Dangerous Disclaimers
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Environment, Madness, Media | Leave a Comment
Bluster and bullshit go hand-in-hand: Reportedly, there’s some kind of big game this weekend, don’t know myself, but a lot of hype out there about it — Sunday’s a good day to get some good sleep, though.
Of course, there’s so much chatter about that particular sporting event, but not much on really what’s happening in our country and the world — the future looks dumb: “Do you know the vice president of the United States?” Austin asks. “I don’t know who it it’s, it’s, it’s somebody….Bin Ladin,” one student responds.
Only gets worse as the days, months and years of tomorrow will only bring problems no amount of education can handle (with bad English).
(Illustration found here).
Despite the education, or maybe because of it, President Obama’s view of the earth’s environment has been toned down to the point even a Republican could understand — the words are less frightful and easier to swallow like a nice pat on the head.
In Obama’s state of the union last week, ‘climate change‘ was mentioned just once (not at all in 2011).
One must remember, the White House switched from ‘global warming,’ to ‘global climate disruption‘ because it’s much, much easier to pass on to the ignorant masses in the search for more politically palatable ways to put horrible news in a happy context.
From the Washington Post:
When he did utter the phrase, it was merely to acknowledge the polarized atmosphere in Washington, saying, “The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.”
By contrast, Obama used the terms “energy” and “clean energy” nearly two dozen times.
That tally reflects a broader change in how the president talks about the planet.
A recent Brown University study looked specifically at the Obama administration’s language and found that mentions of “climate change” have been replaced by calls for “clean energy” and “energy independence.”
Graciela Kincaid, a co-author of the study, wrote: “The phrases ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ have become all but taboo on Capitol Hill. These terms are stunningly absent from the political arena.”
…
There is power in how language is deployed, and people setting policy agendas know this well.
In 2002, Republican political strategist Frank Luntz issued a widely cited memo advising that the Bush administration should shift its rhetoric on the climate.
“It’s time for us to start talking about ‘climate change’ instead of global warming. . . . ‘Climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming,’ ” the memo said.
And the GOP is into fear, but only in the fear itself, not the root cause.
A good view of the most-immediate future lies in the past.
The Green blog at the New York Times on the so-called “Little Ice Age,” which started at the end of the 13th century and lasted well into the 19th century and how this small speck makes a huge wad.
Money quote:
Bette Otto-Bliesner, a co-author of the study and a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, suggested that the study has important implications for the modern-day climate change discussion.
“I think people might look at the Little Ice Age and think that all we need to save us from rising temperatures are some volcanic eruptions or the geo-engineering equivalent,” she said.
“But when you see what happened when global temperatures dropped by just one degree and you look at current predictions of six or seven degree increases for the future, you realize how precarious things are for life as we know it.”
“I don’t see a lot of hope that we can somehow compensate for the climate trajectory we’re on,” she said.
(h/t The Oil Drum).
On that big game, my store is way-looking forward to it — more booze!
In contrast, supposedly, or at least theoretically, every alcohol-drinking US person will consume at least seven beers on Sunday.
As we slowly die, we scream, ‘Drink Up!’
Talkin’ ‘Bout the Weather — Not!
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Environment, Media | Leave a Comment
Any half-sane person is by now sick to the bowels of the GOP — Mitt Romney won the Florida primary, but the question posed: Who gives a shit?
Although President Obama is most-likely the most-disappointing leader in US history, he’s leagues above Romney and the rest of his half-assed, ignorant Republican buddies, as the above-mentioned half-sane person surely won’t pull the lever on any of these guys.
All this nasty, way-negative political bull-hockey overshadows the most-pressing concern — the weather.
Part of an e-mail yesterday from my youngest daughter, who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota: Oh yeah, It’s like 50 degrees and sunny today. crazyness, right? I was sweating like crazy riding my bike to work this morning. Global warming man…
The kid’s got some sense — just talkin’ ’bout the weather.
(Illustration found here).
A warm winter, duh!
From Climate Central:
This week, it’s likely that warm temperature records will be broken throughout the eastern U.S., with forecast highs in New York City approaching 60°F on Tuesday and Wednesday, and reaching the mid-60s in Washington, D.C. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), record highs may also be set today in Islip, N.Y., and Bridgeport, CT.
It has also been unusually warm in the mid-section of the country.
As Paul Douglas wrote for the Minneapolist Star-Tribune, the Twin Cities missed setting a record high by just four degrees on Monday, topping out at 44°F, about 20°F above average for the date.
Douglas wrote that there have been just three subzero nights so far this winter in Minneapolis-St. Paul, down from the average of 19 to date.
