JHK’s Three-Act Play
The scene in the White House these days must be a sort of Opera Bouffe, in which an earnest and rather grave young man moves from one roomful of lesser officials to another in which all agree to pretend that they have prevented the nation from falling into something they call “the abyss.” At the end of Act I, a young deputy FDIC commissioner in the Little Mary Sunshine mold gets down on one knee, belts out a show-stopper about the glories of a bright and shining “tomorrow,” and the audience goes out for intermission to discover that the city has been burning down around the theater all night.
Out in America-the-Real, Halloween time in this year of 2009 has an interesting “Day of the Locust” flavor. There’s more than a whiff of smoke in the air, along with an odor of dead carp wafting out of all the the offices and institutions we depend on to define reality. Like the Hollywood of Nathaniel West’s dark 1939 novel, America today seems poised in the gate of some harsh judgment. When the historians look back at this era – especially at the time between January 20th and the holiday season of 2009 – won’t they marvel at how well-understood our predicament actually was, by so many parties to it, and the gulf between that comprehension and the story we told ourselves: that we were “recovering.”
Like a lot of other observer-interlocutors, I’d like to know what folks imagine we are recovering to. To a renewed orgy of credit-card spending? To yet another round of suburban expansion, with the boys in the yellow hard-hats driving stakes out in the sagebrush for another new thousand-unit pop-up “community?” For a next generation of super-cars built to look like medieval war wagons? That’s the “hope” that our officials seem to pretend to offer. It’s completely inconsistent with any reality-based trend-lines, by the way.
Perhaps it’s time to redefine “hope” in the greater social sense of the word. To me, hope is not synonymous with “wishes fulfilled.” In fact, hope should not be about wishing at all. Hope should be based on confidence that the individual or group is reliably competent enough to meet the challenges that circumstances present. Hope is justified when people demonstrate to themselves that they can behave ably and bravely. Hope is not really possible in the face of patent untruthfulness. It is derived from a clear-eyed and courageous view of what is really going on. I don’t think that defines any of the behavior in the United States these days. We’ve become a self-jiving nation intent on playing shell games, running Ponzi schemes, and working Polish blanket tricks on ourselves.
It begins to look now as if the Obama team is determined to run this creaking vessel right over the falls. We could have bravely faced the structural perversities in banking the past year, but we decided not to. So far only a tiny minority of the public – unfortunately the “tea-bagging” race-baiters – have been the only ones to squawk. I look around at my fellow baby-boomer ex-hippie, ex-political radical age-cohorts and I see a sad-ass claque of passive, played-out, defeated dreamers too depressed to form a coherent thought about what’s really going on… lost in sentimental fantasies about “world peace,” or free heart-transplants-for-everybody as they, the boomers themselves, lurch toward the graveyard.
Obama was not a boomer, not one of “us,” so I had expectations that he’d rise above the fog of wishful thinking. But he begins to look more like Millard Fillmore and less like an earlier president from Illinois who got elected on the eve of a terrible national political convulsion. I think about Lincoln a lot these days, about how circumstances shoved him to act when Southern secessionists fired on Fort Sumter barely a month after the new president took the oath of office (which was done in March back then). There was no spinning the news on it, no wiggling away from reality: an organized insurrection led by rogue U.S. military officers fired on their fellow officers… and that was that. The issue, as the saying goes, was joined.
If you think we have been in a crisis of finance and economy for the past year or so, consider that we have also been sunk in a comprehensive crisis of leadership. Nobody in authority is willing to face the truth, state the truth, and offer a reality-based idea about how to meet the truth, This is a leadership failure not just in politics and government, but also in business, in the university faculties, in the editorial and production offices of the news media, and even among a barely-breathing clergy.
Americans look around and see nobody standing up for their interests. Their greatest interest is a vision of a fruitful society that they can help build and be a part of beyond the current wreckage of revolving-debt consumerism. It will have to be a vision based on fewer resources and on new arrangements for daily living. It will have to recognize losses frankly, and enable us to let go of things whose time is over, whether that is Happy Motoring, college-for-everybody, vast industries devoted to vanished leisure, or procedures geared to getting something-for-nothing.
For now, I still see the inflection point as coming by the holiday season, when the masters-of-the-universe on Wall Street will have to publicly post their Christmas bonuses (and as publicly held corporations, they will have to). It is also well within the realm of possibility that a Black Swan the size of Rodan the Flying Reptile will swoop through the stock markets to breath fire on the computer terminals and melt the glorious rally of 09 away. In the meantime, I wonder about that man in the White House, and those ever more comical meetings he attends every day. He must emerge from them spinning like a nine dollar gyroscope. Nobody wants to imagine what happens to him when the spinning stops.
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Ride the painted ponies let the spinning wheels ride.
When Halloween never ends, it’s time to be truly frightened. But if we see things clearly, we can protect our assets and fight back. More at http://www.thenothingstore.com
“won’t they marvel at how well-understood our predicament actually was, by so many parties to it”
You know, I tend to think a different understanding awaits. I believe that after the shit hits the fan that no one will know what “really” happened.
There will be a lot of Joe the Plumbers that will blame the liberal whatever and most likely take vengeance on anything that looks or smells like an Obamaite type citizen.
Beyond the squawking tea-bggers, isn’t Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” a worthy attempt at raising awareness [along with the pitchforks]?
Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it’s ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
Jim:
You’re letting these rascals off a bit easy. This isn’t just some group of naive idealists pining for dreams lost. The president has purposely surrounded himself with the same Goldman Sachs retreads from the Clinton administration that set this mess in motion by refusing to regulate the derivative markets. The Rubins, Geithners and Summers owe their allegiance to Wall Street, not Main Street.
In case anyone hasn’t seen it yet, I highly recommend the PBS Frontline documentary “The Warning.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/
Things don’t happen be mistake in Washington. Well financed interests influence events to make sure they have a winning hand every time.
This isn’t a matter of Obama getting advice from the banking oligarchs, it is the money masters letting Obama know what he can and can’t do.
It seems to me..and no, I’m not a silly pollyanna…I realize that I could be quite wrong…but…It seems to me that Obama understands perfectly well that our society has been spinning toward the falls and his efforts I still hope may be more heroic than JHK is willing to consider giving him credit for…time will tell…. I’d prefer to think that our society and economy could indeed be compared to a whitewater raft heading toward class 6 rapids….Obama’s efforts could be compared to getting the raft pointed downstream with competent people holding the paddles and a skilled guide at the helm…..I think our chances of paddling out of the maelstrom into an eddy might be considerably improved if we have first righted the boat…still hoping that’s phase one…and a president with huge standing as a skilled savior of the “status quo” is probably the only hope for phase two to be successfully pulled off…ie..moving out of the status quo into a sustainable future. Watching and participating with interest.
This is a concise take on current events. Keep up the good work.
Jim, the public is by and large absolutely outraged at the hijacking of the treasury by Wall Street and that outrage is expressed everywhere, on about a million blogs.
But most of us don’t want to align ourselves with the race-bating “teabaggers” and their right-wing social agenda.
And most of us don’t have the time nor wherewithal to participate in protests across the country. We’re too busy trying to keep our heads above water, stay gainfully employed, pay down our bills, and save for what we can see is coming.
What you are seeing out here among the population is not ignorance but the stunned apathy of people who have taken so many shocks that all they can do is move from one side of the cage to the other in a vain effort to get out the way. Our politicians have made it clear that they don’t care what we believe and don’t have to care- they passed the various bailout and industry assistance programs in spite of widespread and vehement public opposition among almost all classes, races and ethnic groups.
The only real cheerleaders for this administrations “solutions” for sustaining the unsustainable are the corporate interests who are the direct beneficiaries and their shills, as well as what remains of the well-paid upper-middle managerial class, a bunch of people whose ability to get ahead depends on how well they mindlessly follow every trend in opinion and shill for their corporate masters.
The rest of us aren’t deceived, but our protests have no effect.
We are busy crafting solutions of our own. Some will work better than others, but anything is better than those our current government will ever come up with.
Fixed Income nails it. The problem here is that we’re not going to pay serious attention to anything except those things with serious money behind it. If the American economy has devolved to casino management, that’s what gets the attention. If this nation is beginning to resemble Atlantic City, the metaphor is not merely apt but resonant.
At some point, an IMF-style oligarchy will restrain us from putting any more quarters in the slots. We’re not there yet. This is Apocalypse Maybe with people worried more about some Palinesque entr’acte than a genuine revolt. I suspect the pain will evolve its own tolerance over time but that supposes no catastrophic shocks and surprises.
Jim describes this putative “grave and earnest” young man in the White House. Who can this be? Obama wants things done his way, trouble is, he has lost his way, in fact, never had a way. Yet, the adulation for the grave and earnest young man continues. Are we adoring things that are grave and earnest, like funerals and graveyards?
Jim seems very unhappy that the only people who see things for what they are and are complaining are tea baggers, the lunatic right wingers. Does he issue credit to this group? No, Jim is a character who is dyed in the wool liberal and it’s below his dignity to admit that the “other folks” may be on to something. Not even grudging respect is given to the other guys. Pathetic.
The something-for-nothing mentality is as old as mankind. Advances in every aspect of technology have made spinning this hubris and getting the masses to buy into it easier, bigger and in the end, far more likely to fail in dramatic fashion. It’s not ‘The Left,’ it’s not ‘The Right,’ its man’s inability to see through to reality, that nothing comes free for long without the bill, in some form or fashion, coming due. The fastest way to see this is walk out the front door and look at the ‘real’ world. No organism in existence can survive expending more energy than it takes in. Period. And by extension, we can’t as a species spend our way into prosperity, either.
Believing that mankind is somehow ‘different’ is The Big Lie. Getting More-for-Less will never permanently exist, because it’s ultimately at the expense of others. The world is getting smaller. Mankind is all in one boat, or perhaps a better analogy is one raft, adrift in a vast ocean. In the end it’s either Hell for none of us or Hell for all of us. We need to get off of ‘Who’s right’ and get on with ‘What’s right.’ Because if we don’t nature will damn sure do it for us, and if history is any lesson, usually in very uncomfortable ways.
I see where Chicago is considering selling its water and sewer system to “score” some ready cash! Indiana leased its turnpike for the same reason: cash now, pay later. So, the question comes to mind, what happens after the cash gets spent? We don’t like to think about things like that. Next we’ll be holding group prayers for a miracle.
Jim, pass me another stair banister – the fire’s getting a bit low and it’s getting chilly.
Obama is the biggest race baiter, for Chrissakes. Since when have you forgotten this obviously transparent fact? Why don’t you say right wingers don’t wipe themselves after they defecate, too? Still an Obama adulator? Still think he’s so great?
Another pathetic viewpoint from the elitist class. Trouble is, the elitists have no class in the first place. Wouldn’t know reality if it stepped on their toe.
Your hero botched the Henry Louis Gates incident. Remember? Tried to act like a phony peacemaker, when in reality he was to blame for his stupid comments. He’s an ugly president.
Not only must Obama be spinning I am quite certain Abraham Lincoln and our original founding fathers must be SPINNING in their graves right now at the pathetic mess corporate greed and globalism have reduced this country to.
Not to mention the sheer amount of waste, debt and environmental degradation created in the name of “consumerism”.
It’s time to end the failed experiment in globalism, tell the Chinese to “shove their cheap junk”, bring back our factories and jobs and start building a strong America based a new paradigm of self-sufficiency and a new reality of living within ones means and in-line with natural constraints.
Excellent take, JHK!
False hope and its’ close cousin, delusion are the only “positive” entities bleating to the masses now. If you look around you [clear-eyed], you will indeed see that “the folks” no longer have any confidence (or trust, for that matter) in their government. I predict the largest cracks will begin to appear next spring, when the truth of our total bankruptcy starts to seep into the open, like a clogged leach field leaking out of the lawn… Law? What law? Is torture “legal”? Okay then, see where that road leads ya. Toodle-loo, best of luck, my chosen-by-gawd “brethren”!
Marygold – Right on. Thanks.
I’m just scooting along, getting out to the edge, not ready to jump off today, but preparing for it. Better than nothing, I suppose.
I also hope to be able to pay the fuckers back for what they have done. I am watching carefully to see who and where. I’m not squeamish.
Nino said:
“There will be a lot of Joe the Plumbers that will blame the liberal whatever and most likely take vengeance on anything that looks or smells like an Obamaite type citizen.”
Well, there is perhaps a grain of evidence in support of your contention, namely that as the economy has deteriorated, public opinion has not gravitated in the direction of expanding government in order to ameliorate the economic pain, but has in fact gone in the opposite direction of supporting a shrinkage of government in order to return to something closer to a free enterprise system.
However, that civil shift in public opinion does not presage an epidemic of right-wing violent extremism any more than if the public had responded to the economic downturn by making a political shift to the left would imply that our country was headed toward homicidal Stalinism.
Obama emerges from meetings but divorces himself from the proceedings because he does not understand what was said. He is not learned in many disciplines. He is green as grass. He wanted the job desperately, he got it, and then blames W when things go wrong. Lousy leadership? Immaturity?
The Peter Principle is alive and well on Pennsylvania Avenue. He’s reached the level of his incompetence, this Obama. We adored Greenspan before, no longer. Hey, let’s have our own Kristallnacht and Anschluss, give Obama some time. He deserves time, right?
However, there is a bright spot. People are waking up to the fact Obama is an impostor. Next time around, will there be the fanatic press support, and bubbleheaded young people supporting Obama during the Election? Unlimited donations to reelect this chucklehead?
When Obama ruins the country, we’ll need socialism, but who pays then?
There are some … interesting … posters here. I don’t see this on other blogs so much. I’m getting used to skipping over them, but still…
Weird.
Not sure what they get out of it.
I see the rest of us are getting better at not feeding them.
Yeah, we owe the Chinese a cool trillion or so and we just walk away lickety split? Build factories, deny globalization? China calls their loans, where will we be then?
One thing about Hallowe’en – it will probably bring out even more of the nutjobs in their nightgowns and pointed hats to play ghosties trying to terrorize ethnic minorities.
Pink Floyd – The Wall comes to mind.
Shame the ovens aren’t been fired up for the coporate wank stains who caused all this mess and shame on Obama for not taking them to task.
Knowing some teabaggers, I find it interesting that the spin about them labels them as “right-wing” and “race-baiters”. Since when is protesting against massive spending and deficits either right-wing or race-baiting? Those were the primary reasons for the protests.
Nino, this whole mess derived in large part from the Commumity Reinvestment Act. Was that not a liberal program? Its enhancement was sought by ACORN and Barney Frank. Are they not among those called “liberals”?
Ironic: Some of us certified Olde Pharts out here have been sounding some sort of warning signal for twenty years, now. The spoiled-brattism of consumeritis has obviously been leading to exactly this present situation.
While I differ with Mr. Kunstler as to some of his causalities, he is in general spot-on in his overall analysis of our situation. It’s nice to see a young man agree with an Olde Phart. 🙂 We differ as to Obama in that I said during the campaign that he would continue Bush’s failed economic policy, and give us a reprise of Hoover and FDR. He has.
“Recover to what”? is certainly the question of the day.
‘Rat
Al Klein said:
“So, the question comes to mind, what happens after the cash gets spent?”
Al, I think part of the answer to that is that the world discovers the US is an economic basket case, and discovers to its horror that we are going to reneg on the debts we have racked up.
In some manner the US will go through a process analogous to an individual deep in debt going into bankruptcy.
That will to some degree wipe the slate clean and allow us somewhat of a fresh start. Although one problem is that we ourselves are the debtor as well as the creditor- e.g. Social Security and Medicare.
So when we go bankrupt, if we want to wipe out all our debts, one creditor we will have to welch on is us. We will have to tell ourselves, sorry, we’re bankrupt, we can’t pay you all those promised Social Security and Medicare benefits.
So, more than our foreign creditors, the ones we have screwed the most is ourselves.
I don’t doubt that Mr. Obama has been quietly, but overtly threatened by some member(s) of the financial community. Accidents happen, you know, particularly if you’re wealthy enough to make them happen. I also don’t doubt that he has been promised rich rewards if he plays ball.
And what would you do under those circumstances?
So no. I expect nothing from this president, or any president. Presidents are now figureheads. Congress was purchased long ago. The real power is in the boards of Goldman Sachs, et. al.
You complain about baby-boomers and non-baby-boomers alike. It is not a particular demographic that is the problem.
The fact of the matter, politics is now and always has been dominated by the moneyed classes. Any person with common sense and a progressive agenda is marginalized by the MSM. As you know, there is freedom of the press for anybody that owns one, internet notwithstanding. It has degenerated to the point where “news” is actually a reality TV show and millenials are mesmerized by looking at their belly buttons on Facebook (r) or gaming on Playstation.
The root of the problem is there is nothing approximating a popular movement for authentic change — we get the Cool-Whip version with Obama, as presented by his billionaire class masters in the media.
Until there is a viable third-party alternative advocating real change to supplant the twiddledee-twiddledum demopublicans and republicrats.
I assume that there will be a more serious downturn (i.e., depression) in late 2009 or 2010. In the event things get REAL bad, will people turn towards progressives or Sarah Palin?
TEDC sez: “I also hope to be able to pay the fuckers back for what they have done. I am watching carefully to see who and where. I’m not squeamish.”
Yes, I think that’s how it’s going to have to shake out as well.
What is the emotion that is the strongest of all? Revenge, my friends. That may be a sad commentary on “human nature”, but there it is, and it needs to be faced as another forgotten “reality”.
I just finished reading Marc Gerstein’s “Flirting With Disaster, Why Accidents Are Rarely Accidental” (while traveling to FL from NY on the train!) and his book nails why the Powers That Be are still flirting with the idea that recovery is just around the corner.
The Crown Point Bridge (between NY & VT via Rouses Point) is closed and everyone from Gov. Patterson on down seems to think it will be repaired and rebuilt soon. Welcome to the Shape of Things to Come, to borrow a phrase. How much money will we waste trying to figure out what happened before the folks who used to use that bridge daily just get on with living in their new reality? (The smart ones already have!)
I recently converted my retirement “electrons” into 3.5 acres of land on a freshwater pond. I beat the rush while I still had access to enough electrons to own it outright. (That’s the new reality: no bank-held mortgage for me, thanks very much.)
Our leaders in government and medicine have been preparing for the current flu epidemic since SARS hit a few years ago and the brighter lights envisoned what Bird Flu might do. Well folks, President Obama just declared a national emergency and we are lucky that so far this flu epidemic is not killing folks off left and right. But one roll of the genetic dice and we are toast – the “I Hate Government” crowd that Reagan ushered in have done their work very well. I suppose it is too much to hope that they will be the first ones to die off.
We have weeks and maybe months (if we are lucky) to get our personal houses in order and then go to work on our neighbors and our communities. Just like the Crown Point Brudge, don’t waste time on fixing blame on fast-moving targets, just figure out how to get to the other side of the lake without getting your feet wet.
I don’t like the fact that you think people who are teabaggers are race baiters. Are you suggesting that if I disagree with the way that President Obama is trying to run the country, that I am a racist.
I have thought that both President Bush and President Obama have the wrong ideas and that we need to change the direction that the country is going. I don’t agree with Obama in the direction he wants to take the country, but that does not make me a racist.
“Yeah, we owe the Chinese a cool trillion or so and we just walk away lickety split? Build factories, deny globalization?”
Yep, that’s just about it!
Is it any wonder we look at 9/11 and see conspiracy, with the self service money buffet that is known as Wall St
http://www.suburbanempire.com
conspiracy? No wonder we see it everywhere.
http://www.suburbanempire.com
quote
This is Apocalypse Maybe with people worried more about some Palinesque entr’acte than a genuine revolt
unquote
Yeahiwasthinking at least I am not going crazy in French.
