With all the bad, there are quite a few good things that can be said about the MAGA crowd.  For one, they cannibalize, they devour one another.

Here’s a group of thugs accepting donations to build the Armed Forces Brewing Company, a military tribute craft brewing company.

Is it fair to use the word “thug” here? I don’t know, I’m trying to think of the last time I was given a tour of a company’s inventory led by a guy carrying an assault weapon.  The buxom woman in the skin-tight black leather adds a nice touch.

The kicker is that the company is looking for a brewery to buy.  The photo was staged somewhere.  Their products don’t exist and their prospects for success are nil.

But will I lament the loss of the suckers’ money?  Not in the least.

Tagged with:

My wife believes, and I think she is correct, that what made Trump such an enormous danger to our country and the world in general is that no one ever stopped him.  He got away with everything–the lies, the impeachments, the fraud, the opposition from within his own party, and now, so far at least, an act of treason, i.e., an attempted coup.

In short, he got “on a roll,” the momentum of which convinced him that he was invincible.

The author of the meme here is suggesting that the case with Putin runs in parallel.  Suppose Trump hadn’t been elected, and Putin had remained a figure of only moderate importance in world politics.  It’s a sure bet that he wouldn’t have conducted a blatantly illegal invasion against a sovereign country and found himself leading a nation of suffering people whose army of dejected soldiers is getting spanked by a relative speck.

Tagged with: , , , ,

The meme here exemplifies what we’ve been hearing out of Ukraine, i.e., that their proud and brave citizens are being surprisingly effective at fighting off their aggressor to the east.  (A similar cartoon portrays a salmon’s sharp teeth chomping down on the nose of the bear that had just snatched him out of midair as he was making his way upstream.  I’ll add it below if I can find it.) (more…)

Tagged with: ,

Like this gentleman, I believe that Putin’s outrageous aggression will result in his downfall, and perhaps for this reason he suggests.

Yes, most Russians are moral people.  But Putin is ruthless, and they’re terrified.  Moreover, they’re impoverished, and thus quite weak in terms of what they can accomplish.

Having said this, the sheer volume of suffering facing the Russian people may drive them to support an honest and decent candidate, supposing one can be found.  I just hope that when he comes on the scene, whoever it is, he’s extremely well protected; as we know, the ideal candidate would be immune to poison.

Tagged with: ,

I remember seeing this shortly after it happened, and thinking, “Isn’t it just a matter of time before someone socks this pig in the mouth?

Tagged with:

I’m afraid you do, Mitt.

But keep in mind how they got there.  They were elected.  By morons.

So perhaps it would be more apt to say, “We Republicans have tens of millions of morons among our constituents.”

Tagged with:

FIFA

The world of sports has been extremely lenient with Russia, that dating back long before its invasion of Ukraine.  After all, they cheat.  Shouldn’t that get you banned?

Given the war, the imperative to kick these people out of international sports competitions has become that much greater.

Obviously, one has to feel sorry for those athletes who are honest, and just find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this really has to happen.

Tagged with:

Carl Sagan Quote

Until Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, I would have said that the “new consciousness” that Carl Sagan posited here did not exist.  Now, we may be facing a turning point.

Putin is reviled by virtually everyone on Earth.  Yes, he has some support in the Motherland, though it’s hard to know how much.  Astonishingly, he is also admired by Trump and a few ultra-right wing nutjobs who follow him here in the U.S.

But what Putin is doing is so blatantly indefensible that it’s possible that the world is in the process of having an epiphany about war, and how unacceptable it is at this point in human history.

Tagged with: , , ,

As the Russian invasion into Ukraine continues, we find ourselves wondering about the effectiveness of the sanctions that the rest of the world has imposed on the aggressor.  Some say that Russia is experiencing a financial meltdown “as we speak,” others claim the effects are minimal.  It will be interesting to find out; they can’t both be true.

A similar story could be told about Donald Trump.  As suggested in the meme here, his financial empire may be imploding.  For years we’ve been hearing how his bankers are cutting off his capacity to borrow money.  The numerous lawsuits that have been filed against him will take years to resolve, but how dire is his financial condition notwithstanding?

 

Tagged with:

Green cornfield under a summer sky.

As the world’s population grows and consumes more food, a natural effect is the expansion of farmland.  And at first glance, that doesn’t sound like too bad a thing; after all, growing plants absorb atmospheric CO2 and convert it into carbohydrates and innumerable other carbon-based molecules that form the structure of the plant itself.

The problem is that, unlike the forests that were cleared to create this farmland, the carbon cycle associated with all the plants in question is very short.  Yes, CO2 is absorbed and converted to something else, but then the plant is ingested by either a person, or an animal, perhaps a cow, that will be ultimately eaten by a person, and the CO2 is then rereleased into the atmosphere.

By contrast, the trees in the forests have lives that last decades, or perhaps centuries, enabling the sequestration of carbon for considerable periods of time.

Tagged with: