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Trump Admits 'Some Connectivity' Between Climate Change and Human Activity (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: President-elect Donald Trump conceded Tuesday there is "some connectivity" between human activity and climate change and wavered on whether he would pull the United States out of international accords aimed at combating the phenomenon, which scientists overwhelmingly agree is caused by human activity. The statements could mark a softening in Trump's position on U.S. involvement in efforts to fight climate change, although he did not commit to specific action in any direction. During the campaign, he vowed to "cancel" the U.S.'s participation in the Paris climate agreement, stop all U.S. payments to UN programs aimed at fighting climate change and continued to cast serious doubt on the role man-made carbon dioxide emissions played in the planet's warming and associated impacts. "I think there is some connectivity. Some, something. It depends on how much," Trump said Tuesday in a meeting with New York Times reporters, columnists and editors. He has previously called climate change a "hoax" invented by the Chinese. Asked if he would withdraw the U.S. from international climate change agreements, Trump said he is "looking at it very closely," according to Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Mike Grynbaum, who were live-tweeting the meeting. He added that he has "an open mind to it," despite explicitly promising to withdraw from at least one climate accord on the campaign trail. The President-elect on the campaign trail repeatedly vowed to slash environmental protection regulations burdening U.S. businesses and said that beyond the consequences to the planet, he is particularly mindful of the economic impact of combating climate change. He said he is considering "how much it will cost our companies" and the effect on American competitiveness in the global market, according to a tweet from Grynbaum.
He's getting very good at emulating a pancake.
Running for President and being President are two entirely different things.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Trump is the best thing to happen to the socialist agenda. He is going to run up a massive deficit. How soon before the conservatives try to disparage him? It will be comedic gold. This is the guy they said is unafraid to speak the truth and can't be bought. Cause no matter what you believe if you say exactly what u think you're good .. right? I mean, nobody despicable in history ever said what they really think?
... reality is doing him in, as it does all political outsiders.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
There's a fact about Trump that's growing ever more apparent: his mouth is nearly useless. Only his actions matter (and they've yet to unfold).
Forrest Trump is like a box of chocolates: you don't know what you are getting until you bite into one ... or one bites into you.
Table-ized A.I.
Keep up the good work.
If Trump doesn't admit its real then someone else has to pay for it, which is a smart business move. And its going to be the poor people who suffer the most, not the rich, so why should he care? Trump is not an idiot, hes just good at playing one when it makes business sense.
How do you walk back something you've given different answers for? He waffled heavily on the campaign trail also. He is consistently inconsistent. We shouldn't be surprised.
Table-ized A.I.
Damn! And me here without my heart medicine handy....
Think of all the stereotypes you can think about with a politician.
Lying, manipulative, weasil-tactics, duplicitous, and so on.
Trump is pretty much all those things to a level we're unfamiliar with in the modern era. People tend to vastly overestimate how badly corrupted our system has become in the recent modern era, when seeing isolated incidents of outrageous things, such as lies before congress, violence, or right being ignored.
The thing is, if you've ever read any newspapers from the 1800s, or from earlier eras from most places, politics have always been truly horrible, to a much greater degree than we're used to. History is replete with millions of deaths for the sake of the worst kinds of political stupidity, Even the mythical ideals, such as Camelot, are filled with absurdly horrible acts as commonplace, when you read the versions not cleaned up for modern standards.
The return to commonplace racism, outright lying and fiercely punishing those who call you out on lies, and playing of all sides with open disdain is what we seem to be seeing here. A return to the 'good old days', well before the 1950s.
So yeah, if Trump find he can use the specter of global warming to push some part of his agenda, a nugget to throw to get someone in line, he'll play that card.
He just said whatever he thought would win him the election.
What he said has pretty much no attachment to what he will do.
He's a fast learner at becoming a typical lying establishment politician, after having been briefed on the actual facts of the nation and the world.
Of course the role dictates what you have to do in it, anyway. It's all part of the machine.
Enjoy the ride, suckers.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I'm waiting for the Trump to state, "Climate Change is really huge, and you're going to love it."
I don't know what to think nor even if it's worth thinking about any more. Governance by RNG. Ignoring for a moment all those shadowy Republican puppet-masters that are a hell of a lot cleverer and more tenacious than Trump... this could actually be an improvement of sorts?
I mean, this is not actually flip-flopping any more. The term is simply not strong enough. What we have here is a flesh and blood expert system running some crude, buggy-as-shit genetic optimizing algorithm... and it's shortly going to be POTUS.
Huh.
Trump has nasal drips of factoids. Drip-drip-drip.
On the one hand, it looks like Trump lied to a bunch of scared and vulnerable people to get elected (under the disguise of "not being another politician" and "not just being all talk"). . . On the other hand, a lot of his promises ranged from authoritarian to completely incoherent (Bring back jobs by attacking free trade when automation is the real job killer at this point? Bring back coal by attacking green technologies when natural gas is the true coal killer?).
Either way, the guy is a real douche in my book. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
"Human Activity" hey? The Chinese are human, right? And creating a hoax is an activity.
Some just wanted job protection, and others wanted to stick it to the establishment. Climate change skepticism was hardly on anyone's minds on the right. They're probably still euphoric from seeing the left break down in tears on election night, and will forgive broken promises for now.
You know what's funny? Seems like if you want to get things done, you need a Democrat to start wars, and a Republican to protect the environment. That way, the left largely stays silent as countries get attacked, and the right largely stays silent as regulations are imposed.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Right from the very beginning, Trump struck me as an individual who cared for nothing but himself and how much money he had, having no regard for the actual *people* of the United States, and looking only at their economic worth. Some things are, in fact, more important than money, and I am discouraged that Mr. Trump does not seem able to realize that. While this waffling on his previous stance on climate change is probably going to seem like welcome news for environmentalists, his motivation is still completely wrong, and I cannot bring myself to hold out a lot of optimism that he will actually change his plans or actions.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Is Trump going to tell Pence that there is "some connectivity"?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
... who voted him in because globalism is un-American.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
"Many people are saying climate change is a serious issue, many people. Nobody is better at fighting climate change than me. We're going to have the best carbon controls in the world. Obama was a total failure at fighting climate change. Total failure. The rest of the world is laughing at us...."
