Ten A Dozen Essential Ideas For Fixing The American Economy — Robert Reich

Robert Reich has completed, not his scheduled ten, but an even dozen videos succinctly expressing the great ideas essential to making the American economy more robust for all its participants and transforming American society into one more committed to equality of treatment of all its members under the law.

The 12 Videos appear (in reverse order) in the right-hand column of Reich's blog, and each video runs about 2-3 minutes. I can't think of a better way for an adult or adolescent American to spend about a half hour than in watching these videos. (In addition to his insight, Reich has a great hand as a cartoonist, which he exercises along with voiceovers on the current topic. You'll have fun learning some excellently framed talking points!)

Guardian Reports Environmentalists Say Shell Strategy Risks Catastrophic Climate ChangeLeaked internal Shell documents reveal Shell believes temperature will rise 4°C, then 6°C above today's

Terry Macalister at The Guardian reports that internal Royal Dutch Shell business planning documents have been revealed which show that Shell knows its current plans will cause Earth's surface temperature increase to exceed by 2 to 4 degrees Celsius the internationally agreed-upon maximum of 2°C, the level above which global climate change could easily run out of control. Shell has not yet publicly admitted that its production plans assume this larger temperature rise. Until the matter of this known deception is resolved, I recommend we do not believe any public statements by Shell. I suppose we should have known that one or more big oil companies would make matters as difficult as possible.

Interior Approves Shell Plan To Drill Arctic Starting In July

Servicing the Public
for Over 100 Years

In what can only be called an ill-considered but well-hidden hand‑job for Shell, the Department of the Interior announced on Monday its approval of Shell's plan to drill in Chukchi Sea in the Arctic Ocean, beginning almost immediately: July. The approval is conditional on Shell's obtaining all legally required permits to drill (a virtual certainty), authorizations under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (surely already a done deal) and all required Biological Opinions under the Endangered Species Act (I'm afraid I don't know what this means, but I do know it is surely no obstacle to what one of the world's largest megacorp's wants to do). The precipitousness of implementation deals a blow to all organized efforts to prevent the drilling or mitigate the inevitable damage both to the environment in the Arctic and, perhaps more significantly, to the global climate. (Do you think they even noted your signature on an online petition opposing this action? Me either.)

The Earthjustice article linked above has a good summary of the damage such drilling could easily cause:

...

... The project Interior approved today is bigger, dirtier, and louder than any previous plan, calling for more sound disturbances and harassment of whales and seals, more water and air pollution, and more vessels and helicopters. It also runs the risk of a catastrophic oil spill that could not be cleaned in Arctic waters.

The company’s accident-filled efforts to drill in 2012 demonstrate that neither Shell nor any other company is ready to drill in the Arctic Ocean. Shell proved that again just last month when its Discoverer drillship was held in port due to pollution control failures. Drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean also takes us in the wrong direction on combating climate change.

...

I have done contract IT work for Shell (more than a decade ago; I would not accept such work today) and I knew some of the people involved in designing the more ambitious drilling projects. Those at Shell are neither better nor worse than typical in the industry, but it is the nature of things that they appear to be self-assured to the point of arrogance about the outcomes of their work, in deep water and/or extreme weather. What could possibly go wrong? (*cough* BP Deepwater Horizon *cough*) Apart from that,  as of a couple years ago, it looked as if all the big oil companies, including Shell, were partnering with one of two Russian companies, both of which have bad track records regarding safety and environment.

Shell Kulluk Rig Damaged, Mar. 2013
(credit: National Geographic)

I'll let you know if I find any letter-writing campaigns or petitions to sign, but I suspect it's a done deal.

Clearing The Desktop

In fact, in Ubuntu Linux 12.04 with the Gnome 3 shell, the default desktop is completely clear, and many of us keep it that way in the interest of sanity. So I'm speaking only metaphorically...

• Tesla Announces New Product To ‘Fundamentally Change The Way The World Uses Energy’ (H/T ellroon. The new product is a battery.)
  
  
• Judge Halts Work On Maryland Pipeline Due To Environmental Concerns (Don't get your hopes up; the ruling is by a Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge, and I don't doubt the pipeline company has an appeals court judge securely in its pocket somewhere up the line.)
  
