Walking on Water

We got cross-country skis in the 1990s, and haven't been able to use them since. After almost two decades of wimpy winters, during many of which we haven't gotten any snow until late December or January, we have finally have a normal winter for Minnesota, the coldest one in 30 years by one reckoning.

Some people are using this throwback weather to "prove" that global warming is a hoax. This is a normal winter for Minnesota; the south and east did get a bit of snow and set a few record low temperatures, but it's a different story in the rest of the world: Europe and Alaska have been very warm this winter. All the snow at the Sochi Oympics is being made by machines. Australia was burning up during the tennis tournament, and parts of the American West are experiencing severe drought. Fox News reports that water rationing may be in store for parts of California, Nevada and Arizona. Globally, we're still setting far more record high temperatures than record lows.

But we finally got some snow here in Minnesota, and riding the exercise bike gets a little old. We dug the skis out of the basement, only to discover that the plastic and rubber in the ski boots had disintegrated. I tried to put on my ice skates, but they're at least a size too small now.

Last fall the friends we bike with suggested snowshoeing. I pictured Canadian mounties with tennis rackets tied to their feet. But, what the hell: we got snowshoes. Mine have lightweight aluminum frames; other designs have all-plastic construction similar to a skateboard with bindings and teeth.

I don't know a thing about snowshoeing. But it seems self-evident how to use them: they have two ratchet bindings that go over the toe and arch of the foot, and a strap behind the heel. They pivot at the ball of the foot, so the toe of the shoe stays high when you lift your foot and doesn't get hung up in the snow. There are steel claws on the bottom for traction.

I expected snow shoes to be clumsy to walk in. But once you learn to pick up your feet up high enough to avoid kicking the binding, or tripping yourself up by catching the claws on the surface, you're extremely stable.

The claws keep you from slipping on ice and packed snow. The snowshoes keep the snow out of your boot tops. Going up hills is easy; my snowshoes came with poles, but they seem unnecessary unless you're on really rough terrain. Going downhill is a little trickier: angling your feet and side-stepping seems the easiest way.

A lot of people snow-shoe on trails in parks. We just followed the tracks of a cross-country skier through the woods at the end of our street. I was expecting a quiet snow-bound trek, but snowshoes make a fair amount of noise, between the crunching of the snow and the scraping of the shoes. It was ten degrees, but there was little wind, so we didn't really feel cold.

When we reached the lake beyond the woods, we blazed our own trail. We got four or five inches of fresh powder recently, on top of 12 to 18 inches of old snow. The lake was an untouched expanse of virgin cream. We set off straight across. The snowshoes usually punch through the snow and you sink in six to eight inches. But instead of getting stuck up to your knees and filling your socks with snow, the snowshoes keep you high and dry. Walking in fresh snow is also quieter .

If you do it just right, keeping your weight on both feet, you can walk on the top of the snow. It's like walking on water.

We crossed the lake and came to a sidewalk that had been half-heartedly plowed. We stayed on the icy part because you make a lot better time. Then we crossed a street that had been plowed to the pavement. Walking with steel claws on asphalt is like fingernails on a chalkboard, and the snowshoes make a dreadful racket.

We normally take walks when we can't bike, but we've been walking a lot less because of the treacherous condition of the streets. Earlier this year my wife slipped on an icy spot while crossing a busy street with her arms full of groceries. Back in the nineties my volleyball team lost three setters in a single season to knees torn up from nasty spills in parking lots.

One of the major hassles when it finally gets around to snowing in Minnesota is shoveling sidewalks, parking lots and streets. Even if people do their duty, there are always little slippery spots that form from drifting and melting, creating booby traps.

Is all this energy-intensive technology like snowblowers and snowplows going at it the wrong way? Instead of spending all this time and effort trying to maintain that ever-elusive bare pavement, maybe we should just wear snowshoes.

Hating On Coke (A Voices In My Head Story)

Apparently, some conservatives got pretty pissed off about the Coke ad yesterday that was in multiple languages. Recall Chuck Schumer's words as they very much apply here.

The second deep-seated force that fueled the emergence of the tea party is the rapid pace of change in America's cultural, technological and demographic makeup. Tea party adherents see an America that's not reflective of themselves, and the America they have known, and they just don't like it.

Here is the ad.

 

I suppose this all part of that liberal multi culti agenda they are trying to ram down our throats, right?

