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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

As I’m sure readers are aware, some of these posts are inspired purely by images that are distributed on social media.  I really love the one to the left.

Trump is finished, because too many Republicans have grown tired of the lies and criminality.  They love the white supremacy and the economic punishment he inflicts on lower- and middle-class Americans, but they’re done with the fraud and seditious conspiracy.

Decent people around the world want to see Trump incarcerated, but he’ll still be irrelevant in U.S. politics, even if that doesn’t happen.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Re: the meme here, let’s be honest.  Until a few years ago, the idea of removing controversial books from school libraries never occurred to anyone.  We didn’t need book police to determine what was right or wrong for our children, simply because we trusted our teachers and other faculty members.

That was before teachers’ failure to comply with Florida’s new book laws became a felony, and long before these folks’ pay was cut so as to make their lives completely miserable, forcing many of the best of them to quit.

Preventing our kids from reading The Grapes of Wrath, because it challenges the premise of unbridled capitalism, is a new idea to the United States, a country founded on the free expression of ideas and the concept of critical thinking.

Yet here we are.

In other (though related) news, Trump, desperately hoping that American ignorance will protect him from criminal prosecution, hasn’t yet selected a running mate for his bid for a second term in 2024, after his unsuccessful bid to overthrow the U.S. government following his loss in 2020.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Yes, McDonald’s can pay its employees in the states more, but it doesn’t have to, so it won’t.

Like every other law in the United States, the legislation that governs labor is made by people who receive enormous campaign donations from the wealthiest folks in the country, and guess what: they want wages as low as possible.

The fact that low-income wage earners are working two or three jobs, some living in their cars, is of no concern whatsoever to McDonald’s and its multi-millionaire franchisees.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Our culture is deeply rooted in guns and violence.  And, as a nation taken as a whole, we seem to have very little capacity to pull ourselves out.

Tomorrow, next year, and a decade from now, it appears that we’ll still be talking about police department units with astronomically high rates of complaints of unnecessary brutality, and how our Second Amendment provides our citizens the right to carry weapons of war.

There will be funerals for young black men, a few police going to prison, and numerous protest demonstrations.

The meme here suggests just how powerless and frustrated we are.

Of course, the “blue lives matter” people will be asking if we want police to stop thwarting crime.  No.  We want to them to stop executing innocent black men, especially via torture. God damn it.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

My wife and I recently returned home after escorting my 96-year-old mother from a senior living facility in Hawaii to one we’re sure she’ll like far better in Richmond, VA, where she’ll be surrounded by numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Richmond is rich in U.S. history, especially that of the Civil War.  The Union army’s overtaking the city close to the end of the conflict was a turning point; the Confederacy was forced to evacuate, but before doing so, they did everything they could to burn Richmond to the ground.

Of course, everything made of wood was destroyed, but most of the large brick buildings survived.  At the time, they had industrial purposes; now they are condos and trendy eating and drinking establishments.

We were delighted to find that the smallish state capital is quite sophisticated, rife with well educated people and a robust social fabric. In particular, during three full days there, we didn’t see a single sign suggesting support for Trump or the Confederacy.

Mom is deeply conservative, but I think she will fit in here very well.  She has a profound appreciation for the  feelings of others, and is loath to engage in political discussions unless provoked, which is unlikely to happen.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

I just met a hydrology engineer who works for the U.S. Forest Service, which is an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture; it administers the nation’s 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands, managing 193 million acres of land.

The gentleman works primarily in disaster relief, following severe flood damage, which, sadly, we have in great abundance out here in (once again) sunny California.

I was gratified to learn that the Forest Service fully accepts climate science and the imperative to both mitigate and adapt to climate change.  He says, “Unfortunately, there are some agencies within the federal government that only pay lip service to that issue, but we are simple men and women of science.”

Good to know.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

A friend from college who resents “woke” culture sent the meme here.

I’m wondering what, in his mind, is the difference between “racism” and “people of color are oppressed.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

There may be no proven answers to this question, but there are certainly some obvious candidates.

Let’s start here: he’s going to lose, and thus will have no power to return favors for rich donors.  This stands in stark contrast to what happened in 2016 – 2020, when Trump looted the U.S. Treasury to provide trillions of dollars of tax cuts for billionaires and the country’s wealthiest corporations.

Even if he’s not indicted on charges of tax evasion, fraud, extortion, witness intimidation, election tampering, theft of classified documents, seditious conspiracy or treason, the majority of Republicans, bless their hearts, prefer someone (anyone?) who isn’t a career criminal and traitor to the United States.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley (Nimrata Nikki Randhawa Haley) will announce her candidacy for U.S. president on Wednesday.

Not much to see here, folks.  She’s a garden-variety conservative, though she doesn’t sport Donald Trump’s sociopathic tendencies.  She’s not a career criminal, a pathological liar, nor a spoiled child.

As a consequence, we can expect her to perform better in the election than, say, a traitor who desperately tried to overthrow the U.S. federal government.

Exactly how much better, however, remains to be seen.   It will depend on voters’ appetites for the current-day elements of the GOP platform: its enmity to LGBTQs, the poor, people of color, women’s rights, black history, epidemiology, and climate science.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I believe that religion will come to play an ever-diminishing role in human civilization.

Of course, there is no reason to expect a straight decline, and there are phenomena in the United States right now, e.g.,  QAnon and the evangelicals, that represent huge anomalies.  Yet, if we have an organized society here in 100 years, there will be widespread adoption of science and rejection of superstition.

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