Tag Archives: national

Obama halts new oil drilling in the Arctic — for now.

by TodLewers6303 Posted on November 18, 2016

Into the ocean, it seems. New satellite data show the total area of global sea ice dipping wayyy below the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s record for this time of year.

In fact, Arctic sea ice has dropped well below the next-lowest seasonal extent ever observed (which was in 2012). That year’s all-time record low was narrowly avoided in September, the month when Arctic sea ice levels typically are at their lowest. But the fact that ice levels are lower now than they were this same time in 2012 is part of what makes this latest data so alarming.

Meanwhile, Antarctic sea ice is also much lower than usual at the end of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.

We’ve gotten somewhat used to broken records here, but watching sea ice levels flatten out when they should be peaking is well beyond normal understanding of record lows and highs.

Meanwhile, the temperature at the North Pole right now is a not-cool 36 degrees F above average. Is this what the Upside Down feels like?

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Obama halts new oil drilling in the Arctic — for now.

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Oh god, they’ve discovered even more oil in Texas.

by ElliottClaudio Posted on November 18, 2016

Into the ocean, it seems. New satellite data show the total area of global sea ice dipping wayyy below the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s record for this time of year.

In fact, Arctic sea ice has dropped well below the next-lowest seasonal extent ever observed (which was in 2012). That year’s all-time record low was narrowly avoided in September, the month when Arctic sea ice levels typically are at their lowest. But the fact that ice levels are lower now than they were this same time in 2012 is part of what makes this latest data so alarming.

Meanwhile, Antarctic sea ice is also much lower than usual at the end of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.

We’ve gotten somewhat used to broken records here, but watching sea ice levels flatten out when they should be peaking is well beyond normal understanding of record lows and highs.

Meanwhile, the temperature at the North Pole right now is a not-cool 36 degrees F above average. Is this what the Upside Down feels like?

Excerpt from – 

Oh god, they’ve discovered even more oil in Texas.

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Watch people on the frontlines of the Dakota Access fight defend their water and their rights.

by ReynaMarie942 Posted on November 18, 2016

Into the ocean, it seems. New satellite data show the total area of global sea ice dipping wayyy below the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s record for this time of year.

In fact, Arctic sea ice has dropped well below the next-lowest seasonal extent ever observed (which was in 2012). That year’s all-time record low was narrowly avoided in September, the month when Arctic sea ice levels typically are at their lowest. But the fact that ice levels are lower now than they were this same time in 2012 is part of what makes this latest data so alarming.

Meanwhile, Antarctic sea ice is also much lower than usual at the end of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.

We’ve gotten somewhat used to broken records here, but watching sea ice levels flatten out when they should be peaking is well beyond normal understanding of record lows and highs.

Meanwhile, the temperature at the North Pole right now is a not-cool 36 degrees F above average. Is this what the Upside Down feels like?

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Watch people on the frontlines of the Dakota Access fight defend their water and their rights.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Jason, LG, ONA, Oster, Ringer, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Watch people on the frontlines of the Dakota Access fight defend their water and their rights.

Meet Ret. General Michael Flynn, the Most Gullible Guy in the Army

by MargoPinkney Posted on November 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump’s favorite general, Michael Flynn, was fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency a couple of years ago. The circumstances have long been a bit mysterious. On one side, the story is that he was pushed out due to a revolt of his senior staff over his abusive and chaotic management style. Flynn himself says it was because he was tough on Islamic terrorism, and the weenies in the White House didn’t like it.

In any case, Flynn has been “right wing nutty” ever since, in Colin Powell’s words, so naturally he’s now in line for a top position in the Trump administration. Possibly National Security Advisor. But whatever you think of Flynn, he was the head of an intelligence agency and therefore ought to have a pretty good BS detector. Apparently he doesn’t:

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Meet Ret. General Michael Flynn, the Most Gullible Guy in the Army

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Obamacare’s Individual Mandate Is No Big Deal. But Something Else Is.

by LatishaEyre1860 Posted on November 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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As Republicans go about their plans to repeal and replace Obamacare, attention is now turning to the second half of that mantra: what will they replace it with? Oddly, this is not something that Republicans have come to a consensus on even though they’ve had seven years to do it. It’s almost as if they never had any intention of replacing it in the first place.

But that’s just me being cynical. There may not be any consensus, but there are Republican plans out there. Andrew Sprung rounds up a few of them and concludes that one particular piece of Obamacare shouldn’t cause any real trouble:

One change that need not be too disruptive, I suspect — if done right — is replacing the individual mandate with continuous coverage protection — that is, protection from medical underwriting for anyone who maintains continuous coverage.

“If done right” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, isn’t it? But that’s just me being cynical again. So let’s get serious. Is Sprung right?

Yes he is. The details get a little complicated—click the link if you want to dive into them—but the “individual mandate” is nothing more than an incentive: buy insurance or else you’ll pay a tax penalty. Likewise, “continuous coverage” is an incentive too: buy insurance or else you’re going to be screwed when you get sick and no one will sell you a health care policy. Both are ways to motivate young, healthy people to buy coverage and help subsidize all the old, sick people like me. Honestly, the biggest difference between them is semantic: “mandate” just sounds a whole lot more coercive than “continuous coverage.”

So sure, there are more ways to skin the incentive cat than a tax penalty. But I think we’re putting the cart before the horse here. We really ought to be talking about something else: the pre-existing conditions ban. Unlike the individual mandate, which can be repealed by a simple majority because it affects the federal budget, Republicans can’t repeal the pre-existing conditions ban without Democratic votes. And if it’s not repealed, Republicans can’t do much of anything else. As long as the ban is in place, any Republican plan is almost certain to cause total chaos in the health care market.1 It would be political suicide.

So if Republicans want to do something that’s not political suicide, they need Democratic votes. And that means Democrats have tremendous leverage over the final plan. They can either negotiate for something much better than what Republicans are proposing, or they can simply withhold their votes and leave Republicans between a rock and a hard place: either abandon Obamacare repeal, which would enrage their base, or pass a plan that would cause chaos for the health care industry and for millions of registered voters. This is not leverage to be given up lightly.

1If you don’t understand why, shame on you! My blogging has been in vain. However, Jon Gruber explains it here. Also, check out conservative Michael Cannon at National Review. He gets it too. The pre-existing conditions ban is the key roadblock in the way of Republicans repealing Obamacare.

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Obamacare’s Individual Mandate Is No Big Deal. But Something Else Is.

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NSA Chief: WikiLeaks Hacks of Democrats’ Emails Were a “Conscious Effort by a Nation-State”

by CareySargent Posted on November 16, 2016

Mother Jones

The WikiLeaks release of internal emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign constituted a “conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect,” the head of the National Security Agency said Tuesday.

“There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind,” NSA Director Michael S. Rogers said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “This was not something that was done casually, this was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily.” Rogers acknowledged in October that Russians were behind the hacks.

News that the DNC had been compromised broke earlier this June, when hacker Guccifer 2.0 released a trove of documents containing campaign emails and memos—most notably emails implying that the committee favored Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary. The release of the emails led to the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

WikiLeaks also published thousands of emails from John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair. Though Russia was long suspected of being behind the hacks, US officials did not formally accuse the Russian government of orchestrating the cyber attacks until October. In November, just four days before the election, DNC officials told Mother Jones they had found evidence that the DNC headquarters may have been bugged and had submitted a report to the FBI.

Watch the video of Rogers’ full remarks above.

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NSA Chief: WikiLeaks Hacks of Democrats’ Emails Were a “Conscious Effort by a Nation-State”

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The VA Just Dealt a Big Blow to Transgender Veterans

by LawannaGvr Posted on November 15, 2016

Mother Jones

The Department of Veterans Affairs is calling off plans to allow sex reassignment surgeries for transgender veterans, citing budget concerns.

The decision is a blow to trans veterans who need the surgery to treat gender dysphoria, a medical condition characterized by extreme distress over a mismatch between a person’s body and gender identity. It also marks a departure from the Pentagon’s recent move to cover the surgery for eligible active-duty troops. (There are an estimated 1,320 to 6,630 trans soldiers in the military.)

The VA Department has banned sex reassignment surgeries for veterans since the early 1990s, but it covers hormone therapy. In June, the department announced that it was considering lifting the ban on surgeries “to remove any barriers to transition-related care.” But in a statement to the Military Times this week, VA officials said the proposal had been scrapped by the Office of Management and Budget because it was not clear how the department would pay for it. The National Center for Transgender Equality has estimated that more than 134,000 veterans are transgender, though it’s not known how many would have tried to get the surgery. When the Pentagon decided in September to cover sex reassignment surgery, researchers noted that of thousands of trans troops, only an estimated 25 to 130 soldiers would opt for the procedure each year, amounting to less than a 0.13 percent increase in current health spending.

The VA Department said it would consider covering the surgery “when appropriate funding is available.”

“Increased understanding of both gender dysphoria and surgical techniques in this area has improved significantly and is now widely accepted as medically necessary treatment,” it said in the statement. “VA has been and will continue to explore a regulatory change that would allow VA to perform gender alteration surgery.”