Fox News commentator Todd Starnes' tweets were completely ridiculous...talking about baiting the race baiters. The best mouthfoam was from Allen West.

If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing “American the Beautiful” in English in a commercial during the Super Bowl, by a company as American as they come — doggone we are on the road to perdition. This was a truly disturbing commercial for me, what say you? 

Cue the boiling pit of sewage!

More ironic, though, is why wouldn't conservatives want different cultures singing American the beautiful? Don't they want everyone to love America?

Saving $$$ With Obamacare?

Financial adviser Jay Larson has done quite well for himself in life so it makes sense that he would look to save money on his health care expenditures. Guess what he found out?

I am 63 and my wife is 61. Beginning on July 1, 2012, through Jan. 1, 2014, the cost of our MCHA premium was $1,788 per month for my wife and me. This was for a $1,000 deductible plan for both my wife and me, with a maximum lifetime benefit of $5 million. My wife and I have now enrolled in Obamacare via a large, well-known health insurance company with coverage that began Jan. 1, 2014. We are now paying $1,053.98 per month (compared with $1,788 per month in the previously mentioned pre-Obamacare plan) with a similar $1,000 deductible. This is a savings of $734 per month ­— $8,808 per year. A 41 percent cost savings. Wow!

Wow is right...even the wealthy are saving money now?

Conservatives Embrace Renewable Energy

Check out this recent piece in the Times.

One would not expect to see Barry Goldwater Jr., the very picture of modern conservatism and son of the 1964 Republican nominee for president, arguing passionately on behalf of solar energy customers. But there he was last fall, very publicly opposing a push by Arizona’s biggest utility to charge as much as $100 a month to people who put solar panels on their roofs. The utilities, backed by conservative business interests, argue that solar users who have lower power bills because of government subsidies are not paying their fair share to maintain the power grid. 

Mr. Goldwater and other advocates have struck back by calling the proposed fees a “solar tax,” and have pushed their message in ads on Fox News and the Drudge Report. Similar conflicts are going on in California and Colorado, with many more to come. And as the issue pops up, conservatives are even joining forces with environmental groups. In Georgia, a Tea Party activist and the Sierra Club formed a “Green Tea Coalition.”

Green Tea...love it! And it makes perfect sense when you think about it.

To Mr. Goldwater, the true conservative path lies elsewhere. “Utilities are working off of a business plan that’s 100 years old,” he said in an interview, “kind of like the typewriter and the bookstore.” On the website for his campaign, Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed, Mr. Goldwater, a former congressman, says, “Republicans want the freedom to make the best choice.” He says conservatives are the original environmentalists, especially in the West. “They came out here and fell in love with the land,” he said, and added that his father used to tell him, “There’s more decency in one pine tree than you’ll find in most people.”

Yes, conservatives are the original environmentalists. Let's help them get back to their roots!

Meanwhile, how about yet another severe drought in California? Weren't we warned about this 10 years ago?

Jesse Ventura on Racism in the NFL

Something to mull over as we settle in for the game this evening...

Good Words

An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality. ----(Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

Homosexuality Is Not A Sin According To These Christian Denominations

Here is a list of Christian denominations that do not consider homosexuality or transgenderism to be sins. Take a close look at the list and you may find some surprises. There are some very mainstream faiths that think that the Hebrew text and history that the word sodomy literally means "male temple prostitute", and not a translation for homosexual.

The Keystone Report

The State Department has released its report on the Keystone Pipeline. There is no recommendation one or another on whether the pipeline should be built. It noted that even with some sort of governmental blockage on the line, it would accomplish very little to slow the expansion of Canada's vast oil sands. The report offered some solace to climate activists who want to stem the rise of oil sands output. It reaffirmed the idea that Canada's heavy crude reserves require more energy to produce and process - and therefore result in higher greenhouse gas emissions - than conventional oil fields.

So where does that leave us? In my view, still undecided. I don't see any convincing evidence that Keystone is going to do massive environmental harm, as activists claim. Yet I also don't see a negligible impact on the environment either. I guess I'm wondering why we are having this debate in the first place. Arguing about oil is like having a debate over the viability of the cassette tape versus Mp3s. We should be spending our time on bringing down the cost of renewable energy and making it as cheap as coal and oil. The entire debate over Keystone reminds of past arguments over the NEA (a loser for both sides who just want something stupid to club each other over the head with).

