Author Archives: BeauDrewvd

Donald Trump Is a Serial, Compulsive Liar

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump, eight days ago:

Donald Trump, in a legal filing five days later, as reported by the Washington Post’s Philip Bump:

Trump is a serial, compulsive liar. Soon he will be president of the United States.

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Donald Trump Is a Serial, Compulsive Liar

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Even Wisconsin’s Republicans Are Getting Tired of Scott Walker

Mother Jones

Our story so far in America’s laboratories of democracy: Over the past few years, Republican governors have been eagerly implementing big tax cuts, insisting that they will supercharge their states’ economies and increase revenue instead of reducing it. Kansas was the poster child for this experiment, and it failed miserably. Louisiana has been a disaster too. Now comes Wisconsin, where fellow Republicans are getting a little tired of Governor Scott Walker’s denial of reality:

Leaders of Mr. Walker’s party, which controls the Legislature, are balking at his demands for the state’s budget. Critics say the governor’s spending blueprint is aimed more at appealing to conservatives in early-voting states like Iowa than doing what is best for Wisconsin.

Lawmakers are stymied over how to pay for road and bridge repairs without raising taxes or fees, which Mr. Walker has ruled out. The governor’s fellow Republicans rejected his proposal to borrow $1.3 billion for the roadwork, arguing that adding to the state’s debt is irresponsible.

Oh man. Been there, done that. This was also Arnold Schwarzenegger’s solution to a budget hole created by his own tax cuts, and it didn’t work out so well. It turns out that spending is spending, whether you pay for it now or later.

As in so many other states, even Republican legislators are starting to glom onto the fact that if you cut taxes, you’re pretty likely to create a big budget hole. Unfortunately for them, they’re learning that there’s only so far you can go in crapping on the poor to close the hole.1 At some point, you have to start cutting back on stuff you approve of too, like roads and bridges. But Walker doesn’t care. He’s got a presidential run coming up, and he wants to be able to say he didn’t raise taxes. If that means playing “let’s pretend” and borrowing the money instead, he’s OK with that.

On the bright side, at least it’s better than the childishness that Bobby Jindal came up with. And borrowing costs are low right now. So I guess things could be worse.

1Though in Wisconsin’s case, Walker’s signature move for crapping on the poor has been to refuse Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. This will cost Wisconsin $345 million over the next two years, making their budget hole even worse. That’s how much Walker wants to crap on the poor.

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Even Wisconsin’s Republicans Are Getting Tired of Scott Walker

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Why the Arctic Is Drunk Right Now

Mother Jones

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Perhaps the best analogy yet for the insane cold weather now afflicting the US came from science blogger Greg Laden, who created the viral image above. “Go home, Arctic,” it reads. “You’re drunk.”

When it comes to the reason why the United States is currently experiencing life-threatening cold—with temperatures in the negative-20s in the Upper Midwest, and wind chills much lower than that—that’s actually not so far from the truth. “It’s basically the jet stream on a drunken path going around the Northern Hemisphere,” explains Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis. In other words, we’re experiencing record-breaking cold temperatures because a wavy and elongated jet stream has allowed frigid Arctic air to travel much farther south than usual.

And according to Francis’ research—which has drawn increasing attention in the past few years—we’re seeing more of just this kind of jet stream behavior, thanks, at least in part, to the rapid warming of the Arctic.*

To understand how it works, it first helps to think of the jet stream as a river of air that flows from west to east in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing with it much of our weather. Its motion—sometimes in a relatively straight path, sometimes in a more loopy one—is driven by a difference in temperatures between the equator and the north pole. Southern temperatures are of course warmer, and because warm air takes up more space than cold air, this leads to taller columns of air in the atmosphere. “If you were sitting on top of a layer of atmosphere and you were in DC, looking northward, it would be like looking down a hill, because it’s warmer where you are,” explains Francis.

The jet stream then flows “downhill,” so to speak, in a northward direction. But it’s also bent by the rotation of the Earth, leading to its continual wavy, eastward motion.

As the Arctic rapidly heats up, however, there’s less of a temperature difference between the equator and the poles, and the downhill slope in the atmosphere is accordingly less steep. This creates a weaker jet stream, a jet stream that meanders more or, if you prefer the new analogy, staggers around drunkenly. “As the Arctic continues to warm, we expect the jet stream to take these wild swings northward and southward more often,” says Francis. “And when it does, that’s when we get these particularly wild temperature and precipitation patterns, and they tend to stay in place a long time.” (For a more thorough explanation, see here.)

That’s not to say the jet stream never staggered around drunkenly in the past. It did. But Francis thinks this is happening more often, and the result is all manner of weather extremes, including both cold snaps and also record heat. (Not every scientist agrees; for the debate over Francis’s work, see here.)

Thus, it is not at all nuts to draw a connection between extreme weather, including extreme winter weather, and climate change. In fact, what would be truly stunning would be if the dramatic warming of the Arctic were not affecting the weather.

* This sentence was updated to reflect Francis’s view that Arctic warming may not be the sole cause of these jet stream patterns.

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Why the Arctic Is Drunk Right Now

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Rand Paul Doubles Down on Support for GOP Senate Candidate Who Rallied With Secessionists

Mother Jones

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On Monday, Mother Jones profiled North Carolina Senate hopeful Greg Brannon—a Republican primary candidate who believes public education is dehumanizing and Marxist, and who recently cosponsored a rally with a secessionist group, the League of the South, which seeks “a free and independent Southern republic.” Brannon feels bipartisan compromises in Washington “enslave” Americans. He prefers the governing style of his “modern hero” Jesse Helms—a North Carolina senator of 30 years best known for refusing, even until the day he died in 2008, to renounce his support for racial segregation.

Sen. Rand Paul, among other big-name conservatives, has endorsed Brannon as the best candidate to challenge vulnerable Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan next fall. And while Paul’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment for that profile, a photo posted on Paul’s Facebook page Monday evening reiterated Paul’s support for Brannon and his campaign.

“Greg Brannon is the type of 100% fight to repeal ObamaCare conservative I need in the U.S. Senate,” read the caption, under a composite photograph that showed a smiling Paul next to Brannon. “Support his ‘Retreat is NOT an Option Money Bomb’ by clicking the link below.” The caption linked to a page on Brannon’s website where supporters could donate to Brannon’s ten-day “Money Bomb” campaign. The fundraiser, which ended Monday night, aimed “to fight back against Karl Rove and the DC Insiders who are determined to silence grassroots conservatives,” a reference to Rove’s work for one of Brannon’s primary opponents.

In a recent survey conducted by Public Policy Polling, Brannon was the only Republican who beat Hagan in a head-to-head matchup. When PPP polled Republican primary voters on the four GOP candidates, North Carolina Speaker of the House Thom Tillis ran 9 points ahead of Brannon—but nearly half of those voters said they were undecided.

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Rand Paul Doubles Down on Support for GOP Senate Candidate Who Rallied With Secessionists

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How to Keep Bears & Neighborhoods Safe

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How to Keep Bears & Neighborhoods Safe

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