Sure, that sounds bad, but it really depends on how one defines “quality of life.” If affluence, education, and health mean a great deal, then, yeah, there are 48 states in which you’ll fare better.
If you want to see women and non-white men lead even s***ier and more oppressed lives than yours, then you’re in heaven, my friend.
We’re a country at war with itself, in so many different ways.
As suggested here is the battle being fought between our nation’s gun nuts and its parents of school-age kids.
Parents will do anything to protect their children, but the National Rifle Association is undeterred; the NRA will do everything in its power to ensure that insane people can carry assault weapons.
So far, the NRA is way out on top. Each day 12 children die from gun violence in America. Another 32 are shot and injured.
From this article on Trump and his insurrection:
As former President Donald Trump weighs announcing a potential 2024 presidential run this fall — which would be his third run for president in as many election cycles — a constitutional law professor is calling on Democrats to act now to prevent him from doing so. (more…)
“May” is a word (used in this article) that doesn’t hold much certainty. Of course, almost nothing is certain in our world today.
But do you know what makes a Trump resurgence extremely unlikely? A long prison term, for seditious conspiracy and treason.
From this piece on the European droughts and heat waves:
Record-breaking heat has killed over 1,000 people in Western Europe over the past week, while firefighters battle to contain blazes scorching swathes of three countries amid a worsening climate emergency, officials said this weekend.
El País reports heat killed 360 people in Spain between July 10 and July 15. This follows the heat-related deaths of more than 800 people last month, according to the Spanish government’s Carlos III Health Institute. Madrid-Barajas International Airport recorded an all-time high temperature of 108°F Thursday, while some Spanish municipalities registered highs of 110°F to 113°F.
One 60-year-old Madrid sanitation worker collapsed in the middle of the street while working Friday. The man was rushed to the hospital with a body temperature of over 106°F and died of heat stroke. He was one of 123 people who suffered heat-related deaths Friday in Spain.
The heat waves of Southern Europe provide another opportunity to talk about how and why high temperatures are so deadly.
As we see from the story above, high temperatures by themselves can cause death by hyperthermia, as the victim’s body temperature reaches a point where vital functions are impaired via the breakdown of the actual cells.
Adding humidity makes all this more dangerous than the “dry heat” found in deserts. Wet bulb temperature is defined as the lowest temperature a volume of air can achieve by evaporative cooling. The human body cannot survive extended periods in wet bulb temperatures over 95° F, which occurs at 100° F and 83% humidity or 110° F and 56% humidity.
From Rolling Stone: Trump Tells Team He Needs to Be President Again to Save Himself from Criminal Probes
Obviously Trump understands this; he’s not an idiot.
But is this a valid reason to vote for a U.S. president? Our boy is on his way to a life sentence in prison for seditious conspiracy and treason if we don’t get him back where he can overthrow the federal government and skate through the judicial system.
Sounds like sketchy reasoning, but maybe that’s just me.
An old friend sent me this, as apparent evidence that environmental science has no idea what it’s talking about, and that climate change is a hoax.
It’s perfectly possible that some jackass predicted in 2005 that New York City would be under water 10 years later, but the actual discipline of climate science has been amazingly accurate since it began in earnest half a century ago.
Moreover, it’s constantly improving, as technology advances and gives us more and better information about atmospheric conditions, melting ice masses, ocean currents, etc.
When someone challenged my friend on the validity of all this, she responded that she was simply passing it along. To which I reply: don’t forward malicious lies.
The only one missing here, it seems to me, is the hamstringing of the EPA when it comes to limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
The logjam in the U.S. Congress has meant essentially zero progress of environmental sustainability, and climate change mitigation in particular.
This is hardly a surprise, due to the demands of the billionaire class and the stranglehold it has over our lawmakers. Of course, the descendants of the super-wealthy will have to live on a horribly degraded planet, just like the children of the rest of us, but that doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the matter.
The Sierra Club is calling for President Biden to use his executive authority to make this happen. Needless to say, he has my support.
As we watch the rapid devolution of the United States into a country of hateful morons, it’s hard not to feel sorry for the people who tried their best to make it stop. Some had the courage to teach us and our children, only to have their pay cut and freedom to express their own ideas extinguished.
They tried.
And we failed them.
