fayfreethinkers.com

kwlyon wrote:There will be no one solution. There will need to be massive development of multiple technologies in order to obtain sustainability.

DAR
Oh I expect us to appeal to every technology at hand, and all at the same time. Even considering this I think we are in for a major, MAJOR, hit on our energy lifestyle. One the American people have very little clue is coming. They also don't realize how integral our oil use is to so many other parts of our high energy use (see Vegas) fun party.

Currently there is no replacement for our huge desire for (relatively) cheap and energy dense oil. I think the major players are natural gas, coal and uranium for a while. So maybe we're completely screwed for a while. That's good cause I'll be 83 in 2050 and I am hoping it's all pretty smooth until then.

"I've always wondered whether he [Glenn Beck] ever sought the forgiveness of the wife of his rival DJ in Phoenix who he called up on air and humiliated over her recent miscarriage. I'd wager not." --C & L

Darrel wrote:

kwlyon wrote:There will be no one solution. There will need to be massive development of multiple technologies in order to obtain sustainability.

DAR
Oh I expect us to appeal to every technology at hand, and all at the same time. Even considering this I think we are in for a major, MAJOR, hit on our energy lifestyle. One the American people have very little clue is coming. They also don't realize how integral our oil use is to so many other parts of our high energy use (see Vegas) fun party.

Currently there is no replacement for our huge desire for (relatively) cheap and energy dense oil. I think the major players are natural gas, coal and uranium for a while. So maybe we're completely screwed for a while. That's good cause I'll be 83 in 2050 and I am hoping it's all pretty smooth until then.

I agree...for the most part. I would suggest, and this is just my intuition not based on hard numbers but rather informal chats with people in related fields, that we would only need to endure a relatively minor hit on our energy lifestyle if we begin to commit ourselves fully toward development of sustainable energy technology NOW. However this is not likely to happen. The longer we wait to begin this substantial undertaking the greater the hit on our lifestyle...if we wait another 20 years...well, it's never a good idea to begin studying the day before the exam. My guess is we are going to wait just long enough, putting forth a halfass effort, that the process will be VERY painful. But we will make it. So if by "screwed" you mean not going to make it...I disagree...but if by "screwed" you mean raped in the ass...sure...I concur.

Yes, "raped in the ass," that's what I meant.

And this just in:

Obama: Time To Roll Back Tax Breaks For Oil Companies, Use Money To Develop Clean Energy

It's so nice to have an adult in the White House.

"You have billions of us who are rooting for you and we know you are going to come through.
After the last eight years, it's great to have a president who knows what a library is."
-- Paul McCartney, to Obama, at the White House

"So Hillary has the highest approval ratings of any US politician, in the mid-60s.
And then of course there was the "revelation" that White House asked Bill Clinton to talk to Sestak.
And it got me thinking, and eventually smiling.

This power couple is still as strong, as powerful and as relevant as ever. They're both still in position to do
so much for US and the world, and they continue doing it. They have had everything and the kitchen sink
thrown at them, and they both survived, and came out stronger for it. And it's such a sweet feeling."
--seen on bartcop.com

Excerpt from this week's Peak Oil Review [PDF]:

In an obeisance to reality, the EIA now has reduced its forecast for global oil production for 2020 to 92 million b/d from 96 million b/d in last year’s estimate. Give that we are currently producing 86 million b/d the projection says that the annual increase over the next 10 years will be on the order of 600,000 b/d each year or close to flat.

...the US government is now effectively in the peak oil camp by forecasting little to no change in global oil production over the next decade.

Quote of the Week
•
“[EIA’s] forecasts to 2020 are 2-3 mbpd lower than that of traditionally dour Total, the French oil major. And they are below our own forecasts at Douglas-Westwood through 2020. As we are normally considered to be in the peak oil camp, the EIA’s forecast is nothing short of remarkable, and grim.” -- Steven Kopits, director NYC office of Douglas-Westwood

"I was down there a month ago, before most of these talkin' heads were even paying attention to the gulf. A month ago...I was meeting with fishermen down there, standin' in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this could be. And I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar, we talk to these folks because they potentially...have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."

Holy Cow! I want a poster of that picture!

"We wouldn't see $20 billion in a case like this, all you've got to do is look at Exxon,
it would be decades before the legal system would be able to render anything close.
...It's unprecedented to have a leader that says we don't trust you and we want your money now.
To do this in the legal system is almost impossible. You can't go back and find an example of this kind of
leadership yielding this kind of money in any legal setting in America." --Mike Papantonio on the Ed Shultz show.