They have two ways of sounding out, “ooh”, one with the face wrinkled up like they just smelled something horrible, and the other one where you put your lips in the “ooh” shape and make an “e” sound. This is the crazy one, just croaking out “sacre bleu”, “ma maison”, “incredible!”, “ensemble’, “tout suite”, “ooh-la-la”, and muttering stuff like Pepe le Pew does. Deranged, seriously. And why do they have a little kid when it says, “Les Miserables?” The point of Kunstler’s whole blog is that adults can be miserable, especially when they did all kind of illegal drugs as young people. We’re not even forty any more. A 38-year-old (say, conniving and female), is going to be sizing up a new fifty-year-old to take to the cleaners. He doesn’t need to go see Jack Nicholson’s next theatrical triumph where he plays the axe-swinging virile hero with his balls dragging on the ground.
Survey says! Show me Jack Nicholson right now.
Note to self: If this comment posts, i.e. “If you are reading this comment, it must have posted.” Okay, (b), OTHERWISE I EXCEEDED THE POSTS IN THE ALLOTTED TIME, so, as Kunstler says, “We’l see.”
I’m going back to my own blog while I spend $100 per day waiting in front of the Family Court for my hearing twenty-five days after being removed from my place of residence, computer on.
A few weeks back Jim nostalgically pines for telling a good story, just before he posts his painting. You can’t tell a story, man. For God’s sake, you can’t member what you had for breakfast!
Happy Hallowen! Oh, the spirit of Michael Jackson is in the air this year!
What a treat for R. Crumb in France, I bet. Oh, I am reading and it says here that Washington, D.C. was laid out “bigger than Paris”.
The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are 30% down in their container throughput. Christmas is already dead. Will gangrene ride up to Thanksgiving? South Coast Plaza has abundant parking on Saturdays and elegantly unpatronized storefronts.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has some 700,000 students of whom 8.9% are White. The 60% of entrants who graduate high school within six years(!) have a California Academic Performance Index (CAPI) equivalent tested IQ of 84.
Pray for a silver-masked, potbellied wrestler to appear to save us all. Or we bow down to our new Drug Overlords. Or, “all your futures are belong to us.”
JFK set the mark. He messed with the banks. Ever wonder what was up with the red seal on money in the mid sixties? A death sentence…
Now, everyone since ‘gets it’.
Bend over, peon.
Concerning the following:
“He stared at them, they blinked, the wall came down.” ——ZZZZZZ on Pres. Reagan.
————————————–
I see….and were those the walls of Jericho or Berlin?
Seriously, and this guy has the nerve to criticize Obama voters for considering Obama a Messiah? I’ve never heard any Obama supporter get this close to pure adulation………..well, maybe Asoka.
———————————
Asoka,
lighten up a little bit, the main point of the post was to shed a little light on what a complete hypocrite Parrot Boy is.
That being said, you are a little over the top on Obama. The jury is still out on his actions, which thus far have been pretty uninspiring. Personally, I think he flubbed a chance to make real constructive change by bringing a strong agenda to congress shortly after his election. So far, all he really has accomplished is a continuation of the policies of the previous eight years, and a lot of smiling.
Revenge might function as a sort of larger immune system for society as a whole. Those who would destroy us for their own gain, should themselves be destroyed, to make us healthy again.
I look around at my fellow baby-boomer ex-hippie, ex-political radical age-cohorts and I see a sad-ass claque of passive, played-out, defeated dreamers too depressed to form a coherent thought about what’s really going on… lost in sentimental fantasies about “world peace,” or free heart-transplants-for-everybody as they, the boomers themselves, lurch toward the graveyard.
That was classic JHK !!! Keep those fists swinging!!!
Obama has found out that money runs the show and monied people/businesses comprise the SHOW. Remember that Obama is green as grass. He’s suddenly going to start calling the shots against these interests?
Obama, the country’s love child from the last election, wanted to make his pay czar, Ken Feinberg, available to the press excepting FOX. The press, in a rare moment of integrity, said “no dice”. No FOX, no us. Obama caved.
Moral of the story? The Emperor has no testicles. For those like Asoka who “respect” Obama, perhaps this incident reinforces their respect. It must be nice to respect the President, even if he’s a creep.
America has to wake up before Obama sinks the country. There are enough pro-America Americans who will remember these slights. The fanatical fervor will be gone, largely, in ’12. We languish in the Middle East thanks to Obama, where the President admitted we were bad news, used too much oil, etc. Yet, Chicago is a great place for the Olympics. Nothing wrong with this picture?
When have I ever said that I thought Obama was some kind of God.
It simply isn’t in me to “adulate” a politician, especially a Chicago Machine politician, which is what Obama is and has been. I lack the capacity for hero worship, having never met with one who didn’t turn out to be seriously flawed. I voted for the guy because he was the lesser evil, and still maintain that McCain would have been still worse.
You don’t have to worship Obama to despise the tea bag movement, as much as I agree with its basic premise. If the tea baggers had stuck to the core issue, which is the complete hijacking of our treasury by corporate interests, I’d be behind them.
But that hijacking was well underway in the WW2 era , and has continued and expanded through every administration since. The Republican Right is every bit as guilty as the Lefty Dems. And we out here have enabled it, all of us, by making demands for various welfare programs and stimulus.
So we’re all supposed to come together but the Liberals and the Lefitsts are going to keep insulting us-even though we are the ones who have been right all along about the Banks and the Fed.
Yeah right.
Tea Bagger is a grotesque homosexual insult. If it’s not obvious to you, then you have probably lived a clean life. But you have to know what we’re up against so google it to find out. As for race baiting, what and where? Most of the Tea Party acutally believes that Blacks are going to morph into White Patriots with good Sun Tans who defend free enterprise and low taxes. Delusion is no respecter of political affilation you see. But yes, some of the Tea Party know that a certain ethnic group dominates Banking and Finance-is acknowldgeing an awkward fact prejudice? Isn’t todays’s post about facing hard reality? If Jewish Americans don’t like what their wealthy brothers and cousins have done to America, they should start making noise. But so far the silence is deafening-except when Bernie Madoff screwed his fellow Jews.
Madoff’s biggest associate was found yesterday face down in his pool. Guess he wont have to go to court…And the caveat: lots of the old money Mayflower Whites are totally in with and behind the Financial System. They are as guilty as any-more so for betraying the Country their ancestors founded.
“America has to wake up before Obama sinks the country.”
———————————
I’d like for one of you Obama hating dipshits to post one significant thing Obama has done that wasn’t baked in the cake before his election.
Oh!! Oh!! were all socialists all of a sudden!
What crap, Obama put stilts under the auto companies, 1/10 of 1 percent of the American economy. All the rest of the shit that’s happened out there, TARP ect., was all in place before the election, and mearly supported by Obama…..to my considerable chagrin.
All this Obama hysteria makes it very difficult to even pretend that it isn’t mostly racism. As far as the dipshits on this website who keep up this spew of horseshit that isn’t even in doubt.
I couldn’t have said it better re: baby boomers. I think the lesson boomers have taught us is: Finish the job. They saw what was going on in the 60’s/70’s.. got coked up and FICO’ed in the 80’s and turned a blind eye to the malfeasence they helped expose the formation of… until now, their ‘oh shit’ moment in history… and its too late… Their homes foreclosed upon, their genX/y heirs left to scramble to build a new world ‘made by hand’ when they finally succumb to the inevitable and let go of their power roles in areas of society that could have already gotten started.
Speaking of Christmas, I was in a Home Depot last week and was startled by Christmas music! Yep, two weeks before Halloween and they’ve already got the Christmas ornaments out! And stocking stuffers for sale in the aisles too. What a country. What leadership. Woe is us – at this rate we have no future.
First of all, JHK, thank you for this wonderful site. I think you’re a bit of a crank, but, being cranky myself, that only makes you more fun to read.
I’ve pondered what you write for a long time now and, frankly, I think we are in a slipstream, that last peaceful moment of aimless wandering before the shit really starts hitting the fan.
And hit the fan the shit certainly will (in Yoda-speak). But I think the public outrage-trigger will most-likely be found in two places, both coming up on the horizon very soon:
1) Elections. It’s time to clean house and just toss every last motherfucking incumbent out of office. Clean slate time is upon us. As much as it pains me to do it myself, I strongly feel that the most legitimate way to unleash pent-up public anger is through the ballot box. Fuck’em all and let the voters sort’em out.
2) Local tax hikes. Tip O’Neill sagely intoned once that “all politics is local”. Well, so are taxes. And once We The Homeowners start getting whacked with ungodly tax increases (and they are most definitely coming, New Yorkers!!!), the shit will start to fly. Of course, none of this madness will occur BEFORE elections – how stupid do you think our ruling class is? Venal, yes; stupid, no.
Thanks to our American live-now-pay-later mentality, the check is in the mail and it’s about to come due. And no one wants to pay.
The result will be drastic increases in nickel-and-dime fees, charges, and taxes with a correlating decrease in services. We’ll be paying MUCH more for MUCH less. Something Americans hate more than anything else.
EVERYTHING and ANYTHING that you are currently enjoying for free – or at a much-reduced price – is about to cost ya! And I mean EVERYTHING!
Start looking for email fees or taxes. Stamps will (but of course) be going up yet again. Get ready for an American VAT (what fun THAT is going to be!). ATM fees or taxes for each time you use your card for ANYTHING. Increases in tolls and toll roads (and the privatization of same). In fact, get ready for Privatized America!
So, “where is the outrage?”, you ask? It’s coming. In fact, it’s about two weeks away, in my reckoning.
My advice is four-fold: 1) buy a top-of-the-line home safe, 2) buy precious metals, to the extent that you still can; 3) secure your residence the best way you can; and 4) have as much cash-on-hand as you think you can safely store in your residence.
Money-in-Mattress Time is a-comin’! And a-comin’ soon! And the shit will be a-hittin’ that fan!
Exhibit A-he doesn’t like points of view that are new to him so he skips over them-ignores them. Americans are very good at ignoring things they don’t want to look at. He just wants to read more things that he already knows from people he feels comfortable with, his fellow Liberal Tribesmen. Well things are changing real fast and I suggest he tries to take in some new viewpoints. After all, from ignoring comes ignorance. And you are as weird to us as we are to you.
Uh, Jim? You’re a smart guy, and I enjoy starting out my week reading your unique take on current events. But this constant doom-predicting is your Achilles heel. This time you’re calling for The Apocalypse sometime before the holidays. Last week you were prognosticating a bomb going off in the lobby of Goldman Sachs. I believe last year you were calling for the shit to hit the fan sometime in the summer of ’09.
This is the exact kind of blowhard-ism that you, yourself, are so good at lampooning in others. You are the guy who’s making a cottage industry out of predicting the collapse before anybody else does. Shall we call it the Kunstler Collapse, so that you can patent it?
Don’t you see that you are in danger of discrediting your entire analysis by playing Prophet? If the shit doesn’t hit the fan before the holidays, then, by your own definition, you’re an idiot. What kind of moron goes all in, betting on the end of the world? Yay! The world ended – and I predicted it! Yay!
Of course, if the world doesn’t end before the holidays, then you’re the asshole holding the “The World Will End By The Holidays” sign on January 2, 2010. I don’t get it. You’re better than this. Why pin yourself down to predicting the exact dates when such and such is going to happen? Didn’t you learn your lesson with Y2K?
Sasha and Melia have not been given the vaccine btw. When asked the White House Press said that “they don’t qualify”. Very interesting.
Fox News in Colorado Springs, CO just reported that a single truck driver / delivery job for $13.00 an hour received over 500 applications over night.
These must be some of the green shoots!
Quote:
We could have bravely faced the structural perversities in banking the past year, but we decided not to. ”
I disagree. Yes, we “could” have taken the nasty tasting medicine, but to harp on this point completely dismisses every day, human realities, like, you know, feeding one’s family. In a debt society how many businesses can actually meet payroll with cash on hand? Short answer: they can’t, they need credit to grease the wheels.
It’s amazing that people are so blithe about the implications of allowing the system to seize up. You’re all awfully willing to throw your friends and neighbors to the wolves in order to make a moral point, huh?
Even though I supported Ron Paul, thus favoring the idea that the Big Boyz should have been allowed to fail, the truth is, had that been allowed to occur, the banking collapse would have taken the entire world economy down with it. No head of government would permit this to happen, not Bush, not Obama, no president would allow it.
“- the “I Hate Government” crowd that Reagan ushered in have done their work very well. I suppose it is too much to hope that they will be the first ones to die off.”
Does this include the “I hate unconstitutional government” crowd? There is a vast difference you know. And how well they did their work is certainly open for debate!
I forgot to mention in my last post….
(What, Steve?)
Umm, I dunno. Must be something detailed into how insanity causes rapid cell death in a wave, leaving the brain shtruggling with 10% of its neurons suddenly dead, a post-Freudian deal off on about a thisclose. Well, then say about the die-back.
The usage of a heroin substitute in the early 1980s gave researchers apple-cheeked glee because now they had a perfect model for Parkinson’s. Once the re-uptake of dopamine in the substantia nigra was prevented, the vesicles swelled and burst, with necrotic die-back leading to permanent brain damage. The rate of neuron loss is pegged by scientific jiggering such that the average old person loses 5% and doesn’t have PD, but the MPTP+ treated addict or manufacturer has, say, a loss of 15% and that is PD. Now, the schizophrenic loss in one go not only approximates a lifetime of attrition—
JHK was redundant today.
I read the news today, old boy. No I didn’t. Who does that. Die, newspapers. Save a tree!
Uh, yeah now: JHK does a little dance, makes a little love with Lincoln. You wonder, “Well, as a journalism major, he learned to paw through the stacks. Right. Re: Nah. How do you suppose he knows what’s wrong with America? Because, THE SAME SHIT IS WRONG WITH HIM!! Don’t you see that?
We want a bright Israeli future. (What do they have for halleluja?) Javier the gila monster?
And so, you are going through the stacks, but the archeology of it, and that of the Public Lands Survey System in the United States, makes something akin to a Rosetta stone helpful.
Our genius in surveying was named Gunter, and that was so we could measure ten chains. In Berlin, 1939 looked good, and 1945 looked bad, any way you cut it. 1997 Washington, D.C. looks good. Do we even have the oil to make a 1945 Berlin out of it? I fret about that.
Okay, so you go your chains, but you have 640 acres to the square mile, and 8 x 8 = 64. You go 80 chains, bingo. Turn ninety go 80 chains, bingo. Drive an IRON PIPE, not a stake, a monument (fill it with concrete, water from a canteen, falsify the corner record, now you got more land, put in a brass tag, done. Wull lat’s 6400 square chains. Ah, now the genius: every TEN square chains is an acre, and an acre we use for a farm. We hit the farm and we standardized the mile. The upside was that the longitudinal convergence could be adjusted at the township level (didn’t matter much to the flat grid).
The PRICE you pay (not the downsidefuck), is to have us calculate the Pythagorean part due to elevation changes (and wipe out the pesky Injun), while you stay put, Pilgrim .
Yes we stake, but nobody knows what a stake is, and yes we drive, because we pound (with a sledgehammer), but we don’t “drive” “stakes”. That’s just what you see since you’re not there and if you were you’d be swatting flies and not looking.
Aw, so there is no Grover’s Corners in Our Town. No, we can’t reinvent Europe. There’s enough of you out on Sharon Tate’s property to keep us busy thinning your ranks for some time.
Good one, Jim. “Medieval War Wagons”, indeed!
Crisis of leadership? Well, yeah… barely breathing clergy, included.
We have the leadership “we” deserve. Well, at least the majority of voting Americans has the leadership they deserve.
Your essay, essentially gets it right – the dominant cohort of baby boomers, as well as many others, is, frankly not interested in being led anywhere but back to the same old promised land they’ve been promised since at least the day Hoover promised a chicken in every pot. Sustainable reality is not imaginable to any of us who grew up in the Eisenhower era of successively richer generations. I include myself, here.
Even though I frequently think about how we must shrink our appetites for EVERYTHING, I’m flumoxed by actually imagining what that might really look like. Hunting and gathering amidst a human-dominated world with 6.8 billion opposably-thumbed bipeds working the same angle? I know that isn’t the paradigm you’ve been promoting, but it might well eventually come to that (hunting/gathering) if humans are on the planet in another century or two.
Meanwhile we are stuck. We are, I believe in a quagmire of unprecedented paralytic properties.
Unlike the nominal “boomers” we depict around us, we ( I ) see quite clearly the cosmic untenability of our situation, but, even absent conventional delusions, I am morale-ly paralysed. I am stuck, largely doing what I know how to do, in a dying industrial capitalist culture.
On a ship heading, mid-ocean, into an impossibly treacherous storm, jumping overboard does not promise a very satisfactory enhancement of my prospects.
I am quite stuck. Those of us with progeny (if I have any, they never call or write) have plowed a field of decreasingly viable yields. There is no way out – unless…. I somehow manage to get a ticket on the next Martian colony-bound frigate that will accept me… and my truck and brush-chipper.
Doomishly’
Treecraft
Al, I’ve been telling them about the Black American IQ for months-they wont listen. Mexicans are a little higher at 90, but even more of them drop out so it doesn’t make much difference. Neither group is the stuff technological civilizations are made of-what to speak of Western Civilization-which is by definition, White. There are half a dozen seccesion movements-get out of California and get involved. The strongest and the one with the best chance is in the Northwest. I know it’s hard-the Golden State was a Paradise. At some high level, they sold you out and gave it back to the Mexicans. It’s gone-to get it back would mean war now. And that would mean the Feds-who are the ones who gave it away.
As an ancient Chinese Proverb said, a gentleman may well have to pack his bags and go several times in his lifetime.
Will the USA (and/or global economy) collapse before Christmas? I don’t know but I am very much in favor of it collapsing.
Capitalism has done enough damage to the Earth and humankind. Capitalism has died. What exist now is a form of zombie capitalism propped up by the governments of the world in order to maintain the illusion of hope necessary for the ponzi scheme of consumerism to maintain itself.
It has cost trillions of dollars to make the dead seem undead but this sort of spending is unsustainable and must of necessity end. The sooner that it ends, the better. Americans will become impoverished and powerless, but this is a fate which Americans have earned.
Building an entire world economy upon the myth of perpetual population and economic growth is a recipe for catastrophe, a dead-end path leading to extinction for humankind and many other species.
Best that it end now rather than later.
Not that it will make any difference to the outcome. Humankind has already damaged the Earth sufficiently to guarantee the extermination of civilization and the extinction of humankind.
Undoubtedly the Earth will become a more peaceful, happier, less violence, and pristine place after humankind is gone. Nature doesn’t care about humankind’s survival any more than Nature cared about the survival of the dinosaurs.
Extinction is a just fate for a species which has destroyed its only home.
http://www.flickr.com/dmathew1
“Laura Louzader | October 26, 2009 10:07 AM | Reply
“And most of us don’t have the time nor wherewithal to participate in protests across the country. We’re too busy trying to keep our heads above water, stay gainfully employed, pay down our bills, and save for what we can see is coming.”
They have you, and millions like you, distracted and perfectly positioned for a stay long refreshing stay and indoctrination at Camp FEMA. You say you don’t have time to protect your rights and liberty huh? Hmm. You’ll have plenty of time to follow orders, I guarantee it.
LRAD. Look it up. Was the McMansion, SUV and flat screen on credit worth it after all?
Good Luck with that Liberty thing…
When I first began to hear the term “Globalization,” I realized then that something was coming. We are all one people, after all, and the space between us is diminishing rapidly. One thing I anticipated was that globalization would make our society more like a Third-World society than it would make Third-World societies more like us. Good, I thought; we could use some deflation, some humility, some economizing. And, after all, Jim, isn’t that what you are saying? That this is coming, despite the attempts by the politicians and exploiters to deny it, or to reverse the trend that has already started. We should be happy, actually, and accept gladly the new sort of society we will live in and the new sorts of lives that we will all share. It is actually fun to live a more spartan life, to produce what is possible for yourself, and to “reduce, reuse, and recycle” all else. Globalization has brought us this. It is inevitable now. Keep saying that, Jim! And thanks.
