BILL NYE’S EMBARRASSING FACE-OFF WITH TUCKER CARLSON ON CLIMATE CHANGE — It didn’t end well for the ‘Science Guy:’

Now usually when these charges are made by someone who purports to possess expertise in climate science (Nye has a degree in mechanical engineering), the interviewer acquiesces, immediately surrendering the debate to the climate activist. But Carlson wouldn’t back down: “To what degree is climate change caused by human activity? . . . Is it 100 percent, is it 74.3 percent? If it’s settled science, please tell us to what degree human activity is responsible.”

* * * * * * * * *

While it’s easy to dismiss Nye’s interview as a kooky one-off appearance from an unprepared celebrity scientist, he sadly represents the lack of integrity by most climate-change pushers. They move goalposts, manufacture facts, resist honest debate, and resort to smear tactics when confronted with specific questions they cannot answer. As Carlson said to Nye, “You really don’t know, and you bully people who ask questions.” Good thing Carlson is there to bully back for once.

Read the whole thing; video of the segment online here.

CHARLES HURT: Trump speech leaves Democrats befuddled, in ruins, with question marks.

As I noted in last night’s drunkblog, Trump is going after traditionally Democratic constituencies in way some of us on the right-leaning bloggers have been pushing for since George W. Bush’s first term.

IT’S LIKE THE FAILED OLD AGENDA ON STEROIDS: The Environmentalist Left’s New Agenda.

Indeed, as President Trump and GOP leaders breathe new life into the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, left-wing environmentalists are pushing their anti-fossil fuel “Keep it in the Ground” movement even further out of the mainstream with a proposal, called “The Solutions Project.”

Conceived by Stanford University professor Mark Z. Jacobson and endorsed by McKibben and others, The Solutions Project is a plan to move America to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. McKibben offered glowing praise for the proposal in a recent op-ed, saying it comes “as close to winning this war [on climate change] as we could plausibly get.”

What McKibben and his allies fail to tell Americans is that Jacobson’s plan would totally devastate the U.S. economy to the tune of 4 million lost jobs, and would be a land grab the size of North Dakota, as a new AR2 white paper makes clear.

Jacobson buries these details deep in his long report and offers scant analysis or consideration of the costs. He casually notes the project will cost $14.6 trillion – or $429 billion per year if spent equally over the 34 years between now and 2050.

Insane.

But so long as there’s enough money and power concentrated in Washington, they’ll keep coming up with bigger and grander and more despotic schemes to impose on the entire country.

JOE BATTENFELD: New tone proves to be prime-time hit for prez. As I said last night, he’s breaking the “Hitler frame.”

YEAH, BUT THEY DIDN’T CARE: UC Berkeley and City Officials Had Warning Anti-Milo Protests Could Spiral Out of Control.

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RETAINING AMERICA’s “HARD POWER”: My latest Creators Syndicate column looks at the Trump Administration’s plans for the Department of Defense.

FORMER DEMOCRAT SENATOR BEN NELSON: ‘Adequate Vetting’ of Travelers Important ‘Even If You Make Some People Angry.’

HARSHING THE NARRATIVE, AS USUAL:

HMM: Trump’s $54 billion defense budget increase isn’t what it seems. And Congress is mad.

The Trump administration billed the $603 billion budget as an increase of 10 percent or $54 billion, but that number is only in comparison to sequestration levels of $549 billion. Sequestration has not been triggered since 2013. President Obama’s 2017 budget request and 2018 plans both went over the sequestration limits and put the onus on Congress to pass a budget deal to avoid the cuts.

“The new administration claiming a 10 percent increase that’s really a 3 percent increase is fake budgeting,” said House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Turner. “Our military’s readiness has suffered immensely over the past 8 years due to stringent budget cuts. It is imperative we can make a real attempt to reverse dangerous trends in defense spending.”

Of course, getting a handle on how the Pentagon spends is just as important as how much the Pentagon spends.

UBER CEO: ‘I must fundamentally change and grow up’

Kalanick’s apology, also posted to Uber’s website, began, “By now I’m sure you’ve seen the video where I treated an Uber driver disrespectfully. To say that I am ashamed is an extreme understatement.”

The language then grows increasingly more melancholy, stating the incident “cannot be explained away.” It continued:

It’s clear this video is a reflection of me — and the criticism we’ve received is a stark reminder that I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up. This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it.

It closed with Kalanick “profoundly” apologizing to Fawzi and the “driver and rider community” as a whole. The entire letter is posted below.

Such language from the CEO suggested the apology was inspired by more than simply the video. The past few months have not been kind to company.

Most of Uber’s wounds have been self-inflicted.

CHANGE: Tea Party moving from defense to offense.

As liberal activists embrace Tea Party tactics to try to rescue the Affordable Care Act, Tea Party organizations are preparing to reclaim the protest mantle by planning a “day of action” to encourage Congress to repeal Obamacare.

“Tea Party tactics were excellent when there were not Republican majorities in Congress and when the president was opposed to all conservative policies,” Freedom Works stated in acknowledging that a new approach is necessary now that the GOP controls the executive and legislative branches.

“Rallies by themselves are a defensive tactic used by those without significant leverage in the government,” Freedom Works CEO Adam Brandon stated. “It’s time to move from defense to offense.”

From March 15 to April 15, “Freedom Works will begin to unleash new tactics,” the conservative group stated, promising to bring 1,000 supporters to Capitol Hill for the March 15 kickoff.

Stay tuned.