“It’s been one of the mildest winters on record; at the rate we’re going this will easily be a “Top 10 Warmest Winter” in the Twin Cities,” Douglas wrote.
And it’s only gonna get worse — Dr. Jeff Masters at Wunderblog: But it strains the bounds of credulity that all of the extreme weather events — some of them 1-in-1000-year type events — could have occurred without a signicant change to the base climate state. Mother Nature is now able to hit the ball out of the park more often, and with much more power, thanks to the extra energy global warming has put into the atmosphere.
No one seems to be much concerned, however.
Despite all the warming, the US MSM still doesn’t connect the dots, or put two-and-two together, or use any other glib phrase to describe how Americans are walking around in January bundled up in a Slayer t-shirt seemingly without a care in the boiling world.
These warm countrywide temperatures ain’t no flash in the pan.
Joe Romm at Climate Progress:
Our science-based institutions, like the National Center for Atmospheric Research, have no difficulty straightforwardly explaining the connection between human-caused global warming and these monster heatwaves.
If only our news-based institutions could do the same.
Now as I’ve said many times, every story about extreme weather does not need to mention global warming.
But if you are writing about a heatwave that is so uniquely extensive in space and time — just the kind of heat wave climate scientists have warned would become increasingly likely — and you are devoting an entire science article to explaining why it’s been so warm, then, yes, it is incumbent on you to at least mention global warming.
And political irony from Craig Ferguson: “It was so hot in Washington that Congress had to install a fan on the debt ceiling.”
Beyond just talkin’ about the weather, we should be screaming, crying about it.
Party of Assholes
Filed Under Bullshit, Media, Politics | 1 Comment
Last night, long-time CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer waxed hot on modern US politics:
This is just another sign of the incivility and really the vulgarity of modern American campaigns. These campaigns have gotten so ugly and so nasty, that they’re now tarnishing the whole system.
I think it also underlines the coarseness of our culture in this age of social media when it is so easy to say anything about anybody and get no penalty for saying it.
…
I’ve watched a lot of presidents over the years but I can never recall a president stepping off Air Force One, which is itself a symbol of the presidency and American democracy, and being subject to such rudeness.
(Illustration found here).
Of course, Schieffer was discussing the incident between Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and President Obama on the tarmac involved in what seemed an intense conversation, with Brewer at one point pointing her finger in Obama’s face.
No audio, but the video/picture painted a scene not very cordial.
Brewer said later: “I respect the office of the president,” she said. “I was there to welcome him.”
Also later, Brewer reversed the action, putting a lie on top of a lie, claiming Obama treated her like an asshole: “It is what it is. I proceeded to say that to him, and he chose to walk away from me,” she said Thursday. Asked whether she regarded that as disrespectful, she replied: “Well, I would never have walked away from anybody having a conversation. And, of course, that is what it is. It is disrespectful for me.”
Such total bullshit.
A lie within a falsehood, from real-time to book time:
The argument stemmed from Obama’s feelings about Brewer’s 2011 book, “Scorpions for Breakfast.”
In it, she refers to the president as “patronizing” and claims he lectured to her as if she were a child during a 2010 meeting in the White House.
At the time of the meeting, the White House described their encounter as a “good meeting,” and even Brewer said it was “very cordial.”
But, later, in her book, she accused Obama of being extremely “condescending.”
“I said to him, you know, I have always respected the office of the president and that the book is what the book is,” Brewer said.
Back to Schieffer’s view on political rudeness — he still played the MSM line and didn’t tell the entire truth about the ugly rudeness now apparent in US politics : This vulgar, shithead activity stems from one, and only one, nasty corner of the room — Republicans.
The GOP is the party of the rude, of the sneering asshole remark, of the racist, of the zilch compassion for the ordinary US person, and the absolute rude behavior in all workings in things political.
Since becoming aware of politics via the 1960 election between Jack Kennedy and Dick Nixon, I’ve never seen such total bullshit spewing from the lips of one group of assholes — and the big, massive problem is that the MSM will not point it out.
Just like John King of CNN and Newt Gingrich’s rebuttal of an opening question about Newt’s tangled martial operations — instead of slapping back at Newt’s lying hypocrisy, King MSMed himself, back stepping.
The GOP has been on this nasty forum awhile.
From Time magazine in September 2009 and the “You lie” incident:
So when Representative Joe Wilson, a little-known Republican and Army Reserve veteran from South Carolina shouted them at the nation’s Commander in Chief on the night of Sept. 9, heads snapped.
The House chamber took a collective gasp.
Nancy Pelosi, sitting behind Obama, tensed and scowled as if she had just witnessed a crime, her disgust unhidden.
