Coal is for Christmas stockings

What the U.S. has to look forward to

Progressive, former developing countries like Chile decided to look to solar rather than stick with coal power. As a matter of fact, coal-fired power plants dropped 62 percent over the past year worldwide, according to a survey by the Sierra Club. The Washington Post reports...

An investor in Chile wanting to build a hydroelectric dam or coal-fired plant potentially faces years of costly political battles and fierce resistance from nearby communities.

 The environmental impact of coal is horrendous. As an example...

• Coal-fired power plants are responsible for one-third of America’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. 
• Coal combustion waste is the nation's second largest waste stream after municipal solid waste.
• Forests are destroyed by mountaintop removal mining.
• Coal causes a loss or degradation of groundwater.
• Transportation of coal releases air pollution such as soot and can lead to disasters that ruin the    environment.

But the new U. S. President of Profit has decided we need to create more jobs at the expense of destroying the environment so he picks the coal industry as the next goal for all this increased employment. The problem with this is that the entire coal industry employs fewer people than Arby's. That's right, a U.S. fast-food chain has more people working for it than all the coal companies nationwide. But Donald John apparently doesn't see the ignorance in his efforts, because this is a passionate group and it got him top TV exposure. They like him, they like him.

Industry experts have pointed out repeatedly, that the coal jobs are extremely unlikely to come back. The plight of the coal industry is more a function of changing energy markets and increased demand for natural gas than anything else. Coal is basically dead, and from here on should be relegated to once a year Christmas stockings. Besides, from experience over the years, coal mining companies have placed minimum emphasis on safety with the former CEO of Massey Energy convicted of conspiracy to willfully violate mine health and safety standards in 2015.

It gets worse: "Coal contains minor amounts of the radioactive elements, uranium and thorium. When coal is burnt, the fly ash contains uranium and thorium at up to 10 times their original levels. And, its 500 tons of small airborne particles, can cause bronchitis, reductions in lung function, increased hospital and emergency room admissions, and premature death. It also contains arsenic, lead and mercury. Solid waste from a typical 500MW coal plant contains 120,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of coal sludge from the smokestack scrubber." (Excellent stats thanks to Sourcewatch.org)

Here's one. Trump is cutting back on Obama's environmental protections but then instructs "...federal regulators to rewrite federal rules to reduce carbon emissions." Are they different? Are they better? Or is this just a way to delay and eventually do nothing? I vote for the latter. Apparently a $39 million cost figure under Obama's plan can't be confirmed, but isn't saving the environment worth spending a significant amount of money on? The problems of the appalling conditions in China have been used to signify a need to take action in the U.S. before it is too late.

In total, the statistics may not be real but the problem of pollution in America is very real.

Hackers will get politicians web history and have a field day

If they can break into the National Security Council, they can find out what Senators and House members are doing online. It's just a matter of time and who has the bucks to pay for it. I choose Anonymous because of its known presence in the U.S. and the fact that they easily hacked into a security firm for charity donations which could translate into a budget to coop with other hackers to buy what they cannot hack themselves. Nothing is secure against these people when they make up their minds to do something. They lean left and would consider Republicans fair game.

ISP's are professing the fact that they will not sell our private information, but what if they don't have a choice? Suppose someone takes it?  And then there's the question of whether or not the two GoFundMe campaigns would buy the data from an illegal source. But it's really not important that there is a buyer if an organization like Anonymous has the information in hand. If they do, you can bet that it will soon become public. And you can bet that the GOP Congress, backed by Donald John, will make it impossible for anything to be obtained legally.

PC World reports...

"Still, providers of so-called marketing cloud services—think Salesforce and Oracle—track web users and develop extensive profiles based on shopping and web-browsing habits, said privacy advocate Jeffery Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy."
"It’s likely possible to buy the web marketing profile of individual politicians from a marketing cloud provider, if not an ISP, including the kinds of websites they like to visit, by targeting them using their general location and other publicly available information," he said.

