Trump 19: Please Cry for Us Montenegro (and We Are so Sorry!)

[Rachel333]

@fraurosena The Russian translation is fake, but the translation memes are funny. Apparently it is somewhat similar to some Samoan words, though. (Link is possibly NSFW--there's a vintage photo of a Samoan woman.)

The Nigel Farage news is interesting (and, as usual, disturbing).

[fraurosena]

Ugh. Where are the barf-bags? 

 

[sawasdee]

A very interesting look at the intellectual and thinking side of the right in politics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-anti-trump-right-is-becoming-a-breed-of-its-own/2017/05/31/7f3832ac-4635-11e7-bcde-624ad94170ab_story.html?utm_term=.c7bf74fa7042

Spoiler

Quote

Most of the conservative Republicans opposed to President Trump are writers and policy specialists. Few are politicians — or, perhaps more precisely, few of the conservative politicians who see Trump as a danger to the nation are prepared to say so in public.

So does this mean that the writerly anti-Trump right is ineffectual? Not at all. But we may be approaching a time when the gutlessness of the GOP’s leadership moves these restive conservatives to abandon their traditional loyalties altogether. It would not be the first time that a group of thinkers opened the way for political realignment.

History, it’s said, sometimes rhymes. The anti-Trump distemper on the right has some of the rhythms and sounds of an earlier intellectual rebellion in the mid-1960s involving an uneasy group of liberals. They remained staunch supporters of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal but worried about what they saw as liberal excesses and the overreach of some Great So

Over time, this collection of magazine- and university-based rebels — among them Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Daniel Bell and Norman Podhoretz — came to be known as “neoconservatives.” They were not party bosses, but they sure knew how to write essays.

The history of this movement, well-told in books by Peter Steinfels, Justin Vaisse and Gary Dorrien, is winding and complicated. Some of the neocons never abandoned liberalism or the Democrats. This category includes Bell and Moynihan, who eventually served with distinction as a Democratic senator from New York. Glazer’s views have always been hard to pigeonhole. Others (notably Kristol and Podhoretz) moved steadily toward old-fashioned conservatism. By the beginning of this century, neoconservatism came to be associated more with a muscular foreign policy than with its initial focus on domestic issues.

What cannot be doubted is that the neocons helped prepare the ground for Ronald Reagan’s political revolution. Will the anti-Trumpers (a fair number of them philosophical descendants of neoconservatism) have a comparable impact?

Much depends on whether their critique of Trump carries into a broader critique of contemporary conservatism and the Republican Party. This is already starting to happen. My Post colleagues Michael Gerson and Jennifer Rubin are representative. Gerson recently wrote: “The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased,” while conservative institutions “with the blessings of a president . . . have abandoned the normal constraints of reason and compassion.”

Rubin charged Republicans with practicing “intellectual nihilism” and proposed that “center-right Americans . . . look elsewhere for a political home.”

David Frum of the Atlantic, another eloquent anti-Trump dissident, wrote about the “broken guardrails” of American democracy back in 2016 and argued that the conservative guardrail had “snapped because so much of the ideology itself had long since ceased to be relevant to the lives of so many Republican primary voters. Instead of a political program, conservatism had become an individual identity.”

Conservative talk radio host Charlie Sykes criticized his side for indulging conspiracy theories going back to the Bill Clinton years and for “empowering the worst and most reckless voices on the right.” He did not pull his punch: “This was not mere naivete. It was also a moral failure, one that now lies at the heart of the conservative movement.”

Evan McMullin, who ran as an independent conservative against Trump in 2016, explicitly raised the prospect of realignment in a tweet over the weekend: “In our Trumpian era, is there any longer a traditional right and left? Or are there only those who fight for liberty and those against it.”

Another factor could push the anti-Trump conservatives out of their ideological home: attacks on them from one-time comrades. Writing recently on National Review’s website, author and radio host Dennis Prager described the anti-Trump right as “a very refined group of people” who live in a “cultural milieu” in which “to support Trump is to render oneself contemptible at all elite dinner parties.” Fighting words!

Like the intellectuals of a half-century ago who developed qualms about liberalism but insisted they were still in the liberal camp, conservatives standing against Trump today still see themselves as being true to their old loyalties.

But eventually, a large cadre of those liberal dissenters accepted that they were, in fact, neoconservatives. Something similar may be happening in the other direction as members of the anti-Trump right, battling against immoderation, irrationality and irresponsibility, become ever more distant from their old allies. Let’s call them “neo-moderates.” They, too, could emerge as a major force in our politics and make a difference in our history.

 

Wow. It seems some conservatives are seriously examining their consciences.

And there are some real call outs here to those who are just going along.

[fraurosena]

Well, he went out and did it...

 

I HATE HATE HATE this idiot. FUCKER, it's MY world too, you wanking wanker fuckity fucker. UGH.

I'm angry. Can you tell? 

[Destiny]

Well, he went out and did it...
 
I HATE HATE HATE this idiot. FUCKER, it's MY world too, you wanking wanker fuckity fucker. UGH.
I'm angry. Can you tell? 

God fucking dammit. Who needs a fucking planet anyway?

[sawasdee]

Having a f$#@ing idiot who has never read any thing more than a kindergarten primer screws the whole f@#$ing world!

I am beginning to feel more and more strongly that the US alone shouldn't be entrusted with electing their president - the rest of us need a voice too, as he's screwing us ALL over!

How about giving the rest of us a few votes in the EC? If you'd done that last time, we wouldn't be in this mess!

[Cleopatra7]

Who wants to bet that the same conservative idiots who are high fiving the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement will then be fuming when refugees and migrants start pouring in because climate change has wrecked their ability to live in their native lands? And that they will never connect the dots between the former and the latter?

[sawasdee]

I'm just waiting for Mar-a -Lago to go under - schadenfreude in spades!

[faraway]

@Cleopatra7 That is in the very near future. This is literally the worst thing he has done so far. I think the pressure on him needs to be augmented as much as possible so he'll hopefully cave at some point. He needs to see that the people are not behind him. 

[sawasdee]

@faraway Every poll is telling him that now - no president has had numbers like this in their first year, let alone first four months.

But he is so much a narcissist that he can ignore it.

If it benefits him, and his friends, it must be good.  Any other opinion is FAKE NEWS!

Including opinion polls.

 

 

 

[Destiny]

He either doesn't know or doesn't care that the people are not behind him. I honestly am not sure which it is - is he so delusional that he thinks he is doing well and the people are behind him, or is he just so awful that he doesn't care? Inherently, it doesn't matter, because the damage is being done either way.

[faraway]

I know the numbers are terrible but he still has around 40% approval, that is way too much for a crazy $hithead like himself. Those people need to wake up.

[sawasdee]

@faraway But how much of that support is for him, or for any generic republican?

There are some, who see an R, and vote for it.

He has been an enormous beneficiary of this. But more and more 'classic' republicans, who actually think about the ramifications of his decisions, are slowly backing away.The Evangelicals, who swallowed every principle they ever had to vote for him, are now discovering what they approved.

A man who was pro abortion until he decided to run as a republican (he was a registered democrat), a man whose knowledge of the NT expands to '2' Corinthians - not '2nd' Corinthians, a man who has never been a regular attender at ANY church, a man who is thrice married (and admits affairs within those marriages), a man who refers to women as 'pussy' that he is entitled to grope, who refers to his avoidance of STDs as his 'Vietnam'.

Those 'christians who have approved him, and voted for him, have disgraced both their own particular sects and christianity in general. I believe they have done more to undermine their faith than any generation before.

And they are a large part of the '40%'.

Will they gamble the credibility of their faith on this huckster? Or will at least some, through conscience, or realistic assessment of how he damages their christian 'message', back away?

[AmazonGrace]

Love this burn from the mayor: 

 

[LeftCoastLurker]

39 minutes ago, faraway said:

I know the numbers are terrible but he still has around 40% approval, that is way too much for a crazy $hithead like himself. Those people need to wake up.

I have decided that the only way these people will "wake up" is when one of his policies ACTUALLY effects them. When it is not just the ebil lying liberal media telling them it will happen.

