The Story of Stuff makes a good point here.
In truth, both the manufacturers and the consumers play important roles in reducing plastic waste, and the consumer’s role is not limited to recycling. It also includes shopping with waste in mind.
Good examples are all around us. I like the current trend towards laundry detergent that comes in strips of material that dissolve in the wash, and concentrated broth that is sold jars.
An old friend, now a law professor at Georgetown, writes about this: Today is the showdown between ExxonMobil and rebel shareholders trying to convince the company to confront climate change and install four new independent directors. The vote will come at today’s ExxonMobil annual meeting. The country’s biggest pension funds have openly sided with rebel shareholders, and the votes of the major fund managers — BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street — hung in the balance. (more…)
A surprise to no one, Trump is decrying the actions that the Justice Department is taking against him as an extension of the original witch hunt. He can be counted on to say precisely this whenever he’s attacked legally, at least as long as there are people who believe that.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the American people want absolutely nothing here but fairness. Speaking for myself, I don’t want excessive aggression or excessive leniency. In the case of the alleged fraud in re: the Trump Foundation, I want for the Trumps whatever would have happened to my family and me if we ran the “Shields Foundation” in the precise fashion that he ran his organization. (more…)
A friend sent me this, “a powerful image of what Memorial Day is all about.” It is indeed powerful.
The United States is the most bellicose nation in the history of humankind. We’re a land whose core negotiating strategy is sending young troops to fight and die simply because a few old white men are angry with another country and have duped voters to support them. Yet maybe this basic ethos will someday be revealed for what it is: a gross moral failing. (more…)
Trump rioters occupy the West Front of the Capitol
At this point, it appears that Senate Republicans will be effective in blocking the creation of an independent commission to investigate what culminated in the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Perhaps even more important than the event itself is the planning by numerous right-wing extremist groups that went into it, which seems to have begun shortly after it became clear that Trump had lost the election.
However, the absence of a commission doesn’t mean we’ll never know. (more…)
What Galbraith said here was true until recently. The election of Trump started an epoch in which the modern conservative is so involved in hate, cruelty, deceit, science denial, and conspiracy theories that it no longer is in search of a moral justification for anything.
Please don’t tell me that the support of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the demotion of ultraconservative Liz Cheney (who voted with Trump in 92% of cases while he was in office) is anything other than a sickening blend of sycophancy and insanity.
Think of the type of world we would have if the Dalai Lama’s words here informed the way we live our lives.
All the dogma, war, white supremacy, cruelty, superstition, and ignorance–all of it replaced by a single commodity.
Kindness.
As illustrated in the brief discussion below, it’s always easy to pick something that’s going wrong in the world, and blame a politician you don’t like for it. I don’t fault Trump for being unable to keep Kim Jong-un from testing nuclear weapons or failing to end Israeli/Palestinian hostility, though he is certainly culpable as a liar and a criminal.
Reader: And that’s just 4 months! Imagine what this illegal, unelected administration can do in 4 years. In just 4 months President Trump (the real PRESIDENT) had made so many changes for the good. Anyone who defends this current dictator is out of their mind. (more…)
The most interesting thing about the limits on outrageous behavior from Republican congresspeople is that there are none.
Sure, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s comparison of mask regulations to the Holocaust has resulted in a few more voices calling for her ouster from the House of Representatives. (more…)
Appearing on ABC News’ “This Week,” ultraconservative columnist George Will told the roundtable participants that the bipartisan commission to investigate the causes of the deadly riot was controversial among Republicans for one reason: “We have something new in American history. We have a political party defined by the terror it feels for its own voters. That’s the Republican Party right now.”
