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Nov 2, 2019
Nov 1, 2019
It's Not Prophesy
...it's called S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
Bitch.
The Guardian:
The Silent Spring prophecy that pesticides could “still the leaping of fish” has been confirmed, according to scientists investigating the collapse of fisheries in Japan. They say similar impacts are likely to have occurred around the world.
The long-term study showed an immediate plunge in insect and plankton numbers in a large lake after the introduction of neonicotinoid pesticides to rice paddies. This was rapidly followed by the collapse of smelt and eel populations, which had been stable for decades but rely on the tiny creatures for food.
The analysis shows a strong correlation but cannot prove a causal link between the insecticides and the collapse. However, independent scientists said other possibilities had been ruled out and that the work provided “compelling evidence”.
The research is the first to reveal the knock-on effects of insecticides on fish. Harm to bees is well known, but previous studies in Europe have linked neonicotinoids to die-offs in other freshwater species including mayflies, dragonflies and snails and also to falling populations of farmland bird that feed on insects, including starlings and swallows. The insecticide has also been shown to make migrating songbirds lose their way.
Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, her seminal book on the dangers of pesticides in 1962. In their report, the Japanese researchers said: “She wrote: ‘These sprays, dusts and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests and homes – nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams.’ The ecological and economic impact of neonicotinoids on the inland waters of Japan confirms Carson’s prophecy.”
We're fouling the nest.
And that doesn't just mean we're increasing the dangers to our own health and lowering our odds of survival. We're also raising the probability that every child will be born with a physical or mental anomaly that's easily preventable if we could just learn not to shit where we eat.
Bitch.
The Guardian:
The Silent Spring prophecy that pesticides could “still the leaping of fish” has been confirmed, according to scientists investigating the collapse of fisheries in Japan. They say similar impacts are likely to have occurred around the world.
The long-term study showed an immediate plunge in insect and plankton numbers in a large lake after the introduction of neonicotinoid pesticides to rice paddies. This was rapidly followed by the collapse of smelt and eel populations, which had been stable for decades but rely on the tiny creatures for food.
The analysis shows a strong correlation but cannot prove a causal link between the insecticides and the collapse. However, independent scientists said other possibilities had been ruled out and that the work provided “compelling evidence”.
The research is the first to reveal the knock-on effects of insecticides on fish. Harm to bees is well known, but previous studies in Europe have linked neonicotinoids to die-offs in other freshwater species including mayflies, dragonflies and snails and also to falling populations of farmland bird that feed on insects, including starlings and swallows. The insecticide has also been shown to make migrating songbirds lose their way.
Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, her seminal book on the dangers of pesticides in 1962. In their report, the Japanese researchers said: “She wrote: ‘These sprays, dusts and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests and homes – nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams.’ The ecological and economic impact of neonicotinoids on the inland waters of Japan confirms Carson’s prophecy.”
We're fouling the nest.
And that doesn't just mean we're increasing the dangers to our own health and lowering our odds of survival. We're also raising the probability that every child will be born with a physical or mental anomaly that's easily preventable if we could just learn not to shit where we eat.
Oct 31, 2019
Trump-onomics
It ain't workin' for us.
via Seattle Times:
U.S. farm bankruptcies in September surged 24% to the highest since 2011 amid strains from President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and a year of wild weather.
Growers are also becoming increasingly dependent on trade aid and other federal programs for income, figures showed in a report by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest general farm organization.
The squeeze on farmers underscores the toll China’s retaliatory tariffs have taken on a critical Trump constituency as the president enters a re-election campaign and a fight to stave off impeachment. The figures also highlight the importance of a “phase one” deal the administration is currently negotiating with Beijing to increase agriculture imports in return for a pause in escalating U.S. levies.
Almost 40% of projected farm profit this year will come from trade aid, disaster assistance, federal subsidies and insurance payments, according to the report, based on Department of Agriculture forecasts. That’s $33 billion of a projected $88 billion in income.
The trade war and two straight years of adverse weather rattled farmers already facing commodity price slumps.
Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings in the 12 months ended September rose to 580 from a year earlier. That marked the highest since 676 cases in 2011 under the chapter of the bankruptcy code tailored for farms. The total “remains well below” historical highs in the 1980s, the federation said.
Recent bankruptcies were concentrated in the 13-state Midwestern region, a key battleground in the presidential election where grain, soybean, hog and dairy farms have been hit by trade disputes. More than 40%, or 255 filings, were in the region.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman took issue with President Donald Trump's repeated claims that the economy is doing better than ever under his administration.
The economic expert wrote on Twitter Wednesday that the president's promises regarding manufacturing jobs and GDP growth have failed to materialize.
"The meh GDP numbers won't help Trump next year. But what should really scare him is his utter failure to boost manufacturing in swing states," Krugman, who is a columnist for The New York Times and won the Nobel prize in economics in 2008, wrote on Twitter. He shared a graph of manufacturing job levels over time in Wisconsin to emphasize his point.
- snip -
Krugman also explained that Trump has fallen fall short of his promises regarding GDP growth. The economist tweeted an article by The Hill from last year, which highlighted how Trump was promising that GDP growth "could be in the fives," referring to 5 percent growth or higher.
