Deep Politics Forum

Do people truly appreciate how dangerous Trump is?

This isn't the usual fucked up imperialist America.

Trump Adviser: Screw' China If It Doesn't Like Taiwan Call
It's time America "stand up to these bullies and say we're not gonna let you do this."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/step...b31399064a

Trump owes a Chinese bank tens of millions so he gins up a rationale for stiffing them?

This is fuckedness on a whole new level.

Cliff Varnell Wrote:Do people truly appreciate how dangerous Trump is?

This isn't the usual fucked up imperialist America.

Trump Adviser: Screw' China If It Doesn't Like Taiwan Call
It's time America "stand up to these bullies and say we're not gonna let you do this."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/step...b31399064a

Trump owes a Chinese bank tens of millions so he gins up a rationale for stiffing them?

This is fuckedness on a whole new level.

It is 'fucked-up' on steroids and nukes. If he manages to last 4 years without impeachment/death/destroying the Planet, he will do about 40-75 years of damage [to get the USA/World back to where it is now - which is NOT in a good place, at all!], IMO. He talks and acts like a gangster; he is rubbing shoulders and shaking hands with KKK, Nazis and worse. His choices for his advisors and cabinet are the bottom of the barrel and a betrayal of his campaign 'promises'. He's a thug and will use his new corporate offices in the White House to sell Trump steaks, Trump casinos, and Trump land/building sales. A Berlesconi clone for sure. In just months most who voted for him will be very sorry....but we will all suffer greatly. Sadly, some part of the Deep Political Establishment backed this thing, and will use him as their useful idiot. The only possible bright spot could be the development of a sustained and growing resistance movement not only to Trumpf, but to the entire structure of the National Security State and Secret Government. If not, this will be the lights out for the USA and perhaps much of the World...... Clinton would NOT have been a cake-walk, however. With Trumpf we are in uncharted territory, I admit. We will certainly become the laughing stock of much of the World....more than we are already.

A slightly different view of what is happening below, which argues that the signs are that we are witnessing the end of the end of the American century.

Quote:WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2016
The End of the American Century
I have a bone to pick with the Washington Post. A few days back, as some of my readers may be aware, it published a list of some two hundred blogs that it claimed were circulating Russian propaganda, and I was disappointed to find that The Archdruid Report didn't make the cut.




Oh, granted, I don't wait each week for secret orders from Boris Badenov, the mock-iconic Russian spy from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show of my youth, but that shouldn't disqualify me. I've seen no evidence that any of the blogs on the list take orders from Moscow, either; certainly the Post offered none worth mentioning. Rather, what seems to have brought down the wrath of "Pravda on the Potomac," as the Post is unfondly called by many DC locals, is that none of these blogs have been willing to buy into the failed neoconservative consensus that's guided American foreign policy for the last sixteen years. Of that latter offense, in turn, The Archdruid Report is certainly guilty.


There are at least two significant factors behind the Post's adoption of the tactics of the late Senator Joe McCarthy, dubious lists and all. The first is that the failure of Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions has thrown into stark relief an existential crisis that has the American news media by the throat. The media sell their services to their sponsors on the assumption that they can then sell products and ideas manufactured by those sponsors to the American people. The Clinton campaign accordingly outspent Trump's people by a factor of two to one, sinking impressive amounts of the cash she raised from millionaire donors into television advertising and other media buys.


Clinton got the coverage she paid for, too. Nearly every newspaper in the United States endorsed her; pundits from one end of the media to the other solemnly insisted that everyone ought to vote for her; equivocal polls were systematically spun in her favor by a galaxy of talking heads. Pretty much everyone who thought they mattered was on board the bandwagon. The only difficulty, really was that the people who actually matteredin particular, voters in half a dozen crucial swing statesresponded to all this by telling their soi-disant betters, "Thanks, but one turkey this November is enough."


It turned out that Clinton was playing by a rulebook that was long past its sell-by date, while Trump had gauged the shift in popular opinion and directed his resources accordingly. While she sank her money into television ads on prime time, he concentrated on social media and barnstorming speaking tours through regions that rarely see a presidential candidate. He also figured out early on that the mainstream media was a limitless source of free publicity, and the best way to make use of it was to outrage the tender sensibilities of the media itself and get denounced by media talking heads.


That worked because a very large number of people here in the United States no longer trust the news media to tell them anything remotely resembling the truth. That's why so many of them have turned to blogs for the services that newspapers and broadcast media used to provide: accurate reporting and thoughtful analysis of the events that affect their lives. Nor is this an unresasonable choice. The issue's not just that the mainstream news media is biased; it's not just that it never gets around to mentioning many issues that affect people's lives in today's America; it's not even that it only airs a suffocatingly narrow range of viewpoints, running the gamut of opinion from A to A minusthough of course all these are true. It's also that so much of it is so smug, so shallow, and so dull.


The predicament the mainstream media now face is as simple as it is inescapable. After taking billions of dollars from their sponsors, they've failed to deliver the goods. Every source of advertising revenue in the United States has got to be looking at the outcome of the election, thinking, "Fat lot of good all those TV buys did her," and then pondering their own advertising budgets and wondering how much of that money might as well be poured down a rathole.