  
• Hawaii Will Soon Get All Of Its Electricity From Renewable Sources (Give me a few minutes to pack my bags, and a few more to earn another $1m or so to live on in Hawaii for a couple of years...)
  
  
• NSA Phone Data Collection Program Revealed By Edward Snowden Ruled Illegal (What a surprise! [/irony])
  
  
• French Lawmakers Approve Sweeping Expansion Of Spying Programs (Following in America's footsteps, despite all typical wisdom of the French...)
  
  
• Can Bernie Sanders Break Through the Status Quo?
  He may have already done it, with his unapologetic defense of social democracy and assaults on the “billionaire class.”
  
  

♫ Once... I Had... A Secret Law... ♫The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Environment

NOT the logo, but should be...

If I have been absent from the blog a lot, it is because I've been reading Naomi Klein's prizewinning book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. The book is utterly essential reading for anyone who calls him- or herself an environmentalist, but I'd be the last to deny it is challenging reading on several levels. Especially on point regarding the environmental consequences of the TPP are two chapters: chapter 9, Blockadia: The New Climate Warriors; and chapter 10, Love Will Save This Place: Democracy, Divestment and the Wins So Far. It may be possible to read these chapters independently without starting at the beginning of the book; I'm not sure because I so strongly feel you should read the entire book.

Leaders of TPP member states
(courtesy Wikipedia))

Reading the chapters led me to pursue more information on TPP on the web. Goodness knows there's both a lot of it, and not enough of it: the damned thing is being written in secret, from the public of the involved nations and (in America) from Congress, by 600 people who might politely be called corporate lobbyists... no environmentalists involved. But someone leaked an early version of specifically the environmental section of the draft, WikiLeaks published it in January 2014, and a team assembled from Sierra Club (SC), World Wildlife Federation (WWF) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published an analysis (.pdf), also in January 2014. This is surely not the final version, but it does include a comparison of two earlier versions of the environmental chapter. Believe me, it isn't pretty!

For background, you might want to read about the two decades of NAFTA, the only major trade agreement in town at the moment, and see how that has worked out. Back to TPP, here's a recent TechDirt article of possible interest, mostly about how the US thinks it can get around TPP's provisions... yes, the ones for which no one has been permitted to know the text... and an op‑ed by Sarah Rose at SFGate urging that TPP not be fast-tracked.

The whole thing sucks little green dog dicks. And I doubt we can stop it; TPTB have shown little interest in what the public thinks in any nation involved. But we have to try: democracy already means little enough, and IMO we are obliged to give it some help.

Owen Jones Interviews Naomi Klein On This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

Naomi Klein

Here is the interview. It begins with a presentation by Klein of the essentials of the book, and concludes with a Q-and-A session driven by Jones. I am increasingly convinced that Klein is one of the dozen most articulate people (journalists, scholars, activists... choose your own term for her) alive today; the result is not nearly as subjectively interminable as its 1½-hour length might suggest. And unless you are a professional in some environment-related field, I can pretty much guarantee you that you will learn something.

Once you have viewed the interview, please find and read the book. The further into the book I read, the more I am convinced it is one of the essential books of our time. (One reviewer compared its impact to that of Silent Spring; most of you are probably too young to have encountered it when it was new, but I agree This Changes Everything is comparably powerful and, one can hope, influential.

Can't afford to run out and buy a copy? Public libraries seem to have it, though demand is high and you may have to queue up. Or you can try Amazon; several of their many affiliate bookstores offer quite inexpensive used copies... my experience on the one in my hand is that "Used - Like New" meant exactly that. And of course fans of e-books can find one, probably at a good price. (I don't have an e-reader.)

(Once again, the YouTube video is one of those restricted to being visible only through its YouTube page; sorry about the additional click.)

AAH Report: EPA Announces Refineries Under-Reporting Air Pollution Emissions

From an article in airCurrent News, a publication of Air Alliance Houston:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined that flares at refineries and chemical plants emit about four times more volatile organic compounds (VOCs) a smog-forming air pollutant than previously reported.  EPA also found that Fluid Catalytic Cracking Units at refineries emit more than 10 times more hydrogen cyanide per year, releasing more than 3000 tons more of this powerful neurotoxin each year than previously reported, and more than one third the combined total of all hazardous air pollutants refineries reported to the Toxics Release Inventory in 2013.

