1/ Charles Blow in the Times looks at the Wall Street protests, and although sympathetic he notes the lack of focus to the demonstrations. However, the anger in the mainly young protestors shows the potential for a populist to capture the mood since just about everyone is pissed off with the status quo. And especially the Wall Street oligarchs.
This Sunday [today] the New York police tricked protestors into going on to a bridge, and arresting over 700 people for obstructing a roadway....and demos have started in Boston.
While it lacks the clarity and size — at least so far — of other protests we’ve seen in this country, let alone in other countries, it does highlight a growing sense of disillusionment among Americans and the failures and ineffectiveness they feel from the current government in addressing their concerns.
In fact, a series of Gallup polls released this week found record-high dissatisfaction with government, including these findings:
• 81 percent of Americans said they were dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed.
• Confidence in Congress reached a new low last month.
• Americans’ confidence in the people who run for or serve in office is also at a new low.
• The 15 percent of Americans approving of Congress in the September poll is just 2 percentage points above the all-time low recorded twice in the past year.
• At 43 percent, fewer Americans today than at any time in the past four decades said they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the federal government to handle domestic problems.
• Americans’ sense that the federal government poses an immediate threat to individuals’ rights and freedoms is also at a new high.
• Americans are more than twice as likely to say President Obama and the current Congress are doing a poor job as a good job of dealing with the nation’s most important problems. Most even believe that they’re doing worse than their predecessors.
But even with high levels of unhappiness and star power involved, there is something about Occupy Wall Street that feels like a spark set down on wet grass: It’s just hard to see how it truly catches fire. (Some of the city’s largestlabor unions and liberal groups are expected to join the protest next week. Maybe that will help.)
This has less to do with what began as a mission — after all, it’s hard to argue with the idea of fighting greed and corruption — than with the fact that it has nowhere to go.
While many Americans are feeling the pain from this financial crisis and our leaders’ at-times-wrongheaded-at-other-
2/ One of the major lines of defense against global warming is the ability of trees to absorb CO2, but as this scary story in the Times says our forests are under severe pressure from many predators, from beetles to droughts to fires to man.
No matter what Rick Perry says, we're in trouble.....
Remember - even if you don't believe in climate change, climate change believes in you.....
Long but very worthwhile article......
WISE RIVER, Mont. — The trees spanning many of the mountainsides of western Montana glow an earthy red, like a broadleaf forest at the beginning of autumn.
Temperature Rising
Trees at Risk
Articles in this series are focusing on the central arguments in the climate debate and examining the evidence for global warming and its consequences.
Forests and Climate Change
READER Q. AND A.
Justin Gillis is taking questions on climatic threats to the world's forests and the implications for the earth's future. He will respond next week on the Green blog.
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But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in part by bitterly cold winters. As the climate warms, scientists say, that control is no longer happening.
Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days.
From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state’s spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water.
The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two “once a century” droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.
Experts are scrambling to understand the situation, and to predict how serious it may become.
Scientists say the future habitability of the Earthmight well depend on the answer. For, while a majority of the world’s people now live in cities, they depend more than ever on forests, in a way that few of them understand.
Scientists have figured out — with the precise numbers deduced only recently — that forests have been absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people are putting into the air by burning fossil fuels and other activities. It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks.
Without that disposal service, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be rising faster. The gas traps heat from the sun, and human emissions are causing the planet to warm.
Yet the forests have only been able to restrain the increase, not halt it. And some scientists are increasingly worried that as the warming accelerates, trees themselves could become climate-change victims on a massive scale.
“At the same time that we’re recognizing the potential great value of trees and forests in helping us deal with the excess carbon we’re generating, we’re starting to lose forests,” said Thomas W. Swetnam, an expert on forest history at the University of Arizona.
While some of the forests that died recently are expected to grow back, scientists say others are not, because of climate change.
If forests were to die on a sufficient scale, they would not only stop absorbing carbon dioxide, they might also start to burn up or decay at such a rate that they would spew huge amounts of the gas back into the air — as is already happening in some regions. That, in turn, could speed the warming of the planet, unlocking yet more carbon stored in once-cold places like the Arctic.
3/ Bill Maher evicerates all of the Republican candidates for president, and says even Jesus couldn't get the GOP nomination.....very clever humour.....2 wonderful minutes.....
4/ If you are up for a long but fascinating read about the next big financial crisis coming soon, look at this article from Vanity Fair about the state of America's cities, focussing on California. In the golden years of the 90's and the 00's pensions and entitlements to public service employees were amazingly overgenerous, and now the piper is due to be paid.
The article also includes an interview with Governor Schwartzenegger.....
The smart money says the U.S. economy will splinter, with some states thriving, some states not, and all eyes are on California as the nightmare scenario. After a hair-raising visit with former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who explains why the Golden State has cratered, Michael Lewis goes where the buck literally stops—the local level, where the likes of San Jose mayor Chuck Reed and Vallejo fire chief Paige Meyer are trying to avert even worse catastrophes and rethink what it means to be a society.
