Have these people at LIFT Aircraft really raised $3.2 million?? From what class of moron?
Of all their outrageous claims, here’s my favorite: “No pilot training/license or previous experience required, just a 30-minute virtual reality session.” (more…)
American investigative journalist and author David Cay Johnson, pictured here, is a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting. He’s has been covering Donald Trump since long before the former president arrived on the political scene, and has spent most of his recent years documenting Trump’s vast array of lies and crimes, especially as they pertain to financial matters.
His skills are fantastic and his writing is excellent.
Moreover, he predicts that indictments are soon to follow. All that’s the good news.
The bad news is that he’s been wrong before. In particular, he seemed to think that the Southern District of New York would have already brought fraud charges.
Most Americans, and I dare to say most people in the rest of the developed world, wake up each morning enthralled with the idea that this could be the day on which justice in America finally asserts itself.
Actually, you can ask any questions and consult any resources you like.
The problem is that, given the sheer enormity of misinformation online, unless you happened to have training in whatever it is you’re researching, you’re more or less bound to come to completely absurd conclusions.
One of the My Pillow Guy’s banks closed his account the other day, citing “reputational risks.” This, of course, is a simple continuation of the trend towards marginalizing Trump from our society.
Organizations and the people within them who wish to be taken seriously can no longer stand behind asinine positions like the Big Lie.
An IBMer who pulls into his company’s parking lot with a “Trump Won!” bumper sticker on his car is making a serious career blunder.
As the noose continues to tighten around Trump’s neck, look for this phenomenon to grow in intensity. Already, symbols of Trump support say, “A pathological liar in the White House is OK with me, as long as he stands for my hateful values.”
Soon, those symbols will say, “A proven traitor in the White House …..” This isn’t going to fly anywhere outside of an ever-shrinking set of Trump rallies.
In response to the cartoon here, someone wrote, “He won’t plead the fifth. Remember this: “You see the mob takes the Fifth,” he said during one rally in Iowa. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
In the first place, he changes his position to suit whatever present-time crisis he’s facing, with no regard for consistency whatsoever. Has he released his tax returns?
Secondly, it seems that he’s incapable of telling the truth. I’m not sure there is a single example of his providing a direct and completely truthful answer to a specific question, if in so doing he damaged himself.
No wonder God has His popcorn ready.
solar panels
A reader who is skeptical of the value of renewable energy writes:
No wind? No electricity. No sun? No electricity.
Why is it that this dog has more skepticism about the world around him (or at least appears to) than more than half of Republicans? The percentage of extremely gullible GOP voters who still believe the Big Lie, that Biden stole the 2020 presidential election, continues to linger at somewhere between a half and two-thirds.
This article in The New York Times attempts to provide an answer.
I grant that it’s not completely fair to look to Norway as an exemplar of what the United States should be doing re: taxation/wealth distribution, social services, and environmental responsibility. The Norwegians have a small, homogeneous population, abundant clean energy resources, an extremely small military, and no borders with countries full of poor, desperate people.
Having said that, imagine what American society would look like after a few years of the policies identified in the meme here:
• Largely decarbonized energy and transportation sectors
• A quantum improvement in education and a corresponding enhancement in race relations
• Few if any anti-vaxxers, climate deniers, and believers in QAnon and the Big Lie
When I was young, back before hitch-hiking ceased to be part of the world’s culture, I used to pick up people constantly, and I often relied on the goodness of other people to get me where I was going. Someone told me that in Norway, every year, all citizens get a packet of coupons. When someone picks you up as a hitch-hiker, you give the driver a coupon, which he can later redeem for some sort of prize. The concept, obviously, was to minimize the number of cars on the roads while building up national camaraderie.
I’m sure this practice is no longer in place, but it’s illustrative of the harmonious “vibe” the country strives to achieve.
Think of how nice it would be living in a land of human decency, without all the hate and ignorance–a land where policies are made based on what’s best for the nation’s people.
Regarding the cost of renewable energy, a reader notes:
This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Limits to Growth (LTG), a report on the exponential economic and population growth with a finite supply of resources, by Donella H. Meadows et. al.
People long before them understood that infinite growth on a planet of finite size was impossible. In particular, around 1800, British philosopher and economist Thomas Malthus theorized that food production will not be able to keep up with growth in the human population, resulting in disease, famine, war, and calamity.
Yet it is LTG that brought it all home with computer simulations for the first time.
The question is what our civilization has done with this concept over the last half century, and the answer is precious little.
Two and one-quarter centuries after Malthus, it appears that the production of food will not be our downfall. Currently it looks like the increase in the consumption of energy is far more likely to cause massive destruction to human societies all around the globe, via global warming / climate change.
Some look to space migration as the ultimate solution, i.e., eliminating the condition that our living area is finite. That may be, but part of every one of us wonders if it’s a good idea to take this s***show on the road.
