Comment on Brace Yourself: This Is the Tip of the Iceberg for Oil-Induced Enviro Catastrophes

Yet the Obama administration is openly supporting not an outright ban on offshore drilling, but Kerry and Leiberman's weak-kneed concessions. Their bill does include provisions that allow states to ban operations within 75 miles of their coastlines, as well as a sweetener that allows them to siphon off larger revenue from those operations. Brace Yourself: This Is the Tip of the Iceberg for Oil-Induced Enviro Catastrophes, Scott Thill, Alternet.org

So, O.K., I turn on my TeeVee this morning and there's New York US Senator Chuck Schumer, and usually I put him in the provisional "good guy" column, saying something like, "We are not going to get a "clean" energy bill unless we have offshore drilling."

Schumer was immediately followed by recombinant DNA human-turtle mutant Mitch McConnell saying, "If we don't have offshore drilling we'll have fourteen dollar a gallon gasoline!!!" Of course my personal reaction was, "What's wrong with that."

Next I saw some bloated Louisiana, rednecked commercial fisherman pitching a bitch about how me makes more in one day of fishing than BP paid him for three days of cleaning oil off the Gulf! Oh, poor baby.

And what fuel do you suppose that poor lard-assed Louisiana, rednecked commercial fisherman uses to power his boat to go to the fishing grounds to make more in one day of good fishing than BP pays in three days of cleaning up the area of his livelihood? I'd say diesel fuel refined from petroleum, wouldn't you.

And I'll bet you even money that when that same bloated, rednecked Louisiana fisherman sets down to slam down a few watery Bud Lights with his buddies, he'll start bitching how big gub'munt ain't doin' enuff for 'em down here. Course he and they all hate big gub'munt 'cause big gub'munt dictates to 'em what they can catch. Then he'll start moaning how the price of diesel fuel's going up because of this oil spill; how it'll cut into his profits and he jes' cain't go on like that. And all his buddies will shout their assent.

Then some other barroom sage will interject, "Mubbe that offshore drilling ain't so bad. It brings in a lotta jobs fer young folk an' them oil rigs are good fer fishin'." And our lard-assed, rednecked protagonist and all his buddies will nod in agreement.

From the corner of the bar comes a voice saying he heard tell that that Nancy Peelosee and her California tree-huggin' pals wanna stop offshore oil drillin' altogether and that'll spell the end of commercial fishin' in Louisiana! And the bar will erupt in shouts of acclamation. Why thanks to them tree huggers the gub'munt tells us fishermen what we can catch and when we can catch it, shouts another. And a round of anti-government grumbling cascades round the bar.

And so we Americans are caught in a web of our own making. We say but we don't do. We bitch but nothing changes. The ideologically pure left's wishing to improve things for what it sees as the better feeds right into the lunatic right's paranoia about loosing its pathetic jobs and ways of life.
And that paranoia is kept at a fever pitch by constant feedback from right wing talk radio and FauxNews.

Two things are clear, we will never see any significant change in this country until somebody dies. Perhaps very many somebodies.

Secondly the forces of reaction have done a better job in studing and understanding the psychology of the working middle class, especially "white" working middle class, than its counterparts on the ideologically pure left. While the ideologically pure left says it stands for the interests of working men and women, they too often look at their leftist saviors as creatures from another planet.

Comment on Jim Hightower Op-ed Posted on Alternet.org

Jim Hightowner has a spot-on op-ed posted at Alternet.org titled The Right-Wing Loons Should Stop Blaming "God" for the Oil Spill

Hightowner's right, gawd didn't cause the BP Gulf oil spill, human avarice and cupidity did. Not only on the side of the oil company executives and their major shareholders but on the side of politicians for campaign contributions and average Americans hungry for cheap shrimp and fish and even cheaper gasoline.

And sorry, even though this oil spill will damage an already endangered eco-system, I can not feel too much sympathy for the shrimp and fishing boat owners and operators, the charter fishing and excursion boat captains. What do you think they used to fuel the engines of their boats so they can shrimp, fish? Their farts?

In the last presidential election these assholes voted for cheap oil. They voted for "drill, baby, drill!" Look at any detailed map of the '08 election. Why in St. Bernard Parish, LA, directly in the path of the oil slick, 71% of the eligible voters cast their ballot for the McCain-Palin ticket and "drill here, drill now!" And I will wager that the older voters of St Bernard Parish overwhelmingly cast their ballots in 1980 for Ronald Reagan, apple pie and SUVs.

Here's how fucking brilliant the American people are:

Despite the spill, 60 percent say they support allowing for more drilling off U.S. coasts, and 53 percent believe that offshore drilling’s potential economic benefits outweigh its potential harm to the environment.

The public is split on the federal government’s response to the spill: 45 percent say it has not done enough, while 43 percent say it has done enough. Poll: Despite spill, support for oil drilling high, MSNBC.com

I was talking about this to a buddy of mine last night. I was complimenting him on his comments to an NPR talk show. But when I launched into my rant about the dumbasses on the Gulf coast who vote for cheap oil, guns, gawd and the right to be as stupid as they can to be, he said, oh, no, no, no. Those poor dumb bastards are "victims," he said, of slick Madison Avenue advertising. They, and the vast majority of Americans, are conned, hoodwinked, bamboozled by a never ending stream of propaganda telling to buy SUVs and big block V8 pick ups.

