1/ We get immersed in the details of our complex society, but this excellent article steps back and looks at our economic system with a dispassionate eye, and concludes it's not sustainable.....
I've read this twice, and can't fault his logic or his conclusions....everything you hear from businessmen, politicians and elites stresses growth is the key to success, but the planet may have reached it's limit.
Stick with this article by an Australian writer....it's pretty deep, but entirely logical.....
(Image via abc.net.au)
Stuart Andrews discusses the First World's addiction to “wealth creation” and how long our finite resources can sustain us.
IT ASTOUNDS ME when I read political or economic commentary expounding the need to boost economic growth.
In First World economies, that usually means encouraging greater consumer spending and borrowing — the logic being that our world socioeconomic order will collapse without continued growth. This predicates the economic survival of an entire nation-state on continually increasing consumption.
Right now, close to 70 per cent of Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP) is generated by consumption. The economies of the U.S. and many European countries are also highly dependent on consumer spending and the developing world is aspiring to this same level of economic development.
At the root of this focus on GDP is capitalism. Capitalism as we know it today has its origins in the era of European colonial expansion, which was funded to a large degree by mercantile activity. This was a kind of venture capitalism that required the input of stock by one or more wealthy individuals or state entities to undertake high-risk, high-gain revenue generating ventures.
This investor mentality has underpinned our meteoric growth over the past 300 years. It sparked the industrial revolution and facilitated the growth of democratic governments throughout the
2/ A funny two minute clip from "The Simpsons", where Marge can't sleep because of the election.....wonderful!
With the political chaos and divisive rhetoric that has defined the 2016 presidential race, it only makes sense that The Simpsons would have plenty to say about how things have been going.
Coming off of South Carolina’s primary vote, the show released a clip last night that opens with Marge Simpson having a nightmare about a three-way fight between Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton. Waking up hyperventilating, she laments “basic manners are gone from politics. What is it with these ding-dongs?”
To calm her nerves, Homer asks her to visualize a different kind of America “where Republicans, Democrats and Donald Trump all get along.”
3/ Frank Rich on the chaos that is our politics....
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Trump's victory in South Carolina, Jeb Bush's exit, and the results of the Nevada Democratic caucus.
After Donald Trump’s victory in South Carolina, the GOP Establishment is left with what some political reporters have called "an urgent decision: Either destroy Mr. Trump or embrace him." At this point, which is the bigger challenge?
Far and away the Establishment’s bigger challenge is to destroy Trump. In the aftermath of South Carolina, that seems less likely than ever, and the magical thinking of the stop-Trump forces reeks of desperation.
Far and away the Establishment’s bigger challenge is to destroy Trump. In the aftermath of South Carolina, that seems less likely than ever, and the magical thinking of the stop-Trump forces reeks of desperation.
The conventional wisdom about taking him down can be found, as usual, in the Times Upshot column, which has segued from its early predictions of Trump’s rapid demise to the scenario by which he will be vanquished by Marco Rubio. Under its theory of the case, as outlined after the South Carolina results came in, “it is hard to overstate how important Mr. Bush’s departure is to Mr. Rubio” because Bush’s exit will bring “a flood of endorsements and donations” to Rubio. And better still, Trump will soon lose his advantage of running against a divided Republican field. Really?
4/ Seth Meyers with a good commentary on the politics of Trump, Rubio and Cruz.....a pretty amusing six minutes....
“Late Night” host Seth Meyers took a “Closer Look” last night at Donald Trump’s sweeping victory in South Carolina Saturday.
“The media is talking about Trump’s win the way the reporters in the movie ‘Armageddon’ were talking about the asteroid,” Meyers said of the post-South Carolina coverage, which saw many pundits questioning if and/or how Trump can be stopped.
5/ Great cartoon - Brian McFadden with the Republican wish list for a Supreme Court nominee.....he nails it...
6/ Even if you've never watched "Game of Thrones" you will get the idea from this clever two minute video how even in this mythical land there is a Trump!
It's two minutes, and titled "Winter Is Trumping".....
Very clever, and very funny....
(Credit: YouTube)
I could lard this post with unnecessary text about who Donald Trump is and what his positions are, or endless explication of exactly why all of the references in this short video are culturally relevant, but that’d be like explaining the joke, so I’m just going to let it speak for itself.
Because things of glory? It’s best to let them speak for themselves:
7/ If you are like me, long past the time of worrying about schools, you wonder why the school systems in this country are as bad as they are. That's why it was disturbing to read this story from Salon because the main person driving the standards downwards has been President Obama's Secretary of Education Arne Duncan......what a dick....
