The Pondering Gulch

2012-02-02T02:53:00.010-05:00

SOAP ON A ROPE

Burrowing Lizards:

Ya know, I’ve never really trusted someone that went by the name of a lizard, but that just goes to show you, I don’t angle in much with the mentality of Republicans. I naturally though, do feel the choice in Republican candidates running for the office of presidency kind of makes all the Tea Party peoples, the right-wing conservatives and moral evangelical majoritators look, feel and at times smell a tad bit hypocritical. Let’s point out a few of the discrepancies, shall we…

It appears that no matter their beliefs, Republicans just want someone with a Republican nametag that can beat Obama in the general election this year and I mean anyone; even one who’s character and background is a glaring contrast against the Republican’s moral coded backdrop.

In atypical fashion, the current four hopeful Republican candidates are at each other’s throats utilizing the conservative Super PAC anonymity to attack each other that was originally intended to lambast other party opponents. Now, both Romney and Gingrich are hiding behind the façade that they have no control over what their PACs put out (usually lies) and of course claim to never watch them to disagree or not with their egregious messages.

In discussing the final four, Willard (Mitt) Romney and Newton (Newt) Gingrich are the back and forth frontrunners, in which I suppose is why Richard (Rick) Santorum and Ron Paul are still hanging in there; maybe the ‘Mitt n’ Newt Show’ will self-implode leaving room for the other two to maneuver up into the frontline.

There have been enough false accusations, fibs and idiocracy and plain ol’ dumbness during this Republican presidential campaign to fill a full Bush W. presidential term with. With all the mudslinging, it has gotten dirty, but not much a little soap could wash off. The contenders though had better hang onto that soap’s rope, for, if but for the one second it takes to bend over and pick up that bar of slippery soap, they’re going to get pinched on the behiney.

An Iota of Support:

Ol’ Newt is the crass goat that will boot ya at any chance through his well rehearsed verbiage in catering to the right and fending off false and truthful attacks with white gloving. Why the social conservative, evangelical Christian and moral majority standing on his side of the aisle feel he is immune to their beliefs in religious fidelity, who knows? Except for followers biting into his platform of late that he is the only qualified candidate standing a chance of defeating Obama this year (which by the way is also Romney and Santorum’s battle cry as well), Gingrich’s background should shun these type voters.

In his romps of infidelity by cheating on his first two wives, most of his conservative voters like to justify in repeating, “He’s made mistakes, but has been forgiven by God.” Fair enough, for that is Newt’s excuse too, in claiming he’s only human and has made mistakes, but does that mean his present wife, Callista is a mistake? After all, she was the one he was cheating with on his second wife, who was one of the ones he was cheating with on his first wife. He demanded that his second wife live in an open marriage so that he could swing it with Callista. She refused, so he finally divorced her. Doesn’t sound much like a mistake, it sounds more like a mission with an agenda. But if it truly was a mistake, why does he insist that his mistake (Callista) continue to tag along with him? I suppose integrity in a candidate running for office does account for something, doesn’t it?

I will confess here absolutely that I once was a whorehound and have been married three times myself, but I’m not running for president on the Republican ticket to be judged or forgiven by the moral majority and surely never will.

I want delve into his forced resignation as Speaker of the House, his dealings with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and his taking the opportunity to gain financially from his Washington connections, or even his callous remarks such as putting poor kids to work as janitors, for most by now already know of the stories.

Rick Santorum in my opinion has no business whatsoever in running for the office of United States president. His thinking, again my opinion, is demented and his total ignorance of environmental health, gay-rights, middle class and the poor’s struggles along with his unflappable allegiant loyalty to big corporations has mind warped the ol’boy.

Santorum has further wrapped his one-sided philosophy with a religious cloak. I’ll tell ya right now, I don’t want even an etching of a theocratic state to envelop its dark shadows and throes around the U.S. government. Look at Iran and Israel; even though they’re a claimed democracy, the respective and dominant biased religion in their politics deletes minority freedoms, rights and sometimes life. Theocracy does not work in a true democracy. He would do his utmost to bring home his god to the fore fold in American legislation…bye-bye sound science.

As for the type of voters Santorum attracts on his speech stumps, the following is a prime example. During a 01/23/2012 town hall event in Lady Lake, Florida on a sunshiny Monday afternoon, Rick Santorum declined to refute a lady’s proclamation that President Barack Obama is an "avowed Muslim" preferring instead to remain focused on further criticizing Obama's recent recess appointments, allowing impetus to the misinformed woman’s claim.

The woman in Santorum’s audience could not comprehend why people refer to Obama as President Obama because legally she felt he truly is not. She concluded, "He constantly says that our constitution is passé, and he ignores it as you know and does what he darn well pleases. He is an avowed Muslim and my question is, why isn't something being done to get him out of government? He has no legal right to be calling himself president."

Instead of immediately disagreeing with her statement and setting the record straight as John McCain once did to a misguided audience member during his 2008 presidential run, Santorum simply bypassed her false assumption. Without any correction in reminding her that President Obama is in fact a Christian, Santorum entirely ignored the controversial parts of her question by simply stating, "Well look, I'm doing my best to get him out of the government right now."

Santorum actually fed her errant feelings along with the rest of the audience by finishing with, "And you're right about how he uniformly ignores the constitution. He did this with these appointments over the recess that was not a recess, and if I was in the United States Senate I would be drawing the line."

Santorum’s dig on Obama is simply a show of Republican steam blowing after Obama’s appointment of Richard Cordray as the first director of the newly formed, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He also made recess appointments of three members to the, National Labor Relations Board.

The appointments truly were during congressional recess. The sham that congressional Republicans were still at work by having three or four show up on the house floor, announce by gaveling the house is open for business only to gavel that business of the day is adjourned minutes later, is a joke. Also, it was only the few members that were staying in Washington D.C. over the recess that even attended.

Republicans were pulling this ploy not because they didn’t think Cordray wasn’t eligible, for his qualifications were passed by a bipartisan congressional panel. Republican beef on the matter is not per say with Cordray, it has more to do with the new consumer protections bureau to begin operations investigating the financial institution to ensure nothing occurs again like it did in 2008 in creating the global financial crisis. The new bureau will have the authority to regulate and investigate and bring to trial wrong doers. The only way the bureau can begin operations is when a director is in place. Republicans, in protecting financial institutions, could not defeat the implementation of the new bureau, so as second resort tried their darned best to keep a director from being inaugurated by originally filibustering, not allowing a straight up and down vote in passing Cordray, then finally, the fake non-recess during the holidays.

As reported by Lindsey Boerma of CBS/National Journal concerning the lady’s outburst and Santorum’s reaction, Santorum felt he had no obligation in correcting her. Boerma reports, “Santorum tells press it's ‘not my responsibility’ to correct when someone calls Obama a Muslim. Asks us, ‘Why don't you do it?’” And he wants to be our president. That is what we really want in a president isn’t it...such decisive active justice.

One last note on this topic I find bemusing is a quote by GOP house congresswoman, Diane Black (TN). All in a huff from Obama’s recess appointments, she declares, “It’s astounding to me that the president is claiming these are recess appointments and within his authority, when Congress was not in fact in recess. These appointments are an affront to the Constitution. No matter how you look at this, it doesn’t pass the smell test.”

Now get this, after stating she is going to write into legislation a resolution against the recess appointments as unconstitutional, she further threatens, “I hope the House considers my resolution AS SOON AS WE RETURN TO WASHINGTON (from recess) so we can send a message to President Obama.” Now doesn’t that just beat all.

As for Ron Paul, well he is no ordinary Republican; you can actually believe what he says. He is not mainstream Republican; in fact most Republicans don’t care for him. During the Bush years, when Paul would enter a Republican meeting room, the congressional attendants, would suddenly quit chattering with one another and lower their heads. Indeed, Paul is a loner, the rebel amongst Republicans.

If Republicans don’t like one of their own, then I think it is cause for me to probably like him. I confess that I ardently agree with 15% of what Paul says and stands for. The only problem is, I fervently disagree with 85% of what he says and stands for. Unfortunately, from the Ron Paul late ‘80s to early ‘90s newsletters, it appears that he may not only be biased, but also racist. Even though these utterly prejudice statements went out under his name, he currently claims he did not write them, although he took responsibility for the wording in a 1996 ‘Texas Monthly’ investigation. Dog-gone-it Paul…

For a Tea Partier to vote for Mitt Romney, it has to be the quintessential farce of modern politics. It was the Tea Party that was so aghast at the financial institution for creating the economic crisis that middle class is still enduring its rapture. They revolted when congress passed the TARP bill. But now, Romney, the epitome of financial institutions and all that it represents, the Tea Party is willing to back him as long as they feel he can beat Obama.

During this campaign, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has preached a message of economic populism by vowing to fight to keep jobs in America backed by his business experience. In Romney founding and running a buttout, excuse me, buyout enterprise known as Bain Capital, allow me to quote Los Angeles Times reporter, Bob Drogin. From his researching he recently concluded, “From 1984 until 1999, Romney led Bain Capital, a Boston-based private equity group that earned jaw-dropping profits through leveraged buyouts, debt hedge funds, offshore tax havens and other financial strategies. In some cases, Romney’s team closed U.S. factories, causing hundreds of layoffs, or pocketed huge fees shortly before companies collapsed.” Now really, does that sound like someone a Tea Party person could represent?

Surely the moderate to liberal political background Romney carries must look like an awful lot of excess baggage. Ya know, Romney even once voted for Paul Tsongas a liberal Democrat over George H.W. Bush and Pat Buchanan in the Massachusetts 1992 primary. That’s got to hurt a staunch conservative. Turn out the lights, the party for the Tea Party is over.

And what about those evangelical moral majority peoples; how could they possibly think of casting their vote for a Moron, err-ah, excuse me again, I forgot the ‘m’; I meant Mor‘m’on? They consider Mormonism a cult that lost its way; just another Jonestown. On the other hand, why would a Mormon want to be president? Mormons will not join any military branch due to professing the conscientious objector routine on religious grounds of not wishing to be put in a position to kill. Instead, in its place, Mormons volunteer for service to do Mormon missionary work. Romney took this route and yet he’s more than willing as president and commander-in-chief of all U.S. military to send thousands of our GIs into harm’s way to kill or be killed. He’s even promoting himself as a war lord in his speeches on Iran, getting out of Iraq and criticizing Obama for downsizing the defense budget. Just seems a bit hypocritical don’t ya think…

Romney as of late has been whining how his phrase, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me,” has been taken out of context. I concur it has been stretched beyond what he meant, but how can he cry when he did the exact same thing to Obama in even a more devious way.

It was Romney’s campaign whose very first ad was an attack on President Obama and the economy. Romney's people took a snippet from a much longer Obama comment during the 2008 campaign which, taken out of context, made it appear that Obama was somehow admitting responsibility for the still lingering economic debacle caused by the crash of 2008. You know, the crash that was actually brought about by the Bush administration’s deaf, dumb and blind deregulatory policies that by the way, Romney wants to return back to.

On top of this, Obama's remark, about not wanting to talk about the economy during the campaign, he was actually quoting John McCain who, as a Republican candidate like Romney, in fact didn't want to discuss the economy back then for obvious reasons. That was the point Obama was making with the words that were taken out of context by the Romney people, so they were flat-out lying about Obama's meaning and by extension, his purported responsibility for the economic crash in 2008.

Obama's words, taken out of context by Romney and his campaign, was just fine and dandy, peaches and butter, but the heavens forbid if that sly stunt was returned in favor. But, Romney's comment about how he enjoys firing people clearly does have at least some relevance to his experience as a businessman. I mean, does anyone of ethics truly enjoy terminating someone from income?

Romney was talking specifically about terminating service contracts, but he has in fact been involved in firing, or downsizing (the preferred corporatist term) thousands of average American wage-earners through leveraged buy outs in pursuit of bottom line profits that filled his pockets leaving others with dust.

Money to gain power or power to gain money, it’s all the same in the American way according to Romney CEO Bain Capital 1984-1999.

Without doubt, Romney will be the last one standing due to backing of the Republican establishment and money. But besides the wealthy and authoritative Republican establishment, why on Earth would other Republican groups vote for him as he stands for everything he is and isn’t, dependent upon which ears his words can fall on at the moment.

Zebras Changing Stripes:

No matter how you argue, Obamacare was fashioned from Romneycare. Compare them yourself; they read a lot alike. Romney tries in vain to distinguish the two as separate, but they are very familiar. He knows that doesn’t sit well with Republican conservatives, so during this primary election, with nothing but Republican voters, he must say he doesn’t agree with what he did.

Actually, he should admit to accomplishing Romneycare, for it has been successful in Massachusetts. Healthcare is no longer a burden to the state in adding to the deficit. Since the new social healthcare plan has been in effect, it has actually added 1% to the state’s total GDP. That’s not much, but at least it doesn’t take away from the state budget and all Massachusetts citizens now have access to healthcare.

As governor in a liberal state, Romney said that all illegal immigrants should have a chance to obtain citizenship. Now in pandering to only the right-wing voter, he stated on CNNs ‘The Situation Room’ and in a form thereof in countless campaigning speech stumps that, “I think I’m best off to describe my own positions. And my positions, I think I’ve just described for you – secure the border, employment verification and no special pathway to citizenship.”

Back in 2003 he said, "I think the global warming debate is now pretty much over and people recognize the need associated with providing sources which do not generate the heat that is currently provided by fossil fuels." He also said later that year, “I concur that climate change is beginning to [have an] effect on our natural resources and that now is the time to take action." But, in catering to his 2008 presidential bid, in February of 2007 he backhanded by saying, “I have to tell you with regards to global warming that that’s something, which, you’re right, the scientists haven’t entirely resolved…” and, “Unfortunately, some in the Republican Party are embracing the radical environmental ideas of the liberal left. As governor, I found that thoughtful environmentalism need not be anti-growth and anti-jobs. But Kyoto-style sweeping mandates, imposed unilaterally in the United States, would kill jobs, depress growth and shift manufacturing to the dirtiest developing nations. Republicans should never abandon pro-growth conservative principles in an effort to embrace the ideas of Al Gore.”

Nearly five years after Romney refused to sign on to a pledge of no new taxes and not support the, ‘Americans for Tax Reform’ movement during his governorship campaign, he announced that he had done exactly that…supporting the pledge and movement in kicking off his presidential bid in 2007.

Romney once was a strong supporter on campaign spending limits believe it or not, even to go so far as to suggest restructuring measures that would place spending limits on political federal campaigns and measures to tax political contributions. His backtrack occurs in 2007 for a Republican presidential bid, when he noted his foe from Arizona wrote the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law that restricts certain types of contributions. “That’s a terrible piece of legislation,” Romney said. Continuing, he finished with, “It hasn’t taken the money out of politics....(But) it has hurt my party.”

When speaking in support of the Brady gun control law and ban on assault rifles, he confessed, “That’s not going to make me the hero of the NRA. I don’t line up with a lot of special interest groups.” But once again in speaking to a full Republican audience during his first presidential campaign in Derry, New Hampshire he says, “I’m after the NRA’s endorsement. I’m not sure they’ll give it to me. I hope they will. I also joined because if I’m going to ask for their endorsement, they’re going to ask for mine.”

In his current claims to invest in Amercican jobs, he invested in 23 foreign holdings last year only withdrawing from a Swiss bank account after his campaign manager said it would be political suicide to retain. If a congressional candidate holds offshore accounts, he is ineligible to hold office.

Oh, there is so much more on Romney; his pro-choice pro-life flip flops, his anti-Reagan pro-Reagan flip flops, his pro-gay rights anti-gay rights flip flops, his endorsement of stem cell research to his wanting to pass legislation to criminalize it and so on and so on to ad-infinitum.

The GOP has tried their darnest to replace Romney as the frontrunner. Cavorting Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie didn’t work out, so he’s replaced in short spurts by the other runners until they bomb. A champion birther surpassed him for a bit until he decided to quit and do a television gig. Then a totally inept politician that knows nothing of American history and current politics passes him up in an Iowan straw vote. Then comes along a dude who can’t remember three items at a time, only to be outdone by the godfather of pizza, a misogynist whose only charge was ‘999’. Finally, the salamander overtakes him twice with Richie Rich leading in between in Iowa.

Romney is not in tune or in touch with the significant 99%. Statements like I’ll bet ya $10,000 or I didn’t make much last year, only $325,000.00 in speeches (he makes $41,000.00 per speech) doesn’t link him with the common voter. He is very offish and aloof when he’s in airline transit to people curious about what he has to say. Peter Hart, a pollster asked in a poll once, “If Romney was your neighbor, what first comes to mind?” The answer…high hedges…

Newt Gingrich can dish out anger very well as it resonates with a conservative audience. He knows how to hit the high notes in the musical resentment that is so entrenched in the Republican Party. But the one who professes we should make all poor children work as janitors, he himself alluded work with a passion during his high school and college years. His stepmother still recalls how he called his dad from college pleading for money because he “did not want to go to work.” His first wife supported him all the way through in achieving his PhD.

Santorum, who has made his millions by lobbying for the coal industry claims to belong to the blue collar class while at the same time insists there are no class distinctions in America.

Confused Belief:

For some reason, Republicans to the right consider anyone that is liberal in thinking is not patriotic and are totally against capitalism. This argument is demure at best and a show of biased ignorance at its worst.

The sign of a country’s strength is how well it takes care of all its citizenry and simply because there are social programs implemented in a democracy, does not mean that that country is socialist. Socially democratic countries today are the most successful in its economy and the well-being of its entire people. Sweden is a prime example, poverty is virtually nonexistent in that country and it is innovative enough economically to be financially sound.

Here in America, there is a push by the right to abandon key social programs that benefit its less wealthy population in unemployment, education, health and social services for senior citizens. America is no longer the leading country in categories that once made it the shining beacon. The U.S., where it once led 191 countries is now ranked 37^th in overall health care performance. Since the Bush administration policies, more of the once strong American middleclass is slipping below the poverty level with one out of fourteen people ranked as the poorest of the poor. Statistics now show median income has dropped down to the late 1970 levels, while adjusted inflation has skyrocketed with a consumer price index of 137.64% when 2011 is compared to 1978.

America, once the dream for anyone in opportunity, now sees upward mobility in decline to the point, even those socialist European countries that Republicans paint, have better income equality opportunities and social mobility than the U.S. currently affords. It’s a good debating point for the misinformed by the likes of Ryan, McConnell and Cantor, but today it doesn’t get the floor waxed.

Since 2006, the Pew Charitable Trust’s Economic Mobility methodology report shows dating to the Bush era that the U.S. has fallen well behind Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Spain and Sweden in mobility. The U.S. is also behind Canada and Australia.

As far as Liberalism goes, all our founding fathers were indeed liberals fighting against aristocratic capitalism. It was unfair. Liberalism, in basing its core value in equal rights, actually despises systems like communism as it gives all those rights away from the individual to the government. Indeed, liberty, therefore liberalism was the patriarch of America’s early-day revolutionists. I at times just wonder how these founding Americans would view today’s right-wing view of corporations as people. Yeah, I ponder that…

Liberals aren’t against capitalism, there against what it has evolved into and yes how it has set up a class state of Bush’s term, “the haves and the have nots.”

What liberals are against is crony capitalism vs. democratic capitalism. Crony capitalism, in keeping wealth in the hands of a few, stunts healthy economic growth in a democracy. What liberals want and what the OWS movement poignantly points out best, is for capitalism to go back to a fairer playing field. Americans before never cared at what wealth one brought in, for they knew they had a chance at opportunity as well. Americans are tiring of hearing Republican politicians state over and over, if we protect the wealthiest 1% few from any fair taxation they will make more jobs eventually. Well they’ve had their Bush tax cuts since 2001 and have actually decreased employing Americans since that time.

Offshore bankroll accounts of America’s wealthiest individuals and corporations will not aid in American employment opportunities. Financial institutions’ immunity to excessive greed that spurred the global financial meltdown will make the economy stronger; not hardly.

No, liberals are for a more democratic capitalistic state. Coming up with great ideas for the legacy of this country is not in cronyism and doesn’t necessarily have to exert full effort in aiding the mother of mother record profits for corporations either. Pursuit of mutual benefaction (as we’re all in this time frame of life as woven together) is belief in the utmost importance of liberty for all with equal rights as its cornerstone. This surely is a liberalist creed; now why would a Republican bad mouth and lambast that?

With Romney’s foreign bankrolls and elitist comments ($10,000.00 bet, corporations are people, didn’t make much in speeches, only $325,000.00 and the latest of that he’s not concerned about the very poor) creates gulfs. His constant defending of Wall Street and corporations along with his push to go back to Bush deregulation or lack of regulatory enforcement shows his true stance. His constant insistence that America needs a corporate executive for its leader is crony, as he will only manage the decay as a CEO corporate raider would, ensuring elites’ welfare at the expense of the rest. No, America doesn’t bash its top echelon, but to truly gain our respect we’d like to know how one reached the top. If it was off the backs of others, well then that’s another story altogether in earning respect.

Liberals want capitalism, but they want austerity put back into the equation when the power of social innovation reigned, returning capitalism back to its moral roots.

Flat-out, there is sharp contrast in crony finances and fair democratic playing fields. The higher the monkey climbs the pole the more he reveals his behind for those below. How do ya like the view now?

Reporting with no tenure,

BJA

02/01/2012

2011-12-24T23:26:00.008-05:00

Believing in the Belief Rejects Belief in the Believing

Portrayal:

As muddled as the title portrays, believing in any certain religion that cannot be partially proven, much less wholly, while existing only in the human mind nurtured from the brought-up comforts of faith in a belief…is confusing.

