Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features jazz tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet. Enjoy!

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history."

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

News and Opinion

Guess what? When the choice gets narrowed down to the blood-soaked war monger, Tweedledee, or the racist clown-man, Tweedledummer - either way Social Security and Medicare are going down the toilet.

Donald Trump’s Pledge to Defend Spending for Old and Poor Belied by Staff Picks

For more than a year, Trump has regularly assailed his rival candidates for “attacking Social Security… attacking Medicare and Medicaid.” He boasted that he was the one “saying I’m not gonna do that,” instead saying that he’d focus on economic growth so that we’d get “so rich you don’t have to do that.” ...

But that [campaign promise] now appears to be crumbling.

Trump policy adviser and co-chairman Sam Clovis said last week that the real estate mogul would look at changes to all federal programs, “including entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare,” as part of a deficit reduction effort.

Clovis made the comments at the 2016 Fiscal Summit of the Pete Peterson Foundation, an organization whose founder has spent almost half a billion dollars to hype the U.S. debt and persuade people that the Medicare and Social Security programs are unsustainable. Trump also met privately last week with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., an outspoken Medicare privatization advocate.

Clovis previously ran for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat in 2014. During his unsuccessful bid for the GOP nomination, Clovis made clear that he wanted to privatize the Social Security and Medicare programs.

The Snapchat Version of American Victory

One of the most popular apps these days is Snapchat. It allows the sender to set a timer for any photo dispatched via the app, so that a few seconds after the recipient opens the message, the photo is automatically deleted. The evidence of what you did at that party last night is seen and then disappears. POOF!

I hope you'll forgive me if I suggest that the Iraq-Syria War against the Islamic State (ISIS) is being conveyed to us via Snapchat. Important things happen, they appear in front of us, and then... POOF!... they're gone. No one seems to remember them. Who cares that they’ve happened at all, when there's a new snap already arriving for your attention? As with most of what flows through the real Snapchat, what’s of some interest at first makes no difference in the long run. ...

We've been winning in Iraq for some time now -- a quarter-century of successes, from 1991's triumphant Operation Desert Storm to 2003's soaring Mission Accomplished moment to just about right now in the upbeat third iteration of America’s Iraq wars. But in each case, in a Snapchat version of victory, success has never seemed to catch on.

At the end of April, for instance, Army Colonel Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesperson, hailed the way American air power had set fire to $500 million of ISIS’s money, actual cash that its militants had apparently forgotten to disperse or hide in some reasonable place. He was similarly positive about other recent gains, including the taking of the Iraqi city of Hit, which, he swore, was “a linchpin for ISIL.” In this, he echoed the language used when ISIS-occupied Ramadi (and Baiji and Sinjar and...) fell, language undoubtedly no less useful when the next town is liberated. In the same fashion, USA Today quoted an anonymous U.S. official as saying that American actions had cut ISIS's oil revenues by an estimated 50%, forcing them to ration fuel in some areas, while cutting pay to its fighters and support staff.

Only a month ago, National Security Adviser Susan Rice let us know that, “day by day, mile by mile, strike by strike, we are making substantial progress. Every few days, we’re taking out another key ISIL leader, hampering ISIL’s ability to plan attacks or launch new offensives.” She even cited a poll indicating that nearly 80% of young Muslims across the Middle East are strongly opposed to that group and its caliphate. ...

Yet despite success after American success, ISIS evidently isn't broke, or running out of fighters, or too desperate to stay in the fray, and despite all the upbeat news there are few signs of hope in the Iraqi body politic or its military.

The new story is again a very old story: when you have to repeatedly explain how much you're winning, you’re likely not winning much of anything at all.

Federal Court Blocks 'Truth About Torture' in Ruling on Senate Report

A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a lawsuit that called for the full release of the U.S. Senate's report on the CIA's post-September 11 abuse and torture of detainees.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the report isn't subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests—ruling against the ACLU, which filed the lawsuit seeking publication of the 6,000-page document.

"This decision has the disappointing result of keeping the full truth about the CIA torture program from the American public, and we're considering our options for appeal," said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security project.