Presumably the mainstream news media could earn the trust of the public again by breaking out of the echo chamber that defines the narrow range of acceptable opinions about the equally narrow range of issues open to discussion, but this would offend their sponsors. Worse, it would offend the social strata that play so large a role in defining and enforcing that echo chamber; most mainstream news media employees who have a role in deciding what does and does not appear in print or on the air belong to these same social strata, and are thus powerfully influenced by peer pressure. Talking about supposed Russian plots to try to convince people not to get their news from blogs, though it's unlikely to work, doesn't risk trouble from either of those sources.


Why, though, blame it on the Russians? That's where we move from the first to the second of the factors I want to discuss this week.


A bit of history may be useful here. During the 1990s, the attitude of the American political class toward the rest of the world rarely strayed far from the notions expressed by Francis Fukuyama in his famous and fatuous essay proclaiming the end of history. The fall of the Soviet Union, according to this line of thought, proved that democracy and capitalism were the best political and economic systems humanity would ever come up with, and the rest of the world would therefore inevitably embrace them in due time. All that was left for the United States and its allies to do was to enforce certain standards of global order on the not-yet-democratic and not-yet-capitalist nations of the world, until they grew up and got with the program.


That same decade, though, saw the emergence of the neoconservative movement. The neoconservaties were as convinced of the impending triumph of capitalism and democracy as their rivals, but they opposed the serene absurdities of Fukuyama's thesis with a set of more muscular absurdities of their own. Intoxicated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its allies, they convinced themselves that identical scenes could be enacted in Baghdad, Tehran, Beijing, and the rest of the world, if only the United States would seize the moment and exploit its global dominance.


During Clinton's presidency, the neoconservatives formed a pressure group on the fringes of official Washington, setting up lobbying groups such as the Project for a New American Century and bombarding the media with position papers. The presidency of George W. Bush gave them their chance, and they ran with it. Where the first Iraq war ended with Saddam Hussein beaten but still in powerthe appropriate reponse according to the older ideologythe second ended with the US occupying Iraq and a manufactured "democratic" regime installed under its aegis. In the afterglow of victory, neoconservatives talked eagerly about the conquest of Iran and the remaking of the Middle East along the same lines as post-Soviet eastern Europe. Unfortunately for these fond daydreams, what happened instead was a vortex of sectarian warfare and anti-American insurgency.


You might think, dear reader, that the cascading failures of US policy in Iraq might have caused second thoughts in the US political and military elites whose uncritical embrace of neoconservative rhetoric let that happen. You might be forgiven, for that matter, for thinking that the results of US intervention in Afghanistan, where the same assumptions had met with the same disappointment, might have given those second thoughts even more urgency. If so, you'd be quite mistaken. According to the conventional wisdom in today's America, the only conceivable response to failure is doubling down.


"If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again" thus seems to be the motto of the US political class these days, and rarely has that been so evident as in the conduct of US foreign policy. The Obama administration embraced the same policies as its feckless predecessor, and the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon went their merry way, overthrowing governments right and left, and tossing gasoline onto the flames of ethnic and sectarian strife in various corners of the world, under the serene conviction that the blowback from these actions could never inconvenience the United States.


That would be bad enough. Far worse was the effect of neoconservative policies on certain other nations: Russia, China, and Iran. In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, Russia was a basket case, Iran was a pariah nation isolated from the rest of the world, and China had apparently made its peace with an era of American global dominance, and was concentrating on building up its economy instead of its military. It would have been child's play for the United States to maintain that state of affairs indefinitely. Russia could have been helped to recover and then integrated economically into Europe; China could have been allowed the same sort of regional primacy the US allows as a matter of course to its former enemies Germany and Japan; and without US intervention in the Middle East to hand it a bumper crop of opening wedges, Iran could have been left to stew in its own juices until it imploded.


That's not what happened, though. Instead, two US adminstrations went out of their way to convince Russia and China they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by accepting their assigned places in a US-centric international order. Russia and China have few interests in common and many reasons for conflict; they've spent much of their modern history glaring at each other across a long and contentious mutual border; they had no reason to ally with each other, until the United States gave them one. Nor did either nation have any reason to reach out to the Muslim theocracy in Iranquite the contraryuntil they began looking for additional allies to strengthen their hand against the United States.


One of the basic goals of effective foreign policy is to divide your potential enemies against each other, so that they're so busy worrying about one another that they don't have the time or resources to bother you. It's one thing, though, to violate that rule when the enemies you're driving together lack the power to threaten your interests, and quite another when the resource base, population, and industrial capacity of the nations you're driving together exceeds your own. The US government's harebrained pursuit of neoconservative policies has succeeded, against the odds, in creating a sprawling Eurasian alliance with an economic and military potential significantly greater than that of the US. There have probably been worse foreign policy blunders in the history of the world, but I can't think of one off hand.


You won't read about that in the mainstream news media in the United States. At most, you'll get canned tirades about how Russian president Vladimir Putin is a "brutal tyrant" who is blowing up children in Aleppo or what have you. "Brutal tyrant," by the way, is a code phrase of the sort you normally get in managed media. In the US news, it simply means "a head of state who's insufficiently submissive to the United States." Putin certainly qualifies as the latter; first in the Caucasus, then in the Ukraine, and now in Syria, he's deployed military force to advance his country's interests against those of the United States and its allies. I quite understand that the US political class isn't pleased by this, but it might be helpful for them to reflect on their own role in making it happen.


