A Midsummer Night's Mare
By DS Posted in User Blogs — Comments (74) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Some nights when cold wind whistles through dead thistles on its frigid lonely quest, cooled in deep July's darkness in the belly of my nest, I awaken, startled stifled, heaving silent screams, wrested from the clutches of dissolving winter dreams, Unreturning despite my yearning for the sweet embrace of sleep, down my hallway quietly creeping I read of something deep; but all too often, surf'n and blog'n, only despair invades my keep ... The vision that m'live'n is not the mare I'd choose to face; the more I see, the more I crave the bed'n grave of sleep'n's sweet embrace...- A Midsummer Night's Mare
I'm normally proud of the four-billion year long slog our lineage has made out of the Archeaen depths, into the Devonian shallows, onto the Permian wilderness and beyond, and I'm all too often self-congratulatory for my unearned status as the current living legacy of one of evolution's many winners. But as of late, when I'm caught in the delirium between sleep and consciousness at 3: 00 AM, I'm haunted with a darker moment of dreamlike clarity: It's then that I realize how little we, as a species, have changed. Can I invite you to keep me company for a few minutes in my dark vision? Let me show you my midsummer night's mare ...
We are naked talking chimpanzees who stand upright and no longer live in the forest. My bed, the latest incarnation of the ancestral tree top nest; my bedroom, the cave of my era; the hallway, a remote descendant of the well traveled jungle trail; the softly glowing flat screen monitor stands in for the campfire; the Internet it beams into my home is the communal hearth around which my global tribe virtually huddles in the ancient circle of our kind. And more often than not what I see lately when peering through the Internet portal in the middle of a lonely July's darkness is deeply disturbing; even filtered through a mind numbed with sleep, or perhaps because of it.
Assemble the right bits of data buttressed with several disciplines of science and eco-politics, and what emerges is a vision so terrifying I hope it is nothing but a dark dream. And in my winter somnolence I despair. The short term does not look promising. The trends are all there, the information easy to assimilate, the darkdream may turn real. Geology and economics have conspired with our behavioral shortcomings to take our complex interdependent culture apart at the petroleum stained seams. The Collapse of the Mighty Oil Empire. The Fall of Petro-Rome. No one can stop Hubbert's Peak. But I digress ...
Deep under the once pristine deserts of the Middle East, now littered with the industrial wreckage and chemical poisons of a century of energy mining and warfare, crude oil and ancient sea water are locked in mortal combat for dominance. There is no doubt which will prevail; the fossil water will, absolutely, inevitably, verifiably, win. And when it does, our petro-civilization will unravel, with the US leading the pack. The house of cards is set to collapse.
Below those Arabian sands, the oil sat patiently on top of water, sealed in natural rocky bottles under high pressure with caps of gas holding guard above. The dinosaurs came and went without disturbing it. Meteor impacts did not affect it. Mass extinctions, shield volcanoes, and tectonic upheaval went unnoticed by the caramelized algae. But a hundred years ago some more recent arrivals, clever walking chimpanzees from the African Savannah, figured out it was good to burn. So they pierced the desert vault with slender steel pipes like the termite mounds they once fished with twigs, and they are sucking it dry. In my darker moments the only question I ask is, how soon will we succeed?
Ghawar in Saudi Arabia is the largest single oil reservoir on the planet, pumping out an estimated 5 million plus barrels a day. It took millions of years for cyano-bacteria to convert and store the solar radiation, settle to the sea floor, form thick mats, slowly transform into a rich organic syrup, and migrate into high pressure reserves. Ghawar is the crown jewel in our energy treasure chest, the king of them all. But it is dying, we are killing it, and as goes Ghawar, so goes world production.
When looking at how fast oil can be pumped from a given find, the reservoir manager has to carefully consider the geology of the formation, the viscosity of the crude, permeability, and many other factors, to establish a safe, maximum rate of 'pull'. If pulled to the surface too hard, lower viscosity water sitting underneath will sneak past the oil in the tiny interstitial spaces between the tightly packed sand grains and eventually foul the reserve, forever.
But the grinning primates are greedy and shortsighted. They're driven by ancient desires of status manifested as modern profit margins. They're compelled by vestigial urges they cannot control and barely recognize to bolster their rank in the troop hierarchy, attract the most desirable mates, and intimidate their peers with artifacts of power and prestige. They're riddled with dangerously hostile evolutionary baggage transformed by technology into devastatingly effective predatory behavior. No other species on the planet is safe from the talking chimpanzee; the only thing they have to fear is each other and their own nature. So they power their war machines on the very black gold they defend with their oil burning tanks and bombers. It's a vicious, fatal, and unsustainable, cycle.
In a few short decades the clever jabbering hominids cracked open the primeval reserves of stored sunlight, freed the trapped gas, sunk their steel snouts into the thick bubbling crude like it was a frosty chocolate soda, and began gulping it down. They dynamited the rocky seals and dredged off the protective layers of earth, which had withstood so much for so long, to satiate their petty thirst for wealth and control, to power their machines of luxury, and to drive their contraptions of war. And not being satisfied even with this wasteful act, the grinning primates pulled too hard on the precious sludge and sucked the water past the oil; now half the fluid pumped out of Ghawar is briny water and much of the remainder crude will never see the light of day. How long before production begins to decline steeply and irreversibly no matter how much extra pressure we pump into the sandy refuge, or how many metal straws we drop into the ground to sip the last recoverable drops? How long before the fossil sea water claims it's inevitable victory in the subterranean tug-of-war? A few years ago when petro-geologists still had easy access to reservoir data on Ghawar, they were guessing maybe ten to fifteen years. Then oil started increasing in price, western oil expertise was diverted into Iraq and then chased out of the entire region altogether under threat of terror attacks. Higher prices and US pressure convinced the corrupt House of Saud to over-pull those already abused wellheads. Not that it would've mattered who ruled the meanest troop of talking chimps; this is our nature. But we hastened the day of judgment. We may be seeing Hubbert's Peak right now. Happy New Year, 2005.
Over fifty percent of the almost 100 million barrels of oil the world uses every day comes from a handful of irreplaceable fields in five tiny regions of the world. And the story is the same in every one of them. Greed, profit motive, impatience, arrogance, and out and out ignorance, have deprived future generations of what could have been while saddling them with the debt for what was. Saddam cranked his wells past recommended production limits as a result of years of UN Sanctions and to generate badly needed cash, ironically, and perhaps fittingly, leaving little for the world. Our blood-soaked gory prizes in Rumulia and Kirkuk are sandy formations saturated with brine coughing up smelly, water-tainted crude, half of which is lost through cracking pipes and rusted pump stations targeted for destruction by furious insurgents. Kuwait's Al Burgen reserve is in about the same shape as Ghawar, same for the fields in the UAE. We know little about the state of Awiz these days, the largest reserve in Iran, but it's a pretty safe guess that since all these fields have been operating as long as Ghawar and managed by the same inept corrupt chimpanzee conglomerates who managed Saudi Arabia's only treasure, that the story is the same. Outside of the Middle East, Mexico's Cantarell field has recently just peaked and is now in decline, and the Venezuelan fields are likely to be at or near peak. Despite new finds in the North Sea the UK is now a net importer and the same goes for Norway. China has a large producing field but they use every liter of it and no one expects them to start sharing. Russia is nearing that same limit. No matter how many new finds you read about, if the country of origin uses more than they produce, it doesn't do the US a damn bit of good.
