We need to talk about Donald: cursing and swearing allowed

[Scot Dutchy]

Dont touch real beer.

[Forty Two]

North American auto parts, owned by the Chinese. http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20 ... ecord-pace - it's a trend all over - http://fortune.com/2016/03/18/the-bigge ... e-chinese/

That's a problem.

[Animavore]

More links between Trump support and the Alt-Right and it all begins with Gamergate.

http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news ... ht-w510618

[Animavore]

More scumbaggery from the most dangerous and threatening Republican administration yet.

http://thehill.com/policy/international ... ion-effort

US backs out of global oil anti-corruption effort

The Trump administration said Thursday it would exit an international effort to fight corruption that targeted revenue from oil and natural gas extraction.

The U.S. will no longer participate in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global initiative that requires member nations to disclose their revenues from oil, gas and mining assets, according to Reuters.

Under the agreement, the U.S. was required to reveal all the revenue it received from oil, gas and mining companies, and required those companies to publicly disclose the payments they make to the U.S. and other governments.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comm ... h=36fe209f

The Trump administration said Thursday it would exit an international effort to fight corruption that targeted revenue from oil and natural gas extraction.
The U.S. will no longer participate in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a global initiative that requires member nations to disclose their revenues from oil, gas and mining assets, according to Reuters.
Under the agreement, the U.S. was required to reveal all the revenue it received from oil, gas and mining companies, and required those companies to publicly disclose the payments they make to the U.S. and other governments.

Remember when believers in the Trump-caliphate cheered as he said he was going to drain the swamp of corporate influence?

I remember.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Back in March, I posted a link to a story about how the Trump/Tillerson Department of State was getting off to a remarkably rocky start. Things have not improved.

'Is Rex Tillerson Destroying the State Department in Order to Save It?'

Shortly after he was confirmed to lead the State Department, Rex Tillerson was tasked with overseeing its diminution. With President Donald Trump calling for the most radical budget cutbacks in a generation, the former oil executive has promised a top-to-bottom reorganization of the State Department along corporate lines, guided by business-consulting firms Insigniam and Deloitte. But as Tillerson studies the organizational charts, other problems mount. Several veteran diplomats say the paralysis has left the department crippled—and that the condition may persist long after Trump and Tillerson are gone.

According to these accounts, Tillerson has isolated himself, micromanaging in small, seemingly random areas while missing huge swaths of the big picture at Foggy Bottom and around the globe. “There are very few people who are in a trusted circle,” a recently departed top State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told me. “There is no possible way for a group that small to be able to do everything the department is supposed to be able to. What that means is you don’t end up with as much of a vision as you end up with a focus on whatever is hot at the moment. . . . If you start making decisions without a plan, you end up undermining our ability to do foreign policy, and the signal to the rest of the world—including our allies but also our adversaries—is not necessarily a stable one, and that’s problematic.”

...

While career staffers grapple with the changes, Tillerson has retreated to his bunker. Whether by design, lack of bandwidth or the result of White House influence, dozens of critical ambassador and assistant undersecretary positions remain unfilled. Instead, the secretary of state has leaned heavily on a small contingent of advisers, primarily made up of campaign veterans and foreign-policy neophytes. Tillerson’s coterie includes his chief of staff Margaret Peterlin; her deputy, Christine Ciccone; communications adviser R.C. Hammond; and senior policy adviser Brian Hook. Characterized to me by one current senior official as a team of “radical gatekeepers,” this foursome is said to have imposed a vice-like grip on the stream of information to and from the secretary, leaving veteran diplomats in the dark and on the outskirts of the decision-making process. “I think that the new team came in with this premise that obviously the last eight years were a total failure and that everything that was done—to some extent—was either inefficient, was too soft, or [fit] this idea of a bloated State Department,” one current mid-level staffer familiar with the dynamic told me. “Their solution to that has been to limit, pretty strictly, the flow of information—particularly Margaret Peterlin is very iron-fisted about that—and keeping a very small inner circle that is in the know and that decidedly does not include any career foreign service.”

...

Eighty-million dollars allocated by Congress to fight terrorist propaganda and Russian misinformation campaigns goes untouched as the State Department’s Global Engagement Center waits on action from Tillerson. Even readouts of Tillerson’s meetings with key foreign leaders are no longer distributed as they were in past administrations. “Things are going up but they’re not coming back down, if that makes sense,” a former foreign service officer who recently left the agency, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained. “It is all very opaque once it gets to that inner circle.”

Some argue that Tillerson’s leadership style harkens back to the era of James Baker, who served as secretary of state under George H. W. Bush. While a number of the current and former diplomats I spoke with acknowledged that it is not unusual for a secretary of state to work through a contingent of close advisers and the policy planning staff—as Baker did—they stressed that Tillerson’s dependence on Peterlin, Ciccone, Hook, and Hammond eclipses that of his predecessors. “Secretary Baker brought a handful of close aides that he’d worked with, but they were receptive and open to the career, experienced, senior foreign service, civil service, and so far Secretary Tillerson’s team hasn’t been,” a career foreign-service officer who left the State Department earlier this year but remains in touch with current staffers told me. “You hear the words ‘aloof,’ ‘walled off,’ because, frankly, they are not interested. They’re much more interested, in my view, in just having people implement what they are told.”

Not only had they not worked with the secretary before his nomination, Tillerson’s cadre of confidants also falls far short when it comes to diplomatic experience. Ciccone had most recently served as the chief operating officer of Jeb Bush’s failed presidential campaign, which followed stints as a Senate staffer and special assistant to President George W. Bush. Peterlin is a former Commerce Department and congressional aide with a law degree who helped draft the Patriot Act and shepherded Tillerson through his Senate confirmation. Hammond rose to prominence among the media for his combative relationship with reporters when he served as press secretary for Newt Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign. Of this group, only Hook—a veteran of the George W. Bush administration—has any notable foreign-policy experience. Diplomats I spoke with described Hook as Tillerson’s “right-hand person on all policies” who provides the decisions with a “substantive chop.” But while they said Hook was well-intentioned, they dismissed his previous experience as “a small slice,” and not “very relevant,” and characterized his previous role as the assistant secretary of state for international organizations as akin to being “in the wilderness” at the State Department.

[Animavore]

Inept, incompetent, corrupt, and drowning in the swamp. These ecocidal maniacs need to be ejected fast.

[Tero]

Beautiful tax cut! Best tax cut for Trump ever! It’s giving him an erection, one he hasn’t had since January! Bud Lights for MAGA hat people!

It’s time to abdicate. Pence? Ryan?

[Animavore]

Fossil fuels can help prevent sexual assault, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Thursday.

Perry described his belief at an energy policy event in Washington hosted by Axios and NBC News, while talking about how bringing power to African villages would save lives.

"But also from the standpoint of sexual assault, when the lights are on, when you have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts," Perry said. "So from the standpoint of how you really affect people's lives, fossil fuels is going to play a role in that. I happen to think it's going to play a positive role."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... lt-n816896

If you like fossil fuels so much why don't you start your car in your garage and inhale those sweet fumes?

[L'Emmerdeur]

Here's some more of that infamous 'fake news':

'Carter Page Says He Told Sessions of Russia Trip'

Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page told the House Intelligence Committee during a closed-door interview on Thursday that he informed Attorney General Jeff Sessions during the 2016 campaign that he was traveling to Russia. Page recounted the series of events to CNN after he testified in front of the committee for more than six hours, and Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), who is leading the committee’s Russia investigation, confirmed Page’s account. “If I were Sessions, I wouldn’t have recalled it either. It was just in passing. He was walking out of the room. A guy he had never met before, grabs him, ‘Hey, I’m out on the team. I changed my travel plans to go to Russia,’” Conaway said. Sessions previously told Congress that he was “not aware of anyone” from the Trump campaign who was communicating with Russians.

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has a remarkably convenient problem with his memory.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Trump is showing his true colors as a ham-handed blowhard authoritarian arse:

At the core of President Trump’s unfitness and his malfeasance in office is his interaction with the Justice Department and the courts. This goes from the merely verbal denigration of the courts — “a joke,” “a laughingstock,” “so-called judges” — to actual actions such as firing the FBI director, reportedly imploring the FBI director to lay off of former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, trying to meddle in the prosecution of Joe Arpaio (whom he subsequently pardoned for criminal contempt of court) and, now, directly encouraging the Justice Department to go after a political opponent for spurious, long-ago debunked claims.

