Remember, we only kill black people.Update (September 1): D. Watkins dismisses the defense from the officer's attorney.
If this joke of a statement by LoRusso is true, then how would Abbott de-escalate a similar incident with a black person? Oh yeah: shoot them.Update (September 9): Kristin Hull reiterates a point all too easy to forget.
We, as well-meaning white people, often take for granted the freedom with which we walk around.
he even defended his pardon of Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff convicted of contempt of court after refusing an order to stop targeting Latinos for detention. [Von Clownstick] told the press that he thought the announcement would get better ratings during a natural disaster. It's unclear whether he was joking or not.
“I assumed the ratings would be far higher.”Ok, so let's suppose he is joking and not mentally impaired. In this same press conference, he claimed that the racist Arpaio was "treated unbelievably unfairly" despite widespread condemnation. Is he joking about that, too? Is it all a joke to him?
Ryan and McConnell — in this telling of the story — were so bowled over by our maverick president’s macho boldness they had no choice but to bring this package to the floor and let the Democrats have their day. Please.
In the end, the Republican leadership got some much-needed breathing room, the Freedom Caucus got to rail against Ryan as usual without having to do anything about it, Democrats got to smirk and wink and [Fuckface] got his massive ego stroked once again by the mainstream media, upon which he heaps contempt on a daily basis. Win-win.Update (October 6): Because matters of life and death deserve a good cliffhanger:
Fuckface: Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.
Reporter: What’s the storm?
Fuckface: You’ll find out.
Update (October 15): Neal Gabler thinks von Clownstick views the presidency as not just a form of celebrity.
He actually seems to see it as an entertainment — not just a way to be the center of attention, though he clearly loves that — but as a way to tickle the public appetite for excitement. In doing so, he has replaced political values with entertainment values. Politics mean nothing to him. Policy is a bore for him as for most Americans. They want a show. So does he. And he intends to provide it.
Chaos is an awful way to run an administration, but it is a wonderful way to keep people riveted and to distract them from policy discussions.
[H]is “ratings,” as determined by the national preoccupation with him, are through the roof. You can call it a form of rubber-necking, gawking at the disaster and unable to look away. Whatever you call it, [he] is putting on one hell of a show. It’s just that it comes at the expense of everything else, especially governance.And what if the "ratings" wane? Might an attack be needed to boost them back up?
My fear is that he is calculating precisely what he wants. We have never seen [Fuckface] cornered, never seen what he would do if there was seemingly no way out, never seen what would happen if the show were about to sputter and die.
No one is above the law and the individuals entrusted with the privilege of being sworn law officers should always seek to be beyond reproach in their commitment to fairly enforcing the laws they swore to uphold. Mr. Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt for continuing to illegally profile Latinos living in Arizona based on their perceived immigration status in violation of a judge’s orders. The President has the authority to make this pardon, but doing so at this time undermines his claim for the respect of rule of law as Mr. Arpaio has shown no remorse for his actions.Even Paul Ryan disagrees with the pardon.
Law-enforcement officials have a special responsibility to respect the rights of everyone in the United States. We should not allow anyone to believe that responsibility is diminished by this pardon.Update (August 28): Heather Digby Parton analyzes the reasons for the pardon.
[Von Clownstick] didn’t just pardon Arpaio to signal the base that he’s still the anti-immigrant xenophobe they voted for. He pardoned Arpaio to signal to the police in this country that the “law and order” president thinks it’s fine if cops ignore the courts and the law if they believe those things are inhibiting them from doing their jobs.
When he says “law and order,” he means that police are the law and they can keep order by any means necessary. That’s the opposite of the rule of law, a concept for which [Fuckface von Clownstick] clearly has no respect.Update (August 29): Charles Kaiser sees the beginning of a constitutional crisis.
By pardoning a man convicted of criminal contempt for direct violation of a federal order, [von Clownstick] is now flaunting his eagerness to overturn the rule of law in America.