 And then Chester added, “Let the web monitoring and surveillance of the politicians begin.”

But the recent congressional action makes it impossible for consumers to now opt-out in sharing, "...sensitive personal information, including web-browsing history, geolocation, and financial details with third parties." What this means is that the banks can now make hay with not only your money market account where the interest is paltry, but the Republicans have made it possible to sell everything they know about you. Both privacy advocates and one actor are attempting to raise the money to buy congressional names...

"In an effort to strike back against the Republican-led legislation to roll back the FCC privacy rules, advocate Adam McElhaney has raised more than $205,000 since March 25 to buy the personal history of top politicians supporting the resolution."

"Actor Misha Collins has raised more than $86,000 in the last six days in a similar GoFundMe campaign, although he’s well short of his $500 million goal."

What all this says is that the general public does not like the republican Congress.

Back in 2012 I did a piece on supplementing Social Security with junk mail. That year the industry was grossing over $4 billion on the names and personal data of American citizens, which I felt the individual should at least share in. Well, even privacy advocates wouldn't support me because some of their efforts were funded by the people I targeted. My point here is, if it was a $4 billion business years ago, it has grown since then. And the sale of financial data attached to a person is significantly more valuable just by its nature. The banks stand to make even more millions off this data.

Advocate Adam McElhaney, who has already raised $205,000 since March 25 to buy the personal history of top politicians, allows supporters to vote on whose web browsing histories they want to see. Number one is Paul Ryan, two is House member Marsha Blackburn with Mitch McConnell coming in third. The campaign is in its infancy and it's anyone's guess how much these people might raise. There is one down-side to this and that is the possibility this information could get in the hands of either Russian or Chinese hackers where the wheels come off as far as honor.

And of course there is the group that sponsored Richard Snowden, Tailored Access Operations who has 600 employees in the main NSA complex in Fort Mead, Maryland. If that's the case, they could literally embed their people in every ISP in the world. The site TurboFuture lists the ten "Most Powerful (Known) Active Hacking Groups" in the world and a reading of these makes one wonder if there is any reason to protect anything private. With the protection of secrecy and the tools available to these people, you have to believe 1984 is here...again.

Bernie Sanders "TV exploding online"

Those are the words of Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, on the video below that goes into detail on how Bernie Sanders is getting out the Progressive word. This is a must see.

Bernie Sanders is back and this time he plans to win

Elizabeth Warren-Bernie Sanders

When I say win, Bernie Sanders is already in overdrive to elect more Progressives in the 2018 midterms and, yes, I think he is shooting for the presidency again in 2020. But I hope that Elizabeth Warren will see the light and support his candidacy this time, no matter who the Democratic Party plans to run. And there is a definite difference between Democrats and Progressives, a point that is confirmed by the fact that Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, lost the election to an incompetent candidate who is also defined as a pathological liar by Sanders. The new Republican president, Donald Trump.

Just yesterday Elizabeth Warren  with Bernie Sanders introduced a new tuition bill that would make college education available to all,regardless of who they are. "Education should be a right, not a privilege," according to the Bern, an issue he has been promoting since first starting his 2016 presidential race. "The legislation includes a joint-bill in the House which would be introduced Wednesday by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn.," according to a statement provided to International Business Times.

This should arouse the Progressives out there who have been on the sidelines wanting something to happen. That includes me, and I am now ready to roll on to upending a Republican Congress to putting Bernie sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the White House in 2020. Don't laugh, conservatives, it has been some time now since the left has had this much reason for the momentum to get the right job done. With Hillary history, and Sanders as the most popular political candidate in the U.S. the cross-country fight for legislative and governor's seats will now be easier.

And the Sanders/Warren people aren't alone. Not satisfied that enough was being done, two major groups have formed to elect Progressives in 2018 and 2020. The first is Justice Democrats, started by the founder of the Young Turks, Cenk Uygur, who said that he was starting the organization because it needed to be done and no one else was doing it. The second is Brand New Congress which was originally started by a group of volunteers and staffers from the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. They want, "...to be a big tent for anyone who is tired of partisan politics."

