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If you do not think global warming is possible, I think you are a moron

Ok, the title might be a little rough, but I just have a tough time with people completely excluding the idea of global warming.  Its not the folks that use reasoned science to promote their ideas I have a problem with (although I think they are wrong), its the people who just don’t think that human kind is capable of changing our environment on a global scale.  Surprisingly enough, I have heard this argument from several people over the past few years.  I am even not convinced 100% that global warming exists to the capacity that some people try to sell, but we NEED to entertain the idea that it does exist and act on it. 

For those who really think that humans cannot dramatically affect the environment, consider the following:

1.  Nuclear weapons could end the world as we know it.  If we can make a bomb that can kill everything, why couldn’t we slowly poison it?

2.  Humans destroy entire species of animals.  We could certainly also do the same to ourselves.

3.  We have enough chemical weapons to wipe out humanity. 

4.  We have created computers that can read minds.  Our technology continues to amaze me, but unfortunately most of it ends up having a destructive purpose.

I could go on and on, but my point is simple.  Global warming CAN exist.  Even if you feel that global warming doesn’t exist, what if you are wrong?   If you are wrong, there will likely be a tipping point where there is no turning back.  Is your best guess worth screwing over the future of humanity?

99 cent gas on its way and how North Dakota might be the next battleground for American energy independence

I hope leaders are paying attention to the topic I will discuss in this post.  I am honestly nervous for North Dakota and the US.  -Gas prices- As a regular consumer, I am ecstatic that prices are no longer insane.  It is only right that we are not paying $4.00/gallon for gas, but my immediate satisfaction may be an precursor to bad things for ND and a potentially a poor outlook indicator for the US.  Here are my thoughts:

1.  Bakken is not bust, but how far away are we from bust?  For those who do not know, the Bakken Formation contains billions of barrels of oil and just waiting to be extracted.  During the gubernatorial election I heard somewhere that Bakken would break even at $40 a barrel.  Well, today it closed at $44 something.  Who would have thought?  Really Who Would Have Thought?  

Other reports are indicating that the Bakken boom is slowing down.  How low will it go and when is the point where investors just pull out?  No one has made this clear to me.  What were people thinking prior to the previous boom?

2.  Corn is down.   Hmm, that can’t be great for an agriculture state that touts Ethanol.  Beyond that, the price of E85 is about the same as for regular gas in many places.  So, why would anyone buy it?  In fact, for many people, if they actually figured out the data, E85 was NEVER a price break.  Often it was more expensive…. just now its really expensive.  So, is corn a bust in 2009? I am not a farmer and would really be interested in hearing other people’s thoughts

I noticed that corn was the biggest increase in exports from 2006-2007 for ND.  I wonder if the supposed export growth statistics will continue with the decreased popularity of corn along with the strengthening of the dollar?

3.  The Arab world is NOT stupid.

The LAST thing the Arab world wants is US Energy independence.  How can they fix that you may ask?  Drop prices for a year.  $40 might do it, but they may drop it lower.  This bodes well for the entire industry.  Possibly, prices will be back to .99 per gallon.  If the industry keeps it at that rate for a year, I can almost guarantee that most ‘green’ companies competing with Middle East oil will be out of business.  Heck, it may even save the US auto industry.  Low gas prices for 6 months could spawn resurgence in Hummer sales, increasing demand for cheap gas, putting a penny or two in a few pockets.  Come a year or two… BAM.  $4 gas and let the profiteering resume. 

It may very well be that the new administration wants to focus on renewable energy, but if gas is cheap, we may not be able to pay for it of convince investors to lay down money.  The only people that will be interested in renewable energy during the momentary price drop will be the “insane liberals”.  And even if we want renewable energy, our nation may not be in the financial position to make that happen after all of the fiscal chaos that is occurring.

I do not know what the answer is, but I hope folks are considering the possibility of a Bakken bust.  I hope corn and ethanol comes out of this ok.  I hope we are not forced into servitude by the oil companies and Arab world through cheap (although very expensive) gas.  I hope we continue pursuing alternative energy despite the costs.  I hope that ND continues beating the trend and we do not see the same problems as other areas, but I hope we are covering our butts.  BTW… everyone understands that ND could potentially power 25% of the nation with its wind?

Back From Vacation, Back to Political Chaos!

I have been out of the country on vacation and it sure feels good to be back in the USA!  Being a midwest boy, the holiday season just does not feel the same without a few inches of snow.  While I sit here writing in the midst of a blizzard, I am left to reflect on the things that have happened the past few weeks in my absence.

