Wonder if that makes your hair frizzzey?

See, another advance in rapid charging of Electric Vehicles.  This full size bus in Switzerland gets a 15 second "flash charge" at every 3rd stop from that device over the bus, at the end of the line it gets a 3 minute charge, then back on the road.  This is new technology, just on the street this week, and could mean E cars are in for the same, pull in, stick a quarter in the meter, by the time you  adjust the radio and roll up the window your charged.

Leave your billfold at home and see the USA

I have been posting info about high mileage cars and electric vehicles.   Many of you have continued to say the range of EV's is no good, and the infrastructure for recharging just isn't there.  My position was the infrastructure for EV's is a no big deal, it will suddenly appear one day to meet the demand, that will stimulate more EV sales and so the circle feeds it's self.
Yesterday was the day.  Tesla announced that in 6 months most of the above set of charging stations will be built, all within 2 years, and perhaps more.  You can see these are located along the major interstate highways, less than 200 miles apart.  For Tesla model S owners recharging is free, forever.  Their slogan, drive free forever using the power of the sun.  All charging stations will be powered (or offset) by solar or wind.  The Tesla has a little over 200 mile range, so this frees their owners to drive cross country free.  The charge time is 20 minutes, on a road trip when I fill up, hit the boys room and stretch it takes 10 to 15 minutes, so this is pretty minor increase.  Other than these stations hotels will soon provide charging.
In one fell swoop this is set in motion.  For the 30 mile range cars this is still not going to work, but battery technology and rapid recharge is leaping forward every few months.  Not all cars have to be built for cross country, but there will soon be more out there with long range, and more charging stations will appear.  5 years from now, it's going to be much different.

Exxon CEO doesn't care what damage is done.

Today, Dallas Texas, the Exxon Mobile shareholders meeting, CEO Rex Tillerson:
"What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?"  Actually his concerns are "if profits suffer".

This is what the fossil fuel industry believes.  Fuck it all just make money, lots of money.  This is the face of modern capitalism, disgusting, relentless, greedy, callous, remorseless.

STAY OUT OF exxon mobile stations,  BUY NOTHING!  Find a way to save your money when energy is involved, we have to retain our personal and collective wealth, keep it from the fossil fuel industry.

After the speech, they then voted down a stockholders motion to treat gays with respect.
See the cartoon I posted a couple days ago.

30 billion $ stolen at Russian winter Olympic site

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22720228

Corruption of oligarchs, a combination of concentrated wealth and power and a revolving door of government position holders moving in and out of corporate and investment, a little bit market, a little bit Mafia, a little bit gun and poison.

What's that sound?

I remember when I was a kid, one day the news was all about the funny looking "Beetle", as VW signed up it's first dealer in my state, and the exciting thing about it was it got over 25 mile per gallon.  This at a time when the standard Detroit barge got 14 mpg, gas was 35 cents a gallon and my dad was making $5.05 cutting sheet metal at Cessna.

Here we are again with another funny looking VW, but this time it gets 261 mpg.  It's a limited production car, they will make 250 and they are not for sale.  They will be leased to 250 approved drivers.  But 261 mpg, damn.  OK it's no hot rod though like the original Beetle, given enough road it can climb to high speeds, 100 mph they say, but with a motor of around 87 HP finely tuned engine and electric assist, it accelerates slow, I imagine like the old VW Vanagon, did you ever drive one, you didn't fly up any steep hills, but you got there and it was a fun ride, hopefully this one isn't as noisy.  If the results are good, the car may go into mass production, and you can hear the assholes clinching tight  over at big oil.

Dear shit fer brains,

ah, never mind.

progress is good if you can get it

The government announced it will buy another 10,000 hybrid cars in the next couple of years.  They currently have 10,400 hybrids.  Adding the new ones will bring hybrids to 10% of the fleet.  Savings is hard to predict, depends on what they replace, buy and how much use it gets.  It is estimated it will save at least $10 million in fuel.
This is right up Ernest Moniz the new Secretary of Energy's street.  His first speech claimed fuel and energy efficiency is going to be his main thing.  Maybe he will get the department off it's ass, they delayed for years a new standard on appliances that would save us all hundreds of dollars a year if they were in place now.
The sticky part of this is he also said he wants to let the states decide some of the energy efficiency issues.  That will mean state by state fights with the Kochs on every stinking building code or phone charger.  We already see the results of this, Virginia and North Carolina are trying or have blocked Tesla sales in their states on the grounds they must pay a dealer.  Sure it's partly the businessmans version of a union job, (coal shoveler on the diesel electric locomotive) but it's a lot to do with keeping the demand for oil high, the Kochs are right in there with the car dealers on this, anything to stall the change.

You mean a place of beauty and a bright future?

Cars without engines coming soon

Want a car with two trunks, raise the hood (bonnet) and nothing's in it.  Crawl underneath, no differential, transmission.  What the F.  Most the weight is gone, all the crap that breaks and needs service, gone.
Have you ever been around these bigger than a house mining trucks?  I have, lots of times in factories.  Every wheel has an electric motor.  Thats the deal here.  An 80 pound 100 hp motor in the wheel, or wheels.  Put a few batteries where the gas tank was, a few more where the engine/transmission was in the front for balance, the extra space is for golf clubs and a fishing pole.    Next year these new motors are going into production, and they can be retrofit to old cars, and you can tie your crazy ass brother to the transmission you take out and throw it in the lake.

Wheel motors they're called.  Shit is changing fast in energy and transportation.

This is the trailer of "How America gets it's butt kicked".

Europe, especially Germany, Denmark, Spain, and Portugal are ahead of us in alternative energy by percentage of power generated, and maybe more importantly, by making local grids self reliable.  An outage has little impact on houses or villages that produce their own energy for part of all of the day.  This strengthens the whole economy and nation. It's very nice to see the news photo of a solar generating feedlot shading the cattle and making clean energy, it's a small but important step.  Driving through Germany you will encounter many farms with solar PVs in the pasture, high enough for cattle or sheep to graze under them, spaced so the grass still gets enough sun to grow, double income for the farm, power for the locals.  You will see streets with a solar units on most every house.  

This is like a movie trailer, this is what the future looks like for those who will maintain a good standard of living and provide industry and commerce with reliable clean energy.  Over the years this energy form will be the cheapest, if not in the initial investment, then in the overall.  Either we invest in the future, or we die in the past.

California feedlot with solar PVs.

German pasture with solar PVs.

Almost every house has solar PVs in this German neighborhood.

German muscle car getting very green

Porsche's 2014 Panamera SE Hybrid is 400 HP.  Who the hell needs 400 horses?  But!  it burns just 4.4L per 100 km. That, my metrically challenged friend, is 53 mpg.  In a Porsche!

I don't know how often I hear people buy into the crap that car companies can't get the mileage improvements the government wants.  Can't be done.  We'll end up with tricycles disguised as cars.  Well, if 400 HP can get 53, then high mileage is possible for all cars, vans and pickups.  No excuses.

What's Better? More pollution, or less pollution (playlist)

wind at 3pm eastern

Wind energy spill covers the whole 48 today.  Don't worry, no clean up required.

A queer feeling about the chicken industry

Wilhelm* had a queer feeling about the chicken industry, that it was sinister.  On the road, he frequently passed chicken farms.  Those big, rambling, wooden buildings out in the neglected fields; they were like prisons.  The lights burned all night in them to cheat the poor hens into laying.  And the slaughter.  Pile all the coops of the slaughtered on end, and in one week they'd go higher than Mount Everest or Mount Serenity.  The blood filling the Gulf of Mexico.  The chicken shit, acid, burning the earth. ......

"Read me that soy-bean figure now, boy," he said, and Wilhelm did.  He thought perhaps the old man might give him a tip, or some useful advice.  But no.  He only wrote memoranda on a pad, and put the pad in his pocket.  He let no one see what he had written.  And Wilhelm thought this was the way a man who had grown rich by the murder of millions of animals, little chickens, would act.  If there was a life to come he might have to answer for the killing of all those chickens.  What if they all were waiting?

*sitting next to old Mr. Rappaport the retired chicken farmer king in the futures trading room.

From: Seize the Day, by Saul Bellow, 1956

Last month most the chicken tested in the US supermarkets contained arsenic, residue from the processed food they are fed.
And most fish contained mercury, and meat contained hormones and a half dozen deadly bacteria and crop chemical residue.  Vegetables (non organic) had a virtual cocktail of chemicals on them.
If you can find it and afford it, do the organic vegi's, and chicken (or at least antibiotic free and minimal processed), and wild caught salmon and sardines.

did anyone hear BBC overnight?

I'm waking up, the radio's on a BBC business show, groggy, foggy, I thought I heard BBC dude say the tax actually paid by corporations to the US government has fallen from 30% of total collections to 10% in the last few years.  I didn't catch the number of years.
Did anyone else hear this?  Is this right?
I can't find the show on BBC archives on line.

If this be true, why in hell are we claimed to be overtaxed, and the remedy to prosperity is only through lower taxes for corporations and rich?  If this be true it's no wonder bridges are falling and schools failing, expect more of same.

E cars follow up

The EPA just approved the 2013 Nissan Leaf to claim 75 mile range on a 90% charge.  Not many errands around town exceed 75 miles.   I keep milage records on my sales calls, and that would cover most of my multi-stop visits to local customers.

Obama care cost less than Republicans want it to

California revealed the policy prices insurance companies are offering for Obama care coverage in the state.  Bad news for Republicans, real bad.   The bids for insurance is way low, way lower than predicted.  As much as 29% less in some cases.  The republicans put out their own set of predictions, they said Californians would pay 66% more than before Obama care.   And........they were wrong, again.

shock therapy will get you there

The Chevy Spark is out, another electric vehicle, priced under the Nissan Leaf, and the Chevy Volt.  

There is, or was, a Leaf and a Volt in my neighborhood.  I saw them on walks in the evening.  I don't know the owners, I think the Leaf people moved.  A neighbor told me he talked with the lady Volt driver.  Loves it, absolutely in love.   She does about 20-30 miles every day around town for what she believes is 15 cents worth of electricity.  The lady owner said she had not used any gas for about 6 months but was going to run the engine the next few trips because she was afraid it would go bad in the tank.  (in case you don't know, the Volt goes about 30 mile on "E", then you switch to gas and go all day like any other car)
--------

A couple months ago I went to the state house to meet legislators and ask them to vote down the ALEC bill that would make wind energy less attractive and I met one who owns a Chevy dealership.  He was ranting about the Volt, Chevy made him buy some to sell, he hates them, people want big cars he said, big as you can get, and ask me how would I like to only get a few miles and be on foot.  I said not true, your volt goes all day and what I really want is a Tesla, which goes 200 miles on a charge.  OH shit he was mad, "god damn Tesla, you better buy it fast, they are almost bankrupt, be gone in a few weeks".  I will email him this weekend with the news Tesla is doing so fucking good they paid off $450 million government loan 7 years before it was due, a $10 million dollar profit for the US taxpayers.  450 and 7 and 10, love those numbers.  Also I'll ask him how it feels to be part of the solution, selling both the Volt and Spark?  

Hey mule, whats wrong with this business model?

Apple has over $100 million in cash in offshore banks, not paying US tax on it, not paying for the protection this nation provides.
US corporations have over 1.7 Trillion in cash (due to lack of R&D, cuts in benefits).
US CEO's make over 300 times what employees do, the only known higher disparity is drug king pins to mules.

you know the day destroys the night, night divides the day

The worlds largest polluter tried to run and tried to hide from the CO2 and soot and sulfur killing it's people, but now they appear ready to break on through to the other side.  China will start being part of the solution on global warming.  To do that, they are about to implement a carbon tax.  E-gads a carbon tax, end of civilization so says the Kochs and Peabody.  As a fair tax, those that pollute, or buy products that pollute, incur a higher cost and the tax goes either to fund alternative energy or health care, sounds like the end to me, fair tax, clean air, low polluting products are more competitive.  I can see why fossil fuel is freak'n.  

Then today another bummer for dirty coal.  China will soon set new  kcal/kg and sulfur standards in coal.  kcal/kg  is kilojoule per kilogram, a measure of how much heat a kilo of fuel gives off when burned.  Much of what they import from the US is in this low btu range.   The big push for coal export ports in Oregon and Washington suddenly look less likely.  Indonesia will be lose the most, their coal is low btu crap.    Australia the winner with hot burning coal, plus the freight distance is less than half of coal from the US.

The Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek died this week.  This is the end.

Lay off 450 from hospital/clinics in my town

One of the hospitals here, also an owner of lots of clinics in the area, says business has fallen off so steeply they are cutting 400 to 450 within 45 days.

Most the people here do not have health insurance, and we that do are running into higher copays every year.  I think the price of healthcare is causing lots of families to cease seeking care.  Priced out of the market, left to live suffer & die.  Welcome to the third world.  Maybe Bill Gates will start trying to keep our kids from dying in the first year, launch a vaccination program here,  our rate is the highest of any industrialized nation.

