If we can’t see it, it won’t happen, climate change edition:
Donald Trump is poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by Nasa as part of a crackdown on “politicized science”, his senior adviser on issues relating to the space agency has said.
Nasa’s Earth science division is set to be stripped of funding in favor of exploration of deep space.
After all, we can’t have any of that nasty left wing bias that reality imposes:
There is overwhelming and long-established evidence that burning fossil fuels and deforestation causes the release of heat-trapping gases, therefore causing the warming experienced in recent decades.
[Trump campaign advisor Bob] Walker, however, claimed that doubt over the role of human activity in climate change “is a view shared by half the climatologists in the world. We need good science to tell us what the reality is and science could do that if politicians didn’t interfere with it.”
Walker is, as one expects from Trumpistas, simply lying. Half of the world’s climatologists do not doubt the fact of human-driven climate change, unless you include those who got their advanced degrees at the University of Exxon’s Koch School of Science. Ostriches and sand ain’t in it.
This is a hugely consequential move. There are two technologies that are essential to modern climate science: large scale numerical modelling made possible by the insane advances in computing power and associated computer science over the last several decades…and remote sensing, the ability to monitor earth systems on a planetary scale. That’s what NASA — and for the forseeable future, no one else, brings with its earth science programs. Kill that and we not only lose data going forward, we degrade a capability in an intellectual infrastructure that will take a long time indeed to restore:
Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said as Nasa provides the scientific community with new instruments and techniques, the elimination of Earth sciences would be “a major setback if not devastating”.
“It could put us back into the ‘dark ages’ of almost the pre-satellite era,” he said. “It would be extremely short sighted.
“We live on planet Earth and there is much to discover, and it is essential to track and monitor many things from space. Information on planet Earth and its atmosphere and oceans is essential for our way of life. Space research is a luxury, Earth observations are essential.”
This is a call your representative kind of issue. It’s going to be difficult, certainly, if Trump really does go down this path, but NASA is enough of a pork barrel, and some GOP senators, at least, are not wholly clueless on this issue, so it might be possible to avoid the worst outcome. It’s necessary to try. If and as I hear of organized campaigns on this, I’ll bring the news (and feel free to email me with any info you might gather.)
Feh.
PS: that laser like media focus during the campaign on issues like climate change sure was impressive, wasn’t it?
C. C. Pierce, Carl Eytel and George Wharton James in a horse-drawn wagon on the Butterfield Stage Road in the Colorado Desert, c.1903. (Eytel was a painter associated with the “smoketree school” of artists working on desert subjects; James was a journalist and photographer.)
schrodinger's cat
The Nazi comparison is apt.
SiubhanDuinne
And yet, the Moustache of Understanding is . . . hopeful.
(NYT link.)
West of the Rockies (been a while)
I despise Republicans. I really do.
Of course, burning hot rage ain’t gonna feed the bulldog of science funding. Let’s get active, folks, do as Mr. Levenson suggests.
SenyorDave
I’m pretty sure that New York City could be under ten feet of water and the lead story in the New York Times would be Clinton’s emails.
debbie
Except yesterday, he was moderating his stance.
This is the real danger with Trump: Who knows what he thinks and where he stands?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/donald-trump-says-he-believes-there-is-some-connectivity-between-humans-and-climate-change-in-major-a7432671.html
smintheus
So…let’s ignore the planet we live on and instead go off looking for another one that seems congenial?
Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog
Sincere question for Tom:
Did your conversation with your NY Times contact ever arrive at a conclusion you’d be comfortable sharing (or did share but I missed it)?
I have a lot of anger at Our Great Nation’s Only Media, but I’m morbidly curious, I guess.
With kind regards,
Dog, etc.
Poopyman
Geez Tom, you left out my favorite part of the quote:
gene108
If there’s a need and we’re not filling it, someone else will.
The world will get along just fine, while we isolate ourselves.
The Russians, the ESA, the Chinese and Indians all have space programs, which maybe able to fill the gap given time.
Chris
@Poopyman:
“Heavily politicized” = “the scientists obstinately refuse to come up with the conclusions we want them to.”
Poopyman
Also too, while NASA as a whole is good for pork barrel politics, earth science is concentrated at Goddard Space Flight Center here in liberal Maryland. In Steny Hoyer’s district, no less. Republicans will have no problems sticking it to Steny.
JPL
@Poopyman: Mr Trump’s decisions will be based upon solid science, not politicized science.”
hahahahahahahahhahahha
This morning when I read the article in The Guardian, I mentioned that we needed a WTF category. It’s going to be a long, long four years.
MomSense
@gene108:
We are too stupid. Not the worst thing for the planet if humans go the way of the dinosaur.
schrodinger's cat
@gene108: I have been reading up on my Indian history. This is what happens when regimes/cultures start fading away. They turn inwards, reject facts, cling to religion. They are no longer bold and confident and tolerant of differences. The Mughal Empire under Aurangzeb. Marathas after Nana Phadnavis’s death are just 2 examples.
Lurking Canadian
Climate change is a unique problem for the Republicans, because it is the one place where they cannot create their own reality. The laws of physics don’t care how many lies you tell, or how many hats you sell, or which set of Those People you blame. Those carbon dioxide molecules are going to keep trapping heat even if you can bribe, cajole, or threaten all the reporters into pretending otherwise.
Mike J
If half the climatologists doubted climate change, that would be a good argument to double or triple the amount of research we’re doing, not cut it to nothing.
Tom Levenson
@Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog: Nah. I kept saying how crappy the NYT coverage was, and the person on the other side of the conversation decided I was too uncouth.
Poopyman
I passed the Guardian article to a couple of friends in the business. One of them responded saying he’s been in mourning for his career since the election, made worse by the fact that his particular research was starting to bear fruit.
So yay for the anti-science folks! More egghead scalps will be collected in the days ahead.
Bill E Pilgrim
Dateline 2023: Following on the catastrophic rise in global temperatures on Earth, the temperature of deep space has risen by ten degrees according to recent measurements, something scientists attribute to the gasbaggery of former President Trump expanding in a bubble of increasing diameter since his election.
schrodinger's cat
@Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog: And yet we pass each other NYT links like they are gospel.
Poopyman
@Lurking Canadian: Republicans create their own reality. And while you study it, judiciously as you will, they’ll be acting again and again.
Or whatever the hell the Rove quote is.
Chris
@Lurking Canadian:
They can’t control it, but expect them to do everything they can to turn it to their advantage.
One of the biggest and first results of climate change is going to be an increase in mass migrations from areas affected by it. That in turn ramps up the xenophobia and plays right into the hands of politicians like Trump.
Droughts and the like in parts of the country that don’t even know how to rely on the government any more will drive more people into the arms of churches which’ll feed them apocalyptic bullshit and tell them that the only way to save themselves is to vote against the godless liberals who brought this upon all of us.
Etc.
There’s sure as hell never going to be a Day After Tomorrow moment where climate change hits so fast and so brutally that the Republicans can only admit they were wrong.
Librarian
In addition to the Nazi comparison, another one might be the barbarians conquering Rome. Compared to the GOP, Attila the Hun was a Red Cross volunteer.
