WIP

That makes sense.....to anyone with a twisted mind.

If anyone on your side of the argument was following the precautionary principle, you would have taken the rapid carbonization of the atmosphere as a sign that we need to collectively back off from increasing the amounts of carbon produced, rather than just toss up some dubious claim of "low sensitivity" to CO2 as an excuse to support business as usual. That claim centers on incomplete knowledge of a complex system that continually proves itself to react in unexpected ways to change.

No doubt the Liberals were the banker's party during their salad days, but the new Conservatives are riding a wave of overt and covert oil funding. Last time round: Oil money on the campaign trail Here in the US Debacle, the big money went overwhelmingly to the Republicans for years, and as union membership dried up in the 70's, and union influence on the Democratic Party declined, Bill Clinton and the "Third Way" Democrats, came up with the brilliant idea of going to most of the same funding sources as the Repubs (except for oil) and quietly setting the stage for today's Neoliberal economic regime, while lying about their intentions to their supporters. The primary reason why Hillary Clinton...coming in to this election armed with vast amounts of money and promises of more money, appears to have lost the base of the Democratic Party is because the average Democrat in the US has watched Democratic presidents, majorities in Congress, state and local governments - betray them on every important economic issue as badly as the Republicans...who do not try to present themselves as friends of working people....let alone minorities! When Clinton and his Third Way Dems came into Washington in 92, the Democratic Party was even more flush with cash and backdoor promises of private sector payoffs after leaving office, than the Republicans were! So, this crap doesn't seem to be working this time for the Democratic Leadership Council, which will either lose control of the Party or watch it implode as the vast majority of grassroots Democrats are giving the Party one last chance in backing Bernie Sanders's campaign. Not that Sanders is really all that left wing if you check his record, but he would be the only possibility of having a candidate who isn't already owned and sold out his supporters to his financial benefactors (Obama).

Well, this is one topic that you have left science behind! Because Norman Borlaug warned the UN policymakers and international government representatives back then that the Green Revolution should only be viewed as providing the breathing space to prevent starvation while getting population growth under control. What happened since then is that the triumvirate of US Republicans, the Catholic Church and the Council of Islamic States formed an unusual tagteam to disrupt and defund birth control and abortion programs worldwide....thereby paving the way for our +7 billion we have today. One thing that Borlaug was aware of...and techo-irrationalists have been ignoring ever since, is that new hybrid seeds were NOT the primary cause of higher grain yields. The productivity per acre has mostly been increased through massive application of oil-based fertilizers and using oil drilling technology to drill for deep water reservoirs that had previously been considered too far underground to utilize effectively. Today we are spiraling down in agricultural output after leveling off for many years as burned out topsoil and groundwater depletion is leading big ag to scramble for more land and leaving depleted exhausted land in its place. Available arable land is becoming scarce and is only found by burning down the last remnants of rainforests and pushing people off of land in Africa and Asia for cash-cropping. If you can't see that we are coming to the end of business-as-usual then you are not using reason or evidence, as we are going to hit a massive crunch in the coming years (all depends on weather) and the mass migrations we have seen so far, which have desertification as their catalyst, will look like child's play in comparison. The global population is going to start falling rapidly in the relative near future, and if there is no attempt to bring it down in a controlled manner, it will happen through wars, famines and an elevated risk of full scale nuclear war. Whether anyone is still surviving on this planet at the end of the century is up for grabs considering the choices that have been made over the past 40 years or so!

