Watching daylight turn into rain, there comes a feeling that what is perceived as reality is just noise to a lot of people, creating a blip in the mojo, a trip in the ether, and forcing disaster onto the multitude.
In casual observation, the statement, ‘fish need water,’ requires no explanation, either for it’s actual-factual basis, or it’s pure absurdity in sight, sound and emotion — the seemingly apparent message, however, like a shitload of other stuff nowadays, remains oddly like a variation in that old standard, it’s all in-the-eye (or, the-brain) of the beholder.

One telling segment in the original  movie (the first one), ‘The Matrix,’ occurs within a training program when Morpheus explains a bottom-line about the system: “You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it. Were you listening to me, Neo, or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?”

Thus it is in soon-to-be 2011 A.D., distractions — sex, lies and videotape — keep the obvious out of sight, or if seen, the vision is so twisted and distorted, people question its validity.
And in this mega-information age, even a rational near-sane person would have trouble.
So beware the source of information.
(Illustration found here).

UGLY VOICES, UGLY FACES

One obvious source is Fox News.
As I explained in a post last week, a survey from World Public Opinion, a project at the University of Maryland, disclosed a shitload of US voters were sorely misinformed on the issues involved with last month’s midterm elections — a major reason is there’s no real, credible MSM as none of the usual media suspects are worth a shit, especially in the faux form of Fox News.
The poll found 9 in 10 voters said that in the 2010 election they encountered information they believed was misleading or false, with 56% saying this occurred frequently. Fifty-four percent said that it had been more frequent than usual, while just three percent said it was less frequent than usual…
Not at all surprising, if one understands Fox News.
And it’s not really all that surprising either how Fox News responded to the validity of the survey — once again the old moniker of attack the messenger, not the message.
From the New York Times:

Asked for comment on the study, Fox News seemingly dismissed the findings.
In a statement, Michael Clemente, who is the senior vice president of news editorial for the network, said: “The latest Princeton Review ranked the University of Maryland among the top schools for having ‘Students Who Study The Least’ and being the ‘Best Party School’ — given these fine academic distinctions, we’ll regard the study with the same level of veracity it was ‘researched’ with.”

And not a whit about the results.
An obvious blowback onto US peoples from Fox News is Sarah Palin and the Tea Party — the country seems to have lost decades in just a few months.

THE ‘GOOD’ UGLY WAR

Another obvious situation is Afghanistan — which might just be much-more obvious than even Iraq at its inglorious peak.
President Obama’s so-called ‘review’ of the war last week was pretty-much pure bullshit and obviously oblivious to the real situation as all kinds of different venues report horror at the doorstep, from the Red Cross reporting the country is more dangerous now than in the last 30 years (covering a lot of killing ground), to US intelligence services, and even from the so-called enemy: In an e-mailed statement, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the last nine years of war had proven that increased troop levels had no effect.
“It is a failed strategy, not only on the military side but also in civilian and administrative affairs,” he said. “Public services in Afghanistan have failed. Corruption, insecurity and also the civilian casualties are a result of failed American strategy.
“President Obama is also talking about progress, but it is clear for everyone that the reality is completely the opposite of what he says,” he added.
Obviously the opposite.

If one is not curious about facts and figures and reality, one is doomed.
One horrific view of Afghanistan comes from one of the best reporters literally in the field, Patrick Cockburn, who always takes an off-the-beaten-MSM-path to present an obvious reality — there’s indeed been important changes on the ground this year, but most in favour of the Taliban, and, how the Afghan situation is becoming a repeat of US blunders in the Vietnam saga.
In a commentary Saturday in the Guardian, Cockburn rightfully acknowledges the only real, obvious path is through a political conclusion, not a military one — though the US and NATO have no formulated political plan in hand to do just that — and how much NATO and the US are detested among Afghan peoples:

The generals, diplomats, aid workers, security men and all the others who make up a sort of colonial elite in Kabul may be dancing on thinner ice than they imagine.
Afghans may work for them but do not like them.
One highly educated Afghan who worked for a US aid agency recalled bitterly how “they treated us Afghans as third-class citizens, packed five or six to a room while each foreigner earned five times what we did and had a room of his own”.
Afghans are adept at concealing their real views.
A government official was giving me a bland account of his ministry’s activities.
Bored, I asked if there was anything he would like to say to me unattributably.
“Well”, he said, without changing his smooth tone of voice, “there is no chance of any progress here so long as our country is run by gangsters and warlords.”
But it is to keep these same people in power that the US and Britain are now fighting a war.

And there’s only one obvious end here: The US and NATO to get the shit out of Afghanistan.
However, one knows there’s going to be a shitload more blood and treasure spilled before the big pull out, but it will come, sooner or later, no matter the-then-current situation there, it will come.

UGLY WEATHER

The biggest, most dangerous, and most compelling obvious entity currently facing everybody sucking wind on this planet  right now  is climate change — no one can hide from it, buy it off, or dismiss it.
The just concluded Cancun, Mexico, climate talks is an example of the terror, with an answer to the quickly-mounting problem still far down the road even with some obligations worked out: Just as much uncertainty hangs over the legal status of the Cancun commitments, which are voluntary — a price paid for reaching consensus. Unless agreements can be turned into legally-binding requirements, there is genuine concern that many countries will only pay them lip-service.
And it will more than the lips caught in the crack.
Read this post at Climate Progress and the comments section to get a feel of how near-futile the attempt to get a handle on climate change.

Climate change/global warming manifests itself, as far as I can tell from the reading, in weather.
Deniers are obviously bullshitting — assholes! Look out your windows!
In the Middle East, of all places, abnormal winter storms have lashed the entire area — climate change has even been involved with those inferno-like forest fires in Israel earlier this month — and in Europe right now, the whole region is being pounded by “freak weather conditions,” creating chaos.
And it’s only going to get worse.
A study from Duke University released in October indicates the big winter snow/rain storms and the summer heat/dry weather for the US comes from global warning via changes in the Bermuda High, an area of high pressure that forms each summer near Bermuda — warm air holds more moisture, as witness the current heavy storms in the mid to eastern part of the country, or the 1,000-year flooding last spring in Tennessee.
Money quote from the study:

The team’s analysis found that as the NASH intensified, its area enlarged, bringing the high’s weather-making western ridge closer to the continental United States by 1.22 longitudinal degrees a decade.
“This is not a natural variation like El Nino,” says lead author Wenhong Li, assistant professor of earth and ocean sciences at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.
“We thoroughly investigated possible natural causes, including the Atlantic Multivariate Oscillation (AMO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which may affect highs, but found no links.
“Our analysis strongly suggests that the changes in the NASH are mainly due to anthropogenic warming,” she says.

See — seems obvious to me.