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#Post#: 263--------------------------------------------------
Corruption in Government
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: April 18, 2022, 2:06 pm
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[center]This is the FRUIT of BAD GOVERNMENT by [/center]
1) predatory,
2) conscience free ('liberated' from guilt feelings by the
almighty Freud in order to avoid 'neurosis'),
3)
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif<br
/>Social Darwinist,
4) game theory (cooperation is a guise to fool and destroy the
competition) world view,
5) situational ethics (an oxymoron!),
6) if it feels good-DO IT
corporate consent manufacturing propagandists in the service of
UNETHICAL SHORT TERM PROFITS!
The SOLUTION lies in GOOD GOVERNMENT; the PROBLEM is that
CORPORATIONS ARE the present BAD GOVERNMENT! They support
imprisoning people that speak truth to power and giving the
people the mushroom treatment for the same reason they ignore
global warming and pollution: UNETHICAL SHORT TERM PROFITS!
It's time to eliminate the excuse our fossil fuel loving
oligarchy uses for "resources" wars for oil that bring nothing
but misery to us and profits for them.
[center]
HTML https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/7MSADSQp4IBIGDQbb24vCjTnZZHwKKiRCofkpI7ZW29HTKGRqYQfZt-jiafQ70oBE1LjoYp8y2zkr48ElFrskeetTY4lCmy-jHoy3w56Rg_t-stwQ5NNNMgDyX0jaEscIfC5QyZN=s0-d-e1-ft#https://therealnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/newsletter-header-2-1024x170.png[/center]
April 15, 2022
Dr. Cornel West is the most important standard bearer for the
Black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual and
spiritual movement in our history. Rooted in the experience of
American racism, capitalist exploitation, and imperialism, this
tradition has provided an ongoing critique of our economic,
social, and political institutions and beliefs, as well as
calling out the country’s spiritual bankruptcy. In this premiere
episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Dr. West joins Chris Hedges
to discuss the decay of the American empire, the struggle to
show international solidarity in the face of escalating
militarism, and what it means to examine this historical moment
through a moral and spiritual lens.
Chris Hedges interviews writers, intellectuals, and dissidents,
many banished from the mainstream, in his half-hour show The
Chris Hedges Report. He gives voice to those, from Cornel West
and Noam Chomsky to the leaders of groups such as Extinction
Rebellion, who are on the front lines of the struggle against
militarism, corporate capitalism, white supremacy, the looming
ecocide, as well as the battle to wrest back our democracy from
the clutches of the ruling global oligarchy.
Watch The Chris Hedges Report live YouTube premiere on The Real
News Network every Friday at 12PM ET.
Listen to episode podcasts and find bonus content at The Chris
Hedges Report Substack.
[center]The Chris Hedges Report with Dr. Cornel West[/center]
[center]
HTML https://youtu.be/3cWfRdXjepE[/center]
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164555-532108.png
Transcript
HTML https://therealnews.com/the-chris-hedges-report-with-dr-cornel-west?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The+Real+News+Network&utm_campaign=1b6ee167c0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_04_18_05_04_Hedges_West&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_020676f7fe-1b6ee167c0-420547053&mc_cid=1b6ee167c0&mc_eid=4756ab34de<br
/>
AGelbert COMMENT:
Seeing the despicable war profiteering and the hydrocarbon
hellspawn profit over people and planet modus operandi that has
thoroughly corrupted our government and judiciary, we can reach
only one conclusion:
IT'S THE SOCIAL DARWINISM, STUPID!
Social Darwinists believe that ethics based principles are
'limitations pretending to be virtues'. To them, ethics are
'feel good illusions' that humans invented to pretend our
species has empathy. To Social Darwinists, empathy is
irrefutable evidence of inexcusable weakness. To them, all who
are guided by ethics are deluded fools that should be eliminated
from the human 'apex predator' gene pool for the "good" of our
species.
The ideology of the Social Darwinist is indistinguishable from
the despicable ideology of NAZI Germany, clearly exemplified in
their brutally enforced morally bankrupt concentration camp law:
“Eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbor.”
Social Darwinism is actually based, not on "survival of the
fittest", but on fear of tomorrow, a morally bankrupt excuse for
rejecting altruism and empathy and embracing a selfish greed
dominated hoarding modus vivendi. "One who fears tomorrow does
not offer his bread to others. But one who is willing to divide
his food with a stranger has already shown himself capable of
fellowship and faith, the two things from which hope is born."
-- Primo Levi, author of Survival in Auschwitz
Social Darwinism is the morally bankrupt world view that spawned
the profit over people and planet neoliberal ideology.
Neoliberal intellectuals like Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von
Mises and Milton Friedman were all Social Darwinists long before
they renamed laissez-faire liberalism (that had been thoroughly
discredited by the Great Depression) with the catchy title of
"Neoliberalism".
The celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey
explains that neoliberal ideology serves the following
principle:
"There shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of
money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with
one objective: Those possessed of money shall not only be
privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they
shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct
or indirect dominion, not only of the land and all the resources
and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume
absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and
creative capacities of all those others it needs. The rest of
humanity shall be deemed disposable."
David Harvey, “The Party of Wall Street Meets its Nemesis,”
HTML http://www.zcommunications.org/the/party/of/wall/street/meets/its/nemesis.<br
/>Also, by David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism
(Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005.
Agelbert OBSERVATION: If the morally bankrupt, socially
destructive ideology which backs no serious challenge to the
absolute power of money to rule absolutely, while it
simultaneously deems the rest of humanity disposable, is not
SOCIAL DARWINISM, I don't know what is. 😠
#Post#: 278--------------------------------------------------
The Morally Bankrupt Duopoly is Socially Destructive
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: April 24, 2022, 5:37 pm
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[center]
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[center]
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[center]
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422183939.jpeg[/center]
[move]Why lobby politicians when you can challenge their
masters?[/move]
#Post#: 336--------------------------------------------------
🤦‍♂️ Four days. That’s how long
people’s sadness and outrage last after each major gun massacre
in the US.
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: June 3, 2022, 1:15 pm
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[center]
HTML https://sojo.net/sites/default/files/styles/large_rectangle_crop/public/blog/numb_gun_violence.pnghttps://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422141413-627726.png[/center]
[center]OUR NUMBNESS TO GUN VIOLENCE IS A SPIRITUAL
FAILURE[/center]
BY ADAM RUSSELL TAYLOR 🕊️
JUN 2, 2022
SNIPPET:
We must debunk the spiritual lie that the best way to restrain
evil is for more people to be armed to kill. Instead, we should
Jesus’ presumption for nonviolence: “those who live by the
sword, die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090422150144.png
Full article:
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422205132-6472099.gif
HTML https://sojo.net/articles/our-numbness-gun-violence-spiritual-failure
#Post#: 349--------------------------------------------------
What I said cut right through the obfuscation
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: June 10, 2022, 12:27 pm
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Jun 9, 2022
Alex Lawson
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422180554-644315.gif,<br
/>Social Security Works <info@socialsecurityworks.org>
This morning, my colleague Nancy Altman and I had the chance to
testify before the Senate Budget Committee in support of
expanding Social Security. I worked hard on my testimony, but
unfortunately, I was cut off before I got the chance to finish
it. I wanted to share the full thing with you, below.
What I said cut right through the obfuscation that Senators
😈 Lindsey Graham,
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gif<br
/>Rick Scott, and 👿 Mitt Romney use when talking about
Social Security. From the questions they asked, it’s clear that
I got under their skin.
--- Quote ---
> Thank you, Chairman Sanders, for holding the first ever Senate
Budget Committee hearing on expanding Social Security.
>
> In 1935, Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed
the Social Security Act into law. And for the next 87 years,
Social Security has never missed a single payment.
>
> Everybody loves Social Security. Everybody. I have been all
over this country talking about Social Security and I can tell
you it doesn’t matter if the crowd is filled with camo NRA or
the parking lot is filled with electric vehicles. Everyone loves
Social Security.
>
> Well, not everybody, there has always been a tiny splinter
group, a vanishingly small number of people who hate it with
every fiber of their being. These are Wall Street men.
>
> They see the trillions of dollars the system has put in the
pockets of the American people and say, “hey! I want that money
in my pocket instead.”
>
> And as there are money men who hate Social Security, there
will be politicians willing to say how high? At their commands
to jump.
>
> The first, was named Alf Landon in 1936 he ran against FDR on
an explicitly anti-Social Security platform. He called it a
“hoax” and a “fraud,” filled with worthless IOUs that would
never get to the people.
>
> And yet 87 years later Social Security is still here making
payments every month like clockwork to the 70 million people
today who have earned it.
>
> While Alf Landon is forgotten to all except as the guy who
lost 48 states when he ran against Social Security.
>
> For the next few decades the majority of Republicans
understood Social Security as a birthright and cornerstone of
economic security for all Americans, not a partisan football.
>
> My favorite is President Eisenhower in a letter to his brother
saying this:
>
> “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security
…you would not hear of that party again in our political
history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that
believes you can do these things….. Their number is negligible
and they are stupid."