I haven't looked at the next two pages yet...but I hope it hasn't been flipped from being about the Green Party to being about Fukushima and nuclear power! I still don't know where to draw the line (and it's likely impossible to nail it down anyway) when it comes to low levels of radiation being poured into the Pacific Ocean. A lot depends on the type of radiation, as some radioactive elements are more carcinogenic than others. There are plenty of examples of overreaction to radiation....a quick example would be the disseminated public wisdom to slather on sunscreens...especially on children, before letting them go outside. Now some medical experts are telling us that we have way overreacted to solar radiation and aren't getting enough sunlight, which is especially evident in growing numbers of people with vitamin D deficiencies. When people spend little time outdoors and plaster on sunscreen when they do, the cure has become worse than the disease. Even the fatalities claim, which Segnosaur dropped in a comment to me, comes from an open source science journal....which off the top should raise red flags, because open source science is becoming the venue for all forms of dubious science. The journal collects their money up front, and it's questionable what sort of referreeing process the studies receive. The one he mentions about no fatalities at Fukushima can only be zero if we discount some cases that have leaked out about workers...especially temps brought in for the cleanup getting radiation sickness. Many of these people will die prematurely (just like Chernobyl). The screening process will try to remove all of them as liabilities if the corporation behind the disaster gets its way! There are also a high level....about 2000 deaths since Fukushima, of evacuees who had to flee the disaster zone. Many of these people were elderly and/or sick and less able to survive such a disruption, but should there deaths be automatically discounted...as the Japanese Government is attempting to do, or should they be added to the casualty list with the understanding that their lives were likely shortened by the evacuation. There is also a recent story in the news about local farmers getting the go-ahead to resume planting and harvesting. These farmers say they feel conflicted about being told their benefits end if they do not go back and resume farming, and many say they will do so, but will not eat their produce themselves. Many consumers will be eating produce with higher-than-normal radiation levels to add to the fish being consumed that could be dangerously irradiated. I don't know where that radiation line should be drawn, but if there wasn't money involved, the people we put our trust in would be erring on the side of caution.....and like so many other environmental issues, that's not what they are doing!

Well, at least since powerful vested interests...like the entire nuclear power industry - dependent on government for legal, regulatory and financial support...were able to support cottage industries that carefully write up and disseminate the facts they want to present to the public. All it takes is one scientist/engineer/technician who isn't doing his job for a variety of reasons, including covering up mistakes and exhaustion (Three Mile Island case), and that will unravel all of the good work the rest of the team does. But, as in many operations, what I read of the Fukushima Meltdown and the corruption and incompetence of government and TEPCO officials, tells me that there is the same phenomena as many other operations: people at the top of the pyramid have risen to the top through combinations of luck, personality and bullshit, and are able to skate by...looking like they know what they're doing while relying on assistance from useful underlings. The great problem with Fukushima, is that soon after the disaster there was a change in government, with a right wing pro-business Neoconservative administration taking power, and immediately introducing legislation censoring speech and disseminating any negative information about the situation at Fukushima and even about the incompetence at TEPCO itself as 'unpatriotic speech.' So, getting real useful information has been as difficult...possibly worse than getting information about Chernobyl 30 years ago. A quick example of incompetence at the highest levels would be an electric utility company: having full awareness that they are functioning in one of the most active earthquake zones in the world, yet allowing old GE reactors to continue functioning that have no automatic deadman switch capacity to drop carbon control rods into the reactors in case of power failure. A flimsy excuse for the flooded backup generators was that they could not have foreseen such a huge tsunami hitting the coast....which makes little sense considering the high waves that have wreaked havoc on Japan many times within historical record! What we are learning in bits and pieces in the years after, is that a nearby power station was saved from the same calamity by quick thinking staff and management which gerry-rigged a long hookup in the hours after the storm, to get emergency power to their reactors before they suffered the same catastrophe. In other words, if more mistakes were made, Fukushima would have been even worse than it has turned out so far....but so far is the operative word here! No doubt the NIMBY factor rises up whenever the word "radiation" is mentioned. But part of the reason is the difficulty the rest of us have in trusting an industry that functions through the capture of politicians and regulatory agencies. Reactors that are in the process of uncontrolled meltdown (something denied by TEPCO and Government officials until high levels of radiation along the Pacific Coast gave it away) are a wild card! In that sense, Fukushima is much worse than Chernobyl...because at least Chernobyl was brought under control.....at high human cost and risk to nearby residents....but the big issue there was the long delayed permanent encasement of the reactor (est. about $1 billion US if I recall) as the collapsed Soviet Union and bankrupt Ukraine and Russian governments were well underway in their experiment in Neoliberal capitalism and therefore determined to pass the costs on to others within a potential radiation zone of a meltdown. Even more off-topic, but I have mentioned myself that the increasing profitability of making windmills and solar panels is being used to bury unhelpful information like: rare earth elements (often produced by slave labour in conflict zones), the full carbon footprint of new "green" technologies, and...as you refer to here, new state-of-the-art solar panels produce some of the highest GHG trace gases in their production. All reasons why high energy dependence in the west should be the #1 issue, rather than trying to green everything with a near-endless supply of windmills and solar panels....but there are many in the Green Party who are already aware of the problem of Green Capitalism. The Green Party began as a collective of environmentally-conscious people who were all over the map in politics. Trying to gather together green liberals and the permaculture movement will never lead to a party speaking with one voice....like the Conservatives! Some greens are grounded in science/ some are grounded in pseudoscience and take skepticism to the level of accepting everything with an 'alternative' label....which isn't me!

