So far Donald Trump has announced the selection of people to fill five major positions in his administration who all deny climate change is real and exacerbated by human activity. They also happen to be examples of the worst kinds of choices one could have in charge of the things over which they shall be in charge. This doesn’t surprise me. Trump chose Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus to be his Chief of Staff, and Reince is helping Trump pick people who, in typical modern Republican fashion, are wholly unsuited for the positions they will hold. If you’ll recall how the last Republican administration did things like put a lobbyist for the mining industry in charge of the Interior Department, the ones who give out permits to companies wanting to mine on federal property, you’ll get the feeling they’re doing it all over again. And it’s important to note that in addition to all the other flaws each of these people has (bigotry, racism, white supremacy), they’re all climate change deniers. Reince would like to see an end to the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. Their reasons are not in the least bit scientific (they totally reject what 97% of climate scientists say on the subject and defer to the few who are on the payrolls of companies who don’t want the use of fossil fuels, the key human activity making the problem worse, to end), but are economic instead. In short, they whine and complain that if we stop burning fossil fuels, the giant corporations that extract and refine fossil fuels for a living will be out of a job. To which I say, “So?” We’re talking about companies responsible for producing a product whose use will eventually bring about the death of us all. And we’re supposed to be upset that they’ll be out of business?
Steve Bannon, chosen to be Trump’s Chief Strategist (with the not-so-hidden side job of being Chief White Nationalist, which pleased the KKK and Neo-Nazis) and lured away from his former job of running Breitbart News website (the site so horrible they named it after Andrew Breitbart, who actually named it after himself) has said that climate change is a hoax created by activists, scientists, and renewable energy executives. (He really loves conspiracy theories.) He believes there should be unfettered access to fossil fuels as opposed to the more intelligent strategy of ending our use of such destroyers. Bannon believes President Obama’s focus on climate change is a threat to national security. The Pentagon disagrees. They consider climate change to be the biggest threat to national security. But Bannon is of the ilk (I love using that word; it’s so onomatopoeic) that believes the greatest threat to national security is, of course, “radical Islamic terrorism,” usually just shortened to “Islam.” That’s because people like that are more afraid of their own imaginations than they are of factual reality. They refuse to accept the fact that by using the very words they decry Obama for not using, they’re playing into the hands of the very people they claim are the greatest threat to us. That’s too complicated for their fear-filled minds to absorb. Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who was forced out for being a bad manager, will be Trump’s National Security Adviser. While he hasn’t said a whole lot about climate change, he has belittled it as a threat to national security, he being of the Bannon ilk when it comes to terrorism.
Mike Pompeo is a bought and paid-for Koch Brothers stooge. And now he’s going to head the Central Intelligence Agency (a/k/a NAMBLA), the people largely responsible for spreading terrorism via drone strikes famous for taking out large portions of wedding parties. And Little Jeff Sessions is being tapped to be the Attorney General. In addition to having demonstrated a complete and utter lack of understanding of the science behind climate change, Sessions is a well known racist. He thought the Ku Klux Klan was alright, until he learned they smoked pot. Not the attitude I want in my Attorney General.
There you have it. As fulsome a five as you’ll ever find, at least until the next five names come out of the Trump Transition Team. Everyone of them worthy of disapproval. There’s a word for that. Oh, yeah. Deplorable.
This is our weekend open thread. Feel free to discuss any topic you wish.
TheZoo 