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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, asserting that the President of the United States is “trying to destroy” (the country).

Apparently, this type of rhetoric plays well in the American south, where the people, mostly poorly educated, eagerly accept the idea that Democrats are actively engaged in ruining our nation.

Fortunately, this type of language is not particularly effective elsewhere.

More to the point, we used to have political opponents, rather than enemies.  We hire these people to make laws that guide our lives, and sometimes these processes require compromise, or at least the recognition that the guy across the aisle is actually not a traitor to his country.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I love Moyers.

Let’s put so much hope and trust into our teachers, pay them as if they were the trash we are barely willing to collect.

Let’s make sure they have no capacity to discipline their pupils.

Then, as often as not, let’s, send them into our inner cities and let them deal with gun violence that’s laid so many of their peers and so many of the tens of thousands of little pupils into early graves.

And then let’s blame them when our kids can’t read or write.

We deserve every cent of the cost to our society.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

In addition to what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes here, as I understand it, the real scandal is that DeJoy has a direct incentive to degrade the level of quality provided by the U.S. Post Office: his eight-figure investment in a competitive mail delivery service.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

What’s remarkable about these words from Pope Francis isn’t that they accurately express an important truth; anyone with any sense and integrity recognized the fallacy of trickle-down economics decades ago.

What’s worth noting is they came from the leader of the Catholic Church, an institution that hadn’t done much for humankind over its 1600-year history until Francis came along.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

To follow up on earlier posts in which I suggested that there are enormous segments of the U.S. electorate that find Trump an abomination, there clearly are those with a natural affinity for the former president.

At left is a guy whose truck is far larger than some of the apartments I occupied as a young man.  I submit that anyone attracted to these vehicles probably has what it takes to pull the “Trump” lever.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

If you live in Connecticut, you know how much U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has contributed to keeping us safe from gun violence.

It’s true that there are some pretty scummy people in congress, but it’s also true that we have some true champions.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

In an earlier post I mention the disdain that U.S. military veterans have for Trump.

As suggested here, there are other groups that have also figured out that the former president represents them very poorly–in this case, organized labor. Unions are back on the rise, and Trump has done absolutely nothing to help these people.

On top of all this, we have a great array of groups who have a natural antipathy toward Trump: women, LGBTQs, people of color, environmentalists, college graduates, etc.

Yes, our country has its share of hateful morons, but they are nowhere near a majority.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

As one might expect, a great deal has changed about the way we warn about the danger of wildfires.  First is the word “wildfires” itself, which, up until the last couple of decades, were called “forest fires.”

Second is the Smokey the Bear icon, and his famous phrase, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” Smokey is no longer used in today’s PSAs on the subject.

Above, we see that some clever person has morphed this to address what is virtually certain to happen on the planet if we’re unable or unwilling to mitigate climate change.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Of all the segments within the U.S. electorate who are working hard to have Donald Trump removed from American political life, it’s impossible that our military veterans are the most steadfast.

It’s likely that there is a combination of related causes here, but what lies at the core is that vets are people of honor.  True, integrity doesn’t have the same weight in our society that it did a few decades ago, but these folks took an oath to the Constitution, and are not happy that the former commander in chief did everything he could to overthrow the U.S. federal government.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

As we get into the later years of our lives, after we’ve lost a parent (or both) and more than a few school chums, we start to consider, perhaps for the first time, our own mortality.

Dylan Thomas is best remembered for his poem that begins:  Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

As shown at left, however, the Stoics had a far different, and, I would suggest, healthier approach to the event that ultimately confronts all of us.

Their Latin saying, Memento mori, “remember that you [have to] die”, may sound equally macabre, but it carries the same life affirming concept as does “Carpe diem.”  Make every moment count, toward whatever you wish to achieve for yourself, and/or for those around you.

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