First, and most inescapably, the auto bailout failed in the Senate.  I am not exactly sure how to feel about this. On one hand, I think it is only right to let stupid companies suffer the consequences of making stupid decisions.  Possibly, we should let them all go belly up.  Why should the American tax payer suffer because of stupid companies with stupid management making stupid decisions?  Really, it does come down to plain ol’ stupidity.  On the other side of that, there are millions who rely on these companies for a paycheck.  The auto industry is arguably the bedrock of manufacturing in the US and can we just let these companies fail?  Are they too big to fail?

Ok, I don’t have the answers, but I do know that we the people are going to end up paying for all of this for a very long time.

Next, Governor Blagojevich of Illinois.  Ahhh, can you smell the scandal?  Ok, he is innocent until proven guilty, but is looking more and more like his political career will be as messed up as the spelling of his name.  The good Governor allegedly tried to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder.  If true, this dude needs to step down and disappear into the shadow ranks below Mark Foley & Elliot Spitzer.  On the other hand, I wonder what office isn’t for sale?

Barack Obama continues to build his administration.  I still am counting my blessings and look forward to seeing Obama’s action plan put into place.

Overall, we have seen an interesting few weeks.  The months and weeks to come will likely have an impact on the next several years.  Welcome back Ben!

Regaining The Moral Imperative For American Democracy Post-Bush/Cheney: Dealing With War Crimes, Criminal Acts, Abuses Of Power, Corruption, Cronyism, And Official Malfeasance

After the election results came rolling in and it became obvious the Democrats had overwhelmingly won the 2008 election, putting Democrats into the White House, in firm control of both houses of Congress, having Democrats in almost 3/5’s of the governor’s mansions, and making significant gains in state elections for lesser offices across the country–once the initial elation had passed–a significant call began developing for retribution for the illegal acts of the Bush-Cheney Administration.

The word “retribution” in the above sentence was carefully chosen to describe the various rationales and motivations involved with a desire for revenge for the incompetence, mismanagement, and corruption which marked–and marred–the Bush-Cheney Administration. As noted in an earlier blog, “The American Nightmare is Over: Post-Bush Reconstruction of American Ideals” (Nov. 19, 2008), much of America is still suffering from the political equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome, just relieved the unpopular George W. Bush is going to be finally leaving the White House. To date, the various calls for prosecuting Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes or for impeachment have been raised by such politically marginalized characters as Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) [see U.S. Resolution 333].

But there is a rising voice in America calling for some sort of accountability for the reckless abandonment of fundamental constitutional and human rights by the Bush-Cheney Administration. In a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal, it was reported that Bush was unlikely to grant sweeping pardons to governmental officials involved in in harsh interrogations and detentions of terror suspects.” White House officials believe that the Justice Department’s torture memos make such pardons unnecessary. And perhaps more Machiavellian, if the Bush were to grant blanket pardons, it would amount to a tacit admission those policies were illegal in the first place.

It also appears that President-elect Barack Obama is not inclined to pursue criminal prosecutions against officials responsible for authorizing and executing the Bush administration’s torture policies. Obama commented on this issue during the campaign:

What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that’s already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can’t prejudge that because we don’t have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment — I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General — having pursued, having looked at what’s out there right now — are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it’s important– one of the things we’ve got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I’ve said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in cover-ups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law — and I think that’s roughly how I would look at it.

Will Bunch, Philadelphia Daily News, http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Barack_on_torture.html. (April 14, 2008).

Obama recently reiterated this position, and although he never said it directly, he strongly implied that a post-election investigation of the Bush-Cheney Administration and the prosecution of its officials would look like a full-fledged political purge to the 46% of Americans who did not vote for him:

This kind of change — putting your predecessors on trial for their conduct of policy — may not be what most Americans really want or expect from someone with Obama’s gauzy rhetoric of unity. But unity has a dark side in the hands of people who regard their opponents as criminals. America has two centuries-plus of history lacking the totalitarian practice of jailing the predecessors when a new president takes office.

Thomas Lifson, American Thinker,

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/06/what_kind_of_war_crimes_trials_1.html (updated November 27, 2008.) It would look like a political purge to the rest of the world, as well.

Obama aides are wary of taking any steps that would smack of political retribution. That’s one reason they are reluctant to see high-profile investigations by the Democratic-controlled Congress or to green light a broad Justice inquiry…”If you were to have war-crimes prosecutions of the Bush administration, you’d instantly destroy whatever hopes you have of bipartisanship,” said Robert Litt, a former Justice criminal division chief during the Clinton administration.

