Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Lord (or Somebody Real), Please Help Us

This shows the damage deniers can do when people -- like Trump -- have no critical thinking skills. Trump reportedly got all worked up over a fake Time cover claiming that scientists once said an ice age was at hand. From Politico:


First, what kind of dummy is K.T. McFarland, deputy national security advisor, and -- well, we already know, don't we? -- what kind of a idiot is Trump?

Here's that fake Time cover:


I don't know who made it -- but they probably got a bonus this week for it.

By the way, as far as I'm concerned the definitive study on this claim is from Thomas Peterson, William Connolley and John Fleck:

"The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus," W. Peterson et al, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 89, 1325–1337, 2008

From this paper's abstract:
An enduring popular myth suggests that in the 1970s the climate science community was predicting “global cooling” and an “imminent” ice age, an observation frequently used by those who would undermine what climate scientists say today about the prospect of global warming. A review of the literature suggests that, on the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking as being one of the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales. More importantly than showing the falsehood of the myth, this review describes how scientists of the time built the foundation on which the cohesive enterprise of modern climate science now rests.
How dysfunctional is Trump? Reportedly he can't read more than one page of a national security briefing, and like a twisted narcissistic child, he has to see his name mentioned as often as possible. 
One unnamed source told Reuters that since Trump “keeps reading if he’s mentioned” in briefing materials, officials on the National Security Council have learned to insert the President’s name into “as many paragraphs as we can.”
I just hope we get rid of Trump before gets us all killed. (I really do.) 

8 comments:

OnymousGuy said...

Charles Pierce at Esquire refers to Reince Priebus as 'The obvious anagram', which had its origin during Pierce's appearance on Steven Colbert, who coined it. "Crisp bee urine", if you need to know.

David in Cal said...

If it's true that Trump prefers one-page memos, that's OK with me. Ronald Reagan liked one-page memos. He won the Cold War, while avoiding nuclear disaster, and he began a long period of growing prosperity. An article in Harvard Business Review said:

Ronald Reagan was famous for asking for one-page summaries and today many executives follow that example. It is good practice because it challenges the petitioner to reduce his idea to its barest essentials as a means of ensuring understanding as well as developing a platform for advocacy. This methodology is something that I have coached executives to ask for as well as to develop for themselves.
https://hbr.org/2010/04/avoid-over-simplifying-your-on

P.S. Trump has weaknesses as a President, but his achievements show he's not stupid or incompetent. Earning billions of dollars and developing a hit TV show didn't just happen accidentally.

OnymousGuy said...

David in Cal,

Reagan did not win the Cold War. This is a right-wing myth. See Foreign Policy, for example:
Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong
. SDI was a joke and almost cvertainly not going to work. Gorbachev himself dismissed the notion that Reagan caused the collapse of the Soviet Union.

And Reagan's 'simplicity' was really duplicity, with his usual distortions. Don't forget the duplicity behind the timing of the release of the Iranian hostages; almost surely done in collusion with the revolutionists before the 1980 election. And repeated perjuries regarding the Iran-Contra deal.The great communicator was the Great Prevaricator.

You're relying too much on Breitbart.

David in Cal said...

OnymousGuy - A President is generally given credit or blame for good or bad things that occur during his Administrations. That rule of thumb applies more strongly when the achievement involves military and foreign affairs -- two areas that are directly under the control of the President.

David in Cal said...

I would add that the myth that Republicans are dumb has been used against them for many years.

Eisenhower was supposed to be dumb, even though he graduated from West Point and guided the Allied victory in Europe. And, after he left office, it was discovered that he had shrewdly worked behind the scenes to undermine Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Gerald Ford was supposed to be dumb, even though he graduated in the top 25% of his class at Yale Law School. And, also had a quite successful Presidency.

Reagan was supposed to be dumb, but his record of achievements speaks for itself. And, collections of scripts he had written for his weekly political addresses showed that he had a keen understanding of political issues and he had a knack for explaining the issues. (See https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_2_22?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=reagan+in+his+own+hand&sprefix=reagan+in+his+own+hand%2Caps%2C206&crid=3GAV8WHEXCVJ7 )

George W. Bush was supposed to be dumb, despite graduating from Yale and earning a prestigious Harvard MBA degree.

So, the claim that Trump is dumb is just normal Democratic mud-slinging.

Layzej said...

Sarah Palin was supposed to be dumb as well. I hadn't heard that about McCain or Romney though... Are you sure that this is your vbest and brightest?

OnymousGuy said...

David in Cal,

I said Reagan was duplicitous. The word 'dumb' never appeared in my post. You should look at a dictionary.

OnymousGuy said...

And David in Cal, you are apparently unaware of the CIA's own assessment of the end of the Cold War.

At Cold War's End