Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

“Alexa, change the president.”

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Trump Had A Very Smart Uncle

Trump Had A Very Smart Uncle

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A week or so ago, the Department of Defense, under Donald Trump’s acting Secretary, decided not to renew the contract for the Jasons.

The Jasons are about 40 scientists who can be tasked with various questions about science and national security. Recently, they’ve been asked how long the plutonium pits in nuclear weapons are likely to remain usable (answer: about a century). They were also asked, a while back about a hafnium bomb, which I still see, like Red Mercury, on the internets. (Answer: No, it wouldn’t work.)

The Jasons have security clearances, so they can be asked classified questions. The group has existed for almost sixty years.

The Department of Defense gave no reason for not renewing the contract, so I’ll take a guess. Donald Trump has a very good brain. His uncle was a professor in nuclear physics at MIT, and he had a very good brain. So we no longer need those university and national laboratory slackers when Trump is the only one who can solve the problems.

Here’s a nice summary, with all the relevant links, from the Washington Post.

And does anyone know if Trump’s uncle actually was an MIT professor? Tom?

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

106Comments

  1. 1.

    Spanky

    Per Wikipedia:

    ohn George Trump (August 21, 1907 – February 21, 1985) was an American electrical engineer, inventor, and physicist. A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1936 to 1973, he was a recipient of U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s National Medal of Science and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.[3][4][5] John Trump was noted for developing rotational radiation therapy.[3] Together with Robert J. Van de Graaff, he developed one of the first million-volt X-ray generators. He was the paternal uncle of Donald Trump, who would later go on to become the 45th president of the United States.

  3. 3.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    Of course. Nobody knows more than he does. He has the best brain. He went to the best school…

    Shit. I’ve always found that people who truly are worth a shit don’t have to spend all their time going around telling everybody about it. Only Trump is a very stable genius, so I guess he knows things all the rest of us don’t…

  5. 5.

    chopper

    hafnium bomb

    bogus, but nuclear isomers are still fascinating materials that deserve more study.

  7. 7.

    Droppy

    MY uncle was a world-class chef, so I am going to fire all the cooks at my restaurant and make the food myself even though I eat only McDonalds and have never managed any skilled employees doing any kind of work of any trade. But great chef genes run in my family, so that is all I need for great chefiness to appear. Amen.

  8. 8.

    Sloane Ranger

    Clearly Uncle and perhaps to a lesser extent Sis the Judge, took the entire allocation of brain cells intended for the Trump family for at least 2 generations.

  12. 12.

    Tom Levenson

    Yeah. His uncle really was an MIT professor — electrical engineering. This after he and Fred (the shitgibbon’s racist dad) fell out as partners in a home building business.

    And also yeah…getting rid of the Jasons is another unforced surrender to our adversaries. Our national security just got dicier as DoD got dumber.

  13. 13.

    TenguPhule

    Pretty soon Trump is going to start selling off America’s nuclear arsenal to the highest bidder.

  14. 14.

    Sab

    Even if he was the sweetest, most decent man in the world, we should impeach him for sheer incompetence.

  15. 15.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:

    The brains seems to have skipped the succeeding generations.

    I don’t think Trump is stupid, per se, or at least he wasn’t stupid before he went into cognitive decline. He strikes me as somebody who was reasonably smart but also lazy and incurious. When he felt the need to know something, he was capable of learning it well and thoroughly. But at some point his thinking calcified. He had learned everything he thought he needed to know, so he gave up bothering to learn anything. That’s why so much of his worldview is stuck in the 1980s; that’s when he stopped bothering to learn anything new.

  16. 16.

    MattF

    Probably, some highly classified Jason report concluded that a Trumpian concept was physically impossible.

  17. 17.

    Mike G

    Trump doesn’t need advisors, he already knows everything.

    I’ve known a few people with this mentality in my life and what a coincidence, they were all Republicans.

  21. 21.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Thanks for the reminders about Trump’s Uncle John. I actually read that at one time, but obviously it didn’t come up to the proper priority for my brain to retain it.

    Or it just seemed so discordant that anyone in Trump’s family could be an MIT professor.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Tom Levenson: The question is going to be how long the Office of Net Assessment holds out. If that goes too, then we’ve got an even bigger problem.

