidate Trump promises to return coal miners to a Golden Age of jobs by reopening closed coal mines.

Results So Far: This time-series from the St. Louis Fed illustrates progress in restoring coal mining jobs:

Giving President Trump the benefit of calculating from the employment low of 48,400 in Aug 2016 to the latest numbers of July 2019 of 52,500, I calculate a rise of 8-9% in employment for the coal industry over that three year period. I can not consider that a return to any golden age, seeing as the job total of 52,500 is 70% below the high of 175,200, set in May of 1985.

This comparison is, of course, unfair, as modern machinery inevitably displaces some jobs, hopefully those that are most dangerous. But the fact remains that President Trump has not engineered any great recovery in coal mining jobs. To reinforce this fact, consider these recent remarks by United Mine Workers Of America President Cecil Roberts:

Cecil Roberts said at an event in Washington that his message to Trump and others running for president in 2020 is: “Coal’s not back. Nobody saved the coal industry.” He said coal-fired plants are closing all over the country, calling it a “harsh reality.”

But this is not for a lack of effort. The coal mining industry is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and regulation often receives a majority of the blame for the failing coal industry. When Trump took office, he nominated Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA, and Mr. Pruitt was confirmed by the Senate. Prior to this position, Mr. Pruitt, as Attorney General of Oklahoma, had apparently fought the EPA at the behest of fossil fuel companies. With what are anti-EPA credentials, his nomination would appear to be partial fulfillment by President Trump of the campaign promise, if we accept the implicit “I will try …” which goes along with many political promises to the electorate.

While EPA Administrator, Mr. Pruitt attempted to repeal or otherwise neutralize many regulations, which actions were then contested in court; he has been considered to be ineffective, due to his sloppy approach to his task. We’ll leave the particulars of Mr. Pruitt’s dubious performance while in his position for other times, places, and commentators.

Another effort made by President Trump is on the consumption end, as he attempted to transcend market forces by ordering Secretary of Energy Rick Perry to research how to keep coal-fired (and nuclear) power plants up and running. Mr. Perry’s proposals? Reordering of priorities in favor of research on so-called “High Efficiency Low Emissions” coal-fired power plants, which were also supported by the Obama Administration, while cutting the priority on development of carbon capture technologies. This is generally considered disastrously inadequate in the face of climate change. Perry also suggested a simple bail out and escape from the free market, as the climate change Desmog Blog reported:

Conservative rancor toward the free market in energy systems was on full display this week, as both Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and coal magnate Robert Murray made loud, unapologetic calls to subsidize coal-fired power plants.

“We don’t have a free market in the [electricity] industry, and I’m not sure you want one,” Perry said Monday at the BNEF Future of Energy Summit.

Speaking on Tuesday, Murray, CEO of the country’s largest underground mining company, said that Perry “has to approve” an emergency bailout for coal and nuclear plants in order to “ensure the resilience, reliability, and security of the grid.”

The desperation of the Secretary and the industry was palpable in that report. Republicans do not lightly throw the free market under the bus.

Returning to Candidate Trump’s promise, it may simply be that he is attempting to swim up a waterfall. From the US Energy Information Administration:

Note the share of coal is 13%. Mark Sumner on the progressive site The Daily Kos, a former worker in the coal industry, produces more facts:

This is the hard truth. In 2000, coal generated almost 53 percent of all the electricity in the United States. By 2009, that was 45 percent. In 2014 it was 39 percent. One year later, it was 33 percent.

Look at that last number. Coal’s contribution to the electrical picture dropped by 6 percent in a single year. That didn’t happen because of rules on carbon pollution that were never even made. It didn’t happen because of regulations on water pollution that never went into effect.

It happened because fracking for natural gas has made that fuel extremely abundant, and generators of electricity would much, much rather deal with gas than coal.

From 53% to 13% in 19 years suggests a substantial and negative trend line. Mr. Sumner also has this observation on cutting regulations that should alarm any advocate for more coal mining jobs:

If Congress repealed every environmental law and every safety law that affects coal mining tonight, you know what would happen tomorrow? There would be fewer coal jobs. And fewer still the day after.

In fact, the regulations that Trump is repealing will make that happen faster. The rule that was changed on allowing more coal waste in streams won’t make new coal jobs. It will allow mining companies to replace underground mines with mountaintop removal mines. Those mines use far fewer people. When Trump signed that document and handed you the pen, what he was repealing was coal jobs.

Was President Trump truly trying to fulfill Candidate Trump’s promises when cutting regulations? It’s hard to know, because Mr. Trump, despite his claims of being the most knowledgeable person in many fields of human endeavour, does not appear to actually be cognizant of many details in self-proclaimed fields of expertise. It is possible he advocated for that particular regulation repeal without realizing he would hurt those he had promised to help.

Or perhaps he, cold-bloodedly, did know. It’s a judgment for my reader to make.

The Bigger Picture: But the better question to ask is whether or not Candidate Trump should have ever made promises to the coal miners in the first place. Regardless of claims by the industry known as King Coal, coal is widely considered as a very dirty energy source, emitting ash, mercury, uranium, and climate gases with abandon. Its ease of availability and provision of jobs, even those of exceptional danger, are no longer an adequate counterweight to its negatives of pollution in a world which is heavily overpopulated. Coal does not scale up.

Candidate Trump may have promised to bring back coal mining jobs, and made some attempts to do so, but success would have guaranteed more deaths through pollution, and a more miserable world overall.

The best reading of the evidence is that Trump made an attempt to fulfill his promise, but was ineffective in doing so, and probably should never have made those promises in the first place. In a world where coal is becoming less and less appropriate as an energy choice, Candidate Trump should not have encouraged miners to stay in their shrinking professions.

In a complex topic such as this, my reader may come to a different conclusion, but to my eye it appears clear that, regardless of his attempts to fulfill his promises, this promise was ill-considered and a mark of poor judgment by the candidate, and now president.

Remember Comet ‘Oumuamua? Another object apparently falling into the broad classification of Not from these parts has appeared, and is called Comet Borisov. Here’s a depiction of its trajectory from Jet Propulsion Laboratories:

In a press release:

The new comet, C/2019 Q4, is still inbound toward the Sun, but it will remain farther than the orbit of Mars and will approach no closer to Earth than about 190 million miles (300 million kilometers).

Spaceweather.com has more details:

There are thousands of comets in the Solar System, but this one is special. Comet Borisov is interstellar. The newly-discovered comet is following a hyperbolic orbit with an eccentricity greater than 3.7. This means it is unbound to the sun. Indeed, Comet Borisov is moving 30.7 km/s (68,700 mph) too fast for the sun’s gravity to hang onto it. It must have come from the stars.

This is the first time an interstellar visitor to our Solar System has clearly shown a tail due to outgassing. The only other known interstellar visitor was ‘Oumuamua in 2017-2018, a cigar-shaped object with no visible comet-like emissions.

Because Comet Borisov is still just entering the solar system, astronomers will have plenty of time to study it in the months ahead. Is it truly interstellar? What are comets from other solar systems made of? Answers to these and many other questions are forthcoming.

I’ll be looking forward to more details over the coming months, and while I assume there’s no space vehicles in position to approach it, we may be able to get a better view of it than we have so far.

This report in WaPo is disturbing:

I love these ultra-violet pictures of flowers.

More at Craig P. Burrows Photography. His ultraviolet work is here.

Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society regularly provides updates on the status of various intra-solar probes of all nationalities. Here’s part of her latest:

Parker Solar Probe is racing away from perihelion number 3, which it passed on 1 September, and will fly by Venus for its second time on 26 December. The Spitzer Space Telescope, advancing ahead of Earth in its orbit, is nearing the end of its mission; it will be shut down on 30 January.

Asteroid Ryugu is near perihelion, which takes it closer to the Sun than Earth. The asteroid is too warm for Hayabusa2 to do any further touchdown activities. Late this quarter, Hayabusa2 will begin its journey home. …

For the space enthusiast, The Planetary Society is a delightful way to contribute and gain some insight.

