Rhiannon12866
Rhiannon12866's JournalGore: US Getting Close To Political Shift On Climate Change
Former Vice President Al Gore believes the U.S. is nearing a political tipping point, with the 2020 Democratic presidential field offering voters the chance to replace President Donald Trump with someone “committed heart and soul” to combating climate change.
Gore, who emerged as a leading climate activist after losing the 2000 presidential election, told The Associated Press in a Friday interview that he won’t take sides in his party’s wide-open nominating fight.
But he said he’s talked to several candidates privately and is “encouraged” by what he’s hearing publicly, noting that “at least 10? have declared climate action a top priority, while Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has put the issue at the center of his bid.
“We need a new president, and we need a president committed heart and soul to the climate crises,” Gore said during an activist training conference in Atlanta hosted by his nonprofit, nonpartisan Climate Reality Project. “I’m very happy that so many of the Democratic candidates have made it clear that’s the way they would intend to govern if they won.”
Trump’s presidency “is unfortunate in so many ways,” Gore said, but he also credited Trump’s open contempt of the scientific consensus that human activity affects the Earth’s atmosphere with pushing many moderates and even some conservatives toward the more traditional liberal activists on the issue.
Read more: https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/1696806/gore-us-getting-close-to-political-shift-on-climate-change.html
Why Trump Is Stuck With 'Saturday Night Live'
A federal rule requiring fairness on broadcast television is gone, and that’s probably for the better.By Noah Feldman
March 18, 2019, 1:35 PM EDT
President Donald Trump apparently caught a rerun of “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, and decided to tweet Sunday morning that the NBC program should be investigated by the Federal Communications Commission for parodying him so much. That’s legally absurd.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1107250037854212096
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1107253742271901696
But Trump’s lament reflects the persistent power of the old idea that television networks should be fair to all political sides and give equal time to all candidates for office. It’s worth asking: What’s the current state of the law on broadcaster fairness? And beyond the law, should fairness be an objective of any kind in the era of cable news and social media?
It’s important to distinguish the two legal principles derived from the federal regulation of broadcasting: the fairness doctrine and the equal-time rule.
The fairness doctrine, instituted by FCC regulation in 1949, required radio and television broadcasters to be honest, equitable and balanced in presenting matters of public importance. It applied only to licensed broadcasters using the airwaves, not to newspapers. Cable television hadn’t yet been invented.
The doctrine was challenged as a limitation on broadcasters’ freedom of speech, because it obviously affected what they could and must say. In an important 1969 decision, Red Lion v. FCC, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the fairness rule.
The court reasoned that because bandwidth was a scarce, limited resource, owned by the government and effectively leased to licensed broadcasters, the usual First Amendment limits on regulation didn’t fully apply.
The court also hinted at a broader public right to know, albeit in language it has rarely, if ever, used since. “The people as a whole,” the court said, “retain their interest in free speech by radio and their collective right to have the medium function consistently with the ends and purposes of the First Amendment.”
Crucially, the court said, “it is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.”
Much more: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-18/trump-snl-and-the-fairness-doctrine-what-fcc-rules-say-today
Equal time doesn’t apply to parody. Photographer: Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Seth Meyers - Trump Melts Down on Twitter, Defends Fox News Hosts: A Closer Look
Seth takes a closer look at President Trump spending the weekend on an unhinged Twitter rant after dismissing the rising threat of white nationalism.
The Daily Show: Democratic Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang's Campaign for Universal Basic Income
Ronny Chieng sits down with Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang to find out why he thinks the government should be paying every American adult $1,000 a month.
The Daily Show - Beto O'Rourke: Born to Run & Born to Apologize
Beto O’Rourke apologizes for problematic comments he made on his family dynamic, saying he was “born to run” for president, and his past membership in a computer hacking group.
Who Writes the Music for America’s Network News?
Desi Lydic imagines what kind of person could be behind the dramatic, over-the-top music that accompanies big stories on cable news channels.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) - Public Shaming
John Oliver talks about the power of public shaming, good and bad.
The Trump administration is opening millions of new acres to drilling -- and that's just the start
The Trump administration is aggressively pressing ahead in expanding federal oil and gas industry leases that could lead to more drilling on land and at sea, defying an assessment by government scientists that the production and use of fossil fuels is accelerating climate change.
On Friday, the administration announced a final decision to lift protections for a uniquely American bird, called the greater sage grouse, on nearly 9 million acres to provide more leasing opportunities to oil, gas and mining industries.
A day earlier, an Interior Department assistant secretary confirmed that he told leaders of the fossil fuel industry last month that the Atlantic coast will almost certainly be included in the administration’s plan to expand federal leasing to nearly the entire outer continental shelf. Offshore leases haven’t been granted in the Atlantic for decades, and drilling hasn’t been allowed for a half-century.
Joe Balash, assistant secretary for land and minerals management, said the department’s determined effort to approve seismic surveys is a sign that the Eastern Seaboard is in serious play — despite concerns that blasting piercing sounds every 10 seconds for weeks on end pose risks to whales and dolphins, according to conservationists and some scientists.
“I will tell you, we wouldn’t work really, really hard to get seismic permits out if that area wasn’t going to be available,” Balash said during a question-and-answer session following his speech at the International Association of Geophysical Contractors conference in Houston.
In his remarks, Balash said he found it “absolutely thrilling” that President Trump’s “knack for keeping the attention of the media and the public focused somewhere else” has allowed Bureau of Ocean Energy Management employees to process the permits without much scrutiny. In an email to The Washington Post on Thursday, Balash said his comments reflected his appreciation that the president’s leadership style made it easier to execute his energy dominance agenda.
Much more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-trump-administration-is-opening-millions-of-new-acres-to-drilling-%E2%80%94-and-thats-just-the-start/ar-BBUPKzG
Male greater sage grouse gather near White Mountain to perform annual spring courtship in a high desert area in Wyoming. (Noppadol Paothong)
15-year-long oil spill is the longest in U.S. history
Port Eads, La. — In 2004, Hurricane Ivan plowed across the Gulf of Mexico and triggered an oil spill that is still leaking. It's the longest continuous oil spill in American history.
Captain Rick Jiannuzzi took CBS News to where the Taylor oil rig once stood.
"Wherever it looks smooth, that's all the sheen," he said.
From the air, that sheen is visible for miles and you can even see it from space. Fifteen miles out, you can also smell it.
In 2004, Hurricane Ivan destroyed the MC20 oil platform operated by Taylor Energy. The company has spent over $400 million working alongside the U.S. Coast Guard to contain and clean up the spill which Taylor estimates has been leaking at a rate of about ten gallons a day for years.
But Florida State oceanographer and oil spill expert Ian MacDonald, who has studied the site for the government using underwater technology, thinks the leak is closer to 96 barrels a day. MacDonald convinced the Coast Guard that more oil is leaking than previously thought.
Read more (Includes video): https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/15-year-long-oil-spill-is-the-longest-in-us-history/ar-BBUPF2W?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=U508DHP
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