In Search Of A Superb Owl
What do we want? Wisdom! When do we . . .
Links are at the end, begging for the currency of love.
Yr. editor has been physically unwell, tilting this way and that, and finds theirself once again apologizing for the silence.
The States of the Union are fucked
All of them, obviously—all the states of the union are fucked.
Yr. editor’s usual practice is to read the transcripts of SOTU speeches rather than watching them live, but this year’s was the unseen and unread exception to the rule. Why bother, was the rationale. There were no mysteries in advance beyond how the oldest president ever would react to the antics of the awfullest opposition since the day before the Civil War. Their leader’s futile attempts to quiet the ululations, mouthing “ix-nay on the ullshit-bay” at the back benchers—that might have been worth watching.
That’s the Republican mainstream in the House. McCarthy’s unwillingness to howl in public makes him an outlier on the party’s extreme left.
Did Biden talk about the war department budget in the speech? Politico’s Lara Seligman says the administration are preparing the largest war department cash grab ever, despite having got $45 billion more than they asked for last time.1 Add in all the other national security stuff they’ll be requesting and the total will be well more than a trillion greenback dollars.
Nobody seems to be suggesting that the proposal is in part an effort to bust up future opposition to a debt ceiling increase. The current ceiling left unlifted would knock the Pentagon budget back to the previous fiscal year, lopping off $75 billion from the budget Biden signed for this fiscal year. Magic eight ball says getting 218 House votes in favor of reducing the shoot-em-up budget is not fucking likely: invading hordes of Chinese weather balloons and UFOs the size of a Rhode Island pre-school bus will see to that.2
Regarding the latter, the Air Force sent a pair of F-35s, our amazingly sophisticated and dodo-like fighter-bomber, up to look at the thing, and then sent up some F-22s, the most closely held and the only U.S. stealth fighter capable of flying in the rain,3 which is on a path toward extinction because it is nevertheless also useless,4 to shoot down whatever it was (experts disagree).
(One of those stories says that China stole the plans for the F-35; one can’t but imagine, though, that we lured them into it so they too would spend massive sums of money on an aircraft that can’t stay in the air.)
(“An American fighter jet [also an F-22], acting on the orders of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, shot down another unidentified flying object on Saturday.”)5
(American jets taking orders from a Frenchy in Canadia? All is lost.)
Anyway: did Biden talk about that shit?
The newsies say Biden hurried to correct himself after he ad-libbed that the U.S. would need fossil fuels for at least the next 10 years.
Ironically, Biden's comment came as he tried to reassure critics that he recognizes the need for continued oil production. “We’re still going to need oil and gas for a while,'' Biden said, before adding the 10-year time frame in a later, ad-libbed remark.
After GOP lawmakers laughed, Biden quickly responded: "And beyond that. We're going to need it.''
Biden's message to the oil industry — “Stay in business, we need you today" — was the right one, "but his units were off,'' [fossil fuel shill Kevin] Book said. "He was giving a 10-year life expectancy to 50-year assets.”
Mr. Book’s comment neatly illustrates the disconnect between what oil and gas producers say about their efforts to usher in an era of clean energy, and what they mean, which is to keep pumping until they’ve extracted every bit of dinosaur goop available through projects extant or in the works around the world.6
Mr. Biden’s comments neatly illustrate the disconnect between what he and the administration say about their heroic efforts to combat global warming, and their intention to keep approving new projects projected to break even, profits-wise, well beyond the 2030 milestone.
Most of the administration’s heavyweights and a goodly number of congressional goobers will be dead by then, so maybe there’s some chance that at some point more serious-minded folk will pull the plug.
Did Biden mention that so long as fossil fuel companies are pumping the black gold out of the ground they’ll be pumping the gold gold into political veins, so long as that’s allowed?
That’s Neil Young backed by The Band and Joni Mitchell. Helpless helpless helllllpless. You could do worse than listen.
Our situation at present fails palliative care standards. (That’s not the royal “our,” but the inclusive one.)
That’s the fucking state of the fucking union (F-SOTFU).
Monkeys in love
Momo, a 12-year-old white-handed gibbon, shocked her keepers at the Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden in Nagasaki in February 2021 when she gave birth despite having no known male companionship.
Now two years later, following a DNA test on her baby, the zoo has worked out who the father is – and even has a theory about how the gibbons mated.
The test showed the father to be Itō, a 34-year-old agile gibbon, who was in an adjacent enclosure to Momo around the time she became pregnant.7
“Agile gibbon,” indeed. Gibbons are not great apes, but these ones should be promoted.
Music to incite a revolution by
The Shaggs, “Shaggs’ Own Thing;”8 Dry Cleaning, "New Long Leg;"9 Special Interest, "Endure."10
You really should give a listen to The Shaggs, whom Frank Zappa once described as the best band working at the time. Yr. Editor was most fond of Dry Cleaning, to which Kirt should give a listen, among the three. Special Interest has a distinctly punk-like quality despite the Freddy Mercury look-alike at the keyboard and the EDM overtones.
And that, Comrades, is all there is.
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Be well, take care.
I like it very much. Courtney Barnett meets Souixsie Souix. Thanks for the recommendation.