CNNMoney.com covers Dividends and Elinor Ostrom on the Commons

Good job CNNMoney.com for totally being on it.
The article "Fight global warming, get $1,100 a year" covers Maria Cantwell's CLEAR Act. A bit too much air time to the traders who are like, "But I want the money." But otherwise, it's the best article they've ever done.
Here's the link:

http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/23/news/economy/cap_and_dividend/

Plus it includes a great interview with Elinor Ostrom, the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Economics. Hooray for Elinor! She's great.

Climate Scoreboard

More cool climate widgets.

What remains broken about the health care system: Fee-for-service, malpractice, lack of competition

Here's a brief health care bill analysis, excerpted from the Votemaster, a website I recommend for insider political info at http://www.electoral-vote.com/.

"When all is said and done, we may have a bill, but it really doesn't reform what everyone agrees is a broken system. What it does is have the government buy poor and semipoor people insurance within the framework of the current system. The fee-for-service paradigm, which encourages doctors to do unnecessary procedures thus driving costs (and their income) up, is still fully intact. The malpractice situation, which drives doctors to practice defensive medicine by ordering all kinds of useless tests to cover their tushes in the event of a subsequent lawsuit remains the same. The fundamental lack of competition between insurance companies, most of whom have something close to a regional monopoly does not change. In short, while 30 million people will get health insurance as a result of this bill, the factors driving health-care costs ever upward will not be broken."

My own editorial is simple: expand Medicare to all U.S. citizens.

Cap and Share (Copenhagen is Over)

Cap and Share (Copenhagen is Over)
Sung to the tune of “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono
- - - - -
So this was Copenhagen
And what have you done
Another COP over
A new decade just begun
And so this was Copenhagen
I hope you had fun
The protests and speeches
But nothing got done

We face a scary future
Starting with the New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
But I have some fears

And so this was Copenhagen
The UN is not strong
The rich watch the poor drown
The world is so wrong

And so glaciers melting
Refugees and drought
Hurricanes and diseases
Makes me want to shout

A very scary future
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this was Copenhagen
And what have we done
Another COP over
And a new decade just begun

And so this was Copenhagen
I hope you had fun
Next time Cap emissions
and give Shares to everyone

A very scary future
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

Cap and Share it
If you want it
Cap and Share
Now...

Story of Cap & Giveaway

This video is about 10 minutes, by the Story of Stuff folks.

The Story of Cap & Trade from Story of Stuff Project on Vimeo.

Grist has a counterargument here.

I agree with the Story people that giveaways are bad, offsets are mostly a sham, and there's potential for Enron-type shenanigans. But I see why David Roberts of Grist is worried that overly broad critiques of cap and trade may sway the political outcome so much taht we'll end up with nothing, which is Exxon's divide and conquer strategy.

In the end, c'mon Obama and the Democratic majority. Do something, how about Cap and Dividend, Contraction & Convergence, or something. With Obama's 30,000 more troops being sent to slaughter, I'm at a personal all-time Obama-era low in hope for change we can believe in, just in time for Nopenhagen.

Sacrificing 30,000 troops for Lieberman's health care vote

Everyone knows the war in Afghanistan is pointless. But Lieberman is so bloodthirsty, that he probably extracted the additional 30,000 troops in exchange for his vote on health care. I can see why Obama may have taken the deal. 30 thousand American lives in exchange for health care for 30 million Americans.

But why waste the time and money? Would it be cheaper to just fly the troops to Connecticut, maybe line them up in front of Lieberman's district offices or his house, and shoot them dead now, rather than wait for them to trickle in 5 a day? Maybe this would appeal to Lieberman's budget hawk tendencies.

Oh well, thank you to the brave soldiers who are being sacrificed so that the rest of us can have health care.

Cool California

Tell McChrystal that all the new troops are going to fight climate change instead

Sorry McC. Rumsfeld had his head up his butt. His worldview was warped, and I would sympathize with you for trying to invent a reason for being in Afghanistan, but you military folks are holding a hammer and try to make everything into a nail. Now, if you could look around for a minute, you might notice that the whole biosphere is under attack, and the national security of the United States of America is threatened. The enemy? Climate change.

So, Obama, tell McC that he can have extra troops, but that they won't be sent to Afghanistan. They'll be assigned to stopping climate change, and they won't have any guns or missiles or things that kill.

By the way, Mr. Obama (and I did like your books, and I am trying to have hope and I like change), while I'm giving you orders, you could make me General of the CarbonWarRoom and let me invade Congress and the NYSE and institute a Carbon Share program. Maybe I'll take an army of wonky climate economists to Copenhagen and force the world to support a Global Climate Trust too.

To summarize, whatever the mission was in Afghanistan (helping Bush run up deficits so that Obama can't pass universal health care now?), we don't want it anymore. Bring the troops home, well, maybe leave a few Special Forces to hunt down bin Laden, but no need to try to run the whole country. Sure, I want to help women over there. Let's help fund some US AID workers and Oxfam and others that can set up shelters for battered women and schools, etc, and bring home the macho dudes with the rifles, who only make people anxious and aren't the right people to help women in burkas anyway.

Carbon War Room

Cap and Trade costs are only half the story - Auction revenues can be returned to consumers

Anti-cap and trade forces (oil companies, coal companies, and their campaign contribution recipients) are publicizing a U.S. Department of Treasury report on the costs of cap and trade. Their right-wing spin interprets the total in "new taxes" (which are actually auction revenues from the government selling permits to corporations, then having them pass costs to consumers) of between $100 billion to $200 billion a year as meaning the cost per American household could be up to $1,761 a year.

The spin is wrong for several reasons. First, it depends what you do with the money. You can return the auction revenues back to people as a dividend or share. The costs are totally different depending on what you do with the money. Look up Dallas Burtraw's papers on the RFF website for more info.

Second, each state has unique carbon costs, depending on the amount of coal in its electricity mix, investment in energy efficiency, weather (too cold or too hot and you use more heat or AC), and more. So if you're in ND, WY, or WV, sure, you'll pay more. But if you're in Vermont, CA, or even Idaho, you won't pay that much. Now, maybe you want some redistribution payments to make it more fair, and that can be done through modifying the per capita dividend or share. But let's take the right wing spin with a large grain of salt (or chunk of smoggy coal-filled toxic pollution).

Why do smears only work on good people? A Requiem for Van Jones

Why was my 6-year smear campaign against Rumsfeld less successful than Glenn Beck's 2-week smear campaign against Van Jones?

Do Dems just have no backbone, and when they get criticized they immediately run for cover? But I know Van Jones and he's no wimp. Maybe Obama can't stand up for his people, and wants to cater to the Repubs so he can get every possible vote on health care and climate. But how far will he bend? You give up Van Jones after a mere week or so?

I don't follow right wing media, so I don't know how loud their echo chamber was on Van. I don't know if the minority party Repubs had traction and could have actually used it to distract people from the important issues coming up. Is the very mention of having another commission examine 9-11 enough reason to fire a green jobs expert? What are people so afraid of? I do know that Van's a good guy, and doesn't deserve to be booted after only a few months on the job.

Is Obama going to be spineless when attacked? If so, here are some modified slogans for your next campaign: "Change we can believe in (until someone says something mean, then, we'll ask our change agents to resign)" "Change we can believe in (as long as no one ever asks any questions, and repudiates anything they ever said that was the least bit controversial, about Bush, Rumsfeld, the Iraq War, or 9-11)" "Hope (that Fox News doesn't smear anyone who works at the White House because if they do, then we'll immediately give up our whole agenda and hope they don't think of anything else to smear)" I really do hope that this isn't the case.

In counterpoint, Rumsfeld stuck around for 6 disastrous years. I wasn't smearing what Rumsfeld said about 9-11, I was smearing what he DID about it. Well, it's not really a smear if it's true. But Rumsfeld got to stick around, and Dems voted to support Bush's war plans, and to keep funding the war (even now).

In my idealistic blogosphere, smears against Rumsfeld would work, and Repub smears against good people would be ignored.

Advice for "No Impact Man"

No Impact Man, it's a stunt, don't get so defensive.
You should have spent the year going to NYC City council meetings, getting them to buy recycled toilet paper, and you'd save more trees than your patient wife who is a saint for being such a good sport just like the Supersize-Me guy's vegan girlfriend was.

We need to work for institutional change. When McDonald's began printing their logo on their napkins instead of embossing it, fitting more napkins per package needing fewer shipments, they saved more trees and reduced more GHGs than I could in my whole life.

We need a mandatory carbon cap, so that the price signal rewards good behavior, and makes Hummer drivers pay more. This could be done through a carbon tax or through cap and dividend, etc. Hopefully, No Impact Man will start promoting this, not just telling people to stop using toilet paper.

For most people, every weekend is a possibility for a low-impact day, the Sabbath. Yom Kippur is coming up, and millions of Jews will participate in a low impact day, and spend the day thinking about the impact they have made in the last year.

