(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Overnight News Digest for August 24, 2022 ("It is easier to ask forgiveness" edition) [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2022-08-24 OND is a regularon Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments. Last night’s primary elections had some good news, and some bad news. Pat Ryan swept the special eleciton in NY-19, surprising all the pundits who have been predicting/creating a “red wave”, which looks more and more like a blue tsunami x Choice was on the ballot. Freedom was on the ballot, and tonight choice and freedom won. We voted like our democracy was on the line because it is. We upended everything we thought we knew about politics and did it together.#NY19, it will be my honor to serve you in Congress. pic.twitter.com/BsPKlLGqE0 — Pat Ryan 🇺🇸 (@PatRyanUC) August 24, 2022 x It's not just what topic to make focal (abortion) that @PatRyanUC nailed; it's how to frame it. Across testing we've seen that "protect our freedoms" is our most effective rebuttal to oppo AND articulation of what we're for. /1 https://t.co/zuW9JLQ3gj — Anat Shenker-Osorio (@anatosaurus) August 24, 2022 My NY State Senator, Allesandra Biaggi, lost her long-shot bid to unseat corporate Dem Sean Maloney for NY-17 Congressional District. But she’s not going away: "Transformational work takes time. ... It's not for naught. It's the beginning of something really big and great." x From @Biaggi4NY's concession speech in #NY17 a few minutes ago. "Transformational work takes time. ... It's not for naught. It's the beginning of something really big and great." pic.twitter.com/QRdty3aBaG — Hunter Walker (@hunterw) August 24, 2022 And I would LOVE to see this SCIENTIST elected to Congress (and take out one of the skeeziest sitting members of the House, to boot!) x Rebekah Jones just won her primary for Florida's 1st Congressional District. She was the scientist fired by DeSantis for exposing his Covid fraud. Jones will face Rapey McForehead, also known as Matt Gaetz, in this November's election. As a bonus, she's not a rapist. pic.twitter.com/gWVdAjVfDk — megs (@the_meghaning) August 24, 2022 Remember how the Infrastructure Bill and Build Back Better were supposed to be linked — passed together, at the same time, because the first one gave us leverage to get the “moderates” to vote for the second one? And the “moderates” said “No, pass the Infrastructure Bill ASAP and we promise we’ll vote for BBB later, sometime, for sure”, and then they proceeded to NOT do that? And Manchin finally came around for a shadow of the original BBB with lots of Fossil Fuel sweeteners thrown in, plus a promise of a later gutting of NEPA to make it easier to cram through pipelines that nobody wants? Well, surprisingly, a bunch of progressives are still upset at being screwed over, and are not actually in the mood to go gently into that good night for Senator Manchin and his dirty pipeline... It’s starting to become clear that the “side deal” to permit pipelines and other fossil fuel projects that was put forth by Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer as an accessory to the Inflation Reduction Act (aka the ‘climate bill’) faces tougher-than-expected sledding in the Congress. Some of us started lobbying against the giveaways it proposed to the oil industry even before the IRA was signed, but now it appears that the agitation is growing—growing enough that what activists are calling a “dirty deal” may in fact be in danger. I talked at length this afternoon with Ro Khanna, who chairs the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Environment, and he was quite blunt. He called the side deal a gutting of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and said “that’s not going to happen. You’re not going to get progressive support for that.” In fact, he promised a September 15 hearing of his subcommittee to explore whether or not the fossil fuel industry actually wrote the language of the deal: an early draft circulating on Capitol Hill literally bore a watermark from the American Petroleum Institute. Who really cares about climate change? Turns out, it’s actually a MAJORITY of Americans… 80–90% of Americans underestimate the prevalence of support for major climate change mitigation policies and climate concern. While 66–80% Americans support these policies, Americans estimate the prevalence to only be between 37–43% on average. Thus, supporters of climate policies outnumber opponents two to one, while Americans falsely perceive nearly the opposite to be true. Further, Americans in every state and every assessed demographic underestimate support across all polices tested. Preliminary evidence suggests three sources of these misperceptions: (i) consistent with a false consensus effect, respondents who support these policies less (conservatives) underestimate support by a greater degree; controlling for one’s own personal politics, (ii) exposure to more conservative local norms and (iii) consuming conservative news correspond to greater misperceptions. x We label this case of pluralistic ignorance a "False Social Reality" as it met two notable criteria: 1) The misperception was society-wide and present in every demographic we assessed 2) The magnitude of misperception is so large as to invert a super majority to just a minority — Gregg Sparkman (@GreggRSparkman) August 23, 2022 x Turns out, a lot more people are concerned about climate change than we think. How do we bridge that gap? By talking about it, of course! Read this new study by @GreggRSparkman @nathanielgeiger @elkeweber, visual by @climatecentral and see thread below. https://t.co/yt8n6mWP6r pic.twitter.com/Q8MkbkqcGs — Prof. Katharine Hayhoe (@KHayhoe) August 24, 2022 And then there’s EVs. Conservatives do like to go on and on about how low the demand for electric vehicles is, how they’re just so expensive and they have no range and wait, what? Plugin vehicles continue to be all the rage in the Chinese auto market. Plugins got back into the fast lane in July, growing 112% year over year (YoY). They scored over 505,000 registrations last month. Plugin hybrids (PHEVs) surged 174% year over year (YoY). They reached a record 137,000 registrations in July. Their growth even beat the growth of BEVs, which was a paltry 96%…. Share-wise, despite July showing another strong performance, plugin vehicles hit “only” 27% market share, since the overall passenger car market surged 30%. That surge was thanks to the start of the tax cut on most fossil fuel models (cars with an engine size lower than 2000 cc and priced below 300,000 CNY, or $44,000, got their registration tax reduced by half). ...Another measure of the importance of this market is the fact that China alone represented some 60% of global plugin registrations last month. And it’s not just good for cars — electrification is going to give a big jolt to the shipping industry: Crucially, this research demonstrates that electrified containerships have an economic advantage over the internal combustion engine (ICE), even when the costs of environmental and health damages are excluded. ...The authors show that at current battery prices, the electrification of trade routes less than 1,500 km is economical, and has minimal impact to ship carrying capacity. And when the authors include environmental costs, the economical range skyrockets to 5,000 km. ...The average cost of lithium-ion batteries has plummeted 89% since 2010, and is expected to reach $50 per kWh in the near future. Assuming a battery cost of $100 per kWh, the TCP for a battery-electric containership is already lower than that of an ICE equivalent, for routes less than 1,000km. And when battery prices reach $50 per kWh, which is predicted for the near future, electrified ships will be cost-effective on routes as long as 5,000km. Ooh la la! France will now pay you €4,000 (nearly US $4,000) to swap your old polluting car for a cleaner, more efficient, and more city-appropriate electric bicycle. That marks a major increase in the incentive designed to improve French cities. ...Pedal bicycles are also included in the generous incentive package, though e-bikes are contributing to one of the biggest jumps in cycling ever across Europe and much of the world. ...The concept of walkable cities that are designed to prioritize the mobility of people over cars has led to calls for changes across much of Europe and the US. In many cases that means repurposing car lanes and on-street parking into dedicated lanes for public transportation or bike lanes, as well as expanding sidewalks and pedestrian streets. Not to be outdone, California announces it will go to 100% EV sales… in just 12 short years! (Sigh) x Breaking News: California detailed a sweeping ban on the sale of new gasoline cars by 2035, a move that could speed a global transition to electric vehicles. https://t.co/VUsAQbVlgP — The New York Times (@nytimes) August 24, 2022 Meanwhile, in climate chaos news: Across the country, wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense as climate change dries out forests. Scientists and public health advocates are also increasingly recognizing the danger posed not just by the flames themselves, but the smoke that they generate. Smoke from megafires in the West has blocked out the sun as far as Washington, D.C.; asthma cases and deaths from wildfire smoke now affect more people in the Eastern U.S. than in the West. But these impacts are not distributed equally. Communities of color and low-income residents in urban areas already shoulder disproportionate air pollution burdens from sources like truck traffic and industrial waste sites. But Indigenous communities, which tend to be located in rural areas closest to blazes and often have difficulties accessing air filters and upgrading homes to keep out the smallest particles, can be more vulnerable to the impacts of intensifying pollution from wildfires than other