https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/oct/11/victims-of-hurricane-michael-voted-for-climate-deniers
John Abraham
Thu 11 Oct 2018 06.00 EDT
Last modified on Thu 11 Oct 2018 20.28 EDT
Floridians are staring down a very powerful Category 4 typhoon (2 mph less than a Category 5) that is causing extensive damage. The high winds, heavy rains, and storm surge will cost billions of dollars.
We know that climate change is making these storms stronger. The storms feed off of warm ocean waters, and those waters are much warmer now because of climate change. I have written about the science in more detail here and here. But basically, Michael strengthened because it passed over really warm waters. Waters that were hotter because of human-caused warming.
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It is a wonder that a state like Florida, which will get pummeled by Michael, could vote for someone that denies climate change. Think of how backwards the situation is – the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has reportedly been banned from using the terms “climate change” and “global warming”. This policy reportedly went into effect when Florida elected a science denier, Rick Scott, to governor.
Rick Scott has been condemned by people in Florida for his backward stance. It is climate denial like his that has contributed to the suffering of residents in the state.
It’s not that my colleagues haven’t tried to help Governor Scott understand how his policies hurt his state. A few years ago, scientists met with him and urged him to take climate change seriously. He remained silent.
It isn’t that the local media hasn’t tried. Major newspapers have called upon Rick Scott to take action on climate change. But to little avail. Maybe it’s because Rick Scott invests in companies that oppose climate change regulations?
It isn’t that his political opponents haven’t tried. Recently, Florida Democrats petitioned Rick Scott to acknowledge climate change.
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Rick Scott isn’t the only politician from the state of Florida to reject science and diminish climate change. Senator Marco Rubio has as well.
Florida voters could put an end to this nonsense. In the current race for state Governor to succeed Scott, Republican candidate Ron DeSantis is ignoring science. He recently claimed that climate change is not an issue for states to mitigate. Say what?
•••••
But it’s not just Florida; there are other states getting hit by Hurricane Michael that are also led by climate deniers. For instance, Georgia will be hit by Hurricane Michael. One of the senators there, David Perdue, congratulated President Trump when he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord. Georgia’s other Senator, Johnny Isakson also denies the science. He too supported President Trump’s reckless actions.
•••••
Climate deniers will try to say this article is gleeful about a hurricane. It is not. First of all, this hurricane and all hurricanes that hit land can cause death and destruction. I pray that people heed warnings and get out of the way. I hope people stay safe, regardless of their understanding of climate change and its effect on storms.
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Second, elections have consequences and if we as a society want to create a better world and reduce climate change, we have to vote for people who understand science, who believe in facts. Climate deniers are making these storms worse by stopping action on climate change. What the hell do we expect to happen when the deniers are writing the laws?
Third, for those who say “taking action on climate is too expensive”, how about you add up the worldwide costs of climate inaction over the past decade. My response to you is, it’s too costly to do nothing.
•••••
Finally, climate change is only starting. It will continue to get worse and worse. And that means storms will get worse, droughts will get deeper, flooding more severe, and the costs will go up. What we are seeing now and what we’ve seen over the past decade is just a small taste to come of what the future will bring if we don’t take this problem seriously.
Good luck Florida and Georgia. My thoughts are with you. See you on the other side.
tags: extreme weather, severe weather
Friday, October 12, 2018
Links
We are told it would would hurt the economy to avoid global warming. I guess we can see their point in the results of hurricanes Florence and Michael, which happened less than a month apart. Just think of the extra business hospitals and rescue workers got. Think of all the business there will be for people to clean up the mess, and repair and rebuild. Do we really want to give up this aid to the economy. Do we really want to deprive undertakers of extra work?
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/10/yes-downpours-are-getting-more-intense/
Oct. 10, 2018
If you’ve noticed that torrential rain storms are getting more common, you’re right.
Andreas Prein of the National Center for Atmospheric Research says the amount of rain that falls during the most intense storms is increasing all over the country. The change is most extreme in northeastern states …
Prein: “… where we have up to seventy percent higher intensities of rainfall than we had fifty years ago.”
One of the reasons is that warmer air can hold more evaporated water. So as temperatures increase, clouds can hold more moisture, which means more water can fall in a single storm.
And with more intense storms comes an increased risk of flash floods, which can threaten lives and damage property.
[Also warm water evaporates faster.]
tags: extreme weather, severe weather
https://www.vox.com/2018/2/16/17021420/russia-indictments-mueller-elections-race-voter-fraud-police-violence
Feb. 16, 2018
An indictment filed Friday by the special counsel to investigate Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election shows the lengths a Russian troll farm went to inflame racial tensions, operating several social accounts that intended to discourage African-Americans from voting in an election shaped largely by racial issues.
In all, 13 Russian nationals and three companies were formally accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election. According to a 37-page document released Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller, Russian operatives working for the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency used several social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — including ones called “Woke Blacks” and “Blacktivists” — to urge Americans to vote for third-party candidates or sit out the election entirely.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Not Just CO2: These Climate Pollutants Also Must Be Cut to Keep Global Warming to 1.5 Degrees
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07102018/ipcc-global-warming-science-report-short-lived-climate-pollutants-methane-hfcs-carbon
By Phil McKenna
Oct. 7, 2018
Countries won't be able to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, considered by some scientists and policymakers to be the "safe" limit of climate change, without immediate and rapid reductions in a wide range of greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide, according to a new United Nations report.
The report, released Oct. 8 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sums up the research into how 1.5°C of warming will affect the world and how global warming can most effectively be stopped.
The planet has already warmed about 1°C since the start of the industrial era, and that's likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if emissions continue at their current rate, the IPCC says. It describes how recent warming has been accompanied by a trend toward more intense and frequent climate, temperature and weather extremes, and how those risks will rise with the temperature.
The warming can be stopped, the IPCC writes in its summary for policymakers. Doing so will require countries to reduce global net emissions of carbon dioxide to zero by around 2050 and to also significantly reduce short-lived climate pollutants, including methane, black carbon and hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.
That emphasis on reducing short-lived climate pollutants, which are many times more potent than CO2 but don't last as long in the atmosphere, is stronger than what has been written into past international agreements.
That's partly because, with the clock running out before the world busts through its carbon budget, curtailing short-lived pollutants can buy valuable time.
•••••
Groups that are encouraging reducing short-lived climate pollutants emphasize that doing so reduces health hazards at the same time. For example, black carbon, also known as soot, can damage the lungs and cause heart problems, particularly for people who live or work around sources of it, such as diesel engines or wood- or coal-burning cookstoves.
"If you reduce things like black carbon emissions from the tailpipes of vehicles, for example, you are providing these important air quality improvement benefits which is going to help local populations as well," said Katherine Ross, an associate with the World Resources Institute's Climate Program.
•••••
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/410590-scotus-wont-hear-appeal-of-greenhouse-gas-case-ruled-on-by
By Miranda Green - 10/09/18 02:14 PM EDT
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a lawsuit challenging a lower court ruling written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The decision to pass on the case, announced during Kavanaugh’s first day as an associate justice, means the Supreme Court will not consider the lower court's August 2017 ruling that struck down an Obama-era regulation pertaining to a greenhouse gas. Kavanaugh did not participate in the Supreme Court's decision on whether to take up the case.
Kavanaugh authored the ruling that overturned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule on hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), commonly found in air conditioners and refrigerators. He argued that the federal government did not have the jurisdiction to regulate the gas under the Clean Air Act.
•••••
By Phil McKenna
Oct. 7, 2018
Countries won't be able to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, considered by some scientists and policymakers to be the "safe" limit of climate change, without immediate and rapid reductions in a wide range of greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide, according to a new United Nations report.
The report, released Oct. 8 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sums up the research into how 1.5°C of warming will affect the world and how global warming can most effectively be stopped.
The planet has already warmed about 1°C since the start of the industrial era, and that's likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if emissions continue at their current rate, the IPCC says. It describes how recent warming has been accompanied by a trend toward more intense and frequent climate, temperature and weather extremes, and how those risks will rise with the temperature.
The warming can be stopped, the IPCC writes in its summary for policymakers. Doing so will require countries to reduce global net emissions of carbon dioxide to zero by around 2050 and to also significantly reduce short-lived climate pollutants, including methane, black carbon and hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.
That emphasis on reducing short-lived climate pollutants, which are many times more potent than CO2 but don't last as long in the atmosphere, is stronger than what has been written into past international agreements.
That's partly because, with the clock running out before the world busts through its carbon budget, curtailing short-lived pollutants can buy valuable time.
•••••
Groups that are encouraging reducing short-lived climate pollutants emphasize that doing so reduces health hazards at the same time. For example, black carbon, also known as soot, can damage the lungs and cause heart problems, particularly for people who live or work around sources of it, such as diesel engines or wood- or coal-burning cookstoves.
"If you reduce things like black carbon emissions from the tailpipes of vehicles, for example, you are providing these important air quality improvement benefits which is going to help local populations as well," said Katherine Ross, an associate with the World Resources Institute's Climate Program.
•••••
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/410590-scotus-wont-hear-appeal-of-greenhouse-gas-case-ruled-on-by
By Miranda Green - 10/09/18 02:14 PM EDT
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a lawsuit challenging a lower court ruling written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The decision to pass on the case, announced during Kavanaugh’s first day as an associate justice, means the Supreme Court will not consider the lower court's August 2017 ruling that struck down an Obama-era regulation pertaining to a greenhouse gas. Kavanaugh did not participate in the Supreme Court's decision on whether to take up the case.
Kavanaugh authored the ruling that overturned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule on hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), commonly found in air conditioners and refrigerators. He argued that the federal government did not have the jurisdiction to regulate the gas under the Clean Air Act.
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Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Links
I live in a northern suburb of Atlanta, GA. Rain is coming down hard here, fortunately not high winds. Hoping we don't get a repeat of the tropical storm winds as we had from Irma last year. Looking at the devastation from Hurricane Michael, I feel a combination of anguished sorrow and intense anger, like one feels at the suffering of a loved one whose actions caused their own suffering. The people in the areas being hit worst have been denying climate disruption and voting for people who have blocked action on it. And I don't expect the two hurricanes that have recently devastated the southeast U.S. will change many people's minds. I hope I'm wrong.
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Michael-Slams-Georgia-Fierce-Wind-Torrential-Rain
Oct. 10, 2018
One important reason Michael got so strong is that very warm water (around 29°C or 84°F) extended to some depth across the Gulf and extended all the way up to the northern Gulf Coast, a rarity for mid-October. More typically, at least one or two cold fronts have chilled the waters just off the Florida Panhandle coast by this point. Florida just experienced the warmest September in its history, a sign of the overall atmospheric and oceanic warmth that’s prevailed across the region over the last few weeks.
As human-produced greenhouse gases continue to warm our climate, it’s reasonable to assume that waters warm enough to support an intense hurricane will be present over larger areas and over longer stretches of the season. Michael came ashore more than a month later in the season than all six of the previous strongest mainland hurricanes in U.S. history (as measured by central pressure at landfall). Many studies have shown that we can expect an increasing proportion of Earth’s hurricanes to reach intense levels as the climate warms. In addition, at least one study has found that hurricanes and other tropical cyclones have tended to intensify more rapidly over the last 30 years.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/by-the-numbers-michael-becomes-most-intense-hurricane-to-ever-strike-florida-panhandle/70006313
October 10, 2018, 9:49:38 PM EDT
On Wednesday afternoon, Hurricane Michael became one of the most intense hurricanes to ever strike the United States as it unleashed catastrophic winds and storm surge across the Florida Panhandle.
Hurricane Michael was just shy of Category 5 status when it made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida, with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph and even higher wind gusts.
The minimum central pressure is another way to measure the intensity of a hurricane. The lower the pressure, the more intense the storm.
When Michael made landfall, it had a minimum central pressure of 27.13 inches of mercury. This makes it the 3rd-most intense US land-falling hurricane with a pressure lower than Katrina and Andrew.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/09/australian-government-backs-coal-defiance-ipcc-climate-warninghttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/09/australian-government-backs-coal-defiance-ipcc-climate-warning
Oct. 8, 2018
The Australian government has rejected the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report’s call to phase out coal power by 2050, claiming renewable energy cannot replace baseload coal power.
The deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said Australia should “absolutely” continue to use and exploit its coal reserves, despite the IPCC’s dire warnings the world has just 12 years to avoid climate change catastrophe.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/04/this-drought-is-different-its-drier-and-hotter-and-getting-worse
Oct. 3, 2018
'This drought is different': it's drier and hotter – and getting worse
On the land and in the towns across Australia they’re affected to varying degrees; some find it harder to cope. But they all agree something has changed
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/10/solar-powered-drug-tunnel-discovered-on-mexican-border-with-california
Oct. 10, 2018
US and Mexican authorities have discovered an incomplete cross-border drug smuggling tunnel complete with a rail track and a solar-powered lighting and ventilation system.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/10/10/why-are-teachers-europe-paid-so-much-better-than-united-states/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.422fc4567800
Oct. 10, 2018
Why are teachers in Europe paid so much better than those in the United States?
But to observers in Europe, the mere existence of the U.S. debate has appeared rather strange at times — if not downright tragic. On both sides of the Atlantic, the vast majority of people tend to agree that teachers are important — and that they deserve to be paid well.
And yet, somehow, the wages of American teachers — unlike anyone else in the top ranks of that list — have dropped over the past decade. That’s a long way from similarly wealthy European nations such as Germany, for example, where teachers are among the nation’s top earners and can make more money than Web developers or sometimes even entry-level doctors. Besides the United States, no other developed country has such a large gap between salaries paid to teachers and to professionals with similar degrees. In fact, according to a recent OECD study, teachers' salaries have increased almost everywhere else since 2005.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the fading competitiveness of the teaching profession is manifesting itself in recruitment and quality. According to a poll from May, fewer Americans consider a career in teaching to be the right choice for their children, mainly because of low pay. Public schools are facing a staffing crisis, and the drop in competitiveness will make it worse.
Regardless of gender, two-thirds of Americans think that the country’s teachers are underpaid. And as far as Western Europe is concerned, that view is more than justified.
Tuesday, October 09, 2018
Links
https://qz.com/1414238/secret-amazon-brands-are-quietly-taking-over-amazon-com/
Oct. 5, 2018
Secret Amazon brands are quietly taking over Amazon.com
By Alison GriswoldOctober 5, 2018
Arabella. Lark & Roe. Mae. NuPro. Small Parts.
You might not know it from their names, but these brands all belong to Amazon.
[Conservatives will be happy the limo company was not constrained by regulations that might decrease their profits.]
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/10/08/limo-crash-new-york-victim-texted-van-terrible-condition/1563414002/
Oct. 8, 2018
One of the victims of the upstate New York limousine crash that killed all 18 aboard had texted concerns about the "terrible condition" of the limo less than 20 minutes before tragedy struck, her aunt says.
The limo failed inspection last month and the driver didn't have appropriate license to operate the vehicle, New York Gov. Cuomo said Monday.
Cuomo said the limousine, owned by Prestige Limousine, didn't have the necessary federal certification to operate and failed a state inspection just last month. The vehicle was "not supposed to be on the road," he said.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/04/health/parenting-food-drayer/index.html
Oct. 4, 2018
Of the four parental 'feeding styles,' only one is good for kids' health, experts say
https://thehill.com/policy/international/410555-us-student-detained-at-israel-over-support-of-palestinian-led-boycott
Oct. 9, 2018
An American student has been detained at an Israeli airport for more than a week due to her past support for a boycott against the country.
Lara Alqasem arrived at Israeli’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Oct. 2, but was blocked from entering the country, The Washington Post reported Monday.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/global-warming-what-you-can-do-to-help/
Oct. 9, 2018
So are there practical ways we can help limit the warming? According to New York Times international climate reporter Somini Sengupta, the answer is yes:
Drive less, try to carpool or use public transit instead
Buy less clothing, as apparel and footwear industries contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, or buy vintage and clothes made from recycled fabric
Replace air conditioners and refrigerators with ones that save energy and reduce hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)
Have less demand for products that lead to deforestation including meat, timber, soy, and palm oil
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/climate-change-what-you-can-do-campaigning-installing-insulation-solar-panels
Oct. 8, 2018
Overwhelmed by climate change? Here's what you can do
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/nation-now/2018/10/09/kavanaugh-classmate-fbi-investigation-joke-clumn/1575930002/
Oct. 9, 2018
Kavanaugh Yale classmate: The FBI investigation was a joke. I tried to help and was ignored.
Many of us who lived in Lawrance Hall during 1983-1984 approached the FBI last week offering help with its inquiries. I promised a list of names of people who may have attended the party at which Ramirez claims to have been assaulted. The FBI never returned my call. Based on what has now been revealed about the FBI report, I do not believe that the FBI contacted people on that list.
Other classmates had far more valuable information to provide. One can corroborate that he heard about the incident with Ramirez right after it occurred from a classmate. The FBI never returned his calls, either. A theologian at one of our nation’s leading universities, he did not “search and destroy.” He just wanted a proper look at the allegations so that we all could reach our own conclusions on the basis of facts, not hearsay and partisan mudslinging.
