April 25, 2016


News and Views


SAD AND DISAPPOINTING – TWO ARTICLES


http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/tony-messenger/messenger-laid-off-catholic-worker-finds-surprise-at-unemployment-office/article_f05bc23f-e328-5ae8-af03-4ce7b74630bc.html

Messenger: Laid off Catholic worker finds surprise at unemployment office
By Tony Messenger St. Louis Post-Dispatch
April 25, 2016 3 hrs ago


A friend of a friend lost a job recently at a Catholic high school in the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

Times are tough and donations and enrollment weren’t keeping up.

So a few people were let go.

The suddenly jobless person — a lifelong Catholic who had worked for a couple of different Catholic schools — did what most in that situation would do. They went to see about getting unemployment while looking for another job.

“I contacted the state of Missouri to get unemployment benefits kicked in,” the person told me. The person asked that I not use their name as they feared retribution in their own parish for criticizing the church. “I found out the Archdiocese doesn’t pay unemployment.”

Indeed, churches in nearly every state are exempt from paying into unemployment insurance programs, though many — including many Catholic dioceses — participate voluntarily.

Not so in St. Louis.

For the Archdiocese of St. Louis, it’s a simple matter of dollars and cents, says Kevin Loos, managing director of human resources.

Loos says he sympathizes with the laid off employee’s situation, but he points out that the handbook all employees receive explains that the church doesn’t pay into the unemployment insurance system.

“We specifically tell people that’s the case,” Loos says. “It’s not something anybody should be surprised about.”

But it happens every now and then.

In both 2005 and 2009 when there were teacher layoffs in the St. Louis Archdiocese, the Post-Dispatch interviewed former employees who said they were surprised to not have access to unemployment benefits.

“There’s the law, and then there’s what’s morally correct, and in the church that’s always a problem,” said Bob Fehey, 66, of Fenton, after losing his job in 2009.

Loos said then, and repeated this week, that the decision balances out the need to provide other benefits and be good stewards of donors’ funds.

“It comes down to an economic decision,” he said. “If magically I had another quarter of a million dollars, there would be a clamor for how to best invest that money.”

So the unemployed do without any safety net to help them as they begin their next job search.

That didn’t sit well with the person I spoke to who is doing some odd jobs to make ends meet.

“I’ve told this to many Catholics, and not one person knew that the church didn’t pay unemployment,” they said. “It’s a matter of justice.”

That seems to be how some churches see things.

Last week, Loos was at a conference of the National Association of Church Personnel Administrators. During a panel discussion with 26 dioceses represented, he asked how many of them pay unemployment. Six of them did, he said.

Nationally, among larger Catholic dioceses, Oakland, Calif., and Richmond, Va., both pay into the state insurance program or self fund to provide the benefit to their employees.

A survey the association conducted in 2009 found that out of 45 Catholic dioceses, 25 of them either paid into the state system or provided a similar unemployment benefit through a reimbursement program.

Loos said the St. Louis Archdiocese has had the discussion every few years, but the decision is always to spend the church’s resources elsewhere.

Loos says a former archbishop taught him to think about the little old lady in the pew on Sunday putting her money in the basket as it passes by. How would she like her money invested?

The laid off Catholic high school employee thinks along similar lines.

One sees economics. The other sees justice. The truth likely lies somewhere in between.

Tony Messenger is the metro columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.



Churches in the US don’t have to pay taxes. That is partly because they are supposed to help the poor, run schools and hospitals, etc. They should also, when they do employ people, pay them a decent wage and see that they are covered under Unemployment and Medical Insurance. They should be required to do that, not merely when they happen to want to. Most churches, certainly the large well-known churches, make quite a lot of money. They can afford to pay their share.



http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/04/19/3770435/american-geophysical-union-exxon-mobil/

American Geophysical Union Sells Its Scientific Integrity For $35,000 In ExxonMobil Money
BY JOE ROMM
APR 19, 2016 1:03 PM

Related Post: More Than 100 Scientists Ask Leading Science Association To Cut Ties With Exxon


Apparently you can buy the scientific integrity of the entire American Geophysical Union (AGU) for $35,000. Well, maybe you can’t, but oil giant ExxonMobil can.

In February, 100 AGU members and other earth and climate scientists wrote an open letter to the board of 62,000-member group urging it to stop taking sponsorship money form ExxonMobil. The scientists urged the AGU to live up to its 2015 board-approved policy that says AGU will only partner with (i.e. take more than $5,000 from) organizations that meet “the highest standards of scientific integrity, that do not harm AGU’s brand and reputation, and that share a vested interest in and commitment to advancing and communicating science and its power to ensure a sustainable future.”

If that doesn’t scream “NOT EXXONMOBIL” loud enough for you, the policy immediately continues:

“AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation of science, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science.”