  24. 24.

    karen marie

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Trump is so smart, he’s protecting all us stupid not-rich people from the brilliance of his secondary school and college records – to such an extent, they’ve been hidden in a filing cabinet, in the basement — to which the stairs are broken — guarded by a leopard. Oh, yes, don’t forget your flashlight – the lights are broken.

  29. 29.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: I honestly couldn’t even tell you how you even apply for a job there. But if it goes that would be very, very, very bad.

  30. 30.

    Leto

    The war on science/education continues, unabated. I’m sure this will be outsourced to some Bircher society think tank. I’m sure free market solutions are the best way. Or some bullshit in that vein.

  32. 32.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Roger Moore: According to my sixth grade English teacher, one who knows not and knows that he knows not is a fool. T fits that description to the T. In Marathi we call such a person अति शहाणा.

    ETA: A person who thinks he is too smart but is really a fool because he has no humility to figure out what he doesn’t know.

  33. 33.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman: I’ve been a bit of an Office of Net Assessment skeptic. OTOH, I was trained up in somewhat similar methods, afaict. I don’t know much about them either.

    The bottom line is that Trump, and the Republican Congress, since Newt destroyed the Office of Technical Assessment, have been trying to get rid of independent scientific advice so that they can push their hype on EMP and probably hafnium bombs and red mercury as well.

  34. 34.

    Sab

    @Cheryl Rofer: Well at least there was some point in letting anyone from that family in. I am pretty much pro immigration, but that bunch had shaken my faith.

  35. 35.

    Sister Golden Bear

    In addition to the SCOTUS yesterday taking up the question of whether LGBT people have protection from job discrimination

    [Narrator voice: This is a bad sign, and likely means the court will legalize anti-LGBT discrimination]

    the Pence Trump administration is poised to roll back transgender health protections (as well as for women who have had abortions). Which is bad enough in itself — it means that a doctor or other healthcare would be able to refuse to treat me because I’m trans*.

    On paper they might claim that it’s only trans-specific health care, but in the real world, thanks to “trans broken arm syndrome” — when “healthcare providers assume that all medical issues are a result of a person being trans. Everything – from mental health problems to, yes, broken arms.” — it would have huge ramifications.

    But worse yet, the HHS may also use it as any opportunity to apply the “sex is assigned at birth and cannot be changed” rule that they’ve been trying to persuade other agencies to adopt, which essentially define trans people out of existence — and since trans people wouldn’t legally exist ipso facto there can’t be any anti-trans discrimination that requires protection from.

    *As in the case where EMTs let a trans woman bleed to death in the street while mocking her for being trans.

  37. 37.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Sister Golden Bear: Yes, all that, and today the Trumpies insisted on changing a UN resolution so that sexual and reproductive health measures can be denied to women who have been raped in war.

    The cruelty is the point, particularly to anyone who is not a cis white man.

  38. 38.

    zhena gogolia

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    I haven’t had time to watch the Town Halls, but this just caught my eye:

    Kamala Harris
    ‏
    Verified account

    @KamalaHarris
    20h20 hours ago
    More
    Right now we have a president who is putting in place a process for discharging transgender men and women. It is absolutely unconscionable and that is something I would reverse immediately when I am elected president of the United States. #HarrisTownHall

  39. 39.

    debbie

    ODG, we will never hear the end of this:

    I will name a Golan town after Trump, says Israel’s Netanyahu

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he intends to name a new settlement in the Golan Heights after US President Donald Trump.

    Mr Netanyahu said the move would honour Mr Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan in March.

    Israel seized the Golan from Syria in 1967 and annexed the territory in 1981. The move has not been recognised internationally.

    Syria said Mr Trump’s decision was “a blatant attack on its sovereignty”.

    Mr Netanyahu, who has secured a fifth term in office in the recent Israeli elections, has been on a trip to the region with his family for the week-long Passover holiday.

    “All Israelis were deeply moved when President Trump made his historic decision to recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

    “I intend to bring to the government a resolution calling for a new community on the Golan Heights named after President Donald J Trump”, he said in a video message.

  41. 41.

    The Dangerman

    I’m guessing that Obama said something nice about the Jasons once so, of course, it had to go.

