Heard on CBC radio from Toronto/Ottawa and also just posted to BBC --
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38324045
A special archiving event is being held in collaboration with Archive's End of Term project. Since 2008 this has saved US government websites at risk during government transitions.
Canadian "guerrilla" archivists will be assisting a rushed effort to preserve US government climate data.
Environmentalists, climate scientists and academics are collaborating to protect what they view as fragile digital federal records and research.
They want the data saved before Donald Trump takes office.
The CBC report interviewed a Canadian scientist who described some of the scientific data that was lost during the Harper government.
Help and donations are requested.
Related Stories
You were warned. Now it begins: The Chicago Tribune reports that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is working on changes to its Web properties:
The EPA's extensive climate change website now redirects to a page that says "this page is being updated" and that "we are currently updating our website to reflect EPA's priorities under the leadership of President Trump and Administrator Pruitt." It also links to a full archive of how the page used to look on Jan. 19, before Trump's inauguration.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @11:23AM
Former NASA chief scientist on the same topic of backing up federal climate science data,
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38322594 [bbc.com]
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 16 2016, @12:35PM
Donald's got a quick hand
He'll look around the room
He won't tell you his plan
He's got a rolled cigarette
Hanging out his mouth
He's a cowboy kid
Yeah he found a six-shooter gun
In his dad's closet, in the box of fun things
I don't even know what
But he's coming for you, yeah he'scoming for you
[Chorus x2:]
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, faster than my bullet
Daddy works a long day
He be cominghome late, and he's coming home late
And he's bringing me a surprise
'Cause dinner's in the kitchen and it's packed in ice
I've waited for a long time
Yeah the sleight of my hand is now a quick-pull trigger
I reason with my cigarette
Then say, "Your hair's on fire, you must've lost your wits, yeah?"
[Chorus x2:]
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, faster than my bullet
Run, run, run, run, ru-ru-ru-run, run, run
Ru-ru-ru-run, run, run, run
Ru-ru-ru-run, run, run, run, run, run
[Chorus x4:]
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, faster than my bullet
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @02:31PM
Naw, the end of life in song lyrics ended during the Nixon administration, maybe you (1956) were too young to hear Gimme Shelter when it came out in 1969?
Recently read the back story on the backup singer Merry Clayton who sang the Rape, Murder chorus (check her on YouTube)
Come on
Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
Rape, murder yeah!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away yeah
The floods is threat'ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away, shot away, shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away, shot away, shot away
I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away, kiss away, kiss away
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Songwriters: Keith Richards / Mick Jagger
Gimme Shelter lyrics © Abkco Music, Inc
(Score: 5, Informative) by TheGratefulNet on Friday December 16 2016, @01:00PM
anti-intellectuals?
ie, they are the science deniers, they are firmly in bed with Big Religion(tm) which is no friend to logical thought and reasoning.
this isn't really about trump, its about the party of denial. every time they take massive power, we end up with more 'god' stuff shoved down our throats and they simply won't listen to the fact that this country was never meant to be held or owned by ANY religious org.
the environment means nothing to them; again, they think that the earth was 'given to them by god' and that means they can use it all up and 'god will fix things when its needed'. therefore, why have laws about environ policies. the sky daddy will just come by when we need him and he'll fix everything up!
not kidding. many of them believe this deeply and they won't listen to reason.
this is why there is always this kind of reaction when the R's take hold of the majority of power. even worse, PENCE! that moran is not ashamed of his myth fantasies and has been quite bold about how he wants to force his views on everyone.
so, its not about trump. its about the party that now has full power in this country (at least for 2 years) and how they want to ransack our country like invading barbarians.
its quite reasonable to guard our collected wisdom and save it so that it can't be 'redefined' and twisted to suit their agenda.
the 'post fact world' is all about the R's being in total power.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @01:06PM
EPA was founded by republicans.
Gee, don't you look a right fuckwit now.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday December 16 2016, @02:38PM
And the religious loonies used to be part of the Democrat party. What was your point?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @05:01PM
You convinced me with your persuasive argument of "the other guys do/did it as well".
Good job not answering the question, idiot [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @05:07PM
Are you forgetting the black church that is still a large component of the Democratic party?
Why are liberals so ignorant of history?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @06:06PM
> Are you forgetting the black church that is still a large component of the Democratic party?
I know its fashionable among ignorant geeks to make everything black and white. But not all churches are equal.
The typical republican version of christianity is prosperity gospel. [wikipedia.org] The democrats' versions of christianity are closer to social gospel. [gotquestions.org] As a muslim looking at christianity here in america it seems to me that the democrats got it right. Jesus said it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
Look at Jimmy Carter the only evangelical ever elected to the office of the president. He is the living antithesis of prosperity gospel and is loathed by republicans. And on the flip side there are some black guys like Creflo Dollar [creflodollarministries.org] who are the absolute dregs of the prosperity gospel movement with absolutely no redeeming value at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @06:45PM
It's even more fashionable for people who apparently have never set foot in the South, much less is a church, to lecture people living there about what is happening [youtube.com].
I live in an area where nearly all the food banks, charities, and social programs are faith based. There's more churches here than Starbucks.
