Good thing most of us won't be alive in 2100, and here is why.........

 

America Will Invade Canada Before the Year 2100

But it could happen far, far sooner

Let’s face it, friends:

America is over.

• We poisoned all our rivers and we’re running out of freshwater, with 96 out of 204 basins in trouble and the western seaboard on fire.
• We’re like a thirsty ex-boyfriend in our desperate search for ever-harder-to-extract oil and gas, fracking our foundations to smithereens.
• Our infrastructure is crumbling and our cities are overcrowded like a Tokyo metro station.
• Our virgin forests have been destroyed and aren’t coming back.
• We’re trying to coax GMO crops from dead dirt instead of living soil, leaving us with sickly and anemic food.

Eventually, despotic American politicians will wake up and realize there’s a simple solution to all their self-imposed problems:

Invade Canada.

Snowy's reaction: Oh geeze, what a depressing article, and this after just getting away from the good Ole U.S. of A.

Here is the rest of the depressing article:

https://survivingtomorrow.org/america-will-invade-canada-before-the-year-2100-29d8f3dd3b24

Conclusion: At least Americans will get to discover poutine.

About social security and how much the Republican Party hates it

Republican elites hate, hate hate social security and the rest of the social safety net. The GOP is a pull yourself up by your bootstraps Darwinian survival or die political party. In GOP dogma, those who die deserve to die. Every penny that goes to regular people is one less penny that go to super wealthy elites. Each of those lost pennies is a moral outrage to GOP elites. Lost pennies includes those lost to evil, socialist, pedophilic social security spending and etc.

Waddabout the Republican Party rank and file? Most are deceived, clueless and betrayed by the GOP and its propaganda Leviathan like Faux 'News'. Most of them actually believe the lies and adopt the irrational Republican Party hate propaganda.

A Washington Post opinion piece comments:

Opinion | Republicans are coming after Social Security. Democrats, take note.

.... the Republicans are once again taking aim at it and are, in the process, handing Democrats an issue almost as politically potent as abortion rights as they fight to hold on to their slim majorities in the November elections.

The most recent to join the fray is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). He announced earlier this week that he believes Social Security should be up for a congressional reauthorization vote every single year. “If you qualify for an entitlement, you get it no matter what the cost,” he huffed on a podcast.

The nerve of those entitled seniors. They paid faithfully into a program and expect a check. Imagine that!

This ups the ante from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who opened the Social Security floodgates earlier this year when he proposed putting all government programs — including Social Security and Medicare — up for renewal every five years. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) immediately declared it dead on arrival, but that hasn’t stopped some Republicans such as Johnson from expressing their approval.

It’s almost as though these Republicans can’t stop themselves from acting on the hope that when it comes to Social Security, the majority of voters won’t take them seriously, even as the GOP base laps their message up. But, in an age when increasing numbers of Americans are going to need a Social Security check to get by in retirement, that seems like a risky bet.

The fascist Republican Party is all in on getting rid of all social safety net spending, including Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and all the rest. In their twisted political religion, no mercy for anyone for any reason is what the Founders intended. That includes no mercy for veterans who fought in wars to protect their  corrupt, worthless hides and bank accounts.

Our morally rotted ex-president once commented about America's war dead. In 2020, the Atlantic wrote:

Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed. 

The rest of the corrupt, hard assed Republican Party leadership feels or acts the same way, no matter how hard they deny it. Liars deserve no credibility. That includes Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, the two radical right Republican Senators the MSM falsely refers to as "moderates."

Where there is some dispute in the GOP is about how fast and openly to shaft us regular people. 

Morally rotted McConnell wants time for an appearance of subtlety to quietly abandon average Americans and leave them rotting in a garbage heap. Less patient, equally morally rotted Republicans like Ron Johnson are ready for immediate action. The US Supreme Court also wants to bulldozer safety net protections for average people right now. But maybe most of those Republican Christofacscist radicals on the court are more politically savvy. They might bide their time for a bit, no matter how that odious it is to them. They are also part of the relentless radical right quest to kill democracy, inconvenient truth, the rule of law, civil liberties and our social safety net.

Or, is all that just over the top?

