261 days until the November 2018 election

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• What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …

° How Republicans stole the Second Amendment, Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza

° I can’t wait for people of every color to be wearing Black Panther costumes, by Ian Reifowitz

° The first rule of White House Wife Beaters Club is don’t talk about … the wives, by Frank Vyan Walton

° Despite Trump’s praise of Rob Porter, domestic violence remains a deadly threat, by Sher Watts Spooner

° If Democrats provide an answer to these types of problems, they are unbeatable, by Egberto Willies

° Thoughts and prayers are not doing a damn thing, by Mark E Andersen

° Black History Month: The vejigante masks and bomba music of Puerto Rico, by Denise Oliver Velez

• By November, California could have more registered independents than Republicans: Democrats still dominate the voter rolls in California, but the number of independents is rising and could, by November, exceed the number of Republicans. Currently, Democrats account for 44.6 percent of California’s registered voters, giving the party a 19 percentage point advantage over the GOP at 25.4 percent, with voters stating “no preference” at 25 percent, and 5 percent registered with other parties, registration figures show. Democratic registrations have barely budged in the past two decades, slipping not quite 2 percent since 1997, while Republican registrations have fallen by nearly 11 percent, and independent registrations risen by more than 13 percent. Paul Mitchell, who runs the data firm Political Data Inc., told the Los Angeles Times that more and more millennials, college students, young Latinos and Asian Americans are registering as independents. “Democrats are celebrating Republicans losing registration. But they should be mourning,” Mitchell said. “This new registrant population looks like Democrats but they are registering as independents.” In past elections, “no party preference” voters in California have leaned heavily Democratic at the polls. 

• Mike Mulvaney’s objective is to wreck the CFPB and leave a hollow shell. If that sounds to you like what’s happening throughout the Trump regime, you’re not imagining things. Former Rep. Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat who served on the House Financial Services Committee, was one of the leading voices in Congress for consumer finance protection:

“I think we’ll be right back to where we were in 2007 and 2008,” Miller said. “Where it’s open season on consumers. Where anything you sign may have hidden in the tiny little print . . provisions that just screw you blind.”

He noted, “That was true of credit cards. It was true of mortgages, and it will be true again. It’s never really stopped being true; consumer finance has continued to be a problem.”

“What the Trump administration is going to do, and Mulvaney is going to do, is strip away all the protections that were intended to keep that [a major financial crash] from happening again,” Miller explained. 

MIDDAY TWEET

The woman’s back was once Catalonian hills

• New scanning method can reveal what’s beneath master works:  U.S. researchers have employed a new technique that let them see beneath one of Pablo Picasso’s major works, the Crouching Woman (La Misereuse Accroupie). The new x-ray fluorescence scanning system was used to find a landscape of Barcelona under the Picasso. The technique is cheaper than other art scanning systems, and being portable, any gallery can use it on their own turf. The Crouching Woman is a painting from Picasso’s blue period. The landscape painting beneath, which researchers say is probably the work of a student, is turned 90 degrees. The woman has been painted to take on the contour of the Catalan hills in the background.

• Trio of studies indicate people would positively greet news of extraterrestrial life being discovered.

• Elon Musk’s Boring Company flamethrowers quickly sold out, but the Do-It-Yourself crowd is filling the gap: 20,000 of the flamethrowers at $500 apiece were sold to raise money for the Boring Company. The entire stock was off the shelves in a mere four days. That led others to imitate the device at home. For instance, Jason Salerno uploaded video of his Boring Company clone early this month. His creation is a combination of an airsoft gun, a propane torch, a propane tank, a propane extension hose, and a bottle holder taken from a bicycle. Other imitators have arisen, too. Not everybody thinks the devices are cool, however. In the House of Representatives, New York Reps. Eliot Engel and Carolyn Maloney introduced H.R. 4901 (known as the “Flamethrowers? Really? Act”) to ban flamethrowers that shoot fire more than six feet. It would “treat flamethrowers like machine guns.”

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