But Kolbert's conclusion is powerful, think about the impact you can make on those around you, don't just focus on your poor suffering patient wife. Make an impact on policy, don't just torture your wife. Hopefully you can use your book tour and publicity to promote that message, not just to defend the righteousness of your stunt.

Earth to Congress: The current health care system sucks

In case you haven't seen the movie Sicko yet, the current health care system sucks. Insurance companies are evil. 40 million people have nothing. Now fix it!

I don't care how warped your ideology is. I don't care if you're the love child of Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and Alan Greenspan (blech!). I don't care if you're the editor of the Wall Street Journal, you intern at the Cato Institute, and you work at the Plundermaxx Corporation. Your ideology has already been proven wrong and you are like a muttering homeless person who did too much LSD and you think you're at some free-market Woodstock dystopia.

Give it up. We both know the current system sucks. And Canada has a better one. You know what to do, you don't need me to say it. OK, I'll say it. Single-payer universal health care. I heard McGovern on NPR the other day, he said he could fix the health care system in a single line: Medicare is now extended to all Americans.

Did Hope last only 7 months?

At the climate justice march the other day, I was talking to a lady who said that it is a waste to support Obama, that he is the same as all the other corporate politicians. I disagreed and said during the 2008 election, I thought if Hillary had won it would be the same Dem centrist triangulation, but that Obama's young, multi-racial supporters would demand more progressive change, and that when Obama won, it was the signal that the Dean wing (anti-war) had beaten the Kerry wing of the party, something that should have happened in 2004.

Now I'm starting to see lefties get discouraged around (lack of) health care, and I'm surprised at how much media attention these current protesters are getting, while my recent 8 years of protests didn't seem to even cause a blip. What's up with that, "liberal" media?

A few quotes from a HuffPost article and comments show how disgruntled lefties have become:

"(for continuing to support Obama), what will we get in return? If the last six months are any indication, the answer is, "Nothing"...
"Obama is here to tamp down the aspirations of the people. To enact reforms that don't cause any fundamental change. To protect the profits for the big players."...
"warning folks to expect from Obama exactly what we have gotten so far - compromising with right-wing bullies, flip-flopping on most of his campaign promises and turning his back on his progressive base."

(back to my comments again)
I'd hate to be taken in again as naive, I'd like to view myself as more patient to get the change we need to believe in. But I can see people's point that the compromising and waffling and caving in can only go on so long, and at some point, I'd like to see Obama show some strength and twist some arms, and get what he wants. Pull out of Afghanistan, auction 100% of GHG permits, return dividends to consumers, put money towards clean energy, and not corn ethanol handouts to corporate agribusiness (offsets), stop caving in to Wall Street, and get real single-payer health care that is not a sell-out to big-pharma. It's not that complicated, is it? I'm willing to give some more benefit of the doubt, but at some point if we don't see progressive progress, the green party will get another influx of annoyed voters who are saying, "Never again," again.

Will Copenhagen be the "next Seattle"?

This December is COP-15, the international climate conference in Copenhagen, where the Earth will hang in the balance. Some people are saying it will be the "next Seattle" (a citizen's convergence where the people show the officials that it's time to take our demands seriously). I guess the big demand is 350 ppm, but I'd add in Contraction & Convergence, and Cap & Share too.

http://beyondtalk.net/

http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/

Senate can choose Dividends instead of House Climate Change Giveaway

The House strategy for Cap and Trade was 1) hand out allowances to utilities and other powerful lobbies, and 2) hope carbon costs will remain low (the so-called "postage stamp a day"). But many midwesterners, including North Dakotans Sen. Byron Dorgan and Rep. Earl Pomeroy are sceptical of the "postage stamp" strategy. High-coal states will face major costs, and the strategy puts supporters at risk in the 2010 or 2012 elections.

But the Senate still has time to choose an alternative strategy that sets aside Waxman and Pelosi's vision of realpolitik (that had almost everyone holding their noses by the end of House debate). An alternative strategy would be to level with the American people, tell them that costs might be high, but auction revenues will provide them with a dividend to help cover the costs. Perhaps Van Hollen's Cap and Dividend bill could be modified to limit the tradability of the auctioned permits, and then return the revenues to the people, bypassing the lobbyists and financial speculators.

