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This evening's music features Texas blues guitarist Frankie Lee Sims. Enjoy!

"If you ever feel unimportant, remember that rich and powerful people are constantly pouring effort and wealth into trying to manipulate the thoughts in your head."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

How We Could Wind Up Banned From Discussing An October Surprise On Social Media This Election

In what it calls an effort to make itself “a more reliable source for election-related news and information,” YouTube has announced  that it will be removing “content that contains hacked information, the disclosure of which may interfere with democratic processes, such as elections and censuses.”

“For example, videos that contain hacked information about a political candidate shared with the intent to interfere in an election,” adds the Google-owned video sharing platform.

This by itself is an alarming assault on human communication and press freedom. If there is authentic information out there about either of the candidates who are up for the most powerful elected position on the planet, the world is entitled to know about it, regardless of how that information was acquired. Monopolistic tech oligarchs have no business barring us from learning about and discussing that information.

Immensely powerful people should not be permitted to have secrets from the public anyway. The amount of power one has should be directly inverse to the amount of secrecy they are permitted to have. If you’re anywhere near the presidency of the United States of America, the secrecy you are entitled to should be zero.

If a hacker is able to get ahold of accurate information about Donald Trump or Joe Biden, that information is ours. We’re entitled to it. Anyone who tries to obstruct our access to that information is stealing from us. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we have a society where people are permitted to both rule over us and keep secrets from us as it is without government-aligned tech plutocrats silencing our attempts to learn what those secrets might be.

Krystal and Saagar: Dems Embrace Authoritarianism On Edward Snowden To Own Trump

Trump says he will 'take a look' at pardon for Edward Snowden

Donald Trump said on Saturday that he would look at the issue of giving a pardon to whistleblower Edward Snowden. ...

At a press conference on Saturday Trump said he did not know much about the case and heard powerful arguments for and against a pardon. He then added that he would look into the matter.

“I’m going to take a look at that very strongly, Edward Snowden,” Trump said.

Donald Trump vows 'snapback' over humiliating UN defeat on Iran arms embargo

Donald Trump has vowed to use a contentious provision to unilaterally reinstate UN sanctions on Tehran, following what Iran’s president said was a humiliating defeat for the US in its bid to extend an arms embargo on Tehran.

A day after the UN security council overwhelmingly rejected a US resolution to extend the embargo, Trump said at a news conference at his New Jersey golf club: “We’ll be doing a snapback. You’ll be watching it next week.”

The US president was referring to the contested argument that the US remains a “participant” in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal – despite Trump’s withdrawal from it – and therefore can force a return to sanctions if it sees Iran as being in violation of its terms. European allies have been sceptical on whether Washington can force sanctions, however, with experts saying a “snapback” threatens to plunge the council into one of its worst ever diplomatic crises.

Iran’s president said earlier on Saturday that the US had suffered a humiliating defeat when the council voted on the American proposal on Friday. Russia and China voted against, while 11 members – including France, Germany and Britain – abstained. The US and the Dominican Republic were the only votes in favour.

“I don’t remember the US preparing a resolution for months to strike a blow at the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it garners only one vote,” the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said in a televised speech. “But the great success was that the US was defeated in this conspiracy with humiliation.”

No Longer Leader of the Free World: Trump Admin. Humiliated at UN over Iran Arms Embargo

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Last week, I asked, “Will Trump’s Maximum Pressure on UNSC against Lifting Iran Arms Embargo Backfire Big Time?”

As Iran’s IRNA news service reports today, the answer was a resounding “Yes!”

On Friday, the United Nations Security Council took up a resolution presented by US ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, aimed at an indefinite extension of the UN arms embargo on Iran. Only one of the 15 members, the Dominican Republic, supported the US resolution. Eleven abstained. And two–Russia and China, voted against it. The resolution would have needed 8 to pass and would have needed to avoid a veto by one of the five permanent members.

