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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

At left we see what really is happening here, but it’s not going down quite the way Khrushchev imagined 70 years ago.

Without a wanna-be dictator in the mix, The United States’ relation with Russia would have continued to bump along, business as usual–the occasional tense moments, but nothing calamitous.

Our state of Texas has a higher GDP than the totality of Russia; the country is economically weak, and its people are poor and disengaged.  Without the appearance of Trump on the scene, with his deep admiration of Putin and his desperate craving for absolute power, none of this would be taking place.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

It’s hard to disagree with the words at left, given that it’s the kid’s decision.

College isn’t for everyone in the United States, and that applies, to our shame, to families that can’t afford tuition and the other considerable expenses.  Most of the rest of the developed world offers its citizens free tuition, and provides stipends to encourage everyone to achieve their full potential.

College graduates are more likely to:

Take pleasure in art, reading, playing a musical instrument, traveling, and dozens of other pursuits that derive from higher education, and

Live longer, healthier, and more affluent lives.

By contrast, they are far less likely to vote for sociopathic criminals to lead what once was our democracy.  If every American had a college education, Donald Trump would just be another walking joke who bankrupted six casinos.  He certainly wouldn’t be crawling around this planet, ruining virtually every aspect of life on Earth.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

As Bernie Sanders puts it, “We cannot allow that to stand.”

Yet it’s unclear what we can do about it, when the majority of congress and about half of U.S. voters support everything Trump says and does, regardless of how morally wrong and distinctly un-American.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The nonsense shown at left serves as a reminder of an extremely important fact about life here in America, albeit a sad and disgusting one.  There is absolutely nothing that Trump can do or say that his supporters are unable to spin as a positive.

Now, while the United States is stabbing the rest of the free world in the back, Trump is playing three-dimensional chess.  Sure.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

While I care deeply about my country I understand that a) a plurality of voters elected Trump, a man they knew to be a pathological liar, and b) my vote doesn’t count any more than that of some hateful moron.  This is what these people wanted, and it’s what they got.

Here’s another way to look at it.  There are 206 sovereign nations on this planet, of which the United States is only one.  Now of course, some people believe that the U.S. is clearly the best one, and that God blesses us over all others, but, speaking of morons, that is the thinking of the true idiot.

America is obviously going into a swoon.  Will it recover?  We all hope so.

But there are no guarantees.  As historians have consistently pointed out, once a democracy is lost via a military attack, or, far more commonly, as in this case, via moral decay from within, it very seldom recovers.

I’m far more emotionally involved with the fate of humankind and the other life forms on this planet than I am of a country that elected Donald Trump not once, but twice.  The man is systematically removing everything that ever may have existed that is noble or honorable about this nation, while his countrymen stand and applaud.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Uncategorized

My recent post about a father who’s considering home schooling as an option for their kid due to the “terrible” quality of education reminds me: how qualified are these folks to home school their kids?

I tutor in the local high school system, but that doesn’t mean I’m good at teaching little kids to read, or teaching AP European history to teenagers.  My parents were both college graduates, but they were both smart enough–and humble enough–to leave my education to professionals.

I’m also concerned that the typical parent in this position is going to crap out very badly when it comes to post-algebra math: geography, trig, algebra 2, and calculus, not to mention high school science: biology, chemistry, and physics.

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Virtually every day we have shocking news concerning America’s self-destruction in terms of domestic policies and externally, on the world stage.

It would seem that all this is unsustainable, i.e., that we’ll reach a point at which there is no more damage remaining to be done.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

In conversations with senior energy analysist Glenn Doty, he’s warned me of the dangers of promoting ideas like “Mother Nature,” or other suggestions to the effect that the planet is animated by a kind of spirit that protects it from humankind’s atrocious behavior.

In reality, the Earth is not “adjusting itself to eliminate man,” though it is true that the Earth is steadily losing its capacity to support life, due to carbon emissions and other pollutants.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Re: the last sentence in David Axerlrod’s comments here, Zelensky most definitely does know that the majority of American’s stand behind his efforts to repel the Russian invasion.

We reject the alignment of our country with Russia, and we stand with Europe in opposition to Putin’s aggression.

This is true of all progressives, and even most conservatives.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

The other day I ran into a young couple with an infant, who live in a rural part of the U.S.  I happened to overhear the father saying that the quality of public education where they live is “terrible,” and that they’re thinking about home schooling.  And so, as if it were any of my business, I asked him by what metric the schools in his area are, in fact, terrible.

He responded, “LGBTQ+,” by which I’m sure he meant indoctrination into the idea that non-traditional sexuality is OK.  He went on to qualify: “Now, that’s public schools.  Private schools can at least be held accountable.”

Now, at this point he had answered my question, and I had the good sense simply to thank him and politely end the conversation, but a few thoughts remained on my mind:

• Your kid isn’t even walking and talking at this point.  It seems that you’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist.

• Let’s say that seven years from now he’ll be in third grade.  How much interest do you think he’s going to have in learning about homosexuality at that point?  How much impetus will his teacher have to introduce topics like sex education that are irrelevant and confusing in young students’ lives?

• Do you seriously believe that discussion on this topic “grooms” kids to become gay? How did you become straight?  When your blood serum testosterone level hit a certain point, perhaps when you were 12 years old, you took on a sexual identity, quite independent of something you had seen on TV or in a movie.

• Are you suggesting that public school teachers have more latitude and less accountability as to how and what they teach than instructors in private institutions? Keep in mind that these folks have administrators breathing down their necks and can face jail time for noncompliance with state mandates re: things like critical race theory and teaching from banned books.

• If parents have the financial means, they can put their kids through private schools, and yes, those schools have distinctly different approaches to politics, religion, philosophy, and their overall approach to education.  For example, if you want your kid to learn that the world is 6000 years old because the bible says so, you’ll need a deeply religious school, one that explicitly rejects science, to fulfill that task.  In general, however, private education tends to be more liberal in terms of teaching techniques and subject matter than our vanilla public schools whose curricula is the joint work of thousands of bureaucrats.

Friends say I have too much time on my hands.  Perhaps they’re right.

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