Breasts in Paris, breast cancer in England

A few years ago I was in Paris and a number of billboards around the city showed a nude well shaped breast, with a few lines of text I couldn't read.  Eventually I ask what these beautiful and erotic advertisements were about.  I was told it said, Beautiful isn't it? Get a breast cancer exam!  You gotta love Europe for directness.

During the last half of World War II and the first few years after, women in England experienced a big decline in breast cancer.   Why?  Studies found that the war time diet of the island nation shifted to high level of plant based diet as meat production fell and most the meat was sent to the army.  Economy in milling efforts put an end to most white flour, whole grain breads were the norm.  Sugar became scarce.
This diet yields less breast cancer, less of all cancers.

Sadly, a few years after the war the diet went back to sugar, meat and white flour, breast cancer returned to earlier levels.  Eat your fruit and vegi's.

your goddamn land got on top of our gas

How to collect for pool construction. erotica 101, chapter 1

Back in the late 1980's the wife and I were friends with a couple from our early school days.   The guy managed a company that built pools, nice expensive pools.  He sometimes had trouble getting final payment on a job.  One guy was driving him nuts with little delays and complaints, every time he resolved a problem and tried to pick up the check, the guy raised another fuss.

Our friends were a good looking couple, in fact the wife was a knock out and an avowed exhibitionist with kinky tendencies.  The picture here is not her, but fairly close, and she had more damn bikinis than a department store.  She had one with a v front bottom  like this, only deeper, made her husband and me really happy every time she wore it, it's the one she used when she was in collection mode.

Together they hatched a plan to put an end to it.  They set an appointment but avoid the front door, instead march around back to the pool, the guy and his wife come out and sure as hell starts bitching.  Our friend does a little strip tease down to her bikini, struts around, jumping in and climbing out giggling and cooing and the top, I saw it wet a couple times, it ain't worth a shit wet, hides nothing.  Well the guy can't talk, he's following her like a puppy, the wife is pissed, the teenage kids come out to gawk, a neighbors shows up grinning.  Sha-zam the wife produces a check.

After that she went to a lot of final payment events, and they said most worked like that, they got the check.   It got worse, she would ask the guys to come to the pump and filter and she would tell them how to operate and clean it.  I imagine a few spent the night on the couch for enjoying class so much.

Stay tuned, chapter 2 in a few days.

Tom Coburn, again

A few minutes ago Tom changes his tune, maybe, who can tell, he said “I can assure Oklahomans that any and all available aid will bedelivered without delay.”

Tom Coburn says screw Moore Oklahoma

Here is the prick that, along with much of his states senate and congressional GOP ferrets delayed and voted against disaster relief for Sandy.  This morning Tom Coburn head in the sand climate misanthrope sent his mouthpiece spokesman out with the good news for Moore Oklahoma, he will not support tornado relief without a budget cut.

There you go, this is what the Republicans are.  Take a disaster, deaths, homelessness, bankruptcy, community destroyed and use it, at their expense, to push the tea-bag agenda.

The old joke, my mother's weighing the mailman she'll be right down. More junk science from the Fringe

Something to do with testicles if examined correctly can reveal the owners weight.  Yea well it was a nasty joke.

But what if we passed two German satellites over Greenland a couple times a day, say 450 kilometers up, one chasing the other 220 kilometers apart to triangulate the sniffing and tasting of Greenland with lots of sensors measuring gravitational pull, ice pack depth and density, surface height, and more.  Well, you could figure out how much Greenland weighs.  Every day they have more data showing year by year the impact of a warming world.  The Germans found that in the last few years, annually, 183 gigatons of Greenland ice melts into the sea.  That's a load any mailman would tell you, thats a hell of a load.

Here you make your own dirty joke about the mailman cometh or weighing slippery things, global warming,  coastal flooding.

don't fear volcano's cause Thor loves you!

I see in the news, Alaska has another volcano spewing today.  This will get the knee slapping climate science haters going again with their sure to convince you line........"It's not humans causing the CO2 rise, it's volcanoes".  Not true!  Not since the industrial revolution have volcanos made more greenhouse gas than man, maybe not since 250 million years ago when volcanos were as thick on the land as pimples on a prom date.

Humans are releasing 27 gigaton of CO2 a year.  Volcanoes average .2 gigaton a year.

