monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

But let's also note at this critical juncture where the US of A speeds over the edge of the cliff, that Trump is orchestrating this State Dept appointee thing exactly as he would promote a professional wrestling match. Exactly.

And if you think about it, one can see that Trump's understanding of truth is the same, no difference whatsoever, as it is for a wrestling promoter.

Just as the tobacco industry gained decades of huge profits by obfuscating the dangers of smoking, the oil industry secured decades of profits—in Exxon’s case, some of the largest profits of any corporation in history—by helping to create a fake controversy over climate science that deceived and victimized many policymakers, as well as much of the public. The bogus science it paid for through front groups, which was then repeated and validated by industry-funded, right-wing think tanks and a too-easily cowed press, worked just as well for ExxonMobil as it had for R.J. Reynolds. A 2004 study by Naomi Oreskes in Science examined 928 peer-reviewed papers on climate science and found that not a single one disputed global warming’s existence or its human cause.50 But according to a recent Yale University study, only 11 percent of Americans understand that there is a scientific consensus on these points.51

I've just begun reading this review of books and documents detailing how Exxon's scientists have long appreciated the global warming crisis while their PR operations have pretended something quite different.

Trump is well on his way to becoming one of America's great presidents.

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Reports by @CNN that I will be working on The Apprentice during my Presidency, even part time, are ridiculous & untrue - FAKE NEWS!

“The idea of The New York Times being worried about fake news is really weird. The New York Times is fake news.”

blatham wrote:

I've just begun reading this review of books and documents detailing how Exxon's scientists have long appreciated the global warming crisis while their PR operations have pretended something quite different.

I think you and the author whose words you post here are likely well over your heads in terms of real understanding on these points. Anticipating the likelihood of increased regulation of CO2 emissions does not require anything more than orfdinary business prudence, and in no way constitutes an embrace of the already discredited forecasts or theories of Al Gore and his self serving (and uninformed) supporters. Reinforcing expensive infrastucture on the North Shore of Alaska doesn't do that either. There is a universe of engineering issues, of which I suspect you know little, likely involved there. I recognize it doesn't take much to stimulate your "vast conspiracy" theories, but this is a bit trivial even by your standards (If all you have is a hammer then every probelm appears to be a nail....)

In 2013, [ExxonMobil CEO and possible choice for running the State Department Rex Tillerson] was awarded the Order of Friendship by Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation.

The problem for Trump is the simple fact that he was taped. All the media has to do is play back his contradictions.
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/donald-trump-contradicting-himself-hypocrisy-video

At the last [press] conference, he told reporters that he hoped Russian intelligence agencies had hacked Hillary Clinton’s emails and would publish whatever they found. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll, has written a new book about ExxonMobil and how it has shaped American policy in the U.S. and around the world. The book is called "Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power."

Coll describes Exxon as one of the most powerful businesses ever produced by American capitalism, a company that now functions as a corporate state within the American state. To get access to oil, it partners with African dictatorships. In America, Coll says Exxon's lobbyists have bent and shaped American foreign policy, as well as economic, climate, chemical and environmental regulation.

Coll is also the author of "The bin Ladens," and "Ghost Wars," about the wars in Afghanistan. He's the president of the Public Policy Institute, the New America Foundation, and is a staff writer for the New Yorker.

Steve Coll, welcome to FRESH AIR. So you usually write about Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Taliban. Why did you write such a huge book about oil, and why specifically ExxonMobil?

GROSS: And so under the CEO Lee Raymond, who was there from 1993 to the end of 2005, Exxon started a public policy campaign to raise skepticism about the science that concluded fossil fuels were a cause of global warming. And it basically tried to create an alternate science, an alternate pool of experts. What did it do to create that?

COLL: Well, remember, 1997 is when the Kyoto Accords come into being. And that is what really galvanizes Exxon and the oil industry. There were a lot of people who objected to the Kyoto Accords on economic grounds or fairness grounds because they required the industrialized countries to reduce their emissions but not the developing world and so on.

But Exxon's campaign was unique or distinctive because of its attack on science in the way that you describe. So they started, both themselves and through the American Petroleum Institute, to fund free-market communications groups and campaigns, some of them small, some of them larger, who developed a strategy for challenging the validity of emerging science about global climate change, and not just the fact that there was lots of evidence that industrial activity was contributing to global warming but also the finding that there was a warming trend.

And this not only borrowed from some of the tactics that the tobacco industry had used to delay public understanding of the dangers of smoking, in some cases there were even overlaps of the individuals and groups that were engaged in this communications campaign.

Trump is far and away in the lead to become America's all-time worst president.

It doesn't hurt the business to raise minimum wage, they simply charge customers more to pay the higher labor costs.

Georgeob1: I read the words you posted above, but noticed the lack of substance. It appears the only purpose of your post was to aim your personal attack cannon, loaded with dripping condescension, in Blatham's direction. If anyone is deserving of obloquy, it appears to be you. Next time, please identify the substantive point you are making and back it up with bona fide evidentiary support.

Quote:

Trump is far and away in the lead to become America's all-time worst president.

Your comment is based only on the fact that he has a penis.