Climate Change

Predictable…

by MyBaconPress

I have questions…
Huh. A glacier collapsed? It wiped out a whole town? Now there are other areas threatening to do the same? Wow, who could have predicted? What? The vast majority of the world’s climate experts predicted exactly this kind of calamity? Not JUST this but other kinds of natural catastrophes, too? And they’re ALL coming true, exactly as warned?

Wait a minute, isn’t there a huge number of people who insisted for decades that climate change isn’t real? What about them? Doesn’t it all just go away if we collectively don’t believe in it? Didn’t 47 “solve” it all by removing any reference to climate change on government websites and firing the people who study the problem? And… didn’t he ALSO eliminate regulations intended to battle climate change? Won’t THAT fix the problem?

Come to think of it, wasn’t that ALSO his big strategy for dealing with Covid-19? I mean, didn’t he suggest that if we just stop testing for it, Covid-19 would just go away? Didn’t he say that? Doesn’t that also suggest that if we don’t look, it isn’t real? Didn’t that idea boost the body count to just over a million people when every other country on Earth couldn’t get anywhere NEAR that body count? Didn’t we have the best body count, the biggest body count?

Wasn’t that brought to us by 47, thanks, mostly, to his astounding lack of understanding of reality and the way things work? So why shouldn’t his clever strategy of ignoring it and hoping it goes away while declaring it ‘fake news’ work? Do you supposed the Swiss faked the crushed village just to make the Orange Man look bad?

Isn’t it at least STARTING to feel like ignoring it isn’t working? Doesn’t it seem like we should be at least TRYING to do something to protect ourselves? Wouldn’t it be the most outrageously stupid, monumentally moronic, ridiculously irresponsible choice – to pretend a problem that’s causing deaths and billions of dollars in destruction doesn’t exist for no other reason than shareholder value? Isn’t that the dumbest thing you’ve EVER heard of in your life?

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This goes with that…
I saw two articles, side by side, in the Guardian this morning. The first was, ‘One day I overheard my boss saying: ‘just put it in ChatGPT’: the workers who lost their jobs to AI’ and the second was, ‘Are there billions more people on Earth than we thought? If so, it’s no bad thing.’

I think the first story suggests the folly of the second. Full disclosure, you can put me, firmly, in the “We’re WAY too overpopulated” camp. 47’s regime is trying to encourage people to have more babies. White babies, to be sure, but more. People who would bear the responsibility for those babies seem… concerned about the future 47’s regime is offering those babies. The birth rate is down. But only in developed countries.

In places where more hands are required to get the work done or there’s a high mortality rate, people still have lots of kids. On balance, the population continues to grow. People often associate that problem as a resource management issue. Those of us who are concerned that there are too many of us worry that there aren’t enough resources for 10.3 billion people, the number we’re expected to reach by the mid-2080’s.

It should be noted, that’s even a concern for the people who think more babies would be better. The guy who wrote the article defending the increasing population, Jonathan Kennedy, included in his story a line that reads, “That many people will put considerable stress on the Earth’s resources, but if consumption is managed responsibly and sustainable technologies are developed, the world will avoid an apocalyptic catastrophe.”

Isn’t that great? IF consumption is managed responsibly and sustainable technologies are developed? Dude, have you ever MET a human being? Since when do we manage consumption responsibly? IF we can develop sustainable technologies? That ‘If’ is doing a LOT of heave lifting. What IF… we can’t? Or maybe just… don’t? Shareholder value, you know. If we’re not going to address overpopulation – and, surely, we are not – I’m putting my money on ‘apocalyptic catastrophe.’

But even before then, the other story, the side-by-side partner of the overpopulation story was about people losing their jobs to technology. And of course people lose their jobs to technology. That’s the way it has always been. Why wouldn’t that be the way it will always be? My best example, right off the top of my head while I blearily drink my morning coffee, is the coal mining industry.

When politicians run for office and get into coal country, they LOVE to promise one-time coal miners that their jobs will be restored. THAT particular politician has the plan and he or she will get those miners back into the mines, digging coal and dying of Black lung in no time at all. 47 promises “Two weeks. We’ll have it done in two weeks.” (Why is it always “two weeks” with this guy?)

But coal miners didn’t lose their jobs to regulations. The didn’t lose their jobs to environmental concerns. They lost their jobs to technology. Coal companies started using open pit mines. A small team of munitions experts blow up a huge swath of coal-infused earth and giant backhoes fill giant dump trucks that take the load to largely automated processing plants. Where once 100 were needed, now 25 can do the job. The other 75 are left without work.

Estimates for the work force to build the Great Pyramid range from as low as 7,000 to as many as 30,000. I would imagine we could build the thing, today, with only a few hundred. Modern technology would easily replace the rest. That would leave a LOT of people standing around with nothing to do.

