August 21, 2021

Why are there so many non-military Americans still in Afghanistan anyway?

I remember the Biden people were telling non-essential staff to get out months ago.

And certainly once it was clear the Taliban was taking control, shouldn't they have gotten to the airport first?

Is it media types or what? They say thousands of Americans left in country.

August 20, 2021

Maine Will Make Companies Pay for Recycling. Here's How It Works.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/climate/maine-recycling-law-EPR.html


The law aims to take the cost burden of recycling away from taxpayers. One environmental advocate said the change could be “transformative.”

Recycling, that feel-good moment when people put their paper and plastic in special bins, was a headache for municipal governments even in good times. And, only a small amount was actually getting recycled.

Then, five years ago, China stopped buying most of America’s recycling, and dozens of cities across the United States suspended or weakened their recycling programs.

Now, Maine has implemented a new law that could transform the way packaging is recycled by requiring manufacturers, rather than taxpayers, to cover the cost. Nearly a dozen states have been considering similar regulations and Oregon is about to sign its own version in coming weeks.

Maine’s law “is transformative,” said Sarah Nichols, who leads the sustainability program at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. More fundamentally, “It’s going to be the difference between having a recycling program or not.”

Long piece but quite good and I hope more states go this way

August 4, 2021

We Can't Tackle Climate Change Without You

https://www.wired.com/story/what-you-can-do-solve-climate-change/

From there, the conversation naturally spiraled into the undercurrent of terror that comes with being alive today. Australia was ablaze, and the embers had barely cooled in the Amazon. A typhoon was encroaching on the Philippines. And that wasn't counting the countless other disasters underway in Africa and Latin America that never made the headlines. Even on our way in, we couldn't help but notice that it hardly seemed like December outside.

I could tell that it felt good to talk like this: open and honest about the experience of watching the world fall apart in front of our eyes. To say our fears out loud and have them, and ourselves, accepted and understood.

It was almost like I could see the weight lifting from our shoulders. But as that weight lifted, it only rose so far. It hung in the air, just above our heads like a heavy ominous cloud, until someone finally popped the question that brought the weight back down on us:

“But what can we, as individuals, do?”

The piece doesn't really offer any specific action items but still it's important that we all do SOMETHING, especially speak out to make this issue more pressing for lawmakers.

July 26, 2021

The Supreme Court Needs to Be Cut Down to Size

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/23/opinion/supreme-court-commission-court-packing.html

On Tuesday, the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States sat for its third public meeting. Formed in April by executive order, the 36-member commission exists to hear arguments for and against Supreme Court reform and to analyze and appraise the merits of specific proposals.

President Biden did not run on court reform and rejected “court packing” during the 2020 campaign. But after Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell pushed Amy Coney Barrett through the Senate in a hurried bid to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the presidential election, he could not resist calls from within the Democratic Party to do something.

The commission is Biden’s something, and it isn’t much to look at. Not only is it not meant to make recommendations or suggest a course of action, but its members come from the upper echelon of the legal elite — exactly the people most comfortable with the institutional status quo on the Supreme Court.

But this doesn’t mean the commission is worthless. It may not offer needed reforms, but in its three meetings so far it has already served as a valuable platform for scholars with a cleareyed view of the court and a powerful critique of its current role within the nation’s constitutional order. If nothing else, the commission has helped elevate important ideas and perspectives the broader public needs to hear. It is interesting, illuminating and worthy of your attention.

Really interesting column about how historically, SCOTUS is really anti-democratic and racist. He proposes a solution I hadn't heard before, which is that rather than altering the number of justices, Congress can pass laws circumscribing the power of SCOTUS.

July 26, 2021

Biden said something odd and RW twitter is going nuts saying he said

"my butts been wiped".

I'm sure he didn't say that but I can't figure out what he was saying. He was asked about immigration. Anyone have any idea? I'm just curious. Sounds like he was joking with the reporter but I can't make it out.

https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1419437818636550145

July 21, 2021

Texas Senate Bill Drops Teaching Requirement That Ku Klux Klan Is 'Morally Wrong'

Source: Huffington Post

In a new political low in Texas, the Republican-dominated state Senate has passed a bill to eliminate a requirement that public schools teach that the Ku Klux Klan and its white supremacist campaign of terror are “morally wrong.”

The cut is among some two dozen curriculum requirements dropped from the new measure, along with studying Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the works of United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez, Susan B. Anthony’s writings about the women’s suffragist movement, and Native American history.

Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-senate-education-bill-white-supremacy_n_60f50cf6e4b01f11895b2dc3

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Blatant racism from these Republicans

July 18, 2021

The looming era of endemic COVID

I think the logic here is reasonable

Thread starts here
https://twitter.com/WilliamBHoenig/status/1416430672948903937

Read the rest here

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1416430672948903937.html

June 18, 2021

Was Dr. Ronny Jackson always an embarrassing wingnut moron?

or did Trump do that to him through some sort of kompromat?

I mean, jeesh. What a sad joke he is.

https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1405646663495081984?s=20

June 18, 2021

The problem with Juneteenth as a holiday

"It was with dismay that I realized, a few weekends ago, that Walmart is now selling Juneteenth T-shirts. I live in an extremely white Massachusetts county, one where it feels like a lifeline whenever I see another Black person I am not related to. I greeted the news of the T-shirts with an eye roll and a sour chuckle.

Though Juneteenth has recently gained nationwide attention, and just became a federal holiday, it originated as a Texas-specific celebration of the end of slavery. Other states and regions have their own traditions for marking Emancipation: Crucially, these celebrations have different dates from place to place, because freedom was gained through wildly different ways for Black people across this country. These are outlined in Mitch Kachun’s excellent book “Festivals of Freedom.”

In New York State, where gradual Emancipation was put into place to ease white fears at the expense of Black comfort, Emancipation Day was celebrated on the 5th of July. Celebrating on the 5th became a way to avoid the white mobs that often attacked Black people they saw daring to celebrate the Fourth of July. Indeed, in 1876, the year of the country’s centennial, many white newspapers ran articles decrying free Black people celebrating the country’s 100th anniversary of freedom — they dressed too finely and partied too elegantly, the newspapers said. It was above their station to do so.

(snip)
The first time I celebrated Emancipation Day was a July 5 in the late 2000s, maybe a year or so after Barack Obama was elected president. I stood on a makeshift stage in a community garden in Central Brooklyn and, along with a crowd of other Black Brooklynites, raised a small glass of cold water (many Emancipation Day celebrations shun alcohol because of the close ties between the abolition and temperance movements, and because Black communities were afraid historically to celebrate too boisterously in predominantly white areas like Brooklyn). We shouted, “to freedom!” "

Really good piece:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/opinion/juneteenth-emancipation-walmart.html

June 11, 2021

Anyone else think that Velveeta Voldemort actually leaked the classified data himself

as an excuse to go after members of Congress for their supposed leaking? I really doubt Schiff or Swalwell leaked as they seem to take their oaths very seriously.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/us/politics/justice-department-leaks-trump-administration.html?smid=tw-share