How To Kick The Oil Habit

The conventional wisdom that we must depend on fossil fuels until we “transition to a new energy future” is a favorite of our political and media betters; problem is, they’ve been saying it for the past 30 years while doing absolutely nothing to further said “transition.” Now we face one crisis after another, after another.


Thanks a lot, assholes.

Never mind. I’ve said all along that this piece of conventional wisdom is false, a lie we’ve been told to make us feel better about our lack of action. Don’t worry, be happy. But sorry, peeps. Time to grow up. Time to call bullshit where we see it and demand some action, some leadership and some honesty.

Here’s a great place to start:

The last time lawmakers truly freaked out about the problem of our oil dependence--when gas prices topped $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008--the Senate Energy Committee called in Skip Laitner, director of economic analysis at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

The committee asked Laitner what efficiency--the famously unglamorous energy strategy--could do to relieve gas prices. He gave them an astonishing figure: It could save 46 billion barrels of oil. If the U.S. made an all-out investment in energy efficiency-cutting energy waste out of vehicles, buildings, the electrical grid, and elsewhere in the economy--Laitner believes it could save the energy equivalent of 46 billion barrels by 2030.

Domestic offshore drilling produced 537 million barrels a year over the last nine years, according to the Minerals Management Service. A full-bore efficiency plan would save the equivalent of 85 years of offshore drilling.

Let me repeat what I’ve said before: the oil companies are cutting back on refinery production, even shutting some refineries down permanently, in an effort to keep gas prices high. So I don’t believe conservation will lower gas prices significantly. But that’s not my concern. My concern is ecology, safety, and other areas of the economy that depend on our coastal areas. And it looks like conservation will give us that so-called “breathing room” we’ve been told we need offshore drilling to provide to fuel our transition to renewables.

Most of Laitner's “10 solutions” look fairly painless and easy to implement, but they require will, leadership, and commitment. We need to decide that we really do want to transition to renewables, not just use the words to justify our wasteful ways while we steep ourselves in denial.

There are tons more ideas from folks like Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, whose commentary Freeing America From Its Addiction To oil provides tons more pro-business, capitalistic solutions. But, as he notes, we need “real carrots, not just sticks painted orange.”

We can do this. It’s not hard. We have the motivation. We have the tecnology. We simply need to demand it of our leadership.

Alabama: Push It!

Mash-ups are not the end of culture, but the final form.

The politics portrayed here are not exclusive to Alabama, but my state is a bellwether for such politics nationally. Indeed, the south generally serves as a great indicator of the national direction. That is because southern Alabama is the epicenter of all wingnuttery -- as you can see by our TV ads.

Tim James has pandered his way to national attention. Young Boozer (real name!) has drawn national mention. So has Dale Peterson, a candidate for Agriculture Commissioner (really!). These ads are aggressive shouts for attention; they are desperate moves (no one in Alabama had ever heard of Dale Peterson).

The time had come for a mash-up -- a complete deconstruction of the right-wing Alabama advertisement:



Alabama's politics can be twisted; ironically, Dale Peterson is the most progressive candidate in the race in the ways that really count for the post. That said, I think Alabama is going to surprise the country this year -- and contribute to a sense of disappointment among the right.

For if the election were held today, the man at the beginning of that video -- Artur Davis -- would probably be elected Governor. The heart of Dixie...might just be turning blue again.

Fundamentals of the Social Contract: Why Rand Paul Is Wrong

According to aspiring legislator, Rand Paul, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 went too far in prohibiting racial discrimination by private businesses. All the while asserting that he would have voted yes for the Civil Rights Act, Rand nonetheless believes that private businesses should be allowed to refuse goods or services to black people, at least that's what he told Rachel Maddow in an interview. His words have thrown the GOP into something of a frenzy as they try to distance themselves from his remarks and yet reap the benefits of his popularity with the tea party contingency.

I have a very personal reaction to Paul's observations. I grew up in the era of Jim Crow when segregation was the norm. White Only and No Colored Allowed signs were as common as traffic signs. All businesses were legally allowed to discriminate, to deny goods and/or services based on the color of the consumer's skin. I don't have any desire to return to the good ole days. I also don't hold with the thinking that given time to evolve, Jim Crow would have died a natural death. Jim Crow wasn't born. The system of racial discrimination known as Jim Crow was artificially and intentionally created as a response to the post civil war efforts of black people to claim their rightful place in the social, economic, and political hierarchy of this country. There was nothing natural about it. It couldn't die; it had to be executed. I have no doubt that without government action legal segregation would still be a part of the fabric of this nation.

Rand Paul's position is seriously flawed; however, based on the comments littering the Internet on this topic, there are a lot of folks out there who have succumbed to the same flawed thinking. Much of it stems from worship of the cult of individuality. A characteristic of this cult is a belief that my individual rights supercede all other rights. Of course this is totally irrational. If my rights are more important than your rights, then aren't your rights more important than mine? What about Mary Sue next door, where do her rights fit in this hierarchy? Although said much more eloquently by such diverse thinkers as Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Hobbes, it's this tension regarding individual rights balanced against the needs of the whole that necessitates the formation of governments. (My listing of only western philosophers is not intended to suggest that only white males have wrestled with these issues. It's just that as a product of a limited American public education, I am most familiar with the works of Eurocentric writers, which is an entirely separate topic to be addressed someday.)

Society is the whole, individuals are the parts. Societies were formed by the individuals to create a system in which the individuals could agree to live governed by rules to protect the common good. Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, Jefferson and many others have defined this concept as it relates to the purposes of goverment. Those who do not wish to agree to the social contract are free to live outside of it but cannot then also benefit from it. (i.e. you don't have to own a business) This is the basic flaw of Rand Paul's argument that a private business has the right to engage in discrimination. Businesses are by definition public enterprises. Its goods and services are sold to the public and as such the business is part of our system of commerce. The regulation of commerce is constitutionally assigned to Congress. If the businessman wishes to engage in discrimination, he may do so but not via his public enterprise. It's up to him to figure out how to run a profitable business enterprise without engaging in public commerce, if he wishes to engage in discrimination as to whom may partake of his goods and/or servces.

