Tag Archives: pence

Republican lawmakers’ familiar blame game hangs COVID’s spread on young people

Taking no responsibility for coronavirus infections raging to new records amid the rash reopenings of businesses, beaches and bars, the White House and governors are now playing the role of Aristotle: They blame the young for bringing us down.

Leading this ancient lament on excessive juvenile gratification is Vice President Mike Pence. Over the last week, as infections rose in 38 states and Puerto Rico, according to tracking by the New York Times, Pence admonished Americans under 35, saying they bear “particular responsibility” to not infect their elders. He urged them to wear masks to blunt the spread of the virus. On CBS’s Face the Nation, he wagged his finger at partying younger adults, saying they may “have disregarded the guidance that we gave.”

It is impossible to regard Pence as the nation’s nanny when he and President Trump have actually offered little guidance during the worst pandemic in modern medical history. Despite 126,000 Americans being dead, Trump rarely wears a mask. Rather, he has speculated on efficacy of ingesting disinfectant, promoted off-label use of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine — which the National Institutes of Health says confers no benefit — and went the last half of May without speaking with his infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci. The president’s March prediction of 50,000 deaths will likely be tripled in a month and may soar beyond 175,000 fatalities by October.

Both Pence and Trump are back at rallies and appearances where supporters and choirs shout and sing unencumbered by masks. There was no scolding by the administration of 20-somethings at Trump’s recent young conservative voter rally in Phoenix where masks were roughly as evident as Black Lives Matter t-shirts.

Following suit in viral hypocrisy are Trump-supporting governors who have overseen some of the nation’s most disastrous reopenings. Take Florida, which according to public health experts, has had a more than 200 percent spike in cases in its rolling 14-day average. The state saw 9,585 new coronavirus cases on June 27, seven-and-a-half times more than the previous high during April and May. Governor Ron DeSantis blamed younger adults for creating cramped conditions in bars – that, mind you, he reopened — where “caution was thrown to the wind.”

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott blames 20-somethings for that state’s nearly 140 percent rise in its rolling 14-day average of cases. That includes a new record of high of 6,584 infections on June 24, more than triple the single-day record during April and May. Abbott complained that young adults are “not wearing face masks, they’re not sanitizing their hands, they’re not maintaining the safe distancing practices.” (This is quite the umbrage from a governor who banned municipalities from issuing mandatory mask orders with penalties, and only just now is looking the other way as localities are implementing them anyway in a desperate bid to fight the virus.)

To be clear, the frolicking of the young is being noticed in Democratic strongholds where the virus is ablaze, but they are not being assigned complete blame. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom is also blaming playdates, birthday parties, and adult family gatherings. Such events invariably are organized by parents and older adults.

As for the White House, DeSantis, and Abbott, even Aristotle might shake his head over a septuagenarian president who is burying science wherever he can, a sexagenarian vice president who was slow to address HIV/AIDS as governor of Indiana, and a host of lapdog governors past the age of 40 telling us to behave as they reopened unsafely, without a sustained decline in cases and without robust testing and contact tracing in place. National Public Radio and Harvard’s Global Health Institute reported Tuesday that only four states are doing enough testing to suppress the virus. DeSantis, Abbott, and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp are among the COVID hotspot governors who have been accused of cherry-picking, manipulating, or ignoring data to justify reopening.

Their own poor behavior on COVID-19 is a logical outcome of their general disregard for science, public health, and the environment. DeSantis this winter received a D from the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club for his performance on environmental protection. Abbott runs a state where environmental spending was cut 35 percent between 2008 and 2018. The governor’s blaming of the young is the latest volley in a generational battle, where baby boomers and older Gen Xers create a hot mess and then place an undue burden on younger people to save humanity.

That is literal with climate change and the planet frying up. Witness the sharp rise in youth climate activism over the past several years, where 20-somethings and teens — like Greta Thunberg and the members of the Sunrise Movement — have pointed their fingers at the older generation for dragging its feet on climate change. Instead of being moved by the pleas of the young, Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have belittled them, specifically Thunberg. Our supposed leaders, instead of mandating or modeling the behaviors needed to stem a crisis, are passing the buck to younger people even as their cowardice robs our youth of weddings, proms, and graduations.

Worse, it appears that game of relying on the young has infected more than the older fogies who told us to get back to work, get back in the barber’s chair, roll one down the bowling alley, and eat, drink and be merry. Administration officials who still have some credibility at coronavirus task force briefings or congressional hearings are joining the chorus.

Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield recently singled out people under 40 as having a societal responsibility not to spread the virus. After saying last week that the coronavirus has “brought this nation to its knees,” Redfield on Tuesday told a Senate hearing: “It is critical that we all take the personal responsibility to slow the transmission of Covid-19 and embrace the universal use of face coverings. Specifically, I’m addressing the younger members of our society, the Millennials and the Generation Zs — I ask those that are listening to spread the word.”

As necessary as it is for all of us to take personal responsibility on COVID-19, it is scary to see Fauci and Redfield creep down the same road as Pence and the red-state governors. Surely they know in their hearts who told America that the water was fine and firewater could flow again. If health officials are going to tell us that the young are silent time bombs for the virus, they also have to tell us who lit the fuse. It was not the 20-somethings.

Source article:

Republican lawmakers’ familiar blame game hangs COVID’s spread on young people

Posted in Accent, alo, Casio, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Republican lawmakers’ familiar blame game hangs COVID’s spread on young people

The Republican Health Care Bill Is In Deep Trouble

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Jonathan Chait has a question:

No, no, no, no, no! Remember when we thought it might be better if Donald Trump won the Republican primary because Hillary Clinton would be sure to beat him? Then James Comey came along.

Shit happens, people, and there’s no predicting it. I doubt that the Republican bill can pass the Senate, but it might. The only thing we should care about is taking every possible opportunity to stop it, whenever and wherever we have a chance. Period.

(Besides, I doubt that voting for this bill will do much harm to Republicans when the midterms roll around. That’s still 20 months away, and besides, at least the yes voters can say they did everything they could to repeal Obamacare but leadership screwed it up.)

And speaking of the Republican bill, apparently the whip count really is falling short. So now the vote has been postponed to Friday. Maybe. It all depends on whether Paul Ryan and Donald Trump can figure out something else to capitulate on in order to win the votes of the crackpots in the Freedom Caucus.

Oh, and one more thing: CBO has rescored the bill. The original version reduced the deficit by $337 billion. The new one reduces it by only $150 billion. But that’s already out of date. They’ll have to score it again after Ryan and Trump finish negotiating with the conservatives. But it’s worth noting that Ryan doesn’t have a lot of headroom left if he also needs to negotiate with moderates who want a slightly less brutal program. Another $150 billion and the bill won’t reduce the deficit anymore. And if it doesn’t reduce the deficit, it can’t be passed under reconciliation.

But wait! One final thing: earlier I noted that the Republican bill is allowed to repeal only the elements of Obamacare that directly affect the budget. So if Republicans try to add provisions that repeal, say, essential benefits or pre-existing conditions, the Senate parliamentarian is likely to rule that they have to be jettisoned. However, as the presiding officer of the Senate, VP Mike Pence has the final word on this. He could just declare the parliamentarian wrong and allow the vote to go forward.

But what justification would he offer? As it happens, Republicans already have one handy. Last year, a number of them made the argument that the “direct effect” rule should be applied to the whole bill, not to its individual parts. In other words, Obamacare can be repealed completely because Obamacare as a whole directly affects the budget. If Republicans go down this road, that’s what you’re likely to hear.

However, my guess is that if Pence does this, he’ll lose a whole bunch of votes from moderate senators who won’t be a party to something that effectively kills the filibuster. So it probably can’t pass the Senate either way.

View original: 

The Republican Health Care Bill Is In Deep Trouble

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Republican Health Care Bill Is In Deep Trouble

The Question the White House Won’t Answer: Did Trump’s Campaign Have Contact With Russia?

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The first question at White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s daily briefing on Tuesday—half a day after the news broke that national security adviser Michael Flynn had resigned—focused on a key issue: Flynn’s contacts with the Vladimir Putin regime during the campaign. Flynn has been under fire for his post-election conversations with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, during which he discussed the sanctions President Barack Obama was imposing on Russia as punishment for Moscow’s meddling in the US election. But ABC News’ Jonathan Karl asked whether any Trump associates were in touch with the Russian government before the election.

