Tag Archives: Trump

We’ll always have Paris

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If you are upset about Trump and upset about Trump pulling the US out of the Paris agreement, please let me help you get through the day.

Trump announcing that the US is pulling out of Paris does not mean the end of Paris, the end of action on climate change, or much else about global warming. I’ll explain why in a moment. The US pulling out of Paris could even be interpreted as better than the US staying in. I’ll explain that too.

I’m not saying that Trump should have pulled out, I’m just saying that at the moment, if you are deeply concerned about the climate and the future, which you should be, don’t let this get you down too much because when you add up all the complications and nuances, Trump’s decision about Paris is not that different than his decision about immigration. A big league tweet followed by an awkward presentation of his racist America First agenda followed by not much.

First, I’m going to list a few reasons that PAREXIT is not the end of the world. None of these arguments individually means much, but this will give you an idea of how this is not YASBTTTD (yet another simple bad thing that trump did). Then, I’ll tell you the real meaning of PAREXIT and why, in my view, this will backfire on Trump. Then, I’ll give you a few money quotes and links to commentary by my smart and trusted colleagues so you can read all about it.

1) We have made arrangements and are part of Paris already, and leaving the Paris agreement therefore will take time. It will likely take a few years, which is longer than trump will be President. Here is the President of the European Commission explaining that since Trump does not “get close to the dossier” (translation: can’t read or think) he has announced a thing he can’t really do.

2) There are almost 200 nations in the agreement, and the US would have been only one of them. Yes, we are the bigliest and the bestliest and among the most polluting and all that. But think about this for a second. How many times in the past has there been something like a 200:1 ratio of countries on two different sides of something? Answer: Never. Not once has that ever happened. Even Hitler had a couple of other bad hombres on his side. The sheer yugeness of this imbalance makes what Trump does not count for much. See below for more aspects to this part of PAREXIT.

3) If the US were to remain an active participant in Paris, with Trump and his anti-environmental, anti-planet Republicans in charge, they would ruin the agreement. Right now, there are a lot of people quietly breathing a sigh of relief that the next few years of acting on Paris can ignore the US.

Trump has said and done a lot of dumb things, and among those things have been a number of serious insults to other countries. The whole building a wall along the Mexican border thing is a good example. Trump’s attack on a huge portion of the world, directly, and insult to everyone else, indirectly, with his stance on Immigration seriously affected the view other countries have of the US. His coziness with Putin pisses off Europe. Every chance he has had to be nice vs. insult a foreign leader, he’s chosen the bully-brat approach and mostly insulted.

All this together made everyone else in the world look at Trump with suspicion. But, world leaders remained diplomatic, sometimes even hopeful, said nice things, and tried to live with it all.

Then, Trump went to the Middle East and Europe. While in Europe he violated the old proverb, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” By the time Trump returned to the US, his standing among world leaders was pretty nearly ruined.

But not totally ruined, there may have been some hope, and he still got along with the Orb People.

But then, PAREXIT happened and the Trump is now on the very edge of being a full on pariah globally, and the US is teetering on the edge of utter irrelevance in the areas of diplomacy, trade, or anything that requires cooperation or conversation. The following graphic is optimistic, allowing for a tiny bit of hope which we assume Trump will erase within the next week or two.

And that is the true meaning of PAREXIT

This all sounds bad but it can be good, and here’s why. Once the rest of the world is allowed to no longer take the US seriously, and more importantly, once the rest of the world is required to not take the US seriously for their own preservation and protection, then they can do something about trump and the Republicans.

For example, if other countries are trying to meet Paris goals, they may need to suspend trade with the US. If you are Argentina and you are mostly non-fossil fuel powered, you can’t really buy cars or electronic parts from the Dirty US, can you? You’ll get them from Germany or France. If you are Mexico, and you are trying to meet Paris goals, you can’t let American based airlines land in your country. It is not Trump that is going to shut down all the trade agreements. It is everyone else.

When US business that supply manufactured good and technology overseas are shut down by the Paris countries (= all the countries) and all those nice people in Wisconsin and Michigan who want to fly down to the Maya Riviera next January can’t, the disastrous nature of Trump’s decisions and Trump himself will gain special meaning.

And it goes on from there. The US has to negotiate and communicate and get along. Remember just a few days ago when the UK intelligence services said they would stop sharing certain information with the US because of photos from Manchester being released? That was a line of crap. The photos were released to news agencies by a British based source. That was something else going on. It was the UK intelligence services creating an opportunity to “USEXIT” the special relationship before it became a disaster, because trust with the US was gone. Just to be clear, the thing that keeps getting called the “special relationship” is not just some valentine’s day card aphorism. It has a specific meaning. It means that the US and the UK share intelligence between each other at the same level that we share intelligence within our own services. No other two countries do that, or maybe a couple but not most. The UK has been for years in a special place within that special relationship, having experienced the worst case of double-agent caused loss of trust ever, years ago, and ever since then the Americans have been able to hold the UK’s feet to the fire and make them feel bad whenever necessary. It was like the UK had an affair and the spouse (the US) could never really trust them again. Now, with Trump, the shoe is on the other foot, an the UK is seriously reconsidering the marriage.

Every single thing the US does from now on will be tainted, until Trump is gone and not replaced by the equivalent. The US is now a second-level power. It is now Russia, China, and the EU (with Germany leading) that run the world with Japan.

Look for big moves. Look for the “G-7 minus one” because if you are the other 6 countries in the G-7, you do not want Trump at the table. Maybe Mexico will build a wall and make Trump pay for it. Other things. Many other things.

PAREXIT is not about Paris or the climate. It is about the end of American exceptionalism, and there are both bad and good things about that.

And now the other things. Some of this is from before PAREXIT but very much related.

A Veteran’s Day warning: Trump’s climate policies will create more war, more refugees

Donald Trump’s climate policies would create dozens of failed states south of the U.S. border and around the world. They would lead to hundreds of millions of refugees and more authoritarian demagogues like Trump himself.

Trump’s policies would assure that a tremendous number of people become veterans of one of the ever-growing number of climate-related conflicts.

Trump just cemented his legacy as America’s worst-ever president

Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris treaty is a mostly symbolic act. America’s pledges to cut its carbon pollution were non-binding, and his administration’s policies to date had already made it impossible for America to meet its initial Paris climate commitment for 2025. The next American president in 2020 can re-enter the Paris treaty and push for policies to make up some of the ground we lost during Trump’s reign.

However, withdrawing from the Paris treaty is an important symbolic move…

REFERENDUM NOVEMBER 3, 2020 ON TRUMP’S WITHDRAWAL FROM PARIS AGREEMENT NOVEMBER 4, 2020

Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement means that the United States formally abdicates its role as world leader on November 4, 2020. By coincidence, the United States will hold a referendum vote – and, make no mistake, it will be a referendum vote – on November 3, 2020.

RL Miller, cofounder of Climate Hawks Vote, states: “Trump’s fuck you to the world redoubles our determination to end his regime. We will take back Congress in 2018, expose him for the traitor and grifter that he is, and elect climate candidates up and down the ballot, culminating in the election of a climate hawk President on November 3, 2020 to restore America’s place in the world.”

Paris Agreement: What Experts Say vs. What the White House Says

In President Trump’s speech today announcing his intention to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, there were several false and misinformed statements.

Trump falsely claims Paris deal has a minimal impact on warming

In a speech from the White House Rose Garden filled with thorny lies and misleading statements, one pricks the most: Trump claimed that the Paris climate deal would only reduce future warming in 2100 by a mere 0.2°C. White House talking points further assert that “according to researchers at MIT, if all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be negligible… less than .2 degrees Celsius in 2100.”

The Director of MIT’s System Dynamics Group, John Sterman, and his partner at Climate Interactive, Andrew Jones, quickly emailed ThinkProgress to explain, “We are not these researchers and this is not our finding.”

Trump’s Paris exit: climate science denial industry has just had its greatest victory

The foundation for Trump’s dismissal of the Paris deal – and for the people who pushed him the hardest to do it – is the rejection of the science linking fossil-fuel burning to dangerous climate change.

