CityNerd examines Agenda 47 and cities in 'And You Thought Project 2025 Was Bad'

Ray "CityNerd" Delahanty has uploaded a second follow-up to CityNerd explaining 'What Project 2025 Means for Our Cities' can drive one to drink, the first being CityNerd responds to comments on his Project 2025 video, a reaction to the general tone and contents of the bulk of the replies to the video. There was another critique that Project 2025, which Trump himself has said isn't his agenda, doing his best Sergeant Schultz impression in the process. Instead, convicted criminal Donald Trump's supporters say Agenda 47 is Trump's real platform. CityNerd decided to take this claim seriously, so he examined it, telling his viewers And You Thought Project 2025 Was Bad.

Against my better judgement, I accepted the idea that Project 2025 isn't Trump's "real" plan, and instead looked into Agenda 47, which I was assured by certain viewers was much more reasonable (and an accurate description of what Trump proposes to do if he wins back the presidency). What I found was disturbing on more levels than I can count.

As CityNerd observed, at least the writers of Project 2025 could put together coherent policy proposals, even though their ideas are bad. They're supposed to persuade Trump and the people around him to adopt them should he be elected. Since a lot of the chapter authors were members of the previous administration and would be likely to be part of the next one, heaven forfend, that isn't a hard lift. On the other hand, the individual items that compose Agenda 47 are emotional appeals that Trump himself can understand and get behind and that he thinks will appeal to his supporters, although it's not always clear who those are. They're definitely not the same supporters for every proposal, which makes them as incoherent as a whole. In that case, they reflect the candidate.

One of those proposals, "freedom cities" to solve the housing crisis, is one of the "cyberpunk villain ideas straight out of Snow Crash that are influencing Vance" I referred to in Kosta, Colbert, and Hayes react to the VP Debate. They're also influencing Trump, too, or this concept wouldn't be in Agenda 47. I wrote "They would be right on target for this blog" so expect me to blog about them.

I'm responding to the item "ending Biden's war on the suburbs" by recycling what I wrote in 'CBS This Morning' comes to Michigan to record the pulse of voters — literally.

Gayle King asking "Save the suburbs from what?" reminds me of what I wrote in Kunstler said Americans would elect maniacs.

Five years ago, I juxtaposed two quotes from James Howard Kunstler to reconstruct a prediction about American politics from the movie "The End of Suburbia."

There will be a great battle to preserve the supposed entitlements to suburbia and it will be an epochal act of futility, a huge waste of effort and resources that might have been much better spent in finding new ways to carry on an American civilization.
...
Americans will elect maniacs who promise to allow them to keep their McMansions and their commutes and that’s going to produce a lot of political friction, probably a lot of violence, probably a threat to our democratic institutions.

Kunstler was both right and wrong about that prediction, as I pointed out when I revisited that quote in my comment on Slowly, Then All at Once (ETA: this is now a dead link, as Kunstler has moved to Substack).

As for Trump, you once predicted that Americans would elect maniacs who would promise that they could keep the entitlements of suburbia. Trump has shown you to be right and wrong about that. Yes, they'll elect maniacs to protect the entitlements of suburbia, but those entitlements turned out to be psychological and social, not physical. Trump's support is more a response to threats to the social environment as it is to losing SUVs and McMansions, which with the price of oil being low right now, are not issues like they were in 2008 and 2012. Instead, it's immigration, terrorism, and "law and order."

What I also wrote, but didn't post because I didn't want to inflame Vlad, who now goes by Janos, and his fellow deplorables was a second observation.

The one thing missing from "The End of Suburbia" was any discussion of White Flight; the movement to the suburbs was all phrased in class terms, not racial ones. That's something my students from Detroit and its suburbs notice.

It's not what, it's who Trump promises to save the suburbs from. I know who and so does Governor Whitmer, which is why she called it a dog whistle, one people in Michigan have been hearing for decades. I suspect King does, too, which is why she asked.

Trump is still blowing that dog whistle and it sounds throughout all these proposals.

That's a wrap for today. Stay tuned for a highlights post of tonight's Saturday Night Live as the Sunday entertainment feature.

John Oliver examines 'Trump’s Second Term'

I closed John Oliver on UFOs for World UFO Day by telling my readers "I might return with another John Oliver video for tomorrow's post that I can share next month. Stay tuned." I'm following through by sharing Trump’s Second Term.

John Oliver discusses Donald Trump’s plans for a second term, why it could be much worse than his first term, and what Trump has in common with a hamster.

I'm recycling what I wrote in National Review ironically reveals another deep truth about the current GOP to begin my reaction.

As I tell my liberal friends who keep thinking that the GOP should be dead by now, the GOP as a traditional party engaged in electoral politics is already dead. What it is now, as described by "EscapefromWisconsin" over at the Hipcrime Vocab, is an authoritarian movement. That makes it an undead party in a democratic system. As Bela Lugosi's Dracula said in the eponymous movie, "There are far worse things awaiting Man than Death." Yeah, and one of them has happened to the GOP.

That was a dozen years ago. Back then, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan weren't the candidates to realize that movement's ambitions; they were still conventional conservative candidates contesting for power in a democracy. The condition of the GOP has become even more obvious since then with the rise of Hoover Cleveland, who is the right candidate to fulfill the current party's dictatorial desires. As I wrote nearly three years ago, "I had no idea how right I was then and now I wish I hadn't been. Break out the garlic."

MSNBC has been all over Project 2025, so stay tuned to see if I follow up with their videos tomorrow for a serious take on the issue.

PBS Terra's Weathered asks 'Earth's Temperature Has Changed WILDLY, So What's the Big Deal About a Few Degrees?'

I'm working on the posts about Emmy Awards winners I promised twice. In the meantime, I'm sharing PBS Terra's Weathered asking Earth's Temperature Has Changed WILDLY, So What's the Big Deal About a Few Degrees?

If you take a look at global temperature graphs that span millions or billions of years, you can see that our planet’s temperature has made wild swings. In fact, the Earth used to be completely covered in snow and ice! So, what’s the big deal about a few degrees of warming today? In this episode of Weathered, we take a deep dive into Earth’s climate history in order to better understand our current moment.

This video connects to what I wrote in PBS Digital's Be Smart debunks 'The Biggest Myth About Climate Change'.

I have mentioned several times that I'm a paleontologist who studies Pleistocene fossils, particularly snails. What I don't mention is that I used data from the snails, clams, and plants of Rancho La Brea to reconstruct the late Pleistocene climate of southern California, so I'm quite familiar with natural climate change.

I'm also familiar with the story that Michael Mann tells. I haven't mentioned "Snowball Earth" here before, although PBS Eons has a video about it, but I have blogged about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), calling it "the end of an epoch — literally, as it ended the Paleocene with the Eocene beginning when it abated" and "an event that, as rapid as it was, happened much more slowly than modern climate change."* I also mentioned the high levels of carbon dioxide and its effect on life, writing that "[I]f there is an endless supply of oil, then we'll be content to burn us [it--my Freudian slip was showing] until we reach Jurassic level[s] of carbon dioxide and global warm temperatures. As I also tell my students, that was a great world for dinosaurs, but there weren't any people in it." It's also why I also tell them about uncontrolled climate change, "Life will persist, but humanity would be clobbered." This goes double for our current civilization.

The correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperature from ice-core data is another story I tell my students. I asked them about it in my worksheets about An Inconvenient Truth and still ask them about it in my worksheet for Chasing Ice. I also ask them about it on my exams, but for test security reasons, I don't post those here. Maybe after I retire.

The video ends with a peek at solutions. PBS Terra has another video about how "there is no free lunch" when it comes to those. Stay tuned for that among all the awards show coverage.

*Maybe I should compose an entry featuring the "Snowball Earth" video — when I get a break from awards season and presidential primaries. That could be as early as Thursday, or not until the end of the month.

Seth Meyers and Joy Reid take closer looks at Tucker Carlson leaving Fox News

While Fox and Dominion settled without Fox News apologizing on-air, the cable channel paid an unexpected additional price yesterday as they fired Tucker Carlson. It's time for a silly to serious examination, beginning with Seth Meyers presenting Fox News Ousts Tucker Carlson in Shock Move Days After Dominion Settlement: A Closer Look.

Seth takes a closer look at Fox News abruptly cutting ties with Tucker Carlson less than a week after a massive settlement over the Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit.

"Let Them Eat Bugs" — I feel seen, but I also feel attacked. Tucker may be gone from Fox News, but I think the right-wing dislike of the idea and the conspiracy theories around it will survive. That is, unless The Former Guy starts talking about it. Remember, like Carlson's career, everything Trump touches dies.

That was the silly look. Now for a serious one from Joy Reid and her panel, Tucker Carlson undermined democracy through 'enormous platform' Lincoln Project senior advisor says.

Tucker Carlson’s reign as the top rated primetime host in cable news came to an abrupt and embarrassing end some say when Fox announced that the two had “agreed to part ways” and thanked him for his service to the network on Monday. Tucker Carlson has officially achieved something that some say no one else in the media industry can claim: being let go by all three major cable news networks. Joy Reid and her panel discuss.

On the one hand, Carlson being let go by all three cable news channels deserves a recycled meme.


On the other, the comparison of Carlson to Father Coughlin reminds me that I have never mentioned him here, but I have elsewhere. An entry from my LiveJournal included his church.

National Shrine of the Little Flower, Royal Oak, Michigan

Our last Michigan destination, the National Shrine of the Little Flower, boasts a rich yet complicated history in the metropolitan Detroit area. Located at the northwest corner of Twelve Mile and Woodward Avenue, the instantly recognizable structure and its fascinating history are well worth a look.

This is an absolutely stunning structure and it lies almost halfway between the other two houses of worship in this article. However, its history is inextricably tied up with Father Coughlin, a forerunner of Rush Limbaugh who was a notorious radio demagogue, fascist sympathizer, and anti-Semite. I can never see the building and have a completely appreciative reaction.

I moved down the street from it the next year, which I mentioned in a comment to Down the Memory Hole at Kunstler's blog in 2014.

“The whole story vanished from the news media like the legendary D.B. Cooper — anyone remember him?”

There used to be a bar named after him just a mile away from me. I saw that and smiled that some criminal from the 1970s who got away with a backpack full of money was still remembered. This year, they changed the name of the place. It’s now “The Pour House.” I think they have an idea of what’s coming. We’re all headed to the pour (poor) house.

