The Not Fake News Update:
What you might have missed while impeachment is stealing the headlines…
– Wildfire season in California is right on schedule. Previous years were due to untended brushlands and the elimination of systems of seasonal lakes like Tulare Lake; this year, we’re told it’s climate change combined with an evil corporation. Meanwhile, the Trump White House has decided to cut California’s disaster funding while continuing to chip away at the Waters of the US policy that protects, among other things, seasonal lakes. Rolling blackouts to prevent fires are somewhat effective.
– Northern Australia too is being overwhelmed by massive bushfires. Similarly with California, human interaction has increased the susceptibility of local lands to fire danger; here, however, politics are less entrenched on the subject making it much easier to point at climate change as a culprit. Fire season has been getting longer and more severe over time.
– The President of Bolivia stepped down after international observers ruled the election invalid. Riots and disorder have been met by something akin to a military coup.
– In a year of increasing tension and bloodshed along the Pakistan-India border, an open corridor has been completed for Sikh pilgrims to visit between their political and religions centers, located three miles apart but in different countries.
– Nikki Haley, former Ambassador to the U.N., is publishing another book, lending public support to Trump during the impeachment process and the 2020 elections, and in several other ways is announcing her openness to be selected as a candidate by the G.O.P. if they should need a highly-electable figure. You, know, just in case. For anything at all.
– Meanwhile, demonstrating a level of political suicidal ideation not often observed even in the DNC, two more candidates are threatening to enter the presidential primaries.
– Hong Kong is still undergoing regular protests, and the violence is escalating. Protestors are getting killed.
– The CDC has figured out why bootleg THC vaping has killed people, but perhaps not soon enough to save the industry. Meanwhile, both state and federal government is cracking down on perfectly safe vaping products in order to be seen as doing something about it.
– India, like China, England, and the United States, has discovered that one cannot burn masses of low-grade coal without creating deadly smogs. One wonders which country will discover this next.
– Lacking access to guns, criminal gangs in Sweden are using explosives on each other in drive-by grenadings. Voters are told it’s not a problem because it’s only happening in poor neighborhoods where they don’t live. This is not a joke, but we consider it in extremely poor taste.
– The founder of the White Helmets has been killed in Turkey.
– There’s a Federal animal cruelty law sitting on the President’s desk, waiting to be signed. If he’s waiting for a day when the press will cover him favorably, it could sit there a while.
– Epstein is dead: to begin with. There is absolutely no doubt about that. He’s been examined, tested, autopsied, and autopsied again. Epstein is as dead as a door-nail. Curiously, his former guards are not committing suicide. Yet.
NOTE: I’m not covering impeachment because everyone else is. CNN is massive; I’ve got a staff of one. My time is better spent elsewhere, important though impeachment may be.
The Not Fake News 