I want to see this video. It is currently being censored by TED so I figure enough internet pressure might just force it out of wraps.

Nick Hanauer to GeekWire:

Although I am disappointed in Chris’s decision not to run my talk, I certainly accept his decision. He owns TED and it is up to him to decide what they share. I have great respect for him and the entire TED organization.

But I do disagree that my talk was too political or controversial to run. I got a sensational reaction to the talk at the conference itself, including a big standing ovation. Even the people who I spoke to who disagreed were intrigued and moved by the eco-systemic argument. And many of the talks at the conference and on the TED website are similarly controversial. That’s what makes them interesting.

In a reply to Don's lament about petrodollars Tina quoted a generic CBS news writer on the slow disappearance of actual physical money. Once upon a time BCC, before credit cards, transactions were conducted with a physical representation of exchange value, money. "Even the tooth fairy dealt only in cash." Just as substantial gold was replaced by less substantial paper, so now is paper being replaced by even less substantial bits of magnetism. No pun intended.

Yesterday I attended my new alderman's community visioning meeting to create a ward-wide master plan. I went with the intention to make two pitches. The first was for a system of representing opinion by revocable delegation (here and here) and the second was for setting up our own local currency (see Cyclos here). I had gotten the notion from a Guardian article about a Greek town essentially forced to do what their government was no longer able to do, create their own currency.

I tried once to add to the Godwin's Law entry in Wikipedia. I tried to suggest that there was a new corollary to the law and it was called the Krugman Corollary. Needless to say the Wikipedia editors were not amused. Or rather maybe they were amused but placed the joke on me and deleted my attempted wiki change.

Krugman's Corollary goes like this: "As an online economics discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Wiemar hyper-inflation approaches 1."

Over the last few years of either this lesser depression or great recession, you have likely encountered this effect often. Let me demonstrate. Everyone here that is expecting hyper-inflation in the next x years please raise your hand. Hmmm, lets see, one, two, three .... Okay you can see for yourself that the number is non-trivial and I rest my case.

Someone, maybe Ian (Welsh), or maybe any number of other astute commentators on the Bush Regime, said of the Democratic half-hearted opposition of the Iraq war, a half-heartedness born of not wanting to be on the wrong, read losing, side of the debate, someone said that the half-heartedness was doomed to bury them in the very loss they sought to avoid. This someone said that if Iraq was won handily and the Democrats had supported it that the Republicans would still get all the credit and if it went badly their half-heartedness would garner them no credit at all. It was a classic lose-lose situation. The proper approach is to take the full stand, in this case against, accept the lumps of a rousing win by the U.S. but more importantly, that by standing with your beliefs, garner an actual win.

Around here there is much consternation about why Obama hasn't started another war in Syria. No not a direct one but a Libyan NATO-style war. What's holding them up anyway?

Me, I figure that's it's just about oil. Or rather the lack thereof. But that's an easy armchair analysis. What I really want is something way more cynical. So a post in Counterpunch titled Cynicism Around Syria quickly grabbed my attention. And a subtitle of "Russia as Smokescreen" was more icing on the cake. It did not disappoint so I'm going to quote about a third here and mention that there are still additional good morsels in the rest.

So this from EFF, which begins, "Consider providing someone outside the country with the following information", got me to thinking, "who do I even know in another country":

For Bloggers at Risk: Creating a Contingency Plan

I was thinking at first that you would want someone you have at least spoken to face to face. But really that could be a huge challenge for many people. So now I'm thinking, well, how about a blog for bloggers to arrange such contacts.

Of course I finally got to, "wait a minute, how many Agonists are in another country right now?"

The countdown walk/don't walk sign:

No one talks about this amazing addition to urban living. And it's not just super for the pedestrian in us but also the driver in us. It is literally changing my driving habits. I drive much more smoothly now. I can anticipate accurately a half or more block away whether I can make the light or not. While sometimes I will speed up, just as often or more I will slow down. Even when I speed up I know just how much to speed up without over accelerating.

< begin rant >

Let me phrase that a bit. Hitler is gearing up his armies. (This is not an argument so I haven't lost it already Mr. Godwin.) He attacks your country. Do you wait for the right market pricing of war materials before deciding to go to war?

