The New York Times reports as follows:

Election Updates: Trump falsely claims the Biden administration was ‘locked & loaded’ to kill him.

We all know that there are tens of millions of hateful morons who will believe anything Trump tells them.  But fortunately, “tens of millions” isn’t going to get the job done in November.

In 2020, the former president got 74.2 million votes and still lost by almost exactly 7 million ballots. And that was before Trump was hit with indictments from four different jurisdictions totally 88 felony counts.

In many ways, we’re a pathetic nation.  Can anyone imagine Germany, or France, or Japan electing a criminal conman to lead them?  Yet our pitiable nature only goes so far, and that’s not nearly far enough to put Trump back in the White House.

 

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From this:

While former president Donald Trump won the Kentucky primary, thousands of Republican voters cast ballots for candidates who have dropped out of the race.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has already won enough delegates to secure the nomination, and each of his rivals has dropped out of the race. However, some moderate Republicans still refuse to vote for Trump. Instead, they are casting their ballots for other candidates like Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador who ended her campaign in March.

The bad news is that, regardless of how many Republicans dislike Trump due to his criminality and opposition to the principles of democracy, Kentucky is going to vote overwhelmingly in his favor.  States that rank close to the bottom in terms of education, healthcare, and economic opportunity would vote for Adolph Hitler or Ivan the Terrible over a moderate Democrat like Joe Biden, and there’s not a goddamn thing anyone can do about that.

Fortunately, the U.S. electorate is composed largely of folks who uphold true American values: honesty, fairness, rule of law, and above all, democracy.

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The United States boasts the lowest inflation rate of the OECD nations, and that rate is holding steady at about 3.5%.

Yet the common American is having trouble affording basic goods and services.  Perhaps that’s because of record corporate profits, a phenomenon that the business world seems to be acknowledging.

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Thorium

Can solar and wind scale fast enough to keep climate change in check, by decarbonizing our energy and transportation sectors?  That’s a controversial matter.  What’s not at all controversial is that nuclear power, if it can be implemented safely and cost-effectively, renders the scalability of renewables moot.

Of course, that is a big ask, considering that we’ve been promised nuclear energy that is “too cheap to meter” since the 1950s.

Below is what could be called a “Goldilocks video” when it comes to explaining a complicated subject like nuclear physics: rich and well-presented, but without being overwhelming.

The element thorium, atomic number 90, represents an opportunity for nuclear power to be implemented with no chance for weapons proliferation, meltdowns/explosions, or issues with waste disposal.

Here’s how:

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What the author of the meme here says is true–not only of some of us, but of damn near all of us.

Of course, there are “old-time” religious institutions whose adherents build their lives around the word of the bible.

I say: no big deal. Live and let live.  Are we really that desperate for controversy?

 

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It seems that there are Americans who don’t know that each and every country around the globe, more than 200 in total, had its own response to COVID-19, and that Dr. Fauci had nothing to do with the decisions in all but one.

I was curious to know what actions France took, to select a nation at random.  Interesting stuff.

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For a moment, think of all the world’s scientists and the disciplines across which they operate (see below).  Then ask yourself what percentage of these people work under coercion, censorship, fake data, manipulation, cherry-picking, and fear mongering.

I know dozens of people personally who work in these fields, and it’s hard for me to accept that the fellow in the photo with the tats and the gun knows more about the subject than I do.

Did I just write “gun?” What value does that add to this guy’s point?

 

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As we all know, a pro football player told the graduating class at Benedictine College that women should aspire to be homemakers.

This would have been newsworthy if the sponsoring body were not a small, deeply religious school in Kansas.  Does anyone think that biblical teachings on the role women play match our society’s norms in the 21st Century?

Let’s just be glad he didn’t talk about woman as the property of men, women remaining silent in church, stoning adulteresses to death, etc.

 

This British gentleman has nailed the core problem we face in the U.S.

I’m reminded of the occasional conversations I have with Fox News acolytes, where I’m compelled to ask, “And you believe that?”

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At this point in the “development” (some would say “retrogression”) of human society, it appears that the hopes expressed here by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu are not taking root.

That’s because:

1) Our species evolved to be tribal, i.e., to be at least wary of, but more often hostile to, those who don’t look and think like us.  For every Desmond Tutu on Earth, there are hundreds of people with very little capacity to look outside of the racist values with which they grew up.

and

2) Corporate profits are harder to be made when people treat each other as brothers and are thus more likely to share resources with one another. Money makes the world go ’round, and the notion of “one human value” doesn’t work for capitalism.

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