Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

Democrats are worried about another GOP surprise document dump that could hurt their chances in November, and it looks like that grand plan has already started.

Democratic operatives are growing anxious that Republicans working to undermine the FBI’s Russia probe are teeing up a series of document dumps meant to gin up GOP voters ahead of the midterm elections.

After weeks of hand-wringing, President Donald Trump on Monday ordered the declassification of a slew of documents related to the FBI’s long-running investigation into the Trump campaign’s potential connections to Russia. The move came on the heels of top House Republicans revealing that they may also release documents related to their probes into Trump-Russia ties, as well as anti-Trump bias at the FBI and Justice Department.

The White House and GOP leaders have cited “transparency” as their motive, and Trump has suggested the documents will show anti-Trump bias in the FBI led the bureau to supercharge its 2016 Russia probe based on flimsy evidence.

But Democrats see a more sinister plan: to taint special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing Russia probe, while simultaneously motivating Trump’s political base on the precipice of an election in which Democrats are favored to make gains. To Democrats, the situation has eerie similarities to 2016, when WikiLeaks’ slow-drip daily release of internal Clinton campaign emails hobbled Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and offered regular fodder for Republicans.

“Oh, God,” said Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director for Clinton’s campaign. “Trump could be setting the stage for the same kind of manufactured October surprise designed to help boost his standing and undermine Mueller.”

Sure, that's possible.  But the Trumpies exactly don't have a good post-election track record on competence, as Steve M points out.

It's been reported that Trump hasn't read the material he just ordered released, and we know that Devin Nunes didn't read the FISA application for surveillance of Carter Page before seeking its release. But I'm not sure it matters -- even if they read the documents, they're incapable of imagining how a person who doesn't live in the right-wing bubble will react to them. They just know that the FBI and the Mueller investigation are evil, and everyone they know is equally certain of this, so the only possible reason everyone doesn't know this is that some people just don't have all the facts. All information leads to one conclusion because no other conclusion is possible! So release more information and everyone will agree!

They've tried this before.  It hasn't exactly worked.  Yastreblansky also calls BS.

When that Red Wave doesn't arrive in November, they'll go back to talking about millions of illegal voters, or dead ones, and insist that they "really" won. When Mueller's report comes out, their belief in the conspiracy against our emperor won't be shaken at all—it'll be reinforced ("It's even worse than I thought!"). I'm really hopeful, though, that these paranoids will become more and more marginal as time goes on and retreat into the cells, like the John Birch Society, where they used to hide before the Reagan election brought them into polite society.

It's one thing to fake out Trump voters, who believe all sorts of factually incorrect garbage because it's a cult.  But Dems really shouldn't fall for it.

Not to say there isn't legitimate espionage going on here by Trump's Russian friends.

But I doubt Trump is going to be able to keep the news cycle on what he wants.  The October document dump he should be worried about are the ones coming from his former employees talking to Robert Mueller.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

It's been less than a month since the primaries, and Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis is caught up again in another example of his campaign's endless racism against Democrat Andrew Gillum, this time one of DeSantis's major donors was more than happy to go on a massive racist tirade on Twitter.

A Republican activist who donated more than $20,000 to Ron DeSantis and lined up a speech for him at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club called President Obama a “F---- MUSLIM N----” on Twitter recently, in addition to other inflammatory remarks.

Steven M. Alembik told POLITICO Wednesday he wrote the Obama tweet in anger, that he’s “absolutely not” a racist and that he understood that DeSantis’s campaign for governor would need to distance himself from the comments — which the campaign promptly did.

“We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: we adamantly denounce this sort of disgusting rhetoric,” DeSantis campaign spokesman Stephen Lawson said in a written statement.

The controversy comes after DeSantis sent his campaign into a tailspin the day after the Aug. 28 primary by using the awkward phrase “monkey this up” in describing how the economy could falter under the plans of his opponent, Andrew Gillum, the Florida Democratic Party’s first African-American nominee for governor.

That comment drew harsh criticism for its racist dog whistle connotations — Gillum called it a bullhorn — with the state Democratic Party chairwoman calling the remark "disgusting."

DeSantis denied he had any racial intent in using the phrase. But the pattern of racial controversies, including the Alembik remarks, highlights a problem that is getting harder to overlook in this racially diverse swing state: Despite DeSantis’ denunciations of bigotry, this is the fifth race-related issue concerning the candidate, the campaign or one of its supporters to erupt since the start of the general election campaign.

Five in under a month, guys.  And Steve Alembik here?  He's a real piece of work.

Alembik, a self-employed data and email services provider in Boca Raton who has had some Republican campaign clients, said it was unfair to call DeSantis a racist. Alembik, who has contributed a total of $22,920 over the years to DeSantis, said there was a double standard for white people when it came to using the N-word.

“So somebody like Chris Rock can get up onstage and use the word and there’s no problem? But some white guy says it and he’s a racist? Really?” the 67-year-old Alembik said, noting that what’s considered racially charged language now wasn’t racist when he was a kid. “I grew up in New York in the ‘50s. We were the k----. They were the n------. They were the goyim. And those were the s----.”

I mean I know the joke is that Trump and his party want to take America back to the 1950's before the civil rights era, but this is literally what Alembik is complaining about, that socially it's not the 1950's anymore.

And guess what?  He wants that era back so badly that he's willing to give Ron DeSantis tens of thousands of dollars in order to make it happen in Florida.

Oh, but that's not even the only bigoted DeSantis-related mess his campaign is dealing with THIS WEEK.

As was reported on Monday, just a few months before DeSantis formally announced his candidacy for governor, the then member of Congress attended and spoke at an event organized by the nation’s most vile anti Muslim group: ACT For America. To Muslim Americans like myself, this organization is akin to neo-Nazis who seek to demonize and marginalize blacks and Jews. But in the case of ACT, they target Muslims. 

So what is ACT about? Its leader, Brigitte Gabriel, has made it clear that every Muslim in America is a threat with her infamous remark that Muslims “cannot be loyal citizens of the United States.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has stated point blank that ACT “is the largest anti-Muslim group in the United States.” 

Gabriel, who has no known expertise in the field of counterterrorism but personally profits from demonizing Muslims, has claimed that 25 percent of all Muslims support violence. And, as the ADL notes, ACT recently “circulated a document in Minnesota featuring Muslim elected officials and a warning about an imminent Muslim takeover.” 

