Cassandra Calling. Our Goose is Nearly Cooked.

Another climate change report from the "Yeah, it's way worse than you imagined" file.

Has there ever been an area of science where predictions have been so persistently unduly optimistic. Not all that long ago the really dire predictions were that, if we didn't quickly slash our emissions of greenhouse gases, thus and so might hit us by 2100. Of course that meant not us, not you and me, but maybe our grandkids or their kids. That Arctic sea ice might be gone by 2100 if we didn't change our ways. The temperature might rise by 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 if we kept gorging ourselves on fossil fuels. We might trigger feedback loops, runaway global warming, by 2100 unless we were really careful.

Okay, so here's the latest.

“The hope was that climate sensitivity was lower and the Earth is not going to warm as much,” said Cristian Proistosescu, at Harvard University in the US, who led the new research. “There was this wave of optimism.”

The new research, published in the journal Science Advances, has ended that. “The worrisome part is that all the models show there is an amplification of the amount of warming in the future,” he said. The situation might be even worse, as Proistosescu’s work shows climate sensitivity could be as high as 6C.

Prof Bill Collins, at the University of Reading, UK, and not part of the new research, said: “Some have suggested that we might be lucky and avoid dangerous climate change without taking determined action if the climate is not very sensitive to CO2 emissions. This work provides new evidence that that chance is remote.” He said greater long term warming had implications for melting of the world’s ice sheets and the rise of sea levels that already threatens many coastal cities.

The reason the historical temperature measurements indicated a lower climate sensitivity than models or paleoclimate data is because the Earth has a fast and a slow response to increases in carbon emissions, Proistosescu said.

Land, mostly in the northern hemisphere heats up quickly. But there is also a slow response, he said: “This is mostly associated with warming over the oceans. They are big and full of cold water, especially at depth, and take a long time to heat up.” Furthermore, when the slow warming does kick in, it is likely to reduce the cloud cover that shades the Southern ocean and the eastern tropical Pacific, amplifying the heating.

Now, here's the thing. The impacts of 4 or 5 or 6 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels are generally the same as what we'll see with 2C of warming only orders of magnitude greater in severity. For example, you'll get sea level rise only as the world gets ever hotter the seas will rise faster and higher and the losses and disruption will be more catastrophic.  Floods in some places and droughts in others will have the same pattern of increased intensity, frequency and severity as temperatures rise. The deadly consequence of heatwaves will likewise just get worse and more areas will be rendered uninhabitable.

The world may already be seeing the increasing rises in temperature, said Prof Piers Forster at the University of Leeds, UK: “It may already be happening – the rapid increase in temperatures since 2014 could be partly due to the eastern Pacific catching up.”

There you go, our goose is pretty much cooked. We don't have five or ten or thirty years to abandon fossil energy. As Hans Joachim Schellnhuber warned the delegates to the 2015 Paris climate summit our only chance of surviving climate change depended on our willingness to accept an "induced implosion" of our fossil fuel industries. And you know that we've never had a government - federal or provincial - in Canada onside with that notion.

Okay, Then. He Was Just In a "Baghdad State of Mind."

Tony Blair has been in the news the last couple of days as the English High Court has been hearing a case claiming the former Brit prime minister should be put on trial for war crimes in deciding to conquer Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Who better to weigh in on this one than Sir John Chilcot who took seven years conducting an inquiry into Blair's war waging.

In consummate British upper crust fashion, Chilcot says Blair wasn't straight with Parliament but he goes all mushy on the question of whether the less than straight Blair lied.

Asked by the BBC whether Mr Blair gave the fullest version of events, Sir John replied: "I think he gave an - what was - I hesitate to say this, rather but I think it was from his perspective and standpoint, emotionally truthful."

Blair was "emotionally truthful." He didn't have the facts to justify invading Iraq but he convinced himself that he did. He believed he needed to invade Iraq and kill all those people. So, even though he was bullshitting Parliament, he was emotionally truthful. He was just in a Baghdad State of Mind. Cue Billy Joel.

If emotional truthiness is a good defence to war crimes it sure as hell should work for you the next time some cop pulls you over for speeding. Give it a try. Let me know how it works.

It's Fatso's Fault

The History Channel, that is to say the U.S. version, will be airing a documentary on Sunday that purports to reveal what really happened to Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.

Okay, here's the deal. Earhart and Noonan survived a crash landing in the then Japanese-held Marshall Islands. The Japanese assumed Earhart was a spy and the pair were taken prisoner. Here's the best part. The American government knew all about it and simply covered it up.

Here's the photo. Earhart is supposedly the woman with her back to the camera. The documentary producers contend that facial recognition software confirms the face that no one can see much less recognize is definitely the missing aviatrix.

Me, I'm thinking this shifty guy in the foreground is the culprit.

Birds of a Feather - The U.S. and Poland

Donald Trump's visit to Poland was a big hit, at least with the sitting government. Trump likes Poland. It's his kind of place - for Europe at least.

What's not to like? It's an authoritarian state. It has attacked and suppressed its judiciary. The rule of law is whatever the government says it is. Poland is a hardliner on immigration, especially them Muslims. It is opposed to action on climate change and it's big on coal. It pisses off Angela Merkel and the rest of the E.U., Hungary excepted. And it spends 2% of its GDP on its military. In other words, Poland is a role model for Trump. It is what he would like to Make America - you know, Great Again.

Warsaw was the perfect place for Trump to champion unregulated free enterprise running wild.

"The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies."

He's got a point but it was too many people freely chasing their dreams and pursuing their destinies without regard to their neighbours and the future that has landed us in the various environmental calamities we're now confronting. It took mankind from just one billion to 7.5 billion in just two centuries. But if you don't believe any of that malarky about climate change and overpopulation and exhaustive overconsumption of resources and extinctions and loss of biodiversity and all that stuff, we're doing just great.

Update:

It's also been announced that Trump will make a drive-by visit to Slovenia, the birthplace of his third wife, Melania. Slovenian president Borut Pahor told Trump it might be time for him to trade her in for a new model.

As Alberta Goes, So Too Does B.C.

Out of sight, out of mind. I expect most British Columbians don't tend to think of our province as a fossil fuel player. By and large we aren't, except for the north east corner where, up by Fort. St. John, likes the Montney shale gas field.

The remote region up in that corner is similar to Alberta. One similarity is the problem of abandoned or even active wells leaking methane.

