We need to add to this:
• Character doesn’t matter.
• Telling the truth is for sissies.
• Treason and sedition are acceptable ways of staying in power after you’ve lost an election by seven million votes.
What kids will learn if Trump somehow escapes justice:
• Rule of law means absolutely nothing in the United States. There are banana republics all over the world in which justice matters more than it does here.
Here, a couple of journalists from Bloomberg attempt to explain how climate change mitigation is receiving political backlash, both in the US and the EU (two of the three largest emitters).
Bottom line: extreme right-wing forces on both sides of the Atlantic are wielding considerable power. The last thing we need.
Who doesn’t completely admire this man, if for only his sheer humility?
As a tutor, I essentially teach. If I have a kid in front of me who wants to learn math/science or any of the humanities, I’m pretty effective.
But occasionally, I come across moments where I can open up that mind and get it to look at life and learning on a grander scale. In those few moments, I suppose I could be called Socratic, thus flattering myself.
Here’s what Santa Monica (CA)-based environmentalist Zan Dubin wrote to the editor of the Los Angeles Times in response to an article on income and childbearing, which includes: “What largely remains overlooked, however, is the abject failure of America’s political elite to protect the country’s middle-class standard of living.”
From this: Engine manufacturer Cummins must pay the second largest environmental penalty in United States history: a whopping $1.6 billion to settle claims that it outfitted hundreds of thousands of trucks with software to defeat pollution controls.
Plug-In America co-founder Paul Scott writes: Jennifer Rumsey is the CEO of Cummins. She’s been a high level member of management for over a decade and was intimately involved in this scheme to defraud California regulators and presumedly those in other states. While I appreciate that her company has been fined $1.6 billion, it is also a fact that the consequences of her crime involve more human deaths from the added diesel pollution. Seems she should spend time in prison for that.
As I noted repeatedly during the (extremely similar) VW emissions scandal, corporate malfeasance, while it isn’t brand new, continues to escalate as time passes.
When I was working as a business consultant a few decades ago, principally to the Fortune 100 tech companies, no-one would have dreamed suggesting a conspiracy to defraud government regulators, cheat customers, and endanger the health of everyone on Earth. If someone had actually done so, he would have been fired immediately and escorted off the premises by security.
Times have changed, to put it kindly.
Re: Trump, the Lincoln Project writes:
Let the math do the talking:
49% of Republicans in Iowa.
44% of Republicans in New Hampshire.
Roughly 40% of Republicans in South Carolina.
All of them voted against Trump.
The guy who’s “unstoppable.” The guy who’s basically running as an incumbent. Between 40-50% of Republican primary voters – the absolute, most motivated core of the party – do not want Donald Trump as their nominee.
It’s true that a huge swath of GOP voters would like to see another nominee. But what happens if they don’t? These are people like my mom, traditional conservatives, who, bless their hearts, have the capacity to see that Trump is a criminal sociopath.
But how will this translate at the polls? How many will abstain? How many will vote for Biden?
It’s anyone’s guess.
Much speculation has gone into pinning down exactly where American education fell off the rails.
We might infer that Aristotle would point to how our teachers are both underpaid and rendered impotent in establishing order in the classroom.
Who hasn’t driven next to a car whose driver has hip-hop music blasting into his (and your) ears? Is it even remotely possible not to form a negative judgement about such a person?
The music one gravitates to is most definitely a reflection of that person’s character.
Perhaps that’s a segue to a piece on the tragedy of removing music from our schools.
When we think about the horrors that lie within Trump’s mind, this makes sense to most of us: Lying and cheating comes more naturally to him, and provides greater rewards, than any attempt at winning with intelligence and honesty.
Somehow, due to our faults as a society, we fell for it once, but it’s not going to happen twice.
When one looks at this apparently recent conversation in which Fox News interviews Donald Trump, it’s hard not to wonder what will ultimately become of the narrative of the stolen presidential election of 2020.
In the extremely unlikely event that Trump is re-elected in 2024, or in the almost certainty that he will be be defeated, there will remain tens of millions of Americans who believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the 2020 election was rigged in favor of Biden.
Are there tapes showing “people stuffing ballot boxes?” No. Does that have any bearing on the beliefs of Trump supporters? Of course not.
