April 17, 2016

Oil import statistics and oil imports from Saudi Arabia

Oil imports by the month to USA

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm

Oil Imports by Month from Saudi Arabia

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIMUSSA1&f=M

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Less than 12% of oil imports to USA come from Saudi Arabia (note this is imports only and does not included domestic production used domestically)

Less than 1/6 of oil imports to USA come from the Persian Gulf.

However, USA based (and NATO-based) trans-national oil corporations produce and market substantial amounts of Saudi and Persian Gulf oil by an order of magnitude over what we actually use, I know this and if interested anyone can do the research in minutes.

April 17, 2016

Sanders may well do better than Clinton regards to Trump or the GOP.

All the polls seem to indicate Sanders does better than Clinton.

Right now there are several OPs that have most recent favorability ratings of the various candidates and only Trump is worse than Clinton in negative public image:

-41 Trump
-24 Clinton
-23 Cruz
+9 Sanders (one could argue this has been dampened by negative campaigning within the Democratic Party)
+12 Kasich

Where I live in rural California, folks are for Trump or Sanders, and I know of no one nor locally have I seen a single campaign sign nor bumper sticker for Hillary Clinton.

Several days ago I spoke to a friend of 40 plus years and former roommate in youth. He is the Director of Public Health in an adjacent rural county and what I would call a legacy Democrat.

He moved to CA from MN in 1981 and grew up in Hibbing where his grandfather founded what was a major regional bank. His family in MN was very politically active and his grandparents and parents were long time personal friends and supporters of the Humphrey and Mondale families. He was the black sheep and studied environmental science and came to CA while his brothers earned law degrees and one went into banking in Duluth. Now all are in 60s and nearing retirement. I was more liberal but always listened to him.

When we spoke, he said he was troubled by Clinton but rather than Sanders, he supported Kasich. He bleeds Democrat. This blew me away but fortunately politics was only a brief mention in our conversation.

April 16, 2016

Many of the impacts of fracking to water, air, and underlying geology cannot be mitigated nor is

natural recovery in a human-scale amount of time.

Projects are permitted under NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) and as such require a Categorical Exclusion, Environmental Assessment, or an Environmental Impact Statement, with a Categorical Exclusion requiring the least study and mitigation and Environmental Impact Statement the most.

The shales that are fracked may lie under public or private lands, however, the federal government retains mineral rights to shales underlying most private lands and can put private tracts up for sale regardless of surface ownership and use.

Fracking projects are being approved under Categorical Exclusions, the weakest NEPA document and study. This is a bad faith application of NEPA but policies are implemented to avoid documenting the environmental impacts. Some fracking projects are approved without NEPA.

At the link is a pdf document by the Congressional Research Service about fracking in general and several specific projects where federal and state agencies and promoters argued that NEPA did not apply. This claim is ludicrous. I cannot copy from the pdf to DU.

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42502.pdf

April 16, 2016

Neocons and the Ukraine Coup

https://consortiumnews.com/2014/02/23/neocons-and-the-ukraine-coup/

Exclusive: American neocons helped destabilize Ukraine and engineer the overthrow of its elected government, a “regime change” on Russia’s western border. But the coup and the neo-Nazi militias at the forefront also reveal divisions within the Obama administration, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

More than five years into his presidency, Barack Obama has failed to take full control over his foreign policy, allowing a bureaucracy shaped by long years of Republican control and spurred on by a neocon-dominated U.S. news media to frustrate many of his efforts to redirect America’s approach to the world in a more peaceful direction.

But Obama deserves a big dose of the blame for this predicament because he did little to neutralize the government holdovers and indeed played into their hands with his initial appointments to head the State and Defense departments, Hillary Clinton, a neocon-leaning Democrat, and Robert Gates, a Republican cold warrior, respectively.

cut

Obama’s Strategy

As President, Obama has sought a more cooperative relationship with Russia’s Putin and, generally, a less belligerent approach toward adversarial countries. Obama has been supported by an inner circle at the White House with analytical assistance from some elements of the U.S. intelligence community.

But the neocon momentum at the State Department and from other parts of the U.S. government has continued in the direction set by George W. Bush’s neocon administration and by neocon-lite Democrats who surrounded Secretary of State Clinton during Obama’s first term.

more ...

April 15, 2016

The unsanitized story of Jackie Robinson

I liked this article.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/15182338/how-story-real-jackie-robinson-shows-deeper-more-painful-side-civil-rights-legend

Although born from good intentions, the idea of Jackie Robinson the saint is a convenient, unfortunate concoction. It is true enough that Robinson changed America, and in turn, America changed with him. His image and name rests on awards and on stamps, on highways and schools, and in his sport, no player on any team will ever wear his number 42 again, except during the one game later this week, when every player, coach and umpire in the majors wears it.

The simple language at the root of his legend -- Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier -- sounds good and permanent and important, uncomplicated both for grade schoolers and adults alike, and the triumphant tone is consistent with America's enduring need for hope.

[The Undefeated: 'Jackie Robinson' doc kills myths of legend

Ken Burns' four-hour, two-part documentary on Jackie Robinson alters the memory and mythology of the first black man to integrate baseball.]

