Memnison Journal

See http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/ I know that the Administrator was down these in the last couple of days, and that there’s a huge gearing up on this issue.

The ninny right-wing libertarian who runs Whole Paycheck Foods is at it again, giving me more reasons not to shop there over his what-me-worry statements on global warming and evile-socialism stuff on health care.

I have been listening to enough rants, hate and nonsense in the last year and a half to last me a lifetime or more, and I’ve been more than fed up with it all.  But I started realizing that this sort of crud is endemic; uninformed people who choke off their sources of information to [...]

…being played against Chinese state-controlled firms vis-a-vis foreign mining and iron mill outfits.    The Chinese have a response; their own Gulag, where the rule of law is variable and limited at best. Which is the essential problem in dealing with China, business-wise.  The whole 关系 guanxi / baksheesh ‘special connections’ situation is all-important, and the [...]

Website for the remains of the old GM that they’re liquidating.   Wanna buy a golf course or a Superfund site? At the first day of hearings on GM’s proposed asset sale restructuring chief Albert Koch estimated on June 30 that the company’s environmental liabilities for all sites are $530 million. Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson [...]

Due to overload on the family (and that I’m unable to handle the mower at present) we depend on a mowing service to come over and do the lawn – a very nice operation, really, and we recommend them to any locals that might need it. But the dogs have been plagued recently with some [...]

Risk map setup from air toxics risks on causing cancer in the USA via the EPA: Parts of Los Angeles, Calif., and Madison County, Ill., had the highest cancer risks in the nation — 1200 in 1 million and 1100 in 1 million, according to the EPA data. They were followed by two neighborhoods in [...]

Due to the demand for coal dropping due to the worldwide recession,  Ukrainian coal mines are shutting down or not paying their workers, with a large glut of unsold coal. After the Russian company Gazprom decided to play politics with its natural gas supply to the rest of Europe, the Europeans have been connecting up [...]

No, it’s not because of the demand, it’s because hedge funds and market speculators who drove it to $4-5 a gallon gas are going back into the market because they think that commodity is going to make money again.

Some read-this items on the GM bankruptcy: Cissna Park, Illinois struggles with the loss of a huge chunk of its tax base, as a local GM dealership is closed. A LA Times article on why GM went down for the count. Michael Moore, a GM kid like me, on where we go from here and [...]

Sundance: What’s your idea this time? Butch: Bolivia. Sundance: What’s Bolivia? Butch: Bolivia. That’s a country, stupid! In Central or South America, one or the other. Sundance: Why don’t we just go to Mexico instead? Butch: ‘Cause all they got in Mexico is swine flu and there’s too much of that here. Look, if we’d [...]

Dow Chemical donating contaminated fish to the poor.

The end of the ‘Performance Track’ program for self-’regulation’.

More major delays in the damn Energy-Efficient stuff – just as I thought I had everything lined up and nearly ready to go.  The 3rd insulation guy has NOT been responding to my requests to send me a non-messed-up proposal, and even a couple of calls, one to his damn cellphone, isn’t getting anywhere. Lots [...]

If the Seattle Press-Intelligencier survives the next month, it will be as a online paper only.   Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountain News of Denver is about to cease publishing. The new US government budget (PDF link) under Obama is going to cap federal employee raises (the automatic kind) to 2% next year; the base this last [...]