As a detailed report accompanying the scientists’ letter made clear, ExxonMobil continues to be one of the biggest promoters of climate science misinformation and one of the biggest opponents of all things sustainable on planet Earth — as it has for a half century now.

So of course you’d think the AGU Board would write the scientists back and explain that it had unanimously decided to immediately cease and desist taking any sponsorship money from the oil giant. Not quite.

On Thursday, the AGU board announced that — after reviewing the detailed report on ExxonMobil along with the peer-reviewed literature and other publicly available information — it wasn’t going to cut ties with Exxon. Here’s what the letter from AGU President Margaret Leinen says (emphasis in original):

In the end, by a majority vote, the board passed a motion that approved ‘continuing our current engagement between ExxonMobil and AGU including acceptance of funding from ExxonMobil.’ (In 2015 that support consisted of a $35,000 sponsorship of the Student Breakfast at the Fall Meeting; based on current information, if we are offered support for 2016, we can accept it).

Everyone certainly deserves a free breakfast, especially students. And what a great way to introduce them to one of the central facts of the adult world — “money talks, values walk.”

Now you are probably wondering what logic the majority of the AGU Board used to defend its decision. With the customary warning that you should put on your head vises now to prevent cranial explosion, here goes:

We concluded that it is not possible for us to determine unequivocally whether ExxonMobil is participating in misinformation about science currently, either directly or indirectly, and that AGU’s acceptance of sponsorship of the 2015 Student Breakfast does not constitute a threat to AGU’s reputation.

I am going to call this rationalization the “You can’t prove they didn’t stop yesterday” defense.

Apparently you can introduce all of the evidence in the world that ExxonMobil continues to be “participating in misinformation about science” — and to be clear there is a staggering amount of evidence (see here and here). But the AGU board will still claim that you can’t prove they didn’t stop yesterday — so they’re going to keep taking their money.

As you might imagine, this defense didn't sit well with climate scientists and other experts. "This is an unfortunate decision, and a sad day for the integrity of the AGU," as climate expert Robert Brulle told me. Brulle, a leading academic expert on how the climate disinformation campaign is funded, explained that the detailed report accompanying the letter "clearly shows that ExxonMobil continues to support the promulgation of climate misinformation. The AGU is engaging in willful blindness regarding a very clear cut pattern by ExxonMobil to sponsor climate misinformation and hinder action on climate change."

MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel, who signed the open letter, said the AGU "makes a mockery of its own bylaw that states that it will not accept funding from disseminators of disinformation."

“If the AGU cannot turn down a mere $35K from a high-profile disinformer like Exxon, then it is hard to imagine it ever adhering to its bylaw. I am considering withdrawing from the AGU," he added.

Exxon sold its soul decades ago, but at least it got trillions in revenue

Indeed, "mere $35k" recalls a line from the classic play, "A Man For All Seasons." Sir Thomas More, after being convicted of treason thanks to the perjured testimony of Richard Rich, notices that Rich is wearing the medallion for his newly appointed position, Attorney-General for Wales, which he obviously received in return for lying under oath. More says bitingly, “It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for Wales, Richard?”

The lies of ExxonMobil are unique in the annals of climate history for many reasons. Here are two. First, ExxonMobil (and its precursor companies, like Humble Oil) has known its product posed a serious threat to a livable climate for a half century -- longer than perhaps any other major company in the world. And like any morally bankrupt mustache-twirling corporate villain, rather than warning the public, media, and policy-makers about this potentially catastrophic but quite preventable threat to all of humanity, ExxonMobil decided to become the biggest funder of disinformation on climate science energy (at least until Koch Industries dethroned them).

In 2015, the Pope explained at length in his encyclical that indifference to the dangers of climate inaction by the rich and powerful is immoral. He called it a sin. So what would the Pope say about a company that’s fostering lies in order to spread indifference among the public, the media, and policy-makers?

Second, under public and investor pressure, ExxonMobil appeared to promise it would stop funding groups that promote climate science denial almost a decade ago. As it wrote in its Orwellian-titled "2007 Corporate Citizenship Report:"

In 2008, we will discontinue contributions to several public policy research groups whose positions on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.

Reading that, you would naturally think that Exxon had in fact stopped funding climate denial. And indeed, that is clearly what ExxonMobil wanted everyone to believe -- and how the media reported it for years to come. Just last year, the Guardian wrote of the oil giant, "Under pressure from shareholders, [the] company promised eight years ago to stop funding climate denial -- but financial and tax records tell a different story."

ExxonMobil never, in fact, stopped funding "public policy research groups whose positions on climate change" were anti-scientific, as the Union of Concerned Scientists and Greenpeace have repeatedly documented, most recently last year.

