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Donald Trump: A "monster shot" causes autism

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting imbibing the latest and greatest that science-based medicine has to offer against cancer. The AACR is mainly a basic science and translational meeting; so a lot of this stuff is seriously preclinical. That's what makes it interesting, though. In any case, my distraction aside, sometimes stuff happens that I still have to comment on and, better yet, sometimes it's the sort of stuff that I don't feel obligated to write an Orac-ian length screed about. In other words, it's perfect for keeping the blog active…

I fear for medical science under Donald Trump

It’s been two weeks since Donald Trump unexpectedly won the Presidential election despite losing the popular vote. Regular readers of my not-so-super-secret other blog know my opinion of this; so I won’t belabor it too much here. If you’re curious, I have written about Donald Trump’s antivaccine views here many times dating back to 2007, and, amusingly, I’ve even been at the receiving end of criticism from an “integrative medicine” activist in which my snark was compared to that of Donald Trump and my criticism labeled not just once, but twice. As you might imagine, I was not pleased. Leaving…

The Current Trump-Clinton Electoral Prediction

There are some interesting, and in some cases, potentially disturbing, things going on with the state by state numbers in the current election. Most of this has to do with third party candidates, and most of it with Gary Johnson. First, I'll note, that despite fears among liberals and progressives that a lot of Bernie Bots would flock to third party candidates and eschew Clinton, there is no strong evidence that Clinton is losing much to any third party candidates. However, in some states, especially those with libertarian tendencies, Gary Johnson is doing fairly well. And, this had been…

Electoral Vote, Popular Vote, Final Model Prediction, 2016 Clinton v Trump

The 2016 Electoral Vote Prediction I'm finished making predictions for the 2016 Presidential Election contest. According to my model, Hillary Clinton will win with 310 electoral votes to Donald Trump's 228 electoral votes. The map is shown above. Caveats and wrongosities: My model puts Iowa barely in Clinton's column. Polls say Iowa is for Trump. My model puts New Hampshire barely in Trump's column. Polls say it is for Clinton, barely. My model puts Ohio barely in Trump's column, but the polls put it in Clinton's column. Polls and other data are ambiguous about Florida, my model is…

The Trump War on Science: What Can the US Learn From Canada's Experience?

Sarah Boon's post yesterday, The War on Science: Can the US Learn From Canada?, is an excellent answer to a very popular topic on Twitter yesterday. With the Trump government seemingly determined to roll back decades of environmental protections and at the same time make sure no body in government talks about it, everyone wants to know what advice the Canadian science community might have for our cousins to the south. Read Sarah's post to for an excellent first answer to that question. In the four days since Trump’s inauguration, however, it has become increasingly clear that Trump is…

Republican Candidates Running Away from Trump. And Phyllis Schlafly.

... and why we never got the Equal Rights Amendment. Donald Trump is a very good Republican candidate. In terms of both style and substance, Trump does a good job of representing that part of the Republican Party that has been in charge of that party for several years, the Tea Party. The Republican Party has built itself up to become, effectively, the majority party in the US by pandering to this part of the base, along with gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression. So, really, there is no reason that Republicans running for office around the country should be upset with the…

Trump administration’s de-regulatory agenda: “Watching the American safety net unravel before our eyes”

In late July, while many of us were preoccupied with Republican Senators’ attacks on healthcare, the Trump administration released its first regulatory agenda (technically, the Current Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions). These routine updates are published so the public can see what they can anticipate from federal agencies in the way of rulemaking. (Celeste Monforton has been tracking the Department of Labor regulatory agenda for years.) The Trump administration’s first entry into this genre is better described as a de-regulatory agenda. It’s a dizzying array of delays,…

The Donald ignorant on public health, too: Asbestos widow schools Trump about the “magic mineral”

Factcheck.org has a growing list of Donald Trump's erroneous statements. But it's not the only source for dissecting Trump's uninformed and ignorant statements. On the topic of asbestos, I can't think of anyone better to school the Republican candidate than a strong woman who is a widow because of the deadly mineral. Linda Reinstein’s husband Alan, died in 2006 from pleural mesothelioma. It's the quintessential disease associated with exposure to asbestos. He was 66 years old and their daughter Emily was only 12 at the time. Writing in yesterday’s Huffington Post, Linda Reinstein reacts…

