j_b

Their low birth rate can be easily offset by immigration, of which they have an abundance even if it's the illegal kind. It'll be hard for the xenophobes and other flag wavers, but that's a good thing too. in other words, you are ignoring my comment about accounting for both public AND private debt because you'd have to admit that neoliberal economies have overall contracted more debt over the last 30 years. "structural reform" is euphemism for making average folks pay for the excess of unregulated capitalism while the banksters and the destroyers of industrial sectors (and jobs) enjoy their loot.

NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option by Miles Mogulescu For months I've been reporting in The Huffington Post that President Obama made a backroom deal last summer with the for-profit hospital lobby that he would make sure there would be no national public option in the final health reform legislation. (See here, here and here). I've been increasingly frustrated that except for an initial story last August in the New York Times, no major media outlet has picked up this important story and investigated further. Hopefully, that's changing. On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed New York Times Washington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV show, and Kirkpatrick confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for the for-profit hospital industry on Kahn's confidence that the White House would honor the no public option deal, and Kirkpatrick responded: "That's a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he's talking about the hospital industry's specific deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee and, yeah, I think the hospital industry's got a deal here. There really were only two deals, meaning quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the hospitals and the other with the drug industry. And I think what you're interested in is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product." Kirkpatrick also acknowledged that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina had confirmed the existence of the deal. This should be big news. Even while President Obama was saying that he thought a public option was a good idea and encouraging supporters to believe his healthcare plan would include one, he had promised for-profit hospital lobbyists that there would be no public option in the final bill. more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/ny-times-reporter-confirm_b_500999.html

of course, here you are, blaming government and the public sector, per usual. Perhaps, some day you'll stop cherry-picking data and you'll consider the entire debt, public AND private, and then it'll become apparent that overall debt levels are very similar if not higher in more neoliberal economies.

I don't know if your statement is true for prole, but it is definitely true about you. All robber-baron economies eventually collapse and it usually doesn't take them 50 years, a few decades is all that is needed.

You have to admire JayB's audacity: Greece is bankrupt because of neoliberalism's casino capitalism, yet he manages to indict mixed economies. The dude has no shame.

In other words, you claim that the robber-baron economy is the only alternative to Stalinism. What a bleak world view.

and I ignored the few that have already gone under.

The economies of the most neoliberal countries in Europe are barely threading water and that's probably only because nobody has really seen the (cooked) books.

One way to prevent all that carbon from entering the atmosphere would be to harvest the wood for something other than firewood I'd say we ought to train a new generation of chainsaw artists to make front yard ornaments for the Las Vegas burbs. See, it's all there: job creation, quasi permanent carbon sink, and beoootiful wooden bears'n stuff.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if climate change denialists ended up making that argument. They have shown to be capable of any and all logical fallacies.

don't break the speed limit with that boat [video:youtube]dFGS7YCDk3Y

probably some junk boat since the pirates would preferentially come from that part of the world with the greatest needs

losing all these trees will amount to a nice little positive feedback on carbon emissions. Land use already accounts for 20% of yearly emissions, I assume most of it being due to deforestation.

Those building gated communities sure don't see it that way and don't plan on ever giving up grabbing all that they can. No matter how little is left. Who wrote that regions like the Pacific NW that have plenty of resources and shouldn't be catastrophically affected by climate change would become the prime targets of pirates roaming the Pacific? There, is a catastrophic vision of the end of the world as we know it. As for the Greeks, many don't live unsustainably, especially the small farmers who lost everything in mega-fires of never seen intensity until a few years ago.

Pulling your head out of your ass sure would help you realize that the world of plenty of people is indeed ending.

They wear sheep's clothing and can't be as blatant in their destruction of the social safety net and deregulation of economic activity because the traditional European left still has plenty of muscle, but neolibs are in control of Europe. Just look at the way they rammed down people's throat their version of a constitution that enshrines "free trade" (read unfair trade) and economic competition.

What's even more dismaying is that most formerly industrial nations are becoming failed states. I mean just look at western Europe, they are in just sorry of a situation and show as little capacity to address significant problems. Neoliberals are like locusts.

It's a little too late to lament the effects of logging. Helloooo? The article is about warming induced deforestation. Are you going to deny that too?

it seems like it'd have been difficult to get 2 weeks at -30degC in Oct-Nov at lower elev West of the Rockies even before global warming.

Bivy up the canyons (Eagle wall area is great). Best accommodations in town.

Holiday in Laos too.

Anybody knows if the beetle is spreading rapidly east of the Rockies? or are winters too rigorous?

by jim robbins For many years, Diana Six, an entomologist at the University of Montana, planned her field season for the same two to three weeks in July. That’s when her quarry — tiny, black, mountain pine beetles — hatched from the tree they had just killed and swarmed to a new one to start their life cycle again. Now, says Six, the field rules have changed. Instead of just two weeks, the beetles fly continually from May until October, attacking trees, burrowing in, and laying their eggs for half the year. And that’s not all. The beetles rarely attacked immature trees; now they do so all the time. What’s more, colder temperatures once kept the beetles away from high altitudes, yet now they swarm and kill trees on mountaintops. And in some high places where the beetles had a two-year life cycle because of cold temperatures, it’s decreased to one year. Such shifts make it an exciting — and unsettling — time to be an entomologist. The growing swath of dead lodgepole and ponderosa pine forest is a grim omen, leaving Six — and many other scientists and residents in the West — concerned that as the climate continues to warm, these destructive changes will intensify. “A couple of degrees warmer could create multiple generations a year,” she said, as she chopped off a piece of bark on a dead lodgepole pine to show the galleries of burrowing larvae. “If that happens, I expect it would be a disaster for all of our pine populations.” Across western North America, from Mexico to Alaska, forest die-off is occurring on an extraordinary scale, unprecedented in at least the last century-and-a-half — and perhaps much longer. All told, the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the United States have seen nearly 70,000 square miles of forest — an area the size of Washington state — die since 2000. For the most part, this massive die-off is being caused by outbreaks of tree-killing insects, from the ips beetle in the Southwest that has killed pinyon pine, to the spruce beetle, fir beetle, and the major pest — the mountain pine beetle — that has hammered forests in the north. These large-scale forest deaths from beetle infestations are likely a symptom of a bigger problem, according to scientists: warming temperatures and increased stress, due to a changing climate. Although western North America has been hardest hit by insect infestations, sizeable areas of forest in Australia, Russia, France, and other countries have experienced die-offs, most of which appears to have been caused by drought, high temperatures, or both. One recent study collected reports of large-scale forest mortality from around the world. Often, forest death is patchy, and research is difficult because of the large areas involved. But the paper, recently published in Forest Ecology and Management, reported that in a 20,000-square-mile savanna in Australia, nearly a third of the trees were dead. In Russia, there was significant die-off within 9,400 square miles of forest. Much of Siberia has warmed by several degrees Fahrenheit in the past half-century, and hot, dry conditions have led to extreme wildfire seasons in eight of the last 10 years. Russian researchers also are concerned that warmer, dryer conditions will lead to increased outbreaks of the Siberian moth, which can destroy large swaths of Russia’s boreal forest. While people in some places have the luxury to doubt whether climate change is real, it’s harder to be a doubter in the Rocky Mountains. Glaciers in Glacier National Park and elsewhere are shrinking, winters are warmer and shorter, and the intensity of forest fires is increasing. But the most obvious sign is the red and dead forests that carpet the hills and mountains. They have transformed life in many parts of the Rockies. Much more here: http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2252

Well, My Lai is just one atrocity among many atrocities during a war that caused the death of at least 5 million Southeast Asians. examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Force http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program

Now 41 votes for the public option through reconciliation. Only 9 to go: "We are 9 Senators away from victory, while the White House continues to act like these votes don't exist. It's time for both houses of Congress to commit to an up-or-down vote on the public option -- and to invite the White House to help lead or get out of the way," said Charles Chamberlain of Democracy for America, which has been pushing hard for the public option. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/public-option-support-now_n_493725.html