Story #1 fits the bill of " Davids Daily Dose of Doom"......again I prefer to say DDD of Reality you need to be prepared for.....sorry for including this stuff but if you're not informed, you're vulnerable.
1/ You may have read this summer how Arctic ice is disappearing, along with stories of how this will open up the Northeast passage to ships and unlock the Arctic's oil supplies. What you did NOT read is the possible climate consequences of an ice-free Arctic estimated to be by 2016 [US Navy scientists], but definitely by 2018 according to other researchers. This is five years from now.
What also hasn't been mentioned in the corporate media are the methane deposits under the Arctic ocean, and how the warming of the Arctic ocean could release these deposits in addition to the continued acceleration of CO2 production.
I'm in my 60's, and I have been working on the assumption that I won't see the full catastrophe that is coming tp our civilisation by the middle of the century, which will include water shortages, food scarcity and really extreme weather. Now I'm not so sure. This story, first published in Al Jazeera English [non-corporate media!!!], quotes respected scientists and papers written in the last few years that speculate that the climate change wild card is methane, and that if the present trends continue to accelerate chaos could begin much sooner than 2050, because when methane warming kicks in bad things could happen quicker that anyone thought possible.
I have to say if I were younger I would definitely be thinking about buying some land in Minnesota, Michigan or Wisconsin [lots of lakes, i.e. water] and starting a farm......
And if you choose to shrug these warnings off, as 95% of Americans do, don't be surprised when it hits the fan. Think back on when Rolling Stone published their excellent story "Goodbye Miami" and how apart from very superficial comments in the print media and TV News in South Florida, the story disappeared very quickly. Why? Our leaders don't want you to be worried, as it might interfere with business and alarm the community, so there is an unspoken gag order about these types of articles. Channel 7 Miami [Fox] didn't mention it at all.
So read on folks......sorry to bring you these stories but at least you won't be surprised if and when things start to go sideways and Publix starts to be out of stock of a lot of your favourite foods.....
I grew up planning for my future, wondering which college I would attend, what to study, and later on, where to work, which articles to write, what my next book might be, how to pay a mortgage, and which mountaineering trip I might like to take next.
Now, I wonder about the future of our planet. During a recent visit with my eight-year-old niece and 10- and 12-year-old nephews, I stopped myself from asking them what they wanted to do when they grew up, or any of the future-oriented questions I used to ask myself. I did so because the reality of their generation may be that questions like where they will work could be replaced by: Where will they get their fresh water? What food will be available? And what parts of their country and the rest of the world will still be habitable?
The reason, of course, is climate change -- and just how bad it might be came home to me in the summer of 2010. I was climbing Mount Rainier in Washington State, taking the same route I had used in a 1994 ascent. Instead of experiencing the metal tips of the crampons attached to my boots crunching into the ice of a glacier, I was aware that, at high altitudes, they were still scraping against exposed volcanic rock. In the pre-dawn night, sparks shot from my steps.
2/ This reinforces #1........it's 13 seconds, and note the Arctic changing from blue to red - in 60 years......
Back to normal stuff!
3/ Great three minute clip from Jimmy Kimmel, including a promo for the Fox News version of "It's A Wonderful Life"......very amusing.....
FOX turned it up a notch recently when Megyn Kelly insisted that Santa is white! And Jesus too! But you know, she said it “for the kids…”
In an effort to preserve the spirit of Christmas, FOX, like every other network, will be airing It’s A Wonderful Life 7 million times before December 25. Kimmel gave us a glimpse of how FOX is promoting it (wink, wink).
4/ Matt Taibbi wearing his observer/reporter hat - he visits one of the poorest cities in the country and just writes what he sees......an interesting essay on how we have essentially written off some portions of the country as ungovernable.......poca New Jersey: A Dispatch FromAmerica's Most Desperate Town
Carl Washington, 11, left, and Kirhe Williams, 16, play curb ball in front of a vacant house on Morton Street. (
Jessica Kourkounis
By MATT TAIBBI
December 11, 2013 10:10 AM ET
The first thing you notice about Camden, New Jersey, is that pretty much everyone you talk to has just gotten his or her ass kicked.
