Loyalty without truth
is a trail to tyranny.
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a middle-aged George Washington
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Wednesday, 7 November 2007 at 3h 9m 16s | So much for the market solving everything | In his latest article, David Kay Johnson
reports that 2 separate studies showed that "Retail electricity prices have
risen much more in states that adopted competitive pricing than in those that
have retained traditional rates set by the government."
The price spread grew from 1.09 cents per kilowatt-hour to 3.09 cents, her
analysis showed. It also showed that in 2006 alone industrial customers paid
$7.2 billion more for electricity in market states than if they had paid the
average prices in regulated states.
Electric customers are a captive audience. There is no real competition for
the customers, who have to pay the electric bill to the electric company that
provides the electricity. The idea that competition amoung businesses to
provide electricity to the power grid would change this reality was
proposterous from the start. Instead, it is in the interest of all of the
electric providers
to increase the prices since demand for their electricity product has no other
sensible alternative.
This is the problem with ultra-market ideologues. They misunderstand the
inherent power-relationships in society. Competition might make a better
product, but it does not solve or even understand social stresses and
situations at all. In fact, as the studies prove over a period of 16 years,
competition can exascerbate social relations and make system integration and
investment difficult because the priorities of profits and portfolios will
overrule the long-term goals of society.
The neigh-sayers and true-believers will talk about gradual improvements or try
to tie the higher prices to the overall energy situation, but again they miss
the point. Energy is such an important commodity, that we shouldn't outsource
energy production and distribution to private for-profit entities whose goals
are to make money and accumulate customers. The funds are funnelled out of the
communities who rely on them for their electricity, and thus don't get re-
invested in the community. The capital-intensive nature of the energy business
makes it a natural monopoly. There is no real competition possible because
there will always be a small number of very large firms who have to collude or
coordinate to avoid ruinous price wars.
The mantra of de-regulation was really just another way to allow other large
corporations to get a piece of the action, and that's why the prices in
deregulated states are 37% more than in the regulated states.
| Tuesday, 6 November 2007 at 5h 50m 6s | It all started with Reagan | Gerald Ford in his recent book.
[REAGAN was] a superficial, disengaged, intellectually lazy showman who didn't
do his homework and clung to a naive, unrealistic and essentially dangerous
world view."
[Reagan was] "probably the least well-informed on the details of running the
government of any president I knew."
If any fool tells you that Reagan ended the Cold War, tally 1 more point for
stupid idiot. Gorbachev and the people of Eastern Europe ended the Cold War.
All Reagan did was go to a few Summits at the instigation of Gorbachev, and
Gorbachev was able to negotiate despite the ignorance of Reagan and the
bloviating arrogance of the American delegation that came with Reagan.
Reagan allowed appointments up and down the federal bureaucracy who were
incompetant, inferior, and corrupt. Fortunately there were occasional
exceptions, but that was due to George Schultz and Vice President George
Herbert Walker Bush. Reagan read speeches and had no idea what was going on in
his administration. That's why Iran Contra happened.
| Monday, 5 November 2007 at 5h 32m 15s | That mean ole Clinton | From the ABC News
Washington Post poll
since 1980.
Percentage of Americans who Prefer a New Direction
- After Bush 75%
- After Reagan 55%
- After Clinton 47%
Yea, oh that same Clinton was even 66% approval on the eve of impeachment for
having sex with a 21 year-old intern.
But they still drag him out like a funky, rotten old teddy bear they've had
since they were 3 years old. Cause they are still 3 years old.
| Monday, 5 November 2007 at 5h 21m 22s | My feller citozens ... |
| Monday, 5 November 2007 at 0h 20m 11s | The jobs are weaker due to statistics | From Floyd Norris at the New York Times.
Over the last 12 months, the government’s current numbers indicate that the
private sector added an average of 115,000 jobs a month. But 80 percent of
those jobs came from the statistical adjustments....
Most of those jobs — 103,000 of them, before seasonal adjustment — were added
by the statisticians, not reported by employers. (It should be noted that,
before seasonal adjustment, there were 201,000 jobs added, so this is just more
than half.)
