Nobody has spoken on gun control more astutely than Jim Jeffries
0 Replies
blatham
3
Wed 4 Sep, 2019 01:51 pm
@blatham,
This is a perfect example of Trump/GOP setting and touting policy which is designed primarily as a trolling device to "own the libs"
Quote:
In yet another hit to efforts to combat climate change, President Donald Trump’ administration announced on Wednesday that it was rescinding conservation rules requiring energy-saving light bulbs.
The Department of Energy’s policy changes will halt the shift toward LED light bulbs, which help save energy and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.
Under the new policy, manufacturers are no longer required to meet energy conservation standards for several types of light bulbs, such as candle-shaped and reflector bulbs.
More from Ed Kilgore and Thomas Edsall on the trolling theme. This one is important, if terrifying.
Quote:
Millions of words have been spilled in efforts to understand Donald J. Trump’s appeal, much of them involving discontent with the alternatives in both parties offered to voters in 2016. But now, 32 months into his presidency, the more pressing question is how Trump maintains such steady support despite his erratic behavior, his incessant lying, his outbursts of racist malevolence, and his many broken promises.
Is it simply a matter of a booming economy anesthetizing people who really only care about their own pocketbooks, and if so, could the steadily increasing economic jitters — many of them directly attributable to Trump’s policies — finally send his approval ratings into a downward spiral? Is the whole MAGA movement purely and simply an effort by demographic “losers” — particularly white men on the margins of the economy and society — to turn back the clock? Or is Trump just an especially lurid product of extreme ideological and partisan polarization — proof that literally anyone can command one of the two major political parties with no serious erosion of support?
To these much-discussed possibilities — each with its own implications for 2020 and American political life generally — you can add an especially alarming alternative explanation highlighted in a column by the New York Times’ Thomas Edsall: Trump is tapping into a hunger for chaos that he is uniquely qualified to feed. According to an award-winning paper by three political scientists (two from Denmark and one from Temple University), there is a sort of toxic synergy at work between this “populist” pol, chaos-seeking voters, and social media that has placed Trumpism in the mainstream of American politics:
Quote:
It argues that a segment of the American electorate that was once peripheral is drawn to “chaos incitement” and that this segment has gained decisive influence through the rise of social media.
How do Petersen, Osmundsen and Arceneaux measure this “need for chaos”? They conducted six surveys, four in the United States, in which they interviewed 5157 participants, and two in Denmark, with 1336. They identified those who are “drawn to chaos” through their affirmative responses to the following statements:
I fantasize about a natural disaster wiping out most of humanity such that a small group of people can start all over.
I think society should be burned to the ground.
When I think about our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking “just let them all burn.”
We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over.
Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things.
In an email, Petersen wrote that preliminary examination of the data shows “that the ‘need for chaos’ correlates positively with sympathy for Trump but also — although less strongly — with sympathy for Sanders. It correlates negatively with sympathy for Hillary Clinton.”
More terrifyingly, they found sizable numbers of people agreeing with three of the five “chaos” statements:
Quote:
The responses to three of the statements in particular were “staggering,” the paper says: 24 percent agreed that society should be burned to the ground; 40 percent concurred with the thought that “When it comes to our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking ‘just let them all burn’ ”; and 40 percent also agreed that “we cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over.”
If you ever wondered to whom Trump was addressing his dark vision of “this American carnage” in his inaugural address, this could be your answer. More importantly, perhaps, these chaos-seekers don’t seem to care about empirical data or even truthfulness:
Quote:
Petersen, Osmundsen and Arceneaux find that those who meet their definition of having a “need for chaos” express that need by willingly spreading disinformation. Their goal is not to advance their own ideology but to undermine political elites, left and right, and to “mobilize others against politicians in general.” These disrupters do not “share rumors because they believe them to be true. For the core group, hostile political rumors are simply a tool to create havoc.”
To put it another way, when Trump says and does outrageous things, he’s just “owning the libs,” or defying “political correctness,” which is a more important goal than truth-telling to people driven by fury. This could well be the reality underlying Salena Zito’s famous maxim that MAGA folk “take Trump seriously, but not literally.” What are a few thousand lies among comrades-in-arms?
Edsall ends his column with some unhappy thoughts about how these chaos-seekers, who are almost by definition hostile to democratic norms, might react to a Trump defeat in 2020:
Quote:
If voters deny Trump a second term, how many of his most ardent supporters, especially those with a “need for chaos,” will find defeat unbearable?
It’s certainly a fear I’ve expressed, based in part on the regular efforts of Trump and the GOP to promote voter-fraud and election-theft myths in the last few years. But beyond that lurid scenario, evidence that a significant share of Trump supporters are as nihilistic and destructive as Donald Trump himself supplies a sort of Occam’s-razor answer to all the questions about why they put up with him: His worst traits are a feature, not a bug, for those who take pleasure in chaos. Yes, maybe there is a progressive cure for this malady that you can prescribe via the right mix of economic policies and demonstrations that cultural and demographic change is good for us all. But it would appear that appeals to sweet reason, or even to self-interest, will produce limited results. Maybe it’s enough to drive Trump and his enablers from office, but the longer he’s there, Americans addicted to the chaos he embodies will want more.
