California is burning; because of climate change. Texas drowned under record rainfall; because of climate change. Puerto Rico is suffering still; because of climate change.
If you think it’s impossible to say that, check again. I just did. And if you feel compelled to drag out a rubber stamp bearing the words “climate scientists don’t know if any individual event is caused by climate change, though there is general agreement that the severity of events during 2017 is related to higher yada yada yada ...” Just stop it. Because all anyone gets out of that statement is the phrase “climate scientists don’t know.” And they do know. So do you.
In all the presidential debates during the 2016 election cycle, not one question was asked about climate policy. Not one. And if you think the 2016 debates were especially awful, 2012 was worse. Not only where there no questions on climate change, there were none on any environmental issues at all. At least in 2016 Hillary Clinton managed to talk about the environment for just over five minutes by bringing it up herself. In 2012, it wasn’t even mentioned.
So right now there are Americans huddled in the dark, without electricity for another night because of climate change. Right now there are Americans on the move again across the south, washed out of their homes by climate change. Right now there are Americans mourning over the ashes of their homes, or listening to screams of burning horses, because of climate change.
And the one thing that they all have in common, is the sure knowledge that America is not doing a damn thing about it.
Steven Thrasher on the fires in California.
An unbearable amount of Ventura county in southern California, where I was born and raised, is simply gone. And as I hear about site after site from my childhood simply disappearing into scorched earth, I am realizing that climate change is not only erasing the present, it is also destroying the physical touchstones to my own past.
Lisa Hymas on how the press continues to ignore the biggest story of any year.
Even in a year when we’ve had string of hurricanes, heatwaves, and wildfires worthy of the Book of Revelation – just what climate scientists have told us to expect – the effect of climate change on extreme weather has been dramatically undercovered. Some of Trump’s tweets generate more national coverage than devastating disasters.
Come on in, let’s look at that other stuff.
Leonard Pitts on Donald Trump and race.
Here comes the most meaningless sentence you’ll read today: Last week, Donald Trump paid tribute to Rosa Parks.
It’s meaningless because Trump obviously has no real idea what Parks did or what it meant. If he did, he could never have cursed Colin Kaepernick. …
You cannot truly understand Parks’ legacy or appreciate her bravery and still declare, as he did in September, that NFL owners should say “Get that son of a bitch off the field” if a player follows Kaepernick’s lead and kneels during the National Anthem. This is not to equate the athlete and the seamstress; her impact obviously dwarfs his — at least, thus far. But it is to say that, in terms of motive, method and reaction, there is little substantive difference between the two.
The thing is … Trump seems to understand that. He sees that what Kaepernick is doing is important. That’s exactly why he’s attacking it. Because there’s nothing that George Wallace did, that Trump won’t take a step farther.
It’s important to remember that it wasn’t just the indignity of being told to surrender her seat that made Parks say no that day. Rather, it was also decades of living with white people’s abuse, exploitation and violence under a system that assumed, as a matter of policy, that she was filthy, ignorant and unworthy. Which is not fundamentally different from Kaepernick’s frustration with police brutality that kills and wounds African Americans while the courts do nothing.
Warning for those who have been kicking the subject around all week: Several pundits found time to take on Al Franken. And I’m going to talk about pretty much all of them.
Kathleen Parker did her best to mangle everything about the situation.
With quavering voice and a tinge of stubborn denial, Sen. Al Franken announced that he would resign from office. ...
While men and women may have found his alleged behavior unbecoming a U.S. senator, it is transparently obvious that Democrats needed Franken to leave as a political matter. Even as other officials similarly accused will face investigation by an ethics committee rather than necessarily forfeit their jobs, Franken clearly was a sacrificial symbol for the party that stands, when convenient, for women.
Wonderful how Parker manages to demean Franken, Democrats, the women he sexually harassed all at once. You know when it would have been “convenient” to ignore women — right #$@%ing now. Funny. That didn’t happen.
The truth is that Franken made a dignified departure speech. But he needed to make that departure because what he did in the past was anything but dignified. He’s leaving not because he is some “convenient” symbol, and he’s anything but a martyr. He’s going because his actions were both unsupportable, serious, and damaging to his ability to continue in his role as an advocate for the citizens of his state — women and men.
Despite Parker’s sneering and snide remarks about both Franken and those who held him to account, she does acknowledge one thing.
Franken’s alleged actions, including one that was captured on camera , were certainly objectionable. But they were nowhere near as repugnant as the charges leveled at Moore and other men of prominence. These include Donald Trump, who, as Franken noted with irony, bragged on a recording about forcibly kissing and grabbing women.
There’s no such thing as an acceptable level of sexual harassment. What Franken did was both wrong and serious enough to demand his departure. But that doesn’t mean that others can’t be far worse. And both Moore and Trump fit that measure.
Ana Marie Cox has something to say about those prominent men.