• It could be that they will no longer be able to get healthcare because of a pre-existing condition, or the cost of that healthcare doubles or triples.
• That pristine lake/river/bay that they are used to fishing in for food to feed their family becomes polluted
• Their 17 year old daughter contracts an easily preventable STD because their local planned parenthood clinic closed
• The cost of fruits and vegetables become cost prohibitive or they become in very short supply
• Their taxes DON'T come down while the cost of goods/healthcare/life goes up!

I know there are other examples, but those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.

On another note, we had been looking at colleges for my daughter. It is a sad commentary that we had to completely cross entire states off our list because I didn't want my daughter (she is not white) living there! We have settled on a school in a state that is "mostly" blue, so I'm happy (it was her first choice, so it's a good thing!).

[sawasdee]

I had to post this. It's a commemt from WaPo, and it sums up exactly what I feel.

Quote

When I hear the word Republican, the first words to come into my head are "hypocrite, ignorant, selfish, and mean." Then I recall the fact that so few GOP politicians are willing to confront the very clear conflicts of interest and probable treason going on in the WH and the words "traitor and craven" are added to the mix. Finally, when I see how gleeful they are to cut health care and food stamps, the words "fake Christians" pop in. I'm sticking to those words until I see actual politicians stand up to this madness. I used to believe Republicans were good people who had a different governing philosophy. After 8 years of obstruction and 5 months of Trump, I've changed my mind. There is nothing good about them. My hope is that they reap 100 times what they have so carelessly sown.

Her 'name' on WaPo is'Angry Girl'. I'm with her, 100%.

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, Destiny said:

God fucking dammit. Who needs a fucking planet anyway?

Agent Orange doesn't care. First of all, he doesn't have that many years ahead of him on earth and it's not like he would care how he leaves the planet for his descendants. Secondly, he has enough money to put a dome over Mar-a-Lago and live in his little world.

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Something fishy’ is going on with Trump’s Twitter account, researchers say"

Spoiler

Reports have zinged around the Internet this week about a sudden and mysterious surge in President Trump’s Twitter following, along with dark musings that something nefarious may be afoot.

The wildest of these claims — including the suggestion that Trump had gained up to 5 million followers in just a few days and that nearly half are “fake” — are clearly overblown, analysts say. But several researchers who study social media have also reached the conclusion that something fishy may be going on with Trump’s account.

That something fishy may involve the mass creation of “bots,” a catch-all term for accounts that are automated, meaning a single individual or a team can run hundreds or thousands at time. This is something Trump’s supporters have a history of doing well, far better than his political opponents, according to work by several researchers.

“In my expert opinion, something strange is going on,” said  Samuel C. Woolley, research director for the Computational Propaganda project at Oxford University. “It’s consistent with other strange things that have gone on before with this politician’s Twitter feed.”

First, a few facts: Trump’s Twitter following, which is one of the largest in the world, has been surging since his inauguration in January, rising this month alone from 28.6 million to more than 31 million, according to Twitter Counter, a tracking site. That’s an increase of 2.4 million in May, for an average of nearly one each second of every day, around the clock.

That would be extremely impressive for most people but less so for one of the world’s most famous men, not to mention one known to use Twitter to convey some of his bluntest and newsiest utterances. Bear in mind, for perspective, that the Twitter feed for Trump’s predecessor, @BarackObama, has more than 89 million followers, including a substantial percentage of bots, according to various reports.

But here’s the catch: There is a strangely large percentage of Trump’s followers — and especially his newest followers — that have only the most rudimentary account information, with no profile picture, few followers and little sign that they have ever tweeted. These are so-called “egg followers” because instead of a profile photo they traditionally carried the image of a blank egg on Twitter account pages.

And that, say some researchers, is odd.

“This is very, very obvious when you just go and click on the newer followers,” said Jonathan Albright, research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. “The quality of the new followers is pretty bad.”

SocialRank, a New York-based analytics company that works with Southwest Airlines, L’Oreal and the NFL, reported this week that as Trump’s number of followers surged from 24.1 million in February to 31 million in May, his number of “egg followers” grew sharply as well, from 5 million to 9.1 million. Of that group, more than half have never tweeted and only 4 percent have 25 or more followers; 927,000 of Trump’s egg followers opened new accounts in May, according to SocialRank’s analysis posted Tuesday.

