The Watering Hole: August 11 – The Mayan Calendar

The Aztec calendar, an adaptation of the Mayan calendar

August 11, 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar marks base 0 or creation on the of the Mesoamerican Long Count or Mayan calendar. December 12, 2012 marks when the 5th creation is slated to start.

That is when all shit hits the fan. It is not clear whether the new creation is in a new universe or the one we live in will be replaced in its stead. In any case, plan for a short Xmas shopping season and be sure to turn out the lights if you are the last to leave.

This is our Open Thread. Please feel free to present your thoughts on any topic that comes to mind.

Double dip? Or the new direction.

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Steve Sack, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

In Rick’s mind…

MSNBC:

“This is a napkin. I can call this napkin a paper towel, but it is a napkin,” Santorum declared at the local Hy-Vee grocery store. [..]

“It’s like saying this glass of water is a glass of beer. Well, you can call it a glass of beer, but it’s not a glass of beer. It’s a glass of water. And water is what water is. Marriage is what marriage is,” said Santorum , who defines it as a union between a man and woman.

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Jeff Danziger, Syndicated Political Cartoonist

So, who are the ‘extremists’?

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

Is that all ya got?

Created for TheZoo by Paul Jamiol
All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

The Watering Hole: Wednesday, August 10, 2011: Hump Day: Wisconsin Votes to Reaffirm its Committment to Destroying Unions

Not too long ago, Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker, together with a Republican Controlled legislature, took unprecedented steps to destroy public unions in the State. The Unions reacted with massive demonstrations and a recall effort.

Tonight, the good people of Wisconsin voted overwhelmingly to support 4 out of the 6 Republicans targeted for recall, essentially giving a resounding affirmation to the GOP’S efforts to destroy unions across this country.

As of this writing, with all but a couple of precincts reporting, 183,215 Cheeseheads (and I use that term affectionately) voted for the Republican incumbant and 164,542 voted for the Democratic challenger.

So, Wisconsin, enjoy your victory. Kiss unionism good-bye and welcome in a brand new era of Corporate dominance.

This is our open thread. When’s the last time you looked for the Union Label?

The Watering Hole: Tuesday August 9th – What goes down outside the economy

FUKUSHIMA, Japan — The day after a giant tsunami set off the continuing disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, thousands of residents at the nearby town of Namie gathered to evacuate. (read full story at the NYT)

This comes as no surprise at all. While we have lost track of the story during the turbulent times of non-existing governmental due diligence and the ensuing market meltdown, this story will stick with us. For hundreds, if not thousands of years. What really happened comes to light in bits and pieces now. Radiation is sky high, high enough to be lethal in the broken reactors. The goal is: Avoid making the Headline. Fact is: Great parts of Japan, including the Tokyo area have become hazardous to live in. Psssht just don’t tell the people.

If you have the time, just listen into this: There is no safe level of radiation.

This is our open thread. What’s on your mind outside of the markets today?

Perry for Prez

Report: Rick Perry To Announce Presidential Run Saturday

The wait is almost over. After weeks of hints and rumors, Texas Governor Rick Perry will reportedly announce a presidential run in South Carolina on Saturday. [..]
The timing of Perry’s speech undercuts the Ames Straw Poll, a crucial event for many of the Republican candidates that will occur the same day. With Perry not participating, the results will likely hold less weight and may quickly be overshadowed by coverage of the Texas governor’s debut.

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle Editorial Cartoonist and Animation Artist.
For Nick’s animations, visit Nick Anderson: Animation Archives.
For Nick’s cartoons, visit Nick Anderson.

Who Killed Economic Growth?

Some things to consider..

This video is by Richard Heinberg:

From his website“

The End Of Growth: Adapting To Our New Economic Reality

Economists insist that recovery is at hand. Yet, unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments stagger under record deficits. The End of Growth proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in our economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits.

Richard Heinberg’s latest landmark work goes to the heart of the ongoing financial crisis, explaining how and why it occurred, and what we must do to avert the worst potential outcomes. Written in an engaging, highly readable style, it shows why growth is being blocked by three factors:

• Resource depletion,
• Environmental impacts, and
• Crushing levels of debt.

