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BLOG'a'Boulder
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Dispatches from Boulder the Damned
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Sunday, January 22, 2012
Newt Gingrich. A morbidly obese Chickenhawk whose personal history is enough to gag a maggot, won the South Carolina Republican primary. The Treason State has expanded its image to include World Class Hypocrisy, because those GOPers who responded to various media identified themselves as not just Christian but Evangelical and devoted to conservative values such as family and faith. Oh, horseshit.
If their supposed values were more than just a plausible, and barely plausible, cover for their cherished racial bigotry they'd have burned Newt Gingrich and his current mistress made legal at the stake. That the did not, and that the record is absent any incident of mass vomiting in his presence, is testament to the long tolerated internal decay of religion in this nation. The time they spend talking about their supposed faith is no more evidence for truth than their presence at their work place is evidence of work.
Gingrich married his high school teacher, with whom he began an affair when he was underage. Okay, fine. Consensual. He left her for a younger woman after an affair with that woman, in turn left her for a blond and younger woman, currently his wife, and has made a big deal of being a Christian and conservative strong heart. His current wife, who chemically makes me want to burn every bed in the world, is a supposedly devout Catholic, yet nothing in the recent compendium of worldwide Catholic horrors within the priesthood and its parish enablers wobbles a valid Christ more than their marriage. Baptismal fonts and all holy water must vaporize in steam at their approach.
Gingrich lies and race baits and lowers himself easily to whatever level his audience is willing to tolerate or, better, enjoy. He can say the things they cannot without blowback.
The assumption is that this cross between Pat Buchannon and George Wallace and every bad licentious novel that sold in southern drug stores for years will falter in Florida, which is not really a Southern state and where the next debate is scheduled for Monday night. Essentially the same four people - Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and alternate Catholic horror Rick Santorum - will not take the same tack as they did in the previous debates, because Florida is different. Florida is, but the GOP base is the same, and that's all they need to excite. Democrats hope that live coverage of their lies, garbage, and racism will essentially win the election in November, because the vast majority of people do not agree with these clowns if polling is done correctly and people tell the truth. We have our doubts about the former and we know better than to fall for the latter.
Gabby Giffords is stepping down this week, leaving Arizona to append a special election to replace her. As it turns out, she probably ought to have done this earlier as some have screamed, and she selfishly didn't realize it because of, you know, the friggin' bullet in her head.
But then her remarkable recovery seemed to suggest she might be able to overcome all and participate in Congress. Only a year and weeks after being shot at close range in the brain, she can make a video and say all this herself, and she has her humor and her energy and herself back and people are enthused just looking at her. I am, anyway. Watch.
There is something terrific about her that just is there, and despite the reshoots and the editing, that she can do this so soon after what should have blown her brain out a back hole in her skull is enough to impress anyone. Compare and contrast her actual dignity and courage with others that spring to mind.
Harvard, a struggling Internet education business catering to Home Schooled Children, has come up with something annoying to our ignorant Tea Party and Libertarian experts. To wit, this:
"In 1790, the first Congress, which was packed with framers, required all ship owners to provide medical insurance for seamen; in 1798, Congress also required seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. In 1792, Congress enacted a law mandating that all able-bodied citizens obtain a firearm."
Einer Elhauge on Thursday, January 5th, 2012 in a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine, also said that...."Congress required merchant ship owners to purchase medicines or provide health care for their workers. Seamen were later taxed to pay for what might be regarded today as an 18th-century health maintenance organization to provide for hospital care. And most able-bodied men were required to purchase weaponry for their service in the militia."
This is the sort of thing that gives the Tea Party and Libertarians the fits. Good.
Whether Romney or Gingrich, the GOP has gotten to the point where they just lie outright about Obama and the recession crisis and whose fault it was. This chart below pretty much straightens that out. The GOP should not be exempted from having to explain how we went to war twice without trying to pay for either, which happened when they controlled Congress and the Executive.
The way we treat our veterans disgusts anyone with a sense of fairness. That anyone hurt in service to the richest nation ever should be subject to any expense whatever in cure, care, recovery, rehab is despicable. That all the big talking Chickenhawks are not putting them to work at decent wage is another.
And that a single soldier, marine, or service member is on the street for any reason (and we'll limit it to honorable discharge to filter out criminals in the services) is a cause for revolt.
Banks and financial institutions are in the process of kicking people out of their homes for which the banks have no money or interest in maintaining, so this sucks. Perfectly fine homes which could be used for vets or, gee, even the actual mortgage laden owners would probably work better financially for the banks, the nation, and everyone than this idiotic program we have now. This is the sort of stupidity that characterized the Katrina Follies, with ice trucks driving the nation pointlessly, and trailers not being used because they were toxic, and just everything Bush and Michael Brown (who now lives in Boulder) touched.
There's always talk in Boulder about getting an expanded Homeless Shelter subsidiary up and functioning, but there is also always the opposition, and both sides have points. But I bet the opposition would go away if the proposal was for vets, although whether there are enough of them homeless in Boulder to make a difference is hard to say. Vets as a group are better educated these days and motivated. They may also be in trauma and not know it, but caring for them and employing them has big benefits, and should have more.
I've been harping on the book "Debt: the First 5k Years" for a while, not because I agree with everything but because its by a financial anthropologist with a communist background. I'm pretty sure he isn't selling communism anymore, and this book would prove it, and in any case he has impressive evidence for his contentions, which is that a great deal of libertarian theory and Marxist theory is based on fiction, much of it conceived by Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations.
Paul Krugman adds to it here. If you follow to the comments, I'm Foremost Felon. Socially Foremost Felon, rather, but I can't always get that in.
The whole concept of debt is interesting, because we are born in debt to God, parents, people, or so it is claimed. There has never been a barter economy of the sort we were taught, and until the Columbian Exchange, there was not enough gold and silver to establish a cash economy. But people didn't have anything to buy with without cash, so........
Economies were based upon debt and debt sticks, which are found in abundance everywhere around the world. Coin was needed to pay soldiers, mostly mercenaries as the locals had to feed king and court.
The implications about the debt ceiling, therefore, are often bogus, and the assumption that small town commerce is reflective of the big time is no more valid than Newtonian physics explains Quantum.
I'm not sure that we know enough to say we're full of it, but there's increasing evidence that this is so.
When Gingrich and others go off on the media as evil and stupid and a bad thing, it's an old, old mantra. This cartoon from the British magazine Puck over 100 years ago pretty much sums up the same complaints of today.
And finally, because the weather and because the political scene is so combative and disturbing, a return to a more placid place, a more serene life. A cold one, but for the point. National Geo wins again.
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Sunday, January 15, 2012
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Friday, January 13, 2012
These are Thai lanterns, essentially paper bags with a paper clip holding a candle, which heats the air in the bag, rises, candle burns out, falls to earth. And, usually falls while the candle is just sputtering and starts fires, and leaves hot metal to start other fires and puncture the bare feet of local farmers, so it's not just a skip in the park for everyone.
That said, I think the whole idea beautiful, and that it could be made doable and I'm surprised nobody has done it here. Realize the insurance companies would be horrified, and the fire danger is real, but this could be made safe.
A Thai realtor friend of mine has sent photos of these celebrations that I've used previously, but this particular shot is by National Geographic.
This year is the centennial of the Titanic sinking. Two more years is the centennial of the First World War's beginning. That's something we ought to study a lot, given that it's the basis for WWII and all the Middle East horrors of today. But because we were not in it long, and because Hitler is much more the easy villain, we do not study it hardly all in this country. But we should.
For that reason alone, it is good to see War Horse, even though it's a juvenile's view of it as lived by a horse, and by those he met on both sides. It is an exquisite set of scenes but the movie doesn't succeed at gripping the viewers at the depth needed. It may not have been possible to do so, given the material. It's a gallant try, though.
War Horse is a buddy movie lain atop another sort of buddy movie, war variant, and a series of episodic horrors that culminates in an implausible and strangely unmoving finale. That said, it is incredibly well done, with sets that seem to come closest to first hand accounts of the First World War's western theater. Given how little America knows of the First World War, and how short a time we were in it, it is good to see this horror set before us.
The protagonist, once in the British Army, meets another horse and they become competitors and friends as clearly as a great director can provide a family audience, and it is also clearly as valid a friendship within the movie as any other. In fact, more so, since few other relationships absent family are demonstrably as close, even the one between the British human hero and his human friend, who is sort of a klutz and not all that bright.
British and Germans alike are given recognizable and plausible characterizations.
The detail is exquisite. The Germans start out with the spiked Prussian helmets and soon had the coal shovel type they wore into the next war and which the US and other nations have only been able to use post Vietnam because of the Nazi association. Even though their helmets were by far the better design - covering the neck better than the US versions and far better than the near boater helmets the British used in that war and the next. Of course, the British started the Great War with no helmets at all, just the soft cap.
The German trenches were built much better than the British, French, or American later on. They were built for strength and duration, and had underground bunkers for sleeping that could withstand heavy artillery hits. Some had stoves for heat, and some had separate but inside latrines. The British thought that such would suggest to the soldiers they weren't moving ever, and kept the temporary design motif going.
As a result, their trenches were disgusting, unhealthy even before gas, rotting horse and human flesh made it far worse. And they essentially lived in them for four years straight with little variation. Virtually everything the Germans had was better lain against the equivalent Allied weapon or device, except for tanks, planes, and R and R facilities. The Allies had Paris. The Germans had their homes, yes, but after four years of blockade and no food, supplies, medicine it was a desolate nation. This is all referenced.
A discomforting and unsatisfying movie, but beautiful.
Years back when there was an Iraq War starting up, there was an immediate comic strip called Get Your War On, which was a devastating send up of the Bush Chickenhawk hypocrisies and incompetence. Now, the young David Rees is taking on, via the same boilerplate cartoons, the attempts to censor the Internet.
How's he doing?
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Wednesday, December 21, 2011
An uncomfortable amount of good news. It's the sort of thing that puts me on edge. I hope it's for real, and I hope it lasts a bit. At least through Christmas.
First, Douglas Bruce, the slum lord and author of TABOR, which has caused such trouble and removed governance from the government, has been convicted of tax fraud, pure and simple, and could get significant prison time. This is a good thing, and he well deserves it for his selfish hypocrisy and for deception, albeit of a temporarily idiot electorate. Bruce called it the dirtiest trial he'd ever seen. Wait till he comes up before the Board on who's holding out on ciggies in prison.
Doug Bruce is an unrepentant Scrooge without the humor (or the brains).
Second, it looks like the GOP has come a cropper, with the Senate voting for Obama's two month extension of a middle class tax break but the GOP making a big deal out of Boehner's favorite phrase "kicking a can down the road" when he asked for a one year extension. That Red Flag Journal of Communism - the Wall St. Journal - is confounded by this, and tears the House Republicans - and by extension, the Tea Party-Libertarian idiots - a new and ragged one. They're absolutely correct. From the WSJ:
The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play.
Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he's spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.
House Republicans yesterday voted down the Senate's two-month extension of the two-percentage-point payroll tax holiday to 4.2% from 6.2%. They say the short extension makes no economic sense, but then neither does a one-year extension. No employer is going to hire a worker based on such a small and temporary decrease in employment costs, as this year's tax holiday has demonstrated. The entire exercise is political, but Republicans have thoroughly botched the politics.
Of course, they get this wrong, demonstrating how ill informed they are in the details - as in which tax they are supposedly discussing - but they're right either way in how it will play in the public: poorly, and the GOP will take all the damage.
Even Karl Rove, another Trotskyite, savaged the GOP.
Third, Gary Johnson, the two term New Mexico governor and current unsuccessful Presidential candidate, has announced he's leaving the GOP and running as a Libertarian. Whatever votes he picks up will not be coming from the GOP's beloved Kenyan socialist.
Fourth, God only knows who the hell will be the GOP's candidate. Mitt Romney - who at least is reasonable and affable and without doubt a decent person - on the day the GOP bitch slaps the Middle Class chose the moment to attack Obama for being mean to bankers and investment bankers in particular. His Bain Capital, for example.
