Saturday, January 10, 2015
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Canada's Tar Sands Oil vs. Clean Energy
A solar energy company from California is to be hiring 600 people for 600 jobs in Kansas City.
Sungevity shines on with office build, hiring spree
Meanwhile, a Canadian tar sands oil company---TransCanada---would be bringing between 35 to 50 total permanent jobs TO THE ENTIRE NATION, if only we'll let them build a pipeline THAT WILL INEVITABLY LEAK AND SPILL THEIR TOXIC TAR SANDS OIL just so they can get this stuff to the Gulf coast so they can get it out to world markets.
And with the solar, "green", sustainable energy, there will never be any inevitable oil spill and environmental nightmare like we can count on with the Keystone XL pipeline.
So tell me how tar sands oil from Canada, for a foreign oil company, crossing our nation and our farmlands and aquifers and lakes and creeks and rivers and streams, threatening all those, so it can go out to world markets from the Gulf, is somehow a good idea and a jobs maker.
How does that make sense?
To anyone?
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Missouri, Learning Nothing From Neighboring Kansas
First Kansas slashes taxes on the wealthy and corporations--you know, the old Right Wing "tickle down" ideas--on the promise it will bring business, people and money to the state and its coffers.
It fails miserably.
You think Missourians in Jeff City would see and learn anything from it?
Not really. They still wanted to slash those taxes down at the Missouri State Capitol.
Now? It seems Missouri wants to do the same thing, again. That is, Missouri legislators are proposing already-sponsored legislation Kansas enacted and has some experience with. First, what's being thought of and maybe proposed in the Show Me state just now:
Lawmaker wants 75 mph limit on some Missouri roads
And as I said, Kansas beat us to this. And here's their results:
Folks? May I ask a question? Please?
Can we learn nothing?
And another. Why would we go down this path?
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Entertainment Overnight
Haunting. Fascinating. I think Stanley Kubrick would love it. He'd likely have put it to effect.
The GOP, Their Leadership In Congress and Where We Go From Here
I love this article
GOP leaders staring at cliffs
Boehner, McConnell have big plans and big obstacles.
I'll cut to the chase, so to speak. Of the entire article, this is the part that intrigues and involves me most:
The highway trust fund will become insolvent in May, and federally funded infrastructure projects across America will grind to a halt if nothing is done. Congress will have to work out a new funding mechanism — the gas tax has not been raised since 1993, and fuel-efficient cars have steadily decreased its buying power. Raising the tax is politically difficult, so Boehner, McConnell and the transportation chairmen will have to work out another funding mechanism — or turn to another unpopular general fund bailout, rather than risk a construction shutdown.
This Highway Trust Fund needs so much money it's beyond thought. Our infrastructure needs so much attention. We have so many highways, bridges and airports and so much infrastructure that needs reworking and improving and updating, it's nearly staggering.
Fortunately and rather ironically, we're at a time when, not only do all these things need so much attention but with oil per barrel and per gallon, at the pump, is so low, it would seem it's the perfect time to increase this gas tax so we can fund this infrastructure and so, the country and our commerce.
It used to be government representatives would legislate and act for the betterment and best of the nation, of the country. But as we've seen of particularly the Republican Party in the last few decades at least and especially since our current president was elected, they legislate and put their party first, country be damned.
And that's where we are today.
What should be easy and intelligent legislation for the country and for the people becomes complicated and difficult, if not impossible, for these people. Their biggest fear is that this president would be successful and so, that they might suffer.
It used to be if the country was successful, that was your goal in government, no matter your position. Not so now. These people are downright fearful that, should President Obama be successful, should the US profit and grow during this time frame, they would be hurt. The last thing they want is to come close to doing anything, anything whatever, that would create a second Franklin Roosevelt. They never forgot the lesson of FDR and the Great Depression. He was successful and what did that get them? They were out of favor with the voters for at least 40 years.
So screw you, America. The Republican Party must come first.
If you're still here after all this, once they're finally back in the White House, then they might consider doing something for you. Something for Mr. and Mrs. Working Man and Woman of the nation.
Like a jobs bill.
Or like the infrastructure needed to make the nation work.
Quote of the Day -- On Money in Government
Lesson unlearned. Lesson forgotten.
"There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. . . . It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced.
"Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs."
- Theodore Roosevelt (who died January 6,1919), in speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, 31 August 1910
Monday, January 5, 2015
Sunday, January 4, 2015
"Kansas City Choir Boy" hits New York This Week
I hadn't heard anything about this but a new play is to premier in New York later this week--"Kansas City Choir Boy" with Courtney Love:
Courtney Love has been cast as the star of Todd Almond's "Kansas City Choir Boy", an experimental opera that will premiere at Prototype Festival at the Manhattan Arts Center from January 8 to 17. According to the New York Times, productions at the Prototype: Opera/Theater/Now festival "seek ways to erode the boundaries between opera and pop".
Then there's this from today's New York Times:
Courtney Love's latest and thoroughly unexpected gig is the music-theater piece "Kansas City Choir Boy."
Singer, songwriter, punk-rocker, actress, fashionista, tabloid bonanza and ... piano mover? That’s part of Courtney Love’s latest and thoroughly unexpected gig. The performer who made her name in the 1990s with her primal rasp and confrontational, straight-from-the-id songs will play the lead in “Kansas City Choir Boy,” a music-theater piece she’s performing with its songwriter, Todd Almond, in the 84-seat South Village performance space Here from Jan. 8-17.
