39 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Pogeaux
3 years ago

And the circular firing squad continues. 

Liberal Democrats have become the mainstream of the party and less willing to compromise with dwindling moderates

Moments after President Biden instructed House Democrats to make concessions or risk derailing passage of his economic agenda, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus hastily gathered in the depths of the Capitol on Oct. 1 to talk strategy about what policies they could sacrifice.

No one was ready to compromise.

According to several lawmakers and aides who participated in the two-hour meeting, members stood up one by one to vouch for establishing universal pre-K, making the child tax credit permanent and guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid family leave. Others mentioned the need to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision, which would get them one step closer to the progressive goal of Medicare-for-all.
[…]

I’m fine with those spending priorities, but show me how you get it through the Senate. I’m not fine with doing nothing. 

Jamie
3 years ago

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'Indigenous Peoples Day Today we celebrate the people who first called this land home. We remember the struggles and tragedies they endured. We honor their place in and contributions to the shared story of America.'

RebelliousRenee
3 years ago

Today in New Hampshire… we call it Leaf Peepers Day.  But they’re going to be kinda disappointed this year.  It’s raining…  and we haven’t gotten a frost yet, so the color is kinda dull and late.
 
ps… something tells me that Native Americans would much rather have better schools, better housing, better job opportunities…  etc., etc… than some crummy holiday.

Pogeaux
3 years ago

Renee,  colors here are also kinda dull and late.  Odd stuff happening.  The maples are all over the place – from the red maples that are starting to show to the sugar and black maples that went green to brown and dropped their leaves without a show.  It’s the yellows that aren’t contributing around here.  Beeches and birches are going to brown fast and the oaks ain’t doing shit yet. Autumn glory weekend is coming up this weekend in Oakland, MD, and unless something up there changes it ain’t looking very glorious.

Pogeaux
3 years ago

I had my first Canadian Snowbird sighting today – old couple from Ontario in Subaru headed south.  Seems that the snowbird migration may be starting a little early this year.

Pogeaux
3 years ago

Covid 19 by the numbers over the past week – from WaPo.
In the past week in the U.S. …

New daily reported cases fell 10.1% 
New daily reported deaths fell 6.8% 
Covid-related hospitalizations fell 7.1% 

Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 6.4%.
The number of tests reported fell 41.9%  from the previous week.Read more

Since Dec. 14, more than 401,819,000doses of a coronavirus vaccine have been administered in the U.S.
More than 187,215,000people have completed vaccination, or about 56.39% of the population. 

Beware of that new cases reported number – testing dropped 41% so it’s hard to think it’s reflective of the real numbers.

old man
3 years ago

This is what all them little connectors look like when they’re put together.
 

old man
3 years ago

The “Civil War” lady in Iowa on Saturday made a splash.
Wait till General Sheridan  rides through takes all her grain and burns her barn. 
 

old man
3 years ago

Ancient alcohol: World’s largest Byzantine winepresses uncovered in Israel
Industrial complex dating back 1,500 years, found south of Tel Aviv, was capable of producing 2 million liters of wine a year that were marketed across region, archaeologists say
https://www.timesofisrael.com/worlds-largest-known-complex-of-byzantine-winepresses-uncovered-in-israel/

old man
3 years ago

The old port of Rome,  at Ostia has a midden pile of broken amphora that is 142 feet high, and contains around  40 million jars in it. 

old man
3 years ago

Trashing the planet and hiding the money isn’t a perversion of capitalism. It is capitalism
 

George Monbiot

 
Exploiting people, exploiting land, and keeping its ugly side secret. Its historical effects are all too recognisable in the Pandora papers now
 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/06/offshoring-wealth-capitalism-pandora-papers

Capitalism was arguably born on a remote island. A few decades after the Portuguese colonised Madeira in 1420, they developed a system that differed in some respects from anything that had gone before. By felling the forests after which they named the island (madeira is Portuguese for wood), they created, in this uninhabited sphere, a blank slate – a terra nullius – in which a new economy could be built. Financed by bankers in Genoa and Flanders, they transported enslaved people from Africa to plant and process sugar. They developed an economy in which land, labour and money lost their previous social meaning and became tradable commodities.

