News bits 'n nits: A bit about plastic; A bit about making babies; Etc.

NPR reports about public attitude toward disposable plastic items:

These poll results come as environmental experts project disastrous levels of plastic that are already permeating the water you drink, the food you eat and the air you breathe. By 2050, the amount of plastic waste produced worldwide is expected to quadruple, according to a 2017 analysis. “The Plastic Problem”, an hour-long PBS NewsHour special report that premieres Nov. 27 at 10 p.m. ET, examines how the plastic we use is creating problems for our entire planet.

“Those items will be with us for centuries,” said Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer in North America for Oceana, a nonprofit ocean conservation organization, in an email to the PBS NewsHour.  

More than a third of Americans — 34 percent — oppose a total ban on single-use plastics, such as non-reusable forks and drinking straws, while a quarter of U.S. adults said they support such a measure, according to a PBS NewsHour and Marist poll.

That’s sort of a mixed bag. People need to be willing to give up some convenience for the sake of the environment. For example, about 0% of plastic cutlery and about 0% of plastic coffee pods are recycled. Almost 100% of those items go into the environment in some form or another.

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Here’s a bit of good news from a research paper about the repeal of abortion rights by American radical right Christofascists:

Prevalence of childfree adults before and 

after Dobbs v Jackson in Michigan (USA)

Although there are many reasons one may choose not to have children, recent restrictions on reproductive health care may also contribute to this decision. For example, the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson eliminated a long-standing constitutional protection for abortion access, which reduced patients’ medical autonomy and increased the risks of pregnancy and childbirth, and therefore may have led adults to decide not to have children. In this study, we use representative data on Michigan adults immediately before and after the Dobbs decision to examine changes in the prevalence of childfree adults in this population. We find that 21% of Michigan adults were childfree before the Dobbs decision, but this number rose to nearly 26% after the decision. Controlling for demographic characteristics, a Michigan adult was 32.8% more likely to be childfree after the Dobbs decision than before. We conclude that when access to safe reproductive health care is uncertain or unavailable, adults that do not already have children may decide that they do not want children.

If this is a nationwide thing, it ought to help decrease American overpopulation. If so, that would be a good thing, but for the wrong reason. Hm. One can wonder if this will prompt a spasm of emotion over the Great White Replacement Theory if it gets picked up and distorted into some blood curdling horror by America’s radical right propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux News, et al. Hard to tell.  

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From the Trolling the Christians Files: Rapper Lil Nas (Little Nasty?) releases a new single today called J CHRIST. The song is dedicated to “THE MAN WHO HAD THE GREATEST COMEBACK OF ALL TIME!” 

A Lil nas publicity photo promoting the new song is sure to get some blood pressure up.

Lil nas being a little nasty

I like the cute wings

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Some Trump stuff

The Nitter net reports about an unsulting, lies- and slander-laden DJT verbal screed in the courtroom in New York City, from yesterday I think:

Qs: Why the hell do judges not toss DJT's sorry, treasonous, insulting, lying ass in jail for inciting another insurrection, and openly insulting the courts, the legal system and the American people?  What’s a Nitter net?

Newsweek reports about payments to DJT from foreign governments in violation of the emoluments clause of the US Constitution: 

Speaking at a Fox News town hall on Wednesday night, the former president defended himself from accusations made in a recent report from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee which accused him of accepting payments from foreign governments from countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar while in office.

The report accused Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution's foreign emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officials from accepting money or gifts from foreign governments without permission from Congress, after overseas officials stayed in his real estate company's hotels and apartments during his time in the White House.  

Eric Trump, executive vice president of The Trump Organization, dismissed the report's finding as a "joke" and said that all the company's profits from its business with foreign governments were voluntarily donated to the United States Treasury.

Apparently it is lost on vice president Eric the Corrupt and Clueless that the emoluments clause does not care what a president does with money from a foreign government. All it says is a simple Don’t take the money, stupid! The open contempt and disregard the Trump family has for the rule of law could not be clearer. The Trump family sure has a lot of morally rotted grifters, traitors, crooks and liars in it. Eric himself is a sick, insulting joke.

