News bits: News burnout increases; House witch hunt is failing; A new recyclable plastic; Etc.

A WaPo article discusses poll data showing a new trend in news avoidance. To growing numbers of Americans, the news is too aggravating, discouraging and/or threatening. People feel helpless, except by avoiding news reporting. The WaPo writes:

[S]omething changed during the pandemic. Maybe it was her. Maybe it was the news itself.

“It was so upsetting,” says Claudia Caplan, a retired advertising executive who is now a graduate student of history at New York University. “So frightening, so apocalyptic.”

And so Caplan began to turn away.

The troublesome trend is spelled out in research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. For years, the Oxford-based think tank has been asking people around the world about their news-consumption habits. In its latest survey, 38 percent of U.S. respondents say they sometimes or often avoid news, including 41 percent of women and 34 percent of men.

At the same time, the proportion of people who are “extremely” or “very interested” in the news continued to sink. In the United States, this group was in the minority (49 percent) for the first time in the survey’s short history, down from 67 percent in 2015. 

And much of it, people say, drives feelings of depression, anger, anxiety or helplessness.  

Carolyn Cohen, a retired school teacher, cites a number of topics that provoke feelings of helplessness: gun violence, climate change and climate-change denial, and President Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election results.

“What can I do about it?” she says. “Nothing you do gives any control,” other than laying the newspaper aside, turning off the TV and going for a walk.

The article mentions the Ukraine war as one topic where there is significant avoidance of news (32% of people) because the situation is so bad. I'm one of those people. I wrote to Biden months ago urging him to make peace talks the highest priority for Ukraine because Russia was going to pulverize the country, which it is now doing. The boilerplate "response" I got back was just propaganda drivel. It inspired a feeling of hopelessness. The letter was OK for recycling but nothing else. But worse than that, even more people, over 40%, avoid national and social justice news.

The bigger issue here cannot be ignored. America's radial right knows full well that the constant stream of demagoguery, lies, slanders, hate and bigotry will lead to a significant number of people to turn away from the unpleasantness. That hate, lies and slanders all the time strategy aims for two seemingly contradictory goals. Whip up the base on your side, while burning everyone else out to get them to disengage out of feelings of hopelessness or discouragement. Some of those who disengage will also disengage from voting. That's how demagogues and tyrants rise to power in a democracy. That's what is going on here.

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From the Biden Witch Hunt Files: The Independent reports:

House Oversight chair admits GOP can’t back up Biden bribery accusations

Republicans still haven’t produced evidence of any illegal behavior by President Joe Biden

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee on Monday said he and his colleagues still lack evidence proving that President Joe Biden took bribes while he was vice president during the Obama administration, despite months of investigation into his son, Hunter Biden.

Representative James Comer made the embarrassing admission during an appearance on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s eponymous nightly programme alongside Representative Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

Asked whether he would be able to prove the outrageous claim about the president, Mr Comer hesitated.

Pressed further by Hannity, he finally replied: “I sure hope so. And I do believe that there’s a lot of smoke and when there’s smoke, there’s fire”.

Remember this rule of law rule of thumb for political witch hunts: When there’s smoke, there’s fire. MAGA!! 

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Recyclable plastic precursor made by bacteria:  Berkeley Lab news reports:

Making Renewable, Infinitely Recyclable Plastics Using Bacteria

Scientists engineered microbes to make the ingredients for recyclable plastics – replacing finite, polluting petrochemicals with sustainable alternatives. The new approach shows that renewable, recyclable plastics are not only possible, but also outperform those from petrochemicals

Unlike traditional plastics, PDK [poly(diketoenamine)] can be repeatedly deconstructed into pristine building blocks and formed into new products with no loss in quality. PDKs initially used building blocks derived from petrochemicals, but those ingredients can be redesigned and produced with microbes instead. Now, after four years of effort, collaborators have manipulated E. coli to turn sugars from plants into some of the starting materials – a molecule known as triacetic acid lactone, or bioTAL – and produced a PDK with roughly 80% bio-content.

[Planned] improvements would include speeding up the rate at which microbes convert sugars to bioTAL, using bacteria that can transform a wider variety of plant-derived sugars and other compounds, and powering the facility with renewable energy.

GIF showing PDK plastic breaking 

down in an acidic solution, leaving the bioTAL

precursor available for reuse

Here, genetically engineered bacteria make bioTAL from sugar and that is used to make PDK plastic. Additional research is needed to decrease the production cost of bioTAL and expand the range of plant sugars that can be used to fuel the bacteria. If the US had a carbon tax in place, this lower-pollution plastic would be significantly more competitive. It will take a couple of years of more research and development before this impact of this can be assessed. 

