Tag Archives: Global Warming

Torturing the universities, future feminine possibilities for Colorado College

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Pity the universities these days. They have become wildlife havens for America’s torturers. Southern Methodist University in Dallas is to house the papers of the head torturer advocate of them all, George W. Bush, in his ‘presidential library’. Stanford gets Donald Rumsfield. And now the University of Florida took it upon itself to take up the media rehabilitation program of Alberto Gonzalez. Whoopee, Students!

Here at home the local rag, The Gazette, today continued in its campaign to pretend that Global Warming is nothing to be concerned about, health care for all is too expensive to be implemented in the US, and YES, that water boarding is ‘uncomfortable, not torture’. So what, since at least local students have the ‘liberal’ Colorado College to find refuge in, right?

No, this local institution has graduated Dick Cheney’s wife and both his daughters, too (Lynn, Elizabeth, and Mary). And the college’s board of directors has Suzanne Woolsey , wife of super neo con advocate of fighting a continual, decades long ‘world war’ against the Muslim World, exCIA Head James Woolsey, sitting in as Vice Chair of the Colorado College Board of Trustees, emphasis on VICE.

These women folk ‘belonging to’ such noted torturers and torture advocates, Dick Cheney and James Woolsey, make it just right, that Colorado College and its Department of Political Science should house a proposed ‘Library of Women That Love Torturers’. There, we could see the love letters between these prominent ladies and their torturer husbands, dads, and lovers!

It would be a credit for the local military community’s institutions, too! Visit the Air Force Academy, then step over to Colorado College to see the more feminine side of US militarism, and women who love the torturers behind it. Other cities have their water parks, but Colorado Springs could have their waterboarding park!

Maybe our mayor, Lionel Rivera, and the entire city council will get behind this idea? We can only propose… but Colorado College should not let itself fall behind in the academic love affair with noted American torturers! Now can it? Maybe it could open up by next Halloween?

Float like a butterfly, sting like Al Gore

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Once-upon-a-time-Vice-president, Al Gore, now introduces himself at public appearances with a real knee-slapper: the man who won the 2000 election. The joke counts on the audience knowing about the rigged count in Florida, black box voting, Supreme court cronyism, etc, because Al Gore explains it no further. To me it’s like the Monty Python routine, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, know what I mean? Except the audience does know and does get it. Hahaha, say no more!

Well I don’t get it. A stolen election, a bitter aftermath, tragic consequences which compound every day, to Al Gore this is a joke?

If Al Gore, Emmy, Oscar and Nobel in hand, wants another shot at the helm, he’s got some ‘splaining to do.

Gore is being given credit for taking global warming seriously, but I’m not sure it reflects his taking responsibility for the problem. What’s he doing about it? He’s running around talking about it. Who does he think is responsible for it?!

Gore wants us to address global warming. Weren’t he and Clinton in charge once-upon-a-time? What did they do about it? The little boy who put his finger in the dike wouldn’t be so honored if the Nobel Committee had seen him laughing while the hole was being drilled.

Now Americans are looking to Al to be the Democrat’s Great White Hope, to step into the ring and trounce Bush and Co in the next election. Does Gore give you any sense that he wouldn’t do the same thing he did in 2000, graciously step aside while barbarians plunder the country, his finger on the alarm bell, a silent alarm meant not to alarm the burglars, pretending but probably knowing that really there are no first responders on the way. Gore is the ambulance driver waiting for roadside assistance, cracking jokes with the patient, both deluded that there’s another ambulance on the way, one dying, the other contemplating another run at a rescue.

Some chose their battles, holding themselves as would-be winners above the fray, had the fray mattered. Al Gore chose his battle in 2000 and it wasn’t the presidency, the fate of the world perhaps being merely academic. To the above-the-fray class I assure you it is. Now the man who would be king wants to weigh in again? Why?

My favorite sports analogy is prizefighting. They are surely the most courageous men who enter the ring knowing they bring no one but themselves to bear against the blows of their opponent. You want to be heavyweight champion of the world? No one”s going to do it for you.

‘Freedom Communications’ tap dances for wiretaps

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The Gazette rag today took time out from its campaigning to increase global warming and campaigning to kill off more species of life to laud El Paso County for using wiretaps. See page A3 of Sept 17 ‘DA defends wiretapping’.

The county had 11 times the # of wiretaps of Denver in 2005, but only 3 times that county’s amount this year. There just seems to be a great need to listen in on people by the police here according to the District Attorney and Gazette police whore (oh, I”m sorry, I meant reporter), Kim Nguyen. Why the big need, Kim? Terrorism?

Meth is terrorizing the community, so civil liberties needed to be shedded from the citizenry, so says the great freedom communicators at The Gazette. I wonder if they got cops over tapping their foots out at the airport, too? Meth, homos, pedos, and Muslims. We need them wiretaps, foot taps, and loads of baloney from the police and press. Otherwise we won’t feel secure, now would we?

And we need those wiretaps, too, so that elderly ‘ St Pat’s Day parade participants can be stopped in their tracks and then charged with blocking the parade!

The Science of Fools

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I’m sure you missed it, since most of us have long since given up on reading the idiotic editorials of The Gazette, our Far Right Wing local daily paper. But there it was this Tuesday morning as they attacked the notion of giving our country’s children government guaranteed health care. Oh horror of horrors they said, ‘This will keep people from buying health insurance for the tiny tots!’

This all from a paper that has no problem with giving trillions of government funds to the military industrial complex. They call their ideology ‘Libertarian’, too! But what about the science of these fools, the Science of Libertarian Fools?