A proper FBI investigation might have put Americans’ worries to rest. But Young and his GOP buddies made sure that investigation never happened. And now they add insult to injury by attacking patriots who care about their country and one of its great institutional pillars, the Supreme Court.
https://www.businessinsider.com/christine-blasey-ford-cant-move-home-kavanaugh-testimony-death-threats-2018-10?utm_content=buffer04fb9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer-home
Oct. 8, 2018
Christine Blasey Ford's lawyers say she has still not been able to return to her home because of the "unending" death threats she has continued to receive after testifying against Brett Kavanaugh, who was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice over the weekend.
Ford addressed the harassment against her in prepared remarks to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she said: "My family and I have been the target of constant harassment and death threats. I have been called the most vile and hateful names imaginable."
She added that she and her family had been forced to leave their home. "Since September 16, my family and I have been living in various secure locales, with guards," she said.
Ford said "my greatest fears have been realized — and the reality has been far worse than what I expected."
She said her work email account was hacked "and messages were sent out supposedly recanting my description of the sexual assault."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/christine-blasey-ford-attorneys-reveal-043956404.html
Oct. 6, 2018
Koegler had previously said in a sworn affidavit submitted in September that Ford, a Palo Alto University professor, told him about the alleged assault in 2016, around the time former Stanford University student Brock Turner was sentenced for raping an unconscious woman. He said she told him about it again three months ago in an email.
Koegler identified himself as a close friend of Ford and her husband, saying he has known them for more than five years and had coached their son’s baseball team.
Saturday, October 06, 2018
Links
Sen. Susan Collins speech about Kavanaugh was so full of lies and misleading half-truths, evidently under the control of McConnell, that she illustrated the reason several decent republicans have left the party because it has become so degraded.
https://theintercept.com/2018/10/04/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-confirmation-corporate-regulations/
Oct. 4, 2018
Business groups with interests before the U.S. Supreme Court have orchestrated a multifaceted campaign to pressure the Senate to swiftly confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the nation’s highest court. The advocacy reaches across the influence economy of Washington, D.C., with the largest corporate lobbying groups and billionaires working in concert with Republican operatives to elevate Kavanaugh to a lifetime posting atop the judiciary.
https://qz.com/1415990/read-letter-of-blasey-fords-witness-after-fbis-kavanaugh-probe/
Oct. 6, 2018
late last night, a letter addressed to the body from Keith Koegler, a friend of Christine Blasey Ford and one of her corroborating witnesses, was released, in which he urged senators “to do what is right.”
In it, Koegler said he and at least seven others who had known about the alleged sexual assault that occurred when Ford and Kavanaugh were in high school were not interviewed by the FBI as part of its investigation.
“The process by which the Senate Judiciary Committee has ‘investigated’ the facts relating to the assault has been a shameless effort to protect Judge Kavanaugh,” he wrote. “The fact that the FBI did not interview either Christine or Judge Kavanaugh, by itself, renders absurd any assertion that the investigation was ‘thorough.'”
Koegler had previously submitted a letter to the Senate on Sept. 24 detailing an email exchange between him and Ford, in which she named Kavanaugh as her alleged attacker—this occurred shortly after the announcement of justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the bench and more than a week before Trump named Kavanaugh as his Supreme Court pick.
[Read the full letter at the link.]
http://time.com/5416084/john-paul-stevens-brett-kavanaugh/
Oct. 4, 2018
Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said Thursday that he no longer believes Brett Kavanaugh is qualified for a seat on the Supreme Court because of his performance during last week’s confirmation hearings.
http://time.com/5415845/kavanaugh-fbi-investigation-witnesses/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/as-fbi-background-check-of-kavanaugh-nears-its-end-probe-appears-to-have-been-highly-curtailed/2018/10/03/2fa4e93e-c72f-11e8-9b1c-a90f1daae309_story.html?utm_term=.dccdc1d0095b
FBI did not interview dozens of people regarding Kavanaugh
[Why did the FDA have to be sued before they removed this stuff from our food? Let's hope the republican supreme court doesn't reverse this.]
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/06/655135633/fda-bans-use-of-7-synthetic-food-additives-after-environmental-groups-sue
Oct. 6, 2018
Ever heard of these food additives? Synthetically-derived benzophenone, ethyl acrylate, methyl eugenol, myrcene, pulegone, or pyridine?
These compounds can help mimic natural flavors and are used to infuse foods with mint, cinnamon and other flavors.
You've likely never seen them on food labels because food manufacturers are permitted to label them simply as "artificial flavors."
Now, the Food and Drug Administration has announced these compounds will no longer be allowed to be used as food additives. The FDA is giving manufacturers time to remove them from the food supply.
The decision comes in response to a petition brought by environmental and consumer groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Food Safety, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-05/how-is-donald-trump-profiting-from-the-presidency-let-us-count-the-ways
Mar. 5, 2018
Donald Trump is raking in big bucks from emoluments foreign and domestic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/donald-trump-reports-hes-getting-rich-off-the-presidency/530718/
June 16, 2017
Donald Trump Reports He’s Getting Rich as President
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/5/17940610/trump-hitler-history-historian
Oct. 5, 2018
Usually, comparisons between Donald Trump’s America and Nazi Germany come from cranks and internet trolls. But a new essay in the New York Review of Books pointing out “troubling similarities” between the 1930s and today is different: It’s written by Christopher Browning, one of America’s most eminent and well-respected historians of the Holocaust. In it, he warns that democracy here is under serious threat, in the way that German democracy was prior to Hitler’s rise — and really could topple altogether.
… So when Browning makes comparisons between the rise of Hitler and our current historical period, this isn’t some keyboard warrior spouting off. It is one of the most knowledgeable people on Nazism alive using his expertise to sound the alarm as to what he sees as an existential threat to American democracy.
The threat to the United States isn’t so much Trump alone as it is the breakdown in the practice of American democracy, and the Republican Party’s commitment to extreme tactics in pursuit of its policy goals in particular.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/11/18/16670576/dunning-kruger-effect-video
Nov. 18, 2017
Why incompetent people often think they’re actually the best
There’s a psychological phenomenon behind it: the Dunning-Kruger effect.
“When psychologists Dunning and [Justin] Kruger first described the effect in 1999, they argued that people lacking knowledge and skill in particular areas suffer a double curse. First, they make mistakes and reach poor decisions. But second, those same knowledge gaps also prevent them from catching their errors. In other words, poor performers lack the very expertise needed to recognize how badly they’re doing.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/07/21/a-rigorous-scientific-look-into-the-fox-news-effect/#346f3bf112ab
July 21, 2016
A Look Into The 'Fox News Effect'
In 2012, a Fairleigh Dickinson University survey reported that Fox News viewers were less informed about current events than people who didn't follow the news at all.
Thursday, October 04, 2018
Links
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/10/04/654107109/you-dont-have-to-pass-out-to-be-blackout-drunk
Oct. 4, 2018
You Don't Have To Pass Out To Be Blackout Drunk
A less confusing term might be "alcohol-induced amnesia." It can be total. Hours of experience and events can be totally missing from memory. Or it can be spotty. Either way, it can be hard to impossible for a bystander, or even the inebriated person, to know when it has happened.
Many people confuse the idea of a blackout with someone who's had so much to drink that they are unarousable — they're not awake and they don't know what's going on. That's not at all the case. A blackout is when you don't remember what happened. You can appear to be completely awake. An observer can't tell when someone is in the midst of not forming a memory.
The second common misconception is that having a blackout is characteristic of an alcohol use disorder more commonly called alcoholism — that you only have blackouts if you have an alcohol use disorder. And that's just not true.
https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/2018-10-02-two-category-five-at-once-hurricane-walaka-typhoon-kong-rey?cm_ven=wu_videos?cm_ven=hp-slot-1
Oct. 1, 2018
Hurricane Walaka and Super Typhoon Kong-rey attained Category 5 strength in the Pacific Ocean on Monday, marking the first time in 13 years two storms of that intensity have roamed the tropics simultaneously.
Walaka was deemed a Category 5 by the Central Pacific Hurricane Center at 8 p.m. EDT Monday while it was well to the southwest of Hawaii. Kong-rey hit this top rating on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale a few hours later at 11 p.m. EDT Monday, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/03/rescued-slave-thought-to-have-lived-in-a-shed-in-cumbria-for-40-years
Oct. 3, 2018
Specialist officers have rescued a potential modern slavery victim who is believed to have lived in a six-foot shed for 40 years.