That’s exactly the problem we have today. Too many people with nothing to do. AI is coming for jobs many people didn’t expect. When it seemed it would only be robots displacing blue collar workers, that didn’t bother too many people – at least, those not wearing the blue collars. But AI is coming for WHITE collar jobs. Who expected that? (I’m raising my hand. You just can’t see me.)

But the problem is the same. If a robot inserts tab A into slot B and then bolts them together, the blue-collar human worker is out in the cold. If AI becomes the accountant, the white collar worker is out in the cold. Same difference. It will take a fraction of the current human population to maintain the machines – at least until they learn to maintain themselves.

I am NOT a proponent of forced population reductions. China tried that. It looks as though the results are shaping up to be disastrous. I prefer educating people and letting them make their own decisions – exactly the problem that creates the future dystopia depicted in “Idiocracy,” I know. It’s still the right answer.

People who are looking at the world around them and holding off on babies are doing the right thing. Humans have never stopped doing pretty much the same things: we build roads and bridges, we build houses and other buildings, we produce food for the masses. The thing is, technology allows us to use fewer and fewer people to do those things. Population reduction seems the only rational choice. Sadly, being rational is NOT a human strength…

Wrong Directions…

by MyBaconPress

It was just yesterday, right? I heard Joe Biden giving a speech. He was talking about how awesome it was that Israel and the Palestinians had come to an agreement on a cease fire. Since the agreement had been negotiated by Biden’s team and Trump’s team, a spat broke out over who should get the credit. Truthfully? I’d have to say the credit should have been split between the two. The agreement is, basically, Biden’s original plan, the one Hamas had rejected before.

But Trump brought the crazy and Hamas believed him. Trump made clear that he was going to allow Netanyahu to do whatever he wanted in Gaza. Sure, it might start World War III. The Felon doesn’t know about things like that. He just talks tough. But he’s very, VERY, um…not smart and doesn’t understand the possibilities of his tough talk.

Still, Hamas seems to have believed him and realized that American bombs were still going to fall but there would not be any more American relief efforts and there wouldn’t be any more American negotiation efforts. Just the bombs. So, Hamas tried to stand down and accept the agreement.

This morning (and it’s early, yet) I woke up to the news that Israel delayed gathering it’s Cabinet to finalize the cease-fire and, instead, bombed the crap out of Gaza, yet again. Seventy dead – AFTER agreeing to the cease-fire.

I’ll tell you this: It looks like neither Biden nor The Felon are going to get credit for the cease-fire that, apparently, never happened. Lots of people defended Israel because Hamas attacked without warning. I wonder what that crowd will say now that Israel has done the same thing?

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I wrote about how disgusting I think it is that MAGA is politicizing the fires in LA. I received some push-back. No, the MAGA story goes, it WAS Newscum’s fault. He didn’t sweep the forests. (To fight a residential fire?) There wasn’t enough water. (Yeah, physics.) He didn’t sign the non-existent document to move water from Northern California to Southern California. (Keyword: non-existent. Oh, AND Californians DO move millions of gallons of water from Northern California to Southern California every day.) “They” smog-checked the fire trucks from Oregon. (No, they didn’t.)

It’s all pretty crazy and I’d bet I haven’t heard them all. MAGA media is very good at completely wallpapering the landscape (it can be done – ask Christo and Jeanne-Claude) with misinformation so MAGA can pick and choose the lies that work best for them. When I was writing about the poor form of politicizing a disaster, I was really gobsmacked that human beings could take so much pleasure from so much pain.

MAGA is having a great time, blaming California. MAGA politicians are threatening to withhold aid to California until we clean up our political act. That is, bend the knee. THAT, by the way, is a huge F*CK YOU to every MAGA that lives in California, but that’s an entirely different piece.

Of course they are gleefully politicizing while laying fraudulent blame. They really have no choice. They absolutely MUST make the case that the fires were fed by Democratic incompetence because, as it happens, THEY, MAGA, own the severity of these fires. I mean, look, California burns from time to time. We expect it. But we were told by science that the fires were going to get worse because of climate change and, guess what? The fires are worse. FAR worse.

MAGA started pretending climate change was fake LONG before they were MAGA. Hell, they weren’t even Teabaggers, yet. They were just a loose coalition of like-minded, closed-minded people realizing they all hated the same things, like science, and America, and smart people… MAGA media told them climate change was fake, so they KNOW climate change is fake, even as the projections of climate science come true, over and over and over again. Like the fires in LA.

But MAGA doesn’t take responsibility for anything – particularly the things they’ve actually done. They’re not about to accept the blame for runaway climate change just because they’re to blame for runaway climate change. MAGA won that battle. It was the very definition of a Pyrrhic victory. They “won” the battle. We ALL lost the war. Their “victory” prevented humanity from taking effective action in time to prevent the global rise in temperatures scientists were warning us about.

So, now we suffer the intensified hurricanes, the deeper snow drifts right next to the more intense droughts. Stronger tropical storms anyone? Now we get crop failures and increased pests and illnesses. Now we get the deeper floods – and the worse fires. ALL of it because MAGA defended the activities of corporations that knew they were destroying the environment for humans, but couldn’t resist picking up a few more pennies.

They absolutely MUST distract from the fact that fires of this intensity are the direct result of their earlier position-of-the-day, that climate change is fake news. So, DO they take responsibility for what they did? No way. Sweep the forests…

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Oh, yeah. I forgot. It’s a terrible miscalculation and I apologize. Many on the left have been waiting for what we see as the inevitable ‘Come-to-Jesus’ moment when MAGA finally – FINALLY! – realizes they’ve been duped and turns, angrily, on their Precious. It seems inevitable to the rational mind. But these aren’t rational minds. These are MAGA minds.

Mr. Felon has not delivered on much of what he promises, right? Ask a MAGA, though. Either he DID, or it was Democrats fault he didn’t. Period. He has already told them the economy is going to crash because of Biden. They believe him. California has always burned, of course, but the fires are worse, now, and more often because of climate change. But, as we’ve seen, cons have decided against climate change so they pretend that if the (DemocRAT) governor had JUST taken a broom into the forests…

MAGA media has so much control over the MAGA mind, they’ll NEVER be allowed to see that the leaders they support are as responsible for their plights as anything else in their world. MAGA media just lays the blame. They don’t got to show you no stinking truth! They don’t need no stinking truth.

It’s a game MAGA has played since long before they were MAGA. Anything bad that happens is a Democrat’s fault. Anything good that happens belongs to whoever their beloved of the day is, currently Trump. It’s SO deeply ingrained, they do it automatically. I think they’re incapable of considering one of theirs might have done something questionable – even when the only available evidence indicates that one of theirs might have done something questionable.

It won’t be enough that MAGA understands they’re being harmed as The Felon starts his damage. They need to know that it’s The Felon doing it – and their brains just… can’t. We won’t be able to count on fallen away, one-time MAGA to help put things back to right, after all. Bummer…

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As the dark day approaches, I’ve noticed that Steve Bannon has NOT, yet, managed to remove Elon Musk from MAGA. Bannon’s attacks are widening. Now he’s railing against Mark Zuckerberg and all the other tech bros. He wants them OUT. Uh-huh.

My personal opinion is that MAGA has been the dupe of the One Percent. They played an important role but The Felon will be taking the office soon. MAGA isn’t needed anymore. Let the One Percent reign!

The only problem? MAGA is still there. Oh, and…MAGA MAD! I think Bannon is spitting into the wind. He can bring votes that aren’t needed anymore. He can bring public support that is no longer sought. In the other corner, the tech bros can bring money. Lots and lots of beautiful money, money, money. Where do YOU think Trump’s loyalties lie?

It looks like Bannon knows. He has decided to simply declare victory and move on. Clever, eh? Nothing seems to have changed between Muck and The Felon but Bannon is claiming he’s done it, Musk’s influence is reduced – so there!

Facts Are Facts, Even When Fiction Wins…

by MyBaconPress

When The Felon campaigned, he promised all the good things to all the right people. It was easy. He found out what his people wanted to hear, then he said it. They believed him. Lower gas prices? Done. Lower food prices? Day one. End Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine? Even before he took office. Deport every non-white person he could find? Count on it. Pardon every J6 rioter, even if they attacked cops? DAY ONE! Tariffs to balance the trade deficit? That’s the plan. Promises, promises.

He said lower energy prices would lower food prices because of energy used in producing and shipping food. Experts in the field say the energy costs are too small of a component to make a big difference. Oh, AND the energy producers have made clear they have no intention of increasing their drilling efforts.

The US, you see, is already producing record amounts of oil and natural gas. The producers don’t WANT to lower the cost any more. Sure, it would help consumers – but it would hurt shareholders. Who do YOU think our corporate overlords are more worried about?

He has already failed at ending Putin’s war ‘even before taking office.’ He’s looking at failure in producing more natural gas and oil. He won’t be bringing prices at the supermarket down. (“It’s hard,” he whined.) He’s backpedaling on which J6 rioters will get day one pardons. If he follows through on his promised tariffs, the most likely result will be inflation – and everything will cost MORE! Not surprisingly, that’s the SAME result we will see if he actually starts deporting every brown person he can find. Everything will cost MORE.

