Disgusting

Survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting are speaking out, and gun fanatics don't like it. In Florida, condemning pornography was deemed more important than banning assault weapons.

The students have been shamefully attacked. Two were accused of being "actors that travel to various crises when they happen". A video spreading conspiracy theories had to be removed from YouTube. A Texas district threatened to suspend protesters.

And the cowards in government don't give a shit about trying to stop mass shootings. They've decided that any number of deaths, every few weeks or so, is simply the price to pay for an imaginary "freedom".

Update (February 24):  Andrew O'Hehir applauds teenagers for opposing inaction and cynicism.

It was profoundly satisfying to see [Dear Leader] and Marco Rubio and NRA spokesbot Dana Loesch and various Fox News talking heads taken completely off guard, as a narrative they thought they understood spun out of control. How dare these kids express forceful and angry opinions, instead of weeping incoherently in the parking lot or organizing silent prayer vigils? The far-right conspiracy theories describing the Parkland young people and others like them as “crisis actors” — as far as I know, a term Alex Jones simply made up — is both a projection and an admission of weakness. Anyone who challenges the increasingly elaborate fictions through which the American right constructs its worldview must themselves be fictional.

Update (February 28):  Cody Fenwick reports on polls showing more enthusiasm on the side of gun control advocates.

Update (March 14):  One month after the Parkland, Florida shooting, thousands of students held walkouts all over the country to protest gun violence. Listening to a news report reminded me that among the schools participating are several with their own victims to commemorate.

Update (March 15):  Jeremy Adam Smith discusses a study that finds half of the guns in the U.S. are owned by only three percent of the population--and they are stockpiling even more.

The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy.

These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives.

Update (March 23):  Hundreds of thousands of students are expected at the March For Our Lives.

Update (March 25):  Even as they uphold the interests of the gun manufacturers, the NRA claims to be the group truly concerned with children's safety.

Today’s protests aren’t spontaneous. Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plan to DESTROY the Second Amendment and strip us of our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones.

Update (March 26):  The disgusting smears against teenagers continues.

[T]he right is attempting to weaponize the Parkland survivor's newfound fame in the form of a photoshopped image of her tearing up a copy of the U.S. Constitution.

Update (March 27):  John Paul Stevens criticizes a 2008 Supreme Court decision that prevented Washington, D.C. from enforcing strict gun control for constitutional reasons.

Overturning that decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the NRA’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.

Update (March 29):  Fearless indeed.

Several companies announced Thursday that they were pulling the plug on advertising during Laura Ingraham’s show after the Fox News host bashed a teen survivor of the Parkland school shooting.

The companies’ announcements came a day after Ingraham mocked David Hogg, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, for not getting accepted into a few of the colleges he’d applied to.

In response, Hogg called on people to pressure a dozen companies to remove their ads from Ingraham’s programs.

Hogg and his 14-year-old sister, Lauren, responded to Ingraham’s attack Wednesday night, calling out the Fox News host for cyberbullying students.

Update (July 25):  After a mass shooting, Toronto seeks to ban the sale of all handguns.

Irreversible

Robert Hunziker and Jeff McMahon relay the warning of James Anderson of Harvard University.

The level of carbon now in the atmosphere hasn't been seen in 12 million years ... and this pollution is rapidly pushing the climate back to its state in the Eocene Epoch, more than 33 million years ago, when there was no ice on either pole.

"The ocean was running almost 10ºC warmer all the way to the bottom than it is today ... and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere would have meant that storm systems would be violent in the extreme."

People have the misapprehension that we can recover from this state just by reducing carbon emissions .... Recovery is all but impossible ... without a World War II-style transformation of industry.

"The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero. ... Can we lose 75-80 percent of permanent ice and recover? The answer is no. ... People at this point haven't come to grips with the irreversibility of this sea-level rise problem."

Update:  This warning seems to be backed up by Eric Holthaus' report that global sea ice is at a record low.

Update (February 24):  Passed along by a colleague, the Onion probably gets it about right.

Sighing, Resigned Climate Scientists Say To Just Enjoy Next 20 Years As Much As You Can

Update (February 27):  The North Pole just experienced temperatures 30 degrees Celsius warmer than usual.

Temperatures may have soared as high as 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) at the pole, according to the U.S. Global Forecast System model.