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which also designates ACT as an anti-Muslim hate group, has documented the recent comments of ACT local chapter activists such as one who stated last year, “Islam is a supremacist, totalitarian political ideology masquerading as a religion. It's as dangerous as Nazism or communism and must be eradicated.”

DeSantis is more than happy to get support from people like this, and take their money to further his campaign. But gods above and below, don't actually call the racists "racist" or you'll just motivate them to do more racist things!

The racism was always there.  Trump just made it socially acceptable again.

Supreme Misgivings, Con't

America is still pretty meh on the whole "Brett Kavanaugh for SCOTUS" thing at best, but already weak support has gone notably down since Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward last week with allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years ago.

A growing number of Americans said they opposed President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, as the candidate’s confirmation hearings took place and as he fended off a sexual assault claim, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

The Sept. 11-17 poll found that 36 percent of adults surveyed did not want Kavanaugh in the Supreme Court, up 6 points from a similar poll conducted a month earlier.

Only 31 percent of U.S. adults polled said they were in favor of Kavanaugh’s appointment.

If support for his nomination remains this weak, Trump’s pick would rank among the lowest-supported Supreme Court nominees to later be confirmed, according to historical data from Gallup.

“Not after the sexual charges,” said Jeffrey Schmidt, 56, from Colorado, who opposes President Trump and his policies. “Before the allegations, I was not sure.”

Kavanaugh has denied the claim that he assaulted a woman while in high school in 1982, calling it “completely false.”

Support for Kavanaugh was higher among Republicans, but fewer than two out of three, or 64 percent, said they were in favor of his nomination.

Thirty-five-year-old Karis Reeves, a Republican-leaning professional from Arizona, said he supported Kavanaugh’s nomination, but added he wasn’t “informed enough” and that the timing of the sexual misconduct allegation was “conspicuous.”

More women — 33 percent — opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, up seven percentage points from a month earlier.

“It was already a ‘no’ but now it’s a stronger ‘no,’” said Bonnie Mann, 29, when asked about whether her view of Kavanaugh’s nomination had changed since the allegation.

Still, that means a third of Americans are for him, a third against, and a third don't know or don't care, which at this point is less shocking and more utterly depressing.  Kavanaugh will be setting precedent for thirty years, nominated by a man under investigation, and for anyone, that should be reason enough to give pause.

StupidiNews!

• Legendary journalist Bob Woodward's book on the Trump regime, Fear, debuts this week as Number 1 on the New York Times best sellers list.
• US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says talks next week with North Korea's foreign minister in New York could lead to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula by 2021.
• Damage from Hurricane Florence to North Carolina's Outer Banks is reigniting debate about just how sustainable the region's $2.4 billion tourist economy is in the era of climate change.
• The battle for Britain's Sky TV network will come down to a one-day auction on Saturday as both cable giant Comcast and entertainment juggernaut Disney duke it out.
• The Senate has unanimously passed a major new update to music copyright law, the bill now goes to negotiation with the House version passed earlier this year.

Last Call For The Company Store, Gig Economy Edition

Already more than a third of working Americans are contract/freelancer/temp workers, and we're rapidly approaching the point where the majority of American workers will be freelancers with zero benefits in under a decade. 

If freelancing continues to grow at its current rate, the majority of U.S. workers will be freelancing by 2027, according to projections in the Freelancing in America Survey, released today by the Freelancers Union and the giant freelance platform Upwork. The survey found that 50.9% of the U.S. population will be freelancing in 10 years if a current uptick in freelancing continues at its current pace.

But those American workers still get paid nominally, and that means one of the fastest-growing industries in the US financial sector is payment services.  If you thought payday loan sharks and mortgage giants were predatory parasites, wait until tens of millions of us start getting paychecks in the gig economy through companies like WorkMarket that exist literally solely in order to take a healthy chunk of your income.

“Now for the first time, thanks to Fast Funds Mobile,” as WorkMarket VP Mousa Ackall wrote in January of 2017 when announcing the service, “freelancers can gain instant access to their funds via the WorkMarket mobile app – offering the level of flexibility and effortless mobility that modern workers crave.”

Ah, finally, the level of flexibility and effortless mobility I deserve.

I did not happen to be in dire need of the money right away that particular month, but as a freelancer, there have certainly been times in my life that I might have been tempted to take the devil’s deal. There are no shortage of people in more tenuous financial situations that might not be able to turn it down. In fact, as Jens Audenaert, general manager of WorkMarket explained to me, it’s proven to be an exceptionally popular feature and its use continues to grow. Weird!

Michael Sainato is one of them. He’d written a piece for the Huffington Post about Standing Rock activists in July. After a month of waiting to be paid, he was told to sign up for WorkMarket as well. A couple of weeks later, he got a notification that the $400 he was owed was available to him, but the only clickable option to withdraw the money was on something called FastFunds, something he’d never heard of. Confused and clicking around on the site he said he somehow selected the payment option, and $30 was subtracted from his invoice. He told me that while it was a mistake, he would have taken the cut regardless, because the payment was already exceptionally late and he was hard up for cash that month.

“It’s absolutely predatory,” Sainato told me. “You shouldn't have to be charged to get paid in a reasonable amount of time and HuffPost is well aware that freelancers tend to have financial issues in that they can't push off being paid several more weeks, few people can.”

“No one would reasonably spend $30 or more on [getting paid] unless they were financially put in a position where they couldn't afford not to.”

While the idea of early payment discounts aren’t novel in large industries like construction or manufacturing, where suppliers might arrange to let a company pay less than full price of an invoice if they do so in a prompt fashion, and factoring is a longstanding tradition, in which businesses sell their accounts receivable to a third party in order to facilitate having cash flow on hand more quickly, the concept coming to individual creative industry workers is novel, and yet another example of how media professionals, and freelancers in particular, are being preyed upon.

Ahh, but should you think this is only for freelancers, think again.  The rest of us will be getting these "new payment options" very soon.

The early payment model WorkMarket is using is part of a movement across the economy at large to let workers, often hourly workers, access the money they’ve already earned earlier than usual. Walmart announced last year that its workers would be able to withdraw from their paycheck early up to eight times a year for free through a service provided by PayActiv, one of a fast-growing number of instant-pay apps that look to be the future of hourly employment. PayActiv likens the fees they charge employees accessing their own money ahead of payment schedule as akin to an ATM service charge.

