eVille Times

May 10, 2024

Lose The Perversion

Slow Are The Wheels Of Justice

It was almost two years ago that Steve Bannon told the House Jan6 Select Committee to shove it. And the guy has yet to spend one fucking minute in lockup.

When they bitch about a "2-tiered justice system", they mean rich fuckers walk around free while everybody else rots away in a jail cell awaiting trial.

How the Gateway Pundit sees it:

How normal people see it:

Appeals court upholds Steve Bannon's conviction for contempt of Congress

Bannon, an ex-aide to former President Donald Trump, was sentenced to four months in prison, but the trial judge allowed him to remain free pending appeal.

WASHINGTON — A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has upheld Steve Bannon’s conviction on two counts of contempt of Congress.

Bannon was convicted after a trial in 2022 and sentenced to four months in prison. The trial judge, however, stayed Bannon’s sentence, allowing him to remain free pending his appeal.

Bannon still has the option of asking the full bench of the D.C. Circuit to hear his case, or he can petition the U.S. Supreme Court for review.

An order issued by the D.C. Circuit said the judges' mandate will not officially take effect until seven days after further appeal attempts are resolved. That means Bannon is unlikely to have to report to prison immediately.

Bannon, who was an aide to former President Donald Trump, was convicted in July of 2022 when a jury found him guilty of two contempt of Congress charges for failing to comply with a subpoena for documents and testimony issued by the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.

Arguing before the appeals court last fall in an effort to overturn the four-month prison sentence, Bannon's attorney asserted that his client couldn't comply with those subpoenas because Trump had invoked executive privilege. In addition to jail time, Bannon was fined $6,500.

NBC News has reached out to Bannon's lawyers for comment.

Comin' Up Fast

This piece says straight out that it'll take 40 years to stop the increase in CO2, even if we could slow our emissions dramatically starting right now.

And if we got those emissions down close to zero by the end of this century, it'll take another 200 years for CO2 to drop below 400ppm again.

Seems like it's getting harder not to shrug and say, "We're fucked anyway - why bother."

But here's the thing: It's not unreasonable for me to do something good now, so as to make things better for people two centuries after I'm dead.

I'll never sit in the shade of an oak tree I plant today, and I don't need my magnificent foresight acknowledged by someone who will.

A lab on a Hawaii volcano is capturing ominous signals about the planet’s health

Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever.

Hawaii’s Mauna Loa’s Observatory just captured an ominous sign about the pace of global warming.

Atmospheric levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide aren’t just on their way to yet another record high this year — they’re rising faster than ever, according to the latest in a 66-year-long series of observations.

Carbon dioxide levels were 4.7 parts per million higher in March than they were a year earlier, the largest annual leap ever measured at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration laboratory atop a volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island. And from January through April, CO2 concentrations increased faster than they have in the first four months of any other year. Data from Mauna Loa is used to create the Keeling Curve, a chart that daily plots global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, tracked by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego.

For decades, CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa in the month of May have broken previous records. But the recent acceleration in atmospheric CO2, surpassing a record-setting increase observed in 2016, is perhaps a more ominous signal of failing efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and the damage they cause to Earth’s climate.

“Not only is CO2 still rising in the atmosphere — it’s increasing faster and faster,” said Arlyn Andrews, a climate scientist at NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.

A historically strong El Niño climate pattern that developed last year is a big reason for the spike. But the weather pattern only punctuated an existing trend in which global carbon emissions are rising even as U.S. emissions have declined and the growth in global emissions has slowed.

The spike is “not surprising,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 Program at Scripps Institution, “because we’re also burning more fossil fuel than ever.”

Why carbon dioxide levels keep rising

Carbon dioxide levels naturally ebb and flow throughout each year. At Mauna Loa, they peak in April and May and then decline until August and September. This follows the growth cycle of northern hemisphere plants: growing — and sequestering away carbon — during the summer months and releasing it during fall and winter as they die and decompose.

