Kitchen Sink Omelet

 

When voting on the proposed NECEC corridor project, we need to ask simple questions:  How does CMP stand to profit from this project?  What if the profits don't go to Central Maine Power, but to its parent companies?  Suppose all the earnings go upwards, never to come back down:  How will CMP continue to maintain the NECEC corridor?  The burden of maintaining the NECEC corridor won't be absorbed by CMP—nor its parent corporations.  It will be transferred directly to the people of Maine, be it increasing the delivery fee, or raising the kilowatt hourly rates.  And what if there is a natural disaster, such as ice storms or wind storms, that damage the towers and high-tension lines; who will then pay for the repairs?  Again, the people of Maine.  We don't need this unwanted burden imposed on us with no hope of benefit.  Vote to ban the NECEC corridor.

Corporate GOP loves factory farms  Food production becomes a cut-throat market (Globalization)  Independent farmers and farmer cooperatives viewed as competition by corporations  Independent farmers sustained by USDA subsidies  GOP orders USDA to move to Kansas  Most USDA employees refuse to move  USDA effectively shut down as federal agency  Subsidies for independent farmers ends  Independent farmers stop farming; farming cooperatives forced out  Corporate factory farms can't keep up with the demand  Imported food is banned by high tariffs  Food prices skyrocket (at this point the process has spiraled out of control)  Most Americans face death by starvation  GOP rides the horse of Famine into greater power  Processed faux food cheaper than real food  Factory farms use slave labor  Major grocery chains stores torched by starving protesters...

The consequence of a stratified hierarchy--beloved by conservatives--is we, the people, all die, be it a military death, a religious death, a medical death, or an economic death; we die slowly and painfully, and our deaths are usually meaningless.

xkcd strikes again!

From Indivisible.org, how big data is being used for voter suppression--and how inept the oppressors are with sensitive information: On October 23, a story broke in Mother Jones, ProPublica, and Think Progress that caused a big stir in voting rights circles. A group of citizens in Illinois ha d discovered some smoking-gun evidence that the problematic Interstate Crosscheck program had some major security issues—and that key people knew about them. WHAT DID YOU GUYS DISCOVER? COULD YOU WALK US THROUGH THE SECURITY PROBLEMS YOU FOUND? Within the past two weeks we discovered massive security failures in the Crosscheck program and in how the Illinois State Board of Elections (SBE) handles voter data.   We sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to Illinois and other states for information about the program. We were startled by what we got back. For starters, we received multiple usernames and passwords that election officials use to log in to voter data and Cross...

Shorter Watson: We're not addressing the underlying issues resulting in juvenile gun deaths.

Existence Proof by xkcd:

What I think is amazing is there are still steam trains operating around the world, with engines sometimes over a hundred old. Here's Sort Of What It Would Look Like If Steam Trains Didn't Need Rails

I keep reading about how there are typically 100 applicants for every one job opening. I don't know how anyone can look at figures like that and assume the unemployed are lazy, rather than victims of a vicious numbers game. I say vicious because far too many corporate business owners are spreading around far too much money to keep it that way. We're not unemployed by some statistical fluke; we're unemployed by design . It's deliberate. I can't help thinking about the early 1980's when computer electronics were taking off. PC's would save the world. Some of the chip foundries and manufacturers were setting up tents in their parking lots and literally hiring people off the streets. All these generous employment benefits you read about today (and wish you had) began in that frenetic time. But then someone, who surely has a special place reserved in Hell, came up with a brilliantly simple solution: set up the hiring tents in developing countries and just forg...

I just love this. It's a fascinating look at what we can achieve in a just a few short years. The concept works. Now it's just a matter of scaling it up.