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State of Suspension

     You kind of wonder here in the flash-frozen northeast if, a few days from now, scores of dead bodies will be found in unheated trailers across the county. The Weather Channel said 20-below-zero this morning in upstate New York. I know there are people so desperately poor out there because a couple of weeks ago I overheard a supermarket worker say she couldn’t afford to buy propane. And she had a job!
     I haven’t left the house myself for two days and a Snow Leopard installation put my iMac into a hang-up deepfreeze all its own (I’m on the MacBook now). But enough about me…. I wonder if Barack Obama himself is sleeping in a casket in the White House basement these days, waiting for fairer conditions before facing a nation spinning into the dark unknown. Of course he has to put in the annual appearance before a mostly hostile joint session of congress later in the week. I can’t imagine that coming off as anything but an orgy of self-congratulation for our national wonderfulness – especially on the occasion of a multiple slaying – and cheerleading for the marvelous restoration of the set of revolving rackets we call “the economy.” I pray to all the Gods that assorted heroes du jour will not be planted in the balcony of the House Chamber and subject to the Reagan-style show-and-tell, which the Gipper’s managers so astutely used as a sly distraction from straight talk about where we are at as a polity.
     The bloodbath in Tucson completely obscured a momentous development in Mr. Obama’s executive sphere, when he brought on JP Morgan factotum William Daley as White House Chief of Staff, for Gawdsake, and nobody in the news media so much as coughed into his (or her) sleeve. He also hired recent Goldman Sachs errand boy Gene Sperling to direct the National Economic Council. At Goldman, Sperling was charged with running self-esteem workshops for Third Worlders – an obvious public relations ploy. You wonder now whether he’ll be carting American “99-ers” off to the Aspen Institute for weekends of buffet line cruising and “ideating” – to use a popular new vapidity from the lexicon of Big Business.
     Last Thursday, Mr. Obama actually flew up to my home territory to visit the headquarters of General Electric and sign on its CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, as yet another White House special economic advisor. Notice, by the way, that GE was the recipient of untold billions of TARP pixie dust. I wonder if the president got a good look at GE’s home base, Schenectady, New York, a once-vibrant industrial dynamo now so sclerotic that it makes the former soviet Magnetogorsks and Traktorgrads sound like El Dorados. 
     Meanwhile, GE only incidentally makes electrical things anymore. Mostly, like everything else in America, they became a financial company, looking for ways to make money off of money, and mostly losing heaps of money in the process – for the excellent reason that it’s really not possible to get something for nothing in this universe, though we wish it were. Likewise, GE’s vaunted new battery initiative, which is aimed mainly at the idea that we can run the whole US vehicle fleet on electricity (mostly powered by coal, you understand, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels) is another quixotic project based on something-for-nothing wishes.
     The weird part is that a president can journey to a place like Schenectady – once a fine, small-scaled walkable city with first-rate public transit on a major waterway (the Mohawk River / Erie Canal system) plus the New York Central Railroad main line – and never notice that the future of this society waits in realms and actions other than the tragic habit of Happy Motoring. He certainly didn’t use the occasion to make a single remark on that theme, which is probably the only true alt.energy scenario that might prevent America from sliding into a dark age.
    The appointments of Daley, Sperling, and Immelt show not just the total “capture” of Obama’s government by sociopathic corporate interests (which, after all, have the sole mission of rewarding their shareholders, boards of directors, and executives), but it also shows the astounding poverty of imagination at the center of American political life. This is a fatal vacuum that invites something like revolution, because the only thing this vacuum seeks to do is suck things outside of itself into its own darkness.
     Revolutions come in many styles. This one is shaping up to look rather red-and-slippery, because the grift has really amounted to the wholesale theft of a generation’s future. There are 21-year-olds out there right now laboring under massive burdens of college loans that they were swindled into signing at a time when the parts of their brain concerned with judgment had not fully developed, and they are every bit as smart as the men running the predatory corporations today. Even after they eventually give up paying their debt-peonage tuition loans, they are going to be very pissed off at the way the older generation ran their country into the ground. Let’s just hope that the mental torture inflicted on them doesn’t turn them into a legion of Jared Lee Loughners.

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About James Howard Kunstler

View all posts by James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

300 Responses to “State of Suspension”

  1. Cabra1080 January 24, 2011 at 9:57 am #

    First!

  2. Citizenman January 24, 2011 at 9:58 am #

    What would you see as a result for company or state pensions in the near and far future? Question goes out to Jim and the readers. What is your reasoning for this?

  3. empirestatebuilding January 24, 2011 at 10:07 am #

    James,
    I am starting to think you should have called your book The Loooooooooooooooooog Emergency
    Everything is moving in slow motion.
    Just saying,
    Aimlow Joe was here.
    http://www.aimlow.com

  4. James Howard Kunstler January 24, 2011 at 10:08 am #

    Citizenman asked: What would you see as a result for company or state pensions in the near and far future?
    Not very good prospects that any real money will be there to support these programs. Capital is vanishing. Capital is money. All the wishes in the world will not make these arrangements viable. A lot of pension-holders will be disappointed and pissed off. These are the ones I worry about most, politically because they will vote for the corn-pone Nazis.
    –JHK

  5. JonathanSS January 24, 2011 at 10:10 am #

    As far as state pensions, here in CA, I think we need to slowly increase the qualifying age. I’ve posted before about pensioners who have worked for the state for 25 yrs., retire at age 50 and now have collected a pension at 80% of max pay at time of retirement for 30 years.
    Not sustainable in a country that is poorer than 10 yrs. ago. Minimum retirement age should be no less than 55 now and increase to 60 by 2020. I don’t think these changes are that radical or should be considered “pension bashing”.

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  6. Onthego January 24, 2011 at 10:11 am #

    “Are there no prisons? No workhouses?”
    N.Y. GOP mum on weatherization
    HEATING HELP: Newly elected House members joined committee that supports ending 30-year program
    By MARC HELLER
    TIMES WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
    SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011
    WASHINGTON — Monday may dawn with temperatures in the minus teens across most of upstate New York [minus 28 here!], but the region’s newly elected members of Congress are mum so far about a proposal to end a federal program to protect homes against harsh winter weather.
    None of the four new upstate Republicans elected to the House in November, whose offices were contacted by the Times, would comment on the proposal to stop the Department of Energy’s 30-year program to weatherize homes for low-income residents, floated Thursday by a group they recently joined.
    New York has been the top recipient of such funds since the Obama administration poured money into the program for the economic stimulus in 2009.
    Only Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, R-Syracuse, returned calls seeking comment, and she offered no criticism of the idea, saying instead that Congress must have a “frank” conversation with the American people about the future of federal programs, popular or not, that have contributed to climbing federal deficits and a burdensome national debt.
    All four lawmakers — Ms. Buerkle, Chris Gibson of Kinderhook, Tom Reed of Corning and Richard Hanna of Barneveld — joined the conservative Republican Study Committee after taking office this month. The RSC included the elimination of the weatherization program in a broad proposal to cut dozens of programs and slash $2.5 trillion in federal spending over 10 years.
    Cutting those programs, the study committee said, would help restore the government’s financial balance while eliminating duplicative or wasteful programs. The idea is not likely to advance in the Senate, if it even reaches a vote in the House. But it could set the tone for reductions that have a better chance of becoming reality.
    Cutting weatherization grants would save $530 million a year, lawmakers said, based on typical funding amounts separate from the temporary increase the program received through the Obama administration’s economic stimulus.
    Word of the proposal has not reached all of the agencies around the country that administer the program, but advocates contacted by the Times said it would cripple their efforts, especially because states such as New York are in no financial condition to make up the losses.
    “It’s only one of the most cost-effective programs the government runs,” said Charles A. Acquard, executive director of the National Association of State Utility Customer Advocates, in Silver Spring, Md.
    Winterizing homes is not terribly expensive, he said, but saves low-income residents enough money through lower heating bills that they can, in extreme cases, keep paying their mortgage or avoid homelessness. Many low-income households in the north country also qualify for federal low income home energy assistance, a program that would face reductions, too, as the proposal takes a broad cut at non-defense discretionary programs.
    “For people on the margins, energy bills often can send them over the top,” Mr. Acquard said.
    The weatherization program has helped protect about 500,000 homes in New York since its inception in 1977, said Denise Harlow, chief executive officer of the New York State Community Action Association, an anti-poverty organization. Often, organizations would look to Albany for help, but the state’s bleak fiscal outlook suggests lost federal dollars would not be replaced.
    “The state right now wouldn’t have the money to put into the program,” Ms. Harlow said.
    In St. Lawrence County, where forecasters said readings would stay below zero all day today and Monday, the federal government has poured $3.7 million into the DOE’s program in the past year, including $3.1 million in stimulus funds and $600,000 in regular funding. That has been enough to cover improvements in 524 homes, the St. Lawrence County Community Development Program Inc. reported.
    The weatherization program became a popular target in conservative circles with the passage of the stimulus, which included $5 billion for the program. Critics questioned its economic impact and potential to create jobs. Those concerns were further fed by the Obama administration’s slow implementation of the program. Less that half of the money devoted to the program has been spent, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported recently, in part because of the Energy Department’s difficulty in administering such a greatly expanded program.
    In the north country’s congressional race, Republican challenger Matthew A. Doheny questioned why weatherization money belonged in the stimulus at all.
    Rep. William L. Owens, D-Plattsburgh, who opposes the RSC’s spending reduction plan, said last week that he expects many of the ideas to lose favor on the Republican side as the real impact becomes known.
    But the lead sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, suggested at a press conference last week that they might go further by targeting smaller weatherization programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
    The program would take an especially hard hit from GOP efforts to stop any more spending related to the stimulus — possibly disrupting projects that already are planned or partly under way, a GAO analyst said earlier this month.
    The proposal could become an early test of newly elected lawmakers’ willingness to deliver on promises to cut federal spending and stick with their conservative base. Similar ideas surfaced from time to time when Republicans controlled the House before 2007 — home heating assistance was a favorite target, for instance — but New York’s moderate Republican congressional delegation at the time stood in opposition.
    It also may test the new Republican leadership, which has not indicated a willingness to go along with all of what the RSC proposes.
    “They’re going to get a lot of opposition within their own party,” Mr. Acquard said.

  7. Cabra1080 January 24, 2011 at 10:13 am #

    Most of the manufacturing companies are just financial fronts for Chinese manufacturing – all the real work and wages once provided to American workers has been shipped offshore to that faraway, foreboding place. Thus, no middle class wages to pay the taxes that keep the state pension funds going.
    So far, the states and local municipalities have not found a way to “outsource” their road maintenance, school systems, utilities, court systems, etc. to the Chinese. So with middle class incomes drying up thanks for manufacturing going away, states are leaning toward bankruptcy. Not a pretty site.
    The multinationals have “bought” the government so they are not going to do anything about it. Also, average Joe is not going to quit buying the Chinese goods so we are on the path we are on…

  8. Steve Knox January 24, 2011 at 10:16 am #

    The coup d’etat is complete, and it was done right in the open, without anyone questioning the deed. Not only that but the Fed is now changing the rules of the game, so that the deck is even more stacked. Are we beyond saving, or are we worth saving?
    The status quo will be maintained, at whatever cost. The only question is, how much longer will this charade go on? There are laws of economics, and Keynesian Theory isn’t one of them, but that hasn’t prevented the Keynesians from violating every one of those laws. What will be the Black Swan event that demonstrates the fact, the emperor has no clothes.

  9. SunshineNutrons January 24, 2011 at 10:18 am #

    Pensions:
    JHK is insightful in speculating on the future disappointment of the current pension holders. They still live in a bubble. I reached adulthood post Reagen and could never find a pension even as a tradesman. I have fairly low standards about getting “taken care of” as I enter my early 40s. But the real danger comes from the current “pension holders” who imagine that it will be there for them.

  10. ozone January 24, 2011 at 10:18 am #

    “The appointments of Daley, Sperling, and Immelt show not just the total “capture” of Obama’s government by sociopathic corporate interests (which, after all, have the sole mission of rewarding their shareholders, boards of directors, and executives), but it also shows the astounding poverty of imagination at the center of American political life. This is a fatal vacuum that invites something like revolution, because the only thing this vacuum seeks to do is suck things outside of itself into its own darkness.” -JHK
    Thank you for bringing back into focus the shape and direction of our “Grand National Suicide”.
    We can only hope that a financial collapse might curtail some of the ecological murder in which we’re so heavily invested.
    Knowing where one might be headed determines what one should pack for the “trip”. Make things work where you live, people! (Or get the hell out of there if the “lifestyle” can only be sustained by direct central gov’t. inputs. The “folks” in D.C. ain’t gonna be on your side. Refer to “State of Suspension” by James Howard Kunstler ABOVE. Focus, people, focus….)

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  11. rex_b99 January 24, 2011 at 10:19 am #

    Looking at your situation in the US from someone in Canada, it is clear that your entire political system is fully controlled by the bankers. And the situation is not getting any better as shown by the latest appointments of yet more bankers.
    It is obvious to me that the current administration is sticking sharp objects in your collective eyes with incredible arrogance and force, like a bully in a schoolyard.
    How does it feel to have someone steal your lunch money? when do you say enough?

  12. LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown January 24, 2011 at 10:20 am #

    Good column this week, thanks.
    Sorry to hear your iMac screws the pooch on a software upgrade. This country really is going to hell, or else the gods of computing are sending you a message you should be running Linux.

  13. BICO January 24, 2011 at 10:21 am #

    I’m curious what you all think about buying gold & silver: as Glenn Beck is pushing.

  14. myrtlemay January 24, 2011 at 10:25 am #

    “How does it feel to have someone steal your lunch money? when do you say enough?”
    I don’t know. Maybe ask someone in Tunisia. Or maybe one of the young unemployed men in Egypt who have set themselves on fire in protest of their deplorable economy. Frankly, amerikans don’t have the balls for any rebellion. Might have had ’em 70 or 80 years ago. Not now. Not even close. We’re too busy arguing about abortion, gay marriage, muslims…you know, the REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF!

  15. Cash January 24, 2011 at 10:27 am #

    Did you know that Mark Carney (head of the Bank of Canada, for Americans the Bank of Canada is our counterpart to the Fed) is a Goldman alumnus? That is really depressing.

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  16. piltdownman January 24, 2011 at 10:28 am #

    Amazing, really, that a Democrat would so utterly abandon the unions (depleted and weak as they are…) in favor of a complete handover to “business interests.”
    Or not.
    Even more depressing ( is that possible at this point?) is watching as the GOP pounces on their fav issues, like abortion….while Rome burns. The entire system may be in default, but damn it, we gotta get this here abortion thing riled up again…so that people ca have more kids with fewer prospects!

