The (2) debates are the main topics during Bill's monologue and boy is his assessment very funny. Although, I am not sure what he means by the Rosemary's baby joke or maybe it was not a joke. That could have actually been something that Donald Trump actually did say. The ham colored hamster joke from the 1980's joke went over my head but then again, I am not even sure if that was not areal comment either.
Bill is now talking about the moderators whom he thought did rather well. I kind of did too. The only people that I did not think came off that great are / were ted Cruz and in some cases, Rand Paul. Ben Carson was non existant for the most part and Chris Christie did OK. Jeb Bush was weak for a beofre he picked up after about an hour an half for a segment or two and then I thought John Kasich, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorino came off great for that party.
I am not saying they said anything substantial because I agree with Bill too about everyone as a whole, however, they products of just an out of touch bad party (the GOP). They came off well talking about their platforms but nothing of substance was even asked about all night. They left out so many major subjects in those debates and they keyed on the same old thing.
THINK PROGRESS:
1. Many of you predicted that Obamacare would have a devastating impact on the American job market and continue to refer to Obamacare as a “job killer.” How do you explain the historic job growth under Obamacare?
In 2011, Republicans passed the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” Since the passage of Obamacare in March 2010, however, there have been 64 straight months of consecutive job growth — and all-time record — adding nearly 13 million jobs to the economy.
2. Do you support paid maternity leave?
Out of 185 major countries, the United States is one of just three that does not offer new mothers paid leave. The other two are Oman and Papua New Guinea.
CREDIT: THINKPROGRESS
3. There are no guns allowed in the arena tonight. Do you support that policy?
Many of the candidates oppose “gun free zones” in places like schools and military bases, arguing that allowing people to carry guns will enable them to protect themselves against “bad guys.” But candidates recognize the importance of “gun-free zones” in their own lives. Trump, for example, does not allow guns on his hotels and golf courses. Quicken Arena, where the Republican debate is being held, also does not allow guns. (HT: @CaitlinFrazier)
4. What lessons have you drawn from the disastrous consequences of the Iraq war and how does that impact your view of the Iran deal?
Many of the people opposed to the Iran deal supported the Iraq war. (Many of the candidates areadvised by architects of the Iraq war.) The arguments the candidates are using to justify their opposition to the Iran deal are very similar to those used to justify war in Iraq.
5. You have said you admire Ronald Reagan. But Reagan granted legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants. Why is your approach so different than Reagan?
In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed legislation that created a pathway to citizenship for 3 million undocumented immigrants.
6. Many of you attended a recent gathering by the Koch brothers, who say they are opposed to corporate welfare. Would you commit to eliminating all government subsidies and tax breaks to the fossil fuel industry as President?
The Koch brothers, who are spending millions to influence this election, claim to oppose corporate welfare. The fossil fuel industry receives at least $4.7 billion in direct production tax breaks and billions more in indirect support.
7. Does the government spend too much on women’s health?
Jeb Bush recently said that though we might be spending too much on “women’s health,” before quickly backtracking. But Bush and the rest of the candidates support defunding Planned Parenthood, one of the largest providers of women’s health services.
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Anyway, Michael Mann is on for the first interview tonight. Also on the show are Gov. Gavin Newsom, Mary Matalin, Steve Schmidt and Caitlin Flanagan. Michael Mann is a distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University and co-author of Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change. He is also a co-founder of realclimate.org, a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. Twitter: @MichaelEMann
The GOP and/or did any of the moderators even mention climate change. There were atleast five major issues we are dealing with as a nation and as world leader that were not mentioned in those debates the other night.
Honestly and I hate to harp on the debates, this first one was just for them to show whom is Presidential looking and sounding and it was not even remotely about substantial issues.
And, with regard to the climate bill brought out by President Obama last week, from the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency, his approach to climate policy has divided the environmentalist community. The “cap-and-trade” bill that he championed, but never received a vote in the Senate, was lauded by some groups as essential and others as weakened by compromise to fossil fuel interests. Some appreciate that he’s regulating fracking, others are critical that he won’t move to ban it. Some are impressed that he’s protected 260 million acres of public lands and waters, others are livid that he’s expanding oil drilling into the Arctic and on other federal lands.
Similar fault lines are emerging in response to his Clean Power Plan, the EPA rule designed to cut carbon emissions from power plants 32 percent relative to their 2005 level by 2030. The Sierra Club hailed the announcement as “the most significant single action any president has ever taken” while 350.org downplayed it. “Taking on King Coal is the easy part … decisions on things like the Keystone XL pipeline, fracking and Arctic drilling are … the true test of climate leadership,” they said.
How can we make sense of it, and what should citizen-activists do next?
On the negative side of the ledger, Politico’s Michael Grunwald argues the EPA set the bar too low:
The [utility] sector’s emissions are expected to drop 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 … the power sector’s emissions will already be down 15.4 percent from 2005 levels — about half the anticipated reductions in just a decade, and before the plan goes into effect. In other words, even under the strengthened plan, the rate of decarbonization is expected to slow over the next 15 years.
