Is Blogging Optimal?

A Disconcerting Thought

tonight i posted on FDL the new secret releases from the Politburo files on Gorby's discussions about how to leave the fiasco in Afghanistan. The response had more to do with some silicon babe's divorce from Kid Rock, whoever he is, not that i don't listen in my head to what Miles Davis would have done with hiphop.

There was no response, which makes me question the entire understanding of americans during the Goebbels era of 24/7 very professional propaganda. I posted examples of the highest level discussions of Soviet meetings about how to leave Afghanistan, which obviouly has great meaning to american discussions today, given the Carlyle Report coming soon. And the response was pathetic. Witty puns about nothing that would survive by tomorrow, but worse no real discussion.

I remember the WELL days, when the first virtual community in the world was established. It was not top down, anyone could begin a thread and if, if, there were takes the thread would survive. But in these days we have top-down blogging, where even if Jane Hamsher isn't in the complete right direction, where she normally is, it's still top down.

Blogging is good for the world, we've seen that in countless ways, but to call blogging a community is, is... can i say it digitally?... False.

Community is not top-down. I believe, and who am i to believe anything much less post it on the net where no one will read it unless i resort to programmed search bombing, that the model of the WELL is so vital, and so necessary, that we need to rediscover the WELL in all its attributes. Especially in these critical times.

Is there anyone out there who wishes to discuss this key point? I would love it if all my old WELL friends and enemies would come and comment and link. That would be the beginning wouldn't it?

Kudos to YouTube?

Of course i should give my post-election thoughts, and i do have them, but i'm waiting. Waiting because we really have to distance ourselves from election rhetoric before there is something valuable to say. HuffPost will say it all anyway. There are some very serious threads which are not explored after this stunning turnaround in america, but one thing we can say is Gott Sei Fuckin Dank!... that John Conyers will chair Judiciary.

So forget the (coming) commentary on the beginning of a return to good ol' checks and balances, tonight we're going to post about... YouTube!

First yoiu have to understand that i've been in the digital wilderness for five years. Only after 8 months here in Deutschland did i have a computer, and this laptorp was even then years old. It had a system called windows, with which i was totally wrongified. Later i got a dial-up 56k connection paid by the hour, about as stone age as one could get. So i lost track of modern civilization.

Then a few months ago greater downtown Remscheid received DSL, one of the last places in the urban world. Then i bought an Apple, Macbook intel Pro, which together with DSL escaped me from the Stone Age and made me remember my Sanfrisco netroots... which was hard to take, as my last years in SF were the railing years of my novel against the insanity of the internet boom and the monetary destruction of my beloved city.

But it meant a return to THENET in all the forms which i had previously been unaware, as it evolves so QUICKLY.

When i find videos from Levon Helm's studio in Woodstock, when i can see not only all the tributes to Gram Parsons but even some rare old videos, when i can “favorite” Richard Manuel singing “Georgia” only a month before the Last Waltz, when i can even find DJ s Mark Farina and Derek Carter live (i remember the time at the Park City Sundance fest when i brought Mark to a private party where Derek was playing... it was the first time they had seen each other in years... and the resluting musical chaos was about as high as one can get)... and i even saw my estranged son live in some dive...

Kudos internet. (Not kudos youtube, as there are more and better, but still i'm thrilled that i can do this after all these years in the wilderness.) the model is good. And my new laptop is getting loaded.

It's just another technology which at its best can bring the people of the world closer together if the powers don't kill it.

Since no one reads this blog, i can say for now: Hey Woody, what's up? Are you going to fight to be OK? Much love and respect to one of the fathers of windpower aerodynamics.

An FDL Post about Jerry McNerney's Win

I might end up saying a few things here at FDL, but there's one thing which absolutely must be said, right at the top. Whoever, and i mean that plural, is responsible for getting Jerry McNerney on the roadmap to congress deserves more than a few kudos.

Let me 'splain. I've been fighting for renewable energy for more than three decades. All the current arguments about about the pluses of renewables, like energy security, boost local economies, stop expensive pollution, eliminating international hot spots based on control of resources, not to mention the problem of calculating the present value of 20,000 years of nuclear waste storage (we don't even bring up depleted uranium weapons) were actually made way back when the first renewable wave broke.