It’s starting to look like there’s not ONE THING he promised that he intends to do. Worse, if he DID do them, there’s not ONE THING he might do that will improve our day-to-day lives. He told a rabid mob what they wanted to hear and they supported him. It’s looking like ‘rabid mob’ may not be the best format for decision-making…

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In retrospect, though, I’m not sure WHY I’ve been so upset over possible economic programs of The Felon and the damage those programs will do. His environmental plans promise to derail every human endeavor over the next four years. With people suffering fires, record-strength hurricanes, tornado clusters, extra cold winters and extra hot summers, flooding and/or drought (fueling crop failures), there’s going to be MUCH unrest, struggle, and desperation…

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It’s weird, watching Steve Bannon call Elon Musk a racist – as an insult, I mean. (Pot? Kettle. Kettle? Pot.) It’s even weirder hearing Newt Gingrich talking about the importance of open legal borders in direct defiance of MAGA right now. Arguably, Gingrich is more responsible than any other politician for launching the far right movement that eventually became MAGA. He’s a deeply evil individual with folksy charm.

He created a monster that DOES NOT DO nuance. Now, he’s trying a nuanced argument to justify some immigration. I suspect that’s going to be a tough sell. Gingrich seems to think The Felon won’t follow through on his promise to use the military to get to every undocumented person they can find and deport them. Oh, but not JUST them.

Trump is quoted as saying, “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.” Send them all… back? Where, to East LA? That’s not much of a deportation. Trump’s words sound like he’ll deport any undocumented person AND their American family members. “Deporting” Americans sounds like nonsense but, then, many things that fall from his lips sound like nonsense.

Meanwhile, Gingrich says, “I’d be very surprised if you see any significant effort to change the game for people who are here legally. I just think there’s a very small faction of the party that’s rabid about this.” He has also said, “We are a nation of law [sic], despite some of the things that have been said. And I think that if you have legal standing in the American system, it’s very difficult to deport you. On the other hand, if you have no legal standing, it’s pretty easy to deport you, right? And I’m for doing the easy first. That’s why we should give [Dreamers] legal status, as a practical matter.”

Do you think Gingrich can get The Felon to deport people in a nuanced and thoughtful way? ‘Nuanced’ and ‘thoughtful’ are not words I normally associate with Trump and his acolytes…

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Let’s say you have a house. It’s been in your family for 250 years and, let’s face it, it could use some attention. Is the right answer to identify the problems and correct them as they come up, or would it be better just to set fire to the whole freaking thing and burn it to the ground?

MAGA has chosen, “Burn it! Burn it all!” I can’t agree that was the best answer…

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I want to make something clear. Jack Smith has resigned as Special Counsel. He didn’t resign because he lost his case. He resigned because the target of his prosecution created a legal loophole that allowed him to slither away unscathed. (There are advantages to being the Anti-Christ.) Donald J. Trump did NOT “beat” the charges. He did NOT “win.” He cheated – and got away with it. I believe that, had he stood trial, he would have been convicted. He’s still a criminal. He just got away with it…

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I’ve heard yet another smear in the politicization of the SoCal fires: fire trucks from Oregon have been held up because they couldn’t pass a smog check. Yeah, that’s the story. As with all things MAGA, it’s false. It’s just a smear.

Fire trucks from Oregon WERE stopped in Sacramento and examined. It was a safety and equipment evaluation, not a smog check. No smog checks were performed. The idea was to make certain that the trucks were up to the terrain they were heading into – for the safety of the firefighters involved. ALL trucks from Oregon are now on scene in LA.

But I’m guessing that the fact that the story is pure and unadulterated bunk won’t stop MAGA from repeating it over and over. (“They’re EATING THE DOGS!”) When have facts ever been an issue for a MAGA?

Burning It All Down…

by MyBaconPress

Mr. Thirty-Four Felonies KNOWS climate change is real. It’s part of his justification for wanting Greenland. (Climate change melting ice caps will create new, year-round shipping lanes.) But he keeps denying it because that’s dogma of the MAGA brand. So when climate change causes fires, 34 knows that, really, it was because Gavin Newsom did not, personally, take a broom into forests and sweep up the debris. Yes, of course, it’s amazingly, stunningly stupid. Just remember the source.

Hey, guess what? No, you’ll never guess, so I’ll just tell you. It turns out, MAGA doesn’t like Gavin Newsom. No, I’m sorry, “Newscum.” They’ve connected some dots. There are several great big fires in Southern California and MAGA doesn’t like Gavin Newsom. Ergo, the fires in Southern California MUST be “Newscum’s” fault, right? I mean, it’s logic! Okay, yeah, it’s BAD logic, but…

Newsom wasn’t in the mood, though. After Trump posted that the fires are Gavin’s fault, Gavin responded. “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation.” Newsom is right. People who deny science have no business in intelligent conversations. (Of COURSE you have a right to be wrong, but don’t expect intelligent people to “respect your opinion” when your “opinion” is rooted in intentional stupidity.)

Yes, it was fun watching Gavin clap back at 34. The problem, of course, is that once he’s in office, the petulant puke (34) will direct FEMA to ignore California. Fortunately, for THESE fires, we have Biden still in office, and he has already approved FEMA help for the state. But going forward? Once Trump takes over? We’re on our own. I don’t know what Newsom is planning on THAT score.

