What Could Go Wrong?

Godzilla bless you, Daryl Hannah. We need more celebrities to step up and get busted for speaking out against the XL Keystone Pipeline.

The Keystone XL is a proposed 1,700 mile pipeline that will carry Canadian crude oil across the middle of America, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

What could go wrong? It's just raw crude oil, and the Oil Industry hasn't spilled any oil since, like, forever.  I mean, we can be pretty sure that the Big Oil's streak of bad luck is over and nothing bad will ever happen, anywhere along the entire length of the pipeline. No earthquakes, no tornadoes, no floods and...

...hey, did you notice this- the line runs very close to Oklahoma City, which , sadly is still remembered as the place where American terrorist Tim McVeigh blew up an office building. My guess is that he'd have picked the pipeline as his target instead, had that been an option.
The Keystone XL pipeline would be a tempting target for anyone with explosives and a serious grudge against America.

The objective is to reduce our dependence on 'foreign'  oil, which I guess means America annexed Canada and it didn't make the news or something, because last time I checked, Canada was a foreign country.

I wonder if Saudi Arabia is worried about the competition from the XL line? It would be in their best interest if some wackjob did something horrific to the line. Not that anyone would.

Speaking of Saudi Arabia:

Did you know that they are building solar powerplants in Saudi Arabia? They would rather export the oil than burn it in their own air. Right now the plants are in their first stages, but it is only a matter of time and research  until the technology is developed into an advanced enough state to be commercially viable. My totally non-scientific guess would be that it will take decades before 'Green' energy can be produced at massively commercial levels, so the sooner we get started the better.

If America won't lead the way in renewable energy, the Saudis will. Of course, they'll be building nuclear power plants as well, so it isn't as if they Saudis are 'Green', they are just smarter than we are. They'll be powering their luxury resorts with wind farms and solar arrays and exporting their smog to us.When the oil runs out, they'll sell us the technology we should be developing now.


Remember how we finally succeeded in our mission to spread Freedom on Iraq, at the cost of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars? Did you know what the newly-Freedomed Iraqis want to do?:

Many of the world's biggest energy companies may have to surrender most of the gas from Iraq's vast southern oilfields to a processing and export project led by Shell, a final draft contract between Baghdad and Europe's biggest company shows.

Under the $17bn gas deal to be ratified by the Iraqi cabinet, Baghdad has pledged to do what it takes to ensure these fields supply the Shell-led Basra Gas Company (BGC) joint venture with all the raw gas and natural gas liquids (LNG) it needs, including for an LNG export plant.

We spilled all that blood and treasure to set up a State that promises to give OUR oil to the damned Europeans. What a bunch of ingrates! Are we gonna have to invade them all over again?

Maybe we should invade Holland instead, Shell is a Dutch company.

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McCain and Gramm Sitting in a Tree

The collapse of Enron continues to trickle down on us little people. I must admit that until recently, I had never heard of the so-called Enron Loophole.

Keef-O has an excellent report on it here.

The Enron Loophole permitted unregulated electronic trading of oil futures, which led to speculators "gaming" the market by betting on (and agreeing to set) the future price of oil and other commodities without meddlesome Gubbermint interference...Republican Congressman Phil Gramm was instrumental in the lobbying effort that got this provision rammed through Congress and signed by Bill Clinton.
The Loophole, according to many reports, was directly responsible for, among other things, the Californian energy crisis of 2000-2001 (which gave us Gubbiner Ahnold) and the sharp and steady rise in oil prices worldwide.

Phil Gramm is currently a senior economic advisor for John McCain. John McCain, in years that he isn't running for President, has been a staunch supporter of the Enron L-Hole. He changes what he says during election years, a consistent pattern in the Senator's speeches...in 2007, he criticized then-opponent Rudy Giuliani for having "absolutely no foreign policy experience"...yesterday Giuliani-at McCain's request- was publicly defending McCain's proposed policy of endless, unwinnable war...how did Rudy go from "know-nothing" to "expert" in six months?