“Obama to Take on Torture?, Newsweek, p. 6 (December 1, 2008)..

Obama also couched his recent comments into the context that the present financial crisis requires our full attention and a war crimes tribunal held while the economy is going down the drain would be a needless and potentially dangerous waste of his political good will during the initial stages of his administration.

There is also another danger in commencing war crimes tribunals. Especially in the initial stages of any investigation into war crimes, the people who would be targeted would low-level functionaries and the military personnel who actually carried out these policies. Unfortunately, these people would look too much like the hapless and clueless Lynndie England:

Lynndie England, the public face of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, told a German news magazine that she was sorry for appearing in photographs of detainees in the notorious Iraqi prison, and believes the scenes of torture and humiliation served as a powerful rallying point for anti-American insurgents.

In an interview with the weekly magazine Stern conducted in English and posted on its Web site Tuesday, England was both remorseful and unrepentant and conceded that the published photos surely incensed insurgents in Iraq.

“I guess after the picture came out the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it … no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn’t exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved,” she was quoted as saying.

Asked how she could blame the media for the controversy, she said it wasn’t her who leaked the photos.

“Yeah, I took the photos but I didn’t make it worldwide. Yes, I was in five or six pictures and I took some pictures, and those pictures were shameful and degrading to the Iraqis and to our government,” she said, according to the report.

“And I feel sorry and wrong about what I did. But it would not have escalated to what it did all over the world if it wouldn’t have been for someone leaking it to the media.

England, who was a private first class, was in several images taken in late 2003 by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib. One showed her holding a naked prisoner on a leash, while in others she posed with a pyramid of naked detainees and pointed at the genitals of a prisoner while a cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth.”

See e.g. http://www.rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/03/lyndie_england_not_a_good_pers.php; http://www.stern.de/politik/ausland/614356.html?&loc=interstitialskip; various other reports and documentation about the above quotation(s) are the responsibility of the reader.

Various options to war crimes trials are being discussed and bandied about, things like reconciliation courts similar to what occurred in post-apartheit South Africa, a congressional investigation, as well as Obama’s examination on a case-by-case basisAnother option would be what occurred after Richard M. Nixon resigned from the presidency after Watergate. President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, but the “national nightmare” was not over. The nation needed catharsis. And as a result, a series of investigations, some conducted by the government and some conducted by the media, slowly revealed the full nature and extent of the abuses in which the Nixon White House engaged. Unfortunately, while these investigations and their accompanying reports occasionally led to a number of needed reforms in government, the national catharsis also created liberal excesses which caused Jimmy Carter to be only one of a very few single term presidents, losing to Ronald Reagan in 1980. That, of course, led to another round of conservative abuses, although in retrospect, after the Bush-Cheney Administration those abuses seem more like relatively harmless fraternity pranks.

After all, who can forget the hilarity of envisioning the bawdy looking Fawn Hall smuggling classified documents out of Oliver North’s office in her underwear or of seeing North give his testimony in the equivalent of a Boy Scout uniform and thinking of him when he had an apparent nervous breakdown and sat naked with a gun? I just hope when Oliver Stone makes the Iran-Contra movie, they include those interesting little tidbits.

What Obama needs to do in regard to war crimes, criminal acts committed in the Bush-Cheney Administration, abuses of power, corruption, cronyism and official malfeasance is to set these investigations off into the future, just as he apparently is doing. It will take time for the public (and the politicos) to accept what has happened to America in the past eight years, and the top priority right now has to be addressing the world-wide financial crisis.

But there has to be a day of reckoning for the rampant violations of constitutional and statutory laws which occurred during the Bush-Cheney Administration. We need to have time to absorb what has happened to us as an American people–an election stolen, another campaign fast boated, illegal surveillance, a war based upon random aggression and sold with lies, constitutional rights abridged, an effort to steal the Supreme Court for a conservative agenda, and an economy in shambles, with our houses worth less, our investments worth even less, and our retirements postponed.

As Leon Jawarski, the Watergate prosecutor, had posted in his office, Fiat justitia, ruat coelum (Let justice be done, though the heavens fall). There comes a time when justice must be done.

 

Article written on Nov 29.

White Collar Bailout/Blue Collar Waitout: Bush-Style Warfare or Wall Street Favoritism?

