Help! My Vegan Dog And Atheist Cat Can't Agree On Vacation Plans! Tabs For Wed., July 10, 2024.

It's your morning news roundup!

Strategy! Tabs gif by Yr Martini Ambassador

President Joe Biden last night welcomed leaders of NATO countries to the Washington summit meeting marking the 75th anniversary of the post-WW II military alliance, and welcomed Sweden and Finland as the two most recent members to join. Biden also announced that the US and other NATO countries would provide Ukraine with additional air defense systems, and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, citing his leadership of the alliance as it has opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall says that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Congressional Black Caucus giving their solid support to Biden struck him as “the first thing that made me think Joe Biden will weather this storm and remain the Democrats’ candidate for President.” [TPM]

Fed Chair Jerome Powell testified to the Senate Banking Committee that the US is “no longer an overheated economy” and that the “labor market appears to be fully back in balance.” He added, however, that he didn’t want anyone to think that means there’ll be an interest rate cut right away, so we suppose we’ll have to wait for the Fed’s Midichlorian count determines who is The One to bring balance to the economy. [Reuters]

Some shithead apparently tried to carjack one of two deputy US marshals sitting in unmarked cars while guarding the home of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor last week. The shithead walked up to one of the cars and pointed a gun at the lawman, who fired back four times, wounding the shithead, who was arrested after being hospitalized. It doesn’t appear the shithead was targeting Sotomayor, or that he was even particularly sentient. [Daily Beast]

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) said at the “National Conservatism Conference” Tuesday that America is a “Christian nation,” and that means “some will say that I am advocating Christian Nationalism. And so I do." So brave and fashy! At previous iterations of the conference, Hawley has invoked antisemitic tropes about “cosmopolitan elites,” and explained that a leftist war on masculinity is why good men are driven to watch porn and play videogames. [New Republic via Yahoo News]

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) have asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to assign a special prosecutor to investigate all those really generous gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, just in case there might be any eensy-weensy violations of ethics and tax laws. [CBS News]

Since the US is ramping up its investments in clean energy (yay!) but at only about half the rate we need to in order to meet our Paris goals (oh no!), law professors Alexandra Klass of the University of Michigan and Hannah Wiseman of Penn State have a creative suggestion. To avoid NIMBY conflicts, how about we massively build out new renewable energy — wind, solar, grid scale storage batteries, maybe more — on America’s all-too available “marginal land,” like “retired mines, closed landfills, former industrial facilities, brownfield sites, and depleted or unproductive farmland.” Some areas that were formerly home to retired gas or coal plants would already have grid connections and power line infrastructure that could be repurposed, and the Inflation Reduction Act offers sizeable tax incentives to clean energy development in low-income communities, especially those that previously relied on fossil energy (and in many cases, were poisoned by it.) Some states already help with cleaning up and redeveloping contaminated sites, too. That could be a whole bunch of win-win-wins piled on top of each other! [Heatmap News]

Another Heatmap story (I don’t know how many free views nonsubscribers get) about how Minneapolis is about to start one of the nation’s first municipal carbon removal projects, using a “biomass pyrolizer” that locks the carbon from tree branches and clippings into “biochar,” a kind of charcoal that stays stable for hundreds of years and can be mixed with soil to improve crop yields, among other uses — even filtering nasty stuff out of stormwater. Neato! [Heatmap again]

More climate nice: a pilot project to cover irrigation canals with solar panels is close to completion on tribal land in Arizona. A half-mile long section of canal owned by the Gila River Indian Community south of Phoenix will start delivering 1.3 megawatts of solar power to the community while also shading the canal, reducing evaporation of the water and inhibiting growth of algae. Funding from — let’s say it together, kids! — Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, among other grants. Construction of a similar installation is getting underway this year in California. [Canary Media]

I swear he fell asleep trying to grab the bandage and pull it off.

Time for a happy Thornton update! As I let you know in June, my big loveable doofus cat had to have one toe on his left hind foot removed for a biopsy; it was a tumor, but the “margins” were clean and the vet is satisfied that the cancer was unlikely to have spread. We’ll go forward with regular periodic checkups.

A brazen demonstration of Thornton’s foot-chewing pose. (No such chewing was tolerated in this instance.)

Thornton, being very clever and flexible but lacking any understanding of convalescence, figured out how to stretch out his leg far enough that he could reach past the edge of the Cone of Shame and chew off his bandage, then lick and chew at the incision enough to reopen the wound. He had to have a second surgery, removing a bit more bone from what was left of that toe. Poor dope. Discovery: a bit of Bitter Apple spritzed on the new bandages discouraged chewing.

After a few weeks of him hating me for squirting pain meds in his mouth from a plastic syringe and not letting him tear up his foot again, he is now free of both Cone and bandage, yay! He’s been doing a lot of post-Cone remedial grooming of his fur.

Sometime when he’s not asleep I’ll post a pic of his weird Frankenstein three-toed foot (hidden from view in the pic below) for you. Or not.

Go give a hug, an ear-scritch, a nose boop, and/or a treat to the animal(s) in your life (if any), and have a fine Wednesday, you!

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