August tied with July 2023 for the hottest month for our planet in all of modern human recorded history. We have a supersized El Nino which may continue to strengthen. August was 1.65º C above the pre-industrial average, blowing away the Paris Accord target of no more than 1.5° C. NASA reports that this was the hottest summer for the lower 48 states ever. Our August was nearly 4 tenths of a degree hotter than the prior record. Europe had its numerous record temperatures, a very destructive fire season, rivers so low that barge traffic ceased, and massive damage to its agricultural production. Nuclear plants had to be shut down because they did not have access to enough water to cool them. Climate change is wrecking havoc.
The Transportation Department just gutted clear car efficiency standards for 2031 and eliminated the CAFE trading program starting in 2028. They claim that this will save upfront vehicle purchase costs by $1,300 per vehicle. They deliberately forget the Biden era analysis showing that there would be large total savings over the life cycle of vehicle ownership with the prior standard. They only count the evidence that supports using more fossil fuel.
The First Amendment is being wrestled out of the White House as we post this. MS Now, CNN, and Politico reporters had their credentials revoked. Interestingly, Fox News supported the resulting refusal of all five media pool members to cover the President. There is the lame excuse that there is a national security issue. All fascist regimes want to specify how they are portrayed in the media. Mainstream media consists of trained journalists. They know how to be fair and balanced and factual. Corrupt and incompetent regimes want to limit any exposure to facts that reveal their greed and ignorance. It is also why this administration is attacking academia, museums, and the peer review panels that rate science researchers who actually do science. Letting politicians dole out our science research budget will gut the leading edge of science in this nation, removing many inconvenient facts.
The Iran war is bringing fuel costs back to recent highs. Mortgages at 7% are not helping housing costs. The rising costs of capital and fuel will increase the costs of anything that need capital to operate or fuel to be transported. Farmers are screaming about how hard it is to get their products to market and still make a living. Such factors imply a massive desire for economic change. Democratic change that will place limits on the current tidal wave of insanely costly and thoughtless actions, will be forcefully resisted by this kleptocratic mafia.
The Supreme Court recently supported the Trump administration on the SAVE database of US residents and their citizenship status. From NPR:
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson authored the dissent, writing about the "majority's omission of any consideration of the harms that might occur if the modified SAVE system is allowed to continue operating. The District Court highlighted such harms, noting the risk that States might cancel the voter registrations of at least some recently naturalized citizens or force such persons to provide proof of citizenship before voting."
In reality this database is an illegal sham. The usage of data from various government agencies violates numerous privacy laws. Federal law precludes systematic removal of voters in the 90 days before an election anyway. The pretense that this will be used to help states decide is beside the more salient point. The actual use will be to generate a tidal wave of lies asserting that something was wrong in voting systems that produced wins for Democrats. This is just one tool in the attempt to overthrow democracy after the coming midterm elections.
As usual there are dozens of other atrocities that either occurred over the last month or can be expected. In addition we have AI creating its tidal wave of change. We are so fortunate to have our group to create our small window into sanity, within the insane intensity of change swirling around us.
Meetup RSVPs will get the Zoom link in the 24 hours before the meeting. The prior vetted list will get the Zoom link about an hour before the meeting.
