How come the Globe didn't report that?
***************
"officials are reminding travelers to pay attention to security guidelines to expedite the screening process."
You can pay a whole lot extra for that, and it comes with a limo to take you to the lounge away from main terminal.
opinion | Thomas E. Perez Fair labor practice helps us all
He's Obama's Secretary of Labor, and after 7 years of exploding inequality, that's stale.
Pay is no substitute for ‘thank you’
The bankers will be happy to $ee that!
What’s the state of the American labor movement?
What labor movement? It's dead.
"Obama to address Labor Day breakfast" by Jim O’Sullivan Globe Staff August 31, 2015
President Obama will address a union-hosted Labor Day breakfast in Boston, White House officials confirmed Tuesday.
Several senior Democrats told the Globe Monday that Obama was planning to attend the annual Park Plaza event, sponsored by the Greater Boston Labor Council. The breakfast traditionally provides a venue for Democrats to dish red-meat rhetoric to a constituency historically allied with the party.
That means they are taking you for granted.
“I know the labor movement will be excited in Boston,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh said Monday.
But the visit comes during a complicated stretch in Obama’s relationship with organized labor. Unions have bucked the Democratic president this year over his trade and regulatory policies, which they call destructive to American jobs.
Yeah, it's the knife coming out of the back as he serves corporations at every turn.
In June, Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO’s president, reportedly wrote to Obama, alleging he had “repeatedly isolated and marginalized labor and unions” during the debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Well, I wasn't going to mention it by name, but....
One top Democrat who has joined with labor in criticizing Obama over the trade deal is expected to share the podium with Obama on Monday. US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts used the Labor Day breakfast as something of a coming-out party in 2011, days before announcing her candidacy.
I won't belabor how disappointed I am that she is mostly a party flak. Maybe you have to be to get there, but... this country is in real trouble. We don't need go-along, get-along nibbling on the fringe and political show fooleys. We have gone from Republican-controlled government to filibuster-proof Democrats -- and all we got to show for it was a crappy corporate health bill and more wars and tyranny.
Things are rocky, too, between labor and Democrats on the state level, after the heavily Democratic Legislature sided with Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, in a budget fight earlier this year.
Never mind DeLeo and the Democrats flipping them off years ago when they opened the pension and health benefits contracts to fix budget deficits during the Great Recession -- while still tossing gobs of tax loot to Hollywood, pharmaceuticals, well-connected interests and concerns, and the like.
When will unions learn that the two political parties work for the bo$$ now?
Party leaders ratified a major setback for public-sector unions, easing wider privatization at the MBTA. Union leaders argue the measure will mean more government work being performed by private contractors who will charge more but pay employees less.
Well, you guys and your corruption over the years have ruined your reputations.
That maneuver, which many in organized labor called a betrayal, prompted about 45 top labor officials and activists to huddle in June, where some strongly advocated finding primary challengers to Democratic lawmakers — an unusual demonstration of raw anger among traditional allies.
Nonetheless, a labor audience in a reliably blue state will put Obama in front of a friendly crowd. Both of the state’s US senators have announced support for the Iran nuclear deal, negotiated by Secretary of State John F. Kerry, that Obama has placed atop his agenda.
“We’re always the reliable welcome wagon for a Democratic president,” one Democrat said.
I'm tired of the imagery and illusion of politics!
The breakfast occupies something of a unique, if obscure, niche in Obama’s own political record. In 2009, days after the death of US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and with the field to succeed him still taking shape, a show of force at the event by then-attorney general Martha Coakley helped cement her momentum on the way to becoming the Democratic nominee. At the same time, the chilly reception given to US Representative Stephen F. Lynch, a former labor leader, because he had been noncommittal to Obama’s health care bill, helped sap enthusiasm for his candidacy.
Related: 9/11 Lynch Mob
I know I endorsed him for the special election back in 2013, but he's failed the test.
Coakley embraced the health care measure, but later lost to the Republican nominee, Scott Brown, a vocal opponent of the bill.
Brown’s victory complicated passage of the bill, which ultimately became law several weeks after Brown took office.
Anybody remember him?
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And look at what those T workers did:
"Traffic delays likely as Obama visits downtown" by James Vaznis Globe Staff September 06, 2015
Traffic is likely to be tied up in Boston on Monday morning, with street closures and parking bans surrounding President Obama’s trip to speak at the Greater Boston Labor Council’s annual Labor Day Breakfast.
Yeah, the people of Boston are going to love that inconvenience.
The breakfast, which draws high-profile elected Democrats, is scheduled to start at 8:30 a.m. and should end by noon.
Obama is expected to arrive at the breakfast — at the Park Plaza hotel on Arlington Street a block south of Boylston Street — later in the morning, after touching down in Air Force One at Logan International Airport about 10 a.m. He will be greeted there by Governor Charlie Baker, the governor’s office said Sunday afternoon.
Thanks for the greenhouse gas spew contributing to climate change, if you buy into that kind of thing.
According to the president’s daily schedule, he’ll deliver his remarks at the breakfast at 11 a.m.
Temporary street closures are expected to pop up around the president’s motorcade as he makes his way from East Boston to the Park Plaza and then as he journeys back to the airport. Such rolling closures are standard on a presidential visit.
I'm choking on the hypocrisy.
Obama will be speaking to a sold-out crowd in the ballroom.
“This is a big deal,” said Steven Tolman, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. “In the big picture, it says the president of the United States understands the importance of labor’s role in America.”
The labor breakfast is expected to highlight accomplishments in the labor movement in Massachusetts that overlap with Obama’s agenda.
You would almost think labor is winning all across the board.
Related:
"The typical US household saw its net worth actually decline 1.2 percent from 2010 to 2013....
Incomes for the highest-earning 1 percent of Americans soared 31 percent from 2009 through 2012....
And after 30 years of skyrocketing income inequality, the top 1 percent now control a bigger share of wealth than they have since FDR, [and] not only are the rich getting richer — they’re getting taxed less, too."
Don't want to leave you workers out:
"job market just demonstrated that it may be nearing full health, but the share of adults working has fallen to 59.3 percent, the lowest level in 31 years."
If that's full health, it's ill.... but it's a great recovery for youse.
***********
Labor organizers also plan to celebrate other victories.
This breakfast menu is GROSS!!
Other elected Democrats plan to speak as well. They include US Senators Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren, Attorney General Maura Healey, and Mayor Martin J. Walsh.
“Any time you get to have the president come to the city is very positive,” Walsh said.
Unless you happen to be a regular citizen in traffic and not important slobs like Obama and Walsh, who get taxpayer-supported police escorts to hurry them along.
At least two demonstrations are planned for before and after the breakfast. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority workers say they will be rallying against privatization, starting at 7 a.m. near the Park Plaza.
And at noon, labor leaders and union members will gather at the Boston Common bandstand for a rally and then plan to march to Downtown Crossing, Faneuil Hall, and the MBTA’s Blue Line Aquarium station stop. They will be calling for higher wages and fair workplace practices.
They are going to list a whole bunch of victories over breakfast; what is with these greedy MBTA $cum?
Ababuti Ogalla, who assists travelers with disabilities at Logan International Airport, said that if he gets the chance to speak with Obama at the breakfast he will urge him to push hard to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour nationwide.... You won't get the chance, and the Globe doesn't want to talk about the TPP.
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At least the water main has been fixed.
This breakfast making me sick:
"Obama to target sick time in Boston visit; Order Monday will require US contractors to offer leave" by Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff September 07, 2015
While he continues to call for earned sick time, Obama intends to create the more limited policy by executive order, which gives the president power to create rules for the executive branch with the force of law.
Everyone comfortable with dictatorship, and whatever happened to all those alphabet scandals regarding the administration? They just vanished.
Administration aides said that some 44 million American workers don’t have access to a single sick day and that the United States is the only developed country in the world that doesn’t have a paid leave policy.
You have access to a sick day; you call in.
This idea that workers need sick days so they can collect them and then get paid turns us all into $elf-$erving public $ervants, although I gue$$ those are the only unions left these days. This whole conversation is taking place inside government. Those of you in the corporate world know this means nothing.
“We live in a ‘Modern Family’ world, but our leave laws are stuck in the ‘Leave it to Beaver’ and ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ era,’’ said US Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez in a conference call with reporters to preview the president’s Boston visit.
We live in a matrix of ma$$ media staged and scripted fictions.
While some question the cost of paid time off for employers, Perez argued that, to be competitive globally, even conservative-leaning governments around the world consider leave necessary for their workers.
“The United States is the only country where the issue of a paid family leave has become a partisan issue,” Perez said. “Everyone else in the world has recognized how common sense this is.”
Since when has this government cared about going along, other than when corporations feel they will miss out on a market (think Cuba and Iran)?
Had they cared about common sense and what the world thinks, they wouldn't be fomenting wars via covert means all across the planet and wouldn't have invaded Iraq.
The Family and Medical Leave Act ensures workers can take unpaid time off, but many find it impossible to take leave without pay, and the law still doesn’t cover newer employees and smaller companies, according to a Department of Labor report released Monday, called “The Cost of Doing Nothing.”
Lucky you have a job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some business groups are dubious about mandatory leave policies, saying they inevitably inflate costs. Not only must employers pay workers who aren’t there, but they must pay other workers to do the jobs in their absence.
Yup. If bu$ine$$ doesn't like it, thumbs down. And if there is a law, they will get around it (seen that with the death of them and cutting hours to shovel employees onto Obummercare).
Hasn't anyone been paying attention?
“The president and these Democrats imagine that every company is Google and Apple and Exxon Mobil and they have giant pools of workers they can shuffle around to accommodate workers who aren’t there. It’s just not true,” said Jack Mozloom, national media director for the National Federation of Independent Business, a coalition that represents only a few government contractors but is concerned about measures being applied to all companies. “Half the economy is a small business, and many of them can’t absorb it.”
That I believe.
Related: Judge approves $415 million settlement in Apple, Google wage case
Oh, those workers and their "conspiracies."
Cecilia Muñoz, White House domestic policy council director, said the executive order would benefit both full-time and part-time workers on new contracts starting in 2017. Employees would earn one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours they work, up to 56 a year, she said.
While acknowledging skepticism about the potential costs to contractors and boomerang costs to taxpayers, Obama aides argued that there will be no cost at all.
Like they did regarding health care. Told us it would cost less.
Massachusetts law changed July 1 after a ballot question last November won support from a majority of voters....
I voted no on it, no sick time. Why make more people state workers? You already have sick time. You call in. What are they going to say, no?
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And if the result is "you're fired," you can blame Trump as you grumble about how rotten is this greate$t economic $y$tem ever devi$ed.
Here's your plate:
"On Labor Day visit, Obama praises Boston, US workers" by Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff September 08, 2015
In a Labor Day visit to receptive territory in Boston, President Obama lauded Massachusetts for leading the way on worker-friendly measures, including the state’s new law requiring companies to offer employees earned sick time.
I love myths.
“You all should be proud of what you’re doing for working families in this state,” the president told union leaders at their crowded annual Labor Day breakfast, also pointing to the city of Boston’s decision to offer employees paid parental leave. “But that’s not a new story here in Massachusetts. You all have always been a little ahead of the curve.”
Look at him suck up.
Dressed casually in a button-down shirt and khakis, a relaxed Obama expressed relief that he is not on the ballot this election season, yet spoke forcefully about his record, contrasting his administration’s job gains and its efforts to help the middle class with opponents’ claims that requiring health care and raising the minimum wage will kill jobs.
“In their world, the only way to help . . . people get ahead is to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires, and loosen up rules on big banks and polluters,” Obama said. “Then you look up at the sky and prosperity will come raining down on us from the top of whatever high-rise is in your city.”
Yeah, and you have fought them real well. The wealth inequality under this president has yawned, and his campaigns were backed by more than $1 billion from Wall Street.
And that was with a filibuster-proof Congre$$ for the first two years (Joe Lieberman was the gatekeeper). They never did a damn thing to address corporate welfare or taxes, other than increase the first and cut the second.
As expected, Obama used this Boston trip to announce that he had signed an executive order requiring federal contractors to offer employees up to seven paid sick days a year, depending on how many hours they work. The order will affect about 300,000 people, he told the crowd of about 765 union members gathered in Park Plaza for the Greater Boston Labor Council’s annual event.
Ah, the greenhouse gas spew is for a public relations and political photo op.
“Unfortunately, only Congress has the power to give this security to all Americans,” he said. “But where I can act, I will.”
Pointing to the difficulties in Congress, the president compared another government shutdown to “an unforced error, a fumble on the goal line,” and drew laughter when he referred to the infamous Bill Buckner flub of the Red Sox’s 1986 World Series.
“It would be like a ground ball slipping through somebody’s legs,” Obama said, before qualifying his remark: “You guys have won a couple since that time, so I can make that joke.”
People were not laughing about it for a long time, but I guess they can now.
He also made two references to Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady, whom a judge freed last week from a four-game suspension imposed by the National Football League for his alleged conspiracy to underinflate footballs during the championship game.
“Even Brady is happy he’s got a union,” Obama said. “They had his back. So you know if Brady needs a union, we definitely need unions.”
That is a union that got bent over bad by the NFL, so not a good example, and I've had enough.
Obama spoke fondly of Boston, recalling his years here as a Harvard Law School student, his breakthrough Democratic National Convention speech in 2004, and his visit two years ago for an interfaith memorial service following the Boston Marathon bombings.
Sharing the stage with labor leaders and politicians, including US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward J. Markey, Mayor Martin J. Walsh, and Attorney General Maura Healey, Obama extolled the state’s leadership for safeguarding workers’ rights. Earlier in the day, Obama had been greeted warmly at Logan International Airport by both Walsh, a longtime labor leader; and Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican.
But all was not entirely harmonious on the labor front, even in Boston. In recent months, Obama has drawn ire from some leading Democrats and labor chiefs — including Warren and the AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka — for pushing a Trans-Pacific Partnership that they argued would hurt the country’s workers. Meanwhile, the Baker administration’s plan to privatize some bus routes drew a protest from the Boston Carmen’s Union, whose members amassed around Park Plaza in bright orange shirts with signs declaring messages like “Keep Public Transportation Public.”
But the protesters were never visible to the president’s motorcade, which dashed through the city mostly via tunnels, streets, and ramps that were closed to traffic.
Yeah, he is INSULATED from the PEOPLE!
All the RHETORIC was $hit-$how fooley in front of the POLITICAL CLA$$!
And inside the Park Plaza, the president sought to rally his allies against Republicans whom he blamed for a “constant attack on working Americans.”
Why were Democrats not defending us?
The GOP wants to become “the party of higher wages,” yet opposes raising the minimum wage, said Obama, who also took a few swipes at “some of the folks who want to be their standard-bearer in the next election.”
