WHAT IS A REPUBLICAN?

Remember the parable of the Blind Men and an Elephant?  Well, the Republican Party is at a crucial crossroad about where they're headed.

First Republican presidential debate?  Read this.  And this.

Japan releasing nuclear contaminated wastewater into the Pacific?  Read this.  Dumping of radiated fluids will need to go on for the next forty or so years.  International relationships?  Totally screwed up.  A quote:

Bob Richmond of the University of Hawaii (we are in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology), scientific advisor to the Pacific Island states, which like China and most countries are adamantly opposed, analogized that Japan's extensive monitoring plans do not actually mitigate health risks posed by duming the wastewater into the ocean:

Its' the same thing as saying, 'I'm going to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, but I'm not worried because I'm gonna get a chest X-ray every year.  That's my monitoring program.'  One you you get a lesion on your lung, and you don't say, 'Ok, I'm done smoking, I see the lesion.  I'm going to quit.'  You've got cancer.

So was Yevgeny Prigozhin assassinated by Putin?  Of course.  Is this ironically the beginning of the end of Putin?  Probably yes.

This Forbes article is two years old, but now seems to be the time to keep blaming Donald Trump for what he has wrought.  He is not on trial for this "crime," but the Trump administration is said to have killed more people than the total American deaths in WWI (53,402) and WWII (291,557), combined.  This from the British Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health.  Thus, nothing to be national politics.  40% of Covid-19-related deaths in the U.S. could have been prevented had the U.S. only had the same Covid-19 death rates as those of other Group of Seven (G7) nations.  But going back 40 years, the gap between the USA and G7 countries has been growing anyway.  It's just that during Trump's 4 years as president, he aggravated the decline through his misguided Covid Pandemic policies.

The range of Trump priorities, from a trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and high-income individuals, followed by reductions in food subsidy and health care programs, to repealing environmental regulations to actions that left 2.3 million few people medically insured, had adverse impacts that hurt.

This last graph shows that life expectancy in the pro-Trump counties was 2 years shorter than counties where he was defeated.  So, ironically, those who supported him suffered the most.  In short, Trump's repudiation of science, disdain for wearing a mask and lack of clear messaging cost a lot of lives.

As you might know, he will be booked today at 7:30 PM EDT at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia, paying a $200,000 bond.  Terms will be set.  What happens if Trump violates his bond conditions?

About a dozen of the 18 other co-defendants have already surrendered.  A federal judge yesterday denied requests by Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark to delay their arrests.   Meadows complied and was released after paying his $100,000 bond, and Clark will need to show up by noon tomorrow, with $100,000.  Remember that March 2024 trial date previously announced?  Well, that has now changed to October 23, 2023...for all of them.  Looks like the Republican Party, after what happened at their first debate yesterday, is in real trouble.

-