  17. Newfie January 24, 2011 at 10:28 am #

    The elephant is in the room. But nobody is stating the obvious. However judging by the flurry of recent articles on the possibility of state and municipal bankruptcies, it is obvious that Greece is coming to America.
    A Path Is Sought for States to Escape Their Debt Burdens:
    “Policymakers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.”
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/business/economy/21bankruptcy.html
    Mayors See No End to Hard Choices for Cities:
    “Despite having one of the highest crime rates in the nation, Camden, N.J., laid off nearly half its police force this week … On the other side of the country, Vallejo, Calif., was filing a bankruptcy plan that proposed paying some creditors as little as a nickel or 20 cents on each dollar they are owed.”
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/us/22cities.html
    Budget Worries Push Governors to Same Mind-Set:
    ” The dismal fiscal situation in many states is forcing governors, despite their party affiliation, toward a consensus on what medicine is needed going forward. The prescription? Slash spending. Avoid tax increases. Tear up regulations that might drive away business and jobs. Shrink government, even if that means tackling the thorny issues of public employees and their pensions.”
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17governors.html
    Etc, etc…

  18. informedveteran January 24, 2011 at 10:28 am #

    Lets not forget the billions in “defense” contracts GE gets, especially now on this 50th anniv of Eisenhower’s farewell address where he issued an ominous and unheeded warning about the Military Industrial Complex. Permanent war is big business, and it matters little if the wars are “winnable”. But hey, at least we don’t have a “defense” contractor for a vice president anymore. I’m sure Barack W Obamabush will end the wars any day now……………..

  19. The Mook January 24, 2011 at 10:29 am #

    People were dying in the metro Buffalo area weeks ago. One guy near Olean, NY, died in a mobile home fire. It was reported that he had no electricity and was using a homemade wood stove for heat. Poor bastard; no memorial service for him. Speaking of Genital Electric, have you seen their new commercial? All the employees are country line dancing because their jobs are so great, until the antenna falls off the radio. Ironically, it will probably the electricity that stops flowing that will end the party. Oh, by the way, no mention in the commercial of where to apply for one of these fabulous domestic jobs.

  20. Newfie January 24, 2011 at 10:31 am #

    “I’m curious what you all think about buying gold & silver”
    I’d buy cans of beans. By the truckload.

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  21. RobertaWa January 24, 2011 at 10:32 am #

    I am so disappointed in Obama I can hardly speak about it. To see him put all these robber barons in places of power is beyond disgusting.
    Both my future and my children and grandchildren’s futures are getting dimmer every day.
    We are done for as a country.

  22. greg January 24, 2011 at 10:32 am #

    Pensions? In Virginia our (R) governor is being very “clever.” He is cutting the state’s contribution to the pension plan by 2%, offset by a 2% employee contribution taken out of our paychecks. At the same time he is giving everyone a 2% bonus – not a raise, haven’t seen one of those in several years. Of course a bonus is a one time thing, the additional pension contribution is forever. And probably the first of many cut/bonus maneuvers. Something has to be done of course, I just wish elected officials didn’t have to treat us like naive children.

  23. loveday January 24, 2011 at 10:32 am #

    HI Jim
    So things are moving along, very slowly as someone above commented, however by doing things that way the authorities will keep the natives quiet longer. Because once the avalanche of social unrest starts there won’t be any stopping it. Please note the reported concerns of food shortages by agriculture ministers at a meeting in Berlin over the weekend.
    Upstate New York is in dire straits except of course the area around a military post, but even there it isn’t very good either. Cutting assistance at this time for basic necessities is either foolhardy or downright brutal but I think it will be done.
    take care all
    loveday

  24. Smokyjoe January 24, 2011 at 10:34 am #

    “‘Are there no prisons? No workhouses?’
    N.Y. GOP mum on weatherization”
    I’d expect the return of debtor’s prisons except we’d never be able to build enough of them in this land-of-the-free-on-credit. Perhaps a return to some form of indentured servitude for a government or a bank?
    As for weatherization assistance, I can imagine my state’s governor saying “keeping people from freezing to death is not a core function of government,” even as he claims that billionaires deserve the continuance of the Bush-era tax breaks.
    Bah. America on the skids is not pretty.

  25. BICO January 24, 2011 at 10:34 am #

    Newfie! You kill me. 🙂
    Beans….you’re probably right, though.

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  26. Newfie January 24, 2011 at 10:36 am #

    Don’t forget to buy some can openers too – hand operated, not electric!

  27. LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown January 24, 2011 at 10:36 am #

    If they are hawking it on TV, then it’s probably a sucker bet. Do you physically have the gold, or just some certificates? I’d invest in other things, such as getting some gardening skills or learning to brew moonshine.

  28. rocco January 24, 2011 at 10:38 am #

    Good Morning all:
    Jim our local news, down the road in Rochester was so excited about the GE visit and the new uptick for jobs it will create. It is sad many old timers even around here worked one or or another for GE in the “Glory Days”. Many of my neighbors, friends, and work pals have become pro right wing, less federal government spending,and laugh at our current temp of -5f this morning, stating that global warming is false. I say climate change,but they are pushing for Mike Huckabee as the new savior who will control spending, bring back prayers,and God will save America. Meanwhile I am praying to Zeus for help.

  29. The Mook January 24, 2011 at 10:39 am #

    Worked for Ametek, a fortune 500 company, for 26 years. I should get a nice pesion check when I am 62. I will get nothing. The company is presently quite profitable, but will jump right into the pack of weasels who will void all pensions. But’ at the other end of the spectrum, the Wall St. boys got their bonuses last year because it was in the contract.

  30. endofworld January 24, 2011 at 10:41 am #

    i own gold,lots of american silver eagles,many shares of gold and silver mining companies-have semi trailer with 50 lb bags rice,pasta,gravy mixes,freeze dried breakfast,etc.my family owns a cattle ranch and hopefully we won’t need any of it in a survial mode but it is insurance…..

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  31. Cash January 24, 2011 at 10:42 am #

    The narrative you hear on the main news channels is that Obama appointed these banksters and the GE toad to gain the confidence of the financial and business community. Which is mind blowing. After what was inflicted by those assholes on Wall Street and after all the offshoring it’s Obama that has to justify himself?

  32. walt January 24, 2011 at 10:43 am #

    The civil war has this as its predicate: who are you going to believe? Liberals who register black “takers” to vote? Or white “producers” who give us jobs, even in those jobs are in places like Bangelore?
    For the gun-happy Real Murkans, the choice is clear. You vote skin color because that’s the only thing that seems remotely tangible. In a nation that’s become little more than a second-hand store in the space previously occupied by entities like Sears and Montgomery Wards, you struggle to understand how all this happened. In the end, you believe Glenn Beck and Michael Savage because nostalgia is our lodestar. There used to be this shining city on a hill. Then blacks moved in and everything went to hell.

  33. myrtlemay January 24, 2011 at 10:43 am #

    Same here in the “sunny” South. Last week, a group of unrelated people quietly burned to death in an unheated home. Firefighters speculate that perhaps a kerosene heater lit some draperies on fire in the wee hours of the morning. Meanwhile, in an abandoned subdivision (one of many with most homes only 3/4ths finished) squatters huddle in mass, frequently setting vinyl clad Mchouses afire with untended candles (this from Gastonia, a suburb of the Charlotte-Mecklenberg area). Of course, the neighbors of the squatters are appalled that the “bargain” they got in the same subdivision is quite rapidly being turned into a shanty town, filling up with “all those people we wanted to flee from in the city.” Ya can run. Ya can’t hide – at least for long.

  34. noel bodie January 24, 2011 at 10:44 am #

    JHK suggested gold when it was 400 an oz. now ,who knows. Here in Illinois we just passed a state income tax increase to deal with 15 billion debt. Last week the founder of JIMMY JOHNS restaurants said he is considering moving headquarters from Champaign,Il to Florida to avoid taxes. As a result I am asking all to boycott. Talk about a rat leaving the ship and with his booty.

  35. mow January 24, 2011 at 10:45 am #

    36 below early this morning in saranac lake , ny

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  36. BICO January 24, 2011 at 10:45 am #

    “Do you physically have the gold, or just some certificates?”
    I don’t know. To get the answer you had to subscribe to his newsletter. Pass!
    There was a comment about keeping it safe offshore, so it sounds like certificates.

  37. sevenmmm January 24, 2011 at 10:47 am #

    The snow leopard ate your computer on a minus 20 degree day! Ha!
    Serves you right for believing the corporate advertising.
    🙂

  38. suburbanempire January 24, 2011 at 10:47 am #

    I spent the past two weeks brushing up on political assinations… it seems that when it happens in any other country there is about a 10% chance of it being a “crazy lone gunman”… forgien political assinations almost always involve 2-8 people with close involvement, and the backing of some group (ETA, IRA, Drug Cartels, PLO, Front Liberation du Quebec)
    Six people were convicted of killing Gandi (one conviction was later over turned) and two killed Indera Gandi.
    As far as political assinations in the USA go there is one that stands out, the first Congressman ever assinated in office, Leo Ryan. Leo was killed by the “Peoples Temple” and only one person was brought to justice… the rest commited “sucicide” and could not stand trial. Of course it didn’t happen on US soil.
    The “Crazy lone (apolitical) gunman” as political asassin is a unique criminal class that seems to exist no where else on earth.
    And the timing of the “crazy lone gunman” helped take the media eye off the ball…. no one even noticed that Obama is appointing corperate crooks… except Jim, and even he forgot about it for a week.
    just sayin.

  39. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 10:48 am #

    “These are the ones I worry about most, politically because they will vote for the corn-pone Nazis.”
    Corn-pone Nazis? Corn-fucking-pone-fucking Nazis? Would you please identify some of these corn-pone Nazi candidates that you are so concerned about? Please. Pretty please?
    And Nazis (corn-pone or otherwise) aside. Who are you suggesting pissed-off, moneyless pensioneers should vote for, the same fucking MORONS that brought them to their current state?

  40. Unconventional Ideas January 24, 2011 at 10:52 am #

    There are two ways I see to positively respond to the state of affairs in the collapsing American Empire:
    1. Do whatever I can to teach the young how to think critically, and to encourage them to learn meaningful things that will enable them in the years ahead to solve real problems, and keep food on the table. I’m talking about steering them away from majoring in gilded age subjects like business, communications, and sports marketing, and instead promoting the natural and physical sciences, food growing, food preparation, and all around handyman skills.
    2. Focus nearly all of my energy, time, and dollars toward building and strengthening the local economy where I live.

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  41. ozone January 24, 2011 at 10:53 am #

    “”The appointments of Daley, Sperling, and Immelt show not just the total “capture” of Obama’s government by sociopathic corporate interests…”
    -JHK
    Keeee-riced, the names of some of these “folks” continues to amaze! (In an Orwellian/ironic fashion.)
    Immelt. Im[minent]-melt[down]; Wicked Witch o’ the West: “I’m melting! All of my beautiful wickedness…”, etc.

  42. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 10:53 am #

    “I’m curious what you all think about buying gold & silver: as Glenn Beck is pushing.”
    Don’t mention Glenn Beck. Even though Jimmy agrees with about 90% of what Beck sez on his daily program, Jimmy gets all torqued up because Glenn has a religious faith. NOT ALLOWED. Faith=Stoopid.

  43. Rick January 24, 2011 at 10:53 am #

    Hey Jim,
    Like this part:
    “Likewise, GE’s vaunted new battery initiative, which is aimed mainly at the idea that we can run the whole US vehicle fleet on electricity (mostly powered by coal, you understand, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels) is another quixotic project based on something-for-nothing wishes.”
    I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating. Electric vehicles going forward just won’t happen in a Peak Oil world. These advocates for electric vehicles are delusional. Without oil to make the tires, the plastics and other parts, it ain’t going to happen.
    Like Michael Ruppert says in this film Collapse, it take 7 gallons of oil to make one car tire.
    You find the film at: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/collapse/

  44. SunshineNutrons January 24, 2011 at 10:53 am #

    I can think of one corn pone nazi, she quit as gov. of Alaska

  45. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 10:57 am #

    “i own gold,lots of american silver eagles,many shares of gold and silver mining companies-have semi trailer with 50 lb bags rice,pasta,gravy mixes,freeze dried breakfast,etc…”
    What is your address? Just curious.

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  46. IS4U January 24, 2011 at 10:57 am #

    Good morning.
    In coming weeks, I hope Jim will comment more on “massive burdens of college loans”. Actually, the “student loan debt bubble” may have more impact upon students older than the traditional 18-21 years. These older students have fallen prey to the call centers of for-profit online universities. This is predatory capitalism running amuck in academia. Here is some background on this racket.
    http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/01/permanent-debt-bondage-from-americas-student-loan-racket/
    http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=116850&st=0

  47. J Lee January 24, 2011 at 10:57 am #

    Students of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your loans! Most of the students of most of the advanced countries with the exceptions of the USA (and now maybe the UK) have no or little tuition to pay. Join their ranks. Those students will be the unwashed future leaders of those countries. Just think of the return their societies get from their education. Just think of the return our University Board of Trustees or Shareholders gets from your tuition. Renounce your loans. Pull an Argentina, Bolivia, Greece and Ireland. Just don’t pay. Restructure, refuse and renigg. Let the loan sharks go down. The only thing you have to worry about is that Obama and his new crowd of advisors may institute a debtors’ prison. Oh wait! That’s america now! The future is here. Ain’t america grand.

  48. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 10:59 am #

    “Then blacks moved in and everything went to hell.”
    Oh really, race bating asshole? Well how do you explain Mr. Obama being elected? Fucktard.

  49. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 11:03 am #

    “Talk about a rat leaving the ship and with his booty.”
    Well, I suppose Illinois could always LOWER its tax base and hence encourage business to stay or actually relocate there. But alas they remain on the top of the list as one of the most corrupt states in the nation, with bloated payrolls, corrupt unions(public and private) and the good old “Chicago Way” of doing business. And Jimmy Johns want to leave? And you are surprised and want to blame the founder? Go fucking figure.

  50. myrtlemay January 24, 2011 at 11:05 am #

    Can we go one better? How bout not paying our “income” taxes? How bout letting those folks under 59 1/2 years of age withdrawing their IRA funds with NO penalty AND NO TAX? Seriously, how many of us can they fit into the jails and prisons? Just say “no” to this modern day robber baron bullshit!

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  51. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 11:08 am #

    “Can we go one better? How bout not paying our “income” taxes?”
    News break. Currently, roughly 50% of Americans pay NO income tax.

