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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

A few times a week, I flick on Fox News for a minute or two just to see how they’re seeing current events under Trump.  What I notice is that they seldom mention Trump at all; most of their content is about Democrats.  You remember them–the group that is powerless in the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court.

They cover Joe Biden in great detail; they call him “Pothole Joe” now, I guess for his $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, some of which may have been misspent??  I honestly don’t know.

The point is this:  If you’re trying to make sense of the world around you today, how much do you need to understand about a man who has been out of office since last January, and has no more effect on your political or financial lives than Daffy Duck?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The presence of Trump in our lives can be compared to the “chicken and egg” phenomenon.  Did Trump cause our immorality, ignorance, and lies, or did an intellectually and morally failing electorate bring Trump into power?

The author of the meme here believes it’s the latter of the two, though I would say that it’s impossible to make the call here, as neither could have happened without the other.

In any case, all this leads to another discussion that Americans have constantly with one another: Is a difference in politics worth losing friends over?  In my own mind, I frame the question a bit differently: How close do I want to be to someone who, for whatever reason, honestly believes that Trump is a good, honest, and effective leader of the United States?

I’d far rather have an evening martini and watch Jeopardy with my wife–even on a night when I really hate the categories.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels
From The Other 98%:
Trump just gave away America’s last wild frontier — to Big Oil. It’s the largest giveaway of public land to fossil fuel companies in modern history. The announcement, made Thursday by Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, opens 1.56 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge wilderness to oil and gas drilling.
Burgum bragged that “Alaska is open for business,” calling it a win for “energy independence.” Translation: the Arctic is open for destruction.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I agree with the author of the meme here; before Trump came along, it would have been the end of a president’s candidacy to commit an act of great violence in an effort to overturn a federal election and remain in power.

We can only conclude that Trump has a special hold on tens of millions of hateful idiots.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Bulldozing the East Wing.  The National Guard in U.S. cities.  Executing untried Venezuelans.  Charging for entry to White House events.  Getting rid of food safety.  Grab ’em by the pussy.  Overt racism.  Jeffrey Epstein. Extreme tariffs.  Bailing out Argentina.  Annexing Canada and Greenland.  RFK, Jr. and Pete Hegseth. Fake assassination attempt.  Killing wind and solar energy.  Prosecuting political enemies.  Mass redistricting. Alligator Alcatraz.  Orchestrating January 6 and pardoning its participants.  Self-enrichment.  Pardoning war criminals convicted in military courts. Mass deportation without due process.  Defiance of court orders.

It seems that almost every day we get news of something Trump did that is so outrageous it defies words.

There are people who believe that, when November 2028 comes along, the Unites States will be in such a state of chaos that there will be no way to have a free and fair election, and that Trump will use this to stay in power.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Agreed. Hope things turn out well for him and his country. It’s a shame the “civilized” world can’t do a better job in protecting and defending them.

Speaking of “loading up a plane with money (and concubines),” this is what I expected of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in his final days.  Obviously, he was a man completely devoid of honor.  But why was he also stupid enough to stay around and get hanged?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

It’s not exactly “new news,” but (at least in the United States), there are two completely antithetical versions of Christianity, those who:

1) Live by the teachings of Christ, e.g. loving one another and taking care of those who most need our help, and

2) Follow the very worst characteristics of human beings and somehow call it Christianity.  Here, I’m talking about war, savagery, torture, slavery, racism, and ignorance.

What causes the divide here?  No one knows.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Synthetic Fuel

Virtually every molecule of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel we use here in our human civilization came from decomposed plants and animals that were on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago.

Within the last decade or so, scientists have performed computer simulations that demonstrate that point sources of carbon dioxide and hydrogen, made from electrolyzing water, can be brought together with large amounts of off-peak energy from wind farms or nuclear plants to create compounds that are chemically identical to those we use to fill our automobiles, cargo ships, and jets.

There are a few nasty problems standing in the way, however:

1) The idea is perceived to be risky, and the company who’s patented the concept hasn’t been able to raise the venture capital required to build a prototype.

2) As mentioned above, the idea requires point sources of CO2, e.g., coal-fired power plants or concrete manufacturing plants, with concentrations of CO2 north of 30%, rather than the air we breathe with concentrations approximately 0.04%. The meme above is pure nonsense.

3) At a certain point I was quite bullish on synthetic fuels, but now it seems that electric transportation is likely to win the day.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I have a very good friend who’s about my age, i.e., getting old, who writes:

We the People either find a way to break Trump’s party’s grip on the wheel, or we go down with the ship….Like many of our older citizens, I’ve been fighting against this evil current for decades, and with many in later generations who’ve also been waking up and grabbing oars, I still hope we may together turn the tide.

In many, probably hundreds of talks we’ve had on this and related subjects, you’ve always been the more optimistic one. And that’s a good thing, as pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I agree that there are scenarios under which Trump is removed from office before our nation becomes another Russia.  Yet my imagination is running thin, as each day we have an event that boggles the mind: he did WHAT to the East Wing of the White House?

Does Washington D.C. need a new ballroom?  Our course not.  Trump has a need, however, and that is to show the American people that, to use my favorite French expression: les carottes sont cuites, i.e. “the carrots are cooked,” a metaphor for “the dinner I’ve made is a disaster and it’s too late to save it because the carrots need to be served immediately,” which is in turn a metaphor for “the situation at hand is a catastrophe and it can’t be fixed at this point.”

Most of what he does on a daily basic is patently illegal, and, while some are small acts, like executing a few Venezuelans on the high seas with no proof of guilt of a crime may seem trivial, what they really mean is this: “Obviously I know that this clearly violates both domestic and international law. That’s the whole point. Do think I don’t have any lawyers for Christ’s sake?   I can do anything I want, and no one can stop me.”

So, can anybody stop him?  We’ll soon see.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

…. just like 32 of the world’s most productive nations.

Why is this so hard to fathom for the citizens of the wealthiest country on Earth?

News flash:  We don’t want sick, ignorant people!

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