Robot cooks are rapidly making their way into restaurant kitchens


Todd Wasserman@TODDWASSERMAN

WED, AUG 3 2022

KEY POINTS

Robots have been making their way into kitchens nationwide as the technology becomes cheaper and finding workers becomes harder.

Chipotle, Wing Zone, and White Castle are just some of the restaurant chains investing in robotics.

Stellar Pizza, founded by former SpaceX engineers, built a touchless machine that fits in the back of a truck that can make pizzas in under a minute.



A White Castle team member next to Miso Robotics’ Flippy.
Courtesy: Miso Robotics


Before the end of this year, a brand-new pizza purveyor plans to hit the Los Angeles area. But this isn’t just another pizza place.

This company plans to serve pizza from trucks and the pies themselves are put together not by humans but by robotics developed by former engineers from SpaceX. The machine can produce a pizza every 45 seconds.

Benson Tsai, who founded Stellar Pizza in 2019 along with fellow SpaceX engineers Brian Langone and James Wahawisan, got about two dozen former SpaceX employees to build a touchless pizza-making machine that fits in the back of a truck.

Stellar isn’t the first company to conceive of robot-made pizza, and the early track record for the business model includes one notable failure. Softbank-backed Zume Pizza, which was once valued at $4 billion, shuttered its robot pizza delivery business in January 2020 and has since pivoted to making compostable packaging.


VIDEO13:19
These robots turn waste into compostable packaging


Entrepreneurs are not giving up on the robot pizza concept. Chef Anthony Carron’s 800 Degrees Go of Cleveland, which specializes in wood-fired cooking, and robot-based artisanal pizza maker Piestro of Santa Monica, Calif., have a venture to use robotic pizza machines at bricks-and-mortar and ghost kitchen locations in what they say will be a lower cost restaurant model. They plan to have 3,600 machines deployed in the next five years.

The trend has moved far beyond pizza as well, with Miso Robotics, the maker of the Flippy 2 — a robot arm that works the fryer at fast-food restaurants — already deployed at Chipotle, White Castle and Wing Zone. It’s being introduced to the Middle East market as well through a partnership with Americana, a franchisor and franchisee with over 2,000 restaurants in the region including KFC, Hardees and Pizza Hut.
Robot chefs becoming “commonplace”

Jake Brewer, Miso Robotics’ chief strategy officer, said such machinery will soon be commonplace in restaurants.

“I believe that if anyone wanted to, they could go see a robot working in a restaurant in 2024, 2025,” Brewer said. “You can go see robots cooking right now and that’s only going to grow week over week.”

Chipotle Mexican Grill worked with Miso Robotics to customize the “Chippy” robot, which cooks and seasons Chipotle’s chips with salt and fresh lime juice. The robot is trained to recreate the exact recipe using artificial intelligence.

As of March, Chipotle was testing the robot at its innovation hub in Irvine, California, the Chipotle Cultivate Center. The company plans to use it in a restaurant in Southern California later this year and will determine if it will roll it out nationally.

“Right now, the general sense is that there’s going to be a lot more robots,” said Dina Zemke, assistant professor at Ball State University. She said in the past adding robotics to the staff was prohibitively expensive, but now there are more companies making kitchen-ready robots, which is helping to drive prices down.

A finished pepperoni pizza exiting a machine made by Stellar Pizza, a robotics-powered mobile pizza restaurant created by a team of former SpaceX engineers
Medianews Group/long Beach Press-telegram | Medianews Group | Getty Images

Fast-food preparation is made for robotics. “The recipes are highly standardized. And really, it’s mostly heating an assembly,” Zemke said. “No one’s creating just the right secret sauce in the back of the house; all of that is provided through a commissary system.”

Wing Zone, a 61-unit chain, is perhaps the most robotics-friendly fast-food restaurant right now. In May, the chain expanded its relationship with Miso Robotics. Wing Zone has been testing Flippy 2 in the last step of the wing-frying process and is using its Wing Zone Labs arm to develop fully automated Wing Zones.

Lack of restaurant staff aids robotics push

Part of the adoption is driven by an inability to find workers. The National Restaurant Association reported last year that 4 in 5 operators are understaffed, and overall employment in the leisure and hospitality category that includes restaurant staffing has been the most challenged since the pandemic, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A recent report from Lightspeed found that 50% of restaurant owners plan to install automation technology within the next two or three years.

For Chipotle, it’s not about replacing workers but allowing them to complete more impactful tasks than repetitive things like making chips.

“It started with, ‘How do we remove some of the dreariness of a worker standing at the fryer and frying chip basket after chip basket?’” Chipotle chief technology officer Curt Garner told CNBC earlier this summer. “It allows our crew to spend more time doing culinary tests, serving guests,” he said.

Clemson University professor Richard Pak, an expert on the use of autonomous technology, said automation works better for food that is cheap. “When you’re paying for it, when you’re paying more, you’re paying for experience and artistry and experience,” he said. “And so I don’t know if these kinds of robots would be acceptable in higher-end restaurants. People would wonder what they’re paying for.”

Yet there is some trepidation in the broader restaurant market as well. A recent poll by Big Red Rooster found that a third of diners don’t want to see robots preparing their food.

For Stellar founder Tsai, the robotics are a means to an end: making sure that the company can deliver an affordable pizza pie that customers like. While pricing has not been finalized, he said the target price is “definitely sub-$10.” A 12-inch pie of cheese pizza will run about $7, Tsai said.

The plan for Stellar, which has raised $9 million in funding, includes national expansion.

“The pizza market is a big, big market and as we sort of establish a foothold here in Los Angeles we will start to grow and expand outwards towards Las Vegas, towards Phoenix, towards Texas,” Tsai said.

Steve Bannon confirms Trump's 'deconstructing' government plan for 2024

Conservative podcaster Steve Bannon confirmed the news that former President Donald Trump has a plan to "deconstruct" conventional government in his second term.