Congress recently passed the Farm Bill, which includes a provision for closing the Enron L-Hole.
The bill, of course, was vetoed by Bush, with the support of John McCain- the same John McCain who rejects expanding the benefits granted to our veterans by the G.I. Bill as being:"too expensive"...support the troops? He'd rather not do that, it costs too much money...it would be difficult to cut taxes on the Super-Rich and support the troops at the same time and former POW or not, McCain has shown his true colors.
Fortunately, Congress had enough votes to override the Bush veto. It's about time the Limpocrats finally did something, says I.

I'm embarrassed that I once defended McCain's integrity when he was smeared by Karl Rove's machine prior to the 2000 South Carolina primary election.
It turns out that McCain hasn't any integrity whatsoever. A shame.

A vote for McCain is a vote for Phil Gramm and the Enron Legacy.
It's a vote to increase the number of homeless vets .
It's a vote for Five Dollar Gas.
It's a vote for a man who prefaces every third spoken sentence with the meaningless phrase "my friends". That annoying oratory tic might actually piss me off more than his dangerous politics.


Do America a favor. Don't elect John McCain.

A Confederate Sea of Dunces

The Confederate flag was proudly flying above the drunken rabble in the NASCAR parking lot this morning . Here was the Budweiser-for-Breakfast Club, massed and ready for action; Made In America, Drunk In Public and Proud Of It.

I heard Molly Hatchet playing. From more than one truck.


The tribe pictured above seems to worship canned meat products. There's an inflatable canopic jar tethered to the top- I think that at the end of the ongoing ceremony the wienier idol will be released from it's moorings and Ascend Heavenward , taking the devout with it. Good riddance.



Did you know that there is a flavor of Vienna Sausage called "Bilingual Chicken"? There is.
It wasn't mentioned at this Armour tent...I doubt that the company's decision to print labels in Spanish would have been a hit with this crowd. I saw more than a few "America is Full" t-shirts - at first, I thought that it was merely an incomplete sentence but I quickly caught on that it was an anti-immigrant statement.


I didn't see any Mexican NASCAR fans, nor did I see any Cinco De Mayo festivities.
I did see the U.S. Border Patrol. They are hiring.



Here we see a NASCAR version of inter-racial harmony. Off-key, it was.
There was a tent that urged onlookers to sign up for credit cards, enlist in the Armed Forces and embarrass themselves at karaoke - all under one roof!
Public drunkenness was not only allowed, it was encouraged and exploited.
This is a dangerous place.


More wiener worship. These (above) are marinated in 30-weight motor oil , rolled in sawdust and cornmeal and then deep-fried in boiling Crisco. One will cost you five dollars.
Two might kill you.



The only fresh food I saw was what was in my cooler. I didn't see any apples, oranges or bananas on the grounds, other than this. No fruit juice either. I tried to blend in by quaffing an energy soda that I scored from the trailer next to mine, but my banana gave me away, marked me as Other; on my breaks I hid under a trailer and ate stealthily.

I didn't know this, but if you are crew , you are supposed to eat the Corn Dogs and drink the Kool-Aid.
Literally.
There was Kool-Aid available to those who could afford it but juice, as noted, was conspicuously absent.
Notice the Navy recruiter in the background,above...military recruiters were ubiquitous at the track. The end begins here for some, I imagine.

I drank as little fluid as possible, as dehydration was preferable to urination- the toilets were straight out of Trainspotting. Bad scene in there. Very, very bad.

One thing that fascinated me was the amount of Nationalistic jingoism I overheard... over and over...only American Cars were acceptable...everyone hated foreign cars, Jap cars in 'tickular. I started fearing for my Volvo's safety, it being parked alone in a sea of Amurrican Trucks and all, but then I noticed that a great many of the diesel rigs were Volvo.
Maybe Volvo is OK ? They are made by Aryans.

I really wanted to point out that nothing for sale in my booth was Made In America; that all the toys, shirts, gimcracks and geegaws were manufactured overseas, mostly in China. I wonder how much gasoline was consumed during this event- attendees, vendors, the race itself- how much of that money gets used to pay for ski resorts in Dubai?

From an economic standpoint, NASCAR seems to move an awful lot of American money and jobs overseas.
It's not exactly a green sport either.

I kept these thoughts to myself.

One of my crewmates told me that this race was smaller than last year's, which was smaller than the year before... I heard many tales of woe about the costs of operating diesel rigs for ten months out of every year- bitching about how the "global warming assholes" were going to ruin the country- how Cheerios suck the big one- it was an overload of cognitive dissonance.