As Rachel Maddow of MSNBC asked on her nightly program, why did Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson almost instantaneously and unilaterally gave Citicorp a $20 billion bailout over the weekend, whereas the Big Three auto makers still have gone begging for their $27 billion bailout?

As Maddow pointed out, there seems to be a difference between the Citicorp bailout and the Detroit bailout. She queried whether this was because one was a white collar financial business and the other was a blue collar manufacturing business, and she wondered whether this was because of the class distinction.

The official reasons for this distinction appear to be based upon a number of appropriate issues which include the fact that the Big Three have (1) refused to make little concessions to Washington in exchange for $27 billion plus maybe a little more, like changing their leadership team, agreeing to higher CAFÉ mileage standards, or agreeing to limit executive bonuses; and (2) failing to present a comprehensive plan to Congress that will tell the lender what they will do with that all that money.

Actually, those are some pretty reasonable requirements being imposed by Congress upon the auto industry, which has so long sought favorable treatment to protect it against the foreign auto manufacturers. This is an auto industry which, despite the shot-across-the-bow in the 1970’s when there was an Oil Embargo and the projections that always said this day was going to come, still manufactured gas-guzzling SUV’s and decked-out “pickups” that avoided the overall fleet mileage requirements because of a technicality in the law which exempted SUV’s and pickups from those fleet mileage requirements. And this is an auto industry which actively sold these gas-guzzlers to the public.

In fact, it was rather weird to witness a generation of young men grow up, dreaming not of a hot, fast car, but rather of a big, shiny, 4 X 4 pickup. For those in my generation, we grew up feeling sorry for the poor farm kid who had to take his date to the Prom in a pickup because that meant that the family couldn’t afford anything more than a pickup. But by the 1990’s, young men only wanted to have a bigger pickup than his friends. And for those of you in generations younger than mine, pickups in those days were cheap but sturdy vehicles which actually saw duty off-road and working in the fields. If they had any floor mats at all, they were made out of sturdy rubber–no carpeting there because they usually smelled like manure, having a layer of manure and mud smeared across the floor. They carried tools and supplies, and they carried farm animals in the box. These pickups didn’t have a radio, and they were lucky to have any heat. Most of them were only 2-wheel drive vehicles; it wasn’t until later that any significant numbers of 4-wheel drive pickups were being purchased, at least in North Dakota. They didn’t have big, shiny chrome bumpers or grills, and they didn’t have box liners. They didn’t have fancy stereos with sub-woofers, heated seats, or designer dash panels. These were working vehicles.

But Detroit latched onto the huge profits they got from manufacturing and selling pickups and SUV’s to the public. The profit per vehicle to the manufacturer was in excess of $2,500 for a SUV, compared with $600 per vehicle for an automobile, so Detroit just abandoned this market to focus in on making Hummers, Cadillac Escalades, Ford F-series, and Dodge Rams. So Detroit launched its vast resources into advertising these gas-guzzlers and creating an artificial demand for these monstrosities.

How many of us, when we have been discussing purchasing new vehicles with our friends, have been told that our friend felt they needed a 4 X 4 vehicle because they had to be able to get around when the weather was bad? Oh really? Less than 3% of these over-sized grocery getters ever got off-road, and the only time they ever saw 4-wheel drive was when it was inappropriate, like on icy roads. Or been told that the friend felt safer driving a larger vehicle? By that standard, Detroit should have been putting carpeting and stereos with subwoofers into Sherman tanks instead of building vehicles which were so top-heavy they had a tendency to roll over when they were put in a skid. So what if these vehicular godzillas only got 10 miles to the gallon? Or less?

Boy, these folks who bought into this whole bigger/safer/more macho thing really bought a bill of goods, didn’t they?

So yes, Detroit is now having to pay the price for its arrogance, both past and present. European countries already are on track to have 50 mpg mileage standards, so it is not impossible to attain those levels of fuel efficiency.

But it is easy to cast a cynical eye toward this imbroglio and blame the failure of the Bush-Cheney Administration to push through a bail out program for the Big Three on the failures of Detroit. It is also easy to blame this failure on class distinctions, like Maddow did.

But a truly cynical eye will ask some deeper questions about this whole Bush-Cheney culture of putting corporate welfare above consumer welfare.  Or even above the health, safety, and welfare of American citizens.  After all, virtually the first thing the Bush-Cheney Administration did in the Middle East Wars (as that is what those “two wars” in Afganistan and Iraq are really about) was to give its corporate cronies those infamous “no bid” contracts as perverse corporate rewards. 