A federal jury, after less than three hours of deliberation, found Bannon guilty of contempt of Congress on Friday for his refusal to answer a subpoena from the House committee investigating January 6. As soon as the verdict was in, Bannon ran straight to Fox News to guest on a segment of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that had the vibe of an alt-right party at 4AM, when the old head is ranting while the young ones try to figure out how to buy more cocaine with crypto.

"I support Trump and the Constitution and if they want to put me in jail for that, so be it," Bannon raved, swearing revenge on the January 6 committee.

Bannon, as usual, is using bluster to intimidate the legal authorities out of holding him accountable for his role in Donald Trump's attempted coup and his ongoing efforts to overturn democracy. Clearly, he wants them to envision Adolf Hitler in the 1920s, when he used his time in prison after the Beer Hall Putsch to write "Mein Kampf" and gather more support for the fascist cause. Bannon wants law enforcement to see him as a martyr for Trumpism, someone whose speckled visage will become an icon of the movement that will rally supporters, creating even more momentum for 21st-century American fascism.

No one should feel intimidated. Steve Bannon is not Adolf Hitler and this is not 1920s Germany, despite many admittedly alarming parallels between now and then. For one thing, Hitler was a healthy man in his mid-thirties, one who had actually put himself in the fray during the attempted insurrection. Bannon, on the other hand, is a decrepit 68-year-old. Despite all of his big talk behind the microphone, Bannon has yet to actually put himself in any physical danger for his fascist beliefs. More importantly, Bannon's been declaring for months that he will be a martyr for the cause and that attempts to hold him accountable will only make him stronger. So far, the opposite has been happening, and there's no reason to think things will change if or when Bannon sees the inside of a prison cell.

There's a lesson in this that could be applied to the entire pantheon of Trumpist leaders: They talk a big game, but if they face real consequences, they turn out to be paper tigers.

If only more of them were actually prosecuted for their crimes, we'd find a mob of Steve Bannons. Behind the microphone, they are mighty warriors. But when facing actual consequences, they've got nothing.

When Bannon was first arrested, his bluster about how he was going to turn this into a recruitment opportunity for his fascist cause was genuinely frightening. After all, Bannon is a talented propagandist. With Trump's help, he was able to remake the GOP in the image of the site he used to run, Breitbart. So when he started to paint a picture of how he would use this trial to champion his cause, much as Hitler used his trial for treason to build up his public image, smart people were reasonably worried. Salon's own Heather "Digby" Parton even wrote at the time that "being indicted for defying Congress is the best thing that ever happened to him" and that Bannon may "turn any trial into a spectacle in order to foment more chaos."

I'm not blowing up Digby's spot, I hope. I'm sure she's as grateful as I am that none of this happened. As she wrote more recently of Bannon's efforts to escape consequences, "Usually arrogant and full of bravado, Bannon does seem to be scrambling."

Bannon didn't use the trial as he initially envisioned, as an opportunity for grandiose speech-making, à la Hitler in 1924. Unlike Hitler, who had a sympathetic judge, Bannon found himself facing a judge who wasn't interested in fascist grand-standing. Instead, Judge Carl Nichols was so effective at shutting down the defense's trollish hijinks that Bannon's lawyer complained, "What's the point in going to trial here if there are no defenses?" Eventually, the defense went with a failed "no defense" strategy of offering no witnesses or evidence, which is just as well, because Bannon probably didn't have any worth considering.

During last Thursday's January 6 hearing, the committee played a video that showed the aftermath of Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and his infamous raised fist encouragement of the January 6 insurrectionists. The video shows Hawley running for his life from the rioters after they breached the Capitol. The choice to play the video was largely received by the press as gratuitous mockery of Hawley, though most everyone agrees he deserves it.

Presenting the evidence against Trump has weakened his hand.

In truth, the committee was likely doing something both sly and profound with the video: Reminding both the public and, crucially Attorney General Merrick Garland, that if you peel back the bravado of authoritarian bullies like Hawley and Bannon, you'll find empty-headed cowardice. It underscores why it's important not to be intimidated by the braggadocio, but instead to take these folks head on. Often, as with Bannon, one finds that they don't simply don't have some secret reserve of power to draw on, just hot air.

Bannon's not even the first example of this.

During the coup itself, Trump's lawyer Sidney Powell loved to brag into any microphone stuck in her face that she planned to "unleash the Kraken," i.e. bury Joe Biden's electoral victory in so many lawsuits that Biden's win would simply crack in half and, presto bingo, Trump would be able to stay president. But it turns out that you can't sue an electoral victory into oblivion like you're dealing with a contractor you stiffed on a bill. Trump's team did, in fact, file a dizzying number of lawsuits, and one by one, they all failed to make a dent in Biden's victory. Now Powell is facing a defamation lawsuit and she's been frozen out by Trump, who has no loyalty to return to those who serve him.

We see a similar situation play out, over and over again, with the people who actually rioted at the Capitol on January 6.

As has been remarked on by many at length, the insurrectionists ended up creating most of the evidence used to convict them, by filming themselves and posting the videos and photos of the riot online. Flush with white privilege and high on Trump's encouragement, most of these folks didn't stop to consider the possibility of consequences for their actions. As they are churned through the court system and found guilty of their crimes, they often blubber in disbelief, the fascist warrior front dissolving to reveal the crybaby underneath.

Of course, as the Capitol insurrection shows, these folks are indeed very dangerous, if their violent impulses and authoritarian longings remain unchecked.

Listen: Steve Bannon cheers Trump plan to axe thousands of government employees

Conservative podcaster Steve Bannon cheered the news that former President Donald Trump has a plan to "deconstruct" government departments in his second term — stacking them with thousands of Trump appointees.

Axios reported over the weekend that Trump has a "radical plan" for his second term, which threatens the jobs of 50,000 government employees. The plan would involve "purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his 'America First' ideology," and go beyond traditional government appointments to government agencies.

