1) If you live in a home that contains guns, you’re 5 times more likely to die by being shot.
2) Absolutely nothing will be done legislatively for the next 4 years on the following issues: immigration, gun control, and climate change.
Gorilla says: “The challenge for Americans is to elect a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate and House, because Democrats represent the only party interested in actually governing!”
From the Guardian:
Yes, and climate change is gun control is unemployment: nothing at all serious is being done.
Gorilla says: “I remember colder years, because I was born before 1976!”
Never have been, never will be!
Climate change negotiations, round infinity, and as usual the US shares the goal but has neither the intention nor the capacity to achieve it:
So sayeth our Ambassador to the talks in Oslo: “This kind of flexible, evolving legal agreement cannot guarantee that we meet a 2 degree goal, but insisting on a structure that would guarantee such a goal will only lead to deadlock.”
Gorilla translates from the Diplospeak: “If you insist that we do something, and hold us accountable, why am I here again?”
We’re not serious about either in any way!
Now would be the time to require background checks and firearms training on all gun purchases, ban the sale of automatic/assault-style weaponry, and raise the price of gasoline to at least $8/gallon.
Instead, we’ll all be waiting for the next lunatic to blast away at a group of innocents, while the Koch brothers and other polluters buy every politician they can.
Gorilla says: “Making no sense at all is the American Way!”
“In principle, this agreement in principle will be in principle about an agreement in principle, once a sufficient time period in principle has made this agreement in principle unprincipled.”
On climate change and global warming…
Yes, it’s real, yes, it’s been going on for 200 years, yes, it’s all about fossil fuels, and yes, we need to tax fossil fuels to the point where they’re no longer competitive with alternative energy sources.
And yes, nothing much at all will be done until we elect leaders who aren’t complete idiots.
Gorilla says: “Alas, we’re stuck with one political party made up of complete idiots, so it will be a while!”
Giant king crabs on the cusp of Antarctica!
No, it’s not a 50s drive-in flick, it’s yet another example of the impact brought to the planet by global warming and climate change.
Wildfires and droughts in Texas, big floods in the northeast, the hottest temperatures on record: these things are happening and we’re not doing enough to moderate the human behavior that is causing these disasters.
We need heavy taxation of fossil fuels, to make alternative energy sources more economically viable.
We need far more of the kind of measures President Obama has pushed through, like higher mileage standards for cars.
We need to see ourselves, with 4 percent of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s energy consumption, as something other than amoral, selfish, science-denying morons.
Gorilla says: “It starts with acknowledgment, continues with education, and ends with innovation!”
This time, it’s Exxon, spilling oil for the umpteenth time in yet another refuge, the Yellowstone River!
One wonders when the wholly owned Seven Sisters subsidiary known as the US Congress will decide that it’s time to stop subsidizing these wildly profitable polluters.
Meanwhile, climate change legislation and a real energy policy based on raising the cost for using fossil fuels remains moribund.
Gorilla says: “Destroying our country is so much easier for our leaders than pretending to care!”
Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat: “If you find your national position is in opposition to that of others, don’t ask for compromise, think of our common planet and offer the compromise first. The deal here in Cancún will not guarantee all your short-term national interests, but reaching no outcome here in Cancún will endanger everyone’s long-term well-being.”
Gorilla translates: “Abandon hope, all ye who waste your time here!”
Another year, another pointless round of climate change talks, but at least the Japanese are attempting to entertain!
Seems they no longer want to abide by the Kyoto Protocol, an official says: “Japan will not inscribe its target under the Kyoto protocol on any conditions or under any circumstances.”
And that’s that.
Gorilla predicted long ago that climate change talks would go nowhere. There are just too many oxen to be gored, and polluting policymakers know there’s zero chance of anything serious getting passed by the US Congress (or for that matter any other developed country legislature).
Why should the Japanese worry too much about what happens in 75 years?
Gorilla says: “Now, if it was budget deficits in 75 years, you’d certainly get an enthusiastic international chorus of OECD-style stupidity!”
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