Oh, and also he chose today to come out for deporting Obama's uncle, another great FoxNews issue which they produce when their world goes to hell. Not a moment too soon, get rid of the uncle nobody has heard of, possibly even Obama.
Of course Fox has some other issues........
Fifth, the DOW is not 4.5% up on the year and is finishing with significant gains. Good. I'm pretty sure if we'd let all the banks go broke, things would not be so good, nor if we hadn't saved GM and allowed them to get rid of stuff they probably wanted to do forever but could not because of Union workers and political push back. Yeah, Obama really hates business.
Sixth, a scandal in Minnesotta where a female GOP state leader is admitting to an affair and yada yada. If she'd been a Democrat, FoxNews would have run a three hour special.
Seventh, the Golden Dukes are announced.
Something sorta cool, sorta ominous, is that in a few years the 20 tallest structures in the world won't be in this Hemisphere, except for the Freedom Tower which gets to count a radio antenna. They'll be mostly in Arabia, China, and Indonesia. They're all designed by westerners, I'm pretty sure, but the point is that New York's skyline was a big sell for us for decades, and this may now be tossed away and give prestige to others. On the other hand, these things are of dubious value if it takes a while for the elevators to rise to 3k feet, with each floor more constricted, and at some point, a waving building at that height would be scary and, someday, one will fall. Not collapse, but fall over. It can happen, Murphy says it will.
So many are built in earthquake prone zones around the Ring of Fire. I literally do not see how these often lovely towers could survive a big quake, and can see them snapping in two. Engineers assure otherwise, but I don't know, and I don't know if the risk is remotely worth it. Especially if they're built by near forced labor by unwilling immigrants as the Dubai area was.
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Monday, December 05, 2011
 So, been awhile and no real excuse except I've been enjoying the writings of others, big time. The GOP Primary race has come to its scheduled collapse as all the candidates arrive at their level of incompetence - some distressingly low, very low - and dissolve. Cain, whose personal vanity is quite something, just face planted. Gingrich, the serial adulterer and corrupt Congressman, is at the plate. This cannot end well.
So much is happening in the Republican primary alone that it's difficult to keep a grip on it all. In general, I'm enjoying a real clown college where actually competent and worthy men like Huntsman have to take a back seat to either smart sleaze, like Gingrich, or entirely capable but rudderless entities like Romney, or honorable but unqualified blinkered politicos like Paul, and then a selection of not even close to being qualified frauds, like Santorum, Bachman, Cain, and Perry. I do not see any of them giving Obama a race.
However, it's fun to watch supposedly moral Christians try to justify their support for one or another.
I know the above graphic is fake, but there is more than an element of truth to it. A lot of higher education is world class, letter sweater bullshit of the first water, and the predictable collection of usual suspects attending these Occupy gatherings does indeed lower public esteem. Still, in the main they're right and on to something to call attention to the fact that NONE of those who risked the solvency of this nation for personal profit have been charged with squat, much less convicted. 60 Minutes did a real good piece on that very issue last night in which they essentially laid out the case against people in Country Wide, which is now part of Bank of America. They ID'd witnesses and the narrative and essentially dared the feds to arrest these folks. We'll see.
This is gold. Karl Rove tearing into Donald Trump, who's going to host the next GOP debate. Rove, who can be razor sharp, nails Trump for his ego mania and the fact he doesn't dare fill out the financial forms required for presidential candidates. And people attend just so he'll endorse them, when Trump isn't in any way able to throw significant popular support one way or the other.
Headlines announcing that France and Germany are working together and determined to get a European treaty to save the Euro and keep the idea of a United States of Europe working is still a startling event to those who have read history. People - well, Americans - forget that before Germany was the pariah, France was under Bonaparte and various odd descendents and revolutionary fervor. The two fought huge wars, including the world wars, and that they are, if not bosom buddies, participants in a responsible and constructive relationship is an incredibly good thing. They can probably pull this off.
If, like myself, you were not swept off your feet by the cowardly way Europe faced up to the devolution of Yugoslavia two decades back, and forced the US and Britain to save the day, or the way they have not exactly worked together on the economic front, or handled Turkey, this is an incredibly optimistic development. Of late, France and Italy and Britain under NATO handled the air campaign in Libya well, mistakes included. Working together in military matters like that build trust and regard and that's good.
