Senate Democrats vow to fight drilling in Alaska reserve

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democrats vowed on Tuesday to fight a measure expected to be slipped into budget legislation that would open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to oil and gas drilling, saying it would destroy one of earth’s remaining paradises.

Northern Alaska’s ANWR is a wilderness about the size of South Carolina that supports tribes that have fished and hunted there for thousands of years and is home to polar bears, caribou and birds vulnerable to development.

A plan passed by the Senate budget committee late last month contains a directive for the Senate energy committee to draw up a provision securing $1 billion in revenue for the budget, which is expected to be voted on late Thursday.

The head of the energy panel, Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican and a longtime proponent of drilling in ANWR, is expected to write a provision opening the reserve. She and Senator Dan Sullivan, also an Alaska Republican, have both supported measures to open up parts of ANWR.

“This Republican budget scam to hand over the wildest place left in America to Big Oil should be removed from the budget and put on ice,” said Senator Edward Markey.


More: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-oil-arctic/senate-democrats-vow-to-fight-drilling-in-alaska-reserve-idUSKBN1CM38C

The Daily Show (in Chicago): Trump & McConnell's BFF Presser

Andrew Sullivan: Trumps Mindless Nihilism (discussed on tonight's Last Word)

The trouble with reactionary politics is that it is fundamentally a feeling, an impulse, a reflex. It’s not a workable program. You can see that in the word itself: it’s a reaction, an emotional response to change. Sure, it can include valuable insights into past mistakes, but it can’t undo them, without massive disruption. As any Burkean conservative will tell you, the present is what you work with. “Home is where you start from,” in T.S. Eliot’s words. The reactionary, like the progressive, never fully grasps this, cannot see the connections that require that present actions are most effective when they build on what is, rather than what was, or, for the progressive, what could be.

I mention this as a way to see more clearly why the right in Britain and America is either unraveling quickly into chaos, or about to inflict probably irreparable damage on a massive scale to their respective countries. Brexit and Trump are the history of Thatcher and Reagan repeating as dangerous farce, a confident, intelligent conservatism reduced to nihilist, mindless reactionism.

Trump is careening ever more manically into a force of irrational fury. I watched his infomercial with Hannity Wednesday night and see a sharp decline even from his previously unhinged and malevolent incoherence. He riffed for a while on how the rise in the stock market since he came to office somehow halves our national debt. He asserted, like an American Erdogan, that no citizen can disrespect our flag, anthem, or country … or else. He claimed that the economy — which a year ago was a “total disaster” — is now a staggering overnight success. He boasted of unemployment numbers he described as fraudulent only months ago. In his interview earlier this week with Forbes, he sounds like someone so stoned he can barely parse a sentence, let alone utter a coherent thought, and whose utter indifference to reality still staggers.

But it’s the impossible reactionary agenda that is the core problem. And the reason we have a president increasingly isolated, ever more deranged, legislatively impotent, diplomatically catastrophic, and constitutionally dangerous, is not just because he is a fucking moron requiring an adult day-care center to avoid catastrophe daily. It’s because he’s a reactionary fantasist, whose policies stir the emotions but are stalled in the headwinds of reality. He can’t abolish Obamacare because huge majorities prefer it to any Republican alternative, so he is sabotaging it. He hasn’t built a huge wall across the entire southern border because it’s a ludicrous project that cannot solve the problem it was designed for. Ditto ripping NAFTA to shreds, which would cause immense disruption to three countries’ economies and ricochet around the world. Or attempting to ally with Russia against the E.U., as if Merkel was worse a threat than Putin. Or removing NBC’s license, which it doesn’t actually have, for political reasons. Or deporting 11 million people. Or pretending that climate change is not happening. Or a massive tax cut on the wealthy, and arguing, as Trump did Wednesday night, that it would create surpluses as Reagan’s did, which, of course, Reagan’s didn’t.


Much more: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/andrew-sullivan-trump-mindless-nihilism.html

Rest time at last!

The Daily Show - Chicago: Syria, But with Different Pizza

Donald Trump is the Harvey Weinstein of Washington - The Resistance with Keith Olbermann GQ

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Equifax (HBO)

Quake rescue dog named Frida becomes national hero in Mexico

The Sept. 19 earthquake in central Mexico killed more than 300 people and destroyed many buildings in the nation’s capital, Mexico City. In the days that followed, rescue crews went out to search for survivors trapped under collapsed buildings.

And one rescuer, in particular, got a lot of attention.

Her name is Frida. She’s 8 years old, and she's a labrador sniffer dog with the Mexican Navy. According to the Navy, she has a "sixth sense" for finding humans, that's unlike any other dog they've ever trained before.

Over the course of her career, she’s rescued 12 people after earthquakes and other disasters in Mexico, Haiti and Ecuador. She’s also found 53 bodies buried under rubble.

Reporter Franc Contreras in Mexico City went to meet her for the China Global Television Network. “I would say, at this stage, she's a rock star but she doesn't let it get to her head,” he says. “She’s just getting used to being in front of the cameras because she's gotten so much attention lately.”


More (including video): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/10/09/quake-rescue-dog-named-frida-becomes-national-hero-mexico/745343001/



Rescue dog Frida looks on while working after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico, Sept. 22.
(Photo: GlobalPost)

Billings truck company tapped to haul national Christmas tree from Montana to Washington, D.C.

Whitewood Transport, a Billings-based trucking company, will haul the 2017 U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree from the Kootenai National Forest in the northwest corner of the state to Washington, D.C., next month.

"It means so much," said Mike Wilson, Whitewood's owner and president. "It's cool for Montana."

The truck, a Kentworth T680 Advantage, will depart from Kootenai with the tree on Nov. 8 and journey cross-country to Washington, D.C., over the course of a month, making stops in communities along the route.

The journey will take the tree across western Montana and the Hi-Line with stops in 10 different cities, including Whitefish, Missoula, Helena, Great Falls and Glasgow. It will continue to make stops in various towns and cities from North Dakota to Kentucky until it arrives at the Capitol the first week in December.


More: http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/billings-truck-company-tapped-to-haul-national-christmas-tree-from/article_5e992cd7-64d6-572f-8065-2721ba8fd2c4.html



Whitewood Transport, a Billings-based trucking company, will haul the 2017 U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree to Washington, D.C., using a donated truck that will feature the phrase "Big Sky. Big Tree. Big Journey."

Stephen Colbert: Guest Conan O'Brien