SARAH HOYT: “I know the idea we have in our minds of a populist revolution. But that is not … exactly what we’re facing.”

More:

People underestimate how big a change extremely cheap data storage and processing and communication at a distance have made.

No, mass production for some things is not going away, any more than agriculture went away. But it is going to shrink, products are going to become more customizable. And one size fits all government will be almost impossible, the further we get into that change.

I’ve talked about this, and the necessity to build under, build around, build over to take the weight of the structures that aren’t working.

But it wasn’t until this weekend and the conversations about last week that I GOT it. It’s not just government. If it were just government, it would be easy. But the same stick hitting politics is hitting EVERYTHING from Hollywood to your local grocery store.

Read the whole thing.

The Automation Revolution has been going on for a while now, but so far progress has been relatively slow and steady. The almost-impossible thing to understand is that for all the change and disruption we’ve undergone, we’re just now starting the big swoop where the graph turns all hockey stick.

OUT: TRUMP’S A RUSSIAN PATSY WHO WILL ROLL OVER FOR OUR ENEMIES.

In: The Trump presidency ushers in a new age of militarism. Former President Dronekiller McLibya was unavailable for comment.

ROGER SIMON: Is February 28, 2017, ‘The Night the Democratic Party Died’? “The Democratic Party members watching that speech looked like a party of the living dead. They didn’t know how to react. They didn’t know if they were Americans. They didn’t know who they were.”

SHOCKER: Barack and Michelle Obama sign book deals.

Former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama have signed book deals with Penguin Random House, the publisher announced Tuesday, according to multiple reports.

“We are absolutely thrilled to continue our publishing partnership with President and Mrs. Obama,” Penguin CEO Markus Dohle said in a statement, according to The Associated Press.

“With their words and their leadership, they changed the world, and every day, with the books we publish at Penguin Random House, we strive to do the same.”

Dohle said the publisher is looking forward to working with the former president and first lady to “make each of their books global publishing events of unprecedented scope and significance.”

In the past, the Obamas have published books through Crown, a Penguin imprint.

The former president has written “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope,” while the former first lady wrote a book about food and gardening called “American Grown,” released in 2012.

There were no details yet on the titles and publishing dates for their latest books. The financial terms of the deals were not disclosed, though have been pegged as likely in the tens of millions of dollars.

Step One of the Clinton playbook. Next: The Obama Global Initiative?

FAKE NEWS: NPR Failed to Disclose Trump-Bashing CIA Officer As Clinton Donor in Radio Interview.

DISRUPTING THE NARRATIVE: Hey Dems, Trump and the GOP Just Signed Bills to Help Women, Black Colleges.

KURT EICHENWALD: How Donald Trump is fueling ISIS.

IRAQI COMMANDER: ISIS leaders ‘running away’ from Mosul.

Who you gonna believe — Kurt or the Iraqi commander’s own lying eyes?

IS THERE ANYTHING HE CAN’T DO? Trump’s Big Achievement: Making the New York Times Care About Antisemitism.

To summarize: Ten Jewish cemetery desecrations, of which two — one of which was outside the US — were covered by the New York Times. Both times the Times bothered to cover the attacks, the newspaper did so in a way that minimized the potentially antisemitic aspect of the attack.

In November of 2016, Donald Trump was elected president.

In February 2017, there were two attacks on Jewish cemeteries. About 200 tombstones were affected at a graveyard near St. Louis, Mo., and about 100 at one in Philadelphia, Pa.

The Times responded in a markedly different way than it did to the earlier, pre-Trump attacks, which it had either ignored or minimized. One Times news article about the Missouri attacks carried the bylines of two Times reporters and was accompanied by two images shot by a Times-commissioned photographer. The article prominently noted that critics said the attacks “were an outgrowth of the vitriol of last year’s presidential campaign and Mr. Trump’s tone during it.” The Times reinforced this point with not just one, but two op-eds commenting on the attack, both of which were accompanied by additional photographs and carried headlines reaching speculative conclusions about the motive: “The New American Anti-Semitism” and “When Hate Haunts a Graveyard.” (Never mind that one of these op-ed pieces itself propagated the falsehood that Jews oppose organ donation.)

The Times produced a video report on the attacks. The Philadelphia attack also got its own Times news article, accompanied by a photograph. . . .

But the difference is not that now Jewish cemeteries are subject to vandalism. As the timeline above demonstrates, that has long been the case. The difference is that now, rather than ignoring or minimizing the problem, the New York Times is highlighting and emphasizing it. (We’ll also have to see whether the attacks increase in scope or frequency, and, if culprits are found, what can be determined about their motivation.)

Of all the possible consequences of a Trump presidency that have been warned about or hoped for, a heightened attention by New York Times editors to antisemitism probably falls in the category of unexpectedly positive developments.

Heh.

NEW RESPECT:

DON SURBER: Trump Reassures America. “We have all seen his Howard Beale side. It was time to see his Norman Vincent Peale side.”

RICH GALEN: “My Twitter feed, which is mostly national political reporters, was soggy with the tears of disappointment that President Donald Trump hadn’t put on a clown suit and gone completely off script.”

I didn’t like the part about “paid family leave.” And Elaine Chao is on Fox talking about “public/private partnerships,” which also gives me pause. Those are usually less efficient than either the public or the private sector. But it was a great speech overall, not just for Trump, but for any President.

THE DEMOCRATS IN 2017: Bernie Sanders Rips Trump For “Stirring Up Fear And Hatred” By Inviting Families Of People Killed By Illegal Aliens.