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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

While we should be deeply concerned about gerrymandering and voter suppression, we need to remind ourselves that all this is not a fait accompli.

Here we have the Justice Department suing the State of Texas.  At stake are the 14th and 15th Amendments, i.e., citizens’ right to vote.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld states’ rights to conduct their elections according to their own policies and procedures, unless they contain something clearly discriminatory.

Other than burning Latinos’ and African Americans’ neighborhoods to the ground, it’s hard to imagine anything more clearly discriminatory than what’s happening in Texas.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Readers from outside the U.S. often express how perplexed they are about the goings on here.  In particular, where did Americans’ sudden appetite for sheer stupidity spring from?  “You folks seemed fairly intelligent until just a few years ago,” someone said to me. “What happened?”

A partial answer is the degradation in our education system, but that doesn’t really explain the extreme velocity toward idiocy.  And it’s true that before 2016, someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene would not have stood a chance of being elected to Congress.

She seems not to understand that our public health response to a viral-based pandemic may need to be different from our policies on a non-contagious disease.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

A talking head on today’s U.S. morning news went on at length about the situation with Russia’s assemblage of troops on the Ukrainian border.  “We can’t trust what Putin says about his intentions,” he warned.

True, it doesn’t matter what he says.  But it’s perfectly clear what Putin intends nonetheless, and that’s the further devastation of the United States. Moreover, he’s proved himself remarkably adept at it.

Right now, his goal is best accomplished by engineering a second term for Trump, and his tactic is to make Trump look as good as possible, while making Biden look bad.  Does anyone think it’s a coincidence that this is happening now, rather than at any time during Trump’s administration?

If Putin can somehow get Trump back in the White House, there is a good chance that American democracy will have suffered a lethal blow.  Keep in mind that Trump came fairly close to achieving this in the aftermath of the most recent presidential election.  He went to incredible lengths to overturn the 2020 results, and then to stop the certification process.

Keep in mind as well that the damage Trump did to our democracy is far from recovered.  His “Big Lie” is still very much alive in American culture; most Republicans continue to believe that the election was rigged/stolen, and so have no faith in the validity of our elections.  This idea persists, of course, despite the fact that 60+ judges who reviewed this situation saw no evidence of significant voter fraud.

No one knows precisely the complete set of effects that reinstalling Trump would have on this country, but if it happens, the damage a) will certainly be huge, and b) will come at the sheer joy of Vladimir Putin.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Pardon the profanity here, but I wanted to make a point about the content.

It’s true that our lifestyles half a century ago were less destructive to the planet, but that was a happy accident.  Corporations at the time hadn’t figured out all the ways to wreck the planet in order to drive up profits.

The moral issue we have now is all this is deliberate.  Nestle and Coca Cola know that a certain percentage of every 100 plastic bottles they manufacture are going to wind up as microplastics in our oceans, and they couldn’t care less.

Consumers, of course, are also to blame.  As long as there is a market for toxins, there will be corporations to supply it.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

From this: Nordic humor is often seen as a little bit too dark for the rest of the world. Especially if you think about Iceland, the most sparsely populated country in Europe covered with glaciers and still erupting volcanoes. As Hugleikur Dagsson, a famed local cartoonist has said, “Iceland is very cold, very bleak and very expensive,” and his funny and twisted sketches really showcase this.

Decent people find it gratifying that homophobia is fading in most parts of the world.  Here’s a cartoon that wouldn’t be at all funny were it not for that slow attenuation.

Jimmy Carter said: “Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things—he never said that gay people should be condemned.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

There are Americans who look at the Christmas card below and celebrate the right to bear arms and they use the weaponry of war to settle disputes.

This is a mental illness that is both contagious and incurable. (more…)

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Never been to Iceland, but I’ve spent a decent amount of time in Denmark, and I feel the same way as this guy.  You’re in a country where there is essentially no homelessness and poverty, no one dying of a treatable disease, no one going uneducated for lack of funds, and no mass incarceration.

The reason is they have very little money in politics.  Here, the top 1% owns our law-making machinery.

They build renewable energy generation and protect the environment.  We fight clean energy, and defile the environment.

They punish corruption.  We enshrine it.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

If you want to watch a four-minute video that will inspire you to the point of tears, you won’t do much better than this.

Admiral William H. McRaven has been a voice of integrity over the past five years.  He’s spoken in unison with many others at the top of our military, as Trump was clearing peaceful protestors for a photo-op, abandoning our allies in Syria, using our troops against legitimate protestors, disempowering NATO, pardoning war criminals, and referring to our fallen soldiers “suckers” and “losers.” (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

“The agency needs more than a return to quiet competence.”

Oh really?  Speaking for myself, I’ll be quite happy with the removal of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, criminal who used his power to hamstring an institute that Benjamin Franklin set up decades before the American Revolution.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics
A reader sent me the meme here.  When I wrote:
“Not sure what you’re referring to here,” he responded: “Please do some research. This is one of the most critical information. The trials happened in 1947 after the horrors of WWII.”
I know what the Nuremberg Trials were, but I don’t see how history may be repeating itself in this case.  The only connection I can see is that many of the Jan. 6th insurrectionists, who are one by one being sent off to prison, are contending that they were just following orders (from the then-President of the United States). As I’ve often written, I find that to be a mitigating circumstance, and therefore I believe they deserve some level of leniency, even though they are detestable human beings.
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