More BS That Distracts Us From the Slow-motion Global Disaster Happening Right in Front of Us

My old friend Blaise sent me a link to a site of dubious origins, which usually means he wants me to debunk it. This time (I won't link but it's easy to find) it's "NASA Upgrades Solar Storm Warning - Learn How to Prepare."

My first problem with this is that the first mention of the "Award winning astrophysicist Alexia Demetria" there is no link or mention of what award. Then, his name is spelled "Alexei Dmitriev" near the bottom.  That spelling brings up an IMDB result: Short films...

The next closest thing I can find for that last spelling is a hockey player.

I find a lot of other results on that search that are parrots of the site you sent me. Nothing points me to an award winning astrophysicist with a name anything like that.

Snopes has nothing. So, I searched NASA, since all the sites talking about this either claim that NASA has put out a warning, or that NASA is hiding this (that dichotomy alone tells me something's up), and whadya know, nothing at all from NASA. So, either the guys saying NASA is hiding this are right, or, it's all bunk. Also, note that they want you to download the survival guide, which probably has all kinds of good stuff to purchase, like gold and freeze-dried food, a kind of Glenn Beck vision of the future.

What I do find interesting, though, is that if you go to NASA's home page, you'll find that the first item in their slide show right now is this: NASA Airborne Mission Maps Remote, Deteriorating Glaciers.

A slow-motion disaster of global proportions happening right before our eyes while Republicans want to force women to have their rapists' babies and eliminate the EPA.

I agree that we should all learn to prepare for a world with major problems and governments less likely to be able to do anything about it. I read Global Guerrillas, by John Robb.

He talks a lot about Resilient communities, which are the way to go on general principal anyway (more environmentally correct). He recently turned me onto this cool project, the Global Village Construction Set, to which we donated $8.

That kind of thing will be very important in the future.

The older I get the more I realize that one thing is extremely true: a few assholes really screw it up for the rest of us.

Whenever I hear anyone saying how it's a shame that we're so polarized, and that it's both sides fault, like Tom Brokaw's been going around saying while promoting his new book, I just want to point out to them that it's not both side's fault. One side is screwing it up for all of us. Most of our problems come from Republicans and rich people wanting to get richer. The FED could be flooding the country with money, allowing more inflation to get unemployment down, but rich people hate inflation. The Treasury Department could take action to lower the value of the dollar in the world, but rich people hate a cheap dollar because it makes their imported cars and European vacations more expensive. But a lower dollar would boost exports and put Americans to work in good jobs. The president has been trying to get a jobs bill passed that even conservative economists say would help, but Republicans would rather trash the economy and keep Americans out of work than hand the president a victory that might lead to his re-election.

Then I hear Very Serious People say we should stop fighting with each other and get along, be less partisan, and I wish I could be there to say to them: we have some very real differences in this country. For example, a very large and angry (and often violent bunch of people ) want to force women have their rapists' babies. This isn't me being partisan. This is fact. Next week in Mississippi, they're going to vote in a personhood amendment that will say a fertilized egg is a person. These same fanatics vote for Republicans who do their damndest, while people need jobs, to make it impossible for a woman to get an abortion in this country. Now, how do you propose we hold hands and get along with people like that?

Further, when I watched Enron, or Iraq, or the latest Disaster Capitalism in action (a bunch of crooks packaging crap loans and saying they were candy) I watch people get ruined, jobs lost (750,000 a month during the last months of Bush), A GDP contraction of NEGATIVE 8.9% in 4Q2008, all that and then someone says we should all just get along. Well, sure. If you're the people who got us into Iraq, let a thousand people drown in Katrina, or ignored warnings about Bin Laden being determined to attack the US, who want to deny gay people the right to marry, or continue with 50 million people not getting health care, or force women to have rape babies, well, sure, you'd want to hold hands with the liberals and "all get along" now wouldn't you?

And when those same forces would rather tank the economy than let Obama have another term, I think it's a crock to say we need to get rid of political parties. What we need is more and better Democrats. The parties represent people with actual views. The Republicans have made it quite clear what their views are. They want more war, less taxes, no safety net, no abortion, health care only for those who can afford it, and a 1% that has more wealth than they could ever need telling us the country is broke.