By the way, a mile in the other direction is Father Coughlin’s old church. If you remember Father Coughlin, he was the spiritual ancestor of Rush Limbaugh. To this day, the friends of mine who claim to be psychic get the chills when they drive by the building.

Vlad, the subject of Impaling Vlad, or With friends like this, Kunstler hardly needs enemies took me to task for comparing the two, saying that I couldn't tell non-leftists apart. I reminded him that I used to be a conservative, so I certainly could.

Impaler, with friends like you, the legacy of Father Coughlin hardly needs enemies.

As for my not being able to tell conservatives apart, I was a Republican for 22 years. I have lots of practice distinguishing the varieties of people on the American Right.

I've since moved away from the National Shrine (now Basilica) of the Little Flower and stopped reading and commenting at Kunstler's blog. I don't miss either, just like I won't miss Carlson. Good riddance!

CNBC's 'Why Coronavirus May Change How Americans Vote' updates pandemics and outbreaks for the ninth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News

Happy Flashback Friday!  For today's retrospective, the topic is the coronavirus pandemic, as if nearly all the posts here for the past four weeks haven't been on that topic in one way or another.  I'll review the top posts on the subject during the ninth year of this blog over the jump.  Above the fold, I'm going to focus on yet another aspect of American life the pandemic may change when it's over, elections.  Watch CNBC explain Why Coronavirus May Change How Americans Vote.

As states and jurisdictions move elections later in the calendar and call for voters to request absentee ballots, the country faces the possibility of holding a presidential election in the middle of a pandemic. As states and jurisdictions move elections later in the calendar and call for voters to request absentee ballots, the country faces the possibility of holding a presidential election in the middle of a pandemic. Recently, Governors from both parties have attempted to postpone primary elections, but courts have upheld election dates.

In Ohio, a judge rejected a lawsuit backed by Republican Governor Mike DeWine to extend the state’s presidential primary elections scheduled for April 9 to June 2. DeWine said he made the recommendation following guidance from public health officials, but claimed that he lacked the legal authority to suspend the election.

Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper said he supported the recommendation to do away with Tuesday’s in-person voting, but added that the party was considering other ways of extending the election, including switching entirely to vote-by-mail with a “much earlier” deadline than June 2.
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In the case of Wisconsin, the United States Supreme Court voted 5-4 on Monday to reverse an order extending the absentee ballot deadline for voting in the elections scheduled for Tuesday, stepping into a back-and-forth between Tony Evers, the state’s Democratic governor and the GOP-controlled state legislature.

The Supreme Court, which was considering a case brought before Evers issued his executive order, was not considering whether voting would take place on Tuesday, but only whether to keep in place an order that extended the deadline for absentee ballots to be postmarked.

In an unsigned order from which the court’s four liberal justices dissented, the court did away with the extension. The top court’s five Republican-appointees, none of whom attached their name to the court’s order, reasoned that extending the date by which voters could mail absentee ballots “fundamentally alters the nature of the election.”

Democrats and voting rights groups had gone to court to push for an extended deadline, warning that coronavirus fears could keep voters from the polls. On Friday, a federal appeals court upheld a one-week extension for absentee ballots.

Michigan to mail ballots and $400 million for elections in coronavirus stimulus bill update the election news and views for the ninth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News wasn't enough, especially when I saw that CNBC had uploaded a video on the subject.  CNBC explores why coronavirus is more dangerous for diabetics convinced me that they were a good source of videos about the wide-ranging effects of COVID-19.

Follow over the jump for the most read entries about the pandemic from the ninth year of this blog.

Coronavirus response reducing air pollution updates climate change and the environment for the ninth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News

Happy Throwback Thursday!  As I have every Thursday since the blog's 9th birthday, I'm observing the day by posting a retrospective on the top entries on a topic during the previous posting year.  Today's topic is climate change.  I'll review the most popular posts on the subject over the jump.

Now that that's out of the way, it's time for the featured video, CNBC explaining How Coronavirus Quarantines Lead To A Drop In Air Pollution, a video I found when I wrote CNBC explores why coronavirus is more dangerous for diabetics.  Yes, the coronavirus pandemic is affecting everything, including the environment.

As coronavirus quickly spreads around the world, the virus is forcing people to stay put. People aren’t driving or flying, leading to a massive reduction in air pollution, most notably in China, but also in Italy, the U.S. and other hard-hit areas that have implemented directives to stay home.

So staying safe at home is not only saving lives from COVID-19, but so is the reduction in air pollution from reduced travel.  That's quite the silver lining to a response that's also produced record unemployment claims in the U.S.  Unfortunately, it's hampering the fight against climate change.  Sigh, a short-term gain leading to a long-term loss.

One of the experts interviewed in the CNBC segment is Katharine Hayhoe, who I've featured here before.  She has two videos on the interaction among coronavirus, air pollution, and climate change on her Climate Weirding YouTube channel in which she expands on the points she made in the CNBC video.  I begin with Climate Change and Coronavirus | Special Episode.

What does climate change have to do with the coronavirus?

Climate change is not increasing the geographic range of COVID-19. And the novel virus did not come from the permafrost or the soil, like other infectious diseases that climate change is spreading.

So where did it come from? How is it spreading? And what's the connection to climate change?

Find out on this special episode of Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe!

One of the most read entries from the previous posting year was about climate change leading to more diseases, so this video provides a good connection and reminder of the risk.

Now, the second video, The Pandemic's Effects on Climate Change | Special Episode.

