Climate change bits

Evidence of increasing global warming continues to contradict false narratives from climate science deniers and pollute-for-profit propagandists. A SciAm article, No U.S. states had a record cold winter. Nine had a record hot one, make's its point with the headline. Record winter cold is now truly rare. However, record winter heat is increasing in frequency.

Red = areas with record high temps

Orange = significantly above average

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

In a meeting with farmers and ranchers about converting more food (corn) into fuel (ethanol), Trump slandered environmentalists, calling them terrorists. Trump said this to to pander to his crowd:

“It's a big problem what they've done to you and the country. The environmentalists are terrorists. I call them the environmental terrorists.”

 

Trump pandering to the crowd

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Trump is moving ahead with plans to decimate a major US climate science research lab, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado. Elite MAGA operative Russell Vought said the move is to reign in “climate alarmism” from the lab.

About Vought: For context, next to Trump himself, Vought is arguably the 2nd most powerful person in the US. He is quiet and keeps a low profile. He uses low key stealth to hide both his (1) intense hate of government and government employees, democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and the public interest generally, and (2) the enormous power he has to inflict grievous damage on democratic norms, laws and institutions that protect and empower the targets he wants to obliterate. Vought can reasonably be called America's Shadow President.  

Peanut 1: Someone once said “I'm not saying Trump is a Russian asset trying to destroy America from the inside, I'm simply saying if he was it would look exactly like this.”

Peanut 2: A slim majority of the electorate voted to burn it all down.

Peanut 3: This fire season, the Republicans will once again blame California for not raking the leaves in the forest, or whatever it is they pretend to believe.

Peanut 4: After more than 1500 temperature records were broken in the American west in March, this seems like a good move. /s 

🤪

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Satellite images are showing an area of Alaskan permafrost approximately the size of Wisconsin is thawing. Climate science experts warn this could significantly alter the global carbon cycle and affect coastal ecosystems worldwide. The data indicates that the Alaskan thawing season has now been extended into late summer and early fall.

DOC (dissolved organic carbon) trapped in permafrost 

flows into the sea from areas of Alaska with permafrost melt

Ok, now this is what I call a good ole fashion ass-kickin'

  I gotta tell ya, I have seen some royal take downs of Trump, but Carville did a serious ass-kickin' of Trump on Good Friday.

The only thing that will be richer than Carville's take down is how Trumpers  out there are going to react. They are going to lose their minds.

Here it is folks:

In a short YouTube video posted on Friday, James Carville sent President Donald Trump a particularly heartfelt Good Friday message, starting the address, “Listen to me, you fat f*ck.”

“Listen to me, you fat f*ck,” said Carville to start the nearly six-minute clip. “By the way, get your finger outta your a** and quit licking it. You got no g-damn manners. How were you brought up?”

I told you that you’d be gone by April Fool’s of 2027. I’m getting a little worried. I gotta tell you, I watched that word-mash you had night before last, I guess it was. Man, I gotta tell you, don’t go f*cking numb on me before the election, because I want you very, very aware on election night when people tell you what the f*ck they think of you. They hate you. Everybody hates you. There’s an article a day I read about how low can his polling go. What’s your floor? Some people say it’s 33. Well, now it’s 35, so you might go through the floor. ‘Cause all you gonna have left is hardcore MAGA.

Oh, there is more:

https://www.mediaite.com/online/listen-to-me-you-fat-fck-james-carville-sends-trump-heartfelt-good-friday-message/

There is even a video within that link for anyone who wants to actually HEAR this take down.

I think Carville needs to run some classes for Democrats and other liberals to show them how to do a proper ass-kickin' of Trump. 

Solid evidence of Trump’s dictatorship intent

Trump used to be a little more cautious about signaling his intention to be a dictator-kleptocrat. But now he is either getting sloppy about stating his dictator intentions in public, or maybe he just doesn’t care. 

A Daily Beast article quotes Trump saying that he does not want his own MAGA judges to be independent from himself. He wants them to do what he wants, nothing else. That is true dictatorship intent.

