Politics Plus

Yesterday, I brought up the live hearing, coming in on the testimony of the Speaker of the Arizona House, Rusty Bowers. I then watched the testimony of Georgia’s Raffensberger and Sterling. I had to return later to catch the Georgia election workers Andrea (Shay) Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman. as well as the opening and closing statements. You know, we have been talking about Republicans putting party before country. But with regard to this insurrection, we have been wrong. They were putting prsonal gain – probably in some cases only personal whim – before both party and country. I’ve seen some people on the net saying, “I love it when they eat their oen,” I don’t. I don’t love bottom-of-the-cesspool depravity, and that’s what this is. Disgusting. And also dangerous. If they will eat their own, they will eat anything and anyone. We have also been saying they are moving toward fascism, and by the book they certainly are. But I question whether actual fascism is their goal, or whether tha goal is total chaos – a state with even less predictabiity than anarchy.

When I returned to the hearing at the YouTube link provided at house.gov (to the committee’s channel) I happened to notice that that channel has 29.4K subscribers. I know, not a lot in the scheme of things, but those are only the people who are watching at this channel. That does not include anyone who is watching at PBS, MSNBC/NBC, CBS, ABC, or CNN, or anyone who is watching with The Lincoln Project or Meidas Touch, and that probably does not exhaust the list of sources. Somewhere I also read even Fox is now carrying it (the implication being more than just on Fox Business), but I can’t verify that.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Here’s What the Insecure Insurrectionists Don’t Get About America
Quote – America was not actually built on unlimited individual freedom, as a shocking number of Americans seem to believe it is these days. The foundation of our nation, the bedrock of its multi-century success, is the philosophy of democratic liberalism: the government will not interfere with your pursuit of happiness unless your pursuit interferes with that of other people.
Click through for more (including a point about the poem “America the Beautiful”), but the quote is the bottom line. I also feel that one verse of “America the Beautiful is not enough. I tend to focus onthe second verse (“God mend thine every flaw – Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law”), but the third verse may be even more important.

CPR News – A Colorado startup wants buildings to suck up carbon, one living concrete block at a time
Quote – His company’s proposed alternative is a “bio-cement” first developed at the University of Colorado Boulder. Inside the Colorado company’s warehouse, sand is loaded in block-shaped molds with micro-algae, which binds the material through the same process corals and oysters use to build their shells. The final masonry units feel like hardened sand castles. While the process takes energy, Burnett said algae absorbs enough carbon to make the blocks 90 percent less carbon-intensive than traditional concrete.
Click through for the interview – yes, it’s an interview, but there’s what appears to be at least a partial transcript. It’s good news locally but appears to have potential – and we need every possible step (and may already be too late.)

Food For Thought