Sitting in Richard Nixon's Chair

Yes there are Nixon-Trump similarities. But in the end, probably not many. (A lot of Congresspersons boycotted his second inaugural, by the way). Also, for those who are not familiar with Watergate, I'll tell you this: The medium to worst case scenario of Trump's election, which would include Russian Hacking and possibly the Trump Dossier (but you don't need the dossier in this scenario) is about 400% worse than Watergate. The Watergate scandal, after which we now name all scandals, was also about stealing an election. It is not as clear that the Plumbers stole the election for Nixon that it…

Science and the Fourth of July

Science and The American Experiment Click here to find out how attacking science is attacking the Declaration of Independence. Read this book to discover the link between science and democracy. We have Three Years to safeguard our climate, and the world probably needs America to take part in that. From the Striving to Kill Civilization Department Let's maintain all those racist symbols in America's national parks! A few hundred armed militia group members, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Ku Klux Klaners, supporters of President Donald Trump, and other self-described patriots descended upon…

The Presidential Race Tightens Even As Many Assume It Is Over

A Trump-Kaine presidency is now on the table. It ain't over 'till the lady in the pantsuits wins. Or looses. Imagine Debbie Downer and Chicken Little have an offspring. It would be me. Or at least, that's how I've felt over the last few weeks as the only person in the Free World who seems to have noticed that the gap between Trump and Clinton is closing, and in fact, was never really that large to begin with. It only appeared large because a fluctuation occurred at about the same time everyone was hoping for a fluctuation, so it became more real than it should have been. The race has…

Trump Doubles Down on Immigration; Promises Tacos for Everyone

I was half expecting Trump to soften on immigration. The logic of that? His main supporters, who hate all immigrants and are a bunch of racist slobs will vote for Trump no matter what he says because the are morons. But, the fence sitters, the amoral "Good Republicans" who would vote for him because they have learned to fear Democratic economic policies (this group are also all morons) might vote for him if he was less crazy sounding. But no, that didn't happen. Instead, he embarrassed our nation buy telling the President of Mexico, to his face, that he's going to have to pay for this wall…

Is Mad Dog Mattis Getting Cold Feet?

Probably not, but it is worth brief consideration. Mainstream media is reporting that USMC General James Mad Dog Mattis's Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense is stalled because Mattis is a no show for a related hearing in the House. The reason for the cancellation of his appearance is at this writing a mystery, but it is known that it was the Trump transition team's word to the Senate, not the other way around, that underlies the delay. Here is what I was originally going to suggest: Mad Dog Mattis, as I have previously written, is in the position of breaking his solemn…

Antivaxers are collecting stories of "vaccine injury" to send to Donald Trump to change federal vaccine policy

I've written quite a bit about how our soon-to-be President Donald Trump has consistently expressed antivaccine views over the years, such as his oft-stated (on Twitter and elsewhere) beliefs that it's a "monster" shot that causes autism and infants get "too many" vaccines "too soon." I've heard Trump supporters who are pro-vaccine pooh-pooh these statements and claim that Trump won't be doing anything about vaccine policy because it's not a priority, an observation I counter by pointing out that Trump met with two of the biggest antivaccine "icons" there are: Andrew Wakefield and, just last…

An era of racism and xenophobia

In the days following the 2016 election, reports of hate crimes and harassment have spiked, and experts have described it as being worse than in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks. Between Wednesday, November 9 (the day after the election) and the morning of November 14, the Southern Poverty Law Center had collected 437 of hateful intimidation and harassment – and noted that “many incidents involved direct references to the Trump campaign and its slogans.” I spent part of the weekend reading news and opinion pieces about Donald Trump and US racism and xenophobia. The excerpts…

Trump Hates You, His Supporters, And Our Planet

A few items that I think you should see: Trump’s executive order puts the world on the road to climate catastrophe On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order that effectively guts national efforts to address climate change. If he isn’t stopped, the endpoint of this approach is the ruination of our livable climate and the needless suffering of billions of people for decades to come. The order starts the process of undoing President Obama’s Clean Power Plan standards for power plants. It also spurs fossil fuel consumption and blocks federal efforts to even prepare for…

Trump Dictates To The Press: Mika, Obamacare, Bullying the Press Corp

Trump is reportedly pressuring public news media and other outlets to not distribute information about Obamacare, as they normally would, in an effort to sabotage the n-Law. This is what dictators do. Trump's people in the "press" room have bullied the press to the point that they are finally starting to lash out. This is what dictators do. https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/879783260137504768?ref_src=twsr… Trump has attacked another female journalist, this time Mika Brzezinski, with another enigmatic blood coming out of her body parts comment. This is what dictators do. https://…

Friday Fun: We all believed in science at some point...or did we?