    I’m sure there are many Chinese/Korean/Russian members at Mar-A-Larceny that can handle these tasks (with Jared and Ivanka supervising, of course)…

    …although I haven’t heard a word about Don Jr. in a while (I consider myself fortunate). What crimes is he up to these days? He can handle nuke stuff, I’m sure. Hannity told me so.

  43. 43.

    trollhattan

    @debbie:
    Bigass Helvetica Extra Bold Hebrew font–does it exist?

    “I want it BIG. I want it GOLD! Do you hear me, Bibi?”

    They could make it a candy brand name and just tell him it says Trump.

  44. 44.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:
    I guess I would say that intelligence/stupidity, knowledge/ignorance, and wisdom/foolishness are separate things*. Knowledge is information you know about the world. Intelligence is the ability to gain knowledge through education. Wisdom is the ability to apply what you’ve learned outside of the narrow domain where you learned it. Trump is (or was- I think his intellect has declined with age) a reasonably smart man, which means he was able to learn when it suited him. He was also a surprisingly ignorant one because he was foolish enough to believe he already knew it all and didn’t need to learn anything new.

    ETA:*Though they obviously aren’t completely orthogonal. A really stupid person will almost always be ignorant as well, because they have trouble learning.

  45. 45.

    Dan B

    @Leto: Pence could outsource science to the Kuwaiti Prophetic Science Institute. A “Dr.” there has found a cure for homosexuality. Because people of the 3rd and 4th genders (gay and lesbian) are oversexed she has perfected suppossitories that contain “sp@rm eating an@l worms”. It’s from the Quran, because of course. The formula is the same for gays and lesbians but she’s color coded them. It’s based upon bitter herbs because (natch) they increase masculinity.

    We have some questions, mostly related to how to implant a suppository in an angry dyke. Or butch leather guy who dreams of more hair on his back. And a few others – source of sperm in lesbian a$$es, etc.

    And is there a televangelist that can bring these miracle a$$ worms to desperate americans? Suggestions?

  46. 46.

    km

    @Cheryl Rofer: “so that they can push their hype on EMP and probably hafnium bombs and red mercury as well.”

    Why do they want to do this though? That’s what I don’t get. Is there some way they make money or what?

  47. 47.

    VeniceRiley

    @Cheryl Rofer: Is it wrong that I have a revulsion just to seeing Samantha Power’s name? She was the OG “Killary!1!!11!!!” in 2008 and I still haven’t forgiven her. I think of her as a redhead Bernie Sanders.

    I wonder if getting rid of The Jasons was a goal of Vlad The Destroyer?

  48. 48.

    Balms Away

    The more this administration rids our government of intelligent, diplomatic people, the more obvious the fact our government has become a superfluous drain of no use. We should revert to state’s rights and do away with the elitist empty monster WA DC has become.

  49. 49.

    Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): “Shit. I’ve always found that people who truly are worth a shit don’t have to spend all their time going around telling everybody about it. Only Trump is a very stable genius, so I guess he knows things all the rest of us don’t…”

    Only the most stable geniuses preemptively threaten to sue every school they’ve ever attended from releasing their grades. That is SOP in the MSGC (most stable geniuses club), I hear.

  50. 50.

    John D. Thullen

    So, instead of the Jasons giving expert counsel, we now hand over the nuclear arsenal and nuclear holocaust to Jason himself.

    There will be blood.

  52. 52.

    Baud

    @debbie:

    I will name a Golan town after Trump, says Israel’s Netanyahu

    “And the town symbol shall be a golden calf.”

  53. 53.

    Ohio Mom

    @zhena gogolia: The whole world is not horrible, there are good things happening everywhere. Just not in the halls of power.

    Here is one small example of a good thing, on the subject of one of the topics on this thread: my local children’s hospital has a new transgender clinic for children ages 5-24 to provide medical and psychosocial support to these children and their families.

    There are many forward-thinking efforts all over to draw hope from.

    And one day, the halls of power will be righted too. We will get there.

  55. 55.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @km: It’s hard to say. Some of them seem to get off on the fantasies. The business about EMP is pure scare stuff: Look at this terrible thing that someone could do to us with practically no investment.” The corollary is that we have to spend more, particularly on missile defense, so that’s a motivation. I saw a suggestion that it’s survivalist porn – they like to think about how they would be the only ones who would survive in the blasted land.

