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This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Luther Tucker. Enjoy!

“I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a disgrace, that two become a lawfirm, and that three or more become a congress."

-- John Adams

News and Opinion

Congress Could Take Back Trump's Power to Wage War. But It Won't.

Hoping Congress will stop President Trump from stumbling into a war with Iran? Don't hold your breath. ...

The Democratic-controlled House will vote on a war powers resolution aimed at curtailing Trump’s powers in Iran this week, a vote that’ll likely sail through the chamber. Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D-Va.) push on the Senate side will at least get a vote after Jan.13, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) won’t be able to block it.

But even if Democrats win over some GOP senators on the measure, the best they can hope for is a moral victory of passing the bill through the Senate before Trump vetoes it. All that effort is almost certain to fall short of actually constraining the president from doing just about whatever he wants abroad — just like every other congressional attempt to rein in the president on foreign affairs since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“Congress is really afraid of owning these wars, of taking a stand on these military actions,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Even in the best of times, Congress has shown a complete inability to exert its constitutional power to declare war. In case you haven’t noticed, these aren’t exactly the best of times.

How money in politics fuels a war machine

'Kicking the Can to Next Week Is Irresponsible': Progressives Rebuke Pelosi for Delaying Iran War Powers Vote

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faced immediate backlash from progressives Tuesday night after she informed congressional Democrats of her decision to delay the planned vote on a War Powers Resolution to constrain President Donald Trump's authority to launch further military attacks on Iran.

Pelosi's decision to push the vote back to next week, first reported by CNN, came shortly after Iran retaliated for the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani with missile attacks on U.S. airbases in Iraq. A House War Powers vote was expected as early as Wednesday.

Indivisible—part of a coalition of progressive groups leading nationwide anti-war protests on Thursday—said Iran's strikes should increase, not diminish, the urgency of the congressional effort to restrain Trump, whose hawkish policies and belligerent rhetoric toward Iran have sparked widespread fears of another devastating Middle East conflict.

"Speaker Pelosi, the House should have already voted on a resolution to limit Trump's authority on Iran," Indivisible tweeted Tuesday night. "Every day we wait is a message from Congress to Trump to continue this march to war. After tonight, kicking the can to next week is irresponsible." ...

According to Politico, top House Democrats are considering abandoning entirely the attempt to constrain Trump's ability to wage war on Iran following the Iranian missile strikes. "Moderate Democrats had their own reservations about the whole exercise, and are unwilling to draft a resolution that would hamstring the military in its response to future attacks," Politico reported. "They're also hesitant to support any language that would directly repudiate Trump for the Soleimani killing."

In a video posted just ahead of Iran's missile strikes against U.S. bases in Iraq, Ro Khanna said Congress never should have passed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which handed Trump $738 billion in military spending without any limits on his ability to wage war against Iran. "We should now learn our lesson," said Khanna. "Let us make it very clear. We control the House of Representatives. We will not fund a dollar for any offensive strike on Iran without authorization."

"We will not fund a dollar for any offensive strike on Iran without authorization."@RepRoKhanna calls out Trump's act of war in Iran and urges Congress to limit Trump's war powers. pic.twitter.com/mzg7ys0uhY

— MoveOn (@MoveOn) January 7, 2020

A View from Tehran: Iranian Professor Condemns U.S. Aggression & Warns U.S.-Backed Gulf States

DOD Statement on Iranian Ballistic Missile Attacks in Iraq

Statement from Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Jonathan Hoffman:

At approximately 5:30 p.m. (EST) on January 7, Iran launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles against U.S. military and coalition forces in Iraq. It is clear that these missiles were launched from Iran and targeted at least two Iraqi military bases hosting U.S. military and coalition personnel at Al-Assad and Irbil.

Soleimani Assassination and Iranian Missile Strikes an "Unprecedented" Step in U.S.-Iran Relations

Trump backs away from further military confrontation with Iran

Donald Trump backed away from further military confrontation with Iran on Wednesday after days of escalating tensions, saying Tehran appeared to be standing down following missile attacks on two Iraqi bases hosting US and coalition troops.