The Russian initiative isn't limited to Syria, though. Those of my readers who only pay attention to US news media probably don't know yet that Egypt has now joined Russia's side. Egyptian and Russian troops are carrying out joint military drills, and reports in Middle Eastern news media have it that Egyptian troops will soon join the war in Syria on the side of the Syrian government. If so, that's a game-changing move, and probably means game over for the murky dealings the United States and its allies have been pursuing in that end of the Middle East.


China and Russia have very different cultural styles when it comes to exerting power. Russian culture celebrates the bold stroke; Chinese culture finds subtle pressure more admirable. Thus the Chinese have been advancing their country's interests against those of the United States and its allies in a less dramatic but equally effective way. While distracting Washington's attention with a precisely measured game of "chicken" in the South China Sea, the Chinese have established a line of naval bases along the northern shores of the Indian Ocean from Myanmar to Djibouti, and contracted alliances in East Africa and South Asia. Those of my readers who've read Alfred Thayer Mahan and thus know their way around classic maritime strategy will recognize exactly what's going on here.


Most recently, China has scored two dramatic shifts in the balance of power in the western Pacific. My American readers may have heard of President Rodrigo Duterte of the Phillippines; he's the one who got his fifteen minutes of fame in the mainstream media here when he called Barack Obama a son of a whore. The broader context, of course, got left out. Duterte, like the heads of state of many nominal US allies, resents US interference in his country's affairs, and at this point he has other options. His outburst was followed in short order by a trip to Beijing, where he and China's President Xi signed multibillion-dollar aid agreements and talked openly about the end of a US-dominated world order.


A great many Americans seem to think of the Phillippines as a forgettable little country off somewhere unimportant in the Third World. That's a massive if typical misjudgment. It's a nation of 100 million people on a sprawling archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, commanding the entire southern end of the South China Sea and a vast swath of the western Pacific, including crucial maritime trade routes. As a US ally, it was a core component of the ring of encirclement holding Chinese maritime forces inside the island ring that walls China's coastal waters from rest of the Pacific basin. As a Chinese ally, it holds open that southern gate to China's rapidly expanding navy and air force.


Duterte wasn't the only Asian head of state to head for Beijing in recent months. Malaysia's prime minister was there a few weeks later, to sign up for another multibillion-dollar aid package, buy Chinese vessels for the Malaysian navy, and make acid comments about the way that, ahem, former colonial powers keep trying to interfere in Malaysian affairs. Malaysia's a smaller nation than the Phillippines, but even more strategically placed. Its territory runs alongside the northern shore of the Malacca Strait: the most important sea lane in the world, the gateway connecting the Indian Ocean with the Pacific, through which much of the world's seaborne crude oil transport passes.


All these are opening moves. Those who are familiar with the rise and fall of global powers know what the next moves are; those who don't might want to consider reading my book Declineand Fall, or my novel Twilight's Last Gleaming, which makes the same points in narrative form. Had Hillary Clinton won this month's election, we might have moved into the endgame much sooner. Her enthusiasm for overthrowing governments during her stint as Secretary of State, and her insistence that the US should impose a no-fly zone over Syria in the teeth of Russian fighters and state-of-the-art antiaircraft defenses, suggests that she could have filled the role of my fictional president Jameson Weed, and sent US military forces into a shooting war they were not realistically prepared to win.


We seem to have dodged that bullet. Even so, the United States remains drastically overextended, with military bases in more than a hundred countries around the world and a military budget nearly equal to all other countries' put together. Meanwhile, back here at home, our country is falling apart. Leave the bicoastal bubble where the political class and their hangers-on spend their time, and the United States resembles nothing so much as the Soviet Union in its last days: a bleak and dilapidated landscape of economic and social dysfunction, where the enforced cheerfulness of the mainstream media contrasts intolerably with the accelerating disintegration visible all around.


That could have been prevented. If the United States had responded to the end of the Cold War by redirecting the so-called "peace dividend" toward the rebuilding of our national infrastructure and our domestic economy, we wouldn't be facing the hard choices before us right nowand in all probability, by the way, Donald Trump wouldn't just have been elected president. Instead, the US political class let itself be caught up in neoconservative fantasies of global dominion, and threw away that opportunity. The one bright spot in that dismal picture is that we have another chance.


History shows that there are two ways that empires end. Their most common fate involves clinging like grim death to their imperial status until it drags them down. Spain's great age of overseas empire ended that way, with Spain plunging into a long era of economic disarray and civil war. At least it maintained its national unity; the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires both finished their imperial trajectories by being partitioned, as of course did the Soviet Union. There are worse examples; I'm thinking here of the Assyrian Empire of the ancient Middle East, which ceased to exist completelyits nationhood, ethnicity, and language dissolving into those of its neighborsonce it fell.


Then there's the other option, the one chosen by the Chinese in the fifteenth century and Great Britain in the twentieth. Both nations had extensive overseas empires, and both walked away from them, carrying out a staged withdrawal from imperial overreach. Both nations not only survived the process but came through with their political and cultural institutions remarkably intact. This latter option, with all its benefits, is still available to the United States.


A staged withdrawal of the sort just described would of course be done step by step, giving our allies ample time to step up to the plate and carry the costs of their own defense. Those regions that have little relevance to US national interests, such as the Indian Ocean basin, would see the first round of withdrawals, while more important regions such as Europe and the northwest Pacific would be later on the list. The withdrawal wouldn't go all the way back to our borders by any means; a strong presence in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific basins and a pivot to our own "near abroad" would be needed, but those would also be more than adequate to maintain our national security.


Meanwhile, the billions upon billions of dollars a year that would be saved could be put to work rebuilding our national infrastructure and economy, with enough left over for a Marshall Plan for Mexicothe most effective way to reduce illegal immigration to the United States, after all, is to help make sure that citizens of the countries near us have plenty of jobs at good wages where they already live. Finally, since the only glue holding the Russo-Chinese alliance together is their mutual opposition to US hegemony, winding up our term as global policeman will let Russia, China and Iran get back to contending with each other rather than with us.


Such projects, on the rare occasions they're made, get shouted down by today's US political class as "isolationism." There's a huge middle ground between isolationism and empire, though, and that middle ground is where most of the world's nations stand as they face their neighbors. One way or another, the so-called "American century" is ending; it can end the hard way, the way so many other eras of global hegemony have endedor it can end with the United States recognizing that it's a nation among nations, not an overlord among vassals, and acting accordingly.


The mainstream news media here in the United States, if they actually provided the public service they claim, might reasonably be expected to discuss the pros and cons of such a proposal, and of the many other options that face this nation at the end of its era of global hegemony. I can't say I expect that to happen, though. It's got to be far more comfortable for them to blame the consequences of their own failure on the supposed Boris Badenovs of the blogosphere, and cling to the rags of their fading role as purveyors of a failed conventional wisdom, until the last of their audience wanders away for good.

Thanks to tooth for bringing this to my attention.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fl...teen-times

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for national security advisor, has reportedly promoted conspiracy theories and unfounded accusations at least 16 times since August.

Flynn used his Twitter account in recent months to push unproven and outrageous allegations about top Democrats, according to a Politico report published Tuesday.

The report cited Flynn's retweet of a post claiming that Hillary Clinton "secretly waged war" on the Catholic Church and another which called President Barack Obama a "jihadi" who "laundered" money for Muslim terrorists in Iran.
Flynn promoted a claim that John Podesta, Clinton's campaign manager, took part in occult rituals involving bodily fluids. He also posted tweets suggesting that Clinton's emails contained information on "Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc" and asking readers to "decide" for themselves based on a "MUST READ" article by True Pundit, a fake news site.
During the presidential campaign, True Pundit pushed the false claim that Clinton wore an earpiece during a debate. The site broke into the mainstream after publishing a bizarre conspiracy theory that Clinton led a child sex trafficking ring run from the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant, which Flynn promoted a week before the election.
On Sunday, a man entered the restaurant with an AR-15 assault rifle and fired at least one shot. He was arrested and charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, and reportedly told police that he came to "self-investigate" the fringe conspiracy theory dubbed "Pizzagate."

They're polluting our precious bodily fluids!

Tracy Riddle Wrote:http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fl...teen-times

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for national security advisor, has reportedly promoted conspiracy theories and unfounded accusations at least 16 times since August.

Flynn used his Twitter account in recent months to push unproven and outrageous allegations about top Democrats, according to a Politico report published Tuesday.

The report cited Flynn's retweet of a post claiming that Hillary Clinton "secretly waged war" on the Catholic Church and another which called President Barack Obama a "jihadi" who "laundered" money for Muslim terrorists in Iran.
Flynn promoted a claim that John Podesta, Clinton's campaign manager, took part in occult rituals involving bodily fluids. He also posted tweets suggesting that Clinton's emails contained information on "Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc" and asking readers to "decide" for themselves based on a "MUST READ" article by True Pundit, a fake news site.
During the presidential campaign, True Pundit pushed the false claim that Clinton wore an earpiece during a debate. The site broke into the mainstream after publishing a bizarre conspiracy theory that Clinton led a child sex trafficking ring run from the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant, which Flynn promoted a week before the election.
On Sunday, a man entered the restaurant with an AR-15 assault rifle and fired at least one shot. He was arrested and charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, and reportedly told police that he came to "self-investigate" the fringe conspiracy theory dubbed "Pizzagate."

They're polluting our precious bodily fluids!

It is certainly going to be a very paranoid and delusional bunch in control....backed by the 'usual' powers that be behind the curtains. It will not be dull, at least. It may be mind-stretching. There are real conspiracies and make-believe conspiracies. Sadly, the public airing of fake ones makes the unschooled public more skeptical of all of them, and those really not bright lights to blindly believe in some of the obviously fake ones. Propaganda will likely take a turn toward the fight for 'what is reality'....but after all, wasn't it always like that.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:

Tracy Riddle Wrote:http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fl...teen-times

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for national security advisor, has reportedly promoted conspiracy theories and unfounded accusations at least 16 times since August.

Flynn used his Twitter account in recent months to push unproven and outrageous allegations about top Democrats, according to a Politico report published Tuesday.