Spreading Rumors About Palin

What follows is pure speculation, so don't quote me on this. There are no unnamed sources for this article, Judith Miller did not talk to Scooter Libby, Curveball did not tell me this after being waterboarded, Rove did not out any CIA agents here, and David Letterman and his writers did not tell jokes about this. So without further ado, here is my random list of potential scandals that caused Palin to resign for no apparent reason:

She had an affair with: a. one of her staffers, b. McCain, c. Joe the Plumber, d. Eminem, as shown in his recent music video, e. all of the above

She had a threesome with John Ensign and Mark Sanford

She visited a $15,000 prostitute while in D.C.

His name was Newt Gingrich

She got pregnant

She got pregnant by Levi

She got an abortion (during the 2008 campaign)

She put Willow on birth control and feels bad about it and wants to spend more time at church asking for forgiveness

She is actually gay

There is something in Levi's forthcoming book that she is worried about

She got a job with Fox News

She got a job with Saturday Night Live

She will be on a reality TV show (MTV's The Real World?)

She got a job as a spokesperson for a turkey-killing factory

She is planning to pose for Playboy's Girls of the Radical Right Wing

She is planning to pose for Playboy's Anti-Choice Grandmas of the GOP (I'll probably skip that issue)

A girls gone wild video of her from 1983 has surfaced and she wanted to resign so she could make a deal to get a portion of the proceeds (Paris Hilton style)

She sold meth to Levi's mom

She bought meth from Levi's mom

She did meth with Levi's mom

Palin's car wash had "not filed its biennial report and/or paid its biennial fees"

She wants to go back to working at her car wash

Boring old using state troopers for personal family stuff, like changing diapers or babysitting for her

Boring old firing state troopers who got divorced from her sister, etc.

Boring old trying to get paid state funds for sleeping at home or taking family with her on trips

Boring old embezzlement of public funds (maybe while she was mayor of Wasilla regarding a Sports Center and contractors doing free work on her house)

More scandals here

(Note: this blog is covered by the 1st amendment (it's in the Constitution, Sarah, look it up), so no moaning or whining about defamation. If you want to sue someone, sue McCain. If he hadn't picked you, I wouldn't have known who you are.)

The Highlight of the House's Energy Bill Debate

I watched the debate last Friday on CSpan. It was disheartening to hear the disingenous Repub arguments, they have already decided to vote no, now time to backfill for reasons why. Um, hoaxy? Al Gore-rrible? Economy? (sorry guys, all of those are weak!)

Among Dems, the highlight of the debate was Rep. John Larson (CT? I'm pretty sure, although after awhile the talking heads seem to blur together, sorry if it wasn't him) who gave a great speech about how we are sending so much money for oil to Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela, that the Repubs should be ashamed of voting against this because they are supporting our enemies and contributing to terrorism (or something like that). It was a way stronger argument than some of the flimsy green jobs stuff which sounds a little like “just wait another 10 years and we’ll have a hydrogen car, we promise.”

Some Music and Videos of Hope

A tribute to Michael Jackson, and hoping that we can solve the problems of the world.

"We are the World" - An anthem of hope, great 80's cameos.




"Man in the Mirror" - A good song to listen to if you are thinking of becoming vegetarian.

"Smooth Criminal" - looks like he was protesting the WTO and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle police started getting violent.

"You are not Alone" - I like the Olive song by that name too.

"Heal the World" - sort of cheesy, but a good kids song, nice anti-war sentiment.

"Earth Song" - really good, put that pollution back into the smokestack.



"Feed the World" - this isn't Michael Jackson, but I think his work helped inspire it, plus I was on a roll, and more 80's cameos.

Gaia's Future Debated in the House

It's a day that Bill McKibben, Carl Pope, Stephen Schneider, James Lovelock and Gaia itself have been waiting for. HR.2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), the House's first serious attempt to address climate change, is on the House floor. Climate change is a serious challenge. We need to reduce our GHG emissions, and the consequences of not doing so are serious, perhaps threatening the continued existence of half of all species, perhaps eventually including our own.

Do any of these Congresspeople know what they are talking about? Very few have read the bill. It's over 1200 pages. How many Congresspeople understand cap and trade, at all? Or think they understand it, but really don't.

Especially the Republicans. I assume many of them understand that climate change is a problem, or at least are concerned about dependence on imported oil from the Middle East and elsewhere. But they have prioritized short-term power politics over the survival of God's creation, the Earth. The economic scare tactics, skepticism of science, callers on CSpan saying that global warming is a hoax. Mainly it seems they hate Al Gore, and this gives them a reason to announce it to people loudly. Interestingly, Al Gore is not even that liberal, but he stirs up memories of the 90's, which I guess for Repubs was a painful time, it was like Middle School and he was like the Assistant Principal, I guess. Even so, the Repugs are trying to fit what they can into their existing worldview, for example, saying that if there is a problem, it's because of those dark skinned people in the Amazon cutting those trees. If they could say global warming was caused by welfare mothers they would.

