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Barack Obama Talked About Donald Trump in a Speech in 2005

by BerryDeLaCondami Posted on March 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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In 2005, Barack Obama had only been in the Senate for a few months, but he was already a rising star in the Democratic Party. Four years later, he would be in the White House, and seven years after that Donald Trump would be the Republican front-runner to replace him as president. He couldn’t have known that then, of course, when he mentioned The Apprentice star in a commencement address at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.

(Hat tip Michael Sherer)

Here’s the relevant bit:

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it – Social Darwinism, every man and woman for him or herself. It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say to those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford – tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job – life isn’t fair. It let’s us say to the child born into poverty – pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially tempting because each of us believes that we will always be the winner in life’s lottery, that we will be Donald Trump, or at least that we won’t be the chump that he tells: “Your fired!”
But there a problem. It won’t work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that it has been government research and investment that made the railways and the internet possible. It has been the creation of a massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public schools – that has allowed all of us to prosper. Our economic dominance has depended on individual initiative and belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we’re all in it together and everybody’s got a shot at opportunity – that has produced our unrivaled political stability.

Originally posted here – 

Barack Obama Talked About Donald Trump in a Speech in 2005

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Canada and U.S., longtime frenemies on climate change, join forces at last

by Lino9076rj Posted on March 8, 2016

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) and U.S. President Barack Obama conclude remarks in Manila, Philippines, November 19, 2015. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Canada and U.S., longtime frenemies on climate change, join forces at last

By on 8 Mar 2016commentsShare

At long last, two countries that share a border will also share a comprehensive plan for climate action.

Serious climate conversations between the U.S. and Canada have been few and far between over the years. This week, the two countries are expected to present a unified front with a climate change agreement, a rare event, given that they have long been on opposite ends of the climate action spectrum.

The two nations’ leaders, U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, will announce a series of joint measures this week during a meeting at the White House. According to The Guardian, the agreement is expected to include pledge to cut up to 45 percent of methane emissions — a greenhouse gas that is roughly 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide — from oil and gas industries. During a White House press call on Tuesday, Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, said that the meeting would focus on short-lived pollutants like methane, hydrofluorocarbons (potent greenhouse gases used in refrigerators, aerosols, and air conditioners), and black carbon (a particulate component of soot). Officials also expect the agreement to call for a decrease in diesel fuel and more funding for Arctic climate research.

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One major focus for the two Arctic neighbors is addressing warming at the pole, a region which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.

“There’s a kind of canary-in-the-coalmine quality to the Arctic, and it’s important to let people around the world know what’s going on there and the impacts there, which will, in turn, have impacts around the world,” Stern told reporters.

It’s a rare breakthrough for the two leaders — one at the end of his tenure and the other just four months in. For much of the past decade, the two countries have been at odds on climate policy. Before Trudeau’s election last October, Canada was led by conservative Stephen Harper, who steered Canada into a pit of dirty oil. Harper kept the oil sands industry afloat throughout his tenure, beginning in 2006. Harper turned Canada into a booming petrostate, muzzling climate scientists who spoke out and  pushing hard for companies to be able to suck up the dirty substance lying under massive tracts of forest in Alberta. At the very same time, Canada’s neighbor to the south elected a Democrat in 2008, Obama, who promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions, amp up investments in clean energy, and was rumored to veto the Keystone pipeline (an action that he did in fact take in February 2015).

Before Harper’s administration, Canada had more of an appetite to fight global warming. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin, a liberal who served in office from 2003 to 2006, ratified the Kyoto Protocol, a global treaty to cut emissions. But the U.S. was under the eight-year reign of President George W. Bush, who opposed Kyoto, allegedly tried to block public scientific data on climate change, and broke campaign promises to limit carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants. “To the reticent nations, including the United States, I say this: There is such a thing as a global conscience,” Martin said about his southern neighbors in a 2005 conference in Montreal.

It’s not yet know exactly how far-reaching the terms will be in the expected climate agreement announced this week. But in a town hall hosted by The Huffington Post this week, Trudeau said that the moment was a “nice alignment between a Canadian prime minister who wants to get all sorts of things done right off the bat and an American president who is thinking about the legacy he is going to leave in his last year in office.” If all goes well, that legacy will finally include climate policy that crosses both country borders and longstanding ideological divides.