The latest information is that these two groups recently merged, which is a good start for the new aggregation.

Somewhere in the future it will be necessary to galvanize all these efforts into one cohesive group that supports Progressivism in order to move ahead as a collective organization. NBC News takes us back to the 2016 convention to point out where the left might take us...

"But the more radical strain, which led hundreds of Sanders delegates to walk out of the Democratic National Convention in protest last summer, is still present on the left and emboldened by the loss of Hillary Clinton and their belief that Bernie would have won."

"Some are betting that the disaffected left is as or more interested in remaking the Democratic Party as it is in fighting President Donald Trump."

What is needed now is a defined structure to get there. And that is why all these splinter groups will have to bite the bullet and find one common denominator that will rebuild, or replace, if necessary, the Democratic Party with one that will serve the people and not a political clique. Corbin Trent of Brand New Congress said...

"The point is we've watched this party over the last decade lose over 1,000 seats, lose a national election to least popular nominee in history, Donald Trump, and now we've seen poll after poll showing the Democratic Party less popular since election day. What we think is the American people are ready for a new direction."

The American people were ready for a new direction in 2016, namely Bernie Sanders, proven by the fact that he won 23 primaries with 1,865 delegates, winning just one-hundred less votes in the Democratic Primary than Donald Trump did in the Republican Primary. But he didn't win because of the shenanigans of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which has now resulted in the firing of two top politicos. Unfortunately, Tom Perez heads the DNC now, instead of Keith Ellison, which is another result of Party hardliners. See, they will never learn.

Although Republicans profess not to be worried, they should take note of the fact that the Tea Party almost upended the Party in 2009 and 2010, proving that a grassroots kind of movement can be effective. But this will require the passion of all liberals, including those who regularly rally around the Party. Just after the 2016 election, I did a post, "What do Republicans have that Democrats don't?" and the answer was passion. Some of those that didn't like Hillary Clinton either didn't vote or for some stupid reason, voted for Donald Trump.

In that case the "Party" would have been better than what we ended up with. We are not in that position approaching 2018 and 2020, and there is plenty of time to build on your passion by looking at the daily antics of the Oval Office maniac. If this isn't enough to make you crave for a change to the kind of government you would get from Bernie Sanders, then you don't want to live in the kind of country I do. That, of course, is your choice.

Paul Ryan continues to pursue his health care nightmare

Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan, the shaky Speaker of the House, says he doesn't want to work with Democrats on health care. This was Donald Trump's idea, predicting Obamacare will soon go down in flames and Democrats will be willing to cooperate. Ryan feels that won't work but only has one more option and that is to unify Republicans. Here were Trump's words in a tweet...

"The Democrats will make a deal with me on healthcare as soon as ObamaCare folds - not long. Do not worry, we are in very good shape!"

Most political experts say this isn't likely to happen. As far as unifying Republicans, this won't happen as long the Freedom Caucus' Mark Meadows is running their show. Trump recently pushed Meadows to the point the latter had to stand his ground in defiance of Donald John who tweeted this recently...

The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!

Doesn't sound like unification talk to me. And here's something else re. all these Donald Trump tweets. Is the new czar of the universe afraid of a press conference where he has to face real people with real questions that ask for real answers? We know Trump's assessment of the press, but wouldn't you consider hiding behind his cell phone tweeting everything a bit cowardly? This runs hand-in-hand with his generous use of Executive orders instead of attempting to get his programs through Congress. Perhaps he just hasn't anything substantive.

Conservatives want to unify the Party again and Paul Ryan apparently believes now that is the only way the GOP will get anything done in this congress. Ryan's predecessor, John Boehner, fought the conservative right the entire time he served as House Speaker with no success. He finally just quit. Does this mean that the separation within the Republican Party is so analytically impossible to unify, that, as long as the GOP is in power, the government will remain in chaos? It looks like this might be the case looking as far back as the George W. Bush administration.