Well, thanks for the nuclear industry propaganda for today! What we do know about nuclear is that it has the potential to cause more deaths and sickness by magnitudes than other energy sources. That's why the nuclear industry has to lobby governments to finance the building and continued operation of these plants and relieve themselves of most of the liabilities....which is even what has happened with TEPCO in Japan. And worth noting that Fukushima is not over yet! It is still melting down and leaking contaminated water into the Pacific and there is still no way of knowing if and when it can be safely contained and decomishioned. This is a disaster much worse than Chernobyl. Looking at the Green Party and the Election again, I've mentioned it before and I'll say it again, most of us who are contemplating checking the box for a Green candidate are also anyone-but-Harper voters, and our Green vote is going to come after carefully checking the local polling data in our ridings.....so much for Conservative dreams of splitting the vote and ushering in the brave new world of permanent Conservative Government in Canada. For myself, I don't find Elizabeth May and the Green Party all that radical or radical enough on environment issues. I'd rather have something similar to the US Green Party, which being shut out of a two party system, is free to be as radical as necessary on environmental issues, and has placed Steady State or No Growth economics right in their party platform. Our Green Party is not going to venture into anything that will challenge our notions of constant, unending growth, but if we're really serious about climate change and other unfolding environmental calamities coming at us today, we are going to have to deal with the end of business-as-usual voluntarily or watch the whole economic system collapse around us.

My limited understanding of all things internet-related tells me there are only two ways to make it profitable: 1. load it with malicious adware like Huffpo 2. find rich billionaire benefactor who wants more pro-business, free trade, libertarian thinking to be put out there. From what I see, anything worthwhile online doesn't really earn much money!

I had a good idea what to expect before I even read the OP! A humanitarian disaster...mostly caused by America and its western allies + useful Arab allies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, share most of the culpability for turning what began as an ecological disaster (climate change patterns drying out and turning much of the Levant into desert) into the long-feared beginning of human wave mass migrations coming from the global south and heading first - right to Europe's doorstep! It never ceases to amaze me how the US right wing just cannot bring themselves to criticize the Obama Administration's regime change failures in Libya, Syria and Ukraine (this is why they are pulling the plug on the Ukraine mess before it adds to the migration crisis). But, in Libya and Syria, the Obama Administration didn't seem to learn the lessons they should have from Dubya's regime change failures, and expected they could install new governments in Syria and Libya and get on with business as usual. When it comes to who should take refugees now, the US should take the most, since it started as their idea and they just expected Putin to fold....stop supporting Assad and clear out their naval base in Syria or something. It should have been obvious that the Russians considered Syria more of a redline than Libya, but...the rest is history! After US, those Saudis and Gulf allies need to step up and open their wallets, since they have been funding and arming "the liberators" of Syria...and creating ISIS along the way. Not many refugees are expressing much interest in going to Saudi or the Gulf States, since they already are aware of what happens to poor migrants who do most of the menial work in these countries that their nationals won't do.....it's a situation worse than slavery in most of the Gulf, and the US has remained silent about their long-running human rights abuses and crimes. In a sense, I see the typical rightwing conservative attitude about the Syrian and other refugees as similar to the way US rightwingers blame Mexicans and Central Americans for trying to get across their southern border: the US pushed for NAFTA, which bankrupted thousands....perhaps millions of Mexican farmers...forcing them off the land, and the number of "illegal" immigrants started rising rapidly. In more recent years, the bulk of the refugees have come from countries in Central America like Honduras...where the US apparently wasn't happy with a democratically elected government they considered too unfriendly for business and had the military overthrow Manuel Zalaya and return back to the landowner feudalism that preceeded it. The fighting and deprivation that has gone on since then...unnoticed in most of our media has led many to just keep moving north and hope for something better. But, at least in the Latin American examples, the US has to pay a price directly for causing harm to millions through their foreign policy manipulations. But, America is too far away for Syrians to get to, so Europe takes the brunt of the mass exodus. Maybe it's time for Germany and the rest of the EU countries to speak up early and stop rubberstamping US policies that might backfire on them indirectly!

Nothing else matters as long as the businessmen who read the Financial Post are happy! Looking at what's happening around us, I'd say most national "reputations"....assuming it's a concept that can be measured against other nations....only has to avoid falling as fast as most of the other nations like the US, England, Europe, Japan, who typically rank high on that list.

And since you mentioned Rabble: even though I started drifting leftward in most of my thinking 10 years ago, I've never found much of value on Rabble. There are a number of small collective blog sites that do much better. I tried joining the Babble Forum and I got signed up....but then discovered I coundn't post any comments for unknown reasons. And every attempt I made to contact site admin or get help went unanswered....so I just gave up! All for the best, since I notice every time I check their forums that the many subforums are issue silos where feminists, environmentalists, LGBTQ advocates etc. run their own little shows and have no participation in the rest of the site. That seems like one huge disadvantage of having too many subforums. When it comes to politics, Babble is NDP Central, and your political orientation matters less than your adherence to NDP objectives! It's sort of like what happens in the US with crap like Democratic Underground or Daily Kos, where radical means repeating and agreeing with everything that works for the benefit of the Democratic Party, and criticism of the Party and especially the President has to be extremely muted! So, if I scan through Babble, I can find lots of criticism of the Green Party splitting the left vote (that sounds mighty similar to the US example), and little about just how left is Tom Mulcair exactly! Anyone who questions Mulcair's support for tarsands development, very conventional-looking views on Israel/Middle East, talk of increasing military spending, past expressions of admiration of Margaret Thatcher etc. is pounced on by the Party faithful. If I just want to know what the NDP is thinking on a range of issues, I'll just go to their Party website instead!

I've been on and off with discussion forum participation ever since I tried the first one about 12 years ago, and even in and out at MLW....I get tired of seeing and writing about the same stuff and go awol until I decide to try again. One of my favourite forums when I started, was simply titled "Political Forums" and set itself up as being as open as possible to views and opinions on a range of issues that seemed rational, sincere and passed the 'offensive language' barrier. Members in good standing contributed $10.00 per year to cover the basic costs of site admin. The problem was the personal financial fortunes of the site administrator and he and his wife went bad, and they didn't have the time anymore to spend managing the forums. They tried creating a bunch of volunteer moderators to look after things, but that's when I noticed a pattern that I've found on every forum that has a small army of volunteer moderators: the mods set themselves up as super-forum members who hog all the attention...can often be abusive/but get away with it, and eventually the forums become little more than the playground for the mods to argue and abuse each other....hope that sort of thing doesn't happen here.

