This inspiring Independence Day speech from the former president…brought a tear to my eye:
“Warmongering and despicable human being Liz Cheney, who is hated by the great people of Wyoming (down 35!), keeps saying, over and over again, that HER Fake Unselect Committee may recommend CRIMINAL CHARGES against a President of the United States who got more votes than any sitting President in history. Even the Dems didn’t know what she was talking about! Why doesn’t she press charges instead against those that cheated on the Election, or those that didn’t properly protect the Capitol?” - Donald J. Trump July 4, 2022
1.
But before we get into those murky waters, have you heard that sand, a really big pile of sand, is being used in Finland now to heat homes, factories, even swimming pools? According to an article in CleanTechnica, They can Heat the sand with excess renewable electricity to around 500º C (932º F) which can stay hot for 3 months or more. Americans may have a hard time seeing the value in this idea. The hot sand is not very good at generating electricity, so what’s the point? But don’t let American Exceptionalism cloud your judgment. There are lots of places in the world — particularly in cold climates — where district heating is common. Instead of individual furnaces in each building, heat is generated in a central location and distributed to homes, factories, and businesses via a system of underground pipes and ducts. The first Polar Night Energy system has been installed at the Vatajankoski power plant, which runs the district heating system for the area.
The project above is the joint effort of Polar Night Energy and compatriot utility Vatajankoski. In the United States, The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is focused on developing and accelerating the implementation of holistic future energy systems with purpose-driven, interconnected technologies that improve flexibility and balance to maximize renewable energy generation, storage, and conversion.
I say this is good news all around as Ongoing research from NREL’s Storage Futures Study analyzes the potentially fundamental role of energy storage in maintaining a resilient, flexible electrical grid through the year 2050. I’ll be 96 then, BTW…
2.
There are many folks in our country who are involved in the Christian Nationalist movement…and it is organized, growing, and taking over positions of power in our politics and judicial system. In a July 5th article in the New York Times (titled Christian Nationalists Are Excited About What Comes Next), Katherine Stewart writes The Supreme Court’s decision to rescind the reproductive rights that American women have enjoyed over the past half-century will not lead America’s homegrown religious authoritarians to retire from the culture wars and enjoy a sweet moment of triumph. On the contrary, movement leaders are already preparing for a new and more brutal phase of their assault on individual rights and democratic self-governance. Breaking American democracy isn’t an unintended side effect of Christian nationalism. It is the point of the project. The point of the project is to BREAK AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.
The speakers for the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Policy Conference held last month included the likes of Frump, Texans Ted Cruz and Dan Crenshaw, Nikki ’Stepford’ Haley, Betsy DeVos, Newt Gingrich (who’s loving every bit of this), Marco Rubio, Strange man Hershel Walker (who’s running against Raphael Warnock in Georgia), Jim Jordan, Lindsey Graham, Louie Gohmert…basically the usual suspects. Again in the NY Times article: Citing the fight against Nazi Germany during the Battle of the Bulge, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina said, “We find ourselves in a pitched battle to literally save this nation.” Referring to a passage from Ephesians that Christian nationalists often use to signal their militancy, he added, “I don’t know about you, but I got my pack on, I got my boots on, I got my helmet on, I’ve got on the whole armor.”
She wraps up be writing It’s mistake to imagine that Christian nationalism is a social movement arising from the grass roots and aiming to satisfy the real needs of its base. It isn’t. This is a leader-driven movement. The leaders set the agenda, and their main goals are power and access to public money. They aren’t serving the interests of their base; they are exploiting their base as a means of exploiting the rest of us.
Christian nationalism isn’t a route to the future. Its purpose is to hollow out democracy until nothing is left but a thin cover for rule by a supposedly right-thinking elite, bubble-wrapped in sanctimony and insulated from any real democratic check on its power.
These people are not Democrats. They are the Republican base, and Republican politicians are pandering directly to them. These religious squirrels who deny climate change, evolution, and believe that an erection is entitled to more rights than women, whom they regard as nothing more than captive brood mares, have now taken over the Supreme Court (thanks to the folks who didn’t bother to vote in 2016), and they’ve done more to undo 100 years of progress in the past ten years than any elected body could have ever dreamed of. They (the court) are now the most powerful, over reaching branch of our government by far.
Richard Wolffe wrote in the Guardian yesterday The founders didn’t explicitly give the supreme court the powers this particular bunch of rightwing radicals has assumed for themselves. They didn’t say there should be only nine of them, or that they should serve until they die. So if Democrats, and a handful of Republicans, are truly interested in defending democracy, it’s time to rein in the rightwing supremes who have used the court to grab power for themselves, ignoring their own court precedents and culture. At the very least, they could introduce term limits and allow each president the pick of two justices in each term. The preamble to the constitution talks about “a more perfect union”, as if the American idea is a work in progress, not regress.