The world is going to hell in a hand basket. But at least we can laugh as we're sucked relentlessly into the Hellmouth. Maybe if we all collectively understood science and evidence better, the path to Hell wouldn't be quite so straight and narrow. So maybe that's what's making me think of these particular funny bits today. And by funny I mean so funny in hurts. First up, we have retired basketball superstar Shaquille O'Neal, who apparently really and truly believes the world is flat. He has a doctorate in Education, by the way, which I just can't even.   Shaquille O'Neal agrees with Kyrie…

Trump White House New Policy: Fire reporters the White House does not like

The policy of the Republican Trump White House is that if a reporter or commenter says something that the White House strongly disagrees with, the reporter or commenter should be fired. It remains to be seen how the Trump White House will enforce this newly articulated policy. The policy was provided as a response to a question about an African American reporter identifying Trump and the White House as being aligned with white supremacy, which is a widely held and well documented truth. Cindy Boren at the Washington Post has more here.

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where ignorant armies clash by night

I was going to write something much harsher than this; but then I chanced upon "ignorant armies" and hence was reminded of Dover Beach and it was so gloriously beautiful again that I can't bring myself to be unkind, at least for a while. So instead I'll just quietly point out that the vast slew of Trump stories are counter-productive. The one that triggered my... I'm being nice, aren't I? OK, my disapproval, was Trump has violated his oath to the Constitution. But it is just an example; there are many many others. The bit they are worrying about is "emolument"; and they're worried, for…

Trump has turned the corner

It wasn't much of a corner, he was already pretty much there, but yesterday, Donald J. Trump, pretender to the Presidency of the United States, threw in his lot with the "good people" of the fascist, white-supremacist, KKK-loving movement. There is a lot of commentary out there about this. None of it surprises me, I and others have been pointing at this train wreck all along. But there is one new thing I'll mention now. Listen to Trump's tirade about the protestors. When he speaks of the past notables, including Jefferson and Washington, and the statues, he is plain and articulate, non-…

Trump's Take It Or Leave It Approach Makes Sense

In real estate. I'm not an expert on this but I've seen the sausage being made a few times. Individuals with investment money, commercial businesses that might use new space, other possible tenants, maybe or maybe not some designers or builders, municipal or other government stakeholders, community stakeholders such as neighborhood associations, etc. consider a real estate deal. Perhaps there is a bit of condemned land the county wants to sell cheap if only you clean up the brownfield and develop something nice. Maybe the investors include a person who owns an underexploited business…

Latest celebrity drinking the Kool Aid of vaccine pseudoscience: Donald Trump

As if Jenny McCarthy weren't enough stupidity in pushing the alleged "link" between vaccines and autism, it looks as though Donald Trump has joined the fray on the side of pseudoscience: In an interview with Palm Beach Politics, Donald Trump offered a controversial opinion on a new topic: autism. The New York-Palm Beach real estate mogul is no doctor, but he said he thinks the rising prevalence of autism is related to vaccinations given to children at a young age. Autism now affects 1 in 150 children, a sharp increase from a few decades ago. But whether vaccinations have anything to do with…

The Kelly Fallacy

General John F. Kelly is retired from the US Marine Corps, where he commanded the Southern Command. He replaced political operative Reince Priebus as President Trump's Chief of Staff. The White House Chief of Staff is the highest ranking staff member in the White House, and was formalized as such in 1961. This is not a Senate confirmable position. What the Chief of Staff does varies from administration to administration but it is almost always about the same. This person can be the puppeteer, in the case of a President who is weak and in need of a guiding hand. This person is always a…

There is no way to sugar coat this: Trump is a Russian asset, according to me.

ADDED: It has been suggested that I clarify an important point about this post. So, dear reader, please understand that the information provided here is my best attempt at analysis of the information that I have available. There is clearly conjecture here. So, of course, read all this with a grain of salt. The size of that grain of salt can be as small or large as you like. I also amended the title of the post. -gtl ADDED Feb 1 I'll just be putin' this link here: http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/news/fsb-kaspersky-arrests/index.html?sr=twcnni020217fsb-kaspersky-arrests0129AMStoryPhoto…

UPDATED: Was there a Clinton Surge or not?

Updated to include polls through Oct 26th (AM, more polls later in the day on the 26th will be added at the next update): Updated, 25 October AM As I expected, and demonstrated much to the consternation of everyone, the ever widening double digit lead of Clinton over Trump in an increasing number of polls meme is a falsehood. Here is the latest graphic using the same approach as described below, but updated to reflect additional polls. Rather than a widening, or even consistent, gap, or a gap that is double digit, we see Clinton continuing to lead, but pretty much in the same way that she…

Trump's Latest Outrageous Claim: Obama Born In US

"After years of peddling a false conspiracy theory that President Obama wasn't born in the United States, Donald Trump — just 53 days before Election Day — now says he believes the president was born in the U.S. "President Obama was born in the United States. Period," Trump said at a campaign event in a ballroom in his new hotel in Washington. "Now, we want to get back to ... (bla bla bla)." That's from NPR. This is clearly going to hurt Donald Trump with his base. The accusation to begin with wad deplorable, after all. That was today, a few minutes ago. But yesterday ... Start about…

Who won last night's Republican presidential debate?

UPDATE for Feb 6th debate: This post was originally written for the previous GOP debate. Here are a few comments on last night's debate. I watched the debate at a debate watching party of DFL activists, so naturally I saw very little of it because we were a loud and raucous crowd. But this morning I re-watched portions of the debate, and checked out the online commentary and polls. Once again, most of the commentary by experts has little to do with the on line polls. The on line polls show Trump as having won by a huge landslide, while the experts are talking about this or that lower level…

Trump Calls The Majority Who Voted Against Him Enemies And Losers In New Year’s Message?

More politics-via-fb I'm afraid. I wouldn't trouble you with this except people I know not only post it, but defend it. My headline could instead have been "a plea for toleration". Some... oh dear, I'm pleading for toleration, aren't I? So I'd better be nice and choose my words with care. Some website, "politicususa.com" wrote: President-elect Trump delivered a bizarre New Year's message where he claimed that the majority of voters who voted against him are his enemies and losers. Trump is indeed something of a loose cannon and I wouldn't have been especially surprised to see that he had done…

Trump Signs Most Hated Bill Ever In Secret

This bill was so unpopular that only 11% of Americans thought he should sign it. It was so unpopular that 74% of Americans thought he should veto it. This bill was not one of Trump's campaign promises, and it wasn't part of the Republican Party platform. I can only assume it was a bought and paid for deal. I'm speaking, of course, of the bill that allows your Internet service provider to collect pretty much any information it wants, including quite possibly the contents of what goes into and out of your house on the Internet, and the physical locations of you and your family members, and…

The Link between Russia and White Supremacy in the White House

It is very rare that I find myself yelling at the TV when Rachel Maddow is on. She is very good at historically contextualized nuanced well informed analyses. But when I watched a segment of last night's show (on the Internet, I have no cable) I was shocked to see that she missed something really important. If, that is, it is real. In the segment below, she makes the point that there are two "clear through lines" in the whole Trump thing. One is the love of Russia and Putin by Trump, his unwavering stance that Russia and Putin can do no wrong. The other is the consistent "vehement antipathy…

Under President Trump, US No Longer Primary World Power

It appears that if Donald Trump is elected president, many world leaders, including the leaders of the Western European countries, will freeze out the US from intelligence and security decisions, because they have learned that they can't trust Trump's ability to manage or handle intelligence, and recognize that he will be Putin's puppet. In phone calls, meetings and cables, America’s European allies have expressed alarm to one another about Donald Trump’s public statements denying Moscow’s role in cyberattacks designed to interfere with the U.S. election. They fear the Republican nominee for…

Clinton Vs. Trump: Latest Electoral Prediction

It is fun to look at polls, and using such data, decide which candidate will win which state, and ultimately, which candidate will win the electoral college. A lot of people and organizations do that, and for this reason, I don't. I do not have access to polls that no one else sees. Were I to use polling data to directly predict outcomes per state, I'd use a method like that used by FiveThirtyEight, and probably come up with similar results. How boring. It would be a waste of my time to try to replicate the excellent work done by Nate Silver and his team. Back during the Democratic Primaries…

