We need to talk about Donald: cursing and swearing allowed

[JimC]

That may not be so far from the truth. Film has undergone a resurgence in the last decade or so. Some film makers have re-released some of their classic film stocks.

Only as a niche speciality for a small group of enthusiasts, not as something that requires industrial scale production.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Scott Pruitt making the EPA great again.

'EPA Prevents Scientists From Speaking About Climate Change at Conference'

Before becoming President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt spent years fighting environmental regulation. Since taking over the EPA, Pruitt has denied the scientific community’s consensus opinion on global warming and removed most mentions of climate change from the EPA website, leaving agency employees worried that they will be prevented from keeping the public informed about climate change. Those concerns appear to have been borne out over the weekend, when the EPA barred three of its scientists from giving presentations on climate change at a conference in Rhode Island.

As the New York Times first reported, EPA scientists Autumn Oczkowski, Rose Martin, and Emily Shumchenia were scheduled to speak at Monday’s State of the Narragansett Bay and Watershed, an event that will coincide with the release of a report on the health of Narragansett Bay. Oczkowski, Martin, and Shumchenia all contributed to the report, which, according to organizers, features “significant” discussion of how climate change has affected the bay. Tom Borden, whose Narragansett Bay Estuary Program is hosting the conference, told the Times that an EPA official called him on Friday to cancel the scientists’ appearances. “I was not really provided with a clear explanation,” Borden said. “He advised me that it was the decision of the E.P.A. Office of Public Affairs.”

“It’s definitely a blatant example of the scientific censorship we all suspected was going to start being enforced at E.P.A.,” said John King, who also works on the program. “They don’t believe in climate change, so I think what they’re trying to do is stifle discussions of the impacts of climate change.” Meanwhile, Democratic Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse told the Washington Post that the EPA had “muzzled” the scientists. “Whatever you think about climate change, this kind of collaboration should be a no-brainer,” he said.

In an email to the Post, EPA spokesperson John Konkus wrote, “EPA scientists are attending, they simply are not presenting, it is not an EPA conference.” (The EPA provides $600,000 in annual funding to the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program.) The Post reports that “at least one senior regional EPA official” will attend the event, while it’s unclear if the scientists who were supposed to speak still plan to go.

[Brian Peacock]

This is at least the second time public sector scientists have been prevenrwd from attended or speaking at specialist environment conferences. No doubt the research and monitoring programs are being actively de-skilled as well.

[JimC]

Old King Coal will be happy...

[Brian Peacock]

Who is this John Konkus bloke anyway.?..

The Environmental Protection Agency has taken the unusual step of putting a political operative in charge of vetting the hundreds of millions of dollars in grants the EPA distributes annually, assigning final funding decisions to a former Trump campaign aide with little environmental policy experience.

In this role, John Konkus reviews every award the agency gives out, along with every grant solicitation before it is issued. According to both career and political employees, Konkus has told staff that he is on the lookout for “the double C-word” — climate change — and repeatedly has instructed grant officers to eliminate references to the subject in solicitations...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html.

[JimC]

He's in that Egyptian river, all right...

[L'Emmerdeur]

A Fox Business Channel interview with Trump allows him to do what he does best--prattle dishonestly and incoherently while strenuously patting himself on the back.

'Trump’s latest big interview is both funny and terrifying'

It’s not exactly a news flash at this point that Donald Trump isn’t very fluent on questions of public policy, but his interview over the weekend with Fox Business Channel’s Maria Bartiromo is really a sobering reminder of the levels of ignorance and dishonesty that the country is dealing with.

Bartiromo is an extraordinarily soft interviewer who doesn’t ask Trump any difficult questions or press him on any subject. That makes the extent to which he manages to flub the interview all the more striking. He’s simply incapable of discussing any topic at any length in anything remotely resembling an informed or coherent way. He says the Federal Reserve is “important psychotically” and it’s part of one of his better answers, since one can at least tell that he meant to say “psychologically.”

By contrast, it’s often hard to make any sense at all of Trump’s words. Asked whether he plans to tie an infrastructure plan to his tax plan, Trump says, “I was thinking about tying it, but there’s too many honestly.” Too many what? He then continues: “You lose a few votes, you gain a few votes. I don’t want to take any chances ’cause I feel we have the votes right now the way it is.” There is, of course, no tax bill at the moment, so there’s no way Trump has the votes for it.

It’s a funny interview in many ways. Along with being comically ignorant, Trump for some reason keeps referring to Chief of Staff John Kelly as “elegant.” But the prospect of a president of the United States who’s incapable of talking about any of the many issues he oversees in a reasonable way is also pretty scary.

...

Sometimes Trump’s factual errors are just a little bit of puffery.

Bartiromo says, “You see the job creation, as well this year,” to which Trump replies, “It’s been fantastic.” In reality, job creation this year — while okay — has been somewhat slower than job creation in 2016 or 2015.

He also gets numbers wrong, like when he says, “If we pick up one point on GDP that’s $2.5 trillion if you think of.” The right number would be $185 billion, so Trump missed the mark by a couple of trillion bucks — which is a lot of money even for a rich guy.

Trump also brags of last quarter’s 3.2 percent GDP growth that “we haven’t been there in a long time; it’s been a long time.” In fact, we had a stronger growth quarters in Q1 of 2015, Q3 of 2014, Q2 of 2014, Q4 of 2013, and Q3 of 2013. There’s nothing particularly unusual about it, in other words.