What does religion express in one’s life, much less mean? Why are we drawn to follow in footsteps of manmade religions that otherwise would be considered made-up mythologies to anyone else outside a particular religious hold on its followers? Take for instance the worldly three biggest religions revolving around the same single deity…Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Here, we have three religions all based solely on the one old Jewish god, but with differing prophets or redeemers to guide their varying dictates away from one another. The Jews have Abraham and Moses, the Christians got Jesus while the Moslems only accept final conditions as interpreted by Mohammed.

Underneath the shredded veil of these three religions lies countless scores of further segregation in worship to this one god in the guise of denominations, affiliates, sects and cults. This one particular god must surely feel that he/she/it has been put asunder, wouldn’t one think? As these three religions with their host of splintered camps chastise the others while promoting themselves as the one and only righteous path, surely the godhead must be getting confused. For if none of them are wrong in accordance to their edicts, then assuredly none of them can be right in claiming to be the one and only path to the final throne.

From the Start:

It is in the anima of mankind to seek ground higher than what he/she presently stands on. To devote total confidence into one’s self is not an option. There is a security void that needs filling. To stand alone, a human indeed feels vulnerable.

During man’s earliest primal events, when a leader of a small clan died, it opened up a security void, much like the insecurity a child feels when witnessing a heated argument by the parents. To comfort, to soothe the insecurity, humans with a developed imagination began to reason that the chief was not dead, but still present in emotional form (spiritual). From that point onwards, deities, whether physical or placated imagined beings, were implanted into man’s reckoning of his worldly worth and from there, religions arose explaining to and maintaining the fold. The scenario goes pretty much like this:

Humanity arising with a developed imagination in a physical world, could not explain nature and its course.

With no understanding of life, nor the conception of birth with the cloaked fear of death, gods or a spiritual self began to develop to explain order out of physical chaos, which in turn gave purpose to life and comfort for death.

Religion then evolved to explain the intricate complexities of an unrevealing spiritual realm admixed in an already perplexed reality and confused physical presence.

Next, the written word came to pass to setup a particular religion’s core emphasis on laws and governance for adherence to the belief.

The word though was not enough, so clergies arose to interpret the religion’s dictates.

Finally, those who dared to question the authority of any particular religion enveloping the invented deity or spirit came about.

Debates now ensue but are significantly pointless, for to argue an entrenched belief with real-world logic only brings argument to a boil. Belief is not functional under analytical parameters, so to try and influence congruently, discrepancies of an ingrained religious belief is defeat even before the attempt. There is no compromise, much less reasoning.

If I am to truly believe in and worship Shl’bonceqounces residing heavenly on Pluto, cognitive argument in reasoning will not sway me away from believing it, nor shake my comfort in that belief.

Anti Reason:

To be religious, one must be a traditionalist and as time consumes space, to remain religious, one must hold onto those revealed traditional values that squarely conflict with uncovered gained knowledge. This is not reason; it is not even rationale, it is merely belief. That is fine to a point until a need is prodded to fill others with the ignorance entrenched in the religion. Replacing truth with ignorance is not progress; it is primal isolation, or simply put…primitivism.

Any religious ol’ soul will admit in a heartbeat that dear old Mother Goose is nothing but a fairy tale and yet Jews, Christians and Muslims alike will profess to all that a donkey did indeed speak to Balaam in the Torah’s Numbers, in the Bible’s Numbers 22:28 and 2 Peter 2:16 and referenced in the Qur’an in the 7^th Sura.

In all three of the religions’ ordained scripture, Jonah is swallowed by some kind of great fish in the Tanakh (Jonah 2:1), Old Testament (Jonah 4:9-11) and Qur’an (Q 37:141). Heck even in the Christian’s New Testament, there is contradiction to the ‘believed’ story, in that it wasn’t a fish after all, but a whale (Matthew 12:39-41).

Surely a one omnipresent and eternal god recognizes the difference between a fish and a whale. It only goes to show that these writings were indeed scribed in ink to parchment by mortal humans in varying time frames. A god of creation would not be so ignorant during the day, or any day in describing a fish as a whale or a whale as a fish.

There were according to the Bible, two starts for mankind’s prodigy; one with Adam and Eve, then the second, once all humans were wiped out in the Great flood, with Noah’s immediate family. Cousins, once the flood subsided, had to repopulate the earth with humans. This though, doesn’t explain the current fifty-nine human allele genomes grouped in us all. Since Noah had only three sons and no daughters, three couples had to repopulate the Earth, even though one may be discounted in the fact that once Ham witnessed his drunken dad, Noah butt-naked without a shred of cloth wrapped around him, Ham, along with his progeny were to be cursed for all time (Genesis9:18-27).

No, there is no mention of Noah having daughters nor son-in-laws on board the Ark; only his three sons and their wives. With this cousinly incest in restarting human’s reign on Earth from just the three couples offspring, there should be only twelve allele groups, not the current fifty-nine.

To add further to the Great Flood story, which will lead us into the next subtitle; with all the freshwater and saltwater fish swimming around today, if the Great Flood was reasonable, there would only be one or the other fish left, for saltwater fish would have all died off if the flood inundated the earth with freshwater or the freshwater fish would have perished if all the floodwaters turned into salty water.

Of course back then, men who were writing flood verses were ignorant of this and did not have an inkling of this fact in mind. Back then it was ignorantly reasoned a fish swam in water whether it was salt or fresh. But of course a creator god should have known the difference and accounted for it. Nowhere though in the bible, does it explain this, much less all the microscopic life that exists today. With some not able to withstand freshwater, others not able to acclimate to saltwater and the rest not able to subsist in any watery environment, they too had to be collected and herded into the Ark. Could you just imagine Noah as tasked in collecting all the microscopic life? No sir/ma’am you couldn’t. Religious writers back then didn’t even know microscopic life existed, much less assign Noah to collecting them into the Ark so as to keep them from all perishing.

Bullfrogs & Butterflies:

In the above three religions’ genealogy, Earth was created somewhere around six thousand years ago. Based on biblical scripture analysis, Archbishop James Ussher in 1654 ushered forth in proclaiming Earth was created in 4004 B.C. Still further, John Lightfoot, a rabbinical scholar concluded that man was created by the Trinity at precisely 9:00 in the AM.

Of course these guys were totally ignorant in their reasoning. Once radiation was discovered, and the antiquity found in the orogenies of mountain building and canyon carving, man realized religious scripture did not quite get the age of the earth right.

Radiometric dating is a technique utilizing the observed parent (original) material’s abundance of naturally occurring isotopes as decay products versus the relative quantities of the decay rates into daughter (transformed material) products, which are always half of the original material from which they decayed from. Half-life is simply the time allotted to reduce half of the original parent’s volume into the daughter product.

By knowing the rate of transfer (decay) and the ratio of material transferred (daughter) against the remaining amount of the original material (parent), calculations can determine how long the disintegration process has been going.

Radioactive decay bears out a much older age of Earth at 4.4 billion years. Earth’s truly oldest crustal material is long gone, for it has been consumed due to the dynamic earth’s ability in recycling material. We know the earth is a bit older than the 4.4 billion years due to corroborating data from other sources. By comparing radiometric dating of lunar (moon) material and the oldest known solar system constituents of melded calcium/aluminum inclusions in meteorites, along with the mass and luminosity of the sun as compared to other stars, Earth calculates to be 4.54 billion years old.

To contend that bullfrogs and butterflies were created on the same day is accepting blindness to the truth.

Brachiopods, bivalve marine animals first appeared during Cambrian times 550 mya and they are still currently hanging around, but barely and as a different species of brachiopod as opposed to the former. Found in oceanic stratification, brachiopods are a consummate asset in revealing evolutionary trends. Not common today or when they first appeared in the Cambrian, they did enjoy population explosions in between the Cambrian time scale and the present. In the older layers, species of brachiopods became extinct, only to evolve into other new brachiopod species witnessed in the younger layers. The layers are like a page-by-page history book. But since around 100 million years ago, no matter what species, brachiopod populations have been declining. The brachiopod’s heyday has subsided, but what a lengthy journey.

Extinct animals found in tar pits, a lot of the time, have preserved soft tissue left with the remains. Though the species is long gone, this tissue nonetheless contains viable DNA that shows the animal’s gene pool still carries on in present day related animals. This is a classic example of evolution with natural selection utilized as its mechanism during environmental change.

Once upon a time the Antarctic riding atop convectional currents like a hitchhiker, was once positioned geographically in a more life-friendly latitude and longitude. Even dinosaurs were able to have once roamed its lands. Today, positioned at the bottom of Earth, those same land dinosaurs that once chased each other are now buried in parts under ice more than 2 miles/3.22km thick. Underneath that ice rest fossils. How could all this have been created in one instance? How could those animals and plants have lived, then died under two miles of ice? They could not have and surely to a logical mind, it takes far more conditions and time for snow to pack into two miles of thick ice than what is religiously professed.

Religion is Its Own Turmoil:

Religions tend to be the bashers of religion. If you don’t belong to my belief system, then you are wrong and need converting. And so it goes…

Wars, wars, wars! Behind most wars has been a religious theme in promoting them. From the war gods of old lore to the present, mankind has been using his religion to compensate his bias and greed. Even the old Jewish god was a warlord. Directly or indirectly, that god had around 2,826,455 living human beings, man, woman, child and infant put to death.

Actually of the three big religions, I prefer their offshoots, for they are more of the heart than devotion to a structured and stale orthodoxy. Kabbalists, branched from Judaism adds a little more fun to their worship by not just studying the divine, but adding to learning…personal experience. Sufism, branched from Islam, also is more heart rendering. One would be hard pressed to bump into a Sufi worshipper that is hung up on liturgical religion. A Sufis favorite phrase is, “He who tastes knows.” As far as Christians go, the wrath of fear is exempt in the teachings of Franciscan Catholics. They only concentrate on the forgiving portion of the divine and social action towards the poor. To be Christian means to be Christ-like and they are about as close to that as it comes in the Christianity field.

There are religions like Hinduism and Wicca that have multiple gods, while there are those as Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism that are atheistic. They have no gods to answer to, or even be bound to liturgy. Instead, with no concept of original sin or sinning wracking a follower with guilt, they strive for nirvana (internal, therefore eternal peace) in how well one’s morals treat another person.

Jainism though, is the icing on my cake. As an offshoot of Buddhism, Jainists not only strive for individual enlightenment through reverence to all life, but where other religious works teach compassion only in portions as subdivided with non-acceptance and conquering, Jainists live their whole life fully devoted to respecting all life in all its myriad forms. They even take great care not to step on a bug. Do not think that they are merely pushovers, for their nonviolent behavior has led them to be the greatest thinkers of India and are the ones responsible for the country’s oldest libraries.

Repetition:

So it goes, over and over to gain more members and to hold onto the ones already in place. Castigating other religions to gain authority over all; that is the usefulness in deifying a religion.

It would have made sense if the monotheistic god would have revealed himself to all his created humankind that populated the earth in geographically different regions. It just doesn’t make sense for a god to be known in an isolated region only from the exposure of conquering hordes coming from another region bringing their god to be indoctrinated into the vanquished.

The TV evangelist, who belches out words of condemnation concerning scientific research and accolades, conveniently forgets he’s using the very same scientific principles that allow his ranting from the pulpit to reach the multitudes, via the microphone and television. He utilizes science when it benefits him, but attempts to deride and assail it when it is in conflict with him and his delimited rhetoric. The world is wide, don’t use such a narrow lens when viewing it, or you’ll miss the periphery, the completion of its whole picture.

Definitely in argumentation, doubt is necessary or no one would be arguing, but as the sole agenda it’s insufficient. Hanging onto doubt in believing just because, leads to ignorant behavior. Ignorance is what God attempted to keep Adam & Eve and therefore mankind in. How could Eve have known it was truly wrong to eat the fruit of knowledge if she was kept in gullible ignorance and not afforded the chance or opportunity to make either an informed prudent or baneful decision beforehand?

The tried but tired argument that scientific research and facts are dangerous to faith and as well, cognitive approaches to reason from an atheist to a faithful believer...will never merit brownie points and can drive both sides to anger. Let all believe they feel most comforted in. It may not be real, but imagination is a key element in what makes us human. For some folks, all they have is their faith, so why would one want to take that from them?

Go ahead, as long as it is not a negative impact to others, believe anything conjured up you want. Believe in your gods, for I certainly intend on continuing to believe in my Shl’bonceqounces.

With Yuletide Cheer,

Merry Christmas to All

BJA

12/24/2011

2011-12-01T01:40:00.047-05:00

It’s Not What It’s Fracked Up to Be

Rehash:

By now, whether you are for it or against it, most know what the term ‘fracking’ refers to, in particular for those that are in areas fracking has impacted. But, before we get into the gut of details, we’re going to begin at a refresher starting point.

High volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing or ‘hydrofracturing’ that is commonly known as ‘fracking,’ is employed by the oil and gas industry to extract methane gas trapped minutely in underground geologies that were once prohibitively too costly to produce by traditional vertical drilling means or were too difficult to gain access to.

The technique involves injection of a fracking fluid consisting of millions of gallons of water laced with a cocktail of chemicals and proppant materials such as sand or ceramic beads. The injection process is conducted under high pressure (exceeding 9,000psi) down the well borehole. Pressure forces the fracking fluid into the geological formation of production interest that has been drilled into horizontally. This is achieved after the initial vertical drilling was guided to a curving bend, where the route is redirected as latitudinal by the driller. Once entering the formation forcibly, pressure from the the fracking fluid released from small holes in the piping stem, fractures the rock creating a path the trapped gas can take and collect into the borehole. The proppant material forced into the cracks, maintains stability in keeping (propping) the fracture walls from collapsing, but physically arranged as spherical, keeps the fracture zones permeable enough for gas to diffuse through. From there, natural substratum pressures force gas back up to the well head, where it can be collected.

Fractures provide a conductive path connecting a larger area of the reservoir to the well, thereby increasing the area from which natural gas and liquids can be recovered from the targeted formation. Since most easy access gas reservoirs have all played out and been tapped in the last century, it’s estimated that over 60% of gas wells are now fracked. But between 2005-2009 it’s been over 90% and currently climbing.

According to the gas companies 99.5% of the material injected is water and sand leaving only 0.5% as chemicals. They claim that gas fracking will make the U.S. independent of foreign fossil-fuel energy and most importantly…create jobs during this economic downturn. The gas industry also claims methane is a cleaner fuel option to burning coal, as spent or burnt natural gas emits less carbon dioxide (CO₂) fingerprints.

The gas industry along with their proponents, also claim that fracking is a safe practice and measures are taken in keeping water aquifers from being contaminated. From surface to below the water table line the casings are cemented over and in some instances the borehole is double cased. They also state that all the borehole tailings and spent fracking fluid once reaching the surface, is piped to temporary lined impoundment pits or injected into deep underground drilled holes. Some well sites have above ground tanks for storing the waste. From there, whichever comes first, once it is full or operations cease, the stored waste is properly disposed of.

In justifying homes where there is methane contamination in their drinking water supply near active or former fracking activity, the gas industry’s argument goes that it is simply the natural accumulation of methane seepage.

Counter Punch:

Although I have never worked on a fracking crew in refusal to do so, due to moral ethics, I have worked on a professional level in consulting or contract work as an onsite vertical and horizontal hydrocarbon and petrology geologist, as a geophysicist in seismic fieldwork and as a polymer chemist in lab environments, I do feel I have some form of expertise and a measure of understandable sway in this argument. So here goes…

The Cheney secret energy meetings with the electrical power companies and oil & gas industry in early 2001 came up with legislation that oil companies may now be immune to EPA monitoring, were exempt to the Clean Water Act regulations and did not have to divulge the chemicals being used by merely stating that they were corporate intellectual property under proprietary rulings.

With these humongous advantages in place of dissolving ecological responsibilities, a disregard of environmental health issues and exemption from the Clean Water Act, gas companies commenced fracking production at an accelerated pace.

With laxed regulation and without any official environmental oversight, except for the gas companies’ own internal regulatory reviews guided by making the dollar, fracking production pounced onto America’s landscape. At first it was more rural, but it accelerated its way into public lands and populated areas, even into the backyards of residential homes with children at play. Pennsylvania has more than 3,000 fracking operations alone with fracking wells within two miles of 320 day care centers, 67 schools and 9 hospitals.

In countering the gas industry’s argument discussed above and with a few added extras, let’s highlight each of their defenses first and then we’ll attempt to be a bit more truthful than they are in the facts.

The gas companies contend:

1. Only 0.5% of the fracking fluid is chemicals. 99.5% is merely water and sand.

2. Chemical additives are trace in amount, safe and do not pose a health risk.

3. In combusting, methane is the cleanest fuel and emits little CO₂.

4. The water table is protected from any contaminant leakage with double casing and cement.

5. Fracking wells will not have a blowout as conventional wells will.

6. There are no gas leaks from underground or above surface to create blow outs simply because the gas is residual emanating far underground below the water table.

7. Fracking fluid is carefully and safely impounded then disposed of.

8. For local communities fracking activity is economically sound and creates jobs.

9. Any radiation produced is not enough to be biologically harmful.

10. Fracking will wean the U.S. from foreign fossil fuel dependency.

In countering:

Only 0.5% of the fracking fluid is chemicals. 99.5% is merely water and sand.

1. In 2009 there were more than 443,700 fracking wells in operation across the U.S. That figure is higher now at over half a million. Well production is expected to continue well beyond the next two decades. For 2010, the EPA estimated that up to 140 billion gallons of water was used to fracture only 35,000 wells. A single well uses anywhere, from two million to ten million gallons of water that has to be withdrawn from a source and transported. On average, a heavy water truck will take 1,000 round trips to satisfy the water requirements in drilling a fracking well.

In 2008 during a Pennsylvania drought, water taken from and released back into the Monongahela River as fracking fluid waste, so overwhelmed the river, local officials strongly advised the Pittsburgh public to only drink bottled water.

Of the claimed 99.5% of fracking fluid in being water and sand, that composition is further broken down as 90% water with the remaining 9.5% as sand. That amounts to a lot of sand. Fracking well usage on average uses more than 4 million pounds of sand per well. Sand mines that cater to fracturing gas are scrambling to keep up with new sand mines springing up all over from Texas to Wisconsin. These mining operations themselves have environmental impacts and health issues in scarring the land, air pollutant emissions and water consumption. Plus in being a solid, polluted sand is much harder to decontaminate, as it traps pollutant particles. This is a two-fold problem. What comes to the surface would have to be repeatedly rinsed creating much more liquid waste and what stays down in the borehole and fissures could eventually make its way into the water table, only then to release its pollutants after being filtered by the aquifer’s current.

Chemical additives are trace in amount, safe and do not pose a health risk.

2. Between 2005-2009, the gas industry used at least 750 types of chemicals amounting to 750 million gallons. That half of a percent adds up in a hurry, although at times chemical additives in fracking fluids have reached upwards to 2.5%. A 4 million gallon fracking fluid gas well will typically use a minimum of 80 US tons (160,000 lbs) to a maximum of 330 US tons (660,000 lbs).

Chemicals are added to adjust viscosities, develop specific rheologies, act as surface tension surfactants, to act as anti-corrosive agents, to defoam, stabilize certain minerals as clays, maintain pH levels and an array of other physical constants.

“I have fracking fluid taken right out of a fracking truck. I’ve had it in my mouth. I’ve tasted it. And I’m just fine,” so confessed Kathy Hall, a former Colorado Oil and Gas Association lobbyist. Ms. Hall stated in the Denver dispatch newspaper, “There’s nothing more dangerous in that fluid than what’s in your make-up, honey, or your toothpaste, or what you use to clean your hot tub.” So she claims…but why are the gas companies so insistent in keeping their chemical additives from government officials and the public? If it is so safe that you may put it into your mouth and swallow without ill-effect, then why are they fighting hard tooth and nail to not divulge the chemicals used? Why…because a lot of them are harmful.

I would hope that most proponents would not go this far in defending hydraulic fracturing practices, for point blank, these kind of statements can only have slobber value…it’s idiotically nonsensical nonsense. But reasons the industry won’t really divulge their fracking chemical components is simply due to the fact that they are harmful to health and environment.

Due to sampling and analysis of spills, a congressional hearing and a handful of gas companies revealing their chemicals under public pressures, it’s becoming clear what certain chemicals the gas companies are putting into fracking fluids or ‘slick water’ as the roughnecks call it. They range from salts, acids, alcohols, glycols and biocides to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Some of the chemicals extensively used are known carcinogens, air and water pollutants, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), neuropathic and nephropathic agents and material that exceeds the Clean Air Act & Safe Drinking Water Acts (SDWA) exposure limits or threshold limit values (TLV) and OSHAs permissible exposure limits (PEL). Currently, twenty-nine toxic chemicals are combined or blended together to make 652 toxic products used in fracking.

Some of the worst chemicals are:

Symbols: HAP – Hazardous Air Pollutant SDWA – Safe Drinking Water Act

1. Butyl Cellosolve, (2-butoxy ethanol/ethylene glycol mono butyl ether ) ~ also known as EB is carcinogenic, detrimentally affects central nervous system, especially in children, HAP, SDWA.

2. BTEX ~ is a cocktail of an organic solvent blend being, Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene and pXylene; all are VOC, HAP & SDWA; benzene is carcinogenic.

3.Napthalene ~ carcinogen, HAP.

4. Diesel ~ carcinogen, HAP, SDWA.

5. Hydrogen Chloride devolves from hydrochloric acid ~ HAP

6. Sulfuric Acid ~ carcinogen.

7. Hydrogen Fluoride devolves from hydrofluoric acid ~ HAP

8. Formaldehyde ~ carcinogen, HAP.

9. Phthalic Anyhydride ~ HAP

10. Lead ~ carcinogen, HAP, SDWA

From 2005 to 2009 Texas lead the states in the amount of butyl cellosolve used at 12,031,734 volume fluid gallons. Oklahoma placed second at 2,186,613 gallons, while in Pennsylvania 747,416 gallons were used.

