The monkey on my back

I've been thinking about this one lately and feel it's a good topic for a blog.

That topic being anxiety.

So allow me to explain a couple things first. I have a crappy job as a front desk clerk for an equally crappy motel on the outskirts of Baltimore city. I would say it's a mystery why I still work there, but the truth is I'm lazy and there's something else to it that is much harder to explain. Travel kinda scares me and it wraps back into greater topic of anxiety. I have this somewhat irrational fear of getting lost that I developed as a teenager. The fear that I might have gotten on the wrong bus was enough to get me sweaty. Strangely I had zero fear when I went on a trip to Chattanooga almost a decade ago with $0 so it's one of my weirder personality quirks....

So on to the meat of the problem. Back in October some 'tard with mental issues decided it would be a good night to get out his gun and do some random shooting at nothing. Being the desk clerk at the motel, I immediately called the police and connected them with the resident that told me about the event. The police showed up and stuff happened and I figured "that was that". Except it wasn't. A couple weeks later I got a subpoena to testify at the guy's trial. I tried to get a hold of the attorney in charge to be exempted from the trial, but had little luck getting a hold of her. Eventually the trial was postponed around Thanksgiving and I figured, again, that "that was that". After all, the guy had mental issues. They'd probably just throw it out and whatever the end. But then I got another subpoena 2 weeks ago for a trial coming up.... But now there was another twist in the story. Now I was miserable with the flu. As the Mic Check crowd know, I've been fighting this crap for about three weeks. So at some point my mind started wrapping around the possibilities that I might have to somehow find transportation all the way out the to the Towson court house. What if they say fuck you, you have to come and you're on your own? Towson is way to the northeast from Baltimore City. The commute by car would only take 30 minutes, but.... because I'm lazy, I don't have my license or a car. And trying to travel there by bus would be a nightmare because it triggers my fear of getting lost. And fuck spending $60+ on a cab going back & forth.... The anxiety of having to travel to Towson and the flu double-team dropkicked me in the face for a couple days making me super depressed.

Luckily, however, this story has a happy ending. I got a hold of the attorney finally and explained the situation. She was all "Oh then I definitely won't need you" so I won't have to worry at all about trekking out to Towson. So no more anxiety and this dumb flu crap is slowly but surely getting out of me. In fact, I've been coughing up some interesting looking mucus. But this whole ordeal does make me wonder seriously about anxiety. I have a younger brother who is basically confined to the house because the minute he walks out the door, he can suffer an anxiety attacks. So it's a pretty big deal to me. And it's a widespread problem with people in general have to fight with sometimes on a daily basis.

What makes you anxious? I'd like to hear about that monkey on your back.

How to address Climate Change

The most important outcome of "frankenstorm" or "Super Storm" Sandy is going to be the reversible fact that Climate Change for one of the most densely populated regions of America is a real thing. And citizens of NY and NJ should know -- they got kicked in the balls by it. This leads us to the next phase of the discussion: if Climate Change is 100% real (which it is), what can we do to stop it?

First red flag right there: this is nature itself we're talking about. There is no "stopping" it. Like Bloomberg called it, this is our new reality. It's not going away and it's going to get worse. If we keep burning C02 at the rate we're already burning it, the endgame is Kevin Costner's magnum opus: Water World. Remember that crappy movie -- the one there's no land and just one giant sea covering the whole planet? That's the ultimate endgame for Climate change. Well... That or a new ice age. That's possible too and not exactly any better for your children's children's children. Either scenario is up there with any other apocalypse setting: scarce resources, limited land, and billions dead from war, famine, and everything else.

So how do we prevent the bad ending from climate change?

Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist. I sure as hell am no expert on the subject. I'm a bastard with a blog. These are more or less the results of watching documentaries on the subject and browsing r/science. So these are basically my opinions.

First: address the cause

First off, we need to address the amount of greenhouse gases: primarily CO2 and methane. Both require different solutions, but resolving one and not the other is not going to be enough to "lower the tides & heal the planet".