It’s time for fundamental reform of American democracy – including the supreme court – before the radical right steals that democracy away forever.
…and did I mention…JUST. VOTE. BLUE.
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Art time. Here are two pieces I’ve recently made that have been entered to show in a gallery in New Orleans…TBD.
4.
Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom announced that an effort to amend Arizona's Constitution to guarantee abortion rights fell well short of the 356,000 signatures required to add the measure to November's ballot. They said they will still try to obtain enough signatures to add to the November, 2024 ballot.
According to the Tucson Sentinel, In March, Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill into law that made it illegal for a woman to have an abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, even if the patient was a victim of incest or rape. The new law is supposed to take effect in September.
However in the meantime, state Attorney General Mark Brnovich attempted to lift his faltering Senate campaign by arguing that an 158-year-old statute that outlaws all abortions — written when Arizona was still a territory, but still on the books — was still enforceable and women or health care providers could face legal action. That law, which was passed in 1864 and then recodified in 1901, only allows for abortions if the life of the mother is threatened.
Speaking of undoing 100 years of progress…BTW, Brnovich is running in the primary for Mark Kelly’s Senate seat. Brnovich, the man who opposes the ACA, pro-border wall, against same-sex marriage, and refused to defend the rights of 90% of Arizona voters to use mail-in voting in the case that was brought by the Arizona Republican Party before the state Supreme Court (the case was dismissed in April, meaning the Arizona GOP will have to start in Superior Court if it wants to continue its baseless assault on mail-in voting). That guy.
JUST. VOTE. BLUE.
5.
Rebecca Solnit is one of my main go-to writers. As the Jesus tide is sweeping across the country, Solnit penned a piece in last Sunday’s Guardian titled Women’s rights have suffered a grim setback. But history is still on our side.
She writes that So many things have changed in the last half century for women in so many countries that it would be hard to itemize them all; suffice to say that the status of women has been radically altered for the better, overall, in this span of time. Feminism is a human rights movement that endeavors to change things that are not just centuries, but in many cases millennia old, and that it is far from done and faces setbacks and resistance is neither shocking nor reason to stop.
The last decade has been a rollercoaster of gains and losses, and there is no neat way to add them up. The gains have been profound, but many of them have been subtle. Since about 2012, a new era of feminism opened up conversations – on social media, in traditional media, in politics and private – about violence against women and the many forms of inequality and oppression, legal and cultural, obvious and subtle. Recognition of the impact of violence against women expanded profoundly and brought on real results. The Me Too movement has been much derided as a celebrity circus but it was only one manifestation of a feminist surge begun five years earlier, and it helped lead to changes in US state and federal laws governing sexual harrassment and abuse, including a bill (https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/senate-passes-landmark-metoo-bill-to-ease-workplace-lawsuits) that passed the senate this February and the president signed into law in early March.
Women in many US states have lost their access to abortion, but not their belief in their right to it. The uproar in response to the court’s decision is a reminder of how unpopular it is, and how hideously it will impact the ability of women to be free and equal under the law.
6.
And in some serious weirdness, the Washington Post reported that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said “unknown individuals” detonated an explosive device yesterday, destroying a large portion of the Georgia Guidestones. The structure, which has been dubbed “America’s Stonehenge,” originally consisted of four 19-foot granite slabs, a center stone and a smaller block capping the top.
Located in Elberton, Georgia, the stones were erected in the late 70s by funders who have chosen to remain anonymous. There are 10 guiding principles etched onto the stones, including urging humanity to protect nature and care for fellow citizens. The principle that may have lit a spark in conspiracy theorist’s underpants was most likely the call to cap the world’s population at 500 million.
According to the Post, Right-wing conspiracy theorists such as Infowars founder Alex Jones have seized on the edicts as proof of a nefarious globalist scheme. In a 2008 documentary, he pointed to the granite slabs as evidence that global elites were plotting to enslave most of the world. During the coronavirus pandemic, misinformation circulated that linked the emergence of the virus to the Guidestones. This led to the wack-a-doodle’s favorite daughter, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), to once again pander to her base and get the rubes all excited by defecating that the monument represented a future of “population control” as envisioned by the “hard left. There is a war of good and evil going on, and people are done with globalism.”
Even Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp got into the act and pledged to dismantle the monument and fight the “Luciferian Cabal” that Greene suggested was behind it. Are these people for real? For the love of all that maintains a sense of sanity, JUST. VOTE. BLUE.
And now…
Heating with sand? Interesting! And ironic that It's happening just as the world is running out of sand. (It's the second-most in-demand resource after water.) Let's save the sand for temperature control, and use recycled materials for building instead of cement, which needs sand.
Always love your art, Gary. Do you need any more dolls or dominoes?
Thanks for your work! --Kay
Keep up the great work Gary! It really is great.
I accidentally hit the wrong button on my phone. I would never UNSUBSCRIBE, to you :)