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Nation’s Mood at Lowest Level in Two Years, Poll Shows

22 Apr

So says The New York Times:

Amid rising gas prices, stubborn unemployment and a cacophonous debate in Washington over the federal government’s ability to meet its future obligations, the poll presents stark evidence that the slow, if unsteady, gains in public confidence earlier this year that a recovery was under way are now all but gone.

Capturing what appears to be an abrupt change in attitude, the survey shows that the number of Americans who think the economy is getting worse has jumped 13 percentage points in just one month.

Not surprising. Obama created expectations of change, and then kicked those expectations in the teeth. And there’s this:

Given the choice of cutting military, Social Security or Medicare spending as a way to reduce the overall budget, 45 percent chose military cuts, compared with those to Social Security (17 percent) or Medicare (21 percent.)

Some guy named Eisenhower, a general and a Republican no less, warned us that military spending would eat away at home and hearth. No one listened then. Is anyone listening now?

THEY keep saying things will get better. And they do, for them, but not for the rest of us. They’re getting better on our backs.

No Fracking Way!

18 Apr

They’re at it again.

The New York Times informs us that  “Oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in more than 13 states from 2005 to 2009, according to an investigation by Congressional Democrats.” The wells are being drilled to tap reserves of natural gas contained in deep rock formation. The chemicals are injected along with water and sand to release the gas. The process is known as hydraulic fracturing, aka hydrofracking, aka fracking.

Frankly, this sounds like one of those deals where they don’t really know what they’re doing. So you try this and that and, if it works, it works, and you keep on trying:

Some ingredients mixed into the hydraulic fracturing fluids were common and generally harmless, like salt and citric acid. Others were unexpected, like instant coffee and walnut hulls, the report said. Many ingredients were “extremely toxic,” including benzene, a known human carcinogen, and lead.

Instant coffee and walnut shells! Shall we try a little castor oil? Maybe a little ipecac? How about some eye of newt? Toe of frog? Then comes the wool of bat and tongue of dog.

Maybe dance a little jig while they’re at it.

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Throttled by the military-industrial complex

14 Apr

Ike got it right

And he saw it and called, yes in 1960 when he left the Presidency. But James Ledbetter informs us on Blogginheads.tv, that he was aware of the problem much earlier. Here’s an excerpt from a speech he gave in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

Will ever escape the grasp of this terrible logic, which continues to impoverish us?

The New Octopus

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Wake up and smell the coffee

13 Apr

Coffee Party USA declares independence from the two-party system:

We the People hereby declare our Independence from the failed two party system and vow to chart a new path with representatives who will put our interests first and foremost.

 

Is the Progressive Moment Over?

12 Apr

Adam Serwer (The American Prospect) and Elli Lake (The Washington Times) have a discussion at blogginheads.tv. Did Obama scuttle progressives with a bait and switch?

Toward a Truth and Traditions Party?

12 Apr

By Charlie Keil

We’re considering a name change to the Truth and Traditions Party (TNT).

It’s all about the politics of truth, the facts, the observable evolutionary and devolutionary trends in Nature and in society. Notice Nature gets the big N and society the small s. “small is inevitable” says Rob Hopkins in The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience, which echoes Fritz Schumacher’s “small is beautiful” book (1973), which was in turn was built upon Leopold Kohr’s classic but still neglected text, The Breakdown of Nations (1957). The Kohr book points to Traditions and an anthropology of anarchism or relatively leaderless living which is how we humans co-evolved with Nature over 99% of our existence as humans (Humo ludens collaboratus). Post peak oil, peak water, peak everything, we are returning to our true human nature which has always been shaped by local traditions adapting us to very local conditions.

The Truth & Traditions Party aspires to explore “the way” or “path” of this transition from big to small as a practical matter of getting Big Corpstate off our backs.

  • from global to local
  • from alien-nation to local participation
  • from power-over to pleasure-in
  • from killing machinery to non-killing music-dance-dromena-ngoma
  • from war to peace
  • from famine to local food
  • from entropy to sacrament
  • from death trips to life affirmation
  • from corpstate values to family and kingroup tribal values
  • from monoculture to thousands of cultures, genuine diversity
  • from utilitarian to spiritual
  • from addiction-to-perfection to participatory-discrepancies
  • from structure to process
  • from hubris to humility
  • from hierarchy to equality
  • from false pasts/futures to present time

We’re Evolving to a New World

14 Feb

About the Truth and Traditions Party USA

In response to peak oil, climate change, and continuing economic crises, we’re organizing a Truth and Traditions Party in all 50 states this year, 2011, so that we can hold primaries and run or endorse candidates in all 435 Districts for the US House of Representatives in 2012. Our modest aim is to become a “decisive” or log-jam breaking party in the House. If, for example, there were 214 Republicans elected and 209 Democrats, our 12 TNT Representatives could exert great leverage for Truth, Traditions, Transition legislation – and against the tremendous waste encouraged by big corporations feeding at the trough of big government.

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