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White House to crack down on methane pollution

by MauriceMpi Posted on March 21, 2014

White House to crack down on methane pollution

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In his big climate plan released last June, President Obama promised new rules to reduce methane leakage during the production and transport of natural gas. Since then, we’ve learned that the problem of methane leaks is much larger than the government had estimated. 

Now the administration is poised to finally announce those regulations and help prevent the country’s natural gas industry from turning the world into a Dutch oven.

When burned, natural gas produces half as much carbon dioxide as coal. But methane, the main component of natural gas, is a much more potent greenhouse gas when released directly into the atmosphere, 86 times stronger than CO2 over a 20-year time frame.

Obama adviser John Podesta told reporters this week that the White House is “in the throes of finalizing” a government-wide strategy aimed at reducing accidental leaks of methane. The Washington Post reports that the new rules could be announced as soon as this month. They don’t require the approval of Congress.

Colorado, home to a booming natural-gas fracking industry, recently became the first state to clamp down on methane emissions. The state’s efforts were mostly supported by the natural gas industry, which stands to benefit financially by cutting back on the amount of product that wafts into the atmosphere instead of being sold to customers. Even frackers in Texas are starting to see that it might be smart to patch up those methane leaks.


Source
WH to unveil new methane strategy this month, The Washington Post

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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White House to crack down on methane pollution

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US Lawmakers Fight Russia on Twitter: "I Guess This Means My Spring Break in Siberia Is Off"

by JeremyRedmond Posted on March 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, shortly after President Obama expanded sanctions against Russia for its role in the Ukraine crisis, the Russian Foreign Ministry released its own list of nine US officials and lawmakers who will be targeted by sanctions. The list includes three White House aides—deputy national security advisors Ben Rhodes and Caroline Atkinson, and senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer—as well as six US lawmakers: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)â&#128;&#139;, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)â&#128;&#139;, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)â&#128;&#139;, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)â&#128;&#139;, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)â&#128;&#139;, and Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.)â&#128;&#139;.

Many of the Sanctioned 9, none of whom will be allowed to visit the Russian Federation or attend Valdimir Putin’s birthday party (assuming it is held in the Russian Federation), took to Twitter to win the morning show their strength and solidarity.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)â&#128;&#139;

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)â&#128;&#139;

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.)

Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), to senior White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer

“What did you do during the war, daddy?”

“Twitter, mostly.”

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US Lawmakers Fight Russia on Twitter: "I Guess This Means My Spring Break in Siberia Is Off"

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Obamacare is Probably Safe, But It’s Not a Slam Dunk

by Prokippxv Posted on March 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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I was chatting with a friend this weekend about what Republicans will do if they manage to win total control of the government in 2016. Will they abolish the filibuster and repeal Obamacare? I think the odds are low. At a guess, I’d put the chances of winning total control at p=20%, the conditional odds of abolishing the filibuster at p=50%, and the conditional odds of then repealing Obamacare at p=50%. (Why so low for repeal? Because by 2017 there are going to be a lot of people benefiting from parts of Obamacare; at least a few Republicans will recognize that you really can’t repeal just the unpopular bits; and the health care industry will have spent billions of dollars committing itself to operating within the framework of the law.) So that’s about a 5% chance that Obamacare dies in 2017. Not zero, but not very significant either.

But what about 2015? What if Republicans win the Senate later this year? Paul Waldman surveys the landscape and notes that House and Senate Republicans are offering very different campaign visions of what to do about Obamacare:

See the difference? The senators accept that the ACA is law and are thinking about how they’d like to change it. The House members are coming up with another way to make a futile, symbolic shaking of their fists in the general direction of the White House. And this may offer a clue to how legislating would proceed in a Republican Congress. The House, still dominated by extremely conservative Republicans for whom any hint of compromise is considered the highest treason, could continue to pass one doomed bill after another, while the Senate tries to write bills that have at least some chance of ever becoming law.

And that would be just fine with Barack Obama. If he’s faced with both houses controlled by the opposition, there’s nothing he’d rather see than them fighting with each other and passing only unrealistic bills that he can veto without worrying about any backlash from the public.

Allow me to be a bit more pessimistic. Even if they lose the Senate, Democrats will still have the filibuster available to them, and they’ll use it. And as Waldman says, Obama can veto anything he doesn’t like.

