Ed Hawkins is a University of Reading climate scientist. He's the guy who created a temperature spiral that went giga-viral. Now he has created another for the carbon dioxide readings at Mauna Loa Observatory. Ed Hawkins at Grist calls it mesmerizing, and it certainly is. Perhaps putting an automatically updated version permanently on screens over the entry doors to both chambers of the U.S. Congress would be a good reminder to our lawmakers.
In an unusually stark warning a leading international scientific body says the Arctic climate is changing so fast that researchers are struggling to keep up. The changes happening there, it says, are affecting the weather worldwide.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says: “Dramatic and unprecedented warming in the Arctic is driving sea level rise, affecting weather patterns around the world and may trigger even more changes in the climate system.
“The rate of change is challenging the current scientific capacity to monitor and predict what is becoming a journey into uncharted territory.”
The WMO is the United Nations’ main agency responsible for weather, climate and water.
Its president, David Grimes, said: “The Arctic is a principal, global driver of the climate system and is undergoing an unprecedented rate of change with consequences far beyond its boundaries. [...]
Drudge last night floated one spin attempt—that Bush was emotionally drained because he had spent the day meeting with hurricane victims. So in other words, Bush can't handle his job.
But it wasn't just the eye rolling, nor the petulance, nor the fact he clearly hadn't prepped for the debate. It was also the content, and Bush gave our side plenty of material.
At one point, Kerry's asserted that 90 percent of cargo in Florida ports wasn't inspected, nor was cargo loaded in commercial flights, and that he would do better. Bush gave this amazing answer:
I don't think we want to get to how he's going to pay for all these promises.
In other words, your safety takes a back seat to Bush's tax cuts and his unecessary war in Iraq.
Monday through Friday you can catch the Kagro in the Morning Show 9 AM ET by dropping in here, or you can download the Stitcher app (found in the app stores or at Stitcher.com), and find a live stream there, by searching for "Netroots Radio.”
Big news out of Ohio: a sports God in the Buckeye state, LeBron James, has endorsed Hillary Clinton:
Two years ago, I told you I was coming home to Northeast Ohio — where I was born and raised. When I came back, I had two missions.
In June, thanks to my teammates and all your support, I accomplished my on-the-court mission. We came back from being down 3-1 in the NBA Finals to finally grab what we’ve waited 52 long years for: a championship in Northeast Ohio. [...]
There are a lot of people who want to tell kids who grew up like me and looked like me that they just don’t have anything to look forward to.
That’s dead wrong. And that’s why I came back to Cleveland to continue my second mission. I am determined to make sure my kids in Akron have what they need to become their best selves. Opportunities, a support system, and a safety net for kids in poverty or kids in single-parent households shouldn't be limited to those lucky enough to be blessed with athletic talent. [...]
When I look at this year’s presidential race, it’s clear which candidate believes the same thing. Only one person running truly understands the struggles of an Akron child born into poverty. And when I think about the kinds of policies and ideas the kids in my foundation need from our government, the choice is clear.
The SpaceX ITS booster and spacecraft intended to carry 100 people or 100 tons of cargo to Mars and beyond.
The SpaceX ITS booster and spacecraft intended to carry 100 people or 100 tons of cargo to Mars and beyond.
There were many failures in the chronicles of the European Age of Discovery. The age officially started when Columbus bumped into the New World on the way to India. But it unofficially began centuries earlier as ships and navigation gradually became reliable enough for explorers to make a run across an unknown ocean. We’ll never know for sure how many ships sank or how many crews were lost along the way, but over the preceding millennia it was surely in the thousands. Exploring new worlds with new technology is dangerous. It always will be. If humans are to become a multi-planet species there’s something we need to accept: failure has to be an option.
If loss of equipment or loss of life stops a program in its tracks, and that program happens to be sailing across uncharted oceans in small wooden boats through storms and waves by the light of strange stars, or blazing through 100 million miles of vacuum at Mach 100 pelted by exotic rads and rays, that program is doomed from the start.
No doubt some recent and relatively minor failures keep SpaceX CEO Elon Musk up at night. No one was hurt, but it’s the kind of thing that threatens to set back Musk’s ambitious voyages to Mars—which are the whole reason he started SpaceX. The goal is not to “save” Earth. The end goal is to create a self-sustaining colony that can grow, independently, of our home-world. Think of it as biospheric reproduction.
On Tuesday, speaking at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, Musk showed he wasn’t kidding about his original motive, laying out his plan on how a colony might be sustained and developed:
The trip will work like this: First, the spaceship will launch out of Pad 39A, which is under development right now at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. At liftoff, the booster will have 127,800 kilonewtons of thrust, or 28,730,000 pounds of thrust. The spaceship heads to orbit, while the booster heads back to Earth, coming back within about 20 minutes. Back on Earth, the booster lands on a launch mount and a propellant tanker is loaded onto the booster. The entire unit — now filled with fuel — lifts off again.
The problem might be best broken down into two parts: the spacecraft that gets people and cargo to the surface of Mars, and the initial strategy those first colonists follow to survive and create the conditions necessary for sustainability. We’ll introduce the first part and have some thoughts on other issues below.
The civil war in Colombia has gone on for five decades — long enough that people who are fighting today had parents and grandparents involved in the struggle. Between the actions of the government, the communist Farc guerrillas, and right wing militias, over 260,000 people have died while Colombia’s stability has been roiled by kidnappings, terrorism, and the drugs that provided funds to keep the fire burning.
In 2010, President Juan Manuel Santos was elected on a pledge to end the conflict, and since then he has worked to negotiate an end to the war. Just days ago, it seemed that the war was finally over. Santos signed a treaty under which the rebels would lay down their arms and form a political party in exchange for amnesty for most past crimes involved with the conflict.
However, the treaty between the Farc and the government needed to be ratified, and there was opposition from the political party led by former President Alvaro Uribe who wanted the Farc rebels punished. And now it seems that the treaty has failed.
With votes in from more than 99% of polling stations counted, 50.2% opposed the accord while 49.8% supported it - a difference of less than 63,000 votes out of 13 million ballots.
The surprise result means the peace process is now shrouded by uncertainty.
It is also a major setback to President Juan Manuel Santos …
If he sticks to his word about there being no plan B, the bilateral ceasefire will be lifted and the war will resume, our correspondent says.
Uribe has called for the government to return to the negotiating table and require that some Farc leaders face jail while others receive a lifetime ban from public office. However, it’s unclear if the Farc will agree to this — knowing that they are negotiating to bring harsher penalties to bear on their own side. The Farc is already deeply unpopular, and it was unclear if their re-engineering into a political party would have been successful.
“The war is over,” declared Humberto de la Calle, chief government negotiator, after signing the deal in Havana, where talks have been held since November 2012. “It is the time to give peace a chance.
Instead Colombia is facing a moment of stark uncertainty.
Many religious leaders are causing the destruction of religion itself. Why? Many have merged politics, religion, and capitalism as the definition of Christianity itself. It’s true that Pope Francis is attempting to reintroduce a lost morality, but he is only one man—and he may be too late to reach American Evangelicals.
Evangelicals contort themselves into knots to find justifications to vote for Donald Trump and consider him one of their own. Still, conservative radio personality Steve Deace described him as anathema to all their values in a piece he wrote warning Christian leaders about the hypocrisy of voting for Donald Trump.
Furthermore, the Scriptures make clear the qualifications for public office:
Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens.
There is simply no way to avoid the conclusion that Trump violates every syllable of these requirements.
Now that we’ve addressed the biblical case, what about the moral one?
Trump is a scam artist.
Trump is a gossip.
Trump is a slanderer.
Trump is a misogynist.
Trump is an adulterer.
Trump is a deceiver.
Trump is a liar.
Deace forgot to include the fact that Trump is an unfettered capitalist. To Donald Trump, capitalism is not a tool but an ideology, his religion. While it can serve us well as a tool when controlled, as a religion it is anathema to humanity.
But then, many evangelical pastors have validated capitalism as a God-sanctioned and divine economic decree.
Yesterday would have been my dad’s 93rd birthday. I had intended to write a post honoring my father, his World War II service, and his years as a Teamster. Then I watched the first presidential debate. My first thoughts were of my father watching the Carter/Reagan debate: every time Reagan would speak, my dad would wag his finger and mutter, “that asshole.” So dad, this is for you, as I have clearly become you.
I have a 16-year-old son. I’m voting for Hillary because I have no desire to see him go off to war just because someone baited our president on Twitter.
I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries. I supported him because his beliefs came closest to my own. He was not perfect though—just as Hillary isn’t perfect. However, she is not a narcissistic, misogynistic, lying, word salad-spewing, oompa loompa-looking man who does not have the intelligence nor the temperament to be president of the United States. Anyone who watched the debate on Monday night and thinks that Trump (that asshole) should be president over Hillary should really reconsider the life choices they have made. If you wait for the perfect candidate, you will will die waiting for him or her.
Here is why I am voting for Hillary: she is intelligent. I do not want a president that I’d like to have a beer with—I want the smartest damn person in the room, and in this election, that is Hillary.
She has experience as a working first lady, a U.S. senator, and secretary of state.
Several of my veteran friends say Hillary does not care about vets. They are wrong: she has stood up for veterans and service members alike. Here are some highlights:
Like millions of others, she believed that President Obama was a Muslim. And like so many she had gotten to know online through social media, she also believed that he was likely gay, that Michelle Obama could be a man, and that the Obama children were possibly kidnapped from a family now searching for them. …
“Finally,” she said. “Someone who thinks like me.”
What’s making the racist, sexist, and antisemitic especially happy is they don’t have to hide who they are. They can let the white sheets, Confederate flags, and concentration camp jokes fly.
To help out, the Trump campaign has a mobile app called, appropriately enough, America First. And if the nationalist name doesn’t tip you off, just a short scroll down the leader board will let you know what kind of user really rates in Trump’s campaign.
As I immerse myself in the start of football season and the home stretch of the general election, it’s hard not to notice a few striking parallels. Aside from the merging of the two worlds in response to Colin Kaepernick’s protest of the national anthem, the ebb and flow of politics and sports share many commonalities.
There are always two opposing sides, represented by two different mascots, and no shortage of trash talk to go around in between contests. Both politics and sports are covered by a breathlessly captivated media, which thrives on the thrill of the competition, and sometimes derision between the two opponents. We use the term “horse race” to describe a political process that paradoxically happens slowly over a year-long period, and unfolds in the quiet confines of single, solitary voting booths. We obsess and agonize over losses in week three, knowing full well that you don’t have to be undefeated to win the Super Bowl.
Regardless, it’s October, and we must necessarily endure a media narrative that assures us the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is so close that we need to remain on the edge of our seats for the next month. While there’s merit to keeping the populace engaged in the election by identifying the stakes as high, we’re now reaching a phase where the media has to flat out obfuscate reality in order to do so. Case in point: the latest word on the street is that Clinton and Trump are “both” the least liked people on the planet, with very little mind paid to who dislikes them and why. It then follows that because they are “both so disliked,” it’s anyone’s guess as to how either one of them can put together a winning coalition in time for Nov. 8.
Of course if you were sentient in 2008, 2012, or during the Democratic primary, you’d know a little something about the Obama Coalition, and how it repeatedly defies conventional “horse race” wisdom.
What was supposed to be a couple of brief, scripted paragraphs turned first into Trump staggering around the stage in mocking imitation of Hillary Clinton’s recent bout with pneumonia.
He said Clinton could not fight bad trade deals or Russian President Vladimir Putin because “she can't make it 15 feet to her car,” alluding to video that showed Clinton buckling as she unexpectedly left a 9/11 memorial service early. Her doctor later said she had pneumonia. Trump then imitated Clinton by flailing his arms and jostling side to side. He walked unsteadily away from the podium as if he were about to fall over.
Then he went beyond talking about Bill Clinton’s affairs, and beyond talking about Hillary Clinton’s reactions to these affairs, and kept on going until he was accusing Hillary of infidelity.
“Hillary Clinton’s only loyalty is to her financial contributors and to herself,” Trump said. “I don’t even think she’s loyal to Bill, if you want to know the truth.”
And he reached what might be the purest moment of projection in Trump’s projection-laden life.
