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Trump Says He Doesn't Believe Government Climate Report Finding in a New Low (apnews.com)
President Donald Trump on Monday rejected a central conclusion of a dire report on the economic costs of climate change released by his own administration. Associated Press reports: But economists said the National Climate Assessment's warning of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in global warming costs is pretty much on the money. Just look at last year with Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma, they said. Those three 2017 storms caused at least $265 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The climate report, quietly unveiled Friday, warned that natural disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming. It said warming-charged extremes "have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration." The report noted the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015.
"The potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century," the report said. It added that if emissions of heat-trapping gases continue at current levels, labor costs in outdoor industries during heat waves could cost $155 billion in lost wages per year by 2090. The president said he read some of the report and "it's fine" but not the part about the devastating economic impact. "I don't believe it," Trump said, adding that if "every other place on Earth is dirty, that's not so good."
"The potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century," the report said. It added that if emissions of heat-trapping gases continue at current levels, labor costs in outdoor industries during heat waves could cost $155 billion in lost wages per year by 2090. The president said he read some of the report and "it's fine" but not the part about the devastating economic impact. "I don't believe it," Trump said, adding that if "every other place on Earth is dirty, that's not so good."
Republican idiot is republican idiot is ... waiting for 2019 to watch the Trump insane asylum get ... TRUMPED!
It's more like Trump having Trumpified the Republican party. He commands the fanatical loyalty of a portion of the party that is sufficiently large for the Republican establishment having to suck up to him and appease his followers because they need that portion of the electorate to win elections. In order to win Trump's support they have to follow him in a headlong charge towards the right wing nationalist fringe and cater to his narcissistic bullshit. The last few Republicans that looked moderate because the rest of the party had moved so far to the right have now retired or been primaried and in those cases where they were replaced by Republicans in the recent elections those Republicans are universally hard core Trumkins. So just face it, there is no Republican party anymore. There are two US political parties, the 'Democrats' and the 'Cult of Trump'. I can only imagine how frustrating all of this is to Mitch McConnell. Just when he thought he had secured congressional majorities for the Republicans on the back of the minority vote using gerrymandering, voter suppression, disenfranchisement and intimidation, along comes Trump and basically hijacks the party. I bet it is still nothing compared to how galling it is for old Mitch to have to make an ass of himself in public by kissing Trump's posterior and heaping sycophantic praise on Trump as if he is some oriental god-emperor.
From McConnell's perpspetive he ain't doing too bad : he got what he wanted. Conservative judges filling all the vacanices across the country, 2 (and maybe more) ultra conservative supreme court justices and THE FUCKING NEW TAX CODE (ie stealing from the poor to appease the rich). He has no problem kissing Trump's ass, doing him a blowjob or worse.
You're asking for the President of the United States to be assassinated. Given that there are a number of constitutional and legal means to dump him, I think that would be a low - although not a new one.
There's Trump quote for every occasion. Back in 2016 he said this about Hillary
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
source (first link on google search)
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From McConnell's perpspetive he ain't doing too bad : he got what he wanted. Conservative judges filling all the vacanices across the country, 2 (and maybe more) ultra conservative supreme court justices and THE FUCKING NEW TAX CODE (ie stealing from the poor to appease the rich). He has no problem kissing Trump's ass, doing him a blowjob or worse.
Yes, but on a purely personal level McConnell deeply despises Trump, you can tell when he talks about the guy, no matter how hard he tries to hide it it always shines through. Kowtowing to Trump like the Jade Emperor of China and heaping ridiculous praise on Trump is clearly deeply galling to old Mitch. He'll do it alright, but that does not mean he likes it. For Mitch kowtowing to Trump is probably much like cleaning the toilet is to the rest of us, we don't like doing it but not cleaning the toilet is worse. Mitch, of course, has a servant who cleans his toilets for him, but making an ass of himself by kowtowing to Trump and flattering him in public is the one job Mitch can't outsource.
I still can't believe how messed up it is, that a guy like Donald Trump got elected president of the United States of America .
A man who boasts about grabbing pussies of models, because as the boss, he can get away with it. And who basically insinuated that someone assassinate his political opponent.
It is a freakish thing to happen. Fucking nuts is what it is. Somewhat damaged my belief in the democratic process and ordinary people (the electorate) in general.
I'd pretty much stick to the UN climate report. It runs a bunch of scenarios, and seems to be a bit on the conservative side.
False equivalence arguments are a common deception strategy. It lets someone put out a false extreme as if it carries equal weight to the reasoned (usually dull middle of the road) explanation. Then the false equivalence compares them both as if they were equally valid, and pretends to be the measured middle ground. It isn't.
