Monday, August 29, 2016

Climate Change May End Civilization But The GOP Has Decided They Don't Care

VOX posted a disturbing video history of how the climate change consensus devolved into a partisan football game pitting the stupid people who distrust science against the rational people who trust science.

There was scientific consensus early on, then there was political consensus. Then people who disliked the consensus decided to sabotage it and destroy it. Why? For reasons of profit.

But the main visible reason that consensus seems to have broken down is because Americans elected a black man president. Republicans didn’t like having a black president and decided that everything he proposed needed to be blocked.

Of course it’s more complicated than that. Fossil fuel billionaires poured billions into the PR campaign to derail the rational response to the climate change threat. Their profits drove the whole propaganda machine. But the unifying principle behind the opposition and its absolute team unity was racism.

FoxNews enforced this opposition with dangerously misleading and prejudicial reporting and the Republican Party turned the future of civilization into a team sport. They decided they were on the team that didn’t believe the scientists. A Republican senator said on the floor of the Senate that climate change was a hoax because he had a snowball in his hand.

We know what the problem is. We know which companies are causing the problem. (You'll find a list here at Science Magazine.) We know our behavior is making the problem worse and we have the ability to choose. But the most powerful media force available to Americans, the most watched news network, FoxNews, is dead set against a rational response. Why? Because they are the network of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is dedicated to the rational scientific response, so they are opposed to it. It’s a binary response. Whatever the other side is proposing, they’re against it.

For eight years this obstruction remained unified because the leader of the Democrats was black. They hated being told by a black man that something needed to be done. Following the leadership of a black man was against 500 years of tradition.

The new obstruction that will begin in 2017 will dictate that all Republicans must oppose everything President Hillary Clinton proposes because they dislike having a woman president. This opposition will be built on thousands of years of male dominant tradition.

Deep racism and sexism and the sacred profits of oil and coal companies have energized half of America into an irrational mob. They refuse to believe anything except what they are told by their masters. This has turned a danger into an existential threat to civilization.

This seems attractive to some on the right who believe if they screw up the world badly enough Jesus will come.

What people need to understand is simple enough. Civilization is built upon a predictable and reliable climate––reliable rainfall and reliable growing seasons. Climate change will end that. It took thousands of years of reliable rain and growing seasons to lay down the soil that grows the crops we live on. We built our infrastructure around these reliable growing regions. People need to understand what will happen when our farming infrastructure and our fertile soil is located where crops will no longer grow. When the oceans rise we will have difficulty shipping food because our port infrastructure will be flooded.

A recent president who was faced with his failure said he didn’t mind how history judged him because he’d be dead. This appears to be the reasoning of the wealthy and stupid forces organized to oppose responsible action to slow and halt climate change. By the time the world knows the Koch Brothers helped doom our civilization they will be dead.

At some point people with enormous wealth stopped behaving responsibly as people, as citizens, and began playing wealth as a game in which nothing mattered but the score they could rack up before they died, at which point the game was over.

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Saturday, August 27, 2016

The Anti-Hillary Hate Machine

The latest wave of attacks on Hillary are about the Clinton Foundation, which, contrary to the right wing claims, is one of the highest rated organizations in terms of its high percentage of donations that go directly to the charitable objectives. It does good work that needs doing, which wouldn’t be done without their efforts and capable direction.

Of course the news media feels itself in a bind: if they report fully on Donald Trump’s lies, bigotry, extremism, and borderline insanity without devoting an equal amount of ink and airtime to Hillary’s small or nonexistent flaws they feel biased. For my money I’d be comfortable if the news media were biased in favor of honesty, competence, moderation and sanity. I wish they would stick to that.

Politifact rates GOP chair Priebus's latest lies about Hillary.

SLATE analyzes the multiple falsehoods in the smear campaign against the Clinton Foundation.

Newsweek looks at the hypocrisy of the unending Hillary Email Smear.

Pensitor Review takes a look back at how the news media gave W and Karl Rove a pass regarding hidden and destroyed emails. The Bush White House was trying to cover up wrongdoing in its purge of insufficiently partisan US Attorneys.

