Slow Train Coming

By Capt. Fogg

One of the most frequently recurring themes echoing inside the bubble of Obamahate culture is that the President, although handily elected, was somehow thrust upon us by mistake and is an unelected tyrant.

It takes a special kind of person to believe that. It takes a special kind of person to attempt to profit by that belief and it takes a special kind of specialness not to be able to smell the boot polish and Cordite when reading about Wisconsin Governor Walker's plan to take over municipal governments ( duly elected) as part of his plan for prosperity through penury.

Forbes' Rick Ungar calls it Financial Martial Law and the Walker plan:

"would empower the governor to insert a financial manager of his choosing into local government with the ability to cancel union contracts, push aside duly elected local government officials and school board members and take control of Wisconsin cities and towns whenever he sees fit to do so,"

I have no doubt that's just what the Tea-Shirts would like and little doubt that they will be able to reconcile that with their flimsy facade of Constitutional reverence.

"Such a law would additionally give Walker unchallenged power to end municipal services of which he disapproves, including safety net assistance to those in need."

That's not tyranny, that's not the kind of shredding of the constitution the baggery would love to attribute to the President: at least not to the Tea-drunk masses longing to break free of any remaining bonds of civilization.

It'll never happen? It's Liberal hyperbole? Think a State Government can't simply strip a municipality's elected government of all power by Gubernatorial fiat? You say this isn't possible in America? It's already happened in Michigan. Perhaps it's coming soon, to a state near you.

I'll spare you a rant about Fascism and Mussolini, the perils of "special emergency powers" and Orwell's eternal boot heel, I suspect you've read enough 20th Century history to know what I'm talking about, but I suspect too that the years I have left to me will be years of counting up the mounting victories of barbarism, and the steady descent of our empire. Perhaps it's high time that I got back to studying Chinese.

“So Shall I Be Saved from Mine Enemies”: Barack Obama’s Diabolical Trap for the Republicans Exposed!

They don’t call him Bush’s Brain for nothing. Karl Rove is quoted in a recent HuffPo article  as saying on some FOX program the following about Donald Trump’s penchant for firing up the birtherites:

This is a mistake. It will marginalize him and he's falling into Barack Obama's trap. Barack Obama wants Republicans to fall into this trap because he knows it discredits us with the vast majority of the American people when they do.

I'm trying to stop laughing long enough to comment. Okay, I think I can do this now. I suppose we might credit Mr. Rove with the good sense to be meaning only that it boosts President Obama’s re-election chances when prospective GOP candidates talk like the arrantest chuckleheads. Got it. But what is this “trap” language? What’s the underlying notion here? That by being born in the US but having two furren-sounding names and non-pinkish skin and not posting an online streaming video of his own birth to the accompaniment of Hawaiian ukulele music, the president has been self-consciously setting a snare all his life for the GOP? Yes, I see it clearly now: that man is diabolically clever! You never know what he might be up to….

But really, this is a "trap" that has been set by the brazen bigotry of a certain element within the GOP. The baser angels of their nature are always plumbing for new lows, and it's nobody's fault but their own. And mark you now, by Jesu, anyone who panders to the worst of them while knowing the aloha kai omega of the matter is “an ass, and a fool, and a prating coxcomb,” as the fervent Captain Fluellen of Shakespeare’s Henry plays would warrant.

Mrs. Brown Gets A Bikini Wax

Time to take a Teahoo break:

World Amateur Radio Day

By Capt. Fogg

I've often said that history could rightly be called The Revenge of the Nerds. After all, who else has relegated the huge brutal guy with the horned helmet to the football field and wrestling match and wrested the control from their hands? Some guy with a tube of Clearasil in his pocket operating from a cubicle in Fort Knox wields more power than all the Vikings, the Hordes of Genghis Khan and the generations of Crusaders added together and more.

Nerds rule and of course nowadays, it's hip to be a nerd. As with all hipdom, however most of what you see is imitation and pose. That "tech-savvy" kid who just walked out of the cell phone store with a new gadget, quacking app, app, app like the AFLAC duck? a real nerd? I don't think so.

