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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: locogringo who wrote (1189857)1/2/2020 12:02:00 PM
From: sylvester801 Recommendation

Recommended By
pocotrader

  Respond to of 1576982
 
HEARTBRAKING: NEARLY 500,000,000 ANIMALS HAVE BEEN KILLED IN WORST EVER AUSTRALIA's WILDFILES
Zoe Drewett
Thursday 2 Jan 2020 9:08 am
metro.co.uk
Almost half a billion animals have been killed in Australia’s raging wildfires with fears entire species may have been wiped out. Ecologists from the University of Sydney now estimate 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles have been lost since September with the figure likely to continue to soar. Devastating fires have ripped through the states of Victoria and New South Wales in the past couple of days alone, leaving several people dead or missing. Scores of homes along Australia’s east coast have been razed to the ground leaving thousands of residents stranded and many forced to take shelter in the only safe place left available to them, the ocean. Harrowing pictures and videos have captured kangaroos desperately attempting to flee great walls of flames while rescue teams have been met by the charred bodies of thousands of koalas. Others reported seeing cockatoos falling dead out of trees and farmers have fled only to return to their burned land and find it littered with the bodies of livestock.

A kangaroo rushes past a burning house amid apocalyptic scenes in Conjola, New South Wales (Picture: Matthew Abbott / New York Times / Redux / eyevine)


Fire and Rescue workers give water to a koala rescued from a wildfire in NSW in November (Picture: Reuters)
The world has struggled to take in the scale of destruction caused by Australia’s worst wildfire season on record, with pictures of the sky turning a blazing red likened to apocalyptic horror films. Koalas have been among the hardest hit of Australia’s native animals because they are slow moving and only eat leaves from the eucalyptus tree, which are filled with oil, making them highly flammable. Up to 8000 of the animals — a third of the entire koala population of the NSW mid-north coast — are believed to have been killed in less than four months. Nature Conservation Council ecologist Mark Graham told the Australian parliament that the fires have burned ‘so hot and so fast’ that there has been ‘significant mortality’ of animals, particularly in trees. He added: ‘There is such a big area now that is still on fire and still burning that we will probably never find the bodies.’ Animal rescue volunteer Tracy Burgess said her centre had seen less animals than expected coming in for treatment, which she described as ‘worrying’.
..................much more



To: locogringo who wrote (1189857)1/2/2020 12:03:56 PM
From: sylvester80  Respond to of 1576982
 
MUST SEE BY ALL CLIMATE DENYING ASSSHOLE TRUMPTARDS...HEARTBREAKING: metro.co.uk



To: locogringo who wrote (1189857)1/2/2020 12:51:12 PM
From: sylvester80  Respond to of 1576982
 
WHY TRUMP WILL LOSE 2020
Rick Newman
Senior Columnist
Yahoo FinanceJanuary 2, 2020
finance.yahoo.com
With unemployment at a 50-year low and the stock market near record highs, President Trump should be a shoo-in for reelection. He’s not.

In fact, Trump could very plausibly lose in November. Perhaps by a wide margin. Here are 4 reasons why:

The economy isn’t strong enough. There probably won’t be a recession by Election Day in November, but there will still be plenty of discontent. Income inequality has worsened under Trump, with the wealthy benefiting much more from a booming stock market than working- and middle-class Americans. Evidence continues to mount that Trump’s signature achievement, the 2017 tax-cut law, benefited businesses and the wealthy more than ordinary workers. Trump and other backers of the law insisted a boom in business spending would follow the tax cuts, but Moody’s Analytics found recently that just 20% of the corporate tax savings went to investment. The other 80% went to stock buybacks and dividend hikes that mainly benefit the shareholder class.

Economic growth under Trump peaked at 2.9% in 2018. It has slowed since then and will probably end 2019 around 2%, with even slower growth likely next year. That should be good enough to keep the unemployment rate low, but not necessarily enough for Trump to win. Trump’s net approval rating is -10.3, according to a Fivethirtyeight composite, which means his disapproval rating is about 10 points higher than his approval rating. Research by Alan Abramowitz of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics shows that an incumbent with a -10 net approval rating needs economic growth of between 2% and 3% to win reelection. Trump probably won’t get that in 2020. There’s one other factor blocking the normal tailwind a president gets from a decent economy: Trump is the first president in 150 years running for reelection after being impeached.

It's also possible recession fears could return later in 2020, just as they materialized in the summer of 2019. And some traders expect stocks to flatline or drop in 2020, perhaps even entering a correction that ends an 11-year rally. Even small fluctuations in confidence could be enough to sink Trump.



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Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg speaks to volunteers and supporters in Old City in his first field office in Philadelphia on Saturday, Dec. 21, 2019. (Tyger Williams/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)
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Bloomberg’s money. Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg probably won’t win the Democratic presidential nomination. But he could still end up being the most influential Democrat in the campaign. Bloomberg has pledged to spend whatever it takes to beat Trump in 2020, and the multibillionaire has virtually unlimited funds to do it. Money isn’t everything in politics, but Bloomberg has been adept at spending money on targeted ads and organizational activities that have helped to elect more Democrats in Virginia and push Democratic causes such as gun control. Whether he’s the Democratic nominee or not, Bloomberg’s spending on behalf of the party will probably produce a financial advantage, maybe a decisive one.

Trump’s health care blind spot. Even in a decent economy, health care is a chronic problem for some people who don’t have insurance and others who do but still can’t afford the out-of-pocket expenses. Trump has no plan on health care, other than continuing to try to dismantle Obamacare, otherwise known as the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The Trump administration remains party to a controversial lawsuit attempting to kill the entire law, which may succeed, canceling insurance for about 20 million people and restoring the old, heinous insurance company practice of denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. That’s about 60 million Americans.

Every Democratic candidate, by contrast, has a serious health care plan. Medicare for all, the Bernie Sanders plan for eliminating private insurance and forcing everyone into a government plan, is undoubtedly too radical for some voters. But Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and even Elizabeth Warren have plans for an optional government coverage for those who want it. That seems like an idea whose time has arrived, and Trump’s only riposte is to riff about “socialized medicine” and promise a health care plan of his own that plainly doesn’t exist.



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Democratic presidential candidate South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks during a campaign event Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019, at New England College in Henniker, N.H. (AP Photo/ Cheryl Senter)
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Barack Obama’s role. The former president has been largely silent about Trump, and also about the Democratic presidential contest. But it seems certain that once Democrats choose their nominee in 2020, Obama will fully back the candidate and campaign on his or her behalf. That could help boost minority turnout, which was weak in 2016 and contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss. Trump’s so-called base would stick with him, but that’s only about 25% of the electorate. Others support Trump because they dislike radical Democrats such as Bernie Sanders or feel Trump is presiding over a prosperous era they don’t want to disturb. If any of those things turn Democrats’ way, Trump will be a one-term president.