Well, there was much more to this than just a desire on the part of the Bush-Cheney Administration to feed, clothe, and shelter those poor little corporate orphans on “philosophical” conservative grounds, covered under the cloak of “national security”.  Things like greedy self-interest in dealings that more than smacked of serious conflicts of interest. 

Remember Haliburton?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/26/politics/main575356.shtml

But as much as we might want to decry the past corporate cronyism displayed by the Bush-Cheney Administration, the problem continues right into the economic bailout. The Bush-Cheney bailout is so disorganized, so disjointed, and so ineffective that one might think that Pat Paulson, the deadpan comedian and erstwhile perpetual presidential candidate, were in charge of the Department of the Treasury, rather than Henry Paulson.

So, in comparing the ease with which the Citicorp bailout occurred to the still pending Big Three auto industry bailout, one may wonder why this disparity has occurred. Maddow feels it is an example of class warfare. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman said it was an example of the Bush-Cheney Administration being more concerned about corporate welfare than consumer welfare.

But sitting out here on the prairies, away from the Washington Beltway, it looks more like the past is prologue to the present. Shakespeare, Tempest, Act II, Scene 1. That is, if corporations were afforded completely unwarranted governmental largess by the Bush-Cheney Administration because there was some financial tie in the past, it seems like there must be a financial tie to the favoritism that is being shown to corporations, especially large financial corporations, to the detriment of those corporations who really produce manufactured goods. You know, the kind of goods that can actually be bought, sold, used, and even exported, as opposed to nebulous financial advice that the financial corporations provide.  Try driving financial advice.

On paper, the Citicorp bailout would save about 50,000 jobs in the United States and in various foreign countries, for the bargain basement price of only $20 billion. But a Big Three auto industry bailout would save approximately 3.2 million jobs in the United States alone. And Citicorp got its bailout without even having to fly anyone into Washington in a private jet to beg money from Congress. Citicorp’s bailout was granted administratively by Secretary Paulson.

As Shakespeare also said, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Is it a Bailout or is it a rich man’s Sodom and Gomorrah-out?

Look.   I want to make it clear.  I am ALL for the bailout.  But the very term bailout implies that some sort of  long term rescue.  If we are just delaying the inevitable, it really is not a bailout, is it?  Nothing that is currently happening is a bailout, but more like putting tons of money into a lemon car.  What is happening is more like gross moral sodomy on the American taxpayer rather than a bailout.  It does not seem that these people are not looking for a way to change what they are doing… they are looking for handouts.  It seems like nothing more than corporate thuggary Let’s look at some recent items of interest supporting my theory:

1. Electric cars exist.  There is no reason we should be giving billions of dollars to these guys who make junk when we could be creating jobs in the new marketthat I would guess is being suppressed by the big three.
2. People are trying to pin the mortgage debacle on government and forced mortgage.  Simply isn’t true.  It is due to greedy policies from greedy companies who are continuing extravagant behavior on the backs of the American tax payer.  I don’t care  if your bonuses are a drop in the bucket of the whole problem… why would the tax payer reward these people for doing a spectacularly crappy job.  If companies accept our money…. it should be like the IRS when they determine that the average guy owes.  The IRS will get the value one way or another.
3. CEOs of the big 3 fly in separate private jets to a hearing where they are going to beg for money.  Gee, its like giving money to the “why lie, I need a beer” beggar.  Kudos to Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) for saying “There’s a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands,”   Then, although their leadership has helped to fuck up the economy, would not work for a $1 in order to obtain the beggar bailout money these folks are asking for?  Surely, these people do not need to work.  They don’t care about their companies and the people at the companies THAT much.  The items shown today are a display of the kind of disgusting Sodom & Gomorrah style pigginess that most American’s hate.  — As a side note…mebbe that is the solution.  Find some way to reward the folks that are in it for the people instead of self-serving douchebags.  5 or 10 years of non-pay military style service for a select few for a lifetime of no personal tax?  Yearly reviews etc…. mebbe a final vote on who gets it and who doesn’t.  Just throwing that out there.  
4. Is the car company demonstrating a long standing policy of passion by asking for this money?  I don’t know.

These were just a few examples of the reasons why I think the current situation is not real and more of a practice in insanity (do the same thing with undesired results over and over) rather than a real bailout.  Do we need to save these insane companies from continuing the insanity?  Possibly if money is to go anywhere, we should be giving this money to the folks who are willing to earn crap and work hard for greatness. Not only individuals, but companies.

