2012 and Beyond: The End of the World as We Know It

We seem to think that mind and spirit are separate, that there is a spiritual realm and a practical realm and that they do not overlap at all - and that the one does not inform the other.

But cause and effect still rules and amoral actions in the here and now lead to direct consquences that are suffered by our children and grandchildren. Indeed.. unto the seventh generation.

It's the Agenda, Stupid

A Digg commenter made this post come together for me:


It's a Corporate agenda, disguised as your mean old white alcoholic Dad's agenda, disguised as a Christian agenda, disguised as a Libertarian agenda.


And Alan Grayson, a Democratic Representative from Florida, is either courageous or desperate enough to just lay it out. H/t Down with Tyrrany.



Now, in a seeming non-sequeteur - this bit of news...

As ads on energy/climate go, the new one from VoteVets, a progressive organization founded by veterans of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, is a little harder hitting than most.

The spot features commentary from retired Brigadier Gen. Steven Anderson, who was the chief of logistics for U.S. forces in Iraq under Gen. Petraeus, and who is now urging the Senate to pass a clean energy plan.
In the ad, Anderson tells viewers, “Breaking our addiction [to foreign oil] must not only be a military priority, but America’s mission, and why the Senate needs to pass a clean energy climate plan. It’ll put Americans to work developing new energy technologies that’ll save lives overseas, make us less dependent and more secure…. It’s time for our senators to choose: Pass a clean energy climate plan that makes us more secure, or let America keep paying the price.”

It’s a powerful argument from a compelling figure, and VoteVets is reportedly spending a half-million dollars to run the minute-long ad on national cable networks.

Why, you might wonder. There's a general, there's money, and it's talking about national security...



Oh. My.

CNN and MSNBC began airing the commercial today, but not Fox News. The Republican network has rejected the ad without explanation.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s happened before. In May, VoteVets put together a similar ad, which Fox News deemed “too confusing” for its audience.

An American Hero talking about Green Stuff? I can see how they might think that would "confuse" their audience with "facts" and stuff. Like, all that money going to Iran. I wonder how much sticks to Murdoch's hands on the way there and back again.

Perps And Consequences

The war on drugs has to be one of the single stupidest policies ever devised.



Via: Medical Coding Certification


Even if every single thing D.A.R.E. and the various "drug warriors" said about slippery slopes and inappropriateness for medical use were factual (a matter of some considerable dispute between those who care more than I, one way or the other), the unregulated consequences predicted by the pearl-clutching nannies would still be less severe than the current state of affairs.


This is leaving aside the entire question as to whether people should be "permitted" to use drugs - since it's clearly failed to change drug usage in any detectable way, it's my presumption that the war is exactly what it seems to be - an ongoing war against people, and that the violence and repression is not a means to an end, it is the entire point. 


I refer to it as the "Bigger Hammer" theory of governance. If things don't go as you desire, if people don't behave as you think they should, pull out your biggest hammer and hit them as hard as you can. I'm quite certain I've referred to it as the Gallagher School of Public Policy. I had no actual idea at the time that it is also Gallagher's idea of Public Policy. Go figure. 


So like I said above, the whole point is to smash shit. That's the whole act. Smash shit, say something viciously stupid, and the audience laughs nervously. Confuse that with approval, and carry on.


Speaking of assholes who smash people when they don't behave as he thinks they should; Mel Gibson is selling his property and returning to Australia. It seems hardly worth commenting about - but that certainly didn't stop people. Eww. I do so enjoy seeing all the upstanding people crawl out from under their rocks to assure us all that it's all the victim's fault for making the perp angry enough to beat her up.

If I need to explain why this is so very wrong to you - well, I doubt I can. But you should probably seek help.

This cycle has both personal and political relevance - and I wryly observe that my advice to Democrats would be to take out a restraining order against the radical right, rather than to attempt to reason with their perps; advice that is even more relevant to the serial abuse victims of the Moderate Right.


Without in any way trying to discount the personal impact on people who are victimized personally by real abuse and sexual violence, it's worth observing that it is not a separate thing; moreover, it's most likely a public expression of much worse private behaviours. 


Not that it will stop the shouting of abusive, hateful perps that I'm an evil abusive perp. Here's the tactics directed at the NAACP with professional and amateur variations.








Um. There IS a racist element. I wouldn't say it's the only questionable thread, it's one of many sorts of grouchy, mean spirited, simple-minded and ugly messages to be found.



They should be condemned, if for no other reason than to keep the Tea Party on point. When you accuse critics of being racists for having noticed not even subtle racism, it makes people watching wonder if your stated politics is just another Jim Crow Shuck and Jive.