The Hillary health scare nonsense:

SNOPES (the best lie debunker on the internet) debunks the GOP's rumormongering about Hillary's health.

CNN calls this obsession out for what it is, a nonsense conspiracy theory.

The doctor who certifies Trump’s supremely robust health is a nutcase who specializes in colonoscopies. Here are his Trump accolades ranked by degree of ridiculousness: DeadSpin gives a quick rundown of the ludicrous Trump "bill of health" from Trump's personal gastroenterologist. His photo alone is priceless. It's noted that Trump's doctor once tried to copyright the phrase "compassionate colonoscopy." Would Trump appoint this fruitcake Surgeon General?

On Buzzfeed, one of the right wing rate***ers behind the Trump juggernaut speaks his mind. Interesting how the Donald Segrettis and Lee Atwaters and Roger Stones and Roger Aileses, the diehard dirty trick artists, all seem to find a home in the Republican Party.

The sad fact is this wild eyed radical hate mongering right wing fringe is no longer a fringe. It's the heart and soul of the Republican Party. What does that mean going forward? POLITICO weighs in.

They swore to shut Obama down from Day One. They will do the same to Hillary. That is the central idea of modern Republicanism: make democracy fail, make it grind to a halt, make it dysfunctional, make people frustrated and angry at it, make people hate it, then replace it with a dictatorship.

The Alt Right is gung ho on this idea. They hate our democracy because it gives stuff to people with darker skin who live differently than they do. They hate democracy because FoxNews tells them to, tells them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, twelve months a year how democracy is an inefficient mess which should be replace with a sleek modern efficient corporate model called fascism.

What the alt right faithful believe is a con. They think a dictator would take dictation from them. They think the new totalitarian efficiency would serve their needs. Baloney. They are angry people who want someone to kick ass on people and make people hurt the way they are hurting, assuming a bully dictator would prey on people other than them.

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Thursday, August 25, 2016

Your Daily Trump-The Alt Right Explained

Trump has embraced that oddball fringe of the right wing called “Alt Right”. What is it? The Alt Right wishes George Washington would have declared himself king. The Alt Right believes democracy is a joke and our country should be run like a corporation, from the top down. The Alt Right believes people are expendable and discardable… everybody but them of course.

Explained succinctly and well by VOX

The horrible history of campaigns like Trumps that suggest people take up arms against each other

From The Nation

The "Make America Great Again" meme dates back to the days of Jim Crow and lynching.

From BuzzFeed

The old Trump campaign manager summarized at SLATE

The new guy's open bigotry and extremism explained by Alternet.

One of Breitbart’s bright boys is a lot like Donald, bragging about big charitable giving and pocketing the money instead.

So explain again why we are crucifying Hillary and Bill for running one of the most ethical and effective charitable organizations in the world...

How America became a nation that worships selfishness and greed, conned by the high priestess of greed and hate, Ayn Rand. From Raw Story

A mild satire on Trump’s potemkin fantasy which might result in the satirists imprisonment if Trump is elected



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Sunday, August 21, 2016

Your Daily Trump––The Anti-Science Candidate

Trump’s and the GOP’s hatred of science may doom our civilization.

Reported in Scientific American

Reported in the New Yorker

Of course many Republicans fervently and sincerely believe that if we screw this world up badly enough Jesus will come.

An excellent set of charts which show how bogus the nay-sayers' claims are

This Republican congresswoman believes if she says it it must be true.

Instead of working to limit the enormous damage of global climate change Republicans have spent billions making sure communities who will never be threatened by foreign terrorists are expensively protected from foreign terrorists. Reason? Weapons manufacturers demanded higher profits.

Reported by the National Memo

Is a journalist guilty of bias if he or she believes the honest and well-informed candidate and doesn’t give equal credence to the uninformed dishonest candidate?

A discussion (as if we needed to discuss this) of why it is wrong to give equal weight to honesty and lies

Meanwhile in a wonderful twist of karma some superchristians who’ve been saying weather disasters are God’s punishment for homosexuality have had their homes flooded by the most recent weather disaster… Most of the citizens of southern Louisiana do not deserve this, but these godbotherers might.