This pandemic is responsible for untold suffering around the world. If anything, it's simply reminding us how interconnected we all are, and how we can ignore a crisis until it's brought to our attention.

Let's take a step back and say 'what is going on?', in relation to COVID-19's effects on climate change on this special episode of Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe.

Hayhoe's video reminded me of what I've written about Commoner's Laws, most recently in World Wildlife Day 2020 celebrates biodiversity.

1. Everything Is Connected to Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.
2. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no "away" to which things can be thrown.
3. Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, "likely to be detrimental to that system."
4. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms.

This crisis serves as a good example of the first law.

Follow over the jump for the top posts about climate change from the ninth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

Record unemployment claims and coronavirus accelerating existing retail trends update tales of the Retail Apocalypse for the ninth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News

Today's record unemployment claim numbers changed the subject of today's Throwback Thursday look back at last year's top posts on a common theme.  Because of the news, today's theme is the Retail Apocalypse, the topic of seven of last year's most read entries, including the most read post from the back catalog.*  I'll get to those over the jump.  First, watch 6.6 Million Americans File for Unemployment | TODAY.  When I wrote "Today's record unemployment claim numbers," I meant it literally in more ways than one.

NBC senior business correspondent Stephanie Ruhle talks about the news that a jaw-dropping 6.6 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits. She says “we just don’t know yet” where the bottom of the economic downturn may be. She answers TODAY viewers’ questions related to the coronavirus outbreak, such as what happens to “flat-rate” workers and whether companies are allowed to cut employees’ pay without their consent.

Note that Stephanie Ruhle segued into retail and the transition from brick-and-mortar job losses into job opportunities in online ordering and delivery.  The response to the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating existing trends.  That's the theme of the next three videos.  Ruhle and her guest made that same point in Retailers Reeling From Coronavirus Pandemic on MSNBC yesterday.

Thousands of retailers are closed right now, some unsure of if they'll reopen. Stephanie Ruhle is joined by Matthew Shay to discuss what's next for an industry that was already struggling before the pandemic. Aired on 4/1/2020.

Again, the effects on employment played a major role in this interview.

CNBC uploaded two inteview clips on the subject of COVID-19 and retail this morning, beginning with Fmr. Toys "R" US CEO: "Retail was already going through a revolution," virus is just amplyfing (sic) exist.  Looks like the caption writer for CNBC ran out of room in addition to making a typo.  I think the second clause should read "virus is just amplifying existing trends."  Yes, I used to be an English teacher.

Gerald Storch, Storch Advisors CEO & former CEO and chairman at Toys "R" Us, talks the state of the retail industry amid a spike in unemployment numbers and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

That segment was relatively sanguine compared to the next one, Coronavirus 'is an existential threat to retail,' says former Saks CEO.

A new report by Cowen shows that retail store traffic is down 97% year-over-year. The market caps of retailers are plummeting, with Macy's getting kicked out of the S&P 500. Steve Sadove, former chairman and CEO of Saks Inc. and now a senior advisor for Mastercard, joins "Squawk Box" to discuss.

And I thought things were bad for brick-and-mortar retail before.  The current crisis seems to have compressed the next two years into two months — or less!  The exception might be grocery stores and supermarkets, a sector Business Insider thought might have 7,310 stores close by 2026, a statistic I quoted in 12,000 stores are likely to close this year, including at least 313 Fred's, a tale of the Retail Apocalypse.  That could still happen, but not as a result of the response to COVID-19.  They're one of the few kinds of businesses that are open right now.

Follow over the jump for the most popular tales of the Retail Apocalypse during the ninth year of this blog.

Statistics for the ninth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News

As I promised in Happy 9th birthday to the blog and Nowruz Mubarak (Happy Persian New Year) to my readers, it's time to review the statistics for the ninth year of this blog.

As of 11:59 PM EDT March 20, 2020, this blog had a lifetime total of 2,484,920 page views, 4274 posts, and 3211 comments.  Minus the lifetime total of 2,168,149 page views and 3853 posts at 11:59 PM EDT March 20, 2019, 366 days earlier, the ninth year of the blog saw 316,771 page views on 421 posts during the ninth year of my writing it.  In addition, both the blog and I counted 464 comments during the past year.  While those are fewer page views on more posts than the 537,636 page views and 361 comments on 388 entries during 365 days for the eighth year of the blog, I set a monthly page view goal of 25,000, which means 300,000 total page views for the ninth year of the blog.  I surpassed my monthly page view goal by 1397.6 and my annual page view goal by 16,771, so I consider the past year a success in terms of readership.  Yay for realistic goals!

Follow over the jump for my analysis of the past year.

Time names Greta Thunberg Person of the Year for 2019

I trolled Kunstler's readers in a comment to Cascading Cat Litter about Greta Thunberg.

My choice for the Nobel Peace Prize is Greta Thunberg, who started the Youth Climate Strike.  Better her than Assange or even the student activists from Parkland, Florida.

That didn't happen, as Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize.  However, she did earn an honor that would have worked just as well for the purpose.  Watch TIME 2019 Person Of The Year: Greta Thunberg.

Greta Thunberg is the face of a global youth-led climate movement.

Congratulations, Greta!  Not only are you the Person of the Year, you are the youngest to ever be named for this title.  May you and your youthful followers continue to raise people's awareness and prompt action on the climate.

Time bestowed three other titles, Athlete of the Year, Entertainer of the Year, and Guardians of the Year.  I plan on posting videos about all of them as the week progresses.  Stay tuned.

Vox explains the phone call that could get Trump impeached

Last week, Ezra Klein of Vox argued for impeachment even if it doesn't result in conviction and removal.  This week, Vox explains the basis of a possible impeachment, The phone call that could get Trump impeached.

The impeachment inquiry into President Trump started with a phone call. And what makes it noteworthy is actually how simple it is.

Trump’s White House released a rough transcript of his call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. It shows Trump asking a foreign country to investigate a man who could challenge him in the 2020 election: Joe Biden. But to understand exactly what Trump wanted Zelensky to do, we have to get into a theory Trump has peddled about Biden.

According to this explanation, Trump got the story backwards.  I shouldn't be surprised.  Trump has a weakness for conspiracy theories.  I also am not surprised that floating one about Joe Biden is backfiring.  It seems to be part of a pattern, as I noted in a comment on A Dumpster Fire on a Garbage Barge at Kunstler's blog.

"They turned on him...because he made the fatal mistake of trying to take down a fellow member of the ruling elite."  That seems to be true of the Democrats as well.  Swalwell attacked Trump [I meant Biden] at the first debate.  Next thing I know, Swalwell drops out because he didn't make the next debate.  Harris also attacked Biden. After the sugar rush of that wore off and she failed to follow up at the next debate, her fortunes fell.  Besides, she pissed off people like my mom and my wife; they didn't like her attacking Biden.  Castro attacked Biden at the third debate, now he's warning his supporters he may not make the November debate.  Trump went after Biden and Democratic Representatives in Republican-leaning seats who had been avoiding impeachment pile on.  Directly going after Biden personally does not seem to be working for candidates.  Instead, it seems to work against them.

Just the same, that hasn't stopped Trump and his supporters from trying.  FiveThirtyEight shows that Fox News is trying to make the Bidens the center of the scandal, not Trump.  The good news for Biden is that it keeps him the most mentioned Democratic candidate in the news.  The bad news is that it might taint Biden in the eyes of Democratic voters, but I'm not sure about that.  As Perry Bacon Jr. of FiveThirtyEight said, Biden is essentially arguing “I’m so electable that Trump is already trying to cheat to beat me.”  I tend to agree with that.  Once again, attacking Biden directly is backfiring.  Let's just hope impeachment itself doesn't backfire on the Democrats in Congress.

Slotkin and Stevens join calls for impeachment inquiry

When I found out that the whistleblower complaint against Donald Trump involved Trump trying to convince Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, I immediately wondered what Elissa Slotkin would do.  On the one hand, she represents a Republican-leaning swing district that makes her advocating for impeachment dangerous.  On the other, she served in the CIA, Defense Deparment, and State Department before entering Congress, so she takes national security very seriously.  If she thought he allegations against Trump were as serious as I thought they were, she would come out in favor of impeachment.  Sure enough, WXYZ reported These Michigan Democrats support President Trump impeachment hearings.

More Democratic lawmakers are calling for impeachment hearings for President Donald Trump.

Haley Stevens also joined Slotkin in supporting hearings.  That means that every Democratic member of Michigan's Congressional delegation is now in favor of impeachment hearings.  Add in Justin Amash and a majority of Michigan's U.S. Representatives now favor impeachment.  That's one of the reasons why Nancy Pelosi called for initiating hearings on an impeachment inquiry.

It's also the reason why my response to The Odor of Desperation at Kunstler's blog now seems ironic.

You may be looking for Biden to dissolve over his ties to Ukraine, but the meltdown in Ukraine that more people are paying attention to right now is the HBO limited series "Chernobyl," which earned three Emmy Awards last night in addition to the seven it already won for technical categories.

Now more Americans will be watching news about the inquiry than watching "Chernobyl" on HBO Go or Amazon Channels.  I'll probably be one of them.

Bye-bye Bill as de Blasio drops out

It's been three weeks since Kirsten  Gillibrand dropped out, so I've been quiet about the presidential campaign here other than updating Democratic candidates' Voteview scores and posting drinks for candidates at the September and October Democratic debates; the Emmy Awards have been more interesting.  All that changed yesterday as Bill de Blasio dropped out.  CBS News reports.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday morning that he's ending his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination after making no headway in the polls and failing to qualify for the last debate. CBSN political reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns has more on the latest shakeup in the race.

Oddly enough, I had just mentioned Mayor de Blasio in a comment to Turning on the Light at Kunstler's blog.

I've been following the ideological progress of Mayor De Blasio according to On The Issues since he announced his candidacy.  For such a notorious liberal, he started off near the right end of the spectrum.  Since then, he has moved to the left and is now the median candidate ideologically in the remaining field.  That means he's just an average Democrat.

And now he's gone, so it's time to quote FiveThirtyEight in their first 2020 drop out draft and then retire some memes and recipes.  Follow over the jump for those.

Higher oil prices because of attack on Saudi facility plus driving update for Pearl on Talk Like A Pirate Day

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!  Appropriately enough, my car Pearl, short for The Black Pearl, Jack Sparrow's ship, passed 48,000 miles on Monday, September 16.  That means it's time for a combined energy and driving update along with a celebration of the fake holiday.  I'll begin with three videos from CNBC about the effects of an attack on an Aramco oil facility that took out 5% of the world's oil supply above the jump followed by the driving update and a song for Talk Like A Pirate Day below the jump.

