Something So Simple As Affordable Drinking Water...

...Let alone that it not be full of poison even if you can afford to pay for it. And yet, according the study paper presented in Plos One (and echoed by Digg), in five years time our current rate of 11.9% of households not being able to afford potable water will increase to 35.6%, and that's using the conservative estimates.

But wait, the most important thing facing the new administration is getting rid of the Affordable Care Act; because why should the 18 million estimated to lose care when it's gone be able to afford health care either?

I mean let's get our priorities straight here. We've got some insurance providers who have had their profit margins bruised significantly (not to mention groups of folks who simply don't like the government telling them they have to do, or not do, a particular thing; unless, of course, it's paying more for everything you already can't afford). And nobody feels pain like a holder of large piles of capital who suddenly gets a smaller return percentage.

So. The buffoon about to take up residence in the White House is a problem. The fact that absolutely critical infrastructure is both literally failing, as well as failing to keep up with utilization demands, is a problem. Climate change causing increasingly severe weather is a problem. Dwindling resource availability is a problem. And the fact that all of that only serves to make the world as a whole a great deal more unstable is both a humanitarian, and military problem; all of this, and I mean all of it, currently rests on the ability of a cost based economic operating system to solve. An operating system that is patently obsolete; both because of it's own inherent contradictions, as well as its inherent corruption of the very social systems that must work in order to do much of anything, let alone fix very big, interrelated problems.

If we don't start putting our attention, as well as our actions, towards the root issue, all of the other problems will simply continue to do what they've been doing: Getting Worse!

PARCHED IN THE SOUTH

Huge Swaths Of The Country Are At Risk Of Losing Affordable Water Access

The Circumstantial Evidence Continues To Accumulate...

...And Trump continues to refuse to answer that one question.

It's really hard now to think in anything other than it's not if Trump will be impeached, but only when it will happen. When even the self serving Republican leadership can no longer ignore the all too repugnant reality.

The One Crucial Question Trump Refuses to Answer

Could There Be a More Laughable Set Of Contradictions? Assuming This Wasn't So Pathetic To Begin With?

First we have Putin claiming that President Obama has been trying to undermine Trump's credibility, as if Trump needed anybody to do that more than he already does to himself. Then you have Putin then claiming that Obama was the one producing fake news. I mean seriously, Obama, and the rest of the Democrats, only wish we could have cranked fake out like the Russians did with social media in the fast few years. Then we could have had real competition in our race to the bottom of corrupting an informed electorate.

Then we have the current Communist Party Chairman of China trying to lecture Trump on the benefits of Capitalism! Holy Shit! Are dogs going to sleeping with cats next?

You'd think the mere fact that someone like Trump actually winning a presidential election would have prepared us for anything, but maybe not so much. Or maybe it's just the cascade effect of one oxymoron after another falling on top of us that has made keeping a proper sense of normal impossible anymore; and/or reality itself has simply come unglued... The speed of light will be fluctuating, gravity going full tilt yo-yo, and rates of decay in general deciding to throw the dice at every turn.

Fortunately Putin ought to be easy to ignore as he undoubtedly graduated magnum cum laude from KGB school of lying, but the whole Xi lecture coming from Devos is another matter altogether. And with the way Trump goes off not even half cocked in multiple, diametrically opposed directions, in areas of both foreign policy and economics, how can any of the rest of the world (with perhaps exception to Russia) know what to actually expect from this Moron. What is one to say when, on the one hand you stuff your cabinet with Big Money Stalwarts, and then on the other you give big lip service to starting trade wars with China and Europe.

You have to hope that it is only lip service for the latter, and that he understands that it is lip service, with the money people, and the rest of the Republican Congress keeping a lid on that potential pot of crazy he calls a brain. At least that way we can hope that killing the Affordable Care Act will cause only a "bad" recession, as opposed to an actual depression with a capital "D." A depression that would add at least one more big power to the list of desperate nations; one more towards too many of those desperate enough to risk hostilities in the South China Sea, or the Middle East.

You also have to wonder here about whether Putin is playing a much longer game than we might be seeing so far. In this view getting something back in terms of a weakened Nato, or more of his way in Ukraine, might only be dressing on a nice cake. Nice but the ultimate prize. Perhaps the real prize here is our being put at armed odds with China. Not only does that put a huge new burden on us, it keeps China focused on anywhere other than the Sino-Russian border (as well as the Arctic), where new resource riches may only be a few years, to a decade away. And where Putin knows, even more than Nato, he is really the most vulnerable.

Russia’s Putin: Obama Administration Trying to ‘Undermine’ Donald Trump

by ALASTAIR JAMIESON

China’s Xi Lectures Trump on Globalization and Climate Change

by ALEXANDER SMITH

The Company Trump Keeps

One of the details that was given internet copy about was Trump's Russian connections that dealt with the Russian mob. This has been the main basis for the charge that organized crime there has been funneling loans to the so called "artist of the deal," so as to keep him afloat through the several major bankruptcies he has gone through. Specific bits of "smoking gun" evidence has been hard to come by on this score, despite what a lot of people in the know there claim.