Instead of shaking hands, people here are always lifting hats, sleeves, pant legs and shirttails to show you wounds or scars, then pointing in the direction of where the bad thing just happened.
"I been shot six times," says Raymond, a self-described gangster I meet standing on a downtown corner. He pulls up his pant leg. "The last time I got shot was three years ago, twice in the femur." He gives an intellectual nod. "The femur, you know, that's the largest bone in the leg."
"First they hit me in the head," says Dwayne "The Wiz" Charbonneau, a junkie who had been robbed the night before. He lifts his wool cap to expose a still-oozing red strawberry and pulls his sweatpants down at the waist, drawing a few passing glances. "After that, they ripped my pockets out. You can see right here. . . ."
Even the cops have their stories: "You can see right here, that's where he bit me," says one police officer, lifting his pant leg. "And I'm thinking to myself, 'I'm going to have to shoot this dog.'"
"I've seen people shot and gotten blood on me," says Thomas Bayard Townsend III, a friendly convicted murderer with a tear tattoo under his eye. "If you turn around here, and your curiosity gets the best of you, it can cost you your life."
Camden is just across the Delaware River from the brick and polished cobblestone streets of downtown Philadelphia, where oblivious tourists pour in every year, gobbling cheese steaks and gazing at the Liberty Bell, having no idea that they're a short walk over the Ben Franklin Bridge from a full-blown sovereignty crisis – an un-Fantasy Island of extreme poverty and violence where the police just a few years ago essentially surrendered a city of 77,000.
All over America, communities are failing. Once-mighty Rust Belt capitals that made steel or cars are now wastelands. Elsewhere, struggling white rural America is stocking up on canned goods and embracing the politics of chaos, sending pols to Washington ready to hit the default button and start the whole national experiment all over again.
But in Camden, chaos is already here.
5/ Fox's "War On Christmas" - Jon Stewart nails Megyn Kelly for her assertion "Santa is white"......five minutes......
Fox News has certainly made their fair share of problematic gaffes on air, but on Thursday, they marched forward with out-and-out racism when Megyn Kelly clarified to kids that Santa is white, despite what the liberal media has been telling them.
Yes.
Jon Stewart hit back: "Who are you actually talking to?"
He tried to imagine the kid Kelly was addressing: "Sophisticated enough to be watching a news channel at 10 o'clock at night, yet innocent enough to still believe Santa Claus is real, yet racist enough to be freaked out if he isn't white."
Even more troublesome was her statement that the black Slate writer she was addressing need not have concerned herself with such issues: "Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change." As Stewart pointed out, that's literally the dictionary definition of oppression.
6/ After the media firestorm, Kelly went on air to "explain".....and of course Jon Stewart nailed her again - a delicious three minutes.....
Jon Stewart spoke for plenty last week with his response to Megyn Kelly's assertion that Santa and Jesus are and were white men. And when she tried to explain that her critics were "humorless" by missing out on her supposed comedic banter, Stewart doubled down on his criticism.
He saw no comedy, but instead "what appeared to me to be another example of a Fox News segment expressing anger and victimization over the loss of absolute power and reframing that as persecution of Real America by minorities, freeloaders and socialists."
7/ Interesting essay on exactly how and why we are awash with "McJobs", that keep the poor employed but don't pay anything even close to a living wage. It's really looking like this is what the oligarchy wants - a compliant, desperate workforce that is partially subsidised by the gumment.
Read the stats on exactly who gets food stamps - 60% of them have jobs.
For decades, both parties supplanted a push for higher wages with well-intended public aid. The result: calamity
JOAN WALSH
TOPICS: WELFARE, EDITOR'S PICKS, BARACK OBAMA, BILL CLINTON, NEWT GINGRICH, EMPLOYMENT,LABOR, WO
Newt Gingrich, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton (Credit: AP/Ron Edmonds/Reuters/Joshua Roberts/AP/Stephan Savoia/Photo collage by Salon)
2013 is the year many Americans discovered the crisis of the working poor. It turns out it’s also the crisis of the welfare poor. That’s tough for us: Americans notoriously hate welfare, unless it’s called something else and/or benefits us personally. We think it’s for slackers and moochers and people who won’t pull their weight.