Houston Ship Channel
on a crystal-clear day

The new EPA guidelines were prompted by a 2013 lawsuit by the Environmental Integrity Project on behalf of Air Alliance Houston, Community In-Power and Development, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services.  EPA revised its methodology for estimating emissions from flares used at various industries, including refineries and chemical plants after determining that they release four times more VOCs than reported by industry in the past.  VOCs contribute to smog and include benzene and other carcinogens.  Although EPA is apparently informing reporters that these emission factors should not be used to estimate VOC releases from flares and oil and gas drilling sites, the agency has not made this distinction in the guidance it has published today or in previous versions.

“The VOC air pollution plume from flares is four times larger than we thought, and that multiplies their contribution to health problems,” said Eric Schaeffer, Executive Director of the Environmental Integrity Project.  “Based on this new data, flares deserve more attention from state and local regulators.”

...

Ah, yes, the lying bastards diligent corporate citizens hard at work for their own profit your city's benefit. Please read the rest of the article, if you survive the air you breathe long enough to reach the end...

Naomi Klein On Oil Prices, Fossil Fuel Divestment, Better Climate Movement

Some of you know that my admiration for Naomi Klein is such that when my attempt to place a hold at Houston Public Library on her newest book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, failed, I actually promptly purchased the book, far out of my planned sequence of books to buy. Knowing that, it should hardly surprise you that I found an interview of Klein by May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, at a conference on divestment as an activist tactic, to be well worth reading. The interview is in three parts, dealing with oil prices, how to build a better climate movement, and fossil fuel divestment.

And if any old geezer (like me) says "they don't make activists like they used to," point them to Ms. Klein as an example: no, they don't make 'em like they used to; they make 'em better.

Breaking: Obama Vetoes Keystone XL

This just happened; Meteor Blades at Kos gives the scant detail known now. GOPer override attempt expected by Mar. 3 at the latest. Thank the President and urge him to maintain a stiff spine in this matter; Keystone XL is one of the dirtiest fossil fuel pipelines ever proposed.

(FWIW, and to me it's worth something, Sierra Club was first in my mailbox informing me of the veto. Other environmental org's got around to it within a few minutes, but Michael Brune broadcast it immediately.)

Tesla Gigafactory In Nevada Aims To Be A Game‑Changer In EV Market

Here's a very short excerpt from Juan Cole's article on Tesla's announcement of a new factory in Nevada:

...

Clean Technica points out that the battery-making factory is on track to reduce battery prices by 30% by 2017, making EVs indisputably cheaper than fossil fuel-driven internal combustion, at less than $100 per kilowatt hour. (Of course, if externalities are taken into account, like the cost of environmental disruption caused by global warming, EVs are already far, far cheaper than gasoline engines. Moreover, if coupled with rooftop solar panels, i.e. with free fuel, their pay-off time is even quicker and households can cut tons of CO2 emissions each year). [Bolds mine. - SB]

Not only will the gigafactory lead to cheaper auto batteries, it will also lead to better battery storage for home solar panels so you can store solar power and use it at night.

...

Roadster (source: Wikipedia)

This is a companion to some steps Tesla has already taken, such as releasing their patents open-source fashion for "good faith" use. Needless to say, any activist environmentalist would love to switch to driving a Tesla exclusively with no delay and no annoying considerations like high price standing in the way of doing so: technologies available, open-source, to other makers and batteries actually capable of use in a practical EV combine to raise the rate at which the transition can happen considerably.

The thought of living long enough to replace my late father's 20-year-old (!!) Chevy with a practical EV at a cost I can manage is a very appealing notion. Elon Musk seems to change the level of the whole game not less often than once a year or so. Watch this space!