The Likely Outcome Of The Latest Trump Revelations

You know the problem. Not just the release of the "I'd grab her ..." tape, but starting before that. Here, watch: A roughly written Facebook comment by me, reacting to much of the reaction I'm seeing: To everyone who is saying that Trump is out of the race because of his admitted preference for sexual assault as a way of getting women to like him: Sorry, you are wrong, and you may be living in a bubble. Do a transect across humanity, in the US. You will find that a double digit percentage of both women and men (though I'll allow you the possibly true but possibly not true idea that more men…

Trump Loses Another Fight, or two

The Trump Administration, in the person of Interior Secretary Zinke, tried to eliminate Obama-era limitations on greenhouse gas emissions from the petroleum industry. The Administration tried to use the "Administrative Procedure Act to turn off provisions intended to reduce how much natural gas petroleum drillers could vent or burn on public or tribal lands. This would have been administered via the BLM. The federal government was sued by California, New Mexico, and various environmental groups, and yesterday, the court ruled in favor of the environment. This is the second loss for Trump…

No, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is NOT a "vaccine skeptic." He is antivaccine. So is Donald Trump.

This week hasn't been a particularly good week for science. It started out on Monday with news of the social media storm from over the weekend over a blatantly antivaccine screed published the Friday before by the director of The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Clinic. Then, towards the middle of the week, we learned that our President-Elect, Donald Trump, had met with an antivaccine loon of the worst variety, someone whose misinformation I've been dealing with since 2005, in order to discuss some sort of commission on vaccine safety—or autism (it's not clear which). Whatever it was, there's no way…

How Twitter Starts The Next Big War, Unless You Act To Stop Them

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/911789314169823232?ref_src=t… A pair of American B-1 Lancer bombers is flying north northeast along the border of North Korean air space. Accompanying the bombers is a squadron of F-15C Eagle fighter jets. The crews are aware of the fact that North Korea may have a policy of shoot first and ask questions later, as a response to a tweet by the Russian-installed president of the United States, in which he threatened to kill the psychopathic leader of North Korea. (I fear for a big drop in Tom Clancy novels, as they are no longer challenging or…

Natural Resources Committee Democrats Respond to Trump’s Advancement of the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines

This is a press release from the Natural Resources Committee Democrats, US House of Representatives concerning President Trump's decision and actions to push ahead with two highly controversial petroleum pipeline projects. These projects had previously been stopped because they did not meet environmental standards, or because they violated tribal agreements. It is still quite possible that these reasons still matter, and that President Trump cant' simply wish the projects back into existence. Or maybe he can. It remains to be determined. Here is the statement: Washington, D.C. – Ranking…

The House Should Demand That Trump Apologize For John Lewis Insults

A lot of people are just catching up on who John Lewis is. One way to do that is to read his memoir, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement. U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) is presented with the 2010 Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. He is a senior African American Representative to the House who was famously involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, along side Doctor King. If you watch any news at all you've seen him plenty of times. He is now also known as the latest person Donald Trump decided to denigrate and insult on Twitter. I would like to see everyone…

Unscientific polls rocket Trump to way top spot.

Trump went into the GOP debate last night with a roughly 20% poll standing. Everyone will tell you to ignore polls early in this race, they never predict the outcome of a primary or a general election. That, however, is a non sequitur. We do not look at early polls to predict the distant future. We look at them to help understand the present, and to get a handle on what might happen over the next few weeks. The meaning of the polls shifts quite a bit before the first primaries, then they meaning of the polls has to be re-evaluated after every primary. At some point the re-evaluations…

Tracking Polls Show Clinton Disaster Looms, But Electoral College Holds

The relationship between the popular vote, roughly reflected in national polls, and the Electoral College vote, is where the rubber meets the road. When you look at states that are very solid for each candidate, neither candidate has a lock on the race, but Clinton has way more electoral votes, currently. These numbers hover around 200-something to 100-something. Then there are the strongly leaning states, which when added to the other states, put Clinton almost exactly at the required 270 electoral votes. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less, depending on which states you think you can…

