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"We have a lot of dumb people in this country. But the difference between the stupidities cherished by the Idiocracy set ingesting fish cleaner, and the ones pushed in places like the Atlantic, is that the jackasses among the “expert” class compound their wrongness by being so sure of themselves that they force others to go along. In other words, to combat “ignorance,” the scolders create a new and more virulent species of it: exclusive ignorance, forced ignorance, ignorance with staying power.

The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells people to inject disinfectant. It’s astonishing that they don’t see this."

-- Matt Taibbi

News and Opinion

Five Things That Are Revealed By Democrats’ Rehabilitation Of Bush

George W Bush is in the news again today, and once again it’s not for the only legitimate reason that he should ever be in the news, namely a war crimes tribunal. No, it’s because his voice was used in a cutesy feel-good video about unity during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Let us remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat,” Bush is heard saying. “We are not partisan combatants. We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God.”

And, needless to say, Democrats are all over social media orgasming in their pants about it.

“This video made me ugly cry,” tweeted actress-turned-McResistance pundit Alyssa Milano.

“A REAL president,” tweeted the other Alyssa Milano, Debra Messing.

“In a million years I never thought I’d be crying watching this, thinking how much better we’d all feel if Bush were president today,” tweeted former Democratic congresswoman Katie Hill to thunderous online applause.

The Intercept‘s Mehdi Hasan spent all day on Twitter defending his position that Dubya is superior to Trump, at one point even arguing “You can be a sane warmonger. You can be a warmonger but be an ok human being to your friends and family. You can be a warmonger and be able to handle a domestic public health crisis.”

For years rank-and-file Democrats have been giving the true Butcher of Baghdad a majority approval rating, running with the common narrative that while Bush perhaps made some “mistakes”, Trump is spectacularly worse. Here are five things that are highlighted by that common perspective:

1. It shows how little Democrats care about the lives of human beings overseas.

By the end of his first term Bush had launched two full-scale ground invasions, murdered a million Iraqis, destabilized an entire region in a way that would shortly give rise to ISIS, and ushered in a whole new level of unprecedented US military expansionism and imperialism. Trump has done none of these things. He has inflicted many evils upon our world and, like Obama, has continued and expanded the warmongering of his predecessors. But he has done nothing that rises to the level of depravity of Bush’s wars.

The fact that Democrats see Trump’s evils as not only equal to but far in excess of Bush’s reveals as plain as day that, for all their supposed bleeding heart liberal sensibilities, they simply do not place much value on the lives of foreigners. Sure they might enjoy a little masturbatory melodrama over kids in cages when it shows up on their doorstep, but kids getting ripped to shreds by cluster bombs and being born severely disabled from depleted uranium munitions simply does not register for them, because they don’t have to look at it.

They do not care. Rude tweets and racism are worse than institutionalized mass murder for them, because they have to look at one but not the other.

2. It shows that Trump-era Democrats are Bush-era Republicans.

The problem is that Bush and Cheney’s operatives, speechwriters, policy advisers, propagandistas and top aides are the close friends and colleagues of media liberals and DC Democrats and their beloved pundits, so they have to whitewash Bush’s evil to justify themselves: https://t.co/Z1C3CB7JQn

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 3, 2020

“Dems have no choice but to rehabilitate George Bush because their core narrative is the US was a fundamentally good and decent land before Trump vandalized it,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted in response to Democrats’ fawning over Bush, adding, “How do you join with Bill Kristol, Nicole Wallace, Rick Wilson, David Frum and the CIA without whitewashing Bush’s crimes?”

Indeed, Bush-era neocons have been able to fully ingratiate themselves to and integrate themselves with Democrats in the age of Trump by posing as moral opposition longing for a more civilized time when presidents would politely butcher humans by the hundreds of thousands without using offensive language like “shit hole”. A gentlemanly time for gentlemanly presidents to unfold gentlemanly Orwellian surveillance measures all around the world without posting rude tweets about celebrities they don’t like.

Trump-era Democrats are Bush-era Republicans. That’s how far to the authoritarian right the party has moved in the last few years on important matters like foreign policy. You can see this by the shrieking, hysterical response they had to Tulsi Gabbard calling for what more or less amounted to a simple reversion back to pre-9/11 US foreign policy. It has been necessary for Democrats to gaslight themselves into this position because for three presidential campaigns in a row–Obama 2012, Clinton 2016, and now Biden 2020–they’ve had to find ways of convincing themselves that a politician who has facilitated Bush’s foreign policy agendas would make a good commander-in-chief.