Reported in the Independent

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Thursday, August 18, 2016

Your Daily Trump––the health issue

The estimable Kurt Eichenwald discusses the hypocrisy of the Hillary-is-unwell smear when Trump is noticeably sick.

In Newsweek

The quack doctor behind the “Hillary is dying of some dread disease” meme.

From the Daily Beast

The most odious person in recent history is behind the rumor that Hillary has Parkinson’s.

Raw Story reports on Martin Shkreli's nasty work for Trump's campaign

Meanwhile, Hillary seems to understand that healthcare is something you help people with. You don’t use it as a profit opportunity or an opportunity to gain an advantage over them.

A heartwarming story reported in ELLE

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Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Your Daily Trump––Trump & Rudy

Is Trump’s Plan B to capture a large segment of America and imprison them in an endless loop of hatred and lunacy? He’d find lots of investors. I’m guessing Roger Ailes will run it for him.

Vanity Fair reports on Trump's plan to become a TV network

Does the First Amendment protect deliberate lies?

The Atlantic sorts out this tricky issue.

Are liberals to blame for Trump? You’re joking...

The New Republic debunks this notion.

What we’ve learned about Trump supporters this past week

Reported by the New Yorker.

Trump and Giuliani as you’ve never seen them before. (Shared by my old editor at SPY)

Trump and Rudy on YouTube, where else?

Trump is already ordering his stormtroopers to intimidate voters on election day.

Trump's brownshirt plan reported by the LATimes.

From a year ago: Scientific America’s three part series examining the psychology of Trump supporters




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Monday, August 15, 2016

Your Daily Trump––Verbatim Trump

The Donald said something recently which had a lot of people scratching their heads. Luckily CSPAN was recording it.

And SLATE reported on it.

“Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist
and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes,
OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart
—you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if,
like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the
smartest people anywhere in the world—it's true!—but when you're a
conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that's
why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went
there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my
like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged—but
you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would
have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear
is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the
power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of
what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?),
but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it
used to be three, now it's four—but when it was three and even now, I
would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because,
you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter
right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about
another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians
are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”
~Donald Trump

The Chronicle of Higher Education asks some serious linguistics experts to attempt to diagram this sentence.

CNBC (where people who own stocks get all their news) posted something about Trump's undisciplined mouth and wandering mind.

TIME magazine goes inside Trump's meltdown.

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Thursday, August 11, 2016

Your Daily Trump––Why "Just Kidding" Doesn't Work This Time

Why Trump was not “just joking” about gun owners assassinating Hillary.

An explanation in a series of tweets, from Mother Jones.

Henchman Rudy Giuliani explains it another way: if Trump wanted Hillary killed he’d order it done. Giuliani emphasizes that if he did so he would be doing the right thing. Reported by The Gothamist, with video.

Rolling Stone on the Trump command to fire when ready

Trump’s “shoot my opponent” joke is called Stochastic Terrorism. Unfortunately this is a word his supporters can’t pronounce. From BlueNationReview.

Meanwhile, most elected Republicans are refusing to walk away from Trump, despite everything. At some point we may have to rename Paul Ryan Paul von Hindenburg. For the GOP, though, there is no history prior to Ronald Reagan.

An open letter to Paul Ryan by Kurt Eichenwald in Newsweek sets out the dangerous outcomes Ryan's continued fealty would lead to.

Con games are about numbers that do not add up. Trump’s economic plan is a con. The Economist, the conservative bible of people with money, weighs in

The business-conservative WSJ’s conclusions about the party Trump ate

There’s talk of finding a way to ditch Trump before November and run somebody else instead… [Cue the armed revolt]

From Vox

From Bloomberg and ABCNews

The Atlanta Journal Constitution says a Georgia Elector (as in Electoral College) is considering refusing Trump his Electoral Vote if he wins the state.

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Monday, August 08, 2016

What's All This About Hillary?

