August 10, 2016

Study: High levels of toxic chemicals in drinking water of 6 million Americans

More than 6 million Americans are drinking water laced with unsafe levels of chemicals linked with cancer and other illnesses, a new report indicates.

Researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences found that levels of a certain class of chemicals -- called polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs -- are above what's recommended by the federal government in many public drinking water sources.

Study author Xindi Hu told CBS News, "We are interested in this group of compounds -- PFASs -- because they're widely used in a lot of applications."


According to the Environmental Protection Agency, PFASs are used in a broad range of consumer goods, such as cleaners, textiles, leather, paper and paints, fire-fighting foams, and wire insulation.

Food packaging is another source of PFASs, said Hu, a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard Chan School and Environmental Science and Engineering at SEAS.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/toxic-chemicals-in-drinking-water-6-million-americans/

August 10, 2016

The stories we aren't talking about: Aleppo.

In Aleppo, 2 million people have no water supply, no electricity, little food and they're being bombarded to hell.



The water pumps in Aleppo, Syria, are no longer getting power, leaving 2 million people without running water — and at risk of coming under a full siege.

The United Nations is calling for an immediate halt to the fighting and at minimum a two-day weekly humanitarian cease-fire to allow for the city's water and electrical systems to be repaired. But there's another round of fighting ongoing in the strategically significant city.

Aleppo is divided in two: the rebel-held east and government-held west. But for civilians, it's "a city now united in its suffering," as U.N. officials put it.

A few days ago, rebels forces claimed significant gains. They said they broke a government siege on the east side and also cut off the main access road to the west side.

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In late July, Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF, described attacks on four hospitals in eastern Aleppo in just one week.

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http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/09/489296670/2-million-residents-of-war-ravaged-aleppo-now-without-running-water


Doctors Describe Horrendous Conditions in Syria's Aleppo

http://www.voanews.com/content/doctors-describe-horrendous-conditions-syria-aleppo/3456265.html

Regime Bombings Interrupt Daily Life In Syrian City Of Aleppo

http://www.npr.org/2016/08/09/489361647/regime-bombings-interrupt-daily-life-in-syrian-city-of-aleppo

Putin Seeks Approval for Air Force’s Indefinite Syria Stay

Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked parliament to ratify the Russian air force’s indefinite stay in Syria almost a year after the official beginning of Russia’s military operations there.

The Russian Ministry of Defense struck a deal last August with the Syrian government to provide assistance to Damascus in battling militants in the country, using Syrian facilities rent-free and without worry of compensation for damages. Putin’s push for airstrikes were approved by parliament on the last day of September and the first official Russian airstrikes fell before dusk.

Now Putin has submitted the agreement for parliamentary ratification, state news agency Itar-Tass reported. Putin’s decision to seek parliamentary approval for the exact terms of Russia’s intervention are unclear, but the lower house of parliament’s deputy speaker said it was bound to be approved.

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read:http://www.newsweek.com/putin-asks-parliament-ratify-air-forces-indefinite-syria-stay-488864

And no, this isn't about what the U.S. should do. It's about how awful it is. It's about the Iraq War destabilization of the Middle East.
It's about how hopeless the whole ghastly mess in Syria is; how apparently there is no navigable avenue to save these people.

And damned straight we need to increase the number of Syrian refugees we allow into the U.S.

August 10, 2016

This is beneath contempt: Assange floats theory that Hillary murdered a DNC staffer who

Assange says was the leak from the DNC to WikiLeaks.


Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks organization appear to be actively encouraging a conspiracy theory that a Democratic National Committee staffer was murdered for nefarious political purposes, perhaps by Hillary Clinton.


Seth Rich was killed last month in Washington D.C. in an early morning shooting that police have speculated was a failed robbery. Because Rich did voter outreach for the DNC and because we live in a ridiculous world, conspiracy theorists have glommed on to a fantastical story that Rich was an FBI informant meeting with purported agents who were actually a hit team sent by Hillary Clinton. There is of course absolutely zero evidence for this and Snopes has issued a comprehensive debunking of the premise itself (Rich is only 27 and has only worked at the DNC since 2014 so is unlikely to be in possession of information that might take down Clinton, he was on the phone with his girlfriend at the time of the shooting and she hasn’t reported any FBI meeting, there have been a string of robberies in the area, an FBI rendezvous at 4 a.m. only happens in movies, the whole thing is batshit crazy, etc.).


The fact that the idea is so absurd, though, has not stopped Assange from suggesting that Rich was murdered for nefarious political purposes either because he was an informant for the FBI or because he may have been a source in last month’s WikiLeaks release of thousands of DNC emails. In an interview on Tuesday that was picked up by BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, Assange seemed to lend credence to the idea that Rich had been retaliated against.


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http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/08/09/wikileaks_is_fanning_a_conspiracy_theory_that_hillary_murdered_a_dnc_staffer.html

August 10, 2016

Bernie endorsed a pony tailed organic farmer/VT Progressive Party guy for VT Lt. Guv. He won,

beating out the Democratic House Majority Leader. David has served in the VT legislature for almost two decades. First as a VT Prog in the VT House and then as a P/D in the Senate. He ran as a P/D in the Lt. Guv dem primary.

He is the next Lt. Governor. The republicans just have a sacrificial lamb running against him.

Sue Minter, legislator and former Transportation Secretary won the dem nomination.

I voted for both of them, so I'm thrilled. Sue has a harder race but I think she can win it. She's running against popular moderate sitting Lt. Guv, Phil Scott. She'd be Vermont's second woman governor.