The most extreme example of those who place individual liberties tantamount to the society as a whole are those who commit crimes. The thief believes that his/her needs are superior to the needs of all others thereby justifying their right to take what they need. Indeed, if we follow the argument of the superiority of individual rights to its logical conclusion, then those who commit criminal acts are merely choosing to place their individual needs above the needs of the whole. Under this logic, our prisons are populated by true libertarians.

However, in a society, we all agree to subvert our individual liberties to the benefit of the function of the whole. To not do so results in anarchy and a society in which no one has any security. Whatever property that I may have secured would constantly be at risk of being taken by someone who had the strength to do so in a world governed by the supreme right of the individual. Instead, we have laws, enforcers, and systems of punishment to maintain order so that property rights, mine and yours, are not subject to the arbitrary will of might makes right. Which brings me to the final element of the social contract, governments are not instituted to protect the rights of the strong but rather to ensure that even the weak have protections. Otherwise, in the words of Hobbes,we would be in a constant state of war, and man would be a solitary being living an existence that is nasty, brutish and short.

P.S. A good friend, Mark Olmsted, writes for the Huffington Post. In his most recent piece, People and Property: What Rand Really Wants, he presents an astute assessment of Rand Paul's disturbing views which suggest that civil rights should be optional. Check it out.

Baffling Bedfellows

by Nance

At dinner the other night, my son asked me why I continue to study the history and evolution of Christianity, among other religions, since he's pretty sure I took a position on Christian beliefs many years ago. Do I study Christianity in order to validate my position?  To argue better with those who don't agree with me?

I explained that I started this study in high school, and continue it to this day, because Christianity has so powerfully influenced our culture. I've long since given up trying to convert or convince anyone to my way of thinking.  I was raised in Protestant churches and chose a women's college that allowed me to make an historical-critical study of the Christian Bible and of other religions.  I stay fascinated because Christianity plays such a huge role in the conflicts of our time, and because scholars continue to present new perspectives and deeper understandings.  I want to understand what philosophies drive American actions and inform America's short history. If I seek to understand, rather than to be understood, then I have to seriously ask, "What the hell are those people thinking?!"

As luck would have it, I found Mike Lux's article, Why Are So Many Christians Conservative?, on AlterNet. Lux does a really good job of explaining, with Biblical references, why the philosophy Jesus taught as revealed in the gospels is at odds with the stated philosophy of Conservatives.  To give a taste:

Conservatives believe that the rich and powerful got that way because they deserve to be, that society owes its prosperity to the prosperous, and that government's job when they have to make choices is to side with those businesspeople who are doing well, because all good things trickle down from them. Progressives, on the other hand, believe it is the poor and those who are ill-treated who need the most help from their government, and that prosperity comes from all of us -- the worker as well as the employer, the consumer as well as the seller, the struggling entrepreneur trying to make it as well as the wealthy who already have.

And,

The Jesus of the New Testament spent his public career preaching about the nature of God and our relationship to God, but also about how we should deal with each other. He repeatedly blessed mercy, gentleness, peacemaking, community, and taking care of each other. He lifted up the poor and oppressed, and spoke poorly of the wealthy and powerful. If anyone in modern society talked like he did, you can bet your bottom dollar that conservatives would condemn that person as a class warrior, a socialist.

The article is too long to have tattooed on my arm, although I briefly considered trying.  You'll have to read it for yourself and get back to me.

When you've done with that, perhaps you can help me understand another mongrel miscreation that keeps me awake at night:  The Feminist Conservative.

Addendum:  I should add that my own leanings are toward a mix of Reform Evangelical Druidism and Free Range Addlism.

Let there be -- bacteria

Said the J. Craig Venter Institute research team - and there was life.

While the human race, or at least Homo Americanus is preoccupied with destroying itself with it's pet mythologies and peremptory political philosophies and general stupidity, a few of us have been at work actually creating something that constitutes a giant leap for mankind. It's always a very few, isn't it?

A team of American scientists have succeeded in animating a cell with a synthetic genome made out of raw chemicals. The implications of this huge accomplishment are beyond anyone's ability to foresee and I'm not talking only about the ability to design or reproduce life from scratch or even to bring extinct species back from extinction: I'm talking about dispelling another myth, explaining another mystery without relying on further myths and mysteries ad infinitum.

Remember the scene from Blade Runner where the genetic engineer looks at a snake scale to find an identification number encoded in the artificial snake? Perhaps the team who put together a synthetic "replicant" bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides remembered when they encoded the names of the 46 scientists in the project along with the project's e-mail address into its genome.

Beyond being another blow to the "I don't understand how it works so God must have done it" fallacy, the creation of living, reproducing things from bottles of Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine will require us to re-examine the nature of life itself and just when it "begins."

I wonder if looking back at today's newspapers 200 years from now we won't wonder why it didn't make the headlines, but perhaps the reason is the same reason we're in so much trouble right now: 300 million self-absorbed, short sighted, ignorant life forms trapped in solipsistic bubbles ( or tea bags) unable to see much beyond the membrane.

The will of the WASP

Rand Paul is not Ron Paul and I'm not flattering him by saying it. There is a difference between principle and bull-headed intransigence and Paul the younger seems as unclear about that as he is not quite up to the task of successfully debating Rachel Maddow about his distaste for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Asked whether he thought a restaurant had the right to refuse service to black customers, Paul commenced a rather evasive dance around the subject by trying to describe regulation as ownership.

"What about freedom of speech?" asked the less than candid Candidate. "Well what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says 'well no, we don't want to have guns in here' the bar says 'we don't want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each-other?'" Paul replied. "Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion."

