Wish we didn’t have to talk about election races every day of every year, but it looks like former U.S. Congressman Beto O’Rourke is considering a run for Governor of Texas against GOP incumbent Greg Abbott in 2022.
I’d very much like to see that. There are a lot of kind, intelligent and honest people in Texas who must be infuriated that a hateful moron resides in the governor’s mansion.
Also, one has to think that there are plenty of Texans whose eyes have been opened by the energy debacle.  What happens when government does absolutely nothing to protect its people is now on stage for everyone to see.
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Here’s an article that begins: People often complain about both the high cost of energy and the fact that “they don’t have time to exercise.” This invention certainly solves both problems.

Not exactly.  Professional cyclists put out 200 – 300 Watts, averaged over a four-hour ride. If this guy can deliver 150 for a full hour, he’s doing great.

That’s 0.15 kilowatt-hrs. The average house in the U.S. uses 20 times that, about 30 kilowatt-hrs per day. So either you get 19 other bicyclists, or he rides 20 hours/day.

He may be smiling now, but alas, that won’t last long.

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From this:

At a bail hearing Tuesday for a Proud Boy member from Kansas accused of storming the Capitol, Chief U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell said she was dubious about the legal merit of the effort to shift blame toward the former president and his inflammatory rhetoric about the election.

(more…)

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Scarcely a day goes by without a new and vivid reminder of how different the Biden administration is from its predecessor.

As you read the words of the new Secretary of the Interior, try to imagine their coming out of the mouth of someone–anyone–working for Donald Trump–in any capacity.

When Trump’s first Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke shrank national parks and monuments and resigned in disgrace due to several conflicts of interest complaints, he was replaced by David Bernhardt, who was investigated for his own set of conflict of interest issues.

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Using chemistry to mask odors is one of the many tiny horrors of modern life.  There are people who plug room “fresheners” into their outlets, so as to emit a gas that covers up the smell of mildew or whatever else is making their house smell like a men’s locker room or a bathroom at a bus station.

How about identifying the culprit and removing it?  That, btw, is what deodorant does; it works by killing the bacteria whose metabolic processes give off foul smelling gases.

The pic here is what made me think of all this.  Can you imagine being inside this guy’s car?

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One of my favorite high school teachers, Joe Turk, makes this remark: Scientists allowed us to watch live (with a time delay caused by 40 million miles) a rover land on Mars. But some people won’t believe them about climate change.

Yes, this is a terrible shame, and it may be precisely this that ultimately condemns the inhabitants of this planet to a terrible future. (more…)

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The Dalai Lama says: Adopting a wider perspective includes working cooperatively with others. Crises that are global by nature, such as problems related to climate change or the modern economic structure, call for coordinated and concerted efforts among many people, with a sense of responsibility and commitment – this is more encompassing than any individual or personal issue. (more…)

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We’ve all seen the argument that favors replacing some of our kids’ high school classes with those covering some of the practical life skills discussed in the meme here.  Some use sarcastic humor to make this point, e.g., “I’m glad I learned about parallelograms instead of how to do taxes. It’s really come in handy this parallelogram season.”

As we know, however, American schooling is already horrifically deficient in math and science, and making that worse would make the next generation that much less capable of competing on the global stage.

A cynic might say that we actually want our kids as uneducated as possible, because the college experience enables young people to think critically, an ability that is essentially poison to a government that is completely reliant on public ignorance.  Very few college educated people believe that the 2020 election was stolen, that climate change and the pandemic are hoaxes, or that Trump was an honest hardworking servant of the American people.

If you’re a Republican, that should scare the hell out of you.

 

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Of course, this is a bit passive-aggressive, but it’s funny at the same time.  And let’s not forget that what makes humor work is the degree to which its concept approximates the truth.

Kidding aside, I would choose Rick Perry: Texans hate government regulation so much that many of them would rather suffer greatly than to succumb to what the other 49 states are doing to take care of their citizens. (more…)

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Conservative news sources tell us that science isn’t always right, especially where the politics is concerned.  Of course science can be wrong.  It could be argued that it’s always wrong.  Think of how little of what we “knew” about physics, chemistry, astronomy, cosmology, and biology 500 years ago that we still hold true today.

Reopening the economy during the pandemic is a very hot topic with them; they believe that it’s the liberals (who hate America) who want to keep everything locked down.

My mom quotes Fox News in her assertion that Dr. Fauchi (a leftist?) has changed his mind several times about the validity of face masks, social distancing and school/business closures, as if this means that he’s incompetent, corrupt, or both.

Isn’t it more likely that dealing with a one-of-a-kind global tragedy might require some trial and error, and changing course according to what we’re learning?
(more…)

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