Bill E Pilgrim
@smintheus:
If Trump can build a Trump hotel there under the plastic dome, he’s good.
Poopyman
I just caught something on the Guardian page. The photograph with this as the caption:
Methinks there’s some editorializing going on there. :^)
dedc79
There’s not going to be anything satisfying about saying “We told you so” when the sh** hits the fan (of course in some ways the sh** is already hitting the fan)
dedc79
It’s the Wile E Coyote school of thought – unless/until we look down, we won’t see that we’ve run off the cliff and we won’t fall.
ETA: Spoiler alert: it doesn’t even work out well in the cartoon.
Sayne
@gene108:
Not immediately, no. In terms of temporal and spectral resolution, there’s really not much of a replacement for the two NASA MODIS satellites.
They image in 36 spectral bands and cover the entire earth once every two days. The imagery is coarse, 250-1000m pixels, but since the area imaged is so huge, the pixel size doesn’t matter too much.
This suggestion by the Trump admin is beyond outrageous. I’m a geographer and I’m shaking I’m so angry.
Poopyman
OMG
Oh well!
Persia
Can we frame this as a weather issue, not just climate change? Like, NASA has been tremendously helpful in letting us know where storms are going, etc. I can’t imagine this won’t have a chilling effect on that, and I feel like that’s the kind of panic-inducing rhetoric that might even get the skeptics and denialists pissed off. So, not ‘NASA is banned from researching climate change,’ ‘NASA’s banned from monitoring the weather to keep all of us safer.’
Hungry Joe
@MomSense: By going the way of the dinosaur, you mean that we become birds? Hmmm … I might sign on for that. Dibs on hawk!
permafrost
This country is a fucking joke.
NotMax
A thousand points of blight.
gene108
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I remember 10 years ago getting into arguments on-line with right-wingers, who said (1) temperatures are rising, but (2) they were due to the Sun’s activity, because (3) temperatures on Mars were also observed to be rising, and thus (4) there’s nothing we can do about it.
When I pointed out there are no Martian weather people on Mars taking measurements, unlike those here on Earth, and if you doubt the stuff people on Earth are doing, why do you trust these imaginary Martians?
Right-wingers will cling to any argument, no matter how weak, to keep denying global warming is real.
artem1s
Two words to communicate the damage this will do to Trump voters…Hurricane tracking. This data for the most part goes straight to NOAA and is used by them to forecast weather.
WereBear
Nothing will surprise me anymore.
Timurid
@SiubhanDuinne:
Have… to… normalize… faster… FASTER!
tobie
The waves of truly appalling news just keep on coming… It’s hard to know how to resist such a full frontal assault on reason, well-reasoned policy, reasonable discourse and debate, reason-based arguments, etc. The fact that our press functions merely as stenographers for the new regime crushes any hope of effective resistance. I’m 53 and I’ll see countries disappear off the map, epidemics spread, minorities persecuted and democracies fall, and there’s nothing I can do. Even trying to elect a ‘reasonable’ person to my local school board will likely fail. A Democrat hasn’t been elected to a single county office since the 1990s. Dark times, indeed.
Waldo
@Lurking Canadian: You’ll see Mar-a-Lago valets standing out front in waders before anyone on Team Trump admits there’s a problem.
Epicurus
Trump will change his tune when Mar-a-Lago is under two feet of the Atlantic Ocean…maybe. He really does live in an alternate reality, but water lapping around the 18th hole just might get his attention.
liberal
While robotic/scientific exploration of non-near-Earth space is great and all, manned space exploration (whether near Earth or not) is a complete f*cking waste of money.
artem1s
@Chris:
so expect refugees camps in NC for FL residents?
Epicurus
@Waldo:
Ha, judging by the time stamps, great minds really do think alike.
MomSense
@Tom Levenson:
So are you on TeamAdam now?
Tom Levenson
@MomSense: Pretty much. The Times does bring resources to certain stories no one else has, but its self-identification as the newspaper of record has left it so vulnerable to manipulation by its sources that I basically don’t trust anything they write on politics.
Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog
@schrodinger’s cat:
I haven’t got a solution to offer. We need functional news media and actual reporters, but when I realized I couldn’t reasonably assume the accuracy of the purported facts (or on-the-record quotes!) I was reading in the NYT, I gave up reading it.
This did no good for anyone except insofar as it saved me time I had previously spent cross-checking some of their Professional Journalists and writing to a series of Public Editor functionaries.
Kit Seelye (“It was just one word!”) still has a job there. HRC’s emails are still the biggest deal EVAR. Hebrews thirteen and eight.
Not sorry I noped out of it, but that’s not a solution.
With kind regards,
Dog, etc.
aimai
Jeesus. We are right here, like Tom, in the home of science research–MIT, Harvard, etc..etc…etc… I’m personal friends with someone who was one of Obama’s top science advisors. This just makes me want to puke. They are going to decimate science and scientists, destroy the lives of up and coming graduate students, end research projects and just shut down meaningful research. WE knew people who had to leave the country under Bush when their research was shut down. The brain drain that gave us great scientists coming from all over the world, when I was a little girl, is going to go the other way but given the lack of good language skills we can’t expect that our graduate students will find an easy time finding jobs in Europe or China.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog: I’ve gone with The Guardian. Not perfect, but I simply cannot support the NYT any more. Booman is also flogging the Washington Monthly. Anyone know if that publication is a worthy investment?
Poopyman
@artem1s: Actually, don’t think just of humans.
Alligators in the Potomac River! Ohhhh, never mind. It’ll be a stinking lifeless hole once the Trump Administration gets done gutting environmental protections.
schrodinger's cat
@Tom Levenson: Are you saying that the NYT cannot fail, it can only be failed. Hillary is not the first the Democratic Presidential candidate they have gored and swift boated. They are and have been the fluffers of the establishment. Right now its the Republican party. I haven’t forgotten their crappy coverage of the Iraq War either.
Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog
@Tom Levenson:
Damn. I was hoping for better.
Thanks for giving it a shot though – and for the reply of course.
schrodinger's cat
@aimai: Most graduate students in the STEM areas are damned foreigners and immigrants anyway, so no big loss right?
/end snark.
Poopyman
@O. Felix Culpa:
I’d like to point out the blurb at the bottom of the Guardian article that Tom linked to:
Which is a linkie.
James Powell
@SiubhanDuinne:
Friedman is such a first class sycophant to RWers. One of many reasons I want to see the NYT go down.
The Moar You Know
@liberal: Mostly agree. What the ISS is showing us is that long-term spaceflight is pretty disastrous to human beings; as the state of the art stands, sending people to Mars is just going to kill them one way or another. Sending people off to a moonbase, same thing. There are radiation issues we just don’t know how to deal with, and that may not be solvable. Humans really weren’t built to go into space.
Unmanned spaceflight/probes have been an undisputed success, however.
Botsplainer
Wonder if I can figure out a marketable skill that will enable me to emigrate to China, South Africa or Scandinavia? The stupid doesn’t seem to extend that direction.
Feathers
One weird outcome I can see happening from this is this function being taken over by the Pentagon or one of the intelligence agencies, the NRO perhaps? The military is certainly taking climate change seriously. They have to be completely bullshit over this.