Here's something I wanted to post yesterday but my computer froze up and I've had to spend a few hours today running diagnostic tools and cleaning junk off my hard drive before going online today: This whole saga of lawyers arguing about law and government procedures makes my eyes glaze over....at least as much as looking at algebraic equations. So, even though I'm interested in how this story plays out, I don't give it a lot of attention....and I don't think I've even commented on this thread....if I did, it was early on. Anyway, I like to get to the source and find out what the root causes are behind a story in the news, and to the rescue, along came an episode of the CBC Radio show: The Current yesterday, with an interview of Donald Savoie - Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at the University of Moncton. According to Mr. Savoie, the problem started out back when Pierre Trudeau became Prime Minister in 68, and began expanding the size and power of the staff working in the Prime Minister's Office. Over the years, there's been no turning back, as a succession of Liberal and PC governments continued the process of taking away powers and responsibilities of MP's and even cabinet ministers, and turning the work over to the PMO, which has developed two distinct class levels: an upper level of professional managers who communicate directly with the Prime Minister and keep virtually all ministers and certainly backbenchers out of the loop. And there's a secondary level of the PMO that doesn't even report directly to the Prime Minister, but follows the chain of command. As Savoie sees it, if either the Liberals or the Conservatives awarded a patronage senate seat in the old days, that new senator would have clear boundaries on spending and what could/ and what could not be claimed as expenses. The muddled mess that exists in the PMO today shows us that it's about more than the Duffy Trial. Canada has been on track to selecting a dictator every four to five years, and the whole Parliament....not just the Senate, has been reduced to an irrelevant expense as 99% of the government is done out of the Prime Minister's bureaucracy. Just sayin - if larger issues aren't addressed out of this Duffy incident, it's mostly a waste of oxygen!

Yes, that's the problem with putting too much stock in the electoral process! The closer they get to the brass ring, the more baggage (platform, principles etc.) they're willing to jetison to try to win. The Liberals have long dreamed of removing the NDP, and the NDP tries to move to the center and push out the Liberals every time they have a chance to form the Official Opposition, let alone winning the most seats and forming the government. That's one of the reasons why I favour proportional parliamentary government. Minor parties that do not see a path towards winning a majority, will hold fast to their core issues instead of trading them away to win seats in parliament.

If conservatives have their way, eventually only white male property owners with driver's licenses or gun permits/ but no criminal records, will be able to vote....that's what their ideological heroes are working towards south of the border, I'm sure Harper's tentative steps towards voter suppression will winnow away the open democracy that conservatives hate.

Bill Clinton’s Epic Double-Cross: How “Not An Inch” Brought NATO To Russia’s Border by David Stockman • May 18, 2014