An investigation is under way after the 58-year-old British man was found in the wooden structure, which contained just a chair and soiled bedding, at a residential site north of Carlisle in Cumbria.
A 79-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of modern slavery offences, while the victim was taken to be medically examined and assessed by specialist trauma officers.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/oct/03/kochs-conservative-patagonia-toilet-paper-interactive
Oct. 2018
You're funding the Koch brothers
The Koch brothers are planning to spend about $400m in the 2018 election cycle to advance their conservative and libertarian agenda, and are putting money behind 178 House candidates and 17 Senate candidates. Just one of the groups in their influence network, an advocacy outfit called Americans for Prosperity, has 500 paid staffers and nearly 3 million citizen activists nationwide.
The reason they can afford to do this is, in part, you. The Kochs own most of Koch Industries, an oil, gas and manufacturing behemoth with over 120,000 employees involved in the production of some unexpected consumer goods. Their interests are so multifarious, their reach so pervasive, that their organization has been branded the Kochtopus.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/sep/26/america-oligarchy-dominated-billionaires-big-money-series
America's super rich
Oct. 2018
{I have to say I see this in many of the Trump supporters I know personally.]
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/?utm_medium=social&utm_term=2018-10-03T20%3A43%3A10&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_source=facebook
Oct. 3, 2018
Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/27/17907312/warren-buffett-mark-zuckerberg-mark-cuban-frugal-billionaires
Sept. 27, 2018
The appealing myth of the frugal billionaire
People love stories about supposedly penny-pinching billionaires like Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg — even if they aren’t entirely true.
“I think wealthy people who care about feeling like they are morally worthy of their privilege and who want to be seen as normal are always using people like that as their foil,” Sherman said. “That’s something that they can say, ‘Well, we’re not that.’ By saying that, they’re often signaling, ‘Well, we’re wealthy, but we’re not the kind of wealthy that wants all the attention, that has this over-the-top taste.’ They sort of distance themselves from that.”
That also means downplaying their own spending habits. The families Sherman interviewed spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on private school tuition, home renovations, and lavish family vacations each year, but most of them continued to classify their spending as normal.
What the simple dichotomy between good rich people and bad rich people obscures is that even if wealthy people aren’t spending as much money as they could be, they’re still spending far more money than the average person. Mark Zuckerberg may be known for his minimalist hoodie-and-T-shirt wardrobe, but those hoodies are made of cashmere and cost $2,000
Lauding the wealthy for their thriftiness is also a way of blaming people for their own poverty.
Increasingly, conversations about wealth have shifted from how the wealthy spend their money to whether they should have that much money to spend, and how they accumulated that wealth in the first place. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently called out Jeff Bezos for amassing more and more wealth while Amazon warehouse employees make so little that they qualify for public assistance.
Where some people see a frugal billionaire who should be emulated, Sanders and others see an unconscionable hoarding of a fortune built on the backs of underpaid employees.
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/2018-arctic-sea-ice-ties-sixth-lowest-extent-record
Oct. 1, 2018
Arctic sea ice has likely reached its annual minimum for 2018, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Sea ice extent shrank to 1.77 million square miles (4.59 square kilometers) on September 19 and again on September 23. Since then, ice extent has grown again, signaling an end to the summer melt season.
While the 2018 ice extent was not as extreme as the record low set in September 2012, it tied both 2008 and 2010 for the sixth-lowest area since satellites began measuring sea ice nearly 40 years ago. The NSIDC reports that the 12 lowest Arctic sea ice minimums have all occurred in the last 12 years. This year's minimum also occurred nine days later than the normal date of September 14.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/04/climate-change-deforestation-global-warming-report
Oct. 4, 2018
The role of forests in combating climate change risks being overlooked by the world’s governments, according to a group of scientists that has warned halting deforestation is “just as urgent” as eliminating the use of fossil fuels.
Razing the world’s forests would release more than 3 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, more than the amount locked in identified global reserves of oil, coal and gas. By protecting and restoring forests, the world would achieve 18% of the emissions mitigation needed by 2030 to avoid runaway climate change, the group of 40 scientists, spanning five countries, said in a statement.
Wednesday, October 03, 2018
Links
Maybe it's their way of fighting global warming - reduce the population by mass poisoning. The fewer the people, the less pollution. Bet you didn't know how brilliant these people are.
https://apnews.com/6a573b6b020e453c90ecd5e84aa23f57
Oct. 2, 2018
The EPA is pursuing rule changes that experts say would weaken the way radiation exposure is regulated, turning to scientific outliers who argue that a bit of radiation damage is actually good for you — like a little bit of sunlight.
The government’s current, decades-old guidance says that any exposure to harmful radiation is a cancer risk. And critics say the proposed change could lead to higher levels of exposure for workers at nuclear installations and oil and gas drilling sites, medical workers doing X-rays and CT scans, people living next to Superfund sites and any members of the public who one day might find themselves exposed to a radiation release.
The Trump administration already has targeted a range of other regulations on toxins and pollutants, including coal power plant emissions and car exhaust, that it sees as costly and burdensome for businesses.
The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements reaffirmed that principle this year after a review of 29 public health studies on cancer rates among people exposed to low-dose radiation, via the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan in World War II, leak-prone Soviet nuclear installations, medical treatments and other sources.
Twenty of the 29 studies directly support the principle that even low-dose exposures cause a significant increase in cancer rates, said Roy Shore, chief of research at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a joint project of the United States and Japan. Scientists found most of the other studies were inconclusive and decided one was flawed.
None supported the theory there is some safe threshold for radiation, said Shore, who chaired the review.
If there were a threshold that it’s safe to go below, “those who profess that would have to come up with some data,” Shore said in an interview.
“Certainly the evidence did not point that way,” he said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toysrus-bankruptcy/toys-r-us-lenders-cancel-auction-plan-to-revive-brand-idUSKCN1MC2MJ
Oct. 2, 2018
The top lenders of Toys ‘R’ Us have decided to cancel the bankruptcy auction of its brand name and other intellectual property assets and instead plan to revive the Toys ‘R’ Us and Babies ‘R’ Us brand names, a court filing on Monday showed.
https://www.businessinsider.com/star-wars-the-last-jedi-criticism-linked-to-russian-trolls-and-bots-new-study-finds-2018-10
Oct. 2, 2018
Much of the "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" backlash came from Russian trolls — not fans — according to a new study.
Researcher Morten Bay wrote in a paper that there was "evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments."
Bay said much of the hatred for the film was politically motivated, a result of the Trump era.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/10/02/trump-unpopular-worldwide-views-u-s-historic-lows-poll-shows/1492940002/
Oct. 2, 2018
President Donald Trump is deeply unpopular across the globe, holding the most negative rating among five world leaders, according to a new poll conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
A median of 70 percent of respondents across 25 countries said they do not have confidence in Trump to do the right thing – a significantly higher disapproval rating than the leaders of Germany, France and China. Only Russian President Vladimir Putin came close, with 62 percent of the poll’s respondents saying they did not trust the former KGB agent.
It's not just Trump. Attitudes toward America are at historic lows around the world – from from Sweden to South Africa – with a median of 50 percent holding a favorable opinion of the U.S., compared to 43 percent who see the U.S. unfavorably. More people also say their own country’s diplomatic relationship with the U.S. has grown worse over the past year.
https://phys.org/news/2018-10-high-co2-thicken-worsen-climate.html#jCp
Oct. 1, 2018
Plant scientists have observed that when levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise, most plants do something unusual: They thicken their leaves.
And since human activity is raising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, thick-leafed plants appear to be in our future.
But the consequences of this physiological response go far beyond heftier leaves on many plants. Two University of Washington scientists have discovered that plants with thicker leaves may exacerbate the effects of climate change because they would be less efficient in sequestering atmospheric carbon, a fact that climate change models to date have not taken into account.