Looking at what are called 'oil reserves' gives a false sense of comfort as, at best, no more than half of the oil shown can be recovered, and in practice it's far less. The only thing that matters is how much we can bring to market and at what pace. In some cases, none of the oil presented is recoverable at meaningful rates, as is the case in the trillion barrel Orinoco Tar Belts. Sounds pretty good, right? It's nonsense; we cannot produce significant crude with current methods or foreseeable technology from these deposits. The tar is nothing but natural asphalt, way too thick to pump and far too deep to mine. Domestic Reserves in the Arctic and elsewhere sound like a lot, but even if we could extract the ideal quantity possible, the most we could get after subtracting the energy investment to run the machinery needed to harvest the oil is only enough to power our nation for a few months, maybe a year or two, tops. And that production would be spread over a decade.
This is the first part of my darkdream; half the oil in the world comes from a score of large fields which have been producing for more than fifty years. They're in bad shape. No comparable reserves have been found, and we've looked everywhere there is to look. New finds are almost meaningless in terms of world consumption, they're peanuts compared to what is needed. Nuclear fusion is a dream and fission too expensive, and besides, we're too far behind the construction curve to start now; grain ethanol takes more oil invested than it produces; enthusiaist of solar panels rarely mention we would have to cover 10% of the country or manufacturing them takes oil, exotic materials, and produces toxic chemical byproducts; hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen itself are offered as a solution only by idealists who lack the basic physics to understand their limitations.
Misguided librals calling for more renewable energy resources simply do not understand and consistently reject a fact: We use oil because it is by far the cheapest and most convenient form of stored energy many times over... and production is peaking while consumption climbs. The consensus among those in the Petrology Community is that global oil production will peak within five years or so, maybe less, while world oil consumption, fueled largely by the insatiable US addiction and the burgeoning economies in Asia-India, continues to grow steadily. Production Vs consumption. Those lines will cross next year. What happens then?
What happens then is that the price of oil begins a sustained long term move to record levels, and where it will stop nobody knows. The surge in oil prices seen in the middle of this year was the first leg of that.
Most of the time I trust primate ingenuity and capitalist resourcefulness. I'm an optimist. Our ancestors survived many threats in the past and I think we will prevail over this as well, in the long run anyway. And it bears pointing out that we do have enough coal, oil, natural gas, alternative energy resources, and (hopefully) brain power in the US to at least keep the electricity on, the trucks, ships, and trains full of food and supplies moving, the farms churning out produce, and the water flowing, for a few decades more. If we're careful we can bridge this shortfall until we find a solution and keep ourselves afloat.
But are we that smart? Are we willing to give up our SUV's, air conditioning, and winter grapefruit, right now, so that we can have the barest essentials for a few decades? Or will we bury our heads in the sand with what is left of the oil and scream "IS NOT" until the poop hits the fan so hard it splatters us with economic collapse and starvation? Normally I'm a positive thinker. But late at night, unable to sleep, the darkdream takes over ...
As oil rises, self serving chimpanzee politicians from all over the political spectrum, the most persuasive among us, will be quick to groom our ever fraying nerves with polished, empty rhetoric. Easy scapegoats will be offered to absorb the blame; Arab-Americans, homosexuals, atheists, perhaps Jews, maybe even scientists; the unfortunate archetypical gamma. They will take the full fury of the pack. References will be made to the 1970s and parallels will be drawn to the chicken littles of that time to ridicule the geoscientists who inform us of the reality today. Petro-geologist who try to warn us will be expertly targeted for contempt. A myriad of excuses will pour out of Washington, echoed mostly on partisan blogs form left and right as the White House bears the brunt of the criticism; but make no mistake, this disturbing vision is not the GOP's sole doing any more than the DNC or anyone nation. And it's been in the mail for years. This is everyone's fault, not just a few ...
But still, certain types are about the last ones you want in power when it happens be they rigid conservarives or clueless liberal idealists. Some folks don't like the inconveniences that reality brings. The darkdream quickens ...
In the current US political climate, accurate bad news is punished and false good news rewarded. Noted economists will keep their heads planted firmly in the ground by way of books and data bases rippling with theoretical models reciting a dizzying array of differential equations and colorful graphs, which will 'prove' that the price 'spike' is temporary, blithely ignoring that oil is a finite resource unimpressed with calculus using assumptions of infinite elasticity. Wall Street pundits will project impressive power point presentations onto the darkened walls of board rooms and committees using fancy technical analysis showing why the price of a barrel will 'trend down' any day now, to the sound of applause. The professionals who play ball will be promoted to high political advisory positions and congratulated. Those who tell us the truth will be fired, then marginalized, then ultimately exiled from credibility. Speculators will dip in and out of the futures market, adding wildly jagged price fluctuations as surely as they enrich their investor-class clients. And each significant speculative price bottom produced on the way to a thousand dollars a barrel will be presented as the end of the crises to an increasingly anxious public, who will so want to believe it they won't care about facts. Welcome to the darkdream ...
Sooner, rather than later, the cost increase in crude will be too noticeable in the price and scarcity of everyday items to pretend away. Our economy will slip first into mild recession, and then tumble into deep recession. Stagflation will set in. Interest rates will rise. The bond market will teeter and fall precipitously, adding more interest to our already staggering debt, compounded by the unwillingness or inability of our Chinese bankers, who are too beset with their own host of problems over rising oil prices, to absorb more of our paper IOU's. The refusal of our Neo-conservative Alphas to take action, or even acknowledge the risk, will undercut any remaining confidence, and the era of massive deficit financing will draw to an economically violent close in the US. The government will have to cut back basic services across the board. Programs once thought politically immune from the budget ax will fall. Those countries who share our lifestyle and use the most oil per capita, the most wasteful nations, will suffer the first and the loudest. Those that are more frugal will benefit from the shifting fortunes. The reign of the US super power is ending, but my darkdream is just getting wound up ...
