... imagine my horror – nay disgust – when I clicked on The Guardian to find an article under the heading “Neil Young Permits Trump to Keep on Rockin.’  

I read that piece several hours ago and I’m still hyperventilating. Neil, what have you done?

“I’ve got nothing against him [Trump],” said Young. “One the music goes out, anybody can use it for everything.”

Wait, what?

Ok, let’s tackle the first portion of Young’s statement – “I’ve got nothing against him.” After spending a lifetime championing hyper-liberal causes – including racial equality – how on earth can Young claim he has nothing against a man who has effectively promised to wind the clock back a half-century on civil rights? If Young was as active in his songwriting today as he was in the 1970s, I’m sure many of his new releases would say something about proposals to ban Muslims entering the United States, and something else about reducing an entire race of people to drug dealers to rapists.

As for Young dismissing his earlier protest against Trump with the casually dismissive, “Once the music goes out, anybody can use if for everything” – this is a wimpy like cop out. Artists have, in fact, even sued politicians for co-opting their music without their endorsement.

In 1996, GOP candidate Bob Dole used a rework of Isaac Hayes’ ‘Soul Man.’ In turn, Hayes, a staunch liberal, sent the Dole campaign a cease-and-desist letter, threatening to sue Dole $10,000 for every time the campaign played the song. Hayes told the New York Daily News, "Nobody gave any permission here," adding, "It also bothers me because people may get the impression that David [Porter] and I endorse Bob Dole, which we don't."

Artists and bands such as Foo Fighters, Orleans, Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, and John Mellencamp have also opposed Republican Party presidential candidates using their music for political purposes.

"I don't think it has anything to do with money. It has to do with the political viewpoint of the artist or songwriter or publisher," Chuck Rubin, founder of Artists Rights Enforcement Corporation, told Rolling Stone. "But they do have the right to either say yea or nay."

Tragically, Young has said yay to the most vulgar and racially divisive political candidate to reach the national stage, and for that I must now say nay to Young.

When I try to think of a reason for why Young turned over on Trump, I can only think of money. It brings to mind Michael Jordan’s response to a question on why he wasn’t more outspoken on matters of national political importance. “Republicans buy shoes, too,” Jordan replied, which, in a hyper-corporatized, overly privatized, universe, goes a long way to explaining why we rarely find heroes like Muhammad Ali and the very much younger Neil Young.

http://ahtribune.com/us/2016-election/930-neil-young.html

 

Over the course of his presidential bid, Sen. Marco Rubio called Donald Trump a “con man” who was “dangerous” and unqualified to control the nation’s nuclear codes. He ridiculed the businessman’s manhood and warned he would “fracture” the Republican Party if he was the nominee.

By March — a few days before Rubio dropped out — the senator from Florida said with a cracking voice that it was “getting harder every day” to envision supporting his rival.

But now Rubio is on board, saying that he plans to attend the Republican convention in Cleveland and that he would be “honored” to help Trump however he can.

“I want to be helpful. I don’t want to be harmful, because I don’t want Hillary Clinton to be president,” Rubio said in a CNN interview that will be aired Sunday.

read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rubio-called-trump-a-dangerous-con-man-now-he-says-trump-should-be-president/2016/05/27/b837e16c-2410-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_rubiotrump-252pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

 

 

In general, you shouldn’t pay much attention to polls at this point, especially with Republicans unifying around Donald Trump while Bernie Sanders hasn’t conceded the inevitable. Still, I was struck by several recent polls showing Mr. Trump favored over Hillary Clinton on the question of who can best manage the economy.

This is pretty remarkable given the incoherence and wild irresponsibility of Mr. Trump’s policy pronouncements. Granted, most voters probably don’t know anything about that, in part thanks to substance-free news coverage. But if voters don’t know anything about Mr. Trump’s policies, why their favorable impression of his economic management skills?

The answer, I suspect, is that voters see Mr. Trump as a hugely successful businessman, and they believe that business success translates into economic expertise. They are, however, probably wrong about the first, and definitely wrong about the second: Even genuinely brilliant businesspeople are often clueless about economic policy.

An aside: In part this is surely a partisan thing. Over the years, polls have generally, although not universally, shown Republicans trusted over Democrats to manage the economy, even though the economy has consistently performed better under Democratic presidents. But Republicans are much better at promoting legends — for example, by constantly hyping economic and jobs growth under Ronald Reagan, even though the Reagan record was easily surpassed under Bill Clinton.

Back to Mr. Trump: One of the many peculiar things about his run for the White House is that it rests heavily on his claims of being a masterful businessman, yet it’s far from clear how good he really is at the “art of the deal.” Independent estimates suggest that he’s much less wealthy than he says he is, and probably has much lower income than he claims to have, too. But since he has broken with all precedents by refusing to release his tax returns, it’s impossible to resolve such disputes. (And maybe that’s why he won’t release those returns.)

Remember, too, that Mr. Trump is a clear case of someone born on third base who imagines that he hit a triple: He inherited a fortune, and it’s far from clear that he has expanded that fortune any more than he would have if he had simply parked the money in an index fund.

But leave questions about whether Mr. Trump is the business genius he claims to be on one side. Does business success carry with it the knowledge and instincts needed to make good economic policy? No, it doesn’t.

read more of Krugman at the New York Times...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/opinion/trumps-delusions-of-competence.html?

 

 

After news broke in February that CSIRO was cutting up to half its climate scientists, 200 angry staff met with the organisation's CEO, Dr Larry Marshall, at the Black Mountain site in Canberra.

The government policy, frankly, determines public good.
DR LARRY MARSHALL, CSIRO CEO

In a secret recording of that meeting obtained by Background Briefing, Marshall tells climate scientists CSIRO is now less interested in science for the sake of curiosity.

'It's a fundamental shift away from curiosity-led research toward impact. That's the key,' he said.

The focus now would be on delivering the Prime Minister's innovation and growth agenda, said Marshall. That meant funds once devoted to so-called 'public good science'—such as monitoring and measuring climate change—would be directed elsewhere.

'The government policy, frankly, determines public good,' Marshall proposed to the meeting. 'That's their decision.

'The danger of us deciding what is public good for ourselves; the risk is that we are biased. If I poll the organisation−and I did−each group fundamentally believes that what they do is public good, in the truest, purest sense of the word.'

 

And according to Dr Marshall there was no mistaking the signal the government was sending: federal funding for climate science programs had been cut. The federal government was CSIRO's most important 'customer', and it no longer wanted what the climate scientists were selling.

'I don't mean to be insensitive,' said Dr Marshall, 'but you have to get real about your customer.'

In the tape, the scientists can be heard groaning and protesting at Marshall's comments. By the end of the meeting half of them had walked out, including the head of the Land and Water Division. One, however, asked Marshall how he could argue—as he appeared to be doing—that the science on climate change was 'done'.

'What I was trying to say was we have proven climate change,' replied Marshall. 'It's real, it's happened, I don't think there is any doubt about that. Not to say the science is done.'

It's talk like this that alarms the science community.

They're worried that if we don't measure and model how our climate is changing, and how and to what degree it is warming and acidifying the oceans, we'll have no chance of adapting.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/the-inconvenient-scientists/7451660

 

It's time for Dr Larry Marshall to fucup, rack off, get out and go to hell... His attitude is damaging to the intent of sciences. Actually his curriculum vitae borders on the incompetent for the job he's been placed in by Tony Turdy's mob, who under Tony Turdy nasty views on sciences had no understanding of public good....