George W. Bush, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan (Credit: AP/Charles Dharapak/Ted S. Warren/Andrew Harnik)
From the book "SCHOOLS ON TRIAL" by Nikhil Goyal
When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in November 2008, I was grinding my way through the eighth grade, my final year at John F. Kennedy Middle School before I was to move up to high school. While I followed the election closely, the candidates’ positions on education policy weren’t of much interest to me. And at the time, I didn’t give any thought to how my school experience could be different.
Among many progressives and liberals, there were flickers of hope that Obama’s election signaled the prospect that his presidency would lead to the reversal of the No Child Left Behind Act and Bush-era policies. It sure seemed that way once he named Stanford professor and NCLB critic Linda Darling-Hammond to head his transition’s education policy team.
But then in December 2008, any remaining optimism suddenly vanished. The president-elect appointed the CEO of Chicago Public Schools and his friend (and basketball pal) Arne Duncan to the post of secretary of education. A report by the Broad Foundation, a group that has financed anti– public education reforms, noted that Obama’s election and the appointment of Duncan “marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned.”
8/ Samantha Bee's new show "Full Frontal" is taking off in a big way, because of great segments like this one on the Republican response to Scalia's death.....well worth seven minutes of your time....funny, but insightful too....
The reactions to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's death on Saturday ran the gamut from mourning to less than sympathetic. But perhaps the most common reaction of all was one of confusion — over pending and impending SCOTUS cases as well as conservatives vowing to block Obama's rightful ability to name Scalia's replacement. Late night newcomer Samantha Bee helpfully addressed the madness on Monday night's episode of her show Full Frontal.
"Constitutional crisis!" Bee declared amid sirens. "All hands on deck! Oh my God! What happens now
9/ The environmental hero Bill McKibben on Exxon Mobil, one of the most evil corporations in the world, and what they're up to.........
(Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.
Here’s the story so far. We have the chief legal representatives of the eighth and 16th largest economies on Earth (California and New York) probing the biggest fossil fuel company on Earth (ExxonMobil), while both Democratic presidential candidates are demanding that the federal Department of Justice join the investigation of what may prove to be one of the biggest corporate scandals in American history. And that’s just the beginning. As bad as Exxon has been in the past, what it’s doing now — entirely legally — is helping push the planet over the edge and into the biggest crisis in the entire span of the human story.
Back in the fall, you might have heard something about how Exxon had covered up what it knew early on about climate change. Maybe you even thought to yourself: that doesn’t surprise me. But it should have. Even as someone who has spent his life engaged in the bottomless pit of greed that is global warming, the news and its meaning came as a shock: we could have avoided, it turns out, the last quarter century of pointless climate debate.
10/ Stephen Colbert on Trump......a very funny five minutes....
On Monday night’s Late Show, Stephen Colbert — like so many others this week — slowly came to terms with the potential of a Donald J. Trump Presidency.
It’s tough to deny the facts: although unexpected, Trump improved on a second place finish in the Iowa Caucuses to win both New Hampshire and South Carolina, and his momentum seems as difficult to beat as ever. Although Colbert may still struggle to physically say the words as you’ll see in the clip, the implications of a Trump White House are clear.
11/ John Oliver is back, and here has one of his excellent investigations into how some states have chipped away at women's right to have an abortion to the point of no return.....a wonderful piece of comedic investigative journalism.....sixteen minutes....
John Oliver began Sunday night by excusing the 19% of people who think abortion should be illegal, telling them to rejoin the program at 11:29 p.m., the final minute of the show, to watch a video of “a bucket of sloths,” which he called “almost violently delightful.”
Oliver noted four states–Mississippi, Missouri, and the Dakotas–that now only have one abortion clinic each, adding, “Mississippi now has four times as many S’s as it does abortion clinics.”
The decisive Supreme Court case on the matter is no longer Roe v. Wade, said Oliver, but, rather, the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which allows states to place restrictions on abortion clinics so long as those restrictions don’t place “(a)n undue burden [or] substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion.”
In other words, “Women can be asked to jump through a few hoops, just not too many,” said Oliver. “Which might sound a little less insulting if those weren’t also the rules for a dog agility course.”
12/ Bernie vs Hillary - what's at stake? A lot more than you think, because they are surrogates for the two wings of the Democratic party......
A most interesting essay by a most articulate writer on the fight between the "establishment" and the progressive wings of the smarter party.....very insightful, should be read by every Democrat....
Why Bernie vs Hillary Matters More Than People Think
by Benjamin Studebaker
Lately the internet has become full of arguments about the merits and demerits of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been discussing and pondering all the various views about this, and I’m increasingly of the opinion that most of the people engaging in this debate don’t really understand what is at stake in the democratic primary. This is in part because many Americans don’t really understand the history of American left wing politics and don’t think about policy issues in a holistic, structural way. So in this post, I want to really dig into what the difference is between Bernie and Hillary and why that difference is extremely important.
We have a tendency in American politics to focus too much on individuals and personal narratives, especially in presidential campaigns. Who’s in touch with ordinary people? Who is experienced? Who is a nice person? Who connects better with different identity groups? Who would you like to have a beer with? This is in large part because many democrats like to think of Hillary and Bernie as different flavors of the same Democratic Party popcorn. Consequently they mostly just pay attention to which candidate they feel they can more readily identify with. But Sanders and Clinton represent two very different ideologies
13/ Read and be disgusted at what the sugar industry and it's wholly owned politicians are doing to our once green state.....flushing the Okeechobee toilet out to the coasts instead of into the Everglades....
Dirty water at Fort Myers Beach Cheryl Cagle Jones/Facebook
According to David Guest, managing attorney of the Florida branch of the environmental law group Earthjustice, the pollution is not going to end anytime soon. He blames lax regulations, not the unseasonable rain, for the current crisis. "The lake is basically a toilet," Guest says. Florida's powerful sugar industry has stood in the way of the state purchasing land south of the lake that could be used to build a waterway to direct dirty water to the Everglades, cleansing it along the way.
Todays video - one of the funniest clips from Monty Python's "Life Of Brian" is a skit called "Biggs Dickus"......here it is, four minutes of hilarity....
Todays wonderful husband joke
Several men are in the locker room of a golf club. A cellular phone on a
bench rings and a man engages the hands-free speaker function and begins to talk. Everyone else in the room stops to listen.
MAN: "Hello"
WOMAN: "Hi Honey, it's me. Are you at the club?"
MAN: "Yes."
WOMAN: "I'm at the shops now and found this beautiful leather coat. It's
only $2,000; is it OK if I buy it?"
MAN: "Sure, go ahead if you like it that much."
WOMAN: "I also stopped by the Lexus dealership and saw the new models. I saw one I really liked."
MAN: "How much?"
WOMAN: "$90,000."
MAN: "OK, but for that price I want it with all the options."
WOMAN: "Great! Oh, and one more thing. I was just talking to Janie and
found out that the house I wanted last year is back on the market.
They're asking $980,000 for it."
MAN: "Well, then go ahead and make an offer of $900,000. They'll
probably take it. If not, we can go the extra eighty-thousand if it's what you really want."
WOMAN: "OK. I'll see you later! I love you so much!"
MAN: "Bye! I love you, too."
The man hangs up.
The other men in the locker room are staring at him in astonishment,
mouths wide open.
He turns and asks, "Anyone know who's phone this is ?"
Todays drunk joke
A man and his wife were awakened at 3:00 am by a loud pounding on the door.
The man gets up and goes to the door where a drunken stranger, standing in the pouring rain, is asking for a push.
"Not a chance," says the husband, "it is 3:00 in the morning!” He slams the door and returns to bed.
"Who was that?" asked his wife.
"Just some drunk guy asking for a push," he answers.
"Did you help him?" she asks. "No, I did not, it is 3:00 in the morning and it is pouring rain out there!"
"Well, you have a short memory," says his wife. "Can't you remember about three months ago when we broke down, and those two guys helped us? I think you should help him, and you should be ashamed of yourself! God loves drunk people too."
The man does as he is told, gets dressed, and goes out into the pounding rain. He calls out into the dark, "Hello, are you still there?"
"Yes," comes back the answer.
"Do you still need a push?" calls out the husband.
"Yes, please!" comes the reply from the dark.
"Where are you?" asks the husband.
"Where are you?" asks the husband.
"Over here on the swing," replied the drunk.
Todays computer joke
Dear Technical Support,
Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance — particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. The new program also began making unexpected changes to the accounting modules.
In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 and then installed undesirable programs such as NFL 5.0, NBA 3.0, and Golf Clubs 4.1.
Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I’ve tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.
What can I do?
Signed,
Desperate
——————————————————–
Dear Desperate:
First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System.
Please enter the command: ” C:/ I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME” and try to download Tears 6.2 and don’t forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update.
If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1.
Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta.
Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources).
Also, do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.
In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly.
You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Food 3.0 and Hot Lingerie 7.7.
Good Luck,
Tech Support
Tech Support
