An Eostre shrine

I've made an informal study of comparative religions over the course of my rather long life. Pretty sure this was left in Atlanta's Grant Park as part of a nature based religious practice. (That's a rabbit in a carrot car by the way.) We don't know why it's there. Thinking it's a shrine to welcome spring and mourn the lost tree.



[Stephen H Banks photo. Click the link. Buy his metaphysical mystery novel. It's a great read.]

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This is your future with the KXL pipeline

The Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline hasn't been authorized yet, but the filthy tar sands oil is already streaming through the heartland in existing pipes that have been retrofitted by Big Oil, in this case our old friend Exxon-Mobil. The unfortunate residents of this neighborhood in Arkansas got a hard lesson on what that means this weekend, when the pipeline sprung a leak.


[photo via]

Imagine walking out your door and discovering this.



The town evacuated the neighborhood and shut down sections of highways because a single spark could blow up the whole damn place. Not to mention the toxic fumes are not conducive to breathing.

No one knows exactly how much oil spewed into lovely Mayflower, AK before they managed to shut the line down. I've seen some claims of hundreds of thousands of gallons but surely it was a lot:

Exxon Mobil said it's investigating the cause and working with local authorities in clean-up efforts. The company added that the breach was in a pipeline that originates in Illinois and carries tar sands oil to the Texas Gulf Coast.

In 2009, Exxon modified the capacity of the Pegasus pipeline, increasing the capacity to transport Canadian tar sands oil by 50 percent, or about 30,000 barrels per day. In a 2012 report, Bloomberg News reported the pipeline daily capacity to be 96,000 barrels of oil per day.

There's 42 gallons in a barrel of oil. Considering how far the spill reached before they contained it, it's a safe bet we're talking thousands of barrels. Worse yet, according to this (unverified) video at least one homeowner had no idea the pipeline was so close to his home.

Just this little leak is being classified as a serious incident. The KXL would be a much bigger pipeline, snaking across our entire country, including over major aquifers and agricultural land. A rupture in a KXL pipe could be a major disaster for the entire nation.

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Moses, don't get lost

Working on clearing out the archives on quiet Sunday afternoon. This seems like the perfect time to post this video. John Davis And The Georgia Sea Island Singers:

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Happy Easter

In case you were wondering what to do with all those hard boiled eggs...



[Photos are better if you click on them to embiggen.]

Addendum: Also too, WaPo's annual peeps diorama contest.

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Everything I know, I learned from Mayberry

Don't often pass on facebook memes and I'm reasonably sure that is not Opie in the photoshop but this is, as the cool kidz say, well played.

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Sweet charity

I didn't find this at all surprising. Anybody who has ever worked in the restaurant/hospitality industry knows the rich are tightwads. Indeed the richer the are, the stingier they are with tips. So it goes with charitable giving.

One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest percentage of their income. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns.

It's not that rich don't donate at all, but they do it mainly for self-interested reasons. Like tax breaks. This is especially true of conservatives. Something that was made perfectly clear after the fiscal cliff farce of 2012 finally concluded and Ari Fleischer tweeted this threat.



The super wealthy also do it for prestige. Billionaires will donate hundreds of millions to museums and universities and other cultural insitutions that cater mainly to their social class to either get things named after them, or to advance academic work that suits their personal agenda. You won't see the Kochs endowing a chair in civil rights studies or labor law. Nor will you likely see the Waltons donating to Planned Parenthood even as Walmart's business practices create the welfare clients who desperately need the affordable health care.

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NC GOP attacks voting rights

Suppressing the (Democratic) vote has been an ongoing effort since the idiot GOPers took over our statehouse and they're not letting up for a minute. Not content to trust their extreme gerrymandering of the districts, which went as far as to split a college campus down the middle, the GOP's latest assault on voting rights is going for the ALEC approved attack on voting access. They're double teaming this one:

Senate Bill 428, filed by Sen. Jerry Tillman, R-Randolph, would cut the early voting period from two weeks to one and would eliminate same-day voter registration.

