The Breakfast Club 7-23-2014

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Everyone’s welcome here, no special handshake required. Just check your meta at the door.

Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Breakfast News

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Poll: U.S. Leads The World… In Climate Denial

The poll found that 52 percent of Americans agreed with the statement “The climate change we are currently seeing is a natural phenomenon that happens from time to time.” India was tied with the U.S. in this belief, and China came in a close second, with 51 percent of respondents agreeing. In contrast, only 34 percent of Swedes, 26 percent of South Koreans, and 22 percent of Japanese agreed with the statement.

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Half of All New Energy Capacity in the US This Year Is Renewable

Renewable energy continues growing its share of new electricity generation in the U.S.

According to the latest  Energy Infrastructure Update from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, solar and wind energy constituted more than half of the new generating capacity in the country for the first half of 2014.  Solar and wind energy combined for 1.83 gigawatts (GW) of the total 3.53 GW installed from January to June.

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Obama moves to protect LGBT federal contractors and employees

The executive order President Obama is scheduled to sign today protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) federal contractors is as notable for what it says as what it explicitly does not say. There will be no additional exemptions for religious entities. Given the established carve-out made by President George W. Bush, Obama was right to say no to more.

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Did Courts Just Gut Obamacare? There’s More to This Story Than You Think

The right-wing war on Obamacare reached a new plateau Tuesday, with two different federal appeals courts issuing opposing rulings-one killing and one upholding the billions of dollars in subsidies that lower the cost of health insurance that 4.5 million people bought on federal government websites in 36 states.

The legal roller coaster began with a 2-1 ruling by a U.S. District Court of Appeals panel in Washington. That panel dominated by conservative judges held that the subsidies-which are paid by the government to insurers and make the policies more affordable-can be granted only to those people who bought insurance in state-run exchanges or in the District of Columbia, but not on the federal government’s HealthCare.gov.

(snip)

But then several hours later, another federal appeals court three-judge panel in Virginia unanimously upheld the same provisions in the law that allows the federal government to issue the subsidies to insurers.

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White House Criticizes Anonymous Sources, Reporters Note The White House Has An Anonymous Source Call Today

A press briefing between reporters and White House press secretary Josh Earnest got testy Monday as reporters pushed back against the White House’s criticism of a Washington Post story for relying on anonymous administration sources.

“The lead of that story is hooked entirely to anonymous sources,” Earnest said of the Post report that Obama aides were warned of coming influx Central American minors into the United States. “That’s just a fact.”

“You criticize anonymous sources, but we have anonymous sources from you all every day. In fact, I think we have a call today. How can you criticize that when that’s all you give us everyday except for the briefing,” McClatchy White House reporter Anita Kumar said.

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Must Read Blog Posts

Tomgram: Jonathan Schell, A Niagara Falls of Post-9/11 Violence

by Jonathan Schell

State Department Section Chief Becomes NSA Whistleblower. ‘Democracy Threatening’

by LieparDestin

Shaming the poor, 2014 edition: Behold this horrifying Great Depression remnant

by Charles Davis

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones to sister of Henry Demarest Lloyd: “He died many years to soon.”

by JayRaye

George Harrison Memorial Tree Killed by Actual Beetles

by Chris Martins

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The Daily Wiki

Tunguska event

The Tunguska event was a large explosion, which occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at about 07:14 KRAT (00:14 UT) on June 30 [O.S. June 17], 1908.[1][2][3] The explosion occurred at an altitude of 5-10 kilometres (3-6 mi) at 60.886°N, 101.894°E. Different studies have yielded widely varying estimates of the impacting object’s size, on the order of 60 m (200 ft) to 190 m (620 ft).[4] It is the largest impact event on or near Earth in recorded history. It is classified as an impact even though the asteroid or comet is believed to have burst in the air rather than hitting the surface.[5]

Since the 1908 explosion, there have been an estimated 1,000 scholarly papers (mainly in Russian) published on the Tunguska explosion. Many scientists have participated in Tunguska studies; the best known are Leonid Kulik, Yevgeny Krinov, Kirill Florensky, Nikolai Vladimirovich Vasiliev, and Wilhelm Fast.[6] In 2013, a team of researchers led by Victor Kvasnytsya of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine published analysis results of micro-samples from a peat bog near the blast epicenter showing fragments that may be of meteoric origin.[7][8]

Estimates of the energy of the blast range from as low as three to as high as 30 megatons of TNT (between 13 and 130 PJ).[9][10] Most likely it was between 10-15 megatons of TNT (42-63 PJ),[10] and, if so, then the energy of the explosion was about 1,000 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan; roughly equal to that of the United States’ Castle Bravo ground-based thermonuclear test detonation on March 1, 1954; and about two-fifths that of the Soviet Union’s later Tsar Bomba (the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated).[11]

It is estimated that the Tunguska explosion knocked down some 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi), and that the shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. An explosion of this magnitude would be capable of destroying a large metropolitan area,[12] but due to the remoteness of the location no fatalities were documented. This event has helped to spark discussion of asteroid impact avoidance.

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Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. ~C. S. Lewis

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Breakfast Tunes

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Stupid Shit by LaEscapee

Convictions They Should Not Go as the Wind Blows

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