Daily Kos

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/dnUFSz4BHDI/-Obama-touts-education-programs-in-weekly-address

In a global economy, we’ve got to help ensure that everyone, of every age, in every zip code—urban and rural—has the chance to learn the skills that lead directly to a good job.

President Obama touted his education initiatives in this morning's weekly address, including high-speed internet in schools and free community college. Delivering the address from a public library where he had met with students, Obama said:

All of us have a responsibility to not only make sure our own children have pathways to success but that all children do. And a great education is the ticket to a better life like never before. Making sure all our kids receive one is the surest way to show them that their lives matter. And it’s the smartest way to prove to them that in communities like this, and in a country like ours, we believe in opportunity for all.

To read the transcript in full, check below the fold or visit the White House website.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/qcLYJ2-Jgso/-This-week-in-science-stardrive

There is great excitement in some corners of the space exploration community this week, as several NASA people opened up a discussion with engineers and others outside the agency over a mysterious, possibly radically new type of engine:  

After consistent reports of thrust measurements from EM Drive experiments in the US, UK, and China – at thrust levels several thousand times in excess of a photon rocket, and now under hard vacuum conditions – the question of where the thrust is coming from deserves serious inquiry.

Applications: The applications of such a propulsion drive are multi-fold, ranging from low Earth orbit (LEO) operations, to transit missions to the Moon, Mars, and the outer solar system, to multi-generation spaceships for interstellar travel.

Under these application considerations, the closest-to-home potential use of EM Drive technology would be for LEO space stations – such as the International Space Station.

Be hopeful, but cautious, and remember cold fusion. It's not at all clear if this thing really works, yet. Even if it pans out in the most ideal way, a lot of hurdles would have to be cleared before a souped up version could be designed.

But in theory, a drive that can accelerate and decelerate up to say, a middling 50-100 miles per second, within a few weeks, and that doesn't have to carry the fuel on board to do so, would open up our solar system in much the same way advances in wind power and navigation enabled the systematic exploration of the Earth's surface during the Age of Discovery starting about 500 years ago.  

• Science writer Jennifer Ouellette has a flair for fearlessly tackling some of the most complex topics in physics and cosmology with superb writing and top-notch research. Here she dives into a classic form of analysis on a classic paradox in physics and a related, mind-bending idea, written for the benefit of the layperson, and one that we'll flesh out more tomorrow on Sunday Kos, called the holographic principle.
• Health care is part science, part policy, a bunch of inside baseball from the insurance industry, and a ton of politics these days. Which is why I never miss a post by Richard Mayhew over at Balloon Juice on those topics. I almost always learn something from him.
• NASA's Messenger Mercury spacecraft intentionally ended its life this week when it finally ran out of fuel for station keeping and plunged into that dense little planet. Craters on Mercury are named after artists and writers, even Tolkien has one! Messenger left a small, respectable crater behind, who do you think should get the honor?
• Blue Origins rockets into the private space-race:

  Three weeks after revealing that its liquid hydrogen- and liquid oxygen-fueled rocket engine was ready to fly, Blue Origin, a startup space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, launched its New Shepard spaceship on its first flight into suborbital space, the company said Thursday.

  Powered by the recently completed BE-3 engine, the rocket blasted off from Blue’s privately owned test site in West Texas on Wednesday (the time was not disclosed) and soared almost to the edge of space 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the planet.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/kQRqPaQNwnw/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up-Chris-Christie-s-end-will-be-bitter-and-messy

NY Times:

No matter how Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey spins the George Washington Bridge scandal as he eyes a run for president, one thing should be clear: These are his people, charged with a conspiracy to exact revenge against a local mayor by closing lanes to one of the world’s busiest bridges.

There have been plenty of pundits refusing to admit Chris Christie is toast (I'm not one of them.) But the end game is upon us.

NY Times:

Brigid Harrison, a professor of political science at Montclair State University who has studied Mr. Christie closely for years, said the indictments of Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, once two of the governor’s most loyal and trusted lieutenants, spelled the death knell for his national aspirations.

“Even if he is not directly connected to the indictments,” Professor Harrison said, “he is guilty of creating a political culture in which corruption was allowed to flourish.”

Mr. Christie faces the specter of a lengthy and embarrassing criminal trial overshadowing the 2016 presidential campaign, in which the star witness — David Wildstein, a onetime Christie loyalist who pleaded guilty on Friday to two counts of conspiracy — still maintains the governor was aware of the lane-closing plot as it happened.