From the new trends files: Liars are getting better and richer

So far, the Alex Jones lawsuit for lies and defamation regarding the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre looks set to cost him about $49 million. He worth is estimated at ~$135-270 million by the New York Times. Fortunately there's another Sandy Hook defamation lawsuit on tap. Maybe he will lose another ~$50 million. We can only hope.

What liars have learned from the Jones lawsuits is two simple things: First, do not defame people. You can lie all you want, even tell blatant whoppers, but just stay on the good side of the law. That strategy allows plenty of room for lying and lying and lying a hell of a lot more. That can inflict massive damage on American democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties as we are witnessing right now.

Second, if you are a good enough liar, you too can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. 

The floodgates are open to blatant lying for fun and profit. It is a freaking goldrush! The NYT writes:

Don’t Expect Alex Jones’s Comeuppance to Stop Lies

His success has inspired a new generation of conspiracy theorists, who have learned how to stay away from legal trouble.

The jury’s verdict came after Mr. Jones was found liable for defaming Mr. Heslin and Ms. Lewis, whom for years he falsely accused of being crisis actors in a “false flag” operation plotted by the government.

Court records showed that Mr. Jones’s Infowars store, which sells dubious performance-enhancing supplements and survival gear, made more than $165 million from 2015 to 2018. Despite his deplatforming, Mr. Jones still appears as a guest on popular podcasts and YouTube shows, and millions of Americans still look to him as, if not a reliable chronicler of current events, at least a wacky diversion. (And a wealthy one — an expert witness in the trial estimated the net worth of Mr. Jones and Free Speech Systems, his holding company, at somewhere between $135 million and $270 million.)

In the coming weeks, Mr. Jones — a maestro of martyrdom — will no doubt spin his court defeat into hours of entertaining content, all of which will generate more attention, more subscribers, more money.

But a bigger reason for caution is that, whether or not Mr. Jones remains personally enriched by his lies, his shtick is everywhere these days.

You can see and hear Mr. Jones’s influence on Capitol Hill, where attention-seeking Republican politicians often sound like they’re auditioning for slots on Infowars. When Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, suggests that a mass shooting could have been orchestrated to persuade Republicans to support gun-control measures, as she did in a Facebook post about the July 4 shooting in Highland Park, Ill., she’s playing hits from Mr. Jones’s back catalog.

You can also see Mr. Jones’s influence in right-wing media. When Tucker Carlson stokes nativist fears on his Fox News show, or when a Newsmax host spins a bizarre conspiracy theory about an effort by Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, to have Justice Brett Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court killed, it’s proof that Infowars’ DNA has entered the conservative bloodstream.

Even outside politics, Mr. Jones’s choleric, wide-eyed style has influenced the way in which a new generation of conspiracy theorists looks for fame online.

These creators don’t all rant about goblins and gay frogs, as Mr. Jones has. But they’re pulling from the same fact-free playbook. Some of them focus on softer subject matter — like the kooky wellness influencers who recently went viral for suggesting that Lyme disease is a “gift” caused by intergalactic space matter, or like Shane Dawson, a popular YouTube creator who has racked up hundreds of millions of views with conspiracy theory documentaries in which he credulously examines claims such as “Chuck E. Cheese reuses uneaten pizza” and “Wildfires are caused by directed energy weapons.”  

It would be too simple to blame (or credit) Mr. Jones for inspiring the entire modern cranksphere. But it’s safe to say that many of today’s leading conspiracy theorists have found the same profitable sweet spot of lies and entertainment value.  

Other conspiracy theorists are less likely than Mr. Jones to end up in court, in part because they’ve learned from his mistakes. Instead of straightforwardly accusing the families of mass-shooting victims of making it all up, they adopt a [faux] naïve, “just asking questions” posture while poking holes in the official narrative.

Sadly, adopting a fake “just asking questions” facade is just how easy it is to dance away from defamation lawsuits. Any idiot can do it. Does that make Jones an idiot? 

That's not an accusation, I’m just asking questions. Inquiring minds want to know. 🤨

A rhetorical question bubbles up from the toxic cauldron of poisonous dark free speech. Can American democracy and society withstand the now undeniably staggering power of divisive lies social media, online bullshittery, podcasts, and etc. in the crankshpere? That’s a topic of a blog post coming here soon.

