President Obama said Saturday that scientists must design new fuels and energy sources to curb carbon pollution, part of a larger plan that he will announce next week that is expected to include efforts to regulate emissions from coal-fired power plants.
The president says in an online video that his plan includes preparing the United States for the effects of such pollution, which has been connected to climate change, and leading other nations in such efforts.
The new details and the Environmental Protection Agency-led plan for coal-firing plants, under the Clean Air Act, comes as no surprise, considering what Obama said in 2008 while running for this first term.
“If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” he said.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-23 04:32:272013-06-23 04:32:27Obama Declares War on Global Warming, Making Good on Campaign Promise to Bankrupt Coal (+video)
HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher asked female Saudi Arabian filmmaker Haifaa al Mansour about the obstacles she encountered as a female filmmaker on Friday and spoke out against the nation’s governing religion of Islam.
Maher noted that some nations in the Middle East are becoming more conservative in regards to Islam after the Arab Spring, which, in his view, isn’t necessarily a good thing.
“The problem is, the Arab Spring kind of turned into the Arab Winter,” Maher said.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-23 04:28:482013-06-23 04:28:48Bill Maher Hammers Islam: ‘It’s the Liberals Here Who Don’t Quite Get It’ (+video)
Highlighting the split between big-business Republicans and their more socially conservative brethren, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Friday mocked Karl Rove and his allies at the super PAC American Crossroads as a bunch of out-of-touch “fat cats” who spend their time sipping drinks at country clubs.
If they paid more attention to regular people, Sessions argued on the Senate floor, Rove and his pals might have advised Mitt Romney to take a more aggressive stance on immigration, which could have put the wealthy former governor in the White House.
Instead, American Crossroads and its affiliated nonprofit, Crossroads GPS, spent more than $100 million in a losing effort that Sessions belittled.
“Now, my friend Karl Rove, from the Center for American Progress or something like that,” Sessions said in a mistaken reference to the liberal think tank, “raised a bunch of money for Crossroads to run ads in the last election that was supposed to elect Mr. Romney. Didn’t do so well, Karl. Sorry about that. Wish you’d been more effective.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-23 04:24:232013-06-23 04:24:23Senator Jeff Session Blasts Karl Rove and Country Club Republicans for Amnesty Bill (+video)
The El Dorado County Sheriff says he’s not happy with the U.S. Forest Service, so he’s stripping them of their authority by keeping them from enforcing state law within the county.
Sheriff John D’Agostini is taking the unusual step of pulling the police powers from the federal agency because he says he has received “numerous, numerous complaints.”
In a letter obtained by CBS13, the sheriff informs the federal agency that its officers will no longer be able to enforce California state law anywhere in his county.
“I take the service that we provide to the citizens of El Dorado County and the visitors to El Dorado County very seriously, and the style and manner of service we provide,” D’Agostini said. “The U.S. Forest Service, after many attempts and given many opportunities, has failed to meet that standard.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-22 05:40:002013-06-22 05:40:00Sheriff Strips Federal Forest Service of State Law Enforcement Powers (+video)
Always-unfiltered Rep. Jim McDermott penned a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller Wednesday claiming a Joint Terrorism Task Force ‘Faces of Global Terrorism’ ad is racist.
McDermott, a Democrat from Washington state, voiced his “deep concern” about the ad, which shows mug shots of international terrorists, and asked the FBI chief to “reconsider publicizing” it.
According to McDermott, the “ad featuring sixteen photos of wanted terrorists is not only offensive to Muslims and ethnic minorities, but it encourages racial and religious profiling.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-22 05:39:302013-06-22 05:39:30Dem. Congressman Says FBI’s Most-Wanted Poster is Racist, Demands that it be Changed (+video)
Controversy is heating up over an administration plan to drastically reduce the amount of federal lands available for oil shale development in the American West.
The Bush administration had set aside 1.3 million acres for oil shale and tar sands development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The new Bureau of Land Management plan cuts that amount by two-thirds, down to 700,000 acres, a decision that has prompted industry outrage.
“What they basically did was make it so that nobody is going to want to spend money going after oil shale on federal government lands,” said Dan Kish, Senior Vice President of Institute for Energy Research.
Planned Parenthood is diving into a new area of education, not without its own controversy: Obamacare.
The group’s more than 750 health centers across the country will be promoting the health law and helping women find out about new coverage options for themselves and their families before — and after — enrollment begins Oct. 1. They’re creating everything from refrigerator magnets to online apps that help people enroll in a health plan. Some affiliates will be applying to become official government-funded “navigators” to give people more hands-on help through the signup process.
Planned Parenthood says its health centers see nearly 3 million patients a year, many of them using the clinics as their primary point of care. More than nine out 10 are under age 40. About half are uninsured.