But then if you go back and read very closely what Exxon actually publicly committed to, you realize it never actually said it would stop funding all such groups. It just said they would "discontinue contributions to several public policy research groups." Furthermore, it never even defined what "positions on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner" meant.

Exxon has used similar weasel words for years to make it seem like it stopped promoting climate science denial, though sometimes its senior leadership appears to slip up -- as pointed out in a Huffington Post piece last fall.

I bring up Exxon's weaselly use of words since the AGU, in deciding to stay in bed with them, has inevitably been corrupted into using its own weasel words.

In a new ClimateWire interview, AGU President Margaret Leinen repeats that the Board decided to keep taking Exxon's money because "we do not have evidence that they are currently contributing misinformation."

This "You can't prove they didn't stop yesterday" defense is not merely Orwellian, it puts the onus on the wrong party. Yes, we live in a world where people are innocent until proven guilty. And in theory corporations are people -- albeit people without a soul, kind of like vampires. But I digress.

The thing is, ExxonMobil has been proven guilty again and again. It has not only spread lies for decades about one of the most consequential matters in human history -- helping to delay action for decades, bringing us close to (if not past) crucial points of no return in the climate system -- it has been lying for years about whether or not it stopped spreading those lies.

I would say to the AGU board and Leinen that the burden of proof is not on Exxon's critics to provide evidence that the company is contributing misinformation (and working against a sustainable future) right this very second. The burden of proof is on Exxon to show that it is not still funding countless organization that spread lies on both climate science and clean energy. All recent ExxonMobil money should be returned -- and all new funds refused -- until Exxon can publicly document that it has stopped funding attacks on climate science and sustainability.

It profits AGU nothing to give its soul for the whole world … but for a $35k student breakfast, Margaret?



“AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation of science, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science.” As a detailed report accompanying the scientists’ letter made clear, ExxonMobil continues to be one of the biggest promoters of climate science misinformation and one of the biggest opponents of all things sustainable on planet Earth — as it has for a half century now. …. Here’s what the letter from AGU President Margaret Leinen says (emphasis in original): In the end, by a majority vote, the board passed a motion that approved ‘continuing our current engagement between ExxonMobil and AGU including acceptance of funding from ExxonMobil.’ (In 2015 that support consisted of a $35,000 sponsorship of the Student Breakfast at the Fall Meeting; based on current information, if we are offered support for 2016, we can accept it). …. We concluded that it is not possible for us to determine unequivocally whether ExxonMobil is participating in misinformation about science currently, either directly or indirectly, and that AGU’s acceptance of sponsorship of the 2015 Student Breakfast does not constitute a threat to AGU’s reputation. I am going to call this rationalization the “You can’t prove they didn’t stop yesterday” defense. …. MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel, who signed the open letter, said the AGU "makes a mockery of its own bylaw that states that it will not accept funding from disseminators of disinformation." …. “If the AGU cannot turn down a mere $35K from a high-profile disinformer like Exxon, then it is hard to imagine it ever adhering to its bylaw. I am considering withdrawing from the AGU," he added. …. All recent ExxonMobil money should be returned -- and all new funds refused -- until Exxon can publicly document that it has stopped funding attacks on climate science and sustainability.”


I’ve believed that an honest scientist is presumably good rather than evil unless he is involved in some nefarious activities such as the Nazi “experiments” in the 1940s. The reasoning process called “the scientific method” and the “peer review process” leads to accurate information. Unfortunately, many or even most people can be bought and for a fairly cheap price. What are the benefits Exxon gives AGU that are worth losing their worldwide respect? Apparently 100 members’ letter is simply a drop in the bucket compared to 62,000 members. Maybe if enough of their individual members withdraw their membership, that will make a difference. I assume that they pay fees, and that if a larger number than this 100 join the movement AGU will give in.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/19/i-used-to-be-a-flight-attendant-dealing-with-passengers-racism-is-part-of-the-job/?postshare=2321461119023523&tid=ss_fb-bottom

I used to be a flight attendant. Dealing with passengers’ racism is part of the job.
Our training taught us to take safety concerns seriously. It did not teach us to think Arabic is suspicious.

By Gillian Brockell
April 19, 2016

Play Video -- In April, U.C. Berkeley student was escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight after speaking Arabic on the phone to his uncle. Here are three other instances when innocent people were escorted off flights. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)


It happened during the boarding process on a flight from Fort Lauderdale to JFK in the fall of 2009. I had long earlier learned that the key to a pleasant flight was to greet everyone as they walked onto the plane, so I stood in the front galley and said my hellos.

Suddenly, a middle-aged white woman leaned uncomfortably close to me and whispered, “There is a man, four people behind me, in a green shirt, who is very suspicious.”

I whispered back: “Okay. What’s he doing?”

“You’ll see,” she said, wide-eyed.

I thought two things: This woman is probably racist. And I need to take her seriously.