Jim’s got an audience of racists, as the post above indicates …
* “Al, I’ve been telling them about the Black American IQ for months-they wont listen. Mexicans are a little higher at 90, but even more of them drop out so it doesn’t make much difference. Neither group is the stuff technological civilizations are made of-what to speak of Western Civilization-which is by definition, White. ”
Sir, if you are any indication of the intelligence of white people, I’d say that it must be in the single digits. If you people want to leave the USA I suggest that you do so. Go find yourself a little island so all the bitter morbidly obese Southern racist can build their own civilization. Hopefully it will be better than the backward religious fundamentalist civilization already present in the Confederate South.
http://www.flickr.com/dmathew1
Is this the equivalent of a blogosphere filibuster?
“brevity is the soul of wit” —-can’t remember who said that, but you ought to read ’em.
“Does this include the “I hate unconstitutional government” crowd? There is a vast difference you know. And how well they did their work is certainly open for debate!”
————————————
Yes, there is difference, but why do I doubt that you know what it is? This tea bagger crowd is very good at repeating slogans, without having a clue what they mean. So….what has Obama done that is “unconstitutional”?
As far as that goes, why aren’t we still using quill pens and riding around on horseback? Where is your powdered wig, you liberal fuck?
The founding fathers had far less faith in their infallability than the Libertarians do, otherwise they wouldn’t have made it possible to amend the constitution.
All you need is the wah-wah pedal and the theme from The Good, the bad, and the Ugly to make your spite into some god comic ironyfuck.
Whoops and interestin—whoops! And, inneres-teen. Weird, and very eenterrr-esting. But shtupid.
What whir gittin’ out of it? It’s free and not costly. It takes your mind off the wife.
You and Molly Be Dram make me look good becuase neither of you can write. Wait’ll the English teacher Abbeysbooks gets here. She doesn’t reply to me directly, either.
Well, how about you don’t reply to me directly or indirectly, champ?
“So, “where is the outrage?”, you ask? It’s coming. In fact, it’s about two weeks away, in my reckoning.”
———————————-
Yes…..well, we won’t be surprised if two weeks come and go and it becomes another two weeks, and so on and on.
When are you forecasters going to get it through your heads? IT’S TOO FUCKING COMPLICATED FOR YOU TO PREDICT WHEN SIGNIFICANT INFLECTION POINTS MIGHT BE REACHED.
By the time they come, you will much more likely to have foregotten you ever made such a prediction. That is, if you are still even around.
Were all just along for the ride here people….enjoy the scenery.
was2swallow
11
Dave-first you say that we should all become Third World-as if the invaders just want to share and be equal with us. Go to their websites fool. The motto of La Raza is “For our Race everything and for other Races nothing.” Then you say we are all doomed to exctinction anyway. What a ray of sunshine you are-and then you claim I am bitter! Well you are a self defeating self hater which you “compassionately” extend to all of Western Civilization and all White People.
Non Whites aren’t coming here out of the goodness of their hearts but out of desire to get what they can take. They aren’t better or wiser-they want to be just like us. But what they lack is our creativity and capacity to create an orderly society. The East Asians can do the latter btw. And the East Asians have higher IQ than us-so don’t say I’m a White Supremacist.
I agree that we have to change btw. We should never have given the rest of the World this system which cannot last. We should have used our creativity to lead the world in Green Technology. Alas, it’s water under the bridge now. But there will be many survivors in many places. You’re just projecting your desire for human extinction into a bogus realism. And the more primitive countries will come out ahead-that should make you happy. But there will be White Survivors too-sorry about that. But you wont be one of them-thankfully.
The game was over BEFORE Obama set foot in office.
8 years of idiot Bush and neocon Cheney took us from the edge of disaster (thank you Reagan-Bush-Clinton), over the cliff.
Obama has become President while we are in free fall. The only question left is how those who survive will react after we hit the ground.
Some Dale guy rips me since I took half a page to cover neuroscience (DA ennervation) plus Lincolns PLSS.
I am renouncing the racism. Hate to tell you. Got your wire brush handy to take off these tattoos?
I get released and stole my car, drive to Ocean Beach, meet the world’s most stoned free people, drive to Chulavista, rent a room, drive back to OB, meet a black jalhouse lawyer, and after associating for two days I am light $350 to buy him a separate room and “cosmetics”, he goes to talk to my spouse for me (I’m forbidden by court order ( a sentence American style)), they lapse into Spanish—yes, he is all that—I don’t get my clothes, we mount a frontal assault, he withdraws, I don’t get my clothes again. I just get to wonder about my jewelry.
They figured out a way to steal a house, you know.
You won’t have to drink to wake up with a hangover in the future.
When Miss Abbey git here, be sure an use the wah wah peddle to give her a big entrance. She wern’t down herre but once last week neither.
Sorry about your situation. As the Ancients said, “Adore the Feminine, but beware the Female.” Now one thing old boy-Miss Abs was trying to treat you and, if I interpret your post correctly, forgive me if I’m wrong-you said if she was in the same room with you she would now be finding herself on the other side of said room! Perhaps that is the source of her silence-a kind of discretion.
I voted for Obama. No way I could have voted for Sarah Palin. I thought the DEMS would end the war. After all, “there was no way Obama could make things worse than 8 years of Bush?” hoo-boy..
Sadly, from day one, Mr. Obama surrounded himself with Bush Bots (Gates) and Clintonistas.(Rham, Summers)
Then came the torture photos he couldn’t release, the Patriot Act he re-newed, and the Goldman Sacs fiasco with Geithner and crew.
I agree with JK, I see a country crying out for leadership, direction and an FDR-Type of rebuild… but I hear nothing coming from the White House. (except the sound of crickets from time to time)
“Nobody in authority is willing to face the truth, state the truth, and offer a reality-based idea about how to meet the truth, This is a leadership failure not just in politics and government, but also in business, in the university faculties, in the editorial and production offices of the news media, and even among a barely-breathing clergy.”
The crux of the matter – but an important distinction needs to be repeated -and repeated again and again – JK – most, if not all these so-called captains of industry and our “leaders” of this society know exactly what is going on.
But they are acting to various degrees to promote and preserve their own standing with the status quo and are not willing nor brave enough to “toss out” a few ideas and risk their future.
Before Bush & Cheney. The American dream, as perceived by a bunch of consumers, consisted of more for less. Now that’s a sure-fire recipe for success. Ponzi upon Ponzi.
When peak oil USA oil hit, did anyone except the kooks do anything to investigate, analyze, plan?
Nope.
So, sorry folks, but we’ve had it coming for a long time and it’ll be here soon. It doesn’t matter who’s driving this bus, it’s already over the cliff.
You come to steal my potatoes, I’ll blow a hole in ya.
CSC
In America, tipping points tend to center around elections and taxation. You want the attention of the masses? Then steal their money, destroy their jobs, and offer them nothing but cake every Election Day. Things have a way of getting ugly VERY quickly once that happens.
@ Dale:
I live here in Upstate New York (actually just down the road from JHK, as luck would have it), and I strongly believe that things are about to get ugly. I may be wrong and I sure as hell hope that I am. I would like nothing more than to be wrong about something so cataclysmic. In fact, I’ll be glad to be the first to admit that I was wrong, if and when that time comes.
When you take away a person’s hope, their future, their job, their home, their livelihood – when there is NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE!!!!! – what do you think happens next?
That’s right: social disorder. Anarchy.
I believe it was Madeleine Albright who asked Colin Powell why we don’t use our vaunted imperial forces, since they cost so damned much and we have so many of them. Well, looks like we used’em! All too well.
So, let me ask you: at some point, won’t a lot of hopeless people start asking the same question with regard to their own private armories? Yeah, I think they will. All too well.
He/she who harnesses the peoples’ collective rage wins. For better or worse.
This essay, and [most of]these comments, are why I rush to my computer terminal each Monday morning, ready for a weekly dose of intelligence. Sadly, I can barely make to to Tuesday anymore, without longing for a refill.
The grudgeful, dreadful, paranoid drip of scattered teabag bodies are the only tannic reminder of the self-serving “lone wolf” mentality which brought our nation to this pass in the first place. Thanks to the voices of compassion and contemplation found here, the Teabaggers’ plaintive whines: “What about ME?” and “Because I deserve it,” are almost drowned out.
Free and easy, boys, free and easy. Like pulling a trigger.
While I’m old enough to look dispassionately at the scenery on this carnival log spume ride, I’m not beyond the seduction of hope. So I husband my trash and remind myself, every fortress becomes a trap in the end.
I’d give economic collapse about a 50-50 chance in the next ten years. But I wouldn’t presume to know when that would happen in that timeframe.
Predictions are more a reflection of the emotions of the person making them than they are of reality, and the more specific they are the more that is true. Yes, that is also true for the one I just made.
When people start putting dates on things as complex as collapse and assure us the “SHTF” by that date, you can pretty much be assured they don’t understand the world we live in.
Nah, Dale. It is my belief that I use my computer when I want. There’s no blogosphere culture. There are fish in the ocean full of mercury to keep the internet running on coal.
This is no filibuster. This is you having fun. There’s no good approximation to Congress, only one severe beating with a hickory cane leading up to the Civil War.
You had your say.
Your use of words above your station in life is unbecoming. As soon as I turn the light off on this computer you can have the floor all to yourself, with my compliments.
AH……don’t go away mad. All I said was you were using a lot of words to say very little. Who of us hasn’t been guilty of that at times.
Jesus?
@ Dale:
I appreciate your perspective. I, too, often wince at some of JHK’s “predictions” but I think they are thrown into the blogospheric ether more out of a visceral frustration with the Here And Now than with some inherent prognostication skills (But JHK is clearly on to something, no?).
Much of my current perspective comes from my meetings with various people. There are some truly desperate people out there, and I happen to know some of them. Why do you think Obama’s Secret Service detail is strained to the breaking point? Everyone knows that Obama has squandered the time, energy, and resources of the last nine months and, if he is lucky, he only has a few more months left to turn things around.
People will simply no longer tolerate the status quo without a fight. I am lucky enough to be able to sit out any “fight” in the near future, as I am rather well-off.
But, you really have to ask yourself, how much worse do things have to get before communal violence becomes the new normal? Once the inevitable tax increases kick in, will tax revolts be peaceful, when the masses come packing heat?
All I have are personal anecdotes, you’re right. That’s all any of us have. But I sense this deep forboding among everyone I come into contact with. The kindling has been placed. The gas keeps being poured into it. We’re all just waiting for the inevitable spark, which will surely make things most interesting.
Also, a poster above alluded to the topicality of the Pink Floyd album “The Wall”. I beg to differ. This is more of an “Animals” era than anything else. A telling quote:
“What do you get for pretending the danger’s not real?/
Meek and obedient you follow the leader/
Down well-trodden corridors, into the valley of steel/
What a surprise!/
A look of terminal shock in your eyes!/
Now things are really what they seem/
NO!, This is not a bad dream!”
As for me?:
“And any fool knows a dog needs a home,/
A shelter from pigs on the wing.”
Wow this place is getting intense and interesting.
I know lots of tea baggers and don’t think of them are race baiters, so maybe that is a regional thing. And I agree that Moore’s latest project/movie is another response to the situation from the one poster. I suspect there are more, just not “organized” groups, people who no longer want their children to take on college debt to get an english degree or who have moved onto 5 acres and are building mega gardens, and forming/joining trading networks. Opting out, an inch or a mile at a time seems to be increasing. It certainly is harder to tax when you are focused on your family and local goods, instead of those faux good/services that live in the various virtual lands of media, government, vast swaths of academia, etc..
As for the O, it seems that a group/party of people so focused on re-allocation of assets for most of their lives is probably the worse group for reallocation of where a society invests. I honestly believe there is a difference between those two statements.
As for the poster who believes that everything that we have seen was a “bushy” thing, I think that is akin to buying a gun used in a murder to go and murder for yourself, and feel better about oneself. Recommended reading might include “The Banality of Evil”.
When the Urban Chicago Clique decided to merge with the clintonian finance guys did you really think that was going to be a good thing? Neither side of this new crime family has done anything but suck on the teat of others creating wealth/product. Do you think they have ever milked a cow, nursed an elderly person, welded steel, etc? Cesar Chavez has got to be rolling in his grave as well.
Well off to turn over compost pile, realign the microwave link, and help the neighbor who lost his job, etc…..
Hey Jim, this one’s a gem. Dale, Seb and Lavocat, other than the lover’s quarrels:), I like what you’re all saying.
Let’s say the most advanced spiritual work turns out to be right – the movie “Groundhog Day.” What if we’re here, or somewhere like here, as the Buddhist screenwriter of that classic feels, for something like up to 10,000 lifetimes until we get it right.
Why not get it right now? Fear, blaming, scapegoating, hating, hoarding, guns and using them to perpetuate all of the above will only perpetuate all of the above.
Why don’t we try their opposites?
FDR suffered with high unemployment and a lousy economy until WW2 bailed him out. Him trying to jury rig the Supreme Court was another fine gig that you probably admire, too.
If Obama erred in selecting BushBots and Clintonistas, this only shows Obama to be horrible at choosing people suitable to you. You are saying these people should be dead, yet your guy chose ’em. What is wrong with Obama, what’s wrong with you? Despite all these Obama foibles, you still love the guy and will vote for him again. Your love is apparently indelible, just like people of color who vote Democrat perpetually and for Obama for reasons known only to God or Charlie Gibson.
Your use of the word “sadly” is pathetic, too. Why don’t you sound off like you’ve got a pair, soldier? It’s no time to hide behind elitist nerdery, sound the fuck off…
Jaego said: “Go to their websites fool. The motto of La Raza is “For our Race everything and for other Races nothing.”
Thanks for the suggestion, Jaego. I did exactly what you suggest and checked out their website. Turns out they do not have a motto like you say. Here is what their website says:
“Many people incorrectly translate our name, “La Raza,” as “the race.” While it is true that one meaning of “raza” in Spanish is indeed “race,” in Spanish, as in English and any other language, words can and do have multiple meanings.
As noted in several online dictionaries, “La Raza” means “the people” or “the community.” Translating our name as “the race” is not only inaccurate, it is factually incorrect.
“Hispanic” is an ethnicity, not a race. As anyone who has ever met a Dominican American, Mexican American, or Spanish American can attest, Hispanics can be and are members of any and all races.
The term “La Raza” has its origins in early 20th century Latin American literature and translates into English most closely as “the people” or, according to some scholars, as “the Hispanic people of the New World.” The term was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions.
Mistranslating “La Raza” to mean “the race” implies that it is a term meant to exclude others. In fact, the full term coined by Vasconcelos, “La Raza Cósmica,” meaning the “cosmic people,” was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people. This is an inclusive concept, meaning that Hispanics share with all other peoples of the world a common heritage and destiny.
And this is not just NCLR’s interpretation. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, “La Raza” means:
“…Mexicans or Mexican Americans considered as a group, sometimes extending to all Spanish-speaking people of the Americas.”
Furthermore, MSNBC’s online Spanish-English website, Encarta, translates the term this way:
“Hispanic Spanish-speakers in the Americas: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, or Spanish-speaking people of the Americas, considered as a group.”
The Free Dictionary, available online, similarly finds that the term “La Raza”:
“…embodies the notion that traditional, exclusive concepts of race and nationality can be transcended in the name of humanity’s common destiny.”
SOURCE: http://www.nclr.org/section/translation/
Jesus?
—————–
Maybe, but then we’ve only seen the abridged text. He might have actually rattled on like a Libertarian after a latte, for all we know.
Does anybody remember that infamous biblical verse about “inheriting the wind?” I remember we had to read the book “Inherit The Wind” back in high school for English Lit and that line always stayed with me. Like William Jennings Bryan in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, we [North]Americans have brought trouble to ourselves through our own foolish actions, from drowning ourselves in an orgy of credit card and low-interest loan debts to our our own wishful thinking about how the world ought to function. Do my fellow Generation X babies not realize that all the positive self-talk and pseudo-therapies peddled by everyone from Dr. Phil to Tony Robbins can not make folks in Afghanistan and the Middle East and Bosnia give up their ancient blood feuds long enough to stop killing each other? Another excellent post for JHK, who seems to have put his finger on what is ailing us. By the way, according to an article in one of the local Detroit papers, if all the vacant land in Detroit were put together it would create an area larger than the city of Boston.
Jaego,
I am sorry if you were speaking to someone else. But you did say: “Go to their websites fool” and so I thought you might be speaking to me also as I am a fool, also, thanks to Diogenes.
I am a madman, a wandering fool, and I really like the Chinese gentleman proverb you mentioned earlier… I believe in the wisdom of packing one’s bags and moving on, instead of staying, fighting and defending turf, or dying for a stick or brick home… which is not our real home… or dying, or killing, for pieces of bright shiny metal, whether silver or gold.
Violence is so ugly and so unnecessary.
Here is another Chinese proverb:
“Be in readiness for favorable winds.”
Who knows? I wouldn’t doubt things are a lot worse in Upstate NY then they are in my neck of the woods. I do Aikido with a group of people, mostly in their 20’s and 30’s but some up to the 60’s. I see a lot of adjusting going on. People learning how to live on less and not worry so much about their image.
I’ve seen a few businesses close down locally, contractors leave town, that sort of thing. But the restaurants are still full on Friday nights and the downtown area, while having a few vacancies, doesn’t look like Detroit, by any stretch. The only people I see who might get crazy are the ones who weren’t too stable to begin with. Cowboy guy, (one of those people who has to have an “image”) starting to lose his ass after years of cutting a fat hog, talks about collapse all the time. It’s really his problem and his fault, as far as I can see. I think Boise is about typical U.S. right now, in terms of economic pain.
Could there be a little violence?, sure…..probably happened in the 30’s too. How come we don’t here about it now? Because they were dealt with harshly and quickly and everybody got the message. Bonnie and Clyde, and all that.
I suspect Joe Six-Pack is largely hot air. When the SHTF, he’ll sell that gun for money before he uses it. Bear market in weaponry coming soon?
Dear 3rd Generation,
FYI, I am one of the people who has preaching preparation for the past 20 years.
I do not live in a “mcmansion” nor do I drive a SUV. I ditched my car 22 years ago. I live in an elderly 750sq ft apt with minimal amenity and I take buses and trains, or I walk. I have minimal CC debt. I buy 70% of my clothing from resale shops. I live close to everything I need. I have never had kids, and am all alone, so it’s easy for me to make some adjustments.
I feel sure I live a more frugal lifestyle than about 70% of the people posting here.
I simply am pointing out that most of the people in my area, who are distinctly not SUV owners or McMansion dwellers, and who are by and large frugal and careful, are scrambling to meet day-to-day needs for a frugal lifestyle, keep their kids safe, and save some money. While I can talk of preparation and public policy on my own blog because I have the time, and downscale further because I am only one lone woman, my neighbors have not those choices.
Even I would like to spend more time acquiring skills I will need, but first I must make a living in the present. So I take care of my job, considering myself fortunate to have it.
Destroying my present life will not help my future one bit.
“I have never had kids, and am all alone, so it’s easy for me to make some adjustments. ”
———————-
You hear that ZZZZZ? Maybe this woman could use a date!
On second thought, I’m sure she’s not that desperate.
Dale is a very big problem for everybody-even himself. Since he doesn’t consider himself real no one else is either. A carte blanche for bad behavior. Buddhism is always popular with the elite-especially the gaze. Nothing is wrong, all is permitted-they think. They “sit” mindfully on toilet seats at glory holes waiting for tough rade.
Sounds like you might need those skin illustrations. You’re already a soldier-you got your uniform when you were born. But what did your uniform look like before that?
Sorry I meant Dave. But yes, you’ll do.
