Hot Enough, Thanks

Heat is the #1 weather-related cause of death in the US, killing 600 Americans every year.

And that number is going nowhere but up.

When the ocean is cool, it cools the land. When it's warm, it warms the land.

The ocean is very warm now - on it's way to pretty fuckin' hot.

There are people in Phoenix being taken to the local ER because they've contacted the asphalt pavement with bare skin for a few minutes, and suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns.

In one Sicilian town, the extreme heat shut down the whole electrical grid when the underground cabling melted.

Key Points

• Between 1979 and 2018, the death rate as a direct result of exposure to heat (underlying cause of death) generally hovered between 0.5 and 2 deaths per million people, with spikes in certain years (see Figure 1). Overall, a total of more than 11,000 Americans have died from heat-related causes since 1979, according to death certificates.
• For years in which the two records overlap (1999–2018), accounting for those additional deaths in which heat was listed as a contributing factor results in a higher death rate—nearly double for some years—compared with the estimate that only includes deaths where heat was listed as the underlying cause (see Figure 1).
• The indicator shows a peak in heat-related deaths in 2006, a year that was associated with widespread heat waves and was one of the hottest years on record in the contiguous 48 states (see the U.S. and Global Temperature indicator).
• The death rate from heat-related cardiovascular disease ranged from 0.08 deaths per million people in 2004 to 1.08 deaths per million people in 1999 (see Figure 2). Overall, the interaction of heat and cardiovascular disease caused about one-fourth of the heat-related deaths recorded in the “underlying and contributing causes” analysis since 1999 (see Figures 1 and 2).
• Since 1999, people aged 65+ have been several times more likely to die from heat-related cardiovascular disease than the general population, while non-Hispanic Blacks generally have had higher-than-average rates (see Figure 2).
• Examination of extreme events has revealed challenges in capturing the full extent of “heat-related” deaths. For example, studies of the 1995 heat wave event in Chicago (see example figure) suggest that there may have been hundreds more deaths than were actually reported as “heat-related” on death certificates.
• While dramatic increases in heat-related deaths are closely associated with the occurrence of hot temperatures and heat waves, these deaths may not be reported as “heat-related” on death certificates. This limitation, as well as considerable year-to-year
•  variability in the data, make it difficult to determine whether the United States has experienced a meaningful increase or decrease in deaths classified as “heat-related” over time.

Background

When people are exposed to extreme heat, they can suffer from potentially deadly illnesses, such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Hot temperatures can also contribute to deaths from heart attacks, strokes, and other forms of cardiovascular disease. Heat is the leading weather-related killer in the United States, even though most heat-related deaths are preventable through outreach and intervention (see EPA’s Excessive Heat Events Guidebook at: www.epa.gov/heat-islands/excessive-heat-events-guidebook).

Unusually hot summer temperatures have become more common across the contiguous 48 states in recent decades (see the High and Low Temperatures indicator), extreme heat events (heat waves) have become more frequent and intense (see the Heat Waves indicator), and these trends are expected to continue. As a result, the risk of heat-related deaths and illness is also expected to increase. The “urban heat island” effect accentuates the problem by causing even higher temperatures in densely developed urban areas.4 Reductions in cold-related deaths are projected to be smaller than increases in heat-related deaths in most regions. Death rates can also change, however, as people acclimate to higher temperatures and as communities strengthen their heat response plans and take other steps to continue to adapt.

Certain population groups already face higher risks of heat-related death, and increases in summertime temperature variability will increase that risk. The population of adults aged 65 and older, which is expected to continue to grow, has a higher-than-average risk of heat-related death. Children are particularly vulnerable to heat-related illness and death, as their bodies are less able to adapt to heat than adults, and they must rely on others to help keep them safe.8 People with certain diseases, such as cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, are especially vulnerable to excessive heat exposure, as are the economically disadvantaged. Data also suggest a higher risk among non-Hispanic Blacks.

Today, President Biden is issuing a heat wave “hazard alert” to protect workers.

Meanwhile, here’s what 2024 GOP candidates have to say about the climate crisis. pic.twitter.com/7KFZY8u1lW

— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) July 27, 2023

Today's Reddit

“Alien comes up to me. Big tears in his eyes. ‘Sir. We’ve been watching your planet for millions of years. And we’ve never seen anyone treated so unfairly…. Perhaps….the most unfair treatment of anyone throughout all of history…Ever. Just nasty nasty people.’“
by u/oxcart001 in PoliticalHumor

Woke

He hates "woke" so bad he can't stop talking about it.

I think maybe 'woke' isn't really a thing, it's just known to be a good trigger word that keeps the rubes amped up.

Hmmm

It strikes me as interesting.

What I hear Ken Buck saying (at about 7:30) is that Kevin McCarthy is fucking around with this impeachment nonsense in order to placate the MTGs in the Freedom Caucus (and the rabid loons who keep voting for them) instead of facilitating the Old Guard Republicans who really wanna dig in and do their dirt by fucking my kids out of their Medicare and Social Security when it comes time for them bow out and retire.

But ol' Kevin is bound and determined to run the Benghazi play again, hoping he can cast just enough doubt on Biden to move the needle.

Makes me wanna holler.

The Past Is Not Past

A coal miner lies dying of Black Lung Disease while his miner sons keep watch. West Virginia,1976.

The disease was most common in the 60s and 70s, but then incidence plummeted with the passage of mine safety laws.

Now it’s on the rise again.

Fuck Joe Manchin, and his dark money paymasters in the Dirty Fuels Cartel.

Yo, Mitch - You In There, Buddy?

Sorry not sorry.

People who predate the invention of sliced bread and chocolate chip cookies should be knitting, or playing golf, or trying their hand at pottery. Or maybe they should be shopping around for a good hospice - but they should not be in charge of a country with a net worth of $125 Trillion.

Today's Meme

Seems like a lot of very "alpha" guys

are very hung up on some very

un-alpha stuff

Today's Tweet

This is total bullshit.

• If McCarthy has the votes, he doesn't need to "call for" impeachment. He's the fucking Speaker - he moves forward with it or he doesn't. Maybe some of the normies are finally finding their balls.
• An "investigation' is how Republicans use tax dollars to produce content for outfits like DumFux News, which is used to drive down the approval numbers for Democrats.
• This is what weaponization of government actually looks like.

🚨JUST IN: Speaker Kevin McCarthy doubles down on his calls for Congress to begin an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden:

"It's giving Congress the full power to get the information they need. It's the way people should go about investigating." pic.twitter.com/Shsn7iBOgE

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 25, 2023

Today's Press Poodle

I have no idea what GOP this guy's been watching. Thinking and rethinking aren't high on the list of Republican attributes - if they're on the list at all.

It doesn't matter what the truth is. It doesn't matter what actually happens. Republicans are going to spin up whatever bullshit they think will stoke the rage boner enough to keep the rubes firmly cemented in their little fantasy world.

As inflation falls, GOP may have to rethink attacks on Biden economy

Soaring prices have given Republican lawmakers a powerful talking point, but its potency may begin to fade

Soaring egg prices. Gas for more than $5 per gallon. Used cars that cost 30 percent more than they had the year before.

For most of President Biden’s term, the fastest inflation in four decades provided Republicans with no shortage of ripe targets for political attacks over his economic stewardship, emerging as the central talking point of their 2022 midterm campaigns and the early 2024-presidential election campaigns.

But now that message may no longer be as powerful. Inflation has eased to 3 percent on an annual basis, down from 9 percent last year, and workers’ earnings are beginning to outpace rising costs. Economists’ fears of an imminent recession have abated as well, and Biden administration officials are eager to tout the billions of dollars in private investment unleashed from legislation on semiconductors and clean energy that they pushed through Congress.

