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September 27, 2005

Interview with doc who dissed Cheney; 'Brownie,' Russert and balmy Canada; oil rigs down

12:02 p.m.
Here's a long, interesting interview with Dr. Ben Marble, the Mississippi emergency room doctor who, when diverted from getting to his Katrina-flooded Gulfport home by an official motorcade in his neighborhood, confronted Dick Cheney with the same obscenity Cheney had tossed at Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, last year. Rob Kall at OpEd News asked the questions.

Marble considers himself a realist, a name he associates with a third party he'd probably want to belong to.

9:00 a.m.
I am still in the clutches of a change-of-season cold/flu, but I'll drag my body into work later to produce at least the classic cars movie page, since I haven't taught anybody else how to do that.

I've been having strange dreams about New Orleans and putting a bubble dome over my house. I'd swear that, in my fevered state, I heard that Michael Brown has been hired back by FEMA, that Tim Russert got his clock cleaned on his own Meet the Press show for lack of humanity, and that global warming gave Canada a balmy summer.

That last turned up in my mail, from Eric Lilius of Eagle Lake, Ontario:

Hi Sheila,
Hope your enforced break was restful and that you savoured the Pats pulling it out of the fire.

We are having a day of solid heavy rain here as a cold front smacks into all that moist air from Rita.

We have just frozen 10 pounds of beans from the garden which were picked under the threat of the first frost two nights ago. These were purple and yellow beans. The purple ones go green when they are blanched. I even throw them in with the yellows to serve as a marker.

I am starting to save seeds this year partly because I don't have the certainty that the seed supplies will be available in the future and I better start selecting for my climate which is changing. We had 40 days of 86 degree weather this summer. It gave us a great pepper and tomato crop. We live beside a river so water is not an issue. I could have grown eggplant this year. We even got a good second crop of peas.

We are members of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. An organic going to biodynamic farm that raises only open pollinated vegetables and some livestock. We will have a lamb in our freezer next week and maybe some beef since the farm doesn't have the hay to support them through the winter. This is another result of the hot summer. There was no second cut of hay in this area.

I am ordering extra wood for the winter and may not even order oil for backup. This house has three heat sources wood, oil and electric.

I can't see how the house of cards is going to stand up much longer.

Do you read Jim Kunstler?

Yikes.
Kunstler in Rolling Stone last March: (The Long Emergency)

...Some regions of the country will do better than others in the Long Emergency. The Southwest will suffer in proportion to the degree that it prospered during the cheap-oil blowout of the late twentieth century. I predict that Sunbelt states like Arizona and Nevada will become significantly depopulated, since the region will be short of water as well as gasoline and natural gas. Imagine Phoenix without cheap air conditioning.

I'm not optimistic about the Southeast, either, for different reasons. I think it will be subject to substantial levels of violence as the grievances of the formerly middle class boil over and collide with the delusions of Pentecostal Christian extremism. The latent encoded behavior of Southern culture includes an outsized notion of individualism and the belief that firearms ought to be used in the defense of it. This is a poor recipe for civic cohesion.

The Mountain States and Great Plains will face an array of problems, from poor farming potential to water shortages to population loss. The Pacific Northwest, New England and the Upper Midwest have somewhat better prospects. I regard them as less likely to fall into lawlessness, anarchy or despotism and more likely to salvage the bits and pieces of our best social traditions and keep them in operation at some level....

At Rigzone, which covers the oil industry:

Rita Sinks Offshore Rigs; Capsizes Tension Leg Platform

Rita may have landed at Sabine Pass as a category 3 hurricane but she plowed through Gulf of Mexico offshore oilfields at a Category 5 level knocking down jackjup rigs and setting deepwater floating rigs adrift.

As storm generated seas rose to meet the US Gulf continental shelf drilling rigs and fixed production platforms were severely damaged and in some cases sunk....

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 12:02 PM | Permalink