There are more than 6200 miles of the U.S. border.  If a terrorist crosses at any point and kills an American citizen, who is to blame?

If you’re a garden-variety idiot, you blame the U.S. president. Can’t the occupant of the White House be held accountable for every crime committed here by someone from any country who comes here illegally?

If you’re a lying idiot, you blame Biden, even if the terrorist entered during Trump’s presidency.

 

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When the poorest, least-educated Trump supporters are starving and dying of treatable diseases, this whole, pathetic refrain will morph into the following, and tens of millions of Americans will wear hats saying:

The need for food is a Democratic hoax.

and

The Republicans will abolish Obamacare and replace it with something much better.

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Here’s a concept in small wind for readers to check out. A few points:

It’s not new.  A few years ago, there was a nearly identical idea that came and went, when investors figured out that this concept, as all the others before it, was dead in the water.

They have an “axial flux generator.”  Really?  Haven’t we all seen “Back to the Future?” Making up technobabble like the “flux capacitor” gets laughs, but that’s about it.

The fact that climate change poses a huge threat doesn’t mean that every yo-yo idea in renewable energy makes sense.

There is a reason, based on physics, that vertical axis wind turbines are intrinsically less efficient than their horizontal axis counterparts and do not exist in the enormous industry of wind energy.

The wind conditions on our roofs are impeded by trees and neighboring buildings, and even that notwithstanding, they don’t take advantage of wind conditions 50-100 feet higher.  That’s the reason that wind farms are located in remote areas with incredible wind resources.  No one would like to live in a place like Tehachapi, California with gale-force winds.

The spokesperson’s idea that he’s raising investor capital to engineer the product because “you have the recipe before you bake the cookies” is catchy, but this is a recipe that clearly cannot exist.

 

 

 

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There must be a reason that our life expectancy here in the United States is slipping, while people in other countries in the developed world are living longer, healthier lives.

Is it that, on average, 12 children get shot and killed, and another 26 are injured, each day in the United States? No, but that is a contributing factor.

It’s largely that healthcare is made available to Americans only on the basis of profitability for the insurance companies.

From Cornell University:

In an oft-cited study, as many as 66.5% of people who file for bankruptcy blame medical bills as the primary cause. As many as 550,000 people file for bankruptcy each year for this reason. This data has been known for many years and has continued even with the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

 

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Let me guess. He’s from a predominantly Christian country.

Do people who have returned to life from brain-dead conditions in Japan or Israel tell stories about meeting Jesus?

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There are several reasons that this is a bad idea for schoolchildren, or anyone, really.

It imposes a religion, as prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

It acts against the clearly expressed wishes of the Founding Fathers, whom Americans respect, if not revere.

It builds enmity against those who have “other gods,” e.g., the Hindus, Muslims, etc.

The God of the Old Testament is everything we don’t want our kids to be: cruel, vindictive, bullying, childish, and temperamental.

Though it can be argued that the bible offered value to the people of the time in which it was written, it now serves to re-enforce anti-scientific thinking.  There are members of the U.S. Congress who don’t accept the theory of climate change, on the basis of a chapter in Genesis that says explicitly that “Only God can destroy the Earth.”

 

 

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To the reader who sent me this meme, I ask, with all due respect: Are you serious?

When we re-elected Trump, we chose to receive a masterclass in ruining things — in the most clearly absurd conceivable manner.

This is true across the board, whether we’re talking about women’s and LGBTQ rights, environmental protection, education, government services that help the common American, and relationships with our allies.

We conduct aggressive wars in violation of domestic and international law, and we support the world’s great dictators.

Is it really a surprise that we’ve installed a crackpot in our government to attack human health?

Ruining things.  It’s what we do now.

 

 

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Look, we understand that the MAGA folks aren’t too smart, but isn’t there a limit to how long they’ll believe that anything wrong with America is Biden’s fault?

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Here in the United States, our political leaders thumb their noses at the International Court of Justice.  This isn’t new, btw; when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney waged an aggressive war against Iraq in 2003, and no one said a thing.

What’s happening now in Venezuela is far more egregious, but it’s hard to imagine that Trump and Hegseth are too worried about it.

 

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First of all, I believe there are far fewer of these crackpots than are commonly thought to exist. The presence of social media serves to distort this.

To answer the question, there are QAnon conspiracy theorists who simply believe that science of all types is a web of lies.  The theory goes that scientists in all disciplines, health, climate, transportation, infrastructure, etc., are paid to publish papers proving ideas that profit the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet.

If you will recall, someone has supposedly invented a carburetor that enabled cars to get 200 miles to the gallon, but it was buried by the auto industry.  This whole phenomenon isn’t new.

On top of all this, we live in a time that features an appalling lack of scientific education.  If you go on Facebook right this minute, you’ll run across dozens of different fraudulent claims for devices that generate electricity out of thin air, and tons of other crap that violate the laws of thermodynamics.

 

 

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