In a series of tweets, he called on the Justice Department to go after the Democrats: “Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems … People are angry. At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!” In remarks to reporters, he continued on in this vein. “I’m really not involved with the Justice Department. I’d like to let it run itself, but honestly, they should be looking at the Democrats. They should be looking at [John] Podesta and all of that dishonesty. They should be looking at a lot of things. And a lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me.”

There is no president in modern memory who has repeatedly and directly called on the Justice Department to investigate a political opponent in such a manner. A politician, one could imagine, upon new and actual evidence of wrongdoing, might say something like, “The appropriate authorities should look into this.” That’s not what Trump is doing here. He is both assuming guilt and applying pressure to go after an opponent based on scurrilous propaganda that he and his followers have generated. This is the conduct of a Third World dictator, and by any stretch of the imagination, an abuse of presidential power.

[Brian Peacock]

Dont touch real beer.

OK, but I always use a glass anyway.

[Tero]

How long till Sessions fired?

[Svartalf]

he won't be fired, he'll resign, maybe after getting indicted...

[Animavore]

A reminder that supporting Trump and the Republicans is supporting ecocide, land loss, environmental destruction, extreme weather, displacement, and a threat to our way of life.

[quote="Macdoc";p="2595064"]Science 1 Dumpf 0

Trump admin. releases report saying climate change is driven almost entirely by humans

The report offers a stark contrast to the Trump administration's efforts to downplay human contributions to global warming. Earlier this year, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accord aimed at slowing climate change.

By CHRIS MOONEY JULIET EILPERINThe Washington Post
BRADY DENNIS
Fri., Nov. 3, 2017
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration released a dire scientific report Friday detailing the growing threats of climate change. The report stands in stark contrast to the administration’s efforts to downplay humans’ role in global warming, withdraw from an international climate accord and reverse Obama-era policies aimed at curbing America’s greenhouse-gas output.

The White House did not seek to prevent the release of the government’s National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by law, despite the fact that its findings sharply contradict the administration’s policies. The report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by human action, warns of potential sea level rise as high as 8 feet by the year 2100, and enumerates myriad climate-related damages across the United States that are already occurring due to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming since 1900.

“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the document reports. “For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”

The report’s release underscores the extent to which the machinery of the federal scientific establishment, operating in multiple agencies across the government, continues to grind on even as top administration officials have minimized or disparaged its findings. Federal scientists have continued to author papers and issue reports on climate change, for example, even as political appointees have altered the wording of news releases or blocked civil servants from speaking about their conclusions in public forums. The climate assessment process is dictated by a 1990 law that Democratic and Republican administrations have followed.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and President Donald Trump have all questioned the extent of humans’ contribution to climate change. One of EPA’s web pages posted scientific conclusions similar to those in the new report until earlier this year, when Pruitt’s deputies ordered it removed.

The report comes as President Trump and members of his Cabinet are working to promote U.S. fossil fuel production and repeal several federal rules aimed at curbing the nation’s carbon output, including ones limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, oil and gas operations on federal land and carbon emissions from cars and trucks. Trump has also announced he will exit the Paris climate agreement, under which the U.S. has pledged to cut its overall greenhouse-gas emissions between 26 per cent and 28 per cent compared to 2005 levels by 2025.

The report could have considerable legal and policy significance, as the scientific matter provides new and stronger support for EPA’s greenhouse gas “endangerment finding” under the Clean Air Act, which lays the foundation for regulations on emissions.

“This is a federal government report whose contents completely undercut their policies, completely undercut the statements made by senior members of the administration,” said Phil Duffy, the director of the Woods Hole Research Center.

more


https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017 ... umans.html

snip

The first document, called the Climate Science Special Report, is now a finalized report, having been peer reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences and vetted by experts across government agencies. It was formally unveiled Friday.

“I think this report is basically the most comprehensive climate science report in the world right now,” said Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers who is an expert on sea-level rise and served as one of the report’s lead authors.

It affirms that the U.S. is already experiencing more extreme heat and rainfall events and more large wildfires in the West, that more than 25 U.S. coastal cities are already experiencing more flooding, and that seas could rise by between 1 and 4 feet by the year 2100, and perhaps even more than that if Antarctica proves to be unstable, as is currently feared. The report says that a rise of over 8 feet is “physically possible” with high levels of greenhouse-gas emissions, but there’s no way right now to predict how likely it is to happen.

[/quote]

[pErvinalia]

I've been wondering if macdoc was still alive.

Is fact-man still posting?