SAR #12137

Energy is money.

Rights Of Passage. Talks between the US and Pakistan, after droning on for six months, have resulted in an agreement whereby for only a million dollars a day Pakistan will let their close friend and ally, the United States, ship food and gasoline to its combat troops in Afghanistan. That does not include bribes and 'shrinkage' en route.

And Your Point Would Be? Sen. Tom Harkin maintains that the filibuster rule is ‘inherently unconstitutional’.

Mighty, Fallen: North Dakota produced an average of 575,490 b/d in March, beating Alaska's 567,481 – but nowhere near the 2 million barrels a day Alaska pumped back in the 1970s.

Ever Vigilant: The Department of Homeland Security is leading the federal effort to prevent the people from peaceably assembling in Chicago during the NATO conference, along with the Secret Service and Federal Protective Service, supplementing the 12,500 member CPD.

Inside Joke: In order to keep global climate change from exceeding 2°C, scientists say we must cap our greenhouse gas emissions before 2020.

Here's Your Hat... Banks keep pushing courts to speed up the foreclosure process and then let the houses sit there, empty and unloved. Deteriorating. No Realtor sign. Little maintenance. There are tens of thousands of these one-time homes, vacant and abandoned, rotting away. This is what our country has become: We use taxpayer dollars to throw people into the streets so that the banks can collect federal dollars and pretend they are profitable. Then we throw the people off unemployment. And no one goes to jail. No one seems to care. And every single one of us has played a part.

Similarities: According to Pat Robertson, “The union of two men doesn’t bring forth anything except disease, apparently, and suffering. And the same thing of the union of two women.” Just like the union of a man and a woman. Ah, equality.

Score:The atmospheric CO2 reading at Mauna Loa on May 6th was 397 ppm. A year ago it was 393 ppm, and a decade before that it was 375 ppm. Before the industrial age began dumping CO2 into the atmosphere it stood at 280 ppm. At the current rate of increase (and we are doing absolutely nothing to slow that increase) we will reach 800 ppm by 2090. That will guarantee global warming to at least 5.5°C by 2100. That in turn means a rise of 13-18°F over most of US and a 27°F rise in Arctic temperature. It is unlikely than human civilization will survive the heat, drought and catastrophic storms that would follow such a rise. And according to NOAA, the worst impacts would be “largely irreversible for 1000 years."

Inquiring Mind: Do we know enough to ensure safe drilling in the Arctic? No, why do you ask?

Today's Reading: Congress is more dysfunctional than it has been since the Civil War, mainly because "one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." Mann & Ornstein "It's Even Worse than It Looks".

Playbill: Ten years ago we had such a large a budget surplus that some worried we were paying off the national debt too fast. But by the last Bush budget year we had a $1.4 trillion deficit. What happened to the surpluses? Tax cuts for the rich and a doubling of military spending to fight two wars - two wars of aggression. The the economy collapsed because Washington abdicated its responsibility to supervise the thieves. That is why we have a deficit. Wouldn't it make sense to look at what caused the deficits and fix that?