But that makes it sound like the entire Clean Power Plan is a rearranging of the deck chairs. Vox’s Brad Plumer argues that the past rate of decarbonization is not expected to keep pace on its own:
US power-plant emissions aren’t destined to keep plunging without further policy. One big reason for last decade’s drop was the massive recession, which hopefully won’t repeat itself anytime soon. What’s more, thanks to the shale gas boom, most of the “easy” cuts have already been made — as utilities switched from coal to cheaper gas. The harder cuts are yet to come, including making greater use of renewable power. That’s what this plan aims to do — and in that sense, it’s a departure from business as usual.
And the emission targets shouldn’t be treated as written in stone. The EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has said she expects actual emission cuts to beat the EPA targets:
…you will probably see significantly more emissions reductions than we anticipated. Number one: That’s usually what happens when we regulate utilities—they bring in a big margin of safety. But most importantly because these will be investment signals—not just what the utilities are investing, but these are going to be investments in renewables, investments in energy efficiency, investments in keeping costs low for consumers.
Another criticism came from former Rep. Henry Waxman, who said the EPA should be applying clean power rules to industries beyond utilities:
Under the Clean Air Act’s existing authority, EPA could pursue regulations that would reduce emissions from fossil fuel combustion at industrial sites such as cement, oil refineries, pulp and paper mills and steel mills. These account for 55 percent of all industrial emissions…
But the Obama’s decision to focus on power plants stems from the objective to accomplish, in McCarthy’s words, “what’s doable, reasonable and practical.” The utilities were relatively cooperative during the failed attempt to have Congress enact an economy-wide cap on carbon – they crave regulatory certainty – so a regulatory plan focused on them mitigates the political and legal pushback.
The political payoff is in the positive, if restrained, responses yesterday from utility lobbyists and CEOS. Instead of utilities feeding conservative talking points by threatening mass layoffs, the top industry lobby group, the Edison Electric Institute, praised the EPA for designing a plan with considerable flexibility regarding implementation:
Throughout this rulemaking process, EEI raised a number of issues, and EPA seems to have responded to some of our key concerns. While we are still reviewing and analyzing the rule’s specifics and the impact of the restructured interim goals, the final guidelines appear to contain a range of tools to maintain reliability and better reflect how the interconnected power system operates.
And the CEO of American Electric Power indicated he thought the rule was manageable: “I think it will be good for the climate. As we progress toward the emphasis on renewables and energy efficiency, we’ll be able to make and adapt to changes through the power system…”
That flexibility is key in terms of what citizens should be doing next.
Whether you gravitate toward the optimistic or pessimistic analyses is not very relevant. This is the final rule. It’s on the books. State governments are now tasked with developing their own plans to meet the EPA’s goals. Early adopters will get more federal funds. Resisters will not only lose money, but also the EPA will step in and impose a plan anyway.
The question before us is: How can we make the state plans as strong as possible?
National People’s Action is one group making a grassroots push, urging its members to call their governors and demand a Clean Power Plan that “prioritizes renewable energy, energy efficiency, and job creation for low-income communities.”
That’s a constructive use of grassroots energy, no matter how you feel about Obama’s environmental record to date.
They also touched on how Germany is way ahead of the curve with regard to the use of solar and wind energy.
I read the following article by Ari Phillips off Think Progress which I am posting here:
Germany Just Got 78 Percent Of Its Electricity From Renewable Sources.
According to an analysis by German energy expert Craig Morris at the Energiewende blog, a stormy day across northern Europe combined with sunny conditions in southern Germany led to the new record, the exact figures of which are still preliminary. Morris writes that most of Germany’s wind turbines are installed in the north and most of its solar panels are in the south.
If the figures hold, it will turn out that wind and solar generated 40.65 gigawatts (GW) of power on July 25. When this is combined with other forms of renewables, including 4.85 GW from biomass and 2.4 GW from hydropower, the total reaches 47.9 GW of renewable power — occurring at a time when peak power demand was 61.1 GW on Saturday afternoon. To bolster his analysis, Morris points to early figures from Agora Energiewende, a Germany energy policy firm, that have renewables making up 79 percent of domestic power consumption that day.
Renewable sources accounted for 27.8 percent of Germany’s power consumption in 2014, up from 6.2 percent in 2000. The expansion of renewables and another weather phenomenon — a relatively mild winter — led to Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions falling for the first time in three years in 2014, a 4.3 percent year-over-year drop. Greenhouse gas emissions are now down to their lowest level since 1990, according to analysts at Agora Energiewende.
This made 2014 a big year for Germany’s renewable energy transition, known as Energiewende, which requires the phasing out of nuclear energy by 2022 and reducing greenhouse gases at least 80 percent by 2050. The government also wants the at least double the percentage of renewables in the energy mix by 2035.