[W]hat we are now experiencing is exactly what incipient fascism looks like. The combination of [Fuckface's] relentless assaults on the free press, his open encouragement of Nazis — which is the only honest description of his initial refusal to condemn them — and now a pardon without even pretending to go through the normal channels of the Justice Department: These are all the acts of man who is blatantly defying his sacred pledge to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
We document that the majority of mainstream media coverage was negative for both candidates, but largely followed [Fuckface von Clownstick's] agenda: when reporting on Hillary Clinton, coverage primarily focused on the various scandals related to the Clinton Foundation and emails. When focused on [Fuckface], major substantive issues, primarily immigration, were prominent. Indeed, immigration emerged as a central issue in the campaign and served as a defining issue for the [von Clownstick] campaign.Eric Alterman:
What’s going on here is that conservatives are winning a war that liberals, centrists and, indeed, anyone who believes that politics should be tethered to recognizable reality don’t even know they are fighting. Racism and Islamophobia from outlets like Breitbart and the lunatic ravings of Infowars’ Alex Jones — which somehow make even Breitbart appear relatively reasonable — drove the news coverage of the election even in our most prestigious outlets. Twitter and Facebook were dominated by phony stories designed to discredit Clinton, and cable news, in its ceaseless quest for ratings and the advertising dollars that follow them, reinforced these priorities, allowing [von Clownstick] surrogates to lie with impunity and without correction.Update (October 30): While constantly derided as "fake news", Media Matters demonstrates how CNN actually enables von Clownstick's agenda.
[I]f CNN is truly worried about the sort of people who tell you that an apple is really a banana, the network should deal with the stable of pundits it has hired to provide viewers with knee-jerk defenses of the president. Those ... apologists -- some of whom were previously on [Fuckface's] payroll -- actively harm CNN’s journalism, frequently bringing panel discussions to a screeching halt with claims so dishonest they approach parody, at times drawing on-air rebukes from the network’s anchors. The pundits force the network to constantly debate whether the apple is really a banana.Update (November 4): Get ready for a surge of propaganda through Sinclair Broadcasting's centralized control of local news.
[S]ince [he] badly bungled the administration’s response to white supremacists who marched on Charlottesville, VA and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer, charities have been pulling out of hosting their events at his properties in a veritable stampede.But think about it this way--if they had no problems with leasing from him before Charlottesville even knowing what we already knew about this racist asshole, then Fuckface has made a huge mistake.
Part of the reason the ocean warms more slowly is that much of the heating of the ocean goes into evaporation. But the land, particularly the drier parts of the planet, don’t have much moisture to evaporate–so much more of the global warming goes directly into temperature rise.
The president and his aides support gutting efforts to counter violent extremism stemming from white supremacy and other racist ideologies in order to divert funding to anti-jihadist measures.
At the same time, violent incidents, including murders, committed by far-right extremists continued to rise.While police efforts shouldn't be maligned, there have been troubling incidents.
It’s not just the violence the nation saw in Charlottesville, but also right-wing protests in Berkeley, Sacramento, Portland and Huntington Beach, where police took a hands-off approach.C. Wright Mills wrote that Marx differed from other social scientists in foreseeing a "qualitative break" in society brought on by revolution. And Chris Harman documents the history of violent class struggle. If the U.S. "alt-right" is pushing for a violent revolution, are they likely to win?
[I]f the resistance and the #Never[Fuckface] movement could rise above their differences and stand together against incipient fascism, they could show the rest of the country how “we the people” can rescue our government. They would show the Congress that the time has come to put country ahead of party and to impeach a disgraceful president.
I know, I know. It’ll never work: Americans are too divided. Which is true. It’ll never work until Americans learn how to put aside lesser differences in service of a greater good. Then it just might work, if it's not too late.Update (August 22): Max Pensky and Nadia Rubaii are optimistic that the U.S. is not heading toward genocide.
Try to impeach him, just try it. You will have a spasm of violence in this country, and insurrection, like you’ve never seen.Update (August 31): Even though some fans have been critical, there's a solid base of supporters that like von Clownstick because he's an asshole. I'm guessing a lot of them are armed and Charles Blow fears that Roger Stone may be right.
If these people should come to believe — as [Fuckface] would have them believe — that establishment systems have unfairly and conspiratorially acted to remove from office their last and only champion — another thing [von Clownstick] would have them believe — what will they do?
