Don't give your trash collector your High Tech Trash

 
E-waste.  High Tech Trash.  Did you know in Japan almost all of it is recycled.  In the US almost all of it goes to the land fill.  Why are we throwing away the richest ore stream in the world?

10 to 20 ounces of gold per ton is in this stuff.  No gold mine in the world has ore that rich.  It also has large amounts of silver, hugh amounts of copper, some aluminum, platinum and trace amounts of rare exotics.  It also contains hugh amounts of lead, mercury, fire retardants and dozens of highly poison and crippling chemicals.

Where is it? Computers, cell phones, microwaves, copiers, fax machines, DVD players, TV's, music players of every sort large and tiny, coffee makers, alarm radios, hair dryer, pocket calculators, game player, GPS, digital camera, batteries, ect.  We each have 20 to 70 of these things and throw one out every few weeks.

There are a number of firms in the US processing this, but it's a drop in the bucket, Europe is processing far more, and safely.  Asia is the destination for much of this, but rather than in grinders and furnaces it's done with kids burning and cooking down components, killing them. Well that's an issue, but for us the issue is to handle it safely in our community.  On a recent trip to Arkansas I passed a house surrounded by junk cars, not unusual there, but I noticed a half dozen TV's and old computers laying in the weeds, not good, nor is sending it to landfills.

The materials in these devices cannot be gotten out by you or me, taking them apart is even dangerous, break a circuit board and you get showered by microscopic doses of mercury, lead and fire retardant chemicals and heavy metals.  You have got to turn them over to a recycler.  A few appliance stores will take them back, a few manufactures will pay shipping, but for the most part you need to keep your eyes peeled for a community recycle day, or like I have near my home a recycle center, though they only take computers cell phones copiers and fax machines and batteries, at least it's a start.  I stop over there 2 or 3 times a year with my contribution.

Recycling of is a hugh net savings to the world when dealing with dangerous metals and chemicals, material used to produce a "chip" amounts to 630 times the mass of the final product.  As a teenager a friend of mine had a TV in the pasture, we set it on a brush pile, lit it on fire and threw bricks at it till the hot thing broke.  What a disaster, though we didn't know, those old TV's had several pounds of lead dust in them, and mercury vapor.  Breaking it in a roaring fire updraft surely was a disaster we made unaware of.  By the way, mercury floats for 1 year, no part of the world is without mercury pollution, it's found in polar bears.

Wheat harvest 3 weeks early = 3 weeks longer summer

In less than a month thousands of square miles of the central plains states, TX north to ND, go throughthis progression starting in the south and moving north.

1) Tall green (grass) wheat shading the earth and giving off water vapor helping to cool the atmosphere.

2) Wheat matures, plant dies and grain berries dry, the earth is still shaded from sun light by the standing wheat.

3) Harvesters cut the plant save the berries leaving short stubble and straw, with almost all shade removed the soil and air temperatures in the field rise.

    4) To speed the composting of the straw and prevent weeds, plowing and disking of the fields soon follows, leaving soil fully exposed to the sun, temps increase further.

This is the farming method for wheat in the central plains states.  So far as I know there is no fault in this process, it's what my family has participated in for a century, I explain it only to inform you of something few people are aware of.  When hundreds upon hundreds of square miles of farm land goes from respiration of cooling water vapor to bare earth the temperature of the region begins to rise.  It is a seasonal solar produced rise for sure as days grow longer accelerated by our farming of wheat on a massive scale.  But as barefoot kids and dogs know well the sunny day rule, walking in grass and walking on blacktop are not the same.

But, 2012 could be a scorcher, my theory, we had a warm winter, record spring highs, high soil temps, we are on pace to harvest wheat 3 weeks earlier than ever before.  Kansas will be cutting wheat in mid May.  As the pictures show examples of the 8 million acres will soon be without shade in Kansas alone.  The temperature feed back loop will have a 3 week jump start to a long hot summer in the plains states.