Oh boy Mr Sensitivity strikes again. Do you have to detroy everything you touch Buddha Boy?
As Gandhi Ji said, In a choice between violence and cowardice, I would advise violence.
He knew that the average Hindoo was a coward-he knew his own people very well. So he took his message to the Sikhs, a warrior people, in order to shame his co-ethnics.
Does this perhaps apply to you? Whites, and their Black Dependants like you, can only run so long. There is no place left to go. We have to fight. You can help-become an honorary Aryan.
Don’t worry, I’m well supplied with dates.
I just like living alone. Peace and quiet and all that.
If we have to go back to living 3 to a room, I’m cooked. I’ll make a lot of space sacrifices to be alone.
Well….you’re just desperate to be acknowledged aren’t you? OK…here you go. Who says I’m not sensitive?
I think long ago I posted about the farm in colorado that offered that anyone could come and glean their fields….maybe last fall
did you hear about that one?
Welcome to the Shape of Things to Come
collapse is disorderly…but politicians of both sides bieng what they are:
NEVER LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE
I finally understand the “apathy”. People know and understand they really have no say, and never have. So if the fascist US corporatist system crashes & burns, who cares.
here tis:
and this was a year up the ladder…how many jobs have been lost and debt added in a year?
Down on the farm, a frenzy over free food
In a sign of bad economic times, more than 40,000 show up when a Weld family invites people to gather surplus produce.
By Allison Sherry
The Denver Post
Posted: 11/23/2008 12:30:00 AM MST
Want one more palpable sign of a desperate economy?
An estimated 40,000 people came to a Weld County farm Saturday to collect free potatoes, carrots and leeks.
Cars snaked around cornfields and parallel parked along Colorado 66 and 119 early in the morning to get free food from the Miller family, who farm 600 acres outside of Platteville, about 37 miles north of Denver.
As this prolonged Indian summer continued, the Millers had decided to give away produce because so much was left over at the end of their annual fall festival. Any day now, a few deep freezes would kill it off.
They expected between 5,000 and 10,000 people spread out over a couple of days. Instead, they found themselves on Saturday morning inundated with cars and people with sacks and wagons and barrels ready to harvest whatever was available.
The Millers canceled the second day of the giveaway originally planned for today because, as Chris Miller put it, “the pickins’ are very slim now.”
At one point, 30 acres of family farmland had become a parking lot. Their crowd estimate of 40,000 plus was based on the number of cars. Sheriff’s officials said they “wouldn’t be surprised” if that count was accurate.
Traffic was backed up almost to Interstate 25, and police ticketed people who had illegally abandoned their cars in the frenzy.
“Overwhelmed is putting it mildly,” Miller said. “People obviously need food.”
Evidently, Platteville isn’t the only place where this is the case. Last week in Denver, thieves broke into freezers owned by the Park Hill Grandparents Organization and stole Thanksgiving trimmings — including more than a dozen frozen turkeys — set to be donated.
And in Lakewood on Saturday, people lined up in the dark at 6 a.m. to collect Thanksgiving boxes, donated by the Jeffco Action Center. By the end of the day, 5,141 people had gotten food — the biggest demand in 40 years.
At the Miller Farm, it never got truly unruly.
They had friends and family members help direct cars. Sheriff’s deputies cruised up and down highways trying to move traffic along, after fielding complaints from neighbors.
The family makes most of its money in the summer and fall, visiting 42 farmers markets a week, and hosting a fall festival where relatives charge an entry fee and then teach people about where their food comes from.
Normally, any unpicked produce goes back to the land. But after hearing reports of food being stolen from some nearby churches, the Millers decided to let people take what they wanted for free.
Sandra Justice, a Greeley resident who works at a technology company, brought her mother and son to pick potatoes. The price was nice, she said, but Justice also enjoyed picking her own food in these downtrodden times.
“Everybody is so depressed about the economy,” she said, noting she hauled off about 10 bags of vegetables. “This was a pure party. Everybody having a great time getting something for free.”
Allison Sherry: 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com
drafen, i agree with you but you’re going to hear it now from the ayn rand capitalist crowd about how capitalism is the most morally sound economic system. and that government intervention and aims for the u.s. to be self sufficient is too communistic itself.
and you are a bag of hot air!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jaego said: “Do you have to detroy everything you touch Buddha Boy?”
I do be thinkin’ you jivin’ me. You be self-jivin’? You wanna become an honorary Brother?
Ain’t no damn thing “green” about Mr. Obama like that bahmi sayin’…
Mr. Green Obama was smart enough to outfox that old buzzard McCain and that shrew Clinton. Mr. O be one good jive talker too.
Mr. Green Obama done kept the country safer more months than than W’s first year in office. We weren’t safe on Bush’s watch and we got hit hard in Sept. of the year he took office. And Bush GOT the memo, he just too lazy to read it.
On Mr. O’s watch we done passed Sept. and we’s still safe.
i care
if the usa goes its north mexico and LA FAMILIA rules…..hobbesian/darwinism…survival of the most violent
asia said: “Cars snaked around cornfields and parallel parked along Colorado 66 and 119 early in the morning to get free food from the Miller family”
Interesting they still have money to make car payments. Interesting they still have money to put gasoline in the car and wait in long lines of cars.
they’ll choose sarah palin, because you know, she’s a mom, and if she can raise kids she is definitely able to run a whole nation.
Idon’t think he does. He is no financial genius and I think that is why he stuck to the tried and true even tho they led us into this. He is hoping they know what to do and will do it. I am not so sure.
We are in for complete paradigm change and as Kuhn tells us in The Logic of Scientific Revolutions this is often fast and produces upheaval. And does not only apply to science. The 60’s were a paradigm change also. They are still trying to stuff that one back in the bottle. Or maybe it was the precursor. Read Toynbee’s History to see where we are now in disintegration.
Oil only at a huge price will stop it all. One thing is the tiny base of the huge pyramid.
But I think it has to happen to save the planet from more destruction and allow it to recover (very slowly) from all our damage.
It looks like the Obama administration response to the economic crisis is like the Bush response to hurricane Katrina. Paul Volcker, one of the few sensible Obama advisors said last week in a NY Times article he never had any influence with Obama. Frontline showed last week Geithner & Summers, during the Clinton years, were responsible for gutting derivative regulation–and things like repealing the Glass-Stegall Act. Our country would be better off with a horse breeder (Bush’s FEMA head) as Treasury Secretary and Head Economic advisor.
Glad you noticed. There are diverse opinions here that are often argued very intelligently. And we try notto feed the flamers and some of them have calmed down on their stupid rhetoric learned elsewhere and are offering concise comments. All it takes is solidarity.
China has been dumping dollars all over the world and buying hard assets all over the world. They see very clearly what is going on and have taken steps to remove their danger to it.
Just because they are communistic does not mean they don’t understand finance.
“Governments have known how to ‘stimulate’ sickly economies — usually by war — as long as they have known anything.” — Robert Skidelsky
Looks like we’re headed for the “usual” option, then.
China would have put them to death long ago for ruining things. After all they put to death the one responsible for the poison melamine in pet food that killed so many pets. Now no one who cares will buy any kind with ingredients from China.
And no fur on clothes, toys etc. They skin cats and dogs alive to get it. The most recent occurrence was at The Coach at the Frontenac Mall in St. Louis. They said it was coyote fur around the collar. When we looked the fur was from China. The sales women could do nothing, but they gave me all the info unprompted to complain.
Coyote fur to make us believe otherwise. Fnoof.
I think so too. This man feels he has nothing without his family. He is not a loner, a rugged individualist type.
Malia and Sasha on their way somewhere? Security is stressed out already.
Hell I’d cave. Remember how they used to compromise gay diplomats? Give us the info we want or we tell what you do with your mouth and butt.
JHK can say the nation is engaging in self-jiving, but the proof is in the pudding, the economic pudding.
The economy has recovered through Obama’s masterful and intelligent leadership. Proof of that is the strengthening of the dollar that has sent prices for gold, copper and other commodities tumbling.
If we were in an economic crisis, the precious metals would be increasing in value, not decreasing.
We have turned in time to avoid the abyss. That in and of itself is good news, and Obama gets the credit, regardless of what happens between now and New Years Day.
Nope. We just devalue the dollar. And we have already started. Mortgages will vanish into thin air is the hope. The big banks will have gotten theirs and the little ones that didn’t participate in this fiasco will drown.
I used to own the Banca d’Italia in Philly. During the last depression as people lined up to take out their money, the mob lined up to put money in. So that bank never folded.
And we will see home grown terrorism. If rag heads with pieces of metal and blow up stuff can hold our military at bay for 8 years, why then so can we. All we have to do is be willing to die to do it. And we can’t let them out perform us, can we?
As Solzhenitsyn said, It was the fearless old women who provided the most resistance to the USSR. The Iraqis have shown us the model and we have paid a trillion to see it, eh?
NEW YORK, Oct 26 (Reuters) – New York gold futures ended at their lowest level in more than two weeks on Monday as a sudden resurgence of the dollar decreased bullion’s appeal as a hedge against a depreciating U.S. currency
The person in the White House often has little choice in his actions once actually there; something that Bush found much to his own chagrin. Obama is trying to restore faith in the banking system, and worked on the assumption that the banks would in fact act as conduits to restart lending. He miscalculated – but having started, he’s in the even more untenable situation of either letting it continue or watching the stock market plunge as QE gets withdrawn.
Note that this was the strategy that Clinton and Rubin followed after LTCM collapsed in 97, and it worked at that point – make the banks sufficiently whole that they could give the appearance of solidity, until such time as the economy shifted (and to this day I’m convinced that the Tech Bubble was a direct attempt to recapitalize the banks, just as the mortgage fiasco was a direct attempt to recapitalize the banks after the Tech bubble burst.
The question is in fact whether this time is different. My take is that it is, that far too much damage was actually done to the financial system for such techniques to work, and that transparency, vaunted though it was by Obama before taking option, is making it far harder at this stage to hide most of what’s really going on.
That the banks have no specific reason to support Obama in this is also making a real difference – they expected him to roll over and simply hand over the cash – instead, he made it clear that there were strings attached; the pay caps on TARP recipient CEOs was simply a reminder of that. My feeling is that most of the banks would be perfectly happy to plunge the US into a Depression (again) if it discredited Obama, but right now will lap up any largess they can get from the invested taxpayer funds.
Obama had a mandate. He has thrown it away to people who will never cut him a break on anything. This kid was not a street kid, he never learned to fight. It shows. Hillary honed him as best she could. I wasn’t for Hillary but I think she knows how to fight. Her vast right wing conspiracy has been shown to be true.
Nowlook at the good the right wing has done for us. They yell loud and clear on everything they don’t support. But not being intellectually adroit they believe some stupid shit. But they won’t lie down and be rolled over. Obama take notice of this model.
Obama is just a rather poor boy who pulled himself up with education and smarts. Now that he is standing on the top of the ladder he finds that it is not steady up there at all. And his supporting structure is wavering and he is balancing himself. This is lonely and sad.
I have said in many places. He is married to a woman all teachers know. She was the little girl who pouted and frowned if she didn’t get an A++++. She was sort of grumpy, but a good student always and had a strict home upbringing that did not foster creative intelligent learning but keeping your nose to the grindstone. Keep reaching for that gold ring. She dressed preppy at Princeton when the white girls were dressing hip hop. And she is affirmative action in action. This is the woman he chose. The woman who only6 looks happy and relaxed at social parties wearing pretty clothes and playing at gardening, and being family oriented. she is now a stay-at-home-mom, which is all she ever wanted but couldn’t get from him before. She was the breadwinner for many years while he climbed. He had to run now. She was getting grumpier and grumpier year by year. She wasn’t going to wait until she was approaching retirement.
And notice how she never lets go of her childrens’ hands. Malia is as tall as she is and can walk by herself yet still she hangs on tight. Sasha is the creative one, the non cookie cutter one.
You forgot to mention the private army you will need to protect everything you have just stored up.
Sorry it won’t work. Start rethinking.
Jaego here’s what I’ve been thinking.
Cthulhu the creeping chaos is upon us and the new mythology of Lovecraft is alive and well.
Government seeks to ever expand its tentacles into all things. Capitalism does the same and they sometimes cooperate and sometimes do not. The two intertwine and make their own net and if you can’t see it your vision is distorted.
They are both afraid of masses with any sense of solidarity. But that is being disproved in the middle east. Individuals are taking the problem in their own hands. Instead of being conscripted and dying under someone else’s orders,they are the lone generals, the lone rangers, the Wyatt Erps, the self defined heroes doomed to die.
It will happen here.
I reluctantly agree with you but still it could have been handled differently. Reich and Soros had other plans and Roubini.
Well Treecraft I have 40 acres paid for that I am thinking about what to do with. A brush hog would be nice and a truck.
I can send you flickr pics if you want.
I am also thinking of having an essay contest with a 1.00 entry fee with a minimum of 40,000 replies. Like why do you want to live here in the Ozarks. It is at the end of a cul de sac, two ponds, electric and telephone lines, truck made paths/roads. Anything else you’d like to know?
I have already said this a number of times. The physical body builders may survive and they may just be drive to this activity by some unknown evolutionary reason.
As Marx and Marcuse state capitalism moves like quicksilver into every nook and cranny. And government does too. Two opposing and sometimes cooperating forces. The individual tries to squeeze in the holes and survive.
This crash if complete, may just save the planet.
The stock market will tank soon. Then the outrage over the “bonuses” will become livid. This can be contained by TPTB unless a terror attack manifests. In any case Providence will convert to luck.
Get rid of the microwave. It kills the enzymes in your food. A study done onkittens warming their food in the microwave resulted in dying and dead kittens.
I loved mine too.
Dumber-than-dale sez:
” All the rest of the shit that’s happened out there, TARP ect., was all in place before the election..”
Riiight. Like Nationalizing health-care, taking over banks, auto makers, declaring swine-flu a “national emergency” (and promptly doing nothing) golfing, basketball games and Wednesday concerts (while Rome burns), waffling on troop commitments, cap and tax proposals, etc. etc. etc. Have you been blowing asoka-his-pants lately, or what? (You need not answer. I saw your lip prints all over asoka’s tutu.)
All that vacant land in Detroit can be turned back into farmland. Here’s how:
The city begins to have trash collection separated into organic waste which goes in a pile that is waiting to be a garden.
Biodynamic (live cultures) are sprinkled on it. In less than two weeks you have compost.
This is all Rudolph Steiner’s work. It was done in LA in the 1940’s (maybe 50’s) and was a working model. It’s also in a book by a Steiner disciple. Also there is a book on cattle feeding that makes the cattle immune to hoof and mouth disease. Naturally.
And Jesus said follow me. Leave your baggage behind. You only need the shoes on your feet, one cloak, etc.
Stuff is what caught the Jews in Europe. Otto Frank was a big believer in stuff.
Chinese proverb: Happiness is finding joy in little things.
Has anyone seen the art of Andrew Goldsworthy? I think that’s his last name.
We have more than we thought in common. I have seen all this since 1960 when I spent 2 years doing Ayn Rand.
I am elderly, with no others except dogs and cats, all rescued creatures.
One suggestion though. Stop going to thrift stores. Check the dumpster in back and see what the universe wants you to have today!I have almost completely stopped buying now. The universe is generous.
Often there are others checking out the dumpsters. There is a spirit of sharing. Do you want that blue thing at the back? I’d love to have it if you don’t want it. And since most likely a young Hispanic is inside it they will get it for you. Carry an expandable curtain rod with you to hook things you can’t reach. Sell things on ebay you don’t want.
And local yard sales to help your neighbor.
Asoka you are pontificating in front of a gold watcher from 1879. This is just a dip. From $200 or so in 2000 to $1000 plus, a lifetime high, is not a downtrend. Gold is in a bull market and its price was just depressed on purpose. High gold signals things the biggies don’t want us to read.
The central bank of Germany is not selling gold. The central bank of Switze rland is not selling gold. There is a high premium on all gold transactions from bullion to coins.
Know of which you speak.
Dear James Howard Kunstler,
I’ve been reading your column for 5 or so years now and this is your best piece I’ve read, thanks…….just gimme some truth.
I live in Australia, currently the other side of the coin that you describe, we have followed the example of our colonial founders U.K. Our distance based settlements saw nothing wrong with car ownership, and the Amway way of life got the better of the populace, but not the very conservative based banking system. The John Howard years socked away a healthy profit from resource exploitation, now spent on stimulus.
The U.S. cavalry, looking suspiciously like China arrived for a “domestic” stimulus of their own buying up everything they could. We have just seen interest rates RISE here, with more to come.
Australia never went into recession.
Crisis what crisis ? Kevin 07 (Rudd) is a master of disguise. He was the only other person I recall advising “go out and spend, do your duty” in relation to a crisis.
Fuel costs will get us, we used to have oil but its gone, Chevron had a go at pulling some oil out of the Montara oilfield 3 months ago but they sprung a leak. Its been pouring min 400 barrels a day into the Timor Sea ever since + the gas discharge that caused the evacuation of the rig.
The 9 week spill has seen a slick 25,000 sq klms floating towards Indonesia. Do we get pictures in Australia Nooooooooooooo. We have to look at the Gaurdian in the U.K. Are we selling brown coal to India Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeesir…..This last thrashings of a dying system is really making a mess.
“Yes, there is difference, but why do I doubt that you know what it is? Where is your powdered wig, you liberal fuck?”
Who are you asking? Your questions certainly do not make that clear.
Tell us about your healthcare system, please. I know it is hard to emigrate to Australia because of all your social benefits. They only want people with skills who will not take jobs from the nationals. True?
Tell us.
Hum… The way I see it is that we now, for the first time in at least 20 years, have an accurate view the world around us.
Much of the economy that evaporated was a myth to begin with and, in the long run, we wont be harmed by its evaporation. The economy of the last 20 years ruined our communities, it ruined our environment and it ruined our heath. Good bye and good riddance.
What comes next is a smaller, more local economy, based on real wealth and value. Something along the lines of a high tech version of the 19-teens.
The three car suburban family family eating fast food becomes a one car family, with a kitchen garden. Can’t happen? Sure it can.
Roof water routed into cisterns can provide all the water the gardens will need and they can run off of a solar powered pump. Like wise the fridge and freezer can go “off grid” thanks to a solar panel and a battery insuring that your food wont go bad. Solar hot water heaters can provide all the hot water you need spring summer and fall and offers a pre-heat in the winter.
Chances are the kids live within a couple of miles of their school and can bike where they need to go. Fewer cars means safe roads for biking.
No more “retail therapy”, fast food meals, ditching all but one car and growing a chunk of your own food means that the income from the second job that evaporated wont be needed anyway.
Shrinking government budgets will cause some chaos and problems in the short term, but things will equalize in the long run. Fewer cars= less need for road repairs. Cell phones= less need to keep up the phone grid. Cisterns= less runoff to deal with.
Yes, there is going to be chaos and disruption. Yes, there will be problems. Yes some suburbs and exurbs wont make it the jump and will become home to squatters and crime.
But, I’m seeing people slowing changing habits, reconnecting with their communities, growing some food, buying bicycles- even if they’re just using them for recreation right now.
Looking forward to the next 20 years things look better to me than they do looking back over the last 20 years.
Obama was not a boomer, not one of “us,” so I had expectations that he’d rise above the fog of wishful thinking.
————–
Not a boomer?
Boomers gor from 45-65. The largest group in the population is now 45. The third wave of boomers.
That third wave is probably going to be the one screwed the most.
Does anybody remember that infamous biblical verse about “inheriting the wind?”
“For they sow the wind,
and they shall reap the whirlwind.
The standing grain has no heads;
it shall yield no flour;
if it were to yield,
strangers would devour it.” Hsa. 8:7
I couldn’t find anything about “inheriting” thev wind.
The Census Bureau considers a baby boomer to be someone born during the demographic birth boom after WW2, between 1946 and 1964.
Baby Boomer subgroup #1 (born from circa 1946 to 1955) — was the group associated with the cultural change of the sixties.
Baby Boomer subgroup #2 or Generation Jones (born from circa 1956-1964) — includes Obama born 1961.
Google “Generation Jones” to see where the term came from.
“Shame the ovens aren’t been fired up for the coporate wank stains who caused all this mess”
I’ve got an oven; and if I come to the point of starvation, I know exactly who I’m going to put in it (bankers have addresses and children too; better theirs than mine; protein is protein).
I–not in the safe private “hopeful” recesses of my mind–but in the glorius public anonymity of the Clusterfuck Forum am absolutely sure that our Dexters are out their preparing to bring tears of joy to our eyes RIGHT NOW! The success of the Showtime Commentary on the validity of righteous anger and vengeance should be a warning to Wall Street–but it won’t be;in the meantime, let them fatten for our feast.
Looking at the world through suspect eyes has gotten easy these days, is it a conspiracy? Or really just coincidence…
http://www.suburbanemprie.com
biting commentary….way oversimplified.
I heard about one case where the police found a person who kept their microwave turned on 24/7, door open-aimed at their next door neighbor thru a window. The neighbor realized something was happening and called the police.
Have you read “One Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka? If so, do you think his methods are applicable here?
I do not see my original post included in the Comments (and there are some mighty fine comments. Whew!).
Now I wonder if James Howard Kunstler is exercising the right to delete posts. Oh, well.
http://sbillingurst.wordpress.com
I got six hits. I need 100 hits from this blog. I hope I don’t get cranky when I get to be that age. What do you pronounce it like? Koonstler? Uh-huh, and/or Kunt—sler—oh. Never mind. Koonstler it is. You got a beard now? what is it—moustasche? Ah, great. Aw righty then. Good to go.
This guy’s the master psychic prognosticator, dammit. I’m serious. You guys, come on. Nooo body could do this. Hell, we can’t do this. He’s a little bit of a pustule.
Oh, hell yes that was a great post. I said I didn’t read it. You took me serious? I just wrote a new post on how to make meth. Use any of my material you want to, just don’t get caught.
They may be like us-very difficult for Whites to immigrate but if you’re Non White even if illegal, no problema. A former Labor Official in Britain admitted that the Labor Party set out to change the population in order to destroy British Culture. A couple of nights ago the BBC had an electronic lynching of Nick Griffin. Now that the BNP has hit the big time they can’t ignore them anymore, so now slander is in order. But unfortunately for the BBC Stalinists, it’s not going to work. The real British have a great sense of fair play and they know that “Nick” was being crucificed in front of a specially picked panel and crowd. They even had some Black American Woman Professor who was saying that the British are not the indigenous people of the British Isles. Why? Because they weren’t there during the ice age! And after, “Africans” came into Europe! Just another hate monger trying to make Whites disappear. She reminds me of what some rap star once said, Black is the real thing because when you close your eyes, that’s what you see.
It aint gonna fly. The cat is out of the bag-everyone knows what vicious Marxists the BBC are. And Nick. Who can hate a man named Nick? How quintessentially British. The man incarnates the class he represents-unheard of nowadays. The future is getting Whiter and Brighter. Twenty percent of the British now say they would consider voting for the British National Party. The future may indeed be like that movie “Children of Men” with the British cleansing Britain of the Muslim taint.
Mount Chinchilla Man Jaro
I thought this ws the sandbox. Nice background color, kind of soothing.
La Raza means The Race. Stop being such a jive turkey, you and Obama. They put that little disclaimer on their English Site to trick libtards like you. I know Mexico is a very complicated place-but like most Latin American Countries, it’s ruled by people who are “fairly” White compared to the rest of the population. Anyway, this ethnic diversity is not germane to the discussion. They have their own mythology which has nothing to do with it. To wit: they are Aztecs, they come from the Land to the North, they are reclaiming it from us the usurpers. It will be called Aztlan. Now of course, most of them are Mestizos not pure Aztec at all. But as I said this is their mythology, don’t ask me to defend it! Why don’t they take back Mexico first from the White Usurpers? Because if you fuck with those White People-you get dead real fast. So instead, with the approval and collusion of the rulers of both countries, they come north. It’s a win, win, win, lose situation. The Mexican Elite wins, Mexican People win, the American Elite wins,
and the American People lose.
It’s so easy for me to cut to the chase and impossible for you. Why? My Cyclops Eye, the Eye of Balor is open and your’s is tightly shut. The Dollar Bill shows this Eye-they know about it too and they are cutting also, but for Evil ends. No ability or capacity is above morality. In more rational terms, it’s being able to bring both hemispheres of the brain to bear on any problem. Hillary gave a clue a couple of months ago-she said most people can’t think of two opposite things at the same time. Implication: she can and she does-to confuse her opponents. Bad to the bone.
Wow. Just been combing through this stuff with a club soda and gin in hand after a long day’s work. Where to start?
First off, Jaego, tea bagging is not a strictly homosexual act. I’ve met some dirty women in my time and, well, hopefully, some day you do too.
Asoka — As usual, pull the reins on the Obama praise. He’s no Bush II, sure, but he’s no FDR either. He needs to push for banning derivatives to truly show he has what it takes. And don’t discount gold. Over $1,000 an ounce in several years — and this is growth that occurred largely during a period when out national debt was much less.
And Dave Matthews — good stuff, as always. I checked out your pics. Nature does indeed rule. But why the pics of the damn boats? Irony perhaps? This world will truly be a more aesthetically pleasing place without us — unless we blow each other to bits, and nature as well, in the process of getting rid of ourselves. Also, aren’t you sometimes in awe of the human mind and our potential for great things? So much so that it would actually be a shame to see a world in which that potential may never be reached? For to get rid of the fat, cheese puff-munching hillbillies, we also have to get rid of the Stephen Hawkings and Richard Dawkinses of the world.
That can’t be good.
Anyway, whatever, I’m just going to enjoy the my unsustainable 21st Century ways until the inevitable, blessed rebirth comes.
I love Fukuoka and he says in his book that anywhere you see weeds growing you can grow food.
I did a diary at http://www.dailykos.com on Fukuoka and right after that I diaried the legal courses I was taking and got kicked out by the Nazis over there. But it’s a great diary with many wonderful informative comments.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/9/321288/-Natural-Agriculture-the-Fukuoka-Way
And the movie Children of Men is a pale reflection of the book even tho I really admire Clive Owens. They changed it all around and ruined it. The woman having the baby is white in the book, and she is his lover.
I love Fukuoka and he says in his book that anywhere you see weeds growing you can grow food.
I did a diary at http://www.dailykos.com on Fukuoka and right after that I diaried the legal courses I was taking and got kicked out by the Nazis over there. But it’s a great diary with many wonderful informative comments.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/9/321288/-Natural-Agriculture-the-Fukuoka-Way
And the movie Children of Men is a pale reflection of the book even tho I really admire Clive Owens. They changed it all around and ruined it. The woman having the baby is white in the book, and she is his lover.
OK, very good. There’s a story-a lie as usual-that Fascists not only do not have a sense of humor but in fact, can’t take a joke. Jaego Scorzne can take a joke. I enjoyed that Moo Moo. But be warned-when we laugh we show our teeth. And as Bertrand Russell said, funny men who like to use their humor as a political weapon also assume that being funny means being right. Not so Russell said. Tea bagging may in fact have hetero applications, but in essence it’s a slur-calling the Tea Party queer-an insult even in the eyes of the Gays. Interesting thought-even they don’t like themselves. And if you think they’re nasty now-just wait. Just wait. Did you know that some of the pervs who have kids bring them to the Folsom Street Fair-which has live sex and S&M right out on the Street? And that they dress the little kids in little leather outfits?
You see the whole thing is based on transgression-as Bataille knew. So when something-say S&M becomes accepted, it has to then be superseded. Some coming possibilities: sacrafice and cannibalism-the two guys in Germany. Sex with animals-already here, call themselves Zoos. Sex with the dead-coming soon, gang rape as a gay passtime-the angels who came to Sodom.
Let’s stop it here, eh Moo Moo? You don’t want some guy mooning you do you? Or milking you against your will?
So has anyone noticed how when the stock market rallies, the dollar is weak, and Wall Street is cheering; but when the dollar is strong, the bastards on The Street are not happy?
The bastards want to see this sinking ship go down, because it means they’re going to get theirs. The dollar means nothing to them.
But a weak dollar hurts the middle class, who don’t have the knowledge and resources to invest their assets into exotic instruments, commodities, foreign currencies, etc.
If things indeed get worse, at least with a strong dollar people can buy food and shit, but with a weak dollar, they’re screwed — even if they do have a job.
PS: To Jaego — I had a gay roommate once, he never once tried to “milk” me. Pretty cool guy really. And, I know you might find this hard to believe, but I suspect he wouldn’t approve of kids at the Folsom Street Fair either.
Rodan may be arriving sooner than you think… Speaking of Japan, perhaps the recent revelation of the Japanese who after all these years have finally given up on their one party version of our 2party farcical demo-republican parties is a sign that they will be returning the favour of our 1945 atomic bomb with a 14 trillion dollar debt collection bill.
Check out an excellent talk by Larry Wilkerson on the real news :
“Wilkerson: From US debt to the geopolitics of oil, the US empire will come to an end”
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=74&jumival=460
So you’ve had a gay friend-whaddya want a fucking medal? So have I, though “I know you found that hard to believe”. Always the one upmanship with you people, always the disrespect. Yet you losers voted for Obama even though we told you he was just more of the same. Far more of us saw through the whole good guy/bad guy-Republican/Democrat game a long time ago-even though you find that hard to believe. True Conservatives loathed Bush. Loathed him-but you don’t want to know that-gets in the way of your moral superiority complex.
They do that alot-change the races. Always trying to make Blacks look better than they are and White worse. All these cops shows based on real crimes-except they change the perps to Whites instead of Blacks and Hispanics as they really were. And this movie-the Child of Man has to be Black. Isn’t it despicable? You can’t believe it’s an accident. It’s too frequent and all pervasive. There is clearly a will and a design behind it.
Michelle was disbarred early in her career-has anyone ever heard why? Her record is sealed tight as a drum just like his. The Obama Conspiracy stems from the tippity top.
Malia is going to be a real beauty. I’ve heard she already has a little thug boyfried. Some White Nationalists feel the need to deny other races have any beauty-probably a defence against their own natural attraction. I prefer to face the temptation head on and not go into denial-which is a very bad habit. Triumph of the Will and Strength through Joy is the way.
Bach’s work-“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” is also very good-take your mind off temptation and put it on the God Man who will lead us into Triumph. What Baudelaire was trying to express in his glorious essay-Genesis of the Man God. But he tried to attain through Hasish-which cannot deliver the reality but only emotional/physical simulations for an hour or two.
saoka-his-pants sez:
“Interesting they still have money to make car payments. Interesting they still have money to put gasoline in the car and wait in long lines of cars.”
Interesting? Not really. This is just the “something for nothing” crowd showing up for a free handout. Shit asoka, don’t you recognize Obama voters when you see them? You of all people?
“Her vast right wing conspiracy has been shown to be true.”
Yeah, it was so fucking “vast” that we elected Obama. (Fucking MORON)
Puzzler:
My point is that the largest group in the population right now was born in 1963. They are boomers.
Obama, 1961, is certainly part of that.
Puzzler:
My point is that the largest group in the population right now was born in 1963. They are boomers.
Obama, 1961, is certainly part of that.
This says it all.
Neil Lori Montclair New Jersey
Jim regarding:Obama is a modern day Millard Fillmore. This is an insult to Millard Fillmore.
All kidding aside Obama is the following: a conformist/believes in uniformity, a corporatist who favors the rich over the working men and working women of the USA, a follower and not a leader.
Note: When Bush was president we had two wars and a bad economy. Now Obama has had over 9 months and we still have two wars and a bad economy.
This guy is the Goldman Sachs/Wall Street President.
I would say to impeach then remove this guy, but then we would have Biden which is not an improvement at all.
Neil Lori Montclair NJ
Neil Lori
Jim more opinions: Obama and his team can’t think on their feet nor act on their feet. They can’t think outside of the box or outside of the Suburban Nation
Neil Lori
More comments: Obama can’t think outside of the box. He can’t think or act on his feet. He can’t make fast decisions. Finally he believes in Suburban and Exurban Nation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Climbing Her is a cinch in a pinch-as long as you clinch tight your chinchilla and keep it away from the porcupine in your backpack.
The last part reminds me a Spanish Raj Man Singh-the great Sikh general who fought the Muslims to a standstill.
“As Gandhi Ji said, In a choice between violence and cowardice, I would advise violence.”
——————————
Hummm……I would love to see you post a source and direct quote from Gandhi which would come anywhere close to this interpreted meaning of yours.
Never mind, here is the actual quote:
“My nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected. Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice.”
Note: in reference to “running away and leaving dear ones unprotected”. No where is they any mention of “advising” violence.
As usual Jaego, you twist to suit your twisted world view.
“True Conservatives loathed Bush.”
I made up my own bumper-sticker which said, “Clinton Questioned My Faith in Government, Bush Destroyed It”.
My paraphrase is accurate-you just don’t want to give me any credit for anything. And it blows your image of Gandhi as a pacifist punk. Most so called pacifists just call a police man, a trained warrior so they don’t soil their lilly Black hands. Hi Asoka! Gandhi’s Pacifism reqiored great courage-as the movie showed so well. Certainly far more than a male bitch like you is likely to have.
Yes, your paraphrase is more or less accurate, based on other comments he made.
It’s a strange circumlocution and juxtopostion of ideas for him. This is a man who wrote an open letter to the British public advising against war with Germany under any circumstances.
There you go….you got credit.
Why are so many of our young men such utter self hating, White hating, and Western Culture hating sickos? Many of them never had a father to model themselves against and yes, to rebel against. Instead, their inner female developed before their masculinity was well developed. This anima/animus development shouldn’t happen until the primary gender identity is well established. But our culture wants to destroy its young people-both male and female by perverting their identities. Robert Bly, not a great Poet but a great scholar of poetry and a sharp social critic, develops this theme in two books “Iron John” and “The Sibling Society”.
The Sibling Society-no Fathers, no hierarchy, everyone’s equal-the SAME! Minimized gender-they’re moving towards no gender, polymorphous perversity. Homosexuality will be encouraged and then actually taught in schools.
Kids feel free to critique professors who have studied for fourty years. Their criterion? Is something cool or hip? If not, it’s not true.
I was helping a female friend help her friend move. My friend first called her friend and apologized for getting a man to help-after all, just cuz men can lift heavier things doesn’t mean they are stronger!
Is something funny and gives pleasure? Then it’s true! You don’t have to refute anyone you don’t like, you just have to mock them. Serious debate is so uncool-just mock and ignore, mock and ignore.
“You don’t have to refute anyone you don’t like, you just have to mock them. Serious debate is so uncool-just mock and ignore, mock and ignore.”
————————–
Jaego, you are mocked when you make posts like this, because you so heartily deserve to be mocked.
Thank you. Satyaghra (sp?) or soul force is not pacifism but the path of a spiritual warrior. He never considered himself a pacifist-that is the source of your confusion. I was just talking in terms of what people here understand-as I am often forced to do.
I don’t agree with him of course, but I respect his courage. If you are right, you have a right to fight and yes, to kill. As long as you have tried to negotiate first, you are clear. So his reading of the Bhagavad Gita is distorted by this error certainly. As the Sikhs say, God loves the anger of His Saints. And the Warrior Saints like the Muslim, Ali, set a very high standard for themselves-to fight and kill without anger and hatred. As the famous story goes, Ali was about to kill his prone opponent and the man spat in his face. Ali spared him. The man asked why, and Ali said, because I got angry. In other words, it had become personal and no longer Godly.
Now this is a VERY high standard. Ordinary men can’t fight without getting angry. It takes long training and Grace. I’m not there yet, and I’m not going to wait till I get there to defend myself.
I went to a tea baggers party and passed out my own leaflets.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2009/04/at-mad-hatters-tea-party.html
There are many people trying to do many different things to change the US into a peaceful, sustainable country.
Just because the corporate media doesn’t cover it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Just because the efforts are underfunded and struggling doesn’t mean the people trying should be dissed.
Any improvement in our society will have to come from the bottom, because those on the top are happy the way things are now.
Therefore, by definition, the struggle will be uncovered (except for ridicule) by the corporate media and run by people who have to save the world on top of their ordinary jobs, family responsibilities, and other demands on their time.
To just look at these movements and compare them to well-funded and lavishly documented propaganda efforts and them to dismiss them will never get us anywhere.
And Lincoln should have let the South go.
Here is a link to the Green Party candidate for governor of Illinois, one of many states struggling to provide services for its people, who are overtaxed to fund war, oppression and handouts to the banks by the federal government, so are not too inclined to spend more to finance the state.
The website is run by volunteers and the candidate has a full time job, so it isn’t updated daily.
Does that mean that they should be dissed and dismissed?
http://www.whitneyforgov.org/joomla/index.php
JHK will be interested in this AP headline: “McDonald’s closes in Iceland as currency collapse takes a bite out of Big Mac profits.” How the hell could an outfit like McDonald’s NOT fail to make a profit anywhere? They use the cheapest, lowest-quality ingredients, pay their employees minimum wage with almost no benefits and use the cheapest materials in the construction of their restaurants. Maybe somebody can clue me in.
The founder’s name was Ray Kroc-not McDonald. Just like John Kerry’s real name is Kohn. Mimicry of the host has always been a Jewish strategy. Jews have always had a genius for the fast buck with low overhead and little or no consideration for the social costs. And yes, gentiles have to imitate them in order to compete. Or they want to when they see how lucrative it is-and after the laws have been changed, the social fabric torn, and the social stigma gone. The Jews created the department store. And dominate the incredibly lucrative pornograhy industry. And simultaneously, they have presented themselves over the last sixty years as the most moral people on Earth. If you control the media, you can make people believe anything. Anything. The poor dears weren’t quick enough to gain control over the internet. They are trying night and day to remedy this.
No Dale. You don’t debate me because you’re afraid you will lose-as you just did. You yourself said that my posts make your head feel uncomfortable. Well Dale, the brain has a physiological aspect, it used glucose, etc. That feeling is your brain trying to understand-thinking in other words. And yes, thinking can be hard work. It so much easier just to read other liberals who believe exactly as you do-and have a participation mystique with them. And it so much fun to mock people! Like Wage Laborer above-he went to a Tea Party party but he still calls them tea baggers. You punks were raised to be just that-punks. If my posts were easy for you I wouldn’t be doing my job.
“You yourself said that my posts make your head feel uncomfortable.”
————————-
Now it’s your turn to man up and be admit you are wrong, I said no such thing. Never would.
abbeysbooks said: “Asoka you are pontificating in front of a gold watcher from 1879…. Know of which you speak.”
abbeysbooks, I am impressed. The Gold Rush was in 1849. You say you have been watching gold for 130 years, but I doubt it.
Know of when you speak.
“Iceland’s three McDonald’s restaurants — all in the capital Reykjavik — will close next weekend, as the franchise owner gives in to falling profits caused by the collapse in the Icelandic krona.
“The economic situation has just made it too expensive for us,” Magnus Ogmundsson, the managing director of Lyst Hr., McDonald’s franchise holder in Iceland, told the Associated Press by telephone on Monday.
Lyst was bound by McDonald’s requirement that it import all the goods required for its restaurants — from packaging to meat and cheeses — from Germany.
Costs had doubled over the past year because of the fall in the krona and high import tariffs on imported goods, Mr. Ogmundsson said, making it impossible for the company to raise prices further and remain competitive with competitors that use locally sourced produce.
