White House restricted access to Trump's calls with Putin and Saudi crown prince - CNNPolitics

White House restricted access to Trump's calls with Putin and Saudi crown prince - CNNPolitics:

Administration officials say John Eisenberg, the White House deputy counsel for national security affairs and a national security legal adviser, directed the Ukraine transcript call be moved to the separate highly classified system, as detailed in the whistleblower complaint. That system is normally reserved for "code word" documents that are extremely sensitive, such as covert operations.

The White House acknowledged earlier Friday that administration officials directed the Ukraine call transcript be filed in a highly classified system, confirming allegations contained in the whistleblower complaint.

The Risk Trump Poses to All Americans | emptywheel

The Definition of "Collusion" as Impeachment Proceeds: the Risk Trump Poses to All Americans | emptywheel:

So not only do Americans lose out on having a President who makes decisions based on how they benefit the country rather than himself personally, but they also get a far weaker President in the bargain, someone who — if he ever decided to prioritize American interests over his own — would have already traded away his bargaining chips to do so.

Please read the whole post.

Manafort, Giuliana, Trump and Ukraine

Thread by @AshaRangappa_: "Manafort was calling the shots to WH[?]":

This is the part that was most interesting to me: The part where Fruity and Trump feel they need to “reassure” Manafort that he’ll get a pardon, like they have to keep him happy. Why? 🤔

What a tangled web...

How to Break Trump's Stonewall - The Atlantic

How to Break Trump's Stonewall - The Atlantic:

Pressed for his reaction, Ervin said Nixon’s position was “executive poppycock, akin to the divine right of kings.” Ervin declared that his committee had no intention of submitting to the suggested judicial delays, but would instead utilize the Senate’s sergeant at arms to arrest any recalcitrant White House aide, bring him to the bar of the Senate for trial, and ultimately compel him to testify.

Impeach Already

If Trump extorted a foreign leader for political gain, it’s impeachment time - The Washington Post:

This complaint was considered so troubling by a Trump-appointed inspector general that he asked that the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, immediately forward the complaint to Congress, but Maguire refused to do so, reportedly on the advice of William Barr’s Justice Department.

Everything You Need to Know About the DNI, the IG, and the Whistleblower Report - The Bulwark:

Upon receipt of the report from the IG, the DNI “shall within 7 calendar days of such receipt, forward such transmittal to the congressional intelligence committees” of Congress. “Shall” means shall. It does not mean “may” or “if the DNI agrees with the inspector general.”

George Conway and Neal K. Katyal: Trump has done plenty to warrant impeachment. But the Ukraine allegations are over the top. - The Washington Post:

So it appears that the president might have used his official powers — in particular, perhaps the threat of withholding a quarter-billion dollars in military aid — to leverage a foreign government into helping him defeat a potential political opponent in the United States.

If Trump did that, it would be the ultimate impeachable act. Trump has already done more than enough to warrant impeachment and removal with his relentless attempts, on multiple fronts, to sabotage the counterintelligence and criminal investigation by then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and to conceal evidence of those attempts. The president’s efforts were impeachable because, in committing those obstructive acts, he put his personal interests above the nation’s: He tried to stop an investigation into whether a hostile foreign power, Russia, tried to interfere with our democracy — simply because he seemed to find it personally embarrassing. Trump breached his duty of faithful execution to the nation not only because he likely broke the law but also because, through his disregard for the law, he put his self-interest first.

Trump whistleblower complaint involving Ukraine, explained - The Washington Post:

The overlapping timelines of Coats’s resignation, Maguire’s elevation and the whistleblower complaint are also raising eyebrows. Trump announced the exit of Coats, with whom he occasionally clashed, on July 28. That’s three days after his call with Zelensky. Trump announced Maguire’s selection Aug. 8. Four days later, the whistleblower complaint was filed.

Trump Whistleblower Complaint: The Obvious Problem with Rudy Giuliani's Spin on Ukraine | National Review:

There is not a Republican alive who would find it acceptable for a Democratic president to press a foreign country to work with his personal lawyer to investigate a domestic political rival.

Trump and Giuliani’s Quest for Fake Ukraine "Dirt” on Biden: An Explainer

To abstract from all of these articles: Trump should be impeached, ASAP.

1. Just Security: Trump and Giuliani’s Quest for Fake Ukraine “Dirt” on Biden: An Explainer
2. The Hill: Dem senator calls for Senate to investigate Giuliani's planned Ukraine trip
3. Washington Post: Whistleblower complaint about President Trump involves Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter
4. Washington Post: Trump tries to force Ukraine to meddle in the 2020 election
5. The Intercept: A Republican Conspiracy Theory About a Biden-in-Ukraine Scandal Has Gone Mainstream. But It Is Not True.

