Pump-U-Up
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Energy, Environment, Madness | Leave a Comment
In the midst of people/places/things making news this week, one item seemingly absent is any hysteria over high fuel prices.
Competition for news time is tight, with the vernal Dick Clark dead at 82, Leon Panetta trying to explain away another Afghan horror photo as “…not who we are…,” three SS agents forced out in a widening whore scandal, Syria not keeping its word on a ceasefire (Duh!), and, even maybe Mitt Romney slapping a terrible put-down on some cookies, prompting the baker to proclaim: “Let him eat cake next time.”
And so it goes…
But where’s the oil?
Outside the urgency circle — for the first time in two-and-a-half months, US gas pump prices declined last week, and with it, the nation’s drivers are staying closer to home with consumption down 4 percent from the same time last year.
(Illustration found here).
Due to oil supplies growing, oil prices are skimming the milk — US inventory grew by 3.9 million barrels last week on “…some pretty anemic fuel demand levels.”
Also via Bloomberg: Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude fell $1.53 to finish at $102.67 per barrel in New York, while Brent crude lost 81 cents to end at $117.97 per barrel in London.
Meanwhile, on the street-level pump time: U.S. retail gasoline prices dipped slightly to a national average of $3.899 per gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. The national average has declined by 2.6 cents this month, and it’s now it’s just barely under $3.90 for the first time since March.
Although pump prices are down right now, they’re supposed to chart upward as we approach the summer time.
So, to do my part, I put another $20 worth of gas in the still-chugging Jeep yesterday, the pump price still at $4.49 a gallon for regular — the same the past month.
Still higher than the rest of California: The average cost of a gallon of regular in California is still 6.5 cents higher than it was at this time last year, at $4.245. But that is a drop of 4.5 cents a gallon since last week and a drop of 11.6 cents since last month.
What a gas.
No, it’s really an inferno and no one is watching.
The most-major problem with oil — fossil fuels in general — is not gas pump prices, or demand or consumption, but what the shit is doing to life on this freaked-out planet.
Oh, there’s still plenty of oil, though, it’s near the end of the so-called ‘easy oil,’ but still enough to kill every living creature now alive.
From European Energy Review under the title, ‘Cheer Up: The World has plenty of oil,’ on how we might be f*cked:
It’s widely believed nowadays that global oil production is running up against its limits.
“The days of easy oil are over”, we are told and we should brace ourselves for an age of relative oil scarcity.
The reality, however, is very different.
As more and more people within the oil industry have come to realize in recent years, the world has plenty of oil that can be produced at competitive prices for a long, long time to come.
This means the world does not face inevitable “energy poverty” and there is no reason to be afraid of unavoidable “energy wars.”
The author then explains in some detail how OPEC effects oil production, how the growth of unconventional fuels, demand and other factors in revealing there’s still enough fuel to keep civilization blasting into a far distant future.
It’s a horror tale.
There’s way more oil than earth.
From the Natural Resources Defense Council last week: More importantly, we were always going to run out of the earth’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide without suffering catastrophic climate disruption long before we ran out of fossil fuels.
Via Climate Progress and Jonathan Koomey:
I focus here on the lower bounds to make an important point: Even with estimates of the fossil fuel resource base at the low end of what the literature says, the amount of carbon embodied in just the conventional sources of these fuels is vastly larger than the amount of fuel assumed to be burned in the MIT no-policy case (which is a reasonable assessment of our “business-as-usual” future, assuming no major efforts to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels).
…
I conclude from this comparison that there’s virtually no chance that resource constraints would provide a brake on carbon emissions in this century, and the emissions in the MIT no-policy case are below what could be expected if we were to burn even a quarter of our entire conventional resource base in the next ninety years.
…
One implication of these results is that the current estimated value of fossil fuel reserves (as capitalized in the stock prices of fossil fuel companies) is an illusion, as Dave Roberts of Grist points out.