A chemical not in the above list that is toxic and HAPs listed is methanol. This alcohol appears in 342 fracking products. Ethylene glycol is used in 142 products.

In combusting, methane is the cleanest fuel and emits little CO₂.

3. Combusted methane does release CO2, but yes, it is much less than combusting coal and doesn’t emit all the other sulfate pollutants found in coal combustion. What the gas industry doesn’t add into the equation though is gas leaks. Methane released into the air is a far more efficient heat trapping absorbent than carbon dioxide. Methane’s current GWP rating over a 100 year horizon is 21-25 times that of carbon dioxide. The GWP or global warming potential for methane is ~23.5, where carbon dioxide is 1. From the well itself via transport to facilities, gas leaks indeed occur.

A fracking site near public water, Pa.

The water table is protected from any contaminant leakage with double casing and cement.

4. Extra effort from the platform down past the freshwater table is put into place to seal the borehole, but accidents, wear and corrosion do occur. Leaks in a piping stem that is thousands of feet long are a constant ordeal during production. Below 1,000 feet, if there is any water it is normally saltwater. Being in close conjunction to the freshwater table, brine contamination has its pathway opportunities to infiltrate freshwater aquifers once drilling commences and ceases.

No one can dictate how underground formations will shift or fault over time. Piping, in particular piping exposed to fracking fluid acids, hydrogen fluoride and bromine will corrode. These chemicals actually accelerate metal fatigue and corrosion. Anyone who has walked a cement sidewalk, knows that it cracks from the ravages of weathering and earth shifts. The cement poured to reinforce the borehole’s casing is subjected to the same forces and will over time, crack.

There does not have to be an immediate contamination threat to a water table used for drinking to be considered as still dangerous. 55-90% of the millions of gallons of toxic fracking fluid does not resurface, is not recovered and remains in the hole. Over time, with Earth's slight shifting and substrata movement, a contaminant opportunity could arise at any time. No gas company in their right minds will guarantee the life of the fracked well as free from contaminating subterranean drinking water sources.

Fracking wells will not have a blowout as conventional wells will.

5. It is true that a traditional blowout will not occur with a resultant major fire in fracking wells as witnessed in the BP Gulf Coast incident, but accidents do occur. Accident reports are currently generated by the gas companies, not regulators or environmental officials; that’s just the way the system has been designed. Even when accidents are reported to the proper authorities, these officials are hesitant to levy fines or harsh judgments onto the gas company out of fear they will quit reporting accidents altogether. Of course, there have been some accidents that gained everyone’s attention without a report due to its magnitude.

There have been over 1,000 accidents at fracking well sites that have posed serious environmental and health risks. They may not create the fireworks of a traditional blowout, but just the same they are dangerous and prove that the chemicals used, even diluted by the water they’re in, will still immolate just like a mini blowout.

Just this past September in Frio County, Texas, seven Mission Well Services LLC hydraulic fracturing trucks filled with fluid waiting in line to feed the piping into the borehole caught fire and burned to the ground.

Mission Well Services officials still haven’t revealed to the public exactly what happened, stating the investigation has been taking months to conclude, but apparently, methane was escaping from the piping and flashed catching the nearby truck on fire that quickly engulfed the other six in line loaded with flammable fracking fluid cargo.

There are no gas leaks from underground or above surface to create blow outs simply because the gas is residual emanating far underground below the water table.

6. True, there will be no roaring traditional out of control blowout fires, but nonetheless, hydrocarbon gases such as methane, butane and propane are being collected and accumulated in the borehole; that’s the whole idea behind fracking operations. As accumulation progresses, gas volume increases in a confined and pressurized containment, to the point it can support an explosion and fire.

That is apparently what happened at the Husky fracking site in Alberta. While extracting gas (in this case propane) from the well, it flash exploded, then caught fire injuring thirteen from singed hair to first degree burns and fractures.

A major fire that originally had nothing to do with gas or oil, but strictly the fracking fluid occurred west of Walton City, North Dakota this past March. The fracking line located on the surface caught fire that quickly spread to oil stored onsite. The raging burn lasted nearly a week before it was contained and oil and gas had to be burned off to keep the fossil fuels from feeding the fire. Also, an oil truck was still onsite that if caught fire, a potential explosion could have occurred. The well was managed by SM Energy.

Fracking also will cause gas to migrate in all directions once the formation it was sealed in is fractured. This multidirectional migration includes going into the upper formations that may already be faulted up to the water table and surface. The fracturing process is not solely limited to the target formation. It can create seems in upper layers, where the gas may travel forced upwards by strata depth, heat and pressure.

Finally for the first time this past spring, a scientific study was concluded and published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that emphatically linked hydraulic fracturing to methane drinking water contamination. The study found that the type of gas found at high levels in the water table and in people’s home water lines were the same types of gases the gas companies were extracting thousands of feet below the surface. This heavily implies that indeed gas is seeping upwards from manmade or naturally induced faults created by the fracturing process, or even from faults in the well structure itself. The points of study were conducted from 68 well sites in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations.

Fracking fluid is carefully and safely impounded then disposed of.
7. Fracking fluid waste is not stored nor treated properly. From 10 to 45% of the fracking fluid is forced back up the borehole by static pressure known as ‘flowback.’ In addition to the chemicals in the fracking fluid, naturally occurring underground materials such as salts, arsenic, hydrogen sulfide and radium radiation are now included to contend with. Most shale layer formations deep underground are ‘hot’ or radioactive. This material has to be stored and stashed somewhere.

In Pennsylvania, the underground geology is not suited for deep well injection period, much less for underground storage, so containment pits are used. Marcellus shale is very fissile and brittle, prone to crumbling and leaching. Also, where actual well fracking is not regulated, well storages are, so gas companies try to avoid deep well storage sites. The onsite containment pits’ linings have been observed to tear and rip on many occasions, releasing the fracking fluid.

Containment pits of course, are temporary storage sites, so the contents have to be later dealt with. Usually it is pumped out and sent to other regions where deep well storage is permissible or sent to water treatment plants to contend with.

This past April, in Leroy Township, Pa. at Chesapeake Energy’s Atgas 2H well, there was a mechanical failure right in the middle of frack drilling that created a leak just underneath the blowout preventer (BOP). The fracking fluid leak could not be immediately turned off allowing tens of thousands of gallons of fracking fluid to be released contaminating Towanda Creek, a popular trout fishing stream.

Onsite containment pits were used but failed. Due to consistent rains, the pits at this site quickly filled from the discharge and overflowed releasing the fluid into the local environment and into the creek. Dairy farmers were told not to allow their livestock to drink from the contaminated creek waters, but how hard is it to keep free ranging cattle from going to their local watering hole?

Scarring public lands

The sole culprit to this disaster was that a steel coupling located just beneath the BOP failed allowing the fracking fluid to spew out leaving no way to immediately shut it off. Unfortunately, there was no accountability in foresight that weather can affect fracking operations. By the way…Chesapeake Energy, the owner of the well, is one-third owned by the Chinese state-owned energy company. Any methane coming from this site, I wonder…what market is it ultimately bound for?

For local communities fracking activity is economically sound and creates jobs.

8. Well, if you think that temporary fixes are great, perhaps fracking sites are an economic boost to local communities, but even then, not so much. For every fossil fuel boom, ultimately there is a bust to follow.

Seventy percent on average of all fracking rig workers are from out of town. The right-of-way leases granted are a pittance and the landowner must have a lot of acreage to make any monthly worthwhile income. The heavy trucking is true wear and tear on local roadways and bridging and then they’re gone leaving behind rutted rural roads and potholed paved streets.

In Dimock, Pa, they received a boost in the local economy of around $240,000 due to a Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation frack gas well. But because of three fracking fluid spills totaling 8,420 gallons contaminating the local water supply, it’s costing the town more than $10 million to transport safe water to the affected homeowners. In Wise County, Texas landowners with fracking gas wells have lost 75% of their property value. There are many other examples too numerous here to comment on, where costs exceed the returns for local economies.

Any radiation produced is not enough to be biologically harmful.

9. It’s true, if you are strictly speaking of external exposure. Radium radiation up to a certain concentrated level is easily shielded by thin structures such as skin. Radium is an alkaline earth metal found in shale formations as radium bromide, radium chloride and the water soluble radium hydroxide and radium nitrate. With four naturally occurring isotopes, all of which decay into radon that's a radioactive gas we are constantly exposed to naturally when we enter the basement or cellar. Unless your basement is tightly sealed to trap and accumulate concentration, not to worry, your skin is your defense in shielding you from the radioactive effects.

But the problem with fracking is not in the radiation coming to the surface for direct external exposure, it is what is contained in the fluid flowback that will be sent to sewage plants for treatment or what radiated fracking fluid remains in the borehole or still in situ in the shale formation to later contaminate the water table.

If radium radiation or radon diffused gas is ingested through drinking water, a variety of biological defects will occur. Radium is chemically similar to calcium and if it enters the body through ingestion, it will replace calcium in bones creating degradation of the marrow and mutation of the bone cells and will cause cancer throughout the body.

We only have the studies for there are no determined methods in place yet to monitor and analyze radioactive fracking fluid waste. Along with the accompanied brine compounds, heavy metals, solvated hydrocarbons, wastewater facilities are not equipped to analyze, manage and treat fracking fluid with radioactive material.

A recent study, in analyzing flowback waste accepted at wastewater treatment plants, radiation levels in some instances,15 in fact, were 1,000 times higher than the threshold limit standard set up by the EPA. 116 fracking wells out of 179 checked had radiation levels one hundred times higher set by federal drinking water standards. In Pennsylvania, total dissolved solids (TDS) in wastewater plants that accepted flowback waste was more than double the accepted high end range of 500mg/l (milligrams per liter).

In the past three years, more than 1.4 billion gallons of flowback waste was generated and sent to Pa. wastewater treatment plants that could not adequately treat the waste and simply discharged it into the waterways after normal sewage treatment.

For 2010, Pennsylvania water treatment could not account for the disposal method of 1.28 million 42-gallon barrels of flowback waste that was eventually dumped into the waterways.

The Niagara Water Falls Treatment Plant is in one of the hardest hit areas of the recession. Left operating far below capacity and loss of revenue coerced the town of Niagara Falls to be one of the first to accept flowback waste, but they are not equipped to handle this waste and guess where the plant’s final effluent is going into. That’s right, right into the Niagara River and down the falls.

Thankfully, public outcry has stalled the proceeding due to public protests and hearings, but in still being permitted by the state to do so, it could happen.

Meanwhile, tests conducted on rural shallow water wells near active or completed fracking wells have verified elevated health risk levels of benzene, methanol, ethane and methane to the point, occupants had to be evacuated from their homes.

So, the gas companies go with semantics in stating that it is the natural seepage of methane contaminating the water wells. Still doesn’t explain away where the benzene and methanol came from and that the housing tap water couldn’t be ignited prior to fracking activity. I would like to see them with a straight face and eye-to-eye tell the affected people driven from their homes this.

Fracking will wean the U.S. from foreign fossil fuel dependency.

10. Perhaps so, but assuredly not. Gas is one part of the fossil fuel equation America is addicted to, but oil is the greater half of the equation. As long as we are the top-end of the world’s consumers of oil, we’ll never be independent.

I’ve stated it many times before, how long are we going to pursue non-renewable fossil fuels when reserves are quickly dwindling at the same time the whole world is gaining a larger appetite for it as well? Fossil fuels are an expediting dying dinosaur and are about to become extinct. No more of the stuff is being made. Are our politicians going to allow us to go to war for that last drop of oil or cubic foot of natural gas? We urgently need to bite the bullet on this one.

We have the technology and expertise to truly pursue alternative energy sources, but don’t want to put the time and expense into it. It’s downright shameful. Green energies first thought of, designed and developed right here in the good ol’ USA died on the vine due to lack of interest, but was picked up by other countries and have succeeded.

SamsØ Island off the coast of Denmark is totally carbon neutral in its energy usage, using technologies that were first developed right here in the states. They don’t fret much about the price of oil. In fact it doesn’t affect them at all.

Folks will argue, but that’s just a small island, it’s easy to supply an island with renewable, America is a huge nation. Perhaps so, but if you want to look at it that way then start with a neighborhood as an island in a community, then do the community as an island in a city, then do a city as an island in a county, then do the county as an island in a state, then…

Not In My Backyard:

“I’m not an activist, an alarmist, a Democrat, environmentalist or anything like that. I’m just a person who isn’t able to manage the health of my family because of all this drilling,” notes Mrs. Kelly Gant of Bartonville, Texas. She ends with, “It’s ruining us.” Mrs. Gant is referring to the severe asthma attacks her fourteen year old daughter and eleven year old son developed ever since fracking started up near her home two years ago with a well and compressor station. Never before the drilling activity had the children complained of difficulties in breathing, much less asthma attacks; only after activity started.

There has been only one extensive EPA study of fracking activities and that was in 2004 under strict orders by the Bush administration, in particular Cheney to make the final report industry friendly. Cheney even had business professionals, not scientists in the Bureau of Land and Mines edit the report. Naturally, the final report came out stating that hydraulic fracturing poses little or no threat to drinking water and that no further study was necessary.

In Pennsylvania, hydraulic fracturing is at ground zero for the Marcellus shale play. The Marcellus shale formation stretching from West Virginia, eastern Ohio, to central New York, runs all the way through Pennsylvania. It is considered by some, 'as is oil to Saudia Arabia, so is gas to Pennsylvania.' For the keystone state public, it doesn’t look too healthy for the moment. Republican governor Tommy Corbett, who took more than double the campaign contributions from the oil & gas industry than all his opponents combined, has stated the industry is overly regulated and is refusing a proposal to levy a gas extraction tax on the industry. This amounts to a pittance for the industry in totaling $2 million a year that is intended to help offset the cost for the state in the treatment of flowback waste.

Corbett has also cleared the way for gas companies to drill as many as 10,000 fracking gas wells on public lands.

Most Republican politicians are doing their best to keep any regulations from monitoring fracking, but one that stands out is Republican Congressman of Ohio, Bobby Gibbs. He rants constantly about too many regulations are already in place and constantly raves about the so-called positive economic impacts from expanded fracking operations. If the gas industry ever needed a poster child, Gibbs has got dibbs.

Too much regulation they whine, well as it stands now, if they want to drill in your backyard, you may not have any say in hindering their efforts. This happened numerous times in the Barnet shale play around the Greater Forth Worth area in Texas; even in front yards for that matter.

In trying to change this arrangement by allowing citizens to have more say in their environment, health, safety and ownership, more progressive legislation came up in the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, or for euphony, the FRAC Act. The bill has two purposes. One is to require gas companies to disclose the chemicals injected underground and two, to eliminate the exemption gas companies engaging in fracking currently enjoy from regulations carried under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). That’s all, there is no red tape binding this piece of legislation and it gives the latitude to states to administer the provisions of the bill. Also, states can tailor their own legislation to fit the bill.

Most Republicans and the gas industry are fighting this act to the nub under the guise it will hurt job creation. Nonsense, it’ll only hurt the egos of those wanting to make profits off the backs of the environment and the public’s health. It is difficult to imagine the authority these gas companies have in basically regulating themselves while mismanaging the public at the same time.

If yore gonna drill in my backyard, ya had dad-burned better tell me what yore drilling with.

In Concluding Fashion:

The thing is here, is that frack drilling as it currently stands is a dangerous method in extracting minute forms of gas from a very brittle substrate and is very shortsighted greed on the gas companies part along with the politicians who blindly support them.

Fracking was originally developed to drill vertically in stable sandstones. As it stands now, hazards associated with horizontal drilling in shales are far less understood and regulations and regulatory staff have not kept pace with the rapidly expanding fracking industry. Gas companies are learning as they go at the expense of the general public.

Air borne contaminants are a big negative result as well from fracking. The state of Wyoming in 2009 for the first time in its history failed to meet federal air standards since 27,000 fracking wells started up five years ago. Sublette, a rural Wyoming county with a high concentration of fracking VOC emissions registered a higher concentration of smog or ozone layer than Los Angeles or Houston did with all their gas guzzling vehicles.

In March 2010, a fracturing flowback wastewater impoundment in Washington County, Pennsylvania caught fire and exploded producing a cloud of thick, black smoke that could be seen miles away. This spewed particulate and gaseous air borne contaminants throughout the seven winds. Several days prior to the explosion, nearby citizens tried in vain to alert state officials about noxious odors emanating from the impoundment that were sickening their families. Officials never returned phone calls and messaging didn’t work anymore as one citizen stated, “their voicemail boxes were full.”

Earthquakes have come into the fold too. Arkansas, even in northwest England where seismic activity has never been recorded experienced numerous small earthquakes just after fracking activity. Recently in Oklahoma, the first part of this November, a 5.6 magnitude temblor occurred 45 miles east of Oklahoma City. This was in conjunction with fifty minor quakes of 1.0-2.8 magnitudes. In 2009, Oklahoma registered 1,047 tremors. All of this trembling preceded the fracking activity that commenced heavily in Oklahoma in 2008.

Gas companies with no hesitation deny any connection, but they do know fracking originally was used a lot in water drilling and in water tables in coal beds. The fracking actually was incorporated to create minor tremors and disperse the water.

Fracking essentially is a massive pipe bomb that not only creates fissures, but pulverizes and crushes shale. We need to lay back a bit and do some serious reevaluation.

The problem with fracking is that it knows no borders. If a neighbor next to you gleefully signs a lease…contaminated subterranean waters, formations and air don’t stay within the borders of his land, they reach out to yours as well. If we feel the need is so urgent to pursue natural gas, fine. But let’s develop a more efficient way in how to get at it and leave as small a fingerprint as we can on the environment and the health of the public’s good.

I leave you with an Earthjustice video for your viewing enjoyment.

As Understood,

BJA

11/30/2011

2011-10-27T12:37:00.039-04:00

Darkness in Light of a Better Word

Shock & Aw-kward:

How ironic! As of late, it appears that Obama may be going down in the history books as one of the most successful war presidents this country has ever had when it comes to taking out enemy leaders. The irony of it all, is that he prefers peaceful routes and to preside over diplomatic means rather than militarily. For the conservative war hawks though, it is indeed a very awkward moment to have a labeled ‘liberal’ to be quite the war Commander-in-Chief.

Once entering office, Obama has upped the ante more than five times over Bush, with a total of 235 drone strikes thus far. He got right to work in stepping up drone attacks but yet, even though the number of remote guided drone missile firings escalated, the number of civilian casualties plummeted.

From the Bush years of 2004-2008, non militant deaths from drone attacks were forty-two. Even though U.S. drone attacks have escalated under Obama, while the civilian death rate under the Bush years were trending towards 20%, in 2010 under Obama’s watch, innocent civilian death rates dropped to 5% with 2011 presently hovering at 6.25 %. This states that commensurate with increased drone attacks, more attention to detail and precision has been added.

This information is from the politically independent ‘New America Foundation’s counterterrorism strategy initiative analysis of U.S. drone strikes.

Let’s see, for conservative Republican’s viewing pleasure, I’ll list some of Obama’s Commander-in-Chief accomplishments. They are:

(2004-2008) Ordering 42 drone strikes, Bush had killed 14 militant leaders.

(2009) Under Obama 10 militant leaders are killed: these include in April, Abu Salayman al Jazairi, whom American intelligence officials say planned and trained operatives for attacks in Europe and the U.S.; in August, Baitalluh Mehsud a top Taliban leader; in September, Nazimuddin Zalalov alias Yahyo who was a chief lieutenant to Osama bin Laden.

(2010) 15 militant leaders are killed: these include in January, Hakimullah Mehsud who had close links and ties to al-Qaeda; in February, Mohammad Qari Zafar a Taliban commander responsible for the 2006 Karachi consulate bombing; in November, the Afghani Taliban commanders, Sabir Mehsud & Mullah Abdul Agyoum.

(2011) This year has proven to be a great year in terms of Obama being Commander-in-Chief in directing the ousting of high value targets. Starting in February, the financial manager of al-Qaeda’s affairs in Pakistan is struck dead by a drone delivered missile; in May under Obama’s directed guidance of the plan, special forces killed Osama bin Laden; in June, Ilyas Kashmiri, Pakistan’s top al-Qaeda commander is killed by a drone attack; in September, the Yemeni-American born extremist cleric, Anwar Al Awlaki who orchestrated the underwear bombing and the Fort Hood massacre was killed by airstrike in Yemen; in October, the senior Haqqani commander, Janbaz Zadran was killed by a drone strike and lastly this October, Muammar Gadaffi was injured by a NATO airstrike, then killed by revolutionary Libyan rebels.

Of course, all the conservative Republicans have been whining by trying to belittle Obama’s involvement and trying to neutralize the glory with attempts to steal credit for the accomplishments. They have to be very careful on how hard a footstep they tread here to not look so unpatriotic at a time that has stirred a little patriotism among us all. But hey, they had to do something to take the wind out of the sails.

On how Obama approached Libya and Gadaffi, Republicans chided him on every decision on how to conduct and tackle the Libyan uprising. First they claimed Obama needs to get involved. Once he does, they then complained how he did it. They complained as it was being conducted that we weren’t leading the resistance and solely for this, the revolution would turn into failure.

Of course now we know the results and they occurred without putting one American soldier’s boots on the ground. Listening before though to Republicans, American troops should have been our option of choice even though we were tempered in two existing wars and as they claim, the U.S. treasury is broke. Obama, in deciding simply to be background support after the initial American airstrikes, proved very fruitful, for it got other allies fully engaged up front.

