Check out our slate of Daily Kos-endorsed candidates

Here we go again, with yet another “incident” fueling right-wing outrage about black people and symbolism. The latest was over a photograph of 16 black female cadets who had come together to celebrate their upcoming graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point.

The New York Times reported:

The gesture, posted on Facebook and Twitter last week, touched off a barrage of criticism in and out of the armed forces as some commenters accused the women of allying themselves with the Black Lives Matter movement and sowing racial divisions in a military that relies on assimilation.

West Point opened an investigation on April 28 into whether the women violated Army rules that prohibit political activities while in uniform. Now, as the women wait to hear if they will be punished, they are gaining supporters who say they were simply making a gesture of solidarity and strength.

The elite public military academy, which trains many of the Army’s future leaders, is overwhelmingly male and 70 percent white. The 16 cadets in the photo represented all but one of the black women in a graduating class of about 1,000, a meager 1.7 percent. But the Army has long tried to play down race and gender to create a force where “everyone is green.”

The good news in all of this is that the cadets have been cleared:

West Point has said that 16 black female cadets did not violate any Department of Defense or Army regulations by posing with their fists raised in a photo taken ahead of their graduation from the academy.

No punitive action will be taken against the women after an inquiry found that their gesture was intended to demonstrate "unity" and "pride," a statement from the institution said.

Black women have a long and often unrecognized history of serving in our military. But this tempest in a tea party pot is really not about the military, except for the fact that the armed forces are symbolic of our nation’s strength and have traditionally been a male domain and preserve. The criticism is simply part of a historical continuum that attempts to repress any and all expressions of black pride, and our solidarity and success against the odds.

Time to get planting, people. And if you want to see it full sized, check it out at Compound Interest.

Michael Barbard and Megan Twohey check on how Donald Trump, world’s greatest supporter of women, treats women when he doesn’t think the world is watching.

Donald Trump and women: The words evoke a familiar cascade of casual insults, hurled from the safe distance of a Twitter account, a radio show or a campaign podium. This is the public treatment of some women by Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president: degrading, impersonal, performed. “That must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees,” he told a female contestant on “The Celebrity Apprentice.” Rosie O’Donnell, he said, had a “fat, ugly face.” A lawyer who needed to pump milk for a newborn? “Disgusting,” he said.

Actually, the phrase “Donald Trump and women” summons up all sorts of distasteful images. But when he’s not standing behind a podium, Trump found other ways to demean women. 

The New York Times interviewed dozens of women who had worked with or for Mr. Trump over the past four decades, in the worlds of real estate, modeling and pageants; women who had dated him or interacted with him socially; and women and men who had closely observed his conduct since his adolescence. In all, more than 50 interviews were conducted over the course of six weeks.

Ruh roh!

Their accounts — many relayed here in their own words — reveal unwelcome romantic advances, unending commentary on the female form, a shrewd reliance on ambitious women, and unsettling workplace conduct, according to the interviews, as well as court records and written recollections. ... They appeared to be fleeting, unimportant moments to him, but they left lasting impressions on the women who experienced them.

There’s been a recurring idea throughout this improbable campaign season, that Trump isn’t really Trump. That is, that Donald Trump isn’t the boorish, churlish, snapish, bigoted, bull-headed, fascistic idiot that we see on TV. He’s playing a role! He can be good!

No dammit, he’s not. And no, dammit, he can’t. The persona we’ve been seeing in public is also his persona in private. If it’s an act, it’s one he’s been honing since at least high school. Trump doesn’t change, not as he gets older, and not in private. He just becomes more the bullying, belittling, dictator over time, because preying on the insecurity of others is exactly how Trump works. He’s not a sociopath in the sense of not understanding that other people have feelings. He knows they do. He also knows that casually tossing barbs into the places where people feel weak, gives him not just a sense of power, but makes others feel powerless in comparison. There’s another technical term for that. It’s monster.

Come on.  Let’s go see what else we can find…

The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office has decided not to retry seven members of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles on misdemeanor charges related to the closure of the 101/Hollywood Freeway in December of 2014. The seven—Haewon Asfaw, Povi-Tamu Bryant, Rosa Clemente, Sha Dixon, Todd Harris, Damon Turner and Jas Wade—went to trial in March on charges of obstructing a thoroughfare and refusing to comply with lawful police orders. Accused of blocking some of the northbound lanes of the busy freeway on November 26, 2014, the group’s actions were part of nationwide protests over the failure of former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson to be indicted by a grand jury for the murder of Mike Brown. The March trial ended in a hung jury with jurors rejecting most of the charges against the protestors. 

