Today’s comic by Mark Fiore is Suck it, U.N.!
What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …
- Environmentalists on plan to shrink national monuments: See you in court, by Sher Watts Spooner
- The Caribbean, the U.S., and how their past and present are intertwined, by Denise Oliver Velez
- What will happen when Paul Manafort, the first likely Russia domino, finally falls, by Frank Vyan Walton
- Will flooding in this conservative community change its residents’ point of view, by Egberto Willies
- The GOP’s Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill is a killer scam, by Jon Perr
- Data science and you: Hype, hope or just plain creepy, by DarkSyde
- If government doesn't make decisions on your health care, for-profit insurance executives will, by Ian Reifowitz
• Alabama Senate GOP candidate Roy Moore wins the debate against Luther Strange:
In what was perhaps the most attention-grabbing portion of the evening, Moore, as a Westpoint grad and Vietnam vet, emphasized his desire for a strong military before going on to explain his plans for the economy and to lament the fact that “crime, corruption, immorality, abortion, sodomy, sexual perversion sweep our land”:
• Not going to happen, but it would be a hoot:
The new FBI director, Christopher A. Wray, is planning for his installation ceremony next Thursday. By tradition, such events feature a speech from the president, and the FBI’s deputy director acts master of ceremonies for a VIP audience including past directors.
That could place President Trump on stage with Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — a man whose integrity the president has repeatedly publicly challenged – and speaking to a front-row audience that includes James B. Comey — the director he dismissed — and Robert S. Mueller III — the special counsel investigating whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice.
• Elon Musk’s maligned solar partnership strategy doesn't look so crazy anymore:
Elon Musk took a lot of heat last year when his Tesla Inc. bought solar-panel installer SolarCity for $2 billion. The synergies between his two companies didn’t seem immediately obvious, among other issues, critics said.
But now other solar installers are looking to partner with companies as they wrestle with a market that is
shrinking after 16 years of rapid growth. Their longtime sales model -- knocking on doors, cold calling at home, setting up mall kiosks -- has proven to be costly. Far more effective to use the umbrella of bigger established companies to find customers, they’ve decided. [...]
Solar companies hope the alliances will solve a problem long bedeviling installers: customer-acquisition costs that often run 20 percent of expenses, sometimes exceeding the panels themselves. They also address another issue: Some potential customers are reluctant to sign on to decades-long contracts with relatively small, little-known companies. That could change by associating with brand names.
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• War of words continues as North Korea foreign minister mentions H-bomb test over Pacific:
“It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific,” Ri, who is due to address the UN general assembly at the weekend, told reporters in New York. “We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong-Un.”
Trump tweeted in response on Friday: “Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!”
• Hurricane-struck Puerto Rico a test for environmental justice:
It's not just that Puerto Rico was already laden with chronic debt and acutely injured by an earlier storm that had passed just north of the island two weeks before. Nor is it merely that Maria, probably the most destructive hurricane in the island's history, is the kind of event that climate change experts have long warned would be among the risks facing coastal areas as the planet warms.
From the vantage point of environmental justice, this storm also represents many of the ways that those risks are unfairly distributed—and whether the United States, like the world as a whole, is prepared to come to the aid of poor and vulnerable communities that have contributed little to climate change.
• ITC finds imports of cheap solar panels harm U.S. manufacturers:
The U.S. International Trade Commission voted 4-0 on Friday to find that imports of cheap solar panels have caused injury to domestic solar manufacturers, setting up a high-stakes tariff decision for President Trump.
The ITC sided with two financially struggling U.S. manufacturers who blamed cheap Chinese solar module imports for their demise. Suniva and SolarWorld propose a tariff of $0.40/watt on imported solar cells and a floor price of $0.78/watt on imported modules.
The ITC has until November to make formal recommendations to the White House, after which Trump has two months to decide on a final policy. Tariff opponents say the manufacturer proposal could endanger 88,000 jobs and put at risk two-thirds of utility-scale solar projects set to come online in the next five years.
• Students at Howard University protest convocation speech by James Comey:
Scores of students stood up in protest as soon as Comey took the stage at the official opening the fall semester at the esteemed HBCU, where a throng of students stood up, with fists in the air singing the old Negro spiritual, “We Shall Not Be Moved.” [...]
They then began a call and response, chanting slogans like “I said I love being black” (repeat) “I love the color of my skin” (repeat) “This is the skin that I’m in” (repeat).
Students also shouted “Get out James Comey, get out our home” and “No Justice No Peace!”
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: #Dotard! Facebook’s “porousness” led to its exploitation & that of its users. “Dark posts” are an exceptionally dangerous tool for a con/genital liar like Trump. Armando joins in agreeing that in reconciliation, there are no rules. Except when there are.
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