Congressional documents are exempt from FOIA rules, but the ACLU argued that the Senate Intelligence Committee gave up control over the report when it handed it over to the White House and other agencies.

US Army Chaplain Resigns in Protest Over Drones, 'Policy of Unaccountable Killing'

An Army chaplain has resigned in protest over the United States "policy of unaccountable killing" through drone warfare and the nation's continued investment into nuclear weapons, which "threaten the existence of humankind and the earth."

In his letter sent April 12, 2016 to President Barack Obama, Rev. John Antal, a Unitarian Universalist Church minister in Rock Tavern, New York, wrote, "The Executive Branch continues to claim the right to kill anyone, anywhere on earth, at any tie, for secret reasons, based on secret evidence, in a secret process, undertaken by unidentified officials."

Antal served as a chaplain from September 2012 to February 2013 at the Kandahar Airbase in southern Afghanistan. "While deployed," he wrote in Feb. 2015 a the Times Herald-Record, "I concluded our drone strikes disproportionately kill innocent people."

Foreign ministers hold Vienna talks as Isis threat to Libya grows

Leading foreign ministers from Europe and the Middle East are to meet in Vienna on Monday under the joint chairmanship of the US and Italy to discuss how to bolster support for the UN-backed Libyan government in the face of deepening splits in the country over political legitimacy, oil resources and Islamic State.

Elaborate plans to send thousands of Italian-led troops to the area are either on hold, or have been abandoned. But the west is still desperate to find ways to strengthen the political authority of the Tripoli-based government since it will help create a single military Libyan force able both to defeat Isis and tighten the control of refugees leaving the lawless coastland for Italy.

Special forces from the US, UK, France and Italy are operating in various parts of Libya, sometimes backing different military forces and hindering efforts to reunite Libyan politics behind the UN government of Fayez al-Sarraj.

Sarraj has been trying to broaden his authority in Tripoli since he and his political allies arrived in late March, taking over key institutions such as the central bank and the National Oil Corporation, but he still faces a rival administration, and military power, in the east. Disputes between the factions are such that bankers on one side are depriving the other access to the code to a bank vault containing badly needed cash to pay staff. Different groups are also trying to export oil.

Officials say that at the Vienna meeting on Monday, which will be held under the joint chairmanship of the US and Italy, the fledgling Tripoli administration is likely to submit a list of requests for western partners to assist its forces with arms, training and intelligence. The meeting will be chaired by the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and the Italian foreign minister, Paolo Gentiloni.

Britain to Send More Troops to Libya This Week

New reports out of Britain suggest the nation is preparing to send more ground troops into Libya this week, with estimations that the latest group will be about 50 troops. Britain has been slowly adding troops to Libya in recent months, despite publicly denying any plans for a ground war in the country.

All-told, Britain is planning to deploy around 1,000 ground troops into Libya to take part in a Libya-led invasion. Officials say this will be a “training” force, though they have also conceded that only a fraction would be trainers.

Senior al-Qaeda Figures Sent to Syria to Establish ‘Emirate’

There’s already one Islamist faction, ISIS, which has carved out a de facto independent state in Syria, but they may soon be joined by another, as al-Qaeda in reportedly sending their top leadership to northern Syria to help with the establishment of an “emirate” under the control of their Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra.

The reports come just a week after a speech by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was released, in which he urged Nusra to unify Islamist factions, and expressed support for their establishment of an emirate. It seems that he was not leaving them to their own devices, however, and has dispatched seasoned leaders from the parent organization to help.

ISIS Bombers Destroy Iraqi Gas Plant

ISIS forces have attacked and destroyed a gas plant in the Iraqi city of Taji, just north of Baghdad. The plant saw massive damage, and two power plants which received their fuel from the site have had to be closed indefinitely. ...

In addition to a huge fireball visible in the surrounding area after the attack, ISIS appears to have focused on doing damage to the economically important site, which both provides fuel for power plants and cooking gas for a large chunk of Baghdad.

Democrats divided over women registering for the draft

The fight over women registering for the military draft is splitting Democrats.

