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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

In response to the meme here, it all depends on how one defines “governing.”

If that means drafting laws that are intended to improve the lives of the American people, then, to be sure, Republicans will be absolutely terrible.  But this isn’t a huge change from where they’ve been for quite a while.

If it means stopping all progress towards public health, better education, environmental responsibility, and the rest, then they’ll be aces.  Of course, part of this mission requires investigating the January 6th Committee, Joe Biden and his son, and the Department of Justice.

We need to prepare ourselves for two years of slow strangulation.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

A new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has been chosen; the spectacle has ended.

My life-long republican mom and I talked about this last night, and I asked for her take on the selection process that spanned four days and left most people nauseated by all the chicanery, backstabbing and lack of any concern for the welfare of the American people.

To my surprise (not really), Mom told me what a pundit she follows thought about what, for most of us, was a humiliating nightmare: “This is what real democracy looks like.  We should all be quite proud of what went on.”

To me, this is just one more reminder that the far right will always find a way to spin GOP politics favorably.  It doesn’t matter how atrocious the behavior; there will never come a time when Fox News and the rest simply admit, “Well, that was inexcusable. Let’s apologize and move on.”

At a certain level, I have to admire these people’s creativity.  “….what real democracy looks like.”  I honestly didn’t see that coming.  Shame on me.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The fellow here raises an interesting point, but let’s keep things in perspective:  Trump attempted to overthrow the U.S. federal government.

Anybody with the IQ of a carrot understands that he is guilty of innumerable counts of fraud, but when the dust settles, it won’t be tax evasion or parking tickets that sends the former president to prison for the rest of his life; it will be that he did his damndest to remake the United States in the form of dictatorships like Russia and China.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are the great autocrats of the 21st Century.  The United States came close to having a third one.  That’s the reason Trump must pay.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability
Here’s a follow-up conversation on my earlier post, in which I discussed this article, that predicts the extinction of humanity within the coming few decades.
Reader A: I am curious as to why the extinction of a species is anything more than Natural Selection? Why is it a big deal? 95% of the species on Earth have gone extinct over the years. Earth has already experienced 5 mass extinctions we know of. Humans have only been on Earth for a blink in the grand scheme. Are we really all that different than other creatures? All that special?
Reader B: You go from, one day, impressing me with cogent thought to, next time, astounding me with unbelievable senselessness.  Otherwise, I have no words to describe WTH keeps your ears apart… but let me try:  Your thinking is the actual problem.
Me: I had never run across reader A until just now, but obviously, I’m with Reader B, who happens to be a friend.  It’s true that millions of species came into being and went extinct long before humans came on the scene, and yes, that was because they couldn’t adapt to changing conditions and natural selection gave preference to other species that were better suited.  Most importantly, these animals were not capable of using their intelligence to help them along.  In any case, there is no moral good or evil there.
There are several important differences in the case of human life, however.
In particular, humans are endowed with large brains that give us the ability to solve problems related to our survival.  We are capable of reason, and are morally obligated to use it in constructive ways.
Thus, things like first-strike nuclear attacks and failure to mitigate climate change to the point that it bakes our only home are ethically indefensible, because, unlike the dodo bird (see above) or the passenger pigeon, we are capable of making choices that would avert catastrophe.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s an article that predicts the extinction of humanity within the coming few decades.  It begins:

In case you haven’t heard, we’re currently in the midst of Earth’s sixth mass extinction event, and it’s only accelerating. On a recent episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes, Stanford scientists dropped by to ring the warning bells again. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s a meme that illustrates how U.S. politics has lost all sense of nuance.  If a proposal could possibly benefit the common American: better education, healthcare, voting rights, or environmental responsibility, the GOP will be dead-set against it.

Now, if you ask how it’s possible that anyone from the working class (especially women) could vote Republican, you’re asking an excellent question, and it’s one that has exactly two answers: hate and ignorance.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

This from long-time EV advocate Zan Dubin-Scott (pictured):

Hitching a ride to the near future, where one day soon all our trucks will be electric, like this (prototype) Tesla semi cab. Heavy-duty vehicles account for 10% of on-road vehicles but pump out 30% of transportation greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 60% of particulate matter, the fine particles that can cause heart disease and other deadly illnesses. S’why I can’t hate Elon. Tesla leads this sector.
Interesting point on Elon Musk–and a great number of people feel this way.
It’s just such a shame that the world’s (former) wealthiest person had to turn out to be a complete ass****.
$200+ billion could have gone a long way towards climate change mitigation, tackling homelessness, feeding the world’s children, fighting pandemics, you name it.
But no, it needed to be spent in an effort to re-elect a sociopath as president of the United States.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

This is funny, but in reality, there are tons of witnesses from outside the Trump family who have devastating testimony to give in exchange for leniency from prosecution.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

An oft-given piece of advice to bloggers is to try to fashion content that is “evergreen,” meaning focused not so much on current events that lose relevance over time, but on concepts that have enduring importance to potential future readers.

Here’s a post that couldn’t violate that recommendation more directly, because, a few months from now, no one will remember pathological liar and fraud George Santos and his freak arrival on the GOP political scene.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

This reminds me of all the people who said, going into the 2020 election cycle, that the Democrats needed a compelling message, that is it wasn’t enough to say, “We’re not Trump.”

My response: “I’m not so sure. I think most Americans are tired of this steady diet of criminal insanity.”

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