There is a Facebook group called “Conservatives Take Back California,” which I find rather amusing. Here are a few reasons why they won’t come anywhere close to achieving their goal, at least within lifetimes of anyone living here today.
Sheer Volume of Quality Higher Education. California has over 750 higher education institutions, including public universities, private colleges, community colleges, and vocational schools.
The nine campuses of the University of California alone have over 300K students, 26K faculty, 194K staff members, and 2.5 million alumni.
How many UC professors support Trump? Four? There is a huge correlation between voters’ education level and repudiation of Trump and his values of hate, corruption, authoritarianism, anti-education, etc.
Environmentalism. California ranks #1 in the nation in terms of things like college graduates with environmental science degrees, pro-environment policies, and the development of clean technology. California (along with Texas with its immense wind resources) leads the country in terms of MWs of renewable energy installed.
Conservatives, at least those of today, are doing everything they can to inflict damage to solar and wind energy, most notably via Trump’s cancelling tax credits for both these technologies. The GOP views environmentalism generally and climate change mitigation in particular as something for woke socialists. The also believe (without evidence) that the scientists in these fields are corrupt.
Precious few Californians vote for the party that supports fossil fuels and accepts enormous campaign contributions from Big Oil.
Prosperity. California has the largest GDP in the Unites States. If it were a country, it would be the fourth largest economy on Earth.
Of the 3400 venture capital firms in the United States, 2400 of them are in California.
A great deal of this economic success is cutting-edge technology. This legacy goes back to the establishment of Hewlett-Packard, Fairchild, and several others in the late 1930s.
We need to compare this triumph to Trump’s tariffs, an instrument which uniformly causes retaliation and has historically hurt both American workers and consumers. In addition, we have a variety of other economic policies that experts regard as erratic and misguided.
Entertainment. California is known as the entertainment capital of world, by virtue in its stature in film, television, and music. Of course, not everyone in the industry is a progressive; you will find an occasional Clint Eastwood or Kid Rock. But most people in entertainment attained their positions via their emotional sensitivity, and therefore tend to reject Donald Trump’s indifference to human suffering, not to mention his overt criminality.
Conservatives have a solid grasp on states like West Virginia and Alabama, which are known for their racism, poverty, and ignorance. They could get a grip on Mars or Venus before they could make a serious dent in California.
American workers who are facing agonizing and preventable deaths predominantly vote for the party that is condemning them to that horrible fate.
That’s just one of the many disgusting facets of today’s life in the U.S.
Oh my goodness! Is “Liz Churchill” right?
We hear all the time that Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served Americans’ health needs under seven presidents, created COVID-19 in a Chinese lab and deliberately inflicted it on U.S. citizens, killing millions. The anti-science right is cranking up the animus against the man, and now, tens of millions of Americans are desperate to have him sentenced to prison.
A few facts are presented below. What they seem to show is that whoever authored the meme here simply made up lies that would serve to undermine our scientific method and make all this crap fodder for the Fox News / MAGA crowd.
Unvaccinated individuals face a significantly higher risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 compared to vaccinated individuals. Historical and public health data consistently show that vaccines offer robust protection against the most severe outcomes of the virus. [1, 2, 3]
- Early Variant Spikes: During earlier waves like the Delta variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that unvaccinated individuals were up to 29 times more likely to be hospitalized. [1]
- Severe Complications: Hospitalized unvaccinated patients are more likely to experience moderate-to-severe disease, spend more days in the ICU, and have a higher likelihood of complications. [1]
- Financial Burden: A study by the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker noted that unvaccinated patients historically accounted for the vast majority of preventable COVID-19 health system costs due to lengthy, intensive hospital stays. [1]
- Elevated Death Rates: Data compiled by platforms like Our World in Data demonstrate a clear gap in mortality, with unvaccinated individuals dying at significantly higher rates per capita. [1]
Meet Reid Rasner (photo at left). He’s a MAGA Republican running for congress in Wyoming–that’s a good fit.
He faces three challenges, however:
1) He’s openly gay, a terrible fit for Wyoming,
2) His politics appeals only to the true idiot. While it’s true that voters there are not well-educated, they’re aware and alert. They’ve seen trickle-down economics fail consistently since the days of Roland Reagan, and they’ll be very hard to convince that democratic socialism as it’s implemented around the world makes the nation’s citizens poor, and
3) I hate to judge a book by its cover, but he looks like a dullard.
-
Climate Change12 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases12 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy10 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits