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.
AP’s Today in History for April 7th
Civil war erupts in Rwanda; NY audience previews long-distance television; Auto pioneer Henry Ford dies in Dearborn, Mich.;Singer Billie Holiday, known as “Lady Day” is born in Philadelphia.
Breakfast Tune “Laughing At Life” (Billie Holiday) Eddy Davis Banjo
Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below
CHUCK SCHUMER NEGLECTED TO NAME A DEMOCRATIC COMMISSIONER FOR THE SEC. NOW IT’S OPEN SEASON FOR WALL STREET, BANK LAWYERS CROW
David Dayen, The Intercept
LAST SUMMER, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer failed to name a candidate for a minority position on the Securities and Exchange Commission, and now Wall Street lawyers are celebrating a virtual amnesty that they think could last the rest of Donald Trump’s term.
In a remarkably candid editorial, five partners with the D.C. law firm Debevoise & Plimpton have confidently predicted that the SEC will refrain from imposing financial penalties on corporations for securities violations “for the remainder of the current presidential term.” This benefits the large trading and securities interests that employ Debevoise for legal defense work. The editorial amounts to Debevoise informing their clients that the coast is clear.
The reason for the expected decrease in enforcement has to do with a fatal delay by Schumer to name a minority commissioner and the Trump administration’s unprecedented exploitation of this mistake.
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Polish general who fought with Washington may have been a woman
Jessica Glenza, The Guardian
Researchers believe a famed Polish general who fought in the American Revolutionary war may have been a woman or possibly intersex.
A new Smithsonian Channel documentary examines the history of Casimir Pulaski, a Polish cavalryman who became a protege of George Washington.
Researchers began their work when a monument to the general in Savannah, Georgia, was set to be removed. Pulaski’s bones were contained in a metal box under the monument, which was erected in 1854. Charles Merbs, a forensic anthropologist at Arizona State University who worked on the case, said that allowed researchers to exhume the skeleton for study.
“Basically I couldn’t say anything about what I found until the final report came out,” Merbs told ASU Now. He worked with Dr Karen Burns, a physical anthropologist at the University of Georgia, and other experts.
“Dr Burns said to me before I went in, ‘Go in and don’t come out screaming.’ She said study it very carefully and thoroughly and then let’s sit down and discuss it. I went in and immediately saw what she was talking about.
“The skeleton is about as female as can be.”
Another team member, Virginia Hutton Estabrook, a Georgia Southern University professor of anthropology, told NBC News: “One of the ways that male and female skeletons are different is the pelvis. In females, the pelvic cavity has a more oval shape. It’s less heart-shaped than in the male pelvis. Pulaski’s looked very female.”
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- Only the Struggle Matters
Chris Hedges
- “Assange Is Not A Journalist!” Yes He Is, Idiot.
Caitlin Johnstone
- Jomo Kwame Sundaram: Has Privatization Benefitted the Public?
Jerri-Lynn Scofield
Something to think about over coffee prozac
Why some animals dress up, start fires and have sex just for fun
Mary Huhn, NY Post
In 2007, a 15-year-old chimpanzee named Julie started sporting a stiff blade of grass behind one ear — a trend that drove her fellow apes wild.
First, her son donned his own ear ornament, followed by eight other chimps in Julie’s troop of 12, who all lived in a sanctuary in Zambia.
When Julie died in 2012, her local gang kept wearing the single-blade accessory, and the style eventually spread to fashion-forward chimps in two nearby populations.
Julie and her fellow fashionistas were likely copying each other “just to be in with the in-crowd,” writes Adam Rutherford in his book, “Humanimal: How Homo Sapiens Became Nature’s Most Paradoxical Creature — A New Evolutionary History” (The Experiment), out now.
They’re not the only beasts to display human-like behavior — whether it’s a creative use of tools, enjoying recreational sex or harnessing fire, it turns out that animals are often just like us.
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