3. It shows how the amnesia-inducing effects of the mass media news churn make it difficult to retain perspective.

Mass media propagandists are able to distort perception even while telling the truth using the news churn memory hole. Even when forced to report on uncomfortable truths like not finding any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or the fact that the occupation of Afghanistan has been justified by an entire generation of lies, the memory of that reporting can be made to fade into the background by frantically reporting on what’s happening right now without referring back to the previous revelations.

Russiagate alone did so much to distort people’s perceptions in mainstream liberal circles. Having the baseless narrative breathlessly promoted year after year after year that the Kremlin had literally seized control of the highest levels of the US government left rank-and-file Democrats who subscribed to it without any sense of scale or proportion, because they were constantly being told that the Most Important Thing Ever was about to happen. How can you hold perspective on a million dead Iraqis when you’re being told day after day, year after year in myriad ways that Russian Hitler was controlling your country but Super Mueller is going to swoop in to the rescue any minute now? It would be very difficult.

4. It shows the glaring difference between fact and narrative.

Most of the mass media reporting on Trump has been factual, it’s just had a ton of narrative spin attached to the facts. It is a fact that Trump frequently says and does dumb, obnoxious and horrible things. It is a fact that many racists think he’s the cat’s pajamas. It is a fact that there was an impeachment and a collusion investigation. But the narrative overlay that has been heaped upon those facts while they’re being reported–the urgency, the alarmism, the hyperbole–leaves viewers with the distinct impression that this US president is awful in a way that is unique and historically unprecedented, and he simply isn’t.

Trump is not worse than Bush, the mass media just yell about him a lot more. If the narratives matched the facts, mass media consumers would be aware that nothing Trump has done is as evil as Bush’s invasion of Iraq alone. In reality Trump didn’t wind up being another Hitler, he wound up being another Obama (not a compliment). And if the narrative spin matched the factual reality, people would understand that.

liberals have the baffling ability to simultaneously believe both that George W. Bush was a good president whom they love and miss dearly AND that Ralph Nader is a piece of shit who's going to burn in hell for supposedly getting George W. Bush elected

— i bless the rains down in castamere (@Chinchillazllla) May 3, 2020

5. It shows that this simply is not working.

Imagine you’re out in the woods with a friend you trust in the dark. You know there’s a horrible monster out there stalking you, and suddenly you hear it in the distance coming crashing towards you. It has picked up your scent and it will be upon you in moments.

You turn to run, but your friend grabs you and won’t let you move. He falls to the ground grabbing your legs screaming “No! No! We must stay here! We mustn’t move an inch!”

Who do you need to fight first? The monster? Or your “friend”?

That’s why I focus so much of my criticism on the Democratic Party instead of the Republicans. Ultimately they’re the party which could actually allow for positive changes to be made to the world, but instead they keep moving further and further into the warmongering totalitarianism they once purported to despise in George W Bush.

Relying on either head of the two-headed one-party system to make meaningful changes simply is not working, and will not ever work. No institution that would so warmly rehabilitate and welcome a bloodthirsty monster like Bush is going to help humanity one iota. In fact, its sole purpose is to do the exact opposite.

North and South Korea exchange gunfire across DMZ at border

North and South Korea exchanged gunfire over the demilitarised zone between the two nations, South Korean military officials have said. The exchange began when North Korean soldiers shot at a South Korean guard post at 7.41 am local time on Sunday. The South Korean military shot back twice, Seoul’s joint chiefs of staff said in a statement.

No casualties or equipment damage were reported on South Korea’s side, and it had not been made public whether there were any casualties in North Korea.

South Korea’s military confirmed it found four bullets lodged in the outer wall of a guard post and that its forces fired 10 warning shots towards North Korea. Messages of warning were broadcast to North Korea which said that it had violated the inter-Korean military agreement of 2018 under which the two countries agreed to halt all hostile activities at the border.

South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said they sent a message to their North Korean counterparts via a hotline to find out more about the situation and to prevent further escalations. So far, North Korea had not offered an explanation.

