Saturday, June 3, 2017

Uh, oh. Science Journal Nature editorial on #ParisAgreement: “Better out than in”

warrs up with that? ^ | June 1, 2017 | Anthony Watts 

Now that President trump has announced the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris Climate accord, this comes from nature.com and the “that’s going to leave a mark” department:

By Luke Kemp
Continued US membership in the Paris Agreement on climate would be symbolic and have no effect onUS emissions. Instead, it would reveal the weaknesses of the agreement, prevent new opportunities from emerging, and gift greater leverage to a recalcitrant administration.
After the election of President Trump and a two-house Republican majority, many fear for the future of US climate policy. The new administration has indicated that they will abolish Obama’s climate legacy through executive orders.
The repeal of domestic measures will likely result in the US missing its first nationally determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, which is an inadequate target of reducing emissions by 26–28% compared to 2005 levels by 2025. If other countries adopted comparable targets, global warming would likely exceed 2°C (ref. 2). The US would need to implement the Clean Power Plan and additional measures to reach its NDC.
Preliminary research suggests that the policies of the Trump administration would instead lead to emissions increasing through to 2025.
Now the predominant concern for much of the international community is that the US will withdraw either from the Paris Agreement, or the overarching United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The former would take four years and the latter only one. Both are legally possible and within the presidential mandate.
The conventional wisdom is that a US withdrawal would be a worst-case scenario for international climate policy.
However, a sober analysis of the political, legal, and financial impacts suggests otherwise. The modified matrix of risks posed by a recalcitrant US administration summarized in Table1, and explored in detail below, highlights the paradox of US participation: a rogue US can cause more damage inside rather than outside of the agreement.

Full essay here

At age 111, America's oldest veteran is still smoking cigars, drinking whiskey and loving life!

Dallas News ^ | 2 Jun 17 | Brendan Meyer 

AUSTIN — Richard Overton is right where he wants to be.

He’s sitting in a lawn chair on the front porch of the Austin home he built nearly 70 years ago, working on his fifth Tampa Sweet cigar on a 91-degree sunny day. The smooth tunes of the Isley Brothers flow from a portable speaker. Birds are chirping in the late afternoon breeze.

“I’m feeling pretty good today,” Overton says, emphasizing the word pretty, because any day spent on this porch smoking cigars is a pretty good day for the 111-year-old.

This is where you’ll find the nation’s oldest veteran for 10 hours every day when the weather is nice. His friends call it his “stage.” It’s where Overton sits and thinks about life, his starting in 1906, the same year as the first wireless radio broadcast and a year before the paper towel was invented.

Richard Overton, 111, smokes a cigar on his Austin front porch among signs from his recent birthday celebration. Overton is the oldest living U.S. war veteran.
On this day, Overton is wearing a red cardigan buttoned over a powder blue polo, with light blue slacks and a black World War II veteran hat. He’s smiling and joking and feeling thankful. The previous week, Overton was wearing a hospital gown. He spent those sunny days stuck in a hospital bed with a 102-degree fever, in a non-smoking room, hooked to an IV as his body tried to fight off its latest bout of pneumonia. Overton prayed and flirted with nurses. Four days later, he was back where he wanted to be, on his stage with the birds and two packs of cigars.
Life has slowed year by year for the lifelong Austin resident. He was once a soldier in the U.S. military...
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...

Friday, June 2, 2017

Trump cements 'America First' doctrine with Paris withdrawal

The Hill ^ | June 2, 2017 | Jonathan Easley 

President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord has put the world on notice that “America First” is not just a campaign slogan — it’s his administration’s guiding doctrine.

Trump on Thursday delivered on a key campaign promise by announcing he will pull the U.S. out of a 190-country agreement that former President Obama entered into less than nine months ago.

Obama had hailed the Paris Agreement as a “turning point for our planet” and the culmination of “an intense diplomatic effort” that drew scores of countries, cultures and governments into a pact aimed at slowing the rise in global temperatures.

Critics of Obama, including Trump, called the agreement another example of him putting foreign interests ahead of America’s.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...