  52. newworld January 24, 2011 at 11:08 am #

    Only losers in America talk about “revolution.” Either those on Obama’s left who he befriended up to a point or on the right like Harold Covington and his half dozen “vanguardists.” Americans don’t buy revolution that is for other people.
    We have anything like that in this country it will look like the mini-empire of Yugoslavia imploding, but on steroids.
    Anyway a tip for those on the Left, stop your baiting racism of whites.

  53. bobby j January 24, 2011 at 11:10 am #

    Maybe the summer will be really hot and dry,as mother nature tries to achieve some balance ,but who really knows.We are entering the state of increasing chaos and eventual collapse. Our religions ,politics, economics, are leading us further down the road of destruction. Our consciousness is caught in the grip of fear and the resulting ego.Will my precious pension be gone,of course it will there is no safe haven on this path.The will to live to love to experience true freedom and evolve a balanced life supporting civilization is on the flip side of our present state. We can not solve our problems within the context that created it.

  54. dale January 24, 2011 at 11:12 am #

    “Schenectady, New York, a once-vibrant industrial dynamo now so sclerotic that it makes the former soviet Magnetogorsks and Traktorgrads sound like El Dorados.”
    ==================================
    Magnetogorsks….hehe…..yeah, there actually is such a place, and it does look pretty good, at least from about 300 feet in the air! The next great real estate gold rush perhaps?
    But seriously Jimmy, you’re losing your gloomy touch, do you really think the Corporate GEO’s give a shit about the shareholders?? You really are a Polyanna.

  55. MarlinFive54 January 24, 2011 at 11:15 am #

    There are ways to attend college without incurring massive debt, even now. I for one went to State U on the GI Bill. Hardly cost me anything. And there is always the community college, come of which are quite good. Everybody doesn’t have to go to Princeton.

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  56. Cash January 24, 2011 at 11:19 am #

    Agreed.
    Also need to radically change how education is done and how much time it takes. With resources and productive capacity in N. America dwindling or going overseas post secondary education is an unaffordable luxury. So we have to make the 13 years from K to grade 12 count. Make it intense, pack as much in as possible and don’t worry about stressing the little dears.
    My wife was educated in Asia. She said that the system here is la la land compared to what happens in the orient. Kids there work their asses off. I’ve read that student suicide in places like Hong Kong, Korea and Japan is fairly common because of the intense academic pressure. When was the last time a kid offed himself in N.America because he couldn’t keep up in grade 8? Never is when. I’m not advocating killing off kids, I advocating upping the heat.
    Amy Chua, so called tiger mom, is wacko but she does have a point. Enough diplomas in self esteem, enough pissing away hours, days and years on social media. Up here a school decided, for reasons known best to them, to have a day where the girls dressed as boys and the boys dressed as girls. That is until parents got wind of it and put a stop to the nonsense. Enough of this GARBAGE and wasting time and start teaching the tough stuff ie math, science plus vocational training for the academically disinclined.
    Far as money goes it’s important but the most important resource is motivated teachers, parents and students. Up here a colleague said that his kid had to share a textbook. Then he said something about the school swimming pool. So here’s a thought: shut down the damn pool so you have enough money for textbooks. Ditch the computers and all the fancy schmancy technology. Money is short. You can teach in a barn with basic materials like paper, pencils, blackboard if you have to.

  57. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 11:22 am #

    More Obama favoritism:
    “Three local chapters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), whose political action committee spent $27 million supporting Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, have received temporary waivers from a provision in the Obamacare law.
    The three SEIU chapters include the Local 25 in Obama’s hometown of Chicago.”
    I’m shocked…shocked!

  58. Imagainstit January 24, 2011 at 11:31 am #

    Gold is in a bit of a stall right now, but I believe it’s at the very least a good place to park your remaining money–which I’ve done. I don’t pay attention to Beck although I do hear he is a shill for GoldLine, is it? I buy gold and silver through Kitco, a very reliable and reputable company with offices in Canada and New York, and a very small markup over spot price if you let them hold it for you (buy through their “pool account.”) It works for me–hope that helps.

  59. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 11:32 am #

    “I can think of one corn pone nazi, she quit as gov. of Alaska.”
    Really? Well then I suggest you list something (video link or her writings) that would suggest that she is a Nazi. I mean, the fact that you disagree with her or don’t like her is inadequate. We are talking NAZI here, so please provide the proof.

  60. wagelaborer January 24, 2011 at 11:38 am #

    Only one person mentions the over trillion dollars a year we waste on the military?
    Shouldn’t that, and the rapidly rising Homeland Security boondoggle, be the first to go?
    Pensions? Private pensions are long gone. The corporate raiders of the 80s bought and stripped numerous corporations of their pensions.
    Personally, I lost mine in 2001. I had two, now both 401Ks. They both send me periodic updates, and I can watch my “fortune” rise and fall.
    They are now going after public pensions. The drumbeat of hate is now being directed at public workers and their “bloated” pensions. (Note the regurgitation of talking points already on this blog).
    Interesting how the flame-throwers aim at different groups, yet the embers of traditional hate don’t die. Mention muslims or immigrants, or the old favorite, welfare mothers, and watch the hate flame up again.
    Gold is a scam. People screaming about “fiat money” are manipulated into buying pretty pieces of paper showing that they own gold. How deliciously ironic!
    This month’s Harpers had a saddening story about the effect of the gold bubble on the rain forest in South America. Gold miners are ripping down forest, bulldozing the land, and dumping mercury into the rivers.
    Just so Americans can feel “safe” in the coming disaster. I wasn’t inclined to buy gold before, because of the effect on the workers in Africa, but I certainly wouldn’t now.
    And someone here linked to Naomi Klein last week, talking about the destruction of the beautiful Alberta forest, land and water, in order to dig out tar sands, to fuel Americans driving their pick up trucks 50 miles to work.

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  61. LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown January 24, 2011 at 11:39 am #

    Oh, I don’t know, maybe all them speeches calling the president a muslim terrorist? Drill baby drill!

  62. mow January 24, 2011 at 11:45 am #

    Once I built a space shuttle – now its done .
    Brother can you spare a dime ?

  63. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 11:47 am #

    “Oh, I don’t know, maybe all them speeches calling the president a muslim terrorist? Drill baby drill!”
    I welcome you to post a single speech where Sarah Palin referred to our President as a “muslim terrorist.” Just one.
    Regarding “Drill baby drill.” I didn’t realize that wanting to tap into your nations’ own natural resources qualified as being a NAZI.

  64. budizwiser January 24, 2011 at 11:50 am #

    This week’s State of the Union address may be the last year any President will have any semblance of a “normal” economy to use as a backdrop to spout ignorant platitudes about “turning corners” and enhancing or “growing” the “recovery.”
    To be sure, by this time in 2012, enough proverbial treasury looting – as well as actual land-robbery by bankster’s foreclosures – will have transpired to leave all but the very most purblind of bond holders the idea that maybe “paper investments” aren’t all they cracked to be.
    Unless of course, you’re the one selling them.
    I’ve previously noted that our present grace period of “economic stability” has been fueled by the Fed and Treasury letting the richest amongst the rich cash out of their toxic-paper holdings.
    Although, the wild volatility of treasury-note sales has been ignored by the US press, most of the rest of the world has “caught on” and is listening closely for signs that the “music” is about to stop.
    For those in the know, the latest Federal Reserve accounting stunt amounts to “not only can we print money” – but we can ignore (discount) debt as well!
    I’ve been wrong for two years now, but I’ll take another stab at predicting that the 2012 SOUA won’t have many applause lines.
    And by 2012 the President may indeed be giving the State of the Long Emergency Address.
    Stay tuned, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel

  65. dale January 24, 2011 at 11:50 am #

    “Ditch the computers and all the fancy schmancy technology. Money is short. You can teach in a barn with basic materials like paper, pencils, blackboard if you have to.”
    ================================
    Yeah!….and come to think of it, who needs those fancy schmancy pencils and paper too. Them dang kids can just write in the dirt with their fingers, that’s how I did it in my day…and….hey!! you kids get off my lawn, gawldang it.

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  66. Newfie January 24, 2011 at 11:51 am #

    “the destruction of the beautiful Alberta forest, land and water, in order to dig out tar sands”
    The Athabasca River river cuts through the area which is being mined for oil (bitumen), and some waste oil inevitably finds its way into the river. Mutated fish are being caught downstream.
    Here’s a picture of a fish from that river with two mouths and two jaws:
    http://www.thetelegram.com/Environment/2008-08-20/article-1453769/Mutated-fish-caught-in-lake-downstream-of-Albertas-oilsands/1
    The oil companies should have to post that picture on the gas pumps!

  67. ragtop January 24, 2011 at 11:51 am #

    I’m curious, O. The article states that discontinuation of the program would save $530M/yr and then goes on to say that BHO gave the program $5billion in stimulus money. That’s 9yrs worth of program dollars.
    “The weatherization program became a popular target in conservative circles with the passage of the stimulus, which included $5 billion for the program.”
    Doesn’t this mean that the program would continue at it’s previous level, without annual funding, but rather using the remainder of the stimulus money? A shell game, true, but the people would not be frozen in their homes.
    Back in the 80s my brother (former slum lord) used thousands of $$ from this program to make upgrades to his properties. He paid the utilities and benefitted from the higher resale value, as a result of the improvements, when he sold the properties. I’m not saying that he shouldn’t have made the upgrades, but why should I pay to improve his property so he can later make more profit from the investment? He, of course, saw it as providing affordable housing for the poor.
    I know there are many people who are legitimately helped by these programs. Certainly it helps in a larger sense, by reducing their energy needs, but we need to face the reality that, with $14 trillion of debt and growing every day, the brakes must be activated. EVERYTHING must be on the table.

  68. jerry January 24, 2011 at 11:53 am #

    Listening to Obama lie to the American people really turns my stomach after pretending to be such a populist candidate. Now that he has taken on the corporate pigs in his lifeboat as he heads toward 2012, it may end up capsizing unexpectedly.
    All Obama is seeking is to cut wages, and benefits of workers. Just how is going to spread his fairy dust around the nation to magically grow the economy and create his robust industrial fantasy?
    His plan to use these corporate predators to turn America into a competitive powerhouse, once again, is more soft shoe dancing on the stage of the Vaudevillian Theater.
    He is just another Kool-Aid drinking oligarch shill.
    http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

  69. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 11:54 am #

    “And someone here linked to Naomi Klein last week, talking about the destruction of the beautiful Alberta forest, land and water, in order to dig out tar sands, to fuel Americans driving their pick up trucks 50 miles to work.”
    And now we can deconstruct this stupid paragraph:
    The Alberta tar sands are a Canadian natural resource. How Canadians choose to use or not use their own resources, is the business of Canadians.
    Regarding driving 50 miles to work. People have to travel to where the work exists. What would you suggest for those who cannot afford the housing costs of the “big city” yet are employed in the “big city.” And let us pretend for a moment that they could afford to live closer to their job. The housing market has gone to shit. Who is going to buy their home so they can move closer to their work? You? i thought not.

  70. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 11:58 am #

    “The oil companies should have to post that picture on the gas pumps!’
    Uh, huh. And when you tank is empty you are going to do what? Put the picture in your tank?

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  71. Newfie January 24, 2011 at 11:58 am #

    “the destruction of the beautiful Alberta forest, land and water, in order to dig out tar sands”
    Waste oil from the mining operations is dumped into huge tailings ponds. Migratory water fowl landing in the ponds become instant dead ducks! Here is a picture of one of the tailings ponds:
    http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/albertas-tar-sands-and-the-dead-duck-trial/
    The oil companies should have to post pictures of oil coated dead ducks on the gas pumps!

  72. LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown January 24, 2011 at 12:06 pm #

    I think her “pals around with terrorists” and “doesn’t see America the way we see it” pretty much speak for themselves. Do you remember her followers shouting out stuff like “kill him” and so on during her speeches? At least McCain tried to be a little classier.
    The “drill baby drill” was just to remind you of her energy policy. Really, do we have any places left that aren’t drilled? Seriously.

  73. Steve January 24, 2011 at 12:07 pm #

    It was -22 in Vermont this AM with crunchy snow on the ground. Heard an interesting segment on VPR’s ON POINT about the recent Organized Crime busts, the largest in history. Anyway, a caller’s comment questioned the current rationale that the recent and continued financial collapse is not being treated as an “organized crime rape” of AmeriKa by the FBI? Really food for fodder. The response from the experts was we probably will see indictments in the next year or two. I for one am not holding my breath but will focus on my seed catalog order.

  74. Steve M. January 24, 2011 at 12:21 pm #

    When Obama does talk about mass transit, it’s about high-speed rail, and he talks a good game on that, but he can’t deliver. The GOP wants to get rid of Amtrak altogether. It would be hard for Immelt to commit his company to building Acela II if guys like Boehner and Kasich in Ohio and Ryan and Walker in Wisconsin keeping saying “No, no, no, NO!”

  75. Steve M. January 24, 2011 at 12:32 pm #

    Ryan and Walker in Wisconsin “keep” saying “No, no, no, NO!” Sorry for the typo.

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  76. helen highwater January 24, 2011 at 12:38 pm #

    Rex, don’t be too confident about the Canadian government not being controlled by the bankers. Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada, is a 13-year veteran of Goldman Sachs. There’s also a big revolving door between Bay Street (Canada’s version of Wall Street) and the government. Do you think they aren’t in cahoots with their counterparts in the US?

  77. GAZ January 24, 2011 at 12:58 pm #

    ….” a legion of Jared Lee Loughners ” indeed! With a side of “Snookies” and Jay Cutlers.

  78. Cavepainter January 24, 2011 at 1:04 pm #

    Times past, dating all the way back to the 1930s, the “Left” wasn’t a “body politic” as such; but rather an amorphous way of referencing that portion of population that – being free-thinkers — weren’t disposed to accept a bundled slate of intractable party positions on whatever were the issues of the day.
    Today though, the self anointed “Left” has ossified into a set of doctrinal edicts — bona fides, you might say. Failing to embrace unquestioned the Left’s preachments on any one issue – or the entire “slate” — one risks being branded with scurrilous labels.
    Reminds me of how the Bolsheviks took over the Russian Revolution by branding anyone who dared venture into shadings of thought outside of the sanctioned structure became “dangerous reactionaries” – threat to the “movement”.
    The Left today, no less than the Right, expects loyalty that is antithetical to the notion of free thinking. The consequence is that demarcation lines between “Left” and “Right” are drawn ever more harshly, serving to suppress or force further outside of public debate free-thinking.
    Any surprise that as a nation we are becoming more anti-intellectual than before?