These developments have led Republican analysts to begin early discussions about whether, or how, the party should adjust its attacks on Biden to account for the new economic reality. For now, most are convinced that the scars of inflation remain deep enough for the issue to serve as a central electoral message a year from now. But some conservatives acknowledge that may be shifting as the rate of price hikes levels off.

“Honestly, I’m hearing many more complaints about Biden now that are about something else. It’s beginning to fade as the key issue,” said Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank in frequent communication with GOP policymakers. “There’s a sense that Biden’s economic message can be attacked anyway, but it’s instead becoming more of one topic among many.”

Falling inflation will lead Republicans to adjust from highlighting the annual rate of inflation to highlighting price hikes since Biden took office, said Casey B. Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who served as chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Donald Trump administration. But the bigger messaging adjustment would have to come if “real wages” — earnings accounting for inflation — continue to grow, Mulligan said.

Inflation rose faster than earnings for most of Biden’s presidency, meaning most Americans were getting poorer. But for the past two months, real wages have risen, although economists caution the trend has just begun and could be reversed.

“I think the thing that would change their message — and I know this from working in the White House — is what happens to real wages. If inflation stops at the highest price level, and wages continue to march ahead, you’re in a very different situation,” Mulligan said. “If that were to happen, that would shift the narrative — no doubt.”

Democrats have reason to be optimistic that change is occurring. Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, found that inflation-adjusted wages have already caught up to their pre-pandemic trajectory for “nonsupervisory workers,” a category that encompasses 80 percent of workers.

Frank Luntz, the longtime GOP pollster, said it would take as much as a year for voters to react fully to the fall in inflation, because it takes time for the public mood to catch up to the new economic reality.

“But if it continues to come down as it is, it won’t be nearly as potent in 2024 as it was in 2022,” Luntz said.

To be sure, most Republicans still ridicule as absurd the notion that they will have to change course. Inflation may have come down, but consumers are still facing price increases of 3 percent that exceed recent norms. Despite the cooling economy, the 16 percent price hikes over the past two years “are still embedded,” said Brian Riedl, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank.

The Republican National Committee has continued over the past week to criticize Biden over inflation-adjusted wages, even as they move in the right direction.

“I still hear about inflation everyday — that’s what I hear from friends, family and voters,” said Doug Heye, a GOP political consultant. “They’re still talking inflation, and they’re still going to.”

And that has nothing to do with the fact that wingnut media hammers on that point every fucking minute of every fucking day?

The polling data, for now at least, appears to suggest little immediate softening in attitudes. More than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of inflation, according to a Monmouth University poll released last week, and there is scant evidence that has substantially budged. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment surveys, after months of strikingly negative findings, finally ticked up in July, but consumer attitudes remain sour.

Historically, political science research suggests that voters base their election year decisions on economic performance over the prior year. That would mean how the economy fares from now until the election may matter more than how it’s done up to now. But it’s unclear how voters will react to inflation that was high but is falling, leaving experts guessing as to exactly how the economy will influence the 2024 campaigns, said Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.

“We seem to be in a position where people are staying dour, and if that continues into the election that could disrupt the historical pattern,” Grossmann said. “I don’t know if we have a firm grasp on whether inflation moving in the right direction will be enough.”

Just Going For Better

On people's problem with virtue signaling:

Are you complaining that I believe myself to be virtuous, or is it just that I'm stating my values, indicating I think those values are virtuous, and you object to that?

Are you saying you're in opposition to those values, and that we need to hash it out?

We should talk.

Some takeaways:

1. It's not poverty in America. It's poverty by America
2. LBJ's War On Poverty reduced the number of poor Americans by 45% in about 10 years
3. FDR's Social Security has cut Elder Poverty by 90% in some states
4. Biden's COVID Rescue Plan cut childhood poverty by more than 50% - in about 8 months
5. 38 million Americans live below the poverty line
6. 12 million kids live in poverty - almost 1 out of every 6
7. It's very expensive to be poor in America

Stop speaking the language of Scarcity, and start realizing the language of Plenty.