Nate Cohn on Bernie Sanders' political issues:

The presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont and self-described socialist who will most likely champion the liberal cause, won’t change that fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton is poised to win the Democratic nomination without a serious contest.

That’s true even though the Democratic Party’s liberal activist base, which strongly opposed her bid in 2008, has considerable reservations about her ties to Wall Street, her foreign policy, the recent allegations about foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and the revelations about the private email account and server she used when she was the secretary of state.

This is mainly because of Mr. Sanders’s own weaknesses as a candidate and Mrs. Clinton’s strengths. But there is another, strangely simple reason Mrs. Clinton will have an easy road to the nomination: The left wing of the Democratic Party just isn’t big enough to support a challenge to the left of a mainstream liberal Democrat like Mrs. Clinton.

I love Bernie, and I'm glad he's running. But political reality is what it is.

More politics and policy below the fold.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/MiTVGzZpgzo/-Open-thread-for-night-owls-FAIR-takes-on-economist-pundit-who-disappeared-economist-critics-of-TPP

At Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Jim Naureckaswrites NYT Lets Economic Pundit Disappear TPP’s Economist Critics:

The New York Times (4/24/15) handed its readers an exploding cigar this weekend–in the form of an “Economic View” piece by Greg Mankiw headlined “Economists Actually Agree on This: The Wisdom of Free Trade.” In this piece, Mankiw–an economic adviser to George W. Bush and Mitt Romney who writes regularly for the Times–put forward an argument in favor of fast-tracking the TPP and TIPP trade pacts whose logic was so tortured it might shock Dick Cheney.

“The issue at hand,” wrote Mankiw, is whether Congress will give President Obama “fast track” authority to negotiate a trade deal with our trading partners in the Pacific…. Among economists, the issue is a no-brainer…. Economists are famous for disagreeing with one another…. But economists reach near unanimity on some topics, including international trade.

So all economists are for TPP because TPP is a “free trade” bill and all economists are for “free trade.” Simple, right? The only reason Congress wouldn’t pass fast track, Mankiw suggests, is if politicians listened to voters who were “worse than ignorant about the principles of good policy.”

You would never know, reading Mankiw’s piece, that many economists in factoppose TPP and fast track. Or that economists can and do reject the characterization of TPP and the like as “free trade” bills. Or that there is no consensus in the economics field that free trade necessarily benefits most people. [...]

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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005—Buffett: Thumbs Down on Bush's SS Piratization:

Warren Buffet doesn't think much of Bush's SS scam. This quote below is from the Omaha World-Herald (registration required):

Warren Buffett, the 74-year-old chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, and his 81-year-old partner, Charlie Munger, launched an impassioned defense of Social Security at the company's annual meeting Saturday, with Munger terming Republican efforts to overhaul the program "twaddle."

While they did not directly discuss President Bush's proposal to allow Americans to divert some of their Social Security taxes to individual investment accounts, Buffett and Munger said the country faces far more pressing problems than the projected Social Security insolvency in 40 or 50 years. [...]
Munger, who called himself a "right-wing Republican," said, "Republicans are out of their cotton-picking minds to be taking on this issue now. "Munger cited nuclear tensions with North Korea and Iran as issues the administration should be working on instead of "wasting its good will over some twaddle." [...]

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Tweet of the Day

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On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Capitol GunFAIL! Greg Dworkin rounds up Bridgegate, Sanders, Republican demands for work requirements for Medicaid expansion, Rick Scott's continuing contortions, and Jeb's Charles Murray fandom. The invasion of TX is underway. Conservatives prepare their gay marriage freak-out. A near "perfect storm" of GunFAIL: school cop shoots himself with a derringer in his pocket while at Walmart. Armando on VT's GMO labeling law & TPP, plus Dickerson's thoughts on Sanders. More on ShotSpotter; Samsung's TV that listens to you; the surveillance we "volunteer" for, and; how Motel 6 reportedly started faxing all its guests' names to the cops!

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High Impact Posts • Top Comments The Evening Blues

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/atuUwzNHgLU/-Cheers-and-Jeers-Rum-and-Coke-FRIDAY

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

Late Night Snark: May Flowers Edition

"Violent thugs run amok in the streets of Baltimore. But enough about the police department."
---Larry Wilmore

Chief Justice John Roberts at Tuesday's marriage hearing: Every definition that I looked up, prior to about a dozen years ago, defined marriage as unity between a man and a woman as husband and wife. … You’re not seeking to join the institution, you’re seeking to change what the institution is.

