Today's Tweet

Rooster Demands Credit For Sunrise

Trump Trade War In Four Acts:

—Act One: Threaten to burn down your own house.

-Act Two: Your family tells you it’s a really bad idea to burn down the house.

-Act Three: Agree Not to burn house down

-Act Four: Put out press release demanding praise from family for saving home https://t.co/jKjSSXCI7M

— stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) June 8, 2019

Last Nite's Bill

Katie Porter is one of the best things that's happened for the Dems in a very long time.

"If Democrats ever adopt a motto - and I really hope we don't - but if we do, it'll probably be something like: SOLVING YESTERDAY'S PROBLEMS TOMORROW - MAYBE".

New rules is pretty dumb tho - worth skipping.

Podcast

Kind of a Never give. Never surrender thing.

The Professional Left

support the podcast

Today's Tweet

Believe only what I tell you at any given moment.  And be sure to check with me often because I'll change it all if it suits my immediate need.

Laura Ingraham tells her viewers not to believe what they just heard Donald Trump say. pic.twitter.com/xVdQCSnhkQ

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) June 7, 2019

Today's Pix

click it

Maniacal Mango Man

Lord Commander Smarmalade knows the rubes won't hear anything about anything that's not on DumFux News or on the endless loop running in the Right Radical Echosphere of Breitbart and The Daily Caller and BlazeTV et al.

And don't be fooled into thinking it doesn't matter what he does because "the base" always seems to be with him no matter what. I don't know what goes on with his polling, but there's something a little weird about a guy with such horrible negatives managing to stay above 35-45% "approval".

But also, don't be fooled by the "amazing shrinking base" meme. Radicalizing and re-radicalizing and hyper-radicalizing a core group of fanatical devotees is the Daddy State at it's most dangerous.

Today's Tweet

Our extended family across the pond is doing us proud.

I’ll say it again people—

The Brits are killing us in the #ProtestTrump arena.#BabyTrump #TrumpInUK
pic.twitter.com/Iyst7q3RAW

— JΛKΣ (@USMCLiberal) June 5, 2019

Today's Tweet

I'm lovin' me some of our British cousins.

Aerial view of today's Anti-Trump protest London.

Thousands of Protesters March down the Streets Of London against Trump's policies & recent Visit.

I'm guessing this wasn't the Parade Trump was hoping for lol pic.twitter.com/k1RJOrOocv

— Terrence Daniels (Captain Planet) (@Terrence_STR) June 4, 2019

Today's Today

Tiananmen Square, 04 June 1989.

Beijing has been blocking these videos.

Once the violence starts, it'll "run its course" almost no matter what. And the government is always going to win as long as the police and armed forces are "loyal" to government leaders.

When this kind of thing happens in a society where the general populace is not well-armed, the optics get really bad really fast, government is seen as the brutal assholes they usually are, and they end up having to make changes and accommodations for people. We've seen that all over the world. 

But if we get this shit going here in USAmerica Inc, it's not just going to "run its course".

That Report

Here's the report Beau refers to in the video below - actually, it's the foreword from the position paper.

Can we think in new ways about the existential human security risks driven by the climate crisis?

by Admiral Chris Barrie, AC RAN Retired

In 2017-18, the Australian Senate inquired into the implications of climate change for Australia’s national security. The Inquiry found that climate change is “a current and existential national security risk”, one that “threatens the premature extinction of Earth- originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development”.

I told the Inquiry that, after nuclear war, human- induced global warming is the greatest threat to human life on the planet. Today’s 7.5 billion human beings are already the most predatory species that ever existed, yet the global population has yet to peak and may reach 10 billion people, with dire implications absent a fundamental change in human behaviour.

This policy paper looks at the existential climate-related security risk through a scenario set thirty years into the future. David Spratt and Ian Dunlop have laid bare the unvarnished truth about the desperate situation humans, and our planet, are in, painting a disturbing picture of the real possibility that human life on earth may be on the way to extinction, in the most horrible way.
In Australia recently we have seen and heard signals about the growing realisation of the seriousness of our plight. For example, young women speak of their decisions to not have children, and climate scientists admitting to depression as they consider the “inevitable” nature of a doomsday future and turn towards thinking more about family and relocation to “safer” places, rather than working on more research. 

Stronger signals still are coming from increasing civil disobedience, for example over the opening up of the Galilee Basin coal deposits and deepwater oil exploration in the Great Australian Bight, with the suicidal increase in carbon emissions they imply. And the outrage of schoolchildren over their parent’s irresponsibility in refusing to act on climate change.

As my colleague Professor Will Steffen has said of the climate challenge:

“It’s not a technological or a scientific problem, it’s a question of humanities’ socio-political values… We need a social tipping point that flips our thinking before we reach a tipping point in the climate system.”

A doomsday future is not inevitable! But without immediate drastic action our prospects are poor. We must act collectively. We need strong, determined leadership in government, in business and in our communities to ensure a sustainable future for humankind.

In particular, our intelligence and security services have a vital role to play, and a fiduciary responsibility, in accepting this existential climate threat, and the need for a fundamentally different approach to its risk management, as central to their considerations and their advice to government.

The implications far outweigh conventional geopolitical threats.

I commend this policy paper to you.

Admiral Chris Barrie, AC RAN Retired, is Honorary Professor, Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University, Canberra. He is a member of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change and was Chief of the Australian Defence Force from 1998 to 2002.