Had a conversation with someone who works at the EPA a few days after the election. She was convinced there was no danger to her job, because she worked on Clean Water Act filings. Didn’t have the heart to tell her I wasn’t so sure about that. Trump would dump the entire Clean Water Act, just to spite the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters.
O. Felix Culpa
@Poopyman: Yes, I responded to that request. I figured that good, or at minimum less bad, journalism is worth supporting with actual dollars.
Chris
@gene108:
This is also fascinating in the way it demonstrates the gateway-drug effect of conservatism, where people who joined the party for X or Y reason quickly imbibe all of their unrelated ideas. (The “I used to be a liberal but then 9/11 happened and now I’m outraged by Chappaquiddick” thing).
I mean, there are a lot of issues that can drive you into conservative politics (abortion, 9/11, taxes, guns… “political incorrectness,” as the racists are now calling racism). But let’s face it, no one goes into into because they feel very strongly that climate change isn’t happening. It’s a complete non-issue… except as a marker to separate liberals from conservatives, with the latter obediently towing the line because if their party says it, it must be true.
I think the process goes “conservatives absorb a position by osmosis without much thinking about it, but liberals disagree, and conservatives shriek that liberals are attacking our freedoms and the baby Jesus by disagreeing, and pointyheaded scientists armed with unglamorous ‘facts’ will point out that liberals do, in fact, have some grounds for disagreeing, and then conservatives will say that this just shows how deeply rooted the liberal conspiracy goes…” and before you know it, an issue they’d never heard about, never cared about, and don’t understand the first thing about has become their newest hill to die on.
Botsplainer
I’ve been trying to download an editing suite from Adobe about the last 35 minutes. Is this stuff as bloated as I suspect?
rikyrah
The New York TimesVerified account
@nytimes
Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead surpassed 2 million overnight
rikyrah
NYT PoliticsVerified account
@nytpolitics
Obama is the first president in a half century to leave office with a smaller federal prison population.
hovercraft
The same media that failed to ask a single question about climate change during the debates? Yes they are true guardians of the planet. I will call, but as a Jersey girl, my representatives are believers in science, still constituent calls may get them to speak up louder and more vociferously. Sandy’s floodwaters stopped less than a 100 feet from my front door, and left a tree across my front steps, so this is personal.
rikyrah
meta
@metaquest meta Retweeted West Wing Reports
Precisely what President Obama warned about repeatedly. United States of America has surrendered trade in fastest growing region to China.
SatanicPanic
Well at least California will still be working on this. Maybe some tech company can think of a clever way to fill the gap in knowledge. Or maybe we’re screwed, who knows.
rikyrah
Reuters WorldVerified account
@ReutersWorld
A new peace accord between Colombia’s government and FARC rebels will be signed on Thursday:
Poopyman
@O. Felix Culpa: I can’t from the work computer, but will tonight. Just wanted to put it out here for folks who didn’t go to the site.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
This will be largest popular vote win while losing the EC in history, it’s projected to be 2.4 million. But hey she didn’t inspire people to turn out, while the Shitgibbon did, right?
Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog
@O. Felix Culpa:
I read less news than I did 20 years ago. When I do, it’s often The Guardian, or BBC, or a big German daily (whose name has naturally done a Houdini now that I want to mention it) …
I read more here, tbh. In years past I read newspapers and looked to blogs for different views of (what I took to be) the facts. But I don’t trust the news to give me facts anymore – the Times is a good example of the problem, but of course it’s not alone.
No real idea how to remedy this.
With kind regards,
Dog, etc.
ETA: a missing word
rikyrah
Jason Easley
@PoliticusJason
As President, Trump Plans To Raise Taxes On 26 Million Low Income Americans
Barry
Conbined with Brexit, we are facing the loss of primacy of the scientific Anglosphere.
Schlemazel
@debbie:
He thinks nothing & stands nowhere. He will, however, appoint assholes like those cited above to positions where they can use their ignorance and malice for the maximum damage. If I didn’t have grand kids I would be supporting them so as to bring the end as soon as possible, it is not like they haven’t earned it.
Poopyman
@Chris: The “conservative” cohort aligns pretty well with the Authoritarian cohort. A hive mind is necessary for acceptance.
Poopyman
@Botsplainer: Yes.
rikyrah
Kristen Zimmer @kristen_zimmer
Call the Department of Justice at 202-353-1555. Redial until you get through. Demand that they #AuditTheVote
#AuditTheElection
Schlemazel
@Poopyman:
A) politicize the science
B) claim that the science is politicized & therefore must be ignoreed
C) profit?
O. Felix Culpa
@Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog:
Let me know which one it is, once your memory is restored. :) I used to read the FAZ, but have allowed my German skills to lapse. Given the state of our homegrown media, it might be wise to go to foreign sources for information.
P.S. I also read less news now. I’m trying to keep up on the local level, though, as the first point of engagement.
rikyrah
8-year-old hospitalized after beating by white bullies who told his sister ‘go back to the cotton farm’
An 8-year-old African American boy was hospitalized after bullies attacked him and his younger sister on November 14, the Atlanta Black Star reports. The incident occurred at the Spanish Lake Primary School in Geismar, Louisiana. Now, the family is seeking help with medical expenses.
Jordan Jackson was defending his 4-year-old sister from a group of older children — all of whom were white, and one of whom was 13 — who were throwing mulch at them. The two Jacksons appear to be victims of a racially-motivated attack.
When Jordan asked the kids to stop, one of the kids told him, “You need to go back to the cotton farm.” He was then pushed to the ground and body slammed.
Jordan was hospitalized with a broken arm and a concussion that later led to “post-concussion syndrome,” which includes symptoms such as dizziness, headaches, and insomnia, among others.
Lizzy L
@O. Felix Culpa: I am also considering sending funds to Washington Monthly. I have a subscription to The Washington Post. I am a member of TPM Prime because I think Josh Marshall is doing outstanding work. I read The NYT but refuse to subscribe. I also read The Guardian.
hovercraft
@debbie:
FOX News’s Shepard Smith made this point yesterday, no one knows what the Shitgibbons positions are, because depending on the audience at any given time, it hold all of them Katie. These are a combination of trial balloons by some of it’s supporters and the Shitgibbon wanting to please the audience it’s talking to at that moment. Right now it’s all theoretical, but we need to shoot down the stupid, dangerous stuff like this, but we will have to wait till January to see how much of this is real, and how much just hot air that will be quashed by reality. I’m thinking the Pentagon might have an opinion about the Shitgibbon scraping research in an area that they consider to be one of the greatest threats to our nation security.
Starfish
@gene108: Why no love of JAXA?
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: Aargh.
CaseyL
Hard to see how NASA can “slow-walk” this one, if the funding disappears. It’s a pretty cunning move on the deniers’ part. Even though the military and the insurance industry “take GCC seriously,” they need data to formulate policies and responses. Without the data NASA collects, they can’t plan very well. So it won’t matter if some sectors of gov’t and private sector want to work on this despite Trump saying “No”; they won’t have any data to work with.
frosty
@O. Felix Culpa: I subscribed to WaMo in the 70s back when Fallows was getting his start there. It was good then and it’s good now. Worth the bucks.
rikyrah
just a phone call
Cornelia @PaladinCornelia
We need to #AuditTheVote
Some numbers to try:
202-353-1555 (often busy)
202-514-2000 option 4
A suggested script is below.
