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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Now here’s a clever little rejoinder. Wow, he walked right into that one.

Seriously, with the exception of a few cities in Florida, Texas, and the Deep South, almost all big cities in the United States have Democrat mayors.

That’s because big cities tend to be areas of high GDP per capita, and a large contingent of highly educated people.  That’s bad news for Trump and today’s GOP, which cater to the MAGA group, found primarily in the rural areas.

To answer Jordan’s question.  Yes, I feel safe in Boston, NYC, Philly, Chicago, LA, San Fran, Portland, Seattle, and the rest.  Is there crime?  Of course.  Should residents and visitors keep their eyes open?  Sure.  But no one’s leaving America’s most productive regions because of crime.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Fox News host Jesse Watters has slammed No Kings protesters as ignorant trend-chasers who had “no idea why they’re there” — after admitting that his own mother was among their ranks.

Here’s a question: Out of the ~7 million participants, does it ring true that these people fail to understand what the phrase “No Kings” means?

I think the average eight- or nine-year-old has learned in school what the American Revolution was all about.  The colonists were sick of being ruled by–that’s right–a king.

Most Americans don’t want a president who, like a king, is above the law, especially one who:

• Pardons violent criminals who happen to support him.

• Illegally gathers power into the executive branch by diminishing the power of the legislative and judiciary branches.

• Uses the Justice Department to punish his enemies.

• Appoints completely unqualified people to cabinet positions.

• Destroys our country’s efforts to clean up our energy and transportation sectors while supporting megadonors in fossil fuels.

• Dismantles all aspects of the federal government that provide help to the common American.

• Kick tens of millions of American citizens off healthcare.

• Jeopardize all Americans’ health and wellbeing by doing violence to government departments that study disease, research cancer, administer vaccines, etc.

It’s easy to see why Trump’s approval is tanking; Americans have lost their taste for an authoritarian, especially this conman.  It’s as simple as that.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Do Americans have unlimited patience for this kind of garbage?  I doubt it.

George Santos didn’t commit violent crimes, though would it have mattered if he did?  Trump pardoned hundreds of thugs who delivered severe beatings that resulted in 174 injuries and several deaths of capitol policemen.

Santos’ crimes were numerous, and they hurt hundreds of people around him very deeply.  Now, because Donald Trump needs every supporter he can find, he commuted every one of Santos’ criminal penalties.

Americans aren’t as sharp as they once were, intellectually and morally, but we still have a limit.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I wish I could say that there is a tsunami of former high-level Republicans who have realized that supporting Trump is a distinctly immoral and anti-American thing to do and have abandoned the criminal sociopath.  What we seem to have, however, is the next best thing: a mid-sized, but steady river of folks who are withdrawing their allegiance in favor of a more honest and decent government.

Yesterday, we learned that Miles Bruner, a Republican fundraising strategist revealed that he is leaving the party, saying he has finally had enough of its appeasement of Donald Trump.

His resignation, it is said, was “scathing.”

Question: If your feelings about the president are anywhere close to pushing to you write a “scathing” resignation, what’s the matter with getting out of there right now?

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

My theory is similar, and it goes like this:

Every single thing he did in his entire life was calculating to make him money, fame, and power at the expense of other people. This started when he was young: dodging the draft in the Vietnam War, cheating contractors, and defrauding his “university” students.

Predictably, it extended into his presidency: conning the lesser educated white nationalists into believing that he along could eliminate liberalism and make American great again.

His friendship with Putin (among the world’s most ruthless dictators) showed our nation and the rest of the world how little regard he had for honesty and decency, and how he adored the absolute power enjoyed by Putin and the other world dictators.

Then came his claims that the 2020 election was stolen, the violence of January 6th, his interest in annexing Canada and Greenland, and his economic policies that can only prove devastating to the United States in the long-term (long after he’s gone).

It all comes down to one guiding principle: Trump will do whatever’s good for Trump in that moment of time, regardless of how destructive it is to all others.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

There is a Facebook group called “Conservatives Take Back California,” which I find rather amusing.  Here are a few reasons why they won’t come anywhere close to achieving their goal, at least within the lifetimes of anyone living here today.

Let’s begin by admitting that all of these points are generalities and as such, admit of clear exceptions.  Not all movie stars are progressives; you will find an occasional Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, or Sylvester Stallone.