About 35 per cent of British Columbia’s 25,000 oil and gas wells in the northeastern part of the province are leaking significant amounts of methane, according to a forthcoming new study.

The report will be released later in the summer and submitted to the industry-funded BC Oil and Gas Commission.

Researchers with the David Suzuki Foundation measured leaks from abandoned, suspended, shut-in and active oil wells in the Montney shale gas play near Fort St. John.

According to John Werring, senior science and policy advisor to the foundation, the study found that the average rate of flow of methane gas from surface casing vents from oil wells was conservatively estimated to be between nine and 11 cubic metres per day.

...

The new study follows research with a mobile sensor mounted on a vehicle that detected large amounts of methane emanating from oil and gas wells in northeastern B.C.

That peer-reviewed study found that methane emissions from B.C.’s shale gas basins are now at least 2.5 times higher than provincial government estimates.

That makes the oil and gas sector the largest source of climate pollution in B.C., a greater source of pollution than commercial transportation.

...

“The number one reason the industry is not dealing with the problem is the cost. It has nothing to do with the technology,” said Werring.

In jurisdictions such as B.C. and Alberta where the oil and gas industry is not required to post reclamation and clean up bonds, there is no incentive for industry to address these environmental liabilities.

“The problem is getting worse as the wells age, and the clean up of these wells shouldn’t be put on the back of taxpayers,” Werring said.

The good news is that we've got a new government, NDP and everything. The less than good news is that Alberta got one of those NDP governments too and their record of dealing with fossil energy problems isn't very impressive.

Confused Elderly Man Wanders...

This is sort of funny. Maybe he just didn't understand that the presidential seal on the limo door meant that was his ride.

Be Honest. Hasn't This Question Crossed Your Mind?

Progressive talk show host and author, Thom Hartmann asks, "Is America past the point of no return?"

Have corporate/billionaire control of our republic reached such a point that it’s no longer reversible? Have we passed the tipping point where democracy dies?

A few years back, on my radio show, President Jimmy Carter said that America, in large part because of Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United, has become “just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery.”

He’s right. It’s the elephant in the room that everybody, particularly our corporate media, completely ignores.

While Republicans are doing the will of their oligarch owners, replacing real scientists with industry lobbyists and shills everywhere from the White House to congressional science committees to the EPA, the media stubbornly refuses to report in depth on it, preferring instead to following the Worldwide Wrestling moves of our tweeter-in-chief.

“Red-shift“ election fraud (called red because it helps only Republicans) has been flagrantly on display across the country since the privatization of our vote by GOP-leaning voter-machine companies in the 2000-2004 period. GOP voter suppression in nearly 30 states has now been institutionalized with Kris Kobach’s Interstate Crosscheck scam (now a presidential “commission”). Pre-poll and exit-poll results “flipped“ in Georgia’s 6th district in a way that caused us to decry similar vote-rigging in the Ukraine (the result, like in Georgia’s 6th, was measurably off from the exit polls).

Yet in the face of all this, enough to provoke revolution in countries like Egypt and Ukraine, our press instead focuses on the oligarchs’ unproven and well-debunked claim that “illegals” are voting to help Democrats.

...

As Vice President Henry Wallace predicted in a prescient New York Times op-ed in 1944:

“They [the super-wealthy] claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.

“Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

Have they finally reached that goal which, in Wallace’s day, they could only hunger for?

In 1944, the dream of the oligarchs to once again control America the way they did during the Gilded Age of the 1880-'90s was just that, a dream. Wallace’s president, FDR, had called them out, repeatedly, calling them “economic royalists” and damning their efforts to corrupt American democracy.

“These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America,” Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed in 1936. “What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.”

But, he thundered in that speech, “Our allegiance to American institutions 

requires the overthrow of this kind of power!”

It's been a long time since any American president rode to the defence of democracy, possibly as far back as John F. Kennedy.  The United States has been on corporatist cruise control ever since, gradually picking up speed.

This is all fine rhetoric but there's a good deal more to it. Two professors, Martin Gilens (Princeton) and Benjamim Page (Northwestern), produced an analytical study of the decline of democracy in America published by Princeton in 2014. Their conclusion - the American government no longer operates in service to the American people. It has been hijacked.

The Gilens and Page study was dutifully challenged in The New Yorker by staff writer, John Cassidy. The authors didn't take that lying down and fired back convincingly a month later in The Washington Post.  

Perhaps the only meaningful question remaining is whether rank and file Americans will every rally to depose the "economic royalists" from whose ranks Trump has heavily larded his own administration or instead succumb to a new form of illiberal democracy blended with neoliberal feudalism. The latter is the default choice.

Nibbling Away at Tony Blair

The English High Court is hearing an appeal that seeks to have Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Lord Goldsmith tried for war crimes in attacking Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The Chilcot inquiry’s conclusion that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and undermined the United Nations requires the prosecution of Tony Blair, the high court has heard.

In his opening argument calling for a war crimes trial in Britain, Michael Mansfield QC said that the offence of waging an aggressive war has effectively been assimilated into English law.

Mansfield summarised the report’s findings as: “Saddam Hussein did not pose an urgent threat to the UK, intelligence reporting about [Iraqi] weapons of mass destruction was presented with unwarranted certainty, that the war was unnecessary and that the UK undermined the authority of the UN security council.”

“Nothing could be more emphatic than these findings,” he said. “It was an unlawful war.”

Mansfield argued that when British prosecutors had opened their cases at the Nuremburg war crimes trials at the end of the second world war, they had acted as though the crime of aggression had already been assimilated into English law.

The British government has interceded to oppose the appeal citing the ancient Saxon doctrine of "piffle." Besides, they say, war crimes are only for losers and Tony Blair, while discredited, ain't there yet.

It's Over. Volvo Goes Electric.

The now Chinese-owned, Swedish automaker, Volvo, wants to wean itself off internal combustion power. Starting in 2019 all new Volvo models will be either pure electric power or hybrids.

The Chinese-owned firm, best known for its emphasis on driver safety, has become the first traditional carmaker to signal the end of the internal combustion engine.

It plans to launch five fully electric models between 2019 and 2021 and a range of hybrid models.

But it will still be manufacturing earlier models that have pure combustion engines.

"This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car," said Hakan Samuelsson, chief executive of Volvo's carmaking division.

"People increasingly demand electrified cars, and we want to respond to our customers' current and future needs," he said.

Three Words. Now, Worse than Ever.

I remember those tense days in October, 1962, when John F. Kennedy squared off against Nikita Khruschev in what would come to be called the Cuban missile crisis.  We didn't know it at the time but we were immensely fortunate that the showdown involved these two leaders, cool heads who found a way to back down from what could have become nuclear armageddon.

It's fair to say those two weeks left some scarring on the psyche of many. Not much, perhaps, but some especially for those who realized that tomorrow might not come - for them.

Which is why I got a little jolt this morning when I read a headline about the "Korean missile crisis."

First of all, this is not remotely the same as the Cuban missile crisis. North Korea doesn't have the weaponry, not yet, to annihilate the U.S. or trigger "nuclear winter." That said, other nations that could wind up dragged into this definitely do.

And there's no John Kennedy or Nikita Khrushchev at the helm either. No this time we've got Kim Jong-un, the guy who thinks it's fun to dispatch his own uncle with an anti-aircraft gun, staring down the aging man-baby president, Don Trump. I think those two are scarier than the nukes - by an order of magnitude.

An old friend has a phrase to describe two guys like these - "great snappin' assholes." I think that's apt. They're both in serious need of therapy. Both currently find their own positions a bit precarious. Trump knows he has investigations closing in. Kim knows he's never more than a couple of steps away from his own trip to that anti-aircraft gun. Neither of these half-wits can afford to be seen as weak. Each needs the other to bend.

Wait and see. Just remember to breathe.

Continuing with the theme of other nations getting drawn into Pyongyang and Washington's pissing contest, Paul McGeough of the Sydney Morning Herald worries that Trump is risking a crisis with China.


North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has seemingly crossed a threshold - he now has missiles that go halfway around the world, despite a January warning, when then president-elect Donald Trump declared: "It won't happen!"

If Trump's tweet was an implicit threat of a pre-emptive strike by Washington, it stands out in the administration's menu of possible responses as the only one that has not been attempted.

...

That the North already had the capability to strike South Korea and Japan, possibly with nuclear-armed missiles, had a certain abstract quality for Washington. With Alaska now in Pyongyang's crosshairs the calculus changes dramatically - but useful responses remain elusive.

As Americans celebrated Independence Day on Tuesday, Kim taunted Trump, describing the test as a milestone in his plans to bring the US within strike range and as a Fourth of July "gift" to the administration.

"We should send them gifts once in a while to help break their boredom," he was quoted as saying in a report by the state-run news agency.

...

But just as Pyongyang seems impervious to all that Washington has tried to date, so too, it seems, is Beijing.

Chinese President Xi Jinping was unmoved by a folksy dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and by a subsequent presidential Twitter spray, as it dawned on Trump that China was playing to its own regional agenda, not Washington's.

...

The contours of Trump's "go it alone" strategy are becoming apparent - selling weapons to Taiwan, sanctions on a small group of Chinese banks and individuals who do business with the North, challenging China's territorial claims, citing China as a worst-offender in the State Department's annual report on human trafficking and renewed warning of action against China for dumping steel in the international market.

The risk in all this is that, instead of resolving the existing North Korea crisis, it will only create a new crisis with Beijing. China experts say that Xi is eager to continue dialogue with Washington, but if Trump extends the limited sanctions on Chinese businesses dealing with North Korea, Beijing is likely to retaliate.

China has applied limited sanctions to North Korea, acting earlier this year to reduce its coal imports from the North. But it is not prepared, yet, to accept the collapse of the regime and the ensuing chaos on its doorstep, in which the US most likely would emerge as a major military force on the peninsula.

Verdict: Jefferson

Apparently it is customary for America's National Public Radio, NPR, to commemorate the 4th of July by reading or, this year, tweeting the Declaration of Independence in its entirety.

However this, the first year of our lord, Donald Jehova Trump, Thomas Jefferson's handiwork riled up Trump supporters who imagined the public broadcaster was trying to incite revolution, the overthrow of the federal government and its new king.

Some supporters of President Donald Trump didn’t recognize one of the nation’s founding documents and accused the broadcaster of inciting violence and even revolution.

Many of those comments have since been deleted and at least one user deleted an entire Twitter account.

But the tweets live on, some still posted online while others have been preserved in screen captures.

Credit Where It's Due. Trudeau Stands Up to Trump and May.

Despite my general disappointment with the Trudeau government, the prime minister does periodically say or do things that are praiseworthy. His remarks during his visit to Ireland's new Taoiseach, Leo Vadkar, are one example.

Trudeau said in a joint press conference with Vadkar that Canada and Ireland had major allies who were going in a “different direction” from them, underlining his souring relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump.

"There are tremendous opportunities for countries like Canada and Ireland, at a time where perhaps our significant allies and trading partners in the case of both the U.S. and the U.K. are turning inward or at least turning into a different direction,” Trudeau said in comments carried by AFP.

The Canadian prime minister’s opinion was shared by Vadkar, who took the opportunity to discuss Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, and underlining the similarities between Ireland and Canada’s leaders-as opposed to those of the U.S. and U.K.

“We each share a relationship with a very big neighbor, a neighbor that has to a certain extent decided to go in a different direction at least for the time being,” Vadkar stated, adding: “I can't see a scenario where Britain could remain a member of the EU, even in transitional period, and then negotiate other trade deals on their own.”

Trudeau added that Trump has put America on the wrong side of the remainder of the G20.

Post Truth Wente

Well that's that then. The Globe's in-house contrarian, Maggie Wente, has read some study that finds the minimum wage hike introduced by the city of Seattle has made a complete shambles of its economy. Bad for Seattle ergo bad for Ontario, says Madam Wente.

Mags attributes the study to the University of Washington but it's actually pumped out by the National Bureau of Economic Research from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The good old NBER.

The Toronto Star, meanwhile, has an open letter signed by 40 Canadian economists who maintain Ontario's proposed minimum wage hike won't harm the province's economy.  Perhaps they haven't heard of the NBER study.

Oh dear, who to believe, Margaret Wente or 40 Canadian economists. Wait a minute. How about this National Bureau of Economic Research Ms. Wente touts? Is NBER legit or is it on someone's payroll?

SourceWatch suggests NBER received millions in "conservative philanthropic
underwriting." MediaMatters reported on an earlier and deeply flawed NPER study that claimed a direct correlation between unemployment insurance and laziness.

While the NPER study has attracted rightwing media coverage like white on rice, no one mentions the flawed methodology used in the research.


