CSotD: The World Begins Another Week
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We’ve had some smoky days here, but — looking at the AirNow.gov map — nothing like what they’re seeing in the Midwest and certainly not what they’re seeing in large swaths of Canada. We had readings of 83 yesterday, just shy of the “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” level, but high “Moderate” enough that people reported sinus issues and scratchy eyes.
The question arose at the dog park, “Is this going to be the new reality?” and nobody suggested it wasn’t.
Canada is the second-largest nation of the world, but about 80% of its population is within 100 miles of the US border. The rest is not — despite American preconceptions — entirely tundra, which leaves a lot of forests that will be vulnerable to wildfires as the climate changes.
Canada isn’t the only place with wildfires happening; Russia is also seeing major blazes, and wildfires seem more frequent in the American West as well. Australia has always had damaging wildfires each summer to ruin their Christmas season, and now, presumably, they’ll have more.
Fortunately, most of us have a stash of N-95 masks left over from our last adventure in the New Reality.
And, fortunately, Big Brother has recalibrated the EPA so we no longer have to worry about the effects of air or water pollution. Air that used to be hazardous back when Richard Nixon founded the EPA has now been declared to be of no danger whatsoever.
Richard Nixon doesn’t look as bad as he once did, either. It’s all relative.
Air quality is like employment figures. You simply have to set a goal and make sure you meet it, even if you have to fire a few Gloomy-Gus types in order to get the results you need.
Interesting insight on the jobs-report fiasco: The person who presents the report to the White House isn’t the one who came up with the numbers, which are tallied by an entire staff of accountants. The numbers are their work, not hers, and so firing her truly was a case of shooting the messenger.
For that matter, the Fed’s decision whether or not to change the interest rate is, similarly, determined by a board of 12, which is about a quarter the size of the group that collates labor numbers but it’s not just the judgement of Jerome Powell.
However, the Fed is a smaller group and is appointed by the President, so that, as vacancies occur, he‘s able to nudge the economy in desired directions.
A lot of farmers who supported Dear Leader in the last election are already aware of the impact of climate change on their business, and the smart ones are worried about the future in that regard.
However, as Kearney says, there are economic clouds on the horizon that will hit sooner and harder. Trump brags about the money collected from tariffs — which he continues to pretend are paid by exporters, not you — but soybean farmers have already lost the remains of the Chinese market to Brazil.
What will happen? Under the previous Trump tariffs, the government paid soybean farmers billions to make up for the initial massive wave of lost sales. Presumably, they’ll have to compensate them again for the results of Dear Leader’s trade wars.
Keep it in mind when he says how much he’s collected (from you). I doubt he’ll subtract the subsequent costs.
Never is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not smoky all day.
There is some comic relief in a few of Dear Leader’s attempts to change the subject from You Know Who, and re-instating the Presidential Fitness Test got giggles, given that Dear Leader lives on an insanely unhealthy diet, is morbidly obese despite lying about his dimensions and not only uses a golf cart but has been known to run it up onto the greens to avoid walking.
He got some brickbats for recruiting convicted child molester Lawrence Taylor as a booster for the effort, which overshadowed his similar use of Harrison Butker, a placekicker who became famous for coming out against Pride Week and DEI and telling women they’d be happier as housewives than out in the working world. The third spokesjock was golfer Bryson DeChambeau, an avid Trump fan who apparently plays a lot at Bedminster with Eric Trump.
In case you thought he only chose cabinet members and judges with those sorts of credentials.
For instance, Clay Jones has been known to flog Dear Leader as a sport, but it’s hard even for him to overstate the unfitness of Emil Bove for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.
And in that passionate essay, he focuses on the Republican Senators whose loyalty to Dear Leader overrode multiple warnings from whistleblowers about Bove’s unfitness for the bench. They also got a letter signed by more than 900 former Justice Department attorneys urging them not to confirm Bove.
But one person wanted him confirmed, so the GOP Senators lined up and signed up like good little boys and girls.
I see a lot of Republican legislators are back home, but are conducting their town halls by video rather than stepping out in person to face their constituents.
They know what they’re doing, and they’re doing it anyway.
Meanwhile, in the Antipodes
About 100,000 Aussies turned out in the rain to march over Sydney’s Harbour Bridge to show their opposition to the war in Gaza. And to answer the question in Hudson’s cartoon, that’s slightly more than the people who have been killed in Gaza so far.
Given the pressure in this country to either support the war or STFU, it’s heartening to see people turn out to voice their opposition, especially since, as Le Lievre records matters, the winter rain was reportedly quite a bit more than a sprinkle.
And if the media seems to be toeing the line overall, Katauskas points out that certain questions still demand answers and good journalists will do the demanding, even in the face of doubletalk and opposition.
The alternative — here, there, and around the world — is having history remember you as this guy, a prisoner indeed of his own unwillingness to commit to a set of values.
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