Thanks, I've been wondering in recent years, why so many American leaders have been pushing for NATO expansion and encircling Russia and China with missiles, military bases and hostile governments since these are nuclear-armed nations, regardless of whether or not they are liked over here! That was something that was always front and center during the Cold War...when an anti-communist politician (like Barry Goldwater) went over the top and seemed to be arguing for full scale war with Russia and China, the cooler heads that prevailed in the Pentagon and military branches would deliberately work against them, because most of the military and political leadership throughout the Cold War were WWII veterans and had a personal understanding of the stakes involved when warfare becomes option #1. Aside from the US political establishment being overrun by chickenhawks looking to advance their position and even profit on the side from new wars and regime changes, the failures are showing a stunningly high level of ignorance and lack of ability to carefully weigh the pros and cons of military and covert action. I was listening to an interview a few weeks back on NPR with someone I never heard of before - Emma Sky...a British woman who directed a UN-sponsored NGO and also a pacifist...yet accepted the offer of being named an interim governor of one of the Iraqi provinces early on in the American Occupation. According to an autobiography she was promoting at the time, she was asked because she had already been in the area prior to the fall of Saddam, had some knowledge of the culture and attitudes, and spoke Arabic....things that were surprisingly short in supply among an invasion force intending to set up a provisional government! One of the most shocking revelations was a little tidbit about Donald Rumsfeld...the guy who had been defense secretary before and was supposed to be reforming and remaking the US military forces. It seems that in a talk among staff during one of Rummy's visits, he referred to Iran and then had to have a little help finding Iran on the map behind him! (Sarah Palin wasn't the only Republican who failed geography). No wonder the whole Neocon grand design of turning Iraq into a western-friendly oil producer was a total clusterfuck that has created ISIS, sectarian wars and genocides that never existed before, and has contributed to the mass refugee crisis that Europe doesn't want to deal with today! Back to war with Russia....I haven't seen anyone here mention it...likely because nobody follows the other side in the Ukraine Civil War, but those "peaceful" Orange Revolution demonstrators we heard so much about back when they were trying to overthrow a Moscow-friendly president, are now killing national guardsmen and causing severe injuries at the same parliament building they attacked when they were disposing of the last government: Ukraine guardsman killed in nationalist protest outside parliament The story on the latest protests led by right wing fascist parties - Svoboda and Pravy Sektor, are still getting little coverage in MSM even though it's been up on Reuters News Service for more than 24 hours. This is the kind of story they don't want to deal with, because right now the Poroshenko Government appears to have been told by his US controllers to follow through on the Minsk Agreement that grants regional autonomy in the eastern provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk.....the same deal offered up by the east and rejected a year ago and could have avoided the whole damn war in the first place! Instead, the coterie of Clinton advisers (likely including Clinton herself) at the time said no deals other than surrender as the US funded and stage-managed a war against the eastern territories that elevated the status of the fascists who did the bulk of the fighting, and are now taking the order to just go home as a sign to try to overthrow the Poroshenko Government! And I'm not seeing any signs that any Republicans or right wing media hawks are mentioning the unfolding disaster which actually started a few months ago when Poroshenko and an oil oligarch started arguing about their money. The coverage of this whole unnecessary debacle has been horrible in virtually all western media, because what isn't controlled by rightwing billionaires is under the thumb of the so called "left" like Soros...who was a primary agitator for the civil war and making Ukraine an indebted Eurozone dependent.

Were you complaining when the amalgamated Reform/PC Party gave us an American-style right wing political party? As if we don't already know that advisers like Frank Luntz and a lot of the money coming in to the slush funds of think tanks like the Fraser Institute didn't have American fingerprints on it:Koch Brothers, Tea Party Billionaires, Donated To Right-Wing Fraser Institute, Reports Show The right wing hack site started by cokehead breitbart is trying to portray the Democratic Party funding sources like the Ford Foundation as left wing. There is no such thing as a left wing billionaire! It's an oxymoron that doesn't exist in the real world. Same with the foundations started up by Gates, Soros et al, are set up to handpick "moderates" and establish limits on how far left the Democratic Party can travel.....and that means no further than full support for the military-industrial complex, private prison and charter schooling industries etc. I'm sure we can expect the same thing once they decide whether to make the Liberals or the NDP the 2nd party in a two party rigged system like they have south of the border!

It has to be noted that many anthropologists who specialize in studying our hunter/gatherer ancestors, feel that we never fully adapted psychologically to settled- mostly agrarian life of the last 10,000 years, let alone adapting to the new age of urban life surrounded and absorbed by personal high tech devices. Our ancestors lived most of the history of our species in extended family groups that varied in size depending on resources available and frequency of travel. There is a lack of good evidence for the recent revisionist teaching that has gone back to savage primitive ancestors, as they try to make the case that our increasingly dystopian world is steadily improving and making us better! Our ancestors avoided confrontation rather than fight or kill nearby groups they came across, as they would be on the move anyway in a matter of days. Our ancestors were non-hierarchical...even the surviving hunter-gatherers influenced by moderns rarely established tribal hierarchies and they were not male-dominated societies either, as men and women in most groups except for hunting and fishing cultures of the far north depended on women for gathering most of the food. Then along came agriculture and civilization shortly after. The world has mostly been dominated by warring patriarchal empires because settled matrilocal villages along river-valleys etc. had to fight fire with fire, and turn their societies into something as warlike as the invaders trying to overrun them. In more recent history, we have a veneer of civilized behaviour, but that's largely because the empires today utilize a minority of the population to apply violence at home and abroad. So, much of the psychological illness and related problems that many people today have is coming from their inability to adapt to dealing with urban isolation and the extreme competition and striving within social hierarchies in today's civilized urban environment. I find it a stretch to blame most people for failing in a system that is psychotic, that can only be adjusted to by making a few compromises and trying to create our own private worlds of relative sanity.....that's where family comes in as the oasis in a desert of urban insanity. It's just not always an option for everyone, and aside from family, there are no other institutions in modern consumer capitalism that are not based on monetary transactions somewhere.