Or rather, Trump’s rejection of the Paris deal was built on the flimsy, cherry-picked and long-debunked talking points of an industry built to manufacture doubt about climate science. Once you fall for those arguments, making an economic case suddenly feels plausible.

Trump Abandons Paris Climate Deal At Bidding of Fossil Fuel Interests

Condemnation from environmental groups was swift.

“President Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Agreement sends a dangerous signal to the rest of the world that the United States values fossil fuel industry profits over clean energy innovation and the health and well-being of our citizens,” Earthworks’ Executive Director, Jennifer Krill said in a statement. “The over 12 million people living within a half mile of an oil and gas facilities deserve action to reduce air pollution, not head-in-the-sand climate denial.”

Tobacco To Fossil Fuels: Tracing the Roots of Trump’s Claims on Paris Climate Deal

To understand why President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the global Paris climate agreement, we might start by looking at the sources he relied on to justify his decision.

But we’re not going to start there, but we will end there.

Instead, let’s go back to the early 1990s….

We’ll always have….oh, never mind

The Paris Climate Agreement represents rational order. It aligns the planet’s nation-states behind a common understanding of our gravest collective threat. It provides a weak but coherent structure for needed actions. Flawed and tentative though it is, it plants a stake in the ground for humanity’s collective will to save itself. It memorializes what global climate sanity there is.

That’s why Trump can’t stand it….

Withdrawal From Paris Climate Accord Makes Covfefe Sense

For the first time in history, the United States has removed itself from a worldwide agreement negotiated to protect the world’s atmosphere.

Trump’s reputation as a dealmaker is a sham, walking away from Paris proves it

His decision Thursday to abandon the Paris climate agreement proves he is in reality one of the worst dealmakers in history.

Of course, with six bankruptcies and an astounding 4,000 lawsuits over three decades, Trump has always been less of a dealmaker and more of a con man, as Michael Bloomberg and so many others have described him.

The world needs the U.S. in fight against climate change

President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement is not only bad for the country, it’s bad for the world.

The Paris Agreement is the fruit of more than 20 years of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The accord was struck almost exactly 50 years after researchers presented President Johnson with the first official expert report warning of the dangers from burning large amounts of fossil fuels.

Aaron Sorkin ate some bad sushi and we are all living in his hallucinogenic nightmare.

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Its like this.

Only with Trump instead of Josh, and it is real life. Yet, less like real life.

Trump, remembering something about watergate, tweets:

and the Washington Post reports:


Trump suggests there may be ‘tapes’ of his private conversations with former FBI director

Trump experiences verbal diarrhea and says, “In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.’”

Headline:


Trump said he was thinking of Russia controversy when he decided to fire Comey

Trump’s press office is incompetent and the White House can’t keep its message straight, what with all those reporters asking all those questions, so Trump sarcastically tweets:

Headline:

Trump threatens to cancel White House briefings

And those are just the examples I ran into this morning. This has been happening for months.

Donald Trump needs to learn this thing: When words come out of he president’s mouth, policy is created.

The press needs to learn this thing: When you play the run-up game with a moron like Trump, it makes you look like a bully at the beach kicking sand in someone’s face. Someone we all love to see getting sand kicked on him, sure, but still… you may want to get a different approach to dealing with this president’s random idea puking. Like, for example, always mention that no one takes him seriously.

Here, I’ll give you an example.

The Washington Post wrote:

Trump threatens to cancel White House briefings because it is ‘not possible’ for his staff to speak with ‘perfect accuracy’

President Trump threatened Friday morning to end White House press briefings, arguing that “it is not possible” for his staff to speak with “perfect accuracy” to the American public.

Trump’s comments come after his description of his decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey in an NBC News interview Thursday flatly contradicted the accounts provided earlier by White House officials, including Vice President Pence, exposing their explanations as misleading and in some cases false.

[Trump said he was thinking of Russia controversy when he decided to fire Comey]

In a pair of tweets sent Friday, Trump suggested he might do away with the daily press briefings at the White House and instead have his spokespeople communicate to the public only via “written responses.”