Evidence Arizona Immigration Law May Be Fatal Mistake for GOP

"If a surge of anti-Republican Hispanic voters destroys the careers of enough politicians who thought that pandering to anti-immigrant fear was good politics, the whole political narrative about immigration reform will change.

Watch for big sections of the Republican establishment to fall all over themselves to make amends to the rising tide of Latino voters, soon after the elections. But in all likelihood it will be very difficult to get the anti-immigrant toothpaste back into the tube.

If it continues to pursue its current course, the Republican Party may find that it loses another ethnic minority the same way it lost African Americans two generations ago. African Americans recall, were a solid part of the Republican base from the Civil War through the early part of the 20th Century. Roosevelt's New Deal began to change that. The civil rights revolution and the Republican "Southern Strategy" completed it. Now 92% to 95% of African Americans vote Democratic. The problem is that you can only get shut out of a couple of minorities and before you know it, you are no longer competitive with the majority of Americans.

Within just a few years minorities will become a majority of the American electorate. And let's remember that Republicans are also having enormous difficulty competing for young white millennial voters that are forming their voting habits at this moment. That may very well mean that the decision to write off Hispanics may turn out to be a fatal error for the future of Republicans as a national party. Hispanic voters could have been a political lifeboat for Republicans. No longer."

--Robert Creamer, long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win

Some journalists have been going after the Rolling Stone writer (Hastings) who wrote a candid article regarding the General leading the war in Afghanistan (McChrystal) which caused Obama to fire the General (technically he "resigned"). Matt Taibbi responds to Lara Logan of CBS:

"Anyone who wants to know why network television news hasn't mattered since the seventies just needs to check out this appearance by Logan. Here's CBS's chief foreign correspondent saying out loud on TV that when the man running a war that's killing thousands of young men and women every year steps on his own dick in front of a journalist, that journalist is supposed to eat the story so as not to embarrass the flag. And the part that really gets me is Logan bitching about how Hastings was dishonest to use human warmth and charm to build up enough of a rapport with his sources that they felt comfortable running their mouths off in front of him....

If I'm hearing Logan correctly, what Hastings is supposed to have done in that situation is interrupt these drunken assholes and say, "Excuse me, fellas, I know we're all having fun and all, but you're saying things that may not be in your best interest! As a reporter, it is my duty to inform you that you may end up looking like insubordinate douche bags in front of two million Rolling Stone readers if you don't shut your mouths this very instant!" I mean, where did Logan go to journalism school - the Burson-Marsteller agency?"

LINK

Lindsey Graham, quite correctly, reading the tea leaves on the Teabaggers:

"Everything I'm doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement's at," Graham said... On four occasions, Graham met with Tea Party groups. The first, in his Senate office, was "very, very contentious," he recalled. During a later meeting, in Charleston, Graham said he challenged them: " 'What do you want to do? You take back your country -- and do what with it?' . . . Everybody went from being kind of hostile to just dead silent."

In a previous conversation, Graham told me: "The problem with the Tea Party, I think it's just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out."

Link

How is it useful for this country use it's vast radio communication system to broadcast the voice of a racist sack of shit like this?

Limbaugh today...

“I don’t know why Michele my belle is not there [at Senator Byrd's funeral], but as has been said by several black civil rights leaders, Obama does not have authentic slave blood, but Michele does. We can only speculate. Maybe she is at a skybox at a baseball or football game, who knows?”

"Limbaugh was trying to take a shot at another deceased Democrat, because picking on the dead is somewhat of Rush specialty, but the difference between Robert Byrd and Rush Limbaugh is that Byrd eventually abandoned the politics of hate, and worked hard as a champion of equality. In 2005 Byrd said of his association with the KKK in the 1940s, “It has emerged throughout my life to haunt and embarrass me and has taught me in a very graphic way what one major mistake can do to one’s life, career, and reputation.” [He also said: "I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times... and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened."]

Sen. Byrd lived the rest of his life embarrassed and shamed by the racism in his past, whereas people like Rush Limbaugh embrace the racism in order to politically divide and as a path to greater financial riches. There was no reason for Limbaugh to talk about slave blood, when discussing the Obamas and the funeral of Robert Byrd. His sole purpose in doing so was to [pedal] the right wing myth that Democrats are more racist than Republicans.

It was also an easy chance for Limbaugh to reinforce the idea that the African-American president and his wife are not white, and thus inferior to himself and his white listenership. Limbaugh’s speculation combined the ugliness of hate politics with racism. When radio hosts start speculating about slave blood they are playing with a dangerous Molotov cocktail, or our nation’s ugly underbelly. Which each mention of slave blood and race, Limbaugh, who is the de facto leader of the GOP is reaffirming the notion of the terrified white racist Republican."