A Big Mac in Reykjavik already retails for 650 krona ($5.29). But the 20% increase needed to make a decent profit would have pushed that to 780 krona ($6.36), he said.
That would have made the Icelandic version of the burger the most expensive in the world, a title currently held jointly by Switzerland and Norway where it costs $5.75, according to the Economist magazine’s 2009 Big Mac index.”
Full story here:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/10/self-jiving-nation.html#comments
You’re welcome.
James, very good piece! Once again, you are right about the fact that we don’t have any clear-eyed, courageous leaders in this country anymore. We have Alan Grayson trying his best to make the crooks accountable for their criminal actions.
For anyone to believe that for millions of Americans, their lives are in freefall and our representatives look the other way or pretend to take action.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
Fuck McDonalds. Iceland is much better off without their standards-lowering, artery-clogging, animal-torturing, small-farm-destroying “restaurants.”
And, contrary to what was said above about Ray Croc (sp?) being the founder, I believe the McDonalds brothers were the founders. They ran a good mom-and-pop business and then Croc bought them out and turned McDonalds into an evil empire.
———-
Fat and docile, big and dumb
They look so stupid, they aren’t much fun
Cows aren’t fun
They eat to grow, they grow to die
They die to be ate at the hamburger fry
Cows well done
Nobody thunk it, nobody knew
No one imagined the great cow guru
Cows are one
He hid in the forest, read books with great zeal
He loved Che Guevera, a revolutionary veal
Cow Tse Tongue
He spoke about justice, but nobody stirred
He felt like an outcast, alone, in the herd.
Cow doldrums
He mooed we must fight, escape or we’ll die
Cows gathered around, cause the stakes were so high
Bad cow pun
But then he was captured, stuffed into a crate
Loaded onto a truck, where he rode to his fate
Cows are bummed
He was a scrawny calf, who looked rather woozy
No one suspected he was packing Uzi
Cows with guns
They came with a needle to stick in his thigh
He kicked for the groin, he pissed in their eye
Cow well hung
Knocked over a tractor and ran for the door
Six gallons of gas flowed out on the floor
Run cows run!
He picked up a bullhorn and jumped up on the hay
We are free roving bovines, we run free today
We will fight for bovine freedom
And hold our large heads high
We will run free with the Buffalo, or die…
Cows with guns
They crashed the gate in a great stampede
Tipped over a milk truck, torched all the feed
Cows have fun
Sixty police cars were piled in a heap
Covered in cow pies, covered up deep
Much cow dump
Black smoke rising, darkening the day
Twelve burning McDONALDS, have it your way
We will fight for bovine freedom
And hold our large heads high
We will run free with the Buffalo, or die
Cows with guns
The President said “Enough is Enough!
These uppity cattle, its time to get tough”
Cow dung flung
The newspapers gloated, folks sighed with relief
Tomorrow at noon, they would all be ground beef
Cows on buns
The cows were surrounded, they waited and prayed
They mooed their last moos,
they chewed their last hay
Cows out gunned
The order was given, turn cows to whoppers
Enforced by the might of ten thousand coppers
But on the horizon, surrounding the shoppers
Came the deafening roar, of chickens, in choppers!
We will fight for bovine freedom
And hold our large heads high
We will run free with the Buffalo, or die
Cows with guns
Fuck McDonalds. Iceland is much better off without their standards-lowering, artery-clogging, animal-torturing, small-farm-destroying “restaurants.”
And, contrary to what was said above about Ray Croc (sp?) being the founder, I believe the McDonalds brothers were the founders. They ran a good mom-and-pop business and then Croc bought them out and turned McDonalds into an evil empire.
———-
Fat and docile, big and dumb
They look so stupid, they aren’t much fun
Cows aren’t fun
They eat to grow, they grow to die
They die to be ate at the hamburger fry
Cows well done
Nobody thunk it, nobody knew
No one imagined the great cow guru
Cows are one
He hid in the forest, read books with great zeal
He loved Che Guevera, a revolutionary veal
Cow Tse Tongue
He spoke about justice, but nobody stirred
He felt like an outcast, alone, in the herd.
Cow doldrums
He mooed we must fight, escape or we’ll die
Cows gathered around, cause the stakes were so high
Bad cow pun
But then he was captured, stuffed into a crate
Loaded onto a truck, where he rode to his fate
Cows are bummed
He was a scrawny calf, who looked rather woozy
No one suspected he was packing Uzi
Cows with guns
They came with a needle to stick in his thigh
He kicked for the groin, he pissed in their eye
Cow well hung
Knocked over a tractor and ran for the door
Six gallons of gas flowed out on the floor
Run cows run!
He picked up a bullhorn and jumped up on the hay
We are free roving bovines, we run free today
We will fight for bovine freedom
And hold our large heads high
We will run free with the Buffalo, or die…
Cows with guns
They crashed the gate in a great stampede
Tipped over a milk truck, torched all the feed
Cows have fun
Sixty police cars were piled in a heap
Covered in cow pies, covered up deep
Much cow dump
Black smoke rising, darkening the day
Twelve burning McDONALDS, have it your way
We will fight for bovine freedom
And hold our large heads high
We will run free with the Buffalo, or die
Cows with guns
The President said “Enough is Enough!
These uppity cattle, its time to get tough”
Cow dung flung
The newspapers gloated, folks sighed with relief
Tomorrow at noon, they would all be ground beef
Cows on buns
The cows were surrounded, they waited and prayed
They mooed their last moos,
they chewed their last hay
Cows out gunned
The order was given, turn cows to whoppers
Enforced by the might of ten thousand coppers
But on the horizon, surrounding the shoppers
Came the deafening roar, of chickens, in choppers!
We will fight for bovine freedom
And hold our large heads high
We will run free with the Buffalo, or die
Cows with guns
1879 was a typo for 1979. And you know it. Ah Trivial Pursuit again.
Thank you for admitting you were wrong Dale. Now I’m supposed to say I’m wrong about this-so we can stay on the same level, right? As I said, sibling society. I do value good manners and correct form, but the Truth trumps them. Joe Wilson was absoulutley correct to yell out and call Obama a liar. Good manners and good form serve a high purpose when they are connected to the Truth-not otherwise. Then their prestige become intruments of the Lie.
If I remember correctly, you said my posts cause a feeling of “constipation” in your head. You said this months ago just before you made your big farewell speech-which caused hilarity on sites even beyond this one. I humbly took some credit for this…You want humility? Ok, I may have been wrong in my reply to Moo Moo: Mickey D’s may have been founded by actual McDonald’s and only later bought by Kroc. Imagine having that as a name!?
Rodan is the turtle that spins like flying saucer-doubly significant because of the spin of events and the helium UFO. But we mustn’t forget the other two members of the triumverate-Godzilla and Mothra. I used to love the way Godzilla would mug for the cameras…And Mothra is very special and strange. Mothra is a good monster who only goes to war when his Island is invaded and people kidnap the two tiny singing Japanese girls. Just like the Birds only attacked when the the two love birds were put in cage. Love must be free or it isn’t. As Blake, “A robin red breast in a cage, puts all Heaven in a rage.”
America should become more like Mothra and less like Godzilla. Otherwise, it’s going to be “Destroy all Planets and destroy all Monsters.”
Undertaker Cheney and Gravedigger Bush didn’t create the war mongering, or the war crimes, they just took what had been going on for decades to new heights. The country has been full of these three foot Nazis for quite awhile.
Like Gore Vidal said, we don’t have a two party system. For the most part, the Republicans aren’t conservative and the Democrats aren’t progressive. 95% of congress are big government police state types, spend money we don’t have, anything for multi national corporations and major banks.
It looks like most of congress thinks we run the world and can do anything to anybody and call it national defense, and there is no limit, absolutely no limit to the money we can borrow.
Underlying all of our experience in the bardo of this life is a fundamental level of ignorance that simply does not see things the way they are. Due to this, the appearances of samsara arise and we engage in the action of duality between subject and object. Some things are adopted or accepted, and we experience attachment towards them; other things are abandoned or rejected, and we experience aversion towards them.
This is the nature of samsaric existence, which is simply a way of saying that the sensory world around us, as well as our emotional world and our intellectual world, are all seen, experienced, and thought of in a superficial way. As a result of this these misconceptions about appearances, we give rise and are subject to intense states of suffering. Such suffering is the result of our afflicted mental states and are seen as destructive from the POV of the spiritual journey. They obscure the natural clarity of mind and are the cause of unskillful actions.
Thus, when the emotions are unattended by mindfulness and awareness, they (produce) mental states that always increase our suffering and bring pain and devastation into our lives.
— Dzogchen Ponlop in “Mind Beyond Death”
Forgive me as I yawn watching Kunstler march around the block one more time with his “End Is Near” sandwich board.
Some people are doing more than just blogging, thank goodness. It’s a start:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkjULfV5Fmw&feature=player_embedded
The thing is Dale, Jaego or me or any other “conservative” {I reluctantly use any type of label} could have offered the same quote from Dzogchen Ponlop, or others that we may be more familiar with, {and have said essentially the same thing}, and you would still ignore it and pretend that everything we say is unworthy of consideration because of a few things we put forth and you cannot hear, for what ever reason. We are not all the same, but we are not all different either. I think God blinds people to certain things until it is time for them to see it. Assumptions about who sees and who doesn’t based on POV are actually presumptions.
messianicdruid said: “I think God blinds people to certain things until it is time for them to see it.”
I think God is playing silly games if she is wasting her time blinding people. Of course, God has probably blinded me so I cannot understand her “mysterious ways”… ha, ha, ha!
Is God self-jiving?
“I look around at my fellow baby-boomer ex-hippie, ex-political radical age-cohorts and I see a sad-ass claque of passive, played-out, defeated dreamers too depressed to form a coherent thought about what’s really going on… lost in sentimental fantasies about “world peace,” or free heart-transplants-for-everybody as they, the boomers themselves, lurch toward the graveyard.” – yea, man… that’s where the real problem lies. The more the baby boomers “got there” the worse things have become. From the generation that was to change everything.., nice work calling it what is is James!
“Is God self-jiving?”
Don’t you mean to ask, “Is God jiving us?” And if that means something like, “God is not letting everyone in on what He’s up to” or “Is God allowing us to jive {convince of things that are not true} ourselves {and by extension, each other}?” I would have to say, yes.
It is easy, now, to recognize some stages of immaturity that I went through. Because of this I’m convinced, some remains. Unjive = to burn our idols.
The God of the Ages cannot waste time.
A few weeks ago I began to seriously question my motives for spending so much time commenting on this blog. I had to admit that whatever I wrote had zero chance of swaying anyone’s views and was, in fact, nothing more than a vehicle for practicing english composition, exercising vocabulary and seeing my own words appear in print.
If I couldn’t browbeat Asia into beginning his sentences with an uppercase letter what would the odds be of convincing JS that the Human Race trumps all it’s components? What chance that Abbey could be snapped out of her paranoid delusions? Or Asoka, be made to admit that holding diametrically opposed beliefs simultaneously is not rendered okay by the statement “I contain multitudes?”
Without actually resolving to do so I simply stopped commenting although I did continue to read the weekly essays and follow the commentary. But like an addict in withdrawal I kept my fingers away from the keyboard syringe and just bit my lip at the latest iterations of bullshit from the usual cast of characters.
It was touching that JS noticed my absence and wondered aloud if Squished Dik had left the building but it was disheartening to be mistaken for pathetic Rico who made a brief appearance under a new pseudonym.
My point in writing now?
If any of you regulars actually believe you’re accomplishing something more than a display of your googled erudition I suggest you try reading but not writing for awhile and see if Kunstler’s blog doesn’t just go on as always with nary a Saul-like conversion nor a viable solution for what ails us.
Really? — you think Jaego might be described as a “conservative”? Interesting,…..I guess that would make Hitler a sort of “neo-conservative”, I suppose. Let him describe himself and the terms he’s used certainly don’t include conservative. Try, “Fascist” “White Nationalist” or “Neo-Nazi., I don’t think he would argue.
Right now Jaego himself is probably trying to calm his ruffled feathers over that comment, strutting passionately around his mother’s kitchen in his Jodhpurs and lace up knee high boots slapping himself in the thigh with a riding crop. If this guy hasn’t seen the inside of an asylum, I’d be amazed. His delusion is approaching lift off, soon he’ll be planning some sort of race war, a latter day Charlie Manson. His presence here is likely in his ego manifestation of “Propaganda Minister”, recruiting stormtroopers for his screwball “cause”. I’m sure the FBI has a file on this whack job, and I hope they keep a close eye on him too, before he hurts himself or someone else.
Philosophically, what you say has some merit, regarding POV and all that, at least in the ultimate view. But don’t kid yourself about who you are making common cause with here in what Ponlop would describe as the “conventional world”, or you could wind up as Herr Propaganda Minister’s bodyguard.
He probably going to need one where he’s going to wind up, if he’s crazy enough to walk his talk.
Nice quote. Yes, the East has always sought and found inner freedom-the West has gone farther in its quest for outer freedom. Despite their higher IQ’s (higher than our’s) their self control, (higher than our’s) and their commonsense, the East Asians have never even approached having a Democratic Republic or allowe their citizens to be armed. They just don’t trust each other as individuals-they trust the collectivity and their Traditions. Thus they produce large, powerful, prosperous states with little intellectual or individual freedom. They have been influenced by the West-but often for the worse. Japanese kids act out wildly-but in a highly stylized fashion-really just more of the same. Ultimately the inner freedom should support the outer and the outer the inner. For without such self knowledge, our Bill of Rights becomes a carte blanche for self inulgence.
Yes perception make our individual world. But we can share perceptions in common-otherwise there would be no “World” what to speak of culture or society. In this consensual reality, you complained that my posts gave you a headache. I assume you realize now that you did say that-thus you have been wrong twice in a row. I wish I didn’t have to keep score, but if the other person wont keep an account of themselves, someone has to.
Glad to see you’re alive-I thought I might have finished you. After all, not all races are asgrounded as the Anglo Saxon. The Celtic nervous sytem is much more delicate-and capable of feeling. American Indians would just give up and die if anyone tried to make them into a slave.
Now that you’re alive, I can go back to killing you again. Now all I was saying is that a deciding the parameters of a species is a judgement call. Wolves-dogs or not. Bonobos-chimps or not. Negroes-the same species as us or not. If Blacks are the exactly the same as us, should they be denied medicine that doesn’t help us but helps them-Bidil works wonders for Black heart patients, but does little for us. I posed this to Asoka and got nothing back. It’s a no brainer for me, but it seems to be a painful conundrum for the PC types-like you perhaps. Where did you people get the idea we were all the same? Answer: the Goverment Ad Agency. It’s not science-it’s ideology.
Right from Ponlop to Adolf-you contain multitudes. You are a member of what I call the Adolf Hitler School of Philosophy. You posit him as a negative authority. This is how it works-if he believed something and the person you’re talking to believes the same thing, you smear the person in front of you for believing what Hitler believed. Hitler is the Devil and completely Evil. So if Hitler believed that 2=2+4, it can’t be true because he believed it. So I turn your weapon back on you-if you believe that 2+2=4, you are Evil too, just like Hitler.
Oh and btw, I’m not German and not a Nazi. I don’t have to defend everything he did and said. And I don’t. But he certainly had some good ideas-many world leaders of the time were amazed at the Economic miracle he enacted out of a broken Germany. He kicked out the International Bankers-which we don’t have the balls to do. JFK praised him passionately in his journals after the War but before he was turned into a demon by the Revisionists-the same people who said the Palestinians didn’t exist.
I forgot to mention that the wind from Mothra’s wings can blow down buildings. Did Building 7 collapse due to an invisible Mothra perhaps? And didn’t the world end and Christ return “invisibly” according to the Jehovah’s Witnesses-or is it the 7th Day Adventists? Can something be considered true if it can’t be seen, felt, or proved mathematically? Some particles can’t be seen but their influence can be seen. And some just fufill theoretical deficits in mathematical models-this seems to be the role Christ has for the Witnesses-he was supposed to come, and when He didn’t, they say said he did-you just can’t tell. Charming-Charm being the name of one such particle.
ahem…….
you are not aware of the ways of corporations?
MCshits is a franchise,,i believe…as a friend said…a few of their ‘restaurants’sold in a day in san diego…for millions of dollars
Mcshit makes the franchiees buy the [ray] croc from UK…SO HOW CAN SOME BLOKE IN ICELAND MAKE $?
the guy will still sell burgers…but local beef and it wont be under the Mcshit arch n name
are you familiar with the story of
dominos pizza?….hes a billionaire
subway sandwich biz
subway..i learned this in forbes or similar mag years ago:
named worst of 500? franchises by that mag
a guy in NJ or ny had a few shops that werent makin much $$$…so he started selling franchises instead of sandwiches…and bingo hes a billionaire of sandwich franchise!
how about 7/11…know about them?
you can pay for a franchise and theyll sell one to someone else to open one a block from yours
etcetcetc
Howie Stern:
‘the reason so many jews are in show biz is because thats the easist way to suck money from people!’
Really? — you think Jaego might be described as a “conservative
and would you be described as a BUDDIST?
the first teaching is ahimsa..so if yr intent was to ‘ ruffle’ him…..well thats a 180 from ahimsa and buddism
i read or heard on talk radio that while they climbed up in chicago MO had a 200,000$ a year job at a hospital in chicago….when they didnt need the $ anymore the job disappeared!!!!
some ‘job’
that really is funny ….reading that here in this ‘ blog gone amock’
Qshtik said: “see if Kunstler’s blog doesn’t just go on as always with nary a Saul-like conversion nor a viable solution for what ails us.”
Exactly. You have hit the nail on the head. This blog, named Clusterfuck, is itself an example of clusterfuck.
While you were on your self-imposed vacation I have been writing outlandish posts, saying ridiculous things, trying to get you to respond.
Now I can go back to being my usual, boring, sane self and make my usual rational, well-thought-out comments. I am large. I contain multitudes. And, yes, dude, I CONTAIN THEM SIMULTANEOUSLY.
Your English composition has suffered in your absence. First of all the word English is capitalized. Second, when you introduce a sentence with a long dependent clause, you need to separate it with a comma. Third…
No, I’m going to be accused by Abbeysbooks of Trivial Pursuit if I continue. Suffice it to say you could benefit from a reading of Strunk and White’s ELEMENTS OF STYLE.
AA ??? online AA??
12 steps?
lately its been mano a mano here….the ‘buddist’ and the ‘nazi’
notice i put the terms in quotes
dales the nazi…js the buddist
asia, be very careful about getting involved in AA and 12 steps because inside that are the 12 traditions and number 2 says this:
“For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority — a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.”
AA does not lead to success for many who attend their meetings. And AA is not universal because some of us do not believe any “higher Power” whether you call it God or Allah or the Great Spirit exists. So we can’t even get with the AA program.
But for most people (sheeple) who accept the existence of such a supreme authority over their lives, in other words, for puppets, AA might be useful. But not for atheists. We are excluded.
“A loving God, as HE may express HIMSELF”
God is Black… and is SHE going to be pissed at all these AA’ers! That’s a fact, Jack.
Or, maybe not so much pissed as in a revengeful mood, or, maybe not.
Or, as Nudge used to say… “meh”
Asoka said: “But not for atheists. We are excluded.
God is Black…
Or, as Nudge used to say… “meh”
Asoka, in one post, you simultaneously expressed that you are an atheist, a theist (albeit in a Black God), and an indifferent agnostic.
Simultaneously, dude. And there is no contradiction whatsoever.
Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.
Do I contradict myself, hobgoblin?
Asoka, you are talking to yourself now. You need serious help, dude. Get some meds and take them regularly. You, like Rachel and Keith, are one sick puppy.
I would like to advise everyone on CFN not to read or respond to any of Asoka’s posts.
He is sick, and worse, he is a liberal commie who talks about loving our enemies. Asoka cannot be trusted. Ignore everything he says.
I hope you will all agree with me and take my advice to heart, for your own good.
I know this is a Saul/Paul-like conversion on my part, as I used to agree with Asoka. But reading his comments in CFN has convinced me to change my mind about Asoka.
I know many of you will agree with what I am saying.
Sincerely,
Asoka
I would like to advise everyone on CFN not to read or respond to any of Asoka’s posts.
He is sick, and worse, he is a liberal commie who talks about loving our enemies. Asoka cannot be trusted. Ignore everything he says.
I hope you will all agree with me and take my advice to heart, for your own good.
I know this is a Saul/Paul-like conversion on my part, as I used to agree with Asoka. But reading his comments in CFN has convinced me to change my mind about Asoka.
I know many of you will agree with what I am saying.
Sincerely,
Asoka
Thanks podner(SEB). I had Dale on the ropes right from the begining. He was dazed-two rounds ago I basically had him on a technical knock out. But he’s resilient. He stormed out like a storm trooper and rattled me with a couple of good left hooks. I was going to make that point about “Where did all your compassion go, you seem to want to get me locked up”. But I didn’t have the strength and basically just did some philosophical jabbing.
And he has a point-the ultimate deterrent in this Country for dissident Whites is to be thrown in prison-where somehow the other inmates always know your record. And then to be beaten, raped and murdered by Blacks. Or die slowly of Aids. Cruel and Unusual? You bet, but this unoffical system has been in place for decades. And what is the response of White America? My God-to laugh. Actually your neck of the woods might be better than most-Aryan Brotherhood and the powerful Mexican Gangs at least check Black Power.
Good grass hoppa, good. Asoka has to die so that Asoka can live. As the Sufis say, die before you die so that when you die you wont die. Just try to keep it together a little bit. No trying to fly tonite. You need form to get to formlessness. Look in the mirror. If your reflection just does what you do, you’re ok. If it starts doing other stuff, seek help. Also don’t stare in the mirror too long, demons can get into the reflection that way.
Fine wordsmithing, Howard…and well-thought out.
Asia,
Nah…..I’m just having Jaego on a little, as my Australian friends like to say. The truth is he’s an anachronism, the cultural equivalent of a buggy whip salesman in N.Y. in 1910, the Salem witch trials, or a barroom spittoon. Perhaps some day an historian will look back on his posts and everyone will stand around mouth agape, and wonder if he had long hair growing from his forehead and the bottom of his feet, he will seem so primitive. Jaego knows it too…but he can’t face it. Look at the attitudes of under 30 y.o. Americans toward racial issues, it ain’t going back to the bad old days, no matter how bad he wants it.
I can’t hurt Jaego, he and I (and you) are all imaginary beings of a virtual community that can change completely in the blink of an eye. For all we know Jaego is manifesting as his complete antithesis somewhere else in the blogosphere as we speak. In that way, it is a good example of how to regard this illusory world we inhabit.
Poor Jaego deserves our compassion. He climbs out every night on the balcony he built on the back of his mother’s single car garage and looks out over the horizon for the torch light parade of his imaginary white brotherhood that will come and gather him up to join them in their march to oblivion. But like the last of the passenger pigeons he just looks to the sky, waiting and yearning for the flock which will never come.
Here is another reason to be glad Obama is president and not McCain. McCain would have us paying for internet access the way the telecoms have us paying for minutes of phone access, the way the Republicans have us paying for insurance middle men deny coverage claims and who contribute nothing to health care.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/29/losing-net-neutrality-wha_n_338351.html
LOSING INTERNET NEUTRALITY
If you want a glimpse of the future go here:
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
I check in daily for chuckles. Try it — it’s addictive and frightening.
“The U.S. economy grew at a 3.5% annual rate in the third quarter, ending a string of declines over four quarters that resulted in the most severe slide since the Great Depression.”
Obama gets credit for his success in stopping the slide toward the abyss and bringing the economy back. Employment will follow.
Only BIG GOVERNMENT could have stopped the economic crisis generated by Bush.
Thank you, President Obama.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Stocks rallied Thursday in a broad-based advance as a strong report on economic growth in the third quarter reassured investors that the recovery is on track.
there was a great speaker on KPFK today, sounded like a talk from a few years ago. he quoted Paul Volker in 1980 as saying:
the typical americans standard of living will decline!
and noted volkers from the power elite so he doesnt care about joe the plumber…and the thinker said:
in 2002? GDP grew nicely…as the middle class continued to be destroyed!
and
‘Employment will follow’
thats how the power elites manipilate the masses…with words like EVENTUALLY…or SOON
yikes
i only got thru a few pages….reminds me of going to a mall in arizona late at nite
there was a case where a guy in a city morgue van in LA was found screwing a little girls corpse
according to radio news….and there was no law he could be charged under
and considering where he worked and that he got paid to be there….YUK
Asia, you are a bit paranoid about “manipulation” …
The unemployment rate is a lagging indicator. This means it measures the effect of a recession and so occurs after one has already started. And employers are reluctant to hire people back when the economy improves.
When the indicators show a recovering economy, and the unemployment rate is declining, then you know for sure businesses are confident enough to start hiring again. Obama has achieved this condition.
Yaaaay, Obama! The numbers are going in the right direction now.
Since it is a lagging indicator, unemployment can worsen even after the economy starts to improve. For example, unemployment went from 5.6% in 2002 to 6% in 2003, even though the recession ended in 2002.
Asoka said: “The unemployment rate is a lagging indicator. This means it measures the effect of a recession and so occurs after one has already started.”
C’mon, man. This statement assumes a lot of things: (1) That we can get back to the bullshit bubble economy ultimately fueled by loans provided by the Chinese, who know our currency is going the way of the dodo; (2) That jobs that never should have existed in the first place (i.e., endless construction jobs to build Chuck E. Cheeses and Wal-Marts; and every asshole with an associate’s degree making six figures by flipping houses); and (3) (Please back me up Dave Matthews if you’re reading) that such a way of life is actually desirable.
Don’t cheerlead this bullshit, I say.
I, personally, would like to see President Obama form a Civilian Conservation Corps tasked with the job of burning down every Wal Mart and Chuck E. Cheese in this country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEIVTS9Lvso
Damn it — (2) in the above post should read: “That jobs that never should have existed in the first place” will come back
Jaego,
Let’s say you are right. I still contend we
are the robots of our genes. They don’t care about the color of the robot’s skin. They care about ultimate (or even NOW NOW NOW) victory. I agree that the smartest black kid I’ve seen was fawned over by Grad Schools, Med Schools, and anyone needing PC. Does it matter? Maybe the kid had the smart gene. Is that what we care about or the (lack of melanin gene). Guess what, today doesn’t
matter.
MINDless
According to Japanese culture a mother does not say no, she says later.
The recession didn’t end! Greenspan just created a new bubble: housing! by lowering interest rates.
Of course it matters-if you want to thrive and see your children thrive. We are smarter but we are being brutally handicapped by affirmative action. In line with their Marxist Religion, the Mandarins are raising up the downtrodden and undeserving and pulling down the high, beautiful and worthy. Now of course, the people who sign the mandarins’ checks don’t believe any of this crap-but they want to make damn sure their genes stay at the top-a dumbed down brown population of serfs will do that quite nicely. Is it a conincidence that the tax structure and affirmative action hits the White upper middle class harder than anyone else? Why? Because they are the very people who could unseat the Judeo-Masons. Therefore they must be reduced to serfdom, condemned as evil (racist) as often as possible, and hopefully miscegenated out of existence. It’s working too. White Women are irresistibly attracted to money and power. Plus they have been preped by years of TV to see Black Men as the alphas. So you get a good looking Black guy in a suit, and they are silly putty. So what if he’s a stuffed suit like Van Jones-he’s successuful! That’s all they care about.
The Urban White Proles are miscegenating very nicely-and they are very dumb anyway. But the rural proles are heavily armed and many of them are racially conscious. If they could allie with the now disempowered White Middle Class-the Country could be taken back. But it would mean for Liberal Whites to give up their hatred. And for “Conservative Whites” to actaully give a shit about something besides their portfolios. So it doesn’t look too good right now.
In short, defeat has very serious consequences-possibly fatal for our Race since the whole West is being invaded now to a greater or lesser extent. As the great Anthropologist Arthur Keith said, two species cannot occupy the same niche (same food and shelter) in the same environment. One will destroy or drive out the other. Grey squirels were intoduced to England and they have utterly defeated the native red squirels. Native Britons are now in the same boat as the red squirels. Of coure, two very alike species might interbreed-in which case the White Race would be wiped out while the Black and Brown races still thrived in their native lands. Still an utter defeat for the West. The battle is on our turf-not their. Our survival is at stake, not their’s. And we must effect this by any means necessary.
Yet another sign of the unraveling (see link below) — no budget for cops at an inner city school. To tell you the truth, I think I’d be scared to be a white guy in a poor black neighborhood and, to tell you the truth again, I’d be scared to be a black guy in a poor white neighborhood.
It’s too bad we all can’t get along. Because the elites can continue to screw us over by keeping us scared of each other.
I shouldn’t have, but have fun with this one Jaego…
http://tinyurl.com/yld7phg
Oh I knew about this one. We didn’t know if she was White or not. Evidently she is. Ah, clueless Middle Class Whites breed dumb White Bunnies ripe for the plucking…One incredible one last year: two Hispanic thugs in their twenties would hang around with a 16 year old White girl-at her house in front of her parents. They killed her because she wouldn’t put out. From their perspective they were being dissed-I mean they hang out in her pool, she owed them after they courted her and shit. Not to put out meant she was a tease. All of this went right under not over her and her parents head. Most Whites can’t imagine how barbarians think.
So it’s all even-but it isn’t. Sure there are bad Whites-but Blacks murder, rob, and rape and five times the White rate. Hispanics three times. And the worst age if from 15-25. To be in a Black High School is deadly-for both Blacks or Whites. The article mentioned an Abdullah Morales- a hideous trend for Hispanics to embrace Islam. That would bode very ill for us indeed.
This story is nuthin. Google the Witchita Massacre if you want real action. Or Chris Channing in Knoxville.
Strangely cool poem btw. Your’s?
Yes, more. It’s important damn it. I live in a city near a big city. Blacks come from the big city to go to one of the local high schools. And the Whites worship them-both the middle class ones and the poor. Both want to be like them. Black Culture is Youth Culture to a large extent-at least right now. The triumph of MTV and the music executives who created the market for rap. You have to order from special web sites to get White Power Music. To get Black Power Music, you just go down to the record store. Black Hate is completely accepted. Under this kind of pressure, Peckerwood Culture has large disappeared from the Cities from what I’ve seen.
Vegan propagana
— Cows With Guns by Dana Lyons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IJBbtkBMMs
The rural whites are lumpen though. Ally with liberals and educated people? Nope.
Self-jivin’ Jaego said: “Blacks come from the big city to go to one of the local high schools. And the Whites worship them”
Yes. And?
What is the problem? Black people are cool. That is why we elected, (by we I mean the majority of the population), elected a Black president. Damn good one, too.
And white women deserve to have the caring and sensitivity and intelligence that Black men offer because from White men they get mistreatment and domestic violence.
See how easy it is to play this bullshit, false stereotyping and over generalization game?
Give it a rest, Jaego. Not a damn thing you can do about it.
Miscegenation is winning out. Miscegenation rules!
Unfortunately for you and your’s-We of the West have developed a discipline called statistics. By it’s power we move beyond the usual “he said, she said” as well as the vagaries of individual karmic experience. Statistics tells us a very different story than what liberalism would have us believe. And many White Women have payed with their health and very life by believing liberalism and not statistics. When it comes to Aids and Herpes, Blacks lead the pack as they do with Crime. No other group is even close. If one wants to stay healthy, one would be advised to abstain from sex with Blacks or at least use protection. The down low is low down-unfair to Sisters-as is chasing after de White Girls. That may be your problem-you never had a good Black Woman to whup your ass into shape.
Just read today, Malcolm X was bi. Or at the very least, in his days as a male prostitute he had male as well as female customes. He gave it up for Islam-a blow to the gays who would have claimed him. And no wants to claim the scandalous “Dr” King, whose sexual outrages are well known.
Ah, the hatred goes both ways. Who can blame them?
What precisely does lumpen mean anyway? Aren’t Marxists supposed to love the lumps?
That page of your’s is very interesting…Now are you telling me that five inches of leaves would compost enough over the winter to be able support and nurture the seeds that were dropped in? If that’s true, than we are truly mad. All that raking-nothing but a waste of potential life energy.
I’ve started the book. Your journal is the launch I needed to get started.
JHK,
The discourse contained in the comments is a very mixed bag. Some are thoughtful, but many are simply trash.
You need to have an assistant moderate comments.
I can’t see how reading half the reasonable ones is worth the bother of wading through nonsense or worse.
Hey, knuckleheads!
STFU and haul ass to The Automatic Earth and read ALL of what Stoneleigh has to say.
Then read it again. Slowly.
If this doesn’t terrify you, nothing will.
Wow. Like one commenter noted: “it’s like a hit of doomer crack”.
We most definitely are NOT in Kansas anymore!
Maybe you should tell us who “Stoneleigh” is, and why he/she should have any more credibility than someone like….oh…..Jaego….for example?
Jaego said: “Unfortunately for you and your’s-We of the West have developed a discipline called statistics.”
So, the statistics for those who earn more than $250,000 a year will clearly show “Blacks lead the pack” when it comes to crime? That should be the case since Blacks are genetically different, correct?
Where can I find such statistics? Or are statistics just another way the White man lies?
For the sake of critical analysis let’s examine a couple of Stoneleigh’s assumptions:
Chart on Deflation: – While this is an accurate chart of a cycle that has occurred in the past, I find the assumption that he knows where we are in that cycle, presumptuous at best. With the FED in full printing mode it remains to be seen who will win the Deflation/Inflation battle. I’d still bet on inflation in a multi year time frame.
Option ARM reset chart – This chart does suggest that RE will continue to swim upstream until about 2012, but how would he determine that this would signal a bad market for “decades or longer”? Trust me, nobody knows what is going to happen for “decades”. Anyone who suggests he does, has a serious ax to grind and can’t be trusted. BTW – That’s great that he thinks RE will fall “at least 90%” but there is simply no realistic basis for such an apocalyptic scenario.
Baltic Dry Index – his analysis of what this chart means is ridiculous. I’ve watched this chart for years, and where it’s at at this point, is far from an indicator of anything.
His claim that “tens of trillions” of dollars has been shoveled into a “black hole of credit destruction” is wildly exaggerated. Based on the lack of liquidity he claims, this would contradict his previous statements. It seems at best that 200-400 billion of US dollars has gone to buy debt that may be of low quality, I don’t see the evidence for the rest.
While I would agree that a deflationary scenario (albeit, less severe than his assumptions) is a distinct possibility, probably in the 50% range (for a guess). Something as severe as his suggestion would have to be much less likely. Still possible, but not likely.
This guy is a bomb thrower with an agenda. If he’s right, it will be based more on luck or intuition (if predicting economic collapse accurately can be called “luck”) then any capacity to provide cogent economic analysis. Take with a large dose of salt.
Self-jivin’ Jaego said: “Unfortunately for you and your’s-We of the West have developed a discipline called statistics.”
So, the statistics for those who earn more than $250,000 a year will clearly show “Blacks lead the pack” when it comes to crime? That should be the case, shouldn’t it, since according to you Blacks are genetically different, correct?
Where can I find such statistics? Or are statistics just another way the White man lies?
Blacks kill and rape five times as often as Whites. Go to the FBI website-the Uniform Crime Report. I didn’t say anything about 250,000 dollars a year. If an equal number of Blacks at that income were matched with Whites at that income, the proportion of criminal acts would be the same-though presumeably it would be a lower rate for both Races due to the good environment. We don’t deny this factor, but you people deny genetics. We are the open minded ones, not you.
“The bardo of this life”-that’s not incorrect but it’s an unusual useage. I assume that you don’t believe in life after death-your Buddhism becomes just a form of therapy-like the New Age “create your own reality” crowd. It only stands to reason that people with distorted political views would distort Buddhism for their own ends-as they have already destroyed Chritianity. You can’t have a religon without life after death. Rationalism so called and real spirituality are incompatible. And don’t argue that since Buddhism posits no self, that there can’t be life after death. No, no self is the condition even now in life-the subtraction of ONE of our bodies makes no ultimate difference in our condition. But such re-shuffling of our constituents is a profound opportunity for seeing through the whole game of self and other-thus the Bardo Thodol or Book of the Dead.
What are jodhpurs? You seem to know more about this than I do-some kind of Gay Nazi Fetish perhaps? And for the record, I don’t carry a whip. Hitler did in his early Party days-and I am not worthy to imitate…I carry a swagger stick as in the English Military Tradition.
Another self satisfied liberal faux revolutionary come aboard. Welcome comrade! You just want to read things you already know so you can bond with your fellow liberal tribesmen. Bond away-but don’t try to get people kicked off. Who the hell do you think you are? Stalin? Green is the new Red.
Whom the Gods wish to kill, they first drive mad. Look at poor Asoka. Hell look at all of America. God has withdrawn his grace and left us to our own hideous devices. And the evil ones have left In God We Trust on the fake currency-as a mockery and blasphemy.
“Rationalism so called and real spirituality are incompatible. And don’t argue that since Buddhism posits no self, that there can’t be life after death. No, no self is the condition even now in life-the subtraction of ONE of our bodies makes no ultimate difference in our condition. But such re-shuffling of our constituents is a profound opportunity for seeing through the whole game of self and other-thus the Bardo Thodol or Book of the Dead.”
===========================
Well….this does prove than politics and race are not the only things you have no idea what you are talking about. Better stick to your usual bullshit.
rumor has it that the DREADED SOGYAL RINPOCHE
[see rick ross cult for more info on him] rocketed to fame and wealth on his BOOK OF THE DEAD..ghostwritten by andrew harvey,,,whos..ggg..gggga….has an alternate lifestyle..hahahahahahahahah
‘can’t have a religon without life after death’
depends what yr definition of religion is…since Budda never was a buddist and never talked about god….
as black gangs and brown gangs fight..well
are you happy blacks mostly kill blacks/ or do they?
JS…face the music…the USA is finished..its in its death throws as Geraldo Rivera..whos half jewish! eggs the crowds on
do you know of his latest tome?
you might enjoy
‘ the death of common sense’
or the website…fireandreamitchell.com
[shes greenspans wife]
there you can read about the aborted babaies corpses being harvested for skin care materials
didnt surprise me..i heard a thymus brings 1000$ from genetech..that i read in LA Times
Self-jivin’ Jaego said: “You can’t have a religon without life after death.”
This will come as quite a surprise to 350 million practitioners of Confucianism.
Confucianism does not believe in the Hereafter, Paradise or Hell, nor does it accept any belief in Resurrection.
One of the disciples once asked Confucius about death, Confucius answered succinctly: “We haven’t yet finished studying life to delve into the question of death.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/18/religion.uk
Self-jivin’ Jaego said: “Whom the Gods wish to kill, they first drive mad. Look at poor Asoka.”
I am mad, crazy, drunk on the divine. And I am poor, by choice… through the practice of voluntary simplicity.
And if the Gods wish to kill me, bring ’em on!
I ain’t ‘fraid of no God or gods because I have already whupped their asses, and I defeated them all non-violently, without betraying the practice of ahimsa.
http://tinyurl.com/yacbshl
This very body the Buddha.
This very earth the lotus paradise.
The House Health Care Reform bill is deficit neutral, with long-term cost reduction, across-state-lines competition, medical malpractice reform, and protections for small business.
Those are Republican values. I wonder how many Republicans will vote for health care reform?
asoka said “And I am poor…through the practice of voluntary simplicity.”