Speaking to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, a South Korean military official said the shots from North Korea did not seem to have been intentional.

West Bank annexation not contingent on Palestinian state, US officials emphasize

Amid reports intimating that the White House is conditioning its support for Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank on negotiations over a Palestinian state, the administration stressed Friday that it continues to back Israel’s annexation plans, as long as they’re carried out in the framework of the peace plan President Donald Trump presented on January 28.

“Our position has not changed,” a spokesperson for the US Embassy in Jerusalem told The Times of Israel on Friday. “As we have made consistently clear, we are prepared to recognize Israeli actions to extend Israeli sovereignty and the application of Israeli law to areas of the West Bank that the [Trump peace plan] foresees as being part of the State of Israel.”

In exchange for American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the areas the administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” vision earmarks as part of Israel, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to freeze all settlement activity for the next four years in areas the plan envisions for a future Palestinian state, “and negotiate with the Palestinians in good faith on the basis of the Vision,” the spokesperson added. ...

On Thursday, the US news website Axios published an article entitled “West Bank annexations must come in context of Palestinian state, White House tells Israel.”
Some observers understood this to mean that the administration would only agree to recognize Israel’s annexation if Jerusalem agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state.

The story itself does not make that claim. Rather, it quotes US officials saying that any Israeli annexations must come “in the context of an offer to the Palestinians to achieve statehood based upon specific terms, conditions, territorial dimensions and generous economic support.”

Egypt has made journalism a crime with crackdown, says Amnesty International

Journalism in Egypt has effectively become a crime over the past four years, Amnesty International says, as authorities clamp down on media outlets and muzzle dissent.

As the number of coronavirus infections in Egypt continues to rise, the government is strengthening its control over information instead of upholding transparency, the London-based rights group said in a report released on Sunday.

“The Egyptian authorities have made it very clear that anyone who challenges the official narrative will be severely punished,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa director.

Amnesty documented 37 cases of journalists being detained in the government’s escalating crackdown on press freedoms. Many had been charged with “spreading false news” or “misusing social media” under a broad 2015 counterterrorism law, which has expanded the definition of terror to include all kinds of dissent.

Matt Taibbi: FBI set up against Mike Flynn exposed

“Exceptionally Dire”: Secondary Impacts of Covid-19 Could Increase Global Poverty and Hunger

More than 240,000 people worldwide have already died of Covid-19, and before the pandemic finishes, it could kill hundreds of thousands, even millions, more. But the final toll is destined to be far higher than just those who die of Covid-19. Experts warn that deaths from secondary impacts – poverty, hunger, diseases, and violence exacerbated by the pandemic – may dwarf the number of those who die of the coronavirus itself.

A new analysis by researchers from King’s College London and Australian National University, under the aegis of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, for example, warns that the economic contraction caused by Covid-19 could push an additional 500 million people – about eight percent of the earth’s population – into poverty, reversing 30 years of economic improvement. “We were surprised at the sheer scale of the potential poverty tsunami that could follow Covid-19 in developing countries,” said Andy Sumner, one of the study’s authors.

Not surprisingly, such financial fallout has grim knock-on effects. “I want to stress that we are not only facing a global health pandemic but also a global humanitarian catastrophe,” warned David Beasley, the executive director of the United Nations World Food Program. “Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the specter of famine a very real and dangerous possibility.” A new study by the WFP found that lockdowns and the economic recession caused by Covid-19 may exacerbate an already dire worldwide hunger crisis, almost doubling the number of people who could go hungry, pushing a total of 265 million people to the brink of starvation by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization notes that a diversion of resources could have especially devastating effects on the fight against malaria. Under a worst-case scenario, in which all insecticide-treated bed net campaigns are suspended and there is a 75% reduction in access to effective antimalarial medicines, fatalities from the mosquito-borne illness could reach 769,000 – double the number of deaths in 2018 – effectively wiping out 20 years of gains in suppressing malaria mortality. Similarly, a new analysis by researchers at Imperial College London found that in low- and middle-income countries, disruptions to health services could cause deaths from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria to increase by up to 10, 20, and 36 percent respectively over five years. ...