Give us your tired...

Thread by @Breznican:

When I got back to the office, a senior reporter said, “So you went out with Nick? How’d it go?”

“Great,” I said, not wanting to call it “boring.” “We got some good stuff.”

“What’d you think of Nick?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer this. There was expectation in the question.

Was there something wrong with Nick that I didn’t realize?

“He was cool,” I said. “Nice guy.”

The older reporter just stared at me. Reading me. “You know who he is, right?”

Leadership and Sacrifice - Against Demagoguery

My father served on D-Day. He experienced a leader who spawned hatred. - The Washington Post:

He walked by himself among the gravestones of his compatriots from the 4th Infantry Division, and eventually stopped and stood for a long time at the marker of one of his commanders, Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

Later we asked my dad why he spent the most time at Roosevelt’s grave, rather than at the resting places of his fellow infantrymen... he showed us where he had landed on Utah Beach and described seeing the general standing calmly amid the indescribable chaos of battle and firmly directing the troops ashore. He said Roosevelt’s selfless, honorable leadership heartened him and, he presumed, thousands of other terrified young soldiers on that day.

They all were war heroes — the captured, the killed, the wounded, the mentally maimed, the lucky survivors such as my dad — because of circumstance, not desire. They went to war because of what happened when xenophobia and demagoguery supplanted real leadership.

Juxtapose

Five Things I Learned From the Mueller Report

The president committed crimes.

The president also committed impeachable offenses.

Sara Kendzior: Impeachment Isn't Optional for Democrats

Sarah Kendzior laid out the case for the impeachment of Trump this morning on AMJoy, as she usually does, that it's not an optional situation for the Democrats. In her opinion, they have no choice in the matter, that the body of evidence is so clear, so obvious by now that that is the only true course of action. It's their Constitutional obligation, their actual job to have impeachment hearings on Trump.

Pelosi Warns Democrats: Stay in the Center or Trump May Contest Election Results

Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not believe President Trump can be removed through impeachment — the only way to do it, she said this week, is to defeat him in 2020 by a margin so “big” he cannot challenge the legitimacy of a Democratic victory.

(I hope she's right. This is a terrible gamble to take.)

That is something she worries about.

“We have to inoculate against that, we have to be prepared for that,” Ms. Pelosi said during an interview at the Capitol on Wednesday as she discussed her concern that Mr. Trump would not give up power voluntarily if he lost re-election by a slim margin next year.

Donald Trump Won't Say if He'll Accept Result of Election [2016]

Mr. Trump insisted, without offering evidence, that the general election has been rigged against him, and he twice refused to say that he would accept its result.

“I will look at it at the time,” Mr. Trump said. “I will keep you in suspense.”

For me this statement by itself should have disqualified Mr. Trump from the office of U.S. President. In effect he was saying he would not respect the laws which he would be required to swear to uphold.

“That’s horrifying,” Mrs. Clinton replied. “Let’s be clear about what he is saying and what that means. He is denigrating — he is talking down our democracy. And I am appalled that someone who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that position.”

Climate change: Bill McKibben’s advice for activists - Vox

Climate change: Bill McKibben’s advice for activists - Vox:

Sean Illing
I worry a lot of people have trouble connecting the dots between these food supply disruptions and the political chaos that results from them. For instance, you point out how a 2010 heat wave in Russia, which wrecked their grain harvest, led directly to the Arab Spring. How did that happen and what are similar scenarios that could play out in the near future?

Bill McKibben
That happened because the Arab world is the biggest importer of grain from eastern Europe and when the price went way up for a loaf of bread, the predictable trouble ensued. Probably an even more dire example is what happened in Syria. In the early part of this century, we had the deepest drought ever recorded in the Fertile Crescent. That drove an immense number of Syrian farmers, maybe a million farm families, off their land and into the cities.

And there’s been a lot of academic work to establish that that was one of the key things that triggered the civil war (here and here). Syria was already a brutal and unstable place, unable to cope with this massive influx of people. And so many of those people were spun out into the rest of the world where they utterly discombobulated the politics of Western Europe inside of 18 months.

So we can look at what happened in Syria and Europe and expect much more of that in the century ahead. And I think the low end is 200 million climate refugees and the high end approaches a billion. So take the kind of upheaval that the wave of refugees out of Syria created and multiply it by a couple of hundred and ask yourself how that’s going to impact war and peace, or development, or any of the other things we desperately care about?

