Civil War Monuments

I live in a town with a monument to the Civil War dead from here. Many towns in upstate NY have them. I even see bumper stickers for daughters of the Civil War--that's how seriously people up here still take their fight against the south.

So, I wish there was going to be a tea party protest up here near me, because as someone who grew up in the south and knows damn well that this flag represents slavery, not state's rights or some other conservative bullshit, I would really like to see this symbol of racism die. I would like to see the flames engulf this disgusting relic, and I would like to watch the faces of the racists while it burned.

Anyone who does this should be prepared for a fight, especially in the south, where this cloth that isn't fit to wipe my ass carries all kinds of emotional baggage for the Obama haters, many of whom probably don't even realize how racist they are. We've all seen it: someone who seems like a tolerant person suddenly engulfed in the flames of their Republican talking points on hate crimes, or welfare, or ACORN, or Obama's birth certificate...

Fact is, they can't stand the fact that a black man got elected. They can't stand the fact that he's managed to do OK despite the crap sandwich he's been handed. They can't stand the fact that their precious GOP is a rump party that represents less and less of the country. So they get mad, and they try to say they're mad about spending, or mandates, or some other misdirection, when it's all, really, about that southern flag, and, ultimately, slavery.

They don't want a federal government telling them how to treat the "lesser" race. They believe the Bell Curve crap. They buy into the supremacy.

And they hate to see it burn.

in reference to:

"An anonymous liberal blogger in Washington state hopes that progressives across the country will show up to tea party rallies on September 12 and -- if it's legal -- light up a confederate flag so tea partiers can watch it burn."
- One Progressive's Nat'l Scheme To Burn Confederate Flags At Tea Party Rallies | TPMDC (view on Google Sidewiki)

Government that at least tries

"The last time any president did this much in office, booze was illegal. If you believe in policy, if you believe in government that addresses problems, cheers to that."--Rachel Maddow

George Steinbrenner Was a Republican Crook

Wait. That's redundant.

From Time Magazine's list of The 10 Most Notorious Presidential Pardons, coming in at number 7:

Indicted on 14 criminal counts on April 5, 1974, the owner of the New York Yankees plead guilty to obstruction of justice and conspiring to make illegal contributions to President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign. Steinbrenner, a major Republican donor, allegedly knew the money he was donating was not going through regular election procedures. Not wanting to appear soft on crime, President Ronald Reagan would only pardon Steinbrenner if the Yankees' owner admitted to the crime.

 He spent the rest of his life giving money to Republicans, supposedly legally. He was an ass, and he won't be missed here. In fact, he's one less rich Republican to donate mostly to Republican causes (a quick search at Open Secrets reveals that he did give money to Democrats).  All the contributions for President went to all the recent Republican candidates. So fuck him.

One odd note, his Yankees only won the World Series under Democratic Presidents.

Head for the Hills

A good friend and client who is a Los Angeles caterer tells me the majority of calls and emails she gets these days are from people looking for work. Of the calls and letters from people who want to hire her, almost all are looking for discount catering: party platters, box lunches, and cupcakes. In a recent exchange of work mail, she sent a letter from a kid who sounded pretty desperate looking for work, and she sent along this little gem:

When the unemployment runs out, head for the hills, because the streets won't be safe.

It's what I used to tell my Republican Dad: the more you suck from the bottom to the top, the more pissed the bottom will get. But maybe I was wrong about what those pissed off people will do. Because the vast majority of them are gun-toting troglodytes who believe the lies from the likes of Limbaugh and Beck, instead of getting mad and voting for liberals who will tax the rich and extend unemployment, they're actually toying with the idea of voting for the very same people who got us in this mess.

I should never underestimate the ignorance that permeates among Republicans, or even potential Republican voters. Because if you're considering voting for the same people who brought you the Trillion Dollar Adventure in Mesopotamia, the Great Recession, the BP Oil Spill, and all kinds of other problems, then you certainly deserve what you get. The rest of us will just have to suffer along with you because you can't pull your head out of your ass.