This is important, for that would mean that Trump folks were in contact with the Putin regime while it was attacking American democracy. Trump and his team have adamantly denied there were any interactions with Russian officials. At a press conference in mid-January, Trump ignored a question about such contacts. Once the event was over, he said, “No contact.” Days later, on Face the Nation, incoming Vice President Mike Pence said the Trump campaign had no interactions with Moscow. Host John Dickerson asked him, “Did any adviser or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?” Pence declared, “Of course not. And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.”

Yet the Washington Post reported days ago that Kislyak told the newspaper he had been in touch with Flynn since before the election. The ambassador declined to say what he and Flynn had discussed. And the newspaper reported that the Flynn-Kislyak conversations “were part of a series of contacts between Flynn and Kislyak that began before the Nov. 8 election and continued during the transition, officials said.” These facts and Kislyak’s comment undercut Trump’s and Pence’s assertions there were no pre-election contacts.

So what was Spicer to say when Karl posed this query? At first, Spicer said that Flynn did speak to the Russian ambassador during the transition. No, Karl protested, that’s not the question. What about before the election? Spicer then sputtered out this reply: “There’s nothing that would conclude me that anything different has changed with respect to that time period.”

That contorted reply would seem to mean that the White House is sticking to its previous denial. But this assertion runs contrary to what is now the public record: that the Trump campaign was in contact with Putin’s man in Washington while Putin was subverting an American election to help Trump. What was going on? What was said? What messages did Flynn send to the Putin regime? These are the obvious questions that warrant answers. They are also dangerous questions for Trump. And that’s why Spicer cannot acknowledge the hard truth that the Flynn scandal started before the election. These contacts deserve as much, if not more, attention than the conversations that triggered this controversy, for they are relevant to the fundamental subject at hand: Trump’s relationship with the autocratic leader who mounted an operation to subvert American democracy to assist Trump.

Link to original: 

The Question the White House Won’t Answer: Did Trump’s Campaign Have Contact With Russia?

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Question the White House Won’t Answer: Did Trump’s Campaign Have Contact With Russia?

Michael Flynn Is In Big Trouble

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The Washington Post has the latest on Flynngate:

The acting attorney general informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States….It is unclear what the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, did with the information.

Well, within a few days Trump had fired Yates for not defending his immigration order. At that point, I imagine no one in the White House felt like approaching the boss with any other bad news she had passed along. In any case, the issue here is threefold. First, did Flynn talk with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition to assure him he shouldn’t worry about Obama’s sanctions for interfering with the election? Second, was Flynn in touch with Kislyak before the election, while the Russian interference was actively taking place? And third, did he lie about it?

In the waning days of the Obama administration, James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, shared Yates’s concerns and concurred with her recommendation to inform the Trump White House. They feared that “Flynn had put himself in a compromising position” and thought that Vice President Mike Pence had a right to know that he had been misled, according to one of the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

A senior Trump administration official said that the White House was aware of the matter, adding that “we’ve been working on this for weeks.”

….Kislyak, in a brief interview with The Post, confirmed having contacts with Flynn before and after the election, but he declined to say what was discussed.

So: the intelligence community concurred that Flynn had spoken to Kislyak about sanctions; he “misled” Pence about this; the Trump White House has known about this for weeks; and Flynn was indeed in contact with Kislyak during the campaign. It’s no wonder that the White House has declined to stand behind Flynn and now says they are “evaluating the situation.”

The New York Times has more details:

The Justice Department had warned the White House that Mr. Flynn…could be open to blackmail by Russia, said a former senior official….The White House has examined a transcript of a wiretapped conversation that Mr. Flynn had with Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador….The conversation, according to officials who have seen the transcript of the wiretap, also included a discussion about sanctions imposed on Russia after intelligence agencies determined that President Putin’s regime tried to interfere with the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf.

Still, current and former administration officials familiar with the call said the transcript was ambiguous enough that Mr. Trump could justify both firing or retaining Mr. Flynn….Former and current administration officials said that Mr. Flynn urged Russia not to retaliate against any sanctions because an overreaction would make any future cooperation more complicated. He never explicitly promised sanctions relief, one former official said, but he appeared to leave the impression that it would be possible.

