"While Dubai is not big enough to set off financial
repercussions outside the Middle East, the main fear is that investors could
flee risky markets all at once in search of safer havens for their money." -- The NYT, Vikas Bajaj and Graham Bowley, reporting.
Apart from the stark self-contradiction in this quote from The New York Times, you have to love the fatuous 'it's all good' self-assurance where global banking is concerned. No problemo y'all! A mere overdraft incident, a cash-flow hiccup... and yet "the main fear" [among whom?] is that investors [where and in what? Like, everywhere?] could flee risky markets all at once in search of safer havens for their money [WTF?]. Gosh, well, as long as they don't flee the New York Stock Exchange, the Hang Seng, the FTSE.... And, hey, do you suppose anybody bought any credit default swap "insurance" on the deals that financed scores and scores of super-giant condominium skyscrapers and hotels amounting to the greatest spec construction folly in the history of the world?
Snapshots of the stupid fucking work-in-progress have been circulating around the Internet for five years, the disbelief was so monumental. I confess, when I first saw the Palm Island I was impressed at what a superb air-strike target it presented. And then, when the real estate assemblage of artificial islands arranged like a map-of-the-world came along, I could only imagine the megalomanical glee rising in the throat of a jet bomber pilot (nationality unspecified) as he closed in on it.
Whom the gods would punish, they first make completely crazy. That includes us, here in the USA, by the way, but pound-for-pound Dubai is the current champeen. The monstrosity they built in their waterless convection-oven of a city-state makes Las Vegas look like a mere strip mall in comparison. Throw in a few other affronts to nature, such as an indoor ski "mountain," a beach cooled by an under-the-sand refrigerated pipe network, golf courses that have to be hosed down with acre-feet of desalinated sea-water, and forget about "the gods" -- one begins to see the monotheistic hand of "Old Scratch" himself working the levers of the construction cranes out there.
Frankly, I have no idea whether the Dubai fiasco will send seismic ripples thundering through a global banking establishment that is already crippled in more ways than you can count. But it does remind those in thrall to the dazzlement of "green shoots" that debt comes a'creeping, and runs so far, deep, and wide through the broken system of mutual assurances constituting international finance, that Ben Bernanke and his counterparts in central banks 'round the world could drop helicopter loads of paper cash on every rooftop, intersection, parking lot, field, forest, and camel raceway and never make a dent in the fatal web of false obligations we have woven for ourselves.
But you do wonder what was going through their minds as this ridiculous organism took shape on the horn of the Persian Gulf, just as one wonders at loathsome aspirations that Las Vegas presents in our own so-called culture -- essentially a wickedness that exceeds the wildest fantasies of the most demented clergymen, be they closeted sado-masochistic Southern Baptist teleministers, Vatican-approved child molesters, or mullahs dispatching suicide bombers to the marketplaces frequented by housewives and their children.
Lately, the much-repeated aphorism has circulated around the Web that civilizations build their most extreme monuments at the very moment of collapse. If this is true -- and it is hard to argue with the historical record -- then it's time to organize a new Third Party for the 2012 election with Jared Diamond and Cormac McCarthy heading the national ticket (and Roland Emmerich for EPA chief). By then, if we don't stop lying to ourselves about the destruction we have induced, every other suit-and-tie wearing authority figure in America, from the county clerk to Barack Obama, will take on the aura of the archetypal Evil Clown from a Stephen King yarn. Imagine living in a country where absolutely nobody in a leadership position is credible. This is the kind of country we're becoming and it will not keep running that way for long.
The markets will begin digesting the Dubai news in earnest today, making for a holiday season of possibly momentous thrills-and-chills. The big debate going into Thanksgiving was whether the dollar would continue its downward trajectory, leading to some kind of currency failure, hyper-inflation, take your pick... or turn briskly around as investors bailed out of risk vehicles for the conventional safe-haven paper parking lot of US Treasuries. This debate between the inflationists and deflationists has defied resolution all year. Personally, I side with the deflationistas these days, though I believe our ultimate destination, in a year or so, is destruction of the dollar.
In keeping with the wickedness theme, isn't it interesting that our society now vests all its hopes and wishes for thriving -- indeed survival! -- on a yearly ceremony we have come to call Black Friday. I was raised in a religion-free household, but I confess the signs are just everywhere that we've taken some turn to the Dark Side. I'm a little surprised that "consumers" were not caught on video wringing the necks of chickens in the WalMart parking lots the other day in the hopes of winning supernatural favor for that race down the aisle to the flat-screen TV loss leaders. The cinemas are full of blood-sucking teenagers. Grown men swarm in the unemployment offices wearing sideways hats and butt-crack trousers. Why not just tattoo a message on your forehead that says: "Moron For Hire"?
______________
The Sequel to World Made By Hand is now done and scheduled for publication by the Atlantic Monthly Press in Fall, 2010.
Man, it's too early in the morning for this.
Walmart is already the center of the new Cargo Cult -- they have a house of worship in every community.
Too early? Why it's never too early for a nice, toasty-warm dose of reality! Unfortunately for most of us, we're playing in a zero-sum game. The consequences of 'money-from-nowhere' and nearly-free energy weigh heavy on one side of the equation (the losing side). We get to pay for the losing side with our sweat while our guidance-from-above reaps all the benefits and builds their off-the-grid fortresses in South America & other safe zones.
Good morning!
Bravo, James!
Actually, it is an extremely polite post for what is going on.
"Imagine living in a country where absolutely no one in a leadership position is credible." We're there. Leadership will never again be able to help us because the human race now needs to look far, far deeper than leadership can ever take it.
He got the requisite tattoo refernce in at the wire. Good job, Jimmy!
Plus this: "Personally, I side with the deflationistas these days, though I believe our ultimate destination, in a year or so, is destruction of the dollar."
Despite a poor track record and advice to the contrary he continues to make the specific, dire predictions. I'm gonna put this one in my Outlook calendar. See you next year.
Meanwhile, the feds keep trying to inflate another bubble. See Miss Nothing sing the Bubble Anthem (after a few glasses of wine)at http://www.thenothingstore.com
Wow! A bit disgusted Jim? HaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!
You forgot about the Afghanistan, $300 per gallon and up war escalation where for every troop added there will be an additional mercenary soldier/operative added. Don't worry, Barack Stoogebama is going to sell it to the consumers without mentioning the true cost.
Or what of the revelations/allegations by Jeremy Scahill that things over in the Pentagon are so bad that Blackwater aka Xe has its own unaccountable secret from the CIA Pakistan assassination operations going on.
Business is good for Blackwater, Halliburton and Perini. Sorry Jim. I know. It is even worse than the oblivious wanna-be thugs, iPod snoozing, Gossip Girl persnickety, debt tranched abyss sliding orgy that you despise so much.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/10/11/dianne-feinstein-war-profiteer/
We have been warned...on multiple occasions, as it turns out.
From StreetTalk at Forbes.com:
"India's central bank bulked up that nation's gold reserves by 55% with the purchase of $6.7 billion worth of gold from the International Monetary Fund, which is selling gold reserves to raise funds for lending to poor nations. The move is already profitable, as the Indians bought their gold at prices averaging around $1,000 an ounce. Gold closed at a record $1,085 an ounce Tuesday in New York. The big buy from India follows months of huge gold accumulation by Chinese authorities, as well as hedge fund operators like John Paulson and others amid growing anxiety about the viability of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. ... Make no mistake about it: Central banks have not been liquidating their gold. This sale by the IMF is therefore an extraordinary event at a time when there is little gold supply to meet the burgeoning demand by investors wary of paper currency. Trillions of dollars have been injected into the financial system to save it from Armageddon; they must find a home somewhere."
And straight from the lips of Warren Buffett to God's ear back in May, "No one can know the precise level of net debt to GDP at which the United States will lose its reputation for financial integrity."
"In other words, printing money can degrade the integrity of the dollar, making gold look like an attractive alternative to Treasuries that yield 3.5%. Look at how gold has soared 51% over the past year while the U.S. dollar index is down 10%." - StreetTalk at Forbes.com
I'm not betting that Dubai won't send a shock wave across the financial bows (could this be the famous last straw?). And those Wal-Mart shoppers would be better off to take that chicken home and get it to lay a golden egg than to depend on one more iteration of the Holiday Shopping Season to save our collective economic asses this year!
JHK,
You are in top form this morning.
Thanks for writing about what you think & feel.
WAY WORSE!
The New York Times may be downplaying this Dubai crisis, but the Toronto Star was more realistic in its coverage over the past weekend.
Right now I have a friend in Dubai, looking after his grandson while his daughter teaches English there. After sending him one of the Toronto Star stories he told me it's just like home - poor people are treated like dirt there too. He is Iranian, a Bahai, who is not too fond of Muslims. Says he's sick of the bells ringing all day long calling people to prayers.
His photos show lots of concrete, new buildings, but they look like Leggo, not quite real. None of the many kids in the pix deserve the future we have unwittingly constructed for them.
I will be happier when he gets back home.
The New York Times may be downplaying this Dubai crisis, but the Toronto Star was more realistic in its coverage over the past weekend.
Right now I have a friend in Dubai, looking after his grandson while his daughter teaches English there. After sending him one of the Toronto Star stories he told me it's just like home - poor people are treated like dirt there too. He is Iranian, a Bahai, who is not too fond of Muslims. Says he's sick of the bells ringing all day long calling people to prayers.
His photos show lots of concrete, new buildings, but they look like Leggo, not quite real. None of the many kids in the pix deserve the future we have unwittingly constructed for them.
I will be happier when he gets back home.
The New York Times may be downplaying this Dubai crisis, but the Toronto Star was more realistic in its coverage over the past weekend.
Right now I have a friend in Dubai, looking after his grandson while his daughter teaches English there. After sending him one of the Toronto Star stories he told me it's just like home - poor people are treated like dirt there too. He is Iranian, a Bahai, who is not too fond of Muslims. Says he's sick of the bells ringing all day long calling people to prayers.
His photos show lots of concrete, new buildings, but they look like Leggo, not quite real. None of the many kids in the pix deserve the future we have unwittingly constructed for them.
I will be happier when he gets back home.
Interesting as always, I love my Monday morning dose of Jim. Where I live nothing seems too different, people sit entranced by the big TVs either at home or the bar or neighborhood Fridays. There are all the great football games and old rivalries to watch and then shopping and drinking ahead. It is all good and very in the spirit(s) of the season.
Of course, for the few who read the news (as opposed to watch the spin on the tube, there are stories of local and state budgets in gloomy red ink, layoffs, furloughs and service cutbacks looming. But alas, we'll get over it, we always do and then back to McMansions and SUV Monsters so shiny you could comb your hair in their mirror-like finish. This buffoons who recently crashed the White House State dinner sum our culture up perfectly: vapid, materialistic, seeking fame and fortune and totally devoid of any sense of reality.
How long this charade can continue is something I cannot fathom, what will really TIP the average Joe into the realization that this time he and his family is really screwed. Maybe repossession of the F350 or plasma TV? As for then seeing the disenfranchised masses actually doing anything about their plight? I sincerely doubt it so long as the numbing glow of the TV and cinema and PC and Blu-Ray dulls the senses.
As for Peak oil as the ultimate Bringer of Death and carnage to all (especially us; with the IEA constantly downgrading the crude possibilities it looks like the slide may have indeed begun off the peak, perhaps. We'll see in 2012 when either the Earth blows up as it is currently on various cinema screens or gas costs 6 bucks a gallon and we are all pissed, wondering who to vote out of office now that both parties have proven corrupt, incompetent and self-serving.
If you think Dubai represents some scary shit, Bill and Melinda Gates appeared on "Meet the Press this weekend. The richest man in America is bullish on capitalism, and philanthropy and was very quick to point out that our "real" industries like Microsoft, and Google are just fine and the economic hiccups are going to pass.
At Suburban Empire it is time to look at the coming emergency for emergency services....
http://www.suburbanemprie.com
Oversimplified opinion, whose reach exceeds it's grasp...... at Suburban Empire.
Heh. How soon before this blog starts: "Hey you kids, get off my lawn!"
While there is some merit to what is said, it's so wrapped up in the cranky-old-man-isms that no one will pay any heed to it.
In an era of resource scarcity our emergency services will no doubt hit a rough patch as the way we currently put fires out.... is with oil.
http://www.suburbanempire.com/front
Sorry about the glitch in the previous comment.
Yes JK - we is all bad peeple and we need God or somebody to tell up to straighten up and fly right.
Something worth discussing. The etiology of a clusterfuck "mindset." What are the seeds of discontentment or foreboding that spawn serious introspection about the human condition?
In other words, what inspires you, or anybody else to trumpet the dire consequences we face as a result of the natural[?] state of our collective rat race?
Can the equation be as simple as maintaining a life of distraction through gainful employment? What are the colors of the socio-economic spectrum that filter or reveal truths surrounding our future.
Will events transpiring in Dubai or Vegas open a few more eyes? Just what has to happen to get "doom and gloom" into the stores on the shelves for Xmas?
Just what kind of "action news" will it take to turn a nation of consumers into a nation of -------- CON-GLOOMERS?
If all those "investors" (as in "idiots") had ever actually visited Dubai first, chances that they might have thought twice prior to throwing their money away. If the world needed an enema, Dubai would be the place to insert the hose. What a fitting edifice to the worldest tallest peckerheads. This twenty first century megalopolis must fly in nearly all of it's fresh food and has no water that can be actually "drank" as Merle Haggard extoles. Talk about "sustainability" DUH! I do hope that they attach a light atop of the Burj Dubai building so that some wandering camel herder a hundred years from now will think that he is one of the Magi and declare the second coming. And to think that they are only upside down a few billion dollars or so. Our treasury does that much red ink in a few minutes. Yes Dorothy, the gods ARE crazy.
Larry
Thanks for the Monday morning cup-o-dystopia Jim!
After a four day weekend of stuffing food down our obese necks, I am back in the real world, watching nervously as my company is slowly bled to death.
The talking bobble-heads on the idiot box were busy downplaying the Dubai debacle yesterday and will likely continue today, yet the truth is that we are watching yet another sovereign default play out. England, Spain, Ireland and indeed the United States are all spending significantly more than we can generate in taxes, and will soon follow Dubai.
I think the end of the fun is quite near and that we will all get a lesson in extreme austerity that will serve as the basis for our new economy. All of the folks who called me 'chicken little' will be sucking buttermilk when the shit hits the fan and they have made absolutely no preparations in advance.
Without some earth shaking changes made by our Congress, the U.S. will soon sink in to a third world quicksand, taking a large part of the civilized world with us.
For those of you who have not stored up some extra food and converted some of your fiat in to durable and useful goods........I say good luck and Godspeed.
Collapse of US credit and currency will constrict the flow of calories (food and power) into its cities and inner cities. Grocery stores will be looted, the lights will go out. The only precious metal then will be lead in brass.
This is a good time to invest.
Right on, Jim.
As a nation, we have definitely moved to the dark side, with our abandonment of decency, decorum and anything resembling fiscal responsibility. Gambling has become not only a family adventure, but a national vocation as we gamble the future away on instant gratification at the expense of our kid's future.
The collapse of Dubai is actually a positive development for the west. There will be a lot of "capital flight" out of this place, and many of the western corporation that sought refuge from taxes and regulation there will repatriate their operations, and their money. This event will cost "emerging markets" a lot of credibility. And, while we're looking pretty battered, we have a history of recovering from debacles, and we are not anything like as ridiculous and unsustainable as Dubai.
You really have to wonder how it carried on for so long. People finally managed to build a place NOBODY can afford. The whole thing was impossible from the outset and on some level, everyone kmows it.
Face it, the place was never For Real. The whole point of the place seemed to be to prove that its denizens could afford to waste, waste, waste.
It looks like it's over and let's hope it STAYS over.
Right on, Jim.
As a nation, we have definitely moved to the dark side, with our abandonment of decency, decorum and anything resembling fiscal responsibility. Gambling has become not only a family adventure, but a national vocation as we gamble the future away on instant gratification at the expense of our kid's future.
The NYT story I found today appears to be taking the threat seriously: "The operative question is whether the governments of Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates will rescue Dubai from the consequences of its profligacy. If it does not, the secondary effects could spread to Greece, Britain and some Baltic states, all heavily indebted nations; to India and the Philippines, whose workers in Dubai send back millions to support their families each year; or to any corner of the market for credit that individuals, companies and countries rely on."
Black Friday wasn't a total bust, but that's probably, as they say, 'pent-up' spending, bargain-hunting after hanging onto pennies. I'm hearing from belt-tighteners making my cabbage soup and oatmeal.
Lynn
http://www.10in10diet.com/
Diet for a small footprint, and a small grocery bill.
Another day another catastrophe in-waiting here at "clusterhysteria"
If you haven't already found this view of the present / glimpse of the future, take a look:
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
Today is the ten year anniversary of the anti-globalization demonstration in Seattle that shut down the WTO meetings and the town. The NYT incoherent blather about Dubai would have been a perfect lead into how right those activists (environmentalists, labor unions) were about how dishonest and self-serving the Krugmans and Greenspans and Lardo Larry Summers were about trusting Adam Smith's invisible hand.
Ten years later, we see that the economic elite from Harvard, Princeton and especially the University of Chicago have down more damage to the US than Saddam Hussein and more damage to the planet than Hitler did to the Jews. The New York Times has generated into gestapo-esque propaganda to keep the shell game going long enough for the stock owners and pensionees floating in cash for a few more decades.
Not a word about the confluence of the fiasco in Dubai and the 10 year anniversary of the prophetic protesters in Seattle. Nope, Jim is sort of the antithesis of a true academic - narcissistically regurgitating his memes and never acknowledging anyone else's.
WICKED NARCISSISM would have been a better title for the latest spewing from our self-absorbed, anti-intellectual (never mentioning anyone but your fucking self in a positive light is anti-intellectual)
Happy 10-year anniversary to the prophets of the pacific northwest which one day soon, might be a nation unto itself called Cascadia and Uncle Sam and the northeastern yankees and southeastern rebels can all go f themselves.
I'm still laughing from the first reply by puzzler
Well some people have already realized that our government does not represent our best interests. Most sadly, do not yet. I was talking to a very smart friend of mine and he commented on how great this new healthcare reform would be. The thing was, he freely said how he new NOT ONE DETAIL of what the changes would be to our healthcare system.
He also can't wait for the day when we all own electric cars and we all can just plug 'er in. Just like magic!! Because we all know electricity is an UNLIMITED resource. No worries about the grid trying to carry this extreme load or cost increases or how we are at the max of production right now.
So how any of our brainwashed masses of US citizens could actually comprehend a debt spiral/collapse or that, yes the US is bankrupt, is beyond me.
Maybe when our latest greatest Nobel Peace Price winner sends 30,000 or so more troops to a country we should already be out of people will see the disconnect between what our masters tell us and what they really do....Nah.....Better tune in to see who Tiger is cheating with.
JHK said: "The Sequel to World Made By Hand is now done and scheduled for publication by the Atlantic Monthly Press in Fall, 2009."
Since there's only about 3 weeks of fall left, I guess it's on the trucks already?
Well some people have already realized that our government does not represent our best interests. Most sadly, do not yet. I was talking to a very smart friend of mine and he commented on how great this new healthcare reform would be. The thing was, he freely said how he new NOT ONE DETAIL of what the changes would be to our healthcare system.
He also can't wait for the day when we all own electric cars and we all can just plug 'er in. Just like magic!! Because we all know electricity is an UNLIMITED resource. No worries about the grid trying to carry this extreme load or cost increases or how we are at the max of production right now.
So how any of our brainwashed masses of US citizens could actually comprehend a debt spiral/collapse or that, yes the US is bankrupt, is beyond me.
Maybe when our latest greatest Nobel Peace Price winner sends 30,000 or so more troops to a country we should already be out of people will see the disconnect between what our masters tell us and what they really do....Nah.....Better tune in to see who Tiger is cheating with.
I always wonder about the "dollar is going to fail" comments. If you don't want USD then what are you going to hold? Pesos? Dinars? Pounds? Euros? Yen? Ah and you then say - none of them, since they are all going down. Well if they all go down then none of them have gone down. (That's relativity applied to the sandbox of finance.) What we should be concerned with is the value of our own personal hour of labor. As long as mine is valuable relative to yours them I'm well off. But try telling that to kids who want to study film or ranch hands in their pickups or bank clerks and rental car jockeys in their cheap suits. What do you know or do that has some real value?
I always wonder about the "dollar is going to fail" comments. If you don't want USD then what are you going to hold? Pesos? Dinars? Pounds? Euros? Yen? Ah and you then say - none of them, since they are all going down. Well if they all go down then none of them have gone down. (That's relativity applied to the sandbox of finance.) What we should be concerned with is the value of our own personal hour of labor. As long as mine is valuable relative to yours them I'm well off. But try telling that to kids who want to study film or ranch hands in their pickups or bank clerks and rental car jockeys in their cheap suits. What do you know or do that has some real value?
I live in the Pacific Northwest so it's about 6:30 am when JHK's newest gets posted each Monday. I wish he'd wait a couple hours so the caffeine could kick in. But I should really be trying harder to get ready for the post-caffeine world to come -- I've already gotten past Peak Caffeine and have reached a 50/50 mix of dark roast and decaf beans in my grinder. Along with precious metals like gold, silver, and the ever useful lead/brass combo, plus food, be sure to stock up lots of coffee -- I can adapt to a world without Cheetos, but having no coffee will seriously piss me off. In fact that'll be the tipping point that'll bring out the torches and pitchforks, when the caffeine pipeline gets disrupted.
Glad to see you working "blue" again, Jim.
Cuddletuffy wrote: ..."Don't worry, Barack Stoogebama...."
I really dislike these stupid name-puns. Please refrain from brandishing them. It's not the worst sin, but it just bugs me and makes the comment section look stupid. It may also incline me to ban people who indulge in it.
--JHK
'our latest greatest Nobel Peace Price winner sends 30,000 ...'
i heard on radio that the greenbacks lost 30% ? of its value under his watch!!! as he tripled the ND..and its been 10 months!
And those of you who read my posts yday...huckabees back in the news last nite...his early release turned child rapist..they still let him loose and hes maybe killed 4 LEOs in wash state!
i read Investors Biz daily...10 years ago they mocked those nuts opposing Globaloney...
but remember the WSJ writes about how 'immigrants will save social security' and Obamas not got euro blood in him so he matters...barak whos ancestors owned slaves in kenn or tenn!
Good God. I'm sitting in a Statistics class analyzing the heights and weights of the Knicks. It's as if there's nothing wrong.
I wish I didn't know this nonsense. Can anybody say they're going to miss the Dubai case studies and the endless swirling crap of Black Friday's past and future?
I think now would be a great time to slip off the Economic Grid unnoticed. Good luck, all.
http://freedomguerrilla.com/
>Grown men swarm in the unemployment offices wearing sideways hats.
You're missing the point James. You see, the hat is at JUST THE RIGHT ANGLE.
It's quite an art and requires a fairly serious intellect to match the angle to the day and weather conditions.
The emir of Abu Dhubai would be an idiot to bail out his cousin when the loan cannot possibly be repaid. Dubai produces nothing; it's the ultimate resource sink. No sane person will move there when they realize that they can be stranded or choked out by a single strike on the water desalinization plant or the oil pipeline that feeds the power plants.
I just want to be able to cheer as Dubai burns and the enslaved workers revolt and hurl their former masters from the top of that tower like teddy bears tossing storm troopers. Followed closely by the western media news crews that oh-so-carefully ignored the fact that the place was built and staffed by slaves for all these years. What a monument to everything evil in the world. In my just and right dream world we would burn it. Then march that fire right up to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and burn out those bastards too.
Jim's got it right. We can no longer generically trust anyone who works every day in a suit. Your corporate professionals are there to scrape as much money off the world as they can get and if your skin comes with it that was your bad bub. Until we stop them at the ballot box or by means of legal protest; of course. Always the legal means only.
Thanks to Heckler for remembering that today marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Seattle over the WTO.
Here in Cascadia, we are proud that we shut down the meetings and helped the world understand the great evils of WTO. On Sunday, a Seattle Times business writer acknowledged that "the protesters got it right," as he went on to detail all the failures of "free trade."
There is no difference between Las Vagas and Dubai.
It is just a degree of decadence. Every office building of the upper Midwest, which has no opening windows is just a small miniature of Dubai. Our decadence of burbs dwarfs any Dubai. Therefore, we should keep our mouth shut.
"a wickedness that exceeds the wildest fantasies of the most demented clergymen, be they closeted sado-masochistic Southern Baptist teleministers, Vatican-approved child molesters, or mullahs dispatching suicide bombers to the marketplaces frequented by housewives and their children."
Whoops, you forgot the rabid rabbis and hasidics. Why does this whole post reek of two bit middle-east envy? How dare those camel racers build bigger buildings than those in Tel Aviv - ya see what happens?
Oy veh.
"a wickedness that exceeds the wildest fantasies of the most demented clergymen, be they closeted sado-masochistic Southern Baptist teleministers, Vatican-approved child molesters, or mullahs dispatching suicide bombers to the marketplaces frequented by housewives and their children."
Whoops, you forgot the rabid rabbis and hasidics. Why does this whole post reek of two bit middle-east envy? How dare those camel racers build bigger buildings than those in Tel Aviv - ya see what happens?
Oy veh.
Jim pointedly that the morning after follows the night before. I get a kick out of those who take exception to Jim's reiteration of the abject craziness of current "thinking". They seem to ascribe some nefarious (or at least cloaked) purpose to his repeated admonitions. The worst motive I could imagine is that Jim is a bit of a masochist: he might be taking a small perverse pleasure in reminding himself how utterly stupid we are as a people. If so, I empathize.
Jim, you rock!
You made my day, thank you. Not the best rant ever but close.
J. Daeh, Hannover, Germany
Ed's comment about JHK: "Despite a poor track record and advice to the contrary he continues to make the specific, dire predictions. I'm gonna put this one in my Outlook calendar. See you next year." makes me wonder. Let's see...real unemployment over 20% with no chance of it coming down. Real inflation at 7%. Umpteen trillions printed/pixelled into a bankrupt "financial" system. No industrial base left in the U.S. that actually makes things of value. Huge percentage of mortgage holders underwater. Commercial real estate crashing. Banks who only show a profit thanks to FASB letting them lie in their financials about the value of their worthless OTC derivaties. Option arm loan resets to start peaking in late 2010 into 2012. Largest U.S. budget deficits ever. State after state going bankrupt. Oil already at $80+- barrel. UK on its way to bankruptcy. IEA revising downward its ridiculously optismistic estimates of available oil. The stock market 'rally' created by the banks taking their printed fed dollars and investing them in the stock market to get a better rate than loans. U.S. treasury bond sales propped up by Federal Reserve printed money--essentially the U.S. buying its own debt. Ever since he published The Long Emergency JHK has been wrong about catastrophe coming Ed? I'm not sure what signs you are looking for. The catastrophe HAS happened and CONTINUES. Take a look around!
Well done, once again. Dubai and Vegas are monuments to everything that will crush the current system under its own pondeous weight. Note that Mr. Kuntsler says "us" and "we," not just pointing the finger, but joining us in the responsibility for our lemming-like ways.
In my last job, I got to watch the starchitects celebrating all the construction geegaws being raised on the sand--the Burj Dubai, the islands, the vacation places, etc. It looked silly even in 2005; it looks stunningly stupid now.
What's especially spiffy is that Sharia law (as practiced in Dubai) looks down on unsecured debt, and there's no bankruptcy equivalent in much of the Muslim world--if you write a bad check, you go to jail(http://robray.net/skipdubai). The foreigners, many of whom are the people actually running things, are getting out of Dodge. So there won't be anyone around to unwind this disaster (although it would be a good place to send our Goldman Sachs guys).
Just another wacky episode in the day and life of the human race. As if building useless sand castles wasn't enough just think how those aliens must be enjoying the show from their new swimming pool on the moon. I think I'll kick back and enjoy a tall cool one before placing my next bet on the wheel of misfortune.
And for Benny and fefe: You cannot count judaism among the BIG monotheistic religions. It's a small monotheistic religion. There might be more Armenians than jews in the world (I don't know). So what the heck.
It was the christians who started the crusades and the muslims tried to raid Vienna.
Christian Germans conquered and enslaved the slavic people of eastern Germany.
Christian Americans enslaved millions of Africans and somewhat more inadvertedly killed millions of indigenic Americans (read Guns, germs and steel by Jared Diamond).
The jews? They did not start any crusade and will never. They were always the ones to get scapegoated and didn't even try to missionate other peoples. So what?
I have to admit that I dislike any religion/ideology. So I wouldn't weep a single tear for the orthodox jews if secular jews would -finally- take over Isreal and make peace with the muslims in the region but this won't happen in my lifetime. Religion is a mental disease.
I'm not sure there's anything inherently wrong with the concept of a Las Vegas.
If we had a functional society, there very well could be a role for a city whose function was to provide a place for hard-working people to get some relaxation and diversion.
I think the real problem is that Vegas economics is not a viable basis for running an entire country.
The catastrophe HAS happened and CONTINUES. Take a look around!
========================================
Typical, when catastrophe doesn't happen redefine catastrophe. Listen.....when/if catastrophe happens there won't be any doubt about it, or need to parse the definition. It hasn't happened yet, that's for sure.
I visited Dubai last January and the newspaper had two full sections of real estate ads, mostly condos that listed the original price paid, and an appeal to "make offer". I have no idea why anyone wants to live there. The summer hits 120F. There is one public beach. For fun, there is golf and the desert, not much more. And now Michael Jackson is gone. Malls again, anyone?
Speaking of wickedness, and Dubai, here's some highly recommended reading from Johann Hari, a columnist with the London Independent:
The dark side of Dubai
Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/cgwa9q
"Dubai is nothing less than a giant relief valve for the playboys of the neighboring nations."
You're confusing Dubai with Bahrain...
"Dubai is nothing less than a giant relief valve for the playboys of the neighboring nations."
You're confusing Dubai with Bahrain...
I see the mention of the sequel to World Made by Hand has been corrected to Fall 2010. I hope JHK has a wood-burning printing press available, and a stash of paper and ink.
As far as distribution, Johnny Appleseed provides the business plan. Jim Writer (since our new last names will revert to the old style descriptors like Cooper, Smith, etc. although Kunst is German for Art, so he could be Jim Artist) will wander from village to berg with a mule-load of hand printed books, planting little novel-seeds. More likely, his acolytes will lead traveling minstrel shows, telling the tales of former suburbs and big-box stores to the amazed audiences.
"... it's time to organize a new Third Party for the 2012 election with Jared Diamond and Cormac McCarthy heading the national ticket (and Roland Emmerich for EPA chief)..."
Hey, you'd fit right in there as the chief of staff.
Jim: even as Jim Kunstler, you really outdid yourself with your colorful language and truly inspired dark and hilarious images. This is indeed the height of dark humor. I do wish you would try to be a little less understated. What's wrong with really telling it like it is? I am looking forward to the sequel of World Made by Hand. I couldn't wait for the prequel last time and had to buy a pre-publication copy which was pretty ratty. What is title anyway?
I think it's amazing how well the unemployed masses are dealing with their sudden poverty. I've been expecting to hear of smash-and-grabs at the grocery stores and ATM machines on the nightly news. Things are too quiet. I'm not sure how I'll handle my future poverty, I'd like to think I'll be able to get on with life as a feral being, but I think I'll more likely end up dead. Oh well. I guess I had a good run.
I think it's amazing how well the unemployed masses are dealing with their sudden poverty. I've been expecting to hear of smash-and-grabs at the grocery stores and ATM machines on the nightly news. Things are too quiet. I'm not sure how I'll handle my future poverty, I'd like to think I'll be able to get on with life as a feral being, but I think I'll more likely end up dead. Oh well. I guess I had a good run.
Jim, your Wordpress install seems broken. That explains my, and other's double posts. I got an internal server error, hit "back" and resend. Sorry.
Don't hit "back" -- when you get that error just leave, go to another website, come back again and your post is usually there.
"I just want to be able to cheer as Dubai burns and the enslaved workers revolt
---------------------------
To Pangolin (and to Asoka-FAIL),
Take a look at the picture on pg A3 of today's NY Times. The caption reads "A cricket break at a Dubai construction site in 2007." Just like America's slaves ... every few hours, put down that sack of cotton and play cricket.
Everbody knows the boat is leaking, everybody knows the Captain lied!
The Detroit News/Free Press Sunday print addition had an interesting story on the plight of Motown's old Michigan Central Station, once the region's main passenger rail hub, now a derelict eyesore about two miles from downtown Detroit. The story compared the shabby condition of Michigan Central with Nashville and Kansas City's beautifully restored early-20th century train terminals. According to The Free Press, Michigan Central depot was built in 1913 at a cost of $15 million by the same architects that designed New York City's Grand Central Terminal. It's been twenty years since the last Amtrak train left the grand old terminal, and there have been all kinds of proposals to turn the crumbling 18-story edifice into a casino, a luxury hotel, offices and even the new headquarters of the Detroit Police department. Everybody in town has an opinion on what to do with the old train station but so far nothing has been done. The city even voted to have it torn down. However, I have yet to hear anyone talk of restoring the tarnished jewel to its' former use as a passenger rail hub. With the American economy in the grip of the worst downturn since the 1930's and Washington handing out stimulus money by the truck load for every hare-brained make-work project under the sun, why hasn't anybody in a position of authority thought about restoring America's mothballed passenger rail terminals to their old position as the local and regional hubs of a revitalized national passenger rail network? Maybe somebody can clue me in on why the bankrupt American government has billions to prop up Wall Street and the domestic auto industry but turns a blind eye to revitalizing passenger rail, which would pay for itself in the years to come?
Ba-hahhahahahahahaha
You think anyone in the bankrupt American government gives a rat's ass about revitalizing passenger rail? And while there might be a few wheelbarrow loads of stimulus money for hare-brained make-work projects, the truck loads are reserved for the bankers and other wall street suits. And they're stuffing into a bottomless pit somewhere and we're never going to see it again.
Besides...even if we wanted to revitalize rail...the weekend bicyclists would never give up their newly paved trails.
If we ever colonize the moon, or terraform Mars, or need new sets for a follow-on series to the recently excellent Battlestar Galactica (the Ronald D. Moore edition), I nominate Dubai and Dubai World to do the job(s).
Anticipating the rise in Gasoline prices,I thought of buying one of those street legal 3 wheel scooters,(I am too old for a two wheeler) that gets over 80 MPG and registers as a motorcycle and requires no insurance in this state.
After drooling over all those pretty pictures on the net,I decided to visit several of my local dealers.
Waddayaknow,nobody has any,neither the cash to buy 20 at a crack from China.
The Chinese in the meantime want to see the cash up front,since we are no longer trustworthy and have credibility.
Because of this I already see more shortages coming and it will get worse.
If you need or want anything that's imported,get it now.
Way to go James, always a pleasure to read you on Monday morning. Now I've discovered the comments section and realised I ought to put two cents in from northern New Mexico.
Fantastically written critique of world events, always makes me think.
Can't wait for the follow up to World Made by Hand
Thanks for writing
Brian Rodgers
Last week I took Amtrak from St Louis to Texas. I took the metrolink to St Louis.
In Chicago you get the train at Union Station. Same with Dallas and Los Angeles.
But when I got off the trolley at Union Station and hauled my suitcase all through the shopping mall, there was no train station.
Finally, I asked the helpful man at the gun boutique where the train was, and he acted like I was the foolish one!
The Amtrak stops at the civic center, not Union Station. Union Station is a mall!
Why didn't I know that?
One of the nice things about riding the train is that the train station is usually right in the center of town. Since you obviously are walking, not driving, when you leave the train, that is as it should be.
But not in Albany, New York!. The train station is across the river. Apparently the old, center of town one is now a bank. How fitting.
And Amtrak doesn't even go to San Francisco. It goes to some god forsaken dump in Richmond.
We definitely need to redo the trains.
"...Everybody got this broken feeling, like their momma or their dog just died."
Saw LC earlier this month. He puts on a good show for a 75-year-old
He is truly one of our great musical prophets.
Thanks for pointing that out. I remember as a college student watching the Seattle WTO protests on TV and for a second was like "these people are going to change the world for the better."
But the good guys lost. The Dubais of the world won.
As Hunter S. Thompson said: "We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . .
"So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
It would be nice to have HST around today to slam the current chaos, which makes the days of even Nixon look progressive. I suspect HST would have his own Clusterfuck Nation-esque blog.
I thought he would have made a great mayor for Aspen!
Dale wrote: “Another day another catastrophe in-waiting here at clusterhysteria.”
Translation from Dale-speak: “Nothing much has changed here in the potato hills of Idaho, so nothing's really changing much. In fact, the last 10 days were pretty much the same as the 10 before them, so what could possibly happen next? Zzzzzz”
So, Dale, you never told us how your beanie-baby “infestments” turned out after the dot-bomb era ended.
Err, I hope you didn't lose too much money on the compressed-air-car thing.
No, wait a minute, I DO hope you lost money .. because it's all good. Let me explain. Remember the other year, when you were shilling compressed-air cars madly? Your flawed rationale, then as now, was that if “infestors” are getting in on the action, then they must know something you don't know, so therefore you'd better buy now or be priced out forever once the thing takes off. By this process of hype-without-understanding, a fair amount of money found its way from less-clueful to more-clueful hands.
Why? Because money likes to be held in better hands. It's got class conscience. It doesn't like to be held by dolts. As everyone knows, a fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place ~ and are soon parted.
Good luck infesting :)
Dale, someone here who I trust told me you missed me .. and that's why I'm back. I will go dig up your compressed-air car comments some other time and repost them here.
Las Vegas was alright when you could walk right out of the city into the desert. Such a contrast and transition from sin to purity is bracing and salubrious for the soul. But now, endless billboards and sub-urbs. Truly as Hunter said, "Generations of Swine".
Fefe/OEO/Zzzz wrote:
“So does a religious reference get one a pass from stoopid name-puns? And where the HELL are the negative characteristics associated with the Jewish faith in your rant against religious faiths? I mean aren't we trying our darnedest to be politically correct?”
James Howard Kunstler wrote in the parent post:
“In keeping with the wickedness theme, isn't it interesting that our society now vests all its hopes and wishes for thriving -- indeed survival! -- on a yearly ceremony we have come to call Black Friday. I was raised in a religion-free household, but I confess the signs are just everywhere that we've taken some turn to the Dark Side.”
Fefe/OEO/Zzzz/ZsaZsa, here's the key to the answer you seek:
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
Christianity .. 33%
Islam .. 21%
nonreligious .. 16%
Hindu .. 14%
primal/indigenous .. 6%
Chinese traditional .. 6%
Buddhism .. 6%
Sikhism .. 0.36%
Judaism .. 0.22%
Looks like Jim got 50%+ with just the first two religions he singled out. Are you saying he should have cherry-picked from the minority religions instead?
Hey Guys! What do you think about the fantastic techno-fixes envisioned by Dr. Kaku? See this in the Youtube (copy/past the following link): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxU-Hm8dWjE&NR=1&feature=fvwp
What an opposite sight, when compared with "World Made By Hand"!
John
Hey Guys! What do you think about the fantastic techno-fixes envisioned by Dr. Michio Kaku? See this in the Youtube (copy/past the following link): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxU-Hm8dWjE&NR=1&feature=fvwp
What an opposite sight, when compared with "World Made By Hand"!
John
Dale wrote:
“Typical, when catastrophe doesn't happen redefine catastrophe. Listen .. when/if catastrophe happens there won't be any doubt about it, or need to parse the definition. It hasn't happened yet, that's for sure.”
Funny, that's exactly the mentality that was in play during the 1930s here in the US. No one called it the Great Depression at the time. That came later. At every day along the way, it was referred to (in the news at the time) as “this rough spot the economy is going through”. It was not until years later that it came to be called the GD.
Sure, this is just a rough spot .. nothing to see, just move along, folks.
That new Amtrak station in St. Louis is a heartbreaker, isn't it?
The sick part is that the mall at Union Station is failing quickly, and could use some "action". The old train concourse is given over to parking. There aren't enough people living in or downtown to support the mall, which is quite a few blocks outside the main retail district downtown (which is also not doing too well)>
What a way to greet visitors to the city! Instead of rolling into the beautiful Union Station building, where there are good places to eat and some decent places to shop, you roll into the blighted backyard of downtown, an area where freight trains are staged. The new station is jammed under the I-64 overpass and is the weirdest looking thing. There are only 4 pockets for trains, and two platforms, a far cry from the days when St. Louis was a major rail hub.
And then you step outside the station and first see, directly across the street, a vacant lot, then you see, 5 blocks to the north, the gorgeous copper roof of Union Station, and wonder why none of the city leaders could think to allocate part of the old concourse to Amtrak.
Laura Louzader wrote (of Dubai): “Face it, the place was never For Real. The whole point of the place seemed to be to prove that its denizens could afford to waste, waste, waste.”
Pretty soon, common hindsight might say just the same thing about California ~ which still bills itself as the world's eight largest economy, even as it pays its suppliers in IOUs and borrows money from the federal government in order to keep its BK unemployment insurance fund afloat.
Los Angeles was once a desert and will be again. Its shell will be a monument to human greed and stupidity-the more diverse the environment, the more fragile. We thought the laws of nature, and God didn't apply to us because we were Americans. We will find out differently. As Jeremiah said, "The heart is corrupt above all things."
"I will go dig up your compressed-air car comments some other time and repost them here."
=================================
Please do, until then I am calling you out as liar. Prove me wrong. Don't forget to give the date of the alledged post.
===================================
By contrast let me summarize your "position" here from memory. Correct me if I am wrong. I don't need to make up posts for you.
You and your doomer buddies were all hot and bothered and sure the end was near two years ago.
Oil prices would go to $300-400 a barrel. We would all be out of food, not be able to afford to drive our cars etc. etc. Wah..Wah...Wah...I believe that Dr. Doom's timeline was 2012 (he must be one of those Mayan calendar geeks). I don't remember your timing but it was soon, and of course, we all deserve to die according to you. (it's some sort of twisted moral thing in your mind) God forbid anyone would own an SUV or be overweight in your world, you would be wishing them dead or trying to run them off the road. Oh.....and anyone who was betting on the market rally back in April/May, well you just knew they were suckers, right?
My point was then and is now, that many different positions can be advanced using innumerable data points. Will PO come?, sure, but no one knows when and only someone of supreme arrogance, or lack of imagination, would think they do. Anything can happen, but black swans are black swans for a reason, and cubicle occupying harpies aren't likely to forecast the end of civilization. Starting to come back to you....?
As for physics, what do you know about physics?? As I recall current quantum mechanics suggests you are a creation of my conciousness. So I guess I must want you here, or you wouldn't even exist.
Dale wrote: “As for physics, what do you know about physics??”
It was my major at college. Does that answer your question?
Dale .. life is rough, but it's rougher when you're stupid.
HST saw it coming from a long way off.
I have to agree, Nudge.
California is a place that was built on fantasy, and Excess is an entitlement. "America's wilder fantasies tend to roll westward," some author or the other once remarked. It was the last stop and the place to live out every fantasy and fulfill every wild dream, and it was also a place that for 80 years drew the more unstable people in the population. And it also manages to embody every contradiction in American life- a Welfare State built on government contracts that prides itself on enterprise and independence, an paragon of eco-consciousness where nobody can live without driving 80 miles a day.
Not that any of the rest of us here in the U.S. are exactly level-headed and rooted in reality. This is a country driven for 200 years by the desire to live out really large dreams, and uninhibited by any sense of limits.
It's been fun, but it is sure going to be hard to adjust to new realities here.
I found a 1946 Roosevelt silver dime in my pocket the other day. I couldn't believe it. I thought all of those dimes were in $500 face value bags of coins with lead seals on them. I guess some of them escaped. With the current price of silver at $18 an ounce, I think I'll hold onto it.
JHK said, "Personally, I side with the deflationistas these days, though I believe our ultimate destination, in a year or so, is destruction of the dollar.
I think it is going to be inflation. Apparently there is no shortage of ink or paper.
http://teddersrandomnotes.com/blog
>If we ever colonize the moon...
Like Jon Stewart said, the reason we haven't done that already is, no way to cool our beverages. This ice discovery is HUGE!!!
You are right Jim. Stoogebama was pretty lame. I will try to hold my stupidity in check, or at least keep it veiled so that the stupidity, racism and hatred of other posters can shine brighter to attract the scrutiny of banishing eyes.
Speaking of stupidity, I've kept a journal of Yahoo news headlines for the past several years. I've never done anything with it. However, the stupidity of them makes 60 Minutes business news seem prescient and relevant by comparison. Often times the articles behind them are clearly propaganda pieces written by DNC/RNC, Wall St. or Pentagon PR firms.
Shortly after leaving the CFN blog this morning I discovered this artifact of brazen fantasy-land assessments of the key challenges Barack Obama faces. Note they are all challenges of perception.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20091130/pl_politico/29993
Let me say what I wanted to say in a more mature and intelligible way. Barack Obama, like all of our modern presidents, is a stooge of the money/military interests that paid for his campaign, and have their own policy agendas in motion long before inauguration day. So are the throngs of political-class sycophants that run the perception management machinery in DC no matter which victorious party enjoys the spoils of power. So are we the people for continuing to put our faith, hopes and votes in this hopelessly corrupt, national system of imperialism.
I have long liked and respected Dr Kaku; however it would appear to me that he has taken a deep draft on the deranged spigot with this video. Forty five years ago when I worked in product engineering at GM they were talking the same talk that Dr. Kaku is spouting. Maybe ten years ago Gm produced a tv program in which they demonstrated self contained automated vehicles driving around the test track in (I believe) Arizona sans a human controller. Can it be done? Yes. Will it be accomplished prior to the cost of petrol going through the roof? Not likely.
Dr Kaku's most egregious comments to my mind were his contentions that hydrogen would soon be powering automobiles. Can a hydrogen powered vehicle be built? Obviously yes, since prototypes have been built and road tested. Will mass produced hydrogen powered vehicles save Americans from the ignominy of no freedom to travel at will? Not until micro miniaturized fusion reactors or cold fusion reactors are realized. At the current rate of progress maybe in a 100000 years. Anyone want to wager on the likelihood of a high tech human society on the Earth in a 100000 years? How about 10000? A 1000? Last chance, a 100 years?
I think that anyone with a sense of history, has realized that we have entered the downward part of our cycle. We may like to think that we are different than the Egyptians, the Romans, etc., and that somehow we will prevail where they did not. The reason that history moves in cycles, that economic bubbles always show up and burst, that the economy moves in cycles, is because of human nature. Human nature stays the same whether it's in the days of chariots or the days of rocket ships. As an example, the stock market crash of 1929 was a combination of no regulation coupled with wild speculation. Lesson learned right? Nope. Ronald Reagan, who the conservatives worship as an economic genius, deregulated the Savings & Loans in 1982. They all went belly up in 1987. The reason? No regulation and rampant speculation. Lesson finally learned right? Nope, Bush 42 said the marketplace could regulate itself & he basically cut everybody free to do what they wanted. Given the record of the last two eras of deregulation would it be reasonable to expect the same thing to happen again? You would think so, and yet people were caught by surprise again. It's not necessary to be Nostradamus to get an idea of what the future will bring. All you need are some history books and a basic understanding of human nature. JHK might state things in a way some of you find objectionable, and he certainly isn't 100% right on everything, but he is someone who is capable of seeing things with a realistic eye and who deserves to be listened to more than the talking heads on TV. We live by our decisions. The future will determine whether you were a wise man or a fool based on what you decided and what actually happened. Those who see it accurately will hopefully be a little better off than they would have been otherwise.
If you're going to watch Dr. Michio Kaku, along those lines, you may be just as well advised to watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8jZtwRJnRs
Yep, I watched the whole thing unfold on the news services - up late a couple of nights - and essentially took the same line as JHK on every point. I read the New York Times article and saw the same silly contradiction, but, there's no way I could've written a more hillarious or precise description of the absolute stupidity of it all.
I look forward to JHK's slant on important issues more than any other - I wish he'd write more flashes of his insight and viewpoint more often (one of my week's higher points). His descriptions of folly and his grasp of irony tickle my funny bone every time - black humour to be sure, but a good laugh is better than a good cry. An honestly indignant person who reminds me of Mark Twain somehow.
Yep, I watched the whole thing unfold on the news services - up late a couple of nights - and essentially took the same line as JHK on every point. I read the New York Times article and saw the same silly contradiction, but, there's no way I could've written a more hillarious or precise description of the absolute stupidity of it all.
I look forward to JHK's slant on important issues more than any other - I wish he'd write more flashes of his insight and viewpoint more often (one of my week's higher points). His descriptions of folly and his grasp of irony tickle my funny bone every time - black humour to be sure, but a good laugh is better than a good cry. An honestly indignant person who reminds me of Mark Twain somehow.
Ah yes, the signs of the apocalypse are all around us.
Frankly, I honestly thought that today would be "the tipping point" when all hell would break loose in the markets.
I had a serious WTF-moment when I read that Dubai wants a "standstill" on its debt repayment. A standstill? Is that analagous to a "do-over"? I mean, seriously: W. T. F.!!??
I am still of the opinion that the ripple-effect from this momentous clusterfuck in the desert is going to wreak havoc on the markets soon. Perhaps everyone is just in denial.
Ah yes, the signs of the apocalypse are all around us.
Frankly, I honestly thought that today would be "the tipping point" when all hell would break loose in the markets.
I had a serious WTF-moment when I read that Dubai wants a "standstill" on its debt repayment. A standstill? Is that analagous to a "do-over"? I mean, seriously: W. T. F.!!??
I am still of the opinion that the ripple-effect from this momentous clusterfuck in the desert is going to wreak havoc on the markets soon. Perhaps everyone is just in denial.
>Can a hydrogen powered vehicle be built? Obviously yes, since prototypes...
Just to throw in my 2 cents sir, you're right. There are huge technical snafus with that. First, the hydrogen is difficult to produce at an affordable cost. Second since hydrogen is the smallest molecule, it is difficult to create seals to prevent leakage.
Third, a device that uses platinum as a catalyst at a cost of X, needs to be replaced every Y miles.
X is fairly small, Y is large.
I only know this shit because a year ago I was wondering why the hell this wasn't happening, then found out why.
Correction,
X is large, Y is fairly small.
I know you were at the edge of your seats to see if I'd correct that.
I know you were at the edge of your seats to see if I'd correct that."
--------------------------
Yes you're right. Luckily I scrolled down a bit and spotted your correction before sending off a snide reply I had concocted in my mind that ended with the word asshole.
Whom the gods would punish, they first grant wishes.
Dubai is all so easy to pick on. It has indeed set itself up, along with the rest of the globe.
Having made camp in Dubai a few times, my on-the-ground surveys of the malls, cafes, beaches, museums, taxis & buses, dunkin donuts/KFC's, art galleries & hops, plus the real working class neighborhoods comes to a simple & complex conclusion. DUBAI is not the "other" - it's "us".
All of us, as in "globalization" or in universal dance in between greed & need
So we can poke fun at those fat Emirati youth with their $259 trucker hats and dishdashes sitting around at the Starbucks all day, but they've done themselves in at the Kentucky Fried Chicken. Diabetes runs wild there with the "haves", just like the "have-nots" in my native Kentucky.
Interesting note, I bought JHK's The Long Emergency a couple of years ago at Magrundy's Bookshop in one of the worlds largest malls. They also had an extensive peak-oil & survival section. Awareness about peak-oil is very high there. The Maktoums know that they can ride a camel back to their tent, as long as their blood sugar allows.
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Those are technical problems. The main problem is that hydrogen is simply a battery, a storage m edium. It takes more energy input than you get out of it.
long ago i watched a documentary called ' mondo elvis'...folks that want elvis to be ' the first protestant cannonized saint' !!!!
KEEP AT IT..THEM DANG SOUTN BAPTISTS..i doubt if SB will cannonize NASCAR.....hahahahahahahahahah
Jim, you are a visionary as usual. Unfortunately, our future is rather dismal. I was always dumbstruck that Dubai was building ski emporiums, fake island sanctuaries--is this for real? Am I crazy? It is so unnatural that it is unnerving, disturbing, not quite right, and perverse in its own way. A magnification of Disneyworld. The world is Disneyworld! A fake bubble of reality. Little difference between that and the casinos with flashing bright lights and the promise of instant wealth to distract us from the true reality which is our destiny.
Thanks Again JHK. Well, not really. Looking forward to the sequel of "World Made By Hand."
newsflash
computer strips installed on steaks
food theft is way up according to some newsreports!
While the collapse of any sovereign entity these days would likely have negative consequences for the West, the Dubai issue concerns non-public debt. The hope by lenders over the weekend for a Government 'bailout' (as is so popular here in the US) has aparently been dashed. The Government has said to lenders: "You should have known this was risky. Now you'll have to take the hit for your carelessness." What a concept - moral hazard. Despite the fact that Dubai - The Emirate is not going down, there will still likely be an adverse impact to the West as an amount I have yet to see described was lent to the collapsing entites by Western financial institutions.Now given that international finance (and Muslim Bonds in particular) is a very specialized & complex business line for a bank, it is unlikely that any of this risk resides at your local Thrift or Credit Union. Rather, the likely culprits are our friends, the Too Big To Fail crowd (whatever happend to "the bigger they are..."?). No, when the Dubai default chickens come homme to roost, it may be to some of those TBTF morons we're on the hook for. As to firms onshoring assets, jobs, and such back to the US, I suppose it's possible. I would tend to think the Dubai economy was mostly finance and construction though so....well....let's face it, those are not growth industries here right now either. So today's important take-away is: a debt default in ten figures or higher is BAD.
We were discussing this at work today, and I am of the same mind.
It looks to me like Al Dhabi's leadership is doing the sensible thing by refusing to bail Dubai. Amputate the diseased appendage to save the body, unlike what we're doing here in the states, which is to sacrifice the whole country to save the banking and auto industries, and sustain the unsustainable.
I really don't think that the UAE ever had a lot of faith in the long term viability of Dubai, and that they are prepared to let it go. We- by "we" I mean modern industrial civilization, finally managed to build a city nobody can afford to live in. Several Dubai insiders have expressed misgivings as to how long the place can afford to keep itself supplied with potable water, the most basic thing, and one said that the city never has more than a week's supply given the storage problem.
Worse, their sewer system is no way equal to the metastatic growth of the past few years, and they've destroyed their beach with really horrible water pollution. The water is so fetid you will get infections and rashes from swimming in it, yet this is one of their principle tourist draws!
This is what societies do when they've lost all contact with reality. They spend $6000 on the living room drapes while the bathtub's backed up and the roof's leaking, and put it on a credit card. They saw the growth coming but did not spend the money to install the sanitary infrastructure it would need, and now they can't afford to make the necessary improvements.
I do not fully understand why California gets singled out so much with regards to all that is wrong with the US of A.
The East coast may have all the bankers and politicians but what do they produce? nothing. We've got high tech firms all over the place. We've also got quite a bit of manufacturing here which makes sense because we're on the coast and we can export our products (including produce) using our world class ports. We're very much against Big Box retail with many towns, including my own, voting to keep them away. Furthermore, our often bashed entertainment industry wouldn't exist at all but for the rest of the world buying it up as fast as we can make it.
Go pick on Detroit.
There is a certain verbal construction that has come into vogue in the past few years among young adults in which a sentence is begun with the words "yeah, no" or, less frequently, "no, yeah."
The two words begin a speaker's reaction or response to another person's statement or question. For example, Chuck says "Hey Tom, I scored a couple of free tickets to the Rutgers game on Saturday, you interested?" Tom says, "Yeah, no I don't really follow college football but sure, there's always the cheerleaders and I got nothin doin Saturday so yeah, I'm down with that." For all the sense it made, those first two words might just as well have been "no, yeah." For reasons unclear to me, an unambiguous declaritive statement such as "Yeah, that would be great ... thanks for asking me" has become uncool.
For further evidence of fuzzy talk one need only consider the ubiquity of the word "like." The first speaker says "Hey Tom, how 'bout we catch a couple of brews at the Bottle and Cork?" And Tom replies, "Oh man, I'm gonna like have to pass; I've got an early class and I'm like really tired." When I hear such an exchange involving my son I'm apt to inquire (to bust balls) "are you ACTUALLY very tired or are you merely in a state SIMILAR to being very tired?"
Financial talking heads also have adopted fuzzy-speak in order to stay on both sides of some future event that they are asked to predict. It's a defense mechanism. In today's blog Jim Kunstler enters the land-mined field of economics and, like a pro, has played it safe by predicting we will have both DEflation and INflation with DEflation arriving first. Well, how convenient. We have ALREADY had DEflation (housing and other assets) yet he predicts it as though it hasn't happened yet. If INflation eventually arrives he can claim a totally accurate prediction, first DElation then INflation. By not specifying WHEN these conditions will occur he has covered his ass with wiggle room. Even if years pass with no significant INflation he can always claim, at a minimum, to have been half right ... the DEflation part.
As you may have guessed, I am no fan of these half-assed - on the one hand this and on the other hand that - kinds of predictions ... whether I hear them on CNBC or from Jim Kunstler.
Q dik is just disgruntled because his Dubai defense and praise has been quaffed. Royally. Today.By all.
The Gulf States desalination plants are operating at such capacity so as to actually change the chemical composition of the Gulf itself. Salinity levels have spiked to levels that are now poisonous to native wildlife.
"The good Earth- we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy." --Kurt Vonnegut.
North of Stockton, California is an agricultural powerhouse. Cut off our shipping and we'll have years of wine to drink, mountains of rice, stone fruit, grapes, cheese and god only knows what else. I could walk out my door right now with a hammer to crack walnuts and eat myself sick before traveling a mile. There's even a number of solar powered breweries and wineries to go with our extensive hydro, wind, solar and geothermal resources. Crack the world and we'll just bike out to the fields and keep eating while you starve.
If you want a state to pick on try Arizona. Pheonix is a death trap and Tuscon is as ugly as life gets in the U.S. I don't know how long anyone is going to live in a diet of napolitas either.
We now have simultaneous deflation and inflation.
The value of most people's primary assets, their house and their car and/or retirement funds is diving. In many cases the value is less than zero for "assets" that they have been making payments on for years. That's DEFLATION.
At the same time the value of people's daily labor in terms of purchasing goods and services has decreased. When you go to the store and try to exchange your labor tokens, dollars, for rice, beans, cheese, potatoes, milk and bread; you will find you need more of those dollars to purchase those items. That's INFLATION.
Some asshole economist would say that this averages out since Joe can now buy a cheaper house but the labor and credit disruption means he can't. He's tied to the house he's got and probably the job he has also and he still has to eat. Which is why economists should have their tongues ripped out and burned to ash in front of them.
Why all the sad sack lamenting?
This is a major gain for the Planet Earth! As this
insane scheme of emitting god knows how much greenhouse gases so elites could ski in the desert
goes down the tubes barrels of oil and greenhouse emissions will all be saved! And the other great thing?
In 2007 Haliburton moved their HQ to Dubai!
Revenge is sweet! As everything the neo-cons touch turns toxic....
Northern California always sounded like a paradise to me, but the trick is to manage to depopulate the place. I always thought that CA didn't have any problems that couldn't be solved by sending about half the population elsewhere, and now that it's becoming generally known that the streets are not paved with gold and that this is a difficult place to live with a severe shortage of jobs and a very high cost of living and doing business, maybe that will happen.
Any place that gets a reputation as a paradise gets wrecked. CA as it is at the moment is overbuilt, over-dependent upon auto transit, saddled with a welfare system that has some of the most lavish benefits in the country, and most of all with a population that has an incurable "entitlement" mentality. SoCal, the most overpopulated part of the state, is far too dependent upon imported water, though they are not as badly off as Phoenix. But there's a limit to how many hydro dams or solar plants (notorious water guzzlers) can be constructed, especially in a place dominated by the NIMBY mentality. The worst thing about the place is the mentality-there is, at least among SoCal residents, a sense of entitlement and ridiculously elevated expectations that are unbelievable. It's given that every time a fire sweeps through the hills and takes out a thousand houses, that the rest of the country will step in to supply the money to rebuild in the same fire corridor, and that the wherewithal for extravagant, high-energy-imput lifestyles will always be there no matter what is happening elsewhere, along with the total inability to recognize how dependent upon government subsidies it all is.
I agree with you regarding Phoenix- the place is a desert death trap, which, like Las Vegas, would not even exist were it not for the taxpayer-financed Colorado River plumbing system. Phoenix is, I believe, very dependent upon Lake Powell for water, and the dam that forms Lake Powell, the fragile Glen Canyon, is a badly- built 700' high monster that nearly breached in 1983. It was named one of the two most dangerous (in danger of breaching) dams in the U.S. in 2007, yet BuRec has decided not to remove it- even though the consensus among experts is that it will sooner or later fail, like when the drought that has gripped the west reverses and Lake Powell once more gets to "full pool". Removal of this timebomb is off the table because BuREc doesn't have the money to decommission the thing, even though the flood hazard is almost unmeasurable, and a breach would release 3X as much water as the breach of the Banqiao Dam in China in 1975, which killed aat least 90,000 people. A breach of the Glen Canyon would send a 500' wall of water charging down the Colorado, which would be 230' high by the time it reached Lake Mead. It would surely overtop the Hoover Dam, which might hold, it is so well built, but might not. If it held, the flood would merely send 2 years worth of Colorado river flow further down, and surely topple the 5 dams down river from the Hoover, including the Parker, Imperial, Morales, and two others, that are much smaller. The loss of life and property would be biblical. If the Hoover did not hold, the flood would be unimaginable.
We are subjecting ourselves to incredible risk as well as financial cost to sustain these desert cities, as well as breaking ourselves in general to finance the American sprawl lifestyle, and if we have a hard time maintaining this stuff to reasonable safety standards now, what will we do when constricted fuel supplies drive the costs out the roof.
Why all the sad sack lamenting?
This is a major gain for the Planet Earth! As this
insane scheme of emitting god knows how much greenhouse gases so elites could ski in the desert
goes down the tubes barrels of oil and greenhouse emissions will all be saved! And the other great thing?
In 2007 Haliburton moved their HQ to Dubai!
Revenge is sweet! As everything the neo-cons touch turns toxic....
Hi Capt -
It is true that certain aspects of the financial industry were deregulated. It is not true that the deregulation caused the bank failures in '87, '96 with Long Term Capital Management and '08 - '??. Included in the banks are the GSE's like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
There is an excellent book that describes what happened with the real estate bubble. It is called, "Meltdown", and was written by Thomas Woods. The root of the cause is the Federal Reserve and its artificial manipulation of interest rates. Namely, it sets them too low and makes cash free to the lenders.
The second, and worst culprit has been the knowledge by the corrupt insiders of these politically connected banking cartels, that they can make wild speculative bets with all the money the Federal Reserve is printing out of thin air, and that if their bets fail, they will get bailed out rather than face the penthouse-to-poorhouse consequences of their mismanagement. This has become known as the, "Greenspan Put."
The current reaction to the crisis has been even more absurd. Not only do they want to bail out the failed lenders, they want to bail out the failed borrowers. Where in a mortgage contract or in the Constitution does it say that if you buy property and can't make your payments, your fellow citizens are de-facto co-signers on home loans? This will create even more problems. Namely, the debt default of the entire US dragging down the fiscally responsible citizens with the irresponsible ones.
Ultimately, the only viable regulators of the financial services industry are interest rates, depositors with the executive management of the lending firms, all of them operating with the knowledge and healthy fear that there is no one but themselves to live with the consequences of the risks they volunteered to take upon themselves.
All of these actors being forced to operate in a reality of extreme risk will be much more cautious in the types of loans they extend and assume. Of course, we have to be honest and say that it would mean that we wouldn't have this rampant consumer economy that it seems most readers of CFN all agree is absurd. We would likely only be lending and borrowing money for essential and productive economic activities.
When we acknowledge the true source of the problem, which is right under our noses and explained clearly and simply by Thomas Woods and others informed by the writings of Mises and Rothbard, we'll solve a lot of problems. We won't have these massive and absurd fantasy driven bubbles/manias. We will have a much more sober population of productive citizens laboring in and managing worthwhile enterprises that seek to maximize the benefit and returns on our scarce and precious savings and capital goods. We won't have nearly as much need for easily corrupted federal regulators. We won't have a run-away military empire sucking away all of our vital resources and distorting markets for all goods and services.
As Jim would say, we would become much more serious as a nation. There are two huge elephants in the room in these discussions of eliminating this debt-carnival we call an economy and becoming serious. The biggest is the Federal Reserve System that makes it all possible. The second is its stampeding prodigal son, the military-industrial-complex.
Why don't we try removing the guarantees and forcing the lenders and borrowers to face success and failure alone? Why don't we eliminate the money-wands and force us all to live within the bounds of our savings - which is really the upper bound and real measure of our material wealth and fiscal sobriety I might add.
Confronting and managing our constraints is, to me, the worst reality we are trying to escape. Why not make little Johnny move out of the house and figure out how to pay his own bills and manage his own resources to the outcome he deserves; be it a van by the river, a cardboard box under the bridge or a nice home in a community of responsible citizens. I think that would be more effective then hiring a bunch of nanny's with other people's money to nag him whenever his behavior isn't what it should be. Don't you agree?
Hi Capt -
It is true that certain aspects of the financial industry were deregulated. It is not true that the deregulation caused the bank failures in '87, '96 with Long Term Capital Management and '08 - '??. Included in the banks are the GSE's like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
There is an excellent book that describes what happened with the real estate bubble. It is called, "Meltdown", and was written by Thomas Woods. The root of the cause is the Federal Reserve and its artificial manipulation of interest rates. Namely, it sets them too low and makes cash free to the lenders.
The second, and worst culprit has been the knowledge by the corrupt insiders of these politically connected banking cartels, that they can make wild speculative bets with all the money the Federal Reserve is printing out of thin air, and that if their bets fail, they will get bailed out rather than face the penthouse-to-poorhouse consequences of their mismanagement. This has become known as the, "Greenspan Put."
The current reaction to the crisis has been even more absurd. Not only do they want to bail out the failed lenders, they want to bail out the failed borrowers. Where in a mortgage contract or in the Constitution does it say that if you buy property and can't make your payments, your fellow citizens are de-facto co-signers on home loans? This will create even more problems. Namely, the debt default of the entire US dragging down the fiscally responsible citizens with the irresponsible ones.
Ultimately, the only viable regulators of the financial services industry are interest rates, depositors with the executive management of the lending firms, all of them operating with the knowledge and healthy fear that there is no one but themselves to live with the consequences of the risks they volunteered to take upon themselves.
All of these actors being forced to operate in a reality of extreme risk will be much more cautious in the types of loans they extend and assume. Of course, we have to be honest and say that it would mean that we wouldn't have this rampant consumer economy that it seems most readers of CFN all agree is absurd. We would likely only be lending and borrowing money for essential and productive economic activities.
When we acknowledge the true source of the problem, which is right under our noses and explained clearly and simply by Thomas Woods and others informed by the writings of Mises and Rothbard, we'll solve a lot of problems. We won't have these massive and absurd fantasy driven bubbles/manias. We will have a much more sober population of productive citizens laboring in and managing worthwhile enterprises that seek to maximize the benefit and returns on our scarce and precious savings and capital goods. We won't have nearly as much need for easily corrupted federal regulators. We won't have a run-away military empire sucking away all of our vital resources and distorting markets for all goods and services.
As Jim would say, we would become much more serious as a nation. There are two huge elephants in the room in these discussions of eliminating this debt-carnival we call an economy and becoming serious. The biggest is the Federal Reserve System that makes it all possible. The second is its stampeding prodigal son, the military-industrial-complex.
Why don't we try removing the guarantees and forcing the lenders and borrowers to face success and failure alone? Why don't we eliminate the money-wands and force us all to live within the bounds of our savings - which is really the upper bound and real measure of our material wealth and fiscal sobriety I might add.
Confronting and managing our constraints is, to me, the worst reality we are trying to escape. Why not make little Johnny move out of the house and figure out how to pay his own bills and manage his own resources to the outcome he deserves; be it a van by the river, a cardboard box under the bridge or a nice home in a community of responsible citizens. I think that would be more effective then hiring a bunch of nanny's with other people's money to nag him whenever his behavior isn't what it should be. Don't you agree?
Hi Capt -
I also want to complete your narrative of deregulation. No person did more to dismantle the Progressive Era anti-trust laws, and the New Deal era financial services regulations than Bill Clinton and his buddy Newt Gingrich. We must make sure this is a full and honest accounting and not a, "See it is all the GOP's deregulations", fantasy.
Furthermore, the '96 LTCM bailout orchestrated w/ cooperation from the White House confirmed the ultimate moral hazard - the Greenspan Put. I am not a Republican nor am I a Democrat. We need full intellectual honesty when discussing these issues. Partisanship makes that very difficult if not impossible to achieve.
Finally, I would like to take the little Johnny metaphor for regulation one final step to match reality. Wouldn't that suck if the nannies we hired to nag little Johnny to change his behavior stopped nagging because Johnny used the allowance we gave him to pay them off?
Any place that gets a reputation as a paradise gets wrecked. CA as it is at the moment is overbuilt, over-dependent upon auto transit, saddled with a welfare system that has some of the most lavish benefits in the country, and most of all with a population that has an incurable "entitlement" mentality.-Laura Louzader
Then it went on with an elaborate description of the possible loss of Glenn Canyon dam. Damn, and I thought I was a misanthrope.
As long as we're shoveling "welfare" populations into the ovens can we toss everybody from -welfare-state-subsidizing-state/>the Sierras to the Missisipi? Do we get to toss all the useless old people living on their Social Security checks? How about all those people needing hip replacements on Medicare's dime? Or for that matter about three quarters of the medical-industrial complex. It's not the "welfare bums" that are burning your taxes but overpaid medical professionals, farm subsidies, the military, the military and the prison-industrial complex.
One thing we learned out here in California; poor people got matches or haven't you figured out why some part of the Malibu hills burns every year. Tossing a portion of our population to the dogs just pushes civil war that much closer.
"We live by our decisions."
There is no adequate warning for those who have decided to become suddenly rich. Lord Overbrook
"...a good laugh is better than a good cry."
I wonder about that, and am resigned to the fact that we shall soon know.
Civilization is threatened in many ways, but not, I think, by butt-crack pants. To mention them brings down the tone of the discourse. Perhaps those who wear such pants realize you can't get a decent job nowdays even if you cover all your cracks.
"Q dik ........... has been quaffed."
---------------------------
Hahaha ... that's a good one.
From Dictionary.com: quaff, to drink (a beverage) copiously and heartily.
Perhaps Miss Misandry intended squelched or squashed. The mind begins to slip. Too bad she never had children or grandchildren. Kids tend to keep the mind sharp.
In any case Q is undaunted.
It must be disheartening for jerks like Abbey and Asoka to see that the world has apparently already blown off the Dubai news. DOW up 130+, Japan and Europe up 2.5% give or take and GOLD over $1200/oz. I wonder how much Asoka's kitchen table is up. What a fool! What can be expected from someone who has made not working his life's work and sponging, both an art and a science? And you with your failed art gallery and the rest of your long list of failed enterprizes ... reduced to growing beans in the Ozarks among people for whom you have no respect. Doctor, heal thyself.
We're not talking about "shoveling welfare populations into the oven".
We're talking about triage for systems that are unsustainable, like most suburbs, for mega-cities located in the driest climates on Earth, for lifestyles than can no longer be justified or sustained.
We're talking about SAVING the populations of unsustainable places by allocating our resources toward what can be sustained, instead of continuing to shovel money and resources into what we will never be able to afford at any price down the road, when fuel supplies start to become critical, which I figure will be in about 15 years.
The only reason we have been able to build megacities in desert climates is because our government systemically stripmined the old, traditional Eastern and Midwestern cities to build the massive infrastructure that makes it possible for 4 million or so people to live in a place with water for 25,000. St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Syracuse, Rochester, Camden, Pittsburgh and other mid-sized older cities watched the federal taxes they paid in the post WW2 era go to build the water reclamation infrastructure out west, to entice tens of millions of people to leave these places to live where life is not sustainable without massive imputs of fossil fuels and other resources. And the larger cities, like NYC and Chicago, were turned into tax hells and substantially damaged by the loss of tax revenues pursuant to the development of the western cities.
Without the ham fist of the Feds, people would have remained in more sustainable traditional towns and cities, just as the suburban development would have been much smaller and far fewer people would have left cities and towns to move to auto suburbs were it not for the subsidies in the form of the interstate highway system and the housing agencies like HUD, and all the loan programs they sponsored for suburban home buyers at the expense of city neighborhoods.
What is better, to let people know NOW that we will not be able to maintain these huge systems down the road, and let the western cities end up utterly bereft of water and flood control and transportation when it is too late for their large populations to get out of the way, or to start the process of triaging this stuff now, in stages, while there is time for people to make appropriate adjustments?
At some point we are going to let a lot of things just go that we've been supporting for a long time. I have paid into SS for 35 years but I doubt I'll get much out. Get used to it, those of you born after 1950, we will have to raise the minimum age to 70 minimum to save the program. We will have to get the government out of the housing market altogether, if only to have affordable housing again, and because we can no longer subsidize people in living over their heads.
"...to see that the world has apparently already blown off the Dubai news."
"What is most likely happening is more nuanced. The US and Abu Dhabi are hoping to use Dubai’s financial troubles as a way of finally severing the close ties to Iran. For years, Dubai has enjoyed the benefits of walking the line between its military and economic alliance with the US and economic benefits from banking and trade ties to Iran. The price of a bailout from Abu Dhabi may be having to finally choose to give up the Iran connection."
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-geopolitics-of-the-dubai-debt-crisis-its-iran-vs-the-united-states-2009-11
{funny link!!}
I agree with your conclusions about directing resources more realistically and productively. Unfortunately, it isn't going to happen.
Witness the efforts to sustain the bubble RE economy with tax credits etc. This is the reality of our completely corruptable political system, it can do nothing but respond to the usual special interest money and directives. Sustain the status quo as long as possible.
If anything makes a case for collapse it is the inability of the political system to make appropriate responses to change. The likelihood of congress and the executive branch responding quickly, even in a real emergency, looks increasingly unlikely.
I hate to say it, but it appears only a systemic crisis will provide any meaningful change, and that leaves the door open for some pretty frightening possibilities.
Fefe: I bow before your mighty keystrokes, re-rendered and formatted remotely in HTML. in awe of the immense daring and bravery you display here as an anonymous blogger.
P.S. the sentence above is one example of sarcasm.
Regarding the fires that happen every year along the California coast.... I am amused by the yearly search for an "arsonist" every time a firestorm consumes a few dozen miles of forest and expensive homes built where no sensible person would build. History suggests that this area always has and always will burn and burn and burn.
The fact is that the coast of CA has been burning for centuries. That is a very incendiary area, I'd be terrified to light a cigarette in those parts from July to November out there, never mind a campfire.
Remember the fire that supposedly set, in the early 90s, by a firefighter so that she could play hero? Well, this young woman's reputation was trashed and she went through 30 kinds of hell before the real culprit was found: a spark off badly maintained power lines belonging to Pacific Gas and Power co. You don't have to be an arsonist to light that landscape up. After the horrid 1930 Decker Canyon fire, the great park designer Frederick Law Olmsted recommended that the entire Malibu coast be "hazard zoned" as off-limits to development. Olmsted had sense enough to see that the area was innately hazardous, and that it was sheer folly to try to live there as you would in any normal landscape. Nobody listened. And now, the taxpayers of CA and the United States pay, and pay, and pay to rebuild multi--million dollar houses and to fight unstoppable firestorms, because we are so senseless about where we build. Note that Scripps Ranch was rebuilt within 2 years, in the same location that anybody ought to know better than to build on, while New Orleans is still floundering. Grant you, the taxpaying cohort on the CA coast may pay more taxes than most people, they still use fire protection services way in excess of what they pay for and what would be required if they built sensibly.
The CA coast and the extent to which we subsidize its hazardous lifestyle is only an extreme example of the way our governments, federal, state, and local subsidize the unaffordable and disguise the true cost of our wasteful lifestyles. Whether it's the CA fire coast, or the demand for more and more mega-dams to supply expanding populations in the most arid regions in the country, or more highways around Chicago and Atlanta to enable more economically marginal folks to buy "cheap" houses in the remote exurbs and commute 75 miles each direction to work, or Section 8 subsidies to live in middle-income apartments on the taxpayers' dime, or government-subsidized mortgage assistance for middle class borrowers who bought $900K houses and pulled the equity out to buy cars. We're doing our population no favor by continuing to allocate everyone's money to maintaining systems that are going to fly to pieces for lack of resources no matter what we do to prop them up.
An example of a well reasoned analysis of economic circumstances. By no means the only possibility but I good one (odds wise)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/12/reckless-myopia/
Unfortunately Laura, most of those fires ARE caused by arsonists. A modern trend.
Failed enterprises? The only one that failed was the laundromat and I didn't mention that. My Beautiful Laundrette as a matter of fact. It's still there on South Street in Philly. 828 South St so google it.
Q you are a troll, so bye.
Unfortunately, I live in Los Angeles county and that means that I receive a yearly dose of smoke from the neighboring fires. This wouldn't be such a bad thing except I suffer from asthma and have to get shot up each month with a new (and very expensive drug). As a matter of fact, I just completed a five year study for this drug, serving as a two legged guinea pig for these folks. But, I'm not complaining because as far as I'm concerned, it's a true wonder drug for me and my insurance picks up the tab.
The bottom line here is that I think Los Angeles is entirely sustainable with about 1/20th the number of people here. Folks forget just how many crops were grown here before and just after World War II. The problem is that we have packed in too many people in too many suburbs. I do think that things will change here over the next 2-3 decades but they will be horrible changes with lots of violence, death and wealth destruction. That's only one reason that I'm leaving California soon. But, I don't plan on moving to Arizona or Nevada. That would be like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. As far as I'm concerned, Las Vegas and Phoenix are just L.A. wanna-be's for folks that don't have as much money and are willing to trade this nearly perfect weather for heat stroke and horny toads.
Breaking news from Detroit,Michigan: General Motors CEO and "corporation lifer" Fritz Henderson has been dumped from the GM permanently. Apparently, the GM board was concerned about its' standing at the Bloomfield Hills Country Club and decided to dump poor old Fritz before the executive committee at Bloomfield Hills revoked their gold-plated membership. JHK will be happy to know that the GM board is on the lookout for a Messiah if God will comply.
Hi Cuddletuffy. You're right, I did forget Clinton, and yes he deserves a share of the blame with the rest of them. Unfortunately, it's also beginning to look like Obama (Whom I voted for) is also going to take his place in the pantheon of Wall St. stooges, with regards to regulation. There's a good article about it in the new edition (Dec 10) of Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi. The only conclusion that I can draw is that Congress has been completely bought off (both parties). Nothing will be done for the benefit of the country anymore since Congress has become hopelessly corrupt. Thanks for the book reference, I'll look it up. Regards: the Captain.
JohnTedder wrote:
“I found a 1946 Roosevelt silver dime in my pocket the other day. I couldn't believe it. I thought all of those dimes were in $500 face value bags of coins with lead seals on them. I guess some of them escaped. With the current price of silver at $18 an ounce, I think I'll hold onto it.”
A cousin who's in the numismatic business told me that when you find stuff like that in your change, it's usually because someone's coin collection got stolen and the thieves are just spending the stuff at face value, ignorant of its melt value. It's a sad sign of the times.
Hi to you from a former Capitol District native presently living outside Boston. Nice blog BTW :)
Either Asoka has been run over by a truck since his last post (11/29/09) or is sensibly lying low, holding his head in his hands and hoping beyond hope we won't, in fact, be getting change we can disbelieve in.
If the media has it right, that 30,000+ more lives will be put at risk in Afganistan, it has to give pacifist Asoka pause.
But NAH. Asoka has never had a problem with inconsistency. He "contains multitudes." (Whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.) Why else would I call him the Slimy Eel?
It will be interesting to see the future direction of his comments once his Messiah pisses on his pacifism - about two hours from now.
OEO/Fefe/Zzzzz/ZsaZsa/whatever wrote:
“Well, well. Don't you personally feel slighted? I mean having a Jewish grandfather and all?”
Not at all. I take it you've never heard the phrase “chosen people”?
OEO, is this the best you can do today? Have you really got no answer to the question about why you expected Jim to name the extreme-minority religions instead of the majors? Whatsamatter, has some yearling goat's bunghole got your tongue today? *
* Sorry, couldn't resist. You've never mentioned any sexual affinity for prepubescent barnyard animals, so the glaring absence of this from your usual subject matter here makes it all the more likely that it's exactly the sort of deep, dark secret you'd rather most people didn't know.
Well, it looks like Jim had a little bourbon with his coffee.
But you know, it looks like change is going to happen, perhaps not what we want, or as soon (or late) as we want. But we have seriously screwed the pooch, and I just don't see the clowns in DC really doing much that can be said to matter.
The whole "health care reform" is just a distraction, something that could have waited until next year. This year there should have been deep justice dept investigations into what led up to the so-called bailouts. Instead we get the "health care" circus, a distraction.
Some times I wonder if Obama will come on the toob some evening like Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact and tell everyone that this is it, hope you had some fun, but tomorrow you all die.
Sometimes I think that the way things are run, such a self destructive manner, is deliberate. After all, we cant be THAT stoopid, can we?
Gee, I guess either we are that stoopid, or this country is run by psychopaths with a malevolent intent to destroy the whole planet and the human race too. What else make any sense?
Perhaps there is some asteroid heading our way, and the PTB know it, and have just decided to party like its '99 forever, or up until the last possible moment anyway. Who knows, would they even bother to tell us it that were so? What the hell for? People would just freak out. Best to just let it happen while most are asleep, dreaming of new big-screen TV's.
Anyway, I've about had it with this place, am moving to "South Montana" soon, going to be a dental floss tycoon.
Later, doods.
The arsonists [usually male] sucumb [?] to temptation, after all the area is so dry.
and when caught they face the death penalty.
Goldman-Sachs staff packing pistols to defend against the peasantry:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/12/goldman-senior-staff-packing-pistols-to-defend-against-peasants.html
Who could have seen this coming?
Dolan, I personally love CA and I have profound sympathy for Los Angeles and hope it makes it through the decades ahead with its charm intact. And it does have charm and history and a lot of beauty, natural and built both. There are many great neighborhoods in it that could be livable in a post-auto society and I feel that somehow these people will find a way to cope.... if they give up the 20th century California dream.
But you're correct- the place has many times the population it could support with its own endowment of natural resources. The water problem is very scary. I read once, many years ago, that L.A. begin to go into resource overshoot at a population of about 150,000 people, back around 1910. That was the age of the great infrastructure projects and the guys who built them, people like Mulholland and the rest, who gave us the aquaducts and dams- fantastic achievements, but perhaps not the wisest use of resources and effort. It was then that California began to sacrifice its best features- its incredible scenery and fantastic agricultural land that produces such a huge variety of products that can be grown almost nowhere else in the country. The destruction of the Santa Clarita valley is an absolute tragedy- a veritable Eden, the last one SoCal had, to build tacky subdivisons and put people that much further from work and make them that much more fuel-dependent.
I always said that CA didn't have any problems that couldn't be solved by dispersing about half the population, but maybe more people need to go elsewhere. I fear they will whether they want to or not, as the place becomes increasingly unworkable and expensive to operate, and businesses are forced to move to a cheaper place to remain competitive. As it is, the working poor cannot afford to live there at all. Joan Dideon, in her great book WHERE I WAS FROM, spoke of how many unemployed people, including Anglos whose forebears go back 5 generations in CA, were being given grants of $2000 each to GO AWAY- leave the state. Gov. Schwarzenegger recently stated that the state needed 76 more dams to assure an adequate water supply and provide power. I didn't know there were that many suitable dam sites left in the whole country.
Mike Davis wrote a great book about the unsustainability of LA. I forget the name. He talks about fires and floods and the horrible sprawl of LA.
Growing up in the San Gabriel Valley, choking on the smog, I always hated the rich in the mountains, who lived in clean air, polluting as they drove to work everyday, who then expected us to pay for their houses when they burned or a mountain slid onto them. Screw them!
I was on a trolley in Sacramento, during the Jazz festival last May. Also on the trolley were other festival goers, decked on in fine clothes and mardi gras beads, and then the usual homeless and gang population. Strange combo, indeed.
Anyway, I was listening to a heavily beaded woman talk to a homeless man. He mentioned some shelter he frequented and she had done volunteer serving there and thought it was a fine place.
Then he said he was from New Orleans, displaced after the flood. She disapprovingly said that people shouldn't live in a flood zone.
I looked at the people across from me. They looked as shocked as I did. "This from someone who lives in California with the fires and floods", I said. "I was thinking about the earthquakes" said the man across from me.
But I think that we are capable of taking care of everyone as long as our labor tokens are equal, and we all have a modest standard of living.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/
wagelaborer said: "Mike Davis wrote a great book about the unsustainability of LA. I forget the name."
Davis, M. (1998). Ecology of fear: Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Davis, M. (1990). City of quartz: Excavating the future in Los Angeles. London: Verso.
Thank you, Asoka. I meant Ecology of Fear, because that's the one I read.
Right on. Tell it like it is. At times, I'm critical of CA, too, especially the southern part and the northern sprawl. But there's a reason why so many people came here: great weather and crops that can grow year round. In short, it can sustain a large population.
Until about five weeks ago, I was still gorging myself on figs from a nearby tree. People here have so many fruit trees that most of it just falls and lays on the ground to rot.
If the SHTF, Cali is the place to be.
The Ealges had it right about LA:
Then the chilly winds blew down
Across the desert
through the canyons of the coast, to
the Malibu
Where the pretty people play,
hungry for power
to light their neon way
and give them things to do
Some rich men came and raped the land,
Nobody caught 'em
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus,
people bought 'em
And they called it paradise
The place to be
They watched the hazy sun, sinking in the sea
...
Who will provide the grand design?
What is yours and what is mine?
'Cause there is no more new frontier
We have got to make it here
...
And you can see them there,
On Sunday morning
They stand up and sing about
what it's like up there
They call it paradise
I don't know why
You call someplace paradise,
kiss it goodbye
wagelaborer & Laura Louzader,
No train, no game.
wagelaborer & Laura Louzader,
No train, no game.
"California is a place that was built on fantasy, and Excess is an entitlement."
Fantasy can have morsels of truth.
I hate California, and love California.
The state is a hub of innovation and creativity. The reason perhaps: most citizens are so disconnected from the natural environment - in their car, in their home.
I'm choosing to make it a better place with urban cycling, cycling in dresses and heels. And this aberration feels normal because individuality and creativity is admired in California.
As a lifelong Californian water policy arguments and wildfire watching are my mother's milk. Starting with water; the majority of water from the Central Valley Project goes not to urban areas but to farms that are indeed, out in the middle of the desert. Kuntsler et al are spot on noting the explosive growth of housing in insane areas, Hesparia being a prime example, funded by the feds.
As to fire....... All of California except Mendo-Humboldt and the desert is wildfire territory. It could be dealt with if the mortgage rules insisted on stucco or masonry sheathing, metal or tile roofs and steel shutters. The real estate whack-jobs insist on building faux Tudor mcmansions and side-by-side shingled Swiss chalets for mile after mile. Marin County, in particular, will burn in a way that will make New Orleans disaster look like a pancake breakfast. Proving that money has no attraction to intelligence; perhaps vice-versa.
You could repopulate the Midwest from here if people there learned to insulate the buildings and had decent interurban rail but that's a no-go. J.H.K. himself lives in a region where the majority still heat with petro and live in buildings with 2x4 exterior walls where 2 feet of thermal mass should be the norm. Stupidity is generously served in all regions.
Oh, inland CA. is insanely hot in the summer, 105º is normal, and the coast is fog shrouded. There are no jobs or services in the mountains. Don't come here, even to visit.
Greetings all:
Thanks Jim another great article. I enjoy and appreciate all the comments and discussions. JHK, I was wondering can you do a series of article on preparing for the peak oil life? I read certain peak oil sites and their "leaders" advise leaving the east coast, head west spend ten of thousands of dollars, or if you live in the city stay low. Thats it, is it beans, seeds,special space food, or dried can foods that last for 20 years? I live along the 90 in NYS in a small city losing it's industrial base, and our leaders answer, lets build malls,sport stadiums for minor league teams,fast ferry boats to carry all our dollars to Toronto or play houses. No rail,no production,etc. Whats the steps for family prep, then neighborhood, then city?
Greetings all:
Thanks Jim another great article. I enjoy and appreciate all the comments and discussions. JHK, I was wondering can you do a series of article on preparing for the peak oil life? I read certain peak oil sites and their "leaders" advise leaving the east coast, head west spend ten of thousands of dollars, or if you live in the city stay low. Thats it, is it beans, seeds,special space food, or dried can foods that last for 20 years? I live along the 90 in NYS in a small city losing it's industrial base, and our leaders answer, lets build malls,sport stadiums for minor league teams,fast ferry boats to carry all our dollars to Toronto or play houses. No rail,no production,etc. Whats the steps for family prep, then neighborhood, then city?
Anyone notice how many cadets were falling asleep in their chairs during the presidents speech?
And this is our best and brightest. Disturbing. The only thing I can wonder is maybe they were up at 4:30 running laps or something.
No, I didn't notice any dozing cadets but what I did notice in one shot was 7 cadets, 4 white and 3 black. All 3 blacks were chewing gum. No whites were chewing. My first thought: buy Wrigley stock.
Maybe not outright dozing but tired eyes and a lack of due attention. And yeah, the gum.
I was thinking a week under the supervision of Sergeant Major JH Kunstler would do them some good.
The Michael Davis book about L.A. is THE ECOLOGY OF FEAR.
The beaded woman you spoke of who said that "people shouldn't live in flood zones" while she's living in a place that's so fire-prone a spark off a car could set off a conflagration, forgets that any place that is truly livable- that is, with a reliable local water supply- has some flood hazard. While I agree that certain low-lying parts of New Orleans should be "hazard zoned" now that the full extent of the hazard is known, there is no way we can dispense with our port cities, and as JHK points out repeatedly, we will need to live as close to water as possible for transportation of goods as the fossil fuel age draws near its close
People need to live in river valleys and on lake fronts but they don't need to live in places that are so flammable you can't light a bbq pit without taking out half the county.
My Beautiful Laundrette is a 1985 film directed by Stephen Frears. No doubt Frears stole the name from you. Bastard! No attribution. No royalties.
'And this is our best and brightest'
SEZ THE MEDIA.....remember patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel!
thats obama plus some of the soldiers in the war machine.
"What was alarming was that Dear Leader decided to use these fine individuals as stage props. Fuck him for that. He would have been better giving this speech hiding under a desk, quivering in the White House bomb shelter." Phoo-Phoo
Say, shit-for-brains, just how many press-shows were staged for Brainless Bush to stand in front of and read his queue cards? Or do you not recall the "Mission Accomplished" banner on the aircraft carrier, and the tens of millions of dollars that little side-show cost. Thought not.
So fuck you too.
I am taking a class in ' solar panels'...the teacher was talking energy efficiency and how californians are not using more energy...however since its a 3rd world / multicultural class i didnt say....'there are twice as many people in this state as there were 40/ years ago..'
and the teeech is saying ' china builds 50 or more coal plants the size of our largest or bigger every year'..then says we need the kyoto protocols and cap and trade!
so i say... ' you work for the govt so you think it can with its laws fix things' .... HE LOOKS DUMBFOUNDED!
Loved this bit of Colbert satirizing the idiot Beck. Leave out the fact that what Beck said is nonsensical i.e. "listen to the generals" after giving as an example Lincoln firing his generals??
Naturally, this fucking dim bulb is Parrot Boy's big hero. Funny stuff:
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/colbert-mocks-fox-news-chief-military-haircut-glenn-beck.php?ref=fpb
Justin Raimundo on Obama's War Speech:
http://bit.ly/6SQqyV
Obama made the wrong decision.
"Waist deep in the Bid Muddy, and the Big Fool says to push on..."
Imagine a country where none of the leaders are credible. How true. It appears that nearly everything Obama touches turns sour.
This uptick in the Afghan war is a waste. The Bernanke-Banking Swindle is a failure except if you are a rich banksta.
The real economy spirals down the drain as jobs continue to disappear, and wages in developing countries making cheap crap go up.
In Dubai the opulence has been displayed in outlandish architectural splendor, but in the US, it is seen in how a strip mall can be designed to appear like a small town with high end condos integrated into the design.
James, there is nothing we can do when the lame leadership doesn't have a forward vision, but only a backward vision.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
The herd will take quite a bit more to get restless. Maybe a winter with out heating oil or a summer without air conditioning will do the trick.
Clearly being swindled out of their retirement savings and the gutting of the laws protecting their liberties and privacy aren't causing any stir.
Fucking Dear Leader, who has shown nothing but contempt for the military, just out Bushed, Bush. So double fuck you and the horse that you fucked and rode in on. FOO FOO
HAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAA!
YOU ARE SO STOOPID.
Business News Flash!
John Hussman is predicting an 80% chance that the Market will crash sometime next year. Of course, lots of people make predictions and we will just have to wait on this one but Hussman is no moron. However, I was watching retail kingpin Howard Davidowitz yesterday and he provided an even more sober and interesting take on the future of the good old U.S.A. He stated that America is now Japan except with no savings. Davidowitz is essentially predicting an American economic meltdown for the next 20 years. When you factor in recent comments from Gerald Celente and Peter Schiff, it really makes you think hard about getting all those mason jars ready for when you have to steal fruit off the neighbors' trees for canning purposes. And my neighborhood pigeons are beginning to peak my interest. They sure are nice and plump. I'm a BB and pellet gun freak so I have all the weaponry and ammo I need to keep my barbecue busy for quite some time.
A real Albert effin' Einstein... for an ate-up with the dumb-ass wing-nut. Beck was listening to the opposition more then anyone else, that is where his people/writers develop their talking points, typically with wedge issues. He also jumped the Ron Paul bus, saw potential there for grabbing cross-over idealogs. He is nothing more then a huckster with a keen eye on common culture and media, laughing all the way to the bank. Suckers...
"The destruction of the Santa Clarita valley is an absolute tragedy- a veritable Eden, the last one SoCal had, to build tacky subdivisons and put people that much further from work and make them that much more fuel-dependent." Indeed! People from my home town, Saugus, Massachusetts founded Saugus, California way back in the 19th century. It must have been paradise: warm year round with just enough water from the winter rains in the hills to enable a decent supply of food. And now, Saugus is gone, a result of the merger into Santa Clarita and the rampant build-up of the valley over the past few years. Wait a few generations.
"The destruction of the Santa Clarita valley is an absolute tragedy- a veritable Eden, the last one SoCal had, to build tacky subdivisons and put people that much further from work and make them that much more fuel-dependent." Indeed! People from my home town, Saugus, Massachusetts founded Saugus, California way back in the 19th century. It must have been paradise: warm year round with just enough water from the winter rains in the hills to enable a decent supply of food. And now, Saugus is gone, a result of the merger into Santa Clarita and the rampant build-up of the valley over the past few years. Wait a few generations.
A couple of years ago, some developers had a plan to build about 40,000 units north of Santa Clarita. There was a big write up in the L.A. Times and a whole bunch of critics started screaming from the sidelines. I have no idea how anybody would have been able to commute from there down to the San Fernando Valley or downtown L.A. I don't think the developers had any reason or desire to deal with this issue at all. So many times, the developers in SoCal only worry about building tract homes, raking in the money and moving further out to the next potential suburban site. I got a chance last month to meet some of these uber-rich old geezers from my wife's side of the family. I had to take my father-in-law out to see his relatives who live in a wealthy golf course community by Indio. Boy, try talking to these old dinosaurs who have made their fortune building suburbia. The guy whose party we were attending quickly pulled out his scrapbook and showed us pictures of his personal yacht. I asked my wife's uncle about the $2.5 million home he just completed building and was planning on selling. I was told that it was still on the market. What a surprise! While I was there, my wife's cousin and her uncle were signing paperwork on some mansion he had just sold to some rich one-foot-in-the-grave oldster. You can imagine my joy at having to spend one of my weekend days with these guys.
' America is now Japan except with no savings.'
what a stupid quote...from a talking head? writer? economist?
rewrite:
'US is now dying with no borders'
and FEFE..let the media continue to excoriate? beck..the dreaded tim rutten just did a rotten piece on him in the LATimes..asking for the powers that be to censor him!..i forget the title but it was in last 10 days..worth reading to see the work of the ' thought gestapo'
I recall around 1990 driving out toward san bernadino and seeing where the 'old buildings and cow pasture' ended and countless new homes had just been built....struck me as odd but there must have been $$ in it for some.
i recall a piece about a city some developers wanted to build ..was that it? endless miles of burbs
Agree fefe,
Yesterday Beck started with a thing on the economy, bailouts and government propping up of the current zombie conditions.
Sounded like what Kunstler would say if anyone dared give him a microphone.
That said, I think it would be better if you knocked it off with some of the foul language. Afterall we're all gentlemen here right.
"Obama made the wrong decision."
--------------------------
A rare consistency from Asoka. Tepid but consistent. I'll give it a C+.
Single handedly launched the 9/12 tea party protests, has 3 books currently on the NYT's best seller list.
======================================
What's the old saying; 'No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public' The dumbing down of America, so apparent when one views what is considered popular on network television, doesn't suggest to anyone with a brain that popularity should be a measure of intellect.
As for this idiots alledged predictions, so what? Two years ago we were already in economic contraction, what kind of prediction was that? What were his actual statements? I'm betting it was for more wild and crazy than you are representing.
If you want to defend this hack then use quotes, not cherry pick his scatter shot statements to create your own conclusions about what a soosayer he is. This dipshit also insisted Obama was building FEMA concentration camps, Obama is a racist, etc. etc. etc. This guy is so confused he can't even get his own arguments straight. Why don't you try to defend the clip I posted, where his argument is Obama MUST listen to the generals and used Lincoln, who fired his generals (and consistently was a better strategist then his generals) as his example.(?) Totally convoluted.
If there is a dumber fuck in the media than this guy I challenge anyone to post evidence thereof. That the teabaggers love him is no surprise. The idiot right is always looking for someone in public life dumber than they are, so they don't have to feel so lame by comparison.
"I really wish that dumber-than-dale had a microphone as effective as Beck's so he could lead us out of the darkness."
======================================
If you're thinking that Beck's going to "lead you out of the darkness", you need more help than I can give you. What a fucking twerp!
I am taking a class in ' solar panels'...the teacher was talking energy efficiency and how californians are not using more energy...however since its a 3rd world / multicultural class i didnt say....'there are twice as many people in this state as there were 40/ years ago..'- asia
That's odd; what was the population of the world forty years ago? What is the population today? Maybe there's a correlation.
As to whether government can be a part of solutions..... The major reason that California uses less fossil fuels per capita is that state government (that word again) required builders to put extra insulation in our buildings and provided tax breaks for the installation of wind power and solar panels. There was also considerable effort to install and improve public transit well before other states got on board.
Obama can't get out of Afghanistan because if he did the MSM noise machine would skewer him six ways from sunday. 'Mericans, present company excluded, are just too dumb to penetrate the haze and stay on task when being fed a line of bullshit.
Proof, some idiot is PROUD of the 9/12 "protests." If you polled more than three Teabaggers and divided the sample size by their additive IQ's you were never going to get a three digit number. As for Beck and his pet Christian Taliban, well, that's enough said.
He initially said that he could neither support or deny the stories behind FEMA camps.
========================================
Even if your version is true, doesn't this constitute the sort of journalism that says; "I can neither support nor deny that FeFe is a dress wearing transvestite" then dropping the issue for the time being, while everyone draws the wrong conclusion. If you can neither "support nor deny", why the fuck are you talking about it at all??
Your understanding of history is incorrect. Lincoln's strategy against the South was always the same; "press them hard until they crack, we have superior forces and supplies and can wear them down". His problem was finding Generals who had the stomach to pursue the Southern Army to extinction. He was constantly giving advice and encouragement to them on a battle by battle basis, and he was almost always right. He NEVER gave his generals the kind of license to pursue THEIR stategy that you are suggesting. Tactically, they had some freedom, strategically none. That's the way it should be in a democracy, and that's why the President is called the CIC.
We do not want a military government, which is what Beck's sort of "let the generals do it" would lead to. If that had been the case in Korea we would have had a major land war with China. If that had been the case in the Cuban Crisis, we would have been in a nuke war with the Soviets. You don't let the Generals decide strategy.
I've read literally 1000's of pages of military and political history of this period. It was a main interest of mine in both undergraduate school and as a hobby post grad. It's you and Beck who have a lot to learn.
There are a whole host of members of the MSM that will trip all over themselves defending the Muslim religion. In that I agree with them. But they will also spend an inordinate amount of time running down those of the Christian faith.
===========================================
What nonsense, I've never heard anyone in mainstream media openly criticize the tenants of Christianity, give me one example.
One of the most annoying things about religious zealotry is it's predilection to view itself as some sort of oppressed minority. Take Christianity as an example. The Evangelical version, which is actually a bastardized form of real Christianity, has made a science out of seeking political power, to pursue policies which are anti-modern, anti-science, and intolerant. While they do this they insist the rest of us should feel sorry for them because some un-named “others” are out to get them. Well fuck yes, we're trying to pull their teeth out of our collective leg, if that amounts to oppression than so be it.
In a recent spot on FOX and friends, Beck claimed that he had conducted "research on" the so-called concentration camps being built by the Obama White House as part of a conspiracy to establish totalitarian rule in America and the he could not "debunk them." According to Beck, "If you have any fear that we might be heading toward a totalitarian state, look out. There is something happening in our country and it ain't good."
========================================
So in other words, I can't debunk it, so it proves my crazy theory that the government is out to get you.
Beck makes so many truly nutty statements, they are spread all over the media, both main and otherwise.
I only watched more than a 30 second clip of his once, and that involved several minutes of him alluding to some "Big Brother" symbolism by posing himself as a tiny person in front of a giant screen while he talked about supposed conspiracies to "take away our freedoms". It's heavy handedness was only exceeded by it's naked attempt to manipulate a gullable viewer base. If you believe the government is a bad thing, this is certainly the guy for you. If you are looking for well reasoned and supported criticism, look elsewhere.
You're right about Hitchens, but he usually isn't on television to talk about Christianity and he criticizes pretty most everything he sees. That's his gig. Given all the mega-christianity programs on various channels I would guess the ratio of pro to negative on Christian coverage is about 1,000 to 1.
That's just my opinion on Evangelicalism. It's based on my personal veiw of what I've seen from a number of people who are involved. I've seen these people think some minister could "faith heal" their car, other people etc. I seen these ministers extract money from these poor people telling them that giving them (the ministers) money will make them (the givers) financially successful.
Every religion has good and bad, and people who abuse it, but I've seen way too much of this in the Evangelical world for me to have any respect for it.
The segment on "fox and friends" was where he used it as an example of all the terrible things happening to us. Typical demagogue tactic; make sensationalist statements about how you are doing "research" on some crazy idea that is used to support paranoid anti-goverment positions, then later, when the heat comes on a little bit, deny it was you that was promoting the nonsense to begin with and pose as the one who "sorted it all out". This same tactic has been used thousand of times by the likes of Joe Paine, Dan Smoot etc. he's just the latest incarnation.
You're way to green and way to gullable.
"I've never heard anyone in mainstream media openly criticize the tenants of Christianity"
-------------------------
Hey you tenants up there, HOLD IT DOWN!! There's other tenants in this building trying to get some sleep!!!
So how well are those global "free markets" and low taxes for the rich working out for everybody? Cough, Dubai, cough. Wasn't it a bunch of millionaires that just looted the US treasury with the explicit, fawning, help of the GOP and the Democrats?
Hey, we'd rather our kids wandered around with rotten teeth while we pay for aircraft carriers because giving them basic dental care would be socialism. The rest of the world looks at the US like a crazy moron with a big gun and poor impulse control
"You're way to green and way to gullable."
-------------------------
I'm sure you meant way two green and way two gullible.
"The rest of the world looks at the US like a crazy moron"
----------------------
I don't know diddly 'bout subjects and objects but somethin above don't sound right. Is it the rest of the world that's like a crazy moron or is it the U.S. that's like a crazy moron?
Abbey, help us out here.
HeHe....you can always tell when someone has lost an argument on this blog....they start criticizing typing errors.
Dale
you weeks ago here accused me of being a 'retard' who [supposedly] watched FOXnews.....do you watch fox news ? or where do you get yr info on GB?
How can anyone refer to Dubai as a "free market"? Or our country, for that matter?
Dubai's economy is a "command" economy if ever there was one. Dubai World is a government-owned entity, and so are the two other major development companies there, and all their debt had implicit government guarantees. International investors stated that there would have been much less trust had it not been for these implicit guarantees.
The fake-money economy of Dubai is a creation of its ruling family front to back, and in the absence of its guarantees to lenders and investors, whether direct or implied, there would have been nowhere near the development there that there has been...... and the world might have been spared yet another bursting bubble, as well as the construction of a laughably extravagant and unsustainable adult Disneyland that sucks up about 3X as much energy and water per person as the next most wasteful country, the USA.
Parody of Beck would go as follows:
I'm doing "research" on the possibility that aliens live on the moon and are getting ready to attack us. I can neither confirm or deny that possibility. If you have any fear that we might not be spending enough money on the military or that we haven't paid enough attention to alien threats you need to know that there could be something out there and, "look out, it ain't good".
============================================
Typical bullshit that only fools will buy.
First, I've brought up the idea that aliens on the moon is a reasonable proposition. Which of course, it is not. Nor is it reasonable to assume the government is building concentration camps for Republicans. It's crazy bullshit.
Second, I've advanced the notion that we may not be spending enough on the military and played to people's fears.
Third, I've given you are reason to watch my show if you think crazy shit like this is plausible. Because I'm doing "research" on it and will get to the bottom of it.
Get it stupid, he's playing to your ignorance. But you can't see it because you've got "flies in your eyes" right?
More breaking news from the land of the apocalypse aka Detroit, Michigan. News reports have been inundated with stories of houses going up in flames all over the Metro area. According to authorities, hapless homeowners faced with repossession have taken to burning down their homes in a futile effort to collect insurance money. The situation in some parts of Detroit is so bad that entire blocks have been razed with only one or two houses left standing. If JHK ever decides to write a book about the end of the world, he should move to Detroit.
"and than bring up a new topic"
--------------------------
than??
"News reports have been inundated with stories ....... etc."
---------------------------
George, it is NOT news reports that have been inundated with stories ..... etc. Rather, it is WE who have inundated with news reports ... etc.
Abbey, please confirm.
Here's an interesting slideshow on Dubai:
http://www.fastcompany.com/pics/look-decline-dubai?slide=0
including abandon cars and sewage dumping ending up on the beaches.
"have inundated"
----------------------
Ooops:
have been inundated
"In 2002 the latest year of available data, the top 5 percent of taxpayers paid more than one-half (53.8 percent) of all individual income taxes, but reported roughly one-third (30.6 percent) of income."
What a load of shit. The top tax rate for capital gain is less than the 15% social security tax on payrolls. That's before the six or seven other taxes that every poor wage earner pays. Since the Federal budget raids the so-called "trust fund" it might as well be income taxes. No less than Warren Buffet pointed out that he paid less in taxes on his income than his secretary as a percentage of income. Well documented and verified.
Are you sure you're not a Republican shill?
Taken out of context ANYTHING can be made to look imbecilic.
========================================
Now don't start being reasonable on me! That's true, and it's also a tactic you have used here many times
I don't watch Olbermann, except for the same sort of comic relief you should be observing when you watch Beck. I agree Olbermann engages in serial exaggeration, that's why I don't take what he says seriously. But he is a good hatchet man, and that is funny for a few minutes now and then. I doubt that I watch 1/2 hour of his shown in a month. I don't need to watch Beck for hours to see that he is a seriously twisted aberration of a deeply corrupt society, it's pretty evident after just a few incidences of his clips, and I have watch a few minutes of his program a few times, as much as I could stand. Yes there is a lot of corruption out there, but it's due to the enormous influence of money on our government not such plot by leftist who want to take over and create a communist utopia.
Beck wasn't being ironic or anything but the serious nutjob he is when he stated he was researching the possibility of concentration camps and talked about it as if it were a reasonable thing to investigate on "Fox and Friends" AND YOU KNOW IT!
FeFe, the main thing that comes through in your various posts in the tendency toward either agression or fealty (you know - worshipping Reagan, loving Sizemore, a committed disciple of Beck) It reminds me of the observation Churchill made about the Germans during WWII "They are either at your feet or at your throat", and that describes you to a tee.
By the way Colbert is a comedy show, yes it's ok to use crazy exaggerations to make a joke. It's poisonous, but still legal, to do so seriously to try and undermine our government. It's just not ethical for anyone who poses as a journalist/commentator to do so, just to rile people up.
Lastly, I didn't just decide to call the people who want to faith heal cars and people and babble in tongues etc. "Evangelicals", that's what they proudly told me themselves they consider themselves to be.
By your logic you should write off all Americans.
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No, but if a sizable percentage of the Americans I met, if I weren't an American, demonstrated very questionable views I think I would be justified in drawing conclusions. Isn't that what we all do everyday of our lives?
If Beck's a "rodeo clown" why do you attach so much credibility to him?
By the way when it comes to taking things out context to make people/things look bad. I can't think of a more complete example of that than the hatchet job done on ACORN, can you? I mean really, these guys are a long term non-profit, the goal of which is to help poor people. Yeah man, lets get those guys, we can't have those poor people getting helped!
Beck may be a clown but he's a clown who hurts people, and he hurts this country.
The only way to put an end to the claims was to investigate the claims. He brought a guy form Popular Mechanics into the controversy because PM had done what Beck believed to be a credible job debunking the 9/11 idiots."
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Popular Mechanics? Why PM, could they look at the trailers and tell if they were intended for Republicans? He didn't need to put an end to the claims by investigating them, they were so rediculous he could have just ignored them as any one else would do who wasn't looking for a way to profit from it. Besides, since when were conspiracy nuts swayed by the facts?
PM...that's sort of funny really, should we ask them about the aliens on the moon too?
Worked constructing multi-story building for years, absolutely no reason why they couldn't fall just as they did. Of course, it's always possible to find a structural engineer who would support a crazy theory (their human too), but I'm wagering 99+% of them would agree with consensus.
Hummm....now what does that 99+% remind us of?...oh yeah....climate scientists who agree that global warming is all or partly caused by man made activity. Another conspiracy, but this one you believe in, because Gleeny boy, got some ACORN style tape on someone.
Yeah....all those scientists. man....don't trust them, it's a conspiracy of some kind.
FeFe, why are you whining about "high taxes" on the rich? The rich are not paying what they owe... they just move assets to offshore tax havens.
It is estimated that there is at least US $11.5 trillion held offshore in wealth.
According to the Tax Justice Network: “this does not include the laundered profits of businesses which operate through offshore tax havens to avoid tax. Nor does it include the financial assets of those whose wealth amounts to less than US$1 million. The total sum of money currently held offshore is not known.”
... Whatever the actual cost, former IRS Commissioner Rossotti says that abusive tax shelters are the “biggest single source” of a larger problem — the gap between taxes owed and taxes collected. The total uncollected tax gap, Rossotti says, is somewhere in the range of $250 to $300 billion per year — which, he says, is the equivalent of a 15 percent surtax on the honest taxpayer.
"which, he says, is the equivalent of a 15 percent surtax on the honest taxpayer."
-----------------------------
None of that (alleged) surtax is weighing on YOUR shoulders since you have arranged your life so as to pay zero taxes while sponging off the govt (i.e. people who DO pay taxes) to subsist. We don't appreciate hearing about tax "justice" from the likes of you.
Qshtik, thank you for your thoughtful reply.
I paid my share of taxes when I was earning a taxable income. My choice to live simply and not owe any taxes is legal.
The rich earn a taxable income and evade paying their share. That is illegal.
I think there is a difference.
That's odd; what was the population of the world forty years ago? What is the population today? Maybe there's a correlation
IM NOT TALKING THE WORLD POPULATION..im talking Us population....thanks to the dems its about to double!
i prefer not to name individual contries other than my own.
i call them tibetan buddists...but since you said white culture doesnt exist you can also say buddist culture doesnt exist..and Tb believe in things far stranger..and more dangerous..like mixing their herbal ' medicine' with mercury.
are you aszasz reincarnated? or jeago scorze?
Not surprising...my brothers a fire chief in a Us city...from his early days at the academy he was warned of blacks that burn houses...just to lure white fireman in to watch them fry.
JHK
in answer to yr question that opened yr blog 2 weeks ago:
'Their complaint, of course, implies that we would do something about overpopulation if only we would recognize it. Which is absurd. What might we do about overpopulation here in the USA?'
uh..we could have borders and imm law like japans
1 in 10 born here is an anchor...
is there any other nation that allows citizenship by birth to children of criminals?
usa is a country where someone convicted of murder in another country can move here and get citizenship.
JHK, in this week's post, indirectly slams Obama by saying: "Imagine living in a country where absolutely nobody in a leadership position is credible."
We do not live in such a country. Obama is credible. For example, Obama is now doing exactly what he said he would do about Afghanistan during the campaign (saying it over and over during debates with McCain and on the stump over a period of two years on the campaign trail in small towns all over America). His action now, in Dec. 2009, is the fulfillment of his promise during his campaign.
In fact, Obama was very clear, and explained in eloquent language, what he intended to do as President and now he is keeping his promises. In other words, he wasn't lying. In other words, he is credible.
Just look at what he has done in his first six months: he has been more activist than FDR or LBJ. Here are 90 of his accomplishments:
OBAMA'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN HIS FIRST SIX MONTHS
http://bit.ly/5K2c97
I can see why you might be concerned about taxes. You've been working so hard.....
fefe | December 3, 2009 10:45 AM
fefe | December 3, 2009 11:41 AM
fefe | December 3, 2009 11:55 AM
fefe | December 3, 2009 12:09 PM
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fefe | December 3, 2009 1:01 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 1:12 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 1:19 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 1:49 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 1:55 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 2:19 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 2:43 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 3:46 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 4:02 PM
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fefe | December 3, 2009 4:11 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 4:21 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 5:53 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 6:01 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 6:06 PM
fefe | December 3, 2009 6:27 PM
Hey, that looks like a 10:30 to 6:30 workday; eight hours. This being a very popular blog and all could make one wonder.... what is it that you do for a living again?
Asia,
You have no idea!! What Buddhists believe is probably far stranger to you, than you can even imagine. But then I think it pretty strange that someone would find professional football worth watching. Nothing but meaningless athletic contests to me, and I like college ball.
What's strange or not, isn't important, I'm OK with people believing whatever they want. I just think that religion should stay out of politics and that's my gripe with the evangelicals. Eventually, I think/hope it will backfire on them anyway.
I like Obama, smart guy, and I think, if nothing else, he's a far better international representative for the US than we've had in a long time. My complaint is he is too much like Clinton. Clinton was a pretty good President, but he was a terrible Democrat. His 'triangulation' was just an excuse to conduct policy without leadership. Read the polls, then decide what to say and do. This always leads to the corporatist controlling the agenda and the dialog because they have the money and the lobbyists to drive that agenda. Clinton hurt the Democratic Party much more than he helped it. The Presidency is an office with a bully pulpit, and any good President really gets out and uses it. Bush did, and he got a lot of his agenda done, regardless of the fact it was bad for the country.
The minor little accomplishments for Obama you found a list for on a liberal website, really don't compare to the kinds of accomplishments and risks that Presidents like FDR and LBJ undertook. At this point, Obama's centrism and lack of political courage may very likely make him the perfect foil for the Republican's in the next election. While Obama has essentially conducted a centrist national agenda, the Republicans will be able, if the economy gets worse, to claim that his “far left” agenda was bad for the country, and jerk the country even further to the right. This will lead to an even worse collapse of the middle class as the working class abandons a Democratic party that has abandoned them, in favor of voting their prejudices, which the Republicans are always willing to exploit.
If Obama had entered office with a strong list of action points, he would have rallied the country behind him and that agenda and put huge pressure on Congress to follow his lead. Instead, he has squandered an historical opportunity to prove the value of the Democratic party and it's core principals. So, once again, we see the Republicans and corporate interests driving the dialog and a President who sits on the sidelines through most of the discussion, calculating the best way to get reelected. Good Presidents spend less time listening to there calculating advisors, and more time listening to their hearts.
Hi Capt.
That is great. I'll check out the Taibbi article. I do have to say that the other things I've read by him, while I enjoy his scathing sense of humor, he tends to miss the elephant in the room when he writes on the financial meltdown. While Goldman Sachs is evil and terrible, demonizing them exclusively misses their enablers, doing a great disservice. Pining for regulation and handing the power to the great enabler is beyond a disservice, it is madness. I hope he is starting to pick up on this in his newer work.
I recently found myself at a table with a bunch of economists and students who adhere to the Austrian school. It was boring and weird, but still some interesting, intelligent and folks were there. One of them is a guy who is a, "quant", on Wall St. A quant who believes in a free-market, (not the centrally planned environment we've had since 1913). In two sentences he eloquently explained how the MBS and CDO's worked in terms of interest rate sensitivity and pricing. Essentially, what this meant was that in a free-market, interest rates on sub-prime and Alt-A would have risen substantially by early 2004; quelling any further speculative madness in real-estate.
The market driven rate hike would have caused defaults, foreclosures and losses in the market. However, the damage would have been much smaller to the overall economy. Because the Fed kept rates low and made money cheaper, the party raged on more wildly for another 3 years. The higher interest rates would have encouraged saving and the savings would have chased returns in potentially more productive endeavors - perhaps developing railroads, more refinery capacity, adjusting to a smaller car market, reality based energy investments on the most efficient of the alternative sources, encouraging more frugal state and local governance...
Instead, debt and savings depletion chased Erik Estrada's middle-of-nowhere housing developments, Dubai, gank-nasty condos below thoroughfares in Bushwick Brooklyn, Las Vegas subdivisions, and re-fi's everywhere to get bigger cars and tv screens.
Then there is the military empire the inflation from the Fed permits. Talk about thievery.
Tom Woods' book explains in even better detail.
Thank you for keeping an open mind. Meltdown is a good read for an open mind. Be well and prosper Captain.
JHK, in this week's post, says: "...the signs are just everywhere that we've taken some turn to the Dark Side."
Yet, the data (for five months straight now) show something else: that the season of hope is upon us, that the economic recovery is for real, that even unemployment is beginning to lessen due to the reality of the economic recovery that Obama and his team have successfully brought about, steering us away from the abyss and the Dark Side and Wickedness.
You might think: "big deal, a .2% drop or a .3% drop in unemployment" but, month after month, going in the right direction, takes us back to a 5% unemployment rate, eventually. The important thing is the trend and it is not getting worse each month, it is getting better each month.
WASHINGTON — A surprising drop in the unemployment rate and far fewer job losses last month cheered investors Friday and raised hopes for a sustained economic recovery.
The rate unexpectedly fell to 10 percent, from 10.2 percent in October, as employers cut the fewest number of jobs since the recession began. The government also said 159,000 fewer jobs were lost in September and October than first reported.
If part-time workers who want full time jobs and laid-off workers who have given up looking for jobs are included, the so-called underemployment rate also fell, to 17.2 percent from 17.5 percent in October.
Hi Dale -
You have a thoughtful and articulate post. I disagree with your premises though.
The first premise I disagree with is that Obama is, like Clinton, being a good President and not a good Democrat. I think it is quite the opposite. I think he is too busy dealing with the party machinery, and not sticking to ideals. No time to elaborate more. I will say, look at all of his appointments for evidence of what I am saying. They are mind-boggling particularly when considering the campaign slogan of, "Change." The same is true of Pelosi's stunts in '06 - '08 to keep the wars going to blame them on Bush and put her party and her party aspirations above the wishes of the constituents in her district. There are many more such examples, including John Kerry's recent activities to support the notion of grave threats being nurtured in Afghanistan timed perfectly before Obama's plea to escalate that war. (What happened to John Kerry the Winter Soldier? Sad.)
The second premise I disagree with is that the President should whip up the people and Congress should follow. The problem is two-fold. Obama has whipped up the public, but not behind any concrete ideas, rather vaporous slogans like, "Hope", and "Change." Are you saying what he is doing by arguing for more war in Afghanistan, even if the public and our treasury are weary and exhausted from these idiotic wars? He is out in front leading the people, just like George Bush did. Should Congress follow on that one?
More importantly, our system is designed for the people to lead, not be lead. I believe the term is self-governance. The people should decide what the mandates are in terms of what to do, what not to do, and what to stop doing. Then we are to elect legislative representatives to put those desires into law, repeal laws, end wars, reign in spending ... ... The President is merely a feckled beaurocrat whose job is to faithfully execute the law, and veto bills he feels are bad and force a larger majority of the people's representatives to pass it over his veto.
We are in a huge mess of historically epic proportions because too much power is concentrated in too few hands.
I don't understand why anyone is surprised by Obama being, "disappointing." He pledged in the campaign to escalate the Afghanistan war. He accepted the premise of the, "Long War", "War On Terror" in all of his speeches... He changed the words but accepted the Cheney/Bush/Pentagon doctrines.
Then, in one of the most brazen admissions of corruption I've seen in modern politics his actions on the domestic spying were appalling. Through the early spring of '08 he was supportive of the effort to end domestic spying and the supported the lawsuits against the telecom companies' complicity in violating our rights to privacy. After he placated the Democratic base and won the nomination over Hillary, he voted in favor of giving, "retroactive immunity", to the telco's and effectively quashed the lawsuits. In a final, giant middle finger to his hope-emmured loyal Democratic followers, he accepted the party's nomination at the AT&T sponsored convention.
I think the problem is that too many people are too busy being good Democrats, and forgetting that change always comes from non-partisan adherence to principles and well-thought out ideas enacted at the local level and that forces the powers to loosen their grip lest they lose it.
We are hopelessly lost. When I see these ideas that advocate giving more power to an executor, (no matter what positive traits we are projecting upon him/her that is a distortion of reality or even direct contradiction to the demonstrated reality of their character), I become very sad. We've lost all understanding of what it takes to be a self-governing confederation of states of the people, for the people and by the people.
Asoka -
You are amazing. You are the only person I know of who is saying that it is a good thing that we lost 457,000 jobs in the last month. I also don't know what school of mathematics shows that continuing job losses will result in a lower unemployment rate. Is their a massive decrease in population that changes the numbers?
I am also confounded how anyone can find the government's claim that they saved some number of jobs credible. There is no way to know how much of something hasn't been lost. It isn't possible. Maybe the government can tell you how many people should be laid off to balance their budgets. That could be accurate. There is just one problem with that. The government is a consumer not a producer. If they save a job that there is no money for, then the wealth has to be destroyed to keep paying people for doing work we can't afford to pay people to do. If you do that in large enough numbers than pretty soon there is no money left for producers to employ people with. The employment situation becomes worse in terms of the numbers employed and what the wages of the lucky few will buy for them.
I think that was tried in the Soviet Union and it didn't work very well. More and more our economy looks like theirs did on the eve of collapse. Corrupt oligarchies sucking out the wealth and discouraging diligent productive activity; Massive military apparatus destroying the nation's wealth; hopelessly loyal partisan apparatchiks swallowing and regurgitating all the lies they are being fed. Some even extrapolating them into even more distorted delusions.
http://www.shadowstats.com
When I say "good democrat" I don't mean playing politics with the other pols, I mean upholding true democratic values of helping the working and middle classes. If you make that correction in your understanding of my position you would find that in many ways we agree.
I don't agree that the people 'lead" however, we elect leaders, or people who are suppose to be leaders, allegedly because they will do what needs to be done irregadless of the public sentiment of the moment, which is often clearly manipulated, shortsighted and wrong. A good President will get out in front of public obinion and help guide it. "Hope" and "Change" don't constitute an agenda, just campaign slogans that don't go anywhere. While Obama did support the war in Afganistan, I am criticizing him more for his domestic agenda, which is designed and run by Goldman Sachs, and his failure to deliver on closing Gitmo, and ending Iraq.
Likewise, he's presented no far reaching policy on how the US can reverse it's decline, not the short term one, the long term one, which requires strategic thinking and that leadership thing again. Finally, he hasn't addressed the lobbyist and money problems which are at the heart of Washington's corruption.
TL:DR
I've never met an economist that didn't quickly degrade the conversation into realms of wishful thinking that make Harry Potter sound like a documentary.
In any reasonable dreamworld the worlds economists are left without food or water on those silly "World" islands in Dubai and the local waters are stocked with crocodiles.
Obama is going to be a one-term wonder unless the GOP runs a zombie. The people wanted a health care program like Canada's and jobs.
dale said: "...[Obama] hasn't addressed the lobbyist and money problems which are at the heart of Washington's corruption."
The Obama administration has roiled Washington’s special-interest galaxy by deciding to unseat hundreds of registered lobbyists from government advisory boards. A precise roster has yet to be done. But lobbyists clearly should have no place on the more than 915 advisory panels (with 60,000 members) laced across 52 federal agencies that seek “outside” expert advice. (NYT, Dec. 3, 2009)
Unseating a few lobbyists from advisor boards doesn't impress me too much. In defense of Obama, and condemnation of the SCOTUS, they have more than once equated money with free speech, thus making it very difficult to extract the money which is fueling the naked bribery that runs Washington from top to bottom.
If anything gives me a sense our political/economic situation is hopeless for the people themselves, it is this extreme corruption at the heart of the system(s) both corporate and political.
It is almost impossible to do any strategic or long term planning, which will always upset the existing power structure and vested interests, if there is no way to counter their power. At this point, short of collapse, I don't see where that counter comes from. The media was suppose to provide some of that function, but the corporate owned media outlets totally drown out those sources which provide any useful or relevant content.
Instead they dwell on shouting heads arguing pointless factoids and entrenched partisan positions as if that were meaningful, or chase celebrities around trying to find out who is sleeping with whom.
The situation is seriously fucked up.
fefe said: "Eric Holder, attorney general nominee, was registered to lobby until 2004 on behalf of clients including Global Crossing, a bankrupt telecommunications firm [now confirmed]."
So? What is your point? Obama has never said someone who was a lobbyist in 2004 could not work in his administration. His criteria was a two-year lobbying ban, with the idea of slowing down the revolving door.
http://bit.ly/7g44Oe
Most of the names you have listed meet the 2 year criteria. The revolving door is moving slower.
Yeah...nice list, but it would no doubt look very similar for the last few Repub administrations.
Hell, everybody in Washington either is, or was, a lobbyist. Graft, Corruption and Influence Selling, opps....I mean lobbying, pays so well there are thousands of those blood suckers in DC. You probably can't hire a guy to mow your lawn without finding out he lobbys for The lawnmower industry and the lawn fertilizer cabal.
Take that prick Daschle, gets a car and driver "given" to him, and he's surprised that is considered a problem when it comes to getting a government appointment. Blood suckinng vampire can't even drive his own sorry ass around Washington.
I don't have any issues with lobbysits.
======================================
spelling error!! Anyway, so you and your buddy Beck are going to solve the problem of corruption in Washington without dealing with the money issue? Do tell....
Dale,
I think you missed my important points altogether.
Perhaps we fundamentally disagree on who, how and why life improves for people and what leadership is.
I don't ever recall a time and place in the history I have studied, when the reforms that were required were vast and sweeping largely because an entrenched and parasitic oligarchy held too much power was ever initiated by a leader whose power was dependent on the oligarchy.
Would the American Revolution have occurred if they waited for the King to repeal taxes? Would India have gained independence if the people deferred to the British to just leave? Would the House of Commons existed if the Lords just felt like giving the commoners a say out of the goodness of their heart? Why do you think we have a Congress?
I think people do lead. There are some here and now who are making as much change as they can by living differently. Unfortunately, the power has been so concentrated so centrally for so long, the impact of this living leadership is minimal in regards to our biggest albatrosses: the military empire; the non-productive debt service economy led by our modern day Venetian financiers. Our leaders are silent on Afghanistan; though strangely ushering new troops into battle rather than leading into battle.
We are supposed to be an intelligent species. However, the evidence is to the contrary. We will change. The question is will we wait for a knight in shining armor who writes nice heartwarming books in pursuit of power or will we mandate it in our actions and in some sweeping changes that will require a lot of political courage and will and intelligence? Or, will the system topple under its own weight on top of us and rot while something new grows spontaneously on our remains.
It would be better to sew our own seeds and do our own pruning.
As for what you mean by being a Democrat I can't even address it. My point is, what is a Democrat? Is it a political party/machine or a set of ideals? I think the evidence is overwhelming that it is a political machine.
How come Nancy Pelosi keeps voting to fund and expand wars? She is a leader right? She is against war right? Wrong. She wants power and prestige. Until the people in her district stand up and stop electing her unless she votes on their behalf, assuming they are against war and her private jet flights and other corrupt dealings, then she'll be free to make gains for herself and the political machine against their hopes and wishes.
Perhaps you missed the recent scandal involving Democrat Jane Harmon. It seems that she got caught up in her own domestic spying and extortion scandal.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/20/harman/
Harmon isn't dumb. She demanded that the tapes be released, knowing full well that they wouldn't be because lots of other powerful people would fall if they were.
The bigger question is, how come the Democratic party leadership hasn't purged this corruption? Likely because they are almost all guilty of massive crimes - many of them caught on tape. This is our leadership.
That leads me back to my point. You must distinguish between people in positions of power and leadership.
You may think the Democratic party embodies ideals. But, the party members in power will not embody them just because you think or hope they do. People like MLK and Gandhi and the movements who make it possible for history to eulogize them as the lone-wolf heroes they are not are always outside of and opposed to the system of power. The American revolutionaries risked their lives to make a change when it could no longer be made from within. If you want the Democratic party, (the machine designed to win elections, not designed to uphold ideals), to uphold ideals, you must take the lead in forcing them to do so. There is no other way. People do lead; or they don't in which case they get led - sometimes off a cliff. Where do you think we are being led? Afghanistan. Bankruptcy. Further dependence.
Ideals have no parties. They only have adherents and advocates. Often parties are power structures specifically designed to be powerful forces against adherence and advocacy. The Democrats are no more the party of the middle class, peace and social justice then the Republicans are the party of small government, lower taxes and free-markets. That is to say, there only as much those things as their supporters force them to be in practice, not in rhetoric. The evidence suggests that the followers are doing a very poor job.
Wishful partisan thinking in the realm of politics reminds me of the documentary, "Grizzly Man." It is about a guy who ended up getting eaten by bears after he went out and lived amongst them thinking he was saving them and that the love he felt for them was reciprocated by them. This anthropomorphic wishing got him and his girlfriend eaten alive by a huge bear foraging for the scarce remaining meals it could find before a long and dark winter.
Had he recognized and respected these predators for what they truly are, things would have turned out a lot differently for him and his girlfriend. I think the same lessons should be applied to our current predicaments in the realm of politics.
FeFe, your keys to the nursery school analogy falls flat. As you acknowledged lobbyists depend upon the influence they can have due to the contacts they have.
If you are working in government this week, and are a lobbyist next week, you have fresh contacts.
If you are out of the loop for two years, you do not have fresh contacts.
I am sure you can understand this. We do not live in a perfect world, but at least Obama is trying to minimize the "revolving door" that lobbyists/representatives have abused in the past.
The Dark Side of Dubai:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
Reminds me of Las Vegas.
This is an interesting blog, and there are things to be learned here. Many good insights. The only criticism I could offer is that some of you folks don't know how to respond to trolls, which means of course not responding to them in any fashion. They will leave if you ignore them long enough. I guess what I'm getting at is that if people can't rid themselves of a troll,(an easy thing to do), they might not be the best person to listen to when it comes to diagnosing the problems that confront us. Regards to All.
Has this place been dead since 8:01 pm last night or has JHK pulled the plug?
"Has this place been dead since 8:01 pm last night or has JHK pulled the plug?"
------------------------------
Nah, Dale and FeFe just bored everybody to death, that's all.
I'm thinking of changing my handle to Dimebag Tyrannosaurus. What do you think? Pretty bitchen?
--tc
PS Anyone want to argue about greyhound racing?
Greyhound Racing Sucks
http://bit.ly/91q5fl
Very surprised there is no discussion of the global warming fraud vaulted on taxpayers. Mr. Algore hasn't even released a statement from his giant McMansion to argue that his religion is still right. Did I push anyone's buttons? I still don't doubt we're in a shaky energy situation though. The city I live in is still trying to "force" urban sprawl by laying utilities at the edges even while empty subdivisions abound. The city council has forced us to pay for recycling even though they don't participate (yes I check their dumpsters)
Maybe there is no discussion about climate change because there is scientific consensus on it.
Even climate change doubters don't believe tree ring temperature data in one graph does not indicate that climate change is a fraud. It doesn't change anything.
Roger Pielke Sr. of the University of Colorado, who has been critical of what he called “the climate oligarchy,” including some of the scientists involved in the e-mail, replied that it did not.
Pielke has characterized some scientists in the field as inbred and wedded to their views, but he said that the temperature measurement by Jones’s group was only one of several showing a long-term warming trend, and that there was no doubt that carbon dioxide produced by humans was a major factor.
There is no doubt human beings are contributing to climate change. There is uncertainty about the extent.
So, no big story to report. Of course, some are blowing it up as if it proves Al Gore is perpetrating a fraud, which is ridiculous.
'Perhaps you missed the recent scandal involving Democrat Jane Harmon. It seems that she got caught up in her own domestic spying and extortion scandal.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/20/harman/
Harmon isn't dumb. She demanded that the tapes be released, knowing full well that they wouldn't be because lots of other powerful people would fall if they were.'
WOW.................SHES NOT DUMB...just crooked
and Qtip....you neglected to mention As in yr post along with the ' warriors'
'just because you think or hope they do'
so lets hope against hope and hope those who are manipulated by the powerbrokers thru that term see thru them!
This from a Global Warming proponent: "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t."
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Climategate is showing what a joke the pro human-caused Global Warming case is. There is NOT a consensus of scientists. Climategate is showing it's not science, it's political claptrap.
Al Gore has been proven a fraud many times. He just cancelled an appearance at Copenhagen for which 3,000 tickets had been sold.
Human-caused Global Warming is not science, it's become a Faith. It's taken on the trappings of a religious cult and true believers aren't going to let a lack of scientific proof get in the way.
On Global Warming: When the Earth was young, there was a lot more carbon in the atmosphere -- thus the planet was an inhospitable place. Flash forward tens of millions of years into the future: plants evolve to suck a lot of it out of the air, the oceans absorb a lot of and so do rocks (a process that takes a long time).
Earth is suddenly a nice place and animals (also carbon sinks) evolve and rapidly multiply. Many of them die out. Eventually humans come around, get really smart and start sucking the carbon stored in the Earth over a millions of years and put it into the atmosphere -- instantly.
Whether oil is biotic or abiotic is irrelevent, the fact is humans are using fossil fuels around 400 times faster than they can be regenerated.
Just from a layman's perspective, that doesn't really seem like a good thing.
Oh this is so sad. My HoneyBee is lyting beside me in front of the heater. She came from a puppy mill. They had turned her into a puppy factory. Her eyes wre dead when I got her and it took her 2 years to learn to jump into the car.And she is a Jack Russell.
As for global warming.Just because it isn't warmer where you are doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Forget the trolls.
cwithguns THE LAST RESORT. YES YES YES YES YES.....
TELLS IT LIKE IT IS, LIKE JHK.
That song gives me the 'chills'.
listen Don Henley and JHK are on
the top of my favorite people list.
Thanks for posting the lyrics.
SO TRUE.
I'm with you. You know, I'm not really an Eagles fan, but I absolutely love that song. The lyrics are poetry.
The Last Resort by The Eagles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qywjewBMaaY
The latest on Climategate is interesting, albeit perhaps only a setback. That being said, climate change is something humans and some other life forms can live with.
What we and countless life forms in the oceans (that we depend on) cannot live with is continuing increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that inevitably dissolves into sea water, acidifying the oceans.
As the oceans become more acidic, life forms with shells are in considerable peril. Many of these are close to the bottom of the food chain. Coral reefs will also suffer - does this matter? Coral reefs are the nurseries for many species of marine animals.
While there were some cheers (premature I think) from the anti-climate crowd, I fear that the last noise from humanity won't be a cheer when many of us run out of food from the oceans.
FeFe said: "And of course we only want people in government to have stale contacts and stale information."
No, with stale information and stale contacts you don't get hired to be a lobbyist, which is the way the revolving door gets stopped.
Lobbyists produce nothing. They are parasites feeding off the public host, trying to get government money for private profit, trying to get government money contributed by taxpayers which should be spent for public good, not to enrich corporate elites.
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