January 18, 2017

U.S. scientists officially declare 2016 the hottest year on record. That makes three in a row.

Source: The Washington Post

By Chris Mooney January 18 at 10:30 AM



In a powerful testament to the warming of the planet, two leading U.S. science agencies Wednesday jointly declared 2016 the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set just last year which, itself, had topped a record set in 2014.

Average surface temperatures in 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 2015, and featured eight successive months (January through August) that were individually the warmest since the agencys record began in 1880.

The average temperature across the worlds land and ocean surfaces was 58.69 Fahrenheit, or 1.69 degrees above the 20th century average of 57 degrees, NOAA declared. The agency also noted that the record for the global temperature has now successively been broken five times since the year 2000. The years 2005 and 2010 were also record warm years, according to the agencys dataset.

NASA concurred with NOAA, also declaring 2016 the warmest year on record in its own dataset that tracks the temperatures at the surface of the planets land and oceans, and expressing greater than 95 percent certainty in that conclusion. The agency noted that just since the year 2001 the planet has seen 16 of the 17 warmest years on record.


Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/18/u-s-scientists-officially-declare-2016-the-hottest-year-on-record-that-makes-three-in-a-row/?utm_term=.e361336f8267&wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-world%252Bnation

January 18, 2017

Federal Ethics Chief Wants Meeting With GOP Oversight Chair To Be Public

Source: Talking Points Memo


By MATT SHUHAM Published JANUARY 18, 2017, 10:27 AM EDT

The director of the Office of Government Ethics has requested that a private interview with House Oversight Committee leadership and staff be held in public, given “the significant public interest” in government ethics since Election Day.

In a letter dated Monday, Shaub responded to House Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz’s (R-UT) request for him to meet with committee leadership and staff in response to the office's public statements, including a series of bizarre tweets Shaub’s office had sent urging President-elect Donald Trump to divest from his business interests.

A day before Chaffetz sent Shaub the interview request, the OGE chief delivered a speech at the Brookings Institution that was harshly critical of Trump’s plan to separate himself from his businesses, calling it “wholly inadequate.” Shaub noted in his letter that over the weekend Chaffetz’s office had “modified your original request and proposed a private meeting with you and the Ranking Member and your respective staffs.”

“Since the election, there has been significant public interest in OGE and government ethics issues,” Shaub wrote to Chaffetz. “Our office has received an unprecedented volume of telephone calls, emails, and letters from members of the public related to our executive branch ethics program. As these communications make clear, the public wants to understand conflicts of interest in government and the role that OGE plays in preventing conflicts from hindering effective governance. Holding our meeting in public is in accordance with OGE’s educational function and will further ensure transparency in how we approach ethical governance.”

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/walter-shaub-wants-chaffetz-meeting-to-be-public

January 18, 2017

6 state AGs urge rejection of Sessions for attorney general

Source: Associated Press


NEW YORK (AP) — Attorneys generals from six states, including New York’s Eric Schneiderman, have sent a letter urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general.

In the letter dated Jan. 17, the prosecutors said they had “grave concern” that Session would “diligently and fairly enforce all laws protective of civil rights, public safety, health and welfare.”

The letter said Sessions made bigoted statements in the past, rejected sensible, criminal justice policy reforms, and badly managed his office during his tenure as Alabama Attorney General. Attorneys General Ellen Rosenblum of Oregon, Brian Frosh of Maryland, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Doug Chin of Hawaii and Karl Racine of the District of Columbia also signed the letter.

Sessions is expected to win confirmation in the GOP-led Senate.

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Read more: http://www.salon.com/2017/01/18/6-state-ags-urge-rejection-of-sessions-for-attorney-general/

January 18, 2017

Michael Eric Dyson Compares Police to ISIS: Black People Were Terrorized 'Long Before 9/11'

Georgetown professor and frequent political commentator Michael Eric Dyson argued on CNN’s New Day Wednesday that violence from white people and “viscous police” was a far greater problem in America than Islamic terrorism.

Dyson argued that the election of Donald Trump was the result of a racist backlash to Barack Obama, leading to some pushback from host Chris Cuomo. “A lot of people voted out there because they think we’ve been weak on ISIS. That’s color neutral,” Cuomo noted, also listing racially neutral problems with Obamacare and the economy.

“Color neutral and ISIS?” Dyson repeated. “Many African-American people say we were introduced to terror long before 9/11: the vicious police forces of America that victimized us, and the way white supremacy operated.”

Cuomo also pushed back at that, calling it a “false equivalency” to compare “having Islamic extremists wanting to eradicate the American way of life, and police vs. citizens.”

more
http://www.mediaite.com/online/michael-eric-dyson-compares-police-to-isis-black-people-were-terrorized-long-before-911/

January 18, 2017

Protester Hospitalized After Trying to Light Himself on Fire Outside Trump's D.C. Hotel

Source: Mediaite

by Ken Meyer | 9:31 am, January 18th, 2017

A California man has been hospitalized with burn injuries after an attempt to set himself ablaze in protest of Donald Trump‘s incoming presidency.

The D.C. fire department and emergency services were outside of Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, after a man started a fire across the street. The man, who remains unnamed at this time, told reporters that he planned on committing self-immolation in order to protest Trump.

“We have a dictator that has been elected,” the man said to WRC-TV. When asked to explain himself, the man said he did it in order to “protest the fact that we’ve elected somebody completely incapable of respecting the constitution of the United States.”

Trump’s inauguration on Friday is likely to be protested by his critics, and dozens of Congressional Democrats have said that they will not attend the ceremony.

