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Comments Posted By CityGardener

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From Coal to Solar

Nirek, I was trying to give an enthusiastic THUMBS-UP to your idea, but hit the wrong pic by mistake. Don’t know how to fix it, or I would.

» Posted By CityGardener On July 23, 2014 @ 4:49 am

Thanks for this, badex. But let me to pause for a moment to drink in the beauty of that sentence…

“The Shell Oil International HQ is all solar PV glass.”

Pleeeeze send urls for an article that describes and shows the building, ok? I want to put the pic up in the computer room. Thanks in advance!

» Posted By CityGardener On July 23, 2014 @ 4:45 am

Congress Does the Limbo

Elegantly put. And I hope you’re ri… accurate.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 24, 2014 @ 5:05 pm

MonAng wrote: “I personally would like to know who that 7% is.”

So would I, very much so. Polls with 4 or 5 choices would be a lot more useful to the electorate than ‘yes/no, either/or’ formats.

Or perhaps the answer to the 7% question is that those who approve the current Congress are drawn from the same groups (real estate salesmen, car salesmen, family members, close friends) who go to performances of middle-school plays.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 20, 2014 @ 2:45 pm

Understanding How the Military Works

Fine description of ‘Crashmaster’ McCain.

And who knew how appropriate his self-description is? Like so many others I vaguely thought ‘maverick’ probably meant ( or exactly what his publicists wanted us to think), that is, ‘a wild stallion, bravely roaming the windy plains of Washington, alone and fearless’.

But no, it means ‘a bleating, lost, immature, motherless herd animal’? Knowing that is priceless.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 17, 2014 @ 12:04 pm

The Bush Legacy 2.0: The Dissolving of Iraq Into Warring Factions

The comment space ran out, so I’m starting a new one here:

sillylittleme wrote:
on 06/15/2014 at 8:06 AM
“Perhaps it is time for a mental evaluation to accompany all those who are active representatives and those who are running.”

As discriminatory and job-destroying as that would be for a number of public figures, I agree. A guarantee of at least ordinary mental health in our elected officials would be nice; it’s probably necessary if we are to continue as a nation. But I don’t see any way to do it.

We are all going to have to deal with the effects of a decades-long rightwing experiment with forcing us to be (un-)represented by the mentally unbalanced and the mentally unfit. Clearly, it is not obvious to those groups that the cumulative effect of their seizing power is a broken government and a nation that is staggering socially and economically – one which will probably not yield the endless power and endless money they expect.

Given how many of them are profoundly handicapped by solipsism, istm that they should be made legally incapable of interfering in the governance of their state and nation… but how on earth do we do that, given that they are precisely the people who are already using discriminatory power against the rest of us?

» Posted By CityGardener On June 16, 2014 @ 6:02 pm

Wow. I am bowled over by the depth and clarity of your answer. First, thanks for spending the time to write it! About 90% of what you’ve written is news to me. McCain was never interesting to me, and I’ve read little about him; now it’s clear that what I did read was seldom accurate.

The old man and I used to wonder how an apparently decent person like the PR-campaign McCain could do and say certain things, like threatening the stability of the whole world by running for president. Your post makes it easy to understand, so I’ll save it for him to read.

Again, thanks.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 14, 2014 @ 12:14 pm

Welcome, outlandish! And for starting with your usual excellent job of posting – thanks.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 14, 2014 @ 6:48 am

He is indeed in his dotage. He’s the hood ornament on the TeaGOP’s gold-plated, armor-plated Hummer.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 14, 2014 @ 6:44 am

“His every action as a U.S. senator appears to be so connected to those that tell him what to do and how to act that many times he flip flops so much it is impossible to tell if statements he makes are coming from him or his corporate backers.”

I agree. Afaics his mistreatment by the Vietnamese left him broken in spirit but suitable for long-term use by our rightwing political machine – sadly, he thinks he’s a team player, not a tool, as he dependably reads the often-contradictory scripts he’s given. Does this seems plausible to you?

» Posted By CityGardener On June 13, 2014 @ 3:59 pm

Baghdad, Blowback and Bush

Thanks so much for the welcome, AdLib. What a warm, comfortable place PPov is turning out to be, after the loud, discordant coldness of the some talk sites.

And what a great idea! You’re ri… correct. We’re a litigious society, let’s put that national pastime to good use. Suing the individual members of the Bush administration’s disinformation machine would be an excellent place to start.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 14, 2014 @ 12:01 pm

‘“The oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years.”‘

Then they all climbed into the rightwing clown car and drove out into the Iraqi desert, where they found money. And behold, it was not a measly 100 billion, but closer to 1.7 trillion* that they ‘found’, over the next eight years…

… often in the form of neat, clean money flown directly from the U.S. in shrink-wrapped bundles set on large pallets: suitable for easy distribution to tribesmen, mercenaries, international arms dealers, international drug dealers, touch football players, and all the other entities that deserved it so much more than the American taxpayers who generated that money.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/14/us-iraq-war-anniversary-idUSBRE92D0PG20130314

*NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said. […]

» Posted By CityGardener On June 13, 2014 @ 3:21 pm

An Open Letter To Any And All “Conservatives”

Nirek, your posts make it clear that you’re good people, so I expected to like the song (which I’d never heard before). I didn’t expect to have tears in my eyes halfway through the song. Didn’t expect to listen to it twice in a row, and didn’t expect to start planning who to send it to. (Everybody.)

Thank you.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 16, 2014 @ 4:12 pm

Hey, NSN. I really like the neat term “George Cheney”. That’s exactly what we had instead of a Prez & Vice-Prez – a donkey costume with Cheney in front and Georgie as the silent posterior.