Now, with the two prime ministers on a mission to see this done, I'm back to being optimistic and impressed with Europe. This also includes Russia, which has apparently independent and objective polling that clouds Putin's victory lap and says the mandate isn't there, although the votes are. Normally, all contrary info would be hushed, so this is a good sign. I expect it is due the Internet.
The free internet and web. Let's keep it so.
Here in Colorado, like in much of the nation, the last census bore fruit in Congressional District resizing and changes. The GOP tried some trickery that impressed nobody, so they pushed it to the courts who have accepted as valid the Democrats' version, and this was not supposed to happen. The Republicans are furious.
Apparently, according the ColoradoPols, it's their own fault and incompetence. Republican Mike Coffman, who has national aspirations, is now in a district out of Aurora that is a lot bluer than previously. Some Democrats are in more red districts, but nothing they can't deal with, they feel.
Mostly, this has to do with the GOP's stupid Latino public relations that have not nudged thoughtful Hispanics into the GOP column, mostly because of the outright bigotry in illegal immigration issues. Oh, and hypocrisy. The current theory is that this will give Colorado a kick into perpetual Bluedom for a while, and the GOP is not taking this well. But as said in CPols, it's their own fault.
Boulder has some gruesome (but interesting on a strictly legal level) cases that do not include the name 'Ramsey' about now. This is one involving an insane mother killing her child, or at least an arguably insane mother. Who can call experts and who cannot, and who can contest experts is the apparent issue that discouraged the DA from trying to prosecute her as a wanton murderer.
The expert whom the Daily Camera tapped for info is Trip DeMuth, my attorney, and he's a repository of good info on this sort of stuff. He's at Faegre and Benson.
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Friday, November 11, 2011
The cover is a painting about the blizzard 71 years ago today that came from the north and shellacked Minnesota and Wisconsin with a ton of snow, hurricane winds, and below zero temps. It had been a warm autumn and all of a sudden tons of ducks - far more than normal for that time of year - were about and hunters went out to get them.
The storm killed over 200 people in one night, not a few of them duck hunters, freezing them to death, leaving white out blizzard conditions during the day, and everyone got lost and confused when the cold weather, for which nobody was prepared, descended. There's a Wiki reference to it here.
So. This photo was stolen from my niece's Facebook page, and I thought it cute, but then I really like owls. I thought it first it was a Saw Whet owl till I noted the wings were tiny for the body, and so this must be the young of a larger breed. The eyes and hat kill me, and the critter looks like several of my grand nieces and nephews at under a year, with huge eyes staring up at the camera, dressed by parents for escapades outside. So pleased, I sent it off to a number of friends.
Most of whom found it creepy, or perhaps just creepy I thought it cute, or creepy I thought it cute and thought they would as well. I'm befuddled, but I'm still pleased to look at the thing. Ah well.
In 1995, the year of the comet, I was living in north Boulder and a humongous barn owl would go hunting after I passed the large tree in which he sat before dawn on my four mile walk to work. Rarely heard anything but felt the downdraft of his wings. Scared the hell out of me at first.
Got used to it. Like owls. They keep everything in balance.
So, the DOW is up over 12k again, over 5% for the year, and the nation seems to have caught on that the media really have no clue what the huge ups and downs mean. They never have, actually, and they know less now given that the majority of shares are traded by computer and this exaggerates everything. But, at least it has reminded everyone that 'playing the market' means getting others to be gullible or silly and taking advantage of them. It truly annoys to see the media be a willing partner in that.
It's sort of piling on drop kick Rick Perry around for his ghastly showing during the Michigan debate. Like Bush 2, he doesn't seem to respect the voters or see them as deserving of minimal preparation or rehearsal. Facts aren't as important as the performance art which, alas, both Perry and Bush stink at as well.
The bombastic Texan politico is an image and prejudicial one with legs and history, from Sam Houston to Rick Perry, but the decline in substance is a swift descent. Perry was long regarded as an idiot by the Republicans (he's a former Democrat) but it didn't matter in the weak Governor's office of Texas. He got what he very much deserved, and I only hope he stays in to turn his anger on Romney and Cain, both of whom are as vulnerable for their own past statements and falsehoods. I'm hoping for blood on the walls in the next debates.