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Canada and U.S., longtime frenemies on climate change, join forces at last

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Bloomberg stays out of presidential race to prevent President Trump

by ClintR79dfxybm Posted on March 8, 2016

Bloomberg stays out of presidential race to prevent President Trump

By on 7 Mar 2016commentsShare

Mike Bloomberg, the eighth-richest person in America and former mayor of New York, announced Monday that he will not be entering the presidential race as a third-party candidate, despite some speculation. Bloomberg joins a long list of figures who will not be running for president this year, including Al Gore, Ross Perot, and Frank Underwood. Now, this isn’t because he doesn’t think he’d make a great president — he does — but because Bloomberg, unlike some people, knows he just can’t win.

In a statement on BloombergView, a website that is not normally about Bloomberg’s views, the former mayor writes:

[W]hen I look at the data, it’s clear to me that if I entered the race, I could not win. I believe I could win a number of diverse states — but not enough to win the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to win the presidency.

In a three-way race, it’s unlikely any candidate would win a majority of electoral votes, and then the power to choose the president would be taken out of the hands of the American people and thrown to Congress. The fact is, even if I were to receive the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, victory would be highly unlikely, because most members of Congress would vote for their party’s nominee. Party loyalists in Congress — not the American people or the Electoral College — would determine the next president.

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As the race stands now, with Republicans in charge of both Houses, there is a good chance that my candidacy could lead to the election of Donald Trump or Senator Ted Cruz. That is not a risk I can take in good conscience.

Bloomberg then goes on to discuss Trump, who, he writes, “appeals to our worst impulses” by campaigning on platform of racism, xenophobia, and fear. “We cannot ‘make America great again’ by turning our backs on the values that made us the world’s greatest nation in the first place,” Bloomberg writes. “I love our country too much to play a role in electing a candidate who would weaken our unity and darken our future — and so I will not enter the race for president of the United States.”

Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg, for not increasing the likelihood of a president who believes that climate change is a giant, homosexual agenda–level hoax. Maybe he listened to our own Ben Adler, who wrote a post a month ago headlined, “If Mike Bloomberg really cares about climate change, he won’t run for president.”

Because, even though Bloomberg is an unfettered capitalist who trampled on the rights of protesters and subjected black and Latino men to racial profiling and aggressive policing when he was mayor, he does in fact really care about climate change. He’s far more passionate and engaged on the issue someone who definitely is running for president, Hillary Clinton.

So is it unequivocally a good thing that he’s out? A candidate Bloomberg might have elevated climate change as a critical issue, and pushed other candidates to discuss it in more depth, particularly if he got himself into general election debates with the Democratic and Republican nominees. As it is now, the Republican debates have neglected climate change almost entirely: Donald Trump’s dick has gotten more airtime than the most pressing challenge of our era. But more conversation wouldn’t do much good if the ultimate outcome were a hardline denier in the White House.

As it is, we’ll never find out if Bloomberg’s run would have jumpstarted a national conversation on climate change or paved the way for President Trump. For now, Bloomberg has declined to endorse a candidate, so we don’t even know where he’ll be putting his vote instead — or, for that matter, his money.

Bloomberg ends his essay with a note on the importance of voting, and he urges all voters to demand “the honest and capable government we deserve.” Unfortunately, we probably deserve Trump, as we can’t seem to shut up about him. Let’s hope we get one better.

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Bloomberg stays out of presidential race to prevent President Trump

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Breaking: Michael Bloomberg Officially Rules Out a Presidential Run

by TracyDaniel Posted on March 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Monday that he has ruled out a presidential bid. In an editorial on Bloomberg View, Bloomberg wrote that he feared his entry into the race would only strengthen Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s chances at the White House.

“As the race stands now, with Republicans in charge of both Houses, there is a good chance that my candidacy could lead to the election of Donald Trump or Senator Ted Cruz,” he said. “That is not a risk I can take in good conscience.”

Read Bloomberg’s editorial in its entirety here.

Taken from: 

Breaking: Michael Bloomberg Officially Rules Out a Presidential Run

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Here’s Hoping Earth Imagery Isn’t Too Routine to Inspire

by Myrna Posted on March 4, 2016

Has the power of imagery of Earth from space faded since the days of “Earthrise”? Link –  Here’s Hoping Earth Imagery Isn’t Too Routine to Inspire ; ; ;

Originally posted here: 

Here’s Hoping Earth Imagery Isn’t Too Routine to Inspire

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Quote of the Day: Marco Rubio Tells Us What Halftime Was Like at the Debate

by AntonettaScherf Posted on February 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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If the future of my country weren’t at stake, I’d say that things are getting genuinely entertaining in the Republican primary race. Here is Marco Rubio this morning dishing on Donald Trump:

Let me tell you something, last night in the debate, during one of the breaks — two of the breaks — he went backstage, he was having a meltdown. First he had this little makeup thing applying, like, makeup around his mustache because he had one of those sweat mustaches. Then, then he asked for a full-length mirror. I don’t know why, because the podium goes up to here. But he wanted a full-length mirror. Maybe to make sure his pants weren’t wet — I don’t know.”