Rebuttal to Bill O'Reilly's Opposing Gay Marriage by Ishtarmuz shows the technique of fisking to good advantage. But to be quite fair, it was aiming plunging fire a great big fat soft target. 

Shame, blame and patronizing dismissals of the validity of the person and their plaints are, of course the very first response to anyone who dares to "whine" about ill treatment within such a dynamic, at least, before the tapes are released to the press.

For the coverage of this particular weeks events - hell, these cartoons tell you all you need to know. The difference between an ethicist, a comedian and a clown? Comedians are funny.  

That's because they tell the truth, regardless of consequences. Clowns, on the other hand... clowns exist to enforce social norms and, just for extra fun, scare the crap out of children. This usually happens because children have a far better grasp of the difference between "normal and to be expected" and "justice." 

There are lessons from history to be studied, lest we all find ourselves living in times even more interesting than our current state of disarray. This history of the troubles supported and encouraged in Argentina by Authoritarian Catholic Fanatics who failed to pacify Algeria and failed to assassinate France's Charles De Gaulle. More than 30,000 "disappeared". In the end, such a revulsion was bred toward the Catholic Church that one of their worst nightmares came true, aside from the consequential fact that barely a quarter of the population are practicing Catholic. It does not seem from this remove that the proponents are a much better class of leader - it was that such self-inflicted karmic wounds tend to attract predators. The issue of same-sex marriage was an opportunity to split an opposition coalition - and it seems to have worked quite well.

Examples of the obliviousness to the consequences of the authoritarian mindset abound. The ACLU, in speaking of Yet Another Ham-Fisted Backdoor Ban on Abortion, quotes the legal decision, and of course mentions the impact upon persons such a law would have.

The idea of providing patients with thousands of scientific studies dating back as much as 100 years would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous. A woman's health and well-being are best supported when she can trust that her doctor will provide medical information that is accurate and unbiased. Rather than ensuring that a woman's choice to end her pregnancy is meaningful and informed, this law forces her doctor to provide her false and misleading information, undermining the trust between a woman and her doctor.

Fortunately, Judge Laurie Smith Camp found that compliance with the law "would be impossible or nearly impossible," and would likely deter physicians from providing abortion care in the first place. Additionally, Judge Camp determined that "no such legislative concern for the health of women, or of men, has given rise to any remotely similar informed-consent statutes applicable to other medical procedure."

Both the court and the ACLU seem to have missed the larger point, save in the title itself. "Respecting Women's Decisions." 

Those who demand respect for their authority without respecting those they are given authority over deserve neither respect, nor deference, nor obedience, particularly when they abuse the law and society and the intelligence of critics and courts in so doing.

This is something that is intuitively understood by the least and youngest among us. Bullies may steal your lunch money but it's no great achievement; they deserve no respect, no allegiance, nothing but contempt.

When those in power conspire to use the law against the helpless, seemingly just because they can, and when the authoritarian fringes cry out in protest against entirely basic human rights being asserted in court, it's clearly time to sharply curb the presumptuous bumpkins and abusive toads who seem to think that power only exists to be flaunted and abused. A general disrepect for the values and visions of the Authoritarian of the Moment emerges. Resistance and evasion emerges quickly, more and sharper oppressions follow, derision and disrespect ensues, until you find yourself in something that might be called a "Cold Civil War."

Well, it's really no wonder there's such fear and loathing and suspicion of authorities, government, media and law enforcement. For, all too often, it's seen as a means to an end, which is quite at odds with any piously stated ideals. 

The way we avoid that is that we adhere to the ethical prime directive, which is to live your life while avoiding harm to others; a concept that scales perfectly well to churches, governments and corporations. Why? Well, because! 

Because when you don't - this is your legacy.

The Man

The Mess

Let us speak once more of our Family Values.

"Tell The Truth and Shame the Devil."

Having to conceal his relationship, Choi explained, contradicted his values, as well as the military values of integrity and honesty. He created a fake female name for his boyfriend in order to talk with other soldiers about his relationship, and he began to struggle to make up excuses about why the people he worked with couldn't meet his significant other. The delicate balancing act proved too much for Choi.

"It was really when I had to force my boyfriend into the closet -- that was when it got to be too much," Choi said. "That's when I saw it as lying and as absolutely immoral.

"I promised to live under an honor code at West Point that says, 'You will not lie, and you will not tolerate lying,' " Choi said. "It's simple. It doesn't say, 'Straight people cannot lie, but gay people are allowed to lie about their loved ones, so we'll make exceptions for gay people.' I found that to be antithetical to the values that our military was founded on."

Attack the idea, not the person

This week, Elliott Abrams, the former Bush official and noted neoconservative, wrote an essay in the Weekly Standard attacking the Obama administration for not more forcefully defending Israel during the flotilla crisis. Abrams said the White House had joined an anti-Israeli “lynch mob.” Over the course of the article, he used the metaphor six times.

