Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become the first to scale Mt. Everest’s peak; President John F. Kennedy born; Patrick Henry gives his “If this be treason” speech; Comedian Bob Hope born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I don’t feel old. I don’t feel anything till noon. That’s when it’s time for my nap.
Breakfast News
Is US Trade Rep a Wall Street Crony? Groups Demand Transparency.
Noting deep ties between the country’s top trade negotiator and Wall Street banks, ten groups representing millions of Americans are calling on the White House to make public all communications between U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and the massive financial institutions that stand to benefit from proposed trade deals.
In a letter (pdf) addressed to Froman-lead champion of President Barack Obama’s corporate-friendly trade agenda-groups including National People’s Action, Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, and CREDO Action request “the prompt, voluntary, and proactive disclosure of all records of communication between yourself and representatives of the ten largest U.S. financial institutions-including lobbyists, employees, and trade associations-during your tenure as U.S. Trade Representative.”
Those financial institutions include JP Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup.
In particular, the letter’s signatories are concerned that provisions in proposed trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or the TransAtlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) would weaken or rollback existing U.S. financial regulations, for the benefit of big banks.
Corporate Media Accused of Parroting Fear-Mongering over Patriot Act
With key provisions of the USA Patriot Act nearing a long-awaited expiration date, there remains one last adversary to take down in the fight for privacy rights: the corporate media.
The most recent case is the New York Times, which on Thursday quoted several anonymous White House officials who warned that allowing the Patriot Act to sunset is akin to “playing national security Russian roulette” and leaves intelligence agencies in “uncharted waters…fraught with unnecessary risk.” [..]
But as other national security experts note, the Patriot Act is far from a safeguard against terrorism. In an op-ed published last Sunday, ACLU legal deputy director Jameel Jaffer criticized the media’s choice of publishing such quotes wholesale without challenging their veracity. The “claim that the expiration of Section 215 would deprive the government of necessary investigative tools or compromise national security,” wrote Jaffer, “is entirely without support.”
As DOJ Cracks Down on FIFA, Are Powerful Multinationals Being Shielded from Public Exposure?
As the U.S. Department of Justice, in concert with European officials, launches a much-publicized crackdown on FIFA corruption, bribery, and racketeering, the powerful multinational corporation Nike-widely believed to be implicated in the scandal-has been largely shielded from the same public outing.
The discrepancy adds to suspicions that, despite the “tough-on-white-collar-crime” rhetoric of the DOJ, the agency is in fact far more willing to aggressively go after the Zurich-headquartered soccer enterprise and smaller companies than powerful multinationals and financial institutions.
The DOJ announced on Wednesday that it is levying charges against 9 FIFA officials and 5 corporate executives, and Swiss authorities raided FIFA’s headquarters and arrested officials pending their extradition to the United States.
Devastating Floods in Texas Just Latest Example of Global Weather Extremes
With at least a dozen people dead and the raging high waters described as having ‘tsunami-type power’ in Texas over the Memorial Day weekend, the latest example of extreme weather in the United States is being tied to a global pattern of increasingly volatile events that are claiming lives and costing billions of dollars in damage each year.
As Texas Gov. Greg Abbott expanded the range of a declared disaster zone in his state on Tuesday, neighboring Oklahoma is also coping with an emergency response to flash floods and overflowing rivers.
Marking the official end of a four-year long drought in the south-central part of the country, the storms may be filling the region’s diminished reservoirs, but not without a high cost.
As the nation’s media focuses on the acute damage to property and loss of life, an international conference sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which kicked off in Switzerland on Monday, may shed additional light on the impact that human-caused climate change is having on the planet’s highly-dynamic weather patterns.
India heatwave death toll rises as awareness campaigns launch
The death toll in India’s heatwave has climbed towards 1,500 as the country sweltered in one of the worst bouts of hot weather for several years.
Southern India has borne the brunt of the sudden spell of hot, dry weather. So far more than 1,000 people have died in the state of Andhra Pradesh, more than double the total number of heat-related deaths last summer, authorities said.
“This is the highest death toll due to heatwave ever in the state,” said Tulasi Rani, the special commissioner for disaster management in Andhra Pradesh. “Last year around 447 people died due to heat. This year the heatwave is continuing for a longer period than in previous years.”