In a paper published Oct. 1 in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, the researchers report that, when they incorporated this information into global climate models under the high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels expected later this century, the global "carbon sink" contributed by plants was less productive—leaving about 5.8 extra petagrams, or 6.39 million tons, of carbon in the atmosphere per year. Those levels are similar to the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere each year due to human-generated fossil fuel emissions—8 petagrams, or 8.8 million tons.
https://mashable.com/article/trump-scary-time-for-men-america-reactions/#sG077xnReZqx
https:// mashable. com/article/trump-scary-time-for-men-america-reactions/#sG077xnReZqx
Oct. 2, 2018
A number of people also responded by calling attention to the Central Park Five, a group of five black and Latino teenagers wrongfully convicted of raping a woman in 1989. After they'd spent years in prison, someone else confessed to the crime and they were exonerated. Trump had initially advocated for their execution and refused to back down later, despite DNA evidence proving their innocence. Earlier this year he tweeted a remark about the importance of "due process," which was condemned by the exonerees.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/201802/dogs-and-guilt-we-simply-dont-know
Feb.9, 2018
Returning to dogs and guilt, to make the case that dogs don't feel guilt, Mr. Brennan cites the work of Dr. Alexandra Horowitz. He writes, "... according to Alexandra Horowitz, a dog-cognition expert at Barnard College, what we perceive as a dog’s guilty look is no sign of guilt at all." However, it may or may not be. As others and I have pointed out, there are persistent misrepresentations of a study she performed, the results of which were published in an essay titled "Disambiguating the 'guilty look': salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour." In her research Horowitz focused on whether or not humans are capable of detecting guilt in dogs, not whether dogs actually feel guilt. She discovered that we are not very good at reading guilt, but this does not mean they can't or don't feel guilt.
https://www.artba.org/2018/01/29/54000-american-bridges-structurally-deficient-analysis-new-federal-data-shows/
American Road and Transportation Builders Association
2018 Deficient Bridge Report
54,259 of the nation’s 612,677 bridges are rated “structurally deficient.”
Americans cross these deficient bridges 174 million times daily.
Average age of a structurally deficient bridge is 67 years, compared to 40 years for non-deficient bridges.
One in three (226,837) U.S. bridges have identified repair needs.
One in three (17,726) Interstate highway bridges have identified repair needs.
https://www.livescience.com/63348-insecticide-may-increase-autism-risk.html
Aug. 16, 2018
Pregnant women who have high levels of a byproduct from the banned insecticide DDT in their bodies may be more likely to have a child with autism, a new study finds.
Researchers looked at nearly 800 mothers from Finland who had children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and found that these women had higher levels of DDE, a byproduct of DDT, than did mothers whose children did not have ASD.
"Very likely, you need other predisposing factors [for autism] in addition to [DDE]," Brown told Live Science.
[The opt-out system would be immoral in the U.S. because poor people who couldn't afford an organ transplant if they needed one would be unlikely to opt-out.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2176819-an-opt-out-organ-donor-system-might-actually-lead-to-fewer-transplants/
Aug. 16, 2018
The impending “opt-out” system for organ donation in England may fail to boost transplant rates and could even lead to a fall in such life-saving operations.
Under the new rules, set to be introduced in 2020, everyone will be assumed to consent to donating their organs after death, unless they have proactively signed a register to say they object.
People were more certain that their injured relative really wanted to donate their organs if they had signed up under the opt-in system, than if they had been presumed to consent under the opt-out system. “People don’t think their relative wants to donate unless they’ve actively chosen to sign up,” says Osman.
In Wales, an opt-out system was introduced in 2015. There were slightly fewer cases of organ donation the following year, dropping from 64 to 61.
At the moment about 100 families in the UK a year veto organ donation taking place despite their relative having signed up to the organ donation register, about 7 per cent of those who are asked.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/jn-sdi092718.php
Public Release: 2-Oct-2018
Southern diet is top factor associated with higher risk of high blood pressure among black adults
JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association)
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/tuhs-tms092718.php
Public Release: 2-Oct-2018
To make SNAP healthier and save costs: Offer food incentives and disincentives
Policy interventions to make SNAP healthier in the next Farm Bill could save from $6.8 to $41.9 billion and reduce disease burdens
Tufts University, Health Sciences Campus
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/d-dia093018.php
Public Release: 2-Oct-2018
Diabetes is associated with an increased risk of cancer and reduces post-cancer survival
Diabetologia
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/d-sfp093018.php
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/cuot-swt100118.php
Public Release: 2-Oct-2018
Studded winter tires cost more lives than they save
Chalmers University of Technology
The biggest negative impact is generated during usage, from the emissions caused by road damage. Even taking only this into account, the negative health impacts already clearly outweigh the advantages. Once you measure the other factors in as well, the result only becomes clearer, the researchers explain.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/msu-sru100218.phphttps://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/msu-sru100218.php
Public Release: 2-Oct-2018
Sleep research uncovers dire consequences to deprivation
Largest sleep study of its kind shows how sleep hinders memory
Michigan State University
"If you look at mistakes and accidents in surgery, public transportation and even operating nuclear power plants, lack of sleep is one of the primary reasons for human error," said Kimberly Fenn, associate professor of psychology and director of the MSU Sleep and Learning Lab. "There are many people in critical professions who are sleep-deprived. Research has found that nearly one-quarter of the people with procedure-heavy jobs have fallen asleep on the job."
Some basic errors, such as adding salt twice to a recipe, might not be so serious. However, some of the world's greatest human-caused catastrophes - like Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Challenger explosion - along with daily train and car accidents have sleep deprivation at least partially to blame, she said.
[I myself fell asleep MANY times while commuting.]
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/w-aop100218.php
Public Release: 2-Oct-2018
Analysis of published studies links processed meat consumption to breast cancer risk
Wiley
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/uab-epc100218.php
Public Release: 2-Oct-2018
Editorial praises childhood obesity study that finds 'genes are not destiny'
They noted the study found that healthier homes can help offset the genetic risk for obesity
University at Buffalo
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/uosc-omy100218.php
Public Release: 2-Oct-2018
One more year of high school may shape waistlines later in life
How a change in mandatory high school attendance can tip the scales
University of Southern California
In 1972, England, Scotland and Wales raised the mandatory school attendance age from 15 to 16. Through a large-scale genetic study, USC Dornsife researchers have found that decades later, the change had a health benefit for those students affected by the reform, especially those who were at greatest risk of becoming obese.
The extra year of education contributed to weight loss, despite their genetic risk, the research team found.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/uom-tcu100118.php
Public Release: 3-Oct-2018
Teen cannabis use is not without risk to cognitive development
University of Montreal
A new study by researchers at CHU Sainte-Justine and Université de Montréal, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, shows that beyond the role of cognition in vulnerability to substance use, the concurrent and lasting effects of adolescent cannabis use can be observed on important cognitive functions and appear to be more pronounced than those observed for alcohol.
tags: drug use, drug abuse
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/tnam-sha100118.php
Public Release: 3-Oct-2018
Sexual harassment and assault take long-term toll on women's health
New study sheds light on prevalence of sexual harassment and assault and negative implications for women's mental and physical health
The North American Menopause Society (NAMS)
Looking at potential health consequences, the study found that sexual harassment was associated with higher blood pressure and greater likelihood of hypertension, greater triglycerides, and clinically poorer sleep quality. Sexual assault was associated with levels of depressive symptoms, anxiety, and sleep quality in the ranges consistent with clinical disorders.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/uobc-ers100218.php
Public Release: 3-Oct-2018
Exercise reduces stress, improves cellular health in family caregivers
University of British Columbia
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/w-dfs100218.php
Public Release: 3-Oct-2018
Demand for sexual services in Britain: does sex education matter?
Wiley
By analysing survey data from 1999-2001 and 2010-2012, researchers have estimated the demand for commercial sex among British men.
The Scottish Journal of Political Economy study found that men traveling abroad, men living in London, drug users, religious men, and men with middle-class income are more often together with prostitutes than other men.
The most notable finding from a policy point of view was that learning about sex in school had a significant and sizeable negative effect on the expected number of times with a prostitute. The authors noted that requiring sex education in all schools could therefore help in reducing prostitution in Britain.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/w-lvd100218.php
Public Release: 3-Oct-2018
Low vitamin D linked to earlier death in Thai men
Wiley
Previous studies on the association between blood levels of vitamin D and survival have come from high-income countries. A new Geriatrics & Gerontology International study has now found that vitamin D insufficiency is linked with earlier death in community-dwelling Thai older men.
Tuesday, October 02, 2018
Links
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-world-runaway-climate-chief.html
Sept. 11, 2018
With 2018 shaping up as the fourth hottest year on record, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Monday that the world must take action in the next two years to avert the disastrous consequences of runaway climate change.
"If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us."
"Far too many leaders have refused to listen. Far too few have acted with the vision the science demands," said Guterres whose address came just two weeks before world leaders gather in New York for the annual UN General Assembly meeting.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/newly-discovered-goblin-world-hints-presence-planet-nine
Oct. 2, 2018
Far beyond Pluto, astronomers have found a new dwarf planet that follows the most distant orbit yet confirmed, reaching some 2300 times farther from the sun than Earth’s. Nicknamed “The Goblin” thanks to its discovery around Halloween 2015, 2015 TG387 takes 40,000 years to orbit the sun, researchers report online today on the preprint server arXiv.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/why-i-wouldnt-confirm-brett-kavanaugh/571936/
Benjamin Wittes Oct. 2, 2018
If I were a senator, I would not vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh.
