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
The Beatles appear on TV’s ‘Ed Sullivan’; Sen. Joseph McCarthy launches his anti-communist crusade; World War II’s Battle of Guadalcanal ends; Soviet leader Yuri Andropov dies; author Alice Walker born.
Breakfast Tunes
happy Birthday, Carole King
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
Breakfast News
US to deploy hundreds of troops in Afghanistan to thwart Taliban
Hundreds of additional US troops are slated to deploy to a volatile province in Afghanistan to bolster the local military against a resurgent Taliban, the Guardian has learned.
By month’s end, a force described as battalion-strength, consisting of mostly army soldiers, will arrive in Helmand province where US and UK forces have struggled in battles for over a decade to drive out the Taliban.
In keeping with Barack Obama’s formal declaration that the US is not engaged in combat, despite elite forces recently participating in an hours-long battle in Helmand, defense officials said the additional troops would not take part in combat. But they will help the existing Helmand force defend itself against Taliban attacks, officials said.
German plan to impose limit on cash transactions met with fierce resistance
A plan to introduce a limit on cash transactions in Germany has been met with fierce resistance across the country.
Proposals to ban cash payments of more than €5,000 (£3,860) to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism were revealed by the German finance ministry last week. They face opposition from a broad alliance of political parties as well as the country’s bestselling newspaper.
The Bild published an open letter on Monday entitled “hands off our cash”, which, in keeping with the analogue theme, it encourages readers to sign, cut out and post to the finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.
Millions could die as world unprepared for pandemics, says UN
A global epidemic far worse than the Ebola outbreak is a real possibility and could kill many millions if the world does not become better prepared to deal with the sudden emergence and transmission of disease, the UN has said in a hard-hitting report.
The report has emerged in draft form, as experts rally to deal with the rapid spread of the Zika virus across Latin America, which has been linked to thousands of cases of brain damage in babies.
Countries in the region have again been caught off-guard because of the lack of scientific knowledge about the virus and the absence of good data on microcephaly, a condition in which babies’ heads fail to grow properly in the womb.
The report comes from the high-level panel on the global response to health crises, set up by the UN secretary general in April 2015, as the Ebola epidemic that killed more than 11,000 people finally waned. Several other inquiries into what occurred, and the slow and inadequate response by the World Health Organisation (WHO), have reported and fed into the UN panel’s conclusions.
Wanted: home for giant rabbit that could grow to 1.2m long
A giant rabbit that has grown too large for its owners to handle is looking for a new home.
Staff at the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) have appealed for help finding a new owner for Atlas, a seven-month-old continental giant rabbit that is the size of a dog.
While he is exceptionally cute, Atlas is not your average pet. He will need an oversized hutch and lots of room to roam. He also has a colossal appetite. Fully grown continental giant rabbits, which can measure up to 1.2 metres long (4ft), munch through a bale of hay a week and up to 2,000 carrots and 700 apples a year.
Roaches to the rescue: insect provides blueprint for robotic first responder
Search and rescue missions of the future could be led by a horde of robot cockroaches, with US researchers developing a mechanical version of the reviled insect in order to serve the whims of its human overlords.
A University of California at Berkeley team found that cockroaches, despite their reputation as unwanted vermin, are superbly adaptable creatures able to contort their bodies to fit into various small and awkward spaces.
By constructing a special obstacle course, the researchers found that an American cockroach could slip through a space smaller than a quarter of its standing body height in less than a second and withstand forces of around 900 times its own weight without sustaining injury. A cockroach is able to compress its exoskeleton to around half its original size in order to achieve these feats.
The cockroach could also move at 20 body lengths a second and also use a little understood form of locomotion called “body-friction-legged crawling” when moving in confined spaces.
Breakfast Blogs
The “Bernie Bros” Narrative: a Cheap Campaign Tactic Masquerading as Journalism and Social Activism Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
What the Heck is Going on in the Stock Market? Wolff Richter, naked capitalism
Hillary’s Bill Clinton Problem Is More Political Than Personal Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
NSA’s Funny Description of the Job that Required a Controversial Reorganization emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
Ted Cruz and the 200 lb psychopath in the foxhole digby aka Heather Digby Parton, Hullabaloo