Some see the issue as one of basic gender equality, arguing women should face the same requirements as men. Others argue that no one should be required to register for the draft, and that including women would be a step in the wrong direction.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a man, a woman or a houseplant—we need to abolish the Selective Service,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said in a statement to The Hill. “Allowing women to be included in the Selective Service would just double the number of people punished unnecessarily by the government over inclusion in a mean-spirited and outdated practice.” ...

But Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the No. 2 Democrat in the House, said this week that registering women is a matter of equality.

"Women ought to be treated equally,” he told reporters. “If you're going to have Selective Service registration continue, and you're going to have women available to serve in the armed forces in either front-line capacity or support capacity — or both, which I think is now the case legally — then I think it makes sense to have eligible individuals, male or female, register as long as you have registration.”

Hoyer also argued against abolishing the Selective Service altogether. ...

Both the House and Senate versions of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would require women to register for the draft. But three amendments have been put forward in the House to strike that language. The bill is expected to come to the floor next week.

Apparently democracy looks a lot like terrorism to Erdogan.

Turkish Police Blocked Entry to a Party Meeting That Threatened Erdogan's Presidential Plans

Turkish police sealed off a hotel in Ankara on Sunday to prevent dissident members of an opposition party from holding a snap meeting, which, if it went ahead, could potentially thwart President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's plans to expand his power and authority.

Dissidents from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) planned to gather at the Büyük Anadolu Hotel — in defiance of a court order — to hold a meeting and discuss ousting their party chairman, Devlet Bahçeli. Bahçeli has led MHP for the last two decades. At the snap congress, dissidents were hoping to change party rules which would allow for his removal.

Erdogan is seeking a "completely new constitution" for Turkey, which would effectively give him considerably more authority by centralizing power in the office of the president rather than in parliament.

To call a referendum and make those changes, he needs the blessing of Bahçeli's party. ...

Bahçeli and his loyalists are willing to throw their support behind Erdogan. However, dissident leaders within MHP — including former interior minister Meral Aksener — have vowed to oppose Erdogan presidential plan and defend Turkey's parliamentary system. ...

"You see what has been happening," Erdogan said in a speech broadcast live on Turkish television earlier this month. "They are trying to terrorize the parliament. You won't see such incidents when the governmental system shifts to a presidential system."

"Turkey is a country driven by fear"

China marks 50 years since Cultural Revolution with silence

Beijing has marked the 50th anniversary of one of the most devastating and defining events of 20th century China with silence.

Chairman Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – a decade-long period of political and social turmoil – began exactly 50 years ago on Monday.

On 16 May 1966 a Communist party document fired the opening salvo of the catastrophic mobilisation warning that counter-revolutionary schemers were conspiring to replace the party with a “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”.

What followed was an unprecedented period of upheaval, bloodshed and economic stagnation that only ended with Mao’s death, in September 1976. However, on Monday newspapers in mainland China were bereft of any coverage of the Cultural Revolution’s anniversary.

The party-run Global Times tabloid completely ignored the event leading instead with a story about Beijing’s anger over a Pentagon report detailing its land reclamation activities in the South China Sea.

China Is Pissed About the Pentagon's New Report on Its Military Activity

China is not happy about a new Pentagon report, and has condemned it as a deliberate distortion that exaggerates Chinese military activity and their ramped up activities in the hotly contested South China Sea.

In its annual report to Congress on Chinese military activity, released Friday, the US Department of Defense said that China's "investments in military and weaponry operations continue on a path to increase its power projection."

Abraham M. Denmark, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia, said in a Pentagon statement that "China continues to focus on preparing for potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait," referring to a strait in the highly contentious South China Sea which separates the island of Taiwan from the Asian mainland. "Additional missions such as contingencies in the East and South China seas and on the Korean Peninsula are increasingly important to the [People's Liberation Army]." ...

China's Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun expressed "strong dissatisfaction" and "firm opposition" to the Pentagon report, saying it had "severely damaged" mutual trust. ... Despite its calls for freedom of navigation and restraint for peace, the US has pushed forward militarization of the South China Sea with an "intention to exert hegemony," Yang added.