The report cited Flynn's retweet of a post claiming that Hillary Clinton "secretly waged war" on the Catholic Church and another which called President Barack Obama a "jihadi" who "laundered" money for Muslim terrorists in Iran.
Flynn promoted a claim that John Podesta, Clinton's campaign manager, took part in occult rituals involving bodily fluids. He also posted tweets suggesting that Clinton's emails contained information on "Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc" and asking readers to "decide" for themselves based on a "MUST READ" article by True Pundit, a fake news site.
During the presidential campaign, True Pundit pushed the false claim that Clinton wore an earpiece during a debate. The site broke into the mainstream after publishing a bizarre conspiracy theory that Clinton led a child sex trafficking ring run from the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant, which Flynn promoted a week before the election.
On Sunday, a man entered the restaurant with an AR-15 assault rifle and fired at least one shot. He was arrested and charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, and reportedly told police that he came to "self-investigate" the fringe conspiracy theory dubbed "Pizzagate."

They're polluting our precious bodily fluids!

It is certainly going to be a very paranoid and delusional bunch in control....backed by the 'usual' powers that be behind the curtains. It will not be dull, at least. It may be mind-stretching. There are real conspiracies and make-believe conspiracies. Sadly, the public airing of fake ones makes the unschooled public more skeptical of all of them, and those really not bright lights to blindly believe in some of the obviously fake ones. Propaganda will likely take a turn toward the fight for 'what is reality'....but after all, wasn't it always like that.