When I was a kid we cut wheat at the very end of June, now it's 45 days earlier, and the summers are hotter.
Temperature variations: grass over blacktop or white roof over black roof, in the range of 40°f.

wheat, corn, taxes

If you look at my blog very often, you know I have a small grain farm, which no one lives on, it's all farmed.  From the air the area is a little like this, but with not so many green (irrigation) circles, in our area not nearly so many sections are irrigated.  In my area all the well permits are used, with rare exceptions, no more can be added to preserve water for the future.  Each of those circles are a quarter mile across.  A section (a one mile square) is 640 acres, a quarter section is what I have, 160 acres.  The irrigation wheel can wet almost 130 acres, the corners, 7 to 10 acres I guess, are dry.  We rotate, but most years the corners are wheat, under the irrigation wheel it can be anything fit for this climate.  The last 4 years we did corn, soybean, corn, soybean and last weekend we planted corn again.  Further back we did other crops.  The well pumps 705 gallon a minute, and we have a permit for 1.3 acre feet per year, or equal to about 15" of rain over the 160 acre.  Thats a lot since it is watered only when needed, if we get a rain, or weather is mild, we don't sprinkle.
Now I have written about this before, about how there is damn near nothing to do to be a grain farmer in America.  Each time someone gets riled up and writes me a nasty gram, claiming I don't know shit about it, its hard work.  Well again, I will explain how much work it is today with mechanized farming practices and a whole industry developed to do bits and pieces of it for you.  So, not necessarily in order here it is:  call the co-op and have them send out the giant spider truck and dump chemicals on the earth, do that 2 or 3 times each year.....hire a custom planter that will pick up the seed, plant it in a few hours at prices you cannot compete with by owning your own drill, tractor, and trucks.......drive by and turn on the sprinkler, or do it from the computer.......hire a custom cutter to cut the grain and haul it........get your old tractor out of storage and spend a day turning the ground........check the grain price on the computer......put in a sell order.......cash check.  Do you feel sorry for me yet?  It wasn't like this until a few years ago when all these services popped up and tractors and combines got to costing more than a house.  If I had a lot more land, it might, just might, be cheaper to own my own equipment like my father and father-in-law did years ago, but now, around here, we are becoming arm chair farmers.
This is just if you are farming grain on flat land.  Cattle, pigs, fruit, that would be more work.

This arm chair farming is one of the multiple reasons for the farmland price bubble.  For the last 2 years the price of farmland goes to new heights every time a piece sells.  The fact that any and all of the jobs in grain farming can be done cheaply by small firms is drawing speculators and corporations into farming in large numbers, they never have to go near the place.  Will the bubble pop?  Maybe, but when?  High grain prices and record high farm profits are drawing non-farmer speculators like moths to a Buick's headlights.  Texas and much of Oklahoma and southwest Kansas have dried up, killed dead by global warming, land to the north and east rocket up in value.  Iowa a few months ago saw a small farm go for 10k an acre, land here is no where near that, but I wish.  T Boone Pickens  has made farming in Texas and Oklahoma panhandle and southwest Kansas harder by buying up water rights, piping that water off to cities for sale, they can't grow much but wheat and grass without water, adding to value of irrigated lands in other areas.  Grain is a world market now like oil.  We read the papers hoping for hail in Brazil, drought in Russia, fires in Texas, wars in middle east, floods in South Africa, the UN to buy grain for Bangladesh, anything to reduce supply and increase demand and hold the prices high if our grain makes it to market.

Now on to taxes in Kansas,  well gop brownback is about settled on what future taxes will be, they wanted to get rid of income tax all together but they are leaning now to get rid of tax on non wages only.  Seems fair to me, fucking middle class and poor don't even have farms and stocks and bonds to make non wage income, it's not fair to be taxed on something the poor don't have.  Yea thats it, we are paying taxes on farm profits, business profits, dividends, cap gains, and they don't, its free ride for them.  Thats the thinking  they use.   .......  I shit you not thats it......  So they haven't got the numbers complete but it looks like the state will fall another couple hundred million shorter if they make this fair thing the law.  Well most the librarians and school nurses are already laid off, lots of music and foreign language teachers to, but I think if we get rid of the few left, cut a few more professors out of the state colleges that could help, we are closing all the courts in the state every few days for a day, we could add more, also the dmv closed for a week, lets do a month, hell they register voters in there, they may close them till Nov. 3rd.   Brownback said if we cut the tax on non wage earnings, it will mean thousands of new jobs.  I don't know how, the couple hundred dollars it could save me will go right into savings for retirement, what am I going to do, buy a new suit, shit, and if you think the grocery store is going to hire another check out guy with their savings your nuts, that money goes out of state to the company that sells self checkout machines.

Chut Wutty shot dead for taking pictures in Cambodia

41 year old Chut Wutty has been hunted by the military and illegal loggers in his Cambodia.  Yesterday Cambodian military police saw him taking pictures of timber felling and killed him on the spot.  A military person also died, but it is not known how, for sure the story will be he attacked, even though he has for years been hunted by lumber companies and the police.