Sexton broke onto the national stage when a series of his tweets from a [von Clownstick] rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, on June 14, 2016, went viral. Because he was sitting in the stands, not in the media bullpen, he could hear what [von Clownstick's] supporters were really saying in the company of their peers: racial slurs, gay slurs, vulgarities about Hillary Clinton, all delivered with gusto and acceptance.Sexton describes how campaign events became outlets for hatred.
Inside the aircraft carrier they were hanging on every word. It was obvious they were angry at any protestors who were there. Then afterwards they actually were threatening other protestors. They were talking about getting their guns and shooting them.
Then by the time I went to the rally in June, it wasn’t a surprise anymore. I think it had the beginnings of what you would call a movement and you had these people in the same space who knew that they were now safe to say [out loud] the things that they might have said [to themselves] in the past, the things that they thought the culture sort of frowned on.Political discourse doesn't matter at all--it's who you identify with.
If you are a Patriots fan and you’re pissing off Colts fans, you don’t care if Tom Brady cheated. You’re just happy the Colts fans are miserable. What you’re actually doing is you’re elevating yourself via your fanhood and living through these idols. It doesn’t matter [to a fan] if [von Clownstick] lies — if he pisses off people, [the fans] win.Update (August 14): It took two days for Fuckface von Clownstick to condemn hate groups, but less than an hour to criticize Kenneth Frazier for resigning in protest from the American Manufacturing Council.
In other words, the white supremacist who rammed his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters, killing Heyer and injuring 19 others, is on the same level as the counter-protesters who didn’t kill or severely injure anyone that day. This according to your president, the ironically dubbed “leader of the free world.” The president’s “many sides” line also appeared to link the deadly Charlottesville terrorist attack with Black Lives Matter protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, and other activists who, again, haven’t engaged in any acts of terror whatsoever nor are linked in any way to the Holocaust and other atrocities of World War II.
Making matters worse, the president refused to condemn the Nazis and white supremacists who assembled in the name of defending, in this case violently, the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville and — perhaps more importantly for them — expressing their perceived grievances in an age of broadening equality and civil rights. Again, it’s worth repeating: The president refused to condemn Nazis — actual, self-identified neo-Nazis with their snappy World War II German cosplayer regalia, their matching Nazi helmets, their khaki slacks and their combat boots.
[Von Clownstick] was more than happy to attack his own attorney general and his own party’s Senate leader. He condemned war hero John McCain. He repeatedly condemned the judges of the Ninth Circuit. Hell, [Fuckface] condemned both “Saturday Night Live” and Nordstrom. But he’s afraid to condemn despots like Putin or the Nazis who attacked American citizens in Charlottesville.
We know exactly why [von Clownstick] refused to say what so many other prominent Republicans and Democrats said in response. We know that [he] performs exclusively to his base. No one else matters beyond those represented best by his googly-eyed rally-attending disciples. These are people who largely do not identify as racists or Nazis, but who seem perfectly comfortable sticking it to perceived outsiders as well as the liberal benefactors of those “others.” We know that [Fuckface] has no problem with relentlessly blasting his enemies, yet neo-Nazis and white supremacists are somehow off limits.It is worth trying to understand the obstacles to overcoming racism. Richard Moser quotes Bob Dylan ("You got more than the blacks, don't complain") and borrows the concept of a "psychic wage" from W.E.B Dubois.
This psychic wage is collected, in part, by an imaginary connection with whites of high status. White privilege creates vertical solidarity that connects working class whites to the power and glory of the rich, strong, and celebrated white elites, even though our overall political and economic interests are shared by working class people of color. White workers are exploited by the boss and sent to die in their wars daily. Our privilege gives us the delusion that we are not who we truly are.
[I]t is the privileges whites have that disrupt horizontal solidarity, but when those bribes are eroded, even partially, by debt, poverty, the long term decline of wages, poor health, drug addiction, and hopelessness, their hypnotic power weakens. Young whites in particular have come to see the transparent truth that the system is rigged against them, and perhaps above all, that the scientific forecast of life on our planet is so poisoned and precarious that no amount of privilege will save them.
