Good joke here.

Moving our society’s functions into the private sector is an appealing notion …until we begin to think about its consequences. And in no arena is this more apparent than the environment, where unregulated businesses happily use our atmosphere and waterways as their own private sewers.

“Capitalists abhor waste,” a spokesperson for the libertarian CATO Institute said in an interview, attempting to convince me that for-profit enterprises have a compelling motivation to regulate themselves.

No, they abhor wasting money.  If by “waste” you’re talking about things like toxic waste streams that result from their manufacturing processes, in general, they are fine with directing that poison in the direction that costs them the least, regardless of the damage it does to the surrounding world.

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As COVID-19 raged around the world, many Americans believed that the pandemic was planned by the U.S. government, as an event to determine to what extend we would tolerate having our liberties taken away.  An alternative theory was that our hospitals were being given huge amounts of money for each fatality they attributed to COVID, and thus coroners were deliberately misclassifying the cause of deaths on millions of the certificates they filled out and signed.

If you have that type of QAnon mind, some of this garbage may make sense to you.  But you also need to put aside the fact that the disease was raging in every other country around the globe.

Suppose a huge percentage of U.S. doctors were willing to lie and cheat.  Did the same thing happen in Iceland, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, France, Australia, Switzerland, and Argentina?

To buy into this, you have to be stupid beyond words.

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We’re teetering on the edge.

If the coup attempt goes unpunished, we’re essentially saying that using “force or fraud” to stay in power is a completely legitimate undertaking.

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For the low-low price of only $32.99, you can buy this baseball cap from a company called “Our True God,” taking the MAGA creed one step further, making the point that there are other so-called Gods that aren’t true, such as the God of the Jews and Muslims, and you won’t have anything to do with them.

 

 

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There sure is growing certainly that Trump and justice are on a collision course with one another.  And I have to admit, as time passes, there seems to be less and less wiggle-room surrounding a couple of the former president’s crimes.

It appears that a) the stolen documents, and b) ordering Pence not to certify the election, are both slam dunks at this point.

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The note at left is a reminder of how cruel our system of healthcare is here in the U.S.

It’s just one of dozens of things that all decent people would like to change, along with gun control, better education, environmental responsibility, and so many others.  Every single one is blocked, because our lawmakers are owned by billionaires and huge corporations.

It’s also worth noting that our country is teetering on the edge of authoritarianism, which makes it difficult to focus on anything else.

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Over the last couple of years, Tulsi Gabbard has become a supporter of all things Trump, including many of the (repulsive) Republican candidates the former president endorses.

Ask yourself how any person of integrity can suddenly stand behind an obvious criminal.

We all understand that she has presidential ambitions, but doesn’t honesty matter?

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Refusing to concede an election isn’t a crime.

Attempting to overturn the results of an election is a felony, punishable by five years in prison.

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Is there anyone who isn’t predicting sky-high turnouts at the midterm elections?

I can only imagine how inundated with political advertising people who live in states with contentious races must be.  If you’re in Pennsylvania, for instance, you’re either going to elect a progressive recovering from a stroke, or a billionaire snake oil salesman from New Jersey.  That must be pretty damn captivating, regardless of which side of the fence you’re on.

In Georgia, it’s either the incumbent Democrat, or a pathological liar and true moron.  Who can stay home?

Moreover, all these races are, to one degree or another, referenda on Donald Trump. You either stand for rule of law, or you don’t.

Let your voice be heard.  But again, I’m not sure you need any urging.

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FWIW, the phenomenon shown below is real, as I realized at a neighbor’s 4th of July party, where I was (I believe) the only progressive.

A guy who was both astonished and infuriated that I had voted for Biden refused to give me his name, saying, “You could turn me in.  The FBI is rounding up all Trump supporters.”

“Gosh, I was unaware of that,” I replied, in keeping with my policy of refraining from arguing with crazy people.

Now, is this insanity statistically significant in our polls?  I doubt it.

 

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