These converging limits will force us to re-evaluate cherished economic theories and to reinvent money and commerce.

The End of Growth describes what policymakers, communities, and families can do to build a new economy that operates within Earth’s budget of energy and resources. We can thrive during the transition if we set goals that promote human and environmental well-being, rather than continuing to pursue the now-unattainable prize of ever-expanding GDP.

into the wind

Found this gem atop it’s favorite bullrush, waiting for dinner to come down the lake…

Watering Hole – Monday August 8, 2011 – Crises of Capitalism

This video is a little more than 11 minutes in length.  It’s an interesting perspective.  Last week was bad news week.  Can it get any worse?

This is our Open Thread today.  My apologies for not having much more to say at this point.  Perhaps you have something to add to the conversation so Speak Up!

Sunday Roast: On people who vote against their own interests…

via Al Stefanelli

One of my facebook friends posted a link to this internet posting, and I think it speaks quite poignantly about why some people may be voting against their own interests, especially those of an older generation.

…I listen to my own father, who has been the victim of layoffs from corporate merger after merger, who’s had his retirement fucked, who’s lost money on wall street – he’s done everything he was ‘supposed’ to do. He joined the military, went to college, had 2 kids, bought the house, invested & saved his money, worked his fucking ass off all his life & he still has squat to show for it. Now as a man well into his 60s he’s feeling the wrath of age discrimination, he’s finding his skills becoming outdated & his pay & benefits today (for the last 10 years) are lower than what they’ve been in the last 30 for him. Living the american life he finds his health failing as he’s a lifetime smoker with a growing waistline.

He’s the prototypical uncultured, red-blooded american male. He slathers his [steak] in ketchup, votes conservatives down the line, and wants the good old days before the women, blacks and fags took over. He’s a flag waver, supports his troops, and fends for himself. He’s always bitching about how much money corporations have to spend [because] of regulation & about how the upper class need a tax cut. Nothing in the world makes him angrier than “socialism” & the so-called welfare state. Working people getting needed services bothers him tremendously because a few extreme token examples get painted as degenerate leeches by the likes of AM Radio & Fox News. ANd then he’ll turn right around & support corporate subsidy for just about anything from corn to oil – b/c it “stimulates jobs” and it “trickles down”.

He refuses to recognize that we as a nation spend more money at the beckoning of corporate America than we even begin to touch what we spend on our own citizenry through what he claims is “welfare” or infrastructure. He’s a working class guy who’s been fucked by the system all his life. He still puts his suit on with a kind of sad pride, every day, & goes to work downtown to phone-monkey job nowadays. He’s doing a job any body could do but he likes to pretend all his education & experience has gotten him somewhere. He’s deluded about what America’s exceptional way of life has brought him personally as he is deluded about what the world is like at large. So he denies global warming, blames the unions, blames teachers & other government workers, blames regulation, blames the EPA & the FDA, blames those struggling to make it in this world, blames the blacks, blames the immigrants, blames everyone & anyone but those at the top.

Sound familiar?  Maybe it’s your Dad or another relative, or the neighbor two doors down, but I think we all know a version of this man.  

birds in the wilderness

These youngsters reminded me of the old summer camp song “Here we sit like birds in the wilderness, waiting to be fed…”

A family of Western Wood Peewees were hatched, raised and fledged on the front porch of an old cabin I have been doing restoration work this summer.

Very tolerant of our presence, the parents basically ignored the humans, and the young’uns were only interested in bugs. They will have flown the coop by now, and I can finish painting the log their nest sits upon next time I get back.

The Watering Hole: August 6 – Enola Gay

The Enola Gay

Today marks the date of the first use of nuclear energy in a weapon. A bomb dropped from a single plane, the Enola Gay, destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Most of the people who perished from the blast, 70000, died in an instant. Others spent days in excruciating pain from physical injuries and burns, some while buried in the rubble. Still others have died from radiation poisoning since then.