Sheer Volume of Quality Higher Education.  California has over 750 higher education institutions, including public universities, private colleges, community colleges, and vocational schools.

The nine campuses of the University of California alone have over 300K students, 26K faculty, 194K staff members, and 2.5 million alumni.

How many UC professors support Trump?  Four?  There is a huge correlation between voters’ education level and repudiation of Trump and his values of hate, corruption, authoritarianism, anti-education, etc.

Environmentalism.  California ranks #1 in the nation in terms of things like college graduates with environmental science degrees, pro-environment policies, and the development of clean technology.  California (along with Texas with its immense wind resources) leads the country in terms of MWs of renewable energy installed.

Conservatives, at least those of today, are doing everything they can to inflict damage to solar and wind energy, most notably via Trump’s cancelling tax credits for both these technologies.  The GOP views environmentalism generally and climate change mitigation in particular as something for woke socialists.  They also believe (without evidence) that the scientists in these fields are corrupt.

Precious few Californians vote for the party that supports fossil fuels and accepts enormous campaign contributions from Big Oil.

Prosperity. California has the largest GDP in the Unites States.  If it were a country, it would be the fourth largest economy on Earth, behind the U.S., China, and Germany.

Of the 3400 venture capital firms in the United States, 2400 of them are in California.

A great deal of this economic success is cutting-edge technology.  Though we think about Facebook (Meta), Google, Apple, Intel, Nvidia, etc., this legacy goes back to the establishment of Hewlett-Packard, Fairchild, and several others in the late 1930s.

We need to compare this triumph in prosperity to Trump’s tariffs, an instrument which often provides short-term gain, but invariably causes retaliation, and has historically hurt both American workers and consumers.  In addition, we have a variety of other economic policies that experts regard as erratic and misguided.

Entertainment.  California is known as the entertainment capital of the world, by virtue of its stature in film, television, and music. As mentioned above, there are exceptions, but most people in entertainment attained their positions via their emotional sensitivity, and therefore tend to reject Donald Trump’s indifference to human suffering, not to mention his overt criminality.

Conservatives have a solid grasp on states like West Virginia and Alabama, which are known for their racism, poverty, and ignorance.  They could get a grip on Mars or Venus before they could make a serious dent in California.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Many progressives are getting a good chuckle out of the allegation that the folks who took part in the “No Kings” rally were paid to participate.  The woman with the sign at left sure has a smile on her face.

Even professional comedians are getting in on the act.  Here’s the New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz from The Borowitz Report:

George Soros has been forced to declare bankruptcy after paying over seven million people to attend the No Kings protests, the billionaire confirmed on Monday.

“When I agreed to pay everyone who showed up at these things, I had no idea so many people were going to accept my offer,” Soros admitted. “But a deal’s a deal.”

The legendary investor said that paying No Kings participants had required him to liquidate his most prized holdings, including his share in the orbital lasers operated by the Rothschild banking family.

Soros revealed that paying the five million Antifa members at the rallies cost him “a pretty penny,” adding, “They may be anarchists, but they don’t work for free.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Once we accept the well-documented truth that the incidence of voter fraud in the United States is almost exactly zero, the question becomes why we would want to make it harder for certain people to vote.

Of course, not all Americans accept the findings of huge studies performed over many decades, addressing many billions of votes cast, by the country’s most well-respected institutions.  That’s because Trump says, with no evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen by the Democrats, and he continues to forward this lie.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

As the “No Kings” rally was going on yesterday, I wrote a few posts about the unexpectedly high level of participation that was achieved in places that are normally thought of supporting Trump, e.g., Montana and Idaho.

On the other hand, anyone could have expected that the crowd in Boston would be enormous.  The state of Massachusetts ranks #1 in education nationally, and greater Boston is the home to no fewer than 44 colleges and universities.  So you have students at Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Boston College, and Boston University within bicycling distance.  Then, elsewhere in the state, you have Williams and Amherst, and the nation’s top women’s colleges: Wellesley, Mount Holyoke and Smith.

How many of these folks do you think support the criminal sociopath in the White House?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I heard they were being paid by antifa, but I guess even the truest morons eventually abandoned that idea, insofar as antifa is a political philosophy with no leaders, members, headquarters, or, most importantly, assets.

I happen to know some of these protesters personally, and some of them could have really used the money.  But alas.

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