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Did he commit a crime?: The Hill reports recent poll data:

According to most of that group, he didn't commit serious crimes. 13% are still unsure!!

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Jellyfish!!: The NYT writes:

505-Million-Year-Old Jellyfish Fossils May Be the Oldest Ever Found

[Jean-Bernard Caron, a paleontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto] and other scientists recently described a cache of jellyfish fossils from the Cambrian period that found an improbable pathway to preservation. In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the scientists posit that these 505-million-year-old animals are among the oldest swimming jellyfish known to science.

“These new fossils represent the most compelling evidence of Cambrian jellyfish to date,” said David Gold, a paleobiologist at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the new study.

A 505 million year-old jellyfish fossil

A life reconstruction of a group of Burgessomedusa phasmiformis

swimming in the Cambrian sea

Trump indicted for role in Jan. 6. Finally!!

At long last, Donald Trump was criminally indicted today for his role in Jan. 6. A Washington grand jury voted to prosecute him on 4 counts: 1) conspiracy to defraud the government 2) conspiracy against the right to vote, 3) conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and 4) obstruction of an official proceeding. 

The indictment announced by the Justice Dept  also references six unnamed co-conspirators. Any guesses? It follows an investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith that stretched an 8 month period, and included interviews of many prominent figures in Trump's sphere at the time, including VP Pence, over Trump's efforts to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6. 

Predictably, Trump called the indictment "fake" and lashed out at Jack Smith for "election interference," a reference to the 2024 election. "Why did they wait so long?", he asked. He's got a point for once. They should have done this 2 1/2 years ago! Better late than never, though it will doubtless cause chaos during the upcoming the election cycle, as will other pending Trump cases. Indeed, he may soon face yet another criminal prosecution in Georgia over alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election result there.

The US is in for a bumpy ride in 2024 if Trump, as expected, clinches the Republican nomination. But one thing at a time. For now, I (like many readers here, I'm sure)  plan to fully enjoy the rest of the evening! Cheers!

News bits: The 1 mile rule protects Texas polluters; More Covid cover-up; Cooling a Tortoise in Phoenix

From the Republicans Just Making Shit Up Files: The Texas Tribune reports:

The “1-mile rule”: Texas’ unwritten, arbitrary policy protects 

big polluters from citizen complaints

It’s not found anywhere in state law or the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s rules, but for years the agency has denied citizens the ability to challenge air pollution permits because they live more than a mile away

On a rugged stretch of the Gulf Coast in Texas, environmental groups called foul in 2020 when an oil company sought pollution permits to expand its export terminal beside Lavaca Bay.

Led by a coalition of local shrimpers and oystermen, the groups produced an analysis alleging that the company, Max Midstream, underrepresented expected emissions in order to avoid a more rigorous permitting process and stricter pollution control requirements.

In its response, Max Midstream did not respond to those allegations. Instead, it cited what it characterized as the “quintessential one-mile test” by Texas’ environmental regulator, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to claim that the groups and citizens involved had no right to bring forth a challenge because they lived more than 1 mile from the Seahawk Oil Terminal.

“The well-established Commission precedent has been repeated again and again,” the lawyers wrote. “Based on the quintessential one-mile test relied upon by the Commission for decades, none of the Hearing Requests can be granted.”

The TCEQ agreed, rejecting all hearing requests and issued the permit as initially proposed.  

But the agency says the 1-mile test cited by the company’s lawyers doesn’t exist.

“The Commission has never adopted a one-mile policy,” said TCEQ spokesperson Laura Lopez. “Instead, the Commission applies all factors set out in statute and rules.”

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality? Wrong name. It's really the Texas Commission on Degrading Environmental Quality and Lying About It. The radicalized corrupt Republican Party, it's America's fun-filled pro-pollution, pro-global warming, pro-deceit, pro-lies, anti-environment party.

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More evidence of a cover-up about the origin of COVID: This 14 minute video comes from an Australian point of view. The Australian scientist who dismissed the possibility that the COVID virus was man-made and leaked from the lab in Wuhan says comments between scientists in the recently released documents (i) are being taken out of context and new information was coming in, (ii) there is no proof of a man-made origin, and (iii) allegations of a man-made origin is a crackpot conspiracy theory, not a valid science theory. The reporter in the video points out that there is no proof of a natural origin, but that is taken as a scientifically valid possibility. Also, the allegation of taking comments out of context strikes me as clearly false. 

