Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.
- John Locke
Two Treatises on Government (1689)
This week's featured posts are Catching Up on Donald Trump and Catching Up on the Gaza War.
This week everybody was talking about disqualifying Trump
That, and a bunch of other Trump news, is covered in one featured post. Something I forgot to mention in that post was Trump's weird rant against magnets.
On the subject of magnetic elevators, Trump said, "Think of it, magnets. Now all I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that's the end of the magnets.
In the inspiring words of the Insane Clown Posse: "Fuckin' magnets, how do they work?"
But, you know, it's Biden whose mind we are supposed to worry about.
and the Gaza War
which is covered in the other featured post.
and January 6
In the immediate aftermath of Trump's failed coup, the GOP establishment and conservative commentariat almost universally recognized 1-6 for what it was: un-American, over the line, terrorism, etc. Over the last three years, they have completely changed their tune. Rep. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican conference, is typical: Sunday she referred to those who have been tried, convicted, and sentenced for crimes committed on January 6 as "hostages".
I believe we’re seeing the weaponization of the federal government against not just President Trump, but we’re seeing it against conservatives.
She refused to commit to certifying the 2024 election.
We will see if this is a legal and valid election. What we’re seeing so far is that Democrats are so desperate they’re trying to remove President Trump from the ballot.
Of course, President Trump will only be removed from ballots if the conservative majority on the Supreme Court finds that the Constitution disqualifies him. "Democrats" can do nothing on their own.
and 2023 becoming 2024
2023 was another great year for jobs. The economy added 2.7 million jobs during the year, bringing the 2-year total to 7.5 million new jobs. The unemployment rate held steady at 3.7% in December, and has stayed below 4% for 23 consecutive months. The Trump administration's longest streak below 4% was 13 months.
The Economist combined "inflation, inflation breadth, GDP, jobs, and stock market performance" into a single index to rank 35 "mostly rich" countries' economic performance in 2023. The US came in third, behind Greece and South Korea, and I might quibble about ranking us that low: Greece's advantage is mainly in its stock market, which was up 44% compared to the US' 4.3% gain.
2023 was the hottest year on record by a wide margin, as global warming teamed up with an unusually strong El Nino. As anyone who follows sports knows, that's how records get set: a trend gets topped off by special factors. (For example, Barry Bonds' 73 home runs in 2001 was the best season of the best hitter in the home-run-happy steroid era. Between 1998 and 2001, three hitters posted six seasons of 63+ home runs, a figure no one else has reached before or since.)
The El Nino is expected to continue into this year, so 2024 could be equally hot or hotter. But it might not be, and by 2025 we can expect some regression to the mean. (In other words: Outliers are typically followed by something less outlying. For example, Shaquille O'Neal is 7'1", but his son is only 6'10" -- tall, but not as tall as Dad.) What that would mean in this case is that 2024 or 2025 will be hot, probably hotter than the average of 2018-2022, but probably not as hot as 2023. When we look back from 2030 or so, the upward trend will continue to be clear, but 2023 will probably stick up above the trend line.
1998 was a year like that: significantly hotter than any year before, but also hotter than several years after. And you know what we saw? Climate-change-denying authors writing that global warming ended in 1998. You can guess what they did: If you start your graph at 1998, it looks like global average temperature goes sideways for several years. (The two graphs here aren't tracking precisely the same things, so they don't perfectly match up.)
Warming trend? What warming trend?
So don't be fooled over the next few years if you see articles claiming that the danger has passed, because global warming peaked in 2023 or 2024. It won't have passed; the trend will just be catching up to a year with some special circumstances.
Kat Abu, who watches Fox News so we don't have to, announced her Fox News predictions for 2024. A few highlights:
- Greg Gutfeld is going to say the N-word.
- If Trump is found guilty of anything this year, Sean Hannity will start his show with the words "Today, all of America was found guilty."
- A host will overtly call for the assassination of Joe Biden.
and Governor DeWine's veto
On December 18, the Ohio legislature passed a Substitute House Bill 68, which included this:
Sec. 3129.02. (A) A physician shall not knowingly do any of the following: (1) Perform gender reassignment surgery on a minor individual; (2) Prescribe a cross-sex hormone or puberty-blocking drug for a minor individual for the purpose of assisting the minor individual with gender transition; (3) Engage in conduct that aids or abets in the practices described in division (A)(1) or (2) of this section, provided that this section may not be construed to impose liability on any speech protected by federal or state law. ...
Sec. 3129.05. (A) Any violation of section 3129.02, section 3129.03, or section 3129.06 of the Revised Code shall be considered unprofessional conduct and subject to discipline by the applicable professional licensing board.
So, Ohio doctors who provided gender-affirming care for minors (with or without parental consent) would lose their licenses.
On December 30, Governor DeWine, a Republican, announced that he was vetoing this bill. He said:
Were I to sign Substitute House Bill 68 or were Substitute House Bill 68 to become law, Ohio would be saying that the State, that the government, knows what is best medically for a child rather than the two people who love that child the most, the parents.
In other words, the people who are actually involved in the specific case should make the decision, not the government. I wonder when DeWine or any other Republicans will grasp that this is also a reason to oppose abortion bans at any number of weeks. In some particular cases, you may not agree with the decision made by the people on the ground, but on the whole they'll do better than the legislature.
and you also might be interested in ...
the sad story of a public library in upstate New York. When the library scheduled a Drag Queen Story Hour, protests erupted, and the event was never held. You might think the anti-LGBTQ side would say, "Yay, we won!" and be happy. But no. Next they went after all the queer-themed books in the library. They harassed the librarians until they resigned. Several trustees also resigned (leaving the board without a quorum to hire new staff), and the library has been closed for four months.
As so often happens, the minister leading the anti-library charge accuses the librarians of pushing an "agenda" on the town, when in fact he is the one pushing an agenda. The librarians saw their mission as serving everyone in the town, while the minister wants the library to serve people only to the extent that they are like him.
Wednesday, the quack doctor that Ron DeSantis made Florida's surgeon general called for a halt on the use of mRNA Covid vaccines (like Moderna's and Pfizer' vaccine's), because of the claim that such vaccines can contaminate a recipient's DNA. If you're curious, Scientific American explains the alleged risk and why it's not worth worrying about.
The first American moon mission since 1972 launched this morning. It's supposed to land on the Moon on February 23. There are no astronauts, though.
Carbon offsets can be kind of an iffy thing. The credits that get bought to offset carbon emissions are often from, as Grist puts it, "distant and questionable" projects. But there is at least one offset program Grist likes: the Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund, which offsets emissions from local eco-tourism by paying for Juneau residents to replace fossil-fuel-powered furnaces with electric heat pumps.
Another environmental development worth watching: JAC Motors, a Chinese automaker backed by Volkswagen, as about to launch an EV with sodium-ion rather than lithium-ion batteries. Mining lithium is one of the major environmental trade-offs of EVs.
January 1 is a typical time for new laws to take effect. This year,
Twenty-two states and more than three dozen cities and counties increased their minimum wages in January, providing a boost to millions of the country’s lowest-paid workers.
The increases will bump wages for about 9.9 million workers, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington-based think tank.
Washington state has the highest minimum: $16.28 per hour. Just about the entire South has stuck with the federal minimum of $7.25. We can think of this as an almost-controlled experiment. Eastern Washington sits right next to the Idaho panhandle, where $7.25 is still the standard.
and let's close with something cold
Over the weekend, my town had its first real snow of the year. So in honor of the beauty of winter, here's a contest-winning photo.
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