I think, overall, this is very close to the truth of what's going on. And it gives us another handle on the bleak and destructive cynicism -> nihilism we have seen in many supporters of Bernie Sanders. I've mentioned before the statement made by Andrew Breitbart shortly before he died, "I hope the left tries something because we have the guns". That state of mind on politics fits exactly as do the recent broadcasts by Tucker Carlson ramping up rhetoric on a coming civil war between right and left.
And we really have to confront the role Russian trolls are playing in helping foment these notions and emotions.
Not to mention that we must face how deeply influenced the modern GOP is by such cynicism and how it attempts to forward it for perceived political advantage. The more cynical the voters can be made to feel about politics and politicians, the less likely those voters will be to trust anyone or any government program. "Government is the problem" and "government can't help, it can only do harm".
0 Replies
blatham
2
Wed 4 Sep, 2019 03:50 pm
@neptuneblue,
I should have thought of that one. Damn you.
0 Replies
blatham
2
Wed 4 Sep, 2019 05:56 pm
@glitterbag
Quote:
The State Department’s deputy secretary and undersecretary admitted last week that they could’ve done more to protect the department’s career officials from the Trump administration’s campaign of political retaliation and harassment.
Foreign Policy reported that Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan had expressed regret over his handling of the issue during a town hall meeting with department employees on August 29, which was held in response to the department’s inspector general’s report on two top political appointees who had targeted career staffers deemed “disloyal” to President Donald Trump.
“I will be the first to admit the failure on my part to have done more to address the situation,” Sullivan said of the report’s findings.
David Hale, the department’s third-ranking official as undersecretary of state for political affairs, promised during the town hall to help staffers who had been punished by the Trump officials to “make amends” and fix any damage those officials had inflicted upon their careers...
The only way amends can be made is by financial means. This can be decided in court, and it wouldn't be the first time a career employee received a settlement because of outrageously unfair treatment.
Schools and daycare centers for military families are just some of the 127 defense department projects that will lose their fundings to cover the cost of the wall that the president insisted Mexico would pay for.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Wednesday it would pull funding from 127 Defense Department projects, including schools and daycare centers for military families, as it diverts $3.6 billion to fund President Donald Trump’s wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Schools for the children of U.S. military members from Kentucky to Germany to Japan will be affected. A daycare center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland - the home of Air Force One - will also have its funds diverted, the Pentagon said.
Trump declared a national emergency earlier this year to access the funds from the military construction budget. In March, the Pentagon sent to Congress a broad list of projects that could be affected.
A Pentagon official said in a briefing that the department was given a “lawful order” by Trump to divert the funds. She said the Pentagon is working closely with Congress and its allies abroad to find funding to replace money diverted for the wall, but that there are not any guarantees that those funds will come.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon said the first $1.8 billion would come from projects outside the United States, followed by projects inside the country.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the Trump administration’s reallocation of funds was a “slap in the face” to members of the U.S. military. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point in Schumer’s state is the most expensive project impacted in the United States with $95 million pulled from construction on its engineering center.
The list of affected projects also includes roads, maintenance shops, equipment storage buildings and hazardous material warehouses.
The wall was a central promise of Trump’s 2016 campaign and remains central to his immigration policies as he aims for re-election in 2020.
Some $30 million in funds for an equipment building at Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona will be diverted to pay for the wall.
Republican U.S. Senator Martha McSally of Arizona said she fought to ensure no projects in her state would be affected and was guaranteed of that by former acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan. She said in a statement the Fort Huachuca project was already delayed.
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a call with fellow Democrats on Tuesday that the diversion of military funds “will undermine our national security, quality of life and morale of our troops, and that indeed makes America less safe,” according to an aide.
0 Replies
oralloy
-1
Thu 5 Sep, 2019 08:50 am
@MontereyJack,
MontereyJack wrote:
Wrong, as usual.
Wrong again. You cannot provide a single example of anything untrue in any of my posts.
MontereyJack wrote:
Your opinions masquerading as facts, as usual.
Wrong again. You cannot provide a single example of me ever claiming that opinions are facts.
0 Replies
farmerman
2
Thu 5 Sep, 2019 08:52 am
@MontereyJack,
Dr Craig Malkin did a series of studies on heaalthy and diminished self-esteems in folks and its been pretty well backed up that those with low self esteems are want to draw admiration from such diverse areas as "claims of intelligence or wealth", "trophy" marriage partners, and claims of infallibility etc. Sounds like someone other than our president?
I'm watching a really good series called Utopia at the moment. A group of people who've only met online have to meet in person. One is an 11 year old kid called Grant. The others say that they thought he was a twenty five year old city trader who drives a Porsche and has a supermodel girlfriend. To which Grant replies. "When I'm 25 I will be."
0 Replies
neptuneblue
1
Thu 5 Sep, 2019 08:32 pm
Trump reportedly set to challenge California’s mileage authority
About a dozen states have opted to follow California’s pollution and mileage standards.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS |PUBLISHED: September 5, 2019 at 2:59 pm | UPDATED: September 5, 2019 at 4:02 pm
By Tom Krisher and Ellen Knickmeyer | Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is moving forward with a proposal to revoke part of California’s authority to set its own automobile gas mileage standards, a government official said Thursday, confronting a state that has repeatedly challenged the administration’s environmental rollbacks.
The Environmental Protection Agency was preparing paperwork for the White House for the move, meant to help the administration set a single, less rigorous mileage standard enforceable nationwide, according to the official, who is familiar with the regulatory process and spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been made public.
President Donald Trump has pushed for months to weaken Obama-era mileage standards nationwide and has targeted California’s decades-old power to set its own mileage standards as part of that effort.
Administration moves to rescind authority that Congress granted probably would end up in court. When President George W. Bush challenged California’s greenhouse gas emissions and mileage-setting ability, California fought it. The Obama administration subsequently dropped the Bush effort.
The Trump plan would have to be posted in the Federal Register and would be subject to public comment.
His administration has tried to ease or remove scores of environmental regulations that it regards as unnecessary and burdensome. The tougher mileage standards were a key part of the Obama administration’s efforts to reduce climate-changing fossil fuel emissions.
California has sued the Trump administration 27 times on environmental matters alone, often as part of a group of states. Counting preliminary injunctions, California has won in court 19 times, said Sarah Lovenheim, a spokeswoman for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
Becerra, a Democrat, made clear his state would battle this move as well. “California will continue its advance toward a cleaner future. We’re prepared to defend the standards that make that promise a reality,” he said in a statement.
EPA officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The mileage move would target California’s half-century-old authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own, tough tailpipe emission standards. California’s long struggles with smog mean the state has been setting its own standards since before the 1970 law was written. Congress allowed California to seek waivers from the national standards for that reason.
About a dozen states have opted to follow California’s pollution and mileage standards.
The waiver has allowed California, the state with the highest population and by far the biggest economy, to steer the rest of the nation toward cutting down on car and truck emissions that pollute the air and alter the climate.
Margo Oge, director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality from 1994 to 2012, said the Trump administration is likely to lose in a court challenge of California’s powers.
“There is nothing under the Clean Air Act that allows the EPA to revoke a waiver that was given to the state,” she said. “They cannot do that, in my view, based on 20 years managing the program.”
The Trump administration has proposed freezing gas mileage requirements for automakers at 2021 levels, thus eliminating Obama-era regulations that require them to rise about 5% per year on average for the fleet of new cars sold in the U.S. A final proposal is expected next month.
Trump’s own administration, in documents proposing to freeze the standards, puts the cost of meeting the Obama-era requirements at around $2,700 per vehicle. It claims buyers would save that much by 2025, over standards in place in 2016. But that number is disputed by environmental groups and is more than double the estimates from the Obama administration.
Consumer Reports found that the owner of a 2026 vehicle will pay over $3,300 more for gasoline during the life of a vehicle if the standards are frozen at 2021 levels.
Many in the auto industry don’t like the far tougher Obama-era mileage standards and fear it won’t be able to meet them, as U.S. consumers keep shifting away from sedans to less-efficient trucks and SUVs. Most automakers favor increasing mileage requirements at a lower rate than set under President Barack Obama. They also want one U.S. standard to avoid having to engineer separate vehicles for California and the states that follow its rules.
In July, four automakers — Ford, Honda, BMW and Volkswagen — broke from the rest of the industry and struck a deal with California agreeing to 3.7% increases in mileage per year. That’s less than the 5% annual increase under the Obama-era standards.
The side deal has irked Trump, who has chastised Ford in tweets.
0 Replies
oralloy
-2
Thu 5 Sep, 2019 09:44 pm
@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
draw admiration from such diverse areas as "claims of intelligence or wealth", "trophy" marriage partners, and claims of infallibility etc. Sounds like someone other than our president?
Do you ever stop lying?
I don't claim infallibility. I merely point out that you are lying when you falsely accuse me of imaginary errors because you can't come with any intelligent arguments.
My claims about my intelligence are not attempts to gain admiration. I am merely setting the record straight when progressives lie about me to distract from the failures of their demented ideology.
Are you trying to say you are Donald Trump????? That's who farmerman was talking about. Why in the world would you imagine anyone thinks you have a trophy marriage partner, vast wealth and glorious success at anything. This might be a shock to your system, but not every topic or remark is directed at you.
