monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Lujan Grisham traveled last month to New Mexico's southern edge for briefings from the National Guard and Customs and Border Protection, explaining that she wanted to see the situation for herself.

On Tuesday, she also directed 25 troops from other states — Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Wisconsin — to withdraw from the New Mexico border.

The world is in the middle of what is likely to be the warmest 10 years since records began in 1850, says the Met Office.

It's forecasting that temperatures for each of the next five years are likely to be at or above 1C compared to pre-industrial levels.

There's also a small chance that one of the next five years will see global temperatures temporarily go above 1.5C.

That's seen as a critical threshold for climate change.

If the data matches the forecast, then the decade from 2014-2023 will be the warmest in more than 150 years of record keeping.

Will the forecast temperature rises bust the Paris climate agreement?
The Met Office says that 2015 was the first year in which the global annual average surface temperature reached 1C above the pre-industrial level, which is generally taken to mean the temperatures between 1850 and 1900.

Each year since then, the global average has hovered close to or above the 1C mark. Now, the Met Office says that trend is likely to continue or increase over the next five years.

"We've just made this year's forecasts and they go out to 2023 and what they suggest is rapid warming globally," Prof Adam Scaife, head of long term forecasting at the Met Office, told BBC News.

"By looking at individual years in that forecast we can now see for the first time, there is a risk of a temporary, and I repeat temporary, exceedance of the all-important 1.5C threshold level set out in the Paris climate agreement."

Last October, UN scientists published a special report on the long-term impacts of a temperature rise of 1.5C.

They concluded that it would take a massive carbon cutting effort to keep the world from tipping over the limit by 2030. The Met Office analysis now says there's a 10% chance of this happening within the next five years.

"It's the first time the forecasts have shown a significant risk of exceedance - it is only temporary. We are talking about individual years fluctuating above the 1.5 degree level," said Prof Scaife.

"But the fact that that can happen now due to a combination of general warming and the fluctuations due to things like El Niño events in the next few years does mean we are getting close to that threshold."

The Met Office says it has a 90% confidence limit in the forecasts for the years ahead.

It says that from 2019 to 2023, we will see temperatures ranging from 1.03C to 1,57C above the 1850-1900 level, with enhanced warming over much of the globe, especially over areas like the Arctic.

The research team says it is pretty certain in its predictions because of its past experience. The team's previous forecast, made in 2013, predicted the rapid rate of warming that's been observed over the past five years. It even predicted some of the lesser known details such as the patch of cooling seen in the North Atlantic and the cooler spots in the Southern Ocean.

Chuck Schumer STUNNED when 76 percent of Americans say…

According to CBS News, 76 percent of American voters said they approved of Trump’s State of the Union address, and 72 percent agreed with the president’s view on illegal immigration reform. CNN reported the same numbers, and included a startling fact: 60 percent of Americans had a “very positive” review of Trump’s remarks.

It will take more than a few carefully-scripted speeches to convince the country and the world that Trump actually knows what he's doing.

Definitely some of both.

Every few years, I do a re-read of Politics and the English Language. Surely one of the finest essays I've ever bumped into.

Ivanka Trump has criticised an artwork that shows her lookalike hoovering up breadcrumbs from a gallery floor.

Visitors to the Washington DC gallery throw crumbs for the model to clean.

The gallery says Ivanka Vacuuming, by Jennifer Rubell, explores Ms Trump's "comically wide range of feminine identities - daughter, wife, mother, sister, model, working woman, blonde".

In response, Ms Trump tweeted that "women can choose to knock each other down or build each other up".

The performance is being staged by arts group CulturalDC for two hours every night until 17 February, and is also being live-streamed online.

CulturalDC's executive director Kristi Maiselman said Ms Rubell's work was "insightful", "timely" and "boundary-pushing" in its reflection of contemporary womanhood.

The gallery added that it was not just about Ms Trump, and did not represent "one feeling, one relationship or one point of view towards this powerful and sexualised female form".

But Ms Trump - the president's daughter and a White House adviser - disagrees.

Tweeting almost a week after the piece launched, she accused the artist of trying to "knock down" a fellow woman.

Her brothers reacted in a similar way.

Donald Trump Jr called the piece a "sexist attack", while Eric Trump told Fox News that his sister was "a powerful woman who has done more for women than probably anybody in Washington DC".

Replying directly to Ms Trump online, Ms Rubell said she would like for her to "form [her] own direct response". The artwork is not intended to mock, she added, but is instead "exploring complicated subjects we all care about".

She also offered to arrange a private visit for Ms Trump "with none of the media circus that has formed around it".

In an interview on CulturalDC's website, published before its launch, Ms Rubell said the piece was also partly about power and control.

"Here's what's complicated: we enjoy throwing the crumbs for Ivanka to vacuum. That is the icky truth at the centre of the work. It's funny, it's pleasurable, it makes us feel powerful, and we want to do it more," she says.

"We like having the power to elicit a specific and certain response. Also we know she'll keep vacuuming whether we do it or not, so it's not really our fault, right?"

Looks like Ivanka is as thin skinned as her dad.

The State Of American ‘Fact-Checking’ Is Completely Useless

Hyper-precision fact-checking that creates the impression that a Republican is misleading the public: For this, take Politico’s insinuation that Donald Trump was lying to the public about abuse of women at the border. During the State of the Union, Trump claimed “one in three women is sexually assaulted on the long journey north.” This contention is only “partly true,” according to Politico, because a “2017 report by Doctors Without Borders” found that only 31 percent of female migrants and 17 percent of male migrants said they had been actually abused while traveling through Mexico.

..."Massive Approval Numbers..."

Then he reinforced the lack with his vanity shutdown

On Tuesday, she also directed 25 troops from other states -- Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Wisconsin -- to withdraw from the New Mexico border.

Report Busts Myth: Illegals More Likely To Be Jailed Than Citizens, Legal Immigrants

“This study should put to rest, once and for all, the notion that illegal aliens commit crimes at a lower rate than legal residents,” concluded FAIR President Dan Stein. “Contrary to the popular myth, this analysis shows that when applied nationally, SCAAP data from key states suggest that illegal aliens are incarcerated at three times the rate of legal residents, on average.”

FAIR’s study tracks with those of the Government Accounting Office.

Anybody think the American people didn't notice that??