Tag Archives: Trump_Donald

Climate clippings 198

1. LiquidPiston engine

The innovative LiquidPiston engine, mentioned by BilB, is targetting a global market worth $460 billion. It has a power to weight ratio more than ten times better than a regular engine:

The big bruiser on the left puts out 35 HP, the one on the right 40 HP. Continue reading Climate clippings 198

What is Trump up to?

It has emerged that Donald Trump was from youth a regular church-goer and an enormous admirer of his pastor, one Norman Vincent Peale, whose 1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking was translated into 15 languages, remained on the New York Times best-seller list for 186 weeks and sold 5 million copies.

Peale’s son is not so keen on Trump, but Trump is very keen on himself. His biographer says Peale’s influence is the source of Trump’s boundless self-confidence, and is the key to his persona, along with his father’s modus operandi and interest in branding.

Trump’s “America first” meme presented as somewhat isolationist. What has emerged in his recent speech to the joint houses of Congress, is that Trump has in fact embraced American exceptionalism, the notion that America has a special role in the world to lead the all peoples and countries to the sunny uplands of peace, justice and freedom. Trump is going to save the world. Continue reading What is Trump up to?

Saturday salon 18/12

1. Millennials lack hope

I heard it on the radio, and have tracked it down, I think, to The Deloitte Millennial Survey 2017. It depends where you live:

    Millennials in emerging markets generally expect to be both financially (71 percent) and emotionally (62 percent) better off than their parents. This is in stark contrast to mature markets, where only 36 percent of millennials predict they will be financially better off than their parents and 31 percent say they’ll be happier.

Continue reading Saturday salon 18/12

How Trump won: the real story

Nate Silver, editor in chief at FiveThirtyEight, has been thinking about this issue for two and a half months, and has come up with perhaps the best analysis I’ve seen to date in The Real Story Of 2016: What reporters — and lots of data geeks, too — missed about the election, and what they’re still getting wrong.

Silver’s primary focus is on how the press covered the election, and how it is reflecting now on what happened. However, he puts his finger on some of the key factors. Continue reading How Trump won: the real story

The dawn of the Trump epoch

President Trump’s inaugural address was full of sweeping promises:

    Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning.

    Because today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another — but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the American people.

Which is counterfactual and ridiculous. He says that no-one listened to the “forgotten people”, but, “Everyone is listening to you now.”

Will he listen to the voters who by a majority of almost 3 million voted for his opponent? Continue reading The dawn of the Trump epoch

Saturday salon 14/1

1. Sussan Ley takes one for the team

Health and sports minister Sussan Ley took one for the team and resigned before inquiries into her expenses had concluded. Apparently while she was there journalists who currently have nothing much else to report on were digging into everyone’s business, like the four ministers attending the PM’s private New Year function.

Earlier Bronwyn Bishop amused everyone by saying that criticism of Ms Ley was socialism on the march. Continue reading Saturday salon 14/1

Trump compromised?

US intelligence agencies have briefed both President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump that the Russians may well have information that compromises Trump. They don’t have anything they know directly, but they have information from a credible intelligence source which says that the Russians have information about his finances and about himself personally which would compromise him if released.

This may be why they wanted Trump rather than Hillary Clinton. Perhaps they didn’t have anything really damaging on her. They wanted what they call a “useful idiot” to win. Continue reading Trump compromised?

Wallerstein looks at the world in the era of Trump

Wallerstein usually doesn’t make short-term predictions, but has made an exception in the case of Trump. He says:

    It seems to me that everyone everywhere is focused for the moment on what will now happen in the short run. There seems to be no other subject of interest. Anxiety is at its maximum, and we need to deal with it.

Continue reading Wallerstein looks at the world in the era of Trump

Goodbye 2016, hello 2017

I had a look at the archive, and last January we were confronted with the question One-third of Australian pensioners live in poverty?, an overheating planet, and groups of men humiliating, sexually assaulting and robbing women around the main railway station in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.

A year later it has become clear that opportunistic, small-scale acts of terrorism are going to be with us for a very long time.

Meanwhile Britain voted to leave the EU, Americans shocked the world by electing Donald Trump, and after eight excruciating weeks of campaigning, Malcolm Turnbull fell over the line, and with a dummy spit on election night, and as one Coalition insider said, “with his authority diminished and his judgment is being questioned on multiple levels”, proceeded to try to govern with a polyglot senate. Continue reading Goodbye 2016, hello 2017

Climate clippings 194

1. Methane emissions spiking

The Global Methane Budget 2016 has been released, and the news is not good.

    CSIRO researcher Dr Pep Canadell said it was the most comprehensive modelling to date and revealed a potentially dangerous climate wildcard.

    “Methane emissions were stable for quite a few years at the end of the 2000s. But they’ve begun to grow much faster, in fact 10 times faster, since 2007,” said Dr Canadell, who is also the executive director of the Global Carbon Project.

Continue reading Climate clippings 194

How Trump won, but what does it mean?

The numbers are now in. Trump won with a little help from the Russians, and the Chinese are definitely on the front foot in the South China Sea.

Adrian Beaumont at The Conversation has the final count.

    Clinton won the overall popular vote by 65.84 million votes, to 62.98 million for Trump, a difference of 2.86 million. Clinton’s raw vote was down only slightly from Obama’s 65.92 million in 2012, while Trump was over 2 million above Mitt Romney’s vote.

    In percentage terms, Clinton won 48.1%, to Trump’s 46.0%, a 2.1% popular vote win, compared with Obama’s 3.9% win over Romney. Libertarian Gary Johnson won 3.3% and Green Jill Stein 1.1%.

Continue reading How Trump won, but what does it mean?