Republicans and Democrats are arguing over spending once again, this time about what to do with the mess on the East Coast in the wake of Hurricane Irene. You see, FEMA is just about out of money and the Republicans don’t want to give them any more unless it can be offset by cutting spending elsewhere—this after already making “draconian” cuts to the deficit in August and even more cuts sure to come in November. When all is said and done, the specifics of this story are unimportant and there aren’t even any real villains—the sad fact of the matter is that this country is in such dire financial straits that we can’t even afford to clean up after natural disasters. Read more here.
Dick Cheney pretends to be the president
In other news, Dick Cheney’s new book, In My Time, is making waves and garnering a lot of attention, as I’m sure was the author’s intention. Colin Powell wasted no time in calling it a stinking crock of shit full of “cheap shots” and now Powell’s chief of staff during his time as secretary of state, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, has denounced Cheney as being “vindictive” and a “war criminal”—charges that Mr. Cheney seems reluctant to refute; in fact, he has come right out and said that torturing prisoners of war is a fine thing and he’d do it again if he could. Even now, Cheney still refuses to admit that Iraq was a colossal failure, electing instead to herald it as a triumph. And why not? Col. Wilkerson said that Cheney was “president for all practical purposes” during George W. Bush’s first term in office, which makes sense, since Bush never struck me as a particularly evil man—just a very stupid one.
According to MSNBC: “Wilkerson claimed that Powell was misled by Cheney and the CIA’s director of central intelligence, George Tenet, before giving his key address on Iraq to the United Nations, during the run-up to the war.
“‘[Cheney] had been out there [to the CIA] a dozen times to put his personal imprint on George Tenet, John McLaughlin and others so that they would know positively what he wanted, and what he wanted was war with Iraq,’ Wilkerson said.”
"Waterboarding is a war crime," says Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson
“Waterboarding is a war crime, unwarranted surveillance … all of which are crimes. I don’t care whether the president authorized him to do it or not, they are crimes,” Col. Wilkerson told ABC.
But so what? Everyone already knows that George W. Bush is an idiot and his administration was rife with liars and criminals; it’s just somewhat unsettling to see a crooked old buzzard like Dick Cheney write a goddamned book about it.
Meanwhile, President Obama urged Congress today to extend bills funding highways and air travel, which according to him will protect something like a million jobs. “For construction workers and their families across the country, it represents the difference between making ends meet or not making ends meet,” Obama said. “All of them will be out of a job just because of politics in Washington. That’s just not acceptable. It’s inexcusable.”
Of course it’s inexcusable. But John Boehner’s spokesman, Brendan Buck, said this: “Aside from the president today, no one has suggested the highway bill will be allowed to expire. Republicans support an extension of the highway bill and appreciate the need for a long-term solution for infrastructure projects.”
Well, given the Republicans’ recent track record, no one can blame Obama if he anticipates yet another manufactured crisis/hostage situation at the hands of the GOP. John Boehner and his ilk routinely dismiss anything the president comes up with out of sheer spite and on general principle—even if it’s something that they agree with. This is a story worth following as the September 30 deadline draws closer.
Michele Bachmann
In other news, Barack Obama is still dangling his jobs proposal out there like a carrot on a stick, only now he has decided that he’d like to unveil it next Wednesday while addressing Congress—the catch is that it’s smack in the middle of the Republican presidential debate in California. John Boehner has asked Obama to postpone his address until the following day, which just happens to be the opening NFL game, which kicks off football season. So far, both sides have accused the other of orneriness and being spectacularly pigheaded, but they’re said to be working on a “compromise” that is expected to yield no results. This is what it has come down to: Democrats and Republicans arguing about when to get together and argue. The White House has called the scheduling snafu “coincidental,” but it’s hard to accept that this isn’t a poke in the Republicans’ eyes—even though Obama apparently didn’t take into consideration the fact that many people own DVRs, VCRs, and even two television sets.
Other than that, it’s business as usual in the news. Perry is leading the Republican pack, Romney is trying to figure out what happened and how he can fix it, and Rick Santorum just stayed home. I’m not sure what kind of crazy shit Michele Bachmann is cooking up in her cauldron, but whatever it is, it will be screwy enough to make headlines and too batty for anyone to take seriously, which on the evidence is not the best way to run a presidential campaign. As for Romney, he has taken to criticizing Obama’s foreign policy in a desperate attempt to win back his front-runner status. As a Republican, he abhors big government almost as much as he loves spending cuts … except when it comes to the defense budget. Romney is proposing that we increase spending on our military—better planes, bigger bombs, and more troops—all so we can more efficiently eradicate nuisances like China, Russia, Pakistan, and Korea if they continue to annoy us and make American businessmen uncomfortable. Our country is reeling from one catastrophe after another, FEMA is bankrupt, we’re $14.6 trillion in debt … and Romney’s solution is to bolster our military and make some more enemies—or at least piss off the ones we already have.