These changes in consciousness are signs that we might again cross into revolutionary territory. The unending recession of 2008 has forced whites to choose. Cling ever harder to the psychological wage, hate, and white supremacy, or join the movements toward social reform, revolution, resistance, and love.
In a broader sense, it is the corporate power that is creating the crisis in privilege as a form of social control. If the corporate state can no longer allow any meaningful improvements in the lives of everyday people — and impose only austerity and growing poverty — we can expect that both the Democrats and Republicans will increasingly turn to the psychological wage as the remaining form of compensation, bribe and appeal.Update (August 15): A third statement from the "leader of the free world":
I think there’s blame on both sides … You also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent.
What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, the alt-right?. . . Do they have any problem? I think they do.Update (August 16): Heather Digby Parton sums up where we're at as a nation.
His obtuse reaction to Charlottesville is really just the latest in a long string of behaviors that should have made him unelectable — but that actually helped him win.Update (August 17): There seems to be a contrast in reaction to the attack in Charlottesville versus attacks in Spain.
In a rambling press conference Tuesday, [von Clownstick] defended his initial statement, arguing he needed to get “the facts” before making more definitive remarks against racist groups.
But [von Clownstick] has been quick to cite “radical Islamic terrorism” for attacks in the past.
His rhetoric toward “radical Islam” is often violent and sweeping, unlike his comments on the white supremacist and racist groups who gathered for the rally in Charlottesville, which [von Clownstick] claimed had some “fine people.”Update (August 18): Did the "alt-right" overplay their hand with that rally? And will the Republican civil war escalate? Allies turn into enemies. Who knows what could happen?
Grant’s moral vision was clear enough. He saw the slaveholding aristocracy that drove the South into secession as an indefensible criminal regime, rooted in treason and an immoral economy where human beings were “bought and sold like cattle.”
[He] perceived the slave-owning South as “an enemy with whom we could not make a peace. We had to destroy him. No convention, no treaty was possible. Only destruction.”Somehow, this time, history has been rewritten by the losers.
White America’s strange romance with the supposedly tragic and supposedly noble “lost cause” of the Confederacy is so tangled and so contradictory that it can likely never be unsnarled. Sometimes the Rebel battle flag and the bronze generals on horseback stand for badass rebellion and hell-raisin’. Sometimes they stand for a genteel and deliberately vague conception of “heritage and history,” all too perfectly captured in the noxious and seductive “Gone With the Wind,” a film that overwrote actual history for several generations of white Americans. Sometimes they stand for overt and vicious racism.And rewritten in a way only possible in the United States.
I ... encountered a beach towel for sale in a Delaware resort town: The Rebel flag, emblazoned with a giant marijuana leaf at its center. I’m not even sure that’s a mixed signal so much as an eloquent statement of American bewilderment: We’re white, we’re stoned and we ain’t apologizing for shit. We’re pissed off about something, but we’re not quite sure what it is and have no idea who to blame.O'Hehir writes that American society has been "poisoned by its addiction to a perverse and suicidal myth".
By refusing to face the true legacy of slavery and its aftermath, and embracing an entire universe of “alternative facts” about the Civil War, the Confederacy and race relations, a large portion of white America has in effect enslaved itself to a false sense of history and a false racial consciousness. We can see the resulting confusion and dysfunction all around us: In the “diseases of despair” and self-defeating politics of the now-infamous white working class. In the appalling street theater of Charlottesville, a new low in our nation’s 21st-century decline. In the White House, whose current occupant, a person not much given to aesthetic contemplation, felt it necessary to wax rhapsodic on the subject of mediocre martial statuary.Grant had respect for Lee, but clearly understood what mattered most.
"I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse."Update (August 20): He just can't shut the fuck up.
Protesters against the alt-right are now “anti-police agitators” to the president, apparently.
[I]n a common pattern, [von Clownstick] was faster to denounce the peaceful, anti-hate protest than the actual white supremacists and neo-Nazis who gathered in Boston Common for a “free speech rally.”Update (August 22): Conor Lynch warns against splintering on the left.