Hillary has been the object of constant scrutiny for the past 25 years, ever since she and Bill entered the public eye. Most of the scrutiny has been antagonistic. Politicians attract enemies when they try to do things. It's almost as bad as the resentment politicians get from not doing things exactly as each individual voter wanted.

The greatest danger to our nation in recent years is running for president at the top of the Republican ticket. And yet there are still people who feel uncomfortable voting for the only viable alternative. Casting a pure vote is an irrational and dangerous hobby. Voting is not a hobby, it needs to be an act of reason and compromise. Noam Chomsky is not a great fan of Hillary Clinton, but he explains why it's vitally important that reasonable and intelligent voters on the liberal side unite behind her.

This article is from DemocracyNow, which isn't a centrist or neoliberal news organization.

Hillary is being accused of dishonesty. Actually she is the most honest politician in the race this year.

Jill Abramson explains why this is so.

An interesting interview explaining what liberal communitarians stand for. Hillary is one.

It's weird some of the things Hillary is attacked for. Last week she was attacked for putting her hand over her heart...

This article from the Boston Globe is about how any woman running for president must be perfect in every way.

And Americans aren't too keen on people who are too perfect. Actually, if you are a woman and too perfect they really hate you.

This writer hated Hillary, until she sat down and read the emails Hillary is being hounded over.

This article is about the many sexist questions Hillary has had to answer (politely) for the past several decades.

Meanwhile, from the LATimes, we have Trump rallies where small children are applauded for screaming obscenities about Hillary Clinton.

So... what's all this about Benghazi?

What Hillary's values are.

From MEDIUM.

Hillary's convictions about social progress, from The Tablet.

What happened to the feminist excitement that surrounded Hillary in 2008? From SLATE.

Thinking about voting for Jill Stein?

Prominent ethicists are saying voting your conscience on a minor party candidate in an election like this one is actually immoral.

And by the way, in case you are still angry Bernie didn't win, NO the DNC email leaks do not contain evidence the system was rigged against Bernie. I was and am as big a Bernie supporter as anyone, and a Bernie fan of longer standing, and I am expressing that by putting all my support behind Hillary Clinton. As Bernie has done.

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Saturday, August 06, 2016

Your Daily Trump: Is The Candidate Dangerously Insane?

Insane?

Wall Street Journal writer and former Reagan wordsmith Peggy Noonan thinks Trump is insane.

The Daily Beast discusses the history of similar insanity in the Republican Party.

Incompetent or stupid?

Newsweek lists all of Trump's business failures. The list is long.

The National Review (our most respected conservative magazine) does the same.

Vindictive?

USAToday sorts through the thousands of lawsuits Trump has been involved in. A lot of them involved people who he'd hired but refused to pay. No major party presidential nominee has ever been involved in so many nasty legal actions as Trump. Not even close.

Traitor?

TIME magazine asks why Trump is sleeping with so many Russians, and who is on top?

Insulting toward key U.S. allies?

The Daily Telegraph, the UK's conservative newspaper, reports how Trump has now decided to insult the Japanese.

Contempt for the U.S. Constitution?

SLATE reports how Trump rallies are now boo-ing people who hold up copies of the U.S. Constitution. That document used to be holy writ in the Republican Party.

Con Man? (We knew this already.)

SLATE reports how people contributing to Trump's campaign find that the campaign website makes it impossible to stop the campaign from taking the same amount from your checking account every month forever.

Why is he still popular? Are some voters stupid or insane too?

The American Conservative examines the phenomenon of poor, ignorant, white people who vote Republican.

RawStory reports that it isn't the whiteness or the relative poverty that makes someone a Trump supporter. It's the ignorance and insanity.

Criminal?

Bloomberg lists the many shady business partners and business deals that litter Trump's past––and his present.

If Trump is vindictive, how would he perform if given control of our legal system?

NPR asks what kind of kick-ass Justice Department Trump might appoint? And whose asses might they kick?

If Trump is insane or irrational how should he be given unlimited control of our nuclear arsenal?

Politico paints a scary picture of President Trump with his new toy, the nuclear arsenal.

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