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
Prohibition ends in the United States; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies; Walt Disney and Little Richard are born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
Breakfast News
UAW wins historic victory in U.S. South with vote at VW plant
The United Auto Workers union won its first organizing vote at a foreign-owned auto assembly plant in the U.S. South on Friday, in a groundbreaking victory after decades of failed attempts.
About 71 percent of skilled trades workers who cast ballots at Volkswagen AG’s (VOWG_p.DE) factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted to join the UAW, according to the company and the union.
The skilled trades workers account for about 11 percent of the 1,450 hourly employees at the plant.
If the UAW victory, as expected, survives an appeal by Volkswagen to the National Labor Relations Board, the 164 skilled trades workers will be the first foreign-owned auto assembly plant workers to gain collective bargaining rights in the southern United States.
Massive natural gas storage leak alarms California residents, climate activists
It’s the climate equivalent of the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: the rupture of a natural gas storage site in California that is spewing vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere and is likely to go unchecked for three months.
The breach of the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage site, near Porter Ranch has forced the relocation of hundreds of families, who complained of headaches, nosebleeds and nausea from the rotten-egg smell of the odorant added to the gas to aid in leak detection.
The leak, which was detected on 23 October, now accounts for at least a quarter of California’s emissions of methane – a far more powerful climate-altering gas than carbon dioxide.
Climate change could make 175 million more people go hungry, report says
Unchecked climate change risks plunging a further 175 million people into hunger and undernourishment worldwide, undermining progress in reducing food insecurity, a US government report warns.
The US Department of Agriculture analysis states that climate change is “projected to result in more frequent disruption of food production in many regions and in increased overall food prices”.
The impact of rising temperatures is expected to hit poor people and tropical regions the worst, while those in colder, higher-latitude areas could experience improved agricultural capacity. However, from 2050 onwards, every food-producing region in the world is expected to be detrimentally effected.
Vikings were not spurred to Greenland by warm weather, research shows
The Vikings’ arrival and departure from Greenland was not heavily influenced by the so-called medieval warm period, according to new research that casts doubt that the climatic change was a global phenomenon.
Viking seafarers, led by Erik the Red, are understood to have expanded from Iceland to south-western Greenland around 985. The Norse population grew to about 3,000 to 5,000 settlers, harvesting walrus ivory and raising livestock. But the colonies disappeared by 1460, with the local Inuit population remaining as the only inhabitants before Europeans again arrived in the 1700s.
Previous theories have suggested that a warming climate allowed Norse people to push further north to the frigid expanses of Greenland, before leaving as temperatures dropped again. In what has become known as the medieval warm period, temperatures rose from around 950, with the generally balmier conditions lasting until 1250, before the arrival of what is known as the little ice age.
Spanish galleon with rumoured £1bn treasure hoard found, says Colombia’s president
Colombia has found the wreck of a Spanish galleon that sank off the coast of Cartagena and is thought to be laden with emeralds and gold and silver coins, the country’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, said on Friday.
More details will be provided at a news conference on Saturday, Santos said on his Twitter account. [..]
The San José sank in 1708 in the Caribbean Sea close to the walled port city of Cartagena and is said to be carrying a hoard worth £1bn. It was part of the fleet of King Philip V as he fought the English during the War of the Spanish Succession.
Breakfast Blogs
U.S. First Shields Its Torturers and War Criminals From Prosecution, Now Officially Honors Them Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
This Will Be the Ugliest, Most Leprous Presidential Campaign We’ve Ever Seen Charles Pierce, Esquire Politics
America is obsessed with “terrorism”: Why our furious debate over semantics could be hurting us Marcy Wheeler aka emptywheel, Salon
“At the end of the day, the work of amateurs” digby, Hullabaloo
Inspector General’s Report: Still Lots Of Problems At DOJ Agencies, Who I Now Have To Ask For Permission To See Documents Tim Cushing, Techdirt