Imagine that we are under attack this very moment by Global Warming/Climate Change. It's harder for some to imagine, but no mind. If it were a war then is there any doubt that we would do everything imaginable to gear up our response and hang the costs. There are two tank manufacturers out there. Both building the essentially the same tank. We do not insist that the more expensive manufacturer go out of business because we actually want and vitally need the production of both manufacturers.

It may actually be pretty easy as there are two major clues within the picture.

Full size

China that is. This graph is exaggerated vertically for effect. But it tells several stories over time. The U.S. catches France of 1970s as France nearly catches China of the 70s. Meanwhile China and the U.S. are in a race to the worst, trying to catch an improving only by decelerating Brazil.

It takes more electricity to drive the average gasoline car 100 miles, than it does to drive an electric car 100 miles.

Reading that was like a intellectual tipping point for me. I already knew that the future of cars is electric. It's like so obvious right? Yet as the earth spirals into global climate change; and solar cell prices crash from a mismatch of the ability to produce and the ability to consume driven by our sick economic so-called system; and while every auto-mobile manufacturer worth their salt has an electric car on some burner back, middle or front; this factoid comes drilling into my brain like a laser light of sur-reality:

AutoBlog Green and Electric Mini

It is a simple fact that just the refining of gasoline requires approximately 6 kwh of electricity per gallon of gasoline. In fact electricity and natural gas cost are estimated to be 43% of the US oil refineries total expenses. If you tack on the energy required to extract and transport the oil to the refinery and then to the gas stations as well as the energy cost of the gas station, I’m sure that number jumps a few more kwh per gallon.

So let’s be conservative and cut the oil guys a break and say it takes 8kwh to extract, ship, refine and transport each gallon of gas.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Drum roll…….

It takes more electricity to drive the average gasoline car 100 miles, than it does to drive an electric car 100 miles. A gas car at the US fleet average of 21mpg will consume approximately five gallons of gasoline which took 40kwh (5 times 8)of electricity to make, to drive 100 miles. An electric car will use approximately 30 kwh of electricity (3.3 miles per kwh) to drive the same 100 miles.

As I watched a police video of the Brooklyn Bridge "police trap" (See Sean Paul's Story)I instantly found myself wondering if I were watching agent provocateurs in action? Then what to my surprise but a few minutes later I read in the Guardian the same claim. Damn I'm good! :)

"Provocateurs" were responsible for leading Saturday's Brooklyn Bridge march into illegal territory, leading to hundreds of arrests, Occupy Wall Street organisers have told the Guardian.

Karen McVeigh writes from Wall Street:

Karen McVeigh

After criticisms that some of the protesters were engaging in illegal protests, such as the 700 arrested on Saturday, organizers at Occupy Wall street said that they were seeking to identify provocateurs.

Christopher Longenecker head of march planning and tactics, said marches were organized by committees with several people trained as 'pace-keepers' to ensure they are legal and safe.

He accused the police of allowing a situation to develop on Saturday's march where provocateurs led hundreds to engage in illegal protest on the road.

"We dont do illegal actions," Longenecker said. "Pace-keepers are scattered throughout
marches, including the one on Saturday. One of the pace-keepers was standing between the march andthe highway and she was yelling as loud as possible that what was on the road was an illegal autonomous unplanned action [my bolding] – that the legal route was over the walkway and they weren't supposed to take the highway."

"Normally the police block off the highway and cross streets to keep us safe but they didn't on Saturday. There was a heavy police presence on the Brooklyn side of the bridge but not on the Manhattan side. They created the situatuon for provocateurs to lead people onto the highway."

Shown video pictures of those people who appeared to be leading protesters onto the highway – which is illegal in NY – he said he did not recognize them.

Thorin Caristo, one of OWS media spokesmen, said that they were working through the videos to identify provocateurs.

"They have been pointed out as provocateurs in our midst who are trying to mislead the group.

"We are a really open democracy here. Saturdays situation happened really quick and showed the vulnerability of a group that has no leaders."

And as a blast from the past 60's/70's struggle, I found myself reading about the same struggles with sexsim within our side. Melissa Gira Grant talks about the "images of brogressivism and manarchism that have dominated"

Like Hoover, Obama has gotten either a lessor depression or a great recession dumped in his lap. There are two ways out of this current economic situation, called liquidity trap by Krugman. Either the social democratic route of a Roosevelt or an authoritarian one of a Mussolini. Mind you both have the goal of preserving Capitalism. It is an open question whether simple WPA type government stimulus would have been sufficient. In '37 Roosevelt was convinced by his corporate banker-type friends to pull back from government stimulus because it has done its job, only to have the economy return to its bad ways.

When it's private it's "too big to fail." But when it's public then all of a sudden it's "too big to save."

Go figure:-(

FRANKFURT -(Dow Jones)- Germany's government thinks Italy is too big for Europe's rescue fund to save, Der Spiegel magazine reports in a preview of an article to be published Monday.

The government doubts whether even tripling the size of the rescue fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility, would enable it to save Italy because the country's financing needs are so enormous, the magazine reports without naming the source of its information.

Unemployed with cell phones attached to social media. Ok that's several generalizations. Some may well have jobs and landlines with no internet connection.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/aug/07/tottenham-riots-police-duggan-live

What the tea-partiers did, holding the debt-ceiling hostage, was government by gimmick. Government by gimmick is where you do something that is legal but not customary. Needless to say this is something that the right is only to happy to engage in. The filibuster is one of their latest government by gimmick approaches.

During the debt-ceiling "OMG-the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh" (OMGTEOTWIN) pseudo-crisis someone came up with another end-run besides the 14th Amendment gimmick. This other gimmick could have been used if only we had a Democrat in the White House. This other gimmick struck me as the mother of all government by gimmick ideas.

Sometimes the leadership releases it's members to vote against them in order to help the members get elected in difficult districts. Maybe there is some of that here but I think the progressives and the so-called tea partiers actually voted their principles.

Here's how the Midwest voted on the Debt Limit / Worse Depression / Saftey Net Slashing deal tonight:

An exchange of resources within a community of trees and fungus.

http://abject.ca/do-trees-communicate/

Chicago sidewalk scene.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.shtml

A winter storm crashed upon an unfrozen shore in 1986 in Chicago and flooded enough of Lake Shore Drive to force its closure. That year the water topped the lake connected lagoon between the North Avenue Beach causeway and the mounted General Grant statue in Lincoln Park. About ten years later the bottom of the lagoon began showing at its edges.  That's five feet of difference.

Ever since then, that has been my daily guide to the water level in the Lake Michigan-Lake Huron common pair. My summer guide is the size of the beach 53 Crow miles away in Harbert Michigan. In 86' dunes were eroding and houses were falling into the lake. Ten years later the beaches were wide and welcoming.

Water gushing from the ground at 13,000 feet.

Here's what I have heard and experienced:

For the first time in 10 to 15 years the water of Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam has risen. Western states were preparing to go into a special water ration regime for the Colorado River water if levels had not risen.

My contact in Durango reports that Durango, Colorado was at the break even line for snow pack. At the northern end of Colorado at Steamboat Springs they had 216% normal snow while Durango had 100% and south of Durango, CO, had below average.

Two weeks ago I was passing through north central New Mexico on I-25 headed towards Raton Pass. Look carefully at this picture:

Along the interstate it's pretty green. Yet look beyond the fence line and it's starkly brown and dry looking. That's over-grazing, by cattle most likely.

Now pretty much all agricultural practices in the world are extractive enterprises. Meaning they remove more energy from the soil than they replace. Usually the process is too slow to notice except where there are boundaries that separate practice types.

It's not often that our corporate masters screw up as badly as they recently did in Italy. How did they allow a referendum on three touchstone issues to appear on a national ballot?

It's likely that they saw it as a chance to demoralize three movements at once. National referendums have a very high bar to cross to succeed. They must get 50%+1 of the eligible voters out to vote. It's a feat not accomplished in the last ten years in Italy. And the turn out for this one was the highest in twenty years.

57% turned out and 94% voted against nuclear power.

It is reported that the energy and excitement generated by the vote was comparable "to the student uprisings of 1968" (Here.)

Then future quit happening here as SPK likes to say.

In 737 U.S. counties out of more than 3,000, life expectancies for women declined between 1997 and 2007. For life expectancy to decline in a developed nation is rare. Setbacks on this scale have not been seen in the U.S. since the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, according to demographers.

Map From Here.