Queen of crazy needs your attention, now

Subject: I just signed this -- will you? Representative Michele Bachmann is the Tea Party’s queen of crazy. So what kind of a signal does it send that she's on the House Intelligence Committee where she has access to sensitive national security information? Bachmann has actually said that gay marriage is the biggest problem facing the nation, financial reform efforts equate with Mussolini-style fascism, and that President Obama is "anti-American" and "turning our country into a nation of slaves.” Send a message today, and tell Speaker John Boehner to remove her immediately. http://act.credoaction.com/sign/bachmann_intel_comm/?sp_ref=1076726.4.84.e.362.2&source=mailto_sp

coal is stupid appreciation day, more junk science from the fringe

The little boat that could, and these two guys, stopped a coal shipment today, and launched http://www.coalisstupid.org  Today a little civil disobedience got the attention of people all over the upper eastern seaboard.  Check out the site, jump on the take action button, and the why we do this page, religious it appears.  You know, I like religion when it does good things for the earth and it's critters.

don't do koch

The Koch brothers will soon be the owners of 3 of the biggest news papers in Florida, also Chicago Tribune and LA times, one of the largest Spanish language papers, the biggest radio station in the US, and a handfull of little papers and some significant internet news connections. Tell the pushers no, that stuff ruins lives, hollows out brains.

junk science from the fringe, rats and radioactive isotope

I'm not a scientist, and neither are 99.?% of the climate deniers.  So.... my credentials are no weaker than theirs.

Recently I wrote not all carbon is equal.  Scientist can take samples of CO2 and determine if it came from fossil fuel, or a dead rat.  Dead rat carbon is what you want to breath, not coal or car gas carbon.

First, we don't make CO2 breathing, my stupid business associates are always saying stop breathing if you want to stop global warming, then they slap their knee. We take it in when we inhale, then out, it's the same, we didn't filter or add to it.  OK, got that.

14C is a radioactive isotope of carbon.  It is only found in carbon which has been sheltered from galactic rays, below the surface.  Carbon that has been cycling around the earth in and out of trees, oceans, grass, rats, that carbon has had the 14C hammered out of it by "the force" or some magic guy in the sky.

So, next time your uncle says they can't prove CO2 comes from human activity, think of C14, and every tailpipe smokestack and kiln is spewing it out.  That is pollution.  That adds to greenhouse gases, and increases a little tiny teenzey bit the atomic poisons in the sky.  The tree that falls and rots, that CO2 is not pollution, it was here before, and absent C14.  When they drill down for ice samples, or amber, or mud samples from a thousand years ago, it's all good CO2.  Out there on the tundra, the sea, and in balloon 5 miles high know that there is a geek (or his mechanism) with a tiny little butterfly net scooping up CO2, and most of it has our fingerprint on it.

Mauna-Loa Observatory, where the first 400 ppm of CO2 was recorded last week.  Temperature follows CO2.  CO2, Methane, water vapor and other greenhouse gasses let sun rays through but reflect back infrared rays.  This is good, this is why we have the goldielocks atmosphere.  But as they increase they make the atmosphere more dense, slowing the heat loss to space, rising the temperatures.  Stephen Hawking says we can end up with some regions on earth reaching nearly 200° and a very acidic atmosphere.   Oh, what does he know, he never played football.

Energy Democracy - The Socio-Economic Case

10,000 years of farming practice flipped by the court

Monsanto won a lawsuit against a farmer yesterday in the Supreme Court.  That farmer is bankrupt now, he owes more than his farm is worth.  All because he saved a little bit of last years harvest for seed, that is how farming worked for the 10,000 years BM (before monsanto).
Monsanto has carved out a new right for products.  Single use, this is going to be big.  You break the law if you reuse the seed, you must buy seed from them each year.  Monsanto seeds are poison resistant, plant them then wash the field in chemicals.  No anyone with cancer?
Can Ford get in on this, you should have to repurchase your car if you use it a second time.  What about Music, buy a CD and it plays once.  For the fridge and toaster, same.  I think the public is going to soon find the Monsanto patent model spreading to other things.

Happy Mothers Day New Orleans, 2nd amendment approves

It's the right of the shooters to have those guns, to carry them, to fire them. 19 injured, that's OK, were free today even after that.  The whole damn country can shoot their guns into a crowd, 2nd amendment is there for that isn't it.
An NRA splinter group in my state is lobbying for open carry, everywhere by everyone, counties and cities and even companies should not be able to prohibit it, cause it says right in the constitution that I can take my gun with me to sporting games, bars, schools, christmas sales, yea it really does a dick head red neck told me, and god is ok with it too so we can fight evil.  It's the natural progression.

Well, but don't you wonder what they found?

