the all-brawndo diet

i have recently switched my newswire of choice from the associated press to reuters. why?

1) reuters is a british, rather than american, news wire service. while i feel kinda guilty having this knee-jerk reaction against american wire services, the fact is that a foreign publication has a lot of easier of a time getting away with saying things about easily-offended bigoted loudmouths from rosie o'donnell to pat robertson.
2) MURDOCH ALERT! rupert murdoch has recently been appointed to its board of directors. i've mentioned my animosity towards him in previous posts, and i don't think it's hyperbole to suggest that he could be the most dangerous man in the western world.
3) fabrication of false media narratives. while this is purely anecdotal speculation, the ap seemed to be just as in love with reporting on hillary clinton's dead-on-arrival campaign, long after it was clear that she was statistically eliminated. articles with headlines like "can she still win?" rather than "she can't still win" are deceptive.
4) i see way too many stories near the top of the wire like this one:

QUINTON, Va. - A Virginia man lost about 80 pounds in six months by eating nearly every meal at McDonald's. Not Big Macs, french fries and chocolate shakes. Mostly salads, wraps and apple dippers without the caramel sauce.

Chris Coleson tipped the scales at 278 pounds in December. The 5-foot-8 Coleson now weighs 199 pounds and his waist size has dropped from 50 to 36.

The 42-year-old businessman from Quinton says he chose McDonald's because it's convenient.

among the things not mentioned in the article: exercise plans, other pre-existing health conditions, or anything else to dissuade the reader from thinking that this guy could be mcdonalds' answer to subway spokesdouche jared fogel. in fact, this seems to me to have a striking parallel with television news' tendency to air corporate-made pr puff pieces disguised as news.

i may be reading too much into some cutesy bullshit story, but dammit, there's real news to be reported.

Score One for the Cryptkeeper

Dick Cheney has apparently won the political staring/pissing contest to keep every single thing he's ever done for the past eight years a secret.

Some of the choicest fatalistic cuts:

“He has managed to stonewall everyone,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do.”

Sweet.

Waxman said that despite Cheney’s turning this administration into “one of the most secretive in history,” there’s not much he or anyone else can do because the administration has only a few more months left in office.

Awesome.

“The vice president is sort of a weird duck in the sense that you do have some duties that are executive and some [that] are legislative,” said Cheney. “In terms of accountability, I’m accountable to [President George W. Bush].”

And this, my very favorite:

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, who has battled with OVP to release more information, thinks [this fucking bullshit will end when Cheney leaves office].

“Vice President Cheney won the battles over non-disclosure, but I believe he has lost the war,” said Aftergood. “His position has become an object of public ridicule.”

Here's my question - How can this not piss you off? Like no. Seriously. That's not meant to be rhetorical.

How can you look at that and just shrug your shoulders? Are there people in this country who legitimately believe that the VICE FUCKING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED GODDAMN STATES OF SHITPISSWHORESTAIN AMERICA should be allowed to conduct literally all of his business in a toxic airborne event* of complete secrecy?

Forgive me, but I believe all these people should be herded up and sent to Mexico. We'll trade them for people who actually give a shit about having the chance to live in this country and vote and give a flying fuck about things that don't happen outside the pages of In Style or Sports Illustrated.

Yeah. I think that's all I've got.

*credit Don DeLillo

Nonpolitical Interludes: Band of Horses Made a Record

Wannabe Indie Seattle Sentimentalists Make Pseudo-Corporate Craprock for Girls

I didn’t exactly set out for the beach looking for my next record to review. I feel my music copy is what you'd call at least up to snuff. However, the event I was attended was sponsored by a local radio station (94.9), and they were giving away free swag. I ended up with a CD. Since one of the girls had already taken Flogging Molly, I went with the band who had the best album art – Band of Horses.

It bears noting now that I haven’t listened to the radio for something like seven years. I had no idea who Band of Horses were, to be honest. I knew they were signed to Sup Pop, which told me they were likely from Seattle or were cutting their teeth there. Basically what I’m saying is that when I picked out the CD, I had no idea what I was getting. The girl who took the Flogging Molly told me, “I like those guys, but they’re kind of too sad for me.”

When I put the CD (Cease to Begin) in my car stereo on the way home, my initial response could be best summed up with the word, “eh.”

