California adopts cap-and-trade program

EssEffChron

The California Air Resources Board has approved the creation of the nation's first broad-based program to put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and to begin charging large emitters for the excess carbon dioxide they put in the air.

After an all-day meeting on Thursday, the board voted 9-1 for the proposal, which will take effect in 2012 and means California is once again moving forward with climate-change policy while efforts on the national level have stopped.

"The comment 'the world is watching' is sometimes an idle comment. It's not idle this afternoon," said Air Resources Board member Ronald Loveridge.

Cool! We're a buncha exhibitionists out here anyway. We do it with the shades up!

Cap-and-trade will be remembered as a plan introduced by the Repugs which they were for before they were against because Obama and the Dems wanted it and which the Repugs now lie about.

This part is of local interest to me:

Several people and environmental organizations also called for changes in the offset program involving forests, arguing that the rule as written could encourage clear-cutting of forests on land that might be eligible for tree-planting credits, leaving swaths of forests with trees of the same age, which ultimately would be harmful.

I don't think that's much of a problem. I live in the middle of a pine forest where all the trees for fifty miles around are about the same height. All second growth. The area was clear-cut in the 1860s and '70s for railroad ties and Deidesheimer Square Sets to shore up the mines in Virginia City. Things in the forest seem to be OK with it. So far.

Just as an aside, we would usually think mines are maybe a little ways out of town. Not in Virginia City. They're right on, or under the main street. When yer havin' a beer in the Bucket of Blood or enjoying the Julia C. Bulette Red Light Museum, there's a coupla thousand feet of nothing but rotting timbers underneath you. In my heart of hearts I just know there's one that's going to snap one of these days and they can go change the elevation on the city limits sign.

I'm a little amazed that a drunken, spirited Saturday night buck dance or Klingon-like dalliance with one of Julia's girls by Hoss Cartwright didn't do it already. Heh.

Dear Santa...

I hope he gets mine. I wrote it on 80-grit sandpaper.

Thanks to Fyaah.

Headline of the Day

Extended exposure to Fox News makes voters stupid, university study finds

Duh. They needed a study for that? An "easy A" course fer sure.

You can't build a wall high enough...

El Paso Times

A Mexican drone crashed in El Paso's Lower Valley, sparking a federal investigation and raising questions about why the aircraft was in U.S. airspace.

Approximately twelve passengers were seen fleeing north after the crash and from the speed of their departure are believed to be uninjured.

I mighta made some of that up...

Friday Monster Blogging

Woke 'em out of their late morning nap. Heh ...



Update:

I'll never get done ...

Cattle Dogs ...

see more dog and puppy pictures

My pal Kathy (our dogs' breeder) turned me on to this Cheezburger post. Her quote: "... I think most cowdogs would be a LOT less merciful than these two in mocking the poodle ..." No shit. The poodle would have a complex after my two were done with him. Heh ...

Tea Party Day

Today is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party of 1773 in which colonists threw a boatload of tea into Boston Harbor to protest taxation without representation.

Those Tea Partiers are spinning in their graves so fast they could generate electricity over the stupid things today's teabaggers are doing in their name.

Assembly ...

I posted this about a year ago when I was working on the wife's office and the time was rife for me to start getting "Christmas gift assembly" calls. It's that time again. Spare the "guy with skills" in your life extra aggravation this holiday season. Heh ...

* Open the box and find the directions first before you unpack any of the parts. Read them thoroughly, twice if you have to.

* Next, find the bag(s) or card with the hardware (screws, bolts, brackets) and compare them to the parts list in the directions (in both size and quantity - most manufacturers give "actual size" pictures of what things look like). If anything's not there, or you're not sure about something, now is the time to go to the website or call the toll-free number for help given in the directions (men, again, do not be ashamed to do this), not when whatever you're working on is half assembled.

* Locate all the major parts, unwrap them and lay them out in order of use (again, consult the directions).

* Use the now-empty box as a garbage can. As soon as you unpack something, toss the wrapping materials directly in there. Why? Because it's frustrating when little shit gets caught up or hidden by the wrappers and you can't find it when you need it. Makes it easier to throw the crap away too.

* Follow the directions step by step, using the method, technique, and parts they specify. Nobody knows how to put it together better than the folks who made it.

* And lastly, once the assembly is complete, go through everything again to make sure there's nothing you missed. Also, take the directions and file them somewhere. You might have to disassemble it someday and put it back together again. I have a folder in my file cabinet with every set of directions for everything we have.

If all else fails, get a BFH or a stiff drink; whatever works for you.

Kyl and DeMint: Baby Jesus Doesn't Want Us to Pass the START Treaty Right Now

The Rude One on the latest Repug bullshit. A good read:

"Ye shall know them by their fruits," motherfucker, says Jesus. And, goddamn, if that Middle Eastern Jew wasn't right in Matthew 7:16. In fact, a good bit of Book 7 of Matthew (King James, man, always King James) ought to be read to the alleged righteous Christians, Senators Jon "Looks Like W.C. Fields and Broderick Crawford Had a Big, Ugly Baby" Kyl and Jim "I Whip My Balls Bloody Every Night" DeMint. Whining like little bitches who were denied their evening Milk Bone, Kyl and DeMint announced that they want their Christmas vacation and they don't give a fuck about any damn reduction of weapons of mass destruction. That's right: no START treaty, no consideration of real and actual peace on Earth unless they get to sing songs about "Peace on Earth."

Now, the Rude Pundit's no biblical scholar, but he knows some basic shit. For instance, Jesus was pretty clear on helping people in poverty. Like, you know, 1 John 3:17-18: "But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?/ My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth." Yeah, DeMint and Kyl have clenched their sphincters tight and haven't shit out even a tiny turd of compassion for the poor.

Kyl and DeMint have both voted against expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program, against increasing the minimum wage, against funding for housing for the poor, and for raising the estate tax exemption to $5 million. DeMint gets extra points for voting against extending unemployment benefits in 2008.

Of course, they've both voted big time for anything to do with war, because killing Muslims is really high on Jesus's to-do list. As is torture, apparently, and denial of any help for illegal immigrants, who would probably qualify as the "least of these."

Of course, since all of this is over passing a treaty that would actively make the world safer from nuclear weapons, one imagines that even Baby Jesus would say, "Dudes, shove that myrrh up your asses and get back to work."

(Note: Harry Reid showing Kyl and DeMint his pimp hand on the whole stupid Christmas thing is deliciously fun. And so is Joe Biden's spit-rage.)

Rude-y's right - it is kinda fun to watch. I worry about the direction my sense of humor is going sometimes. Ah, fuck it - phony outrage by Repugs is hilarious. Too bad so few get the joke and so many fall for it.

Jim DeMented said Xmas is the most sacred day for Xtians. It's not, but he's right: it's the most sacred day for the merchant class because they make a lot of money from people trying to emulate the Magi giving gifts to Baby Jesus. Money=Repugs=Xtians.

The real most sacred day for Xtians, of course, is the annual springtime recognition of The P.R. Stunt That Wrecked The World. And continues to do so for fun and profit.

The Crux of The Afghan/Iraq Wars

In These Times

For the defense industry, dumb wars are the best ones because they create more problems than they solve, assuring future sales of weapons and services. A great example of this bad policy propaganda machine in action occurred in the winter of 2002, when the Taliban had been defeated in Afghanistan and there was a chance to install a credible government. Then the defense industry helped fund the campaign to convince Americans they needed to divert resources from Afghanistan to launch a preemptive strike against Iraq. Eight years later, Afghanistan is in utter chaos, yet think tank scholars assure us that we can still “win” the war as long as we pursue Gen. David Petraeus’ counter-insurgency strategy.