Wouldn't it be nice to think that government pork, lucrative corporate welfare, tax cuts for the richest Americans, futile military projects sucking down gas by the megaton, and frivolous spending, will be the first to fall? One can dream that our priorities will make sense, but the dream turns dark given the grotesqueries of our brutish primate nature and in light of the track record of the clowning apes who currently run both parties. As the crises loom, sharp operators endorsed by reality challenged leaders, will move in to protect their sacred cows. Social programs, police, schools, libraries, prisons, medical benefits, health care for the indigent, postal services, infrastructure repair and maintenance, etc., will be the first to feel the pain. These programs will be demonized, Satanized, portrayed as unpatriotic, their beneficiaries will be persecuted, hated, perhaps even a few will be lynched. In short, in my darkdream, I see not the rise of reason in face of challenge ; quite the opposite. The light of reason will be expertly shot out with rhetorical sniping. Appeals to prejudice and ignorance will occupy the masses while the powerful and wealthy steal what's left in the cover of darkness. The scary fact is that none of this is new, except for the scope and the details. It happened to the Maya, the Egyptians, the people of Easter Island. This is SOP for bands of talking chimpanzees since they learned to make markings in clay tablets. We'd like to think we're at our best when things are at their worst. But history tells us the opposite.
As in any economic upheaval, the poor, infirm, and young, will bear the brunt of it at first. But this is a global problem, there is no escape. The well off and connected will correctly see that it's time to grab whatever they can. They will collect their winnings from the rest of us and entrench themselves behind fortress walls of privilege bristling with hired guns like war lords of yore. Corruption will go from a cottage industry to the backbone of the economy. Unscrupulous political shills looking out for their corporate feudal Masters will emerge and deftly play on the chaos using religion, patriotism, and fear, to manipulate public opinion to their employer's ends. Spooky new pre-millennialist factions of Christian extremists, Islamic Jihadists, and bizarre New Age Religions will bud off, gain followers by preaching Armageddon is finally at hand, and beam the joyous news of the end of the world from sea to shining sea. Who knows how many self-proclaimed messiahs will clamor to claim the title of Savior, and how many will be marked as The Beast by rivals.
It gets worse, much worse, as the dream inexorably builds to it's crescendo. Throw in a terrorist nuclear strike, or two, or ten, and the obligatory responses. First Israel and then the whole Middle East gets fused into radioactive glass as the US becomes the most reviled Police State on earth; these dollars in our wallets and the data stores in our bank accounts are petro-dollars. When foreign oil and easy credit get cut off, the US dollar will completely collapse, like the Confederate currency one now sees adorning the walls of bars in the Old South. And if no one can get paid, there is no incentive to work, so even thoughtfully utilizing remaining energy sources to run the essentials might be so racked by logistical bottlenecks that basic electrical power becomes intermittently available; a tipping point is reached, mechanized agriculture freezes up, farms and transportation shut down. Our entire industrial base disintegrates. Waves of mass panic sweep the nation, transforming it into an unrecognizable state in a few short years. Fundamentalists of every stripe triumphantly proclaim the Prophecy of Revelations fulfilled. States secede, the US splinters as each region blames the other in blue-state Vs red-state guerrilla wars; north Vs south, family against family. Fifty million US citizens starve to death, die of disease, freeze in their homes, or fall victim to violence. In the panic and confusion I see the remaining survivors making a calculated life and death decision to unleash the horror of preemptive nuclear strikes, not just on foreign nations, but on their own domestic rivals. I warned you; darkdreams. Nightmares.
The worst of the dream is over. My eyes feel the first sign of blessed heaviness. I close out the news Blogs, extinguish the virtual campfire, put down my Stephen Baxter novel, and return my tattered, worn copy of The Demon Haunted World to the bookcase. Anticipating some measure of peace, I retrace my steps down the hallway trail, dimly lit in lunar nightlite, to find my modern cave and the awaiting nest within. But Hubbert's unwelcome apparition follows me for just a few minutes more, and a cacophony of nightmarish memes ricochet 'round my psyche as I crawl into bed.
In the blink of a cosmic eye, one species of ape came down out of Miocene treetops to forested Pliocene floors, and walked onto Pleistocene plains. They learned to make stone tools, usurp the kills of others, and hunt their own. They domesticated The Flame, overtook their less fortunate bipedal cousins with luck and evolution, eradicated them forever from the planet, and spread all over the globe. They soon turned their swollen brains onto domesticating the flora and fauna and focused their new found wealth on waging their wars to defend it, or steal it. They enlisted their most trusted ally, fire, to melt rocks into metal, pound metal into molds, contrive massive mechanical devices belching black smoke driven by fire's generous sibling, heat, and learned to turn the wheels of industry powered with the fluids and condensates from putrefied bacterial mats. Armed with these inventions, the gibbering self aggrandizing hominids, glibly slaughtered ever-greater numbers as each respective herd proclaimed themselves the pinnacle of creation, unaware or uncaring that the beasts created from their own Id now on the prowl was tracking them all. The newest camouflaged predator padding silently behind them through their metal and concrete rain forests is no mere ice age mega-predator stalking nomadic Paleolithic apes intent on filling it's belly with the tender meat of talking chimpanzees. It is a monster of their own making and one they're nurturing with reckless, unstoppable, abandon.
What will our descendants think of us? Will they view us as barbaric decadent savages, who madly consumed our most precious resource until we finally incinerated what was left with nuclear fire? Will they condemn our glaring stupidity for wasting our energy endowment, and theirs, on winter strawberries and Stealth Bombers? Or will they recognize in themselves stirrings of those same ancestral weaknesses we fell pray to and forgive us, maybe even thank us, for educating future civilizations on yet one more hidden danger facing the talking chimpanzee and his clever tools?
Before finding the sweet black embrace of sleep, I sometimes lie awake in the dark musing. The dichotomy of a sweeping intelligence helplessly overruled by mindless instinct is tragic, is it not? Time and time again we're smart enough to see disaster coming, yet too burdened with the shadows of our ancestors to stop it. Maybe it would be better not to know. Maybe the last T-rex gorging on a duckbill carcass was better off not comprehending the portent of those brilliant meteor showers lighting the very last Cretaceous sky. But we traded the option of blissful ignorance for lucidity with every stone tool knapped, every fire kindled, and with every novel technology teased out of nature. The tragic irony is that individually we talking chimps sport the most prodigious intellect on the planet, but collectively we barely surpass the intelligence of those ancient algal blooms whose metamorphosed corpses have led us into this latest inescapable trap. The die for this generation has already been cast. The fate of our mechanized petrol world is as set in stone as the oil we harvest to run it. The last conscious thought I have before my self awareness dissolves in the forgiving mist is the time table; this isn't a long range forecast of doom our children's children will face. The fun and games begin in less than five years: And nothing will stop it.