The first video from Monday is Oil prices soar after attack on Saudi Arabia oil facilities.

Drone strikes attacked an oil processing facility at Abqaiq and the nearby Khurais oil field on Saturday, knocking out 5.7 million barrels of daily crude production — or 50% of the kingdom's oil output. CNBC's Hadley Gamble reports from Riyadh.

I commented about this attack in response to A View from the Brink at Kunstler's blog.

I was reminded of what you said in "The End of Suburbia" about "all it takes is 50 pounds of plastic explosive and a camel to take out a pipeline."  This is very similar, although it was some cheap drones and a facility more sophisticated than a mere pipeline.  Still, the concept applies.

All this takes place as the United States is fixing to tip into recession anyway, something the yield curve, "the chart that predicts recessions" is already telling us.  A good old-fashioned oil price shock would do the trick.

On that note, the next video CNBC uploaded on the story was Expect oil prices to go even higher, says Again Capital's John Kilduff.

Amy Jaffe, Council on Foreign Relations, and John Kilduff, Again Capital, join "The Exchange" to discuss the price of oil soaring following attacks on Saudi oil facilities.

In addition to a yield curve inversion, which has already happened, a large prolonged oil price spike is one of the phenomena I told my readers to watch out for in The tax bill and the U.S. economy in 2018 and beyond almost two years ago: "The second is a rapid rise in oil prices, which has occurred either slightly in advance or concurrently with every recession since 1973."  Whether this price spike is big enough or will last long enough remains to be seen, but if so, that's another recession warning.

I concluded my comment at Kunstler's blog by noting the latest bad news for brick-and-mortar stores: "Meanwhile, the Retail Apocalypse rolls on, as GameStop announced it was losing money and closing stores."  It turned out that Tuesday's video on the story bore directly on the Retail Apocalypse, as CNBC uploaded Amazon is the biggest loser from higher oil prices: Smead Capital's Bill Smead.

Bill Smead of Smead Capital Management, joins 'The Exchange' to discuss the momentum vs. value stocks and who stands to lose the most from higher oil prices.

While I'm sure higher oil prices passed on as higher delivery costs will hurt Amazon's profitability, I don't think it will hurt the company enough to slow down the effect of online retail on their brick-and-mortar competitors, who also have to pay for increased transportation and delivery charges.

Follow over the jump for the driving update and a celebration of Talk Like A Pirate Day.

'The Facebook Dilemma' earns two Emmy nominations

I made a prediction about "The Facebook Dilemma" on "Frontline" in 'Frontline' updates 'Facebook knows your political affiliation and much more,' the top post of the eighth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

I have the same reaction to this documentary that I had to "Putin's Revenge" on "Frontline," that it will earn at least one News and Documentary Emmy Award nomination.  I was right about that prediction, as "Putin's Revenge" earned two nominations and I am confident enough that the same will happen to "The Facebook Dilemma" that I am holding off embedding Part Two until the News and Documentary Emmy nominations are announced.  As for the specific awards, I expect it will definitely earn a nomination for either Outstanding Business and Economic Documentary or Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary, and possibly for Best Documentary, Outstanding Writing, or Outstanding Research.  As I wrote before, "I am not going to hold my breath.  It's a long time until the end of July, when the nominees are announced, and the competition will be stiff."

As I mentioned in a comment on He Did What… ! ? ! at Kunstler's blog, that prediction came true:  "'The Facebook Dilemma' on 'Frontline'...has been nominated for two News and Documentary Emmy Awards," Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary and Outstanding Research, both categories I called back in March.  *Buffs nails*

Of course, a nomination is not a win, so follow over the jump for its competition in these two categories.

Crisis averted as Congress lifts debt ceiling for two years

I made a prediction in a comment on What Looms Behind at Kunstler's blog.*

While I agree with our host that the inevitable decline in tight oil production will usher in a repeat of 2007-2014, I suspect the attention of politicians and the media will be focused on a possible calamity that could happen much sooner, the U.S. bumping its head on the debt ceiling, which could happen in less than two months.  Nothing like a deadline or an execution to focus one's mind!

Focusing on a deadline paid off, as Congress took action in less than one month to suspend the debt ceiling for two years.  Of course, this will cause other problems, as Lisa Desjardins reported on PBS NewsHour last night in The long-term debt implications of Senate's new 2-year budget.

The Senate passed a new budget bill Thursday, delivering a rare bipartisan legislative agreement. But critics say the spending it allocates and its temporary suspension of the debt ceiling represent runaway spending and fiscal irresponsibility. Lisa Desjardins joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the huge numbers at play, who opposed the new budget and the different types of spending it reflects.

I foresaw a lot of this coming when I wrote The tax bill and the U.S. economy in 2018 and beyond two years ago, when I wrote "Both the deficit and national debt will be larger."  That was for 8-10 years from now, but it's already beginning to happen and this deal, which is politically necessary (neither side wants to have a combined budget and debt ceiling crisis in the middle of an election), will likely speed it up.

Yahoo! Finance had a livelier but less informative discussion of the news in Senate passes two-year budget deal on debt ceiling, which I'm including here for its unintentional comedy value.

