Author Archives: BudHockaday

Here’s Why Donald Trump Needs a Facebook Page

by BudHockaday Posted on December 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’ve been so fixated on Donald Trump’s mesmerizing Twitter performances that it’s escaped my attention that he also has a well-maintained Facebook page.1 As near as I can tell, it’s used for three things. First, when 140 characters won’t do and he needs someone to write an in-depth 65-word essay for him:

Second, when he wants to add some grade-school artwork to a grade-school tweet:

And third, when he wants to make a poster, suitable for scrapbooking, out of one of his quotes:

The quotes are great. I expect a Trump 2017 calendar made up of these pearls. Putin has one, after all. Plus a calendar offers tons of opportunities for keeping his message front and center. January 25: “68th anniversary of first Emmy Awards. Celebrity Apprentice should have gotten one!” February 2: “Groundhog Day! Yes, I’m still president.” March 23: “Obamacare is 7 years old. I’ll repeal it!” April 1: “Sexual Assault Awareness Month starts today!” April 15: “We’re the most highly taxed nation in the world. Sad!” May 5: “Time for a taco bowl!” June 14: “It’s my birthday!”

July 28: “It’s been a year since Khizr Khan insulted me. He still hasn’t apologized.” August 13: “Berlin wall created. Walls work!” September 17: “Electoral College is 230 years old today. Hooray!” October 19: “Everybody says I demolished Hillary in the third debate a year ago!” November 8: “First anniversary of biggest landslide victory in presidential history!” December 3: “International Day of Persons With Disabilities!” December 31: “Last day for all the rest of you to make charitable donations!”

This has so many possibilities. Trump should be all over it.

1Also Instagram and, at least once, a famous Snapchat filter. But he’s not on Pinterest, Tumblr, or Flickr. Time to branch out, Donald.

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Here’s Why Donald Trump Needs a Facebook Page

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Trump Talks Policy!

by BudHockaday Posted on August 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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A “friend” of mine forced me to read the transcript of Sean Hannity’s interview with Donald Trump earlier this week, and it was fascinating in a train wreck kind of way. After a few minutes, Hannity said it was time to get serious and talk policy. Trump says great, let’s do it. So Hannity then tries manfully to get Trump to explain how Mexico is going to pay for a wall on the border. No dice:

HANNITY: You talked about Mexico. How quickly could you build the wall? How do you make them pay for the wall, as you said?

TRUMP: So easy. Will a politician be able to do it? Absolutely not….

HANNITY: Is it a tariff?

TRUMP: In China — listen to this. In China, the great China wall — I mean, you want to talk about a wall, that’s a serious wall, OK….

HANNITY: Sure.

TRUMP: So let’s say you’re talking about 1,000 miles versus 13,000. And then they say you can’t do it. It’s peanuts. It’s peanuts….

HANNITY: So through a tariff?

TRUMP: We’re not paying for it. Of course.

HANNITY: You want to do business, you’re going to help us with this.

TRUMP: Do you know how easy that is? They’ll probably just give us the money….And I’m saying, that’s like 100 percent. That’s not like 98 percent. Sean, it’s 100 percent they’re going to pay. And if they don’t pay, we’ll charge them a little tariff. It’ll be paid.

Trump gets five chances to explain his plan, and all we get is endless bluster. It’s easy! Hell, the Great Wall of China cost more! We’re not paying for it! The closest Trump comes to an answer—after prompting from Hannity—is some kind of tariff on Mexican goods, which of course is illegal under NAFTA. Trump would have to abrogate the treaty and get Congress to agree. In other words, maybe just a wee bit harder than he thinks.

(Oh, and Mexico’s president says the entire idea is a fantasy. “Of course it’s false,” a spokesman told Bloomberg News. “It reflects an enormous ignorance for what Mexico represents, and also the irresponsibility of the candidate who’s saying it.”)

The whole interview with Hannity is like this. The fascinating part is Trump’s ADHD. He just flatly can’t stay on topic, and I don’t think it’s fake. He constantly veers off into side topics: how far ahead he is in the polls; how everyone says he won the debate; how good a student he was at Wharton; how he’d send Carl Icahn to China; etc.

And then there’s the Hannity/Trump math. In Texas, there have been 642,000 crimes by illegal immigrants since 2008. Obamacare premiums are up more than 40 percent this year. Unemployment is at 40 percent. The whole 5.4 percent thing is just a government lie.

I don’t even really have a comment on this stuff. On a lot of subjects—his replacement for Obamacare, for example—it’s obvious he’s just making up his policy on the spot. Um, health accounts! And, um, no more state lines! And catastrophic insurance, sure! And preexisting conditions! You bet. And then….an ADHD segue into Obama playing golf, and Hannity finally gives up and switches topics.

I understand that the second part of the interview is even better. If I’m bored enough, I’ll take a look at it when the transcript goes up. Like I said, kind of fascinating if you’re the sort of person who likes to gawk at car wrecks on the side of the road.

Link: 

Trump Talks Policy!

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Climate change could flood your streets with doo-doo and toxic waste

by BudHockaday Posted on June 12, 2014

Ah shit

Climate change could flood your streets with doo-doo and toxic waste

By

Stefan Klocek

Oakland and surrounds.

Rising seas and ferocious storms linked to global warming won’t just bring water to our doorsteps. In some cities, it will deliver a witches’ brew of sewage from low-lying drains and toxic waste from Superfund sites and industrial areas.

That’s because when seas rise, they don’t just top over shorelines. They can burble up through waterfront infrastructure like sewage systems. New America Media reports from Oakland, a port city built along San Francisco Bay — an estuary that’s vulnerable to the rises in the Pacific Ocean on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge:

Because the flatlands are the lowest part of the city, they receive the overflow in a storm drainage system that relies on gravity and a sewer system that planners expect will be overwhelmed by sustained high water levels or by a storm surge of three or four feet above high tide. Water, and whatever industrial runoff or sewage is mixed with it, would backflow out of storm sewers onto streets, yards and basements.

“Some of the first flooding likely to occur will be in the low lying areas in Oakland, where the poor people happen to live,” said Lindy Lowe, lead senior planner of the Adapting to Rising Tides project of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. …

“Nobody from the hills to the flatlands will be able to flush their toilets” if a storm surge or rising tides were to top four feet, said Jeremy Lowe, sea level rise program manager at ESA and author of tidal wetland design guidelines for San Francisco Bay and an ecosystem-based climate change adaptation plan. …

“Most of the effects on communities will be the flooding of infrastructure,” said BCDC’s Wendy Goodfriend, a senior planner on the Adapting to Rising Tides project, with no where for the water to drain. “Drainage is a problem in East Oakland and West Oakland. These neighborhoods rely on sump pumps,” she said, to deal with saturated yards and homes during rainy seasons.

Short of armoring with New Orleans-style levees, the best adaptation solutions for cities like Oakland could be retrofitting and replacing infrastructure, relocating businesses, and abandoning neighborhoods. That’s a shitty pill to swallow.


Source
Sea Rise Threatens Oakland’s Sewer System, New American Media

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Climate change could flood your streets with doo-doo and toxic waste

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