New Mexico seeks energy savings in state building upgrades | Local News | santafenewmexican.com

New Mexico seeks energy savings in state building upgrades | Local News | santafenewmexican.com:

New Mexico is pushing forward with multimillion-dollar, energy-saving upgrades to its portfolio of agency buildings in the state capital, as part of an emerging climate-change strategy from Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

The General Services Department which oversees more than 800 buildings plans to invest $32 million on projects to improve the energy efficiency of state buildings in Santa Fe and generate on-site renewable electricity with photovoltaic solar panels.

The state government’s first battery storage for solar energy is part of the project.

State legislation approved this year provides $20 million in direct spending on the energy upgrades at state buildings.

The contractor hired to implement building improvements in Santa Fe has guaranteed energy-related savings of $1.1 million a year... The state expects actual annual savings of about $1.4 million.

Separately, General Services said it has received $1 million in state funds to purchase electric vehicles for use by state workers. Another $1.5 million is going toward the creation of vehicle charging stations at state facilities within Santa Fe County.

It's very encouraging to see all of this. Thank you, Governor Lujan Grisham.

Power without Accountability

Former Mozilla CTO was detained at US border and told he had no right to a lawyer / Boing Boing.

North Carolina Orders Duke Energy to Excavate All Coal Ash - The New York Times

Michael Shellenberger has observed that, of all current types of electricity generation, only nuclear has the cost of waste management included in its price. Now some of that cost is being rolled, almost retroactively, into the cost of electricity from coal. North Carolina Orders Duke Energy to Excavate All Coal Ash - The New York Times.

Is Nuclear Power the Key to Finally Reducing the CO2 Footprint?

NB: These are essentially the same points Michael Shellenberger makes, but they come from a different source. Is Nuclear Power the Key to Finally Reducing the CO2 Footprint?:

In about 20 years, at a cost of at least two hundred billion dollars, it has added about 80 gigawatts of wind and solar generating capacity—enough in principle to cover its winter peak—to its energy mix, an amazing feat in itself.

the International Energy Agency shows that the amount of CO2 generated per kWh of electricity in Germany is still about 480 grams, despite their large investment in wind and solar technology. The reason is that the country still relies on coal and natural gas for about half of its electricity, as its wind and solar fleet lay idle most of the time. In the meantime, France—which relies on nuclear power for 75 percent of its electricity—generated only about 70 grams of CO2 per kWh. When France decided to go nuclear after the first oil shock in 1973, it derived about two thirds of its power from coal and oil-fired power plants and emitted 500 grams of CO2 per kWh. Twenty five years later, its power sector was almost carbon-free.

Because of its reliance on nuclear power, France currently has one of the lowest rates of CO2 emissions per kWh in Europe. Every year, the French power sector emits approximately 260 million fewer tonne (metric ton) of CO2 than its German counterpart, despite similar productions (respectively 560 billion kWh and 630 billion kWh). This is equivalent to taking 175 million cars off the road (assuming an average emission of 0.15 kg-CO2 per car and per km and 10,000 km per car and per year)—about 75 percent of the whole European fleet of personal vehicles.

Delays in implementation caused by legal and regulatory issues—in particular those associated with long-term liability—are likely when it comes to choosing the sites that will have to permanently host billions of tonnes of CO2. Such delays have been happening for the geological disposal of used nuclear fuel. However, unlike used nuclear fuel, which can be safely stored at reactor sites while waiting for a final disposal solution, CO2 is currently released to the atmosphere until a final solution emerges—which could take a while.

After more than two decades spent analyzing available data, experts from institutions such as the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, concluded that 43 people died of causes directly attributable to the Chernobyl accident. They also indicate a potential 3 percent increase in cancer mortality in the 600,000 most exposed people. In such a large population, unfortunately, more than 120,000 lethal cancers are expected to occur spontaneously—independently of any radiation exposure—and the Chernobyl accident may add 4,000 cases to this macabre toll. However, a long standing issue associated with this predicted increase is that it cannot be verified with certainty because it is much smaller than—and mostly undistinguishable from—the background of spontaneous cancers.

Finally, whereas most of the general public will very likely point at the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents as the worst modern science and engineering failures, only very few will remember the 1975 collapse of the Banqiao dam (China) where approximately 26,000 people died from flooding and another 145,000 died because of epidemics and famine. Another dam, Machchu-2, in India also failed a few years later (1979) killing at least 2,000 people. Experience shows that nuclear power does not entail more risk than other industries.