Update (March 2):  Andrew Glikson discusses climate tipping points.

Update (March 3):  "The rich are destroying the Earth."

Update (March 6):  Last month was the warmest February for the arctic in the temperature record. Ruth Mottram:

[W]e’ve actually got open water at the top of Greenland right now, which is incredibly unusual.

Update (March 12):  In an interview with David Wallace-Wells, Wallace Smith Broecker discusses the need to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as well as replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

[I]t’s hugely expensive to do all that. I’m very optimistic in most things, but not about this. This is a huge problem, and we don’t have a clue how to solve it. It’s got to involve a tax, and the word tax is death to a politician.

[I]f we’re ever going to get this thing solved, we’re going to need an international group that has a lot of authority. It’ll have to be like the Fed, but to manage carbon. That would mean we’d all have to give up a lot of our sovereignty, but I think that’s the only way it would happen. It couldn’t be the U.N., because the U.N. doesn’t have the power. They’d have to be able to penalize, they’d probably have to have an army, because cheating would be very, very lucrative.

I’d say it’s one chance in a thousand. I mean, we may get to that. Maybe China will get so powerful that it can start to dictate. That’s what we need. Our democracy is shot, I think. It just doesn’t work.

Update (March 25):  Melting permafrost creates a positive feedback through the release of carbon. Chris Mooney describes a study published in Nature Climate Change as "suggest[ing] that methane releases could be considerably more prevalent as Arctic permafrost thaws".

Current studies report a minor importance of CH4 production in water-saturated (anoxic) permafrost soils and a stronger permafrost carbon–climate feedback from drained (oxic) soils. Here we show through seven-year laboratory incubations that equal amounts of CO2 and CH4 are formed in thawing permafrost under anoxic conditions after stable CH4-producing microbial communities have established.

Or, as Mooney writes:

The research finds that in waterlogged wetland soils, where oxygen is not prevalent, tiny microorganisms will produce a considerable volume of methane, a gas that doesn’t last in the air much more than a decade but has a warming effect many times that of carbon dioxide over a period of 100 years.

Update (April 22):  Thirty percent of the Great Barrier Reef died in 2016. And, there's an increasing "mismatch" in the availability of food.

A paper by ecologists at the University of Ottawa examined 88 species on four continents, and more than 50 relationships between predator and pray as well as herbivores and the plants they eat, and found that food chain events are taking place earlier in the year than they have in the past, because of the warming climate.

Also, while the administration does its best to destroy environmental protections, Anthony Ingraffea says that if natural gas fracking wells grow in number as expected, the world may cross the 2 degree Celsius warming threshold in 10 to 15 years. This is based on previous research at Cornell University showing that "shale gas" could have a worse climate impact than coal.

Update (May 5):  A battle is brewing over the Colorado River basin.

Update (May 14):  Referring to the water crisis in Cape Town, Robert Hunziker quotes Peter Johnston.

We are careening towards disaster on all fronts — whether it’s agriculture, pollution, soil, water, pesticides. The human race is hell-bent on destruction. It’s a case of looking at the future and saying we’re going to have to get used to using less water on a permanent basis.

Update (June 25):  Rather than "addiction to oil", Lance Olsen quotes John Platt for a different analogy--that climate change is the consequence of a "social trap".

The term refers to situations ... where men or whole societies get themselves started in some direction or some set of relationships that later prove to be unpleasant or lethal and that they see no easy way to back out of or to avoid.

Olsen explains that oil companies used to deny responsibility because consumption, not extraction of oil is what really caused rising carbon dioxide levels. It seems like innovations like agriculture or the internal combustion engine are examples of traps--eminently logical at the time but now nearly inescapable problems.

Update (June 26):  Russian energy interests may be hindering European Union efforts to reduce emissions. And in a possibly another example of a social trap, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed lawsuits against oil companies by California cities saying that the problem of climate change is too big for one person to solve.

Noting that the world has reaped many benefits from fossil fuels since the dawn of the industrial era, the San Francisco-based judge said “questions of how to appropriately balance ... worldwide negatives against the worldwide positives of the energy itself” must be handled by the U.S. government’s executive and legislative branches.

Update (July 5):  A report from the Climate Council warns that bleaching events are likely to become more frequent threatening the survival of the Great Barrier Reef.