Trump, however, compounds his vague misstatement with some extra detail, saying, “As you know, the previous administration didn’t hit it for the year for eight years,” which isn’t remotely true, before reiterating, “In eight years it didn’t hit it at all.”

...

Over the course of the interview, Trump also claims to be working on a major infrastructure bill, a major welfare reform bill, and an unspecified economic development bill of some kind.

Under almost any other past president, that kind of thing would be considered a huge news-making get for an interviewer. But even Fox didn’t tout Bartiromo’s big scoops on Trump’s legislative agenda, because 10 months into the Trump presidency, nobody is so foolish as to believe that him saying, “We’re doing a big infrastructure bill,” means that the Trump administration is, in fact, doing a big infrastructure bill. The president just mouths off at turns ignorantly and dishonestly, and nobody pays much attention to it unless he says something unusually inflammatory.

...

Perhaps it will all work out for the best, and someday we’ll look back and chuckle about the time when we had a president who didn’t know anything about anything that was happening and could never be counted on to make coherent, factual statements on any subject. But traditionally, we haven’t elected presidents like that — for what have always seemed like pretty good reasons — and the risks of compounding disaster are still very much out there.

There's a full transcript available for masochists.

[Animavore]

I think...

I think I'm officially bored with Trump.

Like not like other times when I said similar then couldn't resist coming back. I actually don't care any more, and it makes me feel hollow and empty inside.

[Tero]

Trump is one thing. But we here find the House and Senate somewhat interesting. My both senators are assholes. She as she is just the 1% and a Betsy DeVos supporter. He as he is just a young upstart who takes no real side. He wants to be Republican Obama, young dude.

Occasionally I send emails to my congressman. Another asshole but he is more interested in local matters. His counties are all rural except ours (300 000 city) and one other city. He is a bit vulnerable if the Democrat can promise healthcare to farmers who have basically no group and pay through the nose.

[Tero]

Nafta too confusing for Trump. It has math.

But the bigger problem with Ross' argument is that he harps on the annual percentage drop in American-made parts in NAFTA imports while disregarding their rise in absolute terms. Thanks to the treaty, trade between the three countries has increased dramatically. For example, American imports from Mexico have increased from $40 billion to about $300 billion a year. So even if the percentage of American parts in these Mexican goods has decreased, in absolute terms it has increased from $10 billion to $46 billion. Ditto for Canada.

And of course, the Trump administration's flawed analysis leads to flawed remedies.

http://theweek.com/articles/731367/dona ... job-killer

[L'Emmerdeur]

The one man swamp.

'Trump Nearly Deported a Chinese Dissident — at a Casino Magnate’s Request'

Donald Trump has displayed a number of alarming instincts during his time in the Oval Office. One of these is a tendency to endorse the policy position of whomever he last spoke with; another is a penchant for making major geopolitical decisions on the basis of how they’d affect his people — which is to say, people who’ve demonstrated personal loyalty to him.

The former instinct recently led the president to call for the deportation of a Chinese dissident seeking asylum in the United States — while the latter caused him to change his mind.

Or so a new report from The Wall Street Journal suggests. The paper reports that casino tycoon Steve Wynn hand-delivered a letter to Trump that was written by the Chinese government. In the missive, Beijing urged the president to extradite Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman turned vocal critic of corruption in Xi Jinping’s government. Guo fled China in 2014 and is currently seeking asylum in the United States. Earlier this year, Chinese officials entered the United States on false pretenses in order to pressure Guo to return home. This effort failed.

But the letter — and/or Wynn’s presentation of it — temporarily succeeded. Wynn, who also happens to be the Republican National Committee finance chairman, reportedly handed Trump the document at a private dinner. It appears that Wynn didn’t just convey Beijing’s concerns, but also gave them his tacit endorsement. If so, Trump should’ve taken it with a grain of salt: The casino magnate owns multiple billion-dollar gambling properties in the Chinese region of Macau. To keep those facilities running, Wynn must get his casino’s licenses renewed by Chinese authorities on an annual basis.

But this potential conflict of interest did not seem to trouble Trump. During an Oval Office discussion of the Guo affair in June — shortly after his dinner with Wynn — the president reportedly asked his secretary, “Where’s the letter that Steve brought?” before telling his top advisers, “We need to get this criminal out of the country.”

Those advisers eventually convinced Trump not to deport the Chinese dissident — in part, by alerting the president to the fact that Guo was a member of his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

In a perfect world, the American president would neither take foreign-policy advice from a casino magnate with ties to the Chinese government, nor give special preference to asylum-seekers who frequent his luxury properties. But sometimes, the next best option is, apparently, to have a president who does both.

Just call him The Creature From Mar-a-Lago.

[Tero]

Benghazi!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-tru ... in-senate/

[L'Emmerdeur]

Benghazi!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-tru ... in-senate/

Mr. congressional "Benghazi!" himself, Trey Gowdy, has said straight out that congressional investigations are usually overtly political. With a Republican Congress, there's little chance of seeing a repeat of the circus that was "Benghazi!"

[Tero]

Fundamental belief: taxes are bad.
They will pass this one and Trump will sign it.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/2 ... 0?lo=ap_b1

[Tero]

Trump tops Trump! More lies, best lies ever!
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017 ... dates.html