Fifth Third Bank was savaged when it offered the exact same service a few years ago and charged $10 bucks to get $100 early, when you needed the money up front this week to pay a bill, it was cheaper than A) the late fee from missing the bill payment, B) the overdraft fee from the bank for trying to write a check Friday for a deposit that wouldn't clear until Monday.  But the bank was sued when people realized that it was a 200% APR loan with a 35-day period, and payday lenders were pissed that real banks were getting away with their con.

That was during the Obama years.  Now in the Trump era, the wild west of "payment services" to access your own money is here to stay.

And everyone will get their cut before you will ever see a dime.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Democrats may be on their way towards making impressive gains in the House and Senate nationally, and at the state level in winning back several governor's mansions...but true blue Maryland is not going to be one of those states.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan holds a commanding 22-point lead over Democratic challenger Ben Jealous in a new poll that suggests the Republican is consolidating substantial support from groups that traditionally back Democrats in the deep-blue state.

The Goucher Poll, released early Wednesday morning, found likely voters favor Hogan over Jealous by a margin of 54 percent to 32 percent. Undecided voters have dwindled to just 9 percent of the electorate, the poll found, meaning Jealous must win the lion’s share of persuadable voters and bank on dramatically heightened Democratic turnout to have a shot on Election Day.

In addition to Hogan securing his Republican base by large margins, the poll found he had the support of 38 percent of Maryland Democrats, who outnumber GOP voters in the state by more than 2 to 1.

Even though most voters support the issues on which Jealous has campaigned — a $15-an-hour minimum wage, boosting education spending, and Medicare-for-all — they trust Hogan more on education, the economy and health care, the poll found.

“They like the issues, but they haven’t connected them to Jealous,” said Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center at Goucher College in Towson, Md., which surveyed 472 likely voters from Sept. 11 to Sept. 16. “It’s clear that Ben Jealous needs to introduce himself to Marylanders.”

While Hogan and the Republican Governors Association have spent more than $2 million in a sustained advertising blitz in Maryland since June, Jealous launched his first television adMonday, with a modest buy in the Baltimore market. The Goucher poll — the latest to show Hogan with a double-digit lead in the race — was completed the previous day.

A quarter of voters identified the economy and jobs as the most important issue that would determine whom they picked in the governor’s race — more than any other topic. That bodes well for Hogan, since likely voters said they thought he would handle economic development and job creation better than Jealous by 66 percent to 23 percent. 

Ben Jealous has done an abysmal job of campaigning so far.  It's so bad for him that Hogan is getting more than a third of the black vote in the state, and women prefer Hogan by 9 points, 47-38%.  And despite Donald Trump being next door, only 40% think he's a factor in the race at all.  Both Trump and Hogan have ignored each other, and that's fine with both of them.

Jealous is winning with voters under 35.  Millennials prefer him by 20 points.  The problem is voters over 35 prefer Hogan by more than 30 points, and there's a lot more voters over 35 that actually vote in midterms.

If younger voters showed up to the polls in Maryland in record numbers, then yes, Ben Jealous would have a real shot at this race.  Hogan's not terrible for a Republican but in 2018, he still chooses to be a Republican, and that's a disqualifying move as far as I'm concerned.

But since Millennials don't actually vote, and especially, aggressively don't vote in midterms, Hogan will be reelected and win walking away.

There's a lesson here for those who choose to learn it.

Florence And The (Farm) Machine

We're just now starting to get a picture of the billions in dollars of damage to North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia from Hurricane Florence and the record flooding, especially in eastern NC.  The losses in lives are tragic, but there's also the aftermath of thousands of pigs and millions of chickens in Carolina farms that are gone, and with them, the livelihoods of tens of thousands still reeling from Hurricane Andrew two years ago.

The number of hogs and poultry killed in Hurricane Florence flooding is already double the casualties from Matthew in 2016, and the losses are expected to mount this week as new information comes in from farmers as they gain access to their properties.

Meanwhile, the number of hog waste lagoons in North Carolina that are damaged or overflowing continues to increase.

The N.C. Department Agriculture and Consumer Services said Tuesday that so far 3.4 million chickens and turkeys have been killed by Florence, and 5,500 hogs have perished since the storm deluged the state. In preparation for the advancing storm, farmers were moving their swine to higher land, but the intensity of the flooding exceeded all expectations. The N.C. Pork Council said some of the hogs drowned in floor waters, others perished from wind damage barns.

The agriculture agency provided no details as to which counties or farming operations suffered the losses. The only specifics have come from a note to investors issued by Sanderson Farms, saying that flooding claimed 1.7 million broiler chickens out of its 20 million in the state, ranging in age from 6 days to 62 days.

Sanderson Farms said that 60 broiler houses and four feeder houses were flooded. Farmers, who are contracted to Sanderson, could be out of power for as long as three weeks, and are running on emergency diesel fuel. Sanderson Farms noted that about 30 independent farms that supply its chickens are isolated by flood waters and unreachable at this time. Each of the farms houses about 211,000 chickens, totaling more than 6 million birds that can’t be reached with chicken feed.

Perdue Farms said it was largely spared by the storm.

“We experienced minimal impact on our live operations, with partial losses at two farms raising our chickens,” spokesman Joe Forsthoffer said by email. “Our feed mills are operating normally and we’re delivering feed to farms. We moved birds from low-lying farms in advance of the storm.”

During Matthew, which struck in October 2016, the poultry industry lost 1.8 million birds, while 2,800 hogs perished, according to state Department Agriculture. North Carolina farming operations total 819 million head of poultry and 9.3 million hogs.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality said Tuesday that four open air lagoons that store hog waste have structural damage, up from two known pits whose retaining walls were compromised as of Monday.

The environmental agency said 13 lagoons are overflowing from heavy rainfall and 55 are close to the brim and could overflow if water levels continue rising.

If Andrew was a head shot to the economy of the sandhills, Florence was a mortar round right through the window.  The economic, environmental, and consumer impact of the storm will be felt in this area for years to come, and there's every reason to believe that in the years ahead, Atlantic hurricanes will only be more powerful and more common.

StupidiNews!

