The climate has changed many, many times throughout geologic time. A new study points to dinosaur flatulence as a climate changer that may have contributed to their demise. Within the scope of human history there has been a receding Ice Age. Species adapt. Or die off. But life persists.

I am FAR MORE concerned about poisons. Toxic chemicals and plastics that alter DNA. Animals can move within and around and adapt to changing climate. Denaturing of DNA by toxic chemicals that persist in the air, water and soil for generations…that’s an entirely new and troubling problem. This can wipe out ALL LIFE. Or it can mutate it into submission. We humans are awash in it. Bisphenol-A is in everything. Plastic is leeching into our foods and our water. Herbicides and pesticides and GMOs designed to allow for wider usage of poisons are ubiquitous…and the poor animals of this planet are hapless victims of this unprecedented insanity. They have no idea of the poisons they are consuming. Nor do most humans.

Which brings me to population.

I, too, think there is too much. Too much of everything and everyone. And we are consuming. And consuming. And consuming. People pay no mind to the reality that the Glade Air Freshener they buy is comprised of resources. And that those resources will be lost forever once they toss that spent Glade Air Freshener into the “trash.”

Trash…we should write an historical etymology of the word.

And think of a car! Think of all the millions upon millions of cars. And of the people who buy them. And use them. Discard them. And now all the new car-buyers of India and China? It is daunting.

But it’s the toxicity.

The poisons and plastics and chemicals. They are killing us. And we are not going to be able to pay to treat the cancers and diseases they create. Not for most of us. Population control is nigh. Nature is going to cough us up with the castor oil of untenability. The poisons we are shoving down her throat are untenable. The castor oil is the rapidly approaching breaking point of both DNA and of ecosystems. And I despair not for the human future, but for all the other innocent life forms on this planet we are destined to take with us.

Here is Unspun’s program description:
“My special guest is Joseph Sottile, Emmy-award winning news producer, historian, researcher, writer and blogger. “JP” and I critique Obama’s State of the Union Speech 2012. SOTU was the beginning of the Obama campaign for re-election. Listen to us decode segments of it for you and provide you with a more realistic state of our union.”

His candidacy is lancing the boil of festering ignorance that has hobbled our tiring, unsuccessful march toward modernity. He embodies a long-growing discomfort with anything that implies political, cultural or biological evolution.

Anti-science. Anti-social. Anti-anything that smacks of the common good, he is the last culture warrior standing on a battlefield increasingly littered with the corpses of racism and homophobia. Saint Rick seeks a political beatification of those tired canards of religious piety that actually take people down rather than lift people up.

Saint Rick is giving us the gift of understanding, both of where we’ve been and of where we could go if we continue to refuse the modern world. His vision is based in a trembling fear of the bonds of social cohesion, a social “ism” we must embrace if we are to survive as a people and a nation.

He is good for America because he has torn the curtain between the collective fantasies of long-held beliefs and the harsh reality of…well…reality.

And we are finally harvesting the bitter fruit of an educational rot that grips our zealot-based mentality and feeds our deeply-rooted belief in a divinely dispensed exceptionalism.

This is a fork in the road.

And Saint Rick is offering us a chance to choose the fiddle while civilization burns.

And his shrill shill is propped up by an ever-more callow culture of celebrity that typifies contemporary politics and journalism.

His latest shill job is a book titled “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero.” He married its release to the anniversary of JFK’s murder and made certain that he not only profited from that unholy marriage, but he also used it to burnish his credentials as a latter-day PR man for the Warren Commission.

There is a great deal of media job security in propping up that fiction…which is an important fact that historian and JFK researcher James DiEugenio points out in his carefully constructed and painstakingly researched counterpoint to Matthews’ flaccid paean to his own self-interest.

In a piece titled “Why Mr. Hardball Found JFK Elusive,” DiEugenio writes: “Clearly, the fast-talking and opinionated TV host did not master the latest scholarship about Kennedy’s views and actions on a variety of topics, from the Bay of Pigs to Vietnam.”

Although not nearly to the extent of Mr. DiEugenio, I have also spent many hours on JFK, his post-Missile Crisis transformation, his murder and have formulated an operating “theory” that he was the “Last President.”

No president since JFK has operated independently from the Military-Industrial Complex and the National Security superstructure that controls the US. JFK not only operated independently, but he began to challenge that superstructure. His murder was, in fact, a coup d’état.

Nixon tried a bit. Carter thought about it. But they were clamped down…immediately.

DiEugenio does a great job with those themes and with the callow self-interest of Matthews, who, like clockwork, takes time each Nov 22nd to cling to the paper-thin fiction that Oswald was the lone gunman.