This "false extreme" is the Fox News game. Take children from their parents at the border, becomes "children saved from human traffickers pretending to be their parents". Wanting healthcare from children and old people become "socialist healthcare to overload hospitals and make people die"..... Kashoggi, the journalist the Saudi Prince tortured live on WhatsApp becomes an "ISIS terrorist" that the Saudi's saved USA from.
Can you really expect someone who lost money owning a casino to have anything worth while to contribute?
While inflation and density of population both increase the damage done from storms, there is a simple way to figure if the damage is actually going up on a inflation corrected, population density corrected scale.
To be honest, some one else has done most of the work for you.
Homeowners Insurance rates.
Since the number of people in an area, increases the number of insurance plans in that same risk pool, it works out well to a per capita number, and it's pretty easy to correct for inflation... and what you'll find is that homeowners insurance rates are rising much faster than inflation in at risk areas for large scale disasters...
Similar things are happening for auto insurance for things like covering hail damage...
To be fair the only reason Trump wasn't a slave trader is because he hadn't been born yet.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The Tax changes are responsible for GDP growth and great unemployment numbers we have enjoyed over the last few months. The tax "cuts" have predictably caused in increase in tax revenue due to the increase in economic activity, upping employment, raising household incomes and otherwise causing the "poor" to have more money as more of them have jobs who where unemployed and raising the pay of those who already where working.
The tax cuts reduced revenue. Deficits have doubled.
There was an economic benefit due to the fiscal stimulus- but it didn't cause tax receipts to rise by so much that the tax cuts paid for themselves. It never does.
"Voodoo economics" George Bush Snr called it. We are not at the top of the Laffer curve. We are never at the top of the Laffer curve. Tax cuts are a stimulus the economy didn't need and when a recession comes (and it will) the increased defecits will reduce the ability of the government then in power to enact a fiscal stimulus package when it is actually needed.
With unemployment so low there was no need for the tax cuts.
Also the benefits went to the rich. I know it, you know know it everyone knows it.
Hurricanes are not a function of global warming -- they've been occurring at least since 1970
The ability of some people to out-stupid themselves on the internet never ceases to amaze me.
Trump is a result of many things.
Politics in the US is incredibly polarized. Discontent made it ripe for a populist. Politics is dominated by money. The internet enabled fake news in a way people were unprepared for. Clinton had too much baggage. A lot of the progress made lately on things like same-sex marriage and rights was done via legal process rather than as a reflection of widespread changes in attitudes in every state. The Democrats were too concerned with doing the right thing instead of winning.
These things always correct themselves eventually, it's just a question of how long and how much pain.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Only if you weren't paying attention. About a third of the US population has been "deplorable" for a long time. After WW2, a newspaper poll found that 1/3 of Americans wanted to genocide the Japanese.
Trump came along at exactly the right time for a deplorable shitstain to take power - the electoral playing field had been tilted heavily in Republicans' favor, he had a historically unpopular opponent to defeat who was also being targeted by a foreign interference campaign, the deplorables were absolutely fuming after 8 years of a black President, and finally the straw that broke the camel's back, an October surprise that took his opponent down a peg.
Combined, it was just enough for the deplorables to squeak through an electoral victory with a popular vote loss. It was only a matter of time before coddling these hate-filled garbage people would bite America in the ass, and the clock finally ran out.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Democracy is long dead in America. You must be pretty brain washed to consider a two party system, with no real way of ever getting a third party in power, a democracy.
What you have is a system whereby the party best at slandering the other wins. Blaming the current party in power for current problems is a big part of this, which is why we see a regular switch between the two parties in power. As both parties are in the pocket of the rich, good luck ever changing something that will benefit the general public.
" The first slave owner in the US and the one who fought a lengthy legal battle through the British colonial courts to make slavery legal was a black tobacco farmer named Anthony Johnson."
Not quite correct. He was not the first slave owner in the US but he was one of the first people in Virginia to have his right to own a slave legally recognised. Snopes and Wikipedia seem to be on the same page with this explanation.
"Anthony Johnson was not the first slave owner in American history, but he was, according to historians, among the first to have his lifetime ownership of a servant legally sanctioned by a court. A former indentured servant himself, Anthony Johnson was a “free negro” who owned a 250-acre farm in Virginia during the 1650s, with five indentured servants under contract to him. One of them, a black man named John Casor, claimed that his term of service had expired years earlier and Johnson was holding him illegally. In 1654, a civil court found that Johnson in fact owned Casor’s services for life, an outcome historian R Halliburton Jr. calls “one of the first known legal sanctions of slavery — other than as a punishment for crime.”"
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)