It’s not “Mary Poppins,” but it’s not Grand Guignol either. Billed as a “theatricalized concept album,” “Kansas City Choir Boy” is a song cycle with very little dialogue: the story of a couple pulled apart by ambition. In Kansas City, he’s a nameless musician who composes on his laptop and his piano; she’s a singer, Athena, and they’re teenage sweethearts. He’s content in the Midwest, while she leaves him behind to make it in New York. He tries to follow her and reconnect, but she has been seduced by the siren call of fame.
“Kansas City Choir Boy” is the most immediately eye-catching show in thePrototype festival, which is devoted to contemporary opera and innovative music theater. Prototype had asked its director, Kevin Newbury, to suggest a production, and he had long envisioned “Kansas City Choir Boy” as what he calls “an immersive theater experience.”
The story of “Kansas City Choir Boy,” Mr. Almond said, grew out of a memory. More than a decade ago, he had been hired by the Juilliard School of Music to do a musical adaptation of “The Odyssey.” The actress who played Athena disappeared and was later found murdered; he was watching TV news when her face suddenly came on screen. Some years later, around 2006, he was in a hotel room in Kansas City, Mo., writing music with his laptop when “the face of a missing girl popped up on the news.” It elicited a memory of the woman who had played Athena; he started imagining her as someone who “ran off to the big city to make something of herself, and then she fell into the wrong hands.”
The story of “Kansas City Choir Boy,” Mr. Almond said, grew out of a memory. More than a decade ago, he had been hired by the Juilliard School of Music to do a musical adaptation of “The Odyssey.” The actress who played Athena disappeared and was later found murdered; he was watching TV news when her face suddenly came on screen. Some years later, around 2006, he was in a hotel room in Kansas City, Mo., writing music with his laptop when “the face of a missing girl popped up on the news.” It elicited a memory of the woman who had played Athena; he started imagining her as someone who “ran off to the big city to make something of herself, and then she fell into the wrong hands.”
The Social Media Sell Job on the Keystone XL Pipeline has begun
With Republicans taking over Congress this week, it became clear the social media "sell job" has gotten under way. I was just pulling up a video to watch on YouTube---ironically, with Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges---when this disgusting bit of advertising just came up:
Naturally "Comments are disabled for this video." Of course.
In the ad, they claim they're building it "to bring energy security to the United States."
Wow.
That is one gigantic lie.
Here's the YouTube video more should see:
And this one:
No to the KXL. No on the Keystone XL pipeline.
Missourians Against the Keystone XL Pipeline
Contact your representatives in Congress. Tell them no on the Keystone XL pipeline.
Contacting the Congress: A Citizen's Congressional Directory
The Media Documentary More Americans Need to See
These people---Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and everyone at Fox--are scarier than I even gave them and the entire situation credit (or blame) for:
The data I'd seen years before, on George W. Bush and the Republicans stealing the 2000 election as well as the 2004 election showed me what happened. After seeing this, it's even more so. Pitiful.
It's some of the best one hour and seventeen minutes you can spend. If you don't understand Fox viewers and followers as well as people who still support George W. Bush, this might help.
If there's good news, it's that young people aren't watching these ugly, misguided, warped people.
What we need is the Fairness Doctrine so we get pro and con sides of issues. We have to take our airwaves back and like getting the big money out of our elections and government, this will have to come from us, the people.
Links: Fairness Doctrine
Equal-time rule
Saturday, January 3, 2015
What 2014 Was -- And Why It Matters
According to Scientific American:
2014 to Be Hottest Year Ever Measured
Yes, 2014 was the hottest year ever recorded in the history of humankind (though admittedly, in the "big picture" of things, that's a short time frame--around 150 years or so).
This year will likely be the hottest on record for the planet, with global temperatures 1.03 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 1961-to-1990 average, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization.
But here's why this is important and why we should do something about it. It's part of a far bigger trend:
This would make 2014 the 38th consecutive year with an anomalously high annual global temperature.
Each year for the past 38 years--nearly 4 straight decades, the new year tops the other in temperature increase.
Clearly, that's a trend.
And it's not a trend sitting there, all by itself. Here's another, rather obvious result:
And satellite images show it, in case there are any disbelievers out there:
Other possible effects this could and will likely have in the future for us:
Friday, January 2, 2015
Fight to End Campaign Contributions
Get the Big, Ugly Money Out of Our Election System and Government
We have to fight for this. It has to come from us. It has to come from the people. We must demand it.
We Americans don't really know just who we are
It's my contention Americans don't know who we really are, given what we do, collectively, as a nation.
For one, we have, far and away, THE MOST EXPENSIVE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD, bar none. The most expensive. It's obscene. Because of it, because it's tied to profit, more people go bankrupt due to health care costs and bills than any other source or reason.
Second, WE OUTSPEND EVERY OTHER NATION ON THE PLANET WHEN IT COMES TO SPENDING ON WAR. We spend more than any other nation, many times over, for spending on bombs and bombers and bullets and guns. Immoral. Highly immoral. Again, obscene.
Finally, we IMPRISON MORE OF OUR OWN CITIZENS THAN ANY OTHER NATION, per capita. Check out these statistics:
Quote of the day -- on Capitalism
Imagine if he were alive today, to see how we and our nations function.
Thursday, January 1, 2015
With This New Congressional Year and Session
Contact your Congressional representatives in the new year. Push them, ask for a jobs/infrastructure bill for the nation. Americans need the jobs, our infrastructure, it's widely known, needs to updating and repairs and the economy needs the boost. It's a no-brainer:
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Happy New Year
25 Strangest New Year's Traditions from Around the World
My God, we are a superstitious, even silly lot, aren't we?
Ending the year in humor, hopefully.
Happy new year, y'all.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
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