The president also chided Republican candidates for president. One, he said, has been “bragging about how he destroyed collective bargaining rights in his state,” and saying that “busting unions prepares him to fight” the Islamic State, while another has “said a union deserves a punch in the face.” Though he didn’t name names, Obama seemed to be respectively referring to Governor Scott Walker’s crackdown on public unions in Wisconsin and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s combative words about national teachers’ unions.
He attacked two guys who are at the bottom of the field!
“It reminds me of something our old friend Ted Kennedy used to say: ‘What is it about working men and women that [they] find so offensive?’ ” Obama said.
Before he left Boston, the president made an unscheduled stop at the Union Oyster House, the historic restaurant near Faneuil Hall, picking up chowder and shaking hands with patrons.
That is what he had for lunch?
Related: Officials close oyster beds on infection fears
Won't be eating at them at Long Wharf anyway, and a hurricane came this way.
On Air Force One, he was joined by Warren and Markey, as well as US Representatives Katherine Clark, Seth Moulton, and Ann McLane Kuster of New Hampshire.
--more--"
He then endorsed Sanders for President before flying back to Wa$hington:
"Obama moving to boost green energy options" by Nancy Benac Associated Press August 25, 2015
LAS VEGAS — President Obama on Monday accused fossil fuel interests and other critics of his energy policies of trying to restrict consumers from accessing solar, wind, and other renewable sources to protect the status quo.
‘‘That’s not the American way,’’ Obama said in a speech at a green energy conference in Las Vegas. ‘‘This is about the past versus the future. America believes in the future.’’
This guy serious or just crazy?
He just opened up the Arctic to drilling and supports fracking which, if there is global warming, counts for far more than your breathing and farting, human.
He also questioned the ideological consistency of those who champion free-market solutions, except when the free market is pointing to the wisdom of renewable energy. He singled out billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who are major donors to Republican political candidates.
‘‘It’s one thing if you’re consistent in being free market,’’ Obama said. ‘‘It’s another thing when you’re free market until it’s solar that’s working and people want to buy and suddenly you’re not for it anymore. That’s a problem.’’
Don't worry; I'm sure they did not take it personally:
Obama Coal Kochs Colorado Environmentalists
I'm really, really tired of laboring over the psychotic hypocrisy coming from this president.
Fossil fuel and utility interests have been working to undercut clean energy policies with arguments that the matter should be left to the free market.
I'll tell you where I have landed on the global warming question, and you are not going to like it.
I don't believe either side, and view it as a false debate like in "Promised Land."
I don't believe the lying $cientists that hid the decline, the agenda-pushing governments behind their funding (that somehow never make the connection when it comes to their ever-increasing war machine operations), the ma$$ media mouthpieces of the propaganda pre$$ (exhibit A when it comes to doubt) that push the global warming narrative.
Doing it to get you to fork over a carbon tax (more need for monitoring of you, too, thus a cha-ching to that industry as well) so that Wall Street can literally create money out of thin air and then commoditize it complete with derivatives market.
On they other side are the entrenched energy industries that are making billions each and every quarter. They benefit from sowing dissension, and they don't need much help. Despite the last five weeks, we have had record cold the last few years. Add to that the fact that the oil and gas industries fuel the war machine while profiting from it. Who benefits at that pump?
What one comes to realize is neither side is really interested in the health of the planet or you. It's a case of manipulating your mind and getting the result they want. To do that, they control both sides of the debate (think Democrats and Republicans as one big corporate party).
Sorry if you don't like the pox on both houses bit, but that's the way I'm seeing things throughout the smog of propaganda.
The annual conference was hosted by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid.
Who doesn't want the nuke dump in Nevada.
Obama used his appearance to announce executive actions and other efforts aimed at making it easier for homeowners and businesses to invest in green energy improvements that in the past may have been impractical or unaffordable.
‘‘We’re taking steps to allow more Americans to join this revolution with no money down,’’ Obama said.
This guy has reached the point of offensiveness!
Yup, doing all right.... the future is so bright, I've gotta wear shades!
The moves, which include expanded use of energy improvement loans, are designed to build on power plant rules the president announced earlier in the month to cut carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired plants by a third. They all feed into Obama’s goal of cutting US emissions by 26 to 28 percent over the next decade to combat climate change and encourage other countries to do likewise.
Actions Obama announced Monday focus on giving families and businesses more say in what types and how much power they rely on. That could mean rooftop solar panels and other renewable energy innovations.
This as they look to switch us all over to smart light bulbs or whatever.
Ahead of Obama’s remarks, Housing Secretary Julian Castro said the plan ‘‘hits the sweet spot’’ by making clean energy more affordable and protecting the environment. He said people too often have been ‘‘priced out.’’
Utah Republican Representative Rob Bishop said Obama’s policies mean ‘‘increased costs and decreased choices on all Americans and especially the most disadvantaged communities.’’ Among the steps announced by Obama:
■ New guidance from the Federal Housing Administration that could dramatically expand the use of so-called PACE loans that allow homeowners to install energy improvements and pay back the costs over time.
■ Making $1 billion in additional loan guarantees available from the Department of Energy to encourage innovation in technologies that give Americans more flexibility in choosing renewable energy options.
Obama also was announcing the approval of a transmission line to support a planned 485-megawatt solar plant planned for Riverside County in California. The plant is expected to produce enough renewable energy to power more than 145,000 homes.
The Wilderness Society’s Chase Huntley called the project a good example ‘‘of how we can meet our clean energy goals with limited impact to wildlands and wildlife habitat.’’
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See photo 19 in your calendar; that's as close as I can get to my A2 picture.
Look what leaked out and was gone:
"Project reveals 20,000 leaks in Mass. gas lines; Trouble spots widespread, some decades old" by David Abel Globe Staff August 21, 2015
The state’s aging natural gas pipelines are riddled with about 20,000 potentially dangerous and environmentally damaging leaks, many decades old, according to the first statewide analysis of the problem in Massachusetts.
But it is you breathing and driving that is the problem, not neglect from profitable, price-gouging energy companies.
Detailed maps of the leaks became available this week as a result of a new state law requiring utility companies to report the location and age of all their known gas leaks, which according to one estimate have cost ratepayers more than $1 billion.
“The leaks are potentially explosive, kill trees, harm human health, and release an extraordinarily destructive greenhouse gas,” said Audrey Schulman, president of the Home Energy Efficiency Team, a Cambridge nonprofit that mapped the leak data submitted by the utilities. “To add insult to injury, we ratepayers have to pay for the lost gas.”
The data show that Cohasset has more leaks per household that uses gas than any other municipality in Massachusetts, while Weymouth has more leaks than any other town when measured by the amount of streets.
Boston, which has 9 percent of the pipes in Massachusetts that are losing gas through ruptures, more than any other city or town, also has the oldest leaks in the state. One leak not far from Fenway Park has been seeping noxious emissions for 30 years, the data show.
NO CARBON TAX, EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe that is why there was a shooting near Fenway. Heads were spinning from the fumes. Either that or the booze.
Also see: Residents able to return after Fenway chemical scare
Another f***ing Jade Helm drill psyop while the street seeps!!
Schulman said there may be even more leaks than the utilities are reporting. Last year, her organization tested for gas leaks in Somerville and found nearly 500 of them — almost three times the number reported by Eversource Energy and National Grid, the region’s main gas suppliers, she said.
