Hammer Mill Days

Is this the new itinerary? Looks like last week's. Which, if I recall correctly, was a hastily updated photocopy of the flight path for Voyager 2. That mission didn't end well, my fine friend, just you remember. Yes, yes ... we are still preparing the ground for our upcoming interstellar tour to support celestial sales of Big Green's latest album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick . The itinerary thus far includes stops on gas giants, molten moons, and frozen asteroids hurtling into black holes. Couple of snags, that's all. Nothing to get excited about. (Man Jack Jesus, this band has to work like an animal to find an audience.) In the meantime, we have plucked the lost September episode of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN from the jaws of non-existence (if such a state of being can be said to have anything resembling jaws), and good thing, too: we needed an October episode very badly indeed. What's it all about? Well, you could give it a listen. Or you could j...

In the midst of chaos in Washington, it took more than a week of government shutdown for me to find something to be grateful to the Republicans for. It's a short list, but not an insignificant one. 1) Keeping Obama from attending the TPP negotiations . Because of the continuing resolution and debt ceiling disputes, the president opted not to go to the APAC summit in Bali to join in advancing negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership, a "trade agreement" he has been promoting as a great opportunity for the U.S. economy. I put "trade agreement" in quotes because, as always, these pacts are not so much about trade as about investor's rights. Like the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), NAFTA, and other similar instruments, the TPP would establish rules and requirements that would supersede those of national governments. That means environmental, food safety, labor, and a host of other regulations could be overridden in what would amount to a race...