This** will soon be recycled into a 

tasty new Chuck E. Cheese pizza!

Yum!

** “This” includes the plastic plate and fork

Old home, new home, striking similarities

 Now that I am firmly replanted back in Canada, I thought I would drop this little nugget on Germaine and friends.

Leaving "home", small-town Minnesota for the 2nd time, was not easy. Leaving behind the country I was born in. But I have been struck with how similar the two countries have become.

Let me explain:

I moved back to Minnesota in 2009, thrilled that my home country had finally grown up and elected a black President. Then 2016 happened.

As for my home town, not much had changed, and still hasn't changed, despite the change in mood in the country. We have been and continue to be a progressive town, but the demographics have changed slightly since my childhood.

Now most of the convenience stores, gas stations, and some restaurants are owned and run by East Asian and South Asian people. I have seen no animosity towards this group. The town had, in my original absence of living in Canada, become a bit more upscale. Fancier boutiques, coffee shops, gift shops. But all in all, the town has retained it's charm, and it's progressive views.

The shame is, the country around it has changed, and not for the better. I feel like a father abandoning a struggling child. Makes me sad.

Now contrast THAT to my new home. The town I am moving back to has always had it's problems but also it's charms. Not much has changed. Like my home town in Minny, there are now a few more fancier shops and upscale restaurants. BUT what the residents of this northern Ontario town love is the big city amenities but the small town "feel." People here are general kind, generous, willing to help a neighbor and lack the standoffishness you find in some big cities.

BUT...as with the U.S, the country has changed. Canada has now it's fair share of anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-mandates. NOT as bad as the U.S, but still.....

We had the truckers protest, Conservative politicians are starting to sound more like American conservatives than Canadian ones.

Have far-right radicals infiltrated Canada’s conservative parties?

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/04/29/opinion/far-right-radicals-infiltrated-canada-conservative-parties-commission

Is this the shape of the world to come? Where a socialist paradise like Canada is starting to slide into some of the same political wonkiness that is infecting the U.S.?

In my case, I have been fortunate to leave both a progressive small town in Minny, and move into a larger town but with still a very calm and generous population here in Ontario. I know we can't all be that lucky.

Future elections in both countries will be ever the more important because of the changes we are seeing. At least - SO FAR - Canadian conservatives haven't embraced the stolen election mantra - SO FAR!

Here is hoping that this one bit of sanity will still prevail here in Canada, and will eventually return to American politics.

Republicans punish companies trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

A coal fired plant in staunchly 

pro-pollution West Virginia

The Republican Party is serious about maintaining high levels of pollution. It is only in that sense that Republican elites take climate change seriously. The GOP is dead serious about ignoring climate change and continuing to pollute as much as possible, as fast as possible, as long as possible. The New York Times writes:

How Republicans Are ‘Weaponizing’ Public Office Against Climate Action

A Times investigation revealed a coordinated effort by state treasurers to use government muscle and public funds to punish companies trying to reduce greenhouse gases.

Nearly two dozen Republican state treasurers around the country are working to thwart climate action on state and federal levels, fighting regulations that would make clear the economic risks posed by a warming world, lobbying against climate-minded nominees to key federal posts and using the tax dollars they control to punish companies that want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Over the past year, treasurers in nearly half the United States have been coordinating tactics and talking points, meeting in private and cheering each other in public as part of a well-funded campaign to protect the fossil fuel companies that bolster their local economies.

Last week, Riley Moore, the treasurer of West Virginia, announced that several major banks — including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo — would be barred from government contracts with his state because they are reducing their investments in coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.  

Mr. Moore and the treasurers of Louisiana and Arkansas have pulled more than $700 million out of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, over objections that the firm is too focused on environmental issues. At the same time, the treasurers of Utah and Idaho are pressuring the private sector to drop climate action and other causes they label as “woke.”

And treasurers from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Oklahoma joined a larger campaign to thwart the nominations of federal regulators who wanted to require that banks, funds and companies disclose the financial risks posed by a warming planet.