Chut was the founder and director of the Natural Resource Protection Group which has spent years fighting lumber thugs, land grabs, tiger and elephant poachers and exposing the militarys hand in most of these events.  Without military help with shipments few of these products could exit Cambodia.

avalanche free Aspen slides away from Chamber

Yesterday Aspen Colorado voted 11 to 1 to leave the Chamber of Commerce.

Things are hot in Aspen the last few days, slopes are bare, normally they can still ski in Aspen.  Record high temps day after day.  73° Tuesday.   The town is empty, it should be filled with people skiing, getting laid, and lapping up cafe food.

The board had enough of the Chamber's anti-science lobbying and shilling for fossil fuel related corporations.     After pointing to the Chambers denial of human contributions to global warming as being unacceptable, the ghost towns council voted 11-1.  It appears they have a funny idea, they think a business association should act for the general good, I could have saved them last years dues, that's not their purpose.

re: safe meat, "my father-in-law looked at me and said, we can't be part of this"

About 10 years ago we were going to have one of our cattle butchered and the vet said, don't, we recently gave them hormones and meds, you need to sell them he said.  "Hell dad said, we can't be part of this, this is no good".  Over the next 8 months we got out of the cattle business, then sold the pasture land.

Now we have more mad cow found.  I am surprised.  The industry knows it's out there.  Slaughterhouses are limited on how many cattle can be tested, it's law, you can not test more than your limit.  A small processor in Kansas spent 5 years in court trying to get around this law, they had a contract from Japan that would pay high dollar for meat that was 100% tested.  Cattlemen associations and the governement finally drove them out of business to stop the law suit.  The last thing they want is more testing.  The other thing is the animals age, mad cow, if the beast has it, doesn't show up till the animal gets a little older, so the industry is making sure older animals don't get tested so often by a number of methods and economic decisions like making sure cattle meet the stun gun before they get very old.  Take note of what I said, it doesn't show up until the critter is older, young ones can have it but it doesn't test.

Pink slime, why do they mix it, why can't you get a pink slime chili, or burger?  Think.

Slow Jam The News with Barack Obama: Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

video fun house

fox is worried, Zimmerman's in danger, someone might kill him for no reason

Jews just won't follow Ryan or Libermann to the GOP in large numbers.

For 50 years the scare every 4 years is the prediciton that at last Jews are going to flee the democrats and vote republicans.  Every 4 years it does not happen, the numbers jumped up just a little for Reagan, but they overwhelmingly stay with the democrats and vote with the blacks they rode the civil rights busses with, even into the grave for some.
Again this year the Reichwing is thumping it's chest of certainty, this year Jews are conservatives.  Wrong-o buck-o.  Recent polls find; 81% of them favor the Buffet bill.  Even higher numbers say fairness for all is the number one issue.  (that is never an indicator someone is changing their affiliation to Republican)  On religion (American jews who intend to vote) view Mormonism as less positive than evangelicals.  And get this, they gave evangelicals a lower rating than they gave Muslims.

As for GOP hate and divide issues they score little or no interest to Jews: same sex marriage, abortion, birth control issues, immigration, and get this, another big surprise, Iran, they are knowledgeable but not obsessed with Iran watching.  The GOP fear machine may work on middle America, but it does not scare, or convert the well educated Jewish voter.

I think I can say with confidence, the Jews are not going to vote for Romny in numbers much out of line with the last half century.  Hung up on fairness issues, it's almost Christian, wow, those Jews are a mess aren't they?

Cholesterol and Female Sexual Dysfunction

This video is another reminder to men, High cholesterol ruins the thing you like best, sex.  Women or men on the prowl should be asking "what is you cholesterol", not "my place or yours".

 High cholesterol clogs the little pipes in the heart leading to heart attack, in the brain leading to stroke, in the spinal support system leading to chronic back aches, and in the penis and vagina are the tiny little pipes, smaller than the heart, that clog up with cholesterol preventing sex or it's enjoyment.  For women their is no viagra, so for them the switch is even more difficult to get into the on position.  For men, viagra only works till more pipes clog up.  See it's forcing blood into the remaining free pipes and holding it there for a while, but as more little pipes close well say bye bye to whoopie time.

