Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Fast Walker 52
Fast Walker 52's Journal
Fast Walker 52's Journal
August 15, 2016
By Bill McKibben
August 15, 2016
In the North this summer, a devastating offensive is underway. Enemy forces have seized huge swaths of territory; with each passing week, another 22,000 square miles of Arctic ice disappears. Experts dispatched to the battlefield in July saw little cause for hope, especially since this siege is one of the oldest fronts in the war. “In 30 years, the area has shrunk approximately by half,” said a scientist who examined the onslaught. “There doesn’t seem anything able to stop this.”
In the Pacific this spring, the enemy staged a daring breakout across thousands of miles of ocean, waging a full-scale assault on the region’s coral reefs. In a matter of months, long stretches of formations like the Great Barrier Reef—dating back past the start of human civilization and visible from space—were reduced to white bone-yards.
Day after day, week after week, saboteurs behind our lines are unleashing a series of brilliant and overwhelming attacks. In the past few months alone, our foes have used a firestorm to force the total evacuation of a city of 90,000 in Canada, drought to ravage crops to the point where southern Africans are literally eating their seed corn, and floods to threaten the priceless repository of art in the Louvre. The enemy is even deploying biological weapons to spread psychological terror: The Zika virus, loaded like a bomb into a growing army of mosquitoes, has shrunk the heads of newborn babies across an entire continent; panicked health ministers in seven countries are now urging women not to get pregnant. And as in all conflicts, millions of refugees are fleeing the horrors of war, their numbers swelling daily as they’re forced to abandon their homes to escape famine and desolation and disease.
World War III is well and truly underway. And we are losing.
We’re under attack from climate change—and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII.
https://newrepublic.com/article/135684/declare-war-climate-change-mobilize-wwiiBy Bill McKibben
August 15, 2016
In the North this summer, a devastating offensive is underway. Enemy forces have seized huge swaths of territory; with each passing week, another 22,000 square miles of Arctic ice disappears. Experts dispatched to the battlefield in July saw little cause for hope, especially since this siege is one of the oldest fronts in the war. “In 30 years, the area has shrunk approximately by half,” said a scientist who examined the onslaught. “There doesn’t seem anything able to stop this.”
In the Pacific this spring, the enemy staged a daring breakout across thousands of miles of ocean, waging a full-scale assault on the region’s coral reefs. In a matter of months, long stretches of formations like the Great Barrier Reef—dating back past the start of human civilization and visible from space—were reduced to white bone-yards.
Day after day, week after week, saboteurs behind our lines are unleashing a series of brilliant and overwhelming attacks. In the past few months alone, our foes have used a firestorm to force the total evacuation of a city of 90,000 in Canada, drought to ravage crops to the point where southern Africans are literally eating their seed corn, and floods to threaten the priceless repository of art in the Louvre. The enemy is even deploying biological weapons to spread psychological terror: The Zika virus, loaded like a bomb into a growing army of mosquitoes, has shrunk the heads of newborn babies across an entire continent; panicked health ministers in seven countries are now urging women not to get pregnant. And as in all conflicts, millions of refugees are fleeing the horrors of war, their numbers swelling daily as they’re forced to abandon their homes to escape famine and desolation and disease.
World War III is well and truly underway. And we are losing.
August 12, 2016
He continued: "He was the founder of ISIS and so was [Hillary]. I call them co-founders.... Because of the way he got out.... He shouldn't have gotten out the way he got out. It was a disaster what he did. Is there something wrong with saying that? Are people complaining that I said he was the founder of ISIS? All I do is tell the truth. I am a truth teller."
Radio host Hugh Hewitt got Trump to commit to that view even more strongly.
HEWITT: Last night, you said the president was the founder of ISIS. I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum; he lost the peace.
TRUMP: No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the Most Valuable Player Award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton.
HEWITT: But he’s not sympathetic to them. He hates them. He’s trying to kill them.
TRUMP: I don’t care. He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, okay? ...
HEWITT: I know what you’re arguing …
TRUMP: You’re not, and let me ask you, do you not like that?
HEWITT: I don’t. I think I would say they created, they lost the peace. They created the Libyan vacuum, they created the vacuum into which ISIS came, but they didn’t create ISIS. That’s what I would say.
TRUMP: Well, I disagree.
There was no "Right, I was making a point" or "I misspoke" in that. Trump said that, no, he really meant that Obama had founded the Islamic State and that Trump had to "disagree" when Hewitt said that wasn't the case. (Do we need to point out at this late hour that, of course, Obama didn't found the Islamic State? Well, he of course didn't.)
On Friday morning, at long last, Trump explained his rationale.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) "the founder" of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?
----------------------
How does anyone deal with this man???
It's seriously just like arguing with a 2 year old.
Brain-melting interview between Trump and Hugh Hewitt
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/12/donald-trump-has-an-airtight-sensible-excuse-for-why-he-said-president-obama-founded-isis/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumprevealed-745a-top%3Ahomepage%2FstoryHe continued: "He was the founder of ISIS and so was [Hillary]. I call them co-founders.... Because of the way he got out.... He shouldn't have gotten out the way he got out. It was a disaster what he did. Is there something wrong with saying that? Are people complaining that I said he was the founder of ISIS? All I do is tell the truth. I am a truth teller."
Radio host Hugh Hewitt got Trump to commit to that view even more strongly.
HEWITT: Last night, you said the president was the founder of ISIS. I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum; he lost the peace.
TRUMP: No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the Most Valuable Player Award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton.
HEWITT: But he’s not sympathetic to them. He hates them. He’s trying to kill them.
TRUMP: I don’t care. He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, okay? ...
HEWITT: I know what you’re arguing …
TRUMP: You’re not, and let me ask you, do you not like that?
HEWITT: I don’t. I think I would say they created, they lost the peace. They created the Libyan vacuum, they created the vacuum into which ISIS came, but they didn’t create ISIS. That’s what I would say.
TRUMP: Well, I disagree.
There was no "Right, I was making a point" or "I misspoke" in that. Trump said that, no, he really meant that Obama had founded the Islamic State and that Trump had to "disagree" when Hewitt said that wasn't the case. (Do we need to point out at this late hour that, of course, Obama didn't found the Islamic State? Well, he of course didn't.)
On Friday morning, at long last, Trump explained his rationale.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) "the founder" of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?
----------------------
How does anyone deal with this man???
It's seriously just like arguing with a 2 year old.
August 6, 2016
Clinton vs Trump reacting to a security threat
I think this has been around for a while, maybe I even saw it here before. But it's an amazing comparison. And I just love Hillary's expression. Her eyes become very focused but she's calm and then she smiles a little, when it is dealt with.
https://twitter.com/RiotWomennn/status/761547612084285440
https://t.co/np0yyZZz9X
pic.twitter.com/np0yyZZz9X
August 6, 2016
I keep hearing how Trump is getting support from all these disaffected poor whites
who have been screwed over by the political system, or whatever. Left behind. No one pays attention to their plight. They think the system is rigged. Republicans keep breaking promises to them.
The simple question is: are there possibly more of these people out there that will vote for Trump than voted for Romney in 2012?
I can only imagine there would be fewer as the economy has improved, and some have died off.
But isn't it just the rabid GOP base that are supporting him? Is he really drawing that much new support? Maybe a few more white supremacists than normal, but it can't be that large of a number, election-wise, can it?
August 5, 2016
The background music of my life is the steady drumbeat of tweets about how Hillary Clinton stole the presidential primary from Bernie Sanders.
It’s there when I wake up in the morning. It’s there when I go to sleep at night. The constant thrumming of election fraud conspiracists is like the noise made by that board game in the movie “Jumanji.”
I didn’t write about this during the primary season, since I didn’t want to dignify the views of conspiracy theorists. But they’re still going.
The allegations are remarkably consistent. They go like this: Mr. Sanders did better in the early exit polls than he did in the final result. Therefore, Mrs. Clinton probably stole the election. The exit polls are a sufficient basis to make this determination, in the eyes of the conspiracists, because exit polls are used internationally to detect fraud. They’re supposedly very accurate and “well controlled” (where this phrase comes from, I don’t know). Furthermore, they say, the exit polls were right on the G.O.P. side — confirming the underlying validity of the methodology and raising suspicions about the Democratic vote count.
All of this starts with a basic misconception: that the exit polls are usually pretty good.
I have no idea where this idea comes from, because everyone who knows anything about early exit polls knows that they’re not great.
-------
The piece goes on, and gives good explanations for the discrepancy. I have heard endlessly about his exit poll thing and finally am happy to see a good explanation
Exit Polls, and Why the Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/upshot/exit-polls-and-why-the-primary-was-not-stolen-from-bernie-sanders.htmlThe background music of my life is the steady drumbeat of tweets about how Hillary Clinton stole the presidential primary from Bernie Sanders.
It’s there when I wake up in the morning. It’s there when I go to sleep at night. The constant thrumming of election fraud conspiracists is like the noise made by that board game in the movie “Jumanji.”
I didn’t write about this during the primary season, since I didn’t want to dignify the views of conspiracy theorists. But they’re still going.
The allegations are remarkably consistent. They go like this: Mr. Sanders did better in the early exit polls than he did in the final result. Therefore, Mrs. Clinton probably stole the election. The exit polls are a sufficient basis to make this determination, in the eyes of the conspiracists, because exit polls are used internationally to detect fraud. They’re supposedly very accurate and “well controlled” (where this phrase comes from, I don’t know). Furthermore, they say, the exit polls were right on the G.O.P. side — confirming the underlying validity of the methodology and raising suspicions about the Democratic vote count.
All of this starts with a basic misconception: that the exit polls are usually pretty good.
I have no idea where this idea comes from, because everyone who knows anything about early exit polls knows that they’re not great.
-------
The piece goes on, and gives good explanations for the discrepancy. I have heard endlessly about his exit poll thing and finally am happy to see a good explanation
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHometown: Southern California
Home country: USA
Current location: Indiana
Member since: Thu May 14, 2015, 07:31 AM
Number of posts: 7,723
