Have you seen this 110 year-old newspaper clipping dated August 14, 1912?

First, we need a fact check. Is this 110 year-old article predicting a “considerable” rise in global temperature the real thing? Yes, it is.

A startling prediction from so long ago. Al Gore may have invented the internet, but someone in New Zealand beat him out on introducing global climate change (however, when AL said it some people listened).

I’m intrigued that the forecast allowed that this considerable rise was going to become a problem “in a few centuries”. Probably true at the time, but that’s only if you consider a steady state of consumption which we all know just hasn’t happened.

In fact, we burn over 4 times as much coal these days (8.5 billion tons/yr) than in 1912. But that’s only 52% of today’s world fossil fuel consumption. Carbon dioxide yield from petroleum is about 80% of what on average we get from coal. Using this crude estimate, consuming petroleum is roughly equivalent to burning an additional 6.3 billion tons of coal for a grand total of 14.8 billion tons. Burned up, that’s over 7 times the rate of coal consumption in 1912, and hence 7 times the CO2 production.

“A few centuries” now appears to be an over-estimate. And yeah, it’s getting a little warm here.

I may have told you that Alex Jones had great difficulty finding a good lawyer and keeping them.  He had either 12 or 14 lawyers, one at a time and depending on who’s counting, over the course of the trials and two more for the bankruptcy court. They have managed to win exactly zero motion hearings or even objections during hearings and or trials.  And there’s still one trial in Connecticut and three more in Texas pending.

This morning I read that TFG’s biggest problem is getting a qualified a lawyer who knows his or her business in a courtroom.  It seems that no lawyer wants his case.

So, here’s my advice.  If you make fun of parents who lost their first graders to a crazed gunman or you steal nuclear secrets, you are on your damn own.  So, don’t do that. Also, it does not help if you are well known for lying all the time.

So there are 85 calendar days until the mid-term elections. Any day now we should be seeing a major uptick in political ads on TV (and radio, I guess). But here on the Left Coast we’ve been subjected to an avalanche of ads for months now on one ballot proposition, Proposition 27. We even had ads before they knew what the proposition’s number was. That was new. Not so new is the subject of the proposition: legalizing online sports betting. We’ve seen that one before.

Many states have legalized online sports betting, but California, the sugar plum that the gambling industry has tried to pick before, has not. And the “Yes on 27” campaign has vigorous opposition from the “No on 27” campaign. Hundreds of millions of dollars in TV ads are being spent across both campaigns. It could go as high as a half a billion.

See, California has lots of native American tribes that have enjoyed the profits from our many, many “Indian Casinos”. They’re big here. Seeing a cut in casino profits, the casino tribes are behind the “No” campaign and huge out-of-state online gambling concerns are behind “Yes”.

So this should be an interesting tug-of-war in this deep blue state. Vote “Yes” and the taxes levied on online sales go to help house the homeless, and vote “No” to protect the sovereign rights of California’s casino tribes. A conflict worthy of the California Woke to mull over.

I guess ultimately I’ll vote for the cause that tells the fewest lies.

Generally, in American history, Benedict Arnold is considered the epitome of a traitor. But I think there’s a better candidate than that emo, money-grubbing glory hound: a certain New Yorker.

The son of a powerful family, who from childhood to adulthood seethed with resentment over other people getting more attention or accolades, he became a sometimes-successful politician, who built a mere social club into a political organization so crooked, it became the avatar of political corruption in America, which he helped along by creating a shell company, ostensibly for one purpose, only turn it into a political slush fund making “loans” to business associates who would then support his candidates.

A power-hungry social climber who nearly destroyed the Electoral College in an attempt to turn a loss into a win, this ego-maniac thought he could kill a fellow New Yorker in broad daylight and not hurt his political fortunes.  And once those fortunes did tumble after one term, he conspired with foreign powers to set himself up as a kind of client-king in North America, beholden to the other strongmen who put him there.

He single-handedly stress tested the political experiment of our Constitutional Republic, blowing past norms and guardrails of gentlemanly patriotism in pursuit of raw power that he deemed was his by right, and it was only thanks to the incompetence of his co-conspirators that we didn’t end up with Aaron Burr the First, King of America.

Gotcha!

Yes, TFG emulates him in so many things, but let’s hope there’s one major difference: other than the political fallout, Burr got away with the rest, including two treason acquittals for playing a game of thrones with England and Spain. He got away with creating a clean water company that instead became a bank and gave loans to allow small business owners to have enough property to vote. He got away with creating Tammany Hall. He got away with lying to Jefferson as a running mate and trying to steal the election from underneath him via the Electors.

And he was never even charged for shooting that one guy who became a musical.

Now I’m the villain in your history.

Let’s hope that the knock on the door at Mar-a-Lago last week is just the first of many, and that Burr’s title gains an asterisk:  The Worst Traitor in American History*

*who got away with it

A customer asked about my relationship with Fenway. I started to answer in the comments but it got a little long. I thought y’all might like to know as well. So here’s my story, you won’t need to subpoena me for details. I didn’t know what to title this, so I stole from Dropkick Murphys.

Basic history: I was born in Brighton, but my parents moved to Waltham, the Watch City, when I was 2. Dad and my Uncle Dick worked at Buck Printing on Ipswich St, at the corner of Landsdowne St. It has been a nightclub-The Ark- a roller rink, an arcade/bar. I googled the address, it’s now a bowling alley and bar, Lucky Strike Fenway. You can see the old building from the Mass Pike. The Buck Printing sign on the roof could be seen from the park, before the Jumbotron days. Dad said they’d sometimes take their breaks up on the roof on game days/nights. Uncle Dick was always scoring tickets, and would take me and my brother to games when we were kids. They lost a lot back then, but we always had hope. I loved keeping score, and trying to convince Unk that we shouldn’t leave before the end to beat the crowds because they just might come back. During my college years at Northeastern, I lived in an apartment along the Green Line half a block from the Fenway stop. You could still get really cheap bleacher seats and SRO tickets. We’d get the latter, then roam around sitting in empty seats until someone kicked us out. I loved that old place, but it’s gone crazy upscale in the 40 years since I left New England Last game I witnessed was Jon Lester’s no hitter, May 19, 2008. Reminds me, I’m overdue for a pilgrimage. I try to catch games in places I’ve lived, so I’ve been to Oakland, Houston, and Seattle. Juanita Jean and I share a deep love of baseball, but sadly we never did get to one together before I left Fort Bend. About the Fran, both of my grandmothers were Frances, so it’s my middle name. I always liked it better than my real first name, but don’t tell my mother.

Russian state media is laughing at the US, saying that the files in TFG’s basement contain information about new nuclear weapons, and that they’ve already seen them.  Let that sink in.

Meanwhile in Russia: Putin's mouthpieces on state TV are taunting America about "Top Secret" documents sought during the raid of Trump's estate, which they claim had to do with the newest nuclear weapons developed by the US and gleefully imply that Moscow already got to see them. pic.twitter.com/hmmphB4Utf

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) August 13, 2022