tvashtarkatena

How about "better blue than red"?

Ever met any software engineers? Total destruction, man, as only killer robots can do it.

You're always a bit freer when you're the one with the gun.

this might be one reason why they hate us from the article: "His report drew on a 2006 survey by the surgeon general of the Army, which found that fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents. More than one-third said torture was acceptable under some conditions, and fewer than half said they would report a colleague for unethical battlefield behavior. Troops who were stressed, angry, anxious or mourning lost colleagues or who had handled dead bodies were more likely to say they had mistreated civilian noncombatants, the survey said (PDF). (The survey can be read by searching for 1117mhatreport at www.globalpolicy.org.)"

That reminds me, I need to do a meth run to MT before the heavy snows. The prices out there are to die for. WY even better, but it's just too damn far.

For example, Canadians might value something other than money (NO WAY!), like the environment, or salmon, which just might be a cultural symbol that far outweighs its monetary value (IMPOSSIBLE!). Or water might become a a symbol of national soveriegnty (NEVER HAPPEN!). Or the kind of people who live in the Southwest might just not give a shit about conservation or believe there's a problem, like all those Republicans your favorite loser's home state (NUH UH!). No, I'm sure everyone's going to hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and agree to do the right thing according to the pricing model, you know, like they always do. No bubbles, no collapses, no lasting regional devastation, no non-linearity, no permanent environmental degradation, no political fun and games; all smurfs and loves and hugs. Just another wonderful day in sphericalchickentopia!

If we were a species of price-model adhering androids, that might be true. Too bad about that little perception and politics thing. Consider the spherical chicken!

Wow. For all his copious pontification, JayB doesn't have even a rudimentary understanding of the economics of the real world, nevermind the huge role that human perception plays. Apparently, he memorized the first 2 chapters of his Econ 101 text, and took his world view from there. Damn near autistic, really. I'm reminded of a really bad joke from Engineering school. A slaughterhouse owner asks an engineer to design a chicken plucking machine for him. "No problem, give me a week." the engineer replies. A week passes, and to the surprise of the owner, the engineer appears with drawings and a contraption, and begins his presentation. "Consider the spherical chicken..." Five minutes in an actual business environment might actually do him some good.

It's too bad the DA who's handling the indictment is such a fucking loon himself.

After Gonzales, Ashcroft should be canonized.

Rummy can live out the remainder of his confused days in disgrace. Perhaps he'll be gored by one of his bulls at some point.

Oh, and Gonzales needs to die. Agonizingly, horribly.

It's not that I'm not grateful for seeing the GOP shat upon by a particularly incontinent electorate, but one can get a bit greedy on Christmas morning.

A particularly aggressive case of testicular cancer for one Mr. Bush would also be nice.

It was a landslide, particularly by today's standards, but it doesn't matter. The good guys won, and the self-brain eating zombie army was defeated and shoved into a deep, dark hole where it always belonged. I'm not expecting it to come to fruition, but if Cheney gets frog marched to Buttfuck Acres, I'm going to start believing that Jebus is Lord.

Bill, if you were any dumber I'd serve you up deep fried with ketchup.

D'oh! I guess I didn't read carefully enough. I thought maybe she is in her 60s,and might have been better looking at 18,not to be! She was born in 57,never married,no kids,not a rug eater,butterfaced,not gay?,mountainbiker,mountainclimber,built like FW,and oh ah not gay?? ??? I can't see her cankles anywhere in these photos.

One interesting example is America at the time of Gifford Pinchot. America was facing an energy crisis back then, too: wood, the primary energy source of the day. Massive deforestation was a huge issue at the time; the eastern US was running out of trees (they've grown back as hardwoods, mainly, after the cessation of most of the agriculture in the region enabled them to). Pinchot went to Europe to study forestry (which didn't exist in the U.S.), and came up with the sustainable national forest system. Problem solved (well, sort of)...through reasoned governance and a (relatively) early recognition of the problem. The Romans, also a wood powered society, weren't so prescient.

OH, and regarding FW's drivel about Chicago housing and Stalin or whatever diarrhea he's going on about, again: Dated. Nobody's built housing like that since the 60s; it's long been recognized as a failure. New public housing looks and works very differently nowadays, not that he'd know anything about such things way out there in Meth County.

