Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is Billy Dare, Boy Adventurer, in a three-act adventure:
• James O’Keefe wannabe busted by Russ Feingold’s Senate campaign.
• Eighteen times the media introduced a new Trump: It all started 11 months ago on Sept. 17, 2015.
• Firefighters struggle to contain ferocious Blue Cut Fire in San Bernadino, California: The fire, which began Tuesday morning in the hills above the city of 210,000, had grown to encompass more than 40 square miles by Thursday morning. Plagued by drought, the area is very dry. "In my 40 years of fighting fire, I've never seen fire behavior so extreme," Incident Commander Mike Wakoski told the Associated Press.
• For second time in 14 years, Alaska villagers vote to relocate, but there’s no money to do it: Rising sea levels spurred the residents of the coastal village of Shishmaref, Alaska, to vote 89-78 Wednesday to relocate. About 600 people, most of them Iñupiat, live in the village. This isn’t the first time the village has officially decided to relocate. In 2002, residents voted 161-20 to leave for the mainland. But no federal funds were available to help them move. Since then, the U.S. Department of the Interior has made $8 million available for all Native tribes seeking relocation. But it’s estimated that moving Shishmaref alone would cost $200 million.
• It's Thursday, August 18, and Day 187 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 150 since Merrick Garland was nominated by President Obama to fill that vacancy.
• Dune in emoji:
• Federal court orders Lakota to end their protest blocking construction of oil pipeline in North Dakota.
• UK okays what will be the world’s largest wind farm: The Hornsea Two project will add 300 wind turbines to the already approved first phase of the Hornsea project, which is being built by the Danish company Dong 55 miles off shore in the North Sea. This second phase will add 1.8 gigawatts of capacity to the project, bringing it up to 3 gigawatts total. That’s enough to power 2.5 million (U.S.) households, roughly equivalent to a nuclear power plant. “Offshore wind is already on course to meet 10 percent of the U.K.’s electricity demand by 2020,” said Huub den Rooijen, Director of Energy, Minerals and Infrastructure at The Crown Estate, the UK government’s asset management firm. Two more phases of Hornsea could boost capacity to 6 gigawatts.
• Black women’s wages were gaining on white men’s, but not anymore. And they’re also falling even further behind white women’s. In 1979, white women’s wages were 62 percent of white men’s wages, compared to 58 percent for black women. Thus, while there was a huge gender disadvantage for both groups of women, black women were at the time near parity with white women, just a 4 percent difference. By 2014, white women’s wages had, on average, risen to 79 percent of white men’s, but by the end of 2015 had dropped back to 77 percent. Black women’s wages had risen to 69 percent of white men’s in 2004, but by 2015, they had fallen to 66 percent, an 11 percent difference between them and white women.
• Our era of crappy oil.
• More states will be voting to legalize marijuana in November Five of them where medical marijuana is already legal will vote on whether to legalize recreational use: Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada. There’s a court fight going on in Michigan to get a vote on recreational legalization. Arkansas, Florida, Montana, and North Dakota will be voting on legalizing marijuana for medical use. And voters in Missouri and Oklahoma may also get a chance to decide on medical marijuana, but the initiatives have not yet made the ballot.
On today's “encore presentation” Kagro in the Morning show, it’s the 8/20/15 show: Greg Dworkin offers a polling roundup. Trump sets the 14th Amendment on fire. Deez Nuts-mentum. Always keep the SCOTUS in mind. Ian Reifowitz discusses the Iran deal fight and his thinking on the Dem primary.
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