Flanked by the vice-president, Mike Pence, defense secretary Mark Esper, and other high ranking military officials in uniform, Trump delivered remarks in the Grand Foyer of the White House, hours after Iran declared the attack to be retaliation for the US drone strike last week that killed senior Iranian Gen Qassem Suleimani.

“Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world,” Trump said, reading from teleprompters. “No American or Iraqi lives were lost because of the precautions taken the dispersal forces, and an early warning system that worked very well.” ...

Trump said the United States would continue evaluating options “in response to Iranian aggression” and that additional sanctions on the Iranian regime would be imposed. He did not elaborate. Iran is already so heavily sanctioned that few experts believe that further US measures would make much economic difference. ...

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, described the bombings as “a slap in the face” for the US but warned Tehran still had a wider goal of expelling its enemy from the region. The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said the “final answer” to the assassination would be to “kick all US forces out of the region”.

Iran targets US troops: What does the attack mean?

Iran crisis: conflicting statements about the retention of US forces in Iraq

Iran has launched missile strikes aimed at US troops in Iraq in what it said was retaliation for the killing last week of top Iranian general Qassem Suleimani. ...

The Trump administration did little to clarify the confusion that arose on Monday over its intentions in Iraq. Pentagon officials had said that a letter sent to the Iraqi government from the US taskforce commander in Iraq, announcing a troop departure, had been a draft released by mistake.

Iraq’s acting prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, however, insisted that the letter had been signed and that it had initially been sent back to the US commander over a translation query, and then it had been redelivered with a corrected translation.

“They said it’s a draft. OK, it’s a draft. But we received it. As a state, how are we supposed to act? We should get a second letter to clarify so we can clarify to our people too,” Abdul Mahdi, who resigned in November but has stayed on in a caretaker role, said, according to Agence France-Presse. “If I don’t trust you and you don’t trust me, how are we supposed to proceed?”

In a prerecorded television address he insisted the US would have to leave.

“We have no exit but this, otherwise we are speeding toward confrontation,” Abdul Mahdi said, adding that Iraq would have to take a “historic decision” to implement the expulsion. “Otherwise we will not be taken seriously,” he added.

No Iraqi Request to Withdraw U.S. Forces, Pentagon Says

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Tuesday he hadn't received a request from Iraq to withdraw U.S. troops from the country and noted that an Iraqi parliamentary resolution requesting a pullout was non-binding.

"To the best of my knowledge, I haven't received any communication from (Iraq's prime minister) or the Iraqi government about the legislation, or about an order or a request to withdraw U.S. forces," Esper told a news conference at the Pentagon.

Iraq’s outgoing prime minister says US troops must leave

Iraq’s outgoing prime minister said Tuesday that the United States has no alternative and must pull its troops out of the country, or else face an impending crisis. But President Donald Trump countered that it’s not the right time for a pullout and that it would be the worst thing that could happen to Iraq.

Trump said a U.S. pullout would allow Iran to gain a stronger foothold in Iraq.

“The people of Iraq do not want to see Iran running the country, that I can tell you,” Trump said from the White House.

Adel Abdul-Mahdi, who resigned in November amid mass anti-government protests, said Iraq wants a U.S. troop withdrawal to avoid further escalation as tensions soar between America and Iran. ...

U.S. troops are present in Iraq based on a request by the government in 2014, when vast swathes of the country were being overrun by the Islamic State group. But now that IS has been largely defeated, Abdul-Mahdi said, the mission has devolved into a U.S.-Iran proxy war.

Much more detail at link:

There Is Zero Actual Evidence Iran Is Responsible for Killing Hundreds of Americans

The skepticism expressed by some leading Democrats and the mainstream media regarding the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani has been refreshing, after decades of bipartisan support for disastrous U.S. policies in the region. These critiques, not unreasonably, have acknowledged Suleiman’s nefarious role in advancing Iran’s geostrategic reach in the Middle East supporting extremist militia, exacerbating sectarianism, and suppressing progressive democratic movements.