From the vantage of the boardroom of a defense contractor, the Afghan war is a good war. It destabilized much of the Middle East and southern Asia, including nuclear-armed Pakistan. It has created tens of thousands of new enemies for the United States — people who had no beef with us until we invaded their country and killed their relatives. Most of our new enemies are too poor to pose any immediate threat. But they will be targets for recruitment into terror groups, thus assuring future dangers, more war and unsustainable levels of military spending.

Many, including George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower, have warned of the danger to republican liberty posed by massive standing armies and unchecked military spending. One of the most eloquent scholars on this topic, Chalmers Johnson, passed away in November. Johnson warned of the inherent instability of a political system that seeks to combine domestic democracy and foreign imperialism. The final volume of his seminal treatise on militarism is titled, The Last Days of the American Republic. If his analysis is correct, we have no time to waste.  

Yet waste it we will as long as there's money in it for the few.

Heh ...

For the first time in years (the Mrs. put an end to it a while back), I personally went down to the Sheriff of Nottingham local Receiver of Taxes to pay my tribute to the King yearly property tax bill, unsupervised (she didn't even send Chooch along to keep an eye on me). Business was concluded without me getting tossed in the dungeon incident and in record time*.

*I was briefed, before I left the house, that the Mrs. needed a special kind of receipt (not my department, just do what I'm told) for the taxes this year and, since I needed them to do something for me, my opinions about the use of my tax money during the past year (and if I got rolling, I'd go back over everything since the last time I personally gave them a piece of my mind; one of the reasons I wasn't allowed to pay the taxes in person anymore) would not be appreciated by either the Receiver of Taxes or Mrs. F when I came home without what she needed. I might be crazy, I ain't stupid. Heh ...

Hey, Chickenshits ...

Or, "Keepin' Us Safe". Think modern-day Americans could deal with this?

Click to embiggen.

From my collection: In the London Transport Museum, Covent Garden, England.

Just sayin' ...

Ya think?

People are getting tired of the bullshit:

A record 60 percent of Americans say the war in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting, a grim assessment -- and a politically hazardous one -- in advance of the Obama administration's one-year review of its revised strategy.

...

I'll tell ya what the review will say, just pull one of Westmoreland's briefings out of the archives from Vietnam and change the names of the towns and the dates to reflect the present.

From Wikipedia:

...

On April 28, 1967, Westmoreland addressed a joint session of Congress. "In evaluating the enemy strategy," he said, "It is evident to me that he believes our Achilles heel is our resolve ... Your continued strong support is vital to the success of our mission ... Backed at home by resolve, confidence, patience, determination and continued support, we will prevail in Vietnam over the Communist aggressor!"

...

So we've resolved to stay in Afghanistan, longer than we were in Vietnam, and we have less to show for our efforts. Thankfully, we haven't managed to get 58,000 of our troops killed yet.

Bored?

You will be. Go see "The Amazingly Boring Antics Adventures of Gordon and Bermflinger!" at Fixer & Gordon.

Get out ...

Although Pedro Espada has too much chutzpah to resign, it's about time this scumbag had his day in front of a jury. Yeah, he's a Dem, but in Albany they're all crooks.

State Senator Pedro Espada Jr. and his son pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of plundering the taxpayer-funded health clinic they operate in the Bronx.

The elder Espada and Pedro G. Espada are accused of stealing more than $550,000 from Soundview Medical Center coffers to pay for expensive dinners, Broadway tickets and a downpayment on a Bentley.

...

Personally, I think the NY State Police should throw a net over everybody in the State House and waterboard 'em until they confess to something. Get us a whole new buncha criminals.

Views of 2011 From 1931

Abnormal Use

1931 was a long time ago, and few who live today can claim to remember it all too well. Just two years after the stock market crash of 1929, 1931 claimed Herbert Hoover as the President of the United States (which that year had 48 states). Movie monsters were the rage; Bela Lugosi starred in Tod Browning's Dracula film and Boris Karloff did his star turn in Frankenstein. Cab Calloway recorded the classic "Minnie The Moocher" (and he was 49 years from performing it again in 1980's The Blues Brothers). James Dean was born that year; so were William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. That December, the first Christmas tree was placed at the construction site that would later become Rockefeller Center. The Lindbergh kidnapping was a year in the future, and the attack on Pearl Harbor - precipitating the country's entry into World War II - was a full decade away.

It was a far different time culturally, socially, politically. The issue: What did the great minds of 1931 predict the rapidly approaching 2011 would be like?

Some hits, some misses. Interesting.

Quote of the Day Il Due

The header of an LATimes op-ed:

Incoming House Speaker John Boehner weeps for our schoolchildren even as he works to take away their dreams.

That's how Repugs roll.

If You're Interested...

From Voyager 1 comes cutting-edge science on solar wind

Shorter: if yer ship depends on solar wind for propulsion, yer gonna be sailing in big circles.

Five things that change everything

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford.

This is what they say. This is the breathless abandon that accompanies each tale of discovery and terror, pain and glory across the vast and troubled worlds of science and tech, politics and warfare, love and sex and death, oh my.

"This changes everything," they say. This revelation, that amazing gizmo, this startling new way of seeing things, that flaccid terrorist's imbecilic underwear bomb that now means anyone can be freely groped at the airport. Baby, the terrorists won long ago. Haven't you seen the news?

This box just arrived. Let's see what we've got.

2) Winner, most deliriously misleading headline of the year: "NASA finds new life form." OMG you guys! NASA! New life form! Maybe some crazy soil sample came back from Omega X-19 containing some pulsing blue alien microbes! Perhaps they found the living, conscious source of dark matter! Wait, what? They only found an odd microorganism in creepy ol' Mono Lake in California? A place where any tourist with a $95 Canon P&S could tell you bizarre things certainly must live? Oh.

Do not misunderstand. The discovery of an uncanny new organism that rearranges the six common ingredients for "normal" life -- carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur -- and instead munches arsenic for a living and it's not Dick Cheney? Well, that opens up all sorts of fascinating possibilities for what might be out there. Yes, gods of science, "this changes everything." But we're just not yet exactly sure how.

It would be lovely to think one idea could do it. But this has always been the impossible dream of empires on the verge of collapse: that somewhere in the maelstrom of wanton discoveries lies a wild new technology, a stupendous magic bullet that seven billion bipeds pray will soon absolve us of our unchecked gluttony, cure the vicious cancer we've inflicted on ourselves and make everything right with the world. Sure. As Jesus used to say, good luck with that.

Here's a teaser about Wikileaks:

-- Wikileaks is one unprecedented, stunningly detailed explanation of just how the global diplomatic sausage gets made.

And lo, it is vile sausage indeed. This is the biggest revelation of all, the thing that changes everything: What we're learning is, this meat is more rancid, disrespectful, abusive, cruel, barbarian and childish than anyone wanted to imagine. No wonder world governments and whimpering doltbuckets like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee want this Assange guy dead.

Truly, the banality of global political evil has never been this exposed. Hell, even the Vatican is condemning Wikileaks over revelations about its own pathetic sex scandals in Ireland. In my book, that alone makes Julian Assange a goddamn saint.

Go...

To Serve Banks

From Rep Spencer Bachus (R-AL), new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee via al.com:

"In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks," he said.

We knew that, but thanks for blurting it out so clearly, Spence.

He later clarified his comment to say that regulators should set the parameters in which banks operate but not micromanage them.

"Clarified" is DC-speak for trying to clean up after a gaffe, i.e. inadvertently telling the truth.

"Republicans putting Spencer Bachus in charge of financial regulation is voting for the fox to guard the henhouse," said Ryan Rudominer of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Dude, it's what Repugs do, it's who they are. Their whole focus is be in charge of our money so they can give it to their Masters. They've done this pretty well over the last thirty years.

"To Serve Banks" is a cookbook just like in the old Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man". Recipes for disaster.