Ben Carson Comes Through Again
This asshole’s only strength is his ability to prey on Americans’ ignorance, in this case, failure to understand that the platforms of the Republicans and Democrats flipflopped in the early 20th Century.
Bashing Socialism
Margaret Thatcher made this comment in the 1980s, before the Internet made it possible for most people to figure out that:
- The countries that make universal healthcare and free education available to their citizens are the happiest nations and Earth, and
- The United States is far from a pure market economy, in that it offers its people a great number of free services: roads, bridges, tunnels, firefighting, national defense, embassies, air traffic control, food safety, libraries, public schools, FEMA, criminal justice and corrections, law enforcement, OSHA, auto safety, disease control, the upkeep of our local, state, and national parks and beaches, animal control, space exploration, and dozens of other items.
It Seems Trump Is on His Way Out
I know not everyone agrees with me (e.g., my wife) but I will be surprised if Trump completes his term in office.
Congresspeople want to be re-elected, and for most of them, this is the only thing motivating their actions. How many of them want to be thought of as someone who supported a criminal president who brought this country to its knees?
Recognizing the Worst Among Us
There are two types of people.
First are those of us who stand for the idea: live and let live. We don’t deliberately step on ants, and we support the rights of the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere to enter the United States to escape starvation and the threat of death by the Mexican drug cartels to pick our crops and live here, for months at a time, in the U.S.
Until Donald Trump rose to the U.S. presidency and gave us all permission to be our worst selves, virtually all of us felt this way. Were migrants a problem before about 10 years ago?
The other type is those like Christian Castro, who takes (took, past tense) great delight in tormenting the world’s poorest and most desperate.
The story here from the New York Times:
Law enforcement officials on Friday arrested an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent accused of shooting a Venezuelan immigrant this year and lying about it.
The agent, Christian J. Castro, 52, was caught in Texas after investigators from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension tracked him down, according to the Hennepin County attorney’s office, which had charged him this month with four counts of second-degree assault. He faces an additional charge of filing a false police report.
The shooting, on Jan. 14, set off violent protests at the height of the Trump administration’s immigration operation in Minnesota this past winter.
“Today’s arrest is a critical step forward in our prosecution of Mr. Castro,” Mary Moriarty, the attorney in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, said in a statement.
It’s OK To Say “We’re Not Trump”
It’s amazing how often we hear that the Democratic party’s platform can’t be “We’re Not Trump.”
Of course, I agree that Democrats have to stand up for lower prices, quality education, affordable healthcare, etc. But right now, the critical agenda item is removing this criminal sociopath from public office.
Tagged with: We're not Trump
Biggest Threat to Human Civilization
Until Donald Trump rose to power, I probably would have said climate change.
Now, I would say it’s world fascism, as the world’s most powerful nation, at least at this point, is no longer a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word.
The planet is faced with rule by sociopathic dictators with absolute authority.
Carbon Capture and Synthetic Fuels
As we’ve noted in the past, the idea of capturing CO2 from the atmosphere is completely unfeasible, since 99.96% of the air around is something other than CO2 (mostly nitrogen). However, there are environments that change this equation radically, cement plants being one of them, where the concentration of CO2 emissions is as high as 30% (versus .04%).
Now, this brings the subject of synthetic fuels into the realm of possibility. Sure, if you want to make gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, you’ll need two other things: hydrogen (which can come from electrolyzing water), and a considerable amount of energy, as these processes are heavily endothermic, meaning that energy must be supplied from external sources.
The good news is that we have enormous amounts of off-peak wind and nuclear that are wasted every day, and here’s the best solution in this arena: Doty WindFuels.
Tagged with: Carbon Capture and Synthetic Fuels
What Trump Is Actually Doing
With each passing day, there are fewer and fewer American voters who believe the bullshit at left.
Is Trump working hard to stay out of prison? Enrich himself and his family? Of course.
Could he possibly care less about anything else? Obviously not.
Flagging Tourism to the United States
What’s the thought process of people in the rest of the developed world when it comes to visiting the U.S.?
Would you or I want to visit some country with a deeply corrupt regime that is systematically committing atrocities all around the globe, while its leader is lining his pockets?
I’m glad I don’t own a resort in New England that counts on a flow of visitors from Canada. If I were a Canadian, I’d be thinking I’d rather visit hell.
The Huge Herd of RINOs in Congress
Part of the challenge facing Trump is that a large and growing number of congressional Republicans have reached the limit of their tolerance for the lies, the reckless stupidity, and the criminal corruption.
Since they are abandoning the sociopath en masse, that makes them, in Trump’s mind, RINOs (Republicans in name only).
It’s too soon to see where all of this is going to settle out, but God willing, it looks like the GOP may be headed back towards some level of normalcy in terms of honesty and sanity.
Of course, one wonders about the true motivation of these congresspeople. Have they found a certain amount of personal integrity, or have they simply come to the realization that they’ve become unelectable?
