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Sunday, August 26, 2018: Promises Are Cheap – Outright Lies Are Better
"As a candidate, Donald Trump spoke about getting tough on Wall Street, fighting corporate consolidation and looking out for 'forgotten men and women' — rhetoric that won him the support of some working-class voters who had backed Mr. Obama. But he and his fellow Republicans in Congress have governed like conventional far-right conservatives — going easy on Wall Street, doing little about corporate consolidation, bolstering corporate profits and gutting a range of protections for those 'forgotten men and women.'
Last year, Republicans claimed their biggest legislative victory of the Trump era, reducing federal revenue by $1.5 trillion over 10 years by slashing taxes on corporations and wealthy families. The legislation provides generous and permanent tax cuts to rich people in the investor class, including foreigners who own stock in American businesses. Working-class families, by contrast, received minor savings that are set to automatically vanish after 2025."
From "Inviting the Next Financial Crisis", Editorial Board, New York Times, August 26, 2018
Saturday, August 25, 2018: On The Road To Extinction – An Inconvenient Truth
My hope has been that at some point Americans would wake up and recognize we are quickly destroying the earth and very likely setting the stage for the extinction of mankind. But alas, the fascist SOBs supporting the Republican Party are going to make sure that the environment doesn't get in the way of their goal of world domination and obscene corporate profits.
A recent New York Times Magazine was dedicated to our failure to act on climate change ("Losing The Earth"). Its premise is that when we had a chance to save the planet, we didn't. Republican administrations and carbon generating industries managed to kill any and all initiatives designed to address the issue of global climate change and we as a people failed to hold our government accountable.
Thirty years ago, in the decade from 1979 to 1989, we fundamentally lost the battle. According to the prologue of the article:
- Since the Industrial Revolution, the earth has warmed one degree.
- The Paris Climate Agreement (which we backed out of) hoped to restrict warming to two degrees.
- Based on a recent study, the current odds of making the two-degree target is 1 in 20.
- A two-degree rise is a prescription for long-term disaster and if we succeed and the earth only warms by two degrees, at a minimum we will see the extinction of the coral reefs and the oceans rise several meters.
- It has been argued that a more realistic estimate is a three-degree increase.
- At three degrees, we will see forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities.
- At four degrees, Europe is in a permanent drought, the Colorado River is dry, and the American Southwest is basically uninhabitable.
- At five degrees, we would basically see the end of civilization if we haven't nuked ourselves into oblivion before that time.
So how did be come to this point where we have a suicide pact with fossil fuels? Essentially, it comes down to the same human faults that have plagued the human race since its existence. Only this time, it could well lead to our extinction. In the mix are greed, ignorance, shortsightedness, selfishness, and just plain old stupidity.
The first warning of an impending global crisis came in a government report EPA-600/7-78-0019: technical report about coal. In that report was a paragraph that coined the term "greenhouse effect" and described how carbon dioxide emissions had the potential to alter the atmosphere and trap heat in the atmosphere.
In 1978 a group of elite scientists met to determine what would happen when carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere doubled from the pre-industrial period. Their conclusion was that doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would result in an average increase of 2 to 3 degree Celsius in global temperatures. This increase would create dust bowl conditions in large areas of North America, Asia, and Africa. Agricultural production would fall and access to potable water would significantly decrease leading to mass migrations. The polar ice sheets would melt and sea levels would rise by 16 feet, flooding large coastal areas.
It was abundantly clear that the third rock from the sun was in deep shit. Despite all the evidence, a series of Republican administrations initiated policies designed to exacerbate the problem. Reagan wanted to eliminate the EPA. Failing to do that, he appointed Anne Gorsuch, an anti-regulation zealot to head the organization. She cut the agencies staff and budget by 25%. The Council on Environmental Quality submitted a report to Reagan warning that fossil fuels would "permanently and disastrously" alter the Earth's atmosphere. Reagan's response – eliminate the council. Reagan was determined to the reverse environmental achievements of Nixon, Kennedy, Johnson, and if he could do it, Roosevelt.
Then came George H. W. Bush who claimed to be an environmentalist – not. Bush was the great pretender, leaving the anti-environment work to John Sununu. Sununu considered the environmental science as "technical garbage." Sununu worked diligently to insure that the White House didn't support any form of a global climate treaty.
In spite of some early support for a global policy on carbon emissions, the oil and gas industry, the coal industry, and the auto industry began to consider the impact it would have on their collective profits and decided to form a lobbying organization to spread disinformation about climate change. That organization spent $13 million on a single campaign to weaken support for the Kyoto Protocol.
The current administration will likely be the worst of them all. Trump is on course to undo every environmental protection established during the Obama years. Rather than reducing carbon emissions, Trump's plan is to dismantle the Clean Power Plan and roll back emission standards for coal burning plants. He has also lowered the MPG targets for the auto industry.
In a paper published last year by James Hansen, a respected environmental scientist, he noted that the planet is as warm as it was before the last ice age 115,000 years ago, when the seas were 19 1/2 feet higher than today. Supporting this finding, a recent CNN article, pointed out that the sea ice off Northern Greenland has started to break up. Because this ice is much thicker than other Arctic ice, it was assumed that the sea ice off Northern Greenland would last year round. But recent satellite imagery shows that for the first time on record, some of the Arctic's oldest ice has been replaced by miles of open water.
My advice, if you live on a coast line at sea level, sell your place and move to high ground, because in a few short years, your property is going to be under water.
Thursday, August 9, 2018: A Bad Tendency And A Clear And Present Danger
Right wing evangelists have used the First Amendment as the basis for spreading their filth and furthering their agenda. In the past their influence was minimal. The ability to reach and organize potential adherents was limited because the people who feed off their garbage tend to be dispersed and isolated. But the internet and social media have changed that. Where the far right had to print and physically disperse their propaganda and lies, now it is just a matter of leveraging technology and they can reach every wacko who has a smart phone or a computer connected to the internet.
My question is this. Does Free Speech now have to be placed into the context of modern technology and the tests of whether speech can be restricted or criminalized using the Bad Tendency Test or Clear and Present Danger doctrine need to be revised?
Is publishing lies and falsehoods designed to inflame the far right base a threat to our democracy? If it is, is it a "Bad Tendency" or a "Clear and Present Danger" and does that constitute something that should be restricted?
I would argue that there is a difference between protesting against something with the goal of expressing a grievance (Occupy Wall Street) versus publishing lies that are designed to undermine American democracy and incite a group to violence (Infowars). The first is acceptable and the second is a Bad Tendency that is a Clear and Present Danger to our democracy and to the vast majority of Americans who do not support the loose coalition of right wing racists, misogynists, nationalists, gun nuts, and Nazis.
Sunday, August 5, 2018: The Trump Groupies
As his presidency wanes, I have decided that the Trumpster gets off on his campaign style rallies. For him, the rallies are orgasmic. His Trumpies (Trump Groupies) bathe him in adoration and hang on his every word. They yell and scream at his command. He just doesn't just love the adoration; he needs it. It is his opiate. Without it he couldn't survive - he would simply curl up in the fetal position in the oval office and shrivel away.
What amazes me is how easily the trumpies are manipulated by the guy. I mean, what patriotic American would allow themselves to get whipped into an antagonistic frenzy over one of our core democratic freedoms - the freedom of the press. Oh wait, I just looked at a picture from the Trump rally in Tampa. The trumpies seem to be using their middle finger to indicate their IQ. Clearly they lack the basic literacy skills necessary to read and understand the First Amenndment of our Constitution.
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