Once CO2 makes it into the atmosphere, it stays there for hundreds of years, acting as a blanket trapping heat. That blanket has been steadily thickening ever since humans turned materials that were once dense stores of carbon — oil and coal, primarily — into fuel to burn.

That means the Keeling Curve reaches new heights each May, forming a new peak in a sawtooth-like pattern.

The Keeling Curve, a diagram of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations,
shows a spike each May as northern hemisphere plants grow -
yet the trend overall is upward.
(Scripps Institute of Oceanography)

The chart originated when Charles David Keeling, Ralph Keeling’s father, started recording atmospheric concentrations of CO2 atop the Mauna Loa volcano in the late 1950s. It was the first effort to measure the planet-warming gas on a continuing basis and helped alert scientists to the reality of the intensified greenhouse effect, global warming and its impact on the planet.

Each annual maximum has raised new alarm about the curve’s unceasing upward trend — nearing 427 parts per million in the most recent readings, which is more than 50 percent above preindustrial levels and the highest in at least 4.3 million years, according to NOAA. Atmospheric CO2 levels first surpassed 400 parts per million in 2014. Scientists said in 2016 that levels were unlikely to drop below that threshold again during the lifetime of even the youngest generations.

Since that year, carbon dioxide emissions tied to fossil fuel consumption have increased 5 percent globally, according to Scripps.

Why annual increases vary

The increase in carbon dioxide from year to year is not precisely consistent. One factor that tends to cause levels to rise especially quickly: the El Niño climate pattern.

El Niño is linked to warmer-than-average surface waters along the equator in the eastern and central Pacific. That warmth affects weather patterns around the world, triggering extreme heat, floods and droughts.

The droughts in particular contribute to higher-than-normal spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, Keeling said.

Tropical forests serve as reliable stores of carbon because they don’t go through the same seasonal decay as plant life at higher latitudes. But El Niño-linked droughts in tropical areas including Indonesia and northern South America mean less carbon storage within plants, Keeling said. Land-based ecosystems around the world tend to give off more carbon dioxide during El Niño because of the changes in precipitation and temperature the weather pattern brings, Andrews added.

That can allow CO2 concentrations to rise especially quickly on the tail end of El Niño events — such as the current one, which NOAA scientists said Thursday is likely to end this month.

The increase observed at Mauna Loa over the past year is some five times larger than the average annual increases seen in the 1960s, and about twice as large as in the 2010s, according to NOAA data.

A record surge in early 2016 was also at the end of a historically strong El Niño.

Why carbon matters

It will take some four decades to stop the annual growth in CO2 concentrations, even if all emissions began declining now, Andrews said. Because Earth’s carbon cycle is so far out of its natural equilibrium, plants, soils and oceans would give off stores of extra CO2 in response to any reduction in humans’ emissions, she said.

And for CO2 concentrations to fall back below 400 parts per million, it would take more than two centuries even if emissions dropped close to zero by the end of this century, she added.

In the natural carbon cycle, the element passes through air, soil and water, and plants and animals, eventually making its way into deep ocean sediments and fossils deep underground. Carbon’s movement throughout Earth systems helps regulate our planet’s temperatures — unlike on Venus, for instance, where CO2 accounts for most of the atmosphere, making that planet’s surface hellishly hot.

But human emissions of CO2 throw that system out of balance. It’s like adding more and more trash to a dump, Andrews said. Even if each load of trash gets smaller, “it’s still piling up.”

Today's GOP Fuckery

Because Republicans are assholes who won't hesitate to throw your ass off the train if they think that might get them a spot on DumFux News tonight so they can bitch about "broken government".

By Dr Thomas K Lew, assistant clinical professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and attending physician of Hospital Medicine at Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley.

Congress voted against funding a cure for cancer just to block a win for Biden

Some Republicans, refusing to give President Joe Biden a 'win,' voted against the renewal of funding for cancer research. Vote for those who do not politicize Americans' health.