So, John Kerry is going spend the next three months consulting with government agencies when he should be doing other things like...oh, I don't know...an actual peace deal between Israel and Palestine.

Yay!

Who Was Ronald Reagan's Infamous Welfare Queen?

Remember when President Reagan used to go on about a woman who “used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year?" It turns out that the woman was very much real after all.

Small problem, though. She wasn't a lazy black woman from the ghetto as the story morphed into over the years. She was Linda Taylor, master con artist and feared criminal. President Reagan left out that part about how she was a kidnapper, baby trafficker, and possible murderer. Apparently, she also once impersonated a heart surgeon. Read the entire piece and see that she was far more than the poster child for government abuse that Reagan made her out to be.

Essentially, it was like saying that government is bad because Al Capone was a tax dodge.

Economy Gearing Up

From the Wall Street Journal...

A potent mix of rising exports, consumer spending and business investment helped the U.S. economy end the year on solid footing. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services churned out by the economy, grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.2% in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department said. That was less than the third quarter's 4.1% pace, but overall the final six months of the year delivered the strongest second half since 2003, when the economy was thriving.

Many economists see the U.S. economy moving into a higher gear. Federal Reserve officials, in further pulling back on a bond-buying program meant to spur growth, noted this week that the economy has shown "growing underlying strength." Consumer confidence is rising, and manufacturers are getting busier to meet increased demand. A big driver of growth in the fourth quarter was a rise in consumer spending, which grew 3.3%, the fastest pace in three years. Consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of economic activity.

Really great news.

Take a look at this graphical representation of the Obama years.  Note the downward trend of government investment (i.e. spending).

Considering this is the Wall Street Journal, will anyone believe the BS being peddled by the Right about how awful the president is for the economy and how he is a big government spender? 

Another 1 Percenter Comes Around

As I have previously predicted, the wealthy are starting to come around on inequality. Bill Gross, the most powerful bond manager of his generation and co-head of a $2 trillion investment management firm, has joined Nick Hanauer and other members of the 1 percent on the perils of this much inequality.

"We're not just experiencing a new Gilded Age, but a Bitcoin Age," says Mr. Gross, referring to the digital currency. "Artificial money, corporate K Street, and Wall Street interests are producing one world for the rich and an entirely different world for the working class," says the founder and co-chief investment officer of PIMCO in Newport Beach, Calif. "It can't go on like this, either from the standpoint of the health of the capitalist system itself or the health of individuals and the family," he adds.

Why not, Bill?

"For the past 10, 20, 30 years, capital has moved away from labor and towards corporations and investors," Gross says. "I'm not sure capitalism can thrive in a system in which ... [labor] has a declining interest, in terms of percentage of the pie. Then ultimately the pie itself can't grow, because consumption can't be supported."

Exactly right. Capitalism can't thrive, most lose their percentage of the pie and the pie itself can't grow. And to think someone as wealthy and knowledgeable about finance as Gross is saying the same things I am...what on EARTH is going on??!!??:)

So what do we need to do?

When Gross highlighted many of these trends and others in an investment outlook piece posted on his company's website in late October, he told his peers that maybe they should be willing to pay higher taxes. More provocatively, he challenged the orthodoxy on capital gains taxes, saying they should be taxed at rates as high as that for income.

Oh no he DI INT!!!

Based on some of the other testimonials in the article, it seems like we have finally turned a corner and that makes me very happy.

One other part of this piece I found interesting...

Just over two years ago, growing inequality was the rallying cry of the "Occupy" movement. Its "we are the 99 percent" slogan has since become part of the cultural lexicon, and many of its members have moved on to fast-food strikes and protests calling for a higher minimum wage.

Again, just as I have been saying..

Burning a Million Dollars a Day

Across the country there's been a lot of controversy over opening up new natural gas fields to fracking, as the technology makes it possible to extract gas from places not feasible till now. Drillers have been madly opening up new fields, often without regard to environmental consequences or if they can make a profit in a market flooded with cheap natural gas.

Meanwhile, in North Dakota oil drillers are flaring off a million dollars a day worth of natural gas:

"People are estimating it's about $1 million a day just being thrown into the air," says Marcus Stewart, an energy analyst with Bentek Energy. Stewart tracks the amount of gas burned off — or flared — in the state, and his latest figures show that drillers are burning about 27 percent of the gas they produce.

Natural gas is frequently associated with oil deposits (you see methane flares at oil drilling sites all the time), so this shouldn't have been a surprise. 

Part of the problem is the energy industry's focus. As drillers arrived to tap the riches of the Bakken shale formation under western North Dakota, they were looking for oil, not natural gas.

Now that they've found gas, it's taking time and money to build the pipelines and processing plants to use it. Meanwhile, infrastructure for the oil rush needs to be built, too, and oil prices are relatively high, while natural gas prices are really low. That means companies are investing in oil infrastructure first.

"Where would your emphasis be?" asks Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council. "If you've got a barrel of oil that's worth $95 and you've got [1,000 cubic feet] of gas ... that's worth $4.25, which infrastructure would you build first?"

The oil companies are being sued by mineral rights owners who should be getting royalties from this natural gas. They could simply wait until they developed the necessary infrastructure to handle all the gas and oil. But instead they're pumping oil out as fast as they can, shipping it in completely inadequate rail cars that explode in giant fireballs.

In their haste to get that oil out right now, the oil companies don't care that they're screwing mineral rights owners out of millions of dollars in royalties. They don't care that they're pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the air, completely wasting natural gas at a time when utilities are advising customers to turn their thermostats down to 60 degrees and avoid using gas appliances. They don't care that people are dying and towns are burning because their oil can't be safely transported.

And these same oil companies are telling us that global warming isn't real, that climate scientists are promoting climate change theories in order to get research grants. Through their dark money channels conservative groups like the Koch brothers and Exxon Mobile are spending a billion dollars a year denying the facts of climate change. This completely dwarfs the research budgets of all climate researchers the world over.

But I guess they have the money to burn.

The Nazi Attack on the 1 Percent

I guess recent attacks on the wealthy are just like the Nazis. Look out!!

 "Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich,'" he wrote, opening a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal. This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?" he concluded.

Yes, Tom, it is just like Kristallnacht. Just the other day I saw my wealthy friends being hauled off to the local internment camp for reprogramming, experimentation, and ultimately execution. Good grief, what a fucking moron...

A Dying Party

Half of Fox News' Viewers Are 68 and Older

Pay attention to Fox over the next few years and watch how their content shifts to favor younger viewers. They are in the ratings business after all and if they are losing younger viewers, they will change or lose advertisers.

How Many Conservative Responses Were There To The State Of The Union?

Three. 

I guess there was the official one from Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Senator Mike Lee from Utah delivered the Tea Party response and then Rand Paul delivered the double awesome super duper Tea Party response.

Wow. They are really fucked, aren't they?

State of the Union A Go Go

As is usually the case, the president delivered an excellent speech in front of the nation calling for action in multiple areas of our society that would improve our nation a great deal. His main focus was inequality, citing multiple areas in which we could improve the disparity between the very wealthy in this country and everyone else. He spoke of his health care law, tech hubs, improving the tax code, immigration, and a whole host of other issues, ending with a very poignant and moving tribute to a wounded Afghan vet named Cory Remsburg.

But cynicism is the rule of the day presently in Washington and with good reason. We still have a Congress full of Republicans who will never allow the president to succeed on anything. Their maturity level (see: 12 year old boy) simply can't stand that someone they don't feel is befitting of the office of president will be viewed positively in any way. They are so insecure that even a small degree of success somehow translates into a boiling pit of sewage for them. The only possible movement we might see this year is on immigration and that's because GOP leaders know they are fucked in the election if they don't do something. The Latino vote has become far too important to disregard any longer. So, I suppose I should happy for at least that.

Yet I am not. We used to be a nation that got things done and strove for higher ground. We weren't held back by petty adolescents whose only conviction was their vanity. People who were..well...nuts didn't win elections. People like Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY).



Or people like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who said after the SOTU speech last night that "The world is literally about to blow up." Boiling pit of sewage indeed.

Or people like Fox News analyst and retired Army general Paul Vallely who have called openly for a coup d'etat.

Seriously, what a fucking clown show. And there are millions of people that fall for this shit?

The political press and beyond have talked extensively over the last week or so about how important this speech was for the president if he hopes to tread water in the 2014 elections and not lose any ground. Given the jack wagons on the Right and their behavior, I'm wondering how long it will be before the dam bursts and we can finally be rid of the right wing blogger mentality that seems to overshadow the GOP these days.

Honestly, it can't come soon enough.