Tarpetbagger: New Word From Edward Faraday's New America Dictionary

Tarpetbagger
noun
pronunciation

TARP et bag ger

1) U.S. History, The profiteering Bankers and Wall Street companies, which caused the financial crisis of 2008, and benefited from the problem they created by successfully maneuvering within the unsettled social and political conditions of the economy previous to the Obama reconstruction.

2) An opportunistic banker or Wall Street figure who seems to offer a public service but is actually using the public to serve themselves.

Origin
2009 New York City slang, American
so called because they came back to work with their blind folds on and hiding their continued greed in TARP bailout plans. (TARP: Troubled Assets Relief Program)


Wall Street Bankers Feted After
Causing/Profiting from TARP Bailout

Granny locks the TARP Wolf in her penthouse
apartment in "Red Hot Riding Hood."

From Fantasy Tales of Tex Avery
by Gary Morris

PROJECT DRILL AWAY: New Bravo Network Show Featuring Lady Sarah Palin

Photo Credit/Source: Ryan McFarland


Lady Sarah Palin is to star as judge in a new BRAVO TV show called Project Drill Away! The show will focus on a group of sexy Alaskan Oil Workers who compete to see how much oil they can find in new areas of the arctic refuge. The contestants will also compete to see how many animals they can trap to make fur hats and coats with and how many moose they can shoot while flying in helicopters. Bill O'reilly will guest judge along with Danny Bonaduce and Karl Rove.

The Mud Room Of The Future: The Jet Pack Room

In the old days one needed room near the door to put a musket, the boots you made out of the skin of an animal you killed yourself, perhaps those snow shoes you made yourself so you could get out of the house before spring to get some grain at the local general store which was ten miles away through difficult territory. If one was wealthy enough one would eventually have a covered porch or make an entry way or foyer or a room that became known as a “mud room”.

The concept of Mud Room morphed a bit since the early days but has remained fairly similar. Now we need a mud room to hang our coats, put our galoshes and umbrellas, our skis in winter, tennis rackets, roller blades, ice skates, perhaps golf clubs in summer.

But does everyone realize what the new necessary accoutrement is going to be to put in the mud room? That all purpose in out I’m using the stuff all the time storage room between the front door and the house, often times between the garage and the house?

A Jet Pack. That’s right. Yes I know you are thinking the Jet Pack might be more appropriate for the garage and has no place in a mud room. But I don’t think so. I really see Jet Pack’s as a mud room kind of thing. Maybe Mud rooms will become Jet Pack Rooms. Or there can be a designated Jet Pack area in the Mud Room. You can hang them near your coats above the pile of boots. Those folks on the higher end of income will surely have a Jet Pack room in addition to the Mud Room just like they have walk in his AND hers closets.

You think this is a fantasy? No way. Jet Packs were originally conceived in the 1950’s. In the 1960’s we had Johnny Quest and The Jetsons and although cartoons somehow we imagined that cool futuristic things like that could happen. We landed on the moon didn’t we? But somewhere between the 1960’s and now we seemed to have lost touch with that whole idea of fantasy becoming reality. . We couldn’t possibly fly our cars in the air or pop on a jet back to fly in and visit our in laws in the town next door. We still think electric cars are a new thing.

It’s time to stop doubting the fantasy. Color TV was magic. Now Flat Screens are taken for granted. There is a Jet Pack in your future. Even if you have to put it in the old Mud Room it’s going to happen. Move over the flannel shirt with the IPOD in it, the titanium feather light ski poles. We need room for little Sally’s new hot pink Jet Pack. You know the one you’re giving her for her next Birthday.

Eco Friendly Uses for Organic Vodka Every Day of the Week

1) Increase Consumption of Cancer Fighting Tomato juice
A Bloody Mary a day keeps the Doctor away!
At least that's what my dad said before
dying in that car accident.
Jazz up the V8 and live longer.


2) Quiet Your Annoying sniffling Kid at Night
If you run out of Baby Nyquil one
night why spend gas money
going to Rite Aid before the next day?
Cut down on your carbon footprint
by using that bottle you always
have on hand. Vodka will keep any pesky
baby quiet all night in a happy slumber.
How do you think the Soviets survived
influenza in communal apartments?

3) Save a bad marriage
Helps any bad marriage last longer
than it should. Stay married the old fashioned
way and have a martini
before you even get home after work.

4) Clean Your Water Pipe
Or other glassware in the home...Vodka sterilizes
everything. Get a little pocket bottle so you
can sterilize in the car in
an alley, whenever you are on the run!

5) Wash wine stains out of your new white couch
Yes - Vodka is a miracle fabric cleaner.
After that next blur of a party just pour
some Giorgi on your couch and rub off the
wine stain with some recycled paper towels.
Forget about the toxic Fabreeze too.
There's nothing sweeter than the smell
of Vodka when you want to lie down and
chill in front of the flat screen.


6) Practice Your Russian
Studies have shown that drinking shots
of Vodka increases aptitude for Slavic
languages. Go for it comrade!
Drink up. Soon you'll be
starting Green Drinks, Moscow, and
speaking Russian like Vladimir Putin.

