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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It certainly would be interesting to know what Steve Bannon knows about the January 6th insurrection, especially given that he told his television audience on January 5th:

“All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It’s all converging, and now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack.  I’ll tell you this: It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. It’s going to be quite extraordinarily different, and all I can say is strap in.”

So why did I use the phrase would be interesting as opposed to will be interesting?  It’s because Steve Bannon ignores subpoenas.

When he was sentenced to four months in jail for ignoring a congressional subpoena, was he immediately remanded into custody like you or I would have been?

Of course not. He’s connected to some of America’s wealthiest and most powerful elite, and he knows that he can thumb his nose at the U.S. federal government until hell freezes over.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Jane:

Thanks for thinking of us.  But, as I’m sure you know, the vast majority of Americans understand that our problem with gun violence stems from too many guns, especially in the hands of people who may be mentally imbalanced.

Yes, we have a few morons who believe that more guns, not fewer, will make us all safer, but again, they are relatively  rare.

At the heart of our suffering in this arena is what lies at the core of all of our other woes: big money in politics.  The gun lobby is so powerful that our lawmakers are terrified even to broach the subject of legislation that would restrict the ownership of any type of weapon, even those designed to kill as many people as possible in the shortest period of time .

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It does appear, at least in the United States, that empathy and compassion has taken a back seat to greed, selfishness, and indiscriminately directed hate.

In fact, we have an entire political party built around exploiting this trend.

Speaking for myself, I join Ms. Rozzi; I’m happy to be what the GOP calls “woke.”  It feels good to get up each morning hoping that humankind will find new and better ways of taking care of one another.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Those who follow professional golf know that the Saudi-backed LIV Tournament has recently merged with the Professional Golf Association (PGA), to the chagrin of many.

At issue is the concern that Saudi Arabia is a rogue state with gross disregard for human rights.

The meme here refers to the fact that Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated and dismembered at the direction of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Most of us crawling around this planet join Charles Dickens in his hope for the world.

In fact, many of us are living our lives in such a way so as to achieve this outcome.

The problem arises when evil people accumulate large amounts of money and power, and are thus enabled to cause enormous damage to our planet and the civilization that lives on it.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I support the right of labor to organize in most cases, but I urge caution to those who approve of the meme here: Be careful what you wish for.

I had just over 100 employees at a certain point in my career managing a marketing services agency.  The subject of unionization never came up, as it was never implemented in our industry, and I paid my people well, with significant bonuses, even if that weren’t the case.

Trust me, these people didn’t want to send me up a tree in terror, desperately looking for a way to reduce head-count. They wanted me on my game, excited to travel the globe, bringing home huge projects that would be lucrative for the entire team to deliver.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

As I’ve mentioned, progressives, unlike Trump supporters, generally don’t put on massive public displays of their political and religious beliefs. No Confederate flags, no “Let’s Go Brandon” decals.

As an example, I have a small “Amnesty International” bumper sticker on the back of my Prius, but there is nothing else by which I can be identified as “woke.”

As we can see in the photo shown here, this practice of discretion doesn’t hold universally.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Nicola Tesla was an enigmatic figure who, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, played an important role in the development of the technology that made it possible for humankind to make use of electricity.

And he didn’t get the credit he deserved.

But we’re not doing his name any favors with idiotic stuff like this.

He invented electricity?  First of all, electricity is a property of the universe that existed from its inception.  Thus it’s no more proper to say that someone invented it than to say that someone invented the North Pole.

More to the point, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, a Greek named Thales discovered that amber, when rubbed with silk, attracted feathers and other light objects.  He named this phenomenon after the word for amber: ëelectron.

More than 2000 years later, European scientists Galvani, Volta, Ampere, Ohm, and many others worked out certain of the key principles of the subject.  Note that many of the units in which we measure electricity are named for them.

In my estimation, it was England’s Michael Faraday who deserves top credit in this department for having nailed all this together in the 1830s with his discovery of the relationship between electricity and magnetism.  But, if you’re a purist, you can argue in favor of James Clerk Maxwell, who expressed all this in the elegance of the mathematics that Faraday couldn’t.

In any case, Tesla was a great mind (though he had little or nothing to do with X-rays and radar).  Let’s not dishonor him with our stupidity.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It may have been CNN’s Chris Licht’s decision to give Donald Trump the floor in a “Town Hall” to promote his “Big Lie” that cost him his job.

In any case, given the now-deposed CEO of CNN and his credentials as a complete asshole, maybe he can obtain a new job euthanizing dogs in animal shelters or separating families at the southern border and inflicting unspeakable cruelties on the world’s most unfortunate little children.

As we’ve proven over long periods of time, there’s always a path forward for our country’s most despicable people.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff oversaw the goings-on in the White House in the period in which the former president tried desperately to retain power following his loss in the 2020 presidential election. Now, it appears that, because of his participation in Trump’s attempt to overthrow the U.S. federal government, Meadows has agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge than seditious conspiracy so as to avert a life prison sentence.

Evidently, there is no honor among traitors.

If, in fact, Meadows had been sentenced to die in prison, that would have been completely acceptable to those of us who care about the continuation of American democracy.

If he gets a lesser sentence, and his boss goes down hard, that’s also totally fine, IMO.

 

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