9:53 AM – 23 Nov 2016
hovercraft
@artem1s:
I’m also thinking tornado watch. That’s a problem coastal ‘elites’ don’t have to worry about, oh wait, for some strange reason we’ve had a few tornado watches here in Jersey the last few years. I wonder what’s changed to make that a thing, it used to be we had to worry about hurricanes and blizzards, now we have tornados, vortexes, derechos and I’m sure there will be more new phenomena for me to learn about in the next few years.
Major Major Major Major
@CaseyL: It’s very “we don’t believe that guns can do anything bad so let’s outlaw studying guns.”
dance around in your bones
I used to like watching that Earth Without People tv show and marvel at how quickly plant and animal life would take over our abandoned buildings. So green and prolific!
Now I can’t even daydream about that. Thanks, Chief Embarrassment Object.
eta: Life Without Humans (oops)
Jonny Scrum-half
@debbie: I’m wondering if Trump is going to be essentially irrelevant to what happens during his administration, with him operating as mostly a decoy for the media to focus on, while everyone ignores what’s really going on.
Poopyman
@Schlemazel:
Nah. Cleek’s Law.
O. Felix Culpa
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Yes, I’ve wondered that too. He’s the shiny object (aka puppet), while Bannon – and Ivanka? Kushner? – pull the strings behind the scenes.
Chris
@CaseyL:
Which is basically what they’re already doing with gun data, I believe.
@Jonny Scrum-half:
That would be consistent with Republican SOP. Reagan and Dubya both worked on this model, amiable dunces who were there to put a smiling public face on the whole operation, while their cabinets and the people they were connected to did all the real work behind their backs.
That’s every bit as terrifying as the prospect of Trump deciding everything would be.
EBT
@debbie: The real danger is he could be as senile as Reagan.
rikyrah
Lisa BloomVerified account
@LisaBloom
Paul Ryan’s doing a survey in hopes of killing Obamacare. Tell him you support it. Here’s how.
hovercraft
@O. Felix Culpa:
I like Nancy LeTourneau , and obviously Booman is there, I know a lot of people here aren’t fans of his comments section, but apart from reading their politics blog, Political Animal Blog, I don’t really read the magazine.
debbie
@O. Felix Culpa:
I cannot imagine Trump letting anyone take over his role as, as Omarosa put it, the most powerful man in the Universe. It’s just not in his DNA.
mai naem mobile
NPR had a story about the increase of rats due to climate change with milder winters. They procreate more in milder wintera.I hope Trump Tower and the DC hotel has a massive rat problem.Hell I wouldn’t mind if they had some contagious diseases. Bit of trivia – Stalin was killed with rat poison. U guess it’s a blood thinner.
Major Major Major Major
@EBT: Re: this theory–is there any evidence he wasn’t always like this?
hovercraft
@Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog:
Der Spiegel ?
Chris
@mai naem mobile:
Yep. That’s how climate change happens. Death by a thousand cuts.
rikyrah
DA PHUQ?
Trump’s Son Held Talks on Russia
November 23, 2016
Donald Trump’s eldest son, emerging as a potential envoy for the president-elect, held private discussions with diplomats, businessmen and politicians in Paris last month that focused in part on finding a way to cooperate with Russia to end the war in Syria,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
The disclosure of a meeting between the younger Mr. Trump and pro-Russia figures—even if not Russian government officials—poses new questions about contacts between the president-elect, his family and foreign powers. It is also likely to heighten focus on the elder Mr. Trump’s stated desire to cooperate with the Kremlin once in office.
debbie
@rikyrah:
I just watched him give the MOH to Ellen DeGeneres. A man who gives pat-pats when he hugs is a treasure!
D58826
@artem1s: Syria may be a case in point. I’ve read in a couple of places that a severe drought (whither global warming related or not) caused crop failures that forced much of the rural population to move to the cities looking for non-existent jobs. This in turn led Assad to cut back on food subsidies. Then………………………………
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
4 years of this shit, is so scary. I wish I could just bury my head in the sand.
Brachiator
@Lurking Canadian:
Didn’t a former Canadian leader, Harper, similarly downgrade climate change research? What has happened since his term?
In any event, conservative climate change deniers always claim that any variation is simply due to a cyclical pattern, and equilibrium is always restored. On top of this, they simply assert that the Earth’s climate is too complex to understand, so nothing should or can be done.
The religious have the ultimate fallback. Nothing that humans do can have any long term impact on the Deity’s creation. End of discussion.
D58826
@rikyrah: Isn’t there a law against free-lancing foreign policy – Sullivan act?
PPCLI
Get ready for the next four years at least. Trump says some vague noncommittal things about climate change maybe not being entirely a hoax, to the NYT. They have a collective orgasm about his “evolution” and “reasonableness”. Meanwhile, the Trump administration bans all study of climate science on the grounds that any research giving conclusions they don’t want to hear is “politicized”. This does not phase the NYT at all. “Evolution of Trump” stories will continue apace.
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: Ok, is it possible to do just one huge primal AAAARRGH and get it over with? W is starting to look like a genius saint in comparison. Words I never expected to utter.
D58826
@CaseyL: They have been doing this for years. Two examples I can think of
1. Newt eliminated the Congressional office of technology when he was speaker.
2. ban on gun violence research.
I’m not sure if this passed but at one point they wanted to eliminate the census long form that asks all of t he questions about household income, indoor plumbing, etc. The information from that questionnaire is used by both the public and private
sector.
But if you have no information that the problem ‘goes away’.
schrodinger's cat
@PPCLI: Why are you still reading NYT and giving them clicks? Boycott NYT.
Major Major Major Major
@PPCLI: Yep, four years (at least) of this. They’ll be more of a lapdog than they were for W. Hopefully only a few hundred thousand people will die this time as a result.
Regnad Kcin
@hovercraft: Ha! If you can’t stand FAZ, then try morgenpost.de or sz.de
Captain C
@SenyorDave:
But there would be cutesy stories in the LifeStyles section about the various artisanal boats that the Times reporters’ neighbors were using to get to and from their brownstones.
JMG
By 2019, the markets and the rest of the world will treat US government statistics the same way they treat Chinese government statistics. They’ll be ignored, ridiculed, or both.
Major Major Major Major
@JMG: Especially if the “Obama was making up employment numbers!!” folks end up in charge. The BLS will get trashed & replaced with a propaganda organ.
JPL
Betsy Devos for education. Vouchers not only for health care, but for schools
http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2016/11/22/what-a-betsy-devos-appointment-would-tell-us-about-donald-trumps-education-plans/
sherparick
@schrodinger’s cat: There Times political writers and editors have been fans of Republicans skills at ratfucking and suckering the boobs with culture war issues since Reagan and they were on a 25 year snipe hunt after the Clintons (e-mails, e-mails, Clinton Foundation). No news source was more important in building up Hillary’s unfavorables and giving credibility to Republican lies that created the portrait of “Crooked Hillary.” So we now live with the result.
