Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87

On the eve of Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) A sad day for America. Leading the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc, Ginsburg was a legal pioneer who backed affirmative action and defended abortion rights. Her notable rulings and dissents advanced feminist themes, including the groundbreaking 1996 decision ordering the Virginia Military Institute to allow women to enroll.

The battle for who will take her place on the Supreme Court will be brutal.

Biden Townhall

Donald Trump has contended that Joe Biden can’t put two sentences together. That argument was put to bed at this townhall event. His answers were cogent and given without hesitation.

There were no hardball questions thrown at Joe Biden. No one knows if he was prepared for any tough questions. One woman who said she was a Republican questioned the $600 weekly unemployment support that ended in July saying that it had discouraged people going back to work. Biden responded saying the money was needed to help pay their rent or mortgage and that was a clear answer.

CNN provided a good summary of six lines.

• Trump’s response to the pandemic: “But he knew it. He knew it, and did nothing. It is close to criminal. … The idea that you are not going to not tell people what you have been told that this virus is incredibly contagious — seven times more contagious than the flu — you breathe the air and you get it sucked into your lungs — what has he done?”

• Police must be held accountable: “The vast majority of police are decent, honorable people. One of the things I’ve found is, the only people who don’t like bad cops more than we don’t like them are police officers. And so what we have to do is we have to have a much more transparent means by which we provide for accountability within police departments,” Biden said.

• When it comes to the pandemic, trust the science: “I don’t trust the President on vaccines. I trust Dr. [Anthony] Fauci. If Fauci says a vaccine is safe, I would take the vaccine. We should listen to the scientists, not to the President,” Biden said.

• Characterizing his campaign: “I view this campaign as a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue,” Biden said. “All Trump can see from Park Avenue is Wall Street. All he thinks about as the stock market.”

• Trump’s troubling administration: “I’ve been doing this a long time. I never, ever thought I would see such a thoroughly, totally irresponsible administration.”

• Bridging the divide: “I plan to unite the nation. I’m running as a Democrat but I’m going to be everyone’s president. I’m not going to be a Democratic president. I’m going to be America’s president.”

The six hottest years on record include 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019

The above photo was shown on sfgate.com on September 9. The smoke from the fires has obliterated the sun for the past week in Los Angeles. My eyes sting. So what is the problem?

An Inconvenient Truth presents in film form an illustrated talk on climate by by former Vice President Al Gore, aimed at alerting the public to an increasing “planetary emergency” due to global warming. He may have had the dates wrong but we are having another once in a life time crises almost every year. Available on Amazon.

The temperature in Los Angeles suburb Woodland Hills set a new record on September 6, 2020. 121°F (49.444°C).

Consider an exchange that took place in California at an event focused on the fires. Wade Crowfoot, head of the state’s Natural Resources Agency, called on Trump to recognize the role of climate change in the historic conflagrations.

“We’ve had temperatures explode this summer,” Crowfoot said. “You may have learned that we broke a world record in the Death Valley: 130 degrees. But even in greater L.A., 120-plus degrees. And we’re seeing this warming trend make our summers warmer, but also our winters warmer as well.”

He acknowledged Trump’s that ground cover and fallen trees contribute to fires.

“But I think we want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forest — and actually work together with that science,” he continued. “That science is going to be key, because if we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together in protecting Californians.”

“It’ll start getting cooler,” Trump replied. “You just — you just watch.”

“I wish science agreed with you,” Crowfoot said.

“I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump responded.

As it turns out, science knows quite well. For more than 100 years, it’s been speculated that burning fossil fuels (in particular coal) emits gas that can trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. By now, that effect is well documented and obviously manifested, with atmospheric carbon dioxide hitting levels never before measured and the effects of that saturation felt everywhere from increased droughts to increased severe precipitation events (since warmer air can hold more moisture) to higher temperatures to things such as dissolving shells on marine life.

Throw Everything at the Wall

Donald Trump is trailing in every election poll. This past week has been a disaster for him thanks to his own words.

He privately disparaged dead American soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.”

In a February interview with Bob Woodward admitting to that the coronavirus was much more deadly than the flu and easily transmitted through the air — while saying virtually the opposite publicly and most recently Trump has insisted that the U.S. is “rounding the turn” on coronavirus.

So there is only one thing he can do to win on November 3. Throw everything he can say about Joe Biden at the wall and hope some of it sticks.

September 10, 2020 Tweet, ‘If I don’t win, America’s Suburbs will be OVERRUN with Low Income Projects, Anarchists, Agitators, Looters and, of course, “Friendly Protesters”.’

