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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich says: Every day the Supreme Court fails to make a decision in Trump’s immunity case is effectively a decision in his favor. They’re acting like an arm of Trump’s campaign by letting him run out the clock on his prosecution.

This is unsavory, to say the least; it’s a totally unprecedented travesty of justice, a disgrace to this once-fine nation.

Yet it’s quite unlikely that Trump will be able to “run out the clock on his prosecution” and walk away a free man.

For that to occur, he’d first have to be re-elected.  And even if he used his power to force the DoJ to drop the federal cases against him, or to pardon himself, that won’t get him off the hook in the cases filed in Fulton Country, Georgia, where he and 18 coconspirators are charged with a broad variety of felonies associated with attempting to overthrow the U.S. federal government under the RICO Act, and he is powerless to intercede.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

You and I may agree with the meme here, but let’s be real: You could replace “Trump” with “Biden” and the MAGA crowd would be just as adamant.

What this means is that, though we talk about independent voters, they exist in extremely small numbers, if they exist at all.

We’re told that there are people who are on the fence about Biden because he’s too old.  I’m unconvinced, reminded of the old joke:

To be on the fence in this case is like being asked to choose between two dishes on a cross-country flight, chicken, or a plate of dogs**t, infused with shards of broken glass, and then to ask how the chicken is prepared.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

At left are a few words from four-star Marine Corps general John Kelly, who served as Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019. He had previously served as Secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administration and was commander of United States Southern Command.

Question: If you’re a top executive in a U.S. media organization, and you actually care about your country, what precisely have you been doing these last three-plus years?  Where have you been?  Why on Earth have you not been having this gentleman tell his story in full detail?

You’ve led us to the precipice of another four-year term for this criminal sociopath.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Though I admire the author’s fierce independence, I urge caution.

Yes, parents have the responsibility for their children’s health, but they’re also held accountable when they fail to apply a basic level of reason in these duties.

In particular, there are parents who are criminally indicted for rejecting basic science in favor of whatever religious cults they may be participants in and winding up with dead kids.   For instance, there are Christian Scientists who, on religious grounds, didn’t get their kids clearly needed medical care on the basis of their belief that faith in Christ is the only legitimate healing power, who are now in prison.

My advice: Calm down, and apply reason and science to protect your children.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

I’d be careful here.

Your kids will remember all kinds of things about you, in this case, that you were a selfish redneck who contributed to the demise of the planet with his refusal to care about anything but himself.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Kind of a drag that we’re just hearing about this now, wouldn’t ya say?

It would have been nice if the mainstream media had given General Mattis all the airtime he needed to tell his story to the American people.

Had that been the case, we would probably not be in danger of re-electing a criminal sociopath to lead the United States.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The “Fund for American Studies” asks:

Are you concerned about the Left’s push for more government control?  Do you want to know what life looks like under socialism? 

Then look no further! We’ve got you covered with our FREE eBook, “Socialism, Democratic Socialism, and the Failures of Central Planning.” Written by world renowned economist Matt Kibbe, every single U.S. citizen is warned — and he explains why Venezuela is now the poorest country in Latin America.…
I doubt there is a single person in America, regardless of how far to the left his politics may be, who advocates for “Soviet-style Central Planning” here in the United States.  Finding someone who even understands this concept is going to be a challenge.
More to the point, the Fund for American Studies fully understands this.  
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change
Re: the meme here, a reader notes:  The important thing is that we survive future disasters, not do nothing because we don’t all agree that climate change exists or if it is a natural cycle or caused by humans. I have my opinions and so do you. But I think if we can avoid planetary catastrophe we should do that. Doing effective things about it now is more important. There is a lot that can be done.
My reply to the reader:  I hope you’ll share your ideas as to what can and should be done.
I stopped short of going through what most of us already know: Educated people don’t have “opinions” on matters of science.  We either understand science or we don’t. If I were to say that I think evolution is just a theory, equivalent to creationism, all I’m really saying is that I am ignorant of that particular matter of science.
Of course, science isn’t always perfect; in fact, it never is; it’s simply our best path to an understanding of the universe around us.  Currently, we disbelieve almost all of what we did 500 years ago, and we would be silly indeed to think that science 500 years hence isn’t going to set asunder most of of what we hold true today.
Again, science is the best we have.  It’s better than the occult, just like it’s better than some guy’s opinion.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Now we have a new way to differentiate our products from those of our competitors: wokeness.  Regardless of what we’re selling: beer, razors, cars, workout facilities, or scientific theories, we can always claim that our products are for men who aren’t woke.

Note: this would have have been laughed out of the room until the Trump/MAGA days of the last ten years.  We didn’t hold our nation’s morons in esteem until just that recently.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

NPR’s special series, “The Undercount: The invisible death toll from climate change,” aims to answer this question. When climate and health reporter Alejandra Borunda asked doctors what important topics she should focus on, she heard the same thing over and over: Climate change is hurting a lot of people, but we aren’t doing a good job of keeping track of how many. “We’re undercounting the damage by an enormous amount,” Borunda says.

The answer to the basic question here is no; it’s impossible to provide even a good guess as to this figure, if only because there is no way to ascribe any particular catastrophic event, say a hurricane or a wildfire, to climate change.  It’s really not a matter of doing a good or a bad job at keeping track.

Consider what appears to be a far more black-and-white situation, deaths from COVID-19.  As discussed in this paper, it’s not a straightforward task to say that a certain victim died “with” COVID or “of” COVID.

As unsatisfying as it may be, I’m afraid that the community of climate scientists will eventually give up on the task of counting the deaths due to global warming.

 

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