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.