monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Ever heard of climate?

Ever heard weather and climate used in the same sentence?

Scientists are increasingly confident of the links between global warming and hurricanes.

In a warming world, they say, hurricanes will be stronger, for a simple reason: Warmer water provides more energy that feeds them.

Hurricanes and other extreme storms will also be wetter, for a simple reason: Warmer air holds more moisture.

And, storm surges from hurricanes will be worse, for a simple reason that has nothing to do with the storms themselves: Sea levels are rising.

I’m going to say something controversial. As a climate scientist, I predict a sustained, noticeable, and severe cooling trend across the Northern Hemisphere. The cold will begin soon, if it hasn’t already, and last until at least the end of the year. Some regions will freeze, it will snow, and climate deniers will gloat. The cause is a phenomenon that, while mysterious, is known to science. We call it “winter.”

As someone who has been deployed in a war zone, I can tell you the "VIP's" need to stay the hell away.

Trump's refusal

first minutes of the first lesson.

We know you glory in your ignorance.

Too bad you don't reason logically too.

How would you know?

(...)The Department of Commerce has almost nothing to do with promoting businesses. It gathers data (including the census), sets material and technological standards—and predicts the weather. More than half of its budget goes to NOAA, which in turn runs the National Weather Service.

Here we come to another way of wrecking government. Alongside malign neglect, Trump has a second option: appoint the worst possible person. Trump’s pattern of appointing to the top layers of government people who were openly antagonistic to the very departments they would run—Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, and Rick Perry among them—was obvious enough. But arguably of even greater import was his approach to the appointment of the people who actually run things, the low-profile technocrats and bureaucrats crucial to a competent administration.

According to the criteria drawn up by Mitt Romney’s team for the transition he hoped would take place in 2012, the head of NOAA should have a “strong scientific background in either oceans or climate,” as well as extensive management experience, preferably in NOAA or another government agency. This ought to be a given, since the agency’s 11,000 employees are primarily engaged in scientific work. Hence George W. Bush appointed Conrad Lautenbacher, who had been the CEO of the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education and deputy chief of naval operations in the US Navy. Barack Obama appointed first Jane Lubchenco, professor of marine biology at Oregon State University and president of both the International Council for Science and the Ecological Society of America; and then Kathryn Sullivan, previously NOAA’s chief scientist, an assistant secretary of the Department of Commerce, and, incidentally, an astronaut and the first American woman to walk in space.

Who could replace Sullivan? According to Lewis, a former Bush administration adviser whom he does not name but who had worked at the Commerce Department for eight years, was asked by the White House to provide an answer. This man was well aware that Trump would not want a leading climate scientist—constructed ignorance of climate change being a core presidential principle. But he still reckoned that the appointee would be an experienced scientist: “If you don’t believe in climate change, you at least want to understand the climate.” He drew up a list of six “qualified Republicans, inoffensive to Trump.” Emphatically not on it was Barry Myers, who has no scientific or public service credentials. He is the CEO of AccuWeather, a private company that makes its money by taking the weather data created at great public expense by NOAA’s National Weather Service, marketing it through apps, a website, and a TV network, and tailoring it for private clients like newspapers, ski resorts, and home improvement stores.

Myers managed to define AccuWeather, in reality parasitic on the government, as a private sector competitor of the government, and therefore insisted that the National Weather Service not be allowed to provide citizens with the information they pay for through their taxes: “The government should get out of the forecasting business.” He argued that the NWS was like the Post Office, while AccuWeather was FedEx: “It was,” he told a congressional hearing in 2013, “like the Post Office and Federal Express, except it would be like the Post Office offering to carry every letter without postage, and every package for free.” Myers donated to Rick Santorum, who in turn introduced a bill in the Senate in 2005 that would have forced the NWS to issue forecasts only through “data portals designed for volume access by commercial providers” (like, of course, AccuWeather) and would have effectively banned it from issuing any public information except immediate severe storm warnings.

Making Myers head of NOAA would therefore be, to use his own analogy, like putting the CEO of FedEx in charge of the Post Office, with the power to decide that it should cease to provide any services that compete with private courier companies. (Though to make the analogy complete, FedEx would already have free use of the Post Office’s trucks and distribution systems.) In October 2017, Trump nominated Myers as head of NOAA, a nomination quickly confirmed along party lines in committee but still awaiting Senate approval.

He reads your posts.

WASHINGTON – Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied repeatedly to the FBI, violating a plea agreement with Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, who is recommending that Manafort receive no credit to reduce his prison sentence.

The development suggests that Manafort now faces a severe prison sentence for his August conviction in an Alexandria federal court and for his separate guilty plea in the District of Columbia where his plea included his promise to cooperate with Mueller's team.

"The government will file a detailed sentencing submission... that sets forth the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies, including those after signing the plea agreement herein," prosecutors said in a brief court filing late Monday.

"As the defendant has breached the plea agreement, there is no reason to delay his sentencing," prosecutors said.

Video shows driver trying to run over Jews near Los Angeles synagogue

There has been an increase in anti-Semitic hate incidents in recent years, with an almost 37 percent spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes in 2017, according to the FBI in a recent report.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied repeatedly to the FBI, violating a plea agreement with Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, who is recommending that Manafort receive no credit to reduce his prison sentence.

The NYT is full of ****.

President Trump on Monday suggested that the federal government start its own television network, as he voiced frustrations with the way CNN has covered his administration.

"Throughout the world, CNN has a powerful voice portraying the United States in an unfair and false way. Something has to be done, including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!" Trump wrote on Twitter.

The president regularly criticizes coverage of his administration, labeling stories he dislikes as "fake news." He has in recent months ratcheted up his attacks against the press, calling some news outlets and journalists "enemies of the people."

Trump has had a contentious relationship with CNN in particular since hitting the campaign trail in 2015.