House Bill 451, filed by Rep. Edgar Starnes, R-Caldwell, goes even further. In addition to cutting early voting and same-day registration, it would also outlaw early voting on Sunday and straight-ticket voting.

You know for balance. And the Sunday voting ban has nothing to do with the long standing tradition of black churches "Souls to the Polls" voting drives. Of course not, it's all about the keeping the Sabbath holy.

"I think Sundays just should be – some things you just shouldn't do on Sundays, so I am just opposed to voting on Sunday," Starnes said.

However, you can bet you won't find him filing any bills to end Sunday retail sales or alcohol vending or holding NASCAR races and other sports events on a Sunday. Only voting by possible Democrats offends his God.

Not sure how much difference it even makes. The shameless gerrymandering NC GOPers pushed through gives them a ridiculous advantage already. I'd be willing to bet that was a big part of the reason why Obama didn't win this state again in 2012. Sadly, this isn't the worst thing they're ramming through the legislatures very much against the will of the people. One can only hope the deluded voters who put them into office will remember the GOP's betrayals at the next election.

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Your moment of Zen

Moon hovers near Chrysler Building at sunrise. Inga Sarda-Sorenson photo: 12-30-12.



[Click to embiggen]

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The true cost of the Iraq war

James Fallows reminds us George W. Bush fired anybody who dared suggest the true cost of Iraq war. Before the invasion the Bush administration falsely claimed it would be over in a few months, with few troops and cost a couple of billion dollars because as Paul Wolfowitz put it, "the invasion would be largely 'self-financing' via Iraq's oil." Of course, it didn't happen that way at all. Not even close.

Furthermore, according to a new study done at the the Kennedy School at Harvard, we've only just begun to pay and the real costs look more like this:

The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, taken together, will be the most expensive wars in US history - totaling somewhere between $4 to $6 trillion.

Mother Jones created a set of cost charts about this as well. You'll notice the greatest cost driver is the interest. Never let them forget, the Bush administration borrowed a ton of money to pay for this folly.



And then there's the hidden costs which were mostly not covered in appropriations at the time. Taking care of the troops that survived and came home damaged. That was the double edge sword of improved battlefield care of the injured. It kept the death count relatively low compared to previous wars, but now we have an obligation to take care of these veterans for the rest of their lives. Considering how young they were when they were deployed, those costs will survive longer than those who started this abomination will live themselves. Our children, and quite possibly our grandchildren, will be paying this war off until they reach old age.

Funny, you never hear the austerity addicts talking about that spending.

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Your moment of Zen

A garden in Sammamish, WA.

[Photos are better if you click to embiggen]

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Armed and dangerous idiots

This is the stuff that makes me want to break crockery. Assholes with loaded weapons crash a gun law reform rally.



This is not responsible gun ownership. These guys didn't have to crash this event. They had to know there would be kids there. In the wake of the school murders, just seeing the guns would likely frighten the children. And in the light of the daily accidental discharges, it's fucking dangerous. If they want to strut around acting like dicks, they could hold their own damn event at a different time.

And these asshats are all about their free speech rights, but you don't have to be Einstein to figure out they're not interested in protecting anybody else's right to disagree. Clearly, their objective is to intimidate and it's working.

A member of Moms Demand Action said that she felt unsettled by their presence and said that the organizers would have to think twice before holding another event, particularly one where children could be present.

Seriously. Not that hard to imagine some idiot dropping a loaded gun that goes off and kills an innocent bystander. These are the people who should not be allowed to own guns at all. [video at the link]

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Look at all the hungry people

Wall St. Journal is concern trolling about the rise in use of the food assistance. Some well fed genius is appalled to learn the number of enrollees aren't falling along with the unemployment rate. Well you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. There's a simple answer:

There are record numbers of Americans on food stamps today because there are record numbers of Americans in poverty (records begin in 1959.)

As of 2011, there were 46.2 million men, women, and children living below the U.S. poverty line. There isn't much reason to believe that the last year of mediocre job growth has dented that number. And until it plunges, the food stamp rolls are going to stay full -- plain and simple.

The jobs being created are minimum wage positions that often only offer part time hours. Minimum wage in this state is $7.25 and most of the jobs in that range won't give any one person more than 24 hours of work in a week. The price of everything from food, to fuel, to clothing to shelter has risen far faster than wages, which we already know have been basically flat for over a decade. Every private food bank is seeing an astronomical rise in clients who were formerly secure in the middle class.

Furthermore the vast majority of the weath that's been created during this stubbornly slow recovery is being sucked up by the already wealthy 1% at the top. But sure, let's demonize the poors. You know, you give those people too many free ramen noodles and they'll never want get off the dole. Better we should let their kids starve than ask the wealthy to kick in a few more tax dollars to help them out. [graphic via Class Wars]

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GOP plans to fight Obamacare forever

Bit of buzz today about the "secret Republican plan" to kill Obamacare. After at least 37 failed attempts, they're not willing to give up the fight yet. Their secret weapon is Mitch McConnell.

Steve Benen already has the details down:

The "secret Republican plan" really isn't much of a secret. Hell, it's not really much of a plan, either. McConnell's idea is apparently to have Republicans win a bunch of elections and then destroy the law through the reconciliation process so Democrats can't filibuster the GOP's anti-Obamacare crusade.

That's roughly the same plan Republicans came up with last year, right before the electorate re-elected President Obama and expanded the Democratic majority in the Senate.

But as is the case with so many issues -- taxes, deficit reduction, Planned Parenthood, Paul Ryan's budget, etc. -- GOP officials are determined to pretend 2012 didn't happen and the will of the voters is irrelevant.

They really thought they were going to sweep the elections in 2012. That they actually lost by a rather large margin doesn't really figure into their version of reality. As Mitch said:

“We were prepared to do that had we had the votes to do it after the election. Well, the election didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to,” McConnell told National Journal in an interview. “The monstrosity has ... begun to be implemented and we’re not giving up the fight.” [...]

But, in the next two years, Republicans are looking to bring the issue back in a big way. And they’ll start by trying to brand the law as one that costs too much and is not working as promised.

This part of the plan is already happening. My idiot GOP Senator is tweeting this sort of anti-Obamacare propaganda daily. It could work over time I suppose, but for the moment, I'm seeing more pushback by liberals than support from the local cons in the responses. So there's that... [graphic via]

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Your moment of Zen

Once in a blue moon. Santa Fe, New Mexico.



[Photos are better if you click on them to embiggen.]

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How to build a big gun with a 3D printer

Should probably have titled this one, "Smart kid kills the world" because this kid seems a little crazy to me. But that aside I've been trying to visualize how this 3D printer thing works. I've seen dozens of stories about how they're using this technology to build everything from spare body parts to automatic weaponry. Now thanks to Roger Ebert at least I understand, "How to print out a firearm in the comfort of your own home."



Calling it printing is somewhat deceiving. It's more like you design it in 3D and then build the model from the specs with a fairly simple machine. They're using plastic in this video. Not sure how that would work with metal. Would think you need a much different setup to build that. And I'm still mystified on how they would build body parts. I mean what do they use for the human tissue in the construction? Nonetheless, rather astounding technology.

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All the dope on DOMA

Day two of marriage equality at SCOTUS. Today my Senator Kay Hagan came out in support for equality. I appreciate her courage. Even given my longstanding belief that red state Dems should act like real Democrats and forget the Blue Dog GOP lite positions, it was just less than a year ago an anti-equality measure passed in this state. Don't blame her for hestitating.

