Twelve Months Later…
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In case you didn’t know already, this is the last evening of 2011.
And if you didn’t have your collective head up your collective ass, you know the past 12 months have been shitsville.
“There are a lot of reasons not to elect me.”
– Mitt Romney, last September
Beyond tomorrow, the Iowa caucus crap-shoot is Tuesday, starting the political version of 2012 — which might be meaningless if other forces, i.e., economics-finance, climate, war, energy, and so forth, don’t blow the lid off before next November — election day seemingly seen from here as way down a patch of real-bad road.
(Illustration found here).
This particular season has been the easiest for me at the liquor store where I work — my fifth New Year, the third as manager — since I have weekends off, missed Christmas, and now New Year’s, and, this is a big, ‘and,’ no long hours, or 13 days in a row — all employees working full shifts, nobody going home for the holidays.
When I left work yesterday afternoon, business was starting to pick up a bit and people had money (checks early for the first of the month).
But a shitload of people still pay for a pack of Marlboro or a Tilt Watermelon with handfuls of coin.
Near shadowing the national picture, decent business comes in binges/holidays/special events with a crater-like effect in between — the store is down near two grand a month compared to 2007.
We’re doing okay at this financial ‘near normal,’ but the owner worries month-to-month.
After this weekend, no blip on the business-traffic radar until Super Bowel Bowl weekend.
Tonight and wee-tomorrow morning, and maybe on into Sunday, a lot of booze will be sucked down, big Times Square crowds, people all over will gushing and hugging and cheering ‘Happy New Year, and then, wake up Monday with a WTF hangover.
And still be just as clueless.
Well beyond any Mayan bullshit, 2012 on its own merits ain’t going to be pretty.
An excitingly long, short year — 2011.
Both it and the year before would have made way-nifty titles for science-fiction novels written in the mid-1970s.
‘Fer instance:
- “2010 AD” — sprawling, multi-character story of the end of energy told via a war between giant international financial consortiums for oil discovered in the now near-iceless Arctic, even as the world is pitched into chaos due to abrupt and bizarre shifts in weather…
or maybe,
- “2011: Rise of the Machines” — guy invents a small device in his parents’ garage, said device spawns a vast cornucopia of machines highly morphoditing all of humanity, and except for just 1 percent of the population, machines rule civilization, forcing an occupying of ceaseless uprising begins…
Unfortunately, we’re not back in the naive, dumb-ass’70s.
Even after a not-so-calm 2010, this year quickly coming to close has been one for the literal record books — in the US alone, 14 billion-dollar weather-related disasters; and although all not directly tied to global warming, the collateral effect takes place.
But there is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago.
It’s about a 4 percent extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change.
And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future.
Most-likely climate change is the biggest problem mankind has ever faced — it’s just another Happy New Year.
And to start things off in the right mind, and the real horror of urban life is the reports of a series of arson fires churning up around Los Angeles.
Hollywood Mayor John J. Duran may have coined a ‘new-normal’ phrase, via CNN:
“When you have millions of people living with millions of cars in these very dense neighborhoods, this is becoming a new form of domestic terrorism that really has got our community in a very bad spot.”
Twenty-one of these fires were started in Duran’s town — ‘a new form of domestic terrorism.’
Even as I hear firecrackers popping in the distance, the new year is coming whether I’m ready or not and from all indications, most US peoples will celebrate, but the heart is afraid.
No resolutions will temper the gloom.
Sounds of Dumb
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Politics, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
The nastiest catfight right now is taking place in the frozen wastelands of Iowa — and it’s all bullshit and way-dumb.
Top-of-the-hat, ‘fer instance — Newt Gingrich thinks Sara Palin rocks and would a most-excellent running mate:
“She is certainly one of the people you would look at,” he responded.
“I am a great admirer of hers and she was a remarkable reform governor of Alaska, she’s somebody who I think brings a great deal to the possibility of helping in government and that would be one of the possibilities.”
(Illustration found here).
Anyone hearing that babble would blow chunks in the direction of the twitchy, no-brainer Rick Santorum, who claimed that poverty comes from being gay — one needs to marry in the “normal” way because then there’s only a small, small chance you’ll end up poor: “If you graduate from high school, you get married before you have children, and of course you work — that’s sort of a given, you have to work — you do those three things, there’s a 2 percent chance you’ll be in poverty.”
