Searching For Pocahontas

By way of Yahoo News we find that Donald “Trump doubles down on Elizabeth Warren ‘Pocahontas’ attack after Native American woman calls him ‘offensive’“.

Donald Trump repeatedly mocked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as “Pocahontas” at a press conference in North Dakota on Thursday, even as a Native American woman present at the event interrupted to call his comments “offensive.”

Elizabeth_Warren_Tonto_Pocahantas“That’s very offensive. Sorry,” the woman said.

“Is that offensive? You tell me,” Trump asked.

The woman replied that she was offended, and Trump quickly repeated the phrase.

“Oh, oh really — oh, I’m sorry about that,“ Trump said before turning to a reporter who had asked about Warren, immediately using the term again. “Pocahontas. Is that what you said?”

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has previously used the term to refer to Warren as an allusion to a controversy over her past claims of Native American ancestry. Warren listed herself as a minority when she worked as a faculty member at a pair of Ivy League law schools in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Though she reportedly is 1/32 Cherokee, that would not qualify her to be a member of the tribe. The issue made headlines during Warren’s 2012 election campaign and she defended herself by claiming her “family stories” held that they had Native American roots.

 

Trumping Global Warming

From The Japan Times, “Trump sends shivers down spines of nations trying to solidify global warming pact“.

The talks in Germany to flesh out December’s historic global climate deal are probably not at the top of Donald Trump’s agenda this week.

AGW_Bazillian_Polar_BearsBut the diplomats from 196 nations huddled in Bonn are keenly aware of the fact that the “The Donald” is now within spitting distance of the White House — and it is making a lot of them nervous.  It is not hard to see why.

The last Republican standing in the U.S. presidential race has described climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China to gain competitive advantage in manufacturing over the US, an eccentric Meme_Almost_Gave_A_Fucktheory even among climate skeptics.

More recently, he said he was “not a big fan” of the Paris Agreement, the fruit of two decades of stop-and-go (but mostly stop) wrangling between rich and developing nations.