But it failed by 13 to 2. China and Russia did not even have to brandish a veto. It is hard to remember another vote on which the US was humiliated quite this badly, though if George W. Bush had actually pursued a UNSC authorization for his Iraq War in spring of 2003, he might have similarly gone down to epochal diplomatic defeat.

Let us underline this. The most powerful countries in the world and the current representatives of the main global blocs just sided with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against Donald J. Trump.

The United States is no longer the leader of the free world.

Mohammed bin Salman 'encouraged' Russia intervention in Syria, lawsuit claims

In the summer of 2015 Mohammed bin Salman, then Saudi defence minister and third in line to the throne, turned his country’s foreign policy on its head and gave a covert green light for Russia’s intervention in Syria, according to a lawsuit by a former top intelligence official. In his complaint filed in a federal court in Washington, Saad Aljabri alleges that the abrupt switch of course by the man who is now Saudi Arabia’s crown prince alarmed the then CIA director, John Brennan, who met Aljabri in July and August of 2015 to pass on a rebuke from the Obama administration.

“Brennan expressed concern that defendant bin Salman was encouraging Russian intervention in Syria, at a time when Russia was not yet a party to the war in Syria,” the lawsuit, filed last week in the District of Columbia district court, alleged. “Dr Saad passed Brennan’s message to defendant bin Salman, who responded with fury.”

Aljabri said the meetings with Brennan cost him his job as the second most powerful man in Saudi intelligence and his country’s liaison with the CIA. He later fled Saudi Arabia and is now living in hiding in Canada, where he alleges the crown prince tried to have him killed by a Saudi death squad, shortly after the murder of the Saudi dissident and journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. ... In March Aljabri’s 20-year-old daughter, Sarah and his 21-year-old son Omar, were arrested, and have not been seen since. Aljabri says they are being held as hostages to force him to return home, because of his detailed knowledge of Prince Mohammed’s rise to power. ...

Western diplomats say that soon after Prince Mohammed became defence minister, with the ascent of his father to the Saudi throne following the death of King Abdullah in January 2015, he was strongly influenced by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, another young moderniser with radical ideas. ... A source familiar with the sequence of events in 2015 said that Prince Mohammed and Sheikh Mohammed (widely known as MBS and MBZ) met at the Idex arms fair in Abu Dhabi in February.

“That was a turning point in MBS’s ambition and vision and belief,” the source claimed. Sheikh Mohammed is said to have argued that the threat of a Muslim Brotherhood revolution in Syria was worse from the point of view of their Gulf monarchies than Assad’s survival. The Emirati prince also persuaded his ambitious Saudi counterpart that if he was going to compete with, and eventually oust, his cousin, Mohammad bin Nayef – then deputy crown prince and intelligence chief (and Aljabri’s patron) with close ties to Brennan and the Obama administration – he would have to find friends beyond Washington.

Lukashenko remains defiant as protests mount

Not much of value in the rest of this article, which has a bias so thick that a meat slicer couldn't get through it.

'We will perish': embattled Lukashenko sends SOS to Putin

Isolated from the west and besieged by mass protests, the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has made repeated calls for Vladimir Putin to intervene and save his 26-year-old regime.

In telephone calls to the Kremlin on Saturday and Sunday, he sought confirmation that Russia would provide military assistance against external threats, while warning supporters that the country was under foreign pressure. “Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and our native Ukraine, their leadership are ordering us to hold new elections,” Lukashenko said in a speech. “If we follow their lead, we will go into a tailspin … we will perish as a people, as a state, as a nation.”

In a statement, the Kremlin said Moscow stood ready to provide help in accordance with a collective military pact. It also said Belarus was under external pressure, without naming the source. But Putin has stopped short of offering support or an endorsement of Lukashenko, who is facing the gravest crisis of his career. It is likely that Moscow will wait and see whether Lukashenko can survive the next weeks or even days, as protests and labour strikes grow and pressure mounts on him to leave office.

FBI Caught Faking Documents To Russia-Gate!