• Charlotte Bobcats owner and Wilmington native Michael Jordan is donating $2 million to Hurricane Florence relief efforts in the state, the coastal city is still dealing with massive flooding.
• Donald Trump is expected to visit North Carolina as the death toll from Florence reaches 33 as flooding has large portions of Interstates 40 and 95 closed.
• China says it will retaliate against US tariffs beginning Monday with tariffs of its own on $60 billion of US goods ranging from natural gas to frozen vegetables.
• The Justice Department has now opened a criminal probe into Tesla founder Elon Musk's tweets last month to take the company private, a move regulators say could be securities fraud.
• A Russian surveillance plane in Syria was shot down by Assad regime air defenses, but Moscow is blaming Israel directly for the incident.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

Above all, Donald Trump is motivated by petty vengeance against slights both real and perceived.

President Donald Trump is privately lashing out at one of his top allies, Ron DeSantis, angrily accusing the Florida Republican gubernatorial nominee of publicly betraying him.

The president has told close associates in recent days that he views DeSantis — who won his Aug. 28 GOP primary thanks to Trump’s strong support — as profoundly disloyal for distancing himself from the president’s assertion that the Hurricane Maria death toll was inflated by Democrats for political purposes.

“Ron DeSantis is committed to standing with the Puerto Rican community, especially after such a tragic loss of life. He doesn’t believe any loss of life has been inflated,” the DeSantis campaign said last week after Trump tweeted that "3000 people did not die” in Puerto Rico.

Trump’s comments unnerved Republicans across Florida, which is home to a burgeoning Puerto Rican population, leading DeSantis and other Republicans — including Senate hopeful Rick Scott — to publicly break with the president’s remark.

DeSantis’s reaction, however, particularly piqued the president. Trump views the former congressman as politically indebted to him, people familiar with the president’s thinking say, because he believes DeSantis owes his electoral success to him. The president has privately maintained that he was correct with his comments about the hurricane’s death toll, and has expressed frustration that DeSantis crossed him on the matter. 

Trump’s anger toward DeSantis is rooted in the extraordinary level of political capital he expended on behalf of the former congressman, who was little-known at the time he began his campaign for governor.

The president — over the wishes of some advisers — endorsed DeSantis in the primary, flew down to the state to campaign with him and lavished him with praise on Twitter. DeSantis, in turn, tied himself closely to Trump, at one point even running a TV ad which featured his infant child wearing a MAGA outfit.

One person close to the president described the situation as a “divorce.” At the moment, Trump has no plans to travel to Florida to campaign for DeSantis in the November general election, according to two GOP officials familiar with the president’s schedule.

You will lie for Dear Leader, or you will be destroyed by him.  Dear Leader's truth is the only truth. The Faithful Real Americans believe Dear Leader's truth, even when it is a lie.

Twenty-four percent of Americans believe that Hurricane Maria caused many fewer than 3,000 deaths, the survey finds, while 43 percent say the 3,000 figure is about right. Another third say they’re not sure.

Different respondents to the poll saw different versions of the question. Half of those surveyed were told that the Puerto Rican government had reported a death toll of 2,975 based on the results of an official study, and that Trump had rejected those numbers without offering any evidence that the figure was incorrect. The other half were simply asked for their estimation of the death toll, without any additional context.

The results among both groups, however, were nearly identical ― not only as a whole, but also when broken down along political lines. In both groups, more than 80 percent of Hillary Clinton voters accepted the official tally, but only about a tenth of Trump voters did.

Less than ten percent of Trump voters believe nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico.  Less than ten percent of these cultists believe thousands of Americans died.

For the rest, there is only Trump.

Shutdown Countdown, Con't

Republicans in Congress are scrambling to get funding bills passed ahead of midterm elections, and that apparently means dispensing with the usual months of shutdown threats and grandstanding and actually passing a funding bill with overwhelming bipartisan support.

The Senate is racing to avoid the third government shutdown of the year ahead of a looming end-of-the-month deadline.

Senators on Tuesday voted 93-7 to pass a sweeping $854 billion spending bill that includes funding for the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor and Education, which make up the lion’s share of total government spending.

Six Republicans, Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Mike Lee (Utah), Rand Paul (Ky.), David Perdue (Ga.), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and Pat Toomey (Pa.), joined Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in voting against the bill, which also includes a short-term stopgap bill to fund the rest of the government through Dec. 7 and prevent a shutdown that would start Oct. 1.

Passage of the sweeping package of defense and domestic spending marks a significant victory for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who has dedicated weeks of floor time to government funding and avoiding another catch-all omnibus bill less than two months before the midterm election, where control of Congress hangs in the balance.

It’s the first time the Senate has approved funding for Labor, HHS or Education outside an omnibus bill since 2007, though even then the package was not completed on time. The bills normally get bogged down by fights over partisan riders, but Senate negotiators agreed early on to avoid attaching them to their legislation and were able to keep them out of the final House-Senate version of the minibus.

“These milestones may sound like inside baseball, but what they signify is a Senate that is getting its appropriations process back on track; a Senate that is attending to vital priorities for our country,” McConnell said.

Despite containing only two appropriations bills, the package represents roughly two-thirds of Congress’s 2019 spending. Of the $854 billion, $785 billion fell under agreed-upon budget caps, and the rest came from off-budget funds such as Overseas Contingency Operations.

It includes provisions for military pay raises, defense research, increases for Pell grants and the National Institute of Health, and workforce development training, among others.

The House is out this week but expected to take up the funding legislation next week, ahead of the September 30th deadline to keep the government funded.

Of course all this mess does is punt the countdown well into the holiday lame duck session, but by then it won't be Paul Ryan's problem anymore...and it may not be Mitch McConnell's problem either.

Goes to show you just how terrified Republicans are right now.

Trump Trades Blows, Con't

The Trump regime will officially levy tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports starting Monday, costing American consumers an extra 10% for the rest of this year, and a whopping 25% starting in 2019.

President Trump threw his biggest punch yet at China, imposing tariffs on an additional $200 billion worth of Chinese imports and gambling that American consumers are willing to pay more for popular products to wring trade concessions from Beijing.

With Monday’s announcement, roughly half of the $505 billion in goods that Americans buy annually from Chinese firms will face new import levies.

Unlike the $50 billion in Chinese products that Trump hit in the first tariff wave, in July — which fell mainly on industrial goods — Monday’s action will affect consumer products such as air conditioners, spark plugs, furniture and lamps.

