Raking in huge profits and pretending needing to be rescued

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos, in this week’s edition of stories to know series included:

On March 8, the NOAA announced that this has been the warmest winter in U.S. history, with overall temperatures 5.4 degrees above average. The winter was also wetter than usual. That may generate temporary relief in some drought areas, but it's unclear if this will continue into summer, when more record heat is expected.

Sumner also included a video created by Steve Shives who discusses how comics are important to life. In this 23 minute video Shives talks about an edition of DC Comics Superman from 20 years ago and why this particular story is relevant to today. I’ve watched an occasional movie based on DC and Marvel comics. It’s been many years since I have, mostly because there is too much violence. In this story Superman faces some bad guys that act like good guys in that they get rid of other bad guys. The reason why Superman considers them bad is they are unconcerned with collateral damage and they think killing the actual bad guys is a good thing. Superman responds with why disabling the bad guys, yet keeping them alive, is better. The story also include Superman listening to why people are drawn to his new enemies (as people are always drawn to strongmen). Yes, there are a lot of intentional parallels to authoritarians, even though this was published before the current batch. Superman’s way allows the author to explain to the characters and to us why Superman’s way is preferable. Back to the climate. In an Earth Matters column for Kos, Meteor Blades, had a few interesting stories. Rebecca Burns of Sierra magazine wrote about the latest tricks the climate deniers are using. Blades wrote about a couple of them. One is going into rural communities and get the residents riled up against wind turbines. Of course, the reasoning they use is mostly lies (I’m not familiar with how loud a wind turbine actually is and whether the claimed noise is a lie). They also go to state legislatures to restrict spending on climate action. When visiting my aunt and uncle in Ohio several months (or maybe a couple years) ago I saw small signs by the road at some farms saying the owner was against a wind project. My aunt lamented the appearance of these signs and said they were because of what the Sierra magazine discussed. Blades also wrote about a study from the Environmental Protection Agency about the life cycle emissions of electric vehicles. There are claims that EVs are as bad or are worse that ICE (internal combustion engine) cars. The claim says one must add in the emissions during manufacturing, especially of batteries, and the emissions of generating the electricity. The EPA looked at EVs in five countries. In France EVs are cleaner (even considering all sources of emissions) after 25K kilometers (15K miles), while in China the breakeven point is 153K km (92K miles). But as manufacturing of batteries becomes more efficient and power plants switch to cleaner sources the breakeven point will drop. FishOutofWater of the Kos community posted the Atlantic heat anomaly map for March 12. Yeah, the water is warm and has set a new record. Last year the sea surface temperature started heading higher than previous readings at the end of April. It set a record in mid August. This year the readings are way above previous readings for this time of year and earlier this month topped August’s reading. The rest of the post gets rather technical, but it leaves with this thought: The 2024 hurricane season could be nasty. Sumner looked at the nasty guy’s claim (threat?) to “Drill, baby, drill” if he gets back to the Oval Office. But...

The idea that President Joe Biden is holding back American energy production and has “destroyed U.S. energy independence” is being spread not just by Trump but also by Republicans in the House and Senate. Claims of a Biden “war on energy” are front and center in Republican campaigns, in claims by the conservative Heritage Foundation, and in Trump’s dictatorial ambitions. But all of this is just lies, baby, lies.

The US is in the middle of a record oil boom. It hasn’t needed to import oil since about 2020 and now produces enough to export. That’s while the US had a record year for renewable energy and installing renewable capacity. While the nasty guy’s – and Republican’s – claims are easily disproved, energy is supposed to be one of the issues Republicans are good at. That “drill, baby, drill” line has been used by Republicans since at least 2008. Republicans are making energy an issue because the oil and gas industry is a significant donor – and because Biden keeps calling for immensely profitable companies, like oil and gas companies, pay their fair share in taxes.

It also helps that Republicans are still calling both renewable energy and the climate crisis is a hoax. Fossil fuel companies really like that. Give them lower taxes, lower regulations, cheap public land, and cripple their competition? They’ll take that any day. So they’re both raking in huge amounts of money and pretending that they need to be rescued from mean old Biden.

A week ago I thought I’d soon be writing about my forsythia blooming. A few years ago I posted that it bloomed at the end of March, which was rare. And now I’m looking at it blooming in mid March. Except we are having a cold snap and maybe snow tomorrow. So instead of blooming it looks like most of the buds on a few of the shrubs were killed by the cold. This is the second time my forsythia didn’t bloom because early warm days were followed by cold ones. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote about the practice of judge shopping. Conservative ideologues would file their case in the court of a judge they knew would be friendly to whatever cause they wanted to enforce across the country that they knew would never be approved through the ballot box. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Amarillo has gained fame for being the judge of choice for the forced-birth movement. He’ll give them what they want, no matter hour convoluted his ruling. Since Kacsmaryk is the only federal judge in Amarillo he handles all cases. If they’re appealed (and they are) they go to the conservative 5th Circuit Court. So last week the Judicial Conference of the United States, which creates policy for the federal courts, unveiled a plan to end judge shopping. The plan was that cases would be randomly assigned to one of the federal courts in a state (or region) so plaintiffs couldn’t pick their judge. There was joy that such anti-democracy practices would be ended. That joy lasted about three days. Then far right judges, as well as members of Congress who installed them (like Moscow Mitch), started complaining. And quite quickly the Judicial Conference said the plan is only “guidance” (which can and will be ignored).

It’s telling that nearly all of the objections cited by The Washington Post come from Republican-appointed judges and their backers. But as corrosive to the legal system as the practice of judge shopping is, thanks to the seeding of the federal judiciary with these transparent ideologues, the entire institution is now appearing more and more tainted. ... Due to this rampant ideological corruption—from the top on down—conservatives are gradually transforming the federal judiciary into an institution that many Americans sensibly fear, especially since it can take away established rights without being held accountable. It is a judiciary that does not foster the notions of fairness that Americans have every right to expect from it. It is a judiciary that is becoming increasingly illegitimate in the eyes of the public, because its application of the law is increasingly seen as selective, arbitrary, and politically infused. No ham-handed public relations campaign from the Supreme Court is going to change that, particularly in a system where constitutional law professors can no longer even look their students in the eye and assure them that the nation’s founding principles are being fairly interpreted and applied. Americans should not have to live in dread of how some unelected judge in Amarillo or Fort Worth may decide to rule on an issue that could seriously alter their lives. They shouldn’t have to put up with the arrogance of an unaccountable judiciary that has been deliberately manipulated to fast-track the rabid dreams of domination by a tiny minority.

Mark Ira Kaufman of the Kos community looked at the Jewish Bible (the Christian Old Testament) and showed – contrary to the strong emphasis of Christian evangelicals – the Bible does not command belief in God. Instead, what is commanded is to do what God wants us to do. And what he wants is for us to help and love each other.

The flawed human heart is especially problematic for those whose reliance is on faith to be right by God. Why? Faith, unfettered by reason, is a product of that messed up heart. But if faith doesn't impress God, what is there that can? The answer is offered in the very next verse, calling for righteous conduct. So for those of you pious reprobates who think you're hot stuff in God's eye because of your faith, think again. And don't blame me that your faith might not mean anything to God. I didn't write the Bible.

That “very next verse” is at the top of the Ten Commandments (which Jews call the Ten Utterances), in which God says don’t worship anything else. But why do we need to “impress” God? Doesn’t He love us anyway?