Apparently, each driver's company releases a 'collectible car' for every racing season. This year's 'collectible' was actually a pretty cool toy -but it came with a $70 price tag! Parents would admonish their kids, telling them that they could have that car, but they wouldn't be allowed to play with it, otherwise it "wouldn't be worth anything".
Then they would buy a left-over toy car from the previous year for use as a 'play' toy.
These older toys were available for 10%-25% of the original price.
I saw a pattern here... this year's $70 'collectible' will be next year's $12 'play toy'...hmmm.

When I ran a comics shop, kids would ask me: "how much will [this comic] be worth in ten years?"
My stock reply was : "That book won't even be worth reading."
Then they'd tell me that "they don't read " the comics, the books are investments.
They'd often buy two copies after these exchanges, thinking that I was trying to talk them out of buying the book in question so that I could retain ownership of it , hoard it for ten years, sell it and retire.

Free advice: If something leaves the factory with the phrase "Collector's Item" printed on it, the odds are very,very good that it will never increase in value. Ever.


I had to wear a NASCAR shirt while I fed lead-based Chinese toys to hungry Americans. It felt weird.

I wonder what would have happened if I'd worn an Obama '08 T-shirt? I saw a great deal of anti-Hillary ephemera but no openly anti-Obama statements.
I guess the Confederate flag speaks for itself.

" Success is not no violence."

UPDATE: This is just a piece of political 'filler' I did because Dubya's incoherence, wrong-headedness and incompetence fills me with great pain. This blog really isn't about politics anymore, but thanks for visiting anyway.
___________________

I guess my willpower isn't as strong as I thought.

Somehow I fooled myself into believing that I could just walk away and never look back- but it's never that easy, is it?

So here I am. Alone with the cable news and Godzilla help me I'm gonna do it because I can't stop it.
Lou Dobbs is my enabler.
I'm writing about politics again. Just a quick one, then I'll quit again. Promise.
Oh hey, sorry about the last time.

No one can see me if I don't hit publish, I think, and my battle is lost. Another tab opens, another set of headlines are scanned...and I wait for the rush.

And wait.

It's a rush alright. A torrent of sewage loosed from the cancerous bowels of Hell.

I can't believe I used to enjoy this. But it begins again:

The 222-203 vote to override Bush's veto fell far short of the two-thirds needed, effectively killing the $124 billion supplemental appropriations bill.

George Bush is still President? How is that possible?

He just said this when asked about the ongoing collapse of Iraqi society- I quote:

" Success is not no violence."

My shame and despair deepens to an almost unknowable depth.

I feel the need to hurt myself.

" Success is not no violence."
" Success is not no violence."
" Success is not no violence."
" Success is not no violence."


I guess it's only fitting that he describes his goals using a double negative.

"" Success is not no violence." =" Success is violence."

Mission Accomplished.

He continues:

There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it.But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve.

What level of "comfortable" violence is acceptable to you? Your family? I'm hoping none.
Were the Va. Tech shootings "comfortable?"
Worse things happen in Baghdad every single day-
why is it acceptable there but shocking here?

While Rome Burns

This is a start, but it's a little slow and it's a little late. And it contains a lot of unnecessary political timidity:

The White House is likely to face its most significant confrontation with Congress so far over its handling of the Iraq war after House Democrats agreed on Thursday on plans to debate a simple resolution next week that would oppose the escalation of the war but express support for funding the troops already on the ground

No rational person would interpret opposition of troop escalation as a lack of support for our troops, be they on the ground in Iraq, at home or elsewhere.
The argument that opposing the escalation is somehow 'unpatriotic' is absurd. It's a last desperate to defend the indefensible.
Listen to this bullshit:

However, John Boehner, House minority leader, attacked the coming debate as "nothing more than political theatre that means nothing. And I believe that it demoralises our troops in the field."

I would point out that sending our already tired soldiers and Marines back to Baghdad for a third or fourth deployment demoralises our troops.

Perhaps living in a state of kill or be killed for weeks and months on end in a strange and hostile land , bearing daily witness to carnage and brutality - while trying to do your duty for a President who gleefully proclaims: "you ain't coming home while I'm the Decider"- perhaps that is demoralising.

A case could be made that long, repeated deployments overseas can have terrible consequences at home.
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" Since the 2003 invasion, divorce rates in the military have skyrocketed, with a 28 percent increase among enlisted, and almost 80 percent among officers, according to MSNBC. Experts estimate that there will be at least 100,000 war-related divorces by the time the war ends. The veterans and military families here today say that, for them, "It never will."

Divorce is demoralising.
PTSD is disturbing.
Orphans are a bummer.
And lets not talk about bombs or the nerve impulses of severed limbs.

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And lets not mention global warming.
There's still quite a few Republicans who claim that there's no man-made climate change.
They don't seem to understand that this is no joke.
To this delusional Congressman, our global crisis is little more than a fart joke:

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., an outspoken skeptic of global warming, questioned whether the temperature changes weren't cyclical.

"We don't know what the other cycles were caused by in the past," he said. "It could be dinosaur flatulence. Who knows?"

Haha. Very funny. Maybe it's cow farts. Maybe it's an old lady in West, Texas. Maybe building more coal plants will solve all our pollution problems:

The official treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions hasn't gone into effect yet and already three countries are planning to build nearly 850 new coal-fired plants, which would pump up to five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce.

And if there is such a thing as global warming- which there isn't,of course- it's Nancy Pelosi's fault, according to an increasingly desperate sounding GOP who would rather talk about anything but the Iraq:

The jet that Pelosi has produces 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide an hour, far more than the previous speaker used," said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C. Pelosi's predecessor was Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

Flying in a large Air Force plane, Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said, "appears to remove any spending controls from our operations and dramatically increases our impact on the environment especially climate change."

This attack was so absurd it caused the White House to issue a true statement to the media, setting a historical precedent for the Bush administration.

... presidential spokesman Tony Snow, "This is a silly story and I think it's been unfair to the speaker."

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You know, if we could do this :

...(and include Cheney as an accomplice) then Nancy Pelosi would be President.

Then she could use Air Force One.

Reporting From:

Mainstream journalism has given up the slightest pretense of doing it's purported job- reporting the news-
and has handed the keys over to bloggers- here's a BBC article about blogs that are covering a conflict that the U.S. press won't seem to touch...one of many such unpleasant trifles.

This blogger's conclusions largely match my own, and he's not sanguine about the outcome, although he does offer some optimism. It's no small deal, this war, despite being ignored in typical U.S. media fashion.

Q: Where's Darfur?
A: Right after da three, duh.

Sadly, the above isn't a joke, it's a national mindset.

From the Head Heeb blog:

So on balance, I'd still rate the most likely outcome as a sham Ethiopian withdrawal followed by an extended counterinsurgent conflict, with the TFG remaining ineffectual and internally divided while the Islamist militias wage a guerrilla struggle with substantial public support. This, in turn, will ensure that Eritrea continues to support local proxies against the Ethiopians, and that fighters from the greater Middle East will continue to be attracted by the widely reported (albeit erroneous) portrayal of the conflict as one pitting Somali Muslims against Ethiopian Christians. And needless to say, a prolonged counterinsurgency is the type of conflict that nobody wins, with major impact on regional food security as well as widespread death and displacement. Somalia deserves better, but there are too many forces converging toward the opposite to provide much room for optimism.

Change a few words and I got this:

So on balance, I'd still rate the most likely outcome as a sham American withdrawal followed by an extended counterinsurgent conflict, with the ITG remaining ineffectual and internally divided while the Islamist militias wage a guerrilla struggle with substantial public support. This, in turn, will ensure that Iran continues to support local proxies against the Sunnis, and that fighters from the greater Middle East will continue to be attracted by the widely reported (albeit erroneous) portrayal of the conflict as one pitting Al -Queda against America. And needless to say, a prolonged counterinsurgency is the type of conflict that nobody wins, with major impact on regional food security as well as widespread death and displacement. Iraq deserves better, but there are too many forces converging toward the opposite to provide much room for optimism.

See? I cut and pasted someone else's words, changed a few nouns...took about twenty minutes, start to finish- and suddenly it's a more in-depth look at world events than you can find on our Network/Cable news...pitiful.