Well lets see…..? Just at the moment that scientists see an explosion of infectious disease epidemics as being likely in the near future (in fact they see it as already underway), these fools of The Gazette ignore scientific opinion. They don’t give a shit that the Medical System of the US if more full of holes than Swiss Cheese.

They pooh pooh the idea that there is such a thing as Global Warming, too. Or that there is any planetary ecological crisis currently underway! They practice the Science of Fools, Pretend Libertarianism, so they oppose strengthing medical coverage at the time it is most needed! That’s how they support ‘national security’. They ignore common scientific sense.

Speaking of ignoring science. The Gazette Gang of Editorial Clowns wrote their editorial against providing federal medical coverage for America’s children almost exactly 2 years after Katrina. That was when political clowns such as The Gazette always supports had completely ignored scientific advice calling to strengthen the levees of New Orlean, scientific advice that had been given for decades.

Ignoring that scientific advice led to the Great New Orleans Flood, which no doubt the ignorant a-holes at The Gazette consider to be God’s will. It wasn’t, but New Orleans got washed into the gutter because of dumb dicks like the Gazeete editorial writers that always support what they call “Free Enterprise,’ while condeming and ignoring realy important scientific opinion. Goodbye, New Orleans.

Boy that paper sucks! Every time The Gazette writes editorial comments on ecology, medicine, or anything at all dealing with science, they just are on Cloud Nine. They are lost dealing with Political Science, too. In fact, they are as corrupted as you can get.

The ‘free market’ doesn’t like science at all. It just gets in the way of maxing out making profits for the well-to-do. Our children deserve more, and they deserve guaranteed federal mandated medical coverage. This is the science that will stop the spread of disease. Big Business hates it. They prefer the Science of Fools instead.

PS- See where these unoriginal editorialists of The Gazette got their unoriginal opinion from. A Socialist Plot

The separation of education and thought

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Kucinich 2008Would you entrust your children to the care of a teacher who didn’t have a Kucinich 2008 bumper sticker on their car? Or a sign in their window reading “What are you doing about global warming?” I know another elementary school teacher who distributes peace buttons wherever he goes, and another who teaches at peace camp during the summer.
 
What do the other teachers think they’re doing? Worrying about not getting fired by school administration lackeys, to hell with the children?

What teacher would not by nature be an activist? As our children’s guides to a better future, their function is one and the same. What kind of farmer doesn’t care if pollution is flowing into his fields? What kind of rancher feeds his herd in a cesspool? If teachers aren’t worried about the state of the world, they’re not showing any optimism for the fate of our children.

It’s time to be more discriminating about whose voices we mean to subject our children. And subject ourselves, from the media for example. Anyone in the visual or audio media, who reports about President Bush without a knowing intonation that Bush is a moron or crook, is clearly a crook or moron themselves.

If a door to door salesman tried to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, you’d laugh him off the stoop, perhaps you’d call the police. What if he reappeared everyday, several times a day even, to repeat his pitch, without even a hint of admission that he’s been discredited. If neither the police, nor your politicians, are going to protect you from his fraud, and you want to preserve your sanity, you’ll have to close the door in his face.

Mincing Words with Nature’s Matriarch

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I learned about Sudden Wetland Dieback yesterday. What’s that? The salt marshlands of America’s east coast are turning inexplicably to muddy wastelands and scientists have developed a euphemism for the occasion.
Not nice to fool Mother NatureThe nomenclature reminds me of another unnatural phenomena that’s been given its own death form: Coral Bleaching. That describes coral reefs which have suddenly expired white as ghosts. As if we’d need to call the piles of bones in the elephant graveyard, Elephant Bleaching.

I understand that scientist want to name what they are seeking to study, but doesn’t a name confer the unfortunate suggestion of a natural occurrence?

It also adds a step, is seems to me at least psychologically, between the effect and the cause. The poor Indonesians in 2004 didn’t suffer a Rapid Oft-Fatal High Water Relocation. It was a Tsunami. Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance wasn’t due to Cement Negative Buoyancy Cankles. It was the mob. Do we need to study the criminal element’s access to poured concrete, or do we need to go after who done it?

The immediate agent of the dieback may be dust from Africa, just as an impassive Pacific may be blamed on an intensified gulf stream (belittled with the appellation El Nino), but wherefore comes this unprecedented toxicity of the elements? We all know. It’s not nice to fool mother nature.

I’d like to know what specifically is meant by dieback? Perhaps those subversive academics are allowing after all for the inclusion of the principle of equal and opposite reaction: blow-back.

We know what’s behind wetland dieback, coral dieback and El Nino blowback, it’s man’s unnatural pollution. It’s our excess carbon emissions and then some, which are heating and killing the globe. There’s already a neat term, sufficiently unnatural sounding: Global Warming. Corporate polluter think-tanks have already re-termed the problem Climate Change to introduce an ambiguity of inherent badness. Change can be good. Only Luddites fear change. The fittest survive change.

The corporate media very cleverly reframed the recent Enviro-palooza concert event as A Climate In Crisis. Sound the alarm there’s a crisis! But what to do, what to do?! The Global Warming warning was too simple. When bath water becomes too warm, for example, we know what to do: shut off the hot water.

Do we need to rename extinction as Pervasive Survival-Instinct Reversal? We could, if we are seeking to ameliorate the intermediate effectiveness of the death blow. Or we could find out who took out the contract on our murder and prevent it.

To belabor mixed metaphors, put an ambulance at the base of the cliff to address Near-Instant Altitude Deceleration Injury, or go to the mountain and curb Dead Man’s Curve.

Will world agriculture production collapse?