Here's an example of the inability to work together...

"But so far, Republicans haven’t proven that’s in the realm of possibility. Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) told reporters that the moderate Tuesday Group agreed Wednesday that they would not meet or work with Freedom Caucus members. 'If that call comes in, just hang up,' Collins said."

Chris Conover of Forbes says Trump will not repeal and replace Obamacare. Prior to this piece, he had cited partisan opposition and partisan rancor over the debt ceiling coming up soon, and now focuses on the fact that Trump himself is the reason Republicans will fail. Here's how Politico's Tim Alberta put it...

"faced with his first major test, the president failed—on multiple occasions and on many levels."

Sounds to me like a mandate on both the GOP control of Congress and Donald Trump himself. The question is, how long will the American people accept this utter nonsense from our government? DT was the least equipped in health care of all the competitors for the 2016 Republican nomination, remarks Conover. I would add that Donald John is the least equipped to be President of the United States based purely on his moral values and his contentious and freaked out temperament. The Governor's Conference even ridiculed him over his lack of health care knowledge.

It goes without saying that he doesn't even measure up to a novice in his understanding of the needs of U.S. health care. And back several years ago he highly favored the parallel to Obamacare, universal health care. An interview in 1998 with Stone Phillips...

Trump: "[I'm] liberal on health care, we have to take care of people that are sick."
Stone Phillips: "Universal health coverage?"
Trump: "I like universal, we have to take care, there's nothing else. What's the country all about if we're not going to take care of our sick?"

Here's a man who either doesn't know what the hell he's for, or simply says what he thinks the people want to hear in order to keep them loving him. It is no wonder that Paul Ryan has gone his own way to get the passage of a Republican health care plan. The problem here is that everything he has come up with so far is crap, agreed to by both Democrats and the GOP. Here's what New York Times reporter Michael Shear said...

"Mr. Trump — who sold himself as a winner who could turn around a country that 'doesn’t win anymore' — has endured a litany of missteps, controversies, resignations and investigations, all of which have dented his 'I alone can fix it' vow to remake government with businesslike efficiency."

No one believes that malarkey anymore but what is worse, in an additional remark by Shear who points out that the U.S. is in the slowest presidential transition in decades. Translated, that means that the good of our country has been put on the back burner, all because of one man. Unfortunately, he happens to be president.

Mike Pence epitome of male version of Mr. Goody Two-Shoes

Mike Pence uneasy with all those legs?

You know them. They're all around us, those people who profess to be the hygienic individuals who wouldn't say shit if they had a mouthful. The Urban Dictionary says they are almost always women, and always go to church, professing their virginity and complete abstinence. I've known some who were absolute hypocrites; we called them "backdoor Baptists" in the South. Pastor comes in the front door of the bar, the Baptists go out the back door. Sometimes it is purely to set up a front to make other people think they are something they aren't and can't be. It's pathetic and it is demeaning.

Mike Pence always looked a little too good to be true to me. Believe the republican Party put him in there in the hopes that Donald Trump would quickly go down in flames and Pence is someone they can control. Well, Donald John could still implode but I am horrified over the possibility of Pence taking over the Oval Office. First of all, he is a dedicated Tea Party supporter, solid grounds for being removed from the planet. Second, the Huff Post reports that, "...unless he is with his wife, he won’t eat alone with a woman or attend an event where alcohol is served."

Oh. My. God! Mr. Goody Two-Shoes.

Is this what he thinks of other women, that they might wrestle him under the table, ripping off his clothes and seducing him between the main course and dessert? What kind of women has this man dated, or was he so shy and introverted he couldn't get a date. In religious circles this is called the "Billy Graham Rule," but where I come from it is called blatant sexism. How has Pence gotten this far in politics? HP says the Graham rule is, "...that men are little better than animals who cannot control themselves and, so, can’t, ultimately, be held accountable." Mike Pence? Don't think so.

