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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics
Regarding the meme here, a reader notes: Politicians have done this for 100 years. And have been completely wrong.
I respond:  I believe that, until fairly recently, politicians were more or less constrained by facts. Eisenhower didn’t try to tell Americans that 2+2=5. Now, all bets are off. Climate change is a hoax, Democrats want open borders. Covid vaccines kill more people than the disease.
It really doesn’t matter how totally stupid the claim. There is a market demand for stupidity, and there are plenty of politicians champing at the bit to supply this market with what it demands.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

From this piece in Politico:

A federal judge on Friday squarely placed the blame for the Jan. 6 Capitol attack on Donald Trump, suggesting that the former president’s role in seeding lies about the 2020 election — and the effect it had on his followers — has been an underappreciated part of the entire episode.

Judge Amit Mehta issued his commentary as he delivered a 14-day jail sentence to Jan. 6 rioter John Lolos — a sentence Mehta said he shortened in part to reflect the fact that Lolos was responding to Trump’s call. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The content of the meme here seems obvious, but apparently, only to Democrats, and, I suppose, rich Republicans too, who like things this way.

Working class Republicans are told that Democrats are opening our borders, flooding the country with immigrants who are stealing American jobs and taking valuable goods and services from taxpayers. Then, when the immigrants get citizenship, they vote for Democrats, so as to get even more free things.

This plays into the narrative of voter fraud and strict criteria for voter registration, while it excuses gerrymandering.

I think virtually ever voter believes one way or the other, and very few of us are changing our minds.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

From this:  A federal judge, Senior District Judge Reggie Walton (pictured),  took aim at former President Donald Trump on Monday for lying about voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election, saying that former Vice President Al Gore had a better standing to challenge the 2000 election results but that he was “a man” and walked away.

Yes, but there are many important differences, and I don’t believe the (sexist) metaphor “to be a man” about the election results is too descriptive. In particular:

• The concentration of gullible, hateful, ignorant boobs was far lower then.

• The number of such boobs who would storm the Capitol under Gore’s incitement, get arrested, and go to prison was probably zero.

• Gore didn’t need the presidency to help him dodge at least a dozen potential criminal charges.

• Gore isn’t a pathological liar with a set of mental disorders you could drive a truck through.

• Gore didn’t have entire news channels that would happily run whatever stories the administration wanted them to.

It’s always good to hear a federal judge criticize Trump and his horrific character, but there is so much more that could have been said.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I have a wellness consultant who tries not to involve herself in the most troublesome aspects of American life these days. Her reasoning, and I understand it, is that in order to help her clients most effectively, she needs to protect herself from despair, anger, terror, and all the other deeply negative emotions that permeate our society.  She wants to follow this stuff only to the level that she has a fairly decent understanding of what her patients are experiencing, but not to the level that she experiences it herself. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science
Here’s an anonymous free-form poem about the pandemic and the anti-vaxxers.  Poignant, to say the  very least.
“We wanted to help people
We were smart and driven
We loved science and physiology, humans and disease
So we made a commitment
We signed up
It was an honor
We read thousands of pages
Attended hundreds of lectures
Pulled all-nighters
Took more exams than we thought possible
Finals week felt insurmountable
But it didn’t break us
It made us stronger
We learned statistics and biochemistry
Immunology and pathophysiology
We mastered genetics, virology and pharmacology
We read scientific papers and learned how to dissect them
Papers, not videos
It was an honor
We came running when you needed us
Literally, running down the hallway
To the ICU, the trauma bay, labor and delivery
I need help, you said
We can help, we said
It was an honor
There were moments that we thought would break us
Moments that drove us to journaling, to therapy, to nightmares
Broken babies.
Paralyzed children.
Dead pregnant mothers with three kids at home.
The wail of a mother whose son just died.
We bent but we did not break
We returned because you needed us
And we could help
It was an honor
Then there was fear
Fear of walking into our place of work
Fear that we’d be killed by going to work
Fear that we’d kill a loved one because of our work
There were tears and sleepless nights and anti-anxiety medications
But you banged your pots and pans
You sent us pizzas and called us heroes
You needed us
We could help
So we wore our masks, and our gowns, and our gloves, and our goggles
We decontaminated ourselves before going home and isolated ourselves from our families
We almost broke
It was an honor
How quickly the joy turned to defeat
Elation to rage
You’ve learned to do your own research now
You know better than we do
Gaslighting is your language
Your selfishness is astounding
You don’t want our help when we ask you to stay healthy
Yet you arrive at our doors begging for help at the end
You stole our resources
You hobbled our ability to help those who did what they were supposed to do
You killed our patients by filling our beds and using up our ventilators
We can’t help any more
You broke us
There is no more honor”
– Anonymous
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

