March 29, 2017

Wednesday Toon Roundup 1- The pile

March 28, 2017

Stunning advocates, Gov. Matt Bevin vetoes mental health law

Stunning advocates who have fought for years for a law to get better help for severely mentally ill people, Gov. Matt Bevin on Monday vetoed a bill known as "Tim's Law" aimed at ending the cycle of jail, hospitalization and homelessness experienced by some who don't get proper treatment.

Advocates were shocked by Bevin's veto of Senate Bill 91, which passed with near-unanimous approval in the House and Senate this legislative session. It allows a judge to order outpatient treatment for up to a year for some people unable to recognize the severity of their mental illness and with a history of involuntary psychiatric hospitalization.

"It's a real kick in the gut," said Sheila Schuster, a longtime mental health advocate with a group called the Advocacy Action Network. "We think the governor has been misinformed."

more
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/28/stunning-advocates-gov-matt-bevin-vetoes-mental-health-law/99722188/

March 28, 2017

Affordable Care Act Repeal Is Back on the Agenda, Republicans Say

Source: NYT

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders and the White House, under extreme pressure from conservative activists, have restarted negotiations on legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, with House leaders declaring that Democrats were celebrating the law’s survival prematurely.

Just days after President Trump said he was moving on to other issues, senior White House officials are now saying they have hope that they can still score the kind of big legislative victory that has so far eluded Mr. Trump. Vice President Mike Pence was dispatched to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for lunchtime talks.

“We’re not going to retrench into our corners or put up dividing lines,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said after a meeting of House Republicans that was dominated by a discussion of how to restart the health negotiations. “There’s too much at stake to get bogged down in all of that.”

The House Republican whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, said of Democrats, “Their celebration is premature. We are closer to repealing Obamacare than we ever have been before.”

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/us/politics/health-care-obamacare-freedom-caucus.html

March 28, 2017

Humans 'Domesticated' Mice 15,000 Years Ago

By Jason Bittel

Most people are all too familiar with house mice. We know them as the eaters of crumbs, gnawers of cords, and leavers of droppings. They create the pitter-patters we hear in the night and the messes we find in the morning.

Conventional wisdom has said that mice and people began living together when humans learned to farm. But new research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that our relationship with these rodents may be even more ancient.

By studying the fluctuations of house mouse fossils found in archaeological sites in the eastern Mediterranean, scientists have revealed that Mus musculus domesticus first cozied up to humans around 15,000 years ago.

That would be about 3,000 years before the advent of agriculture.

more
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/house-mouse-domesticated-humans-animals-science/

March 28, 2017

While Trump is preparing for Xi Jinpings visit, he still has no ambassador to China

US president Donald Trump will be hosting China’s president Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago Florida private club, possibly as early as the first week of April, online media outlet Axios first reported. While prepping for the visit, though, the US president won’t be able to count on on-the ground insights from his chosen ambassador to China, since Terry Branstad is still governing Iowa.

The US has said it hopes the meeting will be a chance to address tensions in the US-China relationship over how to deal with North Korea, and over the deployment of a U.S. missile defence system in South Korea, another place where the US doesn’t presently have an ambassador. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on diplomatic nominations and on Branstad’s confirmation process Tuesday (March 28).

“It’s the purpose of this meeting, of that kind of a meeting, to help defuse tensions over North Korea and the recent deployment of a THAAD military battery to South Korea,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on March. 13, in relation to the Xi visit, without confirming the dates.

Trump announced even before taking office that he was appointing Branstad, the Republican governor of Iowa and an old friend of Xi, to be ambassador to China, but Branstad hasn’t yet been confirmed by the US Senate. Branstad’s name went on Jan. 20 to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Republican Bob Corker. Republicans have a majority in the Senate, but a hearing date has not yet been set.

more
https://qz.com/943562/while-trump-is-preparing-for-xi-jinpings-visit-his-pick-for-ambassador-to-china-is-still-governing-iowa/

March 28, 2017

Tuesday Toon Roundup 3: The Rest

Treason




Old White Guys



Trumpers



Ryan




Voters


Raiduhs

March 28, 2017

Tuesday Toon Roundup 2: More AHCA fallout

March 28, 2017

Tuesday Toon Roundup 1 - Losers gotta keep losing

March 27, 2017

Amateur cloud-spotters lobbied to add this beautiful new cloud to the International Cloud Atlas

Gavin Pretor-Pinney, the London-based president of the Cloud Appreciation Society, first saw the unusual cloud in 2006. A member of the amateur cloud-spotting group in Cedar Creeks, Iowa emailed a photo of an oddly wavy cloud, and asked how it would be classified.

“Here was this weird turbulent wave cloud,” Pretor-Pinney recalls. “It looked like you were beneath the surface of the sea on a really choppy, rough day when the sea surface is being churned about.”

Its shape was similar to what the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) would categorize as an undulatus formation, but was “more intense, more chaotic.” The WMO’s International Cloud Atlas, first published in 1896, didn’t include anything like it.

Every six months or so, a similar image would arrive, maybe from Scotland, or Australia. The president and others began to feel that a new label was needed to fit the unfamiliar cloud. In 2008, the amateur cloud-spotting group proposed the name asperitas, Latin for “roughness,” and submitted the idea to the WMO.

more
https://qz.com/942065/the-beautiful-new-cloud-asperitas-has-been-officially-recognized-in-the-international-cloud-atlas/

March 27, 2017

Trump's associates and friends 'still go via his longtime Trump Tower secretary to contact him'

Donald Trump might live in the White House but his friends and associates appear to be getting in touch with him via his old Trump Tower secretary.

Rhona Graff, who joined the Trump Organisation in 1987, has reportedly been working as a middle man for people who want to get in contact with the president. Since his inauguration, these associates have been using Ms Graff to privately offer Mr Trump advice, make suggestions for staff picks and arrange times to meet the billionaire property magnate at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

According to seven Trump associates who spoke to Politico, Ms Graff continues to pass on messages from acquaintances and friends of the president. Many of these contacts have used her to get in touch with Mr Trump for years.

more
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-friends-associates-rhona-graff-trump-tower-secretary-roger-stone-contact-him-a7652581.html