Apparently, there is a social media platform available to those who resent “woke” people, where participants can discuss a great variety, including gardening and poetry.
I have to confess that I have a morbid curiosity about this. What type of poetry is most appealing to Trump supporters? They don’t seem to be the most free-minded and nuanced thinkers I’ve ever run across.
A sustainable society is one that meets its own needs without preventing future generations from meeting theirs.
So, what can happen to make a society unsustainable? We normally think of environmental issues like pollution, climate change, over-fishing, etc.
Yet consider a country that has successfully made its way from a democracy to an oligarchy, and contemplate some of what that means:
• Harsh justice and gross unfairness for the masses, and no accountability for the 1%
• Vast levels of undereducation
• Lack of competitiveness in international markets
• Broadspread apathy towards voting
• Healthcare that is increasingly unaffordable, creating an ever-enlarging diseased population with lowering life expectations
It wasn’t too long ago that the United States was respected and envied by the world. Now we have a political party based almost purely on lies, ignorance and hate.
We all know that Donald Trump has the emotional maturity of a spoiled eight-year-old and is incapable of controlling his temper whenever someone mentions a disparaging word about him.
But when the source of such a word is the community of evangelical Christians, can’t he simply “count to ten” before entering into a “fiery rant?”
Yes, our country has many voting blocs whose taste for racism and stupidity is enormous, but there are limits.
From this: At least 74 Illinois sheriff’s departments have publicly vowed to defy elements of a recent gun-control law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which banned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and switches. The officers have vowed to not check if weapons are registered with the state or house individuals arrested only for not complying with the law.
This may be a good time to remind the world of law enforcement that the American people don’t want you writing your own laws. Of course, most of the news coverage here surrounds the summary executions of black people, but we’d actually prefer that you not violate any of the laws.
I’ll “wait a second,” then mention that Russia is:
• An avowed enemy of the U.S., with nuclear weapons aimed at each one of our population centers
• A brutal dictatorship, imprisoning and torturing its dissenters
• Waging an aggressive war
• Attacking a democracy
• Torturing and executing innocent people, including women and children
If you can’t figure this out, that’s precisely why you’re watching Fox News to begin with.
“Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, hate leads to violence. That is the equation.”
Access to high quality public education is absolutely critical to our ability, as Americans, to reverse the course of all the horrific behavior that we see all around us.
(Those of us trying to learn Spanish note that the verb llevar is used here, which I’ve translated as “to lead to.” It can also mean carry, take, wear, have, occupy, bring, consume, conduct, guide, behave, bear a burden, assume, spend, drive, and include. Like I say, English has more words than it needs; Spanish has too few.)
My mom occasionally mentions that the blog here has a tendency to be repetitive, and there’s no arguing that. After all, there are only a few main impediments to humankind’s living longer, healthier, more just, more satisfying lives on a greener planet, and it is to those subjects that I confine myself.
The one that sits on top of all the others, the keystone to the arch as it were, is money in politics.
David Cobb, known as a “people’s lawyer” for his fierce legal pursuit of corporate polluters and lobbied elected officials, says this: no matter what cheeses you off most about our current situation: rapidly deteriorating education, a two-tiered justice system, the mass murder of our school kids, the fossil fuel industry’s using our atmosphere as its own private sewer, or homeless veterans dying of treatable diseases, it all comes down to one thing: bribery.
Lawmakers are taking campaign contributions from entities that profit from ruining innocent people’s lives.
Here’s an interesting video that compares small wind (<50 KW) with solar for the typical homeowner.
The fellow concludes that small wind “isn’t there yet,” though there are some promising potential solutions coming onto the market soon; he actually predicts a positive growth rate for small wind in the U.S. (more…)
There is no doubt that 99+% of the people of Arkansas are totally fine with what their governor has said here, and that their kids are learning to be “children of God.”
Of course, this violates the provision of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that prevents the government from making laws that regulate an establishment of religion, and thus such governance, if it were to occur outside the Deep South, it would be obliterated in the courts.
It’s good to see that the U.S. legislative world hasn’t forgotten about overturning, preferably via a Constitutional Amendment, the Supreme Court decision FEC v. Citizens United, that granted corporations free speech protection to donate as much as they want to our political campaigns, essentially undermining the will of the American people.
It’s been almost 13 years to the day since this decision came down, and it would be interesting to know what if anything in the political and economic climate has changed that may make things easier or harder on those supporting such an amendment.
The rich have most certainly gotten richer, and everyone else is struggling just to stay alive, so that probably doesn’t bode well. Neither does the fact that we have a GOP House majority that has a huge appetite for pleasing the super-wealthy and for inflicting cruelty to the common American.
Still, it’s heartening to see a few progressive congresspeople moving this forward.
