I’ll have to admit I found Kirsten Sinema’s defection irritating, though not surprising. The entire time she’s been in Congress (that I’ve been aware of her) she’s been irritating, though not surprising. She ran – and won – as a Democrat but many had her pegged as a DINO, Democrat In Name Only, right away. The part I DID find surprising? She’s really a nothing. She’s actually just an opportunist. She’s been a registered independent before. She’s ALSO been registered in the Green Party. She ran as a Democrat and won. Now she’s an independent again. She works like a Republican. There’s no telling how long it will be before she moves into that camp but my guess is, she will, sooner or later. She seems to have NO loyalty to anything or anyone but herself.

I don’t know why the Democrats continue to support DINOS. I supposed putting Kirsten Sinema or, say, Joe Manchin in office gets the party control of the committees but what good is that control if “Democrats” like that will constantly undermine the efforts of the party? Sinema has now cut herself off from support from the Democratic Party and I suspect Manchin will do the same soon. My attitude? Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Yeah, sanity needs to expand it’s hold on this country but using fakes won’t get ‘er done, you know?

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14,000 Barrels. That’s how much the latest (discovered) leak from the Keystone Pipeline dumped into a creek in Kansas. 14,000 barrels. I’ve been seeing stories like this my whole life, an oil spill here, an oil spill there. The Keystone Pipeline started operations in 2010. There have been 22 previous serious spills. Truth be told, it’s one of the larger reasons I’d like to transition away from crude oil as an energy source. (That’s in addition to the climate change effects and the fact that it’s finite and running out.) The cons – certainly not a dependable source of information – blame Democrats for…well, everything, really. But in THIS case, I’m talking about their dogmatic belief that Joe Biden DESTROYED the oil industry. To me? The industry seems to be doing just fine, thank you very much.

One of the points the cons pretend to understand is that Biden cancelled the Keystone XL Pipeline. Now, the XL was only the latest branch in a complex of pipelines and it was still under construction. It had not moved one drop of crude and was not scheduled to move a drop of crude for another couple of years. But, somehow, Biden cancelling the project “destroyed” the oil industry. Leave it to the cons to display – furiously – their lack of understanding.

I prefer solar. I find that when oil spills all over the landscape, everything dies and it takes years to clean up. When solar “spills” all over the landscape, flowers grow. That’s a better outcome. Is solar the perfect solution? Not yet. It still needs development. That takes a bit of time. Some people take issue with solar because it doesn’t solve every problem today. That’s some solid thinking, isn’t it? (It’s a logical fallacy called ‘making the perfect the enemy of the good.’) When cars were first invented, they didn’t solve every problem immediately, either. In fact, the horse was the better option for a LONG time after the invention of the automobile. But horses can’t compete with cars anymore when it comes to travel. The same will be true for alternative energy sources.

There’s only ONE reason we haven’t made the switch we should have made years ago: greed. The people who own the centralized energy distribution systems make lots of money manipulating that market to their own advantage. The very best long-term power solution is DEcentralized generation. Once that happens, “they” lose their ability to manipulate the market. They know it. They bought time with their anti-science claims about climate change but they’re starting to lose that battle – as the oceans lap at their feet in Omaha. (Hyperbole alert!)

If you live in California, you’re likely FAR more sensitive to the realities of price fixing and market manipulation than any other place in this once-great nation. The oil companies have LOTS of reasons for their failures. None of them ever hold up under scrutiny. So, we’ve been paying HUGE amounts of money just to fill our tanks here on the west coast and, excuses notwithstanding, nobody can figure out why. This last fall, there was this massive spike in gasoline prices at the pump. According to the Governor’s office, it put $63 BILLION dollars into the company’s coffers in just 90 days. The key point, here, is that the prices spiked in California at a time when (again quoting the Governor’s office) “crude oil prices dropped, state taxes and fees remained unchanged and gas prices did not increase outside the western U.S.”

The Governor started off calling for a windfall profits tax. Now his suggestion has morphed into some complex kind of scheme that’s supposed to encourage the oil companies to do the right thing. I suspect the change is related to his constantly denied but well-known desire to be President of the United States and the need to work with the corporations to get there. It’s how fascist states work. It’s why he’s about to eliminate some of the financial incentives to roof-top solar, to placate Pacific Gas and Electric.

Corporate greed is holding down the economy and rapidly rendering the planet incapable of sustaining human life. It’s pretty simple really. We could stop. We could do so quickly. But we have to have the will and…we don’t.

I’ll tell you this: humans like to pretend we’re the smartest thing to ever grace the face of the planet. I’d say wiping out one’s own species for a dollar is pretty effing stupid, though…