“Republicans, judges, and justices. They always want to show that they’re independent. ‘I don’t care if Trump appointed me, I don’t care, if it doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m voting against him! Cause they want to show their independence, you know, stupid people. ..... I can’t get a ballroom approved. It’s pretty amazing, right? If I was a king, we’d be doing a lot more. I’m doing a lot, but I could be doing a lot more if I was a king.”

The critical flaw in mainstream media reporting

Context: Trump’s for-profit hotel in Miami

The title of a Daily Beast article, Trump Admits ‘Library’ Is Scheme to Line Family’s Pockets, implicitly but clearly treats Trump’s state of mind about his ‘library’ as corrupt. A scheme to line a president’s pockets doesn’t imply an honest state of mind. So, is this assertion not credible? Facts the DB article asserts are consistent with other reporting that Trump wants his “library” to be at least mostly a hotel, not a library or museum. The DB headline, “Admits ‘Library’ Is Scheme to Line Family’s Pockets”, is its interpretive framing of what it means for Trump to put a revenue‑generating hotel on free public land, with funding from secret quid pro quo donations and other sources.

Florida officials gave taxpayer‑purchased prime downtown Miami land for Trump’s library. The land is held in a nonprofit that Trump and his family control. There has been and will be no compensation to the public for the valuable asset they gave away. Link 1, link 2, link 3

MSM standard of evidence and state of mind

In view of Trump’s corruption and contempt for the rule of law, it’s only a small step to infer corrupt intent from the documented facts of self‑enrichment and opaque money flows around the library and his broader pattern of profiting from public office. While in office, taxpayer, political, and foreign money have flowed into Trump properties while he was and is in office. His corruption includes his $TRUMP memecoin scheme and related ventures, which include a billion‑token supply with roughly 80 percent owned by Trump‑affiliated entities and fees on each transaction. Those schemes raised hundreds of millions and a multibillion‑dollar market cap built off his political power and visibility. While in office Trump and his family amassed up to ~$11.6 billion in crypto holdings and over $800 million in crypto venture income. At the same time, he weakened enforcement and rolled back investor safeguards in ways that directly add more wealth to him personally. Link 4, link 5, link 6, link 7

Based on solid evidence showing Trump is deeply corrupt, the DB article takes the small inferential step and basically calls him a crook and his library scheme corrupt. That small leap asserts that his state of mind is corrupt and that he is building the hotel to make money for himself, and very likely his family. By contrast with essentially all other MSM reporting about Trump’s criminality and corruption, the mainstream media reporting about this stops short of stating the obvious that he’s a deeply corrupt crook.

In court, circumstantial evidence is just as valid and probative as direct evidence. A person can be convicted of 1st degree murder and sentenced to death on the basis of circumstantial evidence alone. Link 8, link 9

In this situation, the DB article takes the vast circumstantial evidence showing that Trump is thoroughly corrupt and applies that fact to a situation that looks just as corrupt. Nonetheless, most of the rest of the MSM will not take that inferential step because there is no direct evidence of his corrupt mind. At least so far, Trump has not said something like ‘I’m doing this to make money’. So unlike the DB, most of the rest of the MSM refuses to call Trump a crook, even though he clearly is a crook. What other major reason is there to build a hotel in Miami other than to make money, especially if the hotel is taxpayer subsidized by giving away the land it sits on? There’s a lot of money to be made there.

The MSM’s critical failure

Most Trump supporters irrationally howl about how awfully and unfairly the MSM mistreats him. But people can rationally howl about how the MSM unreasonably protects him by (1) refusing to call him exactly what he is, a shameless crook, and (2) falsely calling his kleptocratic authoritarianism “conservatism” and “conservative”. Trump is a corrupt dictator wannabe, not a pro-democracy conservative.

By now, there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence of corrupt self‑enrichment and authoritarian intent, but mainstream journalism still insists on treating that evidence as too “speculative” to name plainly. That isn’t neutrality, it’s complicity. The MSM’s fear of asserting intent as a factual conclusion, even when it is a perfectly rational explanation of the pattern, is the critical structural failure. The MSM leaves the public disarmed in the face of an existential threat. In Trump’s case, this high bar for naming corruption functions less as a safeguard of rigor than as a gag order against accurately describing what is happening. The MSM normalizes and protects Trump and his blatant corruption and equally blatant authoritarian intent. According a grade of F for MSM soft-pedaling its reporting on Trump's corruption and authoritarianism, and the MAGA threat is warranted and reasonable.

