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FOCUS: The Inevitability of Impeachment |
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Friday, 28 December 2018 12:08 |
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Drew writes: "An impeachment process against President Trump now seems inescapable. Unless the president resigns, the pressure by the public on the Democratic leaders to begin an impeachment process next year will only increase."
A billboard asking people to sign a petition calling for the impeachment of President Trump in Times Square in New York last year. (photo: Justin Lane/EPA)
The Inevitability of Impeachment
By Elizabeth Drew, The New York Times
28 December 18
Even Republicans may be deciding that the president has become too great a burden to their party or too great a danger to the country.
 n impeachment process against President Trump now seems inescapable. Unless the president resigns, the pressure by the public on the Democratic leaders to begin an impeachment process next year will only increase. Too many people think in terms of stasis: How things are is how they will remain. They don’t take into account that opinion moves with events.
Whether or not there’s already enough evidence to impeach Mr. Trump — I think there is — we will learn what the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has found, even if his investigation is cut short. A significant number of Republican candidates didn’t want to run with Mr. Trump in the midterms, and the results of those elections didn’t exactly strengthen his standing within his party. His political status, weak for some time, is now hurtling downhill.
The midterms were followed by new revelations in criminal investigations of once-close advisers as well as new scandals involving Mr. Trump himself. The odor of personal corruption on the president’s part — perhaps affecting his foreign policy — grew stronger. Then the events of the past several days — the president’s precipitous decision to pull American troops out of Syria, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s abrupt resignation, the swoon in the stock market, the pointless shutdown of parts of the government — instilled a new sense of alarm among many Republicans.
The word “impeachment” has been thrown around with abandon. The frivolous impeachment of President Bill Clinton helped to define it as a form of political revenge. But it is far more important and serious than that: It has a critical role in the functioning of our democracy.
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Trump Imperils the Planet |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=23770"><span class="small">Editorial Board, The New York Times</span></a>
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Friday, 28 December 2018 09:26 |
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Excerpt: "Endangered species, climate change - the administration is taking the country, and the world, backward."
Forest. (photo: iStock)
Trump Imperils the Planet
By Editorial Board, The New York Times
28 December 18
Endangered species, climate change — the administration is taking the country, and the world, backward.
 t’s hard to believe but it was only three years ago this month — just after 7 p.m., Paris time, Dec. 12, to be precise — that delegates from more than 190 nations, clapping and cheering, whooping and weeping, rose to celebrate the Paris Agreement — the first genuinely collective response to the mounting threat of global warming. It was a largely aspirational document, without strong legal teeth and achieved only after contentious and exhausting negotiations. But for the first time in climate talks stretching back to 1992, it set forth specific, numerical pledges from each country to reduce emissions so that together they could keep atmospheric temperatures from barreling past a point of no return.
Two weeks ago, delegates met at a follow-up conference in Katowice, Poland, to address procedural questions left unsettled in Paris, including common accounting mechanisms and greater transparency in how countries report their emissions. In this the delegates largely succeeded, giving rise to the hope, as Brad Plumer put it in The Times, that “new rules would help build a virtuous cycle of trust and cooperation among countries, at a time when global politics seems increasingly fractured.”
But otherwise it was a hugely dispiriting event and a fitting coda to one of the most discouraging years in recent memory for anyone who cares about the health of the planet — a year marked by President Trump’s destructive, retrograde policies, by backsliding among big nations, by fresh data showing that carbon dioxide emissions are still going up, by ever more ominous signs (devastating wildfires and floods, frightening scientific reports) of what a future of unchecked greenhouse gas emissions is likely to bring.
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Trump, Russia and Saudi Arabia Are Forming an Axis of Climate Denial. It's Up to Us to Stop Them. |
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Friday, 28 December 2018 09:26 |
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Su writes: "Climate suicide is not an option. And, if the last two years have taught the world anything, it is that people are rising to resist this end."
Mobile home park destroyed by Hurricane Harvey. (photo: Getty)
Trump, Russia and Saudi Arabia Are Forming an Axis of Climate Denial. It's Up to Us to Stop Them.
By Jean Su, Climate Home News
28 December 18
The US administration, together with Russia and Saudi Arabia, is forming an axis of climate denial. It is down to grassroots movements to stop them
  oivanna ny tolokandro” was the diagnosis of a single mother I met visiting a remote village in eastern Madagascar.