I remember when fake email stories went viral back in the 1990s, so it's not entirely new. It's just quicker and more powerful these days. TPTB are getting better at gaming all of us.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: President-elect Donald Trump has announced he will nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt has been one of the EPA's fiercest critics and has led a legal effort to overturn parts of President Obama's climate change policies, including his Clean Power Plan. Pruitt claimed the science of climate change is, quote, "far from settled." He is also seen as a close ally of the fossil fuel industry. In 2014, The New York Times revealed that Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general had formed what the paper described as a, quote, "unprecedented, secretive alliance" with the nation's top energy producers to fight Obama's climate efforts.
AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times also exposed Pruitt's close ties to the Oklahoma firm Devon Energy. In 2014, Pruitt sent the EPA a letter accusing federal regulators of overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in Oklahoma. What Pruitt didn't reveal was that the letter was secretly drafted by lawyers at Devon Energy. In 2015, Pruitt testified before Congress about his opposition to the EPA's Clean Power Plan regulations. When questioned by Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Pruitt refused to acknowledge the existence of climate change.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse questioning Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt last year. Trump's selection of Pruitt to head the EPA has been widely criticized by environmental groups and lawmakers concerned about the climate change crisis. Senator Bernie Sanders said, quote, "Pruitt's record is not only that of being a climate change denier, but also someone who has worked closely with the fossil fuel industry to make this country more dependent, not less, on fossil fuels."
AMY GOODMAN: Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook said, quote, "It's a safe assumption that Pruitt could be the most hostile EPA administrator toward clean air and safe drinking water in history."
To talk more about Scott Pruitt, we're joined by two guests. Here in New York, May Boeve is with us, executive director of 350 Action, the political arm of the climate organization "350.org"https://350.org/. And joining us from Washington, D.C., is Wenonah Hauter. She is executive director of Food & Water Watch.
Wenonah, let us begin with you. Oklahoma's attorney general, Scott Pruitt, tapped to head the EPA, your response?
WENONAH HAUTER: Well, you know, I first ran into Scott Pruitt when I was writing my recent book, Frackopoly, on the history of the oil and gas industry, and saw that he was one of the leading attorney generals lobbying on what he called sue-and-settle legislation, which we know that our citizenry has the right to sue the federal government when the government is not doing what's in their best interest. And he was lobbying in favor of Devon and Continental Resources in trying to stop the ability of citizens to actually move forward with lawsuits.
I think that putting Pruitt in charge of the EPA is a lot like putting one of The Three Stooges in charge of the agency, because he is not really credible on any of the issues around the environment. We can look at what he did in 2013 when he brought nine attorney generals to Oklahoma City, some of the most powerful law firms that represent the energy industry, along with the CEOs of many energy companies, to put together a scheme about how they were going to stop the federal government from taking action to stop the pollution from fossil fuel drilling and fracking. This was paid for by the right-wing energy and law institute at George Mason University.
The fossil fuel industry actually helped raise the money to put him in office. And one of the first things he did upon becoming the attorney general of Oklahoma was to start a committee on federalism, because what's unfortunate about Pruitt is, not only is he a cartoon character, but he's a very smart politician. And he saw the possibility of creating what is a lot like a national law firm, made up of attorney generals and also the legal arm of the energy industry, to be able to not only hassle the EPA, but also what was going on at state legislatures regarding fossil fuel development. So I think he's a very dangerous character.
I think that he is going to attempt to destroy the Environmental Protection Agency, and not just in the area of fossil fuels, but also around the pollution from factory farming and industrialized agriculture. He has been an ally of the big corporations that own these large animal factories. In fact, there was legislation that was turned down in Oklahoma in the last election called Freedom to Farm, which, of course, really means freedom of factory farms to pollute. So we know that, because the EPA hasn't done a real great job of regulating factory farms anyway, that we're going to see a lot of trouble ahead.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: May Boeve, in the news release that announced his nomination, the Trump transition team called Pruitt "an expert in Constitutional law" and said he, quote, "brings a deep understanding of the impact of regulations on both the environment and the economy." So could you respond to that and, in particular, the significance of him being a constitutional lawyer?
MAY BOEVE: Well, it's no surprise that he knows about the impact of regulation, because the regulations were starting to work. We were starting to see real pressure on the oil and gas industry on the issue of climate change. And they are pushing back. And so, they are celebrating that Scott Pruitt has been selected for this role. So, his expertise in this area means he's going to try to dismantle the foundation of laws that this country has built around environmental protection. Most significantly right now are the regulations that have been put in place around coal plants, around fracking. They're not nearly as strong as they need to be, but we certainly need the ones that we have. And so, this is a very dangerous appointment. It cannot be overstated. And it shows us exactly what we need to know about Donald Trump.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt's appearance on Capitol Hill in 2015, when he testified about his legal fight against President Obama's Clean Power Plan regulations.
AMY GOODMAN: So there you have Scott Pruitt testifying before the Senate. Wenonah Hauter, respond to what Pruitt has just said.
WENONAH HAUTER: Well, this is really a false dichotomy that we see all the time when energy is discussed. Really, what we need to do is be moving into a more energy-efficient and an energy future that relies on renewable energy. This would create many jobs, and it would also solve many of the problems that are going to cost taxpayers a lot of money as we see the problems from climate change really snowball.
You know, it's interesting that Pruitt and his allies have attacked the Clean Power Plan. I don't think that they completely understand what the plan does. It certainly disadvantages coal, which is a very, very dirty fossil fuel, but states are able to make their own plans. And one of the criticisms of the plan has been that it really incentivizes natural gas. And, of course, coal is beingthe industry is being destroyed because the amount of fossil fuel that has been fracked for has increased so much that it's realthat coal is now a higher price.
So, I think that what we're going to see at EPA is a real attack on anything that protects people or the environment. And this is really disturbing, because attorney generals are supposed to be the attorneys for the people, and Pruitt clearly is an attorney for the fossil fuel industry. And we're going to have to unite against Pruitt and the policies that he's going to put forward.