Bannon — recently convicted of defying a Congressional subpoena to testify to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks — seemed defiant and energized by aggressive plans for a potential Trump second term.

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On Monday, Bannon and former Trump adviser Steve Cortes were gleeful that the plan had been revealed publicly.

"You have to deconstruct it," Bannon said of the government. "You have to take it apart brick by brick."

"It gets my deplorable blood going on a Monday morning to hear Jonathan Swan talk about a purge," Cortes exclaimed while Bannon laughed. "A purge of the administrative state. Of course, he means that to be an exposé, to be a hit on our movement. We took it exactly the opposite and wear it as a badge of honor."

"It tells me that, yes, Jonathan Swan recognizes that there is a plan in place," he continued, "that this second Trump term is going to be far more consequential than the first one."

"This is taking on and defeating and deconstructing the administrative state," Bannon said.

Bannon also claimed that he is planning a one-hour special to prepare "4,000 shock troops" to be ready to take over the government. Bannon has spoken about a plan to "deconstruct" the government before, including in an October interview with NBC News.

"If you’re going to take over the administrative state and deconstruct it, then you have to have shock troops prepared to take it over immediately," Bannon quipped to NBC News. "I gave 'em fire and brimstone."

The length of Earth’s days has been mysteriously increasing, and scientists don’t know why

The Conversation
August 05, 2022

Sun and Earth (Shutterstock)

Atomic clocks, combined with precise astronomical measurements, have revealed that the length of a day is suddenly getting longer, and scientists don’t know why.

This has critical impacts not just on our timekeeping, but also things like GPS and other technologies that govern our modern life.

Over the past few decades, Earth’s rotation around its axis – which determines how long a day is – has been speeding up. This trend has been making our days shorter; in fact, in June 2022 we set a record for the shortest day over the past half a century or so.

But despite this record, since 2020 that steady speedup has curiously switched to a slowdown – days are getting longer again, and the reason is so far a mystery.

While the clocks in our phones indicate there are exactly 24 hours in a day, the actual time it takes for Earth to complete a single rotation varies ever so slightly. These changes occur over periods of millions of years to almost instantly – even earthquakes and storm events can play a role.

It turns out a day is very rarely exactly the magic number of 86,400 seconds.

The ever-changing planet

Over millions of years, Earth’s rotation has been slowing down due to friction effects associated with the tides driven by the Moon. That process adds about about 2.3 milliseconds to the length of each day every century. A few billion years ago an Earth day was only about 19 hours.

For the past 20,000 years, another process has been working in the opposite direction, speeding up Earth’s rotation. When the last ice age ended, melting polar ice sheets reduced surface pressure, and Earth’s mantle started steadily moving toward the poles.

Just as a ballet dancer spins faster as they bring their arms toward their body – the axis around which they spin – so our planet’s spin rate increases when this mass of mantle moves closer to Earth’s axis. And this process shortens each day by about 0.6 milliseconds each century.

Over decades and longer, the connection between Earth’s interior and surface comes into play too. Major earthquakes can change the length of day, although normally by small amounts. For example, the Great Tōhoku Earthquake of 2011 in Japan, with a magnitude of 8.9, is believed to have sped up Earth’s rotation by a relatively tiny 1.8 microseconds.

Apart from these large-scale changes, over shorter periods weather and climate also have important impacts on Earth’s rotation, causing variations in both directions.

The fortnightly and monthly tidal cycles move mass around the planet, causing changes in the length of day by up to a millisecond in either direction. We can see tidal variations in length-of-day records over periods as long as 18.6 years. The movement of our atmosphere has a particularly strong effect, and ocean currents also play a role. Seasonal snow cover and rainfall, or groundwater extraction, alter things further.

Why is Earth suddenly slowing down?

Since the 1960s, when operators of radio telescopes around the planet started to devise techniques to simultaneously observe cosmic objects like quasars, we have had very precise estimates of Earth’s rate of rotation.


Using radio telescopes to measure Earth’s rotation involves observations of radio sources like quasars. NASA Goddard.

A comparison between these estimates and an atomic clock has revealed a seemingly ever-shortening length of day over the past few years.

But there’s a surprising reveal once we take away the rotation speed fluctuations we know happen due to the tides and seasonal effects. Despite Earth reaching its shortest day on June 29 2022, the long-term trajectory seems to have shifted from shortening to lengthening since 2020. This change is unprecedented over the past 50 years.

The reason for this change is not clear. It could be due to changes in weather systems, with back-to-back La Niña events, although these have occurred before. It could be increased melting of the ice sheets, although those have not deviated hugely from their steady rate of melt in recent years. Could it be related to the huge volcano explosion in Tonga injecting huge amounts of water into the atmosphere? Probably not, given that occurred in January 2022.

Scientists have speculated this recent, mysterious change in the planet’s rotational speed is related to a phenomenon called the “Chandler wobble” – a small deviation in Earth’s rotation axis with a period of about 430 days. Observations from radio telescopes also show that the wobble has diminished in recent years; the two may be linked.

One final possibility, which we think is plausible, is that nothing specific has changed inside or around Earth. It could just be long-term tidal effects working in parallel with other periodic processes to produce a temporary change in Earth’s rotation rate.

Do we need a ‘negative leap second’?

Precisely understanding Earth’s rotation rate is crucial for a host of applications – navigation systems such as GPS wouldn’t work without it. Also, every few years timekeepers insert leap seconds into our official timescales to make sure they don’t drift out of sync with our planet.

If Earth were to shift to even longer days, we may need to incorporate a “negative leap second” – this would be unprecedented, and may break the internet.

The need for negative leap seconds is regarded as unlikely right now. For now, we can welcome the news that – at least for a while – we all have a few extra milliseconds each day.

Matt King, Director of the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, University of Tasmania and Christopher Watson, Senior Lecturer, School of Geography, Planning, and Spatial Sciences, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Revealed: Joe Manchin's price for supporting the climate change bill
Pro Publica
August 05, 2022

Screengrab.

