BillyCreek

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

1910

In response to a comment below, a comment in which the the year 1913 appears to be the end of the world for the commenter because that's when the Federal Reserve System was created. I was also exhorted to study history. Well, here are a few tidbits from 1910-1913, a glorious time for Americans, according to the commenter.

-25 March. Fire breaks out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, killing 146 workers, mostly women and girls; some jump to their deaths when inadequate equipment makes rescue impossible. [It served the workers right. For some reason. Oh, & no such thing as OSHA back then either.]
-15 April. The Titanic strikes an iceberg, and 1502 lives are lost because the ship did not carry enough lifeboats. [Again, free to die.]
-5 June. In what is now known as "Dollar Diplomacy," the U. S. sends marines to protect business interests in Cuba. [What can I say?]

Day Three

From The Times-Picayune, we get the third installment of the series on the loss, destruction, & ignoring of the wetlands of south Louisiana.

Right smack in the center of Louisiana's fragile, sinking coastline, a river gives birth to new wetlands every day.

The Atchafalaya River flows freely through the middle of Cajun country to the Gulf, depositing life-sustaining sediment into the interior wetlands along its path and the shallow bays at its mouth, creating a rich new delta.

The river's natural land-building ability contrasts sharply with the Mississippi River, which politicians and engineers long ago confined inside levees and jetties. That prevented the inundation of the cities, towns and industrial infrastructure along the river, but it also stifled the annual floods that had nourished the wetlands with fresh sediment.
....
"We can't go on for many years before we cross a threshold" beyond which the coast can't be saved, Groat said. "The scale of catastrophe and impact on the state and on the people -- on the entire country -- are all affected by the delta."

Emphais added.

The lesson of the the Atchafalaya River was/is lost on most of the commercial, i.e., business, interests. Their bottom line is not the resurrection of the delta, but maximizing shareholder value. & that's why we have this huge problem to begin with. Along with, of course, this whole notion of having dominion over the earth.

Libby Is A Convicted Felon

Celebrate!

Good news on a cold & snowy March day in northern Wisco. Of the four counts he was convicted of, two are obstruction of justice & lying to the FBI. Tip of the old hat to The SideKick, AKA,. Shutterwi, who called me with the news. The public library is awash in happiness, no kidding & no shit.

Celebrate!

http://www.phoenixorganics.com/4054/expanko/confetti.jpg

Finally, some accountability.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Just Completely Nuts

The shame of Wisco shows why it is the shame of Wisco. This is the kind of argument that the right-wing uses all the time. The worst is that these guys are no longer out of the mainstream of ReThuglican thought. Maybe it's time to resurrect that old-time religion & get drunk & dance on Joe McCarthy's grave one more time. What's also interesting is that if we follow the link, we find out that the "former Canadian defense minister" claimed to have seen an UFO a couple of years ago & that he is now 83 years old. He served as defense minister in 1973. That would be 34 years ago. Here's a tidbit that the Birchers didn't notice:

His views were too right wing for most delegates, and alienated many Tories with a speech attacking Red Tories as not being "true conservatives"

Losing Ground 2

It can, sadly, be summed up with Talking loud, doing nothing.

"At the same time we were asking for help in protecting our wetlands, (the Louisiana delegation) was pushing for reducing regulations and protections," Davis said. "It was all to help the oil industry. People on the national level just couldn't take us seriously."
....
Another huge hurdle for planners lay in the sanctity of private property rights, which the state's congressional delegation vociferously supported. More than 80 percent of the state's coastal wetlands are privately held, so landowners had to agree to the changes caused by the restoration projects, or accept financial compensation.

The landowners also included the petrochemical industry, which sought to protect thousands of miles of pipelines and service canals running through the wetlands. Dumping new sediment into that network could close off canals, restricting access.

Real estate developers, with a stake in providing land for industries as well as residential and recreational owners, also had a vested interest in saving the coast -- but they wanted the coast-saving diversions to be installed where it wouldn't hurt their bottom line.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Heckuva Job

Nothing is working & it's a year and a half after the storm. Isn't anyone embarrassed, besides me?

Bad Thinking/Worse Politics

The right-wing nutjobs over at Free-Market News Network, the name says all you'll need to know, dug up some goofball Russian scientist, Habibullo Abdussamatov, who claims that Mars is also experiencing a climate warming & we can blame it all on radiation from the sun. What the free-marketeers fail to mention is that the aforementioned Russian has been isolated by the majority of the scientific community. Media Matters For America has the goods.

After explaining Abdussamatov's theory, the article reported that the theory has "not been well received by other climate scientists." The article first quoted "Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University" saying that Abdussamatov's "views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion" and that they "contradict the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report." The article added that "[t]he conventional theory is that climate changes on Mars can be explained primarily by small alterations in the planet's orbit and tilt, not by changes in the sun" and that "most scientists think it is pure coincidence that both planets are between ice ages right now."

Finally, the article reported that "the biggest stumbling block in Abdussamatov's theory is his dismissal of the greenhouse effect," and quoted Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who said that "without the greenhouse effect there would be very little, if any, life on Earth, since our planet would pretty much be a big ball of ice."

Emphasis added.

Standing Army

A really interesting discussion on the advisability of a standing army. Full of historical background (you know, the Founding Fathers, etc.), along with some modern day bullshit from Lieberman. Go read it if you are interested in the survival of our country, not to get too wild or anything.

Wake Up!

In today's The Times-Picayune, there is the first of a three part series on the destruction of the wetlands that nourish & protect, not only New Orleans, but much of what matters to America. Or ought to matter to America.

"People think we still have 20, 30, 40 years left to get this done. They're not even close," said St. Pe, director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, which seeks to save one of the coast's most threatened and strategically vital zones.

"Ten years is how much time we have left -- if that."
....
"I think that shocked us as much as any other group," said Robert Twilley, director of Louisiana State University's Gulf restoration initiative who has worked on the issue for years. "I think our concern now is that we may have contributed to false optimism."
(No shit, Dick Tracy. & my emphasis.)
....
Studies show destruction of the wetlands protecting the infrastructure serving those industries would put $103 billion in assets at risk.

Despite such dire threats, the most disturbing concern may be this: Coastal restoration efforts have been under way for two decades, but not a single project capable of reversing the trend currently awaits approval.

The modest restoration efforts already under way have no chance of making a serious impact, experts say.

"It's like putting makeup on a corpse," said Mark Schexnayder, a regional coastal adviser with LSU's Sea Grant College Program who has spent 20 years involved in coastal restoration.
(Very New Orleans, ed. My emphasis.)
....
That has forced researchers at the Louisiana University Marine Consortium in Cocodrie to take boats to work, and the erosion has made life ever more precarious in communities once separated from the Gulf by miles of marsh.
(Emphasis added. Gratuitous mention of The Kid's dog, Cocodrie.)

& this has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not New Orleans ought to be rebuilt. It is not about people living in a flood/hurricane/below-sea-level area. It is about the destruction of a massive wetland. & this destruction lies at the feet of human beings through their neglect, ill-advised levee construction, refusal to recognize global warming, & we don't care about poor people attitude.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Plumped

This link is of concern to me because I'm interested in hawkmoths & global warming, but my brain was piqued by the use of the word plumped. & that is my concern, OK?

Another Drowning Victim

I mentioned this before, but the numbers are worse. It's also made one of the local dailies, the Daily Globe from Ironwood, MI. It keeps getting worse.