For those of us who require more than just enthusiasm, keep in mind that one of the ways to avoid plague and famine brought on by overcrowding is to expand the amount of available, usable real estate. While the territory being explored is not directly usable, we’re learning, and that’s the start for gaining access to that territory. I’ll omit the traditional citation of Secular Cycles …

From my Arts Editor:

Limone Cello Chinchillas

If you know any aspiring bands who despair that Vampire Weekend’s already been sucked up, this is an offering for you.

Gary Sargent in The Plum Line missed the best response to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s statement concerning the loss of funding for his home state’s military base Fort Campbell’s middle school expansion:

McConnell himself had previously boasted of funding he had secured for Fort Campbell families. Yet subsequently, McConnell voted to uphold Trump’s national emergency, which will now take funding away.

So how does a McConnell spokesman justify this? By saying: “We would not be in this situation if Democrats were serious about protecting our homeland and worked with us to provide the funding needed to secure our borders during the appropriations process.”

And Sargent goes with this:

That’s a stunning statement, once you unpack it. Democrats are to blame for the emergency taking funding away from people, because Trump responded to their refusal to fund his wall by going around Congress!

To be as clear as possible, an elected member of that body is claiming other lawmakers in that body are at fault for Trump’s corrupt circumventing of them, because they represented their own constituents’ will, rather than give Trump what he demanded, to fund something Trump himself has privately admitted is all about giving his supporters something to chant about before reelection.

For me, there’s one simple fact: the Republicans held the entire Federal legislature for the first two years of Trump’s term. They failed to fund Trump’s wall.

Own it, McConnell. Stop being a child about the entire situation. Trump’s wall could have easily been funded, the Democrats couldn’t have done a thing about it. If you or former Speaker Ryan had a problem with it, then speak up. Explain yourself. Give up the whole political animal thing, because no one’s impressed with it.

The entire team politics excuse doesn’t work with the American people. How do we know this? I thought this Morning Consult poll to be quite interesting:

That’s an immense red disapproval line, and the Morning Consult verbiage seems to imply the data comes from Kentucky voters, not nation-wide.

Well, my cautious hope that maybe North Carolina could climb out of its toxic hell has been dashed.This is in connection with the NC GOP’s determination to override Governor Cooper’s budget, as noted earlier, Business Insider provides the basic story:

Republicans in the North Carolina House of Representatives stunned their Democratic colleagues on Wednesday by holding a surprise vote and passing a controversial budget while many of its members were absent.

The Republicans overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the state budget with a 55-9 vote, while colleagues were absent from the floor during a 9/11 memorial ceremony.

To override the governor’s veto, the Republicans needed to secure a three-fifths majority vote among those present. Local news outlets reported that Republicans in the state had been trying for months to override Cooper’s veto and seized an opportunity on a morning typically set aside to honor the 2,977 people killed in the 9/11 attacks 18 years ago. …

Democrats also said they were tricked by Republicans into believing there would be no vote in their absence. House Minority Leader Darren Jackson said at a press conference that the House rules committee chairman told him the chamber would hold no recorded votes on the floor until 1 p.m.

No doubt, the NC GOP is congratulating itself on its cleverness. But there are always consequences to doing mischief, and a reader sent me to the Charlotte Observer’s, in which the editorial on the matter says it all:

NC Republicans’ shameless theft of democracy

Another reader sent me this link to a video of North Carolina educators reacting to the GOP’s maneuver.

The NC GOP seems to have either made a bet with itself that handing a barrel of tar and feathers to the NC Democrats is not dangerous, or they simply executed this risky maneuver because they’re fixated on their goal of overriding the veto.