From his Summers County, West Virginia, farmhouse, Mark Jarrell can see the Greenbrier River and, beyond it, the ridge that marks the Virginia border. Jarrell moved here nearly 20 years ago for peace and quiet. But the last few years have been anything but serene, as he and his neighbors have fought against the construction of a huge natural gas pipeline.

Jarrell and many others along the path of the partially finished Mountain Valley Pipeline through West Virginia and Virginia fear that it may contaminate rural streams and cause erosion or even landslides. By filing lawsuits over the potential impacts on water, endangered species and public forests, they have exposed flaws in the project’s permit applications and pushed its completion well beyond the original target of 2018. The delays have helped balloon the pipeline’s cost from the original estimate of $3.5 billion to $6.6 billion.

But now, in the name of combating climate change, the administration of President Joe Biden and the Democratic leadership in Congress are poised to vanquish Jarrell and other pipeline opponents. For months, the nation has wondered what price Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin would extract to allow a major climate change bill. Part of that price turns out to be clearing the way for the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

“It’s a hard pill to swallow,” said Jarrell, a former golf course manager who has devoted much of his retirement to writing protest letters, filing complaints with regulatory agencies and attending public hearings about the pipeline. “We’re once again a sacrifice zone.”

The White House and congressional leaders have agreed to step in and ensure final approval of all permits that the Mountain Valley Pipeline needs, according to a summary released by Manchin’s office Monday evening. The agreement, which would require separate legislation, would also strip jurisdiction over any further legal challenges to those permits from a federal appeals court that has repeatedly ruled that the project violated the law.

The provisions, according to the summary, will “require the relevant agencies to take all necessary actions to permit the construction and operation of the Mountain Valley Pipeline” and would shift jurisdiction “over any further litigation” to a different court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In essence, the Democratic leadership accepted a 303-mile, two-state pipeline fostering continued use of fossil fuels in exchange for cleaner energy and reduced greenhouse emissions nationwide. Manchin has been pushing publicly for the pipeline to be completed, arguing it would move much needed energy supplies to market, promote the growth of West Virginia’s natural gas industry and create well-paid construction jobs.

“This is something the United States should be able to do without getting bogged down in litigation after litigation after litigation,” Manchin told reporters last week. He did not respond to questions from Mountain State Spotlight and ProPublica, including about the reaction of residents along the pipeline route.

ProPublica and Mountain State Spotlight have been reporting for years on how a federal appeals court has repeatedly halted the pipeline’s construction because of permitting flaws and how government agencies have responded by easing rules to aid the developer.

The climate change legislation, for which Manchin’s vote is considered vital, includes hundreds of millions of dollars for everything from ramping up wind and solar power to encouraging consumers to buy clean vehicles or cleaner heat pumps. Leading climate scientists call it transformative. The Sierra Club called on Congress to pass it immediately. Even the West Virginia Environmental Council urged its members to contact Manchin to thank him.

“Senator Manchin needs to know his constituents support his vote!” the council said in an email blast. “Call today to let him know what climate investments for West Virginia means to you!”

But even some residents along the pipeline route who are avidly in favor of action against climate change say they feel like poker chips in a negotiation they weren’t at the table for. And they are anything but happy with Manchin. “He could do so much more for Appalachia, a lot more than he is, but he’s chosen to only listen to industries,” farmer Maury Johnson said.

It’s not clear exactly when the Mountain Valley Pipeline became a focal point of the efforts to win Manchin’s vote on the climate change legislation. Reports circulated in mid-July that the White House was considering giving in to some Manchin demands focused on fossil fuel industries. That prompted some environmental groups to urge Biden to take the opposite route, blocking the pipeline and other pro-industry measures.

Pipeline spokesperson Natalie Cox said in an email that it “is being recognized as a critical infrastructure project” and that developers remain “committed to working diligently with federal and state regulators to secure the necessary permits to finish construction.” Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, the developer, is a joint venture of Equitrans Midstream Corp. and several other energy companies.

The company “has been, and remains, committed to full adherence” with state and federal regulations,” Cox added. “We take our responsibilities very seriously and have agreed to unprecedented levels of scrutiny and oversight.”

The White House and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Mountain Valley Pipeline is one of numerous pipelines proposed across the region, reflecting an effort to exploit advances in natural gas drilling technologies. Many West Virginia business and political leaders, including Manchin, hope that natural gas will create jobs and revenue, offsetting the decline of the coal industry.

To protect the environment, massive pipeline projects must obtain a variety of permits before being built. Developers and regulators are supposed to study alternatives, articulate a clear need for the project and outline steps to minimize damage to the environment.

In Mountain Valley Pipeline’s case, citizen groups have successfully challenged several of these approvals before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In one widely publicized ruling involving a different pipeline, the panel alluded to Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax,” saying that the U.S. Forest Service had failed to “speak for the trees” in approving the project. The decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, but not before the project was canceled.

The 4th Circuit has ruled against the Mountain Valley Pipeline time and again, saying developers and permitting agencies skirted regulations aimed at protecting water quality, public lands and endangered species. In the past four years, the court has found that three federal agencies — the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management — illegally approved various aspects of the project.

While those agencies tweaked the rules, what Manchin’s new deal would do is change the referee. In March, Manchin told the Bluefield Daily Telegraph that the 4th Circuit “has been unmerciful on allowing any progress” by Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Then, in May, lawyers for the pipeline petitioned the 4th Circuit to assign a lawsuit by environmental advocates to a new three-judge panel, instead of having it heard by judges who had previously considered related pipeline cases. Among other things, the attorneys cited a Wall Street Journal editorial, published a week earlier, declaring that the pipeline had “come under a relentless siege by green groups and activists in judicial robes.”

Lawyers for the environmental groups responded in a court filing that Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC was just “dissatisfied that it has not prevailed” more often and was unfairly lobbing a charge that the legal process was rigged. The 4th Circuit rejected the company’s request.

It is unclear whether this pending case, which challenges a water pollution permit issued by West Virginia regulators, would be transferred if the Manchin legislation becomes law.

Congress has intervened in jurisdiction over pipeline cases before. In 2005, it diverted legal challenges to decisions on pipeline permits from federal district courts to the appeals court circuit where the projects are located. The move was part of a plan encouraged by then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretive energy task force to speed up project approvals. (Under the Constitution, Congress can determine the jurisdiction of all federal courts except the U.S. Supreme Court.)

Besides the pipeline, Manchin has cited other reasons for his change of heart on the climate change bill. He has emphasized that the bill would reduce inflation and pay down the national debt.

Approval for the pipeline may not be a done deal. Both senators from Virginia, where the pipeline is also a hot political issue, are signaling that they don’t feel bound by Manchin’s agreement with the leadership. Manchin’s own announcement said that Democratic leaders have “committed to advancing” the pipeline legislation — not that the bill would pass. Regional and national environmental groups are walking a fine line. They support the climate change legislation while opposing weakening the permit process.

The pipeline’s neighbors say they’ll keep fighting, but they recognize that the odds are against them. “You just feel like you’re not an equal citizen when you’re dealing with Mountain Valley Pipeline,” Jarrell said.

The forever coup: The Big Lie is more than Trump now

Alan Elrod, Arizona Mirror
August 05, 2022

The Big Lie is no longer just about 2020: It's now the core of the GOP's spirit, and it will be center stage in Arizona in November. Photo by Ken Coleman | Michigan Advance

This week’s primaries helped show something: The January 6 hearings may well not end the Big Lie. The Big Lie is more than Trump now, and it is more than a revisionist project about the 2020 election.

The Big Lie is now part of the culture wars, and as such it has become more diffused through our politics, more capable of enduring in myriad ways across American life. Any and all elections can now be called into question—from school board to president. Thiel-backed Senate hopeful Blake Masters, addressing questions around his own peddling of election lies summed it up by saying, “I think there’s always cheating, probably, in every election.”

His fellow Arizona election deniers — Kari Lake, Mark Finchem, and Abe Hamadeh — all have secured their nominations. Lake made waves by alleging she already had proof of fraud and tampering in the 48 hours before the primary vote, but has refused to provide any proof. She also emulated Trump by taking to the stage at her watch party at a moment when she still trailed in the vote and declaring, “We won this race, period.”

Lake is now the nominee, with all the worrying things that could portend, but her conduct in the final hours of the primary race highlight just how thoroughly embedded the logic of election denial has become.

While Masters has taken extreme positions, the threat posed by Lake, Finchem, and Hamadeh is far more direct. If they successfully win their respective races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, then elections in newly swing-y Arizona would be at the mercy of a trio of Big Lie supporters. While such a trifecta is by no means guaranteed, this would be a dream scenario for the MAGA movements hardcore coup supporters in 2024.

Finchem, a self-identified member of the Oath Keepers, also offers a prominent example of the increasingly dangerous relationship between the modern GOP and extremist militias. The Big Lie isn’t just fueling attempts at legal coups, it’s helping to propel groups that are entirely willing to engage in armed and violent actions to subvert democracy.

We live in the age of the supercharged conspiracy theory, capable of finding wider and wider audiences through new media platforms and capturing believers before they’re even fully aware of the nature of the content they are consuming.

But, perhaps more importantly, we live in the age of the fractured civic soul. Americans do not trust their institutions, and they do not trust one another. A host of politicians and activists, primarily on the populist right, have emerged to prey upon these vulnerabilities and move across the country like door-to-door salesmen for authoritarianism.

Concerns remain elsewhere. The Rust Belt states that helped deliver Donald Trump’s shock win in 2016 and were then critical to Biden’s 2020 victory have been particular hotbeds of Big Lie radicalism. In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano’s candidacy threatens to bring a firmly pro-coup politician into the governor’s mansion. In Michigan, party purges across state and local levels have elevated election deniers and alienated those who defend basic democratic accountability and transparency. Canvassers in Macomb, Saginaw, and Kalamazoo Counties, among others, have been pushed out to make room for Big Lie believers. In Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District, Republican Peter Meijer paid the ultimate price for his 2021 impeachment vote, falling to Trump-backed John Gibbs.

Across Lake Michigan, politics in Wisconsin is also turning into a stew of election paranoia and contempt. One stark example can be found in Elena Schneider’s examination of politics in Green Bay, where she noted that the city’s “nonpartisan city council races — traditionally quiet affairs that focus on taxes and roads — feature ads from a GOP super PAC questioning whether the city’s elections are legitimate…” We are no longer at a moment where the question is only whether Donald Trump will run in 2024 and attempt to manipulate or invalidate the results. We are at a point where even the most local races are vulnerable to conspiracy theorizing and attempted power grabs.

That local aspect is critical. It isn’t just in the prominent congressional, gubernatorial, and senatorial races that you can find the rot. Across America, officeholders and power-seekers in the most banal and seemingly minor contexts now plead conspiracy and theft in the face of basic democratic process. Sheriffs in states like Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin have taken it upon themselves to tout and even investigate election conspiracies. The deterioration of state Republican parties is clear, and so is the descent at the county level — perhaps best highlighted by the refusal of commissioners in Otero County, N.M., to certify their results of the state’s Republican primary.

Yes, many of the people above were propelled to prominence by Trump and the Trump movement — Kari Lake was, after all, once a proud Obama-voting moderate. And conspiratorial fears about Dominion Voting Systems continue to come up as a point of contention even in cases like Otero County. But the genie is well out of the bottle at this point.

Make America Great Again is so 2016, and Keep America Great is so 2020. Make America Great Again, Again is the new credo, and its redundancy is a function of its eternal quality. It’s the language of the Lost Cause, a nation having risen, been thwarted, and risen again, only to fall again to the overwhelming power of a corrupt elite and its power centers of finance and cultural production.