Maybe someone presented climate change to him as a jihadist terror plot. I can't wait to hear him repeat the phrase "radical Islamic climate change" ;)
Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
Scott Adams predicted this in May.
Predicted that Trumps real position on climate change was actually "I don't know because I haven't looked into it," and that once he did, if he decided it was a problem, he'd be the only person who could convince the Republican base that it was a problem and that something needed to be done. That no Democrat ever could, but Trump could carry the Republicans right along because they see him as one of them, and very credible.
Mr. Adams is a very observant wingnut.
minus the ACA that was keeping my type-1 diabetic friend alive. Thanks America.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...after that well-known radical leftist Margaret Thatcher addressed the issue!
Can you explain how Obama is not a total failure at fighting climate change or cite links as to how he has had a meaningful impact on reducing global warming?
The fact that progressive policies have been implemented on working towards goals, open, rational and above all educated dialouge. Most importantly not idiotic pro-business, anti-middle class policies that counteract any attempt to deal with the main issues that would need to be in place for this: the consumer public and the actual economy, not the millionaire+ economy.
Did anyone expect any different?
Twinstiq, game news
I'm expecting a lot more "reality checks" as he approaches the White House - like Obama's promise to shut down Gitmo, it sounds simple enough, until you learn all the facts.
*singing* We're going to make it after allllllll
"Why is his admission carrying more weight, than his denial would have?
Because during the campaign he said it was all a scam. Now he's contradicting himself. At the time, his denial carried a lot of weight.
I can explain using even shorter words, if that would help.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Just because we might get out of the fire and back into the frying pan, that doesn't make it a good place to be.
Also, let's be clear what Trump actually said here. "Some connectivity." It's not like he's suddenly become an environmentalist.
I can just hear him tomorrow if he got too much push-back from conservatives: "Uh... yeah... I said 'some connectivity.' Not a lot. Like a phone -- when you got 'some connectivity' you might have one bar if you're out in the woods. Well, not on my phone, because my phone's awesome and I'm rich. But some people get one bar. That's 'some connectivity,' which is all there is with the climate change. Obama and ISIS, on the other hand -- there's FIVE bars of connectivity there."
I think Buchanan was worse.
http://blog.constitutioncenter...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
"Total Failure" my fucking ass. Hmmmmm..... the bigoted, ignorant, insane fascist is going to say....
Relax dude it was a joke.
Instead of scratching our heads and trying to interpret/understand everything he says as if he were sane, can we please instead have a sane person?
Just wait for him to speak to a gay audience. He'll say he likes some butt stuff. Not too deep.
One of the things that kind of puzzles me about the idea that being "pro business" and "pro not-fucking-up-the environment" being mutually exclusive is that potentially fixing climate change could be great for industry, if it got past its short sighted myopia.
Switching over to a low/no CO2 economy doesnt just mean shutting down coal plants. It means shutting down coal plants and building solar/wind/nuclear plants. Surely this counts as "economic activity". Those wind farms don't build themselves and those solar panels wont service themselves.
European countries that have put effort into transitioning over have generated a tonne of jobs, money and economic activity in the process , so it seems strange that people seem to think the US doing so would mean the opposite of that.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Ironic that somebody like you (clearly a collectivist) says that Harding is one of the worst, when in fact Harding was probably the last decent POTUS America had because he didn't interfere with the 1921 depression by doing anything stupid like pumping money into the failed businesses, so that depression went away in about a year leading to what is currently known as the 'roaring twenties'.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Two words:
Republican Congress.
'Nuf said.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I agree that a certain amount of oscillation is normal, but I think there are cases when the oscillations go so far as to destroy the pendulum. I'm prefer to use an example from the financial markets, however. Easier to follow in some ways.
The lack of any transaction charges in the stock market has created a kind of friction-free money machine. Flash Boys is a good introduction. The trading has no relationship to anything except the perception that the price of the shares will increase before they are sold, even if the time interval of holding the shares is measured in seconds or microseconds. Perhaps the main point of the book is how some cunning bastards rigged the game by jumping between the bids, so they could buy faster than the higher bidder could, and then turn around and sell the same shares to the higher bidder while pocketing most of the difference. The risk is that you can't sell at a higher price, but they already had the higher price in the bag because they could move faster. Worth billions, but... This sort of thing can only be done by computers, and so the engine of the stock market spins faster and faster, with the oscillations always threatening to go out of control. Nearly happened in 2007. The rational response would have been to prevent it from happening again, but obviously they didn't. Maybe the engine is accelerating out of control again on the rumors? ("Buy on rumor, sell on the news.") At some point a sufficiently low-friction engine under continual acceleration has to destroy itself.
Don't get me wrong. I'm NOT arguing against change. I just prefer evolutionary change rather than revolution. There is no guarantee on the outcome in either case, though the long-term average is for things to get better. The problem is that we always live on the short term, and lots of people die in any revolution worthy of the label. At least in the case of evolution you can usually wait for the losers to die off peacefully. China in Ten Words is an interesting discussion of the revolutionary mentality in China...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
So today the airwaves are flooded with stories about Trump "backtracking" on promisss from reporters quoting "hearsay" from a paper that loathes Donald Trump and actively supported his opposition.
So this story must automatically be true?
Because the sources are reputable?
Well, get off your armchair and go see. Do your own research. Maybe actually THINK FOR YOURSELF, for once. Given that the sources are literally Donald Trump himself, it really shouldn't be too hard to google, "donald trump climate change", read about an interview with the New York times, and watch him say whatever words he does. After that, you can draw your on conclusion of what that means and why, really really preferably with a logical explanation.
Of course, this actually requires you to venture outside a single newspaper, it will require a few minutes of your time, and it will require you to actually think. Are you up for that?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Quote: "he is particularly mindful of the economic impact of combating climate change."
Enlightenment: Should I buy a gadget built in US that is more expensive, in the production is more contaminant to the planet and has no warranty in my country; or a cheaper or equally priced, planet-caring with 2-year warranty one?
Sincerely, if Trump worries about the economic impact of selling more expensive, unsafe and contaminant products he ain't showing it at all...
