Tag Archives: politics

Some Climate Moves

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Maybe.  Via Watts Up With That we see these items [emphasis in the originals]:

By Megan Darby in Marrakech

US Republicans are expected to axe billions of dollars in climate finance when they take the White House and Congress in January.

Funds to help poor countries adapt to the impacts of global warming and develop sustainably will be redirected to domestic priorities.

“We are going to cancel billions in payments to the UN climate change programmes and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure,” said President-elect Donald Trump in his 22 October Gettysburg address.

With a Republican majority in the Senate and House of Representatives, there appears to be little standing in his way.

And

What a Trump Win Means For the Global Climate Fight

Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency signals an end to American leadership on international climate policy. With the withdrawal of US support, efforts to implement the Paris agreement and avoid the most devastating consequences of global warming have suffered a huge blow.

by David Victor

With the unexpected triumph of Donald Trump, what’s in store for US climate and energy policies?

[…]

One thing is clear: the Trump administration will inflict more harm on global cooperation around climate than any prior president. After the successful Paris agreement last year, that cooperation was finally poised to make progress with decisive US leadership. I doubt that a Trump presidency will kill the Paris process—too many other countries are too invested in its success. But it will shift the intellectual and political leadership of the process from the United States to other countries, most notably China.

Oh please, oh please.

The Blame Game and Ducking Responsibility

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Hillary Clinton told supporters Saturday that letters about her email practices sent by the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to Congress in the final days of the presidential race weighed heavily on her campaign and contributed to her defeat, according to a person who heard her remarks.

‘Tain’t my fault.  Nuh, uh.

Nonsense.  Say what anyone might wish—and there are a number of differing and valid views—about how FBI Director James Comey handled or mishandled the FBI’s investigation of Clinton.  Those remarks are irrelevant.

If Clinton hadn’t set up her private, unsecured email server on which she handled State Department official business and on which she feloniously handled classified information, there would have been nothing for Comey’s FBI to investigate.

You protest too much, Lady.  Full stop.

Broken Promises

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The Left has some, albeit only the Left’s celebrities.  Recall some of those who promised they’d leave the country if Donald Trump were elected President.  Here’s how they’re doing so far.

  • Bryan Cranston, of Breaking Bad Who—me!?
  • Lena Dunham, actress Nooo!
  • Whoopi Goldberg, of The View among other enterprises I’m sorry to disillusion you, but I’m not leaving the country that I was born and raised in.  Never mind.
  • Barbra Streisand, singer crickets; although she said she’d leave if Bush the Younger were elected, and she never did then, either
  • Samuel L Jackson, actor (channeling Schumer, apparently): When you learn the difference between My Actual Opinion and a Kimmel Skit….
  • Chelsea Handler, comedian everyone in my office is like, “You have a responsibility, you have a voice and you need to use it and you have to be there.” Which, if that truly had mattered, she would have said at the start rather than promising to leave
  • Reverend Al Sharpton, Baptist Minister (also channeling Schumer?) That was said in jest!  Wait—what!?
  • Amy Schumer, comedian King’s X!  I didn’t mean it!  It was a joke!
  • Rosie O’Donnell, late of The View crickets

Broken promises.  Empty rhetoric.

How the European Left Sees Us

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Here’s how Gordon Repinski and Holger Stark see us, as they say in so many words in their Spiegel Online piece from last Friday.

On that evening [on which Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump won the election and became President Elect Donald Trump], America experienced a revolution. The successful postwar Western model, rooted in mobility, enlightenment, and inclusion has been convulsed by this angry protest vote.

Because it couldn’t possibly be the case that the successful postwar Western model, rooted in mobility, enlightenment and inclusion has been rescued from the Progressive, cynically divisive identity politics, deliberately dependence-on-government-making Left of the President Barack Obama (D) administration.

And

It was a vote of no-confidence in globalized capitalism, an expression of America’s partition into liberal cities and backward rural areas.

Because it couldn’t possibly be a repudiation of too easily done and so too bad trade agreements and not at all a rejection of international trade.

Because rural Americans are just rubes, too stupid to keep up with their Betters of modern liberalism (read: Progressivism) in our cities.

And

The political system has experienced a delegitimization of democracy that makes it impossible to simply carry on as before. It is a delegitimization aimed primarily at the elite, Hillary Clinton first and foremost—a woman who represents this system more than any other politician.

Because elitism is a better form of democracy than actual democracy, and even a better form of democracy than American republican democracy.  Never mind that Hillary Clinton, as the exemplar of this elitist, corrupt (literally as well as metaphorically) elitism is the raison d’être for that rejection—explicitly to rescue republican democracy from that elitism.