Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

[Animavore]

Interesting article I came across.

A tale of two policies: climate change, Trump, and the U.S. military

The U.S. government appears to be of two minds, with utterly opposing worldviews, on climate change policy.

On one hand, the Trump Administration has pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, has proposed eliminating three vital new climate satellites, reneged on an Obama era $2 billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund, and wants to slash funding to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency domestic climate programs and State Department USAID climate programs around the globe. The President has also denounced global warming as a hoax and a Chinese plot.

On the other hand, the Republican-dominated Congress has affirmed that climate change is a prominent national security threat and mandated that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) look closely at how climate change is going to affect key installations, while also addressing the need to boost the military’s finances considerably to deal with global warming threats. When Trump’s National Security Strategy – announced in January – erased climate change as a threat to U.S. security, that decision drew the ire of a bipartisan group of congressional legislators.

As a result of this dichotomy, the DoD has emerged as an unlikely champion of climate action in the Trump government, with the Pentagon declaring emphatically that a rapidly warming world is bringing with it alarming security risks ranging from rising sea level (which threatens naval bases such as Norfolk, Virginia, the largest in the world), to the “mother of all risks” unpredictable and worsening political instability around the globe brought by climate chaos.

However, the U.S. military is far from being environmentally friendly. It has a horrifically destructive record as one of the planet’s worst polluters, and it also can lay claim to a heavy, and largely unreported, carbon bootprint (it is the single largest institutional user of fossil fuels in the world).

A year into Trump’s term, it remains to be seen whether the president’s climate-unfriendly policies will curtail the DoD’s global warming response. Complicating this question are efforts by the White House and Congress to wildly expand the size of the military, which could exponentially increase its fossil fuel bootprint, something critics argue is the opposite of what is environmentally needed.

“A threat multiplier”
While the NDAA mandate is important, it is not entirely new. Climate change has been on the military’s radar for well over a decade, but not due to the threat it presents to the planet’s environment.

First and foremost in the military mind is the Pentagon’s mission: to defend the United States and its national interest. Seen within this framework, climate change is viewed as a “threat multiplier,” rather than a distinct, standalone issue.

“Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration,” potentially leading to civil strife and war, reads the grim forecast outlined by the 2010 DoD Quadrennial Defense Review. The Pentagon isn’t alone in its predictions; a report from the American Security Project says that 70 percent of the world’s nations have assessed climate change as a threat to their national security.

However, the U.S. Armed Forces response isn’t to immediately cut its carbon emissions in order to curb climate change. Rather it is to determine how best to defend against the instability and chaos that climate change may bring to the international community, as well as the threat it poses to U.S. military bases and operations around the globe.

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/posting ... 22&t=53363

[Tero]

When Trump refused to deal with Schumer, or Kelly forbid him, Wall is off the table. Not even a chain linked fence to pee on:
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/ ... fer-359156

[DRSB]

Gary Shilling, Famed Bubble Detector

What are the chief positives of President Trump’s tax package?

The cuts, kind of, even up the playing field in the corporate area. They don’t really do much net-net in the individual area. They front-loaded them, with the idea of spurring the economy. But it was a political game — we’ve got an election coming up this fall. However, there was serious need in the corporate area for updating in a globalized world. We had a 35% tax rate, and now it’s 21%. Amazon and Microsoft and [other companies] had cash stashed overseas.

Why will the cuts have little effect on individuals?

There’s an effect in the next year or two because they’re front-loaded. But then that’s basically taken away in the succeeding years. So it may spur incomes in the next year or two, but that fades over time.

Will people start spending more?

Higher-end people don’t adjust their spending when their incomes or assets go up and down. But with more money in their hands, middle- and lower-income people tend to spend. So I think that whatever increases they get in income will probably go to rebuilding their savings, particularly baby boomers, who have been notoriously poor savers throughout their entire lifespan.

Gary Shilling, Famed Bubble Detector
http://www.thinkadvisor.com/2018/01/22/ ... 7fBg%3D%3D

[L'Emmerdeur]

Interesting article I came across.

Interesting yes, but not grounds for optimism, despite it being very mildly encouraging that at least some of the US government establishment isn't wed to the numb-skulled denialist position of Il Douche.

The link you gave doesn't go to the article, so ...

'A tale of two policies: climate change, Trump, and the U.S. military'

[L'Emmerdeur]

'How it feels to be a Muslim in Trump’s America'

[T]he biggest anti-Muslim bully of all sits in the Oval Office. Trump is often dismissed by his many critics as erratic, inconsistent, an empty vessel. Yet there is nothing erratic, inconsistent or empty about his fuelling of anti-Muslim hatred. There has been no “pivot” away from Islamophobia in office; rather, the president has doubled down on his bigotry. He appointed white nationalist fellow-travellers Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, from the anti-Muslim Breitbart News website, to senior positions in his White House. Both have since been sacked – but what about Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who called Islam “a toxic ideology”, or his housing secretary, Ben Carson, who said he opposed putting “a Muslim in charge of this nation”? Or the president’s CIA chief, Mike Pompeo, who has accused mainstream Muslim-American organisations of being “tied to radical Islam” and “potentially complicit” in terror attacks on US soil?

Trump has also been quick to use Twitter to denounce angrily any terror attack carried out by a Muslim, anywhere in the world, while either ignoring or responding with only brief and bland statements to mass killings by white Christians. The president has even stoked anger by tweeting about imaginary terrorist attacks (for example, in Sweden in February 2017 and the Philippines in June 2017) while also retweeting posts by far-right, Islamophobic activists such as Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First.

After an Isis-inspired terror attack in Barcelona in August 2017, Trump tweeted a debunked rumour about a US general during the Philippine-American War who supposedly killed his Muslim prisoners by shooting them with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. The implication was that America could learn from this horrific example. “Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught,” read the president’s tweet. “There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!”

So how did Trump respond to a bomb attack on a mosque in Minnesota in the same month as the Barcelona tragedy? An attack deemed an “act of terrorism” by Minnesota governor Mark Dayton? With online silence, of course.

The Trump era has been marked by a record number of attacks on US mosques. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of FBI figures, the number of assaults against Muslim Americans has now surpassed “the modern peak reached in 2001, the year of the September 11 terrorist attacks”. Two months ago, as I was walking near Capitol Hill with a Muslim friend visiting from the UK, a woman shouted out at us: “You people should get your countries to treat your women right.” (For the record, the head of government in our country is a woman; the head of her government was caught on tape bragging about sexual assault.)

...

These days, [Imam Mohamed] Magid is deeply concerned about the way in which the rise in anti-Muslim bigotry might be helping to fuel radicalisation among some young Muslim Americans. Violent extremism and Islamophobia “feed into each other,” he says. “They use the same tactics… the more people say they hate Islam and Muslims, the more the extremists say [to Muslims]: ‘We told you so.’” What would the imam say to the current president, if he had the opportunity for a one-on-one meeting? “We Muslims are part of America’s social fabric,” he says, recalling how he presided over the funeral of a Muslim American soldier, Ayman Taha, at Virginia’s Arlington cemetery in 2006. “I want [Trump] to acknowledge the ultimate sacrifice that Muslims have given to this country.”

[JimC]

President Scumbag to put massive tariffs on solar in an attempt to destroy renewables for his scumbag friends in oil. These fuckers don't care how many lives and property they ruin.

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/amp.theguar ... lar-panels

History will not be kind to them.

A possible silver lining to this could be if it spurred the actual production of solar panels in the US...

I've always thought it was a damn shame we don't manufacture them here; Oz is the perfect country for large scale solar...

[pErvinalia]

"discussed the possibility of..."

"would also 'potentially' fund the wall..."

I'm sure Schumer has discussed the possibility of potentially funding the wall on the southern border. Just as Trump and other Republicans have, at a minimum, discussed the possibility of a potential DACA fix.

The question is, will they agree to a deal. At this point - now that the GOP won the government shutdown battle -- if Trump gets what he wants on the border wall and border security, he can give the Democrats everything they want with DACA, but TRUMP will be able to claim credit for it. He will be able to say "I kept my biggest campaign promise - we have the wall funded -- and a revised border security law -- and we did it at the same time as we compassionately helped those individuals who are here through no fault of their own." about 75% of Republican voters are in favor of helping the kids -- the people who were brought here -- Trump will get a huge win.

Add to that the Tax cut which is resulting in bigger paychecks and massive investment in the US by business and industry, and deregulation an order of magnitude greater than Trump promised in the campaign..... ISIS destroyed (doesn't matter if you say obama had done a lot of the work already -- the campaign promise, which most of the left and Democrats said was a silly bluster, was to destroy ISIS - and they're done)... and a softening now of North Korea thanks to Trump's work with the Chinese and harder line stance.

I mean - Trump gets the wall/border security, and he's really notching up the policy wins.

Say what you want about the guy. But, he's proving his detractors wrong.

Umm, Mexico was supposed to be paying for it. He's failed on the wall before he's even started.