I mean, it’s cool that they like to make pretty pop indie music with a country tinge, I guess. Being a country boy, myself, I must admit songs like "The General Specific," "Window Blues" and "Marry Song" all tugged at my hickstrings, but the rest of the record is so freaking bland, it's almost too ambivalent to exist. The whole record is kind of like a hot chick who isn’t really annoying per se, but she’s just kind of totally devoid of personality. You don’t hate being around her because hey, she’s kinda hot. However, you’d never date her because she’s boring as hell.

And that’s how I felt about Cease to Begin. Upon my first listen, approximately three songs in, I turned to my buddy in the passenger seat and told him, “I bet this is the kind of music chicks listen to when they’re trying to be deep.”

Say what you want about me, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t wrong.

The CD lived in my car for a day or two that weekend until I got to work on Monday. It was at this point that I truly began to understand the wonder of Band of Horses. Their record was exactly the unique blend of barely-there elevator music I needed to help me zone out and finish all my marketing copy. The songs are droning, ambient, guitar-driven pop constructions that lack the depth of Blonde Redhead or the grandiosity of M83. They never go anywhere, and with the exception of the three aforementioned tracks, all the songs pretty much sound the same.

That’s not to say songs like "Ode to LRC," "Is There a Ghost," "No One’s Gonna Love You," and "Detlef Schrempf" don’t all get stuck in my head like gangbusters. They totally do. Again, to go back to the simile, you might remember a pretty girl’s face. That doesn’t mean you’re actually interested. In much the same way, the songs on this record get stuck in my head, but that doesn’t make Cease to Exist intriguing in the slightest.

Still, I found myself singing these songs in the shower. I found myself defending the record as “not so bad” to my roommates. I asked the high school kid I’m mentoring if he’d heard of the band, and he told me they were pretty good. This kid knows about Weezy Mixtapes, so I respect his musical opinions pretty solidly. I started having this existential quarter-life crisis. Was I getting old and lame and selling out by liking this pansy record? Or was I getting old and lame and out of touch by not like this girly rock trash?

I received my answer a week later. I spent my evening hanging out with some friends, drinking and dancing, and just generally being young in a land of crumbling economy, failing war and whispering hope. After last call and the like, I was driving a couple of sorority girls I’d recently met back to their place. So I put on Cease to Begin. Having listened to the record on basic repeat for a week at work, I knew many of the words and sang along lightly and ever so sensitively.

One of the girls proceeded to melt into me as I drove her home. Her friend in the backseat was fairly quiet, as I believe she sensed a moment was occurring. However, as I parked the car and we exited to head up to their room for a nightcap, she asked me, “Hey who was that band you were playing in the car?”

I replied, “Oh that was Band of Horses. Why do you ask?”

“I kind of liked it.”

Checkmate.

Political Theatre - Part 2 - Nashville

Legendary american auteur Robert Altman's (M.A.S.H., McCabe and Miller) 1975 epic 'Nashville' is ostensibly a meditation on the country music star making machinery. Strictly on that plane it is a level eyed stare at the ugliness, the moral and physical exhaustion that exists behind the curtain of the Grand Ole Opry and on the fringes of the scene; in the bars filled with horny men looking for T&A and among the star struck, star wannabes trying to get backstage to deliver demo tapes to their favourite singers. But 'Nashville' is no simple musical picture. It is at once an examination of patriotism and advertising(how the two can seamlessly meld in politics and in commerce), the idea of America - the dream, the ideal, and finally the more problematic reality and the corruption and misuse of individuals by the political and showbiz machine. If that is not enough it also deals with the propagation of the mythical America by naive foreign journalists, the concept of celebrity political endorsements and finally the ultimate Altman theme - that of the sheer ugliness of people in modern society.

Remember the babble of voices that fill the soundtrack in M.A.S.H., coming at your from characters both off and on screen in a perfect simulacrum of the crosstalk of everyday life. Similar to the famous overlapping voices technique that Altman was known for, this movie features a cacophony of characters from different professions, classes and functions. Without a fixed focus the camera roves through their lives and rummages through their ambitions, desires and lusts and shows us the compromises they make to achieve them. As the movie plays out very few characters escape the director's critical eye and our condemnation. The great thing is that these two things are separate - no special effort is made to induce our judgement as in traditional films with ominous music or reaction shots of other characters. The ugliness of the characters simply stands out and we recognise these things, partly because of similar characters we may have observed in life or even on the news.