That doesn’t necessarily make the accounts “fake,” as some reports have claimed. Most academic researchers say that determining what percentage of followers are actual individual humans can be extremely difficult — and almost impossible with an account with as many followers as Trump’s. Twitter itself has acknowledged that as much as 8.5 percent of all of its accounts are likely automated, though independent researchers say the number may be twice as high. (The company also has a team that searches for bots and, when found in violation of Twitter policies, shuts them down.)

There another possible explanation for Trump’s mysterious follower surge. Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio said that newer users often appear without profile photos because they have not yet developed their accounts fully. The company’s most recent earnings report shows that the number of Twitter accounts overall grew by around 9 million in the first quarter of 2017, up to 328 million, meaning plenty of newcomers may be using the platform merely to browse what others are saying. (In March, Twitter abandoned the egg image for users without profile pictures, but the term "egg followers" has endured among researchers).

Alexander Taub, chief executive of SocialRank, said that both theories may be true. Trump may be drawing an unusual number of new — but real — egg followers. And he may also be benefitting from an aggressive new campaign of bot creation.

“It’s probably a combination of both,” Taub said, “but there’s something fishy.”

Here’s where a little history may help sharpen the picture. Last year, during the election campaign, several academic researchers tracked the use of Twitter bots supporting either Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. They reported that the bots supporting Trump massively outperformed the bots supporting Clinton, by a margin of 5-to-1  in the final days before the vote.

Among accounts that researchers had identified as “highly automated” — meaning likely bots — 81.9 percent carried at least some messaging supporting Trump, according to a November paper written by Woolly and two colleagues, Bence Kollyani of Corvinus University and Philip N. Howard of Oxford.

It’s that history, in part, that makes Woolley suspicious that Trump’s surge may benefit from aggressive bot development. “There’s a legacy of this.”

But even Woolley and other researchers skeptical of Trump’s total say there is no definitive way to determine who is behind making Twitter bots, nor is there any plausible way to determine their motives.

Descriptions of how to build Twitter bots are widely available on the Web, and they can even be purchased en masse from companies that specialize in developing them. Spoofing location, language, profile pictures and other information for Twitter accounts is also easy, making it hard to get clear answers, said University of Southern California researcher Emilio Ferrara.

“A 13-year-old kid with access to Google can figure out how to create a smokescreen,” Ferrara said.

 

No big surprise.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Trump administration keeps trying to create an alternate reality — and failing"

Spoiler

Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign proved that if you lie with sufficient frequency and shamelessness, the truth will be no hindrance to becoming president of the United States. But believe it or not, the truth may be making a comeback. The administration is doing all it can to construct alternate realities and persuade everyone to accept them as true. But it’s not working.

Let’s start with this interview that Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney gave to the Washington Examiner, in which he laments the continued existence of the Congressional Budget Office:

“At some point, you’ve got to ask yourself, has the day of the CBO come and gone?” Mulvaney said. “How much power do we give to the CBO under the 1974 Budget Act? We’re hearing now that the person in charge of the Affordable Health Care Act methodology is an alum of the Hillarycare program in the 1990s who was brought in by Democrats to score the ACA.”

He continued, “We always talk about it as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Given the authority that that has, is it really feasible to think of that as a nonpartisan organization?”

The person he’s referring to is a longtime CBO analyst who worked in the Department of Health and Human Services in the 1990s. Her presence no more means the CBO is partisan than does the fact that the office’s director, Keith Hall, served in George W. Bush’s administration and was chosen for the job by the Republican congressional leadership.

The point is not just that Mulvaney’s whine about the CBO being biased against Republicans is ludicrous. It’s also that no one will take it seriously, apart from a few Republican members of Congress and Fox News hosts. As a piece of public communication, the assertion that the CBO’s analysis is irrelevant will fail. That analysis, particularly the office’s prediction that as many as 23 million people could lose their health coverage if the Republican health-care bill were to pass, will continue to shape the debate over the bill. They’d like to wave their hands and make everyone forget the CBO score, but they can’t.

Or consider the ongoing Russia scandal. With a hint of desperation, this morning President Trump tweeted, “The big story is the ‘unmasking and surveillance’ of people that took place during the Obama Administration.”

Does he actually believe that the “Look over there!” strategy will work? Of course it won’t. As Michelle Ye Hee Lee documents at length Thursday, at every turn of the scandal, Trump has tried to convince people that the whole thing is a hoax concocted by Democrats. But while it’s certainly true that many of Trump’s most ardent supporters believe that, it has done nothing to slow the scandal’s progress. Now, in addition to congressional investigations, we have a special prosecutor, who might exonerate the administration or might not. Either way, it will be the facts that determine the fate of the president, and their attempts at spin will convince no one who isn’t already enthralled with Donald Trump.

That’s not to say that the facts always win, but this administration is so ham-handed in its attempts at creating an alternate reality that it has created a situation where it can’t get the benefit of the doubt, from the press or most of the public. Don’t forget that when Kellyanne Conway proclaimed Sean Spicer’s rightness in presenting “alternative facts,” she was talking about Spicer’s insistence that Trump’s inauguration crowd was the largest in history, a “fact” that is no more true than the “fact” that last year I led the NBA in scoring and won the Nobel Prize in physics. More to the point, no one actually believed it. “Alternative facts” is now a punchline about this administration’s dishonesty and ineptitude.

And later this afternoon, Trump is going to hold a triumphant Rose Garden ceremony, presumably to announce that he’s pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. He’ll say that is a triumph for American coal jobs, or something, and expect everyone to applaud. But the Paris agreement is extremely popular with the public — even a majority of Republicans support it. Is Trump going to change their minds? Don’t bet on it.

Or think about it this way: Could you imagine this crew being able to pull off something like the propaganda coup George W. Bush’s administration did in persuading the public to go along with the invasion of Iraq?

They built a case on a series of fantastical lies. We were told that Saddam Hussein had a bristling arsenal of weapons of mass destruction he was about to unleash on the United States (“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us,” said Vice President Dick Cheney). We were also told Hussein was in league with al-Qaeda and might have had something to do with the Sept. 11 attacks (“The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al-Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq,” said Bush). And we were told we would be welcomed with open arms by the Iraqi people (“My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators,” said Cheney). And most of the public bought it. Just before the administration launched the war, support for the invasion was running above 60 percent.

That was no accident. The Bush White House undertook a carefully crafted and undeniably brilliant propaganda effort, designed by a high-level assemblage of staffers called the White House Iraq Group, led by Karl Rove. They masterfully manipulated a news media excited for the prospect of a dramatic war. But even with all the skills and resources they brought to bear, the facts could be outrun for only so long. The war was a complete disaster, and eventually most of the public came to view it, correctly, as a terrible mistake.

The Trump administration is utterly unable to persuade the media to adopt its spin, and it hasn’t yet been able to convince a majority of the public of just about anything. They don’t support the administration’s health-care plan, its tax plan, or its plan on anything else. Trump’s attack on a Syrian airfield got the support of a narrow majority, but that’s as well as he’s done. Trump may have been successful in real estate getting people to buy into an alternate reality he created, but that sales job isn’t selling anymore.

I wish we could get some of the 40% who seem to believe TT and his minions to see the actual facts. I know, not gonna happen.

[JMarie]

Wolf Blitzer was interviewing Gary Cohn (chief economic advisor) about today's events.  Cohn said that Obama's emission standards goals were unattainable, so they're going to focus on bringing jobs back instead.  Why can't they work on both things simultaneously?

[GreyhoundFan]

8 minutes ago, JMarie said:

Wolf Blitzer was interviewing Gary Cohn (chief economic advisor) about today's events.  Cohn said that Obama's emission standards goals were unattainable, so they're going to focus on bringing jobs back instead.  Why can't they work on both things simultaneously?

That takes thought and planning, not exactly this administration's strong suit.

 

A good opinion piece: "Trump just betrayed the world. Now the world will fight back."

Spoiler

President Trump has made a colossal mistake in deciding to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. There is simply no case for withdrawal, other than a desire to double down on an ill-informed campaign promise, while the case for staying in is overwhelming. But damaging as it is, this decision is not the beginning of the end for efforts to contain climate change. The world decided in Paris to confront the climate threat, and it is not turning back.