As a former flight attendant for a major carrier, I wasn’t surprised to hear that a Southwest Airlines passenger reported University of California student Khairuldeen Makhzoomi as suspicious after he said “Inshallah” (“God willing”) during a phone call conducted in Arabic while boarding a flight at Los Angeles International Airport this month. Flight attendants are often made to play referee when hundreds of humans with wildly different life experiences are crammed into an aircraft cabin.

It’s usually simple stuff, like asking a young woman who has never seen a Hasidic Jew if she can switch seats with her boyfriend so she’s not touching the devout man next to her. (She, of course, has the right to say no.) Or moving the man with the severe dog allergy as far away as possible from the blind woman’s service animal. Or asking the bachelor party to pipe down for the umpteenth time, because not everyone is going to Las Vegas to get drunk.

But sometimes you’re asked to be someone’s accomplice — in their racism, their homophobia, their cruel joke about the larger person seated next to them or their demand that the mother in front of them drug her children to shut them up. For professionals who are supposed to be polite, it can get awkward. The expression “Takes all kinds!” becomes your best friend.

[Airline apologizes after kicking woman off flight for having cancer]

This past week, Southwest released a statement saying that the passenger who reported Makhzoomi also spoke Arabic and was alarmed by the content of his conversation, not the language itself. Makhzoomi says he was telling his uncle in Baghdad about attending a speech by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and made a passing reference to the Islamic State. The airport police agency says Makhzoomi made no threats and broke no laws. It is not illegal to mention the existence of the Islamic State on an aircraft.

But to me, the most shocking thing about the whole story is that, according to Makhzoomi, from the time the other passenger reported him to the time he was asked to leave the plane, he had no interaction with the flight attendants.

Flight attendants are trained extensively in evaluating suspicious behavior with videos, checklists, regular exams and drills. (And drills and drills and drills.) This infuses you with an automatic, paranoid vigilance that follows you forever and insists that you take all threats seriously, since the cost of being wrong is too high.

But nowhere did our training recommend that we accept a passenger’s assessment of a situation, and nowhere did it teach that speaking Arabic is cause for suspicion. It’s unlikely that any airlines do. I contacted all of the major U.S. airlines this past week to ask about training procedures. United Airlines, Frontier Airlines and Southwest declined to reveal any details. A spokesman for American Airlines said the company never trains crew members to perceive the Arabic language, Arab- or Muslim-style clothing or a Middle Eastern background as suspicious.

UC Berkeley student recounts 'Islamophobia' that removed him from a Southwest flight
Play Video3:09
Khairuldeen Makhzoomi spoke Arabic on a Southwest plane, and a passenger reported him to the flight crew. Soon, he was being questioned by the FBI. (AP)

During that 2009 flight, after the woman alerted me to the “suspicious” passenger, I thanked her and told her I’d check it out. I watched the man closely as he stepped onto the plane, looking for signs of a terrorist. Was he jittery? Nope. Was he sweating? A little bit, but we were in South Florida; I was sweating, too. Was he wearing unseasonable clothing, like a big coat in the summertime? No. In fact, his Green Bay Packers jersey perfectly fit the season — football season. Did he have trouble following a normal conversation?

“Hi, how’re you doing today?” I asked.

“Fine,” he said, nodding casually.

“Going home?” I asked.

“Nope, wedding,” he said.

All right, no problems there.

A few minutes later, after he reached his seat, I walked down the aisle to assess the situation again, the woman who flagged him tracking me with her eyes.

Did he hold on tightly to a piece of luggage? No, his roll-aboard was in the overhead bin. Did he sit stiffly? Nope, he was slouched in his seat, headphones on, already watching the game on the seat-back TV. Not exactly the actions of a person who believes he’s about to die.

In fact, the only thing he appeared to have in common with the 9/11 hijackers was that he was brown. He could have been Punjabi or Puerto Rican; I have no idea. He could have been a Catholic, or a Sikh, or one of the many hundreds of millions of Muslims who have nothing to do with terrorism. I let it go and had no further discussion with the man or the woman, other than to serve them drinks and bid them well when they disembarked.

I hope, and I think it’s likely, that the man never noticed what was happening. In other cases, airlines have ended up on the losing ends of lawsuits. In 2006, Iraqi immigrant Raed Jarrar was forced to change his T-shirt, which said “We will not be silent” in English and Arabic, before boarding a JetBlue Airways flight. JetBlue and the Transportation Security Administration eventually paid him $240,000 to settle a lawsuit. In another 2006 incident, six imams were removed from a US Airways flight after they prayed in the departure lounge at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport; the airline and the imams eventually settled out of court.