Of course, twitch Rick has it back-ass backwards.
Michele Bachmann is a laugh, and she’s so hilarious, her state chairman suddenly defected to support Ron Paul, just hours after appearing at a campaign event with her.
Hahaha from one Iowa voter: When asked if she’d support Bachmann this time around, she said hesitantly, “Yea, I guess. I would support her.”
Love those strong endorsements.
And Mitt Romney went history — from HuffPost: “When the president’s characterization of our economy was, ‘It could be worse,’ it reminded me of Marie Antoinette: ‘Let them eat cake,’” said Romney.
The DNC responded:
“It is actually laughable that the ‘Quarter-Billion-Dollar Man’ would call President Obama out of touch — and use the example of a French monarch to make the point,” DNC spokeswoman Melanie Roussell said in a statement to The Huffington Post on Thursday evening.
“This is the same guy who joked that he was ‘unemployed,’ offered a $10,000 bet as casually as one might buy a cup of coffee, and said ‘corporations are people.’
He’s also the same person who, as a former corporate buyout specialist for Bain Capital, made his fortune firing thousands of workers, cutting benefits, bankrupting American companies and outsourcing jobs overseas.
He’s the one who won’t release his tax returns — most likely because we would all learn that he pays a lower tax rate than middle class wage-earners.
Laughable.”
Keep laughing and laughing.
Politics is so full of shit it’s hard to find the toilet.
This is only the GOP and there’s not a one who’s worth any salt of US history and they act as if the world revolves their words.
The US in 2011 is not all that funny.
Dear George Carlin nailed:
Forget the politicians.
They are irrelevant.
The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice.
You don’t.
You have no choice!
You have OWNERS!
They OWN YOU.
They own everything.
They own all the important land.
They own and control the corporations.
They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls.
Now try to giggle.
‘Bluster’ — Oil and Water Mix
Filed Under Bullshit, Energy, Environment, Madness | 1 Comment
A few days ago, I put another $20 worth of gas in the old Jeep, and this time the pump price had dropped six cents since the last gas-station visit, down to $3.83 a gallon for regular.
Although prices here in northern California have dipped a bit, it’s still freakin’ high compared nationwide — the national average for regular this week is $3.258 a gallon, still more than 20 cents higher than the same time last year.
Meanwhile, in California the statewide average hit $3.576, up 2 cents since Dec. 19, according to the Energy Department’s weekly survey of service stations. That shattered — by 28.9 cents — the old record of $3.287 a gallon set in December 2007 and was tied in December 2010.
(Illustration found here).
The price of oil — beyond the natural-technical problems — has been influenced by more swinging bullshit centered around Iran, which, in the face of new efforts by the US and the European Union to halt Iran’s nuclear program, has threatened to close the most-vital Strait of Hormuz if the shit gets too deep.
Some experts Iran is bullshitting.
Maybe not — the two-mile-wide strait is much closer to Iran than just the physical: After boasting yesterday: “Shutting the strait for Iran’s armed forces is … easier than drinking a glass of water,” Iran’s navy chief Admiral Habibollah Sayari said: “Today, we don’t need [to shut] the strait because … it is completely under the control of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
A nasty set of circumstances, though, it doesn’t seem to ruffle many feathers.
The US, however, will not be intimidated, and pooh poohed the possible action as an empty gesture:
However, playing down the threat, State Department spokesman Mark Toner called it as nothing more than mere “bluster.”
According to Toner, this was just another attempt by Iran to draw attention away from the key issue, that of their habitual “non-compliance with international nuclear obligations,” he added.
A lot of drama is being played out with this Iranian deal — the US claims it has certain “red lines” (kind of like those famous, ‘line in the sand’ routines) that if crossed would justify a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and then, the shit would really hit the fan.
Israel is the most concerned.
Jason Ditz at antiwar.com:
Officially, of course, both sides would insist such an attack was about Iran’s nuclear program.
But since both nations have been claiming Iran is within striking distance of acquiring nuclear weapons since the mid-1980s, the excuse isn’t going to really fly internationally, so both nations are hoping to settle on something which could be the “trigger” for the attack.
This ‘trigger’ ain’t no horse on some happy trail.
Bluster or not…
From liveoilprices: In London, Brent crude oil futures for February 2012 delivery was trading at $107.90 a barrel, 08.03 GMT this morning on the ICE Futures Exchange.