Nuclear weapons have been used on only one other target – the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9th. The results were no different.

Since then, no nuclear weapons have been used in any conflict. It seems that humanity has realized that these weapons are to horrible to ever be used again. Still bigger and better (I use that term loosely.) versions of these weapons have been developed which mutes that concept.

At the present time, 7 or 8 nations possess and maintain nuclear weapons. 2 others have active development programs.

This is our Open Thread. What do you think about nuclear weapons? Should the arsenal even be maintained? How do we phase them out?

Music Night, pretending to be in New Orleans, August 5

If you have not watched the HBO program,Treme, do so. Now.

Best radio station on the ‘net? I don’t know, but I love WWOZ and can even listen to it on my phone.

 

The Watering Hole: Friday August 5 – Home Made Reactor

Don’t tell us we Europeans are not imaginative problem solvers:

(Reuters) – A Swedish man was arrested after he tried to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen and documented his efforts on the Internet, authorities and the man said Thursday.

And we’re not shy to use leading edge technology, as well.

This brings me to one of my favourite “are-you-kidding?-websites”

 

Ok I feel a little silly today. And tired of Gloom and Doom.

This is our Open Thread, I’m out of ideas. Can you mend it?

The Watering Hole: August 4 – Geese

Roast Goose

I tried to express the situation where Americans find themselves after the debt agreement on Sunday. At first I thought that I could say: “Our goose is cooked.” This statement does not really fit our situation because it implies that we have been caught in a lie or cheated on a partner and will have to pay in some matter such as being fired, ostracized or divorced depending on the nature of the ‘crime’.

I came to the realization that a better statement would be: “We are all goners” as that implies the visage of death or loss through something that was not really our fault. That expression derives itself from the old British term ‘gone Goose’.

We can also say that the debt agreement has “Killed the goose (the middle class) that lays the golden eggs.”

Geese play a central part in all these sayings because geese supplied eggs and meat to guilds-men and the middle class in pre-Victorian Britain. They were easy to care for and mowed the grass around town to boot. In some towns, they were allowed free range and harvested by their designated owner(s). Often the lord (small ‘l’) was the owner who extracted a fee (tax) on said harvest.

Right now the “silly geese” of Congress are giving me “goose bumps” from fear because I will gain nothing but a “goose egg” due to their policies. The basic reason for this situation is that Obama “can’t say boo to a goose.”

Flip the page for a table defining these and other terms. One American term is included.

Actions speak louder than words…even mis-spelled words.

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

Which is a more effective Attorney General? Eric Holder or a bucket of warm spit?

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

You poor people need to stop running up America’s bills!

Created for TheZoo by Paul Jamiol
All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

Even the mass murder of children is fodder for the Beck et al hate machine.

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

The Watering Hole: Wednesday, August 3, 2011: The end of the world averted!

Well, we all get to blame Obama for caving in and agreeing to 98% of Boehner’s demands. Boehner had the guts to destroy the entire world economy if he didn’t get what he wanted, and he succeeded. Obama didn’t want to see the entire globe fall into chaos, so he failed. Huh?

Life goes on, Social Security Checks will go out, the U.S. will keep its coveted AAA rating in the financial markets, for now at least. Seems like Obama achieved his goals, too. Maybe more so than Boehner. Let’s face it, Obama dealt with an enemy that advocated and rejoiced in the notion that it would hurt people. If Obama’s first and most important task is to protect the American People from harm, he succeeded.

But this episode proved, once and for all, that extortion by the rich WORKS! The rich didn’t give up one single tax break. They got 98% of what they wanted. And as long as there is a privleged class, they will continue to extort concessions from the rest of us. That is, until we realize we outnumber them, and that collectively, we have more power than they do.

***

A return to the “good old days.” That’s what the Teabaggers want. But it’s not the good old days of the 1950′s. Its the good old days of the 1850′s…the days of the Wild West.

In the Wild West, everyone was self-reliant. There was little to no government, and the 2nd Amendment Solution settled most disputes. Slavery was still legal, women couldn’t vote and knew their place, either keeping house or working at the brothels. The downtrodden victims of the industrial revolution, working for a pittance in dangerous conditions with no job protections had been left behind in the Eastern cities.