Other than that, I don't have much to say about today's arguments. For one thing I'm superstitious about predictions and as I said before, think it's pointless to even try. SCOTUS has surprised me more often than not. But there's loads of earnest analysis on the internets if you go for that sort of thing. Me, I'll just leave you with my hopes and Tom Toles perfect toon.



And one last side note, Greg Sargent reminds us Boehner's Congress is spending big bucks on defending DOMA. Funny you don't hear any complaints from the austerity crowd about that wasteful spending. Last I heard House Republicans sank well over a million bucks into this dopey case. No surprise they don't want to talk about it at all.

Of course, when they hired the guy to defend DOMA, the GOPers were feeling all powerful and mandated by some illusionary silent majority. Which leaves them in something of a quandry now. How do they convince everyone else they really care about "teh ghey" after all and placate their crackpot base who want a theocracy and want it now dammit at the same time?

As John McCain might say, "You can't do it my friends."

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Your moment of Zen

Tweets from space. From Cmdr Hadfield on the ISS - farms in Brazil.



[Photos are better if you click on them to embiggen.]

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Smart kid saves the oceans

Saw it on the internet. Don't know anything about this website, but I really hope this Ocean Cleanup Array is real and that it works.

19-year-old Boyan Slat has unveiled plans to create an Ocean Cleanup Array that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic waste from the world’s oceans. The device consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the world. Instead of moving through the ocean, the array would span the radius of a garbage patch, acting as a giant funnel. The angle of the booms would force plastic in the direction of the platforms, where it would be separated from plankton, filtered and stored for recycling.[...]

It is estimated that the clean-up process would take about five years, and it could greatly increase awareness about the world’s plastic garbage patches.

The process would make the patches visible. Hard to believe it could happen that fast but the kid is organized. He also started up The Ocean Cleanup Foundation, a non-profit organization which is responsible for the development of his proposed technologies. Wish the nightly news would be investigating this instead of obsessing on the latest drama in the Amanda Knox case.

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The invisible victims of casino capitalism

I may as well have titled this "expendable people." Those would be the millions struggling to cope with having lost everything that formerly defined their comfortable lives. They live among us, nearly unnoticed by the throngs of the still secure who stride confidently down sidewalks to their next appointment or linger in cafes absorbed in their mobile devices. In the vast halls of our policy makers, they only exist as random numbers on charts and spreadsheets. The political overlords do not see their faces. They're too far removed from the reality of the invisibles' existence to have even the faintest understanding of their misery.

The luckier invisibles can still afford tenuous shelter in cheap motels but there is little hope they will find a way to return to any semblance of the middle class comfort they once enjoyed. Once the jobs they performed were essential to the creation of wealth for the investor class. Casino capitalism changed all that. Workers are expendable, a negative expense to be eliminated from the balance sheets lest they interfere with the profit margins.

Most of the invisible newly poor played by the rules. They worked hard to build decent lives. They were cheated out of everything, in one way or another, by the investor class. The end of their road looks like some version of this.



No one thinks it could happen to them before they get there. Truth is, it could happen to anyone.

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SCOTUS fever

The most amusing thing about every time SCOTUS gets to oral arguments is, everybody is either an expert on the case law or has discovered their inner mindreader and is certain they know what the Justice's questions really mean.

Me, I stopped trying to divine the future years ago. We won't know for a few more months how it all shakes out. What is most interesting about this particular round is how many politicians have been inspired to come out in favor of equal marriage rights. Clearly they're opportunists for the most part, but I welcome them all. Even if they're "coming out" for the wrong reasons, every voice raised in support helps move the public mood towards tolerance. That can only be a good thing.

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Your moment of Zen

Shadow of an adventurer. Sky Sutton photo.



[Photos are better if you click on them to embiggen.]

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Your moment of Zen

Tabula rasa. This morning at the Library of Congress, Packard Campus in Culpeper, Va. Guessing it's just about melted by now.

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