The ensemble cast (another Altman trademark that helps him achieve that babble effect described earlier) makes it difficult to describe the plot and the place in it of the characters, but I will make an effort - with the caveat that my list is far from comprehensive and to get the full effect one has to watch the film. I mention less than 1/10th of the characters that make up the cast. We have a country music elder played by a gloriously mutton chopped Robert Arkin, his shrill wife and good natured son, who comprise a country music first family of sorts. Nurturing gubernatorial ambitions of his own he agrees to the request of a slimy political operative(are there any other types of poitical operatives!) to play a concert for the enigmatic Replacement Party Candidate. This fictional candidate is represented only by a slogan spewing, painted, party van, that over the course of the movie becomes a character in its own right, given a voice alongside the people who inhabit the screen. The megaphone voiced slogans, typical of quasi successful third party candidacies including Ross Perot's, contain a mixture of common sense ideas and complete gobbledygook, like - "Does Christmas smell of oranges to you?". That van represents modern political advertising in all its campy glory.

Then there is the most repulsive and hence most interesting character of the whole cast, a sharply drawn caricature of an obnoxious BBC journalist called Opal, played by a pregnant Geraldine Chaplin, who tries to define America and her people in terms of laughably high flown literary language and what are essentially racist terms. She views people only through symbolic terms and cannot engage with them as human beings and treats everyone around her like dirt. Her only driving aim is her personal ambition. Her character is probably the vilest of the lot and appears to be born of Altman's personal rage against a profession that I am surmising had treated him shoddily.

In one symbolic scene she walks through an empty lot filled with school buses that invoke the busing controversies of the civil rights era. Ten years too late to the scene, she tries to conjure up meaning from the overwhelming yellowness of the whole scene without a single child in sight using pathetic sentences like - "Yellow, the colour of cowardice." or "the yellow menace". Her attitude towards Americans in the South is that they are a bunch of yokels - the joke of course is that they are simple to a certain extent but not in any way that her sententious journalistic sentences can grasp. She can only view blacks and whites through the racial prism gained through reading books and newspapers and refuses to acknowledge the complexity of human and race relations in the south. Altman's own handling of race in the film is a lot more subtle and some might say curious. The only outright racist statement in the whole movie is made by a drunk black man who calls a successful black country singer an Oreo cookie. The only other obviously racist characters in the film is the journalist who talks of blacks in basic noble savage terms and seems to be as much of a unrefined aristocratic classist as she is a racist - In one scene she tells an ingratiating driver/manager that she does not to gossip with servants. In one scene the Robert Arkin country singer elder character offers the black country singer a slice of watermelon at a Nascar event and his wife sho's him away and offers some other package of food. Was that a sign of his latent racism? You have to decide that and the director is not gonna offer any help either way.

The other notable characters include two wannabe stars - one, a talentless waitress trying to trade in her looks and sensuality for a career and the other, a wife who flits through the movie trying to get her demo heard while evading her angry husband. The waitress, in a depressing and humiliating scene, is coerced at a fund raising party by the machinating political operative to strip for a room full of lecherous men, who, she realises too late, don't care for her flat voice. Altman seems to be suggesting that as nauseating as showbiz might be, with its affectations of sincerity and its rampant commercialism(the harmonising duo reading and singing syrupy adverts for candy in between Opry performances shows us the music - commerce nexus and foreshadows today's clear channel mandated radio monotony) - it is but a slow witted cousin to the corrupt political machine. Given free reign, the political apparatus will simply subsume the entertainment business to its purpose and strip the bit players of what little integrity they possess. Given the flak Altman took for M.A.S.H. - a movie set in the Korean war but made in the spirit of anti war defiance during the Vietnam era one can see the genesis of this angst.

This point is driven home by the story of the returning female star Barbara Jean played by a divine Barbara Baxley. She collapses at the start of the film due to the exhaustion from the grind of the music biz and is hospitalised. In one of the most poignant and simultaneously hilarious scenes in the film she returns to the stage not completely recovered, and becomes silly(I don't know how else to describe the gentle way in which she looses her marbles) in front of the audience, telling them never ending 'aw shucks' stories from her youth that are otherwise typical of the country music circuit. This scene shows Altman's genius for evincing co - mingled emotions from the audience - nothing in life is a straight laugh or cry and his scenes have that same ability to evoke mixed, often contradictory, reactions from us.