Alexandra Lamarche, senior advocate for West and Central Africa at Refugees International, explained that preventative measures aimed at countering Covid-19 were also impediments to humanitarian aid, leaving poor people without access to food. “We’re going to see significant impacts on malnutrition rates,” she told The Intercept. “And we’re seeing all sorts of secondary impacts. For example, there’s a polio outbreak in Niger because they stopped vaccinating.” Between hunger and disease, poverty and violence, the follow-on effects of Covid-19 threaten to be as wide-ranging as they are lethal. “There are just so many different unexpected consequences,” said Lamarche. “It’s extremely disheartening. And it’s going to be exceptionally dire.”

Honest Government Ad | The Machine

Trump's wealthy friends look to cash in during coronavirus crisis

Fracking billionaire and Trump donor Harold Hamm was among an elite group of oil and gas executives who met with the president in early April to press for federal help, including access to big loans for businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic. It prompted Trump afterwards to promise to “make funds available to these very important companies”.

Major Trump ally Tommy Fisher, who last year landed a $400m Army Corps of Engineers contract to build 31 miles of Trump’s border wall in Arizona, in April received another $7m from the army – despite an active investigation by a Pentagon watchdog into allegations of favoritism after Trump reportedly pushed for Fisher.

Another big Trump donor, Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and the chair of Trump’s campaign in Minnesota, got red-carpet treatment from Trump at a press briefing in late March. Lindell then praised Trump, hailing him as “chosen by God” as the president touted the firm’s efforts to make thousands of face masks.

The president’s kid-glove treatment of the three Trump backers, who have donated well over $1m to help Trump and other Republican candidates try to win this fall, underscore how even during an unprecedented national crisis Trump’s priorities and campaign machine often tilt towards giving donors and political allies favors, access and publicity.

Numerous bosses of hotels, airlines and other sectors have lobbied Trump and cabinet officials during the pandemic. Watchdog groups say Trump’s close ties with top backers and donors from the oil patch and other sectors deserve close scrutiny, as more than $2.6tn in relief funds are doled out.

Krystal and Saagar: Larry Kudlow MELTS DOWN after confronted with past statements on coronavirus

Trump adviser: coronavirus relief aid threat to ‘sanctuary cities’ could happen

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow has not ruled out any element in the next potential coronavirus relief bill, including more money for state and local governments and the small business programme. But he added that the White House was in “kind of a pause period”, while hinting that Donald Trump’s threat to link aid to concessions on immigration policy could yet be attempted.

“Regarding the states,” Kudlow told CNN’s State of the Union, “as you know, the president has from time to time spoken about linking that to sanctuary cities. I don’t think anything’s been decided yet.”

Sanctuary cities, mostly run by Democratic authorities, do not comply with federal attempts to detain and deport undocumented migrants under Trump’s hardline immigration approach. Speaking at the White House this week, the president said: “If you’re going to get aid to the cities and states for the kind of numbers you’re talking about – billions of dollars – I don’t think you should have sanctuary cities.”

It is not clear that the White House would be legally able to mandate such compliance. Observers have also questioned the propriety of tying economic aid to states and cities to policy priorities, particularly in a time of national crisis.

Progressives Boost Call for 'Peoples Agenda' With Eyes Towards Next Relief Package

As the Senate prepares to reconvene Monday, progressive organizations are encouraging people to put pressure on lawmakers to reject any future coronavirus relief measure that doesn't provide "real relief" for working Americans.

"No more waiting for 'next time,'" say the groups. "Next time is now."

The goal is to have lawmakers sign "The Peoples Agenda Pledge." The agenda is grounded in four pillars:

• Keep people on payrolls: Stop mass layoffs, and preserve employment relationships for all businesses, including small businesses. Ensure federal dollars go to workers and small businesses, not enriching CEOs and Wall Street.
• Provide financial relief: Expand aid for the most vulnerable in the COVID-19 epidemic, including direct cash assistance, increased food aid, debt relief, and eviction protections.
• Protect public health: Full health coverage for all COVID-19 care and protections for all frontline workers.
• Defend elections: Enact a vote-by-mail requirement for 2020 federal elections while maintaining access to in-person voting for those who do not have access to mail voting.

Indivisible suggested people turn up the heat on their representatives by contacting them via email and tweet this week.

As the Associated Press reported Saturday, senators will return to the capitol even as the region "remains under stay-at-home orders as a virus hot spot."