5/ If you watch ESPN or the sports networks a lot you will see many documentaries about high school football, and it's always the same small town in Texas.
Onion Sports News has the story......yes it's satire, or is it?
Note the scene at 1 minute 11 seconds.....remember, it's Texas.
6/ Tax the rich more? Class warfare!
Here is an excellent article about the real war going on, the vilification of the working poor by the right wing. The author debunks 6 of the most common talking points of the Fox News punditry......
Very good indeed......
Here are the six points.....
1. Registering the Poor to Vote Is “Un-American”
2. Unemployment Benefits Have Created a “Nation of Slackers”
3. You Can’t Really Be Poor if You Have a Color TV!
4. Food-Stamps: “A Fossil That Repeats All the Errors of the War on Poverty”
5. “The Main Causes of Child Poverty Are Low Levels of Parental Work and the Absence of Fathers”
6. Taxing Working People Less Than the Rich Is “Perverse”
http://news.salon.com/2011/09/7/ Remember this from 2006? R.E.M with "Losing my Religion".....great song, atmospheric video......4 minutes.....
8/ Still have an account with one of the major banks? Why? They are screwing you.......
This story is about a fee you will have to pay [if you are a BoA customer] to use your debit card, and I am sure it's just the beginning. If there was ever a time to move your account to a "nice" bank like a credit union or a local bank, it's now.
I moved my account 2 years ago to a local bank here in Mount Dora, First Green Bank, and I get excellent service and no annoying fees.....and I can get fee-free cash at any Publix ATM.....
The news on Thursday that Bank of America is imposing a $5 monthly fee on people who have the nerve to use their debit card to buy things probably should not have come as much of a shock.
Wells Fargo, the other giant coast-to-coast bank, had already revealed its plans to test a $3 fee in the wake of new federal rules that made the cards less profitable for many banks.
Bank of America probably has bigger problems than any of its competitors. So it stands to reason that it would make a bolder move. After all, it is dealing with a pile of troubledmortgages, legal fallout from the sales of bondsmade from those loans and questions about how it serviced its home mortgages.
Still, the scale of its changes mean that most debit card shoppers who do not have Bank of America mortgages or more than $20,000 in account balances will need to pay that $5 monthly fee. It is a tax on pretty much every customer without a healthy salary or investment income, plus those who want to keep their savings elsewhere for whatever reason.
Bank of America and Wells Fargo are hardly alone here, since other big banks have toughened the rules for people who want to keep free checking, or have killed off rewards programs to save money. And we probably haven’t heard the last of the new rules either. All of these moves together, however, raise a simple and rather obvious question:
Why is anyone still doing business with banks like these?
9/ I've watched this twice and have no idea how he does this.....only that Criss Angel might be a very good friend of Satan....2 minutes.....
10/ I love Gail Collins.....she makes our horrible politics so amusing.........good column.......
Mitt’s been on a roll, knocking over one new challenger after another on the road to the Republican presidential nomination. As soon as they get near him, they seem to go ga-ga.
Rick Perry is sounding as if English is his third language. Michele Bachmann is seeing invisible people who tell her terrible stories about killer vaccines. Newt Gingrich has contracted scary delusions of grandeur. (“The scale of change I am suggesting is so enormous I couldn’t possibly, as a single leader, show you everything I’m going to do ...”) Rick Santorum is on Fox News, brightly announcing: “We finished fourth in the straw poll in Florida, which was a big help to us.”
11/ Perky Pam Bondi, Florida's intrepid Attorney General, still hasn't explained why she fired two attorneys that were after some of the corporate corruption in Florida.....
When last we checked on Attorney General Pam Bondi, she was being investigated for forcing out two of her top-producing investigators, and legislators had asked her to produce records to justify her actions.
Well, the investigation is still going, and state officials are tight-lipped about when it might be complete.
Well, the investigation is still going, and state officials are tight-lipped about when it might be complete.
12/ I know you are yearning for something decent on TV, so here's a good 3 part series starting tonight [Sunday] on PBS - "Prohibition", directed by Ken Burns.
Excellent review......
Yet you can hear history talking directly to the Americans of 2011 all through “Prohibition,” an absorbing five-and-a-half-hour documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that runs for three nights, beginning on Sunday on PBS stations. Especially now, the story of America’s disastrous experiment with banning alcoholic beverages seems made for Santayana’s phrase about learning from the past or being condemned to repeat it.
13/ Good movies out this week.
Just a note - we saw "Moneyball" Friday with Brad Pitt and it was excellent. One for the Netflix queue....if you still subscribe......
Here is a film for our times....."Take Shelter".....
Some of the reviews mention "masterpiece". It's not out in fringe markets like Central Florida but it's a movie to watch out for.....
A sinister corollary to Dewart’s homespun truism might be that the greatest fear a man can experience is that of losing the good life he has. It is this anxiety, which afflicts Curtis in especially virulent form, that defines the mood of “Take Shelter,” Jeff Nichols’s remarkable new film. It is a quiet, relentless exploration of the latent (and not so latent) terrors that bedevil contemporary American life, a horror movie that will trouble your sleep not with visions of monsters but with a more familiar dread.