But what do I know? War is good business, they say; I’ve even heard it uttered that war is money … to wit:
It took World War II to get us out of the Depression, so maybe it’s time for another big one.
And so much for that. Here’s your wisdom:
“President Obama urged Congress today to extend bills funding highways and air travel, which according to him will protect something like a million jobs.”
We’re running out of oil. There is plenty of evidence that it will happen in our lifetime. Here’s a good book about it:
http://www.amazon.com/Your-World-About-Whole-Smaller/dp/1400068509
Any further work on roads and airports is wasted time and money. We need to start working on what happens when the oil runs out. If we wait until it happens, that will be the worst time to start asking, “What now?”
Understanding running out of a natural resource like oil doesn’t take a genius. It is pretty simple math to look at our increasing rates of use, and the cost both in terms of energy and money of producing more oil.
It amazes me that the so-called “leaders” continue to ignore peak oil and carry on like there’s nothing to worry about.
Thanks for the link–I’ll look into it. As for oil, I think that we should be investing our time and resources into developing/perfecting alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, wave, and geothermal technologies. Whether or not we’re going to run out of oil in the near future is debatable, but it will happen, so why not make the switch to cleaner, more efficient, sustainable means of energy such as the ones listed above?
Thank you, Brent–it’s nice to know that I’m not necessarily “crazy.”
The alternative energies are definitely part of the solution, but there is currently no alternative energy solution for transportation. A big part of what makes our lives easy and low-cost is cheap transportation: commuting to-and-from work, importing goods from Asia, etc.
Some people think electric cars are the answer. Sadly, they’re not. There are more than 250 million cars in the U.S.A. alone. Imagine if everyone plugged in their cars every night? Energy production in our cities is already maxed out.
Plus, electricity won’t be able to power supply ships, aircraft, and trucks for shipping. Nothing provides energy like we get from oil.
Peak oil could be the most serious problem humanity has every faced, but we’re pretending it will all be fine and we’ll take care of it later.
I too am not convinced that we can stop using oil overnight, but it is a goal that we should be working toward more seriously than we are. As for transportation, magnetic levitation technology looks pretty promising. When it comes to plugging in a car at night, I don’t think that it would make that much of a difference down at the power grid. Charging a car battery does not require much amperage. Of course, cars that run solely on batteries would have to have multiple/bigger cells, so who knows? As it is, you can drive a surprising distance on a standard car battery when your alternator fails.
I’m no genius nor am I an inventor or technology expert; however, Jacque Fresco of the Venus Project is, and he seems to think that we can do this if we only put our minds to it. I’ll have to research the electric car thing more–I think that Chevy just released a model that runs entirely on electricity. Check out the Venus Project and some of the related videos that I’ve posted and tell me what you think.
Here is a link
Here’s a quote I liked from Michael Ruppert (author and star of the peak oil documentary “Collapse”):
“Today’s a day when lines have to be drawn and sides have to be chosen. From this moment on, if you are supporting an infinite growth paradigm or trying to recover the markets, you are an enemy of all life on this planet, and you are trying to steal any future left for the generation of people under 30 years old who are inheriting a world of nothing, of wreckage, of ruin, who have no hope and no vision.”
If Ruppert’s theories on peak oil are correct, then his quote here is spot on.
I’m on-board with TVP and Fresco’s RBE. I don’t like to limit the RBE to just Fresco’s ideas though. It’s a great vision, but once we get the brightest minds in the world on-board with it, the skies the limit. I don’t think we can even envision the possibilities humanity can rise to if we all worked together and didn’t limit ourselves by money and competition. That puts me in the TZM camp, rather than the TVP camp.
Cities around the world are already experiencing “brown-outs” and “black-outs” in the summer when everyone has their air-conditioners running. If everyone in a city plugged their hair-drier in at the same time, it would take down the city’s power grid.
Plus, creating the car bodies, tires, and batteries for the 250+ million cars in the U.S.A. would take a massive amount of oil and energy. I don’t have any numbers, but I don’t think we have enough oil left to do it. In any case, it would take a long time, so we better get the conversion started, if electric cars are the agreed on plan.
I like the idea of magnetic levitation transportation too. This could replace airplanes and ships for shipping overseas, but it will take a massive amount of time, money, and resources to develop this idea and get it built-out. When the oil runs out, it will be difficult for people in the third-world countries, but for most people in third-world countries dependent on long-distance imports for food, water, medicine, etc, I shudder to think of what will happen to them.
Well said. Thank you.