I’m afraid I have some bad news.

As a hospital doctor, I’ve gotten pretty good at delivering bad news. Still, it never gets any easier. It certainly was not easy the day I told my 53-year-old patient, a devoted father of two, that his stomach pains were not from gallstones as everyone had assumed. Whenever a doctor says “bad news,” our minds often jump to that terrible “C”-word we fear: cancer. Unfortunately for my patient, I diagnosed him with a deadly form of cancer: cholangiocarcinoma. Over the next year, I would watch him deteriorate as he was readmitted with complication after complication.

Cancer affects everyone in some way, shape or form. Whether personally or through a family member or friend, the stress and heartbreak of a cancer diagnosis is immeasurable. Which is why I was so surprised when I read that Congress would not be renewing investments in the “Cancer Moonshot” initiative dedicated to curing cancer.

While there are many different forms of cancer and likely as many different research endeavors to treat them, the Moonshot program was the largest, organized effort by the U.S. government to find cures. Formed in 2016 by then-Vice President Joe Biden, after his own son was killed by brain cancer, the program has enjoyed bipartisan support and praise.

Initially funded in 2016 at $1.8 billion for seven years, with the aim to reduce cancer deaths by half by 2047, the program has made strides in expanding access to cancer detection screenings, especially to veterans, increased support for programs aimed at preventing cancer in the first place and provided funding to groundbreaking cancer cure research.

Biden's Cancer Moonshot initiative is Congress' latest partisan casualty
However, with the ever-present dysfunction of Congress, maybe predictably, the program has been stalled. Some Republicans, refusing to give Biden a “win,” voted against the renewal of funding.

Even though this would be a win for all Americans – and humanity – it apparently did not outweigh the politics of making a Democrat look good. This is the definition of party over country.

Republicans have stated budget cuts need to be made with an ever-growing debt. But where was this attitude when tax cuts for the wealthy were on the table in 2017? They don’t have to look at patients in the eye and break the devastating news that they have cancer. They don’t have to treat cancers that block intestines or drown a patient’s lungs in fluid.

Cancer claims more than 600,000 American lives a year. In economic terms, it has been estimated that the annual financial burden of cancer care in this country is about $200 billion.

If throwing some government money at this will expedite a cure, then it’s still a bargain.

I cared for my patient with cholangiocarcinoma through crises of pain, bowel obstructions, chemotherapy, kidney injury and, unfortunately, when he could no longer continue the fight of his cancer, his death. Besides the nurses and doctors supporting him, our patient had his family by his side.

Until recently, one could have argued that the government was also on his side, but Republicans and those who voted against funding the Moonshot Cancer initiative have made it clear that he, and other cancer patients like him, are not their priority.

But we, as voters, need to keep our priorities straight and focus on the health of our fellow Americans. Keep in mind who voted against the Moonshot Cancer initiative in the upcoming elections. Keep in mind those who continually vote against scientific progress, against funding for cancer research, against pandemic vaccines roll-outs or even against climate change, which is not just an existential crisis in the future but today exacerbates chronic health conditions such as asthma.

Keep this in mind and vote for those who do not politicize Americans’ health. Otherwise, the country’s prognosis is bad news for all of us.

Pro Left Podcast

Overheard

Somebody working at a McDonalds franchise in Denmark makes about $21 an hour.

They're in a union. They get 5 or 6 weeks paid vacation every year. They can take up to a year paid maternity leave. They get life insurance, healthcare insurance, and a pension plan if they're over 20 years old.

A Big Mac in Denmark will run you about $5.50

Somebody working at a McDonalds franchise in USAmerica Inc makes about $9.50 an hour with no benefits.

A Big Mac in the US goes for about $5.50

McDonald's gross profit for the twelve months ending December 31, 2023 was $14,563,000,000 - 14½ billion dollars - a 10.26% increase year-over-year. And they paid the CEO almost $20 million.