Something about that year 2007

Hmmm... This article could mention the fact that it was Bush appointees running MMS and Wildlife, that they'd been guarding the hen house since 2001, they had gutted the regulatory power of the agencies and, in the case of MMS, staffers were literally snorting coke of oil industry asses.

This is what Dick Cheney wanted.

in reference to:

"But in a letter dated Sept. 14, 2007, and obtained by The New York Times, the wildlife agency agreed with the minerals service’s characterization that the chances that deepwater drilling would result in a spill that would pollute critical habitat was “low.”"
- Agency Agreed That Spill Risk to Wildlife Was Low - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

A Little Organic Search Work

As you may know, I do SEO for a few clients' web sites, like these Los Angeles caterers. In my new post at my Internet Marketing Blog, I mention that we're in the middle of a link buidling campaign for them. So, any of you Los Angelinos with an LA web site might want to get in touch with me to swap links with them.

Culinary Delight Catering has been around for a while now, and has quite a following! I'm always amazed at the number and quality of the good catering reviews they get. Emma Tate, who runs the company, is the best client I could ever hope for--actively involved in creating content, getting links, prompting clients to send in letters of recommendation, and coming up with new promotions and sales that keep interest up. She's constantly providing things to put on her Los Angeles Catering blog. And she always pays her bill on time.

So if your LA or food-based web site needs a little Google Boost, let me know. We'll do some link swaps and everyone will be happier with their ranking. For more information on how to get higher search engine ranks, be sure to check out my SEO business site at that last link.

Anardako owns 25% of Deepwater Horizon

So cozy.

in reference to:

"Robert J. Allison, Jr. Business 29-Jan-1939   CEO of Anadarko Petroleum, 1979-2002"
- Robert J. Allison, Jr. (view on Google Sidewiki)

Republicans want to argue with this guy?

Seriously. People love this guy. Besides, activist judges are defined by the majority in Bush v. Gore, not by those who helped fix great injustices.

in reference to:

""the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today.""
- Thurgood Marshall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (view on Google Sidewiki)

Lil' Help on Byrd for Josh Marshall

In his excellent look into racism in the US Senate following the passing of Robert Byrd, Josh Marshall wonders if you can ever really know what someone feels in their heart in regard to racism. I think Josh isn't giving himself credit for having just estimated quite accurately, I would wager.

People change over the course of their lives. This we know. Whether they change out of conviction or opportunism is very difficult to judge. Indeed, it's often a false dichotomy because overtime we come to believe what we find it convenient and expedient to believe. I think the operative question is what they do. 

People eventually do what's in their hearts. I'm from Arkansas, which was a lot like West Virginia (mining, union jobs, middle class, religious).  I knew older men Byrd's age, some relatives. They were kind, gentle, intelligent, and ambitious. They won WWII. They grew up in a different age. They told racist jokes. They treated other races like a novelty, an oddity, almost like a afliction--like the handicapped. They grew up apart from other races, and as they realized (as they were being forced together by the Civil Rights laws) that other people were just that: people.

I think they were embarrassed by their former selves, and many went on to make great strides for the people they had ignored and ridiculed for so long. People do change. Some for the better. Others, like Trent Lott, don't. They just occasionally say something that tips you off to what they think, but long ago learned to not say in public.

This is what Dick Cheney wanted

While Dick Cheney is laying in his hospital bed, thinking over his life's accomplishments (millions killed, oil all over the Gulf of Mexico, economy wrecked, friends made much richer) I don't expect him to think much about the warnings he and Georgie boy must've gotten about drilling for oil in deep water. After all, Dick ran Halliburton, the company that KBR is part of, and KBR had a history of stopping oil leaks.

Right.

I don't expect Dick to think much about how much damage this gusher has done to the environment and the people who depended on that environment for their jobs and livelihoods. I don't expect Dick to think about these things because I don't think Dick thinks much at all really. He's made up his mind on issues like this. If you care about the environment, or Iraqis, or US economic growth and job creation, his attitude has, and always will be, "Go fuck yourself."

