Energy And Oil

I just want to write here to re-hash something I've mentioned a few times before: our country (and the modern world) has to do something about our finite energy supply (coal, which is the biggest source of energy for our power plants, is due to run out in 95 or so years, and oil is due to run out much sooner). Remember, almost no one lives off the land, or even near a farm, anymore. The way we get our food is from refrigerated trucks and trains that depend on our energy supply. If a substitute for gasoline (that is, a way to power vehicles that is about as efficient and costly as gasoline) isn't devised, most of the world's people will starve, and if we come up with or implement a substitute for our vehicles a year or even a few months or weeks too late, it will almost certainly lead to widespread destruction and havoc and wreak a terrible disaster on the economy (because, again, a large portion of the people will end up without any food).

The keys to solving these problems are, in my opinion, (1) nuclear power plants and (2) putting about as many non-gasoline cars on our roads and highways as we have gasoline-powered cars currently.

-Why can't we replace cars with pedestrianism and mass transit? Why can't we just become more fuel-efficient? Nobody lives near a farm anymore, because family farms are almost gone, most having been taken over and consolidated into large mega-farms by huge corporations. Almost no matter who you are and almost no matter where you live, most of your food probably comes from hundreds or even thousands of miles away from where it is produced and packaged to you, and a lot of electricity and gasoline is spent getting it to you and to the many, many, many other people like you.

There are several dependencies created by this that perhaps cannot be broken. Not only might totally re-organizing every single person's life so that everyone lives with walking or mass transit of their jobs not work because it would be too massive and effort to organize-- such a thorough reorganization would be too big a drain on the economy as a very large portion of people have to figure out a new place to live-- but our societies might already have grown to such a degree that such an attempt at re-organization would destroy them. Some habitations (cities, towns, and whole counties or states) that cannot be put within cost-effective distance of farms have to be completely abandoned. We just don't know if the economy of an America where almost everyone has to be located is going to be able to be successful at all. And we might have so many people already that such a reorganization of our food production and distribution system just might not work (economies of scale would be totally lost, and we would have to go back to local production of food that has not been seen in America since our economy was much, much smaller). Naturally, the local farms that used to exist across America 90 years ago and more than 100 years ago are no longer there. Because economies of scale will be lost, it will put more pressure on where people will be able to live and still have it be cost-effective to transport food to them. And all this will have to be done presumably without petroleum-based fertilizers (i.e., most modern commercially-used fertilizers) since petroleum is becoming more and more scarce.

So, in order for post-petroleum America to be anything like America is now in terms of how safe and rich it is, what we really need is a 1-to-1 replacement for how many automobiles we have currently making the system work.

-Why can't we just replace all the gasoline with coal? Why can't we just use plug-in cars powered by electricity from coal-fired power-plants? Coal itself is due to run out in 95 years. Once gasoline becomes too expensive and we all have to start relying on electric-powered cars, this will create such a great new demand for electricity from coal that coal will run out even sooner than in 95 years. And we will be left with nothing-- and some of us will probably live to see that disaster. Certainly, our children and grandchildren will, and if we don't give them a solution, many of them will experience literally fighting for their lives and livelihoods.

Coal can, by a complicated process, be transformed into gasoline. But because this is complicated, it is necessarily more expensive. And it leads us to the same problem as before-- coal running out sooner than in 95 years. If you live in the US, your being able to watch Wheel of Fortune on TV and eat ice-cream out of your own refrigerator is probably because of electricity from a coal-powered power-plant. When coal ends, if there is no replacement, all that ends, too.

Turning coal into gasoline can probably be a part of the solution, like keeping gasoline-powered planes and boats moving longer as gasoline runs out. But it's nothing like a long-term solution.

-Why can't we use gasoline created from germs? That process has not yet been shown to produce a commercially-useable product, but even if it ends up working, it's not going to be efficient enough to produce all the gasoline the country needs-- by a longshot.

-What about the air-car? The air-powered car is actually less efficient than other "green" cars, and anyway electricity is used to run the device that compresses the air to power the car! Refilling an air car is a mechanical process that requires several hours of a machine working to compress the air. You can imagine how much electricity must be used to refill a car every day or two. If you've ever owned a portable CD player, you're probably familiar with the fact that just because the device has to use some of the power to physically spin a CD around, the batteries run out very fast, and much faster than if the power was only used for electronic, rather than mechanical, processes.

The point is, air-cars aren't likely to ever prove to be more efficient than other "green" cars could be because of the machanical process that is necessarily involved in compressing air to "re-fuel" the car, and in any event, air-cars will still require a lot of electricity to get them to go (electricity that will have to come from somewhere).