However, the claim that Soleimani and the Iranian government are somehow responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of Americans” in Iraq—which has been repeated by leading Democrats and the mainstream media—appears to be groundless.

There have not been significant U.S. casualties in Iraq since around 2007, when charges of Iranian involvement in attacks against U.S. forces first surfaced. Virtually all attacks against U.S. forces since the 2003 invasion had come from Baathist, Sunni, and other anti-Iranian groups. Of the more than 10,000 suspected insurgents arrested in U.S. counter-insurgency sweeps prior to the first U.S. withdrawal in 2011, the relatively few foreigners among them were Arabs, not Iranians.

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, compiled by America’s sixteen intelligence agencies and issued in February 2007, downplayed Iran’s role in Iraq’s violence and instability. Yet it was at this point that the George W. Bush Administration began making the case that Iran had become the principal foreign threat to U.S. forces in Iraq. The Bush Administration’s case was based primarily on assertions that bomb fragments, such as those displayed by U.S. military officials in a press conference in Baghdad on February 11 of that year, were of Iranian origin. But they never showed any proof making this linkage. ...

Rather than recognizing that Iran is simply seeking to take advantage from the dramatic U.S.-instigated changes in the political and strategic situation on their western flank (as would any regional power in a comparable situation), Bush—and now Trump, with the backing of many Democrats—has tried to depict Iran’s role as something far more sinister: yet another front of “the war on terrorism,” making an aggressive U.S. response a matter of “self-defense.”

Trump Is Congratulating Himself in Facebook Ads for Killing Soleimani

President Trump is so proud of himself for the assassination of Iran’s top general that he’s using it as a fundraising ploy in hundreds of new Facebook ads. ...

“Thanks to the swift actions of our Commander-in-Chief, Iranian General Qassem Soleimani is no longer a threat to the United States, or to the world,” the ad says. “Take the Official Trump Military Survey TODAY to let me know what you think of my leadership as Commander-in-Chief.”

It’s one of at least 768 self-congratulatory Facebook ads bought by the president’s reelection campaign, according to the company’s public ad archive. The mass celebration of Soleimani’s death is the latest effort in the digital operation that has helped Trump raise gobs of cash from small-dollar donors.

The ads show a triumphant Trump speaking, clapping, and giving a thumbs-up before crowds at campaign events. Users who click on the ads jump to a 10-question survey on the president’s website bearing vapid yes-or-no questions like “Do you think Democrats should spend less time on bogus witch hunts and more time working with President Trump to Keep America Safe?” After completing the survey with their contact information, respondents are led to a page where they can donate to the president’s campaign.

Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Demands Official UN Probe of Soleimani Assassination

The United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions on Monday called for an impartial probe into the legality of the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, warning that strongly worded denunciations from the international community are far from a sufficient response.

"Messages and bilateral exchanges are not enough," Agnes Callamard tweeted in response to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres' call for deescalation of military tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Callamard urged Guterres to activate Article 99 of the U.N. charter and "establish an impartial inquiry into [the] lawfulness of Soleimani's killing and events leading up to it." Article 99 gives the secretary general authority to bring to the U.N. Security Council "any matter which... may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security."

Callamard tweeted last week that the U.S. drone strike that killed Soleimani in Baghdad was likely a violation of international law, an assessment echoed by other legal experts.

President Donald Trump and members of his administration justified the strike on the grounds that Soleimani was plotting "imminent" attacks on American forces in Iraq, but the White House has yet to present any evidence supporting its self-defense narrative. Callamard told Reuters Saturday that the U.S. assassination of Soleimani "appears far more retaliatory for past acts than anticipatory for imminent self-defense."

