The G7 or The Severn Largest Economies

According to the media, the G7 summit members enjoy the seven largest economies in the world. There must be a reason why our media say that, but I don't know what it is.

The G7 consists of the USA, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada. Russia used to be a member. But if you rank the nations of the world by the size of their economies, you get the following list;

USA 
(The European Union, which attends the G7 but for some reason does not count.)
China
Japan
Germany
United Kingdom
India
France
Brazil



Italy has the 8th or 9th largest economy. So does Brazil.

Canada has the world's 10th largest economy.

Russia is 12th.

Mexico is 15th.

(Note: On this list, California would rank 6th.) 

Why are China, India and Brazil left out in favor of Canada, Italy (and little Russia)? 

The Democratic Plan to End Hate Crimes

The Republican leadership supports hate crimes, wink, wink. The Democratic leaders oppose hate crimes, but they have no plan to end them.

Unless advocating for background checks will end hate crimes.  Remember, when President Grant crushed the KKK, he did it with stern background checks. 

No, not really. Grant sent in the army. That was his plan. As Lincoln said of Grant, the man fights.

Trump Voters: Two Facts

A couple of years ago I read a summary of some studies of tRump voters. Two things stuck in my memory.

The median income among tRumpers was $72,000 a year. They weren't poor, but they felt entitled to more. 

Support for tRump increased the farther the American voter lived from the southern border. 

John. Adams on tRump

I posted this some time back, but it remains timeless. What follows is something John Adams wrote about Alexander Hamilton, but it might also be his view of President tRump. 

"His ambition, his restlessness and all of his grandiose schemes come, I'm convinced, from a superabundance of secretions, which he couldn't find enough whores to absorb."

In Adams' era politics could get rough. 

Painkillers

Wanda Sykes commented last night on why black people are under-represented in the opiod-addiction crisis. It's mostly a white problem.

Statistics show that American doctors are slow to prescribe painkillers for people of color.

Kendi

Ibram Kendi is a cultural historian who won the National Book Award for nonfiction several years ago for Stamped from the Beginning. In this book he challenges deeply held and sometimes well-meant and progressive ideas about racism. He argues convincingly that even the strongest anti-racists have been infected with racism. I, of course, have been infected. Even people of color accept half-hidden racist beliefs that define black people as inferior. 

You may recall that President Obama once made a speech in which he pointed out that many black families have disintegrated--that they are in some ways inferior to the typical white family.  

Do white families set the standard that black families should try to meet? Or is there more than one way to build a good family?

Kendi's research goes back to Cotton Mather and the Founding Fathers, some of whom were very quietly opposed to slavery. Some argued in private  that people of color could be loving and loyal but not smart or creative, and that in compensation for these deficiencies, black people had been made more athletic and sexual. This ancient idea lives on today in the many jokes about male sex organs and "white men can't jump." 

The last ten winners of the men's Olympic high jump contest have been named Sotomayor, Wszola, Brumel, Drouin, Ukhov, Silnov, Holm, Klyugin, Austin and Avdeenko, two of whom are people of color.

Kendi has a new book: How to Be an Antiracist. In it he has written that the only way to fight racism "is to consistently identify and describe it--and then dismantle it."

Her Husband Is Ugly

What can the future nominee of the Democratic Party look forward to in today’s political climate?   

Let’s assume, for sake of argument,  that the Democrats nominate Tulsi Gabbard, because she surfs and Hawaii is their lucky state. Shortly after being nominated, she will hear the following:

Her husband is too ugly.

Her father assassinated JFK. 

She is a rapist and a drug mule.

She arranged the murder of Jeffrey Epstein.

She runs a pedophile ring out of the Taco Bell on Wall Street.

She is a Jew who is financing thousands of people of color to invade the United States and vote for her dozens of times each, wearing a different cap each time. 

She is a low energy, non-citizen Hindu. 

She was born in a shithole country.

The last claim will be tested in 2020.

What Is Real

The nation is divided into two cultural worlds. The world of tRump and his voters is the smaller and less pragmatic world, less attached to reality, inventing imaginary facts. You can order reality to go away, but it's still there even if you don't like it and call it fake news. That's what makes it real.

The Vegetarians

Certain leaders in my family have suddenly become vegetarians or near-vegetarians, which has given me something to think about.

Humans and bears evolved as omnivores. They enjoy meat, and animal protein has been important in the physical development of children. Arguing that it is morally okay for an osprey but not a chimpanzee to eat fish hasn't been entirely convincing. But the situation has changed.

Science has invented plant-based meat and clean meat. The Impossible Burger is plant-based, and it is suddenly available everywhere. Clean meat is genuine cell-based meat grown in a factory. Soon you'll be able to buy factory-grown chicken meat indistinguishable from meat from a dead bird.

Growing crops to feed cattle and all that follows is, I hear, a major contributor to global warming. Science is telling us we face a catastrophe. We have choices to make.