Labels

The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places. ― Bryant McGill




PREVARICATOR TRUMP      





THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLUE

The president of the United States struggles to speak in complete sentences. He says things that are not just factually incorrect, but have little basis in reality. He seems incapable of grasping the basic parameters of major policy issues. He lies constantly and never corrects himself.

This is, of course, not breaking news, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be taking about it. Take, for example, Trump's remarks this week in an interview with the Washington Post about climate change. They are stupefying in their disorder and incoherence. I'm going to quote at length because it's worth reading the president's words in their entirety.

When asked about his thoughts on the recent federal report that outlined the grave risks of unchecked global warming, Trump said this:
 
"One of the problems that a lot of people like myself — we have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers. You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean. But when you look at China and you look at parts of Asia and when you look at South America, and when you look at many other places in this world, including Russia, including — just many other places — the air is incredibly dirty. And when you’re talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small. And it blows over and it sails over. I mean, we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia. It just flows right down the Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from. And it takes many people to start off with."

And this:
 
"Number two, if you go back and if you look at articles, they talked about global freezing, they talked about at some point the planets could have freeze to death, then it’s going to die of heat exhaustion. There is movement in the atmosphere. There’s no question. As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it — not nearly like it is."
 
As for his theory on the fires that recently swept through California, which scientists have said were exacerbated by rising global temperatures:
 
"The fire in California, where I was, if you looked at the floor, the floor of the fire, they have trees that were fallen, they did no forest management, no forest maintenance, and you can light — you can take a match like this and light a tree trunk when that thing is laying there for more than 14 or 15 months. And it’s a massive problem in California … you go to other places where they have denser trees — it’s more dense, where the trees are more flammable — they don’t have forest fires like this, because they maintain. And it was very interesting, I was watching the firemen, and they’re raking brush — you know the tumbleweed and brush, and all this stuff that’s growing underneath. It’s on fire, and they’re raking it, working so hard, and they’re raking all this stuff. If that was raked in the beginning, there’d be nothing to catch on fire. It’s very interesting to see. A lot of the trees, they took tremendous burn at the bottom, but they didn’t catch on fire. The bottom is all burned but they didn’t catch on fire because they sucked the water, they’re wet. You need forest management, and they don’t have it."
 
It’s hard to even know where to begin with this. To the extent one can even understand Trump’s argument, it is just nonsense. No, poor forest management is not the reason why California has forest fires (and it’s worth nothing that while Trump clearly wants to deliver a cheap shot against California, most of the state’s forests are managed by the federal government).  His argument on global freezing seems to refer to a hoax Time magazine cover from the 1970s that allegedly claimed a global ice was coming. It’s been repeatedly debunked. 
 
The real issue here is the disjointedness of Trump’s narrative. He seems to cobble together arguments out of scraps of things he’s heard, has been told, or has seen on "Fox and Friends." This isn’t even a word salad. It’s a word salad tossed in a wood chipper and thrown off a building.  Over and over we see this in Trump’s interviews and press conferences: a repeated struggle to make even semi-coherent arguments and a tendency to repeat the same stock phrases and words.  Even worse, Trump seems incapable of learning new information. His argument about forest management has been repeatedly debunked and ridiculed - and yet he continues to make it. 

If you go back and look at the way Trump spoke decades ago, there were similar tendencies - the exaggerations, the boastfulness, the same words and ideas regurgitated over and over again. But even then he demonstrated the capability to make sense when he talked, to adhere to a narrative, to speak in complete and coherent sentences. Today, however, when he is asked to speak extemporaneously, you get what I've cut and pasted above. 

Quite simply, there are not the words of a healthy, well-functioning, cognitively sharp man. I realize this is an uncomfortable subject - and gets us into the realm of armchair psychiatry - but it seems far past the point for us to conclude that the president isn't simply brainless and completely unqualified for the job he holds. Perhaps he simply isn't a well man. [#FREE PRESS, Michael A. Cohen, November 29, 2018]








VOTING RIGHTS   

Events this [month] serve as a stark reminder: our democracy needs defending.

On [November 6th,] millions of voters exercised their most fundamental right. They elected a remarkably diverse new Congress, and they restored voting rights to more than a million people in Florida.

But far too many who attempted to vote were frustrated by malfunctioning machines, untrained poll workers, and long lines. Tens of thousands of others were denied a voice by discriminatory voter suppression laws.

...even before all the election returns had been counted, President Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Although Sessions has been a longtime foe of civil rights, his firing by the President is most likely the first step in an effort to weaken the Special Counsel's ongoing investigation, and thus deals another blow to the independence of the Department of Justice.

These are serious developments, and LDF is not standing on the sidelines. Before the election, we fought voter suppression in Georgia and Texas. On [Election Day,] we were on the ground in seven states, helping voters cast their ballots despite delays and opposition. And ... we filed a complaint against Alabama for denying voting rights to four Black students.

We are prepared to urge the new Congress to pass new voting rights legislation, and we will be fighting to ensure that the next attorney general is independent, committed to civil rights, and devoted to the rule of law.

We're going to keep fighting. But we can't do it alone. We need your support.

This week showed us what we can achieve when we stand together. It also made clear that we cannot take our democracy for granted. JOIN US
With you in struggle,
Sherrilyn A. Ifill
President and Director-Counsel
P.S. If you believe that every citizen should have a say in who governs this nation, and how they govern it, I hope you will make a donation today and fight for the right to vote.



















READ








GLOBAL






GREECE








RUSSIA

Bangladesh







CHINA









NORTH KOREA


EL SALVADOR






NOTE: I have no official connection to any organization from which information is shared.. Occasionally, I post informational material and/or an opportunity to donate or join as  a "community service" announcement.  These again are shared for their varying perspectives.


Any commercial or business interest information shared is purely informational, not an endorsement.  I have no connection with any such commercial or business interest.

Any books listed are random or topic-related to something else in the post.  Think of these as a "library bookshelf" to browse.  They are shared for informational or entertainment value only, not as being recommended.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment