JHK’s Three-Act Play
“Recession Officially Over,” The New York Times‘ lead headline declared around 7 o’clock this morning. (Watch: they’ll change it.) That was Part A. Part B said, “US Incomes Kept Falling.” Welcome to What-The-Fuck Nation. I suppose if you include the cost of things like the number of auto accident victims transported by EMT squads as part of your Gross Domestic Product such contradictions to reality are possible. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, where are you when we really need you?
I dropped in on the Occupy Wall Street crowd down in Zuccotti Park last Thursday. It was like 1968 all over again, except there was no weed wafting on the breeze (another WTF?). The Boomer-owned-and-operated media was complaining about them all week. They were “coddled trust-funders” (an odd accusation made by people whose college enrollment status got them a draft deferment, back when college cost $500 a year). Then there was the persistent nagging over the “lack of an agenda,” as if the US Department of Energy, or the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs was doing a whole lot better.
This is the funniest part to me: that leaders of a nation incapable of constructing a coherent consensus about reality can accuse its youth of not having a clear program. If the OWS movement stands for anything, it’s a dire protest against the country’s leaders’ lack of a clear program.
For instance, what is Attorney General Eric Holder’s program for prosecuting CDO swindles, the MERS racket, the bonus creamings of TBTF bank executives, the siphoning of money from the Federal Reserve to foreign banks, the misconduct at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the willful negligence of the SEC, and countless other villainies? What is Barack Obama’s program for restoring the rule of law in American financial affairs? (Generally, the rule of law requires the enforcement of laws, no?)
Language is failing us, of course. When speaking of “recession,” one is forced into using the twisted, tweaked, gamed categories of economists whose mission is to make their elected bosses look good in spite of anything reality says. I prefer the term contraction, because a.) that is what is really going on, and b.) the economists haven’t got their mendacious mitts around it yet. Contraction means there is not going to be more, only less, and it implies that a reality-based society would make some attempt to acknowledge and manage having less – possibly by doing more.
Instead, our leaders only propose accounting tricks to pretend there is more when really there is less. The banking frauds of the past twenty years were a conspiracy between government and banks to provide the illusion that an economy based on happy motoring, suburban land development, continual war, and entertainment-on-demand could go on indefinitely. The public went along with it following the path of least resistance, allowing themselves to be called “consumers.” They also went along with the nonsense out of the Supreme Court that declared corporations to be “persons” with “a right to free speech” where political campaign contributions were concerned – thereby assuring the wholesale purchase of the US government by Wall Street banks.
Praise has been coming in from all quarters for the peacefulness of the OWSers. Don’t expect that to last. In the natural course of things, revolutionary actions meet resistance, generate friction, and then heat. Anyway, history is playing one of its little tricks by simultaneously ramping up the OWS movement in the same moment that the banking system is actually imploding, with the fabric showing the most stress right now in Europe. I shudder to imagine what happens when OWS moves into the streets of France, Germany, Holland, Italy, and Spain.
All of the action right now has the weird aura of being an overture to the year 2012, fast approaching as we slouch into the potentially demoralizing holidays of the current year. I don’t subscribe to Mayan apocalypse notions, but there’s something creepy about the wendings and tendings of our affairs these days. OWS is nature’s way of telling us to get our shit together, or else. This means a whole lot more than bogus “jobs” bills and Federal Reserve interest rate legerdemain. It means coming to grips with the limits of complexity and purging the system of the idea that anything is too big to fail. What happens when Occupy Wall Street becomes Occupy Everything, Everywhere?
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James – Last week’s discussion of the OWSers was only a beginning. Where are the real DISAFFECTED? It may be an Arab Spring in NYC, but it is Indian Summer in Siberia. kulturcritic
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/disaffected/
Enjoyable read James,
If anyone is interested in developing strategies to keep the OWS-ers going, please see here:
http://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/occupy-wall-street-strategies-tactics/
I’m glad to read that JHK is actually praisihng someone, especially the youth. It’s a refreshing change of pace, and he’s done it two weeks in a row.
I’ve been blogging pretty consistently and favorably about the Occupy Wall Street movement and its supporters while tossing virtual rotten tomatoes at its detractors over at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News. The latest post contrasts Trump saying that “nobody knows why they’re protesting” with Alan Grayson and Keith Olbermann being able to say exactly why they are. I also point out that their list of grievances show that the Occupiers are part of a sustainability movement, even if they don’t realize it yet. I’ll have an analysis forthcoming later this week over at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/
Best Peak Oil Video of 2011? Bartlett has really refined his message. http://tinyurl.com/bartlett-peak-oil-may-2011
Just heard this morning a guy call in to NPR’s “The Take Away” complaining about the OWSers. Specifically, one of the protesters saying he’d quit his job to come down to Wall Street and join the throng. The guy was outraged because he’d lost his job, and here’s this other guy QUITTING his — and to do nothing more than PROTEST!
My question to the caller was, so why aren’t YOU there, also??
Happy Thanksgiving Day, everyone! It’s a beautiful morning, at least here in my part of Canada, and I for one plan to gather my rosebuds while I may, whether Wall Street comes tumbling down or not.
In Russia nowadays, they say that Karl Marx was completely wrong about communism, just as he was completely right about capitalism. And if anyone would know, it would be them, wouldn’t it?
The Right to peaceable assembly is (still) guaranteed in the US Constitution. That the OWSers are actually able to take their movement to the street is in itself, considering the state of The Police (Panopticon) State is almost a miracle. The day citizens are not not permitted to make protest will be the telltale that the American experiment has corroded and crumbled. The LameStream media is just that JHK – that is why I read you for a cynical, mordant, yet refreshing optique of the times. My question will either/both Tea Party or OWS protests become violent and under what circumstances? Satyagraha works wonders people.
Going fishing today. Let the banks crash as they may. As I whistle and fiddle Dixie with the merchants of our official Alter Reality. I’ll be in good company. I’ll say hello to Toto.
Good point James, about the role of the ubiquitous Baby Boomers(of which I am one):
The Boomer-owned-and-operated media was complaining about them all week. They were “coddled trust-funders” (an odd accusation made by people whose college enrollment status got them a draft deferment, back when college cost $500 a year).
Hunter Thompson called us “the Generation of Swine”, among other things…
“We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the world-a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer Whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum and that is how history will remember us.” (Hunter S. Thompson)
JHK, linked below:
“The Citibank Plutonomy Symposium – Rising Tides Lifting Yachts”
I posted it at the tail end of last week’s thread, so I don’t know if you saw it.
It is so icily informed and detailed in it’s brutal descriptions of the future these bastards are creating and how they can further exploit it, I have no doubt you will glean much regarding the implications of it’s 64-page corporate analysis with massive amounts of supporting information.
You will not regret taking the time to read it.
One last time, here it is for your edifcation:
http://www.box.net/shared/9if6v2hr9h
I take back what I said last week, about the group not having an agenda. A young scamp with friends in the Occupy movement showed me their agenda:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/
Takes a bit of digging to find it on their site. As a Lefist, I like some of the demands, such as universal, single-payer health care. On the other hand, three demands in particular are too hard-Left to fathom:
–“free college education.”
Might work if 1) we had more revenue somehow and 2) if “free” meant “free for those passing rigorous and high-stakes entrance tests.” No matter: ain’t gonna happen.
–“Open borders migration.”
Civil War in the making, kids. Hello? Ever taken a look at what the narco-gangsters do in places like Juarez? Yeah, I want that here. No matter: ain’t gonna happen.
–“Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.”
It’s harder than hell to get a loan these days. It should have been earlier. Why on earth would outlawing credit-reporting agencies fix anything? Reform them, perhaps, but somebody has to ensure credit or we’ll be worse off than we were in 2007. Money and credit are both illusions, but they are handy ones as our slow-mo collapse continues.
Those young scamps! But out of this rage, something coherent will emerge to counter the theocratic nutjobs who have come to dominate the Tea Party.
I asked a TP member, a libertarian atheist, how he regards the Jesus-Nation wing of his “movement.” He said the Dominionists worry the hell out of him. Odd bedfellows…we can hope they fracture, and soon.
“In Russia nowadays, they say that Karl Marx was completely wrong about communism, just as he was completely right about capitalism.”
Couldn’t agree more. Marx knew what ails the capitalist system, then and now. On the other hand, proposing a workable solution was another matter…though he and Engels proposed a libertarian utopia after “the withering of the State.”
Hey, BabyStrangeLoop, fancy meeting you here. In fact, I’m surprised I haven’t seen you much in the comments section until now.
Greetings from New Delhi, India!!!!
Additions to Holder Obama legacy
“Pass the Fraudulent Orwellian Jobs Bill NOW!” and Please add “Fast and Furious (not the movie) to the list of seditions.
Pass the communal air sickness bag…and Thank God (sic) Europe has been saved by another $1-$2 Trillion of additional Debt…It’s all better now. Nothing to worry about…back to business as usual…’Do yo have your $45k tuition check yet?’ “Sorry, there’s no Soc. Sec. for you mamma”
Kunstler made a great point- these demonstrators are faulted for not having a program, while those in power in this country, be it the politicians, the Fed, the banking industry, none of them have any idea what to do.
The only prominent people with any proposals are media nuts like Paul Krugman.
The leadership vacuum at the top in this country is truly disheartening. When the going gets tough the rule seems to be grab as much as you can before the ship sinks. I have trouble believing that Mr. O and his crew are doing anything other than trying to keep the peace long enough for the big boys to create safe havens for themselves, if there even is such a thing.
Few people realize that humans and bacteria have way more in common than we would like to think. Growth always comes to an end in a finite environment, whether it be a petri dish, the earth’s surface, or a bank ledger. The economic die off is occuring first as we speak. The physical demise of our species will folow, maybe sooner, maybe later. Our dependence on oil for food production and distribution is going to be our real undoing if greed and corruption fail to accomplish the task. Understanding the problem is the first step in finding a solution.
“If you can remember the 60s, then you weren’t really there” Having said that…….Kent State could have been a flash point but it effectively ended the protest movement and I’m sure this point isn’t lost on the ‘powers that be’ as they watch what’s happening today. Activism may be returning but maybe it’s also time for a new “Made by Hand” back to the earth counterculture. This time they should list to Andres Duany and hire someone to wash the dishes.
“The latest post contrasts Trump saying that “nobody knows why they’re protesting” with Alan Grayson and Keith Olbermann being able to say exactly why they are.”
In other words, surveys show two out of three crackpots agree the demonstrators have a coherent message.
We’ve got an “occupy wall street” demonstration here in Denver as well. It too has been left out of the news media, even though it is right in front of the state Capitol building, and thousands of people drive past it every day.
May OWS and OE morph into OMS (Occupy Mind Space). Protesting the establishment is only considered seemly when it is coming from the right. On the other hand, both an editorial in the NYT and Krugman are putting forth righteous analyses of what is going on.
Yes, the banks and governments are most assuredly complicit, together, but there was supposed to be regulation. I know the guys that designed the derivative in the city of london. Not evil in and of itself, such instruments are devised to mitigate risk;
risk which is part of the risk and reward of capitalism. Alas, look what happens when there’s no regulation. Not really capitalism, just kleptocracy.
Thatcher and Reagan drove the housing boom, inspired everyone to own, now that will n long be the case. The credit bubble, which began in the late 70’s, well, now with resource depletion, it really is a random, scary globalized world.
Still, one can and should go local, as many of commenters suggest. The Italians don’t call their huge gardens ‘crisis gardens’, they’re just gardens, sensible areas in which to grow stuff in soil that’s been toiled well, over land occupied by custodians that are kind to their land.
Gold, commodities and agriculture, yes agriculture, it’s working well in other lands….
Hi Jim and all the gang
Like I said last week, the OWS group has a real clear agenda- stop the financial thievery, that’s it! The problem is the lamestream media just doesn’t want to acknowledge this agenda. Because even disagreeing with that position validates the ideas being put out there for people to evaluate and kick the tires. TPTB don’t even want these ideas articulated. So no surprise that we keep hearing these weak excuses being screamed out in the media- NO AGENDA- bullshit the agenda is right out there, just pay attention.
Hope everyone is enjoying the great weather- get your sun while it’s hot, cause winter is coming.
loveday
thank goodness we have politicians and civil servants to print and spend billions of dollars on our behalf, to police us and jail us and keep us free and safe and able to sleep at night.
i just cant understand how early man could handle life in all its wild hallucinogenic primitive glory, without police, judges, lawyers, politicians and journalists. such freedom must have been quite challenging.
luckily, someone had the bright idea to invent money and give everyone a bit, so we could all relax and be able to afford lifes little luxuries.
I’m not sure what to make of this Occupy Wall Street movement. They appear to be disorganized and “grass roots”, yet their agenda is dyed in the wool ultra-left socialism. I’m afraid this may be another stealth attack on what remains of our freedoms.
I see the stock market is up again this morning – roughly 2.5 percent. I don’t know how else to describe this time – a pregnant pause prior to collapse, the calm before the storm. It’s eerie. I have this foreboding sense that events are about to bust loose and the result won’t be pretty.
Prepare And Prosper
Yes, by all means, occupy everything and bring the empire to its knees! Mes rêves!
http://www.Thesisa.org/
“The only prominent people with any proposals are media nuts like Paul Krugman.”
Yes, but notice that JHK has ceased calling Krugman a moron lately. The two of them are on the same page now, as Krugman’s past two columns have been not only about the Occupy Movement, but in support of it.
Also, “media nut” is insufficient to describe him. After all, he is a tenured professor with a Nobel Prize in Economics to his credit. He might actually know something.
Jim, thanks for the link to Agrarian Nation, read it this morning whilst waiting for your new post. Wood is stacked, potatoes dug, squash picked, corn for chickens in drying racks, next comes garlic planting. In spare time helping to organize local OWS for Saturday this week, and labor rally for Tuesday. It will be a good week.
“Contraction means there is not going to be more, only less, and it implies that a reality-based society would make some attempt to acknowledge and manage having less -”
-jhk-
The OWSERS seem conflicted on open borders and US population growth due to legal and illegal immigration. But most of the problems IN the US, and most of the Worldwide problems created BY the US – are exacerbated by our increasing population.
Just keep hammering on the theme, JHK. We (as a nation) could have managed contraction the easy way. As time goes by, doors close, and – someday soon – all that will be left for us will the hard way.
Some in the OWSER movement get this.
Even some in the TEA party get this.
How do you wake up the rest of the Nation?
Unfortunately George Carlin is not around anymore to lambaste people’s Long Emergency euphemisms. Recall “Green Shoots?” It really meant, Denial we are in a depression or contraction. Then there was a possibility of, “Double Dip Recession,” which means, deep depression. Now in vogue is “Recovery,” which means, Double Deep Depression.
Our President continues Bush policies and is merely an inspirational, motivational speaker and the attorney general is a cardboard cutout. We say Nero played the violin as Rome was burning. Perhaps future people will say, “Obama was singing, ‘Yes we can, as the US burned out.'”
Imagine an Obama cabinet meeting discourse. It probably would come off like this: http://www.meltingclocktimes.com/mct-plants-mic-in-white-house-meeting-on-what-to-do-about-wall-st-protests
That headline in the New York Times is still (for now) there, but there’s another WTF header on the front page online worth noting: an opinion piece asking the question, “Have Americans Gotten Lazy?” Nice little attempt to continue the “it’s-all-your-own-fault-if-you-don’t-have-a-job” spin. Fortunately, many of the responses are pretty well reasoned, and the trolls haven’t come out in force yet.
It is hard to have specific demands when the current system is so damaged. It’s like hoarders. They may want to clean up but their place is so full of garbage it is hard to know where to start.
If the OWSers want to see what may happen when the going gets tough, they can look to Egypt. The power elite is fighting back now that their patience has run out. Our power elite has much less patience.
Aimlow Joe was here
http://www.aimlow.com
Why pretend we don’t enjoy all this?
If you hate it when people lie to your face,
as I do, then these times are great and getting
better. Go ahead, world, crash!
Even the television and movie industries
are going down. A deserving bunch of bastards
if ever there were.
Peak oil is about as foreign to most Americans
as flying saucers. I happen to believe both are
true. My opinions are based on evidence. The
common opinion is based on exhaustion. Anything
really new is hard to assimilate. Anything really
new gets a blank stare. By the time consumers
have accepted that their children’s plastic cups
are carcinogenic, they can no longer face the fact
that peoples’ teeth in the Miami have plutonium.
More than “normal” levels, that is. And that
northeast Japan must be abandoned to the forest for 100, 200 years.
It’s not all bad. A beautiful forest will grow up
there, as in ancient times. And sea life will
prosper, radioactive as it may be, because we
eat less of it.
You truly are an idiot
The wonderful thing about the OWS is their mix – white people, black people, union people, young people, old people. It really is inclusive. Now Catholic priests and Jewish rabbis are starting to march along side the protesters and demand justice. What the OWS want is to work and have jobs. Doesn’t seem that complicated. Getting those jobs back and putting everyone back to work is critical for capitalism to work.
Its fun to see the GOP squirm. They keep saying that protests are “Un-American”. Rubbish. The GOP only uses the First Amendment when it suits them. Everyone is scared and tired of being scared. How long will you be employed? Apparently until some CEO can find a way to outsource your job to India and then pocket the difference in lower wages and benefits to line his golden parachute. And they will keep doing this until there is no one left to buy their products. Wall Street believes in increasing productivity but not in increasing employment. Nothing matters but making money from money. And that will be their undoing.
If Wall Street were smart, they’d see that keeping this country afloat with the working and middle class busy at their jobs would guarantee that their status remained secure. Instead the banksters decided to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. Wall Street has put the noose around its own neck and rather than give back a single dime, they’ll jump off the platform and hang themselves willingly, all the while shouting “Class Warfare!” and become the martyrs of greed.
Does anyone else thin that psychopaths are trying to take over the planet?
google “Political Ponerology”
spread the word.
Van Jones called this protest an American autumn as a sequel to the Arab spring. American autumn? Dude, you can take that two ways!
“Our President continues Bush policies and is merely an inspirational, motivational speaker and the attorney general is a cardboard cutout.”
Brian,
Agree, for the most part, but Obama is a phoney and nothing he has ever said has inspired or motivated me because it’s all bullshit. Focus people.
horseoutside,
Yes.
Occupy Jim’s house! He has more than you do.
“…The banking frauds of the past twenty years were a conspiracy between government and banks to provide the illusion that an economy based on happy motoring, suburban land development, continual war, and entertainment-on-demand could go on indefinitely. The public went along with it following the path of least resistance, allowing themselves to be called “consumers.” They also went along with the nonsense out of the Supreme Court that declared corporations to be “persons” with “a right to free speech” where political campaign contributions were concerned – thereby assuring the wholesale purchase of the US government by Wall Street banks.” -JHK
Nicely encapsulated (as per usual).
Da Deb’bil is going to have to design a new section of Hell for Frank Luntz and other Orwellian disinformants and language-twisters.
These are the dastardly shit-bags that brought us the first test case: “Human Resources”. That was quite a while ago, and my wife’s alarm bells went off IMMEDIATELY. When “personnel” became “resource”, we kinda saw the swastika on the wall.
…And here we have mendacious GOP-dick-of-the-moment, Herman Cain saying that the protests are “anti-American” and “anti-capitalist,” and that the entire movement is a union-organized scam?
Really, you coddled moron? Would you be in the position you are today if it wasn’t for a little thing called the civil rights movement? A movement in which people protested and DIED for a cause!
“You truly are an idiot”
-kulturecritic, demonstrating fear, or something-
You need to explain why a personal attack on my intelligence helps the situation, kulture.
Say what’s on your mind.
Don’t hide behind insults.
———————
Jobs – US
Pay scales – US
Pollution – global or US
Carbon – global or US
Resource depletion – global or US
Pick any topic, kc –
And explain how a larger and larger US population makes it BETTER.
“What the OWS want is to work and have jobs.”
ccm989,
I think they also want the pigs on Wall Street to cease robbing them in every imaginable way.
Contraction reminds me of the urban barbershop where I work where the owner cannot comprehend that the business has dwindled because it is located in a declining town, Cleveland, whose population is now less than half what it was when the shop was founded some fifty years ago. Since he doesn’t get that he keeps the place overstaffed so no one makes any money because they are always planning for the crunch of haircuts which never arrives believing that customers forced to wait too long will go elsewhere. Consequently they will now get barbers quitting since they’re not making enough. They’ll then place an ad in the paper to get someone else who in turn will also quit. Although the money doesn’t seem that bad to me, people with house payments cannot stay there like I can. If I tell them “don’t hire a replacement, we only need one barber during the middle of the week” they won’t believe me. Apparently everyone is still living in the past inside their own solipsistic bubble. And the front page article in the Plain Dealer today is about the local NASA research center’s investigations into the field of algae secretions! I just had to sneak that one in for Jim’s amusement.
What OWS needs is a defined structure and a single, unified list of demands developed by a clearly defined hierarchy. In other words, a corporate framework. That way they can be easily infiltrated and their leadership coopted by the application of a few well-spent $$$. See, that’s the way way you TCB, folks! Money for nuthin’ and chicks for free!
I really get a kick out of the MSM complaining about OWS’ lack of clear agenda and focus. Oh they do so have such high standards! Too bad they don’t apply those same standards to our so-called leadership. So I guess because they have no clear agenda and focus nothing is wrong with the country, right? See how easy it is to fix the problem! There is no problem! Whooda thought Zen would be so mainstream!
The time for protesting and rallying for change has long since past. This energy would be better spent preparing for collapse and becoming as self sufficient as possible. Completely opting out of the system in every way you can manage is the way to go. I find it amusing that James and others opine and compare this disorderly conduct to ones in the 60’s when many of the people that we’re involved are the now the ones that are creatively destroying things for the majority. Never underestimate the power the World Corporate Oligarchy has to delay the collapse, as long as they possibly can, while THEY prepare. People would be wise to do the same. All human kind are fundamentally flawed, therefore every economic and political “system” it comes up with will be flawed, subverted and fail. This has happened before many times and I think most of you know that on some level but the “hope” continues. It’s over people. Try to forgive each other, make peace with yourself and get ready.
SMOKYJOE,
Regarding your list of OWS demands, the OWS site specifically states the following:
“This is not an official list of demands. This is a forum post submitted by a single user and hyped by irresponsible news/commentary agencies like Fox News and Mises.org. This content was not published by the OccupyWallSt.org collective, nor was it ever proposed or agreed to on a consensus basis with the NYC General Assembly. There is NO official list of demands.”
So…you’re doing about as well as FOX news in reporting the facts. Keep that up, and you’ll lose credibility around these parts…
Al,
Yessir, that is the beauty of a decentralized, polyglot (in a sort of abstract sense) of a movement; very difficult to “co-opt”! And infiltration is also a confusing mission, as there’s no specific agenda to pretend to cleave to.
Best of luck, gum’mint toadies; you’re gonna need it.
Industrial Civilization is too big to succeed.
Meanwhile a natural disaster is unfolding in Asia. Record floods are inundating vast tracts of central Thailand. The capital city of Bangkok, home to 10 million people, is expected to be inundated next week. That could knock out a major economy in the region.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/
Antonio Borges, head of the IMF’s Europe program, said “We have a whole set of options that could be put on the table to restore confidence in those countries”. Sound familiar?
The situation in the western world comes down to a game of “confidence”.
The Wall Street demonstrators, and other demonstrators around the world know that something is wrong even though they can not put their finger on it. Although there is no united purpose, the one issue that unites them all is a lack of confidence in government, and the reason for that is that government and banking officials have played the CONfidence card one too many times!
Gaz,
An interesting dissertation on “entrenched” versus “aware” outlooks is found h’yar.
(We’re always wondering, “Why don’t they see what’s happening?”)
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/10/peak-oil-initiation.html
Achieving “lofty economic status” via self-interest, avarice, and greed is an illusion. In fact, the evisceration of the middle class, like removing the stout middle section of a tree trunk, only results in the “top perch” being lowered down to the arena of spite, contempt, and ultimately, random and targeted violence. Inevitably, this results in a shrinking class of elites paying out a significant hunk of income for security that provides a temporary respite from the roots of retribution. The tragic irony of this scenario is that the cultivation of an equitable and just economic paradigm – reality based – would have been far less costly and productive in the long run.
But never mind. Flawed political and economic agendas, fiercely defended by the sharp teeth of ego investment, are the equivalent of ideological pit-bulls ripping society apart from both ends of the fabric. And so good people bleed, and do the once unthinkable: Two steps back and one step sideways, disengaged.
wait til the OWS (obama stuges) meet the REALLY pissed off disinfranchised groups that have nothing to lose and are not being paid by the seiu or whatever community activist org is sponsoring OWS…..it will be lead pipes versus metrosexual…LOL!
Wow!
Subversive reality-talk is sneaking onto the national air-waves; are the times a-changin’, or is it simple lip-service and co-option?
Check it out; audio available soon;
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/10/10/joel-salatin
(Enough links to chew on for now. ;o)
just to add this….we have 24/7 news coverage of a phedophile druggie(michael jackson) that over dosed on HLN and yet we dont have any ANY coverage of MERS or HFT or corrupt politicians…..
Any motivational or inspirational speaker to me = Bullshit. It’s all shallow talk with no action or substance for people who don’t want to face reality. When that shit enters political language we know we are in trouble.
….”lead pipes vs. metrosexual”….funny and sad at the same time. Thankyou for making my point. It’s all about “divide and conquer”. Can’t you see the folly of all this? All of this pointless bickering about how best to make things better. It’s hopelessly broken and can’t be fixed. Once again, most people know this and they still continue to deny, argue and insult. Stop bailing and abandon ship.
So what will be the event that actually gets people to leave the occupy wall street protest? People are still occuping Tehir square in Egypt, 1/2 year after the revolution.
I think it would take something like the police arresting and detaining everyone, (or attempting to do so leading to riots). Or it will take some event like the Wall street stock exchange going up in flames the way the ministry of finance did in Egypt.
Coversely, if the protesters are as pathetic as the pundits say they are they will just get bored from the lack of progress and go home.
Interesting to watch.
“What happens when Occupy Wall Street becomes Occupy Everything, Everywhere?”
Then there may be the faintest tendril of the merest whiff of hope. Such an odd sensation, hope.
That’s the good news.
And the bad news?
The Democrats are trying to co-opt the OW movement.
Yes, the same Democrats who are complicit in nearly all the excesses and crimes.
Say it ain’t so.
You describe people who think it’s not fair for 1% of the population to have all the goodies as “ultra-left socialists”. Does this mean you think that it is okay that there is such income inequality in America, that many Americans are hungry and homeless while others own several homes and fly between them in private jets? Equalizing the wealth is just common sense, not “ultra-left socialism” because if it isn’t done, and soon, there is going to be massive social unrest. OWS is just the beginning.
What recession, what structural financial crisis? Just as two weeks ago a few words out the mouths of the politicos and all is forgotten, crisis over. Last night it was the Sarkozy-Merkel weekly pronouncement. And it worked. Monday global markets are soaring on their words – thin words alone as no details about fixing things was given. Amazing. Oh, and not one job is being created by the talk or the rising stock markets. That myopic world of financial trading exists unto itself, for itself and by itself with the politico puppets called in from time to time when needed. All these heads have to do is give a weekly talk and voila! The Euro currency is dying? Hardly. The U.S. dollar sank dramatically today. How’s it all possible? How is any of this possible. Sorry, Jim Kunstler, the bag of magic tricks seems to be inexhaustable while the the unemployed, the OWSers, the disaffected, disillusioned will exhaust themselves against the leviathan. Game over. The elites and their SOP win the day yet again. This since 1946. The financial system is being kept afloat on the hot air of the politicos. And it’s working — it’s working because the people in the financial world well know the value the masses hold in the speculation of hope. It’s all they’ve got and they’ll trade in that commodity. The elites have this thing so wrapped tight that no one is getting out. They live to perpetuate the system. It’s worked in light of world wars, famine, drought, pestilence, etc. The beast lives on and on.
There’s no real mystery about today’s soaring stock market. It’s a classic bubble – I mean, where else are you going to put you money? The volatility is a sign that traders are playing the market in much the same way that a knowledgeable (and moneyed) gambler plays the horses – knowing about race horses is a great advantage, but the bets are only for current races; the gambler has no intention of actually buying a steed of his own, and tomorrow a different game may be in order.
Why do you say progress2conserve is an idiot? I went back and read the comment and it made sense to me. If you’re going to call somebody an idiot you should at least have the decency to say why you think so. And why you need to call somebody an idiot in the first place makes me wonder about you. But then maybe you think I’m an idiot too because I also think overpopulation is a cause of many of the world’s problems.
Jim makes many good points this week.
The propaganda press announces “recession is over”, while knowing* it is getting worse. OWSters against Wall street fraud are jailed, but bankster fraudsters are not. Politicians offer us absurd “solutions” and ignore root problems.
Propaganda press, economists and politicians seem reduced to distracting us from the vampire banksters drinking the lifeblood of our economy at accellerating rates. The OWSters are pointing at the source of our immediate problems. The banksters greed is infinite and resources are limited; they want still more in a time of less.
One likely bankster move is to set various subsets of their opposition to war with each other while they profit from the warfare and despoil the “battlefields”. Another is to create a massive emergency of some sort, for further distraction and profit. It is apparent to me they must be removed before any real attempt to deal with our underlying energy utilization and resource problems can succeed. That will precipitate the economic crisis they put off(planned) for decades. Perhaps we will be intelligent enough not to accept their prepared “solutions”.
*http://www.businesscycle.com/reports_indexes/reportsummarydetails/1091
KC can’t and I think he is smarter than that. It could be someone else making the comment. If it was KC that made the comment to P2C then it would be interesting to hear what button of KC’s was pushed. No one with any neurons between their ears know that soaring human populations and continuing depletion of resources are a huge problem to be faced.
Gaz’s posting is spot on with the advice to ‘opt out’ wherever possible. For many posters who see what’s been going on, it’s about the only choice left. Quietly withdraw your consent. Don’t feed the beast! The OWSers don’t have an organized movement. The greater issue is this: if the system is as rotten as we either know or suspect and has been able to operate for decades without impunity can we then reasonably conclude that the country’s populace is equally rotten? Do the two go hand in hand? Has the Post WWII system been able to bring into its orbit the majority of the populace wherein they become accessories to the crimes? Think about it. Why have the American people put up with the blatant criminality. Well, if you read your daily news, year in and year out, you’ll see the millions, yes, millions who are theiving, taking bribes, giving bribes, skimming, embezzling, commiting fraud, etc. Less than a year ago the top FBI agent in charge of white collar crime in Florida publically stated that white collar crime could bring down the U.S. I agree with him. It’s the problems within that go underreported that will cause a downfall. Too many people in America have the values of the Albanian mafia. That’s the truth.
The Earth is 5 Billion people past it’s natural carrying capacity. This will be corrected one way or the other, sooner or later. http://www.dieoff.org/
The original suggestion for Occupy Wall Street was published in Adbusters magazine, an ad-free, anti-consumerist publication. Where are you getting that it was “sponsored” by the SEIU or anyone else? Is the SEIU paying all those people to sit in Liberty Park for weeks on end, marching and getting pepper sprayed for their trouble? What about all the people in hundreds of other cities, are they getting paid too? Really, I’d like to know what “sponsored” is supposed to mean.
Paul Krugman writes about OSW:
“Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/panic-of-the-plutocrats.html
Hey Jim,
Glad to see you use the word conspiracy.
“The banking frauds of the past twenty years were a conspiracy between government and banks to provide the illusion that an economy based on happy motoring, suburban land development, continual war, and entertainment-on-demand could go on indefinitely.”
Unlike the Tea Party and the GOP, I think that OWS has a much better chance of resisting co-optation by the Democratic party. Co-optation is dead simple: just convince the participants that they have to play the game the way it’s played. OWS, on the other hand, has gotten this far by being a leaderless movement where each and every participant knows the reason why they’re there. As long as they hold to that, what’s to co-opt?
Yes, I’m sure leaders of some stripe or another will emerge at some point. At this point, though, I still see reason for optimism that such leaders will be held accountable from the bottom up, which is the single urgent requirement to resist co-optation.
Prog speaks common sense to those without any. that’s why you think it is idiotic.
when asked what he thought about the protest jim cramer on cnbc this morning said he agreed with them.
“the college kids today are being screwed”
or to some such words .
my head is still spinning lol
Jobs Czar JEFFREY IMMETT stated on 60 minutes this weekend that GE has fired many thousands of americans and he has opened up plants in CHINA! He admits the difference between him and people like Trump is that ,”I AM NOT AFRAID OF CHINA, THEY (CONSERVATIVES I THINK) ARE”. If Obama hired this man to help produced jobs in the U.S. then why is he firing americans and hiring chinese? Soros is behind the organizing of the groups protesting against Wall Street. He of course, wants socialism in this country, as does Obama. The regulations that were removed to protect citizens against these bankers and wall street types were removed and Obama has done NOTHING to stop them. HE EVEN BAILED THEM OUT!!!! In my opinion no one ever should have been bailed out. They and the idiots that protect them should have gone to jail and the country would have suffered a bit and eventually gotten on our feet. The Tea Party group as far as I can see are totally inept. The republicans, (except for Ron Paul) seems like the neo con group of Bush etc. and the Democrats are being ruled by the “elite political left” who want to destroy this country (soros crowd.) If the Wall Street protestors were a grass roots crowd and not organized by Soros and that group then their agenda would be sincere and would gain popularity, because people are at their wit’s end. Unfortunately, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but people will follow their instincts and can’t be fooled all of the time. This group is around right now only to promote anarchy, and the people that are against them have equally negative agendas in the form of facism (TSA, Patriot Act, FEMA etc). Its truly a mess and I can’t see any one at all to follow. The only reason we don’t have an outright DEPRESSION, is because of the laws that give us Unemployment Insurance, Welfare, and Food Stamps. Without that this would be called what it truly is: THE GREATEST DEPRESSION…..EVER.
Insufferable (great name to express the status quo) you are correct, the only thing keeping the lid on the pot is what in the 1930s was called ‘relief’. The peasants were given enough for their porridge and then invited, as payback, to participate in the world’s most horrific carnage aka WW TWO. Meaning? The world is one giant insane asylum – well, rather a clusterfuck planet. Good luck to all who are suffering with the knowledge of what the place is really about. Perhaps the head-in-the-sand types are smarter, or at least they don’t feel the mental anguish of trying to figure out what’s next or how to plan for a different world.
The problem with the OWS protesters is that they conflate corporations that engage in production of useful goods and services with financial institutions that generate profits from manipulation of the financial/political system without delivering any benefit to society. What further dicredits the protesters is that many of them appear to have no marketable skills themselves (I wonder how many engineering and science students are in these crowds). This means that they themselves are a net burden to the productive members of society, a characterictics that they share with the financial institutions that they fail to identify as ligitimate targets of their anger.
OWS, is not about a static list of demands it is about restoring a process of local democracy to nation where democracy that has been co-opted by bankers, oil companies, the MIC as JHS has been prescient in talking about for years. Do NOT weight down OWS with a static list of demands but rather see the councils and self organized leaderless cooperation as a model to be brought back to our communities after the collapse as “The Long Emergency,” really kicks in. We are ALL, Libertarians, lefties, and the just plain clueless and confused going to have to live together in the long emergency and engage in local self rule, and the councils at the Occupy everywhere demonstrations are a fine model as to how to do that.
“the financial institutions that they fail to identify as ligitimate targets of their anger”
It is called Occupy WALL STREET fool, the target is the financial institutions and the crony capitalist state finance combine, where are you getting your news from the Fox “news” neo-con hive mind?
Sigh!
OWS consists of emasculated white kids playing out campus politics in a public venue. What ever snake oil they are selling would only add to the complexity of an overburdened system. I mean really, invite the world to crash a freebie welfare state, are they freaking morons?
Democratic Party astroturf complete with astroturds.
Now of course if the right wing in the country protested Wall St. JHK himself would be lining up the Hitler analogies.
You are on your own lefties. enjoy the billy club uspside the head.
Speaking of out of touch with reality, this was heard on WJR (Detroit) on Saturday afternoon as I drove across southern Ontario headed for (Pure) Michigan: Some expert declaring that “The Detroit automakers have proven themselves to be expert innovators, even building a 400 horsepower Mustang that still gets 31 MPG. Of course I [the expert] question whether that is an appropriate use of technology, since most folks would just rather have cheap gas.” I quickly tuned back to the CBC.
-Phut
You can VOTE HERE on the demands YOU consider most important for Occupy Wall Street:
http://coupmedia.org/occupy-vote.html
And here is am article by Naomi Klein on the subject (actually a speech given at OWS last week):
http://www.thenation.com/article/163844/occupy-wall-street-most-important-thing-world-now
Looks like my submitting a post with an actual policy proposal rather than a mere rant is unacceptable and didn’t pass through the Kunstler Thought Police. Never mind, crossing this site off my reading list won’t exactly cause intellectual deprivation.
Dear Roundy,
You are so right. When you finally realize we do live in a sort of insane asylum its quite a feeling of powerlessness. However, I would rather face the truth about a situation than pretend or never realize the Matrix does exist. If you understand the situation we are in, then being somewhat prepared will have you ahead of the crowd when the tide turns, as it will someday. Will I live long enough to see that happen? Well, if it happens within the next 40 years, I intend to still be here.
No, perhaps not, but thanks for removing your irrational paranoia from our ranks! That we could sure use less of…
MrRaven: I am referring to the idiots who criticize capitalism and corporations while fiddling around with high-tech gadgets. If you spent 4 years and 100 grands studying sensitivity studies, you should complain if you have to move back into mommy’s basement after graduating. FYI: I don’t have cable television.
I can always tell the folks around here (almost all of them) who receive a regular dose of the MSM in their world. The excuses for a lack of action are mind-numbing and change weekly. In other words, most of you “well-informed” people are nothing more than malleable pawns. (Just a hint: thinking for yourself is obvious to other people who do the same.)
China, socialism, conspiracy, Soros, blah, blah, blah, bored senseless. There are important things you could be doing, people. A lot of important things.
“It was like 1968 all over again, except there was no weed wafting on the breeze (another WTF?).”
Bwahaha!!! How many have died from “weed”, versus how many have died from alcohol/cigarettes?
Let me state now, that alcohol and (roll yer own) tobacco are my primary drug staples. The medical marijuana they have now is so strong, I can’t even get away with smoking 1/4 of a *HIT* without going out of my mind…
The clearcutting continues, the fracking continues, the aquifers are almost completely depleted, and there’s supposedly an island of plastic carcinogens the size of Australia somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean (note the caps on the last remaining refuse/refuge).
We’ve got about 7-8 more years of ramping solar irradiance/sunspots, and another 8 years thereafter of *stability*. *HOT*!!! Get out your tinfoil hats, gotta keep that skullcap cool *somehow*…
“OWS is nature’s way of telling us”
JHK outperforms even *ME* (and Spirit):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsTK2LHZKPQ
Tripp – the most important thing you can do is get off this blog. It’s the same shit week after week after week. And on the rare occasion I check in you’re a part of it. Why try and change people who don’t want to change? What a waste of time. Go harvest some potatoes or something.
Mike Hunt
“The banking frauds of the past twenty years were a conspiracy between government and banks”
==
The conspiracy is in making a distinction between the government mafia and the banks. The so-called Federal Reserve bank and its partnered banks and Central Banks worldwide are a criminal syndicate. A criminal syndicate whose subsidiaries include the government mafia (and its institutions) along with the multinational corporations. These act as the interface by which this criminal syndicate propagandize, defraud, and enslave the general public worldwide.
Hang in, Jim. We are all doomed. The internet is an electronic Tower of Babel, reduces discourse to opinion. Glad I’m an old guy.
Hey Mike, love the handle. Hunt is actually one of my family names, though I don’t think anyone in our ranks ever had the good sense to couple ‘Mike’ with it. You’re probably right, but it pays dividends here and there. I still get plenty of work done!
I don’t know, these protesters might have started early. First we need a civil war (between, well, that is something I do know), then we need this revolution to clean the winning party’s clock.
Find somewhere else because this over priced toilet is occupied.
Not having an agenda actually IS a problem. It is a problem when the government lacks one, it is a problem when a “yes we can change” presidency (elected to replace a prior lack of reasonable agenda at the national level) itself lacks an effective agenda, and it will be problem for a reform movement in response to failed presidential reform (that was in response to the lack of a sensible agenda before it) if that reform movement ALSO fails to develop a credible agenda.
FYI – G. Carlin explains EXACTLY what the “Occupy” movement is all about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
Owsers as Rorshack
I’m used to being one of the first to post on Monday mornings but will not be doing that for the next couple of weeks or so. In looking at all that has been said today I think the Owsers are the new Rorschach test for everyone to project on.
As I said last week, there are so many different people from different parts of the country going to this. Different ages, different experiences and agendas, so trying typify who’s out there really is not understanding that this is a place where people who know things are very wrong are gathering and sharing their experiences as the disaffected, or concerned citizens. Some are farmers who, like Tripp practicing permaculture.
I had forgotten to mention on Sat. when I went down there that there were Egyptians representing the Arab spring there. A small group, but I began to think about them more after watching 60 Minutes last night and how their movement has been stultified by the military. They are back in the streets again, though.
No we don’t know how this will evolve, or whether some kind of cogent theme comes out of this, but I met one of the organizers who I mentioned before plans to be there through the winter.
I do hope people will continue to support them. I also hope people will come to visit and participate and communicate with those who are there.
At the local Occupation. We’re getting crazy support.
I hope some people are feeling guilty out there for not supporting this. I’m starting to, and I boycott the bastards with my actions every effin’ day. Matter of fact I won’t spend the gas to join a protest because that would provide more support for the status quo than I normally give, and would interfere with my on-going subversion, already in motion (at the moment that’s planting winter crops for self-reliance) but…do something! Preach it, practice it, pretend it if you have to, but maybe common people will benefit from bringing attention to the disparities. Just maybe. I know I already do by opting out. That route is always available too.
“There is NO official list of demands.”
So…you’re doing about as well as FOX news in reporting the facts. Keep that up, and you’ll lose credibility around these parts…”
OUCH. Thank you for the clarification. The young scamp who showed me the list claimed they were OWS demands.
I should have checked. Duly noted…so I best go back to my original premise that OWS has no coherent agenda, just anger and a target.
If the Dems try to co-opt the OWS movement they may find themselves in the same predicament as the GOP with the Tea Party; the dog that is wagged by the tail. We can only hope.
Excellent post again Jim
You should send OWS a couple copies of Long Emergency for their library and come back to speak at one of our future marches.
My wife and I joined last weeks protest, usually I am the oldest person at these things but this is multi generational. How can it not be, we’re all getting the green wienie from the 1%
Bloomberg even seems perplexed in what to do, so power to these kids with no future, at least they are smart enough to know its all a scam. I say occupy where ever you are with the message that the hands of the rich, stuffed with our pensions and our kids futures must be ripped out of their greedy clenched fingers. Class warfare, you betcha. Only keep it peaceful, because we have the numbers. I say get Ron Paul to broker a meeting with the Tea Party and OWS, wouldn’t that make some sense?
Hope we see you again in the trenches, love your neighbor as yourself-
Deacon John
James, yes it is. It is Occupy Everywhere!
I agree that the hypocrites in Washington, the whores of Washington in the Capital and roaming the halls of the White House, the State Department, Pentagon, Justice, etc, and a long with the traditional media have got their cocks all wrapped around in knots freaked out that the protesters don’t have a clear cut and defined agenda to work from.
As you said, these morons in government cannot make decisions that are beneficial for the welfare of the nation but only make them on behalf of their corporate donors, and when they do it takes forever to fuel up the smoke and fog the mirror.
This is very likely to become the Black Swan that Professor Nassim Taleb writes about.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
If some asshole slaughters a bunch of people one morning, the networks have a logo, slogan, and theme song on the air by noon. With no real press to do the hard work of describing the occupiers, we watch pseudo-journalists struggle to write the sound bite. Alas, this doesn’t fit the format.
Hey Tripp, don’t listen to Mr.Hunt. I always look forward to reading your Quinn-sian perspectives…besides, isn’t it time Mike Hunt go for a good shave n’ wax?
I fully agree. In fact, I just posted a similar comment on another forum where there’s a lot of sniping going on about the supposed lack of agenda on the OWSers’ part:
How does one respond to a government that is chaotic and irrational? Certainly not with logic and a clear agenda written up in neat outline form. That’s like trying to reason with a drunk – a total waste of time and energy.
There it is again: the presumption that Occupy Wall Street cannot be a grassroots phenomenon. First it was the SEIU, now it’s the supernaturally nefarious George Soros. How, exactly, is anyone supposed to have managed to get all those people camping out and enduring police brutality for weeks? Seriously, someone needs to either take me by the hand, lead me through it like I’m eight years old, and convince me that this idea has merit — that, or admit that it’s just knee-jerk rejectionism.
Serves you right, Phut. Anyone who tunes into WJR deserves the brain abuse they get as a result. 🙂
I’ve been listening to public radio from Detroit off and on for a couple of decades and never responded to a pledge break. Sadly, now that Stephen Harper has a solid majority it looks like he will be taking a knife to the CBC’s budget, so I may get the opportunity to open my wallet for my own country’s public broadcaster. That’s called putting a positive spin on things.
Okay, this is the greatest joke, like, ever! The city of Fort McMurray, Alberta, is Oil Sands Central. They have one major road, Highway 63, that everyone drives on to get to and from their jobs in the oil patch. Sometimes the traffic jams are ten kilometers long. So, what’s the proposed solution?
An LRT, of course! They’re actually proposing a mass transit solution to get people to the oil sands! This is so damn funny I could just about kill myself.
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/seen+remedy+Alberta+oilsands+traffic+snarls/5529223/story.html
1812 Overture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgOGl_OWOqg
“Looks like my submitting a post with an actual policy proposal rather than a mere rant is unacceptable and didn’t pass through the Kunstler Thought Police. Never mind, crossing this site off my reading list won’t exactly cause intellectual deprivation.”
Bwahaha!
The auto-admin here is absolutely atrocious. You prolly had too long a message, or some “key words” that JHK *stone cops* no-likey.
Today, in RL, I had a friend tell me my views on reality were, “clinical, dry and boring/’yawn’.” This, from someone who has traveled the world, roughed it in India/Nepal/Tibet – but now, lives the “high life,” just slightly NE of NY (an audio guy, part of the crew of “Boardwalk Empire”).
I guess it’s understandably “boring” – most folks don’t want their views of reality shattered by truth. They’d rather continue traveling the road of immediate self-gratification and excess consumption/pollution, rather than suffer the headache and guilt that results from acknowledgement. Why listen to “pessimism,” when you can simply download a new MP3 set to your Steven Jobs’ disposable iPod?
