The Internet is beating up poor Sean Spicer (first press secretary under Donald Trump) because he doesn’t know the difference between Dday (June 6, 1944) and Pearl Harbor Day (December 7, 1941).

Chillax. He wasn’t put in place because of his intelligence, nor for his understanding of U.S. history.

Trump’s campaign to jettison the U.S. Constitution would have been soundly rejected if he had been surrounded by people who had the vaguest notion of what he was suggesting.

 

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The Mackinac Center for Public Policy asks:  Want to combat the “science” your child is taught at school? Sign up now to receive a free digital copy of A Parent’s Guide to Countering Green Ideologies!  They offer the hole in the ozone layer as an example of green propaganda.

The hole in the ozone is very small at this point, but not via an act of God, or some natural cycle, but because atmospheric scientists in the late 20th Century were able to pinpoint the cause of the hole (CFCs).  These are any of a class of compounds of carbon, hydrogen, chlorine, and fluorine, typically gases used in refrigerants and aerosol propellants.

Humankind successfully replaced these chemicals with other formulations, and the problem was solved in a matter of a decade or two.

I’ve signed up to receive periodic updates from the Mackinac Center, as I’m interested to know how it (and other right-wing organizations like it) are working to invalidate science, and ultimately remove it from our schools.  I’ll keep you posted.

 

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There have been neo-Nazis in American society, their numbers ebbing and rising, ever since the Third Reich was put down in 1945.  They are a scourge to civilization, because they remind us of everything that is wrong with the human race, in particular its capacity for hatred and its inability to reason and to exhibit empathy for others.

Last week, however, the United States saw its first sign of official acceptance of racism and anti-Semitism: a former president inviting it into his home for dinner.

Worse, this abomination has not been condemned by many high-ranking congressional Republicans. There are no depths beneath which the GOP will not sink, and drag our nation down along with it.

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Common wisdom suggests that the “rich” in the sense presented at the left have wrested control of our country’s lawmaking processes so completely that the rest of us are powerless to regain even the tiniest bit.

I’m not so sure.  It’s possible that the abject stupidity on the part of the common American that was released and given wings by Donald Trump may be at least partially replaced by some semblance of intelligence once the former president goes down.

Keep in mind that the Salem witch trials of 1692 were a short-lived fad that was gone soon after it came into being; a year or two later, many people had forgotten that they had ever happened.

We may be in the process of learning that being ruled by the billionaires and corporations while the middle class evaporates completely is simply a miserable way to live, and we will demand a change in a major election cycle.  I hope I’m still on this planet long enough to see it.

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The answer to Liz Cheney’s question here, of course, is yes.

Principle, like honor and truth, is as irrelevant in Republican politics as shoe size or hair color.

And Kevin McCarthy in particular is our present-day standard-bearer for moral squalor.

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How are they different?  Glad you asked.

The only difference is that they are relatively few in number, and have no power to burn heretics at the stake.

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All this is true.

But let’s never forget that he narrowly defeated one of the scummiest people imaginable.  The Republicans came within a gnat’s a** of installing a pathological liar and complete moron into one of the most important positions in the U.S. government.

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The meme here is from an anti-vaxxer reader, who seems concerned about the health and safety of my children, both of whom have been vaccinated against COVID-19, btw.

Of course, none of us can undo any of the decisions we’ve made that have permanent implications.  The best any of us can do is to make our choices based on what makes most sense to us at the time. Speaking strictly for myself, any applicable science informs my choices in cases like these; at the very least it trumps whatever’s trending among those who belch their baseless ideas onto social media.

A good example of this is the claim that vaccinations are routinely presented as “experimental.”  To date, 12.7 billion doses have been administered, about 1.5 for every man, woman, and child on Earth.

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The meme here, featuring convicted conspiracy seditionist Elmer Stuart Rhodes, may be topical today.

Yet I guarantee that, when Trump is found guilty of the same crime, Rhodes will be quickly all but forgotten.

 

 

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Other than the pace at which it’s happening, it’s hard to complain about the criminal proceedings against Donald Trump.

Even the guilty findings against the Trump Organization on a massive tax fraud scheme, while the former president was not indicted personally, puts him in grave legal jeopardy insofar as testimony revealed that he was aware of the criminal behavior, and thus may lay the groundwork for future charges to be brought.

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