CSotD: Potpourri for 60, Art
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Back in the days when Art Fleming hosted, Jeopardy had a category called “Potpourri” which mostly consisted of leftovers from previous games. Since they no longer use it, I will.
If Molina had run this earlier, I’d have used it with yesterday’s critique of Michael Ramirez’s anti-wind cartoon. But I still like it, because he focuses on the role of the petroleum industry in both polluting the atmosphere and in funding opposition to alternative energy sources.
I covered a public meeting in Maine about a set of turbines proposed for a ridge in a lightly populated area north of Rangeley. There were several NIMBY protesters there, but also, besides the TransCanada people who wanted to build the things, representatives from the Audubon Society who said stories of bird deaths were greatly exaggerated and the threat is not real.
I once drove up to a turbine on a farm and shut off my engine to listen. I heard no wop-wop-wop and there wasn’t a single bird carcass to be seen. That’s hardly a statistically significant sample, but I’m going with the Audubon Society, not the petroleum lobby.
I also had this Megan Herbert piece, which didn’t quite fit the argument but cracked me up anyway. I remember when wind first came on the scene and they had to quickly craft laws to keep people from erecting towers in their backyards such that, if they collapsed, would smash neighboring fences and possibly houses.
I also suspect that, even if you could erect a turbine, you’d have to live to 150 for the savings to pay it off. However, I know a lot of people who do well with solar panels, particularly since the government used to offer rebates and tax incentives to help clear the air and lower our dependence on fossil fuels.
The current administration has stopped the incentives. I can’t imagine the rea$on.
I didn’t have room for this in my discussion of the Epstein scandal, but it suggests a reason Trump hasn’t kept his promise to release the files.
It also reminds me of earlier Internet days, when the government started releasing documents with blacked-over redacted information, but didn’t know you have to flatten the file to make the move effective. Anyone with even prehistoric Photoshop could simply remove that layer and read to their heart’s content.
They did eventually more or less figure out how the series of tubes worked.
Juxtaposition of the Day
The UK has instituted age restrictions on the Intertubes, and Australia is on the brink of keeping everyone under the age of 16 from accessing the online world.
Blower criticizes it from a free speech/free press perspective, while First Dog points out how little it’s likely to work. I firmly believe that parents should limit their kids’ screen time, but that does seem like something that will only happen in homes where parents are already attentive and kids are raised sensibly.
Even in the Old Days, you could forbid your kids to watch violent and misogynistic stuff, but then they’d go off to school and mingle with friends who swam in that garbage, which reminds me of this classic Boondocks, one of my favorites.
As a parent, I didn’t fool myself into thinking I could keep my kids from seeing violent, sexist garbage, but at least they’d watch it knowing I objected.
You can’t compel behavior but you can impose values.
The recent decision by the IRS to allow churches to endorse candidates without losing their non-profit tax status drew this condemnation from Joe Heller. I’m considerably more ambivalent.
It strikes me that the IRS is not equipped to sneak agents into every little crossroads church and make sure they aren’t endorsing candidates or ballot proposals, and I’d rather they sent them to examine the books of major corporations and fatcats.
I’d also suggest that if little crossroads churches had to pay taxes, their operating costs and charitable outreach would pretty much negate their tax obligations.
But there’s also this: Much as you may hate conservative firebrand preachers, did you feel like that about Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King when they were using their pulpits to organize boycotts and voter registration drives and other political elements of the Civil Rights Movement?
Maybe they were careful to avoid specific instructions on voting. I don’t know that any black pastor in Mississippi ever said “Don’t vote for Ross Barnett,” but then I don’t know that any black pastor worth his salt would have had to.
Whole thing is a head-scratcher to me.
Here’s another head-scratcher: How the world economy can adjust to a goofball who doesn’t understand how tariffs work or what constitutes a trade imbalance and, as Bennett suggests, just throws darts at a map to determine who gets what.
I had to make sure Heard and McDonald islands weren’t where that 15% tariff at bottom left had stuck, which they aren’t. They’re the islands inhabited by seals and penguins that Trump tariffed and that his obedient Commerce Secretary Howard Nudnik defended.
Good News: I’m starting to see media using the term “import tax” in place of “tariff,” which does a better job of explaining who pays these things, which mightn’t be necessary if Dear Leader knew the answer himself.
I’d feel better about our economy if I thought he was deliberately lying and had some cunning plan up his sleeve, but, if so, he’s convincing in his pretense of being totally inept.
Which leads to …
That’s a good question. I can’t tell how much of Dear Leader’s astonishing, contradictory, nonsensical statements are intentional bafflegab to con the pigeons and how much of it is compulsive lying.
Whether Trump believes his followers are stupid seems irrelevant. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, and he seems to believe his own stories, even when they contradict each other.
A compulsive liar who claims to have been an outstanding athlete in high school or to have graduated from college with honors may believe it himself.
Still, before anyone invokes the 25th Amendment, let’s make sure JD knows he never really was a hillbilly.
Never mind. At least Buck was no phony. Even his jokes rang true.
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