Esoteric Mystic @ Seeker Project
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republicansaredomesticterrorists:
The parody site posted a fake article that claimed Brooks was booed off stage by Texas country fans upset that Brooks supports diversity. It won’t on to say that Brooks called the imaginary fans assholes. Abbott was in such a hurry to hate on the lgbt and Brooks that he tweeted the article .
The governor of Tex-ass tweeted an attack on a country singer after believing a fake news story from parody site that was clearly labeled as not real news. No apology was issued to Garth Brooks either.
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Trump escalates fascistic rants against socialism and Marxism The ex-president has increasingly tied his return to power to an open embrace of McCarthyite anticommunism.
(via butyoutoldmeiwasfunny)
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By Jake Johnson
Common Dreams
June 28, 2023
Leading the effort is Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, an ally of the fossil fuel industry and recipient of Big Oil campaign cash.
Senate Republicans introduced legislation earlier this week that would prohibit President Joe Biden from declaring a national climate emergency as millions across the U.S. shelter indoors to escape scorching heat and toxic pollution from Canadian wildfires, which have been fueled by runaway warming.
Led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.)—a fossil fuel industry ally and the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee—the GOP bill would “prohibit the president from using the three primary statutory authorities available (the National Emergencies Act, the Stafford Act, and section 319 of the Public Health Service Act) to declare a national emergency solely on the basis of climate change,” according to a summary released by the Republican senator’s office.
Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), another friend of the oil and gas industry, is leading companion legislation in the House.
The updated version of the bill, first introduced last year, comes as Biden is facing mounting pressure from environmental groups to use all of the power at his disposal to fight the climate crisis as it intensifies extreme weather across the U.S. and around the world.
A climate emergency declaration would unlock sweeping executive powers that would allow the president to halt crude oil exports, block oil and gas drilling, expand renewable energy systems, and more.
“What will it take for Biden and the Dems to stop supporting the profits of fossil fuel executives and finally declare a climate emergency? How bad will all this need to get?”
While Biden reportedly considered declaring a climate emergency amid a devastating heatwave last year, he ultimately decided against it to the dismay of environmentalists.
But the impacts of Canada’s record-shattering wildfires, which are likely to get worse in the coming weeks, have sparked another round of calls for Biden to follow in the footsteps of jurisdictions in more than 40 countries and declare climate change a national emergency.
“What will it take for Biden and the Dems to stop supporting the profits of fossil fuel executives and finally declare a climate emergency? How bad will all this need to get?” asked climate scientist Peter Kalmus. “These days ticking by are absolutely critical.”
Pointing to the horrendous air quality that major U.S. cities are experiencing due to Canada’s wildfires, the youth-led Sunrise Movement sent a simple message to Biden on Thursday: “Declare a climate emergency.”
ALTCapito’s legislation is unlikely to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the narrowly Democratic U.S. Senate, but her attempt to bar the president from declaring a climate emergency has previously gained bipartisan support.
Last May, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Mark Kelley (D-Ariz.) joined Republicans in approving a nonbinding motion stating that the president “cannot use climate change as a basis for declaring an ‘emergency’ or 'national disaster.’”
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More than a year ago, a Trump-appointed judge named Drew Tipton effectively seized control of parts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that enforces immigration laws within the United States. On Friday, the Supreme Court ended Tipton’s reign over ICE’s enforcement priorities.
The Court’s decision in United States v. Texas was 8–1, with all eight justices in the majority concluding that Tipton didn’t even have jurisdiction to hear this case in the first place — though they split 5-3 on why Tipton lacked jurisdiction. Only Justice Samuel Alito, the Court’s most reliable Republican partisan, dissented.
The case concerned 2021 guidelines, issued by Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, that instructed ICE agents to prioritize enforcement efforts against undocumented or otherwise removable immigrants who “pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security and thus threaten America’s well-being.”
Two red states, Texas and Louisiana, sued, essentially arguing that ICE must arrest more immigrants who do not fit these criteria. Moreover, because Texas federal courts often allow plaintiffs to choose which judge will hear their case by deciding to file their lawsuits in specific parts of the state, these two red states chose Tipton — a staunchly anti-immigrant judge who has been a thorn in the Biden administration’s side since the first week of his presidency — to hear this lawsuit.