Even President Obama, who had just dismissed conservative claims that illegal immigrants would be able to take advantage of health-care reform, was taken aback.
He looked to his left, adjusted his arm, part nervous twitch, part macho posturing, and shot back at Wilson, “That’s not true.”
And there, for a moment, the nation watched two men, elected to lead, call each other the worst thing in politics — dishonorable deceivers.
At the moment Wilson exploded, the outburst seemed like an assault on the President.
Soon afterward, it was clear that it had been a gift.
Wilson had, in an emotional expression, proven Obama’s point: the summer of town halls had been less a discussion than a circus, a forum where misinformation was vindicated by passion, where disrespect was elevated to a virtue.
Now the circus had come inside Congress.
Where it has mutated into a living, breathing creature eating at the US.
The problem is the MSM doesn’t call it out — the GOP gets away with it — even taking the circus out onto an Arizona tarmac.
The Dick and The Drone
Filed Under Bullshit, Media, Terror | Leave a Comment
(Illustration found here).
The US drone war is the one conflict that’s always continually escalating — even as the US vacates an isolated Pakistani base from where UAV aircraft were launched will apparently not slow the operations down at all.
From Wired: The CIA just got kicked out of a major Pakistani launching pad for the drone war. But just because the agency is packing up its stuff like a dumped lover doesn’t mean the deadly flying robots will head home. They’ll just move to the airbases in nearby Afghanistan. Consider it the drone equivalent of crashing on a friend’s couch for a while.
These machines don’t need no introduction.
And this is the future.
George Jr. started the program, but President Obama has most-definitely put his mark on it.
There were about 30 strikes on Pakistan during Obama’s first year in office, up from about 13 strikes between 2004 and 2007 and in 2009, about 54 attacks, all also in Pakistan.
Last year, the war expanded to include Yemen, and a total of 122 strikes.
In 2011, there have been 81 strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen combined — of course, there’s still Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya, where hot ‘legal‘ wars are being conducted.
Although there’s been a lot of news about drones, last week, Iran got their hands on a piece of US equipment in the form of a RQ-170 Sentinel, when it was somehow downed inside Iranian territory.
And despite Obama formally asking for the craft’s return, Iran says no way jose, considering the Sentinel “war booty.”
From Time this morning:
“Their plane invaded Iran and Iranian forces reacted powerfully,” said Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi
“Now, instead of offering an apology to the Iranian nation, they impudently ask for the return of the plane.”
…
Vahidi said the United States should apologize for invading Iranian air space instead of asking for drone back.
“Iran will defend its stance and interests strongly,” Vahidi said in remarks carried by the semi-official Mehr news agency.
Some US officials say Iran won’t get much out of the captured drone, but Russia and China might as both are accustomed to copying military hardware from other countries and the innards of the Sentinel should have ant-tamper measures: At least, it’s supposed to, according to the Boeing engineer. “Dumbest thing in the world if it didn’t.”
Another brick in the wall in the nasty Iranian dust-up.
And now another big opinion in the ways of the war world: Richard ‘The Dick‘ Cheney says Obama is acting like a baby and he should man-up to the Iranians — in an interview with CNN on Monday, The Dick claimed Obama should have ordered an airstrike to destroy the downed Sentinel.
Via Press TV: “The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it,” Cheney said, adding, “You can do that from the air. You can do that with a quick air strike.”
If your bowels are strong enough, view the CNN interview here.
Use of drones is really most indiscriminate and the US should be ashamed of how these machines kill without remorse and without human feelings.
See the horror of the aftermath of drone attacks here.
From War correspondent Eric Margolis via RT:
“…it is a cheap way to fight, and does not endanger any American lives.
“It is popular on Capital Hill because it appears to be having success and the military has got to come up with something, or the CIA saying ‘we are killing militants’ and filling a body-count list.
But there is a danger here, and that is what American intelligence professionals have been rightly saying for sometime: As the CIA becomes more and more militarized, it is losing its primary mission, which is to provide intelligence and information on an unbiased basis… it is now a participant [in the US’s wars], and its decisions and information will be biased as a result.”
As a result…
(Illustration found here).
Drone on…
Journalism-i
Filed Under Bullshit, Media, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
I have given my whole life to newspapers.
I am convinced that they have abandoned their functions, and in an abject and ignominious manner, in the present war.
Nine-tenths of them, and even more than nine-tenths, print the official blather without any attempt to scrutinize it… It is a disgraceful spectacle, but I do not believe that anything can be done about it.
Roosevelt has taken the press into camp as certainly has he has taken the Supreme Court.