Blue Dog Democrats are scared of making any bold moves. Status quo coal and manufacturing control them.

I've been arguing that action on global warming is needed. And I've been pestering everyone around me about it for years going on decades now. But is this bill the right one? We are running out of time. Every year of delay is potentially fatal. Even so, the bill has been compromised. A well-respected analyst told me yesterday that at this point, the bill's main impact will be to pay money to corn farmers to make ethanol, with little or no emissions reductions. On the other hand, showing up to the international climate conference in Copenhagen in December with nothing from the U.S. would just prolong the Bush-era stalemate. China and India are right to say that the U.S. should go first. If those Repugnicans think our economic problems are bad, why don't they go there and tell them to reduce their emissions.

There is the head versus heart debate, or what I call the Christina Aguilera debate (my body's sayin let's go, but my heart is sayin no). For normal people, it's that we know the bill is flawed, but we hope that it will help in some way. I'm not sure which is the heart and which is the head, or in Christina's case, which is the T and which is the A (not as much in the head, sorry, uncalled for). For Repugs, it's that they want to oppose Obama's agenda and if they can personally insult Al Gore while doing so this gives them great pleasure, and if they can fit in some populist rhetoric about jobs (when they actually are the unions worst enemy the other 364 days of the year, and their free trade agenda has cost more jobs than this bill ever could) and the economy (which mainly consists of bank bailouts and ponzi schemes at this point right?), and on the other hand, the concessions in this bill might actually benefit their constituencies (industrial ag, Monsanto, the delay in switching off coal, keeping gas prices high which they say they oppose but they enjoy the campaign contributions from Exxon) but they are so blinded by Gore-hatred they refuse to recognize that, and cap and trade was originally a free market solutions that was an alternative to command and control regulation but if they aren't in front of the parade them they won't go I guess, and they often have grandchildren and like going outdoors, and there may be a small voice in the back of their mind that knows that they would feel bad if they were responsible for ending civilization. But that is a distant echo, which can be easily drowned out with Venezuelan hookers, whiskey, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh.

350 ppm trumps politics. (many enviros think the tipping point for climate collapse will be 350 parts per million CO2 equivalent in the atmposphere, the IPCC sometimes refers to 450 ppm as a goal for 2050 or 2100, this blog has a graphic that shows our current ppm). But there's no silver bullet single solution to climate change, so we should support anything that reduces coal use. It's not clear if ACES will, but it might be a step towards it (squinting, wishing). Maybe strategic opposition can improve the bill, providing a story for the media to cover ("enviros say bill is too weak, allocations should go to consumers not utilities").

If ACES passes, which I think would be a victory for recognition of climate change as a problem, there will still be lots of work to be done, so don't hang up your hat and call it a day yet. Sorry, you can't take the rest of the day off.

6 versions of Terminator:Salvation that would have been an improvement

Here they are, in descending order from serious to just funny.

1) Terminator: What should have been

John Connor leads a small band of people just trying to survive. He comes across young Kyle Reese and acts as a father figure to him. They learn that Skynet is harvesting human tissue to make human-looking cyborgs to infiltrate the resistance. Their upcoming model is based on an Austrian weightlifter whose genome had been sequenced by CyberDyne. John captures and reprograms an experimental Terminator (Marcus). Skynet finds the resistance headquarters and captures everyone. Marcus pretends he is still a machine, but once back at Skynet headquarters, hacks into Skynet, locates John and Kyle, and is able to fight the other Terminators so that John and Kyle escape. Marcus’s last act before he dies is to upload a computer virus into Skynet that John Connor had created. It shuts down parts of Skynet, and the resistance takes over certain factories. As people hear about this, they come out of the woodwork, and this builds up the resistance from a few people to several thousand. Towards the end of the movie they find out that Skynet has repaired itself and is preparing a counterattack. Connor keeps trying to capture Terminators in order to reprogram them and find out how Skynet’s software works. Towards the end of the movie, something strange happens that implies that Skynet is working on time travel technology.
The soundtrack: Nine Inch Nails Year Zero, and The Day the Whole World Went Away

2) Terminator: Hackers

John Connor learned at the end of T3 that Skynet is software, and has infected the computers of the world. Therefore, logically, this next movie is about him trying to find out if any computer programmers survived Judgment Day so that they can try to hack into Skynet and turn it off. It becomes more of an intellectual thriller, as John Connor tries to figure out the structure of Skynet, and how he can communicate with hackers around the world without alerting Skynet to their plans. They may have to build a second Internet, use old WWI analog coding devices, or carrier pigeons.