After bin Laden was killed, all conservatives tried in vain to issue all the credit to the special navy seal team 6 forces, whom indeed deserves a full portion of the credit, since they were the ones who actually conducted the raid. Obama though, picked and directed the special operation all the way down to the wire when other top officials were having second thoughts and preferred airstrikes.

Then they try to shift credit over to the Bush administration…

The conservative media rushes out to ensure Bush era credit:

Hannity: "There Was No Way This Would Have Happened, But For The Policies Of George W. Bush." [Fox News, Hannity, 5/4/11]

Karl Rove: "Important Policy Decisions Made Under Bush" Made Bin Laden's Death Possible.[Fox News, Hannity, 5/3/11]

Washington Times' Brett Decker: "Bin Laden's Death Is More Mr. Bush's Victory Than Mr. Obama's." [The Washington Times, 05/02/11]

Fox's Bolling: "Thank GWB For This Not BHO!" From a May 2 post on Fox Business host Eric Bolling's Twitter feed

Dick Cheney after initially stating Obama deserves credit comes out of hiding and later states in May on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that the Bush era enhanced interrogation (torture techniques) produced vital information in the whereabouts of Osama.

Totally wrong, Cheney was just trying to steal thunder, as there is no proof whatsoever that torture, in particular waterboarding, produced viable information for any reliable intelligence gathering much less than for bin Laden’s final demise.

George W. Bush, after first saying it was “a victory for America,” remains silent for a few months, then comes out to grab a bit of the glory for himself, when he stated in a September USA Today interview that it was his intelligence that got the ball rolling in putting the pieces of the puzzle together so that he should receive some credit.

Well, I suppose he should, but along with that, Bush should also recognize it was his failure to capture or kill bin Laden in Tora Bora of 2001. The American troops that had him and the city surrounded, Bush had immediately withdrawn, deploying them out to Kuwait to await the Iraqi invasion. This is failed action. It dragged the bin Laden search out for another ten years.

Of course back then in 2002, Bush stated, “I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.” “I am deeply concerned about Iraq.”

The thing is, if the bin Laden raid had been a failure, Republicans would have taken that all the way to the rich banks they protect and doom the Obama administration, so at least in turn they should at the bare minimum recognize his success in the foregone successful conclusion.

Irregardless of the deserving credit, perhaps these two statements sum it up best:

"We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority," Obama spoke these words during the presidential debate on October 7. [CNN.com, 11/12/08].

Bush in 2002: In reference to bin Laden, "I truly am not concerned about him." From a March 14, 2002 Reuter’s article titled, 'Bin Laden not a concern: Bush.'

As the modern and I suppose revisionist conservatives are trying to allude to, ‘when Bush killed bin Laden,’ it kind of sounds more like a falsified alternate story ending of hopeful illusions, now doesn’t it…

Megaphone Phrasing:

You’ve pretty much heard them by now. Like a broken record, Republican politicians and conservative talk show hosts are all out there over and over decrying that Obama and the Democrats “are pitting Americans against Americans” and “class warfare.” It’s as if they had all gathered and huddled up in some dark closet with all taking a pledge to repeat these ever so disparaging events at every opportune chance that developed.

I guess this phrase first started off back in June with Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell when complaining about and criticizing Obama, as he always does, stated, when McConnell was orchestrating the obstruction of the debt ceiling that Obama has “retreated behind the poll-tested rhetoric of class warfare.”

Representative Paul Ryan on ‘Fox News Sunday’ this September blurts out, “Class warfare…may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics.”

At the Las Vegas Republican primary debates just this past October 18^th, Newt Gingrich boasts that, “When I am president, we’re going to replace class warfare with cooperation.”

This past September, Speaker of the House, John Boehner in responding to Obama’s job creation plan forewarned us all in crying, “Pitting one group of Americans against another is not leadership.”

One of the more notorious for spreading the Republican gossip is the most nefarious little squirt, Majority House Leader, Eric Cantor (R-VA). In the first part of this month, Cantor addressed a gathering of religious conservatives in Washington D.C. and stated in reference to his perceived notion of collusion between Wall Street protesters and Democrats, “And believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans.”

Representative Paul Ryan mouthed the “Americans against Americans” phrase off numerous times, but as exampled on his interview with Dick Gregory on ‘Meet the Press’ October 9, 2011, upped the phrase a notch where he said,

“Sewing class envy and social unrest is not what we do in America… I think the president is doing that. I think he’s preying on the emotions of fear, envy and anger, and that is not constructive to unifying America. I think he’s broken his promise as a uniter and now he’s dividing people; and to me that’s very unproductive.”

Actually, in my opinion anyway, sewing unrest in America comes directly from the Republican’s playbook; what with all the screaming of bogus death panel scares concerning the new healthcare plan, along with it being government ran taking away people’s right to choose. Pillaging out phony accusations that the government is broke scared a few people. The false references of Obama being a socialist, fascist, Moslem, non-American birth and un-patriotic, also still stirs people’s beliefs.

But what can one expect from Ryan. In response to making his constituents pay to see him during this past August town hall meetings, some have been demonstrating in front of his office. Instead of meeting and talking to them, he and his office calls the police to have them arrested and charged for trespassing.

In one protest incident this past September, a protester began complaining about projected cuts in Medicare. The police were on hand to slam him to the floor and arrest him. He gave no resistance, for the protester was a seventy-one year old retired plumber; for crying out loud, no need to be slammed to the floor. After the commotion, Ryan, while addressing a Rotary Club audience makes a snide pun in saying, “I hope he’s taking his blood pressure medication.” And I say to the Ryan pud, “I’m sure he will…as long as you don’t take it from him…”

Ryan said on that same ‘Meet the Press’ to Gregory, “I don’t disparage anybody who protests their government, for better government no matter what perspective they come from.” How convenient that his own words do not apply to his own actions…

Most of this phraseology rhetoric is in retaliation to the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. Republicans want to blame Obama and the Democrats for it in hopes that it will instill fear and resentment. I got to tell ya, their path of deceit isn’t working, for the Dems had nothing to do with its formation. It simply started with everyday Americans from all walks of life that feel disenfranchised from the current American way and are fed up with the unnecessary suffering, struggling burden and neglect that have been placed upon them. This movement wants to know why Wall Street profiteers are profiting even more, while they…the protesters, as the everyday American remain inflicted in economic strife.

Ya know, in counting, since September I’ve seen or read Republicans stating these phrases thirteen times thus far. This all is a bit befuddling as Republicans always claim that there is no class distinction in America…we must all be middleclass right?

This Republican demeanor is enough to shake the beak off a buzzard. It seems to them that there is never class warfare or American versus American until the lower classes finally rise up to protest the class discrepancies and stand up to fight back.

A Mile Wide But an Inch Deep:

In obstructing job growth and economic remedies to portray Obama as ineffective, it appears that conflict is the Republican’s authored narrow-minded route. They only speak of bipartisanship when it is their turn to promote an agenda as displayed during the debt ceiling negotiations, no matter how much the country suffered from it.

Republican obstructionism to critical economic and unemployment issues prompted the S&P to downgrade the U.S. AAA rating and caught the ire and embarrassment of many CEOs, such as Thomas Wilson of Allstate, James Gorman of Morgan Stanley and Howard Schultz of Starbucks.

Republicans holding hostage the national debt ceiling, FEMA funding for tornado, wildfire devastation and hurricane national relief and FAA funding that axed 90,000 jobs is not in the best interests of the country.

Withholding the country’s lawmaking legislation and holding these entities hostage while pressing hard and pushing for passage of mundane goofiness caricatured as so pertinent to the well-being of the country is such bombastic insolence. Republican defunding of National Public Radio (NPR), axing the ‘Planned Parenthood’ budget, busting unions, protecting the Bush tax cuts, slashing education & job programs, defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and repeal of the new healthcare law is of the mentality below that of a spoiled ten-year-old brat. How Republicans can perceive these venues as so urgently important, ignore and actually add to the average American’s suffering and plight during these dire economic times is beyond my realm of thinking? They do this at the expense of the country only to get what they’ve always bawled for, then cast the blame Obama’s way. Forget the country in all this Republican hooplah…

Three times they pushed our country to the brink of ineffectiveness in their push for social budget cuts and rich tax break agendas. Dragging the country through the toxic muss with manufactured crises during a time of economic crisis, is tantamount to very unsavory principles and that’s all there is to it.

As Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) so eloquently put it this month on CNNs ‘State of the Union’, “You want to talk about sitting on the sidelines? They’re (Republicans) the ones that have just been crossing their arms and hoping for failure.”

Now, with public protest mounting and the buildup of the Occupy Wall Street movement, due to these Republican power strategies and inactions to the ailing middleclass, Republicans are beginning to sweat.

Tender Egos:

Poor Rick Santorum, the one you never hear about in the Republican debates. When Saturday Night Live (SNL) did a sketch on the Republican debates, they portrayed him as stuck in a gay bar. The sketch was funny, but for forlorn Santorum, it hurt his wee-tenderfoot feelings. He said they were bullying him.

Never mind how he bullies gays and lesbians in comparing them to having sex with dogs, or stating that he wished that single women, in particular single moms would marry a man so that it would change their voting to Republicans. Yeah, we all know that the schoolyard bully only expects to do the bullying, for when the role is reversed and done to him, he gets his feelings hurt and seeks the nearest refuge corner.

Last April of this year, Obama gave a budget speech. He gave Paul Ryan a special invitation to attend, even reserved for him a front row seat. During the speech, Obama promptly castrated Ryan’s own budget plan and diplomatically picked it apart one by one on its inaccuracies and failures. Later, after the speech, Republican boohooing commenced in leaps and bounds.

Probably figuring in their own twisted minds, since the president gave Ryan a seat in the front row that Obama would praise their upcoming Republican star and give a bullet point analysis on how grand his budget scheme was. Instead, it got the tongue lashing that it deserves and Obama spanked it good.

Immediately Republicans went out onto the airwaves calling Obama “uncivil” and that he should “call Ryan to the White House and apologize” to him in person for hurting the poor Representative’s feelings. Wah-wah-wah all the way home…

Has anyone ever heard a positive comment come from a Republican concerning Obama. I certainly haven’t for it is always negative. But when Obama charges back, how dare he…

Because of what President Obama said and didn’t say this past summer by keeping a negotiation line open, then daring Republicans to side with the interests of corporations, the big oil industry, hedge fund managers and the extremely wealthy against elderly fixed income grandmas, schoolchildren and the middleclass in general, it hurt their feelings. Mark Halperin even called Obama a dick for doing this. But so be it, it may have hurt the child-like Republican congressmen’s feelings, but by pulling a goat’s whiskers, the response is not an excuse to be absolved of responsibilities in performing the country’s duties.

Due to hurt feelings, Rick Perry is now currently relying on wife support. Recently this month, Anita Perry addressed in South Carolina an audience at Greenville University. Before bursting out into tears she questioned why everyone was being so brutal to her husband; even GOP candidates she said over religious matters. Ya know, the same sweet man that mercilessly and without predication called our Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke a traitor.

Her exact quote was, “We are being brutalized by our opponents and by our party. So much of that is I think they look at him because of his faith,” Continuing, Mrs. Perry said, “He is the only true conservative. Well, there are some other conservatives, and they are there for good reasons. And they may feel like God called them too. But I truly feel that we are here for that purpose.”

Now guess what she did on the next leg of her speech immediately after pining about the criticisms of her husband. She goes right on the attack and does her own criticizing of Obama and Herman Cain, along with any other person that might disagree with her husband’s choices.

I just surmise here that criticizing and demeaning is simply a Republican addiction, as long as they’re the one doing the poking.

Apparently this is so, but Perry took it to a higher ecclesiastical level by blaming God on the BP oil spill, acquitting the greed of BP officials in cutting corners. In defending BP, speaking to the Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. in May of 2010, Perry, instead of blaming man’s actions, blamed God in stating, "I hope we don't see a knee-jerk reaction across this country that says we're going to shut down drilling in the Gulf of Mexico... From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented."

The biggest of all Republican whines though occurred three years ago during the $700 billion bail-out debate.

For the initial failed bail-out House vote in September of 2008, Republicans in the US House of Representatives blamed it squarely on the former Democrat House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi's speech. No, it couldn’t have been due simply from their own actions, conduct and voting.

GOP House Leader at the time, John Boehner said, "I do believe that we could have gotten there today had it not been for this partisan speech that the speaker gave on the floor of the House.” Boehner continues, "I mean, we were, we were…we put everything we had into getting the votes to get there today. But the speaker had to give a partisan voice that poisoned our conference; caused a number of members (who we thought we could get) to go south."

What Pelosi said was nothing against House Republicans, but simply a truthful account that it was Bush economic policies that got the country into this mess. But according to Boehner, simply because this little grandma scolded Bush policy, it was enough to hurt the feelings of these big brave congressmen, so they voted no. Aw, to get yore feelings hurt from a speech then respond by sending the country’s financial being down the tubes, must take a real man…

Be Very Afraid:

The success and rapid growth of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which is now occupying America, apparently has some Republican officials ducking for cover.

At that same Washington D. C. meeting mentioned earlier, Eric Cantor also said, "This administration's failed policies have resulted in an assault on many of our nation's bedrock principles. If you read the newspapers today, I, for one, am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and the other cities across the country.”

Rush Limbaugh in his demented demeanor has had a lot to say about OWS, such as…calling them stupid; that he was more self-sufficient at age 10 than “this parade of human debris calling itself Occupy Wall Street;” that the protesters are “perpetually spoiled rotten 99% white kids; that they are “pure genuine parasites and are “bored trust fund kids,” however ironic that may be and his latest is a deranged theory of his he’s propping up that the movement is anti-Semitic and that Obama started it and under the cover, organized it. Sounds a lot like the OWS has really got the fat boy roiling in fearfulness and is freaking.

Maybe we shouldn’t forget Glenn Beck. On his (10/10/2011) Monday radio show, Beck heeded this dire warning, "Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsies with these people, you're wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you...they're Marxist radicals.”

Then he becomes theatrically dark when he prophesizes that the only way to control the mass of protesters is a forceful crushing from “the top.” He finalizes this with, “It will be the Knight of the Long Knives. It will be a purging of this country.” The Knight of the Long Knives is in direct reference to the purge Nazis and Hitler carried out in exterminating liberals and moderates. Nice parallel Beck.

Oh, and let’s not forget Boehner. He hasn’t said anything publicly that I’m aware of but I bet he’s had a lot to say privately and under his breath. Boehner has been nailed at two golf outings by protesters post and prior the OWS start-up.

Boehner attended a golf outing at a private golf course in Wayzata, Minnesota this past August where attendees paid $10,000.00 a piece to have the privilege of playing a round with him and a few other Republican politicians. Once play started a few hundred protesters had sneaked in along with a plane circling overhead flying a banner protesting budget cuts and lack of job creation. The protesters were tired of the inaccessibility for constituents to Republican politicians.

The other Occupy Golf Course protest that disturbed Boehner’s golf outing, occurred just this month at the private Pelican Hill Golf Club in New Port Beach, California. Playing in the Orange County Republican Party’s Reagan Cup Tournament, again Boehner was raising money for the Republican Party.

The fifty or so protesters with bullhorns were similarly protesting as had the Minnesota protest and that is if millions can be raised for the Republican Party, why not also invest some in job creation.

The OWS is not an unruly mob or representing any one entity as Republicans and some media outlets suggest. You will find the whole cross section of America involved from janitors to professionals, from the unemployed to the well-off, to the young and elderly.

It is not unruly and overall has been quite civil. It is simply average Americans tired of being overlooked. Yes, pretty much, there is no real base of organization, but that is the beauty and strength of it…it functions on its own accord.

The likes of Cantor may call them mobs without rule, but he feels intimidated even though he praised the Tea Party uprising, heralding them as “fighting on the fighting lines of what we know is a battle for our democracy.”

But of course, when the Tea Party people were angrily disrupting Democrat town hall meetings, spitting into congressmen’s faces, vandalizing Democrat offices and sending out death threats; for Republican politicians that was merely patriotism at work…nothing to be afraid of.

But for politicians rebuking OWS as merely an unruly mob, then yes…be afraid, be very afraid. They don’t much go for your kind.

When you have time, watch the Jon Stewart video below to get a better idea of what the OWS is and is up against while getting a laugh or two as well.

Putting Pennies Over People:

To operate under the veil of deceit and lies, especially in positions of power and influence once was as anti-American as eating black pudding. Without doubt though that is now the Republican and modern conservative’s current approach.

Republicans are well aware they have a weak field in presidential candidates and have been courting others extensively to join the fold. Let’s see, first there were Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie. Bush and Daniels gave an emphatic no. Then there was Paul Ryan and Chris Christie. Ryan gave an emphatic no. Then there was Donald Trump and Chris Christie. Trump said yes only for the limelight, then folded up the tent and exited. Then there was Rick Perry and Chris Christie. Perry said yes, but turned out to be a dud.

Oh and did I mention Chris Christie? Finally, he gives his last emphatic “No” and gives up the ghost. Christie knew all along he wasn’t going to run, but all the limelight was good for his ego and was just plain ol’ good for business. He’s smart enough to know he’s physically and perhaps mentally not ready to hold the presidential office for a potential eight years. That would be eight years of grueling 18 hour a day scheduling. For a big ol’ Boy, that could be devastating.

The Republican National committee is a bit sly. To ensure they have a chance at winning the next presidential election, after looking over their candidates, have decided the candidates themselves won’t do it. So, I gather that is the reason for the big push in Republican states to redisctrict under a shroud of secrecy.

Republicans have been working on redistricting maps for months in their favor across the states. This is routine for any party that is currently in power, and in fact every state is constitutionally required to undergo redistricting based on new decennial population results, but what’s different this time around is that Democrats and the general public see these new Republican mappings for the first time usually within a week or two before lawmakers are expected to approve them. It hardly gives time to counter.

Also on ethical grounds, the ruling party normally reaches out to opponent parties, ethnic caucuses and any other outside group or entity, such as citizen commissions for their input. Not this time, Republicans are using their own knives in carving out the new districts. When you have nothing but Republicans behind closed doors in states like Wisconsin, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas drawing up the new districting, you don’t have to ponder much about the outcome.

Speaking of Wisconsin, if you may recall, Governor Scott Walker fought long and hard to take bargaining rights and benefits from state employees to fund his tax deductions for wealthy Wisconsinites and subsidies for corporations like industries owned by the shady Koch Brothers. Well, with his Republican backed state legislation and some questionable moves, he finally succeeded.

The deal is, although he ensured public workers are to pay more for their pensions as he insisted that was the only fair thing, he also said if elected he would in turn pay his fair share. Indeed to show fairness, back in June of 2010 when he was on the campaign trail canvassing for the governorship, he made a promise.

In June 2010, "As governor, I'll pay my share toward my retirement because everyone should pay their own way, including me," Walker said during the campaign.

To lead by example, he promised immediately to pay the full cost of his state pension if elected. Well, he did get elected and took the governor’s seat this past January. Apparently, though he has a short term memory. As of this date he has not paid a penny of it. Funny how he can make it a priority as the first item on his list to force state employees to pay higher costs, but when it comes to a forgotten promise, he still gets his pension for free.

As promised, pay up sir, your workers certainly have to now, you made a point of that…

The Vindictiveness of It All:

During these times of economic crisis and low job growth, Republicans have been taking full advantage of citizen angst and are casting out the lies.

First off, when you have every Republican in office not giving credence to any form of legislation that might spur job creation in hopes of making it appear Obama as ineffectual is ineffectual governance in itself. To have the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell demanding that his fellow Republican senators pledge to say no to anything Obama wants legislated, then of course the country is going to remain in gridlocked economic pain.

Every policy the President has proposed to create jobs, reform Wall Street, and preserve Social Security and Medicare has been opposed by Republicans. They offer no alternate proposals except regurgitated solutions that miserably failed during the Bush years and are the fingerprints that lead and put us into this economic time of woe. With three wealthy Bush tax cuts and eight years of the trickle down method, where are we now?

But to lie in taking advantage of the dire situation is a tad sorry. I’ll not mention any names here, for it pretty much is the GOP stance in general and they have spread these lies over and over enough that hypnotically they are seared into the psyche of most Americans.

GOP Lie #1: Obama has failed to create jobs.

Not true. Obama’s administration created more private sector jobs during his first eighteen months in office than Bush did his entire eight years in office. Obama’s first two years in office saw ~865,000 private sector jobs created per year according to a September 2010 Wall Street Journal report. This is more than double the job per year performance during the Bush years and might you remember, Bush had much better conditions to operate under in what he inherited form Clinton as opposed to what Obama inherited.

GOP Lie #2: The stimulus bill failed.

Not true, but it may not have been as effective as it could’ve been, for it was strung out under legislation and ultimately left hanging without follow-up. Anyone as president under the conditions the country was in at the time would have initiated some form of stimulus package.

GOP Lie #3: Obama and the Democrats want to tax everybody.

Not true. Every time a Republican mentions the Bush tax cuts in defending them, he/she always says “taxing the people,” “more taxes,” “no more taxes” or “taxing Americans.” They never say what it is in taxing only 2% of the wealthiest population that could certainly afford it. Even though we know this, Republicans want us to subliminally think of these as a general tax affecting us all. Obama has never proposed taxing the middleclass; in fact he’s issued out tax forgiveness for the middleclass and is trying to extend the payroll tax deduction that Republican’s are actually fighting him on. Also, small businesses are not under any additional taxation as proposed by Obama as Republicans try to make us think when they say tax increases will hurt small businesses time-in and time-out.

GOP Lie #4: Deficits are growing under Obama.