>
> But unfortunately that greedy splinter faction never stopped
plotting. And that faction today has taken over the entire
Republican party.
>
> Ronald Reagan was possibly the last Republican president who
was not totally under their sway. And he stated with perfect
clarity, “Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit,
Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax levied on
employer and employee, if you reduce the outgo of Social
Security that money would not go into the general fund to reduce
the deficit, it would go into the Social Security trust fund, so
Social Security has nothing to do with balancing the budget or
lowering or erasing the deficit.”
>
> But the splinter group has patience and money, lots of money,
and politics loves money. So after the 1983 reforms they began
waging a new type of war against Social Security. The main
tactic being lying to the faces of the American people about
what they are doing.
>
> So now you will never hear from Republicans that they want to
destroy Social Security, you will never hear that they want to
cut benefits. In fact they always start their assaults on Social
Security with protestations of love. “I love Social Security, I
am just worried it isn’t going to be there.” The goal is to
undermine confidence. To rob people of the security of knowing
that Social Security is going to be there for them.
>
> They cloak their attacks under new monikers. George W. Bush
called for just handing our Social Security to Wall Street so
they could gamble it away, he called it “privatization,” but
again it is just destruction. Imagine if George W Bush had given
our Social Security to Wall Street in 2006 just 2 years before
Wall Street collapsed the world economy, and 401ks became 101ks.
But this wasn’t a George W. Bush production, the entire
Republican party was complicit.
>
> And Senator Ron Johnson said as recently as 2015 that it was a
“shame” the Bush plan to destroy Social Security didn’t succeed.
>
> Senator Lindsey Graham, who supported the privatization
effort, has proposed a bill cutting Social Security benefits by
21%. He hides that policy by saying he is “raising the
retirement” age.
>
> And he is not an outlier in his caucus, the Republican Party
platform from 2016 says with coded language that the plan is to
cut benefits and hand over Social Security to Wall Street, “As
Republicans, we oppose tax increases and believe in the power of
markets to create wealth.”
>
> Senator Romney recently tried to get an up or down voice vote
in the dead of night on his so-called TRUST Act, which would
create an undemocratic, fast-tracked, closed-door process to cut
Social Security. They know it is so toxic to talk about what
they want that they tried to legally create a smoky back room
where they can figure out the best way to rob people of their
earned benefits.
>
> Which brings us to the current Republican agenda as set out by
Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee Senator
Rick Scott. I will have to give this plan faint praise, because
at least it has a hint of honesty about it. Senator Scott’s plan
would “sunset” Social Security in 5 years. Rick Scott is the
modern day Alf Landon, he hates Social Security and wants to
eliminate it. But even he isn’t brave enough to say that and
calls it “sunsetting.”
>
> In fact, the Republican who was most honest about Republican
plans on Social Security was former president Donald Trump, who
as a candidate said from the debate stage, “Every Republican
wants to do a big number on Social Security…And it’s not fair to
the people that have been paying in for years.”
>
> He said that over and over again, breaking the Republican pact
to not tell the truth to the American people about their plans
for Social Security. And he won. Now of course once in office
the splinter faction got a hold on him as well and he spent his
single term in office attacking Social Security from all angles.
>
> There is only one number that I think should rule the
discourse in DC about Social Security, $18,457. That is the
average Social Security benefit. I am proposing that we make
millionaires and billionaires pay the same rate on all of their
income just like the rest of us and then we can expand Social
Security’s modest benefits.
>
> If a politician wants to take any of that meager benefit away,
I welcome that fight, but be honest about what you are
proposing. And be prepared to lose.
--- End Quote ---
Watch the full hearing here, then make a donation to save Social
Security from these modern day Alf Landons.
[center]
HTML https://youtu.be/5bL_VwQeunQ[/center]
#Post#: 407--------------------------------------------------
Today I have more evidence to back my firm view that the Supreme
Court is shooting themselves in the FACE!
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 5, 2022, 4:04 pm
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The Class Struggle
Tuesday, July 5, 2022 by DAVE LINDORFF ✨
[center] What Would a Real Opposition Party of the People Do?
HTML https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2022/07/what-would-real-opposition-party-of.html[/center]
AGelbert COMMENT: It is painfully obvious to those with critical
thinking skills that a Real Opposition Party, not only does not
exist in the US of Oligarchs, but has methodically, with malice
aforethought, been prevented by TPTB from organizing into
existence. This is the present corrupt Oligarchy governing
status quo.