We feel sorry for Barbara Jean and are touched by her emotionally naked fragility but also relish the breakdown of her wholesome showbiz personality because of what it reveals to us about the presentation of public figures. Her patter becomes a parody of all the feel good personal stories that entertainers and politicians tell us to ingratiate themselves in our hearts. Imagine if you will, John McCain or Barack Obama going ditsy in a pubic appearance; McCain losing his grip on his prison camp survivor persona and starting to rail emotionally against the forces stacked against him or Obama stopping in the middle of his hope suffocated racial harmonising to tell us that everything is gone to shit and he doesn't have a clue what to do about it. Wouldn't that be something, straight talk for once.

The audience shows the singer no mercy despite her recent hospitalization and calls for blood. In case you were wondering, Altman is giving you the people a big middle finger there, even you cannot escape the 360 degree spread of his withering critique. Her breakdown forces her manager/husband to accept that same Slimy Political Operative's offer of a spot on a pre rally concert the next day . Now the husband wants no part of political sloganeering and insists that the stage be kept bereft of any Replacement Party material. Any guesses as to how badly he is duped? Again, we have reinforced the point that the very nature of the political business extracts messy individualism from the performer and candidate and makes him/her a tool of the candidate's expediencies. Altman's choice to never show us the actual candidate also plays a role in the sense we get of depersonalisation in politics. I ll just throw this fact in here and see if it resounds with the context - James Brown endorsed Nixon in 69. That's right, the godfather, Mr "I am black and I am proud" backed Tricky Dick. What the fuck was he thinking? Considering the extent to which the sorry celebrity endorsement game has devolved to, one can't help but be astonished at Altman's foresight in warning us not to be swayed by some singer's or actor's limp social commitment.

The last scenes of movie are composed of footage of the concert. What follows is a terrifying scene in which Altman both evokes the then still relevant spectre of political assassination - King, X, the Kennedys - and presciently predicts the age of pop culture assassinations - Lennon, Reagan (John Hinckley Jr and the Jodie Foster connection). The bittersweet denouement has the aforementioned runaway wife/wannabe star (Barbara Harris) taking the mic and giving a soulful, frayed rendition of a song called "It don't Worry Me" while backed by a black choir. The whole thing is handled expertly, especially in some crowd shots with a number of children in it. It is shot in a documentary style reminiscent of Woodstock or of D.A. Pennebaker's pioneering roc doc - Monterrey Pop. When these scenes, seemingly transposed from a more hopeful counterculture era, are seen in the context of the political mire of post Watergate, post Vietnam America, the irony is startling. One cannot help but smile and agree when Barbara Harris suddenly says mid song - "We got to be peaceful y'all, otherwise when we die we 'll just have plastic fly swatters with red dots on em in our graves". There you have it, make what you will of it; but you won't forget it. Plastic fly swatters and orange tasting Christmases in a country that wasn't that all that different from the confusion of the present day.

3 reasons why Obama probably isn't the Antichrist

Hello, everybody. Let me introduce myself. I’m Blood Zirconia and I went to college with Rupert and Debbie. The other day I was talking to my dad and he told me about a new Obama smear email that one of his coworkers received. It was so hilariously asinine that I had to write something about it, and Rupert was kind enough to send me an invite.
Basically, the gist of the email was "Did you know that the book of Revelations says that the Antichrist will be a Muslim in his 40s?" Seriously.

In response, I present for your enjoyment the "How Sensitive Is Your Horseshit Detector?" Quiz:

Question 1: Is Barack Obama a Muslim or a Christian?
A) He’s a Muslim.
B) He’s a Christian and his Christian reverend has been on television constantly for the past several months so all I would have to do to know he’s a Christian is turn on the news once a month or so.

Question 2: Did Islam exist when the book of Revelations was written?
A) What’s an Islam? I thought we were talking about Muslims.
B) Christianity predates Islam by hundreds of years so the author or authors of Revelations would have no idea what a Muslim was or that they would ever exist.

Question 3: Why would a person’s status as the Antichrist be conditional upon his age? Would he suddenly become the Antichrist at the stroke of midnight on his 40th birthday? Would he cease to be the Antichrist when he turned 50?
A) You’re right, that makes no fucking sense.
B) LA LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA!!!