-What about other "green" energy like wind, solar, and hydroelectric? Those are great, and we might end up in a real bad position no matter what, at least in the long run, if they're not developed more and more. But for now, the only feasible alternative to gasoline and coal is nuclear power, which currently provides the vast majority (about 80%) of the electricity used in homes and businesses in the very large country of France. Nuclear energy isn't ideal, and nuclear fuel will run out eventually, but it's cheap.

-How big is this problem really? Think about this-- in addition to everything else I've mentioned, all our plastics and many of our other synthetic materials come from petroleum. When petroluem is gone, we'll be stuck re-cycling old plastic and resorting to alternative materials! We may encounter problems with scarcity if the quality of certain plastic degrade (to the point of unsuitability) after a lot of recycling. And the alternatives to using plastic-- such as wood, which is funny since our forests are running out and a new greater demand for wood could itself be a problem-- may not be entirely suitable or practicable. And many of our weapons of war are powered by petroleum.

=What Can You Do About It?=

-The first thing to do I think is to make sure people know that the coal and oil are running out. You could pick a day of the week on which you'll tell people you happen to meet or already know that coal and oil are running out. You may be surprised even at which people you already know who don't know that oil and coal are running out, and who think that electric cars are just about reducing vehicle emissions to stop global warming.

-Talk about the problem of a post-oil, post-coal world. If you can write an e-mail to a responsible person, a letter to a newspaper, or can give a speech, it won't hurt to mention this problem. You can sum up some of the points I mentioned in my post. You can even try to create T-shirts, posters, a zine or a website about coal and oil running out and about post-oil, post-coal energy alternatives.

-Another thing you can do is buy or construct an electric, hybrid, or other "green" car. When people know that you have a "green" vehicle, it will create a buzz, and when the car companies experience enough of a demand for "green" cars, they may start to get the message that this is the future, and big businesses might consequently spend more money and time trying to create a post-oil world that is worth living in for us.

Remember, it may take activism and speaking out to solve this problem. You just can't count on the most rich and the most powerful people to take this seriously. So long as they feel like they will have enough money to keep them safe and happy no matter what happens, a lot of the richest people in our society may even like it if a lot of people in America become relatively more powerless (because they'll be impoversihed) compared to them.

The McCains And Their Entourage In A Starbucks???

Did anybody else notice the story that McCain goes to Starbucks?

So are the media trying to abandon their stereotyping of liberals to some degree, or to make it OK for Republicans to go to Starbucks again, or what?

That bit about saying that liberals are into Starbucks was a pretty active little Republican policy for quite a while.

My bet is the myth about Starbucks became too cumbersome (conservatives will have a much harder time getting people to like them and cooperate with them if they won't go into a Starbucks because of some ridiculous quibbling complaint), so the conservatives decided to defuse it a bit.

On funny thing about this whole thing is back before 9/11, in the days of the anti-globalization movement's big protests, all those people hated Starbucks almost more than anything. Way before the conservatives pretended that all liberals love Starbucks, the most radical liberals in America were constantly deriding, filching from, and shunning the place. I think there were some bad business practices of Starbucks' that people didn't like (in terms of globalization/capitalism) and people just didn't like the idea of this big corporation pushing little locally-owned businesses out. Also, they actually of course hated the yuppie image of the place, but this is something the Republicans would never, ever, ever tell you.

One More Hack On The Pile Of Hacks

Here's John Cole running interference for the Republicans:

It seems so transparently cynical, so deeply poll-driven and focus-grouped, and so manifestly just a bone to the wingnut pro-life base and the 8 PUMA holdouts, that I really can't treat this pick seriously.

Riiiiiiighhht. Sarah Palin is a bone to the wingnut base. You know, the wingnut base of the Republican party, who have to be won over every election because they hate voting for Republicans, as opposed to the swing voters, who are in the bag.

Palin is more like a mixed bag than she is a "bone" tossed to the base, in my humble opinion.

And Cole's "maverick" routine is just like McCain's-- it always was, and it still is, just a schtick.

Final Thoughts On Palin

Here's Hillary Clinton on Palin. Needless to say, I think her too-diplomatic response is totally wrong. Palin isn't much of anything for women (or anyone else) to be happy about, because she's just a henchman for the conservatives to work against women's interests and the interests of other under-protected groups in our country. People like Palin help make the conservatives even more dangerous than if the public face of conservative politics consisted of white men alone, because people like Palin help fool people into thinking that conservative policies help women. So not only is Palin a particularly dangerous addition, she's also a particularly obnoxious traitor (because the work she's doing as his VP pick is to help the conservatives secure a whole bunch of political power all-at-once).