In my 75 years of existence, I seriously doubt this Socially
Destructive, Social Darwinism based abusive status quo has
changed in any way. The Perception Management Pig lipstick may
have been better (SEE: "The Audacity of Hopium", etc. Ad
nauseam) from time to time, but the Oligarchy's gate keepers
were firmly entrenched a couple of years before I was born.
I think the Oligarchs solidified their power over we-the-people
on that fateful night Wallace was robbed of the Candidacy for
the VP position. The ruthless Oligarchic greedballs won on July
21, 1944, the last day of the Democratic National Convention,
when the LACKEY for the American Oligarchs, Senator Harry S.
Truman of Missouri, was nominated for vice president. 🥺
Despite our (disguised dictatorship with "democracy" Pig
Lipstick) corrupt status quo, up until now, my hope has been
that Catastrophic Climate Change would spur TPTB to act
responsibly out of survival instinct, if nothing else. I hoped
they would, because of ACTUAL enlightened self interest (not the
greed based Capitalist baloney propaganda they push), take
aggressive legal and financial action to, not only stop, but
reverse, Catastrophic Climate Change.
But, as the recent Orwellian Decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court
evidences (i.e. Children with Hansen Climate Lawsuit will not be
heard because, uh, "they don't have Standing" AND The US
Environmental Protection Agency "Cannot Legally Protect
Americans from Environmental Damage"), the Oligarchs are too
committed to their morally bankrupt ideology/Social Darwinist
religion (see graphic below) to act with common sense.
[center]
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422153848-10191017.jpeg[/center]
Yesterday, I tried to reason with a legal sophistry spouting
poster attempting to defend the latest abysmally stupid Supreme
Court Decision against the EPA. That 🐍 sophist, besides
rambling on in long winded this and that about said Decision,
finished with a ridiculous claim that the "CORE" issue was about
properly applying the regulatory framework (i.e. "Legal"
boundaries of EPA enforement actions). Of course I called BS on
that sophistry laden baloney. Unfortunately, it appears that my
graphics pointing to the REAL CORE ISSUE were like WATER OFF A
😈 Roberts Supreme Court, 🦍 Social Darwinist,
🦖 Hydrocarbon Hellspawn loving DUCK.
🤦‍♂️
Today (see link after this paragraph), I have more evidence to
back my firm view that the Supreme Court is shooting themselves,
and we-the-people, in the FACE (not just the foot) by
deliberatly ignoring the CORE EVIRONMENTAL ISSUE of human
society at this time (i.e. Catastrophic Climate Change). No, I
don't expect the reality challenged water carriers for the
🦖 polluters and the 😈 Supremely corrupt Court to
get it, but I am certain many people of conscience do, and will
pass this on for the good of all humanity.
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240622175211.png
July 4, 2022
[center]Chinese Vessel Snapped In Two By Typhoon Chaba, A Dozen
☠️ Bodies Retrieved
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/catastrophic-climate-change/128681-global-climate-chaos-976065039/msg406/#msg406[/center]
[center]
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050722131151.jpeg[/center]
#Post#: 424--------------------------------------------------
Hydrocarbon Hellspawn thumb their noses at emission cuts through
bribed Government and Judiciary
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 19, 2022, 4:16 pm
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[center]
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-080522140849-12222037.pnghttps://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-221219143548.png[/center]
E&E NEWS
[center]Climate-focused bill 😈🦖 collapses as
nation is 😓 gripped by impacts[/center]
By Benjamin Storrow | 07/18/2022 07:12 AM EDT
[center]
HTML https://static.politico.com/dims4/default/55a1666/2147483647/resize/1110/quality/100/?url=https://static.politico.com/df/81/669481fc4e53882b1d0831c10be7/cw-0718-storrow-climate-impacts-1160-01.jpg<br
/>[/center]
Vehicles pass by a golf course and homes across the freeway from
undeveloped desert last week in Palm Desert, Calif. The state is
now in a third consecutive year of drought amid a climate
change-fueled megadrought in the southwestern United States.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Water levels have fallen so low on the Colorado River that they
are threatening a dam relied upon by millions of Americans. In
Texas, it was so hot last week the state’s grid operator had to
twice ask people to conserve electricity. And in western Kansas,
it is so dry that barely any wheat sprouted this year, further
straining global agricultural markets upended by the war in
Ukraine.
Such events are a sign of how climate change is altering life in
the United States. Yet they have yet to provoke a serious
response in Washington, where 😈 Sen. Joe Manchin of West
Virginia told his Democratic counterparts last week he could not
support climate provisions in a wider budget bill (E&E Daily,
July 15). In an evenly divided Senate, the pronouncement likely
kills the prospects for federal climate legislation.
The result is a collision of political and atmospheric reality.
The atmospheric reality is this: The world already has warmed by
about 1 degree Celsius from pre-industrial levels, juicing many
of the extreme weather events observed today. As long as people
continue to put more carbon dioxide and methane into the
atmosphere than machines and the Earth can absorb, the planet
will get hotter. And a hotter planet is a recipe for even more
frequent and stronger heat waves, droughts and hurricanes, among
other extreme weather events.
But the political reality is that the federal government of the
United States, which sets policies for the second largest
emitter in the world today, is not taking steps that would lead
to a significant reductions in greenhouse gases this decade.
That leaves it to states, cities and markets — not to mention
other countries — to try and make up for the lack of action in
Washington.
Few analysts believe they can deliver the needed reductions.
“There isn’t time for the 🦕🦖🐍 largest
carbon emitters in the world to 😈
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-200419205214.png<br
/>thumb their nose at emission cuts,” said Rob Jackson, an earth
systems scientist at Stanford University.
Jackson is a leader of the Global Carbon Project, a group of
international climate researchers who track global emissions. In
2021, they estimated the world had 11 years at current emissions
rates before the planet reached 1.5 C of warming, the threshold
after which the dangers of a warming world begin to rapidly
accelerate. The planet has 32 years before it reaches 2 C of
warming, the initial target of the Paris climate accord.
In recent years, Democrats have talked up efforts to curb
emissions. And so when the party took control of the House of
Representatives, the Senate and the White House in 2020,
expectations for a federal climate bill soared. Yet the
combination of narrow legislative majorities and a slew of
historic crises have relegated climate on President Joe Biden
and congressional Democrat’s to-do list.
“The political reality is that climate isn’t a top priority for
Democrats,” Jackson said. “I think it means we will zoom past
1.5 C in a couple years and hurdle toward 2 C before we know
it.”
The situation is reminiscent of 2009, when then-President Barack
Obama and Democratic lawmakers passed a federal stimulus bill,
health care legislation and financial reforms only to falter on
climate, Jackson said. The problem, he said, is that the world’s
emissions budget is nearly exhausted and Republicans have shown
no serious sign of engaging in climate policy.
“We don’t have the luxury of waiting another 10 years,” Jackson
said.
As Washington dithers, Americans are beginning to grapple with
the consequences of a warming planet. In the Southwest, federal
regulators recently warned states that they needed to
drastically cut back water consumption to protect the dams at
Lake Mead and Lake Powell in Nevada and Arizona, respectively.
The two impoundments are critical for managing the flow of water
along the Colorado River, making them a key source of water for
some 40 million Americans in the desert Southwest. And as large
hydroelectric facilities, they are also keystone’s of the West’s
electric grid.
At least, they have been.
Water levels were just 32 feet above the elevation needed to
generate electricity at the Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell
earlier this year, prompting the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to
take unprecedented efforts to bolster the reservoir’s levels
(Greenwire, May 3). In an average year, Glen Canyon Dam
generates about 5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity,
according to Reclamation, enough to power about 466,000 homes.
But as water levels have dropped, so too has the dam’s output.
Initial Energy Department data shows it generated a little more
than 3 billion kWh of power last year.
In the middle of the country, Texas is experiencing its hottest
summer since 2011 (Climatewire, July 12). Temperatures in Austin
reached 105 degrees Fahrenheit on five consecutive days,
according to the National Weather Service, the third-longest
streak on record. The searing heat sent power demand soaring as
Texans sought the relief of their air conditioning. The Electric
Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s primary grid operator,
twice asked consumers to cut back on power consumption to avoid
rolling black outs.
Further to the north, parts of western Kansas have gone more
than 300 days without recording an inch of rain. Wheat
cultivation there is suffering as a result, an unwelcome
development when the world is scrambling to find grain following
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Climatewire, July 8 ).
Climate change alone is not solely responsible for events like
low water levels at Lake Powell or the struggles of Texas’ grid.
In both those cases, soaring population growth is taxing water
and electricity supplies. A changing electricity grid, which is
seeing old coal and gas plants replaced by renewables, is also a
factor.
But a warming planet has made those challenges harder.
“We’ve been through a degree of warming. In a sense, we at least
have a sense for the magnitude of the impacts. Two degrees of
warming would be twice as intense,” said John Nielsen-Gammon, a
professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University and the
Texas state climatologist. “But it gets us farther outside of
historical conditions, which means the extreme events get more
and more likely to be worse than anything previously
experienced.”