[Stop asking me to condemn terrorism just because I’m Muslim]

Southwest, despite this incident, has a long-standing reputation for friendly customer service. I know Southwest flight attendants, and even in the relative privacy of their Facebook feeds, they talk about genuinely loving their passengers and the work they do to keep them safe and comfortable. But that comfort must include filtering out passengers’ biases and flight attendants’ own.

Heather Poole, a flight attendant and the author of “Cruising Attitude,” puts it this way: “Flight attendants don’t live in a bubble. We don’t get to pick and choose who we associate with. We rub elbows with the world. . . . Has a passenger ever made me nervous? Yes. Did we kick that passenger off? No. I just kept on eye on them. Did anything happen during the flight? No.”

I grew up in a wealthy, mostly white, mostly Mormon town out West. Respecting God’s will was a frequent topic of conversation among my friends. And, like lots of future pilots and flight attendants, my favorite toy was the globe. I’d spin and spin it, dreaming of all the different, “exotic” places I’d go. Becoming a flight attendant made my dreams come true. That included travel to Muslim-majority countries, where the frequent incantation of “God willing” was far from exotic — it reminded me of home.

When passengers report an issue, it’s impossible to know what their life experiences are. That’s why it’s so important to make assessments based on training. In this case, being polite and being vigilant should have called for the same thing: a conversation. Anyone who makes a snap judgment from the cocoon of the galley has no business being a flight attendant.



“But that comfort must include filtering out passengers’ biases and flight attendants’ own. Heather Poole, a flight attendant and the author of “Cruising Attitude,” puts it this way: “Flight attendants don’t live in a bubble. We don’t get to pick and choose who we associate with. We rub elbows with the world. . . . Has a passenger ever made me nervous? Yes. Did we kick that passenger off? No. I just kept on eye on them. Did anything happen during the flight? No.” …. Flight attendants are trained extensively in evaluating suspicious behavior with videos, checklists, regular exams and drills. (And drills and drills and drills.) This infuses you with an automatic, paranoid vigilance that follows you forever and insists that you take all threats seriously, since the cost of being wrong is too high.”


So, airline personnel are being taught the same line of reasoning that most police officers are. I lifted this paragraph above directly from the article on airline safety issues because it is almost exactly like things that police officers have repeatedly said in defense of their violence. We have become not only an increasingly vicious society, but a paranoid one. The cops almost always say, “I feared for my life,” and also almost always the courts don’t convict them. Well we all know/admit now that black men are feared (even by other blacks in many cases) more than members of other groups, so that may account for some of the discrepancy between racial encounters with police. More blacks than whites end up dead. Police are often (or were until some very recent policing reforms) told in their training specifically to shoot to kill and not to wound. The idea is to “eliminate the threat.”

In the situation with the airlines, a person whose appearance alarms another passenger will probably be removed from the plane only, although on some planes there are Air Marshalls who have weapons and may tackle a passenger who doesn’t seem trustworthy. The calm and intelligent comments by Heather Poole show that well-trained workers will probably be able to prevent a case of hysteria at 70,000 feet. While I understand a certain amount of fear, a healthy amount of caution is the best way to approach these matters.

Like police, airline workers are in a high risk job. I think they should be well-trained, well paid and willing to take the risks. I wouldn’t want to do it, from hijackings and bombings to the crash of the plane. Another such job which I wouldn’t do is working as a construction worker, and certainly not as a soldier. Some women really want to do that, so I think they should be allowed to. With the police there is a need for some of them to tackle and apprehend criminals. In my 1980s TV shows, the officers always went in pairs. That isn’t always done now. There should be fewer deadly encounters if a good old fashioned “take down” would be used again rather than a shooting.

I understand the idea that the preservation of the police officer’s life is more important than any other factor, but if it makes it impossible to get the job done, it’s a problem. It seems to me that if police are really very frightened they are in the wrong business. That leads to the reduction in their hero status (remember when you were ten and wanted to be a cop?) and causes a transformation from a cop on the beat into a soldier of fortune. The goal has become to kill and not to save lives, restore peace, guide people to the right path, or any other of the gentler goals that in the 1950s in NC were the norm. What happened to simply making arrests? As in so many things, we are losing our basic humanity, I’m afraid. We are becoming a society who, like Rhett Butler famously said, “just don’t give a damn!”


UNTHINKABLE, OR PREDICTIBLE?


http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/charles-koch-possible-clinton-would-be-better-president-gop-rivals-n561246

Charles Koch: 'Possible' That Clinton Would Be Better President Than GOP Rivals
by CHRISTINA COLEBURN
APR 24 2016, 11:47 AM ET

Video -- Charles Koch not ruling out Hillary Clinton 3:19
Photograph -- na-koch, Charles Koch stands for a portrait after an interview with the Washington Post at the Freedom Partners Summit on Monday, August 3, 2015 in Dana Point, CA. Patrick T. Fallon / The Washington Post via Getty Images file


Conservative billionaire Charles Koch said in an interview that aired Sunday that Hillary Clinton could possibly be preferable to a Republican for president.

