Sunday Facepalm.

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In the really bad news department, evangelicals have found themselves in government heaven. Last month, Right Wing Watch reported on the Pendejo-elect’s transition team giving religious right activists, specifically, the members of his evangelical advisory board unprecedented (sb. unpresidented?) input in shaping the new administration. A member of that board, Richard Land, was busy boasting in gleeful surprise about this recently.

Earlier this week, one of the members of that board, Richard Land of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, appeared on the “Point of View” radio program, where he told host Kerby Anderson that he has been shocked by how much influence he and other Religious Right activists have had over the make-up of Trump’s administration.

“Some of my conservative friends and I, we have been pinching ourselves, are we hallucinating or is this actually happening?” Land said. “I know a good number of people on the transition team and I can tell you right now, about half of them, Kerby, think I’m liberal. I mean, these are very conservative people.”

Indeed. Nazis and fascists in general are “ultra-conservative” by typical standards. One could phrase it more precisely as rigidly evil.

Land, a longtime activist and former Southern Baptist Convention official, said that he has “been solicited five times for personnel recommendations” by the Trump administration, which is something that never happened under any previous Republican president. As such, Land said, “this administration is going to have more conservative Christians, Catholic and evangelical, in it than any administration that I’ve been associated with or had contact with, and I’ve been doing this since Reagan.”

For those of us who eschew willful delusions, this is very bad news indeed. “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” I would say they would soon be eyeing suitable candidates for kindling, to set that cross ablaze, but there’s no soon about it. Already happening.

Via Right Wing Watch.

In Defense of Carbon Dioxide.

Physicist William Happer arrives for a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York City on Jan. 13. (Albin Lohr-Jones/European Pressphoto Agency/Pool).

Physicist William Happer arrives for a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York City on Jan. 13. (Albin Lohr-Jones/European Pressphoto Agency/Pool).

Trump met with crank physicist William Happer, the climate change denier’s climate change denier. Happer sings the wonders of carbon dioxide, extolling its virtues at every opportunity. He doesn’t get every little thing wrong, but he denies the big picture, human responsibility, and the rather serious question of balance, and what happens when instead of balance, you have a tipping point. What we have here is yet another omen of our impending doom.

…In a 2011 essay in the journal First Things, Happer further argued that “the ‘climate crusade’ is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types — even children’s crusades — all based on contested science and dubious claims.”

The essay triggered an in-depth rebuttal from Michael MacCracken, a climate scientist who formerly directed the U.S. Global Change Research Program in the Bill Clinton administration, and who characterized it as “so misleading that, in my view, it merits a paragraph-by-paragraph response.”

The meeting may be most noteworthy as an example of how Trump plans to get scientific advice — through meetings with people whose views are not necessarily part of the mainstream. It’s not a model that most scientists will approve of.

Trump has met individually not only with Happer, but also with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose views on the safety of vaccines have been rejected by scientific authorities. The meeting has caused alarm in the medical community.

The president-elect has not yet named a presidential science adviser.

This story is covered by The Washington Post, Gizmodo, and Raw Story.

The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss.

A YouTube video from North Dakota’s new Gov. Doug Burgum. More of the same about Standing Rock.

A YouTube video from North Dakota’s new Gov. Doug Burgum. More of the same about Standing Rock.

Damn. Think about what was possible: A governor who is framing his entire administration on innovation just dismissed the most disruptive force in his state’s recent history. That is what Standing Rock is about. Instead of saying, “What can we learn from this? What can we do together?” The new governor relied on the screen saver that was there before; the idea that powerful forces will roll over the tribe and build the Dakota Access Pipeline without interference. Thank you.

Burgum also scratched away at an old story: The Obama administration created this problem.

But his larger message is that the state of North Dakota and its corporate partners are more powerful than any tribal government. Instead of a pause, a moment to engage in a government-to-government dialogue, the new governor emphatically says the pipeline will get built soon. No. Matter. What.