Ah, so this is about him — rather than about Global Warming?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Indeed, and the loss of the moral high ground to the Chinese and the prospect of world wide vitriolic hatred for America might have had something to do with his conversion. He may be a lout and a bully but there is no sign that he is actually a moron, in fact quite the opposite his feral cunning in getting elected and dumping various fellow travelers is blatantly on show. The alt-right have just been told where to get off in no uncertain terms, he doesn't need them anymore. He means to be President for Donny Trump and nothing is going to get in the way of his personal success.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
First, there are plenty of other ways of making cement other than with fly ash (e.g. volcanic ash). Secondly the reason it's called 'fly ash' is because it flies, i.e. escapes with the flue gases, and it's the emission regulations and capture systems which collect the fly ash and make it possible to use in the first place. And third, a lot of fly ash is currently being stored rather than used, as the supply is reduced it will become economical to use those sources.
Gitmo is still open because of the legal clusterfuck that was the Bush administration, combined with a 100% obstructionist congress. Closing Gitmo was still a good idea, Obama just couldn't make it happen (without freeing some truly bad guys, I suppose).
Trump, on the other hand, is either an idiot who is finding out he was wrong, or a conman who no longer needs to keep up the con. Correct answer is conman. It's not like he's spent the last couple of weeks studying climate science.
Play Command HQ online
About #2, I think Rush Limbaugh suggested something along that line. I considered it too, but to me #2 seems unlikely unless he is really overdoing/overacting the part. I don't think Obama can pardon Hillary because you have to have charges in order to pardon someone .. though I suppose they could arrange for charges to be brought and then he can pardon her. I don't think Obama would do that, because then Trump will get angry and once in power he can take actions against Obama and even Hillary on other charges such as Clinton Foundation etc.
Fly ash is a cheap supplement and *partial* substitute for Portland Cement. It's only cheap because it's a waste material. Portland cement is itself made from limestone, completely independantly of coal power.
Concrete can and regularly is made without any fly ash.
oooo.. brave anonymous coward.. so scared.
Right, like the fact that congress are pussies.. that they wouldn't pay for doing the transfer of prisoners to the super max prisons.. even the democrats. It was like they were all super villains not a bunch of terrorists that have been waterboarded all over the place and probably can't even think straight anymore.
Most people are comparing his statement with his insistence that global warming is a hoax.
Play Command HQ online
Here's an interesting idea... Maybe, just maybe, President-elect Trump is not the raving, selfish, hate-filled, idiot the media and his opponents have painted him as. Maybe he's actually a sane and intelligent individual with good intentions, who might not be an expert in all areas of everything (nobody is), but who does have lots of experience picking and listening to experts in their respective fields.
Maybe he isn't "flip-flopping", but just realizing that a man as persuasive as him might be able to turn some of the far-right around on issues like climate change and LGBT rights. In order to persuade someone to agree with you, you have to first convince them that you actually kind of agree with them. Perhaps Trump isn't as stupid as people think, and he actually knows this.
Perhaps he isn't just saying "what's in it for me?", and he actually feels some degree of patriotism (shocking, I know, that the president of the United States might actually like this country).
Maybe I'm being naive, but I honestly don't feel like Donald Trump is a dirty, lying, crook who's manipulating the American people for himself. I just don't get that impression of him, and I've been signaled out before for my keen ability to spot a lie. If you disagree, that's fine, but that doesn't make you smarter than anyone else. It doesn't make you better than anyone else. It doesn't mean you're 'above all the sheeple'. It just means you have a different opinion.
One thing that human beings will never get over is their need to be right. If they believe Trump is a bad guy, no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever convince them. They have to feel superior, every single good thing Trump does must be part of some evil master plan of his. So go ahead and downvote me, because that's easier than admitting you could possibly have misjudged the man based on a flood of lies and misinformation spread by people who thought he was "literally Hitler".
Trump used the word 'connectivity'! Ok, it's maybe a little out of place but where did he get those long words?
The problem with closing Gitmo was what to do with the inmates. If you bring them onshore you have to give them trials. Some (perhaps many) will not make bail, many would be convicted - that means they have to be housed as prisoners afterward, the others you have to release.
That creates a double problem. No congressman wanted to have a bunch of convicted ex-gitmo terrorists in the prisons in his state. Nobody wanted his prisons to be housing the awaiting-trial ones, and nobody wanted the released ones living in their state.
Since the whole damn congress went NIMBY about it - Obama had nowhere to put the people in Gitmo - which made closing it basically impossible.
Now if congress wasn't completely obstructionist this may have been possible to work around. For example one may have sent a tribunal of judges to the Island to hold public trials there - with JAG lawyers prosecuting using whatever evidence they were holding them on. The judges would have a grand-jury style trial and then you only release the ones who are found innocent and the rest are already in jail. It would mean exploiting the "not America" loophole of Bush one last time to get around the bail laws but at least you could have gotten the innocent ones out and been able to say nobody is held without trial. That wouldn't be a 'closure' of Gitmo but it would have been a huge improvement and probably an acceptable compromise - unfortunately, not one Obama could take without congressional approval.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>It was like they were all super villains not a bunch of terrorists that have been waterboarded all over the place and probably can't even think straight anymore.
Considering all these people are held without trial - NONE of them are terrorists. In the free world people are innocent until proven guilty and not a single Gitmo inmate has been proven guilty of anything, including terrorism.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Apparently - in America competence and experience is now actually a disqualifier for holding office. Nobody wants to vote for the "washington insiders"... an odd sentiment you do not find in any other field. Seriously when did you ever hear anybody say "I am having a heart attack -please get me anybody who is NOT a doctor !"
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The fact is that China has lured manufacturing to itself by ignoring its own environmental and laws.
Funny way to put it - are the Chinese wrong for taking the opportunity to haul themselves out of the muck they were left in by, among others, the Western powers? Were they incidiously luring the innocent, European and American companies to get things manufactured where it was cheap? Or is this how Capitalism works, by exploiting the poor, snaking through loop-holes in legislations and generally setting aside all considerations of what is right or wrong, unless it is profitable? People in the West have been infatuated with the ideas of unregulated capitalism for as long as it looked like they were winning; now, perhaps, it doesn't seem so attractive any more.
This. You could see the same with Obama: remarkable continuity in many respects in comparison with the previous administration. There can be many reasons for this, and his ideas not being as progressive as some think is only a small part. You learn to take in account factors you disregarded before: for instance you can't cross the pentagon and you have to support the Saudis . And even where you think you could make changes, it turns out you don't have the power. There's a remarkable long interview Obama had with Jeffrey Goldberg where it it transpires if often didn't agree with his own policies ( http://www.theatlantic.com/mag... ). And of course Obama does appear to take on the role a bit of a manager who doesn't interfere unless people do something very stupid.