The AP’s Julie Pace confirms that the White House has been aware of this for weeks. The Times claims that Mike Pence is especially peeved at Flynn and has taken his concerns directly to Trump. They also say that White House officials have already started “discussing the possibility of replacements.”

The other big question here is, inevitably, what did the president know and when did he know it? Was Flynn freelancing the whole time? Or was he acting with Trump’s blessing? A few days ago David Corn asked what had become of the big Russia scandal, which seemed to have disappeared from view, and now we know. It was just waiting for the right moment to rear its ugly head again.

Visit site:  

Michael Flynn Is In Big Trouble

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Michael Flynn Is In Big Trouble

Nine People Say Mike Flynn Lied About His Phone Calls With the Russian Ambassador

Mother Jones

The routine lying by the Trump administration is just beyond belief. Mike Flynn has consistently denied that he talked to the Russian ambassador in December about President Obama’s sanctions against Russia, but apparently he did exactly that. Here are Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima in the Washington Post tonight:

Flynn on Wednesday denied that he had discussed sanctions with Sergey Kislyak. Asked in an interview whether he had ever done so, he twice said, “No.” On Thursday, Flynn, through his spokesman, backed away from the denial. The spokesman said Flynn “indicated that while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

….The emerging details contradict public statements by incoming senior administration officials including Mike Pence…Nine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

All of those officials said ­Flynn’s references to the election-related sanctions were explicit. Two of those officials went further, saying that Flynn urged Russia not to overreact to the penalties being imposed by President Barack Obama, making clear that the two sides would be in position to review the matter after Trump was sworn in as president. “Kislyak was left with the impression that the sanctions would be revisited at a later time,” said a former official.

A third official put it more bluntly, saying that either Flynn had misled Pence or that Pence misspoke. A spokesman for Pence did not respond to a request for comment. The sanctions in question have so far remained in place.

Nine officials! And every one of them says Flynn explicitly talked about the sanctions that Obama levied on Russia as retaliation for their cyber-hacking during the campaign. The message: don’t worry about it. We’ve got your back.

Do these guys ever tell the truth? About anything?

Original article:  

Nine People Say Mike Flynn Lied About His Phone Calls With the Russian Ambassador

Posted in Cyber, FF, GE, LG, Naka, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Nine People Say Mike Flynn Lied About His Phone Calls With the Russian Ambassador

Riveting Moments From Donald Trump Inauguration Protests—Updated

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In the coming days, crowds of Donald Trump supporters will take to the streets to welcome the new president, including at Thursday’s Make America Great Again rally at the Lincoln Memorial and Friday’s inaugural parade outside the White House.

But a whole lot of people are organizing to protest Trump, including more than 1 million people who are expected to participate in women’s marches around the world.

Here are highlights from some of the protests. Come back here for more news as we update this story.

January 20

Mother Jones reporters are on the scene covering the protests ahead of today’s swearing-in ceremony:

January 19

Tensions are high as protesters confront Trump supporters attending the “Deploraball,” an inauguration celebration at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Protesters rally outside the Trump International Hotel in New York, joined by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, filmmaker Michael Moore, actor Alec Baldwin, and other high-profile speakers.

January 18

Hundreds gather for a “Queer Dance Party” outside of Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s Chevy Chase house. Firas Nasr, founder of WERK for Peace, tells DCist that the event is meant to show that “homophobia and transphobia is wrong and should be resisted.” As Indiana’s governor, Pence had a poor record on LGBT rights, signing a bill to protect businesses that discriminated against gay people.

Originally from:

Riveting Moments From Donald Trump Inauguration Protests—Updated

Posted in FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Riveting Moments From Donald Trump Inauguration Protests—Updated

The World According to Trump

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Here is the version of reality that Donald Trump and the Trump team have been spreading around since the election:

Trump’s victory was one of the biggest in recent history.
Trump kept a Ford plant from moving to Mexico.
Snobby New York theater elites were rude to VP-elect Mike Pence on Friday.
The demonstrations and marches following the election were the work of “professional protesters.”
The New York Times apologized for its anti-Trump coverage during the campaign.
Trump won the debates handily.
He totally could have won the Trump University lawsuit, but chose to settle for the good of the country.

It’s only been ten days so far. Can he keep this up for four years?

Link to original – 

The World According to Trump

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The World According to Trump

Paul Ryan Is In Trouble, But Happier Days May Be Ahead

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

With 19 days until Hillary Clinton is elected president, we can now turn our attention to what happens afterward. In particular, what happens to Paul Ryan?

Right now, things look grim for the Speaker. In last week’s YouGov poll, only 37 percent of Republicans thought he was a weak leader. Then he abandoned Donald Trump for good, and now 51 percent say he’s a weak leader. And why do they think he’s so feeble? Last week, 26 percent thought he wasn’t conservative enough. This week it’s 25 percent. This suggests that views about Ryan are almost entirely driven by his estrangement from Trump, not by any problem with his ideology.

Then there’s a new Bloomberg poll suggesting that Ryan’s leadership future looks bleak. Republicans say they prefer Mike Pence, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz over Ryan.

What’s more, as Martin Longman points out, Ryan has never been supported by the tea party faction in the House, and only barely won election as Speaker in the first place. Next year, Republicans will probably have a smaller majority, which means that it will take only a dozen or so defectors to deny him reelection.

So: the future looks grim for Paul Ryan, no? I’m not so sure. For starters, the YouGov poll doesn’t impress me. In the heat of the moment, Trump supporters are turning against Ryan for abandoning their hero. But Trump is going to lose big league, and when that happens a lot of the Trump frenzy will die off. I imagine that once the fog clears, Ryan’s standing with Republicans will pretty much return to normal.

Second, the Bloomberg poll is based almost entirely on name recognition and, again, the heat of the moment. Mike Pence is not going to lead the Republican Party. Neither is Donald Trump. And Ted Cruz is still just as disliked as ever.

In any case, none of this has much to do with whether Ryan can win reelection as Speaker. For him to lose, he either has to drop out or else the tea party caucus has to decide to vote against him. Will that happen? It might. But even tea partiers know that if they block Ryan, they’ll be stuck in the same mess they were in last year: who can they agree on to replace him? There are very few plausible candidates around, and there are certainly no plausible candidates who are more conservative than Ryan. So it’s hardly a slam dunk that they’re going to touch off yet another party crisis by blocking him.

My advice: Wait and see. Things are going to cool down after the election, and Ryan may come out looking better than people think. If that happens, Ryan then has to make a choice about how to govern. Will it just be the usual obstruction? Or will he team up with Republican moderates to take the party back from the hostage-happy tea partiers, and even team up with Democrats occasionally to pass a few important bills that might revive the party’s fortunes?

I’m not sure. But I wouldn’t count Ryan out just yet.

View original article: 

Paul Ryan Is In Trouble, But Happier Days May Be Ahead

Posted in Casio, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Paul Ryan Is In Trouble, But Happier Days May Be Ahead

Here’s What Donald Trump Really Thinks of America’s Scientists

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
JRLPhotographer/iStock

It wasn’t much of a surprise Thursday when Donald Trump’s campaign issued a blistering statement condemning the Paris climate agreement. The deal—which has now been ratified by enough countries to go into effect next month—is a giant first step toward cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming. “Politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue to make bad deals that undermine the interests of the American people,” said a Trump spokesman. “The Paris Accord is just the latest example. Hillary Clinton and other supporters of this global political agreement ignore the reality that it will cost the American economy trillions of dollars.”

It was a bit more surprising, however, that Team Trump decided to use the opportunity to criticize the nation’s scientists. “Mr. Trump and Gov. Pence appreciate that many scientists are concerned about greenhouse gas emissions,” said the statement. It then added, “We need America’s scientists to continue studying the scientific issues but without political agendas getting in the way.”

A few months ago, the implication that scientists were skewing their results to match their supposed political agendas might have seemed like a relatively tame statement from Trump. After all, he spent years declaring that global warming is a “hoax” perpetrated by “scientists who are having a lot of fun.” In July, he defended his use of the word “hoax” by invoking the widely debunked “ClimateGate” scandal: “If you look at Europe where they had their big summit a couple of years ago, where people were sending out emails—scientists—practically calling it a hoax, and they were laughing at it.”

