27 February 2017

NYT | Reality-Checking DT's First Month In Office

Quoctrung Bui | Claire Cain Miller | Kevin Quealy
Click image to enlarge

From The Upshot:
It’s understandable if President Trump’s first month in office has left your head spinning, given the pace of news, the middle-of-the-night Twitter posts and the vows to upend Washington.
To help us get our bearings, we asked experts across the ideological spectrum — people who have served in government or studied the way governments work — to rate 20 news events for importance and abnormality. More often than not, the administration’s actions have been both highly unusual and highly consequential, The Upshot’s 15 survey panelists said.
We asked our panelists: Was the event normal, like the veto of a bill in a prior administration? Or was it highly unusual in contemporary American democracy, like ordering newspapers to suspend publication of the Pentagon Papers? Also, was it unimportant, with limited or no consequences for federal policy, like the menu for a state dinner? Or was it important, creating lasting and significant changes in policy, like the establishment of Social Security?
On average, more than half the events were rated abnormal and important. The most extreme instances, they said, were the immigration ban; the use of falsehoods; and the president’s business conflicts of interest. The Supreme Court nomination and immigration raids were on average considered normal but important. The experts thought just two of the events would have limited or no policy consequences: the firing of the acting attorney general and Kellyanne Conway’s promotion of Ivanka Trump’s products.
Click here to review all 20 items, grouped by their quadrant on [the NYT's] reality-check matrix.

Made Me Laugh


YouTube via FB

YouTube via FB

14 February 2017

05 February 2017

From Ms. Lanny-yap's FB Feed





Theodore Geisel | 1941


Damien Love | Sunday Herald | Scotland | 16 Jan 2017



04 February 2017

People's Climate March | 29 April 2017

Motivated by the success of the women's march ... as well as the Trump administration's efforts to revamp the nation's environmental protection and science policy, advocacy groups have announced a People's Climate March on Washington for April 29.
A steering committee of more than two dozen organizations is organizing the event. It is supported by the major national environmental groups and an array of social justice, religious, and labor groups, ranging from the Hip Hop Caucus to the Franciscan Action Network to the BlueGreen Alliance. More than 100 groups have endorsed the march.
The People's Climate effort is recreating the coalition that put together the largest climate march in history: when 400,000 people gathered in the streets of New York City in September 2014 to coincide with the United Nations general assembly. This time, the groups are turning their sights on Washington, where Donald Trump is embarking on his agenda for his first 100 days, which aims to sweep aside climate protections and expand fossil fuel development.
Climate activist Bill McKibben, the co-founder of 350.org, wrote in a story in Rolling Stone magazine that the purpose of the march was "to show the election didn't cancel physics." "Politicians need to be reminded, even as they do the bidding of the industry, that the rest of us are watching," McKibben wrote, noting that the march will take place on the 100th day of the Trump administration. "His early surge can't be avoided, but it can be slowed."
InsideClimate News