True enough. But, I countered, you don't have to pay attention to the propaganda. And we've always had the option of fuel efficient vehicles and voting for eco-friendly politicians. But we Americans never took those options. We never learned a thing from the Exxon Valdez or the OPEC oil embargoes of the 1970s. I reminded him of a late mutual friend who, dedicated to the outdoors and the ecology as he was, never in his short life owned a fuel efficient automobile; the guy always owned full-sized vans, SUVs and pick up trucks. Dumbass Americans have gotten used to $3 a gallon gas so what the fuck?

I guess B.F. Skinner is right and Noam Chomsky is wrong, we Americans are little more than pigeons in one of Skinner's electrified boxes dancing to the Investor Class's tune every time they flip the switch.

So next in this oil spill saga the commercial shrimp and fishing boat owner-operators, the charter fishing and excursion boat captains and the owners of casinos and resorts all along the Gulf Coast will start whining and crying that the government isn't doing enough for them. Conveniently they make themselves victims of their own stupidity and want the rest of the country to feel so sorry for them and bail their asses out.

Even the CEOs being grilled in Congress right now are playing the victim: "Oh, fuck, it ain't BP's fault this thing blew up it's Transocean's;" "No it's not Transocean's fault, it's Halliburton;" "Hey, guys, don't get on Halliburton's case, it's BP's fault."

But watch this Fall the dumbasses who are getting drenched in crude will turn around and vote for some sleazy used car salesman of a Republican who will sell them out to the corporations at the drop of a dime. Why? Because the "Lie"-brules are gonna take their guns, kill babies, spit on the American flag and socialize medicine!

Meanwhile the Greens, Socialist Workers and libertarians will run around telling everyone and everything that they are not in big business's pocket and not do a fucking thing as usual. They would rather whine how the system is stacked against third, forth and fifth parties; even enough in clean money, clean election states, where they have no excuses and should be making in-roads, they are not doing anything either!

Face it people, we are screwed and as the late Walt Kelly put the in the mouth of his swamp sage Pogo Possum, We has met the enemy, and he is us!

Calling Doctor Keynes

O.K., we can piss and moan all we want about how both political parties are in corporate America's hip-pocket and they are. And we can stomp up and down, thump our chests and yell we're not going to vote or we're going to vote Green, libertarian or socialist.

And it won't do a bit of good.

Why? Because for the last sixty years or so the "free market" school of economic thought has been in the ascendancy and it doesn't look as if it is about to be totally discredited at any time in the immediate future. Oh, sure we've just had this "great recession," but the coordinator class fucks who got hurt by it the least are already seeing an up-tick in their stock portfolios so no biggie. Right? Newsweek magazine says "we're back" so it must be true.

And the Investor class bastards who were the root cause of the "great recession of 2008" are reaping even greater financial rewards than their coordinator class employees, life is good again.

So what if a bunch of unwashed, Jesus-loving working class schnooks are unemployed? Keeps the cost of labor down. And through years of clever and not-so-subtle propaganda the dumb fucks of the laboring middle classes are at each other's throats and in the mood to burn down Washington, D.C. Life is great for the Investor class and its coordinator class lapdogs. They are after all modern America's philosopher-kings.

And as all good philosopher-kings they have concocted a noble lie that a "free market" economy is something akin to a force of nature. To the four forces that hold the universe together, gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, add the "free market." As I interpret this noble lie, the "free market" economy works independent of human control much like gravity say. Its effects can be observed and quantified but human intervention to change the course and behavior of the "free market" are doomed to failure. The best way for mere humans to interact with the "free market" is to let it work its magic with as little human intervention as possible.

At least that's what these fuckers tell us. They know its bullshit. They know that the economy does not work like a gigantic farmers' market. They know that their profits go up when competition--that catch phrase of the capitalist catechism which if we groundlings chant it enough will produce low, low prices-- is stifled.

And it has come to pass, as blowback from the Cold War, that our university schools of business are now mere seminars for the ordination of priests to the "free market." Look at recent US Treasury Secretaries from the current Tim Geithner and Bush's Hank "Wall Street Bailout" Paulson to Nixon-Fords' William Simon whose quotation, "There is only one social system that reflects the sovereignty of the individual: the free-market, or capitalist, system[,]" could have come from the pen of Ayn Rand.

America's middle classes are just fucked until we can demystify and demythologize the "free market" and its high priesthood.

Unfortunately the any ideas of an alternative to the "free market" from the ideologically pure left comes down from a gaggle of tenured university fine arts and language professors, trust fund babies, the true leisure class of the Investor class, and a semi-repentant Reagan-era Assistant-Treasury Secretary, himself the architect of "Reagan-omics!" For the most part it is warmed over sophomore year "Radical Students Brigade" Marxism, sans dictatorship of the proletariat.

The tea bagger far right is even more dismal as it is stupid in calling for even fewer federal regulations over corporate power then is already the case.

Look, I have no problem with capitalism if it is kept small and manageable. Nor do I have any problem with aspects of socialist economic principals operating in industries and services which effect the lives of the vast majority of the public, i.e. the electric grid, medicine, education, basic transportation and communications. What I do have a problem with is the "free market" ruling our lives as if it were religion. Economies are neither forces of nature or divinely inspired. They are the most human of inventions after religion itself.

We need to steer a middle course between the Scylla of the marshmallow-Marxism of the ideologically pure left and the wild "free market" Charybdis of the Randian tea bagger right.

Posted this at Alternet.org

While money is the primary influence on the conduct of both major parties I have come up with a shorthand definition to distinguish between them: Democrats are systems managers, Republican used car salesmen.

The Coakley-Brown match up in Massachusetts, even though both candidates are attorneys, illustrates this nicely.

Scott Brown is running, as nearly every Republican has since 1980, as a Washington, D.C. outsider and champion of smaller government, i.e. cut welfare for the poor and cut taxes for the rich. Never mind that as a lieutenant-colonel in the Massachusetts Nation Guard Brown's sucked off Uncle Sam's tit for thirty years, knowing, in this day and age of the All Volunteer Force our soldiers and Marines and National Guardsmen are sacrosanct heroes whose asses the rest of us must kiss with great regularity, I'll get some flack for even entertaining this thought.

And even though Brown maintains a law practice focusing on divorce and adoptions, for most of his adult life, when he wasn't collecting a US Treasury check for one-weekend a month and three weeks a year with the Guard, he has been since 1992 a professional politician. Yet he sells himself as some one untainted by big money politics. Absolute bullshit which the teabaggers are eating up with gusto as they have since 1980. Some people never get it.

Coakley, on the other hand, is a long time law-and-order Democrat, a prosecutor since 1982. She's the kind of competent systems manager, i.e. coordinator, the establishment Democratic Party elders love so much these days. Intelligent, bland and a good administrator, Coakley is the kind of politician who would be good at running a state or federal agency, as she does in her capacity as Massachusetts Attorney General.

So what this election boils down to is, colorless though competent jurist versus a huckster, a lawyer-huckster at that.

So when some one tells you there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two major political parties, you can say there is: Democrats are systems managers, Republicans used car salesmen. One party, the Democrats, is content to competently manage the status quo. The other, the Republicans, sees the status quo as a means to an end for self-aggrandizement and enrichment at their teabagger partisans' expense for the benefit of their major political campaign donors.
Alternet.org

Paul Craig Roberts, even when he's right he screws it up

Interesting rant by the "father of Reagonomics" Paul Craig Roberts:
Obama is Israel’s puppet

First a sample of Roberts' rant with which I agree:

Obama also found out that he cannot change anything else, either, if he ever intended to do so.

The military/security lobby has war and a domestic police state on its agenda, and a mere American president can’t do anything about it.

The war and insurance lobbies rattled their campaign contribution pocketbooks and quickly convinced Congress and the White House that the real purpose of the health care bill is to save money by cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits, thereby “getting entitlements under control.”

“Entitlements” is a right-wing word used to cast aspersion on the few things that the government did, in the distant past, for citizens. Social Security and Medicare, for example, are denigrated as “entitlements.” The right wing goes on endlessly about Social Security and Medicare as if they were welfare giveaways to shiftless people who refuse to look after themselves, whereas in actual fact citizens are vastly overcharged for the meager benefits with a 15.30% tax on their wages and salaries.

Indeed, for decades now the federal government has been funding its wars and military budgets with the surplus revenues collected by the Social Security tax on labor.

The real entitlements are never mentioned. The “defense” budget is an entitlement for the military/security complex about which President Eisenhower warned us 50 years ago. A person has to be crazy to believe that the United States, “the world’s only superpower,” protected by oceans on its East and West and by Canada and Mexico on its North and South, needs a “defense” budget larger than the military spending of the rest of the world combined.

The military budget is nothing but an entitlement for the military/security complex. To hide this fact, the entitlement is disguised as protection against “enemies” and passed through the Pentagon.

O.K. pretty fair assessment there. Yet Roberts fumbles at the endzone.

The United States no longer commands the respect it enjoyed under President Ronald Reagan or President George Herbert Walker Bush. World polls show that the US and its puppet master are regarded as the two greatest threats to peace. Washington and Israel outrank on the most dangerous list the crazy regime in North Korea.

I may be wrong, but I do believe (and, yes, I know belief with few facts is dangerous) the United States' slide into world infamy had its genesis in the Reagan White House.

Jonathan Narcisse, Democrat. Since when?

Ready for a "WTF???" moment?

Des Moines Democrat says “someone” should run against Culver

Yeah, well, that's not too surprising in itself seeing how Chet has alienated the coalition that got him elected. The surprising thing is the "Democrat" doing the "saying."

On Monday, Jonathan Narcisse told The Des Moines Register that Culver has been a “reckless and irresponsible” governor and “any Democrat who loves the state must call on someone to run against Culver.”
RadioIowa.com

Imagine that, Jonathan Narcisse a Democrat. I think Narcisse is a Democrat in the mold of Joe Lieberman. However, Narcisse's open-letter to Doug Vander Plaats is insightful and correct, but a broken clock is right twice a day.

Actually, from the overall tenor of Narcisse's missive to Vander Plaats and he's past record I think it's safe to say he is working for Terry Bransted's election next year.

Afghanistan is not Vietnam

Let us be very clear: Afghanistan is not Vietnam.

