72 days remain until the November midterm elections
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What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …
- Celebrate Women's Equality Day by voting—and winning—on November 6, by Sher Watts Spooner
- Five things to keep repeating if we want a better economy for everyone, by David Akadjian
- This historic moment, by Laurence Lewis
- Why are we being lied to about the power situation in Puerto Rico, by Denise Oliver Velez
- My son leaves for college today, by Mark E Andersen
- BET founder and black capitalist Robert L. Johnson proves a point about race and class, by Egberto Willies
- Hey, progressive white people, it’s time to talk about our own racism, by Susan Grigsby
- Data shows Democrats must call out Republican politicians’ race-baiting to win voters of all races, by Ian Reifowitz
• With John McCain just days, perhaps hours, away from death, Trump has nothing to say. The pr*sident was silent Friday when McCain’s daughter announced that the 81-year-old afflicted with an aggressive brain tumor had chosen not to receive any more medical treatment. The two men have been in a long-lasting public feud with Trump making negative comments that even some of McCain’s critics have seen as being way out of bounds.
• Study indicates air pollution shortens human lives by a year:
"The fact that fine particle air pollution is a major global killer is already well known," said Apte, who is an assistant professor in the Cockrell School's Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering and in the Dell Medical School's Department of Population Health. "And we all care about how long we live. Here, we were able to systematically identify how air pollution also substantially shortens lives around the world. What we found is that air pollution has a very large effect on survival -- on average about a year globally."
In the context of other significant phenomena negatively affecting human survival rates, Apte said this is a big number.
• U.S.-made bombs are killing kids in Yemen. Columnist wonders if anybody cares:
The reality is that the war has created the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe today. Three-quarters of the population, some 22 million Yemenis, require humanitarian assistance and protection. About 8.4 million people hang on the brink of starvation and another 7 million lie malnourished. Since 2015, more than 28,000 thousand people have been killed or injured, and many thousands more have died from causes exacerbated by war, such as a cholera epidemic that has afflicted more than a million people and claimed over 2,300 lives. At least one child dies every 10 minutes from causes linked to the war, according to the United Nations.
But this is also a story about the responsibility of the United States. A report by CNN indicates that the bomb used in the school bus airstrike was a 500-pound laser-guided MK 82 bomb, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, one of the largest US defense contractors. Having facilitated the sale to the Saudi-led coalition of the weapon used to kill these children, does the United States bear any responsibility for their deaths?
MIDDAY TWEET
• South Koreans worried Trump won’t follow through on dealings with North Korea:
Among the concerns are frustration that Trump has failed to secure a formal end to the Korean War while negotiating on nuclear disarmament; worries that the president is simply seeking a “trophy” for meeting with Kim and won’t be as engaged in the hard work to come; doubts about the “hubris” of the White House’s all-or-nothing approach to negotiating with Pyongyang, as opposed to the incremental process favored by many South Koreans; and dismay over why Trump would launch a trade war with China at a time when he needs Beijing’s help in keeping pressure on North Korea. [...]
The growing number of obstacles and miscommunications — Trump’s recent out-of-left-field tweet canceling his secretary of state’s diplomatic trip to North Korea is a representative example — have made South Koreans more worried that Trump lacks the stamina for the tough work ahead.
• Right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation has always been a propagandist for plutocracy ...
But TPPF’s latest PR blitz is unusually deceptive and aggressive even for them. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see from a seedy advocacy group, not a would-be policy braintrust. In recent months, the group has launched a full-court press against wind power, though the campaign is branded with the slogan “End Renewable Energy Subsidies.” That’s strange, because wind power, which amounts to free money for landowners, is politically popular in Texas. And arguably one reason that Texas produces the most wind power of any state is the free market itself: a combination of a deregulated electricity market and a laissez-faire approach toward industrial development in rural areas.
• Spanish government okays move to dig up Francisco Franco’s body and move it elsewhere: The dictator, who died in 1975, led the overthrow of the democratically elected government in 1936, leading to a bloody civil war that Franco’s fascist forces, which included most of the nation’s Catholic hierarchy, ultimately won against government loyalists and their allies, including foreign brigades. He was buried in a national mausoleum honoring the civil war dead. The move granting the government power to exhume Franco’s body came via amendments to Spain’s Historical Memory Law of 2007. “Having Franco’s tomb [at the complex] shows a lack of respect … for the victims buried there,” [Deputy Prime Minister Carmen] Calvo said, pointing out that a visiting U.N. delegation said four years ago that “democracy is incompatible with a tomb which honors the memory of Franco.” The bodies of some 34,000 people from both sides in the war are entombed at the complex. The family has 15 days to pick a new place to bury Franco’s remains.