Politicususa

"So tired of the phoney outrage and tantrum against BP (except to the degree, if it is shown, that they have been criminally negligent).

If we want to know who to blame we should look in the mirror.

We are 5% of the world's population and use about 20% - 25% of the oil. Up until recently (months ago) we provided vast taxes subsidies to reward people with huge tax incentives only if they bought the extra heavy gas guzzlers. How stupid is that? And now the roads are choked with these icons to our stupidity.

There are thousands of rigs in the Gulf and they are there, FOR US, to try and squeeze a few more drops of oil out to feed our wastefulness (we have just a tiny 2% of the world's reserves left) so we can live high on the hog and pretend we are the chosen ones for just a little while longer. God forbid we would actually leave a little for the kiddies. The only amazing thing is that this didn't happen sooner."

--Me, posted in this thread on Crooks and Liars.

Media Matters

Limbaugh: "Most of these claims about Muslim contributions to science and math are myths"

Curiously, Limbaugh did give an example.

From the comments:

"Lardbutt, is an uneducated, unenlightened, narcissist that's making millions by further misinforming and flat-out lying to an uneducated and highly uninformed portion of the citzenry that's as stupid as he is and he gives voice to their stupidity . And he is the de facto leader of the Republican party --- what an embarassment! Not only to conservatives -- but to the entire nation."

Here are some of those "myths."

"Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program which funds itself. All Social Security needs to stay 100% funded through the next 50 years is to remove the cap on earnings placed there under Ronald Reagan as a perk for the well-to-do, and raise the rate by one percent." Link

Gene Lyons sums up the real cause of these crazy battles with GW deniers and right-wing nuts in general:

"Facts are infinitely malleable in service of ideology. People who call this "conservatism" are mistaken. It's an updated version of what Orwell feared: a dogma-driven, obscurantist attack upon reason." Climate Gate Burned by Reality

Obama is Keeping People from Finding Jesus??

Speaking on the Gina Loudon radio program this afternoon, Congressional candidate Ed Martin told listeners that "we have to be very, very aware" of policies pursued by Barack Obama and Russ Carnahan that will "take away" the "freedom to be a Christian."

ED MARTIN: One thing I like to say is: America is great, not because of our genetics. We're great because we created a place and space where people can be free. And they can choose Christ, they can choose to be faithful. They can worship, and they find their way to the Lord. And -- or some of them don't. We sure want them all to, but some of them don't.

And part of that freedom -- when you take a government and you impose, and take away all your choices. One of the choices you take away is to find the Lord. And find your savior.

And that's one of the things that's most destructive about the growth of government. It's this taking away that freedom. The freedom -- the ultimate freedom, to find your salvation, to get your salvation. And to find Christ, for me and you.

And I think that's one of the things that we have to be very, very aware of that the Obama Administration and Congressman Carnahan are doing to us.

GINA LOUDON: Very well said.

See here.

"Laura Bush coming out for gay marriage! I guess if ur married to W
for 30 yrs u know u don't have to be gay to have sex with an asshole."
-- Bill Maher, tweeting

Maddow gives O'Reilly a smack down:

"Mr. O'Reilly, you and Fox get great ratings," she said. "It is so awesome how great your ratings are. You have very big ratings this year."

Maddow then listed a variety of entertainment programs — from "Deadliest Catch" to "The Closer" to "WWE Wrestling" to "Spongebob" and "Hannah Montana" — that beat both her show and O'Reilly's show, and said that facts are more important than TV ratings:

They are more watched than "The O'Reilly Factor," my lord -- which is totally immaterial to the discussion at hand, because when you got all kicked your network's butt, and madam on me, you weren't really trying to tout your network's ratings. You were trying to take the attention off me saying that your network, FOX News, continually crusades on flagrantly bogus stories designed to make white Americans fear black Americans, which FOX News most certainly does for a political purpose even if it upends the lives of individuals like Shirley Sherrod, even as it frays the fabric of the nation, and even as it makes the American Dream more of a dream and less of a promise.

You can insult us all you want about television ratings, Mr. O'Reilly, and you'll be right that yours are bigger for now and maybe forever. You are the undisputed champion. But even if no one watches us at all, except for my mom and my girlfriend and people who forgot to turn off the TV after Keith, you are still wrong on what really matters and that would be the facts, your highness."

Huff Po