Aside from the obvious geographical and climatic and ethnic differences our Afghan foe, the Taliban, does not enjoy of support and aid of powerful and nuclear armed allies as did North Vietnam in the Soviet Union and China. This is assuming, of course, that the government of our ally Pakistan, Afghanistan's next door neighbor to the east, does not fall the influence of religious fundamentalists, then Katy bar the door.

And, in light of Afghan theater NATO commander US Army General Stanley McChrystal's call for more "boots on the ground" or all is lost, we must keep in mind that most generals have what I call "McClellan's disease." For like the U.S. Civil War's most magnificently incompetent field commander, George B. McClellan, regardless the true size of the enemy arraigned before them our generals will always say they never have enough troops to complete the "job."

Yet to my way of thinking, the biggest difference between the current Afghan conflict and the Vietnam war is in the composition of the US army and Marine Corps this is, after all, an all volunteer force.

In an Associated Press news story on the ninth anniversary of the al Qaida attacks on the United States, reporter Heidi Vogt writes:

Many of the troops now fighting here were high school students at the time. Some saw the attacks on TV during class, and vowed to sign up when they were old enough.

Army Sgt. Joshua Applegate of Springfield, Mississippi, was in high school when the planes hit the towers, and enlisted two years later, though he said he had wanted to do it right away.

"I like my country too much not to," said Applegate, who arrived in Afghanistan in April

Many troops called Friday's anniversary a galvanizing event, and said marking the day reminds them that the U.S. mission here is important.

"It's still one of the reasons why we're here. Sept. 11 is part of it. For those of us who see the repercussions of fighting, it's still there every day," said Air Force Capt. Christopher Dupuis, 26, of Lacey, Washington.

"I feel that a lot of people have forgotten. I would have them replay the video from that day," said Air Force Technical Sgt. Shawn Merchant, 33, of Ellsworth, Maine.

"It became what Pearl Harbor was in World War II: Now we step up," Merchant said.

I am afraid that even though we here safe and secure in the United States desire a speedy withdrawal of US forces from a seemingly unwinnable situation in Afghanistan, there may be little support for a stateside peace initiative among the troops over there. Unlike the conscripted army and to a lesser extent Marine Corps in Vietnam, this is an all volunteer force. And while war may not be healthy for children and other living things is it positively wonderful for the career militarist. As a Vietnam era Marine Corps vet friend of mine relates, "My sergeant said, 'Boys when this war's over you better tattoo those strips on your shoulder. That rating's not going anywhere until Washington gets us into another one.'"

For the career militarist combat is the quickest route to promotion and in the AVF promotion means more than advancement in rank and medals. Not asking questions and following orders is the surest path of advancement in the AVF. As the late Col. David Hackworth observed:"Volunteers tend to go with the flow and seldom blow the whistle on military stupidity, flawed tactics and self-serving leadership. And draftees don't hesitate to make waves and tell the truth."

Quite frankly, the conduct of whatever one chooses to call the situation in Afghanistan it is clearly out of the control of the civilian leadership in the United States. The Democratic Congress at this time may say it opposes more troops for the Afghan theater and the president may demure but General McChrystal will in the end prove persuasive. Meekly, and under cover of darkness, the general's request for more troops will be approved.

The Frankenstein's monster which the late neoclassical economist and "free market-Jesus" Milton J. Freidman created at the behest of the crafty Richard M. Nixon, who out manoeuvred and manipulated the effete suburban, coordinator class anti-Vietnam war activists at every turn, is clearly in the driver's seat in Afghanistan. And we, the American people, had better "click it, or ticket it!" for we are along for a very bumpy ride.

Of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., asshole cops and Al Sharpton

Geezus, read this:

BOSTON — Supporters of a prominent Harvard University black scholar who was arrested at his own home by police responding to a report of a break-in say he is the victim of racial profiling.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. had forced his way through the front door of his home because it was jammed, his lawyer said Monday.

Cambridge police say they responded to the well-maintained two-story home near campus after a woman reported seeing "two black males with backpacks on the porch," with one "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry."

The woman, Lucia Whalen, is the circulation and fundraising manager at Harvard Magazine, a news and alumni magazine affiliated with the school. The magazine's offices are down the street from Gates' home.
MELISSA TRUJILLO (AP)

Here we have a case of racial profiling, but not by the police. The racial profiler in this instance was the woman who called police after seeing two black men with backpacks...yaddy-yaddy-yaddah, Lucia Whalen. Ms Whalen is white. Liberal hypocrisy rears its ugly head in what the local wing nut wags refer to as "The People's Republic of Cambridge." The bitch owes Mr. Gates a very large apology...and then some.

But what about the cop, Sargeant James Crowley of the Cambridge, MA police? Is he guilty of racial profiling?

Technically, I don't think so.

But what I do think Sgt. James Crowley is guilty of is being an asshole cop. And by asshole cop, the vast majority, I mean a guy, usually, who just because he wears a black uniform, carries a sidearm, mace, maybe a taser and whatnot thinks he's king of the world. You, guilty or not, are his serf in that instant and will obey all his commands whether they seem reasonable or not from your perceptive.

