As the media assumes, once again, that Trump has finally gone too far, take a look at this:
PPP’s new North Carolina poll finds Donald Trump at his highest level of support in the state yet. He’s at 33% to 16% for Ted Cruz, 14% each for Ben Carson and Marco Rubio, 5% for Jeb Bush, 4% for Chris Christie, 3% for John Kasich, 2% each for Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, and Rand Paul, 1% each for Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum, and less than 1% each for Jim Gilmore and George Pataki.
When Trump led in our July North Carolina poll it was the first poll to find him leading the GOP pack anywhere in the country. Since then he’s increased his support in every poll- from that 16% starting point in July he went to 24% in August, 26% in September, 31% in October, and now this 33% standing in September. Trump is also broadly popular with Republicans in the Tar Heel state- his 63/26 favorability rating puts him behind only Carson (64/23) and is improved from 52/35 on our last poll.
Trump’s Islamophobia is a central feature of his appeal to his supporters:
-67% of his voters support a national database of Muslims in the United States, to only 14% opposed to it.
-62% believe his claims that thousands of Arabs cheered in New Jersey when the World Trade Center collapsed, to only 15% who don’t believe that.
-51% want to see the Mosques in the country shut down, to only 16% against that.
-And only 24% of Trump supporters in the state even think Islam should be legal at all in the United States, to 44% who think it shouldn’t be.
Although these ideas are certainly most commonly held by Trump supporters, they’re not unique within the North Carolina GOP base:
-Overall 48% want a national database of Muslims to 33% who are opposed. Ted Cruz’s (43/31) and Marco Rubio’s supporters (38/36) join Trump’s in their support for that idea while Carson’s (34/51) are opposed.
-Overall 42% think thousands of Arabs cheered in New Jersey on 9/11 to 26% who don’t think that happened. Cruz supporters (47/12) and Carson supporters narrowly (27/22) agree with Trump’s that that happened while Rubio’s (31/45) don’t think it did.
-Overall 35% want to shut down the mosques in the United States to 33% who are opposed. Cruz supporters (41/28) again join Trump’s in supporting that while Carson’s (26/34) and Rubio’s (29/45) are opposed.
-GOP voters as a whole (41/32) do at least think Islam should be legal in the United States. Trump’s the only major candidate whose supporters are against that- Cruz’s (37/30), Carson’s (52/27), and Rubio’s (52/16) all think Islam should be allowed.
The candidate with the most momentum in North Carolina compared to our previous poll is Ted Cruz. He’s gone from a tie for 4th place at 6% in October all the way up to 2nd place at 16% now. He’s also seen his favorability spike from 51/27 to 61/26. Cruz is the most frequent second choice of voters in the state at 18% to 14% for Carson, 12% for Rubio, and 11% for Trump. If Trump does ever fade Cruz is likely to be the greatest beneficiary- he’s the second choice of 22% of Trump supporters to 17% for Carson and 12% for Rubio.
That’s North Carolina, not South Carolina.
And Cruz is no better than Trump, don’t kid yourself.
Donald J. Trump presents the WWE: World Wide Elections
by Tom Sullivan
“You gotta hand it to the guy,” a friend said of Donald Trump last night. “He knows how to keep all the attention focused on him.”
Donald Trump was reacting to the president’s Sunday address, and to a new poll showing Ted Cruz pulling ahead of Trump in Iowa. We were reacting to Trump’s reaction. To wit, Trump called for “total and complete shutdown” of U.S. borders to Muslims, even including Americans living (or stationed) abroad:
Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said Trump’s proposed ban would apply to “everybody”, including Muslims seeking immigration visas as well as tourists seeking to enter the country. Another Trump staffer confirmed that the ban would also apply to American Muslims who were currently overseas – presumably including members of the military and diplomatic service. “This does not apply to people living in the country,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News, “but we have to be vigilant.”