Evidence available now make it crystal clear that (i) the leading scientists knew the man-made and lab leak hypothesis was valid, and (ii) they clearly wanted to suppress that possibility in the March 2020 proximal origin paper. We have been and still are being lied to by those anti-lab leak theory scientists. Those are the true conspiracy theory crackpots here. That is true even if it turns out that we can eventually prove that the COVID virus arose naturally. Scientists could neither prove nor disprove either of the two possibilities at that time in 2020. That remains true to this day in 2023. 

Fauci, Collins, Anderson and all the other crackpot anti-lab leak theory scientists should be ashamed and fired. But, odds of that happening in the next 2 years are low, maybe about 0.1%. 

Acknowledgement: Thanks to PD for bringing this video to my attention.

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Phenix has now experienced over 30 straight days of temp at or over 110ᵒ F. At the Phoenix zoo:

But it's not global warming. It's a Chinese hoax. It's Hunter Biden's laptop. Joe Biden should be impeached. Benghazi!! Etc.

Phoenix billboard, July 18th

Meanwhile in the ocean off the Florida coast:

Bleached, dying corals on Looe Key

The NYT writes: Phoenix just logged its hottest month on record — and the hottest month ever observed in a U.S. city. Phoenix’s average temperature for July was a blistering 102.7 degrees, taking into account average daytime highs of 114.7 degrees and overnight lows of 90.8. Phoenix had 17 days that hit 115 degrees or greater. The previous record was 7 days set in August of 2020.

Those darned Chinese hoaxes. They're probably in cahoots with the darned Democrats, darn it.

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A major Christian nationalist (CN) breakthrough: A NYT opinion discusses an impending blow to secular democracy, secular education and church-state separation. This new threat attacks all three with what could be a lethal blow in the long run. The opinion is by Rachel Laser, president and chief executive of Americans United for Separation of Church and State:

Something deeply un-American is underway in the state of Oklahoma.

In June, Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved the nation’s first religious public charter school. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa were given permission to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in August 2024.

That’s right, a religious public school, funded by the state’s taxpayers. Proponents hope this model will spread to the dozens of other states that allow charter schools. Seven percent of public school students in the country attended charter schools as of the fall of 2021, and that number continues to grow. That’s why Christian nationalist groups see charter schools as fertile ground for their full-on assault on the separation of church and state in public education.

In just the past year, significant progress has been made in infusing Christianity into public schools. Texas, for example, now allows public schools to replace certified school counselors with religious chaplains and came close to requiring every classroom to display the Ten Commandments. New laws in Idaho and Kentucky could allow teachers and other public school employees to pray in front of — and even with — students. Missouri and Louisiana authorized public schools to teach Bible classes. West Virginia nearly passed a bill that would allow public schools to teach intelligent design creationism. Accompanying these laws are increasingly successful efforts to ban books and lessons about race, sexual orientation, gender identity and even menstruation in public schools.  

The establishment of a school that claims to be simultaneously public and religious — what has been a legal oxymoron in the United States since its founding — violates one of the foundational principles of American constitutional tradition: the separation of church and state. It also threatens religious freedom and undermines public education.

The United States Supreme Court has emboldened Christian nationalists by holding twice in the past three years that if a state funds private secular schools, it must also fund private religious schools. But charter schools are taxpayer-financed public schools — not private schools.  

That is why the organization I head, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, together with the A.C.L.U., the Education Law Center and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, filed a lawsuit on Monday in state district court in Oklahoma to prevent the school from operating as a charter school.

To be clear, the CN wealth and power movement wants to get rid of all secular public education and replace it with radical Christian fundamentalist "education." That is core CN dogma. This move in Oklahoma is a critical step necessary in that transformation of secular America into Christian Sharia America run by a wealthy White male Christian Taliban.

No, none of that is not hyperbole. It is fact. The open question is whether the authoritarian CN movement can mostly or completely accomplish the secular democracy to Christian fundamentalist theocracy goal. We can only hope that this critically important lawsuit succeeds. If the Republican CN Supreme Court upholds the forced use of tax dollars to pay for religious education, this cancer will spread nation wide. It could kill secular democracy, but it will kill church-state separation.

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Meanwhile, rank and file Republicans are getting their act together and thinking deeply about things as they prepare their lemming run for edge of the cliff in 2024:

That is a glimpse of the reality that some or most of the radical right rank and file sees and believes is real and rational.