D58826
WAPO reporting that Betsy DeVos has been selected for Sec. of ED. She wants to privatize public schools
hey history buffs – question. We have Sec of Defense, state, eduction (almost misspelled that as ‘seduction’ but with Trump it may come to pass), etc but an attorney general at DOJ. How did that name come about? I know we have a surgeon general (which would seem like a better fit for Carson) but I think he also holds a military rank so it makes some sense
Это курам на смех
I work for the research wing of the U.S. Forest Service. Studying the Chinese hoax has become a major part of our work. We know that climate change will lead to very significant changes in our environment. Rising temperatures will bring about different precipitation regimes and major challenges to our supply of fresh water. Our models tell us that the Rocky Mountain states will dry up, with much-reduced snowpack and runoff. They also indicate that the Pacific Northwest and northern Sierra Nevada will get wetter, but with less precipitation in the the form of snow, which means much lower streamflows through the summer months. We will also see a lot more severe forest fires. There will be major impacts to agriculture, fisheries, urban water supplies, and other resources the nation depends on. We study climate change to give policymakers an opportunity to consider what is coming and to take steps to mitigate these effects.
Is our budget also on the chopping block? Probably. WASF.
Captain C
@Chris:
At some point, though, even Uday, Qusay, and Lolita will have to admit that their inherited Miami properties are underwater. Or not.
Major Major Major Major
Ten Ways To Tell if Your President is a Dictator
Captain C
@Epicurus: Given his age and apparent lack of physical fitness, he may not be around to see that.
Major Major Major Major
@Captain C:
Lucrezia, please.
D58826
@Это курам на смех: Now who are you gonna believe der Fuhrur or all those charred trees.
Saw a tweet the other day that der Fuhrer went after Smokey the bear.
I can see one growth industry – tv comics (until the 1st amendment is fixed to prevent der Fugrer’s fee fees from being hurt
D58826
@JPL: De Vos family make frequent appearances in Jane Mayer’s ‘Dark Money’. All part of the Kochoctopus.
I’m sure the interests of the WWC are near and dear to their hearts. After all once all of thew illegal gardeners, farm laborers, and maids are deported the WWC will be more than happy to fill those jobs.
CaseyL
And Chuck Schumer has already said he can work with these people?
I called Patty Murray’s office earlier this week. The person who answered said they knew nothing of any plans she had to oppose Trump. I called Maria Cantwell’s office. The person who answered said he knew nothing about anything. I have told them that the Dems need to have a strategy ready to roll on Inauguration Day, when the new session starts. The best they were able to come up with is “We share your concerns.”
I really can’t come up with anything more than: Down the shitter we go.
hovercraft
@JPL:
@D58826:
via GOS
The hits just keep coming, there are so many of them, and they are all so terrible.
Bobby D
Bad week/month, getting worse. I feel like moaning, and ya’ll are a caring bunch…
I’ve related that I work for DoD in the environmental protection field. Well, I work at a military base that also has a NASA mission, and I know quite a few NASA earth science folks. My friends are likely to lose their jobs, and be forced to take either downgrades, move into a job they do not want or have experience in, or leave the civil service. It’s not like there is any other economy here, a military base, a prison, some wine country tourism, and agriculture.
Found out I’m being transferred from the best weather in the US (calif coast), to some of the worst (calif desert). And the money I’d saved for a downpayment anticipating this transfer? Yeah, that downpayment is getting ripped away by my own father, who has successfully sued to force me to buy out his share of our family property (been in the family for many generations). Thanks Dad, extorting me for $50k, deadbeat a-hole.
So in the same month, I’ve seen my entire life’s work in environmental protection about to be reversed as soon as Trump takes his throne. My ability to buy a home taken away, and my job relocated to a shithole inferno, and now have a tenant renting my actual home house 400 miles away but who hasn’t paid me rent in two months and won’t reply to text, voicemail, or email.
Whaaa, whaaaa, whaa. Yes, I am a WATB. I am taking this way harder than I expected. I’m a pretty stoic, grit your teeth and get through it type, but I’ve been absolutely reeling since election night and every time I start to normalize a little, new shitburgers like the NASA funding are served up. Losing. My. Mind.
JMG
The Secretary of Education can do harm, but he/she cannot privatize public schools. Those are under state/local control. This is a patronage hire, not unknown for Cabinet secretaries of all administrations.
When if comes to climate change, you’d think a man who owns extensive beachfront properties would be acutely interested in the subject. Perhaps if Mar-a-Lago goes under six inches of water, he’ll change his tune.
Major Major Major Major
@Bobby D: Holy shit, that’s awful. Hang in there, when I get completely overwhelmed like that I go spar with people. Maybe your preferred therapy involves less punching, but wow, take care of yourself.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
Lolita sounds too benign, she is part of the evil empire, in fact her and her loathsome husband are architects of this monstrosity, so yes Lucrezia, please.
D58826
from WAPO
Just imagine him in the WH in 1941. We would all be speaking German or maybe Russian. Or in Oct. 1962. We would not be speaking anything.
It might work on the Apprentice but not in the world that everyone else lives in.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/welcome-to-washington%E2%80%99s-new-normal-one-trump-drama-after-another/ar-AAkDkIy?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp
Major Major Major Major
@D58826: If only we had paid more attention to [my pet issue], this never would have happened!
D58826
@Major Major Major Major: We didn’t push Baud’s candidacy hard enough but I guess all of those illegal voters on Pitcairn Island probably doomed him any way.
tobie
@rikyrah: And we still think that when Trump talked about the election being rigged he wasn’t telling the truth? A month ago was before the election. That’s some confidence to engage in talks with Russia BEFORE the election.
liberal
@D58826:
The full name was the Office of Technology Assessment. Did good work.
Major Major Major Major
@D58826: Baud! never stood a chance after the DNC cleared the way for Bernie.
hovercraft
@Bobby D:
I’m so sorry to hear about your situation. When it rains, it really pours. Take a deep breath, at least ( I hope) you have your health and other family. Just take care of yourself for now, do what you have to do to get through this right now, and then start a new plan, it sucks, but that’s life. Right now we are all feeling down, so all of our problems seem even worse than they are. Step back and know that you are not alone, we all feel like shit, and many of us are overwhelmed right now. But it’s got to get better, we can’t spend the next four years feeling like this. So see you’re not a WATB, you are just one of us, angry, bitter and afraid. Together we’ll get through it. ;-)
Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog
@Bobby D: sympathy, and +1 for Major^4’s suggestion – it clears the mind, at least.
With kind regards,
Dog, etc.
liberal
@The Moar You Know: Beyond all that, there’s really not much point.
Antarctica is much, much more habitable than Mars, say.
I read as much science fiction as the next guy (can’t deal with reading work stuff or politics stuff when I relax before bed, so it’s almost invariably science fiction), but manned space exploration has no useful end, not until the economics of getting out of gravity wells changes by at least one order of magnitude, maybe two.
Yeah, about radiation…last I heard, you’d be cooked like a chicken in a microwave if you travelled to mars. You could always put tons of shielding on the ship, but then that’s more mass to push.
liberal
@Major Major Major Major:
Not sure I believe that.
The business class really runs this country, and they do like accurate stats on the economy.
Chris
@Bobby D:
If being afraid of having a fascist elected to run your country makes you a WATB, especially when it affects your job, I think I need to own that label proudly.
D58826
one more thing to worry about :-)
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/hijacked-headphones-could-be-used-to-listen-in-on-your-life/ar-AAkFTnW?li=AA4Zoy&ocid=spartandhp
EBT
@D58826: If you have a cellular phone you should already be operating under the idea it is surreptitiously listening at all times.
stinger
@Chris:
Obama needs to sit down with his new buddy and tell him this, in very simple words. Over and over. Until The Donald thinks he came up with it himself. Then maybe his hatred of immigrants will at least cause him to fund climate research and alternative energies.
liberal
@Bobby D: I nearly fell back into depression after the election, and my job is in the private sector (though I did work at NIH for many many years as a contractor…decision to leave a few years ago is looking better every day).
While my wife is a government attorney, and we’re thus somewhat vulnerable, we’re not that vulnerable, and yet it still threw me for a fucking loop.
(Yes, yes, I criticize Hillary and all you other neoliberal sellouts, but I voted for her in my very blue state, and gave two Dem Senate candidates a lot of money in the general.)
Don’t feel bad about feeling bad. Totally reasonable. One thing that’s helped me a little bit (apart from the usual “shit, I can’t afford to get depressed right now!” inspired mental exercises) is to realize that you’re not alone.
Major Major Major Major
@liberal: I said ‘if’.
JPL
After reading about the choice for Education Secretary, I’ve gone from WTF, and joined others here on the WASF side.
Gravenstone
@artem1s: Fuck that. Wall the bastards off. Maybe the Floridians can take crappy homebuilt boats to Cuba (what’s left of it after the sea level rises). I’m sure the remains of the Castro regime would welcome a reverse Mariel boat lift with open arms.
Major Major Major Major
@EBT: This is not entirely accurate. You should be operating on the assumption that your calls are being listened to.
D58826
@The Moar You Know: Always loved the space program. Dream job would be working on one of the Mars rovers but I had a bit of a problem with that 1 + 1 = 2 thing.
I very reluctantly came to the same conclusion that at the moment manned missions are just not going to work. Now maybe we should keep the ISS flying if there is some chance that it will help develop technologies that overcome the deep space dangers. In fact only reason the ISS is habitable at all is that it orbits within the Von Allen radiation belts and the Apollo missions were not in deep space long enough to be a health hazard.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
OMG, Betsy De-Fucking-VOS? She’s married into the Amway family, and her brother was a founder of Blackwater. She’s a huge “school choice” advocate. I guess we all know what that means.
This just lurches from one unbelievable pick to another.
Captain C
@Major Major Major Major:
Fair enough. Besides, given how Lolita was ultimately the victim, maybe that name fits better for Tiffany.
Major Major Major Major
@SiubhanDuinne: I think she’s basically a “generic Republican” choice, actually. This is basically who Kasich probably would have picked.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s awful, but she’s “within the known range of awful”-awful, not Trump-awful.
hovercraft
Something to add to your wish lists everyone.
via TPM
Grifters gonna grift.
D58826
@Major Major Major Major: One of these days as we lower the bar more and more and dig the hole deeper and deeper , the Chinese are going to file a diplomatic protest that we have violated their territorial integrity.
Bobby D
Thanks for the “chin up” wishes, ya’ll. It’s a weird feeling, being so emotionally untethered, very atypical for me. I’m used to being the steadying force, the “rock” and the leader when others are losing it. I know we’ll get through it, somehow. Thank FSM I only have to do this sh*t for another 3-5 years and can then “retire” to non-profit advocacy/policy/political work. I’ll be out of the civil service before I turn 50, with 20+yrs of federal service (also worked state and local govt for some years), but I never thought I’d be closing out my environmental career by fighting toot and nail to retain the gains we’ve made over the last 30yrs.
Hope everyone else is coping well, it definitely helps to get it out here, so thanks for listening.
D58826
@hovercraft: no self respecting tree would stand still long enough to have the ornament put on it.
Major Major Major Major
@D58826: It’s an appropriate metaphor, since we’d first, by drilling through the core, unleash a series of fiery explosions.
ETA: @Bobby D:
Revolving door! Lobbyist! Evil!
Just kidding, but one of my pet peeves is that people don’t realize this is just what folks do, and is not necessarily institutional corruption.
Gravenstone
@mai naem mobile: One type of rat poison is warfarin (commercial name Coumadin, et al.). It is a powerful anticoagulant and will result in death by internal bleeding is too high a dose is ingested.
mike in dc
If Al Gore had warned that the Sweet Meteor of Death was coming, there’d be a thriving meteor denial industry. Trump would cut NASA funding for Near-Earth Object detection. Middle aged conservatives would note that the SMOD will hit after they die, so who cares? Etc.
Raven Onthill
@JPL: Not going to have a lot of education in red states, if parents can pick schools that teach their prejudices. But that’s the point.
Voucher systems are the practice in Sweden, and are an abysmal failure.
Major Major Major Major
@Raven Onthill: As that article notes, they do however work well in Finland.
EBT
@Major Major Major Major: It was shown ages and ages ago it is trivial to make a cell’s mic pick up even when you think the bastard phone is off. If you are doing anything you don’t want someone else to know make yourself a cheap Faraday cage.
D58826
Congress critter Jordan is saying that Congress will continue to monitor the Clintons because of all the laws they have broken. They have a constitutional obligation it seems.
They are private citizens. Presumably we have an FBI to conduct that witch hunt.
They are going to need that pardon.
Major Major Major Major
@EBT: Hardware-wise, yes. Software-wise, not so much, at least not on a smartphone.
ETA: Like how it’s trivial to hack *a* voting machine, but not an election’s worth. If somebody can get you to click the right link or download the wrong app (impossible on an iPhone without testflight) or whatever, then somebody malicious can hack *your* phone, but not so much “any” phone.
tobie
If you feel you’re in need of a collective primal scream, book your tickets for the Million Women’s March on Jan 21 now. (All genders welcome.) I just went to the Amtrak site and the trains on the Northeast corridor on Jan 21 are almost all sold out.
D58826
@Raven Onthill: I think the problem is that in this country vouchers/charter schools are not really about education. They are a way to transfer the maximum amount of taxpayer money to the 1% while providing the minimum amount of service and oversight.
The Moar You Know
@EBT: And laptops. And I know people treat this as tin-foil hat territory, but damn, you really shouldn’t.
mike in dc
@D58826:
When we challenge Republican incumbents in 2018, everyone on the House Investigative Committee should be a target. Even if we only knock off one of them, the message gets sent. If we knock off the chair, it’s newsworthy.
D58826
@Major Major Major Major: IN the article I read today, what you would do is hack into the election office laptop/desktop that loads the software/ballots to the individual voting machine. If the US could get the SUXTET virus into the Iranian nuclear program, hacking the local election office should be a cinch for a state actor.
