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How In the World Did This Man Raise $12 Million to Draft Ben Carson?

Mother Jones

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Dr. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon, author, tea party hero, and Stuck On You star, is contemplating a presidential bid in 2016. He’s being cheered on by conservative activists—and by the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee, a super PAC founded in 2013 to urge Carson to run. The PAC sends out emails touting Carson, gathers signatures for petitions aimed at coaxing him into the race, and it raises money from conservatives enthralled with the prospect of a Carson presidency. A lot of money. According to Federal Election Commission filings, the Draft Carson PAC has raised an impressive $12.2 million since its founding—slightly more than Ready for Hillary, the pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC. Draft Carson has, in fact, done very little besides fundraise.

The guy responsible for collecting and managing Draft Carson’s huge haul is Vernon Robinson, the PAC’s political director and a notorious, perennial candidate with a history of rabid anti-immigrant rhetoric. An African-American, ex-Air Force officer from North Carolina, Robinson has repeatedly run unsuccessful campaigns for Congress. He calls himself “the black Jesse Helms”—a comparison the director of the late senator’s foundation declared “sad.” His congressional campaign ads—one of which characterized undocumented immigrants as flag-burners and sex offenders—are so out-there that political science professors use them to illustrate mudslinging at its dirtiest. In 2006, a Republican running against Robinson in a House primary said that he “scares me.” But win or (almost always) lose, the common thread in his political career has been remarkable fundraising success, with a big chunk of the proceeds Robinson has raised flowing to a small camp of conservative fundraisers, and sometimes, himself.

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How In the World Did This Man Raise $12 Million to Draft Ben Carson?

Posted in Anchor, bigo, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, Mop, Omega, ONA, Radius, Thayer, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How In the World Did This Man Raise $12 Million to Draft Ben Carson?

The U.N.’s latest report on climate change is terrifying

The U.N.’s latest report on climate change is terrifying

26 Aug 2014 7:46 PM

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The U.N.’s latest report on climate change is terrifying

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Yep, we know that greenhouse gas emissions are through the roof, and that climate change is already happening in a big, bad way, and that it’s only getting worse. But did you see the news stories about the latest draft report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? They are positively horrifying! We are royally f#!@%$#cked, everybody. The key word that the report uses to describe our plight: irreversible.

From The New York Times:

The world may already be nearing a temperature at which the loss of the vast ice sheet covering Greenland would become inevitable, the report said. The actual melting would then take centuries, but it would be unstoppable and could result in a sea level rise of 23 feet, with additional increases from other sources like melting Antarctic ice, potentially flooding the world’s major cities.

The IPCC — a team of scientists and other experts appointed by the United Nations to periodically review the latest research on climate science — has been rolling out its fifth assessment report in four installments, and this draft is the latest.

While it restates many things included in earlier reports, this time it uses stronger words in hopes that you and I and everyone else will actually freak out the way we should given the circumstances. Grueling heat waves, droughts, floods, and all kinds of extreme weather are likely to continue and intensify. And the IPCC is trying to get the world to do something about it.

Using blunter, more forceful language than the reports that underpin it, the new draft highlights the urgency of the risks likely to be intensified by continued emissions of heat-trapping gases, primarily carbon dioxide released by the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas.

And that’s because — despite what we know — we’re not doing better at curbing emissions.

From 1970 to 2000, global emissions of greenhouse gases grew at 1.3 percent a year. But from 2000 to 2010, that rate jumped to 2.2 percent a year, the report found, and the pace seems to be accelerating further in this decade.

There is a bit of good news, though: Efforts to curb emissions have been relatively successful at the local and regional levels in many countries, and continuing to lower emissions would at least slow the pace of all this change, if not stop it.

Anyway, at least this report is a “draft,” right? “It’s not final,” The New York Times notes, and could, theoretically, “change substantially before release,” which is slated for early November in Copenhagen. But even if it does, chances are it’ll still be pretty darn grim.

Source:
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Growing, and Growing More Dangerous, Draft of U.N. Report Says

, The New York Times.

UN climate change report warns of ‘irreversible’ impacts

, The Christian Science Monitor.

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The U.N.’s latest report on climate change is terrifying

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, Hagen, KTP, LG, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The U.N.’s latest report on climate change is terrifying