Michael Reich, a UC Berkeley economics professor who was lead author on the Berkeley report, said he found the UW team’s report not credible for a number of reasons.

He said the UW researchers’ “synthetic” Seattle model draws only from areas in Washington that are nothing like Seattle, and the report excludes multisite businesses, which employ a large percentage of Seattle’s low-paid workforce. The latter fact was also problematic, he said, because that meant workers who left single-site businesses to work at multisite businesses were counted as job losses, not job gains in the UW study.

Reich also thought the $19 threshold was too low, and he said the UW researchers’ report “finds an unprecedented impact of wage increases on jobs, ten times more than in hundreds of minimum wage and non-minimum wage studies. … “There is no reason,” he said, that Seattle’s employers of low-paid workers “should be so much more sensitive to wage increases.”

Reich and economists at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute also criticized the report as not properly accounting for Seattle’s economic boom, which they say is causing the shift from lower-paid to higher-paid jobs.

Who to believe? Who knows? Certainly not Margaret Wente.

Albertans at Risk as Energy Regulator Looks the Other Way and Whistles

Alberta's provincial energy regulator, the AER, is charged with protecting the safety and health of the people of Alberta. However the former chief environmental scientist for the Alberta Energy Regulator, Monique Dube, says the AER doesn't have the expertise to meet those responsibilities.


“The expertise to assess the health risk of abandoned wells really doesn’t exist in house,” charged Monique Dube, former chief environmental scientist with the Alberta Energy Regulator and one of the authors of a report on the toxicity of abandoned wells in Alberta.

A report for Natural Resources Canada has described methane leakage from active or abandoned wells as “ a serious threat to the environment and public safety” with the risk of “irreversible contamination of freshwater aquifers, accumulation of explosive gases within and around residences and other structures and contribution to greenhouse gases.”

In addition repair and clean up of leaking wells can be prohibitively expensive, which explains why the issue has become an explosive one throughout western Canada and even Quebec.

...

The report, completed in November, recommended that Alberta Health assess the health and public safety risks of six wells in particular that exceeded a “life-threatening” threshold of 10,000 parts per million.

Alberta Health says it is reviewing the wells, but no action has been taken.

Dube, who was fired “without cause” in March by the AER, said the response to the risks has been too slow.

“At the end of the day we have wells leaking at acute levels,” she said.

...

17,000  Rural Wells Also Leaking

The province has another 170,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in rural areas. The report estimates that 17,000 of them are leaking and 3,400 at levels that pose risks to any nearby residents.

“At this time it is not known what percentage of wells in rural Alberta would be in proximity to surface development or human receptors,” said the report.

But methane, which can be highly explosive in concentrations ranging from five to 15 per cent, isn’t the only problem. The gas from leaking wells also travels with highly toxic hydrocarbons such as benzene and xylene.

Dube said there is no data on those risks from leaking wells.

Letting Industry Self-Regulate

After a series of scandals engulfed its predecessor, the Energy Resources Conservation Board, the Alberta government introduced new legislation in 2012 to rebrand the organization as the Alberta Energy Regulator and “streamline” its operation.

The new legislation eliminated a previous mandate to operate in the public interest and made the agency almost entirely dependent on industry funding.

The new agency also assumed duties on well reclamation previously administered by Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development. The reorganization was completed in 2015.

...

Daryl Bennett, a director of the Alberta Surface Rights Federation, a group that represents landowners, said Dube’s report reflected the Alberta government’s messy approach to leaking wells.

While most North American jurisdictions require companies to clean up and restore non-producing oil and gas wells in a timely fashion, Alberta allows companies to put off cleanup indefinitely.

As a result the province has another 90,000 inactive wells that are no longer producing oil or gas that have not been properly sealed and abandoned. Many are leaking and pose threats to the public or environment. At the same time the number of wells being orphaned by bankrupt oil and gas companies has grown from hundreds to thousands while the liabilities now stand in excess of $30 billion.

Leaking wells in Alberta and other jurisdictions have contaminated groundwater, caused explosions, devalued agricultural land and in one recent case forced the demolition of homes outside of Edmonton.

“These guys at the AER really don’t have a clue what they are doing,” said Bennett, who works as an advocate for landowners. “They are just making things up as they go along. They don’t have the tools in the toolbox they need. We’ve also got the fox guarding the henhouse.”

This is on Rachel Notley's NDP government every bit as much as it is on her Tory predecessors. She has her head as firmly in the sand as they did.

Alberta already has the highest greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. Imagine what those numbers would be if leaking methane and other hydrocarbon gases were included in that tally.

And these are the clowns who, along with our prime minister, tell coastal British Columbians that we just have to accept their hazmat bitumen pipelines and supertankers. Sorry Justin. I don't think so.

I Never Thought I'd See the Day. Charles Krauthammer Rounds on The Republican President.

Wow.

Why Is Trudeau Still Playing With Harper's Stacked Deck?

When it comes to Canada's energy policy keeps dealing with marked cards, a.k.a. the National Energy Board. Trudeau has openly acknowledged that the NEB succumbed to regulatory capture during the Harper era when Sideshow Steve stacked it with energy industry shills. The predictable outcome has been a series of questionable but industry-friendly decisions ever since.

Which raises the question of why, if the NEB is rigged, a stacked deck, is this prime minister, more than a year and a half after coming to power, still upholding its dodgy rulings?

[I]n May, 2016, a panel of experts appointed by the Trudeau government recommended dismantling the NEB to establish a “modern Canadian Energy Transmission Commission” that would “radically increase the scale and scope of its stakeholder engagement to build trust and driver better outcomes for all Canadians.” The panel said this was in response to the “crisis of confidence” it had observed following public consultations across the country.

“We heard that Canadians have serious concerns that the NEB has been ‘captured’ by the oil and gas industry, with many Board members who come from the industry that the NEB regulates, and who — at the very least appear to — have an innate bias toward that industry,” noted the panel in its final report.

Trump's War on the Environment and Humanity

The old bastard has barely been in power for six months yet he's made breathtaking progress in undermining the environment and mankind's prospects for the future.

Unlike the travel ban or healthcare, Trump has faced few obstacles in sweeping away what he has called “job-killing” environmental rules that address problems such as climate change, water pollution and smoggy air.

“I’ve been very concerned by what I’ve seen – this is about people’s health,” said Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican who was the EPA administrator under George W Bush, and also served as governor of New Jersey. “They are undermining science and people’s respect for science. They don’t seem to care.”