Thank you for keeping me company through my haunted vision. Soon the dawn skies will blaze and the morrow will chase away my dark dreams with morning sun's reflection. Thoughts of billions dying from exposure, starvation, epidemic, and nuclear annihilation, will appear remote and deranged in the sobering light of a bright new day. I'll discard the tinfoil hat next to my bedside and join the throngs of consumers searching for economic prosperity and domestic security
But this day, too, will end. Again my eyes will grow heavy; again I'll crave the bed'n grave; again I'll be awakened by Hubbert's spectral passing. I'll creep silently down my hallway painted in artificial moonlight; again I'll start tapping and rapping from behind my glowing new hearth, peer out at the world we've created, and be visited, once again, by my Midsummer Night's Mare.
Delete this diary entry to drive the point home. Please.
what exactly is your problem this time? This doesn't bash the GOP in anyway and there are a number of pointed refernces to the absurdity of liberal idealism in the context of energy resources. What specifically is it you don't like? This piece has been in a number of mags and around the world in print and online.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4077802.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
I like the introductory quote at the top. Here's one of my current favorites:
10. To the literary critic AlexanderNot to be constantly correcting people, and in particular not to jump on them whenever they make an error of usage or a grammatical mistake or mispronounce something, but just answer their question or add another example, or debate the issue itself (not their phrasing), or make some other contribution to the discussion, and insert the right expression unobtrusively.
-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Gregory Hays translation, 2002)
The owners of commercial real estate seem to have escaped your dream's wrath, but there's no reason that they should. Surely one of the first things people will discover as gasoline climbs above $5/gallon is just how many jobs are amenable to telecommuting. A lot of them, with the consequence that much office space will be vacated, the people never to return.
Environmentalists who are going to protect the Alaskan wilderness, and the residents of California from seeing offshore drilling rigs, will be among the first to be heaved over the side. The truly smart people will tell us that there is no long-term solution there, but no one will care. People will be happy to find short-term solutions.
The Industrial Revolution may have occurred because the British ran out of wood. That is not a joke; records from the 1700's show that people were explicitly mentioning the stumps on their land in their wills. Stumps were valuable. It was that bad. How were people to stay warm? They had reached Peak Wood, and gone down the other side quite a ways.
So they started burning coal. The problem with coal was mining it, and in particular keeping water out of the mines. Necessity being the mother of invention, along came the Steam Engine to pump water out of the coal mines. Humans 1, trees 0.
The good thing about being human is that we don't know the future in advance. Imagine how boring it would be if we did.
- Man will never fly. — Wilbur Wright, 1901
Are you G.R. Morton?
agree with you on the Alaskan wilderness thing. It's just nuts. There are a lot of people who either do not understand or who do not want to understand how vital oil is. Don't worry, if the price of gas creeps over 6 bucks a galloon they';ll be setting up rigs in Yosemite and no one will be griping about it.
Beasr in mind I don't think it's going to unfold like it did in my article. At least I devoutly hope not. That was just a Midsummer Night's Mare.
What appears on the following three pages resembles very closely everything you have posted here in the past two days under your alias "DS" and with a website listed as your home page that no longer responds (there are, however, some fascinating pages cached by Google for brentrasmussen.com)
So, are you the genuine article, an acolyte, a disciple, a protege, or an impostor? Or what? Please let us know.
Incidentally, I figured out that it was Brent who made the "benevolent dictator" comment. Also, I am "a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing," and not "freeper in a suit." The only time I am 'freeper in a suit' is at CPAC.
not Brent. I'm Brent's co-blogger DarkSyde AKA DS. Our domain is down. We keep being told it will be back up but no luck yet.
How stupid do you really think people here are? Your other diary was clearly a trolling attempt and was identified as such by Nick in the first post. Now you're sharing that fact at dKos and you still try to feign innocence?
I hope they don't ban you but I really hope you will actually discuss something politically relevant, even if it is the nature and the durability of the current republican coalition given that it seems to be made up of rather disparate groups with very different primary goals.
So much for free discussion. There's your conservative Scoop Blog down the drain. Unless they change their MO, Redstate will never amount to anything but a sparsely populated echo chamber.
If you really believe that then you are either far less intelligent than I would have given you credit for or you didn't read anything here outside of your own diaries.
Whatever the case; They insist on controlling the content of everyone's post and barely tolerate even modest disagreement from their own members over minor issues.
If you are actually interested in participating with these people in a meaningful way I will be happy to dig up any number of threads on this site that I would consider to be far better and contain far more disagreement in terms of reasoned debate than 99% of the echoes I read at Kos.
Part of my reason for posting Kos's taliban screed was to see how the kossacks would defend him. I also wanted to see if anyone of them would denounce him. I got exactly what I expected.
I've been lurking at kos for a while now. I never post because I just can't find anything nice to say that wouldn't get me banned instantly. I don't know about the rest of you but when I read Armando, seattleslough, and some of the others that come over here and try to be all "interested" in knowing the opposing view and then I go back over to kos and read the filth they post, it just makes me want to scream.
I had hoped that after Nick's post regarding the FACT that this is a REPUBLICAN web site, some would get the hint. Seems to me it's only made matters worse. While I never want redstate to be an echo chamber, I really don't care to get on here and read all the blather that the left posts on here and then go over to kos and have them vilify us for not being nice.
FWIW-I don't mind loyal opposition here. amos, g-don and a couple of others are usually perfectly reasonable people with whom one can debate. I rarely ever agree with them in terms of policy, but they don't make me come close to having an aneurysm either.
I hadn't seen his recommended diary at DKos, and I'm at a complete loss for words to describe the depth of this mendacity and duplicitousness. And then these people have the gall to wonder why we think they can't be trusted. Everything that has just been said validates the worst things we've known about people from DKos from the very beginning: they're people who play both ends against the middle, who will do anything to stroke their own egos, and above all else -- are never to be trusted. I've never seen anything more twofaced than this:
With Iraq sliding into Veitnam level popularity, Rove on the hotseat, Bush in a pickle over Gonzales vs Brun Hilda, and corruption bleeding out of every GOP orifice, I think you guys have a real shot this time. I'd hit that religious right connection to the GOP hard in '06 in every way I can think of, and whatever works the best go national with it in '08. That is their Achilles heel and it will split them like log, while driving the people you want the most over to your side.
Addison on DKos at least was fair in his assessment -- we were on to this jerkoff's intent from the instant the first post hit the blog, and it's all been downhill from there for him. So what does he do? Head on over to DKos, turn around and try to blame us for catching him being the lowlife that he is. Priceless.
...There are a lot of people who either do not understand or who do not want to understand how vital oil is....
Yes, far to vital to be burned to make electrity when we have other perfectly good solutions like nuclear.
are a possibility. Here's some of the problems. To replace a significant chunck of our power grid with nukes is super expensive. A peak oil buddy of mine (Glenn Morton) calculated it out to something like 5-10 trillion dollars and it would require a huge workforce if done quickly meaning within 20 years.
