(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)
Speaking of Canada, large portions of the western part of the country are burning down, and the evidence is wafting across the border as we speak. From CNN:
Air quality alerts have been posted as of early Friday across several states, including Nebraska, Washington, Montana and Wisconsin, with a special weather statement about air quality in Wyoming… In Nebraska, “Canadian wildfire smoke is going to move through the area today through tomorrow morning, resulting in potentially dangerous air quality and poor visibility across eastern Nebraska and Iowa. Limit outdoor activities if possible when the air quality is poor!” the National Weather Service in Omaha tweeted Thursday. Wildfire smoke “is beginning to move into the Lincoln and Omaha metro areas,” the service’s Omaha office said Thursday afternoon. “Visibility should drop to 1-2 miles within the next couple of hours and air quality will go into the unhealthy range for sensitive groups.”
More than 90 fires are burning in northern Alberta even as we speak. Not coincidentally, this rolling disaster is happening in the middle of a record heat wave that has extended south into Washington and Oregon. And, since Alberta has opted for being a petro-state, there is a cruel irony in the fact that the wildfires have crippled oil and gas exports in the province. From CNN, again:
The study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that 37% of the area burned by wildfires in the West since 1986 — nearly 19.8 million acres out of 53 million — can be blamed on the planet-cooking pollution from 88 of the world’s major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers, the latter of which have been shown to produce around 7% of all carbon dioxide emissions. The amalgam of megadrought and record-breaking heat that’s drying out vegetation due to climate change has stoked the West’s wildfires. And researchers found that since 1901, the fossil fuel activities of these companies, including ExxonMobil and BP, among others, warmed the planet by 0.5 degrees Celsius — nearly half of the global increase during that period. Carly Phillips, a research scientist with the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists and co-author on the study, said the findings add to a significant library of research that directly links climate change or the impacts of the crisis to burning fossil fuel.
Those clever Chinese climate hoaxsters never miss a trick.
As the conservative extortion continues in Washington, the president seems to me, to be limiting his options at a time when he doesn’t have a lot of them. From Politico:
Senior Biden officials have told progressive activists and lawmakers in recent days that they do not see the 14th Amendment — which says the “validity of the public debt” cannot be questioned — as a viable means of circumventing debt ceiling negotiations. They have argued that doing so would be risky and destabilizing, according to three people familiar with the discussions. The White House has studied the issue for months, with some aides concluding that Biden would likely have the authority to declare the debt limit unconstitutional as a last-ditch way to sidestep default.
But Biden advisers have told progressives that they see it as a poor option overall, fearing such a move would trigger a pitched legal battle, undermine global faith in U.S. creditworthiness and damage the economy. Officials have warned that even the appearance of more seriously considering the 14th Amendment could blow up talks that are already quite delicate.
Call me crazy, but I don’t know why a “pitched legal battle” is worse for the country than a “pitched legislative battle,” which we have now, and the evidence is that the trembling of “global faith in US creditworthiness” already is reaching 8.0 on the Richter scale. My own guess is that decisive action by the president of the United States might at least reassure those nervous foreigners temporarily, anyway. And who gives a damn if it makes Kevin McCarthy cranky?
Biden himself has said that he sees a bipartisan deal as the only option to the current standoff, casting doubt on the 14th Amendment as workable in public remarks. But the private resistance being registered by his aides has frustrated progressives who worry the president is too readily giving up his leverage. It also threatens to fracture months of party unity behind Biden’s debt ceiling strategy, exposing the White House to increasingly vocal criticism just as it enters the final stage of its high-stakes standoff with the GOP.
For those of us with at least one foot in the real world, there is no deal to be had because there is no “standoff” any more than there was a “standoff” over the return of the Lindbergh baby. The Republican majority is acting unilaterally, and that must be met in kind. This is a test of wills and a test of power and there is no point in putting any potential weapon beyond reach.
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Lake of Fire” (Hurray For The Riff Raff). Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here, from 1967, is proof that it can always get worse in legislative bodies. And the South Korean parliament is debating…wait for it…a budget proposal. History is so cool.