The term “forever war” has been popularized to describe the difficult, often flailing foreign military entanglements in which the United States poured itself during the Global War on Terror. These quagmires, the common sense has gone, led to decades of civic rot, misallocated energy, and declining reputation prestige for the country. Now, America could well be poised to endure a prolonged domestic quagmire, marked by anger, distrust, and a fundamentally anti-democratic approach to the election process.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

The GOP’s anti-tax rhetoric is also pro-sedition
John Stoehr
August 05, 2022

Senator Ted Cruz (BILL CLARK/POOL/AFP)

Last night, the Senate Democrats finalized an agreement on a $740 billion piece of legislation that addresses climate change, corporate taxes, healthcare, drug prices and more. US Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona’s conservative Democrat, held out till the end. After some bargaining, she said last night that she’s ready to “move forward.”

The Inflation Reduction Act is only part of an agenda Joe Biden had outlined early in his administration. (The president had hoped for a couple of trillion dollars’ worth of new investments.) Headlines this morning, however, are treating it as if it were the whole shebang. CNN said it puts “Biden's agenda on the cusp of Senate approval.”

Maybe that’s why US Senator Ted Cruz slandered it.

Anti-tax rhetoric

The Republican from Texas told Fox this morning that the bill would expand the Internal Revenue Service in order to descend on America “like a swarm of locusts,” he said. Cruz went on: “These IRS agents aren’t there to go after billionaires. They’re there to go after you, to go after your small business … The Democrats’ idea is if they audit the hell out of every American, think of all the money they can raise.”

Fact is, the bill does expand the IRS. Another fact is, the IRS has been badly depleted thanks to Republicans like Ted Cruz who know very well that an enervated IRS gives multinational firms and the very obscenely rich leeway to hide wealth and otherwise dodge levies. The Inflation Reduction Act remedies this. It also reduces inflation by clawing back taxes owed, especially by the very obscenely rich.

Pro-sedition rhetoric

Cruz’s anti-tax rhetoric should be familiar. The Republicans (as well as some Democrats) have stood against every proposed tax hike for over 20 years. The last Republican president to sign a tax increase into law was George HW Bush. Since 1994, the GOP has treated the federal government’s constitutional authority to tax as if it were theft – as if taxes were morally wrong as well as politically illegitimate.

Anti-tax rhetoric used to cover up for racist white people, especially in the south, refusing to pay for programs benefitting Black people. But over time, it evolved to become something more sinister.

The GOP’s rhetoric became pro-sedition.


Mainstream sedition

That comes naturally to Cruz.

Like many others, Cruz was in contact with Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, before the former president’s bid to take over the US government. Trump pressured Republican senators to vote against accepting Joe Biden’s victory. Cruz readily complied. He voted that night to overturn the election. He later voted to acquit Trump.

The present is a product of the past, though.

And Ted Cruz is a product of Newt Gingrich.

In a review of The Destructionists, a new book about the history of the Republicans, by Post columnist Dana Milbank, Christopher Buckley summed up the record of the former House speaker:

It was Newt who pushed the Ur-rightwing nutjob conspiracy that Clinton aide Vince Foster was murdered. That big little lie metastasized a quarter-century later into 'Stop the Steal.' It was Newt who defended right-wing militias after Timothy McVeigh murdered 168 people in Oklahoma City.

And it was Newt who, while leading a hot steaming mess of a personal life, fiercely agitated to oust Bill Clinton for playing hide-the-cigar with a 20-something intern.

Gingrich brought sedition into the Republican Party.

From that point until today, taxes from the Republican point of view were no longer constructive investments in nation-building. They were wrong. They were robbery. They were politically illegitimate.

They were the basis for a revolt.

Mainstreaming militias

Not a democratic revolt.

Gingrich escalated the Republicans’ militant rhetoric by including “the new, decidedly insurrectionist interpretation of the Second Amendment,” wrote James R. Skillen last year, “namely that the founders had written the amendment precisely so that individual citizens would have guns to use against government tyrants.”

With that, Gingrich established the party’s paramilitary wing.

It was paranoid. It was armed. It was violent.

It was perfect. Skillen wrote:

While Gingrich, [Texas Congressman] Dick Armey, and other leaders did claim that the time for insurrection had come, they *expanded the GOP coalition to include militias,* whose members were literally preparing for war with the federal government. The militias remained at the party’s margins only because *mainstream Republicans did not yet* share their dark conspiracy theories, including the belief that communists had taken control of the federal government or that the military was preparing internment camps for American citizens.

Burning a country

Donald Trump was elected in a backlash against the country’s first Black president. That backlash didn’t come from nowhere. Its funding, its organization and its rhetoric were all firmly planted.

Gingrich had brought sedition into the Republican Party. He had wrapped insurrection in the flag and the US Constitution. He had made respectable the starving of the government of revenue, as if it were just another valid point of view. He had demanded freedom!

He had made it possible for Ted Cruz to look us in the face and say 87,000 IRS agents are going to descend “like a swarm of locusts.”

By 2010, the GOP was ready to foment, as Buckley said, “a racial backlash against Barack Obama, turning ‘itself into the party of white grievance. All that was left for Trump to do was to light a match.’”

But it didn’t just burn a Black president.

It burned a country.

John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.

Rick Scott's unhinged CPAC speech blames the left for every bad thing that happened in the 20th Century

THE AMERICAN RIGHT WANTS TO PURGE THE LEFT IN AMERICA THATS WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT NOW

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
August 05, 2022

FL. Gov, Rick Scott (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) gave a lengthy speech at CPAC on Friday in Dallas, telling far-right conservatives that Democratic policies are "evil," the "militant left" is the "enemy" and "the greatest danger" America has ever faced while claiming Democrats are "wacky" socialists, and socialism is responsible for the deaths of 100 million people.

After calling U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) "one of the most principled individuals I know" who "will always stand up for what he believes," Scott told attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference that the "militant left-wing in our country has become the enemy within" and is "the greatest danger we've ever faced."