This cartoon is on point, but the guy in the last panel isn’t stupid; he’s evil and selfish beyond description.  Stupidity does come into play, however. If he is to be successful, he’ll need to rely on the stupidity of you and me.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

No one can accurately quantify the effect that sharing bull**** on Facebook has on the dumbing-down of humanity, but it must be considerable.

This is all a part of the massive disappointment that we call life in America.  We believed that our acquaintances were reasonably intelligent people….until they turned out to be Trump supporters, or worse.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s a discussion on the potential for the breakdown of the U.S. democracy.  Various commenters’ viewpoints are in bullets/italics, with my remark at the end.

 • I’m curious to know how this “collapse” will manifest. Going to watch it on TV. If the morons start killing people, it’ll be interesting to see the response from law enforcement.

• Especially since most of law enforcement seems to side with the White Supremacists.

 • Making friends in New Zealand

 • Yikes! Elaboration on what you think might happen?

 • Republican State legislators are going beyond gerrymandering to the point where they are putting partisan hacks in charge of “counting the votes,” putting up insurmountable obstacles to poor, urban people’s ability to vote, and otherwise stacking the deck to make it virtually impossible for Democrats to take control of the state legislatures. Police forces are made up overwhelmingly of White Supremacists. The GOP base supports Trump and others whose primary platform position is the dismantling of our democratic institutions. Right Wing nut jobs own the vast majority of guns. With all these forces aligned, it seems highly likely that another Trump “presidency” (either Donald or Ivanka) would be the last democratic election this country sees. It also seems likely that, under Supreme Leader Trump, the Right would start to violently stomp out dissent. Would California and the Northeast start a civil war in an attempt to break away? Maybe, but that would get really ugly, really fast. I’d much rather my kids were in Lisbon, Barcelona or Amsterdam when that went down.

 • London calling.

 • I was thinking about Costa Rico this morning.

 • Empires only usually last for around 250 yrs. We’re coming up on that quickly. This week’s events (China surpassing us as richest country in the world, Rittenhouse), are pretty clear mile markers / messages. I don’t think any of us is prepared for what could be coming…I don’t want to be doom and gloom, but like any good Boy Scout, you have to be prepared. Plans have always been in place, and after living through the burning of Minneapolis after the Floyd murder, those plans became more concrete. My number one goal before ‘24 is to get passports for my family and me.

(Me) For years I’ve been saying that a civil war, in the event that one starts, will be over in about 15 minutes because of the superior strength of law enforcement over a bunch fat racists with AR-15s. That was before I realized that we had lots of white supremacists from law enforcement in the Capitol on January 6th.

It could come down to the U.S. military, which will definitely not be a part of a Trump-led coup, and will happily squash it like a cockroach.  The upper echelon of our armed forced are dedicated Americans who detest Trump, and fascism more generally.

Unfortunately, world politics is nothing like what it was in 1860, and the secession of the red states is not a logistical possibility.  If I were Lincoln in 1860, I would have gladly accepted the secession of the Confederacy.  Yes, slavery wouldn’t have been abolished immediately, but the south would have found themselves with no friends and trading partners, no technology R&D, living only on agriculture like nations did 8000 years ago.  It would have sputtered and died within a decade or two, only to be re-subsumed by the U.S.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s a video in which former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner argues, “No jurisdiction (Georgia, Southern District of New York, the federal government) wants to be the first to indict an ex-president but everyone wants to be the second.”

Thus, when the first one falls, expect an avalanche.

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