I have a great temperament. I have in my opinion — it’s like one of my strongest things. I have a winning temperament but you know how they choose ‘em — we have a winning temperament. … Now [Clinton] has got bad temperament. She’s got — She could be crazy. She could actually be crazy.
And while he was still rambling, screaming, stumbling and waving his arms … the crowd began to walk out.
Despite complaints about "no press conferences," Clinton was never inaccessible to the media. But she's enjoying the contact more after the first presidential debate.
Despite complaints about "no press conferences," Clinton was never inaccessible to the media. But she's enjoying the contact more after the first presidential debate.
The printed newspaper may be turning into a dinosaur, but many of the nation’s newspapers are fighting for relevancy in 2016 by endorsing Hillary Clinton for president.
We’ve seen endorsements by papers with conservative editorial boards for Clinton over GOP nominee Donald Trump. Papers that haven’t endorsed a Democrat in decades. Papers that have never endorsed a Democrat.
We expect endorsements for Democratic candidates by some newspapers, such as The New York Times. We don’t expect them from The Arizona Republic.
Many papers have yet to endorse. But Clinton has received the endorsements of more than 30 publications so far, including large and small newspapers and magazines; in the primaries, she received more than 80 endorsements. (The count is a compilation ofrom Wikipedia; the Clinton campaign does not yet have a list of endorsements on its website, although it does tout the Arizona Republic endorsement on its campaign blog. But we might as well borrow some language from Trump and call it YUUUGE.)
In the primaries, Trump received the backing of four papers: The National Enquirer, the New York Observer, the New York Post, and the Santa Barbara News-Press, the only paper in California to endorse the Orange Menace. Keep in mind that David Pecker, the CEO of the National Enquirer, is a good friend of Donald Trump, and that the New York Observer is owned by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The Santa Barbara paper has faced several internal controversies over editorial interference from the paper’s owner, and the New York Post is, well, the New York Post. Outside of these, Trump has received ZERO endorsements from any major daily newspaper editorial board in the general election.
Do newspaper endorsements even matter anymore? Most likely not, with one exception: When the endorsement goes against the newspaper’s historic trend.
Evangelical Christians are distraught, reports the New York Times, with the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for president. The Times’ in-depth profile of a conservative Christian community in Iowa is quite the read for someone like me—a Left Coast queer rights activist who grew up in a Midwestern Republican household and took a brief turn as a Bible thumper myself. Their tortured journey toward Trump is so incomprehensible to me on so many levels, it felt worthy of dissecting. Let's start with Betty and Dick Odgaard, evangelical heroes of sorts for refusing to rent out their chapel space—a family business—to two gay men for a wedding. They eventually lost so many customers once their prohibition came to light that they had to sell the chapel.
Overnight, it seemed, they discovered that even in small-town Iowa they were outnumbered, isolated and unpopular. Everyone they knew seemed to have a gay relative or friend. Mr. Odgaard’s daughter from his first marriage disavowed her father’s actions on Facebook, and his gay second cousin will not speak to him. Even their own Mennonite congregation put out a statement saying that while their denomination opposes gay marriage, “not every congregation” or Mennonite does. Mrs. Odgaard, 64, the daughter of a Mennonite minister, was devastated.
“It all flipped, so fast,” said Mr. Odgaard, a patrician 70-year-old who favors khakis and boat shoes. “Suddenly, we were in the minority. That was kind of a scary feeling. It makes you wonder where the Christians went.”
They felt like a minority and it was "scary"—bingo! Welcome to the world of LGBTQ Americans, along with numerous other minorities in this country who have the shared experience of feeling vulnerable.
Amidst all the talk about last Monday’s presidential debate and in the interest of improving my own skills, I thought I’d break down some of the things I thought Hillary Clinton did that won the debate for her.
Here are eight areas where I thought Clinton excelled in Monday night’s debate.
1. Focus on your main points
People tend to only remember 10 percent of what they hear. So you want to be sure to keep coming back to your main points and repeating them in different ways.
We want the focus to be on the economy. Even though Trump spoke more during the debate, Clinton was much better focused when it came to repeating her points about jobs and the economy.