His service to power has made him very wealthy.

-the newsvandal

Is America a twisted place, or what?

The people at the top of business fail and collect big bonuses on their way out if, indeed, they even have to leave their jobs. The people at the top of government direct a policy of torture and the soldiers dangling at the last link in the chain of command take the fall. Everywhere the people at the bottom pay the price for the “mistakes’ and malfeasance of the people at the top.

Is America twisted? Or what?

If nothing else, the American Way has been twisted and the current goal is to rise to the place where the buck stops so you can then collect it and, if anything unfortunate happens, pass it.

War-planning tablet computers. Kamikaze Drones. Merge those with new developments in facial recognition. Hunter-killers.

The Neo-Con dream of nano-tech killer-bots. Death delivery systems by remote control. A far-flung array of bases.

And a generation of future soldiers who’ve cut their canines on one shockingly graphic war simulator after another. Just sitting there on a couch, pushing a button and killing one CGI enemy after another. Forget the push-ups, a ready-made army of push-button pilots awaits a near-future filled with ultra-quick assassinations, all-too-easy bombing runs and the ominous and omnipresent patrolling of the skies.

By taking humans away from the immediate impact of the killing, we are taking the humanity out of the decision to kill. We are, in fact, boldly going where no man has gone before.

Except for…Star Trek.

In an episode titled “A Taste of Armageddon,” computer technology has taken the messy complications of war out of the equation. This “advanced” technology allows people to kill each other cleanly, methodically and without the stain of blood on their hands or the stain of remorse in their hearts. In fact, war can go on without any real incentive to stop it. The cities remain. The people live, until their deaths are registered by computer simulation and they must report to a disintegration chamber. Then their deaths are counted.

Remove the blood from the hands and remove the reason to stop killing.

Shatner gives one of his best, over-the-top performances when he delivers a monologue to Anan Seven, the leader of the methodically-structured planet who must suddenly face the harsh reality of war. To save his ship, of course, Kirk has destroyed the computer in question and unleashed the all-too-real dogs of war upon Anan’s planet.

Captain James T. Kirk:
“Death. Destruction. Disease. Horror. That’s what war is all about, Anan. That’s what makes it a thing to be avoided. You’ve made it neat and painless, so neat and painless that you’ve had no reason to stop it.”

Will we, in light of a never-ending war against a world filled with potential enemies both real and invisible, simply relent to the same impulse if there are no coffins coming home, no disabled veterans or PTSD or loved ones who can reflect back the horrors of war simply by looking you in the eye?

Captain James T. Kirk:
“We’re human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands. But we can stop it. We can admit that we’re killers, but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes, knowing that we’re not going to kill today.”

Will we lose that connection to our past and ourselves by inserting a technological interface between us and the darkness? The aversion to war comes from the reality of it. But, if it simply becomes a reality show and our soldiers merely joystick operators toiling away in air conditioned bunkers, what impetus will there be to stop? And rest assured, other nations are busily working on drones of their own.

Captain James T. Kirk:
“Yes, Counselor, you have a real war on your hands. You can either wage it with real weapons, or you might consider, an alternative. Put an end to it, make peace….”

We find ourselves at a crossroads. This is the moment to reflect back upon the time when “A Taste of Armageddon” was made, set against a backdrop of escalation in Vietnam and the Cold War’s looming specter of nuclear holocaust. But take a moment also to understand the prescience of it’s warning and to decide whether or not you want to boldly to go where no man has gone before.

Alas, waiting for Captain Kirk is not an option.

Voting between the lesser of two evils.

Gridlock. Partisanship. Split-screens filled with the same old faces yelling, name-calling and spin-spin-spinning.

Two wings of the same ruling party and the elusive dream – or unrealistic fantasy – of a “Third Party” that will…finally…shake up the system.

The sneering cynicism that comes with the evil of two lessers.

And money. Lotsa money.

You see, we don’t really have a democracy or, for those who like to be precise, a functioning democratic republic. And it isn’t really governance. Rather, we have a political industry that launders money. Tax dollars pay the salaries of Senators and Representatives and provide for their small armies of staffers. We pay for their “fact-finding” junkets. They also get great healthcare, a gym and security. The political appointees of the Executive Branch do pretty well, too. And, by and large, the same thing happens at the state level.

But that’s just the tip of a titanic financial iceberg. The really big money comes from trying to get those pols elected. And re-elected. And re-elected again.

That’s where the partisan laundry service really takes the shirts off of all our backs.