Terminator: After the Bomb

John Connor has come up with some ingenious ways for the resistance to survive under Skynet’s radar. The movie revolves around how they had to rebuild from scratch all the things we take for granted. They had to develop anti-radiation pills or medications, they built a Biodiesel refinery so they would not be reliant on oil, which is controlled by the machines. Kate manages an organic greenhouse underground to grow food. We also find out which animals and plants survived Judgment Day, and which species began to mutate or evolve in the new ecology. Joseph Masco could work as a behind-the-scenes consultant for the film.

Terminator: The Basics

Like a video game, the camera follows John Connor around as he is attacked by robots in creative ways. That’s it.

Terminator: Salivation

The resistance has been living in bomb shelters like the one shown at the end of T3 for over 10 years eating canned beans. Finally, John Connor leads an expedition outside to see if anything edible survived the nuclear winter. Meanwhile, Kate attempts to start an organic community garden, using permaculture principles. It turns out that Kyle Reese really likes fresh fava beans.

Terminator: Under a Hot Moon

Moon Bloodgood strips to 80’s synthesizer techno from Term 1, GnR, Year Zero, Kraftwerk, and other robot related music. Perhaps the most successful of the proposed alternatives.

By the way, I've been enjoying reading the comments on this other blog.

Shih Tzus Against Hummers?

Now that Hummer is being sold to a Chinese company, maybe Chihuahuas Against Hummers should form a Chinese affiliate. Perhaps Shih Tzus Against Hummers?

Issues with Terminator Salvation

I liked the previous Terminator movies so much that I dressed as one for Halloween, and I have one as my avatar photo. But this might change, because I don't really want to be associated with the current one, Terminator Salvation.

So disappointing, because I had high hopes, with the Nine Inch Nails song "When the Whole World Went Away" in the trailer, and Batman swaggering around casually shooting Terminators for fun. There were a few good scenes, but the director and writers missed the big bullet points, and took the lazy cut and paste route to 90 minutes, done, let's go have a margarita. But dude, you got to please the fans or else you won't get hired back.

Here are some of my issues with the movie. If you're planning to see it, you might want to stop reading here.



Marcus and Moon should have been taken completely out of the movie. Why did Moon disobey orders and release Marcus? Oops, now I got shot, wasn't expecting that. You liked this guy who acts like a robot so much that you risk your life and piss off all your friends? Every scene she was in I cringed. Especially the take off the fighter pilot helmet and shake your hair and give the flirtacious smile. Hello, this isn't a shampoo commercial, it's the Terminator. Enough with the tight pants and the Trinity kicks. We've already seen it, in a movie where it was new.

All we really want is to see Christian Bale kill robots, and he did a few times, but all this jibber jabber with Marcus was so pointless. And the face of Skynet is not Helena Bonham Carter. Skynet would not try to convince Marcus of anything. It is a machine, it works by command and control. It would tell Marcus what to do and if he resisted, he would be terminated and another one would be created to replace him. And if you're going to be like a mile away from a nuclear explosion, I want to see you take anti-radiation pills in the next scene, or else I want to see your hair falling out and you die. I can't suspend that much disbelief.

And the Terminator series is not the Matrix. No Architect, no existential questions. You are a machine, with a single mission, and John Connor's is to save Kyle Reese, which is a good counterpoint to the 1st movie. This surety of purpose is what we admire about the Terminator. The Terminator is not a waffling Keanu, trying to figure things out. Too bad the writers lost track amid the CGI, which is not a substitute for plot.

Also, enough with the cut and paste characters. The mute kid with the fro from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and I think in that Kevin Costner movie too, lame. The set, costumes, and gas station with the rasta dude and the old woman who hate each other, wasn't that from Resident Evil Extinction? The character from South Park: Token (you know what I mean). And rehashing the Guns and Roses song, and the random Alice in Chains Rooster song? Did you profile your fans and that came up #1? True, I own the album, but let's be creative here. I'm not saying Enya, but where was the Nine Inch Nails song from the trailer? Any songs off of Year Zero would have been a way better choice. And the PG-13 rating, this is just to sell video games. But long time fans want a better script. So sad.

