“Border Security”, “Critical Race Theory”, & inner city crime – Republicans’ only issues (racism)

It’s not Trump - it’s Republicans.  It’s not Republicans - it’s white supremacist “Republicans” – and white supremacist evangelical “Christians”.

What are the issues that Republican office holders and office seekers are running on?  Border security and opposition to Critical Race Theory and inner city crime.  To clarify that a bit – keep brown people out, and refuse to admit the impact of systemic racism against blacks, and be very afraid of inner city black and brown people.  Add to that the scores of new voter suppression measures in every Republican state.  We just got news that the governor of South Dakota wants to send troops to the border.  South Dakota?  Mexicans are over-running the streets in South Dakota? I guess she has ambitions for higher office in the “Republican” Party. Really disturbing.

Issues not being addressed by Republicans?  Climate change, fouling of rivers and oceans, fouling of the atmosphere, effective suppression of COVID-19 via vaccines, punishing the attempt by right wing crazies to overturn an election, staggering increase in economic inequality, hollowing out of the middle class, living wages for jobs that have been deemed essential work during this pandemic, building of infrastructure including all aspects of physical and human infrastructures, etc. etc. – i.e. actual catastrophic issues facing America.  Forget all of that, say Republican politicians.  Just attack brown and black people.  And, while you’re at it, attack yellow and red people too.

Keep the suckers distracted by trivialities so that the Oligarchy can continue to loot and despoil the country. 

How does a super-billionaire have a midlife crisis?  He builds a space ship so he can take a really fast ride into space.  Golly gee….

Real Republicans are turning away from the MAGA Trump Cult Republicans.  

But the Cult has captured the Republican Party. And if one is a Republican politician one has to out-MAGA other MAGAs, and out-MAGA the former guy himself in order to be elected by the Cult.  We are watching a party destroy itself.  Unfortunately, it is destroying a lot of America along the way.  

I have written often that the Republicans are going the way of the Whigs into oblivion – split by the racist slave owners vs. abolitionists in the 1800s and split by the racist MAGA Cultists vs. issues oriented Republicans of today.  I left the Republican Party long ago, and remain saddened as to why any stay in that party today.

Only 60 harvests left on the planet?

The earth has lost 40% of its topsoil. In 60 years some say it will all be gone.  Do we have only 60 harvests left on the planet?  Some dispute that certainty, but clearly the corporate mono-culture, chemical spraying, over-plowing agriculture, and the federal governments that it controls, are turning nutrient rich, carbon storing soil into barren, empty dirt, and throwing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.  

I just re-watched the “Kiss the Ground” documentary. It presents solutions. Regenerative farming is a major solution.  It re-greens the land, produces harvests every month of the year, grows beef and chicken as well as nutrient rich plants, and pulls carbon out of the atmosphere rather than throws it up into the atmosphere. 

Portland and Seattle are experiencing Over 100 degree temperatures. This is unthinkable. Texas had an extended freeze a few months back that crippled their sadly deregulated power grid and over a hundred died. Arctic permafrost is melting which throws CO2 into the atmosphere, which causes warming, which melts permafrost, etc. 

Time has run out. Climate Change is here.  It is deadly. Multiple species are becoming extinct. Humans are one of those species being threatened. 

This is one of many movies that shows solutions. Any series with David Attenborough does the same. He shows the wonder and beauty of our planet, sounds the urgent alarms, and offers solutions.  We have lost our connection to, and love of nature. We are killing ourselves with our indifference. 

We can turn this around, and I have great hope and expectation that our youth understand this very clearly, and will act.

 

The Jim Crow Party strikes again

 

As expected, the Republican Party killed the fair election bill in the Senate.  This allows Republican states to enact the scores of voting suppression laws they are enacting all around the country, including closing polling booths in black and brown areas, eliminating voting drop boxes for early voting, restricting mail in voting, etc.  In other words, the Republicans in the South, and around the country, are doing what the Democrats in the South did during the Jim Crow era after 1876 – doing all they can to keep minorities from voting – i.e. white supremacy rule.

One of the reasons I left the Republican Party long ago was because of the voter ID laws they wanted. At the time, I thought voter IDs were a fine idea, what would be wrong with that?  But, what I soon had to admit was that the Republicans did one thing – required voter IDs – and didn’t do what was necessary – political outreach to make voter IDs free and easy to get in areas (brown and black areas) where people didn’t have driver’s licenses.  So I reluctantly saw that the Republicans were not concerned about voter fraud, but rather they were concerned about people of color voting at all.

Going forward, I am happy for voter ID requirements if and only if they are as free and easy to get as driver’s licenses.  Meaning, government locations throughout minority, and poor white, communities where free IDs are easy to get.

The Republican Party has become the Jim Crow Party.  They have to other way to cling to power, or at least that seems to be what they admit by their actions.

When will millions of people start fleeing uninhabitable climates?

This week the Middle East had record 125 degF temperatures.  This is unbearable.  When does it become uninhabitable? It is ironic that the part of the world that most contributes to climate change by basing its existence on the gathering of fossil fuels to burn around the world may become the first part of the world that becomes uninhabitable.

All around the world cities are built on coastlines, from New York and Miami and New Orleans to Mumbai and Shanghai and Buenos Aires.  Glaciers are melting into the ocean.  If Antarctica, which has the vast majority of ice on the planet lets massive amounts of ice crash into the ocean, the sea rises and cities become uninhabitable.

Blizzards, hurricanes, floods, droughts, fire storms, killing of coral and marine life – all coming from climate change.

And climate change is driven by two massive worldwide corporate industries – fossil fuels and corporate agribusiness. 

Burning, and extracting, fossil fuels throws massive amounts of carbon, and methane, into the atmosphere, which traps heat in the atmosphere which also heats the oceans – climate change. 

And corporate farming clears wild forests, plows vast tracts of land – throwing tons of carbon into the atmosphere – plants mono-culture crops fertilized by chemicals that foul the waters, and creates billions of farm animals requiring the clearing of land and dumping methane into the atmosphere.

Our world is quickly becoming uninhabitable.  One nightmare scenario is massive migrations of refugees fleeing uninhabitable parts of the word, with nowhere to go, which could well cause worldwide conflict and violence.

When do millions, or billions, of people start being forced to become climate change refugees?  What happens then?

We have time to change, but it has to come from the demand of the populace, we can’t count on the industries to voluntarily end their destruction.

The smartest kids at MIT, Cal Tech, Berkeley, England, Germany, China, India and around the world are not dreaming of more efficient cars and fossil fuel power plants. They are dreaming of world changing breakthroughs in energy and food production. 

I dream of their success, and very, very, very soon.