In the course of those three decades, i realized that actually producing clean kwh's was far more important than all the public posturing, so i went and co-developed the world's first utility-scale windplant. Yet, i could never ignore politics, because the tax and financing measures upon which we built our industry only came through effective use of political capital.

Fate or synchronicity gave me two invites to the reagan White House to argue energy policy. Though i never gave a dime. Actually, i didn't argue, i threatened. Those were the days of heady deregulation, while at the same time the rayguns were threatening the solar tax credit. (From which we built the foundation of renewable technologies.) i simply met with Danny Boggs (of the Louisiana oil'n'gas Boggs) and threatened to go public with the administration's unwillingness to move to energy deregulation while spewing so much other deregulation around the country.

Because i was a reasonably public face for windpower in California, they stopped their attack on the solar credit, and let it die at its appointed time, something the industry association had not been able to achieve. But the same fookin arguments from those days are still being fought two decades later!

I watched in horror as america started oil wars, let kennyboy and chainey pour over iraqmaps out of public view, while the world warmed in the not nice kind of way.

Over those three decades, we had supporters in congress, but mostly in theory only. Suddenly the landscape has changed. I have nothing against lawyers that can't be worked out with fists, but suddenly there is an engineer in congress. A Windpower Engineer.

Jerry and i come from the Altamont Pass, the world's first wind development area. I've known and worked with him a bit for two decades. Seems to me america will soon come to respect the development of a coherent energy policy for the first time, which will stop plunging the world into chaos. (Was i subtle enough?)

And the center of this rapidly developing energy policy turnaround will be centered in two offices in DC. One, a rookie congressman who understands exactly what's at stake down to the gearbox bolt torgueing... and the other, a neighbor congresswoman who will soon answer to the name Madame Speaker, who knows the renewable advantage since she watched us make it happen near her home.

A long screed post, perhaps not permitted here. But i thought it valuable to give some detail, as to why what BlueAmerica and the crew here did to kick Jerry up a level is so important. You can't imagine, if i ever return to the US, what it will mean to me that i have someone to talk to on the hill, if we want to be serious about stopping the carbon poison and returning to a sustainable world.

And you guys helped make it happen, for sure more than i understand. I am so fookin grateful. Let's not stop here.

Know-it-all Kid meets Gore Vidal

Bush names Lee Raymond, former CEO of ExxonMobil and current head of the industry lobbying group National Petroleum Council, to chair a report on clean fuel for america.

Well who did you expect? Amory Lovins?

Another thought: What is the difference between a negative ad and telling the truth. Some of the ads i've seen called negative are only ads which tell the truth about for example the corruption of the incumbent. Is that negative?

Xxxxxx

In the early sixties, Gore Vidal was running for Congress in an upstate district in NY. My mother was heading one of his fundraising committees and this imposing intellectual giant came to our home for dinner. As a snot-nosed know-it-all kid, i got the wake-up call of my life, realizing i must learn much more about our civilization.

More than forty years later, i'm watching this election from my home in Germany, where i have gained some insight into the 3rd Reich and how the citizens here have become the most sustainable industrial economy in the world. And i thank Truthdig for letting Vidal inject his searing perspective into the mass consciousness, especially at this critical junction.

It's apparent from here that the coup d'etat is working, the body of evidence mounts daily as the horror of the mounting bodies in Iraq is hidden from view. That this man can remain so erudite about the mounting horror of stolen democracy, as he exhorts us to finally fight back, is an honor to behold.

There is little in western civilization which corresponds to the concept of "Elders" as in Native culture, but Gore Vidal is a shining example of an elder we should heed.

Would that we all could find within us both a bit of the wisdom, and the courage that this man's life represents. GOTV, and if it's stolen again, be prepared to take back america and stop this cabal.

Windpower in Congress!!!

A windpower colleague of mine from the Altamont Pass windplant in California has defeated the corrupt chair of the House Resources Committee, Richard Pombot. Jerry McNerney, a netroots candidate finally backed by the dccc, is a windpower engineer in a House with subpoena power. We're dreaming of seeing the secret Cheney task force papers where he and Kennyboy divide up Iraq long before 9/11.

And we'll begin to shape an energy policy which may allow america to rejoin the world community.

Wahlkampf (Choicefight) Results 1.0

Already after 2AM here in Deutschland, and i'm getting caught up in the BlueBlogger universe, focusing on Firedoglake. 1st returns are beginning, but from somewhere on Huffpost there's a link to a YouTube video which shows that the White House changed the acclaimed Mission Accomplished video so the Mission Accomplished sign is no longer visible above the Resident's head.

Such manipulation could well be interpreted to mean that they admit the mission is no longer accomplished. But it's also evidence that they are very sophisticated in media manipulation. Not that we didn't already know that, but here we see attention to detail which can only point out their adherence to the Goebbels playbook.

In any case if i can get two hours of sleep now, i'll wake at 4 or 5 and we shoiuld have the real fireworks by then.

REPORT: Borat Finds WMD

~Khazachstan Save World to Be

We digging since three years Iraq. Not simple with only shovel. Then comes first metal strike! We think, metal riches. Wrong, for jewdiggers say only icebergtip. Deeper must.

So we deeper. Come then smell. Fire all jewdiggers (nose too big) and get real KhazachsDkossacks. They strong and find clue, P Anderson glowing silicon. Now hot getting. Gypsies suck sweat off so we go deeper. Find prayer from Saddam thanking Allah for safe hiding. But not safe! We Khazachs! Spell? More work sweat, gypsies suck not so good.

Under Saddam prayer many schekels WMD. Kazaschstan over all!! We find burined woomed, send quick to santoroom, he glad. Big CHEESE for us, little ones. Many money comes now.

But no Anderson. That must come more. Kakazachs love the Lovely Lieberman who lies but gut digs.

Beware the Sushi Police

Last thrusday i was captured by aliens, brought to some kind of theater ship, and was forced to watch what i can only call some form of 3D multi-media reality show about the various potential futures for the planet. My captors claimed they were so angry at the earthlings for abusing the gift of life they had already done some form of hyper-dimensional intervention, which seemed to include accel-aerating the forces of instant karma.

What american apologies to Iraq had to do with the 20,000 year old nukular waste storage facility at Chernobyl was beyond my understantion. Suffice tosay my attention was awked, leeringly. Hear and there are some things which have i learned.
(there is no campaign finance reform other than campaign finance elimination, and without that american democracy cannot be reborn. And do you actually think even the dems are going to bring you that? Hillary Clinton on eliminating money from politics? It's far too sensible to have taxes pay for all campaigns, with no other backing possible except public discourse. Don't get me wrong, i trust, no, have placed the survival of my dna in rupert Murdoch, but something inside tells me there's another way to rebuild the forum.)

I blocked out the part about bushie sucking the cock of a giant Saudi oil sheik, who came in a black tar poison orgasmus which drowned the world.

The sound of the coral reefs dying nearly killed me, but i'm strong. The Norwegian glaciers reaching the German coast while the earth burned hurt, because i used to live in germany and i didn't like to think of no speed limits on an Autobahn tunneling through the ice.

I must admit seeing Manhattan unter Wasser kindofwaslike satisfying, not that i have anything against searing financial agents and their bilk. People who aren't on Wall Street make too much of Wall Street anyway, so shut up and take your medicine when we tell you.

Speaking of medicine, is it true Jesus was a crystal meth freak? Don't get me started, Jesus wouldn't blow some Saudi sheik. Sheik and Beik Haggardly.

The suffering of the chinese people when their economy lost 14% value after pulling only 37.9% of their holdings from the US dollar was sad, but watching the american dollar bitchslap it's own people because they didn't have any more o' them dollars was heartwrentching in a heart wrenching sort of way, though i couldn't stop laughing because i'm so timewarped.

Then there was the Cheese Crisis, which i won't even go into, except to hint at wormholes at Cern in Switzerland, which in Deutschland is called Der Schweiz.

Some of us were debilitated and did nothing, while others were not debilitated and did something, though i can't retail what, being defibrillated.

I was shocked to learn it got so bad that even the dolphins attacked people on the coasts, but what technology they used to capture Cansas Sity cannot be defudged. Found meself rooting for them in a non-perverse kind of way, i mean sometimes even me can't wrap meself around the notion of huymanity as good and worf protecting. Ifyaknowhaati mean.

Bye the bye, the aliens made killer chile, and the Teqkilla was to die for, which i did over and over, getting better each time like they do in Thibet without the Tequilla.

