From the Huffington Post:

A senior FBI officer struggled to answer basic questions about antifa, despite characterizing the organization as “the most immediate violent threat” the US faces.

At a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Thursday, Michael Glasheen, operations director of the national security branch of the FBI, said he agreed with President Donald Trump that antifa is one of the greatest national security threats to the country.

The answer, of course, is that “Antifa” is a concept, not an organization.  It refers to anyone who is against fascism. It has no headquarters, no leaders, and no members.

Now, it is true that people with these views can be violent.  When my father led a crew of his fellow anti-fascists, flying a B-17 bomber in World War II, they completed 29 successful missions, destroying Nazi oil refineries.   Were Nazi soldiers killed in the process?  I never asked him that, and he probably didn’t know, as they were flying at 29,000 feet, but it seems extremely unlikely that no one died.

In peacetime, we antifa people are non-violent.  We may be marching for BLM, or encouraging the use of science in policymaking, or expressing our view that the United States should not have a king.

The FBI must understand this; they must be saying this purely to placate Trump.  No one can be that stupid.

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The United States is a rogue nation.  What we’re doing in Venezuela is really no different than what Russia’s doing in Ukraine.

 

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The Norwegian’s note at left says it all.  No sane person from one of the happiest nations on Earth would trade that lifestyle for ours.

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Costco has, to date, been successful with its management’s ongoing decision to pay their employees a living wage and to adhere to the DEI policies that it’s had for decades.

For most of us, it’s a pleasure to shop there, knowing that their profit on everything in the store is 14%.  That they’re not trying to gouge their customers with the corporate greed that is almost universal in our world today is quite attractive.

Will this work in the long term?  It’s impossible to say.

Today, in the United States, treating other people with kindness and decency is regarded as communism.  The ultra-right-wing is putting up a considerable fight, and God only knows the level of hatred and stupidity that will form the underpinning of the 2030s.

 

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When I came across the meme at left, I was instantly reminded of a guy who called me from Baltimore, MD about 15 years ago, anxious for me to hunt up investors in an invention he had created.  I was having a hard time understanding the concept he was describing, and so he told me, “Think of it as a river in a box.”

“Ah! Now I get it. You have a box full of standing water. You add energy to it to get it moving, and then extract energy from the moving water.  And you think that you can extract more energy than you put into it.”

“Yes!” he said excitedly.

I calmly told him that this violates the laws of physics, specifically the first and second laws of thermodynamics, but he wasn’t “having it.” I wished him a pleasant good night and asked him to let me know when he had built a working prototype.

I’m still hoping to hear from him again.

 

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Can I relate to the meme here?

No, because the U.S. derives a great deal of benefit from foreign aid.

Not that we care about democracy anymore, but before Trump, it was thought to be a good idea to support freedom around the world, to prevent authoritarian states from taking over the planet.

 

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Hardly.

Gravity-based energy storage for electricity has been in use since the 1890s.

Storing mechanical energy with heavy objects goes back to ancient times.

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Energy from wind, generated right where you need it – that’s our SkyWind NG. The first independently tested micro wind turbine is efficient, quiet and Made in Germany.
In response, a reader notes, “They chop up birds amazingly well.”
That’s not the issue.  Birds are 2400 times more likely to die from cars, cats, and plate glass windows.

The problem is the incredible high cost per KWh of small wind.

If you think it looks cool, that’s fine.  Just don’t think it’s going to pay for itself in less than 100 years or so.

 

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What former Republican U.S. representative Joe Walsh says here is 100% true, according to reports.

What exactly this will mean to the U.S. economy, especially in the long term, is impossible to predict accurately, but it can’t be good.

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Here’s a thought: when these guys were little boys, what was their life’s aspiration? Were they like this in elementary school, or did something go off the rails?

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