Stop eating so much meat, butter, fast food, sugars, white bread, white rice, pasta, do it for sex, I don't care what the Republicans say, do it so you can get laid.  Now I know, every time I hear someone say they have high blood lipids, I know it's no sex for you, if not now, then soon, it's no sex for you.  Get your blood in good shape, get on a high vegi-fruit-grain-bean diet and over time some of the damage can be reversed.

I always hear people say about losing weight or eating healthy, oh I love my onion rings and coke and if it kills me so what, I'm not giving up my favorite thing.   I look at it different, take me to a top end house of pleasure and put out a serving of onion rings next to a mature slinky women that looks like she knows what she wants and I leave all those who would die for their food to pass away with grease on their lips.  For me, I have a game of escaped convict and wardens wife to play with my new friend.

Today's tip. Grip the subway pole and you won't fall down.

Break it yourself, or, let it burn.

A recent poll found 86% of women are against polygamy.  So, more than one in 10 are OK with it?  Boys, you get 20 gals together and your in group sex heaven, that is after you find out which 17 or 18 to chase off.  OK ok, I suppose polygamy doesn't guarantee everyone naked at once group sex, it could be do one while the other waits  near by, it could mean the other one is in the other room.  14% OK with it, thats more than I expected.
For Romney this doesn't mean group sex is in his future, (the way he walks I swear gay sex is more likely in his future) so much as it means 86% of the girls view him as the guy from a church which still has not drummed perverts with harems from it's ranks.

The Inquisition returns, the hunt is on for heretic Nuns

God's Jury by Cullen Murphy, I'm about 2/3rds into it and today what do we have in the news:

The Vatican has unleashed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  This office was set up in the middle ages to hunt down political enemies and heretics by any means necessary and in some cases kill, exile, enslave, or imprison them.  700 years of success can't be denied.  

Today the Vatican announced the CDF will investigate the Leadership Conference NETWORK.  The LCN is by far the very largest organization of Catholic Sisters, over 57,000 nuns are members.  The Pope and his Bishops have opened a projected 5 year examination and restructuring of this group on the grounds they are to liberal and feminist oriented.  The group says the reason for the heretic hunt is their support for Obama's health care plan.  In case you don't know, the Bishops have gotten conservative the last few years, they opposed feeding the poor and any health care plan they are not in charge of. 

Cardinal Ratzinger, the current Pope, came out of the CDF.  John Pauls pitbull I believe he was called.  The current Vatican top offices are now populated with former CDF screws much as the Kremlin is staffed by former KGB.

Gather straw, drive a stake in the ground, the Vatican knows the drill well, the manuals for questioning heretics has been written and fine tuned by God's own jury.

And then, and then he asks, won't burning all this coal and oil cause pollution and health problems?

Family portrait

That's me on the left, the wife and the kid when he was about 12.  Remarkable, how much it looks like us.

I finished these about 2 weeks ago.  Set them on the deck rail for a few days.  I had penciled in the eye, decided to put them back on the bench to drill the eye, sha-zam, all three are broken, bases snapped right off.  Having made them so narrow the hammering had set up fractures, a few days in the weather let the stone change in its internal humidity and it got brittle.  I tossed the bases, considering mounting them on new bases, maybe something very slick and angular and geometric.  I don't know.  Life is so hard.  Click on the picture and it gets quit large.

ALEC losing support, another victory for social media

All these emails and on-line protests and nagging of corporations is turning out to be very effective.  Today ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, the rubber stamp and lobbying group that races from one red state to the next any time someone passes a voter restriction law, pro gun laws, laws against minorities, equal pay, protection for abused children and spouses, product safety and more. that ALEC had to back off.
For 2 weeks Common Cause has hammered them with social media and the pile on effect of other groups, hammered them by hammering their money source.  Like the Rush thing, they went after the money.  Coke, Pepsi, Kraft and many others dropped their funding, and ALEC said they were backing out of some lobbying activities and dropping the stand your ground law push, the attacks on hispanics, and voter  ID laws.  Well, we will see if that is what they do, but they have truly taken it in the nuts.

Do participate in social media boycotts and ragging on companies that fund the right wing.  They are afraid of the public eye.   Take a minute and go to NRDC, and take action, or Avaaz, or World Wildlife Fund, or or or, or go back to the boycott Rush sites and take action again, he is in a rebuild phase, we should make sure it's hard for those radio stations to make profit with him.

Don't rag on the kids with their cell phones, lap tops, and texting.  This is powerful shit, get in on it.

