Today’s comic by Mark Fiore is The what about X committee:
What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …
- To hell with Hyde, by Denise Oliver Velez
- The rocket’s red glare, by DarkSyde
- How to get to Planet X, the change we desire, by David Akadjian
- By attacking TPP, Trump is running to Hillary’s left on trade. What does that mean, by Ian Reifowitz
- The mysteries of women’s health, by Susan Grigsby
- As Benghazi probe fizzles, recall when GOP ignored security, by Sher Watts Spooner
- President Trump promises the next Great Depression, by Jon Perr
- Should Donald J. Trump continue to be allowed to carry and possess a firearm, by Frank Vyan Walton
- Retracing Cold War memories — Part One, Iceland, by Mark E Andersen
- Hillary Clinton must adopt a Sanders style agenda or risk Trump outflanking her, by Egberto Willies
• Solar seems headed for another growth record in 2016: A report from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association projects the U.S. solar industry will add 14.5 gigawatts of capacity this year. That would be a 94 percent increase over 2015. In the first quarter, 1.65 gigawatts of solar were added—more than coal, natural gas and nuclear combined. Typically, first-quarter growth in the industry has been slow. Price declines are continuing. Non-residential solar installations fell 8.3 percent to $1.88/watt in the first half of 2016. Residential installations dropped 8.8 percent, to $3/watt. GTM pointed out that if the drops continue, the solar sector could reach the U.S. Department of Energy’s “impossible dream” price of $1/watt by 2020. But there are challenges ahead, including a possible oversupply of solar modules.
• Gasoline prices at 13-year low:
The drop in price is a reflection of the huge worldwide surplus in crude oil. Production in the United States has jumped as companies used a process called fracking to extract oil from shale, while Iran saw its exports soar with the lifting of economic sanctions after it agreed to reign in its nuclear program. Iran’s reentry into the global market came as Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf region players continued to pump freely as well.
• Every life is precious: Amsterdam cops rescued a blow-up sex doll after neighbors alerted them to a lingerie-clad woman standing stationary or maybe hanging in a window. The cops told their story on Facebook. They did not say whether they had a word with the apartment owner, but they moved the doll away from the window.
• Incomes for the 99 percent up, but they still haven’t fully recovered what they lost in Great Recession. The 1 percent? Well, they’re doing much, much better:
According to a new analysis by economist Emmanuel Saez, Americans in the bottom 99 percent of the country’s income distribution saw their take home pay rise 3.9 percent in 2015 over 2014’s levels, adjusted for inflation, the best increase they’ve seen in 17 years. But the top 1 percent of the country far outpaced them: the wealthy’s income grew by 7.7 percent last year, reaching a new high. [...]
While the past two years have been good for the majority of Americans’ income growth, they still haven’t fully recovered from the recession. For the bottom 99 percent, incomes fell 11.6 percent during the height of the recession from 2007 to 2009. Afterward, they grew just 7.6 percent between 2009 and 2015 — not enough to make up for the downturn. Incomes for the 99 percent have only recovered about 60 percent of what they lost.
But the rich are doing great. The incomes of the 1 percent grew 37 percent between 2009 and 2015. They captured more than half of all the income growth in the country over that period, leaving just 48 percent to spread out among the bottom 99 percent of families.
• Pennsylvania Trump delegates say they’s bring their guns to Cleveland: They claim it’s about ISIS. Even though most Republicans in Congress have adopted the National Rifle Association’s disdain for “gun-free zones,” the convention itself will be a gun-free zone. But one Pennsylvania delegate noted the Trump stalwarts will be at dinners and other get-togethers not on the convention floor. Ohio is a traditional open-carry state and it has reciprocal arrangements with 39 other states, including Pennsylvania, regarding concealed-carry permits. That means Ohio will honor anyone’s permit to carry a concealed fireman issued by those states even though regulations for obtaining a permit vary considerably from state to state, particularly in matters of training.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: We’re not saying Donald Trump is the worst person in the world. We’re saying it ought to be looked into. We started out learning he used other people’s charity to buy himself trinkets. But it ended with accusations that he’s a child rapist. That escalated quickly!
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