Breitbart and the Heritage foundation, huh ? Why not Conservapedia and infowars while you were at it ? Then fair and balance it with a 4chan’s /pol quote or some redditor’s blog maybe ?
I was going to get you links just for laughs, but I refuse to go on anything associated with Alex Jones, even as a joke. 
Does anyone know of a place to verify amounts actually contributed thus far to the “Green Climate Fund”? Their website lists “announced” and “signed” categories, but not … (not sure if this is the right word) … “contributed” / “fulfilled” / something like that. Fox News tweeted out that we’ve contributed $1B (out of our $3B pledge), and that China, Russia, and India haven’t contributed any yet (they appear to not have even announced any contribution). Anyone know?
This document has pledges and actual contributions to date.
Thank you for the link! 
El Generalísimo had better hair.
My pleasure. 
Unfortunately, the three Trump voters who watched this (by mistake) lost the thread about a minute and a half into it and clicked over to Breitbart and [del]The Heritage Group[/del] Fox News.
I actually watched the whole thing. I thought it was very typical John Oliver type stuff.
Well, yeah, Oliver has a shtick he has to follow.
The central thing I would hope anyone would come away with, though, is that most of what Trump said about the Paris agreement were flat-out lies.
Awesome. As an aside, I find your posts to be the most HurricaneDitka-like on the SDMB.
:rolleyes:
Rather than turning to John Oliver, someone I consider to be a good ways off from a neutral arbiter of facts, why don’t you work from the primary source material and craft your own arguments?
I’m sure that’s the impression that Oliver wanted to give, too. What’s the point of spin if nobody buys it?
Yours, on the other hand, have little to distinguish them.
Regards,
Shodan
[QUOTE=Nava]
El Generalísimo had better hair.
[/QUOTE]
I recently heard he was still dead, however.
Sure, that is reasonable. How about this?
Let’s pretend for a moment that it’s policy that has stopped coal, not market economics related to the fact that we have engineered ways to get vast amounts of natural gas…or that coal plants have additional costs associated with operations (not any of those namby pamby eco ones, but with stuff like fly ash and soot in operation), and just focus on the vast jobs that the coal sector has. Today, there are around 60,000 jobs related to coal in the US. Even if he reverses that trend in spite of the fact that we’d be talking about holding onto those great buggy whip and telephone operator jobs, it’s a drop in the bucket wrt US employment.
Then, having considered that, let’s think about something…by what mechanism does the PA prevent the US from building new coal plants, if it so desires? Or operating existing ones? By what mechanism does it ‘allow’ China to build 100 new plants (which, China is saying now they aren’t going to do)? Essentially, this statement here is spin and bullshit, and it’s pretty indicative of Trump’s whole speech. I could parse through the whole thing, but, really, I don’t see anything in there (and, as you watched the whole John Oliver video, I slogged through Trump’s whole speech, gods help me) that is accurate or spun so heavily to be misleading to anyone who doesn’t understand the issues. The overarching point Trump is making, which is this will cost the US millions of jobs and billions of dollars is simply spin…Big Coal simply doesn’t have the jobs, and the jobs lost to coal have been amply shifted to natural gas and oil (and all of the jobs associated or supporting those workers). This leaves aside all that green energy stuff, which has also seen an upsurge.
So, I challenge you now…you read through Trump’s speech and you pick out what YOU think are accurate statements. Maybe, in sifting through the vast amount of chaff and horseshit I missed some gem in there somewhere. And since this is what the discussion is about, it would be a great place to start.
I would love to see that list!
I know this challenge was not for me, but after scouring his speech, I did find one statement that can be arguably construed as “true”
depending on your definition of the word “tremendous”.
That’s all I got, sorry.
ETA: just saw this as well
If he ended the sentence there, it would be a true statement.
Knock off the petty sniping.
[/moderating]
Thanks for your sincere and thoughtful response. I’m going to have to decline your invitation to try and catalog all of Trump’s accurate statements in the announcement (I simply don’t have the time). I don’t doubt, as a guy who is typically light on details and cares little for lawyer-like precision in his statements, that there are some things Trump said that are inaccurate. I don’t think it’s “most” of what he said, and I don’t know if I’d use the term “flat-out lies” to describe very much of it, but YMMV. Since you guys seem to be struggling to find any true statement there, let me see if I can help you out with one. Let’s just take the first paragraph that you quoted:
Is that true or false? I didn’t know, and he didn’t offer much in the way of specifics, so I decided to go do some research. Here is what I found: CNN: Trump’s right and NPR. It seems that he was referring to the Acosta Deep Mine, in Jennerstown, PA, set to open on June 8th. Now, the 70 or so jobs it creates aren’t going to single-handedly save the industry, but this claim seems to be mostly true. Agree?