[JimC]

He has implied that if Mexico didn't pay for it directly, they would indirectly, possibly via tariffs etc...

Still bullshit, of course...

[Animavore]

President Scumbag to put massive tariffs on solar in an attempt to destroy renewables for his scumbag friends in oil. These fuckers don't care how many lives and property they ruin.

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/amp.theguar ... lar-panels

History will not be kind to them.

A possible silver lining to this could be if it spurred the actual production of solar panels in the US...

I've always thought it was a damn shame we don't manufacture them here; Oz is the perfect country for large scale solar...

That's if the US isn't sued under some part of the WTO.

[Tero]

twitter
Bill Maher
‏Verified account
@billmaher
19h19 hours ago

I think this deal happened cuz Repub and Dem lawmakers can bond on one thing: they hate Trump. They don't like each other, but now they're parents who share custody of a stupid fat kid.

[Tero]

Trump’s solar tariff backfires: It hits red states and U.S. taxpayers harder than China

"Southern states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina among the most impacted."

MJ Shiao, GTM’s head of Americas Research, explained in an interview that the states hurt the most by the new tariff are the “hot markets that are on the cusp of becoming economic for solar,” or that just became economic thanks to the steady and rapid price drops for solar cells and panels. Those states are disproportionately found in the South and Southeast.

In short, U.S. taxpayers will end up footing half the bill. “The investment tax credit for solar is 30 percent of capex [capital expenditure],” Amy Grace, head of North American research for BNEF, explained — so 30 percent of any tariff-driven price increase gets paid back through the tax code. And the tax code’s accelerated depreciation for new equipment means yet another portion of any tariff-driven price increase will, again, ultimately be paid back by U.S. taxpayers.

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-solar-t ... b1c4f7fbc/

[Forty Two]

Indeed, leave it to Think Progress to have an accurate and unbiased review of economic effects. After all, it's a progressive policy advocacy group, with a strong opposition to anything and everything Trump does, and a strong preference for socialism and leftist ideology. Politico wrote that it "openly runs political advocacy campaigns, and plays a central role in the Democratic Party’s infrastructure, and the new reporting staff down the hall isn’t exactly walled off from that message machine, nor does it necessarily keep its distance from liberal groups organizing advocacy campaigns targeting conservatives". https://www.politico.com/story/2011/04/ ... gop-053053 And, it's been funded by George Soros.

So... you can definitely believe them when they say that a Trump tariff policy will hurt American business, because nobody is more pro-American business than a Progressive political advocacy group.

So, to those who like to take issue with the quality and lack of bias in sources....

[pErvinalia]

So... you can definitely believe them when they say that a Trump tariff policy will hurt American business, because nobody is more pro-American business than a Progressive political advocacy group.

They didn't say it. They quoted some research group saying it.

[Forty Two]

With all due respect to "The Guardian" and "Think Progress" and their clear, unbiased reporting on the issue, I think we should refresh our memories on the topic by referencing the myriad posts you guys made excoriating the European Union for imposing the same tariffs on the same solar panels back in 2016 and 2017. The EU has set minimum import duties for Chinese solar modules and cells that price them up to 30 percent above market levels – a level roughly identical to Trump's.

The idea is that Brussels has long accused China of dumping solar panels on the European market, and Washington (not just Trump) have long accused China of the same thing. That's a long term trade problem, and both Europe and the US have calculated that it's important to put the kaibash on China now, or risk having China destroy both the US and Europe in the solar panel industry. http://www.pveurope.eu/News/Markets-Mon ... -18-months and http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/ ... fm?id=1461

Now... I'm sure the argument will be some form of justification -- Europe, of course, has good and honorable reasons for imposing 30%+/- tariffs on solar panels, and it's not for the evil purpose of destroying the solar panel industry to serve the mustache-twirling oil company executives and the hot-shot bankers. The US tariffs, of course, are for that evil purpose. We know that. Because, you know, Trump is evil. He wants to destroy the American solar panel industry, to serve his masters, the oil company (who he has next to no allegiance to, but who rule him anyway, we just know it...). Trump can't possibly be proceeding with a reasonable justification for imposing the tariff. It's just not possible.

[Forty Two]

So... you can definitely believe them when they say that a Trump tariff policy will hurt American business, because nobody is more pro-American business than a Progressive political advocacy group.

They didn't say it. They quoted some research group saying it.

I've just decided to join the playbook of some others here - if the source is biased, I'm not looking beyond it. Find a better source that's saying the same thing. I wouldn't trust "Think Progress" as far as they can be thrown.