Bits & Pieces #40

 

 

 

Even in the midst of the overbearing controversy over whether to allow a disaster like the XL Pipeline, the oil industry can’t keep their hands clean. On September 29tyh the Tesoro Pipeline fractured and dumped over 865,200 gallons of tar sand oil from the Bakken Shale formation in Tinga, North Dakota. Of course this wasn’t reported until October 10th because the branch of our government responsible for letting us know what’s going on, was shut down by the same degenerates that want to dig up more of this poison.

 

That’s right, one of the big demands that the Tea Party nuts want to be considered in the current negotiations over the debt ceiling is the opening of another one of these ecological disasters waiting to happen, the XL Pipeline. We all understand stupid but this goes so far beyond stupid that it breeches criminal negligence.

 

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Robot technology and bio mimicry are changing the world as we know it and  in the process are changing the workplace and the employment scene. It will never be the same. But unless we pay attention to what is happening we face a terrifying loss of employment across the world but especially in the currently developed countries like the United States.

 

We have saved the auto industry but we will never save the hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been replaced by robots and we never will.  The same goes for almost every kind of manufacturing and the robots are even getting into services.  Those who have always prided ourselves with our ability to work with our hands are finding a sharply reduced market for their skills and those of us without discernable skills, are finding no market at all in which to support ourselves and our families. This, even more than a sluggish economy is the reason why the current job market is so slow to recover from the Bush/Cheney crash. The sooner we, as a nation, realize this and push to create jobs in areas where they have thus far not been replace by robots, the better off our whole economy will be. The main one of those areas is in the replacement of infrastructure. Even there, robots have made significant advances but it is one of the few major employment areas that still need hand labor.

 

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Watched Dick Cheney on the tube promoting his next book, Heart, in which he tells about how all the government medical programs that saved him millions in costs to treat his faulty heart and get another one, should be cut in favor of more military spending. What, you think that might be just a tad hypocritical?

 

How would you like to be the sucker who gave up his heart so Cheney could live? He’s probably down in hell right now kicking himself black and blue.  After all this is the guy who got us into two wars that almost destroyed the country while he was hiding his record of five deferments during the Vietnam war. What an administration, the draft dodger and the deserter. Who better to start the wrong wars.

 

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James Clapper was at it again, denying that, as reported in Le Monde, we have been eavesdropping on French phone calls at a rate of 70 million a month. Add France to Germany, Mexico and Brazil. And these are our allies, what the hell are we doing to our enemies or aren’t we able to get into their systems so easily?  Clapper and his agency are a disgrace. He should be indicted and the agency should be shut down. They have only one function, intelligence gathering but when two men created the atrocity in Boston, where they have been monitoring all the phones for years, it seems, they knew nothing about it. Why pay for a program if it does nothing but invade the privacy of Americans citizens and violate the Constitution?

 

 

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The whole NSA spy thing wouldn’t be as bad as it actually is, if they could show some level of competence. With all their phone tapping they seem to have no idea what’s going on in the world, like what the Boston bombers were up to. They had no idea what was actually going on in Benghazi. They have to learn that it isn’t just about getting the information; it’s about understanding the information and knowing what to do with the information.

 

I find it fascinating that the same people who loudly back those who invade our privacy, tap the phones of friendly heads of state and still fail to come up with the where-with-all to keep us safe, are so loudly condemning of the new ACA screwed up roll out.

 

NSA has been at it for half a century and still can’t get it right. The ACA has been at it less than a month. Give them a break, unless you really want it to fail and that’s what most of these ill informed loudmouths are really about.

 

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Hooray for the voters of Whatcom County, Washington who have voted down a proposal to create a proposed gateway pacific Terminal at Cherry Point which would ship out 48 million tons of coal a year, reputedly to China. This tonnage of coal would create 100 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, a staggering total and an environmental disaster.  The coal industry fought hard and spent a lot of money but in the end The Washington Conservation Voters, an environmental organization fought off the greedy coal interests, and the voters understood the importance of air over short term jobs and with only a few votes to be counted lead the coal interests by over 5000 votes. A hearty congratulations, to those who see that you can’t hold a job, if you can’t breathe.

 

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Rep- Peter King ® NY keeps getting invited onto the Sunday morning talking heads shows and one really has to wonder why. He loves to talk about foreign policy but he knows absolutely nothing abut it. He is far too stupid to understand any kind of subtle negotiation and he seems to have learned his foreign policy skills at the feet of Dick Cheney and the neo coms. He doesn’t know the difference between intelligence sharing and spying on your allies and everything he has to say abut anything goes downhill from there.

 

He still thinks that Snowden is a traitor when everyone with any brains and objectivity know that he is a necessary part of the democratic process and that NSA rather than concentrating on real intelligence work on national enemies is just

trying to get something on anyone that disagrees on anything they say. This clown is too dumb to understand the difference between standing behind our troops and creating policy that will endanger them and make us look like fools, bullies and enemies to the rest of the world.

 

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The big discussion on This Week With Whoever Shows Up was over how NSA has moved from spying on our citizens to spying on our allies/ We know that all of this has been going on for some time but, none of it is really acceptable. It’s hard to believe but George Stephanopoulos is actually dumb enough to give Dick (the Butcher) Cheney airtime so that Cheney can attack Snowden and blame him for the mess. That’s like saying that Jonas Salk who found the cure for polio is responsible for the disease. Cheney should be in jail right now, not spewing his evil venom over the air. He claims that Snowden is to blame for the international uproar over NSA, really Dick? How about NSA being to blame for their outrageous behavior and their unconstitutional actions? All Snowden is doing is pointing out what those lawbreakers over at NSA are actually doing.

 

Then the discussion turns to Iran and of course Cheney says he doesn’t think that the current administration can negotiate a deal on the nuclear situation. What the hell does Cheney know about negotiating anything? The only negotiations he ever took part in were with himself, over which innocent country to invade. And then instead of invading Saudi Arabia where all the 911 terrorists came from, he chose Iraq and Afghanistan.

He talks about his friends in the Middle East. What friends? Everyone in the Middle East wants to see him dead.

 

 

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Occupy Wall Street, that communist destroyer of the American way is at it again, undermining our whole personal debt system. They have a new program, called the Strike Debt group, which buys mostly medical debt from banks and other creditors and forgives the debt to those who have incurred it, thereby making a statement about the entirety of the debt market but especially about that segment of it that buys and then tries to collect debt.

 

Currently they have purchased approximately $15 million in debt for about $400,000 and just freed the debtors from their burden; again, mostly acquired because of medical debt that was not covered by insurance.

 

By doing this they are not only helping people who acquired debt because of illness or the failure of the old health process but they are making a statement on how people should deal with debt collectors, knowing how cheaply they have acquired the debt from the banks.

 

We have to keep a vigilant eye on these socio-commie sympathizers. The next thing you know they’re going to be feeding starving kids.

 

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Here we thought that unlike Dirty Dick Cheney, we had heard the last, or at least almost the last from George W. Bush, but here he is, down in Irving Texas, headlining a fund raiser for the Messianic Jewish Bible. Now before any real Jews get bent out of shape, you should all realize that this is another of those nutcase cults , loathed by most Jews and just discarded by thinking Christians, that are pushing the theory that Jesus was the promised Messiah and therefore it’s time to convert all the Jews to Christianity so the apocalypse can happen. Next thing you know we’ll see old George elbow deep in a knot of snakes.

 

IT seems that old George just can’t keep his nose out of  the Middle East. He wasn’t satisfied with starting two wars there, now he wants to ferment more trouble in Israel, He wasn’t satisfied with calling the wars in the Middle East crusades, now he really wants to start one.

 

Of course this is a concept that is backed by a remarkable or maybe not so remarkable percentage of Evangelicals in this country, who are strangely twice as furious supporters of Israel and all its policies,  as are American Jews. It’s time to retire to the oil field, George or maybe go hunting with Deadeye Dick.

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