So the group sees itself as uniquely placed to reach those women, helping them get covered and serving as messengers to their families and communities. To that end, it’s training clinic staff, printing posters and pamphlets and incorporating information about the law into its educational programs.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-22 05:23:102013-06-22 05:23:10Planned Parenthood to Help Administer Obamacare (+video)
Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst and Bush-era NSA whistleblower, claimed Wednesday that the intelligence community has ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.
He also made another stunning allegation. He says the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Senate candidate Barack Obama back in 2004.
“They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial,” Tice told Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frog Post News.
He went on: “But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-21 03:58:242013-06-21 03:58:24Explosive: New NSA Whistle-Blower Claims Obama was – and Most Political/Military Leaders are – Under Surveillance (+video)
By CBSLA.com. Questions persist following the death of Michael Hastings Tuesday, after reports that the award-winning journalist told WikiLeaks the government was watching him.
WikiLeaks tweeted a message to their millions of followers Wednesday stating that the 33-year-old author and war correspondent had contacted the organization’s lawyer to say he was being watched by the FBI.
“Michael Hastings was a journalist who definitely gave the government trouble, the Pentagon trouble, so if they were surveilling him it wouldn’t be that surprising,” said friend and fellow journalist Cenk Uygur. Read more from this story HERE.
WikiLeaks says Michael Hastings contacted it just before his death. Are they implying he was murdered?
By Tim Stanley. WikiLeaks just threw some gasoline onto the conspiracy fire. On Wednesday night, they Tweeted: “Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.”
What exactly are they trying to say?
Michael Hastings was a much admired freelance journalist who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and helped to bring down General Stanley McChrystal. He was tragically killed this week in a car crash in Los Angeles, after his car hit a tree. Hastings is believed to have been alone in the vehicle. Read more from this story HERE.
My friend Michael Hastings died in Los Angeles on Tuesday. His death leaves a journalistic void, and not just the one created by the loss of a fearless reporter. Michael’s untimely death at 33 deprives Washington journalists and national security professionals of one of their favorite people to sneer at, condescend to, and ignorantly deride.
It occurred to me last night, as I stared into the drink I drank to toast my friend’s memory, that I spent more time defending Michael to colleagues, military officers, bureaucrats, tweeps and random people than I did actually talking to him in person.
You might think Michael’s track record needs no defending. He wrote an immortal Rolling Stone article that exposed a caustic military contempt for the Obama administration and which led within days to the resignation of the Afghanistan war’s commanding general, Stanley McChrystal. The coterie of national security journalists around Washington began to fear that there would be a before- and after-Hastings period in journalistic-military relations. Yet, a bit more than a month after the piece, I was in Afghanistan on an embed with the US military, without any evident post-Hastings professional reprisal.
I heard a lot about Hastings while in Afghanistan. Very little of it was from the soldiers and air force personnel I was with. Nearly all of it was from fellow journalists, and none of it was positive. How could Hastings publish off-the-record jibes made by officers who were trying to be welcoming to him, the complaints went; what kind of arrogance led him to want to make a name for himself like this? What was his problem with McChrystal, anyway? Didn’t he know McChrystal was trying to rein in the war?
As Michael would spend the rest of his life explaining – I can’t believe I’m writing those words – he didn’t publish anything that was explicitly off-the-record; but neither did he stop observing the boorish behavior of McChrystal’s senior aides while the beers flowed. There’s a reasonable professional journalistic debate to be had about what to do with material uttered by sources when they’re drunk. But I found few people were interested in chewing over that question. They simply wanted to feel superior to Hastings. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-21 03:55:442013-06-21 03:55:44Reporter Michael Hastings Consulted With WikiLeaks Lawyer, Complained About FBI Surveillance, Prior to Deadly Fiery Crash (+videos)
The petition to reopen the probe comes before the July release of a documentary — “TWA Flight 800” — that features testimony from former investigators who raise doubts about the National Transportation Safety Board’s conclusion that the crash was caused by a center fuel tank explosion, probably caused by a spark from a short-circuit in the wiring. The documentary is scheduled to air in July on the 17th anniversary of the crash.
“We don’t know who fired the missile,” said Jim Speer, an accident investigator for the Air Line Pilots Association, one of those seeking a new review of the probe. “But we have a lot more confidence that it was a missile.”
In a statement, the NTSB called the 4-year-long Flight 800 investigation among the “most detailed” in the agency’s history. The accident report covered 400 pages and had 17,000 pages of supporting material.
The NTSB said that the probable-cause findings only could be reconsidered based on “the discovery of new evidence or on a showing that the board’s findings are erroneous.”
Those calling for a review of the investigation include former NTSB accident investigator Hank Hughes and Bob Young, a former senior accident investigator for the now-defunct TWA. Tom Stalcup, a physicist and co-founder of a group called Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization, also questions the NTSB’s original findings and is featured prominently in the documentary.