groups. Last year, researchers at the University of California examined the impact of wildfires on communities around the state over the past 20 years. Their study found that areas with a higher percentage of Indigenous residents experienced more frequent and severe fires. In the most highly affected areas, the Indigenous population was about three times higher than the average census tract. Even the topography of reservations like Mille Lacs can concentrate dangerous levels of wildfire haze, threatening tribes’ rights to hunt, fish, and use their land guaranteed under treaties with the U.S. government. x According to statistical forecasting next years El Nino could be the strongest of this entire decade. Prepare for hell...https://t.co/BF9MX7DUPQ — David Ullrich (@DavidUllrich202) August 23, 2022 x The massive heat wave & drought China is experiencing may end up being the worst in recorded history. But turn on the corp news & it’s barely mentioned. George Monbiot calls it The Great Silence. It’s a failure of communication that can’t be rivaled by anything in human history. https://t.co/px9Qe2r74A — Adam McKay (@GhostPanther) August 24, 2022 Nearly every single news outlet features somebody prominently whining about Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness. Oh, the unfairness! I’m not even going to link to the giant pile of whining (mostly along the lines of: Loan relief is only good when it goes to giant corporations who don’t actually NEED it), but I WILL link to the snarky twitter rejoinders: x So the party led by the guy who literally and repeatedly refused to pay his debts and walked away from them despite supposedly being a billionaire is now big mad about debts being forgiven for millions of middle and lower income Americans? Got it. — Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) August 25, 2022 x Chuck Grassley has taken literally millions of dollars from taxpayers in farm bailout money over the years, paid by everyone else who didn't own a farm or who knew how not to lose money owning a farm. UNFAIR https://t.co/OE1RZt2nKO — Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) August 24, 2022 x From the archives | But if President Lincoln were to free the slaves—a preposterous idea—how would that be fair to slaves who risked life and limb to escape or who actually bought their emancipation the old-fashioned way: through hard work? The Editorial Board, 1863 — New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 24, 2022 x Forgiven PPP loans Marjorie Taylor Greene: $183,504 Boebert: $233,305 Catholic Church: $3.5 billion Joel Osteen: $4.4 million Tom Brady: $960,855 GOP should slink away in shame for attacking Biden for forgiving $10,000 of student debt But they won’t cuz they have no shame — Lindy Li (@lindyli) August 25, 2022 x Marjorie Taylor Greene had $180,000 in PPP loans forgiven. https://t.co/f1BszMXFbR — MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) August 24, 2022 x Speaking of debts being forgiven, will we ever find out who paid off Brett Kavanaugh’s $92,000 country club balance, $200,000 in credit card debt, and $1,200,000 mortgage, buying themselves a Supreme Court justice — and the 5th vote to overturn Roe v. Wade? — Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) August 25, 2022 x Trump saves millions in property taxes by owning a dozen goats & pretending Bedminster is a farm, but GOP wants you to believe relieving student debt is a handout. @GOP — NoelCaslerComedy (@caslernoel) August 24, 2022 x Donald Trump has declared bankruptcy six times. https://t.co/dnSzhtWIdm — The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) August 24, 2022 x The two big takeaways from the student loan announcement: 1. Monthly payments are capped to 5% of discretionary income. 2. No interest accrual with monthly payments, effectively canceling interest so you only pay the principal. This is huge for millions of low income Americans. pic.twitter.com/tl5Ek1eUt7 — Donna Imam (@donnaimamTX) August 24, 2022 And we’ll give Joe the last word: x REPORTER: Is this unfair to people who paid their student loans or chose not to take out loans? BIDEN: Is it fair to people who, in fact, do not own multi-billion-dollar businesses if they see one of these guys getting all the tax breaks? Is that fair? What do you think? pic.twitter.com/HA9LzLBMSC — JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) August 24, 2022 You seriously can’t make this stuff up: They’re banning a book by the (black) man the school is named after: x Here’s more on George Dawson and Dawson Middle, once featured on @Oprah. She may need to update this.https://t.co/pAGJHtdhoN — Southlake Together (@Southlake4All) August 22, 2022 And finally, if you live in or around NYC, you might want to check this out: [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/24/2118631/-Overnight-News-Digest-for-August-24-2022-It-is-easier-to-ask-forgiveness-edition Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/