Why add jobs? It is an effort to include jobs created by new companies not
surveyed, less an estimate for jobs lost at companies that went out of business
and therefore did not respond to the survey.
It is also worth noting that the govertment’s other survey, of households, has
not found those jobs. Over the last 12 months, it has found about 50,000 new
jobs a month. In October, it found employment declined by 250,000 jobs.
In other words, the jobs numbers are based completely upon how businesses fill
out forms and paperwork. If they don't respond, or if they are less than
accurate, the number of jobs added per month is not actually counted by
government officials. It comes from voluntary questionaires.
What statisticians do is assume the ratio of employees to employees added are
the same, with perhaps some economic sector adjustments. It's a messy
estimate, given that the original data is flawed, but in times of normal
economic activity, a 5% margin of error is possible. When economic conditions
change or when the economy is in transition, the ratios are impossible to
ascertain with certainty.
| Friday, 2 November 2007 at 5h 42m 14s | Bush loves Hitler | When Bush says the Congress is wasting their time and talks about the dangers
of Hitler, he should know. His family made their millions funding the rise of
Hitler. They loved Fascism and military dictatorship, and kept up their
business relations into World War Two until in 1943 Prescott Bush got busted
under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Roosevelt made a deal however, and got
Bush to use his contacts to infiltrate spies and obtain information.
These people understand Hitler very well, they created him.
| Wednesday, 31 October 2007 at 0h 11m 14s | Caught in another lie | But in truth, anything on Fox news is contrived.
From Today's New York Times [
SOURCE]
The authorities in Southern California believe they have gotten to the bottom
of one of several arson investigations stemming from last week’s wildfires.
A boy who was interviewed about the Buckweed fire, which burned nearly 60
square miles and destroyed 21 homes in Los Angeles County, “admitted to playing
with matches and accidentally starting the fire,” the county sheriff said in a
statement.
Now wildfires don't have to be started by anyone. They occur naturally when
the humidity in the air goes below a certain threshold. California has had
many, many incendiary fire disasters in the last 50 years. They occur in
regular intervals because of the dry, arid climate.
So let's get this straight, A boy "admits to playing with matches" and then
gets sent home. Then later on, the article quotes "The Voice of San Diego" :
Though they work on assumption that there is a non-criminal cause to the fire,
sometimes investigators can’t find any probable cause for a wildfire. That’s
where arson comes in.
If an investigator reaches a conclusion of “negative corpus,” meaning they have
eliminated all other possibilities, they will initiate a criminal investigation
for arson.
So they interviewed a boy who says he played with matches, and that's all the
proof sufficient to publish a news story. According to the crack reporting
job, "it was not clear" that he would face charges.
Remember when Fox News anchors (I think Neil Cavuto) stated equivocally that Al-
Quaeda set the California fires.
In most businesses, you get fired for violating the public trust and for
purposely spreading rumors and false information.
| Wednesday, 31 October 2007 at 1h 52m 31s | Nuclear waste and stupidity | Holy shit. Do you realize that the Russians have been negotiating
deals with
Iran, the Caspian Sea nations, and China over the various natural gas and oil
deposits all over the region? The entire middle east and world politics have
re-aligned thanks to the despots in the White House. Europe is gradually
pulling away from us. Mexico and Canada are very weary, and starting to assert
their independence quite frequently.
The government has been taken over by brigandeers backed by billionaires, and
these people are crazy. They appoint people in the State Department, the
Justice Department, and the Defense Department who believe the Republic can
only be saved by creating an emperor and a new American Empire. Look up "PNAC"
on google.
Russia has a deal with Iran to develop Nuclear Reactors for Energy but they are
afraid to deliver the rods of nuclear fuel pellets because they are afraid the
US will bomb it and release all of that nuclear radiation into the atmosphere.
The cover story in the newspapers is about financial arrangements, but that's
not the real reason. [ SOURCE:I heard this from cynk Ueger on the Young Turks
Tuesday, 30 October 2007 -- who has contact with Turkish and Russian natives
and also various US military professionals.]
