Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: I'm Not a Real Man (Creators Syndicate)
I wish I supported Donald Trump. If you think about it, I should.
Connie Schultz: Naked Trump Reveals Us (Creators Syndicate)
Well, darn it, I'd like to avoid sounding humorless just because I'm not laughing at something that so many others find hilarious.
Susan Estrich: The Olympic Spirit? (Creators Syndicate)
Why, even in this Olympic season, even between young people who share the same passions, does the fire of hatred seem to burn so deep? I remember, nearly 30 years ago, visiting Palestinian refugee camps where little children had cartoon coloring books in which the Jews were always the villains and thieves. "What happens to those children when they grow up?" I wondered then. I fear that we all know the answer.
Lenore Skenazy: Is the Walk to School Really So Terrifying? (Creators Syndicate)
Let's please stop telling parents that it is normal to be terrified for even the shortest periods of time when kids are doing the most mundane of activities: walking to or from school.
Froma Harrop: The French Have a Right to Ban the Burkini (Creators Syndicate)
In the end, it should not matter whether I or other non-French people approve of the burkini. If the French want to ban it, that's their business. And regulating acceptable body exposure on their family beaches is Americans' business. Local authorities may set their own rules on dress in accordance with local sensibilities. One doesn't have to like them - and minds can be changed - but that's their right.
Ted Rall: "Trump Versus Clinton: This Election is all About the Debates" (Creators Syndicate)
I think Donald will trounce Hillary in the debates. In fact, I can't imagine any scenario in which she doesn't get destroyed.
Mary Paulson-Ellis: "'Who were his pals, where did he go?': solving the mysteries of those who die alone" (The Guardian)
An old man dies in a nursing home, but he isn't who he seems: can the police piece together the life and death of Mr Lobban?
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
WTF!
REPUBLICAN VOTER FRAUD!
FALSE EQUIVALENCE!
BRILLIANT!
DIVIDE AND CONQUER!
THE CRIMINALS!
THAT'S DEBATABLE!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Bit cooler than seasonal.
To Be Sold At Auction
'Lost' Beatles Demo
A "lost" Beatles record that was missing for more than 50 years is set to be sold at auction today for tens of thousands of pounds.
The demo recording of It's For You, written for Cilla Black by John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney, was discovered by Black's nephew Simon White after being missing for more than 50 years.
It had been given to Mr White's father by Black - his sister - when he was 18. But while he assumed it was just a copy of his sister's recording of the song, which shot to number seven in the charts, it was actually the original demo sung by McCartney and delivered to Black at the London Palladium in 1964.
Black, who died just over a year ago at her home in Spain, wrote about the record in her book What's It All About?
The record is part of the 25th Beatles Memorabilia Auction, organised by The Beatles Shop, at the Unity Theatre in Liverpool today, and is expected to fetch between £15,000 and £20,000.
'Lost' Beatles Demo
Trump A POS
Don Cheadle
It's a day ending in "y", and so it is that Donald Trump has sparked another firestorm of criticism this morning, and in doing so landed himself the honor of being called "a POS" (piece of sh**) by House of Lies star Don Cheadle. The cause: a tweet politicizing the tragic death of 32-year-old Nykea Aldridge, cousin of NBA star Dwyane Wade, who was shot and killed Friday night in Chicago. Offering no condolences, Trump used the occasion of her murder for a tone-deaf I-told-you-so brag session about his chances of landing the African American vote, in the process misspelling Wade's first name.
"Dwayne Wade's cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!" Trump said in a now-deleted tweet, replaced two hours later with one that got the Chicago Bulls Shooting guard's name right, but was otherwise unchanged.
Sports journalist and political commentator Keith Olbermann - a frequent, vocal critic of The Donald - also weighed in, blasting Trump for the typo and calling him a "psychopath."
After several hours of this, Trump finally issued an a statement offering his condolences for Aldridge's death. However, some political observers immediately pointed out that Trump's original tweet came from his usual Android device, while the apology came from the iPad favored by his staff.
Don Cheadle
Mini Australian 'Lion'
David Attenborough
A tiny "kitten-sized" marsupial lion that roamed Australia's ancient rainforests some 18 million years ago has been named after veteran British naturalist David Attenborough.
The fossil remains of the "microleo attenboroughi" were found in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area -- believed to be one of the most significant fossil deposits in the world -- in remote north-western Queensland state some years ago by palaeontologists from Sydney's University of New South Wales.
"It's around about the size of a grey squirrel... maybe a little bit bigger than kitten-sized," UNSW palaeontologist Anna Gillespie told AFP on Friday, adding that the new species was estimated to weigh about 600 grams (21.2 ounces) and was smaller than other members of an extinct marsupial lion family.
The "microleo attenboroughi" had teeth that included "an elongate, lethally sharp, knife-like premolar in front of basined molar", which is a feature of the other marsupial carnivores in the family.
The extinct lion was named after Attenborough as the conservation icon and BBC legend has long been a champion of the significance of Riversleigh, Gillespie added.
David Attenborough
Tribe Trucks Totem Pole
Lummi Nation
A Pacific Northwest tribe is traveling nearly 5,000 miles across Canada and the United States with a 22-foot-tall totem pole on a flatbed truck in a symbolic journey meant to galvanize opposition to fossil fuel infrastructure projects they believe will imperil native lands.
This is the fourth year the Lummi Nation in northwest Washington has embarked on a "totem journey" to try to create a unified front among tribes across North America that are individually fighting plans for coal terminals and crude oil pipelines in their backyards.
The highly visible tours, which include tribal blessing ceremonies at each stop, fit into a trend of Native American tribes bringing their environmental activism to the masses as they see firsthand the effects of climate change, said Robin Saha, a University of Montana associate professor who specializes in tribal issues and environmental justice.
In North Dakota, for example, people from across the country and members of 60 tribes have gained international attention after gathering in opposition to the four-state Dakota Access oil pipeline. The totem pole heads to that site, near the Standing Rock Sioux's reservation, next week.
Lummi Nation
More Bee-Friendly
Minnesota
Gov. Mark Dayton sought Friday to extend a little Minnesota nice to the state's declining honeybee population by issuing an executive order limiting certain pesticides that harm them, a step advocates said positions the state as a leader in protecting pollinating insects critical to the nation's food supply.
In making the announcement at the Minnesota State Fair, the Democratic governor stressed the importance of pollinators to the state's $90 billion agriculture sector.
The class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids, or "neonics," is one of several factors that have been blamed for falling pollinator populations, along with parasites such as mites, diseases and poor nutrition. About one-third of the human diet comes from plants pollinated by insects, and honeybees do about 80 percent of that work.
Dayton's order directs the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to require verification that any application of neonicotinoid pesticides is necessary due to imminent threats of significant crop losses. It also creates a task force to study issues impacting pollinators and to recommend long-term solutions. State government will set up an interagency team on pollinator protection.
The governor also ordered state agencies to lead by example on the 8 million acres of land they manage statewide. Those steps will include turning highway rights-of-way into better habitat, with more of the kinds of plants pollinators crave. Neonicotinoid-treated plants and pesticides will be prohibited in the 40-acre State Capitol complex, and pollinator-friendly plants will be included in the Capitol's landscaping plan.
Minnesota
Judge Denies County's Claim
Nevada
A dirt road in a national forest at the center of a decades-old dispute between the Forest Service and a rural Nevada county will remain in federal hands after a judge ruled county officials failed to prove it was theirs before President Theodore Roosevelt permanently reserved the remote wilderness in 1909.
Federal Judge Miranda Du says the agency had no authority to cede control of the land to Elko County in a 2001 settlement agreement granting a rare right-of-way to the road running along a mountain river with threatened bull trout near the Idaho line.