Now real criminals don't have any trouble understanding this relationship. But we law abiding citizens do. According to The New York Times:

According to his lawyer, Professor Gates told the sergeant that he lived there and showed his Massachusetts driver’s license and his Harvard identification card, but Sergeant Crowley still did not seem to believe that Professor Gates lived in the home, a few blocks from Harvard Square. At that point, his lawyer said, Professor Gates grew frustrated and asked for the officer’s name and badge number.

Professor Gates followed him outside, the report said, and yelled at him despite the sergeant’s warning “that he was becoming disorderly.” Sergeant Crowley then arrested and handcuffed him. Professor Gates was held at police headquarters for hours before being released on his recognizance.

Now here's where I say, "What the fuck! Did you really have to arrest the guy, Sgt. Crowley?"

No, Crowley didn't.

In fact: (CNN) -- A prosecutor is dropping a charge against prominent Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. after Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the city's police department recommended that the matter not be pursued.

So cooler heads prevailed but not after the Cambridge, MA police department made itself look like a bunch of Southern nedneck sheriffs and until Al Shapton:

called Gates' arrest "an outrage of no small implication."

"I have heard of driving while black and even shopping while black, but now even going to your own home while black is a new low in police community affairs," said Sharpton, who is vowing to attend Gates' Aug. 26 arraignment.
NyDailyNews.com

Al Shapton is the last guy Professor Gates needs in his corner. Whenever this fried, dyed and laid to the side clown make the scene, the right wing bloviators lick their chops in hopes he'll say something they can work into their "pity the poor, privileged white guy" meme. So thankfully, no arraignment, no soapbox for Al Sharpton to pontificate on. And no "white" backlash.

I don't blame Professor Gates for being pissed. After all the guy gets home from a trip to China, he's probably tired after a long flight, which I know makes me cranky, and he can't get into his house. The next thing he knows some asshole of a cop is on his porch hassling him.

I'd be pissed too and I'd probably react just like Professor Gates.

And from a guy like Professor Gates' prospective, an African American scholar whose major works deal with racism in America, he will naturally react to perceived racism.

I see nothing but an asshole cop.

If this country had fewer asshole cops there would be fewer incidents like Professor Gates'.

Et tu, Tom?

As you can tell from the post below I am not a fan of "cap-and-trade." Yet however weak it may be for cleaning up carbon pollution, and strong for lining the pockets of the Wall Streets assholes who fuck up this "free market economy" on a regular basis and get away with it, it may be better than doing nothing.

Well don't tell that to our good U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, liberal hypocrite when it comes to environmental issues. Here's what the late-Paul Wellstone's bestest buddy said of the "cap-and-trade" bill crawling out of the U.S. House:"The fact is the House bill, I think, does disproportionately hurt some of our Midwestern states, and we're going to have to get that rectified in the Senate[.]"

In other words my "liberal" Democratic U.S. Senator is standing in the schoolhouse door to protect one of the major air polluters in the country, MidAmerican Holdings, parent company of my utility company MidAmerican Energy,q.v. Des Moines Register, June 14, 2009.

In a news story by Thomas Beaumont in this morning's edition of The Des Moines Register:

Sens. Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley both have senior roles on committees related to energy policy, and they both say the House-passed bill unfairly penalizes Midwestern utilities and faces long odds in the Senate.

That hasn't stopped MidAmerican Energy Co. from conducting an ad campaign criticizing Iowa Democrats' support for the bill in the House. The utility says the bill would require it to raise rates in order to comply with provisions aimed at lowering carbon emissions.

U.S. Reps. Leonard Boswell, Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack say they backed the bill despite reservations because they were happy with changes that helped farmers and rural electric co-operatives. Boswell and Braley described MidAmerican's ads, in print and on the air, as misleading and intended to justify a rate increase.

Well, jesus christ, Blue Dog Boswell and Braley just may be on to something. And why would this "investor owned"--Omaha-based billionaire Warren Buffett being the most major investor--utility company and polluter of Iowa skies seek a rate increase? Back to Beaumont's news story:

The bill would require utilities to obtain government allowances for the amount of heat-trapping carbon they emit. The number of allowances granted would be reduced over time, to compel power companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Half of these carbon credits would be awarded based on a company's emissions, and the other half would be awarded based on its annual sales.

Some large companies such as Seattle City Light, which provide emissions-free electricity to millions of customers, would be allowed more credits than they need, according to the formula.

MidAmerican, which operates mainly coal-fired power plants, would need to buy credits on a regulated market. The utility, the state's largest electricity provider, had fewer than 550,000 residential customers in Iowa last year.

In other words, MidAmerican will be a big loser in the "cap-and-trade" shell game. Warren's good investment doesn't look so good now. I mean he's in the business of making money from making money and if MidAmerican has to actually use some of its capital to invest in clean(er) electricity generation the value of its stock may take a temporary nose dive. We can't have that, can we? That must be why the "obsessively, relentlessly at your service" MidAmerican has been asking its customers to kick in a buck or ten for renewable energy for the past five years or so.

Well, fuck Warren Buffett and the Dairy Queen he rode in on.

And the usually reliable Beaumont either sallowed MidAmerican's, "we're just a li'l, ol' ma and pa Iowa utility company" bullshit or he was too lazy to "Google" MidAmerican Energy Holdings. Hell, the figure Beaumont quotes "...the state's largest electricity provider, had fewer than 550,000 residential customers in Iowa last year[,]" seems suspiciously low.