What WaPo should have written:

Trump bathroom tweets snide remarks about the American Press, threatens freedom

President Trump sarcastically tweeted from the White House Commode Friday morning to end White House press briefings, arguing that “it is not possible” for his “surrogates” to speak with “perfect accuracy” to the American public. Clearly, he doesn’t know what a “surrogate” is, because he’s really talking about his staff. Surrogates are different.

Trump’s comments come after his nonsensical and random attempt at describing his decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey in an NBC News interview Thursday did not match, because it was nothing other than the random blathering of an ill man, entirely different lies provided earlier by somewhat more articulate but no more honest White House officials, including Vice President Pence. While one might normally assume that the President’s account of what happened in a conversation he was actually in would be the gold standard, and other comments by other White House personnel, if contradictory, would be incorrect, that is not an assumption we can make in the Trump White House.

[Trump also stupidly stated that he was thinking of Russia controversy when he decided to fire Comey, in a different and equally alarming squirt of verbal diarrhea.]

In a pair of tweets sent Friday, Trump sarcastically whined he might do away with the daily press briefings. Nobody gave a fuck.

That’s how to do it.

The Real Fake Reason Trump Fired Comey: Lock her up

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As you know, President Trump sacked FBI Director James Comey yesterday. The firing involved a letter written by Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general, complaining about Comey, to Jeff Sessons. (The three relevant letters by Rosenstein, Sessons, and Trump are here.)

Jeff Sessons had recused himself of matters related to the Russia-Trump Scandal, so it was necessary for the DOJ and White House to make up a reason Comey was being fired, apparently, and that letter from Rosenstein included the excuse.

In the letter, Rosenstein said, “The Director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General’s authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution…”

This is the announcement that ended the Clinton email investigation.

Let me rephrase this. Sessons agreed with Rosenstein’s recommendation, and Trump with Sessons, to fire Comey because Comey had stopped the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email issues without prosecution.

The reason I mention this now is that to this moment, I’ve not seen a single news reporter, facebook commenter, or any one else get this right. At best the Clinton email connection is left vague, but at worse, people are noting how remarkable it is, and how unbelievable it is, that the Trump administration would use the OTHER THING Comey did about Clinton, the more recent momentary re-opening of the investigation thought by many to be a violation of the Hatch Act, as the excuse Trump is using. That is not the case.

Rather, it looks like this: Trump promised during his campaign to jail his opponent. Now, Trump has fired the FBI director for not taking steps to do so.

I am astonished that this has not been noticed, apparently, not yet, by the media.

I acknowledge that this is likely all a lame excuse, and that most people believe that Trump has fired Comey because the FBI was “getting close” to the White House, or to something, in its investigation of the Russia-Trump scandal. Fine. But the alt-Excuse, assuming it is fake excuse, is still important because top level federal officials including the President have now created policy. That policy is, the next FBI director will only be serving the administration’s needs if they pursue or attempt to pursue a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton. And, again, I note, that “Lock her up!” was a campaign promise of Trump’s.

So, this is not unimportant.

Climate Science Removed From EPA Site: WaPo

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The EPA has removed climate science from its site in order that the site contents better reflect Donald Trump’s perspective.

From Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin at the Washington Post:

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday evening that its website would be “undergoing changes” to better represent the new direction the agency is taking, triggering the removal of several agency websites containing detailed climate data and scientific information.

One of the websites that appeared to be gone had been cited to challenge statements made by the EPA’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt. Another provided detailed information on the previous administration’s Clean Power Plan, including fact sheets about greenhouse gas emissions on the state and local levels and how different demographic groups were affected by such emissions.

The changes came less than 24 hours before thousands of protesters were set to march in Washington…

Go to that article to get the gory details.

By the way, given what is happening at the New York Times, the Washington Post has become the US national level go-to major media for climate change. It helps that Chris Mooney is there, and his coverage is excellent, though there are lots of other writers who cover environmental and climate issues as well. If you happen to be a member of Amazon Prime, you can get the Washington Post free for a period of time (I can’t remember how long, I got mine a long time back) and subscribing isn’t too bad. Once you do the free thing for a while you’ll start getting special offers, and I recommend it. Note that even during a period when I wasn’t subscribing to the Washington Post, I used it as my main major media source for ongoing primaries during the election season, as it had the best organized (though not perfect) site with current results. (Prime or not, perhaps this is a good deal for the paper at Amazon as well: The Washington Post.)