These are words I write with no pleasure, but with deep sadness. Unlike many people who will read them with glee—as validating preexisting political, philosophical, or jurisprudential opposition to Kavanaugh’s nomination—I have no hostility to or particular fear of conservative jurisprudence. I have a long relationship with Kavanaugh, and I have always liked him. I have admired his career on the D.C. Circuit. I have spoken warmly of him. I have published him. I have vouched publicly for his character—more than once—and taken a fair bit of heat for doing so. I have also spent a substantial portion of my adult life defending the proposition that judicial nominees are entitled to a measure of decency from the Senate and that there should be norms of civility within a process that showed Kavanaugh none even before the current allegations arose.
Can anyone seriously entertain the notion that a reasonable pro-choice woman would feel like her position could get a fair shake before a Justice Kavanaugh? Can anyone seriously entertain the notion that a reasonable Democrat, or a reasonable liberal of any kind, would after that performance consider him a fair arbiter in, say, a case about partisan gerrymandering, voter identification, or anything else with a strong partisan valence? Quite apart from the merits of Ford’s allegations against him, Kavanaugh’s display on Thursday—if I were a senator voting on confirmation—would preclude my support.
http://www.vulture.com/2018/09/spotify-direct-upload-feature-explained.html
Sept. 26, 2018
Last week, Spotify began beta testing a new feature that allows independent artists to upload their own music directly to the platform, completely bypassing the old label or distributor model that’s existed as the barrier between artist and consumer since the music business’ infancy.
Right now, the direct upload option is available as an invite-only beta feature on its Spotify for Artists platform — which includes about 200,000 verified users, accounting for 72 percent of all streams — and only “a few hundred U.S. based artists” got the invite. But, according to Spotify, in the next few months, more artists will get in.
Millionaire donors to republicans
https://qz.com/1085077/mercers-vs-kochs-vs-adelsons-the-three-ultra-rich-families-battling-for-control-of-the-republican-party/
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/a-guide-to-the-billionaires-bankrolling-the-gop-candidates/391233/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/07/us-republican-donors-offshore-paradise-papers
https://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4
Major Study Finds The US Is An Oligarchy
April 16, 2014
Researchers concluded that U.S. government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organizations: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it."
The American Dream Is Harder To Find In Some Neighborhoods
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/01/649701669/the-american-dream-is-harder-to-find-in-some-neighborhoods
John Ydstie
Oct. 1, 2018
•••••
A new online data tool being made public Monday finds a strong correlation between where people are raised and their chances of achieving the American dream.
Harvard University economist Raj Chetty has been working with a team of researchers on this tool — the first of its kind because it marries U.S. Census Bureau data with data from the Internal Revenue Service. And the findings are changing how researchers think about economic mobility.
People born in the 1940s or '50s were virtually guaranteed to achieve the American dream of earning more than your parents did, Chetty says. But that's not the case anymore.
"You see that for kids turning 30 today, who were born in the mid-1980s, only 50 percent of them go on to earn more than their parents did," Chetty says. "It's a coin flip as to whether you are now going to achieve the American dream."
Chetty and his colleagues worked with the Census Bureau's Sonya Porter and Maggie Jones to create the The Opportunity Atlas, which is available to the public starting Monday.
•••••
Chetty found that if a person moves out of a neighborhood with worse prospects into to a neighborhood with better outlooks, that move increases lifetime earnings for low-income children by an average $200,000. Of course, moving a lot of people is impractical, so researchers are instead trying to help low-performing areas improve.
•••••
It's not unusual for a public school in Charlotte to have a student body that's largely people of color. That's because many white students attend private schools or public schools outside their neighborhoods. Those choices can hinder upward mobility for children who attend neighborhood public schools.
•••••
Harvard's Chetty says he hopes the Opportunity Atlas will help communities across the country revive the American dream in their neighborhoods.
"We hope citizens, local policymakers, nonprofits, people working on these decisions can use [the data tool] to make better decisions," he says.
The Opportunity Atlas is now available to the public. You can find it at: http://www.opportunityatlas.org/
John Ydstie
Oct. 1, 2018
•••••
A new online data tool being made public Monday finds a strong correlation between where people are raised and their chances of achieving the American dream.
Harvard University economist Raj Chetty has been working with a team of researchers on this tool — the first of its kind because it marries U.S. Census Bureau data with data from the Internal Revenue Service. And the findings are changing how researchers think about economic mobility.
People born in the 1940s or '50s were virtually guaranteed to achieve the American dream of earning more than your parents did, Chetty says. But that's not the case anymore.
"You see that for kids turning 30 today, who were born in the mid-1980s, only 50 percent of them go on to earn more than their parents did," Chetty says. "It's a coin flip as to whether you are now going to achieve the American dream."
Chetty and his colleagues worked with the Census Bureau's Sonya Porter and Maggie Jones to create the The Opportunity Atlas, which is available to the public starting Monday.
•••••
Chetty found that if a person moves out of a neighborhood with worse prospects into to a neighborhood with better outlooks, that move increases lifetime earnings for low-income children by an average $200,000. Of course, moving a lot of people is impractical, so researchers are instead trying to help low-performing areas improve.
•••••
It's not unusual for a public school in Charlotte to have a student body that's largely people of color. That's because many white students attend private schools or public schools outside their neighborhoods. Those choices can hinder upward mobility for children who attend neighborhood public schools.
•••••
Harvard's Chetty says he hopes the Opportunity Atlas will help communities across the country revive the American dream in their neighborhoods.
"We hope citizens, local policymakers, nonprofits, people working on these decisions can use [the data tool] to make better decisions," he says.
The Opportunity Atlas is now available to the public. You can find it at: http://www.opportunityatlas.org/
Trump administration sees a 7-degree rise in global temperatures by 2100
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-sees-a-7-degree-rise-in-global-temperatures-by-2100/2018/09/27/b9c6fada-bb45-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.58b79aa67f33
These people are morally mass murderers of an extreme kind. And they are far worse than ordinary mass murderers, because they are not taking these actions because they are overcome by anger, but for the sake of making as much money as possible.
By Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney
September 28, 2018
Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous seven degrees by the end of this century.
A rise of seven degrees Fahrenheit, or about four degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels would be catastrophic, according to scientists. Many coral reefs would dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Parts of Manhattan and Miami would be underwater without costly coastal defenses. Extreme heat waves would routinely smother large parts of the globe.
But the administration did not offer this dire forecast, premised on the idea that the world will fail to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.
The draft statement, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was written to justify President Trump’s decision to freeze federal fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. While the proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says, that policy would add just a very small drop to a very big, hot bucket.
“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,” said Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002.
•••••
The world would have to make deep cuts in carbon emissions to avoid this drastic warming, the analysis states. And that “would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today’s levels and would require the economy and the vehicle fleet to move away from the use of fossil fuels, which is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible.”
•••••
If enacted, the administration’s proposals would give new life to aging coal plants; allow oil and gas operations to release more methane into the atmosphere; and prevent new curbs on greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air-conditioning units. The vehicle rule alone would put 8 billion additional tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere this century, more than a year’s worth of total U.S. emissions, according to the government’s own analysis.
Administration estimates acknowledge that the policies would release far more greenhouse gas emissions from America’s energy and transportation sectors than otherwise would have been allowed.
•••••
This week, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned leaders gathered in New York, “If we do not change course in the next two years, we risk runaway climate change . . . Our future is at stake.”
Federal and independent research — including projections included in last month’s analysis of the revised fuel-efficiency standards — echoes that theme. The environmental impact statement cites “evidence of climate-induced changes,” such as more frequent droughts, floods, severe storms and heat waves, and estimates that seas could rise nearly three feet globally by 2100 if the world does not decrease its carbon output.
•••••
the debate comes after a troubling summer of devastating wildfires, record-breaking heat and a catastrophic hurricane — each of which, federal scientists say, signals a warming world.
Some Democratic elected officials, such as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, said Americans are starting to recognize these events as evidence of climate change. On Feb. 25, Inslee met privately with several Cabinet officials, including then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt, and Western state governors. Inslee accused them of engaging in “morally reprehensible” behavior that threatened his children and grandchildren, according to four meeting participants, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details of the private conversation.
•••••
Please read the whole article at the following link, and consider making a donation to The Guardian so they can continue doing their independent investigative journalism:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/02/trump-administration-planet-boil-refugee-camps
The Trump administration knows the planet is going to boil. It doesn't care
Bill McKibben
Oct. 2, 2018
•••••
The news in that statement is that administration officials serenely contemplate that 4C rise (twice the last-ditch target set at the Paris climate talks). Were the world to actually warm that much, it would be a literal hell, unable to maintain civilizations as we have known them.