Fabulous! I can’t wait for Ted Cruz to join in too.

But if these guys really want to hit Trump where it hurts, there are two things they need to do. First, they have to get under Trump’s skin. Trump favors torturing the families of terrorists, so maybe going after his family will work. Or pointing out repeatedly how badly he got played in his various deals. Or mocking his vanity. Anything that makes him look ridiculous and provokes an atomic reaction. Second, they need to say things that might actually sway Trump’s supporters. This shouldn’t be hard, since both Rubio and Cruz were born and bred in the tea party movement and supposedly know what makes its supporters tick. There’s no point in saying that Trump lies. They don’t care. There’s no point in saying he’s a racist. They don’t care. There’s no point in saying he’s not ideologically pure. They don’t care. There’s no point in saying that he’s an embarrassment. They don’t care.

So what do they care about? That he’s tough. That he’s not PC. That he takes on the politicians and the media. So that’s where to hit him. Show that he’s all hat and no cattle. Show that he’s afraid to really tell the truth. Badger him on his tax returns. Tell stories about how he kowtows to reporters. And above all: whatever you say, say things outrageous enough to force the media to pay attention to you.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but there’s no need to be obsessively truthful in all this. Take Rubio’s little story above. I imagine it’s true. But if it’s exaggerated a wee bit—well, tell it anyway. And lots more like it. That’s what Trump does. If you can make Trump spend all his time denying that he’s a weenie by picking apart tiny details in your stories, you’re on the road to the White House.

POSTSCRIPT: This is just an aside, but am I the only one who finds it a little creepy that apparently Rubio can change his personality on a dime? I mean, he seems to have decided a couple of days ago to become a young Donald Trump, and he’s already doing a bang-up job. I think that even most professional actors would have trouble learning a new part that quickly.

More here: 

Quote of the Day: Marco Rubio Tells Us What Halftime Was Like at the Debate

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Douglas L. Inman, Coastal Science Pioneer, Dies at 95

by Myrna Posted on February 21, 2016

Dr. Inman helped change the understanding of the processes that shape the beach and trained generations of scientists who followed in his footprints. See original article –  Douglas L. Inman, Coastal Science Pioneer, Dies at 95 ; ; ;

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Douglas L. Inman, Coastal Science Pioneer, Dies at 95

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Raw Data: Fewer Blacks Are Going to Jail These Days

by LucileKilvingto Posted on February 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last week Keith Humphreys noted something interesting: although incarceration rates have gone down recently, the absolute level of white incarceration has risen while the absolute level of black incarceration has fallen. But that’s for prisons. What about local jails?

Same thing, it turns out. Since 2009, the number of white jail inmates has gone up by about 30,000 while the black jail population has gone down by 40,000. Humphreys comments: “In short, if you broaden the lens of analysis from prisons to include jails, the patterns I wrote about are even stronger: Being behind bars is becoming a less common experience for African-Americans and a more common experience for non-Hispanic Whites.”

I don’t quite know what this means, but it’s an interesting tidbit of data. Blacks are still in jail (and prison) at a higher relative rate than whites, but since 2009 that’s at least starting to reverse a little.

Read the article:

Raw Data: Fewer Blacks Are Going to Jail These Days

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Dot Earth Blog: Justice Scalia’s Irreplaceable Views on CO2 and Climate

by Myrna Posted on February 14, 2016

The death of Justice Antonin Scalia leaves a big hole in the Supreme Court’s conservative phalanx. Read this article:  Dot Earth Blog: Justice Scalia’s Irreplaceable Views on CO2 and Climate ; ; ;

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Dot Earth Blog: Justice Scalia’s Irreplaceable Views on CO2 and Climate

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Justice Scalia’s Irreplaceable Views on CO2 and Climate

by Myrna Posted on February 13, 2016

The death of Justice Antonin Scalia leaves a big hole in the Supreme Court’s conservative phalanx. Taken from:  Justice Scalia’s Irreplaceable Views on CO2 and Climate ; ; ;

This article:  

Justice Scalia’s Irreplaceable Views on CO2 and Climate

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