What's the name again of that radio guy with the expanding bellyverse whoo i wanted to punch with my overly strong fists one hundred times? But he's not the one who i used to sit with at the SpaceTime Cafe Trieste in SanFrandisco who used to be Michael Weiner before he was Michael Savage when herbal medicine was more important than Verbal Assault. Or was i confusing me with someone else? Hardly Matters.

WAITAMINUTE. Of Course It Matters. Who am i confusing me with?

Believe me, the cheese CRISIS had a large, round effect on my brain drain. Subjunctively.

I turned down Young Man Kang as a MySpace friend yesterday, despite his overarching talent as a film hyphenate, seriously, he's the first multibrilliant person i've ever turned down from MySpace, not that anyone ever asks, and they don't. Which has not of course anything to do with the alien abduction theme and what i learned from it, or was it adduction, haven't been to the gym in over a week.

Who wrote the song I gave My Love a Kerry, It Had No bone?

Where was i, should i post this for my reader and go einkaufing (in buying for american't illiterates) or should i stay and dwarf more? Looks like i'm already gone.

Last thought before elections (NOT!): Don't be AFRAID of martial law, but prepare yourselves for the advent of... THE SUSHI POLICE!

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1953687.ece

What's our world cumming on without cucumber tempura? Or SlicedTooThickFish?

By the way, here's a littlebittyditty about the new world tour drinking show that debuts on some British teevee channel tomorrow:

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/food_and_drink/features/article1949427.ece

and you thought IWASDRUNK?

america, rethuglican style, imploding? A SUSTAINABLE ANSWER

i could write about the years of shaking my head in horror at all that's gone on in america, the descent from two hundred years of relatively crooked politics into the mudslinging, illegal shit over the past decades, to the horror of the Bush coup d'etat. But this election cycle, especially from the perspective of seeing it all from Europe, has my head spinning at the level of horrendous shit which shows up every ten minutes on the internets.

Sure i'm thrilled the laws of instant karma are working overtime, the implosion of those controlling congress and the rapture-based sects is a hopeful sign. With all their down on their knees to global business, i've never been much of a dem, but in what passes for a political system in america the only reality right now is to at least have a return to checks and balances. We can fast-forward to the progressive agenda after we've taken that step. We've got to get John Conyers heading Juidiciary, simple as that.

But what to make of the increasing reports that the voting macacachines have already been hacked, and all the trap doors remain open? One blogger even asked Joe Wilson at a campaign event if he believed these guys would stoop to martial law or some such (not to mention staging a terrorist attack or a Tonkin Iran event.) Is there hope that the will of the people will actually be followed, or is america too far gone?

(total funds for mid-term '06, 527 groups inclusive are even more than 2004, i mean the level at which politics is merely an exercise in obscene funding. it could never happen in Germany, where campaigns have tight regulations which keep electioneering nearly civil.)

Even if the dems take both houses, america has a long, long way to go to save the democracy. From Europe, it's looks like we're watching a replay of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, only 24x speed. Will Bosnia or Kazachstan send election monitors to see if blacks and immigrants really have to face 8 hr lines, while rethuglican districts have limo ride-sharing and pre-reserved places at the diebold table?

Don't get me wrong, any nation which can produce Hank Williams and Tupac Shakur might have some heart left. I was going to make a Paris Hilton joke, but then i realized what i really wanted to do was pound rush limbag's expanding stomach with my strong fists about a hundred times, then have a serious civil debate about torture.

america is already the laughing stock of the entire world, and unless you've spent serious time abroad you don't see how strong the mistrust, the fear, the open-mouthed incredulity. Yes you can, you know from yesterday's survey that Bush is between Osama and Kim Il-Fit as the second most dangerous man on the planet

What i search for is the american Gandhi. ich denke i have a clue. All of the issues regarding how to fix the country have to have a foundation on a complete transformation of the basis of the economy. the pundits can talk about the housing bubble all they want, but the heart of any economy is energy cost. When one includes the military costs of securing energy pipelines, not to mention controlling energy sources, one sees that energy costs are indeed the foundation of the economy. america's economy is based upon global control of a poison energy source. ipso facto, it makes for a poison society. switch to healthy renewable energy, and the entire society is changed.

suddenly, the foundation of society is no longer poison.