Assuming a typical consumption of 7,000 kWh per year, a person living in San Francisco would be responsible for the production of about 6.2 cubic centimeters of used nuclear fuel per year weighing 18 grams if the electricity came only from a nuclear power plant. It would take about 55 years for this person to fill the equivalent of a can of soda with used nuclear fuel. So, yes, these used fuel assemblies contain very dangerous materials—standing next to one, unprotected, would kill you in a few minutes—but there is very little of it. If the same electricity had come only from a gas—natural or bio—power plant during the same 55 years, that person would have been responsible for the emission of about 190 tonnes of CO2—900,000 cans of soda or one every half-hour—and twice that amount if it had come from a coal power plant.

In New Mexico, renewables don't always mean clean energy | Local News | santafenewmexican.com

2008 brought plans to erect wind turbines across the Taos plateau. Last year long-distance transmission lines were ready to carry wind power across the bird migration routes near the Bosque del Apache. And now this: a geothermal plant may be harming an aquifer in New Mexico's Animas Valley. This is an interesting read from the Santa Fe New Mexican, about roses, tilapia, politics and energy politics: In New Mexico, renewables don't always mean clean energy | Local News | santafenewmexican.com:

Riding his horse through cattle pasture of brush and brittle mesquite, Randy Walter spotted a 10-foot geyser spewing from a well that had been capped and padlocked for 12 years.

The dark side of renewable energy is that every form of production carries its own environmental baggage.

During the 2012 legislative session, Southern New Mexico Democrats Sen. John Arthur Smith and Rep. Rudy Martinez co-sponsored a bill that took jurisdiction over 250-plus-degree water from the Office of the State Engineer and placed it in the hands of the Oil Conservation Division.

In other words, the hot water was no longer considered water, but energy. The agency historically tasked with managing water in New Mexico was stripped of its authority over the project.

One of the people unafraid to speak out is Meira Gault, a 69-year-old cattle rancher who once served in intelligence in the Israeli Army and has been a Hidalgo conservation district official for 11 years.

Gault said she views the well blowout as the surest sign that the geothermal water simply isn’t going where Cyrq promised it would go.

Lightning Strike Prototype Review - Cycle News

I've complained since the invasion of Kuwait that the U.S. was missing an opportunity to develop energy-efficiency technology - that the rest of the world would pay to buy. Of course I missed the idea of developing "alternative" (non-fossil-fuel) energy tech, etc. Anyway, this is encouraging news: some U.S. businesses are intent on doing exactly that. Witness Lightning Motorcycle Group: Lightning Strike Prototype Review - Cycle News:

...we think India will be right there with [China, as a market], basically to address the environmental problems that they face at present...

the two largest motorcycle markets in the world will both predominantly focus on electric motorcycles in the coming years, and Lightning will be there to serve them.

Amazon is cleaning up (its act)

After almost a decade I may be able to rejoin Amazon Prime. (Yes, I'm a self-congratulating hypocrite.) It bugged me that they never published the relative carbon costs of Prime vs. std shipping. Now, within the last couple of weeks, they're:

1. stating goals for carbon-neutral ops
2. investing in Rivian
3. hiring away at least one GM executive
4. offering Prime members "one day a week" bundled deliveries (which sounds much the same as std shipping ;))

Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature' | Environment | The Guardian

Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature' | Environment | The Guardian:

“The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification,” Sánchez-Bayo said. “That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.” He said the demise of insects appears to have started at the dawn of the 20th century, accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s and reached “alarming proportions” over the last two decades.

He thinks new classes of insecticides introduced in the last 20 years, including neonicotinoids and fipronil, have been particularly damaging as they are used routinely and persist in the environment: “They sterilise the soil, killing all the grubs.” This has effects even in nature reserves nearby; the 75% insect losses recorded in Germany were in protected areas.

... organic farms had more insects and that occasional pesticide use in the past did not cause the level of decline seen in recent decades. “Industrial-scale, intensive agriculture is the one that is killing the ecosystems,” he said.

“When you consider 80% of biomass of insects has disappeared in 25-30 years, it is a big concern.”

Government shutdown: Interior Department is advancing Arctic drilling - Vox

I forget - what is the correct name for a form of government that combines kakistocracy with kleptocracy? Government shutdown: Interior Department is advancing Arctic drilling - Vox.

The Lincoln Memorial During the Government Shutdown - The Atlantic

The Lincoln Memorial During the Government Shutdown - The Atlantic:

From the start of his career, Lincoln foresaw how American democracy might end—not through foreign conquest, but by our own fading attachment to its institutions. “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher,” he said in 1838. “As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

If shutdowns become routine, if politicians view the government in which they serve as a disposable tool, if we’re no longer capable of governing ourselves, this only reflects Trump’s contemptuous attitude toward democracy itself. Shuttered museums, federal workers who can’t pay their bills, national parks with stinking toilets: This is what Trump thinks of American republicanism. This is what the suicide of a great democracy looks like.