Climate Change is Real

     Record high temperatures are being set every month, and this has been happen for years. It's just getting worse. This past week alone produced the following examples: Montreal hits 97.8F (and several people die), Taiwan hits 104.5F, Algeria hit 124.3F. This is climate change; no ifs ands or buts about it. It's affecting the movement of weather fronts, preventing them from moving around. This helped to lead to the immense rain in Japan and the flood killing hundreds. It's melting the glaciers at an astounding pace raising the ocean levels and flooding coastal cities and islands in the Pacific Ocean. I just cannot understand why Trump, Pruitt and the others refuse to acknowledge this. Probably because they would lose profits affecting their personal bottom line. Their pockets are more important than the thousands of lives being lost.

Responsibility of the U. S. Supreme Court

     The responsibility of the U.S. Supreme Court is to interpret the law, plain and simple. It is not to uphold the xenophobic and racist ideology of the President. The ruling in favor of the baker a week or so ago (upholding gender discrimination) and upholding the Muslim immigration ban against only certain countries (Freedom of Religion) are examples. Ethics and morality must come into play when making any determination in their cases, and it sure looks as if neither was considered. Determinations like these only fuel hatred and distrust throughout this country. If our mighty ideals and principles are not confirmed and supported by the highest court in the land, then we are truly lost as a nation.

Greatest President - NOT

In a poll by the political scientists from the American Political Scientist Association in January, (  https://qz.com/1210855/presidents-day-2018-donald-trump-debuts-in-last-place-in-political-scientists-presidential-greatness-rankings/ ) Donald Trump has been voted dead last in the list of the people who served as President of the United States. He said (from his over-inflated ego) that he would be a great president. He was right, that is if the list was inverted.

For all those non-Trump supporters, this is not so much of a surprise. He has done everything to harm the country, flouting every law and principle for his own gain, being extremely polarizing, racking up over 20 complaints of sexual harassment and cheating on his wives (including against Melania more than once just after gave birth), believing climate change was a hoax invented by the Chinese, ruining our standing on the world stage making the U.S. no longer the free world leader, and refusing to accept facts believing that everything with which he disagrees is fake. He was even two slots below William Henry Harrison who served only 1 month. (Tongue-in-cheek, there are times I feel William Henry Harrison was the greatest President we ever had, solely because he never had a chance to do this country any harm.)

And now the United Nations has declared Trump a “totalitarian leader”! This shows just how far even the rest of the world sees what’s happened to this country under Trump and the GOP. Just what is it that that will get the remaining Trump supporters to see what the rest of the country and the world sees? The sooner change is made, the better chance this country has of recovering.

SKYNET EXISTS !!!!

            In the Terminator movies, SKYNET is a computer program that literally takes over the world in 2017 so that humanity no longer has any control. The computers have control of everything. There is no way to turn it off. Any resistance is met with fatal results. John Connor and company have the mission to prevent SKYNET first from occurring then to destroy it.

            Would it surprise you to know that SKYNET exists now, in 2015? It does, just in a different form.

            How many of you own a cell phone? It does not matter if it is a Smartphone, an Android, an iPhone, or any similar device. If you answered yes, how often do you use it? Odds are that you use it much more often than you are aware.

            You check you mail? How many times a day? Same for texting. For games. How many apps do you have? How about Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the other social media? How often do you use them, and for what meaningless reason do you use them?

            When do you use them? In the home; at work, outside? Do you use it when you are standing still or sitting? Or do you use it when you are moving and are oblivious to where you are going? How many of you keep checking them when you are driving? How many have gotten seriously injured or died because they did not look where they were going?

            How many use them in places they should not be used? Do you use them in school? Do you use them in a theater while the movie is playing? (I went to see a movie [believe it or not, it was “Terminator: Genisys”] and several people had their cell phones on and were using them for one reason or another despite the notices)

            How many have had relationships break up because someone could not put down the phone?

            What is it with people that they cannot take time out from these devices, to put them down and turn them off, as if they have trouble living in the world that exists around them?

            This is what I mean that SKYNET exists now. The ever present internet and the communication satellites that connect our cell phones is the present form of SKYNET to which I refer. John Connor symbolically is the drive to get people to put them down and live their lives, to move around safely, to connect with each other face to face.

            Message to the people of the world: Don’t let your cell phones rule you, like SKYNET. Remember, you rule them.

Missing Half the Problem in Education

            For several years the state of education in the U.S. has been declining. At one time we were the world leader. Now we are sinking miserably in all major subjects. Graduation rates have dropped badly.

            For years the answer was to lower the requirements because all that mattered was that the students can pass the tests in order to graduate. The bar, instead of being raised, has been lowered. Dramatically. And it continues to decline.