Perhaps, once the US turns it’s back on California, California will turn it’s back on the US. We provide FAR more money to the US than we take back. Perhaps we just stop that. We’ll keep our money here to fight the fires the federal government refuses to help with because of 34’s political pettiness. It’s just a thought. But I digress.

As I was saying, and you may have noticed, MAGA is mad. Just in general, to be sure, but in this case, MAGA is mad at Newsom for not taking a broom and sweeping up the debris in the forests. They are NOT heavily focused on the fact that these are not forest fires. (The problem with the hydrant pressures might have been a clue.) It turns out that, being a desert, the LA basin hasn’t had much rain. Hmm, go figure. THEN, these hard, warm winds hit the area.

They’re called the Santa Ana Winds. Really, they have a name. They blow very hard. As far as MAGA is concerned (for the purposes of politicizing this event), it’s the first time in history that exceptionally dry conditions coupled with strong, warm winds has ever had anything to do with fire. EVER! Just ask Mr. Thirty-Four Felonies. And now that the words have been uttered, they MUST be set in stone as gospel truth.

These fires are also a great political opportunity to blame “Newscum” for low water pressure in the hydrants. As it happens, when firefighters hook up to several hydrants in many different places at the same time and open the spigots, the water pressure drops. That’s not water mismanagement. It’s just physics. The ACTUAL problem is the number of fires that have broken out all over the area, all at the same time. “NEWscum!”

It’s almost as if, no matter WHAT happens, no matter WHEN it happens, MAGA needs to quickly find a way to a) politicize the situation and b) blame Democrats. For clarity, that’s ‘Democrats,’ in general, but usually the closest, high-profile Democrat gets the focus of their silly, little faux rage. (Conversely, when a Republican is caught failing, dead to rights, it’s NEVER the time to “play the blame game.”) But if they can somehow pin the blame on a Democrat, the GOP never, and I mean EVER, misses a chance to politicize a natural disaster. EVER! That’s an amazing streak they’ve made up, there.

But while MAGA is finger-pointing and playing the blame game, Newsom is just…dealing with the problem. He has experience with this. He’s done it before. He knows how to handle this emergency and I have faith he’ll stay on top of it. The implication from MAGA, though, is that if 34 were in charge, the response would be much, much better. Really? We’ve seen Trump responsible for an emergency, in charge of the response. He threw paper towels in Puerto Rico and as I recall, after allowing Covid-19 to get rolling so fiercely, he flat-lined the nation’s economy and killed over a million people.

Yeah, um, nice work, Donny. God help us in the next emergency…

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Okay, so it’s official. Donald J. Trump is a convicted felon. No, he didn’t get in any trouble. Essentially, he just got a black mark on his permanent record. BFD. About the only thing one can say about it is, now I really CAN call him ‘Mr. Thirty-Four Felonies.’ Which, let’s be honest, I’ve been doing anyway. Yes, it’s petty. But it ALSO keeps it top of mind that he is, in fact, a convicted felon. MAGA doesn’t like it, but facts are facts, so MAGA hates facts, too!

I’m not clear on why the sentencing defines it as a done deal and not the finding of “guilty.” To me, when he was pronounced guilty because the evidence supported the charge – that is, he did the crime of which he stood accused – he was guilty. But some feature of the law says, no, the sentencing has to happen to close it out. So that’s done now.

Obviously, Trump insists it was all a witch hunt. (It wasn’t.) He called it “lawfare.” (A made-up term, but a practice he claims to abhor, yet intends to engage in with a vengeance.) He pretends it’s just political or electoral “interference.” (Wrong, again.) Of course, he’s the father of lies and I’m not sure he EVER speaks truthfully, so the more he protests, the more sure I am the evidence correctly supported the conviction…

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The job of DOGE, Trump’s new, expensive “government efficiency” office, is to trim fat. Eliminate excess. Get rid of all of those expensive employees. Of course it is. First on the agenda? Hire a large group of expensive employees. Rent office space. Buy desks, phones, tables, and chairs. That is, spend a bunch of money setting up a new bureaucracy. Great start, there, guys, way to reduce costs. Hey, come to think of it, I may have found a place you can cut some fat…

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I’m hoping for snow. No, not here. In DC, on January 20th. Like, FEET of it. It seems Mr. Thirty-Four Felonies never really got over the fact that his LAST inauguration was such a sparsely attended event. I presume he’s planning to bus in some extra “crowd” to make sure THAT doesn’t happen again. But then he gets word the flags are supposed to fly at half-staff on his dark inauguration day and now he’s all whiny about THAT.

I just think it would be funny as hell if, in addition to the half-staff flags, a paralyzing snowstorm hit DC and ground local travel to an absolute halt. Half-staff flags and practically NOBODY in attendance? That might break his teeny, tiny, little ego before he even gets started…

Just The Worst…

by MyBaconPress

I have to start by saying my heart goes out to Southern California. We, here in Northern California, have been through what they’re going through, now, and I know, without question, there are no words. I remember the panic of people in the moment. It’s all just a confusion of “Where do we go?” and “What, now?” I remember the stories people told, after, of how they made it out. I remember the stories about the people who didn’t.