•••••
Meanwhile, reporters also discovered that the administration has set up what can only be described as a concentration camp near the Mexican border for detained migrant children, spiriting them under cover of darkness from the foster homes and small shelters across the nation where they had been staying.
Not an extermination camp – these aren’t Nazis – but a camp that literally concentrates this “problem” in one place: a tent city in the middle of the desert.
•••••
That camp is linked to climate change because, first, it’s in a desert. If you searched high and low across the North American continent, you could barely find a place hotter and drier than Tornillo, Texas, where in June the average high is 96F and where, as one climate data source succinctly puts it, “there is virtually no rainfall during the year”.
But the link goes much deeper. Most of those migrants are from Central America and Mexico, and they might as easily be described as refugees fleeing gang violence (much of it rooted originally in the US) and a changing climate. Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras first saw an outbreak of coffee rust linked to higher nighttime temperatures; the El Niño that began in 2015 led to years of unprecedented drought. Deep new droughts this summer wiped out more harvests: “total or partial loss of crops means that subsistence farmers and their families will not have enough food to eat or sell in coming months,” the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization warned. The author Todd Miller, writing in the Nation, described meeting men trying to jump a train in Guatemala headed north toward the border. “When I asked why they were heading for the United States, one responded simply, “No hubo lluvia.” (“There was no rain.”)
This will, of course, get steadily worse in the years ahead – every climate forecast shows deserts spreading and water evaporating across the region. And of course more migration will follow, in every corner of the world.
•••••
Telling people to stay home is not an option – when there’s no water, or when the floods come each year, or when the sea rises into your kitchen, people have to leave. Period.
And telling people to stay home is not a moral option, either. Because the climate chaos setting off waves of refugees is born above all from the unconstrained migration of carbon dioxide molecules from America over the last century. No wall can prevent the exhaust from our armada of oversized cars from raising the temperature in Mexico; if Guatemala could ship its changed climate back north it doubtless would, but it can’t. We have to realize that global warming stems from the fact that we are a world without atmospheric borders, where the people who have done the least to cause the problem feel its horrors first and hardest. That’s why, over the last half-decade, the environmental and migrant-rights movement have grown ever closer.
•••••
Links
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/10/01/global-confidence-trump-lower-than-chinas-xi-poll-shows/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c7e0aed216b2
Oct. 1, 2018
Polling data from 25 countries released Monday showed a widespread global belief that China is a growing power, perhaps one that now rivaled the United States in economic might, but that most people wanted the United States to retain its leading role in global affairs.
However, the poll also found very little confidence in the countries surveyed that the current U.S. leader would do the right thing in global affairs. Indeed, confidence in Trump was lower than for world leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Russia’s Vladimir Putin — and even China’s Xi Jinping.
Views of the United States in general were more positive — 50 percent were favorable, compared with 43 percent unfavorable — but this was also a drop from the Obama era, when favorable views were at 64 percent. Seventy percent said that the United States did not take into account the interests of other countries, and 37 percent said that the country was doing less to address major global problems (compared with 14 percent who said the country was doing more, and 34 percent who said it was doing the same as before).
Since the last years of the Obama administration, Pew has found a decline in the number of those who say that the U.S. government respects the personal freedoms of its citizens.
The trend was especially pronounced this year in Europe: In France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the United States, a combined median showed a majority (57 percent) didn’t think the United States respected personal freedom. Forty percent said the United States did respect these freedoms.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/01/death-rates-surge-female-pigs-us
Oct. 1, 2018
Death rates for female pigs in the US are rising fast, sending alarm bells ringing throughout the farming industry.
The mortality rate rose from 5.8% to 10.2% on farms owning more than 125 sows between 2013-2016, according to one organisation that collects data across 800 companies.
The numbers have been linked to a troubling rise in prolapse – the collapse of the animal’s rectum, vagina, or uterus. In some cases the prolapse itself is fatal. In others the pig is euthanised as a result.
A number of possible causes have been suggested, including vitamin deficiency, mycotoxins in the feed, high density diets or abdominal issues. Some experts blame confinement systems in intensive farming – sows will spend a large percentage of their lives in gestation and farrowing crates that don’t allow them to move around. Modern breeding practices have also been suggested as a causal factor.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/oct/02/indonesia-tsunami-palu-aid-food-shortages-video-death-toll-sulawesi
Oct. 2, 2018
The search continues for thousands of people who are believed to be trapped under rubble after an earthquake hit the island of Sulawesi on Friday morning, causing a tsunami and around 170 aftershocks.
The death toll is still at 844 but is expected to rise sharply as rescue efforts continue.
Roughly 50,000 people have been displaced by the earthquake.
There have been reports of looting as aid and supplies struggle to reach the affected areas and Palu faces its fifth day with limited power and clean water supplies.
Part of the reason for the slow delivery of supplies to Palu is due to the damage to the airport, where only one runway is operational. On Monday, the airport was forced to close temporarily as hundreds of people flocked to the airport to beg the military to evacuate them or give them food.
The bodies of 34 students were found in a church on Tuesday. The group were killed when a mudslide engulfed the church in which they were meeting.
The bodies of some of the victims have been buried in a mass grave near Palu. The grave has space for more than 1,000 people.
There is a major shortage of fuel in the region. Queues at petrol stations around Palu reportedly stretch for kilometres.
The International Committee of Red Cross says 178 of its aid workers are on the ground in the area.
More than 1,400 prisoners are missing from a local jails in the area.
https://www.apnews.com/3ce363b1eb4d4243b0e7b2d994fd7249/Florence-is-nation%27s-second-wettest-storm,-behind-Harvey
Sept. 25, 2018
Hurricane Florence was the nation’s second rainiest storm in 70 years, a top rainfall meteorologist calculated.
Only last year’s Hurricane Harvey rained more over a 14,000 square mile (36,260 square kilometers) area during a four-day time period, said Ken Kunkel, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and North Carolina State University.
Scientists said climate change likely boosted rainfall totals for both storms.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26092018/climate-change-mountains-landslide-hazard-thawing-permafrost-rockfall-extreme-weather-glaciers-global-warming
Sept. 26, 2018
It's not just the atmosphere and the oceans that are heating up. An ever-denser blanket of greenhouse gases is also sending warmer air and water deeper into the planet's rocky bones.
In the mountains of Switzerland, scientists have measured startling temperature increases, with jumps of as much as half a degree Celsius in just a decade 20 feet deep into the rocks. On Svalbard, an Arctic island north of Norway, similar warming has been measured more than 100 feet deep in the permafrost.
Continued warming and the thawing of permafrost also increases the chances for big mudslides and debris flows. As more and more of the previously frozen soil thaws, it can easily be set into motion by rain, said climate scientist Ketil Isaksen of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.
Along with the melting permafrost, another force is at work. Steep rock walls that were once buttressed by glacial ice several hundred feet thick have been laid bare as the glaciers receded. With nothing to hold them back, gravity pulls the rock toward the valley floors.
Basically, global warming is dissolving the glue that holds mountains together, and that could result in unexpected hazards for mountain communities, said Perry Barthelt, an avalanche expert with the WSL.
Scottish opinion on Trump
From Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/groups/envirogeeksunited/permalink/1923565381042799/
Jamie Klem
Yesterday at 8:58 AM (Oct. 1, 2018)
What Trump did to protected ecosystem in Scotland: He bought the land but the agreement for getting planning permission was that the area of scientific interest was to be protected. Once planning permission was granted the bulldozers arrived at midnight and demolished all the sand dunes so the eco system disappeared overnight. The trump organisation then argued that it couldn't be restored as it had taken hundreds of years to develop so the local authority had little power to do anything about it. The Trump organisation then cut off power and water to the houses and farms who would not sell to him. The neighbours of the golf club still have problems around access to their homes as well as problems with utilities. Some of the homes overlooked the sea but large trees have been planted to hide the houses. The area of scientific interest no longer exists and the promised hotels and new housing never materialised. Neither did the promised jobs. The golf club is losing money and has done next to nothing for the local economy. Here in the North East of Scotland Donald Trump would not be made welcome and indeed he was not made welcome when he visited Scotland last year. Our First Minister chose to lead a Pride March rather than arrange a meeting with Mr Trump. Here in Scotland we welcome pretty much anyone but reject Mr Trump on both his business approach and his political stance on a number of key areas.