As Millions Stripped of Health Coverage Amid Covid-19, House Dems Unveil Bill for Emergency Expansion of Medicare and Medicaid

Just a day after the U.S. Labor Department announced that more than 30 million people have applied for unemployment benefits since mid-March, over 30 House Democrats came together to introduce legislation that would guarantee healthcare coverage to all Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement announcing the Medicare Crisis Program Act, lead sponsors Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) slammed the U.S. healthcare system and pointed out that an estimated 35 million people could end up uninsured due to the public health crisis.

"Our nation's for-profit, employment-based healthcare system did not make sense before Covid-19 struck, and it is proving dangerous and deadly during the crisis," declared Jayapal, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and lead House sponsor another coronavirus-related healthcare bill unveiled with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in April.

"Millions of Americans are losing their job and their health insurance at precisely the moment when we need everyone to be able to access care and treatment for illness," said Jayapal. "The Medicare Crisis Program Act would guarantee healthcare for millions of people struggling with the health and economic realities of the Covid-19 pandemic and protect Americans from outrageous out-of-pocket costs."

Jayapal and Kennedy's new bill would "dramatically expand" Medicare and Medicaid eligibility, cap out-of-pocket costs for Medicare enrollees, and require all public and private health insurers to fully cover care related to Covid-19—including for patients who display symptoms but test negative for the disease. Further, the legislation would bar healthcare providers from billing uninsured patients for Covid-19 care.

"A healthcare system more concerned with profits than patients was never equipped to confront a pandemic like Covid-19," said Kennedy. "Because of our nation's stubborn failure to guarantee universal healthcare, millions of people are now not only out of a job, but out of health care coverage as coronavirus ravages their communities." ...

The bill is backed by a number of high-profile progressives in the House, including all four members of the Squad and Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). More than 60 local and national groups—such as Business for Medicare for All, Indivisible, Our Revolution, People's Action, and Social Security Works—have also endorsed the bill.

Keiser Report | Life imitates Alex Schaefer’s art

Warren & AOC’s Idiotic Plan To Halt Corporate Mergers During Crisis. w/Dylan Ratigan

Warren Buffett dumps US airline stocks, saying 'world has changed' after Covid-19

Warren Buffett, the legendary American investor, has sold his firm’s entire holdings in the four major US airlines, warning that the “world has changed” for the aviation industry because of the coronavirus crisis. In comments that will send shockwaves through financial markets already pulverised by the economic shock of the outbreak, Buffett said the outbreak could have an “extraordinarily wide” range of possible outcomes.

Shares around the world are poised for another torrid week as worldwide cases of the virus creep towards 3.5 million and deaths near 250,000. Despite massive central bank and government intervention, stock markets have been rocked by the continued spread of Covid-19, the plunge in oil prices and Donald Trump’s threats to reignite his trade war with China.

Buffett, 89, who has become known as the Sage of Omaha for his investment skill over the decades, indicated that he believed stock markets had not reached the bottom of the current dip. ...

Berkshire Hathaway had held sizeable positions in the major US airlines, including an 11% stake in Delta Air Lines, 10% of American Airlines, 10% of Southwest Airlines and 9% of United Airlines at the end of 2019, according to its annual report and company filings. But with thousands of planes parked on tarmac across the world and no clear timetable for the resumption of air travel, Buffett said he had sold his stocks as the airline industry’s outlook rapidly changed.

As Workers Get Sick & Die from COVID-19, McConnell Demands Corporate Immunity in New Stimulus Bill

May 1 “general strike” at Amazon: A failed adventure by the Democratic Party and the unions

Throughout the day Friday, Amazon and other logistics workers were confronted with a barrage of headlines and news articles proclaiming a “historic general strike” was underway at Amazon. In reality, hardly any workers participated in this stunt orchestrated by the Democratic Party and corporate media. This was not a real struggle led by the workers themselves; it was a ploy to disrupt and disorient the millions of workers who are yearning for a fight—a real fight—against the corporations, which are using the threat of hunger and destitution to force them to continue working under unsafe conditions where they face the prospect of contracting the deadly virus.