Officials at the utility companies said they’re working as fast as possible to plug the leaks. The gas releases an odor similar to rotten eggs to make the leaks easy to detect.
The leaks are often the result of the corrosion of aging cast-iron pipes, some more than a century old, or construction accidents.
Well, you know the infrastructure was never maintained. All money is profit and pay for the chosen few first!
********
Danielle Williamson, a spokeswoman for National Grid, said, “National Grid’s natural gas system is safe and operating normally. We take the safety of the public, our communities, and our employees very seriously.”
Natural gas explosions, including one last year that injured about a dozen people in Dorchester, have raised safety concerns about the leaks.
But repairing them also yields economic and environmental benefits.
Then why has it taken so long?
A federal study commissioned two years ago by Senator Edward Markey found that Massachusetts residents paid as much as $1.5 billion from 2000 to 2011 for gas they never used because of leaks.
It's been two years since!
Natural gas is mainly composed of methane, which traps heat and is about 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, meaning small amounts can have a significant impact on global warming.
Don't hold your breath waiting for government to address the byproduct of oil and gas drilling and fracking.
In an effort to blunt the impact of methane, the Obama administration this week released a plan to cut emissions of the gas by nearly half nationwide over the next decade.
As he hands out drilling permits in the Arctic.
In January, a study by scientists at Harvard University found that methane has been leaking from pipes, storage facilities, and other sources in the Boston area by as much as three times greater than previously estimated. The leaked gas is enough to heat as many as 200,000 homes a year and is valued at $90 million a year, the authors said....
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Yeah, “now the city can react.”
Related: Propane-fueled school buses coming to Boston
PFFFFFT!
And look who is heading north:
"Obama seeks to walk fine line in Alaska on climate change, energy" by Josh Lederman Associated Press August 29, 2015
WASHINGTON — With melting glaciers and rising seas as his backdrop, President Obama will visit Alaska this week to press for urgent global action to combat climate change, even as he carefully calibrates his message in a state heavily dependent on oil.
FART MIST!
Obama will become the first sitting president to visit the Alaska Arctic when he travels to Kotzebue — population around 3,000 — just north of the Arctic Circle at the end of his three-day trip. He’ll kick off the visit Monday with a speech to a State Department-hosted conference on climate change and the Arctic.
Anyone seeing the hypocritical irony here? Going to spew all those greenhouse gases to get there.
The unambiguous goal of the president’s trip is to use dramatic and alarming changes to Alaska’s climate to instill fresh urgency into his global warming agenda.
When GOVERNMENT GETS URGENT you definitely want to HIT the BRAKES and do a U-TURN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sea ice is melting, critical permafrost is thawing, and Alaska’s cherished glaciers are liquefying — powerful visuals that Obama hopes will illustrate the threat to natural wonders and livelihoods and serve as a global call to action.
OMG! He is something.
‘‘This is all real,’’ Obama said in his weekly address released Saturday. ‘‘This is happening to our fellow Americans right now.’’
Uh-huh.
Sorry, but I have no way of knowing if any of that is true except for what I read in a completely incredible piece of s**t propaganda pre$$.
Yet Obama has taken steps that show he’s cautiously navigating the competing environmental and energy interests at play. A few weeks ago, his administration gave Royal Dutch Shell a final permit to drill into oil-bearing rock off Alaska’s northwest coast for the first time in more than two decades.
Yeah, but the pre$$ doesn't make too much of that. It's all this Obama spew.
‘‘The president has made great strides in protecting the Arctic, but we are really disappointed with this decision,’’ said Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska director for the Wilderness Society. ‘‘This is a point where we disagree.’’
For many Alaskans, though, the issue comes down to dollars and cents. Both the state government and its residents rely deeply on oil revenues to stay afloat, and falling oil prices have already created a serious budget deficit.
Oh, the need to hurt Russia and Iran has hurt Americans, huh?
Brian Deese, Obama’s senior adviser, sought to strike a balance between Alaska’s economic needs and the president’s goal to eventually phase out fossil fuels. ‘‘That’s a transition that is not going to happen overnight,’’ Deese said. In the meantime, he added, ‘‘oil and gas will remain important parts of our overall energy mix.’’
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So much for the URGENCY and the IMMINENT THREAT!
Well, seeing as oil and gas make the war machine go....
“They are one step removed from the column where they would be at risk of being shut down by the NRC,” said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan."
Another “disturbing” part of the mix.
Ahead of Obama’s visit, state Republican leaders emphasized the need for more energy development and urged Obama not to exploit the state’s stunning scenery for political purposes. US Senator Dan Sullivan warned that any national or ocean monument designations ‘‘will go over like a lead balloon’’ among Alaska’s Democrats and Republicans alike.
Or, quite honestly due to the hypocrisy, the public at large.
‘‘What there’s concern about is that he’s going to use Alaska as some green screen for climate change, when he doesn’t take the opportunity to dig into other issues that are important to Alaskans, important to the country,’’ Sullivan said in an interview.
Why not? We are getting green screen productions reported as real news all the time now.
So is that going to be how they show all the melt?
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Look at what he left a pile of:
"Bison numbers surge in Yellowstone National Park; Park has culled 500 in attempt to control herd" by Joby Warrick Washington Post August 29, 2015
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — The culling of the bison is a routine, if little-known, facet of managing Yellowstone.
That is a charged word.
Trying to get us acclimated to the idea?
Under a 15-year-old agreement signed by federal and state agencies, Yellowstone officials are required to keep a lid on the bison population, limiting the numbers of animals and controlling their wanderings to appease farmers and cattle owners who object to intrusions of hungry bison onto their fields and grazing lands.
To keep bison numbers in check, workers spend the winter months corralling bison that venture near the park’s northern entrance, keeping them in pens until they can be shipped to meatpacking plants.
No wonder the texture of hamburger is different than in the past.
They say they are not doing that, and the horseburger scandal has long exited the poop shoot, but do you think they are going to waste product and profit? The meat industry? They never have.
You know what is in hot dogs, right?
Yet, despite expensive control efforts — the annual cost to taxpayers is about $2 million — the herd continues to swell. A February report by Yellowstone officials found that the bison’s population “is prolific and has recovered rapidly” from culling, conceding that the park’s management plan “underestimated bison reproduction and survival rates.”
So KILL MORE!
“As a result,” the report said, “more bison must be removed to regulate the population.”
TOLDJA!
That is AUTHORITIES SOLUTION to EVERYTHING.
KILL IT!
Park officials are pushing for changes that could result in alternatives to slaughter for the bison, including possibly easing limits on moving disease-free animals to new locations.
That is where my printed Sunday Globe cut it
But changing the policies requires a buy-in from multiple bureaucracies as well as private interests that have long fought to keep Yellowstone’s bison walled off inside the park’s boundaries. The prospects for that remain uncertain at best, park officials acknowledge.
They ain't gonna do shit.
“Everything we do with bison is complicated,” lamented Wallen, the park’s bison expert. “This is a conservation program that is steeped not only in ecology and sociology, but also in politics.”
The park’s system for dealing with excess bison is itself a compromise, one that grew out of years of wrangling between well-organized factions with diametrically opposing goals. On one side are ranchers and state officials who adamantly oppose any further expansion of Yellowstone’s wild herds, mostly because of perceptions of bison as disease-carriers that could spread infections to domestic livestock.
Favoring more freedom for bison is a diverse coalition of groups, ranging from wildlife enthusiasts opposed to any killing of bison to Native Americans who want to start their own herds for use in hunting and tribal ceremonies.