I remember the wreckage. I remember the smell of the burned buildings lingering in the air for a long time. I know how they’re going to react to even the faintest smell of wildfire smoke in the future. And I was one of the lucky ones. I didn’t lose anything. I STILL react. They will, too. The buildings can be, will be, rebuilt. The precious mementos are gone forever. But Nor-Cal DID come back and SoCal will, too.

Stay strong, SoCal…

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When a Special Counsel finishes their job, they’re supposed to issue a report explaining, in detail, why they did what they did. That is, why they prosecuted (or declined to) and the details behind those choices. Jack Smith has written his report and turned it over to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Apparently, it’s in TWO volumes. The first is about the election interference charges 34 negated by getting back to the White House. The second is about the Classified documents he stole, I suspect to give to Putin. The question now is, should AG Garland release the report for public consumption.

I haven’t seen it, of course, but MY guess (and yours, I’d bet) is that the report just says something to the effect of, “We were GOING to prosecute because we have evidence enough to fill three trucks, but then The Felon “won” the “election” and is expected to abuse his authority to protect himself so we had no choice but to stand down.”

Puppet-elect Thirty-Four Felonies doesn’t want people to know what’s in the report about him, presumably because it says, “Oh, yeah, he’s as guilty as can be and here’s the evidence!” So, he judge-shopped. It didn’t take long. He knows he has Aileen “Loose” Cannon in the bag and, oh, hey! Lookee, here. He took his case to his corrupt, loyalist judge and she put a temporary injunction on releasing the report. She protected him again – and just in time.

It will buy him time, which is the loophole he used to slither out from under the charges in the first place. Once again, with the help of a corrupt judiciary, he’ll get away with it. This is what the “law” is going to look like going forward in this once-great nation. Sometimes, I think this whole thing is going to get very ugly…

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I read an article in the ‘Motley Fool’ about Social Security. It pretended Social Security is low on funds because of an imbalance in the difference between paying in and taking out. It didn’t mention politicians “borrowing” from the fund for other purposes, then not paying the money back as promised. Nor did it mention the cap rich people enjoy that protects some of their income.

It pointed out that, in an effort to confront the shortfall, Congress started taxing SS benefits. Again, nobody ever mentions eliminating the cap rich people enjoy as a solution. (YOU pay in to Social Security on 100% of your earned income. Rich people pay a tiny fraction of that percentage from their income. It is generally understood that lifting that cap funds Social Security nicely.)

I noticed Congress started taxing SS in 1983. Guess who was President, which party, in 1983. Go on, guess. Did you guess Reagan and the Republicans? That’s the right answer. In fairness, the taxes were adjusted to get more in 1993. Clinton was President. I know, he ran as a Dem, but I’ve long held that Bill Clinton was one of the most effective Republican presidents in decades. He got away with it by hiding in plain sight, as a liberal. But he signed and supported NAFTA. He “reformed” welfare. He killed the free press. He increased taxation on Social Security. There’s more. He was a con, like it or not.

The point, here, is that Social Security can be fixed easily by simply removing the cap rich people pay from their checks. If they pay into SS on 100% of THEIR paychecks, like everyone else does, we don’t really have a problem. No, of course the politicians are just going to tell you there’s no more money and nothing can be done so you lose, but they’ll just be serving their rich paymasters…

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Musk bought Twitter claiming he wanted free speech, then turned it into an insulting conservative misinformation machine that regularly censors speech. Zuckerberg, apparently, likes what he sees in Musk’s example and has decided to follow suit and eliminate the guardrails on Facebook, as well. First he eliminated news feeds almost entirely, then, when they come back, he has opened the door to conservative misinformation to flow freely?

I don’t call for boycotts, per se, because they’re dumb and don’t work dependably. (Besides, who would listen to ME?) But we CAN avoid doing business with companies we don’t like or trust whenever it’s possible, if we choose. My advice? Pay attention to who still advertises on X and avoid them if you can. As Facebook declines, it would be a good idea to do the same with whoever keeps advertising there.

The ONE thing we can count on about a fascist nation is that money rules the day. Always. Most of the Small Folk KNOW they’re Small Folk and don’t think of themselves as able to have an impact. But we can. Collectively. By all means, flee X for Bluesky, but pay attention to who keeps advertising on X (and now Facebook) and direct your dollars accordingly. If nothing else, we can keep them from gaining some of the money they’ll eventually use against us…

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MAGA doesn’t seem to have noticed, yet, but The Felon is already setting the stage for the expected economic collapse that will accompany Trump policies. As we all know, they see Biden as old. VERY old. (He is, too. No argument, here.) They see him as senile. (I’m still sitting quietly.) They see him as incompetent. (He has actually done a very good job…)

They ALSO see him as a mastermind genius capable of some very detailed, intricate, and complex planning. It really depends on what they need at any given moment. According to The Felon, the senile, mastermind, incompetent, genius has set an “economic time-bomb” meant to blow up at a precise moment. Specifically, the moment the inauguration ends.