We quite literally can’t burn it all and continue the orderly development of human civilization, so the trillions of dollars of “value” in those reserves is a mirage (and a major impediment to progress on this problem, given how hard the fossil fuel industry is fighting to preserve its profits).
So in other words, we ain’t ever gonna stop doin’ what we doin’ until we can’t do it any more.
Then it’s extinction time — pump that into your new SUV.
Much Ado About…
Filed Under Bullshit, Politics | Leave a Comment
Pretty much a fact that Republicans can’t govern worth a shit — three GOP presidents excepted, Abe, Ike and Dick, though the last guy had some major pathological problems — and George Jr. was the worst White House occupant in US history.
The only way that nasty party can even stay alive is by blowing thick bullshit smoke.
And in 2012, it’s the word, War, as in everything.
The GOP has funneled up phony conflicts ad nauseum — however, the shit is on the toilet paper: President Obama and Mitt Romney are only a few percentage points apart in tracking polls, so despite reality, the thick, bullshit smoke seems to be working.
Mainly, maybe there’s a lot of real, real dumb-ass and ignorant US peoples out there.
(illustration found here).
One big phony war that ain’t phony is the slashing on women’s rights through all kinds of legislative and backdoor ways.
And the GOP knows it.
Mitt Romney said last week: “We have work to do to make sure we take our message to the women of America, so they understand how we’re going to get good jobs and we’re going to have a bright economic future for them and for their kids.”
Yeah, right.
Heather Borden Herve asks why women haven’t really come a long way, then answers:
The question isn’t whether Ann Romney ever ‘worked’ a day in her whole life, but: Does her husband Mitt truly give a rat’s ass about anyone—especially women—in the 99 percent?
This made-up battle between working moms and stay-at-home-moms is causing people of every gender to lose focus on more important issues—namely whether politicians are advocating stripping rights from women (like reproductive health choices) or finding ways to penalize them and hold them back (withholding equal pay) or simply having a double standard when it comes to lower- vs. higher-income women (Romney’s welfare mom requirement to work).
…
What I’m looking into is where the candidates stand on the issues I care about — not what jobs their spouses had or didn’t have.
Cutting a lean swath through the war zone, Jezebel opens up the can, touching on all the much-ado bullshit of wars, saving the best and brightest:
In the battle of the political wars, the one that mostly resembles an actual war with fighting and people getting hurt is what graphics behind news anchors’ heads have been calling the War on Women.
Of course, no one’s suggesting that women be subjected to the horror of having to pay higher taxes like Class Warfare, or the indignity of not being allowed to force other people to live lives according to their doctrine like the War on Religion, or the soul-crushing torture and violence of being accused of being a lazy rich lady by a pundit with opposing political views like the War on Conservative Moms.
But the War on Women has given us such gems as a serious debate over whether or not to renew the 12-year-old Violence Against Women Act because it expands protection for gay people and immigrants, and an all-male panel discussing whether or not birth control should be provided to women with bosses who don’t like birth control, and several bans on late-term abortions that would force many women with dangerous or doomed pregnancies to wait until an emergency to take any medical action on the inevitable, and the shuttering of a $30 million program designed to help low-income women get health care because the state of Texas doesn’t want to give money to Planned Parenthood, and state legislators saying that women should avoid divorce when they’re getting beaten by remembering why they fell in love with their husbands (his eyes… and left hook).
People could actually get hurt because of this!
But the bottom is in reality this:
So which war is the best war?
That title goes to a below-the-radar war that you don’t hear much talk about — The War on Facts.
And just maybe this little blurb might help.
Maybe a shift in the financial windfall of wealth:
In a stinging rebuke, Citigroup shareholders rebuffed on Tuesday the bank’s $15 million pay package for its chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, marking the first time that stock owners have united in opposition to outsized compensation at a financial giant.
…
“C.E.O.’s deserve good pay but there’s good pay and there’s obscene pay,” said Brian Wenzinger, a principal at Aronson Johnson Ortiz, a Philadelphia money management company that voted against the pay package.