Leaks Show Senate Aide Threatened Colombia Over Cheap Cancer Drug

Leaked diplomatic letters sent from Colombia’s Embassy in Washington describe how a staffer with the Senate Finance Committee, which is led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, warned of repercussions if Colombia moves forward on approving the cheaper, generic form of a cancer drug. ...

On April 26, Colombian Minister of Health Alejandro Gaviria announced plans to take the first step in a multi-step process that could eventually result in allowing generic production of the drug. ... Currently, the cost of an annual supply is over $15,000, or about two times the average Colombian’s income. ... A generic version of the drug that recently began production in India is expected to cost 30 percent less than the brand-name version.

Andrés Flórez, deputy chief of mission at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, D.C., wrote letters on April 27 and April 28 to Maria Angela Holguin of Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, detailing concerns he had about possible congressional retaliation for such a move. ... In the second letter, after a meeting with Senate Finance Committee International Trade Counsel Everett Eissenstat, Flórez wrote that Eissenstat said that authorizing the generic version would “violate the intellectual property rights” of Novartis. Eissenstat also said that if “the Ministry of Health did not correct this situation, the pharmaceutical industry in the United States and related interest groups could become very vocal and interfere with other interests that Colombia could have in the United States,” according to the letter. ...

Hatch has close ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical and health product manufacturers form the second-largest pool of donors to his campaigns. The industry’s main trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, spent $750,000 funding an outside nonprofit that backed Hatch’s re-election in 2012. The lobbying group also employed Scott Hatch, one of the senator’s sons, as a lobbyist, while donating to his family charity, the Utah Families Foundation.

CIA spy tip-off led to arrest of Mandela: report

Donald Rickard, a former US vice-consul in Durban and CIA operative, told British film director John Irvin that he had been involved in Mandela's arrest in 1962 which was seen as necessary because the Americans believed he was "completely under the control of the Soviet Union", the report in The Sunday Times newspaper said. ...

Zizi Kodwa, national spokesman of Mandela's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, called the revelation "a serious indictment".

"We always knew there was always collaboration between some Western countries and the apartheid regime," he told AFP.

He claimed that though the incident happened decades ago, the CIA was still interfering in South African politics.

"We have recently observed that there are efforts to undermine the democratically elected ANC government," he alleged. "They never stopped operating here."

Suspended to face impeachment trial, Rousseff urges Brazilians to mobilize against "coup"

Venezuela accuses US of plotting coup as Washington warns of 'imminent collapse'

The relationship between the US and Venezuela has for many years been nothing less than toxic.

In 2002, then President Hugo Chavez was briefly ousted in a coup by opponents supported by the US. Washington continued to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to his critics, while Mr Chavez took to the podium of the UN to accuse George W Bush of being the devil.

Now, President President Nicolas Maduro has extended a state of emergency in the country for another 60 days and accused Washington of plotting against him, as US intelligence has claimed the country is heading for meltdown.

"Sees" or promotes?: U.S. sees rising risk of coup in Venezuela https://t.co/LVgCavUtUf via WSJ

— Eva Golinger (@evagolinger) May 14, 2016

On Friday night, Mr Maduro delivered a televised national address in which he directly accused the US of seeing to foment his ouster.

“Washington is activating measures at the request of Venezuela’s fascist right, who are emboldened by the coup in Brazil,” he said.

“We have already seen the image of the oligarchy signing and removing power to the people.”

Hidden Microphones Exposed As Part of Government Surveillance Program In The Bay Area

Hidden microphones that are part of a clandestine government surveillance program that has been operating around the Bay Area has been exposed. ...

FBI agents hid microphones inside light fixtures and at a bus stop outside the Oakland Courthouse without a warrant to record conversations, between March 2010 and January 2011.

Federal authorities are trying to prove real estate investors in San Mateo and Alameda counties are guilty of bid rigging and fraud and used these recordings as evidence.

The lawyer for one of the accused real estate investors who will ask the judge to throw out the recordings, told KPIX 5 News that, “Speaking in a public place does not mean that the individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy…private communication in a public place qualifies as a protected ‘oral communication’… and therefore may not be intercepted without judicial authorization.”

