News bits: Birth control under attack; power shifts on gun safety

Lawsuit attacks federal right to birth control

Radical right judge Trump rejects it

Vox writes:

Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee to a federal court in Texas, spent much of his career trying to interfere with other people’s sexuality.

Last week, Kacsmaryk issued an opinion in Deanda v. Becerra that attacks Title X, a federal program that offers grants to health providers that fund voluntary and confidential family planning services to patients. Federal law requires the Title X program to include “services for adolescents,”

The plaintiff in Deanda is a father who says he is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.” He claims that the program must cease all grants to health providers who do not require patients under age 18 to “obtain parental consent” before receiving Title X-funded medical care.

This is not a new argument, and numerous courts have rejected similar challenges to publicly funded family planning programs, in part because the Deanda plaintiff’s legal argument “would undermine the minor’s right to privacy” which the Supreme Court has long held to include a right to contraception.

But Kacsmaryk isn’t like most other judges. In his brief time on the bench — Trump appointed Kacsmaryk in 2019 — he has shown an extraordinary willingness to interpret the law creatively to benefit right-wing causes.

And so, last Thursday, the inevitable occurred. Kacsmaryk handed down a decision claiming that “the Title X program violates the constitutional right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.”  

Kacsmaryk’s decision is riddled with legal errors, some of them obvious enough to be spotted by a first-year law student. And it contradicts a 42-year-long consensus among federal courts that parents do not have a constitutional right to target government programs providing contraceptive care. So there’s a reasonable chance that Kacsmaryk will be reversed on appeal, even in a federal judiciary dominated by Republican appointees.

Nevertheless, Kacsmaryk’s opinion reveals that there are powerful elements within the judiciary who are eager to limit access to contraception. And even if Kacsmaryk’s opinion is eventually rejected by a higher court, he could potentially send the Title X program into turmoil for months. 

Kacsmaryk’s opinion is incompetently drafted and makes several obvious legal errors

Kacsmaryk’s opinion makes a number of legal errors, some of them egregious.

The Constitution, for example, does not permit litigants to file federal lawsuits challenging a government program unless they’ve been injured in some way by that program — a requirement known as “standing.” But Alexander Deanda, the father in this case seeking to stop Title X-funded programs from offering contraception to minors, does not claim that he has ever sought Title X-funded care. He does not allege that his daughters have ever sought Title X-funded care. And he does not even allege that they intend to seek Title X-funded care in the future.

This will probably wind being appealed to the Republican Supreme Court. Given its hostility to the right to privacy, its elevation of religious rights above all others, its radical Christian nationalist ideology and its willingness to blithely overturn precedent, it seems reasonably possible that this decision will be upheld on appeal. But, a final decision is a year or two off. 

This is more evidence of the creeping radical, fundamentalist Christian theocracy that is poisoning too much of America, including federal courts.

Gun safety and politics

A NYT opinion piece written by gun safety advocate Dave Cullen discusses a surprising political shift regarding the politics of gun safety law. The shift is that gun safety laws are starting to be passed in states and the federal government. 

Apparently, years of activism and organization among gun safety groups has gained enough traction that federal and state Republican politicians have come to fear the gun safety lobby more than the NRA and the anti-gun safety law lobby and campaign contributions. Important catalysts in the growing gun safety movement include the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords in Arizona, the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre of 6 and 7 year old children, and the 2018 shootings at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

In congress, Mitch McConnell broke through decades of the rock solid Republican Party opposition to gun safety laws after polls indicated there was overwhelming public support for gun safety. That support was backed by enough anger that Republican politicians were starting to lose bids for re-election in significant part due to this issue. The NYT writes:

After decades of getting trounced by the N.R.A., activists saw 67 gun safety laws passed at the state level in 2019, compared with nine pro-gun laws. This year, 45 new gun safety laws have been adopted in states, while 95 percent of gun-lobby-linked bills have been blocked, according to an Everytown report.

.... Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, warned his conference it was. Before the vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act this June, Mr. McConnell told his conference the game had changed. In a closed-door session, his team presented stunning internal polling of gun-owning households. He summarized it for reporters: “Support for the provisions of the framework is off the charts, overwhelming.”  

And with that, the architect of the gun safety blockade in Congress blew a hole in it. He needed to peel off 10 of his senators, and he got 15. The law strengthens background checks, especially for people under age 21 and provides funding to carry out red flag laws and for mental health, school safety and violence interrupter programs.

This shows the effort and organizing needed to get the corrupt, government and gun safety-hating radical right Republican Party to do what a solid majority of Americans has wanted for years. 

Apparently, about the only thing that moves Republican politicians to respond to usually disorganized majority public opinion in the face of an opposing, organized and well-funded minority is large scale public organization and activism. That needs to be driven by enough anger and votes to threaten politician election or re-election. Once the politicians sufficiently fear public anger for their careers, things can get done.

If that analysis is basically correct, then it points to a way to deal with intransigent Republican politicians. At present, disorganized majority public opinion faces two powerful, opposing, organized and well-funded minority ideologies. One is aggressive theocratic Christian nationalism. The other is authoritarian brass knuckles capitalism.  

Some Republican text messages about the 1/6 coup attempt

Christofascism on TikTok

There is a lot of it out there

Homegirl found some of the text messages that Talking Points Memo published yesterday:

The Messages Included Battle Cries, Crackpot Legal Theories, And ‘Invoking Marshall Law!!’ By Hunter Walker, Josh Kovensky and Emine Yücel | December 12, 2022 5:34 p.m. 

Jason Miller to Mark Meadows: FYI…So I asked Ali Pardo from our press shop to get in touch with Rep. Mo Brooks’ office since he seems to be the ringleader on the Jan 6th deal. They say they will have as many as 50 members on board 1/6…but we won’t have a list of names until Sunday or Monday. This may not surprise you, but no one from the legal team has made contact with them at all. They request examples of fraud, numbers, names, whatever supporting evidence can be provided. We’ve now supplied that, but our legal squad isn’t exactly buttoned up. I bring this up for a simple reason – if we’re hoping to move real numbers on the 6th, I think we need to quickly start mobilizing our real-deal allies. I’m ready to go, I have bodies to help, will follow your lead. 

Mark Meadows reply: Thanks Jason. You are the best. I will bring it up with potus and I plan to meet with them on Saturday. 

Jim Jordan to Mark Meadows: On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence. �No legislative act,� wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, �contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.� �The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: ��That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.� �226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916). � Following this rationale, an unconstitutionally appointed elector, like an unconstitutionally enacted statute, is no elector at all. 

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) to Meadows on January 17, 2021: Mark, in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of � no return � in saving our Republic !! "Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!" 

Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) to Meadows on Nov. 6, just after the Nov. 3, 2020 elections: Mark, When we lose Trump we lose our Republic. Fight like hell and find a way. We’re with you down here in Texas and refuse to live under a corrupt Marxist dictatorship. Liberty! Babin

It is fact that the 1/6 event was a coup attempt supported by a sitting Republican president and some Republican members of congress. IMO, those people should be tried and jailed for life. Those Republicans apparently seriously believed Trump's crackpot lies and conspiracies about a stolen election. They believed it without one shred of evidence. Some of them apparently seriously believe that the Democratic Party wants to establish a Marxist dictatorship. Now, the fascist GOP publicly stated that it will shut down further investigation on Jan. 3, 2023, the day the fascist Republicans take control of the House. That undeniably shows the GOP’s support for the 1/6 coup attempt. Establishment of an authoritarian regime, probably a bigoted, ruthless Christofascist kleptocracy is the fascist goal.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to homegirl for brining these text messages to my attention.

News blasts ’n bits: Christian Sharia’s initial step to tax dollars, etc.

News blast: Christian theocracy under Christian 

Sharia law starts an effort to crack open a state treasury

A central, cherished goal of the radical right Christian nationalist wealth, power and theocracy movement has been to sink its greedy claws into taxpayer dollars at the state and federal levels. One way in has been to argue in courts that religious schools are entitled to tax dollars. State laws that separate tax revenues from religion have stood in the way. However, a Supreme Court decisions held that such separation was an unconstitutional burden on free speech by religion, thereby knocking down a major barrier that protected tax dollars from Christian pillage. That decision went a long way to neutering the Constitution’s establishment clause, which had been the basis for keeping the hooks of religion out of tax revenues.

Politico writes:

Oklahoma’s departing attorney general just took a big step toward achieving a conservative education milestone.

A state law that blocks religious institutions and private sectarian schools from public charter school programs is likely unconstitutional and should not be enforced, Attorney General John O’Connor and Solicitor General Zach West wrote in a non-binding legal opinion this month.

Their 15-page memo leans on a trio of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that favored religious schools and won rapt attention from conservative school choice advocates and faith groups.

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said the advisory opinion “rightfully defends parents, education freedom, and religious liberty in Oklahoma.” Newly-elected state Superintendent Ryan Walters called it “the right decision for Oklahomans.”

Now it’s time to see if faith-based Oklahoma institutions successfully apply for taxpayer support to create charter schools that teach religion as a doctrinal truth just like private schools do today, and if legislators will push to change state law. Legal authorities in other Republican-led states could also pen similar opinions.  

“The policy implications are huge because this is the first state that is going to allow religious charter schools,” said Nicole Stelle Garnett, a University of Notre Dame law professor and influential religious charter school supporter who wants other states to follow Oklahoma’s lead. “The legal implications are huge because this is the first state that says that they have to,” she said in an interview. 

.... [this] formal opinion of a conservative attorney general marks one of three ways religious charters can find legal footing.

In a widely-read 2020 report for the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, Garnett argued states could also amend or write laws that allow such schools to exist. Or perhaps a lawyer could sue on behalf of a school operator that wants to incorporate religion into its curriculum.

His opinion, though, relies on three groundbreaking high court cases involving religious institutions: Carson v. Makin earlier this year, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue in 2020, and Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer in 2017.  

“It is a whole other ballgame for the state to instruct children on religious doctrine and teach it as truth,” said Derek Black, education and civil rights professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, in an interview. “That’s what we’re talking about here: State dollars in public schools, delivering instruction to children preaching religion as a way of life that must be adhered to. That’s staggering.”

This is more evidence of what pro-theocracy Christian nationalism empowered by Supreme Court-endorsed Christian Sharia law intends to do. Once the Christian nationalist Supreme Court finishes obliterating the concept of church-state separation as a viable legal barrier, powerful Christian nationalist elites, i.e., most Republican politicians in Congress and state legislatures, will be unleashed. Fundamentalist Christianity will be freed to have unfettered access to our tax dollars.

Because the threat is grave and imminent, I will keep raising these warnings about the threat of intolerant American theocracy under a vengeful Christian Taliban that is dead set on killing tolerant democracy and civil liberties.

Inside the 1/6 coup attempt

Talking Points Memo has obtained evidence that the House 1/6 investigation committee has about the role of Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. Meadows is a well-know Christian nationalist elite who supported the coup attempt. Meadows is on of the key Christian Taliban  leaders. TPM has 2,319 text messages that Meadows sent to various elite Republicans, including 34 congressional Republicans. This is more evidence that Christian nationalism was a major influence in support of the 1/6 coup attempt. TPM writes:

The text messages, obtained from multiple sources, offer new insights into how the assault on the election was rooted in deranged internet paranoia and undemocratic ideology. They show Meadows and other high-level Trump allies reveling in wild conspiracy theories, violent rhetoric, and crackpot legal strategies for refusing to certify Joe Biden’s victory. They expose the previously unknown roles of some members of Congress, local politicians, activists and others in the plot to overturn the election. Now, for the first time, many of those figures will be named and their roles will be described — in their own words.

The texts Meadows provided to the select committee encompass the period from election night in 2020 through President Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021. It is not clear which, if any, texts Meadows withheld from the committee, but the text message log offers multiple hints it is only a partial record of his conversations. There are discussions that clearly lack prior context and messages where participants indicate there is further communication taking place on encrypted channels.  

TPM is kicking off this series with an exclusive story showing that the log includes more than 450 messages with 34 Republican members of Congress. Those texts show varying degrees of involvement by members of Congress, from largely benign expressions of support for Trump to the leading roles played by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jody Hice (R-GA), Mo Brooks (R-AL), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the plot to reverse Trump’s defeat.

Meadows’ text log shows what the scheme to subvert the 2020 election looked like behind the scenes. It reveals the roots of the violence and its key enablers in Washington. The messages show the plot began well before Jan. 6 and continued afterward. They are essential documentation of a dark day in American history.

It is no wonder that radical right, fascist House Republicans have already publicly stated that on Jan. 3, 2023, the day they take control of the House, they will shut the 1/6 Committee down. They need to end any further House investigation of the role of Trump and his Republican enablers in trying to overthrow the US government on 1/6. They have a hell of a lot to try to hide and spin from treason into something the Republican Party officially calls “legitimate political discourse.”

We can only hope that the Democrats release all of the evidence they have before their power to honestly inform the American people is taken away. Once the Democrats are shut up, the fascist Republicans will start their massive propaganda campaign to turn a true horror for democracy into a faux triumph for democracy.  

Book banning by radical right zealots:

The role of Christian business and its money

The NYT writes:

A Fast-Growing Network of Conservative Groups 

Is Fueling a Surge in Book Bans

Some groups are new, some are longstanding. Some are local, others national. Over the past two years, they have become vastly more organized, well funded, effective — and criticized.

The Keller Independent School District, just outside of Dallas, passed a new rule in November: It banned books from its libraries that include the concept of gender fluidity.

The change was pushed by three new school board members, elected in May with support from Patriot Mobile, a self-described Christian cellphone carrier. Through its political action committee, Patriot Mobile poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Texas school board races to promote candidates with conservative views on race, gender and sexuality — including on which books children can access at school.  

“This is not about banning books, it’s about protecting the innocence of our children,” said Keith Flaugh, one of the founders of Florida Citizens Alliance, a conservative group focused on education, “and letting the parents decide what the child gets rather than having government schools indoctrinate our kids.”

It is easy to see the power of this Christian Taliban tactic. Overtly Christian businesses generate profits. Then they leverage that profit with tax breaks to PACs that support putting more Christian Taliban into positions that can influence public schools, elections, law enforcement and everything else they can corrupt. 

Also, notice the sophisticated propaganda this is packaged with. Book banning is spun into a narrative not about banning books, but about empowering parents. The Christian Taliban wants parents to indoctrinate children into their bigoted theocratic world view by keeping them ignorant and fostering intolerance of aspects of the real world the Taliban hates and wants to oppress.  

1933 book burning ceremony in Berlin, Germany

2022 book burning ceremony in Tennessee

(Harry Potter and Twilight got torched)

Thoughts about anti-Semitism and 

bad faith rhetoric

In 1946, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote this:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

As I’ve argued here before, talented demagogues, tyrants, religious and political ideological zealots, kleptocrats and the like (“bad people”) have known for millennia that bad faith in the form of blatant lies, slanders, flawed crackpot reasoning, scapegoating bigotry and the like are hard to defend against. The burden on the defenders of truth to explain usually complicated truth in the face of assertions of simple false reality and/or reasoning.

Just as bad people understand the power of bad faith rhetoric, some observers have long understood the great advantage that the bad people have over the defenders. Along with Plato and Aristotle, John-Paul Sartre was one of those who understood the asymmetry in rhetoric and the imbalance in persuasion power that is inherent in the asymmetry.

However, maybe one thing has changed from the time Sartre wrote his comments. These days, at least for radical right American fascists, even when they are pressed quite closely, they do not fall silent. Instead, they double down and renew their attacks, lies, slanders and crackpottery. For modern bad people, the time for argument is never past.

IT's TOTAL WAR !!!!!