In the Huff Post analysis of this practice by some men, it becomes apparent that not only is this something that is measured by a potential intimate relationship between men and women, but that these suppressed feelings by the male can often turn into hostility toward women, and particularly when the guy is the inferior one. It can also show up in the hiring process between the boss, a man, and the potential employee a woman. I personally witnessed a corporate scenario where a wife threatened her husband if he hired a woman the spouse considered too good looking.

The HP writer Soraya Chemaly has one of the best grips on the problems of women in the workplace I have ever read, deserving a full read of the article. She says...

"Today, women are still primarily responsible for children, do an average of two hours more unpaid work a week and make up three quarters of minimum wage workers. Thirty-nine percent of working mothers are sole providers for their families, compared to 43 percent of men, who are twice as likely to be making more than $50K and more than six times as likely to be making six-figure incomes."

Chemaly makes it clear that the current President and Vice President of the U.S. could not be further separated in their morals. Here's Mike Pence, the church going, family man fighting off the "evil temptress" to stay pure, compared to Donald Trump who "is one who sees all women through the filter of his sexual pleasure and violability, including, shamelessly, his own daughter," a phrase I couldn't resist from the author. Read it!

Time to dump the Democratic Party...as we know it

The Democratic National Committee fired its entire staff. That even includes longtime Dem pundit, Donna Brazile, who just recently owned up to the fact that she had slipped Hillary Clinton debate questions based on her connections with CNN. Brazile had earlier fired Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was responsible for the Party being in the shape it is today. She stood by with her finger in her nose while Republicans took over political seats starting with city, county and state, all the way to the House and Senate, resulting in a loss of the White House. These people are a disgrace to the Party.

As The Blaze put it, "... a humiliating rout in an election that pundits widely believed would fall their [Democrats] way..." I am not sure just what good this will do, considering the guy doing the firing is a Dem hardliner. The Party couldn't see past their noses when Bernie Sanders tried to tell them that Keith Ellison was the man for the DNC job. They are, of course, both Progressives. And that brings me to the title of this blog, "Time to dump the Democratic Party...as we know it." As Kenny Rogers put it, "ygot to know when to hold 'em / Know when to fold 'em." Now's the time to fold 'em."

We need to revive the Progressive Party in the format of Bernie Sanders Our Revolution and make it a viable political movement that will give disillusioned Democrats/liberals a place to organize and establish a platform that makes sense to the modern day left. That said, did you know the Progressive Party was first organized in 1912 by Theodore Roosevelt after he lost the nomination of the Republican Party to his former protégé, President William Howard Taft. The Bull Moose version of the Party was dissolved in 1916. No more real activity until 2016 when the Bern came on the scene.

An early attempt at continuing the political positions of Bernie Sanders is by Cenk Uygur, founder of the Young Turks, who has started a movement called, Justice Democrats, whose goal is to put a significant number of Justice Democrats in the Congress. You can see their platform here. And to show how grave the situation was, here is Uygur's comment, "I was hoping someone else would do this, but when no one else was, somebody had to do it.” And of course there are the Progressive Democrats of America, who also mirror the Bern's movement. But so far, we're disjointed.

To correct this there must be a coordinated effort to officially structure a party apparatus that will withstand the organizational challenges of the developing members and the constituents. It will take a strong leader, and, of course, who better than Bernie Sanders? I do not think Sanders is too old to run in 2020, but if the consensus is that he is, there is Elizabeth Warren, and as a dark horse, how about Chuck Schumer? The Senate minority head even supported the Bern's pick of Keith Ellison to head up the DNC, who, unfortunately lost.

If we are to be ready for 2020, things must get moving pretty soon and it will take Bernie's organizational skills to ramp it all up. I will be a constant supporter from my blog and am sure there are many others like me, including the Young Turks. The cry is out there senator Sanders and only you can answer the call.