Late on Thursday, the New York Times magazine published a lengthy profile of Hillary Clinton under an illustration of her as a toy soldier and the headline "How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk."

The profile, by Mark Landler, traces her evolution on foreign policy, explores her legacy as secretary of state, and seeks to deduce a Clinton worldview. It's fascinating, deeply reported, and well worth reading. It also reiterates what is perhaps the defining piece of conventional wisdom about Hillary Clinton and foreign policy: she is a super-hawk.

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A few hours after the piece went online, something else was published comparing the presidential candidates on foreign policy. And the story it told could not have been more different.[/font]

It was a simple scorecard, assembled by a non-partisan nuclear nonproliferation group called Global Zero, comparing the five remaining candidates on a battery of eight foreign policy issues.

[font size="3"]On every issue that Global Zero measured, Clinton is indicated as far less hawkish than all three of the Republican candidates, and as basically tied with Bernie Sanders.[/font] She supports the Iran nuclear deal; the Republicans all oppose it. She supports using diplomacy to solve the North Korean nuclear crisis; John Kasich is the only Republican to do so. She supports negotiating with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons; no Republican candidate does.
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Oklahoma state lawmakers are well on their way to passing a bill that would make it a felony for doctors to provide abortions, unless a woman's life is in danger or she has had a miscarriage that needs to be removed. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or the woman's health.

The bill defines abortion as "unprofessional conduct" for a physician, which means that performing one could be grounds for losing your medical license. Oklahoma's existing felony abortion law punishes non-physician care providers with up to three years in prison for performing an abortion. The new law, however, would include physicians for performing abortions.

So if you're a doctor, you risk both losing your medical license and going to jail if you provide abortions. In practical terms, that means the new bill is a total ban on abortion.

The bill has passed both chambers of Oklahoma's state legislature, but it was amended before being passed by the House and now returns to the Senate.
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A bladeless wind energy convertor inspired by the sailing boats of Ancient Carthage is set to breeze past traditional turbines in terms of efficiency, according to its Tunisian developers.

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The designers, led by 37-year-old engineer Anis Aouini, looked to the old technology of sailing boats, as well as the movements of birds and fish for their design. They were inspired by the sailors of the ancient civilisation of Carthage, located close to the present-day Tunisian capital.

The bladeless design uses a non-rotational sail-shaped body combined with a wind converter that follows a figure of eight pattern in the air.

All wind turbines are subject to the Betz limit of capturing 59 percent of the energy from wind, but its developers say the Saphonian is quite capable of surpassing this limit because it is bladeless, making it far more efficient than traditional turbines.

Saphon Energy says the Saphonian will be able to convert wind to energy at around 80 percent. Its lower cost could make it an attractive source of off-grid energy in developing countries.
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For a current standard mid-sized gasoline ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle, the embedded carbon in production will be around 5.6tCO2e, around three quarters of which is the steel in the vehicle glider. This highlights the importance of deploying low weight, low carbon alternatives to current steels in the ultra-low carbon vehicles of the future. A similar electric vehicle will have embedded production emissions of 8.8tCO2e, 43% of which arise from the battery.



Vehicle Whole Life Carbon Emissions Analysis

                                             Estimated          % of Emissions
                                       Lifecycle emissions        in PRoduction
                                        (tons of CO2)
Standard gasoline vehicle                  24              23%   
Hybrid vehicle                                 21              31%   
Plug-in hybrid vehicle                       19              35%   
Battery-electric vehicle                     19              46%   

Based upon a 2015 vehicle in use for 150k KM using 10% ethanol blend and 500g/kWh grid electricity.

Decarbonizing both electricity supply through renewables and the production of batteries will therefore be essential for electric vehicles to deliver ultra-low carbon lifetime emissions.

The report also indicates that lifecycle carbon emissions for mid-sized gasoline and diesel vehicles doing a similar lifetime mileage are almost identical—the greater efficiency of the diesel being offset by high production emissions. It also highlights that some regulations designed to improve recyclability, safety or reduce air pollution can increase carbon emissions in production or use.


There is an emerging consensus that we need to move towards a more holistic analysis of whole life CO2 emissions in order to make more informed and better long term decisions on future technologies.


Life cycle analysis is still in its infancy, with little defined process and standards. The Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership report is an important contribution to this type of analysis and highlights the need to work toward a common methodology and approach to deliver consistent and robust life cycle data on CO2 emissions.

