It’s good to know that we live in a country in which certain people have moral principles that inform their behavior, and Alexander Vindman is certainly among them.
CNN wanted viewers, because viewers = money. They got what they wanted, but, once again, proved that things like honor and love of country mean absolutely nothing to them.
Now, if you think for one minute that the garden-variety Trump supporter will accept the findings of this Republican-led investigation, you couldn’t be more wrong.
Here’s an idea for processing storm water runoff, i.e., precipitation from rain and snowmelt that flows over land without percolating into the ground.
There is no doubt that climate change is exacerbating the problems that our civilization faces with storm water. Not only are flooding events from violent storms more frequent, but sea-level rise is pushing water that was formerly contained in our oceans and aquifers up onto land; this latter effect is called “sunny-day flooding.”
Through the millennia, civil engineers have found ways to collect this runoff and send it downstream into large waterways like rivers, lakes, and oceans.
This particular concept calls for boring enormous tunnels, 12 feet in diameter, far beneath the Earth’s surface, below all current infrastructure. Current technologies enable tunnels to be built at a rate of one mile per month. Given that the United States has 317 cites whose population is greater than 100K, does that seem like a workable approach?
Note the one-size-fits-all approach. It doesn’t come in 2-foot, 4-foot, or 6-foot diameters, only 12 feet. Does that make sense, given the incredible range of needs associated with different urban layouts and storm volumes?
Also, the concept isn’t designed to move the storm water towards larger waterways, but to store it in the tunnels, letting it slowly infiltrate into the underground surroundings.
From what I can see in the website linked above, I can’t estimate the cost per mile, but it must be astronomical.
Climate change is already necessitating that we adapt to flood waters, but it seems extremely unlikely that the concept here will play a meaningful role in these adaptation strategies.
Here’s an article by Robert Reich entitled: “Trump committed treason and will try again. He must be barred from running.”
There are two other parts of our Constitution that renders what Reich says here unworkable. One lies elsewhere in the 14th Amendment and the other is the 5th Amendment, both of which say no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
Of course, if you want to try him and convict him of treason, then you have a deal. Let’s move forward with this, post-haste.
People say there is no right or wrong between the two main U.S. political parties, or that they are essentially identical to one another.
The meme here suggests otherwise.
Keep in mind that about 35% of American voters don’t see it this way at all. And there is nothing that Trump can do–no lie he can tell, no crime he can commit–that will cause his supporters to lose faith in him.
The meme here speaks an important issue in U.S. politics.
My take, FWIW, is that because Republicans are the party of greed and selfishness, its members are more likely to commit crimes than those whose political philosophies are based on the well-being of others.
The meme here came from a reader, to which I respond:
Good for you!
It seems that human beings are wired to think about the world in one or the other of these two modalities. No one knows precisely where this “wiring” come from, but it’s obviously some combination of our DNA and our lived experience.
Spiritualists, i.e., those who believe in the immortality of the soul, will add into this mix the basic personality that we all come into this life with.
In any case, regardless of how you got here, congratulations to you for caring about the people around you. Now that “wokeness” is a pejorative, it comes at a cost.
Almost a decade after Donald Trump entered the U.S. political scene, there are still people all around the world who wonder why the American media industry continues to provide oxygen to a criminal conman in his quest for re-election. The answer, of course, is money. Trump attracts attention, and attention attracts dollars.
In a similar vein, why was Tucker Carlson removed from Fox News? Yes, again, it’s money. This “news” giant lost its appetite for 9- or 10-figure civil litigation damages, as plaintiffs elbow each other out of the way to get in line to sue the bejesus out of billionaire Rupert Murdoch and his organization, whose only real strength resides in its capacity to lie to idiots.
A Fox News acolyte told me recently that, in the last few weeks, her favored channel has shifted noticeably to the political center, and that she wondered what could have prompted this abrupt change from reporting, month after month, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, that the radical left was “opening our country’s borders” and coming for her guns. Maybe Murdoch doesn’t welcome the prospect of being disemboweled financially.
His strategy was going strong, until Fox started naming names. He was all too quick to trust his people not to get him into civil litigation cases in which he stood no real chance, e.g., the catastrophic Dominion Voting Systems decision, and now, Smartmatic, that is currently poised to drive him into the pavement.
The news industry in the U.S. is the offspring of what was, just a few decades ago, a kind of public service. Until the late 20th Century, no one had realized that it could be omnipresent in our lives, serving up its vitriol 24 hours a day, simply to rake in obscene profits in ad revenues. It had its day.
But now, a cautionary note to late entrants: those windfall profits are no longer available. If your business model is to follow the Fox News case study and form a new channel that vomits up lies on the American nation, you may want to go back and reconsider your plan.
Upon my return from the 50th reunion of the William Penn Charter School class of 1973, my mother asked me if the institution’s Quaker tradition had changed over the years since I graduated.
“I don’t believe so,” I began. “There is clearly a great deal of emphasis on the core beliefs of tolerance, fairness, honesty, nonviolence, and the basic equality of every person on Earth–and all this extends from the faculty, to the seniors, and down to the kindergarteners.”
During the course of events, the second grade class gave us alumni a presentation about the issues that surround food security. As I told a friend after the presentation, “These kids are taught just a few basic things, like how to read at a 3rd or 4th grade level, and, just as importantly, be kind to everyone you meet.”
Perhaps what my mom was getting at was How “woke” is Penn Charter? I explained that William Penn lives on in the company of people like Gandhi and MLK–one of the “kings of wokeness,” one might say.
After months of investigation and many public accusations of corruption against Mr. Biden and his family, the first report of the premier House G.O.P. inquiry showed no proof of such misconduct