Where Does Republican Anti-Environmentalism Ultimately Come From? Economic Inequality, Says Krugman

This is one of Krugman's best, and that's saying something. He explores both the decline of environmental quality in America from the bipartisan days... Nixon was a committed environmentalist, and his presidency was a heyday of environmental protection legislation (not to mention some unrelated very unsavory things)... to the present day, in which exceedingly wealthy individuals and corporations can literally buy whatever legislation they want, legislation that allows them to pollute our air, water and land almost without limit. Krugman ties it all together in his usual lucid prose; please read the article.

The Real Bad News: Methane

I awoke this morning from a nightmare of witnessing the crash of an airliner. The real nightmare threatens a lot more people: methane vents are bubbling from the floor of the Atlantic off the East Coast.

Gotta go get my car fixed; gotta keep doing my two cents worth to pollute the atmosphere...

The One Imperial Power Left Standing, And The Planet It Is Standing On

Tom Engelhardt is, of course, pitching his book, The End of Victory Culture. But I believe he is also saying some profound things about a fundamental change in history, from the story of the rise and fall of empires, to the story of a single empire dominating the only planet humanity has... and contributing to the physical decline of that planet.

With luck, HPL will have the book. If not, it may be a while before I read it. Meanwhile, the linked essay is a good start.

Earth Has Its Day

Ever wonder why Earth is celebrated only one day of the year? Or why so many projection maps are not like this one?

I used to work with an Aussie (their own term, pronounced very much like Harriet's husband's name) at UT School of Public Health. She replaced the shared computer grad assistants' office world map (public health is very much an international study, and UTSPH had dozens of international students) with a south-on-top map. In every other respect, it was an ordinary Mercator projection world map... but the Land of Aus (again their term, pronounced just like the place the Wizard lived) was in the top hemisphere.

When I started to prepare an Earth Day post today, I went looking for such a map on Google Images. They are surprisingly scarce. Photos of Earth from space printed with the southern hemisphere on top are even scarcer, though those without labels may simply be turned over. You don't think we have a northern-hemisphere-centered cultural bias or something, do you? Surely not!

For a few years, a bit over a decade ago, I spent my Earth Days standing in the Houston Sierra Club tent in the Rice University stadium parking lot. We each used to stand three or four hours at a shift, chatting with passers-by about just what an urban Sierra Club does ("plenty!" is the answer; don't get me started). Now I wouldn't be able to stand on my own two feet (one natural; one being paid for on a time payment plan) for even one hour, and I've become a stay-at-home Sierran. But I do remember those days fondly, and the map above brings a smile to my face.

Moyers Interviews Anthony Leiserowitz On Climate Change

Leiserowitz is director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Moyers is one of the two best interviewers ever. (The late Studs Terkel was the other.) The issue is not so much climate change... a done deal, an issue that has been scientifically resolved for two decades... as how to communicate to the public just what can be done and how they can help in averting the worst consequences of climate change. Here is the interview... calm, rational, well-conceived and persuasive. Go watch it. Please!

The Putts Putz Stopped Here

... and probably not just the putz, but more than a few bucks, stopped here: Last weekend, Obama golfed with oil executives, at the very moment 40,000 protesters besieged the White House regarding the Keystone XL pipeline.

An old union song from almost a century ago came to my mind: Which Side Are You On? (YouTube, Pete Seeger) One could well ask Obama that question, based not only on his campaign promises and inaugural speech, but even on the climate change references in his State of the Union speech... and I, at least, would not feel a great deal of confidence if he were to answer, "Yours!"

It's time to prove that, Mr. President. Stop playing with the petroleum pro's. Stop contributing to climate change!

Fighting Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline, Sierra Club Engages In First-Ever Civil Disobedience - UPDATED

Amy Goodman, publishing on truthdig, has the story. An excerpt from Goodman's post:

For the first time in its 120-year history, the Sierra Club engaged in civil disobedience, the day after President Barack Obama gave his 2013 State of the Union address. The group joined scores of others protesting the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which awaits a permitting decision from the Obama administration. The president made significant pledges to address the growing threat of climate change in his speech. But it will take more than words to save the planet from human-induced climate disruption, and a growing, diverse movement is directing its focus on the White House to demand meaningful action.