At the nexus of these efforts is the State Financial Officers Foundation, a little-known nonprofit organization based in Shawnee, Kan., that once focused on cybersecurity, borrowing costs and managing debt loads, among other routine issues. 

Mr. Moore went on to offer a classic denial of the overwhelming scientific consensus that the continued burning of oil, gas and coal will lead to planetary catastrophe.

“The climate has been changing in the world since Earth was created,” Mr. Moore said. “Whether these greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to the warming of the globe, I’m not sure I necessarily agree with that.”

The Republican Party’s one and only statement of concern about climate change in Rick Scott’s 11 point plan to make America fascist and kleptocratic again, with rivers occasionally spontaneously erupting into flames:

“The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs.”

So in addition to chronically rejecting and lying about inconvenient truth and constantly attacking and subverting democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties, the Republican Party is hell bent on turning the environment into hell on Earth. The reasons are the usual for the Republicans, power and wealth. According to Republican and polluter propaganda, concern for climate change and the environment is just socialist wokeness. The morally corrupt, fascist, pro-pollution Republican Party will have none of that nonsense.

The GOP, the go-to party for polluters like Exxon-Mobile and coal companies to exercise their free speech rights (campaign contributions). There will be no nutty policies while the Republicans are in charge. But there will be gigatons of pollution and trillions in environmental damage.

What nature should look like according

to the Republican Party

From the not surprising things files: The FBI non-investigation of Brett Kavanaugh

 Vanity Fair writes:

THE FBI CONFIRMS ITS BRETT KAVANAUGH 

INVESTIGATION WAS A TOTAL SHAM

Oh, well, it’s not like he received a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court or anything.

That sense of outrage only deepened last year, when we learned that the FBI had received 4,500—4,500!—tips about Kavanaugh, which were referred to the White House, i.e. the organization trying to get the guy confirmed to the Court. And now, the FBI has confirmed that, yeah, it didn’t really feel the need to look into any of those tips, and when it did follow up on some, the White House was making sure it didn’t dig too far.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse uncovered the Republican cover-up while questioning FBI director Christ Wray.

Whitehouse: And I’d like to try to get that matter wrapped up. First, is it true that after Kavanaugh-related tips were separated from regular tip-line traffic, they were forwarded to White House counsel without investigation?

Wray: I apologize in advance that it has been frustrating for you. We have tried to be clear about our process. So when it comes to the tip line, we wanted to make sure that the White House had all the information we have, so when the hundreds of calls started coming in, we gathered those up, reviewed them, and provided them to the White House—

Whitehouse: Without investigation?

Wray [long pause]: We reviewed them and then provided them to—

Whitehouse: You reviewed them for purposes of separating them from tip-line traffic, but did not further investigate the ones that related to Kavanaugh, correct?

Wray: Correct.

Whitehouse: Is it also true that, in that supplemental B.I. [background investigation], the FBI took direction from the White House as to whom the FBI would question, and even what questions the FBI could ask?

Wray: So, it is true that, consistent with the longstanding process that we have had going all the way back to at least the Bush administration, the Obama administration, the Trump administration, and continue to follow currently under the Biden administration, that in a limited supplemental B.I., we take direction from the requesting entity, which in this case was the White House, as to what follow-up they want.

.... the “requesting entity” is the Donald Trump White House, which had a vested interest in not probing allegations of sexual misconduct, given who was running the joint.

Anyway, now Justice Beer Bong has helped take away the rights of half the country—and who knows what’s coming next!

And sadly, that is just how easy it is for a corrupt White House to subvert the rule of law, while deceiving and insulting the American people. 

One can reasonably argue that the morally rotted, beer boofing liar, Justice Beer Bong is illegitimate and a sexual predator. Impeach that toad. And fire whoever is left in government who was complicit. And, get rid of that asinine the longstanding process going all the way back to at least the Bush administration that allows a White House to subvert the rule of law.

Yeah right. That will happen when pigs fly. 

“The lives of the richest [and most powerful] people in the world are so different from those of the rest of us, it's almost literally unimaginable. National borders are nothing to them. They might as well not exist. The laws are nothing to them. They might as well not exist.” -- Sociologist Brooke Harrington [and Germaine]