And WTI: US Light crude oil futures for February 2012 delivery was trading at $99.53 a barrel, 07.42 GMT this morning in electronic trading on the NYMEX.
The quickly approaching new year signals even higher prices to come.
Humanity is fatally blind.
Seeking oil for energy is akin to eating poison — it tastes good and makes us feel good all over, but will kill us in a horrible, twitching death.
Talk about bat-shit crazy — the intake of this crude is making an environment already stunned near-beyond recovery even worse and apparently the glutton forces are stronger than self-preservation.
Even the so-called ‘saving grace’ of the Canadian tar sands oil creates a horrible future:
Extraction of Alberta’s energy-intensive tar sands has expanded steadily in recent years, with about 232 square miles now exposed by mining operations.
That expansion is expected to double over the next decade, which could mean the destruction of 740,000 acres of boreal forest and a 30 percent increase in carbon emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector.
And in perspective (via DeSmogBlog): The latest tally (2008) puts Canada’s GHG emissions at “only” 1.8 per cent, which is swell as long as you don’t think about Canada’s population amounting to just 0.004 per cent of the world’s total. That makes Canada the fourth worst polluter per capita. It also makes our 34 million inhabitants the seventh largest source of CO2 among all the countries in the world – that’s seventh from a list of 216 countries and jurisdictions.
And the end result?
From TreeHugger:
A new study in the Journal of Glaciology shows that the glaciers in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountain range are melting so quickly that the water they supply to the arid region is being threatened 20-30 years earlier than expected.
Lead researcher Michel Baraer, from McGill University, told IPS News that the time needed for the region to adapt to the coming water shortages, previously thought to be decades off, “those years don’t exist.”
Baraer said that the glaciers feeding the Rio Santo watershed are now too small to maintain past flows of water.
During the dry season water availability is expected to be 30 percent lower than historic levels.
In the 1930s glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca covered 850 square kilometers.
Today they cover less than 600 sq km.
In a global context, the World Glacier Monitoring Service recently has said that 90 percent of the glaciers studied in its latest Glacier Mass Balance Bulletin are losing mass.
In the Himalaya, 75 percent of the glaciers there are melting; the USGS fully puts the blame on this on global warming and not other factors.
My underline for some way-emphasis — and that, my friends, ain’t bluster.
‘Run, Forrest, Run’
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Musings | Leave a Comment
Books and movies are two completely different countries.
In one you read by yourself (unless you’re in a group-grope book club), the other you see and hear — and the two supposedly connect when the book is made into a movie.
Rare, though, when the movie comes direct off the page.
Movies can also alter the spirit of a story to achieve broader appeal.
Think of everything you found charming about the movie Forrest Gump: the feather floating over the opening credits, the signature line that “life is like a box of chocolates,” or Tom Hanks’s graceful innocence as the title character.
You won’t find any of that in the original novel.
Winston Groom’s Gump is cynical, abrasive and swears like a marine.
(Illustration found here).
Not having read the book, the difference then must be is no, they’re not relations.
Yesterday, ‘Forrest Gump,’ the movie, along with 24 others, were installed by the the Library of Congress into its National Film Registry, a repository of motion pictures judged to be culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
Forrest joins a killer/cannibal, a cute deer, a nasty alcoholic and a guitar-case carrying assassin, among others, in the new list, which now totals 575 movies.
“These films are selected because of their enduring significance to American culture,” said Library of Congress James Billington.
“Our film heritage must be protected because these cinematic treasures document our history and culture and reflect our hopes and dreams.”
Those so-called ‘hopes and dreams,’ though, live only in a darkened movie theater, not much in real life — reelly?
Out in the cold of Iowa there’s a shitload of GOP presidential contenders walking around, shaking hands and trying like the dickens to cuddle the hearts of those who will participate in the first big dump of the 2012 political year — the Iowa caucuses, due next Tuesday.
None of those clowns — including one clownette — is nowhere near Mr. Gump’s intelligence level.
The field is so shitty, there’s no clear front-runner.
Via CNN:
“It’s completely unprecedented to have a field and a cycle that has been this unpredictable, this turbulent late in the process,” Iowa Republican Party Chairman Matt Strawn told CNN.
Tim Albrecht, the Twitter-active spokesman for Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, is also surprised.