Jon Stewart: The institution of marriage has almost never not been changing! Before the last century, marriage wasn't "one man and one woman." It was "one man and his new piece of vagina property." Change can be good!
---The Daily Show

Aaagh! These mystery alien invaders are popping
out of the ground in Maine! Run for your lives
while I beat them over the head with a stick!

"Donald Trump may be running for president. He said he is sick and tired of the rest of the world laughing at the United States. Well, President Trump will certainly put an end to that!"
---David Letterman

"While covering the earthquake in Nepal this week, CNN correspondent Sanjay Gupta helped medical personnel perform brain surgery. Gupta said he was excited to work with brains again after being at CNN for so long."
---Seth Meyers

"I'm not going to tell you politicians how to do politics. That would be like you guys telling me what to do with my body."
---Cecily Strong at the WH Correspondents Dinner

"A U.N. study claims the happiest country in the world is Switzerland. When asked why they're so happy, Swiss people couldn't answer because their hands were counting money and their mouths were full of chocolate."
---Conan O'Brien

And one year ago on The Daily Show, this classic:

Clip of rancher Cliven Bundy defending his racist comments: If I say 'negro' or 'black boy' or 'slave' [and] those people can not take those kind of words and not be offended, then Martin Luther King hasn’t done his job yet.

Jon Stewart: Yeah…it's his fault! Why did that guy quit before finishing his job? Somebody should call him and tell him to stop slacking and get back to work.

Don't forget that the U.S. military will be occupying Daily Kos tomorrow from 11amET/8amPT until whenever we boot 'em out and ring them freedom bells from Concord Bridge in New Hampshire.  Meanwhile, your west coast-friendly edition of  Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/PMtVf93hukc/-Cartoon-Trans-Pacific-speculation

Click to enlarge.

The portions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that have been leaked show that it's a giveaway to corporate interests. Only legislators and lobbyists have seen the whole thing, and most of them want to "fast-track" it to prevent amendments and keep the pesky public from commenting on its terribleness.

If the minutiae of trade deals seems too arcane, Robert Reich has a very quick and helpful video about why the TPP is a bad deal for everyone who isn't a multinational corporate person.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/qq1En1m32AE/-House-committee-passes-bill-to-curtail-mass-nbsp-surveillance

The House Judiciary Committee struck a blow against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell this week. McConnell is trying to force a five-year extension of the Patriot Act, without any revision of the controversial bulk data collection provision. But a growing number of members in both the House and Senate are likely to thwart him.

On Thursday, a bill that would overhaul the Patriot Act and curtail the so-called metadata surveillance exposed by Edward J. Snowden was overwhelmingly passed by the House Judiciary Committee and was heading to almost certain passage in that chamber this month.

An identical bill in the Senate—introduced with the support of five Republicans—is gaining support over the objection of Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who is facing the prospect of his first policy defeat since ascending this year to majority leader. […]

The debate has resulted in a highly unusual alliance of House Speaker John A. Boehner, the White House, the Tea Party and a bipartisan majority in the House. They are in opposition to Mr. McConnell, his Intelligence Committee chairman, and a small group of defense hawks. In addition, two Republican presidential candidates in the Senate, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have made it clear they will not accept a straight extension of the current Patriot Act.

The legislation would end bulk collection, but still request that phone companies hold on to records that would have to be accessed with a court order. So that still allows for a more narrow or targeted collection, the bill's authors say, and would still allow for the tracking of U.S. residents in communication with suspected terrorists.

The big question is how much leeway is still going to be included in that "narrower" collection program. When it comes to actually calling records, it does seem to narrow the process down enough to "ensure only specific individuals, accounts, and devices qualify as specific selection terms." Selection terms are what the NSA uses to query a database, or set up a collection system. But beyond calling records, the legislation seems to allow for broader selection terms. This version of the legislation has also lost the "super minimization" requirements in last year's version of the bill, which very narrowly failed in the Senate. Minimization is the requirement that any collected information that doesn't pertain directly to an investigation be deleted. Those procedures weren't included this time and should be in the amendment process on either side of the Hill.

The bill is certainly better than McConnell's alternative, but could be made an awful lot stronger in the amendment process. In fact, Section 215—the provision that the FISA court interpreted to allow for bulk collection—should be allowed to sunset as the original law's authors intended.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/I48MSSTzq3Q/-Baltimore-s-curfew-hits-service-workers-and-small-businesses-hard

If you work something close to a 9-5 schedule, a 10 p.m. curfew may be a drag. It may cramp your style on the weekend. But it's unlikely to threaten your livelihood. Thing is, the American economy does not operate on a 9-5 schedule, and Baltimore's curfew means loss of income for restaurants, bars, and other businesses and for the workers who staff them, among other potential problems:

"With a curfew, you will do more damage financially to our bars and restaurants than rioters will do," writes Liam Flynn, proprietor of Liam Flynn's Ale House, a Station North tavern not far from the CVS burned on Monday night, in an open letter to the mayor. "We have insurance for vandalism, not loss of revenue."

For Hong's part, the Thames Street Oyster House is stopping its dinner service at 7:30 p.m. While the restaurant could stay open later, Hong says he's concerned that his workers get home on time—no mean feat, given bus-service interruptions and road closures, especially in West Baltimore. Plus the hassle could be a problem for some workers.

"The mayor stated that, if you are stopped in violation of the curfew, you would be required to show an ID and a letter from your employer stating that you are traveling to or from work. I'm sure this is true across the service industry," Hong says, "but some of the staff might not have IDs that they can just pull out, whether it's due to immigration status or other concerns."

A local bartender tells Citylab's Kriston Capps that his income has fallen to one-fifth of his usual take ... and that's with the weekend coming. It's not just income and problems getting too and from work, either. An emergency-room nurse told Capps that "Emergency care is primary care for a lot of people in Baltimore" and a decline in overnight visits suggested that some people were delaying care for things they'd normally want treated.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/maSJd9gnQqc/-DOT-issues-oil-train-rules-Industry-objects-Other-critics-say-rules-too-weak-and-deadline-too-slow

The Obama administration issued the final rules on oil trains Friday. The action by the Department of Transportation was spurred after several oil train derailments have caused numerous fatalities and injuries and well over a billion dollars worth of damage and clean-up costs in the United States and Canada. Moving crude oil by rail has soared from fewer than 10,000 carloads in 2008 to about 500,000 in 2014.

Here's Kate Sheppard on the matter:

The rule, from DOT's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Federal Railroad Administration, applies to “high-hazard flammable trains"—that is, those with a continuous row of 20 or more tank cars loaded with flammable liquids, or those carrying a total of 35 or more tank cars with flammable liquids.

New tank cars built after Oct. 1 to carry high-hazard flammable fluids will be required to have walls 9/16th-inch thick instead of the the half-inch thickness both the oil and railroad industries wanted. The thicker the wall, the less oil that can be carried. Electronically controlled pneumatic brakes must be used on most trains carrying high-hazard flammable fluids by 2021 and all such trains by 2023 at the latest. The rules make permanent a provisional DOT rule previously imposed that requires all trains containing one or more tank cars of the older design to travel 40 mph in urban areas. Top speed for all crude oil trains will be 50 mph. There are also routing mandates.

The railroad lobby immediately trashed the action, labeling the them a "rash rush to judgment." At the same time, Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington called the rules too weak:

“The new DOT rule is just like saying let the oil trains roll. It does nothing to address explosive volatility, very little to reduce the threat of rail car punctures, and is too slow on the removal of the most dangerous cars. It’s more of a status quo rule than the real safety changes needed to protect the public and first responders.”

Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin agreed with Cantwell and complained, as did Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, about the speed with which the replacement cars will be substituted.

Edward R. Hamberger, president and CEO of the American Association of Railroads responded with a sharply worded complaint about the requirement for electronically controlled pneumatic brakes:

“First and foremost, the DOT has no substantial evidence to support a safety justification for mandating ECP brakes, which will not prevent accidents. The DOT couldn’t make a safety case for ECP but forged ahead anyhow. This is an imprudent decision made without supporting data or analysis. I have a hard time believing the determination to impose ECP brakes is anything but a rash rush to judgment.”

Acting Federal Railroad Administrator Sarah Feinberg responded: “We are not an agency with a goal of making things convenient or inexpensive for industry,” she said. “Our entire goal and mission is safety.” She knows all too well that when safety collides with the bottom line, it's a rare day industry fails to object.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/MvJR-HLmNUA/-Midday-open-thread-Tesla-home-battery-unveiled-1-in-6-species-at-risk-where-s-Aaron-Schock

On Saturday at 8 AM PT, the tech team will be moving Daily Kos from its current web host to Amazon's Web Services. We'll be taking the site down for an estimated one to three hours while we move our data over to the new servers and update the DNS (the system that tells your browser where our servers are when you ask for a page from dailykos.com). The DNS changes could take different amounts of time for people in different regions of the country (or parts of the world).

• Today's comic by Mark Fiore is Commander-in-Drone:
  
• What's coming up on Sunday Kos ...
  