    And there’s the ever-popular owning the libs, who believe that sciency stuff. And the Jasons are all those perfesser types.

  56. 56.

    Jay

    @km:

    They can now contract out for less than eithical research,

    Get curated results back,

    And used bad science to push bad policy and bad projects.

  57. 57.

    MomSense

    This is one of those days when I want to buy a farm in nowhere, Maine and live off the grid and away from the rest of the world.

  58. 58.

    Dan B

    @zhena gogolia: Thanks for posting this crystal clear statement from Sen. Harris. I posted that Harris was criticized for her CNN Town Hall statement about the “gay panic defense” when she talked about trans murder trials. The criticism seemed like hair splitters or russian bots.

    We need a rapid response team for these half truth smears. They’ll be confusing and epic.

  59. 59.

    boatboy_srq

    At this rate the GOTea won’t be able to drown Gummint in a bathtub because Lord Dampnut will have fired all the plumbers.

  62. 62.

    Dan B

    @Baud: Noooooo! You cannot have Devin Nunes cow! That is a sacrilege most fowl!!!

    How about a Goldrn Lion? No, Jr. and Eric would shoot it.
    Golden Lamb? Trumpf would grab it.
    Hmmm?

  64. 64.

    cmorenc

    Trump probably had the group cancelled because he and his Admin cronies don’t like having experts around who might give them answers they don’t like to questions they don’t want to be inconvenienced considering. Trump doesn’t listen to the experts in his own state department, intelligence services, or military brass, so why would he want to listen to a bunch of egg-headed scientists who might tell him the schemes Trump is cooking up in his excellent brain are disasters in the making because of [facts[.

  65. 65.

    Evil Paul

    @Cheryl Rofer: Red mercury…I vaguely remember that being a thing back in the 90s. Wasn’t there a story about Bill Clinton reading about red mercury and getting really worried and asking some scientific experts to investigate it or something? As I recall, it got played for laughs in the news. But when you think about it, that’s the right response: ‘Wow. That sounds scary! Is it real? I better check with someone who knows!’

  66. 66.

    mrmoshpotato

    I AM LUXURIOUS AND CLASSY AND TREMENDOUS BIGLY AT THE NUCLEAR WITH MY VERY GOOD BRAIN!

    -D.J. Dump

  69. 69.

    Aleta

    I’m going to guess (no surprise) they were supplying answers that opposed what he wants to do. He may have interpreted this as not obeying his orders. And then there’s his paranoia about people who know too much and can’t be controlled. I wonder if the Jasons can/will speak about this.

    What little I know of the Office of Net Assessment from my sis is that it’s secretive and not at all independent of the DoD in its research. So are the research managers and scientists likely to stand up to pressure from Trump’s servants, or just keep their heads down and focus on what the DoD has directed? Scientists who would disagree with something serious might just quit instead.

    Loss of the Jasons is very serious.

  70. 70.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Leto: Again sounds like some in military and some on police force think their position is a license to run amok/kill.

    And–or maybe in adition–they think they are living in a violent video game. One in which the targets are stick figures with no reality–no families, etc

  74. 74.

    Barney

    Just yesterday, I listened to the BBC Radio 4 serialization of ‘Losing Earth’ – which pointed out that ‘Jason’ Gordon MacDonald was one of the first scientists with access to policymakers to raise concerns about global warming. Here’s People magazine reporting on him, in 1979 (not bad for a ‘fluff’ publication): people.com/archive/co2-could-change-our-climate-and-flood-the-earth-up-to-here-vol-12-no-15/ .

    Get rid of the Jasons, and you get rid of those annoying scientists telling you you’re dooming the Earth for that fossil fuel lobby you’ve worked for for 2 decades and still do, despite your position at the Dept of Interior.