It’s remarkable when you think about it. To Americans with even the slightest degree of racial awareness, “lynch mob” conjures something quite particular: African American men hanging from trees in the post-civil war South. To deploy the metaphor to describe a United Nations resolution that obliquely criticizes Israel is audacious. To deploy it to describe the support for that resolution by America’s first African-American president is downright astonishing. It’s a bit like calling Joe Lieberman’s opposition health-care reform a “pogrom.

Never let your morality ideology sponsorship get in the way of doing the right thing.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, went out on a limb today to do something maybe no other American would think to do: Heapologized to BP for having to put $20 billion into a fund for Gulf spill damages. Only Barton called it a "slush fund" and a "shakedown."

Barton's apology to BP led at first to a delicate dance, as some Republicans tried to move awayfrom the so obviously toxic statements without outright condemning Barton, and later a full court press as Republican leaders publicly calledBarton's comments "wrong."

The leaders reportedly gave him an ultimatum: "Apologize, immediately. Or you will lose your position, immediately."

Eventually, Barton, who would become the energy committee's chairman should the Republicans take the House this fall, said he was sorry. He first apologized if anyone had "misconstrued" his statement, and shortly after apologized for using the word "shakedown" and retracted his original apology (to BP, that is).

I try never to assume the motives of an individual - particularly a political individual - but here I'm forced to wonder aloud, which apology was sincere, and which was extracted under pressure? Having found that the question must be asked, the fact that it IS a good question is really all the answer I need.


A footnote to the above: The 7 Dumbest Things BP Has Said About The Spill -- So Far

Psycochemotherapy for the masses.

The bitter fruits of our common human experience of the last rough decade are being distilled into an un-cordial essence of well-earned contempt. It's a distillation I savor at times like this; while I doubt it's good for me in the long run, and I do try to avoid overproduction from my own fruits - at the same time, perhaps it may do some good.

As does chemotherapy - a toxin designed to be somewhat more fatal to a disease than the organism it's trying to kill. Axel erupts with what might be a promising insight in a thread over at FiveThirtyEight.

Dwight, what you need to understand about today's rightwinger is that he wants all the ideological gratification with none of the work required.

Surely you won't deny him the pleasure of running around with the rest of the mob while chanting the same thing over and over in infantile bliss?

Basically, if y'all want to have your triumph outside of the circlejerks, you have to do some actual work (for *once* in your lives) and offer up some evidence. You can't point at a pile of text and say "it's all in there I'm telling you".

One of the main reasons I want climate legislation through is because I think the conspiracy of dunces against such legislation is a sign that it is good for society. You can tell a man's worth by measuring his opponents, and the haters of Gore and the climate scientists are some of the most pathetic and odious people on the internet - they make 4chan look like a British royal reception.

Do your homework or get out of our sights. I don't go up to my teacher and say "I understand it all - I don't have to do the exam" but you cretins can gurgle with happiness over what these e-mails supposedly show?

That's not how the world works, morons.

Personally, I generally try to say something more positive than that. I don't always succeed, but I do try. More often than not these days, I walk away from the keyboard rather than publishing the incoherent rant I've managed to inflict upon my computer.

But sometimes such a rant will include a truly golden insight; an observation that we would be ordinarily too polite to point out, but which is nonetheless both true and inherently toxic to the dangerous stupidities of our day.

...what you need to understand about today's rightwinger is that he wants all the ideological gratification with none of the work required.

Actually, it's worse than that. Some of them actually seem to think they HAVE done the work, when all they have done is expended effort, evidenced by waste heat and fricative noises.

After the third or fourth time that a person of educated intelligence has been presented a crayon-scrawl as being a Grand Theory of This or The Next Great Novel or Inarguable Proof that The Truth Has Been Suppressed - well, it becomes tiresome in the extreme; particularly when it becomes apparent that they really cannot tell the difference between the nonsense they present and the minimum standard of the form.

Before you can do the work, you have to understand what the work is. Perhaps even more importantly, you really do need to understand the people doing it - because people who thrive in academia and who think that modeling chaotic systems is interesting are not at ALL like "Normal Folks." Actually, they are kinda out of the range of pretty damn smart folks - who are mostly useful for translating the banjo music into human speech.

When you have a broad consensus among people who are capable of looking at the data, People like Nate, for instance, evaluating it themselves and understanding the conclusions ,people who come at it from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, it's really rather remarkable for there to be such a broad, scientific consensus.

Bluntly, if there was room for genuine debate, there would be more "sides" to the issue than "Those who have done the work" and "those who think any opinion is as good as any other."