Hillary Clinton -- Endless Sore Loser

Townhall.com ^ | June 2, 2017 | David Limbaugh 

Attacks on President Donald Trump are commonplace -- many depict him as this wildly bizarre, classless person occupying the Oval Office -- but have critics fairly considered what a horror show a Hillary Clinton presidency would have been?
Why is this relevant, you ask? Well, because the liberal media are permanently afflicted with Trump derangement syndrome and won't quit feeding Clinton's narcissistic obsession with her defeat. Did the media fixate on Mitt Romney's defeat to Barack Obama and forever question him about it? Clinton has been muttering about her loss since she recovered from the initial election-night shock, and it has been ugly. In early April -- and probably earlier -- she attributed her loss, in part, to misogyny. "It is fair to say ... certainly, misogyny played a role," she lamented at the Women in the World Summit in New York. "I mean, that just has to be admitted. ... Some people, women included, had real problems" with "the first woman president."
In early May, Clinton said she takes "personal responsibility" but then quickly contradicted herself by shifting blame to Russian interference in the election and then-FBI Director James Comey's release of a letter concerning the investigation into her emails.
Late in May, Clinton resurfaced at the Code Conference, denying she or her organization made any significant mistakes in the campaign and blaming many others and other factors for her loss. She said the Russian government orchestrated a vast disinformation campaign to discredit her, and she also blamed WikiLeaks' release of campaign chairman John Podesta's emails and speculated that Trump had colluded with Russians to disseminate this information. She lambasted the media for covering her email chicanery as if it were Pearl Harbor, calling it "the biggest nothingburger ever." And for good measure, she further blamed sexism, saying that criticism of her six-figure speeches to various groups was gender-driven.
She introduced a new twist, however, in pointing her finger at her formerly beloved Democratic Party. "I get the nomination. ... I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party," she huffed. The Democratic National Committee "was bankrupt. It was on the verge of insolvency. Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong," she continued. "I had to inject money into it to keep it going." She also threw her fellow Democrats under the bus, saying that they "are not good historically at building institutions," adding, "We've got to get a lot better." Clinton said her campaign was further crippled by the widespread assumption that she was going to win. Her attack on the DNC won her no friends in the party. Andrew Therriault, former data science director for the DNC, tweeted (and later deleted) profanity at Clinton's convenient narrative: "DNC data folks: today's accusations are f---ing bull----, and I hope you understand the good you did despite that nonsense." He added, "Private mode be damned, this is too important. I'm not willing to let my people be thrown under the bus without a fight." Nor did her attacks on the media sit well with certain media mavens. MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell said Clinton's claim that Americans colluded with Russia to "weaponize information" against her is "drawing a conspiracy theory" against the Trump campaign without evidence. Isn't it interesting that it took an insult from Clinton to get a liberal media person to admit there's no evidence of Trump collusion with Russia? Clinton's right about one thing: The Democratic Party is to blame. That's because it nominated her to run for president and even colluded with her against Bernie Sanders to ensure it happened.
But the main takeaway from Clinton's pathetically endless election post-mortem is that while Trump critics dwell on his alleged instability and lack of class, Clinton has further proved herself to be worse in reality than Trump is perceived to be.
I'm not talking about policy matters, albeit Clinton would have been an unspeakable disaster in that realm as president, too. I mean on a personal level, where this woman who has held herself out as a public servant all these years is a self-absorbed political animal and shows little grace and even less class. I have no doubt that the stories we've read about how she mistreats people are true.
Cursory inspection of her many scapegoats reveals that even if any of her claims have merit, she is the primary reason for every one of them. She was the virtual head of the DNC she castigates. Her own gross negligence (and criminality, truth be told) led to the FBI investigation, without which Comey wouldn't have made any statement. She bought into and perpetuated the narrative that she was the prohibitive favorite in the campaign. She offered no change from, much less any explanation for, Obama's horrendous record. Her campaign platform was simply, "Never Trump." She arrogantly refused to campaign in Wisconsin, a blue state that ultimately swung to Trump, and she didn't devote nearly enough resources to the other blue states of Michigan and Pennsylvania. She invites attention to gender in constantly whining about it on the one hand while lecturing us for considering it on the other. And can we all just please admit that she forfeited standing to complain about mistreatment of women long ago when she enabled her world-class womanizing husband's serially decadent dalliances? Despite her reputation for brilliance and experience, she couldn't defeat political novice Donald Trump in their debates.
Hillary Clinton was a disastrous candidate and would have been a worse president. How long must we endure these public postelection couch sessions?