Nukes on the scale would require fuel on that scale which means lots of mining, enrichment, transportation, and disposal all of which have issues. For example having several metric tons of reactor enriched uranium moving around all the time and tons of spent fuel rods moving around raises the possibility that some goes missing or gets stolen.
There is no perfect solution. We use oil becuase it is the most affordbale, easiest to obtain and transport, most versatile, fuel source. So anything we do now is going to be more expensive, and I mean maybe ten times as expensive per kilowatt hour, as existing fossil fuels. But yes nukes are a possibility.
you weren't 'onto' anything Kow. You in fact complimented me yesterday and rated one of my comments a four long after I had posted the creationism supernova diary. So spare me the "I was onto him bit".
I set that diary up at Kos specifically because of you. Your first post on this thread demanding I be deleted or banned or whatever it was you were whining about-I have no idea why you took offense at a Peak Oil piece and it certainly qualifies as political and economic in every sense of the word.
I thought you were serious or had the juice to do that and I'd just been put through the ringer for daring to suggest that Young Earth Creationism was both political and scientifically laughable. Frankly I'd had just about enough of it and was about to just pull the plug and move on when a mod contacted me and was far more open, honest, and respectful, than a handful of regs here who went on a tizzy because I posted a diary on astronomy and creationism.
A diary that incidentally the members of RS liked enough to get on the reco list and complimented me on.
Shortly after your post asking that I be deleted I got a spate of e-mails, anonymous, very brave, very classy, telling me I had "Had it here" with some colorful language to boot. So I set that diary up on Kos to basically explain what was going on, and what has been going on here both in my case and, as it turnsout, in other cases: Some of the hard-core folks, such as yourself who was specifically mentioned by several redstate members and not in flattering terms at all, have been chasing off and intimidating liberatarians and moderates. And that's no way to build a community.
In short, if you don't like that Kos diary, take a deep bow in the mirror my friend because your posts were primary motivation for it; you're the architect and it turns out you've made lots of friends the same way. Now you specifically look pretty silly to a lot of people and it's been linked to several large blogs.
BTW-Subsequantly I was in touch with someone on this site who actually can ban people and we discussed the events including he Kos diary and they've informed me I won't be banned, for now at least, and that you have no power to make that decision at all.
The feedback I'm getting from a lot of conservarives, some of them from this very site, is "Way to go, I'm sick of those hardliners telling everyone else what to do" and several of them mentioned you by name. A couple of people said they stopped posting here because of such responses and again your name was at the top of their list.
I'll read your response to this out of courtesy and after that if you don't have any thoughts on peak oil, I'm done with you on this thread and probably the entire Blog. You read me? I'll be polite and civil to you if you can manage to return that. Otherwise I'll just iggy you.
For anyone else who would like to know more about DarkSyde's history as a loyal Kossack before his appearance here on RedState to educate us about peak oil and its importance to politics, see his full list of diary entries here.
You're a twofaced person, and in my opinion a pretty sleazy individual. Nick was right about you from the moment you posted your first diary entry, and the only mistakes I made were not being more suspicious of you, then uprating your post, and then giving you the benefit of the doubt. I think you're a loser. If the editors want to ban me and keep you around, that's unquestionably their prerogative.
rarely ban people at Kos. I've gotten into it with Armando and many others on a couple of occcasions when I was defeneding a conservarive statement (Recently I was defending that Reagan was a good President who earned reelection). They're argued with me, posted disagreements sharply worded with me. Not one of them has ever threatened to ban me or suggest I go elsewhere.
I'm sure you could taunt them into it. But it rarey happens. On a SCOOP Blog you have to get used to some degree of dissent. They're built as communities and just like in any community there will be the old stubborn guy or the conspiracy theoristes ...
you would be the first to survive banning, I think.
BTW-I know you are a fraud, nothing more than a kossack bad mouthing redstate when you go back home. Nick pegged ya right from the start.
no! Yuo got me! I don't agree with a lot of the GOP right now and I'm here for debate and discusison and guess what"? That's why I even said so on my introductory post to this comm a few nights ago. So I'm not hiding anything my friend. I was real upfraont about it and I would have been even more detailed but i didn't want it to get construed as trolling.
Now if you have any thoughts on Peak Oil I'd be happy to discuss those. If you have anything else to add-and you can do it without embressing yourself further-about me or my views I'll even respond to that, if it's phrased in a respectful manner such as I'm doing right now. Outside of that, we're through.
bad mouthed some folks at RS and compliented others-including listing their comments- because frankly the reaction to my post on Creationism and Supernova was full of bizarre and threatening posts; and then your fellow member Kowalski came along and started threatening me on yet another post along with some anynomous e-mail doing the same. Viola, there's your Kos diary. Check the time stamps.
But then a funny thing happened. I started getting e-mail and comments from other Redstaters who are tired of some of those very same people. And a couple of them even asked me to stay and keep posting more science articles.
you agree with the GOP right now is a moot point. Your dairy on dkos is nothing more than a stab in the back. Nick pegged you right away and you knew it.
FWIW-I hope your time here is limited. I know I sure won't be debating you.
you guys should all go get your own blog then. This is not a site for science debate. It is a POLITICAL website. Maybe you should go back and read the mission of RS.
crushed Kowlaski. Truly emotionally crestfallen beyond any hope of recovery that I will miss out on your penetratingly witty repartee. I would have liked to debate you but you never started a debate you just started in with the attacks and threats. Yes it's sad that your arrogance and threats led to a highly reco'd diary on Kos where other past redstaters chimed in about you and sent me e-mails about you ins't it? I'm glad I found out the score and to be honest with you, if half of what i've read is corrcet you are singlehandedly responsible for chasing off at least half a dozen of your fellow conservarives.
BTW- I'm sure Nick can speak for himself.
some people agreed that science and creationism are legit political discussions.
dKos does not tolerate dissent.
They troll-rate guys like RFTR that just raise a question now and then that jolts liberal orthodoxy.
Look, if you want to circulate liberal propaganda, do it on a liberal website.
This site is not for darksyde.
For those of you who don't know darksyde (appropriate name), he is one of the worst abusers of the rating system on dKos. He and Armando and Bulldog are there to make sure that conservatives stay away. And they're probably a good part of the reason why the Democratic Party will be in the wilderness for years before they start to make inroads with conservative voters.
Goodbye darksyde. You're not welcome here. Stop trying to bust up the best conservative site on the web with your unwanted trolling.
But for myself, I've requested that my account be deleted. They can have you.
I might note that reposting previously published material in diaries verbatim (including your own) is generally discouraged (I don't know if the editor you spoke with was aware that your piece had a "history"). I think this may also play into the cool reception of your pieces: they're inspired writing, but they're sort of set-pieces, and don't really (IMO) suggest a course of discussion or debate.
