DL Open Thread: Sunday, October 22,2023

Pharoah And DeSantis: Separated At Birth?  What do they have in common?–plagues.  Hurricanes, floods, seaweed encrusted beaches, pythons who like to feast on elderly Palm Beach matrons, collapsing buildings, epidemics. And now, flesh-eating bacteria:

A study published this week found that Hurricane Ian led to a spike in cases of vibriosis, a life-threatening illness caused by a water-borne bacteria called Vibrio, in Florida. In Lee County, where Ian made landfall, 38 people were sickened by the bacteria and 11 people ultimately died in the month following the storm — the highest number of Vibrio cases in a single month in Florida in more than 30 years. There had been no reported cases of Vibrio in the state in the week leading up to the hurricane.

There are many species of Vibrio, including Vibrio cholerae — the cause of the diarrheal disease cholera, which kills tens of thousands of people per year in the Global South. Vibrio vulnificus, commonly referred to as “flesh-eating bacteria,” is less common globally but more deadly, and it’s becoming more pervasive in the U.S.

Past research has shown that warming ocean surface temperatures are leading to more Vibrio bacteria in the world’s oceans, particularly in the Atlantic, which is heating up at an alarming and unprecedented rate.

Gabriel Filippelli, a climate change researcher and director of Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute, said he would have expected Hurricane Ian’s impacts to produce a “blip” in Vibrio abundance off Florida’s coast “and then a recovery back to baseline.” But that’s not what the study says happened. “It actually ramped up not only the abundance of Vibrio but some of the particular species that are problematic,” Filippelli, who was not involved in the research, said.

We don’t know what plagues will next be visited upon DeSantis’ Florida (I’ve excluded DeSantis himself, but wouldn’t object if you took issue with that sentiment), but we know that there will be more, and that they will be weird.

When Israel Has Lost Tom Friedman…:

However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:

I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.

If Israel goes into Gaza and takes months to kill or capture every Hamas leader and soldier but does so while expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank — thereby making any two-state solution there with the more moderate Palestinian Authority impossible — there will be no legitimate Palestinian or Arab League or European or U.N. or NATO coalition that will ever be prepared to go into Gaza and take it off Israel’s hands.

There will be no one to extract Israel and no one to help Israel pay the cost of caring for more than two million Gazans — not if Israel is run by a government that thinks, and acts, as if it can justifiably exact its revenge on Hamas while unjustifiably building an apartheidlike society run by Jewish supremacists in the West Bank. That is a completely incoherent policy.

Delaware House Rethugs Renew Push For Execution For Cop-Killers.  Bill doesn’t address killer cops.  Ah, yes, the ‘special class’ exception.  Been there, seen that, and seen how quickly said special class exceptions swell.  In fact, the bill provides for that:

Two Sussex County lawmakers are planning to introduce legislation in January that would restore the death penalty for someone convicted of murdering a law enforcement officer, public safety officer, correctional officer or firefighter.

Republican Representatives Danny Short of Seaford and Tim Dukes of Laurel says the measure is in response to the life sentence now facing the convicted killer of Delmar Police Corporal Keith Heacook. The legislation has been named the Law Enforcement and First Responders Protection Act.

Stating the obvious, the Law Enforcement and First Responders Protection Act will do nothing to ‘protect’ law enforcement and/or first responders.  I’d say that the bill is going nowhere, but, seeing as how Our PAL Val (the newly-crowned Speaker) owes her six-figure no-show sinecure to the cops, I’m not so sure.  I am sure that any and all actions she takes as Speaker that benefit cops represent a blatant conflict-of-interest.  Which won’t stop her from killing genuine LEOBOR reform.  It’s probably in her PAL job description:  “Kill LEOBOR reform, keep no-show job.”

What do you want to talk about?