Depleted Uranium (abbreviated as DU) is radioactive. The "Depleted" does not
mean the radiation has been removed. The "Depleted" just means that one of the
isotopes of Uranium has been removed. What's left is still radioactive. "DU"
is used to harded the head of bombs to give them extra-penetration. Millions
and millions of grains of dust is created from each shell (Avogadro's number =
6.02 times 10 to the 23 power is greater than a billion by the way.) The dust
gets blown for miles and miles around. Plus, because it's radiation, you only
need to ingest about 100 grains to get radiation sickness. YOu know what Gulf-
War syndrome is. YOu know why the numbers of birth defects in Iraq began to
appear after the first Gulf War. A lot of pretentious propagandistas have been
allowed to publish otherwise, but let's get real. It makes me sick to hear the
apologist deniers attempt to exculpate themselves from complicity in the
radioactive toxification of the entire region.
Don't believe me. Consult the World Health Organization on Depleted Uranium.
God damn most Americans are so ignorant of what our corrupt government has
become, especially the rabid blind red meat eaters; but really the Television
dumbs everything down into over-simplication and nonsense. Not everyone gets a
good history teacher either.
| Tuesday, 30 October 2007 at 1h 10m 11s | Benjamin Franklin quote | "Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that
don't have brains enough to be honest"
--- Benjamin Franklin
| Friday, 26 October 2007 at 1h 55m 2s | Ocean Acidity | Here is a
story
from the Washington Post ON THE FRONT PAGE dated 2006 July 5th about Ocean
Acidity. Or click here for a google search list of plenty other
prominent stories in news sources like BBC, CNN, The LA Times, The Seattle Post-
Intelligencer, and The Harvard Magazine.
There are even plenty of recent postings over the last month on this topic.
So where is the gat damn media-gopolis on this issue? Those over-paid
corporate
lackeys are more worried about Hillary Clinton's cleavage, or whether a hand-
full of baseball players took a supplement 3 years ago that wasn't illegal and
was
not against baseball rules at the time. Oh wait, the San Francisco Chronicle
did do a story about 3 victims of a violent crime 25 years ago.
Here's synopsis of Ocean Acidity provided by reputable scientists. [SOURCE]
You will want to click the link because the post has plenty of diagrams and
pictures that help explain the phenomenom.
Ocean Acidification, the Other Threat of Rising CO2
Emissions
By Crystal Davis on Tuesday, October 2, 2007.
Fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes release over six billion metric
tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. The consequences of these
greenhouse gas emissions are often discussed in terms of rising global
temperatures, but global warming is not the only threat from increased
atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2). Ocean acidification, which
occurs when CO2 in the atmosphere reacts with water to create carbonic acid,
has already increased ocean acidity by 30 percent (Doney, 2006). Although the
chemistry of this effect is well understood and not much debated, the full
consequences of ocean acidification for marine ecosystems and human well-being
are only beginning to be revealed.
Oceans and the Global Carbon Cycle
The ocean plays a critical role in the global carbon cycle: the amount of
carbon stored in the ocean is roughly 50 times greater than that in the
atmosphere (see Figure 2). At the surface, the ocean interacts constantly with
the atmosphere to absorb and release carbon dioxide. Once absorbed, a carbon
atom will remain in the ocean for hundreds of years, circulating from the
ocean's surface to its depths and back to the surface again. A small amount of
this absorbed carbon will descend to the ocean floor in the form of dead marine
organisms, where it is then trapped within deep ocean sediments. Overall, the
ocean acts as a carbon sink, with a net intake of approximately two billion
metric tons of carbon per year, equivalent to one-third of annual anthropogenic
emissions (Royal Society, 2005).
CO2 Emissions and Ocean Acidification
With the rise of atmospheric CO2 concentrations from the pre-industrial level
of 280 parts per million to 379 parts per million in 2005 (IPCC, 2007), the
amount of carbon in the ocean has increased substantially and rapidly. Global
data collected over several decades indicate that the oceans have absorbed at
least half of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions that have occurred since 1750
(Sabine et. al., 2004). This carbon dioxide has combined with water to form
carbonic acid, which, like all acids, releases hydrogen ions (H+) into
solution, making ocean surface water 30 percent more acidic on average.