So in many respects it's possible Trump won't make much difference. But I think it's hard to predict. If he does make a lot of difference it will be because there are big players supporting him. For instance I think Trump can succeed in bringing us closer to Russia because "after all, Russia is peanuts and the real enemy is China". As long as we have an official enemy, the big players can go along.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Talk about flip-flopping...
Well, that and China is getting into renewables in a big way and have been for several years. In this sense, it doesn't matter whether climate change is real (man-made or not), what matters is there's a growing market for renewables.
However, before we get any sort of hope, Trump has flip-flopped on the issue. He has the attention span of gnat. A few discussions with the carbon energy industry and he'll change his alleged mind again.
Yes, but then the Democrats have bottled up nuclear which last we checked, was carbon neutral.
He as the attention span of gnat. That will get the U.S. in trouble when he starts changing policy every year. Sooner or later, no one will trust any of his policies because they cannot be sure how long they'll last.
"I gonna build a ceiling, a big huge marvelous ceiling that will stop the CO2 from reaching the atmosphere! and it will be made out of glass so you still can see the sky."
very few were waterboarded. Stop acting like they are waterboarded every week, and that stopped about 2004 if memory serves correct.
Personally, I say give them trials and if they get off, ship them home. A few more nutjobs out there isn't going to make that big of a difference. The U.S. just has to be careful to kill them dead next time.
The people who wrote the Constitution thought of government service as a limited duration job, the people would go back to private life. Times have changed and they could not foresee how necessary government is to business. Anti-trust never occurred to them. Big Pharma shipping useless pills never occurred to them. Airline safety never occurred to them. Financial regulation was never an issue (think Wells Fargo). The idea that somehow government could be staffed by people off the street is ludicrous to all but the politicians who know what would happen if that were the case again but insist on campaigning as though some the Constitution framers' golden era (before dentistry) could magically reappear, complete with pink unicorns.
Stalin didn't even have show trials. There were summary judgements followed by a bullet to the head, or being shipped to a work camp and worked to death building Mother Russia.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
He as the attention span of gnat. That will get the U.S. in trouble when he starts changing policy every year. Sooner or later, no one will trust any of his policies because they cannot be sure how long they'll last.
It's true. Trump is No True Republican. He's willing to change his mind. A True Republican takes a position and runs it right off the cliff. And while the nation is falling, doubles down, Stay the Course is the watchword, and damn the consequences, because the Republican position, once set is the only Right position, and all it takes to ensure success is to persevere. That, and perhaps the complete annihilation of those sabotaging Democrats.
For years, one of the greatest terrors of being a Republican was being labeled a "flip-flopper".
Trump doesn't care. Although up to now, all he's had to change was words. It remains to be seen how he deals with hard real issues as policy. Whether he's truly a gnat, or just more willing to learn from experience. I hope for the latter, but it's still too early to tell.
Apparently - in America competence and experience is now actually a disqualifier for holding office. Nobody wants to vote for the "washington insiders"... an odd sentiment you do not find in any other field. Seriously when did you ever hear anybody say "I am having a heart attack -please get me anybody who is NOT a doctor !"
Well, you also have a large group of people who say "Government is useless. They can't do anything right." And we routinely elect - and re-elect - those people to government positions.
A cynic would have to wonder if you can truly expect success from someone who has a vested interest in failure.
He wasn't kidding. He was just trying to get himself elected, so he promised the moon to a bunch of morons who didn't really know better.
There's no chance in hell Trump will go after HRC, just as there's no chance in hell Obama grants her a blanket pardon before leaving office. There's simply no reason to.
That's more like the slashdot I like to read.
Agreed. Besides a handful of Trump/HRC fanatics, politics discussions on ./ have been surprisingly civil so far. Specially when contrasted, well, with the rest of the internet.
It's more than that - even those people didn't show up without knowing what to do. They were all highly educated people who had studied politics, philosophy and history in great detail and based their ideas on having learned. They may not have thought of government service as a long-term job - but they most certainly considered it a job for which you needed to be qualified and trained - and it was one they were highly qualified and trained for. Franklin was a journalist and a scholar of philosophy. Jefferson and Washington were both experts in philosophy and history. These were highly trained and educated people who prepared for the job of governance by gaining suitable knowledge first. Before they tried to invent a new kind of country - they first learned about all the many ideas about how countries could work and chose what they believed to be the best attributes from them.
Historically very few people entered politics as a lifelong career - even today. Most politicians start running for office only after having a previous career - usually (but not inevitable) in a field where they get a chance to learn politics. Many politicians are former journalists or lawyers for just that reason. But there are plenty of other professionals in congress- quite a few doctors for example.
Generally people trained in a profession who want to go into politics would start running small too - they'd run for city council, then mayor, later perhaps governor - and congress or senate only when they've actually learned a thing or two about governance at the small scale. The only real chance is that now they tend to stay there for an extended period, partly because their experience is valuable. Of course there are downsides too - but they aren't inevitable. The US didn't have term limits on the presidency until the mid-20th century after FDR won 4 terms in a row (and would probably have won a 5th if he hadn't died). But you'd be VERY hard pressed to argue that he was dictatorial or abused his power despite holding it for so long - a large chunk of which was amid a war during which martial law powers were available. Even then he used very little of them - enough to temporarily take over a bunch of factories to make weapons for the war, that's about it.
It's ironic that the same people who complained Obama didn't have enough experience 'community organiser with only one year in the senate' now elected a man with none whatsoever - and of course they gave him Obama credit for being a professor of constitutional law at Harvard (which I would consider an imminently suitable qualification for president and so would the founding fathers).
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
English is not my native language, but isn't this wrong? Shouldn't it be 'connection' instead of 'connectivity'?
I'm expecting a lot more "reality checks" as he approaches the White House - like Obama's promise to shut down Gitmo, it sounds simple enough, until you learn all the facts.