If it wasn’t already obvious, the past week should clear up any doubts about what the [von Clownstick] presidency represents. In contemporary America, the political party in power is not only led by an apologist for white supremacists but a president who has extensive ties to the racist “alt-right” movement .... The Charlottesville demonstrations and the subsequent fallout made it abundantly clear what is really at stake in American politics today. To quote early 20th-century revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg’s famous rallying cry: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism.”
[Fuckface's] political ascent was only possible after 40 years of neoliberalism and unfettered corporate capitalism. The resurgence of white supremacy must be stomped out completely, but only a true left-wing movement that emphasizes class politics and structural reform can truly foil the advance of barbarism. Perhaps it is time for liberals to join anti-fascists on the streets and show solidarity.Update (August 26): Timothy Snyder says that "both sides" language makes it sound like two groups of extremists are battling each other.
[W]e’re in a situation where the president will exploit something like this, where he suggests that there is no difference between Nazis and those who oppose them. A few years down the line, we’ll look back at this as a moment where we failed but then later we rallied. This is not the Reichstag Fire — the Reichstag Fire incident would be some act of terrorism where [von Clownstick] does not make evil something relative, but where he uses it as an occasion to suspend basic civil rights. That has not happened yet. Because when there is another incident, we know that the president could say, “Look, that was the ‘alt-left.’ Therefore we have to crackdown on the ‘opposition'” — which is most of the politically active population in the United States. That’s a very drastic position at the end.Update (August 28): Endorsing racism is one priority, pissing off liberals is also a motivation. Bob Cesca:
The close proximity between [von Clownstick's] horrendous comments about the Nazi terrorist attack in Charlottesville and the pardoning of Arpaio isn’t mere coincidence. I’d wager that [Fuckface] made the decision to pardon the controversial Phoenix sheriff as payback against his political opponents for criticizing [his] remarks in which he appeared to sympathize with the white supremacists, KKK members and neo-Nazis who gathered in Charlottesville.It's all part of a pattern where hate ("trolling") seems to be the only point.
Making decisions based on whether they will trigger “liberal tears” is nothing more than political road rage, ignoring everything else on the freeway including the oncoming tractor-trailer with the name “Mueller” printed on the side. Rewinding back to the attempt to repeal Obamacare, for example, [von Clownstick's] approach on this front has only managed to isolate him from his former Republican allies on the Hill, including the Senate majority leader, while utterly burying the repeal-and-replace process, likely forever. Pursuing a policy based on scolding Obama supporters turned out horribly for [Fuckface]. Frankly, I’m not sure why Schlichter and the others are so stoked about this tactic, given how [von Clownstick] has botched, bungled and failed virtually everything he has touched.
Then again, if trolling the anti-[Fuckface] coalition is the entire point of supporting the president — and it seems more and more like it is — then fine. If the full extent of the [von Clownstick] presidential legacy is nothing more than being the nation’s first troll president, I can live with that, especially if it continues to sabotage the GOP’s legislative priorities as well as significantly roadblocking [Fuckface's] longevity as chief executive.Update (September 15): Even black Republicans can't get through.
[Senator Tim] Scott made it clear that his motive for requesting the meeting was to explain to [von Clownstick] that there was no equivalence to the two sides in Charlottesville, saying, “There’s no way to find equilibrium when you have three centuries of history versus the situation that’s happening today.”
“Antifa is bad and should be condemned, yes, but the KKK has been killing and tormenting black Americans for centuries. There is no realistic comparison. Period.”
When asked after the meeting whether the president expressed regret over his post-Charlottesville comments, Scott displayed a “pained expression,” the New York Times reported, and said that [Fuckface] “certainly tried to explain what he was trying to convey.”Update (October 8): A small group of white supremacists returned to Charlottesville.
Thousands of people turned out on Thursday at the University of Florida to protest an afternoon speech by a prominent white supremacist, making their message clear: Richard Spencer, and those like him, are not welcome.Update (October 29): A rally in Tennessee was met with protesters and a second rally was cancelled.
