 Muse in the Morning |
Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.
| I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.
–Rita Mae Brown |
 Basket 3 |
May 2011 archive
May 31 2011
Muse in the Morning
May 31 2011
Memorial Day
New observations from my suburban small town making that transition to larger impersonal town. I used to live on the parade route and we would need at least two large coffee urns and four dozen donuts to host family and friends dropping by. Today this main street was empty. No flag on the neighbor’s porch, no chairs on the sidewalk, just a day like any other. I felt like the last of my dwindling family playing audience to dying tradition. My daughter and I show up mostly for the bagpipe band now. The family knows my take on 911, the bogus wars and the oligarchy of secretive and powerful people who use world governments via media and social engineering for their own profits and or evil amusement.
We talked about things being open on this “holiday”. TD Bank was open which led to the statement, “We only get Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter off”.
To which I said, “globo-corpo-fascism” and my son-in-law replied “the Illuminati plan to destroy america”.
That got me thinking about my life in the R&D labs of a major company you all would know. A life in steel toes and safety glasses that continues today at yet another major company you all should know. I have to say that in the last five to seven years these companies have taken safety to levels beyond safety. Now nobody wants to get injured on the job but it’s now more of a mind game type thing of enforcing compliance. Is the company really concerned about your safety or rather concerned about loosing it’s asset, you, a trained employee (at will employee). Well at the “new” company there are safety posters ready for “roll out” focused on outside of work activities which include seasonal favorites like mowing the lawn in sandals, ticks with lime disease and reading/following labels on gardening chemicals. Yes, companies have to “promote” common sense here, ie, protect their ASSet, you plus insurance payments. In recent years this has taken on a sort of Nazi-like hyper complicance theme rather than a simple egalitarian industrial safety program.
What it feels like? My “fellow Americans” and co-workers are not highly trained people. More like the American Idol and Dancing with the Stars set. They only know how to specifically watch paint dry in the manner prescribed by the signed off certified Mil spec manual. Well, they get sexually excited at catching somebody sans safety equipment. You may think that a bit hyperbolic yet it’s not by much. For the vast majority propaganda works. They have not had my cross cultural experience. They never dared think outside box. I appear odd to them, endorsing neither left nor right politics, having zero interest in Boston sports teams and certainly never ever talking about the shit on TV. I just refuse to degrade my spirit that way.
So, we watched the parade as sort of the last family doing so on this main street of suburban McMansionville after which I had to leave. Well the grandkids are crushed. They want to come with me. Kids are soo much closer to God. No having been indoctrinated yet. They think Grampy is cool but also spent and feeling hopelessly empty. There were no cookouts. There was no beer and it will be a miserable Tuesday morning at the paint watching compliance factory.
In closing I give you a kindred spirit, Bob Dean as interviewed by Bill and Kerry at project Camelot.
http://projectcamelotproductio…
May 30 2011
Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette
Our regular featured content-
- 6 in The Morning by mishima
- On This Day In History May 30 by TheMomCat
- Punting the Pundits by TheMomCat
- Evening Edition by ek hornbeck
This weekly feature-
- Monday Business Edition by ek hornbeck
This featured article-
- Protecting The Constitution & Our Internet Rights by TheMomCat
And this special feature-
- Lime Rock by ek hornbeck
This is an Open Thread
May 30 2011
More Lies
This is why I no longer watch Talking Head Sundays. Krugman opines–
(E)ven I am surprised by this. When the gaping holes in the Ryan plan were revealed, I expected the Very Serious People to move on and find a new GOP daddy to idolize. Instead, however, they’ve mostly dug in, condemning anyone who points out that the plan is a piece of junk as being somehow out of bounds.
Steve Benen (whom Krugman hat tips) says–
It’s exasperating, but it’s worth reemphasizing what too many establishment types simply refuse to understand: Democrats are telling the truth. Indeed, Dems are doing what the media is reluctant to do: offering an accurate assessment of the Republican plan for Medicare. If voters find the GOP proposal frightening, the problem is with the plan, not with Democrats’ rhetoric.
I’m at a loss to understand what, exactly, Ruth Marcus, David Brooks, and their cohorts would have Dems do. Congressional Republicans have a plan to end Medicare and replace it with a privatized voucher scheme. The proposal would not only help rewrite the social contract, it would also shift crushing costs onto the backs of seniors, freeing up money for tax breaks for the wealthy. The plan is needlessly cruel, and any serious evaluation of the GOP’s arithmetic shows that the policy is a fraud.
Which part of this description is false? None of it, but apparently, Democrats just aren’t supposed to mention any of this.
May 30 2011
Why Are We Still In Afghanistan?
Cross Posted fromThe Stars Hollow Gazette
Osama bin Laden is dead. Now after 10 years why are we still Afghanistan? What our diplomats fail to recognize about tribal customs of the Afghan people gets an explanation from Rachel Maddow. The reason for the military to be in Afghanistan is dead, of that I am certain. Are we now getting closer to bringing our troops home?
May 30 2011
Ralph Lauren, Shirt-Maker for the Mob
Three varsity polo players from Princeton, Harvard, and Yale have been detained by Mexican police on obviously bogus drug charges!
Edgar Valdés Villarreal (“La Barbie,” Princeton ’92), José Jorge Balderas Garza (“El JJ,” Yale ’98), and Marcos Carmona Hernández (“El Cabrito,” Harvard ’02) appear in this image from a video of their arraignment, and you can almost hear Ralph Lauren screaming in the background.
“Let my people go!”
May 30 2011
Six In The Morning
Yemeni forces storm protest camp, killing 20
A medical volunteer says troops fired indiscriminately into a crowd.
By Iona Craig
Special to The Times
May 30, 2011, 1:08 a.m.
Reporting from Sana, Yemen- Yemeni security forces stormed a protest camp in a southern city early Monday morning, shooting indiscriminately, setting fire to the camp and killing at least 20 people, a medical volunteer said.The city of Taiz has seen large anti-government protests calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s ouster since early February.
Sadek Shugaa, a volunteer medic at the field hospital at the protest camp in Taiz, said he watched as snipers took up positions around the camp while other Yemeni forces used water cannons to clear the area early Monday.
May 30 2011
Muse in the Morning
| Muse in the Morning |
Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.
| Where’s your will to be weird?
— Jim Morrison |
 Basket 2 |
May 30 2011
World economies as a function of energy use
There is nothing in this world that one cannot get more cheaply by using more oil to get it – whether by importing it, mechanizing its production, or using more energy to extract it. This is not only true of industry, but of people as well: Americans moved to the suburbs because it was cheaper to drive farther than to work through the problems of urbanization, and one could get a larger house with a larger yard in the bargain. As long as it was cheaper to pay rent to Saudi Arabia for the oil, because that is what we are doing, than to pay rent to the government for a working city, people chose to pay rent to OPEC rather than taxes to the overnment. This ability of oil to be used in place of almost everything else, and not whether there is “enough” oil, is the special property that makes it the basic scarcity of the world economy.
— Stirling Newberry, American Thermidor
If you haven’t read it, American Thermidor (part 1, part 2, pdf) is well worth your time. Personally, I think maybe Stirling goes too far in suggesting that the enoughness of oil is not its critical feature, but your mileage may vary.
Previously, I showed the linear relationship between global energy use and population growth, suggesting that a population crash is the predictable outcome of the coming decline in energy use following peak oil (year 2011), peak gas (year 2020), and peak coal (year 2030).
As if “We’re all gonna die!” weren’t bad enough, it gets worse:
We’re all gonna die flat-ass broke!