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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them and affects the decisions and judgments that they make.

Because we’re not computers, we’re all victims of this phenomenon; we have emotions, personal agendas, limited attention spans, peer group pressures, life events that shape our beliefs, and so forth.  Yet some of these are more vicious and less defensible than others.

For example, Fox News has identified a demographic segment of the U.S. population that is especially susceptible to poor thinking, making it particularly vulnerable, and it’s taking full advantage of those weaknesses.

You and I, for example, may have trouble eliminating some our personal prejudices in our thinking.  However, we couldn’t, even we tried, believe the entire U.S. judicial system is corrupt and that it falsely upheld the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, where the true winner was Donald Trump.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Per this piece in the Washington Post, it’s now proven that Fox executives and on-camera actors knew the claims that Dominion had “flipped” votes from Trump to Biden were untrue — but “spread and endorsed” them anyway.  “There is NO evidence of fraud,” anchor Bret Baier wrote to one of his bosses.

But will this, the latest scandal at Fox “News,” have any lasting effect on the criminal organization and its viewers?

The lawsuits brought against Fox are in the billion-dollar range, but, even if successful, they will not bring the company and its chairman, Rupert Murdoch (net worth $18.6 billion), to their knees financially.

OK, but will the Fox audience react to having been the victim of a massive web of deceit?  Not in any significant manner.  These people are 100% convinced that the “radical left” is hellbent on implementing its “socialist agenda,” and regardless of how obviously fictitious it is, they will consume anything that supports this notion, as if it were oxygen.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

So many possibly interpretations here.

Someone mentioned musical performance.  As a wanna-be classical pianist, one of my downfalls was that I never had the discipline to take the piece’s most difficult passages and spend the necessary amount of time to break them down into their elements and practice them until they became, in fact, the most easily played parts.

Perhaps a more obvious application is politics. If we don’t repair an attempt to overthrow our government, guess what we’re going to repeat?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I like the artwork here.

Our country finds itself at a crossroads.  Failing to prosecute Trump for his treasonous attempt to overthrow our government will relegate us into the same category as the other dictatorships for which rule of law means nothing.

In the process of establishing this democracy, our founding fathers’ took incredible risks in the face of hanging, and (a quick note from history) once a democracy is gone, it’s almost impossible to get back.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

FWIW, a lifelong friend recently retired from his career as an Ob/Gyn.  He personally didn’t perform abortions, but worked in a hospital that houses an entire department dedicated to the practice.  He told me that the concept of aborting a viable fetus for any other reason than the saving life of the mother literally never happens anywhere in the United States.

I scratched out the vulgar “c” word at the bottom of the meme here, but trust me, I too have an extremely low opinion of people who spread lies designed to support their political views.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

From this article in the New York Times:

Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.

The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.

Financial risk? Yes.  We’re talking about billions of dollars in compensatory damages, not to mention possible punitive damages on top of that.

But reputational risk?  That’s harder to imagine.  The only people who really matter to Fox are idiots who still believe the election was stolen, and they’re simply going to going to conclude that the lawsuit was a sham, that the judge is corrupt, and that the radical left has prevailed over their leader, the most honest and most effective president in American history.

Maybe time for a new insurrection.  Who knows?  We’re capable of anything.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Roughly:

Mommy, why are there so many sad and empty people?

Because we live in a world full of lies, egos, and pleasures, in which money has the most value, and people deceive themselves, and all that, my daughter, poisons our own spirits.

I would only add that we’re living in a time when, financially, the winners have won and the losers have lost.  40 years ago, the United States lowered its top personal income tax bracket from 90% to 28%.  That was followed by the U.S. Supreme Court decision “Citizens United,” which gave corporations the power to spend as much as they wish to influence our elections.

As a result, the wealthiest people now have complete control over our lawmaking processes, and 60% of Americans don’t have an extra $500 to deal with an unforeseen expense.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

So many things make no sense in today’s world.

Teachers are so badly underpaid that there being forced to leave the profession.

Almost half of American voters believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, despite the findings of more than 60 courts around the country.

We are in the process of baking our planet, yet we’re doing essentially nothing to turn this around.

The meme here depicts just one more piece of nonsense.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s a meme that made me smile.

Like all humor, it’s rooted in truth.  Depending on how sensitive you are to the needs of other human beings, the ultra-right-wing political climate in Florida might make life very difficult for you.

The situation is similar here in this rural part of Central California, in that there are plenty of rednecks.  Is that a burden?  Nothing terrible.  As someone told me the other day, I’m fine as long as they’re not holding rallies.   

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Through court records, we now know that the Fox News executive team and on-camera personnel knew that Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election were “complete bullshit.”

Think for a moment how vile these people are (if you weren’t aware of it already).  They knowingly misled tens of millions of gullible but otherwise guiltless people into believing that the entirety of America’s democratic processes is corrupt. (more…)

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