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World agriculture is facing some dire straits ahead. While most scientists have been concentrating their worries about the ability of agriculture to keep up with the growing population consumption needs for some time, they were often worrying most about the spreading scarcity of fresh water, growing desertification of the planet, increasing soil degradation, global warming, peak oil’s effects on fertilizer supplies, etc. They had not been worrying so much about the death of honey bees.

That has now changed, since these bees are necessary for pollination of flowering plants and the bees are disappearing. We need the bees not just for honey, which alone is a relatively minor item, but we need them most for pollination of crops.

There is a lesson to be learned here, and that is simply that consequences of destructive economic activities are often not foreseen in advance. People calculate one thing, but ‘God’, so to speak, calculates another. Nature is not a controlled laboratory in a university lab somewhere, where reductionist thinking can lead only to reductionist results. So it is deadly to just rely on only a micro-management style, ‘environmental impact statement’ sort of plotting of economic planning in the future. That is precisely what our corporate government and the corporations themselves will try to do, and they will call it GREEN to do so. In fact it is not and is a formula for mass human suicide instead.

Let’s hope that the bees can rally and come back next season? But even if they do, we are hardly out of crisis state in the least. We are just beginning to enter into it. The corporate sector alone is not in any way capable of delivering the type of planning of future economic activity that is needed to forestall disaster worldwide. Temporary profit making, which is what the corporate world is all about, can only be destructive to the world environment we all live in. There is not even a seed of real change that can be accomplished when this mindset dominates. A radical shift is totally necessary in how things are done and made.

Homocidal Economy

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Capitalism is a homocidal economy. Beyond global warming, fossil fuel depletion (Peak Oil), genocidal and constant warfare by the strong and well positioned against the weak, rampant pollution of our habitat, etc., the greatest threat we all face is that capitalism is exterminating other species, both plant and animal. In fact, many scientists predict that the economic system imposed on us by the corporations will kill off over 50% of current species alive in this century. It is being called the Sixth Great Extinction. Check out the film and also the long list of articles linked to at Mass Extinction Underway.

Tears fail me.

Global warming may be a good thing

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To quote a co-anchor of ABC’s 20/20 on PRN’s Glen Beck Program.

I yearn to be back in school, I really do. Even if we had to suffer under misplaced authority sometimes, at least the hierarchy of children’s merits were not perverted. You said something stupid, everyone laughed. Being the class clown was not predicated on being the brightest, but you certainly weren’t asked by the teacher to lead the discussion. Class dunces were dummies and weren’t encouraged to take to the microphone during morning announcements.

I’m still a believer that people are given responsibility based on merit and aptitude. I still believe that successful business people and news anchors have to have quite a bit up there to have been promoted upward. Am I wrong? I admit a lot of commercial media product is so dumb it has to be genuine.

Which do you think it is? Is John Stossel a slow witted big ol’ goof for pondering whether global warming may be a good thing? Or does he have his eye on Exxon Mobil’s stock dividends and he’s just doing his job?

That silence you hear is Al Gore, Slick Willie, and Jimmy Carter on Iraq

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Al is worried about Global Warming, Slick has not so recently been busy alongside George Senior with Tsunami relief, and Jimmy’s been re-writing the history he was part of and using bad words (no, not SCOTUM). All noble efforts without doubt, and all intended more to better public image manage the Democratic Party than to seriously deal with any real problems, like say… the Occupation and War Against Iraq. Hear, we have only deafening silence.

What’s with these guys? Cynics might say that it is merely that they support imperialism, rather than oppose it. What other reason could there be for being so nicely quiet for Bush and Cheney on the central issue of our time? It is so very difficult to posture that one opposes something, while supporting it at the same time. Better to keep mute, I guess? Too bad and so sad there is no Nobel Silence Prize to award Dear Al.

Imagine if these big liberal leaders had not been keeping silent all these years when they actually held office? Oops, they weren’t actually silent then, like now. Instead, they were pushing wars, I do believe. For Jimmy, those were the glory days when it was in to help Osama out. Heck, he was even pushing Apartheid back then. The forerunners of the Taliban were pushing for a sexual Apartheid in Afghanistan, and Jimmy and Osama did their part to hurry it along. Oh the fun times when Jimmy and Brzezinski were a team! So many have forgot…

And Slick and Al working together later on to protect the environment…NOT. Al practically invented computers and was always telling us what a great thing it was. And telling us about its toxicity to the environment.. well he forgot that small detail Really. Does anybody remember Al ever talking about environmental issues when he was VP? I’m getting old and maybe my memory has gone bad? Now he’s up for a Peace Prize no less. Who ever imagined that Norwegians were ever so damn wacky? Al and ‘peace’, what a bloody gore of a joke on us all.

OK, I admit that this is another thread about my obsessive disdain for the DP. But can you blame me really? Sorry to sound like su\ch a broken record. But this deafening silence hurts my ears.

Global Warming leaves The Gazette in dense fog

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Funnier than the poor selection of comics that The Gazette carries, are the poor selection of opinion pieces on their editorial page. And on no issue do these Neanderthals post more comedy than on environmental issues. For example, they must be the last people on the entire planet still poo-pooing the idea that global climate has actually been changed by human activity and the overuse of fossil fuels!

Today, right above their pompous “Principles of Freedom’ nonsense ‘We believe that freedom is a gift from God… blah, blah, blah) is media whore Thomas Sowell’s trashpiece titled, “Global-warming gasbags launching an eco-inquisition’. Can’t you just imagine it? Exxon-Mobil execs being burned at the stake, Cheney with his nuts in a vice, and Bush’s rear end lit up as the natural gas is burnt off secondary to oil production? All victims of eco-inquisitors!

Also on the same page, was their editorial piece against ‘social engineering’. What is that in their minds? Well, they call trying to promote less environmentally destructive vehicles ‘social engineering’ by ‘wackos behind the wheel putting the pedal to the meddle.’!
What a group of total nincompoops. Who paved over their brains with such nonsense?

And a week ago, they were saying that endangered wolves in the state were nothing but rats. The extermination of earth species to them is part of a natural process where real estate developers rule over other forms of life, by the survival of the fittest. That type of ‘social engineering’ they totally adore and love. Engineering towards extermination of other life forms on the planet, no problemo.

What a bunch of social retards they seem to favor and collect at Freedom Communications, publisher of The Gazette and other local brands of demented toilet paper!

Gas goes below $2

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This is insane! We are in a global war to secure energy supplies under US control, and all is justified with a mountain of lies. Meanwhile, the price of oil sinks below $2 a gallon! How delusional is all of this?

The US corporate world is completely unable to deal rationally with any social or environmental problems. The same as with energy, so goes our health care. Diseases are exploding forth, more and more with total resistance to antibiotic treatment. And the leading caste of America cannot even arrange minimal coverage for the population! One factor in the proliferation of these resistant diseases is global warming’s effect on the overall environment, and that is in turn caused by the overburning of fossil fuels.

We need conservation and not deadly wars to try to temporarily keep gas below $2 for Americans when its real worth is far, far higher. It’s the healthy thing to do, anyway you look at it to conserve the use of gas. Healthy for the environment, and healthy for your own personal health and that of your family.

This has got to be the most delusional epoch in the history of mankind. Our energy companies should be nationalized and removed from influencing further the absurd political life of our nation. Yes, and a few of those energy executives already deserve to hang for what they have done to America and the world. Pretending that we do not have an energy crisis when in fact we do, is has set us back from dealing with a crisis that can kill us all quite shortly down the road.

If we don’t run out of the oil to keep the world economy moving, the bacteria will get us as they thrive in our overheated world minus much of its ozone. Many of the indigenous tribes predicted that such poor stewards of nature would eventually destroy themselves, even as they themselves got slaughtered off. It appears to be coming to pass as tribal elders once claimed it would,

Capitalism has become exactly like a societal cancer that is now being fed on gas at $2 a gallon. Don’t celebrate this price. Cry.

Is it Better without a bean than Green?

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The hardcore American nut slogan of 40-50 years ago was “Better dead than Red”. Then they came up with “America, Love It or Leave It”. Dull. But now, the idiot American Right should have as their philosophical slogan, “Better without a bean than Green”!

That’s because their knee jerk support for a totally rapacious capitalism, will lead us into a world without even a tiny bean of anything left worth having. And they the Dittoheads truly do believe that it is Better to be Dead, than Green. Their theory is that Greens are like watermelons, with their concern about the environment only a thin green cover for their evil Red Marxist leanings.

The American Right is clueless about why others oppose capitalism, too. They see the entire Left part of the political spectrum as being equal to the thoughts and actions of Joe Stalin. MLK, Hillary Clinton, Mao, Trotsky, Al Gore, Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, Noam Chomsky, FDR all merge into one for them. They are pinko reds who hate the American way, and care more about owls and jumping mice than their fellow humankind. Global warming cannot be real, any more than the minimum wage should be allowed to exist. Both are socialism. Green is Red, and Red is Green. Simplicity for simpletons!

Let’s face it, the nutcase Right is right! Green is turning Red while many Reds iare now turning Green. It has to be, simply because capitalism destroys the environment. The evidence is now all in, and all pinkos do agree. Capitalism is bad for planetary health.

But Black is Green, too! Black being the color of Anarchism, which is another political ideology quite different than Marxism. And Social Democracy, too, is Green. In America, the Social Democrat is essentially a non European, Democratic Party liberal who wishes for trade unions and social programs to blunt the capitalism they still support, and add in the nationalism that is always the Social Democrat’s core belief. And we certainly cannot forget the religious anti-capitalists, too, whose belief is that socialism is best found through the teachings of Jesus. All these folk are Greens today, even as they stay on merely as dupes of the Red menace side of the political spectrum, at elast to O’Reilly, Pat Robertson, and Murdoch.

There is no way that the world’s ecological problems can even begin to be halted while the world economy remains capitalist. One should ask themselves, is it truly better to be drive toward humanity not having even a bean, than to become non-capitalist Green? Capitalism can yet come up with still more tech, but better tech will not solve any of the real problems. It’s what you do with your ‘tech’ that makes the difference. lol… Get sexy, get Green! Go Red! Better Green than deadhead.

The news

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I got my morning dose of Yahoo already, amazing seeing as how it’s after noon already.
   Senate panel votes to reject Bush war plan
   Olmert calls for Israel president to resign
   Bush shifts to domestic issues with energy pitch
   Experts warn climate change may fan terrorism

The news links above are Congress passed a non binding resolution of non support for the New and Improved stay the course war plan.
OK but they still aren’t on to pulling out, just not the surge. I guess they think baby steps are all they can do.

The President cleverly diverts attention away from his War. The reporter for AP (special correspondent) diverts attention cleverly from the clever and cunning plan to divert our attention from the War. This guy is a spin master from the darkest pits of Hell.

The Israeli Knesset demands that the Israeli president step down.
Not on the charges from the ongoing invasion of Gaza and Lebanon, mind you, but on a personal rape charge. And if I got my Israeli parliamentary structure down correctly, the Israeli president doesn’t have as much power as the Military.