Scott took his audience on a long tour of 20th Century history, but along the way equated "the militant left" with "the woke left" who he says has now "seized...control of our economy, our culture and our country."

He then equated "the woke left" with the entire Democratic Party, suggesting Democrats are socialists, and socialists are communists before declaring: "Socialism leads to two things, poverty and depression. Socialism is not a new idea. It's one of the dumbest, oldest, most despised ideas of the 20th century that resulted in the deaths of 100 million people.

READ MORE: ‘Wants to Steal Your Money’: Ron Johnson Thinks Rick Scott’s Social Security Plan Is ‘Not Cruel Enough’ Say Critics

Scott is likely referring to mass killings under communist regimes, including the Holocaust, genocides, crimes against humanity, and even mass famines – none of which have anything to do with socialism or the Democratic Party.

"When you turn on the news at night do you even recognize the country you see?" Scott asked. "Are you worried for your family? Are you worried for your freedoms?"

"The woke left now controls the Democrat Party, the entire federal government, the news media, academia, big tech Hollywood, most corporate boardrooms, and now even some of our top military leaders," he said.

"They are working hard to redefine our country, silence their opponents – and that means that each of you."

"They are destroying everything they touch, and they've got their hands on everything. Here's the thing about what they're trying to destroy: American patriotism. Border security. American history. Gender. Traditional morality. Capitalism. Fiscal responsibility. Opportunity. Rugged individualism. Judeo-Christian values. Free speech. Law enforcement. Religious liberty. Parental involvement in schools. And even private ownership of firearms."

"The woke left wants all of that gone. They want to end the American experiment," he claimed.

READ MORE: ‘It’s in the Plan!’ Fox News Host Slaps Down Rick Scott Over His Proposal to ‘Sunset’ Social Security

"They want to replace freedom with their control. The elites in the government are telling us what we can and cannot believe what we can think and what we can do. They want to completely control our lives. Woke government schools. Woke government-run health care. Woke government-run media. Woke government-run everything. In their new socialist order, everyone will obey and no one will be allowed to complain. You do speak up, boom, you're going to be canceled. Your views if you don't conform with big tech, Fauci, or Neil Young, you're gonna be taken off Spotify, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter."

"The militant left in America or the modern-day version of book burners," he said, one of his few remarks that drew applause.

Senator Scott continued his attack.

"The modern wacky left Democrat has never read George Orwell," he continued. "They don't know they're making his predictions come true. Let's be clear. What the militant left is now proposing is not simply wrong, it is evil."

"It is evil and the results are evil," he added, minutes later asking: "Is this the beginning of the end? Of America?"

"It's time to take our country back."

'No divorcing' the GOP from 'disgusting' racism and fascism after Orban's CPAC display: former party operative

Matthew Chapman
August 05, 2022

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will meet US President Donald Trump at the White House on May 13 (AFP Photo/ATTILA KISBENEDEK)

On Friday's edition of MSNBC's "The Beat," Kurt Bardella — a former GOP operative and Breitbart staffer turned Democratic adviser — laid into Republicans at CPAC in Dallas for cheering on speakers openly promoting Christian nationalism and the erosion of democracy.

One of the key moments from that gathering was a speech delivered by Viktor Orbán, the strongman prime minister of Hungary.

"What is that disgusting display by someone like Viktor Orbán, on domestic U.S. soil, telling you about the GOP?" asked anchor Katie Phang.

"What you are seeing, Katie, is the Republican Party wrap their arms around autocratic white nationalist ideals and cementing that as the platform of the party going forward," said Bardella. "Make no mistake about it right now, there is no divorcing the Republican Party from racism. Every single candidate that is on the ballot with an R next to their name in November, you own this. Your refusal to speak out against it, your participation in it, the fact that you cater and pander to the audience at CPAC that is cheering on these very dangerous and disgusting ideals. You own this."

Bardella continued on, condemning Republican silence as complicity.

"It would not be hard for any member of the Republican Party to denounce what we're hearing right now," said Bardella. "Things that are repulsive, repugnant, have no place in the 21st century. Yet they're not going to do that. They're going to hide. They're going to embrace. They're going to high-five. They're going to cheer it on. Because to them, the white America that we're hearing these speakers talk about is exactly what they want to do to this country, they're not trying to hide it. They've basically taken off their hoods and exposed themselves for what they are."

Kurt Bardella on GOP's embrace of Viktor Orbán at CPACwww.youtube.com

In New York, a native tribe fights to save its land from climate change

AFP

The Shinnecock Kelp Farmers harvest seaweed to help reduce carbon and nitrates in their coastal water

Southampton (United States) (AFP) - In the Hamptons, New York's playground for the rich and famous, a Native American tribe is battling with the latest threat to what's left of its traditional land: climate change.

The Shinnecock, whose name means "people of the stony shore," have lived on Long Island for 13,000 years.

Their villages stretched along the island's eastern end before land grabs by European settlers and later US authorities reduced their territory to an 800-acre (1.25 square-mile) peninsula.

That low-lying land is now shrinking due to rising sea levels and coastal erosion, and making it increasingly vulnerable to more powerful storms.

"You're looking at a situation where an entire nation of people who have been here for essentially forever are faced with a devastating reality that we may have to relocate," Tela Troge, a Shinnecock attorney, told AFP.

The Shinnecock Indian Nation is a self-governing, federally recognized tribe of approximately 1,600 members.

Roughly half live on its reservation, which juts out into Shinnecock Bay beside Southampton, where multi-million-dollar mansions sit behind electric gates.

Also next door is the hamlet of Shinnecock Hills and its famous eponymous golf club, land the tribe says was stolen from them in 1859.

Warming temperatures are causing seas to expand and rise, eating away at the reservation's coastline.

- Flooding -

Ed Terry, who makes traditional Shinnecock jewelry out of shells found on the beach, remembers the sand going out much further when he was a boy.