Coded Language
We're finally starting to zero in on the main point of all this Cult45 shit.
Ukraine seems to be the absolute key, and the way the Trump administration is talking about it has been very revealing - even though they're working hard to smoke-screen everything.
Rachel Frazen, The Hill:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that President Trump's infamous July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was "consistent" with the administration's policies.
The phone call in which Trump pressed Zelensky to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is at the center of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry into the president.
"The call was consistent with what I had a long set of conversations with President Trump on our policy for an awfully long time," Pompeo said in an interview with Fox News. "Our policy has been very clear all along with respect to Ukraine."
Asked whether any parts of the call were not included in the rough transcript released by the White House, Pompeo doubled down on the fact that it was "consistent" with the administration's Ukraine policy.
"I heard the President very clearly on that call talking about making sure that corruption – whether that corruption took place in the 2016 election, whether that corruption was continuing to take place, that the monies that were being provided would be used appropriately," Pompeo said.
"It was very consistent with what I’d understood President Trump and our administration to be doing all along," he added.
We've been hearing some real whoppers from these guys.
One that 45* popped off with (paraphrasing): "Rudy looks for corruption everywhere he goes."
IMHO, this is not an untrue statement. He's just careful to leave out the operative phrase.
"Rudy looks for...(opportunities to cash in on)...corruption everywhere he goes."
Then along comes Pompeo telling us the Zelensky call was "consistent" with the president's policy regarding Ukraine.
Again, it's not an untrue statement, but what he doesn't tell us is that "the policy" is all about setting up Ukraine:
- to be the patsy for Russian fuckery
- as a conduit for money laundering
- to be a vending machine for phony political dirt
We're starting to see a lot of what the real deal is - Ukraine is a key to whatever is included in Putin's plans, and Trump is key to neutralizing American resistance to his plans.
What's even more certain is that we won't ever be allowed to see some of the really shitty things that're happening.
Today's Tweet
I've been pretty indifferent about Sportsball stuff in general. The big-time games have gotten to be more spectacle than sport. But when your team's got some real-people fans like this guy - go Nats.
“You’ve been such a gracious fan tonight tell me what your thoughts are about this win tonight.”— This American Adam (@adamconner) October 31, 2019
“I think this is huge for DC. DC needed this. We’ve got some asshole in the fucking White House...(camera cuts away)”
WHAT AN ABSOLUTE FUCKING LEGEND. #WONTHEFIGHT pic.twitter.com/9t8watN5FE
Oct 30, 2019
Today's Tweet
Nicolle Wallace has been one of the pimpiest of the political pimps - she helped give us Sarah Palin - but she's since taken to calling out the bad guys on her own side, and while there's always the probability that she's just hangin' out on my Librul TV Box waiting for the next cycle to come around so she can get back to the Big Pimp, I can respect her recent efforts.
Especially one that sparks and crackles like this one.
“Except those people aren’t chicken shit like the three of you and they know that he passed a background check that the President’s daughter and son-in-law didn’t” - Nicolle Wallace responding to Laura Ingraham’s panel pic.twitter.com/aGnDDpcrt8— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) October 29, 2019
Death By Coal
Hillary got slammed hard in 2016 for a selectively edited comment about "...we're going to kill the coal industry..."
Of Course #1: Trump and the GOP seized on the opportunity to make empty promises in order to drag Hillary down and boost their own prospects because...
...Of Course #2: They always deliberately ignored the context. She was talking about how people worked their asses off - for generations - producing that coal and making the coal companies rich as fuck, and we can't just leave them to rot when the market and technology pass them by.
Of Course #3: The Press Poodles never clarified anything - they let the bullshit slide.
Because a good political slap fight sells lots of mouth wash and boner pills.
WaPo:
Murray Energy Corp., the private coal giant whose founder pushed the Trump administration for an overhaul of what it called “anti-coal” environmental policy, filed for Chapter 11 protection on Tuesday.
It’s the fifth coal company to land in bankruptcy court this year, in a rapidly shrinking industry that’s being squeezed out of the U.S. power market by cheaper options such as natural gas, solar and wind power.
The long-anticipated bankruptcy is another sign that President Trump’s efforts to save the sputtering coal industry, a central promise of his 2016 campaign, have largely failed.
It also speaks to the “significant stress on the coal industry today,” said Benjamin Nelson, a coal analyst and Moody’s vice president. Coal once fueled about half of all U.S. electricity; now it powers less than a quarter.
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| Penny post card - ca 1920 Pollution was a sign of progress and power, and it made us proud. |
In 2017, Murray met with White House energy officials to offer an “action plan” calling for deep cuts in the Environmental Protection Agency’s staff, withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, a rollback of safety and pollution regulations, and the repeal of President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
Within a year, the administration followed through by pledging to withdraw from the Paris accord, delivering cuts at the EPA and beginning to repeal and replace the Obama-era plan to curb climate-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants.
There's very little that could better exemplify the perverse delusions of today's version of Unfettered Free Market Capitalism.
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