What goes through my my mind when I read the news with my morning coffee. …Or for the Simon's Rockers in the group, this is my response journal.
It’s tough to believe nobody was asking questions about why Porter hadn’t received a full security clearance.
…It’s also really, really hard to understand why the White House didn’t check to make doubly sure that their initial statements about Porter wouldn’t come back to bite them — especially on an issue as sensitive as domestic abuse.
Incompetence, pure and simple.
The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.
…In January 2017, just weeks before leaving his post, [Former DHS Secretary Jeh] Johnson declared the nation’s electoral systems part of the nation’s federally protected “critical infrastructure,” a designation that applies to entities like the power grid that could be attacked. It made protecting the electoral systems an official duty of DHS.
But Johnson told NBC News he is now worried that since the 2016 election a lot of states have done little to nothing “to actually harden their cybersecurity.”
…Many of the states complained the federal government did not provide specific threat details, saying that information was classified and state officials did not have proper clearances.
…Other states that NBC contacted said they were still waiting for cybersecurity help from the federal government.
…Some state officials had opposed Johnson’s designation of electoral systems as critical infrastructure, viewing it a federal intrusion.
Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems, says top U.S. official – NBC News
oy….
[Gowdy] led the GOP Benghazi fever which gripped Congress for over two years—costing taxpayers $7+ million over the course of eight investigations—all of which found no wrongdoing on the part of Hillary Clinton. The man most well-known for leading a partisan witch hunt in order to discredit a future presidential candidate says that he is quitting Congress because “there is more civility in a death penalty case than there is in some Congressional hearings.”
…“sources close to Gowdy,” says that he is unnerved by his colleagues undercutting the Justice Department—yet he voted to release the infamous memo written by a member of Trump’s transition team which smears the FBI and Justice Department as politically biased against Republicans. Not to mention, the Justice Department and the FBI oppose the release of this memo without being able to review it, yet Gowdy’s vote took that power away from them.
…It’s hard to come up with a simple rationale behind Gowdy’s sudden retirement other than these two explanations. He wasn’t in danger for his next election. He won his last one with 67% of the vote, more than doubling his opponent’s vote total. The “I’m sick of hyper-partisanship” explanation doesn’t hold any weight considering he voted down partisan lines last week to release a partisan memo, and that’s before you get to his reputation as a partisan hack. The “I’m sick of fighting my colleagues in order to protect the DOJ” explanation rings hollow too given that he voted to remove power from the DOJ and put it in Trump’s hands. His own staff seemed to not know he was leaving considering they were still sending fundraising e-mails out just prior to him announcing his retirement.
Why Did Trey Gowdy Suddenly Retire from Congress? :: Politics :: Features :: Trey Gowdy :: Paste
hmmmm
California will block the transport of petroleum from new offshore oil rigs through its state, officials told Reuters, a move meant to hobble the Trump administration’s effort to vastly expand drilling in U.S. federal waters.
California’s threat to deny pipeline permits for transporting oil from new leases off the Pacific Coast is the latest step by states trying to halt the biggest proposed expansion in decades of federal oil and gas leasing. Officials in Florida, North and South Carolina, Delaware and Washington, have also warned drilling could despoil beaches, harm wildlife and hurt lucrative tourism industries.
California says it will ban crude from Trump offshore drilling plan
hmmm
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has championed the continued burning of fossil fuels while expressing doubt about the consensus of climate scientists that man-made carbon emissions are overwhelmingly the cause of record temperature increases observed around the world.
In an interview with KSNV-TV in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Pruitt made several statements that are undercut by the work of climate scientists, including those at his own agency.
…PRUITT: “No one disputes the climate changes, is changing, we see that constant. We obviously contribute to it, we live in the climate, right? So our activity contributes to the climate changing to a certain degree. Now, measuring that with precision … is more challenging than is let on at times.”
THE FACTS: A “certain degree” vastly understates the science. Recent studies leave little doubt that human activity is the overwhelming cause of climate change.
…PRUITT: “Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100, in the year 2018? That’s somewhat fairly arrogant for us to think we know exactly what it should be in 2100.”
THE FACTS: What he calls arrogant is established science. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says if fossil fuel emissions continue on the current trajectory, temperatures by the end of the century will be around 6.5 degrees warmer than now (3.7 degrees Celsius).
That means more extreme heat waves, heavy rains, floods, droughts and storms. It will worsen health problems that now exist, hurt the poorest and most vulnerable and lead to more conflicts and civil wars, much like the one in Syria, the report said.
“Human civilization came about and has thrived during a period in Earth’s history with very little climate change,” said Paul Higgins, a scientist with the American Meteorological Society. “We have no experience with the climate we expect in the near future and the rates of change are unlike anything people have dealt with before.”
AP FACT CHECK: Climate science undercuts EPA chief’s view | Charlotte Observer
What an arrogant, incompetent tool.
A spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represented the officers, said it was an “ambush.” And President Donald Trump said the injured agent had been “brutally beaten” as he called again for the construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico.
But FBI investigators so far have found no evidence of an attack or scuffle in Martinez’s death, the FBI said Wednesday, further deepening the mystery. The investigation, to date, however “has not conclusively determined” how the two agents ended up at the bottom of the culvert — a tunnel structure used for water drainage.
…The only footprints at the scene belonged to the agents and first responders.
…”The second Border Patrol agent also made a statement to the effect of, ‘We ran into a culvert,’ ‘I ran into a culvert,’ or ‘I think I ran into a culvert,'” the FBI said.
The FBI hasn’t found any evidence that border patrol agent was murdered – CNN
So border control can’t keep their own agents from falling into culverts and blames the whole thing on phantom attackers? Gee, I feel so safe with such honest and capable agents guarding our borders. …Not.
Nancy Pelosi’s speech sets record for longest in House history
Wild.
…And perhaps comes to nothing in the end but still a good effort and well done.
George W. Bush: ‘Clear evidence Russians meddled’ in election
I saw this posted somewhere by some tool along with a rant about establishment politicians and how they betray their own party. I’m guessing by establishment politicians they meant politicians telling them something they don’t want to hear….
I knew the price of my new home in Kirkwood, just not what it would cost the neighbors who’d lived there for generations
How gentrification really changes a neighborhood – Atlanta Magazine
hmmmm
King visited Hawaii a number of times during his life. Just a year before the Selma marches, he spoke at a Honolulu conference for the Hawaii State Human Rights Commission—the first committee of its kind in the United States—of which Rev. Akaka was a board member. King found the Islands’ multiethnic population and everyday society to be an inspirational source of “racial harmony” as the struggle of African Americans made headlines across the continental U.S.
…”As I think of the struggle that we are engaged in in the South land, we look to you for inspiration and as a noble example, where you have already accomplished in the area of racial harmony and racial justice, what we are struggling to accomplish in other sections of the country, and you can never know what it means to those of us caught for the moment in the tragic and often dark midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, to come to a place where we see the glowing daybreak of freedom and dignity and racial justice.”
Why Martin Luther King Jr. wore a Hawaiian lei on Selma march | Hawaii Magazine
hmmm
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