Well, it's pretty simple all right. He lacks the courage to carry through and just issue pardons to anyone we don't have enough evidence against to hold legally. You either believe in rights or you don't. If you don't, then you have no business being POTUS. He knew full well before the election what was involved in closing gitmo and he promised to do it anyway, also knowing full well that he wouldn't do it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just tell him that Hillary and Bernie think climate change is a made up hoax from the 1%. Given how the left instantaneously changed their views on TPP when Trump opposed it, I'm sure this will work.
Dude, take a breath, Trump didn't say that, the quote were a type of "Fake News" we call humor.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
"I vow to make sweeping changes!!" shouts the campaigning politician.
Then they get into office, see all the interconnections between all the political, commercial, and social structures, both the good and bad ones, and realises that you can't simply just reach in there and yank out whatever pieces you don't like without tearing everything to varying degrees. So the aggressive stance softens, and the politician backtracks, while commencing to study the whole tangled mess to see what bits he can safely nudge at least a little bit in his desired direction without breaking anything else in the process. This happens over and over again for all politicians at all levels of government, from the President of the local PTA on up to the President of the USA.
Avatar of the God(s) Random
Remember who "represents" industry - current businesses, not future business. So all that money to be made in the future, there is no one lobbying the republicans in government on its behalf. Only the forces of the status quo. And they like the status quo. It gives them status.
Are you mad? Every energy company on the planet is all about "green" energy and selling it any way they can. Go watch a few ads from BP, Exxon, etc. Sure, they mine oil and gas, but they are not fossil fuel companies, they are energy companies. They could give a rat's ass how the energy is generated, they just want to make a profit from it. And there is no long-term strategy for making the same profit from fossil fuels - they are limited resources that will eventually run out.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Fly ash is primarily silicates from the plant material the was made into coal. When it is added to Portland Cement, it increases the strength over other silicate like silica sand because it is much finer and porous, additionally the silicates react chemically with CO2 removing it from the atmosphere over time, about 42% of the CO2 used in making the cement to begin with.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Apparently - in America competence and experience is now actually a disqualifier for holding office. Nobody wants to vote for the "washington insiders"... an odd sentiment you do not find in any other field. Seriously when did you ever hear anybody say "I am having a heart attack -please get me anybody who is NOT a doctor !"
This whole "compare a politician to a doctor" think shows the awful misinformation that the US public has been subjected to for many years. It's the worst kind of false equivalency. Doctors are paid to heal people. Politicians are paid by taking money from people by force. Somehow people can't see the difference.
The US was NOT founded on the idea of professionals making decisions about governing all the people. That was called "monarchy" and they didn't like it (being tyrannical and all), so they came up with the idea of "citizen legislators". In this model, government is run by ... the people being governed. The idea is that the people doing productive work in the country and leaders in business had the most knowledge of what government should be doing to help those efforts (and what they should not be doing because it was hurting people or getting in the way).
Why did people forget all that? Are they so used to helicopter parents that they want a parental government that makes all their decisions for them from cradle to grave? Are we a nation of pussies that would prefer to be ruled by an all-powerful monarch? So we need people "competent in government" so they can "govern" us in the most forceful way possible? Shall we all subject ourselves to anesthesia at the hands of a politician, so that we can sleep through their exploration of our bodies and brains with their knives?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
A no we didn't enter into any Paris accord, President Obama entered into the Accord and when he leaves it's over; in the US the President negotiates treaties, but the Senate ratifies them. All Paris did was enable the World to continue business as usual, i.e. China and India will continue to increase CO2 emission and the US, EU will continue their self flagellation to reduce CO2 emissions.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
We haven't had many True Republicans (or Democrats) at the national level in the last 30 years. The Reagan gang was the last bunch that took a hard-line position and stuck with long enough to make something happen. Today, I'm glad they did, but at the time I was pretty well convinced they were going to start a war, reinstate the draft, and send my generation into the next Vietnam. On the face of it, it was techno-nuclear brinksmanship, but those things have a way of cracking up and manifesting in smaller scale conflicts. The part of the calculus that I wasn't factoring in was that Russia had just finished embarrassing themselves in Afghanistan, so they were too spent to prop up an effective opposing force anywhere, and China wasn't a real player yet.
I'd go more with: Trump is an idiot when he thinks on his feet - a popular, resonates with middle American sentiments and frustrations idiot. Give him time to sit back and reflect and he's a conman who knows how to shift out of his idiot statements and still keep enough popular support to win 49% of the vote, in all the right places to get elected President.
> A few discussions with the carbon energy industry and he'll change his alleged mind again. That's a good way to describe bribes.
Well, for the crimes they're accused of, seems like most of them could just be executed.
I think there's something much more Hollywood at work there, potential for future intelligence gathering and prisoner exchange - otherwise they could all be tried in military court and executed, then close the place. Consider also that there's a stream of new inmates that have to be processed somewhere...
musk ?
Nothing is unlawful when you get to write and interpret the laws yourself.
I think anyone who hasn't actually been in the facility for an extended time, in the active areas, should STFO about what they know does and doesn't go on there. Even if they've been there from 2006-2012, that doesn't really tell what happened in 2005 or 2013. Nations have secrets, Gitmo is the kind of place where they are kept.
There's a reason why the induction says "execute the office" and people refer to it as "serving as". The role is bigger than any one man.
Certainly the man can make some adjustments, but his power largely flows from the people who vote for him, and the congresscritters, moreso today than 200 years ago when communication was so much slower.
Seriously when did you ever hear anybody say "I am having a heart attack -please get me anybody who is NOT a doctor !"
I've heard people saying "Don't take me to that hospital where heart attack patients die from MRSA infections"; and I've had a granddaughter who was discharged from the Port Huron Hospital ER with a diagnosis of "Nothing Wrong" only to be taken directly to intensive care at a Children's Hospital of Detroit.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Funny how the most fascist leader in US history, the one most likely to turn it into a dictatorship EVER - is also the least qualified person to ever be elected.
Your mythology about the founding fathers is flat out wrong. Their expertise in governance was utterly unmatched. They were all extremely well educated experts in the field. Highly trained in philosophy and history - they studied all the best ideas about how to create a government, how to fix the flaws that had caused previous attempts at democracy to fail and how to make it all work before they tried... and they STILL got it completely wrong. So wrong that they destroyed everything they had created up to that point and started over to produce the constitutional republic you now know (a process which, by the way, was entirely illegal). The second time they made an absolutely crucial correction: they made the constitution a living document - that could be changed. Hamilton believed it should be altered by a convention no less than every 20 years - to remove amendments that no longer worked (the second ahem) and add ones that were needed to address problems they hadn't forseen.