Around the world, climate change is a metastasizing danger, for some countries even an existential threat. It was understood in the years leading up to the Paris negotiation that the climate challenge could be met only with a new kind of agreement premised on concerted effort by all. That agreement — ambitious, universal, transparent, balanced — was reached in Paris, with the help of U.S. leadership every step of the way.

Trump’s suggestion Thursday that he is willing to renegotiate the deal to make it fairer to the United States doesn’t pass the straight-face test. The Paris agreement — for anyone who actually understands it — is entirely fair to the United States. The idea that 194 other countries will listen to Trump’s insulting Rose Garden blather and say, “Sure, let’s sit down and negotiate a new deal” is ridiculous.

Instead, Trump’s decision will be seen as an ugly betrayal — self-centered, callous, hollow, cruel. The ravages of climate change have been on display in recent years in the superstorms, floods, rising sea levels, droughts, fires and killing heat waves that will only get worse as the carbon index mounts. Vulnerable countries will look at the United States, the richest power on Earth, the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, and think — even if they do not say — how dare you?

Former president Barack Obama once said to business leaders, in a Roosevelt Room meeting I attended, that climate change was the one threat, other than nuclear weapons, with the potential to alter the course of human progress. A near-consensus of major U.S. companies urged the Trump administration to stay in the agreement because they know climate change is real, that the Paris agreement is a good and balanced deal, that their own concerns on matters such as intellectual property and trade will only be defended if U.S. negotiators are at the table and that turning the United States into a climate-change pariah will be bad for business, for access to markets and for investment. But our chief executive president decided to leave U.S. business in the lurch.

All this is more than disappointing. And watching the so-called internal battle on this issue play out between determined antagonists on the one side and diffident, sotto voce defenders on the other was downright depressing.

But let’s be clear: This is not the end of the line. This is a call to arms.

Countries won’t follow Trump out of the Paris climate agreement and over a cliff. They won’t give Trump the satisfaction of “canceling” the agreement, as he promised during his campaign. They will want to show that they can carry on without the United States. And they know too well that climate change is real and that if the Paris regime fell apart, you’d just have to build it again. They will hold on to the hope that the current administration will be a one-term wonder. It is true that, in the longer run, it would be difficult for the Paris regime to produce accelerated action at the level that is needed without the United States. But other countries will probably bet that the United States will come back.

Progressive U.S. states and cities also have a crucial role to play, not only in extending the good work they are already doing on climate change, but also by sending a clear and resounding message to the global community: that while Trump’s Washington may have gone dark on climate change, inspired centers of innovation and commitment are lighting the way forward all over the country. In states such as California and New York, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Illinois and North Carolina, and in New England; in cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and New Orleans, among many others. These entities account for a sizable chunk of both U.S. gross domestic product and carbon emissions. They may not be able to get the United States all the way to our 2025 Paris emissions target, but they have the potential to go far.

Private companies, too, have been instrumental in driving the clean-energy revolution, pursuing the massive economic opportunities presented by the need to decarbonize our energy system. And consumers are increasingly demanding that companies not only provide desirable products or services, but stand as a good corporate citizen.

Finally, for citizens, it is time to hold our leaders accountable at all levels of government. Protecting our nation, our children and our American heritage should not be optional for an elected leader. Nor should preserving America’s singular standing in the world.

This is not a good day for climate change, and it is not a good day for the United States. Nothing we say now can change that. But it is a day that needs to be remembered as the visible moment the rear-guard opposition went too far. It is a day to spark action and resolve. It is a day that needs to count.

 

[JMarie]

24 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

That takes thought and planning, not exactly this administration's strong suit.

 

A good opinion piece: "Trump just betrayed the world. Now the world will fight back."

  Hide contents

President Trump has made a colossal mistake in deciding to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. There is simply no case for withdrawal, other than a desire to double down on an ill-informed campaign promise, while the case for staying in is overwhelming. But damaging as it is, this decision is not the beginning of the end for efforts to contain climate change. The world decided in Paris to confront the climate threat, and it is not turning back.