Limiting temperature rise above pre-industrial levels to no more than 1.5°C is critical for the survival of at least some reefs worldwide. A global average temperature increase of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels would put 70 percent of coral reefs at risk of long-term degradation by 2100 and a rise of 2°C would put 99 percent of coral reefs at risk.

[G]lobal greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2020 at the latest and track steeply downwards thereafter, reaching net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest.

Update (July 6):  If there's a lethal heat wave in Canada, then we are truly fucked. And, Quriyat, Oman recorded the hottest daily low temperature of 108.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

Update (July 8):  A study published in Nature Geoscience argues that current predictions for the impact of climate change may be underestimates.

Comparison of palaeo observations with climate model results suggests that, due to the lack of certain feedback processes, model-based climate projections may underestimate long-term warming in response to future radiative forcing by as much as a factor of two, and thus may also underestimate centennial-to-millennial-scale sea-level rise.

Update (July 15):  Of all the consequences for climate change, I don't remember anything about the possibility of a giant iceberg off the coast of a city threatening to cause tsunamis if it breaks apart.

The more than 300-foot-tall iceberg towers over the village of 169 people on the west coast of the country. A video posted on Twitter shows a chunk of ice breaking off the massive block and plunging into the sea, sending large waves curling around shore.

This is Greenland, but could it happen next to a much larger population center?

Update (July 25):  Methane concentrations continue to increase with no clear explanation. Heat waves in the Northern Hemisphere may have pushed Siberia to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. But at least it's a fair fight.

Fossil fuel producers, airlines and electrical utilities outspent environmental groups and the renewable energy industry 10 to 1 on lobbying related to climate change legislation between 2000 and 2016.

Update (July 28):  The Washington Post summarizes events that are becoming all too routine.

“The old records belong to a world that no longer exists,” said Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Update (August 24):  Some of the oldest and thickest sea ice is breaking up off the northern coast of Greenland.

Update (December 10):  A study published in Nature Climate Change finds that the Great Barrier Reef tolerated a heat wave in 2017 better than the year before. And yet, half the corals were lost in the two years.

Update (August 18, 2019):  A paper by Robert Howarth finds that the rise in methane emissions since 2006 is associated with fracked shale gas. And 89 percent of that production comes from the U.S.

Update (August 31, 2019):  A report published by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority downgrades the prospects for the reef from "poor" to "very poor".

The findings directly point to runaway climate change spurred by greenhouse gas emissions as the prime threat to the structure, noting that the time to protect the reef's "long-term future is now".

Stormy Options

In an effort to avoid charges of violating campaign finance laws, Michael Cohen has admitted to paying a porn star using his own money. But the admission establishes the existence of a non-disclosure agreement which in itself violates the agreement. The woman involved is therefore no longer bound by the agreement. Can't a slimball get a break around here?

Update (February 16):  David Cay Johnston believes Fuckface has legal problems one way or another.

Paying a porn actress to keep silent about an illicit affair just days before an election would seem to qualify as “anything of value” [per FEC guidelines] to aide a presidential campaign.

On the other hand, if indeed Cohen paid off Daniels as a self-motivated act of kindness and this has absolutely nothing to do with the election—a far-fetched interpretation, for sure—then the IRS should be asking questions.

Also, how many are there?

Update (February 17):  Jeremy Binckes reminds us a president was impeached for lying about sexual affairs.

Update (February 18):  David Rosen and Paul Street examine the consequences of the on-going spectacle.

[His] election has had two consequences, one expected, the other not. Most worrisome, he renewed the culture wars, supporting some of the most regressive public-policy initiatives implemented since the current round of the culture wars began four decades ago.

Most unexpected, [von Clownstick's] arrogance likely contributed to the outing of movie-mogul Harvey Weinstein and helped fuel the subsequent male sex-abuse scandal now gripping the nation.

But, he will not soon leave office and we will be much worse off for that.

Besides the endless ... distraction and diversion that Wolff seems almost to bemoan even as he advances it (Fire and Fury is the ultimate monument to the nauseating culture of “OMG [he] really did/said/Tweeted that?!"), there is something else that Wolff doesn’t mention: the related danger of despair. Beyond the nonstop infantile titillation of the Brave New [Fuckface] World, the dreadfulness of the orange-tinted Awful One may also help foster and deepen public cynicism and apathy and a related forlorn sense that government and the nation’s political life are simply beyond redemption. This promises to dangerously reduce citizen engagement by telling Americans that politics are hopelessly stupid and pointless. Authoritarians love it when We the People turn away from public and political life.