Europe and Japan are already far ahead in all the technologies which comprise a sustainable future for us. the governments have already embarked on a far-thinking program of being technological leaders throughout the world. Perhaps an Apollo program of renewable energy in the US could retake the lead, but what the fuck, why not just join the other leading countries in giving our civilization a chance?

A completely sustainable economy is the only foundation by which this civilization can begin to heal the wounds of the sickness that's destroyed democracy.

Phil Ochs is singing "A Small Circle of Friends" at this moment. So obvious, the truth of the sixties, not the media version, in combination with all the technical savvy we've learned during the birth of the information age is perhaps enough to get the ball rolling.

Would any of my readers (if there was one) be able to calculate just how many american jobs would be created just to truck tower sections for all the windmills which should be built in the next decades? That doesn't include all the jobs from making the turbines, or financing the deals, developing the projects or retorqueing the gearbox bolts. and that's just windpower! (We're not even talking about the jobs created in all the other countries of the world)

You see where i'm going. There is an issue which should be the salvation of a sick america. It contains the answers, it contains the hope and dreams, and it's no longer a vision... it's the only reality left.

How else will the american economy reconcile itself with the native peoples who understood how to live in harmony here? (That's because Dylan's singing "Drunken Ira Hayes" while i remember all my indian friends who are opening the American Indian Film Fest in San Frandisco tonite.)

Jesus H christ, Beck and Emmylou Harris are singing Gram Parsons trying to keep out the lord's burning flame, i better go get a glass of red whine.

ELECTION THOUGHTS

Boot Liquor (SomaFM netradio) spilling from the thin plastic Harmon Kardon towers on either side of my MacbookProscreen, a hillbilly version of Gram Parson's In My Hour of Darkness playing, one of my favorite songs. (from thousands) Imagining drunken cowboy music coming from South a Market San Francisco, home to some wild intergalactic cowboys. The city's not known for its cowtippers. But cowboy music makes me think about my long lost land.

i'm not in my SF home where i spent 22 years, my laptop is connected from a small city outside of Cologne Germany... Remscheid. I've spent hundreds of hours reading as many progressive blogs as i can, trying to figure out what will happen in the election, but i can't believe what the country looks like from this perspective. Political system beyond fixing, intelligence quotients at all time lows, rapture-based reality intruding everywhere, economy soon to be bankrupt (think about it), a dinosaur energy policy blind to what everyone already knows, free press destroyed, and the worst mud-slinging most expensive political ad buys ever.

Here in Europe there are still checks and balances, and a comparatively free press. And a vibrant culture, with a foundation trying to build a real sustainable future. america looks like a cancer rapidly metastizing?, with the system so broke it certainly can't be fixed by democrats controlling congress. (Five Blind Boys of Alabama singing Amazing Grace to the tune of House of the Rising Sun.) But here i am hoping the fuckin dems will win both houses.

It's essential that Nancy Pelosi, who in San francisco i knew well enough to respect her hard compromises (but not how she set up the Presidio), be speaker; the first step, so we can get the impeachment process and treason trials going. Not that all the dems want that, but if america wants to regain respect in the world, of which it currently has little, it's going to have to cross that line. Yes, to save democracy in america, it must first be set in deep conflict, with punishment for the abuse of power to set a new moral tone.

I always wonder how people can go about their daily lives in america, with the unbelievably nasty violence carried out in their name, with the utter destruction of a nation (again) on it's hands, with so much killing, with the looting of the nation's treasury, with the replacement of science by rapture-based feeling. i don't know if the votes will be counted right, but if there was ever a time in my life where a single election counted so much, it's now.

I don't understand why the intersections of every city are not clogged with protesters every day, given the level of the shit Bush perpetrates on the entire earth. But now, get out and fuckin try to save this "democracy." We can deal with Rupert Murdoch, hillary clinton and rahm whatever later.

One more thing, as Commander Cody sings Lost in the Ozone Again. It's clear to me that my experience of living at the highest visionary end of the sixties, with direct experience of what really happened and what it meant, means i just might have some skill in bringing vision back when it's needed so much. There's a few decades of high level sustainable energy business in the intervening years, which helped build perspective to the tumultuous '60's. It's time , as the Derailers sing I Love Me Some Elvis, for the visionary elders to reclaim their space.