Now go to the bottom of the post and turn your computer upside-down to check your answers. If you got one to three correct answers, congratulations, you have stronger critical thinking skills than the average border collie. If you scored zero correct answers, well, you deserve every joke Dick Cheney cracks about your home state.

mccain has enron, petroleum overspeculation ties

keith olbermann strikes again.

long story short, this lady who was responsible for deregulating oil trading and contributing to the overspeculation portion of the commodities bubble, is married to this man, who's one of mccain's top economic advisors, and a possible running mate candidate.

it goes deeper than that, but i'll let keith hit you with it.

let's hope the rest of the talking heads don't find out about this and think it's good news to report on, or mccain's going to be lynched by an angry mob in a matter of weeks.

q: why did we destroy a 6,000-year-old society?

a: for no-bid contracts to steal their previously nationalized oil, idiot.

exxonmobil, bp, and others are coming back to iraq after saddam hussein nationalized their petroleum industry in the 70s. despite large competition from major firms from other countries such as russia and india, most of the benefits are going to america and britain. surprise surprise.

The first oil contracts for the majors in Iraq are exceptional for the oil industry.

They include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today’s prices: the ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.

“These are not actually service contracts,” Ms. Benali said. “They were designed to circumvent the legislative stalemate” and bring Western companies with experience managing large projects into Iraq before the passage of the oil law.

does that mean that gas will get any cheaper? not bloody likely. estimates suggest that "repair work on existing fields could bring Iraq’s output up to roughly four million barrels per day within several years. After new fields are tapped, Iraq is expected to reach a plateau of about six million barrels per day."

to give a sense of perspective, supply has been flat at 85 million barrels/day or so since 2005, as i mentioned in a previous post. if these no-bid contracts wind up running efficiently (if history is any indicator, they won't), this will supply us with, at best, a 7% increase in supply, while demand will continue to spike. and it won't even happen for years.

i guess we can take the "we didn't go to war for oil" argument off of life support now. it's just too bad that this won't even help gas prices at all.

Notes from the Right-Wing: Operation Malicious Mortgage

I'm Joeverkill, and these are some Notes from the Right-Wing.

Finally, someone is being held responsible for all the mortgage buttfudgery that's been going on. From the AP:

More than 400 real estate industry players have been indicted since March — including dozens over the last two days — in a Justice Department crackdown on incidents of mortgage fraud nationwide that have contributed to the country's housing crisis.
The FBI put the losses to homeowners and other borrowers who were victims in the schemes at over $1 billion...
Banks reported nearly 53,000 cases of suspected mortgage fraud last year, up from more than 37,000 a year earlier and about 10 times the level of reports in 2001 and 2002, according to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
The most common type of mortgage fraud was misstatement of income or assets, followed by forged documents, inflated appraisals and misrepresentation of a buyer's intent to occupy a property as a primary residence.

Both the borrowers and lenders are at fault here. The borrowers are already being punished... sort of. A lot of them have been foreclosed upon and/or have had to declare bankruptcy. I don't want to get off on a tangential tirade here, but I don't think that's punishment enough. Bankruptcy doesn't absolve student loan debt, but it allows people who committed mortgage fraud to get a free walk? Ridiculous. It's free money to the liars and the freeloaders, and the honest folk pay for it.

In any case, it's good that the lenders are being punished also. They have already suffered an economic hit because of the subprime crisis, but now they shall suffer legal repercussions as well. These a-holes are the ones responsible for higher rents, plummeting real estate values, and skyrocketing mortgage insurance rates. It's nice to see 'em held accountable for their indiscretions.

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

fiscal self-reliance will get you nowhere

obama has decided not to use public funds in the general election.

"It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections," Obama said in the video message.

"But the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken and we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system," he said.

moral high ground is all well and good, and i don't know enough about the public campaign financing system to really have a clear grasp on what's going on, but this sounds to me like he's stretching a little bit. i already gave the government my money for this, why not use it?

"The true test of a candidate for president is whether he will stand on principle and keep his word to the American people. Barack Obama has failed that test today, and his reversal of his promise to participate in the public finance system undermines his call for a new type of politics," she said.

i mean, ok, mccain. first of all, you flip-flop more than barack obama (let alone john kerry). second of all, obama's the first presidential candidate to refuse these funds since they were instituted. by definition, that makes this a new kind of politics.

it's like arguing with your grandpa about how the krauts aren't actually bad people. he's just too old and out of touch to get it.

The Truth (about the truth)

The truth sounds a whole lot awesomer when it's delivered by an insanely radiant angel of the news.



She's gorgeous, obviously. However, I'd also like to point out that Lara Logan isn't on the Daily Show for the normal reasons most people go on TV to talk shit. She has no book to sell. She has no TV news special or movie to pimp. As far as I can tell, she's on the Daily Show for two reasons.