Almost no one is happy with the current system. Wallen, the Yellowstone expert, acknowledged that the “park service is doing things that aren’t very park-like” in its ship-to-slaughter program. Wildlife groups criticize the management plan as a tarnish on what is arguably one the most successful species recovery stories of modern times: the regeneration of a thriving bison herd from a depleted stock that a century ago numbered only 23 animals.
Killing the success story!
“If we can do it in Yellowstone, we should be able to do it in many more places,” said Kit Fischer, an outreach coordinator in the National Wildlife Federation’s Missoula, Mont., office. “But we still haven’t figured out how to deal with bison in the one spot where they’ve always been.”
The Obama administration, the third to oversee the controversial management plan, has acknowledged the need for a major overhaul. Park officials agree, and some — with heavy support from wildlife advocates — are pushing for the adoption by next year of new rules that would include alternatives to converting wild bison into ground meat.
Like they are not now (unless you trust what the USDA and FDA say).
Some advocates perceive a shrinking window, with only 17 months remaining in the Obama presidency. A new administration of either party would probably push aside the issue for months, and perhaps years, to conduct further studies, said Bart Melton, the Montana-based regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting national parks and their wildlife.
‘‘We’ve now had 15 years of the current management plan, and we have the science and the understanding on the ground of what it will take to see success in bison management,’’ Melton said. ‘‘Now all we need is the political courage to make it happen.’’
What is scary is murderous government seeing its way to "managing populations" -- of any kind!
--more--"
Related:
Escaped water buffalo is found in Westminster
Also see:
General Mills aims to cut greenhouse gases by 28%
"US makes appeal for climate change action at Alaska conference" by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Steven Lee Myers New York Times September 01, 2015"
My printed piece regarding John Kerry and the doom he predicted became an afterthought!
"Comparing: In Alaska, Obama Makes Pointed Appeal for Global Climate Change Action
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/us/us-makes-urgent-appeal-for-climate-change-action-at-alaska-conference.html
Pink: Archived August 31, 2015 at 9:01pm EDT- Green: Archived August 31, 2015 at 9:44pm EDT
Aug. 31, 2015
--MORE--"
Someone else sees what I do!
Never mind that EXTINCTION due to a NUCLEAR WAR brought to you by psychopaths like Obummer is WAY MORE PROBABLE as a doomsday scenario (as these guys are up in Arctic and away from hurricanes)!
"At Alaskan glacier, Obama pleads for action on climate; Kenai Fjords ice has receded 800 feet since 2008" by Josh Lederman Associated Press September 02, 2015
It's another f***ing rewrite!!!!
Obama trekked up to the glacier with photographers in tow in a carefully choreographed excursion aimed at calling attention to the ways that human activity is degrading cherished natural wonders. The visit to Kenai Fjords National Park, where the glacier is located, formed the apex of Obama’s three-day tour of Alaska, his most concerted campaign yet on climate change.
I didn't go along.
Related: Missing American volunteer killed in Nepal
That's the latest from Nepal.
The president, dressed for the elements in a rugged coat and sunglasses, observed how signposts along the hike recorded where the glacier once stood and now only dry land remains.
‘‘We want to make sure that our grandkids can see this,’’ Obama said with the iconic glacier at his back, describing [it] as ‘‘spectacular.’’
How many of them has he murdered in his wars of conquest?
Meanwhile, Obama proposed speeding the acquisition and building of new Coast Guard icebreakers that can operate year-round in the nation’s polar regions, part of an effort to close the gap between the United States and other nations, especially Russia, in a global competition to gain a foothold in the rapidly changing Arctic.
Why would we need icebreakers when it's melting so fast?
As we have seen in Cuba and Iran, this is about AmeriKan energy corporations getting in there before the Russians do!
The president’s proposal, which came on the second day of a three-day trip to Alaska to highlight the consequences of climate change and call for a worldwide effort to address the issue, touches on one of its most profound effects. The retreat of Arctic sea ice has created opportunities for shipping, tourism, mineral exploration, and fishing, but the rush of marine traffic that has followed is bringing new difficulties.
I've read stuff that has said it is expanding and is at record levels.
“Arctic ecosystems are among the most pristine and understudied in the world, meaning increased commercial activity comes with significant risks to the environment,” the White House said in a statement.
Obama is counting on Alaska’s exquisite but deteriorating landscape to elicit a sense of urgency for his call to action on climate change. He opened the trip on Monday night with a speech painting a doomsday scenario for the world without urgent steps to cut emissions: entire nations submerged underwater, cities abandoned, and refugees fleeing in droves as conflict breaks out across the globe.
Okay. The refugees are from your wars and a planned and calculated effort, jerk.
As for the doomsday scenario, that is reminiscent of Netanyahu screaming Iran is on the verge of an atomic bomb for the last 30 years.
Pass that salt shaker, will ya'?
Exit Glacier has been receding for decades at an alarming rate of 43 feet a year, according to the National Park Service, which has been monitoring its retreat for decades using photography and, more recently, by satellite.
As if I would believe photos and data presented by this government.
(Blog editor shakes his head)
Glaciers ebb and flow due to normal fluctuations in the climate, and even without human activity, Exit Glacier would be retreating.
What?
But the pace of its retreat has been sped up thanks to heat-trapping greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, said Deborah Kurtz of the National Park Service.
‘‘Climate is the primary driver for the retreat of glaciers and for ice loss,’’ Kurtz said.
And we should believe them just because they say so!
Obama’s trip was more about visuals than words, and the White House has put a particular emphasis on trying to get the message across to audiences who don’t follow the news through traditional means.
That's everybody now.
To that end, Obama planned to tape an episode of the NBC reality TV show ‘‘Running Wild with Bear Grylls,’’ putting his survival skills to the test while in the national park. He also planned to board a US Coast Guard vessel to tour the park by boat before returning to Anchorage later Tuesday.
TRUMP!
Yup, it's ALL A BIG SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--more--"
No mention Arctic drilling, not one peep, in that pos!
A fart, by any other name, still stinks:
"Obama’s Arctic visit shines light on arduous life; Challenges many, and increasing, in native villages" Globe wires September 03, 2015
My print piece was by Josh Lederman of AP
KOTZEBUE, Alaska — After being the first president to cross the Arctic Circle, President Obama told residents in a far-flung Alaska village that their plight should be the world’s wake-up call on global warming.
Then GROUND the WAR MACHINE, the biggest polluter on planet Earth!
With a historic visit to the Alaska Arctic, President Barack Obama was shining a spotlight Wednesday on the plight of residents in rural Alaska, where Alaska Natives and others toil under rough-and-tumble conditions that most Americans would be hard-pressed to imagine.
Obama’s visit to Kotzebue, a town of some 3,000 people in the Alaska Arctic, was designed to snap the country to attention by illustrating the ways warmer temperatures have already threatened entire communities and ways of life in Alaska. He said that despite progress in reducing greenhouse gases, the planet is already warming and the United States isn’t doing enough to stop it.
He can f*** off!!!!!!!!!! Sorry.
Closing out his three-day tour of Alaska, Obama set off first for the fishing village of Dillingham in Western Alaska to inspect one of the biggest sockeye salmon runs in the world and underscore the need to "protect this incredible natural resource, not just for the people whose livelihoods depend on it, but for the entire country."
What was the CARBON FOOTPRINT on that?!!!!!!!