Raven Onthill
@D58826: they’re also a way to get public funding for teaching religious beliefs in schools. Christian Dominionists have supported them for years.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: That’s because it’s almost literally tin-foil hat territory. There will almost always be a way to get at what you’re doing no matter how careful you are; but these require targeting that is specific to a person, as well as some luck, so it’s not dragnet-applicable.
ETA: @D58826: Stuxnet was specifically engineered for a specific kind of computer in a specific building and relied on an engineer plugging in a flash drive they found in a parking lot.
Poopyman
Oh yeah, and today there’s this:
Aleta
So they think they can go up against the military, which is heavily committed to climate change predictions and related security preparations. I’d like to see them try to order the DoD to stop believing.
The Center for Climate and Security (CCS) https://climateandsecurity.org/tag/u-s-military/ “a policy institute with an Advisory Board of retired senior military officers and national security experts” has articles on coordinated climate research by the DoD, JPL, etc. (I notice Tr’s statement is too cowardly to mention stopping climate research at these places. Because he can’t control the military on this. And, I believe, because they are aiming at defunding academic science but not private contractors.)
Aleta
@Aleta: Anyway, here’s from a speech given by Ret. USAF General Keys. Video at the link.
hovercraft
@D58826:
I strongly disagree, as you say they are private citizens now. There is no crime there, there have been 9 investigations into Benghazi and her e-mails. To pursue her now that she is done running for office will make them look petty and ridiculous, not that’s ever stopped them before. What grounds do they have to pursue her? The FBI has exonerated her, so the most they can do is hold her in contempt of congress. If a new AG wants to re-open the case I have still not heard what they would be charging her with. The media always knew there was nothing there, but they still beat it like a drum because Clinton Rules. I know I’m not the one who would have to pay the legal bills, nut I say fuck em, let them do their worse and stand up to them. The GOP and the media have persecuted this woman for 25 years and she’s still standing, so let them try once more. I say this even though the American people have shaken my belief in their basic decency. But I don’t want her to have to slink off, the beneficiary of a pre-emptive presidential pardon like some criminal. She did nothing wrong.
EBT
@Major Major Major Major: And the average luser is an idiot, to paraphrase Carlin.
Peale
@hovercraft: The advantage is this. While WE may want to get out the message that Medicare is in deep shit, the diminishing amount of time in the press devoted to the Democrats will be spent talking about defending Hillary Clinton. While We may want to identify a new candidate to rally around, and have that candidate speak about our concerns, all the questions will be about whether or not he or she will Pardon the Clintons.
Major Major Major Major
@EBT: Yeah, but nobody (in the US government) is making a dragnet of hacked smartphones.
Chris
@Aleta:
If they really wanted to push it, what could the military do, other than tell Trump as clearly as possible and as slowly as possible in the situation room that this is a real threat and he’d be making a mistake by ignoring it?
Most of the military’s political clout comes from the unquestioning support they get from conservatives and many liberals… on certain issues. But most of their political allies won’t go to bat for them for climate change. And enough of their own soldiers already believe it’s a left wing hoax that between that and simple careerism, they shouldn’t have a lot of trouble replacing generals who make too much of an issue out of it with those that have the right mentality.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: She destroyed the Detroit Public Schools..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/us/for-detroits-children-more-school-choice-but-not-better-schools.html
Who would have thought that when you take money out of public education for charter schools, what is left behind is ruins.
schrodinger's cat
@hovercraft: Pardoning HRC seems like preemptive surrender. She did nothing wrong.
D58826
@Major Major Major Major: true. But I think the KGB is smart enough to figure out how to hack a generic PC in an election office. My point was if you could succeed with something that is orders of magnitude more difficult like Stuxnet then the local election office should be a snap.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@debbie:
You’re assuming Trump thinks at all and isn’t just constantly running on emotion. What ever that reptilian hind brain says is what’s Trump is thinking.
Seriously, I think the problem with Trump it’s way to easy to over think his actions.
I think actual Clinton prosecution is unlikely, would require to much systematic planning for these clowns, more likely Trump will look for the easy way out like with the Ford Plant (non)Closer.
hovercraft
@Peale:
Then We have to have the balls to tell the media to STFU, if they have any questions about a private citizen then go ask them. Every single republican went on TV the last year and a half and refused to talk about the shitgibbon, the f**king speaker of the house and the majority leader of the senate refused to talk about their nominee, so we need to tell them the exact same thing, I’, here to talk about Medicare or whatever. Throw it back in their faces, you spent a year and a half taking about e-mails and hand size now a moron is running the country, I’m here to talk about issues.
@schrodinger’s cat:
My point exactly, no pardon, f**k em.
D58826
@hovercraft:
I should have made it more clear that if there is something to investigate at this point it would be done by the FBI under the control of a US attorney. But unless there is something there that hasn’t been disclosed then an FBI investigation is just as much a witch hunt. Should have stated that more clearly.
D58826
@JPL: Feature not a bug
Brachiator
@JPL:
No background in education or public policy. Children attend private Christian schools. Making America great again??
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: We were told, word for word, the same thing about our internet traffic back in the 00s. We know now that was not true. The telcoms were hoovering up every last bit of data coming across their networks and handing it to various interested agencies. The scope of AT&T’s project, going back to 1987, makes the NSA’s efforts look half-hearted…and they weren’t selling anything to the feds, but to local cops.
I do computer security for a living. Everyone needs to stop assuming that you’re secure unless targeted, or secure because there’s just too much data to plow through. Those are incorrect assumptions. You live in a 24/7 surveillance state. My professional advice would be to act accordingly.
ETA: My personal advice is somewhat more extreme.
D58826
saw this on Huffington as part of a longer article
Words fail.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jared-kushner-white-house_us_5835bc24e4b09b6055ffc064
D58826
@The Moar You Know: (sigh) back to quill pens, ink pots and two cans tied together with a string
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: Of course corporations are hoovering up your information. People here are talking about the government, hacking your devices, at an individual level.
ETA: @D58826: If you want perfect security get pen, paper, and a one-time pad. Everything else is compromisable.
That doesn’t mean the government is hacking your webcam.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Is there any serious discussion anywhere that anyone wants to charge her with anything? So far, I am not seeing that there is anything here worth worrying about.
hovercraft
Look what our “economically anxious” fellow Americans have wrought.
via GOS
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know:
Yeah, but that didn’t pass a basic smell test. Setting up what amounts to a massive botnet of smartphones–sophisticated devices with software that’s either open-source and publicly audited (Android) or very well-encrypted and already at loggerheads with the FBI (iOS)–is a very different question.
ETA: I do data mining, and I run with paranoid hackers, I know what’s possible and what’s been done in specific cases and with limited scope. I don’t think these are realistic scenarios right now.