The Intercept fails to mention in this piece that Walter Jones, despite being a Republican is also fairly reliably anti war and has been, along with banksters, targeted by the neocons.

Bank Lobby Takes Aim at Last Remaining House Republican Who Backed Dodd-Frank

The bank lobby is making another attempt to unseat Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., the maverick House Republican who consistently supported greater oversight of the finance industry, and is the last remaining member of the GOP caucus to have voted in favor of the Dodd-Frank reform law.

The American Bankers Association, a lobby group for the banking industry, this week used a subsidiary called the Fund for Economic Growth to pour $50,000 into campaign advertisements in support of Taylor Griffin, a candidate seeking to unseat Jones in the Republican primary on June 7.

This is the second attempt by Griffin. In 2014, Griffin left a position with Hamilton Place Strategies, a consultancy that helps Wall Street firms with political strategy, to challenge Jones. Griffin’s bid was backed by a Super PAC funded by hedge-fund manager Paul Singer, as well as funds from many major corporate political action committees, particularly from big banks such as Wells Fargo and J.P. Morgan Chase. ...

Campaign finance records show that banks are again fueling his primary challenge this year. PACs controlled by J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Wells Fargo have contributed to Griffin’s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures.

"Up all Night" movement is "floundering"

Verizon Calls in SWAT Team to Keep Exploited Overseas Workers Under Wraps

Representatives from the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the union whose members are currently engaged in a weeks-long strike against Verizon for its "corporate greed," say they discovered this week that the communications behemoth has publicly lied about the extent of its offshoring of jobs.

The union representatives, including CWA staff, a representative of UNI (global labor federation) and representatives of KMU (a Filipino union), traveled to the Philippines for four days this week to investigate a report from local Verizon employees who sent word that the corporation was lying to its American workers about the size of its offshore operations in the country.

"Verizon is offshoring work far beyond what has previously been reported and what the company publicly has claimed. Verizon is offshoring customer service calls to numerous call centers in the Philippines, where workers are paid just $1.78 an hour and forced to work overtime without compensation," wrote the CWA in a statement. ...

Verizon officials at the company's headquarters in the Philippines refused to meet with the CWA when representatives attempted to confront them on Wednesday, the union said. After the representatives left Verizon headquarters, they were pulled over by armed security guards and then surrounded and threatened by a SWAT team armed with semi-automatic weapons.

'Misconduct, Dishonesty, and Bad Faith': Joe Arpaio Found in Contempt

Notorious Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, found guilty in 2013 of racial profiling and violating Latinos' constitutional rights, has now been found in contempt of court for failing to curtail those practices and in fact flouting the judge's orders. 

The ruling on Friday from U.S. District Judge Murray Snow "marked one of the biggest legal defeats" in Arpaio's career, wrote the Associated Press, and was expected to lead to greater court oversight of his office. ...

Three of Arpaio's top aides were also found in contempt. 

"In short, the court finds that the defendants have engaged in multiple acts of misconduct, dishonesty, and bad faith with respect to the plaintiff class and the protection of its rights," Snow wrote in a 162-page finding of fact in the case. ...

Furthermore, Snow ripped into Arpaio's motives for his flagrant violations: "Sheriff Arpaio knowingly ignored the Court’s order because he believed that his popularity resulted, at least in part, from his enforcement of immigration laws.... He also believed that it resulted in generous donations to his campaign."

How the High Cost of Justice Pushes the Poor into Prison

In the American justice system, there’s often an assumption that if you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you. But thousands of Americans arriving in court each year over family disputes, domestic violence, eviction, foreclosure, denied wages, discrimination on the job, and an array of other civil issues have no right to counsel. If they can’t afford a lawyer, they’re on their own to face a system that is often confusing and riddled with fees. For poorer citizens, the cost of seeking justice often becomes so prohibitive they just give up.

Even as criminal justice reform and the reduction of mass incarceration gain support across party lines, civil rights advocates warn that the inaccessibility of the civil justice system tends to channel people into the criminal system. Those with no access to the courts are more likely to take justice in their own hands, lose homes, or face incarceration over failure to pay child support or fines they can’t afford. For some, denials of justice in civil cases can lead to crimes of survival.