I'm increasingly often the recipient of obnoxious snark from people whose fragile egos depend on the complexity of their cell phones, knowledge of the features of the latest Japanese consumer toy and number of things owned with the letter i tacked on to the front. Most couldn't read the schematic for a flashlight much less tell you how semiconductor devices work or how they're made, yet they proudly assume the mantle of nerd. Tell you how a Hartley differs from a Colpitts or how to calculate the resonant point of a tank circuit? That's kid stuff to a real nerd. You can't even get a Technician license without knowing such things. Real nerds were making phone calls from their cars over 30 years ago, sending text messages a hundred years ago and are doing things today you wouldn't understand if I told you about it.

Is it a big deal that I can talk to someone in Australia with a hand held device? Not any more, but doing it for free is still a lot of fun. I got a kick out of contacting a Yuri Gagarin special event station in Kazakhstan the other day and some Mexican guys on an uninhabited volcano in the Pacific and that sort of thing is even more fun when you're doing it with something you designed and built connected to a wire up in the palm trees. But that's just me and it's a me who isn't interested in what the pierced and tattooed kids at the mall are doing at the moment, which of course is how we nerds are.

Anyway, it's April 18th and that's World Amateur Radio Day, which commemorates the founding of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) this year on it's 78th anniversary. There are about 3 million of us in the world; over 600,000 in the US, and we've pioneered and developed nearly every form of electronic communication there is, most of which you're unaware of, thank you very much. We have our own satellites, we bounce signals off the moon and the Northern Lights and the ionized trails of meteors. We can send a photo of the grand kids and text messages to Timbuctu with 20 watts and keep in touch when all else fails, but for the most part we can communicate anywhere and without the fragile and expensive infrastructure you need to send gibberish to the kids at the other end of the hall.

But hey, I gotta go. ZB2FK is CQing from Gibraltar on 10 and that's a new one for the log book.

HOW SOUND IS FRACKING?

Hydraulic fracturing is a drilling process that blasts large amounts of water deep into the earth to fracture dense shale and allow natural gas to escape. Some of the water used in this process which is in the hundreds of thousands of gallons becomes contaminated with toxic and often potentially carcinogenic materials.

Most states where fracking is allowed require the contaminated liquid to be disposed of in deep injection wells. But in some states, primarily PA, the liquid is routinely partially treated and then dumped into rivers and streams.

Fracking was one of those under the radar type activities that didn’t draw much attention unless you live in close proximity to the sites. But it has been in the news lately and a few choice articles caught my attention.

Lots of folks are getting rich off of releasing the huge gas reserves underground, especially since natural gas is in high demand due to the increasing cost of oil products. While the process of fracking and capturing natural gas has it’s advocates, there are some disturbing aspects of the practice coming to light.

A Democratic study of the contaminated water produced is raising the alarm over how sound a practice it really is. There have been incidents of spills, contaminated drinking water and the EPA is finally pushing PA officials to test the water being released into waterways after treatment.

Fracking has also served to divide communities and pit neighbor against neighbor. Land owners getting rich off selling the gas rights on their property are being subjected to acrimonious acts of others in their community. While the land owners defend their right to sell the gas on their property, others argue that the potential for toxic spills and environmental damage, not to mention the increase in noise and traffic related to the gas production will affect their living standards and drive down real estate values.

And while there is no definitive answers yet, there are studies suggesting that deep injection wells may trigger seismic activity especially in earthquake prone areas.

Without government regulation and oversight and further studies of fracking and all related activities, the impact on our environment and the people living in gas rich areas could end up being devastating.

TEA PARTYING WITH RACISM

Tea Party member and virulent birther, Marilyn Davenport of Orange County, California, had no idea that emailing a photo shopped picture depicting President Obama as an ape to her fellow Tea Partiers was racist. Noooooooo. The thought never crossed what passes as her mind. This woman is apparently so bereft of any common sense that she is clueless about the insulting dehumanization that African Americans have endured throughout our sorry racial history, and that one of the ways to humiliate this group was to compare them to subhumans.



Pointing out that George W. Bush was referred to as "Chimpy" isn't in any way, shape or form an equivalency. George W. Bush's race was never demonized and dehumanized to the point where people felt torturning and lynching a white citizen was justified because he dared speak to or look at a black woman. Members of George Bush's race never were told to sit at the back of the bus, or drink from separate fountains, nor were white children of tax-paying parents denied entrance into a tax supported state college because their skin was lily white. Referring to Dubya as Chimpy had nothing to do with his race, and everything to do with his incompetence. If Tea Party members don't understand the difference, then they need to read up on the history of racism in this country, pull their heads out of their collective anuses, and face their bigotry head on.

But back to this Orange County woman who defended her stupid email:

"This afternoon, Marilyn Davenport sent an email to fellow Orange County Republican elected officials, apologizing if anyone was offended by her depicting President Barack Obama as an ape--while also blasting the "liberal media" for reporting the story."

Notice that this contemptible woman didn't really apologize. Nowhere does she say she's sorry for acting like a foul-hearted asshat. No. she apologizes IF anyone was offended by her depiction of President Obama as an ape--an image that white racists have used to demean and demoralize African Americans through our history. She's too lamebrained to understand this simple fact. And then, like all cowards, she blames the messenger for her atrocious idiocy.


"I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth," Davenport wrote. "In no way did I even consider the fact he's half black when I sent out the email. In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people [Scott Baugh, Orange County GOP boss, and this writer] tried to make this about race. . . . I received plenty of emails about George Bush that I didn't particularly like yet there was no 'cry' in the media about them."

 She never considered the fact that President Obama is an African American when she sent out her humiliating email. This is because she is a stupid woman, too ignorant of this country's history to know when she is committing an egregious insult to a group of people who have had to endure the likes of her for centuries.


I'm sick of it all, but most assuredly sick of the jackasses--people like Davenport--who populate the Tea Party. I'm sick of them denying that this racism is a part of who they are and what they believe. It's part of what the Tea Party is, and it's blatant.

Finally, I'm sick of those who become indignant when they are confronted with the reality that the Tea Party has a HUGE streak of racism running down its spine.

It's wide, it's yellow, and it stinks.

Dear Mr. President,

Only 2500 characters allowed, so I had to drop most adjectives, and big chunks of the first and second paragraphs. And, obviously, the video.

Dear President Obama,

Interesting speech this week. You made some very good points, and you're going back to one of your strengths - oration. (To be honest, I didn't actually watch it live, but I've seen clips, and I read the transcript. But hey, what do you want out of me? I don't have that kind of attention span. I have publicly admitted to listening to pop music, so it's probably something of a miracle that I know how to read, much less write.)

On top of which, there are only so many hours in the day, after all, and Cartoon Network is replaying episodes of Robot Chicken that I was too drunk to remember the first time.

I'm not going to go into all the points in your speech: I'll admit, however, that it's somewhat refreshing to hear someone in power point out that the Defense budget could use some trimming. You're going to take some hits from the GOP on that, but stand firm. It's got to happen.

Now, here's the thing, though. I voted for you - hell, I even volunteered for your campaign. But I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. Although you came out and told people you were a centrist, you made a lot of promises, and, while you've come through on a lot of them, there's also a bunch of things you haven't done.

Does "Guantanamo" ring a bell?

And, frankly, you've already said that you'd stand firm on not renewing the Bush tax cuts. That was about three months before you renewed them again.

Well, it's only been five months since the last switch, and here you are, saying "I refuse to renew them again."

So, you know, funny thing: it's kind of difficult to believe you, when you've already lied about something once.

But I'll tell you what. Let's set up a plan now, for what to do at some unnamed point in the future when you decide to cave in compromise again (as, admittedly, you have on a lot of things that are fairly important to those of us on the left side of the aisle: single-payer health care or the Public Option; war-crimes charges for... well, anybody who committed war-crimes, really; and - not to keep harping on this - Guantanamo).

Let's put it up to a vote. Not Congress, but the American people. If you decide that some subject is too much of a hot potato politically, even if the majority of the American people are for it, how about if, instead of just abandoning those liberal, all-American principles that give Rupert Murdoch heart palpitations, how about if you just put it up to the American voter? Stick a simple, unslanted question onto the ballot: "Should the Bush-era tax cuts be extended?" See what the answer is. I think you'll be surprised.

And maybe you can lead up to this with a few more speeches like this last one. Let's be real - you're never going to be popular with Republicans. They don't like you for a number of reasons (and the fact that you're black may not even be at the top of the list). Point out simple logic, like "if tax breaks for the rich created jobs, shouldn't George W. Bush have left office with no unemployment in the country at all?"

