On Climate—
The president tweets, for the umpteenth time, that climate change is not real because it's cold outside.
A dangerous cold front is sweeping the midwest this week, so it was time for another Official Message from the President uniquely calibrated to once again make the whole world dumber…
This man is allergic to books. He is so deeply incurious about the world you wonder how he's learned to navigate outside Mar-a-Lago or his golden apartment in the sky. He is, quite simply, the Dumbest Man Available, and we made him president. This is another piece of red meat for the reactionary Base, whose only goal is to maintain power with which to piss off liberals. www.esquire.com/...
...the utter idiocy of Donald Trump's global warming tweet
Cillizza: Take a step back and put the whole cold weather thing behind us. Is there ANY doubt the world is warming? And is there ANY doubt that this is not part of a cyclical process?
Samenow: The warming of the climate system is unambiguous and irrefutable. The last four years have been the four warmest years on record for the planet. If you don't believe thermometers over land areas, there are all kinds of additional indicators such as decreasing polar ice, melting glaciers, longer flowering and pollen seasons, and rising temperatures in lakes, streams and oceans.
Scientists publishing research in academic journals have been able to rule out natural or cyclical explanations for this warming and attribute it almost entirely to the rise in greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. www.cnn.com/...
On Isis & North Korea—
Intelligence Chiefs Contradict Trump
A new American intelligence assessment of global threats has concluded that North Korea is “unlikely to give up” all of its nuclear stockpiles, and that Iran is not “currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activity” needed to make a bomb, directly contradicting two top tenets of President Trump’s foreign policy.
Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, also challenged Mr. Trump’s insistence that the Islamic State had been defeated, a key rationale for his decision to exit Syria. The terrorist group “still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria,” and maintains eight branches and a dozen networks around the world, the annual report to Congress said. www.nytimes.com/...
Businesses
fighting back
Patagonia — Following the announcement (about Bears Ears National Monument) Patagonia added a bold pronouncement to its homepage stating "The president stole your land."…
Melville House, the bookstore making sure you stay informed—
Cards Against Humanity, the irreverent card company fighting the wall… But Cards Against Humanity has another trick up its sleeve. In December, the company launched a second campaign, Cards Against Humanity Stops The Wall, to fight Donald Trump's proposed barrier. This time Cards Against Humanity built a working 30-foot trebuchet, which, "for legal reasons" is 100%, totally, not at all a threat against the U.S. government or its property...
Merriam-Webster, the dictionary that's not letting Trump's words slide… twitter.com/...
Microsoft, the tech giant fighting for DACA and the Dreamers...
"If Congress fails to act, our company will exercise its legal rights properly to help protect our employees. If the government seeks to deport any one of them, we will provide and pay for their legal counsel. We will also file an amicus brief and explore whether we can directly intervene in any such case. In short, if Dreamers who are our employees are in court, we will be by their side." mashable.com/...
Fact checkers are exhausted.
Send popcorn &/or chocolate.
ANOTHER YEAR FIGHTING TRUMP’S FALSEHOODS
He’s like an indestructible monster in a Godzilla movie. The authorities keep firing at him, but he just keeps walking through town, gaining power.
The fact-checkers have tried every weapon they’ve got: Lie of the Year, Whoppers of the Year and even running lists of thousands of his falsehoods. They’ve created new ones, like The Washington Post Fact Checker’s new Bottomless Pinocchio, which is reserved for false claims that have been repeated more than 20 times. Fittingly, only one politician qualifies: Trump.
(Also quite fitting: The Bottomless Pinocchio was introduced on the front page of The Washington Post’s print edition next to a story about Russian propaganda.) www.niemanlab.org/...