“I have never seen this level of undecided voters this late in the process. It’s a crazy year in that regard,” Albrecht said.
When Newt Gingrich couldn’t qualify for the the Virginia primary, he likened it to Pearl Harbor — remember he’s a historian.
Mitt Romney tweeted in response: “I think it’s more like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory,” Romney said…
Fighting among losers.
In October, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir figured Rick Perry was a lot like Forrest Gump, except Forrest won a medal of honor: “I guess it’s a case of desperate man, desperate measures, as candidate Rick Perry finds himself floundering at the wrong end of the latest poll.”
Maybe Perry’s just running scared: “Now you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but I could run like the wind blows. From that day on, if I was going somewhere, I was running!”
Tomorrow’s another…
Tea Cup Turbulence
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Environment, Finance, Weather | Leave a Comment
Climate change is corrupting Bangladesh tea — the low-lying nation has a great tea growing industry, but the warming temperatures with less rain not only stumps growth, but can alter the flavor.
From Aljazeera English and a tea harvester:
“There is less clouds in the sky than before. Too much sun, which isn’t good for the plants, a lot less rain. How do you expect the plants to grow?”
…
Hundreds of thousands of people depend on the tea sector, but if climate change is responsible for the hotter weather being experienced now, it is just a matter of time before these plantations perhaps disappear altogether.
(Illustration found here).
Although Bangladesh tea picture is rosy right now — The average price of Bangladeshi tea rose 2.1 percent to 159.28 taka ($1.96) per kg from the previous sale, said an official at the National Brokers Limited, the country’s largest tea broking firm — the future isn’t so bright.
A warming world will make dust of leaves and plants.
Via Climate Progress:
The results of studies that try to quantify the effects of climate change on biodiversity loss — which include damage to the micro scale level of subspecies and genetic variation — are perhaps most shocking.
When, however, you focus on the response to climate change at the macro level, the ecosystem level, you get a better understanding of what is one of the major drivers of that biodiversity loss: forced migrations.
And even here, the numbers may be larger than one would expect, as a new assessment by NASA and Caltech published in the journal Climatic Change shows that by 2100 some 40 percent of “major ecological community types” — that is biomes like forest, grassland, tundra — will have switched to a different such state.
According to the same study most of the land on Earth that is not currently desert or under an icecap will undergo at least a 30 percent change in vegetation cover.
Based on IPCC temperature projections for 2100 [which are probably on the conservative side] of 2-4 degrees Celsius warming scientists of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology ran special computer models to calculate the most probable ecosystem responses across the planet.
This average temperature rise is of similar magnitude to the warming that occurred between the Last Glacial Maximum and the onset of the (milder) Holocene — with the big exception that the current warming is happening about 100 times faster — and for ecology that makes a huge difference, the authors stress.
Acceleration of the process is the key.
And not only has the world kicked the climate change can-of-worms on down the dusty road (via 2020), but has failed to even fund the ‘normal’ disasters, making the planet “dangerously unprepared” for future crises.
Earlier this month, the American Geophysical Union at its annual meeting in San Francisco painted a cruel picture of the can of worms.
The problem is bigger, faster and shitty-er.
Via Climate Science:
Four years ago scientists thought the Arctic would not be ice-free in summer before 2100.
Two years ago, the estimate was 2060.
This year, scientists say the ice could be gone by 2030, possibly even 2020.
As Arctic ice melts and temperatures rise, vast stores of methane frozen under the Arctic Ocean are starting to thaw and vent to the atmosphere.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 20 to 56 times as powerful as carbon dioxide.
Researchers had seen small plumes.
But a recent survey showed, to their shock, large areas of the ocean pocked with continuous, powerful plumes stretching a half-mile or more across.
In the Andes, conventional wisdom held that residents had 20 years to 40 years to find a replacement for the dwindling glaciers serving as key dry-season water reservoirs.
That time is up, reported Michel Baraër, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal.
The era of “peak water” is past, he said, and hundreds of thousands of people living downstream face an immediate future of diminished and more variable flows.
…
“The planet is going through incredible change,” said Jonathan Foley, director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment.
“Through rapid uses of the environment, we are pushing our planet in extreme ways.”
…
“We are now on a very different planet than anyone has ever seen before,” Foley said.
“All of our predictions are going to be wrong.
We are going to be very, very surprised.”
Of course, not everybody — some can see the future in the tea leaves.