“Make no mistake, this infrastructure is good for our economy,” the governor said in his YouTube video. “And it’s the safest way to transport North Dakota products. Failure to finish it would send a chilling signal to those in any industry who wish invest in our state and play by the rules.”

[…]

The new governor could have reset the law enforcement battle lines too. Nope. “As a result of the Obama administration’s refusal to uphold the rule of law on federally owned land, both our citizens and local and state law enforcement have been put in harm’s way,” he said. “These actions are putting daily demands on the scarce resources of our state and local government.”

Those daily demands are because the state of North Dakota made it so. Pick a word: defuse, de-escalate, negotiate. There were so many better alternatives, ones that were dismissed in favor of sending in the cavalry. I have interviewed many government officials over the years that successfully reduced tension instead of using the police powers of a state. In every test the state failed in this regard and the new governor is following the same path.

I had hopes that Gov. Burgum would see the potential of the Standing Rock story as one that could make North Dakota a beacon. Think about this: This moment in history has brought indigenous people together in a way that’s unprecedented. And the world is paying attention to that. What an amazing opportunity, something that could stir the imagination of investors, entrepreneurs, and governments. Potential partners in a state that found a solution by working with tribes to solve an intractable problem.

The former governor blamed social media for this global perception. But that misses the point that the Standing Rock Tribe owns the story. And that won’t change because the new governor posts a video on his account. The problem is not social media. It’s the message that the State of North Dakota will use the rule of law, the police power of a state, to roll over a tribal nation. It’s a message of brute force instead of inspiration.

Same old tired shit. Same old tired white privilege. Nothing ever changes. Mark Trahant’s full column at ICTMN.

Goosestepping Along…

CREDIT: Fox News screengrab.

CREDIT: Fox News screengrab.

Gee, just one post ago, I was commenting on how the constitution will glaringly highlight the hypocrisy of conservatives. Didn’t take long for blowhard Bill O’Reilly to jump onto the white supremacy ship. And I just don’t want to think about all the small-minded conservatives who are going to drink the poison kool-aid with nary a thought.

On Tuesday night, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly embraced white nationalism, criticizing minorities and liberals for trying to strip power from “the white establishment.”

“The left wants power taken away from the white establishment,” O’Reilly said, “They want a profound change in the way America is run. Taking power away from the white precincts is the quickest way to do that.”

O’Reilly was reacting to renewed criticism of the Electoral College after Donald Trump was officially enshrined as president-elect. Trump won the Electoral College vote on Monday despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.9 million votes. Clinton received 48.2 percent of the votes, compared to 46.1 percent for Trump.

[…]

“Newspapers like the New York Times and LA Times have editorialized to get rid of the Electoral College,” O’Reilly said. “They well know that neutralizing the largely white, rural areas in the Midwest and South will assure liberal politicians get power and keep it… the left sees white privilege as an oppressive force that must be done away with.”

Hypocrisy, writ large and flaming, right there. The shameless dirty tactics and gerrymandering the republicans indulged in this election, to block people of colour from voting, and finding ways to conveniently lose those votes, why that was perfectly okay, yessir! There’s never any wrong as long as it’s amoral conservatives doing it, then it’s just dandy, fine, and of course it isn’t an unethical, illegal, sleazy thing to do, oh no. I’ll let The Cursing Hedgehog express my feelings about this one:

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Full story at Think Progress.

Oh, The Constitution.

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The Constitution. My feelings about it? Fuck the constitution. That superannuated paen to the rich and the immoral should have been scrapped long ago, and been replaced with something progressive and relevant. The very worst of people worship that ragged document, twisting it to support evil ideologies and actions; much like people with their holy books of myths (for the hard of thinking, yes, that includes the bible). Gun fondlers adore it, as do all manner of right wingers. Republicans routinely mouth off about their constitution love, and how great and grand it is, etc. It isn’t grand. It isn’t great. It’s a document of its times, put together in the flush of a successful genocide, by wealthy, bloodthirsty men, who weren’t overly concerned with moral or ethical behaviour. You can, of course, see the appeal to republicans, but more than anything else right now, the constitution highlights the abject hypocrisy of all conservatives.