Read more: http://www.mediaite.com/online/protester-hospitalized-after-trying-to-light-himself-on-fire-outside-trumps-d-c-hotel/

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Video @ link, above

January 18, 2017

State Department: John Kerry Will Not Attend Friday's Inauguration

Source: Mediaite

by J.D. Durkin | 8:11 am, January 18th, 2017

According to a brief statement released by the State Department, the Secretary of State John Kerry will not be attending Friday’s Swearing-In ceremony of Donald J. Trump.

Mark Knoller ✔
@markknoller

.@JohnKerry will not attend the Inauguration, according to a @StateDept official. No reason given in brief statement.

7:39 AM - 18 Jan 2017
95 Retweets 138 likes

Although no reason was given for Kerry’s decision, the announcement comes after scores of Democrats in the House of Representatives also indicated that they would not be attending the Inauguration. Kerry, the former Democratic nominee for President, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour this week that is is “inappropriate” for the President-elect to criticize our NATO partners around the world, even defending German Chancellor Angela Merkel from Trump’s rebuke.

This story is developing and we will update as more becomes known.

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Read more: http://www.mediaite.com/online/state-department-john-kerry-will-not-attend-fridays-inauguration/

January 18, 2017

Trump offers odd denial of pee-pee-gate: 'I was never even in that room for that period of time'

SARAH K. BURRIS
18 JAN 2017 AT 08:41 ET

Donald Trump went into further detail about the unverified report that he hired prostitutes in Russia to urinate on a bed President Barack Obama once slept in.

“It’s fake news. It’s all fake news,” an animated Trump told Fox News’s Ainsley Earhardt in an interview. “You know, I can say something about George Washington, I can say something about Abraham Lincoln, I can say something about you. I can just — fake news and [the CIA] shouldn’t have been a part of it.”

Trump told Earhardt that he accepts CIA Director John Brennan’s denial that he had anything to do with the leak of the unverified report of Trump’s relationships in Russia.

“It’s made up. Never existed. Never happened,” Trump continued, speaking specifically about the unverified report regarding the prostitutes. “And the reason I say that so strongly because nothing is ever going to show up. There’s never going to be a tape that shows up. There’s never going to be anything that shows up. Now, I would be very embarrassed if a tape actually showed up, saying something like that. It would be double embarrassed because I’m saying there is no tape. There is no event. I was never even in that room for that period of time.”

more
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/trump-offers-odd-denial-of-pee-pee-gate-i-was-never-even-in-that-room-for-that-period-of-time/

January 18, 2017

More than 1,600 factory workers are being fired after Trump said he'd save their jobs ...

More than 1,600 factory workers are being fired after Trump said he’d save their jobs — here’s what they have to say

ARUN GUPTA
18 JAN 2017 AT 05:59 ET

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana—Dragging on a cigarette as he sits in the hall of United Steelworkers Local 1999, Robert James says, “Trump stood on stage and lied about 1,100 jobs being saved at Carrier in Indianapolis.”

James, 57, is the local vice president and a forklift driver who’s worked for 18 years at the Indiana-based factory that manufactures furnaces for homes. In February 2016 Carrier told more than 2,000 workers at two factories in the Hoosier State they were going to be fired and production would shift to Monterrey, Mexico. After a video of the workers being fired went viral, Trump made Carrier a poster-child of offshoring during the presidential campaign. Following his victory, Trump turned the screws on Carrier to keep jobs in the United States.

That enabled Trump to sweep into Indianapolis on December 1 as a job-saving hero. He announced before a packed house of employees and news media that more than 1,100 jobs would stay in the Carrier plant.

But the numbers Trump announced don’t add up. When James and other union leaders met with the company right before Trump went on stage, they were told 730 union jobs would be saved at the Indianapolis plant―nearly 400 less than Trump announced. Trump was apparently including 350 engineering and administrative employees, but they were never leaving. That meant 550 workers would lose their jobs in Indianapolis as well as 738 workers at Huntington, which would shut down entirely.

more
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/more-than-1600-factory-workers-are-being-fired-after-trump-said-hed-save-their-jobs-heres-what-they-have-to-say/

January 18, 2017

Trump Says He'll Show Off The US Military In Parades

Source: Talking Points Memo

By CAITLIN MACNEAL Published JANUARY 18, 2017, 9:10 AM EDT

Donald Trump plans on displaying the United States military's strength when he becomes president by having troops march in parades.

“Being a great president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is being a great cheerleader for the country,” Trump told the Washington Post in an interview published Wednesday morning. “And we’re going to show the people as we build up our military, we’re going to display our military."

"That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military," he continued.

Trump made the comments while talking about his campaign and its slogan, "Make America Great Again." He revealed an option for a slogan for his 2020 re-election campaign to the Washington Post.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-military-parades

January 18, 2017

DeVos Acknowledges Trump Described Sexual Assault In Lewd 2005 Tape

Source: Talking Points Memo

By CAITLIN MACNEAL Published JANUARY 18, 2017, 7:05 AM EDT

Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Education, acknowledged during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday night that the President-elect described sexual assault in the 2005 Access Hollywood tape.

In the tape, which surfaced in October, Trump bragged about grabbing women by the genitals and kissing them without permission.

During the confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) described Trump's comments on the tape and asked DeVos if she would consider kissing and touching girls without consent in a school to be sexual assault.

"Yes," DeVos replied.

Murray then asked if DeVos could commit not to rein in the Office of Civil Rights and its efforts to protect students from campus sexual assault. DeVos replied that she would look closely at the issue.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/devos-access-hollywood-tape