Oddly enough, while the Des Moines-based company keeps mum about the real number of its Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois customers, it has no problem telling anyone with enough dough to buy a big block of its holding company stock that subsidiaries PacifiCorp has 1.7 million customers in Oregon, California, Washington, Utah and Idaho, or that CE Electric UK is ...responsible for delivering electricity to over 3.8 million properties across the North East of England, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire[.]

Yet according to "liberal" Democrat Tom Harkin, poor li'l MidAmerican Energy is just a struggling li'l ol' Iowa utility that can't meet its obligations under the terribly flawed and too-little-too-late Waxman-Markey Climate and Energy Bill.

Karl Rove on Ivy League grads

Geezush, I'm lossin' it.

I can't believe I defended Mike Huckabee in response to an op-ed posted at BuzzFlash.com by one Martha Rosenberg. I wrote:

Regardless of what you think about hunting and hunters, whenever I read an ill-informed, ignorant anti-hunting screed, such as this, I am reminded of an illfated experiment carried out in the New Jersey Pine Barrens in the 1950s or 60s.

What I remember is reading an article in Natural History Magazine or perhaps in what was then The Iowa Conservationist magazine years ago, before the Internet, of the State of New Jersey's effort to increase the deer population after World War II. The article said that the New Jersey fish and game department fenced off a sizable portion of the Pine Barrens and left it untouched for ten years.

When agents and scientists of the New Jersey fish and game department returned to the fenced-off area of the Barrens they found anything but a healthy eco-system. They did find diseased and malnourished deer and depleted vegetation due to overgrazing. Once the fence was torn down, predators, including human hunters, were reintroduced, the deer population rebounded.

So, Martha, let me ask you this: Is it more humane to let wildlife, where human interference has disrupted the balance between predator and prey, overpopulate and overgraze an area and ultimately die of stavation and disease or allow hunting to cull the herd under the various state departments of natural resources supervision? Would you rather see more deer and other prey animals slaughtered along our Interstate highways, as they are now anyway, or dispatched by an arrow, shotgun slug or bullet?

Fine you don't like hunting, Martha, but Mike Huckabee doesn't seem to be a slob hunter. If you want to lambaste him on his sleazy use of religion to pander to right wing Christians be my guest, it's unconstitutional anyway. But essays like this drove many good Democrats into the Republican Party in the 1980s and the poor jamokes have been voting against their own best economic self interests ever since.

p.s. I had a great-uncle who was a Disciples of Christ minister and he hunted, and the the Methodist minister of the church I went to when I was a kid. His kids were kicked out of high school for wearing black armbands to protest US involvement in Vietnam. Their case went all the way to the Supreme Court, I believe.

Now that I re-read it it's not much of a defense. But, Christ, these vegan, nature lovers are such ignoramuses it's not even funny. And all these dopes do is make assholes like Ted Nugent look good. Stupid fuckers all of 'em.

Des Moines Register endorses Clinton, McCain

Well, no surprise here. Milktoast anyone?

The delusions of intellecutal snobbery

If you've been a regular reader, and I doubt many of you have, you'll know that I have something of a love-hate relationship with CounterPunch.com columnist Alexander Cockburn. Well, it's a one-sided relationship as he doesn't even know I exist. Be that as it may, however, there are time I heartily agree with Mr. Cockburn and times that I don't. This is one of the "don't" times.

Perched on his journalistic version of Olympus, Cockburn spurns the suspicion shared by many in the left-learning blogoshpere that Karl Rove's departure from the White House has less to do with embarrassment, shame or contrition and more with the up-coming 2008 presidential campaign. Writes Cockburn:

The Left designated Rove as the arch engineer of America's supposed lunge in the Bush years into the arms of the Christian right. Indeed the left has so demonized Rove it can't even accept he's gone and advances devious explanations: he's not really resigning at all; he fears impending indictment; he's preparing to "work behind the scenes".

Oh, yes, I too am one of the unlettered "Left" who think KKKarl left the White House to work unfettered, behind the scenes, for the defeat of whomever many be the Democratic Party's nominee for president. And what was my evidence, slim though it many be? Why nothing other than Wall Street Journal commentator Paul Gigot's August 13 "interview" with the devil himself.

Interestingly Cockburn, who formerly dropped off a column or two at the Wall Street Journal, makes no reference to the Gigot column. The voice of Rove the anti-Christ is silent.

Cockburn then turns his sights on one of my personal favorite reactionary wing nuts, the inimitable Richard Viguerie:

The conservative right similarly detests Rove as the man they claim pushed Bush towards socialism. Richard Viguerie, a prominent conservative, bid Rove adieu with these words: "Karl Rove's departure from the White House is good news for conservatives. As President Bush's chief political advisor, Karl Rove was a master in the care and feeding of conservative leaders, keeping them mostly silent as the Republican Party moved Left during the Bush presidency." As evidence of Bush's left agenda Viguerie cited Bush's signing of the "No Child Left Behind" education bill, his wildly expensive prescription drug benefits bill, soaring farm subsidies, steel tariffs, higher federal deficits, plus "Nation-building on a scale never attempted before". Viguerie's demonization is rather more persuasive than the left's.