Republicans are always the first to scream “constitution!” whenever there’s something proposed which they don’t like, and they are always the first to search for the tiniest of constitutional violations in the case of someone they find appalling, like President Obama. The conservatives went lunatic fringe, searching for anything which could constitute a violation, so they could oust him from office. Now, the pres-elect will be violating the constitution in the same manner he violated a very long line of women, but who wants to bet the republicans will be zealously pursuing those violations with an aim to impeach? I don’t imagine I’ll have any takers on that bet. I’d be willing to say they are going to find every gorram excuse in the book to absolve Donny in all the violations, and with that, they will demonstrate how little they actually care about that supposedly hallowed document.

What kind of nation allows the loser of a national election to become president — and then does it again 16 years later?

What kind of nation retains an electoral process that was originally designed to inflate the influence of slaveholders?

What kind of nation permits its Congress to write a time bomb into law that periodically forces rival factions into a game of chicken that could wreck the world economy?

What kind of nation fights a civil war over the question of whether people of African descent are people or property, and then looks the other way when the loser ignores the resolution of that war? What kind of nation waits until 1965 to guarantee black people’s right to vote?

Americans speak of our Constitution as if it were a religious text. To label a law “unconstitutional” is not simply to say that it violates some procedural rule or legal technicality, it is to label it fundamentally unAmerican. To do so is to question the values of any lawmaker despicable enough to support such a law, and to suggest that those values are at odds with who we are as a nation.

But our Constitution has not served us nearly as well as we would have been served by other systems adopted by our peer nations. Nor has it lived up to the expectations of its drafters.

Now, our country is facing a man of superlative ignorance. A racist. An admitted sexual assaulter of women. A man poised to violate the Constitution the very instant he takes the oath of office. A man who openly encouraged Russia’s efforts to usher him into the White House. A man who owes his election to the underhanded efforts of deep state actors within our nation’s internal police agency. A man who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. And the Constitution has placed this man in the White House.

The Constitution gave Donald Trump command of the world’s most powerful military and an nuclear arsenal that can eradicate all life on Earth. It let him name a racist as our nation’s top enforcer of its laws. It let him use his office to sell hotel rooms to foreign diplomats. The Electoral College has voted. Trump will be our next president. This is what the Constitution hath wrought.

It did this because our Constitution remains the product of a compromise with moral monsters who believed that human beings could be owned as property. It did this because our Constitution offers no guarantee, or even much in the way of likelihood, that the men and women elected to lead the country will share the preferences of the nation as a whole. It did this because our Constitution fosters voter ignorance. It did this because our Constitution can be gamed — and was gamed quite successfully by the Republican Party.

Emphasis mine. And right there is exactly what the constitution means to conservatives: a means to get their way, to make sure fascism comes marching in, wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible. Nothing is sacred to conservatives, nothing at all. Well, no, a couple of things are sacred to conservatives: the state of their wallet, and the power to oppress and destroy other people.

The full story is at Think Progress, a highly recommended read.

ETA: It seems that even those republicans who might have spoken out are now too overcome by fear to do so. Ain’t fascism fun?

ETA: It’s begun, let’s write special laws, and Donny can just pardon people as he goes along!

Fuck every single person who has brought us to this, and fuck all those who will stand by silently, letting it happen.

The Reality of Oil Spills.

Pastor Dahua, president of the community of Monterrica, on the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon, scoops oil from a spill from a Petroperu pipeline on his community's land. Barbara Fraser.

Pastor Dahua, president of the community of Monterrica, on the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon, scoops oil from a spill from a Petroperu pipeline on his community’s land. Barbara Fraser.

Hunching his shoulders against a driving rain Pastor Dahua scrambled down a muddy bank and stepped across a pool of blackened water to a makeshift shelter that marked the place where crude oil had spilled from an oil pipeline.