—Ricardo Chief Technology & Innovation Officer and Chairman of the LowCVP, Prof. Neville Jackson
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African Americans in the South can’t get a break when it comes to voting, as history can’t deny.

After all they’ve endured through slavery, Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, their voices are still treated dismissively by tone-deaf politicians who would ask for their votes.

If you’re thinking Bernie Sanders, you’re partly right.

This month, having lost massively to Hillary Clinton across the Southeast, Sanders commented that the bevy of early Southern primaries “distorts reality.” In other comments soon thereafter, perhaps covering for what was obviously a lapse in political acumen, he clarified that those early states are the most conservative in the country.

Not really. And not really.

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Many took Sanders’s remarks as insinuating that the black vote isn’t all that important. Adding to the insult, actor Tim Robbins, a Sanders surrogate, said that Clinton’s win in South Carolina, where more than half of Democratic voters are African American, was “about as significant” as winning Guam.
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Based on what I know about the emails, the idea of her being indicted or going to prison is nonsensical. Nonetheless, the belief that Clinton is dishonest and untrustworthy is pervasive. A recent New York Times-CBS poll found that 40% of Democrats say she cannot be trusted.

For decades she’s been portrayed as a Lady Macbeth involved in nefarious plots, branded as “a congenital liar” and accused of covering up her husband’s misconduct, from Arkansas to Monica Lewinsky. Some of this is sexist caricature. Some is stoked by the “Hillary is a liar” videos that flood Facebook feeds. Some of it she brings on herself by insisting on a perimeter or “zone of privacy” that she protects too fiercely. It’s a natural impulse, given the level of scrutiny she’s attracted, more than any male politician I can think of.

I would be “dead rich”, to adapt an infamous Clinton phrase, if I could bill for all the hours I’ve spent covering just about every “scandal” that has enveloped the Clintons. [font size="3"]As an editor I’ve launched investigations into her business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising.

Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.[/font]

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The connection between money and action is often fuzzy. Many investigative articles about Clinton end up “raising serious questions” about “potential” conflicts of interest or lapses in her judgment. Of course, she should be held accountable. It was bad judgment, as she has said, to use a private email server. It was colossally stupid to take those hefty speaking fees, but not corrupt. There are no instances I know of where Clinton was doing the bidding of a donor or benefactor.

As for her statements on issues,[font size="3"] Politifact, a Pulitzer prize-winning fact-checking organization, gives Clinton the best truth-telling record of any of the 2016 presidential candidates. She beats Sanders and Kasich and crushes Cruz and Trump[/font], who has the biggest “pants on fire” rating and has told whoppers about basic economics that are embarrassing for anyone aiming to be president. (He falsely claimed GDP has dropped the last two quarters and claimed the national unemployment rate was as high as 35%).

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It’s fair to expect more transparency. But it’s a double standard to insist on her purity.

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders said in an interview broadcast Friday that he would wait to see what Hillary Clinton includes in her platform before deciding how actively to campaign for her in the fall if she is the party’s nominee.

The senator from Vermont, who has vowed to stay in the race until the Democratic convention, was asked by Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC whether he would try to persuade his young supporters to back Clinton in the same fashion that she supported President Obama after losing the nomination to him in 2008.
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When Bernie Sanders says current polling shows him as a strong general-election candidate, a point he emphasizes in nearly every speech, interview, and public appearance, he’s 100% correct. The polling data is readily available, and it says exactly what he claims it says. Political scientists are quick to point out that the evidence isn’t quite what it appears to be, but for Team Bernie, those details don’t negate the survey results themselves.

And yet, Republicans can see the same polling results as everyone else, and they appear to be convinced that Sanders would be vastly easier to defeat.

Indeed, Republicans aren’t just operating under those assumptions, they’re acting on them. Karl Rove’s Crossroads operation started boasting in February about its efforts to boost Sanders, and other Republican outfits have launched similar efforts to help the Vermont senator. In January, the RNC’s chief strategist conceded he was eager to “help” the Sanders campaign.

So, what explains the discrepancy? With so many polls showing Sanders faring better than Hillary Clinton in general-election match-ups, why would Republicans go out of their way to try to line up a race with the candidate who appears stronger?

Bloomberg Politics reported yesterday that Republican operatives “are chomping at the bit to face Sanders,” because they believe it would be easy to change the trajectory of those polls.


