Thursday

Thursday June 4, 2009

. . . .This is an absolutely gorgeous picture. Normally, the pictures that I post are public domain, and I don't mind if someone decides to download one. This is a very special one. It was taken the day after someone close to me buried her father, at a place that was special to them. If you want to download it, go ahead, but it would be nice if you would treat it as shareware and send something along to me at k.williamsdesolationangel@gmail.com to compensate her for it. Other than that, take a look at it, really look at it. For a significant number of you, I think you'll see what's there.
. . . .Remember, your contributions, your links and stories sent to me are always welcome and published, and I'll always take suggestions for the playlist in the podcast, and if you're lucky, every once in a while, I have a guest "D.J." and invite someone else to do the intro. You never know, might be you!

. . . .The playlist today? Stick around, listen to it. Go ahead and minimize the window after you're done reading and just let it play and listen to it. You're going to find Johnny Cash of course with the column's/podcast's theme song. You'll hear some great stuff, all mostly hell-raisers and renegades, pot stirrers. You'll hear Michael Franti, Steve Earle, Bruce in a couple of different contexts, Tom Morello, one of my favorites with a track from his new band, the Street Sweeper Social Club, Otis Gibbs, and the hilbilly bluegrass hard metal rock of Ryan Bingham. All these folks do have something in common, that would be following in the footsteps of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. They're folks who are singing out for the people and providing a voice for those who don't have one.. . . .Had to do it. After the inquiries and questions. Yes, this is actually what the back yard looks like, taken back in the early spring. Yes, it really does look like a back alley at the Rennaisance Faire. Tom, who normally has very little reaction to most things and is quite stoic, upon seeing it for the first time, couldn't stop laughing long enough to talk. Wait until I run the picture from now, since all the ferns from my landlady's fern fetish have grown in, and it now resembles the back lot set for Jurassic Park. . .it only gets better.

. . . .OK, on to the news of the day. Still trying to get my head wrapped around this one. South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham sat down with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor yesterday for a 1/2 hour closed door meeting, then came out and said she offended him as an "everyday average white guy".
- Ummm, OK? Everyday Average White Guy. Let's see, United States Senator, politician, lawyer. Uh-huh. . . . yeah, everyday average white guy. Let's see. . . I've got a U.S. Senator thinking he's an average everyday white guy, and he's judging the credentials of a sitting Federal Judge that, oh by the way, he confirmed back in 90's when Bush the 1st appointed her to her Federal Circuit Court of Appeals seat, on whether or not she appears to see things from his "everyday average white guy" viewpoint.
- And these mouthbreathing morons wonder why I keep saying that the politicians in the Beltway don't speak for us anymore?

. . .And this is what just completely fucks me up about these wingnuts. In a rare moment of honesty, Graham admitted in an interview that is was all really just a game that the Republicans are playing with the White House, and that it isn't doing the country any good!

"I'm not doing the country any good looking back playing a game of tit for tat. But I'm not going to put my party at a disadvantage if this is the way the game is played," Graham said.

. . . .The hypocrisy turns my stomach.

. . . .Good news, son Caleb's truck is finally finished. Now to just arrange the round-trip back to the Upper Peninsula to retrieve it. One thing at a time.
. . . .Correction: New conversation with Dave of Dave's BP -
Me: "Dave, I'm sending Caleb up there to get his truck, it's done right?"
Dave: "Oh yah - it's done, send him up here. . . .but the engine smokes real bad, so I'm going to bring the sales rep in on Tuesday."
Me: "Dave, can he drive the truck?"
Dave: "Oh, yah, but I want him to keep it here until Tuesday so the sales rep can see how bad the engine smokes"
Me: "Dave, he can't do that, he has to work down here, and he has class next Tuesday."
Dave: "OK, then walll yah. Just have him get the truck, but it smokes real bad."

ATTN: There is a volunteer expeditionary militia force forming now to go up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Expect combat conditions. Volunteer at the e-mail address on your left.

. . . Although this morning, finally, somebody is speaking out about former Sen. Pat Buchanan's outright racist tirades, similar in venality to Tom Tancredo's. You'll remember that Buchanan made fun of Judge Sotomayor's learning and mastering the English language on her own while being raised in the Bronx by one parent who spoke Spanish. Probably learned it pretty successfully, since Buchanan was a sitting Senator when he confirmed her to her Federal Court seat.

. . . .Here's one for you, talk about a meeting of the minds! Sean Hannity sat down last night for a probing "in-depth" interview with Rush Limbaugh. Seems Mister Limbaugh says he still wants the President to "fail", and that he (and I'm quoting here) wants "Al-Queada to destroy the country faster before Obama does". As well, he still thinks Sotomayor is a "racist" but if she thinks the right way about abortion, he'll support her nomination.

. . .Long-time Sean Hannity pal, radio host and white supremacy fan, Hal Turner is facing charges for inciting violence against elected officials.

- Traitor: One who betrays one's country, a cause or a trust; especially one's country

- Treason: The offense of committing overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance

-Sedition: Conduct which is directed against a government and which tends towards insurrection, but does not amount to treason.

. . .This is where my problem comes in with the Limbaugh/Hannity/O'Reilly/Savage/Malkin/Coulter crowd:
-Point 1 - They insist on portraying themselves as "outsiders" who speak for the "rest of us", saving us from the "mainstream media". BULLSHIT! Fox News consistently is the ratings leader and commands a much larger audience than the other "news" channels. Limbaugh consistently claims the largest Arbitron ratings. They aren't the little guys, they ARE the mainstream media.
- Point 2 - They insist on portraying themselves as reporters and news people. BULLSHIT! They're not. They're entertainers and media figures with no more qualification to analyze or pontificate and be pundits than you or I. They work for a media congolomerate that includes the Fox Television Network and FX. Their ratings are just as scrutinized by their bosses as any ratings for American Idol, House, Sons of Anarchy or Rescue Me are. They depend on an audience to pull in numbers to pull in advertisers so they can charge more. They don't report the news, THEY ARE THE NEWS!
-Point 3, made eloquently by E.J. Dionne in this morning's Washington Post:

A media environment that tilts to the right is obscuring what President Obama stands for and closing off political options that should be part of the public discussion.

Yes, you read that correctly: If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don't. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.

The power of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis means that Obama is regularly cast as somewhere on the far left end of a truncated political spectrum. He's the guy who nominates a "racist" to the Supreme Court (though Gingrich retreated from the word yesterday), wants to weaken America's defenses against terrorism and is proposing a massive government takeover of the private economy. Steve Forbes, writing for his magazine, recently went so far as to compare Obama's economic policies to those of Juan Peron's Argentina.. . . . .

. . . .He is the duly elected President of the United States of America, elected through Constitutional process. I am a citizen of the United States of America, as are my sons. The country is in crisis, if he fails, we all fail, and we fail our future generations.

. . . .So. . . anyone who lives in the upper Great Lakes want to debate climate change with me right about now? 47 degree overnights in June?

. . . .Still continuing with the series from Wired on improving and upgrading the national electrical grid, still the smartest, cheapest, fastest, most efficient thing we can do on a right now basis to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce our personal energy bills:

Problem Electricity is the ultimate just-in-time commodity, sent off to consumers as soon as it's generated. But solar and wind installations produce power only when the sun is shining or a breeze is blowing. If you could bank that energy when it's abundant and release it later as needed, you'd have a more reliable, more environmentally sound power grid.