Carbon Dioxide is a hell of a drug!

We get CO2 from burning coal to produce electricity. So if we stop burning coal, we solve the problem right? Easier said then done. Coal is still the meat of our electricity production for most of the world. Getting off of it cold turkey isn't going to work. Renewables -- namely solar & wind -- at best right now only make a small percentage of our total energy production. Eventually when battery and efficiency technology catches up there is a good chance we can make that jump.... but we need a middle man.

And that's where nuclear comes in.

But! you say.... Fukishima! Chernobyl! Three Mile Island! OMG NUCLEAR COULD KILL US ALL!!!111 Now that that's out of the way, allow me to explain: those were old nuclear designs. And each one of them had structural and engineering flaws that were bombs waiting to happen. The problem is that the technology we've been using for current plutonium based reactors is old stuff and it hasn't really improved much in the past couple of decade because of political pressure. There are better options out there, but because of the nature of nuclear reactors it's difficult to make progress on that front. The general idea is to make nuclear reactors that have a smaller land footprint that are more efficient and don't create tons upon tons of nuclear waste. This is the kind of problem that it'll take money to fix because the tech is there. It's *always* been there. We had a functional prototype thorium powered reactor back in the freaking *SIXTIES*. But it didn't make weapon grade plutonium so it was shelved.... The first country that makes a working molten salt reactor (MSR) or Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) will have a huge impact on the future of the planet's energy needs. This will give us the middle-man until renewables catch up in a few decades. For more information, Wikipedia has plenty of information on LFTRs. I also strongly suggest Kirk Sorenson's documentary on Youtube.

Okay, so now we've solved the coal problem.... But what about cars? Cars are another part of the CO2 problem? That one's actually an easy fix. In the next decade, everything will be a hybrid. Everything. And thanks to market pressures we'll probably have cheap electric cars in 15-20 years. The transition will take some time (and some effort), but look at what Tesla is already doing with its cars. Before long every gas station will have a charging station for electric cars. Big rigs and planes will take a bit longer to get there, but biodiesel is getting there. In our lifetimes, we could potentially see the independence of our country from coal and oil....

Who knew cow farts were breeding hurricanes?!

This is actually real -- America's need for cheap hamburgers (and bacon and chicken) is warming our planet. So methane is a problem. Fortunately most of this can be taken care of through changing farm subsidies around to force farmers out in the heartland to install methane digesters. Provided our dysfunctional congress can pass the necessary legislation. This could kill two birds with one stone: fix our methane problem and improve the way we get rid of cow shit.

More info here.

Second: Wait

This may prove the most difficult challenge: waiting. Even if we turned off all the coal plants on the planet and made cows stop farting so much, it would still take years to see a real effect on the climate. It might decades -- even centuries -- to undo the amount of damage that we have caused from two centuries of burning coal and oil. Which means we're going to have to deal with the results of climate change for years: more severe storms, more severe flooding, and more severe droughts.

But the results of not addressing the causes of climate change welcomes the inevitable post-apocalypse ending. To quote Socrates: "Societies grow strong when old men plant tree whose shade they will never sit in".

Politics after tomorrow

So hey tomorrow is the election. FINALLY. Even though I'm an armchair political junky -- more so every four years when the president election rolls around -- I will be glad to see this sorry dog & pony show end. The Republican primary was all fun and games, but Jesus H. Christ was it too long. And it's not like it was such a huge surprise that Robme I mean Romney would get the candidate spot.

Never mind the corporate media inspired fake horse race. Let get down to the obvious -- what happens Wednesday?

 If Obama wins....

As a sane human being/socialist/liberal, this is the result I'm hoping for. Not because I'm this massive partisan flag waiver for the democratic party -- which I'm not.

I just don't want to risk America turning into a third world country overnight by handing the reins to the poster boy of all that is wrong with America's plutocracy.

