December is a good time of year to remind ourselves that our consumerism as a society is a choice; it’s not a requirement.
On a related note, when we support the thrift-store economy, we’re reducing the amount of resources that are extracted from the Earth and providing those with lesser means the opportunity to have clothes and other items that they otherwise couldn’t afford.
Re: the meme here, a reader notes: This climate meeting was all about fossil fuel strategies and alliances to wipe out renewable energy.
There is no doubt that this was the focus on the part of Big Oil. Looked at from that perspective, the “justification” is clear: show the world that fossil energy is here to stay, and as they say in science fiction, “resistance is futile.”
Their problem, of course, is that the costs of solar and wind continue to come down, and the power of pure market forces will eventually make energy from oil, gas and coal, prohibitively expensive.
Precisely what this planet will be like at that point is impossible to determine, as is the prognosis for keeping temperature rises to a workable level.
This cartoon by “Stines” reminds us that, when they grow up, naughty kids turn into bad adults who have no compunction about destroying the planet’s capacity to support life, if that’s what’s required to make them rich.
Though we Americans tend to learn very little about the political issues that motivate voters in other countries, things elsewhere around the globe seem to make better sense than they do here.
I would be shocked to know that the French, the Germans, or the Japanese have viable political parties that are built around anti-wokeism, especially taken to extremes, e.g., what Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida.
Good job by Jimmy Kimmel here (or, more properly, one of his writers).
Thucydides’ statement here implies that war has been a permanent, 365-day-a-year feature of Western society for at least the last 2500 years.
Occasionally we run into small groups of people who are trying to change that, like the organizers of the World Peace Tax Fund (that would allow taxpayers to direct their payments away from the military), and the Year Without War folks, who are working to find a calendar year in which all fighting around the globe would temporarily cease.
Sadly, neither seems to be gaining strength.
I’m willing to bet that he’ll find incarceration even more embarrassing.
When we come across political advertising like this, we realize to our horror that many Americans are incapable of any more refined level of thinking than this, and that their votes counts just as much as yours and mine.
AUSTIN, TX – MAY 29:
In a recent post, I laid out the principal reason that Trump could not possibly be reelected, i.e., by next November, the entire world will have seen crushing evidence that proves that the former president committed a vast array of felonies in a grossly illegal attempt to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.
I failed to mention the final nail in the coffin: Republican politics is ridiculously out of touch with the sensibilities of most Americans, where it comes to things like abortion bans, Ukraine, education, environmental issues, racism, and Social Security and Medicare.
This entire group is going to go down hard in November.
The next presidential election is still almost a year from now, so we’ll have to wait a considerable length of time to see what happens. This is good news for the media, though it’s no minor disease for the mental health of most Americans, not to mention folks around the world.
That said, let’s examine a key data point that will be informing voters’ decisions. Over the coming few months, it will become clear, even to most of Trump’s current supporters, that the former president attempted to overthrow the U.S. government via his conduct after the 2020 election, leading up to, during, and after the J6 insurrection.
We will be exposed to mountains of evidence, including testimony from dozens of witnesses, that Trump was–and continues to be–engaged in a grossly illegal attempt to maintain power by overturning the results of a free and fair election.
Yes, there will be those who will still be impressed with Trump’s swagger as a political strongman, just like the sheep in the cartoon, but it’s unimaginable that he’ll be reelected after being proved to be a traitor to his country.
