So far, the Labour Party has lost 288 local seats in a crucial election. Blair has reshuffled his cabinet in hopes of surviving.

From Bob Piper, a Labour councillor who retained his seat

‘A fish rots from the head’. It is time for Blair (and Blairism) to get off the stage. The people have spoken, go before they start to scream. We have seen some good Labour candidates defeated yesterday, and they didn’t deserve to be stabbed in the back by their own party. If the opposition were not so deeply mistrusted, it could have been much worse.

BlairWatch and NetherWorld have multiple posts on what could be the end of Blair.

[tags]Tony Blair[/tags]

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All of them right-wing Republicans. “Not one Democrat voted against the bill”

Pathetic, aren’t they? The Democratic ’strategy” for winning in Nov. appears to be to do absolutely nothing and hope the Republicans shoot themselves in the foot. Which they may well do. But that still doesn’t give anyone a reason to vote for a Democrat.

Democratic complicity and agreement with the wars grows ever more obvious.

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It seems to make sense. Create ethanol from crops, then you have a renewable, cheaper substitute for gasoline. But maybe not. According to some scientists, it takes more energy to produce ethanol than you get from burning it. Also, the process of creating ethanol often uses fossil fuels, including petroleum-based fertilizer.

Well then, grow it organically, right? Hmmm. I’m guessing that to feed the gasoline jones of the world with ethanol, huge areas would have cleared so ethanol crops could be grown. The whole thing seems unworkable. If it’s not an energy drain, and if non-petroleum products could be used in producing it, and if clearing or converting vast tracts of land to grow corn (the primary ethanol crop) can be done without impacting other agriculture, and if…

Other researchers say ethanol can be produced net energy positive by using different methods. But that still doesn’t address the mega-agriculture that would be needed to create enough of it to be used on a mass scale.

All of which demonstrates how serious our energy problems are and how real, lasting solutions are hard to find.

Meanwhile, self-serve regular at nearby gas stations is $2.35-2,45 a gallon.

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This is excepted from a talk (pdf) by Matthew R. Simmons of Simmons and Company, investment bankers to the energy business. He seems quite convinced we have a serious energy crisis. Three of them, actually.

Mitigating peaking of modern energy will be an unprecedented global challenge.

- Fixing the problem takes “between 7 years” and up to 50 years.
- Starting ahead of the problem has no downside risk.
- Ignoring the crisis until it is in full bloom will make USA’s worst mistakes seem modest:
- It is time to take the crisis seriously before it is too late.

Yet none of our politicians are proposing anything substantive, are they?

How We Solve “Peak Oil”
We reduce transportation intensity of oil:
– Shipments of goods bytruck becomes train to boat
– Liberation of employees to work close to home
End 9 – 5 check in
Begin era of “pay by productivity”
Grow food locally: End era of ornamental food
Reverse globalization: make things at home

If the above were implemented fully, our society would change rather radically, wouldn’t it? Just think of the implications of ‘reverse globalization’ and what that would mean.

We face three crises
Oil is peaking
Natural Gas is peaking
Electricity has limits

And India, China, Brazil, etc. all are developing ravenous need for petroleum too. It’s all quite insane, isn’t it? And can’t last.

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Long live WinRAR

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