Though he has called for a return to “traditional values,” President-elect Donald Trump has not commented on whether the government should pay for transition-related health care for trans vets. Nor has he taken a clear stance on trans rights more generally. In May, he said that if elected president, he would rescind Obama administration guidelines that protect trans rights in schools and health care—before adding that the government had a responsibility to “protect all people” and that he looked forward to learning more about the push for trans rights. In October, he described as “ridiculous” the Pentagon’s decisions to allow transgender people to serve openly in the military.

As the Republican president-elect prepares to head to the White House, LGBT advocacy groups worry trans veterans may be out of luck for some time. “This is a deeply disappointing setback,” Ashley Broadway-Mack, president of the American Military Partner Association, said of the VA Department’s decision not to offer sex reassignment surgeries. “As we now face a new incoming administration, we implore fair-minded Americans to stand united in holding our new administration officials accountable by insisting this be fixed.”

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The VA Just Dealt a Big Blow to Transgender Veterans

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Conservatives Discover That Racism Is Real After All

by Lavern49Swiybx Posted on November 15, 2016

Mother Jones

So here’s an interesting thing. Let’s start off with Newt Gingrich, asked about Steve Bannon’s advocacy of the alt-right:

The left is infuriated that anybody would challenge the legitimacy of their moral superiority. And so the left is hysterical…You get this with all the smears of Steve Bannon. I never heard about the alt-right until the nut cakes started writing about it.

Huh. It’s just a lefty smear. Let’s ask Bannon himself about this. Here is Sarah Posner:

“We’re the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July….During our interview, Bannon took credit for fomenting “this populist nationalist movement” long before Trump came on the scene. He credited Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)—a Trump endorser and confidant who has suggested that civil rights advocacy groups were “un-American” and “Communist-inspired”—with laying the movement’s groundwork.

I guess that clears things up. What’s interesting here is that a fair number of longtime conservatives were #NeverTrumpers during the presidential campaign, and they got a very up-close-and-personal look at just what the alt-right was like. National Review’s David French, for example, started a recent essay like this: “Trump’s alt-right trolls have subjected me and my family to an unending torrent of abuse that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.” Click the link if you have a strong stomach. Today, Ian Tuttle joins him:

Under Bannon’s aegis, something ugly has taken hold of the Right.

In March 2012, Bannon — an investment banker-turned-conservative documentarian — became chairman of Breitbart News….Under Bannon’s leadership…the site built up its viewer base by catering to the alt-right, a small but vocal fringe of white supremacists, anti-Semites, and Internet trolls.

….The alt-right is not a “fabrication” of the media….If ethnic and religious minorities are worried, it’s in part because Donald Trump and his intimates have spent the last several months winking at one of the ugliest political movements in America’s recent history.

….Furthermore, as some on the left have been more attuned to than their conservative counterparts, the problem is not whether Bannon himself subscribes to a noxious strain of political nuttery; it’s that his de facto endorsement of it enables it to spread and to claim legitimacy, and that what is now a vicious fringe could, over time, become mainstream….To conservative and liberal alike, that he has the ear of the next president of the United States (a man of no particular convictions, and loyal to no particular principles) should be a source of grave concern.

Under normal circumstances, the entire conservative movement would be in Newt Gingrich’s corner: Bannon is no racist and the alt-right is just a figment of the hysterical left. But during the campaign, lots of mainstream conservatives were targets of the alt-right. They saw firsthand just how vicious it is and just how real it is. This time, they can’t write it off.

Bannon is an ugly, ugly character. He promoted the alt-right; he loves the right-wing nationalist parties of Europe; and his ex-wife says that he’s personally anti-semitic. The movement he nurtured is dedicated to “white rights,” loudly and proudly. And that has consequences: the FBI announced today that hate crimes were up 6 percent in 2015, “fueled by attacks on Muslims.” Al Franken has this one right:

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Conservatives Discover That Racism Is Real After All

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A Trump Administration Could Gut a Key Federal Policy That Helps Trans People

by epxxatlw Posted on November 14, 2016

Mother Jones

In 2010, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, she implemented a revolutionary new policy to make it easier for transgender people to codify their gender identity on their passports. With Trump now preparing for his new administration, transgender advocates are concerned that this State Department policy could be in jeopardy—and are urging trans people to apply for their passports as soon as possible.

“The current policy that’s in place, it’s a really good one,” says Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Minter emphasizes that even though the Trump campaign has not explicitly targeted the current passport rule for change, “we’re urging people to go ahead and get that done just to be safe and sure. Take advantage of the protection that we know is there now and could be changed in the future.”