Unfortunately, more than just being grammatically confused, he's wrong. He's equivocating and the debate is, of course, entirely about practical matters. Can we agree, for instance, that being black in a restaurant is fundamentally different than carrying a gun in a bar and if so, his analogy is defective and a fallacy of distraction? Certainly a speed limit is not Government ownership of my car, health regulations imposed on food producers aren't the equivalent of owning the family farm nor is forcing Woolworth to stop creating two Americas with their policies isn't Marxism.

Is the government of and by the people allowed,as the founding documents imply, to promote liberty for all, to promote peace and domestic tranquility by imposing limitations on individual behavior? Is he arguing for a government so impotent it must inevitably fall into feudalism and exploitation? Those are the questions he begs and the questions he avoids. Sorry Doctor, I think the balance between individual liberty and being a free country is a practical and necessary discussion.

Is it practical to have a society so far beyond the control of its members that justice becomes only a matter of the will of the strongest and the richest and most well connected -- the will of the WASP? No, unlimited individual license does not allow for a society at all, much less a free one.

Still it's all about the practical as opposed to the relentlessly repeated and self referential principle and we've all heard of or can easily come up with examples where freedom cannot be unlimited for many reasons; where behavior that needs to be restrained cannot be restrained by anyone other than Government. Is it preferable to allow my neighbors to forbid Baptists to live on my block and ignore my freedom or is it better to protect the minority against the majority, which is a common definition of democracy as distinguished from mob rule. No, if this is but a "philosophical" discussion it's because he doesn't want to address the inevitable questions Libertarians invite when they refuse to discuss its inherent limitations.

The traditional 'best government is least government' trope reduces to absurdity all by itself as quickly as does his argument that any restraints or obligations put on behavior or business practices constitute ownership and are an unnecessary stain on the pure and absolute freedom we've somehow decided is our birthright. Certainly although he assures us that he would never patronize a business that discriminates, he realizes that his sentiments are not universal. He realizes that he's giving license to anyone to debase any group he likes and to diminish their lives, their liberty and their pursuit of happiness. He realizes that such a nation as he dreams of would be fractured, Balkanized, a loose, weak, unstable confederation of hostile groups no more pleasant than a baboon troupe and with each of us at his neighbor's throat. He must realize that he's appealing to bigots, racists and sociopaths of no conscience -- and all in the name of principle and freedom.

So why is he debating as though the balance between too much and not enough wasn't worth discussing? As though that wasn't the real question? Perhaps its because he's pandering to an audience somewhat less rational than Ron Paul's: to an audience whipped into irrational fury by the basic requirements of civilization; too hungry for revenge against a maturing world and too angry and self centered to give a damn what he can do for his country.

Rachel, Rand Paul, and Libertarianism: “What That Woman Been Doin’ to Me”

Some readers may have seen Rachel Maddow’s interview last night with Kentucky’s Senate primary winner Dr. Rand Paul on her MSNBC show.  From what I’ve heard, Paul regrets his decision to appear on the show and considers himself not too well treated by Rachel.  So let’s cue Waylon Jennings and the Marshall Tucker Band’s soulful lyrics, “Can’t you see, oh can’t you see, what that woman, lawd, she been doin’ to me?” and consider this a bit.

The source of the dissatisfaction, apparently, was the following: that intellectual pitbull on the pantsleg of opportunity Rachel just wouldn’t give up easily in her quest to get the good doctor to admit that one's philosophy may have consequences in the real world.  In my own admittedly anecdotal experience, libertarians really, really hate it when you try to get them to admit that.  It’s so unfair of you!  They believe the free market (a myth) is the answer to all problems social, political, and economic.  They're hopelessly wrong, naive and ahistorical in their understanding, but just you try suggesting that to them.  I gather that the adoring dittoheads and teabaggery who flock to the well-spoken, eminently presentable and curly-locked Dr. Paul don’t pester him with annoying questions about his utter failure to historicize the concepts that authorize his philosophy and/or that pertain to it by way of extension and impact.  Concepts like, oh, I don’t know – private property, capitalism, American federal and state regulatory practice, and stuff like that.  I’m just sayin’….  I don't think Rachel was in any way suggesting that Rand Paul is personally a racist -- there's no reason at all to think that about him as an individual.  The question was and is, rather, the real consequences of his beliefs and the reflection those beliefs cast backwards on our collective history as Americans.

Well, anyway, if you’re a meanie like “that woman” Rachel, what you’ll get instead of a cogent answer is exactly the response I heard coming from Rand Paul, which I'll meanie-paraphrase and draw out as follows: “I'm sorry I even talked to that person!  I won't be doing that again anytime soon!  Why is she bothering me with all this hypothetical talk about civil rights and human misery?  It doesn't concern my abstraction-laced philosophy, which I know to be absolutely and always right in all things.”  Abstractionists and ideologues always cling to their notions with great fanaticism because they sense, however dimly, that abandoning those notions would leave the abandoner in the middle of the street just waiting to be run down by what Allen Ginsberg called “the Drunken Taxicabs of Absolute Reality.”  And this is an especially intense problem for libertarians, you see, because they pretty much consider the stop light that might halt any such careening Taxicab an infringement of their (and our) sacred personal liberty to do anything they (and we) want at any time.  Okay, I admit that I sort of feel that way about stop lights, too, when they last more than about a minute. It's a weakness of mine, I know....

But I say to the Rand Pauls of the political spectrum, nothing human is perfect, Horatio -- including your and my “philosophy,” however different they may be.  There’s much more to cover regarding the details of Rand Paul’s view of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but I’ll leave that to others’ commentary if they’d care to jump in.

Murkowski Says Yes To Big Oil

One of the definitions of a prostitute is, "a person who willingly uses his or her talent or ability in a base and unworthy way, usually for money." So, if you're getting over $400,000 a year from a bunch of guys in a particular industry, does that make you a whore?

And what does it make you when you side with your "financial backers over the public interest"? A brazen hussy.