Newt Gingrich has postured himself as substantive and moving up in the rankings, but that guy is an empty suit as well. If the social conservatives cotton to Newt, they can only be viewed as the canting hypocrites they are.
Everyone at the GOP debate dumped on Europe and warned us that if we didn't want to be like Greece, or Italy, or Ireland, or Spain, then we need to listen to their idiotic proposals, when they even summoned up the courage for that minimal effort. What they don't dwell on is that much of Europe's problems were made worse by the US and its banks.
Greece had no business getting the 2004 Olympics. It simply could not afford it, Olympic boosters always exaggerate the potential income, few nations ever have need for the hideous buildings they build for the events again. It's a huge waste except to those who get the construction jobs. Greece did a great Olympics, but if she had not, chances are good she'd not be where she is today.
American controlled banks made it easier by lending to the institutions that would lend to the Olympic organizers in Athens. Even the most cursory evaluation had to have been burning with red lights, but as with the later home mortgage mess, the banks didn't care. They kept pushing the loans higher up while taking commissions on the way. Over simplified, but for the point exactly the same.
Of course, the surge in Europe's debt was because of greed and delusion all over. The idea of slow, steady, perpetual advance seems to lack a ringing clarity anywhere. People want stuff 'now' and that's what happens. But surely people were in positions of responsibility to prevent exactly this, as in this nation, and they deserve to be brought up on charges.
Again, as here. As here, they likely will not be.
One of the reasons might be effectively illustrated as below. We've made banks stronger and fewer but have we done as much with regulation and enforcement?
The Herbert Cain thing isn't anywhere near as gruesome as the Penn State scandal. And, as on cue, it looks like at least one of the women is a little dingy. Groping men and litigious women seem to find each other, as nature intended. But while I'm not thinking Cain is qualified for the presidency, nor that he's entirely blameless, I do see exaggeration at work. But the thing is, that's what chief executives have to be on the alert for and avoid them. He did not. Clinton did not.
 I have hope that the increasing revelations of this sort of thing will bring laws and encourage responsibility among those who rarely exhibit any. Raping children on campus by a coach or former coach in public showers is not the sort of thing that can be remotely tolerated, yet it festered for years and worse, continued for years. Paterno had to know. Willing ignorance or plausible deniability are not cherished qualities here, especially for those who profess Christian or any values whatever.
But the problems are huge for the GOP. Most of their candidates are every bit as dingy as we've grown accustomed to see on the Democratic left. That a Santorum or a Bachman got elected to federal office is depressing enough, but that they actually see themselves as fit to be President, and backed by a major party, is a horrible indication of that party's grip on reality. Gingrich, Romney, and Huntsman have the wherewithal, none of the others do. But the top three are sleazy, liars, and charisma free entrants, in that order.
Armistice/Veterans/Remembrance Day has always been something of an issue in this nation, primarily because the war that got first national recognition for it - The Great War, The War to End All Wars - is so poorly understood and so dimly recalled by Americans, even history students. That said.....
This photo, which I sense is genuine of someone unknown to me, never fails to tear at the heart. She has come to talk to her friend, husband, lover, or father or brother and to mourn and to weep. She can do nothing else. She's young and beautiful (I grant that seeing nothing but her slim figure from the back) and confused and hurt. She's going to be there for a while.
She brought water and a knapsack and may be visiting all members of her family in the cemetery this day, but I doubt it. She has a boom box to listen to music they enjoyed together. She's left a note. The hunched shoulders betray so much, and she wants to be as close as possible to him. It's a painful scene. One that civilians ought to recall before rah-rahing more wars and violence from the back in safety. Way in the back.
Veterans Day is to celebrate the living vet, but we can't escape that so many young men and women died in service and deserve to be recalled as an Imago or just a passing lump in the lower throat and a constriction across the chest. This photo moves me beyond measure, and every year I find myself wishing her peace and comfort and that she and he she visits will be together again.
I'm an atheist, but I cannot help it.