  79. mika. January 24, 2011 at 1:07 pm #

    So we have to make the 13 years from K to grade 12 count
    ==
    To what purpose? So they can better serve the corporate machine and the thieving oligarchy? Fsck that! You’re just playing into their hands, like the fscking morons of the Chinese Commie Party.

  80. LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown January 24, 2011 at 1:09 pm #

    Without fuel, they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled.

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  81. asoka January 24, 2011 at 1:10 pm #

    Myrtlemay said: “How bout not paying our “income” taxes?”
    ===========
    Great suggestion, Myrtlemay!
    Here are people doing it:
    http://www.nwtrcc.org/
    A nonviolent revolution.

  82. seb January 24, 2011 at 1:12 pm #

    I can never fill the need to turn the palaver over to the many topics about me. Let’s talk delusions.
    I lost my coffee cup, so, I put on my thinking cap. I began going over the events leading up to the loss of the cup in order to track it down. I do not remember well, therefore I totally fabricate, this time out by using an eclipse*, which must have made the room go dark and that is when I must have lost it. Raising my hands to show how much, much as a fisherman does to show how big the one that got away was, I proclaimed that, “A large—“, and quit it, dropping my hands. The notional size I then freed into the world as, “this largeness.” After that, largeness in the general sense became reality.
    Eventually, “a large” enters the language as in the answer to the question, “What size drink?”
    I can’t produce the cup yet. It is still lost. I’ve been writing. The sun is up, the moon is gone. I don’t like the moon in the daytime.
    Aside: Could something have swum across Jared’s field of vision**? Yeah, you got it. And, he shot at it. Gee, what happens to The Wave at a football game?
    The delusion comes in at the point that a false belief does, as the bottom drops out of, “a large (shape)”, (ironically)leaving no support for the shape nor any large object. Without such an object, others are proposed with the larger ones coming under the greatest scrutiny. This is mere substitution and is an invalid argument.
    Frankly, once a noun doesn’t exist, its modifiers have to be expunged, being that our language is not a Romance one.
    It was in the blanket. I unwrapped it, but, I kind of sat on it.
    In a Romance language, when you stop between noun and adjective, there’s no adjective to justify. Here, you are credited an object when you mouth the modifier, which comes first.
    The Japs adopt the foreign words such that talking crazy is not their fault, and being crazy is distinct. You usually give gifts you can’t afford.
    “A large and very vague—“, won’t work any better, but “any” helps formulate the answers most commonly given so as to be right. “Any large—“, remained viable, but only as a rubber (a period of play). I’m not using—I am, but, anyway, we weren’t looking for another cup. Never mind, but this one says, “Proud to be a 100% dedicated, money providing, child driving, fix it man, hard working, much appreciated Dad.”
    * the idea
    ** field of wishin’

  83. Russ A January 24, 2011 at 1:14 pm #

    Pure, unadulterated Bull.
    You can be “left” and think the way you want without recrimination, unlike the right wingnuts and the republican Fascist Party of America (you know, the Party that Wrecked America).
    Matter of fact, one the great things about being liberal and progressive is the acceptance of different ideas/thought; but of course any far right “thinking” would not be welcome,just as far left thinking isn’t welcomed by the fascist right.
    As for this country going “anti-intellectual”, that’s because of the dumbing down of the population during the past generation. It is what the Right NEEDS – a mass of people unable to think for themselves, unable to scrutinize what they are being told. That’s how the right brainwashes them. You need an uneducated populace for fascism to flourish. And here we are today.

  84. Paul Kemp January 24, 2011 at 1:15 pm #

    Replying about the many state and local municipal governments that over-promised pensions that can no longer be paid: Many, if not all, will default. Translation: “They won’t be paid.”
    The tax money just isn’t there. Without jobs, many former taxpayers will be taking from the State instead of paying into its coffers. Business revenues are down, personal incomes are down. They will have to default, sooner or later.
    In my state of Oregon, they are trying to pass a city income tax in Eugene to pay for the expense of keeping the public schools open.
    The State of Oregon floated a measure in the last election to get the taxpayers to okay putting more school capital and repair cost on the public tab through bond measures, but that just gives them a little breathing room.
    The longterm problem is schools and public employees in general have been paid far more than comparable private sector employees, including generous pensions and now those promised pensions can’t be paid.
    A lot of people who are retired and sitting pretty in a comfortable middle-class lifestyle will find the rug pulled out from under them in the next few years, IMHO. They will be very unhappy at this “unfairness”.
    My other thought is that, at the federal level, the rats know the ship is sinking, so they are openly looting and plundering all they can before the whole tragedy is over.
    As JHK points out, it’s all out in the open now. The Congress for the most part represents the wealthy interests of the few who paid for their re-election. Congressman Ron Paul and a few others are exceptions.
    That’s why Wall St. is not being prosecuted for their part in engineering the swindles that caused them to beg for a bailout. They own Washington, together with the military, pharmaceutical, and agricultural lobby. Their nest will be feathered and the rest of us will have to deal with it.
    I find Jim’s guideposts to be very accurate so far in describing the changes we are going through.
    When will the American people wake up and see how they are being manipulated? Will they ever?
    Will we continue to fall for working as good soldiers for the Empire and learn to be happy peons, watching the Kardashians live it up for us?
    Or will enough Americans say, Enough of this BS! No more!
    I hope it can be done peacefully, but I doubt that it will be. We need to see who the real enemies of freedom are — the real enemies of the principles that made America great and put them in their place non-violently.

  85. asoka January 24, 2011 at 1:17 pm #

    “Gold is in a bit of a stall right now…”
    =====
    Sell your gold before the collapse, unless you bought it at less than $300.
    Just like people who preached “house values can only go up” there are people preaching “gold can only go up”
    The gold bubble is about to burst. Get out of gold and silver now. Get into permaculture and building local community. People who love you (and fresg green vegetables) will get you through better than gold.

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  86. Solar Guy January 24, 2011 at 1:20 pm #

    LARWBD- That mAd mAX scenario haunting us again eh….
    How much TIME is left tick tock tick tock….
    I think I need another ~2-3 years of just in time delivery to really have my shit together…

  87. katnip kid January 24, 2011 at 1:20 pm #

    Pension? Heck, I don’t even have a JOB! and haven’t for so long, I feel I will never work again, at least not in a 9 to 5 job. It isn’t that I don’t want to work, it is that work that will pay a living wage is not there, and I am NOT being picky about what I take.
    Do you think I give a rat’s rear end if wealthy folk, and that means just about everyone to me, never get their pension? AWWWW cry me a river.

  88. wagelaborer January 24, 2011 at 1:30 pm #

    That kind of lack of class solidarity is why we will not have a decent future.
    We stick together, or we hang separately.
    You are an unemployed worker. Hating employed workers is downright stupid.
    There are people who are responsible for your unemployment, and they are not your fellow workers.
    JHK points them out every week, but, apparently, you are incapable of looking up that high.

  89. agribiz January 24, 2011 at 1:34 pm #

    jimmyjizm says:
    “The Alberta tar sands are a Canadian natural resource. How Canadians choose to use or not use their own resources, is the business of Canadians.”
    Could just be that some of her concerns spring from the fact that Ms Klein FUCKING IS (in honor of your downgrading of the dialogue here today) A FUCKING CANDADIAN!!?
    You must be Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny. You are active at every discussion group I’ve visited since Sept. of 2008. You seem to be able to find them all.

  90. Cavepainter January 24, 2011 at 1:37 pm #

    Pardon me,….however, seems to me that people are disposed today to state a qualifier of political affiliation (such as “I’m really a liberal” or “I’m really a conservative”) before venturing an opinion that might strike someone as “off color” to either “faction”.

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  91. Cavepainter January 24, 2011 at 1:42 pm #

    Pardon me,….however, seems to me that people are disposed today to state a qualifier of political affiliation (such as “I’m really a liberal” or “I’m really a conservative”) before venturing an opinion that might strike someone as “off color” to either “faction”.

  92. daofirry2 January 24, 2011 at 1:43 pm #

    many young people are starting to queasily understand the uneasy truth… they may never have a “real” job. Not unless nanotechnology, or something else as massively game-changing as that, utterly transforms our entire economy in a HURRY. Not likely…. these poor kids must feel as if they are getting punched in the stomach by Life. No wonder a few of them SNAP.
    By the way, humanity may be reaching yet another peak, another limit of nature, in our lifetime: the limits of human physical athletic performance. Clearly, we have many far more pressing issues to grapple with, but this could limn the tragic sense that we can no longer say “the sky’s the limit.” I don’t want to clutter up this page with URLs, so just google the phrases “Geoffroy Berthelot” and “Peaked Performance” for more info.

  93. katnip kid January 24, 2011 at 1:44 pm #

    Wagelaborer, I am not about to care about “fellow Men” who don’t give a darn about anyone else. I am quite capable of seeing the bigger picture, but that doesn’t pay the bills. Your insults are unwarranted. Does nothing for any “solidarity”.

  94. asia January 24, 2011 at 1:48 pm #

    ‘The tax money just isn’t there’
    Recently here someone claimed there are cops in florida that make 300k a year!

  95. MoneyMouth January 24, 2011 at 1:49 pm #

    Come on everybody! (I think we need a GROUP HUG here!)

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  96. asia January 24, 2011 at 1:49 pm #

    Obama agitated his base, promised ‘hope’, green jobs, whatever.Young fools helped elect him.

  97. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 1:58 pm #

    ” The GOP wants to get rid of Amtrak altogether.”
    Amtrak has lost fortunes…forever. Getting rid of Amtrak, does not mean getting rid of trains. If the government defunded Amtrak the private sector would have the incentive to come up with a business model that would get commuters to work via the rails, but do so economically and at a a profit for investors.
    As long as the government continues to subsidize waste the private sector can and will not compete.

  98. Nickelthrower January 24, 2011 at 2:00 pm #

    Greetings,
    I, for one, do not believe that gold or silver will have any value if the dollar collapses. First, there are few, if any, people alive today that lived during a time before the Federal Reserve. It is a medium of exchange that has not been used for close to 100 years. Also, the average Joe has no means by which to judge the authenticity of physical gold or silver.
    Reading blogs from other people that have lived through a modern financial collapse, it seems that having excess “must have” items like food, water or toiletries to barter was what got them through the crisis.
    Protecting those barter items can present a challenge especially given that we live in a nation that is heavily armed. That is why I live on a nice sailboat. I can make my own electricity, I have my own running water and I do not need fossil fuels to move from place to place.
    My neighbors and I all have charts, radios, survival equipment and the means to harvest food from the ocean. We can all caravan out to any number of deserted islands and wait out the chaos and do so with electricity, plumbing and the knowledge that people wanting to give us gold and silver for our valuables are stuck on shore.

  99. Grouchy Old Girl January 24, 2011 at 2:01 pm #

    Good comments this week and it seems the Canadian contingent is growing.
    Regarding the Alberta tar sands, I disagree that it’s only our business. Amerika is our biggest customer, not only for our oil but our water, wood and electricity too. It’s the price we pay for living beside the greatest energy hogs on the planet.
    Our country has also been taken over by profiteers, rich people who think the resources in and on the ground belong to them instead of all of us. As long as they keep giving away our precious resources at fire sale prices, we should all be worried. As JHK keeps saying, these resources are finite. When they run out, where will the profiteers be to rescue us? Safely tucked away in some warm paradise, far from the starving cold hordes.
    It costs more to get the oil out of the tar sands than the value of the oil. How does that make any sense at all? Meanwhile we keep hearing about “ethical oil” in campaigns launched by Big Oil up here to con us into submission.
    It’s all one world, people. Boundaries mean nothing anymore. It’s time we face that fact and adjust our behaviour accordingly. Past time.

  100. daofirry2 January 24, 2011 at 2:03 pm #

    just in case there are any worrywarts lurking here… Lord knows, I have never noticed any, but there could be one, somewhere, perhaps in hiding… ha ha ha ha ha ha, I crack myself up. No, really, one more significant thing to worry about is this: how can we reasonably expect hundreds of millions of voters to contemplate the idea of global warming, when they are freezing to death?
    Most people here would probably say that the point is moot, and that lack of resources will cause our whole way of life to go belly-up in time to stave off the most nightmarish climate change scenarios. One can only hope… but seriously. This extreme cold snap probably IS related to global warming, as the article at the end of this post tries to explain. But how many Glenn Beck fans will have the patience to even read that article? Not many.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26cohen.html

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  101. Tancred January 24, 2011 at 2:04 pm #

    “Not now. Not even close. We’re too busy arguing about abortion, gay marriage, muslims…you know, the REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF!”
    More depressing than that, I think “most” people are really more interested in creating their insular, techno-mediated lives and deciding what Netflix movies to watch this week. The lack of intellectual engagement in this country is astounding, not to mention a general lack of ability to see the forest (global economy) for the trees (personal savings/debt). I disagree with JHK that globalism is some kind of intellectual fraud; it’s as real as a dead Youngstown. It’s as real as former blue collar workers trying to sell crap on the Intar-Webs. And JHK is in no place to criticize technological solutions for many of our problems. WTF? Were railroads (which he adores) not a technological solution? So he switches from iMac to a Macbook? Good for him. Lucky he can do that instead of bringing his blog text down to the telegram office. Seriously, if JHK really meant what he said, he would live off the grid (including that of the Web) and do his local farming thing.
    Also, as a person who believes in Civil Rights, I don’t think arguing about Gay Marriage is unimportant.
    Whatever.

  102. Cash January 24, 2011 at 2:09 pm #

    To what purpose? So that they can read, write, do math, think, so that they can understand when they’re being bullshitted, know something about the world, in short so that they aren’t total fucking morons, so that they can get around in this world and make something of their lives and not be played for total suckers.
    Which in my opinion most people naturally are. They believe what they’re told and have no ability to analyze the torrents of crap manipulators throw at them. Which tells me something about the quality of education they’re getting. I’m too much of a humanitarian to make money off their idiocy but believe me I’ve been tempted.

  103. asoka January 24, 2011 at 2:10 pm #

    asia, why don’t you check on the accuracy of claims before repeating them?
    The State of Florida public employee payroll data is in the public domain, freely viewable by anyone.
    http://ia700402.us.archive.org/22/items/StateOfFloridaPayrollDatabase2008/FL-State-Payroll-2008.pdf
    You will note most public servants in Florida earn between $30,000 and $50,000. Very few earn more than $100,000. County judges make $137,000. Do you really think the cop on the beat is going to pull down more than a judge?

  104. jimjim January 24, 2011 at 2:11 pm #

    HOPE FOR CHICAGO
    Guess the creepy little fuck, Emanuel has been bounced off the mayoral ballot. Too funny for words.