A national survey published by the National Center for Access to Justice this week found that people in poverty have virtually no access to civil aid attorneys — only .64 are available per 10,000, as opposed to an average of 40 lawyers per 10,000 people in the general population. “I don’t think most people appreciate how high the stakes are in our civil justice system,” said David Udell, executive director of the group. “The justice system on the civil side has to work in order to reduce conflict. If the civil justice system doesn’t work, there is a slope that leads into the criminal justice system.”

Chomsky: Hillary Clinton Fears BDS Because It Counters Decades of US Support for Israeli Aggression

Sanders Has It Exactly Right: Majority of Americans Want 'Medicare for All' System

Bernie Sanders' call to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a single-payer healthcare system is a policy that a strong majority of Americans agree with, according to a new Gallup survey released on Monday.

Fifty-eight percent of all U.S. adults favor replacing the ACA with a federally-funded healthcare program, such as Sanders' Medicare for All.

This is compared with 48 percent who prefer to keeping Obama's healthcare system in place, a policy which has been a cornerstone of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton's campaign platform.

"While the ACA curbed some of the most egregious insurance abuses, our healthcare system remains a profit-focused, bureaucratic nightmare for far too many people," Jean Ross, registered nurse and co-president of National Nurses United, told Common Dreams by email.

Democrats, Too Clever by Half on Clinton

Last year when Democratic insiders looked forward to Election 2016, they expected a run-of-the-mill Republican, possibly even legacy candidate Jeb Bush. So they countered with their own “safe” next-in-line legacy candidate, Hillary Clinton, who would supposedly win by playing up the prospect of the first woman president.

In such an expected match-up, the concern of rank-and-file Democrats about Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy would be negated by the GOP nominee still defending President George W. Bush’s Iraq War and again surrounded by neocons pounding the drums for even more wars. With both parties putting forward war candidates, anti-war Democrats would accept Clinton as the lesser evil, or so the thinking went. ...

But the Democratic insiders didn’t count on the unlikely emergence of populist billionaire Donald Trump, who repudiated Bush’s Iraq War and the GOP’s neocon foreign policy and rejected Republican orthodoxy on “entitlement reform,” i.e., slashing Social Security and Medicare. ...

[Well, that latter bit about Social Security and Medicare has been called into question now. - js]

At first, the Democratic hierarchy couldn’t believe its luck as the Republican Party seemed to splinter over Trump’s disdain for the GOP’s neocon interventionism and rejection of the party’s cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare. ... So, the Democratic insiders initially rubbed their hands with glee and imagined not only an easy presidential victory but major gains in the House and Senate. However, new polls show Trump running neck-and-neck with Clinton nationally and in key battleground states, while other polls reveal strong public doubts about Clinton’s honesty, thus wiping the premature smiles off the Democrats’ faces.

Indeed, some Democrats reportedly are slipping into panic mode as they watch Clinton’s poll numbers tank and the Republican Party come to grips with the Trump phenomenon. ... So, instead of Democratic dreams of a landslide victory, the party insiders are worrying now about their decision to coronate a deeply flawed and wounded candidate in Hillary Clinton. Not only could she lose to Trump but she could take many of the House and Senate candidates down with her. It’s dawning on some Democrats that they may have squandered a historic opportunity to realign American politics to the left by promoting the wrong person in 2016.

Chomsky on Supporting Hillary Bloodyhands against Donald Fascistface

Heh, I bet this will play pretty well with the Republican base, actually, and criticism of Trump for this by Democrats will probably increase his appeal to the yokel voters.

Donald Trump Says He Probably Won't Get Along Too Well With the British Prime Minister

In case anybody is still unaware, Donald Trump really doesn't like being called stupid — and he's definitely not too fussed about diplomacy.

In an interview aired on Monday the presidential hopeful told a UK television station that he would likely have a rocky relationship with David Cameron because the British prime minister had called his proposal for a entry ban on Muslims "divisive, stupid and wrong."