[div class="excerpt" style="border:1px solid #000000;padding:10px;"]“Republicans are being nice to Bernie Sanders because we like the thought of running against a socialist. But if he were to win the nomination the knives would come out for Bernie pretty quick,” said Ryan Williams, a former spokesman for 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign. “There’s no mystery what the attack on him would be. Bernie Sanders is literally a card carrying socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union. There’d be hundreds of millions of dollars in Republican ads showing hammers and sickles and Soviet Union flags in front of Bernie Sanders.”



“Hillary Clinton is a much more centrist candidate in comparison,” Williams said, and she would have a better chance of winning over moderate and undecided voters, despite numerous polls showing that many Americans, even in the Democratic Party, don’t view her as honest and trustworthy. “Bernie’s numbers are better than hers right now because she’s been in the political arena for 30 years getting beat up,” he said.

FACT: None Of The Emails Sent To Clinton Were Labeled As "Classified" Or "Top Secret"

Government Officials: None Of The Emails Were Marked As "Classified" When They Were Sent. The Washington Post reported that when the ICIG first "found information that should have been designated as classified" in four emails from Clinton's server -- two of which he now says contain "top secret" information -- government officials acknowledged that the emails were not marked as classified when they were sent (emphasis added):

[blockquote style="border:1ps solid #000000;padding:10px;background:#ddffee;"] The Justice Department said Friday that it has been notified of a potential compromise of classified information in connection with the private e-mail account that Hillary Rodham Clinton used while serving as secretary of state.

A Justice official said the department had received a "referral" on the matter, which the inspector general of the intelligence agencies later acknowledged came from him.

The inspector general, I. Charles McCullough III, said in a separate statement that he had found information that should have been designated as classified in four e-mails out of a "limited sample" of 40 that his agency reviewed. As a result, he said, he made the "security referral," acting under a federal law that requires alerting the FBI to any potential compromises of national security information.

(...)

Officials acknowledged that none of the e-mails reviewed so far contain information that was marked classified when they were sent. But a new inquiry would prolong the political controversy Clinton is facing over her un­or­tho­dox e-mail system. (The Washington Post, 7/24/15)(more)

FACT: IG Referral To Justice Department Was Not Criminal, And FBI Isn't Targeting Clinton Herself

Reuters: Inspector General Referral Is Not Criminal. Reuters reported on July 24 that there was "no criminal referral over [the] Clinton emails":

[div class="excerpt" style="border:1px solid #000000;padding:10px;"] The Justice Department said Friday it has received a request to examine the handling of classified information related to the private emails from Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state, but it is not a criminal referral. (Reuters, "No Criminal Referral over Clinton Emails" 7/24/15)

The book examines the influence of several of the country's wealthiest conservative donors, but it pays particular attention to the activities of Charles and David Koch, who have organized their network and spearheaded the group's political efforts. "Few had waged a more relentless or more effective assault on Americans' belief in government," Mayer wrote of the Kochs.

A key element of the Koch brothers' strategy is influencing the media. Through media, they have advanced their political and ideological goals and attacked those who stand in their way. The Koch brothers and their network have paid conservative media figures to promote their message, bankrolled front groups that run aggressive anti-environmental media campaigns, and even created their own right-wing "news" outlets. Meanwhile, they've garnered some favorable mainstream media coverage by tightly controlling reporter access to their summits and other events, while attacking and otherwise intimidating journalists who dare to shine a light on their activities.

Here is how the Koch brothers and their network have infiltrated the media:
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Buying A Conservative Media Echo Chamber



Creating Their Own Media Outlets



Funding Front Groups That Run Deceptive Media Campaigns



Tightly Controlling Reporter Access To Their Events And Activities



Intimidating Journalists Who Seek To Uncover Their True Agenda[/font]





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Table of contents:

Part One: Weaponizing Philanthrop: the War of Ideas, 1970-2008

1 Radicals: A Koch Family History

2 The Hidden Hand: Richard Mellon Scaife

3 Beachheads: John M. Olin and the Bradley Brothers

4 The Koch Method: free-Market Mayhem

5 The Kochtopus: Free-Market Machine

Part Two: Covert Operiations, 2009-2010


6 Boots o the Ground

7 Tea Time

8 The Fossils

9 Money Is Speech: The Long Road to Citizens United

10 The shellacking: Dark Money's Midterm Debut, 2010

Part Three: Privatizing Politics: Total Combat, 2011-2014

11 The Spoils: Plundering Congress

12 Mother of All War" The 2012 Setback

13 The States: Gaining Ground

14 Selling the New Koch: A Better Battle Plan