 A collection of radical right figures including white nationalists and ultranationalist European leaders gathered in Manhattan for the New York Young Republicans Club’s (NYYRC) annual gala Saturday night, where that group’s president declared “total war” on perceived enemies.

“We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets,” NYYRC president Gavin Wax declared to a room full of supporters at 583 Park Ave., an event venue on New York’s Upper East Side.

“This is the only language the left understands. The language of pure and unadulterated power,” Wax added.

At the five-hour event, which Hatewatch reporters attended, white nationalists Peter and Lydia Brimelow of VDARE hobnobbed with Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser and White House official. Donald Trump Jr. was also in attendance.

Republicans publicly lauded members in attendance from an Austrian political party founded by World War II-era Nazi party members. Racist political operative Jack Posobiec shared jokes across a table with Josh Hammer, the opinion editor of Newsweek. Multiple recently elected GOP congresspeople applauded Marjorie Taylor Greene, who told the NYYRC crowd in the event’s closing remarks that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol would have succeeded if she had planned it and that the insurrectionists would have been armed.

“Then Jan. 6 happened. And next thing you know, I organized the whole thing, along with Steve Bannon,” Greene said, referring to allegations that she had led reconnaissance tours of the Capitol for soon-to-be insurrectionists in the days prior to the violence.

“I will tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I organized that, we would have won,” she said, as attendees erupted in cheers and applause. “Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”

Lots more to read about here:

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2022/12/11/white-nationalists-other-republicans-brace-total-war

A bit of legal news: Things aren't always necessarily what they look like

Judge ‘Loose’ Cannon reluctantly dismisses 

her own partisan pro-Trump decision

The 11th Circuit federal appeals court rejected Aileen Cannon’s brazenly partisan decision to appoint a special master to review the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago. Her decision was widely seen as partisan and unjustified. The DoJ appealed and the appeals court said that Cannon’s court did not have jurisdiction to even hear Trump’s unfounded demand for a special master to review the Mar-a-Lago documents. Trump’s filing effectively slowed progress in the case by months.

The deadline for Trump to appeal to the appeals court decision to Supreme Court expired last Thursday. Trump did not appeal.

One could see this as a loss for Trump, but winning an obviously unwinnable motion probably was not what Trump intended. Instead, he arguably won by getting a delay in the DoJ investigation from the pro-Trump judge his legal team intentionally put the case in front of.

If Trump had not filed his demand for a special master to review documents and Cannon hadn’t gone along with it, the criminal case would have advanced farther between August and the November midterms. That was at a time when things looked a lot different. Trump took no political hit from the radical right until the last few weeks, not last August.

In August Trump appeared to be a lot more politically formidable. Everyone expected a devastating red wave to blow the Democrats out of control of congress. Trump arguably reinforced his image of untouchability by stiff-arming both the rule of law and common sense with his legally hopeless motion.[1] Confidence did not start to drop off until early voting polls came in within days of the November midterms. The unknowable thing is what if his supporters started writing him off and fracturing a month or two earlier. We cannot know if it would have made any difference in the House and Senate elections and majorities. It could have. 

In other words, if Trump had not filed this motion in August, it is possible (not certain) that the Republicans would not have taken control of the House and maybe even lost one or two seats in the Senate. 

All in all, one can think that Trump’s delay tactic more likely than not succeeded if one assumes it was filed to delay the DoJ’s investigation for political advantage, not to win on the legal merits. Maybe the whole point was to win by delaying, denying and obstructing, not to win on the merits.

Footnote: 

1. For example, I was unsure whether the radical right 11th Circuit appeals court would pass on the legal flaws in Cannon’s order for a special master. It was only after reading some of the appeals court decision to slap Cannon down hard, did the weakness of Trump’s motion become plausible. That is when I started to believe that Trump’s tactic was likely legally hopeless. That belief was cemented into certainty when Trump chose not to appeal to the Supreme Court.

This exemplifies a big problem with fomenting irrational, unfounded distrust in government, elections, political opposition, etc. Distrust can spread to and poison public confidence in the courts. That was where I was and still am. Even with this appeals court decision, I do not trust that radical right circuit will adhere to the rule of law when the stakes are much higher for the radical right than was the case here.   

News bits: Climate science modeling advances, etc.

Climate models start to get a grip

on the influence of clouds

A WaPo article discusses recent research on how clouds affect climate. The thin wispy clouds way high up in the air (cirrus clouds) have been known to tend to trap energy and increase global warming. Big fat clouds closer to the ground have been known to reflect solar energy, which tends to decrease warming. Advances in models are now digging into effects on clouds. The models are starting to generate predictions about what will happen to clouds and the impact on global warming that projected changes in clouds will probably exert.

Cirrus clouds are heat trappers

The WaPo writes:

First, the high, wispy cirrus clouds that trap the Earth’s radiation are expected to shift upward in the atmosphere, to lower temperature zones. Thanks to a complicated relationship between clouds and the radiation of the Earth, that will increase the amount of radiation that the cirrus clouds trap in the atmosphere. “When they rise, their greenhouse effect, or warming effect, on the Earth tends to increase,” Myers said.

That result has been known for about a decade, and indicates that clouds are likely to amplify global warming. But just in the past few years, researchers have also discovered that the number of low-level stratus or stratocumulus clouds are expected to decrease as the planet continues to warm. One study, in the journal Nature Climate Change, used satellite observations to discover how cloud formation is affected by ocean temperatures, wind speed, humidity and other factors — and then analyzed how those factors will change as the world warms.

“We concluded that as the ocean warms, the low-level clouds over the oceans tend to dissipate,” said Myers, one of the authors of the study. That means that there are fewer clouds to reflect sunlight and cool the earth — and the change in low-level clouds will also amplify global warming.

Researchers have also begun to understand how clouds will be affected by certain changes beyond warming — such as the reduction of artificial aerosols in the atmosphere. Clouds form around particles floating in the atmosphere, such as aerosols; it is possible, therefore, that low-level clouds would have decreased even more if not for human-induced air pollution. According to another study released last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sulfate aerosols have spurred cloud formation, thus masking some of the global warming that has already occurred. “There’s potential that as we clean up air pollution, we unmask global warming,” said Casey Wall, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo. 

Combined, these new findings have helped scientists zero in on how much the planet will warm if carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere were to double from preindustrial times. (Before the industrial revolution, CO2 concentration was around 280 parts per million, or ppm; now it has reached 412 ppm, and is still rising.) Scientists once estimated that if CO2 reached 560 ppm, the temperature would increase between 1.5 and 4 degrees Celsius — a range that spans a “still very livable planet” to “near-apocalypse levels of warming.” 

The new cloud research indicates that the lower estimates for warming are highly unlikely. Instead, the recent papers estimate that CO2 levels of 560 ppm would probably result in at least 3 or 3.5 degrees of warming. 

That doesn’t mean that the world will definitely hit 3 degrees of warming — if countries continue to shift to clean energy, CO2 in the atmosphere could be stabilized at a level significantly below 560 ppm. But it does mean that the most optimistic estimates for how warming will unfold have been taken off the table.

No doubt, the pro-pollution radical right propaganda Leviathan will spin this into a narrative something rationally incoherent but partisan coherent like this: “See, we told you, trying to clean up pollution makes things worse. The evidence shows that sulfur pollution is good for the good clouds. Your idiotic warnings about climate change are just hysterical socialist alarmism and lies. We are defenders of the good clouds and freedom.”

Cumulus clouds, the juicy good ones

The fentanyl plague 

The WaPo writes:

During the past seven years, as soaring quantities of fentanyl flooded into the United States, strategic blunders and cascading mistakes by successive U.S. administrations allowed the most lethal drug crisis in American history to become significantly worse, a Washington Post investigation has found.

Presidents from both parties failed to take effective action in the face of one of the most urgent threats to the nation’s security, one that claims more lives each year than car accidents, suicides or gun violence. Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49.

The Drug Enforcement Administration, the country’s premier anti-narcotics agency, stumbled through a series of missteps as it confronted the biggest challenge in its 50-year history. The agency was slow to respond as Mexican cartels supplanted Chinese producers, creating a massive illicit pharmaceutical industry that is now producing more fentanyl than ever.

The Department of Homeland Security, whose agencies are responsible for detecting illegal drugs at the nation’s borders, failed to ramp up scanning and inspection technology at official crossings, instead channeling $11 billion toward the construction of a border wall that does little to stop fentanyl traffickers.

“Law enforcement did the best it could,” said David King, executive director of a federal drug task force in San Diego. “We can only do so much. But in Washington, they have been very slow to respond to this and now we are at the confluence of paralysis.”

The DEA said it is now taking direct aim at the Mexican cartels and the fentanyl epidemic. DEA Administrator Anne Milgram acknowledged that the government remained too focused on heroin at the onset of the crisis, as Mexican traffickers ramped up production of synthetic opioids. 

The agency continues to count the death toll for 2021 — in a provisional tally seven months ago, it calculated the overall number of drug overdoses at 107,622. Two-thirds were due to fentanyl. 

There is one federal system that collects both fatal and nonfatal overdose data in real-time in several regions of the country. But the system, called ODMAP, is kept from public view. .... Without comprehensive data, the federal government is driving blind.

When President Richard M. Nixon launched America’s first war on drugs 51 years ago, annual overdose deaths stood at 6,771.

At a lethal fentanyl overdose scene

San Diego, Nov. 10, 2022

There you have it. A confluence of government paralysis helps build a useless wall and creates a situation that kills tens of thousands of people each year. Good job gridlocked government! Good job war on drugs! We went from 6,771 corpses/year to some unknown number over 100,000. That's a smashing success by any drug cartel’s standards!! MAGA!!

So one question pops up, which party is more responsible for the gridlock, the useless wall and the failed war on drugs, or are they both at about the same level of incompetence, or if you are a drug lord, competence?

My assessment:

~65% Republican Party

~35% Democratic Party

The Tijuana border crossing south of San Diego

From the poisonous MAGA!! files: 

MAGA!! poisons Germany

An opinion piece in The Hill comments:

The terrorist plot foiled by German security services makes abundantly clear that far-right extremism is not a uniquely American problem, but a pervasive threat to Western democracy.

In a series of raids across Germany, 3,000 members of law enforcement apprehended 25 people suspected of plotting a coup.

Eerily reminiscent of certain aspects of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. capitol, the plan called for storming the Bundestag (parliament), murdering the chancellor and seizing ministers.

The plotters are associated with the Reichsbűrger movement, an anti-government group with approximately 21,000 followers that denies the legitimacy of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany). Like anti-government groups in the United States, the Reichsbűrgers resist what they consider government overreach. Some refuse to pay taxes and engage in other forms of civil disobedience.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased support for the far right in America and Europe. COVID-deniers, vaccine skeptics and people angry at lockdowns have found extremist movements attractive.

Conspiracies fuel extremism on both sides of the Atlantic. The German prosecutor’s office explained that the Reichsbűrger followers “are firmly convinced that Germany is currently governed by members of a so-called ‘deep state.’”

QAnon followers in the United States have long believed that pedophile Satan worshipers control the government. They expect Donald Trump to return to power and defeat them.

The Reichsbűrger movement has a disturbing similarity to its American cousin the Oath Keepers. Both groups recruit former and active-duty military and police. 

This is more evidence of the poison stew of irrational, toxic rage, fear and hate that bigoted, authoritarian Trump and his corrupt, morally rotted Republican Party have unleashed on the America and the world. They continue to unleash the same poison stew today.  

From the fascist Republican criminals and politicians files:

MTG would have overthrown the government

if she and Bannon had been in charge

The Hill writes:

The White House lashed out at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Monday for saying the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol would have been armed and successful if she planned it, arguing her rhetoric is violent.

Greene on Saturday appeared to hit back at claims that she and former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon were involved in planning the Jan. 6 riots.

“And I will tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed,” she said at a gala for the New York Young Republicans Club on Saturday.