Mr. Wenzinger’s firm owns more than 5 million shares of Citigroup.
Maybe a war on over-paid assholes.
Word
Filed Under Bullshit, Economy, Finance, Politics | Leave a Comment
“They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.”
– George Carlin
(Illustration found here).
Yesterday, that most-august body of assholes, the US Senate, and fueled by the ugly gnashing of Republican teeth against keeping the hoard of wealth amongst a select few, torpedoed the ‘Buffett Rule’ bill and kept the American Dream alive.
The GOP claims President Obama pushed too hard, and believe a proposed small-business tax cut scheduled for a House vote this week sets up a nice contrast.
Indeed.
According to Wikipedia: The Buffett Rule is a tax plan proposed by President Barack Obama in 2011 to reduce income inequality in the United States between the top 1 percent of Americans and the remaining 99 pecent of Americans, due to the income growth in the 1 percent group as compared to the 99 percent group. The tax plan would apply a minimum tax of 30 percent to individuals making more than a million dollars a year.
In other words, make life a little less wonderful for the wealthy, and created some equality.
Fat chance.
Even as most US peoples face the ugly tax deadline today, the upper portions of this country still lives fat off the hog — the hog being the rest of the nation.
Nearly 70 percent of Americans want the Buffett Rule.
From CNN:
In the CNN/ORC survey, 68 percent of respondents said the current tax system benefits the rich and is unfair to ordinary workers, compared with 29 percent who disagreed with that view.
Overall, 50 percent said the federal income taxes they paid were about right, with 45 percent saying their taxes were too high and 3 percent answering their taxes were too low.
Who the shit is that 3 percent?
The entire pile of stinking manure is a play at words by Republicans, who don’t give a shit about anybody but their wealthy back-slappers — leaving the unwashed and over-taxed masses out in the laundry room.
The GOP is working like a thief in the dark of night.
And that nice contrast House bill due this week?
From a NY Times editorial this weekend:
This week, the House Republican leadership is expected to bring up the “Small Business Tax Cut Act,” a bill to let most business owners deduct up to 20 percent of their business income in 2012 — a $46 billion tax cut.
Despite the Mom-and-Pop label, it is designed so that nearly half of the tax cut would go to people with annual income over $1 million, and more than four-fifths would go to those making over $200,000, according to the Tax Policy Center.
Dip-shit nit-twit Eric Cantor is thumping up the House bill.
The Times responds:
As for the broader economy, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed 13 policies last year for their potential impact on economic growth and job creation in 2012 and 2013.
The option of a business tax cut along the lines of the Cantor bill ranked next to last in bang for the buck.
More effective options include fiscal aid to states and increased safety net spending, which create jobs by bolstering consumer demand — and which Republicans fiercely oppose.
Reality found in compassion not the GOP word.
Butterfly Blather
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Madness, Politics | Leave a Comment
On the eve of the weekend again — time flies when you’re having fun.
Just ask Monty Python-named character Reince Priebus, RNC honcho, who thinks butterflies are actually female body parts: “If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars.”
Women just love nasty, empty spaces between a man’s ears — drives ‘em crazy with anti-lust.
Molly Ball at The Atlantic responds: Under the guise of aiding the agriculture industry, Republicans and their allies in Washington have been waging a long-running campaign to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from limiting bug-killing pesticides…But the truth is clear, and it’s nothing new: Republicans just don’t care about caterpillars.
Pop that in your cocoon and smoke it.
(Illustration: M. C. Escher’s ‘Hand with Reflecting Sphere‘ found here).
And from the looks of it, Republicans don’t care for anything except hard cash and the people who have hard cash on their person.
From The Hill yesterday:
Mitt Romney often bears false witness about what he really believes, but when we see through his pander of the month, it comes down to this: Romney is the rich man’s candidate who believes in a Social Darwinism (fervently supported by Paul Ryan and Ron Paul) in which the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the middle class gets crushed, wealthy factions can buy elections, big money dominates, women are punished, Hispanics are disenfranchised, Medicare is destroyed and Social Security is attacked while these programs would be turned into profit centers for Wall Street firms under Republican rule.