Good for you — you’ve got a head start on the millions who will become experts in the practice of Involuntaty Simplicity.
from http://www.ranprieur.com
“I was groping for a good pejorative to call the Freakonomics guys, and realized that the English language doesn’t have one. They’re not assholes because they’re quite friendly. They’re not idiots because they have plenty of brainpower. But on the issue of climate change they are using their brainpower to support moral laziness. They caper around pulling facts out of hats and doing tricks with them, and they seem to be increasingly playing to an audience that wants excuses to not make any sacrifices or care about anything.”
Some CFNers might call them “self-jiving”, thanks to JHK.
Now Dale, don’t get huffy. I admire your abilities-your are a good writer-I loved that part about my magnificient garage balcony. And you found that quote by Gandhi with great speed. So why not serve the group here and look up the Black Crime Statistics, Aids rate, Black IQ vs White IQ’s etc? And then come back and tell everyone what you found. Or do you already know that all my claims in this area are correct? And that you only persist out of egotism and a nihilistic desire to pull Traditional America down?
Of course, America is finished-and a good thing too before they get really Evil. I’ve been saying this for months, but what are your plans? You are in the new Mexico-don’t you think you should get out? Or at least have a plan in place. The point is, when America falls-it’s going to get really bad-but some places will be way worse. And in some places, the right places, the White Places-there may be a chance to begin anew. Why don’t you make sure you end up in one of those places.
Yes, a great new evil has entered the world-organ jacking. And the usual suspects are all over it. I heard a rumor about a French Charity in Africa that took kids away from their parents to Europe-where they were never seen again.
Buddha didn’t speak of God but he speak of an ultimate reality-a City of Peace. So he spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven not God. In any case, the many attempts to portray him as just a teacher of morality as blatantly false-the scriptures of all Schools are full of miraculous events, Angels (called Devas), mystical powers, etc.
Self-jivin’ knowledge-inventin’ Jaego said: “the scriptures of all Schools are full of miraculous events, Angels (called Devas), mystical powers, etc.”
Zen is a major school of Buddhism and I have read some Zen scriptures. But there was absolutely no talk of angels or mystical powers.
Can you cite a Zen scripture to back up your claim?
Greetings Mr. Kunstler,
I finally got to read ‘World Made by Hand’, I had to wait for my library to stock it (I asked them to buy a copy several months ago, I can’t afford to buy novels, it’s been several years since I’ve read a novel, (I read a lot of non-fiction).
Getting the library to buy it was good for you, good for me, good for the library and good for the rest of the underclass who can’t afford to buy novels).
The long-awaited book finally came and a nice little potboiler it is too. I read it in a day, so it was engaging, entertaining. Not what I’d expected, less ‘Little House on the Prairie’, more action-adventure. But what a lot of eating and drinking goes on during the book! I kept getting hungry and thirsty, going for snacks and craving glasses of cider! I did not expect ‘food pornography’ (A term myself and a few colleagues invented to describe the utterances of a talk radio jock over here who’s a bit of a gourmet, around Christmas time he starts salivating through the radio over entrees such as’Turkeys stuffed with ducks, stuffed with quail’).
I was glad you weren’t too hard on Wayne Karp and his tattooed underclass. I was afraid I would find myself throwing the book across the room in disgust before the end. But Mr Earle and Brother Jobe showed some restraint, even a little empathy perhaps?
Anyway I look forward to the sequel and the challenge of persuading my local library to buy it, for the benefit of me, you and the knowledge hungry Wexford Underclass.
B.T.W, I still enjoy your blog but don’t bother to comment. The comments section is just too off subject, too many trolls.
Rory Stafford (Urban_Underclass), Wexford, Ireland
You’re right Al, it’s Christianity that’s the problem not Greenspan, Bernake, Geinther, Soros, Goldman-Sachs, and all the rest. If we can just get people to stop praying it will all come out ok.
Not I by the dog! Asoka, Zen does not emphasize the supernatural as much as say Tibetan Buddhism, but it is implicit. Zen is not just hedonism or beautiful poetry, but a religion and also a path to wisdom. You have been undully influenced I fear by Kerouac and Alan Watts.
Your question was dealt with constantly by Roshi Phillip Kapleau-an American Zen Master. People came to him and were disgusted by the bowing and chanting. One girl asked “Why don’t we just bow to each other”? Roshi Kapleau said that’s fine, we do, but you’ll get more out of bowing to the Bodhisattvas who are always ready to bless humanity. So Zen DOES emphasize devotion-it has a strong Pure Land aspect to it. If you don’t know about this, I would suggest Kapleau’s books. He is well known, respected, and his books should be easy. To find, The Three Pillars of Zen was his first and it’s a classic. Zen Comes West is one with the dialogues with questions like the above.
Oh, good. I have a box to write in. Checking whether it works now. But, Rory, I know you. Am I a troll? Jim denied me access.
Oh. I have access again. okay, I won’t abuse the priviledge. I’ll go now. I’m living the life, Underclass. As far as kunstler’s view of the overfed former middle class becoming hopping mad, man. I am not experiencing that. Yes, I made financial mistakes despite Kunstler’s dire warning. It’s just, all I have seen is the ability of government, this time in the form of restraining order laws for redress against domestic violence, to absolutely crush the former middle class individual into stark, homeless poverty. With no trial; no nothing. And this is the great unspoken half of the peak oil curve the way it really happens. Equitible division of wealth is fine. Now that that never worked, let’s at least have some equitible division of loss, and dead soldiers doesn’t do it for me.
Rory, God damnit, I tried to answer your last e-mail with a picture of my own, and it was refused because of the file size. I picture you and your dog on the cobblestones of Dublin, resting a laptop on a cobbestone. But, says here you are in Wexford. Do they have suburbs? We are beset with suburbs. I am reading The Geography of Nowhere, and it is definitely good to read. It came first, it has a lot of research, it has seminal Kunstler ideas, and it mentions a person named “The Possum”. Apparantly that name brings back painful memories for Kunstler and he bans me for awhile. But, hey, I wish you’d stop branding everybody as a troll. Shh, Slugger.
Mr. Kunstler, may I suggest a new edition without the previous dedication? Dedicate it to Teddy Roosevelt and you can’t go wrong.
SEB,
You are not a Troll, but you do sometimes comment and it seems off subject, anyway, you know my e-mail address, we can discuss this privately.
Rory
Jaego, get serious!
Watts? Kapleau? Kerouac!!!!!????!!!!
When I talk Zen scriptures I am not talking about 20th century American wannabeees…
I am talking about the Zen founded in China in the 6th century CE as the Ch’an school of Mahayana Buddhism.
I am talking about the Zen that was exported to Japan in the 12th century CE and gradually developed its own unique, indigenous character.
I’m talking about the Indian scholar/monk Bodhidharma, who is traditionally attributed with transferring the tradition from India to China.
The essence of Bodhidharma’s teachings is that one does not need to study sacred texts, worship deities, or do elaborate religious rituals to achieve enlightenment.
Rather, one needs to break through the boundaries of conventional thought using meditation and experience the world as it truly is in the moment. In the moment, Jaego… forget about heaven, hell, angels, resurrection, etc.
Jaego, there is no worship of Buddha as a god. Zen maintains that through meditation the Buddha himself attained enlightenment and teaches that all humans have the capacity to attain enlightenment… because we all have an inherent Buddha-nature; indeed, we are all already enlightened beings, but our true potential has been clouded by ignorance.
Watts??? Kerouac??? Kapleau??? As zzzzzz would say: bwaaaaaa haha bwaaaaaa haha bwaaaaaa haha bwaaaaaa haha
No deities, no devotion, no afterlife… just simple sitting. That is the heart of the matter.
Of course, you can read the American “Zen masters” but I would recommend reading the patriarchs:
Chien-chih Seng-ts’an (c600, Chinese author of classic Hsin Hsin Ming, aka Seng-ts’an, Sosan, 3rd Patriarch of zen).
Chiyono (1223-1298 Japanese nun aka Mugai Nyodai, “No water, no moon”)
Dogen Zenji (1200-1253, major Japanese Soto zen master, brought Soto to Japan)
Huang Po (d850 aka Obaku, Wobaku Kiun, lineage: Hui Hai > HP > Rinzai (Lin Chi)
Hui Neng (638-713 Chinese, 6th zen patriarch).
Kyozan Ejaku (807-883, aka Yangshan Huiji, Yang-shan Hui-chi, disciple of Isan.)
Ma Tsu (708/9-788? aka Mazu Daoyi, major zen figure two “generations” descended from Hui Neng, guru of Hyakujo and others)
Rinzai Gigen (d866/7 Chinese monk aka Lin Chi, “Rinzai zen” founder, major figure)
Ta Hui (Tsung-kao) (1089-1163, developed and expanded use of koans, Yuan-wu K’o-ch’in.)
Yung-chia Hsuan-chueh (665-713 aka Yongjia Xuanjue, Yoka Genkaku, etc, major poet, “Song of Enlightenment,” heir of 6th patriarch Hui-neng)
Kerouac??? bwaaaaaa haha bwaaaaaa haha bwaaaaaa haha bwaaaaaa haha
Or were you going for Watts, Kerouac, and Kapleau because they are WHITE MEN OF EUROPEAN HERITAGE?
do you think what the Larouche mag claims about Soros sorry past is true?
and how about this??????
Switzerland forbids “swine flu” vaccine for pregnant women, young and old!
Swissmedic, the authority in Switzerland that gives permission for the use of drugs, today announced that the “swine flu” vaccine Pandemrix will not be allowed to be injected into pregnant women, children or young adults (belo…w 18 years of age) or elderly (above 60 years of age). The very same vaccine is now injected through an unprecedented mass vaccination campaign into hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in Sweden. No restrictions are made in Sweden and the authorities there express surprise about the Swiss decision. “There is no reason to make such a decision here in Sweden”, says Jan liliemark, a professor working for the national Medical Products Agency. The many deaths so far in Sweden from this vaccine are “still under investigation”.
Unfortunately, the people of Switzerland will still be injected with the deadly adjuvant squalene and the mercury thiomersal through another “swine flu” vaccine, namely the poisonous Focetria.Focetria is being approved because the EMEA have approved it for the EU. It will be given to children from the age of six months and adults.
Celtura has been tested and according to earlier reports, it is contaminated with dog viruses and bacteria. It is still waiting to receive permission to be injected in the Swiss population.
Swissmedic is attempting to navigate through the massive criticism that has been voiced in Switzerland against the mass vaccination, and the orders from WHO, by taking the worst vaccines away from the equation. Unfortunately, this will mean little when the mass vaccination campaign starts in December. The Swiss population will have to take action now to avoid the worst medical catastrophe in the history of the nation.Read MoreSwitzerland forbids ‘swine flu’ vaccine for pregnant women, young and old!
Source: http://www.theflucase.com
The Flu Case – Jane Burgermeister’s investigation into the swine flu vaccine, bird flu and the real reasons for mass vaccinations. The criminal charges against Baxter and WHO. Daily updates on the swine flu pandemic. Possible mass murder. Possible genocide.
JK
i have seen 1 bumper sticker that says
hope for change 1.13!
‘ Perhaps it’s time to redefine “hope” in the greater social sense of the word. To me, hope is not synonymous with “wishes fulfilled’
HOPE?….seems to be a buzz word for tax and spend..health care bill…war…cash for clunkers…trillion $ bailout…even ultra leftie bob scheer of KCRW/LATimes was saying he doesnt like it
“One girl asked “Why don’t we just bow to each other”? Roshi Kapleau said that’s fine, we do, but you’ll get more out of bowing to the Bodhisattvas who are always ready to bless humanity. So Zen DOES emphasize devotion-it has a strong Pure Land aspect to it. If you don’t know about this, I would suggest Kapleau’s books.”
=====================================
Devotion is beneficial in all human activities, if you are devoted to fixing dinner you will more likely have a dinner worth eating.
In the ultimate sense, the girl is right. In the relative sense (the everyday conventional world) there are reasons for why bowing may be beneficial.
All deities in Buddhism are part of the conventional world of reality, constructs of mind.
Nice post marred by your usual conflation and disrespect. I was contrasting Watts and Kerouac vs Kapleau. But you make out like I lump them all together-because you do because they’re White Americans. Well Kapleau studied in Japan for twenty or more years. And he was accredited (yes, it’s like a collge degree, it keeps the Tradition pure and real) by Yasutani Roshi who was a respected pupil or Hasutani Roshi-one of the great modern Zen Masters. It’s not good disrespect people like this-even if they are White. Or do you not think that Whites have Buddha Nature?
Now maybe Da Mo didn’t do any rituals or need to, the case is very different with the average person-remember Zen is a religion as well as a Path. It needs to have broad appeal. And even for serious meditators, meditation is typically not enenough. As Hakuin says in his Song of ZaZen “Observing the precepts, repentance and giving, the countless good deeds, and the way of right living all come from zazen.” And the precepts are chanted communally and the there is a collective repentance rite in which people admit their faults to each other. Yes rituals-but useful ones, no? Buddha was not against ritual per se, but mindless ones.
I can see where your problem comes from. Zen doesn’t talk much about the Higher Realms and they don’t do much Sutra Study until after some degree of enlightenment is attained. The Sutras are full of stories about the higher realms and Buddha Realms and Devas coming down here to listen to the Buddha preach. But one of the favorite Sutras of the Zen School is the Avatamskara Suta-it’s a huge and utterly cosmic story about the Cosmic Buddha preaching in many different worlds. But beginers would not be encouraged to read it because it would distract them from the practical-and Zen’s genius is the practical. They really do use beautiful and funny stories to teach. It is a path of great appreciation of Nature-I can see why it attracts you so.
But until you recognize these other aspects-you are in danger of the pre/trans fallacy-confusing the impulsivity of a child or animal with the inspiration and immediacy of the sage. Christ said become like a child not become a child.
As for Confucianism-it’s a civil “religion” much like our saluting the flag and going to church twice a year. Or the ancient Romans making an offering to the Emperor as a god. No serious seeker can be satisfied with things like this.
Why are you against the idea of life after death-because it screws up your atheistic metaphysic? Well Buddhism does believe in life after death via reincarnation. As I told you before, it has nothing to do with our Atheism and materialism at all-they don’t believe matter is the all and all. Zen is a Mind Only school-the exact opposite of materialism. So opposite that people can get confused and thing that they’re the same. Matter is just Mind to them. We make it solid by our clinging to sense appearances. For Marx, mind is just matter.
Caste, Race and Gender shouldn’t stand in the way of spritual truth. I would (and have) listened respectfully to teachers of other races. But neither should spiritual truch destroy the necessary distinctions of this earthly life. Let’s face it, most people have nothing to say to each other and any ideology that tries to cram everyone together in some kind of faux “brotherhood” is evil. Let Love and Friendship be free.
(Jaego + Asoka) = (Rob + Paulette)
Extensive knowledge/practice of Buddhism + $2.00 = Ride on the Subway
Your last post was really moving. It really hurts you that you aren’t being listened to. Why? Because you haven’t rectified yourself as Confucius would say. You don’t have the Wakan, (Sioux), the Shakti, the Baraka (Sufism), the Holy Spirit, the Manitou (Algonquin) etc.
A mother and son went to see Gandhi. She said please tell my son not to eat so much sugar. He told them to come back tomorrow. They came back and he said to the boy, “Don’t eat so much sugar.” The mother asked why he didn’t just tell him the previous day. Gandhi said, “Because yesterday I was still eating sugar.”
You alienated everyone here-I’m the only one who missed you. God knows why since you treated me horribly too. But I wish you well anyway. Fascists are good people. Racists can be too.
Try to get Yogi from Rob and Paulette. He is the best influence in your life.
Zen is a Mind Only school-the exact opposite of materialism. So opposite that people can get confused and thing that they’re the same. Matter is just Mind to them.”
=============================
While it’s true that Zen is “Mind Only” it is also assured that you will misunderstand what that actually means, if you attempt to learn Buddhism from Wikapedia.
Don’t try to understand “emptiness” as your first step. You haven’t got a chance that way. Zen and Tibetan Buddhism are both “middle way” school. That is, the middle way between materialism and nihilism. Your conventional understanding of “mind only” would suggest nihilism, (as you stated) and that would be a misunderstanding.
“Buddhism is not telling anyone that he should believe that he has a self or that he does not have a self. It is saying that when one looks at the way one suffers and the way one thinks and responds emotionally to life, is is as if one believed there were a self that was lasting, single and independent and yet on closer analysis no such self can be isolated of found.” –Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Pinpoche in Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness.
How utterly pathetic … Jaego and Asoka, a couple of aging, childless losers with the audacity to tell the rest of us great unwashed how to achieve “enlightenment.” Next thing ya know, Messiah will chime in with the real skinny as received from God Himself. Suggestion: Cut the eccentric asian guru reading list one-upsmanship, kick back with a bag of chips and catch the second half of the Giants – Eagles game.
Qshtik said: “Extensive knowledge/practice of Buddhism + $2.00 = Ride on the Subway”
————————–
Well, any Religion + $2.00 = Ride on the Subway
a pantload + $2.00 = Ride on the Subway
etc.
Yeah, but whose mind? Your’s? Mine? The bodhisattvas are higher beings-closer to the Light or MIND. In that sense only are they “mind created”-as are we. The meditation deities are more complicated because at first it is just a visualization and concentaration. But a higher being may come to inhabit the temple that one has built-or you may become your own visualization.
There are some good analogies and sayings: Ramana Maharshi: The World is Unreal,
Brahman alone is Real,
Brahman is the World.
The World per se or Universe qua Universe is denied, but only to affirm it as a manifestation of Brahman. Or: God is the ocean and the manifest Universe is the Waves. Unenlightenment is clinging to the waves which are anatta, annica, and anatma. But the waves are not totally unreal-that would be monism and thus a duality is created between real and unreal. The waves are real as long as they last-but only as a manifestation of the complete ocean-not in and of themselves. Believing in waves and clinging to them is the great suffering. What you say at the end of your last post is true: the waves can only be understood later. For now, just ignore them. Otherwise one gets into the Hilarious Zen of Kerouac and Co. yelling “Katsu” as they body surf towards the shoals of Bohemia which have claimed so many lives.
Neither analogy contains the important truth of the hierarchy of manifestation howeve. All things contain Buddha Nature, but things vary tremendously in their capacity to understand and express that. Rocks, plants, amoebas, toads, dogs, men, gandharvas, devas, formless devas, stream enterers, once returners, arhats, bodhisattvas-the whole Great Chain of Being is there-and in various forms, all the Great Traditions have it. Without the hierarchy, you have the danger of pantheism, thinking that the Masters are just talking about the physical universe in a new way. As Santayana said, “The Universe gains nothing by calling it God.” In a word, a kind of Flatland that even Thomas Friedman would like.
Fascism, as a philosphy of hierarchy is closer to the real nature of things.And many Fascists were and are learned in these matters. But democracy has a place too in that all men have Buddha Nature-and all beings. And to end this in a way Asoka would like, Not One, not Two. Or, if all things return to the One, what does the One return to?
Puzz, I couldn’t agree more.
Jaego said: “And to end this in a way Asoka would like, Not One, not Two.”
Excellent!
On that we can certainly agree.
On organ jacking. See the film Dirty Pretty Things as it is about that subject. People openly sell corneas and kidneys in India because they say they only need one.
Jaego “Rob” Scorzne said: “You don’t have the Wakan, (Sioux), the Shakti, the Baraka (Sufism), the Holy Spirit, the Manitou (Algonquin) etc.”
——————————–
If sacred forces, holy spirits, or divinities of what ever manner and sort have an existence at all it is entirely as a thought in the mind of man. They have no reality in and of themselves, IMO. Their positive effects in the lives of some people can be likened to the Placebo Effect in pharmacology that Scientific American has called “a cure in the mind” and noted that “belief is powerful medicine, even if the treatment itself is a sham.”
If you “Rob” have a requirement for, and are perpetually sustained by, a holy placebo … well … God bless you.