Total Solar Eclipse To Cross US First Time In 99 Years

America is set to witness a celestial treat as a full solar eclipse is set to occur on Aug. 21 this year. The range of the eclipse will stretch from Oregon to South Carolina.
The other U.S. states will witness a partial eclipse. On the day, the afore-mentioned regions will feel as if all the lights have been blotted out, as the sun will completely disappear in the middle of the day.


http://www.techtimes.com/articles/202041/20170317/total-solar-eclipse-to-cross-us-first-time-in-99-years.htm

Republicans loot the palace: GOPs plan to govern looks a lot like the way it rebuilt Iraq

We've seen this combination of shameless greed and incompetence before — when Republicans tried to govern Iraq

This week’s rollout of Paul Ryan’s “repeal and replace” Obamacare bill is an excellent reminder of what the country would look like if any Republican other than Donald Trump had won the presidency — not that different. We can now say for sure that the problem isn’t just that the party nominated an crude, unprepared conman for the top job. The problem is that the party itself is a big sloppy hot mess. How could we have forgotten?

Like the old Republican cry of “tort reform,” which nobody really understood, “Repeal Obamacare” became a slogan that would evoke lusty cheers from an audience of partisans. If you asked any of them what it meant in practice, not one could tell you. Not that it mattered. The whole issue was political kabuki once the Affordable Care Act was rolled out and tens of millions of people signed on to it, and the Republicans knew it. Their elected legislators just kept voting for repeals they knew would never be enacted and screaming their empty slogan at rallies to keep their base excited.

When Trump unexpectedly won the elections, after having promised that he too would “Repeal Obamacare!” and “replace it with something terrific” which he promised would happen immediately, cover everyone and be much cheaper and much better, Republicans were suddenly stuck with a problem that had no solution. Now that he’s president, Trump has discovered that “nobody knew health care could be so complicated.” Based on what we’re seeing from the GOP Congress, he’s actually right about that.

I won’t go into all the machinations here because they’re changing by the hour. First Trump’s on board and then he’s not and then he’s back on. (He’s been saying for weeks that he’d really prefer to let Obamacare fail — sabotage it from the executive branch —and then blame the Democrats.) He does not want people to call this monstrosity “Trumpcare” — but everyone is doing it anyway.

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/10/republicans-loot-the-palace-gops-plan-to-govern-looks-a-lot-like-the-way-they-rebuilt-iraq/

Mass grave of babies and children found at Tuam care home in Ireland

A mass grave containing the remains of babies and children has been discovered at a former Catholic care home in Ireland where it has been alleged up to 800 died, government-appointed investigators said on Friday.

Excavations at the site of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, have uncovered an underground structure divided into 20 chambers containing “significant quantities of human remains”, the judge-led mother and baby homes commission said.

The commission said analysis of selected remains revealed ages of the deceased ranged from 35 weeks to three years old. It found that the dead had been mostly buried in the 1950s, when the facility was one of more than a dozen in Ireland offering shelter to orphans, unmarried mothers and their children. The Tuam home closed in 1961.

The home, run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a Catholic religious order of nuns, received unmarried pregnant women to give birth. The women were separated from their children, who remained elsewhere in the home, raised by nuns, until they could be adopted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/mass-grave-of-babies-and-children-found-at-tuam-orphanage-in-ireland

Most died from neglect at the hands of nuns because they were born out of wedlock, pure evil cults.

Was downtown Muskegon built with Confederate Gold?

MUSKEGON, MI - The whereabouts of the Confederate treasury have been a mystery since the end of the Civil War, but two West Michigan men believe they've solved it.

One of the country's most illustrious mysteries, the theories about what came of the fabled "Confederate Gold" are as numerous as they are various.

Two history buffs are putting forward their own theory, one that feels like a real life "National Treasure" movie in which many seemingly unrelated events are brought together into one narrative. At the center of it is Muskegon's most generous philanthropist.

Charles H. Hackley, a lumber baron, is arguably the Lake Michigan community's most influential historical figure.
Although he has been dead for more than 100 years, his name lives on through his many gifts to the community, including Hackley Park, Hackley Public Library, Hackley Hospital and the Hackley Administration Building.
Yet, Hackley's legacy contains a mystery of its own.

When he died in 1905, his net worth was about $10 million, or $261 million in today's dollars, according to the Hackley and Hume papers at Michigan State University.

But a biography Hackley authorized in 1899, in which he gave notes to author Lois Haight, says that he earned $3 million in his lifetime.

http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2017/03/did_missing_confederate_gold_h.html

Why the corporate Media helped get tRump elected and love him

Canada PM Trudeau pressured to tackle influx of asylum seekers over US border

Source: theguardian.com

Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, is facing growing political pressure to address the steady stream of asylum seekers who have been braving freezing temperatures, fields of waist-deep snow and icy ditches to cross into Canada from the US by foot.