We like to think that individually and collectively, we have it pretty good, but it is harder and harder to allay the suspicion that a looming disaster — economic or environmental, human or divine — might come along and destroy it all. Normalcy can feel awfully precarious, like a comforting dream blotting out a nightmarish reality.
What if everything that Curtis values were to be suddenly swept away? We are not talking about a life of luxury and ease, but about modest comforts and reasonable expectations: a decent job with health benefits and vacation time, a loving family, a house of your own.
Here's a sleeper - "Tucker and Dale vs Evil". Teens in the woods vs the local rednecks, turned on it's head.....sounds great.
The impalement is a nice touch. The death by wood chipper, pretty sweet. But the best bit of comedy in the ridiculously gory “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” eviscerates the field of psychology with no bloodshed at all.
Eli Craig, directing his first feature (from a script he wrote with Morgan Jurgenson), has put together a droll sendup of the killer-in-the-swamp genre that gets funnier as it rolls along. If you are one of the few who saw the dreadful“Creature,” released on Sept. 9, don’t be alarmed that this film starts out identically: preppy-looking young people driving around the swampy South pull into a tattered store where they encounter creepy locals, then inexplicably decide to explore the woods.
Two of those creepy locals are Tucker (Alan Tudyk, currently trapped in the lame new sitcom“Suburgatory”) and Dale (Tyler Labine), who are harmless despite their appearance. (Mr. Tudyk and Mr. Labine mesh perfectly.) When the young visitors run into them again in the woods, they assume the worst, and through a series of accidents and misunderstandings, the worst comes to pass. Only Allison (Katrina Bowden), a psychology student, figures out that Tucker and Dale are pussycats, but her crisis-intervention techniques need work.
"50/50", a bromance about a dude who gets diagnosed with cancer and works it out with his bro got a decent review [not from the Times though]....Seth Rogan stars, so you know what you are getting....
“50/50,” a feel-good and slightly bad comedy-drama about a young man’s fight against cancer, aims to put a tear in your eye and a sob in your throat, if not for long. Certainly the waterworks don’t need much plumbing, as might be expected when the 27-year-old Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a Seattle radio producer, learns that he has a malignant spinal tumor. Shock and grief and bewilderment ensue as do jokes about barbered testicles and the wisdom of playing the C (as in cancer) card with chicks.
Todays video - Mouse and Mousetrap....cheese commercial
Todays Irish joke
Murphy showed up at Mass one Sunday & the priest almost fell down when he saw him. He'd never been to church in his life.
After Mass, the priest caught up with him & said, "Murphy, I am so glad ya decided to come to Mass. What made ya come?"
Murphy said, "I got to be honest with you Father, a while back, I misplaced me hat & I really, really love that hat. I know that McGlynn had a hat just like mine & I knew he came to church every Sunday . I also knew that he had to take off his hat during Mass & figured he would leave it in the back of church. So, I was going to leave after Communion & steal McGlynn's hat."
The priest said, "Well, Murphy, I notice that ya didn't steal McGlynn's hat. What changed your mind?"
Murphy replied, "Well, after I heard your sermon on the 10 Commandments I decided that I didn't need to steal McGlynn's hat after all."
With a tear in his eye the priest gave Murphy a big smile & said;"After I talked about ' Thou Shalt Not Steal' ya decided you would rather do without your hat than burn in Hell?"
Murphy slowly shook his head. "No, Father, after ya talked about 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery 'I remembered where I left me hat."
Todays taxi driver joke
A man walks out to the street and catches a taxi just going by.
He gets into the taxi, and the cabbie says, 'Perfect timing.
You're just like Frank.'
Passenger: 'Who?'
Cabbie: 'Frank Feldman.. He's a guy who did everything right all the time. Like my coming along when you needed a cab, things happened like that to Frank Feldman every single time.'
Passenger: 'There are always a few clouds over everybody.'
Cabbie: Not Frank Feldman. He was a terrific athlete. He could have won the Grand-Slam at tennis. He could golf with the pros. He sang like an opera baritone and danced like a Broadway star and you should have heard him play the piano. He was an amazing guy.
Passenger: Sounds like he was something really special.
Cabbie: 'There's more. He had a memory like a computer. He remembered everybody's birthday. He knew all about wine, which foods to order and which fork to eat them with. He could fix anything. Not like me. I change a fuse, and the whole street blacks out. But Frank Feldman, could do everything right.'
Passenger: 'Wow, some guy then.
Cabbie: 'He always knew the quickest way to go in traffic and avoid traffic jams. Not like me, I always seem to get stuck in them. But Frank, he never made a mistake, and he really knew how to treat a woman and make her feel good. He would never answer her back even if she was in the wrong; and his clothing was always immaculate, shoes highly polished too. He was the perfect man! He never made a mistake. No one could ever measure up to Frank Feldman.
Passenger: An amazing fellow. How did you meet him?
Cabbie: 'Well... I never actually met Frank. He died and I married his fucking wife."
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