It has ceased altogether to be independent and has become docilely official.
– H.L. Mencken, June 10, 1944
Shift a few items around, and Mr. Mencken could be writing about the nowadays — the above quote comes from a diary entry.
Journalism as practiced today sucks through a small straw, and one wonders at the astonishment faced by Mencken if he was around right now, marveling at how even-more shitty the rank-and-file news business has become in just the last decade.
A decade of terror-induced hysteria.
(Illustration found here).
The so-called mainstream media — dubbed MSM, a set of letters which in its appearance intuits a sexual preference — has degraded itself into nothing more than a stenographer, printing lies and misinformation as if were plain truth.
One huge example: The 2008 Pulitzer Prize went to the New York Times for its story on those nit-twit military ‘advisors’ on MSM TV in 2003 waxing wonderful on the invasion of Iraq, who were, in fact, in the pocket of the Pentagon — delivering to a naive (and hysterical) US public George Jr.’s line on the whole Iraqi bullshit.
Great story, deserving of a Pulitzer, but who knows of it?
I’ve a good friend who follows the news real close, but he’s never heard of the NYT article — and he’s not The Lone Ranger, a vast-majority of US peoples have never heard of it either.
My friend’s problem?
He doesn’t go online.
In my humble opinion, the Internet keeps the MSM from becoming a government mouthpiece.
And now that might be a problem.
Via antiwar.com and blogger Crystal L. Cox:
A federal judge in Oregon has ruled that a Montana woman sued for defamation was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally during a bankruptcy case, a decision with implications for bloggers around the country.
…
U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez found last week that as a blogger, Cox was not a journalist and cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news outlets.
Although media experts said Wednesday that the ruling would have little effect on the definition of journalism, it casts a shadow on those who work in nontraditional media since it highlights the lack of case law that could protect them and the fact that current state shield laws for journalists are not covering recent developments in online media.
…
Hernandez said Cox was not a journalist because she offered no professional qualifications as a journalist or legitimate news outlet.
She had no journalism education, credentials or affiliation with a recognized news outlet, proof of adhering to journalistic standards such as editing or checking her facts, evidence she produced an independent product or evidence she ever tried to get both sides of the story.
Cox said she considered herself a journalist, producing more than 400 blogs over the past five years, with a proprietary technique to get her postings on the top of search engines where they get the most notice.
“What could be more mainstream than the Internet and the top of the search engine?” she said.
…
Ellyn Angelotti, who teaches about digital trends and social media at The Poynter Institute, said the ruling was significant because so little case law has built up on online media.
But she believed it would have little impact on bloggers in general until the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a case, or more federal courts rule.
Kyu Ho Youm, a First Amendment expert and journalism professor at the University of Oregon, called the judge’s strict definition of a journalist “outdated” since so-called citizen journalists currently outnumber traditional journalists.
“When we talk about the shield law, we should pay more attention to the function people are doing than whether people are connected to traditional and established news media,” he said.
Yes, indeed.
And the time is approaching, case in point: The Protect IP Act, and its sister, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would allow the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders focused on shutting down websites accused of copyright infringement, and in the process, will limit free speech and innovation.
Both of these pending laws will change the outlook of the Net — both of which are called “Intolerable Acts” by Slate in a post yesterday:
SOPA would go even further, creating a system of private regulation to shut down websites that are accused of not doing enough to prevent infringement.
Keep in mind that these shutdowns would happen before a site owner could defend himself in court—SOPA could punish sites without even establishing whether they are guilty of the charges brought against them.
…
Rather than blocking online copyright infringement, legislation like SOPA and Protect IP would instigate a data obfuscation arms race, making legitimate law enforcement efforts all the more difficult.
If the United States decides that copyright infringement must be stopped at any cost, the required censorship regime will depend on ever more invasive practices, such as monitoring users’ personal Web traffic.
This counterproductive cat-and-mouse game of censorship and circumvention would drive savvy scofflaws to darknets while increasing surveillance of less technically proficient Internet users.
The Net could go a bit darker.
And a sense of why was captured last Sept. 11 by Spencer Ackerman at Wired:
Ten years ago today, 2,996 people were murdered, unleashing a pair of destructive, mutually reinforcing trends.
To prove their relevance, terrorists keep trying to attack the United States at home.
And the media and politicians react to it with hysteria, running in fear of getting blamed for a successful attack and perpetuating the gigantic, expensive, counterproductive National Security State.
As awful as the snuffing of so many souls on 9/11 was, the second trend has often proved more dangerous than the first.
I-Journalism might become ‘more dangerous‘ in the near future, and in its fashion, the MSM will end up the new porn.