In defense of kowalski, whom I have both strongly agreed and strongly disagreed here in the past, he's neither a YEC nor anti-scientific; both he and I come from scientific/technical backgrounds, and both of us have devoted some thought (or at least worry) to the mending of relations between the scientific community and the Republican Party. What does get him torqued very fast is people joining RedState just to provoke flamage, and I'm fairly sympathetic to that: I've been a regular reader for quite some time (well before registering a username; I followed trevino over here from tacitus.org), and the increasingly high profile of the site has led to a lot more noise in the form of trolling, counter-trolling, and flamage. This can occasionally be fun, but it's not what I would call productive.
Now, I don't think scientists are a "natural constituency," per se, of either party, and I'm interested in how to extend the "big tent" to better cover them (well, us) without pushing lots of other people out the side. If you're interested in contributing to that discussion, fine. If you're just wandering around looking for Democrats, "moderate" Republicans, or whoever to kick evangelists in the gonads for being obtuse, I suggest you decamp for your own blog and pursue that quest there.
that those on dkos chastizing Kowalski were not former redstaters, they were merely lurkers or trolls. Nothing more, nothing less.
Given the number of people who show up here to do nothing but throw bombs, and when called, cry "I'm a conservative!", the spirit of conservatism evidently being embodied by Howard Dean.
My general impression of Blue Neponset would be "loyal opposition," not a troll, but not a conservative either.
read neponset over on dkos. Just another flaming imposter.
Personally, I rather respect people who are willing to put down the "American Taliban Bu$Hitler theocratic oligarchic monomanic crazy!" rhetoric and force themselves to be civil for the purposes of debate. As C.S. Lewis said (I paraphrase), practicing an outward virtue that you do not feel is the best way to instill it inwardly. If they really are being civil and not just stirring the pot, it shouldn't hurt the discussion here, and they may find themselves unexpectedly being civil elsewhere. YMMV, of course, but that's my take on it.
and I know you know who I am talking about;
take a chill pill and sleep on it tonight.
Wear that kos commentary like a badge of honor, buddy.
We like ya and we need ya on our side. ;)
is to a lot of us the there are elements in the religious right who are eerily reminiscent of repressive religious oilgarchies all through history and instead of calling these folks out for what they are, way too many in the GOP seem more interested in protecting their feelings. As long as that coalition exists you're going to have to put up with that. It is sim ply a fact that Islamic Culture agrees with the religoius right on issues such as Gay Rights, abortion, creationism/public schools, and a whole host of others. If you find that an uncomfortable congruency then frankly; you should.
I understand the political calculus that is going on and that's your business. But the blowback from coddling up to these folks could cost you dearly in the future. Not the least of which is it scared away me and many like me.
This stuff is going to come up. In '06 it's going to be all about 'stem cells' and "Schiavo' and other scare words like theocracy and anything else you can imagine. There are going to be full page ads and news shows trumopeting that from every corner and then some. And whatvere works the best will be carried into the '08 election and beyond.
More importantly however is the nature of the community you wish to build. By excluding anyone who points out the obvious shortcomings of the more militant and/or extremist members in the religious right, or by intimidating and chasing off any moderates or anyone who is not in lockstep with the 'platform', you undermine the stated goal of creating a community where diversity and debate is welcome among conservatives. By playing the tired "No True Scotsman Fallacy "He's not a REAL Republican!" you deprive yourself of potential voters and chase them to the other side.
There are a million conservative blogs where I can read the party line. There are a few where I can leave comments. There is only this one which is a SCOOP. That lack of free discussion and derth of forums is not lost on the dems and they make good use of it.
Consider this very post or the latter Creationism and Supernova post: I've spent several hours responding to comments on both. The great bulk of those comments didn't have anything to do with the material in the article but were spent quarrling and rebuffing several RS members whio were whining about tangentially related or completely unrelated matters, or who left a 'warning EG: "You're on thin ice" and/or called me names in clear violation of your own rules. I think debates shold be allowed to flow unrestrcticted within broad limits, but if you're going to have tightly stated rules everyone needs to adhere to them or you come off like spoiled webthugs.
Anyway that all comes off as quite absurd and a bit Orwellian, especially for a SCOOP Blog ostensibly designed to allow greater interaction and the development of community.
You're having a hard time distinguishing "don't smear large groups of conservatives/Republicans" from "we don't tolerate dissent." If you can make the leap to that level of understanding, you'll get in some brush wars here, but you'll be welcome. If you can't, well, don't worry about the first part of the sentence.
Having perused your works elsewhere, I'm inclined to believe that you can't or won't make that leap, but I hold out slim hope nevertheless.
But I see this and your other diary as a sort of trolling roughly equivalent to "chumming the water" you figure there are some fish who will respond to that kind of stimulus and if you throw in the right bait the local fish might even start taking chunks out of one another.
Although your diaries are fine articles in their own right if you want to honestly discuss creationism vs the big bang or evoution you know better than I that their are plenty of sites set up to do just that. If your real goal is to discuss the Republican coalition and its future why not do a diary that is not so oblique to the topic? Something like "What will become of the current republican alliance between Social Conservatives and the historical Republican base if Roe falls and abortion is left up to the states?"
I have read Jerome, Meteor Blades, and bonddads articles about peak oil at dKos and I would like to see it discussed here. Most people don't know what peak oil is, why not be more direct in introducing the concept if you actually want to discuss it here?
I submit that the reason is that you are chumming the water.
Like I said yesterday I would like to see your input here. There are topics that get discussed on one blog or the other and I would like to see them discussed by the other side. You criticize this blog for not tolerating dissent, and I say again you are wrong about that. You know as well as I do that the vast majority of posts at dKos amount to:
I hate Bush!
Me too!
Me three!
Well I hate him more than either of you!
Do not!
Do so!
Hate isn't a strong enough word. I loathe him.
Hate is a stronger word than loathe. It has its etymological origins from the pig latin word....
You're all crazy I hate him the most.
Don't forget Cheney. I hate him too.
You forgot about Poland!
LOL
ROFL
That's right, you can't forget Poland.
Even though I disagree with much of it, the debate at RS is much better here because there is actual dissent. That being said, there are excellent diaries and excellent comments at dKos, yours among them.
I have to take my hat off to the formatting there. How did you get it to work so well? I can't get advanced formatting to work in the comments -- which is a reflection on me, not the software.
Just be polite -- not "in lockstep," just polite -- and you're welcome to stick around.
Me, I'm tempted to walk you off the short pier, because it looks to me like you're running a Republicans in the Mist experiment, complete with running commentary at dKos. Others agree. But I respect DIR a good bit, and if he's wasting the time and effort to turn you into a productive member of the community, then you get a tiny bit more slack.