Starting Sept. 24, American importers will pay an extra 10 percent tariff for the affected items, rising to 25 percent at the end of the year, according to senior administration officials, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.

China has vowed to retaliate against the latest U.S. tariffs with new import taxes on $60 billion in American products. If that happens, the president said he would immediately begin the process of approving tariffs on a further $267 billion in Chinese imports — effectively taxing everything Americans buy from China.

To recap, Trump is heading towards something like an extra $125 billion in costs to American consumers in a consumer-driven economy, a guaranteed recipe for economic disaster.  The best part?  Apparently he has no idea exactly how tariffs actually work.

At the White House, Trump wrongly said that “China is now paying us billions of dollars in tariffs” and he celebrated the Treasury Department collecting “tremendous amounts of money, which is great for our country.”

In fact, tariffs are taxes that are paid by Americans who import goods from abroad. Through the end of August, the administration had collected nearly $22 billion in revenue because of its new tariffs, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. 

When consumer goods start skyrocketing in price just in time for holiday shopping, I'm sure we'll blame Obama for it all.  Hopefully the new Democratic Congress will put on the brakes.

StupidiNews!

• South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his wife, Kim Jung-sook, have arrived in North Korea for a three-day summit, the first such visit for a South Korean leader since 2007.
• The US Air Force estimates getting Donald Trump's proposed sixth military branch, the US Space Force, off the ground will cost taxpayers $13 billion between 2020 and 2024.
• The Trump regime is further cutting refugee settlement programs in the US to 30,000 people in 2019, a 33% drop from this year's proposed maximum.
• SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk says Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will be the company's first space tourist for a flight around the moon and back.
• FCC chair Ajit Pai says California's state net neutrality laws are "illegal", claiming that the FCC has full authority over broadband in all 50 states after a federal court ruling last week.

Last Call For From The Mouth Of The Woman Who Lived It

Hillary Clinton's book on the 2016 campaign, What Happened, is her explanation of how Donald Trump became leader of the free world, and she did not.  The book is out tomorrow, and today in The Atlantic she gives the world a preview.

How did we get here?

Trump may be uniquely hostile to the rule of law, ethics in public service, and a free press. But the assault on our democracy didn’t start with his election. He is as much a symptom as a cause of what ails us. Think of our body politic like a human body, with our constitutional checks and balances, democratic norms and institutions, and well-informed citizenry all acting as an immune system protecting us from the disease of authoritarianism. Over many years, our defenses were worn down by a small group of right-wing billionaires—people like the Mercer family and Charles and David Koch—who spent a lot of time and money building an alternative reality where science is denied, lies masquerade as truth, and paranoia flourishes. By undermining the common factual framework that allows a free people to deliberate together and make the important decisions of self-governance, they opened the way for the infection of Russian propaganda and Trumpian lies to take hold. They've used their money and influence to capture our political system, impose a right-wing agenda, and disenfranchise millions of Americans.

I don’t agree with critics who say that capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with democracy—but unregulated, predatory capitalism certainly is. Massive economic inequality and corporate monopoly power are antidemocratic and corrode the American way of life.

Meanwhile, hyperpolarization now extends beyond politics into nearly every part of our culture. One recent study found that in 1960, just 5 percent of Republicans and 4 percent of Democrats said they’d be displeased if their son or daughter married a member of the other political party. In 2010, 49 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats said they’d be upset by that. The strength of partisan identity—and animosity—helps explain why so many Republicans continue to back a president so manifestly unfit for office and antithetical to many of the values and policies they once held dear. When you start seeing politics as a zero-sum game and view members of the other party as traitors, criminals, or otherwise illegitimate, then the normal give-and-take of politics turns into a blood sport.

There is a tendency, when talking about these things, to wring our hands about “both sides.” But the truth is that this is not a symmetrical problem. We should be clear about this: The increasing radicalism and irresponsibility of the Republican Party, including decades of demeaning government, demonizing Democrats, and debasing norms, is what gave us Donald Trump. Whether it was abusing the filibuster and stealing a Supreme Court seat, gerrymandering congressional districts to disenfranchise African Americans, or muzzling government climate scientists, Republicans were undermining American democracy long before Trump made it to the Oval Office.

Now we must do all we can to save our democracy and heal our body politic.

First, we’ve got to mobilize massive turnout in the 2018 midterms. There are fantastic candidates running all over the country, making their compelling cases every day about how they’ll raise wages, bring down health-care costs, and fight for justice. If they win, they’ll do great things for America. And we could finally see some congressional oversight of the White House.

When the dust settles, we have to do some serious housecleaning. After Watergate, Congress passed a whole slew of reforms in response to Richard Nixon’s abuses of power. After Trump, we’re going to need a similar process. For example, Trump’s corruption should teach us that all future candidates for president and presidents themselves should be required by law to release their tax returns. They also should not be exempt from ethics requirements and conflict-of-interest rules.

A main area of reform should be improving and protecting our elections. The Senate Intelligence Committee has made a series of bipartisan recommendations for how to better secure America’s voting systems, including paper ballot backups, vote audits, and better coordination among federal, state, and local authorities on cybersecurity. That’s a good start. Congress should also repair the damage the Supreme Court did to the Voting Rights Act by restoring the full protections that voters need and deserve, as well as the voting rights of Americans who have served time in prison and paid their debt to society. We need early voting and voting by mail in every state in America, and automatic, universal voter registration so every citizen who is eligible to vote is able to vote. We need to overturn Citizens United and get secret money out of our politics. And you won’t be surprised to hear that I passionately believe it’s time to abolish the Electoral College.

But even the best rules and regulations won’t protect us if we don’t find a way to restitch our fraying social fabric and rekindle our civic spirit. There are concrete steps that would help, like greatly expanding national-service programs and bringing back civics education in our schools. We also need systemic economic reforms that reduce inequality and the unchecked power of corporations and give a strong voice to working families. And ultimately, healing our country will come down to each of us, as citizens and individuals, doing the work—trying to reach across divides of race, class, and politics and see through the eyes of people very different from ourselves. When we think about politics and judge our leaders, we can’t just ask, “Am I better off than I was four years ago?” We have to ask, “Are we better off? Are we as a country better, stronger, and fairer?” Democracy works only when we accept that we’re all in this together.

