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
Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat assassinated; Yom Kippur War breaks out in Mideast; Top U.S. arms inspector reports on Iraq’s WMD; Actress Bette Davis dies; ‘The Jazz Singer’ heralds talking pictures.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.
Breakfast News
Obama faces TPP deal balancing act as Congress considers approval
The White House began lobbying Democrats to take a fresh look at a controversial free trade agreement on Monday after concessions aimed at appeasing some critics on the left risked fracturing fragile support among Republicans.
Despite narrowly securing congressional approval to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement with 11 other countries, Barack Obama still has to persuade a majority of US lawmakers to pass the final deal, which aims to remove thousands of import tariffs.
The White House warned it would take several months before a vote on TPP but said officials had already begun to contact members of Congress to persuade them the deal walked a sensible line between critics on the left and right.
Justice Department trials system to count killings by US law enforcement
The US government is trialling a new open-source system to count killings by police around the country, in the most comprehensive official effort so far to accurately record the number of deaths at the hands of American law enforcement.
The pilot program was announced by the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, on Monday and follows concerted calls from campaigners and lawmakers for better official data on police killings, after a nationwide debate about race and policing was sparked by protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. [..]
The program will be run by the DoJ’s statistics division, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), and is seen internally as a more robust version of the currently defunct Arrest Related Deaths Count, which published annual data between 2003 and 2009 using statistics supplied by some of the United States’ 18,000 law enforcement agencies. The BJS eventually stopped collecting this data in 2014 as the level of reporting varied dramatically from state to state, due to the voluntary nature of the program.
Gun stocks surge as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama call for tougher laws
Renewed calls for tougher gun control laws sent gun stocks surging on Monday as investors expected an increase in gun sales. The value of Smith & Wesson’s shares went up by 7.29% and Sturm, Ruger & Co increased by 2.75%.
It was another good day for gun stock investors. Overall this year, the value of Smith & Wesson’s shares has increased by more than 80% and that of Sturm, Ruger increased by more than 60% – making them some of the best-performing stocks of 2015.
South Carolina floods: climate change intensified conditions, scientists say
Scientists say climate change has exacerbated the effects of a storm blamed for at least nine deaths in the south-eastern US.
On Monday, after weekend downpours, flooding continued to overwhelm large parts of South Carolina and North Carolina in what was described as a “once-in-a-millennium” storm.
Individual weather events cannot be attributed to climate change, but climatologists say atmospheric conditions tied to climate change intensified this downpour.
William C Campbell, Satoshi Ōmura and Youyou Tu win Nobel prize in medicine
Three scientists from Ireland, Japan and China have won the Nobel prize in medicine for discoveries that helped doctors fight malaria and infections caused by roundworm parasites.
Youyou Tu discovered one of the most effective treatments for malaria while working on a secret military project during China’s Cultural Revolution.
The 84-year-old pharmacologist was awarded half of the prestigious 8m Swedish kronor (£631,000) prize for her discovery of artemisinin, a drug that proved to be an improvement on chloroquine, which had become far less effective as the malaria parasites developed resistance.
Two other researchers, 80-year-old Satoshi Ōmura, an expert in soil microbes at Kitasato University, and William Campbell, an Irish-born parasitologist at Drew University in New Jersey, share the other half of the prize, for the discovery of avermectin, a treatment for roundworm parasites.
Air France workers rip shirts from executives after airline cuts 2,900 jobs
Striking staff at Air France have taken demonstrating their anger with direct action to a shocking new level. Approximately 100 workers forced their way into a meeting of the airline’s senior management and ripped the shirts from the backs of the executives.
The airline filed a criminal complaint after the employees stormed its headquarters, near Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, in what was condemned as a “scandalous” outbreak of violence.
Photographs showed one ashen-faced director being led through a baying crowd, his clothes torn to shreds. In another picture, the deputy head of human resources, bare-chested after workers ripped off his shirt and jacket, is seen being pushed to safety over a fence.
California to become fifth state to legalize assisted dying
California will become the fifth state to allow terminally ill patients to legally end their lives using doctor-prescribed drugs after Governor Jerry Brown announced Monday he signed one of the most emotionally charged bills of the year.
Brown, a lifelong Catholic and former Jesuit seminarian, announced he signed the legislation after thoroughly considering all opinions and discussing the issue with many people, including a Catholic bishop and two of Brown’s doctors.
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Must Read Blog Posts
Texans Are Dying Because Texas Fears ‘Job-Killing Regulations’ Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
Richard Richard Wolff on Jobs Now, and David Cay Johnson and Jobs Then Lambert Strether, naked capitalism
This is why the gun nuts win: An Oregon sheriff’s nutty conspiracy theories explains the GOP’s impotence Amanda marcotte, Salon
Bernie Sanders On Pizza Inequality (VIDEO) Kit O’Connell, ShadowProof
Patent Owner Insists ‘Integers’ Do Not Include The Number One Vera Ranieri, Techdirt
Hey, Remember How Net Neutrality Was Supposed To Destroy The Internet? karl Bode, Techdirt
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