1) to let the men who fall in the target demographic of the Daily Show know that an insanely beautiful and intelligent woman does the international news on CBS. (I now know where I would get my TV news if I were to actually watch TV news)

2) To say her piece, much of which is invaluably necessary and insightful, not to mention nearly impossibly well-informed.

I think I'm in love.

internetz pwn american covert ops

has everybody heard of wikileaks before? if you haven't, you will again very soon. as the name would indicate, it's a public wiki for the exposure of secret documents from just about everyone, from scientologists to governments. naturally, they've been in trouble before, and were nearly shut down by the man.

These brave geeks have apparently stumbled upon a particularly good one that could get some powerful people into a lot of trouble. an analysis on the site entitled 'how to train death squads from san salvador to iraq' is not just hyperbole - this is a us government document teaching extremely sketchy techniques for suppressing popular insurgency in the face of an unpopular but america-supported regime.

The manual directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and (under varying circumstances) the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates employing terrorists or prosecuting individuals for terrorism who are not terrorists, running false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it repeatedly advocates the use of subterfuge and "psychological operations" (propaganda) to make these and other "population & resource control" measures more palatable.

much of this is not surprising to me, and strikes me as the same old covert nonsense that helped us win the cold war and unseat too-big-for-their-britches petty dictators from noriega to hussein. nothing mindblowing involving aliens, 9/11 conspiracies, or the bavarian illuminati, but interesting stuff nonetheless. here's one part of the actual document that struck me as particularly damning:

Rights on the legality of detention or imprisonment of personnel (for example, habeas corpus) may be temporarily suspended. This measure must be taken as a last resort, since it may provide the insurgents with an effective propaganda theme. PRC [Population & Resources Control] measures can also include curfews or blackouts, travel restrictions, and restricted residential areas such as protected villages or resettlement areas. Registration and pass systems and control of sensitive items (resources control) and critical supplies such as weapons, food, and fuel are other PRC measures. Checkpoints, searches, roadblocks; surveillance, censorship, and press control; and restriction of activity that applies to selected groups (labor unions, political groups and the like) are further PRC measures.

the first half of the paragraph is nothing even the casual observer of the iraq war would not be aware of. the second half of the paragraph is suprisingly frank in its suppression of populist movements, freedom of the press, and all that other stuff that we supposedly love so damn much in this country. it's no wonder the western-friendly shah of iran fell to the mobs of angry young religious nuts. call it idealism, but how does a country export democracy by suppressing the will of the people?

i guess empires and republics don't really mix.

Abu - Dhabi car free city example of future sustainable development

NY times reports of the ground breaking of Masdar city(literally - 'the source'), Abu Dhabi's own carless, sustainable mini-city fuelled by solar power and new technologies. That is a rendering of a projected aerial view above. The design for this project was provided by Forster+Partners - a London firm specializing in environmentally conscious architecture and urban planning.

Seems that among the 7 emirates of the UAE, Abu Dhabi takes the 'land of the future' mantle very seriously. They have already started constructing a 200 million dollar Guggenheim and feature some of the foremost architectural wonders of the post modern world including a Zaha Hadid bridge that is currently being built. They seem to instinctively understand that being a cultural hub alone will not cut it in the future and have made the leap into sustainable development by funding this little annex/environmental oasis. The real news in all this hype is that a old energy behemoth like Abu Dhabi is investing in a post fossil fuel world in a big way. They understand that this will give them not only a prestigious standing in the current carbon conscious media climate; note their website for the developement that is literally screaming for accolades and also the fact that the city has already won awards for its design, even before a single brick has been laid. They realise that developments like this could also save them from a slow internal decline when fossil fuels run out or from environmental calamity even before that.

The Abu Dhabi government has always been one for planning ahead. It is no surprise that their sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is currently valued at the 650 - 850 billion dollar range - one of the wealthiest in the world. Back in the seventies they made the decision to use their oil wealth to build up resources for the future. This is similar to the Scandinavians as random retard mentioned in his older post about North Sea oil.

Perhaps they also learnt from some of the urban problems the old city (relatively speaking compared to Masdar) currently faces because population and traffic growth has outstripped the city envisioned by her planners. Despite being one of the best planned cities of the 70s their wiki page lists traffic congestion, a shortage of car parking spaces, and overcrowding among their current woes. The new city will have easy public transport access(always within 200 metres according to the architect's site), zero carbon emissions within city limits and zero waste, sustainable materials, food and water among other amenities and programs.

