"A mix of wintry weather conditions is bringing warnings and advisories for some 150 million people, stretching from the Northwest down to the Texas border into the Northeastern U.S. early into the week."
"A winter storm dropping snow and ice also sent temperatures plunging across the southern Plains, prompting a power emergency in Texas a day after conditions canceled flights and impacted traffic across large swaths of the U.S."
"The lions are thought to bring good luck and prosperity for the Lunar New Year. And as they strutted and danced in the streets of Chinatown, decorated with silver bells and fur trim, they passed Rose Wong who was walking inside a wearable red and gold lantern she created as an artwork and symbol of hope for the neighborhood." Happy Year of the Bull.
"Perseverance, NASA's most sophisticated rover to date, is expected to land on the surface of Mars on Thursday, February 18, around 3:55 p.m. ET."
So what do we mean by a carbon tax and why is it necessary? "Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found… Countries with the most prodigious consumption of fossil fuels to power factories, homes and vehicles are suffering the highest death tolls, with the study finding more than one in 10 deaths in both the US and Europe were caused by the resulting pollution, along with nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia, which includes China. Death rates in South America and Africa were significantly lower." Besides being tragic, these are "costs" being incurred by the rest of us to support the profits of industry. Your health insurance is higher, Medicare payments are increased, the loss of productivity because of illness, all of this is a cost borne not by the industry that caused it. A carbon tax attempts to make industry pay the full cost of their actions.
"Drilling through half-a-mile-thick ice and peering beneath Antarctica's Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, researchers have accidentally stumbled upon strange creatures lurking on a rock beneath the icy continent. Using a GoPro, a team of polar scientists with the British Antarctic Survey examined a boulder at a depth of over 4,000 feet and found it was alive with alien stalks."
"For the first time since November, average new daily coronavirus infections in the U.S. fell under 100,000--well below the average infection rate in December and January, according to data from Johns Hopkins University… The seven day average of new infections dropped below 100,000 on Friday, continuing at that level through Sunday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Researchers reported 83,321 new infections and 3,361 new deaths Sunday."
"Researchers have discovered seven variants of the coronavirus in the US, with a mutation in the same genetic letter, a new study found… They were discovered in states across the country and it's not yet clear if the strains are more contagious, but researchers are concerned." Concerned scientists are concerned.
"The first travellers required to stay at quarantine hotels have begun arriving at Heathrow Airport… All British and Irish citizens and UK residents who arrive in England after being in a high-risk Covid country now have to self-isolate in hotels."
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight on the Next Pandemic. Winter is coming.
"For people suffering addiction, (seeking treatment) can be a life-or-death moment. Studies show that getting high-quality medical care can make a huge difference, leading to long-term recovery and a healthier life. So what Beetham's team found was troubling… According to their peer-reviewed study, published in the February issue of the journal Health Affairs, many for-profit rehab programs charged inflated fees and used misleading sales practices to attract patients without evaluating their actual medical needs."
"There’s no question that the pandemic has been hard on children, whether or not their schools have reopened. A flood of research in recent months has found alarming spikes in depression and anxiety among children and their parents. Multiple studies have found that students — especially those with disabilities and from low-income families — are learning less than they should… But a new study from NBC News and Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education, is one of the first to shed light on the differences between students whose classes have been exclusively online and those who’ve been able to attend in person at least one day per week." And this is part of the reason why the bungling of the pandemic is as terrible as we say it is. You can count the cost in the dead and sick, the direct medical expenses and calculate the continuing expenses for those who now have chronic conditions due to COVID (as we're discovering more long last effects of this disease), but then there are the hard to evaluate costs of lives disrupted, thrown off the rails, the costs of having depended on schools to deliver vital social services to those in need and what happens when that support is cut.
"The United States Coa(s)t Guard is searching for 16 people who have gone missing from two separate boats off the coast of Florida. Officials said 10 people went missing near Key West while six others disappeared off the coast of Fort Pierce."
"Some industries are thriving and eager to hire, which should be welcome in an economy that has recovered only a little over half of the 22 million jobs lost during the coronavirus pandemic… Data from the Labor Department this month, for example, showed job openings at a five-month high. Meanwhile, job search site Indeed said recently that job postings are back to pre-pandemic levels." Pay. Living. Wages. Understand that when this owner says "increased wages" he means $11/hr (most likely, looking at local business, which oddly, we have a lot of plastics manufacturers in the area, most of which pay less than $10/hr).
"The rally in commodities that some say is the start of a supercycle continued on Monday, buoying resource stocks… The West Texas Intermediate contract, the leading benchmark for oil in the U.S., topped $60 a barrel for the first time since Jan. 2020. Middle East tensions and an unusual cold snap in Texas that could cause supply disruptions was credited with moving prices higher. Other commodities including platinum also advanced."
"Even before taking office, former President Donald Trump's administration obsessed over the U.S. census… From a failed bid for a citizenship question to a presidential memo about unauthorized immigrants that was fast-tracked to the Supreme Court, its moves over the past four years followed a playbook first drawn up more than four decades ago by the Federation for American Immigration Reform." Again, Trump isn't an aberration, he is the culmination of 50 years of conservative politics.
"More than 46,000 Missourians have also gotten letters demanding repayment. The state says it paid out more than $150 million last year to people who it later determined weren't eligible. The federal COVID-19 relief package passed in December gave states the power to forgive overpaid federal unemployment benefits. Many states, such as Illinois and Colorado, have decided to offer waivers — but not Missouri."
"Business and civil rights groups in California are demanding action after a recent surge of xenophobic violence against Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area left one person dead and others badly injured… The brazen, mostly daylight assaults have rattled nerves in communities ahead of (last) Friday's Lunar New Year holiday."
Trying to make it Biden's fault. "President Joe Biden kept his head down during the impeachment trial of his predecessor, which ended Saturday afternoon with Donald Trump’s acquittal… And now he can’t move on fast enough… Biden is traveling to Wisconsin and Michigan this week as he presses ahead on the challenges that will make or break his own presidency: defeating the pandemic and reviving the battered economy."
"Democratic and Republican lawmakers have issued fresh calls for a bipartisan 9/11-style commission to investigate why government officials and law enforcement failed to stop the attack on the US Capitol in January, following Donald Trump’s acquittal in his impeachment on charges that he incited the insurrection."
"Sen. Lindsey Graham is taking aim at Vice President Kamala Harris with a warning that she could be impeached if Republicans take over the House of Representatives in 2022." Serious eye roll. Yes, this is how conservatives think. Sure, the president standing before a crowd, telling them to march on the Capitol and fight like hell which lead directly to an insurrection just a few minutes later is exactly the same as :: checks notes :: contributing to a bail fund which also inadvertently released someone who then committed a violent crime a few days later. And yes, conservatives do think it's the same thing.
"But now the decades-long love affair is over. After a member of Publix’s founding family donated $300,000 to the Donald Trump rally that preceded January’s deadly Capitol riots, Mize is pulling out of what she says has become 'an abusive, dysfunctional relationship', and joining others in a boycott of the Florida-based grocery chain that operates more than 1,200 stores across seven south-eastern states."
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