The influential donor, who, along with his brother David and their larger network, has been consistently criticized by the left for large contributions to conservative political campaigns, was asked on ABC if he thought that Bill Clinton was a better president than George W. Bush. Koch responded that he preferred Bill Clinton in certain respects.

"In some ways," Koch told the network. "In other ways, I mean he wasn't an exemplar. But as far as the growth of government, the increase in spending, it was two and a half times [more] under Bush than it was under Clinton."

He was then asked if it was possible that another Clinton — Hillary — could be preferable to another Republican, and gave an answer some might find surprising.

"It's possible," Koch said. "It's possible."

Related: With Trump's success, Koch brothers focus on down-ballot races

But when asked if he could see himself ultimately supporting Hillary Clinton, Koch maintained that the policies she implemented would need to be different the policies she has articulated.

"We would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric. Let me put it that way," Koch said.

It is estimated that the Koch network spent about $400 million in the last presidential election. The network has thus far stayed out of presidential primary politics, although it contemplated funding an anti-Trump effort earlier this year.

As of now, the Koch network has only gotten involved in certain Senate races to oppose Democratic candidates.

Koch said in the ABC interview Sunday that he won't "put a penny" into trying to stop Trump — but he and his network may take a pass on the 2016 presidential race altogether because of the lack of good "role models."

"These personal attacks and pitting one person against the other — that's the message you're sending the country," Koch noted. "You're role models and you're terrible role models. So how — I don't know how we could support 'em."



I don’t know what I think of Koch coming out for Clinton. Is he just “blowing smoke?” Worse still, is he now acknowledging money that he may have given to her campaign? Interesting that he didn’t say he would support Sanders.




To another very interesting news article. A “bubble nebula” is an entirely new bit of physical reality to me, and I don’t understand it much. I have a vague idea about what the solar wind is, and the image of this nebula is gorgeous and amazing. Beyond that, I will leave it to NASA, etc. to study it. Can a thin dispersal of space dust form a circular structure?


BUBBLE NEBULA: “This shell is the result of a powerful flow of gas — known as a stellar wind — from the bright star visible just to the left of centre in this image,” NASA writes. “The star, SAO 20575, is between ten and twenty times the mass of the Sun and the pressure created by its stellar wind forces the surrounding interstellar material outwards into this bubble-like form.”

TIME.COM


http://www.space.com/32648-hubble-telescope-spectacular-birthday-bubble-image.html

A 'Bubble' for Hubble: Iconic Telescope Snaps Spectacular Birthday Photo
By Tariq Malik, Space.com Managing Editor
April 21, 2016 11:55am ET

Photograph -- The Bubble Nebula is 8,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia. This image shows the nebula (center) and its surrounding region as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey; Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin
Photograph -- "The object, known as the Bubble Nebula, is, in fact, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the brilliant star within it," Hubble mission officials wrote in an image description. "The vivid new portrait of this dramatic scene wins the Bubble Nebula a place in the exclusive Hubble hall of fame, following an impressive lineage of Hubble anniversary images." [Astronomers Pick the Hubble's Greatest Space Pictures (Gallery)]
Photograph -- This spectacular view of the Bubble Nebula was created from four separate images from the Hubble Space Telescope to mark the observatory's 26th birthday in April 2016. The Bubble Nebula is 10 light-years wide and sculpted by the bright star seen to the left of center. Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team


The Hubble Space Telescope may be turning 26 years old this weekend, but its vision is still out of this world. Case in point: this jaw-dropping view of the Bubble Nebula to celebrate the iconic space observatory's birthday.

Astronomers unveiled the new Hubble photo today (April 21) to showcase what they billed as a "gigantic cosmic soap bubble" as Hubble nears the anniversary of its launch on April 24, 1990. Scientists also unveiled a spectacular video of the Bubble Nebula as seen by Hubble.

Also known as NGC 7635, the Bubble Nebula is a so-called emission nebula located 8,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia. The nebula was first discovered in 1787 by famed astronomer William Herschel, and scientists have used Hubble to photograph the object in the past. But those previous views showed only part of the vast nebula.

This spectacular view of the Bubble Nebula was created from four separate images from the Hubble Space Telescope to mark the observatory's 26th birthday in April 2016. The Bubble Nebula is 10 light-years wide and sculpted by the bright star seen to the left of center.

Hubble's birthday snapshot is actually a combination of four separate images captured by the telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 and pieced together to reveal the entire Bubble Nebula for the first time.

"This complete view of the Bubble Nebula allows us to fully appreciate the almost perfectly symmetrical shell which gives the nebula its name," Hubble mission representatives explained in the image description.

