Loose Ends (179)

Way to go, Biden Administration:

Record Numbers of Migrants Arrested at Southern Border, With Two Million Annual Total in Sight

Record numbers of migrants are being arrested while crossing the southern U.S. border with Mexico, a sustained surge of single men and families from across Latin America either seeking asylum or work, according to new figures Monday from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Border Patrol agents have made about 1.82 million arrests at the southern border so far in the government’s fiscal year, which runs from October to the end of September. The number beats the record set last fiscal year, which was 1.66 million apprehensions in the year ending September 2021.

With about two months left in the agency’s fiscal year, full-year arrests are expected to break the two million mark for the first time, analysts said. . .

So another congressional delegation is visiting Taiwan (or as we old-timers still like to call it, “Free China,” or even “Nationalist China”), and Beijing responds with more drills and live fire exercises in the neighborhood. I think I see a strategy here: get China to use up all its munitions with successive congressional visits.

Is it real—or the Babylon Bee:

If Republicans Really Wanted to Fight Crime, They’d Support Climate Policy

Stoking public fears over violent crime is central to the conservative pitch. The annual summer spike in violent crime in many cities makes it easier for Republicans to harp on the problem, as voters become understandably worried by shootings. But the right has been noticeably silent on one salient dimension of the crime problem: Heat waves worsen violence, and to be safer from violent crime we need to address climate change. . . research has made the links to heat waves much clearer, suggesting that without intervention global warming will lead to more murders.

It’s real, in the once proud New Republic this week. I’ll meet them halfway: how about we build a new generation of solar-powered prisons.

Speaking of wind and solar power, the recently passed inflation-fighting climate bill was enacted without the usual process of committee hearings, government agency (like the CBO) and independent expert analysis, and extensive floor debate that have always accompanied major energy and environmental legislation. If they had passed the bill in the usual way, perhaps they might have considered this tidbit reported by the Los Angeles Times:

Princeton University researchers estimate that zeroing out U.S. carbon emissions by 2050 could require installing solar panels and wind turbines across more than 225,000 square miles, an area much bigger than California.

Say what?

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