Do you think Kansas stand your ground law is reasonable?

Kansas has a stand your ground law, copied within weeks of Florida passing theirs, (red states are fat with legislation copy cat activity these days).  Ask about the law our state dick heads say it is different and would never have Florida's trouble, we inserted the word "reasonable" into our law.  Well, jeeze, glad I live in a state of intellectuals who figured out how to thwart overreaction.

Now coming to light is an event two months ago.   A young man was out walking his dog early in the day, a daily routine.  He was approached by a man with a rifle who said he would kill him if he didn't lay down in the street, he held the gun on him, repeating many times he would kill him if he moved.  The rifleman dialed 911.  The dog walker lay still and said nothing, he was sure he would die becuase the rifleman was nervous aggressive and constantly fumbling with the phone and rifle.  When the police arrived he informed them he was making a citizens arrest of a suspect in his recent house burglary.  The police immediately sent the rifleman to his house and released the dog walker, they did not believe for a minute he was the burglar.

The dog walker signed a complaint of assault and threats of intent to kill him.  Two months and the police can't figure out what to do with this.  It appears the rifleman, any rifleman can approach people and threaten them with death, force them to lie down or come with them, or blow them I don't know, and the gunman not the person laying in a city street is the victim.  We will see if the gunman is ever charged, but it appears the dog walker has no recourse against anyone anywhere who has a gun and decides to play cowboy, that sounds "reasonable".

Poultry and Paralysis

Video!  I don't eat it any more, and rarely eggs either, my brother has another disease that growing evidence also suggests might be from chickens, a cousin of Lou Gehrigs disease, a profound weakness of the muscles.

OK, can you guess who spent this much to influence these groups?

$31,670,444 spent to attack regulations, democrats, science.  Here is the accounting:
9,847,500 Mercatus Center
5,610,781 Americans for Prosperty
4,428,091 Institute for Humane Studies
2,238,571 Heritage Foundation
1,278,400 Cato Institute
1,000,000 Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
855,000 Washington Legal Foundation
723,799 Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
460,000 Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy
473,369 Tax Foundation
440,000 Independent Women's Forum
383,125 Texas Public Policy Foundation
315,000 American Council for Capital Formation
280,000 George C. Marshall Institute
285,309 Reason Foundation
350,500 Fraser Institute
175,000 Institute for Energy Research
150,000 Frontliners of Freedom
155,000 National Center for Policy Analysis
155,000 American Council on Science and Health
152,600 Atlas Economic Research Foundation
110,000 Capital Research Center
100,000 American Enterprise Institute
85,000 Independence Institute
200,000 American Legislative Exchange Council
70,427 Goldwater Institute
108,644 Property and Environment Research Center
89,151 Mackinac Center for Public Policy
60,000 Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
40,000 American for Tax Reform
30,000 State Policy Network
14,030 Media Research Center
47,472 John Locke Foundation
5,000 National Taxpayers Union Foundation
---------
Add to it the following:
$8,273,316 to Senate and Congressmen
$49,580,500 Direct Lobbying activity

Did you guess it yet?  Koch Industries.

This is just the corporation, the Koch brothers themselves are promising around 150 million to the GOP super pacs against Obama.

No sweat, I gave $15 to the Obama campaign last month, how bout you?

Social media is the most powerful political tool we have at the moment.

Look what social media has done for us the last couple of years.  Sure we all bitch that the kids or the drivers are talking or texting or on the computer instead of interacting, but, something is going on there and it is changing the world.  Just recently we saw Tunisia and Egypt revolutions begin by cell phones and emails.  Here we see Rush Limbaugh's network being starved of profits by the actions of millions with emails and phone calls.  Now alec (if thats how its spelled) is under attack, losing McDonalds, Coke and many others who funded their free right wing legislation writing services, handing new right wing laws to states ready for a vote.  Before that it was Pink Slime driven from the market, the industry says it is a conspiricy, but we all know it's about meat so dirty and foul it has to be treated with ammonia before it's safe for cooking, in other words cooking wasn't going to be sufficient.  Then there was Heartland, working against alternative energy and new products, such as the electric cars, and even GM gave to them, but with social media GM backed out, and others to.  What about the run for the cure group with the pink ribbons, their political move to cut off support to planned parenthoods breast screening services has hammered them financially, a really stupid move by the reichwingers who wormed their way to the top of the group only to screw it up.

There are more examples of success, Avaaz has humiliated the police of India exposing corruption and directing millions of emails from over the globe to demand India's police forces be cleaned up.