In the wake of last month's catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion. The Republican lawmaker said the bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would have unfairly hurt smaller oil companies by raising the costs of oil production. The legislation is "not where we need to be right now" she said.

Well I sure would hate for the little bitty oil companies to get hurt while thousands of gallons of oil a day are pouring into the Gulf, threatening the entire ecosystem, the wetlands, the marine life, the coastline, the fishing industry and the tourist industry, and the quality of life of its inhabitants for decades to come.

I wonder just where Mukowski thinks this legislation should be right now. I wonder if she's considered, or if she even cares, where the money is going to come from to pay for the cleanup and all the other fallout from this disaster. I wonder if she thinks about those 11 men who were killed - and their families. I wonder if she thinks.

Murkowski's move came just hours after Washington's top oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API) expressed vociferous opposition to raising the cap. It argued that doing so would "threaten the viability of deep-water operations, significantly reduce U.S. domestic oil production and harm U.S. energy security." API's membership includes large oil companies like ExxonMobil and BP America, as well as smaller ones.

An API spokeswoman told TPMmuckraker that the bill represented "a knee-jerk reaction that could have unintended consequences." she added: "It's important that the Senate did vote it down."

In fact, the Senate didn't vote on the bill. Thanks to Senate procedures, Murkowski was able to block it simply by objecting to a voice vote request on the bill.

It's not clear that Murkowski's move will end up affecting how much BP and Transocean pay. The White House told TPMmuckraker last week that if the courts find BP to have been "grossly negligent or to have engaged in willful misconduct or conduct in violation of federal regulations," -- which would seem likely -- then the $75 million cap disappears. And there will likely be further efforts in the coming days to raise the cap.

(. . .)

Menendez was scathing in response to Murkowski's move, telling reporters: "Either you want to fully protect the small businesses, individuals and communities devastated by a man-made disaster -- this is not a natural disaster; this is a man-made disaster -- or you want to protect multibillion-dollar oil companies from being held fully accountable. Apparently there are some in the Senate who prefer to protect the oil companies."

If you are as angry as I am and if you want to scream at the top of your lungs, here's a couple of ways to go about it:

Senator Murkowski’s office phone number is 202-224-6665.
Her email is http://murkowski.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Contact
Ifidel753 provides this link to sign a petition to save the Clean Air Act. Guess who's trying to kill it?

Ya gotta wonder what kind of thingy is in the water up there in Alaska.

BPocalypse

Every day, I check the latest updates on the Gulf oil spill. The spill is massive; the response of BP is slimier than a cesspool; and our government appears incompetent and impotent. Last night, this article caught my attention, Loop Current Is Now Drawing The BP Oil Disaster To Florida Keys. Sometimes a reader comment is better than the article, such as this one (which follows after the jump):

No TEA for me please.

Rand Paul has things backwards and I don't mean his name. His win in the Kentucky Senate Republican Primary is not quite the same thing as being elected Senator and of course it's at least a few furlongs short of winning the Derby, or "taking back the Government" since, of course it wasn't taken from the voters in the first place. OK, there was Bush V. Gore, but you know what I mean.

Pretending that having been voted out of office was a breach of democracy seems to work for those at the Tea Party table, but then anything seems to work except reality and the reality is that we're not taxed enough already and we haven't had the tax increase they hope you believe we've had. Yes, we may be taxed unfairly and tax policy may have been written by people who can afford lobbyists and huge campaign donations, but beyond the amorphous anger, I haven't heard any proposals for a new tax code that could approach remedying the debt in any reasonable time much less as quickly as we paid off World War II.

They won't come up with one either unless they dispense with the repeatedly disproved fallacy that cutting taxes for the very rich will increase government revenues, spur investment in new businesses and boost employment and won't cause investment bubbles -- and that laissez faire capitalism doesn't lead to monopolies, corruption of government, fewer choices for consumers and less opportunities for small business.

In real terms most of us are paying less in Income tax than we used to -- less than at any time in my lifetime. The countries that have lower taxes are few and tend to have economies based on gambling, money laundering or revenues from things like the Panama Canal. The Republicans were ousted because of public anger and frustration with corporate control over people's lives, because of another apparently pointless and interminable war and the fear mongering that's eroded our freedom. I don't see where Mad Hatters like Rand Paul are addressing that and I do see that the Tea movement, if we can fall it that, is based on the hope that shattering the old form of government will magically cause freedom, justice and prosperity to break out and allow "the people" to control their own destiny. Sound like Marx to you? It does to me too. Does it sound like the same old: "don't trust them, but trust us even though we don't really have a plan other than to cloud your mind with anger?" It does to me too.

READIN', WRITIN', AND ASSASSINATIN'

The GOP has encouraged extremists in its party by promoting and tolerating hate mongers and near-seditionists like Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin or any other jackboot who will join them in stirring up the mobs in order to nullify the election of 2008.


How many times have we heard not just nutjobs like those mentioned above but even GOP Congressmen and women refer to the government, which they are part of, as a criminal organization--a "gangster government?"

And that is why a weak-minded moron, like this teacher in Alabama, felt comfortable in casually talkiing about murdering President Barack Obama as a way of explaining cosines. When stupid people like this teacher constantly hear his cynical leaders call the leaders of the opposition party, leaders of our government criminals, it follows that they deservc to be murdered, doesn't it? And if you're a teacher, what better way to introduce this idea than in math class?

Sara Robinson at Orcinus has written an excellent piece on where this tolerance for radical insurrectionist talk can lead. She discusses the Hutaree conspirators and the group, Guardians of the Free Republic:

"These two events are a wake-up call for progressives. They're telling us that it's time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America. When they're in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they're out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all -- indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can. When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government's authority and capacity to run the country. And it's been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.

This long assault has gone into overdrive since Obama's inauguration, as the rhetoric has ratcheted up from overheated to perfervid. We've reached the point where you can't go a week without hearing some prominent right wing leader calling for outright sedition -- an immediate and defiant populist uprising against some legitimate form of government authority.