Update (February 20):  Fuckface says "Never happened!"  But the woman involved has e-mail from the day of the incident. Again, the lie is an impeachable offense. But Republicans have no principles and don't care.

Update (February 25):  Mona Charen has the guts to confront fellow conservatives at CPAC.

I'm disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women who are in our party, who are sitting in the White House, who brag about their extramarital affairs, who brag about mistreating women.

And because he happens to have an ‘R’ after his name, we look the other way, we don’t complain.

She got booed and had to be escorted by security out of the event.

Update (March 3):  The deal with the porn star almost got called off.

Update (March 5):  This story about paying off the porn star isn't just some sideline on Fuckface's disgusting behavior.

[S]ince the [Steele] dossier was published, several examples have surfaced of [Michael] Cohen making secretive payments to cover up other potentially damaging stories.

Update (March 8):  So Fuckface is angry at his press secretary for trying to have it both ways on a secret arbitration--he wasn't involved but he won the case.

Update (March 10):  Charlie May reminds us that the barrage of White House scandals means significant policy issues still get overlooked. Meanwhile, Alyssa Mastromonaco explains why divestment of secrets and financial holdings is important.

Regardless of whether there’s more to know — and I suspect there’s plenty — what the Daniels saga demonstrates is that the White House officials’ unwillingness to disclose their sordid pasts has compromised the security of the United States. Daniels is blackmailing [Fuckface] right now; she wants to expose her version of what happened between them.

Update (March 12):  The porn star is offering to return the $130,000 in exchange for being able to tell her story.

[The] offer puts [Fuckface] and Cohen in a bind: If they reject it, it could "be seen as effectively acknowledging the existence of a continuing effort to keep Ms. Clifford silent about an affair that Mr. Cohen and the president say did not happen."

I hope she milks it for all she can.

Update (March 15):  Another lawyer is involved.

Update (March 16):  Here comes the countersuit. Michael Avenatti:

How can [Fuckface von Clownstick] seek $20 million in damages against my client based on an agreement that he and Mr. Cohen claim Mr. [von Clownstick] never was a party to and knew nothing about?

Update (March 20):  In another lawsuit, a model wants to be able to tell her story as well. And a defamation lawsuit brought by a women accusing Fuckface of sexual harassment will proceed.

Update (March 23):  In an interview with Anderson Cooper, the model talks about her feelings about the affair and tells his wife that she's sorry. There could be an aspect of self-promotion, but why should her story be suppressed or denied? Because if he's having consensual affairs, then there were others who turned him down and that's what lends credence to the harassment claims.

Update (March 26):  Heather Digby Parton doesn't care about the affairs and hopes the harassment charges have their day in court.

But beyond the cultural and social aspects of this scandal and what it says about the privileges of rich, white men and the exploitation of women, there is another serious issue of national civic importance. This is a story about a rich (and now extremely powerful) man who is so worried about being exposed or blackmailed that he has everyone who works for him sign nondisclosure agreements. Now it appears that he set up an elaborate system for paying hush money to keep people quiet. If Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels are telling the truth this system may include coercion, conspiracy and threats of violence.

Update (March 27):  Even "consensual" affairs can be nuanced as Shannon Weber explains by referring to Deborah Tolman's research with teens.

One prevailing theme Tolman found was the tendency for girls to describe sex as something that “just happened” to them.

Meanwhile, Michael Cohen is facing a defamation lawsuit for calling the porn star a liar.

If the lawsuit is heard in court, the key question will be whether Daniels's claims about the president are true. This could give her the opportunity to prove, for the world to see, that she did have a sexual relationship with the president — a spectacle that would rival the Monica Lewinsky scandal of the 1990s. It could also potentially require [Fuckface] or Cohen to be deposed, and if they lie, they could open themselves up to perjury charges.

Update (March 30):  Andrew Levine praises "all the president's women", especially the porn star.

How wonderfully appropriate it would be if she were to become the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Even in a world as topsy-turvy as ours has become, there has to be a final straw.

