Who Owns The Rain?

I know, it sounds like a Creedence Clearwater Revival song, right? But since rain falls everywhere, you would think that no one could claim it as their property.
But, apparently, in some states, it's illegal to collect rainwater, because the water belongs to the state. I'm sure some of you are thinking that is some sort of reconstituted hippie thing, that collecting water affects aquifer and groundwater supplies. Actually, it's completely the opposite.
So any multinational death conglomerate can tap into an underwater spring, purify and put it in plastic bottles, and that's not a problem, but collecting fresh and pure rainwater is illegal? In past times many people had rain barrels in their yard, at what point did someone say "Hey! You can't do that! You need to pay for water from the city!"
A news study says that thanks to global warming"climate change", 70% of US counties will face water shortages. So wouldn't it be prudent for people to now begin collecting and savingn water? Wait, conservation is the opposite of the American Way! Use it all up, then bomb some foreign country to take theirs because they're not using it up fast enough. Besides, once the polar ice caps melt, and water levels rise, won't there be more than enough water?

Specious Reasoning In The New American Babylon

I find it interesting (and even a little bit racist) that Pat Robertson blames the earthquake in Haiti on a curse due to that country's 'pact with the devil'. The global warming climate change cult wonders if global warming had something to do with it. Next, Dick Cheney will blame the Obama administration's lack of desire to label WWIII as "the war on terror", while the Teabaggers will blame it on excessive taxes and intrusive government programs.
Me, I noticed this happened right after Sarah Palin began her position as a contributor to Fox News.........

The Annual Unbrainwashed Anti-Holiday Rant

I really have come to loathe this time of year. Of course, I mean the holiday season, which starts officially tomorrow, although some radio stations have been playing Christmas music since Halloween, which means that millions of innocent people have had to endure that one person who insists on listening to Christmas music until you're ready to vomit anytime you hear "Holly Jolly Christmas", "Jingle Bell Rock", and "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree", which seem to get played every hour and a half on these stations. And although 'officially' the 'shopping season' doesn't start until four o'clock tomorrow morning, some retailers, in an effort to prop up a dismal year, are letting you know they'll be open today, so that when Dad, Brother and Uncle Pete are relaxing post-meal on the couch watching the football game, Mom, Grandma, and Aunt Shirley can sneak off to KMart to buy more presents that will get lost in the post Christmas morning overkill, that is, after they've finished all the dishes.
And by this time tomorrow, we'll be inundated with stories of that one shopper who falls victim to the spirit of the season and is trampled to death by salivating shoppers pushing each other out of the way to have first dibs on some item they don't really need but couldn't pass up, because it was such a bargain.
This is also the time of year where advertising takes it's toll on me, and I can hardly stand to see another commercial with kids in their jammies waiting for Santa, elves, or dogs with 'reindeer' antlers on their heads. And it's also the time of year when Christ-centric fuckwads refuse to acknowledge that their might be other religions celebrating their various holidays as well, and threaten to boycott advertisers who do acknowledge it in the same breath as they do Christmas.
It's also the time of year when, despite warnings of anthropegenic global warning climate change, not to mention dire predictions of the arrival of peak oil, people cover their yards with displays consisting of so many lights they could be seen from space. Many communities erect Nativity displays, or allow them to be erected on public property.
Not any more in Chambersburg, PA, where every year the local garden club was allowed to erect an Nativity Scene on the ground surrounding the town fountain. That is, until the local Pennsylvania Non-Believers, an atheist group, stepped in. It seems they wanted to put up a sign for the solstice honoring Atheist war veterans. I mean, after the birth of Jesus, what could be more sacred than our soldiers?
Oh. wait a minute, this is a sign honoring our veterans, not our, troops, a difference indicated by where they are now, either over in Iraq and Afghanistan, making sure that the Good Ol' US of A gets first crack at what little oil there is left, or, over here displaying the symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome, reminding those who gleefully sent them over there, that, yes indeed, war is Hell.
Anyway, the town council, sensing a political hot potato decided that, rather than allow a religious-free message be posted, decided to remove the Nativity. Score a point for the War On Christmas!

Michelle's Organic Garden

(To the tune of the Beatles' Octopus' Garden)
I'd like to be
In DC to see
Michelle's organic garden cause a fuss....
Wait a minute! How can something as uncontroversial as an organic garden at the White House cause a stir? Easy. Big business. It seems that the Mid America CropLife Association thinks that an organic garden sends the wrong message to consumers about "conventionally" grown food based products. Surely there's nothing wrong with Frankenfoods, right?
And just who is the Mid America CropLife Association anyway? You think, well, Mid America, they're just a bunch of farmers, right, but then you look at the way they spliced two words together to make one where there wasn't before (CropLife) even using capitalization to point out just how clever they are and you know you're dealing with chemical giants like Monsanto, DuPont Crop Protection and Dow AgroSciences.
MACA feels that Michelle, as part of the ever trend setting Obama family, is sending the wrong message because "(t)he time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family’s year-round food needs.” Of course they don't, that's why most of them don't grow their own food.
You don't suppose that maybe Monsanto is worried because second quarter profits have slipped, and that means smaller bonuses? Because that's what it comes down to: some of you still have money in your pocket and that's money that big business wants to take from you, even if they have to force you to take out another mortgage to get it. They don't care that organic farming works to minimize global warming, they can always fan themselves with stacks of hundred dollar bills.

See? Another Token Gesture By The Cultural Elite

In yesterday's post, I referred to "Earth Hour" as one of those token gestures by the cultural elite. While everybody else was turning off their lights in an effort to save the planet, the king of the global warming climate change cult kept his lights on. It's not bad enough that Al Gore's home uses twenty times more energy as the average household, but when it was time to put his money where his mouth is, he showed me that, well really his quest for reducing his carbon footprint is a s real as his quest for manbearpig. You have to make sacrifices so that the cultural elite can continue their consumptive ways.
Now, I do think that it's important that people make an effort to cut the crap out of their lives. But, as I said, to only do it one day a year because of some corporate sponsored event that they can use to improve their image, write it off on their taxes or use as a basis for some carbon trading scam is ridiculous.

Excuse Me, But I Have To Shovel More Global Warming Offen My Sidewalk

Environmentalists Hail Earth Hour as a Big Success. Of course, when the lights came back on, and the sun rose the following day, the Earth was still littered with garbage, humans still felt the need to convey themselves about in gas guzzling and air polluting vehicles, so how much of a success was it really? Was anything really done to alleviate global warming climate change?
Driving through my neighborhood last night on the way to the grocery store, the only houses with lights out were the ones unoccupied due to mortgage foreclosure. What we have is another one of those token gestures by the cultural elite, like lapel ribbons or mandatory "volunteerism" where we are asked to make sacrifices that they won't have to make because of political connections or carbon trading scams where they can continue to pollute as much as they want by buying carbon credits from suckers people like you and me.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the continuation of the poisoning of our planet, I'm just saying that when corporate types get on board with something like this, there's probably more in it for them than just improving their image. So, please, shop when you feel bummed out, turn out your lights when they want you to, and salivate like a fucking dog every time they ring a bell. But to only do something about the planet only when they suggest (or can make a profit from it)makes them look as powerful as you look silly.