But more recently, Trump has been trying to run away from that rhetoric. During the first debate, Trump insisted (falsely) that he’d never described climate change as a Chinese hoax. The following day, Pence—who once described climate change as a “myth”—acknowledged that human activities do “have some impact on climate.” Regardless, it’s now clear that Trump still thinks scientists are lying to us.

I reached out to a few climate scientists to get their reaction to Trump’s latest attack on them. Needless to say, they weren’t pleased. Trump’s statement is “just another underhanded way of dodging the scientific reality and engaging in mud-slinging against honest scientists by arguing they are engaging in a political agenda,” said Michael Mann, an atmospheric scientist at Penn State, in an email. “This is very Trumpian projection, since of course it is only him and Pence and their fellow congressional climate change deniers who are engaged in a political agenda.”

But years of Trump-like rhetoric seems to have taken its toll. A new survey from the Pew Research Center found that just 32 percent of respondents believe that climate science is guided by the “best available evidence” most of the time. Meanwhile, large majorities of respondents say that climate research is influence at least some of the time by the scientists’ political beliefs and efforts to advance their careers.

All of this helps explain why, according to Pew, just 21 percent of respondent have “a great deal” of confidence that scientists will act in the best interests of the public. Of course, that doesn’t mean the public trusts Trump. In the same survey, just 4 percent of respondents had a great deal of confidence in the nation’s business leaders.

Link – 

Here’s What Donald Trump Really Thinks of America’s Scientists

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Ringer, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s What Donald Trump Really Thinks of America’s Scientists

We’re Live Blogging the Vice Presidential Debate of 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This was a more normal debate than last week’s, which makes it harder to call. Tim Kaine was very much the aggressor, interrupting frequently and demanding that Pence defend the most egregious of Donald Trump’s outbursts. Pence was calmer, and kept insisting that Trump had never said the stuff Kaine accused him of saying. This wasn’t true, but there’s no telling if the audience at home believed him anyway. In the future, perhaps candidates should be allowed to have a series of video clips they’re allowed to display during their answers?

On style, then, Pence probably won with his calm demeanor. On substance, it was a KO for Kaine. Trump really did say all the stuff Kaine accused him of, but Pence simply refused to engage with it. Trump did casually say he didn’t care much if other countries got nukes. Trump did say that women who get abortions should be punished.1 Trump’s tax plan does include huge cuts for millionaires. Trump did promise to release his taxes and then reneged on it. Trump (and Pence) have called Vladimir Putin a better leader than Obama. Trump has trash talked the military. And he did call NATO obsolete and then suggest he might not bother defending the Baltics if Russia invaded them.

Neither Pence nor Kaine made any terrible gaffes, and neither landed any killing blows. This means that partisanship probably weighs most heavily here, but even with that in mind I’d give the debate to Kaine. The post-debate commentary is going to make it clear that Kaine was mostly accurate about Trump, and that Pence simply wasn’t willing or able to defend him. I don’t know if that will be devastating for Pence, but it won’t make him look good. Overall, I give Kaine a B+ and Pence a B-.

As for Elaine Quijano, I really don’t know. She didn’t take control of the debate at all, and frequently allowed Pence and Kaine to talk when she should have shut them up—but just as frequently moved on when she should have let them talk. Was this because of the debate rules? Because Pence and Kaine refused to abide by the rules? Or because she’s a bad moderator? I don’t know.

A full transcript of the debate is here.

1He took it back the next day, but he still said it.


In a presidential campaign featuring superstars Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Tim Kaine and Mike Pence have faded so far into the background they’re almost invisible. In fact, they’ve both avoided controversy so assiduously that the main attacks against Kaine are about his defense of murderers several decades ago, while the biggest complaint about Pence is that he claimed cigarettes weren’t killers back in the year 2000. I’m exaggerating here, but only barely.

Actually, what most people seem to be looking forward to is Pence’s defense of Donald Trump’s various meltdowns. Sadly, he’s probably well prepped for this. But you never know. There might be fireworks anyway.

10:35 – And that’s a wrap.

10:33 – Pence: We’ll unify America by bringing change to Washington DC, standing tall in the world, and supercharging the economy. Um.

10:31 – How will you unify America if you win? Kaine: Republicans respect Clinton. She has a track record of working across the aisle. Kaine says he does too. Not a bad answer.

