(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Overnight News Digest for Wednesday, Nov 22 (Pre-Turkey edition) [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-11-23 Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, and JeremyBloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw. OND is a regular community feature on 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. Ack! So sorry! For some reason this failed to post last night... x Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce as figures in the new U.S. National Climate Assessment report, a thread pic.twitter.com/t18XNevOLu — John Bistline (@JEBistline) November 16, 2023 ..."Before Dallas, I was known as just Clint Hill," Hill told Radio Diaries. "After that, I've been known as the man who climbed onto the president's car. That six-second period in Dallas, it's not an easy thing to live with." ..."Eisenhower, when he would refer to us agents, that was just, 'Hey, agent!'" Hill recalled. "With Kennedy, he knew your first name. He knew if you were married. He knew if you had children. And he would stop, and he would talk to you. And so, we had the utmost respect for him." ...In the aftermath, Hill was riddled with guilt. In his book Five Days in November, he recalls accompanying Jacqueline Kennedy, who was still wearing her bloodstained suit, to Johnson's swearing-in aboard Air Force One. "As I look at her face, streaked with tears, her eyes so hollow and lifeless, a wave of guilt and shame washes over me," Hill recalls in the book. "How did I let this happen to her?" x Taylor Swift as Figure 21.9 (flood insurance rates in the Northeast) pic.twitter.com/DkMnMLxFQY — John Bistline (@JEBistline) November 16, 2023 Did the Kennedy assassination mark the beginning of America’s addiction to conspiracy theories? ...Comprised of our most distinguished public servants, the Warren Commission (headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren) concluded after hundreds of thousands of pages of testimony and physical evidence that a disturbed young man (Oswald) killed the president, and he acted alone. When issued on Sept. 24, 1964, the public overwhelmingly accepted its finding, but more than a half-century later, 60% changed their minds in favor of a conspiracy. Nor has controversy over the commission’s "sole gunman" verdict waned with the passage of time. At the 60th anniversary, expect a flurry of new evidence, new theories and even new witnesses to supplement the almost 1,500 books already written on the subject. Some 90% of these accounts promote conspiracy theories, most with Oswald as a "patsy" directed by deeper and sinister forces. The Warren report thus left behind an enduring legacy of mistrust in government. At the half-century mark, a remarkable fifth of conspiracy believers blamed "the government" (including the CIA) for JFK’s death. A large number have subsequently come to believe that government has been either involved in assorted other conspiracies – that 9/11 was a government setup, or that we lied about Iraq WMD to justify an invasion. ...My last meeting with them was at our house on Thanksgiving Day 1962. One year later, I sat in a car headed to an interrogation as a "known associate" of Lee Harvey Oswald. Mine was not the Gregory family’s only personal connection to the tragedy. My father, Pete, translated for Marina throughout the first five days after the assassination as the Secret Service tried to rule out a conspiracy. It was he who told Marina that Lee was dead. These qualifications give me the standing to opine on whether Oswald had the means, intellect and motive to shoot JFK, and he did so alone. x Ruhle: Last year people predicted we would be in a recession. Guess what? That did not happen. Unemployment near 50 year lows. Wages going up. Inflation is slowing. Thanksgiving prices are lower than last year pic.twitter.com/QUgQRN6WfJ — Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) November 22, 2023 x Travis Kelce as Figure 18.2 (intersectional vulnerabilities) pic.twitter.com/T5FHb8DDvF — John Bistline (@JEBistline) November 16, 2023 Ahead of international climate talks in Dubai in November, economists are updating estimates of the impact of global warming on the world economy, sometimes calculating down to a decimal place the hit to output in decades to come. But detractors say those numbers are the product of economic models that are not fit to capture the full extent of climate damage. As such, they can provide an alibi for policy inaction. ...At issue are the “integrated assessment models” (IAMs) that economists use to draw conclusions on anything from output losses to financial risk or the pricing of carbon markets. They rely on a theory of how demand, supply and prices interact throughout an economy to find a new balance