Basically originalist judges are a contradiction in terms because if there is one thing that NONE of the founding fathers intended it was for their intentions to be treated as important - ever again. They wanted the constitution to be updated all the time - to reflect the society of the day, their vision was for a constitution that by now should have had nothing left of their words but the fucking preamble.
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Enjoy your new cost of living in Utopia.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
>money from people by force
yeah, because roads and infrastructure builds itself, and the military pays for itself, and companies try not to pollute out of the kindness of their harts.
Switching over to a low/no CO2 economy doesnt just mean shutting down coal plants. It means shutting down coal plants and building solar/wind/nuclear plants. Surely this counts as "economic activity".
Although I absolutely think being environmentally conscious is economically beneficial, that is the wrong argument. You're invoking the broken window fallacy. If I continuously break your windows and you have to replace them every time I do, there's a lot of activity, labor, and money changing hands, but you're not actually adding a positive value to the economy.
The valid economic argument to being environmentally conscious is that CO2 emission has a monetary cost. More extreme weather, effects an agriculture, etc. So even though fossil fuels may *appear* to be cheaper, it's simply because the cost has been externalized and we're paying for it elsewhere, but when you take those costs into consideration, a transition to renewables is warranted.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Actually, I see it running in the opposite direction. Reagan, IIRC reversed himself on some of his tax cuts.
George W Bush, on the other hand, was rather infamous for a stay-the-course-no-matter-what approach. In fact, I don't recall hearing the term "double down" in common usage until his last 4 years or so and it wasn't just him that went that route. Basically any time Republicans lost on something they didn't talk altering strategy, they talked "double down". Or "we need to educate" - meaning that the fault wasn't with them, it was with the electorate.
Bush, in fact, was infamous for refusing to accept data that contradicted his position. It was noteworthy when very late in his tenure, he said, somewhat grudgingly that "IF mistakes were made, they are my responsibility".
Now that I think of it, I remember an old cartoon of about 8 panels with Reagan rightside up then upside down repeated.
But Reagan was the Teflon President and no Republican would ever speak ill of him.
>money from people by force yeah, because roads and infrastructure builds itself, and the military pays for itself, and companies try not to pollute out of the kindness of their harts.
What it's used for may include useful items, but that's irrelevant to how it's collected.
I'm curious though why you think only companies pollute, or would.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Sigh... Haterz gonna hate...
No excrescence, brother, you got it!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Funny how the most fascist leader in US history, the one most likely to turn it into a dictatorship EVER - is also the least qualified person to ever be elected.
So much wrong with that statement I don't even know where to begin. He's not a leader at all, yet. Mussolini-style fascism is more like the progressive ideal than anything Trump has proposed. And if you're using a "modernized and popular" version of racial-based fascism, the only group demonizing a specific racial group for all the ills would be the far-left SJWs, who claim white men are always the problem. As far as least qualified - Chester A. Arthur and Andrew Johnson were less qualified than Trump. Andrew Johnson was a tailor with no education - his wife taught him to read. It sucks that they don't teach history in school any more.
Your mythology about the founding fathers is flat out wrong.
No, it's not mythology, and it's not wrong. Jefferson was very concerned about the new Constitution when he discovered it did not limit terms. All his predictions about corruptions and career politicians have come true. Hamilton was the token statist among the founders, and wanted a much more authoritarian government than the others.
The process for amending the Constitution still exists, and is still used. There's nothing wrong with that. If you want to change it, get involved in changing it. Why hasn't it been changed lately? Career politicians protecting their incumbency is the primary reason. If you really think career politicians are better than citizen representatives, I suggest you read the history of the twenty-seventh amendment, and what happened in the aftermath. Having a "career" as a politician means your focus is on furthering your career. If you're a citizen acting as a short-term representative, you're much more likely to view governance with an eye to being governed.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Now if congress wasn't completely obstructionist this may have been possible to work around. For example one may have sent a tribunal of judges to the Island to hold public trials there - with JAG lawyers prosecuting using whatever evidence they were holding them on. The judges would have a grand-jury style trial and then you only release the ones who are found innocent and the rest are already in jail. It would mean exploiting the "not America" loophole of Bush one last time to get around the bail laws but at least you could have gotten the innocent ones out and been able to say nobody is held without trial. That wouldn't be a 'closure' of Gitmo but it would have been a huge improvement and probably an acceptable compromise - unfortunately, not one Obama could take without congressional approval.
I would say there would be 50-50 chance that Obama could have gotten something like that if he actually wanted that (or use continuing congressional stonewalling as another barb against Congress), but I'm sure that he wasn't interested in wasting a single dime of political capital on some 1/2-assed solution where he couldn't actually claim a win.
I'm pretty sure Obama didn't give a shit about helping any "innocent" people in Gitmo, he only cared about the optics of the Gitmo situation to his own constituency (who were mostly hung up arguments over habeous corpus and using professional ACLU defense lawyers) and this kind of pseudo-military justice solution probably wouldn't be very satisfying to them because the only difference this and the Combatant Status Review Tribunals performed by the Bush administration might be some limited amount of public trial coverage (which no doubt would have to be highly censored to prevent classified information from leaking). Why would Obama waste political capital on something unlikely to satisfy his close-Gitmo constituency?
You need to actually study fascism as written about by people who were actually there. Trump is textbook Musolini.
Here - educate yourself: http://www.nybooks.com/article...
14 elements make fascism - and Trump meets every one of them.
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So sometimes doctors screw up - what's that got to do with the analogy ?
I could just as easily use:
"My water-heater just burst and is flooding my house - I better call somebody who has never seen plumbing before"
or
"My transmission just broke, my car won't run and I need it fixed, better take it anybody who isn't a mechanic - can't trust those car-repair insiders"
or
"Mmm, our company is getting bigger, the books is starting to take up too much of our time and it's getting justified to have a dedicated person doing the job - but I better make sure whoever I hire knows nothing about accountancy"
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Increasing petroleum transport capacity increases potential petroleum supply. Supply and demand, my friend; making it cheaper to transport means it can be cheaper to sell, as well.