You can proffer your bullshit someplace else son, to more ignorant among you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:06PM
I live in Tennessee. In fact, I live just down the road from the "most bible-minded" town in the country. And what I see are tons of churches that absolutely love to pat themselves on the back for helping out poor white folks with the minimal essentials to survive - soup kitchens and shelter (but only if you attend services even if it means getting fired from your minimum wage job because your shift is at the same time as the nightly service), who don't even acknowledge poor black folks and preach from the pulpit support for government policies that insure the poor stay poor under the prosperity gospel belief that the poor should lift themselves up by their own bootstraps despite not having any bootstraps.
So fuck off you smug asshole with you faux concern.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:34PM
Yeah, [wate.com] I [www.ncf.church] believe [newcityfellowship.com] that. [cbn.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @08:36PM
You seem to be denying that sunday morning isn't still the most segregated hour of the week.
You are just ignorant. 86% of evangelical churches are segregated. Sure some of the SBC leadership realizes that's fucked up. But they also said Trump was a horrible candidate and the rank-and-file still voted for him like crazy.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2015/january/most-segregated-hour-of-week.html [christianitytoday.com]
http://www.charismanews.com/us/48165-sunday-morning-still-the-most-segregated-day-of-the-week [charismanews.com]
One of the reasons the rank-and-file of the SBC like their churches segregated is because the SBC was founded on segregation. [civilwarbaptists.com] It split off from General Missionary Convention in 1845 for the express purpose of supporting slavery which the GMC refused to condone. It took the SBC until 1995 to officially condone slavery. [sbc.net] Just 20 years ago. Racism was and still is the life-blood of the SBC. Its a damn embarrassment and the elite leaders know it, but they can't do anything about it because the congregations don't have to do anything the leadership says.
Like I said, I live in the south. I know my shit, it is all around me. You clearly don't have an ounce of real knowledge, just another lame-ass "google-expert" whose entire knowledge is based on googling up the rare one-off example that confirms his preconceptions.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @09:35PM
Keep moving those goalposts, boy, eventually you'll happen upon a point that sticks while ignoring every other argument that was made.
Let me direct your attention, again, that the black church (note that hint of segregation there? Thanks for pointing out the obvious) is a large component of the Democratic party, but somehow is different from white churches because "reasons". And even when pointing out that it was indeed segregated even with churches moving towards integration, the point that was missing: prosperity gospel.
From your own link:
Jesus never issued any call for political change, not even by peaceful means. He did not come to earth to be a political or social reformer. The gospel Jesus preached did not have to do with social reform or social justice or political change.
How can you tell me the black church is more a part of the social gospel, when your tirade vindicates every example of moving towards social justice? Can you not even read your own source material? You see any examples or outreaches for the poor? Google scholar indeed.
No, you're just another twit reading in what hey want to believe, missing the obvious, but because they voted Trump (because you can see into their hearts), they must be in league with TBN, but fuck me as long as the black church toadies down to your political beliefs, their hypocrisy can be overlooked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @11:03PM
> that the black church (note that hint of segregation there?
Don't be a dipshit. Black churches are black because the white churches are exclusionary. Blaming the excluded for being left out is some whack bullshit.
> somehow is different from white churches because "reasons".
No, not "reasons." Greed and racial animus wrapped up in religious rationalization. Like most people they prefer to be told they are good people rather than confront the results of their choices.
> How can you tell me the black church is more a part of the social gospel, when your tirade vindicates every example of moving towards social justice?
Sorry, what? You pulled one sentence out of context and think that means something? Could you be any more reductive? Typical google-expert behavior.
> because they voted Trump (because you can see into their hearts),
No, I don't have to see it in their hearts. White evangelicals overwhelmingly voted for Trump, [washingtonpost.com] at even higher numbers than they voted for Bush. They did it during the primaries too [fivethirtyeight.com] when they had actual evangelicals like Carson and Cruz to vote for.
You are profoundly ignorant of the realities here in the south. You know nothing about southern baptists as they live their actual lives and the history of their churches. And you clearly know nothing about the gospel either. Give up trying to rationalize your ignorant bullshit, its completely transparent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @05:36PM
He looks more like a left fuckwit, you right fuckwit!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @01:28PM
https://www.google.com/search?q=gay+pride+parade+2016&safe=off&biw=1563&bih=876&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwju9Yyq6PjQAhWoilQKHUkxDokQ_AUIBygC [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @02:14PM
... have you seen the Democrats the past few years?
"Transgender"
"Hands up don't shoot" ... that never happened. "Racist!"
"Everyone deserves a living wage!" what will we pay them with? "the government can print more money!" what about inflation? "that will never happen!"
Muslims shoot up a gay nightclub... "White Male Conservatives did it!" Muslims do it again. "White Males!" Muslims do it again. "We must import more Muslims!" And there is no Bigger Religion than Islam right now.
The Democratic mainstream right now -- and this includes the New York Times and CNN -- is just as batshit insane as the looniest religious nutter fringe of the Republican right.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @06:42PM
Its called propaganda promoting race/class/religious divides so that we don't pay attention to the important things being quietly pushed through. Even so I would take crazy liberal bullshit over crazy religious bullshit any day. At least those liberals care about the Earth.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday December 17 2016, @01:49AM
> "Transgender"
Care to put that into a complete sentence? Are you asserting that transgendered people don't exist?