In one of the most predictable events in the US judiciary’s history, Tipton promptly obliged the two states by striking down Mayorkas’s guidelines.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion in Texas holds that no federal judge should have ever even considered this case. As Kavanaugh explains, the plaintiff states “have not cited any precedent, history, or tradition of courts ordering the Executive Branch to change its arrest or prosecution policies so that the Executive Branch makes more arrests or initiates more prosecutions.” To the contrary, the Court held in Linda R. S. v. Richard D. (1973) that “a private citizen lacks a judicially cognizable interest in the prosecution or nonprosecution of another.”
That rule, Kavanaugh announces, controls the Texas case. Just as a private citizen may not sue to force the government to arrest or prosecute someone else, a state government also may not bring such a lawsuit.
Kavanaugh’s opinion also reaffirms a longstanding doctrine, known as “prosecutorial discretion,” which permits law enforcement officials to determine who to arrest, and who to otherwise enforce the law against, without interference from the judiciary.
The decision is a serious blow to Republican efforts to control federal immigration policy by seeking injunctions from sympathetic judges. From the earliest days of the Biden administration, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has taken advantage of the unusual rules permitting him to often choose which judge hears his cases to secure court orders blocking President Biden’s immigration policies. (To be clear, there is no evidence that these rules were created for the purpose of allowing someone like Paxton to game the process used to assign cases to judges. But they certainly allow him to do so.) Just six days into Biden’s presidency, for example, Tipton granted Paxton’s request to block a 100-day pause on deportations that the new administration announced in its first week.
At the very least, the Court’s Texas decision should mean that judges like Tipton can no longer decide who is or is not arrested.
That said, the decision does contain some language that anti-immigrant judges may latch onto to impose their preference on the country — including a paragraph that reads like it was written to preserve lawsuits challenging the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
And there is one other very frustrating thing about this case. Although the Supreme Court eventually ruled that Tipton is not the head of ICE and cannot decide who its agents arrest, it rejected a request to temporarily block Tipton’s decision last July.
In other words, by sitting on this case, a Supreme Court dominated by conservative Republican appointees effectively let Tipton control ICE for more than a year.
(via liberalsarecool)
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Excerpt from this book review from the New York Times:
Heat, according to the journalist Jeff Goodell, has a branding problem — though unlike the desperate politician whose P.R. flack is on speed dial, heat doesn’t need to be better liked; it isn’t loathed nearly enough.
In his fast-paced new book about climate change, “The Heat Will Kill You First,” Goodell denounces the term “global warming” for sounding “gentle and soothing, as if the most notable impact of burning fossil fuels will be better beach weather.” He says that the word “hot” has too many pleasing connotations: sexy, winning, in demand. Sure, hell is supposed to be hot, too; but for those who can afford it, air-conditioning has sapped the metaphor of its power, allowing a hellish heat to seem like a matter of intermittent discomfort instead of eternal damnation.
As this terrifying book makes exceptionally clear, thinking we can just crank up the A.C. is a dangerous way to live. Goodell, who has written about climate change for more than a decade, is currently based in Texas, where “every heat wave is a nail-biter” — including, coincidentally, the one that is happening right now. In addition to the viciousness of the climate-control cycle — we cool ourselves on a warming planet by making the planet warmer — powering all those air-conditioners is like playing chicken with the electrical grid: “If power goes out for long on a hot day, businesses shut down, schools close and people die.”
Goodell’s stripped-down style suits his subject. This is a propulsive book, one to be raced through; the planet is burning, and we are running out of time. Death is a common refrain, and it doesn’t apply only to humans. “When it gets too hot, things die,” an agricultural ecologist tells Goodell. Or, as Goodell writes of creatures that adapt by moving to cooler places: “If they can’t find refuge, they die.” A hotter world puts the most vulnerable at risk — the old, the sick, the poor.
Not just THE OLD, THE SICK& THE POOR BUT THE NATIVE SPECIES/WILDLIFE ARE ALREADY DYING. Human arrogance & love of MONEY is annihilating the planet, the only home we have.
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When Zay clocked into her customer service job one recent morning, she noticed things looked different. There were no chairs in the break room. She had nowhere to sit at the table where she usually files invoices. When she reached the back of the store, there was one lonely folding chair propped against the wall. “Not for employee use,” read a handwritten note taped on the metal.
When employees asked their boss what had happened, they learned about a new no-sitting policy. Hopefully, the business owner said, this would “increase worker productivity”.
(via official-arnie-nutts)
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Scientists Find the ‘Extinct’ Victorian Earless Dragon, Not Seen Since 1969 | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine
(via official-arnie-nutts)