AMY GOODMAN: You talked about fracked oil. And I wanted to talk specifically about Oklahoma, where residents have filed a class action lawsuit against fracking companies over a massive 5.0-magnitude earthquake that struck the city of Cushing in November, knocking out power, rupturing gas lines, partially collapsing buildings. Cushing bills itself as the pipeline crossroads of the world and is home to above-ground tanks that store millions of barrels of crude oil. Scientists believe wastewater disposal wells from oil and gas fracking are linked to the dramatic rise in earthquakes in Oklahoma in recent years. Oklahoma experienced 907 magnitude-three-plus earthquakes in 2015. Before 2008, Oklahoma experienced an average of only one and two earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude each year. Your response to that, May Boeve?
MAY BOEVE: Well, this is very telling about what we're going to see more of. Recently, we heard from the chief in the Pawnee Reservation that they had had three earthquakes that day. So the earthquake epidemic in Oklahoma is significant. And here we have someone who wants to do more drilling, who wants there to be more earthquakes in Oklahoma, so is clearly not concerned about the people who live in that state and all the people in other states around this country who suffer from the impacts of fracking. Instead, he is going to make the pathway to more oil and gas development much smoother for his allies in the industry. But the good news here, if there is any, is that the climate movement has focused on fossil fuel infrastructure and won incredible victories at the local and state level. And so, if he intends to expand drilling, we will be there at every turn, ready to resist.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So what do you think the climate movement should be doing now in response to this?
MAY BOEVE: Well, we have to be incredibly clear-eyed about what we are up against. As we know, Trump has been saying two different stories about climate change. On the one hand, maybe he's revisiting his position on climate denial. On the other hand, he's making an appointment like this. So, no one should be under any illusion that we're going to see any sort of continuation of the progress we've seen on climate action. What the movement needs to do is be strong and unified and fight back on all of these decisions and appointments. And also, we can grow our movement. So many people who are concerned about the election of Donald Trump are concerned about what it means for this issue that is going to affect generations that have yet to come. And so, we are seeing many more people who want to get involved, who want to do more, who want to organize and march. That is what they will do. And so, Scott Pruitt better get ready for that.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, of course, Scott Pruitt is Donald Trump's choice, and that's what's key here, is his view on climate, on the environment. May Boeve, one of thecouple of the choices that have been bandied about, media has speculated about, for secretary of state are the current and past presidents of Exxon. Can you talk about Scott Pruitt's relationship with Exxon as attorney general of Oklahoma?
MAY BOEVE: Well, on the subject of appointments, it's absolutely devastating that the CEO of Exxon would be considered for secretary of state, just to be completely clear about that.
AMY GOODMAN: They talk about himthat means he has global experience. It's a global company.
MAY BOEVE: Yeah, of course. It's absolutely disastrous as even an idea. But in terms of Scott Pruitt's relationship to Exxon, he joined forces with other attorneys general backing up Exxon when it came under fire for its climate denial. There is an investigation underway into just how long ago Exxon knew about climate change and funded a disinformation campaign. And so, naturally, our government is doing its job in trying to find out how much they knew and when, and Exxon has gathered around it its allies at the state level, including Attorney General Scott Pruitt, to back it up. And so, we are seeing Exxon try to use its freedom of speech to lie to the public about climate change, and we're seeing climate deniers heading up for the EPA. We're living in some kind of twilight zone.
AMY GOODMAN: How does Exxon affect you at 350?
MAY BOEVE: Well, Exxon has come after our organization and a number of our allies. We've received one subpoena from Lamar Smith, who is a representative from the state of Texas, and we've received another subpoena from Exxon directly. And we are fighting back, but this is the kind of thing we can all expect to see more of under a Trump administration. We have to fight back. But they are not playing around.
AMY GOODMAN: This news from Greenpeace: Harold Hamm, Trump's top energy adviser and CEO of the country's largest fracking company, was chair of Pruitt's 2013 re-election campaign for Oklahoma attorney general. More recently, he's made news as one of the biggest proponents of the Dakota Access pipeline. It's his company's fracked oil that would have flowed through the pipeline if it had been completed. Wenonah Hauter, if you could talk about this? Now, Donald Trump has vowed tosays he supports the Dakota Access pipeline. Not clear how much he personally has invested in the Dakota Access pipelinelast we knew, between half a million and a million dollars, but one of his spokespeople said he's now sold that. Then there is his investment in Phillips 66, that would also profit. But what this means for what Trump, when he becomes president, Attorney General Scott Pruitt, if he were to become head of the EPA, means for the Dakota Access pipeline, which at this point the Army Corps of Engineers says will not grant a final permit to drill under the Missouri River?
WENONAH HAUTER: Well, Harold Hamm has also been an adviser on energy issues to the Trump campaign. And they've been associated for the last several years. So, we can see that when Trump comes into office, he is going to probably try to attack what President Obama has done on the Dakota Access line. And we can see that there's really an unholy alliance here. Harold Hamm's company, Continental Resources, is one of the largest frackers for oil. And, of course, 80 percent of fracking since 2012 has been for oil, and much of it from the Dakotas. And the industry is desperate to get the oil out for overseas delivery, and that's why the export ban was released as part of the omnibus budget bill in 2015. So, we see that there's going to have to be a concerted effort to make the connections between these fossil fuel corporations and the Trump administration very clear, and we're going to have to hammer it home.
I also want to say that I think that Standing Rock and the massive movement that's been created out of this terrible debacle that the fossil fuel industry has tried to bring to the Sioux tribe in North Dakota, we're seeing that kind of infrastructure development all over the country. There are thousands of miles of pipelines. We can make a lot of progress at the state level on some of these issues. And it's completely true what May says about the movement growing. The movement is growing. We need to be there during the process for confirming Pruitt and really bringing to light what he stands for and what is going to happen to our environment and our climate because of Pruitt.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to just ask very quickly of May Boevea lot has been made of this meeting that President-elect Donald Trump has had with his daughter Ivanka and Al Gore on the issue of climate change. Respond.
MAY BOEVE: Well, he can have all the meetings he wants that make it sound like he cares about this issue, but if he makes appointments like this, we know exactly where he stands, which is supporting more drilling, more fracking, which we know causes climate change