We need to stop relitigating and referencing the Civil War as if there was some moral conundrum. There was no compromise to make – only a choice between continuing slavery and ending it. We need to move forward together, instead of letting the divisions of the past continue to force us apart.Update (March 6, 2018): Michael Edison Hayden has some good news.
The white supremacist, alt-right movement that rose during the presidential campaign of [Fuckface von Clownstick] appears to be splintering.
[K]ey figures in the movement [have] lashed out at one another in a public way, accusing each other in heated terms of sabotaging their efforts to organize.
The chaos, defection and infighting shows a political movement mired in turmoil seven and a half months after appearing united at the deadly Unite the Right event in Charlottesville, Virginia.
"North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” the president said Tuesday. “They will be met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before."Update (August 9): Bob Cesca thinks many Republican voters didn't expect their candidate to win and thus didn't fully consider the consequences.
Choosing national leaders isn’t a game or a whimsical matter. We shouldn’t be casting our votes just to troll people we don’t like on Facebook. And now we’re learning why.And Steven Rosenberg says hearing too many lies makes it hard to know what to believe.
A representative government like the United States requires the public to trust the words and actions of its leaders, and to hold those elected leaders accountable. What are we to make of this latest apocalyptic threat ...? No one knows. And that’s precisely the problem with having a pathological liar as president.Update (August 10): As always, he can't leave bad enough alone.
“Frankly, the people who were questioning that statement, was it too tough? Maybe it wasn’t tough enough" ... [He] would not comment on what’s tougher than “fire and fury.”
[He] doubled down on his comments later Thursday afternoon, promising retaliation if North Korea “does something in Guam.”
“It’s not a dare,” he said. “It’s a statement of fact.”Update (August 12): I guess violence can be the answer for everything.
The people are suffering and they are dying. We have many options for Venezuela including a possible military option if necessary.Update (September 5): Who is provoking who?
[Fuckface von Clownstick] is demonstrating that you can be obsessed with the idea of strength and go to absurd lengths to show you have it, but just wind up proving that you're weaker than anyone thought.Update (September 24): Our Dear Leader makes fun of their Dear Leader and now Iran is in the mix.
[Von Clownstick] should be providing leadership in pursuing an effective international strategy to deter North Korea, reassure US allies, add sanctions pressure, and engage in real diplomacy.
Instead, [Fuckface] is looking to rip up the deal that is currently preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. If he succeeds in doing so, he will help turn Iran into the next North Korea and ratchet up the chances of conflict.Update (October 9): He keeps dropping hints.
The top nuclear commander in the U.S. said Saturday that he would reject an “illegal” nuclear attack order from [Fuckface von Clownstick], and would instead steer the commander in chief to other “options.”I hope it's not even more troubling to realize parts of the government think we need some reassurance.
In congressional testimony earlier this month, retired Gen. Robert Kehler, who served as the head of Strategic Command from 2011 to 2013, also said that the military is only obligated to follow legal orders.Update (December 4): The U.S. and South Korea are conducting large-scale military drills--ignoring requests from China and Russia to avoid provoking North Korea.
[A]t the moment, they’re being pointed. And they’re being pointed by two people who are giving very good imitations of being crazy. That’s dangerous. I hope they’re pretending. They might be pretending. But to pretend to be crazy with nuclear weapons is not a safe game. It’s a game of chicken. Nuclear chicken.Update (January 8, 2018): Could it be that their Dear Leader has more common sense than ours?
In private conversations, [von Clownstick] has told advisers that he doesn’t think the 2018 election has to be as bad as others are predicting. He has referenced the 2002 midterms, when George W. Bush and Republicans fared better after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, these people said.Update (February 23, 2018): Senator Jim Risch is worried about what von Clownstick might do to North Korea.
[Fuckface] has "at his fingertips" the ability to trigger "one of the worst catastrophic events in the history of our civilization".Update (March 25, 2018): For now, Patrick Lawrence doesn't see much difference in attitudes toward North Korea with the appointment of a new national security advisor.
The South and the North confirmed their joint goal of realizing a Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons through complete denuclearization.Update (May 8, 2018): As expected, von Clownstick kept his promise to make sure the United States can't be trusted to keep its promises.