'They Fear Someone Will Go There and Tell the Truth,' Says Iran's Top Diplomat as Trump White House Bars Him From Visiting UN

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Tuesday confirmed reports that the Trump administration has denied him a visa to enter the U.S. for a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York this week, a move the diplomat said was motivated by a desire to suppress facts about the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

"This is because they fear someone will go there and tell the truth to the American people," Zarif told reporters from Tehran. "But they are mistaken. The world is not limited to New York. You can speak with American people from Tehran too and we will do that."

Zarif's remarks came after Foreign Policy, citing three anonymous diplomatic sources, reported Monday that the Trump administration had decided to bar the foreign minister from entering the U.S., "violating the terms of a 1947 headquarters agreement requiring Washington to permit foreign officials into the country to conduct U.N. business."

On Twitter, Zarif said the Trump administration's decision to deny him a visa "pales in comparison" to the White House's other aggressive actions against Iran, from devastating economic sanctions to threats to destroy its cultural heritage.

The U.N. meeting Thursday would have been Zarif's first address to the international community since the U.S. assassination of Soleimani, which the Iranian foreign minister condemned as an "act of terrorism."

US President Trump tore up a "win-win deal" against the opinion of many US advisors

Reporters Hit White House for Not Disclosing Meeting With Saudi Defense Minister

President Donald Trump came under fire Tuesday from journalists after a meeting at the White House with Saudi Arabia's Vice Minister of Defense Khalid bin Salman on Monday was not disclosed and only discovered after the minister posted pictures from the Oval Office online.

"A meeting with a foreign leader in the Oval Office should, at the very least, be on the public schedule with a read-out of the meeting released after it is over," Jonathan Karl, president of the White House Correspondents Association, said in a statement. "This has been the long-standing precedent for presidents of both political parties."

"It is disturbing to see the government of Saudi Arabia have more transparency than the White House about a meeting with the President in the Oval Office," Karl added.

The details of what was discussed at the meeting remain unclear, though a photo shared on social media by the Saudi minister shows Trump advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner in attendance.

Idiot Republican warmongering former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley runs off at the mouth again.

Nikki Haley claims Democrats the ‘only ones mourning loss’ of Suleimani

Nikki Haley, formerly ambassador to the United Nations and in many eyes a future Republican presidential candidate, has claimed the “only” people “mourning the loss” of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, killed by a US airstrike last week, are “Democrat leadership and our Democrat presidential candidates”.

“You don’t see anyone standing up for Iran,” Haley told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night. “You’re not hearing any of the Gulf [states], you’re not hearing China, you’re not hearing Russia. The only ones that are mourning the loss of Suleimani are Democrat leadership and our Democrat presidential candidates.” ...

Haley followed her partisan attack over a matter of foreign policy by telling Hannity “partisan politics should stop when it comes to foreign policy”.

“This is about America United,” she said. “We need to be completely behind the president [and] what he did, because every one of those countries are watching our news media right now, seeing what everyone is saying.

[Non-Americans, if you are watching this blog - I am telling you Nikki Haley is an idiot. Prolonged exposure to her natterings will diminish your intelligence. - js]

Study Shows Medicare for All Could Save US $600 Billion Annually on Paperwork and Other 'Useless Bureaucracy'

Insurers and healthcare providers in the United States spent a staggering $812 billion on paperwork and other administrative burdens in 2017 alone, bureaucratic costs that could be dramatically reduced by switching to a single-payer system like Medicare for All.

That's according to a study published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, which found that administrative costs amounted to 34.2 percent of total U.S. national health expenditures in 2017—twice the amount Canada spent on healthcare administration that same year.

The study's authors noted that U.S. healthcare providers impose "a hidden surcharge" on patients "to cover their costly administrative burden." U.S. insurers and providers spent $2,497 per person on healthcare administration in 2017 while Canada spent just $551 per capita, the study found.

"The average American is paying more than $2,000 a year for useless bureaucracy," said Dr. David Himmelstein, lead author of the study and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). "That money could be spent for care if we had a Medicare for All program."

If the U.S. brought spending on healthcare administration to Canadian levels, the study found, it could save $600 billion a year on total national healthcare expenditures.

