Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is Building the perfect candidate to beat Trump:
• Poll: The climate crisis is now more polarizing in America than abortion: Asked to rank 29 topics of importance to them in the 2020 presidential election, conservative Republicans put the climate crisis dead last, while progressive Democrats placed it third, behind environmental protection and health care. While not so sharp. moderate Republicans and centrist Democrats rank the climate crisis quite differently too, 23rd for the former; 8th for the latter. The survey by Yale University found that abortion ranks 5th and gun policies 7th for conservative Republicans, and 13th and 7th respectively for progressive Democrats. “Climate change is now more politically polarizing than any other issue in America,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale program on climate change communication. “The issue has climbed and climbed in importance for the Democratic base since the 2016 presidential election to the point that it’s now a top-tier concern. We have never seen that in American politics before.
• Twenty-two groups, including Daily Kos, want chopping the Pentagon budget to be a campaign issue: The groups sent a letter to major party presidential candidates urging them to commit to a Pentagon spending cuts agenda that includes reducing the budget by at least $200 billion annually, “freeing up $2 trillion or more over the next decade for domestic and human needs priorities”; never allowing the nation to go to war again without congressional action; and never authorizing another war without first figuring out how to pay for it and its residual costs, including taking care of injured veterans. Organizational signers of this call to “Put People over the Pentagon” include: 350.org, Center for Popular Democracy, Code Pink, Credo Action, Daily Kos, Demand Progress, Democracy for America, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Indivisible, Just Foreign Policy, MoveOn.org, National Priorities Project, Peace Action, Public Citizen, RootsAction, Social Security Works, United We Dream, Win Without War, Women’s Action for New Directions and World Beyond War.
• Tied Election for water district in Kootenai County, Idaho, settled with a coin toss. Turnout: 7.5%.
MIDDAY TWEET
• Sens. Sean Casten, Tina Smith introduce proposal to boost grid scale energy storage R&D: The bill, ‘‘Promoting Grid Storage Act of 2019,” would provide $1 billion over five years to drive down the price of storage just government-funded R&D has brought down the cost of solar and wind.
• Release of John Lindh confirmed by Bureau of Prisons: He was 20 years when he was captured in December 2001, fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan just three months after al Qaeda killed 3,000 people in terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on 10 charges, including conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens, contributing services to al Qaeda and to the Taliban, and two counts of providing material support and resources to terrorist organizations. If he had been convicted on all counts, he could have been sentenced to three life terms plus an additional 90 years. Instead, he accepted a plea bargain and was sentenced to 20 years. He completed 17 of those years and was released early for good behavior under three years of probation with several conditions, including a ban on travel and a requirement that he get permission to go on the Internet. He converted to Islam when he was 16 and though he denounced terrorism at his sentencing and said he never realized when he went to Afghanistan that he would wind up fighting Americans, he told a journalist four years ago that he supports ISIS. Critics are unhappy with his release. Those include the family of Mike Spann, a CIA agent killed in an uprising of Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan in which Lindh was a part. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Foxaganda Thursday morning, "There is something deeply troubling and wrong about this."
• Scientists discover new layers of water ice beneath the north pole of Mars: Scientists speculate that the layers are the icy remnants of ancient polar ice sheets. These could be one of the largest sources of water on the Red Planet, hugely valuable if humans even try to establish colonies there.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: The i-word chatter continues. Greg Dworkin rounds up the stories & polls. Armando calls an audible & discusses courts dunking on Trump... so far. Yet another Trump “banker” gets his Midas touch (of death), while another Manafort banker gets busted.