Do they understand the mechanisms and directions of Climate Change completely? Good lord, no. The fundamental science required to make the crudest models is barely a generation old. The computational power to model that science is scarce and inadequate. So we don't have a complete picture, and are still unable to make very specific predictions about what climate is likely to do in any place at any time. But the picture we do have is accurate enough to be a compelling argument against complacency. What we do know is that climate is changing - rapidly, possibly more rapidly than we can gracefully accommodate. It's far more likely than not that human actions are in large part responsible, which is the ONLY spot of good news. You see, that means there is something we can do about the situation. But there is a large social problem in North America with that insight. It means The Hippies were right all along.

That's what it translates to in the minds of Authoritarian right wingers. That the sky and the earth and the waters are not endless, that resources are measured and that the side-effects of private profit will always have some diffuse social impact, the earth being a closed system. In North America in general, and the US in particular, it's considered to be absolutely wrong to ask any "soverign individual" to do any thing - even such a small thing as checking their tire pressure - for any reason other than absolute self-interest.

Indeed, it's considered intrusive when it IS in one's own direct interest, because it will also benefit others.

Well, it turns out that if you dump mercury in the ocean, it ends up in your tuna salid. If you chemicals into the air - you breathe them - after they have unholy congress with ultraviolet light and their offspring ALSO ends up in your tuna salad.

Likewise, it may seem like an intrusion to be "taxed" by being required to paint your roof white. But does a 20% savings on air-conditioning costs sound like a "tax" to you? In some areas, that's a damn fine return on a day's work. So people who insist on acting against their own self interest in the name of opposing what they think to be the intrest of the group, because they have 'a gaw-damn right' to do as they gaw-damn please....

Well, that's only tolerable to a certain extent. Oddly, these are the very same people who use "toleration" as a dirty word toward people who's actions, such as gay marriage, have NO noticeable effect on the arctic ice pack, while thinking that making bonfires out of old tires and spotted owls saturated in PCB-laced waste oil  is a celebration of individual liberty.

If you take too much water from here (because you have the "right" to do so) - there is too little over there - and those who have too little, and therefore thirst and starve are likely to take action against your absolute interpretation of your right to force them to die of thirst or hunger.

The Earth is not a Pyramid - it is a globe. Crap does not flow downhill - it circulates.

You can never act with complete impunity and you can never absolutely know what the ultimate outcome of your actions will be.

When you act conservatively and within your best understandings of the ability of the various, interlocking complex systems to absorb change, you will maximize long term goals at a minimum cost. 

But that requires that the required response to the problem must have some substantial social-action component. It will require the understanding and application of words like "Synergy" and "Appropriate Technology" and "Social mediation."

But regardless of what faith or ideology states, The Ecology is not something separate from us, nor are we independent of it. The Hippies were right. We do have to live in harmony with the land. The reverse is not actually true, though.

So, we all do have to get along. If that offends your idiology - you need a new ideological framework, because yours will eat your children. 

An Letter to Sarah Palin, self-annointed Chromefishtian Leader from a former member of her religious cult.

From the t-shirt boilerplate:

A brutally truthful reminder that a chrome fish is simply a void - and that void will be filled by something. What that something is depends on who you are and what you choose to do as informed by faith and conscience.

Live the words and you won't need to prove anything - or the excuses provided (at a modest price) by the salesmen of chrome fish and glow in the dark Fatimas.

Wow. BTW, never mind the source, per se; more information about the author is below the quote.

The Atheist's Way: An Open Letter to Sarah Palin: "Dear Sarah,

As a former fundamentalist, I'd like to call you on what you are doing. The media has called you “opaque” about your religion, but some of us can connect the dots.

This is not about disrespecting your private beliefs. However, your religion matters to us because it matters to you. You have done and said things that indicate you are a born-again, literal Bible-believing, fundamentalist Christian. This is the most important thing about you and you have not been honest about it.


Most people who have never been entrenched in the subculture of fundamentalist Christianity may not understand what this really means, but I do. Like you, I was raised in the Assemblies of God and I was a zealous part of the Jesus Movement. Like you, my life was consumed with seeking God's will for my life and awaiting the imminent return of Jesus.

It's clear to me that you want to do the Lord's will, as a true believer would be in your position. You talk of the “spirit of prophecy.” You are on a mission from God. If that is not true, then I challenge you to deny it."

There's more...

Marlene Winell, Ph.D.
October 21, 2008

Marlene Winell is a Bay Area psychologist who specializes in recovery from fundamentalist religion. She is author of Leaving the Fold: A guide for former fundamentalists and others leaving their religion. She is the daughter of Assemblies of God missionaries. A longer article about Sarah Palin's religion is on Dr. Winell's website: www.marlenewinell.net

I figured it would be reasonable to examine the source. Well, she seems to be what she states herself to be, speaking from both personal and professional experience, and has written a much longer piece that addresses some very specific and important questions. Furthermore, I will personally attest that these questions and conclusions about mindset are entirely within the scope of my own experience. I, for what that is worth, am willing to go on record stating that I find her concerns to be, if anything, understated.

