Friday, November 02, 2018
Public Says NO To GOP Plans To Reduce The Deficit
A few months ago, the Republicans passed some tax reforms. They called it a "middle class tax cut" but that was disingenuous. It was a massive tax cut for the richest Americans, and no one else. That tax cut for the rich blew a huge hole in the federal deficit -- increasing it by nearly $900 million this last year, and by over a trillion a year in coming years.
Now congressional Republicans say they can fix the deficit. How? They want to cut Social Security (which added nothing to that deficit), Medicare (which added very little to it), and Medicaid (which is desperately needed by poor Americans).
Fortunately, the American people aren't as stupid as Republicans thought they were. And they don't like the GOP tax reform -- or their plan to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. That's what this poll showed. Overwhelming majorities say it would be better to repeal the GOP tax reforms than to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. That was the opinion of all demographic groups -- even a plurality of Republicans.
The survey was the NPR / PBS NewsHour / Marist Poll done between October 21st and 23rd of a national sample of 935 adults (including 738 registered voters). The margin of error was 3.9 points for adults and 4.4 points for registered voters.
The Oceans Tell Us Global Warming Is Faster Than Expected
Most nations of the world have been hoping to keep global warming down to no more than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), and it was believed that there was still time to take the action necessary to accomplish that. But a new report shows that might not be true. It turns out that the oceans (which absorb most of the additional warming) are warming much faster than scientists had thought -- and that means there is far less time to act.
Here is just a part of a very good article on the subject by Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis in The Washington Post:
The world’s oceans have been soaking up far more excess heat in recent decades than scientists realized, suggesting that Earth could be set to warm even faster than predicted in the years ahead, according to new research published Wednesday.
Over the past quarter-century, Earth’s oceans have retained 60 percent more heat each year than scientists previously had thought, said Laure Resplandy, a geoscientist at Princeton University who led the startling study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The difference represents an enormous amount of additional energy, originating from the sun and trapped by Earth’s atmosphere — the yearly amount representing more than eight times the world’s annual energy consumption.
In the scientific realm, the new findings help resolve long-running doubts about the rate of the warming of the oceans before 2007, when reliable measurements from devices called “Argo floats” were put to use worldwide. Before that, differing types of temperature records — and an overall lack of them — contributed to murkiness about how quickly the oceans were heating up.
The higher-than-expected amount of heat in the oceans means more heat is being retained within Earth’s climate system each year, rather than escaping into space. In essence, more heat in the oceans signals that global warming is more advanced than scientists thought.
“We thought that we got away with not a lot of warming in both the ocean and the atmosphere for the amount of CO2 that we emitted,” said Resplandy, who published the work with experts from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and several other institutions in the United States, China, France and Germany. “But we were wrong. The planet warmed more than we thought. It was hidden from us just because we didn’t sample it right. But it was there. It was in the ocean already.”
Wednesday’s study also could have important policy implications. If ocean temperatures are rising more rapidly than previously calculated, that could leave nations even less time to dramatically cut the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide, in the hope of limiting global warming to the ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by the end of this century.
The world already has warmed one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 19th century. Scientists backed by the United Nations reported this month that with warming projected to steadily increase, the world faces a daunting challenge in trying to limit that warming to only another half-degree Celsius. The group found that it would take “unprecedented” action by leaders across the globe over the coming decade to even have a shot at that goal. . . .
The new research underscores the potential consequences of global inaction. Rapidly warming oceans mean that seas will rise faster and that more heat will be delivered to critical locations that already are facing the effects of a warming climate, such as coral reefs in the tropics and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.
Thursday, November 01, 2018
Another Poll Looks At The Youth Vote In 2018
These charts show the results of the newest NBC News GenForward Poll -- done between September 21st and October 6th of a national sample of 1,881 young voters between the ages of 18 and 34. The margin of error for the poll is 3.76 points.
If these young voters turn out in large numbers (and I still believe they will), then that will be very good for Democrats.
New Poll Verifies The Senate Race In Texas Is Close
This chart reflects the results of the new University of Texas at Tyler Poll -- done between October 15th and 28th of 1,033 registered Texas voters (905 likely voters). The margin of error for the registered voters is 3.03 points and for the likely voters is 3.26 points.