> "Hands up don't shoot" ... that never happened.
Perhaps it didn't happen; however there were witnesses who said it did. It's reasonable to entertain the idea that it happened. What's the connection to the Democratic Party? Are you implying that only Democrats are open to the idea that the police might wrongfully use force?
> "Racist!"
Care to put that into a complete sentence? Are you asserting that racism don't exist?
> "Everyone deserves a living wage!" what will we pay them with? "the government can print more money!" what about inflation? "that will never happen!"
From the Democratic Party platform:
Democrats believe we are stronger when we have an economy that works for everyone—an economy that grows incomes for working people, creates good-paying jobs, and puts a middle-class life within reach for more Americans. Democrats believe we can spur more sustainable economic growth, which will create good-paying jobs and raise wages. And we can have more economic fairness, so the rewards are shared broadly, not just with those at the top. We need an economy that prioritizes long-term investment over short-term profit-seeking, rewards the common interest over self-interest, and promotes innovation and entrepreneurship.
We believe that today’s extreme level of income and wealth inequality—where the majority of the economic gains go to the top one percent and the richest 20 people in our country own more wealth than the bottom 150 million—makes our economy weaker, our communities poorer, and our politics poisonous.
[...]
The system is not working when we have a rigged economy in which ordinary Americans work longer hours for lower wages, while most new income and wealth goes to the top one percent. [...]
Democrats believe that the current minimum wage is a starvation wage and must be increased to a living wage. No one who works full time should have to raise a family in poverty. We believe that Americans should earn at least $15 an hour and have the right to form or join a union and will work in every way we can—in Congress and the federal government, in states and with the
private sector—to reach this goal. We should raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour over time and index it, give all Americans the ability to join a union regardless of where they work, and create new ways for workers to have power in the economy so every worker can earn at least $15 an hour. We applaud the approaches taken by states like New York and California.
We also support creating one fair wage for all workers by ending the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers and people with disabilities.
Democrats support a model employer executive order or some other vehicle to leverage federal dollars to support employers who provide their workers with a living wage, good benefits, and the opportunity to form a union without reprisal. The one trillion dollars spent annually by the government on contracts, loans, and grants should be used to support good jobs that rebuild the
middle class.
--
https://web.archive.org/web/20160722204846/https://www.demconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Democratic-Party-Platform-7.21.16-no-lines.pdf [archive.org]
Nothing about printing money in there. It's about having employers pay their workers, and about directing existing government spending toward companies that pay their workers fairly.
Muslims shoot up a gay nightclub... "White Male Conservatives did it!" Muslims do it again. "White Males!" Muslims do it again. "We must import more Muslims!" And there is no Bigger Religion than Islam right now.
Omar Mateen was one person. Apart from your post, I've not heard him described as a "white male conservative." If he were, which parts of that description would you dispute? Besides the Pulse night club in Orlando, which others have been attacked? I'm not aware of any. Are you merely saying that others among the ~1.7 billion Muslims in the world have committed heinous crimes? Would you consider Dylann Roof a "white male conservative"?
As for "importing more Muslims" I'll quote again from the Democratic Party platform:
[...] we will expand opportunities for DREAMers to serve in the military and to then receive expedited pathways to citizenship. We will fight to end federal, state, and municipal contracts with for-profit private prisons and private detention centers. In order to end family detention, we will ensure humane alternatives for those who pose no public threat. We recognize that there are vulnerable communities within our immigration system who are often seeking refuge from persecution abroad, such as LGBT families, for whom detention can be unacceptably dangerous.
We reject attempts to impose a religious test to bar immigrants or refugees from entering the United States. It is un-American and runs counter to the founding principles of this country.
[...] Given the immense scale of human suffering in Syria, it is also imperative that we lead the international community in providing greater humanitarian assistance to the civilian victims of war in Syria and Iraq, especially displaced refugees.
As I understand it, offering asylum to refugees is the obligation of every country. Also, the United States has contributed to the chaos in the Middle East; Mr. Obama, Ms. Clinton and some Democratic members of Congress—even Mr. Sanders—had a hand in that. To give asylum to the resulting refugees is only proper.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fritsd on Friday December 16 2016, @02:42PM
I have a suspicion, but it's not more than that: intellectual wankery, if you will.
I always thought that the Republicans were the "Party of Power" in the U.S.A. (more so than their very close neighbour party the Democrats).
I mean, the party of the status quo: conservatives, the country and world is exactly organized according to their needs, so the ship of state just needs to be steered straight ahead, and the party brass and their voters will become calmly, steadily, richer and more powerful. A party of thoughtful debate on which minor nuances need to be addressed, but otherwise: "full speed ahead".
(So far I think this is not an extremely radical viewpoint, but my more crazy opinion fragments follow)
Such a conservative party can be fully attuned with logical thought and reasoning; there's nothing that precludes a conservative party with a functioning world-model. Both left-wing, social democratic governments and right-wing, christian democratic governments have proved successful in the past, even in times of crisis.
(still not very radical, I think. doesn't really apply to the USA because you only have parties right of the christian democrats (e.g. right of Merkel).)
But now something is different. With my shiny tin-foil hat on, I can make myself believe it is the following:
The world-model no longer fits. Jared Diamond calls this: "predicament", as opposed to "problem", in his book "Collapse".
Republicans smart enough to see this, will lie and obscure the truth, because it makes them unhappy to believe both that they are a party of functioning government control, and that the ship of state is nevertheless completely steerless and there are icebergs ahead and there's fuck all they can do about the real problems within their arena of thought.
For every single one of us people who like to follow the news and bore other people to death about politics on Soylentnews, there are issues which are so-called "anathema". It doesn't bear thinking about.
The solutions exist and are rationally visible, but they are morally invisible, in the sense that: "our culture doesn't do such a thing. shut up!" This causes cognitive dissonance, blindness, and belief in bullshit that pretends to solve the predicament.
We are more moral beings than rational beings.
For Jonathan Swift the preacher it was: "we can solve the problem of the poor Irish children, by selling them to be eaten" [wikipedia.org].
Naomi Klein wrote, that maybe we are in an era where the choice is "capitalism OR survival". (That's not what she wrote; I forgot, the book was so depressing I find it hard to read)
When the Exxon scientists concluded in 1978 that Global Warming was real and a problem and caused by Exxon et.al., Rex Tillerson's company decided to shut them up and even fund fake global warming denier think tanks.
(Sorry, this line of text is the only one that is on-topic, because I'm truly grateful that archive.org thought about this paranoid possibility of all the expensive NASA research disappearing, followed up by a false flag: "they destroyed their own experimental results, because the results showed there's no warming at all!!!")
Tin-foil hat time:
Maybe Republican think tanks concluded that, for humanity's survival, only radical socialist measures would work.
And now they're trying to forget that they thought that, erase the thought, deflect the attention. Try not to think of the elephant. America's going to be Great Again!!1!
Because if the long-term outlook is that capitalism is going the way of the Dodo as a concept, then you might as well build up a huge bar tab before you go!
This is a moral decision, because some people think it is moral to leave our world in a good shape for our descendants to inherit, and some people don't. Pope Francis wrote a quite readable book about it (well.. slightly readable then): Laudato Sì [vatican.va]
What do you think? Prime grade bullshit from wintery Sweden, or not?
(Score: 2) by tisI on Friday December 16 2016, @03:37PM
They've been this way a very long time.
Stupid is hard to fix.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @04:58PM
I thought that religious people looked after the environment because God have Man stewardship of the earth and all the living things on it. If God gives you something to look after, you better do your best to look after it!
(Score: 3, Informative) by fritsd on Friday December 16 2016, @06:19PM
That's right: it's expressed in detail here:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html [vatican.va]
If you have the time, I greatly recommend Chapter IV. INTEGRAL ECOLOGY which is very clearly written.
(most of the book is quite mystical and may be difficult to read if you're not brought up as a Catholic)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @09:57PM
God gave man oil to burn, and when the oil is all burned, Jesus will come back and rapture the people who burned the most oil to heaven while the infidels will burn forever in the lake of fire. The lake runs on nat gas.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @05:08PM
Why is the DNC the party of bashing everyone else? Answer that question and you have your answer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Friday December 16 2016, @01:38PM
Environmentalists, climate scientists and academics are collaborating to protect what they view as fragile digital federal records and research.
All the anti-Trump scare articles are starting to get a tad old, not only here but in general in media. I understand people that write them don't like him and didn't vote for him but the scaremongering is starting to take on unreal proportions. They seem to be trying to top eachother now in how horrible it is going to be on January 20th when Trump becomes POTUS and enters the Whitehouse -- the world as we know it is clearly going to to end, all the science is going away and nuclear war is right around the corner.
(Score: 5, Informative) by TheGratefulNet on Friday December 16 2016, @02:00PM
people truly hated rumsfeld.
people now, also, truly hate pence.
trump, I can deal with. a bozo who has no motivations other than to line his pockets. we've seen that and it does not destroy things, per se.
god botherers, though, IN THE WHITE HOUSE, that's entirely something to be afraid of. when a religion takes hold of a country, all kinds of repression and regression happens.
its quite reasonable to fear those that want to turn back the clock of progress. and that's exactly what pense is all about.
we fear he will be the real one in control. that's what us 'liburals' are afraid of. and with good reason, as he has not been shy about his agenda.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @05:03PM
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." [wikiquote.org], Sinclair Lewis
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday December 17 2016, @01:59AM
Perhaps it would be more accurate to speak of fascism coming back to America:
In Germany, Ford's antisemitic articles from The Dearborn Independent were issued in four volumes, cumulatively titled The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem published by Theodor Fritsch, founder of several antisemitic parties and a member of the Reichstag. In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters." Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Mein Kampf, although he is only mentioned once: Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence...[from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said he regarded Ford as his "inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping Ford's life-size portrait next to his desk. Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany," and modeling the Volkswagen, the people's car, on the Model T.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#The_Dearborn_Independent_and_antisemitism [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @06:35PM
> trump, I can deal with. a bozo who has no motivations other than to line his pockets. we've seen that and it does not destroy things, per se.