We all know how trump works. He’s been bitching about the horrid state of the economy for four years. The minute he’s inaugurated, he’s going to start claiming Biden’s successful economy for himself. It will go from “Horrid!” to “Hurray!” in moments. If he was smart (yes, I SHOULD stop there) he would simply not touch anything and let the economy hum.

But, he’s not smart – and he doesn’t plan to do that, leave well enough alone. According to him, he plans to reduce government revenues while instituting a shiny new program that STARTS with an $80 billion dollar stake. That’s going to do some damage. He knows it. But he doesn’t want to be seen as doing the damage he plans to do. He NEEDS that blame to fall elsewhere and, of course, he chose Biden. Curiously, the damage won’t happen until Trump takes office and starts doing his thing.

By definition, that is NOT a time-bomb. A time-bomb goes off at a specific time. If one sets a bomb to blow up at, say, 2 pm on December 31st, that bomb blows up on December 31st at 2 pm – because it’s on a timer. It’s a “timed-bomb,” see? A bomb that waits for a specific trigger, like, say, moronic policies triggering an economic meltdown? That’s not a time-bomb because nobody knows WHEN it blow – or even if it will.

It requires a specific act, like tax cuts for the rich, side-by-side with a shiny new, $80 billion dollar deportation program. BOOM! There’s a reason Mr. 34 Felonies suddenly hates the debt ceiling – and it isn’t that he plans to lower the debt. (I’ve noticed the price of eggs has gone UP since the “election,” not down, despite his promises…)

It’s a standard con trick. They ALWAYS blame their own economic wreckage on the previous Democratic administration, and they ALWAYS take credit for the economic successes actually achieved by the previous Democratic administration. Once, they even blamed and INCOMING Democratic administration for their own failures. Yeah, the party of personal responsibility…

To The Victors…

by MyBaconPress

Well…it’s time. We (some of us) fought the good fight. We really tried. We did everything we could. But in the end, all of our efforts were for naught. We’ve lost and it’s time to acknowledge the fact, congratulate the winners, and move on to the next set of issues. So…congratulations climate change deniers! You’ve won. You were successful in blocking and stalling any climate action that might have arrested the effects of the changing climate er, I mean, interfered with profits for some oil companies and now…well, there’s nothing anybody can do to stop what’s coming. Nice.

That’s the sportsmanlike response. I have to admit, I’m a little bitter about your victory. It’s not that I’m a poor loser. But the “prize” for your “victory,” in this case, is a planet increasingly unable to support human life. I feel like you made a poor choice and I have to suffer the consequences – right along with you. That sucks. It’s made all the worse for the certain knowledge that you used deceitful and underhanded tactics to achieve your “victory.” I suppose that was your only choice. You didn’t have any legitimate science behind you and you didn’t have any legitimate evidence. All you had was lies and obfuscations – but you made the most of them. And, really, you didn’t have to “win” the debate. You had only to not lose. It didn’t matter how often or how completely your claims were debunked. As long as you could keep talking, the “debate” raged. And you just kept blathering. (Technically, baffling with bullshit…)


Have you ever heard of the Drake Equation? It’s a mathematical formula that attempts to define the number of alien races in our galaxy that developed to a point where they could send signals into space. That doesn’t mean intentionally send signals into space. For example, we reached that point when we started broadcasting radio and television signals. They sometimes slip out of our atmosphere and travel off to unknown places. Since EVERY aspect of the Drake Equation is a variable one just…supplies, the numbers can hardly be called “solid.” One can make the thing work and show one civilization or 500,000 – or whatever other number makes you happy. BUT…

If there are 500,000 civilizations out there capable of sending signals into space – on purpose or otherwise – why can’t we ever hear anything? We ARE listening. There’s an entire program out there, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) that spends a great deal of time looking for signals. It’s been YEARS – decades, even. So far, ONE – exactly ONE “WOW” moment. It’s called the “Wow” moment because the scientist who discovered the pattern wrote “Wow” next to it. But the one moment never repeated and no one knows for SURE it was an organized signal. It could have been just space noise.

There was this physicist named Enrico Fermi who heard about Drake’s Equation and responded with, “Well, where is everybody?” It’s kind of a fun question. If 500,000 civilizations have developed that might have sent signals into space surely some of them developed long before humanity even crawled out of the sea. Even if they’re not coming this way for what we could only hope was a visit, they should STILL be sending signals – assuming they survived long enough to send signals on purpose. We do. We sent space probes with detailed information about finding Earth and what humans look like. We send signals into space to communicate with our space probes and stations. As I’ve already mentioned, episodes of ‘I Love Lucy’ and ‘The Honeymooners’ are well on their way to Alpha Centauri or where ever.