Don't grow tired of working in this new political arena, it is at the moment turning out to be very powerful. Don't grow weary of calling officials, sending emails, texts, signing on line petitions of support.  Things may change, but at the moment it is very powerful, and it works, just ask Rush, or the meat industry.
Excuse me while I jump over to NRDC and Greenpeace and see if they have any thing for me to do, hopefully it will involve bloodying the nose of a polluter or a corrupt forestry manager, or someone trying to discredit science.

who doesn't like solar and wind

I have been to some of these conferences.  The industry sets them up to recruit more suppliers to become certified to work for the industry, the certification process for wind turbine work is as or more stringent than aircraft work. Reliability of what you build is to a severe threshold, they do not take kindly to your part failing 200 feet above the prairie.  The company I work for has done machine work for 3 different builders of wind turbines.  The things are big, one piece we have made is the center turbine shaft, it's big, it would easily bust down your pickup truck.  Another is the center hub (attach the three blades to the nacelle) that weighs 21,000 lbs and you can stand up inside it, the other was the nacelle (the main body on top of the pole) it was about the size of a free standing garage.
Just in the great lakes states there are over 70 shops doing major work on windmills, and another 150 doing small jobs and supplying products.  To give you an idea of the size of this business, Siemens, at it's Hutchinson Kansas shop (at full load) buys $1 billion of products a year, much of it from US sources.
Wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources grew more manufacturing and field jobs than oil/gas/coal in the last few years even while they are drilling at the highest pace in history, even while the GOP act like Obama prevents the industry from drilling.

Who doesn't like solar and wind energy, a new pole says 65 and older republican men are the only group who is strongly against it no matter the cost or benefit, they hate it, the end.  Among republican men the support for it is just over 50%, for women a little higher, among dems it is strong, swing voters it is also strong, and the younger they are the stronger it is.

The neighborhood just got a little quieter, X 2.

One of the neighbors, one of the yards matching up behind me,  bought an electric mower a month ago, man I love it, about 1/3 the noise level, and it cuts as nice as a gas machine. Now this week another adjoining neighbor gets one, his is even softer sounding.  Man I love it, 2 of the 5 roaring machines near by are quieted.

My mower smokes at the start, sounds like a Rolls Royce jet engine with a couple of impellers come loose, it pushes like a wooden wheeled manure wagon, and the start yank risks a rotator cuff every time. To run it you need ear plugs, shin guards  and a respirator, more than 15 minutes without a break damages fillings.  Its one of those throttle wide open birds, I had it overhauled once, as soon as the beast dies this time I'm headed for rechargeable mowerville.  Maybe this year, maybe next, it's just a matter of time that one of us fails.

I been studying them.  They cost on average $50 more than a gas burner.  So it seems they are charging you for the gas your not going to burn.  Most figures I come up with claim the E machines take (national average energy cost) $1 to mow an acre, the oil burners (figured months ago on lower cost benzine) $4.70. My neighbor said he uses 12 cents of E, his old oil burner used 50 cents.  He really loves it, he figures it might break even if it lasts several years, but he really loves not having that can of gas in the garage and all that noise.

Santorum out

OK repubs.  Line up behind Mitt, grit your teeth, now that Santourm is out, he will start to look more and more like a democrat.  That must really piss you off.  And if he wins, you get GOP light, not right wing, why, because he is a weather vane, a transformer, a shape shifter, a cameleon, and he will not risk the political middle ground and a second term. Oh he will be a repub, but not the kind you want, more like a Jimmy Carter republican.

Oil futures, who's buy'n'em?

Speculators are in the market buying oil and refined gas futures.  Currently in the US demand is down, people are driving less, in cars that get better mpg, they shop on line, fewer inner city young own cars, my son has lots of college student friends who do not own cars but ride bikes, scooters, and rent a car for trips.

So why the high price of oil.  Some of it is market worry over Israel hitting Iran with the disruption to follow.  But we have a giant bubble, a glut of product with high prices, supply and demand is turned on it's head.  
Investment bankers and hedge funds are the culprits again.  2/3 of the futures are held by investment bankers and hedge funds.  Only 1/3 of future contracts are held by truck companies, bus lines, airlines, large construction companies.  2/3 of the contract holders have no use for the product & could not take delivery, but are in the market to take money out of your pocket.  I wish the market woud freeze the trading and make these fuckers take delivery, they can't, so they would lose all their money, which by the way is not much since they buy/sell contracts on margin, meaning they may have a small % of the contracts value actually in a position to be snatched if they cannot cover or deliver.   Another house of cards, another wall street mortgage bubble.