Money is not Trump's primary motivation. The presidency was not about making him rich. It was about making him loved and respected. His father was distant and unloving. His entire life has been spent trying to fill the hole his father left in his heart. He's packing his cabinet with generals because his father sent him to a military boarding school where officers became surrogate father figures. Watch how he behaves on twitter - anything even mildly negative said about him provokes a completely over the top attack in response. And the attacks aren't even topical, he'll reach for anything to use as a weapon because as far as Trump sees it, everything is personal so everything is on the table.
He's never going to get the love he wants because his personality is defective. He's completely transactional, 'If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.' [washingtonpost.com] But transactional love is what you get from a hooker, it only lasts as along as you are willing to pay for it so he's always going to have that empty hole in his heart.
That personality defect makes him vastly more dangerous than somebody just out to line their pockets. It makes him easy to manipulate [washingtonpost.com] and easily provoked into completely disproportionate actions. It also means you can not count on him to act in his own rational self-interest.
Look at his "victory tour." It does nothing to make him any money. It costs him money -the tickets are free and he's gotta pay for the facilities and his travel on that jet which is about $11,000/hour to fly anywhere. [aviationcv.com] But the rallies give him the adoration of the crowds. And BTW, the last time a western politician held post-election victory rallies was 1930 Germany. [groopspeak.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:18PM
Psycho-babble all you want, but the bottom line is that people have been voting against the status-quo all over the world. Change is in the air, and we would do better to help shape the change than engage in character assassination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:32PM
And Neville Chamberlain rises from the grave to post on soylent!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:48PM
Well what do you think we are doing????
Delusion is flying thick and heavy through the air, fascism and dictatorship are reaching new levels in many countries. There is change in the air, now make sure you choose the right path. Trump himself may not be the anti-christ, but his cabinet picks aren't making him look any better.
Are you just blind? Insane? A true believing evangelical christian who can't wait to slam the hammer on some illegals and muslims? Not saying that is guaranteed to happen with Trump, but that is his rhetoric and the beliefs of a good portion of his cabinet.
Appointing Elon Musk? Pure PR move to gain support (heeeey, it might not be so bad they got Muskie on board!) Pffft.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday December 17 2016, @02:28AM
[...] people have been voting against the status-quo all over the world. Change is in the air [...]
In Mr. Trump's speech on energy policy, he seemed to favour continued, even increased, emphasis on fossil fuels.
/article.pl?sid=16/06/03/1944223 [soylentnews.org]
His selection of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state only reinforces that impression.
He holds investments in several fossil fuel companies.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2838696-Trump-2016-Financial-Disclosure.html [documentcloud.org]
He's expressed reluctance to sell his stocks or place them in a blind trust. Not doing so would leave him in a position to profit from his office.
I appreciate that Ms. Clinton wasn't, for many people, the change they were looking for, but Mr. Trump appears to me to represent a reinforcement of the status quo in regard to energy.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Saturday December 17 2016, @11:13AM
It has more to do with which way policies have been trending and the economic issues involved:
The trend for the past 8 years or so has been to emphasize reduction of fossil fuel usage. More tax funds are being spent on public transit initiatives and financial incentives for adding solar power or buying a hybrid or electric car. The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting use of the carpool lane in traffic jams, first–row parking with free charger access, huge discounts (or money back) on their utility bill, and so forth.
Meanwhile, thanks to the economic mess, there's a lot of people who can't afford to get solar equipment or a hybrid/electric car, and who have had to watch the more fortunate get all of those perks in addition to their existing socioeconomic status. From that perspective, “change” is then more about curbing or reversing those policies, and possibly about reducing/removing the sales & gas taxes that have been footing the bill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @12:10PM
The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting use of the carpool lane in traffic jams, first–row parking with free charger access, huge discounts (or money back) on their utility bill, and so forth.
Heh. None of those are federal policies. And the nissan leaf is eminently affordable at less than $30K after the federal subsidy - less than the average new car price of $33.6K [kbb.com]
But it has been interesting to watch your mind at work trying to rationalize trumpism.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday December 17 2016, @09:09PM
> [...] for the past 8 years or so [...] sales & gas taxes that have been footing the bill [...]
The federal tax has remained the same, 18.4 cents per gallon, since October of 1997.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/incometaxandtheirs/a/Federal-Gas-Tax-Rates.htm [about.com]
The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting [...] free charger access, huge discounts (or money back) on their utility bill [...]
Those subsidies are intended, it would appear, to make electric cars and solar panels more affordable. Of course they are a burden, but the reasoning has been that the benefits—less pollution, less greenhouse effect, less dependence on the fossil fuel industry and on imported fuel, less need to build central power plants—would outweigh the costs. Earlier this month, OPEC convinced 11 non-member countries, including Russia, to cut oil production.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-opec-russia-cuts-idUSKBN14513U [reuters.com]
Back in 2000 and 2001, Enron and a few other companies coerced California into paying exorbitant prices for electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis [wikipedia.org]
https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/enron-caused-california-blackouts-traders-say [marketwatch.com]
If the rate-payers were generating much of their own electricity, such a situation would be unlikely to occur.