  • 'Sir, are you injured anywhere?' vs. 'f*ck your breath'. Only one kind of approach provokes riots, by Ian Reifowitz
  • Reclaiming secularism is the key to protecting religious liberty, by Jon Perr
  • On "riots" and roots, by Denise Oliver Velez
  • The White House Correspondents' Dinner: America's political saturnalia, by Dante Atkins
  • The most racist areas in the United States, by Susan Grigsby
  • Happy Birthday, Customer, by Mark E Andersen
  • Do we all live in a giant hologram, by DarkSyde
  • Hillary Clinton on Foreign Policy : Critical Perspectives from the Left, by koNko
  • A constitutional amendment is the only solution to our fraudulent politics, by Egberto Willies

• Tesla announces its residential battery:

  The residential battery, called the Powerwall, is available to installers in 10 kilowatt hours (kWh) or 7kWh sized at $3,500 and $3,000, respectively, and is available online now. The business version is not yet available.

  In a Tweet on Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk referred to batteries as “The Missing Piece” in order “for the future to be good.”

• R&B legend Ben E. King dead at 76:

  King started his career in the late 1950s with The Drifters, singing hits including There Goes My Baby and Save The Last Dance For Me. After going solo, he hit the US top five with Stand By Me in 1961.

  Fellow musician Gary US Bonds wrote on Facebook that King was "one of the sweetest, gentlest and gifted souls that I have had the privilege of knowing and calling my friend for more than 50 years".

• 
  Photo by 26-year-old Devin Allen lands on the cover of Time:

  “For me, who’s from Baltimore city, to be on the cover of Time Magazine, I don’t even know what to say. I’m speechless,” Allen told Time. “It’s amazing. It’s life changing for me. It’s inspiring me to go further. It gives me hope and it gives a lot of people around me hope. After my daughter, who’s my pride and joy, this is the best thing that’s happened to me.”

  Here's an interview with him.
• Satellite detects lowering of Everest and raising of Kathmandu:

  The first good view of the aftermath of Nepal's deadly earthquake from a satellite reveals that a broad swath of ground near Kathmandu lifted vertically, by about 3 feet (1 meter), which could explain why damage in the city was so severe. The data also indicate the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, got a wee bit shorter.

• 1 in 6 species at risk from global warming:

  If global warming continues unabated, up to 1 in 6 species on Earth could face extinction, scientists report in the May 1 Science. [...]

  With current warming, about 2.8 percent of species worldwide are at risk of extinction. If global temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, 5.2 percent of species will face extinction. If temperatures rise 4.3 degrees C, about 16 percent of species will be threatened.

• First Air Force One rotting in Arizona.
• Aaron Schock disappears into the ether:

  Aaron Schock once broadcast his worldly travels on Instagram for all to see.

  But two weeks after a campaign donor filed a federal lawsuit against the former congressman, an attorney for the donor said Wednesday he can’t track the Peoria Republican down.

  Attorney Daniel Kurowski told U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood he hasn’t managed to serve Schock with the lawsuit brought April 15 by his client, Howard Foster of Chicago, who gave $500 to Schock’s campaign in 2012.

• These Daily Kos community posts were the most shared on Facebook April 30:
  

  Super El Nino Likely as Huge Warm Water Wave Hits West Coast, Extreme Marine Die Off Developing, by FishOutofWater

  2014 Election results called into question by findings of electronic voting machine security experts, by windsong01

  Rumsfeld: Looting Is Transition To Freedom, by AnnieJo

• Here's how Las Vegas protects Floyd Mayweather:

  No pictures. That’s what the biggest name in boxing, poised for one of the signature fights of his career, says over and over again when asked about the overwhelming evidence that he has a history of abusing women. Ignore the police reports, the court records, and his own plea deals, he says into the camera lens, never an ounce of doubt on his face, because there are no pictures. It’s a cliché of Internet life—pics or it didn’t happen—and one that Mayweather has leveraged into making it okay for millions of sports fans to plunk down $100 to watch him fight Manny Pacquiao without an ounce of doubt about putting money directly in the pocket of a misogynist.

• Team Blackness discusses protests, unnecessary police presence, and curfews in Baltimore. The team also discussed what was learned speaking to native Baltimoreans about the politics of the city and their everyday involvement with the police. Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher | Direct Download | RSS
• On today's Kagro in the Morning show: Capitol GunFAIL! Greg Dworkin on Bridgegate, Sanders, Medicaid expansion, the invasion of TX & more! Armando on VT's GMO labeling & the TPP, and Dickerson's thoughts on Sanders. More on ShotSpotter & other everyday surveillance.