Solution Obama's stimulus package includes $2 billion in grants for battery development. For power grids, sodium-sulfur technology is the best bet. It's more efficient and power-dense than zinc-bromide or lead-acid, and in Japan, where NaS batteries are made, enough have been installed to power the equivalent of at least 155,000 homes. Later this year or next, American Electric Power, a major utility serving 11 midwestern states, will install 4 megawatts' worth of NaS cells in Presidio, Texas. That's on top of the 6 megawatts of battery power AEP installed in three other states last year. "We wanted a real thing that really works," says Ali Nourai, AEP's manager of distributed energy resources. "We didn't want to send a technician out every other day to fix some experimental system." Regulatory uncertainties still abound, but utilities across the US plan to bring sodium-sulfur systems online. Soon, more and more cities will come with batteries included.

Other Energy Storage Technologies

Compressed Air Off-peak power forces air into a sealed space (like an abandoned mine or salt dome); when energy is needed, the air is released and burned with natural gas to spin a turbine.

Flywheels Huge, heavy wheels get spun up by a generator. When they decelerate, they spit the power back out, providing an uninterruptible backup energy supply.

Pumped Hydro Water is pushed up an incline to a reservoir. To put electricity back into the grid, the water is allowed to rush back down, driving a set of turbines.

. . . .In other news today: David Carradine was found dead today in his hotel room in Bangkok. He will be missed. I'm always a fan of the cheesy, but David in "Kung Fu" kicked butt. Not on a physical level for me, it was back then that he opened this teenagers's eyes up to different philosophies and different ways of seeing the world, even if it was just a television show. A true Hollywood iconoclast, he was never afraid to march to a different drummer and didn't give a damn what anyone else thought.

. . . I want to give a shout right now for a new book When Bubba Met The Buddha. It's written by Richard "Dixie" Hartwell, which is a pseudonym for one John Lee, who actually is a pretty fantastic guy. It's a quirky novel, well-written. John's novel concerns the adventures of one good Alabama native along the road towards growing up, which most of us men don't seem to even start to do until we're 50. Give it a try, it'll be worth your while, and it'll give you a chuckle or two along the way.

. . . .I'm going to put my plug in here for the folks down at Hawkwind and the Rev Charla at the Blue Star Times. They've been living sustainability down in the mountains of Alabama for a long time, and helping people find healing and personal transformation for over two decades. Charla has a new program up and rolling, with a book, webinars and bridge calls. It's worth your time to check out.
. . .And while I'm at it, of course a shout for Tarwater and Lulu over at the Red Queen in Chattanooga for killer ink.

. . . .I'm still following H.R. 2454 The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 over at Open Congress. It's still in committee at this point.

. . . .There's a lot going on around G.M and Chrysler. Here's the bottom line from up here in Armageddon Central (Michigan). The bottom line - 1/3 of G.M.'s workforce, 14 plants will hit the street and fast, with no jobs in the U.S. economy to go to. Chrysler will close up to half of it's dealerships nationwide by next Tuesday. G.M.'s dealers will have until October to close. Folks, I really, really don't think that you've wrapped your heads around, even begun to comprehend what this is going to mean to the State of Michigan, to the Great Lakes region, to the Nation.

. . . Reader Paul sends along this link here to a video put together by a former G.M. exec that pretty well takes on everything wrong with the government's plan. Which by the way, is one where I completely split with the current administration.

. . . .Tomorrow's main part of the post will be devoted to Ford Motor Company, and all the things they did right in all of this. I worked for them for over 20 years, and they took no Federal money and are surviving. Just due to that, we all owe them some thanks, and need to look pretty closely at buying a Ford Motor Company product for the next vehicle in mine or yours driveway.

. . . .Thank you, thank you Brad for being one of the people who finally understood all of last years post headings that referred to the Black Flag and looking up the H.L. Mencken quote that started it all for me.

. . . .Outta here for today. I may update more throughout the day.
. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they slip through your hands. This rodeo is a one-way ticket, and no one gets out alive. We don't get to dictate the terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched, so it's not about yesterday or tomorrow, it's about right here, right now. This ain't no dress rehearsal. Change yourself, change your own world, and the world around you at large will change.

. . . .Got your back, somewhere out here in the night.

The Desolation Angel
[where: Hell, Michigan 48137]