tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post8006082135162417603..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Let The Horse Race Commence! Dale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-61046976692251204132016-08-22T09:36:19.224-07:002016-08-22T09:36:19.224-07:00And more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/opini...And more:<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/opinion/the-water-next-time.html<br />-------------<br />The Water Next Time<br />Paul Krugman<br />AUG. 22, 2016<br /><br />A disaster area is no place for political theater. The governor<br />of flood-ravaged Louisiana asked President Obama to postpone<br />a personal visit while relief efforts were still underway. . .<br />He made the same request to Donald Trump, declaring, reasonably,<br />that while aid would be welcome, a visit for the sake of a<br />photo op would not.<br /><br />Sure enough, the G.O.P. candidate flew in, shook some hands,<br />signed some autographs, and was filmed taking boxes of Play-Doh<br />out of a truck. If he wrote a check, neither his campaign nor<br />anyone else has mentioned it. . .<br /><br />But boorish, self-centered behavior is the least of it.<br />By far the bigger issue is that even as Mr. Trump made a<br />ham-handed (and cheapskate) effort to exploit Louisiana’s<br />latest disaster for political gain, he continued to stake<br />out a policy position that will make such disasters increasingly<br />frequent. . .<br /><br />Remember when climate deniers used to point to a temporary<br />cooling after an unusually warm year in 1998 as “proof” that<br />global warming had stopped? It was always a foolish,<br />dishonest argument, but in any case we’ve now blown right<br />through all past records.<br /><br />And one consequence of a warmer planet is more evaporation,<br />more moisture in the air, and hence more disastrous floods.<br />As always, you can’t say that climate change caused any<br />particular disaster. What you can say is that warming makes<br />extreme weather events more likely, so that, for example,<br />what used to be 500-year floods are now happening on an<br />almost routine basis. . .<br /><br />It probably won’t surprise you to hear that when it comes to<br />climate change, as with so many issues, Mr. Trump has gone deep<br />down the rabbit hole, asserting not just that global warming<br />is a hoax, but that it’s a hoax concocted by the Chinese to<br />make America less competitive.<br /><br />The thing is, he’s not alone in going down that rabbit hole. . .<br /><br />[W]hen it comes to denial of climate change and the deployment<br />of bizarre conspiracy theories to explain away the evidence,<br />Mr. Trump is squarely in the Republican mainstream. He may<br />be talking nonsense, but anyone his party was likely to<br />nominate would have been talking pretty much the same nonsense.<br /><br />It’s interesting to ask why climate denial has become not just<br />acceptable but essentially required within the G.O.P. Yes,<br />the fossil-fuel sector is a big donor to the party. But the<br />vehemence of the hostility to climate science seems disproportionate<br />even so. . . What’s happening, I suspect, is that climate denial<br />has become a sort of badge of right-wing identity. . .<br /><br />In any case, this election is likely to be decisive for the climate,<br />one way or another. . .<br />====<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-88482055961860985752016-08-22T09:26:34.374-07:002016-08-22T09:26:34.374-07:00More Trumpery, from today's _New York Times_:
...More Trumpery, from today's _New York Times_:<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/opinion/trumps-hollow-regrets.html<br />-------------<br />Trump’s Hollow ‘Regrets’<br />Charles M. Blow<br />AUG. 22, 2016<br /><br />Donald Trump is the candidate who is so rigid in his perverted<br />self-righteousness that he doesn’t “like to have to ask for<br />forgiveness.” He says he has never even sought forgiveness<br />from God, the divine author and inspiration of his favorite book,<br />from which he struggled to name a favorite verse. . .<br /><br />Precisely what does Trump regret? . . .<br /><br />I don’t believe, even for a nanosecond, that he regrets the<br />personal impact of what he has said on anyone besides himself. . .<br /><br />I believe that Trump regrets that, as Lindsey Graham put<br />it last week, “People are getting pretty nervous about our<br />candidate because he’s in a death spiral here and nobody<br />knows where the bottom is at.” Trump’s “regret” is just<br />a cynical ploy to set a bottom and bounce back.<br /><br />But it will take more than the 75-plus remaining days of this<br />campaign to disassemble what it took 70 years of his life<br />to build.<br /><br />He is who he is.<br /><br />This fragile narcissist, who is a sort of bottomless pit of<br />emotional need and affirmation, is easily injured by even the<br />slightest confrontation.<br /><br />He is a man who has said of himself, “I have no friends, as<br />far as I’m concerned,” as he joked that it would be easy to<br />get big money out of politics. But that claim is worrisome,<br />a thing that only a bully would say.<br /><br />Yes, he can work a crowd, work a screen and work a Twitter<br />account. He can channel anger, hatred and bigotry and give it<br />a voice and face and standing. He can make bombast feel like<br />bravado. He can lower discourse and raise the rabble.<br /><br />He has the gifts of a grifter. . .<br /><br />Trump thinks of himself as a great man — that is the premise of<br />his entire sales pitch, that America has faltered and can only<br />be made great again by the Midas touch of his tiny hands — but if<br />current trends continue and he suffers a staggering loss on<br />Election Day, his ego will be forever injured as he is assigned<br />to history not as a great man but as a great disaster, a<br />cautionary tale of what comes of a party that picks a<br />con man as its frontman. . .<br /><br />There is something rotten at the core of this man that no length<br />of script or turn of phrase can ameliorate.<br />====jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com