In response to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown in Japan in 2011, Germany decided to shutter its nuclear power operations, causing the country to rely more on coal as it transitions to renewables. Currently coal still accounts for some 44 percent of the country’s power generation.
In 2014, Germany had nine nuclear power plants with a total output of 12,702 megawatts, making up nearly 18 percent of the country’s electricity demand. In order to eliminate nuclear power by 2022, many worry that Germany will have to turn to fossil fuels like coal and oil to help bridge the transition to renewables, causing a spike in greenhouse gas emissions.
Osha Gray Davidson, author of Clean Break, a book about Germany’s transition to clean energy, told TakePart that for such a large industrialized country to get 28 percent of its power from renewable sources is “pretty amazing,” and that Germany is a good model for the United States.
“Manufacturing accounts for much more of the German economy than the American economy, and they have 80 million people — much larger than a country like Denmark, which gets more of its power from renewables but has a much smaller industrial base, and has a population of five and a half million people,” he said.
Currently, the United States gets about 13 percent of its energy demand from renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
As more and more wind turbines and solar panels come online there is a major technology push to create better forecasting software and to increase the efficiency and enhance the location of these forms of power. IBM and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently announced that they are working on a producing solar and wind forecasting that’s at least 30 percent more accurate than conventional methods.
“There is good reason to believe that with better forecasts, it might be possible to push solar’s energy contribution up to 50 percent [by 2050],” IBM Research Manager Hendrick Hamann recently said about the United States. “As we continue to refine our system in collaboration with the DOE, we hope to double the accuracy of the system in the next year. That could have a huge impact on the energy industry — and on local businesses, the economy and the natural environment.”
Anyway, that was a decent interview tonight. However and onward speaking, Bill (Maher) will now move over to the panelists that are Mary Matalin, Steve Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom discuss Donald Trump's debate performance and his viability as a candidate. Mary Matalin is a political analyst and is the wife of democrat strategist James Carville, an author, and a television and radio host. She is a former Assistant to President George W. Bush and former Counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney. Steve Schmidt is an MSNBC analyst, Vice Chair of Public Affairs at Edelman Public Relations, and former Senior Advisor to the McCain-Palin presidential campaign. Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) was re-elected to his second term in office in 2014. He previously served as Mayor of San Francisco. In February 2015, he announced that he will seek the Democratic nomination for Governor in 2018. Twitter: @GavinNewsom
I love Steve Schmidt BTW. He is one of my favorite people in the world. He is very real which I Iove about anyone in general, let alone with people in politics today. you just do not get that in politics.
Gavin (Newsom) is now talking about the topics not discussed on the debates and he is correct. They did not even talk about the Budget. Let alone racial issues and many issues.
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Trump on Obamacare: "I will repeal it and replace it with something terrific!"
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Bill Maher welcomes The Atlantic's Caitlin Flanagan to discuss the growth of 'politically correct' culture on college campuses. She is on for the mid-Show Interview is with Caitlin Flanagan is a journalist and author. She is a National Correspondent for The Atlantic, and was previously a staff writer for The New Yorker. The September issue of The Atlantic will feature Flanagan’s new article, “That’s Not Funny: Today’s College Students Can’t Seem to Take a Joke.” Twitter: @CaitlinPacific.
I am not sure what it is but I have no interest in this subject about colleges and students. I am sorry but i just do NOT know what to say about it. I feel like the parents in the Charlie Brown episodes are talking to us right now. I know she was good on the show.
But yes. They are now discussing Animal Welfare. Bill is bringing up the Cecil issue and Mary Matlin wants to talk about human issues. I don't care about humans. We have brains. We have cognitive thought processes in those brain. We can get out of these negative mazes so to speak. Animals do not have the ability to communicate in the ways we do as humans. That is why we must look out for all wildlife and all animals. And, as far as Trophy Hunting, my article entitled 'Stop the Weak Act Of trophy Hunting' has blown up since the Cecil incident. I wrote that at some time last year.
Steve Schmidt is the best. He just now brought up how whales are used in captivity. He also referred to anyone that feels some need to kill some animal to plaster it on its wall a "total whack jab."
They moved over to talk about religion and god.
BTW, Mary Matlin's face looks like it bothers her when she talks. Her face is pulled back or something because she can barely move her face.
And, once again Steve Schmidt makes the best points about the people in the GOP having no clue about the difference between ISIS and Iran. They are total enemies and yet they (GOP) do not even think about them as being different factions over there in themiddle east, let alone again, that they are enemies. They hate each other.
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And, it is time for new Rules. New Rules!
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You know something, great point Bill in that last New Rule, if these assholes like Donnie Trump and the dentist that killed Cecil the Lion feel some need to kill an animal, get you gun, head over to Syria and yeah, protect the world and America by killing some bad people like a terrorist. Great point which I will end on now because that is just perfect and honestly, it is brilliant writing with a brilliant delivery that on this show can provide everyone.
And, most of all, please stay in touch. The show is indeed back after a long month of being off in July.