The radio thing...wouldn't Skynet pick up that transmission too? If not, why not? Where does the gasoline come from? Do they have biodiesel refineries? Underground greenhouses to grow food? No? Just coyote that must be totally radioactive, assuming they were able to survive the nuclear winter. If you're going to attack San Francisco, why not come up El Camino Real like Junipero Serra? Why cross the rickety, destroyed Golden Gate? Is the resistance based up in Marin, in a hottub in Mill Valley? And Batman, just give him the ears and the cape already, and make him fight IceMan, played by CGI Arnold.

Speaking of which, c'mon, give Arnold more of an intro than just "duh duh duh duh." Like, uh oh, here comes Arnold, or something. Then trying all the same stuff from the previous movies to melt him and freeze him, so boring. And the factory where the machines are made, just like the Matrix. Seen it already. Also already seen where the Borg were made, and where the Aliens were born. Yawn.

The worst was that we already knew that Skynet is software, not hardware. So why try to blow up one factory? So lame. Use a computer virus or some kind of software solution. John Connor should have a team of hackers trying to take down Skynet's firewall. Too creative? Too "outside the box"?

I like the Earth

The emotional manipulation worked. Here I am promoting this on my own blog, for free. But I just like polar bears, humpback whales, and elephants. Sorry.

Stop eating meat, 'cuz I want y'all ta live

At the end of his song "Colors," rapper Ice-T made a plea to Stop the Violence where he said, "please stop, cuz I want y'all ta live." Here's my own plea, for y'all ta stop dyin' from eatin' all that meat, excerpted from this story: Eating Too Much Red Meat May Shorten Life



Diets high in red meat and in processed meat shorten life span not just from cancer and heart disease but from Alzheimer's, stomach ulcers and an array of other conditions as well, a U.S. National Cancer Institute study has found.

U.S. National Cancer Institute researchers reported that a quarter-pound hamburger or a small pork chop eaten daily could put you at increased risk for a variety of cancers.

[guess what?]...the American Meat Institute objected to the conclusion...[but the sobering facts say...]

Dying from cancer also was more likely among those eating the most red meat: 22 percent higher for men, 20 percent for women. The risk for death from cancer increased 12 percent for men and 11 percent for women who ate the greatest amount of processed meat.

Similarly, the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease was higher by 27 percent for men and 50 percent for women; for processed red meat, the risk was 9 percent higher for men and 38 percent higher for women.
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In Time Magazine, a nutrition epidemiologist who directs the interdisciplinary obesity program at the University of North Carolina said cutting back from a Big Mac every other day — (7.5 ounces of red meat, the highest quintile of meat consumption in the study, or, in other words, the typical American diet) — to one Big Mac a week would yield "dramatic health benefits."

I'll go even further and say, go vegetarian, buy organic, ban foie gras, and stop killing animals. Too radical? Well, also, stop pestering your vegetarian friends and family about how they are not getting enough protein, or about how their habits are messing up your traditional Palin-style Thanksgiving death-fest. They will give you a nice eulogy at your funeral, with "Colors" by Ice-T playing in the background.

Take Over GM and Make Better Cars

Suddenly these Detroit auto CEOs are eco-friendly, and sweet-talking in DC. But where were you ten years ago? What about your famous Hummer brand? Sure, now that you want free money, you'll promise this and that, but as soon as you're back on your feet, it'll be, "Oh, well, the market's not quite there yet, and oh, it's so expensive, but we're making 50 test models, and oh, we're doing all that we can by investing in R&D, and oh, we have plans to release a hydrogen car in 2025." I've heard it all before.

A few months ago I said let's bail out the auto companies and include contracts saying that they'll green their fleet etc. Now I'm thinking the government should actually take over the companies, fire all the people who sued to stop California's Clean Car Regulations (I mean go through their email archive, and every single person who said yes let's sue - fired!), hire some people from Silicon Valley EV start-ups, and let them run the companies. Oh, and the new contracts will all say they they won't sue to stop new climate regulations, they won't fund climate denial groups, they will support gas taxes and fuel surcharges, and they will green their fleet, or else the company reverts back to the government, and they go to jail.

Sounds fair.

Nationalizing the Banks and Greening the Monetary System

Could nationalizing the banks help fix two major problems with the monetary system? Economists and conservatives, recently including Alan Greenspan, are starting to talk about the need to nationalize U.S. banks in order to stabilize the financial system. At the least, it would prevent the banks from using bailout money for junkets. At best, it could provide an opportunity to fix some fundamental flaws in our monetary system.

The two most basic problems with our monetary system are that 1) money is backed by debt, and 2) compounded interest ensures that a certain percentage of people will go bankrupt. Rather than explain all of that here, I refer you to Richard Douthwaite’s Ecology of Money and an essay here.