Air your tires up, don't drive anywhere you can walk jog or bike.  You might find like some kids, you can get buy without a car except for the occasional trip and then you rent.  Fuck the bankers, fuck the traders, fuck the oil companies.

A statement from a committee on climate change in the UK

"Kennedy (the CEO of the group organizing the meeting) warns that the US is lagging behind and risks “storing up costs” for the future. “There is action in various states of the US. But at the national level, clearly the US has not got anything like the ambition we have, and I think in the long term that will be to the economic detriment of the US.”


A few days ago Sarge over at One Angry Zebra ask me if the wind energy turbines were all made in China as someone had told him?  No, many are made here in part or in total, but, China is now the largest source, and the largest user, which dovetails into the above statement, the US needs to find the ambition to solve it's energy and pollution problems.  It is amazing that the former champion of innovation and new technologies seems to be in a  competitive coma.  

Peace, at least part of the answer is blowing in the wind.

Late in the Bush 43 reign of terror and stupid, the Pentagon issued papers saying global warming was here, it was now, and it would cause mass migrations, wars, more failed nations, hunger, disease.  This was the same thing insurance companies around the world told their major clients a few years ago along with warnings of severe weather losses and higher premiums to come.  The military services launched a program of alternative energies and conservation, some of which the congress has tried to stop.  The US military is the largest single energy consumer on the planet.  They are moving to new technologies to be part of the solution, and more importantly to reduce the cost and risk of energy supply lines.  You can read the Air Force's latest effort to bring the rank and file up to speed at the address below, you can also find the video (so I read) on the Air Force News web site.  Not a very snazzy read, but  thats the military.

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/04/08/five-things-every-airman-should-know-about-energy/

pull your tin foil had down tight and grit yer teeth, the UN is taking over the dirt road near the farm, sure as shooten, their after control of the ditches to.

I wrote this morning about some crazies at my city council worried about a UN take over of the towns since they were talking about sharing resources in the local plan,  and now I find the same shit happened in Airzona and a number of other locations in the last few days.   How many tin-foil hats does it take to fuck up a nation?

In Arizona they already fashioned a way to stop the UN,  Senate Bill 1507, is based upon an unfounded conspiracy theory about “Agenda 21,” a non-binding international plan for environmentally-sustainable development crafted by the United Nations. The plan was adopted in 1992 by 178 countries, including the United States under the George H.W. Bush administration.

Arizona members of the Tea Party believe that clean energy programs in Arizona are a plot by the United Nations to create a single world government in order to control people’s lives. It seems that alternative energy, new technology, CF bulbs, energy star appliances, storm doors, adding insulation, recycling, that's how the UN can take over.  

pull your tin foil had down tight folks, the UN is taking over the dirt roads out here.

I wrote this morning about some crazies at my city council worried about a UN take over of the towns since they were talking about sharing resources in the local plan,  and now I find the same shit happened in Airzona.   How many tin-foil hats does it take to fuck up a nation?

In Arizona,  Senate Bill 1507, is based upon an unfounded conspiracy theory about “Agenda 21,” a non-binding international plan for environmentally-sustainable development crafted by the United Nations. The plan was adopted in 1992 by 178 countries, including the United States under the George H.W. Bush administration.

Burges and other members of the Tea Party believe that clean energy programs in Arizona are a plot by the United Nations to create a single world government in order to control people’s lives. 

my idiot red state's highlights, it doesn't matter which one, it's just red.

*A women so obese fell off her sofa, her family couldn't get her up, left her lay for a week before calling the police for help (Police? Did a hit and run driver knock her off the couch, why police?).  A troop of EMS got her to the hospital where she died immediately.

*To save money we are dropping the mandatory 5 day jail time for domestic violence second time offenders.  I guess it's cheaper to care for shaken babies, and women with broken arms than put these guys in jail.

*The recent slow down in job growth is due in part to 6,000 state employees being let go here in the last 60 days.  It barely made a paragraph, yet it was national news that Yahoo will cut about that many.