According to Hubble researchers, "although the sphere already measures around 10 light-years in diameter, it is still growing, owing to the constant pressure of the stellar wind — currently at more than 100,000 kilometers per hour!" That's a mind-boggling rate of expansion of about 62,000 mph.

The Bubble Nebula is 8,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia. This image shows the nebula (center) and its surrounding region as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Digitized Sky Survey 2.

At the nebula's heart is SAO 20575, a star with a mass up to 20 times that of Earth's sun and the source of the stellar wind that is sculpting a bubble in space from the surrounding interstellar dust. The star (which is the bright star just to the left of center in Hubble's view) is also surrounded by formations known as cometary knots (you can see one just to the right of the star). These crescent-shaped dust globules are larger than our entire solar system and as massive as Earth.

Hidden in the Bubble Nebula's beauty is an astronomical mystery: Its parent star, SAO 20575, is not at the center of the bubble — a fact that mystifies astronomers.

"Astronomers are still discussing why this is the case and how the perfectly round bubble is created nonetheless," Hubble officials wrote.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a joint mission by NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA launched the observatory on April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery. Subsequent shuttle missions sent astronauts to repair and upgrade Hubble's astronomical instruments over time, ending in a final servicing flight (which delivered the Wide Field Camera 3 that took the image here) in 2009.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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http://time.com/4305495/bubble-nebula-hubble-telescope/

This ‘Bubble Nebula’ Looks Like a Giant, Cosmic Jellyfish
TIME Photo
April 22, 2016

New composite image from the Hubble Telescope to celebrate its 26th year in space


A new Hubble Space Telescope image of a specially chosen astronomical object, the Bubble Nebula, has been released just in time for the telescope’s 26th birthday on April 24.

The Bubble Nebula was first discovered in 1787 but due to its large size, was never captured in an image in its entirety. Now, a mosaic of four images from the Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 released by NASA/ESA shows its full form, including the shape of the shell that gives the nebula its name.

“This shell is the result of a powerful flow of gas — known as a stellar wind — from the bright star visible just to the left of centre in this image,” NASA writes. “The star, SAO 20575, is between ten and twenty times the mass of the Sun and the pressure created by its stellar wind forces the surrounding interstellar material outwards into this bubble-like form.”

Mysteriously, the star of this nebula is not located at the center of the molecular cloud, making it an object of study for astronomers.



http://www.britannica.com/topic/emission-nebula

Emission nebula
Astronomy

Emission nebula, Omega Nebula [Credit: © Anglo-Australian Observatory. Photograph by David Malin] in astronomy, a bright, diffuse light sometimes associated with stars whose temperatures exceed 20,000 K. The excitation process necessary to provide observed optical and radio energies in such gaseous regions was long an astronomical puzzle. It was found that ultraviolet light from the star ionizes nearby hydrogen. The hydrogen atoms emit visible light after the electrons and nuclei recombine and the atoms drop to lower energy levels.



http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/23/asia/japan-first-stealth-fighter-jet-airplane/index.html

Japan's first stealth fighter jet test: 'extremely stable'
By Thom Patterson, CNN
Updated 9:56 AM ET, Sat April 23, 2016


(CNN)Japan joined the exclusive stealth jet club Friday with the successful test flight of its first radar-evading aircraft -- a prototype called the X-2.

The test pilot described the flight as "extremely stable," according to manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

The twin-engine jet -- painted in the national red and white colors -- took off from Japan's Nagoya airport and completed various test maneuvers including climbing, descent and circling.

It then touched down at Japan Air Self-Defense Force's Gifu Air Base, Mitsubishi said. The pilot said the flight mirrored simulated training.

Japan's defense plans raise hackles in China

The historic event is the latest example of Japan's assertive defense posture in the region, as China's military continues to flex its muscles, with a 7.6% increase in its 2016 defense budget.

Beijing's Shenyang FC-31 fighter jet appears to have stealth characteristics, but few engineering details are known about it. China's fifth-generation twin-engine J-20 fighter is also thought to be a stealthy design and is expected to be fully operational by 2018.

Japan's development of a stealth fighter jet will add another component to an already complicated security environment. World leaders are concerned about tensions on the Korean peninsula and territorial disputes in the sea lanes running south from northern Asia. With all this going on, Washington has to remain mindful that Japan hosts most of the key U.S. forward bases in the region.

Who really invented stealth technology?

The Japanese X-2 that flew Friday "integrates an airframe, engines, and other advanced systems and equipment all adaptable to future fighters" Mitsubishi said.

The engineering of radar-evading stealth technology remains challenging even now, decades after the United States first invented it. Specific surfaces of the planes are designed to absorb radar signals or to deflect radar signals away -- making the aircraft virtually invisible to electronics. Special coatings are applied to exterior surfaces that make the planes even less detectable by devices. The U.S. F-117 Nighthawk (no longer in service), B-2 Spirit bomber, F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II fighters all have stealth designs.

Opinion: China's military gearing up to compete with U.S.

Geoff Hiscock contributed to this report.



“Japan's defense plans raise hackles in China -- The historic event is the latest example of Japan's assertive defense posture in the region, as China's military continues to flex its muscles, with a 7.6% increase in its 2016 defense budget. Beijing's Shenyang FC-31 fighter jet appears to have stealth characteristics, but few engineering details are known about it. China's fifth-generation twin-engine J-20 fighter is also thought to be a stealthy design and is expected to be fully operational by 2018. Japan's development of a stealth fighter jet will add another component to an already complicated security environment. World leaders are concerned about tensions on the Korean peninsula and territorial disputes in the sea lanes running south from northern Asia. With all this going on, Washington has to remain mindful that Japan hosts most of the key U.S. forward bases in the region.”


I am glad to say that Japan is, so far at least, “on our side” in several East Asian conflicts that seem to be growing competitively. Our places in South Korea, the Philippines and Japan give us a base of operations beyond the Middle East, and likewise we can help stabilize nations like North Korea. They are getting more and more aggressive in the last few years as we have participated in military maneuvers with South Korea. I hope the situation will remain manageable and mere posturing to improve our various status rankings. It does look frightening, though. As much as our religions try to institute human kindness across the world, hostility still remains the status quo. I have wanted world peace all my life, as a lot of us ‘70s kids have, but I’m becoming resigned to what is probably inevitable.



http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/solar-impulse-2-s-pacific-crossing-going-smoothly-it-nears-n560946

Solar Impulse 2's Pacific Crossing Going Smoothly as It Nears California
TECH APR 23 2016, 10:37 AM ET

Video -- Play Solar Impulse Prepares for Pacific Voyage 1:20
Related: Related: Solar Impulse Plane Prepares for Flight from Hawaii to California
Photograph -- Image: Handout photo of Solar Impulse 2 piloted by Bertrand Piccard rising from the tarmac in Kalaeloa, Hawaii
Photograph -- Solar Impulse 2 piloted by Bertrand Piccard rises from the tarmac at Kalaeloa Airport at it resumes the round the world flight that had been delayed because of weather and battery trouble in Kalaeloa, Hawaii, on April 21, 2016. JEAN REVILLARD / REZO / Reuters


OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN — A solar-powered plane's flight across the Pacific Ocean was going smoothly as it gets closer to a stop in Northern California.

The Solar Impulse 2 picked up a strong tail wind before sunset on Friday and was cruising at about 93 mph. It was expected to arrive in the San Francisco Bay area by Saturday evening.

The aircraft started its around-the-world journey in March 2015 from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China and Japan. It's on the ninth leg of its circumnavigation.

Pilot Bertrand Piccard marveled from his plane as it cruised over the Pacific at about 16,000 feet with a nearly-full battery, according to the website documenting Solar Impulse 2's journey.

He told his wife he could see the full moon's reflection on the ocean.

"For now I will say goodnight from the middle of the ocean," Piccard said during a brief conversation streamed live on the website. "This is an extraordinary experience."

Earlier, he exchanged pleasantries with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who hailed Piccard's pioneering spirit as "inspirational," telling him he was making history.

Piccard responded that Ban, too, was making history by having just presided over the signing of a climate agreement supported by representatives of 175 nations.

"What you are doing today in New York, signing the Paris agreement, is more than protecting the environment, it is the launch of the clean technology revolution," Piccard said.

The trans-Pacific leg of his journey is the riskiest part of the solar plane's global travels because of the lack of emergency landing sites.

After uncertainty about winds, the plane took off from Hawaii on Thursday morning and was on course to land in Mountain View, California, over the weekend. The crew that helped it take off was clearing out of its Hawaiian hangar and headed for the mainland for the weekend arrival.

At one point passengers on a Hawaiian Air jet caught a glimpse of the Solar Impulse 2 before the airliner sped past the slow-moving aircraft.

The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Hawaii in July and was forced to stay in the islands after the plane's battery system sustained heat damage on its trip from Japan.

Piccard, said the destination in the heart of Silicon Valley is fitting, as the plane will land "in the middle of the pioneering spirit." Piccard's co-pilot Andre Borschberg flew the leg from Japan to Hawaii.



This isn’t the first solar plane I’ve seen. I have one on a home video that I taped off the TV. I love it when scientists prove the fossil fuel energy cabal to be wrong! Given enough work, solar and the half a dozen other known means of producing energy can work. Exxon, et al, have been saying it’s impossible or too expensive for years, so they won’t lose their source of profits. Go to the website and see the photograph. This plane is really beautiful and elegant. It looks just like something out of Star Trek.