News bits: Biowarfare research is out of control; Deceit by brass knuckles capitalism; Etc.

A local newspaper reports that law enforcement authorities have stumbled across a big, sloppy biowarfare lab in Reedley, CA. This is beyond bizarre. It is as scary as the radicalized corrupt Republican Party and the rabid corrupt Christian nationalism movement. Yourcentralvalley.com reports: 

‘I’ve never seen anything like this’: Illegal medical lab discovered in Reedley

An investigation into a Reedley warehouse uncovered a large-scale illegal medical lab complete with bioengineered mice, infectious agents, nearly 30 refrigerators and freezers some of which were non-operational, incubators, and more leaving officials shocked and the public worried.

Local, state, and federal agencies are all involved and what prompted this investigation was a simple garden hose that was illegally attached and coming out of a wall in the back of the building.

The city then obtained several search warrants to enter the building and once inside they found something they have never seen.

“There was a special room that was built housing about 1000 white lab mice,” Zieba explained.

What they found was absolutely terrifying.

“Through their statements that they were doing some testing on laboratory mice that would help them support, developing the COVID test kits that they had on-site,” Prado said.

Health officials discovered nearly 1,000 lab mice, 200 of which were already dead.

Also found were thousands of vials, many of which contained biohazardous materials including human blood, and other unknown substances.

“A lot of these labels have been removed from bottles so there was only so much testing we could do on those chemicals,” Prado continued.

According to court documents officials with the Centers for Disease Control tested what they could and determined that at least 20 potentially infectious viral, bacterial, and parasitic agents were present including E. Coli, malaria, and even COVID.

NBC News reported:

An investigation found the tenant was Prestige BioTech, a company registered in Nevada and unlicensed for business in California. City officials spoke with Xiuquin Yao, who was identified as the company president, through emails included in the court documents.

Yao told officials that Prestige BioTech moved assets belonging to a defunct company, Universal Meditech Inc., to the Reedley warehouse from Fresno after UMI went under. Prestige Biotech was a creditor to UMI and identified as its successor, according to court documents.  

"The other addresses provided for identified authorized agents were either empty offices or addresses in China that could not be verified," court documents said.

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From the Crooks & Liars Files: A WaPo opinion reports about how pollution for profit companies and the federal government conspire to deceive consumers about what plastics are recyclable and what are not: 

Picture this: You finish a drink from a red Solo cup, and before throwing it out, you check the bottom of the cup to see the iconic recycling symbol. That means it can be tossed in the recycling bin, right?

Wrong. Solo cups are made of polystyrene, a plastic that is very difficult to recycle. No one can fault consumers for not knowing that. The real blame lies with the government, which has failed to properly regulate claims that plastics manufacturers put on their products

The core of the problem is that there is no recycling system in the United States; there are upward of 20,000 of them. As a result, it’s nearly impossible to say which items are actually recyclable. Without stricter standards, consumers will continue to be confused, seriously hampering the effort to divert waste from landfills.

Note: 

0% of plastic cutlery gets recycled

0% of coffee pods get recycled

0% of . . . . you get the idea

Remember: An ignorant, disinformed consumer is a profitable consumer!

Aw, ain't that adorable!

Puggsley and mom sharing a quiet moment of contentment

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Poll data: 

See, crime really does pay!

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The cost of global warming: As time passes, damage will accumulate. Researchers are publishing damage estimates. The NYT reports:

A study published in June on the effects of temperature on productivity concludes that while extreme heat harms agriculture, its impact is greater on industrial and other sectors of the economy, in part because they are more labor-intensive. It finds that heat increases absenteeism and reduces work hours, and concludes that as the planet continues to warm, those losses will increase.

The cost is high. In 2021, more than 2.5 billion hours of labor in the U.S. agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and service sectors were lost to heat exposure, according to data compiled by The Lancet. Another report found that in 2020, the loss of labor as a result of heat exposure cost the economy about $100 billion, a figure projected to grow to $500 billion annually by 2050. 

Other research found that as the mercury reaches 90 degrees Fahrenheit, productivity slumps by about 25 percent and when it goes past 100 degrees, productivity drops off by 70 percent.

Remember: The corrupt, authoritarian radical right Republican Party is anti-labor, pro-global warming and pro-pollution! Texas passed a law to ban water breaks for outdoors workers -- that's real commitment to the anti-labor cause!