after an outside shock – the so-called “general equilibrium” model developed by 19th century French economist Leon Walras. “But climate change is fundamentally different to other shocks because once it has hit, it doesn’t go away,” said Mr Thierry Philipponnat, author of a report by Finance Watch, a Brussels-based public interest NGO on financial issues. “And if the fundamental assumption is flawed, all the rest makes little sense – if any,” he told Reuters. x Ummm, the cover of the new UNEP report is very good. pic.twitter.com/B5l4D867uY — Zahra Hirji (@Zhirji28) November 21, 2023 Water, water… The [ Sites Reservoir] project has been somewhat scaled back since 2018 to ameliorate some of its environmental impacts, but its estimated cost hasn't come down significantly. The changes "moved it from a project that was catastrophic to one that is bad for the environment," Nelson says, "but it sure isn't a beneficial project." Nevertheless, as currently designed, Sites would consume the largest share of the $2.7-billion that state voters approved for surface water storage projects in 2014. Newsom and other Sites advocates have tried to justify the project with flagrantly misleading statistics. As Newsom said when announcing his certification, the reservoir would hold "up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water, enough for 3 million households’ yearly usage." That claim may have been accepted by some people who should know better, but it's fakery, pure and simple. First, suggesting that the reservoir's storage would serve "3 million households" is deceptive. As much as 80% of the water would be stored for the benefit of Central Valley growers, not urban residents. Moreover, while 1.5 million acre-feet of water (about 488 billion gallons) may be equivalent to the consumption of about 3 million households, it's not as if the entire capacity of Sites Reservoir would be available to serve the needs of all those families every year. The project managers say that annual deliveries would average only about 243,000 acre-feet a year, the equivalent of the usage of 490,000 households — if all the water were going to residential users. x Taylor Swift as Figure 22.8 (social vulnerability in the Southeast) pic.twitter.com/SFvgXMwP7x — John Bistline (@JEBistline) November 16, 2023 A new investigation from POLITICO shows that much of the water states agreed to save under new federally-funded contracts was already accounted for under cheaper, pre-existing agreements. The new contracts are based on prior deals that incentivize similar practices like fallowing fields or using water-efficient sprinklers; the only difference is Uncle Sam pays significantly more. That price hike could set an even higher bar for future water conservation. “This market, especially one with a premium [price], might create some perverse incentives,” said Kathryn Sorensen, a former head of Phoenix’s water department. Take California: POLITICO found that at least a third of the state’s conservation commitment to last May’s deal comes from water that was already available under prior, less expensive agreements. … Similar stories around the states raise the possibility that, rather than helping the Southwest adapt to a drier future, the Biden administration’s IRA drought spending could instead drive up the cost of the future water conservation. That’s a problem as states are still under the gun to negotiate a long-term deal to bring down their Colorado River water use. x Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce as figures in the new U.S. National Climate Assessment report, a thread pic.twitter.com/t18XNevOLu — John Bistline (@JEBistline) November 16, 2023 Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, was just 14 when he met President John F. Kennedy. Roughly two hours later, Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. ...Hearing Kennedy inside the ballroom before shaking the president's hand planted a seed. All the young Williams cared about back then was baseball, but as he listened to the 46-year-old Kennedy, defining America as “the keystone in the arch of freedom,” he was inspired and thought to himself he, too, could “be a leader.” “He didn’t seem that much older than me. And I thought to myself, as one person, I can maybe do what he’s doing,” the conservative congressman said of the Democratic president. “He did touch people and young people related to him.” x Taylor Swift as Figure 27.1 (atmospheric rivers and extreme precipitation) pic.twitter.com/jtSQuJjlHI — John Bistline (@JEBistline) November 16, 2023 [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/23/2207457/-Overnight-News-Digest-for-Wednesday-Nov-22-Pre-Turkey-edition?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web 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/