So we’re not sure how to handle the fact that a quarter of people who have jobs today make so little money that they also receive some form of public assistance, or welfare – a proportion that’s much higher in some of the fastest growing sectors of the workforce. Or that 60 percent of able-bodied adult food-stamp recipients are employed.
Fully 52 percent of fast-food workers’ families receive public assistance – most of it coming from Medicaid, food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit — to the tune of $7 billion annually, according to new research from the University of California-Berkeley’s Labor Center and the University of Illinois.
McDonald’s workers alone receive $1.2 billion in public aid, the study found. This is an industry, by the way, that last year earned $7.44 billion in profits, paid their top execs $52.7 million and distributed $7.7 billion in dividends and stock buyback. Still, “public benefits receipt is the rule, rather than the exception, for this workforce,” the study concluded.
Then there’s Wal-Mart, which as Salon’s Josh Eidelson recently reported, boasted to a Goldman Sachs conference that “over 475K” of its 1.3 million workers make more than $25,000 a year – which lets us infer that almost 60 percent make less.
Democrats on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce estimated that the giant low-cost retail chain benefits from many billions in public-assistance funding; one Wisconsin “superstore” costs taxpayers at least $1 million a year in public assistance to workers’ families. Remember, too, that six members of the Walton family own as much wealth as 48 million Americans combined.
8/ The Ross Sisters.
Decades before Cirque De Soleil started moulding bodies into impossible shapes were the Ross Sisters, an act from the 40's. Their act starts with a minute of singing, and then the incredible moves......
9/ The title of this got me.....and reading the detail you just realise how lucky you are to be middle class......
20 Things the Poor Do Everyday That the Rich Never Have to Worry About
Financial advisor and evangelical Christian Dave Ramsey probably wasn’t expecting this much pushback when he shared a piece contrasting the habits of the rich with those of the poor. In her response on CNN, Rachel Held Evans noted that Ramsey and Corley mistake correlation for causality when they suggest (without actually proving) that these habits are the cause of a person’s financial situation. (Did it never occur to them that it might be the other way around?)
Ramsey fired back, calling the pushback “immature and ignorant.” This from a guy who just made 20 sweeping assertions about 47 million poor people in the US — all based on a survey of 361 individuals.
That’s right. To come up with his 20 habits, Corley talked to just 233 wealthy people and 128 poor people. Ramsey can talk all he wants about Corley’s research passing the “common-sense smell test,” but it doesn’t pass the “research methodology 101” test.
To balance the picture a bit, I wanted to take a fact-based look at 20 things the poor do on a daily basis…
1. Search for affordable housing.
Especially in urban areas, the waiting list for affordable housing can be a year or more. During that time, poor families either have to make do with substandard or dangerous housing, depend on the hospitality of relatives, or go homeless.
(Source: New York Times)
Especially in urban areas, the waiting list for affordable housing can be a year or more. During that time, poor families either have to make do with substandard or dangerous housing, depend on the hospitality of relatives, or go homeless.
(Source: New York Times)
2. Try to make $133 worth of food last a whole month.
That’s how much the average food stamp recipient gets each month. Imagine trying to eat well on $4.38 per day. It’s not easy, which is why many impoverished families resort to #3…
That’s how much the average food stamp recipient gets each month. Imagine trying to eat well on $4.38 per day. It’s not easy, which is why many impoverished families resort to #3…
(Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
10/ A clever Swedish ad for a charity....subtle, controversial and very good. Note this will NEVER be shown here - the religious loonies would go totally bananas.....one minute.....
Watch when Jesus pours his glass of water......
11/ There were no Chicken McNuggets at the drive-in window, so a woman went ballistic.......haven't seen rage like this for a long time, but it was probably fueled by meth.....this is actually quite disturbing as it upsets the fabric of our everyday life to see this kind of behaviour.....