John Kerry, in a big surprise move, decided not to take up the standard he dropped big time in November ’04. I really ain’t interested in hearing his spin on why he dropped the ball then nor why we should mourn for him graciously declining to bear the standard for us in ’08.

And a coalition of British scientists paired with a coalition of British Security Experts re-iterated the apparently not well enough documented idea that massive poverty caused by global warming might lead to an increase in international violence.

Now that I ain’t gonna get snotty about. It needs to be said again and again.

Over the Hubbert Peak into war

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Most Colorado citizens probably think that Hubbert Peak might be a fourteener somewhere, and not the reason our country is at war. Fact is, the US led the rush to overmine the world’s most precious resource which is petroleum, so there actually is an oil shortage now. And certainly both Oily Dick and Dubya the Dummy are well aware of that, even if most liberals seem often not to be.
Mount Hubbert

And this shortage is not a temporary one but is becoming most permanent. A shortage that can only worsen, so off to war they took us, all to grab that precious and declining resource. What does the Hubbert Peak mean? It means for one thing, that the Iraqi War is not Vietnam all over again. Vietnam had no important resources, but was a war for political influence and control of a region. It also means that occupying Iraq is not just a ‘clash of civilizations’.

What it does mean, is that those who have taken America into this war feel that they are fighting for their very lives. Yes, Dick and Dubya are fighting for the continuation of profit-making as they know it, and that is their life. With declining world stocks of oil, that means declining possiblities of keeping oil cheap, and declining standards of life for both them, and for us, because of that. That’s why the Republicans, and most of their Democratic Party friends and enablers, are so very hesitant and reluctant to back up and get out of Iraq. If corporations cannot deliver the goods, even the dumbest of ‘We, the People’ will begin to grow dissatisfied with them our supposed leaders. Osama is not the real terrorist for us, it is the lack of oil that is.

Why do the liberal religious peacenics fetish solely focus on American troops dead? That’s not the main point to the Oilies running the show. Cheap oil is. Heck, just having some oil around is most important to them, and really to us too, even if the oil becomes not so cheap. Dick and Dubya think it can only be gotten continually by war, for conservation is off the books for them. That’s an effort they don’t want to make even though it is completely necessary to do so. No Blood for War, should have an additional line to it. Conservation, not Devastation! It is about much more than just the direct killing, as awful as that might be. This war is to maintain our oily way of life.

Exxon-Mobil might pretend that there is no such thing as Global Warming and a Hubbert’s Peak, but that’s all it is really. Pretense. They are not as stupid as they pretend, and are way ahead of most of American society in thinking about the consequences of running short with their precious resource. They are in serious trouble, and so are we, as supplies have begun to dwindle.

If you are reading this commentary and haven’t figured out yet just what I am talking about, then Google ‘Peak Oil’ or ‘Hubbert’s Peak’ on over at Wikipedia, and do yourself a favor and read about it some. Good luck, and try not to get too depressed. Our lives are going to change, and it won’t be much fun at all.

The next Big Lie

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As the befuddled, overly religious minions of America try to figure it all out about Muslims, terrorism, Satan, evolution, chimps, global warming, Osama, and when Jesus is returning, their next Big Lie is being prepared for them to hunker down with. Condi, Dick, Dubya, and the rest of the gang have got the ships, missiles, and soldiers in place, so they got to get the Big Lie in place, too. What will it be?

It is….
We have to threaten and attack Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, because they are assisting and arming the opposition that is fighting our troops in Iraq.

In reality, our government feels the need to attack the Shia, because they will not go along with the US government plan to steal their oil reserves. Stan Goff (ex US Special Forces officer) discusses this upcoming ‘surge’ in bloodshed where the US will attack the Shia in full force. Petraeus! Is Baghdad Burning?

It’s time to oppose what is just around the corner. What are you waiting for? It’s going to happen, simply because the Democratic Party is not going to effectively oppose Bush’s plan. In fact, the Clinton pair are calling for a ‘surge’ of troops to Afghanistan right now, even as they fail to oppose the main ‘surge’. Instead of withdrawal, the government is planning the new attacks to come.

STOP THE WAR! DEMONSTRATE

The Approaching End of Universal Auto Slum

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America, land of the universal automobile slum, from sea to shining sea. Dick Cheney has our nation desperately fighting to preserve this coarse and rude America, while talking Alice in Wonderland absurdities about supposed ‘democracy installations’, ‘counter-‘terrorism’, and ‘national secuirty’ of the ‘homeland’. The US good life embodied by auto slum America is a lifeless, treeless, community-less slurb, stretching for miles upon miles. But the oil is running out.

Yes, the oil is running out, but just as evolution is denied, global warming is denied, ecological collapse is denied, so too, is the fact that we have over-mined our planet. James Howard Kunstler, in his commentary, The Twilight of Mechanized LumpenLeisure, takes us down our most recently passed motorway on our ride to the future. He has collected for us a series of postcards of the past and present.

Alas, we seem to have an evolutionary future ahead that also is most often denied as being ours. But at least it might well be more tranquil and without the sounds of traffic all around. Are we approaching the end of the universal auto slum? An end to abundant oil?

PFOA & Mermaids’ Tears

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All the talk nowadays is about the threat that terrorism supposedly has on National Security. But reality is that Americans are more likely to be taken down by cancer or heart disease instead. Perhaps, companies like Dupont and 3M actualy pose much greater threats to our personal security than does al quaeda? Cheney would disagree, I am sure, but the evidence is not on his side.