*Yesterday 23 speakers attended city council meeting, each in turn speaking in protest at the city joining a regional group of towns and counties for "long term planning and sustainability".  The 23 called it; communism, a federal government take over of local control, a UN plot, world government, and one of them a state house rep said he will offer a bill opposing any thing with the word sustainability in it because "it's goose stepping to environmentalist and UN control of our lives".  Where do these fucks come from?  These towns are just trying to figure out which county roads should they focus on widening between them, or can they share the cost of a rural water district well rather than drill their own.

*Tax on corporate income eliminated for out of sate residents.  So, if I earned 100k as a company owner or officer, I paid about 5k to this state, and since all states have a nearly 100% exemption for it if you paid it in another state, I would have paid my home state around $140 on average.  Now, I will pay this red state zero.  But, now the home state taxes it, so the state where the owner lives gets to tax it which in some states might be 5k in a couple is nearer 12k.  So, my red state gets zero, and another state gets as much or more than my state did.  And this my friend will make investors flock to my state to start corporations, or that at least is what the former Reagan administration yahoos they paraded here said would happen.  In fact starting a company here will still cost you the same tax, and maybe lots more, it's just the state where your shop is will not be making any money on it and therefore the ifrastructure around your shop should be like Haiti's in a few year.

*My county decided a good way to help the economy boom is to cut taxes, normal red state idea, but this time it's property tax on new homes, the next 1000 homes built will have no property tax for 5 years.  Not just any house, it's a little complicated and you have to apply, so the advantage goes to the well connected. No limit on the price either, so it's estimated there will be lots to 1%ers homes with this tax break, these people would have built anyway, they build for status and out of boredom.  And, what impact does this have on sale of used houses, big according to some realtors.

*believe me, there was more, but it's just overwhelming.

6 things the Reichwing, coal, and oil mislead you on

Top six things you really need to know:

1. Clean energy is competitive with other types of energy
2. Clean energy creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels
3. Clean energy improves grid reliability
4. Clean energy investment has surpassed investments in fossil fuels
5. Investments in clean energy are cost effective
6. Fossil fuels have gotten 75 times more subsidies than clean energy

Stock market has a liberal bias some claim, Arizona women carry babies 10 months, to stupid to know it.

Stocks are up, way up.  Did any republicans tell you that, no I thought not.

Arizona has passed another law explaining sex to the most stupid people among us. Women, for they know not a fucking thing about their bodies or stuff like we men know pretty good.  The state of arizona decided conception starts 2 to 4 weeks before sex.  Pay attention girls,  Republican men made it a law that the age of a fetus is from stupids last period, not from when the sperm punctured the egg.  So, abortions have to be done even sooner since stupid women (and doctors) lied about the fetus age, miss this detail and face a charge of murder.  It seems kotex not  pricks causes babies, and babies take 10 months not 9 to hatch.

Amazing, this movie changed the GOP senators mind, 9 of them.

Stunning they say, Senate Republicans watched this movie, returned to the chamber and reversed an earlier procedural vote which had killed the Mendendez bill S.2204 - Repeal Subsidies and Tax Breaks for the Big 5 Oil Companies.  THEY VOTED AGAINST BIG OIL, supporting S.2204 after watching To the Arctic which will be released this Friday.  GOP Senator Mitch McConnell said, "I am calling on all Americans, Democrats and Republicans, to take a stand to defend the Arctic from future oil and gas drilling.  If we're going to subsidize energy, it must be clean, renewable and respect the environment".

I never thought I would hear this, nor hear that 9 GOP changed their votes.  Maybe I'm dreaming.  Well, go see this movie, it must be a mighty powerful piece of cinema.

General Motors pulls out of Heartland

Heartland is one of the dozens of Koch funded groups (others fund it to) who spread anti-science bullshit about global warming and pollution.  They also work to discourage alternative products and energy sources.  In my state they fight solar and wind energy projects nonstop. You get the idea, anything you want as long as it's oil and coal.  Recently they have been providing pre-written articles for the lazy ass news media attacking the Chevy Volt.

GM has helped fund Heartland until today, but after the attack on the Volt, and social media protest that tax payer bailout helped GM survive so why are they funding a critic of their own product........GM said bye bye this morning.  At last.  Heartland is pissed, blaming it on anti-science liberals for attacking their make believe data, they want a stop put to this kind of meanness.

600 times more hormones in US meat than Japanese

Winds in the US Monday 9am central

The white lines indicate strongest, solid lines are 20mph or more.  Through the central plains wind is moving north from Texas, south from Montana and Dakotas, and west out of Chicago.  Colliding in western Kansas and Nebraska.