The reality of Palin’s religion

The media has remarked that when it comes to her faith, Palin has been “opaque.” They have said it’s hard to tell how much influence her religious beliefs would have on her governing. They have not asked direct, hard questions about her religion, perhaps because it seems too personal or they are trying to respect a separation of church and state. But the truth is, the impact of this particular religion would be huge and we need to recognize it. Her religion matters to us because it matters to her. It’s not too personal when a leader is most of all concerned with enacting the will of God and claims to have direct access to God. Journalists need to ask Palin if she believes the Bible is the word of God, because all else follows.

Palin claims not to be Pentecostal any more but still goes to bible-believing evangelical churches and has active ties to the Wasilla Assembly of God Church. Their “non-negotiable tenets of faith” can be seen on their website and should be required viewing for every voter (http://wasillaag.org/index.php?s=au&nid=3734). We’ve heard about her belief in creationism and Jesus’ return, and seen her denial of human cause in global warming. She has not denied any of the fundamental beliefs that define evangelical Christianity.

Note that she is not speaking against Palin's religion. She's assuming that Palin is in fact a sincere member of that particular faith and that therefore she will be properly guided and informed by that religion in an entirely orthodox way. That is what churches do, that is what they are supposed to do. It therefore becomes quite important to ask - will this faith permit a person of sincere faith to faithfully discharge the duties of their office or (in the case of the VP) the potential duties of President? Can they honestly put their hand upon the Bible and swear faithfully to uphold and defend the constitution of the united states, even when the Constitution and their faith come into genuine conflict?

And of course those of us who are not actually athiests; indeed, those of us who think the Bible worthwhile on it's own merits without any supernatural endorsement have to consider it's council in this matter. "By their fruits ye shall know them."

Has Sarah Palin, in her previous offices, acted more in line with her faith, or more in line with the duties of her office?



I think that her policy of charging rape victims for the cost of proving their rape, her well known views on birth control and her absolutely extreme positions on abortion demonstrate that she is, in fact, more influenced by religous doctrine than by concern for the health and welfare of people under her authority.

I have deep objections to the validity of AOG Doctrines and it's "nonnegotiable articles of faith."

Further, I've even more serious concerns about her particular home church, it's practices and it's influence upon her and the people of Wasillia. I consider it an authoritarian cult; it's doctrine Unbiblical, it's practices and professions unethical, immoral with patches of evil.

Tolerance must end at the point where one is tolerating intentional evil in the name of allowing for "differing interpretations" of spiritual truth. This is not because it's "wrong" to tolerate evil. This is because that which is evil wishes to eat you and use your living corpse as a meat puppet. Friends, that would be one of the better outcomes.

The place where you know you have crossed that line of tolerance is when those you are tolerating publicly state they wish to kill you both spiritually and literally and turn all you have made and treasure into the sort of wasteland in which only that which those such as themselves can live within.

NO valid system of morality can be predictably unethical. The core issue for an ethicist discernment; specifically, the risk involved in any particular human action leading to harm to others.

Ethics does not care about alleged consequences in an arguable hereafter - it speaks to specific outcomes in the here and now; real harm to real people.

A religious belief used to justifying the denial of birth control, morning after pills, or even a proper investigation of a rape allegation, such a belief that it is legitimate to over-ride individual judgment of self interest or impose onerous costs - that would obviously, predictably and unavoidably lead to the actual, inarguable harm of real, existing, human beings. That would be unethical; dismissing the importance of the outcome as punishment for sin is, frankly, evil.

The foreign policy implications of a Millienialist mindset - as Dr. Winell points out in passages I have not quoted - are exceedingly troubling. Those who look forward to a "final conflict" in the middle east featuring an atomic Holocaust that requires divine intervention to preserve remaining life - and who look forward to a magical intervention to preserve their own pink assets from the quite literal fallout - should never, ever be permitted to make significant foreign policy decisions or even speak to the issues from a position of secular authority. I think that should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer; there are some beliefs that simply have obvious, inevitable and toxic outcomes.

Whatever the degree of sincerity; a sincere delusion that evil is good is simply a more effective delusion. Sarah Palin must be considered to be dangerously deluded about matters of real, legitimate concern to all human beings.