Dupont, especially, is a company that has been engaged most recently in a tobacco industry style campaign of disinformation and cover-up about the dangers of PFOA, an artificial substance that has accumulated in 95% of us Americans. It’s produced by Dupont (and was also by 3M previously) for use in making fabrics and non-stick cookware, amongst other items. We’re talking Teflon and GorTex now. This is big moneymaker for Dupont, and they have been just a s stubborn about the reality that it causes cancer as Exxon-Mobil has been about denying that global warming is a world threat.

The headlines this week get yet worse about capitalist driven, factory production’s effects on life here on earth. It appears, too, that microscopic pieces of plastic are in ocean water in greater and greater concentrations and in the life forms that live in salt water, too. These are called mermaids’ tears. See the BBC article, Plastics Poisoning World’s Seas. Humans are filling up with PFOA, and sea life is collecting just plain old plastics in their bodies. Oh, along with mercury and numberous otehr toxins. I guess polar bears get it all, since they are finding PFOA in them, plus they also eat the fish filled with mermaids’ tears besides. Lesson. Don’t eat polar bear!

Both articles I linked to illustrate that capitalism does not self-regulate its production. To the contrary, capitalist enterprises deliberately produce harmful products that destroy the environment and destroy your health. The corporate management attitude is simply that if the product does not knock you over seconds after it you consumed it, then who cares about the longer term consequences? That can be hidden away from public view forever, or at least for centuries, oops but maybe only decades. But it can be hidden for the longest time, and by then, the consequences to public health have become enormous.

There simply is no effective observation of the dangers that these ‘free enterprises’ routinely put us in. It is if the meth lab next door was subject to no observation, no requirements to cease production, and the operators of it were also to be held in the highest public esteem even as they were cooking up a poisonous vapor for all the neighborhood. In fact, the neighborhood I lived in last before moving here, had both meth labs in the neighborhood, and a film production facility that did its dirty production at night, as vapors were then vented to float through our streets. Could I have called the police to check them out for safety and health? I think not. Our ‘botanical gardens’ there were run by the Benzene producing company that dominated the regional business community. Our big marine aquarium had a display where the enormous tank was filled with miniture oll derricks to explain to us the suppopsed benefits that the offshore oil rigs gave to sea life! The people effected by these criminal enterprises are nobodies, while the rich owners strut around as if they were the communities’ patron saints of benevolence.

The mermaids cry, the fish do die, and meanwhile, us humans keep dying of cancer. What a stupid way of ‘life’. All because we are taught to adore the rich, and to never, ever question them.

Exit 41 on the road to Mumbai via New Hampshire

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So what is the fast food management mindset that has led to Taco Hell having to close 4 restaurants, this week, in response to an E Coli outbreak? Well, take Exit 41 in New Hampshire to find out, but first, let this company’s website load. It takes just a couple of seconds. Exit 41

Yes, Big Dave, your company has gone totally mad since you passed away from an excess of fat. Wendy’s management is now outsourcing skilled labor, lol, to New Hampshire! But I doubt that it will stop here. Why not follow Dell Computers and others, and outsorce to India as well?

“Hi, this is Patel. That will be one Holy Cow square burger and a Mango Lassi. Will that be all?”

Can capitalism get any more efficient at alienating the Hell out of us all? Are you still listening to the.. uh.. music at Exit 41 and watching the little cars drive thru? Kind of captures the Milton Friedman essence of the thing, doesn’t it? And global warming be damned, too! Let’s get them cars moving, shall we? We need to speed up labor, and speed up consumption! Let’s turn people into little programmed consumer machines!

They Don’t Care and the jumping mouse

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Rodent member of endangered ecosystemMighty Mouse or Mighty Myth? asks The Gazette of their readership today and yesterday in quarter page announcements in their paper. “Does the Preble’s Meadow Mouse really exist?” (Or did that evil environmental movement make it all up?)
 
The editorial board over at our loony local rag really is brain dead when it comes to environmental affairs. Just weeks ago they were also running an editorial expressing doubts about whether global warming was real. (Or did the evil environmental movement make the whole thing up?)

The announcement suggesting that it was all “mighty myth” that another wild animal was endangered, was part of the announcement to invite people to a Right Wing think tank presentation at the U. of Colorado-Colorado Springs campus, all designed to push for the virtual annulment of the Endangered Species Act. So I headed over there at noon to show my support for the jumping mouse and Yogi the Bear vs the real estate and construction magnates. Nature vs more crappy development was my message. It’s not just about the jumping mouse. It’s about whether we destroy all nature’s natural habitats or not.

Well, it turns out that my sign saying,
—They don’t care
—Developers just want to pave over nature and
—DAMN THE WILDLIFE!
provoked some interest as I parked myself inside next to some buffet items as the developers broke for lunch.

First, I was berated by some of the overly dressed crowd for having missed the morning presentations by the all Right Wing panel. Actually, they had one lonely environmentalist who had not made it yet from Denver. But how dare I have an opinion about the mouse without hearing all their important commentary?!!! My response was to just shuck it off. I told them I thought the whole thing was about the spotted owl, and I had heard enough about that rare bird already while living in Washington. Jesus, you tell me I came all this way about a mouse?

It turns out that some of the developers took my sign personally. So I had to discuss whether they were evil people or not. And then the two campus cops showed up, and I thought I might get scanned to see if I was a threat to Homeland Security. But Professor Null, jefe of the Right Wing think tank sponsor, said that he would vouch for me, and even offered me lunch. I thanked him, but told him I wasn’t sure whether their food was organic or not. But that I might come in and listen to their accumulation of proof that nature’s wetlands really were no longer necessary to preserve. Full speed ahead!

