Flint, Michigan motivated an entire country.

There has been some random violence lately, a 17 year old is dead because of a bullet through his head while riding his bicycle and there was a lock down of a school when shots were heard.

Guns and violence do not solve problems. I am sorry to hear such issues exist in a town still trying to recover from an abuse of government. This is not the way to do it. Burning a truck is not the way to do this.

For as hard as it is being in Flint and realizing the tragedy that occurred; Flint was a wake up call to the country. Since this tragedy there are people all over this country asking questions. Flint's tragedy is now saving lives. An example is Waco, Texas which ignored lead findings in water two years ago. (click here) Waco still has lead paint leaching into ground water. Do you know how long ago it was that lead in paint was banned?

The picture is "White Lead" paint. White paint with a lead base. Look closely, it says it right on the label, "Basic Carbonate White Lead." 1978. That was the year lead in paint was banned and it is still in the living environment of children in Waco, Texas. Flint is do this. Flint is making people pay attention to injustice. It is happening around the country because Flint's problem is so very heinous and unnecessary. Flint, Michigan has every reason to be proud of standing up for justice. The people of Flint have a great Mayor. The people need to unite in recognizing the difference they have made in lives across this entire country.

May 12, 2017
By Ron Fonger

Flint, MI -- Vandals burned a truck (click here) and smashed windows of vehicles set to replace water service lines on Friday, May 12, setting back work that's being done on Flint's north side.

Mayor Karen Weaver said a crew with WT Stevens Construction Inc. discovered the damage when they showed up at a staging area where equipment had been left in a parking lot behind the shuttered Bryant Elementary School.

"I don't know what a motive could be," Weaver said at the site on East Pierson Road in Flint's 1st Ward. "When they are caught, they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Police and Stevens employees were also on the scene Friday, assessing the damage and looking for clues....

What's new with Russia, Rex? Arctic drilling? So much for sanctions.

First get rid of Comey, then meet with Russian Foreign Minister followed by flight to Alaska to insure drilling territory; while Russia is building up it's military affront to the USA in the Arctic Ocean.

How do you spell ignoramus? ExxonMobile, that is how you spell it. Under the guise of oil cooperation the Russians are repopulating it's military capacity against the USA.

May 12, 2017

Fairbanks, Alaska (Reuters) - As foreign ministers (click here) from countries with territory in the far North celebrated an agreement on fighting climate change this week, one topic seethed below the surface: growing competition for Arctic resources and sea lanes as the ice melts.

Russia, one of eight members of the Arctic Council which includes the United States, Canada and the Nordic countries, has been pouring money and missiles into the Arctic as well as reopening and building bases there. This is bringing its Arctic military presence to the highest level since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

Although the Arctic Council does not officially consider security issues, the topic was on the minds of policy makers....

No apologies, Crimea is under siege by Russia. Let's get this straight. The Russians don't need oil. It is ExxonMobile that needs money.

12 May 2017
A fighter jet (click here) was scrambled to intercept a US reconnaissance plane over neutral waters of the Black Sea on May 9, the Russian Defense Ministry revealed on Friday.

“After approaching a plane at a safe distance the Russian pilot visually identified the flying object as a US surveillance plane P-8A Poseidon,” the Russian military said.

The Russian pilot “greeted” the US pilots with a special maneuver, after which the US plane changed its course away from the Russian border....

Kodiak Island is within the continental United States. What were Russian jet fighters doing buzzing Gizzly Bears?

...Indeed, these incidents are not rare. In April, two Russian Tu-95 planes were intercepted by US F-22s, about 100 miles from Alaska’s Kodiak Island, and the Pentagon said the Russian bombers were escorted for the full 12 minutes by US jets as they were in international airspace, with spokesman Navy Commander Gary Ross noting their “safe and professional” conduct.

In February, two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers were monitored by Royal Air Force jets northeast of Britain.

Moscow has repeatedly expressed surprise at such zealous attention given by NATO members to routine operations.

Russian nuclear weapons can easily be delivered to the lower 48 without a problem from flying over Kodiak, Alaska. The USA military was asleep at the switch and/or distracted completely by North Korea.

Where was everybody!?!?!? I know where the residents of the island were.

Jeff Sessions is out of line and shows his racist leanings in a speech he made today. I am surprised everyone in the room didn't fall asleep for the length of time it took.

All Sessions had to do was give police a few atta-boys and leave the stage. But, no, not him. He had to give a speech that nearly rewrote the USA Constitution.

He is so old world in his ideas of justice, it is hard to understand why Columbus wasn't arrested when he arrived on North American shores.



May 12, 2017
By Colin Dwyer

...He elaborated (click here) on the memo in a brief speech to the Sergeants Benevolent Association of New York City, which honored him with an award Friday in Washington, D.C.

"Charging and sentencing recommendations are bedrock responsibilities of any prosecutor. And I trust our prosecutors in the field to make good judgments," Sessions said. "They deserve to be unhandcuffed and not micromanaged from Washington."

Holder had asked prosecutors to avoid slapping nonviolent drug offenders with crimes that carried mandatory minimum sentences, practices that, as NPR's Tamara Keith explains, "give judges and prosecutors little discretion over the length of a prison term if a suspect is convicted." Holder's recommendation had been aimed partly at helping reduce burgeoning prison populations in the U.S....

I am not surprised by this vote and no one else should be either. The petroleum industry has been completely remiss in protecting human life.

Pruitt's nomination for the EPA was narrowly approved. He should pay attention to that. The Republicans that voted with Democrats knew it was the right thing to do and have political capital. 

May 10, 2017
By Juliet Eilperin and Chelsea Harvey

The site (click here) of the massive natural gas leak, near Los Angeles.

The Senate on Wednesday (click here) narrowly blocked a resolution to repeal an Obama-era rule restricting methane emissions from drilling operations on public lands — with three Republicans joining every Democrat to preserve the rule.

The 51-to-49 vote on a procedural motion marked the first time since Trump’s election that Republicans have failed in their attempt to use the Congressional Review Act to overturn Obama-era rules. Thirteen other resolutions, based on the 1996 law that allows Congress to overturn rules within 60 legislative workdays of their adoption, have succeeded.

Thursday is the deadline for using the Congressional Review Act this way.

The methane emissions rule, issued by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management in November, addresses a potent greenhouse gas that is accelerating climate change.

The rule would force oil and gas companies to capture methane that had been previously burned off or “flared” at drilling sites. According to federal estimates, the rule would prevent roughly 180,000 tons a year of methane from escaping into the atmosphere and would boost federal revenue between $3 million and $13 million a year because firms only pay royalties on the oil and gas they capture and contain.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) unexpectedly voted no against a motion to proceed with consideration of the resolution, along with GOP Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.). Two Democrats who had considered backing the rule’s elimination — Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia — voted against the motion, and sent a letter asking Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to make it less burdensome....

The California leak was the largest in USA history.

...On Wednesday California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency and called for "all necessary and viable actions" to stop it.

More than 10,000 people have been moved from their homes and many people have reported nausea and headaches.

A further estimated 7,000 are now in the evacuation process, according to SoCal Gas....

The leak displaced an entire town and buildings had to be closed. If that isn't enough the area was highly explosive and the gas company lucked out nothing exploded. I can only imagine the emergency managers running around turning off every lit gas flame in every oven or water heater in the city. IT WAS CRAZY!

And what did Southern Cal say? "It says the gas being pumped into the atmosphere, which includes methane, is not a threat to public safety."

The corruption under Pruitt is thicker than pea soup.

February 22, 2017
By Alexander C. Kaufman, Ben Walsh, Chris D'Angelo

...The public release of the emails (click here) was ordered last week by a judge in Oklahoma and comes just five days after the Senate narrowly voted to confirm Pruitt as EPA administrator. Pruitt’s nomination faced fierce protests from environmentalists and some Democrats, who argued that his confirmation vote should be delayed until after the release of the emails.

The emails reveal a chummy relationship between Pruitt and the companies whose pollution he’s now tasked with reining in. The document dump sheds new light on Pruitt’s frequent strategizing with Devon Energy Corporation, the Oklahoma City-based oil and gas giant. Pruitt’s ties to the company, uncovered in a similar email dump published in 2014 by The New York Times, became a flashpoint during his confirmation process. In particular, critics railed against Pruitt’s 2011 decision to allow the company to write a three-page complaint to the EPA under his letterhead....

Who care if Trump has tapes. This is the country.

May 12, 2017
By Phillip Bump

We have more (click here) than enough evidence that he's vile and unfit for the presidency.

President Trump (click here) issued a not-terribly-veiled threat to former FBI director James B. Comey in a tweet Friday morning.

For a guy who has spent the past week being compared to Richard Nixon for firing a man who was investigating his campaign, it was an odd threat to level. Nixon, of course, was undone in part by the things that he recorded himself saying in the Oval Office. Which raises an interesting question: Do presidents still record those conversations? Does Trump?...

Comey can only improve his reputation and game from here. He violated the instructions from US Attorney General Loretta Lynch. There isn't anything he can do on any tape that is going to worse than his compete disregard of American protocol in regard to elections. 

If Comey knows something he needs to say something !

Is it known the attacks resulted from a program exclusively operated by the USA?

May 12, 2017

By Dan Bilefsky and Nicole Perlroth

London — Hackers using a tool stolen (click here) from the United States government conducted extensive cyberattacks on Friday that hit dozens of countries around the world, severely disrupting Britain’s public health system and wreaking havoc on computers elsewhere, including Russia.

Hospitals in Britain appeared to be the most severely affected by the attacks, which aimed to blackmail computer users by seizing their data. The attacks blocked doctors’ access to patient files and forced emergency rooms to divert people seeking urgent care.

Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity firm, said it had recorded at least 45,000 attacks in as many as 74 countries.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attacks, but the acts deeply alarmed cybersecurity experts and underscored the enormous vulnerabilities faced by disjointed networks of computer systems around the world....

It seems to me no matter the creator of the attacks, it was recognizing a widely used security software. Snowden would not know the program in question? This can't be that much of a mystery. There have to be common denominators somewhere.

I think it was Russia and it's secret weapons, Mr. Snowden. I have stated over and over it is foolish not to bring him home. The USA should be negotiating with his legal team to end this mess.

17 December 2015

Russian software security giant Kaspersky Lab (click here) has formed a strategic partnership with a Chinese state-own company as Beijing and Moscow work more closely in policing their cyberspace.

The deal was signed on Wednesday at one of the panel meetings of China’s second World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province.

Hours before the meeting, President Xi Jinping  gave a keynote speech stressing the need for a new set of global rules on the use of the internet and the importance of respecting cyber-sovereignty. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who also attended the event, supported Xi.

At the internet security panel meeting in the afternoon, Eugene Kaspersky – founder of the Russian software security giant that bears his name – signed a deal with the China Cyber Security Company. The two sides did not elaborate on the extent of their cooperation....