Scientists were once hesitant to ascribe individual weather
events like the heat wave that baked Texas last week to global
warming. Yet that thinking has begun to change in recent years
amid a growing body of irrefutable evidence the planet is
getting warmer.
Events such as the heat dome that enveloped the Pacific
Northwest last year are nearly impossible in a cooler world,
scientists said. So are storms like Hurricane Harvey, which
dropped up to 60 inches of rain on parts of Texas, one of the
most significant rainfall events since record-keeping began in
earnest in the 1880s.
Finding consensus over policies that can cut emissions is
difficult enough, as shown by Congress’s inability to pass
significant federal climate legislation. But the challenge is
compounded by atmospheric reality. Methane emitted today will
stay in the atmosphere for several decades. Carbon dioxide
released in the air today can stay there for centuries,
according to NASA.
“If we wake up in 5 to 10 years and say, ‘This is unbearable to
our economy, to our communities, to a livable future; we must
act,’ it will be too late to cut and stem the losses that will
be going on,” said Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Brown
University. “This is a challenge where the decisions we make
this year, the next year and the next year will determine what
type of climate we will have at least until mid century and most
likely beyond.”
Right now, Washington is making the decision to not to act in a
way that would seriously limit emissions this decade. Congress
passed an infrastructure law last year that shovels money into
research for technologies such as advanced nuclear, hydrogen and
carbon capture and sequestration. Yet most experts expect it
would take at least a decade before those technologies can begin
to be deployed at scale (Climatewire, Aug. 13, 2021).
In an interview with a West Virginia radio station on Friday,
🦖😈 Manchin held open the door to working on a
climate bill after Congress’ summer recess. The West Virginia
senator said he wanted to see July’s inflation figures before
proceeding with a climate bill
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-191017140758.jpeg.<br
/>But many Democrats signaled they had little hope of securing
Manchin’s vote, which is needed in a 50-50 senate, after seeing
him back out of two potential climate packages (Greenwire, July
15).
The Biden administration, meanwhile, is hamstrung by a recent
Supreme Court ruling that limits the options available to EPA
for regulating emissions from power plants. While the agency has
some significant tools remaining for regulating CO2, the high
court’s ruling suggests the justices would look skeptically at
future agency actions that do not have explicit congressional
approval.
For all those difficulties, emission reductions are likely to
continue. Continued renewable deployment and increasing electric
vehicle adoption means emissions are likely to fall 24 to 32
percent of 2005 levels by the end of the decade without
significant changes in policy, the Rhodium Group said in an
analysis last week. U.S. emissions were 17 percent below 2005
levels in 2021, Rhodium reported.
The problem is that those reductions fall far short of the 50-52
percent reduction targeted by Biden — and leave the United
States well adrift of achieving net zero emissions by
midcentury.
The impact of American climate inaction on global emissions
ultimately will depend on how far the United States falls from
meeting its targets, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at
Pennsylvania State University.
“The direct impact on global emissions might be modest, but the
indirect impact could be huge,” he wrote in an email. “If the
U.S., the world’s largest historical emitter, is unable to meet
its commitments to the rest of the world, that provides an
excuse for countries like China and India, who are likely to
dominate further emissions, to ease off in their own efforts.”
The risks of a warming planet grow as temperatures rise. At 1.5
C, there will be more glacier melt and sea-level rise, causing
additional “death and destruction,” Mann said. But the impact
becomes even more
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/>damaging and pervasive after temperatures 🌡️
breach, he noted.
“It is a world,” Mann said, “that we want to avoid.”
HTML https://www.eenews.net/articles/climate-focused-bill-collapses-as-nation-is-gripped-by-impacts/
AGelbert NOTE: Due to the polluter bought and paid for
thoroughly corrupted state of the US Government AND the
Judiciary, there is NO WAY that a 2 C (PLUS 😱) world can
now be avoided. May God have mercy on us.
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#Post#: 431--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corruption in Government
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 22, 2022, 4:10 pm
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[center]SOCIAL DARWINISTS displaying their
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/>CORE BELIEFS:[/center]
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[center]THE PRESENT RESULT OF THEIR RELENTLESS CORRUPTION OF THE
US GOVERNMENT:[/center]
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#Post#: 434--------------------------------------------------
A History of 😖 21st Century USA in 😉
Entertaining Graphics + pertinent article and 😠
comments...