The new deal is expected to be signed by President Trump will raise federal spending and allow the government to continue borrowing money.

It's "the chickens come home to roost," not the roosters, although they're chickens, too.  On the other hand, "when the cows come home" has the implication that its a long way off.  May that be true.

*Kunstler himself responded to my comment with "The debt ceiling problem is just another facet of the energy quandary."  In the long run, it is.  In the short run, I think other causes are more important.

U.S. birth and fertility rates continue falling and setting record lows for Father's Day

Happy Father's Day!  Just as I did last year, I am "writing about the lower birth rate for Father's Day, even though that is usually considered a concern of mothers.*

Just like last year, the birth rate hit another record low, as CBS News reported last month.

America's baby bust isn't over. The nation's birth rates last year reached record lows for women in their teens and 20s, a government report shows, leading to the fewest babies in 32 years. The provisional report, released Wednesday and based on more than 99% of U.S. birth records, found 3.788 million births last year. It was the fourth year the number of births has fallen, the lowest since 1986 and a surprise to some experts given the improving economy.

Gizmodo included even more facts in its article on the subject.

[T]he national birthrate, measured as the number of births per every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 to 44, also took a drop for the fourth year in a row. Overall, the country hasn’t seen this few births since 1986.
...
There’s also been a continuing decline in the fertility rate, defined as the number of children a woman has over her lifetime. In 2018, the rate was 1.72 births per every woman, a decline from 1.76 births in 2017. Experts consider a rate of 2.1 births to be a baseline for ensuring that younger generations can continue to replace the aging population with no problems, a threshold the U.S. has consistently failed to meet for a decade.

I found the CBS News report, while good on the facts, short on analysis.  That's not the case with the following clip from KSNT News from Topeka, Kansas, Report shows U.S birth rate is declining.


In addition to the reasons for the declines among most age groups and increases among older women, the expert from the Cleveland Clinic connects the increase in premature births to the trend towards delayed childbirth.  That's decent analysis of the data.  Still, it misses some of the economic dimensions of both the causes and effects of lower birth and fertility rates.  For those, I turn to Gizmodo.

But there are likely other worrying things that are making pregnancies among women in their 20s less common, namely the lingering after-effects of the Great Recession. Research has consistently linked a struggling economy to fewer births, and in the U.S., this latest decline began in 2008, when the recession hit.

While some people’s financial fortunes (mostly the rich) have since recovered and the economy as a whole is considered healthy, it’s people in their 20s who are often still struggling to stay afloat. And this financial stranglehold is clearly affecting some young adults’ plans for parenthood. A 2018 survey commissioned by the New York Times, for instance, found that nearly two-thirds of adults cited the expenses of child care as a reason for not having children. In fact, it was the most commonly-cited reason.

I first made this point in Next Media Animation thinks low birth rates in the U.S. and China aren't all good eight years ago.  I expected that as the economy improved, birth rates would pick up.  That hasn't happened.

Gizmodo also analyzes the possible effect of lower fertility rates.

Again, as with the birth rate, this isn’t necessarily a doomsday scenario. Many similarly wealthy countries, such as Canada, have rates even lower than that. In some ways, a lower fertility rate could be viewed as a sign that an industrialized country is doing relatively well. It can mean, as mentioned above, that more women have the reproductive freedom to have (or not have) children at their choosing. The closer the birth rate becomes to that of countries like Greece and Japan, though, the more trouble that could spell in the future, with a growing aging population that can strain a country’s resources and labor shortages.

That's a concern elsewhere as well, as France 24 English reported in Drop in world fertility rates leading to 'baby bust' last year.

Women are having fewer babies in developed countries. That's the conclusion of a new global report that warns the current population in some of the world's wealthiest nations can't be maintained at the current birth rate.

I'm ambivalent about this development, as I wrote last year.

I have been in favor of zero population growth for as long as I can remember.  However, I'm not sure the U.S. economy is set up for a stable or slowly declining population, a point I made in the Hipcrime Vocab: Why Slowing Population Growth is a Problem.  We are going to have to figure how to do so.  Otherwise, I might live long enough to experience the wisdom of the saying "Be careful what you wish for; you might get it."

I repeated a similar sentiment in my comment on Going South at Kunstler's blog last month.

It always struck me as odd that, if the economy is supposedly so good with a 50-year low unemployment rate, U.S. birth and fertility rates are falling and the fertility rate is at a record low.  The answer is that, as our host pointed out, the economy isn't actually that good because it's unequally distributed.  On the one hand, it's leading us (as in the U.S.) to do our part to slow the growth of population and affluence, the P and A in I (impact) = P * A * T, where T is technology, which ideally could counteract the effects of the other two variables.  On the other, I and other advocates of zero population growth should be careful what we wish for.  We might not like how we get it.

That includes accepting more immigrants to counteract lower population growth and stagnant or shrinking economies.  I'm O.K. with that, but Trump is in office in large part because many Americans are not.

Enough finding a dark lining in a silver cloud.  It's Sunday, so it's time for an entertainment feature.  As I promised on Mother's Day, "I'm saving Star Wars names for Father's Day.  Stay tuned."

*That written, there are "Men Going Their Own Way" (MGTOW) types who are allies of the men's rights advocates (MRAs) that I criticized in Recycled comments about the men's rights movement that are cheering this development in the comments to the videos I posted because it means men are avoiding marriage, fatherhood, and child rearing and support.  They're not entirely wrong factually, although I think they are wrong morally as well as giving themselves and men in general too much credit.

