I had a phone call just now with a reader, a Fox News acolyte, who is under the impression that Trump took very few vacations, whereas, to her horror, Biden just took four days off over Thanksgiving.
Here is a chart that presents Trump’s vacation schedule over his four years in office.
A learned economist said recently, “We know that COVID-19 is temporary, but we also know that it will cause permanent effects.”
Interesting. It doesn’t seem certain that humankind will be able to put pandemics and their variants behind us anytime in the foreseeable future.
That’s especially true given the new breed of antivaxxer. Their numbers are growing, and their belief system isn’t going away. In fact, it seems to me that their dogmatic anti-science thought patterns are steadily becoming more ingrained.
I have to admit that Libertarianism held an allure for me when I was younger. I was hooked on the concept that nothing in government happens as efficiently as it does in the private sector, which I still suppose is true.
Over time, however, I started to notice the rise in homelessness, the decay of the middle class, the two-tiered justice system, corruption in Congress, the expansion of degraded forms of entertainment-purely because they’re profitable, war as big business, and, later, environmental decay.
Consider the last of these for a minute. We have pollution, climate change, toxic waste, ocean acidification, and loss of biodiversity that is choking us to death, even with environmental regulation. Can you imagine what our skies and waterways would look like without those restrictions?
Putting it concisely, libertarianism and sustainability are mutually exclusive.
To this concept a reader sent to me:
There’s a catch, however.
People with lousy grammar are generally regarded as illiterate morons.
Not sure that’s where you want to be in society.
A reader sent me this, to which I respond:
Keep in mind that there IS an alternative to school. It’s called social isolation, illiteracy, unemployability, impoverishment, and QAnon.
Note that I didn’t say it was a VIABLE alternative.
Something to think about this holiday season, though letting people die of treatable diseases is unacceptable anytime.
That the United States is the only country in the developed world in which this is the case should make us all angry and deeply ashamed.
From Reuters: A federal jury in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Tuesday found the organizers of the 2017 “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally liable for injuries sustained by counter-protesters and awarded approximately $26 million in damages. (more…)
This is sad, of course, but it made me smile nonetheless.
The “rights” that anti-vaxxers supposedly have that allow them to endanger the health of our entire society are very much in the news. And they may remain so for an indefinite period of time, insofar as these people’s ignorance and selfishness are important drivers preventing us from corralling the pandemic.
Here’s a cool video on the physics of sea walls, which are a key piece of climate change adaptation.
As sea levels rise due to the thermal expansion of the ocean waters and the melting of ice on Greenland and the Antarctic, many American cities along the eastern seaboard will be lost if we’re unable to protect them.
(Shown above: sunny day flooding, prominent in southern Florida)
This is what the Trumpers/anti-vaxxers believe.