The Keystone XL pipeline is especially controversial because it will allow the exploitation of Canadian tar sands, considered the dirtiest oil source on the planet. One of the leading voices raising alarm about climate change, James Hansen, the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote of the tar sands in The New York Times last year, “If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.” New research by nonprofit Oil Change International indicates that the potential tar-sands impact will be even worse than earlier believed. Because the proposed pipeline crosses the border between the U.S. and Canada, its owner, TransCanada Corp., must receive permission from the U.S. State Department.

...

I am long since not a participant in the Sierra Club leadership (though I am still a member and strong supporter of the Club), but I can say with some confidence that the first-ever decision to engage in civil disobedience was doubtless controversial within the leadership. Sierra Club is huge, powerful, sometimes unwieldy, and inevitably a synthesis of diverse factions that run the gamut of styles of environmental activism. No, this was almost certainly not easy. But Sierra Club was only one of dozens of org's engaging in the protests, and the issue couldn't be weightier from the standpoint of environmental consequences if the pipeline goes through.

Search Google Images on 'tar sands'.

Obama, meanwhile, is about as stalwart as... well, as a politician; what can I say. Opinions about his environmentalist credentials vary widely within the community. I, for one, am not impressed. As Dave Lippman said in a broadcast email today, he is "better than Romney." That's not exactly a ringing endorsement, and it's the most I can say about his action (or inaction, or wrong action) on this particular issue.

Stay tuned...

UPDATE: Here's the first of doubtless many shockers: the pipeline has holes in it. Here's Emma Pullman at SumOfUs.org, in a list email:

20-year-old Isabel Brooks and two of her friends locked themselves inside a segment of the Keystone XL pipeline -- a controversial pipeline being built to carry toxic tar sands oil to the US coast for export -- to protest its construction. While inside the pipe, they discovered something shocking: there are already holes in the Keystone XL pipeline, created by faulty welding.

But moments after snapping a photo of the light coming into the supposedly airtight pipe, Isabel was arrested and held for 24 days in prison. An hour after her arrest, TransCanada laid that segment of pipeline in the ground without inspecting it.

...

The email goes on to say that TransCanada pipeline contractors hire their own pipeline inspectors. Regrettably this is not unusual in the "awl bidness" (as Texans often pronounce it). They just. don't. give. a. damn.

North Dakota Is Fracked... Poisoning Farm Animals And People

Read about it in Elizabeth Royte's article at The Nation. Here's what happened at one ranch near a fracking site:

...

Ambient air testing by a certified environmental consultant detected elevated levels of benzene, methane, chloroform, butane, propane, toluene and xylene—compounds associated with drilling and fracking, and also with cancers, birth defects and organ damage. [Rancher Jacki Schilke's] well tested high for sulfates, chromium, chloride and strontium; her blood tested positive for acetone, plus the heavy metals arsenic (linked with skin lesions, cancers and cardiovascular disease) and germanium (linked with muscle weakness and skin rashes). Both she and her husband, who works in oilfield services, have recently lost crowns and fillings from their teeth; tooth loss is associated with radiation poisoning and high selenium levels, also found in the Schilkes’ water.

State health and agriculture officials acknowledged Schilke’s air and water tests but told her she had nothing to worry about. Her doctors, however, diagnosed her with neurotoxic damage and constricted airways. “I realized that this place is killing me and my cattle,” Schilke says. She began using inhalers and a nebulizer, switched to bottled water, and quit eating her own beef and the vegetables from her garden. (Schilke sells her cattle only to buyers who will finish raising them outside the shale area, where she presumes that any chemical contamination will clear after a few months.) “My health improved,” Schilke says, “but I thought, ‘Oh my God, what are we doing to this land?’”
...

What, indeed. So is it just in North Dakota?

...

Healthy Cows

In Louisiana, seventeen cows died after an hour’s exposure to spilled fracking fluid. (Most likely cause of death: respiratory failure.) In north central Pennsylvania, 140 cattle were exposed to fracking wastewater when an impoundment was breached. Approximately seventy cows died; the remainder produced eleven calves, of which only three survived. In western Pennsylvania, an overflowing waste pit sent fracking chemicals into a pond and a pasture where pregnant cows grazed: half their calves were born dead. The following year’s animal births were sexually skewed, with ten females and two males, instead of the usual 50-50 or 60-40 split.