Recent months have seen a growing number of people entering Canada at remote, unguarded locations along the US border. Doing so allows the migrants – many of whom are desperate to flee Trump’s crackdown on immigration – to skirt a longstanding pact that bars most refugee claimants in the US from applying for asylum in Canada.

Advocates in Manitoba say they know of some 139 refugees – including children – who have made the perilous crossing since the start of the year, while groups in Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario also report a rise in irregular crossings.

Some haul suitcases for hours across frozen fields that straddle the border, while others are dropped by taxis metres away from the Quebec border. The asylum seekers – many of whom are from Somalia, Ghana and Djibouti – say their actions are driven by fears of what a Donald Trump presidency could mean for refugees in the US.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/26/asylum-seekers-canada-trump-trudeau

An Alarmingly Early Spring is Sweeping Across the Southern United States

Spring is well ahead of schedule across much of the southern United States, in some cases by at least two to three weeks. An early spring may sound nice, but it comes with serious consequences—both to human health and the environment.

A new set of maps produced by the USGS-led US National Phenology Network (US-NPN) demonstrates just how ahead of schedule spring is across much of the continental United States. Temperature-sensitive plants have started to become active earlier than normal, sprouting leaves and flowers in coastal California and southern Nevada through to the southern Great Plains and the Atlantic Coast. In Washington, DC, spring arrived 22 days earlier than historical norms, as indicated by data on leaf-outs and flowering.

Alarmingly, this seems to be a trend. A related study published late last year showed that spring has been arriving earlier than usual in three out of four US National Parks across the US, and that half of all National Parks are experiencing early springs compared to last century. And yes, the US-NPN says this trend is likely the result of climate change:


These findings are consistent with the fact that the instrumental record shows that 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded for the globe, and that it was the third record-breaking year in a row. Researchers have noted that 16 of the 17 hottest years recorded occurred since 2000. These new maps show that 2017, at least so far, is shaping up to be another warm one, but also that different regions exhibit variable responses over time.


http://gizmodo.com/an-alarmingly-early-spring-is-sweeping-across-the-south-1792716680

US private prison program rebooted by Trump administration

Source: theguardian.com

The Trump administration has scrapped Barack Obama’s program of ending the justice department’s use of private prisons, embracing an industry that has come under sharp criticism from civil rights advocates.

Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general, on Thursday rescinded a six-month-old directive for the Federal Bureau of Prisons to wind down contracts with prison companies, claiming that the measure had “impaired the bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.

“Therefore, I direct the bureau to return to its previous approach,” Sessions said in his memo to Thomas Kane, the bureau’s acting director.

The move prompted spikes in the share prices of the major for-profit prison corporations, companies which contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump’s presidential election campaign and inauguration funds.



Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/23/trump-revives-private-prison-program-doj-obama-administration-end

The Kremlin and GOP Have a New Friendand Boy, Does She Love Guns

Source: thedailybeast.com

Just a few years ago, Maria Butina owned a furniture store in Siberia. Now she’s wheeling and dealing with D.C. think-tankers, Republican strategists, and a Russian bank chief with alleged mob connections.
Depending on the audience, Butina has presented herself as a Russian central bank staffer, a leading gun rights advocate, a “representative of the Russian Federation,” a Washington, D.C., graduate student, a journalist, and a connection between Team Trump and Russia. She used each role to help her gain more high-level contacts in the nation’s capital.

It’s another chapter in what’s becoming a familiar story in Washington: Kremlin-connected operators building bridges to the GOP. Ever since U.S. intelligence services concluded that Russia was meddling in the American presidential elections, Team Trump’s ties to Russia have been highly scrutinized. The president’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned because he misled his bosses about his contacts with the Russian government; and his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, also resigned due to questions about his relationship with Russia.

Butina’s relationships, formed with Washington’s conservative society through her fierce advocacy for firearms—one conference described her as the “public face of gun rights in the Russian Federation”—provide a previously unreported link between the Russian government and the Republican Party.

Two of Butina’s friendships in particular have raised eyebrows. She started a business with Paul Erickson, a decades-long Republican Party activist. And she served as a special assistant to the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank, Alexander Torshin, a former Russian senator belonging to Vladimir Putin’s political party with alleged ties to the Russian mob world.

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/23/the-kremlin-and-gop-share-a-new-friend-and-boy-does-she-love-guns.html

PBS INDEPENDENT LENS TOWER The Mass Shooting as an Animated Documentary