I for one am pretty sick of people having mixed feelings about things like highly visible conservative women and highly visible conservative racial minorities. Sarah Palin, Condaleeza Rice and the like are just enemies, at least almost-as-much as guys like McCain are our enemies. The only sense in which they're less culpable than McCain is by way of the possibility that a person like McCain may have a better idea of what conservatism is really all about, but (for instance) a black conservative TV news-magazine personality may be fooled into believing a lot of the lies he's been hired by McCain's ilk to tell.

It's pretty easy to figure out: If an ignorant woman sees another woman running as a conservative politician, she may conclude, "She's a woman, like me. We have the same interests that all women do. She must know more than I do about governing, because she's actually a politician, so if she thinks conservatives' politics are ok, I suppose they've got to be ok. At least, I think she looks honest." That's how conservatives manipulate people. They know that populism isn't their strong suit, so they try to disguise themselves as in some way populist. They used to try to publicly live up to their belief that only men should lead and work. But it became too unpopular idea, so they've got to disguise it a little-- and people like Palin help a lot. If it wasn't for a few people like her-- the Condaleeza Rices-- the conservatives would be doing much worse in this country.

Condaleeza Rice used to sleep with conservative, dicky, white jocks when she was in college. The only reason she does what she does is because she knew that a lot of white people looked down on black people, so being black made her feel small and powerless. She then realized that there was someone conservatives (supposedly) disliked more than black people-- the Russians or communists. If she could help white people fight their white enemies, she thought, they might like her and value her. So she became a Russia expert so she could stop being a black person. Condoleeza Rice is no role model for any black person or freedom fighter at all-- neither is Palin.

Here's Another Angle...

...People may not be telling you: I bet McCain's people thought the story about McCain calling Cindy McCain a "cunt" really hurts them. But if he chooses Palin as VP, that will nullify he effect of the story for a lot of people who hear about it.

It may be a totally dishonest gimmick, but if you think about it, people fall for stuff like that all the time, and that is why women date and deal with men who even trusted friends have told them horrible things about-- because the guy employs some little bit of camouflage, and some people don't want to think that people they meet are that bad.

Some More Thoughts On Palin

One way to look at Palin is, the McCainiacs were planning to choose her for a while, but held out on the announcement for just the right moment or for "just in case," and choosing her reflects the over-all terrain of the campaign as one in which there is really pressure on the Repubs (as in 2000) to win by making themselves look liberal (even as they try to change the race into one about conservativism).

The competing theory is that McCain's staff have been trying and trying to win with the Rovian, "Move extremely in the direction of your base's interests even if it goes against expectations, and sometimes it will surprisingly work" tactic, but this has been leaving them empty-handed in light of the polls, so they have finally turned towards a real dyed-in-the-wool, move-towards-the-center gambit to try to start things up for them. We can debate whether it's the right choice, but no matter what, it's still a pretty natural conclusion for them to come to.

The thing about this particular way to move to the center-- a Republican choosing a woman running-mate-- is it's so novel and different that it's really hard to make predictions about. Will Republicans go for a man-and-woman ticket? Who knows at this point? Presumably McCain's team have done some polling that indicates this can work, but you never know. They always might have skipped the polling.

If the logic behind choosing Palin was correct, then (for speculation's sake) maybe an African American Palin would have been even better (although there certainly would have been a lot of Republicans who would have been offended at putting a person like that so close to the Presidency, a lot of those same Republicans would have understood the politics of it (pandering to bring in new voters) and still would have pulled the lever for what they would see as "the greater good").

Finally, I don't know about this suggestion that Romney and Pawlenty were "screwed" and that Palin had it in the bag all along. I don't have any idea how long they were thinking of using her, but something about that sounds fishy to me. For one thing, Romney was a genuinely strong option, and for another, they seemed to wait until Barack chose his VP, to see who they could effectively counter him with. Even if you believe my point of view that Republican operatives might be intimidating even guys like Barack (and putting words in their mouths), they still could be leaving decisions like who Barack's VP choice will be up to the responsible (genuine) Democrats, since guys like Barack might find it a lot harder to go along with the dictates of Republican propagandists if they feel like the Republicans are deciding things like who the Democratic Presidential candidate picks for his VP. If things like that don't happen, Barack can sort of half-way rationalize that all the intimidation and suggestions really do have to do with something like fighting terrorism (my bet is, he's been told something like that) and not with just plain old sinking the liberal ship.

