Chris Dufresne

These are some interesting texts.

In 1950, America had the richest middle class in the world, but now U.S. workers face wage stagnation and historic wealth inequality.

Let’s talk about this letter from the White House, calling the “impeachment inquiry” illegitimate.

Democrat Monique Limon announced she will run for Hannah Beth Jackson’s coveted state senate seat.

A cartoon on the cover of the Economist says it all: leaders of the world’s two foremost democracies are scrambling to hold on. President Trump is faced with the possibility of impeachment. In the interests of Brexit, Boris Johnson is accused of lying to the Queen and defying Parliament. In both countries, voters are losing trust not just in their elected leaders but in their governments. The UK and the US aren’t alone, as the ideals of western democracy are being challenged by demagogues in other parts of the world.

Jet aircraft, carrier task forces and tanks consume vast amounts of fossil fuel--while emitting vast amounts of greenhouse gases. The Pentagon’s carbon footprint is bigger than those of many entire nations. Now, it’s caught in the middle. It’s a massive contributor to climate change, which is threatening its mission worldwide. Seaports and airstrips are being flooded or burned out, and restoring operations costs many millions of dollars. Meantime, environmental damage is leading to instability and the prospect of international violence. Water shortages have increased tensions in the Middle East and caused new hostilities between India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers. Russia and China are taking advantage of changing conditions. Will politicians who scorn environmentalists and mistrust climate scientists listen to the warnings of military leaders?

66 million years ago, an asteroid caused Earth’s Fifth Extinction, destroying the dinosaurs and most other life forms. Now Earth is facing another extinction, as fish, plants and animals vanish forever. But this time, it’s not the asteroid, it’s us. This week, hundreds of people, both young and old, took to the streets in cities all over the world to begin weeks of protest called the Extinction Rebellion. In the natural course of evolution, the decline and disappearance of a life form takes thousands of years. In the course of a human lifetime, not even one species might disappear. But now, some 28,000 species are vanishing all of a sudden. Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker magazine has written a book called “The Sixth Extinction.” She says, “Extinction rates are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times higher than what is known as the background extinction rate that has pertained over most of geological history.” In her words, “You should not be able to see all sorts of mammals -- to name just one group -- either going extinct or on the verge of extinction. And that is a tipoff that something very, very unusual, and I would add, very dangerous, is going on.” “We’re running geological history backwards. Fossil fuels that were created over the course of hundreds of millions of years buried a lot of carbon underground. We’re now combusting it, putting that carbon back into the atmosphere over a matter of centuries. So we’re taking a process that hundreds of millions of years to run in one direction and then, in a matter of centuries, running it in another direction.” We’ll hear what that means now and for the future of life as we know it.

Despite mounting evidence, Republicans in the House and the Senate are defending President Trump or keeping their heads down. Veteran GOP conservatives accuse them of sacrificing morality for short-term political gain. Meantime the Trump Administration calls the impeachment inquiry “unconstitutional,” while legal scholars point out that it’s part of Article II. And how did Ukraine, an obscure former Soviet republic, become so important? Money.

A bone-chilling documentary about Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s mentor, reveals the all-American evil that brought us modern-day politics.