the best science money can buy

No need to worry about your groundwater or those pesky hilltops anymore!

Last week the University of Texas provost announced he would re-examine a report by a UT professor that said fracking was safe for groundwater after the revelation that the professor pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Texas natural gas developer. It's the latest fusillade in the ongoing battle over the basic facts of fracking in America. Texans aren't the only ones having their fracking conversations shaped by industry-funded research. Ohioans got their first taste last week of the latest public-relations campaign by the energy policy wing of the US Chamber of Commerce. It's called "Shale Works for US," and it aims to spend millions on advertising and public events to sell Ohioans on the idea that fracking is a surefire way to yank the state out of recession. The campaign is loaded with rosy employment statistics, which trace to an April report authored by professors at three major Ohio universities and funded by, you guessed it, the natural gas industry. The report paints a bright future for fracking in Ohio as a job-creator. One co-author of the study, Robert Chase, is poised at such a high-traffic crossroads of that state's natural gas universe that his case was recently taken up by the Ohio Ethics Commission, whose chairman called him "more than a passing participant in the operations of the Ohio oil and gas industry," and questioned his potential conflicts of interest. As landowners in a suite of natural gas-rich states like Texas and Ohio struggle to to decipher conflicting reports about the safety of fracking, Chase is a piece in what environmental and academic watchdogs call a growing puzzle of industry-funded fracking research with poor disclosure and dubious objectivity. "It's hard to find someone who's truly independent and doesn't have at least one iron in the fire," said Ohio oil and gas lease attorney Mark F. Okey. "It's a good ol' boys network and they like to take care of their own..."

Because, of course, it's impossible to get a degree in any energy-related discipline, much less a job, unless you have a seal of approval from the folks with the Right Stuff.

with friends like these

...against that old evildoes Bashar al-Assad... You wonder what kind of technological terrors the pragmatists at Langley and the Pentagon are slipping the Righteous du jour under the table. And what the Rooskies are countering Major Kong with now?

asking silly questions

Where's the outrage? That's a good question, Mr. Blow. Maybe it got dissipated when a Democratic Congress and Presidency embraced the Chuckie Schumer doctrine of expediency at costs for the well being of Wall Street in 2008. Maybe it got dissipated when the Occupy movement yanked the outrage platform from the Tea Party. But when the Administration discovered it could own Occupy, it sent the Justice Department to help the local police forces break them up. Someone sent the Black Bloc. Thinking that "outrage" equals "NSA/ FBI surveillance" takes the wind out of people's sails, alright. Isn't it supposed to?

a place for everyone and everyone in their place

...even if it's just cleaning toilets for their betters who can actually do the math. you would have all the fuss and bother if people didn't know how to cipher like these guys, either, would you?

an offer they can not refuse

help protect us from whoever we tell you we need protecting from

...The head of the American government's secretive National Security Agency has taken the unprecedented step of asking a convention of computer hackers to join him in an effort to make the internet more secure. In a speech to the 20th annual Def Con gathering in Las Vegas, the four-star general Keith Alexander stressed common ground between US officials and hackers, telling them privacy must be preserved and that they could help by developing new tools. "You're going to have to come in and help us," Alexander told thousands of attendees. The conference founder, Jeff Moss, known in hacking circles as the Dark Tangent, told the conference he had invited Alexander, who rarely gives speeches, because he wanted them to learn about one of the world's "spookiest, least known" organisations. Attendees were respectful and gave modest applause, though several said they were concerned about secret government snooping and the failure of authorities thus far to stop foreign-backed attacks...

And oh by the way the name and credit card numbers of every person in that room are now on record.

eyes wide shut

Why does this surprise people? When you access the internet, you are using a system initially developed by and for the D.o'D. Of course a flood of entrepreneurs came and developed it- but all of those back doors are inherent in the system. It was built that way. And good grief, Microsoft owns Skype. This is not overreaching conspiracy theory people. This is how the Company gets inside information to keeping owning everything. That they also pick up details on who is boffing whom is just an amusing fringe.

background noisemakers

Willard has hit his stride among the Let Them Eat Kippers crowd: ... In Mr. Romney, given his ties to the industry and his tax-cutting promises, they have found a person they can back with enthusiasm. And for all of the news about the Libor scandal, an attendee at the reception said that the controversy was merely “background noise” for those in the ornate ballroom — replete with crystal chandeliers and gold paneling and filigree. According to the campaign, roughly 250 people attended the event, which was expected to bring in at least $2 million. And, in a nod to Britain, Mr. Romney’s guests dined on fish and chips, passed around in paper cones... Pretty low overhead when you're working the Beasts of London.

pot investigates kettle and declares it black

No comments:

fresh icewater

coming soon to a coast nearer you

hot times

Airglow ...when there is so much UV radiation absorbed by air during the day the ozone in the upper atmosphere glows as it goes back to its background energy state.

Top of His Game

This is what's known as having Fiends in High Places. Your eyes would twinkle too if you were responsible for as much pain in the world as this man is, and enjoyed it like he does.

Nothing to See Here!

The official story is absence of evidence is evidence of absence, there was no environmental contaminant because all the right tests didn't show 'em, so move along, move along.

feeding the hand that bites you

Surprise, surprise, a leader of LulzSec, the originator of Low Ion Cannon, is an FBI mole.

bringing order to the galaxy

...

Americans have been increasingly socialized to equate inattention, anger, anxiety, and immobilizing despair with a medical condition, and to seek medical treatment rather than political remedies. What better way to maintain the status quo than to view inattention, anger, anxiety, and depression as biochemical problems of those who are mentally ill rather than normal reactions to an increasingly authoritarian society?

...

don't worry, be happy

Skynet loves you and has your best interests in mind.

one definition of insanity

...you keep doing the same thing over expecting a different result.

But who am I kidding? A lot of people made, and continue to make, a pile of money off the last collapse.

if they didn't exist, the bank$ters would have to bankroll 'em

the Black Bloc

...The presence of Black Bloc anarchists—so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontations with police and destroy property—is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state. The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent. They were shut down because the state realized the potential of their broad appeal even to those within the systems of power. They were shut down because they articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines. And they were shut down because they were places mothers and fathers with strollers felt safe.

Black Bloc adherents detest those of us on the organized left and seek, quite consciously, to take away our tools of empowerment. They confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution. The real enemies, they argue, are not the corporate capitalists, but their collaborators among the unions, workers’ movements, radical intellectuals, environmental activists and populist movements such as the Zapatistas. Any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, rather than physically destroy, becomes, in the eyes of Black Bloc anarchists, the enemy. Black Bloc anarchists spend most of their fury not on the architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or globalism, but on those, such as the Zapatistas, who respond to the problem. It is a grotesque inversion of value systems.

Because Black Bloc anarchists do not believe in organization, indeed oppose all organized movements, they ensure their own powerlessness...

Fortunately for Wall Street, it seems likely the Company already has.

masters of the obvious

The government has lied to everyone to keep money rolling into the Endless War machine?

Ya think? But I guess to be a lie you have to actually believe it in the first place.

anticipation

some needs to tell the Editors likely the silence speaks volumes

Answer: It's like Military Intelligence

Question: what is a "pro-life liberal"?

I thought all liberals are pro-life by definition.

lib·er·al/ˈlib(ə)rəl/
Adjective:
Open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.

Planned parenthood and contraception are life affirming and hence pro-life.

But do not think 'pro-life" means what some think it means. Apparently it means mindlessly consuming all resources in a blind genetic rush towards a Malthusian catastrophe. You know, like a third nuclear World War over food, water, and fossil fuels.



Now that's something the Church understands.