Palin

My first thought was that she is a good choice to help them win, based on her interesting, appealing and not-strictly conservative history. However, I think she is going to fail to excite a great portion of the most conservative-of-conservative voters.

Whatever the case, I expect she will become a media darling, will receive much softer treatment from the media than either Barack or Hillary have, and will be seen to "win over" male media characters (like Chris Matthews) whose anti-Hillary bits had a misogynistic tinge to them (and this will be orchestrated, not spontaneous, of course).

What I can say with more certainty than all of the above is that this pick is a great object lesson for Democrats on how to play politics, how the Republicans operate, and how seriously they take what they're doing (the important premise to understanding the salience of these points is that a non-smart person can beat a smart person by taking what they're doing more seriously and working harder). The Republicans know that the biggest point of importance of the VP slot-- since it is unlikely a VP will get a chance to replace the President-- is what the VP does to make the ticket look more appealing in an election. Palin was chosen for how she will make people feel about the ticket. She provides a strong distraction from a lot of McCain's weaknesses, and she hits with the "sweet spot" against the weakness we created by dropping Hillary. Now the Republicans will get to see how a woman can stir up female conservative support.

Remember, women are 50% of the population, and they are a big part of swing voters! And people always like to help or hire someone they can identify with more than someone they can't! They've already got a white male on their ticket-- another white male might not add as much to their voting bloc as this woman can.

To fully appreciate whether Palin is a good choice for them, you have to look at the bullshit/showbiz aspect of it. You can't just say, "Who is this person professionally and what has she done in politics?" There is a low-brow aspect to American presidential elections that you can never forget totally if you want to always be able to appreciate what's going on. Think about it this way: Palin seems like who America would wish McCain was married to, doesn't she?

I'm not sure Mitt Romney wouldn't have been a more effective choice for them. But Palin is definitely a well-thought-over choice.

In the end, maybe it was Romney's family's connection to civil rights that rubbed them the wrong way (even though the commitment to civil rights might not have in actuality run that deep).

A final point: I doubt that her moderate stances are sincere ones, and feel her true stances on the issues will turn out to be much more conservative in the future.

August 29

August 29, 1632, John Locke, philosopher and writer against religious justifications for government / state sovereignty and in favor of the right of a state's subjects to revolt against oppressive and unjust rule, was born in Wrington, England.

August 29, 1975, Éamon de Valera, the Irish independence fighter / activist, who became the third President and first Taoiseach of Ireland, died in Dublin, Ireland.

Keeping Up With Current Events

I haven't been writing too much lately, even though I probably have a couple of worthwhile things to write that I've just neglected to get to, I suppose because I've been busy with things in the non-cyberspace world. I've also had a lot of tiny observations, mostly just "I told you so's" regarding things I've noticed going on, and little confirmations like that, that I just haven't been motivated to post (although maybe they would be a good idea to post, even though to me they seem trfling, since a little more thorough commentary from me might help more people see the light and get on the ball).

But along those lines, I thought I'd just "check in" today. I'm getting the sense that a lot of things that are going on may be effectively confirming stuff out there that I pointed out (for example, about how corrupt the media is and how one-sided our politics are)-- that is, that it's getting to the point that without my narration, a lot of other people are noticing this stuff more than they used to. I myself haven't actually been watching the convention. What should I watch it for? To get confirmation of things I am already totally aware of, like how corrupt the media is and how compromised the Dems are? I am already very familiar with this, and with the kinds of events and behavior these conditions will create. As long as other people are starting to "get it" on their own, that's good. But anyway, Steve Benen writes today that supposed "divisions within the Democratic Party" have "for most of the convention [] been the media's favorite topic of conversation" and this is just what I would expect. You may also recall that yesterday I speculated that Steve Benen is a propagandist, and Steve's writing this is totally consistent with what I wrote-- it's just that he can't avoid making observations like this if he is going to retain his credibility in the eyes of a lot of people.

Steve also writes posts like this one today which really victimizes his more ignorant readers. If you just read Steve's post, and if you are unfamiliar with whether poor people "already get all their health care for free" you may be really fooled about the facts of the situation because of the way he describes it. You really have to click on and read his comments to get a clearer picture.

Steve's post makes it sound as if the current system doesn't really leave people untreated, and that the issue is all about efficiency-- which isn't the case. While it may theoretically be true that everybody can go and get emergency-room treatment if they want to go and ask for it, not having nationally-provided health care in practice probably discourages a lot of uninsured people from getting treatment at all, or from seeking treatment before their condition degrades to a point where treatment is worth a lot less to them. So the problem is not just about efficiency: (1) It's about people not getting treated before the problem becomes bad at all, (2) it's about efficency, and (3) it's about people getting financially ruined (because not having insurance and not paying their medical bills ruins their credit and saddles them with a large debt for a long time) over something that shouldn't be denied to anybody.

