Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA) joins MSNBC’s Ali Velshi to discuss Donald Trump’s shifting explanation of the Ukraine weapons pause and why, according to Rep. Vindman, it’s “dangerous” that our “Commander-in-Chief is the last to know.”
Speaking strictly for myself, I would love to believe that someone (anyone) other than Donald Trump is making the big decisions that guide our domestic and foreign policy.
A few years ago, when I was lucky enough to run into and introduce myself to author, activist, and heavy-duty environmentalist Bill McKibben at a conference of the Bioneers in Northern California, I congratulated him for his 40 years of writing and speaking on what is arguably our civilization’s most important topic.
Just now, I caught the tail end of an interview he did with NPR’s Marketplace, in which he said a few things that stayed with me:
The United States’ decision to adopt Trump’s “drill baby drill” strategy, removing our subsidies from solar and wind, and handing the vast economy of the energy future to China, is already having catastrophic consequences for our nation.
China is installing a gigawatt (the equivalent of a coal-fired or nuclear power plant) of solar every eight hours. Yes, that’s right, with the passage of every single day, there are three more.
He predicts that the U.S. will soon become a kind of “museum,” the only place on Earth that still uses the technology of the 20th Century to power its society in the 21st.
He casually mentioned that we love the burning of coal, even though it’s baking the planet and killing more people every year who are forced to inhale its exhaust fumes. He seems to look at this as America’s “par for the course.”
I love this guy’s idea here, and I wish I had this thought when my kids were young.
Helping others has so many wonderful places in our lives.
I just ran into a man and his wife, a chiropractor and a nurse, who asked me what I wrote about. I explained that I focus on environmental sustainability, the woman almost shouted, “Oh my God, that’s so important!” It’s a good feeling to know that the world is a better place as a result of one’s work.
Natalie has a point here, but I would submit that it’s really both, rather than one or the other. “Ignorant yokels” (to use her phrase) are the targets of Big Oil’s propaganda machine. Educated people who respect and understand science do not buy this crap.
Actually, even in the case of Reagan himself, most progressives don’t think that way. Yes, he put an end to the financial growth that the common American had experienced since the end of World War II, by getting us started with tax cuts for the uber-rich and trickle-down economics.
Yes, all this eventually came home to roost with Trump, but Reagan himself was a talented, sane, and (largely) law-abiding person. There’s a lot to be said for that, especially considering where we are now.
In response to the meme at left, it’s not “miserable” that these people believe what they do. Many of history’s most revered intellectuals have commented that intelligent people are far less capable of happiness than the common idiot. Check out Arthur Schopenhauer and Aldous Huxley.
FWIW, I’m not too sure.
To understand this, you have to put yourself in the mindset of the typical MAGA Trump supporter. These people believe that any amount of criminality and violence is justified if it keeps Trump in office, so as to protect the United States from the woke, radical left.
Obviously, not all college graduates are good people; of course there is no guarantee that higher education carries virtue along with it.
Yet there is clearly a strong correlation. There is a reason (perhaps many reasons) that Donald Trump does particularly well with people in states that are at the bottom of the rankings in terms of education. He got 65% of the vote in Alabama and 36% in Massachusetts. Trump’s platform? White nationalism, mass deportation, punishing the poor, tax cuts for billionaires, anti-environmentalism, support for the world’s tyrants, and the rejection of science. That’s not exactly virtue, is it?
I remember the first time I saw this technology implemented. About 20 years ago, some handy guy with a Prius had engineered and installed a solar PV roof, which, I have to admit, looked super-cool. Then I did the math and realized that the amount of energy added by the roof was so small that it was essentially meaningless.
Two decades later, they’re still ripping off gullible investors.
As former labor secretary Robert Reich notes at left, there are a couple of lessons we’ve learned from the DOGE efforts and the rest of the first six months of the current Trump presidency:
Our federal government and its employees perform services that are vital to our safety/wellbeing.
The White House, with or without Elon Musk, consistently lies to the American people. Perhaps the best example was the claim that there is massive fraud associated with Social Security, which proved to be groundless.
In 