More tax funds are being spent on public transit initiatives [...] The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting use of the carpool lane in traffic jams, [...]
Try to forgive me for quoting and responding out of context. Public transit ought, in my opinion, to be affordable to the masses. It also ought to lessen traffic congestion. I do acknowledge that it sometimes fails to do either.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 17 2016, @07:10AM
Just listened to the news on the radio. Talking about the protests in Poland. Seems they voted in a conservative government and now the people are really not happy as the government removes the freedom of the press.
The problem is that voting against the status-quo, just to vote against the status-quo, seems to lead to reduction of freedoms more often then not.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Saturday December 17 2016, @11:37AM
Its not just freedom of the press that is getting reduced now in Poland: Since the paranoid swivel-eyed PiS conservatives are in government and have absolute majority in parliament (sounds FAMILIAR??!?), they also:
2016-10-06 Poland's parliament rejects near-total ban on abortion after protests [theguardian.com]
Poland has strict abortion laws; only in 3 cases a. rape, b. mother's life is in danger, c. foetus is deformed and will die soon. The government tried, but failed, to pass a law that only in case b. mother's life is in danger, abortion would be allowed.
2016-10-24 Polish abortion law protesters march against proposed restrictions [theguardian.com]
Extremely conservative catholic Poland makes an even more limited abortion law; if the foetus is deformed and will die soon after birth, it must be brought to term against the mother's wishes so that it can be christened and buried.
So only allowed in case of a. rape and b. mother's life is in danger.
2016-11-14 Poland exhumes president Lech Kaczyński's remains [theguardian.com]
Poland's president's brother's body dug up to prove that somehow the "Russians did it", when the government of Poland visited Smolensk in dense fog despite weather warnings and their plane crashed.
2016-12-14 Poland restricts public meetings [theguardian.com]
Freedom of assembly is voted out; the Polish government probably had a (for them) important reason to forbid complete freedom of assembly, namely to make sure that on the day of remembrance of the president's brother's plane crash, only the Catholic church and his own government could hold manifestations. So that no dissent could be heard on that day. It still sounds a bit stupid to me to write a law for that, though. "You have freedom of assembly, except on the following days, because then I'll put you in jail if you disrupt my important meetings"
2016-12-17 Polish government tries to keep the budget secret [theguardian.com]
To be honest I didn't 100% understand this article, they held the budget vote in another room of the parliament building so that it could not be recorded or made public??
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @11:50PM
> when a religion takes hold of a country, all kinds of repression and regression happens...
As opposed to the french and communist revolutions, I guess?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @05:13AM
Secular revolutions can fail for a variety of reasons all unrelated to the fact they are secular.
Theocracies all fail the same way.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by quacking duck on Friday December 16 2016, @04:35PM
We already have a template for what happens when an ideologue takes power: Stephen Harper's conservatives in Canada sought to destroy the scientific works that departments had spent decades building up. Literal libraries of data and research were destroyed by closing the facilities, forcing the materials to be thrown into dumpsters or recycled, not to mention muzzling government scientists from being able to talk to media without going through a political officer / censor.
A TP-led, Republican-dominated house will be much worse, because it's Harper's contempt for science + Rob Ford's unhinged populist behaviour, multiplied by ten. We already have proof by the PE's selection to head various departments like the EPA, education, etc. Funny how I haven't heard a peep about being "qualified for the job" from right wing whiners.
Given odds like this, it's absolutely prudent to safeguard scientific data. It's analogous to moving irreplaceable things out of museums and galleries when you know an invading extremist force is coming that seeks to destroy anything that doesn't conform to their dogma.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @06:03PM
Generally, I find myself getting more stupid by visiting here. Criticism and debate, what little of it there was, has been replaced by grandstanding and specious claims with little to no supporting evidence or reasoning.
In many respects, it reflects the media at large. Congratulations, SN has joined the big leagues, where hyperbolic editorializing has replaced any semblance of intellectual honesty or rigour.
When conservatives [washingtonpost.com] are offering more pointed criticisms of Trump than the left could possibly muster (and certainly of a higher caliber than anything found here), you know it's time to pack it in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @10:28PM
A couple of problems: on SN you probably won't find too many politically focused people who follow every political news item. This means most are limited to the article at hand and whatever thoughts they've gathered overall. Next you have Trump who isn't even president yet so all we can do is speculate for the most part. Complaining about hyperbole? I think its better to waste some hot air on hyperbole in the chance it keeps people alerted to a full fascist take over.
For hard evidence you'll be waiting for Trump to screw things up, come back when that happens. Or better yet, leave! I can tell from
the left could possibly muster that you have your own axe to grind.
On this particular article I've seen a lot of good points and decent discussion, so I don't know what your problem is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @01:31AM
And yet...and yet...here you are again to give us your received wisdom!
I think it bears mentioning here that you have yet to make your own contribution of evidence, reason, intellectual honesty, or rigour. Why is that?
Note that your grand staircase flounce would have been much more impactful if you had actually included your name, rather than posting as AC. That being said, don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out! You were just leaving, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @07:01PM
Generally, I find myself getting more stupid by visiting here.
I find that hard to believe...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by https on Friday December 16 2016, @09:50PM
It's not scaremongering. It's an observation of a pattern of action that has worked well elsewhere. This will require an attention span of more than one minute, so please bear with me.
