Toons

Toon

This cartoon captures my feelings exactly on the blame Obama has been saddled with. Why is this Obama's fault? And why does he "own it"? Bush failed to realize the size of Katrina and send in FEMA fast enough ... Obama doesn't have expertise in deep sea oil drilling. He can't go scuba dive down with a ratchet set. There are probably useful technologies in the Administrative agencies, but I haven't heard anything that would lead me to believe that, say, NOAA, can stepin and plugged the hole faster than BP (hopefully) can.

The Peak Oil Transition

(via Syd O) The Oil Drum has a really good article giving 3 (actually 4) hypothesis of how nations will react, cope, and transition from peak oil. Nations could react like North Korea, Cuba, Japan, or the American South after the civil war. Really interesting account of how cultural memes of individualism, community, and militarism may account for how a nation reacts.

Rejected Fortune "500" Cover

(via Snead 303)

Here's how Gawker reports it:

Fortune commissioned a cover from comic-book artist Chris Ware. He used the opportunity to question some of the foibles of modern capitalism, depicting a "Stocks and Bonds Casino" among other satirical places. So the magazine apparently shelved his work.

The cover, apparently for an upcoming issue, would have been tough for any ardent capitalists to swallow. It depicts the Fortune 500 towering over a map featuring places like 'Cash Loans on House Titles' and 'Toxic Asset Acres'. According to one blogger who attended panel discussion for Pantheon books at Chicago pop culture convention C2E2 earlier this week, Ware:

...showed a cover he did for Fortune magazine which was supposed to be on the Fortune 500 issue. He accepted the job because it would be like doing the 1929 issue of the magazine, and he filled the image with tons of satirical imagery, like the U.S. Treasuring being raided by Wall Street, China dumping money into the ocean, homes being flooded, homes being foreclosed, and CEOs dancing a jig while society devolves into chaos. The cover... needless to say, was rejected.

Fortune and Ware did not immediately return calls for comment.

UPDATE: A spokesperson for Fortune responded thus-ly:

As we often do, Fortune commissioned multiple artists to submit cover concepts for our iconic Fortune 500 issue. Being huge fans of Chris Ware's work, we asked him to participate, but in the end we chose a design submitted illustrator Daniel Pelavin.

BP Exempted from EIS Study

WaPo reports that the EPA exempted the, now gushing, Deepwater Horizon from NEPA and and EIS:

The decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 -- and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions -- show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf.

No Big Government Unless You Have an Oil Slick

(via Armando) Dana Milbank has a great article on the hypocrisy of "small-government" Republicans from the Gulf states who suddenly have a profound interest in federal assistance.

"We're here to send the message that we're going to do everything we can from a federal level to mitigate this," Sessions said after the flight, "to protect the people and make sure when people are damaged that they're made whole."

Sessions, probably the Senate's most ardent supporter of tort reform, found himself extolling the virtues of litigation -- against BP. "They're not limited in liability on damage, so if you've suffered a damage, they are the responsible party," said Sessions, sounding very much like the trial lawyers he usually maligns.

Toons

1st Amendment and Kittens

(via Snead) Stanley Fish has a poignant NYT post on how first Amendment jurisprudence has developed to the point of protecting animal torture as a sexual fettish (U.S. v. Stevens). Good read.

Justice Wood?

NYT does a short profile of Judge Dianne Wood from Chicago's 7th Circuit. Some consider her a good pick to replace John Paul Stevens.

Meteor Shower

This is very cool. Check out the video of a meteor shower this morning.

Michael Pollan

(via veggie meals) Huffington Post has good excerpts from an interview with Michael Pollan.

I Am a Success

I have a wife, a job, a degree ... and Tourette's!! Role Model!!

I have tourettes - haven't read much about it - but this is an excellent article on what it's like.

Toon

World Map According to Americans

Jambo! Kenya's Biggest Music Video

This Kenyan group, "Just a Band" did a music video for their song "Ha-He" with all the flavor of blaxploitation, Tarantino and Kung-Fu. It's going viral in Kenya. Pretty sweet.

David Simon does New Orleans

Check out the NYT Mag article on David Simon's new series on post-Katrina New Orleans. . . can't wait.

Toon

This Guy Saw the Wall Street Collapse Coming - and Cashed In

Michael Lewis has an excellent exerpt from his forthcoming book in Vanity Fair on Michael Burry, an ex-doctor with a penchant for trading who started a fund and made a killing off credit default swaps before anyone on Wall Street knew what he was up to.

