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 January 1st
Castro seizes power in Cuba; Abraham Lincoln signs emancipation proclamation; Ellis Island opens; Hank Williams Sr. dies.
Breakfast Tune Cold Cold Heart / Henning Munk & Plumperne
Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below
Texas federal judge halts Obama protection of transgender health rights
Associated Press in Austin, Texas
A federal judge in Texas has ordered a halt to another Obama administration effort to strengthen transgender rights, this time over health rules that social conservatives say could force doctors to violate their religious beliefs.
US district judge Reed O’Connor on Saturday granted a temporary injunction that stops federal health officials from enforcing rules that are intended to ban discrimination by doctors and hospitals against transgender persons.
O’Connor wrote in a 46-page ruling that the rules “likely violate” the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and “places substantial pressure on plaintiffs to perform and cover transition and abortion procedures”. …
Seaborne Fukushima Radiation Plume Hit West Coast, Corporate Media Reported It Dangerously
Shad Engkilterra, EnviroNews
(EnviroNews DC News Bureau) — “It is not a question any more: radiation produces cancer, and the evidence is good all the way down to the lowest doses,” says the late Dr. John Gofman, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkley, in his book Nuclear Witnesses: Insiders Speak Out.
On December 12, 2016, EnviroNews USA’s own Editor-in-Chief Emerson Urry touched off a firestorm with his news article titled, “It’s Finally Here: Radioactive Plume From Fukushima Makes Landfall on America’s West Coast,” which claimed “medical science and epidemiological studies have demonstrated time and again that there is no safe amount of radiation for a living organism to be subjected to — period.”
In his piece, Urry also exposed other news agencies like NBC, the New York Post, USA Today and The Inquisitr, catching them with their pants down, in the act of repeating the false assertions of the U.S. and Canadian researchers, telling people not to worry about the recently detected low amounts of cesium 134 found in salmon, and that the levels were within “safe” or “accepted” thresholds for human health. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Emerson Urry recused himself from all editorial duties on this news story.] …
Deutsche Bank chairman rules out European merger: Frankfurter Allgemeine
Andreas Cremer, Reuters
Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) Chairman Paul Achleitner has ruled out a European merger or a state bailout after the lender’s mortgage settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported.
The bank, Germany’s biggest, last week announced a $7.2 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over its sale and pooling of mortgage securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
“The management board in principle looks at everything that could help the business,” Achleitner said in an interview with the weekly newspaper published on Sunday.
“At the moment, however, enthusiasm for a pan-European merger is muted as we have other priorities,” he said, when asked why Deutsche does not merge with Italy’s UniCredit (CRDI.MI) or another lender. …
Economic Recovery Is Mostly A Myth For The 99 Percent
Dan Wright, Shadowproof
The famous United States stock index known as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (or simply the Dow) flirted with approaching a historic high of 20,000. The index, which shows how the largest 30 companies publicly traded in the U.S. are performing, is considered a key indicator of how well U.S. business is doing.
On September 29th, 2008, the Dow crashed a historic 777.68 points in intra-day trading and would go on to reach its bottom of 6,594.44 on March 5, 2009.
The recovery of the Dow and the stock market has been great for the top one percent of Americans, who roughly own 36 percent of all private wealth. And, although roughly 35 percent of the general U.S. population owns securities through a retirement fund, their individual ownership share is minuscule to the point of irrelevance.
So, the rich have genuinely and thoroughly recovered from the crash of 2008. But what about everyone else?
* 93 percent of U.S. counties haven’t recovered from the Great Recession according to the National Association of Counties.
* According to Pew, the middle class is now no longer the majority in America.
* The “recovery gap” has more than 50 million Americans living in economically distressed regions plagued by high levels of unemployment, poverty and fiscal anxiety.
* Nearly 95 percent of all new jobs under President Barack Obama were part-time, or contract, which pay less and are precarious.
* Due to unprecedented and often illegal home foreclosures by banks, the wealth gap between whites and blacks grew during the era of Obama.
* 63 percent of Americans do not have enough savings to cover an unforeseen $500 bill.
The only serious counterargument to this narrative is to note many of these trends preceded the Great Recession. That is sadly true.
Workers have seen stagnant wages for decades and a decreasing share of income and wealth. As the Institute for Policy Studies notes, between 1983 and 2009, over 40 percent of all wealth gains flowed to the 1 percent and 82 percent of wealth gains went to the top 5 percent.
President Obama said in 2013 that economic inequality was “the defining issue of our time.” If so, Obama largely failed to do anything meaningful to address this issue.
- Progressive parties have to address the people’s anger
Michael Sandel
- Fascism, SB 1070 and the Arizonafication of the US
Alexander Reid Ross
- Mariah Carey’s New Year’s Eve performance? ‘It just don’t get any bettah’
Christie D’Zurilla
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Keep the change? Cops say man tipped server with Valium pill
BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) — Here’s a tip: Don’t give a prescription painkiller as a gratuity.
According to police, that gesture led to trouble for a patron of a Pennsylvania casino on Thursday.
State police say the man at the Sands Casino in Bethlehem tipped a server with a Valium pill.
The Morning Call reports David Carnevale, of Caldwell, New Jersey, faces a charge of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance. He was released on his own recognizance.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Jan. 6. A working phone number for Carnevale could not be found.
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