Catalan parliament declares independence from Spain

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Justin Timberlake to do Superbowl LII

http://m.tmz.com/#2017/10/22/justin-timberlake-confirms-super-bowl-lii-halftime-show/

A liberal is a conservative whose house just flooded

Last week, the Washington Post ran an article from Port Arthur, Texas, a Gulf Coast city that is heavily dependent on the oil industry and which was badly flooded this summer by Hurricane Harvey. The reporter found that some Trump voters, confronted with evidence that climate change may pose a risk to environments closer to home than the North Pole, were rethinking their opposition to measures to reduce carbon emissions. But it seems to be rather a close call.

One man, who described himself as an evangelical Christian and conservative Republican, had a poignant comment on this dilemma: “It’s a Catch-22 kind of thing,” he said. “Do you want to build your economy, or do you want to save the world?”

Well, environmentalists have to take their victories where they find them. A hurricane is a blunt instrument for getting voters’ attention, but, by analogy to the famous aphorism of the 1960s — “A conservative is a liberal who just got mugged” — perhaps tomorrow’s liberal is a conservative whose house just flooded.

But let’s try to help out the Washington Post’s man in the street, starting with the observation that the economy of the future will increasingly be built on renewable energy. As it happens, Texas ranks first in the nation for wind-power generation, with nearly 12,000 turbines that in addition to electricity, have generated more than 22,000 jobs. That is, of course, a small fraction of oil and gas employment in the state, but the petroleum industry enjoyed a hundred-year head start — and while only a few states have significant oil and gas production, the wind blows and the sun shines everywhere, creating renewable-energy jobs in such states as Iowa and Vermont.

The number of jobs in clean-energy industries is said to be around 3 million, roughly comparable (depending on how you count) to fossil-fuel employment. Not all jobs are fungible, of course, but common sense suggests that someone whose job is welding pipe in a refinery could do the same thing on a windmill instead.

Of course, those workers might need to relocate, but it is probably better for them to relocate now, if the next storm will wash away their homes eventually anyway. Moving to take advantage of opportunities is a familiar part of the American experience—a key component, in fact, of the American exceptionalism conservatives claim to worship, in contrast to the parochial, tradition-bound villages and towns of the Old World. Paradoxically, the party that self-identifies with risk-taking, innovation and entrepreneurship is also the one committed to preserving an energy economy from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

But the bigger issue is that while the economy has always gone through cycles of boom and bust and will again in the future, the world can end only once. Many Americans might even think it’s worth saving even if the process shaves a few basis points off the GDP. The fact that some people — including the ones running the U.S. government and its environmental agencies — apparently disagree is an especially glaring example of the failure of moral imagination that pervades American politics.

Those in a position of leadership who refuse to take action on climate change follow in the footsteps of Louis XV, one of France’s Bourbon kings, who surveyed his restive kingdom and commented, “After me, the deluge.” Louis meant it figuratively, but the deluges we face today are actual. The story brings to mind President Trump trying to finish a round of golf before the next hurricane dumps three feet of rain on his head.

Maybe the problem is just that solipsism is the default human condition. Former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, on most issues an orthodox conservative Republican of the pre-tea party era, was known for his advocacy for the disabled. This was an issue that sometimes put him at odds with his own party, notably a few years ago, when his erstwhile Republican colleagues voted down approval of the United Nations treaty on disability rights, after the long-retired Dole made a personal appeal in its favor on the Senate floor.

But Dole was disabled himself, barely able to move his right arm as a result of an injury in the World War II. His stance was admirable, but would have been even more so had he come to it as a result of seeing someone else struggle with a disability. I respect Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, for bucking his party to become a (relatively) early supporter of gay marriage, but I would respect him more if he had reached that position before his own son came out to him as gay, rather than after. Why didn’t “the Bible’s overarching themes of love and compassion and my belief that we are all children of God” matter to him when it was just the happiness of other people’s children at stake?

As far as global warming is concerned, the Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group in the House founded in 2016 by two Florida congressmen, Republican Carlos Curbelo and Democrat Ted Deutch, is now up to 60 members. That is an increase of 10 since July, before the latest round of hurricanes. One new member, as of March, is Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., whose conversion represents either a stunning reversal of Issa’s long-standing climate science denial, or a desperate move to the center to hold on to his seat in an increasingly liberal district. “Building bipartisan support for fighting climate change is a worthy cause — but we need real action, not just rhetoric,” says Sara Jordan, a League of Conservation Voters’ legislative representative, in an interview with Yahoo News. “Some of these members may be using the caucus to seem more moderate than they actually are.”

It will be hard to gauge the sincerity of Issa’s newfound belief in climate science any time soon, because there will be a 500 mph hurricane before the House Republican leadership brings a global warming bill to the floor, where members would have to take a stand on it. But for conservative Republican voters who are starting to realize that what comes to the Federated States of Micronesia will come eventually to Biscayne Bay, the important question is what they plan to do about it now. As the man quoted in the Post said,  “You can make all the money in the world here. If you don’t have a world, what good is it going to do you?”

Good question.

Full Article

P.F Chang's free sushi day is Thursday October 26th!

https://www.freesushiday.com/

Yummy sticky BBQ beef ribs!