United Nations report warns 1 million species could go extinct

While I was both following a blog tradition and indulging my "I can't be all DOOM all the time" mood when I wrote about Star Wars for the Revenge of the Sixth, some serious DOOM news came out that day.  CBS News has the story in One million species facing extinction, U.N. report warns.

A new report involving hundreds of scientists worldwide warns that humans are accelerating the pace of extinction for many of earth's species, and the loss of biodiversity could be devastating. Patricia Miloslavich, a professor who contributed to the report, joins CBSN with more on the problem and what needs to be done.

It was only last Friday that I mentioned "population and affluence, the P and A in I (impact) = P * A * T, where T is technology, which ideally could counteract the effects of the other two variables" in the comments to Going South at Kunstler's blog.  Both the demand for resources caused by population and affluence and the amount of pollution produced by human consumption and abetted by inefficient technologies and bad habits are contributing to the impact of more than 7 billion people competing for resources with the rest of life on Earth.  As I wrote first for last year's World Oceans Day and quoted for this year's World Wildlife Day, "Climate change, plastic pollution, and overfishing make a deadly trifecta of threats to all the world's oceans, not just the coral reefs."  Many of the same phenomena are threats to life on land, too.  Here's to hoping people's attitudes and government policy change to prevent the worst damage and technology catches up to the need.

Enough DOOM.  Stay tuned for a post about Mother's Day.

'Knock Down the House' updates Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/AOC for the eighth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News

Happy Throwback Thursday!  For today's retrospective, I'm updating and looking back at Anderson Cooper shows other politicians besides Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dance on The Rediculist.  I'll have the story of that entry over the jump.  First, I'm looking at a documentary featuring Ocasio-Cortez and three other women who ran for Congress last year, "Knock Down
the House."  Here is the official trailer from Netflix.

Follow the stories of four inspiring women who took on history in the 2018 midterm election. Knock Down The House, only on Netflix May 1.

It turns out that my old hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, posted a review of the documentary by Kenneth Turan on YouTube.  Watch it.

"Knock Down the House" captures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during her campaign and historical election victory.

That's a glowing review.

I'm sure I'll see this movie nominated for a Best Political Documentary nominees at the 2018 Critics' Choice Documentary Award or two, likely an Emmy, and possibly even an Oscar.  Also, I'll try to remember to nominate it at Coffee Party Entertainment Awards later this summer for television shows or next year for movies.

Follow over the jump for the top post about Representative Ocasio-Cortez and how it became so popular.

Statistics for the eighth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News

As I promised first in Happy Birthday to the blog and Nowruz Mubarak (Happy Persian New Year)! and again in CNN's 'Dirty Water: Danger from the Tap' on World Water Day, it's time for me to report on the statistics for the eighth year of this blog.

Blogger recorded that this blog had a lifetime total of 2,168,149 page views and 3853 posts at 11:59 PM EDT March 20, 2019.  In addition, I counted 361 comments since March 21, 2018.  The equivalent numbers from the seventh year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News were 3465 entries, 1,630,513 page views, and 2,391 comments during the first six years of the blog.  The result was that the blog earned 537,636 page views while I posted 388 entries during 365 days.  Those are fewer page views and comments for more posts than during the seventh year of blogging here, 682,128 page views and 488 comments from my readers and me on 364 entries.  That's a first, and not a good one, either.  Follow over the jump for my analysis of what went "wrong."

Tesla makes a U-turn on closing stores while Musk defends tweet before judge, a tale of the Retail Apocalypse

Kunstler quipped in Ides and Tides, "Pull the truck up to the loading dock and fill it with Tesla shares!"  That prompted me to respond "LOL, yeah, just as Tesla joins the Retail Apocalypse by closing its showrooms."  While I was typing that, Elon Musk and Tesla reversed the decision to close most of its retail showrooms and lower prices, making my comment look silly instead of snarky.  Yahoo Finance has the story in Tesla reverses decision to close all retail stores.

Rick Newman, Dan Roberts and Melody Hahm of Yahoo Finance discusses why Tesla is reversing the decision to close retail stores.

The point that Tesla was still on the hook for the rent on their leased showrooms is a good one.  If Tesla has to pay rent anyway, why not keep the locations open?  With that news, maybe I won't have to hurry to the Tesla showroom at Somerset Collection before it closes.  It probably will still be open.

Tesla making a U-turn on last week's decision to drive away from the Retail Apocalypse for now wasn't the only Tesla/Musk news today.  CNBC reported Elon Musk to defend his tweets to a judge.

Mark Lehmann, president at JMP Securities, joins "Squawk Box" to discuss Tesla CEO Elon Musk big week. Musk must respond to an order from a judge explaining why the court shouldn't hold him in contempt after he posted a tweet in February that some say may cost the CEO his title in the company.

It sounds like Musk really needs to learn when to keep his mouth shut, or at least not tweet.  I want him to continue his Crazy Eddie ways with Tesla and Space X but annoying the SEC would interfere with that.

Finally, I promised to revisit Radio Shack at the end of Charlotte Russe liquidating, a tale of the Retail Apocalypse.  Tomorrow.  The news about Tesla and Musk was too good to pass up.