I only stayed 2 hours. I did get to hear the last panelist, the liberal who could make it from Denver. I also got to shake hands with Craig Manson, Bush’s creep who had formerly been put in charge over “our nation’s critters” to dismantle the Endangered Species Act. He was still working on it as I could see. Nobody quite like him since James Watt had been in charge. He was definitely the big wig invite for sure. I told him that I was sorry I had missed his work in the morning, but that I had read some interviews he had done online, and that “they were quite interesting,” as I politely and sarcastically put it.

One of our CS city councilman recognized me from the city council picnics we sometimes do together. We had a nice cheerful talk about torture, in which he told me that he believed that it did not exist. Then, ala Cheney, he told me that he was for it, except it did not exist! lol…. These White Men speak with forked tongue. He told me that he had family in the military, so that was why he had forked tongue. I will withhold his identity in order to protect the guilty.

I did have a few who came up and whispered that they were in agreement with my sign. But they kind of looked worried that they might get fired for fraternizing if done too openly. So was I too hard on the hard working real estate developers, as some of them had told me? “We’re not all bad.” Well, look at this list of the folk on the board of the Right Wing think tank co-sponsor of this event with The Gazette. Scroll down and check out the many developer folk at The Center for the Study of Government and the Individual

The virtual world of the global marketplace

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Wow. We’ve been trying for several years, a group of friends and I, to get our local public radio station KRCC to add Democracy Now to their news lineup. Nope, we’re told. Nope. Too one-sided.
 
And then they add Marketplace, a daily homage to the stockmarket.

We tried call-in campaigns, petition drives, we’ve even had Amy Goodman come speak on the campus twice and she filled the venues with audiences of mostly KRCC listeners.

KRCC was not disposed, no space available on the lineup, nope, sorry, no. And the dealings have not been above board. Listeners calling in were not told that they were among a multitude. Mention of the petition efforts, or the speaking engagements, was not made on the air. It’s been such an uphill battle, in this ultra conservative city, that petitioners meet people who’d signed already in years past, who ask “what, didn’t that happen already?” They’re no longer even tuning in anymore to KRCC to know.

I check in on KRCC every once in a while, and this morning at 91.5 on the FM dial, what do I hear? Smack in the middle of morning drive-time, a new show. Marketplace or something. Business Talk. As if the news is not already dominated by corporate press releases and corporate mouthpieces trying to direct stock market consumer confidence! And it was atrocious!

Regular NPR news itself is comprised of stories underwritten and packaged by corporate interests. Listen to any one of them and ask yourself, who wants me to know this? Chances are it’s a military contractor, or someone bidding on a water project, or an oil company hoping to ease your anxiety about Global Warming, or a chemical conglomerate wanting to impress you with the scope of human progress. A whole host of pharmaceutical underwriters give NPR reason not dwell on the 25 millions, entire generations, of Africans dying of aids.

The regular NPR stories are broadcast to give you a sense of the bloodless global economy. I guess the irregular work is done by shows like Marketplace, to pretend to report to stockholders and investors in direct terms.

You very likely do not have stock, but they’re talking to you. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was not for the rich and famous to watch. You can’t afford what they’re showing you, but you enjoy it vicariously, and most important your confidence is boosted by the belief that it’s there should you ever overcome your bills, or win the lottery.

National Public Media’s MARKETPLACE. Wow! Corporate press releases designed to stimulate stock values, and commentary designed to give the stimulation a simulation of being in the investor’s interest.

In five minutes I heard about a $40 million mansion for sale on Rhode Island, a rare occurrence apparently, with a 100k-bottle wine collection; to an airline that says it can’t make a competitive bid without concessions from its union; to the US car industry being criticized for having a $24 disadvantage versus Japanese cars, based on poor pricing strategy (whatever that is, $24 short maybe?) and labor problems.

Add to that, amiable chit-chat about the Dow in terms of “nearly” and “a little bit” with specialist experts who don’t want to commit to any opinion really of whether up means down or vice is versa or verse visa.

Gay marriage

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Lovely coupleWho says gays and lesbians can’t marry? Of course they can marry. They absolutely can. They simply have to marry EACH OTHER! C’mon gay men, admit it, a large athletic woman around the house would come in DAMN HANDY! Lawn mowing, house painting, lightbulb changing…not to mention protection from would-be muggers. And you dykes. Fashion advice? Culinary prowess? Feng Shui? Sounds brilliant to me!

Things in the boudoir won’t be that thrilling you say? Oh, grow UP! Even straight couples get bored after a year or two. Is sexual incompatibility enough reason to deep six an otherwise beautiful union? I think not.

Surely I jest. Take heart! You’ve made some headway here. A majority of the American public supports the idea of legal civil unions for gay and lesbian pairs. Civil unions would give you many of the rights and responsibilities associated with traditional marriage. The sticking point seems to be the idea of full-fledged “marriage.”

Once again, falling back on my handy Catholic upbringing, I’ll shed a bit of light on this. Marriage is considered by many to have spiritual significance in addition to its legal ramifications. To most it is a sacrament which, in Latin, means “something holy.” It is a visible sign, in the form of a religious ceremony, of invisible grace–God’s protection and favor. Christians, most notably Roman Catholics, believe that all seven sacraments were instituted by Jesus in the New Testament.

True or not, this explains why, according to a recent poll, 54% of Americans favor gay civil unions while only 35% support gay marriage. Most Christians, and fully 84% of Americans identify themselves as Christian while 60% identify as “committed Christian” (the scarier ones) are not going to be easily convinced, if they can EVER be convinced, that God is prepared to confer his special favor on a homosexual union. They are okay if the state confers a little of ITS protection and favor…but God Almighty? NO WAY.

