Friday, October 30, 2015
Monday, October 26, 2015
Big Change Maybe
The faintest of wry smiles comes across my face when I find something that even barely hints at the prospect of the death of Commodification coming sooner than expected.
Nothing.
Not much that's different anyway. And prob'ly nothing but the usual and customary crap of tax-payers gettin' stuck with the check. We more or less bank-rolled the drive for all this "energy" - sweetheart tax incentives and access to public land; roads and utilities; and sometimes direct subsidies; not to mention having the watchdogs conveniently look the other way while Halliburton (eg) gets to poison the living fuck outa everything. Plus, we get to pay for some pretty high-priced consultants and PR pricks to make the products of USAmerica Inc more palatable to "foreign markets" etc etc etc. And now that those markets are reacting to a supply glut (that we manufactured btw), guess what all those high-rollin' entrepreneurial self-made macho assholes are gonna do next. I think we can pretty much count on 'em to go crying to "their" congress critters that the sugar bowl's empty now and they just can't possibly be expected to take it all on their-own-poor-selfless-selves to clean up the ginormous fucking mess they made while soaking the last dime's worth of life from one more patch of a dying planet.
We can bumper-sticker-ize it: Privatized profits and Socialized costs, but here's the kicker - since they did it on our dime (and because nobody's complaining about 2-dollar gas), they can make a lot of us believe they did it all because we asked them to do it.
And they can make it stick - shit, we'll pay 'em to do it.
And they can do it all over again next time.
No soul and no honor.
From a short bit at NASDAQ earlier this month:
The critical natural gas transit country, Ukraine, reached a supply agreement in the last week of September with the EU’s largest fuel supply partner: Russia.
One could argue that this agreement could actually have come too late. Natural gas supply to Europe heading into winter 2015 seems more secure than ever before, a sharp contrast to the icy winters of 2006 and 2009, in which Russia cut off natural gas supply to Eastern Europe over a conflict with the Ukraine. The following factors have turned the European natural gas market from a ‘’beggars can’t be choosers” into a true “buyers’ market’’.And this from CNBC today:
Kilduff said gas was being hit by expectations a record amount of natural gas will soon be in storage. Weekly data show gas storage at 3.81 trillion cubic feet, and the record is 3.929 trillion cubic feet in November 2012.
The Energy Information Agency predicts a peak of 3.956 trillion this November, said Kilduff, who projects it to reach more than 4 trillion. He said the most recent weather report shows above-normal temperatures for the eastern region, a significant user of heating fuelsBut then again, I can't ignore that this is part of the little political game we love to play. So instead of taking any real steps toward understanding that resources are limited and we have to figure out how to move ourselves past the self-destructive nonsense of Chop-It-Down-Burn-It-Up-Dig-It-Up-Burn-It-Down, here's what I think is most likely to happen.
The oversupply is also causing problems. "The producing region is at a record storage level," said McGillian. He said if more gas is forced into the spot market, the price will drop even more.
Nothing.
Not much that's different anyway. And prob'ly nothing but the usual and customary crap of tax-payers gettin' stuck with the check. We more or less bank-rolled the drive for all this "energy" - sweetheart tax incentives and access to public land; roads and utilities; and sometimes direct subsidies; not to mention having the watchdogs conveniently look the other way while Halliburton (eg) gets to poison the living fuck outa everything. Plus, we get to pay for some pretty high-priced consultants and PR pricks to make the products of USAmerica Inc more palatable to "foreign markets" etc etc etc. And now that those markets are reacting to a supply glut (that we manufactured btw), guess what all those high-rollin' entrepreneurial self-made macho assholes are gonna do next. I think we can pretty much count on 'em to go crying to "their" congress critters that the sugar bowl's empty now and they just can't possibly be expected to take it all on their-own-poor-selfless-selves to clean up the ginormous fucking mess they made while soaking the last dime's worth of life from one more patch of a dying planet.
We can bumper-sticker-ize it: Privatized profits and Socialized costs, but here's the kicker - since they did it on our dime (and because nobody's complaining about 2-dollar gas), they can make a lot of us believe they did it all because we asked them to do it.
And they can make it stick - shit, we'll pay 'em to do it.
And they can do it all over again next time.
No soul and no honor.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Friday, October 23, 2015
A Special Logic
EXPOSED: Paul Ryan helps his donors block family leave bill, then demands Congress give him personal family time https://t.co/3DY2O4AA3G
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) October 23, 2015
Here's how I think it plays out in Paul Ryan's "brain": I'm against family leave, and you're against me for being against it. So then, when I demand family leave, you don't get to be against me now that I'm for family leave for myself - because if you're against my being against it, then you being against me now for being for it makes you a typically hypocritical Libtard.
It's entirely possible guys like Ryan (and GOP operatives in general) do that kinda shit on purpose - not so much the Etch-A-Sketch thing (although there's plenty of that to it too) - but more like, "these blockheaded rubes who make up the GOP base aren't exactly deep thinkers anyway, so we can throw a buncha smoke and eventually they'll get confused and tired and they'll just leave it all to us like they always do.
'swhat it looks like from here right now anyway.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Yeah, About That
My main contention about Politics In Public is that nothing is ever about what the pols are willing to tell us it's about.
So I'm wondering - the Repubs might be trying really really hard to make Benghazi about Hillary because they desperately need us not to be thinking of the obvious connection between The Bush Doctrine and what an even bigger total cluster fuck "The Arab World" has become since we started swinging the big USAmerica Inc dick around knockin' shit over late in 2001 - which, btw, every "liberal" tried to warn us was likely to happen, while every "conservative" kept telling us it couldn't possibly happen because after all, inside every stoopid mooslim is a clean-cut Methodist-wanna-be with a burning desire to open up a shoe store in Topeka and join the local JCs.
How often do we hafta make the same fucking mistake before we get with the fucking program here?
Another great tweet:
And one more thing - I've been watching the Benghazi Circus today, and I've been hearing HRC trying mightily not to end every sentence with "Silly Goose" or "Sonny" or "you scabrous fucking twat-waffle".
So I'm wondering - the Repubs might be trying really really hard to make Benghazi about Hillary because they desperately need us not to be thinking of the obvious connection between The Bush Doctrine and what an even bigger total cluster fuck "The Arab World" has become since we started swinging the big USAmerica Inc dick around knockin' shit over late in 2001 - which, btw, every "liberal" tried to warn us was likely to happen, while every "conservative" kept telling us it couldn't possibly happen because after all, inside every stoopid mooslim is a clean-cut Methodist-wanna-be with a burning desire to open up a shoe store in Topeka and join the local JCs.
How often do we hafta make the same fucking mistake before we get with the fucking program here?
Another great tweet:
How @TheDemocrats have felt about the GOP for the last 30 years in one picture.
#p2 pic.twitter.com/6YrfUmwpVn
— Jason Hitchcock (@JasonHitchcock) October 22, 2015
And one more thing - I've been watching the Benghazi Circus today, and I've been hearing HRC trying mightily not to end every sentence with "Silly Goose" or "Sonny" or "you scabrous fucking twat-waffle".
Wow, Maybe?
Yeah, OK - it's Vermont. But when was the last time anybody running at the national level as a Democrat managed to score with farmers of any stripe or region?
Gotta give Bernie some props here.
hat tip = Democratic Underground
Gotta give Bernie some props here.
hat tip = Democratic Underground
Today's Tweet
From driftglass (aka @mr_electrico on Twitter):
— Blue Gal/Fran (@bluegal) October 22, 2015
Nobody does the Photoshop thing better. Catch his blog here: driftglass.blogspot.com
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