Something finally clicked. Trump is not a carnival barker or a clown. His appeal is the same as that of professional wrestling. He puts on a loud, blustery show and promises that the forces of Right will beat back the Foreign Menace. Back in the day, the Foreign Menace was named Ivan or Boris. Or Nikolai Volkoff, for instance, the villainous faux-Russian wrestler. After the Iran hostage situation came the Iron Sheik, born in Tehran. Today it is Muslims as a whole.
But the Foreign Menace is just for starters. There are plenty of other Others at which wrasslin’ fans can shake their fists. Wrestling matches “pit the Good, the Pure, and the True against the Bad, the Mean, and the Ugly,” as William C. Martin explained in 1972:
Wrestling fans are generally an egalitarian lot, at least among themselves, and they do not appreciate those who put on airs. So they are easily angered by another strain of crowd displeaser one might call Titled Snobs and Pointy-Headed Intellectuals. These villains, who love to call themselves “Professor” or “Doctor” or “Lord” Somebody-or-other, use the standard bag of tricks –pulling a man down by his hair, rubbing his eyes with objects secreted in trunks or shoes, stomping his face while he lies wounded and helpless –but their real specialty is treating the fans like ignorant yahoos. They walk and speak with disdain for common folk, and never miss a chance to belittle the crowd in sesquipedalian put-downs or to declare that their raucous and uncouth behavior calls for nothing less than a letter to the Times, to inform proper Englishmen of the deplorable state of manners in the Colonies.
A third prominent villain is the Big Mean Sonofabitch. Dick the Bruiser, Cowboy Bill Watts, Butcher Vachone, Killer Kowalski –these men do not need swastikas and monocles and big words to make you hate them. They have the bile of human meanness by the quart in every vein. If a guileless child hands a Sonofabitch a program to autograph, he will often brush it aside or tear it into pieces and throw it on the floor. It isn’t that he has forgotten what it was like to be a child. As a child, he kicked crutches from under crippled newsboys and cheated on tests and smoked in the rest room. Now, at 260 pounds, he goes into the ring not just to win, but to injure and maim. Even before the match begins, he attacks his trusting opponent from behind, pounding his head into the turnbuckle, kicking him in the kidneys, stomping him in the groin, and generally seeking to put him at a disadvantage. These are bad people. None of us is really safe as long as they go unpunished.
And Donald J. Trump is just the guy to do the punishing. Believe it. Believe it.
His fans do. Like wrestling fans, Trump’s don’t care if what they are watching is real or just a show. They don’t care if Trump based his statement on a discredited poll from the Center For Security Policy led by Frank Gaffney, an anti-Muslim extremist according to that bunch of Pointy-Headed Intellectuals at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Donald is going to lay a smackdown on the Foreign Menace and all the other weak-kneed Lesser-Thans and Titled Snobs, and they will wait in line to see him do it.
The backlash to the latest gasoline Trump has poured onto an already hot fire came swiftly. The Anti-Defamation League knows what it is like to have an entire faith targeted:
“A plan that singles out Muslims and denies them entry to the U.S. based on their religion is deeply offensive and runs contrary to our nation’s deepest values,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement Monday evening, hours after Trump, a real estate billionaire and reality TV star, issued his call.
“In the Jewish community, we know all too well what can happen when a particular religious group is singled out for stereotyping and scapegoating,” Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s CEO said. “We also know that this country must not give into fear by turning its back on its fundamental values, even at a time of great crisis.”
Trump promises to bring people together. He’s started by having the Jewish community take up for Muslims.
All Trump has done is amp up the existing rhetoric created by the current GOP. It's a joke to watch them clutch their pearls. #YouBuiltTrump— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) December 8, 2015
Even Dick Cheney said Trump’s statements go “against everything we stand for and believe in.” Having managed Dubya, has Cheney ever considered managing the WWE? His snarl would fit right in at ringside.
I’ve been wondering for some time if it wouldn’t just be easier to quit this charade we call “democracy” and have the billionaires decide who is going to rule us directly. They are anyway, and it’s just a big waste of money and makes people feel bad when it becomes obvious that their participation in their own government is illusory.
Anyway, here’s how it might play out. That Florida billionaire Bush supporter, Mike Fernandez, the man who said he would vote for Hillary over Trump has been threatened with a lawsuit from Donald Trump, also a billionaire:
Though we believe your decision is fool hearted [sic], please be advised that in the event your ads contain any false, misleading, defamatory, inaccurate or otherwise tortious statements or representations concerning Mr. Trump, his business or his brand,” [Trump’s attorney Alan]Garten wrote, “we will not hesitate to seek immediate legal action to prevent such distribution and hold you jointly and severally liable to the fullest extent of the law for any damages resulting therefrom … and will look forward to doing it.”
Because Trump is a public figure, however, he’ll have trouble successfully suing for defamation.
Garten also listed the Bush-backing super PAC, Right to Rise, on the letter. The super PAC, however, had nothing to do with the ads, Fernandez said. The fact that Fernandez – who contributed $3 million to Right to Rise – felt personally compelled to run ads against Trump indicates a level of frustration some donors have had with the committee’s effectiveness in helping Bush.
For Fernandez, the threat from Trump’s organization was exactly what he was looking for: a fight. Fernandez, in prior interviews, said he looks forward to comparing his record as a rags-to-riches Cuban immigrant with that of Trump, who inherited the money and was “born on third base.” Fernandez later told The Miami Herald that Trump was so bad that he would vote for Hillary Clinton instead of the Republican if he had too.
After Fernandez first told POLITICO of his plans to run newspaper ads, he was mocked on social media for using a dead medium to communicate. Some said the attack would be feckless and unseen.
But Trump’s organization gave it new life.
In the full-page Trump-bashing ads Fernandez proposed for papers in Miami, Las Vegas and Des Moines, Fernandez referenced how “Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Peron in Argentina” took advantage of economically hard times and misled the masses.”
He’s got the money to fight Trumpie — if he wants to. And Trump tends to be a blustering bully who just tries to intimidate people into backing away without following through. So we’ll see what happens.
I do wonder about the level of professional expertise from Trump’s legal team though. How could this attorney send out a threatening cease and desist letter, especially one that is bound to be heavily publicized, with a mistake as embarrassing as “fool hearted” in it? If I were Trump, I’d say “you’re fired!”
Cruz is channeling the Trump zeitgeist in a number of ways, from macho challenges to “come and get him” or “say it to his face.” And he’s all-in on the “bombing the shit out of ’em” military strategy even to the point of saying “we’re going to find out if sand can glow in the dark.” He’s a little more polished and a little less rambling. But he’s learning very quickly how to use that fascist anger to rile up the troops. And they’re liking it.
We asked Granite State voters what they think Jesus would do when it comes to the Syrian refugees and 51% think he would say the United States should accept them to only 14% who think he would say to turn them away.
Democrats (73/6) are a lot more inclined to think Jesus would say to accept the refugees than Republicans (29/20) are.
This is the Republican Jesus:
He’s a lot like this guy:
And then there’s this:
Issues?
Nah …
One of my tweeters wonders whether Trump is rescuing Lady Liberty or kidnapping her. I’d say the latter.
I wrote a long piece for Salon this morning about the right’s response to San Bernardino and particularly Trump’s influence on the debate. When you put everything he’s said in one place, it paints a very, very disturbing portrait of a very dangerous man:
In the wake of the horrific San Bernardino attack, it’s understandable that we would see a national outcry, with leaders and citizens alike demanding that something be done. After all, 25 people were shot, 14 of them died on the scene. It was a terrifying act of violence. But this is America. We have frequent mass killings in workplaces, clinics, movie theatres, classrooms, churches, public events and even on military bases. Some of them are perpetrated by delusional people in the grip of a mental illness, some are done out of rage, some for political and ideological and religious reasons and often are some combination of those things.
When they happen, the country tends to divide along the familiar political fault lines. Since most of the carnage from these dramatic massacres is carried out with guns, the left always pushes for a restriction on the easy availability of firearms. And most of the time the right shrugs its collective shoulders and says that this sort of violence is the price we have to pay for freedom.
“It is our freedom that allows insane individuals to kill so many people. Guns are legal in America under the Second Amendment…There is no rational explanation for all the carnage, none. And no public policy will stop it.”
It’s like a hurricane or an earthquake, just something we must live with and then try to put the pieces back together when it’s over. Because we are free.
There is an unusual twist to this tiresome dynamic, however, when the perpetrators of this violence are motivated by Islamic extremism. Last week, the left reacted the same way as it does to all such events, with calls to restrict the easy access to guns like the ones the San Bernardino killers used. The right, on the other hand, rather than their usual blase acceptance of the unfortunate necessity of massacres in a free society, are hysterical demanding that the government step in and do something about it immediately.
Now, they are not in agreement with the left on the gun regulation issue, that goes without saying. Their standard response to anyone who suggests that ending the easy access to the guns that shot 35 people might be one common sense way to make such bloodletting less common is total resistance, and it makes no difference who perpetrates the killing. This was demonstrated in the last few days in living color as Democrats tried to make the case that Republicans are so rigid and doctrinaire (and in the pocket of the NRA) that they would not even allow the government to stop suspected terrorists on the secret “Watch List” from buying guns. It’s a tricky argument since the Watch List is a civil liberties nightmare to begin with, but Republicans did manage to twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain why terrorist suspects have inviolable 2nd Amendment rights.
But that does not mean the right doesn’t have a lot of ideas about what needs to be done. The fact that this has been designated a radical Islamic extremist terrorist attack (as opposed to the radical Christian extremist attack that happened the week before) has galvanized them into action. Led by their presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump, they have a lot of ideas about what needs to be done.
Trump has a colorful history of animus toward Muslims, having made quite a spectacle of himself four years ago as King of the Birthers, hiring detectives to prove that President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and insinuating that he is a secret Muslim. In this campaign, Trump first turned his nativist aggression against undocumented workers from Mexico but his hostility toward Muslims — and the previously barely suppressed hostility of his followers — has recently been on more prominent display. Ever since September, long before the recent brouhaha, he’s been saying that he would not only deny Syrian refugees entry, he would deport all the refugees who are already here.
After the Paris attacks, he blathered the usual rightwing bromide, that all this would have been prevented if the victims had been armed. He added that he would bomb the oil fields in Iraq. And he suggested that much more draconian measures were going to be necessary:
“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule… And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago…”
When asked if among those “things,” he would consider having American Muslims register with the government, he said he thought it might be necessary.
“This morning they asked me a question. ‘Would you approve waterboarding” Would I approve waterboarding? Yeah. And let me ask you a question? I said, on the other side, they chop off our young people’s heads and they put ’em on a stick. On the other side they build these iron cages and they’ll put 20 people in them and they drop ’em in the ocean for 15 minutes and pull ’em up 15 minutes later. Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I’d approve it, you bet your ass — in a heartbeat.
“And I would approve more than that. Don’t kid yourself, folks. It works, okay? It works. Only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work.They’ll say, ‘oh it has no value’, well I know people, very, very important people and they want to be politically correct and I see some people taking on television, ‘well I don’t know if it works’ and they tell me later on, ‘it works, it works, believe me, it works’.
“And you know what? If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they’re doing to us.”
It was hard to imagine how he could top that for shocking pathological malevolence. But San Bernardino has changed the campaign and Trump is the field marshall leading the charge.
Read on for more. It got much worse. And others are following, particularly Cruz. It’s chilling, Remember, these people are running for president. They aren’t talk show nuts.
The reason we won’t have nice climate — until we fight for it — is money. Rich people’s money. And frankly, the money of mainly old, soon-to-be-dead, rich people, like this one from Exxon, or these two from god knows where. People, in other words, with no future of their own and a pathological reason to sacrifice ours.
Because it turns out, if humans ever wrest control of the climate-fix process and kick the moneyed bottoms out of the decision room, those moneyed bottoms stand to lose a ton — by this news account, trillions. From Damian Carrington in The Guardian:
Fossil fuel companies risk wasting $2tn of investors’ money, study says
Paris climate deal could render oil, gas and coal projects worthless with US, Canada, China and Australia most vulnerable to losing billions
Fossil fuel companies risk wasting up to $2tn (£1.3tn) of investors’
money in the next decade on projects left worthless by global action on
climate change and the surge in clean energy, according to a new report.
The world’s nations aim to seal a UN deal in Paris in December to keep global warming below the danger limit of 2C. The heavy cuts in carbon emissions needed to achieve this would mean no new coal mines at all are needed and oil demand peaking in 2020, according to the influential thinktank Carbon Tracker. It found $2.2tn of projects at risk of stranding, [i.e.] being left valueless as the market for fossil fuels shrinks.
The report found the US has the greatest risk exposure, with $412bn of projects that could be stranded, followed by Canada ($220bn), China ($179bn) and Australia ($103bn). The UK’s £30bn North Sea oil and gas projects are at risk, the report says, despite government efforts to prop up the sector. Shell, ExxonMobil and Pemex are the companies with the greatest sums potentially at risk, with over $70bn each.
The failure of the fossil fuel industry to address climate change is laid out in a second report on Wednesday, in which senior industry figures state there is “a significant disconnect between the changes needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the [2C] level and efforts currently underway”.
Lord John Browne, former BP boss, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former Shell and Anglo American chair and others say there must be “fundamental reassessment of the fossil fuel industry’s business models” and that companies should seize commercial opportunities in low-carbon energy.
Here’s why that number — $2.2 trillion in stranded-asset losses — is too low (my emphasis):
The Carbon Tracker report looked at existing and future projects being considered by coal, oil and gas companies up to 2025 and determined which could proceed if carbon emissions are cut to give a 50% chance of keeping climate change under 2C. Many high-cost projects, including Arctic and deepwater drilling, tar sands and shale oil are unneeded and therefore uneconomic in the 2C scenario, the report found, although some are required to replace fields that are already depleting.
“Business history is littered with examples of incumbents – like Kodak and Blockbuster – who fail to see a transition coming,” said Anthony Hobley, chief executive of Carbon Tracker. “Our report offers these companies a warning [about] avoiding significant value destruction.”
You read that right. Those are losses from stranding only part of their assets and agreeing to let them monetize and burn the rest. (The amount “allowed to be burned” under a given scenario is called our “carbon budget.”) In other words, what happens if humans agree to burn just enough to give them a 50% chance of keeping global warming under 2°C. In other words, what happens if humans agree to play Climate Russian Roulette with a gun with just two chambers, one of them loaded.
If We Increase the Odds of Success to 90%, There’s No “Carbon Budget” at All
But what happens to oil and gas reserves if humans decide to up the odds of success, to, say, 90%? Answer: There’s no carbon budget left at all. 100% of carbon reserves must be stranded. If you can’t wrap your head around that fact, you’re not seeing the problem, and without seeing the problem, you won’t recognize the solution.
You can see the relationship between the carbon budget and the odds of success in this chart:
The Y-axis represents cumulative carbon emissions since pre-industrial times.
The gray area under the 515+ level represents emissions through 2011 — a part of the “budget” we’ve already spent. Everything above that, as shown by the green, orange and red arrows, is “allowed future emissions” — our remaining “carbon budget” — under a number of scenarios.
Two notes: First, we’re burning carbon worldwide at the rate of more than 10 GtC per year, so for cumulative emissions through 2015, add 40 GtC to that 515 number and mentally raise the top of the gray area. Second, about the units on the Y-axis above — 1 petagram (1 Pg) of carbon is the same unit, the same amount, as 1 gigaton (1 Gt) of carbon. This is two ways to say the same thing.
The X-axis shows odds of success from 0% to 100% for the emissions scenarios shown in the Y axis. In other words, for each amount of cumulative emissions (on the Y axis) there’s a corresponding “chance of success” (on the X axis).
The blue line plots those points that connect Y-axis emissions to X-axis odds of success. The result shows that, as cumulative emissions (and the “carbon budget”) become smaller, the odds of “success” increase.
Note that at the 90% success point, the blue line crosses below 515 GtC. In other words, if we want to improve our chance of failure to 1-in-10 — to play Climate Russian Roulette with a ten-chambered gun — we must stop emitting carbon, completely, now.
Do you see why people like me are sounding urgent, and why climate scientists, when you get them alone, are freaking out? (Be careful, by the way, when listening to news out of Paris and their expressed “carbon budget” number. The IPCC is using a 60% chance of success — Russian Roulette with a three-chambered gun — to derive their recommended carbon budget. Even Clint Eastwood offers a six-chamber chance.)
Again, this isn’t over, but we’ve got just five years maybe, and at most ten, by my estimation, to stop, something that’s entirely possible if the mass of people want to. Will they want to? They’re starting to wake up. Let’s see what the next Hurricane Haiyan brings, say, if it appears in the Atlantic this time.
What You Can Do
As I wrote recently, you can help in two ways. These are things you can do now. First, contribute to Bernie Sanders campaign, and optionally, to the campaigns of all candidates who have endorsed him. (Adjust the split any way you like at the link.)
Second, understand that moving quickly means just that — a World War II-style national mobilization. Consider adding your name, voice and effort to this group and signing the pledge to mobilize. We’ve done this before, and when enough people want to — something that’s well within imagination — we’ll do it again.
Beautiful Miami Beach. If the “big one” hits here next and developers flee like rats from the wreckage of their property values, will “let’s mobilize” be the cry of the day? It’s not unthinkable.
Even the right wing will beg for “daddy” to save them, because, well, that’s what they do. And we’ll be glad to have them on board.
The president’s Oval Office speech and the San Bernadino shootings may have captured the headlines, but that doesn’t mean the Chicago Police Department is off the hook:
The U.S. Department of Justice will open a wide-ranging civil rights investigation into the Chicago Police Department after the release of video of a patrolman’s fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald and police reports from the officers on the scene that conflict with that video, sources told the Tribune on Sunday.
A law enforcement official familiar with the coming investigation said the inquiry likely will be announced “in the next week” and is expected to focus on officers’ use of deadly force — including the system of oversight of police shootings — as well as training and community engagement.
This appears to be a broader investigation than the circumstances surrounding the McDonald case. Presumably, this will include federal investigation into police “black sites” such as Homan Square, allegedly used to torture confessions out of suspects. The Tribune continues:
On Sunday night, the chief administrator of Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority, the civilian agency that investigates the police use of excessive force, said he was resigning effective immediately. Scott Ando and his agency have long been a target of criticism, as was its predecessor, the Office of Professional Standards. Both were accused of failing to conduct meaningful investigations of police misconduct.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel last week fired Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy (or forced him to resign, depending on the news source). The Guardian reports,
City officials are bracing for the release of the dashcam footage in the killing of Ronald “Ronnie” Johnson, who was shot six times in the back by a Chicago police officer in October 2014. The footage is expected to be released this week.
A patterns and practices investigation does not criminally charge individuals, but often results in a consent decree between the police department and Justice Department to agree to new practices and accountability measures.
In one of the most notorious cases of wrongdoing, dozens of men, mostly African-American, said they were subjected to torture from a Chicago police squad headed by former commander Jon Burge during the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s, and many spent years in prison. Burge was convicted of lying about the torture and served 4½ years in prison.
Of 409 shootings involving Chicago police since September 2007, only two have led to allegations against an officer being found credible, the Chicago Tribune reported, citing data from the agency that investigates police cases.