Did the IRS audits of tea baggers turn up a higher than normal amount of tax cheating?  Look, the police patrol where the crime levels are the highest, why's that?  The game warden checks licenses of people fishing, why's that?  The border guards are most often put near the border, why's that?  Don't you wonder if they found a high level of cheating from a group who's stated goal is to not pay taxes, that and to try to spark  some crazy fuckers to harm government officials.  Wonder what they found.

400 ppm and poison ivy

The last time the earth had CO2 levels of 400 parts per million homo sapiens had not arrived, and the earth was 14°F warmer than today.  FOURTEEN.  Tomato's and sweet corn die long before it gets 125-130°.
A study made public in Oslo by scientist in Britain, Columbia, Australia, predict 57% of plants species and 34% animal species will be driven from the zone they live in by heat and CO2 rises.  Only 4 percent of plants will benefit from it.
Poision Ivy is one of a very few plants that benefits, grown in high levels of CO2, it grows bigger, faster and the toxic oil more potent.   Enjoy.

 

0.3% of the worlds scientist say this is wrong.

Here's that hockey stick chart showing the worlds averaged temperature from 10,000BC in blue, and modeled in red for the next few years.  Congress has held hearings on this trying to prove it's wrong, they never did, investigations for years have proved and reproved it is correct, though many in the GOP strutted about as if they won.  Now 3 more studies by others are being published, they confirm it and carry it further, one authored by 30 scientist shows an even harsher future.

One group of skeptics claim they have 30,000 scientist from around the world signed up saying it's a hoax.  Well, some are looking at the list, there are no checks on this, you just sign on line and sha-zam whatever.  Do you know how many real science degrees are out there?  30 k is a teeny tiny itsey bitsey 0.3% of the worldwide estimated number of scientist.  I would not brag if thats all I could get, and I would not let the list out, for sure many will not have a degree any field of science, let alone climate scinence.

400 parts per million

Highest levels of CO2 in about 3 million years.  200 to 300 ppm was the norm until the industrial revolution.  350 ppm is what science indicates is the safe level, above that the warming will tend to fold back on it's self, multiply, and happen faster and faster.  Last week the monitor on Hawaii jumped to 400 for the first time, and ahead of what had been hoped for.  As climate skeptics like to point out, the models are not perfect, and the error unfortunately is constantly in the wrong direction, it's getting worse faster.

CO2 in the atmosphere lets light waves pass through, but blocks infrared waves from escaping.  It's the greenhouse affect.  That has worked for us, keeping the goldilocks world happy, not to cold, not to warm, just right.  Now too much CO2 is overheating the earth and will upset the agricultural systems we need for survival.  The earth will go on, it just won't support the cats dogs cows people and polar bears in the numbers or comfort we have now.

It's the ocean or volcanos say skeptics, not fossil fuel use.  Well just as science can trace radioactive fallout or stolen atomic fuel to the place it was mined and the place it was enriched, so too CO2 has a fingerprint.  The CO2 in the atmosphere from fossil fuel has a different fingerprint.  Scientist know the 400 ppm is from your tailpipe, the smokestack, the cement kiln, the leaking gas well.

Write a letter urging action to the state house, DC, the retirement fund manager, the paper, the stupid blogger world, your crazy uncle urging action.  Then, buy another CF bulb, drive less, and turn the water heater down.

Free trade my ass!

Who's clamoring for free trade?  Business because it opens markets to American products they say.  Look, when the US was the manufacturing engine of the world only 30 to 60 years ago, with innovation, quality, and massive amounts of products, the world bought our products, even with stiff taxes and duties they bought it because it was the best and demand for good products sells.  They want more free trade deals so they can import not export.

This free market shit is for the uber rich, for Bain Capital, for business school graduates, they don't know how to run a lathe, sharpen a cutting tool, how to correctly shut off a heat treat furnace, they know how to buy cheap, skim, fire people, and vote Republican.

Manufacturing job growth last month was Zero.  Why?  *Oil and fossil fuel are stuffing their pockets and stalling the biggest new technology wave in decades, clean energy jobs, their enemy.  *Congress and the president still have not made shipping jobs and factories offshore a penalty, even a minor one.  *There is no buy American program of any kind, even for the defense industry which means as domestic sources die off we have no alternative but to import, which in national emergency is a disaster.  *Wall Street would rather import than produce, profit rather than create and build.  *Retailers value buying low, and successfully hide from consumers a penny saved is dollar gone to China.  *Consumers are weak, we flock to wallmart or menards killing local businesses. *Finally, my own contribution to the problem, machines being sold (some by me) now into industry produce more with fewer people operating and feeding them, productivity go's up without adding another body to the payroll, and wages are flat though the worker is generating this year what a few years ago 2, maybe 10 did, what a century ago a hundred did, this won't change, tools and machines will continue to gain, a trend no politician can change, this is a technology Bain and big oil are just fine with.

