We love you, Bernie, but this is the right thing to do. We will have another chance to pull the U.S. into the modern world politically, but we won’t escape massive damage to our democracy, our environment, and everything else we care about, if we don’t get Trump out of office.
When the good people of Mississippi elected Republican Tate Reeves to govern their state in 2019, they did it, at least in part, based on his long history of ties to pro-Confederate groups. These are voters who look back with fondness of the days when the United States came close to splitting in two because the south was willing to fight to the death to defend its right to own slaves. (more…)
That’s the headline from an article in today’s Washington Post. It appears that, since New Zealand’s coronavirus lockdown on all nonessential activities, it took only 10 days for signs that the approach here is working. They’re targeting “elimination” rather than the “containment” goal of the United States and other Western countries, and it’s having stunning results.
Here’s a deeply moving article by legendary environmentalist Bill McKibben, covering the greed and criminality of the oil companies and the banks that support them, explaining how they’re capitalizing on the pandemonium caused by the coronavirus to push through their planet-killing tar sands pipelines. By way of reference, it is these very pipelines that are designed to carry away the material, which when consumed, will represent “game over for the planet,” according to climate scientist James Hansen. (more…)
In an earlier post today, I asserted that we live in times of extreme emotion. Who hasn’t had extraordinary appreciation of kindness, sadness at apathy to people’s suffering, and anger at the profiteering and gross criminality we see in our time of greatest need?
The purpose of this particular post is simply to point out that extreme conditions are not limited to humankind. I’d call the photo here “extreme bears in a tree.”
I wanted to publish the meme here, from “Media Right” and “MAGA Media,” to remind us of the news environment in which a significant part of the United States lives.
There is a large, well-established, Fox News-oriented media universe that communicates things like “Trump stands between us and destruction.”
There is a reason that 40+% of American voters think Trump is an honest man doing a great job as our nation’s leader, and it’s this: that’s what they’re told.
They don’t want to look outside their media bubble, and, as a consequence, they simply don’t know any better.
Here’s an announcement from Toyota. It’s in Spanish, so my translation may not be perfect, but roughly: A new company will be formed under the Toyota umbrella, Toyota Green Energy, whose goal is to fashion a society in which people, automobiles, and nature live in harmony. (more…)
The ubiquity of news coverage on the cornavirus has offered the fossil fuel industry an opening no one could have anticipated: the opportunity to claim that our civilization is too busy to worry about anything else. They’re using this to try to convince lawmakers to delay consideration of things like the “Green New Deal,” or even less aggressive plans in energy efficiency, rooftop solar, electric transportation, and the like.
Of course, environmentalists are pushing back on this, with phrases like, “I’m pretty sure we can walk and chew gum at the same time.”
It’s a time when emotions run in extremes. Expressions of fabulous warmth and generosity bring us joy. Callous indifference to others’ suffering makes us sad. Greedy profiteering in emergency conditions makes us angry.
At least that’s how this doctor reacted, and it’s hard to disagree.
This never should be happening in the United States–and especially not now.
Here’s a compilation of interviews with people coming out of a church service a couple of days ago in Ohio–one to which she had brought her little kids. (more…)