The real general answer to most of America's problems, not limited to health care, is that the rich should pay taxes. No person needs more than the mansion/Mercedes/summer home lifestyle. The idea that individuals need be able to own lots of properties (like John McCain), lots of cars, or to have hundreds of millions of dollars is absolutely absurd. People should be thankful just that this country gives them the opportunity to get a huge house, an expensive car, and a time-share or summer home. The excess money should be the small price they have to pay to take advantage of the opportunities this country affords to allow a person to obtain that totally sufficient lifestyle. If we were properly taxing the rich and huge corporations, it would be very easy to see that problems like how to provide health care are not big problems for an extremely rich nation like ours at all, and things like proper medical care are "peanuts," cheap investments that we should feel totally happy and not burdened in the least to provide as a matter of course for free to all our citizens.

I'm not saying, of course, that taxes should pay for all sorts of cosmetic and unnecessary care. Nor am I saying that our system should be 100% public (in the sense that we shouldn't consider whether nationally-provided health care would work is we also allowed people to become "high class," non-public doctors who the rich could pay for supposedly "better" treatment if they wanted to opt out of the system in some particular case of illness or injury). But if we were working everything out right, our system would even be able to afford to pay for cosmetic surgery for people-- like a young woman who has almost no breasts, and is consequently very depressed about it, or a person who is not quite disfigured, but is very unhandsome, and is very depressed about it-- who we all might agree need the procedure if we had to be the ones to walk a mile in their shoes. It would just require a recommendation from a treating psychologist / psychiatrist.

Fight The Power

Today Matt Yglesias unfortunately wrote:

I’ve generally liked Chuck Todd’s emergence as a TV talking head,

Chuck Todd is and was a snivelling little hack who they coached and dressed up a little better so that he would give a more serious impression. Check out some of his greatest hits. Chuck Todd’s profession is being a propagandist.

Russert was the same thing. Everyone knew his presentation was garbage, but then after he died, the Machine closed ranks to make sure he was eulogized non-stop for a week or two. Now Media Matters has oddly taken his name off their list of big-offender media personalities, even though he was one of the worst ones, and since he was a conscienceless soldier for the Machine, it’s entirely appropriate to keep his name up there so people can easily check out the examples of his disgusting corruption and better understand the reach and quality of conservative media corruption.

Commenting on the media running McCain's ads for him for free on major networks and times that would require big bucks to advertise during, Steve Benen meekly writes:

But why would major news outlets repeatedly fall for the same trick, even when they realize the ads are created for the sole purpose of free media attention? There are competing explanations, but my hunch is a lot of outlets are just lazy, and video press releases make their jobs easier.

Considering all the other biased stuff that comes out of the mainstream media, it's well-passed the point of being certain by now that they're in cahoots.

This is a real problem, so we've got to think of a way to solve it.

All the times you see stuff from the mainstream media that looks liberal, it's just a red herring. The conservative reach is far in the mainstream media, and they can influence any story or headline in any mainstream media news report they want, even if they haven't actually bought off or intimidated every single mainstream media employee yet. The point of this is so the public won't realize they have a controlled mainstream media yet, since the public isn't so uniformly conservative to support that yet.

I doubt the public ever will be that conservative, but we still suffer from the results of having all these lies infiltrate our mainstream media news. So we've got to deal with the problem frankly and seriously.

Matt Yglesias, Steve Benen, and Kevin Drum have all taken a sharp turn for the worse in their writing over the past year or so. I have no doubt that they are all real liberals (and their past writing was very sane), but I do very much doubt that they have gone untouched by conservative coercion, and in my opinion, they are all now basically Republican propagandists.

When Steve Benen, Kevin Drum, or Matt Yglesias write something critical of the mainstream media, what they are doing is no different from the mainstream media's not acting overtly and uniformly like a conservative loud-speaker. It helps cover up when they write other things that are very wrong or inappropriate or otherwise propaganda. The blogs allow people who notice the mainstream media is corrupt to have a "pressure release valve" that keeps them from getting too fed up with the system, because they show that at least someone else notices the problems (but isn't even taking them that seriously, even though they amount to a controlled news media system, a symptom of fascism). But the blogs do the same thing as the mainstream media, and mix reality in with conservative propaganda, even though they give a slightly higher dose of reality for the (minority) slice of the population that is not dumb enough to un-critically accept the mainstream media.