DL Open Thread: Friday, May 3, 2024

The Drowning South: Sea level rise could submerge coastal communities:

One of the most rapid sea level surges on Earth is besieging the American South, forcing a reckoning for coastal communities across eight U.S. states, a Washington Post analysis has found.

At more than a dozen tide gauges spanning from Texas to North Carolina, sea levels are at least 6 inches higher than they were in 2010 — a change similar to what occurred over the previous five decades.

“Since 2010, it’s very abnormal and unprecedented,” said Jianjun Yin, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona who has studied the changes. While it is possible the swift rate of sea level rise could eventually taper, the higher water that has already arrived in recent years is here to stay.

“It’s irreversible,” he said.

As waters rise, Louisiana’s wetlands — the state’s natural barrier against major storms — are in a state of “drowning.” Choked septic systems are failing and threatening to contaminate waterways. Insurance companies are raising rates, limiting policies or even bailing in some places, casting uncertainty over future home values in flood-prone areas.

Roads increasingly are falling below the highest tides, leaving drivers stuck in repeated delays, or forcing them to slog through salt water to reach homes, schools, work and places of worship. In some communities, researchers and public officials fear, rising waters could periodically cut off some people from essential services such as medical aid.

G-d’s plan?

President Poopy-Pants:  Trump shits on attorney. Attorney…:

Jake Tapper: Okay, I apologize for this update ahead of time. But, Blanche, Todd Blanche, the Trump attorney, is specifically reading a post that Michael Cohen made on Twitter on April 22nd, and one in which he refers to Donald Trump as VonShitzinPants. That is just a factual record that I’m bringing before you. This is in the court transcript. VonShitzinPants. Blanche also said there are repeated attacks on Trump and his candidacy on Cohen’s podcast and TikTok account. Dana Bash, I know you want to weigh in on VonShitzinPants.

Dana Bash: I think you did it on behalf of all of us.

Jake Tapper: Just for the record, I have been calling it “VonPoopsinPants” for weeks now, but now it’s a part of the official transcript.

Poop. There It Is!

“Discredit, Disrupt, And Destroy”.  This is how the FBI set about attacking civil rights groups back in the late ’60’s.  It extended to infiltrating anti-war groups, with the infiltrators urging the groups to commit acts of violence:

It was the late 1960s, and J. Edgar Hoover smelled trouble. The status quo — hallowed by hate, sanctioned by Jim Crow — was beginning to crack.

Behind the scenes, Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation was keeping watch. In 1967, the FBI quietly unleashed a covert surveillance operation targeting “subversive” civil rights groups and Black leaders, including the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King Jr., Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and many others.

The objective, according to an FBI memo: to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the radical fight for Black rights — and Black power.

“These documents … reveal and confirm the kind of root investment in anti-Blackness and quelling dissent that has long been part of our government structure,” says Leigh Raiford, a professor of African American studies at UC Berkeley. “We can only imagine the extent to which the current administration, and the current FBI, is working to discredit, disrupt, and destroy Black Lives Matter and other movements.

“I’m hoping that a new generation of researchers will learn new lessons for how to outmaneuver these attempts.”

The FBI’s surveillance of African Americans and Black rights organizations — whom the FBI called “Black Extremists” or “Black Nationalist Hate Groups” — grew out of the bureau’s larger espionage operation known as COINTELPRO, the now infamous program launched in 1956 to snuff out communism in the United States. (Other radical groups, including socialists and anti-war activists, were soon added to the agenda.)

In Hoover’s view, it went something like this: There were communists in the civil rights movement. Never mind that there were Black people fighting for their lives.

This is just one reason why I remain more than skeptical about reports of violence by protestors on campus.  I was there in the spring of 1970.  The press can’t merely regurgitate police reports on this stuff.  Which reminds me–the press needs to diligently keep an eye on tactics being used on protestors.  The cops loved beating antiwar students back in that era.  Let’s see how much, if at all, things have changed in the intervening 50-plus years.

Take The Kentucky Derby.  Please.

As Churchill Downs prepares to host the 150th Kentucky Derby on Saturday a darker anniversary looms. One year ago, 12 horses died at Churchill Downs in the days and weeks surrounding America’s biggest race.

As hype builds around this year’s runners, those who died fall deeper into the well of memory, if they’re thought of at all. Wild on Ice, a gelding born in 2020 and a Derby qualifier, was euthanized after sustaining a hind leg fracture during training leading up to last year’s race. His connections expressed regret over their missed opportunity to watch him reach his full potential. A month later, Kimberley Dream, a seven-year-old “war horse” was making her 61st start when she broke down in a claiming race. In the chart the final note on her short life read “went wrong in upper stretch”.

In the time between those deaths there was routine equine suffering at Churchill with the deaths of Code of Kings, Parents Pride, Take Charge Briana, Chasing Artie, Chloe’s Dream, Freezing Point, Rio Moon, Lost in Limbo, Bosque Redondo, and Swanson Lake. Twelve dead at one track in one month. Those horses were no different than the ones on the backside and the racing cards this time around. For racing fans and runners’ connections Derby Day is exciting, prestigious, and maybe even profitable but for the horses it’s about survival. When a day in the sport concludes without death there is a collective sigh of relief. What a grim reality.

Cicadas (E)Merge As Blended Family:

Brood XIII and Brood XIX will emerge together this year, for the first time in more than two centuries. But only in small patches of Illinois are they likely to come out of the ground in the same place.

As the ground was warming in April 1803, France sold the rights to the territory of Louisiana, which it acquired from Spain in 1800, to the United States for $15 million.

That spring, Brood XIII and Brood XIX emerged together into a newly enlarged United States.

Their descendants — 13 and 17 generations later — are now poised to return, and will not sing together again until 2245.

We’ve had the eclipse, how ’bout a Cicada Watch Party?

What do you want to talk about?