"You can see the erosion. Where the land was is now water. It's like the sea is coming to us," the 78-year-old told AFP, as he sculpted a mussel shell to be worn as earrings.

Some parts of the shoreline have already receded 150 feet (45 meters), according to studies cited by Shavonne Smith, the nation's environment director.

She says 57 homes may have to be relocated soon and bodies possibly disinterred from the tribe's coastal cemetery and moved elsewhere.

"If you're talking about taking a people that are so dependent on the water -- for spiritual health, recreational and sustenance -- and now moving them further inland, you're talking about a very huge, stressful, emotional, dynamic shift in who we are," Smith told AFP.

The nation estimates its sea levels will rise by up to 4.4 feet (1.3 meters) by the end of the century. Coupled with more intense storms, this would mean frequent devastating floods.

Hurricane Sandy gave a foretaste in 2012, washing away bluffs on the shore, ripping off roofs and flooding basements and the burial grounds.

"There are studies that show by the year 2040 there's a 100 percent chance the entire Shinnecock Nation region will get inundated by a storm," said Scott Mandia, a climate change professor at Suffolk County Community College.
'We will survive'

In an attempt to preserve their homeland and way of life, which includes fishing and farming, the nation is taking a nature-based approach towards tackling global warming.

It has built an oyster shell reef and placed boulders to try to hold back waves, as well as planted sea and beach grass in a bid to stop sand from shifting.

Tribe members are doing their bit too.

Troge, 35, is director of Shinnecock Kelp Farmers -- a group of six Indigenous women who harvest sugar kelp and sell it as a non-chemical fertilizer.

The seaweed helps clean up water pollution, fueled by neighboring development, by absorbing carbon and nitrates that cause toxic algae blooms, which damage marine life.

Wading into the bay waist-high, farmer Donna Collins-Smith says she is inspired by previous Shinnecock generations "and what they have preserved for us."

"We are maintaining that and bringing it back from a state of near dead," the 65-year-old told AFP.

Mandia, co-author of a book about rising sea levels, laments that marginalized communities "who are least responsible for" climate change are those "who are going to feel the pain the most."

He applauds the tribe's efforts but says they are "just buying time" before their land becomes uninhabitable.

Terry, the septuagenarian jeweler, wonders where future Shinnecock will go, since tribal boundaries are fixed.

"We have no higher ground," he says.

Nevertheless, Terry adds, "We are a strong people. We will survive."Read More

 

Hot Rivers To Limit French Nuclear Power Output Amid Energy Crisis

By Alex Kimani - Aug 03, 2022, 11:30 AM CDT

Electricite de France SA, France’s state-owned utility, announced on Tuesday that it is highly likely it will be forced to extend cuts to nuclear generation as scorching weather pushes up river temperatures, making the water too hot to cool reactors. 

The French utility says that power stations along the Rhone and Garonne rivers will likely produce less electricity in the coming days, but has promised there will be a minimum level of output to keep the grid stable, Bloomberg reports.  

As Europe’s energy crisis deepens, most of the world’s attention is focused on Germany and gas flows from Russia. However, France is facing an even bigger crisis with Europe’s biggest energy exporter turning into a net importer thanks to the country’s imploding nuclear sector.

A deadly heat wave in Western Europe has triggered massive wildfires, displaced thousands of people  and disrupted transportation as the continent grapples with the impact of climate change. According to the national weather forecaster, several areas in France have experienced record-breaking temperatures surpassing 100 degrees Fahrenheit with at least five countries in Europe declaring a state of emergency or red warnings. And now the extreme heat is having an unusual effect: it’s making France’s rivers too hot to be used in nuclear reactors.

Currently, Electricite de France SA is running just 26 of its 57 reactors, with more than half of its chain undergoing emergency maintenance after the discovery of cracked pipes. 

Experts are now saying that France faces an electricity ‘Waterloo’ with atomic reactors generating the lowest share of the country’s power in 30 years, according to Bloomberg. 

The slump in nuclear availability is forcing France to rely on gas-fired plants more than ever, hydro, intermittent wind and imports. That’s in turn pushing up the cost of electricity in the wholesale market for the entire continent, with French forward prices surging to almost 1,000% above their 10-year average through 2020.

The crisis could get even worse in winter, with high consumption in the winter season likely to make electricity costs catastrophically expensive.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

German Chancellor: Germany Could Keep Nuclear Power Plants Operating After All

By Julianne Geiger - Aug 03, 2022

Germany’s government has held firmly onto the belief that its nuclear power industry must be retired, even in the midst of an energy crisis. But today, it appears that could change, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying for the first time that the country could put off the retirement of its nuclear power fleet, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“It could make sense” to keep its nuclear power plants operating, Scholz said on Wednesday, despite the current plans to retire the final three plants come December, and despite Germany’s economy and environment ministries in March recommending against extending the life of the reactors.

At the time, the German ministries concluded that extending the life of the nuclear reactors would have a “very limited” impact on alleviating Germany’s power crunch, and that it would come at a “very high economic cost”.

“If someone decides to do so now,”  Scholz said about the potential for building new nuclear power plants as recenly as in June, “they would have to spend 12-18 billion euros on each nuclear power plants and it wouldn’t open until 2037 or 2038. And besides, the fuel rods are generally imported from Russia. As such one should think about what one does.”

Germany has also restarted two power plans that run on oil as the country tries to conserve natural gas as Russian gas flows to Europe continue to be restricted amid an ongoing gas turbine repair situation. Coal-fired plants in Germany have also been resurrected.

Austerity measures have been implemented, with Stadtwerke Munchen reducing swimming pool temperatures and shutting saunas until further notice.

Germany’s plan to phase out nuclear power generation spans decades and was hurried along by the Fukushima disaster.

For now, the German government has commissioned a stress test for nuclear plants, according to the WSJ, to determine if the life of the plants can be extended safely, and whether it will truly aid Germany with its tight energy situation.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com