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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics — No Comments ↓

ABC News has suspended its Senior National Correspondent based in Washington, D.C. for the tweet he posted at left.

Before the suspension, Moran covered national politics and policy, reporting from the White House, the US Supreme Court, and the campaign trail for all ABC News programs.

It would be interesting to know what all this is really about.  Obviously, Moran’s words are his opinions, and not “news” per se.  Having said that, almost none of what we read/see is “news” in the strictest sense.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics — No Comments ↓

I met a woman the other day who expressed her hope that the protests against Trump’s sociopathic criminality would not become violent.   At first I thought she was kidding, but I soon realized that she was simply a Trump supporter who believed that anyone protesting against the president must be a lunatic, capable of great harm.

I tried to reassure her, making it seem that I was taking her seriously: “I’ve been associated with protestors from the days of Nixon and Vietnam to the rights of women, black lives, the use of science in policy-making, climate change mitigation, all the way up to Donald Trump.  These are the most peace-loving people imaginable.”

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics — No Comments ↓

Unless requested to do so, I don’t make comparisons between Hitler and Trump. But, since a reader sent me the piece at left, here are a few thoughts.

A minor point: Unless you’re extremely wealthy, you will actually pay higher taxes under Trump than you did under his predecessor. Not that I expected it, but a little honesty would have been a nice touch.

Far more importantly, it will be very interesting to see how many people actually will die as a result of:

• Removal of healthcare and nutrition programs for tens of millions of Americans and their children.

• Hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, loss of land masses and biodiversity, ocean acidification, and other effects of climate change.

• Gunshots.

• The lies and preventable missteps associated with COVID-19 and its variants.  We can all hope for no further outbreaks, but there are no guarantees.

• Violence associated with rounding up and deporting immigrants.

• Our support of atrocities against the Palestinians.

• The financial devastation that is wreaked upon huge numbers of Americans due to tariffs and trade wars with former allies like Canada.

• Our nation’s retreat from NATO, and support of the murderous Putin regime, inviting Russian aggression further westward in Europe.

• Reduction in the robustness of air safety and other aspects of our infrastructure.

In addition, there are important though impossible-to-quantify aspects of Trump’s leadership that will ultimately result indirectly in many deaths. Though this is all speculative at this point, we are facing a likely end to American democracy and reliance on rule of law.  Trump tried to violently overthrow the legitimate government of the world’s most powerful nation, and has ended all attempts to hold him criminally accountable.  What happens, as a consequence, when the status of United States is globally downgraded, just like its Treasury bonds were last month?

Btw, Trump didn’t “hurt my feelings.”  In fact, he did nothing whatsoever to hurt me personally.  I’m a white male who’s not gay, poor, uneducated,  uninsured, Muslim, Latin American, or young enough to have his life disfigured by climate change.  My kids are grown, meaning that they won’t lose their lives in school shootings.  The only problem I have with Trump is that his insanity and criminality is hurting millions of innocent people around the globe.

I don’t like that, and you shouldn’t either.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics — No Comments ↓

Maybe it was inevitable that the ultra-right-wing underclass in the United States would somehow find a way to turn our cities into war zones.

Most of us were hoping for better, but maybe that was just a dream we had.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science — No Comments ↓

While it’s true that PBS and NPR inform the viewer/lister, it’s not just evangelical Christians that have issues with this.  More than 77 million people voted for Trump in 2024, and precious few of them want to see an American electorate that is more conversant with the U.S. Constitution, international relationships, science, current events, the arts, comparative political philosophies, etc.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics — No Comments ↓

No, what the director of the FBI said here is not a joke.  Apparently, he’s unaware that many hundreds of Trump supporters were convicted  of beating the crap out of police officers at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, and were summarily pardoned when the president returned to the White House.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability — No Comments ↓

Trump adviser Stephen Miller said: “Children will be taught to love America. Children will be taught to be patriots.”

Is this really what we want?  Wouldn’t we rather that our children be taught the unvarnished truth about the United States and its history, and to judge for themselves as to what it means?

If this were Russia and China or North Korea, Miller’s proposal would be precisely what is called for, but it’s inappropriate to a democracy.

I consider myself a patriot, but not because I was forced to remain ignorant of what the white Europeans settlers did to blacks and native Americans.   Knowing that people–people of all races–are capable of atrocities makes us that much more reverent to the U.S. Constitution and to rule of law, and that much less willing to watch idly as these institutions are destroyed.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science — No Comments ↓

It’s hard to know exactly what Trump means when he says this, not that any sensible person believes a word he says.

A price can’t fall more than 100%.  If eggs were $7/dozen and they fell 100%, they’d be free.  If they fell 400% ($28/dozen), it would mean that stores would be paying us $21/dozen to take them.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

One thing is certain about the photo of the toddler here: He didn’t invent this level of anger on his own; he picked it up from someone, most likely his father.

I had a similar experience, and I learned something important from it.  When my son was perhaps two years old, I had him in his car seat as I drove him somewhere.  At a certain moment, I had to stop unexpectedly, and he sensed my frustration.  Without a word from me, he yelled at the top of his lungs from the back of the car, “Come on lady!  Will you move it!?”

I’ll admit that this struck me as funny, but I realized two things immediately: a) I must have screamed that precise phrase within his earshot at some prior time in a similar situation, and b) I needed to be far more careful as to what he was learning from me.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science — No Comments ↓

What Jodie Foster says here about homosexuality is what I have believed since I was old enough to understand what this subject was all about.

Homophobia is like hating people with red hair or brown eyes.  It’s senseless.  It’s hate for its own sake.

Her analogy to left-handedness is interesting, in that, until about 100 years ago, it was considered a defect, and the scientists of the day were working to develop “cures.”

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