Alfred U. alum; materials & process engineer exp. included aerospace & defense industry; politics, history, computing, cycling, & outdoors are some interests.
20 years ago, An Inconvenient Truth put climate change at the center of global debate, shaping politics, influencing leaders, and inspiring a generation of activists.
Two decades later, we can assess not just its impact, but its accuracy. Many of the film’s most alarming predictions did not materialize, while many of the policies it inspired have proven costly and ineffective.
The lesson? Panic is a poor guide for public policy. Focusing on innovation, adaptation, and economic development can do far more to help both people and the climate—at a fraction of the cost.
https://t.co/EIJyuNeFU1
Hey Jasmine…
Black pilot here.
I think you missed the plot.
Then again, that’s becoming a pattern.
I graduated from West Point.
I went through Army flight school.
I learned to fly the AH-64 Apache.
I deployed to combat and flew 55 combat missions over Baghdad.
Nobody handed me a cockpit because of my skin color.
Nobody lowered the standards for me.
Nobody looked at me and said, “Let’s check a diversity box.”
That’s what people like you don’t seem to understand.
Suggesting that Black pilots, Black engineers, Black doctors, or Black leaders need special preferences to succeed is not empowering, it’s insulting.
I didn’t want a different standard.
I wanted the same standard.
And when you’re flying into combat, the American people don’t care what race the pilot is.
They care whether the pilot is qualified.
Merit isn’t racist.
Excellence isn’t discriminatory.
And reducing every achievement to skin color says far more about your worldview than it does about mine.
@VivekGRamaswamy I think he's right. He outlined a couple of reasons why socialism is becoming more popular in this country but a book is needed here. It's easy to think of many more reasons.
Democrats think Graham Platner can connect with working Mainers.
Critics say he is a fraud who went to prep school.
Will voters go for the oyster farmer who reportedly only has his mom as a customer?
Or will they back Republican Susan Collins?
The biggest lie pushed by groups like Maine People’s Alliance, Maine Equal Justice, and Mainers for Tax Fairness is that prosperity is a fixed pie.
It isn’t.
The goal shouldn’t be figuring out how to carve up someone else’s success more “fairly.” The goal should be creating an economy where more people can succeed, build businesses, create jobs, and grow the pie for everyone.
Every great business, innovation, and paycheck started with someone willing to take a risk, work long hours, and create value. Yet we’re constantly told that success is something to be punished rather than encouraged.
That’s not fairness. That’s envy dressed up as public policy.
A thriving society doesn’t come from redistributing wealth. It comes from rewarding hard work, encouraging investment, and giving people the freedom to build something of their own.
Make more pie. Stop punishing the people baking it.
You haven't been "in combat for this country" you total fraud @ScottPelley. Like countless other journalists I also have been to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan on assignment and never in a million years would I pretend that was "combat".
Talk about stolen valor.
Jordan Peterson made a really important point:
The horrors of the Soviet Union didn’t just come from bad government. They happened because ordinary people were willing to lie, about almost everything.
He says the real cause wasn’t political. It was moral. Each person’s relationship to truth, their conscience, and their own soul.
We’re so quick to blame systems and leaders, but this hits deeper. The breakdown starts with individuals choosing comfort over honesty.
Once enough people accept small lies (even in the name of compassion), it opens the door to much darker places.
“We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, and still they continue to lie.” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn
America is outpacing the world because Trumponomics is working.
We’re seeing a historic investment boom, a soaring stock market, and according to Census data, the average family now has $3,100 more in real income since President Trump returned to office.
Growth is up, paychecks are up, and the American comeback is just getting started!
Some timeless #SUNDAYWISDOM from the great Thomas Sowell.
Whether it’s the socialist left or the populist right – it’s easier for politicians to sell people a villain than the truth. It’s easier to tell people someone else is responsible for all their problems than it is to ask hard questions about culture, incentives, and personal responsibility.
Conservatism is different: we know that people are not helpless. Their prosperity comes from self-reliance, strong families, good education, hard work, and the freedom to build a better life.
As true today as it was when Sowell said it over four decades ago.
Why did Jews become Democrats and why did the Left turn on them?
The answer to these questions explains everything we're getting wrong about American Jewish history.
“Oh, cool, y’all are planning a big get-together for the President’s birthday?”
“No, it’s a protest.”
“So, large crowds will gather in his name across the nation on the day of his birth?”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“And there will be a cool concert?”
“A protest concert!”
“And people will have watch parties for the birthday concert? Kinda like a reality show dedicated to him?”
“No!”
“Will there be cake?”
“I hate you.”
Elon Musk just defended America better than every politician in Washington combined.
Musk: “After World War 2, the US could have basically taken over the world and any country. Like we got nukes, nobody else got nukes. We don’t even have to lose soldiers. Which country do you want?”
One nation on earth held a weapon nobody else had.
Total dominance. Zero competition. No risk of retaliation.
Every empire in history that held that kind of advantage used it.
Rome. The Mongols. The British. The Ottomans.
They conquered until they collapsed.
America had a bigger advantage than all of them combined.
And it rebuilt the countries it just defeated.
Musk: “The United States actually helped rebuild countries. So it helped rebuild Europe, it helped rebuild Japan. This is very unusual behavior, almost unprecedented.”
Almost unprecedented?
It had never happened before. Not once in 5,000 years of recorded history.
The Marshall Plan wasn’t foreign aid.
It was the most radical act of restraint any superpower ever committed.
America turned its enemies into allies. Turned rubble into economies. Turned surrender into partnership.
Germany went from ashes to the economic engine of Europe in a generation.
Japan went from unconditional surrender to the third largest economy on earth.
Three years after the war, America was flying food into Berlin.
A city in the heart of the nation that just tried to destroy it.
That’s not policy.
That’s a civilization deciding what it is at the exact moment it has the power to be anything.
You’re being told a story right now.
That America is the villain of history.
You hear it everywhere. Media. Universities. Social platforms.
Musk: “There’s always like, well America’s done bad things. Well of course America’s done bad things, but one needs to look at the whole track record.”
Every nation on earth has dark chapters. Every single one.
The difference is what a country does when nobody can stop it.
And when nobody could stop America, it fed its enemies and rebuilt their cities.
Musk: “The history of China suggests that China is not acquisitive. Meaning they’re not going to go out and invade a whole bunch of countries.”
Probably right.
China has historically built walls, not fleets.
But the real question isn’t about borders anymore.
We’re approaching a moment that mirrors 1945 in ways nobody has fully processed yet.
AI is going to give a handful of people a power advantage that makes nuclear monopoly look quaint.
If someone is going to hold that kind of power, who do you want it to be?
The country that conquered when it could? Or the one that rebuilt when it didn’t have to?
Every alliance. Every trade route. Every economy.
Billions lifted out of poverty.
All of it traces back to one act of restraint that had never been done before.
And carries no guarantee of being repeated.
The most powerful thing America ever did wasn’t building the bomb.
It was what it didn’t do after.
Look at these turbines.
See the dark streaks on the blades and running out of the nacelle?
That’s oil.
This is what they call “green energy.”
Inside these turbines are gearboxes, hydraulic systems, grease lines, coolants, and industrial lubricants. When seals fail or systems wear out, that oil leaks out at hundreds of feet in the air and gets sprayed across the surrounding land. And it’s not just oil—PFAS (“forever chemicals”) from the specialized coatings on the blades and towers, designed to resist erosion and weather, are getting abraded and spread into the environment too. Plus, the fiberglass and composite blades themselves erode over time from rain, hail, and operation, shedding microplastics and fibers right into the air, soil, and water below.
And nobody wants to talk about what happens next.
This toxic cocktail does not disappear.
It lands in the soil.
It coats grasses and brush.
It contaminates the ground insects and pollinators depend on.
It disrupts the microorganisms that keep soil healthy and alive.
Repeated exposure can leave dead patches of ground and long-term soil degradation underneath and around these towers—now laced with persistent PFAS that never break down and microplastics that accumulate in the ecosystem.
Rain then carries these contaminants, leaching them into nearby streams, rivers, and waterways, where toxins spread further downstream—sometimes for miles—affecting aquatic life, drinking water sources, and entire watersheds.
Then wildlife gets exposed.
Birds land on contaminated surfaces.
Small mammals walk through it.
Animals ingest it while feeding and grooming.
Insects decline first. Then everything above them in the food chain feels it after.
PFAS and other toxins bioaccumulate, magnifying the damage up the chain.
And this is happening while politicians and environmental activists lecture rural America about protecting nature.
Think about the irony.
Oil and gas workers are treated like environmental criminals while thousands of industrial wind turbines sit across open country leaking petroleum-based products, shedding microplastics, releasing PFAS, and leaching toxins into soil and waterways on the same land they claim to be saving.
At the end of the day, this is industrial-scale energy infrastructure with real environmental costs. But because wind and solar are intermittent, renewable setups have to be massively overbuilt with far more turbines, transmission lines, and backup systems just to approach power delivery, multiplying the land use, materials, and pollution footprint even further.
The difference is one industry gets demonized while the other gets taxpayer subsidies and media protection.
Maine deserves honest conversations about energy, land, wildlife, and the environment.
We deserve better than fake environmentalist groups profiting off of the grift.
Sen. Kennedy says Iran shifted to a missile-first strategy to threaten the world, arguing President Trump stepped in before it could become a global danger:
“Why did we go in? We destroyed most of Iran’s nuclear weapons program last June when we bombed them. But our intelligence picked up that after that, Iran decided to change its plan. Their new plan was to produce and stockpile so many missiles—ballistic, cruise, and drones—that they could turn to Americans and say, ‘Look, we’re going to restart our nuclear program. And if you bomb us again, you can—but we’re going to destroy the Middle East with our stockpile of missiles. And by the way, we can hit Berlin, London, and Paris.’ We couldn’t let that happen, and President Trump didn’t let it happen."