Moderates and liberals are responding to this rising threat with feckless calls for "a return to civility," as if all that's needed to put things right again is a stern talking-to from Miss Manners. Though that couldn't hurt, the sad fact is that we're well past the point where it's just a matter of conservatives behaving like tantrum-throwing spoiled brats (which they are). When a mob is surrounding your house with torches and telling you they intend to burn it down, "civility" really isn't the issue any more.

At that point -- and we're there -- criminal intent and action become the real issues. Progressives need to realize that the right began defiantly dancing back and forth over the legal line, daring us to do something about it, quite some time ago. And it's high time we called it out -- and, where appropriate, start prosecuting it -- for exactly what it is."

Big top

The Republicans sometimes like to talk about their big tent. Others, in consideration of the exploits and shenanigans of the party of values and families and apple pie may think it's more like a freak show tent, but we shall see soon enough which kind of tent the Donna Milo show winds up in.

Cuban born, 48 year old "Conservative" Republican Ms. Milo is running to unseat rather liberal Broward County Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Yes, Miami Cuban Republicans are pretty numerous and at first glance one who didn't know that Ms. Milo used to be a Mr. Milo, whose friends called him Ed, wouldn't think anything was out of the ordinary.

Donna Milo is a person who prides herself in getting to where she is by her personal ability and in spite of her differentness -- not like those who we support with our tax money or special favors to Cuban immigrants, perhaps. Will that differentness matter more to the GOP than the traditional Republican attitudes she publicly displays?

It remains to be seen whether the party so traditionally inimical to the rights of gay, lesbian and transgendered people -- their agenda -- as they so often phrase it, will welcome her into the three ring big top with the other anti-Castro, pro-corporate liberal-bashing Miami paranoids or ushered out the side door.

Christian Politicians Deliberately Twist Constitution To Gain Votes

If you can pay the price you can buy almost anything you want in this country -- car, home, toothpaste, clothes, food or a charcoal grill. If you can pay the price you can buy services such as sex and votes. It doesn't matter if you don't know your history or your Constitution but it matters how hard you can thump the good book.

Liam Fox sets out to prove this on News Junkie Post.

Religions demand tolerance and acceptance of their own views, practices, prescriptions and prohibitions, when all they offer to others is intolerance. Religions requiring that others be forced, or coerced, to adhere to their tenets are nothing more than fascist political systems, and belief systems that regard their doctrine as being above a democratically elected legislature are seditious.

The founding fathers engineered the separation of church and state to protect America from Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, Islam and all other politically insistent theologies while simultaneously protecting those and all other religions from the interference of government.

In the desperate political climate that they find themselves in, Politicians lacking a clear understanding of or commitment to the First Amendment line up in favor of sectarian measures in the hope of garnering votes and winning elections. . . . Politicians can knowingly violate the constitution secure in the knowledge that the support for their unconstitutional decisions will be provided by those that they have benefited.

TED POE, TEXAS REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: His web page is headlined "National Day of Prayer is constitutional whether federal judges like it or not."

Displaying monumental ignorance, he goes on to say, ". . .James Madison knew more about the First Amendment than anybody else since he was the author; yet, in 1813, President Madison proclaimed a National Day of Prayer. . . ."

Wrong. Liam Fox writes: "In 1789, James Madison proposed twelve amendments that ultimately became the ten amendments. In this respect, Madison was the person who wrote the First Amendment, but he wasn’t the one who initially came up with the idea. In fact, there are several factors that qualify the claim that he is the sole author." See here

Although President Madison did issued prayer proclamations during the war of 1812, at the behest of congress, he later expressed regret for these actions. In an undated essay believed to have been written in the year 1817, referred to as ‘The Unattached Memoranda‘, Madison discusses the issue in detail providing five particular reasons for disagreeing with his prior actions of proclaiming a National Day of Prayer and espousing some insight that we would be wise to heed today. See here.

BRADLEY BYRNE, ALABAMA REPUBLICAN GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: He was attacked by the True Political Action Committee "for his previous support of teaching of evolution in public schools and reportedly having the gall to suggest that the Christian bible may not be entirely true."

In a switch reminiscent of John McCain, Byrne became a Born Again Christian and wrote on his website:

“I believe the Bible is the Word of God and that every single word of it is true. From the earliest parts of this campaign, a paraphrased and incomplete parsing of my words have been knowingly used to insinuate that I believe something different than that. My faith is at the center of my life and my belief in Jesus Christ as my personal savior and Lord guides my every action."

SARAH PALIN (no introduction necessary): In a Fox News interview with Bill O'Reilly Palin with all blinking eyed ga-ga smiling sincerity declared:

“I have said all along that America is based on Judeo-Christian beliefs and, you know, nobody has to believe me though. You can just go to our Founding Fathers’ early documents and see how they crafted a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution that allows that Judeo-Christian belief to be the foundation of our lives. And our Constitution, of course, essentially acknowledging that our unalienable rights don’t come from man; they come from God. So this document is set up to protect us from a government that would ever infringe upon our rights to have freedom of religion and to be able to express our faith freely.”

Someone at Fox, if they even know it, should explain to the Palin that neither the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence mentions a particular religion, Jesus, the Bible or God. The Constitution does mention a "Nature's God" a few times but not Christianity or Judaism.

The principle misunderstanding of Mrs. Palin’s, is that her interpretation of “our rights to have freedom of religion” translates in her mind, as it does in the minds of most fundamentalist evangelicals, to ‘the right of Christians to impose their beliefs and practices on American law, politics, society and education.’

STEVE PEARCE, NEW MEXICO REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE, states on his website that one of his political goals, and a promise to voters, is that he will "protect our right to prayer and against the government halting expressions of faith."

It is due to the fact that America is a secular nation that no ones religious freedom is threatened. No ones religious freedom is threatened because America has a constitution that charges it’s government to remain neutral and to not get involved in religion or make any law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The only threat to the religious freedoms of all Americans comes from religious organizations and their inability to accept a non-theocratic secular government.

