Set the Spin Cycle on High

It's been another busy news week. Are TPTB targeting Joementia? Usually they hide information about illegal classified documents. It has also been interesting to watch people come unglued over investigating the mafia branch of our government in congress. Additionally, the conflict in Ukraine is not going well for NATOstan and will require more spin...or perhaps just ignoring the facts? Let's dive into details below the fold...

The Fading Facade of a Functioning System

We've known for years we don't live in a democracy, at least since the 2014 Princeton Study,

a multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power, or basically the US is an oligarchy...surprise. None the less, people still attempt to work within a system which is dysfunctional, delusional, and really doesn't even exist. Let's look in more detail below the fold...

A Long Hot Summer?

It has been a scorcher here in NE Alabama this week. Pretty dry too. But what we're experiencing is nothing compared to the western US. The drought in the West is staggering. Water futures there are scary. So much of their water is being used for crops like alfalfa and corn which are better suited to grow in other regions. It's not like this issue is new.

On January 17, 1890, John Wesley Powell strode into a Senate committee room in Washington, D.C., to testify...Powell had come to testify not as a hero or explorer, but as one of America’s foremost scientists, the head of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and an architect of federal science. He had something deeply important to communicate about America’s future.
He told them all too rightly that the West offered not enough water to reclaim by irrigation more than a tiny fraction of its land. Their dreams of a verdant West needed to be tempered and shaped to reality. Powell might as well have told them the Earth was flat. The senators were outraged.