In 1787, after the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman on the street outside Independence Hall, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.” That response has been on my mind a lot lately. The contingency of it. How fragile our experiment in self-government is. And, when viewed against the sweep of human history, how fleeting. Democracy may be our birthright as Americans, but it’s not something we can ever take for granted. Every generation has to fight for it, has to push us closer to that more perfect union. That time has come again.

All of this should sound very, very familiar to ZVTS readers, because Hillary Clinton here says what I've been blogging about for the last several years, what I've documented daily in our descent into the Republican-controlled hell that we are in.

It was no accident.

The Bloom(berg) Already Off The Rose

Not that former NYC GOP Mayor Michael Bloomberg ever had a White House shot in 2020 running as a Republican, let alone as an Independent spoiler to split off the anti-Trump vote, but the notion that he could ever run as a Democrat in 2020 is laughable to the point of dark comedy.

“It’s impossible to conceive that I could run as a Republican — things like choice, so many of the issues, I’m just way away from where the Republican Party is today,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “That’s not to say I’m with the Democratic Party on everything, but I don’t see how you could possibly run as a Republican. So if you ran, yeah, you’d have to run as a Democrat.”

Mr. Bloomberg said he had no specific timeline for deciding on a presidential run: “I’m working on this Nov. 6 election, and after that I’ll take a look at it.” 

There is considerable skepticism among Democratic leaders, and even some of Mr. Bloomberg’s close allies, that he will actually pursue the presidency, because he has entertained the idea fruitlessly several times before, and shown little appetite for the rough-and-tumble tactics of traditional partisan politics. A campaign would require him to yield his imperial stature as a donor and philanthropist, and enter a tumultuous political and cultural climate that could make him a highly incongruous candidate for the Democratic nomination.

Though he has received a hero’s welcome from Democrats for his role in the midterms, Mr. Bloomberg is plainly an uncomfortable match for a progressive coalition passionately animated by concern for economic inequality and the civil rights of women and minorities.

In the interview Friday — his first extended comments on his thinking about a 2020 presidential run — Mr. Bloomberg expressed stubbornly contrary views on those fronts. He criticized liberal Democrats’ attitude toward big business, endorsing certain financial regulations but singling out a proposal by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to break up Wall Street banks as wrongheaded. He also defended his mayoral administration’s policy of stopping people on the street to search them for guns, a police tactic that predominantly affected black and Latino men, as a necessary expedient against crime.

And while Mr. Bloomberg expressed concern about allegations of sexual misconduct that have arisen in the last year, he also voiced doubt about some of them and said only a court could determine their veracity. He gave as an example Charlie Rose, the disgraced television anchor who for years broadcast his eponymous talk show from the offices of Mr. Bloomberg’s company. 

“The stuff I read about is disgraceful — I don’t know how true all of it is,” Mr. Bloomberg said of the #MeToo movement. Raising Mr. Rose unprompted, he said: “We never had a complaint, whatsoever, and when I read some of the stuff, I was surprised, I will say. But I never saw anything and we have no record, we’ve checked very carefully.” 

Mr. Bloomberg said the media industry was guilty of not “standing up” against sexual misconduct sooner, but declined to say whether he believed the allegations against Mr. Rose. “Let the court system decide,” he said, while acknowledging that the claims involving Mr. Rose might never be adjudicated in a legal proceeding. 

Mr. Rose, 76, has been accused by numerous women of unwanted and coercive sexual behavior, including claims that he groped female subordinates and exposed himself to them. He was fired by both CBS, where he hosted a morning show, and PBS, which broadcast the program “Charlie Rose,” which Mr. Rose recorded in the Bloomberg office. Bloomberg TV also terminated an arrangement that allowed it to rebroadcast Mr. Rose’s show. 

“You know, is it true?” Mr. Bloomberg said of the allegations. “You look at people that say it is, but we have a system where you have — presumption of innocence is the basis of it.”

And so he's against #MeToo, he's against Black Lives Matter, and he's pro-Wall Street.  He's the living caricature of what Democratic Socialists think all Democrats are, and what actual Democrats know Republicans really are at heart.

Who the hell is Bloomberg's constituency, employees of Bloomberg, Inc?

Hard, hard pass.  A pass on this clown so hard that diamonds couldn't scratch it.

NY Times?  Let's not ever seriously mention this fool as a "Democrat" again, shall we?

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

DOnald Trump is a pathological liar, somebody so divorced from even the concept of objective truth that it simply cannot exist in his world.  He lies constantly and consistently in order to aggrandize himself and receive adoration from his cult.  But now, Trump's endless lies to his base about how easily Republicans will win due to Trump being the Glorious Leader are threatening to turn the November blue wave into a cerulean tsunami as internal GOP polling shows Republicans are in full panic mode.

By the numbers: 57% of strong Trump supporters believe it's unlikely Democrats win the House, according to the source, who wasn't authorized to share findings from the RNC poll with the media. (The survey of 800 registered voters — 480 via landline calls and 320 via cellphone calls — was conducted from Aug. 29 to Sept. 2 and has a margin of error of 3.5%.)

By contrast, election forecaster Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight website gives Democrats an 83.1% chance of winning control over the House.

Why this matters: A month ago, we reported in "Sneak Peek" that Republican strategists were detecting something interesting — and from their POV, concerning — in focus groups of Trump voters. These voters — who have been listening to the president predicting a "red wave" in November — didn't believe polls showing Democrats would win the House.

This disbelief freaked out Republican strategists who want their voters to be panicked enough to vote in November.

But, but, but: Several Republican officials who have reviewed the latest polling tell me they see an opportunity amidst the gloomy data. They think they can energize seniors, suburban women and Republicans less likely to vote by attacking the high costs and potential implications of Democrats' "Medicare for All" single payer health care plans.

For these Republican constituencies, an anti-Medicare for All message "is the best performing message of persuading and motivating these groups in this November’s election," said a source familiar with the president's political thinking. "If you're giving something to everyone, that means less for seniors," the White House's political director, Bill Stepien, told me.

Trump has been briefed on this new polling and has been hammering these messages in recent rallies.

Democrats plan to fight back against this messaging. Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson told me: "For years, Republicans have been trying to make Medicare wither on the vine, so voters aren't going to believe they're now trying to save it. Even if Lex Luthor put on a cape, people wouldn't start believing he's Superman."