  77. 77.

    tobie

    Washington Post editorial board has posted an editorial on Warren’s debt forgiveness and free college plan. Is Fred Hiatt still editor for the editorial page? Is this the first time this season they’ve spoken out against a primary candidate? The editorial notes that 85% of student debt holders are actually current on their repayments; the 15% that are not seem to belong to the following group:

    Student-loan defaults are concentrated among students who attended for-profit institutions, or who accumulated low loan balances but then dropped out and were stuck paying the money back out of lower-than-anticipated earnings. Such issues are hardest for students and families of color, as Ms. Warren correctly emphasized. This calls for a targeted approach that relieves the worst financial stress of those least able to handle it, not a sweeping bailout for the middle class and above.

  78. 78.

    Leto

    @Ladyraxterinok: not so much video game, but not recognizing that the person at the end of their barrel is also human. Refusing to see them as human. Dehumanizing the enemy is part of military training, but this went beyond that. Idk about cops, but if you read the article that’s part of what was happening with the seal being accused of murder (and other assorted crimes). The bigger thing is that, per the reporting, that the immediate command was trying to cover this up, threatening retaliation against the men bringing this to their attention. Thin blue line doesn’t have shit on the special warfare community.

    Yet again, something else to help our enemies with propaganda/recruitment efforts.

  80. 80.

    mrmoshpotato

    @rikyrah: @Baud:

    Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) Tweeted:
    Put another way: the reason Bernie fans mostly haven’t migrated to Warren is because the distinguishing feature of Bernie fans is not leftist policy views per se but that they (figuratively) are a bunch of whiny brats who want something now, don’t know exactly what it is they want and sure as shit don’t want to be bothered with working out the details or doing the nose-to-the-grindstone hard work to get it.

    FIXED IT FOR YOU NATE!

  81. 81.

    JustRuss

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    We don’t need that, I know the best people and they tell me the nets are fine. Some of them are very tall.

    Terrific, I’ll bet they look like they came straight from Central Casting!

  82. 82.

    NotMax

    Science? We don’t no es-stinkin’ science.

    Oops, excuse me. Time to go feed the home cold fusion unit.

    @MomSense

    Maine? Can do that (even sans the farm) in Maui!

    ;)

  83. 83.

    Baud

    Not surprised but I hadn’t seen it confirmed.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): The current front-runner in most polls, Sanders told a CNN town hall audience on Monday that while he supports further investigation by the House into the allegations put forth in the Mueller report, talk of impeachment would serve only as a distraction.

  85. 85.

    tobie

    @Baud: I think the argument was that if the debt burden were crippling, graduates with loans would be behind on their payments. The editorial also asked why, if you’re going to forgive college debt, won’t you forgive other forms of occupational training debt. And regarding free public college the board’s question was why should those who are poor defray the tuition costs of those who have enough means to pay. The editorial didn’t get into what kind of state or federal curricular control would accompany larger state and federal outlays, which is one of my concerns. I frankly think the model of debt free college would address a lot of the problems Warren’s trying to solve without overhauling and possibly upending one of, if not the, greatest asset in the US–the research university.

  86. 86.

    Gravenstone

    @tobie: In other words, let the usury of the masses in pursuit of post high school education continue unimpeded.

  87. 87.

    mrmoshpotato

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Russian Asset # 2 doesn’t want Asset # 1 impeached. No surprise there.

    In other No-shit-Sherlock news, water is wet, and Dump is the Kremlin’s bitch.

  88. 88.

    TenguPhule

    @Balms Away:

    We should revert to state’s rights and do away with the elitist empty monster WA DC has become.

    Over half of the states are controlled by Republicans.

  90. 90.

    West of the Rockies

    @Dan B:

    Yes, we need to be vigilant about articles that smack of truthiness. Among stories about our candidates that may be critical and honest, there will be half-truths and out-of-context quotes. They pop up even here occasionally.

    We need to winnow the field, but I hope that happens more organically during the debates than via random sniping. YMMV.

  92. 92.

    TenguPhule

    We could save a lot of time and duplicated effort by simply impeaching and arresting every Trump appointee, past and present.

    Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Tuesday told a key lawmaker he would make a final decision as to whether to furnish Trump’s tax returns by May 6, committing for the first time to a specific deadline in what has become a major Washington power struggle.

    In a 10-page letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), Mnuchin said the Democrats’ request for Trump’s tax returns raised constitutional and privacy issues that needed to be resolved by the Justice Department before he could make a decision on how to proceed.

