When I came across the meme here, I thought it was a joke. Does somebody seriously believe that there are “anti-ICE rioters” that they’re doing damage to our cities?

Chewing on this further, I suppose that the most gullible members of the Fox News crowd may buy this.  My mom once told my brother and me that undocumented people in sanctuary cities could commit rape and murder, and the police weren’t allowed to arrest them.  We told her that she would do well to look up the term “sanctuary city,” aka “safe city,” so named because these cities normally have less crime than their counterparts, since immigrants feel safe speaking to and cooperating with law enforcement personnel.

Police chiefs in large cities prefer this arrangement, as their duty is keeping people safe by reducing crime, not deporting harmless and law-abiding immigrants.

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Most Americans have their own take on the geography of the South.  For me, it’s not completely geographic; it’s partly sociographic.  For example, Northern Virginia is about as cosmopolitan a place as you’re going to find in the United States, but it’s at the same latitude as West Virginia, which ranks 45th out of the 50 states in education.

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I know lots of wealthy people from prep school, college, and several decades of business consulting, all of whom seemed like decent folks at the time. Yet now, I sometimes wonder how many are Trump donors.  It’s upsetting just to think about it.

It’s hard to believe that this collapse of basic moral values happened in the United States.

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The Permian Basin is a vast sedimentary basin in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico that is the largest oil and gas-producing region in the United States.

I just got an email from “East Daley,” whose white paper Permian Basin at a Crossroads “breaks down who stands to benefit—and who’s at risk.”

I can answer these questions without even reading the white paper:

Who stands to benefit (monetarily): Greedy pigs whose investments are ruining the planet.

Who’s at risk: The eight-plus billion people on this planet who, along with their descendants, are counting on a stable climate.

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A reader notes: These are war crimes meant to test the amount of public outrage they can get away with.

That’s a distinct possibility, though it’s hard to know the precise motive for these crimes.  Obviously, Trump supporters have no issues with our country’s executing countless numbers of potentially innocent people.

It’s fair to say the rest of us are “outraged,” but that’s something that happens almost every day.

As someone posted, “Biden was far from perfect, but at least we didn’t wake up every morning wondering what new form of hell we would be living in.”

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If I were writing the piece at left, I wouldn’t say, “the system is rigged,” because that implies some clandestine.

I would say the system is designed to make rich people richer, and to ignore the needs of the masses. It’s working exactly as it’s designed to.

Now it’s true that all this is more obvious now than it was 50 years ago when the average American came out of college and got an office job that enabled him to earn a living wage.

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In other posts, we’ve looked at the prospects of a massive refusal on the part of America’s top military to follow a manifestly illegal order, like invading Canada.

What about a less dramatic case?  What if I were the chief White House superintendent and Trump told me to bulldoze the East Wing?  I’d say, “Sorry, I resign as of this minute. You may find someone who will destroy a national treasure, but it’s sure as hell isn’t going to be me.”

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It’s true that Norway is a world leader in renewable energy. To be fair, however, they have a few things going for them.

One is the hydro resource itself, which is enormous, especially considering the nation’s small population.

The other, and it’s just as important, is the fact that Norway really wants to remove fossil fuels from its grid-mix. They sport a population of extremely enlightened people who actually care about the welfare of the people in the world around them.

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As I mentioned in my recent post on Germany, we have a president in the United States who’s doing everything in his power to destroy the entire renewable energy industry, and, thus, is creating a real problem for those concerned about jobs.  Currently, there are 569,000 solar in renewable energy generation, and over 3 million in the related industries, e.g., battery storage.

Here’s a question worth asking: What do the Germans have that Americans don’t?  Answer: A population of voters that values honesty and sanity.

What they don’t have is a criminal sociopath running their country.

 

 

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Germany finds itself in a unique position among the countries of the world, in that it’s gotten rid of both coal and nuclear and now depends quite heavily on renewables.   Germany is the world’s third largest economy, behind the United States and China, so there is a huge amount at stake.

These people are extremely sharp, and they’re not known for risk-taking.  Yet they’ve made a huge commitment here; renewables (mainly wind and solar) accounted for 59% of Germany’s electricity in 2024, and that figure is headed for 80% by 2030.

Meanwhile, in the United States, we have a president who’s doing everything in his power to destroy the entire renewable energy industry, and, for those concerned about jobs, this is problematic, to say the least.  At the end of 2024, more than 3.5 million Americans were employed in clean energy occupations, spanning renewable generation (569,000 jobs), battery and storage, energy efficiency, biofuels, grid modernization and clean vehicles industries. These jobs now represent a significant share of the U.S. workforce—including seven percent of all new jobs added in 2024—and are spread across every state, strengthening local economies.

A quick story: The governor of Iowa, a Republican, was asked by another GOP leader why he didn’t put a spear through the wind industry, as it’s competitive with fossil fuels, which Republicans adore.  The reply, “Are you kidding? What do you think hundreds of thousands of my voters do for a living?”

 

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