ZERO DAYS TO WASTE: Most know Trump is an illegitimate president* aided into office by Russian military attacks; some think he’s great, for reasons too dull to get into.
But where all Americans should agree if we want any future on this planet: we’ve got to bury the GOP.
Thread
1/ The GOP under Trump has been trying to relive the “greed is good” ‘80s from the moment he illegitimately took power.
2/ GREAT DANGER: As the theatre of distractions plays on, we can never forget what’s at stake.
Stephen Hawking warned us in 2017: “Trump stance could damage earth.”
@BBCNewsbbc.com/news/science-e…
3/ 😔”The Paris Agreement tried to encourage every nation to cut carbon pollution simultaneously—like a group of children who grab one another’s hands..Trump has significantly diminished this virtuous commitment to fighting climate change.”
@TheAtlantictheatlantic.com/politics/archi…
4/ ANOINTED BY BIG OIL: “Conservative groups, funded by fossil fuel magnates, spend approximately one billion dollars every year interfering with public understanding of what is actually happening to our world.”
@splinter_newssplinternews.com/how-fossil-fue…
8/ GOP likes to make environmental regulations the domain of “libtards”, but you can’t create jobs on a dead planet.
@HuffPosthuffpost.com/entry/runaway-…
9/ Before churchy billionaires of the fossilized set made disbelief in climate change the word of god (see #4), former GOP presidents made historic progress on environmental protections. Hell, Nixon gave us the EPA.
@EPAepa.gov/history/origin…
13/ But overall, Trump’s GOP is a big environmental fail.
@LCVoterslcv.org/trumpyearone/
14/ FAIL: “To simply award Trump an ‘F’ does not come close to capturing both the depth of his administration’s assault on environmental protections..all to provide favors to the wealthiest corporate polluters. The totality of anti-environmental offenses is absolutely staggering”
15/ Climate change is happening and climate change is human caused. So Trump stacks his administration* with deniers.
@NBCNewsnbcnews.com/politics/natio…
19/ "We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible. Trump's action could push Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid," Stephen Hawking.
@cnbccnbc.com/2018/03/15/ste…
20/ “Trump's Dept of Agriculture buries climate-change studies because if you don't talk about it, it's not happening.
22/ So why would a nuclear-armed wreck of a nation put money behind a reality tv bozo.
“There’s no way to understand Trump’s relationship with Russia without oil and climate politics—they’re likely colluding to destroy our planet’s climate system”
@grist grist.org/article/trump-…
23/ CLIMATE APARTHEID: “Climate change is a human rights issue precisely because of the impact it’s having on people..A state that fails to take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is violating their human rights obligations.”-@ashfaqkhalfan
@guardiantheguardian.com/environment/20…
24/ Oh my.
“Climate change is a problem where nothing short of dramatic structural change in the way capitalism works can deliver the 2030 target of a 45% cut in carbon emissions..we are unlikely to recognise it as capitalism”-@paulmasonnews
@NewStatesmannewstatesman.com/politics/econo…
25/ Even the @DalaiLama says Trump is evading global responsibility.
@TIMEtime.com/5616623/dalai-…
26/ Fear of a dead planet.
“We have given our planet the disastrous gift of climate change..there is no new world, no utopia around the corner. We are running out of space, and the only places to go to are other worlds.”-Stephen Hawking
@voxdotcomvox.com/science-and-he…
27/ We don’t have another planet and we’d muck it up anyway. So it’s critical we make it work here. But who holds GOP accountable.
“Exxon’s Arctic dreams fell apart in 2014 after Obama administration slapped sanctions on Russia’s oil industry”
@voxdotcom vox.com/energy-and-env…
28/ The more I investigated Trump-Russia, the more it came back to the oil-war economies. So I got rid of my car. It was one small thing I could do. Not all can do that but what are you willing to do, what sacrifices would you make.
29/ Remember when it took decades to put a warning label on cigarettes because Big Tobacco had a seat at the table. We don’t have time to dither on thwarting climate change and yet...we dither.
@YaleE360e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-…
31/ It seems inconceivable but in the not so distant past, believing in science wasn’t a partisan thing.
@washingtonpost 2014 archiveswashingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/w…
32/ And then Trump happened. An illegitimately elected president* (see #21) calls climate change a “hoax”, MSM parrots his every phonus ballonus utterance confusing the easily bamboozled, casting doubt where there should be none. GOP deny cuz $💸.
@nytimesnytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/…
“Climate change has been damaging polar bears' habitats, forcing them to scavenge for food on land.”