People who voted for Jill Stein were tricked, and we are all paying for it

Or so it seems. Donald Trump won the 2016 election with 306 votes to Hillary Clinton's 232 votes. That is a spread of 74 votes. Clinton was likely to win in several states in which she lost, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, maybe Ohio, etc. In three states that could have gone either way, Jill Stein's vote count was larger than the difference between Clinton and Trump. In Michigan, Trump won by 10,704 votes, Stein got 51,463 votes. In Pennsylvania, Trump won by 46,765 votes, Stein got 49,678 votes. In Wisconsin, Trump won by 22,177 votes, Stein got 31,006 votes. If every Jill…

Bracing for President Trump

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the U.S. caught nearly everyone by surprise, and fingers were immediately pointed in all directions as the election's losers looked to lay blame. Chad Orzel offers one relevant narrative: "There are a lot of people who feel like they’re being screwed by a system run for the benefit of people in big cities on the coasts who sneer at them as ignorant, racist hicks." Ethan Siegel extends an olive branch on Starts With a Bang, saying "we all have our biases, even if we ourselves are scientists," and encourages EVERYONE to accept the responsibility…

How have events shaped the Clinton-Trump race?

It is unfortunate that "all the pundits" are now saying that Clinton will now win no matter what, and that Trump will likely suffer more scandal before the end of the process. This is unfortunate because a weak get out the vote effort is probably worth a couple of points on election day. It is unfortunate because some Trump scandals increase, rather than decrease, his numbers. He could suddenly gain a couple of points if he says or does just the wright/wrong things. It is unfortunate because, for whatever reason, Hillary "My Middle Name is Target" Clinton has turned into the Teflon…

More deregulation by Trump: Ditching mine safety requirements

The Trump Administration is proposing to scrap a requirement for mine operators to conduct safety checks before miners begin their work. Identifying hazards and fixing them is key to preventing work-related injuries and deaths. The requirement on Trump's chopping block applies to more than 11,000 mining operations that extract metals and aggregates, such as underground gold and salt mines and rock quarries. Similar requirements for coal mines are not part of the administration’s announcement, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see this proposal lead to similar changes at coal mines. The rule “…

One step forward, two steps back. Dire consequences from Trump’s edict on regulations

Hearing someone describe a situation as “one step forward, two steps back” is never a good thing.  When it involves efforts to protect people’s health or public safety, the consequences can be dire. President Trump doesn’t care. He’s making good on a ludicrous campaign pledge that for every one regulation issued by a federal agency, the agency will have to offset the cost by eliminating two existing regulations. He issued that order today. The nonsense goes something like this: FAA: “We need to enhance testing requirements to protect against flocking birds affecting airplane engines. That's…

Judith Curry WTF?

JC has been veering more and more to the dark side in recent years1. Or maybe not so recent? I find that all the way back in 2010 I wrote Hopefully Curry isn’t going to fall off that cliff, but she is teetering. And I managed to be nice to her soon after. But in August of that year I felt obliged to announce her shark-jumping. And by 2013 it had only got worse to the point where I think I stopped reading her, and certainly made an effort to stop writing about her. She is suffering - uninterestingly - from having nowhere to go. Her scientific papers are of no interest but she is, by now,…

The Trump War on Science: Is the March for Science too political or not political enough?

Is the March for Science (and all it's satellite marches) too political or not political enough? The text on their website gives a sense of where the organizers are coming from: SCIENCE, NOT SILENCE The March for Science is a celebration of our passion for science and a call to support and safeguard the scientific community. Recent policy changes have caused heightened worry among scientists, and the incredible and immediate outpouring of support has made clear that these concerns are also shared by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. The mischaracterization of science as a…

Trump Is Compiling Science Enemy Lists UPDATE: "NO," DOE

UPDATE: The Department of Energy has reportedly refused Donald Trump's request for names of DOE employees and contractors who have been engaged in climate change research. That does not mean that Tump will never get those names. Once he is President, he can get the names. But for now, he'll have to sit it out. The Donald Trump transition team circulated an eight page questionnaire to the US Department of Energy. Such questionnaires are not normal. This particular questionnaire is deeply disturbing. There are seventy-four questions. They provide insight into likely Trump administration…

Donald Trump on The War

Generally, I don't think much of Donald Trump but in this case, I agree with him wholeheartedly (streaming video below the fold). . tags: streaming video, Donald Trump, Iraq War