All those guys out of trade schools, or laid off from the local machine shop or factory, none of the reasons above are lent to them when they are spoken of, nope, they were lazy, probably belonged to a union, and now why don't they just get a job, get off their ass and get a job.  Or, take a drug test to see if you can find another job or get assistance.  Use to be a bread winner, now he's a suspect.  Oh, free trade, that's the ticket, if only that, he could get his old job back.   What's that?  Oh, the bullshit alarm.

Future King of England gives climate skeptics a jolly good buggering

Prince of Wales is taking over some of the queen's former duties and today in a speech he hammered the "forces of darkness", the corporate lobbyist and climate skeptics for the terrible harm they are causing for profit and ego.  Speaking to a meeting of government officials from several nations, scientist and businessmen, he drew a comparison of the situation we are in to a doctor with a sick kid with a high fever, more needs to be understood about fevers, the cause, the limit to allow, but,  "If a doctor sees a child with a fever, he can't wait for [endless] tests. He has to act on what is there."

Bully good job ole-boy, bully good!  I think we will see a King Charles by Christmas, the queen and her husband are tired, they will shortly step aside.  Charles has a great track record on environment, organic farming and green building.

ALEC Koch LEED RPS

Maine is under attack from ALEC and Koch Industries.  How can an outside group come to a state and suddenly have it's interest brought to the state house floor?  Money and Republicans that's how.  After losing in 22 states, Kansas then North Carolina within the last few weeks, ALEC continues towards hopefully it's 23rd failure.  The bill ALEC wants is designed to make wind and solar energy less attractive by destroying agreements with utilities called RPS (renewable portfolio standard).   If they can get one win, thats the camels nose under the tent.
Why Maine?  Maine has only a few wind turbines and little if any commercial solar.  Maine uses coal and fuel oil, and fossil fuel guys making billions can't let even a tiny fraction of the market slip away, maybe they can win Maine, or one of the other 6 or 7 states left to attack.

Speaking of North Carolina, they are about to pass a law forbidding LEED certified buildings in the state.  I don't remember what LEED stands for, but it means the building was built using products that had a minimum impact (so far as possible) on the environment, and the building must be extremely energy stingy.  These building cost more but energy savings soon overtakes the higher cost, and, it's better for all of us by creating less pollution and demand.  
So, what's up with outlawing LEED?  They want to outlaw until the Federal standard kowtows and becomes toothless and meaningless.  Fossil fuel and lumber companies are behind this.  One wants to prevent energy efficiency buildings, the other wants clear cut lumber from any source to be permitted in LEED buildings, or they take the ball and go home.  Again, as with Maine's RPS fight, billionaires are trying to stop a tiny little leak in their profits, constructions are a drop in the bucket to big lumber, and the savings in energy is a drop in the bucket to fossil fuel, but Koch owns both.  Do not buy Georgia Pacific lumber, that's Koch brothers lumber.

I'm not sure companies who recognize the investment value of LEED will think when they are shopping for a new state to build in?  If I was in the business of recruiting corporations to move, this would be my loudest horn to honk if NC was the competitor.  Of course, I imagine this legislation will appear in most all the red states in the next few months.

1 million killed in the USA by the 2nd amendment

Since 1980 1 million people have been killed by guns in America.  Every one of those killers was using his 2nd amendment rights to the fullest extent of the law, to have and to hold.  The 2nd amendment profited every gun dealer.  1 million died for the 2nd amendment's sins.  20 million injured but just wouldn't die for your sins.

1 million failures of the NRA to protect, 1 million failures of the militia to defend.  Both are utter failures, a hoax, and forever will be.

Happiness is a warm gun (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, mama (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
When I hold you in my arms (Oo-oo oh yeah)
And I feel my finger on your trigger (Oo-oo oh yeah)
I know no one can do me no harm (Oo-oo oh yeah)
Because happiness is a warm gun, mama (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm, yes it is, gun (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Well, don't you know happiness is a warm gun, mama? (Happiness is a warm gun, yeah)
Beatles

GM gets it.