As the geographer Jason Moore points out in the journal Review, a small amount of capital could be used, in these circumstances, to grab a vast amount of natural wealth. On Madeira’s rich soil, using the abundant wood as fuel, slave labour achieved a previously unimaginable productivity. In the 1470s, this tiny island became the world’s biggest producer of sugar.

Madeira’s economy also had another characteristic that distinguished it from what had gone before: the astonishing speed at which it worked through the island’s natural wealth. Sugar production peaked in 1506. By 1525 it had fallen by almost 80%. The major reason, Moore believes, was the exhaustion of accessible supplies of wood: Madeira ran out of madeira.

It took 60kg of wood to refine 1kg of sugar. As wood had to be cut from ever steeper and more remote parts of the island, more slave labour was needed to produce the same amount of sugar. In other words, the productivity of labour collapsed, falling roughly fourfold in 20 years. At about the same time, the forest clearing drove several endemic species to extinction.

In what was to become the classic boom-bust-quit cycle of capitalism, the Portuguese shifted their capital to new frontiers, establishing sugar plantations first on São Tomé, then in Brazil, then in the Caribbean, in each case depleting resources before moving on. As Moore says, the seizure, exhaustion and partial abandonment of new geographical frontiers is central to the model of accumulation that we call capitalism. Ecological and productivity crises like Madeira’s are not perverse outcomes of the system. They are the system.

Ole’ George makes a great case.

old man
3 years ago

 
Brazil, Europe and China have energy crises with different causes: water, gas and coal shortages
 
The Rio Times 

old man
3 years ago

Study: To solve Brazil’s energy and food crisis, store more water

Sept. 28, 2021

Researchers discovered that greater amounts of water in Brazil’s reservoirs could increase precipitation and river flow significantly, effectively resolving its hydroelectricity crisis.

 
https://www.waterworld.com/water-utility-management/energy-management/press-release/14211204/to-solve-brazils-energy-and-food-crisis-store-more-water
 

This seemingly counter intuitive finding has major implications for water and energy management in Brazil, which is in the midst of a historic drought — and a resulting energy crisis for a country that gets two thirds of its energy from hydropower.
The study suggests that keeping the reservoirs at low levels since a drought in 2014 could have exacerbated the problem and contributed to the water and energy crisis facing Brazil today.

I watched this drought start 7 years ago . Sal Palo was drinking mud . They are cutting 200,000 acres a day of trees down there.  That ain’t helping things .
 
 
 

old man
3 years ago

old man
3 years ago

old man
3 years ago

Bink
3 years ago

As Moore says, the seizure, exhaustion and partial abandonment of new geographical frontiers is central to the model of accumulation

Hey, that’s what the extraterrestrials are going to do to us!

Bink
3 years ago

Hopefully, humans can infect them with anti-vax sentiment and they’ll exterminate themselves with easily preventable earth-borne diseases

old man
3 years ago

Lee Ware –
Just got an email , he’s driving ahead on the 3-D drawings.  This is gonna be a big week .  
 

old man
3 years ago

Blink it is a turd filled tsunami,  find something good and work on that .
It will help keep the e coli out of your head. 

Bink
3 years ago

yeah i was at this party recently and threw a can in the trash and got chided by the homeowner, “oh we recycle”.  They have a heated pool🤦‍♂️ 

old man
3 years ago

Blink –
You swim  in larger pools than me. 

Pogeaux
3 years ago

Old man your musical selections are spot on. The first three are in my top 20. The third in my top 10 for Cream. And the connector scrum looks like planning went into it. 

Exit function strikes again. I love Linda … LOVE her. But WADR I have to give the Willing award to Lowell and Little Feat. Hers is wonderful but theirs is definitive.

Bink
3 years ago

i went to where the money is in the hope that some would stick to me🤷‍♂️

old man
3 years ago

I never found the way to be great . I was always afraid  of that. 

old man
3 years ago

Pogo –
I was thinking about her today. 
She took others songs and made them better. 

old man
3 years ago

 
 

old man
3 years ago

Bink
3 years ago

Nice work💪

old man
3 years ago

old man
3 years ago

This is the biggest week of my life.  To take the oldest idea of my life to fruiting is really strange  at this age. 
 
But this idea  is my best. 

Pogeaux
3 years ago

Renee, congratulations to the Sox‼️👍🏻

RebelliousRenee
3 years ago

OMG… I can’t believe it…. We beat the Rays!!!