These Republicans even oppose pay equity for women and do not understand why Democrats benefit from a gender gap that is epic, gargantuan, intergalactic and probably decisive in November.
One wonders if the GOP really has any sense other than the bubble sprouting from tea bags floating around in tepid tap water.
They lash out at anything they perceive as dangerous — forgetting all the while that females also have the ability to remember.
Starting with the Kennedy-Nixon presidential race in 1960, I’ve followed politics for more than half a century and this season’s episode is the most sordid, nasty and cruel ever, as neurotic wingnuts have taken war flight on fantasies against everything, not just caterpillars, or women, or the environment, or the poor, or…
As George Carlin lamented long ago: “Conservatives say if you don’t give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they’ve lost all incentive because we’ve given them too much money.”
And that’s why weekends are for total cocooning.
‘Enough of this you-know-what’
Filed Under Bullshit, Media, Politics | Leave a Comment
Much ado about President Obama’s hot-mike comment to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during the nuclear pow-wow in Korea: “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”
Obama appears real-positive about what will happen in November.
Although he snagged some dumb-ass comments from GOP presidential contenders, and tried to make light of the whole thing, Medvedev also picked up some backlash shit in Russia for his reply: “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir” — and in a show of some kind of freedom, the InterWebs got all cooked up: Russian bloggers immediately circulated Mr Medvedev’s phrase on Twitter, ridiculing Mr Medvedev for his apparent admission that all information needs to go through the all-powerful Russian No. 1 Putin.
(Illustration found here).
One does recall George Jr.’s open-mic blubber from now-near 12 years ago when apparently oblivious of the microphone just inches from his mouth slipped some shit words to regular guy and then-running mate, The Dick Cheney:
“There’s Adam Clymer — major league asshole — from the New York Times,” Bush said.
“Yeah, big time,” returned Cheney.
Assholes will be assholes — and one is not talking about the NYT reporter, Clymer.
Another public open-mic event occurred Sunday evening when chief hypocrite Rick ‘How-did-this-asshole-get this-far‘ Santorum launched into a petulant, temper outburst against another New York Times reporter after the former Pennsylvania senator tore opponent Mitt Romney a new bung-hole, then claimed he didn’t.
Background from Reuters:
On Monday, Santorum defended his outburst at a New York Times reporter, which occurred after the reporter questioned him about a remark Santorum had made about Romney being “the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama.”
Santorum told the reporter, Jeff Zeleny, to “stop lying,” said he had called Romney “the worst Republican to run on the issue of Obamacare,” and then cursed at Zeleny.
Actually cursed.
From CNN:
Santorum did however lose his cool later when a reporter approached him along the rope line after his speech.
Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times was on the receiving end of Santorum’s testy response.
Immediately after the exchange Zeleny recounted what happened to CNN.
“I said, ‘Do you think that Mitt Romney is really the worst Republican in the country to run against Obama?’ — which is what he said.
And he said, ‘I didn’t say that. You guys are distorting what I’m saying,’” said Zeleny.
Then, Zeleny said, Santorum asked him to “quit distorting my words. It’s bulls-.”
“You don’t care about the truth at all do you?
You really don’t.
Asking that question tells me you don’t care at all about the truth,” Santorum added.
See the video of the incident and listen to the asshole/jerk at Digby‘s place.
Santorum, though, cleansed his soul yesterday:
“If you haven’t cursed out a New York Times reporter during the course of a campaign, you’re not really a real Republican’s the way I look at it,” Santorum said on Fox News.
“It was just one of these harassing moments, and after having answered the question a few times, sort of comes back with the same old fashion, the same old spin.”
“I just said ‘Okay, I’ve had enough of this you-know-what,’” he added.
And you know what?
Bullshit is the word, asshole.