Last week in San Francisco General Motors signed the "Climate Declaration".  The first automaker to do so, there are about 30 large companies signed up so far.  The declaration calls on policymakers to move quickly on climate change by promoting clean energy, efficiency, and limiting carbon emissions.  GM executives say they have reduced waste in all operations, energy use, and added solar panels to many of their roofs, and much more is to come.  It's making them more competitive.  Everything going to the land fill was money down the drain.

junk science, all you can eat

Carbon emissions are changing the thermodynamics and chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans.  Not one scientific body in the world believes otherwise.  None.   To believe science is wrong on this is insane, when tens of thousands from different fields and universities, from different countries demonstrate it's true.  To believe this divergent group could mislead, conduct faulty work on a massive scale, and hide for years their confederacy in a hoax, it is beyond any possibility, it defies logic, probability, and reason.

if your brain had a mind of it's own

If only we could cut all the forests and catch all the edible fish, and sell it, think of all the money we could put in the bank for future generations.

Believe in global warming as a republican? Feel all alone?

Actually you can be my friend, on selective subjects at least.  I have been working this week with a red neck racist republican land owner feeding him drip by drip info on wind energy, wind speed maps of his area, etc.  He owns land a few miles from a wind farm, and it never sunk in this hippie idea might make him money someday if they expand the farm in his direction.  So, as I explain things....he is inching towards being riled up that some in the legislature keep working to restrict wind development in the state, and as I sold to him, restrict ways he can make money.  I predict I will have him writing letters soon, he is not bashful and knows a butt load of politicians.   Never talked about clean air, or polar bears, instead we talked about why should a farmer be told by some dickhead in Topeka coal companies can make money off electricity, but he can't.

Republicans can be brought in from the cold, on some issues, sometimes, maybe, with luck, if your careful.  They poll believing in global warming at 51%, jumped up from 33% 2 yr ago.  The pollsters concluded Repubs are seeing through the years of non-stop bullshit adds by dirty energy just as they did decades ago on tobacco.  The earths global temperature (not your damn towns today, but the whole globe) is increasing, in the last 15 years 13 have been the hottest ever recorded.  Carbon emissions are changing the thermodynamics and chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans, it's not disputed, no scientific body in the world disputes this.

GOP just another brick in the wall

I saw some information about various ethnic groups voting.  Turns out Arizona and Georgia (under current trends of which party we vote for) will turn blue in a very few years, Texas by mid the 30's.  If the democrats can get latinos to vote in these states at the same high rate as they do in California then Texas could be in play in only a few years, really soon.  Gerrymandering is going to be more and more difficult for the GOP.  (And before you jump to conclusions, these numbers are on the growth of legally eligible voters, so don't veer off on the illegals or voter fraud bullshit, this is citizens coming of age and voting.)

Another interesting thing, white people vary on how many vote democrat region to region.  Blacks, hispanics, asians, almost no variation from state to state city to city, they know who the racists are and rarely vote for that elephant in the room.

The things the GOP are doing now with immigration, health care, attack on civil rights, gun control (minorities are for gun control by hugh margin, they been taking the hit), jobs and the constant racist remarks by politicians is ensuring they cannot pull enough hispanics over to prevent their own near term decline.  I think they may be able to win a couple more elections with the backlash of rich and redneck and religious whites, but the end is near, 10 years, some of these old white senators won't live to see it, and their passing will speed it.  I hate what they are doing, but I also see it as a rock on the gas pedal, brick wall ahead, yank it Fox, yank it out of park, lets see it go.

350 hours of tin ear work

Just returned from a visit with the son and his wife in Memphis.  I returned with the job to store the daughter-in-laws  350+ CD's.    Most are classical, a few jazz.  They are moving east and expect the new big city abode will be the size of a sardine can, so they are downsizing, and transferred hundreds of CD's to MP4.  The catch, or the joke assignment given, I have to catalog, listen to, and comment on every single CD.
I love classical music, so this is going to be fun.  I have about 16 months to do it, and I doubt I will do all of them in that time.

Dmitri Shostakovich, at age 11 the Russian revolutions began, he spent his whole life as a composer trying to find ways to compose what he wanted under the choke of the USSR's secret police and art sensor which sent many an intellectual to the gulags.  I have a great story about Dmitri and a mistress, I will relay it one day when I encounter his work, for those with an erotic appetite.  The picture during his mid 20's looks like me at mid 20's, later ones not.

I love to set at the end of the day in the dark or soft light and listen to a few minutes of music before bed.  Very relaxing.