            For the past few years teachers and principals have been graded on their proficiency and results they have with the students. If they don’t do well they can be fired, or the school would be deemed failing and risk closure. I can’t possibly understand what this would gain. My question is: why is all the pressure being put on the faculty?

            Doesn’t anyone in charge understand that once the child leaves the school at the end of the day the responsibility for the child’s learning falls to the parents or to older siblings (if there are any)?

This part of the equation has in essence been ignored.

            Teachers can try every possible way of teaching the students, as imaginary as it can be, to get the message across. But if there is little or no back-up at home, the lessons have difficulty in sinking in.

            Here are a few possibilities why students have trouble away from the school:

 

            Due to the economic conditions of the times, some parents work two or three jobs to try to keep the family financially viable, but this takes most if not all the time from monitoring the child’s education.

            Since, as I stated before, the bar had been much lowered to allow students to graduate, many parents don’t really have the level of knowledge to help their own children’s schooling.

            There could be peer pressure keeping the children out beyond when they should so there is less time to get the homework done.

            With all the technology, there is the question why they should learn when the information is already in their computers. Or, they can be so wrapped in their smartphones or iPads or other devices that they detract from their learning.

            The child can be in a broken home and the environment can make the child depressed, detracting him from his studies and everything else.

            Materials including books can be difficult to get or badly out of date. In some areas of the country, officials are foolish enough to change history and science texts as they like, either because they are deniers (e.g. climate change, evolution) or due to religious beliefs.

            There can also be any number of other reasons that keep students from continuing their education at home.

 

            What should be done is survey the situation after school. Is it something at home or outside? This could find the problems and they can be addressed and hopefully to respond to them so the children can learn. It is wrong to say that the teachers and principals are the sole reason the children aren’t learning. The children must also be open to getting up to date and correct information from every source available.

            In reality, the problem can be anywhere or in more than one place. It could be in the school or out. To improve the child’s chances of success, all possibilities must be investigated and addressed.

            Children can be very resilient and resourceful. It is up to everyone to give them every chance possible to allow them to reach their potential and improve this world despite all the various deniers in the sciences.

Traitorous GOP

Senator John Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress, clearly a foreign policy decision. Now 47 GOP senators have signed a letter telling Iran that any agreement they reach with Obama is good only until the end of this term and would be seen as no more than an executive decision between President Obama and the Ayatollah Khamenei; more foreign policy.

These are traitorous decisions. Under the Logan Act of 1799, last amended in 1994, executive power to engage in foreign policy is only vested with the President. It forbids and unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. The intent is to prevent US citizens without authorization from interfering in relations between the US and foreign governments. A violation is punishable under Federal law is a felony and is punishable up to three years in prison. Therefore, by law, all the 47 GOP senators and Boehner should be impeached and thrown unceremoniously into jail.

It seems that Mr. Boehner and the rest of the GOP believe that since Mr. Obama cannot be re-elected, he is no longer a recognized president and that Mr. Boehner thinks he is taking control of the government. This again is treason. Nothing more, nothing less. This could be a dangerous precedent for the future. It is up to the Democrats to stand up and prevent this take-over. The quicker they act, the better for this country.

It’s Climate Change, Not Global Warming

            I, for one, am so tired of people who, when it gets extremely cold, complain that global warming is nonsense. Someone used this term initially and, unfortunately, it stuck, no matter how often it was corrected by scientists and meteorologists everywhere.

            There was another one of these fools in the ‘Voice of the People’ section in the New York Daily News on February 18. This is someone who does know the difference between climate and weather. The latter is in one specific location is short-lived. The latter is over a large area and is of a more permanent duration.

            Global warming indicates that the temperature around the world is rising and it cannot and does not get cold anywhere. This is absolute nonsense.

            Without espousing the entire theory, climate change indicates that the climate in large areas around the world changes over time. If it’s humid and temperate in a large area at a certain time, it can become more of a hot desert if the climate changes. Temperatures in some areas of the world will rise over time and in others it will decrease. Since records have been kept since the 1800’s, the average global temperature has steadily risen since the 1990’s, and it’s going higher every year.

At the moment it is extremely cold in the northeast of the United States where we have to deal with the Siberian Express, a weather pattern that originates in Siberia and comes through along with high winds, drastically dropping the wind chill. If you check the temperatures throughout the Northern Hemisphere for January 2015, you would discover that  the northeast United States, Greenland and north central Asia are the only places that are very cold. All other places are above normal and much of Asia is way above normal. This is a signal of a change in climate.

            Anyone can research this theory in more detail anywhere on the internet. I strongly suggest that everyone does research it.