Corporate media headlines referred yesterday to a “mega-strike,” a “historic mass strike” and a “sprawling protest” against Amazon, Target, Whole Foods and Instacart, presenting this planned action as if it were a milestone in the history of the class struggle. It is a curious fact that the same news outlets praising this “general strike” never report on genuine workers’ struggles and are presently demanding workers to go “back to work,” no matter the health risk, to boost corporate profit. At any rate, those journalists hoping to capture photos of mass pickets or groups of strikers returned from the warehouses yesterday empty-handed. Little more than a handful of workers participated in this Potemkin strike at various locations, and in many cases they were outnumbered by television crews. ...

Other groups promoting the “strike” included the Athena Coalition, which includes various Democratic Party and union-aligned groups as Action Center for Race and the Economy, Center for Popular Democracy, Daily Kos, Demand Progress, Demos, Fight for the Future, Green America, Moving Forward Network, United for Respect, and Warehouse Worker Resource Center. It is significant that the seed funding for Athena Coalition took the form of millions of dollars from billionaire Democrat bankroller George Soros's Open Society. ...

There is no shortage of willingness to fight among Amazon, Target, Whole Foods and Instacart workers, who confront a company and social system that is willing to sacrifice their lives to safeguard the profits of the billionaires. But yesterday’s stunt constituted an effort by the Democratic Party, the unions, and their hangers-on to disrupt and gain control of this growing movement of workers against the efforts by the corporations to force them to continue working during the pandemic under unsafe conditions.

Congress Is Demanding Jeff Bezos Explain Amazon’s ‘Possibly Criminally False’ Statements

Congress members from both parties are demanding Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos appear to explain previous sworn statements by a top Amazon lawyer about business practices that may have been “criminally false or perjurious.”

The surprise request from the bipartisan group follows a report in the Wall Street Journal in April saying the company used business intelligence gleaned from third-party sellers operating through Amazon in developing its own competing products, the members said in a letter released Friday morning. ...

“If the reporting in the Wall Street Journal article is accurate, then statements Amazon made to the Committee about the company’s business practices appear to be misleading, and possibly criminally false or perjurious,” said the letter, signed by a diverse group from both parties, including the prominent Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and provocative Republican firebrand Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

“Amazon's associate general counsel, Nate Sutton, denied the company did this during his sworn testimony before the Antitrust Subcommittee last July,” they wrote.

Rashida Tlaib on Biden, Covid, and Congress - Interview Only | Useful Idiots

Maryland governor orders National Guard to protect 500,000 coronavirus tests at a secret location after they were flown in from South Korea amid fears federal government will try to CONFISCATE them

Governor of Maryland Larry Hogan revealed Thursday that the state's National Guard is protecting 500,000 coronavirus tests flown in from South Korea at a secret location over concerns that the federal government will interfere and confiscate them.

Hogan and his Korean-born wife Yumi worked with South Korean authorities over 22 days to secure half a million tests for his state after conflict between governors and the Trump administration about the level of testing being made available.

The tests landed at Baltimore-Washington International Airport on April 18 where Hogan revealed the National Guard and state police had established a 'Fort Knox' like protection over them.

This was the first Korean Air plane to ever land in the airport as the governor said he wanted to avoid the tests having to cross over state lines because of previous reports of the federal government interjecting to confiscate equipment.

Krystal Ball: What the populist left could learn from right-wing protesters

'Murder hornets' in Washington state threaten bees and whip up media swarm

Researchers and citizens in Washington state are on a careful hunt for invasive “murder hornets”, after the insect made its first appearance in the US. The Asian giant hornet is the world’s largest and can kill humans. But it is most dangerous for the European honeybee, which is defenseless in the face of the hornet’s spiky mandibles, long stinger and potent venom.

Washington state verified four reports of Asian giant hornets in two north-western cities in December. The species becomes more active in April, prompting local officials to invite the public to help beekeepers by creating their own hornet traps.

“It’s a shockingly large hornet,” Todd Murray, Washington State University Extension entomologist and invasive species specialist, said in a statement. “It’s a health hazard, and more importantly, a significant predator of honeybees.”

The hornets are about the size of an adult thumb, with a yellow and orange head. They are most destructive in the late summer and early fall. One telltale sign they have visited a hive is the remains of decapitated bees.