It shows the difference between Cruz and O'Rourke is lies than 5 points among both registered and likely voters.
Making these numbers more interesting is the fact that significantly more Republicans and Trump voters were questioned than Democrats and Clinton voters. It looks like some Republicans are crossing over and voting against Cruz.
Behavior of Republicans And Democrats Are NOT The Same
That is a ludicrous idea. It equates yelling at a politician in a restaurant with sending mail bombs, shooting random Black people, and executing Jews as they pray. But those acts are not equal. While some Democratic politicians may be promoting incivility, Republicans (especially Trump) are engaging in hate speech, and emboldening terrorists to carry out vicious acts that kill people.
Here is how Paul Krugman (pictured) describes this in his New York Times column:
In America 2018, whataboutism is the last refuge of scoundrels, and bothsidesism is the last refuge of cowards.
In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the midst of a wave of hate crimes. Just in the past few days, bombs were mailed to a number of prominent Democrats, plus CNN. Then, a gunman massacred 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Meanwhile, another gunman killed two African-Americans at a Louisville supermarket, after first trying unsuccessfully to break into a black church — if he had gotten there an hour earlier, we would probably have had another mass murder.
All of these hate crimes seem clearly linked to the climate of paranoia and racism deliberately fostered by Donald Trump and his allies in Congress and the media.
Killing black people is an old American tradition, but it is experiencing a revival in the Trump era.
When the bombs were discovered, many on the right immediately claimed that they were fake news or a false flag operation by liberals. But the F.B.I. quickly tracked down the apparent source of the explosive devices: A fanatical Trump supporter, whom many are already calling the MAGABomber. His targets were people and a news organization Trump has attacked in many speeches. (Since the bombings, Trump has continued to attack the news media as the “enemy of the people.”)
The man arrested at the Tree of Life synagogue has been critical of Trump, who he apparently believes isn’t anti-Semitic enough. But his rage seems to have been fueled by a conspiracy theory being systematically spread by Trump supporters — the claim that Jewish financiers are bringing brown people into America to displace whites.
This conspiracy theory is, it turns out, a staple of neo-Nazis in Europe. It’s what our own neo-Nazis — whom Trump calls “very fine people” — were talking about in Charlottesville last year, when they chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”
It’s also the barely veiled subtext of the manufactured hysteria over the caravan of would-be migrants from Central America. The fearmongers aren’t just portraying a small group of frightened, hungry people still far from the United States border as a looming invasion. They have also been systematically implying that Jews are somehow behind the whole thing. There’s a straight line from Fox News coverage of the caravan to the Tree of Life massacre.
So how are Trump apologists dealing with this ugly picture? Partly through denial, pretending not to see any link between hateful rhetoric and hate crimes. But also through attempts to spread the blame by claiming that Democrats are just as bad if not worse. Trump supporters try to kill his critics? Well, some Trump opponents have yelled at politicians in restaurants! . . .
Trump supporters aren’t the only people trying to pretend that he’s only doing what everyone does, that Democrats are just as bad and equally liable for the explosion of hatred.
False equivalence, portraying the parties as symmetric even when they clearly aren’t, has long been the norm among self-proclaimed centrists and some influential media figures. It’s a stance that has hugely benefited the GOP, as it has increasingly become the party of right-wing extremists.
You might have thought that the horrifying events of recent days would finally break through that norm. But you would have been wrong. Bothsidesism is, it turns out, a fanatical cult impervious to evidence. Trump famously boasted that his supporters would stick with him even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue; what he didn’t point out was that pundits would piously attribute the shooting to “incivility,” and that Sunday talk shows would feature Fifth-Avenue-shooting advocates and give them a respectful hearing.
This needs to stop, and those who keep practicing bothsidesism need to be shamed. At this point, pretending that both sides are equally to blame, or attributing political violence to spreading hatred without identifying who’s responsible for that spread, is a form of deep cowardice.
The fact is that one side of the political spectrum is peddling hatred, while the other isn’t. And refusing to point that out for fear of sounding partisan is, in effect, lending aid and comfort to the people poisoning our politics. Yes, hate is on the ballot next week.
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