When dollars are only backed by debt (money is loaned into existence), banks must keep lending in order to keep the money supply stable. Otherwise, when loans are paid back, or when companies are unable to pay back loans and go bankrupt, the money ceases to exist, it just disappears, which is the actual cause of a recession. In order to prevent this house of cards from collapsing, banks must always be creating new loans. But when the debt stops flowing, the money supply starts to contract, which is what happened after banks realized that the credit default swaps based on subprime loans were overvalued.

Money could be based on something real instead of just based on debt. The gold standard had its own problems. Douthwaite proposes an energy-backed-currency-unit (ebcu) that would help the world address climate change. The ebcu’s value would be backed by the limited number of emissions permits allowed under a global emission cap. In the future, greenhouse gas emissions might be more valuable than gold, and because they will get scarcer over time, they will become more valuable. The ebcu would reign in the inflationary fiat paper money system.

The debt basis of our money puts pressure on banks to keep making loans, but the positive interest rate makes those loans more and more expensive. Loans must be repaid with interest, but all money is loaned money, so where does the money to pay back the interest come from? The zero-sum answer: some people must go bankrupt to allow for others to repay their loans. A great source for more information on the interest rate is Margrit Kennedy’s book Interest and Inflation Free Money. Kennedy's book also points out how the growth rate of compound interest is totally unsustainable. One penny invested over time will eventually be worth more than the whole planet. The weird way that the interest rate affects economists estimates of future costs has profoundly affected the debate over the costs of averting climate change, resulting in some economists immorally arguing that it is too expensive to do anything, and it is more economically efficient to sit and fry. One of the few economists questioning this logic was the UK's Sir Nicholas Stern (google: Stern Review, discounting, interest rate, climate change). The interest rate also causes prices to become distorted, and makes capital projects look unaffordable. This is too bad because we need lots of capital projects to transform our energy and transportation infrastructure into low-carbon non-fossil-fuel systems. A steady-state economy will be impossible within the constraints of a debt-backed, positive-interest monetary system. One possible solution is to alter the monetary system to adopt an altered form of the interest rate more like the Swedish JAK Bank model.

So, in summary, the current banking crisis could provide the opportunity to improve our monetary system to fix two major flaws. A new currency that is not tied to debt could be backed by greenhouse gas emissions permits. And banks would be able to loan money without charging compounded interest that forces people into bankruptcy.

Of course, much of the public will not ever learn about the problems of the monetary system because the media will only publish stories that reinforce pre-existing ideologies by focusing on who to blame for the recession: either the private sector (greedy bankers and Bernie Madoff), or the public sector (government-backed loan programs and poor oversight from Christopher Cox's SEC). The Wall Street Journal and Fox News will conveniently forget about how Dubya wanted to privatize Social Security just a few years ago. I already saw one backlash blog posting calling to privatize Congress rather than nationalize the banks. But whether to privatize or nationalize is not the issue. Just like in the first few chapters of Peter Barnes' book Capitalism 3.0, the solution to the problem will not come from either government or corporations, it will come from changing the system. Hopefully, some commentators will recognize the role of debt-backed currency and compound interest play in the current economic downturn, and maybe there will be articles in the media about the monetary system. Booms and busts are not part of the regular business cycle; they are part of the debt/interest monetary system. If the banks need to be taken over by the government until things are sorted out, it may provide a good and rare opportunity to fix these two problems.

Maybe this teachable moment will help create a monetary reform movement in this country. The movement could be based on Richard Douthwaite's The Ecology of Money, and help us create a new monetary system that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and green our economy.

George W. Who?

As soon as President Obama was inaugurated, I suddenly forgot who that other guy was. I remember the Clinton years, when I had fun protesting the WTO. I remember Jimmy Carter, and I even remember during Reagan years watching some good movies and rollerskating to Duran Duran, Wham, Prince, and Taylor Dayne. But sometime after 2000 there's kind of a vague recollection of something distasteful, I'm not sure what. I remember playing some video games and hosting some fundraisers, and then the Obama years, ah, much better, I think I'll remember those.

I remember Slobodan Milosevich, and the guy who grew a big beard and hid for awhile but eventually was found and tried at the Hague for War Crimes. And I remember seeing this guy in a wheelchair at Obama's Inauguration, he looked like Mr. Potterfrom It's a Wonderful Life. Maybe this guy, along with the guy in that video game, will end up in a war crimes tribunal too. Until then, who? Sorry, busy rebuilding America.