“It’s Very Scary”: COVID Surges in Meat Plants as Activists Demand Worker Safety & Meatless Mondays

JD Scholten: Crisis shows how monopolies are killing meat industry, farmers

Big Oil Fears Keystone XL Ruling Means End of Easy Pipeline Permits

On April 15, Judge Brian Morris nullified water-crossing permits in Montana that were granted for the Keystone XL, a major setback for the long-embattled tar sands oil pipeline. The ruling came just days after Keystone XL owner TC Energy, formerly known as TransCanada, obtained billions of dollars in subsidies from the Alberta government as global oil prices plummeted. The oil and gas industry has taken notice. Seemingly just a ruling on Keystone XL - the subject of opposition by the climate movement for the past decade - the ruling could have far broader implications for the future of building water-crossing pipelines and utility lines.

In his decision, Judge Morris cited a potential violation of the Endangered Species Act when he ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do a deeper analysis of potential impacts to protected species. Morris required the Corps to demonstrate whether or not it could construct the pipeline without harming endangered species, such as the Pallid Sturgeon or the American burying beetle. Instead, the Army Corps “failed to consider relevant expert analysis and failed to articulate a rational connection between the facts it found and the choice it made,” Morris ruled, when the Corps gave Keystone XL the initial green light.

The original July 2019 complaint in that case — filed by Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Center for Biological Diversity — also argued that the Army Corps had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in using an obscure regulatory lever to fast-track the review process. Known as Nationwide Permit 12, the permit only requires a short environmental analysis compared to the more robust environmental impact statement required under NEPA for other major infrastructure projects. But Morris also wrote that the decision applied not just to Keystone XL, but to all major federal projects aiming to utilize Nationwide Permit 12, calling for it to be “vacated pending completion of the consultation process and compliance with all environmental statutes and regulations.”

Just two days after this decision, Army Corps regulatory program Chief Jennifer Moyer wrote in an email obtained by the Associated Press that the agency should suspend the program indefinitely “out of an abundance of caution” until the issue is resolved legally.

The Trump administration has already requested a procedural halt on implementing Morris’ decision until its potential appeal weaves its way through the legal system.

'Milestone Moment' as JPMorgan Chase Announces Former Exxon CEO to No Longer Be Lead Director of Bank's Board

Author and climate activist Bill McKibben welcomed Friday evening what he called "a milestone moment in the history of climate action" after JPMorgan Chase announced it was ousting former Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond from his longtime leadership position on the bank's board of directors.

"A truly huge win today," McKibben said in an earlier tweet. "Power is starting to shift."

The change was revealed in new SEC filing documents in which JPMorgan touts its "focus on refreshment" that includes having a new lead independent director by the end of this summer.

Raymond, who's earned the monikers "the Darth Vader of global warming wars" and "America's #1 climate denier," was a target of the Stop the Money Pipeline climate coalition, which urged the bank's biggest shareholders to vote Raymond off the board entirely when they meet later this month.

Their demand was buoyed by New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer.

"On Earth Day last week, we launched a campaign urging JPMorgan Chase & Co shareholders to vote against the re-election of Lee Raymond to the board, based on his role as lead 'independent' director, long tenure on the board, and ties to fossil fuels," Stringer said in a statement Friday.

Raymond's removal as independent leader of the board marks "a tremendous victory for shareholders and for the planet," Stringer said, adding that it stands to "ensure improved oversight of the board and the company's long-term strategy when it comes to transitioning to a low carbon economy."

"But our work does not stop here," he continued. "JPMorgan has been the largest global lender and underwriter to the fossil fuel sector, providing $269 billion in financing to fossil fuel expansion from 2016 to 2019. The company needs to move away from financing the dirty fossil fuels of the past and toward the big, strategic clean energy investments of the future. There must be no place for a climate change denier and former Exxon CEO on JPMorgan's board.”

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

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A Little Night Music

Clarence 'Frogman' Henry - Keep Your Hands Off Her

Clarence "Frogman" Henry - This Time

Clarence Frogman Henry - It Won't Be Long

Clarence Frogman Henry - Little green frog

Clarence Frogman Henry - Ain't Got No Home

Clarence Frogman Henry - Troubles, Troubles

Clarence Frogman Henry - Lonely Street

Clarence Frogman Henry - Hummin' a Heartache

Clarence 'Frogman' Henry - Come on and Dance

Madeline Kahn - Ain't Got No Home