@BBCNewsbbc.com/news/amp/world…
37/ Not a hoax.🦋
“Human-caused climate change and habitat loss are now threatening North American monarch butterflies with extinction. Increasing carbon dioxide levels may be making milkweed—the only food monarch caterpillars will eat—too toxic.”
@NatGeonationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/1…
38/😔
“Around the world, sea level has risen by almost eight inches..a rate unparalleled in the last 6,000 years..This small mammal is therefore only the first of many species that face significant risk due to a warming climate, the authors warn.”
@NatGeonews.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/first-…
39/ Dunno about you, but I like a planet populated by all things great and small. I’ve seen orcas off the coast of Washington and marveled at a monarch born on my milkweed plant. The doomsday clock can be reversed or slowed but not with this GOP.
@nytimesnytimes.com/interactive/20…
40/ Hmmm🤔. Let’s see: who else with oil interests thinks climate change is a hoax. Da, this guy.
@FRANCE24france24.com/en/20170331-ru…
41/ Censoring truth: how very autocratic.
“Trump administration officials sought to cut several pages of the document on the grounds that its description of climate science did not mesh with the administration’s official stance.”
@washingtonpostwashingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…
42/ Many stories in this thread would’ve buried any other administration. But with all the money propping up reality tv bozo, real news is avalanched all too often by puff pieces.
43/ I get it. Oil in its various forms used to win wars. Now, it causes cause wars, and cancer, and climate change and extinction. And it has another ill side-effect: it spawns dictators.
@voxdotcom vox.com/2014/4/10/5601…
44/ Gee I know it’s hard to fathom tuning out the consume/obey marketeers on the boob tube for the past sixty years. But pulling up a lawn chair and watching our planet burn has little curb appeal. The GOP has done a hella job misdirecting truth.
@politicopolitico.com/story/2018/03/…
45/ So with all the money—foreign and domestic—propping up a real fake president* and his science denier hacks—useful idiots for energy interests—what’s our strategy to give em the boot. The cult of TrumPutin will not go gently into that dark night. huffpost.com/entry/stephen-…
46/ Perhaps one way to bury the GOP is to find something to unite over. Maybe if we rise above the theatre of distraction by bad actors clinging to antiquated plotlines and find something to all fall in love with. Something that needs our help.
@NewYorkernewyorker.com/culture/annals…
47/ Remember that time in the ‘70s when we had a President who was an environmentalist who’s narrative of truth was crushed by the Greed-80s. Ya, me too. President Carter knows the score.🦋
48/ So we can allow the GOP to illegitimately remain in power, scripting false narratives for Big Oil—and bury the last whale, the last polar bear, and witness the last monarch take flight—or we can bury the GOP. The future is unwritten.
@VanityFair vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/t…
49/ I’m with Greta.🦋
@UNFCCC @GretaThunberg💜
50/ CLIMATE JUSTICE FOR A LIVING PLANET: “We have not come here to beg world leaders to care..We are running out of time. We have come here to let you know that change is coming whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people”-@GretaThunberg
Photo @anderspangpang
51/ GOP IS INFORMED ITS DENIALISM IS A FAIL: “In a memo circulated Wednesday to Republican congressional offices, the polling firm of longtime GOP strategist Frank Luntz warned that climate change was ‘a GOP vulnerability.’”
@WSJwsj.com/articles/some-…
52/ RISE ABOVE: Now that you have the facts, clearly we can’t leave the planet’s future to a party that is immoral, kompromised, bot by oil, in denial and only pays lip service to climate change when pollsters tell them to. RIP GOP—you won’t be missed.
@qzqz.com/1632364/kids-s…
53/ CODA:
“They took all the trees
And put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half to seem 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Til its gone
They paved paradise...”
58/ To grasp why the Trump administration* would set us back decades in environmental protections, consider his bosses: two villains who stole our data to steal the election, both climate change “deniers” who by installing Trump served themselves billions.
61/ THE POETRY OF A FROG: A special I wrote and produced with a brilliant team of scientists on the importance of rain forests. Seems somehow fitting🔥🌎. aljazeera.com/programmes/tec…
62/ CHOKEHOLD: Another special I wrote and produced with a brilliant group of scientists. Ya, throwaway living is dumb. aljazeera.com/programmes/tec…
“But as the great whites move in for the kill, the seals do something astonishing. Together, they turn on their enemy.”—Sir David Attenborough, Planet Earth III, Series 1, Coasts
On my flight back from the UK, the wi-fi was down, and I faced 11 hours untethered from the digital world. After reading about 50 pages of Our Malady by Timothy Snyder, a birthday present from a Bette member, and writing two Bette posts for future delivery, I decided to turn on the video screen…
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… embedded in the seat in front of me and submerge myself in the natural world by tuning into Sir David Attenborough’s Planet Earth series, the only sensible thing to do on a long plane ride.