After Trump proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, Cameron criticized him in parliament and suggested that Britain would unite against him if he visited.

The US is Britain's closest ally and political leaders from both nations often speak of how the countries enjoy a special relationship.

But when asked how ties would be if he won power in the November 8 election, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told Britain's ITV television station: "It looks like we're not going to have a very good relationship, who knows." He didn't care about Cameron's views, Trump said.

April breaks global temperature record, marking seven months of new highs

Latest monthly figures add to string of recent temperature records and all but assure 2016 will be hottest year on record

April 2016 was the hottest April on record globally – and the seventh month in a row to have broken global temperature records.

The latest figures smashed the previous record for April by the largest margin ever recorded.

It makes three months in a row that the monthly record has been broken by the largest margin ever, and seven months in a row that are at least 1C above the 1951-80 mean for that month. When the string of record-smashing months started in February, scientists began talking about a “climate emergency”.

Figures released by Nasa over the weekend show the global temperature of land and sea was 1.11C warmer in April than the average temperature for April during the period 1951-1980.

With Apr update, 2016 still > 99% likely to be a new record (assuming historical ytd/ann patterns valid). pic.twitter.com/GTN9sPL2D7

— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) May 14, 2016

World's largest floating windfarm to be built off Scottish coast

The world’s largest floating windfarm is set to be built off the coast of Scotland after its developers were granted a seabed lease on Monday.

Statoil, the Norwegian energy company, expects to have five 6MW turbines bobbing in the North Sea and generating electricity by the end of 2017. The company has already operated a single turbine off Norway.

The Hywind turbine is one of the frontrunners in a global race to develop flotillas of floating wind turbines that can conquer the deep oceans and reap the strongest winds on the planet. Existing offshore wind turbines, standing on concrete and steel foundations driven into the ocean floor, flounder on heavy costs when depths are greater than about 40 metres. ...

The Hywind windfarm will float 15 miles off Scotland’s east coast by Peterhead. The base of each turbine is a floating steel tube containing ballast, which is tethered to the sea bed.

Flint Residents Told Their Poisoned Water Might Soon Cost Them Twice as Much

Michigan state officials announced Thursday that Flint residents will not be charged for their water usage in May as part of an effort to help flush the system, but the long-term picture for the lead-poisoned city is far less rosy, according to a new report. 

In fact, the Michigan Department of Treasury analysis presented Friday shows that water rates in Flint, already among the highest in the nation, could double within five years unless changes are made to the crumbling water system.

Because we poisoned you, we are charging you double. I thought this was an @TheOnion article. #fail https://t.co/1CMm8hFCXk

— Will Austin (@willfaustin) May 13, 2016

The Detroit News reports:

The typical Flint resident is currently charged about $53.84 per month on the water portion of their bill, not counting sewer costs, according to the report prepared by Raftelis Financial Consultants of Missouri.

But current residential rates are not projected to cover future costs, assuming the city purchases Lake Huron water from Detroit through fiscal year 2017 before transitioning to the [Karegnondi Water Authority] pipeline in 2018.

As a result, the typical water portion of a residential bill is estimated to rise to $110.11 per month by fiscal year 2022 "if no action is taken" to address various issues, according to the report.

Also of Interest

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

Needed: More Snowdens - Ex-intel analyst

Social Media Fame Shields Dissidents, Until It Doesn’t

UN panel warns against 'excessive force' by Israel

State Legislatures Attacking Community Wealth Building

In "Profound Loss for Maine's Citizens," Court OKs Sale of Town's Water to Nestle

How a digital divide leaves parts of rural America isolated

Refugees from ‘Endless’ War

The Progressive Case For Hillary Clinton Isn’t Much of a Case At All

A Little Night Music

Illinois Jacquet - Lazy Blues

Illinois Jacquet Quartet - C Jam Blues

Illinois Jacquet - Bottoms Up, Bottoms Up

Illinois Jacquet - After Hours

Illinois Jacquet - Harlem Nocturne

Illinois Jacquet - The Blues That's Me!

Illinois Jacquet - One-Nighter Boogie

Illinois Jacquet - Flying Home