It was the dawn of 2007, and the island-nation was slammed by an unprecedented and relentless series of cyclones spaced just weeks apart.
“The climate is changing,” she said in Malagasy, rocking her wailing daughter whose body was heaving from malaria, which had broken out amidst the flooding.
I witnessed firsthand, very early in my career, the human face of climate change. For many, it means living in a state of fragility that is nearly inescapable.
During emergency aid efforts, I waded through waist-deep flood water replete with feces and malaria-carrying mosquitoes – the same water that communities had no choice but to drink.
One decade later, an unprecedented number of Americans also painfully understand what climate change feels like. In this year alone, the Camp Fire and Hurricanes Florence and Michael unraveled an unspeakable number of lives.
There’s a time, of course, to mourn the dead. And then there is the time to fight back.
I just returned from the twenty-fourth United Nations climate change conference in Poland, where government delegates were charged with fleshing out the rules that govern the implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Unfortunately, a new axis of climate-denying nations overshadowed the talks. At this year’s negotiations, the Trump administration banded together with climate pariahs Russia and Saudi Arabia to sideline climate science and protect fossil fuel interests.
This group ultimately blocked acceptance of the findings of the recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1.5C report into the final set of rules. That landmark report found that we have until 2030 to undergo a fundamental transformation of our energy system to have a final fighting chance against climate change.
By rejecting the report, the Trump administration announced that it values fossil fuel profits over human lives. This axis of climate deniers threatens to entrap the world in a climate suicide pact.
Unfortunately, this shameful act of climate denial, executed on the world stage, derailed this year’s climate talks. Delegates from other countries failed to take the reins and steer the negotiations back on track.
Instead, the rules are riddled with loopholes that allow rich countries to avoid giving finance to poorer countries to address climate impacts. And governments refused to commit to the far more aggressive greenhouse gas reduction targets that science demands.
These outcomes only perpetuate the inequity at the heart of these global climate talks. Wealthier countries, like the US, that have done the most to cause the climate crisis are shirking their moral and legal responsibility toward poorer countries, like Madagascar, that have polluted the least but disproportionately suffer the most.
But climate suicide is not an option. And, if the last two years have taught the world anything, it is that people are rising to resist this end.
In the US, we are witnessing a political sea change. While climate deniers and former fossil fuel lobbyists run federal agencies, grassroots movements against fossil fuels are growing – and winning.
Community members in the rural south have increasingly taken over boards of their rural electric cooperatives. They’re voting out dirty energy choices that endanger the health of their families. Fracking bans have been passed off Florida’s coasts and in Maryland, New York, Vermont and six counties in California.
The grassroots have even reached the steps of Capitol Hill – young people have ignited the movement to reclaim our federal politics to enact a Green New Deal.
The politics of our climate crisis both span the globe and reside intimately in every community. And the ramifications of our energy choices in the US are felt in communities around the world – including villages in Madagascar – in ways we cannot fully imagine. Every time one community wins a battle against dirty energy, it is an incremental victory for communities everywhere.
These local wins are the face of global climate resistance: city by city, state by state, people are reclaiming power from polluters.
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My Picks for Athlete of the Year Carried That Weight |
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Thursday, 27 December 2018 14:31 |
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Abdul-Jabaar writes: "Today's athletes have to carry a lot more baggage than a smelly gym bag and the giddy dreams of their parents."
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (photo: Getty)
My Picks for Athlete of the Year Carried That Weight
By Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, Guardian UK
27 December 18
Colin Kaepernick, Maggie Nichols and Serena Williams left us better off because of their commitment to sport and society
 oday’s athletes have to carry a lot more baggage than a smelly gym bag and the giddy dreams of their parents. If they hope to achieve true greatness (or GOAT-ness) – and not just fleeting athletic notoriety – they also have to shoulder the leg-wobbling weight of responsibility to the community. This responsibility can come in different forms: charity work, as a role model and/or political activism. At the same time as they’re pushing the boundaries of their sport, they have to help define and promote the values of their community, even if that goes against some of the members of that community. That kind of athlete needs as much courage off the court as they do on it. Maybe more. With that in mind, in no particular order, here are my picks for athlete of the year, based on conduct most becoming a professional athlete.