The gold rush, with gold for the picking, lay in the forefront. Vigilante justice ruled the land. (remember how popular the song “Beer for My Horses” was right after 9/11?)

Yes, the Teaparty wants to return us to the days of the idyllic past, the days of the Wild West, of rugged he-men with their 6-shooters, the days before the arrival of the Sheriffs and Marshals, the days where all the women are pretty, doctors made house calls, and wives and kids did everything the man of the house told them to do. The days when you could shoot someone you didn’t take a liking to… or just to prove you were a faster draw then he.

And, what the heck, doesn’t the new movie, “Cowboys and Aliens” prove that a bunch of rugged he-men with Colt 45′s can take on the most sophisticated technologically advanced enemy and kick their ass? Yeah. The Good Old Days. Too bad the Teabaggers don’t realize the Good Old Days were a creation of “liberal” Hollywood!

This is our open thread. What the heck, it’s Hump Day! After the vote on the Debt Ceiling, this day seems quite appropriately named, don’t you think?

Birders and Photographers, Start Your Cameras!

To all the Zoo Critters and bird-enthusiast Zoo visitors, a reminder that Audubon Magazine is holding their 2011 Audubon Magazine Photography Awards contest, the Categories being: Birds; and Birds in their habitats. The Divisions are: Professional; Amateur; and Youth.

Now’s the time to show off your great photos. I know that we have some truly excellent nature photographers here, so please, don’t be shy. (We’d love to see what you submit, too, so post your photos in the comments, if possible.)

Go to: www.audubonmagazinephotoawards.org to submit your photos. The deadline is September 5th.

Go ahead, birder shutterbugs, do it!

The Watering Hole: Tuesday August 2nd – Where were you?

Listen again. It seems you have forgotten.

He said it wasn’t going to be easy. He said he needed you to help him bring about the change you voted him into office for. Americans where were you these last three years? Nagging about him not handing you the change you have envisioned on a silver platter? Weren’t you Monday morning quarterbacking decisions he had to make, because there was no support at all from you for any other way?  Didn’t you stand at the sideline when the so called Tea Party took over the public discourse and turned your Congress into a blackmailing outfit? You need to take your country back, for you are the majority, but you can’t stay out of the political struggle any minute longer. The Tea Party cannot and will not be contained, because they don’t accept that they are chosen by the people, they think they are answering the call of some higher power. They do not function the way politicians do. They, frankly, don’t care about your country. They don’t care about the human beings who make up you the People. All they care about is power and they know how to wield it. But in Democracy you the People are  the supreme power. No Deity, no President, no Congressman, no Senator. You are the supreme power. So live up to your responsibility already and fight back. The streets are just outside your front door. I refuse to believe it is too late.

Elsewhere: The people of Hama face tanks and machine guns to try and take back their country!

This is our open thread. Come on!

Some links to what Europe writes:

Der Spiegel
The Economist
The Guardian
The Independent

Watering Hole – Monday, August 1, 2011 – Philadelphia Freedom

Today is our 30 year wedding anniversary and we will be spending the day in Philadelphia doing the “freedom tour”.

For most of my life, I have lived in the southeastern part of Pennsylvania.  During all these years, I have never seen the Liberty Bell.  With the looming shutdown of our government due to its inability to pay the bills or the closing of government buildings due to the cuts, cuts and more cuts, now could be my last chance to get to Independence square and see some of the artifacts that are part of our nation’s beginning.  It’s anybody’s guess as to what will happen if the US defaults on its debt.  One thing for sure is that government employees would be laid off, seniors would not receive their Social Security checks, veterans would not receive their benefits, and nursing homes could close which would create more job losses.  Basically, more people will be out of work and there will be less money to spend and BUSINESSES WILL SUFFER.  Default is NOT an option.  Our bills must be paid.

This is our open thread.  I won’t be around today as I will be searching for freedom. You will need to Speak Up and do all the chatting.