Stephan: Water is destiny, and here is an aspect of what that means that has gotten very little coverage until now. That will be changing as the lights go out. This is another example of how California is being increasingly impacted by climate change.
Houseboats sit anchored at the Bidwell Canyon Marina on Lake Oroville on June 1 in Oroville, Calif. As water levels continue to fall amid a historic drought, state officials say a hydroelectric power plant that relies on the lake will be forced to shut down this summer. Credit: Justin Sullivan Getty
A California power plant likely will shut down for the first time ever because of low water during a prolonged drought, squeezing the state’s very tight electricity supplies, state officials said yesterday.
The Edward Hyatt power plant, an underground facility next to Oroville Dam in Butte County, is expected to close in August or September, said John Yarbrough, California Department of Water Resources assistant deputy director of the State Water Project. The plant has run continuously since opening in 1967. It receives water from Lake Oroville, and that reservoir has dropped because of the drought, as CNN previously reported.
Lake Oroville is among several California reservoirs hit by drought.
In addition, “high heat events in California and the rest of the West have begun earlier than usual and have exceeded historic […]
Stephan: You may well have heard the canard about EVs, not really being cleaner than petroleum-powered vehicles. It isn't true and here are some facts.
Vehicle bodies on the production line of the manufacturing plant for Zeekr Co., an electric-car unit of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China, on Wednesday, April 14, 2021. Credit: Gilles Sabrie/Bloomberg/Getty
A new study lays to rest the tired argument that electric vehicles aren’t much cleaner than internal combustion vehicles. Over the life cycle of an EV — from digging up the materials needed to build it to eventually laying the car to rest — it will release fewer greenhouse gas emissions than a gas-powered car, the research found. That holds true globally, whether an EV plugs into a grid in Europe with a larger share of renewables, or a grid in India that still relies heavily on coal.
This shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis. So governments from California to the European Union have proposed phasing out internal combustion engines by 2035. But there are still peoplewho claimthat EVs are only as clean as the grids they run on — and right now, fossil fuels still dominate when it comes […]
Stephan: The Republican Party is entirely committed to a fascist agenda. Republicans do not like democracy and are doing everything they can to sabotage it. Why aren't people out in the streets by the millions, why do people in the Red value states vote over and over for people who hold them in contempt? I don't know the answer to those questions, but I do know that democracy in the United States hangs by a thread. Here is the latest action by the fascists.
Medical care demonstrators in Washington
The Republicans who lead Idaho’s Legislature spent more than two years smarting over the passage of a 2018 ballot initiative that forced the state to expand Medicaid. They were also plotting their revenge.
This spring, as the lawmakers worried about a looming proposal to legalize medical marijuana, they passed a bill instituting an aggressive new standard on ballot campaigns. The outcry was fierce, with liberal activists quickly gathering 16,000 signatures from residents opposed to the legislation — including from rural counties the lawmakers said they were trying to help. Former state Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones delivered the petition to Republican Gov. Brad Little.
But Little was unmoved and signed the legislation in April, making Idaho home to some of the nation’s most restrictive requirements for ballot petitions. Organizers there are now required to secure signatures from 6 percent of voters in all 35 legislative districts in the state to get a question on the ballot for voters to decide.
The Idaho bill is part of a wave of legislation moving through GOP-controlled legislatures that’s intended […]
Stephan: Finally, some discussion about the corruption and moral bankruptcy of the American legal system. Like so many other things we just constantly lie to ourselves that we are number one or the best. In fact, the United States is not even in the top 20 nations for legal fairness according to the World Justice Project which ranksthe world's nations on the basis of their legal integrity and fairness.
The top 20 countries in the world for the rule of law according to World Justice Project in 2020 are:
Denmark
Norway
Finland
Sweden
Netherlands
Germany
New Zealand
Austria
Canada
Estonia
Australia
Singapore
United Kingdom
Belgium
Japan
Hong Kong
South Korea
Czech Republic
Spain
France
American justiceCredit: Toronto Star
Around 90 percent of criminal cases are handled by county court systems, where inflexibility on disproportionately harsh sentencing outcomes is largely a local political choice. Prosecutors can reopen old cases to correct injustices with relative ease, and some do.
That isn’t usually possible in the federal system, where multiple layers of red tape ensure harsh prison sentences are not altered, even when they are morally wrong in hindsight. The US Department of Justice, stuffed to the gills with conservative federal prosecutors, controls the Office of the Pardon Attorney, the office tasked with giving clemency recommendations to the president.
Even the CARES Act, which was passed by Congress last year to curb the spread of COVID-19 and provides for a move to home confinement for around 4,500 low-risk prisoners, has been heavily influenced by the DOJ—an agency that has thoroughly resisted any efforts to reform prosecution and sentencing.
In the 11th hour of the Trump administration, then-Attorney General Bill Barr issued a memorandum that […]
Stephan: I got two emails today from anti-vaxxers that left me stunned by the idiocy and willful ignorance of their comments. I am not going to repeat them lest some reader take them seriously. How anyone can look at the ongoing illness and death rates, now almost entirely people who have not availed themselves of the opportunity to get vaccinated, and question whether getting vaccinated or not is a good idea simply leaves me shaking my head. It appears you just can't fix stupid, even when a person's life is seriously at risk. And that seems to be the defining trend in many parts of America today.
2020. Grand Rapids, Michigan. USA. President Donald Trump’s last rally before the 2020 Election on November 3, 2020. Grand Rapids was also the site of his final rally in the 2016 election.
Are we living in the age of stupid? The era of the idiot? The answer of course is yes, with examples of monstrous moronicism everywhere – from climate deniers to the “plandemic” crowd who believe Covid-19 was cooked up in Bill Gates’ basement. On the other hand, human beings have always been illogical creatures. A better question is whether we are, as a species, becoming dumberer. If this is already the era of the idiot, what comes next?
An “Idiocracy”, according to film-maker Mike Judge. The Beavis and Butt-head, King of the Hill and Silicon Valley creator’s dystopian 2006 comedy (which he directed and co-wrote with Ethan Cohen) arrived with its own terminology to help us prepare for the upcoming reality TV special that we may call The Collapse of Reality Itself.
Suggesting that morons rather than nerds will inherit the earth, and that the results will […]