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Academy Expels Harvey Weinstein

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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has expelled disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein from its ranks.
The Academy’s 54-member board of governors — which includes such Hollywood luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Whoopi Goldberg and Kathleen Kennedy — held an emergency meeting Saturday at the organization’s Beverly Hills headquarters and voted to strip away Weinstein’s lifetime membership.

Full article here

Verse of the day

Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.
1 Thessalonians 5:15 NIV
http://bible.com/111/1th.5.15.NIV

Rose McGowan Says Harvey Weinstein Raped Her, Amazon Looked Other Way

https://www.yahoo.com/news/rose-mcgowan-says-harvey-weinstein-215412513.html

United States will miss the 2018 World Cup after loss to T&T

http://www.espnfc.us/report?gameId=466968

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Trailer (Official)

Ria PLAYS ROBLOX!

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Gal Gadot Tries a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup for the First Time

JUSTICE LEAGUE - Official Heroes Trailer

Romance Radio Host Delilah Announces Her Son Zachariah Has Died of Suicide

On Saturday afternoon, syndicated romance radio host Delilah announced on Facebook that her son Zachariah had taken his life.

“My dear friends, I need to share some devastating news with you. In the early morning hours, Tuesday, October 3, my son Zachariah, took his life,” she wrote to her 1.4 million fans.
“He was being treated, counseled, and embraced fiercely by family and friends while battling depression for some time now. My heart is broken beyond repair and I can not fathom how to go on…but I have to believe he is at peace with the Lord and that God will get us through,” she continued.

“I will be absent from the radio and on social media for a time as I grieve and try to process this loss with my family. In the meantime we’ll be playing some of my favorite shows from the recent past. I’ll look forward to my return, as you all lift me up so very much,” she added. “Please pray for my beloved Zacky, and I will pray for all suffering from this debilitating disease called depression.”
Unfortunately, this is not the first child Delilah has lost. The mother of 13 previously lost her son Sammy, who died in 2012 from complications of sickle-cell anemia.

Full Article

New Orleans, Gulf Coast brace, prepare for Hurricane Nate

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/07/us/hurricane-nate-forecast/index.html

Birth control: Major blow to Obamacare mandate

Updated 12:11 PM ET, Fri October 6, 2017

(CNN) - In a blow to Obamacare's controversial contraceptive mandate, employers may now have more leeway to withhold birth control coverage on religious grounds, according to new rules issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services on Friday.

The rules would let a broad range of employers -- including nonprofits, private firms and publicly traded companies -- stop offering free contraceptives through their health insurance plans if they have a "sincerely held religious or moral objection," senior agency officials said on a call about the implementation and enforcement of the new rules.

This could apply to the roughly 200 entities that have participated in about 50 lawsuits over birth control coverage, according to the agency, which said that "99.9% of women" who currently receive birth control through the contraceptive mandate would not be affected. At the time of the call, it was unclear how the administration arrived at this data point.

But policy experts argue that this could open the door to hundreds of employers dropping coverage.

This is the latest in a series of moves that undermine an Obamacare mandate requiring that birth control be covered with no co-pay as a preventive essential health benefit.

Over 55 million US women have birth control coverage with zero out-of-pocket costs, according to the National Women's Law Center. The mandate saved women an estimated $1.4 billion on birth control pills alone in 2013, according to the center.

"There is no way to know how many women will be affected," said Alina Salganicoff, director of women's health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on health policy research and communications.

"HHS leaders under the current administration are focused on turning back the clock on women's health," Dr. Haywood L. Brown, president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a statement. "Reducing access to contraceptive coverage threatens to reverse the tremendous progress our nation has made in recent years in lowering the unintended pregnancy rate."

Brown said that weakening contraception coverage could also take a toll on maternal mortality, community health and economic stability of women and families.

The move comes more than three years after the US Supreme Court ruled that "closely held corporations" -- in that case, Hobby Lobby -- could be exempt from providing certain kinds of birth control to their employees.

What has been a limited exemption for churches and religious organizations now broadens to include a number of nonprofit and for-profit organizations that object to contraceptive coverage on religious and moral grounds.

The latest announcement builds upon an executive order in May claiming "to protect and vigorously promote religious liberty" by providing "regulatory relief" for organizations that object on religious grounds to Obamacare coverage requirements for certain health services, including contraception.

"We will never, ever stand for religious discrimination. Never, ever," President Donald Trump said at the time.

 Article 

Verse of the day

And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.
Hebrews 13:16 NIV
http://bible.com/111/heb.13.16.NIV

--Jeremy

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Tom Petty, Rock Iconoclast Who Led the Heartbreakers, Dead at 66

Tom Petty, the dynamic and iconoclastic frontman who led the band the Heartbreakers, died Monday. He was found unconscious, not breathing and in full cardiac arrest at his Malibu home Sunday night, according to TMZ, and rushed to the hospital and placed on life support. EMTs were able to find a pulse when they found him, but TMZ reported that the hospital found no brain activity when he arrived. A decision was made to pull life support. CBSconfirmed Petty's death. He was 66. Article 

--Jeremy

Las Vegas strip shooting: More than 50 dead, 200 injured after gunman opens fire near Mandalay Bay casino

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/active-shooter-situation-las-vegas-police-060406234--abc-news-topstories.html

Such a horrible tragedy!

--Jeremy