Let me clarify how this is done:
I believe the Republican Party needs to address the impact of its base on its ability to grow, specifically, in the sense that many moderate and unaffiliated voters perceive the Republican Party as being too strongly aligned with the base on certain controversial issues, i.e., creationism.
That will generate debate of all sorts. Me, I'm Catholic, and from a family of hard scientists, so I'm perfectly comfy with evolution, creationism, something in between, I don't care. Evolutionary theory seems to fit fairly well, but I need to stress this, I don't care. Most folks here will join in that debate to some extent.
Contrast:
The Republican Party is too beholden to the wingnuts, they're a bunch of Luddites, they're ruining the place, and anyway, they hate gays.
Now, that's grounds for banning in my book.
Get the difference yet? Play nice -- which doesn't mean "agree," as you seem to think, but does mean "be polite in your statements" -- and your tenure here will be as long as you desire. Cross the line and wave bye-bye.
I hate Bushco
Me too
No you don't!
And so on.
Maybe a browser issue.
I wish I could have worded that better.
No matter who the poster is, they have a point. Oil isn't going to be around forever, or even cost effective that much longer. However, I am also optimistic about the future. It would be nice if we could start looking at new nuke plant designs and re-open our reprocessing facility. We have come along way since the last nuclear plants were built. We can get more energy from the fuel and cut the half-life of the waste down to half or better of current levels. This, to me, would be a mid-term solution. The long term is completely renewable/unlimited energy sources. Solar power is getting better, fuel cells exist, we just need to be ready to support them. We can certainly get more wave and wind power as well.
Japan is beating the world to the punch on this and I am sure they are going to be laughing when gas prices skyrocket. China is also investing heavily in nuclear power.
Going beyond nuclear power, renewable resources and fuel cells are much cleaner and provide us with long term energy stability. They fix two problems at once. The only thing disagreed upon is the severity of the threat. Do we need to do it now? I would say we better get started. It's about time we broke free from the oil industry running this country anyway.
It would relieve future tensions with China and India, it would get us out of middle east affairs, and it would make our country greener.
Re: What happens then is that the price of oil begins a sustained long term move to record levels, and where it will stop nobody knows.
Well, I've been wondering when the Peak Oil hysteria would rear its head here.
OK, here's somet hings to consider.
We have two main uses for oil: transportation and petro-chemicals. Our third energy need, electrictity generation, is largely supplied by non-petroleum sources and so need no tcocnern us in this business. As of right now there exist alterante ways to fuel transportation and produce synthetic polymers. Reason we don't use them is because they are more expensive than oil (as the diary in fact noted). But: if oil prices climb, then at some point those alternatives become competitive, in fact at some point they become cheaper. So then we shift away from using oil for those needs and the peak oil problem vanishes. Moreover as we start using alternatives on a large scale, economies of scale begin to make them cheaper while their profitability guarantees that lots of R&D will be funded into them resulting in technical breakthroughs both major and minor which make them cheaper still. Thus: a perhaps at times bumpy, but ultimately non-catastrophic shift away from our dependence on oil.
I don't think I've used that rating system more than a dozen times and I can't think of one of those who was anything less than a 4. And the others you mentioned will get a real laugh out of being told they and I are on the same side and part of a lilberal conspiracy. I suggest you go back to the research drawing board. Outside of that I'm calling you out. Let's see your evidence for those charges?
In the meantime here's a post showing what a "liberal" I am and how everyone over there agrees with everything I say and does not tolerate dissent.
In short, I'm onto your game and it isn't as popular here as you might think. You won't lie me into leaving or intimidate me, I'll stay just to drive that point home unless I'm banned and taken out feet first.
You aren't as far from that fate as you apparently imagine yourself to be.
not Glenn morton if that's who you're referring to Glenn is a friend of mine however who I've known for several years mostly in the context of legal battles against Creationists.
my estimation you're having a hard time distinguishing factions within the current GOP with Conservative principles. The two are not interchangable.
IMO Bush and the religious right are doing long term damage to the GOP which will could alst for some time and have serious consequences. There will be a party after Bush regardless of how he ends up. There was a party before him. Same for the religious right. The two sets, Bush/RR and the GOP/conservatism, are not fully congruent and never have been.
That's my opinion. It's probably not yours, but it is mine.
On the post which you seem intent on carrying over to this one: It is simply a fact that the universe is ancient and anyone who studies the evidence and comes away thinking Young Earth Creationism holds a shred of water is delusional and should not trusted with sharp objects or small children. It is a fact and to deny it is your business, but it's not my business to humor that delusion. I'll be diplomatic about it as I was in that piece, but I'm not going to pretend it makes any more sense than the tooth fairy.
Now what specifically did you have to say about Peak Oil? Or are you insistent on continuing this quarrel from the other thread over here as well?
http://dailykos.com/comments/2005/7/5/204739/7372/163#163
When you get to the bottom part about Leverkuhn and the Abe Fortas thing let me know if you are able to read his comments there. I lost TU status at dKos a while back because I spend too much time over here.
But this is silly. Try to read what I wrote.
Thus:
In my estimation you're having a hard time distinguishing factions within the current GOP with Conservative principles. The two are not interchangable.
IMO Bush and the religious right are doing long term damage to the GOP which will could alst for some time and have serious consequences. There will be a party after Bush regardless of how he ends up. There was a party before him. Same for the religious right. The two sets, Bush/RR and the GOP/conservatism, are not fully congruent and never have been.
That's my opinion. It's probably not yours, but it is mine.
Is not responsive to this:
You're having a hard time distinguishing "don't smear large groups of conservatives/Republicans" from "we don't tolerate dissent."
You misunderstand the point of the slash (it's not an equals sign -- you should have been taught that at some point) and misunderstand my warning: Don't accuse a broad group of conservatives and/or Republicans of gay hatred and expect to have much more time here.
Actually, I suspect that you understand, but you have a show to put on, so you're playing to the crowd.
Attention: Audience: Normally I don't ban someone with whom I'm in a dustup. Given the special circumstances, I'm willing to make an exception.
Similarly, this:
On the post which you seem intent on carrying over to this one: It is simply a fact that the universe is ancient and anyone who studies the evidence and comes away thinking Young Earth Creationism holds a shred of water is delusional and should not trusted with sharp objects or small children. It is a fact and to deny it is your business, but it's not my business to humor that delusion. I'll be diplomatic about it as I was in that piece, but I'm not going to pretend it makes any more sense than the tooth fairy.
Is absolutely unresponsive to this:
Me, I'm Catholic, and from a family of hard scientists, so I'm perfectly comfy with evolution, creationism, something in between, I don't care. Evolutionary theory seems to fit fairly well, but I need to stress this, I don't care.
I suspect you're either dumber than I first thought - and that was a low bar indeed - or you're just performing for the chimps at dKos.