And why is it risky? These are at least two-fold:

1. They’ve signaled that they are untrustworthy in future politics. Why should the Democrats try to work with them when they become the majority party? And why should the citizenry of North Carolina consider them to be an honorable party, even the Republican voters? The date of 9/11 has been made into a virtual sacred national day, like it or hate it; the use of it in this underhanded way brands every North Carolina GOP legislator who voted for it as dishonorable and untrustworthy.
2. They may think they’re pro-business, but their very underhandedness signals to the business world that they cannot be trusted. Sure, some businesses will approve, but those businesses run by wise professionals who have a holistic outlook on the future will take one look at this maneuver and write North Carolina off their list of probable places to work.

The North Carolina Republicans seem to be startlingly blind, which, I am forced to admit, marks them as a bunch of second- and third-raters.

Which is a phrase I use depressingly often for one of the country’s major political parties.

[h/t Arts Editor, RWK]

While reading a Pro-Publica article on Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, this bit put me in mind of the activities of the Soviets and their notorious relation-of-convenience with the truth:

Parscale and his fees have attracted an unusual amount of attention, but they’re only part of the story. He has also spearheaded what appears to be the Trump campaign’s takeover of the RNC to the benefit of the president — and the seeming detriment of other Republican candidates. Other presidents have consolidated control over their party; similar criticisms were made of Barack Obama. But the extent of Trump’s takeover is unprecedented, according to experts. They say it inflicted damage on Republican congressional candidates in the 2018 elections, and could do so again in 2020.

One previously unreported example: Since Trump’s election in 2016, critical “voter scores” — sophisticated polling-based analytics that the RNC provides to party committees and candidates — have conspicuously omitted an essential detail for any down-ballot race: how voters in specific states and congressional districts feel about Trump. Republican insiders believe these analytics are being withheld to try and prevent GOP candidates from publicly distancing themselves from the president or leaking unfavorable results that embarrass Trump.

Indeed, after V. Lenin, truth became merely another item to be manipulated, Pravda being both Russian for truth and the newspaper organ of the Soviet’s Communist Party, the one and only political party of the Soviet Union. It’s only competition – and it turned out to be deadly – was reality, which gave the lie to Soviet claims of crop harvests, when Soviet science and management failed.

Similarly, Trump’s campaign organization is carefully ensuring Trump remains top dog in all possible ways, because that’s his basic ego-requirement and how he discourages challengers to his supremacy. He cannot simply order their deaths, as did Leader Stalin, but he can leave them in the dark.

Or so he wishes. The crucial difference between Trump and the Soviet Union is that he cannot control the free press. He can denigrate it, he can accuse it of lying, but the fact of the matter is that he does not control the information for the entire American population. He endeavours to keep his base in their little cocoon of Fox News, but, like the Soviet Union, reality has begun intruding in the form of poor farm exports and former Republican members blaring out their displeasure for Trump.

Thus, we’re seeing the very long slide of the Republican Party continue. We can trace it back to when it was the Party of Lincoln, the home of slavery abolitionists, and the home of the victorious President in the Civil War that resulted in the abolition of slavery. As the decades passed since then, though, the South had its revenge on the Republicans via Nixon’s Southern Strategy, which brought in former and current KKK members and the like, debasing the party until the Democrats, once home to the pro-slavery Fire-Eaters, became the leading Civil Rights major political party.

The Republicans, who long touted themselves as the redoubtable anti-Soviet party of the American political system, now find their leadership now imitating Soviet practices: information control, equality of falsehoods to truth, and the naked pursuit of power over justice. I don’t think we’re about to see them spouting rhetoric espousing the nationalization of various industries; I believe the tactics of political dominance are neutral as to the political system using them, even as they are diagnostic of the pathological, or evil, nature.

I think and hope it’ll end just as badly for them. The deceptions are stomach-turning, even as they deceive each other. And I can’t imagine how they can degrade themselves next, unless we catch Jerry Falwell, Jr. actually frenching Satan. Gak.

There were two special elections in North Carolina for seats in the House of Representatives. The first was to replace the late Walter Jones (R), and resulted in the Republicans retaining the seat in a convincing victory, roughly in line with previous Republican victories.

The second special election was also a victory for the Republicans in NC-9, but this was something of a nail-biter as Republican Dan Bishop beat Dan McCready by only 2 percentage points. This special election was compelled when the NC Election Board refused, unanimously, to certify the election, due to apparent election skullduggery.

