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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Interesting to see this quote from Tolstoy, strangely appropriate to modern American politics.

From the Brennan Center for Justice:

As recent reports have revealed, former President Donald Trump and his allies are making plans for how a second Trump administration would use the powers of the federal government to punish Trump’s critics and political opponents. Among other things, Trump would reportedly invoke the Insurrection Act — a law that gives the president nearly unchecked powers to use the military as a domestic police force — on his first day in office, so that he could quash any public protests against him. 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

From this piece on Steve Bannon:

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on Tuesday argued the Justice Department is trying to silence “the voice of MAGA” after federal prosecutors called on a judge to lift the stay on his four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the House panel tasked with investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Prosecutors cited the ruling of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit released last week, which affirmed Bannon’s conviction, in their request for the judge to order Bannon to begin serving his sentence.

“Consequently, there is no longer a ‘substantial question of law that is likely to result in a reversal or an order for a new trial,’” the prosecutors wrote in their motion. “Under these circumstances, the Court ‘shall order’ defendant ‘be detained.’”

In response, Bannon claimed this was another effort by the prosecution to keep conservatives quiet.

“I’m shocked they want to silence the voice of MAGA,” he told ABC News.

Those of us who support justice and democracy will have to get accustomed to the whining of Trump and his co-conspirators whenever legal action is taken against them.  We can count on being told that any and all such efforts on the part of the justice system are designed to silence the MAGA movement.  And obviously, since there are huge “news” media sources that support these groundless claims, we can expect some level of resonance with the Trump base.

Note: The photo above featuring a handcuffed Bannon in court was taken at an unrelated event: his arraignment on six felony counts re: his having ripped off Trump supporters who foolishly believed they were contributing to building a wall at the southern border, when in fact, they were shoveling their savings directly into Steve Bannon’s pockets.

In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Bannon “acted as the architect of a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud thousands of donors across the country — including hundreds of Manhattan residents.”

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

For most of us, this is a significant win.  But let’s be honest.  Not every American cares.

In fact, there are many millions of U.S. voters who think that environmentalism in general is a con in which the “radical left,” who hate our country, want to raise taxes and create regulations that will stifle the economy.

If that’s what you believe, there are plenty of places to find corroborating evidence.  Of course, you won’t find it in the scientific community, but these folks reject the findings of our scientists anyway.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

When it comes to the way the U.S. covers the news, what precisely has changed over the years?

In a word, monetization.

Until the late 20th Century, news was a service, offered to the American people 30 minutes each day with little or no profit motive.  Now, it’s an extremely lucrative industry, fed by content carefully crafted to provide huge hits of dopamine into the brains of tens of millions of addicts, 24 hours a day.

Want to see Trump held accountable for trying to overthrow the U.S. government?  You’re not alone, and do we have something for you!

Believe Trump is being persecuted by the radical left that is ruining this country, led by the Biden crime family? Tune in to this crap over here!

Where there are large amounts of money to be made, only a fool thinks he’ll find any honesty and decency that remain intact.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Here’s a review of the new book Children of a Modest Star that ponders the consequences of governance that would sit above the 206 sovereign nations when it comes to climate change mitigation and pandemic control.

There is no doubt that the status quo on Planet Earth, and a business-as-usual approach to global warming is getting us slowly nowhere.  The reasons for this are many, but, at the core, the politics of every country includes the notion: I will not take an action that benefits someone else at my expense.

Yet what would a unified world government look like?  Exactly what powers would it have? Can one imagine how most Americans would respond to being told what to do by an organization like the United Nations? And I’m not talking about our crackpot anti-vaxxers and climate deniers.  This is a big ask, even for sensible people.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

To reader Brian M. Stewart, the author of the post here:  Sorry, but I have terrible news.  Millionaires, and even low-level billionaires, don’t have access to the top-tier of judicial corruption.

Sure, wealthy people can afford attorneys who have been highly successful and are more likely than not to get you acquitted of whatever crime you may have been accused of, or get you off with a light sentence, if you hire them.

But if you want total immunity from criminal prosecution, you better be a Donald Trump

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

In the entirety of U.S. history, where does Goethe’s quote here best apply?

Most Americans would agree that it’s the behavior of Trump supporters post the 2020 election, their clinging to the baseless claim that the election was rigged, and the mindless hatred they feel for the rest of the country’s people as the “woke, radical left.”

Another solid answer is our population’s ignoring the challenges beset upon us by global warming.  As the late Kurt Vonnegut put it, when he saw what was happening shortly before his death, “We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

As we can see here, Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus represented the concept that, for man to acquire the best for himself, he needed to be woke, i.e., concern for the well-being of others.

Only recently did the principle of indifference to the suffering of other people come into full bloom here in the United States.  Perhaps it can slip out through the same putrid crack in the wall it entered.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

One common trait among many of our civilization’s great thinkers is their humility.   Perhaps this started with Socrates and the line for which he’s so well known: “I know that I know nothing,” meaning that true wisdom is knowing you don’t know anything.

About 2000 years later, in the 1660s, we have this quote at left from Isaac Newton.

Of course, not all great minds through the ages were so modest.  Take, for example, the physicists of the late 19th Century who were convinced that everything of any real importance in their field had already been discovered.  A few years later we have Einstein, followed by quantum mechanics.  Oops!  That belief didn’t age well.

All this raises a series of unanswerable questions. Is there an end to physics, i.e. a point at which we honestly do have our arms wrapped around cosmology and all our puzzles have been solved: wormholes, time travel, dark energy and matter, string theory, unified field theory, parallel universes, another universe before the big bang?  If there is such an end, how close are we to it?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Our local National Public Radio affiliate broadcasts a weekly radio program called “The Reluctant Therapist,” in which the host interviews experts on subjects related to mental health.  Today’s subject explored the difference, if one exists at all, between religion and spirituality.

To me, this comes down in large part to how one defines the words.  The broad sense of the word religion, as it applies to practices like Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Jainism, seems indistinguishable from spiritualism, in that adherents hold belief systems to the effect that there are dimensions to human conscious that transcend the mental and physical functions of our bodies.

 

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