    The letter repeatedly cast doubt on the motivations of Democrats in seeking the tax return information. Mnuchin served as Trump’s finance chairman during the 2016 presidential campaign, and Trump already has signaled he does not want the information released, but multiple legal scholars have said they don’t see much precedent for Mnuchin to ignore the congressional inquiry.

  94. 94.

    Zinsky

    Democrats need to open a new front in the Trump Wars by announcing they are forming a Donald Trump Sex Crimes Commission. There are at least 18 women who would be very willing to publicly testify about this geriatric pervert’s rapist tendencies. Make it a prime time TV series…

  95. 95.

    catclub

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    since Newt destroyed the Office of Technical Assessment, have been trying to get rid of independent scientific advice so that they can push their hype on EMP and probably hafnium bombs and red mercury as well.

    The Democrats did not re-start it when they had a chance in 2010. Or better fund the Congressional research system – as far as I know.
    It is a shame that only one side has to be responsible for long term thinking.

  96. 96.

    Bill Arnold

    This is interesting. Another crack in the GOP wall.
    The Mueller Report Was My Tipping Point – I was a Trump transition staffer, and I’ve seen enough. It’s time for impeachment. (2019/04/23, J. W. Verret, Professor of law at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School)

    This elaborate pattern of obstruction may have successfully impeded the Mueller investigation from uncovering a conspiracy to commit more serious crimes. At a minimum, there’s enough here to get the impeachment process started.
    …
    Republicans who stand up to Trump today may face some friendly fire. Today’s Republican electorate seems spellbound by the sound bites of Twitter and cable news, for which Trump is a born wizard. Yet, in time, we can help rebuild the Republican Party, enabling it to rise from the ashes of the post-Trump apocalypse into a party with renewed commitment to principles of liberty, opportunity, and the rule of law.

  97. 97.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Bill Arnold: There is a big chunk of me that would really like to tell this dude the variety of ways in which he can go fuck himself. Hell, there is still a part of me that is sometimes tempted to say it recovering Bush voters. I am not a good choice for outreach to wavering Republicans.

  98. 98.

    Bill Arnold

    @Barney: @Barney:

    …which pointed out that ‘Jason’ Gordon MacDonald was one of the first scientists with access to policymakers to raise concerns about global warming.

    F-in Edward Teller, who was (broadly) correct:
    On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming

    Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect [….] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.

  99. 99.

    Bill Arnold

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    There is a big chunk of me that would really like to tell this dude the variety of ways in which he can go fuck himself.

    He spends the first half loudly touting his radical conservative bona fides (perhaps armor/insulation against right wing projectiles/shivs/flames), and does not endear himself to liberals.

  100. 100.

    Ruckus

    I often wonder if Trump thinks all this stuff he’s not willing to pay for, he thinks he gets a cut of the taxes collected that isn’t being paid out for necessary things. IOW he doesn’t see the need for something, mainly because he’s an idiot and because he’s said idiot, does he expect to get paid for this?

  101. 101.

    Jay

    @Ruckus:

    Naw, somebody told the Moron the whole scam,

    Dumping the Jason’s now allows all the “studies” to be farmed out to for profit Astroturf “science” consultants,

    These consultants will in turn issue pseudo science reports that support the policy,

    Programs to enact the policy can then be farmed out to an assorted batch of connected Corporate grifters.

    The Hedge Funders have looted all the assets and value, ( real estate, machinery, pension funds, subsidiaries, cash holdings) out of the Corporations.

    Bubble after bubble, churning and high fees have hollowed out the 401K’s,

    The Great Recession stole every house that wasn’t strapped down with hurricane ties.

    The last place with large cash flows, lax accounting available to loot, is the US Government.

  102. 102.

    Canadian Shield

    At the bottoms of the linked Washington Post article there was a link to an Editorial:
    “Trump’s record on science so far is a mixed bag”
    That must be a bag filled with 50% shit and 50% vomit…

  103. 103.

    texasdoc

    @tobie: That editorial seems to be missing the point. It’s not that most with student loans are current on payments, but that they are paying for YEARS, when they should be starting their adult lives, perhaps saving for a down payment on a home or starting a family.

  105. 105.

    W. Kiernan

    It’s not hard to see why the Trump administration took this action. Would Vladimir Putin want that contract renewed?

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