Now that I've answered as to AC's fallacious logic, clearly it will not work. If the market worked that way, I'd have very cheap gasoline available, instead of paying the highest prices in the country, as I'm only a 10 minute drive from several refineries.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Problem is neither Republican or Democrat wanted house the gitmo prisoners.
One of the things that kind of puzzles me about the idea that being "pro business" and "pro not-fucking-up-the environment" being mutually exclusive is that potentially fixing climate change could be great for industry, if it got past its short sighted myopia.
Even ignoring climate change, one industrial process' waste is another industrial process' catalyst. Capture and sell, turn that waste into a profit center, rather than paying for disposal that really turns into shipping it elsewhere for dumping, or writing off the fines for dumping as a cost of doing business.
Even smoke stack catalytic converters and filters can be scavenged for usable carbon, at a bare minimum.
What we have, however, is people at the top who can't think outside the box and have egos so huge they can't bring themselves to consult someone who can.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
One of the things that kind of puzzles me about the idea that being "pro business" and "pro not-fucking-up-the environment" being mutually exclusive is that potentially fixing climate change could be great for industry, if it got past its short sighted myopia.
Switching over to a low/no CO2 economy doesnt just mean shutting down coal plants. It means shutting down coal plants and building solar/wind/nuclear plants. Surely this counts as "economic activity". Those wind farms don't build themselves and those solar panels wont service themselves.
Not only that, energy is a valuable commodity. The sun gives us 173,000 terawatts of FREE power. Mankind's entire GDP is powered by just 17 terawatts at a cost somewhere around $6 trillion annually. Imagine what we could accomplish by harnessing just a fraction of the sun's power.
Odd that we have the so call "tech community" on here but they didn't bother to get the full transcript before going off half cocked about what a journalist interpreted as meaning something other than those with the 5th grade reading comprehension would think it means. After reading the full transcript I find it odd that someone would say he was backing down on his stance. Seems more like the liberal agenda of dividing Trump and those that voted for him. Does every ones recall of history go back 1 week now? This is the same NYTimes that was colluding with Clinton's campaign to give her good press and Trump bad press. So are well all suppose to ignore how they were exposed now???
Sure if you listen to one source and have blinders on, you'd come to that conclusion. But hey, why learn anything from the last year of how the media bias and bullshit was brought to light. No, lets all crawl back in to the bullshit bubble and think the national media has your best interests at heart. Lemmings come to mind, lambs led to slaughter? Heck, realizing something is bullshit might hurt your ego, and who wants that? Nah, let's protect you from that big scary world and say fuck society as a whole!
I find it funny how many claim to be "free thinking" yet they accept this article as proof positive without researching anything. Coddle douche bags that are "in the know"!
W wasn't Republican, W represented East Texas Oil - they may look Republican, but they are actually a whole other thing. I had to move to East Texas during the W years, there weren't any jobs available in the rest of the country at the time, and I'm not wealthy enough to take 8 years off from earning income.
But, yes, the Reagan crew waffled quite a bit - except for StarWars and trickle down, they pushed those through pretty consistently. We're still in trickle down (Clinton/Obama did little to reverse it), and all it does as far as I can tell is dry up the middle.
14 elements make fascism - and Trump meets every one of them.
Okay, I'll bite.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition: you are looking in the wrong place. The cult is right there in the slogan: make america great AGAIN. I.E. Return it to a past age, preserve traditions that feel threatened.
rejection of modernism: A perfect fit if you read the whole chapter. In Musolini the rejection was disguised as a rejection of the capitalist lifestyle. For Trump it's in a rejection of modernism, metroplitanism and multiculturalism - all things that are fundamentally modern ideas.
No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism: Had you read the entire article it would be obvious how perfect a fit this is. Firstly he constantly contradicts himself - that's a core feature of all syncretic ideas. And as for how he deals with disagreement: he threatened to imprison his political opponent !
Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference: Firstly the author does nothing of the kind you're accusing him off. The article was written in 1995 and wasn't about Trump in particular, that the description fits so well is all the more valid because it wasn't intended for him specifically. And there is no doubt that Trump's campaign was fueled to a large degree by fear of difference. Gays, Muslims, Hispanics - it's not about race and it never was (not even for Musolini) that was just the TYPE of difference they chose - ANY difference (including the difference in 'where you were born') qualifies.
Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration: Nice little dodge you pulled there - by responding to half the description. Sure everybody tries to appeal to the middle class -but fascism does so in a very specific way, which Trump excelled at: fascism blames the struggles of the middle class on the poor class, and especially those members of the poor who are from other races, countries or in some other way different and presents these differences as an existential threat to the middle class.
Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot: You forgot his obsession with conspiracy theories, claims that the election were rigged etc. etc. etc. all classic fascist claims. It's not in the 14 elements but the rest also makes it clear that a disdain for democratic governments/parliaments is a key feature (the author calls it the first and most important warning) that somebody is a fascist: what was Trump saying about the US government ? The exact same words Musolini used to say about the Italian parliament which he would soon come to disband.
The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies: Trump echoed Sanders in this one, but that by itself is not enough to qualify. You must also present the elites as being in cahoots with the others as an unstopple force of destruction. Only Trump suggested that elites and muslim terrorists were allies !
For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle: Wrong. Trump behaved exactly according to this recipe. Sure he also paid lipservice to isolationism but that is just classic fascist self-contradiction. What he said about ISIS fits this perfectly - that their a terrible enemy, created by Obama, and only HE can defeat them - and he strongly implied he would do so by military action, i.e. launching another war (how did you miss this ?)
The author describes this further, but I don't see it in Trump at all. Trump is anti-elite: there is nothing anti-elite about Trump or his followers despite his and their claims to the contrary. Trump's appeals to white supremacists contradict the idea that it's anti-elite. What is white supremacy if not an elitist appeal ? What is nationalism if not a form of elitism ? You're conflating two meanings of 'elite' and dismissing the claim based on the wrong one - while ignoring that Trump as an individual actually meets both.
In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero: Just because you don't see it doesn
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So I counted 14 out of 14 - but even if we accept your views and say 6/14 ... then that's still WAY too much. You shouldn't vote for anybody who has more than maybe 2 - and even that is risky.
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No, it's about what has news value and what doesn't. Anybody who doesn't understand there's news value in a situation like this is probably so stupid they'd drown looking up at a rainstorm.
Would you know anybody who fits that description, Sparky?