From there, he wasto become the first sitting president scheduled to travel north of the Arctic Circle later in the day with a visit to the town of Kotzebue, a regional hub with a population of barely more than 3,000.
‘‘I've been trying to make the rest of the country more aware of the changing climate, but you’re already living it,’’ Obama told a crowd of more than 1,000 in this rough-and-tumble town on Alaska’s western coast.
Obama's trip will put on rare display the ways of life and daily challenges in Alaska's more than 200 far-flung rural villages. Outside of Kotzebue, 1 in 5 in the Alaska Arctic doesn't have a proper kitchen, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And even more lack complete plumbing. Instead, many use the "honey bucket" system — five-gallon drums that serve as makeshift toilets are emptied into nearby sewage lagoons.
Yeah, ignore the poverty and lack of development.
As he closed out a three-day tour of the state focused almost entirely on climate change, the president sought to show solidarity with Alaska Natives and rural Alaskans whose immense challenges are rarely in the national spotlight. His brief visit had the feeling of a campaign rally, with throngs of people cheering and applauding when he invoked the historic nature of the first presidential visit to the Arctic.
And they won't be for much longer, either, once the president leaves. The pre$$ will leave with him.
The president'sObama's goal was to showcase the havoc he says human-influenced climate change is wreaking on Alaska's delicate landscape: entire rural villages sinking into the ground as permafrost thaws, protective sea ice melts and temperatures climb.
Has been that been confirmed?
You don't expect me to take his word for anything, do you?
From the moment Air Force One touched down in Kotzebue, examples of dire poverty and climate-related obstacles were easy to spot. Obama’s motorcade snaked through the town passing rows of rusting shipping containers and dilapidated huts — almost all on stilts to accommodate gusts of wind and other weather-related events.
Thanks for contributing to the problem, asshole!
Indigenous AlaskansNatives have joined the president in sounding the alarm on climate change. Yet the obstacles they confront daily in rural Alaska extend far deeper, raising questions about whether the federal government has done enough to help some of the country's most destitute citizens, who live a life of subsistence hunting for bowhead whales, walruses and seals, a proud tradition of dependence on the land that poses immense logistical challenges.
You guys should have went into banking or war-profiteering instead.
It was a topic Obama brought up, by way of praising Alaskans for their perseverance despite poverty, isolation, and a lack of support. He said that while many speak of America’s pioneering, independent spirit, in Alaska it’s not just a slogan but a way of life.
Oh, he sucked up to them, too, huh?
"The vast majority of Americans have no idea there are dozens of communities in Alaska that live like this," Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said in an interview. "It's unacceptable, and we need to do more to fix it."
‘‘It can be harsh,’’ Obama said. ‘‘That means that you depend on each other.’’
Because you can't depend on the federal or state government.
With no roads to their villages, residents in rural Alaska are dependent on boats, snowmobiles and bush planes — weather permitting — to ferry them to rare doctor visits or other business. Among Alaska Natives, cancer is the leading killer, with incidence rates about 16 percent higher than for white men and women in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Shouldn't someone LOOK INTO THAT?!!!!
Compounding those hardships is climate change. Here, the phenomenon is not a political talking point or a scientific theory but a punishing everyday reality. Some communities are literally sinking into the water, as erosion and melting permafrost wash away their foundations.
So we are told by the agenda-pushing propaganda pre$$, who despite lying about everything is telling the truth on this one issue, yup!
At the same time, temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as fast as anywhere else on earth, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said, bringing with it profound changes to Alaska's cherished landscape. Amid dire poverty and few resources, many rural villages have had their foundations literally pulled out from under them as the planet gets warmer.
!!!!!!!!!!!
That is like them saying the sea is rising faster on the eastern seaboard than the rest of the world -- even though water seeks the lowest level and disperses.
This isn't worth the effort, folks.
Coming at the end of a trip he used to call attention to the challenge of climate change and to rally support in the United States and globally to address it, the announcement of the new efforts was a bid to draw attention to places that are feeling the effects most acutely.
We all know people like that. Look at me, look at me. What you do is look the other way and note what a self-centered slob is that person.
Permafrost, the layer of frozen ice under the surface, is thawing and causing homes, pipes and roads to sink as the soil quickly erodes. Some 100,000 Alaskans live in areas vulnerable to melting permafrost, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates.
“If your people are in a dire situation, if you allow whole communities to no longer exist, that reflects you as a leader,” said Diane Ramoth of Sewalik, an inland village of 900 people that has been trying for 10 years to relocate to higher ground but has struggled to find the money to do it. “Our village is going to be underwater.”
And on coastal Alaska, sea ice that once offered critical protection is melting, exposing coastlines, causing more extreme ocean storm surges and risking mass emergency evacuations.
On the mostly gravel and dirt streets of this town surrounded by water, where caribou and moose antlers adorn wooden houses on pilings and where pickup trucks and all-terrain vehicles are the mode of transportation of choice, residents said they were grateful for the focus Obama was putting on their difficulties, and for the new promises of federal support.
They haven't learned.
It's enough that the 400 or so residents of Kivalina, an Arctic town on a skinny barrier island along the Chukchi Sea, have decided they have no choice but to pick up and move. Kivalina is one of about a dozen other rural villages have voted to relocate to more stable terrain inland despite the hurdles it presents in maintaining their traditions, such as hunting marine mammals.
More refugees, and that is where the print ended.
“If there becomes, as a result of all of this, a focal point where communities that are really facing the brunt of this climate change crisis can go to get their issues addressed or get answers or make their case, that would be the best that could come of this,” said Reggie Joule, the mayor of the Northwest Arctic Borough. “It means that America has chosen to engage in a way that can help our people, and we have a president at the helm saying that these are important issues.”
So is the wealth inequality he has presided over.
Alaska scholars say the struggles in Kivalina and other rural villages have been compounded by disputes among local, state and federal agencies and a lack of money for large-scale resiliency projects — the relocation of an entire village, for example. One recommendation from an Obama-commissioned task force was for Washington to take the lead in coordinating relocation.
But there is also a hefty dose of skepticism from a native population that has often felt ignored, marginalized and victimized by the federal and state governments.
But Brian Deese, Obama's senior adviser, said the administration was looking for ways to be more nimble in helping communities relocate — not to make the decision for them.
--more--"
We all know who the trendsetter is out West:
"Calif. debates expansive climate bill" Associated Press September 06, 2015
--MORE--"
Someone else sees what I do!
Never mind that EXTINCTION due to a NUCLEAR WAR brought to you by psychopaths like Obummer is WAY MORE PROBABLE as a doomsday scenario (as these guys are up in Arctic and away from hurricanes)!
"At Alaskan glacier, Obama pleads for action on climate; Kenai Fjords ice has receded 800 feet since 2008" by Josh Lederman Associated Press September 02, 2015
It's another f***ing rewrite!!!!
Obama trekked up to the glacier with photographers in tow in a carefully choreographed excursion aimed at calling attention to the ways that human activity is degrading cherished natural wonders. The visit to Kenai Fjords National Park, where the glacier is located, formed the apex of Obama’s three-day tour of Alaska, his most concerted campaign yet on climate change.
I didn't go along.
Related: Missing American volunteer killed in Nepal
That's the latest from Nepal.
The president, dressed for the elements in a rugged coat and sunglasses, observed how signposts along the hike recorded where the glacier once stood and now only dry land remains.