  105. BICO January 24, 2011 at 2:13 pm #

    Nickel, you make valid points about people not knowing how to $ value or identify real gold/silver coins. That is something I will have to think about further.
    As for you riding out the chaos on your boat. Don’t you think there will be more pirates that will want take your pretty toys away?

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  106. tinktink January 24, 2011 at 2:15 pm #

    ” They believe what they’re told and have no ability to analyze the torrents of crap manipulators throw at them.”
    I don’t believe you.
    (Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Nor, according to you should I.)”

  107. Cash January 24, 2011 at 2:16 pm #

    Haw bloody haw Dale, you’re a really funny guy. No seriously , you really are. I’m wiping my eyes, I’m in stitches.
    Now tell me, in your estimation, by the way things are going in the US, do you think the educational establishment, the status quo, is satisfactory? Or never mind that. Is the system, the way it is, sustainable? And if it isn’t how would you fix it? Which brings us to the issue of facilities: what do you need to educate a kid? Do tell, I’m trembling with anticipation.

  108. asoka January 24, 2011 at 2:16 pm #

    “It’s all one world, people. Boundaries mean nothing anymore. ”
    =============
    Thank you!
    I have often said the same thing on CFN, but some people want to get all excited about “the Mexicans” or “the Muslims” … the blame is always put on someone else instead of who is looking back in the mirror.

  109. Cash January 24, 2011 at 2:24 pm #

    That’s the spirit!
    I saw a kid in a museum about ten years ago. Him and his dad were looking at a gigantic dinosaur skeleton. His dad was telling him about the age of the dinosaur, and what it ate etc etc.
    And the kid wasn’t having any of it. He said to his dad how can they possibly know this thing lived 70 million years ago, how can they possibly know what it ate etc etc. And then the kid went into a tirade about other things he’s been told that he didn’t believe. Skeptical to the core.
    And I thought way to go kid, you’re one in a million. I wanted to shake is hand. That kid is going places.

  110. Cash January 24, 2011 at 2:26 pm #

    Guess the creepy little fuck, Emanuel has been bounced off the mayoral ballot. Too funny for words. – JJ
    That is a scream!

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  111. tinktink January 24, 2011 at 2:29 pm #

    “He said to his dad how can they possibly know this thing lived 70 million years ago, how can they possibly know what it ate etc etc.”
    Two words: Carbon dating. It ate what was available at the time which also is included in fossil form. (You’re not this stupid.)

  112. Kickaha January 24, 2011 at 2:31 pm #

    Take a look at this article in Salon.com. It would appear Gingrich and his ilk want to allow the states to declare bankruptcy so they can drop their public employee pension obligations.
    Thanks for the 40 years of employee contributions. You’re on your own now, suckers!
    I’m sure this will all be accepted with no uproar or objections.
    http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2011/01/21/newt_gingrich_and_state_bankruptcy/index.html

  113. SeaYoung January 24, 2011 at 2:36 pm #

    Pensions will become worthless by virtue of QE, IF they are not stolen outright by modern day carpet-baggers. Wages will look good for our young (particullary through older eyes). Wages just won’t buy much.
    The earlier comment about Republican mainstays: abortion, welfare moms, bl(a)ock vote,(“muslims” recently added as an emotion trigger), were championed by none other than the late Senator Jesse Helms, RNC, (bless his soul). Like most Corn Pone Nazi’s he studied and understood propaganda. He managed a local TV station in Raleigh, NC. With no guilt shown (publicly) about his charade orchestrated to divide and grab a calculated majority vote. I watch and wonder how salt-of-the-earth folks then and now can’t see beyond the emotional triggers. I know many of these men and women.
    Gulible is the last adjective you would use to describe them. Until they speak of “Liberals”, their adoration of Sarah, and begin to repeat Fox News talking points. They proceed to the polls and vote American (as dictated by right wing talk) against their own interest time and time again. All the while feeling the power of “taking back our country”. From who? Fellow Americans?
    Senator Helms lived and died as a mean old man. I hope Sarah fares better.

  114. mika. January 24, 2011 at 2:39 pm #

    You do that by disenfranchising the gov mafia/corporations and the institutions subservient to them such as the “public” school system. You withdraw consumption/participation and you withdraw the funding. You do this until these institutions and the power base behind them is no more. What you DON’T DO is try to reform these institutions, because the reform will always be co-opted and be used against you.

  115. Cash January 24, 2011 at 2:40 pm #

    Boundaries mean nothing anymore. – Grouchy
    I think an Aboriginal born and living on a craphole reservation in the middle of nowhere with no way to make a living might take issue with that statement. Ask him if he wants his ancestral lands back.
    So how did Aboriginals find themselves in the fix they’re in, marginalized on the turf their ancestors bought with their sweat and courage?
    They lost it one boatload of white man at a time over about three hundred years.
    Look at this place (Canada). We have got mind boggling resources in a resource poor world. We’re also militarily weak, sparsely settled, disunited. Something like the aboriginals were a few hundred years ago.
    Maybe we think we have no enemies? There are 7 billion aggressive, resource hungry people in this world. I think we won’t have long to wait. I think we’ll find out then the value of boundaries.

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  116. myrtlemay January 24, 2011 at 2:42 pm #

    Jeez, here we go, AGAIN!? My posting did not mean to imply that Civil Rights, gay rights, etc. are unimportant! What we have at stake here is called SURVIVAL…that means gay, straight, black, white, brown, Republican, Democrat, atheist, Jew, Christian, what have you. When we have chopped down the very last tree, poisoned the last ocean, and paved over the last fertile land to make way for a Wallyworld, do you really think anyone will give a damn about a black man being turned on by an atheist Jew named Jerome? Can anyone say, “Easter Island”? No? Better learn about it, cause it’s comin to a theatre near YOU!

  117. helen highwater January 24, 2011 at 2:43 pm #

    How about raising it to 65 like it is for everybody else? Why should government workers get to retire 10 years before the rest of the workforce?

  118. Cash January 24, 2011 at 2:47 pm #

    Gold is a scam. People screaming about “fiat money” are manipulated into buying pretty pieces of paper showing that they own gold. How deliciously ironic! – Wage
    Ironic and hilarious too.

  119. asoka January 24, 2011 at 2:49 pm #

    jimjim said at 11:30 a.m.: “one of the most corrupt states in the nation, with bloated payrolls, corrupt unions(public and private) and the good old “Chicago Way” of doing business.”
    Illinois has just proven itself not to be corrupt. Judges and courts are not paid off and it doesn’t matter who you are: if you don’t qualify as a resident, you can’t run for office. We are a nation of laws. The Chicago Way is the way of abiding by the laws.

  120. Vlad Krandz January 24, 2011 at 2:54 pm #

    It’s not whether American Dollar is to become valueless – it’s happening right now. Silver almost doubled (85%) in one years time. Now almost all of that was now silver increasing but rather the dollar tanking. I respect your feelings about the brutality of industry, but you shouldn’t let that get in the way of saving your wealth. Perhaps you could google ethical investing – there is a small movement and a couple of investment companies that take your concerns seriously. Perhaps you could order metals with their help. By all means stay away from certificates – they are not typically backed 100% by actual metal. And their value has not gone up comensurate with the rise in the actual price of metals.
    Money should stay in close touch with the physical world. So what could be better than something physical like Gold or Silver? But what about convenience? Some people predict that a private money will soon emerge with notes that are backed 100% by these. No one expects the goverments to do it – although Russia has made noises in this direction, it might have been just to humiliate the hapless New World Order. They suggested the inscription “In Diversity We Trust” or something.

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  121. Cash January 24, 2011 at 2:56 pm #

    There was a hoo hah about gay marriage up here too. They eventually legalized it. In the grand scheme of things it’s important if you’re gay and of pretty much no consequence otherwise. The world didn’t come to an end.

  122. idunn January 24, 2011 at 2:56 pm #

    I am hoping that Obama has been canny enough to put Immelt/GE and the rest of his ilk in the spotlight with this appointment, and that he is planning to *shame* them into repatriating jobs. Obama is smarter than we are giving him credit for. Of course the problem remains that these guys have no shame, but I am still hoping against hope that it will turn out to be an adroit move.

  123. Mr. Purple January 24, 2011 at 2:56 pm #

    Mr. Kunstler,
    Regarding your iMac situation: if the iMac in question isn’t built around an Intel processor, Snow Leopard probably won’t work. I say probably, because if I don’t I am sure there is some geek lurking out in the Internet waiting to prove me wrong. Suffice it to say, Snow Leopard is supposed to be for Intel-based Macs only.

  124. Mr. Purple January 24, 2011 at 3:04 pm #

    Glenn Beck has religious faith like the United States has a gold standard.

  125. Mr. Purple January 24, 2011 at 3:07 pm #

    Hahaha!
    Jimjim fails at understanding metaphor!

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  126. wagelaborer January 24, 2011 at 3:10 pm #

    Once again, asoka, you crack me up!

  127. Cash January 24, 2011 at 3:10 pm #

    Yes, I’m not that stupid. I know about carbon dating and other methods.
    People generally believe what they’re told. Real estate “always” goes up. Right? Everyone “knows” this. Or at least they “knew” it. Or at least 15 years from now they’ll “know” it again when they’ve forgeotten what we’re going through now.
    How will they “know” this 15 years from now? They’ll believe the bullshit artists in the real estate industry that tell them houses are the best investment you can make and that prices always go up.
    Maybe I didn’t say it very well but my point was that the kid showed a really healthy skepticism which is something you don’t see much of. IMO that’s what great scientists and thinkers are made of.

  128. Vlad Krandz January 24, 2011 at 3:10 pm #

    Well in the short term, barter will be King. But once things start to get back on track, gold and silver will come back as a medium of exchange – as they always have. Very important: have small coins with which to do business – pre 1965 quarters and dimes (sometimes called junk silver). You don’t want to have nothing but one ounce silver pieces or gold pieces if you just want to buy a can of soup. Making that kind of change would be a bitch.
    For barter, bottles of wine, beer, and the harder spirits will be great. And of course canned food, fuel, firearms, etc.
    Your lifestyle sounds fascinating. Can you reccomend a website or blog about survival boating?

  129. Mr. Purple January 24, 2011 at 3:11 pm #

    Wow, jimjim sure is cranky this morning.
    What’s the matter, jimjim? Did the taxpayer-funded nurse not change your diaper yet?

  130. Schwerpunkt January 24, 2011 at 3:12 pm #

    Stacking the deck with corporatists really is the next fix in the government whereby Obama sets the stage for a loss of our services as is the Demopublican plan all along. Many are correct, however, that it’s really the “Loooooo….oong Emergancy” and few of us will hold on so see any change in our lifetimes. And those twentysomethings? They’re too jacked up on self esteem and Corn Sugar to really make a difference.
    http://schwerpunkter.wordpress.com/

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  131. Vlad Krandz January 24, 2011 at 3:16 pm #

    Yeah and the next ice age will be global warming too. Seriously, most of your fellow travelers have already jumped ship and are now talking about “climate change” not global warming. They never really meant global warming! East Asia has always been at war with Oceania!

  132. lbendet January 24, 2011 at 3:16 pm #

    Yes, they want to be the global empire, but they don’t want to pay taxes.
    While the influentials cheer the corporatocracy. Obama put one last nail in the age of progressivism with his latest installments of Wall street.
    No, it’s not the fault of Keynesianism as such that we’re in this shortfall of funds, it’s the problem that we’re “global” now and moved into a different system that can’t support Keynesian economics. Without a tax base, classical economics of barriers to entry, wage and price control, regulations etc. where we came from in the aftermath of WWII, that is..you can’t support a government which is dominant abroad and fulfilling the social contract at home. You can’t have it both ways. (how we hate to hear that)
    The ideologues on the right are about to see the chickens come home to roost! Oh that beloved set of principles promoted by the corrupt Grover Norquist and Bob Ney, both implicated in Abramoff scandal, BTW, Wanted to see government shrink so small they drag it down the bathtub drain. Neoliberalism at its best.
    Our government has been reduced to a special interest instrument confounded conflict of interest politics. But now they have to cut, cut, cut…. a fait a complit if you don’t like taxes, how else is government supposed to pay for anything? –even Peggy Noonan and Joe Scarborough had to cringe when discussing all the cuts, though they do want ss and medicare reform & military cuts.
    On Morning Joe, Noonan and Scarborough said government should do what it does best…are you ready…help finance innovation! They reminisced how the US gov stepped to the plate when they needed to outdo Sputnik. That’s when we wanted to train a generation of engineers and such..Oh, -how we could be great!
    All with the NYT headline, “Mortgage Giants Leave Legal Bills to Taxpayers.”

  133. wagelaborer January 24, 2011 at 3:16 pm #

    I think that I got your point, Cash.
    It’s not that the kid was right, it’s that he just didn’t swallow whatever he was told because experts affirmed it.
    As for the “right” of people to blow up mountain-tops to get coal, to contaminate water supplies to get natural gas, to destroy the Amazon to get gold, to destroy a great boreal forest to get oil, who gives them those rights?
    What kind of sick society do we live in that allows the destruction of the very things that keep us and other creatures alive if a profit can be made?
    If we can’t question the economic system that tells us that destroying our ecosystem is of little consequence, as long as profits can be made, then any other skepticism that we have is useless.

  134. myrtlemay January 24, 2011 at 3:17 pm #

    Cash,
    Well, yeah! Personally I don’t give a fig if Adam and Steve want to tie the knot and pick out a set of matching Wedgeworth china, nor if Beatrice and Clara arrive at their nuptuals on a pair of matching Harleys. In my own experience, gays can be every bit as obnoxious and unpleasant as their straight counterparts. Of course, some of my best friends happen to be homos and lesbos (joke, here, folks)!
    In the forties, they used to have a campaign called “Take a n.gger to lunch day”. Maybe we can match this “progressive” attitude and have a “Take a gay to lunch day” (ANOTHER joke, folks)! Americans LOVE to stir the pot…no pun intended. If we could harness 1/100th of our energy we spend on useless things (our differences) and use it to organize a united, flat out revolt against TPTB, perhaps I’d have nothing more to bitch about (not holding my breath on that one)!

  135. Nickelthrower January 24, 2011 at 3:20 pm #

    Greetings,
    No, I’m not worried about pirates as anything that runs on fuel will not work for very long. Anything big enough to put a few pirates on and is capable of moving 20 or more miles offshore requires immense amounts of fuel. Those boats typically get less than 1 nautical mile to the gallon. If you listen to those boaters talk, they talk about “gallons per mile” when discussing fuel.
    Finally, my friends and I would move as caravan in order to provide mutual support.