Hello SmokeyJoe,
I agree with you on your points, and your attitude….with the exception of “outlaw all credit agencies.” I would pose that this is possibly the smartest and most insightful bits in the whole meme.
I’ll try to be short… If I want to buy a house from you, and I have 50% of the money (or whatever % you choose to be good) and no legal record for swindling, why should I not be treated the same or better than someone who has 10% down and is a felon (most corps).
I have run a small business for 20 years, and have paid my bills on time and written thousands of checks, all of which have cleared! Inevitably, some person at the cell phone company or the electric company, or most recently, the hospital… screws up somewhere on a record of payment. I then spend weeks, months or years trying to fix the wrong and have my credit points docked accordingly by 3, 5 or 8 different agencies for no reason whatsoever.
Writing this, I realize that it is impossible to be short…. So… I offer a solution. No credit agencies. We need localized banks who can make good judgements about lending. End of story. Simple. People taking the time to think about what they are doing. 5% down on a house makes no sense, 20%… maybe. We’ve been lulled into thinking that tweeking the system only slightly will solve our problems. We need a system Reset!
Recession officially over. Depression officially begun.
That would be my conclusion based on personal experience. I invested a good chunk of money in Detroit, and in the course of trying to get it back out dealt with ten people who were in a fiduciary relationship to me. These were white people with JD’s and such after their names.
Every single one of them screwed me royally, stole as much as he could, knowing that there was little I could do about it, being out of town.
I’m afraid the basic problem is that the American people are just a bunch of sub-human scum now, by and large. We’ve got the ruling oligarchy we deserve. And the society we deserve.
Greetings James:
Where is your report on how Amanda or Kim K feel about the protest and how it may affect shopping routines for the E channel crowd? Not to worry, I saw Billo on Faux news and he said the Tea Protest are the real Americans and the Wall Street crowd Socialists,so lets concentrate on more important issues will the OWS affect Dancing with the Stars or Real Housewives?
Don’t you love the way they say this shows “at least we still have free speech”, ignoring the fact that the Police State has banned all microphones and PA systems – the basic tool of organizing crowds. While the corporate owned media and politicians control all the mass media and use it to mock and belittle the protestors.
Nevertheless the crowd has reacted creatively with the amplification of call and response. Plus we can talk among ourselves on our e-devices, at least until they justify taking that away using their favorite T word.
Thanks for pointing out that our “leadership” has no solutions and no long term plans (at least not beneficial ones); the OWS folks look like clear eyed wizards by comparison.
Winning any type of Nobel Prize has lost much of its luster after Obammy scooped up his “Peace Prize” after a minimal amount of time in office. He hadn’t even began destroying everything in sight during that small window of time. I’m a Herman Cain fan and think he has the experience and character to pull us out of the swamp. I know it’s not fashionable to like him…. He’s a black conservative which is totally contrary to the rules of the left. And, yes I know, liberals can’t be racist. Just the right is capable of that sin. Cain isn’t the type that makes the left feel noble, and he doesn’t spend a lot of time making them feel all tingly and virtuous. A few blacks are willing to walk off the plantation of the Left which is making them extremely nervous. This could spread! Time for a few more comments about “teabaggers”, which, sorry to inform you, is no longer considered a smashing witticism, but equivalent to calling someone a “do-do head” in both maturity and insight. Even though it’s supposed to impossible for a liberal to be racist, we are considering them to be as they fight against our guy who actually is black, came from a poverty-stressed AMERICAN household and is a self-made man. How can you keep them in line and dependent if a black man succeeds on his own? Calling someone a “racist” as a sure-fire way to shut them up is bringing in diminishing returns. In fact, it’s no longer a scathing rebuttal, but a lame rejoinder, overused and tired.
Kulturcritic,
Your post is a bit perplexing to say the least. Prog’s throat clearing ways get on my own nerves from time to time, but he is one of the most polite and civil posters to be found anywhere. And he is far from being an idiot.
At any rate, your essay “The Barbarian Within: A Feral Memory Trace” was truly great and insightful, especially as it relates to alienation. I hope folks take the time to read it.
The “occupy all” that JHK alludes to in this “toasty poasty,” is gaining traction across the nation. For the past 4 days, there’s been an “occupy Portland (OR)” event, with estimates of 6,000 participants the first day.
To me, both their message and their target, seem fairly coherent. The Repub-tards are quaking (shitting?) in their shorts, claiming no message and potential erosion of the Demo-tard base (I still wonder how Pat Buchanan ever gained his seat on “The McLaughlin Group”). ‘Sif the two party purchased hoax (19 times out of 20, the candidate who raised the most [LLC corporate] money wins) is going to change anything, whether it swings it’s cancerous gonads left or right.
I myself find these protests to be at least 14 years too late – but better late, than never, I s’pose. I, as Tripp, have even been tempted to attend. However, I really don’t need another “resisting arrest/harassment” charge on my record, so soon after the last one, a decade ago… And, by merely going there, I will be guzzling the very poison that fuels these banksters/CEO’s/corporate lobbyists/bought-and-paid-for-corrupt-politicians.
Best way to protest – un-fucking-plug. Quit your exponential consumption/pollution. Put on a fucking sweater (and additional t-shirt) when it’s 60’F in the house. WHAT A BUNCH OF FUCKING MORONS WE ARE.
Julleta,
Before singling out “The Left”, let’s see how Cain does in the GOP primaries. In fact, I predict you’ll high-fiving the second coming of Bob Dole in a month or two.
“He’s a black conservative which is totally contrary to the rules of the left.”
Have you even listened to what he says about people of his own race (mostly the non-evangelical, non-gullible types)?
I have to admit, I’ve loved Godfather’s pizza, ever since about 1981. However, he was *NOT* the founder – he was put in place by Pillsbury after a buyout, due to his success with Burger King sales. Godfather’s started to fail, IMHO, when they offered taco pizza (my ultimate fav) without corn chips, circa early 90’s. Anything to cut costs – that’s the only purpose of CEO’s, apparently.
Best to stick with what you know – Cain should go back to being a fast food CEO, and cutting costs. He’s an absolute failure, when it comes to *real* politiks (or maybe not – politicians are nothing but corporate-purchased liars/shills – just look at Obama’s “change,” and the 2 wars/GITMO).
“A few blacks are willing to walk off the plantation of the Left”
I prolly should have read your entire poast, before I gave you any credence *AT ALL*…
And, as Q-Tip would espouse, it’s “PLANTATIONS’.
Streaming video on the Adbusters website just now showing Boston PD arresting hundreds on nonviolent protestors, telling media to leave the scene and ordering city sanitation workers to dispose of camp materials/tents/coolers/signage.
What a fucking country.
It’s also “post”, not “poast”. “Plantation” is a common noun and doesn’t need to be capitalized, particularly in all caps. (I have a degree in English, also.) In addition, you don’t know, and neither do I, that the Left has more than one plantation, thus not requiring a plural. Overcrowding breaks the spirit of many humans, in which I totally agree with LoveDay. I also know that Herman Cain wasn’t brought in as CEO. He was brought in to fix things and Heaven knows, we need everything to be fixed, quickly, before it swirls down the toliet. Don’t know that I’d ever high-five Bob Dole who must be close to one hundred years old (why drag him into it?), but I’ll see your John Kerry and raise you one Bob Dole for sheer incompetence. (Neither man is running, hello?) Even if Cain doesn’t get the nomination, I’ll still write in his name, or perhaps Ron Paul. I’m even changing my party affiliation to vote in the primaries and one can’t be more dedicated than that.
According to Nicholas Shaxson’s excellent book “Treasure Islands”, as much as perhaps half of the world’s wealth is stashed in offshore tax havens and held in secret trusts and bank accounts offshore. In other words, all of the TARP bailout money just “disappeared”.
If you need an agenda, then here’s one: Abolish offshore tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands, Jersey, Guernsey, BVI, the City of London Corporation, etc. This is where the banksters hide.
“I always look forward to reading your Quinn-sian perspectives..”
I’m a little slow today. Could you clarify this reference for me? Who is this Quinn you speak of?
“If you need an agenda, then here’s one: Abolish offshore tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands, Jersey, Guernsey, BVI, the City of London Corporation, etc. This is where the banksters hide.”
I have to imagine that these places will be very poor indeed soon, as they return to the non-monetary resource base they inherited from the planet’s distribution eons ago. Seems to me that locations stacked with paper/metal/digital wealth hardly ever see their own, very real, supply chain shortcomings.
A sticky coastal existence subsisting on crab and coconut in season, without the separation from nature that paper wealth provided temporarily, isn’t exactly my idea of a good time. I tend to only evaluate the landscape in terms of its human ecosystem qualities these days, and tropical islands don’t typically rank very high on my list. Not for my particular genome that evolved with temperate Eurasian food and diseases anyway.
As an example, I vacationed, at the invitation of some family friends, on the “Redneck Riviera” this summer. That’s the densely built-up beach resort area along the Florida-Alabama line. Lovely place really, but when the air conditioning stops functioning, and the food and fresh water stop arriving, it won’t support more than a handful of crusty inshore fisherman. Living in splendor probably! With their choice of beach houses to live in and maintain, at least until the next hurricane comes along and buries them under several feet of sand, like Ivan did back in 2004. The concrete in-ground pool of the condo building where we were staying was apparently lifted out of the ground by the storm surge and thrown into the parking lot under the building. Not sure how you recover from something like that if it’s just you and a few salty mates hanging around grilling gigged flounder over driftwood, with no access to heavy diesel-powered equipment…
Salt life? How ’bout shanty life?
We have a stark choice. Either we stop the plutocrats with their profiteering, or we have no planet to live on.
I didn’t hear anywhere that the recession is over, in fact what I did hear on the Sunday talk shows was that we are heading for a double dip recession or as one person said, we never got out of the first and it will only slide downhill from here. So I was surprised when I read the first sentence of this post.
Yesterday I caught that there is “hope” in Europe that France and Germany (prob with Fed backing) will come to the rescue and the stock market went up 300 points.
Oh, this is going to be a prolonged contraction, alright.
I don’t know that any amount of printed money matters, honestly. The only action that really changes anything is a change in every person’s own behavior. The moneychangers don’t just make money out of thin air. OK, they don’t just make wealth out of thin air. It’s the insatiable appetite of every “consumer” that lines their pockets. Want to blame someone blame me for owning and driving a car, for buying boxed cereal, and for drinking mass-produced beer.
I know the top guys are raping the public coffers right now, but that’s just money, not real wealth. And the more of it they have the less real it becomes. If the people who spend the money that makes them rich don’t have any money to spend, they print more and distribute it so that they can get that too. But it doesn’t actually create more wealth, it just dilutes what’s already there. Real wealth is healthy topsoil, vibrant forests, clean fresh water, clear air, living oceans, and biodiversity. The things we are all destroying every time we buy tuna and shrimp, electricity, conventional grain products, toilet paper, and feedlot beef.
Blame me for destroying your planet. And then let’s get on with some changes that actually make a difference. In order to change the world you must change yourself. I grow increasingly convinced that nothing else matters.
A lot of good stuff’s going down at the mo CFN peeps!
Naomi says, Occupy Wall Street – The most important thing in the right World now – and hopefully if its aims don’t get side-tracked and sucked into the vanillafied mainstream…
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-most-important-thing-world-now
Then the mainstream media presstitutes that serve the elites will eventually have to sit up, take note and listen, as the reality now is for most capitalism simply isn’t working and the 99% are finally waking up and starting to see through the lack of emperors clothes and towrad the truism revelation of the ‘hollow nation state’…
But clues that our society’s controllers (1%) will have already crossed over to the dark-side will be… (a) they’ll shut down and force imprisonment on the defined OWS’s leaders… And (b) successfully kill-off off the social media sites and internet vehicles for communication… that they are using… so look for…
http://www.miiu.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street
And use… Vibe peeps – vibe is unlike Twitter in that all messages or ‘vibes’ are anonymous. You can set how far you want them to be available too – from 15 metres to global…
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vibe/id433067417?mt=8
Key: Don’t use twitter if you wish to remain out of arrest, play safe kids out on those parks and streets – the ‘system’ will be watching!
And or do look for increasing hostility and the use of the police and army plain clothes bully-boyz… to suppress fully the international protest horde that’s growing!! I would imagine as this builds to big numbers 250,000 plus the ‘management’ will start to get very twitchy indeed…
*sniggers*
London’s next CFN’ers – kicks off in the city mile on the 15th October…
Ireland’s just joined in. Me I love the human microphone touch… brings a ‘life of Brian’ momentum to it all…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXK6LAwJYDQ&f
The war on the 1% has begun in earnest now…
But be careful what you wish for folks? As in the vacuum generated a whole new form of ugly spectre can emerge and sadly sweep in…
Berlin’s pirate party tells you though you can win, and it might not be too bad.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/18/pirate-party-germany-berlin-election
These are proving to be the most interesting of times… for those willing to join the fight…
So to those of you inspired to go out and sit and chant…good luck, live long and prosper…
Be seeing you…
(PS. note to JHK webmeister please do let this post through)
Okay, the Belgian bank, Dexia, has been partially nationalized and handed another huge infusion of taxpayer money. (IOW, this bank was insolvent. It would have been the first domino, but it was propped up in panic mode.)
My question would be: Why are the papers equating the WHOLE of “France and Germany” with Merkel and Sarkozy. (And no details of their “plan”.) I very much doubt that the elected representatives of the peoples of “France and Germany” are all on board with a taxpayer transfusion into dead banks.
There’s a weird kind of “L’Etat, c’est moi” thang going on here. (The papers are reinforcing this illusion as well.)
It’s surely a sign of more papering-over and smoke-blowing to hide the rot (and perhaps give the carpetbaggers time to flee with their ill-gotten gains).
Thanks for the eyewitness accounts, LB.
JK and CFNers,
You’re right on about the OWS. It’ll be interesting to see if either party subverts or absorbs the movement. If I were to define the message more succinctly it would simply be “Occupy Democrocy” not Corporatism”. Fact of the matter is our democracy has been bought and paid for and until we get the lobbymafia out of the system it will continue to be ineffective and disfuctional. Unfortunately, chances that occuring with breaking up the furniture is slim. TPTB like it that way while they loot what remains of the wealth of the nation. Any day now I expect to see a garage sale outside on the White House lawn. Hey, how much for that ol’ creaky Lincoln bedroom set? And what’s with the Hudson Super-6 parked over by the West Wing? Go West…
On another note; Thanks for the intro to Agrarian Nation, very pertinent. The past is after all our future.
Oh, am getting caught up on your podcast and other links, appreciate the reference you made to “The Automatic Earth”, helps see the train which is barreling down the track upon us.
Now for a musical interlude; enjoy the following link inspired by Stienbeck’s Grapes of Wrath:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61o-F7IMu2k
Where would we be if we couldn’t escape from this insanity into music once and awhile?
Hi Alexandra,
Great to see you posting again. Yes Naomi is great and my friend stayed to hear her speak as I went up to hear JHK debate last Thurs.
I agree with you. Who knows what takes the place of the leadership. It never turns out well, at least at first.
Something usually develops over time that we can live with.–A new form of localized economy that conserves resources?–How do you retrain billions of people?
To All,
Sorry for all the typos, should have proofread before sending. My sincere apology to Mr. Steinbeck.
I’m going to take a huge risk and guess that the upshot of your worshiping at the altar of the cult-of-personality (especially [but not exclusively] the graven image of a GOP personality) will end in “disappointment”. Most pointedly, if they should actually be installed in office.
Should I be proved wrong, and all our dreams of endless comfort and cheap energy and goodies come to glorious fruition, I’ll bring you a wild turkey breast and a sack of feathers. I hope that smacks of a fair wager.
‘Til then, I wish you luck, and [as always] be careful what you wish for; you just may get it. :o)
L-L,
It’s taboo to mention The A.E., as they’re not properly “vetted”. Even if correct, one cannot be listened to without solid credential-ing. (A collection of letters after ones name is also a help.)
Camel! Cool link. Sorta the original “fusion” guys, and much more. The instrumentation on that is pretty mind-boggling. Good to see they’re still at it, in one form or another.
Time for a little humor, dipped in irony, and sprinkled with a soupcon of paranoia – maybe?
Several of you should enjoy this website.
http://www.studentsfororwell.org/
Speaking of Orwellian things – do you suppose that was really Kulturcritic calling me an idiot because of my views on overpopulation of the US due to immigration? Or was he hacked? Is war peace?
Is debate tyranny?
I dropped in on the Occupy Wall Street crowd down in Zuccotti Park last Thursday. It was like 1968 all over again, except there was no weed wafting on the breeze…but plenty of public pooping and public sex. Gross. Disgusting!!!!
Good one, Prog.
I liked the one and only entry under the heading of Failures.
“Any reports of failure are almost certainly lies, the work of
thoughtcriminals. Kindly ignore them. SOS does not fail.”
Perfect pitch! lol
Eeeeeeeeeww!
(Any you-tube videos of that behavior?)
Be it hereby resolved –
No one who poops shall have any rights.
How’s that, Kim?
The point is not that Bob Dole is literaly running(duh?); the point is the GOP does not have a galvanizing candidate to rally around. Of course it will be Romney at the end of the day – he is getting the big bank. But in all sincerity, how will he run against “Obamacare” with his own past support of similar health care legislation/mandate? Republicans will be forced to swallow the lie that Romney has ‘learned his lesson’. As Bill Keller wrote, “Romneycare” is a burden. “Perrycare,” by comparison, is just another name for praying you don’t get sick.” In short, the GOP is completely and utterly bankrupt, politically, economically, morally. We’ve seen their act before and the inverted apex of their policies was the big bad meltdown in the fall of 2008. The only shaft of light shining down on this disaster of a political party is the shunning of bureaucratic regulations that makes it difficult for Ma and Pa Main Street to start a business.
And the Dems as a whole are not much better. Just last week I read that President Obama wants to now empower collections agencies to further hound people for their student loan debts via the cell phone. So I’m at the point of looking for a third-party candidate to cast my measly little vote.
From the beginning the OWSers were taken over by the so called Liberal agenda which calls for an “equalized” world — that is,open borders.
In other words, a “global order” framed around the dreamy notion that all the multitudinous cultures and societies will somehow meld into one, having a uniform but objective grasp of humanity’s overpopulation predicament and, hence, all will adopt practices of belief and living that conform to a 21st century objective grasp, resulting in immediate zero population growth; rapid decline of population in near future; and all cooperating fully in equal distribution of resources.
Yeah, sure, there won’t be any squabbling over any one nation, race, ethnicity, religion, sect or tribe having been short-handed in the deal!
That’s really funny considering where I live here in rainy Portland, OR I see people walking around wearing 9th century desert wraps and head coverings adopted as customary before sewing machines.
Most particularly though it is “dreamy” because nothing at this point humanly possible will prevent a die-off. All such attempt would do is spread the disaster to those few remaining areas that to now aren’t yet populated beyond carrying capacity or recovery on locally available resources.
“From the beginning the OWSers were taken over by the so called Liberal agenda which calls for an “equalized” world — that is,open borders.”
-cavepainter-
Cave, I think the jury is still out on that. Some of the original “demands” published by the MSM and Fox contained that goal – but this seems to have diminished.
Mostly, OSW seems to be about economic justice and opportunity in the US. And since economic opportunity is diminished by too many immigrants – well, we shall see if common sense rules over ultraliberal orthodoxy. I hope it will.
==========================
You’re not a new poster, cave – so I’m sure your observations/comments are legitimate – from a legitimate individual.
I think Kim Asadurian, otoh, may be some sort of corporate troll or something.
-with a subliminal message-
“EEEEWWWEEE – those people poop – therefore the average US citizen should look away – the OWSERS are too nasty to even be considered as people, or some subliminal thing like that…”
=================
And as far as Kim’s allegation of “public sex,” under the eyes of the NYPD – my first call is
UTTER BULLSHIT.
Any insights here, Lbendet?
OK, So y’day I look at a local free campus paper Soviet Monica ‘CORSAIR’…theres an article on poverty and joblessness…A Russian who immigrated and is on the dole…and may soon be homeless.
Writer has a complete disconnect tween our collapsing economy and bringing in a million or 5 million people a year to the USA.
No where does the writer bemoan immigration or suggest this leach go back to Russia.
The writer wrote a human interest story.
OWS OWS OWS
Why is it so easy to type OSW?
I may stand corrected –
There is only one Kim Asadurian in the whole United States. She lives in Wantagh, NY on Princeton Drive.
So, Kim, if you’re making an honest observation of what you observed at the OSW demonstration – I apologize.
And welcome to CFN.
what does he say about Blacks???
Bwahaha!!!
Is that you Fabian?
Bwahaha!!! was only used by OEO/Fabe/Notyr mommy
thanks
I avoid Rachel like the plague…dont know how anyone could stand her..
Actually all my TV viewing is done at the gym..
I cant escape her there…Ol Rachel.
You’re in India? One of my Indian Facebook friends asked that this be spread around – a resister being tortured by the Indian government.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5lO6cEcUeI&noredirect=1
After ignoring the OWSers for some time, the corporate-controlled media have rather quickly moved to the next stage. I think Mahatma Gandhi was accurate when he said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Humans are social animals. Our suburban isolation is very hard on us, and the few public spaces in the US are usually unoccupied.
So we go to the internet to converse with others of our species.
For you to rail against others who like to come here is pointless.
But, the people occupying public spaces in the US right now are finding the exhilaration that humans feel in communing with others of their species. Perhaps you should join them, if you don’t like it here.
When I saw the clip of a shouting Bill McKibben reverberate the OWS manifesto via the ventriloquist echo chamber of his “equally important“ followers, I had the sinking feeling that I was witnessing the codification of a fledgling movement. And nothing will turn the sparks of a potential wildfire into the dying embers of a lassoed agenda than the ritual incantations of a belief system.
If, in my opinion, the dull demands of a thousand issues recede to the periphery while the sharp spear of economic justice and competence takes front and center stage, this movement will continue to gain traction. If not, this opportunity ends up “Blowin’ In The Wind”.
Thank you for the onsite reporting, lbendet.
I am quite interested in your perceptions.
Think locally, Tripp!
Our local Occupy movement swelled our usual peace vigil from 20 to 70 people last Sat.
I’m loving the energy!
One positive is that this Movement might become Jew Wise. The people over at Ad Busters know that the Jews are a hostile Elite who dominate Wall St, Advertising, Media, Foreign Affairs, Banking – you know, just a few jobs Whites wont do.
The Jews are proud as peacocks of their accomplishments – so why do they object to being known as they are? Ashamed of something? I would be if I was one of them.
Remember though: they only could do as they have done because of our own weakness, decadence, and distraction. And the cooperation of “our” own Elite.
In any case, they are a Movement looking for a Meme. Hopefully they will transcend Left and Right and find Big vs Small, State vs Local, and yes, National vs Global. The Tea Party has a vital contribution to make: the invdividual’s integrity vs being on the dole. I’m not hopeful since the Old Leftists are swooping down like hawks for the kill. And already anti-White sentiments and violence have errupted. But obviously they do share commong ground with the Tea Party if they could only shun the poisonous and failed teachings of the Left.
Did you ever consider that you might not be a Communist? If you want less Goverment and a more widely distributed ownership you might not be – since the Communists are for centralized ownership. Sometimes I’ve gotten this sense when reading you. Why not be a Distributist? (not a catchy name, but a good system) The stumbling blocks may “only” be emotional: like many fanatics, you are intensely loyal. You would feel like you were betraying your family that raised you in this failed and evil system. Loyalty and Courage often go along with ideological fanaticism and keep the sufferer in the narrowed straits of political correctness.
They’re hiring Minorities to show up and protest. The future is bright like the Sun at midnight.
It’s pretty cool to think of you out there in rural Georgia, deep in what most of us think of as reactionary country, working for a better society.
You may be interested to know that I attended a local foods and wine banquet last Friday night. Yummy! Although, unfortunately, it seemed that most of the attendees were also the farmer/suppliers.
But I sat with a couple of people who said that they were harvesting sweet potatoes last week, when a military helicopter flew very low over them, with soldiers sitting in the open doorways. Then it swung around and flew back over them. As my table partner pointed out, “what a waste of oil that was”.
And they said that their neighbor was standing in his yard giving the soldiers the finger.
Did the military think that being out in the boondocks meant that the rednecks would support them?
Not always!
I work with a right wing Republican who always insists that I am really a Republican, whenever I make some snarky remark about some dumbass. (You would probably love me in real life, Vlad, because I am non-discriminatory in my snarkiness).
Did you just make up the word distributist?
Kunstler has banned me for good via my IP address. I can’t even get on anymore at home, even just to read his sacred writ. These few last posts are the last hours of ancient sunshine.
You can say whatever you want about Blacks and Jews, (those only merit a nama (name) banishment) but don’t criticize the Sacred Democratic Party or the Holy Liberal Crusade or you get the Rupa.
Be well and prepare your plan of escape. Try to get a job at UC at Redding if there is such a place. From there you’ll be able to get out before things get too bad.
No, it is a real system that criticizes Centralization – particularly that of land ownership. It was championed by Catholic Thinkers like Chesterton and Belloc among others. Some Catholics knew about and espoused a back to the land organic farming ethos long before the Liberals ever did. It never caught on but some of the ideas are good. Social Credit is the monetary system – this did catch on a bit and had prominent exponents like Ezra Pound. As you know, Pound was imprisoned in St Elizabeth’s as a Mad Man for being against Judeo Masonic World Goverment.
‘Humans are social animals’ yes and
Humans are also ANTI social animals!
Vlad..you are missed..sorry to hear you have log in problems
Why Occupy Wall Street is Right. This is from the business perspective.
http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/occupy-wall-street-news-debt-forgiveness/10/10/2011/id/37300?page=full
“Humans are social animals. Our suburban isolation is very hard on us, and the few public spaces in the US are usually unoccupied.”
True and when you actually find someone else in a public space they are usually too busy talking to another member of their local tribe or family group on the cell to have time for you.
On the OWS topic the arrests of 100 in Boston last night caused me to wonder if any cities will be able to turn profits by arrests. One hundred people paying $200 each in fines would bring in $20,000 dollars. Would wages and city bureaucratic overhead eat all the cash or no?
Could city budgets be balanced?
A short term solution I realize, but hey isn’t that the American way.
Checked in a day late this week after celebrating Thanksgiving on Monday. Full of turkey now and content that “the universe is unfolding as it should”.
Last week I noted that nine OWS events were planned across Canada for October 15th. Now there are seventeen and still counting. It seems likely that the protesters will be watched closely. Any leaders silly enough to poke their heads above the rest will be getting arrested and detained until it’s all over. Then, they may or may not be charged with something. Probably will be.
It’s a useful tactic for them to keep us disorganized. Some of our people from the G-20 protests last year are now forbidden under their bail conditions to associate with any of the others. Quite a chill. One guy was picked up and jailed again after he spoke as part of a panel discussion, the cops said he was taking part in a demo and that wasn’t allowed.
I do agree that as this movement gets bigger, so will the repercussions.
Just to say that in my corner of Ontario, if we see helicopters flying low over farms and rural areas, they are looking for pot plantations. They’re quite agressive about it since it’s their one chance to dress up in their camo gear complete with face paint and carry big rifles to scare the rabbits with.
Every year there’ll be a big front page pic in the local paper showing these idiots proudly displaying their stolen stash of someone’s income for the winter. I always feel sorry for the growers, who are usually only doing this because they can’t find jobs. We had a former tobacco farmer busted a few years ago for converting his fields to that other smokeable commodity when the tobacco farms all went out of business.
“Kunstler has banned me for good via my IP address.”
-vlad-
Vlad, I got 3 403-type bans last week. I don’t think it’s deliberate on the part of Kunstler, I just think the blog software has problems. And it’s not that hard to get a new IP address. All I’ve got to do is restart my DSL. There are IP scramblers? available on Google, also.
There may be a lot of people who would like to see you banned from this forum, I would not put myself in that group.
Plus, you’re lots of fun to argue with.
People from “….protests last year are now forbidden under their bail conditions to associate with any of the others. Quite a chill. One guy was picked up and jailed again after he spoke…”
-grouchy-
Grouch, that’s a hell of a note. It makes me suspect that the British would still be in charge of India and the American Revolution would have been a big FAIL – if TPTB in those days had modern laws and monitoring equipment.
=============
On another note, Q’s been out for the second week now. Cash is out, along with one or two other regular posters. I suspect that they are all under one sort of 403 ban or another.
Again I ask, is this klunky software – or Big Brother in action?
Thank you for reminding me that, despite a lament over certain policy decisions, I must vote for President Obama at the end of the day. You and Hank Williams Jr, who is doing his best to invoke the baleful surliness of some iconic Johnny Reb.
Anti Soak writes:
” Vlad..you are missed..sorry to hear you have log in problems”
May I offer you a hanky?
didnt know you had anything to offer, but no thanks
“Think locally, Tripp!”
I don’t know, I prefer the canon of “think globally, act locally;)
Please try reading the post to which I was responding. My post will make more sense to you then, maybe.
I don’t have a fan mentality and if you want to complain about “personality cults”, look at the furor over Obama. Lots of image, little substance and yes, we’re paying for it, big time. I think the main problem is that I’m a conservative who prefers a conservative candidate and I’m replying on a very liberal blog. Liberals have the most closed minds. You’re apparently getting what you asked for, and how’s that working for you???
I would be surprised if Ozone voted for Obama. The common misconception among you “conservatives” (what exactly are you conserving, pray tell?) is that there is some sort of galvanized “liberal agenda” bent on taking down the world as you know it. As if that would be a desirable thing to half the people in this country for some reason. I assure you there is no such thing. On the right hand you proclaim a lack of coherent message, and on the left you talk about how organized and nefarious the so-called “liberal agenda” is. Which is it? Give it a rest. It’s tired.
This isn’t a reaction from a liberal blog. It’s a response from thinking people directed at a pot-stirrer. Take your spoon elsewhere.
Prog, I swear it’s all true. If you want to know more, just google G-20 Toronto and I’m sure you’ll find lots more. The treatment of the protesters at police hands was atrocious, and about a thousand were arrested. Some half of them have had charges dropped after months of dicking around, but the leaders have been severely restricted in their movements. There have numerous calls for an inquiry into how the police handled it. It wasn’t just Toronto police though, the famous RCMP were calling the shots on behalf of our illustrious prime minister, Stephen Harper. He is a very dangerous man now that he’s leading a majority government and can do whatever he wants. Scary stuff for lots of us up here.
Oh, I read your post. You think Cain has a few answers – “ Nine, Nine, Nine”. Unfortunately for you, Mr. Simple took strike three tonight: It’s over for Cain.
Why is it that some liberal women, with their sanctimonious ideology, are willing to flush pragmatism down the drain and relegate themselves into the equivalent of women’s suffrage nincompoops, while women like you are ready to pull the lever for any politician with a nose that expands like an elephant’s trunk?
Is it the lies?
snort, that was pretty funny.
“Why is it that some liberal women, with their sanctimonious ideology, are willing to flush pragmatism down the drain and relegate themselves into the equivalent of women’s suffrage nincompoops,…”
???????
It seems to me that Juletta is salivating at the prospect of having her very own Black man to vote for.
Sanctinomious liberals have been patting themselves on the backs for three years for their exalted post-racist feat of voting for an African-American.
Oh, Martin Luther King, Jr. would be so proud! His dream has come true!
Not.
His dream was that his children would be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
Obama uses populist rhetoric to shove fascist policies down the throats of gullible liberal Americans. His character is clearly lacking.
Juletta is estatic at having an openly right wing Black man to vote for. No namby pamby caring rhetoric for her. She prefers her fascism straight up. But she doesn’t like being called a racist, so if she votes for Cain, she gets to brag about how non-racist she is.
That’s all there is to it.
Occupy Wall Street actually emanated from Kalle Lasn,
publisher of “Adbusters Magazine”, an anti-consumerist
mag and the ONLY mag to which I have a subscription.
Let’s be optimistic for a change and declare that OWS
is lighting one candle to curse the darkness. It’s a
start. OWS’s main agenda is economic justice and
revolution is a dirty job BUT SOMEONE HAS TO DO
IT.
I think it’s the best thing to happen in this country
in many years, even if many of them are “trust fund
babies”. Jim … don’t they get extra credit for
protesting against their brethren?? Indeed, I don’t
care if they’re transgender Armenian artistes …
IT’S A START!!!!!!!
Did any of you catch Obama’s weak commentary about
Occupy Wall St.??? He tried to walk a tightrope empathizing
with them while being oh-so-careful not to mention any
of the SPECIFIC people OWS is targetting like Hank Paulson.
This president is just another Chicago machine politician
whose specialty is running for the next election while he’s
less than half way through his term. He’s not going to
name any names even of the most odious jerkweeds like
Paulson, Blankfein, or Dimon.
E.
I would amend your statement and say that
capitalism is a utopian joke. It starts out
with innocent intentions to sell a good
product at a fair price and ends up being
being beholden to “shareholder values” no
matter how little it pays attention to the
greater good.
The modern interpretation of “shareholder
values” is PREDATORY GLOBALISM … find out
which dumbfucks are willing to live ten per
room for a dollar a day and let your own
nation’s standard of living slowly sink to that
level.
E.
“It’s pretty cool to think of you out there in rural Georgia, deep in what most of us think of as reactionary country, working for a better society.”
Reactionary? This place is the absolute gospel according to Reagan Christ! We’re doing our level best to introduce some new ideas, even to the one other self-proclaimed permaculturalist (he’s got a nice collection of perennial food plants and animals, but I don’t see a ton of permaculture going on. I’m still not sure how vaccine-loving, germaphobe MDs who are active in the Methodist church can reconcile all that with a Nature-integrated permacultural perspective.)
At this point we’re taking on more of the farmers market duties next season, and we have an intern lined up for 10 months in 2012, but we might be coming into a little inheritance soon, (shh, don’t tell anybody), and if that happens, I can almost promise you it’ll be bye-bye gnats and blood red voting districts. Interesting little experiment in land tenure we’ve taken on here, but ownership and autonomy, even of a much smaller place, is looking pretty sweet right about now.
I’ve been to one of those farm dinners before. They are very cool. Maybe we’ll do one ourselves one of these days. Sounds like you’re doing some cool things, Wage.
I apologies to anyone that’s referred me personally with a greeting or question…
But the accursed new regimen (software blocker) for this here JHK blog is deleting or holding for approval 2 outta 3 posts of mine, over the last few weeks… which has become a real chore/bore.
(Which means that I simply can’t be arsed to type it all in again)
That said with real history in the making and me sensing this TLE scenario is indeed accelerating…
The period for the USA to be a world class colossus is over, your lack of burnable fossil fuels and mineral/hardcore REE assets makes it so.
And your cash driven ability to fight the rest for the dwindling remains is at an end too…The best summation of your nation state I find here:
http://chomsky.info/articles/20110824.htm
The key para is his last – By shredding the remnants of political democracy, they lay the basis for carrying the lethal process forward – as long as their victims are willing to suffer in silence.
Well it does seem that the silence is finally over…?
But as JHK rightly hints at, things here in Blighty are just as bad… and were loosing the war in Afghanistan too… we aim to be there till 2014.
It costs us $60,000 to fire 1 hell-fire missile off an Apache to kill one insurgent (resistance fighter), use the nomenclature of yer choice… and don’t even begin to calculate the cost of operating the hardware there…
Then they (Taliban) build a $125 IED that kills one trooper out right and wounds another 2-3 clean off, and this happens almost daily…
You do the math…
BTW my favourite film so far of OWS is n9’s slick production for Mike…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGfUn7EZ69w
Monkey… I’m not talking to you – you gotta hand it to those cheeky banksters!
A key aspect of this resistance to capitalism movement is that the leaders are hidden, it’s important to keep the head structure fluid, for all manner of longevity reasons…
And you know what they say don’t you CFN’ers…
The powers always behind the throne…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chqi8m4CEEY
Toodle-pip!
A xx
All our history has been the fight between the ones who had little and the ones who had a lot and wanted more.
All our history has been the sequel of victory of the ones who had nothing in having all and loosing it again, to struggle and fight again to get it back.
Because historia magistra vitae, but the problem being that there are never enough pupils and the ones who should remember never do, on both sides.
Nothing new on the horizon, may be soon another fight and another victory, either the “restoration” of the life as ever or the “new that comes” and brings a new redistribution of wealth.
How long will it last?
The time to go back to the new old state of things, where a few arrogant ad presumptuous will get it all back in their few greedy hands.
So glad to see you back E.
And as usual you make the cogent arguments. For a conservative you never cease to amaze me how you see things exactly as I.
Of course Obama is a Chicago school neoliberal. Once he put in Summers and the rest of the Clintonistas I knew what the score was.
The way things have been set-up in that ole Milton Friedman system, it doesn’t matter who gets in, the same overall policies will be followed. Yes, the Dems are slightly more caring about doing something for the great unwashed, —that is us, but they will do the trade deals etc. that are expected of them. The creation of jobs is impossible with the trade doctrine we have.
On 60 Min. They had Jeffrey Immelt of GE on saying for every thousand jobs in the BRIC countries, there will be around 300 here in the US and we should be happy for that. We should all be on his side! What a hero. Obama’s choice for head of jobs council—
As far the OWSers go, I couldn’t agree more. It’s a start. I will be going back down there when my work lets up again and will continue to support them. Hell, I may even make them some food–who knows.
Juletta,
It’s always nice to hear the contradictory nonsense that RW Authoritarian Followers tell yourselves and others.
Orwell was right about you. Frank Luntz, too.
Not that you are responsible for much you say or type on this blog. I mean, really, you didn’t think of any of it on your own, so why should you personally be held accountable?
Just kidding. But RW Authoritarian Followers are so eager to absolve themselves of any crime, I figured it would make you feel comfortable.
It always amuses me to see 21st Century American RW Corporate Socialist propaganda at work on weak minds.
First, you focus on race and racism, even though that’s not the issue on this thread at all, rather the propaganda warfare engaged by the rich on the gullible in order to make you allies in the theft of your own children’s future.
I know, I know, you have to drag the converstaion to one of your ready-to-regurigtate talking points or you simply can’t hold up your end of the conversation.
I’ve seen it hundreds of times in the last decade from RW Authoritarian Followers like yourself. Here’s an experiment, Juletta. Try to reply WITHOUT repeating something you heard on Fox News, at church, or whatever RW Authoritarian propaganda pumps you drink fom.
You can’t do it, I’d wager. That’s what happens when you let the mind atrophy. I’d further debate your specific regurgitated nonsense, but I have learned the hard way that one doesn’t convince Nazis that the Jews are people, too, rhetorically speaking, and this applies to Teabaggery’s nascent “kinder and gentler” Brownshirt movement.
Unfortunately, you are so driven by an intellectual inferiority complex, which glows neon in every one of your posts, I am not sure you can see beyond it, even if you had paid attention in history class, lo those many years ago.
Some of the smartest and more importantly, most conscious, people I know had only high school diplomas and in one case not even that. But I would put those people’s understanding and conception of the world against most of the Ph.Ds I’ve met.
They figured it out for themselves, you see. Their worldview was their own. How few people bother to take the time to do that, these days.
Which is one of our main problems as a nation.
Thus, your English degree has proven apparently worthless in enhancing your critical thinking skills or assisting you in forming your own view of the world.
You can tell yourself all the RW lies you want – regurgitate them undigested on CFN, too. But it makes you look really foolish considering you are a very VERY typical Authoritarian Follower and therefore you stand out like a sore thumb on a blog with a very high level of consciousness and self-awareness.
One thing seems to unify most of CFNs posters no matter what our politics, and that is the growing belief D vs. R and Left vs. Right are nonsense and that whatever is going on it’s more like a puppet show to keep gullible, weak-minded people occupied with Punch and Judy while their futures are destroyed by both sides operating under the ages-old Aristocratic idea that you and yours and me and mine are not much more than burden animals.
Thus it has always been, but for brief exceptions, and now it appears as if thus it will always be.
One thing is a virtual certainty. When Corn-Pone Hitler rises, you and yours will be behind him or her 1000%.
“You know, he is really passionate and that means he really cares.”
“He really takes it to those Socialist Liberals.”
“Everyone at church simply adores him, except for those few Socialist weirdos and what are they doing at our church anyway, the phonies, because they simply can’t believe in God or have feelings like we do. I just sort of wish they would disappear.”
Alexandra, you write “Do the math” when comparing the $60,000 cost for a Hellfire missile against the $125 IED. Yes, from a simple artithmetic standpoint, the IED is much more cost effective. This is a fine example of “asymmetrical” war. But whereas your arithmetic is correct, your calculus is wrong. The $60,000 spent on the Helfire missile creates jobs here in the US, but the $125 IED does not. Look at the economic leverage! And remember, there is usually a three-to-one multiplier for those communitees in the US who host the arms manufacturers: $3 in increased economic activity for every $1 injected! This is the calculus that you’re missing.
You see, Alexandra, once you are suitably re-educated in higher math, you too will understand that war isn’t just to achieve military ends, it has an economic dimension too. Once you understand that our prosperity is intimately tied to some enemy being repeatedly and ruthlessly bombed. I know it may be difficult to grasp, but when you consider the prosperity it brings, war is actually a virtue.
How are your left wing talking points any different from julletta’s right wing view. your world view is not original thinking either. It is the same tired ideas i’ve been hearing my whole life. The intellectual superiority complex of the left is off putting to me even when i agree on an issue.
i do agree with you that some very bright people don’t have high educations. My dad for one.
Brilliant. Loved every word of it. Thank you for that!
You’re backing Hancock, of all people, into a box of partisan propaganda? Absurd. But thanks for another full belly laugh this morning. I’ve had more than my share now. Better run get some work done.
“One thing is a virtual certainty. When Corn-Pone Hitler rises, you and yours will be behind him or her 1000%.”
-hancock, to julietta-
Just as an excercise, HC, let me theoretically concede your whole point regarding a RW authoritarian (RWa) takeover of the country.
The next question becomes – what is the point, for your RWa’s.
I mean, Hitler had a PLAN – conquer Europe first, then a little Libensraum in Russia – then take over the world. And all the RWa followers in Germany signed off on the plan as it moved forward. And they all knew the plan was for the control of the globe to benefit the German people. (or master race/whatever)
Do you really think the RWa’s in the US have a plan like that? Because I don’t think they do. They are just piling up poker chips to fulfill the bumper sticker adage: He Who Dies With the Most Toys (money) Wins.
And they don’t care what happens to the US. And they don’t care what happens to the world. I don’t think they even care what happens to their children or grandchildren –
Except, MAYBE, those children or grandchildren who excel at piling up still more poker chips.
===================
Before I go, I’ve got a decent piece for you this week; I will admit that it’s not all original to me, before people start accusing me of parroting someone else’s thoughts. There is, however, in this case, a bibliography that says as much. Although the very act of getting my information from the sources I do is probably enough to put me on government watch lists on both sides of the aisle. Not a lot of Acres USA research being funded by TPTB, I can assure you.
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/
It’s about the role of fungi in building and improving soil structure, making crops more robust and disease-resistance, and eliminating the need for pesticides and fertilizer (even prepared compost). Some information that could be useful in an energy descent world, no matter how apoplectic the right might get about the so-called “efficiency” of the so-called “system” in place now.
My fiftieth post! Hope you guys enjoy it.
Tripp
So I’ve been sitting on the OWS sidelines with a jaded eye. An eye that somewhat echo’s the ‘unified and coherent message’ mantra emanating from the MSM buffoons ( one buffoon parroting another as they say). But then I read the thoughts of one far more wise in the ways of construction and composition, and far wiser in other areas as well – a very real and great artist. Yes, I’m going to shut up:
“ A new painting should be a unique thing, a birth bringing a new face into the representation of the world through the human spirit. The artist should call forth all of his energy, his sincerity, and the greatest possible modesty in order to push aside during his work the old clichés that come so readily to his hand and can suffocate the small flower that itself never turns out as expected.” – Henri Mattise
Boss – I love to argue – come by it honest from my father and grandfathers generation.
And a year and a half ago I signed onto CFN thinking I was a pragmatic liberal LW’er.
I soon found out I was just pragmatic.
I think the working and middle class of the US has let itself be shoved into a – deregulated – low tax – support a huge military – box.
And I think we’ve gotten ourselves into a position where we are so sure that being in this box is the only way to live –
That any criticism of our lot in life looks like, as you put it –
“the same tired ideas i’ve been hearing my whole life. The intellectual superiority complex of the left is off putting to me even when i agree on an issue.”
Bossier, when an idea is correct, it’s correct.
One of these days, I hope what’s left of the middle class in this country –
will recognize this –
And will start to work for our OWN best interests.
And not for the interest of the 1%.
Can I pile on a point here too? It might even prove how much more sane the Nazis were than their current American proteges, if you can believe it. At one time land was wealth. To be wealthy you had to control the real estate. To today’s screwed up mind, “land” means work, it means dirty farming, horticulture, or livestock, and lots of sweat. Today’s wealth is measured not in units of acres, or head of cattle, but in dollars, ounces, or barrels. None of which require much land. Land, to the petro-citizen is a liability, where a big fat bank account means the freedom to travel and use the land that someone else has to maintain. In this case, toys and money are even better than land. Land is where we get the raw materials to create the so-called “real wealth”, money, and the now-raped land is where poor dirty people live. Why would we want that? We already got the important part.
It’s a really fucked up perception of wealth, and it’s going to be very shocking to the people who were misguided enough to turn forests (soil-enriching, rain-producing, natural capital) into paper currency (aka toilet paper). At least the Nazis had some realistic ideas about what real wealth was.
I sort of feel the same way from the opposite direction. I came to this blog as confirmed right winger. Now I actually agree with Hancock that it seems the left /right divide is irrelevant to the top 1%. I just don’t like the I’m smart and you’re stupid tone I hear a lot.
That intellectual superior tone keeps people from working in their own self interest. To make our society work, we will have to take workable ideas from left and right. and we will have to make the law apply to the top 1%.
I have just finished reading “Whole Earth Discipline–An Ecopragmatist Manifesto,” by Stewart Brand. A fascinating book that rocked my worldview in relation to climate an energy. Have any of you read it?
(HC to Hoo-lietta)
“Orwell was right about you. Frank Luntz, too.”
-HC 1863
‘Fraid so; and I’d agree it’s instructive to “identify” the reptilian mindset of RW’ers and their incessant craving for a savior. For the most part, that would be some ruthless bastard. Whoever these “good folks” support will be the enemy of free-thinkers and a friend of sociopaths and the power-hungry.
Nope, but it sounds great! I have one of his books on my wish list, and that’s as close as I’ve gotten yet.
ProgorCons,
I just wrote a long reply to you – without any links, and it STILL got held up and is now gone.
AAARRRGGGGGHHHH!
Sorry.
Since the last short message posted, I will try to post my reply to you in piees.
But this is getting old very fast.
============================================
Appreciate the reply, ProgorCons.
It all comes back to my “conspiratorial agnosticism”.
I just don’t know what is REALLY going on at the aristocratic level, and I guess no one else on CFN has any idea either, only speculation.
I SUSPECT that there is a good bit more going on, and that it emanates from all those innocent aristocrats vacationing at “Bilderberg Resorts”, G8, and other undemocratic Neoliberal/Neoconservative institutions out of sight of those they rule.
You SUSPECT that it’s more likely just pure human greed and f&ckery, not conspiracy but coincidence.
In either case or any combination of the above two, the result is the same for the bottom 80% of us, maybe more. In other words, if it’s not a globe-spanning Bilderberg conspiracy, it might as well be for all the difference it makes to we Peasants, Plebes, and other Useless Eaters to what is coming.
What’s their plan? Hell if I know. My GUESS, based on past history, is that a Big War, perhaps a World War, will have to be started by the Global Aristocracy in order to deflect Peasant anger onto other Peasants instead of our beloved and noble “Job Creators”.
This is the case whether it’s conspiracy or coincidence, too, I think. Just like gathering unquestioningly obedient followers is the path Aristocratic authoritarianism MUST take, whether LW like the Commies, or RW like the Nazis and 21st Century American Rulers.
Conspiracy or coincidence, that is what has to be in order for the Aristocracy to survive a national collapse like what is coming with their wealth and power even partially intact, to keep people from turning on the authors of their misery, instead turning them against the poor and weak…the outsiders and the different.
Which makes sense, too, in a grotesque way. I mean, if a person is angry, who’s easier to fight, poor and weak people with no power, or the Aristocrats, who are literally bristling with guns, surveillance and henchpersons, and who are known to be absolutely brutal in their responses throughout history when threatened, especially to their own people?
Well, duh! Societies almost always take the easy route, and nothing could be easier than deciding to side with the Hunters over the Hunted, the Nazis over the Liberals & Jews, the Teabaggers over the OWSers.
It’s amazing how those with supposed “higher education” are always caught in the most imbecilic counter-intuitive notions and revel in these imbecilic counter-intuitive notions as though they are a badge of higher intelligence.
Your screed basically boils down to the argument that non-productive debt is good thing. You will soon find out the hard way that squandering precious resources on empty military expenditures and accumulating endless debt has a high price attached to it. With US petrodollar imperialism coming to an end, it’s not going to be long before the rest of fascist Amerikkka will look like Detroit, as in many places it already does.
Well, I’m glad to see you back, E.
Apparently, Cash, Q, Vlad and Asoka have been banned. I thought you were among them.
It sures makes for a lower comment count on this blog.
I’ve spent the last 2 days arguing with a tea party, right wing Facebook friend. One of my actual real life friends signed me up with him, out of ignorance, I guess.
Talk about arrogance!! Twice in two days he has told me to get out of the US!
This is typical right wing presumption. As I asked him, what gives him the right to decide who can live in America? You never hear left wingers telling right wingers to just get out if they don’t love their country. Only right wingers.
And by love of country, they don’t mean the actual country, the spacious skies, the fertile plains, the majestic mountains, the shining seas.
Because they support the “free market” and the pollution of our air, the mining of our topsoil, the blowing up of our mountains and the oil covering our seas. Not to mention the destruction of our water. (This guy is a big supporter of fracking).
The only part of the Constitution they support is the second amendment. The only actual Americans they approve of are fetuses, soldiers and right wingers.
And they presume to decide who can live here?
That is unparelled arrogance!!
And another thing that pisses me off is that I now have dozens of people praying for my enlightenment.
I’m all about the Enlightenment, assholes! Save your breath!
Wall Street supported Barack Obama has gone farther than Bush/Cheney was able to do.
He has killed more people with drones, prosecuted more whistle-blowers, widened the wars, attacked Libya without any pretense of Congressional approval, attacked Social Security and Medicare, lessened abortion rights, claimed the right to assassinate American citizens without charges or trial, and then actually killed two of them, and has given Wall Street trillions of dollars.
Now he seems to be ready to fufill Cheney’s wet dream – attacking Iran.
Sometimes I think that this is all a mind control experiment, to see just how much bullshit the American people will swallow.
Seriously? We’re supposed to believe that Iran conspired with a DEA agent to kill the Saudi ambassador IN the United States? Really?
After the FBI has thwarted so many of its own plots, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out, we’re supposed to attack Iran for another one?
Well, people who can believe that 2 planes can knock down 3 massive skyscrapers, will probably believe anything, or so our ruling overlords seem to be bent on finding out.
George W. Bush told President Kirchner of Argentina that the way to revitalize the US economy is war and always has been.
This speaking of the truth caused a minor uproar, as usual. Truth speaking is always widely and rounded slapped down as outrageous. The US, making money from war? How could anyone say something so very ridiculous?
It doesn’t matter how many people are jumping up and down screaming about the Emperor’s nudity.
The corporate talking head shills continue to praise his finery.
Hey, Tripp. I read your piece and tried to comment, but your blog wouldn’t let me.
If I understand you right, you are advocating cutting off plants, not uprooting them.
But isn’t that what we do with a lawn? And it doesn’t seem to be all that fertile when you dig up former lawn. I was hoping that you could elaborate.
I think that he was being sarcastic, M.
The Tea Party is the KKK on casual fridays. bill Mahr made the point that, at the beginning, the teabaggers where agitating for Wall street justice and then were redirected by Republican party to attacking obamacare, etc.
The same sentiment, that if you’re not in the Tea Party, you’re not a “Real American” was repeated verbatim to my mother in a ladies’ neighborhood tea party… that is, a friendly cup of tea in the original sense with your neighbors.
I got my copy from the library. You would find the chapter, “It’s all Gardening” particularly interesting.
I must say, Wage, when I first heard of this alleged “terror” plot by an Iranian to kill a Suadi ambassador (or somthing to that effect) I thought, “Here we go. Is this Obama’s version of the Gulf of Tonkin?” Nothing like a good war on the third (or is it second) point in W’s Axis of Evil to rally the good ole USofA around a President and his failed policies. I can already hear the “Bomb, bomb Iran” song being resurrected from 1979. Though I must say, it would probably take a bit more than that (what other Iran-Terror conspiracy is in the pipeline?) to get this country behind another war after the two-headed boondoggle that is Afghanistan and Iraq. The point is, how the fuck can we believe any of the shit that gets fed to us by the hand of the MSM that has dipped into the trough of government lies? I know this is nothing new but I think it’s gotten to the point where I just want to scream.
Speaking of “trust fund babies,” I’ve got an anecdote that might amuse you, Eleuthero.
Living in the dorm/apartment room next door to my son is a wild-child whose dad is president and CEO of an organization with $3.2 trillion in assets and 2010 revenues of $150 billion.
A couple of weeks ago, the wild one was hosting a loud bong party, and was busted by the resident assistant. All 15 participants in her apartment were written up–including my son. As soon as the RA left, wild-child, said, “Don’t worry, I’m calling my dad right now, and his lawyers will have things fixed by tomorrow.”
Low and behold, despite his busy calendar, Daddy Warbucks shows up at the dorm and has a talk with wild-child and the dean of students. Five of the party-goers were kicked out of the dorm, but not wild-child, who still apparently has yet to “see the light” in terms of her weed consumption.
Makes me wonder about fairness, etc.
I’m glad to see you back, Bustin.
Where does the right wing get their arrogance?
It’s like wannabe gang members, eager to identify with the big violent boys and pick on their peers, knowing that big brother will back them up. Aint nobody more eager to bully others than someone with a bigger bully behind them.
There is no other reason that the minority of Americans who like corporate domination, military adventurism, police state repression and destruction of our natural world would feel so smugly sure of their ability to define “Real Americans” as people like them.
Me too, Confusionism.
We’ll see where this goes and how it’s played. Remember that the real reason that Cheney’s dream didn’t come true was that the military and the intelligence establishment refused to go along with it.
Are they more willing now? Is the ruling class desperate enough to start WW3 to get out of the fine mess it’s in?
We’ll find out.
Howdy Wage, Per your comments:”And they presume to decide who can live here? That is unparalleled arrogance!!”
Agreed; however, I would replace arrogance with “ignorance”.
I have found that know it all charlatans informed, as I am wont to do, “when you open your mouth ignorance falls out” ofttimes become apoplectic. Very pleasurable to observe. Give it a go. 🙂
SNAFU
Meanwhile, Congress accuses China of “currency manipulation” and threatens sanctions.
What is the currency manipulation?
China pegs the yuan to the dollar.
The nerve!! How dare they!! This must not stand!!
Once again, I’m embarassed to be American.
Well, SNAFU, I am convinced that, with enough facts, I can change people’s minds. It’s the Enlightement beliefs in me.
I did get mad and call some names, whereupon they smugly accused liberals of inability to argue without insults.
So I went back to straight up facts.
Without any perceivable effect.
I guess to paraphrase rocker Bruce Springsteen, “there are nice guys and assholes on every block.” He said that in an interview where he was questioned about being a working class hero but now lived in a 3M dollar house.
I just personally perceive left wingers assuming that right wingers must be mentally deficient( retard) or in need of re-education (crazy). I don’t think you are stupid or crazy because of your political views. I’ve read your blog it is interesting.
Prog is probably on the right track with pragmatism.
Yeah, Obama’s a corrupt, complicit bastard, that’s for sure.
No measures may well have been better than his corporate poison pills. He has served his Masters well.
The amount of bullshit we Americans will swallow has now tipped over into the infinite. No lie, however transparently false or ginned up into something completely different, is too big for 90%+ to swallow if it has the RW Corporate Socialist imprimatur of the Mighty RepublaDem Lie Machine.
I can’t believe it myself, how quickly the free, proud nation I grew up in, that at least tried to be occasionally honest with itself, turned into the “Good Germany” before my eyes.
It is a strange thing to live in a nation in which there is no such thing as facts or truth, where the National Dialogue is completely untethered from any semblence of reality.
And all that is left are only blathering PR Ops, and by how many competing people & factions are they believed.
It is almost inconceivable to me that we have no shared national dialogue, no facts we can as a nation mutually agree on.
Crazy. But it has happened before.
It is one of the many similarities that 21st Century America has to Weimar Germany. Will the RWAs take over on the Aristos, like in 1930s Germany, or has the American Corporatist version learned from their German Industrialist predecessors, and will keep the Henchpersons from becoming Masters this time?
Seems to me that’s about the only question left anymore. Except for OWS and that’s a longshot.
I am cautiously optimistic about OWS, but I just get the sense that OUR Aristos and their pet RWA followers, no matter who winds up on top in the end, are not going to allow any meaningful change on the Titantic at this late date, and will likely cause suffering and death for millions rather than face a disruption in their rackets let alone a reckoning for their crimes.
You’re more open minded than a lot of them, Bossier.
Actually, in real life, there are only two right wingers I know that are flat out assholes. Most of the others are just going with the coporate flow, swallowing the propaganda wholeheartedly.
But I had to laugh at one of the people praying for me on Facebook. I clicked on his profile, and he lives in Texas, and is “disabled/retired”, but his profile picture is of someone (him?) on a jetski. (Busy burning up that oil that God wants him to have).
I got a kick out of a right winger living it up on disability while complaining about those “others” who don’t want to work.
As regards the universal affliction of ignorance, I feel it is important to be forgiving and understanding toward those who are more ignorant (arrogant and greedy, too) as they can not be expected to live in accord with the more lasting values. The more you know, the more responsible you become. Without this attitude, it is much more difficult to love those who would do harm to you and others.
Recognize the ignorance, yes; feel pissed, sure; put yourself in their shoes, be happy you’re not them. Don’t worry about what you can’t change or what you can change. Go OWSers!
Howdy again Wage, Per your comment:”Is the ruling class desperate enough to start WW3 to get out of the fine mess it’s in?
We’ll find out.”
Happy am I to see that you place the initiation of WW3 squarely where it belongs with the US Corporate Oligarchs i.e. the ruling class.
I have argued until purple in the face that the “government” is not in control of this nation.
Having observed the transfer of wealth to the military/weapons industrial corporations at obscene profit margins since the middle of the last century I am amazed it has taken so long for this pile of merde to start collapsing.
SNAFU
What kind of war do you perceive Hancock. Wouldn’t the elite be just as dead in a global war as the masses?
Yes, on the surface, American society is a McMansion village, with the villagers content to play their roles as obedient consumers. But underneath the rot is getting deeper, and fewer Americans can play their roles.
Wasn’t it you that linked to the Citibank prospectus pointing out that most Americans were irrelevant as consumers anymore?
Lbendet reported that she saw her former manager at the protest, and that workers in the buildings around were supportive.
Even people who participate in the madness may not agree with it. I do things at work that I don’t agree with. (The waste, mostly, although I also think giving Tylenol to babies is wrong).
We have a depleted uraninum weapons manufacturer here. I don’t think that the people who work there do it because they are evil. They just want a job. They would be just as happy to work at a solar panel manufacturer, maybe happier.
I think that Americans are starting to rebel.
And some of the 1% are starting to point out that reform beats revolution, when it comes to keeping most of their money.
However, we live in a militarized police state. It’s just as possible that the forces of reaction will be unleashed as it is that meaningful reforms will be enacted.
We’ll see. Just like we’ll see if WW3 is part of the plan.
I liked this 7 minute video. It shows the protesters, but two of the 1% drop by to see what’s going on.
Apparently, they think of us as monkeys. Does that mean they think they’re more evolved?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGfUn7EZ69w
And at the risk of getting banned, Glenn Greenwald, as usual, nails the Iranian plot as the ridiculous piece of nonsense it is –
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-very-scary-Iranian-T-by-Glenn-Greenwald-111012-747.html
“The most difficult challenge in writing about the Iranian Terror Plot unveiled yesterday is to take it seriously enough to analyze it. Iranian Muslims in the Quds Force sending marauding bands of Mexican drug cartel assassins onto sacred American soil to commit Terrorism — against Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel — is what Bill Kristol and John Bolton would feverishly dream up while dropping acid and madly cackling at the possibility that they could get someone to believe it. But since the U.S. Government rolled out its Most Serious Officials with Very Serious Faces to make these accusations, many people (therefore) do believe it; after all, U.S. government accusations = Truth. All Serious people know that.”
Sanity from an American who lives in Brazil.
You said:
Very ironic that you say that, for me on a personal level, if nothing else.
Not just because I specifically said in my post which you ripped that some of the smartest and most conscious people I ever knew had a HS diploma or less. Not just because I said in that very post that I’d stack those people’s worldview favorably against half the Ph.Ds I’ve ever met…
As I have stated before on this blog, what I say now is the result of almost 30 years of watching events unfold with increasing horror, against the backdrop of my lifetime studies of history and of totalitarianisms both Left and Right.
I started out as committed to reason and debate as the way forward. After all, human beings were more than mere animals, weren’t we?
Twenty years to watch rise of authoritarian insanity from the Republicans, coupled with cowardly acquienscence and even complicity from the corporate Democrats (which is now almost all of them).
Twenty years to watch facts and reason get their asses repeatedly kicked by marketing and psychologically designed sophistry, to name just two of many facets o the Authoritarian assault.
So the choice remained, to be reasonable, conceding points where appropriate like a good little debator, or recognizing that this was not a mere difference of opinion, but the onrushing metallic glittering teeth of Authoritarianism.
Keep being reasonable and keep getting mowed down by arrogantly bullying parroting repetitious absolutist shameless RW liars, or get a little absolutist on my own, even though it was about 20 years too late ’cause like a dumb Liberal I spent 20 years making sure it was what I thought it was, and to nine decimal places, before I decided to drop the relativism and go “all in”, as it were.
So what do I do now? Go back to meek reasonableness or give the zealots a bit of their own zeal back? Do I do the former and keep getting run over by repetitious, indefatigable nonsense? Or if I give back even a bit of absolutist zeal, do I make myself look a bit like the RW Crazies I revile, without the covering backdrop of the Orwellian RW Propaganda Machine and the Corporate Media that is it’s de facto henchperson?
But that’s the conundrum. The No-Win Situation the sociopaths put their vitims in, be it a domestic violence situation all the way up to the Battered Nation Syndrome of 1930s Germany and now Modern America.
“Heads we win, tails you lose.”
“You can speak out, and we will pursue you to the ends of the Earth. You can remain silent and we will pursue you to the ends of the Earth with even MORE zeal because of your displayed cowardly weakness.”
I am truly sorry to all the good and decent old-school Conservatives and other non-Fox-News-ish Right Wingers like yourself that it’s your “side” the Aristocratic Authoritarians have hijacked for tyrannical ends this time.
That’s just the roll of history’s dice. But it’s the observable, demonstrable truth and I will not hide behind Liberal navel-gazing and relativism and say maybe it ain’t.
Twenty years ago, there wasn’t enough data to say it was so. Now the data is overflowing from every American orifice, media, poltical, judicial, and otherwise.
No denying it objectively, anymore. The Orwellian Double-Standards and lunacy are approaching obscenely shameless levels.
So, as relates to my decades-long observations above, I no longer bother to equivocate or play the old Liberal, “all positions have some merit” game.
Because sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, one side of the argument becomes so corrupted with lies and totalitarianism, whether it comes from the Left, Right, Center or wherever is wrong and must be opposed.
Another long reply eaten by this site.
I will try and repost in pieces.
==============================================
You said:
How did the Elite fare during the last descent into Dark Ages? They lost some of their gizmos and other benefits of Roman civilization, but overall their life remained as that of Gods, while their Peasants lived like relative dung in obedient ignorance, same as always.
I think as long as the latter remains true, our Aristocratic Elites are fine with whatever needs to happen to make that be true, from a collective viewpoint at least.
Specific details are difficult to guess. It is also possible that, if TLE kicks in, in earnest over the next century, that a massive series of low-level small wars over dwindling resources against a backdrop of mass privation, starvation and thrist as overshoot is truly started.
This might function as a plausibly deniable stand-in for Global War, which may be impossible in the old sense due to modern nuclear, biological, and chemical proliferation.
Global Cyber War? Seems sci-fi, but that would be a good modern substitute for physical World War. Frightening in it’s 1984-ish implications because that kind of war could be simulated by a nation’s own goverment/military/intelligence aristocracy even if there was no enemy.
(continued – I hope)
Part II
================================================
There’s a saying that says something like: Regular Criminals dream of committing the Perfect Crime. State Criminals dream of total control of the crimescene so s the make every crime they commit “perfect”.
I believe that, in modern America, the latter condition has very nearly been reached.
The Kremlinology of the Iranian Bomber Psyop is clear. America’s RW Corporate Socialist Leadership is getting ready to have another go at Iran.
There’s obviously some oil and other wealth yet unstolen over there and OUR Aristos want it. Here comes yet ANOTHER Propaganda Offensive, probably preparatory to another invasion, however long it takes to reach that ultimate end probably during the reign of Corn-Pone Hitler. (unless Iran can get their hands on nukes before we rob and slaughter them, which seems unlikely).
And so, the old Goering statement remains as sadly true now as it was then,
“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY.”
Yes, it does work the same in any country, and in every age I might add. We no different from any of the others.
There are some of my ideas of what I think might come to pass.
The only thing that seems certain (unless somehow a miracle occurs)is greater corruption, greater lies, greater wealth inequality, greater injustice for the bottom 80%, greater predation of the poor, weak, and powerless by the wealthy, strong and powerful.
The time when those things went, however briefly, in the opposite direction are over now, maybe for a long time.
Would that it wasn’t so.
Blogger is notoriously hard to comment on. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard your very complaint. If I blog for much longer I might change software. We’ll see. In the meantime, thanks for the thought!
Yes, I’m definitely advocating cutting off plants at the ground instead of pulling them up. The intact rhizosphere, left in place, hosts an amazing microbial economy that can be plugged right back into with the next round of veggies. I have some tomatoes and broccoli right now that were plugged right behind the previous crop, without any added fertility, that are just tearing it up. In my opinion, organic gardening is predominantly a dialogue with the soil life. The produce is just a happy bonus. But far more soil life will be in place if the root zone is left intact. Coupled with this week’s blog post you can see that the all-important fungi also benefit from this practice, which means the plants will benefit in the next round, which means…
And as for your grass question, you can apply the same logic to grass that you can to the vegetable garden. You just don’t trim it every time it gets uneven, as is the norm. Grass that is trimmed according to MIG grazing principles will greatly enrich the soil it’s growing in, although including grazing animals in that landscape will push that process a lot faster. MIG grazing is the most promising agricultural practice in the world today. These guys are sequestering atmospheric carbon in the topsoil (creating more topsoil) at rates roughly 20 times the sequestration possible with planting trees. I’ve heard it said that if every acre of pastoral land could raise its organic matter content by a measly 1%, which could be done next season with regenerative grazing practices, we could pull 100 ppm of carbon out of the atmosphere. Global warming aside, that’s a whopper for the health of the land itself! Grass can be very good if you do it right.
I did rip you some but I agreed with you some too. Your last post has many valid points which i agree with. I just believe there is plenty of blame to go around. The values and actions of the elite all across the political spectrum have some blame for the condition of the country. Not just the right wing.
This discussion thread is looking a little better today. Guess JHK’s getting his software issue resolved? Any way, I’m working my way up from the bottom and hoping for the best.
“The values and actions of the elite all across the political spectrum have some blame for the condition of the country. Not just the right wing.”
-bossier-
I’ll concede that point, bossier. But I don’t believe we have much of a legitimate or effective Left Wing any longer in national politics. We’d have to go back to some time before Reagan got shot to find strong outspoken progressives in national politics.
Both parties have sold the average middle class citizen out – completely. Maybe it’s time to start a new party – the Pragmatic Party.
Tripp –
Your website is looking GOOD, man. There were about 4 new posts that I had not seen. I particularly like the “tour of the plantation” conducted by your daughter. Your place reminds me a lot of my granddad’s place. Except our oak trees are bigger, or at least they were. One of them keeled over this past winter. 🙁
But, since I was alive and kicking long before air conditioning hit rural Georgia – I well remember the inviting shade and cool of good trees like that. You just have to work around the mid-day, mid-summer heat.
Promise me you’ll try some peanuts next year. Mine are still going nuts. (haha) I’ve got one? plant – that started as 3 seeds from the grocery store – that is almost 5 feet in diameter. I planted it in hard clay soil in a walkway between my raised beds. Imagine what it would be doing in some sandy south Georgia soil.
Prime animal feed
Prime human feed
And legumes should be good for the soil.
I did have to look up Management Intensive Grazing. Sounds like your “mob grazing” but with more checks and balances.
http://beefmagazine.com/mag/beef_fixed_flexible_grazing/
“And another thing that pisses me off is that I now have dozens of people praying for my enlightenment.
-wage-
That’s funny, Wage! You need to invite that guy onto CFN. I’ve spent a large chunk of my life trying to change minds with one-on-one verbal argument. I think all I’ve ever accomplished is to piss people off.
But on websites like this – in front of witnesses and contributors – maybe there’s hope. I have seen minds changed here, occasionally.
And I have changed mine – about a couple of things.
Hey POC! Thanks for stopping in at Small Batch. We’re back online at home now, so I have a bit more time to post with pics and work on layout. It’s coming along!
