Today’s comic by Tom Tomorrow is King of comedy:
What you may have missed on Sunday Kos …
- A tribute to Ethel Payne and the history of the black press, by Denise Oliver Velez
- Ten things we could buy with $25 billion (other than a wall), by David Akadjian
- Trump says his tax plan is 'going to cost me a fortune'—and he’s lying, by Jon Perr
- This is what Democratic enthusiasm looks like, by Sher Watts Spooner
- Circling the drain of the opioid addiction epidemic, by Susan Grigsby
- DOJ proves once again that American police can be biased, bigoted and dangerous, by Frank Vyan Walton
- Right-wing identity politics: Rush says Hillary likes Muslims (them) better than gun lovers (you), by Ian Reifowitz
- It is time for progressives to win the Democratic narrative, by Egberto Willies
- Retracing Cold War memories: Part Seven, Schloss Neuschwanstein, and Rothenburg ob der tauber, by Mark E Andersen
• Elon Musk’s new idea for solar roof isn’t exactly new: The innovative billionaire announced to Wall Street analysts recently that making a roof solar (as opposed to installing solar panels on the roof) “is a quite difficult engineering challenge and not something that is available anywhere else.” But, in fact, solar roof technology has been with us for more than a decade. The difficult engineering challenge is installing an integrated solar roof cheaper than a roof with solar panels on it that are also more efficient at generating electricity than regular solar panels. Heather Smith at Grist notes that Musk doesn’t have a new product yet, so his announcement is a bit like announcing “that he’s come up with a new kind of sandwich, and we’re all going to love it, and it’s called … a hamburger.”
• Gays Against Guns group fight gun manufacturers with civil disobedience:
Members of Gays Against Guns, a group formed in the wake of the massacre of 49 people at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando earlier this summer, said they would “no longer stand by and watch the gun industry profit from death”.
Organizers of the collective, which has more than 300 members in New York and chapters in nine other cities across the country, said they were prepared to break the law and get arrested in their fight against gun manufacturers, their shareholders, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its corporate backers.
• East Chicago, Indiana, has a severe lead contamination problem that opens a window on environmental injustice in other U.S. cities.
• Andy Murray corrects BBC host Inverdale for becoming the first person to win two tennis golds – forgetting the Williams sisters’ four medals each: “Andy Murray has put John Inverdale in his place for saying the Scot was the first person to win two Olympic golds for tennis, as the BBC presenter made the latest in a string of on-air gaffes. Inverdale, interviewing Murray after he defeated Argentina’s Juan Martin Del Potro to claim his second Olympic gold, said: ‘You’re the first person ever to win two Olympic tennis gold medals. That’s an extraordinary feat, isn’t it?’ But the Scot shot back: “Well, to defend the singles title ... I think Venus and Serena [Williams] have won about four each but hadn’t defended a singles title before.”
• Daily Beast reporter recalled from Rio, IOC says:
The International Olympic Committee says that Daily Beast writer Nico Hines is no longer in Rio and deemed his article on Grindr sex “unacceptable”. Last week Hines used the Grindr app to write a piece on gay hook-up sex among Olympians and outed the athletes he chatted with by providing details that could identify them. Some of those athletes were from countries that are notoriously anti-gay, and could have been put in danger by the article.
• It's Monday, August 15, and Day 184 since Justice Antonin Scalia died and Mitch McConnell decided no nominee would get any Senate attention: No meetings, no hearings, no votes. It's also Day 147 since Merrick Garland was nominated by President Obama to fill that vacancy. McConnell’s last remark on the matter? "One of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I said, 'Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court vacancy.’”
• Bangladesh's central bank withholds findings of probe into the cyber theft of $81 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York: The Rizal Commercial Banking Corp says it is keeping secret what it has learned from its ongoing investigation to keep from giving the "foreign perpetrators" information useful to them. It’s been six months since hacks broke into the Bangladesh central bank's computer systems in one of the biggest-ever cyber heists. Most of the money is still missing.
On today's “encore presentation” Kagro in the Morning show, it’s the 8/17/15 show: Greg Dworkin rounds up 2016 headlines from opening weekend of the Iowa State Fair. Trump phones it in. ATT & NSA know everything you phone in. DHS monitor BLM activists. Are they the new "professional left?"
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