Freedom of religion is not the freedom to impose ones religion on others and the First Amendment is not the property of politicians to trade off for votes. Politicians desperate for votes need to get a platform and leave the constitution, and the American people’s freedom of religion, alone.

BEYOND PETROLEUM

Given the continuing saga of the Gulf oil spill, news of dead zones and deceptive conduct by BP officials, and our helplessness in the face of catastrophe, perhaps we are at least due a moment of comic relief:

Credit: Nina Paley @ Voluntary Human Extinction

A special hat tip to our friend and rhyming

amphibian … (drum roll) … finefroghair.

don't say it.

Well, my mentor Dr. Syntax read Everything is on the Table today and liked it a great deal. Unfortunately he had a total breakdown this morning when the fellow in front of him in the Starbucks line said something about a Simplograndemochamacchimacchihalfcalfcrappochinofrappe with cinnamon to the Barista. I don't know which word set him off but they had to take him away in a basket and so I'm posting his response inspired by Sharia's post:

________________

Dear Americans,

There are so many more things you shouldn't be saying. But you keep at it, don't you?

It's not hopeless, you can change if you really want to. After all, you managed to pry yourself away from "efforting" not that long ago and if you keep trying you can stop pushing envelopes too and leave it to the mailman. The worn out engineering metaphor was about pushing the outside of a performance envelope anyway and you don't even know what that means, do you? Efforting -- don't you feel, well, effortless without it?

Yes, I know what you're saying and I know what you're talking about so you don't have to point out that everything you said or saw or liked was what you were talking about, OK? The same for you telling me about what you were like or are like when you were trying to tell me what you said. I already know what you're like what you said and what you've been talking about and I don't like it.

Believe me, I'm being tactful when I mention for the umpteenth time that intact is one word, not two and that you don't tow a metaphorical line, you toe it. So can you remember that, or do I have to get nasty? Because that actually is what I'm talking about -- and while we're about the word because it's because there never was a reason that was because anything. Let's pause and contemplate the cause of such confusion. That's if you want to know the reason that I said it not the reason why I said it. The reason is that I prefer to make sense and that preference takes precedence over my American desire to sound as unlettered and unfettered by logic as possible .

So you want to know your congressman's track record? So do I, because I don't want my congressman betting on the horses or dogs or anything else that runs on tracks. Track records are records one holds at the track or that the track keeps records of. One can have all kinds of records you know. Try saying congressional record or job record or any other kind of record you can think of -- please. You can simply stop saying track record like a broken record now and all of the above in one swoop and I don't care if the swoop is fell or kindly. Just stop.

Are you going green or are you already there? If so, get off my boat or take a Dramamine. It's fine if you turn lights off or drive a small car and commute a short distance and keep your cell phone charger unplugged, but that isn't making the oceans or rain forests any greener because you're not doing a damn thing when compared to what the cattle ranchers and the oil drillers are doing and that Wal-Mart you shop at burns up more Wal-Watts than all the SUVs in the parking lot just keeping the air conditioning cold enough so you won't smell the customers. Just save energy and leave it at that. Green is pretentious, don't pretend it isn't.

Wall Street Vs. Main Street? They don't measure up to Interstate 94, so lose the metaphor and cutesy dichotomy dude, cause it's my way or the highway says the cliche -- or maybe Rte A1A if you prefer the scenic route.

High Tech means absolutely nothing. It's a gimmick designed to make a gimmick more appealing to people who don't know how gimmicks work. It's not a useful comment. Stop saying it.

Did you know, by the way, that you can get close, or even up close without getting personal, and since you can also get personal without getting up close there isn't any reason to keep adding one unrelated action to another as though they were inseparable, is there? So why do you keep doing it?

I had a hard time with the Sunday crossword puzzle yesterday and I was outside on the patio and not in any kind of box, so thanks for your suggestion, but it doesn't help anyone think -- so stop saying it.

And last -- perhaps least perhaps not least, that's up to you -- stop trying to sound like a 14 year old street urchin, unless you are one -- and even then, hipness is only a type of conformity and there's nothing more cliche than a hipster of any age even a week out of date with his palette of cliche-of-the-day speech. It's OK to grow up. It's OK to sound like you are grown up (Not if you're running for office, of course) and have read books and don't need to paste together cutouts from other people's speech like someone writing a ransom note in some 30's cinema noir film.

It's OK to defeat someone without kicking their ass; to be bad at something without reference to fellatio and please, for God's sake don't open another can of whoop ass on me. It was out of date 30 years ago and smells like it.

I could go on, but my message is like simple and I'm like limiting the list in order to impactify it so that it will impact negatively on you in an impactful way and because like you know I can't do this all day without more coffee -- that's what I'm talking about.

-Dr. Syntax-

Kids in cages

"Children should neither be seen or heard from - ever again" said W.C. Fields.

Surprisingly, our activist Supreme Court has begged to differ. It was only five years ago that the Supreme Court finally decided that killing kids for justice was a bit behind the times, but of course some "Conservative" states have continued to sentence juveniles to life without parole. Chief amongst those states is Florida, which houses about 70% of them.

It would be hard to describe Florida as a particularly child-friendly state. Although I can't say it's particularly friendly to those who prey on them or neglect them, the poverty, substance abuse and ignorance that abound isn't child friendly either. Certainly "55 and older" communities are everywhere and as communities of older people are more likely to be afraid of the noise wild behavior and petty crime, there's a certain hostility. There's a certain feeling of helplessness and even terror amongst older people that can lead to hostility. It's a terror that overrides conscience in some cases and that sides with a draconian justice system while whimpering about a less powerful government.