Trump’s agenda has been enthusiastically spearheaded by Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the EPA, who promised in February that he would be rolling back regulations “in a very aggressive way”. Pruitt has repeatedly decried the economic cost of green strictures, especially on the coal industry, which he said was the target of a “war” from the Obama administration.

The Guardian article goes on to list the major rollbacks Trump has already implemented. They're a good indicator of where he's planning to go from here.

Trump's Off to Poland And He's Got the Neighbours Worried

Old man Trump has decided to squeeze in a visit to Poland before the start of the G20 summit in Hamburg later this week. Some European leaders worry that Trump may wind up endorsing a regime that has even less interest in constitutional, liberal democracy than Trump himself.


Trump is due to arrive in Poland on Wednesday evening and deliver a major speech in Warsaw on Thursday afternoon. He will also attend a gathering of central European, Baltic state and Balkan leaders, before heading to the G20 summit in Hamburg.

Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) has struggled to contain its excitement since the visit was announced last month. Defence minister Antoni Macierewicz said it showed “how much Poland’s place in geopolitics and world politics has changed”.

But there is unease in Brussels and other European capitals that Trump’s visit will be seen as an endorsement – tacit or otherwise – of a government which has repeatedly clashed with EU institutions over its assault on independent democratic institutions, and its refusal to accept migrants under quotas agreed to by its pro-European predecessor.

“After a few months of his presidency, Trump has already jeopardised the Paris agreement on the climate change, endangered the EU-US and Nato relationships, and now he risks blowing up the already very delicate situation in Poland and eastern Europe,” said Gianni Pitella, leader of the socialist bloc in the European parliament.

The Secrets of the Romans Unlocked And None Too Soon.

This lovely seawall? Yeah, the Romans built it.

Roman ruins remain everywhere in Europe and North Africa. Some of them, aqueducts for example, are still functioning. The secret to their longevity is the Roman development of concrete.

The knowledge of making concrete was lost during the Dark Ages. We imagined we had unlocked the secrets of ancient Rome in the mid-19th century with the development of Portland cement.

While we often attribute cheap, abundant fossil fuels as the key to launching the Industrial Revolution the reintroduction of concrete played a critical role. We used it to build roads, harbours, bridges, water and sewer lines, buildings, and airports - most of our modern infrastructure.

Only we never really got it right. Modern concrete isn't nearly as durable as the Romans'. Ours lasts about 120-years. It weakens and cracks and crumbles with time and exposure to the elements. Roman concrete doesn't do that. It lasts.

Now it seems we have finally cracked the secrets of Roman concrete by looking at how their marine construction actually improves with age and exposure to seawater.

The Roman recipe – a mix of volcanic ash, lime (calcium oxide), seawater and lumps of volcanic rock – held together piers, breakwaters and harbours. Moreover, in contrast to modern materials, the ancient water-based structures became stronger over time.

Scientists say this is the result of seawater reacting with the volcanic material in the cement and creating new minerals that reinforced the concrete

....

[T]he Romans were aware of the virtues of their concrete, with Pliny the Elder waxing lyrical in his Natural History that it is “impregnable to the waves and every day stronger”.

...

Over time, seawater that seeped through the concrete dissolved the volcanic crystals and glasses, with aluminous tobermorite and phillipsite crystallising in their place.

These minerals, say the authors, helped to reinforce the concrete, preventing cracks from growing, with structures becoming stronger over time as the minerals grew.

So, big deal, why should you care? Simple. Because our dependence on concrete isn't going away. If anything it's going to grow as we have to replace already crumbling but vital infrastructure. Part of that is because our crappy, new concrete doesn't hold a candle to ancient Roman concrete. Why keep paying for a product that might, if you're lucky, last a century when Roman concrete can last for thousands of years.

There's another reason. The environmental imperative. New concrete is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. It is generally thought responsible for 7% of total CO2 emissions. Portland concrete is heated to 1450 degrees Celsius. Roman concrete has to be heated to just 900 C. That's a huge energy and emissions savings.

So now that we know what the Romans knew why would our governments squander countless billions of dollars on short term replacement of new concrete infrastructure?

Monbiot Fingers British Columbia for Democratic Subversion.

These days when you see an unexpected "come from behind" election win you need to ask whether the election was rigged?

When it comes to vote tampering Canada, well more specifically British Columbia, is the temple of the dark art.

The Observer's Carole Caddwalladr exposed these people who use military-grade psy-ops systems to cross the line between electioneering and electoral brainwashing.

It's a web that links Victoria, BC's AggregateIQ and a guy by the name of Chris Wylie with American rightwing billionaire Robert Mercer and his company, Cambridge Analytica, with Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel and his company, Palantir, with the Brexit "leave" campaign plus the Trump campaign and, now, the Trump administration.

One preferred fishing hole is Facebook where people vulnerable to political messaging can be detected, identified and targeted. In this way informed consent can be powerfully displaced by manufactured consent. You don't have to hack into the voting machines if you can hack into the voter's prejudices and neuroses and thereby control his/her vote.

Now  George Monbiot writes that it's urgent to get to the bottom of who may have rigged the Brexit vote, who bought the services of Victoria's Aggregate IQ.


"[T]he questions raised by Cadwalladr over why and how the different leave campaigns – including Vote Leave and the DUP – used the same obscure data company in British Columbia are crucial.
...

A decision of such significance, whose implications are likely to be felt in this country for generations, should be above any possible suspicion of manipulation. Knowing what we know now, I do not believe this can be said about the EU referendum. So do we leave this monumental issue to a body which – by its own admission – is constitutionally incapable of challenging a result, even if that result has been obtained unfairly?

No. Though I am a lukewarm European – a Eurosceptic remainer – it now seems clear that the credibility of our political system demands that Brexit should be halted until the means by which the result was obtained have been thoroughly investigated, ideally by a public inquiry. If the outcome of such an investigation is that serious breaches of electoral law have taken place, the referendum should be annulled and repeated. Is this not what democracy entails?

The fact that these wizards of vote manipulation operate in our own country should set off alarm bells for the 2019 elections. We cannot have free and fair elections that permit manipulation of emotionally vulnerable voters. Or we can do nothing and allow whatever special interest is willing to buy the election of their preferred candidate or party prevail.

What is your prime minister doing to protect your vote, your democracy?

Is An Enemy of Humanity Not Your Enemy Too?