Not true. They are not no matter how you look at it, either in actual dollars or as a percentage of GDP. Remember the trending direction defines deficit. Since taking office after Bush, in which the upward trend was catastrophic, Obama’s time in office, though just slightly has reversed the trend’s direction in sending it downwards.

GOP Lie #5: The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.

So not true and especially during modern times. The national debt tripled under Reagan, almost doubled under the first George Bush, found sanctity under the Clinton years, then doubled banefully higher under George W. Bush. Republicans indeed do spend and in excess. It’s just that the Republican image in defunding programs for average citizenry appears that they are cutting back. But, with the monetary funding they take from social and public programs for everyday Americans, they don’t put it into savings, oh no, they spend it and more in their under the table programs and policies that aren’t so publicly exposed.

So much for the phrase, ‘The truth shall set you free.’

It’s the meanness and lack of any consideration for others more trodden that really makes me disdain Republican mentalities. This Republican mental package is nicely wrapped into one monetary and power excess and that is…greed. To win at all and any costs…

Republicans sending out bogus voting letters to Democrat leaning constituents for the Wisconsin state legislature recall elections and the West Virginia governorship had a specified return mail back date two to three days after the election was over. Henceforth, canceling or nullifying a voter’s vote is deviant behavior.

Republican strategists feel they can’t win unless they cripple voter registration. In at least fifteen states, new Republican photo ID voting laws have been passed to discourage the elderly, the poor and students from voting, since they traditionally vote Democrat. In Texas, a student photo ID is not accepted to cast a vote, but a member of the National Rifle Association membership card is. Seems that in a democratic country voting would be encouraged, not discouraged.

Just last week, Republican senators kept their record of filibustering every bill Obama has put forth in tact by filibustering the president’s legislation to put 400,000 educators and policemen back to work. Again, getting people back to work is not the Republican’s priority; only in seeing Obama fail is their goal.

The National Republican Congressional Committee’s (NRCC) TV attack ads are only going to increase since the conservative side of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow corporations to anonymously donate unlimited sums to political candidates.

The one they aired in Nevada against Democrat Kate Marshall, who was running for congress was so blatantly bogus that it was pulled off the air by the TV stations.

In it, the NRCC claimed Kate Marshall, as state treasurer during the financial crisis is responsible for Nevada’s high unemployment and high mortgage foreclosures, when in fact she had nothing to do with what went on in Wall Street and Washington D.C. Later after the ad was pulled, Tyler Q. Houlton, a NRCC spokesman, in defending the ad said, "The fact remains that, during Kate Marshall's tenure as Nevada's treasurer, the economy suffered the largest increase in unemployment and home foreclosure rates in the nation."

Oh really, well how inexcusable of Mrs. Marshall for living at the time of the national and international financial crisis.

Another Republican deceptive ad was pulled from the airwaves in Ohio this month covering the state’s Issue 2. This legislation, though passed by the Republican governor, John Kasich and legislators was brought forth by petition to be voted on by the citizenry concerning cutting pensions and bargaining rights of public employees. Opponents of the legislative bill aired an ad that had a grandmother praising public employees and how firemen and emergency medics had saved her grandchild. She was a big hit in the TV ad. So much so that Republicans decided to use her in their ad by splicing her image into it and having a voiceover appear to say that she was for Issue 2. All this was done without her knowledge.

How they thought that they could get away with this is beyond anyone with normal comprehension. Kasich states that he actually supports the ad, although adds that he had nothing to do with it. Maybe not, but his chief of staff, Beth Hansen who’s making a sweet $170,000.00 per year took a leave of absence to coordinate the Republican group who later came out with the deceptive advertisement.

Targeting key states such as Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Republican National Congress (RNC) is beginning to air attacks on Obama labeling him as a failure and highlighting deceptive Republican candor accusing him solely of the high unemployment, raising taxes on Americans and the one responsible for all the mortgage foreclosures and financial crisis. Obama must be one powerful dude, far more than what the title president offers.

For him to have twisted the arms of financial institutions, mortgage brokers, and bankers to conduct all those predatory derivative transactions, credit default swaps and shadow banking systems, while forcing corporations to sit on trillions of dollars and don’t dare spend it on hiring and development; wow, that is one almighty powerful sway he’s got there.

One cannot expect much more from the NRC though, for its chairman is Gregory B. Jaczko, one of numerous Republicans who say “it wouldn’t have been the end of the world” if America ever defaults on its debt. Surely a twerp like this can reassure us all with a few deceptive attack ads.

A GOP attack ad started airing this past September in Montana, showing Democrat senator, Jon Tester embracing and shaking hands with Obama. The ad was put out by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and shows all five fingers on Tester’s left hand. The ad is obviously being displayed to show how cozy Tester is with Obama to a conservative audience in a red leaning state. The only problem is, Tester has had three fingers missing from his left hand ever since a childhood farming accident.

The made-up photo is being defended by the NRSC in stating that when they edited out people in the background, they accidentally left a man’s hand in the final cut. Very strange though how that hand accidentally made it right onto the left wrist of Tester.

To take the cake though, has to come from New Jersey. Three Tea Party Republican candidates, Fernando Alonso, John Driscoll and Richard Goldberg in running for state legislator positions, pulled together and ran an ad against their three respective Democrat opponents. Now, ya might want to be sitting down before reading any further, because it is I promise ya, that goofy in stretching the bounds of reality much less the stretch in lying. They contended that the entire global collapse of the economy was caused due to the direct and secret collusion of their Democrat rivals with then Senator Obama.

I can’t even imagine my six-year-old kid coming up with something this bizarre with her active imagination, much less adults running for public office that would be held responsible for the welfare of their constituents.

Even the governor of that state, Republican Chris Christie had to concur that these three Republican nitwits were grasping with straws in airing this incredible negative campaign. Amazing grace…

Diagnosis vs. Remedy:

After reading the above, a chuckle or two had to cross your lips, but as funny as they might be, they occur on a common basis and are an indication of how ailing our political system (that originates the laws of the land) is becoming.

Without doubt I behaved in this article, a bit on what I was complaining about with my slandering. Hopefully, as to the best of my knowledge, when I slandered it was warranted. Whether that makes it justifiable or not, I’m asking you to be the judge.

I’m well aware that my bashing of Republican noggins through words is not the best way to win over converts. But eyes have to be jolted open first from lethargy to absorb, then assimilate the exposed actions of devious behavior that we have become accustomed to and perhaps even have accepted. But no matter our party platform tag, we have to realize the truth and with that serving as the base, go on from there.

We have learned a lot about current Republican mentalities from just the GOP primary debates; the audience booing a soldier based in Iraq because he’s gay.

After a question was raised by the moderator Wolf Blitzer, should a man be allowed to die who has a life threatening condition unless treated, but has no insurance, an audience member who shouted out, “Let him die,” erupted the audience into cheers and clapping.

In both these cases, the GOP candidates all stood there in silence and did not offer one bit of a defense for the soldier or hypothetically sick man.

When Perry the good Christian that he is, but no less has most likely issued the execution of an innocent man in Texas, pronounces in defiant tones he is for capital punishment, again the crowd breaks out into raucous roars and cheers.

A bumper sticker always comes to mind when I think of the moral majority, women’s rights and the death penalty…Fundamental Christians only like you as a fetus.

Is this coherent or incoherent behavior? Is it the trend we really want to go down in? When times are tough, is it fair to pick scapegoats such as immigrants, the poor, gays and lesbians to vent anger and blame out on?

Do you truly believe our current economic condition along with the extreme weather in tornadoes, fires and hurricanes is God’s actions in punishing us for our sins, as Michelle Bachmann alludes to?

Consumer spending is down because consumers have no confidence due to unemployment, under employment or no employ to offer whatsoever to the middleclass. With Republican politicians doing nothing to relieve middleclass pangs and actually taking programs away that relieved economic woes, only adds to the misery. How can one expect consumers to embrace confidence?

Upward mobility is becoming rapidly, a thing of the past.

The lowest unemployment in a hundred years was under the start of Republican Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential term at 2.5% in 1953. But also, as no coincidence, the highest corporate tax rates were in existence too.

With these high tax rates of up to 92%, corporations and industry didn’t pay that full tax amount if they used that profit liquidity to reinvest in technology and new hiring.

When today’s Republicans tell you that 35% corporate tax rates are too high and that is why businesses don’t hire, don’t for one second believe them. First off, hardly any corporation pays that amount while many don’t pay one dime in taxes. The corporate subsidies and tax breaks take care of that. But with no incentive to reinvest that profit as back in the ‘50s, CEOs just ensure the money is pocketed and sits in their coffers. The GOP politician is working for his/her donor, not you.

This hurts the country twofold. Companies have no incentive to hire, which hurts the economy and the lack of reinvesting back into R&D and technology, pushes American companies into the back of the pack in coming up with newer concepts and product to meet current challenges. American companies are losing their competitive edge.

In protecting the wealthiest from a stipend of any tax increase, Republicans neglect that 1% own 40% of the wealth, while the bottom 40% who spend, own only 1% of the wealth. In a democratic society that kind of reversed lopsidedness will destroy an open consumer market; the money needs to be spread out more evenly.

Banging down the doors of Social Security and Medicare do not lessen the deficit as Republicans would like us to believe and are two of the most efficient programs this country and its government have ever produced and conducted.

Medicare is far more effective and honest than any policy a private insurer has to offer. Before Social Security, a little over 50% of America’s elderly lived in poverty. Today, due primarily to Social Security that rate has dropped to 10%. We should all be fighting tooth and nail for these two government entities to remain intact and whole.

I am eternally and internally an optimist, for nothing is impossible; it’s just that certain things are a little more possible than others. That’s all…

Reporting as Referendum,

BJA

10/26/2011

A P.S. News Flash: A new hopeful has just announced his candidacy for the U.S. presidency and has tossed his name into the GOP candidate ring. It is none other than Terry Jones that Quran burning pastor from Florida. His platform is based on a seven point plan, one of which is to immediately deport all illegal immigrants and remains anti-Islam. He's calling his campaign 'Stand Up America Now' and does have financial backing from some conservative and religious principles with a couple of right-wing groups.

It just seems that the Republican candidates, instead of climbing the incline, increasingly keep rolling downhill. I dare say the Republican Party is disintegrating from their own means and devices. Good luck on that...

2011-09-27T20:29:00.014-04:00

IN REVERENCE

A Little Life/A Short Life:

The family is still in grieving. Normally my family keeps to ourselves during bereavement, but at this time and for this time, I feel the need to pen it. My sister was the proudest of grandmas. She had a set of four-year-old grandson twins. I say had, for just last month one half of the twin set passed away. That twin was Andrew. Little Andrew died due to a severe asthma attack that shut down and collapsed his lungs. He didn’t immediately pass away, but lingered on in an unconscious state due to the initial attack cutting off the oxygen supply to his brain.

Taken to the hospital, Andrew was diagnosed with little or no brain activity, but staff and family decided to keep him on life support for another couple days. During that period, many family members were allowed to see the little body lying lifeless with amassed medical equipment surrounding him. This was to be the last glimpses of him and his life ebbing away.

His twin brother, who had been with Andrew side-by-side every single day since birth, saw him too, but of course for a little four-year-old, the understanding and the magnitude of the graven situation doesn’t filter in. Once brought back home he asked for Andrew and has every past day since, wondering why his brother can’t come back home.

He calls out for Andrew by nickname. “Mokey,” he asks, a revision of Monkey, “Where is Mokey?”

Perhaps, a bit more active than most toddlers, Andrew and his twin brother were into everything that their inquisitive minds would lead and take them to. They were little buggers, but no matter if it was in good intentions, or getting into trouble…it was always done together.

On the last evening with still no signs of improvement, physicians asked the family if it would be alright to keep Andrew on life support another day, not to save him, but to harvest his vital organs. After the initial realization and shock wore off that he was gone, the family agreed.

Though Andrew’s wee-little body gave out on him, it was a veritable life saver for others. Along with his eye lens being donated, his heart went to a five-year-old boy and his liver went to a nine-month-old baby girl. His two kidneys were melded together somehow and were rushed to save the life of a thirty-five-year-old man.

In those aspects, he lives on but as whole, where are you now lil’ Mokey, where are you…

Humanitarian Principle vs. Political Pandering:

Just this year, a World Health Organization and Save the Children study published its results of a twenty year analysis that was based on more data than ever before produced with extensive countries’ medical and statistical consultations. In it, it turns out that the United States of America is tied with Qatar in rank as the 41^st world country in infant mortality. Tied with Qatar no less…and with the second worse ranking among modern nations. American newborns are two and a half times more likely to die than newborns in Finland, Iceland or Norway, while three times more likely than Japanese newborns.

With that noted, the core of asthma effects is inflammation of the lungs caused by the increased sensitivity of airwaves from introduced allergens and triggers. Doctors are limited to a degree in treating pediatric asthma as opposed to adult asthma, for harsher medications are more restrictive on children and diagnosis, in particular for under three-year-olds, is much harder to derive.

Just this month America commemorated the tenth year anniversary of 9/11, as we should have, for we lost 2,653 innocent souls that day. But, in terms of asthma, in particular in ever increasing child asthma, it too deserves attention. It is more discrete with numbering spread out in the days it kills, but nonetheless it is killing our children. Since 2007 more than 185 American children die each year from asthma.

Also sad, according to the Center for Disease Control, ever since 2007 two out of five (40%) with asthma were uninsured and could not afford medical treatment and prescriptions. In addition, one out of nine (11%) insured Americans could not afford the high priced medical prescriptions to arrest asthma attacks.

Asthma is the leading chronic illness among children. Today, 14.4 million school days per year are lost attributed solely to American asthmatic children here in the U.S. It is currently ranked third for reasons of child hospital admissions and is not abating or stagnating, but climbing.

Pollution particulates are not allergens per say, but are triggers that exacerbate allergy attacks in young developing lungs. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Lung Association have pointed out from their academia studies that pollution plays a major role in more aggressive asthma attacks. In areas where industrial pollutants are emitted child asthma attacks rise in their intensities, while in areas where pollution was brought under control and decreased, so too did chronic asthma attacks drop in the children living in the region.

So, one would think that cleaning up pollution would be a top priority with our elected officials. What is downright shameful is that, though we cannot control asthmatic allergens such as dander, pollen and mites, we can control the amount of pollution particles that are inhaled by our little one’s lungs, but Republicans choose not to.

Unfortunately, not only is the Republican House ignoring these figures concerning our infants and children’s health, in their newly passed Train Act, they are actually going to allow polluter industries to pollute even more. Under the false premises of job creation, Republicans are actually protecting and allowing polluters to pollute more by taking away current anti-pollution regulations and gutting the EPA’s authority to monitor polluting offenders. Republicans have chosen industry over our child’s welfare. Of course there are a host of other pollutants as well, that will no longer be controlled that cause a slew of health issues from irritants to nerve and brain damage.

Actions like this are not only inexcusable, it is a national tragedy.

This is egregious, not only am I concerned, I’m ticked off at Republican primal mentalities. Yore dang tootin’ I’m annoyed. I just lost a great-nephew due to the ravishes of asthma and Republicans want to add to the misery of parents with asthmatic children by shielding irresponsible polluters? Not on my watch, I’m going to be the thorn in their foot and they will begin to hobble.

This asthmatic upswing in child asthma has got to be approached and responsibly addressed. We’re losing our children. My personal crusade in tribute to Andrew is a petition to Republicans. I’m calling it the ‘Mokey Petition’ and its sole agenda is to bring awareness and lessen pollution emissions, not increase them.

With these statistics and numbers, someone has got to bring this out into the forefront and to the attention of our so-called well intended politicians. It's apparent, they have been blessed, now's the time to reciprocate and bestow upon our children at least the minimum of blessings of a safe and secure environment...an assurance to breathe into little developing lungs fresh clean air.

For you Republicans, let me just say this, you may take away our middleclass jobs, our benefits and even our retirements without so much as just a fuss in return, but don't mess with our children.

When My Child Cries I Cry:

It is agonizing and wrenching for a mother with an asthmatic child to watch him/her suffer through an attack. They must be stalwart and strong outwardly for the child’s sake, but inwardly they are emotionally suffering and tearing apart. They get through one attack, only to know that there will be more to come; perhaps they surmise will the next one be the fatal one.

If, or when that child dies, unmitigated sorrow and constant grief feels the mother’s heart; her otherwise healthy and normal child now suddenly gone from her, by one critically fatal attack.

For a bereaved parent, the grief in losing a child for any reason is tantamount to losing their own life. Nothing said or done can erase away the pain. But when we have the capability to lessen a disease’s causation and choose not to…that has an equivalency value of total ignorance.

Over 7 million American children have asthma and with a prevalence rate of 8.4%, America has to begin seriously approaching this exponential increase and put a halt to pollution. If you can’t do well for the sake of your children, then who can you? I for one want to laugh with my children in their security, not cry for the reasons they have to cry when protections are taken away.

M’ lil’ Mokey, in tribute you will be remembered…

Lil' Mokey, forever retain that smile to shine down on us...

In Honor,

BJA

09/27/2011 for:

08/21/2011 4 Years & 5 Months Old to the Day

2011-09-12T22:37:00.019-04:00

Eventually the Tree Will Fall

Blame Game:

I get a lot of e-mails from Republican friends that are outright blatantly false in claiming what the current U.S. government is doing for illegal aliens. From food stamps to free education, free housing and even free credit cards they all claim that the U.S. government is essentially a free giveaway sweepstakes grab for anyone who is illegal in this country bought and paid for, courtesy of the hard working taxpaying American.

The latest e-mail was more of an attack stating that three previous presidents had deported illegal aliens in mass to create jobs for the ‘real American’ and then asked the question, “Why can’t we do this now?” It ends in large bold letters,

“Don’t forget to pay your taxes – 12-20 million illegal aliens are depending on you!”

Well, after a truckload of these e-mails had been received, once this one reached my screen, I’d pretty much had had enough and fired back a reply that wasn’t exactly too kind. In a more crude connotative tone, I replied back by stressing impolitely, “Don’t allow the e-mail to just stop there. This has riled the Cherokee Indian in my blood, so I say, why not go back to the days when the white man broke every treaty ever promised to uphold and acted illegally as the illegal alien in going into and taking the lands of the American Indian. Why don’t we start there and send the bones of these illegal Europeans packaged along with you as their ancestors and ship it all back from whence ya’ll came.”

Though a silly rebuttal, it was much more befitting and I did feel a bit appeased after sending it. Later an e-mail peace offering of amity and kindness was received from the recipient of my terse e-mail. So apparently, he knew the rope had stretched and frayed into a string about to break. These e-mails are uncalled for, but what is it in their attraction in popularity for the right-wing?

Of course all these illegal alien e-mails are false and all the other made-ups concerning Obama’s birth rights, religion and lack of patriotism are too. If the blatancy doesn’t at first slap you in the face, a little effort in researching could reveal the inaccuracy. They are bogus and needless gossip. So, why is there a great length in effort to come up with these sour and asinine statements? The obvious reason is strictly due to a bias train of thought. With the country hurting financially and socially, these Republicans, or anyone else in like thinking, are searching for a scapegoat to squarely lay blame on for all of America’s ills.

I don’t truly know if the Republican receivers of these e-mails know that they are real or not, for they send them to me sometimes to check out their validity. Yes, they are friends, but I’m still figuring out if they are really that ignorant enough to put merit and stock into these forwarded mailings. But I do know they cling to these e-mails in hopes that they will be a cause in support of their biased opinions, whether they are true or not, for whatever is the case they intend to forward them on to others.

So what does this say? In my opinion anyway, it says that there is a deep seated divisiveness nestled in a Republican’s mindset that doesn’t want to share on both ends of the spectrum. On one end, the right-wing he/she doesn’t want to share any scraps of economic gains that still exists with others. That is why they so desperately seek out perceived pushovers like illegal aliens. Before, it has been based on internal American ethnicity, but always on social ranking. Even poor-folk Republicans feel they’re squared above the rest of the poor folks. Come to think of it, a poor Republican is a bit of an oxymoron. If Republican politics primarily cater to the rich, why on Earth are there poor Republicans still rooting for the GOP? Anyway…on the other end, Republicans absolutely refuse to share in the blame of why America is in this state to begin with, as if the blame is all on liberal accounts. Let me elaborate a bit…

A Stick in Your Crawl:

Concerning George Bush, I’m not this time around going to spew out a load of figures and unveiled he said/she did statements and actions. We’ve gone all over the W. Bush era and have covered about all there is to know in the soaring financial numbers and bad policies that he and his administration infected the country with. So, we’re going to look at it down a different path; a path that leads to the psyche.

Exactly ten years ago as I write today, America was attacked. The Twin Towers went down and along with it 2,753 totally innocent lives. We as a nation were greatly saddened, then appalled and finally angered to action in retaliation.

Bush seized on that attitude to promote and proceed ahead with his agenda to invade Iraq. The only compromise for him was that he’d first have to go into Afghanistan, but that was a small matter. So he went first into Afghanistan, made a good show utilizing the world’s most powerful military against rag-tag militants, but left too soon allowing Osama bin-Laden to escape when he was holed up in Bora Bora and his capture or death was imminent. Bush pulled the military out to send them to his real project in Iraq, still taking advantage of America’s prevailing, ‘let’s get ‘em’ mood.

Now, ten years later on this anniversary date of 9/11, where are we? Bush’s miscues dragged the country into the longest and costliest war period America has ever been involved in. In addition to 9/11, it reeks of more lost blood and treasure with nearly six thousand military coffins filled and 40,000 more wounded and maimed for life. The monetary cost has surpassed the $4 trillion mark in Iraq alone.