Typically, Republican victories in NC-9 are quite a bit larger, although one must account for normal incumbency advantages; in 2018, the incumbent, Robert Pittenger, had been defeated in the GOP primary by Mark Harris, who saw his victory set aside by the Election Board and refused to run again.

However, we can balance that with the fact that President Trump came to North Carolina and held a rally for Bishop. For all that this is typically a strongly Republican district, and Trump came to rally the base, Bishop won by only two points.

I’m tempted to add this to the latest Gallup Presidential Approval poll results, which are certainly not encouraging for Trump. However, without more evidence of a downward slide, it’s an overreach to proclaim that Trump’s popularity is in permanent decline. I think he’s dying of a thousand cuts, as the electorate has discovered that running the country based on appearances, with little regard for the meat and potatoes, results in emotional fatigue and general disfavor.

But Trump has awakened the moral warriors of both the left and the right. By this I don’t mean the cultural warriors of the last three or four decades, who cry out about abortion, sexuality, and other matters, with the purpose of using them to manipulate voters. Rather, I’m talking about folks such as Warren on the left and Sanford on the right, people who may have strong principles, but also recall that governance is a serious matter in which compromise is often an honorable procedure, not a surrender to an enemy.

This awakening, the shining of light into the dank corners of both Parties in search of those who are self-dealing and unserious about governance, may be the most important result of Trump’s time in office. His ghastly depiction of how corruption doesn’t serve the interests of the nation is an important part of the national story.

President Trump has acquired a third challenger in the GOP Presidential primary: Former South Carolina governor and Representative Mark Sanford. Governor Sanford acquired notoriety during his stint in the South Carolina governor’s seat for disappearing for a couple of weeks, claiming he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, when in actuality the married man was visiting a paramour in Argentina.

He refused to resign when the scandal became public, but termed out of office in 2011.

Governor Sanford had been a member of the House of Representatives prior to being Governor, and after being a governor, he returned to the House in a 2013 special election. He left the House when he was defeated in the 2018 primary; the general election was then promptly lost by the Trumpist who beat him, Katie Arrington, to a Democrat in a district that had been reliably Republican for years.

Clearly, Sanford has plenty of experience with both ups and downs. His TrumpScore?

Indeed, his criticisms and disagreements of President Trump were widely credited with his failure in the primary. The Party of Trump is unable to tolerate critiques of their Great Leader.

President Trump’s intra-party approval rating is 88%. Nevada, South Carolina, Kansas, and Arizona GOP parties have canceled their nominating contests, giving Trump early, automatic victories. So why is Sanford running?

Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (R) announced exclusively on Fox News Sunday that he will challenge President Trump in the Republican primary. #FNS #FoxNews pic.twitter.com/2xwdSGpW0d

— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) September 8, 2019

From the Post & Courier of Charleston:

“I think we need to have a conversation on what it means to be a Republican. I think that as a Republican Party, we have lost our way,” Sanford said in his interview with Chris Wallace in Washington. …

He is basing his run on a warning that the Republican Party is at an “inflection point” after three years of the Trump presidency, though he is making attention to the ballooning national debt his focal point.

“We need to have a conversation about humility,” Sanford also said during the interview as he noted Trump’s penchant for commenting by tweet “is not leadership.”

Sanford does not have a realistic chance of winning at this stage of the game, although if Trump is forced to drop out, he, Walsh, and Weld are then in a commanding position relative to undeclared candidates such as VP Pence. Given Trump’s age and disturbing behavior, which hints at mental pathologies, this is not an unthinkable scenario.

But, on a deeper level, a flawed man may be bringing important questions to the Republicans, demanding by their very existence an answer. Both Trump and Sanford have committed adultery, so the offense can no longer be used as an excuse to ignore Sanford by the members of GOP; the sheer hypocrisy would cause meltdowns – or the sudden appearance of a laughing Satan.

