If This Is What You Want, Then This Is What You Get

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." - Histories, Herodotus, 440 BC

"Cash, Grass, or Ass - Nobody rides for free." - 1960's U.S. pop culture slogan

While the news that came out Tuesday wasn't entirely a surprise to any of us, it's one of those social and technological markers that we'll remember for a long time - along the lines of when we first heard that Polaroid film was going the way of the dodo bird.

In case you missed it, the U.S. Postal Service has decided that it can no longer afford to keep open every post office and postal retail location they currently own - so they've released a list of about 3700 post offices that will likely be eliminated across the country.

From coast to coast, every postal service outlet is being looked at, including the historical post office on the site where Ben Franklin invented the U.S. postal service, on July 26, 1775, 236 years ago this week.

For an organization that is fully self-supporting - and has been since 1970, when the Postal Reorganization Act was signed by President Nixon - the last 15 years have been a never-ending onslaught on their core business. The more e-mail we send, the less regular, first class mail goes through the U.S. postal service system.

We understand the logical progression of technology. Every member of our staff uses computers and cell phones, and even iPads and e-readers. We like that it doesn't take days or weeks to send messages across the country or the world. Without modern forms of communication, we couldn't do what we do for you every day.

That doesn't negate our love for the postal service, either.

The U.S. Postal Service is, to us, still one of the wonders of the modern world. Friends, family, and others we love can bake cookies or cakes, buy a book, or take a child's afternoon art project, box them up, and send that item anywhere in the country - really anywhere in the world - for an amazingly small amount, and have that item delivered in a matter of days.

In the U.S., there isn't anywhere the USPS really won't deliver - and in many rural and remote areas these days, it isn't FedEx, UPS, or DHL that carries those precious items the last mile. Often, those private delivery services contract with the U.S. Postal Service to do the part of the job that's too dirty, remote, or expensive for others to handle.

We're certain many of you are probably like us - concerned for the small towns and local neighborhoods that might lose a post office over the next year. You may have friends who will lose their jobs at the postal service, to say nothing of the fact that for many small towns, the post office is one of the few remaining vestiges of an America where we once cared more about our communities than the bottom line.

The next time the idea of privatizing more government services is thrown around by some far-right wing, corporatist-backed politician, we hope that people remember: this is what happens when a society chooses to privatize public services that should remain public.

If you're worked up about this issue, we'd suggest you to write a letter to your Congressperson about it. Sadly, you may have to go just a bit farther to mail it.

Being Led To The Slaughter

We're not sure really what more can be said about the debt ceiling and budget battle raging in Washington. Things likely have already gone past the point where real and significant damage has been done to both the credit rating and the reputation of America.

The truth is, this 'crisis' has been wholly manufactured by the extremist, regressive, far right-wing of the Republican Party - and it's being done against the will of the American people. This is absolutely NOT a "both sides" issue, something that too many media organizations have been glossing over.

More than two-thirds of the American people want REAL, true compromise right now on this issue. In poll after poll, Americans support a mixed solution of targeted tax increases on those who can afford them, smaller cuts in government spending, dumping tax cuts we can't afford, and a few other strategic moves - like bringing our troops home - to save money.

This is exactly what the President has been proposing all along - and growing numbers of Americans seem to understand that he is still on their side.

Even Wall Street, against whom we have (legitimately) railed many times over the years, is opposed to the current positions taken by House GOP members. As long as this political deadlock continues, investors cannot grow their businesses, invest, or hire more workers.

By insisting on NOT taking any of a number of deals weighted heavily in their favor, the party that has claimed for decades to be pro-business has also abdicated its responsibility to businesses, large and small.

Not surprisingly, liberals on the left have whined about the false weakness of President Obama for being willing to go as far as he has in some proposed deals that have fallen through. Yet the all-too-real lack of effectiveness of House Speaker John Boehner has become blatantly obvious as he's failed to pass even his own proposals through the House he allegedly controls.

