Archive for December 4th, 2022
Republicans are willing to terminate the Constitution
I believe that it would be a serious error to ignore the silence of Republican politicians when asked about Donald Trump’s statement that we should “terminate” the Constitution (the same Constitution that, as President, he swore to uphold and defend against all enemies).
Their silence shows a willingness to go along — to go along with ending the Constitution. Heather Cox Richardson writes:
On Friday, November 25, 2022, just over a week ago, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced, “On the very first day of the new Republican-led Congress, we will “read every single word of the Constitution aloud from the floor of the House—something that hasn’t been done in years.”
Yesterday, on Saturday, December 3, 2022, former president Donald Trump, the presumptive leader of the Republican Party, mischaracterized a Twitter thread to claim that Joe Biden’s presidential campaign had successfully pressured Twitter to suppress the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop—the thread actually said something else entirely—and called for overthrowing the Constitution. Trump wrote:
“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential election results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
In case anyone didn’t get the point, Trump followed that post up with another: “UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!”
On Sunday, December 4, all but one Republican lawmaker who expects to stay in office for the next two years stayed resolutely silent about Trump’s open attack on the U.S. Constitution, this nation’s founding document, the basis for our government.
That one lawmaker was Representative Michael Turner (R-OH), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, who this morning on CBS’s “Face the Nation” condemned Trump’s attack on the Constitution. But Turner would not say he would not support Trump if he were the party’s nominee in 2024.
Even at that, Turner’s was a lone voice. When George Stephanopoulos, host of “This Week” on ABC News, asked Representative David Joyce (R-OH) if he would support Trump in 2024 after the former president had called for “suspending the Constitution” (to be clear, Trump had called for “terminating” it), Joyce tried to avoid the question but finally said, “I’ll support whoever the Republican nominee is.” Joyce is the chair of the Republican Governance Group, whose members claim they are the party’s centrists.
Not all . . .
Tesla is not a car company, it’s an emissions-credits company that sells cars as a (necessary) sideline
I did not know this. Their car sales provide the raw material for their actual business. (Note that he is talking about profit, not revenue.)
Thread time. Here’s the thing about @tesla. It’s not a car company. Tesla is a company that has to make cars in order to sell its real product: Emissions Credits. Let me explain. Back in 2012, the EPA put out new, strident emissions standards for new vehicles fleetwide. 1/
Countries by area
Canada’s just after Russia (though you’ll recall Russia is not nearly so large as it appears in the Mercator projection). This image is from Visual Capitalist.
From Germany to Mexico: How America’s source of immigrants has changed over a century
The Pew Research Center has an interesting article that includes a video that shows a slide for each decade that indicates the country of origin for the majority of each state’s foreign-born immigrants. Here are two slides from the video:
Some cute cooking ideas
Webspoon World has no dialog, so you can turn off the video sound. Here’s a sample of their work.
A city can choose
Brent Todarian posts on Mastodon:
It isn’t the hills. It isn’t the wind or weather. It isn’t the size, or legal powers, or budget. It isn’t any of the usual excuses people in your city have been using for years.
Remember this picture every time you hear someone in your city say “we’re not Amsterdam.” This was #Amsterdam in the 1970’s via @fietsprofessor.
The cities we admire made better choices regarding cars, and are still making them today.
Better choices instead of excuses.
And he also posts a chart, noting that how you commute is not just about your choice, it’s also about who pays for your choice:
Later On 