The American Nightmare is Almost Over. Post-Bush Reconstruction of American Ideals

It is a trite title, about the long American nightmare almost being over. And of course, the “nightmare” is the Bush Administration, but even more the conservative coup that has been imposed on America since 1980.

Maybe we are all still suffering from the political equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome. Our captors did not arrest, imprison, or waterboard us, so we feel a little gratitude toward those people who kidnapped the American government for those eight long years. At least they did not do those things to us, so we are a little relieved.

Sure, maybe those neocon operatives of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and those other members of the Republican leadership didn’t impact our lives very much, or at least as much as they could have done to us. Except to be in charge when America got attacked on 9/11, when the Patriot Act was passed, when we attacked Iraq to get Saddam Hussein and grab Iraqi oil and gain a strategic position in the middle of the Middle East, when Abu Gharaib happened, when the rest of the war was mishandled, when more than 4,000 Americans died as a result, when our planet finally gave us clear and convincing proof that it was warming, when our houses became worth less than only a few months before, when gas prices went above $4 a gallon, when our 401(k)’s became worthless.

And that is only a partial list of the things we know about. In the months and years to come, the full and true story will come out, even though President-elect Barack Obama is taking a Lincolnesque approach post-election: being decisive in his appointments, meeting with Senator John McCain shortly after the election, asking for forgiveness for Senator Joe Leibermann for campaigning against him, offering a significant role in his administration to his chief rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

A view of what happened to America during the past eight years was presented by Joseph E. Stiglitz, “The Seven Deadly Deficits”, Mother Jones (http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/11/the-seven-deadly-deficits.html):

When president George W. Bush assumed office, most of those disgruntled about the stolen election contented themselves with this thought: Given our system of checks and balances, given the gridlock in Washington, how much damage could be done? Now we know: far more than the worst pessimists could have imagined. From the war in Iraq to the collapse of the credit markets, the financial losses are difficult to fathom. And behind those losses lie even greater missed opportunities…

One of the strengths of America is its diversity, and there has always been a diversity of views even on our fundamental principles-innocent until proven guilty, the writ of habeas corpus, the rule of law. But (so we thought) those who disagreed with these principles were a fringe, easily ignored. We have now learned that the fringe is not so small and includes among its numbers the president and leaders of his party. And this division of values could not have come at a worse time. The realization that we may have less in common than we thought may make it difficult to solve the problems we must address together.

As I have set forth some fairly moderate views in my submissions to this blogsite, I expected to have reactions, some favorable and some negative.. That is to be expected, especially when commenting upon an ongoing election.

But even though dissent is to expected, it was disappointing to realize firsthand that there are a significant number of people who bought into the Republican brain-washing to reject even the most basic and fundamental American principles of freedom and justice. Sadly, we have learned that the “fringe is not so small”, and we have seen what the fringe will do if given the political power.

And what Bush-Cheney did to America has been horrendous. It was nothing more than a coup, a hijacking of the American democracy.

It is well to remember the Ba’athists are still amongst us. The election of Obama as president, of 57 or so Senators, of a majority of the seats in Congress, and of Democrats in other state elections did not reverse the coup entirely. And rest assured, the vanquished remain only vanquished until the next election. Already, the plans have been made for conservative Republicans to take power and push through their agenda of suppression of individual rights.

It will take some time for the American people and our American institutions to recover from this full-frontal assault on American democracy and ideals. One does not shake Stockholm Syndrome overnight. It takes time to reconcile the horrors we have seen these past eight years under Bush-Cheney because what we, the American people, are undergoing is really a form of post-conservative stress syndrome.

The first step in our 12-step recovery program is to acknowledge what has taken place in our country since we silently sat back while the United States Supreme Court stole our election by a 5-4 vote in the infamous case of Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) and the companion case of Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000).

After we have acknowledged that we did not give a hew and cry to this abomination of the election process and stood by “graciously” while Bush-Cheney took over the American government, we have to accept that we were then powerless over the sway of the neocon hoards. We allowed ourselves to be powerless.

Dick Cheney had, in a grotesque Mein Kampf moment, laid out the agenda for Bush 43, in the ominously titled 1992 Draft Defense Planning Guidance. See http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1571.html for links. This early formulation of the neocon’s post-Cold War agenda into an entirely new foreign policy is chilling in its detail, especially viewed from a historical perspective of what has transpired in the last 16 years since it was written. Virtually all of the neocon agenda was implemented after 9/11, and in the context of the adoption of this Pax Americana view of American foreign policy, the Bush-Cheney lies about weapons of mass destruction promulgated as justification for invading Iraq become chillingly Orwellian in tone and structure.