To be sure, evidence of [Fuckface's] vileness, incompetence, and mental instability is accumulating at breakneck speed, and there are polls now that show support for him holding fast or even slightly rising. [Dear Leader's] hardcore “base” seems more determined than ever to stand by their man.

But even people as benighted as they are bound to realize eventually that they have been had. Many of them already do, but don’t care; they hate Clinton Democrats that much. This is understandable, but foolish; so foolish, in fact, that they can hardly keep it up indefinitely.

To think otherwise is to despair for the human race.

Update (April 5):  The porn star's lawyer is ecstatic.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday, [Fuckface von Clownstick] said he was not aware of a $130,000 payment his lawyer made to a former adult film star in 2016, marking the first time he has commented publicly on the matter.

Update (April 9):  FBI agents raided the office of Michael Cohen. Orangeman is not happy.

So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man, and it’s a disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch-hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time.

And it could easily have to do with a lot more than just the porn star.

Update (April 10):  Fuckface fumes, "It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for." So an attack apparently lead by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

I think I'm realizing this raid is truly significant. It has greatly heightened political pressures. Dear Leader's remarks were totally unhinged. There's reporting on whether Rosenstein will be fired. The press secretary claims that "[w]e’ve been advised that the president certainly has the power to [fire Mueller]". Meanwhile, there's an escalating conflict in Syria with the U.S. considering military action and Russia warning against it.

I'm worried that there's so much going on that a war will just happen with no resistance and then, once it starts, now that's the distraction from all the other corruption being uncovered. I just don't see how we handle a war and a constitutional crisis at the same time.

Update (April 12):  There's a story about paying off a doorman to keep quiet.

[O]ne big unanswered question is what [Fuckface von Clownstick] or his campaign may have promised the Enquirer in exchange for its efforts to kill all these stories about [his] private life. Similarly, the payoff agreement with adult film actress Stormy Daniels isn't about whether or not [Orangeman] ever slept with a porn star. It's about whether, in the days leading up to the presidential election, [Fuckface] consigliere Michael Cohen was ordered to write her a big fat check, perhaps on the orders of the candidate or his campaign. If [he] is ever forced to testify about these events under oath, the consequences could be devastating: The cover-up is almost always bigger than the crime.

Regarding Syria, Heather Digby Parton is hopeful Dear Leader's corruption will help prevent needless carnage.

[T]he Russian president may be enjoying the spectacle of [Fuckface] squirming as he tries to restrain himself from becoming the brutal, remorseless "war president" he is temperamentally suited to be -- perhaps because he is hamstrung by something Putin knows and Mueller is close to finding.

Update (April 13):  The New York Times reports that "advisers have concluded that a wide-ranging corruption investigation into his personal lawyer poses a greater and more imminent threat to the president than even the special counsel’s investigation".

And the attack on Syria is happening.

Could the timing of the attack have anything to do with what Peter Stone and Greg Gordon are reporting?

The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that [Fuckface von Clownstick's] personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the [Orangeman] campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help [Dear Leader] win the White House. Undercutting [Fuckface's] repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.

Update (April 15):  For the record, Cohen continues to deny he has even been in Prague.

The Syrian airstrikes are being described as useless. And Sarah Kendzior argues that the attack is in fact a massive distraction.

Mr. [von Clownstick's] condemnation of Bashar al-Assad is both disingenuous and self-serving. His sudden concern over chemical weapons is as contrived as it was last year, when under a similar firestorm of scandal [Fuckface] launched strikes into Syria in an operation that did nothing for Syrians but plenty for Mr. [von Clownstick], winning him praise from gullible pundits who deemed him “presidential” overnight.

Mr. [von Clownstick's] troubles now are more of a legal than a public relations matter, as the Mueller probe bears down on his closest associates, including his campaign managers Paul Manafort and Rick Gates and his long-time lawyer Michael Cohen. The tidal wave of revelations about the President’s shady deeds is so massive and ominous that it cannot be stopped by a Middle East incursion – unless that incursion transforms into a full-fledged regional war drawing in Iran, Russia, Israel, Turkey, and, as a result, the rest of the world.

Also, non-interventionist right-wingers are pissed at Dear Leader.

Update (April 17):  Are we living in a computer simulation where some 13-year-old hacker is just fucking with us?