August 10, 2016

Yay! Meet the next governor of Vermont, Sue Minter

At least I hope she'll be the guv. She's running against well liked moderate republican current Lt. Guv Phil Scott. And Vermont's weird in the same way MA is- from time to time out of what I can only guess is some weird sense of "fairness" thing, we elect repub guvs.

For Lt Guv, Vermont dems chose longtime Vermont Progressive Party legislator David Zuckerman (yay) over also really good guy VT House Majority Leader, Shap Smith. David is a sitting P/D State Senator. He's definitely the next Lt. Guv whoever wins the Gubernatorial race. The repubs didn't even have a contested primary and republican Randy Brock has no more of a chance than republican Scott Milne who's running against Leahy.


Vermont has only had one other woman Governor, Madeline Kunin. And we have never sent a woman to Congress- but then again, Pat Leahy who just effectively won his 8th term tonight, is the first democratic Senator from Vermont. Peter Welch is will remain our sole U.S. House Rep.

Here's our next Lt. Guv:




You'll be seeing more of him in the coming years- probably in the U.S. Senate or House.

Whoever is elected Governor (probably Sue Minter), both houses will retain dem super majorities.

August 9, 2016

I'm about to go vote in our primary and I still don't know who I'm voting for for Guv

Here are my choices:

http://www.sueminter.com/


http://www.mattdunne.com/


http://galbraithforvermont.com/


For me, it's between the first two, both liberal/progressive, as is the third, but he's Peter Galbraith, so he's out for me.

All things being equal, and because Vermont has had a dearth of statewide elected women officials, I think I'm going for Minter, but I like Dunne a a lot too.

There's not a dem or VT Progressive on the ballot that I don't think is a good choice.

August 9, 2016

Thirty Things Donald Trump’s Advisers Managed to Persuade Him Not to Do Last Month

1. Enter the Quicken Loans Arena riding on Chris Christie.

2. Open a rally in Dayton, Ohio, by making fun of Mitch McConnell’s neck.

3. Insinuate that Khizr Khan is somehow related to Khan, the “Star Trek” villain.

4. Change his campaign slogan from “Make America Great Again” to “Paul Ryan Will Pay.”

5. Secretly attend the Democratic National Convention disguised as his mysterious alter ego “John Miller.”

6. Swap the over-all palette of his hair and skin from orange to purple (“a very, very good color—a color for kings”).


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http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/thirty-things-donald-trumps-advisers-managed-to-persuade-him-not-to-do-last-month

August 9, 2016

Michael Phelps "death stare" at opponent's taunting, goes viral

August 9, 2016

SWIMMING BEEF is becoming the best story in Rio

Everybody hates each other in the pool this Olympics and it’s made for better prime time entertainment than we could ever ask for. The general theme for this year: call out the cheaters. What comes next? Beat them to the finish line and trash them in the post-race interview. Damn, the Olympics are more fun when someone draws blood.

Mack Horton vs. Sun Yang — Winner: Mack Horton

Beef commenced with Australia’s Mack Horton beating the favorite, China’s Sun Yang, in the 400m freestyle. It started with a splash in the pool from Sun in a training session before the race that didn’t sit well with the Aussie. He told the media that he didn’t retaliate in any way because he "didn’t have time for drug cheats." Sun tested positive for a banned stimulant called Trimetazidine in 2014 and served a three-month suspension for it.


Then, Horton set the precedent that if you talked smack, you better back it all up. He did so by touching the wall 0.13 seconds faster than Sun to win his first gold medal. Sun took silver.

After the event, Sun was seen crying which triggered the phrase "Don’t Cry Sun" to trend on Chinese social media. Horton’s social accounts were flooded with messages to apologize to the hometown hero who won two Olympic golds in London.

But Australia’s chef de mission Kitty Chiller backed Horton, stating "We have no intention of making an apology," according to CNN affiliate Sky News Australia.

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http://www.sbnation.com/2016/8/9/12410936/olympics-2016-swimming-rivalries-michael-phelps-chad-le-clos-lilly-king

August 9, 2016

The SS Trumptanic is headed for the looming icebergs and it's too late to change course

Mixing metaphors here; his ducks aren't just not in a row, they're crashing and burning.

99 days on the calendar, 99 days to go, cross one out....

Donald Trump still hasn’t figured out the ground game


A small house in a town just north of Cincinnati is "ground zero for the Trump campaign" in the important Ohio city, according to a press release obtained last week by the Cincinnati Enquirer. The catch? The house -- and the volunteers who sent the press release -- have nothing to do with the Trump campaign itself.

Trump has a staffer in the region, the Enquirer reports -- a woman named Missy Walters who has been with the Trump campaign since January. That "ground zero" doesn't appear to have been her work, though. According to a campaign official, it's a function of enthusiastic volunteers -- volunteers filling a vacuum left by the Trump campaign's non-existent outreach operation on the ground in the region.

It's not clear where Trump's team is running anything of any scale. The campaign continues to trail Hillary Clinton's staff head-count by a wide margin. Trump has regularly argued that his low spending on staff saves him money, but organizing in battleground states requires staff in those states. The internet allows campaigns to coordinate phone calling remotely, but no one has yet figured out how to knock on a voter's door over the web. Volunteers can run phone banks or precinct walks, but relying on unpaid staff to do that effectively is risky.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/09/donald-trump-still-hasnt-figured-out-how-to-run-a-field-campaign/