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. 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
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed; Father’s Day first celebrated in the U.S.; The event behind ‘Juneteenth’; Author Salman Rushdie born; NBA draft pick Len Bias dies; Entertainer Paula Adbul born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I believe that summer is our time, a time for the people, and that no politician should be allowed to speak to us during the summer. They can start talking again after Labor Day.
Breakfast News
Pope Francis, in Sweeping Encyclical, Calls for Swift Action on Climate Change
Pope Francis called Thursday for a radical transformation of politics, economics and individual lifestyles to confront environmental degradation and climate change, blending a biting critique of consumerism and irresponsible development with a plea for swift and unified global action.
The vision that Francis outlined in a 184-page papal encyclical is sweeping in ambition and scope: He described relentless exploitation and destruction of the environment and said apathy, the reckless pursuit of profits, excessive faith in technology and political shortsightedness were to blame.
The most vulnerable victims, he declared, are the world’s poorest people, who are being dislocated and disregarded.
Greece faces banking crisis after eurozone meeting breaks down
Greece is facing a full-blown banking crisis after a meeting of eurozone finance ministers broke down in acrimony and recrimination on Thursday evening, bringing the prospect of Greek exit from the eurozone a step nearer.
Some €2bn of deposits have been withdrawn from Greek banks so far this week – including a record €1bn yesterday – triggering fears that a breakdown in talks would spark a further flight of funds. The German leader Angela Merkel, French president François Hollande and Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras agreed to stage an emergency EU summit on Monday as a last critical attempt to prevent Greece going bankrupt. A representative of the European Central Bank told the meeting it was unsure whether Greek banks would have the funds to be able to open on Monday.
Senate Approves Defense Bill, but Then Votes to Block It
The Senate on Thursday passed a $600 billion defense policy bill that would rein in pension costs, ban the use of torture and authorize lethal offensive weapons for Ukraine. But it then immediately rejected a measure to pay for it, the first battle in a spending fight that could end in a government shutdown this fall.
The blocking of the military appropriations bill was the first in a series of rejections Democrats have promised as they try to force Republicans into reopening budget talks.
Democrats – and many Republicans – want to lift spending limits imposed in 2011 that are just now being applied across an array of government programs. Absent new bipartisan budget talks – the sort that have often failed in Congress before – President Obama has pledged to veto spending bills if Democrats do not kill them on the Senate floor first.
State Department stays quiet about exit from Chinese-owned Waldorf Astoria
US State Department officials have not given a reason for their decision to abandon New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel for the first time in decades during this year’s UN general assembly.
But when Hilton Worldwide sold the high-end Midtown hotel to the Beijing-based Anbang Insurance Group for $1.95bn last year in a sale that allowed for “a major renovation”, eyebrows were raised in Washington, where fears of Chinese eavesdropping and cyber-espionage run high.
The switch to the New York Palace Hotel will affect hundreds of American diplomats and support staff who travel to New York for the General Assembly each September and stay at the Waldorf.For the first time in decades, the General Assembly will be held not at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel, but at the New York Palace Hotel this fall.
Cuba to offer Wi-Fi at 35 public spaces for the first time
Cuba plans to beam Wi-Fi signals at 35 public spaces in the first such offering for the population at large, whose web access has been mostly limited to desktop rentals in state-owned internet parlours.
Cuba will also cut the price for surfing the net from $4.50 to $2 an hour, Luis Manuel Diaz Naranjo, the chief spokesman for Etecsa, the state telecommunications monopoly, told the official newspaper, Juventud Rebelde, on Thursday.
The communist-led island has one of the lowest internet usage rates in the world with very little home broadband service and extremely high rates for foreigners and a tiny number of homes and businesses which are allowed to be wired.
More low-income Americans to get high-speed internet thanks to FCC
High-speed internet access could now be more accessible to low-income Americans after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed a measure on Thursday to subsidise their internet bills.
Fewer than half of American households making less than $25,000 a year have internet access. The FCC voted 3-2 to expand a Reagan-era measure called Lifeline to include broadband. The subsidy program currently serves 1.2 million Americans, providing $9.25 total per household to citizens who qualify.
Bees feeding on fungicide-dosed flowers develop health issues, studies say
While the relationship between insecticides and bees has made headlines – and controversy – for years, two recent studies have shown that another class of agricultural chemicals, little-appreciated but used in ever-increasing amounts, may also pose a threat to pollinators.
The new studies have raised concerns about fungicides: in one, foraging on fungicide-dosed flowers harmed bumblebees. Colonies were smaller, their workers tinier, their queens seemed sickly, it found. In the other, exposures were linked to declines in wild bees living in agriculture-intensive areas. They are only two studies, and far from conclusive, but the findings fit with a growing body of research on fungicides once thought innocuous.
Confederate flag raises renewed ire following Charleston church killings
Fifteen years ago, the Confederate flag was removed from the top of the state house building in Columbia, South Carolina. It was moved all of 200 feet, to be planted next to a Confederate memorial inside capitol grounds. Now there is a call for the flag to be moved again – to somewhere no one can see it.
A day after nine African-American men and women were gunned down inside a historic black church in Charleston, allegedly by a white gunman with racist views, mourners and protesters renewed a call that never quite seems to go away in South Carolina: why is the people’s house draped with a symbol of racial division – or regional heritage, as its proponents hold?
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Must Read Blog Posts
Charleston Shooting: Speaking the Unspeakable, Thinking the Unthinkable Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
Why Didn’t Police Use Force In This Cop Shooting? MaryAnn Spoto and Alex Napoliello, Crooks and Liars
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