...

And in Ohio, which is IMHO full of good people, they're raising holy Hell about fracking.

So how much fracking fluid does it take, per well? And what do they do with it when it's done the job?

...

Fracking Waste Pond,
Wise Co., TX

Fracking a single well requires up to 7 million gallons of water, plus an additional 400,000 gallons of additives, including lubricants, biocides, scale and rust inhibitors, solvents, foaming and defoaming agents, emulsifiers and de-emulsifiers, stabilizers and breakers. About 70 percent of the liquid that goes down a borehole eventually comes up—now further tainted with such deep-earth compounds as sodium, chloride, bromide, arsenic, barium, uranium, radium and radon. (These substances occur naturally, but many of them can cause illness if ingested or inhaled over time.) This super-salty “produced” water, or brine, can be stored on-site for reuse. Depending on state regulations, it can also be held in plastic-lined pits until it evaporates, is injected back into the earth, or gets hauled to municipal wastewater treatment plants, which aren’t designed to neutralize or sequester fracking chemicals (in other words, they’re discharged with effluent into nearby streams).

...

I don't know how many ways I can say this: recovery of ever more challenging deposits of fossil fuels, in this case oil and gas, is killing the biosphere. We can have the remaining petroleum to burn in our inefficient cars, or we can have air safe to breathe, water safe to drink, and... yes... food safe to eat. We can't have both. Fracking has got to stop. Just say NO... frack NO!

As MA Gov, Rmoney Raided State Environmental Funds To Pay For Football Rally

From Mike Ludwig of Truthout...

Forget tailgating, Mitt Romney went all out when the New England Patriots went to the Super Bowl in 2005. Romney, then governor of Massachusetts, diverted $45,000 from the state's Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) to hold a send-off rally for the [Patriots] football team ...

Five days after the rally, four high school students were struck by a pickup truck in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. School officials blamed the accident on poorly plowed roads. Governor Romney blamed the DCR ... and quickly fired DCR Commissioner Katherine Abbott ... .

Surely the word "Recreation" in the department name is not intended to mean "pro football rallies." But this wasn't Rmoney's first run-in with the DCR; read the linked article. Here's another assessment...

...

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a nonpartisan alliance of local, state and federal environmental resource professionals, places at least some of the blame for the accident on political games and Romney's decision to divert public funds to pay for the Patriots' rally. The group says the fiasco is a prime example of Romney's "take-no-prisoners" management style ...

"He approached governance like a hostile takeover and this resulted in gutted agencies, crippling reorganizations and poor morale among workers," said New England PEER Director Kyla Bennett, a former enforcement attorney with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). ...

...

(Bolds mine.) Please read the rest. Rmoney as governor consistently, one might say relentlessly, acted to the detriment of the environment and of public employees. How could anyone justify putting somebody in charge of government and the environment who detests the whole notion of government and doesn't give a good damn about the environment? Of course that doesn't work: it was never intended to work. In our era, the GOP sees its sole mission as making sure government doesn't work. And they're distressingly good at it.

There's only one solution. Charge Rmoney with misappropriation of state funds; convict him; dump him in a jail for a few years ($45,000 is almost certainly a felony). That would, at least temporarily, spare the nation's forests, lakes, rivers etc. the wanton destruction Rmoney would surely bring.

Who Will Tell The Sea?

TPM's Eric Lach:

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are circulating a bill which would limit their state agencies’ ability to calculate sea-rise levels, a proposal that one member of the state’s Coastal Resources Commission science panel has termed “bad science.”

The bill has not yet been introduced, but the language in the version being circulated would make the Division of Coastal Management the only state agency allowed to produce sea-level rise rates, and only at the request of the Coastal Resources Commission, and then only under the following conditions:

These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.

In other words, instead of taking into account global warming to predict higher seas, as expected by most scientists, the bill would have the state rely only on the historical record.

...

Who will explain to the ocean that the North Carolina legislature has ruled that it may not rise beyond specified levels?

I am creating a new label for this post, "Republicans Too Dumb for Words" ... and indeed I have no words for raw stupidity at this level.