The State Department rule, enacted in June 2010, marked an unprecedented shift in the federal government’s treatment of transgender people. The Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing same-sex marriage was five years away, and the Pentagon’s policy allowing transgender troops to serve openly would not come for another six.

Before 2010, a passport gender change required proof of sexual reassignment surgery. Under Clinton’s new policy, those seeking to change their gender on their passport would only need to provide a note from their physician saying they’d undergone “clinical treatment for gender transition,” according to the State Department’s announcement of the change. In practical terms, this meant that Clinton had helped create one of the only ways for transgender people to obtain federal ID that properly acknowledges their gender—a passport has weight everywhere, even in conservative states that otherwise might make it difficult for trans people to change the gender on, for example, driver’s licenses.

Given this history, LGBT-focused legal advocacy groups are concerned about what it could mean for the trans community if this important avenue is shut down.

“I don’t know if transgender people are their highest priority, but certainly the State Department regulations could be changed.” says Jillian Weiss, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. “It will take some time to undo the tremendous progress of the Obama administration, but there’s no doubt that we will lose some rights.”

To be clear, there has been no official movement yet on this front. State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters on Wednesday that the State Department has not yet been contacted by Trump’s transition team.

But Trump has indicated he may not be an advocate of the LGBT community as president. During the campaign, he told Fox News that he would “strongly consider” appointing conservative Supreme Court justices who would consider overturning Obergefell v. Hodges—a move that could affect trans rights for years to come by eliminating the right to marry for some transgender people. (He has since distanced himself from that position, telling 60 Minutes during his first formal interview as president-elect that he was “fine” with gay marriage.) Trans rights advocates are also concerned about a court that will be unsympathetic in matters that deal with trans equality, such as the upcoming case challenging Obama administration guidelines requiring that schools permit transgender students to use the bathroom of their chosen gender.

So LGBT advocates aren’t taking any chances by waiting around to see what might happen. Twitter user Riley (@dtwps) started the hashtag #translawhelp, along with a corresponding website, to connect trans folks with legal advice and funding for the passport process and other questions post-election. Tied to that is a crowdfunding effort to help raise money for the necessary passport fees trans people will need. Kendra Albert of the law firm Zeitgeist Law is also coordinating an effort to match trans people in need of passport funds with donors. Albert told Mother Jones that “for a lot of people, gaining correct documentation has gained a sense of urgency that it didn’t have before.”

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A Trump Administration Could Gut a Key Federal Policy That Helps Trans People

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Donald Trump Once Again the Target of Malicious Gossip From Haters and Losers

by DaisyNewsom Posted on November 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Wall Street Journal reports:

The company that owns the National Enquirer, a backer of Donald Trump, agreed to pay $150,000 to a former Playboy centerfold model for her story of an affair a decade ago with the Republican presidential nominee, but then didn’t publish it, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the matter.

The tabloid-newspaper publisher reached an agreement in early August with Karen McDougal, the 1998 Playmate of the Year….Ms. McDougal expected her story about Mr. Trump to be published, people familiar with the matter said. American Media didn’t intend to run it, said another person familiar with the matter. Ms. McDougal didn’t return calls for comment.

….A contract reviewed by the Journal gave American Media exclusive rights to Ms. McDougal’s story forever, but didn’t obligate the company to publish it and allowed the company to transfer those rights. It barred her from telling her story elsewhere. The company said it also would give her monthly columns to write and would put her on magazine covers.

Trump and the Enquirer deny everything, so this is probably just idle gossip. It doesn’t really seem like him anyway, does it? Anyway, this was all back in 2006, when Trump was only 60 years old and didn’t know he’d run for president someday. I’m sure he’s given up cheating on his wife since then.

And speaking of Melania, I guess we finally got the goods on her. Apparently she did paid modeling jobs in the United States seven weeks before she got a work permit:

The details of Mrs. Trump’s early paid modeling work in the U.S. emerged in the final days of a bitter presidential campaign in which her husband, Donald Trump, has taken a hard line on immigration laws and those who violate them.

….The documents obtained by the AP show she was paid for 10 modeling assignments between Sept. 10 and Oct. 15 of 1996, during a time when her visa allowed her generally to be in the U.S. and look for work but not perform paid work in the country. The documents examined by the AP indicate that the modeling assignments would have been outside the bounds of her visa.

We can all let this go, right? It’s bad enough being married to Donald. She doesn’t deserve any more grief.

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Donald Trump Once Again the Target of Malicious Gossip From Haters and Losers

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