Osama is finally gone, dumped somewhere in the bottom of the Arabian Sea and most probably is fish crap by now. Bush, in an interview with USA Today just last week was trying to gain credit for the assassination of bin-Laden stating the work to get him was done by his presidency. The idiot realizes he had seven years to get him, but never did. Nevertheless, he wants bragging rights and to let the credit shift away from the president who actually called the shots to get him in only two years of his presidency.

During Bush’s years, the more he let the culprit slip away, the more this country changed. What has Bush’s two wars accomplished? What has Osama bin-Laden and his ability to elude the US all those years done to the unity of this country?

The wars have drained us. They have left us limp with former stalwart friendly nations. We can’t call the shots anymore. We have no bite that grips. The wars also spawned Al-Qaeda recruiting posters throughout the Middle East and even into some western and European nations; even into the U.S. in a couple of instances. Bush’s drawn line in the sand in, “You’re either with us or not,” statement and attitude gave the U.S. a black eye as an arrogant nation and we lost global ranking. Bush alienated friends and threatened the rest. The Bush administration’s secretiveness and abhorrent behavior in Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo fell right into bin-Laden’s “see I told you so” debate on America’s conduct. The U.S. was shamed.

In 2002 Bush decreed through his ‘National Strategic Strategy’ that America would not permit any nation to reach a level of power where it might challenge the predominance of American superiority in any part of the world his administration deemed significant to U.S. security.

Later, during his second inaugural address Bush stressed, “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” He finishes with America’s committal to its “ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

So where did he put America’s stance with only one foot tip-toeing to balance with? At the time, 192 nations in the United Nations’ roll-call were ruled by dictators of some sort. Did Bush intend America to overthrow them all and install a U.S. brand of democracy? Not hardly, even he catered to some, but it was sound words for a bully.

Turkey, a once staunch NATO friend that actually sent troops to Korea to aid our cause there during the Korean war, refused Bush to have access to Turkish air bases during the Iraq conflict, because Bush flipped his nose at them and did not allow them to be privy on what the U.S. military was doing on Turkish soil before and during start up of the conflict. Now, Turkey is partnering with Iran.

After all our effort in Iraq to install some form of democracy, the Shia controlled government in Baghdad is shifting to Iran. During Bush’s last year in office, only 5% of the Egyptian populace favored the U.S. and in the countries of Morocco and Jordan, both averaged out to only 11%. Middle East countries that were once unabashedly loyal to the U.S., now feel confidently aggressive towards us.

As soon as American soldiers make their last boot print in the Iraqi and Afghani desert sands, the two countries will revert back to their own way of doing things; ya can bet yore bottom dollar on it.

Bush should have reserved his ‘coalition of the willing’ to go after al-Qaeda and forget the fighting he wanted in Iraq. Heck, Osama despised Saddam Hussein and Saddam could’ve cared less about Osama. The Ayatollah of Iran detested both Saddam and the Taliban of Afghanistan because they murdered his diplomats. Imagine that, maybe we could have had Iranians and Iraqis fighting for us instead of against us.

But Bush’s constant premonitory preaching of a world democracy with himself at the helm, in his belligerent and ignorant way of thinking, would allow him to lead in the fulfillment of all mankind.

Instead, Bush dubs Iraq and Iran, while throwing North Korea into the fold as well, with the insane nametag of ‘axis of evil.’ This only made Iran and North Korea dig in and intensify their military.

General William Odom, who was not one or two, but a three star general and had served under Reagan as director of the National Security Agency (NSA), stated that Bush’s military dabbling was “the worst strategic disaster in U.S. history.”

So, what did Bush accomplish with the invasions? The question should be what has it created? The answer to that is a downgrade in America, the slip for the initial fall in losing our status.

When Bush was elected, we had just won out on the Cold War. We were the last superpower standing with the world’s mightiest military and economy. The dollar was at its highest and the budget inherited from Clinton was a surplus. The world looked up to us, until the mistakes and miscues of the Bush administration set in.

After taking office, Bush showed the world our black skirt that we would and were willing to torture; our humane and ethical doctrines were thrown out the door. No matter how his administration tried to conceal it and no matter how they tried to sugarcoat it in attempting to portray it as less than what it was by giving it the cute new name of ‘enhanced interrogation’…it was still unapologetic torture.

It proved to the world on how the conflicts were conducted that perhaps our military wasn’t so supreme after all, when a collected few rag-tag rebels and terrorists could thwart and hold it at bay.

Then on top of all this, Republican installed lack of business ethics and policies came crashing down on Wall Street and has made the average American pay for it dearly in loss of jobs, income, social programs and his/her dignity.

Bush’s foreign policy and domestic programs have weakened this country of ours. We lost clout under him. Each and every American, whether subliminally or outwardly senses this. This is what we all have in common. On how we react to it is the difference.

As far as bin-Laden goes, he definitely hurt our pride and made us act in a manner of provocation. We unified, but soon turned inward upon ourselves and allowed the anger to leak out amongst ourselves. We looked unto ourselves to find a common enemy amongst us. That enemy became the American Moslem, the illegal alien and any American liberal that would defend them.

Peter King, a Republican congressman from New York instituted a peer review of all American Moslems and their mosque dealings, stating that we have to weed out any internal terrorists, while at the same time he supports the IRA of Ireland. The senseless whining conducted by Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and the slew of other Republicans concerning the construction of a religious center that also has a mosque near the ground zero site was intended to strike nerves in the moral majority in their brand of varnished patriotism. All the political and social uproar of illegal immigration, as if they were never here before when things were good, was a biased slant towards Mexicans and Latinos in general.

During economic good times, Republicans never harp about immigration. But instead of setting up policies to create jobs during down swings, they prefer to find a dupe to blame it on and insist that they are taking viable jobs away from American citizens. Most illegal aliens that work here have jobs that are mostly looked over by Americans, for they are very low paying with no form of benefits.

This internal divisiveness is what Republicans branded as their own method to hold onto power. To literally demean your challenger through misinformation, false accusations and lies over and over and over; even if it’s to ignore the country’s business and woes. That is their mantra and system; attack the credibility of opponents over and over. Just listen once to the Republican debates and you will see the vile vindictiveness towards Obama.

Sawing Off the Limb Yore Sitting On:

Righting the wrongs of this nation is just not in the Republican playbooks, for if it were, they would first accept and learn from their errors that led to the wrongs. It appears though they can only shift the blame while repeating the same mistakes. They currently are pushing hard to repeal the Dodd-Frank bill that covers Wall Street reform and consumer protections. How soon they forget what got us into this financial mess was from the lack of regulations that are contained in this bill.

In Mitch McConnell’s first announcement in winning the 2010 reelection as Kentucky senator and senate minority whip, he stated his top priority was to defeat Obama. He held his very first meeting behind a closed door with fellow Republican senators insisting that no matter what Obama wants, just say no. And boy-howdy have they ever said “no-no-no” to anything concrete to the country’s economic recovery and alleviation of average citizen woes ever since; only because the just causes first came from Obama.

Take payroll tax cuts and job creation for instance. One would think in reducing payroll taxes that Republicans would be all over it, for when the average American thinks of taxes, he/she compares it with Democrats and when he/she thinks of tax deductions, he/she compares it with Republicans. This is because traditionally and today is no exception, Republicans always whine about taxation.

Unfortunately this is not the case when it comes to extending the payroll tax cuts. A payroll tax cut bill that lowered payroll taxes down from 6.2% to 4.2% for anyone making under $106,800/yr. is due to expire this coming January. Obama wants to not only extend the payroll tax cuts before it expires, but to expand them from the current 4.2% down to 3.1%. Simply because this is coming from Obama, Republicans are balking and favor the expiration instead. This, even after Republicans fought so hard to protect the affluent Bush tax cuts and corporate tax subsidies.

With unemployment remaining stagnant at 9.1%, Obama has given a total of 118 speeches just this year on jobs and job creation, but Republicans continue to stymie job creation legislation. Even though in poll after poll, Americans feel that job creation is the nation’s number one priority.

Republican reasons are very shallow in why they won’t pursue employment legislation. Primarily they only use two justifications. One is to protect corporation interests and they will hire, which this trickledown effect was done by Republicans during the Bush era. Less we not recall, this was the period the U.S. witnessed the highest lay-offs and least job creation the country has experienced.

The other excuse is in using the nation’s debt as collateral in pointing to a dire need of immediate austerity measures. Austerity measures are typically last resort efforts when there is a threat that government is unable to pay its bills. But foremost, in honoring liability debt so soon, while ignoring economic job growth, is saying we need to invoke austerity debt measures because we are a broke nation. On the other hand, when it comes to defense spending, aren’t Republicans the first to step in line and still claim the U.S. to be the richest nation on Earth?

Of course, if Republicans had had their way and defaulted on the debt ceiling raise crushing the value of the dollar, austerity measures would have been a priority. But at an ever stagnant 9.1% unemployment rate, now is not the time for austerity debt measures. This country needs stimulus now for not only working families, but for the country’s economic health as a whole. Tightening the screw so soon is only going to strip the bolt.

Leaders need to be as big as or even bigger than the crisis at hand and approach it. They don’t need to be placing or shifting blame, griping or sidestepping. When has omission ever gotten anything done? When has cooperation ever failed?

On the Dole:

Republicans from their statements obviously think that the unemployed American worker has no self esteem and is quite comfortable in remaining jobless. In holding the deficit ceiling rise as hostage, they pressured Obama into allowing unemployment benefit extensions to expire. Economists state that unemployment benefits during recessionary periods are not only good for the unemployed, it is also good for the economy by inducing buying power. It’s as if Republicans really perceive America’s unemployed prefers government funded poverty over honest work. Here are a few excerpts of their statements:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich stated, “The extension of unemployment has given people a perverse incentive to stay on unemployment rather than accept a job.” (08/11/2010)

Representative Dean Heller (R-NV) claimed that on extending unemployment, “Is the government creating hobos.” (02/21/2010)

Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) under his almighty wisdom purported, “Unemployment insurance doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” (03/01/2010)

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) says, “We're basically undermining the cyclical event. Because you're out of the recession, you're starting to see growth and you're clearly going to dampen the capacity of that growth if you basically keep an economy that encourages people to, rather than go out and look for work, to stay on unemployment. Yes, it's important to do that up to a certain level, but at some point you've got to acknowledge that we're not Europe.” (05/24/2010)

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) barks that the unemployed won’t look for work “until their benefits run out.”

This is all kind of sad. I am glad for them that they have never experienced a prolong period of no income, but they could at least understand how that might be for millions of unemployed families and begin to do the things necessary in turning that around instead of blaming it all on the victims suffering through it.

Now Ya See 'Em, Now Ya Don’t:

Even though they themselves recessed for the whole month of August and Bush even took off the whole month in 2001 when American intelligence was spying on a jihadist learning how to fly planes while Bush was unavailable for briefings; that’s OK. But for Obama to take one week off this past August was tantamount to treason according to most Republican bellyaching.

While Congress is in the August recess, it is normally the time they have community meetings in their districts to hear constituent voices and concerns. These town hall meetings are always free and is about the only chance citizens can meet their representatives. Not this time. For the first time, a lot of Republican congressman had left the building before even entering it. They opted for paid private events hosted by friendly corporate executives or business organizations and other impersonal routes.

Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) opted out of town hall meetings in discussions with citizens of his district. Instead, a $15.00 out of pocket fee was charged to go see the Congressman.

Representative Ben Quayle (R-AZ) charged $35.00 a head to attend his luncheon meeting held by the Arizona Republican Lawyers Association.

Representative Chip Cravaack (R-MN) held private invitation only meetings and one $10.00 per head assembly hosted by the National Federation of Businesses.

Representative Renee Ellmers (R-NC) made her only showing as a speaker at a federal employees’ forum that had a $13.00 admission charge. Her constituents could only listen to her speech and not speak to her and weren’t allowed to ask questions.

Representative Lou Barletta’s (R-PA) only interaction for the month was an appearance at a CEO to CEO forum charging a $35.00 per plate admission.

Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA) elected to use automated messages where when a constituent phoned in, he/she was bombarded with a bunch of survey questions.

Most other Republican politicians elected to not hold any kind of interactions with the public. It is in the Constitution that states citizen members of a district have the right to assemble, meet and discuss matters with their elected officials.

Republicans are always the first to insist on upholding the Constitution. So why did they insist on evading its rules derisive of proper elected official conduct? Because they wanted to avoid hearing an earful of complaints over matters of what they’ve done and haven’t done. They did not want to face the music like Democrat delegates did during the 2010 August recess. They did what was convenient for them and not their constituency.

Departure:

There is a sense of unity during this ten year anniversary of the tragedy that struck the Twin Towers and Americans will always respect that date for eons to come. We as a nation will honor the event and in particular remember its victims, but America traditionally chooses to look ahead instead of dwelling on past melancholy. Imagine food. Americans love and enjoy the food that is on the present menu, but do not care too much for it when the food of the past exits the entrails.

The U.S. prefers looking ahead. At the moment though, there isn’t much brightness in the future. As the world is becoming more democratic, we as a nation are becoming less by putting in place Republican installed martial law in Michigan and slipping ever so exponentially into a caste system.

In the Middle East, citizens are not only fighting for, they have died fighting for freedom. In the U.S. it seems we’re doing everything we politically can to do away with democracy and to delete the middleclass while protecting the upper echelon. By taking away valued social programs and not concentrating on jobs, we have lost half of our middleclass, while the very wealthy are protected with all kinds of loopholes, tax breaks and forgiveness projects. 1% of the wealthiest Americans now have in their wallets over 35% of all the U.S. wealth.

Huge disparities in wealth create chaos. The elite will forever refer to the poor as unfortunate until they begin to rebel and riot. Then the elitist terms turn to more derogatory verbiage, such as hoodlums and the criminally minded. Indeed, breaking laws for a cause overall is harmful to a society, but the reckless behavior is only an underlining problem. In creating a society of the ‘haves and have nots’ the wealthy have to take some stalk in the responsibility of harboring a riotous atmosphere.

Osama bin-Laden wasn’t really attacking two buildings he was attacking the heart of our economy and our own individual hearts. Did bin-Laden succeed? Well, how do you rate the current U.S. economy? As far as Americans go, we have become divisive and have lost creativity replacing it with confrontation in mean and nasty tones. That’s okay to a point, but not when it pits one against the other as the enemy. Tom Delay, former House Republican Speaker, dubbed political opponents as the enemy and it stuck with Republicans. Oh, if only he had been sent to the Kyber Pass situated between Pakistan and Afghanistan smack-dab in Taliban turf. Then he would know the true definition of enemy.

This political paralysis Republicans have forced upon us currently reigns, for it appears that Democrats no longer have the will or simply just do not know how to counter it. Allowing Republicans to win simply because they say no and not be too concerned in recovery legislation is in itself a "No-No." Is it time to flatten ‘em out like a bug? Not as long as we truly follow democratic steps in honorable bounds, for in it, there exists diplomacy that takes more than one train of thought to succeed.

There is nothing more that will cheer ya up than a song and a dance with a little seltzer down yore pants. For with a song you have to have a singer and a listener for it to work; one to envision its strength and the other to enjoy that strength. To dance, we all know it takes two to tango. But with the added seltzer, well, all becomes more interesting.

Opinion Issued,

BJA

09/12/2011

2011-08-17T17:31:00.060-04:00

FRONTYARD SENSE/BACKYARD SCIENCE II

Thank Ya Kindly:

I must confess that I’m partially overwhelmed. Due to the large response from the ‘Frontyard Sense/Backyard Science’ original article, I am now so compelled to crunching out a second one.

The paper quickly shot up to number one in the most page views, doubling the number two spot currently held by ‘Land of the Circus People.’

I do appreciate all the readers and in particular Germany, the Philippines and India’s viewers. These three countries by far outranked all others in viewing this article.

So now, I give you number two.

At the tip of m’hat, thank ya’ll kindly…

Earthen Brown:

Generally, unless there is geological, biological or a combination of localized contaminant, the Earth’s surface soils are a descriptive tone of brown. Pretty much anywhere you tread and eyeball the ground in plains, forests, hills, deserts and permafrost, the surface is a hue of browns. Why is that?

Primarily there are three factors in play here, being…plants, microbes/earthworms and carbon. This is how it works.

Grains of soils are deposited mineral components from parent rock that was weathered down. Originally, the color would have been whatever constituted minerals were laid down. Iron ore deposits give off reds, while sulfur bearing materials would be more yellowish beige. Gypsum, along with its crystalline form known as selenite would be white, as is the case in White Sands National Monument.

Once these minerals are laid out, plants began to grow then drop leaves and also die. This introduced organic material layered on the surface of the minerals was then broken down and mixed by earthworms. Further, it was decomposed by soil microbes, such as bacteria and roundworms. This creates alkaline organic material that is further still, turned over and mixed with loosened minerals by the earthworms to an overall averaged depth of 20 cm. or 7.9 in. This mixed material is known as humus.

Topsoil & base soil layers

The microbes with specialized enzymes break down the chemical bonds in the humus, freeing the carbon and assimilating a lot of the element into their cell. When the microbes die they in turn release the carbon they once had consumed with the rest of the carbon they had once freed into the soil.

Now, with a lot of liberated carbon mixed in the soil, the element’s darker color comes into play. Carbon absorbs most of the color wavelengths in white light except for tinges of primary red, yellow and black. Red and yellow make orange and orange with a dash of black make brown.

You might feel deserts may not support enough plant life and earthworms to give its brown surface color, but remember, in geological times past climate events were once conducive in supporting these scenarios. Where now, there is nothing but desert sands, once upon a time stood grand forests.

Sedimentary rock Coyote Buttes Az.

There is sedimentary rock that was once soils and still retains the color brown.

With a little effort, if one digs beyond the soil zone, they will hit the originally deposited mineral zone or even bedrock and note the varying color or colors.

Skies of Blue; Sunsets of Orange:

On cloudless sunny days, why is the sky naturally eternally blue? On partially cloudy sunrises and sunsets, why is the horizon’s sky naturally colored and splattered in arrays of oranges, reds, yellows and pinks? I do include ‘naturally,’ for manmade smog and pollutants have changed the color in industrialized areas to a haze light gray. In fact, during the 1970s until great effort was put forth to clean-up air pollution, here in the states one did not see a true blue sky east of the Mississippi River.

Earth’s sky is naturally blue due to not only the make-up of its atmosphere, but also at what percent of the factors are at play. The atmosphere is composed of a number of gases.

There are elemental constituents that remain constant over time and location and compounds that show variability at any given time and location.

For the constant atmospheric components, there are the gases:

Nitrogen (N₂) at 78.08%

Oxygen (O₂) at 20.955%

Argon (Ar₂) at 0.93%

Neon (Ne₂), Helium (He₂) and Krypton (Kr₂) are all three at trace amounts

For the variable components, there are the compounds:

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) at up to 0.40%

Water Vapor (H₂O) ranging from 0.00-4.00%

Ozone (O₃) an isotope of oxygen, Methane (CH₄), Sulfur Dioxide (SO₂), and Nitrogen Oxides (NO, NO₂, N₂O) are all in trace amounts

In addition, there is also particulate matter in the forms of dust, soot, volcanic ash, condensed forms of water such as rain, snow, hail, sleet, etc. and pollutants.

We’ll note here that trace amounts are less than ~ 1.00 % and the fluctuations in concentrations of carbon dioxide are caused naturally by the seasons of plant life and superficially by manmade industrialization activities, while fluctuations in relative humidity (the measure of moisture in the air) is determined by climate.

Now, for the second factor and that is of course light. Light is vibrating electric and magnetic fields that radiate outwards in straight lines as waves just as sound waves do. As long as the paired oscillatory waves are not disturbed they will continue their universal journey in straightforward fashion.

These electromagnetic waves travel through space as unimpeded at 299,792 km/sec or 186,282 mi/sec. This of course is what we call the speed of light. The energy produced by these electromagnetic light waves is dependent on the wave’s length and frequency.

A wave length cycles through with crests and troughs at a particular frequency, which is the measured amount of waves that pass by each second. Again, just as in sound waves, the longer the wavelength of light, the lower the frequency and energy of its electromagnetic energy. In the color spectrum, each color has its own unique wavelength.

White light is the total combination of the wavelengths in the color spectrum that are continuously blending in together, where blackness of course is the total absence of all light’s wavelengths.

To prove this, just when it’s dark enough, go to your closet and look at your brightest red hanging garment. You may see the outline of the red dress or shirt, but you will not see any form of its color; it will appear simply as a dark object.

Also, go to your corner novelty shop and purchase a prism. As white light travels through the prism, the light splits up into its primary colors. The same thing is happening in a rainbow. But instead of incoming white light traveling into then split up by the prism's optics exiting as its color components, it is split by moisture contained in the air. This moisture could be in the form of rain drops, mist or spray.

A rainbow arc

All this splitting going on is refraction. Rainbows, in order to be luminous must too have a darkened backdrop, such as a rain cloud and is always opposite the sun. Also, a true rainbow is circular, but when viewing a rainbow, it appears as an arc due to the horizon blocking out the other half of the circle. When in a plane, the horizon zone is eliminated so the full circle of a rainbow may be viewed.

The prism and water droplets in a rainbow first refract the traveling white light bending its path by slowing down its light speed. Then it reflects the new refracted straight path by angling its trajectory. Finally, it again refracts it as it exits the medium exposing essentially, white light’s guts…the individual colors.

With the total atmospheric constituents in the mixture of gas molecules and percentages as listed above, as light travels through our atmosphere it bumps into the gaseous molecules. Believe it or not, but the individual gas molecules that make up our atmosphere are smaller than the overall wavelength of white light. This allows the longer wavelengths to pass right through, but the shorter wavelengths do get absorbed by the molecules. The absorption process is quick and the short wavelengths are then released and sent off in different directions from the original point of incidence as it first entered the molecule as a component of white light.

