Scott Pruitt Is a Climate Change Denier… and in Other News, Water is Wet

In perhaps the most Captain Obvious moment on the first week of March, we learn that Scott Pruitt, current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, denies climate change…

From the New York Times…

Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Thursday that carbon dioxide was not a primary contributor to global warming, a statement at odds with the established scientific consensus on climate change.

Asked his views on the role of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas produced by burning fossil fuels, in increasing global warming, Mr. Pruitt said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that “I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so, no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

“But we don’t know that yet,” he added. “We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”

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I Guess Everything Can Be Blamed on Millennials…

I was born on May 22, 1987, which means I’m fast approaching my 30th birthday (oh god… and I still only have my Bachelor’s and work in retail… ugh…). It also means that I’m a Millennial.

And boy do people love blaming us for everything.

This time, we’re being blamed for… WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 (from IBTimes):

A former US spy chief has spoken out about WikiLeaks’ release of alleged Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents, claiming the US federal government may be suffering due to cultural differences between old spymasters and fresh-faced “millennials”.

This week (7 March), the whistleblowing website published a cache of over 8,000 documentsapparently from an expert CIA cyber unit, detailing computer network exploitation and malware-based hacking tools. In an analysis, WikiLeaks indicated a rogue insider was the source.

“In order to do this kind of stuff [intelligence work] we have to recruit from a certain demographic,” Michael Hayden, who has served as both the head of the CIA and NSA, told the BBC in an interview, responding to a question about the source of the leak.

“I don’t mean to judge them at all, but this group of millennials and related groups simply have different understandings of the words loyalty, secrecy and transparency than certainly my generation did,” he continued.

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Actually, it Was Bush, Jr Who Released Those Guantanamo Detainees

From The Hill…

Trump early Tuesday incorrectly blamed the Obama administration for releasing 122 “vicious” prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

“122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!” Trump wrote.

Trump posted the tweet 31 minutes after Fox News tweeted about a U.S. airstrike that killed a former detainee in Yemen.

“Former Gitmo detainee killed by a U.S. airstrike in Yemen; at least 122 former Gitmo detainees have re-engaged in terrorism” the “Fox & Friends” account tweeted just after 6:30 a.m.

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WikiLeaks Claims the CIA Can Hack into Basically Every Electronic Thing

From USAToday…

The crusading website WikiLeaks published thousands of documents Tuesday it says detail CIA tools for hacking into web servers, computers, smartphones and even TVs that can be turned into covert microphones.

The website claims the CIA Center for Cyber Intelligence “lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal,” more than several hundred million lines of code that provide “the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.”

Jake Williams, a security expert with the Georgia-based security firm Rendition Infosec, said the information will be used within days or weeks by hackers and the security firms that combat them.

“My first thought was ‘Wow!’ quickly followed by the realization that this is a treasure trove of information,” he said. “We are regularly dealing with corporations being attacked by nation-state hacking groups. This gives us a lot of insight into how they do it.”

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Wow…

Looking back at my blog recently, it is literally just me sharing stories of how terrible the current administration is, interspersed with Self Care posts.

I’m basically just posting angry, while attempting to lighten things up with nonsense. I haven’t really even provided ideas for resisting.

In my defense, everything is horrible, and everyone already knows how to resist. You all already have the tools, and know the protocols. Call, write, sign petitions, protest, vote… these are the vanguards of resistance. Worse, it so far looks like resistance isn’t fucking working…

And sadly, it’s not going to get better. Because I get a daily round-up of everything that happened that day in Agent Orange’s US-America (quick side-note: I first heard Agent Orange on TWiBPrime… I think Dara M Wilson was the one who I heard use it first; so it’s not mine), I blog about most of those. Every once in a rare while, there’s only one or two things, and they aren’t worth blogging about. But more often, the round-up is long, and there’s a lot I want to highlight.

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Government Contractors No Longer Have to Disclose Labor Law Violations

From APNews…

The Senate on Monday reversed an Obama administration rule designed to ensure government contractors disclose violations of federal labor laws as they seek more work.

Senate approval of the measure sends it to President Donald Trump for his signature and marks another success in the GOP’s efforts to quash an array of regulations issued during President Barack Obama’s final months in office.

This time, the Senate voted 49-48 to overturn a rule that required contractors to disclose violations of 14 federal labor laws, including those pertaining to workplace safety, wages and discrimination. Contracting officers would then consider the violations when evaluating bids.

The rule addressed government auditors’ concerns over the years that contracting officers frequently failed to consider violations when awarding contracts because they lacked adequate information.

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DHS Outright Tells Us That They’re Going to Separate Children from Their Parents

Just pure evil…

From CNN…

Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly confirmed that the department is considering separating children from their parents at the border.

“We have tremendous experience of dealing with unaccompanied minors,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room.” “We turn them over to (Health and Human Services) and they do a very, very good job of putting them in foster care or linking them up with parents or family members in the United States.”

He continued: “Yes I’m considering (that), in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network. I am considering exactly that. They will be well cared for as we deal with their parents. … It’s more important to me, Wolf, to try to keep people off of this awful network.”

A senior DHS official had previously told CNN that the department was considering a proposal to separate children from adults when they are trying to enter the country illegally at the southern border.

The official told CNN the proposal is meant to deter the exploitation of children.

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Republicans Finally Tell Us How They Plan On Replacing The ACA

From the Washington Post…

House Republicans on Monday released long-anticipated legislation to supplant the Affordable Care Act with a more conservative vision for the nation’s health-care system, replacing federal insurance subsidies with a new form of individual tax credits and grants to help states shape their own policies.

Under two bills drafted by separate House committees, the government would no longer penalize Americans for failing to have health insurance but would try to encourage people to maintain coverage by allowing insurers to impose a surcharge of 30 percent for those who have a gap between health plans.

The legislation would preserve two of the most popular features of the 2010 health-care law, letting young adults stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26 and forbidding insurers to deny coverage or charge more to people with preexisting medical problems. It would also target Planned Parenthood, rendering the women’s health organization ineligible for Medicaid reimbursements or federal family planning grants — a key priority for antiabortion groups.

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