Today’s comic by Mark Fiore is The climate science cash cow:
• What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …
- It's the Obama boom. Don't let Trump forget it, by Ian Reifowitz
- How to change the system we have (given the system we have), by David Akadjian
- You don’t want us to talk about climate change? Okay, then how about guns, by Susan Grigsby
- Now is the time to transition from Obamacare to single-payer Medicare for all, by Egberto Willies
- Racism and injustice ‘Down Under,’ by Denise Oliver Velez
- Media still don’t get ‘What Happened’ to Hillary Clinton in 2016 election, by Sher Watts Spooner
- State block grants: The GOP’s worst health care idea of them all, by Jon Perr
- Why is it so hard to get people to vote, by Mark E Andersen
- New NASA director comes with pluses and minuses, by DarkSyde
• After 13 years in orbit, Cassini spacecraft is sent crashing into Saturn:
NASA scientists just received their last message from the Cassini spacecraft, which plunged into Saturn early Friday morning. Those final bits of data signal the end of one of the most successful planetary science missions in history.[...]
Cassini was the first probe to orbit Saturn. Built and operated at JPL, it was launched in 1997 and inserted into orbit in 2004. The spacecraft revealed the structure of Saturn's rings and, by delivering the Huygens probe to the moon Titan, executed the first landing of a spacecraft in the outer solar system. It also exposed two moons — Titan, a land of methane lakes, and Enceladus, which has jets of water streaming from its southern pole — as prime targets in the search for life beyond Earth.
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• Trump regime may decide to replace Obama’s Clean Power Plan instead of just erasing it:
The Trump administration is opening the door to offering its own replacement for former President Barack Obama's landmark climate regulation — rather than just erasing it altogether.
A mend-it-don't-end-it approach on Obama's 2015 rule could appease power companies that say the EPA needs to impose some kind of climate regulation — even if it’s much weaker — to avoid triggering courtroom challenges that would cloud the industry in years of uncertainty. But it would run afoul of demands from some conservative activists, who have pressured EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to reject the idea that climate change is a problem requiring federal action.
• Nikon promotes new camera with 32 photographers. None of them are women:
To promote a new camera, Nikon enlisted 32 photographers from Asia, Africa and the Middle East to try it out and tell their stories on the company’s website.
But Nikon couldn’t — or didn’t — find any women to participate. All 32 were men.
It was a baffling oversight to many female photographers, who have no shortage of challenges finding opportunities in a notoriously male-dominated industry. In photojournalism, for example, women are underrepresented in staff jobs, awards, front-page placements and on conference panels, among other areas.
• Pipeline inspector hired by Michigan was simultaneously working for the pipeline company:
A contractor hired by the state of Michigan to independently review an aging oil pipeline running under the Great Lakes was simultaneously working for the pipeline company, documents obtained by DeSmog suggest. The documents contradict the contractor’s earlier claim that it had effectively stopped working for Enbridge once hired by Michigan.
Last year, facing increasing public pressure to shut down Enbridge’s 64-year old pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac between Lakes Michigan and Huron, Governor Rick Snyder convened Michigan’s Pipeline Safety Advisory Board.
• Speaking of conflicts of interest, Michael Flynn pushed trillion-dollar nuclear deal with Russia and Saudi Arabia even after he became Trump’s national security adviser:
Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn kept pushing a massive nuclear power deal involving Saudi Arabia and Russia even after he (briefly) became president Donald Trump’s national security advisor, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released letters from executives confirming that Flynn traveled to the Mideast in 2015 “to meet with foreign leaders about a proposal to partner with Russia in a scheme to build nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia.” Flynn was advising the executives on the deal.
• Most families almost back to 2007 income level in 2016, but the inequality gap continues to grow:
In recent decades, the vast majority of Americans have experienced disappointing growth in their living standards—despite economic growth that could have easily generated faster gains in their living standards had it been broadly shared. Tuesday’s relatively good news on family income growth over the past year doesn’t make up for this long legacy of rising inequality. This year’s growth is encouraging though not as strong as the previous year in part due to near zero inflation between 2014 and 2015.
Unfortunately, the growth in 2016 was also not as broadly shared as it was in 2015. Families in the top fifth of the income distribution grew faster than in 2015, while the bottom 80 percent of families saw slower growth. Another year of decent across-the-board growth should more than fully restore the income losses suffered during the Great Recession for most American families. But, it will barely put a dent in the generation of losses suffered as the incomes for the vast majority lagged far behind the economy’s potential.