When the former president retweets the home address of Barack and Michelle Obama, or when he suggests that special prosecutor Jack Smith should be “put out to rest,” it seems obvious that he represents a danger to our society.

Yes, the actual amount of pro-Trump violence has fallen since the insurrection, presumably because even the most deranged of these people has the sense to avoid lengthy prison terms, but by no means has it vanished entirely.

For right now at least. the issue is not so much actually violence as it is threats.  As discussed here, threats of violence are plaguing the prosecutors working on the multiple lawsuits and investigations of the already indicted Donald Trump.

Lurking around the nation are tens of millions of armed Trump supporters, many of whom are waiting, some more patiently than others, for their leader to call for the next uprising.  Similarly, there are members of the judiciary who understand their responsibility to prevent a blood-bath before it happens.

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The New Yorker’s editor David Remnick interviews presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in this fabulous podcast.

I join the vast majority of Americans in expressing my concern that candidate Kennedy has no relevant experience that would make him qualified to be the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military, nor in crafting policies that determine how this nation goes about its business as the most powerful nation on Earth.

The fact that he’s a crackpot conspiracy theorist, a la Alex Jones, just puts the icing on the cake. I don’t think we would be well served by a man who asserts, without substantiation, that Dr. Anthony Fauci helped orchestrate the coup attempt following the 2020 election.

 

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Re: the ad here, I wrote, “We need a new internal combustion engine like we need faster biplanes. What type of moron buys into this?”
Reader Andrew Dean replies:  “Literally everyone smart enough to know that electric cars are NOT the long term answer.”
Two points:
The recognition that fossil fuels are ruining this planet is held by everyone whose understanding is not rooted in Big Oil’s propaganda.
The auto industry is investing trillions of dollars to move to electric.  It makes sense, to me at least, to follow the money here.  Mercedes Benz built 6 million gas- and diesel-powered cars and trucks in 2022.  Their target for 2025?  Zero.  Not a single one.
I’m always amused by people who think that environmental movements are a sham, even when industries the size of world transportation are betting their entire future on them.
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Here’s a clever reminder of how humankind came to fill its role as the only life form whose activities despoil its home.

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Many of our civilization’s greatest thinkers believe that humankind has found itself in an “evolutionary cul-de-sac,” i.e., that we’ve progressed as far as this species is capable, along road with a dead-end ahead.

Normally, these folks talk about our superabundance of technology and our woeful lack of compassion for one another.

Another concept is, ironically, in many ways the polar opposite. I join those who fear that it is, in fact, the rejection of science that will bring us to ruin.

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As discussed here, Pence is shifting his position on the subject, but what else could be expected from a person tragically born with neither a spine nor a personality?

Could be a moot point, given that Pence could no more be the next U.S. president than he could be overlord of the Milky Way galaxy.

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If there were only some way to identify the true intentions of these insurrectionists.

What brought them to the Capitol on January 6th? They couldn’t have come to initiate a civil war, could they?

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This might make sense if it weren’t for countries like Japan that are both a) almost completely godless and b) nearly totally safe from gun violence.

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As the United States makes its way through the first half of the 21st Century, we see terrifying reminders of ignorance and divisiveness.

 

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We know that the Earth is experiencing record high temperatures, and that these data points are not isolated, but are part of long-term warming trends that derive from the buildup of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, largely due to our civilization’s consumption of fossil fuels.

We also know that the overarching economic power structures on this planet couldn’t care less about abating the unprecedented levels of suffering that are making their way around the globe: the mass displacement of populations due to the disappearance of land masses, the storms, the wildfires, the loss of biodiversity, the acidification of our oceans, and so on.

I met a young fellow today who was interested in this subject, but believed that our response is based on lies foisted upon us by the woke socialists.  “Isn’t it true that wind turbines require a great deal of oil to manufacture the blades and maintain themselves in operation?” he challenged me.

I explained that, although there is no environmental “free lunch,” there are a great number of actual facts that matter.  When it comes to renewable energy, the most important metric is “EROI,” or “energy return on investment.”   Wind turbines return somewhere between 18:1 and 30:1 in terms of EROI, meaning that, on average, if we spend one kilowatt-hour producing and maintaining a wind turbine, we’ll get, say, 25 kilowatt-hours back over the time of its operation. Meanwhile, most of that energy displaces what would have come from coal, with its greenhouse gas emissions in terms of CO2 and methane, its heavy metals in the form of mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and selenium, as well as its incredible array of extremely toxic, carcinogenic radioactive isotopes.

Did I make an impact here?  Frankly, I’m not sure.  But if I failed, it wasn’t because I didn’t try. That’s all that can be expected of us, IMO.

 

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