Of course there's a big difference between chasing those brats off your lawn and locking them up in a cage for as long as they shall live, and that bit of casual inhumanity has at last drawn Supreme attention. Terrance Graham was implicated in armed robberies when he was a minor and has been sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. The court voted 5-4 on Monday and Kennedy, writing for the majority said:

"The state has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law. This the Eighth Amendment does not permit." (as a cruel punishment)

This decision was a majority one because Chief Justice Roberts sided for once with the liberals although with the qualification that it should not apply to all non-homicide crimes. That of course makes the decision less than decisive. It's a step forward, but a timid and qualified step toward humanity; toward sometimes, in some cases allowing a second chance to someone who got caught doing what millions of others have got away with and never done again. That's just the sort of thing conservatives object to: making the law and justice more congruent; making the law for man and not man for the law -- and that's just the reason we need to balance the angry, self righteous and fearful elements on the court.

Everything Is On The Table

by Nance

It was bound to happen sooner or later, and, like everything else to do with aging, it's happened sooner: I don't understand ninety-five percent of the trendy buzz phrases anymore. In fact, "buzz" is probably the last trendy term I'll ever fully embrace. At a certain age--mine, to be exact--that should be okay. Different strokes for different folks.


I'll be the linguistic equivalent of those old men I used to see in the late eighties who bagged groceries at the military commissary wearing Donald Trump comb-overs and baby blue polyester flare-bottoms with white pleated flare inserts that zipped down from knee to ankle. In 2023 I'll be using phrases I heard in 2004 and expecting somebody at the assisted living facility to compliment me on how hip I still am.  Past a certain age, we just don't take in new trends. We don't see the need; there have been plenty in the previous sixty or seventy years. When is enough, enough? I hereby declare a moratorium on catchy phrases.  Right on.


The Online Dictionary defines a buzz-phrase as, "A word or phrase connected with a specialized field or group that usually sounds important or technical and is used primarily to impress laypersons."  All you laypersons out there, are you impressed yet?  Insider jargon just gets my goat.*


The phrase that's been bugging me lately is, "Everything is on the table." I just can't seem to grok it no matter how I try. And neither, apparently, do most people who use it. I've been hearing about this laden table more and more frequently over the past few years, but it reached a personal tipping point (oh, dear) in April, when I heard Alan Simpson sling it into his gleeful, garbled, phrase-hashing announcement on the President's Budget Reduction Commission, which he'll co-chair with Erskine Bowles. From his NPR Talk of The Nation appearance on April 1st:

This is a suicide mission for a couple of old coots who believe more in their grandchildren than they do in other words, it's not the current election that's important, it's the next generation. So when we were asked to do this by the and Erskine, a very marvelous man, a splendid gentlemen, immediately the cry went out we were stalking horses for taxes. I said, I'm not a stalking horse for taxes. I'm a stalking horse for my grandchildren, and unless we get serious here, everything is on the table. So of course, you know, they come shrieking, you know, like the hounds of hell and the harpies from the cliff at me, and here, I've dug up my record on taxes, and I'm going to slip it right to them.

Those pronouncements had me as worried as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I'll bet Alan Simpson wears plaid bell-bottoms. As Rush Limbaugh has put it, "button your seat belts" for a full-frontal assault (dang it) on Medicare and Social Security. I think that Mr. Simpson is using the phrase everything is on the table, which came directly from Obama's instructions to his commission chairmen, to mean that, in a desperate search for solutions, no stone should be left unturned. Apparently, he was also instructed to pair off in threes, line up in a circle, alphabetically by height.  I'm afraid I don't think of Simpson as the sharpest marble in the drawer.  If he's older than me, I guarantee you he's a few bats short of a belfry.


Of course, now that we have the Obama administration's iconic metaphor, we'll be hearing it  from every middle manager 'til kingdom come.  "When the White House was asked if they might pause all off-shore drilling, Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior David Hayes admitted 'everything is on the table.'” And, "As House Ag Committee Chairman Peterson correctly said in announcing his panel's work on the U.S. farm bill -- everything is on the table."  I get it; this business with the table ain't coming up constantly because life is just a bowl of cherries these days; it's coming up because, when the going gets tough, the tough get going (choke).

I never expected to hear the table metaphor used in regards to condiments, however.  In responding to a call by the Institute of Medicine for federal limits on sodium levels in packaged foods,  FDA spokeswoman Meghan Scott stated, "Nothing is off the table,"  which I suppose to mean that everything is on the blessed table.  Ms. Scott is a pretty smart cookie, but I wouldn't want to be sitting in her shoes. She's already being accused of starting a riot in the chef's kitchen. Look for restaurant signs: This is a Salt-Free Environment. There'll be protest announcements on the Food Channel when the Himalayan Pink comes under attack.


And, finally, my odds-on favorite, from an anonymous officer of a financial services firm: "Everything is on the table now, and you can bet that when the smoke clears, budgets and processes will be a whole new animal."  You can't beat that one with a dead stick.


So, does everything is on the table mean that all the cards are on the table? That we're betting the farm?  That they'll be looking under every rock? It sounds suspiciously to me as though somebody in the President's speech-writer's pool has been watching a little too much Celebrity Poker Showdown.

Group Project:   Help me start a list of currently trendy phrases that need to be retired. So far, in addition to the laden table, I've got...
"That said,..."
"Back in the day"
"old school"
"unpack"
"deconstruct"
"drilling down on..." (my goodness!)


Contest:  How many buzz phrases, overused metaphors, twisted similes, etc., can you find in this post?  It's chock-a-block full of them. Some are cleverly disguised as proper usage and others are as obvious as the nose on your face. I know you can do it; it isn't rocket surgery. [The author will need a linguistics intervention after this.]


* In the Middle Ages, goats were put in stable stalls with nervous race horses to act as calming companions. The surest way to win a race was to steal your opponent's goat.

BRITISH PETROLEUM BLOWS CRUDE UP THEIR NOSTRILS

By Octopus

I have not had time to digest this latest report, so here it is … raw:

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick [my bold] in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given (…) The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

Are you pissed off yet? There is more …

BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well  (…)  “The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday.

And here is another clusterfuck of the highest order:

"It appears that the application of the subsea dispersant is actually working,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said Saturday. “The oil in the immediate vicinity of the well and the ships and rigs working in the area is diminished from previous observations.”

Did I read this correctly? “Enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots.”  Yet, the highly toxic subsea dispersant is actually working! As their Pinocchio noses grow to astronomical size, those BP executives should use mile-long straws to blow crude up their nostrils. Which is larger? The size of the oil plume or the size of their assholes?

WORMWOOD - The BP Apocalypse

By Octopus

And the third angel sounded the trumpet, and a great star

fell from heaven, burning as it were a torch, and it fell 

on the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of 

waters: And the name of the star is called Wormwood.

- The Apocalypse of St. John -

(Note: Chernobyl in Russian means 'Wormwood.)

Here is the latest update on the Gulf oil spill from American Progress:

Based on "sophisticated scientific analysis of seafloor video made available Wednesday," Steve Wereley, an associate professor at Purdue University, told NPR that the actual spill rate of the BP oil disaster is about 70,000 barrels -- or 3 million gallons -- a day, which is 15 times the official estimate of BP and the federal government.  Another scientific expert, Eugene Chiang, a professor of astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated the rate of flow to be between 840,000 and four million gallons a day.  These estimates suggest that the Deepwater Horizon wreckage has already spilled about five times as much oil as the 12-million-gallon Exxon Valdez disaster.  The new figure exceeds the "worst-case scenario" offered by Transocean, BP, and Halliburton officials, who told Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) last week that the maximum possible flow would be "60,000 barrels a day."  Markey said in a statement on Thursday that "an underestimation of the oil spill's flow may be impeding the ability to solve the leak and handle the management of the disaster," adding that, "If you don't understand the scope of the problem, the capacity to find the answer is severely compromised."  BP, meanwhile, has not endorsed the new estimate. It has also declined to take "off-the-shelf instruments routinely used" in deep sea research down to the gusher to measure the rate.  A BP spokesman said that the company "has decided to focus on stopping the leak rather than measuring it."  BP's CEO Tony Hayward sought to downplay the scope of the disaster, telling the Guardian that "the amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume [of the Gulf of Mexico]." The edges of the massive oil slick are expected to begin hitting shore in Mississippi by Sunday, although bits of "tar balls" from the spill have already been found on the beaches of both the state's mainland and barrier islands.

The "Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species," including the Deepwater Horizon site that just exploded.  Under current law the agency is required to get these permits.

Bottom line: This is the worst environmental disaster in history. It is no longer regional or national but international in scope. The entire Atlantic basin will be effected, and ocean gyres will move this mess around the globe.  Meanwhile, BP executives equivocate while tempers burn.

This disaster is in my backyard. It will impact our food supply, our local businesses, the livelihoods of neighbors, our coastline, our environment, our quality of life ... and there will be no fix within my lifetime.

When I read about 29 miners killed in the worst coal mine disaster in 40 years, and how Massey Energy bought off politicians and ducked safety standards, I say: "How's that laissez faire bullshit working out for you."

When I read of defective consumer products imported from abroad, of adulterated pet food that killed the family dog and defective wallboard that caused health hazards, I say: "How's that laissez faire bullshit working out for you."

When I read about the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and how corrupt Wall Street bankers paid themselves bonuses from taxpayer-funded TARP money, I say: "How's that laissez faire bullshit working out for you."

When I think of this GOP right wing crap, their raving insanity over free-market capitalism, and their steadfast refusal to support banking reform, environmental protection, consumer product safety, and healthcare (because reform is bad, big government is bad, and what’s good for business is good for America), I say: "How's that laissez faire bullshit working out for you."

Damn idiots!  These corrupt business interests and their crooked politicians have gridlocked our government and crippled our ability to respond to crises.  As far as I am concerned, bipartisanship is dead.  Civility is dead.   There is more than a culture war being waged in this country.  We are locked in a struggle for survival itself.

True Colors

By Captain Fogg

"I support Arizona's law as amended, and if the federal government fails to secure our borders and solve the problem of illegal immigration, I would support a similar law for Florida,''

said Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, the GOP front runner for Governor of Florida. The law he supports of course, is the one that gives Arizona the unconstitutional power to enforce Federal Immigration Law, bypass the Bill of rights and that makes it a crime for non-whites or people with accents or "foreign looking" faces not to carry papers and furnish them on demand.

Florida Republicans generally act very offended at any suggestion that they're racists, so in a way, I'm glad I don't have to say it this time since it's so obvious. With the Florida Republicans fleeing to the Right, job seekers are hard on his heels in affirming their hysterical objections to less intrusive government and Constitutional law.

"Illegal immigration is a serious problem facing our country and it is unfortunate that the Los Angeles City Council came down in support of illegal activity, over the actions of Arizona's attempt to enforce the law''

responded Holly Benson, struggling to appear as far-right as possible in her quest to become Florida's next attorney general. Can anyone truly be swayed by the argument that being against a bad and illegal law indicates support for a crime? Apparently I need to reassess my estimate of the spread of Acquired Intelligence Deficit Syndrome.

Even Marco Rubio, whose growing popularity has forced Governor Charlie Crist to leave the Republican party in his campaign for the Senate, now supports the Arizona law: Marco Rubio, whose parents were Hispanic immigrants and whose face could easily prompt some Arizona thug to demand his papers. Anything to win. Anything at all.

Apparently no Republican principle, no matter how highly vaunted, is too important to be left behind when it comes to victory. Less federal power? Forget it -- and we can certainly forget that sincere commitment to Constitutional principles. Nothing may interfere with the will to power, neither your freedom nor mine. Christian principles? That only means inserting Jesus Christ into your life while the Brown-shirts cut a swath through the constitution making sure Jesus Morales won't be cutting your lawn or washing your dishes or obstructing our manifest destiny to be a white, Christian nation under God and the Republican Party.