The Mystery of the Carl Vinson

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<li>On September 11th, 1640, a Dutch armada preparing to attack the New World Spanish settlements was lost to a storm, thus changing the course of Dutch, Spanish, and New World history. </li>


<li>On January 2nd, 1678, an entire fleet of French naval ships was lost off the Venezuelan coat, changing forever the history of France.  And Venezuela.  <a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060198184/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0060198184&linkCode=as2&tag=grlasbl0a-20&linkId=b83eba754ac7216967259cba5ee67675">*</a><img src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=grlasbl0a-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0060198184" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></li>


<li>On or about April 19th, 2017, the United States lost the battle group running with the USS Carl Vinson, somewhere in the Pacific.  This altered forever the credibility of the American Military around the world.  </li>

Bombing Syria

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For my friends who are thinking that military action like we just saw in Syria is OK.

No it isn’t, even if it is.

Gather together the three smartest people you know. Then recruit the top five experts on Middle Eastern diplomacy, and the top five experts on military solutions in the region. Call in the joint chiefs. Make a military plan, the best plan ever.

Now put 100% of the responsibility for final decisions, go-orders, choice making between alternatives, etc, in the hands of an ignorant clownish six year old who is allowed to make up his own alt-plans at any time, and who, as a habitual liar surrounded by habitual liars, can say whatever he wants to the public about what is happening.

No. No military action while Trump is president.

The Truth About Syria and Obama

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In case you were wondering, Trump is telling you lies.

Syria is run by a horrible dictator. He is the kind of dictator that makes you want to bring back assassination of foreign leaders. The idea of putting him down is hardly an extreme one, once you know what he does and has done.

There was a moment in time, in 2013, when Obama tried to stand up to Assad, but failed to push back when Assad pushed him. Assad read the US system better than most foreign dictators do, it seems. You see, in the United States, a president can’t just go to war. Congress authorizes war. Once that authorization is done, it is quite possible for a president to abuse the authorization, sure. A president can send all sorts of troops around the world for purposes of security, sure. But you can’t go and kick Assad’s ass for using chemical weapons without an authorization form Congress.

So, Obama asked Congress to authorize going to Syria to kick Assad’s ass. They declined to do so.

Meanwhile, at that time, Donald Trump made the following statements:

  • Obama wants to unilaterally put a no-fly zone in Syria to protect Al Qaeda Islamists Syria is NOT our problem.
  • We should stay the hell out of Syria, the “rebels” are just as bad as the current regime. WHAT WILL WE GET FOR OUR LIVES AND $ BILLIONS?ZERO
  • What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional approval.
  • If Obama attacks Syria and innocent civilians are hurt and killed, he and the U.S. will look very bad!
  • How bad has our “leader” made us look on Syria. Stay out of Syria, we don’t have the leadership to win wars or even strategize.
  • If the U.S. attacks Syria and hits the wrong targets, killing civilians, there will be worldwide hell to pay. Stay away and fix broken U.S.
  • “…mr trump would attack Syria or no?” No, lets make our country great again as they fight their war!
  • What I am saying is stay out of Syria.
  • AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA – IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!
  • Russia is sending a fleet of ships to the Mediterranean. Obama’s war in Syria has the potential to widen into a worldwide conflict.
  • President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your “powder” for another (and more important) day!
  • Don’t attack Syria – an attack that will bring nothing but trouble for the U.S. Focus on making our country strong and great again!
  • Obama must now start focusing on OUR COUNTRY, jobs, healthcare and all of our many problems. Forget Syria and make America great again!
  • We should stop talking, stay out of Syria and other countries that hate us, rebuild our own country and make it strong and great again-USA!

    • Those were tweets, so we know it is what he really meant.

    Trump does this thing that no president has ever done before. He obsesses on the fact that he won, as though it was the only thing he ever won in his entire life, and he blatantly and frequently blames things on President Obama, his predecessor. And, as far as I can tell, none of those accusations has been close to accurate. None of those accusations has even been in the general ballpark of reality. (Plus, of course, he takes credit for things his predecessor did, but that’s a whole nuther story.)

    Now that Trump is president he is blaming President Obama for not invading Syria, but he should really be blaming Congress because it is Congress that made that decision, not President Obama.

    Those are the facts.

    What to do with Syria? I don’t know. My immediate inclination is to go in there, blow Assad off the map, take over the country and install solar energy systems so that Syria can be a major supplier of electricity to nearby countries and SE Europe, make improvements to the agriculture, cut off a big chunk in the general vicinity of Israel and join that with part of Lebanon, part of Jordan, and part of Egypt, to make a large backwards C-shaped country into a weapons-free peaceful Palestinian state. Then, take another bit if Syria, a bit of Turkey and a bit of Iraq and make a peaceful weapon’s free Kurdistan. Then world peace. But that’s just me.

    By the way, the Trump administration is sending more and more troops into Syria. But, of course, the other guys in Syria are the Russians, and they support Assad. So, how is this going to work out, with a Putin puppet in the White House, and a killer madman in charge of Syria?

    Here is some interesting reporting and commentary from Rachel Maddow on this issue:

    Trump Hates You, His Supporters, And Our Planet

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    A few items that I think you should see:

    Screen Shot 2017-03-29 at 12.35.58 PM

    Trump’s executive order puts the world on the road to climate catastrophe

    On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order that effectively guts national efforts to address climate change. If he isn’t stopped, the endpoint of this approach is the ruination of our livable climate and the needless suffering of billions of people for decades to come.
    The order starts the process of undoing President Obama’s Clean Power Plan standards for power plants. It also spurs fossil fuel consumption and blocks federal efforts to even prepare for the multiple, simultaneous catastrophes that unrestricted carbon pollution the world faces?—?severe drought, ocean acidification, ever-worsening heat waves, rising seas that threaten to destroy coastal cites.
    This is not politics as usual. …

    Read the rest

    Screen Shot 2017-03-29 at 12.37.36 PM

    Trump’s Executive Order Threatens to Wreck Earth as a Livable Planet for Humans

    Decades of progress on cleaning up our dirty air took a significant hit on Tuesday, along with hopes for a livable future climate, when President Trump issued his Energy Independence Executive Order. Most seriously, the order attacks the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan, which requires a 32 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from existing power plants by 2030 (compared to 2005 emission rates.)

    Tuesday’s blow was just the latest in a series of attacks that threaten our health and the planet’s health. On March 15, Trump also ordered…

    Read the rest

    I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations

    …At first, the distress flare of lost data came as a surge of defunct links on 21 January. The US National Strategy for the Arctic, the Implementation Plan for the Strategy, and the report on our progress all gone within a matter of minutes. As I watched more and more links turned red, I frantically combed the internet for archived versions of our country’s most important polar policies.

    I had no idea then that this disappearing act had just begun.

    Since January, the surge has transformed into a slow, incessant march of deleting datasets, webpages and policies about the Arctic. I now come to expect a weekly email request to replace invalid citations, hoping that someone had the foresight to download …

    Read the rest

    Trump’s Take It Or Leave It Approach Makes Sense

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    In real estate.

    I’m not an expert on this but I’ve seen the sausage being made a few times. Individuals with investment money, commercial businesses that might use new space, other possible tenants, maybe or maybe not some designers or builders, municipal or other government stakeholders, community stakeholders such as neighborhood associations, etc. consider a real estate deal. Perhaps there is a bit of condemned land the county wants to sell cheap if only you clean up the brownfield and develop something nice. Maybe the investors include a person who owns an underexploited business venture in a particular property, and some other investor owns the property, and they’re building a subway stop down the street.

    All kinds of possibilities for a bigly deal. Plans are made, temperatures checked, conversations happen, money is put down on options to buy, a partnership is formed, etc.

    And then, at some point, bait has to be cut, or put on the hook. One must do number two or leave the loo. All the parties involved have to agree on the deal, so they do.

    Or, they don’t.

    If they don’t, you move on to some other deal. You have not, most of your life, committed to seeing a 7-11 market in a mixed use housing project on the corner of Main and First Ave. It was never really your your dream to build a strip mall on that old landfill by the bus station. You have not woken up every morning of the last 30 years wondering how you could achieve an office building by the new cloverleaf next to the park and ride. Any of those things might have been nice, bit it didn’t work out.

    Even more importantly, you are smart if you figure out sooner than later that it won’t work out, and move on sooner rather than later. You may even be smart to move on even if there is a small chance of pulling off the deal.

    Donald Trump, as of this writing (and things are happening very fast at this moment, so this could change) is saying, vote on Trumpcare now, if the vote is no in the House, drop it. We’ll do something else unrelated to health care. That is a wise thing to do, in the real estate world. I’m actually surprised to see Trump doing something that makes sense in any context at all. Maybe he isn’t a total failure as a businessperson after all!

    Unfortunately, Trump is the President of the United States and the deal we are talking about is with Congress and the People, and it is not a strip mall somewhere, but the health care insurance system.

    There are people who have a life-long commitment to seeing affordable healthcare. It was always their dream to build a system of insurance that would be affordable and fair for all. They woke up every morning of the last 30 years wondering how to achieve this goal.

    They’ve tried before, failed, and got back up and dusted themselves off and tried again. Obamacare was the first real success since the old days, but even that was not enough and there are people ideologically, politically, and for humanitarian reasons committed to an even lofter goal.

    The arc of justice is long but bends gently to the left, in this case to the more universal and fairer health care system. It is convenient that the path Trump has decided to take is a hard right turn followed by … well, parking the car on the side of the road and taking a bus to some other place. Maybe go golfing or something.

    We’ll see what happens today (over the next two or three hours). I wonder if Trump will address all of his issues this way. I wonder if he’ll address the presidency this way. I wonder if some day, soon, Trump will say to Paul Ryan, “Build the wall, and get Mexico to pay for it. I’ll be at the Florida White House while you work that out.”

    Then, when Ryan tells Trump, “There is no way. It can’t be done. There isn’t a mechanism for that, and we don’t have the votes anyway,” that trump will respond in the same way, but more bigly.

    “Call the vote,” Trump tells Ryan. In my fantasy. “If it doesn’t pass, I’m outa here.”

    Warming Oceans, Trump, Cat Litter

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    A potpourri of miscellany:

    Human Caused Climate Change and the Oceans

    It is great to see our local political non-print non-TV news agency, MNPost, covering an important climate change story with local connections. I’ll be writing John Abraham’s research up myself shortly.

    An intriguing and important-sounding new research paper caught my eye on Sunday, with its finding that the world’s oceans have been warming at a much faster pace than is generally recognized.

    Because seawater holds more than 90 percent of the excess heat that arrives from the sun but, thanks to greenhouse gases, isn’t promptly returned to space, that conclusion seemed to fall somewhere between stunning and alarming. Because it had been published in Science Advances, a journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, its credibility was clear.

    Also, I can’t tell you what it is, but some very important new research is about to come out, also on climate change, that I’m chomping at the bit to write up. Probably within the next week or so.

    Donald Trump

    Did the Fed do something The Donald did not want it to do? If so, how will The Donald react? Oddly, there are no tweets about this to date. Perhaps Trump, Putin and Bannon are working out an executive order.

    Some good news, maybe: Increasingly, Congressional Republicans are pushing back on the crazy, not letting Trump get away with being himself.

    This too, wherein John McCain tears Rand “The Freedom” Paul a new one on the ground that Paul is in Putin’s pocket:

    Speaking of Trump, I had a bad experience with cat litter today. For the fourth time in a row, I went to our local Target to get “The World’s Best Cat Litter,” only to find they are out. While standing there, forelorn, in the Mother Ship, I checked on Amazon, and low and behold it is possible to get cat litter delivered to your door on a periodic basis, at a pretty good discount. (might need to have Amazon Prime)

    Children interrupting or otherwise annoying very serious adults