‘‘We want to make sure that our grandkids can see this,’’ Obama said with the iconic glacier at his back, describing [it] as ‘‘spectacular.’’
How many of them has he murdered in his wars of conquest?
Meanwhile, Obama proposed speeding the acquisition and building of new Coast Guard icebreakers that can operate year-round in the nation’s polar regions, part of an effort to close the gap between the United States and other nations, especially Russia, in a global competition to gain a foothold in the rapidly changing Arctic.
Why would we need icebreakers when it's melting so fast?
As we have seen in Cuba and Iran, this is about AmeriKan energy corporations getting in there before the Russians do!
The president’s proposal, which came on the second day of a three-day trip to Alaska to highlight the consequences of climate change and call for a worldwide effort to address the issue, touches on one of its most profound effects. The retreat of Arctic sea ice has created opportunities for shipping, tourism, mineral exploration, and fishing, but the rush of marine traffic that has followed is bringing new difficulties.
I've read stuff that has said it is expanding and is at record levels.
“Arctic ecosystems are among the most pristine and understudied in the world, meaning increased commercial activity comes with significant risks to the environment,” the White House said in a statement.
Obama is counting on Alaska’s exquisite but deteriorating landscape to elicit a sense of urgency for his call to action on climate change. He opened the trip on Monday night with a speech painting a doomsday scenario for the world without urgent steps to cut emissions: entire nations submerged underwater, cities abandoned, and refugees fleeing in droves as conflict breaks out across the globe.
Okay. The refugees are from your wars and a planned and calculated effort, jerk.
As for the doomsday scenario, that is reminiscent of Netanyahu screaming Iran is on the verge of an atomic bomb for the last 30 years.
Pass that salt shaker, will ya'?
Exit Glacier has been receding for decades at an alarming rate of 43 feet a year, according to the National Park Service, which has been monitoring its retreat for decades using photography and, more recently, by satellite.
As if I would believe photos and data presented by this government.
(Blog editor shakes his head)
Glaciers ebb and flow due to normal fluctuations in the climate, and even without human activity, Exit Glacier would be retreating.
What?
But the pace of its retreat has been sped up thanks to heat-trapping greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, said Deborah Kurtz of the National Park Service.
‘‘Climate is the primary driver for the retreat of glaciers and for ice loss,’’ Kurtz said.
And we should believe them just because they say so!
Obama’s trip was more about visuals than words, and the White House has put a particular emphasis on trying to get the message across to audiences who don’t follow the news through traditional means.
That's everybody now.
To that end, Obama planned to tape an episode of the NBC reality TV show ‘‘Running Wild with Bear Grylls,’’ putting his survival skills to the test while in the national park. He also planned to board a US Coast Guard vessel to tour the park by boat before returning to Anchorage later Tuesday.
TRUMP!
Yup, it's ALL A BIG SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--more--"
No mention Arctic drilling, not one peep, in that pos!
A fart, by any other name, still stinks:
"Obama’s Arctic visit shines light on arduous life; Challenges many, and increasing, in native villages" Globe wires September 03, 2015
My print piece was by Josh Lederman of AP
KOTZEBUE, Alaska — After being the first president to cross the Arctic Circle, President Obama told residents in a far-flung Alaska village that their plight should be the world’s wake-up call on global warming.
Then GROUND the WAR MACHINE, the biggest polluter on planet Earth!
With a historic visit to the Alaska Arctic, President Barack Obama was shining a spotlight Wednesday on the plight of residents in rural Alaska, where Alaska Natives and others toil under rough-and-tumble conditions that most Americans would be hard-pressed to imagine.
Obama’s visit to Kotzebue, a town of some 3,000 people in the Alaska Arctic, was designed to snap the country to attention by illustrating the ways warmer temperatures have already threatened entire communities and ways of life in Alaska. He said that despite progress in reducing greenhouse gases, the planet is already warming and the United States isn’t doing enough to stop it.
He can f*** off!!!!!!!!!! Sorry.
Closing out his three-day tour of Alaska, Obama set off first for the fishing village of Dillingham in Western Alaska to inspect one of the biggest sockeye salmon runs in the world and underscore the need to "protect this incredible natural resource, not just for the people whose livelihoods depend on it, but for the entire country."
What was the CARBON FOOTPRINT on that?!!!!!!!
From there, he was
‘‘I've been trying to make the rest of the country more aware of the changing climate, but you’re already living it,’’ Obama told a crowd of more than 1,000 in this rough-and-tumble town on Alaska’s western coast.
Obama's trip will put on rare display the ways of life and daily challenges in Alaska's more than 200 far-flung rural villages. Outside of Kotzebue, 1 in 5 in the Alaska Arctic doesn't have a proper kitchen, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And even more lack complete plumbing. Instead, many use the "honey bucket" system — five-gallon drums that serve as makeshift toilets are emptied into nearby sewage lagoons.
Yeah, ignore the poverty and lack of development.
As he closed out a three-day tour of the state focused almost entirely on climate change, the president sought to show solidarity with Alaska Natives and rural Alaskans whose immense challenges are rarely in the national spotlight. His brief visit had the feeling of a campaign rally, with throngs of people cheering and applauding when he invoked the historic nature of the first presidential visit to the Arctic.
And they won't be for much longer, either, once the president leaves. The pre$$ will leave with him.
The president's
Has been that been confirmed?
You don't expect me to take his word for anything, do you?
From the moment Air Force One touched down in Kotzebue, examples of dire poverty and climate-related obstacles were easy to spot. Obama’s motorcade snaked through the town passing rows of rusting shipping containers and dilapidated huts — almost all on stilts to accommodate gusts of wind and other weather-related events.
Thanks for contributing to the problem, asshole!
Indigenous Alaskans
You guys should have went into banking or war-profiteering instead.
It was a topic Obama brought up, by way of praising Alaskans for their perseverance despite poverty, isolation, and a lack of support. He said that while many speak of America’s pioneering, independent spirit, in Alaska it’s not just a slogan but a way of life.
Oh, he sucked up to them, too, huh?
"The vast majority of Americans have no idea there are dozens of communities in Alaska that live like this," Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said in an interview. "It's unacceptable, and we need to do more to fix it."
‘‘It can be harsh,’’ Obama said. ‘‘That means that you depend on each other.’’
Because you can't depend on the federal or state government.
With no roads to their villages, residents in rural Alaska are dependent on boats, snowmobiles and bush planes — weather permitting — to ferry them to rare doctor visits or other business. Among Alaska Natives, cancer is the leading killer, with incidence rates about 16 percent higher than for white men and women in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Shouldn't someone LOOK INTO THAT?!!!!
Compounding those hardships is climate change. Here, the phenomenon is not a political talking point or a scientific theory but a punishing everyday reality. Some communities are literally sinking into the water, as erosion and melting permafrost wash away their foundations.
So we are told by the agenda-pushing propaganda pre$$, who despite lying about everything is telling the truth on this one issue, yup!
At the same time, temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as fast as anywhere else on earth, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said, bringing with it profound changes to Alaska's cherished landscape. Amid dire poverty and few resources, many rural villages have had their foundations literally pulled out from under them as the planet gets warmer.
!!!!!!!!!!!
That is like them saying the sea is rising faster on the eastern seaboard than the rest of the world -- even though water seeks the lowest level and disperses.
This isn't worth the effort, folks.
Coming at the end of a trip he used to call attention to the challenge of climate change and to rally support in the United States and globally to address it, the announcement of the new efforts was a bid to draw attention to places that are feeling the effects most acutely.
We all know people like that. Look at me, look at me. What you do is look the other way and note what a self-centered slob is that person.
Permafrost, the layer of frozen ice under the surface, is thawing and causing homes, pipes and roads to sink as the soil quickly erodes. Some 100,000 Alaskans live in areas vulnerable to melting permafrost, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates.
“If your people are in a dire situation, if you allow whole communities to no longer exist, that reflects you as a leader,” said Diane Ramoth of Sewalik, an inland village of 900 people that has been trying for 10 years to relocate to higher ground but has struggled to find the money to do it. “Our village is going to be underwater.”
And on coastal Alaska, sea ice that once offered critical protection is melting, exposing coastlines, causing more extreme ocean storm surges and risking mass emergency evacuations.
On the mostly gravel and dirt streets of this town surrounded by water, where caribou and moose antlers adorn wooden houses on pilings and where pickup trucks and all-terrain vehicles are the mode of transportation of choice, residents said they were grateful for the focus Obama was putting on their difficulties, and for the new promises of federal support.
They haven't learned.
It's enough that the 400 or so residents of Kivalina, an Arctic town on a skinny barrier island along the Chukchi Sea, have decided they have no choice but to pick up and move. Kivalina is one of about a dozen other rural villages have voted to relocate to more stable terrain inland despite the hurdles it presents in maintaining their traditions, such as hunting marine mammals.
More refugees, and that is where the print ended.
“If there becomes, as a result of all of this, a focal point where communities that are really facing the brunt of this climate change crisis can go to get their issues addressed or get answers or make their case, that would be the best that could come of this,” said Reggie Joule, the mayor of the Northwest Arctic Borough. “It means that America has chosen to engage in a way that can help our people, and we have a president at the helm saying that these are important issues.”
So is the wealth inequality he has presided over.
Alaska scholars say the struggles in Kivalina and other rural villages have been compounded by disputes among local, state and federal agencies and a lack of money for large-scale resiliency projects — the relocation of an entire village, for example. One recommendation from an Obama-commissioned task force was for Washington to take the lead in coordinating relocation.
But there is also a hefty dose of skepticism from a native population that has often felt ignored, marginalized and victimized by the federal and state governments.
But Brian Deese, Obama's senior adviser, said the administration was looking for ways to be more nimble in helping communities relocate — not to make the decision for them.
--more--"
We all know who the trendsetter is out West:
"Calif. debates expansive climate bill" Associated Press September 06, 2015
SACRAMENTO — Governor Jerry Brown has made climate change the centerpiece of his final tenure by laying out the most aggressive benchmark in North America, which would reduce California’s carbon footprint and boost the state’s renewable energy use to 50 percent in 15 years.
Can't get rid of him fast enough then.
Securing legislation requiring that standard in the world’s eighth-largest economy would be a timely win for Brown before international leaders meet in Paris in November for the United Nations climate change conference. Brown will probably attend the conference, though he has not said so officially.
It's all about agenda, and if he goes he's a hypocrite and part of the problem.
But first, the Democratic governor has to break through a logjam in his own party in the final week of the legislative session.
Many state Assembly Democrats — including moderates and those representing less wealthy districts — are concerned that the ambitious proposal to cut petroleum use by half, boost renewable electricity use to 50 percent, and double energy efficiency in existing buildings will hurt California’s economy and working-class residents.
Those are DEMOCRATS!
An oil industry-funded group, the California Driver’s Alliance, is running what climate law proponents call “fear-mongering” ads suggesting the bill will raise gas prices and even result in rationing, harkening back to gas lines during the oil crisis of the 1970s.
With the current oversupply and price drops, that's an "out there" argument and not serious.
We know what that (and this) is. Explained it above.
--more--"
Related:
"Californians meet water-saving goals.... Officials said heavy rain in July played a role in the latest savings, along with enforcement and strong messaging by water agencies. The strong figures show California residents are beginning to understand the dire need to cut back in the fourth year of the drought, said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the water board. ‘‘This isn’t your mother’s drought or your grandmother’s drought,’’ she said. ‘‘This is the drought of the century.’’
In Calif.’s driest county, families struggle in drought
Calif. beach under shark advisory
Suit over Charles River’s pollution dropped — for now
Harpoon’s newest brew offers up a taste of the Charles River
I think I'll pass on the beer!
Also see: Western wildfires hurting air quality
Two days ago I was told things were getting better.
"A vast and stubborn wildfire that has proven California’s biggest this year was expected to spew smoke through the long Labor Day weekend, leaving some campgrounds empty and prompting health warnings. The blaze is just one factor that has challenged people planning outdoor activities in recent weeks, officials said. An infestation of bugs swarmed high-desert communities on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. In addition, an 18-day search along the famed Pacific Crest Trail ended with the suspect’s death."
Related: Missing hiker found alive after 9 days lost in Sierra Nevada
"The New England forecast stands in contrast to projections of a drop in the apple crop nationally from a year ago, due in part to drought and wildfires in Washington state, the nation’s largest apple producer."
"As residents continued to dig out of the disaster on Saturday, Tropical Storm Erika dissipated after drenching Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. At least one person died in Haiti in a suspected mudslide, and four others were killed and another 11 were hospitalized in Leogane, just west of the Haitian capital, when a truck carrying a liquor known locally as clairin crashed into a bus and exploded. Authorities said it apparently was raining when the accident occurred."
"Hurricane Fred caused flooding and downed trees in Cape Verde as it passed over the archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. State-owned TV station Radiotelevisao Caboverdiana also reported Monday the Category 1 hurricane prompted officials to close all airports in the country of 10 volcanic islands with a population of 512,000. Weather forecasters say Fred is the easternmost hurricane known to have formed in the Atlantic tropics, and the first to pass over Cape Verde as a hurricane. The US National Hurricane Center in Miami says Fred’s maximum sustained winds Monday afternoon were near 85 miles per hour. Fred was expected to produce rain accumulations of up to 10 inches. In the Pacific, Hurricane Ignacio was rapidly weakening and has moved farther away from the Hawaiian Islands, allowing forecasters to lift the tropical storm watches for the state. As of Monday morning the storm was expected to move several hundred miles northeast of Hawaii."
More: Hurricane weakens near Hawaii
It strengthened near North Carolina:
"N.C. shootings kill 5, including boy" Associated Press September 06, 2015
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlotte police officers are being called back in from vacations after five people were killed and five others hurt in shootings during a violent Labor Day holiday weekend in North Carolina’s largest city.
“It’s a sad state of affairs in the city and our country when a 7-year-old boy can’t be free to celebrate a birthday party without being murdered,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Deputy Chief Jeff Estes said at a news conference Sunday.
The spate of violence led officials to call in officers from days off and vacation to help patrol and investigate, Estes said. He said the extra officers would be used to search for illegal guns, among other steps....
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Jade Helm!
--more--"
"One man was killed and an aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo was critically injured in predawn violence near the route of the West Indian Day Parade, a rollicking celebration of Caribbean culture, food, and music that was held Monday. No arrests have been made. The shooting was one of several outbursts of violence in the area of the parade, including the stabbing death of a 24-year-old man. The parade went on as scheduled and drew hundreds of thousands of people to a stretch of Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. Politicians dotted the route, with Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, who is of Caribbean descent, drawing cheers as they waved."
Same thing happened in Boston, and that is strange reaction after a shooting.
Also see: NY governor’s aide remains critical after being shot in head