Those questions won’t reach all of the Republican base; many will ignore Sanford as the not-Trump. There will be limited sympathies between Sanford and the base, as both his TrumpScore and his summarization by On The Issues illustrates. Here are the charts of Sanford and Trump:

Governor Sanford

President Trump

However, he’ll still be a voice of sanity and, perhaps, even morality for a political party that has become a debased ghost of what it was before the advent not of Trump, but of Gingrich and his crowd. He’ll keep pricking away, and we may see the more moderate edge of the Republican Party throw up its hands and sit this election out.

It appears the scientific segment of NOAA is firing back against the leadership for its being a lapdog of President Trump:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s acting chief scientist said in an email to colleagues Sunday that he is investigating whether the agency’s response to President Trump’s Hurricane Dorian tweets constituted a violation of NOAA policies and ethics. Also on Monday, the director of the National Weather Service broke with NOAA leadership over its handling of Trump’s Dorian tweets and statements.

In an email to NOAA staff that was obtained by The Washington Post, NOAA’s Craig McLean, called the agency’s response “political” and a “danger to public health and safety.” …

In his email to employees Sunday, McLean criticized his agency’s public statement, saying it prioritized politics over NOAA’s mission.

“The NWS Forecaster(s) corrected any public misunderstanding in an expert and timely way, as they should,” McLean wrote. “There followed, last Friday, an unsigned news release from ‘NOAA’ that inappropriately and incorrectly contradicted the NWS forecaster. My understanding is that this intervention to contradict the forecaster was not based on science but on external factors including reputation and appearance, or simply put, political.” [WaPo]

A statement greatly congruent with my own view, and kudos to McLean for pursuing the matter. For Jacobs, Roberts, and those who conspired with them to pervert the mission of the NWS and NOAA, this may be the first tone on the gong which will herald their exit in disgrace.

As I explained before, this was not some political incident which, while offending the political class, was essentially harmless. No, the NWS‘s services are far too valuable in safeguarding the food supply and, in extreme weather situations, lives directly. By perverting them, the citizens for which President Trump bears a responsibility are put collectively at risk. This is not a trivial change in risk – people taken by surprise by a hurricane tend to die, even in modern houses, because the resources to rescue and rebuild aren’t ready.

If Trump was an adult, he’d admit the error, apologize, and fire Jacobs, et al. But he won’t, because he’s a narcissist.

UPDATE: Jacobs did this in response to an order from Secretary Wilbur Ross. Nonetheless, I still believe Jacobs should resign for malpractice as a leader.

[Reposted after accidentally making it a tab]

Only the Shadow knows.

Except for completists, there’s only one good reason to watch Masters Of The Universe (1987).

And there it is. Now you don’t have to waste your time on this dreadful drek.

I must admit I found this report of changes in elephant behavior by Bill Andrews on D-brief fascinating:

Elephants might be popular in zoos and older kids’ TV shows, but they’re not doing so great in the wild. Asian elephants are classified as endangered, thanks in large part to human activity. But the big beasts are brainy, and they’re trying apparently trying new things in the face of these changing conditions to survive and even thrive.

At least, that’s what a team of Indian researchers describes in a Scientific Reports paper today. They observed groups of adolescent male elephants — which typically live in mixed-sex communities while young, and wander off to lead solitary lives as adults — form and stay in groups to help face the increased risks of modern life. This new behavior was most common in the most dangerous areas, and actually helped the grouped elephants grow into stronger, fitter adults. The authors say it’s just one more way animals are adapting to a changing world – not (solely) with genetics and evolution, but simply by altering their activity.

I mean, it makes sense. While once, adolescent males could just wander off on their own and expect a relatively low-risk environment, nowadays “movement into unknown habitats in search of food, water and other elephants, may become maladaptive,” the authors write. All the more so in human-dominated areas such as farms and cropland.

I don’t really have anything to say, except that it appears that elephants are finding ways to prolong what appears to be their inevitable extinction. And it’s electrifying to see evolution in action.

It appears leaving comments only appears when reading posts one at a time. If you want to comment on something reading from the home page, click on the title of the post and scroll to the bottom.