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  136. Mr. Purple January 24, 2011 at 3:20 pm #

    “Recently here someone claimed there are cops in florida that make 300k a year!”
    That might be possible, if said cops are claiming their payoffs from organized crime. ;^)

  137. Cash January 24, 2011 at 3:24 pm #

    Some people predict that a private money will soon emerge with notes that are backed 100% by these. – Vlad
    Banks used to issue their own notes. ie Bank of Montreal issued (in 1938?) ten dollar bills rather than the Bank of Canada.

  138. wagelaborer January 24, 2011 at 3:26 pm #

    And I forgot to mention drilling for oil in the oceans and Arctic.
    Out of sight, out of mind.

  139. Mr. Purple January 24, 2011 at 3:26 pm #

    “Two words: Carbon dating. It ate what was available at the time which also is included in fossil form. (You’re not this stupid.)”
    Ummm, carbon dating isn’t of much use past about 60,000 years back. Two words: do research.

  140. tinktink January 24, 2011 at 3:30 pm #

    “What’s the matter, jimjim? Did the taxpayer-funded nurse not change your diaper yet?”
    As a matter of fact she did. Don’t you remember? You insisted you wanted to wear it on your head. Look up, moron…that shitty hat that people are pointing out to you is actually, a shitty hat.

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  141. tinktink January 24, 2011 at 3:33 pm #

    “Obama is smarter than we are giving him credit for.”
    You have got to be shitting me.

  142. jackieblue2u January 24, 2011 at 3:33 pm #

    United We Stand Divided We Fall.
    “They” want us to take out our anger on eachother ie our fellow workers, and not on ‘them’.
    Our anger is misplaced.

  143. Cash January 24, 2011 at 3:33 pm #

    It’s not that the kid was right, it’s that he just didn’t swallow whatever he was told because experts affirmed it. – Wage
    And that’s the key to not being a schmuck. The “experts” have their own motives, sometimes financial, to get you to believe something or think a certain way.

  144. Qshtik January 24, 2011 at 3:34 pm #

    My wife was educated in Asia. She said that the system here is la la land compared to what happens in the orient.
    ============
    No Cash, I don’t think so. Your wife is Chinese born and bred right? So I expect what she actually said was that the system here is rah rah rand (wink wink).

  145. jackieblue2u January 24, 2011 at 3:37 pm #

    Our schools are more like babysitting centers.
    For the most part. Public ones anyway.

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  146. MarlinFive54 January 24, 2011 at 3:38 pm #

    Just read Aaron Klein’s “The Manchurian President, Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists, and Other Anti-American Extremists”.
    Question; If half the stuff in this book is true, then how the hell did
    Obama get his security clearance? And that goes for Michelle.
    U.S. Post Office announced the closing of 2000 Post Offices today.

  147. myrtlemay January 24, 2011 at 3:49 pm #

    Speaking of security clearance, a tiny bit of news came out of Moscow this morning. Seems a suicide bomb went off at the airport there. Yep, killed over 60 people, wounding dozens more. And Lindsay Lohan has gone into rehab again…I think that takes her off the list of possible suspects, but you never freaking know.

  148. Cash January 24, 2011 at 3:51 pm #

    Obama’s no dummy. Case in point: judging by his recent appointments he’s in the pockets of Wall Street, which depending on what you value, may not be a bad place to be. And he doesn’t give a damn who knows it.

  149. asia January 24, 2011 at 3:52 pm #

    ‘wrong way asoka’…a cop in santa monica made more than the mayor of s.m. one year.
    its called overtime.
    i said someone else posted that.
    gawd yr a buffoon.

  150. tinktink January 24, 2011 at 3:53 pm #

    “And that’s the key to not being a schmuck. The “experts” have their own motives, sometimes financial, to get you to believe something or think a certain way.”
    Hmm, You mean like global warming? I mean with the trading of carbon credits there are trillions of dollars at stake.

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  151. DFH Dave January 24, 2011 at 3:53 pm #

    @newfie,
    Those hand operated can openers you mentioned upthread will be worth their weight in gold after the grid collapses. Think about it. All you have to do is stash 100 cases of them and you can get rich quick… of course you’ll have to have an AK-47 & lots of ammo to protect your stash, and… see how quickly things get complicated? Mad Max indeed.

  152. tinktink January 24, 2011 at 3:55 pm #

    “Obama’s no dummy.”
    Obama is no genius. Obama is average. He was smart enough to surround himself with a good spin machine and his appearance on the scene was well timed.

  153. Vlad Krandz January 24, 2011 at 3:55 pm #

    I’ve heard that North Dakota has a semi-sovereign state bank. Doesn’t issue its own money of course, but it has followed much more traditional lending practices. North Dakota is also one of the very few States still in the black. Who knows? Maybe there is a relationship between these two sets of facts. Also their people are traditionalists with very few you know who’s. I’m tempted to make a double entendre here – but I’ll refrain. It’s good to take a holiday every now and then. Sorry Cash, but there’s more to life than just race.

  154. Qshtik January 24, 2011 at 3:57 pm #

    Them dang kids can just write in the dirt with their fingers, that’s how I did it in my day…and….hey!! you kids get off my lawn, gawldang it.
    ==========
    Excellent piece of sarcasm Dale.
    I used to tell my kids gruffly (with barely a wink) “hell, I was born in a log cabin that I helped my father build.”

  155. bproman January 24, 2011 at 3:59 pm #

    Imagine the look on everyone’s face standing at the political buffet line when phony baloney is the only item on the menu.

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  156. Cash January 24, 2011 at 4:00 pm #

    That’s funny. I’m going to show her your post. We’re having flied lice for dinnah. When is the next Presidential erection? Did you know Amsterdam is on the Amstel River? Amsteldam doesn’t have the same ring to it.

  157. seb January 24, 2011 at 4:00 pm #

    I’m doing my research to see who Mr. Purple is, from Reservoir Dogs. You are absolutely right! How is something with a half-life of 5730 years going to date 75 million years? Back up off the carbon, whichever Beatle you are, Tinktink, and take a run at that U/Th.

  158. myrtlemay January 24, 2011 at 4:01 pm #

    Having spent a lot of time volunteering in classrooms, I’m amazed at the amount of time teachers spend disciplining, re-directing, and doing clerical work. I don’t think the class size is the issue, personally. It wasn’t uncommon for a public school classroom to have 30 pupils in it when I was coming up (spent the majority in Catholic school, same difference in # of kids). Difference then was that the teacher could open up a huge can of “whoop ass” if he or she felt you weren’t paying attention or were goofing off. Personally felt the iron hand land on me more than once for “acting cute”. And as you can tell, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, then or now, but it didn’t take me more than about three times before I resigned myself to STFU and at least act as though I were paying attention. If I had got away with the shit kids get away with today, well, let’s just say that today I’d be wavin a tin cup at ya, smilin a toothless grin, across from your house, askin for loose change.

  159. Vlad Krandz January 24, 2011 at 4:04 pm #

    It just means the whole system has been corrupted from top to bottom – and that the birthers of way ahead of everybody else. Not smarter, just more honest about what’s going on. The basis of all learning is a “willingness to have it be so”. It doesn’t matter what your IQ is – it will only work against you unless you have this. Smart people routinely build castles in the air; elaborate argument why bullshit is so. An example: J.P Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were the last people to know that the Soviet Union was a snake pit. And they were some of the smartest most creative people alive. Their genius just went into inventing bullshit excuses for the Russian Communist Party. Why? Because they were not willing to believe their lying eyes; not willing to have it be so.
    So let’s see that Birth Certificate.

  160. orionoir January 24, 2011 at 4:06 pm #

    jim, a rule of thumb for just about any malfing piece of electronic equipment (poee) — open the main box (cpu) and, after grounding yourself for static (eg, touching an electrical outlet, or whatever,) pull out each & every board mounted to the motherboard. (sometimes there are plastic levers, etc, involved.) then, stick ’em right back in. imhe, this solves problems c half the time.
    if a customer is watching, make a huge production of it. waving the entrails of a fatted calf over the cpu chipset is most pleasing.
    with failed software installs, un-cable & un-power the hard-drive. additionally, with operating system upgrades, “intermediate installs” sometimes do the trick… eg, first install linux and *then* attempt snowleopard.
    when all else fails, arc out the power supply and make an insurance claim.

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  161. Newfie January 24, 2011 at 4:07 pm #

    Well, I meant buy some can openers for your own stash of cans of beans. Cans are hard to smash open with a rock. There are 300 millions guns in Amerika. So Mad Max will look like a Girl Guides holiday camp after the wheels fall off of Industrial Civilization. The Wild West will come back. Only the Colts will be replaced with automatic pistols and the shotguns with Ak-47s. It’s gonna be interesting…

  162. Cash January 24, 2011 at 4:13 pm #

    Like global warming? Now you’re thinking.
    The next big thing: legalization of pot. The experts will weigh in with deep thoughts on how much is pissed away on useless enforcement, that it’s a benign weed, that by legalizing you get the bad guys out of the trade. And I’ll bet the experts are funded by…
    Then wait till the big boys on Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry start lobbying to get into it.
    And advertising! Can you see the brand names? There’s loads of money in this.
    Myrtlemay, who would you rather buy your grass from, your local biker or some drug company?

  163. asoka January 24, 2011 at 4:27 pm #

    “Obama is smarter than we are giving him credit for.”
    ================
    Obama is playing chess, and he is only two years into his eight years as president. He may surprise us yet with more change we can believe in.
    Obama’s net job growth numbers in two years already exceed what Bush did in eight years. Of course Bush was losing 700,000 a month at the end of his failed policies. Tax cuts don’t create jobs; they create deficits.

  164. tinktink January 24, 2011 at 4:27 pm #

    “Like global warming? Now you’re thinking.”
    Really? Well its funny how many don’t think about this subject. You are supposed to take at face value that global warming (ahh, I guess I should say man-made global warming) is all buttoned down and settled. And if you think differently, you are a neanderthal, and probably voted for George Bush. And yet the “science” is sketchy at best.
    So who’s the fucktard, believers or skeptics? (Guess which I’m voting for?)

  165. Belisarius January 24, 2011 at 4:29 pm #

    I would not recommend buying gold or silver from anyone who advertises in MSM. You do not want to be paying for those ads!
    Before buying metals i would recommend looking at your everyday needs and storing a backup supply of what you use. When something you use is on half price sale buy a years worth! (or more). Once that is done, look at developing local redundant sustainable sources for basic needs. Once you have your local sources of food, water, heat, electricity, deisel etc. established on top of your storage cushion you might want to trade some of your remaining paper money for silver coin in case the money fails. If you decide to do this, i recommend buying US silver coins from an in state coin shop in person for cash. Or maybe instead you spend the bucks on developing a mutual defense plan with your neighbors. Good luck!

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  166. myrtlemay January 24, 2011 at 4:29 pm #

    Oh, the local biker, Cash, of course! Seriously, I get my supply from well known sources. If the stuff sucks, I don’t buy it. The price reflects the quality. If the drug companies got into the play, I suspect I’d give up the habit. Dirt weed just doesn’t do it for me.

  167. tinktink January 24, 2011 at 4:29 pm #

    “Obama is playing chess, and he is only two years into his eight years as president. He may surprise us yet with more change we can believe in.”
    Oh for fuck’s sake he hasn’t surprised me with ANY change I can believe in much less MORE I can believe in. Let me guess…you also believe in the Easter Bunny?

  168. asoka January 24, 2011 at 4:33 pm #

    Vlad said: “Your lifestyle sounds fascinating. Can you reccomend a website or blog about survival boating?”
    Careful, Vlad… there are sailors on boats who are Black… probably savage pirates every one of them.
    Don’t even think you can escape to the sea.
    There is no escape for you.

  169. DFH Dave January 24, 2011 at 4:39 pm #

    I knew you meant a can opener for yourself… I was just using your comment as a jumping off point for a thought experiment in post-collapse entrepreneurialism… didn’t get me very far. With the Mad Max scenario in mind, I wondered if it’s possible to purchase a lightly used M-1 tank from DRMO(Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office). Then I thought about all the complex systems required to support such an absurd machine in the field… Then I thought about all the complex, interrelated systems required to support me in my present comfort zone, all of them built on a foundation of sand, and I got depressed…

  170. asoka January 24, 2011 at 4:42 pm #

    FILM RECOMMENDATION
    If you get a chance, you might enjoy a documentary called The Black Power Mixtape.
    The film features rare archival footage shot between 1967 and 1975, including some of the leading figures of the Black Power movement in the United States, like Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver.
    The footage was shot by two Swedish journalists and was discovered in the basement of Swedish public television 30 years later.

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  171. Cash January 24, 2011 at 4:43 pm #

    I’m with you. Word of mouth. Just like the old days.

  172. asoka January 24, 2011 at 4:43 pm #

    “Our anger is misplaced.”
    =======
    Everyone on CFN should heed your words, JackiBlue2.

  173. wagelaborer January 24, 2011 at 4:46 pm #

    Good luck trying to find a good can opener.
    I hate those little handheld ones, and the quality is getting worse.
    I wanted one like my parents had, hanging on the wall for decades, functioning well.
    My Mom found me one in the 90s. The brand name was Swingline and the company was St Louis based.
    It already doesn’t function well. I only live 100 miles from St Louis. Shouldn’t there be an abundance of frigging can openers?
    No.
    Finally, my husband went online and bought me one.
    It arrived last week, from a True Value in New Jersey. (We looked at the local True Value. No can opener).
    Sure enough. It’s made in China.
    I haven’t hung and used it yet, but my hopes are not high.

  174. asoka January 24, 2011 at 4:51 pm #

    Cash should listen to his own words: “And that’s the key to not being a schmuck. The “experts” have their own motives…”
    ==================
    Cash claims to admire skepticism.
    Yet when someone actually does go against the official story,
    like saying World War II was counterproductive and enslaved millions of east Europeans under communism,
    or saying that “capitalist” China is communists and greedy businessmen are doing business with communists and justifying it by calling them capitalists,
    or saying that Whites are morally challenged because they are the only people in the world to drop nuclear weapons on civilian population centers,
    then Cash is not so keen on skepticism.

  175. asoka January 24, 2011 at 4:57 pm #

    “i said someone else posted that.”
    ===========
    And I said check the accuracy before repeating what someone else said. I like you asia, as a person. 🙂

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  176. asoka January 24, 2011 at 5:00 pm #

    “Obama is no genius. Obama is average.”
    =============
    Yes, most average people write two books, edit the Harvard Law Review, and become president of the United States. Just average achievements.

  177. MarlinFive54 January 24, 2011 at 5:07 pm #

    Asoka:
    Why would anybody care about a film about the Black Panthers?