In 2017, *$812 BILLION* spent on administration by health insurers and providers. That's 34% of US health expenditures!!

US spending on administration (per capita) nearly 5-fold than in Canada ($2497 vs. $551)

Interesting new study in @AnnalsofIMhttps://t.co/4iscg9j2BS pic.twitter.com/6q9xyM7iLI

— Rishi Wadhera (@rkwadhera) January 7, 2020

Economists 'Surprised Americans Aren't Revolting' Over $8,000 Tax They Pay Each Year Due to For-Profit Healthcare System

Highlighting the thousands of dollars American households are forced to pay in healthcare costs that people in other wealthy countries save thanks to universal healthcare plans, two top economists wondered aloud this weekend why Americans have accepted increasingly high costs and poor health outcomes for decades.

At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in San Diego on Saturday, Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton said they were "surprised Americans aren't revolting against" the $8,000 per year that U.S. households pay to doctors, hospitals, health insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, and the rest of the for-profit healthcare system, compared to what people in other countries.

"A few people are getting very rich at the expense of the rest of us," Case said.

Case and Deaton compared the yearly costs to a poll tax, or head tax, because the costs apply to all Americans regardless of their ability to pay. Americans pay $8,000 a year more than what people in Switzerland pay to that country's system—the second-most expensive healthcare system in the world after the United States.

The payments made to the U.S. healthcare system are "like a tribute to a foreign power, but we're doing it to ourselves," Case said. ...

Case and Deaton, who are the authors of an upcoming book called Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, say skyrocketing healthcare costs over the past two decades have helped drive the rising number of deaths from opioid overdoses, alcohol-related diseases, and suicide.

"We can brag we have the most expensive healthcare. We can also now brag that it delivers the worst health of any rich country," Case said.

IMF boss says raise taxes on the rich to tackle inequality

Raising income tax on the wealthy will help close the growing gap between rich and poor and can be done without harming growth, the head of the International Monetary Fund has said. Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, said higher marginal tax rates for the better off were needed as part of a policy rethink to tackle inequality.

In a sign of how the IMF has moved away from the tax-cutting approach that once formed a central part of its policy advice, Georgieva said there needed to be a different approach to tackling what had become “one of the most complex and vexing challenges in the global economy”. ...

In the 1990s, the IMF was at the heart of the Washington consensus – a free-market approach to running economies that included the belief that tax cuts for the better off would have trickle down benefits through greater innovation and higher growth. The IMF functions as the global lender of last resort, bailing out countries in financial difficulty and issuing policy advice alongside its interventions.

But the IMF has shifted it stance amid evidence of weak growth, a concentration of wealth among the top 0.1% of the population, and a falling share of national output going to workers. In recent years, it has produced research disputing the Washington consensus belief that countries could have lower inequality or faster growth but not both.

Jimmy Dore: Obama Will Support Bernie If No Other Choice!

Joe Biden, Five Years Before Invasion, Said the Only Way of Disarming Iraq Is “Taking Saddam Down”

Former Vice President Joe Biden this week continued to maintain the fiction that he stood against the war in Iraq “the very moment” it began in 2003. The claim has been easily taken apart by fact checkers — Biden publicly supported the war before, during, and after the invasion — but a 1998 Senate hearing sheds additional light on his determination to confront Iraq over weapons of mass destruction.

In 1998, U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter resigned in protest and accused the international community of not giving him and his colleagues the support they needed to carry out their job in Iraq, which had agreed in 1991 to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile. He was called to testify before the Senate in September 1998, where Biden, who was then the highest-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations committee, grilled him. In the course of the questions, Biden made revealing remarks about where he stood on regime change in Iraq. ...

Biden told Ritter that no matter how thorough the inspections, the only way to eliminate the threat was to remove Saddam Hussein. “The primary policy is to keep sanctions in place to deny Saddam the billions of dollars that would allow him to really crank up his program, which neither you nor I believe he’s ever going to abandon as long as he’s in place,” Biden said, characterizing former President Bill Clinton’s administration’s policy. “You and I believe, and many of us believe here, as long as Saddam is at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam’s program relative to weapons of mass destruction. You and I both know, and all of us here really know, and it’s a thing we have to face, that the only way, the only way we’re going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we’re going to end up having to start it alone — start it alone — and it’s going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert taking this son of a — taking Saddam down,” Biden said. “You know it and I know it.” ...