Around the world, climate change is a metastasizing danger, for some countries even an existential threat. It was understood in the years leading up to the Paris negotiation that the climate challenge could be met only with a new kind of agreement premised on concerted effort by all. That agreement — ambitious, universal, transparent, balanced — was reached in Paris, with the help of U.S. leadership every step of the way.

Trump’s suggestion Thursday that he is willing to renegotiate the deal to make it fairer to the United States doesn’t pass the straight-face test. The Paris agreement — for anyone who actually understands it — is entirely fair to the United States. The idea that 194 other countries will listen to Trump’s insulting Rose Garden blather and say, “Sure, let’s sit down and negotiate a new deal” is ridiculous.

Instead, Trump’s decision will be seen as an ugly betrayal — self-centered, callous, hollow, cruel. The ravages of climate change have been on display in recent years in the superstorms, floods, rising sea levels, droughts, fires and killing heat waves that will only get worse as the carbon index mounts. Vulnerable countries will look at the United States, the richest power on Earth, the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, and think — even if they do not say — how dare you?

Former president Barack Obama once said to business leaders, in a Roosevelt Room meeting I attended, that climate change was the one threat, other than nuclear weapons, with the potential to alter the course of human progress. A near-consensus of major U.S. companies urged the Trump administration to stay in the agreement because they know climate change is real, that the Paris agreement is a good and balanced deal, that their own concerns on matters such as intellectual property and trade will only be defended if U.S. negotiators are at the table and that turning the United States into a climate-change pariah will be bad for business, for access to markets and for investment. But our chief executive president decided to leave U.S. business in the lurch.

All this is more than disappointing. And watching the so-called internal battle on this issue play out between determined antagonists on the one side and diffident, sotto voce defenders on the other was downright depressing.

But let’s be clear: This is not the end of the line. This is a call to arms.

Countries won’t follow Trump out of the Paris climate agreement and over a cliff. They won’t give Trump the satisfaction of “canceling” the agreement, as he promised during his campaign. They will want to show that they can carry on without the United States. And they know too well that climate change is real and that if the Paris regime fell apart, you’d just have to build it again. They will hold on to the hope that the current administration will be a one-term wonder. It is true that, in the longer run, it would be difficult for the Paris regime to produce accelerated action at the level that is needed without the United States. But other countries will probably bet that the United States will come back.

Progressive U.S. states and cities also have a crucial role to play, not only in extending the good work they are already doing on climate change, but also by sending a clear and resounding message to the global community: that while Trump’s Washington may have gone dark on climate change, inspired centers of innovation and commitment are lighting the way forward all over the country. In states such as California and New York, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Illinois and North Carolina, and in New England; in cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and New Orleans, among many others. These entities account for a sizable chunk of both U.S. gross domestic product and carbon emissions. They may not be able to get the United States all the way to our 2025 Paris emissions target, but they have the potential to go far.

Private companies, too, have been instrumental in driving the clean-energy revolution, pursuing the massive economic opportunities presented by the need to decarbonize our energy system. And consumers are increasingly demanding that companies not only provide desirable products or services, but stand as a good corporate citizen.

Finally, for citizens, it is time to hold our leaders accountable at all levels of government. Protecting our nation, our children and our American heritage should not be optional for an elected leader. Nor should preserving America’s singular standing in the world.

This is not a good day for climate change, and it is not a good day for the United States. Nothing we say now can change that. But it is a day that needs to be remembered as the visible moment the rear-guard opposition went too far. It is a day to spark action and resolve. It is a day that needs to count.

 

It's just one more thing for the next president to fix.  I pity him or her.

[onekidanddone]

3 hours ago, sawasdee said:

I'm just waiting for Mar-a -Lago to go under - schadenfreude in spades!

Just looked up the hurricane names for 2017.  There is a Jose on the list. I'd like to see it hit and only on his property. I don't want employee hurt, I just want to see it gone.  Of course he will blame it on Mexico seeing as it is called Jose, and he would cash in big on his taxes yet again claiming the loss.  Sigh.

[GreyhoundFan]

Op-ed from the NYT: "Oh Dear. The Trumps Keep Multiplying."

Spoiler

The kids are not alright.

