Today’s comic by Mark Fiore is It’s a wall emergency!
What;s coming up on Sunday Kos:
- Black History Month is an opportunity to instill year-round confidence in our kids, by Rochaun MeadowsFernandez
- The defense argument for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, by Frank Vyan Walton
- Trump's legacy: Hate groups are at an all-time high, by Sher Watts Spooner
- How Norman Rockwell brought Roosevelt's 'Four Freedoms' to life, by David Akadjian
- BLACKkKLANSMAN, the KKK, and white supremacy during Black History Month, by Denise Oliver Velez
- Let’s reset and have civil and respectful debates as we choose the best Democratic candidate, by Egberto Willies
- Through film, young artists document the diverse stories and people creating change in Oakland, by Kelly Macías
- These are dangerous times, by Mark E Andersen
- Book review: 'Why Nationalism' by Yael Tamir, by Ian Reifowitz
• County sheriffs in Washington state refuse to enforce new gun laws: Twenty-one sheriffs, more than half in the state, have joined the refusal, and several county governments have adopted resolutions officially opposing enforcement of the laws. One of those is a ballot-approved effort to restrict the use and possession of military-style assault weapons. Some sheriffs say the law is impossible to enforce. Some of them are not just refusing to enforce the law themselves but trying to keep other county agencies from doing so. Observers say that these refusals are starting to look like a full-scale “constitutionalist” revolt against gun law reforms.
• Former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy tells agency staffers to keep on keeping on: Now prominent at Harvard University School of Public Health, McCarthy gave a 15-minute speech at the Georgetown Climate Center's 10th anniversary reception, alternating between joking and seriously addressing key issues. In addition to cracking wise about Arnold Schwarzenegger who was present in the audience, and about the record delay in getting the Senate to confirm her to the EPA post, McCarthy thanked former staffers at EPA in the room. "There are awesome folks here from throughout EPA. You know I love you, I think about you every day. I shout about you every day. I want you to continue to do the incredibly sophisticated message that I left you with, which is to keep your asses in your seats." She also reflected on the Trump regime’s assault on the environment: "One of the things I have learned as I've left government is you ... get beyond the tweets and you get beyond all the bullshit. The work of states and local governments is what's holding this country together and which will present us a foundation to run when we have that opportunity."
MIDDAY TWEET
• Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” heads to theaters for 40th Anniversary showings in April. The film, the second major release from the group, sharply satirizes religion and all things biblical. So much so that it was banned in Ireland and Norway in 1979:
“It’s another coming of Brian, and we are here to fill the world with laughter,” the Pythons said in a joint statement. “’The Life Of Brian’ may have been set 2000 years ago, but it’s a mirror of what’s going on today. Except that it’s funny.
• Deep freeze in from Polar Vortex showed the tremendous need for storage batteries for 100% renewables: The deep cold plaguing the central and eastern United States late last month required utilities to switch on just about every power plant they own to meet the higher demand for electricity. And what this showed, according to an analysis by Wade Schauer at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, is that a 100 percent renewably-sourced grid would take a whole lot of energy storage to meet consumer demand. Today there are about 11 gigawatts of storage covering the grid regions of New England, New York, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest and parts of the South. Schauer calculated that a 100 percent renewable grid just in those regions will require 277.9 gigawatts of storage. That is about twice as much as Wood Mackenzie forecasts will be in place for energy storage nationwide in 2040.
• FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says killing net neutrality and otherwise weakening oversight of internet service providers increased network investment. That appears to be baloney:
“Overall, capital expenditures by broadband providers increased in 2017, reversing declines that occurred in both 2015 and 2016,” the FCC claimed, again hinting that the repeal of net neutrality directly impacted CAPEX and broadband investment.
A problem with that claim: the FCC’s latest report only includes data up to June 2018, the same month net neutrality was formally repealed. As such the data couldn’t possibly support the idea that the elimination of net neutrality was responsible for this otherwise modest growth.
On
today’s Kagro in the Morning show:
The big story of the day was Trump Labor Sec. Acosta letting Trump buddy Epstein off the hook for his child sex trafficking. The minute we were done, Trump buddy Kraft got busted in a sex trafficking ring in the very same jurisdiction. Gee whiz!