Here in Canada, we recently had the most frighteningly fascist administration in a long time (under Stephen Harper) go out of their way to literally destroy the libraries of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans( DFO). This department was not chosen randomly, and I'll get to why later. It was hard for most people to believe, especially when they couldn't imagine a motivation for it. It worked something like this: first, you claim a long-term plan to gradually centralize and digitize all the books and pamphlets and records and panel papers and so on, and retain a central repository of various undigitized items. So when all the regional offices were having their libraries removed, there wasn't a lot of traction to resist - "why are you opposing this cost-cutting measure that will, in the end, let you have faster access to more information?" So, a lot of the regional libraries started having their collections moved. While this was going on, the quality of the work the scientist did was affected, because parts of their library literally weren't there. The loan process from head office was extremely slow and cumbersome, and when your manager is asking for a report by Friday or you're fired, a three week wait for that good text on the subject that used to be on the third floor... you just do without, even though you know there's some important stuff left out. This had a side effect of getting staff used to contractors fucking around inside their libraries, which was critical to step two: hiring contractors to literally throw the books directly into the garbage instead of into storage that you're not paying rent on. The plan to digitize was a deliberate farce. No records were kept of what, if anything, was digitized. The claims of building a nationwide library index and only throwing out duplicate copies was a lie, and not even a good idea (see previous point, work quality).
The why of that particular department it is fairly clear, at least to Canadians who track the stock market or maybe just live here. One of the things the DFO does is keep historical records of soil and water quality. In a country of two million lakes, kinda important. But if you don't have records of what the water quality was in Le Moo St. Bumfuck from fifty years ago, thirty years ago, five years ago, you're going to have a very hard time saying that these lead levels of 1 mg/mL are caused by the new smelter upstream, because how do you know what the background levels are there? Oh, right, you don't, because we destroyed your records. <smirk>
Canada's stock markets are dominated by mining companies. You name any large international mining concern, chances are its head office is in Canada. Our laws are very generous to mining companies in terms of taxes and rights, but science gets in the way of high ROIs.
It didn't fully work as expected, because several scientists risked their jobs alerting the press (related to a different nightmare where scientists were forbidden from speaking publicly). But we literally don't know how much information was lost, aside from "much much more than that, no, more than that, no you moron, more than that." Multiple shipping containers at every office.
Scaremongering? No. Just a functioning memory, slightly more than a year but not as many as five, is needed. Don't think Trump and Co. can't think of a quieter way to destroy large chunks of the EPA's data now that Harper and Co. have some battle experience (and smirking skills) to share.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @01:19AM
Unreal proportions? Seriously? And, who the hell modded you up as "Insightful", of all things? Your personal sock puppet? Perhaps you missed this [foxnews.com] bit of recent news? When are you going to admit that some people have very legitimate concerns? When experts on climate change are being rounded up and disappeared in the middle of the night? When Muslims, Mexicans, and intellectuals are being shoved into the gas chambers? When? Just where is the tipping point for you?
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday December 17 2016, @06:52PM
All the anti-Trump scare articles are starting to get a tad old, not only here but in general in media.
What's fair is fair. After 8 years of the most ridiculous bullshit being spread about Obama (and 15+ years about Clinton) it's the other side's turn now.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Beanlover on Friday December 16 2016, @02:51PM
...that people think the President has such broad, sweeping power that (s)he can just unilaterally make a motion and do things like make EPA data disappear.
Do people not realize how "real" life works? I know the power of the President has experienced "scope-creep" in recent decades with "Executive Orders" and such...but just because those haven't been struck down by the other two areas of power in our government doesn't mean it's constitutionally correct for the President to do such things.
I'm sure the reason why Executive Orders haven't been challenged is because one "side" or the other either agreed with the order OR was waiting for "their guy" to be in power so they could use the same constitutionally-violating power...rather than thinking, "Hey...this is bad for THE COUNTRY...we should fix this now!". That, apparently, went away a long time ago (which, coincidently, is one reason why Trump got elected in my opinion...people tired of politics as usual and wanted someone who was going to look out for the country...even if they only ever just said they were going to).
Seriously...do people ACTUALLY think that Trump will just wave his hand and all this data will vanish? The scaremongering is reaching ridiculous levels...so much so that I'm hopeful those who are normally influenced by it will see it for what is it when it finally reaches the absurd levels it is apparently aspiring to now.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @03:10PM
Forget executive orders and simply look at the man who has been chosen to lead the EPA, as well as the Congress likely to approve him.
A Trump Presidency is a case study in risk. If you don't prepare now, you risk getting burnt alive.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @06:54PM
> Forget executive orders and simply look at the man who has been chosen to lead the EPA, as well as the Congress likely to approve him.
Or his appointment to lead the Dept of Energy - Rick Perry - who famously wanted to eliminate the entire agency in 2011 [latimes.com] but was such a bumblefuck he couldn't even remember its name.
Obviously as head he won't eliminate the agency. What he will do is dismantle as much of it as possible, except for the parts that prop up american oil companies. That means all the research into green energy engineering and energy conservation is at risk.
