The annual celebration of Earth Day in Santa Barbara is held in a large, beautiful park, with perhaps 100 booths featuring ideas that promote a better planet.  Many concern themselves directly with cleantech: water savings, electrical efficiency, EVs, renewable energy and the like.  While it’s great to see all this, and watch little kids get all excited about learning about ways to be kind to our home planet, it’s even cooler to check out concepts that reach far from the mainstream. (more…)

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Perhaps the most disgusting part of everything we’ve seen and been through as a nation over these last four years is that Trump will ultimately be acquitted in the Senate, since only a few Republicans have any personal integrity whatsoever. The cowards sold any claim they may have had to decency for Trump’s support in coming elections. (more…)

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It’s starting to look like the United States will never get to see the Trump administration’s healthcare plans, not a single one of the many, so as to evaluate their merits in detail vis-à-vis Obamacare.

Damn!

And we were soooo close.

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One of my snide and ignorant readers sent me the meme here, to which I respond:

Yes. The world is reducing plastic pollution as fast as possible, because every decent person on Earth finds what we’ve done to our oceans to be unconscionable.

In some cases that means banning single use items. In others it means developing plastic that biodegrades at the rate appropriate to what it contains.

There are currently 4 trillion pieces of plastic in our oceans.  If the photo below doesn’t upset you, that says something about your character as a human being.

 

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My post “Investigating” Trump concerned Georgia’s “investigation” into Trump’s attempt to coerce the Secretary of State into manufacturing the precise number of voted required for the president’s re-election.  In it I asked, “You have the recording of the call. Outside of listening to it, what is there to investigate?” and then continued, “I would think you either bring charges or you don’t.”

In response, frequent commenter Gary Tulie offers this: (more…)

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I don’t really get all these “investigations.” You have the recording of the call. Outside of listening to it, what is there to investigate?

There are statutes in Georgia that criminalize election tampering, and they’re not written in Old Norse or some secret code.

I would think you either bring charges or you don’t.

What am I missing here?

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So true.

Life in the United States is great, if you’re of European descent and were born into an affluent family with laudable values. If you wish it to, as most people do, this more or less insulates you from the entirety of U.S. history, defined, as it was, by slavery, the slaughter of the Native Americans, constant imperialistic conquests around the globe, the pillaging of the environment and natural resources, the exploitation of the world’s poor, systemic racism before and after the emancipation, the waging of aggressive wars, the cruel treatment of asylum seekers, our $750 billion annual military budget that comes at the expense of education and healthcare, our constant slipping in the world freedom rankings, and the support of totalitarian regimes.

And that before the last four years, where we found ourselves at the brink of losing the American democratic republic.

Perhaps it was this brush with disaster that will represent a watershed event that ultimately moves this nation forward into what it could have been all along: the land with liberty and justice for all.

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If you think Google Earth is amazing (and it is) here’s the radio equivalent.  Each white dot is a licensed radio station, this app lists every single one on the planet.  Click wherever you want, and listen to what they’re airing–in real time!

Some surprises, but not too many. (more…)

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Those living outside the U.S. may find it hard to understand how it is that some of our 50 states routinely do absolutely despicable things.

Here, we have the state government of Wyoming proclaiming: You can do a lot of things in this state, but goddammit, voting your conscience and acting on your principles aren’t among them.

 

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That’s $519 million in cash, according to this.

As usual, there are hidden costs that are much harder to quantify.  The figure above doesn’t include the cost of:

• The further deepening disgrace and shame that the U.S. has suffered in the international community.

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