Conservationists say it's a critical victory in the face of similar confrontations across the West with ranchers, miners, states and counties pressing the federal government to relinquish control of tens of thousands of square miles of public land. The Utah Supreme Court currently is weighing that state's push to claim the right to use about 12,000 rural roads running across more than 40,000 square miles.
Forest Service officials said the ruling doesn't change anything on the ground in one of the most remote stretches of U.S. wilderness outside of Alaska. All but the last half-mile of the 2.4-mile stretch of road has remained open to motorized travel while the legal battle continued, but with limited maintenance and grading so as to minimize impacts on the fish.
Similar fights have been waged in Idaho, Oregon, Alaska and New Mexico over the 1866 law. The statute was repealed in 1976, but right-of-ways legally established previously were grandfathered in.
Nevada
Climate Change
Pika
Populations of a rabbit-like animal known as the American pika are vanishing in many mountainous areas of the West as climate change alters its habitat, according to findings released Thursday by the U.S. Geological Survey.
The range for the mountain-dwelling herbivore is decreasing in southern Utah, northeastern California and in the Great Basin that covers most of Nevada and parts of Utah, Oregon, Idaho and California, the federal agency concluded after studying the cuddly looking critter from 2012-2015.
This study's conclusion marks a more authoritative statement about the role of global warming on the animal compared to research released in 2003 that found climate change was at least partly contributing to the animal's decline.
"The longer we go along, the evidence continues to suggest that climate is the single strongest factor," said Erik Beever, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and lead author.
The study bolsters the case for wildlife advocacy groups pushing for years to have the animal added to the endangered species list amid concerns about global warming.
Pika
Reveals Hidden Dinosaur-Era Sea
Buried Tectonic Plate
A previously unknown tectonic plate - one that has been swallowed up by the Earth - has been discovered in the Philippine Sea, according to a recent study.
Using images constructed from earthquake data, geoscientists have developed a method for resurrecting a "slab graveyard" of tectonic plate segments buried deep within the Earth, unfolding the deformed rock into what it may have looked like up to 52 million years ago. This helped the researchers identify the previously unknown East Asian Sea Plate, where an ancient sea once existed in the region shortly after dinosaurs went extinct.
The Philippine Sea lies at the juncture of several major tectonic plates. The Pacific, Indo-Australian and Eurasian plates frame several smaller plates, including the Philippine Sea Plate, which researchers say has been migrating northwest since its formation roughly 55 million years ago.
In the process, the Philippine Sea Plate collided with the northern edge of the East Asian Sea Plate, driving it into the Earth's mantle. The southern area of the East Asian Sea Plate was eventually subducted by, or forced beneath, other neighboring plates, the researchers said.
Geologists attempting to reconstruct the past were once limited to visible evidence of slow-moving changes, such as mountains, volcanoes or the echoes of ancient waterways. But with new imaging technologies, scientists can now glean information from hundreds of miles within the Earth's interior to map distant history.
Buried Tectonic Plate
Obama Expands Marine Reserve
Hawaii
U.S. President Barack Obama will dramatically expand the Papah?naumoku?kea Marine National Monument off the coast of Hawaii on Friday, the White House said, an action that will ban commercial fishing from more than 582,500 sq miles (1.5 million sq km) of the Pacific Ocean.
Obama will visit the protected area on Sept. 1 to draw attention to the threat that climate change poses to oceans, traveling to Midway Atoll - a remote coral reef that was the site of a pivotal World War Two battle and is now known for its sea turtles, monk seals, and millions of seabirds.
Obama, who was born in Hawaii and spent most of his childhood there, made curbing climate change a central part of his time in the White House, which draws to a close on Jan. 20.
Some of his efforts have been blocked by Congress or held up in court challenges. But preserving public space from development has been something Obama can do using his own power, and he had moved to permanently protect more than 265 million acres of land and water even before the expansion in Hawaii.
Obama has also sought to use the star power of his office to raise public concern about climate issues. Trailed by camera crews, he has hiked on an Alaska glacier and walked through the Florida Everglades.
Hawaii
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