Ex-FBI lawyer to plead guilty in Durham’s Trump-Russia probe

A former FBI lawyer will plead guilty to making a false statement in the first criminal case arising from U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the probe of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

The case against Kevin Clinesmith is likely to be cheered by President Donald Trump and his supporters as they look to the Durham investigation to lift Trump’s wobbly reelection prospects and to expose what they see as wrongdoing as the FBI opened an investigation into whether the Trump campaign was coordinating with the Kremlin to sway the outcome of the 2016 election.

Clinesmith is being charged in federal court in Washington and is expected to plead guilty to one count of making a false statement, his attorney Justin Shur told The Associated Press. ... Clinesmith was referred for potential prosecution by the department's inspector general's office, which conducted its own review of the Russia investigation. ...

Specifically, the inspector general accused Clinesmith, though not by name, of altering an email about Page to say that he was “not a source” for another government agency. Page has said he was a source for the CIA. The Justice Department relied on that assertion as it submitted a third and final renewal application in 2017 to eavesdrop on Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Zaid Jilani: Black Marxist Adolph Reed DISINVITED By DSA For 'Race Insensitivity'

Hat tip to Great Lakes Sailor:

A Black Marxist Scholar Wanted to Talk About Race. It Ignited a Fury.

In late May, Professor Reed, now 73 and a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, was invited to speak to the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter. The match seemed a natural. Possessed of a barbed wit, the man who campaigned for Senator Bernie Sanders and skewered President Barack Obama as a man of “vacuous to repressive neoliberal politics” would address the D.S.A.’s largest chapter, the crucible that gave rise to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a new generation of leftist activism.

His chosen topic was unsparing: He planned to argue that the left’s intense focus on the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on Black people undermined multiracial organizing, which he sees as key to health and economic justice.

Notices went up. Anger built. How could we invite a man to speak, members asked, who downplays racism in a time of plague and protest? To let him talk, the organization’s Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus stated, was “reactionary, class reductionist and at best, tone deaf.”

“We cannot be afraid to discuss race and racism because it could get mishandled by racists,” the caucus stated. “That’s cowardly and cedes power to the racial capitalists.”

Amid murmurs that opponents might crash his Zoom talk, Professor Reed and D.S.A. leaders agreed to cancel it, a striking moment as perhaps the nation’s most powerful Socialist organization rejected a Black Marxist professor’s talk because of his views on race. ...

The decision to silence Professor Reed came as Americans debate the role of race and racism in policing, health care, media and corporations. Often pushed aside in that discourse are those leftists and liberals who have argued there is too much focus on race and not enough on class in a deeply unequal society. Professor Reed is part of the class of historians, political scientists and intellectuals who argue that race as a construct is overstated.

Congress Goes On Vacation During An Economic Crisis!

Calls for nationwide sickout as Arizona school district cancels reopening

An Arizona public school district was forced to cancel its plans to reopen on Monday after more than 100 teachers and other staff members called in sick. “We have received an overwhelming response from staff indicating that they do not feel safe returning to classrooms with students,” Gregory Wyman, district superintendent, said in a statement on Friday.

Now some activists in Arizona, which saw a high-profile teachers’ strike in 2018, said they hope teachers across America will adopt a similar strategy to keep educators safe, as some parents and politicians continue to push for schools in the US to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic. “I’d love to see a nationwide sickout,” Kelley Fisher, an Arizona kindergarten teacher who has led protests in the state, told Reuters on Friday.

In San Tan Valley, a suburb of Phoenix, the JO Combs unified school district’s board of governors had voted to resume in-person classes on Monday. Another school district nearby had made a similar choice, pressured by some parents who argued that reopening schools would be best for their children. The president of the Arizona Education Association, a teacher’s union, told the Arizona Republic that the two districts both decided to reopen despite not meeting the health metrics as recommended by Arizona’s department of public health.

Not a single district in Arizona currently meets all three metrics for a safe resumption of mixed in-person and online learning, the Arizona Republic reported, citing the most recently available state public health data.