Monday, October 01, 2018
Links
I heard that some people are unhappy because they say Instagram is becoming more like Facebook. I have been unhappy recently because Facebook is becoming too much like Instagram. When I post a link, it brings in a huge picture, with a few words of text, although it's the text I want to share. It's supposed to be possible to delete the picture before you post, but when you do, the picture disappears when it is posted. I have started putting spaces at strategic places in link address so that people can see the source, but it is not recognized by Facebook as a link, and pasting in the text that I want to share. Of course, this is MUCH less convenient than it used to be. I have complained to Facebook a bunch of times. I am an adult who can read, not a baby who wants to look at picture books.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-12/devos-loses-states-suit-over-borrower-defense-rule-delay
Sept 12, 2018
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos [appointed by Trump] lost a lawsuit brought by 19 states and the District of Columbia, accusing her department of wrongly delaying implementation of Obama-era regulations meant to protect students who took out loans to attend college from predatory practices.
https://variety.com/2018/politics/news/net-neutrality-california-1202962726/
https:// variety. com/2018/politics/news/net-neutrality-california-1202962726/
Sept. 30, 2018
California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the the country’s strongest net neutrality bill protections, a move that will be met by a legal challenge from the Trump administration.
The Justice Department announced on Sunday that it filed a lawsuit against the state for passing the law, arguing that only the federal government can dictate such a sweeping framework for how ISPs like Comcast and AT&T provide internet service.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/climate/offshore-drilling-safety-deepwater-horizon.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Sept. 27, 2018
The Trump administration has completed its plan to roll back major offshore-drilling safety regulations that were put in place after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in 2010 that killed 11 people and caused the worst oil spill in American history.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which was established after the spill in the Gulf of Mexico and regulates offshore oil and gas drilling, has finalized a proposal for loosening the regulations as part of President Trump’s efforts to ease restrictions on fossil fuel companies and encourage domestic energy production.
https://hillreporter.com/the-supreme-court-case-fueling-republicans-rush-to-confirm-brett-kavanaugh-8463
Sept. 26, 2018
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/trump-pardon-orrin-hatch-supreme-court/571285/
Sept. 25, 2018
The Utah lawmaker Orrin Hatch, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, filed a 44-page amicus brief earlier this month in Gamble v. United States, a case that will consider whether the dual-sovereignty doctrine should be put to rest. The 150-year-old exception to the Fifth Amendment’s double-jeopardy clause allows state and federal courts to prosecute the same person for the same criminal offense. According to the brief he filed on September 11, Hatch believes the doctrine should be overturned.
Within the context of the Mueller probe, legal observers have seen the dual-sovereignty doctrine as a check on President Donald Trump’s power: It could discourage him from trying to shut down the Mueller investigation or pardon anyone caught up in the probe, because the pardon wouldn’t be applied to state charges. Under settled law, if Trump were to pardon his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, for example—he was convicted last month in federal court on eight counts of tax and bank fraud—both New York and Virginia state prosecutors could still charge him for any crimes that violated their respective laws
If Trump were to shut down the investigation or pardon his associates, “the escape hatch, then, is for cases to be farmed out or picked up by state-level attorneys general, who cannot be shut down by Trump and who generally—but with some existing limits—can charge state crimes even after a federal pardon,” explained Elie Honig, a former assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey. “If Hatch gets his way, however, a federal pardon would essentially block a subsequent state-level prosecution.”
the case’s implications may not be as significant as they seem. “It is at least plausible that if the Court gets rid of the [doctrine], it would mean that an acquittal in state court would prevent a second trial in federal court and vice versa,” Rosenzweig told me. But Trump’s pardon power is “explicitly limited in the text of the Constitution to pardons for ‘offenses against the United States,’” Rosenzweig said. If that language is interpreted to mean federal criminal offenses specifically, a Trump pardon wouldn’t protect against a state criminal prosecution, he said, no matter what happens to the double-jeopardy clause in Gamble.
[Of course, Trump and the republicans are trying to put people on the supreme court who rule in their favor when interpreting Trump's pardon power.]
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/climate/epa-trump-mercury-rule.html
Sept. 30, 2018
The Trump administration has completed a detailed legal proposal to dramatically weaken a major environmental regulation covering mercury, a toxic chemical emitted from coal-burning power plants, according to a person who has seen the document but is not authorized to speak publicly about it.
The proposal would not eliminate the mercury regulation entirely, but it is designed to put in place the legal justification for the Trump administration to weaken it and several other pollution rules, while setting the stage for a possible full repeal of the rule.
Mercury is known to damage the nervous systems of children and fetuses.
The proposal also highlights a key environmental opinion of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the embattled Supreme Court nominee, whose nomination hearings have gripped the nation in recent days.
The coal industry initially sued to roll back the mercury regulation, and in 2014 its case lost in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. However, Judge Kavanaugh wrote the dissenting opinion in that case, highlighting questions about the rule’s cost to industry.
Should the legal battle over the proposed regulatory rollback go before the Supreme Court, some observers expect that Judge Kavanaugh, if elevated to a seat on the high court, would side with the coal industry.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-reliable-are-the-memories-of-sexual-assault-victims/
Sept. 27, 2018
Incomplete memories of sexual assault, including those with huge gaps, are understandable–if we learn the basics of how memory works and we genuinely listen to survivors.
Such memories should be expected. They are similar to the memories of soldiers and police officers for things they’ve experienced in the line of fire. And a great deal of scientific research on memory explains why.
https://twitter.com/OfficialJonZal/status/1045381049881120770
Jon Zal @OfficialJonZal
My wife just now: “I’d love to see @LindseyGrahamSC stand in a room full of vets and tell them that their trauma isn’t real because they can’t remember the day and time that their leg got blown off.”
11:33 AM - 27 Sep 2018
https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/1046225717497921536
7:30 PM - 29 Sep 2018
What, the White House “has given the FBI a list of witnesses they are permitted to interview"? At the WH, I helped vet hundreds of job candidates. Every one got an FBI background check. We never told the FBI who they could & could not talk to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/us/politics/chad-ludington-statement-brett-kavanaugh.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Sept. 30, 2018
Chad Ludington, a Yale classmate of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s who said he often drank with him, issued a statement on Sunday saying the Supreme Court nominee was not truthful about his drinking in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. :
In recent days I have become deeply troubled by what has been a blatant mischaracterization by Brett himself of his drinking at Yale. When I watched Brett and his wife being interviewed on Fox News on Monday, and when I watched Brett deliver his testimony under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, I cringed. For the fact is, at Yale, and I can speak to no other times, Brett was a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker. I know, because, especially in our first two years of college, I often drank with him. On many occasions I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption, not all of which was beer. When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive. On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.
I do not believe that the heavy drinking or even loutish behavior of an 18- or even 21-year-old should condemn a person for the rest of his life. I would be a hypocrite to think so. However, I have direct and repeated knowledge about his drinking and his disposition while drunk. And I do believe that Brett’s actions as a 53-year-old federal judge matter. If he lied about his past actions on national television, and more especially while speaking under oath in front of the United States Senate, I believe those lies should have consequences. It is truth that is at stake, and I believe that the ability to speak the truth, even when it does not reflect well upon oneself, is a paramount quality we seek in our nation’s most powerful judges.
I can unequivocally say that in denying the possibility that he ever blacked out from drinking, and in downplaying the degree and frequency of his drinking, Brett has not told the truth.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brett-kavanaugh-classmates_us_5bb157bce4b027da00d46d72
Sept. 30, 2018
Classmates Of Brett Kavanaugh Say He Drank More Than He Lets On
Ludington’s not the only one countering parts of Kavanaugh’s testimony.
Former Yale classmates Liz Swisher, James Roche, and Lynne Brookes have also made public statements about Kavanaugh’s excessive drinking during their youth. Swisher told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Friday that though she never saw Kavanaugh be sexually aggressive, the judge was a “sloppy drunk.”
“There’s no problem in drinking beer in college, the problem is lying about it,” Swisher told CNN. “He drank heavily, he was a partier, he liked to do beer bongs, he played drinking games, he was sloppy drunk.”
Roche, a roommate of Kavanaugh’s during freshman year, told the New Yorker he found Ramirez’s claims to be credible. Roche added that he saw Kavanaugh “frequently, incoherently drunk.” Another unnamed classmate told the New Yorker Kavanaugh could be “aggressive and even belligerent” when he drank.
Brookes, who also attended Yale, told CNN Thursday that Kavanaugh was “lying” to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his drinking.
“There is no doubt in my mind that while at Yale, he was a big partier, often drank to excess and there had to be a number of nights where he does not remember,” Brookes told CNN.
Lying to Congress under oath is a federal crime.
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