The most dangerous presumption is - quite literally - an article of faith for Sarah Palin, if we are to take her word for her beliefs; that all people are inherently and willfully evil and that unless they prove otherwise by belonging to a church that believes the exact same things and acts in precise accordance to those doctrines, subsuming their conscience and common sense to the dictates of "anointed leadership" - then they are sinners worthy of death. Clearly the ethical calculus is that harm to a sinner worthy of death is moot; only consequences to "the saved" matter.

And if that is true of human beings, how much less does it matter that animals suffer, that air is polluted or that the oceans rise, drowning people, depleting fisheries and disrupting the world wide ecology? What matter famine, plague, starvation and death, if they be harbingers of Jesus?

Speaking as a committed and mindful follower of the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, one who takes the clear warnings of the Commandments quite seriously as ethical precepts and statements of natural laws as implacable and quantifiable as those regarding thermodynamics - I stand repulsed and condemn any faith that would so transparently act against such a weight of words and the clear evidence of cause and effect while taking the name of Jesus in vain.

No real Christian that believes that faith to be defined by the words of Jesus can possibly endorse acting upon the assumption that such a worldwide disaster as is predicted by end-times cults could ever be a good thing. Period. It requires looking forward to and praying for (a conscious, mindful act with intent, regardless of it's real world effect) an end that will be harmful to every living human being if it occurs.

And that, to me, is a non-negotiable statement of ethical fact. No faith-based band-aid can trump fact. No amount of willful disregard can trump that consequences arising from actions rooted more in faith than in fact are real and do real harm. No amount of alleged benefit in a believed hereafter can justify inarguable inhumane and callus decisions in the here and now.

It's not the size of your fish... T-Shirt by webcarve
Create Customized TShirts At zazzle
Browse Words To Live By T-Shirts

Elephant Shit and other Organic Wastes.

"Liberals," I'm widely informed by the "Drill, Baby, Drill" crowd are responsible for gas being the price it is.

No blood for oil! Bush, Cheney and Haliburton are evil!

You’ve seen the signs and heard all the protests blaming blaming Bush, Cheney, evil oil companies and Republicans for high gas prices but the real cause of rising gas prices and the faltering U.S. economy are liberals. Liberal agenda’s against refineries, oil exploration and drilling and Democratic votes in congress have taken America out of the oil production business and put it in the oil brokerage business.

Oh, he points out some valid things. Actually presents some real facts. And they are important facts to know:

John Lowe, Executive Vice President of Conoco/Phillips:
Access to resources is severely restricted in the United States and abroad, and the American oil industry must compete with national oil companies who are often much larger and have the support of their governments. We can only compete directly for 7 percent of the world’s available reserves while about 75 percent is completely controlled by national oil companies and is not accessible.
Stephen Simon Senior Vice President -Exxon Mobil
With respect to petroleum reserves, we rank 14th. Government-owned national oil companies dominate the top spots. For an American company to succeed in this competitive landscape and go head to head with huge government-backed national oil companies, it needs financial strength and scale to execute massive complex energy projects requiring enormous long-term investments.
To simply maintain our current operations and make needed capital investments, Exxon Mobil spends nearly $1 billion each day.

A BILLION DOLLARS A DAY! That’s a chunk of change, but don’t be fooled by the phrase, “record profits.” It’s just flat out misleading.

The average price of gas last year was near $2.80. Approximately 58% percent of that was the direct cost of crude oil. 17% went to federal, state and local taxes, 4% represents oil company profits. That figure is relatively unchanged from the previous decade. The point is, if oil companies gave up half of their profits, that’s 50%, the price of a gallon of gas would drop about a 5 cents. If we lowered taxes by half, we could all be saving 23 cents a gallon. John McCains gas tax holiday would save you and me almost 50 cents a gallon. Obama might scoff at that as a gimmick, but my truck has a 23 gallon tank and that would save me about $11 ever fillup, which I have to do at least once or twice a week. That’s real money.

It is indeed. And that tax windfall would be merely unconscionable - if it wasn't offsetting the cost of a war for oil. Which makes it, well, more than slightly evil.

The logic presented above seems unassailable - if you assume that drilling for oil, transporting oil, fighting wars for oil and maintaining the vast oil refining infrastructure is the only cost-effective way of putting energy in one end and having comfort and civilization come out the other.

The oil companies and their pet Bushistas argue that that's both true and obvious - though of course we may need to add to our vast nuclear infrastructure as well to make up for shortfalls.

Those assertions are not just self-serving; they are a steaming pile of elephant shit.

If T. Boone Pickins says we can't drill our way out of this crisis, I for one believe him. I know his heart is in the right place for this discussion. It's right where he keeps his wallet.