Even the construction of the multi phase project has been envisioned in such a way as to be energy renewable. The first part is a 40 - 60 megawatt solar power plant to be built by Conergy of Germany which will then supply power for all subsequent construction work.The Masdar city wiki(which typically has more facts and technical data than the building firm's description) describes the various steps that will be taken over the course of the construction to maintain energy and water renewability. It sounds pretty impressive to me. The entire project has the air of atonement to it -one of the world's largest producers of fossil fuels making up for the damage it has caused - and I say that in the most respectful way. Now if only the largest consumer of fossil fuels would match this effort. Not that they are standing still either. MIT is assisting in setting up a university at the city that will do R&D and train people in future alternative energy and sustainability efforts.

Notes from the Right-Wing: Most Quotable President Ever

I'm Joeverkill, and I know I haven't posted in a bit, so I figured I'd throw a fun link out there that you guys might not be aware of.

George W. Bush's WikiQuote page.

It's quite glorious. It's even funnier if you keep in mind that this man was (and until the end of his term, will continue to be) the leader of the free world. The voters elected the guy to two terms. It's mind-boggling.

Anyway, here are a few of my own personal favorites.

P.S. No more public scatology.

One of the great things about books is, sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.

We ought to make the pie higher.

It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it.

Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness.

They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program.

We'll be a great country where the fabrics are made up of groups and loving centers.

It's amazing I won. I was running against peace and prosperity and incumbency. June 14, 2001, to Göran Persson, unaware he was still on live TV

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them.

A submarine could take this place out. (While surveying the Arkansas River by the Clinton Presidential Center)

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.

I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome.

"As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself — not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the Colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, Colonel." (After visiting with wounded amputee veterans from the Amputee Care Center of Brooke Army Medical Center)

Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.


I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

Dear Mr. President

George W. Bush, you are motherfucking retarded.


To synopsise:

Mr. Bush realizes oil is expensive. Finally. As opposed to February:



Now that he has finally heard, his solution is for us to go drilling for more oil domestically. Even though our refineries are already at max capacity.

Is it just me, or is anyone else tired of the President Black Gold telling us that the solution for our dependence on oil is to just pump more of it so we can continue using it?

Does George W. Bush realize oil is a nonrenewable resource? Is it possible he's become confused and thinks renewable and nonrenewable are the same thing, much like flammable and inflammable?

This quote, from Harry Reid:

"The math is simple: America has just three percent of the world's oil reserves, but Americans use a quarter of its oil."

That's all well and good, sir. But there's only one problem. Our President is far too mentally impaired to do word problems.

This second quote, from a friend of mine after reading this story, aptly sums up the matter.

"thankfully nobody listens to Bush anymore"

Indeed.

obama talks policy with wall street journal; mccain loses his wallet

ok, so all of y'all obama haters who think he's soft on policy or doesn't have any prescriptions or is too god damned radical can shut up.

dude gave a lengthy interview with the wall street journal about his economic policies.

while he's been getting the typical anti-left attacks of "socialist" and "liberal" and so forth, it's clear that this is a man who understands the power of the free market, and how it can radically transform society.

That's why I say that the combination of globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers. I would add an anti-union climate to that list. But all weakens the position of workers, particularly blue-collar workers, in the economy, and some of it is just historical. You know after World War II, we were in this unique position where Europe was decimated, Japan was decimated. China was off the grid because of Mao. And so we didn't have a lot of competition out there, and now other countries are rising and automation has supplanted a lot of work that used to be done by middle-class workers.

We have drastically increased productivity since 1995, and there was the theory that if you increase productivity enough some of these problems of living standards would solve themselves. But what we've seen is rising productivity, rising corporate profits but flat-lining or even declining wages and incomes for the average family.

What that says is that it's going to be important for us to pay attention to not only growing the pie, which is always critical, but also some attention to how it is sliced. I do not believe that those two things -- fair distribution and robust economic growth -- are mutually exclusive.


meanwhile, in out-of-touch land:

McCain's view is that government's hand still weighs too heavily. 'Small businesses are what make the American economy run," he told business leaders recently. "The federal government shouldn't make your work any harder."

The centerpiece of McCain's economic plan is cutting taxes and government spending. He wants to shave the corporate income tax, eliminate the alternative minimum tax for middle-class taxpayers, and reduce the estate tax. He promises to veto needless government spending. And he says he'll balance the budget without "smoke or mirrors."

reduce the estate tax, huh? yeah, let's keep clipping off meritocratic regulations. why should children of rich people ever have to work? paris hilton is clearly contributing more to society this way, by being a superficial alcoholic socialite.

And I Said... Good Day!

The Obama Bounce has currently shifted Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida blue. It's still early....but come on, the man's got game! By the way, if you're like me and are a political nerd that checks polling stats almost as often as you check your email please drop by FiveThirtyEight. This Pollstar was nearly spot on in every contest during the primary season. There is something to be said for that.

Git ur woar ahn

seriously, we're not THAT crazy...

...just able to read the writing on the wall. you can argue with us when we say that 'peak oil' is here. we're not going to stop you...just know that some smart people agree with us.

long-time oil magnate boone pickens has called it - world crude oil production has peaked, and gas is only going to get more expensive from here.

Pickens, who announced a $2 billion investment in wind energy earlier this year, told lawmakers during a hearing on renewable electricity that he expected "the price of oil will go up further." Without alternatives, the cost of foreign oil will drain the United States of more resources, he said.

"In 10 years, we will have exported close to $10 trillion out of the country if we continue on the same basis we're going now. It is the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind," he said.

Pickens downplayed the role that speculative trading and institutional investors -- forces some see behind the high oil prices -- have had in the price trend.

just a couple years ago, this was a theory reserved for the cranks. now, a guy who's been making his money off of oil since ike was in office has decided to pull out of the business completely, move to alternative energies, and is proclaiming it dead.

the signs are everywhere. production has hit a plateau of 85 million barrels a day since 2005. the saudis are supposedly considering loosening up some extra supplies, but nobody else has said a damn thing about it. basic economics suggest that a tenfold price increase over the last decade would bring people out of the woodwork to exploit these high prices, and turn the volume of their pumps up to 11, if this over-speculation theory were true. hugo chavez would be having an oilgasm right about now. instead, he's using turning this limited supply into political clout to make the World's Greatest Nation quake in its boots, and all the powerful nations are getting together to figure out how to weed out the speculators (they won't).

more importantly: oil is fucking FINITE. it had to happen sometime.

call me an alarmist. i'm over it, because i'm probably right. i suggest you, loyal reader, do the following as soon as possible:

-throw away your suv.
-start walking again.
-get out of the burbs and move to an urban center before everyone else beats you to the punch.
-figure out where your closest mass transit stop is.
-learn to get by without plastic.
-dedicate yourself to alternative energy research.

just be prepared, because it's only going to get weirder here in the united states of driving, and more quickly than you think.

adventures in political email: part 4

part of the reason i haven't blogged much lately is because i've been having a lot of back-and-forth with aforementioned conservative douchebag. it got to be pretty respectful, and i was ready to agree to disagree, until he dropped the following pro-life madness:

Next to the unseen carnage of millions of innocent, unborn lives dismembered and suctioned away in this country alone, the American slave trade, the holocaust, and least of all the war in Iraq pale in comparison. Lincoln said that the civil war might have to go on until every drop of slave blood was lost by American soldiers. If every lost life required retribution, more people would die than the cumulative loss of life in every American war that has ever been fought.

my response:

"That's insane. I'm done."

i mean, i like to be open-minded and hear everyone's point of view. i think i do a damn good job at that, but jesus christ. this guy sums up the old aphorism of 'conservatives are only pro-life until the life is out of the womb', or however it's said.

i'll be the first to tell you that i'm indecisive about the whole moral issue of abortion, but god damn, some people really ARE crazy enough to blow abortion clinics up.

mexico gives you cheap gas (besides from burritos)

i saw a news article on top of the associated press that hit a little bit close to home. san diegans are starting to cross the border for $2.50/gal gas.

"I used to buy exclusively in the U.S. before gas started really going up," said Patrick Garcia, a drama teacher at an elementary school in San Diego who lives in Tijuana. "Since then, I've been buying all my gas in Tijuana."

The lower prices mean a U.S. motorist could save almost $54 filling up a two-year-old Ford F150 pickup with a 26-gallon fuel tank in Mexico.

i live in the northern suburbs, so it's a little too far for me, but i'm impressed at this dedication to cheap gas. the us/mexico border crossing takes FOREVER, to the point that i hate going to tj for just a day of cheap beer and tacos.