The spill in Monterrico, the community of Kukama and Urarina people of which Dahua is president, is one of 10 that have occurred since January along the pipeline that runs from oil fields in the Peruvian Amazon across the Andes Mountains to a port and refinery on the Pacific coast.

The rain worried Dahua. Between November and May, water levels in Amazonian rivers rise by 30 feet or more, flooding villages and forests. If the spill was not cleaned up by the time the flooding began in earnest, Monterrico’s only water supply—a stream that crossed the pipeline near the end of the oil spill—could be contaminated.

Monterrico is one of dozens of communities affected by recent spills. Even more people are exposed to contamination from 40 years of oil operations that dumped oil and salty, metals-laden water into rivers, streams and lakes in Peru’s oldest Amazonian oil fields.

Government agencies have identified more than 1,000 sites needing cleanup, but have a budget of only about $15 million for testing and remediation. Experts say that is just a fraction of the amount that will be needed.

Anger over the sluggish pace of efforts to address decades of pollution and neglect have come to a head in Saramurillo, on the bank of the Marañón River, a few hours by boat downstream from Monterrico.

Hundreds of people from more than 40 indigenous communities converged there on September 1, blocking boat traffic on the Marañón River, a key transportation route in the northeastern Peruvian region of Loreto, where there are virtually no roads.

Despite an initial meeting with government officials in October, the protest dragged on into December, amid tensions among both the protesters and the travelers and merchants trapped by the blockade.

Indigenous protesters stand watch on bank of Marañón River in Saramurillo, Peru, blocking boats from passing, as they pressure the government to solve problems related to pollution from four decades of oil production in the Peruvian Amazon. Barbara Fraser.

Indigenous protesters stand watch on bank of Marañón River in Saramurillo, Peru, blocking boats from passing, as they pressure the government to solve problems related to pollution from four decades of oil production in the Peruvian Amazon. Barbara Fraser.

This in depth look at the reality of oil spills, and their impact on Indigenous people is very necessary reading. The impact of such is not at all limited to Indigenous people, and the more Indigenous people fight against having pipelines on their land, the more the impact of spills will spread, further and further out, into a horrible web of contamination.

Everyone needs to stand up against fossil fuels, now more than ever, with the new climate change denying, fossil fuel loving administration poised to take over.

The full story is at ICTMN.

Fracking, It’s Bad for Water.

Fracking water needs a closer look, EPA says. CREDIT: AP Photo/Brennan Linsley.

Fracking water needs a closer look, EPA says. CREDIT: AP Photo/Brennan Linsley.

Has everyone recovered from the surprise and shock that fracking is bad for water? I suppose it’s good that the EPA finally managed to spit this one out, now that it will most likely be dismantled.

The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) can affect drinking water.

In light of the facts that tap water near some fracking wells has become flammable, that two families in Pennsylvania last year won a court case over the impacts of fracking on their water, and that scientists have found arsenic in water sources near fracking, the EPA’s announcement Tuesday should not come as a surprise.

But it does, since just 18 months ago, a draft version of the EPA’s fracking report said that the EPA “did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.”

[…]

It’s not clear that the science will continue to be investigated, at least in the near term. President-elect Donald Trump has suggested dismantling the EPA, and his nominee to head the agency has come out strongly in favor of oil and gas development.

Trump is in the process of assembling what will be the most anti-environment, pro-fossil fuel cabinet in modern history. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who has fought EPA regulations for years, has been tapped to run the EPA.

It’s worth noting that water quality is not the only thing at risk from fracking. Fracking has been linked to numerous air quality concerns, including in areas where fracking wells are located close to schools. Fracking has been tied to asthma, migraines, and other health impacts.

And let’s not forget that fracking causes earthquakes. We really don’t need to cause earthquakes, they are bad enough when they happen naturally. The government that is poised to take power seems to want to hasten the death of our earth, and all of us on it.

Full story at Think Progress.