This is What the GOP Wants to Repeal

Within a year

-- Provides a $250 rebate to Medicare prescription drug plan beneficiaries whose initial benefits run out.

90 days after enactment

-- Provides immediate access to high-risk pools for people who have no insurance because of preexisting conditions.

Six months after enactment

-- Bars insurers from denying people coverage when they get sick.

-- Bars insurers from denying coverage to children who have preexisting conditions.

-- Bars insurers from imposing lifetime caps on coverage.

-- Requires insurers to allow young people to stay on their parents' policies until age 26.

2011

-- Requires individual and small group market insurance plans to spend 80 percent of premium dollars on medical services. Large group plans would have to spend at least 85 percent.

2013

-- Increases the Medicare payroll tax and expands it to dividend, interest and other unearned income for singles earning more than $200,000 and joint filers making more than $250,000.

2014

-- Provides subsidies for families earning up to 400 percent of the poverty level -- or, under current guidelines, about $88,000 a year -- to purchase health insurance.

-- Requires most employers to provide coverage or face penalties.

-- Requires most people to obtain coverage or face penalties.

2018

-- Imposes a 40 percent excise tax on high-end insurance policies.

By 2019

-- Expands health insurance coverage to 32 million people.

SOURCES: Speaker of the House, Congressional Budget Office, Kaiser Family Foundation

-- McClatchy Newspapers

FDR, LBJ, BHO

Legacy.

Glenn Beck Gets Done

MUST SEE TV: watch Jon Stewart spend the first half of the show spoofing and mocking Glenn Beck.

"Collapse" The Movie

I've forgotten to post about this, but I saw Collapse a few weeks ago at this little indie college theater - and it's really incredible. It's a documentary based around an interview, and commentary, by one guy, Michael Ruppert, discussing the "everything comes to a head" scenario that ends up with collapse: peak oil, peak soil, peak currency, you name it. It's undeniable. Start considering the "paradigm shift" we will encounter when things change.

Watch the Trailer here.

A Dose of Truth!

(via VH1) Check out this YouTube video on the "Story of Stuff" - it's a great, brief, animated explanation of how our linear consumer society is on a dead-end course. Collapse - if we don't change the way we consume.

At Long Last: Does the 2nd Amendment Apply to the States?

This is the question that the Supreme Court will hear arguments on tomorrow - whether the Heller decision that found an "individual" right of gun ownership in DC (a federal enclave) will be incorporated to the States via the 14th Amendment.

Where does Coal Come From??

Back in December, Talk of the Nation did a segment on Christopher Lloyd's new book "What on Earth Evolved" which discusses the 100 most important species in the Earth's evolution. This is the part that really stuck out to me:

CONAN: And speaking of forests, there is a species of which I had never heard called lepidodendron

Mr. LLOYD: Yeah.

CONAN: which is - I perhaps put in Irish. But I'm sure it's got an apostrophe there after the O. But anyway, this was a species of tree which vanished a long time ago, and only flowered at the very top and once in its life.

Mr. LLOYD: That's absolutely right. And to think about it, actually, bamboos only flower once in their life. So it is a sort of ancient habit of some plants. But the lepidodendron tree was amazingly successful. It was the first really, really successful tree that evolved about 320, 350 million years ago. And it would - there were like giant telegraph polls. So they would shoot up incredibly quickly in a race to try and get to a light.

And because they didn't have any branches or leaves on their trunks, but only at the top, they could grow incredibly densely. So they're the most densely packed forests. And then therefore when they die, they would fall over and they'd all fall over on top of each other and they'd never properly rot because there were layers and layers of these trees in the forests and the air could never really get to them.

So as the sediment built up and as the forests were flooded, as the seas rose and things, all these deposits of these trees got pressed and mashed up in the geological process of the earth, and have become for us the most valuable commodity, really, over the last 200 or 300 years to man, and that is coal. So most of the coal deposits, the best coal deposits, actually, are the ancient remains of lepidodendron trees.

CONAN: So think about West Virginia or Kentucky or parts of Wyoming covered

Mr. LLOYD: You've got it.

CONAN: in all these trees.

Mr. LLOYD: Absolutely.

So, think about that the next time people argue that we "have enough" or will "find more" coal (or any other natural resource for that matter - like oil). Get it: coal is made from a telephone pole sized bamboo-like tree, that grew thick as thieves in West Virginia 350 MILLION years ago. No biggie.