;-)
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I don't disagree with climate models because of faith. I disagree with them because they've been shown to be wrong.
If climate models, as a whole, were unbiased, you'd expect about half of them to underpredict the observed amount of warming, and the other half to overpredict the observed amount of warming.
But that's not the kind of wrong they've been shown to be. They all overpredict, as this plot of 73 different climate models, run over a 45-year timespan, shows: http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp...
If this isn't long enough to convince you that the models are wrong, how long of a run would it take? 55 years? 70 years?
This is really the only scientific way to evaluate the validity of climate models. The models have performed with such bias, that it's fair to call anyone who still has faith in them a science denier.
[Contrast the bias of the climate models with hurricane track models which, collectively, do a good job. About half the models predict a track that's leftward of the observed track, while the other half predict a track that's rightward of the observed track: http://images.huffingtonpost.c... ]
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Do you feel that current Christian evangelism efforts are more strident than past efforts?
Would you acknowledge that the current efforts are failing?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
It means shutting down coal plants and building solar/wind/nuclear plants. Surely this counts as "economic activity".
Economic activity does not necessarily leave society better off. Paying people to dig holes, and paying still more people to fill the holes back in, is "economic activity."
When the unsubsidized cost-per-kilowatt hour of energy source X becomes competitive, you'll find no greater supporter of X than me. But facts on the ground don't yet look good for solar. (And as a big Elon Musk fan, it pains me to post that link.)
I used to fear global warming a lot. But that was before the climate models were shown to be wrong.
If climate models, as a whole, were unbiased, you'd expect about half of them to underpredict the observed amount of warming, and the other half to overpredict the observed amount of warming.
But that's not the kind of wrong they've been shown to be. They all overpredict, as this plot of 73 different climate models, run over a 45-year timespan, shows: http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp...
If this isn't long enough to convince you that the models are wrong, how long of a run would it take? 55 years? 70 years?
This is really the only scientific way to evaluate the validity of climate models. The models have performed with such bias, that it's fair to call anyone who still has faith in them a science denier.
[Contrast the bias of the climate models with hurricane track models which, collectively, do a good job. About half the models predict a track that's leftward of the observed track, while the other half predict a track that's rightward of the observed track: http://images.huffingtonpost.c... ]
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
He is a veritable Zelig of American Politics.
>that's irrelevant to how it's collected. how does it have to be collected?
Cows leaving the farm where some were sold for meat to go live with the Butcher.
I wonder how fast they realize what is going on before they want to return to being milked.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
What I asked, was not "why is this posted", but why does it matter to the climate debate? People are saying (incorrectly), things like "See, even Trump agrees, it must be true!"
So, I ask, why would his agreeing make it true, if his disagreeing would not have made it false? See, what I mean, Sparky?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Hire a writer. Clearly, you aren't up to the job of expressing what passes for an opinion in your milieu.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Buddy above has described you to a tee.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You have perhaps forgotten that virtually every proposed Obama policy and budget was rejected by Republican legislators and thus not implemented. There was one major exception, the ACA.
So the result of Obama's term cannot be judged as a being a result of being what he would have done had he had the power. He did not have the power. The few things he did have direct executive power over, like getting Bin Laden, and regulating CO2 pollution, he did implement and they had some positive impact.
Everything else was blocked by Republican linebackers. What a f*cking waste of opportunity.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
He proposed a lot of good policy, but Republicans vetoed pretty much all of it. They were actively obstructionist, for the sake of messing with both him and everything he stood for. They've developed a truly evil strategy of sabotaging government, as their strategy of winning the next election. You can't blame the lack of progressive government action over his term on Obama. That would be very naive.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It's so great that the level-headed smart people are in charge now. Civilization at last.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You mean issues like that everything Trump touches is going to turn to shit?
He's the shit alchemist version of King Midas.
You're going to have healthcare for the rich, stupid-ass trade wars that are no-one's fault but your own and a sinking economy because you're opting out of the rest of the world, and a more messed up environment. Oh well at least the 1% will be laughing all the way to the bank with their new plunder, freed up from those pesky regulations and taxes, so it's not all bad.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
That's not the full story. I know that initially a lot of people got swept up with no more evidence than hearsay. Petty assholes who had an axe to grind submitted a targets name to the military. It was ridiculous.
Right, cuz you got security clearance to find out right? Sheesh.
What people are does not depend on whatever some people with robes sitting behind a desk decide what they recognize the formers to be...
But what you get to say they are, and treat them as, does. That's what the presumption of innocence means. Throw that away and you're living in a totaltarian police state. As a liberty it's at least as important, indeed probably even MORE important, than freedom of speech.
Without presumption of innocence any other liberties you have can only ever exist on paper - because you can just be declared guilty of something to shut you up.
Now you are allowed to say they are terrorists, but since there's been no trial that statement has zero evidence to back it up - except some other people in uniforms who declared it (and if anything people in uniforms have been historically FAR less trustworthy than the ones in robes). Frankly - they have a valid case of slander against you for calling them that, and if any of them sued you WOULD lose since you can't prove your accusation.
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It would appear that he never bothered to learn anything while he was running. Now that he has to actually learn the facts about all these issues, I guess we can expect a lot of his plans to change :-).
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
I get your point, but have you read Pasolini's "I know" texte?
As someone else already said, he's inherently a centrist, or non-aligned. His only god is himself. He appeal to the populist vote only to win. Now he's probably scratching his head on what to do about the recount. He has to balance his personal centrist agenda with that of the right-wing party that he's found himself in. I predict that he will come out stronger after the recount. He has called it a scam, but just wait until he "flip flops" and calls it "genius" and proof of his righteous victory.
To be more precise, one realistic wording would be "from what we know so far we can say that amongst these people there are terrorists, people who fought in regular or guerilla warfaire against an invading military and are labeled terrorists, and some innocents; and we - the people - don't know who are what".
This gets the "presumption of innocence" for each individual right, but is not bullshitting like claiming that they are all "innocents till proved guilty".
Except that only 'they are all innocent until proven guilty' is the only thing that counts as 'presumption of innocence'.
You only have the word of generals and politicians that any of them did anything. For all you know they were just kidnapped of the streets to get people in there so Bush could say 'look how many terrorists I caught' with no investigation at all.
You simply don't, in fact, know.
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