That being the case, of course, healthy scepticism should remain in place. Even with that being said, however, doesn't change the fact that, when circumstantial evidence continues to mount, you have to keep a corresponding scepticism about all of the denials that continue to be issued from the Trump camp.

For instance, would there be any reason why we should think Trump would be prone to give any mobster, let alone members of the Russian mod, even small bits of his time? After all, in order to ask for favors of organized crime, wouldn't you first need to have some trusted connections so as to make your needs known?

Funny you should ask that question. Keith Olbermann has no doubt been asking himself that same question, and it shouldn't be any surprise that the answer wasn't all that hard to find. During Trump's recent $525 a ticket New Year's Eve bash, one of his long time friends was prominent: Joe Cinque, aka Joey No Socks; who, as it happens, used to be friends of John Gotti. A friend who just currently happens to run a rubber stamping (along with a Trump son), hotel quality assessment group; set up naturally to heap praise on Trump establishments.

What a coincidence, huh?

Donald Trump Has Some Colorful Friends

Our Fear Of Terrorism Is Made Worse Than The Threat Actually Is

Too often it is in the interests of various powers that be to make you more afraid of something than is actually warranted. For one interest it may be to sell a product (viewership being only one of these -- as being "safe" in this nation is also a product). For another it may be to gather votes, or another to make you receptive to policies (especially here) you wouldn't ordinarily be very receptive to.

Just consider how much freedom we've given up already, not to mention how much money is being spent, to prevent terrorism here. Freedoms that are difficult to get back, and money that might be better spent on other, even more threatening issues. Everything is a trade off of course, and I don't want to minimize the possible, very real tragedy that can happen from terrorism no matter what the relative numbers might be, but just consider:

1. We accept the fact of tens of thousands of deaths on our highways each year because we value the freedom of movement.

2. We accept the fact of tens of thousands of deaths each year because of poor health choices because we value the right to decide for ourselves how much we will eat or drink, as well as what types of food or drink that will compose that consumption, and how little exercise we will engage in to go along with it.

3. We accept the fact of tens of thousands of deaths each year because of product defects, safety procedures ignored or avoided, or general environmental damages that could be prevented, because we enjoy the freedom of spending money on other things, as well as the freedom of not having to deal with government enforced rules to preclude these deficiencies, or damages.

Just some things to think about the next time someone wants to make things more authoritarian, as in police state, here.

How Media Fuels Our Fear of Terrorism

By Nemil Dalal 

This Report On Food Emphasizes One Really Important Thing...

...That a money based, doing "business as usual," approach will be just one more in a growing list of doing "business as usual" disasters.

Taking money out of the equation, and the profit centric mentality that goes with it, will, however, only be part of the answer. This is where the idea that, no matter how much that other group, or nationality, or collection of true believers, pisses us off, or offends us to the core, we will all have to find a way to tolerate each other; at least enough to cooperate so that no one goes hungry anymore.

It's really very simple when you think about it. How could here be a greater blasphemy than letting others starve when it was in your power to aid them in; not only in the short term so that they have something to eat today, but in the long term so that they can feed themselves in all of the tomorrows to come.

4 Possible Futures For The Global Food System
by BEN SCHILLER 

These Trade Deals Were Good For Capitalism And that's What We Must Replace

NAFTA made sense if you were an owner of capital and you wanted to reign in one of the big cost factors in production.  In doing that you made sure the entities you invested your capital into would remain competitive (being made able to seek the lowest common denominator in labor). That it also ended up helping to ship manufacturing jobs to Mexico (and elsewhere) was simply part of the "pain" of restructuring our economy to be more "efficient." It also, of course, allowed you investment entities more markets to sell those goods in, whether they were made here or not.

The Trade deal for trade across the atlantic to europe was simply more of the same. That we end up being more and more dependant on others to make what we are sold on needing is also beside the point. We will make up job losses by being more tech savvy and entrepreneurial, or at least that is how the rant usually goes. And to some extent it can be actually be true.

Naturally now, if you seek to get rid of those trade deals, you risk making the few companies still making things here less competitive again. And even if the jobs still here don't pay as much, relatively speaking to days past in manufacturing, you are likely to lose them because the markets, and the owners of capital surrounding those markets, will make sure you are punished.

Maybe it's time to start asking yourself if maybe the game itself that we've playing all of these years is the real problem. That perhaps it's time to start considering creating a completely new game, a game with rules that favor the rest of us, as opposed to the top few percent who own the capital, and control the markets.

Just a thought.

Scrubbing NAFTA Could Cost More Than 30,000 U.S. Auto Jobs

by PAUL A. EISENSTEIN