The Eastern Islander's world collapsed because of lack of resources. As did the Mayans. And the Greenlanders. And on and on and on. Those societies lived in relatively closed systems. Well, I would define the Earth as a relatively closed system, just a bigger one, sudden arrival of star hopping aliens notwithstanding. The difference, and I can't believe I actually need to explain this, is just one of scale. Any population that outstrips its resources in a closed system is due for a reset. We're arriving at that place globally in terms of energy, water, and food production. I guess JayB's never been to Africa to witness some grim examples of what of this for himself (not really his style, I'd wager). JayB exhibits a common trait among conservatives: an inability to recognize the game being played, and an incapacity to understand when the rules of that game have change. For example, he often cites the Green Revolution and the abundance of cheap calories (in the U.S., anyway) as evidence that there couldn't possibly be a problem; ignoring what every farmer has known for decades: we got that abundant food through unsustainable practices; and are now at risk of not only draining the fossil aquifers that sustained it, but the very topsoil that grew it. In JayB's tiny world, you can drive your car at 150 mph indefinitely without worrying about burning up the motor; because, hey, we've been doing it for the past half hour without a hitch, right? Hence, his oft recycled maxims, which always seem to pre-date the last century, nevermind this one. Will this reset mean extermination? In some poorer, politically ravaged areas, that's already happening. In America, where we have a lower population growth rate, stronger civil society, and much greater resources, not necessarily. The reset will certainly mean global depopulation, probably mostly voluntary. The U.S. won't be excluded from this: an inevitability which will (and, um, already is) challenging an outdated economic model that relies on on cheap, abundant energy and unlimited population growth, and unrestrained consumption. The key idea here is that JayB's kind is not capable of recognizing, nevermind accepting, a problem early enough to prevent catastrophe. That's why this election was so important. The conservative movement badly needed to be put down and shoved aside to make room for people who actually have the capacity to recognize a real threat and do the politically difficult work of addressing it. Under JayB's favored leadership, we had no chance to make a reasonable transition to a world of scarcity. Obviously, given the events of the day, it's not going to be painless...at all, but at least it might be non-violent...for Americans, anyway. Shoving the idiots into a closet and locking the door was step one towards some sort of sane adaptation to the somewhat less bountiful reality of the 21st century.

Reference 'libertarian freakshow' in one of my previous posts....

ARRRR! We've scored a supertanker! See how she tanks, lads!

I'm the love child of William Shatner and Yeoman Rand. You gonna eat that drumstick?

Sorry, I just sprayed coffee all over the keyboard trying to stifle my laughter. Good luck in your new 'no resources required' universe.

Did someone utter the word "landslide"? We can safely store the latest of FW's blustery predictions in the same oil oozing 55 gallon drum full of drowned rats and the rest of his clairvoyant demonstrations; a seemingly permanent installation that complements the cluster of wheeless vehicles awaiting restoration on his front lawn. FW will be long dead by the time the Republicans reconstitute their party into a viable political machine, if that ever happens. Their 'conservative agenda', the most radical and reckless in American history in actuality, has steadily devolved into nothing more than cacophony of trite, feux patriotic slogans worthy of a fat little five year old who stands screaming in a Walmart, center isle, shaking down his stone dumb parents for more candy. The Republican era was basically a multi-decade meth party with a not very exclusive guest list that the rest of us witnessed in horror. It was a moving song about soaring eagles and fallen soldiers belted out loudly enough to distract America's dumber half from the fleecing operation going on stage Right. What was good for The Party was good for America, and that was the problem. Electoral victories and the continuation of the fleecing operation was the agenda, not the health of the nation; it's culture, it's people (all of them), it's environment, it's reputation, it's values, as a whole. The Republican party didn't have to solve real problems like global warming and energy independence, because they didn't have to; that was never on the to do list. It couldn't last. The meth party required an overabundance of resources to sustain it's bloated military budgets and other cocaine-fiend spending and the redistribution of wealth from the backbone of America to it's crack whore fucking, God talking nuova riche. Anyone with any brains or ethics left the conservative movement a long time ago in disgust. What remained stuck in the garbage disposal filter were the religious kooks, asset strippers, liberal-haters, racists (anti Muslim being the current fad), simpletons, incurable ideologs, and standard libertarian freakshow. We have finally been forced to realize, en masse, that we live in an age of resource depletion. The epiphany came suddenly and catastrophically, as it usually does with a species that operates more on perception than reality. The conservative movement could never have survived such a realization, because it depended on the perception that the coke would never run out. Incredibly, some here still cling to that belief. An environment of scarcity requires a society to cooperate more, share more, and amortize risk more if the social fabric is to hold. Of course, there's always the Somalian model for those ardent libertarians out there, but most of the rest of us kind of like the kind of society we live in. This means more socialism, which for some strange reason is bandied about as a bad thing, at times even equated with Stalinism by the most intellectually challenged on this forum. In an age where consumerism has actually been equated with patriotism, this means a refreshing change from I've Got Mine culture to increased stewardship of the society we live in. For those of you who want to pine for a past that never really was, do what you must. But don't delude yourselves that this is just a temporary change until the next midterm elections. I realize that contrarianism as personality disorder is somehow a badge of honor amongst your dwindling tribe, but, at some point, it might be helpful to get real to the fact that the shit's running out and our population's not getting any smaller. The party's over. Time to winch the car out of the ditch and head on back to the trailer park.