I guess, the erudite Mr. Cockburn is taking Viguerie at face value. That is something I've learned, from my wormlike prospective, never to do when it comes to the words or writing of reactionary apparatchiks. And everything Viguerie writes one should take with a very large grain of salt. Obviously Cockburn discounts the notion that the reactionary right of Twenty-first Century United States will react to a small set-back, like the 2006 congressional elections, roll with it, lose the White House if need be; nurse an unfounded grudge four long years, obstruct a Democratic administration at every turn; charge out spitting piss and vinegar, crying "We told you so!" with a new cadre of right wing fanatics and retake the government. Jimmay Carter was an aberration, Bill Clinton an irritant. Why should it be any different now?

But the "I'm-smarter-than-you-are" Cockburn sees Rove's departure as nothing more than routine:

So why did Rove quit? Like many White House counselors in the third or seventh year of their White House sojourns, Rove is getting out before the last humiliating year of a lame-duck presidency, when governors of second tier states won't answer the White House's calls. He'll serve out the stipulated year selling his memoirs, rediscovering his family and learning their names. Then he'll become a lobbyist.

Oh? Cockburn's essay went to press, or Web page, before Peter Wallsten's analysis of Rove's departure and subsequent actions in the Sunday Los Angeles Times saw light of day. Reports Wallsten:

Day after day last week, outgoing White House political strategist Karl Rove delivered slashing attacks on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner. Her healthcare record was "spotty and poor," he declared. Her candidacy was "fatally flawed," he said. And no one with her negative poll numbers, he stated, "has ever won the presidency."

The decision to focus on the New York senator to the exclusion of other potentially formidable Democratic standard-bearers such as Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois offered a rare glimpse into a world where things are not always what they seem -- the world of modern-day electioneering, whose denizens often prefer going from A to B by way of Z.

Their thinking went like this,[Rove lieutenant Matthew ]Dowd explained: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party's nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists actually feared most.

"I haven't known Karl to do many things accidentally or spontaneously," said Dowd, who has broken ties with Bush, Rove and others and has expressed disappointment in the president's leadership and political tactics.

I suggest you read the entire LA Times story. Wallsten even has an interesting quote from small government guru Grover Norquist, who avers that Hillary Clinton is the easiest person to beat.

But what does Cockburn care. He has his home somewhere in the Northern California woods, his vintage car collection and, perhaps, yet some contacts with Wall Street via old and useful friends at the soon-to-be Murdochized Journal.

Oh, our anti-war Democrats

Boston Globe columnist Darrick Jackson shows that some of our most ardent "anti-Iraq war" and "liberal" Democrats are cozy with the Defense Department.

the Globe recently reported that [Massachusetts U.S. Senator Ted] Kennedy slid $100 million into the 2008 defense authorization bill for a General Electric fighter engine that the Air Force said it did not need.

It gets worse in a defense budget that is zooming to $648.8 billion. The nonpartisan budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense last month analyzed 309 Senate defense earmarks. Four of the top five "earmarkers" were not Republican hawks but centrist and liberal Democrats.

[Michigan's Carl] Levin led the way with 44 earmarks. [Senator Hillary] Clinton was second with 26. [Rhode Island's U.S. Senator Jack] Reed was fourth with 23, one behind Republican John Warner of Virginia. In fifth place was Charles Schumer of New York with 21. When asked if she saw any change in defense earmark behavior since the Democrats took back the House and the Senate, senior analyst Laura Peterson of the Taxpayers for Common Sense said over the telephone, "No."

More proof the swamp is still full is the fact that only four of the top 10 senators in defense campaign contributions in the 2006 election cycle were Republicans. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrats Kennedy, Clinton, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Dianne Feinstein of California, Bill Nelson of Florida, and Democrat-turned-independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut collected 60 percent of the $1.4 million the industry lavished among the top 10.

Odd, isn't it, that our nominally most "liberal" senators also come from states with the highest concentration of military-security-industry contractors?

More dots

Look, I don't know if this means anything, but I had the Saturday
Morning Today Show on and the gentleman pictured on the right,
one Ron Noble, Secretary General of the international police agency Interpol, said something to the effect that Michael Chertoff's "gut" is a fairly accurate meter of "terrorist" activity. He also disclosed that al Qaeda plans on killing "four million of us." Where he came by this information Noble would not say.

I think I heard him tell Lester Holt something to the effect that if the United States withdraws from Iraq now the terrorist will follow us home. It was a strikingly similar comment to the oft repeated administration bromide "We're fighting terrorist in Iraq so we don't have to fight'em here." He continued with some alarmist shit about securing our borders and passport date. In fact, just a couple of days ago Noble told government propaganda network Voice Of America (VOA),

Interpol Secretary-General Ron Noble told VOA the organization set up a database of lost or stolen passports in 2002 as an anti-terrorist measure. But, he says, even though it was fully automated in 2005, only a handful of the organization's 186 member governments are hooked up to the database and taking advantage of it.

"In my view, every country in the world should make it their highest priority to scan passports of visitors against Interpol's global database. But my point is, right now, as I speak to you, only 17 countries in the entire world are doing this.

"And in my view, in the 21st century, in the century in which we find ourselves following the September 11th attacks, the world needs to change the way in which it fights terrorism globally by sharing information instantly and immediately with countries around the world. That's not happening, and it needs to happen."