All the shorter wavelengths get absorbed then released in all different directions, but of the shorter wavelengths with higher frequencies, they are absorbed much more often than the shorter frequencies by Earth’s atmospheric gas molecules. Guess which color has a short wavelength with a higher frequency than the rest of the short wavelength colors? That’s right…blue.

The absorbed blue light is radiated in all directions and gets scattered throughout the sky. This scattering process is called the Rayleigh effect. No matter in what direction you look upwards, the scattered blue light wavelength reaches your eyes.

On the horizon though, the sky gives a much paler blue. This is due to the fact that in order to reach you, the horizon scattered blue light must first travel through more atmospheric gases. Thus, some of it is further scattered away in different directions losing its color intensity.

The scattering of the blue is also why our sun appears yellow. Out in space with no atmospheric content to view through, the sun is white. Here though on Earth, our atmosphere scatters the blue and lesser violets leaving only one other short wavelength of light left and that is the spectral yellow.

On sunrise and sunset scenes other colors come into play and it again has to do with the horizon event. As the sun rises or sets, white light along the horizon travels farther through the atmosphere than it ordinarily would higher up in the sky, so much more of the light’s wavelengths are scattered. First, the sun itself appears to change from normal yellow to golden to orange then to red. This is due to the intense scattering of the shorter wavelengths, leaving only the longest, which happens to be oranges and reds to directly beam towards your eye sockets.

The sky itself in sunrises and sunsets may also take on a host of colors. At this angle of light incidence and in particular if there is the right amount of water vapor and dust in the air, these particles further reflect light out in all directions. As light travels toward you, much more of the scattering effect takes place in the shorter wavelengths, sending longer wavelength beams of reds, oranges and even pinks for your viewing pleasure.

In addition to allowing us to see color, due to the reflecting and refracting of white light, Earth’s atmosphere also is one of the main components, along with the sun, that controls weather and climate. Though life is dependent on nitrogen and oxygen which make-up the major constants of Earth’s current atmosphere, it is the lesser amounts of the variable components that affect our weather, such as water vapor and carbon dioxide. Water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (N₂O) absorb heat emitted by Earth causing warming, whereas sulfur dioxide and clouds (condensing water vapor) blocks sun rays from even reaching the earth’s surface creating an opposite cooling effect.

The earth’s atmosphere serves as a shield deflecting harmful cosmic rays and burning up any falling objects such as smaller meteors, asteroids and comets. One only needs to view pictures of the moon’s pocked surface to attest to the protective measures our atmosphere affords us from solar debris impacts. The moon’s much weaker atmosphere has allowed many impacts to occur in testimonial to all the craters on its surface.

The atmosphere is able to burn up falling celestial debris due to specific pressure it possesses in creating friction. This friction is a form of energy that creates heat on an object hurling through it. Once that heat reaches the object’s melting and ignition points, it will begin to melt and burn up. With traces of the atmosphere up to 500 km (310.685 mi) from Earth’s surface, that’s a lot of atmosphere to travel through before making impact.

Solar System Small Parts:

Meteoroids, meteors and meteorites I’m quite sure are words we’ve all heard of, but do we know the distinction between them?

A meteoroid is a rock or bit of debris that is precariously orbiting the solar system. Size ranges from dust particles to rocky and metallic material up to 10 meters or 33 feet in diameter.

Perseides meteor over the Rockies

A meteor is essentially a meteoroid burning up as it passes through a planet’s atmosphere at speeds up to 17km/sec (10.56 mi/sec). A meteor is what we call falling stars.

A meteorite is essentially a meteor that made it through the atmosphere and impacted the surface, whether it is on land or water.

Interpretation of meteorite impact

Whoever decided to label the same object with three names that are determined by where it is located at a certain point, I’ll never know why, but it stuck and that is what we have to deal with.

To make things even more confusing, the difference between a meteoroid and an asteroid is nothing. An asteroid is simply a big meteoroid, for any meteoroid over ten meters is called an asteroid and which further, a larger asteroid is considered a small planetoid. Some physicists do indeed refer to planetoids as asteroids, but are technically wrong.

The asteroid Gaspra

Still further, a planetoid is not to be confused with a planetesimal, which is more than just a rock, but a protoplanet disk with aggregated material that collects gravitationally after reaching over a kilometer or a little over a half mile at 0.62 miles in diameter. Finally, a protoplanet is considered a planetoid that has developed internal melting creating differentiated layers.

The comet Hale-Bopp over Ohio

If this isn’t perplexing enough, in going back to asteroids, a comet is considered an asteroid, but with an additional frozen water layer that displays a visible coma or tail once solar radiation and solar winds strike the nucleus of the comet.

Now how’s that for mass bewilderment…

Arachnid:

Spiders! You either despise them or have a fascination for them, but either way you normally don’t go around catching them. The ones that do seek out our eight legged friends are far and few in between. There are a myriad of facets we could expound on in discussing the fanged little critters, but primarily we’ll discourse a bit on a few interesting facts and on a couple or three oddball species.

In speaking of fangs, in spiders they are specialized hollow chelicerae that are mouthparts and also act as mandibles that are found on most other arthropods.

Irridescent green chelicerae parts

We usually envision large spiders, like tarantulas, when we think of or have nightmares of them. Perhaps there is a reason, for the giant Goliath birdeating tarantula of the northern South American rainforests, has a full 8.89cm (3.50in) girth, a leg span of 30cm/11.8in and can weigh over 170g/6oz. This spider is in possession of fangs an averaged 2.86cm/1.125in long and though its main appetite is a quest for invertebrates, it has been known to take small rodents, bats, and venomous snakes and yes, birds. The Goliath birdeating tarantula’s toxin effects are only as bad as an hornet’s sting to humans, but its urticating hairs that are ejected into the air is what’s most harmful to humans. By rubbing their abdomen briskly with their hind legs, the airborne spider belly hairs act as a severe irritant to skin, eyes and mucous membranes.

Goliath birdeating spider

But just as impressive is how small spiders can be. The Patu digua male of Colombia has a body the size of a pinhead at 0.37mm/.015in. There are a few spider species where the female is about the same size as the male patu where no males have yet been found. Since males are normally smaller than females in the spider world, perhaps these species will have males even smaller.

Spiders always keep four legs on the surface when walking. For the most part, along with four pairs of legs totaling eight, most spiders also have four pairs of eyes situated along the front of the cephalothorax or rather the head area. The two main eyes are pigmented-cup ocelli and are capable of forming images. The other eyes only detect lightness from darkness and at what direction light is coming from.

Spiders aren’t known for excellent eyesight, but the typical jumping spider has acute eyesight ten times that of a dragonfly, in which has the best insect vision. For better perspective, jumping spiders’ telephoto sight due to a four layered retina and ability to swivel their eyes, are only five times less sharp than human sight.

These sets of secondary eyes detect light by a reflective layer of tissue over the eye called a tapetum lucidum. The reflecting tapetum lucidum is the same tissue found in vertebrate eyes that cause the varying colored eye shines when a flashlight’s beam hits an animal’s eyes. Therefore, so too will a spider’s secondary eyes emit a glow.

The spider cuticula or exoskeleton is composed of the same material as cuticles are in human fingernails and toenails which contain insoluble proteins cemented with highly cross-linked collagens. This exoskeleton would totally block out information received from the spider’s outside environment if not for the fact that spiders have modified exoskeletons that hosts an array of sensors. The cuticula is penetrated by these sensors that set up networks between the outside world and the nervous system.

Going back 420 million years ago, (190 million years before the first dinosaur roamed the earth) the spider-like arachnid, trigonotarbid lurked, but had no spinnerets for silk making. For the most part, all spiders today have the ability to spin silk which is a proteinaceous material, but not all spiders spin webs.

A sensor known as a slit sensillae found in the limb joints, aid in detecting force and pressure differentials. Where eyesight is more important to spiders that actively hunt or ambush prey, slit sensillae are more important to the web makers.

There are many types of weaving in web making such as orb, flat and funnel webs, but members of the spider family Theriidae, or house spiders weave the tangle web. This irregular webbing is what we call cobwebs once the web has collected dust. The word, cobweb comes from the old English disused coppe, which at one time meant spider.

In the spider family Deinopidae, net casting spiders do exactly what their name implies. Primarily nocturnal, they have excellent night vision. These spiders spin a rectangular net reinforcing it with extra silk. They then will suspend themselves just above the ground holding the folded net with their front legs. When an unsuspecting insect walks by, the spider widens the netting up to three times its size from when it was folded, then cast it over the prey.

In the spider family Scytodidae, known as spitting spiders, these guys have taken spider silk and spider toxin to a new realm. Spitting spiders are the only spiders to manufacture silk from their head. They still possess silk glands in the abdomen, but in addition, silk glands in the head are connected to its venom glands.

When an invertebrate prey is chanced upon, the spider will size up the prey from around a distance of 10mm/.39in. Then in measured amounts, will emit two streams of the mixed silk-venom fluid from the small fangs with wide openings in the tip of its chelicerae. The ejection has been clocked at 1/600 of a second. The instantly drying concoction envelops the prey, immobilizing and entrapping it.

Other odd features of the spitting spider from its other spider cousins, is that its head is larger than its abdomen, it only has three pairs of eyes and has specialized long hearing hairs in its legs to locate prey.

Though there is current research going on in detecting new pigmentation, as yet there are only three classes of pigmentation that have been found for spider coloration. They are…bilins, guanine and ommochromes. Ommochromes are visual pigments giving spiders their characteristic darker eye coloring. Bilins are for shades of green, while guanine displays whites and silver. Guanine is normally an end-product in protein metablosim, but spiders have the ability to block its excretion and store it for color usage. The common melanins, carotenoids and pterins found in most animals are absent in spiders. Spiders also utilize a tanning process to coat their exoskeleton in browns.

In the jumping spider genus, Portia, members are araneophagic meaning that what is on their main menu are other spiders. Portia stalking skills in capturing spider prey up to 200 percent bigger in size, indeed shows intellectual skills. They are capable of learning and problem solving.

A Portia jumping spider species

The favorite prey is web spiders and with the appearance of looking like a wilted leaf, Portia will act as a leaf caught on the web. When the poor eye-sighted web spider comes to investigate to remove the leaf debris or repair the web, the Portia attacks.

If this mode of operandi doesn’t work, the Portia spider will send out vibrations typical of a trapped insect through the web to arouse and then fool the web spider into thinking he has caught a meal.

Again if this fails, the Portia will time his assault with a light breeze that further hinders the web spider’s already poor vision by making images appear blurred.

In the Philippines, a local Portia will ambush and attack spitting spiders (that themselves stalk jumping spiders) from the rear, but in using instinct as a base, through trial and error tactics, they learn that a female spitting spider laden with eggs will not spit, so attack her head-on.

Against other jumping spiders that also possess excellent spider vision, once sighted, Portia will lie in wait appearing as leaf debris and when the unsuspecting jumping spider is in biting range, it quickly pounces and attacks.

The tactic used for any harmless insect is to simply rush and succumb the prey.

Mimicry, just as camouflage coloration are two defense mechanisms used by a lot of animals, including spiders, but some twelve families of spiders have taken mimicry not only to an art form, but to a technical science level as well in mimicking ants.

This is a spider mimicking an ant

In Batesian mimicry, where an harmless organism mimics a much more dangerous one, if you came across a certain species of spider conducting this mimic form, you would swear to the heavens you were looking at an ant. Most species of spider that perform Batesian mimicry do it to disguise themselves from their natural predators, while a few do it to stalk and prey on ants. They will even use chemical mimicry to give off the same scent as ant pheromones in fooling the true ant and predators.

A real weaver ant

Female Myrrnarachne spider

In Southeastern Asia, the spider, Myrmarachne plataleoides mimics a very aggressive weaver ant species. The jumping spider is even equipped with black dots located on the sides of the head exactly where the weaver ants’ dark eyes are located on their heads. The male spider of the species even goes further by not only in mimicking the weaver ant, but with its extended and disguised chelicerae, it appears as if the ant mimic spider is carrying a fellow ant, as weaver ants commonly do.

Male Myrmarachne spider

Spiders have eight legs where insects, as ants all have six. Also, insects have antennae where spiders have none. The ant mimic spiders ingeniously get around this obstacle by rendering their two front legs useless for walking. Instead, opting out their front legs for mobility, the spiders have incorporated them into apparent looking antennae, while waving them around in the air as insects do in inspecting their environment.

Spiders of course are predatory and carnivorous. But as in all things there is an exception to every rule, or a subscript to every script; so too is there an exception in spiders. First discovered with a withered dead species in 1896, then recently rediscovered in 2001 and fully analyzed in 2008, a jumping spider from Central America and southeastern Mexico, was found to be mostly herbivorous, a diet consisting almost solely of vegetation. The new found spider is called Bagheera kiplingli.

Do not picture an herbivorous animal grazing the fields, for this jumping spider appears to have adapted its ancestral hunting skills into thievery of delectable veggie meals. The spider dines on the protein rich leaf tips of thorny bullhorn acacia tree or shrubs (Acacia conigera), but it doesn’t collect and eat the buds on its own; it steals them.

There is a symbiotic relationship between the acacia tree and the ant species, Pseudomyrmex ferruginea. The acacia also emits a nutritious sap. The aggressive ants fiercely protect the tree from intruding animals in returning the favor for the tree’s lodging and nutritious rewards.

In utilizing their skilled ancient hunting techniques, the jumping spiders have evolved those tactics into methods for stealing the tree’s nutrients from the ant’s mouths as they are transporting leaf tips and sap. In order to be a thief of fierce stinging and biting victims the spider has to be very clever and agile. With a sudden hydraulic increase of blood pressure into their legs, the legs are rapidly thrown downwards propelling the body skywards up to fifty times its body length. This is the spider’s mode of hit and run. Before the ant even knows what happened, the spider has taken the meal and in another bound, suddenly disappears as swiftly as he came.

Though on occasion, the spider thief will also swipe an egg or larva being transported by an ant, over 90% of their diet consists of vegetation as corroborated by tissue culture research on the spider. The tissue exhibits isotopic signatures that are only evident in herbivores.

A further oddity about this spider is that unlike all other spiders that expel enzymes in their saliva to externally predigest their food into a liquid, this veggie spider eats his food raw and digests it internally as any respectable herbivore would.

Serpentine Font:

(Belly Crawl)

Ah the snake! Doesn’t thinking of snakes crawling all about bring pure joy to your soul? Most likely not! For some reason, primates (man, ape or monkey) appear to have an innate fear of snakes. Somewhere down the evolutionary line primate and snake encounters must have not gone over too well.

Snakes really are interesting animals. Just imagine foregoing limbs to opt for belly crawl mobility. In all osteological, or skeletal snake structures, except for the most latest evolved viperidae family, there are vestigial remnants of at least hind thigh bones. In the more primitive snakes such as the boas, the vestigial limbs even protrude outside the body, though more pronounced and obvious in the males. This external protuberance known as an anal spur is located at the base near the cloacal opening, a vent tied into the intestinal, urinary and reproductive tracts.

In the blind snake families of Typhlopidae from the tropical regions of Africa, Asia and the Americas and Leptotyphlopidae from the Americas, there are even remnants of a pelvic girdle. In fact the first snakes to appear on the scene as far back as 125 million years ago or so, possessed minute hind limbs in the extinct genera Coniophis and Lapparentophis.

We’ve been speaking of the hind limbs exclusively, for no snake has any structure (functional or vestigial body part) that would be considered a front limb. This is due to their evolution of Hox gene expressions controlling limb morphogenesis. The thorax of animals is a division of the body that lies between the head and abdomen. In humans, the chest area is the thorax. During the fetal stage, the dominant Hox gene expressed itself upon the developing axial skeleton of the evolving snake lineage, incorporating developing limb buds onto the cervical and into the thoracic identity. The dominance of the Hox gene was expressed from the cervical (neck) through the lumbar (lower back) all the way to the caudal (tail). So essentially, a snake’s skeleton is an extremely long exaggerated thorax.

We pretty much typically recognize the common snake mode of transportation as they slither across. This form of snake ‘S’ wave mobility is called lateral undulation and while it is the main form of terrestrial locomotion it is the only aquatic form. But there are four other forms on how snakes move about as well.

Sidewinding movement

For mobility, snakes utilize the coordinated efforts of ribs, muscle and abdomen scales. In lateral undulation, a firm surface with friction is required to obtain grip for the snake’s belly scales conveniently called the ventral scales. Ribs also help push off anything from rocks and twigs to leaf litter. On a flat surface where grip is not so obtainable, snakes will resort to sidewinding or crotaline locomotion, such as on loose grained sand or in slick mud, where the series of loops leave J-shaped tracks as imprints in the loose surface. In the static nature of sidewinding a very low cost in caloric output is realized.

Elaphe obsoleta quadrivittata

For vertical ascension or tunnel-side restraints, most snakes will resort to concertina locomotion. In this mode of movement the posterior portion of the body is first braced against the tree bark or tunnel wall allowing the anterior portion to extend and straighten. The anterior is then flexed and anchored allowing the snake to straighten its posterior end and pull it forward. The steps are repeated in sequence utilizing vertebrate muscles and belly scales for grip until the snake arrives at his destination.

In horizontal undulation or rectilinear motion, which means movement one way in a straight line, the snake does not bend its body laterally. Incorporating this mode, the ventral scales are lifted then pulled forward before contacting the surface while the body is being pulled over the ventral scales. This generates waves of movement and stasis that pass over the posterior body resulting in a series of skin ripples pushing the snake forward. This method is employed mostly by the heavier boas and pythons and is used for stalking prey since it generates very little movement and is a very slow process, thus a lesser chance in being detected.

Chrysopelea caught in flight mode

Gliding is taken advantage of by the snake genus, Chrysopelea, the flying or gliding snakes of Southeast Asia. Up in trees or any elevation, to elude predators or simply want to go to more accommodating environs, this snake will lean forward to determine a level of inclination, advance a thrust propelling itself from the launching pad, extend its rib cage from back of the head to the anal vent and suck in its belly, thus becoming airborne in a controlled glide. These body assimilations create a concave wing effect, quite like the bottom of a Frisbee and along with a continuous lateral undulation motion parallel to the ground this snake enjoys a long lasting flight (up to a 100 meters/330 feet) and a safe predetermined landing.

The generation of the body’s concave winging cause air pressure to increase underneath the snake creating lift and flight control, where the initial ballistics during lift-off controls the destination point. The lateral undulation stabilizes the flight pattern where the tail may perform as a rudder.

Another glider found in South America, is the short distance aerialist Baron's green racer (Philodryas baroni), which flattens its body to glide from one tree to another.

I should note a sixth form of snake locomotion that deals with heavier boas and pythons that are primarily arboreal. They will grip a branch with the posterior end to act as an anchor, then elongate the anterior head end, reach for another branch, anchor to that one, pull the back half of the body onto the new branch and then repeat the process. This repetitious form of moving through trees can be accomplished by snakes up to 6.1 meters or 20 feet in length quite handedly, or should I say rather ‘un-handedly.’

(Sound)

Snakes have no ears externally or internally to detect sound vibrations from the air, but they do hear you. The ‘ear’ of a snake, for lack of a better word, is within the skull frame itself, where the skull bones sense varying vibrations that travel through the ground. So in effect, as you are merrily enjoying a walk through the field, the snake ‘hears’ your approaching footsteps long before you hear its hiss during the encounter. Snakes may also detect air vibrations through a complex system of internal resonances in distinguishing air vibrations through their scales.

Speaking of hissing, snakes have no larynx or voice box, but even though they can’t hear it, still produce hissing sounds. They do this by expelling air in a forcible manner. Snakes have a small slit known as the glottis just behind the anchored portion of the tongue. The glottis is the opening into the windpipe or trachea. Just behind the glottis is a thin membrane tissue. When air is forcibly expelled from the lungs, the exhaled air rushing past the membrane through the constricted passageway causes the membrane to vibrate producing the familiar snake hiss.

(Shedding)

Snakes shed their skin up to four times in their first year of life, down to twice or only once a year in older age brackets. Unlike spiders and insects molting out of an old tight exoskeleton, snakes do not shed to grow. They shed just like humans do to replace worn skin and also to get rid of ectoparasites. Instead of doing it in piecemeal fashion as humans do in flaking, snakes do it all in one sloughing.

The skin of a snake is of course covered in scales (some call scales scutes), which are simply an extension of the skin so are also shed. In this process of molting skin and scales, we call it ecdysis. Ecdysis begins when the connection between the old outer skin and new inner skin liquefies separating then casting off the old outer skin and scale layer. During ecdysis, the snake is at its grumpiest. For apparent reasons it is obviously an uncomfortable condition and also, the ocular or brille scale that covers the eye is normally transparent, but clouds over once shedding begins making it very difficult to see.

In fact all scales, composed of hard beta keratin, are clear just like the ocular scale. What gives the snake color is not due to pigmentation in the scales but of the diffraction of light through the scales to the pigmented skin and back out to the viewer’s vision perception.

(Scalar)

There are two basic types of scales…smooth and keeled. In smooth scaled snakes, the scales are more reflective appearing shiny. There is a rougher image in keeled scales with a ridge running down the central axis.

Under a microscope, smooth scales appear as densely packed parallel fibers, where keeled scales are widely spaced ridges cross connected by fibers running at right angles.

The family, Hydrophiidae makes up the sea snakes containing around fifty species. Sea snakes left the land for the sea eons ago and are now so equipped for a marine existence that they are very sluggish and awkward on land due to a third of their posterior being rudder shaped. Only one genus of sea snake comes to shore to lay eggs, the rest give birth to live young in water.

The reason I’m bringing sea snakes up here is that in addition to having very potent venom to ensure fleeing fish victims don’t get too far away in swimming, they also possess the roughest keeled scales to wrap around and hold slippery prey.

Sidewinder (Cerastes cerastes)

To end the scale discussion, there is one genus of snakes that do not shed their tail scales, but instead retain them. Do you know just what snake genus that is? It is the Crotalus genus…the rattlesnakes. A rattlesnake rattle is the loose layers of unshed scales that vibrate against each other in creating the characteristic snake rattle.

(Smell)

To track prey, snakes use scent. Along with some lizards such as monitors, snakes flicker a forked tongue to pick-up odor molecules as air particles and take them into the mouth. There, the molecule odors are recorded by a chemo-receptor located in the roof of the mouth known as Jacobson’s organ.

Jacobson’s organ is an olfactory sense organ and for the snake, is used primarily for understanding its ambient environment by letting it know what is in it. But this organ has a very peculiar and interesting evolution in animals. Jacobson’s organ in the snake is a modified vomeronasal organ.

In most animals that still retain a functioning vomeronasal organ, use it for picking up pheromone scents, chemical messages that are sent by individuals to individuals of the same species.

It was once at one point important in human evolution, for the human embryo retains a vomeronasal organ during the early stages of development, but as the fetus grows, the vomeronasal becomes non-functional. It may though have some effect, for chemical communication does appear to occur in humans.

(Vision)

Snakes do not have the best of eyesight. Most fossorial or burrowing species have vestigial eyes and can only detect light and dark tones, but for the most part snake vision is adequate enough to detect objects and their movements. Keenest eyesight is possessed by the arboreal or tree dwelling snakes.

Snakes with elliptical pupils are primarily nocturnal, while rounded pupils suggest being diurnal. The twig snake has a horizontal elliptical pupil for binocular vision.

(Size)

Snake size varies tremendously in extant snake species with the smallest having to go to Leptotyphlops carlae, known colloquially as the Barbados blindsnake or threadsnake. An adult measures a mere length of 10cm/3.9in. To illustrate a visual comparison, this snake could comfortably curl around an American quarter coin.

The largest is an ongoing debate, but the common anaconda (Eunectes murinus) of South America has a documented length of 7.5m/24.75ft. Though this may not be the longest snake, as that documented title goes to the reticulated python (Python reticulatus) of Southeast Asia at 9m/29.7ft, if they were weighed, the anaconda, which is a boa species, would be the heaviest weighing in at 97.5/214.95lbs.

Vertebrae: Anaconda vs. Titanoboa

Paleontologists found fossilized snake vertebrae from 28 specimens of an extinct species that is by far the largest, longest and heaviest snake we know of so far. Slithering or lumbering around in the rain forests of Columbia 60-58 million years ago was a behemoth of a snake called Titanoboa cerrejonensis. This aptly named titan of a snake grew between 12.75-15m/42-50ft and weighed an estimated 1134kg/2500lbs. The diameter of its girth was a full meter across or 3.3 feet. Titanoboa totally blows away the last known largest snake, the extinct Gigantophis garstini that measured from 9.3-10.7m/31-35ft.

Gigantophis & an average woman

Titanoboa compared to an average man

(Organ Arrangement)

Due to the elongation of the snake body, snakes are either losing one of a paired organ, or are rearranging them. The left lung has become vestigial or totally absent in some species, while the right one is elongating. Paired organs such as the kidneys and reproductive organs are staggered within the body with one located ahead of the other.

The snake’s heart is encased in a sac called the pericardium, but is able to move around due to the lack of a diaphragm. The heart is located right at the fork of the bronchial tubes. The cardiovascular system as a whole is a bit unique in that there is a renal portal system in which blood from the tail must first pass through the kidneys before returning to the heart.

(Venom)

It is incorrect to call a snake poisonous; even for those that inject venom into you. Poison is inhaled, ingested or absorbed; venom is injected. Pert near any snake venom of choice could be swallowed without any ill-effect as long as there is no route to enter the bloodstream as an open mouth sore. Digestion breaks the venom down. So snakes aptly are venomous and not poisonous…except for two species.

Tetrodotoxin

Isolated pockets of the otherwise harmless garter snake, Thamnophis sirtalis of western Oregon preys on the highly toxic rough skinned newt, Taricha granulose. The newt carries a very potent neurotoxin known as tetrodotoxin. If ingested, one newt is more than enough to kill a human causing the dissociation in the exchange of sodium ions between nerves. Acute effects are total paralysis while still maintaining full consciousness until death occurs through cardiac arrest. The newt acquires the toxin from the build-up of the bacterial acquired vibrio species and secretes it over its entire body.

The reason certain garter snakes are not affected, is that they possess a mutant point in the gene that codes for the sodium ion channels. This mutation is resistant to the toxin’s effects maintaining the functionality of the nerve ion exchanges.

After ingesting the poisonous newts, the snake stores this nerve poison in its liver and if any bird or mammal happens to prey on the snake, death soon occurs. Species that prey on snakes quickly learn to avoid this garter snake.

In the Rhabdophis genus found primarily in Southeast Asia, these snakes are both poisonous and venomous. They sequester bufotoxins from toads they prey on and store them in paired nuchal glands located on both sides on the nape of the neck.

Bufotoxin, a poisonous steroid is composed mainly of two compounds, one being bufagin (a digitalis) and the other being bufotenin that affects the central nerves. Most toads manufacture bufotoxin and store and secrete it from the paired parotoid or parotid glands, which are the prominently raised areas just behind each eye. Humans also possess these glands as the largest salivary glands in our anatomy.

When Rhabdophis is threatened, it will arch its neck towards the attacker and release the bufotoxin content from the nuchal glands. Bufotoxin is an irritant to mucous membranes, but can be lethal if it is able to enter the bloodstream.

In addition as mentioned earlier, Rhabdophis is venomous. Snake teeth are fixed and recurved backwards. Rear-fanged snakes have enlarged teeth at the back and top of the mouth. These teeth are recurved as well and though not hollow, are similar to front fixed fangs. Rhabdophis is a rear-fanged snake and can inject a lethal dose to a human. The venom is composed of procoagulants as well as anticoagulants that both play havoc on normal blood coagulation. The venom also possesses the capability of producing spontaneous hemorrhaging due to the possible presence of haemorrhagins.

Snakes we consider venomous are the latest edition of snakes in serpent evolution and the vipers are the latest addition of venomous snakes. It is beginning to appear though that all snakes contain some form of venom. The ones that can do harm to man in possessing fangs for injection of lethal concentrations of venom, are the ones we entail as venomous.

This would suggest that all snakes evolved from an original animal line that manufactured mild venom. The venomous snakes today are the results of species that expounded upon the venomous system in their evolutionary trend.

Snake venom is simply slightly modified to highly modified saliva. In fact the manufacture and secretion of snake venom is from the modified parotid salivary glands. Venom is stored in the alveolus, Latin for little cavity, which is an anatomically biological hollow cavity. From there when put to use, it is transported to ducts via muscle contraction situated around the alveolus and exits out either into the mouth or fangs that are connected to the duct works, then lastly, injected into the wound.

Venom chemistry is a complex mix of proteins, enzymes and proteinic peptides. Traditionally, snake venom was categorized under two headings as either neurotoxic (affects nerves) or hemotoxic (affects blood). Hemotoxin may also be spelled in two other ways…haemotoxin and hematotoxin. Later through advancing research, we realized there is a third major element that merits recognition and that is cytotoxic (affects cells). In fact some have replaced hemotoxin outright with cytotoxin. I myself though, prefer to enlist venom components under all three headings.

Dependent on species, snake venom can be more specifically pronounced in one species, or a species can contain components related to all three types. If surviving a primarily neurotoxic bite, there is complete recovery, whereas in surviving a primarily hemotoxic snake injection, there may be permanent tissue damage.

Following is further description of snake venom types.

Neurotoxin: contains dendrotoxins which inhibit neurotransmissions by blocking the exchanges of positive⁽⁺⁾ and negative^(-) ions across the neuronal membrane, thus no nerve impulse can pass. This creates paralysis and can lead to death. Neurotoxic snake examples are the coral snakes, cobras, mambas, sea snakes and kraits.

Hemotoxin: contains enzymes, in particular nucleotidase and proteins such as serine proteinase that act as coagulents or anticoagulents. Hemotoxins also break down protein surrounding the site of the wound. Hemotoxic snake examples are the vipers and certain cobras which contain a lower ratio of hemotoxins.

Cytotoxin: contains the enzyme phospholipase which converts phospholipid molecules into lysophospholipids that are essentially a soap. This soap combines with fat tissue creating cellular mayhem by disrupting cell membranes in breaking down the cement that binds them together. Consequently, water fluid flows into the cell and destroys molecules, a symptom known as necrosis. Cytotoxins also are cardiotoxic that bind to particular muscle cell sites of the heart causing depolarization of the cell to contract, thus quit beating. Cytotoxic dominant snake venom examples are Japanese Habu snakes and the king cobra.

Cytotoxins are more localized where neurotoxins are fast spreaders throughout the animal inflicted, while hemotoxins are localized but slowly spread.

I would like to add another minor venom heading and that is myotoxic. Myotoxins are peptides that are fast acting in causing severe muscle necrosis that leads to instant paralysis. Myotoxins are found in certain rattlesnake specie venom.

(Venom Apparatus)

As pointed out earlier, all snakes to a degree possess venom in their salivary system. Also, snakes with the most advance fang mechanism are the vipers. The introduction of snake venom into a wound is accomplished by the arrangement of four teeth types of teeth structure. They are:

Aglyph: Typical recurved teeth arrangement with no apparent fangs. The vast majority of snakes has this arrangement and relies on chewing to allow normally very mild venom to soak into a wound site. Most aglyphous snakes are considered non-venomous.

Enlarged grooved tooth vs. normal enlarged tooth

Opistoglyph: Snakes with grooved enlarged rear teeth attached to the upper maxilla bones, commonly called rear-fanged. Most snakes with this arrangement have a little more venom potency than any aglyphous snake possesses, but for the most part are still too mild to be considered dangerous to man. These snakes also have to rely on chewing and direct the wound area to the enlarged and grooved teeth. The main exceptions where the bite is lethal in rear-fangs are the boomslang, the twig snake and the rhadbophis snake. Opistoglyphous snakes exhibit the first forms in evolving fangs with their grooving in the enlarged teeth.

Proteroglyph: These are the snakes that displayed the first true fangs that had been fashioned and fixed in place on the upper maxilla at the top and front of the mouth. In the evolution of proteroglyphous snakes the groove in the enlarged tooth began to etch deeper into the tooth until eventually reaching the center. Calcification ensued, encasing the groove forming a hollow fang that was affixed to the venom network. The fangs may still be recurved or slightly curved. These snakes are considered very dangerous.

Solenoglyph: Solenoglyphous snakes are considered to be the most advanced of snakes and primarily are in the viper family. Their apparatus furthered the proteroglyph arrangement with an additional hinging mechanism where the recurved fangs could be folded up against the roof of the mouth and rotate into a striking position when the mouth is opened. Solenoglyphous snakes don’t bite or chew, but rather strike then back off. This eliminates any possibilities of injury due to struggles.

Another solenoglyphous snake is found in the genus, Atractaspis representing fifteen species in Africa and the Middle East. It’s commonly called the burrowing viper, mole viper, burrowing adder and along with a host of others, the side-stabbing snake. These snake species are normally burrowing underground, but when flushed from the subsurface onto the surface say by rain, they appear as a harmless little snake. Don’t fool yourself; they are dangerous and virtually impossible to hold without being envenomated.

Atractaspis

Unlike their solenoglyphous viper relatives, these snakes do not have to open the mouth and thrust forward to strike. Atractaspis not only has the capability to perform a traditional forward strike, they can also perform a lethal injection from either side of the mouth. The maxillary bones where the fangs are based are so designed that the bones have the ability to unhinge sideways allowing the snake to swing his fang into striking position on either side of the mouth. This may occur in repetitive fashion and without opening the mouth; just slinging the fang back and forth from out of the mouth onto the sides until hopefully getting a strike. You can see why there is no way to hold this snake.

(Reproduction)

A male snake hemipenis

Snake reproduction can be a harrowing experience for the female, due to the fact that the male has two penis’ known as a hemipenis or as plural hemipenes. Males alternate hemipenes from copulation to copulation. Hemipenes are held inverted by the male when not in use and are everted when in reproductive use as erectile, much like the human male penis. The big difference here though is that the male snake’s hemipenis is covered in backward curving barbs and hooks that grip the walls of the female’s cloaca. Once the hemipenis is inserted into the female, she has no say in when to end the loving embrace or she would be ripped and must rely on the male when he finishes relaxing the erected hemipenis and pulls out.

Once internal fertilization of the female has taken place, there are three functions female snake species perform in producing young. They are:

Oviparous (egg laying) ~ Most snakes lay eggs and once laid in a fairly safe picked out environment, leave the site totally allowing the hatchlings to defend for themselves from the get go. However, some snake species such as the king cobra female will construct a nest and incubate the eggs and watch after the hatchlings. Female pythons will not leave her clutch of eggs until hatching except to drink water and will shiver to generate heat in the incubation of the eggs during colder weather.

Ovoviviparous (internal hatching) ~ Eggs are retained and hatch inside the female, whereupon the hatchlings exit the female appearing as a live birth. Vipers, grass snakes and most water snakes are ovoviviparous.

Viviparous (placental live birth) ~ Although an egg sac is retained in the Boa constrictor and the common anaconda, Eunectes murinus, both nourish their fetus’ with a placenta giving live birth. This is highly unusual among any reptile species.

(To End Snakes)

In ending the snake section, I’m going to leave you with some personal accounts.

As you may already surmise, herpetology (the study of amphibians and reptiles) is one of my cups of tea. My professional travels allowed me the opportunity to seriously study snakes first hand. I remember in Nigeria holding for the first time a green mamba. In realizing what a potential deadly animal I had caught, I was so nervous that the arm holding the mamba was uncontrollably shaking. In western Africa I remember seeing for the first time a ball python that indeed balled up for easy capture and the pair of spitting cobras that have holes on the sides of the fangs rather than on the tips and can accurately aim for the eyes within 3.6 m/12ft.

Not realizing they were there in thinking they were simply vines as perceived with the blending jungle background, I was walking directly towards them. Fortunately, my laborer was more astute and halted me while pointing them out. The serpent pair both had half the body extended up in the air swaying ever so slightly to and fro in watching our approach. In fact my chief line cutter was hit by spitting cobra venom and was temporarily blinded. He had to forego two weeks of hospital care.

I also recall the time in Nigeria’s Enugu State hearing then watching monkeys become very stressed, excited and emotional as a python was attempting to snare one of them up in the treetops. There was raucous.

In what was once central Sudan and now officially the Republic of South Sudan, we had a campsite with large tents for housing. I would collect various snakes I encountered and put them in burlap bags that I would hang from the main tent poles. Even though the tents were big enough for twelve people, I, for some reason, was the only one who would sleep in my tent. I was known as the Snake Man/Captain Texas.

Each night I would lay a tarp out near our camp and every morning would check to see what slivered underneath. There would normally be three to five snakes of the same species I had never seen before or resourced. Taking a couple of specimens back with me to the University of Khartoum’s zoology department, it turned out that these were snake species that had never been nomenclated or described before. They were a small rear-fanged snake with elliptical eyes. I left them with the department, but after shortly leaving the country, I never was able to follow up on the specie descriptions. They may be an uncommon snake overall, but where our camp was situated, all you needed was some ground cover and there they were on a common occurrence.

In the Scandinavian countryside, observing the viper, Vipera berus for the first and only time and in being used to encountering American ill-tempered rattlesnakes and water moccasins, I was taken by his mild nature for a viper.

Back home, without a doubt, my favorite snake of choice is the eastern hognose, Platyrhinos heterodon. This guy’s natural range is wide, covering the eastern half of the U.S. from southern New Hampshire down to Florida and west to eastern Texas up to western Kansas. This snake reaches lengths of 115.6cm/45.5in.

E hognose standard color phase

E hognose black phase

E hognose variable color phase

Normally a blotched snake of yellow, brown, orangish-red and black, there are common individuals as well colored plain grayish-olive and melanistic jet black specimens.

The snake displays a host of anatomical features and habit peculiarities. For starters, he has an upturned nose that ends in a tip and is utilized as a spade for digging and plowing about in loamy soils.

Note the upturned nose

When first encountered and disturbed in his habitat, the snake will perform every imaginable aggressive display one could think of in what an honorary snake would do, with the one exception of biting.

With the ability of extending his neck vertebrae, he spreads his neck just like a cobra. While doing his cobra routine, he then fills the rest of his body with air, making him appear almost a third larger. With a deflated neck and bloated body, he then commences to acting as a bad-boy by hissing out all the swallowed air and throwing false strikes. Once he realizes this bluff is not working he’ll proceed to bluff number two.

Bluffing in hissing & spreading neck

If you have stuck around to enjoy the performance, he realizes you’re not going anywhere, so he reckons further measures must be taken. Abandoning the bad-boy routine he immediately rolls over on his back, opens and keeps the mouth agape allowing the limp tongue to dangle out, gives a few quivers and body jerks, and finally remains stolidly still. In other words, as known in Texan jargon, he’s ‘playin-possum;’ ya know, acting as if he just died.

If you pick him up and hold him, he will continue to feign death. Put him back down as right-side up though, he will quickly roll back over onto his back to continue his death performance. Stick your finger down his open mouth and throat and he will not bite.

I have not come across anyone familiar or unfamiliar with snakes, nor read in any literature of this snake biting anyone. The hognose is completely a harmless snake.

"Playin' 'possum"

Unfortunately, when humans cross paths with the hognose and are unaware of his true temper, will either run away in fright flight, or outright kill the snake. Another unfortunate here…if you keep the snake because you get a kick from his entertaining antics, once he is accustomed to you, he tames down readily ceasing the performances.

Another curiosity of the hognose is the first choice taken on the menu. As mentioned earlier, toads have parotoid glands filled with bufotoxin that most predators avoid like the plague, but the ol’ hognose relishes them. He will take frogs, but when given the choice will proceed to the toad aisle every time. Toads will inflate their body with air to avoid being swallowed. Hognoses have enlarged rear teeth on the upper jaw that punctures the bloated toad, then injects a mild venom into the puncture wounds that acts as a sedative. With markedly enlarged adrenal glands it is suspected the glands play a role in neutralizing bufotoxins.

Snakes are strictly carnivorous predators and will only eat what they freshly capture or kill. Even a starving snake will not accept previously killed food. Road kill is strictly off their menu; except for perhaps the hognose.

I once fed some thawing toads that I had stored in the freezer in hopes of feeding a captive eastern hognose that was still active during the winter months due to being indoors in a warm environment. Not only did he accept them, he greedily took them. Yes, this is one snake to get to know.

In ending where I started, in man, there appears to be an innate fear of snakes. A small child will stick her finger into a candle’s flickering flame until she learns it burns. This same child’s curiosity will even attract her to a spider skirting across the floor until her mother says no. But when that same child sees a snake slither across the lawn for the first time, she cringes in fear on her own accord.

As far as primates go, squirrel monkeys for instance who’ve never seen a snake, being reared as pets their whole lives, will rivet in abject fear if they even see an object remotely similar to a snake, such as a dangling rope.

Ever heard of the old phrase, “The only good snake is a dead snake?” We’ve vilified the snake in our cultures and religions; referred him to evil. Perhaps we depreciate this reptile due to a legless body, his unblinking stare, his emotionless facial features and his slithering mobility.

Invoking fears towards snakes petitions a hostility that evokes an everlasting apprehension. This enhances a dangerous regard for snakes and is imprinted into our own internal reasoning. The ones who truly fear snakes can give no valid reason, they just do. You see, it’s just in us.

Snakes are no more evil than the next animal. They’re very efficient in what they do and perform a myriad of services in culling diseased vermin, keeping control checks on their prey populations and filling a niche in ecosystems that if they vanished from, no other animal could fill the void.

Baby ribbon snakes with one baby rough green (USA)

In the process of niche filling, snakes have conquered land, sea and air. You don’t have to put snakes on your next Valentines list, but in going beyond in just respecting them, understand them in learning about them. Snakes are deserving of at least a hint of appreciation.

Nailed:

You may not realize this but your toenails grow slower than your fingernails. Toenails grow on average about 1mm/.04in per month while fingernails grow 3mm/.12in per month. At that rate it takes toenails 12 to 18 months to fully grow while the fingernail takes only 3 to 6 months. Apparently a nail is not a nail even though they're composed of the same keratin material. Now why is that…

As Scientifically Pronounced,

BJA

08/16/2011

JUST A QUICK ITEM

2011-08-11T16:26:00.006-04:00

JUST A QUICK ITEM (1)

08/11/2011
This is in lieu of the US Supreme Court's conservative majority 'Citizens United vs. FEC' ruling last year that overturned federal laws banning corporations from using company profits to buy campaign ads and buy political influence. In essence, giving corporations constitutional rights and first amendment protections that were once exclusive to citizens as individuals. Speech is not money in U.S. politics right?

Romney, now campaigning in Iowa for the Republican presidential primary candidacy, just told his audience there today that indeed, "corporations are people, my friend."

Trying to appear as a gutless wonder to the mass of assembled Tea Party type people, he further added that, corporations are people because their "profits goes into the pockets of people."

A fairly lousy analogy, but to make it relevant, he conveniently forgot to state that now those profits also will go mostly into the pockets of PAC's, self-serving politicians and into the pockets of the wealthiest 1% of the population. With this ruling, corporate privileges even go beyond enjoying the privileges of being treated equally as a natural person, because in addition, they have the right to peddle political influence with money no individual can match.

Comment anyone...

Regards,
BJA