However......some of the comments under the one minute video are very funny......
12/ A six minute look at how we get our mass produced food.....how our chicken, pork, milk are harvested and how cruel factory farming is to the animals, then the process of packaging, with a look at a Costco and the end result, fat humans.
Note - this contains some scenes that may produce nausea, including the final sequence.......
Here is a hard hitting dose of perspective of what unsustainable demand looks like. Warning, you may have a feeling of emptiness inside after watching.
13/ Every month we have a collection of "fails" where people attempt stunts and mash them horribly......there are also the athletic feats that go well, and this series "People Are Awesome" celebrates these.....very exciting, and uplifting.....four minutes of awesome......
14/ Music video - something different this week.....David Gilmour from Pink Floyd played in the Fender Guitar 50th birthday celebration, and gives an amazing performance - one of our guitar legends who can make his Fender talk......
15/ An excellent two minute video of Rick Scott's appointees, showing the corruption and incompetence of the assholes this bastard has surrounded himself with to run our State.....
American Bridge savages Rick Scott appointees' scandals and controversies
@MarcACaputo
Amid the outfall over chief of staff Adam Hollingsworth's admission he lied about his degree years ago, Gov. Rick Scott is again the target of a video montage made by American Bridge 21st Century, a liberal group that has an extensive media-tracker network.
This video -- a greatest-hits list of resignations, controversies and scandals that have nagged at Scott -- juxtaposes how the governor stands by appointees and insists they've done a "great job," only to see them resign.
One point Scott defenders will be quick to note: An independent panel in Indiana cleared former Education Commissioner Tony Bennett of wrongdoing in a school-grading controversy (more here). Separately, in Indiana, Bennett faces an ethics complaint for allegedly using government workers for campaign purposes.
Todays video - the wonderful George Carlin on "Euphemisms".....how words gradually lose their meaning.....a repeat but damn good.....
Todays oldies joke.....actually if you read this in conjunction with #1 it's not really a joke, is it....this is what it was like 60 years ago.......
The Green Thing
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."
The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."
She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 22,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?
Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a Smart Aleck young person.
Remember: Don't make old People mad.
We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to tick us off.
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."
The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."
She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 22,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?
Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a Smart Aleck young person.
Remember: Don't make old People mad.
We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to tick us off.
Todays ladies joke
Two women friends had gone for a girls' night out.
Both were very faithful and loving wives, however
they had gotten over-enthusiastic on the Bacardi Breezers.
Incredibly drunk and walking home they needed to
pee, so they stopped in the cemetery.
One of them had nothing to wipe with so she thought
she would take off her panties and use them.
Her friend however was wearing a rather expensive
pair of panties and did not want to ruin them.
She was lucky enough to squat down next to a grave
that had a wreath with a ribbon on it, so she
proceeded to wipe with that.
After the girls did their business, they decided to go home.
The next day, the husband of one of the women was concerned that his
normally sweet and innocent wife was still in bed hung over,
So he phoned the other husband and said:
"These girl nights have got to stop! I'm starting to suspect the worst.
My wife came home with no panties!!"
"That's nothing," said the other husband,
"Mine came back with a card stuck to her ass that said.....
'From all of us at the Fire Station,
We'll never forget you.'"
Todays groaner
A man went to his dentist because he felt something wrong in
his mouth. The dentist looked inside and said, "That new upper
plate I put in for you six months ago is eroding. What have you
been eating?"
The man replied, "All I can think of is that about four months
ago my wife made some asparagus and put some Hollandaise
sauce on it. I loved it so much I now put it on everything - meat,
toast, fish, vegetables, everything."
"Well," said the dentist, "that's probably the problem. Hollandaise
sauce is made with lots of lemon juice, which is highly corrosive.
It's eaten away your upper plate. I'll make you a new plate, and
this time use chrome."
"Why chrome?" asked the patient.
"It's simple," replied the dentist. "Dental researchers have
concluded that there's no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise."
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