Update (April 18):  Heather Digby Parton ponders:

What would possess a man with such a shady track record in business to expose himself to the kind of scrutiny that comes with being president of the United States? Did he truly believe that third-rate operators like Michael Cohen could successfully cover his tracks?

Update (April 19):  Jay Goldberg has some advice for his former client.

Michael [Cohen] will never stand up [for you].

Goldberg warned that "even hardened organized-crime figures flip under pressure from the government". Continuing:

The mob was broken by Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano caving in out of the prospect of a jail sentence.

Heather Digby Parton follows up.

Do you know who made the deal with Gravano? It was an assistant attorney general in the criminal division of the Department of Justice. His name was Robert Mueller.

Update (April 23):  Corroboration for the porn star's claims.

Update (April 26):  Fuckface just can't keep his big mouth shut.

Michael [Cohen] would represent me, and represent me on some things. He represents me. Like, with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me.

Michael Avenatti has the easiest job in the world.

Update (May 3):  Rudy Giuliani says Cohen was on retainer and used that money to pay the porn star. Fuckface now agrees with this story--nothing illegal, just covering the "incidental expenses" any rich person would have.

Update (May 4):  Except now Clownstick suggests Giuliani might not quite know what he's talking about and even a FOX anchor can't handle the lies anymore. And a curious bit from Giuliani defending First Daughter who so far hasn't been a target in Mueller's investigation. Cenk Uygur speculates that counsel are ultimately seeking information on her and would hang her potential indictment over Fuckface to pressure him to resign.

Update (May 7):  Rudy Giuliani on why he can't recommend that his client talk to special counsel and just tell the truth if he actually has nothing to hide:

I wouldn't be an attorney if I did that, I'd live in some kind of unreal fantasy world [where] everyone tells the truth.

Update (May 14):  After the election, C-SPAN apparently had a camera in the lobby of Fuckface Tower and someone reviewed the tape from December 12, 2016.

Michael Avenatti posted photos Sunday on Twitter showing ... Michael Cohen getting into an elevator at [Fuckface] Tower with a man appearing to be a Qatari banker accused in a lawsuit affidavit of boasting that he bribed Washington politicians.

A group of men — including the man who appears to be al-Rumaihi — can be seen getting into an elevator with Cohen. Cohen pats one of the men on the back as the group enters the elevator.

Update (May 15):  The Qatari investor confirms his presence at the December 12 meeting. And now an entirely new corruption story.

A mere 72 hours after the Chinese government agreed to put a half-billion dollars into an Indonesian project that will personally enrich [Fuckface von Clownstick], the president ordered a bailout for a Chinese-government-owned cellphone maker.

Update (May 16):  Heather Digby Parton considers this new arrangement.

Could this be a coincidence? Sure.

But the fact is that the [von Clownstick] and Kushner families are so steeped in conflicts of interest that selling out the national interest to line their pockets is the most logical explanation for any situation where their business interests are involved.

Also, in a financial disclosure form for 2017, Fuckface had to acknowledge his reimbursement of Cohen which had not been reported as a liability in 2016. The former director of the Office of Government Ethics says "it would be a crime to knowingly and willfully omit any required information from a report".

Update (May 30):  Michael Cohen's lawyer doesn't deny the existence of audio recordings.

Update (July 26):  Ted Rall thinks the conspiracy story with Russia doesn't make sense and besides, no one cares. So maybe Cohen's tapes will destroy Orangeman.

Update (August 16):  The Wall Street Journal reports that Michael Cohen initially didn't want to pay off the porn star until after Fuckface was caught on tape bragging about sexual assault.

If it is true that Cohen moved to broker the payment specifically because he was worried that it could further damage the campaign in the wake of the "Access Hollywood" tape, then it will be that much easier for the government to prove the payment was, in fact, campaign-related, and therefore illegal.

Meanwhile, Chuck Rosenberg notices Cohen has been very quiet recently.

The reason you're hearing silence, I think, is because he's cooperating. He was asked the same thing: Tell us the truth and don't talk to anyone else. And guess what? He's not talking to anyone else.

Update (August 21):  This can't be good (and his former campaign chair was also convicted today):

Michael Cohen, [Fuckface von Clownstick's] former lawyer and personal fixer, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to illegally interfering in the 2016 election at the direction of the president.