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THEATRE OF WAR: There's No Debating We Are In an Information War—So How Do We Get Out?
I report on why the pro-democracy faction needs to stop bringing policy papers to a knife fight and how Pres. Biden must address hybrid warfare.—@Byline_Media
“Biden’s old. Deal with it. What Americans need to do is unite to prevent the collapse of democracy by foreign-backed traitors.” @jimstewartson, RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcast
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@jimstewartson That’s it. That’s the job this November. Preventing the collapse of democracy. Voting so we can vote again. Voting for the continuation of democratic governance so we fix things, like the Supreme Court, an anti-democratic force in America.
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BAD BONES—Heidi Siegmund Cuda looks beyond the mild-mannered exterior of US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to find connections to religious extremism, Russian oligarchs, violent rhetoric, and sexual assaulters
My investigation for @Byline_Media on the creepy world of Mike
“The kingdom of God allows for aggression—and there’s a time to every purpose under heaven. From the time of John the Baptist until today, the kingdom of God has been advancing by forceful men and forceful men take hold of it, that’s what the New Testament says.”—Mike Johnson
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In watching archival videos of Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican second in line for the presidency after the Vice President, I notice some curious tics.
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WITCH SWITCH—It was decades in the making. A cruel and sinister plot to turn the Republican party’s base into single-issue voters. As long as candidates professed to be anti-abortion, it didn’t matter if they left a trail of corruption littered with hush money and hypocrisy.
On June 24, 2022, the GOP got its wish, as the MAGA wing of the Supreme Court overturned fifty years of federal protection for a woman’s right to abortion, which really was about health care as people quickly learned.
I recall tweeting the moment I heard the news of Roe that “birds still sing under fascism”.
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I had written years worth of warnings with Sian Norris in Byline Times of what was to come, and when it happened, I recall sitting in stunned silence, as a chorus of things with wings tried to comfort me with birdsong.
Ethane — the company that paid @SpeakerJohnson — was majority owned by three Russian nationals: Konstantin Nikolaev, Mikhail Yuriev, and Andrey Kunatbaev.
Throughout our history, when faced with a threat to our Republic, to the United States of America, we have always come together to defeat it. Every time.
We are asking you as our leader in this grave moment to address the nation about the need to unite against a new threat coming from our adversaries – the threat of information warfare.
We are a target nation in an Invisible War. It is called cyberwar — or information warfare, also known as active measures — and it’s a pernicious type of threat because people may not even know it’s happening.
Instead of bullets or bombs, our enemies are using lies and deceit, half truths, falsehoods. They are using psychological operations designed by foreign military intelligence — targeted to twist our minds, break our truth and destroy our reality — in an attempt to bring America to its knees.
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This invisible war has taken aim at our decency, our humanity, our kindness and empathy, and we regret to inform you — the enemy is hitting their target: all of us.
A country divided is a weakened country, but a country that comes together to stand in shared truth is a strong country, a world leader, a shining example of democracy in action, and the people that make that democracy work. We cannot be divided when the enemy is on our doorstep.
These attacks by enemies of democracy aim to coerce our citizens into bizarre and dangerous beliefs through weapons of mass psychological destruction, weapons largely created to benefit the Russian government.
It is our belief that once Americans hear this truth from you, they will recall that together — united — we can do wondrous things. During the Civil War, Americans defeated slavery and restored our Union. In World War II, we defeated the dark authoritarian forces of fascism both at home and abroad.
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The time is now, in this moment, to alert our nation. The effect information warfare is having on our citizens is wildly destructive and calls for violence are increasing.
It is important Americans know that forces of a very real evil are attempting to destroy our great nation and what it stands for. This is a new kind of battle, because our enemies are using technologies that didn’t exist in previous decades.
This is a war for our hearts and for our minds — a war that rips apart families and divides our communities — that pits parents against their children and neighbor against neighbor — that weakens the US globally and is taking direct aim to tear this country apart. It is an attack on the very soul of America and the democracy which has sustained it.
Disinformation does more than simply misinform people. When weaponized, it can change people’s minds for them. It can make them believe in things that don’t exist. It can make them hate their fellow Americans. It divides families, churches and communities.
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