NERMEEN SHAIKH: A Republican member of the Electoral College has come out saying he will not vote for President-elect Donald Trump when the Electoral College convenes on December 19th. Christopher Suprun, a paramedic from Texas, wrote in an op-ed published in The New York Times on Monday that Trump is, quote, "not qualified for the office" of the presidency. He goes on to write, quote, "The election of the next president is not yet a done deal. Electors of conscience can still do the right thing for the good of the country. Presidential electors have the legal right and a constitutional duty to vote their conscience." Suprun is the first Republican member of the Electoral College to publicly announce he won't vote for Trump, but there are reports of other so-called faithless electors.

Meanwhile, a group of Democratic electors is trying to block Trump by encouraging electors of both parties in every state to unite behind a yet-to-be determined consensus Republican candidate. They've dubbed themselves the "Hamilton electors" after Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, who they say intended the Electoral College to safeguard the presidency. This is Democrat Bret Chiafalo, a Hamilton elector from Washington.



AMY GOODMAN: Electors are typically selected by their state's party leaders. According to FairVote, 29 states have laws forbidding electors from bucking the will of their voters. However, 21, including Texas, have no binding restrictions. Historically, it's extremely rare for electors to dissent, and so far no elector has changed the outcome of an election by voting against his or her party's designated candidate.
For more, we're going to Dallas, Texas, where we're joined by Christopher Suprun. His piece, "Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump," appeared in The New York Times Monday.
Christopher Suprun, welcome to Democracy Now! So, talk about how you came to this decision.
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: Well, painfully. I had intended to support the nominee, but, unfortunately, Mr. Trump has proven again and again he is not qualified for the office. He is a complete demagogue, as we've seen for the past 18 months, up 'til last night, where he picked on a steelworker who had to say something about his jobs plan for Carrier. That's a scary thought: When you're a simple steelworker or union boss there at a factory in Indiana, you question the president, and he comes after you 30 minutes later.
I'm not sure what the president is going to do when North Korea says something even worse about him in international relations, which brings up the second reason why he's not qualified. Fifty of my Republican colleagues, who are national security and foreign policy experts, said Mr. Trump would be a danger if he were president. And we've already seen that, where he has exacerbated situations in Taiwan and China with his change on the "one China" policy, or what appears to be a change.
And then, beyond that, part of the issue with Taiwan was it appeared to be a sales call. Mr. Trump cannot profit off the office of the president. It's expressly forbidden by the Emoluments Clause. And, it appears, every time he calls another country, it's to sell a Trump property.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Christopher Suprun, can you talk about what the response has been to your decision not to support Trump?
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: Well, which response? Because there's certainly feedback saying I'm an awful person, I'm a traitor. I saw a tweet a little while ago that said I should live out the rest of my life at Gitmo, which is a scary thought, that when a person takes a conscious decision to vote their conscience, that our answer is to charge them with treason, even verbally.
But the other feedback I've received from across Texas, from across my county, from across the country, and even outside the country, has been positive. I've had Americans of all shape and form come to me and say, "You've restored my faith in America, that maybe we can still be that great country we should be."
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about how it works. What will happen on December 19th? Where do you go, and what will you do?
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: Sure. Electors from each state will go to their respective state capital. They will then cast ballots; I believe it's a six-page form. Each ballot goes to a different person. And you write in a name. It's not like a typical ballot at the ballot box in a November election, where you have to check a box, as I understand it. This is my first time participating in the process. But you actually write in a name for that candidate you are electing president and then vice president.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And how were you selected, Christopher Suprun? How were you selected to join the Electoral College?
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: I was elected at the Republican state convention in May.
AMY GOODMAN: So
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: The Republicancorrect, the Texas Republican state conventionI want to make sure that's clearnot the national.
AMY GOODMAN: Twenty-nine states have laws forbidding electors from bucking the will of the people of the state. Texas is not one of them. Texas is one of the 21 that have no binding restrictions. So explain how it works for you when you will vote not for President Trump, and how it works for others in other states.
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: Well, I thinkagain, as I just described, I think I'm going to place a name of a person who I think has got great executive and legislative experience and that can unite the country. I think we are going to go through a basic process; I'm not entirely sure of what that is. The secretary of state, as I understand it, will provide us that information when we arrive that morning. In terms of other states, I think they have a similar process, though I'm not sure how they are going to be different and what the binding laws are going toif they're even going to exist. As you mentioned, there's a lawsuit, I believe in Colorado, to overturn that function.
AMY GOODMAN: Who are you going to vote for?
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: I don't know. I'm in a deliberations phase. I said in my op-ed that I think John Kasich would be a great person. And while I know he's declined it, for me, when I speak to other electors, there's one name that comes up as an acceptable alternative over and over, and that's John Kasich.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And do you
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: So I'm not sure who that person is going to be, but I think they'll be like Mr.Governor Kasich.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Do you know of other Republican electors who are likely to join you on December 19th in opposing Trump?
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: I'm not sure I'm ready to say that at this point. When I wrote the op-ed, it was so that I could be accountable for my vote, because I didn't want to go to Austin and cast a vote of appeasement and simply write in Donald Trump because I was lazy. But since that time, I've had a number of people reach out to me. And I'mI guess I would say this: I'm not ready to tell you who they are or what they are, but I don't think I will be alone.
AMY GOODMAN: There's a Change.org petition asking you be removed as a GOP member and/or delegate. It has 16,000 signatures so far. Christopher, your response?
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: If there's a link, I get those tweets all the time. People say, "Where can I sign up?" I can't respond to them all, but I try and refer them to Change.org. This is a great country. I am so glad I live in America, where people have the First Amendment right to tell me they think I'm wrong. I'm OK with that. Fill out the petition. We'll go through the process. If there is a process to remove me, I'm going to oppose it, obviously, but that's how democracy works. That's how our First Amendment works.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig has launched The Electors Trust to provide free and confidential legal support to any Electoral College elector who chooses to vote his or her conscience.
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: Correct.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Lessig quotes Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson writing in 1952, saying, quote, "No one faithful to our history can deny that the plan originally contemplated ... that electors would be free agents, to exercise an independent and nonpartisan judgment as to the men best qualified for the Nation's highest offices." And your response to that, Christopher Suprun?
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: Well, Mr. Lessig has reached out to me. And I've been lucky enough to have him help represent me. And I believe he's going to be representing me going forward. But I agree with the statement completely. This is what the Electoral College is for, is so that we do not elect a demagogue, somebody who cannot practice the foreign policy and national defense of the country appropriately, and one who has played fast and loose with the rules of conflicts of interest.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you consider yourself a Hamilton elector?
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: In the sense that I'm voting my conscience, absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you ever think you'd be in this position, Chris?
CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN: No. I'm an average person. I ran because, as you noted, I'm a paramedic firefighter. I responded to the 9/11 event. For me, that was the last time our nation was united and unified. I wish we could get back to that point. Unfortunately, I see from Mr. Trump again and again attacks on First Amendment, attacks on his critics, like our steelworker friend in Indiana last night. Anyone who he doesn't believe is appropriate or worthy or perhaps the right color, he attacks them. That's not America, and that's not what we want as a nation, I don't think.