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Saturday, October 29, 2011
So, Boulder got about 10" of heavy wet snow this week, and Wednesday the tree outside my window just fell over. It lay there like a wounded soldier, with the wind picking up branches still laden with purple leaves as if heaving in breath. I'd thought it worth an attempt at saving, but today they came and dismembered it.
Each spring, this tree started out with bright and light green leaves that turned to rich and dark and by mid summer was all purple. It was a beautiful tree, whatever the hell it was, and I'll miss it. Didn't realize how much till I look out the window and it's gone, and all that's left is the stump and a rich blanket of purple on the ground. Quite sad. You'd think I'd know what it was, but can only guess with help of the Internet that it was a purple plum or the like. I'll have one in my yard, someday.
I've been thinking about how to prevent forest/grass fires from running down the foothills at 55 mph as the not uncommon wind from the west provides, and one way, however bovine and awkward, was to have a fire break with fire resistant hard woods to at least slow it. Drought and hot fire conceptually would have exploding spruce and other evergreens laden with flammable sap all the way to the first old, wooden houses, and then we're in for it. Horizontal flame is scary beyond the norm.
 I'd been looking and found the cork oak which also, by the way, is a deciduous evergreen, if that makes sense, keeping leaves all year but an oak and hardwood just the same. It has a thick bark of cork that doesn't light up easy. It's prominent in southwestern Europe and across the way in the Atlas mountains and is an easy tree not likely to spread like dandelions and disrupt anything. Far as I've gotten with plants, but a combination suppressant system and a partially elevated bicycle/pedestrian causeway through the trees might work in aggregate.
There's great resentment that a proposed mountain bike trail was voted down, and I took part in the Daily Camera kerfuffle, if you'd care to read. Because DarkCloud had been taken (by me, I'm quite sure, and nobody could find the password) I had to change my User ID to Foremost Felon. This has provided some amusing exchanges, should you have interest.
Speaking of which, Tuesday is a big bloody election here in Boulder, and it's far more annoying than usual. On the ballot are two initiatives that would allow the City to investigate municipalizing our power from the grid and eliminating Xcel Energy over a period of time. In theory great, in reality maybe great, but there is no denying some real issues that need to be fixed.
Of course, this would lend itself to the easy liberal/conservative arguments of ages past and present. There is the whiff of socialism about government controlling the power companies vs. heroic, hairy chested entrepreneurs. Or Democrats and Republicans. Or Boulder vs. the rest of the state/world.
In truth, the old business crust has never adapted well to change in Boulder. They fought the Pearl St. Mall for which the term 'success' is insufficient. When it opened, and people started arriving at 9 AM and stayed up till midnight, they still opened at 8 and closed at 5 as they had and their father's father had. It was painful. Took a while, but times changed and some made a killing, some went under.
 They never adjusted to the Danish Plan of restricted growth (all the implements installed to kick in never have had to) or a great deal of the planning that made Boulder pretty terrific. I'll pass over the stupid stuff we've done, like putting near every important building in the flood way - not just flood plain, flood WAY - because that's what real men do, dare nature to do something bad to us. They hate the concern for often stupid issues that Boulder works on, like prairie dog preservation, redefining either end of a leash, and various feel good causes around the world. There's more to be said about that, of course.
But basically, they object to anything not devoted to short term profit for their businesses. They hate dealing with 'affordable' housing and the homeless, they still hate 'hippies' of which none have existed for 25 years or more, and they undoubtedly vote Republican if the Monarchist Party doesn't offer a plausible Hapsburg Lip. They and their families used to be the majority till it came under fire in the 1960's and was near gone by the mid 1970's.
So, the election's supposed issues of which Municipalization is the main one, are really just covers for the old wars between developers and government guidelines, which often contain an unseemly amount of greenie concerns that annoy bottom liners. While my heart is with the city for the most part, I fully understand how annoying it can be.
The attacks on city council members considered too elite and snobby is where the humor gets in. There is much truth to that, and we do have social climbers aplenty on both sides of the aisle, and they take great pleasure in calling attention to each others' faux pas, something I myself am unconcerned with, being perfect. As the election swings along today and tomorrow, it will get quite ugly, I'm afraid.
NASA is saying one or two of its satellites have been attacked, not penetrated, and not 'hacked' per se, but it's pretty scary that this can happen. China is, of course, suspected, but you'd think we'd know, having satellites up and devoted to that nation.
It's always been my fear that our increasing dependence on uninterrupted power and high tech devices means that should we lose the former and find ourselves behind in the latter, it'll all be over. Of course, NASA isn't our military, but it's a start. You'd like to think that NASA would have secured its on board computers at least as well as the Air Force, but who knows.
Now, this might seem like the most trivial event, but the House of Windsor has now made it official: eldest born, whether male or female is in line for the throne. Females always could become monarch - they have one now, of course - but had Elizabeth an elder brother or even a younger one, she'd be on the street. Not really, but for the point.
So, if Charles makes it to the throne, it won't likely be long, and then Will and Kate produce, the first out of the oven gets to take over. Fair is fair, for the world's most exhausting and non rewarding job. They can have it.
And, this does show that monarchies can advance. And think how many children, unwanted, came into the world till a heir and a spare appeared in the patriarchal nations, of which we are one of near all. Admitting that women are as capable if not more so than men is a big step. Had it been in place earlier, England would still be Catholic, since Henry had no reason to divorce Mary with daughter before him. No Anne Bolyn and four others, no Queen Elizabeth, no Armada, no Francis Drake and no power to stand against Spanish conquest around the world. It's late, very late, but think what is included in this minor story. What would have been different.
Now this is too good. So good, I have to wonder if the climate change deniers were taken in and played. Their foremost scientist who questions Global Warming did, as threatened, his own study, and concludes that he had been wrong and it's pretty much as 99% of his peers had claimed all along, which totally pulls the rug out from the nitwits on the Right, sipping Tea, who still chuckle every cold winter's day about Al Gore.
Idiot Rick Perry, who is Creationist and Global Warming and all that, took this week to sit down with Donald Trump and conclude that he was a Birther and bring that back to what he hopes is a front burner. A variant now has people asking for Obama's grades in school. Annoying, racist, and self defeating, all of it.
So, let's take a moment to stare blandly at some charts. The first supposedly shows how George Soros runs the world. Bask in it and wonder......at the stupidity of people.
Next, let's look at some charts showing how past, current, and proposed adjustments to the taxes of various demographics will affect them. I've found no flaw, but others may have. If so, what are they? Because if these are true, it pretty much blows the GOP case out of the water.
Rick Perry has wheeled out a tax plan that most are calling moronic, but whatever hesitation they have is because they can't think of anything more moronic than current front runner Herbert Cain's 999 solution, which rather defies comment. They both long for a flat tax, which is something they think they understand, but they also don't want a flat tax on unearned income, which is what so many upper percentiles live on: investments and other securities.
A flat tax would make sense if it applied to all income, perhaps. But that is the last thing the wealthy want. And let's get this straight: the majority of the 1% the various Occupy ______'ers around the nation bitch about do not work and do not create jobs. They're parasites off previous family endeavors. I look forward to the day when this is talked about openly, and people like Steve Forbes and Donald Trump aren't allowed to pretend to be self made men, or starting from scratch.
Halloween has gone to hell, and not in a good way. What used to be scary for little kids, consoled with candy, has become, essentially, the Gay High Holy Day and drunken adult orgy and the entire premise has dissolved, with kids bearing the brunt. Nobody is scared of vampires or were-anythings, and so many movies haven't exactly left people with a sense of magic or foreboding, absent fear of a sequel.
So, the originator of Dracula as Vampyre, Bram Stoker, never saw himself become famous or his creation, but family has discovered some journals in which the rather pedestrian but inventive author set down his thoughts about how to write and what to write about. Despite the Transylvania sojourn, he seems to have wanted to be Dickens or a romantic novelist, is the conclusion. Dracula was a romance, of sorts, and the sex is obvious and somewhat over implied, especially for the time.
But: enjoy the celebration, whenever it is. I suspect Saturday.
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All material on this site copyright Richard L. MacLeod (Dark Cloud) 1968-2012 unless otherwise stated.
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