Look, I'm not one of these anti-One World Government nuts, I actually think a stronger United Nations would be a good thing, but...well, let's just read a little of Mr. Noble's official Interpol bio:

Mr Noble previously served as the United States Department of Treasury’s first Undersecretary for Enforcement (1993-1996), where he was in charge of some of the US’s then-largest law enforcement agencies, including the Secret Service, Customs Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and Office of Foreign Assets Control. Prior to that, he served as an Assistant US Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the US Department of Justice (1984-1989).

Noble worked for both in the Clinton and George H.W. "Poppy" Bush administrations, hence the "Bipartisan Bullshit" label, so this signifies nothing other than the fact the guy's a career bureaucrat.

However the internesting thing is, Michael Chertoff, professional Skeletor look-alike and Director of Homeland Security, says on July 10, he has a "gut feeling" that al Qaeda terrorists may attack the United States this summer. Then President Bush and Chertoff downplay and backpeddle Chertoff's "gut feeling" a couple of days later. Yet on the same day, July 12, a National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) report is released titled "Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West."

So, O.K., boys, which is it? Are we under a real threat of a major terrorist attack or are Washington/corporationist bureaucrats just trying to scare the pee-jeezus out of us?

The further shores.......

Alexander Cockburn, the oh, so anti-capitalist editor-in-chief of Counterpunch, of is at it again, going the full-tilt bozo contrarian route to dismiss the currently accepted view of humanities' impact on global warming.

Take his latest opus Sources and Authorities
Dissidents Against Dogma. Writes The Nation's editors, home of Cockburn's "Beat the Devil" feature, where this column had it genesis:"In contrast, many of Cockburn's most contentious assertions in his recent columns came from unpublished papers." Cockburn also quotes such global warming deneiers as Zbigniew Jaworowski and Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov (sic.).

Of course, Cockburn makes his case by telling one and all that his fulmination is aimed squarely at the nuclear power industry, whose dastardly deeds he will manfully thwart all on his own if need be.

Which leads me to wonder if Cockburn owns stock options with the wind turbine power companies, oil & gas or both?

Al Sharpton, agent provacateur?

Today the news is ga-gah over Willard "Mitt" Romney's rise in the Iowa poll at the expense of national front-runners Rudy "America's Mayor" Giuliani and Hanoi John McCain.

So but the sensible say, America will never vote for a Mormon, even if he is the scion of wealth and privilege with the looks of a movie star. Looking like a movie star, or at the very least a television mellodrama president counts for a lot these days. But still, say the pundits, America's loonie fundamentalist Catholics and born-again Protestants will never vote for a Mormon.

Enter the Reverend Al Sharpton.



Back on May 7, in New York, journalist Christopher Hitchens debated Sharpton at forum hosted by the New York Public Library. Hitchens is hawking his latest book God Is Not Great:How Religion Poisons Everything. And it was a pretty straight forward discussion between a leftist journalist, trying to regain his credibility after soiling himself over support for Bush's invasion of Iraq, and a half-assed theologian. That was until the Reverend Sharpton opened his mouth and uttered the memorable line:“As for the one Mormon running for office, those that really believe in God will defeat him anyway, so don’t worry about that, that’s a temporary – that’s a temporary situation.”

Then the shit hit the fan.

Now to put the statement in context Sharpton was discussing the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, in his opinion decidedly church-based, faith-based and god-based. Then followed, seemingly out of nowhere, the jab at Romney.

Of course the equal and opposite reaction followed shortly.

Take for example this blog entry from the comely Erin Di Paolo

I take exception to Sharpton's comments and I am not a Mormon.
I am a Christian whose beliefs do not disagree, on many levels, with Mormons. But I would never accuse Romney of not believing in God.

Who does Sharpton think he is and why does he feel he should be able to get away with such comments when he holds everyone else to a strict code of moral behavior? Every time I turn around, he is on television or in the newspaper, lambasting everyone who makes a comment that he determines to be racist. Now here he is, questioning a presidential candidate's belief in God, yet he feels justified in doing so.

It sickens me, which brings me to my last point: why is Sharpton not receiving as much negative press in this situation as he does positive coverage when he is attacking others for intolerance?

Also Sprach the hot white suburban lady from Denver.

Which brings me back to the title fro this little rant of why I am beginning to suspect the Rev. Al Sharpton is an agent provacateur.

Sharpton from gained fame from his involvement in the Tawana Brawley case, which has been subsequently labeled a hoax. Since that time Sharpton has involved himself in any and all incidents which may have the merest whiff of racial undertones which will garner maximum television facetime. Sharpton, besides his roles as part-time minister of the gospel and fulltime demagogue, was also for a time an FBI informant.

In short, the man should have no credibility, yet to this day he remains a favorite of the MSM.

And this is why I am coming around to Charles Barkely's view of Sharpton. You see, the reactionary right has a contarian streak as wide as the yellow streak down its collective back. So even if in the recent past fundamentalism Protestant and Catholic leaders denounced Mormonism as a cult or worse, once the Rev. Al opens his yap all previous anti-Mormon statements are conveniently forgotten. Much to the benefit of Willard Romney. And, I might add, the Rev. Al Sharpton.