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.
AP’s Today in History for December 13th
U.S. forces capture Iraq’s ousted dictator Saddam Hussein; Authorities in communist Poland impose martial law; Union forces suffer defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia; Actor Dick Van Dyke is born. (Dec. 13)
Breakfast Tunes Catdog Cover (guitar, banjo, mandolin)
Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below
Yemen’s Houthi rebels announce truce ahead of talks
Reuters And AP
Houthi rebels announced a ceasefire date on Saturday ahead of planned peace talks in Switzerland with the Yemeni government.
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, head of the Houthi delegation to the peace talks, said the ceasefire would start on Monday – a day before the United Nations-brokered meeting.
“Based on what had been agreed upon, there will be a halt of the aggression on the 14th of this month,” Abdul-Salam said at a news conference broadcast live from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. …
James Hansen, father of climate change awareness, calls Paris talks ‘a fraud’
Oliver Milman, The Guardian
Mere mention of the Paris climate talks is enough to make James Hansen grumpy. The former Nasa scientist, considered the father of global awareness of climate change, is a soft-spoken, almost diffident Iowan. But when he talks about the gathering of nearly 200 nations, his demeanor changes.
“It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”
…
according to Hansen, the international jamboree is pointless unless greenhouse gas emissions aren’t taxed across the board. He argues that only this will force down emissions quickly enough to avoid the worst ravages of climate change. …
50,000 Hit Streets of Poland to Rally Against ‘Creeping Coup d’Etat’
Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams
Chanting “We will defend the constitution!” an estimated 50,000 people rallied in the Polish capital Warsaw on Saturday to denounce what they see as threats to democracy by the newly elected government.
Demonstrations were held in other cities across Poland as well.
As Bloomberg reports, the conservative, Jaroslaw Kaczynski-led Law and Justice Party, which gained power in October, “has forced out the head of the country’s anti-corruption agency, limited the opposition’s oversight of secret services and outlined plans to overhaul public media, raising concerns about the system of checks and balances, guaranteed by the constitution.” …
- ‘Missing’ China tycoon found amid swirling rumors of graft probe link
Al Jazeera and wire services
- US navy’s stealth destroyer helps rescue stranded Maine fisherman
Associated Press in South Portland, Maine
- Fear Not: More Americans Support Bernie Sanders Than Donald Trump — No Matter What TV Says
Travis Gettys, Raw Story
- Despite Global Blowback, US Military Demanding Bigger, Badder Drone War
Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams
- Gun Linked to Paris Attacks Traced Back to Florida Arms Dealer Implicated in Iran-Contra Scandal
Travis Gettys, Raw Story
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Sewer plant helps create snow for small slice of town
AP
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — A sewer plant helped create a winter wonderland for a 3-square-mile area in central Pennsylvania.
The National Weather Service in State College says a layer of dense fog mixed with condensation from a local sewer plant overnight Monday, creating a dusting of light snow in a small section east of State College.
The snow fell over roughly 3 square miles near the Nittany Mall.
The weather service calls the process a “microscale event” — too isolated to be captured by local weather reporting stations.
The dusting was a rare, if brief, winterscape for a region in the midst of an unseasonably warm and snowless fall.