Links

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/john-mccain-dead-arizona-senator-dies-at-81-1137291
Aug. 25, 2018
John McCain, the six-term Arizona senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee, died on Aug. 25 at his Arizona ranch with his family after a battle with brain cancer. He was 81.
McCain had recently decided to discontinue medical treatment. Though McCain had "surpassed expectations for survival," the family said in an Aug. 24 statement about the decision that "the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict." 


[I'm sad for him and his family. I disagreed with much of his politics, but I honored his decency and true patriotism.]
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/24/politics/john-mccain-cancer-treatment/index.html
Aug. 24, 2018
Sen. John McCain has decided to stop treatment for the brain cancer he has been battling for over a year, his family said Friday in an announcement that precipitated a rare moment of bipartisan empathy in honor of the Vietnam war hero and Republican political veteran.


https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-secular-life/201410/secular-societies-fare-better-religious-societies
Oct 13, 2014
Secular Societies Fare Better Than Religious Societies


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epa-admits-new-emissions-plan-could-cause-1400-premature-deaths-a-year/
Aug. 21, 2018
A 289-page EPA report released Tuesday provides details on the impact of the Trump administration's Affordable Clean Energy rule, which would reverse Obama-era cuts to power plant carbon pollution. The EPA acknowledges that the proposed plan is expected to "increase emissions of carbon dioxide" and "increase the level of emissions of certain pollutants in the atmosphere that adversely affect human health," as compared to the projections for Obama's plan.
The report includes tables showing that, by the EPA's own analysis, the most likely outcome of the new rule would result in 470 to 1,400 additional premature deaths annually by 2030.
The increase in pollutants is also expected to bring up to 96,000 new cases of exacerbated asthma by 2030, the EPA's figures show. Air pollution-related health problems could cause up to 48,000 lost work days and 140,000 lost school days per year, the report says.


http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-meeting-changed-republicans-minds-about-kavanaugh-documents?cid=sm_fb_maddow
Aug. 20, 2018
The reference to Kavanaugh’s work as Bush’s White House staff secretary is important because it offers a behind-the-scenes peek: the Senate GOP leader apparently saw this part of Kavanaugh’s background as the sort of thing that would be scrutinized as part of a confirmation process. And yet, soon after, Senate Republicans agreed that this part of Kavanaugh’s professional background would be excluded from the Judiciary Committee’s document request.
So what happened? Evidently, a White House meeting happened.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), on Friday, asked White House Counsel Don McGahn for information on a pivotal July 24, 2018, meeting with Judiciary Committee Republicans that shaped their document request. Prior to the private meeting, Republican leadership seemed poised to request records that Judge Kavanaugh authored, generated, or contributed to as White House Staff Secretary.
In an abrupt change of course after the meeting, Republicans refused to request any of Judge Kavanaugh’s records from his three years as Staff Secretary and Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley omitted all of Kavanagh’s Staff Secretary records from his request to the National Archives.
Senator Leahy believes the American people deserve to know why certain staff secretary records were fair game going into the private meeting and off the table coming out.


Joke seen on Facebook:
If 666 is evil, then technically, 25.80697580112788 is the root of all evil.


https://hbr.org/2018/08/dealing-with-disappointment
Aug. 22, 2018
Dealing with Disappointment


https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/08/25/donald-trump-labor-unions-court-strikes-down-three-executive-orders/1098451002/
Aug. 25, 2018
A federal judge struck down significant sections of three executive orders on government workers, dealing a blow to President Donald Trump's attempts to curtail the power of labor unions representing federal employees. 
In an opinion Saturday, U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said Trump exceeded his authority because Congress has established collective bargaining rights for federal employees through the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act.


http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/403570-ex-trump-doorman-releases-contract-with-national-enquirer-publisher
Aug. 25, 2018
David Pecker, the CEO of AMI [American Media Inc., whose publicationsns include the National Enquirer], has been granted immunity by prosecutors investigating Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, who last week pleaded guilty to a number of federal charges, including making or abetting campaign finance violations.
Pecker, a longtime friend of the president’s, reportedly possessed a safe full of damaging stories on Trump that the company had purchased the rights to and “killed” in the months ahead of the 2016 election.
Cohen told prosecutors that he "cause[d]" an illegal campaign contribution in 2016, around the same time that AMI, allegedly in coordination with Cohen, reportedly paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 in a separate catch-and-kill agreement about an affair she claimed to have with Trump.
Cohen also admitted to making an "excessive" campaign contribution on the same day he arranged a $130,000 payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels. He said that he made the payment at the request of the candidate for federal office [Donald Trump].


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/24/climate-change-is-melting-the-french-alps-say-mountaineers
Aug. 24, 2018
One of the consequences of climate change is the ongoing retreat of glaciers.
“In the Alps, the glacier surfaces have shrunk by half between 1900 and 2012 with a strong acceleration of the melting processes since the 1980s,” says Jacques Mourey, a climber and scientist who is researching the impact of climate change on the mountains above Chamonix.
The most dramatic demonstration of glacial retreat is shown by the Mer de Glace, the biggest glacier in France and one of Chamonix’s biggest tourist hotspots which would now be unrecognisable to the Edwardian tourists who first flocked there.
“The Mer de Glace is now melting at the rate of around 40 metres a year and has lost 80m in depth over the last 20 years alone,” says glaciologist Luc Moreau.
A stark consequence of the melting Mer de Glace is that 100m of ladders have now been bolted onto the newly exposed vertical rock walls for mountaineers to climb down onto the glacier.
“A 1970s climbing and mountaineering guidebook to the 100 best routes around Mont Blanc isn’t useable any more as most of the routes have changed and can’t be used,” he says.