Stephan: This is the level to which the American Congress has sunk. A member is openly espousing civil violent insurrection, and encouraging others to join her, and nothing happens to her. There is no accountability. Oh, they took her committee assignments away from her. Boo Hoo. That isn't why she came to Congress anyway, and now she has more time to promote civil unrest. Apparently, a member of Congress can get away with almost anything these days.
Credit: Marjorie Taylor Greene via Facebook
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Tuesday floated resorting to using the “Second Amendment” to deal with Democrats who are imposing what she described as a “tyrannical” government.
While speaking with right-wing media personality Sebastian Gorka, Greene slammed Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams for her policies regarding both vaccines and gun rights.
Greene then pivoted to talking about how Americans are guaranteed the right to bear arms to resist such supposed tyranny.
“Ultimately the truth is it’s our Second Amendment rights, our right to bear arms, that protects Americans and give us the ability to defend ourselves from a tyrannical government,” she said. “And I hate to use this language but Democrats, they’re exactly — they’re doing exactly what our Founders talked about when they gave us the precious rights that we have.”
Greene earlier this year was stripped of her committee assignments due to her past statements supporting the execution of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as her conspiracy theories about numerous school shootings being “false flag” operations.
John Abraham, Professorof Thermal Sciences - University of St.Thomas in Minnesota - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: The alarms keep ringing, and Manchin and Sinema keep blocking the desperately needed legislation to at least start to address what is happening. How two corrupt incompetents can so grossly negatively affect the wellbeing of 333 million people with no apparent consequences, I do not understand. I don't expect anything from the MAGAt Republicans; they have made it clear that national wellbeing is of little interest to them or their corporate owners. But I am disappointed in the Democrats, and the Biden Administration. They just seem to lack the collective intention and commitment to forge the necessary legislation to prepare America for the existential threat of climate change.
‘The clear, persistent rise over the past three to four decades is unmistakable evidence of an Earth that is out of balance.’ Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty
I was fortunate to play a small part in a new study, just published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, which shows that the Earth broke yet another heat record last year. Twenty-three scientists from around the world teamed up to analyze thousands of temperature measurements taken throughout the world’s oceans. The measurements, taken at least 2,000 meters (about 6,500ft) deep and spread across the globe, paint a clear picture: the Earth is warming, humans are the culprit, and the warming will continue indefinitely until we collectively take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.I’m a climate scientist. Don’t Look Up captures the madness I see every dayPeter KalmusRead more
We used measurements from the oceans because they are absorbing the vast majority of the heat associated with global warming. In fact, more than 90% of global warming heat ends up in the oceans. I like to say that “global warming […]
Stephan: Given what science has made very clear and definitive about what climate change is going to do. Trump and McConnell and the MAGAt Republicans in the Senate have placed your life and wellbeing in jeopardy. How do you think the three inadequately competent and deeply ideological justices put on the court by Trump will vote, aided and abetted by Alito and Thomas?
At the center of the case is the question of whose interpretation of the E.P.A.’s authority under the Clean Air Act is correct: the Obama Administration’s or Trump’s. Credit: Luke Sharrett / Bloomberg / Getty
Next month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case involving an Obama-era power-plant rule that’s no longer in effect, and never really was. The Court has agreed to hear so many high-profile cases this term, on subjects ranging from abortion to gun rights to vaccine mandates, that this one—West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency—has received relatively little attention beyond legal circles. But its potential ramifications are profound. At a minimum, the Court’s ruling on the case is likely to make it difficult for the Biden Administration to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions. The ruling could also go much further and hobble the Administration’s efforts to protect the environment and public health.
West Virginia v. E.P.A. “could well become one of the most significant environmental law cases of all time,” Jonathan H. Adler, a law […]
Stephan: Here's a heads up from the IRS that I thought my readers would want to know about.
Americans can start filing their income tax returns Jan. 24, but existing backlogs and longstanding operational problems at the IRS, aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic, are likely to make for a frustrating filing season for taxpayers and tax preparers, a Treasury Department official said Monday.
The IRS is still dealing with backups in processing returns from the past two filing seasons. While the tax collector typically has about about 1 million pieces of unopened mail, including tax returns, in its backlog when starting a new filing season, it had 6 million unprocessed individual returns as of Dec. 23, the most recent date for which data is available on the agency’s website.
More than 150 million individual income tax returns typically roll in over the course of a few months.
Tax returns for 2021 are due April 18 for most individual filers, a few days after the normal April 15 deadline due to a holiday in Washington, D.C., though extensions can be requested. This year’s start and end dates, announced by the IRS on Monday, are more in […]
Stephan: Slowly, very slowly, it is beginning to dawn on materialist scientists that Max Planck was correct, consciousness is causal and fundamental, and that beings we formerly thought of as "dumb" animals in fact have consciousness at a level not previously imagined.
A goldfish steered a fish-operated vehicle developed by researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel. Credit: Shachar Givon et al./Ben-Gurion University
Israeli researchers have taught goldfish to drive, according to a study that offers new insights into animals’ ability to navigate — even when they’re literally fish out of water.
For the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Behavioural Brain Research, the goldfish were trained to use a wheeled platform, dubbed a Fish Operated Vehicle. The FOV could be driven and have its course changed in reaction to the fish’s movements inside a water tank mounted on the platform.
Their task was to “drive” the robotic vehicle toward a target that could be observed through the walls of the fish tank. The vehicle was fitted with lidar, short for light detection and ranging, a remote sensing technology that uses lasers to collect data on its ground location and the fish’s location within the tank.
The researchers, from Ben-Gurion University, found the fish were able to move the FOV around unfamiliar environments while reaching the […]