During questioning, Biden mocked Ritter as “ol’ Scotty boy” and suggested that his demands — that the international community compel Iraq to cooperate with inspectors — if met, would give Ritter the unilateral authority to start a war in Iraq. Biden argued that such decisions belonged to higher-level officials. “I respectfully suggest they have a responsibility slightly above your pay grade, to decide whether or not to take the nation to war,” Biden said. “That’s a real tough decision. That’s why they get paid the big bucks. That’s why they get the limos and you don’t. I mean this sincerely, I’m not trying to be flip.” ...

Biden’s grilling of Ritter is important because it gives context to claims Biden later made: First, that when he voted in favor of the invasion of Iraq as a senator, he did not mean to vote for war, but hoped the resolution would empower inspectors to get back into Iraq and monitor the program. And second, that he never believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

JOE BIDEN: “When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well. I meant Medicare & Medicaid. I meant veterans’ benefits....And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a 3rd time & I tried it a 4th time.”https://t.co/TpoSdmjGhA pic.twitter.com/MIAx4nO9Qa

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) January 2, 2020

Aaron Maté: These are the only credible anti-war candidates in the race

'Biden Bait': New Warren Bankruptcy Reform Plan Reignites 2005 Fight With 2020 Rival

Elizabeth Warren, who spent decades as a bankruptcy law professor before becoming a U.S. senator, introduced her long-awaited plan to fix the country's bankruptcy system on Tuesday and reignited a 15-year-old fight with former Vice President Joe Biden, one of her rivals in the Democratic Party's presidential primary race.

Warren's first foray into national politics was not her 2012 campaign to represent the people of Massachusetts in the Senate; it was in 1995, when she was asked to advise the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. She spent the next 10 years fighting—ultimately unsuccessfully—against what would become the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.

The 2005 bill, which was backed by banks and credit card companies, is a key target of Warren's new plan. Several political observers and Warren supporters suggested Tuesday that Biden—who voted in favor of the legislation as a senator representing Delaware, a state that is notoriously home to many large financial institutions—is also in Warren's crosshairs.

Senate footage regarding the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill. Then-professor Warren (US Bankruptcy expert) debates Sen. Biden over who the bill serves.

Biden was the most vocal Dem to support this bill, most Dems — like Obama — voted no.

Warren serves the people, Biden serves the banks. pic.twitter.com/y9FVVtBbAM

— Adam Koenig (@KoenigAdam) January 7, 2020

More Than One Billion Animals Killed in Australia Wildfires Called a 'Very Conservative' Estimate

As Australia's catastrophic wildfires rage on with no end in sight, University of Sydney ecologist Chris Dickman said the number of animals killed in the blazes has topped one billion—a horrifying figure that the scientist described as a "very conservative" estimate.

Dickman told HuffPost late Monday that the original estimate of nearly 500 million animals killed was based solely on figures from the state of New South Wales (NSW) and excluded groups of animals that have been devastated by the wildfires, which have scorched 18 million acres of land, destroyed thousands of homes, and killed at least 25 people.

"The original figure—the 480 million—was based on mammals, birds, and reptiles for which we do have densities, and that figure now is a little bit out of date," Dickman said. "It's over 800 million given the extent of the fires now—in New South Wales alone."

When animals such as bats, frogs, and invertebrates are included in the total, Dickman said, "without any doubt at all" the death toll has exceeded a billion.

"Over a billion would be a very conservative figure," the ecologist said.

Stuart Blanch, scientist with World Wildlife Fund Australia, agreed with Dickman's assessment of over a billion animals lost to the fires.

"It's our climate impact and our obsession with coal that is helping wage war on our own country," Blanch said in an interview with HuffPost.