“Does the Party in NC simply assume that everyone who lives in the state is an R? lol.”

If you’re white, and subscribe to newspapers, they sure do. So we usually make a point of using our outdoor voice when giving our political affiliation. It’s like adding a single grain of sand to the seashore but at least it’s not a cringing timidity or a refusal to identify ourselves. And after all, imho that’s what politics is all about – at least it is if you’re a liberal/progressive/Democrat.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 16, 2014 @ 4:01 pm

Huh. Creative registration. – Now, there’s an interesting way of dealing with the threat of a moron candidate for the highest office. I know how much we all regret that your efforts didn’t work. My friends and I spent a lot of time thinking of a world where we wouldn’t be looking back at the reign of Grand Vizier Cheney and George the Stupid.

Btw, I hope you don’t think of this as criticism – I’ve gotten past thinking that my way is the only good way to try to protect our tattered democracy.

“it took quite a bit of time & effort to end the mailings from the Colorado Republican Party.”

For a couple of months back in the mid-2000s here in NC, we were getting lots of phone messages and a paper mailbox full of Repub “newsletters” – i.e., simpleminded lies – until I called the RNC main office in Raleigh and politely said that we are life-long Dems, and will never vote for their party whose policy is to falsify facts and gerrymander districts because they can’t win any other way. (In so many words.) The lady replied very softly, “Thank you for calling. I will take care of it”, and hung up. The disinfo flood stopped that *day*.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 13, 2014 @ 12:05 pm

Sorry. It’s:

“You can’t fix stupid.”

» Posted By CityGardener On June 12, 2014 @ 10:05 am

“snark and denial get us nowhere but a long walk in a small circle…”

…which is the title of the upcoming “History of the Republican Party, 1981-2014.”

With you, I worry constantly about the weakness of our collective political position, that of suing for the attention of a group all of whose benefits derive from deliberately ignoring us.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 12, 2014 @ 8:20 am

“I belong to a conservative site where I post under another name . I am often censored (i.e., my posts do not publish or they publish and disappear).”

Huh. Well, that answers a question my SIL and I were talking about this morning while I was making breakfast. He was wondering if there actually are Dems who register as repubs in order to take part in repub primaries.

I like our mutual conclusion: (a) we’re certain, from skewed results in very small-vote areas that repubs in fact do this; (b) that we didn’t intend to. That wimpy leftwing ‘code of ethics’ stuff again, interfering with political advantage…

» Posted By CityGardener On June 12, 2014 @ 8:15 am

Murph wrote: “He is now on social security and medicare.
AND HE IS TOTALLY OPPOSED TO THOSE DAMN TAKERS AND THE SOCIALIST WELFARE STATE!”

In cases like this I pause to consider the truth of Ron White’s axiom.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 11, 2014 @ 3:50 pm

S-Man wrote: “They have their views and no facts or arguments penetrate their political bubble.”

The word “have” suddenly jumped out at me. Could the GreatDivide be as simple and trite as this – that political beliefs are valuable, unchanging possessions for cons, but a body of constantly growing, changing information for libs? Seriously?

How depressing: Political belief is something to own.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 11, 2014 @ 3:42 pm

Betcha you ain’t as old as me. My compliments to you and Nirek were sincere – both of you are exactly the kind of folks who make wandering the net worthwhile.

Please don’t be apologetic about dyslexia. It’s just a detail. You remind ne that of the best things about the early internet was learning that there are quite a few brilliantly insightful, observant, intelligent people who weren’t good at the drudgery of writing – spelling, grammar, and punctuation. What made it so great for me was that their good ideas could get into public, misspellings and all.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 11, 2014 @ 3:33 pm

Kilgore, eh? :^) Thank you for the welcome and for the kind remark about my first post. What a pleasure to be welcomed, and how different from a lot of most folks’ web experiences! I’ve already enjoyed reading a couple of your posts, and looking forward to seeing many more.

You wrote: “I always think that to achieve some of the things these people have achieved and still harbor such ignorance, is surprising to me.”

Seems to me they actually are clever and informed, but what they lack is any clue about morality and ethics. They are moral imbeciles. Of course they agree with the low-info crowd – the uninformed can be used to acquire wealth and power. Of course, that plan calls for simply not caring about the consequences in the greater society.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 11, 2014 @ 1:44 pm

Nirek, Thanks so much for the welcome.

I’ve read a lot of your posts in the past two days, and enjoyed them all. I’m impressed.

Because several people have said the same thing recently – that there are those who actually do hate someone because of his skin color, that looks like another truth I was trying to dodge. Since we’ve live in a certain mid-Atlantic state since the late 70’s, we have naturally witnessed the automatic, institutionalized dismissal of black people (less and less as younger people walk away from that stuff). Being Canadian-border Yankees, we always thought of that behavior as just a sad search for superiority by people who managed to convince themselves that superiority consisted of a birthplace and skin color.

From now on I’m going back to CityGardener partly because it’s true – small city, 1/4 acre garden, perfectly beautiful in an old-fashioned way.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 11, 2014 @ 1:21 pm

That united front terrifies me. It’s so frustrating not to be allowed to point out that that is exactly how a certain European house painter acquired political power – essentially using the same methods as we observed in the past 20 years.

At the same time I’m taking seriously the comments to the effect that yes, there is quasi-personal hatred toward the President simply because that is how a certain part of the electorate operates – rattling around among various hatreds just like a pinball.

» Posted By CityGardener On June 11, 2014 @ 11:44 am