the DNC bans all candidates who have participated in climate-change-focused debates from participating in future debates.

Courthouse News:

While it may be foolish to look to our political system for solutions to our problems, it is arguable that who is president at any given time matters. I used to be less certain about this. I had come to the view that any president was basically a spokes-model for the 1%, and hence the military industrial complex, Wall Street, the establishment, the oligarchy, etc.

or at least while that portion of the masses which HAS homes rests in their homes, there are at least a few people in Florida paying attention -- and they've formed the Underwater Homeowners Association, a group dedicated to showing the neighbors that they are minimally paying attention

Okay, my copy of "Paradise Lost" (yes, the Milton poem) is in storage, and the one online doesn't really entice me enough to read it. It starts out with Satan, who like Christopher Columbus was on a quest for the Garden of Eden.

It's hotter than Mercury, which is much closer to the Sun than Venus. Why is this so? 90 atmospheres of carbon dioxide coat Venus' surface, keeping the temperature on the surface at an even 864 degrees Fahrenheit, or 462 degrees Celsius. Compare this with practically-no-atmosphere Mercury at only 800 degrees Fahrenheit during the day.

I've no doubt written a few diaries on climate change, and they probably weren't my most popular diaries -- but this ought to be a bit of fun. The day before yesterday there appeared a piece "the big problem with climate 'realism,'" with a fun picture of Nancy Pelosi on the front. This is from "The Week." At any rate, the piece argues:

One recalls when reading about, say, Australia, that the primary Establishment initiative in climate change mitigation (since the Rio Summit, in 1992), was "climate change mitigation through greater efficiency." Camila Moreno, Lili Fuhr, and Daniel Speich Chassé, in their paper "

Okay this is being splashed all over the news media. The New York Times:

White House Panel Will Study Whether Climate Change Is a National Security Threat. It Includes a Climate Denialist.

CNN Politics:

In the midst of the daily cray-cray (srsly), I sometimes like to pause and look on the bright side. We are having national conversations about many important issues: race and discrimination, police violence and militarized policing, LGBTQ rights, health care for all, free education, wealth and income inequality, dysfunctional government, human rights, immigration, socialism vs.