Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is A Calvinesque and Hobbesian look at Trump and Comey:
• 54 percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center support government regulations to spur more renewable energy: They agreed with question asking if they believe “government regulations are necessary to encourage businesses and consumers to rely more on renewable energy sources.” Only 38 percent supported the idea that “the private marketplace will ensure that businesses and consumers rely more on renewable energy sources, even without government regulations.” But 49 percent said the air and water can be protected with fewer environmental regulations, while 47 percent said they can’t be protected.
• Roger Ailes dead at 77: With Rupert Murdoch’s money and imprimatur, Ailes created and oversaw Fox News, spending 20 years at the right-wing propaganda outlet until he resigned last year as CEO because of allegations of sexual harassment from numerous women. Eight days before his death, a phone call was made to the Palm Beach Police Department. According to the 911 log, Ailes, a hemophiliac, had accidentally fallen and hit his head, and was bleeding profusely:
“Fair and balanced” was Mr. Ailes’s defining phrase for Fox News, along with another slogan: “We report. You decide.” Though routinely mocked by liberal critics, who regarded the network as decidedly unfair and imbalanced, those words amounted to an article of faith for Mr. Ailes.
“If we look conservative,” he said, “it’s because the other guys are so far to the left.” In his mordant humor, CNN stood for Clinton News Network and CBS for Communist Broadcasting System. What Fox News did, he said, was apply a necessary corrective.
• Grandfather of grunge Chris Cornell dead at 51: The vocalist and guitarist of Soundgarden and Temple of the Dog's frontman died of an apparent suicide Wednesday night.
• EPI: Corporate power in state legislatures produces a gerrymandered Congress:
It’s not surprising that corporate money would have an outsized effect in state politics. Few people pay attention to state politics—less than one-quarter of Americans even know who their state representative is— so there’s less opposition to the moneyed interests. And legislative races are relatively cheap to buy. In North Carolina, for instance, supermarket magnate and Koch brothers’ affiliate Art Pope contributed $2.3 million to 20 favored candidates in 2010— effectively doubling these candidates’ campaign budgets. Eighty percent of Pope’s candidates won, and with his help, Republicans gained control of both houses of the North Carolina legislature for the first time since the Reconstruction.
• NRA: ISIS is praising lax U.S. gun laws to dupe liberals into passing stricter ones.
• Everybody has seasonal allergies now. Reason? Climate change:
Why have I suddenly been plagued with this suffering after nearly three decades of blissful, allergy-free existence? The answer is in part due to a familiar foe, climate change, and the fact that even a hearty microbiome can't fully shield you from perennial hell. [...]
"Pollen seasons are getting longer and heavier as the Earth warms up," explained Dr. Mitchell Grayson, an allergist at Nationwide Children's Hospital and researcher at Ohio State University. "We also know that allergic diseases have increased. We can't directly link climate change as the cause. We know both of these things are happening and they're happening on the same time scale."
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin & David Waldman race the clock just to keep pace with the developments of the last day, and keep it under two hours. Mueller! Ailes! Lieberman! Flynn! Manafort! McCarthy & Ryan! Kushner! Bannon! The St. Martin manse & the Toronto tower!
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