“If Biden gets in, this market’s going to crash,” Trump asserted in an interview on Fox Business Network with host Maria Bartiromo. Invoking Biden’s tax plans, Trump also claimed that the former vice president would “tax this country into a depression like in 1929.”

Fox News will broadcast an interview tonight Saturday, September 12, 2020 in which Donald Trump accuses Joe Biden of taking performance-enhancing drugs. What drug would that be? A Consumer Reports doctor says there’s virtually no good evidence that such products can prevent or delay memory lapses, mild cognitive impairment, or dementia in older adults. Some may do more harm than good.

He previously accused Joe Biden of not being psychologically fit for office.

With 53 days to go until election day Trump will keep throwing the mud. Sadly Biden is too quiet. Unless he starts punching some of that mud is going to stick.

If Trump does win you can say good-bye to the American democracy.

La Niña may be Coming to California

The U.S. Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that La Niña — a phenomenon that occurs when the surface of the Pacific Ocean cools — has officially formed.

Between the two phases there is a neutral phase that’s neither El Niño nor La Niña — what climatologist Bill Patzert calls “La Nada.” That’s where we find ourselves at the moment — and where we expect to stay through the summer. But NOAA predicts that there’s a 50% to 55% chance of our current neutral phase shifting into a La Niña this fall and winter. Hence the watch. But there’s also a 40% to 45% chance, according to NOAA, that we will remain stuck in neutral for the fall and winter. In addition, there’s about a 5% to 10% chance of an El Niño developing.

Rain in Canoga Park has been decent the past two years. 18.47 inches in this past year and 23.23 inches the year before. Since 1997 when I started collecting rain data in my yard the lowest seasonal total was 4.53 inches in the 2001-2002 period.

Michael Cohen says Trump is not joking about staying in office for more than 2 terms

This is serious and frightening. I have been writing about this repeatedly. By Paul LeBlanc, CNN Updated 12:44 AM ET, Thu September 10, 2020 (CNN) President Donald Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen said Wednesday evening that Trump isn’t joking when he floats the notion of attempting to stay in the White House beyond two terms. “Donald Trump believes that he should be the ruler — the dictator of the United States of America. He actually is looking to change the Constitution. When Donald Trump jokes about 12 more years … he is not joking. Donald Trump does not have a sense of humor,” Cohen told CNN’s Don Lemon on “CNN Tonight.” “So I want you to understand that when he says 12 more years, if he wins he is going to automatically day number one start thinking how he can change the Constitution for a third term, and then a fourth term, like what he said to President XI and like what he said to so many other people. It’s why he admires the Kim Jong Uns of the world.” Even during an uphill reelection campaign, the President has repeatedly advanced the idea of a third term while also looking to sow doubt in the integrity of November’s election. “We are going to win four more years,” Trump said at a rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, last month. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.” Expanding on his warning against reelecting Trump on Wednesday, Cohen went on to describe the White House as “like a cult” with a culture that forbids anyone from challenging the President. “Not only is the Trump Organization like a cult, but so is the White House,” he said. “Anybody that wants to work there, God forbid you say something wrong. God forbid you do something wrong. You’re fired. That’s exactly why there have been so many people coming in and out of the administration. I think he set all sorts of records. He likes records. Well, he certainly set the record for the most people in and out of the administration.” Pressed on how Trump has been able to command loyalty within the Republican Party, Cohen offered: “Because he is a cult leader.” “And people somehow follow him. Why? I don’t know why. I did it when I had my daughter, my wife, my son continuously telling me, ‘Stop, we don’t want you to work for him. Quit, you don’t need to work for him. What are you doing? The things that you are doing are morally wrong. You lost your moral compass, wake up.” His comments come one day after the release of his book where he unleashes on the President as “a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.” Cohen had been a vocal surrogate for Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign before he pleaded guilty in 2018 to tax fraud, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations for facilitating hush money payments to two women who alleged past affairs with the President. Trump has denied having affairs with the women. When pleading guilty, he implicated the President, telling a federal judge that he had made the payments “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump, who prosecutors identified in court filings as “Individual 1.” “If you look at the end of the book it’s really a call. It’s a warning call to anybody who is reading the book. Put the Visine in your eyes, clean your eyes out and see that Donald Trump cares for no one or anything other than himself. So he doesn’t care if your family member dies as long as it’s not him. He doesn’t care about anything other than himself and this election,” Cohen said Wednesday. “And he is willing to sacrifice your life so he has four more years.”