I use the terms “mob grazing” and “MIG grazing” interchangeably. Either way there is some next level shit going on in this department. People tend to think of meat production as a net drain on the environment. Not the case with MIG. This is a net carbon-negative method, sequestering more carbon that it liberates, that produces the finest beef you’ll ever taste. You’re shooting for exceptionally high Brix scores in your forage when the herd comes back around, and the sugar density puts top-shelf meat on the rack. Reading some of the gurus, they talk about percentage of the fodder in the animals, percentage stomped into the ground, and percentage left standing, and how soon they need to be back on that spot, and these guys have been refining these techniques for decades now. One of the masters, Greg Judy, said that he’s never actually seeded in new forage species, but that just grazing in this way introduces new species all the time, both plants and soil biota. That one percent that I mentioned (to Wage) being required to pull 100 ppm of carbon from the air would be cake in a good season of mob grazing. I’ve heard some of them talk about 2-3% in one year. When you consider that a 1% rise in OC is responsible for an additional 100,000 gallons of water storage capacity per acre…whew! These guys are going places. I don’t think I was off base in suggesting that people who can do this stuff will be in very high demand in the future.
I enjoyed your ideas on what might happen. It seems very plausible. The only question I have is why? Why does this course make sense to the elites. Destruction of a strong civilization in less than one hundred years.
If it just about money, it seems that the bigger percentage of people doing well would benefit the elite more
in the long run.
Good discussion today, I feel a little like the long ranger though.
“Good discussion today, I feel a little like the long ranger though.”
Sorry I was a smart-ass to you earlier, but I still have to ask, is “the long ranger” your secret porn name? Seems more like you might mean the LONE ranger;)
Interesting. The Nazis were knowledgable enough to know that true wealth was to be found in the manufacturing of (take your pick…, farming – land-, metals, and (makers of and seizure of)fine art – including forcing talented Jews into constructing jewelry using gold fillings from holocaust survivors), and looting from almost every museum in Europe). In other words, they recognized that true human endeavor – such as yours – counted for something. And in turn, they ruthlessly exploited it beyond any possible human comprehension. And yet, today’s “Movers and Shakers” aren’t smart enought to know that. Paper chasers. There was a movie called that back in the ’70s. Kind of makes you think about the way our “betters” are going about the world, making the world a bigger shit can than it already is. Thanks for weighing in with that gem.
“Except our oak trees are bigger, or at least they were.”
Proving once again that size matters ;).
“AAARRRGGGGGHHHH!”
-Hancock-
Yeah, HC, I agree. I don’t know if you were checking in, but a little over a month ago this CFN thread was clocking over 1100 responses per week. There was some BS and trolling, sure, but I’m thinking JHK’s IT guy has set the filters so high that the baby went out with the bathwater about a week ago. And the baby is still crawling around, wet in the yard – until JHK gets these problems fixed.
Now, regarding the RWa’s:
“What’s their plan? Hell if I know. My GUESS, based on past history, is that a Big War, perhaps a World War, will have to be started by the Global Aristocracy in order to deflect Peasant anger onto other Peasants instead of our beloved and noble “Job Creators”.”
-hancock-
I’ll admit that you’ve won me over to some subset of your thinking regarding RWa’s. There are people – due to genetics or upbringing, or something – who can not rest until they have ALL THE GODDAMNED MARBLES. These people used to be tribal chiefs, or gang chiefs, or Atilla the Hun, or something – you get the idea.
But now, this small subset of people have found, tweaked, and created – a system of crony government protected “capitalism.” And they can’t stop until they run it into the ground and ruin it for the 80%+ of people who really just want to live, love, and be left alone.
Stopping for now, before the baby gets all the way in the tub.
Now your being a smart ass. I wish I was the looong ranger. Unfortunately not.
Your earlier reply was ok. I was in a little over my head with Hancock, and you knew it.
So, OK, HC – Bossier asks some good questions – and maybe in a simpler and more linear fashion than I would. So I’ll be really interested in your answers to him.
The other thing – every country has elites. Are our own US elites so stupid as to think that they can ruin the US and make us economically defenseless to other elites – the Germans and the Chinese come to mind, here.
Do they think that there is some mysterious Elite-to-Elite mutual respect and admiration system? Do they really think that other nation’s Elites will not sell out the US elites – in a SECOND – when the time is right.
They may. But to me – this just proves my thesis that our US elites are stupid.
=================
Now regarding war as a distraction. Eh, maybe?
We’ve already got 3 of the things, though – Iraqistan and Libya. Will one more make a difference? Especially since we now have a non-drafted and professional military in the US.
And don’t the chemical/biological/nuclear risks of escalation prompt our elites to think that their own effete butts might be harmed.
Probably not, again. But that just proves they are so stupid that they don’t realize that they, themselves, are mortal.
Good questions, HC, and a good debate – I think, all the way around.
=================
Regarding Bossier as the “long” ranger. Is it cause you feel like a lone right winger in a room full of liberals, Boss?
This place does tilt a little bit left, maybe?
But maybe we can make it tilt pragmatic, going forward. Maybe.
That about sums it up. But I am really with you on pragmatism. Being liberal on the environment but conservative on immigration makes sense. The positions pragmatically support one another. Mixing and matching could help hammer out a more hopeful future. Who knows?
“Proving once again that size matters ;)”
-mm-
Funny stuff, Myrtle! I meant to get back to you last week – but I finally got sick of being blocked and 403’d and just gave up.
So, yep, you’re right that I’m in my mid 50’s. And I’m in good health, and with enough assets and family that I don’t worry a whole lot about income and healthcare, and such.
I mean, I’ve made my plans, followed the rules, saved like crazy – and now I’m at the point of saying “screw it” there’s nothing else I can do right now without lapsing into paranoia. But I know doors and options will close to me as I age – nothing else I can do about that right now.
If you know what I mean –
=================
Anyway, a little family trivia.
My inlaws are in their late 80’s – and I’m pretty sure they have more money than God (god?) has little green apples.
They use a free computer program to print birthday cards for a total cost of about 5 cents.
My wife and I have done OK, financially. Compared to lots of folks in our peer group and around the world we are truly B(b)lessed – and we are humbly aware of it.
We buy birthday cards off the dollar rack at the grocery store. Every once in a while, I’ll sneak into the dollar store in town and buy 2 cards for a dollar.
My kids hardly have a pot to pee in – in comparison to my inlaws, and my wife and me.
And they know I wish they would save some money.
And they know I don’t like extravagant cards.
Yet, they always buy the 3+ dollar Hallmark birthday cards.
Rags, to riches, to rags in 3 generations??
DAMN – I sure hope not.
One more thing – and then I’m done for the night.
I’ve been trying to sell some timber and get some pulpwood thinned on my granddad’s old farm. So I’ve been calling foresters off a list.
And yesterday I ran into a genuine gentleman – a lifelong forester, who sounded to be in his mid 60’s. He said he couldn’t help me and cordially offered to put me in touch with someone who could.
But we kept chatting on the phone – and I told him that I really would like to have him take a look at my trees. He finally told me that he couldn’t make time to do it – – that he spent all his working time doing forest management for ONE family trust.
ONE FAMILY TRUST
I roughly calculate that it should take at least 100,000 acres of woodland to justify a full time forester.
So, Tripp – not everyone negates the value of land in favor of paper.
And – to you tax cutting conservatives – there’s at least one family in the southeast that will be doing just fine – no matter what the economy, “class warfare?” and “tax increases for the rich,” have in store for them.
So we’ve had the summer of increasing volatility within MENA society and the financial markets rocking and truly rolling, and now the banksters are once more holding a gun up to the heads of our western OECD leaders saying – give us the money again – or once more we’re gonna crash the system!
And tis’ going ugly peeps… no one in the Eurozone wants to take the losses this time around. No one in the more robust regions of Germany or France wants to grab the nettle…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UGDTtqklSo
The clock on this one is still ticking, and credit is once more drying up fast. As so far no resolution has been found. Oh dear?
Meanwhile the mass ‘monkeys’ on the streets are not fooled by the randomness anymore, they’re joining up all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and see the real deal picture finally emerging…
That the (1%)few have been hiving off privately the riches for decades or more, and when their swinging-big dick-tricks those CDO/CDS financial instruments go bomb blast and fail… that the losses are publicised to the (99%) masses… Which the then in the pockets of the corporates Govts grab back in fees-n-taxes to pay off.
(Nice work if you can get it – family connections and elite public schools and universities attendance required)
So here’s my pick OWS clip today. Hypocrisy has its own elegant symmetry…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYPFLw9S280&f
Make no mistake the 2nd American Revolution has begun for sure, and its spreading to the UK next, (Saturday 15th Oct in fact)… but do these protest ever really work out? Do the 99% protestors end up with what they really need?
The new form of direct representative Govt they deserve? Or simply a new change of emperors clothes and sadly just more of the same?
The winter of discontent is not quite fully upon us, but what a year 2012 is heading up to be.
Hold on to your hats CFN peeps!
Be seeing you…
Another post eaten by the site. Here come the pieces reposted:
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You said:
Thanks for the compliment and, yes, you are correct. From strictly a logical and farsighted viewpoint, it IS better for the Aristos to have a strong, large middle class and overall economic health, not just for we Peasants, but for themselves, as well.
Hell, Henry Ford came up with the idea, but he couched it in different terms of needing workers to be able to afford his products.
All my life I resisted the ideas of marketing, mass psychology and advertising, thinking facts and truth (or at least calm, well-thought and bolstered debate) and reason could now stand against it at this, a pinnacle of human civilization that was just going to keep getting better and not just materially.
It was quite a shock to my system to learn that things don’t have to make sense to be acceptable to human beings, gripped as we are by our Lizard Brains, evolutionary imperatives, or whatever you want to call it.
Say it three times and absorb it, things, where human beings are concerned, don’t HAVE to make sense.
Often, making logical sense is an IMPEDIMENT oand doubly so when the mass psychology has reached a certain tipping point and authority increasingly fuses with insanity.
The science of marketing has repeatedly shown this to be true to the tenth decimal place, so to speak.
Yes, our 0.01% Elites’ behavior will be ultimately self-destructive, but they are having the most fantastic time NOW, snorting up everyone’s spare money and pissing it away, then hiding the jars of piss in the Caymans.
Our noble “Job Creators”. What a piece of RW Corporate Socialist propaganda, eh? Of course the term doesn’t make sense, doubly so against the backdrop of 8000 years of history.
However, I guarantee you that millions of gullible RWers and plenty of the rest of the apathetic herd are now using the focus-groupped and neuromarketed term “Job Creators”. Probably some LWers, too, even though the term was designed to club and neuter them.
Sadly, repetition works.
Repetition works.
Repetition works.
Repetition works.
Repetition works.
Yar-har-har, what a mad world and species!
Google “neuromarketing” and see how far down the rabbit hole we have already fallen in terms of our mass psychological state and it’s implications for the future of totalitarian darkness that almost certainly awaits us.
Back to our unsensible and insensible Aristocrats. Think of how much sense there is in the dying cocaine addict or alcoholic continuing their substance abuse until their inevitable and foreseen death makes.
I actually saw this happen in real life. In my youth, a friend’s uncle was just such an alcoholic, who one day visited the doctor to find out he had approximately 9% of his liver still functioning.
The doctor was unequivocal and told him if he continued drinking he would die, and that within months. No question left, it was now a certainty.
My friend’s uncle continued drinking and in a few months died.
(continued)
That’s one way to look at it. The non-conspiratorial way of a clas of people trapped in a cycle of ultimately self-destructive and self-defeating behavior.
Since human beings are conspiratorial creatures, in evidence every day in courtrooms across the nation, I still believe that whatever combination of factors is at work here, most prominent are the conspiratorial (both implied and occasionally explicit now that there is almost no law for the top 0.01%) factors.
This assumes that we Peasants erroneously ascribe our motives to the top 0.01%, and puzzle when, by that logic, little to nothing the Elite makes sense…from a Peasant perspective.
For instance, we assume that 9-11 was a tragedy, a horror. For the Elites, which they’d never dare admit in public, it opened the door to full-scale lawlessness for them, mass concentration of wealth, power as well as systematic economic and political exploitation of a now-VERY-malleable populace that was already conditioned by decades of advertising and PR to be unable to critically think very well.
(final part)
For we Peasants, 9-11 was a horror. For the Aristocratic Elite, the “New Pearl Harbor” was the greastest thing to happen to them as a group.
We assume that this Greater Depression that has only begun, is a tragedy and horror.
But for the Elites, it has further allowed them to depress the wages and therefore the power, of the Peasantry. Their wealth continues to skyrocket ever faster. It has made we Peasants more desperate and evermore willing to do what we are told, ask no questions, and close our eyes even if we do see something immoral or illegal.
Find the link I made (both this and last week) on the Citibank Plutonomy memo, and you’ll see clearly the benefits to the wholesale impoverishment of the bottom 80% in both the top 0.01% Aristiocracy in both the country and world.
Read the cold, Nazi-esque analyses, of our future.
You are no longer necessary, Peasant. You don’t buy enough stuff to matter. To count as a human being in our Plutonomy.
End of story.
As I have said many times over the past decade, in my opinion, it’s all about maneuvering humanity back into a pre-1776 “neofeudal” condition, where coincidentally, Peasants then also didn’t have enough “purchasing power” to matter to the Elite as anything more than burden animals or cowed artisans where needed.
Medieval Europe was…a Plutonomy.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Hancock,
You pretty much nailed it. I was watching on Morning Joe how the disparity between the top income earners and the rest of us poor slobs is even greater than that of the Great Depression.
About the attitude of the globalists, like Jeffrey Immelt, we should all be grateful for his factory building in the BRIC countries because for every thousand jobs he creates there, we get 300 new jobs here. He wants us to be proud of GE and root for them. Does that mean if we don’t lionize him he won’t bother to create jobs here?
Oh, yeah and GE paid 0% in taxes in 2010. Isn’t this the poster child of why the Republican cant of lower taxes and the job creators will do their magic, isn’t a working paradigm? Just because you say something with conviction doesn’t make it so.
When you look at how influence peddling has been going on for decades, keeping us from implementing anything but a global war and monetizing machine that further destroys the environment and way of live for billions of people, you begin to see the picture.
These people are making the decision for us all that it is far more important to keep themselves high on the hog at the expense of life itself.
Yes they want a neo-feudal model, but there is the calculus of change and economic determinism. Is China going to continue backing this? Is this really going to go unchallenged? There are a lot of organized crime syndicates around the world, are they going to undermine the game plan?
I wouldn’t bet on this going on without a hitch…
Thanks for the mini course. I’m digesting it.
I’ve thought for 15 years that the elite has wanted our society to more resemble Mexico’s than what we had mid 20th century.
There no logic to it long term.
I’ve seen the “CEO earnings vs. average worker” tables across the net several times this week, comparing the two for several different countries. The second widest margin they displayed was 50:1, which I think is a pretty big stretch of a person’s worth, but the widest margin, by far, was the U.S. at 475:1.
I’ve met some really cool people in my life, doing very important work for the benefit of all life on Earth, and I never once thought that even they were worth 475 times as much I am. Twenty times, perhaps, but only because they are ahead of me on the timeline. My last salary was just over 40k. Twenty times that much is 800k. No one needs more than 800k to live a very good life. And the ironic part of my personal analysis is that these people who might just deserve that much more than I got generally couldn’t care less about money.
Leads me to believe that the more one cares about making lots of money, the less one probably deserves it. If these guys I’m talking about were making 800k, they’d be supporting a crew of people doing carbon-negative work for the benefit of everyone else. And hey, what do you know, that’s precisely what they’re doing. What good has Lloyd Blankfein ever done for the planet?
Neo-Feudalism, HO-oooh!
Now we can see why the ONLY secure “career opportunity” in the FUSA is Hired Killer. The pay and bennies have gone down considerably as of late, but I can pretty much guarantee they’ll always be supplied with FOOD and the best weaponry that can be had.
(Now, just why is it, they’re not “bringing the troops home”? Highly trained, unemployed, restless and hungry professional killers; what could possibly happen? Eye-rack… Ear-ack… what was the name of that place again?)
Getting one half of the bottom class to kill and oppress the other isn’t all that difficult when times get desperate (or are purposely “made” so).
HOWEVER, I would agree that it won’t be as smooth of a ride this time because of one thing: communications. Ideas will tend to get around this time, and only those who WISH to be blinded will be. Being a good german will be a CHOICE, thus making the whole operation much more hinky and fraught with bitterness and danger [for all parties].
No, thank you for listening with an open mind and I look forward to hearing your thoughts when you’ve digested it, agree with me or not.
Interesting thoughts on wage disparity, Tripp. Very good.
We’re kind of in winter prep panic-mode ’round h’yar; keeps me from much rumination. (Probably a consummation devoutly to be wished, eh? ;o)
“HOWEVER, I would agree that it won’t be as smooth of a ride this time because of one thing: communications. Ideas will tend to get around this time, and only those who WISH to be blinded will be. Being a good german will be a CHOICE”
So when can we expect the comm to go down? Do you think they’ll start with iPhones, Androids, or Blackberries? Hmmm…
And the Amerikan worker makes 20 – 25 times more than a Chinese laborer….what good has any of us billions of laborers done for this planet??
Hancock writes:
” Peasants then also didn’t have enough “purchasing power” to matter to the Elite as anything more than burden animals or cowed artisans where needed.”
In many ways, the medieval guild craftsmen/artisan was more secure and empowered than the lone American craftsmen of 2011. In fact, and in light of the destruction of unions, the current artisan of 2011 is more more estranged from from the benefits collective cooperation and economic bargaining power than what medieval guild membership provided. Today, when a lone American craftsmen/artisan – isolated and competing against the low-wage craftsmen from India – is hurt he is on his own if unable to afford exorbitant health care insurance which is also multiplied if said artisan has committed a pre-existing condition sin. At least “back in the day” a guild of fellow craftsmen were there to lend economic support when sickness or catastrophe struck.
And the medieval craftsmen/artisan was not forced to go deep into debt to acquire a MA diploma awarded by a university professor who can surely talk the the talk, but, in all too many instances,is unable to walk the walk unless displaying a very considerable competence in the art of the “de-skilled.” ( I am not making this up; look the term up.) The medieval artisan was not forced to knock on internet gallery doors and bow down to snotty and aesthetically ignorant gallery owners who otherwise would be bored housewives if not for the hobby-provided largesse of their very-well-to-do-corporate husbands.
No, the medieval guild apprentice worked his way up the ranks, guided by real artisans. Unlike the MA “sculpture artist” of today, whose bag of displayed peanuts, or dead Deer laying on the gallery floor is nothing but a Jerry Springer episode flushed down the gallery toilet( or gracing the living quarters of some dumb gullible rich person) the evidence of medieval artists efforts still stand today, glorious and beautiful.
No, Hancock…we have regressed even further than you can imagine.
Hmmmm…that’s a tough nut to crack, the whole generalization about Good Germanism being a choice. People have been debating that for decades, and now even having had a small taste of it (minus the physical danger) at least on a psychological level here in the “FUSA”, it is still something at work on a level almost too complex to put into words.
Denial comes in all kinds packages and we’ve all partaken of it at one time or another.
I think I said this before: Is it possible history will arrange it that Free German troops would one day liberate American Slave Labor Camps full of Liberals, Environmentalists, Uppity Negroes, Gays, Lesbians, Marxist Socialists (as distinct to the Uber-RW Corporate Socialists in charge), and Other Enemies of the State?
Seems unlikely. The Free German troops part, not the American Slave Labor Camps part.
I wish that was a joke. I guess it sort of is, but not in the conventional sense.
On the Titanic, sadly, detatched humor is probably the best way to go for those who notice the deck tilting first.
I was there for a bit, but those OWSers and their tiny ray of hope for the future pulled me back to taking things more seriously.
“Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in.”
–Al Pacino in “Carlito’s Way”
You’ve got the right idea, ozone. Humor.
Maybe most of the elites wouldn’t admit it in public, but Bush did. And he repeated it to his base multiple times. Google the phrase “lucky me, I hit the trifecta” and see for yourself.
I believe that other members of the elite also occasionally pointed out that 9-11 was the best thing that ever happened for them. (Although they’d never admit that it was planned for that reason.)
But truth telling is frowned upon, just like when Bush told the president of Argentina that that best way to get the US economy going again was to start a war.
Those are some scary good points, Buck. Not much I can add to them.
Good thing the physical comforts of our “energy slaves” from the Age of Cheap, Abundant Energy not to mention docilizing TV, keep us from missing such things until it’s too late, which it is likely already.
Even the poorest of us can afford the strongest drug of all…TV.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I partake of the TV drug myself, especially during baseball and football seasons (hockey not so much anymore).
Last night I went to a meeting talking about an occupation of my town. There were a lot of people there.
There was some discussion of goals. One guy read an email from his Egyptian friend, talking about the “success” of their revolution, and how it was because they had one demand – remove Mubarek, and see how well that had worked out for them.
I was dumfounded. Seriously? Now the the Egyptian army has taken over the government and increased the repression, this guy is still crowing about his “victory”?
So then everyone started talking about their “one demand”. Campaign finance reform seemed to be the favorite. I couldn’t believe it. You’re going to camp out in the rain with the mosquitoes for the right to pay for campaigns? What about the lobbyists? Do the taxpayers have to pay for the hookers and golf vacations also?
So I stood up and said that our one demand should be the abolishment of class society. Everyone looked horrified! OK, then, I said, then the end of corporate charters. Everyone who wants to go into business should have to do it in their own name, and be liable for their own practices.
That didn’t go anywhere either.
Revolution? I think not.
I think that I mentioned here back in February that my Egyptian friend pointed out that the Egyptian military brass was meeting at the Pentagon when the uprising started.
There were some here who scoffed. Who thought it was a real uprising that wouldn’t be compromised. Well, I’m sorry to be right, but you have to pay attention to little things like that.
It was a real uprising, but so easily misled by the nice soldiers in the tanks who “refused” to shoot the protesters. So the protesters gave them flowers and hugs and went home.
And now the army rules.
I just looked up “deskilling”. Byt hat definition, clearly the Corporate Media has also been deskilled, quite purposefully.
After all, if one is going to rob a house, one starts by disconnecting any alarms, no?
You are correct in that the medieval feudal transition to today is more complex than generalizations, mine or anyone, would allow.
The aspects you bring up make what is coming even more purely vile, in terms of atomizing tyranny emanating from the Aristocracy and “trickling down” on the rest of us.
It appears that, as with Malthus, some or all of Ned Ludd’s philosophies may be turning out to be at least partially true, albeit centuries after both were glibly dismissed by Global Aristocrats as dismal failures.
Exponentially expanding energy budget covers a lot of sins, doesn’t it?
It also looks like Marx, who was entirely wrong about Communism, had capitalism pegged to a tee.
As someone mentioned above, maybe ANY system, no matter what it’s definition and justification, can and will ultimately be used as cover for tyranny and Aristocratic privilege.
“The fault, dear Cassius, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.”
–Brutus in “Julius Caesar”
Yes, the whole Arab Spring, absolutely reeks of the Bresinski Method of destabilization and soverign wealth theft versus the Kissinger Method.
Now three years into the Obama Production, one can see the benefits of alternating strategies (to the Global Aristocracy) in order to sow confusion in the ranks of potential victim nations and our own.
Boy, would the Teabaggers ever be surprised if they realized that Obama is batting Clean-Up Slot in their Neoconservative Masters’ batting order!
Talk about exploding heads!
That’s a very insightful and clear analysis of income and “worth,” Tripp. Therefore, let me see if I can muddy things up a little bit. HAH!
Even if you extend your numbers in both directions – say you made $100K in your best year and a CEO/whatever deserves 40 times that much. That still only gets him to $4 million/year. Which is a nice chunk of change – but NOTHING compared to what top earners in the US get.
Now – someone will immediately say something about the free market setting worth and salary. Which is hard to argue with and IMPOSSIBLE to change, here in the US of A.
===============
So, logically, tax rates should be progressive enough that excessively high compensation is returned to the government that made it all possible, here in the US of A.
I’m thinking something just short of the 90% marginal tax rate that was in effect when the US was its most prosperous – under Dwight D Eisenhower – a great Republican, if there ever was one.
====================
Here, must be where Hancock’s TV drug comes into play. But I would, still, like to get inside the head of someone making $25K a year – who has ZERO logical hope of EVER making more than $100K per year –
yet who fights tooth and nail against “Tax Increases for the Rich.” What thoughts are inside a head like that??
Is it just an echo chamber – EMPTY, except for the voice of Hannity and Limbaugh??
Or does it say – I’m going to win the lottery and be RICH, RICH, RICH.
“…the more one cares about making lots of money, the less one probably deserves it.”
-trippticket-
That’s well said, Tripp. How do you think it would look on a bumper sticker?
“That didn’t go anywhere either.
Revolution? I think not.”
-wage-
Yeah, wage, I’m afraid you may be right.
I’ve been watching the vote totals for the OWS demands on the CoupNation website. They are so LOW and SLOW GROWING as to be ludicrous, IMHO.
The highest vote total in any category is less than 9000 votes. And this is from this young, connected, and wired in generation of protestors.
I was the only one on CFN who reacted to Ms. Kim Asadurian’s one and only CFN post – saying that the OWS’ers were having sex in public. She may be a delightful lady – and research shows she lives less than 35 miles from Wall Street in a very nice house close to Oyster Bay – but why was that her one and only post?? Ever?
One of the great things about the US is that most of us live quite relatively well, and our social safety nets are so good that few people go hungry for very long.
But, looking at the great revolutions of history, well-fed people are not likely to revolt.
Slow incremental change by group action –
Is all we are going to get.
Where else are they supposed to have sex? They’re living in public.
It’s just common sense.
I don’t know, Wage – I still think it’s a BS charge – designed to detract from the legitimacy of the owsers in the “public?” mind. I just can’t picture public sex at a public protest at a public space that is closely monitored by the NYPD.It’s too easy to hide under a blanket or something.
As I discovered in the ’70’s.
Interesting update from an Egyptian, including the helplessness the aware feel while watching the masses be manipulated into civil war.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/dispatches_from_cairo_egypts_black_sunday_20111012/?ln
I agree. I was mostly joking.
“”…the more one cares about making lots of money, the less one probably deserves it.”
-trippticket-
That’s well said, Tripp. How do you think it would look on a bumper sticker?”
I’ll add it to my upcoming schwag store on our soon-to-be-launched website! Along with the t-shirts about the hunting wasps, and how permaculturists “do it on contour”;)
I think that he was being sarcastic, M.
==
I hope so. I’m not familiar with his handle. Though I’ve seen too many of these types of idiotic arguments by these so-called “intellectuals”, that I’m very wary of attributing sarcasm to such idiocy.
Hey Vlad! Good to see you are now three different handles.
Vlad = Metuselah = Mika
The more you change the more you stay the same.
“”The fault, dear Cassius, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.”
–Brutus in “Julius Caesar””
That all sounds vaguely familiar…
“And the Amerikan worker makes 20 – 25 times more than a Chinese laborer….what good has any of us billions of laborers done for this planet??”
Well said, but there are a few, and more coming, who are trying to turn the tide. One farm, ranch, or garden at a time. We possess the knowledge to make it happen, but rarely the will.
From local news:
Earlier, on the UW campus, between 100 and 200 students and some professors gathered at Red Square at noon for an hourlong round of speeches, the first time the “Occupy” movement has touched the state’s largest college campus.
A protester arrested last night at Seattle City Hall said the Westlake mall occupation was having a major rally Saturday and was going to get bigger.
The provinces are making an effort to keep up.
“And the Amerikan worker makes 20 – 25 times more than a Chinese laborer….what good has any of us billions of laborers done for this planet??”
-the viking-
That’s a nice answer @ 2:20, Tripp, but I get the idea that that’s not what the Viking is getting at.
Maybe he’s trying to say that “job creators” are more valuable than laborers for the planet – and that’s why they earn 475 times what average US workers earn.
Mr. D Viking – would you care to elaborate for us?
==================
Your swhwag store, hey? What a great idea.
How’s about some CFN brainstorming.
I’m a fun-guy
She’s a fun-gal
We like to hyphae-nate
That was a good read Wage. Having recently read ‘Collapse’ by Jared Diamond I’d say what is currently happening to the Egyptian Copts is what happens whenever overpopulation, political turmoil and more than one tribe inhabits a land.
Competition gets eliminated by those having the power to kill. Even members of ones own tribe can be at peril when possessions are coveted by others of higher status and power. Maintaining and increasing power by those in authority becomes more important than the greater needs of society.
Sadly this fact of those in power is true in prosperous peaceful times as well but at least then everybody else doesn’t look away from murder in fear, there is a lot less violence then.
Reform movements are often started and led by eccentrics, outcasts, misfits, etc. Do the media expect the leadership to come from a bunch of conformists who are worried about the reactions of their peers?
Americans are obsessed with “trust fund babies” and such because we take a prurient interest in other people’s finances. Never mind that receiving family money doesn’t even register on the scales of financial improvidence and ethical rot; third parties who are up to their own eyeballs in unpayable debts and involved in the seediest rackets see it fit to make censorious comments about financial help from relatives, which is very commonplace and is often handled discreetly and with class.
The corrolary problem is that the givers and recipients of family help are too conciliatory to tell the assholes to shut the fuck up. As one of these conciliatory parties, I’ve been guilty of assent by silence. The next time I discern an insinuation that I’m not independent or industrious enough from the likes of the consummately rude bagwoman for my slumlord, who apologized to me for yawning but not for exposing me to her telephone harassment of her ex-husband, or from the shit-talking enforcer thug who will be my building manager until enough evidence is marshaled to remand him to the general population at Corcoran, I intend to send the aggressor away in tears.
The day that the War on Drugs is fought equitably against all drug users, regardless of class and race, will be VJ day–the victor being not our valiant selves, but Drugs.
Or maybe we should think of it as the day when the low-flying black helicopters will be pushed off the decks of aircraft carriers into a watery demise in the South China Sea, or when the Drug Czars will be taken into the forests of Siberia and shot to herald the inauguration of the Stonership of the Proletariat.
I knew that my BA minors in metaphor mixology and prose bullshittery would come in handy someday.
My point, though, is a serious one, and I’m not the first to make it. Fred Reed has made searing critiques of the war on drugs from his perspective as an American expatriate in Mexico, one whose new home is being ravaged by narcogangsterism; at Lawyers, Guns and Money, the War on Drugs is referred to as the “war on (certain classes of) drugs (used by certain classes of people).” The point is that the varieties of thuggery routinely used against poor drug users and traffickers wouldn’t fly if used against people who have meaningful recourse to the law and to their elected officials.
The article on plutonomy was an eye opener. Unbelievably blunt.
Something had to have snapped in the upper crust about 50 years ago. I can’t see FDR, Harry Truman, or Ike being on board with today’s elite. While they were powerful and sometimes ruthless men, they seemed to have more consideration for those they commanded or lead. in contrast todays elite seem “smaller than life.”
Did it change or is that naivete talking? I read the book “The Fourth Turning’ about 15 tears ago. It’s main theme is that history runs in cycles and that it has all happened before.
Dont forget: Cain’s 9/9/9 idea might be alright if we had a viable currency. Other good ideas would involve luring Corporations back by lowering Corporate Taxes. But Nothing, NOTHING is going to save us with this Fiat, Federal Reseve, create money out of thin air and then loan it to the United States madness. Cain aint gonna fix this and neither is Romney. Only Ron Paul. Don’t know about Bachman. But Ron Paul h as dedicated is life to this and deserves the chance to do it. Bachman make a pilgrimage to Israel before her canididacy and then bodes very ill indeed. Palin did too before her non candidacy. Once you know who owns the Fed, this kind of thing becomes crucial knowledge.
Cunning Runt = Running Cunt. And then you want to comment on the names of others?
Still obsessed with a Right Wing Christian Takeover? Even when we’re in the midst of a slow mo Communist One? Stay off Taki Mag – you aren’t worthy of it.
Thank you for your kind words. I’ll think about it – this is a special site and worth fighting for. Where else can people of some many persuasions come and fight? It’s like Vallhala where the heroes chop each other to bits and reconsititue to fight again the next day.
The Left dearly wants to end all free speech but their own. You are too naive to see how dark the world really is. It comes from a soft heart. That’s both good and bad.
How can any one trust the Goverment on the 2nd Ammendment after the confiscation attempt in N.O during Katrina?
Good points to Al. Now they’re establishing some flimsy pretext for attacking Iran. Why don’t we let Israel fight its own Wars?
Good conspiracy site by an Orthodox Monk – a convert from Judaism. Apparently it was ethnic Jews known as the Donmeh, cyrpto Muslims decscended for the followers of Sabbati Zvi, who orchestracted the Armenian Genocide.
http://www.realzionistnews.com/?cat=71
I think they also want the pigs on Wall Street to cease robbing them in every imaginable way.
—————————————–
While I agree with the sentiment, I think it is more useful to see it as a variety of trends working against the U.S, Europe, and the working classes in both those regions. Go at it from that angle and it has a better chance of being a really large movement. Make it about ‘thieves’ etc., and its chances are diminished accordingly.
Corruption is rife no doubt…and failing to deal with it only makes it worse. Instead of going after the WS financial services industry, which is totally out of control, Obama decides to try to take down the CA marijuana industry. If that qualifies as “progressive”….well, I’ve already given up on the Democratic Party, which is basicaly the General Motors of politics…..so I won’t waste any more space on their sold out minnions.
They’ve been setting up Israel since the beginning. Why do you think all their propaganda outlets keep inciting the jihadis with their staged paliwood theater propaganda all the time. It’s Israel this Israel that, 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, headline “news” for decades and decades and decades. At first it was to be genocide with conventional weapons during the 1948 war. Then it was to be genocide with chemical weapons during the 1967 and 1973 wars. Now they’re setting up genocide with atomic weapons given to the Pakis Saudis Iran Egypt etc.
“For instance, we assume that 9-11 was a tragedy, a horror. For the Elites, which they’d never dare admit in public, it opened the door to full-scale lawlessness for them, mass concentration of wealth, power as well as systematic economic and political exploitation of a now-VERY-malleable populace that was already conditioned by decades of advertising and PR to be unable to critically think very well.”
Back when I used to follow usenet alt.conspiracy in the late 90’s, this prediction you present was made over and over, during the the 3-4 years prior to 911. Based upon the Wolfowitz doctrine, a “Pearl Harbor” event was needed in order to pave their future path. The psychics presenting this information were called k00ks, and flamed non-stop by the (govt/corp/elite-employed [military-industrial complex]) sp00ks/skeptibunkers/disinformants/shills.
It became increasingly obvious during the 8 months leading up to 911, that something was entirely wrong. We had the first major economic bubble pop (internet stocks), the Enron “Kenny-Boy” energy/stock fraud fiasco (Tyco/WorldCom/etc), the “powdered envelopes” of US military grade Anthrax finding their way to Demotards, and Bush’s approval rating in the low 20% (revolutionary levels/Marshall Law).
I remember having a dream the night before 911, where I was talking to around 3-4 arab terrorists – I ironically suggested dirty bombs to them, in addition to their alternate blood-lust desires (expecting them to *finally* get the point that killing innocents wasn’t the solution). In 1987, I drew a picture of one of the world trade center towers being hit by a huge explosion, while a helicopter flew overhead. I think we all have psychic flashes of Deja-Vu, but most of us don’t remember them…
Let’s just say, that it became fairly obvious to me, at that point, how willing *they* were to backstab any ally on a moment’s notice (Saddam during the Iraq/Iran war, Osama during the Afghan/Soviet war, ad nauseum. Agent provocateurs, infiltrating cells, planting attack ideas/methodologies, then maintaining “stand down” orders [and pulling off a 10% probable hit on the very section of the Pentagon that had just been reinforced, and *mostly* evacuated {wonder what those who weren’t evacuated knew/threatened}]. Condi’s claims about having no idea hijacked planes would suicide bomb targets was a lie – they had been briefed on this exact possibility 3 times in the year prior to 911).
If you think about it rationally at this moment in time, were the WTC/Pentagon really ill-conceived targets? I’m not that fond of the WTC as a target, but it did completely represent and employ the very bastards, that continue scamming individuals out of their money, while making themselves “capital” out of nothing but massive debt. If the protesters must kill/murder, then their targets have to stop being innocent peasants/women/children, and need to start becoming the elites/CEOs/generals/politicians/etc, who continue raping the planet and killing innocents in land/resource grab wars. But as I’ve already said, the time to respond is about 14 years too late. The biosphere is beyond repair IMHO (atmopheric thinning/boil-off, resulting in a Mars-style atmosphere in a couple centuries), and any human actions now are just knee-jerk and ineffectual. Unless, of course, you’re the elite/govt/corp rich guy, building underground bunkers – then you might buy you and yours another century or 3 beyond that (wouldn’t that be enjoyable!)…
Vladik, any learned person who has studied the Jewish history and texts and Christian history and texts can immediately discern the lies told in the so-called “New Testament”. It’s only ignorant people that are fooled by that Roman Imperialist propaganda tale and web lies. Hyam Maccoby has wrote several books on the subject, and there’s nothing in his books that a learned person familiar with the Jewish texts and Roman Catholic texts could not tell you the same.
Evenin’ Hancock,I believe your quote was from Godfather III, ;*)
Michael Corleone: “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in!
More good quotes from GF III.
“Power wears out from those who do not have it.”
“Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.
“Never let anyone know what you are thinking.”
“The higher I go, the crookeder it becomes!”
“He’d better be careful. It’s dangerous to be an honest man. ”
“The richest man is the one with the most powerful friends.”
I know cut and paste! I am an old -time Ginzo with Italian roots.
I know, no political shit here., but I am still picking tomatos, squash and green beans here. It is freakish.No frost yet . To Tripp a question, I will level my small area of crops with a scythe. Can I just burn them in place or burn them in the spring and not harm the soil microbes? Otherwise it will be a mess. I figure if I burn them most of the carbon will still be laid down and the soil will not really be affected. Any Thoughts?
I know, we are all hard asses here. just watch this you tube loop and see that we can all be friends, besides our differances.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYLsyNBnE5M&feature=related
So, Why can’t we be friends? I realize animals kill to survive. That is the circle of life. Some must die so that others may live. However in the animal kingdom, humans excluded, killing is for a purpose. Humans kill without prejudice. Sure our leaders say it is justified, so why not? It is us against them. It sickens me to think what we do to this earth. Carry on the good fight people, but I think the fight has already been lost. Sorry to be a downer. Shit, we have mass shootings in this country all the time. I am not anti-gun at all. I have a few. People are really gettin’ down these days. RT
Yes but some of us knew that from the get go!
“When you consider that a 1% rise in OC is responsible for an additional 100,000 gallons of water storage capacity per acre”
WTF is OC? I ass*u*me it’s not the west coast. I presume it’s something about solid carbon, that has already been sequestered (is there really any of that – clearcutting Amazon Rainforest, et al).
If yer gunna use an acronym, use the full name first, then rape us all in dah @$$!!!
I need some hints – please? (I’m trying to be pleasant, asking for help). I’m no shill – I need serious *HELP*!!! I think we all need serious *HELP*, at this moment in time… Would you step on us, while you master the ways of the “permiculturist”? I thought *NOT*.
I’ve been warped by the rain, driven by the snow – Drunk and dirty – dont ‘cha know! *Willin*
Dallas Alice! I know I have know discourse here, but I have the advantage of a trucker’s mainline…
Correction – *NO*
Know place like home (google it)… Know *return*
“Bwahaha!!!
Is that you Fabian?”
Vlad, you are too hilarious. And not very *hidden*.
Get a few more aliases, you *heathen*!!! LOL!!!
Yes, I reply to myself (credence?)
“Why listen to “pessimism,” when you can simply download a new MP3 set to your Steven Jobs’ disposable iPod?”
Any idea how much landfill we require, to dispose of our *ideals*.
C’est *TOUT*. The garbage-men come here every week, spreading the sh!t every which way. It’s pissing me off, how often they have garbage on the street, the day *AFTER*.
Yer all sitting there complaining about a FEW mega rich people making big $$$$’s…so freakin what!!…..these guys worked within the framework of policies set up by the politicians…..thats the Amerikan spirit to make something out of nothing (a beautiful thing)..not saying they are more valuable than your typical laborer we are all part of this ant colony and each has a position in it……everyone one of us make money or recieve money from the result of someone who worked to build a corporation or company or bussiness that had the gumption the vision and took the risk to build these job creating enities….ask yourself how many people work for this guy blankfein??…..everyone is connected in the money web……..the greatest country in the world you live in was built with this idea of the sky is the limit attitude so embrace it don’t demean it…. it’s all we have……
Yes, pushing paper is a mighty job. Thank god we them billionaires and trillionaires and their legions of secretaries and underlings to manage that task for us.
Thank god we ^have them billionaires
“what good has any of us billions of laborers done for this planet??”
-D Viking-
OK, vik, thanks for the reply.
“how many people work for this guy blankfein??”
-d viking-
A better question is to ask how many of blankfein’s executive banker employees actually do honest work that benefits the productive middle class of this country.
And how many of those executives have been paid far too much for doing work that has helped to destroy the middle class of this country.
==================
You should advocate for your OWN best interest, Viking. To the extent that you advocate for the interest of the super wealthy – instead of for your own interest –
You do harm to the idea of democracy.
And, maybe, show how much Hannity and Rush have gotten inside of your head.
Protect your own interest, viking.
I’ll guarantee the wealthy will protect theirs.
Ol’ SOL is turning into a teenager again. He’s gettin’ a bad case of acne.
http://spaceweather.com/images2011/13oct11/hmi4096_blank.jpg?PHPSESSID=c4bo2kgfudjna983r1akv76586
2012 at solar max should be very interesting!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlVWArmysic&feature=related
“the greatest country in the world” – Dasviking
Another cliche/mantra that has been repeated for so long that most people take it as fact, but I can’t let you get off that easily. Is this the greatest country in the world and by what measure? Have you been to every country in the world? Maybe we were the greatest country in the world at some time, but I think that time has come and gone.
“You do harm to the idea of democracy”……well i suspect your idea of democracy is that everyone is supposed to be treated the same and everyone should be on the same level economically speaking in this case and whatz yours is mine and so on and on…. for you want to bring these people down to your level of existance…. “how many of those executives have been paid far too much for doing work”……..that sounds almost socialistic/communistic to me……i don’t care how they made their millions or billions and that’s what a true democracy (freedom of economic self-determination) is in my view…..that’s the beauty of freedom and i encourage it and protect it………..
“…i don’t care how they made their millions or billions and that’s what a true democracy (freedom of economic self-determination) is in my view” – Dasviking
What your view of a true democracy is doesn’t mean jackshit, particularly when 1)it doesn’t jive with the definition of a true democracy and 2)we don’t live in a true democracy.
You don’t care how they made their millions or billions? And therein lies the problem.
What was that I said about “good germans”?
Oh yeah, now I remember….
Saaaay, besides those fine buzzwords “freedom” and “democracy” to cover for massive fraud and murder, the old chestnut “g[G]od is with us” or “g[G]od’s on our side” comes in right handy too!
Hey, the path meanders its’ way straight to the heart of Hell, but it’s always a thrilling ride. Those with dreams of Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens should enjoy the wallowing in fantasies of endless power and death. Valhalla? Ummmm, mebbe not.
I would encourage these fine “folks” to step right up and identify themselves (’cause I’m so interested in their “perspective”, don’cha know).
Go ahead and mind your “principles”; I’ll mind “who benefits”.
Unmaking a Killing: Rooting out entitlement, parasitism, fraud, rapacious greed, and other guarantors of destruction – http://goo.gl/13bht
the greatest country in the world. I hear that phrase a lot and it is true in ways. The problem these days is we say it a lot more than we prove it.
Even when captialism is “working”, that is, providing lots of goodies for the “middle class”, it is destructive of the environment we depend on for our existence.
Disposable Ipods? ProgCon talked about Hallmark cards. Have you seen the ones that have a battery in them? You open them, they sing a song and then you throw them in the landfill.
Is this really what we need to get back to? Do we really need to create jobs building more highways so that people will have enough money to buy more disposable toxic junk?
Most people don’t realize that captialism has gone on steroids in the last 30 years, destroying more than it was able to destroy in the 200 years before. It took many men to cut down each massive redwood tree in the 1800s. Now they can cut down the Brazilian rainforest or the Congo with just a few.
The US steadily expands its military bases, and pollutes more land and water with its depleted uraninum every year.
Does that make us the greatest country in the world?
This shouldn’t be news to anyone but at least part of the bankster’s diabolical plan is the on going confusion created by the MSM and government’s refusal to acknowledge that they know the difference between ridiculous lack of regulation enforcement and ridiculous fraud and outright theft of through (non)accounting of transactions.
I think everyone understands that “liars” had to be created for mortgages to be created with “liar’s loans.” What’s less clear is that other “real crimes” and continuing criminal activity is ongoing along with the “legalized” looting created through acts of congress.
The end result is that all the talking “pin heads” {mostly on the right} somehow are unable to discern these details when extolling the virtues of hard work and free markets.
So now we have Occupy Wall Street’s message being co-opted into some “pie in the sky” idealism with very few pointed accusations correctly aimed at the criminal involvement of these bankster’s and the self-dealing, ethically bankrupted Congress and media outlets.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear:Right now the world markets and banking systems as well as the central banks of many western countries are being influenced to perform transactions that are a result of criminal activity.
I’m afraid the bankster’s are winning the PR war, and there is little left to protest about.
“I’m afraid the bankster’s are winning”……..I believe the politicians/STATE are winning…..there is only 2 ways that the monetary system works…either the markets choose what money is or the “STATE” does….the markets use capital created through the old fashion way of saving and investment and the “STATE” through printing fake paper and regulating the interest rates…unfortunately, I think the “STATE” has won the battle and in the process has ruined our currency……..
There is no difference between the State, the Banks, the Corporations, and the Church. They are all arms of the same criminal syndicate that uses these entities to facilitate its subjugation and complete domination over people’s lives.
Vlad,
You’re talking to yourself again. Not exactly a sign of mental health.
CR
“Does that make us the greatest country in the world?”
Nope. But then, you have an abnormally clear-eyed view of the landscape. Did you read JMG’s post over at thearchdruidreport last week? “The Peak Oil Initiation”? I think you’d dig it.
Jim kicked me off this site permanently; not sure why. I haven’t been here that long. I guess he doesn’t want any countervailing views in this crucial time of Owsers.
Farewell CFNers!
–WSP7
Widespreadpanic7, I got kicked off, too. I cannot even see or read the posts from my home computer, much less sign on. I have to go find a computer in another place to even be able to read JHK’s Monday morning post.
I support the OWSers, so I don’t think that was the reason you got kicked off.
I echo your words:
Farewell CFNers!
–WSP7
–Asoka
I, too, have been locked out of this site for 2 weeks. I believe it is a glitch in the website, not censorship. All of a sudden, yesterday, I was able to get back on – for no apparent reason -and I was able to post if I wanted.
But everything is not all right. Here I am posting, but I cannot use my back and forward arrows, nor is my keyboard cursor working. In fact, it’s not even visible. I just created a separate Word document offline, and my cursor is fine and I can use all my keyboard functions. I even verified that my computer thinks my keyboard is functioning ok. Yet, I can’t work it correctly here. This is another reason why I think the apparent bannings are really just website programming glitches. Anyway, I’m back, sort of.
Asoka, you can at least read what’s going on here by using a proxy server. Search under “proxy servers” on the internet and you’ll see what I mean.
when i fell really silly – i always use Tor and Truecrypt – not that I know if they really work…
Weird, I get this strange burning rash every time I stop by CFN. Not sure how Jim has written this strange burning rash into the blogging software, but it’s pretty irritating, JHK;)!
Personally, what with the Blackberry outage, and all the various website issues we’re all having, here and otherwise (I’ve had plenty – bank account, AT&T, etc), I think we’re seeing the first wave of high-tech systems breakdown. Running a global internet takes an immense amount of energy, and if its primary function seems to be its use as a tool for organizing against TPTB, why would they bother? They could communicate on a secure pay-to-use network, like Akamai.
Whatever happens, you guys know what needs to be done. Pleasure chatting with you the last few years!
I noticed that. They musta really got into it.
I’ve been away for awhile. tired of computers and electronics in general. not all tho.
also lotsa back pain.
Why were they banned, or maybe they just don’t love us anymore ?
I miss them. glad pro2con still on.
I read the blog but mostly don’t post lately.
Once in awhile. I tend to stay online too long and like right now, things don’t get done !
🙂
“There’s a saying that says something like: Regular Criminals dream of committing the Perfect Crime. State Criminals dream of total control of the crimescene so s the make every crime they commit “perfect”.
I liked that I think bossier said it. got tired of scrolling.
I haven’t had time to be on here. just checking in briefly. now out.
For the millionth time, It’s not censorship!
It’s software, nothing personal. Too many postings at once can set it off, live links, etc.
When I met JHK last week at a debate he was in in NYC he said he would look into getting it fixed. Don’t know what has to be done, but he is aware and is not kicking regular posters off.
Cunning, I’m positive Vlad and Metusela are two different individuals. Each has a tunnel vision of reality, but I believe Metusela is mentally ill, perhaps seriously deranged. I hope folks here don’t engage with him, maybe he will just go away if ignored.
Prog, i had to read your story about your kids to my wife, because we are in the same boat with our kids. We are comfortable economically and live below our means, our kids are struggling financially and live as if they were rich, eating out at expensive restaurants most days, etc. I think they are conditioned by the coorate propaganda to equate spending with quality of life. Sad.
Yor comment about folks who earn $25K and oppose taxes on rich remind me of poor people in Mexico City who dont own cars but oppose restrictions on car drivers, because they hope to own cars one day.
Folks who repeat the tired platitude about ” the greatest country in the world” have obviosly not travelled much to learn that there are good aspects and bad aspects in each country. Perhaps this country (USA) had the best potential for true greatness, but sadly we lost sight of what the things that made U.S. so special were, and now we are a second rate country with the first rate military.
I guess I’m glad that I never say such trite things…
Ah Arlo, he lives just a stretch upin’ the road from me! I have seen him play out a few times.
Alices Restaurant
They got a building down New York City, it’s called Whitehall Street,
where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected,
neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one
day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so
I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. `Cause I wanted to
look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted
to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York,
and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all
kinds o’ mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave
me a piece of paper, said, “Kid, see the phsychiatrist, room 604.”
And I went up there, I said, “Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I
wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL.” And I started jumpin up and down yelling, “KILL, KILL,” and
he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down
yelling, “KILL, KILL.” And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me,
sent me down the hall, said, “You’re our boy.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yLg_bzwvxg
When you’re seriously ignorant the truth sounds strange or deranged. You live in a cocoon of lies and propaganda and you’re too stupid to realize it, or too craven and callous to care.
Greetings, CFN’ers! Tonight’s golden oldie is from the Right Wing media, in response to the OWSERS! None other than “Get a Job”, by the Silhouettes. As if flipping hamburgers @7.25/hr will help ANY college graduate of any major help pay off his/her student loan of $30K. Give it a listen, if you care. BTW, an OWSER protest is coming to my little hamlet tomorrow @3:00 downtown. Guess whose going to be there to cheer them on? If they let me out of the house for that long, that is! So far I’ve been promised lunch, and maybe a glimpse of a homecoming parade. We’ll see. I’ll try to update on what I see (if anything) of the protest. If I get there, I’ll be cheering them on!
When I came back
From Luang Prabang
I didn’t have a thang
Where my balls used to hang
But, I got a wooden medal
And a fine “Hoorang”
And now I’m a fuckin’ hero
-Patrick Sky-
In case any of you were wondering why Senator Robert Dole seemed, well, a little tweaked out, read about the battle of Anzio. My grandfather told me a very long time ago that the price of your freedom is always blood.
The difference between synchronous and asynchronous communications. See, with The Internet (DARPA net) they get feedback.
You must have liked Harold and Maude too. That Ruth Gordon, what a hot number.
Luck has it, and birth age of course, that I missed the Vietnam draft by months. I think it will only be a matter of time before the draft is reinstitute. Cannon fodder is tough to find! Then again ,if there are no jobs in the homeland, perhaps young people will still sign on to the few and the proud. Proud to be killed or maimed or do likewise to others.
Harold: You sure have a way with people.
Maude: Well, they’re my species
Hey, thanks for the compliment. I never wanted to be normal.
I like the archdruid, but I never remember to go there unless someone here links to him. Thanks.
The US has increased productivity in manufacturing and also in killing mass numbers.
In Vietnam, the US killed 3-4 million Vietnamese, but lost over 50,000 soldiers.
In Iraq, the US killed over 1 million Iraqis, and only lost 4,400 soldiers.
This more efficient mass murder means that they need less soldiers, the same way they need less lumberjacks to level forests and less coal miners to blow up mountains.
Capitalism is all about the efficiency!
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Just say no.
IF YOU ARE A REAL PERSON:
Would you please fuck off and die.
IF YOU ARE A COMPUTER PROGRAM:
Would you please fuck off and die.
If you really want this nonsensical advertising to stop, create an account and send them email. LOTS OF EMAIL. Random characters. Childhood reminiscences, severe developmental traumas, whatever.
I think that I may have to use……
Mr. Kunstler,
I’m gonna take a chance. If you are involved in this exploitation, I would say that I am surprised that you really believe that ADVERTISING will really make a difference. If you are not involved, my sincerest apologies. Let me explain…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KSiyaqnZYs&feature=related
There are rebellions large and small. I got me a brand new bottle of Jim Beam & a mission. Careful, I know how to cut & paste.
I got lost in here reading about “A World Made by Hand”
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84023255/issues/first_pages/
Comment held…
Check out topdocumentaryfilms.com.
“Tales from the Green Valley”
4000 calories a day for a farmer in 1620? Wow…
X,
LOL! That is surely a description of a truly dangerous person!
Get ’em; it’s the Ol’ Spider hisself again (you can tell by the obsessive use of numbers in the screen name).
Wall st…Islamification
got this email this morning……………….
eccmajlisshura@gmail.com
THE PLAN FOR THIS STATEMENT – is to get signatures from many faith leaders, with over 100 faith leaders “signed on” by tomorrow: Friday, October 14th.
Khutbah given by Imam Ayyub Abdul Baki of the Majlis Ashura’s Leadership Council’s Justice committee.
The Imam asks Muslims present to wear white for the occassion.“We will be feeding protestors and the hungry with the collaborative efforts of invited Muslim charities.”
Interfaith Center of NY |
Our enemies are not stupid. They see an opportunity with the Occupy Wall St protesters, and will use them as Islamic supporting puppets.
Just feeding them will lend the impression that Islam is non-Muslim friendly, which is it not.
I would not be surprised if some of the protesters go all the way and convert to Islam.
At a minimum they will be Islam allies, which just makes our job harder. Imam Baki who will giving the khubtbah (sermon), is the same Imam I have on tape stating that Muslims brought Columbus here with a Muslim made map. S
o we already see he will say anything to try and get non-Muslims to accept Islam. Don’t be fooled!
Dressing in white makes the Muslims stand out, and appear like the angels they are not. Once again, don’t be fooled!
To make matters even worse the interfaith group will be holding a press conference. Where you ask? At a Church of course!
And when Drones are used the soldiers needed is zero, contract labor can then be used.
A free feed? Too easy. If I were in NY I would find something white to wear and wrap a table cloth around my head. mmmmmmmm…hummus. Yum.
Actually, how is it more efficient? For example, what a soldier dies they pay for a hole in the ground, and maybe a payout. Now, technology allows for a surviving cripple. Compare numbers of wounded. Include new categories of wounds, the newly known psychological conditions, the ongoing claims and payouts, the pensions, etc. I don’t know the exact numbers but the total wounded figures are pretty high AFAIK.
The disinformation spin meisters are at it again! You can get anything you want on the web. Nothing is too crazy or outlandish.
“I would not be surprised if some of the protesters go all the way and convert to Islam.
At a minimum they will be Islam allies, which just makes our job harder.” -anti soak
I don’t think I’m quite reading you here.
What is this “our job” of which you speak?
Thanks in advance for the clarification.
Come on O3, what are you thick? YOUR JOB IS TO BE A MINDLESS DRONE!!! stop thinkin’ an shut up already! ;0)
any Joe Walsh fans? This song just says it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=_tiOMu_Bf8Q
Haw!
Yes, thick I be!
Yas’suh, I’se workin’. ;o)
Haw!
Yes, thick I be!
Yas’suh, I’se workin’. ;o)
Wha’happen?
Thanks Ibendet.
Know I know some of my faves werent’ kicked off,
couldn’t imagine why they woulda been.
Iz der a got dam echo in here?
Hey JB2U, I was knocked off for over a week with a forbidden message. I could sign on at work but not at home. Mysteriously the block disappeared and I can now post again. Why? I have no clue. I assume I was one of the favorites you mentioned in your post. HAHAHA, RT
zoom in and read the bottom of column seven. What a hoot!
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84023255/1873-01-24/ed-1/seq-1/
I didnt write it..I am sharing an email I got..
‘our job’….be informed.
People talk of hard times, and well they may. We are fast becoming a nation of schemers to live without genuine work.
Vermont Farmer janaury 24, 1873. the more things change the more they stay the same!front page column seven above the yankee girl blows up rebel family story!
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84023255/1873-01-24/ed-1/seq-1/
One of the most resonant descriptions that I’ve seen of American politics today described the Democrats’ goal as the entrenchment of rule by the urban machine boss and the Republicans’ goal as the entrenchment of rule by the Southern sheriff and his good ol’ boys–a pretty apt summation as I see it.
George Washington was absolutely right to warn us against establishing political parties. Our major parties have clearly turned into cults. The GOP became a fully fledged cult by the late 1990s, and the Democratic Party has pretty well followed suit since Obama’s election to the presidency.
Both parties now consider it beyond the pale for their incumbent presidents to face primary challenges. Well, why the fuck not? Jimmy Carter faced a primary challenge because he was widely considered ineffectual and incompetent. Teddy Kennedy was a dangerously powerful scoundrel, but by challenging Carter he reminded his party that beyond a certain point bad governance would not go unpunished from within the ranks. Yet since 2000, the parties have given no quarter to primary challenges in response to treasonous subversion of the Constitution, utterly feckless military adventurism and, most recently, utterly corrupt and feckless financial and economic policy. The Bush/Obama regime manifestation of cultism is a lot worse than the nineties version, which was distinguished by gridlock, appropriations brinksmanship and Scarlet Letter grandstanding by the likes of Larry “Wide Stance” Craig.
Primary challenges rightly move Washington a bit in the direction of Westminster parliamentarianism, which we badly need as an antidote to the current morally bankrupt kabuki theater. The message is, you fuck up badly enough and the backbenchers revolt. Can you imagine George W. Bush or Sarah Palin answering Prime Minister’s Questions? They’d make Gordon Brown sound like Abraham Lincoln!
Proud, but also glad for a paycheck and bennies. A large part of our military is effectively a mercenary force.
If the caliber of the enlisted personnel I’ve known personally and seen around base when I was helping a family friend move to Fort Lewis in 2008 is any indication, the very deployment of enlisted personnel to our current combat theaters is a sure way to make our ostensible allies in country hate us. At least the commissioned officers whom I’ve known seem to have the manners not to call people “towelheads” or “sand niggers.” Some of the former enlisted personnel I’ve known have manners, too, but they seem very unrepresentative, smarter and more decent by a long shot than the grunts I saw around Fort Lewis. As our family friend told me, from his lofty captain’s perch in the Medical Corps, when I asked him about all the cretins on base, “those, my friend, are the enlisted.”
“It’s always nice to hear the contradictory nonsense that RW Authoritarian Followers tell yourselves and others.”
And, yet, here we are – replying to that very nonsense they spout, and giving them credence.
Feeding the flames, so to speak – as our atmosphere vanishes into the ether – patting them on the back, but point out their flaws – as our atmosphere vanishes into the ether.
Until there is an *ECONOMIC* plan that takes into account *external costs*, “they” will continue to use up and pollute every last piece of solid mass on this planet. You think it’s hard to breathe now – wait until “they”‘ve made the atmosphere 10-100 times thinner. Who cares about the pollution of the land/air/water/oceans – “they” sure don’t – clueless nubs with shortsighted goals…
Got it; thanks.
any insight into the Rome riots?
I went to my local Occupy event, did you?
Mostly Generation X and Y. The State patrol showed up to stand around and drink coffee. They were representing the Boomers. Since the site was a downtown public park, the Silents and other older folk contingent were represented by derelicts and bums and people with obvious mental disorders. The concentration of young people was enough to keep them moving. The sleeping bags and tarps were up, and the camaraderie was good. I left at midnight.
Today, there are more people in the park. The trees are strung with signs and the suburbanite contingent is there, having driven from the suburbs. Kid-friendly acoustic guitar reverberates.
The analysis last night was that this is, so far, a symbolic act. Things just aren’t bad enough to get the people who are currently invested in the system to come out and agitate for regime change, democracy, or transparency, or anything else. Not surprising. Things will have to get worse. And they will.
“disposable toxic junk”
Excellent poast – we jibe (Q? Q!!!), even after that little skirmish a few weeks back. No *external costs* on the “balance sheet” means all resources will be exponentially plundered, until all remaining land surface is DU-polluted desert, and all oceans are acidic enough to strip paint in seconds (wonder how many DU-ordinances have been collected in Iraq since ’91 [Afghanistan since ’01], ground down into dust, and made into dirty bombs ever since?)…
I’ve never seen the site so dead – and it does appear to me that server-side changes are being made regularly/routinely to this page/blog, recently. Yet, we still have the same 6969 asshole (TORRES39/HAYES257) spamming the tired old winter clothing shit…
The 403 ban does indeed seem to be exactly 2 weeks in duration, for those banned (who can’t read this, LOL). Is this an (external/shill) attempt to piss off and shut down discourse? Look at the Republitards and Demotards (ala MSM) shitting their pants, trying to down-play the OWSer deally. If GitmObama’s approval rating ever drops into the low 20% (like Dumbya’s pre-911), expect a *BIG PLAY*…
Dasviking bleated:
“i don’t care how they made their millions or billions and that’s what a true democracy”
That has to be the most idiotic thing I’ve ever read on this site. Or maybe not?
“*They* destroyed the planet, and killed off every last human being – but hey, *they* (RIP *they*) made a k00l, klEEn $$$billion$$$ in the deal!!!”
“I went to my local Occupy event, did you?”
If you’ve read my poast on this topic (doubtful – does anyone?), you’d see I had the same reservations that you allude to, in this very poast of yours. I don’t see it being very productive to burn $3-4 worth of gas, thus supporting the corporations, just to walk around in tarp-parks.
In fact, in the past 3-4 years, areas 2-3 miles from downtown Portland no longer allow parking (anytime) on the weekends (unless you have the monthly/annual sticker on your vehicle). And, downtown parking now charges during the weekend as well, something like $1.50 an hour. Anything to keep the parking meter police employed…
I could take light rail, but I refuse to ever use it again, because over the past 5 years they’ve raised the price over 50% (what inflation? > $5 for all day/2 way tickets) and have cut the number of stops in half (particularly on weekends, where the last train used to be 3am but is now 10pm). This, from someone who had no vehicle for 9 years, from ’93 to ’02, and used nothing but public transportation/bicycle.
As I’ve already said, over 14 years too late. As to all these protesters, the time to clean house first, before you start pointing fingers, has already come and gone (and none of them cleaned house first – they just point fingers…). It all starts with one’s self – but who is willing to even admit they themselves are (contributing to) the problem?!?
“2012 at solar max should be very interesting!”
Tinfoil hat time, to be sure!!! And, strangely enough, I remember that German/Nazi interesting/stupid bit…
Also, remember that solar max will last a good ~5 years… Has the atmospheric CO2 level shown any signs of becoming linearly increasing yet (rather than exponentially increasing as it has been)?
How can one prove that the next second will progress in exactly the same fashion as every prior (measured) second has?!… Induction seems particularly flawed in this instance. “But it has always been that way!” (Best argument I’ve gotten, when discussing feedback systems with limited resources and unconstrained consumption)
Blocked post
Blocked post about the fact that there have only been less than 9500 votes on that coupmedia website – for the most voted on category.
Which was corporate personhood.
And then I got the dreaded 403 “access denied” message and had to restart the computer and the DSL router to get a new IP to get back on.
I think I’ll stop posting for now –
before JHK’s IT guy tries to reach through the wires of the internet and destroy my computer by some sort of proxy remote control.
Better luck next week, CFN!
Somehow I missed this reply, but here goes:
“He was brought in to fix things and Heaven knows, we need everything to be fixed, quickly, before it swirls down the toliet.”
Antisoak, He claimed his own (black) people were brainwashed into voting Demotard. He also claimed that they were disobedients (traitors?) when they participated in the MLK demonstrations. He ignored those demonstrations, the good lil’ obedient boy he was, and didn’t participate in them or support them.
As to his 999 (666 Bachman horseshit), it means even less revenue than currently to pay down the deficit; it means the poor and elderly will have to pay significantly more than now, and it means that the filthy elite rich and corporations will pay significantly less than they do now (and SS/MC/MA will vaporize into the ether). Those sure sound like workable solutions, no?!…
“Don’t know that I’d ever high-five Bob Dole who must be close to one hundred years old (why drag him into it?), but I’ll see your John Kerry and raise you one Bob Dole for sheer incompetence. (Neither man is running, hello?)”
WTF are you babbling on about here? I never mentioned any Demotards, ever (and you somehow suppose I supported them?) I’ve voted Green Party/Nader since 1999 (2 of 3 times I had to write his name down on the ballot). I don’t even recall poasting about the stolen presidential elections in both 2000 and 2004…
BTW, “poast” is what we all do here – it’s what is otherwise known as a worthless “post”, that does nothing, but linger and fade into the abyss. Pluralizing PLANTATION was a joke you didn’t seem to get…
“Yes, I reply to myself (credence?)”
2/3 times a charm? (definitely to lend plausibility)
I have to be clear about this – I have a full garbage can about once every 4-6 months, and it’s only plastics that are not recyclable. Thus, I rarely, if ever (LOL) have my garbage can out during “any given week.” And, this plastic is so clean, I can leave it in a bag, opened, in my house, for months on end, without *rot*/smells (duh, it won’t compost).
“Blocked post about … corporate personhood.”
If you’re not 403 yet, poast in paragraphs.
“And then I got the dreaded 403 “access denied” message ”
D’oh!!!
Hey, stop using the —– separators? I dunno, this Shit Simply Sux (SSS).
***WALL OF POAST***
Thx, *INDESCRIMINATE* IP banner.
Attn – 403 ban:
From what I remember, *DON’T* do the following:
1. Click back to the POAST frame
2. LOGOUT.
That’s how I got banned.
ATTN: Trippticket –
I figured out what OC meant (not Orange County, but Organic Carbon). Please explain to me what *inorganic* carbon is? Is that “liek” old growth 2×6’s that don’t rot?!… Hehehehe! Bwahahaha!!!
“Want to blame someone blame me for owning and driving a car, for buying boxed cereal, and for drinking mass-produced beer.”
Ain’t that the truth – and the rest of your poast will *NEVER* sink into “their” noggins. “They” are the *immediate self gratification* types, the TV-advert babies, that fuel the destruction of the entire planet. I don’t even think “they” understand how polluted the land/air/water/sea already *ARE*, let alone what is coming down the road, much too soon.
As I’ve said, ad-nauseum – it’s all *poasts* here, that vanish permanently into the ether, while “they” continue on their merry over-consumptive, over-destructive ways (see your own blog).
I remember going without a vehicle for 9 years, turning my hot water *OFF* for 3 years, and keeping the house at 56-58’F during the winter for decades. This did not inspire “them”. It only made “them” think I was a crazy loon, ala Ted Kaczynski (and “they” used to call me by his name, fairly often).
It all starts from within – and “they” are not willing to change – only to exponentially breed more of “them”selves. And certainly, “they” are not willing to admit “their” part in all of this…
– is this poast toast? –
Too strange, IX and everyone –
Keep up the good work.
I’m developing a morbid fascination with this blog software – and its thought eating algorithms.
Will this be held for review?
Or will it go through?
========================
————————
I don’t think it’s the “—===” separators, IX.
“toasty poasty” (lulz)
I guessed wrong – but nobody reads this SH! Sunday at 11PM. So, get a new IP for *MORROW*!!!
The number of arrests is increasing and that will only increase the size of the protests. We went through this before in the 70s until tens of millions were in the streets and the war was forced to end.
The World Series is approaching and the OWSer protests are growing, not diminishing, in both size and frequency.
Thank you, JHK, for fixing the software and ending the 403 glitch.
From the archives of “You Can’t Make This Shit Up” comes a real shocker… Herman Cain did a lot of fiery preacher work for Americans For Prosperity and his campaign team is infested with AFP operatives and former operatives.
Oopsie, not so outsider/independent after all.
Guess who might be the main sponsors and organizers of AFP? Why, it’s the squeaky-clean Koch Bros. Inc. I’m SHOCKED, I tell you, SHOCKED!
…And why [in the name of all that’s unholy] would you vote for a person of the name “Cain”? (Oh, sorry, that’s name-ist discrimination; and we all know how the Koch Bros. and their supporters care about “the People’s” rights.) Should we perhaps find somebody named Abel to vote for instead? Mmmm, mebbe not; I see assassination in his future.
FYI…on Kunstler’s observation little pot smoke among the OWS crowd. Occupy Toronto is absolutely obscured in vast amounts of said smoke. Not sure what that means. But it’s nice to see.
” Praise has been coming in from all quarters for the peacefulness of the OWSers. Don’t expect that to last. In the natural course of things, revolutionary actions meet resistance, generate friction, and then heat.”
Its good to remember what Ben Franklin said regarding “old Rome, all was left to the Judgment and Pleasure of the People…Indeed whenever the Commons proceeded to Violence, the great Ones had been the Agressors.”