If T. Boone Pickins thinks there is as much money to be made in wind and solar now as there once was in oil, I also tend to believe him. T. Boone got rich by being right about where to "drill" and what to drill for. He's saying drill for geothermal energy; harvest wind and solar, free up natural gas for transportation - including your precious jacked up 4x4s - and transition as quickly as possible over to renewable for future fuel needs. You can convert damn near any internal combustion engine to run on LNG and it's widely available. So, why NOT do it? Is LNG "pussy fuel?" Does not burning gas make you gay?

Here's another little home truth for ya.

"Liberals" don't want to give up their cars any more than you do. Not that I'm a "liberal," but I know a bunch. The only way you pry a liberal out of their car is by making it more of a pain in the ass to have one than not or easier to get around without one than with one. Period. Just check out a California traffic web cam. Most of those people will vote for Obama - if they don't get stuck in traffic.

Mass transit is a damn good thing to have - but it only goes where it goes.

More to the point, cars are part of our North American culture and a status symbol. Status is as or more important to Lefties as it is to Righties. Nor is that a entirely silly affectation.

In point of fact, when you have a certain place in society, you have to behave a certain way and do certain things in order to keep the job that gives you that status. Unavoidable. It just IS. And for people like T. Boone and Al Gore, it's actually not merely nice, but absolutely unavoidable to have big houses, limousines and personal jets. When your time is worth in excess of 2k an hour, it's not "Green" to drive an electric car and live in a yurt.

"The Green Way" to be a member of the liberal eliete is to pay for offsets in the most practical way - to help more people afford their own electric cars and yurts. But at the same time, that personal jet will run just fine on fuel refined from pork fat. Ask Mr. Richard Branson; filthy rich eliete liberal bastard. And your big o'l mansion can be just as comfortable and just as impressive using a tenth of the energy the average McMansion does. Over time, you can buy a lot of solid gold plumbing fixtures with the savings.

And there's no law from Nature, God or Congress that says you can't make plastics out of green feedstocks. It's not exactly cutting edge tech. Henry Ford was making steering wheels out of soybeans way back when.

Oil refineries are not built here because they are big, stinky, poisonous and potentially explosive as well as being childishly easy targets for terrorism. They aren't lovely places to work, either.

Frankly, bio-fuels are just a heck of a lot less dangerous to have around. Even the highly explosive ones; they might go bang, but the fallout ain't lethal. Nobody would let you refine petroleum in your back yard, much less applaud even the safest nuclear battery system, but bio fuels are about as problematic as a gas water heater. And that means a secure energy supply that cannot be destablized by one terrorist or a plain old hurricane.

Finally, green jobs present opportunities for job creation on the local level, particularly in the job-strapped Mid and southwest; where the wind, the solar and geothermal resources are and where there's lots of potential to combine bio-fuel harvests with sensible crop rotation standards.

Finally, I'm strongly minded in all this of what happened when tee-pee burners were banned in the pacific northwest. Oh, doom was predicted! The end of the forestry industry was at hand! What could be done with the sawdust if it could not be burned?

So what did we end up with? Pres-to Logs, pellet fuel, inexpensive charcoal briquettes; oriented strand board, engineered wood materials, wood dough and all the jobs and profits that come from them, which used to go up in smoke.

You know, real conservatives actually look at waste as a sin - metaphorically and sometimes quite literally.

Look up "Earthship" on the internet, do the math on making your own fuel from waste, look into sticking up a windmill or a solar array and start swapping canning recipes with the hippie commune in the next town over. And screw those compact flurescent lights - they are filled with mercury. Get LED lights - they use even less energy and last damn near forever.

Make your own fast food. Go yard-saling for good solid real things you can fix up instead of buying cheap plastic crap from China.

Use it up, wear it out, make it do. Learn to weld. Start USING those tools you get for Christmas every year to make things worth having.

"Appropriate Technology" does not mean settling for less! Generally it means better, often faster and certainly cheaper.

Energy independence IS freedom. Making a widely dispersed, reliable, diversified energy network IS conservative. You can whomp up a fuel still out of scrap you find at the dump and the BATF will hand you a free license and point you toward plans. Conversion is pretty cheap; with some cars these days, you don't even need to convert; ethanol, gas, methanol - whatever you put in it, the car figures it out and runs just fine.

And remember, every gallon you brew out of yard waste and food scraps is a gallon you didn't pay taxes on. And - jeez - your waste product is either animal feed or concentrated compost, instead of stuff you have to pay to have hauled away. Nor did you pay to have it transported to your car. So, you know, that fact alone can subsidize all KINDS of boy toys!

There's a guy I've heard about, has a luxury stretch Hummer running on bio diesel. All the air conditioning and all the electronic toys known to man run off solar power that comes from the roof.

Doesn't sound like a "sacrifice" to me.

If I had some land, I'd be looking toward growing a few head of cattle and a dense organic garden in a big plastic greenhouse, using the waste from both to reduce or cover fuel costs. It wouldn't just be subsistence - I'd make a ton of money, by not wasting money on buying energy I could have for free.