Speaker Boehner's latest plan - a plan designed specifically to pander to the extremists in his own party - doesn't look like it will succeed as originally designed, and is being "reworked" even as you read this. Even if it would garner enough Republican votes to pass the house, the Congressional Budget Office has said it won't reduce the debt by as much as it needs to - and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised it would fail in the Senate.

In comparison, the President asked Americans on Monday night to call their elected representatives if they were angry about this issue. The American people proceeded to crash the websites and phone lines of multiple Congresspersons, primarily Republicans. If it were true that President Obama is weak, such a task should be beyond his reach. It's quite obviously not.

News organizations around the world are as focused on this issue as most American media. If the United States defaults, or even if its credit is downgraded - as appears increasingly inevitable - the resulting shock will harm people from all corners of the globe.

At this point, like some other wise folks, we're just praying that President Obama's lawyers discover legal precedent that proves the 14th Amendment is legitimate after all.

Otherwise, we could all soon be facing a return to a pre-colonial economy - which would be extremely ironic, since the Tea Party extremists are the people who've been warning us all for years about Muslim terrorists dragging the U.S. back to the 14th century.

Looks like it may be our own homegrown fanatics who drag our nation into oblivion after all.

It's All Connected

It should be obvious that the topic of the debt ceiling and budget battle is still weighing heavily on our minds, and is being heavily covered in most other major media sources. In case you missed the President's latest address on the issue last night, you can find it at whitehouse.gov - and we do recommend watching or reading it.

Today, though, we wanted to draw some focus back to a different story we've been monitoring for a while now.

In case you missed our links yesterday, the discussion about the Keystone XL pipeline is heating back up again in the Midwest, with two public hearings scheduled in Nebraska on the pipeline matter over the next month. As we've mentioned previously, we do not trust the oil pipeline companies to make good on their claims about safety for a host of reasons, including the recent Exxon Mobil spill into the Yellowstone River in Montana.

To be honest, we recommend you see Yellowstone Park and the Yellowstone River sometime in the near future, if you'd like to see a landscape that resembles the Ansel Adams photos you've likely admired. Sadly, the forecast for the future of Yellowstone, like many other places around the world, isn't a very comfortable one.

The heat waves sweeping North America, as well as the snow and cold sweeping South America and Australia have something in common with the attempt to put a dangerous oil pipeline that stretches from the Canadian Rockies all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

They're all related to global climate change.

The latest research continues to reinforce that what climate change scientists have said for years would happen if we didn't get our bad habits under control. The latest development is that frozen toxins, trapped in Arctic ice, are now being released at rates that have never been seen. Many of these are toxins that are no longer produced, but were generated years ago, like a poisonous ghost, now come back to haunt us all.

There are still those stubborn, obtuse people who say these are just ghost stories. So we'll ask a simple question: What's a loaf of bread cost now? What did it cost ten years ago? Twenty years ago? How about forty years ago?

What did it cost ten months ago?

Food costs around the world have gone up, every month, for ten out of the last twelve months, according to the latest research data. We know we've certainly seen it around the country - and we now know it's also happening worldwide.

How about global safety and stability? Famine in Ethiopia and Somalia isn't just something that happened back in the 80s and 90s. It's going on right now, and causing even more unrest in areas of the world where we're already concerned about famine and war breeding terrorism

Don't just think we'll use new technology to get ourselves out of this problem. The Saudi Arabia of lithium - a mineral that is key to new battery technology - is located in the Chilean desert of Atacama, the driest desert on Earth, perfect for drying the soil that holds the precious mineral.

The Atacama desert that just received snow this past week.

The problem of climate change, like many of the problems our society is facing, wasn't caused yesterday, and won't be solved easily or quickly anytime soon. But for our sake - and yours - we hope that governments and private businesses will continue to ramp up an even more rapid investment into green energy and green jobs.

Not only will such an investment produce more jobs NOW, which we need. Those jobs will likely pay better than many of the jobs corporate interests have left behind in America. It will also likely help make things better for all of us years down the road.

The human race simply can't stick our heads in the sandy, dry lakebeds of ignorance anymore.