Trump asks Supreme Court to reinstate travel ban!

Associated Press ^ | Jun 2, 2017 12:50 AM EDT | Mark Sherman and Sadie Gurman 

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to immediately reinstate its ban on travelers from six mostly Muslim countries and refugees from anywhere in the world, saying the U.S. will be safer if the policy is put in place.
The Justice Department filing to the high court late Thursday argued that lower courts that blocked the Trump policy made several mistakes, including relying on statements President Donald Trump made during the 2016 campaign.
The legal fight pits the president’s significant authority over immigration against what lower courts have said is a policy that purported to be about national security but was intended to target Muslims.
The Justice Department is “confident that President Trump’s executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism,” spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said. “The president is not required to admit people from countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism, until he determines that they can be properly vetted and do not pose a security risk to the United States.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...

Judicial Watch Finds New Emails Showing Huma Abedin Doing Clinton Foundation Favors For Russia...

Townhall ^ | 6/1/17 | Katie Pavlich 

Government watchdog Judicial Watch has found a number of new emails belonging to former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton containing classified information and showing favors being done for a Russia connected organization through the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State. The emails were obtained through a lawsuit against the Department and a recent court order.

"The new Abedin emails also reveal additional instances in which Clinton’s then- scheduler Lona Valmoro forwarded the former secretary of state’s detailed daily schedule to top Clinton Foundation officials. The new emails also reveal a number of favors that were requested and carried out," Judicial Watch found. "In May 2010, Abedin tells Band that she has 'hooked up' people from the Russian American Foundation with 'the right people' at the State Department after Abedin received a request from Russian American Foundation Vice President Rina Kirshner, forwarded by Clinton Foundation donor Eddie Trump (no relation to President Trump)."

Judicial Watch found a series of email chains containing classified information that were not turned over from the private server to the State Department as required by law.
"The new documents included 115 Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to at least 432 emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department. These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, 'as far as she knew,' all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department," the documents show. "On December 6, 2010, Secretary Clinton shared classified information with non-U.S. government employees Justin Cooper, then-aide to President Clinton who helped manage Hillary Clinton’s unsecure email system, and Clinton Foundation director Doug Band (neither of whom held security clearances). The email instructs her aide Oscar Flores to 'print for Bill' (presumably Bill Clinton)."
During an interview at a tech conference in California this week, Clinton said she did nothing wrong in using a private email server and that the scandal surrounding her actions was a "the biggest nothing burger, ever."
“These shocking new Clinton emails show why the Justice Department should reevaluate, reopen, or reinvigorate Clinton, Inc. investigations,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said about the new information. “The casual violation of laws concerning classified material and noxious influence peddling show the Clinton State Department was ‘corruption central’ in the Obama administration. No wonder Clinton’s allies in the State and Justice Departments had been slow-walking and hiding these emails.”

Normal?

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From the Grassy Knoll...

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Performance!

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Your Grand-Children!

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Questions?

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TRAUMA?

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Destruction!

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Ass-Assin

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Success!

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Her Career

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Thursday, June 1, 2017

Was Obama administration illegal spying worse than Watergate?

USA TODAY ^ | 05/30/2017 | Glenn Harlan Reynolds 

The Obama administration's illegal spying may have been worse than Watergate.

In 1972, some employees of President Nixon’s re-election committee were caught when they broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to plant a bug. This led to Nixon’s resignation and probably would have led to his felony prosecution had he not been pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.

But if a single bugging of the political opposition is enough to bring down a presidency — and maybe lead to an unprecedented criminal prosecution of a former president — then what are we to make of the recently unveiled Obama administration program of massively spying on political opponents in violation of clearly established law?
Because that’s what was unveiled last week.
{..snip..}
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...

Stupid and Nasty

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Thank You!

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HOW?

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HYPOCRITE!

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No thanks!

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Survival

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Never Forget!

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IGNORANT!

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T-Shirt