When I worked as a stagehand, a lot of people I worked with joked that our union motto was, due to the dwindling amount of union jobs: " I got mine: fuck you."

Well, Dick's motto was, and always has been, "I'm getting more: fuck you." The more they were after in this case was a Mount Everest down from the ocean surface, under methane at 100,000 psi pressure. It was impossible to do safely, and yet the Bush administration had made new drilling priority one from day one, putting foxes in all the hen houses, and pushing for drilling like this to go forward no matter what the risks.

These are the facts. This is how the Bush Administration did business. They risked it all for the benefit of their rich donors, and they blew it. And anyone who says otherwise probably denies global warming, evolution, and the holocaust too.

in reference to: petroleumworld (view on Google Sidewiki)

How's That Fossily-Fuelie Thing Working Out For You?

That's a quote from my wife, Robin, after she picked her jaw up off the floor and held back a new round of tears over this picture--a graphic slap in the face to the Dick Cheney School of Government.

A close-cropped picture of the gulf oil slick from NASA made the rounds to a few big blogs yesterday, but I followed the source links to an even more heart-wrenching high definition large view of the entire gulf of Mexico that gives you a better idea of the scope of this damn thing. Then I cropped it and came up with this startling image--sans the handy place labels, but even the geographically challenged will notice the gulf coast of Texas and Florida (left and right respectively).

Anyone who voted for Bush/Cheney Oil Incorporated shouldn't even look at me right now. Anyone who wants to tell me there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans needs to stare at this for a while, print it out, roll it up nice and tight, and shove it. Every last Republican voter is responsible for this. They put foxes in the hen houses, and this is what it got us.

If you have access to a Republican's computer, go get the big version and use it as desktop wallpaper. Print it out and make a post card and send it to anyone who even ever thought about voting for the Grand Oil Party.

The Trees Are Stealing Our Water!

I don't listen to Rush. He still thinks we [members of Congress] don't pay into Social Security... I don't listen to talk radio. I don't have the time. --Rep. Darrell Issa, via TPM

What does it take to get a Republican to denounce Rush Limbaugh? 80 million gallons of oil spewed into the gulf of Mexico and Limbaugh's continued defense of BP, apparently. The TPM story is the first I've seen noting an earthquake in the GOP that had been building for a while, due to the increased pressure between the two tectonic plates of the GOP: The Limbaugh crazies and the crazies who's job it is to get Republicans elected. This clash of landmasses is going to do even more magnitudes of damage to a party that, if it knew shit from shinola, should be taking back the House and Senate this year.

At the rate they're going, I'd be surprised if they could take back their toys at the end of the day.

Perhaps more telling than the rift between the Limbaugh Lemmings and the Issa Idiots is the story of Karl Rove's adventures in alternative fund raising for the GOP:

A new 527 group conceived by veteran GOP hands Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie and launched this year with predictions that it would raise $52 million to support Republican candidates has thus far failed to live up to the fundraising hype.

The group, American Crossroads, raised only $200 last month, according to a report it filed Monday with the Internal Revenue Service, bringing its total raised since launching in March to a little more than $1.25 million. It spent $76,000 in May, primarily on legal fees and salaries, bringing its total spending to $140,000.

All those tax cuts to the rich and Karl Rove can't raise money? Well, as Turd Blossom himself once said, "You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to 'the' math."

The Math for Republicans is not good these days. The other main alternative fundraising apparatus, The Tea Baggers, aren't doing much better, although at $4.5 million, they make the Shit Flower look like he needs some water. Or more shit. Maybe the GOP donors, many of them pissed that they've been used to fund a neo-con agenda that didn't result in crucifying gays, forcing prayer in school, putting abortion doctors on death row, restarting prohibition, and planting a 40 ton set of stones with the ten commandments on the White House lawn, just don't want to pony up to Karl, or anyone else for that matter. But whadya bet it's just another con job on the right? They'll throw them some bones here and there, then work for their corporate overlords.