Top Dems Demand Postmaster General DeJoy Testify, Citing 'Grave Threat' to 'Our Very Democracy'

Top Democrats on Sunday demanded Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testify before Congress next week and accused the "Trump mega-donor" of having "acted as an accomplice in the president's campaign to cheat in the election, as he launches sweeping new operational changes that degrade delivery standards and delay the mail."

The joint statement came from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,  House Oversight Committeee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, and ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Gary C. Peters . It called for Chairman of the USPS Board of Governors Robert Duncan to also appear before lawmakers.

The demands were issued amid swelling outrage and warnings "our very democracy is at stake" as a result of policy changes imposed by DeJoy that have been blamed for slowed mail delivery and raised fears of election sabotage, and an admission by the president he's blocking Postal Service funding to stop mail-in voting.

"The Postal Service itself has warned that voters—even if they send in their ballots by state deadlines—may be disenfranchised in 46 states and in Washington, D.C. by continued delays. This constitutes a grave threat to the integrity of the election and to our very democracy," the Democrats said. ...

According to Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, "DeJoy should be subpoenaed if he doesn't respond, and members should resist giving speeches at the hearing."

"They need to ask substantive questions that force him to admit his agenda and reverse his recent changes," Gupta tweeted, noting that there are "fewer than 80 days until election."

"Our democracy won't save itself," she wrote.

Pull Back the Curtain on Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Service and Out Pops Koch Money

Since May, the nonprofit group funded with Koch’s fossil fuels money, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), has been mobilizing to defeat the House stimulus bill known as the HEROES Act. In a letter sent to members of Congress, AFP Chief Government Affairs Officer Brent Gardner wrote that AFP wants to see the bill killed and specifically mentions it does not want to see a bailout of the Postal Service.

Today, Aaron Gordon at Vice is reporting that he’s gotten his hands on internal documents from the Postal Service which show that orders have come down from above to destroy approximately 500 mail sorting machines – which cost millions of dollars. Witnesses have told Gordon that they’ve seen the machines “destroyed or thrown in the dumpster.” Gordon’s latest report follows yesterday’s news that mail service has been slowed down in multiple parts of the country.

The order to destroy critical equipment comes at a time when President Trump has launched his own campaign against millions of Americans being able to mail their ballots for the November 3 presidential election, saying there will be massive fraud if ballots are mailed. No evidence has emerged to support that assertion. Democrats see the President’s efforts as an attempt to disenfranchise voters because the President is trailing presidential candidate Joe Biden significantly in the polls. ...

Gordon’s latest bombshell at Vice comes on the heels of another outstanding piece of journalism in July by Lisa Graves of True North Research for In the Public Interest. Graves traces the long history of Charles Koch and his now deceased brother, David, to privatize the U.S. Postal Service and the insidious means that were used to try to bring that to fruition.

Rep. Ro Khanna on Trump's Plan to "Steal This Election" & Voting No on the Democratic Platform

Pelosi vows to protect USPS, which Trump is ‘openly working to destroy’

Top Democrat Nancy Pelosi has accused Donald Trump of “openly working to destroy the post office”, and said the US president is actively trying to “sabotage” the agency’s ability to deliver Americans’ mail-in ballots in time to be counted for the 2020 election.

The House speaker’s remarks came hours after the US Postal Service’s (USPS) own inspector general confirmed Friday that it has launched an investigation into policy changes a Trump appointee has made over recent months, including cutting overtime, which has reportedly led to slower mail delivery. ...

Trump himself admitted last week that he opposed Democrats’ demand for $25bn in government aid to the financially-struggling USPS because he believed it would support the delivery of mail-in ballots.

In a press conference Saturday evening, Trump denied that DeJoy’s operational changes were designed to undermine voting by mail. “Not at all. He would love to see it happen,” Trump said. Trump did not answer questions about the effects of DeJoy’s operational changes on mail delivery. “I don’t know what he’s doing. I can only tell you he’s a very smart man,” Trump said. “He wants to make the post office great again.”

Just days after talking publicly about his opposition to giving $25bn to support the post office, Trump repeatedly blamed Democrats for not being able to secure the money they wanted to ensure that the post office was able to deliver Americans’ ballots on time. Trump said he did not support other coronavirus aid congressional Democrats were negotiating for, including emergency funding for state governments run by Democrats.

Postmaster general’s changes causing mail delays, USPS workers say

Workers at the United States Postal Service (USPS) say changes being implemented by recently appointed postmaster general and major Donald Trump donor Louis DeJoy are causing major delays, with mail carriers struggling to keep up. DeJoy was appointed on 15 June, and has since made controversial changes at the USPS to cut costs, which critics argue are tactics to undermine the agency as the US president seeks re-election in November.

Trump himself has admitted to wanting to starve the postal service of funds so that mail-in voting will become difficult, as tens of millions of Americans are expected to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic. Leading Democrats, including Barack Obama and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, have decried the moves as a threat to the election.
In July, DeJoy instructed USPS employees to leave mail behind if it delayed carriers from their routes and prohibited employees from working overtime. On 7 August, DeJoy announced a management hiring freeze and is planning to seek early retirements of non-union employees.

“Essentially, by ordering us to leave behind mail, we are being instructed to break federal law,” said Zack Finley, a city mail carrier in Midland, Texas, and local union shop steward with the National Association of Letter Carriers. “For first-class mail, there is federal law that says it must be delivered on the day it is received by the office, or have delivery attempted.” Finley added: “By following an order to break federal law, each individual carrier assumes liability for their own action that breaks the law. Not everyone understands that, but the union does. It puts the carrier in an impossible to win situation. Obey the law and potentially lose your job or obey the order and possibly be arrested.”

He also noted conversion of non-career employees to career employees with benefits has been halted, and mail carriers are being forced out on to their routes without being given enough time to complete their office duties, leaving those tasks to gradually pile up, causing further delays.

Krystal Ball: Dem Party CAUGHT Orchestrating Smear Of Alex Morse

“We Have to Expand the Squad”: Cori Bush on Her Upset Primary Win, Defunding Police & Kamala Harris

Progressive Boston Doctor Seeks to Unseat “Do-Nothing Moderate Democrat” in Congress

With just over two weeks left until the Massachusetts Democratic primary, progressives across the country are focused on the high-profile primaries of Sen. Ed Markey, who is fending off a challenge from Rep. Joe Kennedy, and Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, who is running against House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal. Elsewhere in the state, other progressive challengers are struggling to attract similar attention. In the crowded House race to replace Kennedy, two progressives appear tied for third behind two more conservative Democrats. And in the Boston-area 8th Congressional District, Robbie Goldstein, a 36-year-old primary care physician, is scrambling to get his name out and convince voters he’s not running a long-shot bid.

On Wednesday, Goldstein’s campaign released a poll claiming he trailed just 7 percentage points behind nine-term moderate incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch. Conducted last weekend by Lincoln Park Strategies, the poll found that 29 percent of likely voters remain undecided. However, Lynch held a clear advantage when it came to name recognition, with roughly 70 percent of voters knowing who he was, compared to 40 percent recognizing Goldstein. Still, the pollsters concluded Goldstein “has a real chance to win” because among undecideds, 42 percent said they’d prefer to vote for a more progressive candidate, 71 percent said they’d prefer a pro-choice candidate, and 73 percent said they’d prefer a candidate who backs Medicare for All.

Goldstein’s case against Lynch rests on substantive policy differences, including Medicare for All and reproductive rights. The incumbent opposes single-payer health care, and while Lynch has criticized federal efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and “draconian” state-level abortion restrictions, he himself identifies as pro-life and believes ending pregnancies should be “legal and rare.” Goldstein’s campaign argues that this race presents a viable opportunity to bring another progressive to Congress, even if Lynch is not as influential as other incumbents who’ve been toppled, like Reps. Joe Crowley and Eliot Engel. “I am constantly confounded by progressives’ infatuation with claiming these big headline victories instead of just winning and building power,” said Karen Clawson Cosmas, Goldstein’s campaign manager. “We can replace a do-nothing moderate Democrat with someone who is actually a champion of the issues of the progressive wing of the party.” ...