How does this not result in the resignation of the entire NOAA “political” leadership?

Nearly a week before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publicly backed President Trump over its own scientists, a top NOAA official warned its staff against contradicting the president.

In an agencywide directive sent Sept. 1 to National Weather Service personnel, hours after Trump asserted, with no evidence, that Alabama “would most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” staff was told to “only stick with official National Hurricane Center forecasts if questions arise from some national level social media posts which hit the news this afternoon.”

They were also told not to “provide any opinion,” according to a copy of the email obtained by The Washington Post.

A NOAA meteorologist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution said the note, understood internally to be referring to Trump, came after the National Weather Service office in Birmingham contradicted Trump by tweeting Alabama would “NOT see any impacts from the hurricane.” …

Late Friday afternoon, NOAA officials further angered scientists within and beyond the agency by releasing a statement, attributed to an unnamed agency spokesperson, supporting Trump’s claims on Alabama and chastising the agency’s Birmingham meteorologists for speaking in absolutes.

That statement set off a firestorm among scientists, who attacked NOAA officials for bending to Trump’s will. [WaPo]

Perverting the mission of NOAA or the National Weather Service is not a misdemeanor, if I may draw an analogy, but a major felony. What’s the next step down this path? To misrepresent a foul weather forecast because the President made some sort of off-hand remark that Cannot Be Contradicted?

What if defending a President who is showing more definite signs of dementia and narcissism costs citizens their lives?

Acting NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs was involved in drawing up the statement as was the NOAA director of public affairs, Julie Kay Roberts, who has experience in emergency management and worked on the president’s campaign.

There’s the names you need, at least to begin with. Write your Representative and Senators. This behavior is unacceptable and must stop. The best way is to force out those who indulge in it.

I’ve decided to permit direct permit comments to posts for a while. Or at least I think I have.

The climate gas numbers continue to worry, as NewScientist succinctly summarizes:

Levels of a powerful greenhouse gas jumped again last year, continuing a surge in the past few years that researchers still cannot fully explain.

Atmospheric concentrations of methane climbed by 10.77 parts per billion in 2018, the second highest annual increase in the past two decades, according to provisional data released recently by US agency NOAA.

Methane is a shorter-lived but much more powerful greenhouse than carbon dioxide. The amount finding its way from human and natural sources, which can include everything from oil and gas wells to wetlands, has been rising since 2007. The rate has accelerated in the past four years.

Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway University of London says researchers are very worried about the latest rise. Perhaps even more concerning is the fact no one is entirely sure what is driving the trend.

“The disturbing aspect is, we do not know which processes are responsible for methane increasing as rapidly as it is,” says Ed Dlugokencky of the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NOAA supplies these charts:

Of course, if you don’t know what’s causing the rise, it becomes more difficult to treat the problem. Sure, we might find some technology that’ll suck up the methane and dispose of it, but odds are it’d be easier to deal with at the source. It’s rather like mustard gas: do you want to fix the lungs of the victims, or do you want to just not produce and use it in the first place?

Subjugation:

1. : to bring under control and governance as a subject : CONQUER
2. : to make submissive : SUBDUE [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Before 1619, there was 1526: The mystery of the first enslaved Africans in what became the United States,” Gillian Brockell, WaPo/Retropolis:

Spanish explorers brought 100 slaves to a doomed settlement in South Carolina or Georgia. Within weeks, the subjugated revolted, then vanished.

Naked? Sure. Erotic? Uh-uh. And what the hell happened to the mongoose he sent in first? I thought it would WIN the battle with the snake! Not become a bloody corpse!

It was a strange marriage, that of a moderately well-plotted and acted movie, and its wretched special-effects. Nor did they appear to embrace each other in The Lair Of The White Worm (1988). This is the story of a divine horror from a thousand years ago, its devoted, immortal attendant, and the people of today’s Ireland who are caught in its foul legend. It also reaches for eroticism, but I fear that I, at least, found those scenes supposedly erotic were ridiculous, repulsive, or so completely incoherent that it was just a question of checking my watch to see how much more time was left in this doubtful horror, wondering where this was going, and how the actors possibly kept a straight face during some of the more ludicrous scenes.