Citizen_X
@stinger:
And that epiphany will last, what? Five minutes? The man is completely inconstant, and he thinks that’s one of his strengths. He would be turned again by his cloud of idealogue/lobbyist hangers-on as soon as the Times publishes the news of his new reasonableness.
hovercraft
Steve Bannon Thinks He’s Smarter than Liberals
by Nancy LeTourneau
debbie
@hovercraft:
I’ve never met a conservative who didn’t think s/he was the brightest bulb in the room.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: This is definitely part of e.g. Milo’s MO. Say something inflammatory about how the left is a bunch of Jihad-enabling PC bullies and also Muslims are murderers, then use the reaction to the latter to prove the former.
D58826
@Major Major Major Major:
Hmm just have to figure out how to permanently mount the flying fickle finger of fate between me and the camera
Raven Onthill
@Major Major Major Major: No, actually, the article says the opposite:
They do cite New Orleans as a possible success, but even that result has been questioned. A New York Times piece says not.
I think the best we can say is that voucher systems may work in rare cases. Why on earth would we want to make them federal educational policy?
Mothra
I believe that it will be more difficult for Trump to unwind the climate agreement than Trump thinks.
And that most Senators are not insane.
But they do need constant pressure from us to make the right choices.
hovercraft
@debbie: @Major Major Major Major:
We do need to do a better job of not taking every piece of bait, even though we are fully capable of walking and chewing gum, the media are not. They can only focus on one thing at a time, the more petty and trivial the better. I used to think that if it involved sex it would be a BFD, but I’ve recently discovered that it’s only democratic sex and sexual organs that are scandalous, GOP pecadillos are personal matters barely worthy of discussion.
divf
@hovercraft: Bannon is Rove redux, with an extra helping of white supremacy. The one thing that we can count on is that he will overreach – these right-wing clowns always do, because they are impervious to any evidence that their strategy might be taking them off the rails. The only question is, how many people will die, or have their lives ruined, in the process.
tobie
@hovercraft: My understanding was that the push to focus on Medicare privatization, which evidently is the first thing on the agenda, was precisely to find that wedge issue that would disturb some of Trump’s voters. I find it hard not to get provoked these days…but knowing that’s part of Bannon’s evil plan will help me keep it in check.
Major Major Major Major
@Raven Onthill: OK, fair enough, it’s free of vouchers because it’s free of charters, but it still has a ‘voucher’-like free choice system rather than a mandatory geography-based thing. Again, just sayin’. What works or doesn’t work in other countries is often a lot less relevant than it sounds.
@hovercraft: Yeah, on the one hand fuck him, but on the other hand he’s putting our reactions under the spotlight.
BillinGlendaleCA
@divf:
A proud white Turdblossom.
Peale
@hovercraft: Yep. Not certain what to do about it, though. It’s all good and well for the Democrats promoting the “end of identify politics” to run off to rural areas to recapture the “white working class”, that MAY be the path forward, but they are going to be spending a lot of time telling existing Democrats to “shut the fuck up” when the voters who are in the party because of that inclusion get riled up. We are going to get played and played again around some of our well established fracture lines and just when we think we’ve got the right message, we’ll get played again.
Chris
@debbie:
Nor have I. Nor have I ever met one who actually was (and I, personally, have rarely considered myself the brightest bulb in any room I wasn’t alone in). The phrase “a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like” might’ve been coined for Newt Gingrich, but it describes a stupendous number of the conservatives I’ve met IRL, too.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: I’ve met some pretty smart libertarians, to be honest. ETA: But even when they were the smartest person in the room, they still acted like it, which is major-league doucheyness.
@Peale: There’s a thing on the rec list at GOS right now where an Ohio county Dem chairman (or something) says, basically, that voters thought the democratic party cared more about what bathroom people used than getting folks jobs. So the Republicans took something that nobody but god-bothering Republicans was actually worried about, turned it into an issue, and then the Democrats got the blame for putting it front and center even though they weren’t doing that. I don’t even know what to do any more. Post-truth indeed.
BellyCat
@Chris: Yup. Self-reinforcing phenomena. Long game of horrors.
divf
@Peale:
I don’t think that the Dems or the country have that choice. There is too much toothpaste that is impossible to get back into the tube: 11M undocumented immigrants that play pivotal roles in some sectors of the economy; gay marriage and gays in the military; the ubiquity of video technology that documents in graphic fashion blacks being shot down by police. Short of rounding up a substantial fraction of the population and sending us to camps (which is not going to happen), I don’t see these things being walked back.
No, I think that what we are going to get is GOP looting of the public purse on steroids. The there are multiple ways that crashes and burns, on varying degrees of short time scales: a 2008-style (or 1929-style) economic collapse, the “WWC” realizing that they are being taken for chumps, or various unintended consequences of taking an enterprise as big and complicated as the federal government and making very large changes in it.
This last risk, BTW, is the reason that Obama and Hillary stood out as public servants: they both clearly understood that you can’t turn large chunks of the US economy on a dime.
Peale
@Major Major Major Major: Yep. Not certain what can be done about that. Honestly. Its really easy to say “throw the transsexuals out”, just like it was easy to say “throw the gays out and focus on the real issues” in the past. Whenever we lose, there are these groups that get say “we would have won, except that we have xxx and if we just get rid of xxx we would have won. Lets get back to fundamentals.” But its not like we have control over what outrage is going to be committed. We think that if we just focus on saving medicare and social security from an “honest to goodness its real this time folks” threat, that the voters will come out. Then some Congressman will hold a hearing about mandating that insurance companies don’t cover abortions and forbid insurance companies from all forms of birth control while demanding that they cover conversion therapy and that becomes the issue. What are we supposed to tell people when they react to that? Don’t boo. Don’t protest that?
Major Major Major Major
@divf:
If Trump gets a war economy, his fascist-style stimulus, and his pick at the Fed, they could very well loot while the economy went gangbusters and leave the whole thing a pile of smoking rubble only when they’re ready to be finished.
D58826
Well that got me in the holiday spirt – der Fuhrer just sent out a tweet ‘happy thanksgiving to all – even the haters and losers’.
In the meantime his new sec of ed. brags about using soft money to buy politicians. https://twitter.com/kelsosmegaphone/status/801526975038914560
but Hillary’s e-mails……..
Major Major Major Major
@D58826:
…if he did, it’s not on his timeline.
divf
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t see it. (1) His so-called stimulus will be tax incentives, not new spending, so no real stimulative effect – the Tea Party will see to that. (2) If that were the case, the Iraq war would not have led to the 2008 Great Recession. If anything, the effects will happen more rapidly, since we are more than another decade into the secular impact of massive income distribution skew.
Major Major Major Major
eta: nm
Original Lee
@aimai: I worry about a number of young people I know who are starting college in STEM-oriented careers. Will they be lost to science after they graduate?
Sab
@frosty: I have always subscribed to whatever Fallows is working for.
notoriousJRT
All hail the King of the Know-Nothings.
News like this is why I cannot respect anyone who voted for Trump. I just want nothing to do with such people.
Blue Galangal
@debbie:
And are really extremely resentful of people with education. I just discovered my mother thinks I look down on her because I have a master’s degree and a doctorate, and I voted for HRC. I know… that says more about her than about me. But it’s stunning.
fuckwit
@Raven Onthill: It’s the grift. Just think of the profit opportunity!
Bring on the Brawndo!