These are campaign finance violations.

Cohen said he violated the law in making hush money payments during the campaign at the direction of a candidate for office.

It's not yet clear if Cohen will be cooperating with prosecutors.

Update (August 22):  Who needs collusion when there are so many other crimes to prosecute? Jessica Schulberg and Ryan Reilly explain:

[Von Clownstick] and his team were accustomed to breaking the law to get what they wanted. The effort to win the presidential election was no different.

Manafort and Cohen probably could have continued committing financial crimes and making lots of money for the rest of their working lives if only [Fuckface] hadn’t won the election and become ensnared in a special counsel investigation. All three men had engaged in legally dubious business practices for decades without attracting too much scrutiny from federal investigators. It was only after their wrongdoing bled into the realm of hacking and espionage that there was the political will to hold them accountable.

Update (August 23):  Michael Cohen had an agreement to bury negative stories about the Republican nominee as far back as August 2015.

Update (August 27):  Jesse Eisinger argues that Manafort and Cohen thought they could get away with it because white-collar crime has been a lower priority for the Justice Department in recent years.

And Jim Kavanagh warns that we're not better off with von Clownstick removed from office. He writes that these investigations are happening precisely because Clinton wasn't elected.

[Fuckface] is a horrid political specimen. I witnessed his flourishing into apex narcissism and corruption over decades in New York City, as chronicled by the dogged reporter, Wayne Barrett, and I would be surprised if there weren’t financial crimes in his closet that any competent prosecutor could ferret out. Anyone who knows his history knows that this is the kind of dirt the Mueller investigation was most likely to find on [Orangeman]; anyone who’s honest knows that this is the kind of dirt it was meant to find. Russiagate was a pretext to dig around everywhere in his closet. [Dear Leader] was clueless about the trap he was setting for himself, and has been relentlessly foolish in dealing with it. It is a witch hunt, and he’s riding around on his broom, skywriting self-incriminating tweets.

Update (September 9):  Fuckface is trying to remove himself from the lawsuit brought by the porn star.

Update (September 26):  So because Dear Leader disbelieves and tells lies about his own accusers, then there's no reason to believe what any woman says about sexual misconduct?

Update (October 2):  The Wall Street Journal reports that Fuckface coordinated with one of his sons to silence the porn star.

Update (November 9):  The Wall Street Journal reports that Federal prosecutors do have evidence Fuckface directed the hush money payments.

Pecker called off the deal [to be reimbursed for the McDougal payment] because he was concerned that it would be considered an in-kind campaign contribution, a key detail as it signals that there was an awareness of the impact that such a story would have on [von Clownstick's] electoral prospects.

Around the same time, Daniels was preparing to go public .... Pecker, though, refused to buy her story.

Cohen told prosecutors that he then went to [Orangeman] with the news that they would have to handle the $130,000 payment themselves, and [Fuckface] told him to "get it done".

Update (December 27):  McClatchy reports that cell phone records place Michael Cohen near Prague in late summer 2016. This corroborates April reporting that Cohen met with Russians. Cohen has publicly denied ever being in Prague multiple times.

Update (March 4, 2019):  Jane Mayer reports that FOX News had the story about the porn star before the 2016 election, but refused to publish it. Mayer's sources claim FOX executive Ken LaCorte told Diana Falzone:

Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert wants [Fuckface von Clownstick] to win. So just let it go.

Update (August 1, 2019):  While the Federal campaign finance investigation is over, the State of New York is looking into criminal charges related to the porn star payoff.

Holocene Temperature Trend

A paper by Jeremiah Marsicek et al published in Nature compares palaeoclimate data with a climate model.

[W]e show that temperatures reconstructed from sub-fossil pollen from 642 sites across North America and Europe closely match simulations, and that long-term warming, not cooling, defined the Holocene until around 2,000 years ago.

Overall, our reconstructions indicate that the on-going warming today would have started from a baseline approximately 0.5°C higher than observed had millennial-to-centennial-scale variations not produced cooling over the past two millennia that deviated from Holocene trends. The reconstructions support the ability of models such as CCSM3 to capture large-scale climate responses to external forcing and important internal dynamics.

The most glaring part of the picture is the rapid warming of the past 50 years.