There's a perfect example of all kinds of Republican crazy on display in this month's Harper's Magazine article by Ken Silverstein, Tea party in the Sonora: For the future of G.O.P. governance, look to Arizona:

Then there was Sylvia Allen, a real estate broker from the town of Snowflake, who, in 2008, was appointed by the local Republican Party to finish the term of a respected conservative who had died in office. Allen, who retained her seat in an election that fall, has since gained minor notoriety after calling for more uranium mining, saying in a speech that “this earth has been here 6,000 years, long before anybody had environmental laws, and somehow it hasn’t been done away with.” She also has complained that trees are “stealing Arizona’s water supply” and sponsored a new law that allows carriers of concealed weapons to forego safety training and the indignity of background checks.

 Just imagine this kind of institutionalized crazy, which is really pretty typical of the GOP, combined with this kind of corporate arrogance:

“It’s my opinion that Mr. Barton and Mr. Price’s comments were more of a reaction to the arrogance in President Obama’s speech, where he said he was going to ‘inform’ BP that they would set aside this separate compensation fund to be controlled by a third party,” said Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.). “Under our laws and Constitution, the president does not possess the power or authority to make such an arrogant command to a private company.”

OK, then. Anyone who votes for these political Neanderthals deserves the kind of Arizonan dystopia they so deeply desire, where they pay private companies to do what their taxes used to do. If all Republicans would all just move to the land of cheap housing and $500 electric bills, the rest of us could get on with the kind of hard work that running a country requires.

The largest environmental disaster in history?

My Dad was a Republican, although he died before the GW Bush "Presidency," so, who knows what he would think about the screw-the-planet-because-Jesus-is-coming-back-soon lunatics in the GOP now. I like to think that he would be like Charles Barkley, a former "Money Republican" like Dad who said, "I used to be a Republican until they lost their minds."

But who knows. Maybe he'd be a crazy tea bagger, in which case we wouldn't talk anymore. Politics isn't a polite sport for me. I know someone's a wingnut, I give them a blast of my best stuff, and then I eliminate any connections with them. Just ask the Guvernator fans in my family.

But one thing I would ask my Dad, what I ask any old person who might have experienced it directly, is what they knew about the dust bowl. After reading this NYT article, Where Gulf Spill Might Place on the Roll of Disasters, I've been researching man-made environmental disasters, and the dust bowl keeps coming up.

Still, for sheer disruption to human lives, several of them could think of no environmental problem in American history quite equaling the calamity known as the Dust Bowl.

“The Dust Bowl is arguably one of the worst ecological blunders in world history,” said Ted Steinberg, a historian at Case Western Reserve University.

Across the High Plains, stretching from the Texas Panhandle to the Dakotas, poor farming practices in the early part of the 20th century stripped away the native grasses that held moisture and soil in place. A drought that began in 1930 exposed the folly.

Boiling clouds of dust whipped up by harsh winds buried homes and cars, destroyed crops, choked farm animals to death and sent children to the hospital with pneumonia. At first the crisis was ignored in Washington, but then the apocalyptic clouds began to blow all the way to New York, Buffalo and Chicago. A hearing in Congress on the disaster was interrupted by the arrival of a dust storm.

By the mid-1930s, people started to give up on the region in droves. The Dust Bowl refugees joined a larger stream of migrants displaced by agricultural mechanization, and by 1940 more than two million people had left the Great Plains States.

Pretty serious stuff. In the last few days in my role as Captain Bringdown as my wife refers to me, I've been reading about Bohpal, Chernobyl, the Johnstown Flood, The Three Gorges Damn, and various oil spills, nuclear contamination sites, deforestation, climate change, and the near extinction of the North American Buffalo. How can anyone decide what the worst is? They're all awful. Many lives are still being claimed by some of these catastrophes, when you take malnutrition, bad water, cancer, and birth defects into account.

So what's my conclusion about the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in history? Homo Sapiens.

Those Damn Trial Lawyers Republicans Hate So Much

Ironic.

Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer is rolling out a fundraising campaign for a private legal defense fund to represent the state against legal challenges to its new immigration law.

Yes, please, more money to trial lawyers from Republicans. I love it.

Great graphic on energy use in the US

Note the amount of energy "lost" in transmission and distribution. Note the huge amounts of oil, gas, and coal, and the tiny amounts of renewable sources. This is a travesty.

Also note that a lot, if not most of solar, is made where it's used, so there's a lot less loss from transmission. This is one of the main reasons I support decentralized power production. Make the power where it's going to be used and you save a ton on transmission. Make the place it's used more efficient (conserve more) and you save a ton on distribution.

This great graphic makes it easy to see where the problems are. Now we just have to stop people from voting for Republicans. If only there was a graphic to help visualize that...

in reference to: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/assets_c/2010/06/energyflowtrends-21255.html (view on Google Sidewiki)

Peter Baker doesn't understand what makes cars go

In his injuriously slanted article against the president, Peter Baker's ignorance couldn't be more clear. This story belongs in the opinion section, with all the other never-miss-a-chance-to-mention-Rev.-Wright stories. Nice, too, the way he works in Boehner's "job-killer" quote without mentioning the millions of jobs clean energy would provide.

But first, someone should fact check this messy little tirade. While Mr. Baker is right that windmills and solar panels won't fill gas tanks, they will fill batteries, and batteries can make cars go too.

Perhaps we need an Apollo project to train better reporters.

in reference to:

"The connection to the spill, of course, goes only so far. While he called for more wind turbines and solar panels, for instance, neither fills gasoline tanks in cars and trucks, and so their expansion would not particularly reduce the need for the sort of deepwater drilling that resulted in the spill."
- News Analysis - With Call to Arms, Obama Seeks to Shift Arc of Oil Crisis - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

I got your implication right here

Ignoring the obvious beginnings of a feeding frenzy in some oxygen deprived waters by the heads of these other oil companies, who have locked in on the bleeding person-hood of BP with their shark-like senses, I find this implication that somehow Mr. Tillerson's company is immune to Murphy's law disgustingly ballsy.

Here's the question: how big of a spill is so big that it's not worth the risk of more? At what point do you just say, screw it, it's too hard to do safely? 100 million gallons? A billion? I'd like to hear some Oil CEO with a carbon footprint the size of Alaska put a number on it.

OK, I'd settle for a person who might lose their job in a moratorium. Let's hear their number. When we get to that number, I'll support a bill to retrain you for building windmills.
in reference to:

"Rex W. Tillerson, chairman of Exxon Mobil, testified that if companies follow proper well design, drilling, maintenance and training procedures accidents like Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20 “should not occur,” implying that BP had failed to do so."
- Oil Executives Try to Explain Differences From BP - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Jacques Cousteau's 100th Birthday

"We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking."—Jacques-Yves Cousteau

That quote has graced the top of our free desktop wallpaper home page for a very long time now. It is by far my favorite quote. Every time we get another black swan event like Dick Cheney's Katrina down in the gulf, I think of that quote.

Cousteau would, of course, be horrified that his 100th birthday (today) would be marred by this catastrophe. He would be angry at the myopic logic that got us to such a disaster. But, judging from that quote, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be surprised.

Despite the sorrow born of a clear understanding of the terrifying challenges that await us, Captain Cousteau always thought that humanity has a chance, for he believed deeply in the capacity of humans to adapt, to create, to invent solutions that would save the future. This lucid and creative optimism, united with a great affection for life, allowed him to show us paths that many have begun to adopt: the Rights of Future Generations, a holistic and thoughtful long-term approach to risk-taking, the conservation of biodiversity, the determined search for clean energy and especially solar energy, integrated management of large aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, the resolution of problems of intervention between States to establish compatible and effective legal practices in environmental regulation …

I agree we have a chance. But when I see Republicans (and corporatist Democrats), who many people are thinking about voting for, standing up and saying this is not a catastrophe, standing up to defend BP, I come to the conclusion that the chance is minuscule and getting microscopic by the minute. If people can be so guided by their own bigotry and greed that they vote against their own interests for more myopic logic and more resultant absurdities, then what hope can there be that those of us who do have the capacity to adapt, create, and invent solutions will be able to overcome the power and corruption of the ruling corporate class?

Slow Money Grows Slow Food

It probably won't be the next bubble--in fact, that's the idea--but if you're looking to make your money do some good while it makes more money, this might be worth looking into. (It doesn't look like they're taking investments yet.)

The Slow Money Alliance says:

* What would the world be like if we invested 50% of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?
* What if there were a new generation of companies that gave away 50% of their profits?
* What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soil 50 years from now?

I'm not holding my breath on the giving away of profits, but I'm sure there are plenty of companies and investors who understand that if we do the other two, we would have more sustainable communities.

In reference to: Slow Money: Investment strategies appropriate to the realities of the 21st century - Home (view on Google Sidewiki)

Dangerous complex technology with no way to clean up the mess

Yes, deep water oil drilling is a dangerous and complex technology that lets a very messy genie out of its bottle. But one of the proposed alternatives to our fossil fuel addiction is an even more complex technology with an even more dangerous genie, and even less remediation possibilities if that genie gets out.

The Davis-Besse nuclear reactor in Oak Harbor Ohio just had the same problem it had in 2002, where acid has eaten away the vessel head, allowing cooling water to leak out. This has been described as a "startling near-miss" and it's happened twice now at this reactor.

This same corrosion has happened to other vessel heads at other plants, though not as seriously. Considering the assurances we got from the "experts" that deep water oil wells were safe, how can we possibly believe "experts" telling us that nuclear energy is safe.

I can easily prove that Dick Cheney's covert energy meetings and resulting lax regulation and oversight, combined with Bush appointments of foxes into hen houses, resulted in "Cheney's Katrina" now spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. It will be similarly easy to label any future nuclear accident "Obama's Chernobyl."

We desperately need to simplify and decentralize our energy production, with emphasis on renewable sources and conservation.

in reference to:

"a nuclear reactor where a hidden leak caused near-catastrophic corrosion in 2002 has experienced a second bout of the same problem."
- An Old Nuclear Problem Creeps Back - Green Blog - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Why does Carly Fiorina hate the Armed Forces?

Fiorina, in her new commercial: "Terrorism kills. And Barbara Boxer wants to talk about the weather..."

Well, the Pentagon thinks global warming could prove a greater risk to the world than terrorism. Any of you idiot Republicans have a response for the Pentagon?

in reference to:

"a Pentagon study raised the possibility that global warming could prove a greater risk to the world than terrorism."
- Climate-Related Core Issues - Pentagon study on consequences of climate change (view on Google Sidewiki)

Who would even think about voting Republican?

The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming has the live oil geyser cam. Wonder if that would happen under the Republican Chairman, assuming they get one. Just watch that thing for a few minutes, think about the fact that it's been going for 40 days like that, and then think about voting Republican.

Sorry if that made you feel sick. I'll spare you the Greenpeace photos link. You know how to find it. Make sure possible Republican voters see that and remember who's philosophy put foxes in all the hen houses.

Fission, Baby, Fission

"We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking."--Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Hordes of logic-challenged, central-scrutinizer, authoritarian types love having big, centralized power generation and fuel drilling corporations in charge of our energy production. I hope they all go grab some dish-washing liquid and head to the gulf. But they won't. They'll wait a while, blame environmentalists for the Deepwater Horizon spill, and then they'll be back with Sarah "Spill, Baby, Spill" Palin calling for drilling in our back yards-- right now.

But maybe a few more thoughtful "conservatives" will look at the root of the word they use to describe themselves, and think for a minute. To help them with this noble endeavor, I suggest they read Dimitry's piece comparing The Deepwater Horizon accident to Chernobyl.