So I’m sorry, gays and lesbians, I know that you would love to feel that God approves of your lifestyle…but asking me to give you a legal/spiritual rite of passage is actually asking for MY approval. There are quite a few who, like me, don’t feel comfortable speaking for God. So please don’t ask us what he thinks. Take it up with him privately. If he’s the God that I think he is, you’ve got nothing to worry about.

Now, in the spirit of cooperation, I have something to ask of you too. Would you please STOP TALKING about gay marriage already! Especially in an election year. You are scaring people right into the big flabby bosom of the GOP by allowing them to portray the Democratic party as the gay marriage party! The anti-family values party! You’re taking the focus off of the war in Iraq, off poverty, off education, race relations, welfare reform, healthcare, global warming…the crazy cowboy in the White House. Let me tell you, the Republicans are lovin’ you for it! So please please please take civil unions for the time being and shut the hell up.

Shit hits fan writ large

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It’s a hot summer this year, isn’t it? Record-breaking temperatures on this continent and others. Record number of wild fires. Is this global warming? Can’t blame it on an isolated El Nino this time.

Polar ice is melting and finally we’re hearing about it. Perma-frost, glaciers, melting all. Global warming is real isn’t it? No shit Sherlock!

It’s time that you figured it out, it’s time for the politicians and corporate think-tank mouthpieces to admit they’ve been lying about it, and it’s especially time for idiots like you to quit listening to the liars. Lock them away. They’ve been jeopardizing everyone’s lives. And fess up, you’ve been an idiot.

Tree rings for skeptics of science

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dead treeWhenever there is talk about the age of mankind, or the solar system, or the universe, a friend of mine delights in adding, “IN THEORY.” If the calculations denote an earthly past beyond the scale of a Creationist’s 7,000 year model, my friend considers it theoretical.

Someone might be addressing dinosaurs or geology or the Big Bang, speaking in terms of MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO, and my friend will chime “in theory!”

She’ll turn to me and justify her footnote by asking “how do they know?”

In truth, I don’t know. I don’t understand carbon dating or astronomy or quantum physics. I don’t disbelieve, I just can’t explain. I give her argument the credit of the electron-vs.-electron-microscope paradox. How can we know what an electron looks like if we can only see it with an electron microscope, which we invented with the anticipation of knowing how to look at an electron? Something like that. Yes, scientists tend to get the results they anticipate.

We attended Al Gore’s AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH the other day, about Global Warming, and researchers were charting climate changes by analyzing core samples taken from polar ice. We are able to sample ice which dates back 800,000 years apparently.

“In theory” my companion added.

“Apparently” I concurred, having no idea how ice was dated/carbon-dated.

Later in the program a scientist likened the layers of ice to the rings of a tree trunk. You can see the seasons of passing years in the grain of the wood. You can see when there might have been a forest fire, or years when the weather might have been different.

Individual layers of ice in the core samples represented similar changes in the environment. The composition of the ice trapped whatever mixture of gases comprised each year’s atmosphere. You can see each year’s climate as layers of ice formed over the last.

Then I remembered visiting Muir Woods in California and marveling at a cross-section of a tree trunk upon which scholars had marked various milestones in history. Columbus, the Battle of Hastings, the year 0 A.D., et al. Some living Grand Sequoias are as old as 3,000 years.

I can understand tree rings, and I can understand ice layers. It’s science we can see with our own eyes. Now I know where I can see 800,000 years of it. If my Christian friend wants to presuppose that God created the polar ice caps with 793,000 years of climate history already embedded in the ice, fair enough. But allow scientists the latitude to seek the lessons the Earth might have to teach us from its most distant “past.” Certainly God intended us to perceive it that way.

2.
The crux of this issue is of course the denial of global warming. There’s a strange correlation between those who refute man’s influence on the climate, and religion, excuse me, anti-science. If they’re end-timer Christians who are really just rooting for the end of the world, let them admit it and step out of the way. If they’re average Christians with a sane sense of responsibility to their fellow beings, they are being misled by preachers who teach them to doubt scientific research.

living treeScience begat technology begat industry (begat pollution and population) which begat this mess. Human knowledge may be a Pandora’s Box, but we are inside the box ourselves, not at its lid. We have to use scientific tools to deliver us from global catastrophe. No one is saying worship it, just listen to it.

Impeachment prospects

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click here for more pictures of the COS Impeachment Teach-inThe problem with impeachment is that Republicans control the houses which possess the power to initiate articles of impeachment. There are a number of offenses for which Bush could be run out of office, there are 4 or 17 listed in various initiatives. Trouble is, what offense will be bad enough to alarm senators and congressmen?

When a president once got caught having sex with an intern, that upset a bunch of Republicans. Before that it was the bugging of the Democratic Party Headquarters. This president has admitted to conducting illegal wiretaps, starting a war without approval from Congress or the U.N., authorizing torture, and showing an unconstitutional disregard for the separation of power. Without raising the ire of his fellow politicians. What in heaven’s name does he have to do to upset them?

What if the president was caught sharing the Lincoln Bedroom with male-escort pretend-reporter Jeffrey Gannon-Guckert during the bald fellow’s numerous over-night White House visits, would that be objectionable?

What if the vice-president got drunk and shot a fellow Republican lawyer in the face, out of season, and without a license? Would that raise eyebrows?

Killing gobs of Iraqis, sanctioning the bombing of Lebanon, standing in the way of medical progress, denying global warming, spending most of his time on vacation, killing the US economy, what is it going to take?