And, sadly, the last scene is sorely predictable, which is really too bad because it embodies a contradiction as it was played out in this story. If the storytellers had been thinking, however, they could have made it far more interesting than it turned out. Yes, sure, the nurse gave you the wrong test tube and you merely injected a saline solution, rather than the anti-venom you thought you were injecting into yourself. But, think – despite being bitten, you didn’t become a lascivious zombie! The strength of placebos! No, you don’t have to go mad!

You destroyed a divinity and overcame its holy venom! What can it mean? Hahahahahahaha!

So, anyways, despite the competent acting and OK plotting, the special effects were wretched and the storytellers didn’t really go organic. Too bad. But, yeah, that really was Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi.

Deb thinks it’s a moccasin plant.

It’s almost drearily obvious to the paranoid that Boris Johnson, one of the obstinate leaders of Brexit, must be a Russian asset. Not only is the disruption of European trade and military alliances which Brexit will bring on be to Russia’s advantage, but there are two other factors. First, as has been noted numerous times, Trump, himself a suspected Russian asset, is a big booster of Johnson:

Trump has been a Johnson champion for a long time. The president undercut May at every opportunity and boosted Johnson whenever he could. Johnson has seemed his kind of politician — reckless, irreverent, disruptive, not a detail person.

Through Vice President Pence, who met with Johnson on Thursday in London, Trump sent a message of support, for Britain leaving the European Union and for the prospect of a new trading agreement between the two nations that supposedly share a special relationship. “Fantastic,” Johnson said to Pence, while noting that negotiations could be difficult, which was hardly an understatement. [Dan Balz, WaPo]

For the paranoid, dabbling in disruptive politics of our closest ally is a telling sign for Trump’s potential allegiance. The other red flag^[1]? Johnson is not the best of the best, as classmate Andrew Sullivan observed a few weeks ago:

Boris was so posh it was funny. At least that’s how I saw it. And what marked him as different from the other Etonians was his decision to embrace this, and make fun of himself in the process. Others came rather insecure about their privilege and played it down — think of fellow Etonian David Cameron who decided to call himself “Dave.” Not Boris. Alongside party-boy Darius Guppy and Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother, he reveled in it. As sitting president, I did my small part to help him gain his footing, despite a certain amount of class resentment I’m not really proud of. …

This reputation hurt Boris in hunting for votes to be president of the Oxford Union, and he lost the first time around to someone called Neil Sherlock who was a nerdy state school kid. Legend has it Johnson kept reinventing himself politically and playing down his Toryism and poshness — with the help of then-student Frank Luntz, believe it or not — and eventually it worked and he won. I have to say I found him hugely entertaining, and great company, but could never really take him seriously. He has a first-class wit but a second-class mind and got a second-class degree. If you want to measure the quality of his scholarship, check out his deeply awful biography of Churchill, a thinly veiled attempt to redescribe his own career as a Second Coming of Winston.

Johnson and Trump are alike in that they have always been deeply ambitious, but, to use Sullivan’s spot-on adjective, second-raters – their eyes bigger than their stomachs, as it were. Such people are meat and potatoes for master manipulators, and whether it’s Putin himself, or some back-room Russian guru, I think we’re seeing a public display of the lengths to which people such as Trump and Johnson will go to be thought of as in the first rank.

Even when they don’t deserve it, and will wreck everything around them doing it.

¹ Forgive the pun. If you’re too young to understand, in a previous national incarnation, the Russians were known as “the Reds,” due to the color of the flag of the Soviet Union.

My Arts Editor happened across this news:

The E-type appears to have a lot of body types to pick from, so it’ll be interesting to see if it’ll be the one in the ad, above, or another. Long time readers will recall our own advocacy for Chevrolet to put out 1950s Corvettes replicas with electric innards.

Wouldn’t that be delicious in the garage if Chevy could give it a 200 mile range?