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: August 6, 2022, 3:15 pm
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[center]
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/>A History of 😖 21st Century USA in 😉
Entertaining Graphics[/center]
[center]
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August 27, 2000 America must 😇 not act as “an
imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part
of the world, taking down governments.”— VP candidate
🐘🦕 Cheney
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/>
AGelbert NOTE: SEE ORWELL, SEE: PNAC
9/11 is not the reason the Bush/PNAC agenda (which included a
Fascist Coup in the US that gave us the FASCISTS 'R' US
"Patriot" Act, along with all the MIC SWAG for Endless Wars)
took 🦍 shape; it is the (😈 amazingly convenient)
excuse for its
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/>implementation.
AGelbert NOTE: SEE ORWELL, SEE: PNAC SEE: INSIDE JOB
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[move]Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way,
and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of
the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall
destroy them. -- Proverbs 1:31-32 KJV[/move]
Wednesday, August 3, 2022 by Paul Street
[center]On Schedule (for) F(ascism)
HTML https://media.tenor.com/images/926c7a7fd37a2d72b10bc8e1252980b5/tenor.gif:<br
/>the Dithering Dems and the Radical Republicans
HTML https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2022/08/on-schedule-for-fascism-dithering-dems.html#comment-5937763318[/center]
John Kelly
In which Paul Street attempts to give the DemocRATS the out they
so desperately need to remain on the good guys side of the
political circus narrative. Calling them "dithering" is an
excuse thinly disguised as a critique for cooperating with, and
even accelerating the fascist trajectory of death cult #1. They
are **** complicit, not incompetent. They are the "more
effective evil", not a lesser evil. Anyone who spends paragraph
after paragraph on Trump, the Regressives, and the 1/6 mini riot
and temper tantrum, is a closeted DemocRAT(ICK) cheerleader...
acting like they are merely soft, not the **** monsters they
are. They are Tweedle Daddy Feels Your Pain to the Regressive's
Tweedle Dumpster Fire. The butt cheeks of the same arse.
Stipulated: Regressives are pure ****. See how short and easy
that was? Now do the DemocRATS... you know, the left punching,
virtue signaling, war mongering, Putin under the bed, Trump in
the head court jesters of death cult America. They are far more
dangerous, because they and their corporate presstitutes have
successfully brainwashed millions into voting for and making
excuses for them. They are every **** bit as evil as the
Regressives, and far more dangerous.
AGelbert > John Kelly
Agreed. The Democrats and the Republicans are both willing,
active, and fully bought and paid for, tools of the US
Oligarchy. 🥺
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The folowing is a bit dated, but the people crushing trend,
which continues to ACCELERATE, is firmly
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/>established:
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[move]Was Hitler right too?.....[/move]
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Collectivist Action > fuster
"fortunately, the laws are still standing and the loonies are
methodically being tried and sent to prison"
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Are they?
AGelbert > Collectivist Action
Exactly. Also, it is a stretch to believe that the Democratic
Party is "dithering".
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Off topic from the daily dirge 💩 of in-our-faces
government
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/>corruption, but welcome news to people of good will, here is
some good news on the Wind Renewable Energy for Grid ⚡
Demand Predictability and Grid Stabilization front that all my
fellow socialists will welcome:
Clean Technica August 3, 2022 By Guest Contributor
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Can Meteorological Models Correctly Characterize Daily Cycles In
Wind Generation?
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#Post#: 436--------------------------------------------------
"...? Has the 🦍 USSS, ☠️ DOD or
🐍 DHS left us with any choice but to assume the deleted
texts would be incriminating?”
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: August 7, 2022, 3:44 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[center]
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August 5, 2022 By William Rivers Pitt 🗽, Truthout
[center]The
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/>Secret Service Text Cover-Up Keeps Getting Bigger[/center]
SNIPPET:
On August 1, “Two influential House Democrats called on Monday
for two officials at the Department of Homeland Security’s
independent watchdog to testify to Congress about the agency’s
handling of missing Secret Service text messages from the day of
the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, accusing their office of
engaging in a cover-up,” according to The New York Times.
😈 Joseph Cuffari is one of the two officials so called.
Not shady enough yet? Try this on for size, courtesy of CNN:
--- Quote ---
> The Defense Department wiped the phones of top departing DOD
and Army officials at the end of the Trump administration,
deleting any texts from key witnesses to events surrounding the
January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, according to court
filings.
>
> The acknowledgment that the phones from the Pentagon officials
had been wiped was first revealed in a Freedom of Information
Act lawsuit American Oversight brought against the Defense
Department and the Army. The watchdog group is seeking January 6
records from former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller,
former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the
Army Ryan McCarthy, among other prominent Pentagon officials —
having filed initial FOIA requests just a few days after the
Capitol attack.
