Tag Archives: politics

Lucy will again yank the the football away again after the House sends their bill to the Senate to be voted upon. Sen. Susan (Lucy) Collins (R-ME) on Sunday insists she “strongly” supports a bipartisan commission to study the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol even though she has threatened to vote against it. Stepping of her foot . . . while clarifying her demands. “First of all, let me clarify my position. I strongly support the creation of...

Bibi Gets To Stay In Office (For Now)  With the welcome cease fire in Israel-Palestine, it looks like Bibi Netanyahu has achieved his near term goal of remaining prime minister of Israel, thus not only remaining power but also out of jail, with barely anybody noticing that he has done this.  His rival, Yair Lapid, who was invited by President Reuvan Rivlin to form a government, was hoping to cut a deal with the Israeli-Arab members of the Knesset,...

First Genetically Modified Mosquito Released in the United States, Nature (News in Focus), Emily Watz, presented by Professor Joel Eissenberg commenter at Angry Bear. Biotech firm Oxitec launched a controversial field test of its insects in Florida after years of opposition from residents and regulatory complications. The issue at hand is whether it is ethical to eliminate a species even though it causes human contagions. This is the first time...

Oil exports drop by the most on record to least since October 2018; global oil shortage at 1.73 million barrels per day, Focus on Fracking, RJS The “global oil shortage” is from my coverage of the May OPEC report, which i’ll paste below; I also revise global oil shortage/surplus estimates for prior months. I don’t know of anyone else who digs this stuff out of this report (a 100 page report is more than most journos can handle)… OPEC’s Monthly...

for once . . . [embedded content] Good 10 minute dialogue by Al Franken

‘Cut the Bullsh*t‘ and Tax Rich People Like Us, Common Dreams, Kenny Stancil Monday is Tax Day in the United States this year and the Patriotic Millionaires—rich Americans who advocate for greater redistribution of wealth and power to working people in the U.S.—are using the occasion to launch “an offensive” against the “selfish billionaires, Wall Street tycoons, and CEOs” who are trying to undermine progressive tax reforms that would require the...

How should we grade our collective response to the covid pandemic?  What lessons should we draw for the future?  I believe that our response was poor.  To see why, just imagine where we would be today if effective vaccines had not been developed.  Our current strategy of moderate social distancing, intermittent partial lockdowns, and economic assistance for businesses and the unemployed would not have been sustainable for another 1 or 2 years as...

The Public Reappearance Of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict  Sigh, so much that is so obvious, and so much that is not, but so much that is so sad, especially as there seems to be little real prospect of any serious improvement or settlement on the underlying issues.  Indeed, it is probably the case we did not see anything happen for a good 7 years because from the Palestinian side things looked so hopeless in the face of ongoing Israeli expansion...

Hear that China is in trouble with an aging, decreasing population. Headline says that California is in trouble; decreasing population for the first time ever. Years ago now, we heard that Japan was in trouble with an aging, decreasing population. Japan’s doing fine, thank you. And, China and California will both be better off for the decrease. More is not always better. We know where they are coming from with this stuff. They bought into the old...

China successfully lands a rover on the red planet, National Geographic, Andrews The Zhurong rover survived the harrowing “seven minutes of terror,” touching down on a vast plain called Utopia Planitia that may once have been the site of an ancient ocean. Zhurong will search for evidence of water and past habitability on Mars, possibly paving the way for future human missions. China is now only the second country in history to explore the Martian...