Who wants to hear from Hunter right now? Today? Anyone? Come on.

Today’s episode of Today Explained, titled Elections everywhere all at once and heard on NPR, talked about the large number of democracies holding elections this year. I won’t try to list them, though Taiwan has elections within days. There are two important points to share. First, democracy takes work, more than just holding elections, and the quality of the world’s democracies can vary by quite a bit. Second, the quality of the US democracy has a huge influence on the quality of other democracies around the world. If we can’t get it right what hope do they have? In looking at the Today Explained page on the Vox website I don’t see a way to link to this particular episode. They may do that in the future. One can also find this particular episode from whatever site one gets podcasts. Detroit finally got significant snow last night – as in snow deep enough to cover the grass. This is rather late in the season. The snow on branches of bushes and trees looked pretty. But it didn’t last all that long. The forecast tomorrow is a couple inches with more perhaps to come on Saturday and Sunday. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported the number of ways 2023 broke heat records. They hottest overall year. The hottest July, August, September, all the way through December. We’ve been told by scientists that we don’t want to hit a global increase of 1.50 degrees Celsius. In December we hit and average increase of 1.48C with two days in November that were warmer by 2.0C. At an increase of 1.5C sea levels could rise by a third of a foot (4 inches) at 2.0C that doubles to two-thirds of a foot. The nasty guy isn’t worried because it sounds like he confused feet and inches, falsely claiming rises will only be “one-eighth of an inch.” At the bottom of the post Sumner included a tweet by Prof. Eliot Jacobson that shows temperatures took a significant jump up in just the first ten days of January. Experts expect 2024 to break all the records 2023 set. As for the series of snowstorms marching across America over the last week, the cause appears to be warmer temperatures in the Arctic, disrupting the normal polar vortex and sending it a lot farther south. Joan McCarter of Kos did a liveblog of the debate of the House Homeland Security Committee on whether to recommend impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for too many migrants trying to cross the southern border. Republicans said a great deal of stuff, though none of it rose to high crimes and misdemeanors required for impeachment. Democrats did a decent job of playing defense. Yeah, this is the high priority topic less than ten days out from a possible government shutdown. Sumner reported the House Oversight Committee debated whether Hunter Biden should be hit with contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to appear for a closed door hearing Republicans intended to distort. And shortly after the debate started Hunter showed up. He offered to testify in public. Republicans didn’t take it well. After a half hour Hunter left. Sumner noted the “hearing that included three members on the Republican side who ignored subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee.” They had some weird arguments on why a subpoena should apply to Hunter and not to them. Walter Einenkel of Kos added a bit from Rep. Jared Moskowitz: You want to hear from the witness? He’s here. Are you afraid to hear from the witness? “Let's take a vote. Who wants to hear from Hunter right now? Today? Anyone? Come on. Who wants to hear from Hunter?” They were afraid to hear from the witness in a setting where they couldn’t distort his words. Sumner wrote about another bit from the debate. Rep. Nancy Mace declared how Democrats were using “white privilege” to protect Hunter. Mace then went on a long rant on how she wasn’t racist (using racially tone-deaf language). Sumner summarized what she said:

So there you have it. Mace can’t be accused of white privilege, because white people in her district are richer, Black people get killed, and Black people had some level of power there 150 years ago.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the takedown: Yeah, Mace served on the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittees. She also oversaw the elimination of the Civil Rights Subcommittee. Sumner reported the nasty guy is back to birtherism, the tactic he tried to use against President Obama and VP Kamala Harris. This time he is using it against his closest, but not very close, rival Nikki Haley. The nasty guy claimed that because Haley’s parents were immigrants Haley is ineligible to be president. But that’s not what the Constitution says. It says anyone born here is a citizen (and eligible to hold office). Yeah, there are a lot of conservative think tanks trying to come up with ways to end birthright citizenship without changing the Constitution. Sumner noted there is only one reason why this effort targets Obama, Haley, and Harris, even though the parents of both Haley and Harris were highly educated, successful, and would be wanted by any other country: “They’re not white.” Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed the change in Moscow Mitch from stern critic of the nasty guy into a wimp, unable to say a bad word against his former nemesis. Though there was that one chance in 2021 when, along with those stern words, Mitch could have voted to convict the impeached nasty guy and bar him from seeking public office again. Yeah, a lot of critics are pointing to that disparity, saying Mitch got it wrong. It would have saved ever so much trouble this year.