But there are two wild cards here. First, the usual way that you get difficult provisions passed is by tacking them onto must-pass legislation. Pentagon appropriations bills are the traditional favorites. Depending on the provision, this might require monkeying around with the reconciliation rules, but Republicans have few scruples about that. So the odds are that we’ll end up with yet another series of showdowns. Maybe not huge debt-ceiling style showdowns, but big fund-the-military type showdowns. And the question is who wins.

And that brings up the second wild card: will Democrats stay united in defense of Obamacare? After watching Dems scatter like frightened children over the nomination of Debo Adegbile to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division, and then scatter again when the NRA started mau-mauing them over Vivek Murthy’s nomination as Surgeon General—well, you have to wonder, don’t you? Add in the fact that Democrats have been running away from Obamacare for months, and it’s hardly unrealistic to think that they might be less than adamantine when it comes to a showdown over protecting Obamacare while Fox News is pillorying them nightly as playing politics with our brave troops in order to save a failed health care policy.

As it happens, I’d say the odds of caving in are fairly low. Even if Republicans win the Senate, they’d need eight or nine Democrats to defect in order to break a filibuster. And Obama isn’t running for anything. He can afford to hold out.

Still, it’s not a slam dunk. Republicans won’t be able to repeal Obamacare if they win the Senate later this year, but there’s a chance they could do it some damage. It all depends on how willing Democrats are to defend their principles. Unfortunately, that’s always a thin reed.

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Obamacare is Probably Safe, But It’s Not a Slam Dunk

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Tesla Pits Texas vs. the Free Market

by Obeey99 Posted on March 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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Tesla is having a lot of well-publicized problems selling its cars direct to the public. Most states mandate that cars can only be sold through independent dealers, and that’s shut Tesla out of the market in plenty of places, including ultra-free market bastions like Texas. Paul Waldman comments:

You’d think that if conservatives really believed all their rhetoric about the value of unfettered free markets, they would be all over this issue, advocating for Tesla’s side of the controversy and campaigning to break up the anti-free-enterprise car dealer oligopolies. But of course, we’re talking about Tesla, and liberals like electric cars, and therefore conservatives feel obligated to hate electric cars, so that probably won’t happen.

OK, sure, but here’s the thing: Teslas are also really expensive. That means they can only be purchased by rich people, and conservatives really like rich people. So this is a dilemma, no?

Now, I suppose that in Texas they don’t think much of any car that doesn’t run on refined hydrocarbon products, so maybe the cognitive dissonance there is less than I think. But North Carolina doesn’t have any oil. So what’s the deal there?

In any case, I want to know who’s buying these cars, anyway. Last Halloween, Marian and I decided to escape the house and eat out. In order to kill time, we walked around the shopping center we had gone to and I spied a Tesla store there. So I popped in and sat down in a Roadster. I didn’t even come close to fitting, and I’m only an inch or so taller than six feet. Am I just pickier than most tall people? Do tall people who buy Teslas slouch a lot? Or has Tesla simply abandoned the quarter of the market over six feet?

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Tesla Pits Texas vs. the Free Market

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Another Firm That Evaluated Keystone For State Department Had Ties To TransCanada

by Myrna Posted on March 13, 2014

ICF International argued that its work with the pipeline company didn’t pose an organizational conflict of interest. Construction of the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline. Jim West/ZUMA The contractor that evaluated greenhouse gas emissions for the State Department’s Keystone XL report is the latest company to come under fire for its ties to TransCanada, the prospective builder of the controversial pipeline. A conflict-of-interest statement from the consulting firm ICF International, submitted to the State Department in 2012, reveals that the company had done other work for TransCanada. ICF International analyzed greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands oil, the kind that would flow through the pipeline, for the State Department’s supplemental draft environmental impact statement, released in March 2013. Its website states that the firm was hired to compare life-cycle emissions associated with oil derived from Canada’s tar sands to those associated with oil from conventional crude. Read the rest at The Huffington Post See original article here:  Another Firm That Evaluated Keystone For State Department Had Ties To TransCanada ; ;Related ArticlesAustralian Surfers Told To Expect Fewer Large WavesDirty Money: From Rockefeller to KochCan This Coal Plant Save the Climate? ;

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Another Firm That Evaluated Keystone For State Department Had Ties To TransCanada

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Guns May Soon Be Everywhere in Georgia

by YettaKKKvah Posted on March 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Soon gun owners in the state of Georgia may be allowed to pack heat almost anywhere—including K-12 schools, bars, churches, government buildings, and airports. The “Safe Carry Protection Act” (HB 875) would also expand Georgia’s Stand Your Ground statute, the controversial law made famous by the Trayvon Martin killing, which allows armed citizens to defend themselves with deadly force if they believe they are faced with serious physical harm.

The bill could pass as soon as next week, before the current legislative session ends on March 20. It is the latest effort in the battle over gun laws that continues to rage in statehouses around the country. It is perhaps also the most extreme yet. “Of all the bills pending right now in state legislatures, this is the most sweeping and most dangerous,” Laura Cutiletta, a staff attorney with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told PolitiFact. Americans for Responsible Solutions, the gun-reform advocacy group founded by former congresswoman Gabby Giffords after she was shot in the head, has deemed it the “guns everywhere” bill. For its part, the National Rifle Association recently called HB 875 “the most comprehensive pro-gun reform legislation introduced in recent state history.”

In addition to overturning current state laws and dramatically rolling back concealed-carry restrictions, HB 875 would loosen other gun regulations in the state. The law would:

Remove the fingerprinting requirement for gun license renewals
Prohibit the state from keeping a gun license database
Tighten the state’s preemption statute, which restricts local governments from passing gun laws that conflict with state laws
Repeal the state licensing requirement for firearms dealers (requiring only a federal firearms license)
Expand gun owner rights in a declared state of emergency by prohibiting government authorities from seizing, registering, or otherwise limiting the carrying of guns in any way permitted by law before the emergency was declared
Limit the governor’s emergency powers by repealing the ability to regulate the sale of firearms during a declared state of emergency
Lower the age to obtain a concealed carry license from 21 to 18 for active-duty military and honorably discharged veterans who’ve completed basic training
Prohibit detaining someone for the sole purpose of checking whether they have a gun license

The sweeping bill would also expand the state’s Stand your Ground law into an “absolute” defense for the use of deadly force in self-protection. “Defense of self or others,” the bills reads “shall be an absolute defense to any violation under this part.” In its current wording, the bill would even allow individuals who possess a gun illegally—convicted felons, for example—to still claim a Stand Your Ground defense.

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Le1f’s Latest Is a Panty Dropper, No Matter Your Gender

by Guadalupe Scharff Posted on March 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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“I’m being really ratchet right now,” the up-and-coming rapper Le1f tells me over the phone. He’s on a train, and I’ve asked him what his wildest music video fantasy would look like. He laughs, but he doesn’t demur. “I don’t think I’m being like Marina Abramovic, but that’s totally where I want to take it: pulling strands of pearls through wounds in my body while rapping. That sounds really crackin’ to be honest.”

If you don’t know Le1f, aka Khalif Diouf, you will. He’s been making waves in the New York rap scene among queer and straight listeners alike. And for all his subversive ideas, he’s got the potential for broad appeal. (Referring to him as a “gay rapper,” while accurate, is a misdirection, he points out; “female rap” isn’t a genre either.)

Hey, Le1f’s new EP dropping tomorrow, includes the single “Boom.” (“How many batty boys can you fit in a jeep?”) It’s his first project since signing with Terrible Records, a move that establishes his position in the indie scene with labelmates like Grizzly Bear and Dev Hynes. The deal is part of a joint venture with XL recordings, which carries blockbuster names such as Thom Yorke and Vampire Weekend. “I don’t necessarily need it to be a fucking Lady Gaga, Janet Jackson production,” he says. “But I definitely have ideas that require screens and projection and hired dancers.”

At Wesleyan University, where he majored in dance, Le1f, 24, wrote beats for Das Racist, including the track “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” which made them internet famous. But Le1f was destined to make his own mark on the widening hip-hop landscape. He has released three mixtapes, most recently Tree House, whose track “Damn Son” Pitchfork called an “unqualified banger.”

When I ask Le1f for a tour of his musical influences, he narrates his version of Genesis in a matter-of-fact tone. “Music history starts in 1994 with Aaliyah. And then you put on Missy Elliott and Timbaland and that’s the second day, and on the third day there was Lil’ Kim and Junior Mafia. After that it’s like Bjork and weird shit.”

Perhaps the most unique thing about Le1f’s music is it’s deep sensuality in a genre that tends toward phallus comparisons, the objectification of women, and the trivialization of sex. He is at times theatrical or ironic, but the defining characteristic of his music is potency. His lush, clubby beats and agile lyrical delivery thrust him toward a trajectory of pop-rap radio play.

That’s not to say his lyrics lack depth or timely social commentary. “It’s my place to talk about issues within the gay community as well as gay rights,” he says. “Taxi,” one of the songs on his forthcoming full-length album, is about “racist gay dudes in the club” who ignore him precisely the way taxi cab drivers ignore him on the street.

