Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is The true, top-secret story of Trump's presidency:
• Republican-led House Armed Services Committee asks Pentagon to study climate change: That might seem like no big deal since the Pentagon has been looking into the effects of climate change on military readiness and other security issues for nearly a decade. But it matters because a year ago the same body tried to block the military from spending a dime preparing for climate change:
"The truth is that the department can study this on their own, as they have a wide berth when it comes to assessing threats to national security," said Rep. Jim Langevin, a Democrat from Rhode Island and the amendment's sponsor. "But this amendment shows that Congress has the department's back. It signals that we are not naive to the dangers of climate change to our defense strategy."
• Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has a little meltdown in the White House:
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s frustrations with the White House have been building for months. Last Friday, they exploded.
The normally laconic Texan unloaded on Johnny DeStefano, the head of the presidential personnel office, for torpedoing proposed nominees to senior State Department posts and for questioning his judgment.
• Couple’s try at YouTube fame turns stupid stunt into deadly stunt.
• 111 people used California’s new right-to-die law to take their own lives in 2016: The law went into effect in June 2016. It allows state residents with terminal illnesses to ask their doctors for medication to end their lives on their own timetable. By the end of the year, 258 people had initiated the process, 191 were prescribed the medication, but just 111 patients "were reported by their physician to have died following ingestion of aid-in-dying drugs prescribed under EOLA." Reporting lags and natural deaths occurring before the medication was taken were cited as the reasons for the difference in those numbers. Median age 73. Most were cancer patients and most were enrolled in hospice/palliative care.
• EPA looking into how to undo the Clean Water Rule enacted by Obama in 2015: The rule is meant to protect the water supply of 117 million Americans, but it raised hackles on the right, and Republicans have made several unsuccessful attempts to kill it. Also known as the Waters of the United States or WOTUS), the rule set limits on pollution in the nation’s tens of millions of acres of wetlands and thousands of streams that feed the nation's rivers. While even the regime itself admits that Pr*sident Trump cannot rescind the rule, his executive order directing the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers begins a years-long process of eventually repealing it.
• Boaty McBoatface is back in the news: You may recall that the Natural Environment Research Council in the United Kingdom asked the public to name a polar research ship. But when the inspired “Boaty McBoatface” was far and away the most popular of the 7,000 names submitted, the stiffnecks at the council said no. They did, however, give a nod to democracy by giving that name to a little yellow robotic submarine. The submersible, designed for deep dives, has just returned from exploring the Southern Ocean near Antarctica to a depth of 13,000 feet with a boatload of “unprecedented data.” Professor Alberto Naveira Garabato from the University of Southampton, the lead scientist of expedition aboard the research vessel RRS James Clark Ross, said in the statement: "Up until now we have only been able to take measurements from a fixed point, but now, we are able to obtain a much more detailed picture of what is happening in this very important underwater landscape. The challenge for us now is to analyze it all."
• Every single minute around the world, nearly one million plastic bottles are sold.
• Ireland joins France, Germany and Bulgaria in banning fracking.
• Big majority of Americans feel “alarmed” or “uneasy”:
A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll finds that 42% of of those surveyed when asked how they felt when they think about how things are going in Washington today said there were “alarmed.” Another 33% feel “uneasy.” Just 11% choose the positive “excited.”
“The air of angst is bipartisan. Nine of 10 Democrats feel uneasy or alarmed; so do a majority of Republicans.”
• If you haven’t yet seen the NRA’s f’d-up call to arms, take a deep breath ...
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin says work continues on the Gop’s Medicaid repeal bill, as leaders look for ways to bribe holdouts back into the fold. Trump’s tweets embarrass America, again. Nikki Haley seems happy about cutting UN peacekeeping. GunFAIL still dumb.
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