Most Democrats who spoke up for [Franken] initially were reluctant to reach for the weapons that less woke partisans might use: It is unseemly for a good liberal to slut-shame an accuser, and outright denial of the women’s stories run up against the progressive value of believing the powerless when they speak against the powerful. Sure, whataboutism has taken up residence in the West Wing, but “let him resign when your guy does” isn’t an argument, it’s a tantrum.
Every argument that suggests Democrats should accept unacceptable behavior, because to do so is surrendering to the Republicans has it absolutely backwards.
But those who decry what’s happening with Franken — and the #metoo reckoning writ large — as “moral flattening” are doing some serious steamrolling themselves, yoking together every corporate disavowal, every canceled contract and every defunct résumé line into the same tragic ending, such as Ziegler characterizing Franken’s likely return to civilian life as a “demise.” Or Gingrich equating the same move to dangling off the branch of a tree. (I am reminded of Mike Barnicle bemoaning the fate of his erstwhile MSNBC co-contributor Mark Halperin: “But does he deserve to die?”) Much as rape is not opportunistic groping and exposing oneself is not child molestation, there’s a whole scale of consequences available between death and “no longer having an extraordinarily prestigious and well-paying job.”
Al Franken will go home and be a multimillionaire. No doubt with the continued support of his family, his many friends and a sizable legion of followers. He just won’t be a Senator any more. Because he shouldn’t be.
Gail Collins on Franken as the focal point of a “moment.”
Franken was a good politician, and many Democrats hoped he might grow into a presidential candidate. But it was his destiny to serve history in a different way. He was caught up in a rebellion of epic proportion, one that was not just about unwanted groping but a whole new stage in the movement of women into the center of public life. …
Over the last 50 years or so, the rules about a woman’s place were shattered. It’s still hard to appreciate how vast the change was. It began at a time when, in many states, jury duty was regarded as an inappropriate task for women since it would take them away from their housework. They almost never worked in the outside world unless they were too poor and desperate to stay in their proper place.
That Donald Trump is drinking in the tears of white men is not a coincidence. The “economic” concerns of Trump voters are poorly-masked terror at having to face new rules and more equitable— if still far from actually fair — competition.
But it’s a revolution still in the making. The struggle for equal opportunity is far from over, and men haven’t all adapted to the presence of women at the next desk, in the conference room or driving together to the big meeting in Dayton.
David Leonhardt on the actual political results of this moment.
Three members of Congress have resigned over sexual harassment this week. And it sure seems as if one political party is taking the problem more seriously than the other. Here is a rundown of every known case involving Congress and the administration:
Al Franken, Minnesota Democrat. …
John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat. ...
Ruben Kihuen, Nevada Democrat. … Status: Remains a member of the House, although Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader, has called on him to resign.
And on the other side of the aisle ...
Trent Franks, Arizona Republican. ...
Blake Farenthold, Texas Republican. ... Status: Remains a member of the House, and under investigation by the Ethics Committee. Ryan has not called on Farenthold to resign.
Roy Moore, Alabama Republican. Accused by multiple women, with corroborating evidence, of dating teenage girls while an adult and accused by two — one then 14 years old, one 16 — of sexual assault. Status: Supported by the Republican National Committee in his Senate campaign and endorsed by the president.
Donald Trump, New York Republican. Accused by multiple women, with corroborating evidence, of unwanted kissing or touching, and bragged on tape of grabbing women’s genitals. Status: President of the United States.
Farenthold should be called on to resign simply for being the most ridiculous person in a House that also includes Louie Gohmert, and for wearing pajamas in public after the age of 8. But his slovenly stupidity doesn’t make accusations of sexual harassment one whit less serious or more tolerable.
Still, did anyone expect Paul Ryan to call on Farenthold to resign? That would require Paul Ryan demonstrate the presence of a backbone — something that has never, ever happened.
The New York Times on Franken.
In a different era — say, three months ago — Senator Al Franken could have denied the accusations of sexual misconduct against him, relied on the notoriously plodding Senate Ethics Committee to investigate him and, in the end, probably kept his job.
But we are in the middle of a stunning and welcome cultural shift, and so charges of groping and lewd behavior against Mr. Franken prompted female Democratic senators — a distinct minority in the chamber — to start a campaign that swiftly brought about the announcement on Thursday that he would resign. …
In demanding Mr. Franken’s resignation, the Democratic Party seized an opportunity to atone for its own bad history, including President Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct and, just last month, foot-dragging by leadership on the fate of Representative John Conyers Jr., the longest-serving member of the House, who retired on Tuesday after multiple allegations emerged, including news that he paid a $27,000 settlement to a woman who alleged he fired her after she refused his sexual advances.
Democrats are also drawing a bright moral contrast with the Republican Party and President Trump, who boasted on tape of using his power as “a star” to sexually assault women, repeatedly bragging, “You can do anything.”
Here’s my final comment on this topic for the week — I now believe Donald Trump is equally as likely to leave office because of the charges laid against him by the women he has assaulted, as he is because of anything that surfaces from Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Howell Raines has a big colorful piece about Trump supporters who are also Roy Moore supporters who are just so darn quirky and live next to cool old barns and … yes, apparently the New York Times is still requiring someone to produce a Those Charming Trump Voters piece every damn week. But you don’t have to read it. So don’t.
Peter Wehner finds a bridge too Moore.
There are times in life when the institutional ground underneath you begins to crumble — and with it, longstanding attachments. Such is the case for me when it comes to the Republican Party and evangelicalism.
I’ve been a part of both for my entire adult life. These days, though, in many important ways they are having harmful effects on our society.
The latest example is in Alabama, where Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate, stands accused of varying degrees of sexual misconduct by nine women, including one who was 14 years old at the time. Mr. Moore leads in most polls, and solidly among most evangelicals, heading into Tuesday’s election.
That so many people seem to be able to accommodate Moore within their conservative evangelical beliefs, is a good sign that whatever beliefs they have don’t fit those labels — and aren’t really beliefs.
The support being given by many Republicans and white evangelicals to President Trump and now to Mr. Moore have caused me to rethink my identification with both groups. Not because my attachment to conservatism and Christianity has weakened, but rather the opposite. I consider Mr. Trump’s Republican Party to be a threat to conservatism, and I have concluded that the term evangelical — despite its rich history of proclaiming the “good news” of Christ to a broken world — has been so distorted that it is now undermining the Christian witness.
Rachel Black and Aleta Sprague on the other way that Republicans are damaging the political debate.
After months of trying to convince Americans that tax cuts are all about job and GDP growth, suddenly, helping the “forgotten men and women” has given way to clearly putting them in their place. To close the deal, the GOP is redeploying the most reliable device in the in the us-vs.-them playbook: The spirit — if not the visage — of President Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen.”
The remarks fit a rhetorical pattern that draws a straight line from House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s “makers and takers” to Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” to the stereotype Reagan introduced in 1976: “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare.” This rhetoric seeks to divide Americans into hard workers, deserving government protection and largesse, and a second-class group of layabouts who are in poverty due to their own bad choices and lack of character. Though these expressions conform, on their face, to modern norms of race-neutrality, they are grounded in narratives, cultivated over centuries, that portray black Americans, especially black women, with suspicion and derision. These narratives create the justification for punitive and paternalistic treatment of the working poor while bestowing generous giveaways to the wealthy under the pretense of merit.
Reagan’s “queen” never existed, of course. But the racism that wanted her to exist, then and now, is certainly real.
Bella DePaulo on Trump’s truly exceptional skills at falsehoods.
I spent the first two decades of my career as a social scientist studying liars and their lies. I thought I had developed a sense of what to expect from them. Then along came President Trump. His lies are both more frequent and more malicious than ordinary people’s. ...
The college students in our research told an average of two lies a day, and the community members told one. A more recent study of the lies 1,000 U. S. adults told in the previous 24 hours found that people told an average of 1.65 lies per day; the authors noted that 60 percent of the participants said they told no lies at all, while the top 5 percent of liars told nearly half of all the falsehoods in the study.
In Trump’s first 298 days in office, however, he made 1,628 false or misleading claims or flip-flops, by The Post’s tally. That’s about six per day, far higher than the average rate in our studies. And of course, reporters have access to only a subset of Trump’s false statements — the ones he makes publicly — so unless he never stretches the truth in private, his actual rate of lying is almost certainly higher.
The New York Times on Trump’s continuing effort to bail out coal — and make all of us pay for it.
Federal energy regulators will soon vote on a ham-fisted Trump administration proposal to subsidize coal-fired power plants. This plan could cost families and businesses billions of dollars in higher electricity prices for no discernible public benefit.
The measure in question comes from the energy secretary, Rick Perry, and amounts to a devious and reckless attempt to prop up coal-fired plants, which have been shutting down in recent years because they cannot compete against cheaper and cleaner natural gas plants and renewable sources of energy like wind and solar.
It’s reckless, and it’s blatantly foolish. But probably not devious — because Rick Perry isn’t up to devious, even with his smart glasses on. He can only manage plodding and obvious.
Mr. Perry’s plan would provide what amounts to a bonus for power plants with at least a 90-day supply of fuel on site, which he says will make the electrical grid more reliable. Coal and nuclear power plants are the only ones that fit that description, because natural gas plants are supplied by pipeline and wind and solar require no fuel. But it is clear that the primary aim here is to bolster the coal industry, which President Trump embraced unreservedly on the campaign trail and whose moguls embraced him right back.
We’ve been warning about this one for months now. There’s pretty much nothing between your electric bill at this point and this plan except regulators who could decide it’s wrong … all of whom report to Trump.
Frank Bruni on racism and sexism … in an article I’m leaving strictly to those whose need for vitriol hasn’t been satisfied in debates over Franken.