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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Sadly, there are American voters–plenty of them–who believe what they want to believe, despite all evidence.

A good example is that a law already exists that prohibits non-citizens from voting.  And it’s not  some obscure law like those concerning jaywalking or spitting on a sidewalk.  It’s the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Yet we have the Republican Speaker of the House stirring our country’s most ignorant people into an uproar over this point.  Most of the folks are no more familiar with the Constitution than they are with the procedures of open-heart surgery or sending rockets into space, and the Speaker knows this goddamn well.

If you need another reason to believe this, Johnson is an utterly disgusting human being.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It’s hard to respect anyone whose viewpoints on social issues goes from white to black in the blink of an eye, simply to attain political power.

When Haley was a U.S. representative in Hawaii, she was a liberal–on everything from women’s rights to environmental responsibility to the duty of government to help those least capable of helping themselves.

A few years later she’s a garden-variety Trump supporter?

That’s just disgusting.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

If we look up the word “cult,” we find many different meanings, most of which are pejorative.  Here are two good examples:

a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.  “a network of Satan-worshiping cults”

a group which is typically led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader, who tightly controls its members, requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant (outside the norms of society)

As suggested by the meme here, once you’re a member of one of these groups, you’ve proven that you’re susceptible to this type of thinking, making you an easy target for another cult membership.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

For some reason, I’m on the email distribution list of “For the Love of Old Houses,” and one thing that this has confirmed for me is the old adage: “The three most important ingredients in evaluating real estate are location, location, and location.”

The house pictured above was built in 1919 near the ocean in Carmel, CA, about 100 miles south of San Francisco. It’s on the market for $7.995 million.  Now, consider picking this up, moving it almost anywhere else in the United States, and trying to get even half of that.

Conservatives like to say the bloom is off the rose for California and other “woke” parts of the country.  Tell that to investors in Chevron, Meta/Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, Well Fargo, Apple, Disney, Intel, Google, Northop Grumman, and Oracle. These companies are a big part of the reason that, if it were a country, California would be the fourth largest economy on Earth.

It’s true that California is often the locus of innovations that make our lives longer and healthier, not to mention more productive and convenient.  And perhaps that has given us a reputation for being progressive.  Ya know what?  We’re actually proud of that.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

The good people at Inside the Movement write:

(We’re) the action toolkit for the climate movement. Come find your place (and your voice!).  Here’s how you can join us:

All this and more — Inside the Movement.

FWIW, I love keeping track of and promoting what these folks are up to, and I heartily recommend that readers do the same.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

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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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

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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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

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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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

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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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

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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