Goldstein is hoping for a surge in the final weeks — similar to what Cori Bush saw recently in St. Louis, and Jamaal Bowman in New York — though Goldstein trails them both in fundraising and major endorsements, and he has far less name recognition than Bush, a Ferguson activist who ran for Congress in 2018 and was featured in a documentary alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. By the end of June, Goldstein had raised just $292,000, next to Lynch’s $660,000, though Goldstein did raise more in June than in the previous five months combined. ... Goldstein, meanwhile, is backed by left-wing groups like Indivisible, Our Revolution, Progressive Massachusetts, and even the Boston Teachers Union. Justice Democrats, which endorsed Morse, has stayed out of this primary.

Progressive Jen Perelman challenges hawkish Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz in FL

Dems Begin Signaling A Post-Election Surrender On Health Care

On the eve of a Democratic National Convention taking place as millions lose health care coverage, the health care industry is launching a new ad campaign pressing Democrats to back off the party’s already compromised health care promises. That pressure seems to be having its intended effect on Capitol Hill as congressional aides say the party will not push the initiative if Biden wins. The signs of retreat come as health care industry profits are skyrocketing and the industry’s campaign cash has flooded into Democratic coffers.

The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF) -- a front group created by health insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital lobbying groups to oppose “Medicare for All” --  announced on Friday that it is launching a new national ad campaign to persuade Democrats to abandon their plans to create a public health insurance plan. The group said it will run ads during the Democratic National Convention (DNC) this week. PAHCF is led by a former Hillary Clinton aide and run out of the offices of a D.C. lobbying firm led by former top Democratic congressional aides.

A substantial “public option” plan — which polls show is wildly popular — was the centerpiece of recent policy negotiations between supporters of former Vice President Joe Biden and progressive Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had been pushing for a more expansive Medicare for All program. A draft of the party platform, approved by DNC members late last month, includes a pledge to pass a public option, or a government-run health insurance plan that would compete with private insurers.

Within 24 hours of the launch of the industry’s new ads, however, anonymous Democratic congressional sources were telling The Hill that Democrats likely won’t bother with the public option fight next year if Biden wins the election. Instead, they said the party will instead work to tweak the party’s 2010 health care law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has done little to limit insurance or hospital costs and has failed to ensure universal coverage. ...

The situation echoes the Democratic promises and subsequent surrender on a public option that marked the debate over health care more than a decade ago -- only this time around, the health care crisis is an even more acute emergency.

Marge Simpson has something to say. pic.twitter.com/viux96bAPf

— TheSimpsons (@TheSimpsons) August 14, 2020

Experts and volunteers scramble to save Mauritius's wildlife after oil spill

International experts and thousands of local volunteers were making frantic efforts on Sunday to protect Mauritius’s pristine beaches and rich marine wildlife after hundreds of tonnes of oil was dumped into the sea by a Japanese tanker in what some scientists called the country’s worst ecological disaster.

The MV Wakashio, which ran aground almost three weeks ago, split in half on Saturday afternoon as Mauritian authorities said poor sea conditions made the removal of the remaining oil on the ship risky.

The Panama-flagged tanker was carrying more than 4,000 tonnes of heavy oil, lubricants and diesel from China to Brazil. Between 800 and 1,200 tonnes was thought to have leaked into the sea, with the rest being pumped out by salvage experts. ...

Scientists say the full impact of the spill is still unclear, but the oil has already reached exceptional zones of marine life, including the Ile aux Aigrettes nature reserve and the Blue Bay Marine Park, a unique coastal wetland recognised for the diversity of its coral and fish species, as well as for the endangered green turtle.

Satellite images also show contamination spreading northward along the coastline. “This oil spill occurred in one of, if not the most, sensitive areas in Mauritius,” Vassen Kauppaymuthoo, and oceanographer and environmental engineer, told Reuters by telephone from the island, where he was surveying the disaster. “We are talking of decades to recover from this damage, and some of it may never recover.”

Following Outrage, Trump Pulls Nomination of "Unapologetic Racist' William Perry Pendley to Oversee Nation's Public Lands

Environmental campaigners on Saturday welcomed news that President Donald Trump withdrew his nomination of "pro-polluter" and "unapologetic racist" William Perry Pendley for director of the Bureau of Land Management, with groups saying he should no longer be allowed to continue in his role as unofficial head of the agency.

Pendley, who's called fracking an "environmental miracle," was panned by civil rights, environmental, tribal, and immigrant advocacy groups as "the worst possible person you could conjure to be a leading steward of our shared public lands" given his public record that includes a history of racist and sexist comments, "overt racism" toward native people, dismissal of the climate ciris, suggestion that "the Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold," and a 17-page list of 57 potential conflicts of interest.

"Pendley never should have been nominated, and the fact that he was shows you what you need to know about this administration's conservation priorities," Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said in a statement Saturday.

Trump formally nominated Pendley in June to lead BLM, an agency within the Interior Department (DOI). However, he has been overseeing—to the outrage of progressive groups—BLM for over a year, with the agency's website describing him as "exercising authority of the director."

Interior spokesperson Nicholas Goodwin confirmed the nomination withdrawal to The Hill but provided no explanation for the decision. "The president makes staffing decisions. Mr. Pendley continues to lead the Bureau of Land Management as Deputy Director for Programs and Policy," Goodwin said.  

California wildfire spawns ‘firenado’ as tornado warning issued amid heatwave

A wildfire in northern California spawned at least one fire tornado – or “firenado” – on Saturday, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a tornado warning as the state continues to endure a heatwave and wildfires.

“Extremely dangerous fire behavior noted on the #LoyaltonFire! Rotating columns and potential for fire whirls,” NWS Reno tweeted on Saturday.

NWS Reno later said the “tornadic pyrocumulus has weakened & the immediate threat of tornadic activity has decreased for the #LoyaltonFire,” but warned that “extreme fire behavior will continue into this evening w/new Fire Tornadoes & strong gusts in excess of 60mph remain possible. Stay away from the fire area.”

The Loyalton fire in Lassen county, north east of Sacramento, has burned 20,000 acres and was 5% contained by early Sunday, according to CNN.

Large wildfires can heat air so much that huge clouds develop. In strong winds, these can rotate and sometimes produce a tornado.

Also of Interest

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

The show trial of Julian Assange: A cruel and pseudolegal farce

Belarus - This Color Revolution Is Already Dead. The Union State Has Killed It.

Watching mushroom clouds from the beach in LA. Apocalypse...maybe not now, but soon!

Are bread riots coming to America?

U.S. farmers leave fields fallow as COVID-19 wrecks crop prospects

Aid to “Badly Managed” States Versus Aid to “Badly Managed” Wall Street Banks

Georgia: fights break out during protest near Confederate memorial

Felony charges against BLM protesters are 'suppression tactic', experts say

Parties Play Favorites to Allot States’ Delegates

White House Plants Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theorists Among Reporters in Briefing Room

Don’t Forgive Bastards: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Scientists Seek to Collect Ice Core Samples Before Glaciers and Ice Sheets Melt

Alex Morse on Useful Idiots, Interview Only

Jimmy Dore: The Reason Kamala Harris Flip-Flops on Medicare For All!

Rising: Jamaal Bowman Pressed On Whether He'll Challenge Pelosi, Biden, Harris

Rising: MSNBC's Jason Johnson Tries To Blame BERNIE For Post Office Crisis

A Little Night Music

Frankie Lee Sims - She Likes To Boogie Real Low

Frankie Lee Sims - Married Woman

Frankie Lee Sims - What Will Lucy Do

Frankie Lee Sims - Cryin' Won't Help You

Frankie Lee Sims - Misery Blues

Frankie Lee Sims - Walking With Frankie

Frankie Lee Sims - Don't Take It Out On Me

Frankie Lee Sims - Home Again Blues

Frankie Lee Sims - Hey Little Girl