I am announcing today that the U.S. will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanctions.He can't pass up a chance to undermine anything Obama did. I sure hope Iran has more enlightened leaders than we do.
Pay attention to the words of Netanyahu in Washington and [von Clownstick] in Riyadh. Think of them not as political rhetoric, but as prophesies of a grim kind. You’re going to be hearing a lot more such prophesies in the months ahead as the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia move closer to war with Iran and its allies. While ideology and religion will play a part in what follows, the underlying impetus is a geopolitical struggle for control of the greater Persian Gulf region, with all its riches, between two sets of countries, each determined to prevail.Update (May 24, 2018): A planned summit between the U.S. and North Korea is cancelled. We seem have resumed the usual threats.
[O]ther countries see that playing chess with [von Clownstick] is like playing with a three-year-old. He gets an intent look on his face and appears to be thinking through his strategy, but really he's just moving pieces randomly all over the board. We will all have to hope that somehow he doesn't have a tantrum and upend the whole board. He's playing with millions of people's lives.Update (June 12, 2018): Parton suggests the summit was little more than a photo opportunity.
I have written before that any day we are not in a nuclear crisis with North Korea is better than the alternative. In that regard, the Singapore summit was a success. But after [Fuckface's] aggression against U.S. allies at the G7 in Quebec and then, in his own words, the "bond" he formed with the North Korean dictator just days later, nobody should be reassured. It looks as though the more consequential of the two big meetings was the first one, not the second.Is this trip simply another business opportunity for our Dear Leader?
They have great beaches. You see that whenever they're exploding their cannons into the ocean. I said, 'Boy, look at that view. Wouldn't that make a great condo?'
You could have the best hotels in the world right there. Think of it from a real estate perspective.Update (June 13, 2018): Parton quotes James Acton:
There are real risks to [von Clownstick's] expectations being dashed. Once diplomacy has been tried and it has “failed,” then the administration may start arguing that war is the only answer.Update (June 19, 2018): Michael Klare argues that China is the most likely confrontation.
With the possibility of war with North Korea fading in the wake of the recent Singapore summit, one thing is guaranteed: the new U.S. Indo-Pacific Command will only devote itself ever more fervently to what is already its one overriding priority: preparing for a conflict with China. Its commanders insist that they do not seek such a war, and believe that their preparations -- by demonstrating America’s strength and resolve -- will deter the Chinese from ever challenging American supremacy. That, however, is a fantasy. In reality, a strategy that calls for a “steady drumbeat” of naval operations aimed at intimidating China in waters near that country will create ever more possibilities, however unintended, of sparking the very conflagration that it is, at least theoretically, designed to prevent.
This report concludes that “it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”Another study estimates there is only a 5 percent chance that warming will be limited to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. Also, visualizing warming by country.
An article on Tuesday about a sweeping federal climate change report referred incorrectly to the availability of the report. While it was not widely publicized, the report was uploaded by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January; it was not first made public by The New York Times.Maybe that previous availability means the report wasn't exactly "news" as usually defined, but Dave Lindorff makes the case for paying attention anyway.
[U]nless some people in government read it and understand its clear warning, and unless American newsrooms move beyond their breathless focus on alleged Russian meddling in the last election and on the latest Bachelorette scandal, the question will not be whether America can be “great again,” but whether there will be any America at all to speak of, come 2100.Update (November 4): The National Climate Assessment is now officially released.
[T]he study authors outline the scientific uncertainty around things like feedback loops and tipping points. Essentially, there is so much human-influenced ecosystem change of which we aren’t yet aware — and so much that is unprecedented — that we can expect “abrupt and/or irreversible” surprises. The problem being, of course, that we don’t know what those surprises are.Also, Climate Action Tracker says that current policies have only a 0.5 percent chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius.
1. Humans are the cause of global warming.
2. The Earth is warming rapidly.
3. Sea levels are rising faster now than in the past.
4. Ocean ecosystems are increasingly at risk.
5. Extreme weather events are more frequent and intense.
6. The only way out is to reduce emissions.