Political contributions get cycled through PACs and SuperPACs and lobbying firms and advertising firms and polling firms and law firms. As the money comes into campaigns, it pays for staff and also ends up lining the pockets of all those political professionals who keep the “wheels of progress” turning or, more often, not turning. Frankly, less progress extends the life of issues and the candidates who run on them.

Billions of dollars go through this vast laundry service.

Think of all the money made over the years on both sides of abortion. And gay marriage. And think of all the candidates whose suits would be even emptier if they weren’t running on some hyper-contentious issue. Hot issues equal big money. Other issues get ignored. Where is the ad money in ending wars? Or bringing troops home from around the globe? If you want the issue to get into the cycle, you have to put change into the machine. And we ain’t talking chump change. Or mythical change. We’re talking cold, hard bundles of cash. Millions and millions of it.

That isn’t politics. That’s a Political-Industrial Complex.

And the news media is, perhaps, the key cog in that grinding machine. The more contentious the election, the more dichotomous the debate and the more heated the rhetoric…the more enriching the whole process becomes to the seedy squatters currently occupying the Fourth Estate. By generating more heat than light, the news media generates more revenue than facts. How? By filling all those nifty commercial breaks with lucrative political advertising.

You see, the dirty little secret of the broadcasting industry is that they depend upon the political advertising that comes during the two and four-year election cycles to turn a profit. A big one.

Those predictable windfalls are good for business. Very, very good. Don’t expect the media to do anything other than feed that egg-laying goose.

So, highlight the personalities. Knock one down, lift the other one up. Stoke the competition. Forget reporting on facts and turn it into an ongoing soap opera. Draw it out and draw us in. Jabber on about polls. Red versus blue equals green. Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.

The media loves it. Wants it. Needs it.

And what do we see more and more? The permanent campaign. Forget governing. How many times have you heard some blathering head talk about “campaign mode” or heard some faint voice of sanity lamenting the election starting earlier and earlier with each passing year? The reason is simple – a rising tide lifts all their boats and sculls and yachts and nifty little sloops.

The sorta boats that cruise around Martha’s Vineyard or the azure waters of the Caribbean, far away from the iceberg they are crashing us all into.

Media professionals and advertising agencies and consultants all make money off of “us versus them.” They all make money off of the status quo. So do the ad buyers and local station executives and owners. And, as national and statewide campaigns become more and more expensive, the cable networks and broadcasting’s big four – ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX – all rake in the cash. Your donations are more likely to end up in the pocket of some cigar-chomping chump than into the needy hands of some eager, motivated canvasser.

When you wonder why nothing gets done, or why problems only seem to get worse amidst the din of hyperbole and bickering, think of it all as a daily drama. It is a soap opera. And why were they called “soap operas?” Because those quickly-crafted melodramas were designed to hold your attention just long enough to sell you soap. Dish soap and laundry detergent and hand-repairing cleansers. That’s the point of all the drama and tension. It sells soap. And that’s the point of the Political-Industrial Complex. All that drama and hyperbole…it sells soap.

For the media professionals who sell it to us all, it’s money in the bank.

Literally.

It’s the money.
The top 1%.
They’ve been there since the Gilded Age.
They crashed the economy in 1929.
They fought FDR tooth and nail.
They’ve been trying to restore the Gilded Age since the end of WWII.
Right now, there are 400 families who control half of America’s wealth.
We can name some…the Waltons, the Kochs, the Dimons.
We can point to corporations and their executives at Goldman-Sachs, The Carlyle Group, Chevron, Monsanto.
They profit on the repeated inflation of the market, and then on the predicable crashes of the market.
I have waded through their backwaters, particularly in D.C.
They vacation at St. Barts and Martha’s Vineyard.
They go to Harvard and Yale and Brown and private prep schools.
They go to the same dinner parties.
They employ politicians as intermediaries between us and them.
They have the best healthcare and eat the best food.
They live in an alternate America.

Every president since Nov. 22, 1963 has been vetted by “the system.” You cannot be president unless you’ve been determined to be “a sound man.”

In other words, you will service elite power, foster the ongoing money transfer from taxpayers to corporations via the Pentagon and steadfastly refuse to forestall a far-reaching imperial agenda. You will use military power and military aid to preserve access to profitable natural resources. You will protect the national security state and its secrets. You will not investigate, indict or punish those who vetted you, or those who came to “power” before you.

And you will sustain the two-party system by shifting the public’s attention away from all of these responsibilities and, instead, focus their attention on the never-ending public relations battle between you and your opponents who, by and large, have been vetted by the self-same system.

Jimmy Carter was the only loose cannon allowed on deck, and we know how that turned out…it led to the October Surprise and Iran-Contra.

Obama was vetted. Take it to the bank…that is, if you can still afford to keep an account in a bank.