  178. asoka January 24, 2011 at 5:09 pm #

    When TSHTF you might be interested in people who successfully developed a free breakfasts for children program to feed whole neighborhoods.

  179. Mr. Purple January 24, 2011 at 5:12 pm #

    Mr. Purple is only mentioned in Reservoir Dogs, not actually seen.

  180. Mr. Purple January 24, 2011 at 5:15 pm #

    Ooh, somebody’s troll got re(n)amed!
    So, tell me tinkletinkle, how does it feel knowing that you are unloved?
    Anyone care to lay odds on whether or not the response to this comment comes in the form of a childish insult that doesn’t make any sense?

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  181. asia January 24, 2011 at 5:21 pm #

    You may be right but ND is very cold and very flat.
    how much fresh water does it have?

  182. asia January 24, 2011 at 5:22 pm #

    FREE????
    did you say free? who grew the food? how did it get to be ‘free’?

  183. San Jose Mom 51 January 24, 2011 at 5:22 pm #

    Myrtlemay,
    “Not the sharpest knife”…..give yourself credit, you are plenty sharp.
    Classroom discipline is all over the map in my kid’s highschool. Most teachers have control over their classrooms, but some are utterly clueless and ineffective. Our school gives your one choice for a foreign lanquage…Spanish. That gives you a 50% chance of getting Mrs. X–but both my kids have had her. Here are some academic lowlights.
    * Smoking pot in class
    * Ordering pizza’s to be delivered in her class–located remotely in the portables behind the school.
    * Horrible racial slurs/jokes being told in class.
    * General chaos and disrespect.
    Of course there’s not a dang thing to do about it because she has tenure.
    SJmom

  184. asia January 24, 2011 at 5:23 pm #

    Where are you? US? Central America?

  185. Nickelthrower January 24, 2011 at 5:25 pm #

    Greetings,
    All boating is survival boating. One of my neighbors just took off for a two year sail to New Zealand and back. Everything necessary to sustain the crew of two was packed into their 30′ Ketch.
    The thing is that all of my neighbors that sail have boats packed full of survival gear. All of them can generate their own electricity. Many of them can produce fresh water. We all have radios, first aid kits, tools, rope, binoculars, charts, etc.
    Which community will do better when or if things go to hell? Will it be suburbia or the cities? I doubt either and those people that try to hide away in the country will soon find themselves over run by millions of starving, well armed city dwellers.
    I’m already in a community that doesn’t need the grid – we’ll do just fine.

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  186. Nickelthrower January 24, 2011 at 5:28 pm #

    U.S.A. West Coast.

  187. Vlad Krandz January 24, 2011 at 5:29 pm #

    Blacks can’t swim anymore than Whites can jump. Blacks can run but not so well over broken ground. The greyhound is the faster dog on a track but the Afghan Hound is the fastest over broken ground. I’m an Afghan Hound and I will get away if chased by cannibals.

  188. asia January 24, 2011 at 5:30 pm #

    I found this via a link at DOLLARCOLLAPSE.COM
    Fined for growing food:
    Franklin also introduced H.B. 2, Georgia Right to Grow Act, which bans localities from prohibiting or requiring a permit “for the growing or raising of food crops or chickens, rabbits, or milk goats in home gardens, coops, or pens on private residential property so long as such food crops or animals or the products thereof are used for human consumption by the occupant of such property and members of his or her household and not for commercial purposes.”
    This sort of legislation will stem local abuse against small growers like Steve Miller who was fined $5,200 for growing too many vegetables in his two-acre garden in Clarkston, last year.
    Billing itself as the “greenest county in America,” DeKalb County has set a 2011 court date for Miller’s organic garden, according to a recent update by Georgia Insight. Organic gardening has been Miller’s hobby for 15 years. Though he sells some produce at local farmers markets, he gives most of the food to neighbors.

  189. asia January 24, 2011 at 5:31 pm #

    do you have a list of foods he took? and cost of food?

  190. ragtop January 24, 2011 at 5:37 pm #

    An interesting hypothesis, but it’s only that.
    “Most forecasts have failed to predict these colder winters, however, because the primary drivers in their models are the oceans, which have been warming even as winters have grown chillier.”
    This comes as a complete surprise to the “experts” but some hack from the NY Times has it figured out. The experts can’t even agree on the causes or whether this (global warming) is manmade or just another natural occurrence in the endless billions of natural occurrences Mother Nature throws at us. These people try to predict weather for 50yrs out and can’t even predict the next season accurately. Yes, the average temperature is going up. Guess what? It’s done that a thousand times before and will do it a thousand times again. I do not believe it is manmade or that we could impact it if we tried. Back in the 70’s we were told there would be another ice age beginning……….right about NOW! Maybe they were on to something! But no, it will moderate again and people will complain that it’s too hot, too wet, too dry, too cloudy, too sunny.
    I’m sick of all the hype over global warming. Move to Nunavut if it’s too hot for you, where you are.

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  191. rippedthunder January 24, 2011 at 5:46 pm #

    I know this is off topic . Dedicated to Vlad. It is just something to brightin’ yer day and show that Blacks and Whites can work together. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0DMbCKnAg&ob=av2em

  192. OutThere January 24, 2011 at 5:48 pm #

    All offshore sailors are survivalists. It’s the nature of the beast. The ocean has it’s own way of sorting things out.

  193. MINDfool January 24, 2011 at 6:02 pm #

    Several years ago, I went to a department store in Dusseldorf, Germany, understanding that Germans built and exported quality items. I bought two slightly different can-openers, both of very superior construction. I gave my one to my ex and she said something like, “You went on a trip and brought me back a can-opener!!!” My daughter and I happily still use our two can-openers. I notice the Germans have a huge positive trade balance.

  194. Imagainstit January 24, 2011 at 6:03 pm #

    I can’t disagree. Having experienced the housing bust up close and personal, I DO expect the gold bubble to burst…but when? One good jolt to the system and the stuff could double overnight. I’m not immune to good old fashioned greed myself and we all expect jolts to the system, wouldn’t you say?

  195. BeantownBill January 24, 2011 at 6:05 pm #

    Nickel does make some valid points, but there are ways to determine the gold content of coins. In TLE, people will know how to test for true coins. Which makes me think that selling precious metal validating kits might be a good future business, kind of like the old assay offices.
    I’d rather own silver coins than gold coins. Say I go into my favorite grocery store in 10 years and buy a loaf of bread, some milk and some beef (assuming these are available at all). The bill, in today’s dollar value, is $29. So I hand over my gold Eagle, present value, $1,360. How does the clerk make change? It’s not practical. but if I hand over a silver Eagle, present value $30, the transaction is not difficult.
    Personally, I own silver coins, but that’s just insurance because nobody knows the future. A better scenario in TLE is bartering something useful you have for something useful you don’t have. Thus, I would stock up on necessities now for future barering and for survival. In a societal meltdown, gold’s practical usage is problematical, unless you figure out a way to transmute gold into food or clothing.

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  196. Belisarius January 24, 2011 at 6:06 pm #

    “Sell your gold before the collapse, unless you bought it at less than $300.”
    It looks a bit murkier than that. Paper gold and silver is selling off big time, while physical purchases are increasing. Since there is a lot more “paper metal” than physical, prices are in retreat, which encourages more physical purchases. Meanwhile China, Brazil and central banks with accumulation policies are on the sidelines, waiting for a bottom to resume buying physical. Those “playing” the paper may be doing so to make lower entry points for their physical purchases. ie. shake out the little guys, buy at the bottom and run it to the moon!
    Also, as debt/credit implodes, paper dollars will increase in value for awhile. Writedowns, defaults, auction sales, and debt repayments all reduce the digidollars extant and increase the value of paper dollars for a time.
    So, if you have money in gold to pay April taxes, well yes, sell now. OTOH if you have more paper dollars than you will need for five years, then it might make sense to “buy the dip” before March.

  197. OutThere January 24, 2011 at 6:07 pm #

    WaterWorld 2

  198. CaptSpaulding January 24, 2011 at 6:10 pm #

    It’s probably time to acquaint the newer members with jimjim, tinktink, etc. He’s been booted off so many times & reappeared under so many names that it became easier just to refer to him all the time as pissant (with a lower case p. For your edification, I present the definition of pissant…..pissant: an epithet for an inconsequential, irrelevant, or worthless person, especially one who is irritating or contemptible out of proportion to his or her significance. You cannot insult a pissant, because any aknowledgement of his existence, even negatively, is preferable to the lonely life he lives in his parents basement.

  199. jackieblue2u January 24, 2011 at 6:22 pm #

    Yeah and / but on the Sea you have PIRATES.
    and you are on your own out there. It can become very dangerous and very scary.
    Not sure what the best solution is to finding safety for self and loved ones.

  200. jackieblue2u January 24, 2011 at 6:41 pm #

    Yes a big part of the problem is a complete lack of RESPECT for ‘elders’. Parents and teachers being elders.
    Seems like parents don’t know how to draw the line, and they let their kids run them around and around.
    Not a good thing.
    Hey you are SHARP ENOUGH ! and Sharper than most, and that includes me. You are Waaaay sharper than Me.
    I enjoy your posts.

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  201. jackieblue2u January 24, 2011 at 6:54 pm #

    Reminds me of an interview I saw I think on The View
    One of the women asked Dolly Parton :
    Do you think marriage should be made legal for gays?
    Dolly said “Sure, they should have the Right to be Miserable like everyone else !”
    I thought that was very good.

  202. Belisarius January 24, 2011 at 6:55 pm #

    “Obama’s net job growth numbers in two years already exceed what Bush did in eight years. Of course Bush was losing 700,000 a month at the end of his failed policies. Tax cuts don’t create jobs; they create deficits.”
    First off tax cuts do create jobs, but those jobs are generally created in China, India and Mexico. That will not change till corporations pay taxes on imports equivalent to the labor cost differential in the country of origin.
    I’m not a fan of the red team or the blue team. Things are getting steadily worse. This is systemic and not the fault of the talk show host in charge. Obama is better at one thing, getting the press to spin it his way. Yes, Bush job numbers were bad, Obama’s are worse. New jobs created under Obama average under 100K per month while new job losses average over 400K PER WEEK. That nets to an average job loss per month of over 1.5 mil using the governments figures. Much worse if you use real figures.
    After the Titanic hits the iceberg, changing the captian does little good.

  203. dale January 24, 2011 at 7:06 pm #

    Cash ole’ boy, You’re going to get awful tired waiting for me to debate the education system with you. Not because I don’t have an opinion, but because nobody cares what we think.
    I was just having you on a little, if you don’t like it don’t make yourself such an inviting target. You can die from such seriousness, ya know? Kick back and get a beer out of the reefer and watch a little of the Australian Open. I think Murry is going to do it this year, don’t you?

  204. myrtlemay January 24, 2011 at 7:06 pm #

    Jackie,
    Ya had me LOL and rollin on the floor! Thanks for the pick-me-up!

  205. John Howard January 24, 2011 at 7:10 pm #

    MyrtleMay is right that we are too distracted by people prioritizing Gay Marriage, putting all their effort into making sure that genetic engineering of better humans and Transhumanism remains funded and researched and legal. They’re using gay people to sneak in Transhumanism, and the whole techno-future.
    The marriage debate is a huge distraction, and will indeed have expensive and important ramifications when we finally get around to looking at genetic engineering. We should end the marriage debate and give gay people and same-sex couples full equal benefits and obligations as marriage in the form of Civil Unions, but not marriage, which should continue to be for couples that we approve of conceiving offspring together, using their own genes.

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  206. JJF January 24, 2011 at 7:14 pm #

    I’m new here, just recently discovered JHK, I am a prepper,and a socially liberal Libertarian. I’m ex-military and an Iraqi freedom vet thats anti-war,a son of an ex-farmer whose farm didn’t quite make it through the industrial farm takeover of the early 1980’s, thanks Gipper.
    In some parts of the country like ours, the farm crisis was worse than things are now. But we had a garden, we had pork (lots of it), we had milk straight out of the cow (good too) and everyone worked hard, I mean damn hard.
    I am a gen-xer, whatever that means, and I see a boomer generation bent on keeping their hopes and dreams alive no matter what the reality, that scares me. Considering, from my point of view, Boomers can pretty much outvote us and that whole generation has a penchant for self-fulfillment. Meaning: Boomers taken as a whole are bunch of fucking little Himmlers who can’t help but stick their noses in everybodies business and tell everyone how they should be living their lives.
    Like: whining endlessly about Vietnam and then sending their kids and grandkids off to fight for their 89 octane for their douche-bag Harley Davidsons.
    Like destroying endless lives with their stupid crusading Drug War.
    I could go on and on, so in closing, yes we are really and truly fucked as a country whether sooner or later does not matter.
    JHK might be right, maybe there is a little hostility.

  207. ladelfina January 24, 2011 at 7:14 pm #

    “Glenn has a religious faith. NOT ALLOWED. Faith=Stoopid.”
    But when you consider that Beck’s religion is of a particularly recent and even loopier grifter/shaman/huckster flavor than usual… doesn’t that make it better? Or, if not better, at least coherent and utterly predictable?
    Agree with only 90%?
    Acquiesce COMPLETELY to Beck, jimjim… your inner psychopath is telling you so! I’m seeing you in the magic undies, making real estate deals in the hundreds of millions. You CAN do it! Just hold your nose and take the pre-tax tithes.

  208. ladelfina January 24, 2011 at 7:29 pm #

    “That kid is going places.”
    Where? The 700 Club? Samaritan’s Purse?

  209. ladelfina January 24, 2011 at 7:31 pm #

    Sarah Palin is mentally ill.