And this perverted view of foreign policy, which was adopted almost in toto by the Bush-Cheney Administration, led to a plethora of other abuses of the American ideal of democracy. For one thing, it had a concomitant cultural aspect which required a blind acceptance of fewer individual rights. Even a couple of weeks ago, as this author was going through airport security, ignominiously removing his shoes, belt, and other clothing items while providing appropriate photo-identification which was inspected under a jeweler’s eyepiece by a security guard, a woman who was also in line said that at least what we were going through was for a good cause, meaning to catch terrorists. She did not even understand that what she was uttering was mere mimicry of the propagandist neocon line, that Americans would voluntarily give up their rights like so many sheep if they felt they would be somehow safer, regardless of whether they would actually be safer or not.

And under the illusion of patriotism, the Congress gave away even more of our fundamental constitutional rights. The Patriot Act, hastily adopted in the wake of 9/11, was a mistake. American had waged war with all sorts of other countries, other cultures with other customs and other religions, and other races before without changing our fundamental views about freedom, even if we made a few mistakes along the way (most notable was the United States Supreme Court decision upholding placing American citizens of Japanese descent on the West Coast into concentration camps).

But the idea of freedom seemed to die quickly, with every additional, horrible Bush-Cheney mistake. Going to war with Iraq was a $10 billion a month mistake. (What ever happened to the idea that Iraq would pay for the costs of its occupation with oil revenues?) Abu Gharaib was a mistake. Guantanamo Bay was a mistake. Giving the cell phone companies that actively assisted the government in monitoring conversations without search warrants immunity from lawsuits was a mistake.

Of course, that begs the question of whether these were merely a series of unfortunate or short-sighted mistakes, made individually and cumulatively but without an overall design or malice, or whether these were intentional and deliberate intrusions into our American freedoms.

And that is where we have some reconciliation to do. We have to reconcile the immediate past 8 years with our sense of American ideas and ideals. It will be painful.

So while we have symbolically overthrown the Bush-Cheney Administration and prevented by a surprisingly small percentage a continuation of the neocon philosophy, we are still not over the shock, the horror. It will take time to sink in. But we must start an honest and earnest examination of these past 8 years so we can see where we have been. We must make amends for the wrongs we have done. And we must be certain that those larger-than-expected fringe elements never assume power over us again.

C’mon guys… stop being stupid and get it together. This is a 21st century survival manual for US automakers

It’s really very easy.
Step one:  Make a vehicle that requires no gasoline and is affordable to buy.  If random dude can do it, so can you.
Step two:  Sell it
Step three:  Repeat
I know I might be over-simplifying this, but I tend to believe that this technology exists but just has not been exploited yet.  The oil companies certainly do not want to live in a world where oil/gas cars are not needed, right?  I am sure they are taking every step they can to prevent this from happening.  Some might argue that these same companies are spending X on research, but I say that this is like cigarette companies spending money on “quit smoking” campaigns.   They really don’t want people to quit smoking and oil companies probably don’t want people to “quit oil.”
So, why wouldn’t have the car companies come up with this?  Why?  I don’t know, but obviously what they are currently doing is working smashingly.  My guess is that historically it was a matter of expense and convenience.  They would have to make all new assembly lines and all of the other competitors would then have to make cars.  It all would be very costly.  Not to mention, I would guess that the auto industry has been in bed with the oil makers.  For decades, US automakers were king and everyone was happy.  Well, the time for complacency is over.  Any automaker that wants to make it needs to follow my instructions.  Sure, gas prices might be down today, but just wait a while. 

My prediction is that gas prices will drop below $40 a barrel to stop any alternative energy initiatives and move from there.  Once that is done they will return to record profiteering.  Car companies… use all of this bailout money that the government will inevitably throw at you and do something useful with it.  The other option is to go out of business.

Free For All Continues - 26 Things We Could Buy With Bailout Money

It has been reported that the Fed has loaned out 2 TRILLION dollars without disclosing where this money has gone.  The total cost of this fiasco is mounting and it is hard to even count the final bill.  As far as I can tell, we are in over $3 trillion buckaroos.  This is really repulsive and I just don’t understand it.  We are spending all this money on these companies, yet thousands of jobs seem to be lost every day.  We have poor and hungry in our nation except corporate parasites are having parties on taxpayer money.  I previously posted what we could buy for $700 billion bucks, but the following is a reproduction of the bailout considering $3 TRILLION dollars.

