Blogging has remained difficult during some 8 weeks of the upgrading project on ptleader.com. I did post a trial one some two weeks ago. It made it, but without its introductory photos—or any indication of who wrote it. I can only hope for better soon. I’ll take another shot here.
So much has gone on in the past couple of months. For instance: what price a life? At year’s end the Environmental Protection Agency (“Environmental Destruction Agency”?) announced it will begin rolling back Obama-era rules limiting mercury emissions by coal-burning plants. Health concerns may not be worth the cost to businesses, the EPA declared. The health-concern improvements included less brain damage to children and, for the entire population, fewer asthma attacks and an estimated 11,000 fewer premature deaths each year. Just one more indication of how the EPA and GOP under Trump consistently value the short-term self-interest of the wealthy more than they value our collective future,” said opinion writer Helain Olen of the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, Donald’s month-long partial government shutdown also continues to erode the health and economic well-being of well over a million souls—unpaid government workers and their families, plus peripheral others affected. This shutdown is basically supporting the individual egomaniacal self-interest of Donald, with backing of a U. S. Senate dedicated to keeping our society under an upper-class GOP thumb.
Financing of Trump’s Folly, a massive wall along the Mexican border, remains the ransom Donald demands for releasing the multitude he holds hostage while reveling in his power. “Nancy Pelosi and some of the Democrats turned down my offer yesterday before I even got up to speak. They don’t see crime & drugs, they only see 2020 – which they are not going to win,” Donald said. “No, amnesty is not a part of my offer. It is a 3 year extension of DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals],” he wrote. Some 800,000 presently qualify for DACA protection. “Amnesty will be used only on a much bigger deal, whether on immigration or something else.” He also said there would be “no big push to remove the 11,000,000 plus people who are here illegally,” before adding: “But be careful Nancy!”
MORE ENVIRONMENT—According to a NASA study, Antarctic glaciers lost 40 billion tons of melting ice to the ocean each year from 1979 to 1989. That has risen to 252 billion tons per year beginning in 2009. “The findings are the latest sign that the world could face catastrophic consequences if climate change continues unabated. In addition to more frequent droughts, heat waves, severe storms and other extreme weather that could come with a continually warming Earth, scientists already have predicted that seas could rise nearly three feet globally by 2100 if the world does not sharply decrease its carbon output. But in recent years, there has been growing concern that the Antarctic could push that even higher.
“That kind of sea-level rise would result in the inundation of island communities around the globe, devastating wildlife habitats and threatening drinking water supplies. Global sea levels have already risen 7 to 8 inches since 1900.” The Arctic also is melting, of course.
The article addresses the effect of small minds and short-range thinking on an environment that was millennia upon millennia in the making—and now is being fatally raped and pillaged by a plutocratic few whose greedy little lifetimes are a mere blink on the scale of human existence.
See total story here: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/ice-loss-from-antarctica-has-increased-sixfold-since-the-1970s-research-finds/
The world is being stricken hip and thigh. If immigration is a problem now, just consider the effects of drought, heat, destruction of coastline communities—all coupled with ever-increasing over-population. A silly fence bearing the name “Trump” would be like a boy scout troop sent to repel an invading army. What the world needs is globalized preventive medicine, inoculating before the epidemic. Donald Trump is walking in the opposite direction, denying global warming, emasculating the United Nations, cutting foreign aid, giving a free pass to industrial pollution—then spending patchwork money like a drunken sailor when it serves his ego or the bank accounts of himself and the wealthiest cadre of his supporting sycophants.
Politically, Donald brought a knowledge of checkers to a chess game. And overall, it appears any family ethics and morality were left behind in Germany by his grandfather Trump, an immigrant.—Tom Camfield