Anthrax: Pentagon accidentally sent bioweapon to as many as nine states
The Pentagon has conceded it accidentally shipped samples of a live bioweapon across nine states and to a US air base in South Korea.
In an extraordinary admission on Wednesday, the Pentagon revealed what it called an “inadvertent transfer of samples containing live Bacillus anthracis”, or anthrax, took place at an unspecified time from a US Defense Department laboratory in Dugway, Utah.
Nine unspecified states received samples of the bioweapon, which can be fatal if untreated. One sample was also sent to Osan air base in Pyeongtaek, about 65km south of Seoul.
Dozens of Canada’s tar sands projects on hold as prices fall, analysis shows
Oil companies have frozen dozens of projects in Canada’s tar sands, amid falling prices and a rising tide of protest against one of the world’s most polluting fossil fuels.
Some 39 projects containing 13bn barrels of oil are currently delayed or on hold, according to analysis by the campaign group Oil Change International published on Friday. The projects – a combination of open-cast mines and drilling – would pump 7.8bn tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere if they went ahead, the equivalent emissions of 51 American coal-fired power stations over 40 years.
Oil Change International said the delays showed that public protest against tar sands and a proposed network of pipelines is weighing on the industry.
US ends last ban on driving privileges for children of undocumented immigrants
Nebraska ended the nation’s last ban on driving privileges for young people brought into the United States illegally as children, after the legislature voted Thursday to override a veto from the state’s new Republican governor.
Senators in the one-house legislature voted 34-10 to override Republican Governor Pete Ricketts, who has backed the strict policy of his GOP predecessor to deny the licenses.
President Barack Obama announced an executive action in 2012 that creates the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gives the youths a Social Security number, a two-year work permit and protection from deportation. Although a few states initially announced that they would deny licenses to those youth, only Arizona and Nebraska ultimately adopted policies to exclude them.
Swiss scientists plug hole in cheese knowledge
After about a century of research, scientists in Switzerland have finally solved the mystery of the holes in Swiss cheese.
Despite what you may have been told as a child, the holes are not caused by mice nibbling away inside cheese wheels.
Experts from Agroscope, a state centre for agricultural research, said the phenomenon – which marks famous Swiss cheeses such as emmental and appenzell – was caused by tiny bits of hay present in the milk and not bacteria as previously thought.
Trouble bruin: bear’s all-day city chase by officials ends in snooze under tree
After leading wildlife officials on a daylong chase through a Wyoming city, an exhausted young black bear fell asleep under an aspen tree.
State game and fish wardens told the Casper Star-Tribune newspaper that they found the bear sleeping so soundly that it didn’t move when they used a tranquilizer.
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Must Read Blog Posts
Emails Reveal Dairy Lobbyist Crafted “Ag-Gag” Legislation Outlawing Pictures of Farms Lee Fang, The Intercept
What Happens #IfThePatriotActExpires? ISIS, Hellfire, Doom George Joseph. The Intercept
Team Clinton Worried Sanders Will Make Hillary ‘Look Like A Corporatist’ DSWright, FDL
Federal Appeals Court Affirms Persons Threatening Suicide Have Right to Not Be ‘Shot on Sight’ By Police Kevin Gosztola, FDl
Three Former SEC Commissioners Urge Mary Jo White to Stop Protecting Corporate Cronyism via Inaction on Disclosure of Political Spending Yves Smith, naked capitalism
Administration Feeds Journalists Hints of More Secret Law … Journalists Instead Parrot “Russian Roulette” Line Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
How They Do Business at the Keystone XL Death Funnel Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
[GOP’s bloodthirsty Liam Neeson primary: The one issue which unites the Tea Party and the right http://www.salon.com/2015/05/2… Heather Digby Parton, Salon
Data currently unavailable for “one person, one vote” Supreme Court case Jon Green, AMERICAblog
Get Ready to Call ‘Em Out On the TPP! letsgetitdone (aka Joe Firestone), Corrente
Peggy Noonan Joins George Will in Being Enraged at Rape – Victims William K. Black, New Economic Perspectives
Net Neutrality On The Ropes In Europe As Some EU Members Wimp Out On Real Rules Karl Bode, Techdirt
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