If someone is poised to inflict irreparable harm to humanity, especially when he's motivated by greed or prejudice or narcissism, is that person not an enemy of humanity? And, if that person is an enemy of humanity, is he not your enemy?

It's a question that's not going away, not for the remainder of my lifetime or yours. It's a question that's going to become ever more pressing and for each of us there'll be a point where we'll have to take sides.

And, yes, I'm making this point about Donald Trump but it also applies to his collaborators and lesser enemies of humanity. Eventually that migrates down to their enablers, backers and adherents. You either stand with them inside that circle or you stand outside their circle. Think about it.

You may have heard about Stephen Hawking's warning that Trump's indifference to climate change, his rejection of the Paris climate accord and his rehabilitation of America's fossil energy interests, "could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid.”

That's not hyperbole either. It could happen. If you get a chance check out Peter Ward's "Under a Green Sky." Ward, a paleontologist from Washington, believes that five of Earth's great extinctions were triggered by atmospheric carbon loading that acidified the oceans, triggered the production and release of massive plumes of hydrogen sulfide that pretty much wiped out all complex life forms. You can read the critical paragraph from Green Sky here.

And now it's raining in the one place it's not supposed to rain, ever, Antarctica. And this is happening while Donald Trump cuts funding for climate science research and monitoring, promotes fossil energy over renewables and eviscerates the EPA and NASA climate programmes. Does that not make him an enemy of humanity?

Does that make Donald Trump and, for that matter, most of Congress that backs him up, my enemy? I suppose it does not that there's much I can or would do about it. Much as I'll miss it, I've chosen not to travel through the U.S. any longer. I'll do what I can to stop supporting the U.S. economy in other ways.

Can it be doubted, in the perilous state the world faces today, that all of our leaders - not just Trump - have a paramount duty to the survival of our species and our global civilization? Do they not have a duty to stop this madness in the limited time remaining while we may still have that option? Do they have some right to foreclose on our grandkids' future for the sake of their GDP numbers in the runup to the next election and the one after that?

And, if you don't consider these people your enemies, many of those on what used to be the fringe but no longer see you as theirs.



Disgusting. Dishonorable. Dangerous. But also deliberate. Everything deplored by the NRA in the ad is committed by "they" -- a classic manipulation turning anyone who disagrees with your point of view into "The Other" -- something alien, evil, foreign.

"They use their media to assassinate real news," "They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler," "They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again."

"And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance."

Well, we all know who "they" are, don't we? This is the vitriol that has been spewed like garbage since the days of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, blasted from lynch mobs and demagogues and fascistic factions of political parties that turn racial and religious minorities into grotesque caricatures, the better to demean and diminish and dominate.

Don't think for a second that Canada is immune to this sordid disease. We're not. There are plenty of our fellow citizens who can embrace this type of toxic extremism. To them we're libtards, cucks and snowflakes. There's a culture war underway and we didn't start it. Our choice is whether we're going to lose it.

"A War For the Future Of the Republic." Trump's Christian Caliphate.

If Donald Trump has his way, America's Christian right can have their way.

Earlier in the month, the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference brought Religious Right activists to Washington, D.C. The atmosphere was triumphalist, almost giddy, in sharp contrast to previous years’ complaints about Barack Obama and dire warnings about a potential Hillary Clinton presidency. Religious Right leaders had hitched the movement’s wagon to the Trump train, and they had already begun reaping the rewards.

Candidate Trump had overcome conservative Christians’ qualms about his character with a set of too-good-to-resist promises. He said he’d give them the Supreme Court of their dreams and he pledged to make them more politically powerful by doing away with restrictions on churches’ political activities. He won their trust by making one of their own, Mike Pence, his running mate. Religious Right leaders pulled out all the stops to help Trump rack up a massive margin of victory among white evangelicals.

Faith and Freedom’s founder, political operative Ralph Reed, was happy to reel off numbers that he said represented the group’s outreach: 1.2 million doors knocked, 10 million phone calls, 22 million pieces of mail, 30 million voter guides.

Republican leaders’ gratitude was evidenced by their extraordinary participation at Road to Majority. President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows all spoke at some point during the three-day event, along with other right-wing luminaries like Sen. Ted Cruz and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. So much for perennial predictions of the Religious Right’s political demise.

Trump spoke at the event’s opening luncheon, where Reed declared, “We love him because he is our friend.” Trump in turn told the conservative Christian activists, “You didn’t let me down and I will never, ever let you down, you know that.” And, offering a subtle olive branch toward activists who were disappointed that last month’s executive order on religious liberty did not include sweeping exemptions for anti-LGBT discrimination in the name of religion, Trump assured them, “Believe me, we’re not finished yet.”

...

Sort of like Sharia law, only different.

Religious Right leaders have a half-century long grudge against the Supreme Court over rulings on church-state separation, the right to privacy, legal equality for LGBT Americans, and more. Religious Right leaders were thrilled when Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch. They rallied support for his nomination and celebrated when he was confirmed. They made it clear that they are counting on him to undermine the separation between church and state. National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown saw in him the first step toward overturning the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling. Anti-abortion activists are dreaming of the day that Roe v. Wade will be overturned.

But today’s conservative evangelicals are interested in far more than abolishing legal abortion and reversing civil rights gains for LGBTQ Americans. Much of the Religious Right is also fully committed to the Tea Party’s radically restrictive view of the proper role of the federal government. At Road to Majority, Trump adviser Steven Moore said the government should get out of education and health care. That stance draws on both a right-wing ideological view of the Constitution and a Christian Reconstructionist worldview that God did not grant government the authority to be involved in education or the alleviation of poverty, jobs that they believe He assigned to the church and family.

It shouldn't be too long before Trump announces his choices for America's first Mullahs. He knows how badly he's faring in the polls. He knows how badly he needs these fundamentalist extremists. He knows he can't afford not to do their bidding. And he knows he really doesn't give a shit.

UPDATE

In keeping with this theme, bonehead extraordinaire and climate change denier, Florida governor, Rick Scott, has given the age of darkness a leg up by signing into law a provision that allows any parent to challenge how evolution or climate change are taught in schools.

The statute, which went into effect on July 1, forces school boards to hire an “unbiased hearing officer” who will look into complaints about instructional materials, according to a report by The Washington Post. The main proponents of the law, a group called the Florida Citizens Alliance, have argued that state-approved textbooks are “too liberal.”