Lawyers for the BLMLA7, as the protestors were known, argued that the charges were political and should never have been brought in the first place, since the group was merely exercising its right to freedom of speech.

Nana Gyamfi, a lawyer who represented six of the seven protesters in the case, said the decision should signal to city prosecutors that they should stop filing charges against protesters and instead use their resources to address the complaints about excessive police force that prompted the demonstrations. 

“Clearly, we feel like the cases should not have been brought in the first place," Gyamfi said. "There was no need to have gone through this process."

The BLMLA7 now join a majority of Black Lives Matter activists nationwide who have either had cases dismissed or small punishments meted out for various protests such as in Oakland, Minneapolis and Worcester, Massachusetts.

…

Climate change may have affected Neanderthals in modern day Europe and not for the better, leaving them particularly vulnerable when anatomically modern H. sapiens finally invaded the continent:

Neanderthals may have met their end, at least in part, due to colder temperatures brought about by global climate change. The climate in Europe 40,000 years ago was bitter cold, and investigators believe this may have played a part in the extinction of that species.

As freezing temperatures encompassed the European continent, Neanderthals went to great lengths to extract all the food available from prey. That conclusion is the result of analysis of the remains of prey animals consumed by these ancient hominids.

That’s interesting and not all together unexpected. But alas, watch for twists and turns  and queue the global cooling myth zombie lie …

• Never forget, there’s a lot of powerful interests that would love to see Tesla fail and the EV maker has bitten off an awful big mouthful, leaving plenty of ways to fail as an option. The company will have to live or die on its own like any other. But one of the more nauseating and underhanded ways lawmakers and lobbyists beholden to traditional auto-makers use to hobble competition is by playing games with how the company is allowed to sell their cars on the supposed “free” market.

• Through some bubbles, toil, and troubles, some scientists now believe the early Earth’s atmosphere was actually as thin or thinner than it as it is today on Mount Everest:

A thinner atmosphere would ordinarily mean an overall colder Earth, the researchers said, because gases trap heat, and more gas traps more heat. But Som noted that the lower pressure actually might have meant a higher concentration of greenhouse gases because, due to the thin atmosphere, the water on this early Earth would have boiled more easily.

• This week the Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) called Snow White got a size upgrade.

• Short of a hyper-drive of some sort, there are parts of the universe we can see, but we would never be able to actually reach no matter how close to the speed of light we can get.

To someone born in the far distant future, the Universe’s memory of where it came from — of the Big Bang, of other galaxies, and of the process that brought all of this into existence — will be wiped clean from what’s even observable. Even if we were to leave today for the most distant stars and galaxies we can imagine at nearly the speed of light, only 3% of the ones in the observable Universe could be reached, a number that gets smaller and smaller with each moment that passes.

Gross, but not nearly surprising enough: According to a report from Oxfam, workers in U.S. poultry processing plants are frequently denied bathroom breaks to the point of being forced to wear adult diapers while they work. On food you will eat.

The report cited unnamed workers from Tyson Foods Inc., Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., Perdue Farms Inc. and Sanderson Farms Inc. who said that supervisors mock them, ignore requests and threaten punishment or firing. When they can go, they wait in long lines even though they are given limited time, sometimes 10 minutes, according to the report. Some workers have urinated or defecated themselves while working because they can’t hold on any longer, the report said. Some workers “restrict intake of liquids and fluids to dangerous degrees,” Oxfam said. [...]

The conditions present difficulties, especially for menstruating or pregnant women, according to the latest report. Workers could also face medical problems, including urinary tract infections, and managers have told some workers to eat and drink less to avoid going to the bathroom, according to the report.

Naturally the companies in question deny this and say their workers get enough breaks and are allowed to go to the bathroom between breaks. But who do you trust more? High-level corporate flacks guarding the company image, or workers on the production line?

This year, for the first time ever, more electricity in the United States will be produced from burning natural gas rather than coal. It’s a historic change, and it shows that our electrical grid can be very nimble when responding to market conditions. Anyone insinuating that the electrical supply is a Titanic, too large to turn quickly, has been proven wrong.

Burning natural gas to generate electricity creates only about half the CO₂ as would producing the same amount of electricity using coal. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the decade-long transition from coal producing the majority of our electricity to gas in the lead (if only as a plurality) has coincided with a significant drop in the amount of CO₂ the United States pumps into our ever-warming atmosphere. Over that period, renewable sources have also increased their contribution to the mix, but the move from coal to gas has been the biggest factor in shaving over 500 million tonnes from the annual load of CO₂.

A federal analysis released this week shows that energy-related CO₂ emissions (which includes electricity, transportation, and gas used in buildings) are at their lowest point in a decade, largely "because of the decreased use of coal and the increased use of natural gas for electricity generation"

There’s a lot to like in this. Burning coal does more than just pump out more CO_2: There’s also the problem of coal ash entering both the air and water, and there are trace elements released from burning coal that include a lot of things you’d rather not breathe, like uranium. And when you get down to it, there’s no doubt that seeing our long climb in CO₂ production stop, then reverse, is a good thing.

But is the price of this change too high?

What if President Barack Obama's biggest achievement on climate change was actually a total failure? …

You know the Gandhi saying, “First they ignore you, then they laugh ...” Yeah, that one.

Energy companies have their own version. It goes like this: First you ignore climate change, then you deny climate change, then you try to blame anything but your actions for climate change, then you complain about the cost of ending climate change. Oh, and at all stages you pay Republicans to carry your water on climate change. So far this has been a fairly decent strategy for the people raking it in by spewing it out. It’s even allowed them to argue that saving the world would be too expensive. (Because letting world civilization end, that’ll definitely save some bucks.)

Only there’s one new area of conflict that’s hitting energy companies in the only place they care about.

The notion of holding oil companies responsible for global warming, in the same way tobacco companies had to pay billions of dollars in damages over the health effects of cigarettes, had long been seen as a quixotic quest led by scruffy, oil-hating extremists. But POLITICO’s interviews with dozens of activists, industry officials and lawmakers suggest that support for a legal crusade against Exxon is growing far beyond the political fringe — and now poses the biggest existential threat the company has faced in decades.

Disinvestment is already having an impact. It’s worked to strip billions from company bottom lines, and organizations like Go Fossil Free are encouraging investors to remove their monetary support from Exxon while exposing the network of relationships that allow these companies to distort policy and influence research. But there’s a growing movement to dent polluter profits through more than just denying them investment funds.

Once merely intent on shaming the oil giant into better behavior, environmentalists are pursuing a strategy to discredit the company, weaken it politically and perhaps make it pay the kinds of multibillion-dollar legal settlements that began hitting the tobacco industry in the 1990s.

When Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam enacted a law that allows therapists to reject clients who they religiously object to treating, he congratulated himself on a provision that doesn’t allow them to turn away people in life-threatening situations. 

Unfortunately, the law only purports to protect to people in immediate danger while posing an even greater threat to clients who have spent months in counseling before finally gaining the courage to come out. Sheila Burke reports:

Tennessee's law requires all counselors, no matter their personal beliefs, to treat people who are in immediate danger of hurting themselves or others. But because many such people aren't readily identifiable, some wonder how counselors will know.

The law also raises questions about timing.

The therapeutic relationship takes time to build, said Art Terrazas, ACA's director of government affairs. It's not like going to a medical doctor, where patients can quickly describe a cough or a problem joint. 

"When you've gone to a few different sessions, and you're getting help and they finally say, 'OK, I don't think I can help you,' that is going to be devastating," Terrazas said. "And they're going to say, 'Well then nobody can help me.'"

Not surprisingly, this law has no grounding in reality and it runs afoul of the American Counseling Association’s code of ethics. In their rush to score political points, Haslam and his GOP cronies gambled away the well-being of some of Tennessee’s most vulnerable residents. Apparently winning re-election is worth risking a life or two along the way.

At Juanita Jean’s of Texas, Juanita Jean Herownself writes—Well, I Don't See A Problem Here:

Here’s the headline in Mother Jones.

Well, I do not see a problem here.  Let them.

I wonder where they are going?

On Wednesday, the Platform Committee of the Texas Republican Party voted to put a Texas independence resolution up for a vote at this week’s GOP convention, according to a press release from the pro-secession Texas Nationalist Movement. The resolution calls for allowing voters to decide whether the Lone Star State should become an independent nation.

Oh wait, they want to make me join them and quit singing God Bless America and give back my social security?

That ain’t damn happening.   Ever.

They reckon that it has very little chance of passing.  That’s what they also reckoned about about Donald Trump winning the nomination and Dan Patrick being taken seriously.