“The Gaystream doesn’t care about diversity,” Le1f says. “I’m not going to shy away from what it feels like to be unaccepted as a gay person.”

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Le1f’s Latest Is a Panty Dropper, No Matter Your Gender

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Has the Conservative Political Action Conference Purged the Kooks?

by BetteSupple Posted on March 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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In the bowels of the National Harbor convention center in suburban Maryland on Thursday, a nonprofit called Empact America schooled attendees about the threat of a terrorist attack by way of an electromagnetic pulse. Former Reagan Defense Department official Frank Gaffney articulated his view that anti-tax activist and American Conservative Union board member Grover Norquist is an undercover agent for the Muslim Brotherhood. Ginni Thomas, a Daily Caller contributor and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, alleged that President Barack Obama may be guilty of providing material support for terrorism. At least one panelist suggested that Speaker of the House John Boehner was a part of the Benghazi cover-up. (Who can say?)

But this gathering of very concerned right-wingers wasn’t an official part of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference underway in the same facility. The panelists were the “uninvited”—a motley crew of conservative activists who had been shunned by CPAC organizers and assembled, for the second consecutive year, as a sort of shadow convention by Breitbart News. After building a reputation for catering to conspiracy theorists and bigots (especially during the first five years of the Obama administration), CPAC, the nation’s largest annual conservative political shindig, seems to have turned down the volume.

That is, CPAC is getting soft.

Just consider the recent history. In 2012, CPAC organizers opened up their conference to folks like John Derbyshire (since fired from the National Review for telling his kids to avoid black people), and the founder of VDare.com, celebrating the first English child born in North America. Last year, Wayne Allyn Root, who attempted to swing the 2012 election by claiming Obama attended Columbia as a foreign exchange student, spoke from a CPAC side stage. Three years ago, Thomas Woods, a founder of the secessionist group League of the South, spoke at a CPAC breakout session and held a book signing. Last year, a Fox News commentator made a rape joke about a rape victim. There have even been CPAC panels on the supposed Muslim Brotherhood takeover of CPAC.

None of these figures appear on the CPAC schedule this year. Nor does Pamela Geller, who once published a scoop claiming that Obama was the secret love child of Malcolm X. She was exiled from CPAC in 2013. Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a leader of the movement that believes the conservative movement is being co-opted by stealth Islamists, didn’t make the trip this year. Bishop Harry Jackson, who claims gays are trying to “recruit” children, is nowhere in sight, even though he’s from suburban Maryland. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), the Republican party’s most prominent anti-immigrant voice, didn’t get a speaking slot.

Oh, at this year’s CPAC there was still the Georgia man who travels the country dressed up as Declaration of Independence signer Button Gwinnett. There were plenty of bow ties. And two college-age bros walked around in American-flag boxers and boat shoes—which is to say, they walked around like college-age bros. CPAC was still, very noticeably, CPAC. There was the now-annual controversy about refusing to allow an LGBT conservative group, GOProud, to cosponsor the conference. Donald Trump was there, Donald Trumping.

But for the first time in a long while, the lunatics haven’t taken over the CPAC asylum. At least not yet.

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Has the Conservative Political Action Conference Purged the Kooks?

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Currents: Rooms: Redoing a Nest for Bird-Watchers

by Myrna Posted on March 5, 2014

An 18th-century farmhouse at the Norman Bird Sanctuary in Rhode Island has been refurbished for retreats. Original source:  Currents: Rooms: Redoing a Nest for Bird-Watchers ; ;Related ArticlesUtility Cited for Violating Pollution Law in North CarolinaDot Earth Blog: Timber Thieves Threaten California’s Redwood GiantsFinding New Worlds in City’s Old Snow Piles ;

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Currents: Rooms: Redoing a Nest for Bird-Watchers

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Hundreds arrested at anti-Keystone protest in front of White House

by p9zyztu Posted on March 3, 2014

Hundreds arrested at anti-Keystone protest in front of White House

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XL Dissent

Nearly 400 anti-Keystone protestors were arrested on Sunday after zip-tying themselves to a fence in front of the White House. Activist group 350.org characterized the action as the “largest youth civil disobedience at the White House in a generation.”

Those arrested were part of a larger student-led protest coordinated by XL Dissent. Organizers estimated that 1,200 people total participated in the march and rally that called on President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to reject plans to build the Keystone XL pipeline.

Here are some photos and tweets from the scene:

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