--- End Quote ---
At least the
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/>Watergate burglars had the sense to pull their stunt in the
dead
of night. These
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/>clowns are out there in broad daylight trashing crucial
evidence
pertaining to an attempted coup, and have done so within the
walls of the Secret Service, Homeland Security and the
Department of Defense.
Not only is this cover-up massive, it is altogether audacious,
brazen, almost arrogant… and why not? This is Washington D.C.,
right? Nobody ever gets into actual trouble here, unless you
took a bus from out of town to participate in the Capitol riot.
Then, you’re probably busted. The
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/>ones who summoned you there and turned you loose? A few
deleted
texts later and they’re
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/>enjoying a steak at the Capitol Hill Club, irony definitely
intended.
Full article:
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#Post#: 443--------------------------------------------------
The US "Vote" is a MASSIVELY Watered Down Travesty!
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: August 13, 2022, 2:38 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Comment Source:
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August 12, 2022
dmorista Mod > AGelbert
BTW, I think that our Constitution, that has been in place for
about 230 years is showing its age and needs to be seriously
amended. Of course the danger is that the right is powerful and
they want to convene a Constitutional Convention that they
control. And then make changes that make the Constitution less
favorable to enhancing democracy rather than advance the process
of democratizing U.S. society.
Some legal scholars have pointed out that the U.S. Constitution
is too short and too hard to amend. There has not been a
substantive amendment for several decades now. The set up for
basic institutions like the Supreme Court, the Electoral
College, and the Senate is not acceptable to the way this
country is now organized. And the way the U.S. is now operating
it would be impossible to get any serious amendment through the
process. Societies change over time and the controlling
documents need to be amended.
AGelbert > dmorista Mod
I hear ya, but I think you and I are in agreement that the code
speech rhetorical masterpiece known as the US Constitution was
formulated exclusively for the benefit of (and exclusion of
everybody else), uh, see below, but add "land owning men" to the
graphic:
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Our true "voting legislation" history is very instructive for an
objective historian, not into "sanitizing" (only those US
resident historians who are retired and don't fear losing their
jobs need apply) the US elite's habit, from even before writing
of the Constitution, of justifying whatevah to "KEEP theirs", so
to speak.
The issue I have pointed to with various hair pulling rants, off
and on during the last 15 years or so, is the happy talk claim
that the Constitution now applies to "everybody". No it don't!
Why not?
Well, was the U.S. founded as a representative Republic, as per
the Constitution, or not?
What's that got to do with this?
REPRESENTATION in GOVERNMENT is "what that's got to do with
this", and has NOT changed in ANY significant way to lessen the
stranglehold on POWER that the elite land owners (now happily
including women greedballs too - there's progress fer ya!)
CONTINUE to have.
In fact, the average American voter has LESS power to influence
government NOW than in 1780.
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I know that is hard to believe, but it is true. Women out there,
and perhaps some native americans and blacks too, are probably
calling BS on me right now, but read on.
I will list some key dates, but the fact is that the grip of
elite INCREASED at expense of the middle class and poor from
1780 all the way to TODAY.
It has been a propaganda tour de force foisted on we-the-people
loudly boasting that we lesser American mortals are "properly"
represented.
Baloney, the apologists say! Minorities can vote! Women can
vote! What is your problemo, pal?
My "problemo" is the voting MATH that you double talking,
sophistry spouting, lackey lap dogs of TPTB refuse to
acknowledge.
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1780 = one Rep per 30,000 population (minus some fancy 2/3 math
for the Plantation poo bahs). I won't bore you with the Senate.
The name, alone, should tell you ALL you need to know about that
"we are here for the Oligarchs, PERIOD!" institution honoring
the Roman Empire. American voters didn't even get to vote for
Senators until it didn't matter (around 1900) because, by that
time, the gilded age tycoons had firm control of WHO was on the
ballot by corrupting BOTH of the two main Political Parties. The
optics were a bit better because, before that, the tycoons would
just buy the state legislatures and governors (American
Democracy, yeah right.).
1870 = Don't make me laugh telling me blacks got to "vote".
1913-15 = Legislative Cork on the number of Reps so that the
POWER of the elite that bought and paid for Congress would not
be "watered down" by the population increase.
1920 = Women get to "vote" (now that the CORK was put on the
number of Reps per population).
1964 = LBJ wanted more cannon fodder for Viet Nam so he pushed a
"Voting Rights" Act that has done next to nothing to right
racist wrongs in this country.
2022 = Your "vote" has approximately the fractional power of
(700,000 divided by 30,000) 1/23 of a landed white man in 1780.
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Sometimes I feel like Wiley Coyote....
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