As for your 4x4 - well, do you have any idea what sort of low-end torque can come out of a diesel-electric system? And I don't mean the current ones, I mean an intelligently designed one with motors in the wheels, driven by high-density storage batteries and a high-efficiency, constant speed generator. Like a train engine.

It's a rugged and accessible technology; one that's potentially a lot easier and cheaper to maintain, service and repair. The batteries are here. Not yet cheap, but here, and if you don't mind big and heavy, you could build one now in your garage out of stock parts.

The interesting thing about electric vehicles - the acceleration on them can be neck snapping. Modern materials make it a lot easier to manage the battery weights and still keep a decent horsepower to weight ratio. We will be seeing Nascar performance from electrics within the decade, if sanity prevails and some good ol' boys stop bitching and get to tinkering.

We leave this shit to big energy, big government and big auto and we will be still paying through the nose and bitching about it twenty or thirty years from now.

So, shaddup - and head for the garage

Brew Solar Ethanol Sticker
by

webcarve

make your own bumper stickers with zazzle.com.

Damn Conservative Environmentalists

The Sudbury Dryad's Last Repose by webcarve

Large format printing By zazzle

Aside from the silly splatting (we know damn well what D#@*$% means, so it's like pasties on a set of 38DD's), this question needs to be asked by all of us.

God's Politics - Jim Wallis : D#@*$% Environmentalists! (by Brian McLaren)
"A friend of mine recalls a dinner-table conversation one day when she was a schoolgirl. Her dad had come home unusually frustrated from his job as a city planner. 'D#@*$% environmentalists!' he said over dinner. 'Dad, I thought you were an environmentalist,' she said. 'Why are you so upset?'

'All day long,' he answered, 'environmentalists come to me with problems and complaints, and business people come to me with ideas and projects. Why can't the environmentalists be proactive and come to the table with some creative ideas to make things better, instead of just trying to get in the way of things they don't want to see happen?'"

McLaren has his own answer - which somehow morphs into faith-based initiatives. Well, Ok - there's no rule that says that you need one huge answer for every large problem. So, with a hat tip to Brian and Jim Wallace, I shall diverge at this point.

For myself, while I am a person of faith, in situations like this I don't see faith as being significant.

Faith is the answer when you are not sure of the facts, the implementation of the facts, or do not have the critical facilities to get from what you see to what you should do about it. In the latter case, you need to put your faith in people who can and have proven that they know what they are talking about, and can explain it with diagrams, models and math.

I've long held that Conservation is the ultimate Conservatism. So is environmentalism. "Fix it up, Use it up, Make it Do" is a virtue I grew up with. One of my personal bugaboos is the overwhelming avalanche of plastic crap that cannot be fixed up, used up or made to do. Hell, most often it doesn't even quite do when brand new.

And as I grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the midst of way more "environment" than most folks do, I grew up thinking of it as both a rich resource and my personal preferred environment.

While I value softwood lumber, I hate clear cuts - for the same reason you would hate someone bulldozing three houses across the street for the copper plumbing and leaving all the residue behind. That would be unethical, even had they paid for the property rights that would permit them to do that and even if there were no laws and regulations requiring cleanup. Indeed, those laws and regulations exist in recognition of the ethical requirements and serve as a sort of enforcible morality that applies in such a case.

As a good rule of thumb, if it's ugly and it smells bad, it's probably the result of some form of unethical behavior. Oh, and aside from that, it's wasteful of resources and therefore more expensive and less profitable than it could otherwise be.

When ethics and impact are divorced from the equation, you get both opportunism and NIMBYism. And frankly, much of what passes for environmentalism is some variety of Not In My Backyard. Spotted Owls be damned.

And then there's another point - one that seems to evade people on both sides of any of these debates where taking sides makes a solid resolution impractical or entirely impossible.

Every participant in an ecosystem has an impact; that impact must balance with it's contribution, or the ecosystem will tend to adapt and drive that participant to extinction. And we, our cities and all our glorious and terrible achievements are within the context of a large ecosystem called The Earth, which would get along just fine without us.

These are not matters of faith or ideological conviction, they are matters of fact and the factual, predictable consequences of acting counter to the interests of the ecosystem as a whole.

The only question then is how to go about doing that while preserving, and indeed, improving the parts of the environment we live in while not degrading the parts that other beings require. But none of this precludes change. Without change over time, an ecosystem is dead. We are part of it, unavoidably a dominant force within it, and when we find ourselves choking on our own filth in a silent wasteland, we should be able to come to the obvious conclusion - that we have screwed up and need to change our ways.

Why? Because it's ugly and it stinks.