1.  Eradicate homelessness in America and buy a $857,000 home for every homeless American.  $3 trillion/3500000=$857,000.  BUY A MANSION FOR EVERY HOMELESS PERSON.
2.  Poverty in America could be eliminated for years.  In 2007, there were 37.3 million people in poverty which ends up being about $80,000 per person if the 3 trillion were distributed evenly.  According to the Census Bureau, poverty for a family of one is about $11,000.  Assuming every person is a family of one, we would eliminate all poverty in the US for about SEVEN YEARS.  NO POVERTY IN AMERICA FOR SEVEN YEARS! 
3.  Make every person in the state of North Dakota a MULTI millionaire (and I vote that I would get an extra few million for coming up with the idea)
4.  Buy 446 McDonalds double cheeseburgers off of the $1 menu for every single 6,725,792,474 humans on this planet.  BUY MORE THAN 1 CHEESEBURGER EVERY DAY FOR EVERY PERSON FOR A YEAR
5.  Pay off about all credit card debt in the US, UK and Australia.  PAY ALMOST ALL CREDIT CARD DEBT
6.  Find a cure for whatever George Bush has.
7.  Using the $1 a day standard of absolute poverty, we could stop absolute poverty WORLD WIDE for about a year and a half.  $3 trillion/1.2 billion people (older data I know) = 2500.  That is 6.8 YEARS of non-absolute poverty.  ELIMINATE HUNGER FOR ALMOST 7 YEARS
8.  Using Washington logic, we could buy $3 trillion powerball tickets.
9.  Send ALMOST $10,000.00 to every man, woman and child in the United States.  10 GRAND TO EVERY PERSON IN THE US
10.  Buy 1,315,789,473,486 shares of AIG.
11.  We could hire Almost 30 million people (40 hours a week, $30/hr, 52wks)to run around doing good deeds for a year.   That is a lot of good deeds.  Basically, WE COULD EMPLOY EVERY UNEMPLOYED PERSON PLUS A FEW 10 MILLION.
12.  Could provide health insurance for EVERY uninsured American.  $3 trillion/50 million = $60,000 per uninsured.  That is probably 5 years of insurance.
13.  Could buy 1764 space shuttles.
14.  We could buy FIVE Iraqi Wars.
15.  Buy gas for every American for 8 years at current price (Assuming every man woman child consumes gas).  Average of 500 gallons * $2.32*301,139,947 = $349,322,338,520/year.  $3 Trillion/349322338520 = 8.5 years.  FREE GAS FOR ALMOST A DECADE!
16.  Put it all down on Red of the roulette wheels at Harrahs!
17.  Could we find a cure for Cancer?
18.  Give 5 or 6 severance packages to CEOs
19.  Become more energy self reliant.  Set up 20% wind energy for the entire nation.  Looks like we could build significantly more!
20.  We could buy Facebook, Google, Apple & Microsoft.  At least if we invested in this, we might see a return.
21.  An estimated 30 million men suffer from ED.  We could provide Viagra for ALL of these folks.
22.  We could have fixed 30 Hurricane Katrinas.
23.  We could give over $300,000 dollars to every resident of Sierra Leone, one of the world’s poorest nations.
24.  We could have bought almost 3 Vietnam Wars.
25.  We could purchase every known copy of Gigli, thus removing it from the consciousness of the world.
26.  We could give it to a bunch of rich guys who were in no way involved in the problem and hope to high hell that they will devise the right solution.  Oh wait…

In summary, WTF?

Barack Obama Wins! YaY! Now, Let’s Get To Work.

It’s been a while since I have posted and quite a bit has happened since the last item.  Barack Obama won the election and will be the next president of the United States.  YAAAAAAAY!  Ok, celebrations over, yippie skippie… it’s time to get to work.   The Democrats now officially have no excuse for not getting things done.  The next election cycle will be a review on the Dems.  In my opinion, the following need to happen ASAP:

 

• 1. Explain to the American people what you meant about what we are going to have to sacrifice. I want to know what you mean… specifically. I think it is fair that we know what you are talking about so I can get to sacrificing.
• 2. Stop Torturing people.
• 3. Clarify the Military Commision Act to specifically exclude Americans. Also, there needs to be some better rights given to our Gitmo prisoners.
• 4. Stop the Patriot Act.

 

I am very happy that Obama won and we further extended our lead.  I hope they realize, however, that this is just the beginning.