Louisiana issues permits for proposed complex that would double area's toxic emissions

The state of Louisiana has issued a series of key air quality permits for a gargantuan proposed petrochemical complex that would roughly double toxic emissions in its local area and, according to environmentalists, become one of the largest plastics pollution-causing facilities in the world.

The $9.4bn facility, owned by the Taiwanese chemicals firm Formosa Plastics, would consist of 14 separate plastics plants across 2,300 acres of land in St James parish, a largely African American community in the already heavily polluted area in southern Louisiana known as Cancer Alley.

Activists say the plant could release 13m tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, the equivalent of three coal-fired power plants, and would emit thousands of tonnes of other dangerous pollutants, including up to 15,400 pounds of the cancer causing chemical ethylene oxide.

The facility has been forcefully opposed by environmental groups and certain local campaigners.

he 16 permits issued by Louisiana’s state environment agency (LDEQ) essentially allow Formosa to begin construction, said the LDEQ spokesman Greg Langley. A spokeswoman for Formosa, which is operating the project under a subsidiary, FG LA, said the company would start “site preparation activities” in the first quarter of 2020. This first phase, including soil testing, could take up to a year to complete, the spokeswoman said.

The Coal Industry Is Dying in Spite of Trump

Here’s some not bad climate change news: Carbon emissions in the U.S. dropped in 2019, driven by a record reduction in the use of coal power.

Coal use dropped by a full 18% last year, according to a preliminary estimate from the Rhodium Group, a private research group that studies energy markets and climate policy. That caps off a decade in which domestic coal use was cut in half, as renewables and gas power picked up the slack. Mostly thanks to the coal drop, carbon emissions in the power sector declined by 10%, a big turnaround from 2018, when they ticked up by 1.2%. And coal use dropped by just 5% in 2019.

The bad news: The rest of the economy — including the transportation and manufacturing sectors, and buildings — is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels.

Coal plants have closed in record numbers across the country even as the Trump administration tried to prop them up. President Donald Trump’s replacement for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan — which, though it was never implemented, would have shifted the energy sector away from coal — was designed to allow new coal plants to open and existing plants to run longer.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

'No War With Iran' Marches Set for Thursday Across US

Soleimani Strike Marks a Novel Shift in Targeted Killing, Dangerous to the Global Order

Pompeo’s Falsehood-Laden Briefing Echoed Uncritically by Media Outlets

Cable News Turns to Iraq War Flunkies Like Judith Miller for Iran Insight

Biden and Buttigieg Exemplify How Corporatism and ‘the Madness of Militarism’ Go Together

Red Lines: No war on Iran: How to revive the anti-war movement in the US

Joe Biden’s Role in Creating the Student Debt Crisis Stretches Back to the 1970s

US Border Officer Uses Nuremberg Defense to Explain Involvement in Separating Families

Stock Exposure Has Exploded at JPMorgan’s Federally-Insured Bank to $2.4 Trillion

Forget the nanny state, here comes the nanny employer

I didn't want to fly – so I took a cargo ship from Germany to Canada

Astronomers discover huge gaseous wave holding Milky Way's newest stars

Krystal and Saagar: Will Trump take Iran's off ramp?

Rising: Senior Sanders Advisor Chuck Rocha reveals Bernie's state by state path to victory

Rising: Is Biden delusional to think McConnell will work with him?

A Little Night Music

Al Perkins with Luther Tucker - Love Me Baby

Luther Tucker - Keep on Drinking

James Cotton with Luther Tucker - Worried Life Blues, Murder In The First Degree

Luther Tucker & The Ford Blues Band - Luther's Lament

Luther Tucker - Sad And Lonely

Luther Tucker - Tuck's Blues

James Cotton & Luther Tucker - Off The Wall

Luther Tucker w/Bayshore Bluesicians - Falling Rain

Luther Tucker & Charlie Musselwhite - Help Me

Charlie Musselwhite, Luther Tucker, Bobby Murray