Let’s see now. Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is under investigation for weird cloak-and-daggerish meetings with the Russians. Ivanka just took a bunch of money from the Saudis for her favorite charity. Eric and Don Jr. are traveling the world to promote Trump hotels and golf courses while being looked after by the Secret Service on our dime.

Tiffany is going to law school. If only the others were in law school.

Pop question: Who’s your favorite mini-Trump? I’m sort of attached to Eric, the one who compared waterboarding to a fraternity hazing.

In theory, Eric and Don Jr. are supposed to be totally unconnected to the government, running the family business in a manner so separate from the president that they might easily be working in a totally different dimension.

Hahaha.

“I do not talk about the government with him and he does not talk about the business with us. That’s kind of a steadfast pact we made, and it’s something we honor,” Eric told Forbes earlier this year.

Then, Forbes reported, about “two minutes later” Eric volunteered that he’d still be making “profitability reports and stuff like that” to the president. He and Dad are, Eric added, “pretty inseparable.”

Darned tootin’. Besides traveling the world to publicize Trump golf courses and hang out with potential investors, Eric and Donald Jr. are also working the political side of the street. The boys recently met with Republican leaders to discuss 2018 election plans. (Don Jr., by the way, is the one who was recently off shooting prairie dogs during their breeding season.)

Eric’s wife, Lara, was at the meeting, too. More relatives! When she’s not talking with Republican leaders, Lara is active in an animal rights group called the Beagle Freedom Project. It helps find homes for dogs that were used in scientific studies, which is commendable. On the other hand, one of its leaders spent six years in jail for harassing research workers.

Her father-in-law isn’t really into pets, which is now looking like a good thing. Given the way he operates, if Trump had, say, a cocker spaniel it would probably now be deputy secretary of agriculture.

Lately, the Trump relatives we’ve been hearing most about are Ivanka, an official presidential adviser, and her husband, Jared, whose portfolio includes modernizing government and bringing peace to the Middle East. They recently accompanied the president on his overseas trip — the one that began in Saudi Arabia with fun festivities and the glowing orb.

While the Trumps were there, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates announced they were honoring Ivanka by donating $100 million to a World Bank fund for women entrepreneurs.

Perhaps you remember a presidential debate last fall in which Trump denounced the Clinton Foundation for accepting money from conservative Arab nations like, um, Saudi Arabia. (“You talk about women and women’s rights? So these are people who push gays off buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money.”) Ah, well.

Jared’s current issue is the mysterious back channel he attempted to set up with the Russians. Like so very many things involving this administration, it’s a controversy in which the most positive interpretation is that he had no idea what the hell he was doing.

In December Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Russia bank, to talk about setting up a special communication system, apparently so he could talk without American intelligence overhearing.

It had to be disastrous in some way, since Mike Flynn was involved. Among the possible explanations:

A) The incoming administration had directed a 36-year-old real estate developer with no government experience to solve the Syrian crisis while keeping the whole thing secret from everybody except Vladimir Putin.

Jared was trying to do a favor for his sister-in-law Lara by setting up a channel to smuggle abused beagles out of Russia.

C) This is something about Russian money backing Trump businesses.

I am of course going for the beagles. But feel free to be cynical.

“We know Kushner’s business operations are in constant need of loans and investors. It’s highly suspicious,” said Fred Wertheimer of the good-government group Democracy 21. He used to specialize in campaign finance reform, but now Wertheimer lives in a world where a president’s daughter joins Dad at a dinner with the Chinese president the very same day she receives trademark rights for selling Ivanka Trump glitz in China.

And speaking of sleazy contacts with foreign investors, last week Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley called for an investigation into “potentially fraudulent statements and misrepresentations” made by a Chinese company promoting deals that seemed to involve U.S. visas for financiers who made big investments in a luxury condo project in New Jersey.

The condos are being developed by Kushner Companies and were being marketed by Jared’s sister. Yes! There’s no end to them.

Stay the course, Tiffany.

A cocker spaniel would probably be better for the US than 99.999% of the current administration.

[Gobsmacked]

5 hours ago, Destiny said:

God fucking dammit. Who needs a fucking planet anyway?

If Polar bears weren't so grouchy I'd go and hug a few. They are going to need all the hugs they can get.