My earlier admonition stands. Good luck.
I don't know how it will unfold. I'm not a petro-geo and I don't know much about it outside of a few articles I've read and some intro geo-classes. I'd guess (I hope) it won't nearly as severe as in that article I wrote; which is why I framed it as an apocryphal dream.
Thomas "You are a retarded kitten" and 'you're an idiot" as you threw a day or two ago in repsonse to a thread on Astronomy and Creationism don't bear a lick of a resemblance to anything to do with astronomy or creationism. Practice what you preach and I'll take you seriously.
My take is you don't like me because I'm a mod. I have no idea why that is but it's your business and your right. But if you throw out hostile posts intended to intimidate me you're dreamin if you think it's going to work or that I'm not going to respond in kind. I'm not the least bit impressed Thomas with you, not the least bit fearful of you, not the least bit concerned with you or tactics you have already triedf here and elsewhere. Get that through your head.
peole on this very site publicly commented it was a legit topic and asked me for more such posts. I receieved similar response via e-mail. So if you don't like science or find it boring then no problem. You might want to avoid any future posts I write because they're likely to have elements of science and politics in them. In the meantime you're more than welcome to comment even if those comments are in diagreement. Bear in mind if someome uses a hostile or inflammatory style I might or might not respond in kind.
about what you just did Streiff. I responded directly to an false accusation with supprting documentation and challnged the other guy to back up his claims, one that had nothign to do with this article or this topic and one I did not initiate.
Your response ... is to threaten me. That's simply weird on a site which several posters have assured me is 'tolerant even more so than Kos'. I've had a few arguments with Kossacks, big hitters, font pagers, heated words. Not one of them has ever threatened me like you just did and they've had ample reason to. That ain't toleration pal, in fact I believe that's a choice example of intimidation, inequality, and piling on.
I know your audience -- hi everyone!! -- wants to believe I called you an idiot (only a Democrat would take the retarded kitten line to mean I'm calling you one) because you're a "mod" (does "mod" mean "bigot" in your world? in which case you're right). Really, it's because you insisted on wandering over from dKos and picking a fight.
The utility of keeping your around for laughs is beginning to be outweighed by the cost of dealing with your fake bravado.
Cheer for the crowd, laughing boy. Curtain call is coming.
If you've published this elsewhere, couldn't you just link to it? I'm kind of interested in what you have to say, but this was one extremely long post.
Cheers -
little man, just a prediction.
I just checked the rules and I don't find "toleration" mentioned as part of the site mission. I, for one, find it to be overvalued and overrated.
I see the formating in your post. Maybe its a plugin i'm using?
It doesn't happen from my other computer. I could probably sit down and figure it out if I could scare up the time.
- you don't like me because I'm a mod
We have lots of those around here. What we don't have lots of, and don't really need more of, are people who post diaries at DKos inviting the Kossacks to come watch the show as you poke the Nest Of Creationists with a stick. I mean, what kind of nonsense is that?
Your offer is to take someone seriously when we already know you're here to do a stand-up act? Followed by getting banned so that you can claim you were banned?
"Serious" is just not a realistic expectation here. Our plan right now is to charge extra to come visit your threads. "Come see the Amazing Science Troll! He talks! He quotes! Millions of years ago he even crawled on his belly like a reptile!" We might be able to buy a new server with all the dough you're going to help us raise.
Heck, if I had even suspected that you were the sort of guy who would post a diary on DKos to crow about poking the Creationists, I'd have been watching you like a troll from the get-go.
Oh wait... I was. Well, never mind that part. The main thing is, you haven't fooled anybody about why you're here, so why pretend that any disagreements you run into are because of your politics? Your politics don't matter. What matters is that your intent from the beginning was to be a pain. Well guess what? Nobody likes that. That's not coming here in good faith; that's coming here in the hopes of causing trouble, and under false pretenses. What a great guy you are, eh?
The End of the GOP as We Know It (And I feel Fine
Ahh the extremist right has still not learned their jig is up, and we the people are the continued beneficiaries of their hilarious duplicity as they dig their grave ever deeper. The latest attempted talking point, failing miserably amid bouts of hysterical laughter, is that Deep Throat "Felts" acted with self-interested motives. Buahahaha! We can only hope they keep it up!
In fact today I have registered a number of fake screen names with several religious right organizations and I'm demanding they not let these commie pinko liberal republicans get away with 'compromises'. I'm also on the Dobson "Prayer Team" and I'll pass on the prayer targets for each week. Prayer is so effective I'm amazed Dobson bothers with silly materialist solutions like lobbying or voting ...
The rest of his diary entry is pretty much unpostable per our no profanity rule but this excerpt does provide a useful insight into this individual's past behavior on other sites.
even given that the OP has disputed the timing of his Kos diary vs. the initial hostile reception here, it is likely to be hard going here for anyone who believes that we all need to grab sticks and clubs and drive the religious from the party. In the name of Science!, of course.
- given that the OP has disputed the timing of his Kos diary vs. the initial hostile reception here
What does that refer to? I'm not clear on what you mean there.
You might have an old cached version of a CSS file sitting around somewhere.
else. I hadn't realized he intended to be such an obvious troll. He could have contributed to any number of discussions about science, had he desired to.
You won't see me coming to the aid of dKos trolls again.
I'm through swimming in the "Big Ditch" for a while. I'll see you guys later.
We've certainly had our share of good posters (Genghis D and Amos come to mind) from the other side of the ditch. There's absolutely nothing wrong with giving the new guy the benefit of the doubt, particularly when it looks like s/he may have something new to add in the way of topics.
That being said, the whole "evolution versus creationism" debate has to be one of the most boring and pointless topics imaginable. There is something seriously wrong IMO with someone who obsesses over it to the point of actively looking to pick fights.
I've been out on similar limbs before.
This religious lunatic appreciates your thoughtful efforts in both directions.
That guy is literally drinking his own kool-aid over there. Despite being a smart guy there is so much hyperbole everywhere he can't acknowledge the fact that someone like you exists: an intelligent, highly educated, willing to accept evolution as a theory, pro-life/anti-stem cell because you think a fertilized egg deserves the same protections as a human, Catholic, Lawyer.
I didn't think such animals existed either until I spent some time over here. I'm glad I took the time to figure that out. I wish he would have done the same.
And thanks Thorley, I think that guy was once pretty close to your kind of Republican.
Man, did anybody see what happened to Smeagol after he found that ring? I hope Darksyde isn't undergoing the same sort of metamorphosis! LOL!
I kept trying to explain that the whole problem was the religious right smear, and he kept yanking up Creationism and Peak Oil. I persuade (or not, but not for lack of trying) people every day professionally. I was beginning to worry.
this is not what I think will necessarily have to happen. It is however a nightmarish scenario if it does.