Yet even that is a concoction. At best, it is a fantasy discouraging the deeper, more painful excavation of the barriers he couldn't break and why, the ones society did not lower but strengthened because of the threat of his presence. At worst, it is a simplistic and corrosive lie designed to keep America from itself, to keep it from what it is, which is a nation far more comfortable with always being the good guy, always preferring the fairy tale to the truth.

The real Robinson, whole and unsanitized, was constantly human, competitive, flawed and pained, honorably naïve but always in determined opposition to the obstacles that prevented him from fulfilling a quest still unrealized some 44 years after his death: full partnership in the American dream for African-Americans. The real Robinson lives beautifully and heroically, inside a confectionary lie that his sainthood was something given by a redeemed America rather than taken from a resistant one.

The concoction undermines his true, enduring significance: the enormous cost of the legend, its actual price in isolation and hurt. Robinson paid for remaining in the fight, even when overmatched, and was betrayed, sometimes by his supporters. The better story for a nation so woefully divided is the real one of the person willing to pay the cost and suffer the cracks and fallibilities that came with it.

More:

April 8, 2016

Here are several attempts.

Eyes Wide Hut - Woman on vision quest rents hut in Iceland during the off-season that has poor illumination and is rife with vermin (cockroaches, spiders, mice, rats, Icelandic elves and other creepies). Decides her life wasn't so bad after all.

Trading Laces - Valley girl with OCD barricades herself in mall shoe store and won't come out until spirited away by delivery truck driver to distribution center.

Da Vinci Cod - Talented young artist gives up his art to marry a fisherman's daughter and become a fisherman. He invents an automated cod cleaning and fileting machine. In his spare time he paints fish murals all over the village. Today the fishing industry has died but there is a tourism industry based upon his murals, some are still being discovered. As a tie-in to the movie release, there is a coffee table book of his restored murals.

Men in Back - All the men in the world wake up to a medieval world where they have just been released from slavery to the women. The never-ending story of how they strive to become equal and free in an unjust world.

Fee Willy - An ex-POTUS with a weight problem wanders the world collecting stipends for The Fee Willy Foundation. He is uncertain as to whether he wants his wife to be POTUS.

April 7, 2016

The Plan to Send a Submarine to Titan, Saturn's Largest Moon

Planetary scientists intend to send a submersible vessel to cruise the liquid hydrocarbon seas of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The mission study is in its infancy, but its ambition and audacity harkens to the best of science fiction and the heady heights of the Space Race. As Ralph Lorenz of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) explains, "The virtue of this study is that you just need to say those words—Titan submarine—and everyone kind of gets that it's out there, it's interesting, and there's a lot of exciting potential."

At the 47th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held last month in The Woodlands, Texas, Lorenz—the Titan submarine's project scientist—led an open forum on the mission to solicit reactions from fellow space scientists to the mission's targets and objectives. The goal was to help the Titan sub researchers determine the best payload of scientific instruments for the craft.

Among the questions the scientists must eventually answer: How long should such a mission last? How far should the submarine go? How fast should it go? How much data might it try to return?

None of these questions are as simple as they might seem. Cruising speed and data transmission, for example, must be carefully balanced. Too much of one takes away from what little available power exists for the other. Shorter travel distances mean more data about fewer things; vice-versa for longer distances. If the vessel is going to be sticking around one area for a while, what instruments might be needed to really collect every scintilla of data possible? Then it's back to the drawing board with respect to balancing the use of available electricity. No problem in space exploration is trivial, and no decision can be made lightly. Add to all this the problems inherent to submersible vehicles—and that Titan's seas are cryogenic, or extremely cold—and you get some idea of how ambitious and exciting this mission really is.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/78049/plan-send-submarine-titan-saturns-largest-moon

More plus video and images at link.

April 7, 2016

Checked online about my CA registration status and because of a glitch said not registered.

I just got off the phone with County Voters Registration.

One need to put the "/" in MM/DD/YYYY.

Also one needs to enter either last four digits of SS# or DL#.

DL# worked but not SS# when I tried internet online while on the phone.

I have been a voter at same address since 2003 and only have vote by mail as live voting was stopped several years ago as very rural.

So I am still registered to vote and person told me getting many similar calls for same reason.

Here is where to check one's CA Voter Registration Status.

http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/registration-status/

April 6, 2016

Found mass quantities of morel mushrooms yesterday.

What shall I do with them? New ideas welcome.

So far scheduled:

(1) Butter and garlic add eggs and scramble.
(2) Chicken and morel teriyaki stir fry with brown rice.
(3) Butter and garlic with sirloin steak.
(4) ???

I make great mushroom soup in the Fall with tanoak (matsutake) mushrooms and greatly prefer over made with morels so soup is out unless something truly different.

March 26, 2016

The Libya Gamble:Inside Hillary Clinton’s Push for War & the Making of a Failed State - Democray Now

Published on Mar 3, 2016


http://democracynow.org - The New York Times has published a major two-part exposé titled "The Libya Gamble" on how then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed President Obama to begin bombing Libya five years ago this month. Today, Libya is a failed state and a haven for terrorists. How much should Hillary Clinton be blamed for the crisis? We speak to journalist Scott Shane of The New York Times.

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: http://democracynow.org