FWIW, I’m still predicting that Trump is going to face legal consequences for trying to overthrow the U.S. government via a violent insurrection.
To answer the reader’s question at left: People have been talking about this since the dawn of the spoken word. The usual argument is that God gave us free will, which means that it’s up to us to choose one action over another, and some of these actions are evil.
In my way of thinking, this is specious; it’s like saying that the cleverest thing that Satan does is fooling us into believing that he doesn’t exist.
A reader notes about the meme here: Merry Christmas brings an awkward silence when I say it. Oh well, too bad. The holiday IS Christmas.
Most adherents to the world’s religions believe that human beings are, in essence, souls that go on to some form of afterlife when they die. Yet, as far as I’m aware, there are no such provisions made for our fellow primates, e.g., chimpanzees, nor for other intelligent species like dolphins and whales, nor for our beloved pets, like the fine dog pictured at left.
This strikes me as the height of ignorance and conceit.
Living in peace is a skill that most of the modern world has not developed to any significant degree.
Yet that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
Question: Take a peek at the meme at left, and examine it for poor logic.
A cow eating grass isn’t bad for the planet. The beef industry that is driving unprecedented levels of deforestation–in particular, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, is, in fact, terrible for the planet.
So here’s the question: What’s the name of the fallacy by which an argument is deliberately misrepresented so to make it easier to defeat?
Answer: Can be found at Clean Energy Answers.
If I were to name the ten most intelligent and morally wholesome people who ever lived, Vonnegut would be on the list.
At left is my reasoning.
Property taxes are how we fund public schools. Unless we want illiterate children, we need property taxes.
Of course, we’re headed in the direction of mass ignorance anyway. The popular conception among the MAGA right is that education cranks out woke liberals, and thus our kids are better off without it. If you doubt this, tune into Fox News for a few minutes here and there.
Further, it looks like the Department of Education will soon be a thing of the past.
At left we have a handful of irrelevant facts. Knowing all this, Trump appointed Gaetz to be the U.S. attorney general, to the sheer delight of the MAGA right.
The only relevant fact here is that Gaetz comes from an extremely rich family.
From the Daily Montanan:
The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a district court ruling in the nation’s first constitutional climate change trial, affirming that the youth plaintiffs have a “fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment” while revoking two Montana statutes.
The 70-page decision, authored by Chief Justice Mike McGrath, comes 16 months after Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled in the landmark Held v. Montana lawsuit, explicitly stating that the state’s greenhouse gas emissions are “proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment, and harm and injury to the youth plaintiffs.” Seeley’s decision also rolled back two laws enacted by the 2023 legislature that changed the Montana Environmental Policy Act.
The state immediately appealed the decision to the Montana Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in the appeal in July. The court found in a 6-to-1 decision that Montana’s constitutional guarantee of a “clean and healthful environment” includes a stable climate system, “which is clearly within the object and true principles of the Framers inclusion of the right.”
“Plaintiffs showed at trial—without dispute—that climate change is harming Montana’s environmental life support system now and with increasing severity for the foreseeable future,” the order states. “Plaintiffs showed that climate change does impact the clear, unpolluted air of the Bob Marshall wilderness; it does impact the availability of clear water and clear air in the Bull Mountains; and it does exacerbate the wildfire stench in Missoula, along with the rest of the State.”
The six-justice majority found the law which limited analysis of greenhouse gas emissions during environmental reviews violates the Montana Constitution’s “right to a clean and healthful environment,” and enjoined the state from acting on it.
All this sounds great, but what does it mean in practice? OK, analyses of greenhouse gas emissions are admissible in environmental reviews. But what actions can be taken to force the reductions of these pollutants?