“Purchased at taxpayer expense, these materials teach our children that European Socialism is better than free markets and that the government is the answer to every problem,” the group complains on its website.

Although the guidelines single out material that parents believe may be “pornographic” or “is not suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented, or is inappropriate for the grade level and age group,” affidavits filed by the law’s backers indicate that they will take shots at science education. One complainant filed an affidavit complaining that creationism wasn’t taught alongside evolution even though “the two main theories on the origin of man are the theory of evolution and creationism.” Another argued that global warming and evolution shouldn’t be taught as “reality.”

They're Here to Stay But We All Knew That, Didn't We?

In the Beginning, well my beginning, there were but two nuclear powers and, even then, the Soviet's bomb only beat my arrival by a matter of days. Still, two it was. Britain followed in '52, France in 1960 and China joined the club in 1964.

Israel is believed to have assembled its first three nukes just prior to the Six Day War in 1967.  Since then India, Pakistan and North Korea have fielded nuclear warheads. South Africa had a nuke but dismantled it and sinned no more.

Even as the Club of Nukes kept expanding we peace-loving snowflakes stayed faithful to the dream of nuclear disarmament. That was a thing. It's even in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and everything. Yeah, sure.

A new report from SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, finds that the number of nukes is down to a mere 14,935 this year from a staggering 15,395 last year. Wow there's a relief. Except that progress on nukes these days isn't focused on gross numbers - how many times over we could extinguish life on Earth - but on modernization, especially delivery systems. There the focus is not only on better targeting but on means to defeat anti-ballistic missile defences.

"Despite the recent progress in international talks on a treaty banning nuclear weapons, long-term modernizations programs are under way in all nine states," said Shannon Kile, a senior researcher at SIPRI. "This suggests that none of these states will be prepared to give up their nuclear arsenals for the foreseeable future."

Notably, the US is expected to spend $400 billion (350 billion euros) between 2017 and 2026 to maintain and comprehensively update its nuclear forces, according to the report. SIPRI cited estimates that Washington may spend up to $1 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize its nuclear weapons program.

"The projected increases in US spending are not unexpected," said SIPRI Associate Senior Fellow Hans Kristensen. "The current US administration is continuing the ambitious nuclear modernizations plans set out by President Barack Obama."

The Hill recently warned that hardliners at the Pentagon have been trying to entice their man/baby president to authorize development of "mini-nukes" for limited war purposes and to resume open weapons testing.

As for Trump, since he became president-elect he's been musing about a renewed nuclear arms race, seeming to relish the challenge.

DONALD TRUMP’S DECLARATION on Thursday that “if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack,” flew in the face of decades of U.S. efforts to negotiate cautious, mutual reductions in nuclear arsenals around the world.

Trump’s comments to Reuters essentially invited other nuclear powers to escalate their capabilities, and has the potential to set off a new nuclear arms race.

...

 Trump has stoked fears about a new arms race before. When pressed for details about his nuclear policies in December, he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe“let it be an arms race,” and later tweeted that the U.S. should “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

Trump’s spokespeople spent the following day trying to walk back his comments. But he later made his views on nuclear reduction clear when he told Russian President Vladimir Putin that he considers the Obama-era New START treaty a bad deal. The treaty calls for both countries to reduce their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,550, the lowest level in decades.

Oooh, the Optics.

He may not have scored a cushy job in the Trump cabinet but Chris Christie is still the governor of New Jersey and that counts for something. Unfortunately the optics on this 4th of July greeting card to his state constituents are really, really bad.

A budget squabble between the State's Democratic legislature and the governor saw Christie shut down the government and that included closing the Island Beach State Park to the public. The closure, however, didn't stop the governor and his friends from taking in the surf and sand.

With the park closed to the plebs, Christie and his family and a gaggle of friends hit the Governor's beach house to enjoy the holiday.  Some enterprising journo managed to get airborne to take a few delicious snaps of the governor struggling with the government shutdown.

Could Hardliners Egg Trump Into a New Nuclear Arms Race?

Like everyone else, America's militarist hardliners have been taking the measure of their man/baby president and these latter day Dr. Strangeloves see opportunity for the taking.

[A] small but influential group of analysts are suggesting extremist nuclear weapons policy ideas. An example of this is a Pentagon advisory board proposing strategies for the “limited” use of nuclear weapons. Another example is this same group suggesting the development of so-called “mini-nukes.” Further, a cadre of hardliners is pressing this unseasoned, mercurial new administration to resume explosive nuclear testing.

...

Over these past several decades without explosive nuclear testing, the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories have developed and implemented a robust — and expensive — science-based program that has certified that the U.S. nuclear stockpile is safe and reliable. In fact, laboratory leaders have stated that they have a more fundamental understanding of nuclear weapons than “when we were blowing them up.”

So what could drive the United States to reverse course, abandon 21st century science, and abdicate global diplomatic leadership to resume nuclear testing? Just one thing: an effort to develop wholly new U.S. nuclear weapons. These novel weapons systems would introduce uncertainty into the U.S. arsenal that could lead to an explosive test to provide full confidence.

...

Many of today’s policymakers have limited memory of the 20th century nuclear arms race — the constant fear and tension, the “duck and cover” drills, the concerns about nuclear fallout. Maybe it seems just a little unbelievable that this history could repeat itself. But in fact, it might be worse. Today, it’s not just Russia and the United States that would embark on dangerous game of one-upmanship, as China, India, Pakistan, and likely others would jump in to develop new and more sophisticated nuclear weapons. Nothing would more effectively throw gasoline on a global nuclear arms race than restarting nuclear testing.

If it is the United States that leads the way to a global nuclear testing breakout, what possible restraint could we influence or enforce upon other nations using diplomatic tools? Any nuclear test would be a highly provocative event inciting a reaction that could quickly spiral out of control. In a 21st century security environment with multiple global “hot spots,” resumption of nuclear explosive testing now might initiate a cycle with the launch of a nuclear warhead as its tragic end.

Churchill's Plea - "Know I'm Here."

It's called "SeaWall Churchill,"  comprising 16 murals intended to focus attention on climate change and the state of the oceans in the Arctic.  The murals were completed near the end of June. Too bad they weren't a focus of our Canada Day celebrations.

The link takes you to the murals.

America's Enemies Have Less to Worry About Than Her Friends

The upcoming G20 summit in Berlin promises to be a lot livelier than the gatherings of the past.