Colin Kaepernick, football
Colin Kaepernick is still being punished by the NFL for exercising his right to peaceful free speech. Despite protestations of innocence from various teams, his continued absence from the league is a deliberate message meant to keep players in line and pander to football fans who aren’t also fans of the Bill of Rights. This is truly a case of a league misreading the room – and the decade. His influence has only spread more during his enforced absence from football. Nike’s use of his image in their ad campaign increased sales 31%. On 14 December, seven members of the Prince George County Board of Education sent a letter to Washington requesting they give Kaepernick an immediate tryout for the team after their two starting quarterbacks went down with injury: “We believe that giving Kaepernick an opportunity will send the right message to our students and community members, who see him as someone who cares about issues affecting our community.” Washington have instead chosen to start a quarterback who last threw a pass in the NFL in 2011. Kaepernick risked everything to quietly protest racial injustice while the NFL is unwilling to risk anything to do what’s right.
Maggie Nichols, gymnastics
University of Oklahoma gymnast Maggie Nichols will be honored in January with the 2018 NCAA Inspiration Award. This year she won an NCAA individual national championship as well as becoming the first gymnast with two perfect 10s on every event. She is the only gymnast to post back-to-back “Gym Slams” with a 10.0 on every event in consecutive seasons. What makes her achievements even more remarkable is that she accomplished this while undergoing the kind of personal stress that would have sidelined most of us. Right before the start of the 2018 season, Nichols revealed that she was the first of what would become hundreds of young girls to accuse Larry Nassar, the team doctor for USA Gymnastics, of sexual molestation.
Beyond exposing the exploitation of the athletes, her courage in coming forth also led to uncovering the negligence of the USA Gymnastics organization in stopping the abuse. The subsequent lawsuits have resulted in USA Gymnastics declaring bankruptcy and a complete reorganization. “Coming forward made me a stronger person,” Nichols said. “Going through such a traumatic event and growing the courage to come forward took a lot of strength for me. It was very hard. But after I did so, I felt that I was inspiring others which gave me so much strength and made me feel like an inspiration which is so motivating.” Because of her and the other gymnasts who have come forward, thousands of other young girls are safer to focus on the joys of the sport instead of worrying about predators.
Serena Williams, tennis
No one disputes Serena Williams’ place as one of the most successful athletes in the world. She has dominated tennis for most of her career, tying Steffi Graf’s record of being ranked number one by the Women’s Tennis Association for 186 consecutive weeks. Her achievements have not only encouraged young girls to take up tennis, but her prominence as a black woman in a mostly white sport has inspired more African-American girls to pursue the sport. That would be enough to make her one of the most influential athletes this year. But she has gone even further in redefining the sport by redefining the way females are perceived, not just as athletes, but as women.
For most of her career, she has faced body shaming for being a muscular woman. Watching her stride onto the court confident in her powerful body is a stark refutation of the harmful traditional view of beauty which praises skinny, physically weak women in need of a man’s strength. Fortunately, that grotesque and self-loathing image is being replaced by women like Williams who aren’t ashamed of their muscles.
Williams is also the embodiment of what NFL coach Vince Lombardi used to say: “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.” She returned to professional tennis just months after giving birth, a procedure that nearly killed her due to a pulmonary embolism that required multiple surgeries. Despite the trauma to her body, she is back playing as hard as ever, demonstrating that motherhood is not an impediment to ambition, but a bonus in providing a new perspective. “I think having a baby might help,” Williams said. “When I’m too anxious I lose matches, and I feel like a lot of that anxiety disappeared when Olympia was born. Knowing I’ve got this beautiful baby to go home to makes me feel like I don’t have to play another match. I don’t need the money or the titles or the prestige. I want them, but I don’t need them. That’s a different feeling for me.” That difference was demonstrated when she returned to play tennis, only to find that the WTA had changed her world ranking from number 1 to 451, a clear punishment, whether intended or not, for her taking time off to have a baby. After public outcry, the WTA this week changed their rules regarding women returning from giving birth. Williams continues to improve the sport through her athleticism and her social stances.
Coach John Wooden taught me that sports wasn’t just about making us better athletes, but about making us better people. Compassion, kindness, and morality were more important than a championship season. Fame wasn’t an accomplishment, it was an opportunity to show our gratitude to the community that we are a part of by changing it for the better. That’s what these three exceptional athletes have done this year: left us better off because of their commitment to a sport and to society.
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