7) Lower Blood Pressure by Increased Procrastination
Nothing works better than a wasted evening and a
good hangover to put off those
stressful work things you know you need
to get done. Stop having a heart attack trying
to climb and claw your way to the top of
the heap 24/7. Have a double, put your
feet up and watch all the other rats racing
on the treadmills and having
nervous breakdowns and divorces because
they work too much. And for Health's sake -
Don't forget the fair trade organic
olives and the twist.

It's All Happening

Above picture from Worldsnest, New Mexico


It's All Happening

In the 1976 film Network, TV newscaster character Howard Beale utters "I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to Take this anymore " after a news report about OPEC.. This strikes a chord with current events. Beale’s angry passion, eloquent clarity and sense of purpose is still needed today to combat the entrenched way of thinking by consumers, and old industries afraid of losing market share.

Network and the 1970's oil crisis brings up another one of my favorite films, "Ground Hog Day" where Bill Murray keeps waking up the same day It's hard to not think the world keeps going to sleep and waking up the same day when one knows that the Peak Oil crisis was predicted in 1956 by M King Hubbert who was shunned and taken as seriously as a Ground Hog predicting the weather. (If you have not seen the film Crude Awakening you should run out and rent it.)

Despite how much I feel the rage of Howard Beale I don't want to end up sticking my head out the window and screaming "I am Mad As Hell And I’m not going to take this anymore." Don't get me wrong, I am mad as hell. Mad that people building expensive homes don’t make them net zero energy users, spend $50,000 renovating kitchens or building pools but say they can not afford solar panels. That naysayers proclaim that getting off oil and coal and investing in renewable energy is going to bankrupt this country while not having a problem with subsidizing ethanol, oil and proposing subsidies for the nuclear industry to the tune of billions of dollars. In the end, though, I am not really mad as hell.

Another favorite film,"Almost Famous",.about a teenage journalist in the 60’s who goes on the road with a rock band and falls in love with the character Penny Lane, who tells him "It is All Happening" , as if the creative forces of the universe were coming together just for them. Yes Penny Lane “It is All Happening” The universe is cracking open just for us.

T Boone Pickens went from oil man to wind man, the Terminator Republican Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger is a total greenie. People have retrofitted Plug In Hybrid Prius’ that get over 100 miles a gallon, built there own solar powered cars live in homes that generate more energy than they consume. Thin Film solar PV is being made that prints out on a printer. There’s solar paint, a disco in England that generates electricity by people dancing on a dance floor, a city being built in Abu Dhabi that will generate 100% of it’s own energy renewably and have no waste, a futuristic off the grid compound in New Mexico called Worldsnest that makes it’s own hydrogen for it’s hydrogen fuel station..

And hey – if I was a Ground Hog I would stick my head out of the hole and say “Spring is Coming Early This Year.”

OUT GORING GORE

It's refreshing to see Al G out there promoting the idea that we can make the majority of our energy with non carbon sources in the not too distant future. It's refreshing to hear this as opposed to the energy camp that keeps saying powering ourselves with renewable energy any time in the imaginable future is impossible. And most people are just sitting on the sidelines while Gore becomes the defacto green cheerleader who can say what he wants because he does not need to get elected.

Whatever happened to the idea of manifesting destiny and the whole pioneering ideal that anything was possible despite the difficulties and sacrifices one must make to get where you want to go? Clearly the settlers that took over North America did not sit around and say that crossing the ocean in tiny wooden ships or going across hostile, dangerous, un chartered territory was going to stop them from anything. They didn't sit around and worry about going bankrupt and how hard everything was. They just got in their damn ships and wagons or on horses and took off knowing that it was better to die trying than sit at home and let some other country or clan or company do something, every doubter said was impossible, before anyone else could.

Thanks Al G for not getting elected President. Thanks for letting George W screw everything up even worse than it was before. I'm not saying the problems we are having is a Republican problem and that the Democrats have all the solutions. The California Governator Shwartzenegger is a Republican and look what he has done to lead California into a bright green energy future.

As they used to say during the first Internet boom in early 1990's - there is paradigm shift going on. There were even people who doubted that the Internet would actually make money. Remember the first net boom and how it crashed and how all the naysayers said - see it was all just an illusion? But look at the Internet now. After the hiccup of it's initial success the Internet has almost become our life and its not just a part of it.

And same goes for all the renewable energy technology that lots of people say is not really going to happen any time soon in the near future. Sure some of the technologies may go belly up and some of the ideas and companies will fade away.

But just like how the Internet is here to stay after being brought into question, the same will be for the amazing new energy technology being developed now.

It's time for someone to come on the scene and out Gore Gore. The world would have been less interesting if we had Daniel Boone without Wild Bill. The Pilgrims in New England without the French in the Bayou. Bill Gates without Steve Jobs. Apple without Microsoft. Yahoo without Google.

You get the picture. Don't we need more than one green cheer leader?

Come on all you politicos out there who have something to say. Do you have what it takes to out Gore Gore? The more Gore the better.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Copyright Yasu and P Mac G 2008

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