10:27 – Pence opposes abortion. Kaine supports women making their own choices.

10:26 – Now it’s a lovefest. Everybody agrees that faith is great. Everybody agrees that the other guy’s faith is great.

10:23 – Now let’s talk about faith. You will be unsurprised that both men are deeply, deeply informed by their faith.

10:20 – Quijano: I remind you both that the question is about North Korea.

10:19 – Now Kaine is talking about foundations too. The Clinton Foundation is great! But the Trump Foundation is “octopus like” and breaks the law all the time.

10:16 – What would you do to prevent North Korea from developing a missile that can reach the United States? Pence delivers a bit of mush and then….returns to Trump’s taxes and the Clinton Foundation. Huh?

10:11 – Finally Kaine says something not really true: that Trump didn’t know Russia annexed Crimea two years ago. Pence goes after it. But he’s still stuck on most of Kaine’s accusations because they’re all on tape.

10:10 – Kaine has generally been pretty aggressive in his accusations against Trump. Pence is constantly rolling his eyes and saying “Oh please” or something similar. But he rarely even tries to explain why Kaine is wrong. He just switches to an attack on Hillary Clinton. I guess he doesn’t have much choice since Kaine has mostly been accurate.

10:07 – Now Kaine makes it explicit: He’s tried to get an answer on nukes “six times.” Pence won’t defend Trump’s position. Quijano bails out Pence by moving to a new subject.

10:05 – Kaine keeps poking Pence on Trump’s casual attitude toward other countries getting nuclear weapons. Pence resolutely refuses to deal with this.

9:58 – A question about Aleppo. And speaking of Aleppo, Gary Johnson says his ignorance of geography is a benefit. Folks who know all those foreign countries and foreign leaders just end up wanting to attack them. Seriously.

9:54 – What is an “intelligence surge”? Kaine: Expanding our intelligence capacity and building better alliances. Okey doke.

9:49 – Is America more or less safe than it was eight years ago? For the record, I’d say it’s about equally dangerous.

9:48 – Kaine doing a pretty good job of running down why Trump is dangerous on foreign affairs: Trash talks the military, wants to tear apart alliances, he loves dictators, and he wants everyone to have nukes.

9:44 – Back to immigration. Pence trying to soften Trump’s plan. Kaine trying to make sure everyone knows every single detail.

9:41 – Pence now trying to make case that “basket of deplorables” is equivalent to all of Trump’s insults. It’s not working.

9:40 – Interesting that Pence rather obviously refused to say the word “wall” when talking about Trump’s immigration plan.

9:34 – Pence: Enough with all this institutional racism crap. Kaine: We can’t be afraid to bring up issues of bias.

9:31 – Both guys agree that cops are great.

9:29 – What is Elaine Quijano doing? She’s not keeping either of these guys in line, and she’s only allowing a minute or two on each subject. Come on. This isn’t a race to see who can talk about the most subjects in 90 minutes.

9:27 – Pence to Kaine: “There they go again.” Oh please.

9:26 – What the heck are the rules for this debate? Are interruptions allowed? Are there time limits? Or what?

9:22 – Pence to Kaine: “You can roll out the numbers” but the economy sucks no matter what all your egghead numbers say.

9:21 – Kaine on Trump: “His economic plan is a Trump first plan.” Meh.

9:19 – Nobody is making any funny faces yet.

9:16 – So far, our moderator is not doing a good job of keeping things in line. Maybe she’s restrained by bad rules?

9:14 – Both candidates are trying to be tough. It’s a little comedic. Sort of like five-year-olds trying to look tough next to John Wayne.

9:12 – Why do so many people think Donald Trump is erratic? How much time do we have to answer this question?

9:11 – Why don’t people trust Hillary Clinton? Hmmm. Let me think.

9:03 – And we’re off. Can I remember to use Eastern time zone time stamps this time? Wait and see!

9:00 – CNN can’t seem to make up its mind whether this debate is going to be a snoozefest or the biggest moment ever in debate history.

8:55 – David Axelrod: There will be no painting outside the lines tonight.

View article: 

We’re Live Blogging the Vice Presidential Debate of 2016

Posted in Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We’re Live Blogging the Vice Presidential Debate of 2016