Short-term: there will be hell on earth in conservative-ville. Roger Ailes and his minions will have diarrhea of the mouth for a good month or two hatching every conceivable conspiracy plot over how the evil Obama stole the election. They have been hyping this false narrative that Romney is winning on polls for months now and lashing out at anything that runs counter to that fake narrative. So much so that it's impossible that there WON'T be a shitstorm on Wednesday.

Medium term: there's the fiscal cliff. I do think there's going to be a grand bargain of some kind. What form it takes is anybody's guess. But if he can hold Boehner and McConnell to the fire, we could see some significant changes to the tax code. Not to mention that the GOP is going to have to break ranks with King Grover. It's going to have to happen sooner or later -- you cannot be serious about cutting the deficit without raising some taxes. And let's be realistic here: nobody has done better in the last 4 years than the plutocrats. They're making more money now than they were before recession.... If it was up to me, I'd let the tax cuts on the $200k a year crowd expire and slash a number of loop holes for the top end. Especially corporate loopholes. Companies like Apple, GE, and so on are basically robbing the country blind by not paying their share. In more far-out there land, I'd also like to see tax breaks for companies that invest in building manufacturing jobs in the states and penalize companies that use Caribbean tax shelters to dodge their taxes. This "I have mine fuck you" life style of our owner class needs to get anally violated with a baseball bat. Two baseball bats if you claim to be a Christian because clearly they didn't read the Bible. Jesus was sympathetic to the poor and hated moneylenders. I think he was serious when he said "it's easier to thread rope into the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven".

Long term: 2012-2014 will see a lot of grouching from the Republicans in congress, but they are going to have to work with the president. I say this for a couple reasons. The first is they know they're not going to get away with the obstructionist BS for much longer. If they act the way they did in 2011 in 2013, the 2014 midterms will be a bloodbath. Possibly a self-sustained bloodbath. I can very much see the GOP coalition breaking up or at least fracturing. It'll be very interesting to see how the plutocrats react when all the millions they spent on attack ads is a huge failure. I could see a schism forming where you have plutocrats & libertarians and the social issue teabaggers on the other. I expect that 2014 will see either the dems take back the house or there will be a libertarian/moderate republican rebellion. Crazy is going out style. The country simply will not except any more craziness because it kills the biggest fib in 21st politics -- that both parties are the same. When the question becomes "Sane" vs. "Insane", you know we have a problem.

Far as legislation goes.... who knows? There will definitely be a 2nd round of stimulus. AKA the president's job bill. Maybe we'll even get another shot at the Veteran bill that the GOP in the senate shot down.... That was just embarrassing. I'd like to see more action on the green energy front. If the momentum gained from Bloomberg and Cuomo coming out and saying "it's climate change, you idiots", this could happen. Nuclear will need to part of the mix. I'd really like to see a serious attempt at getting a molten salt reactor or LFTR started up. Yes, it will be a huge expensive project... But if it works, we can start leading on the climate change issue. This sorry horseshit over India and China needs to end -- they won't change until we do first. And if we can sell them parts for their thorium reactors, all the better! Then there's weed. If it gets decriminalized on the west coast, that's going to be a big deal. Provided the DOJ doesn't crack down on it, I could see having it decriminalized on a federal level.... maybe. There will be a lot of right wing backlash, but it needs to happen. If gay marriage passes in more states (including MD), I think there might be some hope for it at the federal level. It's going to happen in my lifetime. Eventually most of the other G8 countries will have gay equality laws and we will look like social neanderthals for not being ahead of the trend.

Longer-Longer term: 2016.... I have no idea who the democrats will run with. It'll be almost as open a field as 2008. Hillary won't run. Biden is at best iffy -- he'll be in his 70s. There's a whole line of potential contenders including among others Deval Patrick (MA governor, Martin O'Malley (MD governor), and Cory Booker (NJ mayor). The idea of Booker vs. Christie makes me giggle. Biden vs. Christie will require me to empty my bladder before the debates.

If Romney wins.....