President Trump Delivers Powerful Primetime Address on Operation Epic Fury

 Key word: Powerful!

The White House

https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/04/president-trump-delivers-powerful-primetime-address-on-operation-epic-fury/

April 1, 2026

(Delivers an April Fools joke late in the day?)

Tonight, in a primetime address to the nation, President Donald J. Trump provided an update on Operation Epic Fury

Check out just how powerful the speech was:

Way better delivery than Sleepy Joe's previous speeches, right? Right? Right?

Trump's damage to America is intentional, not incompetence or good faith reform

By now, people who focus on the pattern and nature of changes the Trump administration and the MAGA US Supreme Court have imposed on government, law, commerce, American Christianity, journalism, science, and society can clearly see a corrupt authoritarian pattern and intent. Trump and MAGA elites have pushed all of those targets toward authoritarianism and deep corruption. Billionaires and big corporations have been protected, empowered and deregulated. Christianity, specifically Christian nationalism, has been empowered into aggressive arrogance and cruel, bigoted fundamentalist theocracy. By contrast, wealth and powers of citizens, consumers, and workers have been weakened or eliminated. The same has happened to protections for the environment. In short, Trump and empowered MAGA elites are building the means to move vast new wealth, power and protections from the public interest, citizens, consumers, workers and the environment to elites and special interests. By now, the evidence is overwhelming. Trump and his MAGA political movement is deeply corrupt, staunchly authoritarian, and taking wealth and power for themselves from us. Link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5, link 6, link 7, link 8, link 9

It is now clear that Trump's probably illegal DOGE quasi-agency was an intentional, sloppy effort to (1) disempower and deprotect citizens, consumers, workers and the environment, while (2) further empowering and protecting wealthy people and allied special interests, including billionaire's businesses. DOGE's mass firings at the GSA left that agency unable to perform basic functions. The IRS lost 25% of its workforce, with experts projecting $350 billion to $900 billion in lost revenue by 2036 from failure to enforce tax laws. The evidence of what DOGE did was not about fixing inefficiencies. It was about dismantling government functions that served the public interest, including stripping protections for government workers. Those functions balanced the public interest power against special interest power. Now, the public interest is weak and mostly defenseless, while special interests are deregulated and free to feed on society without most major restraints. The effects are now being documented. In Trump’s second term massive financial windfalls are going to his wealthy backers and his own businesses. Not surprisingly, that is what happens when public interest protections like anti-corruption and financial integrity safeguards are eliminated --- wealth and power flow from the public interest to special interests. Link 10, link 11, link 12, link 13, link 14, link 15, link 16

Trump and MAGA politics have inflicted enormous damage on America's domestic and foreign interests. Tariffs have imposed costs that fall almost entirely on American consumers and businesses, with ~90% of the tariff burden falling on U.S. firms and households. A 6% reduction in long-run GDP and a $22,000 lifetime loss for middle-income households has been projected. Internationally, one analysis documented 111 distinct ways that Trump and MAGA policy have weakened American security, economic standing, and global influence. Some scholars see the damage to US alliances as potentially irreversible. Before Trump, the US had allies. Now we don't. Link 17, link 18, link 19, link 20, link 21, link 22, link 23

What Trump and MAGA politics have done is not just scattered or misguided incompetence or good faith efforts to improve government efficiency or accountability. It is the a focused effort to severely weaken the public interest, and to empower authoritarianism and free special interests from laws and regulations. It's happening everywhere at once. Domestic agencies, scientific research, the military, the judiciary, international alliances, the economy and even Christianity are being bent toward kleptocratic authoritarianism. The destruction is too broad, too deep, too simultaneous, and too consistent to be accidental. Trump is doing his very best to weaken and destroy America and its system of government and laws. Link 24, link 25, link 26, link 27

Qs: Is it credible to argue that Trump and MAGA elites really are authoritarian, deeply corrupt and anti-American? If not, what is the evidence they are honest, pro-public interest, pro-democracy and pro-America? 

Woke up this morning to this headline......

 DONALD J TRUMP, 47th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, HAS RESIGNED!