What I find a little troubling about Mulcair's shifting to some kind of centrism is that it's exactly the same stupid strategy that Andrea Horvath tried here in Ontario in the last provincial election. She took the NDP to the right of the governing Liberals, and many people on the left had no where to go except put the Liberals back in for another term.

Most of the problem is that we are swamped by two alternative streams of propaganda on most issues that vary between conservative and liberal. Anything outside of that limited allowed range takes a little effort to find on the internet. When Stephan Dion proposed a revenue-neutral carbon tax similar to one from the Green Party, he wasn't offering something really radical, but merely a tool to turn down the spigots that favour oil and gas and give alternative energy a chance....so it was an easy issue for opponents to demagogue. Most people lack curiosity and just go with the propaganda they hear most. The same thing happened here in Ontario when we had a chance for partial proportional representation. Most people aren't going to realize that the future isn't going to be easy until we start getting the breakdowns in infrastructure and services that afflict most third world countries already. The kind of Christianity that exists today in evangelical and other rightwing churches is completely opposite most Christian values taught until less than a century ago: Jesus said "my kingdom is no part of this world," yet America is deluged with the "American exceptionalism" version of Christianity. The new and old testaments are filled with verses admonishing followers to take care of the poor/while heaping a lot of scorn on the rich...but since 'prosperity gospel' came along, wealth is a sign of God's blessings and poverty is a sign of personal failings and falling short of God's grace. It's off topic, but I'm looking forward to what happens when Pope Francis comes to Philadelphia and gives Americans another unwelcome reminder of how much their Christianity has diverged from tradition.

1. we can't keep relying on fossil fuels for environmental reasons and declining resource quality. 2. if we have to go completely off fossil fuels....as could happen much sooner than most people think as the costs of developing new oil are exceeding the consumer's ability to pay, and leading to shrinkage of new capital to invest in future oil development, it will leave a world where one billion (at most) are able to survive. Guess all of the possible disaster scenarios in a nuclear age when billions are on the move in a desperate struggle for food.....Europe is just starting to get a glimpse of the future right now. It's a long article with lots of charts and graphs cross-posted at oilprice.com, so I'll leave the link for anyone who really wants to contemplate how the present grinding down of international finance intersects with oil and resource development in the real world: We Could See An Economic Collapse As Debt Defaults Pile Up

If your side had better options than simply personalizing the dilemma of modernity you would be using it! For my part, I'm divesting from oil as much as I can, and I will likely be totally off the grid after I retire and follow my dream of moving up north (I've already bought some land). But you know as well as I do that there are three distinct groups in the debate: 1. the deadenders, who have planted their flag in more carbon extraction, and aren't going to change until civilization ends. 2. the moderate majority, who want to wear green, but want their present materialistic/energy-wasting lifestyle too much to support policies that will make the necessary carbon reductions. 3. the "extremists", who recognize the crisis in the near future is lethal, and are willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to keep a livable world for future generations around the world/not just locally.

When did Mitt Romney join the forum? This putrid propaganda designed by the idle rich to shift attention away from their rigging of the system, really blew up on Romney when he declared 47% were the takers....not him and his friends with hundreds of millions of dollars stashed in overseas accounts! I'm likely going to ignore this attention-diversion thread and end by noting the majority of people who are declared freeloaders here are likely seniors who hopefully have been able to afford to retire instead of working at Walmart or the local supermarket.

I'm sure Ken Ham and the Creation Science Museum are anxious to find some! Anyone with a science degree who believes in 6000 year old earth probably gets a lifetime membership at the museum with free animatronic dinosaur rides!