Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Between the Storms

Thursday, September 7, 2017, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

We are between storms, recovering from Harvey and anticipating Irma. In this period of "calm", we are still fighting the fires in the western states. LA is having its biggest fire in history. Yet, the media still does not discuss climate change. Instead the focus is on the budget battles in Congress which came back from recess this Tuesday. Without any media coverage, it is unlikely that any of Trump's cuts to climate science will be reversed.

Here are the videos for the meeting:
There will be a video about Irma, but I will wait until just before the meeting to select it. In the meanwhile, if you want to track the storm you can try THIS website.

---------------------------------------- Updated 9/7/17 ------------------------------------

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Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Harvey

Thursday, August 31, 2017, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

We would have had a full news week even without Hurricane Harvey, but the epic proportion of the flooding caused by Harvey on the Houston area has made every thing else seem minor. So for our next meeting we will focus on Harvey even though the storm may continue beyond Thursday.

All the problems of Harvey were predicted by the weather models before it hit on Friday. In our first video, below, Shepard Smith does an excellent analysis of how the flood formed, but he leaves out any mention of climate change. The climate models have been predicting the rise of stalled weather patterns causing more floods and droughts. The second video is a repeat from this April about the Potsdam study which showed how climate change led to increased flooding. The third video shows that even worse flooding is now happening in South Asia.

HERE is a website which records the major flooding events around the world. Harvey is the latest entry; the South Asia flood is the entry before that. There are 170 other entries for the past 12 months.

---------------------------------------- Updated 8/31/17 -------------------------------------

Here are the other videos shown at the meeting:




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Tuesday, August 22, 2017

More on Charlottesville

Thursday, August 24, 2017, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

So much was left unsaid last week about Charlottesville, that we need to continue the discussion. It was only last Tuesday since Trump ranted about fault on both sides, but this is old news in the age of Trump. While the news has moved on to Afghanistan and Arpaio, we will take the time to look at the origins of the conflict in Charlottesville.

If you have not already seen it, there is a documentary from Vice News that shows the violent nature of right wing extremist. Clips from this documentary have been used in other news programs as evidence that these groups were primarily to blame. Because of its length, we will not show it at the meeting, but we will discuss it. Here is the link if you have not yet seen it:
While the Vice News piece countered Trump's assertion that there were good people on the Right, it did not address Trumps's other claim that there was bad people on the Left. Another piece from ABC 20/20 takes a more balanced view, showing extremism on both sides. We will review the 20/20 piece at our meeting. Here are the three parts:

These are the other videos that were shown at the meeting:


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Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Charlottesville

Thursday, August 17, 2017, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

During the campaign, Trump was accused of being a beholden to his racist supporters, but that could be dismissed as campaign rhetoric. But the events in Charlottesville last Saturday has seemed to confirm that Trump, as President, is still reluctant to condemn the white supremacists groups.

Here is a video which summarizes the issue. As a serious statement by a well known comedian, it is overtly political without the cover of comedy.
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Monday, August 7, 2017

Legal Immigration

Thursday, August 10, 2017, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

With his administration under siege, Trump has returned to the issue of immigration to rally support from his base. But instead of attacking illegal immigration, he wants to change our legal immigration policies. Here are the videos for the meeting:
---------------------------------- Updated 8/10/17 -----------------------------------------

Here is the breaking news video shown at the beginning of the meeting:

Here is the TED Talk on English in China shown at the end of the meeting:


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Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Chaos

Thursday, August 3, 2017, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

The Trump administration has reached a new level of chaos, while foreign and domestic issues move toward crisis. Just when we thought that Trump could not surprise us, we get surprised with the dismissal of Communications Director Scaramucci, just ten days after he was hired. There may be more developments in the two days before our meeting, but here are some videos to get started:
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Tuesday, July 25, 2017

The Healthcare Vote

Thursday, July 27, 2017, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

The senate healthcare bill is going to the floor without the votes to pass any of its various forms. Right now the plan is just to start debate and allow amendments and hope that some kind of consensus will be reached. Is this an act of desperation or a back-door way to get the Democrats involved? Over the next two days before our meeting, a lot could happen or nothing at all, if the Republican leadership decides to delay again. We will cover the floor fight if anything interesting develops. If not we will cover how healthcare could be solved. We will start with this video:
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