First off, there will be riots in Ohio because the only feasible way that Romney wins is that there is some serious high level electoral fraud in Ohio. And if not in Ohio, there'll be plenty all over the map. This seems to be the story I'm going to remember the most about this election -- more so than Clint vs Invisible Obama or Obama's debate zingers -- that if the GOP can't win fair & square then fuck it we'll just fraud our way in. They say elephants never forget, but the donkey is getting a lot more paranoid. We remember what happened in Florida in 2000 and we're not going to let it happen again.

Short-term: the financial cliff is going to be huge. And zombie Jesus save us all because only he knows which Mitt Romney will show up at the inauguration. Our best bet is to hope Reid plays the obstructionist in those talks. But I think at the end of the day, there's no way going forward that they'll be able to get out of preventing the sequester on the military and keep Bush's tax cuts. Who knows. Romney might even be brazen to let all of the tax cuts die. I wish Obama was that ballsy, but I don't think it'll happen. Romney will immediately become unpopular with his base for whatever comes out of the financial cliff no matter what. This will also play into the 2014 midterms. That's the good version. The bad version is that we get plutocrat Romney who taxes the poor to give to the rich. If we get that version, expect the economy to roll back into recession. Think will get very bleak if that happens and ensures huge losses in 2014 for the GOP in congress.

Long-term: There will still be a schism between the plutocrats & libertarians and the social issue evangelicals. And it will cost the GOP the house. With democrats controlling both sides of congress, we will see a repeat of Romney's term in Massachusetts. Romney will waive that veto like it was going out of style, but the democrats will ram shit through congress with veto-proof majorities thanks to some GOP 'traitors' that want to keep their seat. Stuff will actually get done. The economy will improve and Romney will claim he did it, but we'll know better. That's one of my greater concerns -- that the GOP will try to say they were the ones that turned the economy around. We'll know the truth and call him out on. Hell. Maybe even the corporate media will call him out. They hate incumbents as their coverage of the president shows.

Oh. And Obamacare getting repealed? Will never happen. The healthcare industry itself will lobby for it once it's fully implemented. Dodd-Frank is in much greater danger. But if Romney tries to roll back financial regulations, it will drag down his chances for re-election dramatically.

Attacking Iran will never happen. There will be some thumping for it from the neocons, but reality will butt in. Syria is going to be a much bigger danger than Iran. Hopefully Romney would have the sense to keep their nose out of it, but it's hard to say. I think Syria is going to escalate if Turkey and Lebanon get any more involved than they already are. This will keep Iran from doing anything crazy because they have a horse in the race also. Also remember Ahbadinajad's term will be over in 2013 so we'll be seeing a new Iranian president. Not that it'll matter -- the president is just there to distract people from the Ayatollahs in charge of Iran.

Longer-term: Romney will be a one-term president and the country will elect its second black president by landslide: Deval Patrick. Romney will not be remembered as the second coming of Reagan -- more like the 21st century Nixon. He might even follow Nixon's path of shame if it comes out that those voting machines that Tagg owns turned out to give him the election.

The other elephant in the room

I'm referring to Citizen's United. Notice I haven't mentioned that at all. I see this election as deciding its future. If Obama wins, we have two likely scenarios: either CU will be deemed to be worthless (because the big money candidate still lost) or the amendment process will start up. If Rmoney -- er Romney -- wins, there will be serious public outcry for amending it.

And speaking of way-out wishlist stuff....

How about a federal non-partisan voting committee that would control this mess. It's apparent after 12 years of questionable elections that something needs to be done about the election process at a federal level. Yes yes I know the GOP will whine about state rights, but you know what? Fuck 'em. If Florida and Ohio and the other swing states can't fix their shit than Uncle Sam is going to have to get involved. This silly narrative of how states can do it better and more efficiently falls flat especially here.

And seriously can we please please please getting a shorter primary cycle? We don't need six months of that crap. Bad enough the general election lasts 4 months. We can save everybody some money by making the entire process last 6 months tops.

Hear me..... meow

So the basic idea of this blog will be to contain the awesomeness that pours out of my head (not literally) that won't fit on FB. Expect crazy in semi-random intervals.