Q: Has Barron Trump been unleashed on the world yet, or is he still incubating at some ivy league school while he hones his ethics skills?  🤪  (Hey! Who stole my lunch money!)

TDS flares up in an online DJT screed

In more solid evidence that DJT is truly a dictator in his ambition, he now publicly and directly (i) demands that Joe Biden stop all the prosecutions of himself, and (ii) threatens Biden. DJT undeniably sees himself above the law. He sees the president as having the power to prosecute or not prosecute crimes including treason. That is how DJT’s former attorney general Bill Barr acted, which is why he is now disgraced among most normal pro-democracy people, but beloved by authoritarian radical right elites.

Mediaite reports about DJT’s latest middle of the night flare up of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome):

Trump Rants For SIX Solid Minutes About Criminal 

Immunity Appeal In Falsehood-Riddled Late-Night Attack

“Because of Joe Biden. I spend a lot of time in courts. Federal. State, city. And tomorrow, I’ll be attending another Biden inspired federal appeals court argument on presidential immunity in Washington, D.C..

Of course, I was entitled as president of the United States and commander in chief to immunity. I’m entitled to immunity. Every president has immunity, especially one that did the job I did. I did a great job, and I wasn’t working for myself. I was working for the country, I wasn’t campaigning. The election was long over. I wasn’t campaigning.

I was looking for voter fraud, something that I have to do under my mandate. I have to look for voter fraud. And I was finding it, tremendous amounts of voter fraud in the 2020 election. We have volumes of information. That’s all there.

And I was doing my job, which I had to do. And it’s my obligation to do an otherwise. Running our country and running it well, we didn’t have Russia going into Ukraine. We didn’t have Israel under attack. We didn’t have China talking every day about going into Taiwan. We didn’t have inflation. We had a great economy. If I don’t get immunity, then Crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity. And. All of the things he’s done to allow the border invasion. Millions and millions of people coming into our country, many from prisons, jails. Mental institutions, insane asylums, many terrorists coming into our country. That’s really allowing insurrection.

And come into a situation where he allowed the surrender to Afghanistan. We surrendered. The United States of America surrendered to Afghanistan, where we gave them $85 billion worth of free. The best military equipment anywhere in the world left thousands of hostages behind. And they were American hostages behind. Still there, many of them. And 13 dead soldiers and many soldiers so badly hurt. This is gross incompetence. We did a surrender in Afghanistan. Nothing’s ever been so embarrassing in the history of our country.

Also, the millions and millions of dollars that went into Joe Biden’s pockets with money from foreign countries like Russia, Afghanistan, China, many others. I mean, Joe would be ripe for indictment. So you’re saying that Trump shouldn’t get immunity, but Joe Biden would? I didn’t do anything like he did. I ran a great country. This guy’s gotten $3.5 million from the mayor of Moscow’s wife. What’s that all about?

And that’s the least of it. One of the reasons he’s so soft on China is because he received a lot of money from China, and he’s afraid to do anything about it or say anything because he knows he’s afraid to say, we have a manchurian candidate in Joe Biden. We have to get him out.

By weaponizing the DOJ against his political opponent. Me, Joe Biden has opened a giant Pandora’s box. As president. I was protecting our country and doing a great job of doing so. And the historians will be saying that they already are. But just look around at the complete mess that Crooked Joe Biden has caused.

He’s the worst president in the history of our country by far. He’s also the most corrupt president. The least I’m entitled to is presidential immunity, just like any other president would get. I’d be the only one that they would even consider not giving me immunity, because for whatever reason, people are angry that I’ve done such a good job and I’ve replaced people that were corrupt that was supposed to be president. So take on the fake Biden indictments. They’re all Biden indictments. These aren’t indictments, as we say, like God coming down from heaven and saying you did something wrong. These were indictments given and pushed by Joe Biden. And he told his DOJ to do it. Don’t believe anything else. He told his DOJ to do it. Go and indict him because he’s losing badly in the polls so badly that he figures this is the only way that he can win.

The only problem is that thus far, it’s pushed us way up in the polls, higher than anybody’s ever been, actually, because people see it’s a scam and they see it’s a persecution and they don’t like it when it comes to anything, but certainly not when it comes to a president. They’re running a political campaign in a dirty way, even worse than they did previously. And frankly, it’s never happened in our country before. It only happens in third world countries or banana republics. They using their department of injustice to go after his a political appointment. And this is all him, 100% him. He’s the one that told him to do it and they obey his orders. It’s a shame never happened in the United States before, but it’s happened now.

And he has to be careful because that could happen to him also. The next president, whoever that may be, has a statute of limitations that go back six years. That’s a long time, Joe. You have to be very careful. We have to guard and protect our country. We have to do what’s right for our country.

You don’t indict your political opponent because he opposes the corrupt election, which you know was corrupt. Everybody knows it was corrupt. The American public knows it was corrupt. You don’t indict your political opponent. Thank you very much.”

Sadly and frighteningly, there still are millions of adult Americans who cannot see much of an anti-democratic, kleptocratic authoritarian threat from a former president who openly committed treason in his 1/6 coup attempt and his blatant morally rotted criminality while in office and thereafter. Tens of millions of American voters actually support this lying, kleptocratic wannabe dictator.

News bits: A bit of gun violence research; Authoritarian radical right propaganda tactics; Etc.

Researchers published gun violence data for 1991-2016. They found that gun safety laws correlated with decreased gun violence.

The Era of Progress on Gun Mortality: State Gun 

Regulations and Gun Deaths from 1991 to 2016

Background:

The recent rise of gun violence may lead to the perception that the problem of gun mortality in the United States is intractable. This article provides evidence to counter this perception by bringing attention to the period spanning from 1991 to 2016 when most US states implemented more restrictive gun laws. Over this period, the United States experienced a decline in household gun ownership, and gun-related deaths fell sharply.

Methods:

The main analysis examines the conditional association between the change in gun regulations at the state level and the change in gun mortality from 1991 to 2016. We include a range of robustness checks and two instrumental variable analyses to allow for stronger causal inferences.

Results:

We find strong, consistent evidence supporting the hypothesis that restrictive state gun policies reduce overall gun deaths, homicides committed with a gun, and suicides committed with a gun. Each additional restrictive gun regulation a given state passed from 1991 to 2016 was associated with −0.21 (95% confidence interval = −0.33, −0.08) gun deaths per 100,000 residents. Further, we find that specific policies, such as background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases, were associated with lower overall gun death rates, gun homicide rates, and gun suicide rates.

Conclusion:

State regulations passed from 1991 to 2016 were associated with substantial reductions in gun mortality. We estimate that restrictive state gun policies passed in 40 states from 1991 to 2016 averted 4297 gun deaths in 2016 alone, or roughly 11% of the total gun deaths that year.

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The NYT reports: 

One of Trump’s Oldest Tactics in Business and Politics: 

I’m Rubber. You’re Glue. 

Whenever Donald Trump is accused of something, he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.

Former President Donald J. Trump is appearing twice in court this week — on Tuesday in Washington and Thursday in New York. He was not required to attend either hearing. But advisers say he believes the court appearances dramatize what is fast becoming a central theme of his campaign: that President Biden — who is describing the likely Republican nominee as a peril to the country — is the true threat to American democracy. 

Mr. Trump’s claim is the most outlandish and baseless version of a tactic he has used throughout his life in business and politics. Whenever he is accused of something — no matter what that something is — he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.

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GOP slanders:

“Joe Biden knew exactly what he was doing, he knew exactly how his family was receiving tens of millions of dollars from our enemies around the world.” — Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), interview on Fox Business Network with Maria Bartiromo, Dec. 22

“I mean, you have more than $20 million that has been moved to the Biden family through many of their shell companies and in LLCs that they set up. We know that a lot of that money came from foreign adversaries, including China and Russia and Kazakhstan and places like that.” — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Jan. 7

“Based on the evidence I’ve seen so far, I think the number is going to be north of $50 million that we’re talking about here. This will go down as one of the most politically corrupt presidents and families in U.S. history.” — Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), interview on Fox Business Network, Aug. 22

Too bad there won't be any blowback or legal repercussions for the slanders that authoritarian GOP elites routinely poison American politics with. Those lying slanderers belong behind bars. Instead, they are treated by America’s radical right as pillars of the community fighting for truth and democracy. 

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Compassionate conservatism in action: 

Moving beyond efforts to block expansion of health care for the poor and disabled, Republican governors in 15 states are now rejecting a new, federally funded summer program to give food assistance to hungry children.

The program is expected to serve 21 million youngsters starting around June, providing $2.5 billion in relief across the country.

The governors have given varying reasons for refusing to take part, from the price tag to the fact that the final details of the plan have yet to be worked out. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said she saw no need to add money to a program that helps food-insecure youths “when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.” Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) said bluntly, “I don’t believe in welfare.”

News chunk & bits: Plastic in bottled water!; Huh, a coup attempt was illegal??; New evidence against DJT?

The boffins in the chemistry department at Columbia University invented a new way of detecting tiny particles in water. The counting method is called Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) microscopy. They looked at popular brands of water in plastic bottles. They write in a recent PNAS paper:

Significance
Micro-nano plastics originating from the prevalent usage of plastics have raised increasingly alarming concerns worldwide. However, there remains a fundamental knowledge gap in nanoplastics because of the lack of effective analytical techniques. This study developed a powerful optical imaging technique for rapid analysis of nanoplastics with unprecedented sensitivity and specificity. As a demonstration, micro-nano plastics in bottled water are analyzed with multidimensional profiling of individual plastic particles. Quantification suggests more than 105 particles (100,000) in each liter of bottled water, the majority of which are nanoplastics. This study holds the promise to bridge the knowledge gap on plastic pollution at the nano level.

Abstract

Plastics are now omnipresent in our daily lives. The existence of microplastics (1 µm to 5 mm in length) and possibly even nanoplastics (<1 μm) has recently raised health concerns. In particular, nanoplastics are believed to be more toxic since their smaller size renders them much more amenable, compared to microplastics, to enter the human body. However, detecting nanoplastics imposes tremendous analytical challenges on both the nano-level sensitivity and the plastic-identifying specificity, leading to a knowledge gap in this mysterious nanoworld surrounding us. To address these challenges, we developed a hyperspectral stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) imaging platform with an automated plastic identification algorithm that allows micro-nano plastic analysis at the single-particle level with high chemical specificity and throughput. .... With the established technique, we studied the micro-nano plastics from bottled water as a model system. We successfully detected and identified nanoplastics from major plastic types. Micro-nano plastics concentrations were estimated to be about 2.4 ± 1.3 × 105 particles per liter of bottled water, about 90% of which are nanoplastics. This is orders of magnitude more than the microplastic abundance reported previously in bottled water. 

Smithsonian Magazine commented:

As much as experts are convinced that puny plastics are all around us, few methods to date have been able to directly detect them. Scientists suspect that the hardest to see are the most damaging of the lot: plastic fragments 100 nanometers in size or less, less than 1/100th the width of human hair. Now, a new study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reports a plastics detection technique that can quickly identify the size and composition of miniscule particulates. The authors found that an average of 240,000 particles populate a liter of bottled water, a number greater than previously reported. The find illuminates the true presence of micro- and nanoplastics littering our homes and lives.

“This is really a breakthrough,” says Sherri Mason, director of sustainability at the Pennsylvania State University at Erie, the Behrend College, who wasn’t involved in the research. “If we can’t detect the particles, then we can’t study them. That’s why this study is so important.”

Hm . . . . . YIKES!! 240,000 plastic bits/L?? (1 L = 1.057 qt)

Some commentary from the learned peanut gallery commentated:

1. As I understand it, fetuses are being found with microplastics. I'd go so far to say the majority of the people of the world are full of microplastics.*
    2. Life in plastic it’s fantastic!
    3. I am become Barbie
    4. Destroyer of worlds.
    5. This Barbenheimer thing is getting out of hand

6. They found a whole plastic bag on the bottom of the Mariana Trench. That's ~11,000 meters under the sea surface.

    7. People are putting plastic in their Mariana trench all the time for fun.

8. Plastic degrades over thousands of years... and our life expectancy has increased as we got more plastic within us... that would mean that... if we were made 100% of plastic, we'd last thousands of years!

* Microplastic particles are found on both sides of the human placenta (both maternal and fetal) for the first time, in a study led by Antonio Ragusa of the San Giovanni Calibita Fatebenefratelli Hospital. In this study, six placentas were studied and found to contain a variety of plastics commonly used in man-made coatings, paints, adhesives, plasters, finger paints, polymers, cosmetics, and personal care products of various colors. (the research paper is here)

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DJT’s latest defense in the Georgia state election interference lawsuit is that no one told him it was illegal to overturn an election! Mediaite reports:

Trump Demands Election Crimes Case Be Dropped In New Filing

Because Nobody Told Him Overturning Election Was Crime

Former President Donald Trump demanded the election crimes case against him be dismissed on the grounds that he didn’t have advance notice he would be committing a crime by trying to overturn the election. .... Trump’s attorney argued Trump “lacked fair notice” that his conduct could be considered criminal:

DJT’s I didn’t know it 

was illegal defense

This helps explain why DJT needs to pull out all the stops and all the corks from all the bungs in his own defense: 

Maximum jail terms under Georgia state law

That defense ranks right up there with the dog ate my homework defense. 

Cecil ate $4,000 in bills that were 

laying around on the counter 

Bad dog, bad, bad dog!

OK, OK, DJT’s defense isn't quite as good as the dog ate my homework defense. Sheesh.

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Although this news bit is posited as a big deal, it doesn’t look big to me. Maybe I’m missing something. Salon reports:

Experts: Jack Smith’s “dramatic new proof” so “overwhelming” 

reluctant witnesses may decide to flip

Professor: Trump “demonstrated a criminal intent” to collaborate with insurrectionists at “expense of the Constitution”

Former President Donald Trump refused to help stop the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol and instead watched TV from the White House, according to previously undisclosed details that special counsel Jack Smith's team uncovered as part of its Jan. 6 probe, ABC News reported.

A significant portion of the information in the report comes from interviews with Dan Scavino, Trump's former deputy chief of staff and current senior adviser to his reelection campaign. Scavino, who refused to cooperate with the House select committee's probe on Jan. 6, citing executive privilege, had his claims rejected by a judge last year and was informed he had to comply with a grand jury subpoena. Essential parts of his testimony were disclosed to ABC News.  

“Trump was ‘very angry’ that day – not angry at what his supporters were doing to a pillar of American democracy, but steaming that the election was allegedly stolen from him and his supporters, who were ‘angry on his behalf,’” ABC News reported. “Scavino described it all as ‘very unsettling,’” sources told the outlet.  

“Indeed, Trump’s angry response to Scavino’s comment to him that there’s smoke coming out of the Capitol in effect was, ‘Let it Burn,’” [former prosecutor] professor Bennett Gershman said. “And his nonchalant indifference to Vice President Pence’s safety and welfare offers chilling proof that Trump’s conscious purpose, namely, his intent, was first to incite an insurrection and then by his inaction to demonstrate his intent that the insurrection effectively stop Congress from doing its constitutional duty to certify the election results.”

This proof would be “powerful circumstantial” evidence of Trump’s criminal intent underlying all the federal charges, he added.

Aw, poor Scavino, he was all unsettled on 1/6 because his boss was trying to overthrow the government and pull off a coup. Poor, poor boy. Sad. /s

Actually, I wish Scavino would be put in the slammer for a decade or so to give him time to think about why he supported DJT in the first place and why he refused to cooperate with prosecutors. Citing executive privilege was pure cynical bullshit by Scavino and he knew it all along.

This news isn’t new. We all knew that DJT was watching the coup attempt on TV and refused to do anything about it. That makes perfect sense because he wanted the coup attempt to succeed, not fail because he intervened to stop it. Maybe what makes this important is that there is now testimony under oath about DKT’s morally rotted, autocratic state of mind on 1/6.