Apparently, Trump’s cabinet members are facing an icy response as they try to find employment in the private sector.
What a shock. What corporation wouldn’t want a top executive with a track record of running the most corrupt and citizen-unfriendly government in living memory?
From The Economist:
Brazilian businesses rarely preach greenery. Yet last July, 20 months after Jair Bolsonaro was elected president, rampant deforestation in the Amazon roused 38 CEOs to speak up. Foreign investment was falling and trade talks were stalled.
This negative perception has an enormous potential for harm,” they wrote in a letter to the government, urging Mr. Bolsonaro to do something. He ignored them.
The pace of deforestation, as reported in November, was 1o% faster in 2020 than in 2019. Yet the president merrily slashed the budget for environmental enforcement for the third year in a row. (more…)
From this article on solar energy: A team of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) researchers has designed a ‘smart’ device to harvest daylight and relay it to underground spaces, reducing the need to draw on traditional energy sources for lighting. (more…)
From this piece by CBS News:
More frequent and intense global challenges — in the form of disease outbreaks, financial crises, or the negative effects of climate change or new technologies — are likely to stress already brittle systems of government and international organizations over the next two decades, according to a comprehensive forecast compiled by U.S. intelligence officials and released on Thursday. (more…)
John Boehner (R-OH), the former Speaker of the House, blames Trump and his lies about election fraud for the January 6 riot at the Capitol, writing that the former President “incited that bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons, perpetuated by the bulls*** he’d been shoveling since he lost a fair election the previous November.”
It’s hard to know where this is going. There is no doubt that there are some Republicans with a combination of integrity and intelligence, who simply represent traditional conservative values.
Does this represent a schism in the GOP? It’s conceivable that the Republican Party will split into two, at least temporarily: a) Trump supporters, QAnon followers, gun nuts, et al., and b) followers of people like Boehner, George Will, Mitt Romney, and the others who have the courage to admit that the Trump narrative about the election is a bald-faced lie and con job.
There are no good arguments for the proliferation of guns in the United States (see chart below), but some are worse than others.
The reader who sent me this seems to think that other countries don’t attack us because of our high rate of gun ownership, rather than our military presence and its $750 billion annual budget. (more…)
The headline above is from this excellent, though terrifying piece.
Here’s the next turn in the sickening experience that Trump supporters are having: being reported to Trump as “defectors” if they cease their donations.
I’m not an expert on cults, but this pressure tactic seems like something a cult member may experience, i.e., harsh consequences for anything less that 100% loyalty.
Just when you thought that the quality of thinking and behavior in this country couldn’t sink any lower.
I find it amusing that Fox News and the other ultra-right wing “news” sources still interview Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and throw “gotcha” questions at him.
There is no faster or more effective way to look like an idiot than to attack Pete Buttigieg on live television. If you’re looking for a laugh, watch him answer this question about the investment the U.S. is making in infrastructure.
This opinion piece in the New York Times suggests that the U.S. defense budget can be cut aggressively without endangering the nation.
As if this is something we didn’t already know? The Department of Defense employs more than 200,000–in property management alone. Does anyone think that this is anything other than bloat?
When he left office in 1961, Eisenhower warned us of the dangers of what he dubbed the “military-industrial complex,” i.e., that corruption would rapidly achieve a stranglehold from which good sense and reason would be unable to break.
Of course, the phenomenon was present long before Ike gave it its name. Here’s a cartoon that was published 80 years ago. 
At left is an excellent example of “lying with statistics.” Comparing numbers from Obama when he came into office right after the 2008 crash that occurred under Bush 43, with numbers from Trump, before the market crash due to COVID-19.
Whoever created this is a totally dishonest person.
