January 13, 2018

Alaska crushes record for hottest December as Arctic sea ice hits record low

Alaska crushes record for hottest December as Arctic sea ice hits record low

"We are the U.S.'s canary in that coal mine."


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https://thinkprogress.org/alaska-hottest-december-1e4effce0ad1/?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5a59925c19694a000817f60c&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

In its hottest December ever recorded, Alaska was a stunning 15.7°F above the 20th century average. And the year ended with Arctic sea ice hitting an all-time record low.

While the East Coast had a cool December and New Year’s week, Alaska baked. Last Tuesday, Anchorage hit 48°F, warmer than southern cities from Atlanta and Jacksonville to Houston and New Orleans.

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The Arctic as a whole was so warm in December that Arctic sea ice set a new end-of-year record low, as both the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) reported.

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Unfortunately for the rest of the globe, what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. Arctic amplification drives more extreme weather in North America, while accelerating the defrosting of the carbon-rich permafrost, releasing carbon dioxide and methane that each cause faster warming — a dangerous amplifying feedback.

More on the link

https://thinkprogress.org/alaska-hottest-december-1e4effce0ad1/?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5a59925c19694a000817f60c&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter


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January 13, 2018

Best cable news chyron of the year so far .....

https://twitter.com/nycjayjay/status/952041403168821248


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January 11, 2018

Trumps 2,000 Lies A Documentary ... Happy Lie 2k Everybody!

There is a 1:30 min. monologue and then the docu starts .......



Trump’s 2,000 Lies – A Documentary

Donald Trump reached a major milestone according to the Washington Post by telling his two-thousandth lie since taking office. Telling two thousand lies is an unprecedented achievement in Presidential history, so tonight we look back at his many prevarications with a new mini-documentary that shows us how we got to this remarkable moment in misrepresentation.


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January 11, 2018

Darrell Issa Is Retiring, Just Like Everyone Else. Record number of House GOPers have already quit

Darrell Issa Is Retiring, Just Like Everyone Else

A record number of House Republicans have already thrown in the towel.

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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/darrell-issa-is-retiring-just-like-everyone-else/

Democrats’ path to retaking the House just got a little bit easier. Again. On Wednesday, longtime California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa announced that he would retire from Congress rather than seek re-election this fall. Issa’s departure brings the number of GOP retirements from the House to 30—a record for the party—and comes just two days after another embattled Southern Californian, Rep. Ed Royce, announced his own departure. It is a gift to Democrats who had already put Issa’s district near the top of their list of 2018 targets, and who came within 1,621 votes of toppling the former car-alarm magnate in 2016.

After Trump’s election, progressive activists had made a special target of Issa. They did so both because of his newfound vulnerability—Issa’s affluent suburban district, like others in Orange County and the Atlanta and Houston areas, was one of those places where long-suffering Democrats made substantial gains in 2016—and because his notoriety. Issa cultivated a reputation as a partisan attack dog as chairman of the House oversight committee and took the lead in publicizing Obama-era scandals, such as Fast and Furious. His 49th district has become a hub for “Resistance” groups; just one day before Issa announced he would not seek re-election, a San Diego Indivisible chapter held a retirement party for the congressman outside one of his district offices.

With the retirements of Issa and Royce, two of the so-called “California Seven”—Republican members of Congress from Golden State districts won by Hillary Clinton—have now thrown up a white flag. It’s your move, Dana Rohrabacher.


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January 11, 2018

Report: As Overture To Putin, Trump NSC Official Proposed Withdrawing US Troops

Report: As Overture To Putin, Trump NSC Official Proposed Withdrawing US Troops



https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/white-house-official-proposed-withdrawal-us-troops-baltics

A top official on the National Security Council last year proposed withdrawing some U.S. forces from the Baltics in an effort to please Vladimir Putin, the Daily Beast reported Tuesday.

Two former administration officials told the publication that Kevin Harrington, a deputy assistant to President Donald Trump for strategic planning, pitched the plan to remove or reposition some U.S. forces stationed in Eastern Europe in February 2017.

Though Harrington’s proposal never came to fruition, it represented a remarkable pivot from decades of U.S. foreign policy. One former NSC colleague, speaking to the Beast, called it a “gesture to the Kremlin that would enable the nascent Trump administration to see if its desire for a friendly relationship with Russia would be reciprocated.”

U.S. forces have been stationed throughout Europe since the Cold War as a counter-weight to Russia, and were detailed to the Baltics after the 2014 annexation of Crimea.


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January 11, 2018

This is how coal dies- super cheap renewables plus battery storage

This is how coal dies — super cheap renewables plus battery storage

New Colorado wind farms with batteries are now cheaper than running old coal plants


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https://thinkprogress.org/colorado-wind-batteries-cheap-12e82b91a543/?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5a570ef704d301081a68e358&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter


Solar, wind, and battery prices are dropping so fast that, in Colorado, building new renewable power plus battery storage is now cheaper than running old coal plants. This increasingly renders existing coal plants obsolete.

Two weeks ago, Xcel Energy quietly reported dozens of shockingly low bids it had received for building new solar and wind farms, many with battery storage (see table below). The median bid price in 2017 for wind plus battery storage was $21 per megawatt-hour, which is 2.1 cents per kilowatt-hour. As Carbon Tracker noted, this “appears to be lower than the operating cost of all coal plants currently in Colorado.”

The median bid price for solar plus battery storage was $36/MWh (3.6 cents/kwh), which may be lower than about three-fourths of operating coal capacity. For context, the average U.S. residential price for electricity is 12 cents/kWh.

Note that by definition, half of the bids are below the median price — and there were 87 bids for solar plus storage, meaning many bids were quite low (see table above). There were 96 bids for wind power alone — at a median price of 1.8 cents/kwh — which means some were very low-priced indeed. The tremendous number of bids in Colorado reveal the power of competition in driving prices down.

More on the link..
https://thinkprogress.org/colorado-wind-batteries-cheap-12e82b91a543/?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5a570ef704d301081a68e358&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter


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January 10, 2018

MSNBC The Last Word - this is the best Wolff interview I have seen, Wow ....

Sounds like there is a lot more in this book that we haven't heard about ....


Wolff: President Trump Has Probably Spent His Whole Day Watching Me On TV | The Last Word | MSNBC


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December 17, 2017

Trump transition team were informed re: communications.. "no expectation of privacy can be assumed"

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You can read the article here
https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/the-trump-campaign-claims-a-federal-office-illegally-turned?utm_term=.fyWvJLkdEz#.gvAZ34G0Yg

Here are the money quotes that destroy the Trump legal teams claims ...


In a phone interview with BuzzFeed News on Saturday night, Loewentritt — whose LinkedIn represents that he has worked at the agency since 1972 — disputed the claims made in the letter sent by the Trump campaign.

"Beckler never made that commitment," he said of the claim that any requests for transition records would be routed to the Trump campaign's counsel.

Specifically, Loewentritt said, "in using our devices," transition team members were informed that materials "would not be held back in any law enforcement" actions.

Loewentritt read to BuzzFeed News a series of agreements that anyone had to agree to when using GSA materials during the transition, including that there could be monitoring and auditing of devices and that, "Therefore, no expectation of privacy can be assumed."

Loewentritt told BuzzFeed News that the GSA initially "suggested a warrant or subpoena" for the materials, but that the Special Counsel's Office determined the letter route was sufficient.

As to whether the Trump campaign should have been informed of the request, Loewentritt said, "That's between the Special Counsel and the transition team."

Asked about Langhofer's letter and Loewentritt's statements — and after publication of this story — a spokesperson for the Special Counsel's Office, Peter Carr, told BuzzFeed News, “When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process.”


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December 17, 2017

Obamas photographer shot 2 million photos in 8 years, here are 20+ of his best shots.

With everything that is happening today with the lying traitor in our WH, it just breaks my heart to see these .............


https://twitter.com/FMoniteau/status/942237367754256384


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December 15, 2017

Look what somebody did to the chairman of the FCC's wikipedia page! Ha ha Burnt! (nsfw)

I'll just leave this right here .................


https://twitter.com/LucidFoxx/status/941380744215187457


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