This is Trump's pattern - put people in charge of agencies who haven't just been critical of the agencies but are opposed to much of their official purposes. Like the hardcore religious billionaire DeVoos who wants to privatize public education being appointed to the department of education. I suspect that what's really going on is that Bannon is pulling the strings. He's publicly said he wants to tear down the institutions of government and put (his version of christian) religion in charge. [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday December 16 2016, @08:04PM
In a nutshell, to destroy and annoying agency, you appoint someone who wants it gone, and therefore won't fight when it loses huge chunks of its budget next year.
You make it pretty clear down the ranks that the boss isn't interested in some causes. Then the hammer comes down because of the budget cuts, with projects eliminated based on the boss's priorities.
It sucks all motivation out of the workers, and they either quit or produce nothing you didn't want to hear.
When both Congress and the Executive want to zombify an agency, there are no checks and balances. How many votes do you lose crippling the DOE and the FCC?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @09:38PM
0 votes until at least 2018 or 2020. Until then, it's open season.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @11:48PM
Another outcome is that the rank-and-file employees of the agency rebel and throw a shitstorm until they replace the head. Remember James Watt, the head of Interior who wanted to sell off all the public lands?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday December 17 2016, @12:01AM
It's not 1980 anymore, and I'm pretty sure Trump would love to get some Reagan-cred by firing as many terrible, bad members of a useless department as possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @01:53AM
Christian religion? You do realize this is the guy who listed Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, and Satan [cnn.com] as being among his heroes. Whatever else you might call him, Christian just doesn't quite fit him. It still leaves me gobsmacked that somewhere around 80% of evangelicals in America voted for Trump even though they were well aware of the peculiar values of his campaign CEO and many others of his inner circle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @03:15AM
> Whatever else you might call him, Christian just doesn't quite fit him.
I said his version of christianity. His whole schtick is that america was founded on judeochristian values and america has declined because we've turned away from them. [patheos.com] Of course, as you've noticed, his version of judeochristian is peculiar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @08:28AM
You forgot that Satan is a goddamn angel, and the other two are just his role models.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fritsd on Friday December 16 2016, @04:54PM
Yes, we do :-) Some of us weren't born yesterday, you know.
Somebody high in the hierarchy sighs "won't somebody rid me of that troublesome scientific organisation?"
Some eager climbers take action, unsanctioned, unauthorized. They command an underling to do the actual deed "or you're fired"
The underling does the evil deed
The underling gets found out and prosecuted for criminal action (eventually)
The eager climbers get found out and prosecuted eventually
They may or not be sentenced to become a Fox News talkshow host after several years (cf. Oliver [wikipedia.org] North [wikipedia.org]).
The high ups are let off completely scot-free [wiktionary.org].
The end.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @06:28PM
For those who missed the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Becket#Assassination [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by stretch611 on Friday December 16 2016, @07:41PM
You are correct, things like this do not go away with a simple wave of the hand...
However, When trump takes office, The executive branch will become republican. The legislative branch will be republican. The judicial branch will be tied based on political affiliation; but the first thing done will be to have a conservative appointee rushed through as fast as possible. Basically everything will be set to push through all of Trump's and the republican party's agenda.
Yes there are things like fillibusters available to be done by the democrats... but such measures are usually held for just the most atrocious pieces. It is not something that you will not likely seen done to every single piece of legislation.
For the next 2 years, the ball is in their court.
And before you say it is overblown... look at this "100 day wishlist..." https://consumerist.com/2016/12/15/house-freedom-caucus-asks-trump-to-undo-232-rules-on-everything-from-net-neutrality-to-tobacco-to-nursing-homes-to-ceiling-fans/ [consumerist.com]
Essentially anything done through a presidential Executive order can be repealed/changed with a new executive order from trump after the inauguration. Congress can act to change wipe out any regulatory action by entities like the FCC/FTC/CFRB made in the last 200 days with just a vote.
It will take time to get through everything... but watch out as your rights will be eroded away quickly as the Rich and Powerful elites laugh their way to the bank.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @08:51PM
What? The EPA has secret data? Why don't they just publish EVERYTHING on something like wikileaks, github, etc. It'll get replicated everywhere. This election results fear mongering is getting very silly. Now I can't believe anything they're saying. They're all FAKE news!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @11:23PM
Maybe try growing a brain? It seems you are paying zero attention to the details of reality... The amount of data the EPA has is HUGE, not something you can just send up on a torrent file and "replicate everywhere".
(Score: 4, Informative) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday December 16 2016, @09:45PM
Stephen Harper up in Canada destroyed many volumes of scientific literature by de-funding the libraries storing them. This has happened in the last 5 years,
The Harper Government Has Trashed and Destroyed Environmental Books and Documents [vice.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @11:51PM
Prof Michael Mann has spent millions of tax payer dollars to hide behind FOI laws and yet we still have yet to confirm what data made it into the UN IPCC AR4 nobel prize winning hockey stick graph. I mean, this has been a issue going on for a while now:
https://climateaudit.org/2011/04/25/cru-refuses-foi-request-for-yamal-climategate-chronology/ [climateaudit.org]
Maybe with the work of professional archivists, we can finally see the data our tax payer dollars are paying for.