And, yes, that's because of the terrible-tempered man baby/president, Donald Trump.   Everybody, friend and foe, by now has taken the measure of this emotionally dysfunctional head of state and this will likely be the beginning of a grand realignment of relationships between Washington and other powerful nations.

Hamburg officials are already bracing for what could be huge anti-Trump demonstrations.  Perhaps they'll take a page out of the Brits' playbook and stage a mass mooning along Trump's limo route. It sounds as though plans are underway to humiliate the man who knows no shame. Tough gig.

As host, Angela Merkel gets to set the agenda and her focus will be on the looming climate change emergency. Trump showed what he thinks of that problem during the G7 summit.

The G20 leaders are a thoroughly mixed bag of statesmen, thugs and, well, Trump.  Putin, Erdogan, Modi, Widodo, Salman al Saud, Trump and the badly winged Theresa May. Everyone is going to want something from Trump even if it's just to be left alone.

The Guardian's Richard Wolfe thinks the "leader of the free world" could be sidelined.

This is the Trump paradox, five months into his presidency: the more he tries to assert US leadership, the less of a leadership role he plays. For someone who campaigned on the promise to make America great again, the reality of government has been an exercise in looking weak again and again.
...

It is possible to measure how much Trump has made America weak again. The Pew Research Center surveyed more than 40,000 people in 37 countries this year, examining global attitudes to the US and the president since Barack Obama left office. The numbers are grim reading for anyone but Vladimir Putin.

Confidence in the US president has collapsed 42 points to just 22%, while favorable views of the country overall have dropped 15 points to 49%. The declines are staggering in European countries, and the 10 countries where US presidential favorability ratings plunged the most includes South Korea and Japan: two allies who are clearly not reassured by Trump’s belligerent tone toward North Korea. Trump starts his presidency at the low point where George W Bush ended his, after years of cowboy diplomacy and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are just two countries registering a rise in confidence since the Obama era ended: Israel and Russia. In Israel, where Obama clashed repeatedly with the Netanyahu government, confidence has risen 7 points, from 49 to 56%: hardly a tidal wave of happiness.

The only country to fully embrace Donald Trump is Mother Russia herself, where confidence has rocketed 42 points, from 11% to 53%. Given the number of Russian immigrants in Israel, the two countries may really reflect only one dynamic: the curious case of Trump’s crush on Moscow.

...

The result of all this chest-thumping is the opposite of its intended effect. Instead of promoting American leadership, Trump is leaving a vacuum in Europe that is being filled by the German-French alliance. With Britain busy with its own Brexit chaos, that leaves Trump and the US with fewer friends and less influence.

...

Much like political junkies in America, the international community of elected officials and policymakers seems exhausted by five months of Trump’s engagement with the world. But that exhaustion is not just the result of Trump; rather, it follows a path of disappointment stretching back more than a decade.

“We can almost afford to take a break from American leadership,” says Robin Niblett, the director of Chatham House, an international affairs thinktank. “First we had George W Bush and the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Then Obama ended up failing to follow through on the rhetoric in the Middle East. And now we have Trump. That’s quite a trio. Does he put an end to the withdrawal of American leadership? It’s a short step from leading from behind to not leading at all.”

Other presidents have been lampooned. Europeans considered Reagan as lightweight as Trump. George W Bush threatened to blow up international peace, much like Trump.

But the pace and the depth of Trump’s decline is astonishing, and the gap between his rhetoric and the reality is intercontinental. As George W Bush discovered, the unilateral path is hard to travel when America’s allies are essential players on everything from economic to military cooperation. The first six months do not bode well for Trump or America’s fortunes. If this is Trump’s idea of a stronger America, his foreign foes have less to worry about than his friends.

Have They Tried Lego?

As Donald Trump regresses to an infantile state it becomes ever more difficult to ignore, even for Congressional Republicans.

There's this 71-year old toddler on the eve of a foreign trip, a meeting with Putin, the G20 summit, taking time to  tweet an animation of himself body slamming and punching out a character with a CNN logo for a head.

As if America needed to be reminded of their president's past cameos on McMahon's wrestling show. Like this one, used for the CNN tweet:



Somebody needs to call in the shrinks. The Donald is decompensating and that's a problem when it comes to all manner of things presidential, first and foremost America's nuclear launch codes. In the meantime his aides should find a diversion, Lego perhaps?

Scraping the Barrel - Theresa May's Polls Numbers Are Even Worse Than Trump's

The walking cadaver also known as Britain's prime minister, Theresa May, is in deep trouble - with the British public and especially with her own Tory caucus.

After a disastrous election campaign and the fallout of the deadly Grenfell Tower highrise fire, May's polling numbers stand at -20% (31% approval, 51% disapproval). Contrast that with early April when May decided to crush Labour's Jeremy Corbyn by calling a snap election.  Back then May's numbers were a respectable +20% while Corbyn wallowed at -35%. It was all too tempting to pass up.

The British public, it seems, have had enough of May's hyper-Thatcherite pantomime. Her MPs seem to realize that their mantra of austerity is riling up the proles.

Robert Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester said: “This new poll suggests that the remarkable swing in political fortunes which began in the general election campaign has continued in the weeks after the vote. Theresa May’s personal ratings have collapsed further, while Jeremy Corbyn’s have surged.

“There have been a few occasions when the public have turned rapidly against a prime minister, for example Gordon Brown’s collapse in support in the autumn of 2007, when Vince Cable noted his “remarkable transformation ... from Stalin to Mr Bean.

“Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn’s position in the party, in serious doubt just a few weeks ago, now looks unassailable. He is recording net positive personal ratings on a regular basis for the first time in his leadership, and Labour’s poll share of 45% is among the best the party has seen since the height of Tony Blair’s popularity.” 

Richard Clarke Explains What's Going On

Ever wonder what's going on with Trump and this Russia business? Some think it's all smoke and mirrors. Not Richard Clarke.

America's former counter-terrorism czar explained what the public is missing about Russia and the election that brought Trump to power.



This explanation continues with earlier remarks Clarke made about Russia, Mike Flynn and Jared Kushner.

And Then This Popped Into My Mind

I was just getting out of bed. Blue sky outside. I remembered today was the 150th anniversary of Confederation. Then this popped into my mind. The tune and all the lyrics. Like it was yesterday.



1967. My parents took us on the pilgrimage to the world's fair, Expo 67, in Montreal. My very first world's fair. Amazing.

Here it is, 50 years ago: