Friday News: Trump’s Crazy, Scary, “Rambling” Interview with NY Times; Trump Mocks Climate Science While “2017’s Year of Disasters Carried Climate Warnings”

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Friday, December 29. Also check out that map of world temperatures, which shows that basically the ONLY place on earth that is colder than normal is eastern/central North America. Other than that, global warming is evident everywhere, as all the science would predict would be the case. And yes, our “president” is an insane idiot.

• Alabama certifies Jones’ Senate victory
• Was 2017 the Craziest Year in U.S. Political History? (I’d say 2017 is right up there…)
• One nation, divided under Trump, with perilous consequences
• Leave Robert Mueller alone
• The decline of U.S. influence is the great global story of our age (“Trump’s administration is foolishly withdrawing the country into self-centered isolation.”)
• Republicans’ attack on conservation law would shock their conservative predecessors (“I should know. I wrote the Endangered Species Act for the Nixon administration.”)
• Trump Says Russia Inquiry Makes U.S. ‘Look Very Bad’ (As usual, it’s the exact opposite with Trump: in fact, it’s HE who makes the U.S. look bad, while rule of law makes us look good!)
• Excerpts From Trump’s Interview With The Times (Possibly the most chilling, disturbing line: “I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.” That’s authoritarian crap.)
• Trump Veers Away From 70 Years of U.S. Foreign Policy (“President Trump has transformed the world’s view of the United States from an anchor of the international order into something more inward-looking and unpredictable.” Crazy.)
• What We Learned From Trump’s Rambling New York Times Interview (“Trump still thinks he has the right to fire Mueller…Trump also maintains that Justice Department officials should be ‘loyal’ to their president.” Wrong. Wrong.)
• Is the Senate really up for grabs after Alabama? Just maybe (“Republicans still hold an advantage, but with Steve Bannon trying to destroy the party, Democrats have an opening” Go Bannon!
  LOL)
• Trump’s EPA head will do anything to avoid protecting Americans from pollution (“Scott Pruitt is using a bureaucratic shell game to stop states from protecting their residents from air pollution”)
• Wildfires to Hurricanes, 2017’s Year of Disasters Carried Climate Warnings
• 2017 Was the Year of the Athlete’s Voice
• Five key decisions for the GOP on healthcare
• Confusion reigns as people try to figure out property tax rules (So much for making the tax code simpler. This Republican tax “reform” is a debacle.)
• Trump: US could use some ‘good old Global Warming’ to heat up cold states (Trump is like a bad parody of an angry, f’ed-up old geezer sitting in front of Fox “News” every day and yelling at his TV set.)
• Breitbart quietly deletes recent interview with openly racist congressional candidate
• NYC crime rates at record lows, mirroring national trends (“Data contradicts the Attorney General’s claim of violent crime wave sweeping the nation.” It never ceases to amaze me how many right wingnuts think the crime rate is actually super high, rising, whatever. Facts be damned!)
• It’s cold outside, but that doesn’t mean climate change isn’t real (“2017 is still on track to be the second- or third-hottest year ever recorded globally — and scientists say climate change is to blame.”)
• Thanks to Trump, white supremacists had a big year in 2017 (“From Confederate statues to the defense of the ‘It’s OK to be white’ propaganda campaign on Fox News prime-time, the media normalized white supremacy during the first year of the Trump administration.”)
• Private Prison Companies Are About to Cash In on Trump’s Deportation Regime (“On the ropes in 2016, CoreCivic, GEO Group, and others see big money in immigration detention.”)
• 2017 Was a Big Year for Scrubbing Science from Government Websites. Here’s the List.
• How Federal Giveaways to Big Coal Leave Ranchers and Taxpayers Out in the Cold
• McAuliffe rights restoration official will stay on under Northam
• Northam says he trusts judges and election officials to make right call in tied House race (Hmmm.)
• Woody Kaine, son of Sen. Tim Kaine, gets probation, fine for role in protest at Trump rally
• Editorial: Taking the measure of McAuliffe’s tenure (“To his credit, McAuliffe quickly grew into the office. But he confronted a mule-headed Republican legislature determined not to give him any big wins.”)
• The Virginian Republican Pravda (“Instead of posting articles based on factual evidence, it seemed The Republican Standard would heavily distort the facts or post outright misinformation in order to promote the Gillespie campaign…Doing a bit of fact-checking on VPAP, the claims made in the Chicago Tribune were verifiable; as of early October, The Republican Standard had received $10,000 in outside contributions, $5,000 from something called the Colonial Leadership Trust PAC (tied to the likely future Speaker of the House of Delegates Kirk Cox) and $5,000 from the Ed Gillespie campaign. According to VPAP, the sponsorship money came from Gillespie and the PAC about the same time that The Republican Standard went online. However, I was unable to find any statement on their site that their content had been paid for by these outside groups, thus although giving the appearance of honest blogging, in fact being driven by the Gillespie campaign and others.”)
• Virginia Voting Mess Was Never Supposed to Happen After Bush v. Gore (“‘This is right up there with Bush v. Gore in my opinion in terms of the unbelievable sequence of events that have led us to where we are,’ said Rebecca Green, co-director of the Election Law Program at William & Mary School of Law in Williamsburg.”)
• Virginia legislators prepare for upcoming January session
• Editorial: Get to work on tackling teacher shortage
• Light snow accumulation risk early Saturday, and staying very cold into the new year