Expect this message war to continue.  It's the same tactic that Republicans used in 2010 to destroy the Democratic majority in Congress, and to great effect.  Republicans believe the lie of "If Dems win, they will give your heath care money to those people and you will die alone in the streets" will save them.

2010 and 2014 suggests very strongly that Republicans will be able to significantly narrow the enthusiasm gap through motivating senior voters through Medicare fear...that is if the message isn't sunk by Trump himself.

Or by, say, Robert Mueller.

StupidiNews!

• At least 18 are dead from Hurricane Florence as flooding in the Carolinas and Virginia have left thousands trapped by impassible roads and millions without power.
• Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a sandstone sphinx that may date back 2,000 years to the pre-Roman Ptolemaic Era, after draining water from a temple near the city of Aswan.
• Southern China is bracing for more flooding as Typhoon Mangkhut rips westward from Hong Kong into Chongqing Province, millions have already been evacuated from the storm's path.
• As the Trump Regime prepares imminent 10% tariffs on over $200 billion in Chinese imports, further trade talks with Beijing are in limbo as China considers retaliation.
• Bipartisan nuclear power bills are working their way through both the House and Senate to build a "fast neutron reactor" power plant for research purposes.

Last Call For Supreme Misgivings, Con't

The Borking of Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination by whatever means necessary has now become a moral imperative for Democrats.

Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a nomination that just days ago seemed all but certain to succeed.

Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be the one to tell it. 

Speaking publicly for the first time, Ford said that one summer in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and a friend — both “stumbling drunk,” Ford alleges — corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in Montgomery County. 

While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth. 

“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.” 

Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending all three tumbling. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house. 

Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples therapy with her husband. The therapist’s notes, portions of which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who went on to become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.” The notes say four boys were involved, a discrepancy Ford says was an error on the therapist’s part. Ford said there were four boys at the party but only two in the room.

Notes from an individual therapy session the following year, when she was being treated for what she says have been long-term effects of the incident, show Ford described a “rape attempt” in her late teens.

The White House is denying everything, the Senate Judiciary says the Thursday vote on Kavanaugh's confirmation will proceed without delay or without investigating Ford's claim, and most likely we will have a rapist on the Supreme Court who will be the fifth and deciding vote to end legalized abortion, end legalized birth control, and end women's control of their own reproductive health, their bodies, their freedom and their lives.

Republicans will do nothing.

A lawyer close to the White House said the nomination will not be withdrawn. 

“No way, not even a hint of it,” the lawyer said. “If anything, it’s the opposite. If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried. We can all be accused of something.”

"We" meaning white, male, straight Republicans.  "We can all be accused of something."  Racism. Sexual assault.  White privilege.

Brett Kavanaugh is being put on the Supreme Court to end that.

He will be appointed to the court by a man currently under investigation for criminal malfeasance both before and during his term in the Oval Office.

He will be confirmed by a Senate where Republican women will be the deciding votes to sentence America's women to a life of servitude and punishment for daring to have sex while fertile (and otherwise).

Senate Democrats have to find a way to stop him.

Period.

Trump Trading Blows, Con't

The Trump Trade War with China will finally hit US consumers starting next week as Donald Trump is expected to officially announce 10% tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports as soon as Monday.

President Trump has decided to impose tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods, two people briefed on the decision said, one of the most severe economic restrictions ever imposed by a U.S. president.

An announcement is expected to come within days, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss internal plans.

The new tariffs would apply to more than 1,000 products, including refrigerators, air conditioners, furniture, televisions and toys. These penalties could drive up the cost of a range of products ahead of the holiday shopping season, though it’s unclear how much.

Apple said recently its Apple Watch, AirPods, MacMini and a variety of chargers and adapters would be caught in the tariff war. “Our concern with these tariffs is that the U.S. will be hardest hit, and that will result in lower U.S. growth and competitiveness and higher prices for U.S. consumers,” the company said in a letter to the U. S. Trade representative. “The burden of the proposed tariffs will fall much more heavily on the United States than on China.”

Trump has ordered aides to set the tariffs at 10 percent, likely leading to higher prices for American consumers. These tariffs are paid by U.S. companies that import the products, though they often pass the costs along to U.S. consumers in the form of higher prices.

The U.S. imports roughly $500 billion in Chinese goods each year, and — combined with existing tariffs — these new penalties would cover half of all goods sent to the U.S. from China each year.

The 10 percent tariff is scaled back from Trump’s initial plan to impose 25 percent penalties on all of these imports. But the impact will still likely be felt by millions of American consumers.

A White House spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday afternoon.

On Friday, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said: “The President has been clear that he and his administration will continue to take action to address China’s unfair trade practices. We encourage China to address the long standing concerns raised by the United States. ”

Gosh, I can't think of a better way for Republicans to run on the strength of the "Trump economy" than by jacking up prices by 10% or more for American voters just before midterm elections, can you?

No wonder Republicans are already in full panic mode about November.

As Democrats enter the fall midterm campaign with palpable confidence about reclaiming the House and perhaps even the Senate, tensions are rising between the White House and congressional Republicans over who is to blame for political difficulties facing the party, with President Trump’s advisers pointing to the high number of G.O.P. retirements and lawmakers placing the blame squarely on the president’s divisive style.

Yet Republican leaders do agree on one surprising element in the battle for Congress: They cannot rely on the booming economy to win over undecided voters.

And when Trump's trade war starts costing jobs and the economy stops booming, what will they rely on?  Fear? Racism? War?

All three?

Sunday Long Read: Desert Of The Real

This week's Sunday Long Read is a look at the future of the American Desert Southwest by LitHub's

Saritha Ramakrishna.  What future can cities like Phoenix have in a world where climate change makes this metro area of nearly 5 million less and less sustainable -- and survivable -- every year, especially for those who can't afford to relocate?

My father once showed me an 8 ½” x 11” photo of a McDonald’s drive-through sign, set against a landscape of red dust. There was nothing around for miles; yellow arches were the only humanizing marker in an endless plain. He asked me where I thought the picture was taken. I had no idea. He later showed the picture to our neighborhood friends at a party and explained that it was land he was considering purchasing south of our home in Chandler, AZ. They nodded, asking about prices and contracts with polite interest. Once this had gone on long enough, he revealed he had actually edited those golden arches onto a stock image of Mars. I cringed, all the adults laughed. It was a summer day. The sun burned with its typical intensity, insistent on my skin. The cracked concrete around the pool tessellated outward like the Martian ground. I let my feet dangle in the water, watched them become silhouettes, ghostly in the unnatural blue. All seemed well.

