Politics Plus

Ever since becoming the beloved of his fellow extremists in the US Republican Party, Vladimir “GOP Pootie” Putin has followed the Republican lead and declared war on human rights.  His forces have recently committed an act of piracy on the high seas by seizing the Arctic Sunrise in international waters and imprisoning her crew.

Armed agents—from Russia’s coast guard service, its security agency the FSB, or both—stormed the ship of Greenpeace activists trying to save the Arctic region from oil and gas drilling on Thursday, and after more than 12 hours without communication, the ‘seized’ Arctic Sunrise on Friday morning is reportedly heading back towards Russian-controlled waters while the 30 crew members remain incommunicado and under armed guard.

According to activists on the ship, Russian FSB agents forced their way into the ship’s radio room and inflicted significant damage to communication equipment. This information came from activists aboard the Arctic Sunrise who were able to communicate for some period via satellite phone, but those communications later went silent…

…Director of the Greenpeace campaign to save the arctic, Ben Ayliffe, was both concerned for his colleagues aboard the Arctic Sunrise and outraged at the actions by Russian officials.

“The safety of our activists remains our top priority and we are working hard to establish what is facing them," said Ayliffe. "They have done nothing to warrant this level of aggression and have been entirely peaceful throughout."

He continued: “The real threat to the Russian Arctic comes not from the crew of the Arctic Sunrise but from Gazprom, one of the most reckless oil companies in the world today.”…

Inserted from <Common Dreams>

We should all condemn this action and demand the immediate return of the ship and release of her crew!

Since he knows it will effect his party negatively, I had hoped the Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), aka “Agent Orange” and “Two Inch” Boehner, would step back from the InsaniTEA on ObamaCare and allow the few relatively sane Republicans left to vote with Democrats in an unencumbered Continuing Resolution (CR) and a clean Debt limit increase.  That’s not only what’s best for America, but also, what’s best for the Republican Party.  Well, Agent Orange must fear being TEAbuggered, because he screwed the pooch.  Moreover, it’s most ironic that the whole Defund Obamacare meme is nothing but a Republican scam.

After three years of cajoling, finessing and occasionally strong-arming his fitful conservative majority, Speaker John A. Boehner waved the white flag on Wednesday, surrendering to demands from his right flank that he tie money to keep the government open after Sept. 30 to stripping President Obama’s health care law of any financing.

Mr. Boehner knows that the plan he unveiled cannot pass the Senate, and that it may prove unwise politically and economically. His leadership team pressed just last week for an alternative. But with conservative forces uniting against him, he ultimately saw no alternative but to capitulate — and few good options to stop a government shutdown in two weeks.

“Today was a step forward, and a win for the American people,” said Representative Tom Graves, the Georgia Republican whose “defund Obamacare” push had amassed 80 House supporters, a bloc large enough to dictate the outcome.

With much of the government set to run out of money at the end of the month — and run out of borrowing authority by mid-October — Mr. Boehner faced a choice: he could steer a middle ground and find a way out of his fiscal dead end with Republican and Democratic votes, or he could yield to a conservative movement to strip the Affordable Care Act of financing, unite his Republican majority around that war cry, and hope for the best… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Rachel Maddow covered how this has grown from one of many Republican scams.

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I bet that when Bubba Bagger calls Upchuck Huck to repeal Obamacare and gets Richard Simmons instead, he’s just overjoyed with gaiety! Sheeple-fleecing is clearly Republican’s favorite sport, something they learned well from the Theocon wing of the party.

What will happen is that The Senate will strip the defund ObamaCare language from the CR and send it back. What will Agent Orange do then?  It would insane not to tale the sensible path, so I think that at the eleventh how he will on the CR, but I won’t bet money on it.  The debt limit ceiling is anybody’s guess at this point.

Limiting greenhouse gas emissions starts at home.  Personally, my carbon footprint is less that 25% of the national average for people who live alone.  Oftentimes, our best efforts fall short of changing national policy, drowned out by the din of corporate money.  That does not mean we should stop trying, but often we can do more to effect policies on a local level, so here’s how America’s largest cities stack up.

Does your city have a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions dramatically? Is it seeking to reduce car use through bike share programs and public transit subsidies? Does it partner with utility companies to help small businesses and homeowners save energy? And does it lobby for statewide energy-efficiency legislation?

Those are just a few of the policies that have made Boston the top-ranked city for energy efficiency, according to a new report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Portland, Ore., placed second, followed by New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.

ACEEE ranked 34 major American cities—the 25 most populous incorporated ones, plus the central cities of nine other major metropolitan areas—according to their efforts to promote energy savings. The report looked at building codes, community-wide energy initiatives, transportation policies, energy-saving programs involving public utilities, and efforts to improve the efficiency of government building. You can see where each city ranked on the map above.

The cities’ scores are based largely on their implementation of efficiency policies—enforceable building standards, for instance—rather than on quantifiable reductions in energy use and emissions. During a conference call following the release of the report, ACEEE official Eric Mackres said the report focused on specific policies because the group wanted it to serve as a "playbook of actions you can take to improve efficiency." He added that "because most cities aren’t as good at promoting energy efficiency as Boston and Portland, we don’t have as good of data on energy savings [and] energy consumption…and as a result, we weren’t able to compare all of the cities in the scorecard using those energy metrics."

Most cities did substantially worse than the top performers. While Boston received 76.75 of the possible 100 points, 23 cities earned fewer than 50 points… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Mother Jones>

As a rule, the blue the area, the better the score, and the redder the area, the worse, but we already knew that would be the case, because spending money on billionaires helps only the billionaires.

How did your city do?