Depending on the extent of future CO2 emissions and other factors, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) predicts that ocean acidity
could increase by 150 percent by 2100 (see Figure 3).
Understanding the pH Scale
The pH scale, ranging from zero to 14, is used by scientists to measure the
acidity or alkalinity (a.k.a. basicity) of a solution, which is determined by
the concentration of hydrogen ions, where more H+ indicates greater acidity.
Solutions with a value of seven are considered neutral (such as pure water),
with lower values being more acidic and higher values being more alkaline. The
pH of pristine seawater ranges between 8 and 8.3, indicating that the ocean is
naturally somewhat alkaline, although deeper and colder water tends to be more
acidic. Due to the nature of the pH scale, a 30 percent increase in ocean
acidity corresponds to a decrease of only 0.1 pH units.
Potential Impacts on Marine Organisms
A 150 percent increase in ocean acidity would be undetectable to the average
human, but certain marine organisms including mollusks, crustaceans, reef-
forming corals and some species of algae and phytoplankton are particularly
vulnerable to small changes in pH. These species, known as "marine calcifiers,"
all create skeletons or shells out of calcium carbonate. The essential building
block for this process is the carbonate ion, but when combined with hydrogen
ions released by carbonic acid, it is rendered useless for shell-building
organisms. The concentration of carbonate ions is expected to decline by half
during this century due to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (Orr et.
al., 2005).
Marine calcifiers face a second challenge: their calcium carbonate shells
dissolve in environments that are too acidic. In fact, some deep, cold ocean
waters are naturally too acidic for marine calcifiers to survive, meaning that
these organisms only exist above a certain depth known as the "saturation
horizon." With ocean acidification, the saturation horizon is expected to shift
closer to the surface by 50 to 200 meters relative to its position during the
1800s (Doney, 2006). The Southern and Arctic oceans, which are colder and
therefore naturally more acidic, may become entirely inhospitable for organisms
with shells made from aragonite--one of the weaker mineral forms of calcium
carbonate--by the end of this century (EUR-OCEANS, 2007).
Potential impacts on harvested species like fishes and squids are more
uncertain. One area of concern is acidosis, or the build-up of carbonic acid in
body fluids, which can disrupt growth, respiration and reproduction. An
indirect but perhaps more certain consequence is that many species will suffer
from the loss of marine calcifiers, which provide essential food and habitat
(including coral reefs) for countless ocean dwellers.
Uncertainties Highlight Need for Additional Research
Scientists are still unclear about the full consequences of ocean
acidification. Several lab studies that have investigated the effects of
increased acidity on marine calcifiers have found concerning results, but
theories regarding impacts at the ecosystem level remain speculative. Effects
on human well-being, both through lost fisheries and recreational potential,
are also unknown.
Despite our lack of knowledge, the trend of ocean acidification is undeniably
concerning, especially considering the devastating consequences that acid rain
had on freshwater ecosystems during the 20th century. Furthermore, the ocean is
currently undergoing other potentially dangerous changes, including warming,
sea level rise, pollution and overfishing. The rapid pace at which these
changes are occurring, and the fact that they are happening simultaneously,
threatens to disrupt the ocean's well-balanced physical, chemical and
biological processes faster than they can adapt.
Once the ocean's pH has been lowered, it will take thousands of years to
reverse. Thus, reducing carbon dioxide emissions will be critical to minimizing
future ocean acidification. Even if emissions are reduced, however, the ocean
will inevitably continue to undergo significant human-induced changes
throughout this century. To prepare for these changes, we will need scientific
research to enhance our knowledge of complex ocean processes and ecosystem
interactions. Furthermore, ocean resource and fisheries managers, with the
support of improved scientific understanding, must be alert to early warning
signs of ecosystem decline and take precautionary measures to protect
vulnerable species.
Now I wonder ... is the reason the Television and print news media don't bang
on this truth due to the need to allow morons on air to continually harp about
the need to have "both sides of the issue of global warming."
And what exactly is on the opposite side of the truth?
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