The political challenges, in both cases, centered on the inability of the political establishment to acquiesce to the fact that a key source of energy (nuclear power or deep-water oil) relied on technology that was unsafe and prone to catastrophic failure. The Chernobyl disaster caused irreparable damage to the reputation of the nuclear industry and foreclosed any further developments in this area. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is likely to do the same for the oil industry, curtailing any possible expansion of drilling in deep water, where much of the remaining oil is to be found, and perhaps even shutting down the projects that have already started. In turn, this is likely to hasten the onset of the terminal global oil shortage, which the US Department of Energy and the Pentagon have forecast for 2012.

As Chernobyl fades away into the myopic logic of short term thinking, and as oil and gas become less popular (for a while), I expect to hear even more war cries for nukes. The right, and even some of the left, will beat their shields and swords: telling us how much safer nukes are (thanks to all that regulation they're against); how there are no greenhouse gas emissions from nukes; how we've solved the problems of waste and security; how accidents don't happen to large complex systems that use extremely hazardous nuclear material to boil water.

Small, localized, publicly-owned, renewable power generating facilities powering resilient communities is the simple, less catastrophe-prone answer to these problems. Decentralization makes us more immune to corporate rip-offs like a "terminal global oil shortage", and more able to withstand the crashes that are endemic of globally inter-connected systems like the world's oil-driven economy.

But with corporations running the show, I'm afraid we're doomed to the failure their shareholders seem oblivious to.  Millions of Americans are about to vote for Republicans, potentially swinging the majority in the House of Representatives; don't expect a big push back against these multi-national entities now free to spend as much as they want to own a few congressmen. Don't be surprised, or fooled, when those corporate mouthpieces start to spew their radioactive spiels for more nukes. Sure, nukes are big and complex, they will tell us, but they're a lot safer than those big, complex oil wells that they were telling us were safe.

Blog Round Up

Here's a quick review of the blogs I'm involved in producing...

Organic Gardening Blog. I've been gardening organically for most of my life, and blogging about the experience for many years now. I offer organic gardening advice, products, best practices, and more.

Internet Marketing and Organic SEO. I make web sites get higher search engine rankings, and I blog about how to do it so you can learn for free what to do to your websites to get higher ranks.

Free Desktop Wallpaper and Computer Backgrounds Photography. We've been posting free desktop wallpaper on our sites since we started Supak.com in 1996. We have cityscapes, high resolution nature photos, Hawaii pictures, and more at the Photog Blog.

Hawaii Blog. Hawaii vacations information and all the latest on everything Hawaiian that we post on any of our sites. Occasionally features guest bloggers from Hawaii.

Satan Wrote the Bible. This blog is written by a friend of mine and is full of Bible commentaries that serve as thought exercise for people who are so sure about what one cannot, by definition, be sure about.

Bush Treason Blog. That's right: I believe George Bush and many of his administration committed treason when they ignored warnings of an impending 9-11, pulled out of Tora Bora and let Bin Laden go, and lied us into a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9-11.

Los Angeles Catering Blog. Culinary Delight Catering in Los Angeles provides delicious food for any event at a reasonable price. No matter how fancy or simple the festivities, they can provide exactly the right catered food or craft services, including organic.

Grass-fed Beef Jerky Blog. We've started a small-batch, hand-made, grass-fed beef jerky business, and we now have a blog about grass-fed jerky and why eating grass-fed beef is better for you, the animal, and the planet.

Another Rejected Poem of Winter

Anti-Yungian Death Sentence

The road-side snow grows hollow, wrinkled, shrivled,
carved by snowmobiles, shrunken by sun,
scraped off and piled, gray like road scum,
like the cinder block clouds it came from...

The mountain-side snow stands sculpted
into place, determined to stay, hiding from sun
that only briefly reaches through the scrum
of trees protecting it. Each rock is a crumb

of homicidal heat in marshmallow--s'mored
by sappy maples, buds nearly toward sun
melting sugary white with yellow tongue.
The trees--like an albino's eyelashes--hum,

providing contrast, vibrating on white-skinned
shadows--abraded and afraid of the ascending sun
come to make it bleed before it finally succumbs
to the ubiquitous, incessant, violent green young.

Scott Supak