Do you know a common component of many of humanity’s wars? Something new. Maybe it’s a tactic. Maybe it’s technology but it’s commonly something new. The Mongol hoards used horseback speed to overwhelm their opponents. The Greeks perfected a formation called a phalanx. The Romans took over the world when they added their Gladius sword (it could thrust AND slice!) to the phalanx formation. The Nazis used the Blitzkrieg or “lightening war” – speed in the form of planes from the sky and soldiers and tanks racing across the countryside. The Europeans had rifles while the First Nations had only bow-and-arrows. Come to think of it, Africans had no technological equivalent to European weapons technology, either. There’s a physicist named Michio Kaku. He says we shouldn’t be sending signals into space because anybody who can receive them AND come to Earth would have the technological advantage and be free to do with us as they please. “To Serve Man,” anyone? I agree with him in principal but I think that ship actually sailed LONG before any of us had a chance to ponder the question. At this point, they’d just follow Lucy back to her point of origin…

Anyway, Fermi’s question, “Where is everyone?” is often answered with the supposition that civilizations DO develop to a certain point and then, basically, find some way to destroy themselves. It’s all theoretical, of course, except now we have some…immediate evidence. There’s no telling how many humans are going to die as a result of runaway climate change but the answer is a “non-zero number.” It’s already a “non-zero number.” Sure, the fires and the floods will kill but so will food shortages, forced migrations, violent clashes, and riots. Oh, and don’t forget the illnesses that will rear their ugly…um…spiky proteins as weather conditions become more favorable for them. There’s every possibility the Earth will just shake off humanity like a dog shakes off water.

Thanks to the efforts of the climate change deniers, it’s looking more and more like humanity is about to render itself nothing more than a cautionary tale to future developing civilizations. If you ask me, it was a stupid choice, destruction of the species in exchange for a dollar. Very stupid. But the question is settled now. We know what killed us; stupidity…

On Climate Change…

by MyBaconPress

I don’t debate climate change anymore.  There are several reasons.  Among them is the basic fact that I’m not a climate scientist.  I don’t have the education to make determinations about the data – how it was collected, how it’s interpreted, what adjustments may have been made and why.  That’s all science stuff best left to climate scientists.

That leaves me to make determinations based on things around climate science.  For example, the US military makes adjustments for it.  They don’t make adjustments lightly.  Businesses are taking into account – even fossil fuel businesses.  Rising oceans have already caused the evacuation of at least one island nation and the water regularly encroaches on Florida, things like that…

But there are things, as well.  I was once in a Facebook “discussion” with someone who offered me a link to a blog post with what he claimed included 800 links to peer-reviewed, climate science denial papers.  I guess the sheer weight of such a post had run off many of his opponents in the past but I did something he apparently didn’t expect; I looked at the links.  Turns out, each link went to what is called a manual redirect page – with a link right back to the original post!  It wasn’t a post with links to 800 different papers, it was 1 link 800 times.

Think about that.  Somebody took the time to set up 800 fake blog pages, each with a link right back to the originating page.  I even noticed that the project had apparently fatigued its creator.  At first, each faked “blog” page had a paragraph or two.  Then the content dwindled to a line or two.  Then just a single sentence.  After awhile, only the circular link.  800 fake pages.  800 circular links.

That’s no “accident.”  It’s not an “honest mistake.”  That’s not somebody who “should have looked more carefully”.  That’s a clear intent to deceive.  (These are the same people who insist that the number of hurricanes hasn’t increased, all the while hoping you don’t notice what’s happening with the overall number of “Named Storms” – tropical and subtropical storms that don’t quite make it into the “hurricane” category.)

In a circumstances like that, I resort to my standing rule of thumb that says that the person who knowingly attempts to deceive is tacitly admitting foreknowledge that their position is false.  It’s a good rule.  It serves me well.

But probably the single most important factor, for me, is that whenever I’m talking to someone who denies climate science, I know I’m talking to a conservative.  That shouldn’t be the case.  Science doesn’t draw neat little lines between political positions.  Do you remember those graphs that show the intersections of two groups?  It’s usually two circles pushed together until they overlap with a little shaded area in the middle.  The circle on the left might be, say, the population of New York City and the circle on the right might be the number of people who speak French.  Push the two together and you can see, graphically, the number of people in New York City who speak French.

Well, if you label the left, red circle “Conservatives” and the right, slightly smaller, yellow, circle “People who deny climate science” and start pushing them together, the yellow circle will slide all the way into the red circle, leaving an orange circle with a slim red “halo” around the side (because not even all conservatives deny climate science).  Then we can see, graphically, that the population of people who deny climate science is made up entirely of conservatives.

But I’ll tell you this: that’s not how science works…