By Barry Hastings

Happy New Year… and let’s tip one to the biggest horse’s petutes ever elected to the America presidency, and, probably, the most likely to be impeached during his first year in office by members of his own party.

Every time Donald Trump opens his mouth (or his twitter account), consternation, confusion, contradiction, concern, quickly follow his jumbled (designed to mislead) conjectural congeries.

He ever reminds me of the kid we see in Summertime TV commercials — a cocky little s..t, with his hat on backwards, standing at home plate. He has a bat in one hand, a ball in the other, and three times tosses the latter in the air, shouting, “I’m the greatest hitter in the world!” A big whoosh follows each. After the third, he stands for a second or two, disconcerted and dejected, then brightens up, and shouts, “I’m the greatest pitcher in the world!” The perfect picture of our idiot President-elect — big ego, but no sense of reality, a’tall.

He knows more about ISIL than the generals. He knows more about Russia’s GRU than the spooks. He doesn’t need intelligence briefings — he’s sympatico with Vlad (the new impaler) Putin — they’re friends, buddies… he admires the way Putin helped Assad slaughter 400,000 helpless civilians; women, old men, children over the past couple of years, and commonly calls him, “A great leader.” Well, if you can call Hitler, Bonaparte, Kaiser Wilhelm, Genghis Kahn, and Stalin, “great leaders,” maybe it’s so. He’d be a charming addition to our pantheon of great allies (LaFayette, DeGaulle, Churchill); like Trump will be an addition to our pantheon of great presidents — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmie Carter… Donald Trump?

He’s already created a big stir over U.S. policy toward our changing climate, claiming he’ll put coal miners back to work, increase drilling for oil in both the conventional manner, and in shale. He’s asked the Department of Energy (for who knows what reason) to supply names of employees and contractors who’ve taken part in international climate change negotiations (rejected by DOE), and for names of department staff involved in calculating the “social” cost of carbon emissions (also rejected).

The Energy department obviously believes those employees and contractors would be labeled by a Trump Administration as unreliable, then shoved aside by political appointees who’ll harp the Trump line that, “climate change does not really exist.” A week before Christmas, Trump told supporters at a typical Trump rally, “We will cancel the restrictions on the production of American energy, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean, beautiful coal.” He’s rumored to be considering renunciation of the Paris agreement in which the world’s three biggest carbon-emitters, the U.S., China, and India, all promised major curbs on emissions.

Just in the climate change field alone, scientists are scrambling to archive decades worth of climate data, copying it all onto servers beyond the reach of government. The data is being supplied by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and others, and forms the basis for the general scientific belief the atmosphere and the oceans are rapidly warming due to heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions.

There have been no threats from Trump regarding the matter, but researchers (understanding the kind of dim-wit they’re dealing with) are taking no chances about safety of the data. Just one comparison of the current arctic ice-pack, with what existed just a few years ago, is enough to fuel (no pun intended) the fears of most (95+ percent) scientists.

California Governor Jerry Brown recently said his state will fight any Trump administration efforts to cut-back the state’s war on climate change. “We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers, and we’re ready to fight,” Brown warned at a recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union. He was speaking to rumored budget cuts that may be aimed at a NASA program using satellites to measure earth temperature. “If Trump turns off the satellites,” Brown said, regarding Trump’s oft-stated view climate change is a hoax, “we’ll launch our own damn satellite.”

Trump has promised he’ll reverse President Obama’s progress limiting carbon emissions. Bloomberg News columnist Eugene Robinson, noted a week, or so, ago, “Apparently, Trump never met a fossil fuel he didn’t like.”

It seems to me a page-and-a-half on our Nit-Wit-elect, is enough, and more than enough.

Go! You Broncos!

They had big job ahead of them Jan. 2. As a long-time coach, I can’t, I won’t, say “it’s not about whether you win, or lose, but how you play the game.” I wanted them to get out there and kick their butts all the way back to Wisconsin! But they still, have been, and always will be to us, a hell of a team, with a hell of a coach, representing a hell of a university, who put out 14 great (efforts in 14 games, with all the additional day-to-day effort implied.

It was a very good, well and cleanly played game, by both WMU and Wisconsin. Both teams should be proud of the the way the game was conducted, neither has a single thing of which to be ashamed. The ‘Broncos’ played a tough, determined, smart game — offense, defense, and special teams — their offensive execution was good the whole game. The defense was very tough, but was badly burned on outside runs more than once.

But, as I’ve said (or written) many times, “there’s a wonderful satisfaction and exaltation in superior team play (and the WMU team played at that level all season long); Then, on the other hand, there are the almost unbearable things that can, and do, happen in team athletic competition. “Nothin’ like it in the world,” (to quote builders of the Brooklyn Bridge). Western has built a very good foundation.

Will GOP help check-out Russian ‘hackers’

Well, I don’t know, but the whole House of Representatives (a very good-sized cross-section, at worst) seems concerned to see the incident is thoroughly investigated. What is Putin up to? He’s certainly trying to con Trump (a man he surely views as vain and shallow – “con-a-bull,” as the Shrub might have put it). Or is it a case of two long-term con-men trying to con one another? I don’t really believe Trump is so “worldly-wise” as the KGB/GRU trained and brought-to-power Putin. Trump seems the perfect target for a sucker-punch.

Amazin’ show of solidarity/determination in ND

The colder and nastier the weather’s become at North Dakota pipeline protest sites, the more folks seemed to be turning out in large numbers to support and/or join protesters there. Now though, with the onset of “real, upper-mid-west winter,” numbers are dwindling. When you want to help someone, remember, their environment is your environment.

Chinese fire ‘warning shot’ for Trump’s attention

Trump’s appointment of China-trade ‘hawk’ and former campaign adviser Peter Navarro to a new White House trade policy post, shocked American scholars and Chinese officials. Almost all experts in the field had believed the new administration would relax their hard-line approach to trade policy with China.

Navarro is author of the China-trade related book Death by China, and several other books defining China as America’s, “most dangerous adversary.” While the Chinese are difficult to deal with, officials there were astounded, and angered, by Navarro’s appointment to the trade advisory post. One Chinese world trade expert warned last week, “China is preparing itself for U.S. trade actions, and will respond with counter-actions of its own.” Trump has publicly criticized Beijing’s currency policies, and fortification of numerous islands in the South and West China Seas. Look for more irritants, possibly violent, to follow.