You can't make everybody happy. In fact, you can't make the GOP happy at all. Can you please just ignore Limbaugh and Hannity shrieking, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that you're the "most liberal president ever!" for just a minute, and do what's right? Please?

If you don't get the joke, you might be a Republican

By Capt. Fogg

Well no wonder they don't think The Daily Show is funny and don't notice when Colbert rips them to pieces.

Some scientific folks at UC San Francisco have completed a study indicating that people in the early stages of dementia have lost the snark detection system most of us were born with and can't tell when you're lying or being facetious. It explains a lot of things, actually, from why people send their life savings to Nigeria to why they can support a candidate who changes his entire philosophy from hour to hour to negate whatever his opponent says.

"Divergent Neuroanatomic Correlates of Sarcasm and Lie Comprehension in Neurodegenerative Disease," a paper presented Thursday at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Hawaii, suggests that dementia can be detected earlier by noting this telltale disability. Fans of Blade Runner will smile and those of us baffled by the thought processes of Sarah Palin disciples will say "AHAH!" Perhaps we can now begin to understand why there are no really funny conservative comedians and how John McCain can flip and flop faster than a Cray supercomputer without fostering the slightest cynicism from the right.

After all, what has been eroded by disease in some people may simply not exist in others.

Fukushima Mon Amour

By Octopus

Curious how human beings reduce natural phenomena to pithy terms: A Richter scale for earthquakes; five categories for storms and tornadoes; a number seven for deadly sins and nuclear alerts.

Earlier this week, authorities in Japan raised the severity alert of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to a level seven - a Chernobyl scale disaster - reflecting prolonged releases of radiation and wider consequences than previously thought. For weeks, levels of radioactive iodine and cesium in air, rainwater, vegetables, and dairy cattle have far exceeded normal limits.

Despite the catastrophic scope of last month’s earthquake and tsunami, the people of the Rising Sun consider themselves fortunate in at least one respect. Radioactive clouds of steam and smoke have blown eastward over the Pacific Ocean and away from major population centers in Japan. Yet, millions of gallons of radioactive coolant water were discharged at sea, and it may be years before the impact on ocean ecosystems is fully understood.

Ocean dumping of nuclear waste was banned by international treaty in the 1970s. Of concern to scientists now is not the immediate level of radioactivity but the longer-term consequences. Even minute amounts of radiation have the potential to be absorbed by plants and animals and enter the food chain. As smaller fish are eaten by larger fish, heavy metals and their radioactive counterparts bio-accumulate up the food chain until the ultimate consumer – the human population – is put at maximum risk.

W. Eugene Smith, Minamata

Nuclear waste is a subset of the larger problem of industrial pollution, and Fukushima is merely the latest chapter of a long and appalling saga: Minamata, Love Canal, Bhopal, Deepwater Horizon, Libby Asbestos, Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl, as the most grotesque examples.  Entire ecosystems destroyed for generations, landscapes and seascapes laid waste and barren, dead zones and ghost towns, crippled economies and ruined lives … our world dies by a thousand blows.

Paul Fusco, Chernobyl

To maintain lavish lifestyles, we consume prodigious amounts of energy and pay for it  – not just in unit costs per BTU – but in terms of health and human life. In this unholy bargain, we have come to regard consumers and workers as fungibles and expendables, as a necessary sacrifice in exchange for a profligate and reckless economic system gone mad. Yet, incident after incident, and year after year, we continue to place our trust in the infallibility of our technologies and enterprises. It is a pact made with Mephistopheles Inc.

Free exercise

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

All well and good, but as it so often happens, the ignorant, angry rabble the constitution was designed to prevent from directly controlling our country disagree. According to a CNN poll this morning, 64% of Americans responding, support a federal ban on garments that hide the face; garments which are required by the free exercise of some religious denominations. So much for our constant squealing about Freedom.

Where are the cries of too much government I have to listen to constantly? There's a move here to eliminate licensing for professions that now require them, like Yacht brokerage -- in the interest of "less government" and because, as the local paper says, "it will make it easier to get into the business." I'm sure it will, especially for the unscrupulous.

I had to listen to a tantrum in Miami International Airport the other day, when a man decided the overly long walk to the customs hall was the result of "too much government," but telling us how to constitute our families, who we may marry, what clothes we may not wear, what religion we may not freely exercise? Well, now, that's different!