Years later, on July 20, 2017, temperatures in the City of Phoenix reached 119 degrees, the fourth hottest day the city had ever experienced. The city’s national weather service branch represented the highest temperatures in a shade of brilliant magenta. These areas were designated as “rare, dangerous, and possibly life threatening.” All of Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs glowed pink.

People retreated into their homes and let the air conditioning circulate. They dove underwater, and hoped for the best. Days like these are stagnant, the air immobilizing. It presses against the body and asphalt, radiating through a network of suburban homes in Gilbert, Chandler, Tempe, the Encanto, and elsewhere in the Valley of the Sun. Cul-de-sacs turn ghostly; the sidewalks catch the light, shimmer like water. For those waiting at the light rail or bus stops, shade provides temporary relief, though it’s a landscape not meant for continuous exposure. In order to save on air-conditioning bills, towels are soaked in ice water, dripped across overheated skin. Elsewhere, water falls from restaurant misters, flows cyclically around the waterpark rivers of Sunsplash and Big Surf.

The city of Phoenix sweltered under these impossibly hot skies, as temperatures climbed in a historic upward trajectory. Every year the city experiences an average of three months of temperatures over 100 degrees, or “triple-digit days” as local weathermen describe them. By 2060, it’s expected that three months will turn into four-and-a-half months.

I grew up in Chandler, AZ, one of many linked suburbs in greater Phoenix. Chandler is composed of networks of pools and round-edged subdivisions. Summers brought the acridity of settling chlorine in sinuses, sweat drying in artificially cooled air. In the Valley of the Sun, heat, wealth, and water move together and apart, repelling and attracting each other, shaping housing markets and their occupants’ bodies and livelihoods.

In friends’ backyards and community pools, the better-off among us gossiped and played Truth-or-Dare, fought over outcomes of Sharks-and-Minnows and Marco Polo. We spent our time hiding from each other amongst the greenery of neighborhood parks, or remained captive indoors, tethered to desktop monitors. On such July days, we lived half-online, half-underwater.

I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts during last year’s heat wave. I sat in my work cubicle refreshing social media feeds every few minutes, clicking through the photos and articles that materialized. In pixelated appreciation I scrolled past videos and photos of recycling bins melted into trickling blue goo, kids frying eggs on sidewalks and on the dashboards of cars. I had been admitted to MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning a few months prior, intending to study climate change. That day, I imagined the entire city melting, congealing into indistinguishability. 

Not long after, I spoke with Dr. Nancy Selover, Arizona’s State Climatologist about this heat wave and the increasing temperatures in the state. She told me that the difficulty of extreme temperatures is that they “typically come in a heat wave” which puts residents at greater health risk. (In 2016, Maricopa County, which includes the Phoenix-Metropolitan area, reported 130 heat deaths, the highest count of the past 15 years.) The city’s record high was an impossible 122 degrees in 1990, which has yet to be broken, though she warned that “we’re edging towards probably matching that in the next couple years.” Without adaptive or mitigating measures, by the end of the century the city could be six to eight degrees warmer. Its infrastructure contributes to variations in heat exposure, via Phoenix’s well-acknowledged urban heat-island effect, a phenomenon where paved surfaces trap heat that is slowly released overnight.

“The impact of the heat island in terms of warming the City of Phoenix is almost an order of magnitude greater than climate change, greater than global or regional warming,” Dr. Selover said. Though she does not expect that this will remain the case, this notion is counter to narratives that frame climate-related issues as matters of individual choice, as opposed to summative infrastructural ones. All of Phoenix’s development and its storied overlays play a role in these hazards—developers, sellers, and homebuyers alike.

The city government has acknowledged the heat island, and the importance of canopy coverage to mitigate it. It disproportionately affects the poor, whose neighborhoods do not have the tree and shade coverage of richer areas, where air conditioning bills are an undue financial burden. Dr. Selover pointed out, “We have some older neighborhoods that have been here for years and years and years and they have a lot of turf grass, and they have a lot of big leaf trees, and they have a lot of shade, a lot of cooling,” while “the poorer communities, a lot of the minority communities don’t have the benefit of that shade.”

What I've seen time and time again is that when it comes to the effects of climate change, it's those with the fewest resources who will be made to suffer the most.

Always.

Borderline Psychopaths

The death of Mollie Tibbetts last month allegedly at the hands of an undocumented immigrant was all the rage on the right in August, primary evidence that America's most precious natural resource of college-aged white girls were going to be snuffed out by the savage brown horde. We need walls, we need more border agents, we need border agents made out of walls!

Fast-forward to September, where a US Border Patrol employee has been accused of being a serial killer of women, and radio silence from the right.

A U.S. Border Patrol supervisor was charged Saturday with murder in the deaths of four female sex workers following what authorities called a two-week killing spree that ended when a fifth woman escaped from him at a Texas gas station and found help.

Webb County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said in a tweet that Juan David Ortiz, 35, an intel supervisor for the Border Patrol, had been charged with four counts of murder as well as aggravated assault and unlawful restraint.

Ortiz, a 10-year Border Patrol veteran, was arrested early Saturday after the fifth woman escaped and found a state trooper. Ortiz fled and was found hiding in a truck in a hotel parking lot in Laredo, about 145 miles (235 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio.

“We do consider this to be a serial killer,” Alaniz said.

Alaniz told The Texas Tribune that after Ortiz picked up the fifth woman she quickly realized that she was in danger.

“When she tried to escape from him at a gas station that’s when she ran into a (state) trooper,” Alaniz said.

He said that authorities believe Ortiz had killed all four women since Sept. 3. The names of the victims were not immediately released. Alaniz said two of them were U.S. citizens but the nationalities of the other two were not yet known.

“The manner in which they were killed is similar in all the cases from the evidence,” said Alaniz. He declined to say how they were killed.

Alaniz said investigators are still trying to determine a motive for the killings. Authorities believe he acted alone.

“It’s interesting that he would be observing and watching as law enforcement was looking for the killer, that he would be reporting to work every day like normal,” Alaniz said.

Maybe the problem is violent men abuse and kill women, and that a whole lot of violent men who do abuse and kill women seem to gravitate towards jobs in the military and in law enforcement.

Just sayin'.