My father always was a Jim Brown fan. This stemmed from a moment after a Holy Cross game in which Brown, playing for Syracuse, ran amuck over the Crusaders. After the game, my father approached him and gave him the traditional, “Good game.” Brown then looked him straight in the eye and said, “Thank you, sir.” It was the “sir” that did it, as well as the fact that Brown had looked him in the eye. I spent my entire childhood as a Cleveland Browns fan.
Brown, who died on Friday at 87, is reckoned by a lot of people, including me, as the greatest professional football player of all time. (Jerry Rice and Lawrence Taylor are his only real competition.) He also was one of the very few completely independent spirits among celebrity athletes — Bill Russell and Muhammad Ali, as well as the young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also come to mind — at a time in which independent spirits were in direly short supply. He retired at the peak of his powers for a career in films and in street-level activism. (Here is Brown’s greatest post-NFL run.) His legacy is a troubled one; his history of domestic abuse is a huge blight on his memory. I thought about posting a bunch of action clips from NFL Films here as a tribute but, instead, here’s the memorable Richard Pryor bit about how Brown staged an intervention with the comedian.
Whatcha gon’ do?
Friday also was the 78th birthday of young Pete Townshend, 58 years after he wrote this on his 20th birthday. My congratulations to the guy who first gave a light to show the path forward for one shy kid from the suburbs. There once was a note…
Discovery Corner: Recently, we received some proof that Rome had a trading relationship with India because archaeologists working a site in what used to be the Egyptian port of Berenike found a statue of the Buddha, the first one of those ever found west of Afghanistan. From Smithsonian:
Founded in the third century B.C.E., Berenike eventually became one of the largest ports in Roman-controlled Egypt, according to the antiquities ministry. Goods such as ivory, textiles and semi-precious metals passed through the city for many years, until it was eventually abandoned around the sixth century C.E. Recent excavations at Berenike have revealed other items that suggest a similar cultural blending. Among them is an inscription in Sanskrit dating to the reign of the emperor Marcus Julius Philippus, known as Phillip the Arab. Born in what is now Syria, he ruled the Roman Empire from 244 to 249 C.E.
Such finds are part of a growing body of evidence that shows just how interconnected the Roman Empire was to its ancient Indian counterpart. They also help shed light on the unique role played by Egypt, which was “centrally located on the trade route that connected the Roman Empire to many parts of the ancient world,” says the antiquities ministry.
Old Philip came to a bad end. He sent Decius off to fight the Goths and Decius did that so well that he decided he should become emperor himself. So he got Philip into a battle near Verona, in which Philip got himself slain. He has since gone down in history with a name that sounds like something out of Damon Runyon. Hey, look what we found!
Hey, ABC News, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!
Scientists have proposed a new species of spinosaurid after studying the specimen, which includes a right jaw bone, one tooth and five vertebrate, found in the Arcillas de Morella Formation in Castellon, Spain, in 2011, according to a study published in Scientific Reports on Thursday. Spinosaurids are often characterized by their large bodies, which stand on two feet. The group of dinosaurs, which include the Spinosaurus and Baryonyx, are also typically carnivorous.
Well, that’s a choice, I guess. And is there a connection to be found here with European footie? Of course, there is.
After comparing the specimen to other spinosaurids, the researchers determined it as both a new species and a new genus of spinosaurid, naming it Protathlitis cinctorrensis, with Protathlitis meaning “champion” in Greek and “cinctorrensis” in honor of the town, Cinctorres, in which the fossils were uncovered, according to the study. The name “Champion” was in reference to the UEFA Europa League title won by European soccer club Villarreal C.F. in 2021 and to celebrate the club’s 100th anniversary in 2023, lead researcher Jose Santos‑Cubedo told ABC News.
Well, OK, then. Go, Villareal C.F. Eat ’em up. They lived then to make footie hooligans happy now.I’ll be back on Monday to see if the hostage is still alive in the Congress. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line. Wear the damn masks. Take the damn shots, especially the damn boosters. And spare a moment for the people of Ukraine, the people of the earthquake zone in Syria and Iraq, the people fighting the wildfires in Canada, and, of course, for our LGBTQ+ fellow citizens.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.