  210. Pucker January 24, 2011 at 7:33 pm #

    An excerpt from Matt Taibbi’s book “Griftopia” unelegantly summarizes the world that we’ve created:
    “Here’s the big difference between America and the third world: in American, our leaders put on a hell of a show for us voters, while in the third world, the bulk of the population gets squat. In the third world, most people know where they stand and don’t have any illusions about it. Maybe they get a parade every now and then, get to wave at shock troops carrying order colors in an eyes-right salute. Or maybe, if they’re lucky, the leader will spring for a piece of mainstream entertainment—he’ll host a heavyweight title fight at the local Palace of Beheading. Something that puts the country on the map, cheers the national mood, distracts folks from their status as barefoot scrapers at the bottom of the international capitalist barrel. But mostly your third-world schmuck gets the shaft. He gets to live in dusty, unpaved dumps, eat expired food, scratch and claw his way to an old enough age to reproduce, and then die unnecessarily of industrial accidents, malnutrition, or some long-forgotten disease of antiquity. Meanwhile, drawing upon the collective whole-life economic output of this worthy fellow and 47 million of his fellow citizens, the leader and about eighteen of his luckiest friends get to live in villas in Ibiza or the south of France, with enough money for a couple of impressive-looking ocean cruisers and a dozen sports cars. We get more than that in America. We get beautifully choreographed eighteen-month entertainment put on once every four years, a beast called the presidential election that engrosses the population to the point of obsession. This ongoing drama allows everyone to subsume their hopes and dreams for the future into one all-out, all-or-nothing battle for the White House, a big alabaster symbol of power we see on television a lot. Who wins and who loses this contest is a matter of utmost importance to a hell of a lot of people in this country. But WHY it’s so important to them is one of the great unexplored mysteries of our time. It’s a mystery rooted in the central, horrifying truth about our national politics. Which is this: none of it really matters to us. The presidential election is a drama that we Americans have learned to wholly consume as entertainment, divorced completely from any expectations about concrete changes in our own lives. For the vast majority of people who follow national elections in this country, the payoff they’re looking for when they campaign for this or that political figure is that warm and fuzzy feeling you get when the home team wins the big game. Or, more important, when a hated rival loses. Their stake in the electoral game isn’t a citizen’s interest, but a rooting interest. Voters who throw their emotional weight into elections they know deep down inside won’t produce real change in their lives are also indulging in a kind of fantasy. That’s why voters still dream of politicians whose primary goal is to effectively govern and maintain a thriving first world society with international ambitions. What voters don’t realize, or don’t want to realize, is that that dream was abandoned long ago by this country’s leaders, who know the prosaic reality and are looking beyong the fantasy, into the future, at an America plummeted into third world status. These leaders are like the drug lords who ruled America’s ghettos in the crack age, men (and some women) interested in just two things: staying in power, and hoovering up enough of what’s left of the cash on their blocks to drive around in an Escalade or 633i for however long they have left. Our leaders know we’re turning into a giant ghetto and they are taking every last hubcap they can get their hands on before the rest of us wake up and realize what’s happened.” (Matt Taibbi, “Griftopia”, pp. 9-10)

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  211. wagelaborer January 24, 2011 at 7:34 pm #

    That brings up the old economist joke, also.
    ” A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, “Let’s smash the can open with a rock.” The chemist says, “Let’s build a fire and heat the can first.” The economist says, “Let’s assume that we have a can-opener…”

  212. ladelfina January 24, 2011 at 7:40 pm #

    DFH Dave, if the “grid collapses” consider that there will be a limited amount of conventionally canned food, after which…
    If you need to get into a can of food, you can do it with any number of combinations of household tools (pliers, hammer, chisel, tin snips, hacksaw, etc.)

  213. wagelaborer January 24, 2011 at 7:42 pm #

    OK, asoka, your other joke was funny, but this one is just sick.

  214. messianicdruid January 24, 2011 at 7:43 pm #

    “I’m curious what you all think about buying gold & silver…”
    Gold is a sapling, silver is an acorn.

  215. ladelfina January 24, 2011 at 7:46 pm #

    Holy shit.

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  216. ladelfina January 24, 2011 at 7:48 pm #

    Vlad, this is for you!
    http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/14115/

  217. Freedom Guerrilla January 24, 2011 at 7:57 pm #

    Nice post, James.
    It is seriously cold out here in the city, and I cannot stop thinking about how most of human existence has been geared toward thermoregulation.
    We’ve just made it so easy that it’s now considered a right. But, not all 21-year-old’s are buying the college debt system — this is the type of collapse that is bringing the real revolution.
    Americans will not suck forever.
    BTW (totally unrelated), can we stop w/ the inane “First!” comment? I don’t know — just saying.
    Tommy
    http://freedomguerrilla.com

  218. JonathanSS January 24, 2011 at 8:00 pm #

    A 65 year minimum retirement age would be good for gov’t workers. I was only looking at incremental change, not confident enough that anyone has the courage to confront current workers with such radical change.
    It’s just like an increase in the gas tax. If the tax had been raised 10 cents a year since 1980 (@ $3.10 now), maybe we could have avoided the truck, V8, SUV, Hummer fiasco of the 80’s-90’s. And if “We the People” had kept spending under control in that time, and factoring in the gas tax increases, we might be close to a balanced budget, instead of $14 trillion in debt.

  219. JJF January 24, 2011 at 8:01 pm #

    You can rub a can on a brick or cement wall too, it will grind open the can.

  220. ragtop January 24, 2011 at 8:06 pm #

    Welcome and thank you for your service. You won’t get much attention, here, until you are adversarial toward someone. Just the nature of the crowd, I guess, but both JHK and the commenttators can be VERY interesting reading.
    As a member of the crowd you dis, I can tell you that you have, by and large, nailed it. There are also some genuinely brilliant people among my group. I don’t happen to be one of them, but feel bouyed, somewhat, by the company. There are also many, many who feel the way you do and are sick about it.
    Sadly the folks who tend to rise to positions of authority and influence, tend to be more self agrandizing and power hungry. It’s the nature of the political beast. Yes there are some truly idealistic do-gooders as well. Generally, the system takes care of them, by corrupting them, marginalizing them or flushing them out of the system. See Ralph Nader.
    Sorry about your family farm. It was a tragedy, what was allowed to happen to farming, during the 80s. It also took place in many other industries, but I am always more comfortable with more choices and today’s agri-business industry tends to be very narrowly focused. There is opportunity for smaller farms to specialize, as a result, but it is hard, hard work regardless.
    I, too, only recently stumbled on to this site, as I tend to stumble on or over everything. Just my nature. Anyway, welcome home and best of luck with civilian life.
    -ragtop

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  221. messianicdruid January 24, 2011 at 8:06 pm #

    “So here’s a thought: shut down the damn pool so you have enough money for textbooks.”
    Fill it full of horse manure and dirt and teach them to grow tomatoes.

  222. messianicdruid January 24, 2011 at 8:12 pm #

    “…and a very small markup over spot price if you let them hold it for you…” I’m against it, literally. “If you don’t hold it, you don’t own it.” Ponce Cuba
    They are selling many times more than they have. Paper metal is no better than paper currency.

  223. politicky January 24, 2011 at 8:17 pm #

    JHK,
    You say capital is vanishing. No argument here. I found this disturbing though:
    U.S. Workers Face Chinese Employers
    January 20th, 2011 by Phil Mattera
    “.. Until recently, China accounted for a negligible portion of overseas money flowing into the American economy. But in the past two years there has been an enormous influx. The Washington Post cites a consulting company estimate that the Chinese stake has jumped to $12 billion since the beginning of 2009…”

  224. messianicdruid January 24, 2011 at 8:19 pm #

    “Also, the average Joe has no means by which to judge the authenticity of physical gold or silver.”
    All the average joes I know can recognize a 1964 {90%} siver dime. In 1964 you could mail a one ounce letter for 4 cents. So a silver dime would mail 2 and a half letters. You can take that same silver dime, right now, to any one who recognizes it’s value sell it for fiat, and go purchase about 2 and a half one ounce stamps.

  225. latchkeykid January 24, 2011 at 8:27 pm #

    Amazing. I been listening to Americans blame each other for high wages, pension plans, and the overall cost of american goods for thirty five years now. All it’s gotten us is a lower standard of living and lower expectations of each other. You’d better hope the kids get mad enough to do something about it because this gang of complainers didn’t do squat.

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  226. JJF January 24, 2011 at 8:31 pm #

    Thanks, I really got going there, I shouldn’t lump all members of a generation together, mine isn’t shaping up much better I’m sorry to say. The road to the truth has been long and winding for me, funny but I was talking with my brother last night and we talked about our journeys, how we’ve been able to accept how things are instead of how we want them to be ( not to mention navigating all the crap generated by the media, left and right) we both figure that our “norm” has shifted so often over the years we just adapt naturally. Thank you for your kind words and I am pleased to meet your aquaintance.
    JJF

  227. orionoir January 24, 2011 at 8:55 pm #

    {what happens to The Wave at a football game?}
    ———-
    our firm represents risk non-averse institutions, pension funds & high net-worth individuals seeking exposure to emerging social trends. as such, it behooves us to account for The Wave which propagates along any of several elliptical courses typically in high-capacity open air or domed football stadiums.
    observations:
    * a Wave will not propagate if fewer than fourteen individuals attempt to initiate it;
    * as with The Failed Standing Ovation, an abortive Wave reveals its initiators as drunken fools;
    * in certain circumstances, The Wave escapes stadium confines and travels willy-nilly across the countryside, leaving destruction & carnage in its wake (pittsburgh, 1982; athens, georgia, 1969;)
    * the energy equivalent of The Wave (late season nfl; 80,000 fans; nickel beer) is reliably estimated to be equivalent to the daily output of canada’s hydro-quebec operation. however, its carbon footprint is several orders of magnitude greater than that of all coal burned since 1825.
    ———-
    but where does The Wave go?
    you want the truth

  228. orionoir January 24, 2011 at 8:58 pm #

    {You won’t get much attention, here, until you are adversarial toward someone.}
    you, sir, are a knave and a buffoon.

  229. messianicdruid January 24, 2011 at 9:04 pm #

    Thank You for the 4:01 post.

  230. messianicdruid January 24, 2011 at 9:06 pm #

    “So let’s see that Birth Certificate.”
    You don’t one to be the head of a corporation.

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  231. Nickelthrower January 24, 2011 at 9:08 pm #

    “All the average joes I know can recognize a 1964 {90%} siver dime.”
    Look, I realize that a lot of people believe that gold and silver will save them when the dollar becomes worthless – I get it. I also get the fact that no nation on this Earth is more than 3 meals away from a revolution (or worse). When push comes to shove, people with food and clean drinking water will do fine. Those running around with bits of metal will find out, just like the Jews did, how much their gold, silver and diamonds are really worth – nothing.
    Keep spending your hard earned money on those paper certificates that claim to represent gold and silver and I’ll spend my hard earned money on items that allow me to be self sufficient.
    Time will tell who is correct.

  232. trippticket January 24, 2011 at 9:08 pm #

    226 comments? It’s still Monday! Not even that late! What, is everyone jobless and pissed off now? Can’t say as I blame you guys. It’s been 40 months since I had a “real job”, or 6.67 Friedman units to be more specific. But damn if I haven’t made some strides in the garden in that time!
    You know what frightens me most about all this? It’s that the-powers-that-be refuse to level with the masses. Makes sense, from a gravy train perspective, but when the gravy stops flowing from the magic gravy springs, and the biscuits get dry, things could get pretty ugly. I’m just sick to my stomach that people aren’t being warned about how this might go. It takes time to get good at producing your own food, or living well on shoestring budgets. We could make a go of this if people just knew!
    But then, it appears that more people are learning about it every week. (Thank you JHK, Hienberg, Bageant, Greer, etc, etc!) The top hobbies for 20 and 30 somethings these days are gardening, canning, sewing, keeping chickens and increasingly goats, and thrift store shopping. We’ll get it. But can we get it in time to avoid the pain?
    My friends and family along I-75 in Georgia – Tifton, Macon, Atlanta – have formed an alternative underground slow money economy. It gets more serious every month. There are now nearly enough items coming online to care for a family in its entirety. Or will be within the next 2 years, tops. We have various meats, dairy products including cheese, butter, and yogurt, canned jams and sauces, produce, fruit, nuts, mushrooms, handmade clothes and toys, effective herbal health products. All very skeletal at this point, but the gaps are filling in fast. Very exciting. I got a big kick out of my little brother pumping his fist when he discovered that both our father and I were brushing up on beekeeping over the holidays…
    Don’t panic. Just get started.

  233. Buck Stud January 24, 2011 at 9:10 pm #

    The three most telling words in JHK’s column this week:
    “Poverty of Imagination”
    And yet, school systems are increasingly abandoning the teaching of cursive writing. It’s just not time/cost effect in terms of test scores and teacher/administration reward.
    I was watching  a spot on the news which stated that eventually all school writing will be paperless, done on the keyboard computer.
     
    Is this really a good idea, beyond environmental concerns? Is there not an intuitive and emotional aspect of the intellect that is accessed via the mind/body connection that occurs in actual handwriting ? A creative cauldron lit by the match of the hand forming the undulating arcs and lines of grace in the art of cursive writing? Does not the sensuous circularity of cursive writing trigger far deeper awakenings within the whole person than is possible with the staccato like mechanics of the computer keyboard? Why must all current education be funneled into the catatonic competence of the technocrat and the automaton?
     
    And what is graffiti art and tagging if not a monumental version of cursive writing? For so many kids, the desire for the personalized, flamboyant  and idiosyncratic signature  is what impels them to spray away with creative abandon. So why is this fundamental motivation being eradicated from so many public school lesson plans?
     
    I recall as a boy being mesmerized by the extraordinarily beautiful cursive writing of my mother. I never quite matched her skill and ability in cursive writing, but I have to think that something of the striving and appreciation stuck with me after all these years.
    More paper and pencils, please.

  234. trippticket January 24, 2011 at 9:16 pm #

    And I agree with Nickelthrower about the gold and silver. There was a time that I hoarded some, but I never had any qualms about trading it for self-reliant, procreative life support systems. I think that’s what will really matter in the long haul. Money of any kind is a means, not an end. And the love of money will make this more difficult than it needs to be.
    Just my .02

  235. Vlad Krandz January 24, 2011 at 9:18 pm #

    Really? You like equality? So you must be against all the ads that make White Men look like fools compared to their wives and girlfriends then. Giving up this pleasure may not be easy for you – but whoever said civil rights was?
    Also become aware, if you are not already, of how they now always place Black Men and Blonde Women together. This has become a standard feature of Dancing with the Stars for example, one series after another. It indicates the iron determination of the ruling Clique in Hollywood and Manhattan to miscegenate the White Race out of existence. This is their symbolism btw – to them the Blonde is the epitome of Whiteness. So they focus on them. Personally, I find other hair colors just as attractive, but I recognize the symbolism since light colored hair is more or less unique to our race.

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  236. rippedthunder January 24, 2011 at 9:18 pm #

    36 below is that the best you can do? sheeeet! go to this city of 250,000 in Siberia. http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/24959.html

  237. thomas99 January 24, 2011 at 9:20 pm #

    Suck it up, Jimbo…you stayed inside for 2 days just because it got down to -20??? Out here in the frozen tundra of Minnesota, it was -46 at International Falls the other morning. Winter closed in suddenly on November 13 and we’ve had at least a foot of snow on the ground ever since. You’ve got to get a grip, big fella. The Long Emergency will play itself out and here in flyover country, we’ll survive. All the best, my man. TC

  238. trippticket January 24, 2011 at 9:30 pm #

    My aunt, who is assistant dean of agriculture at the University of Georgia, stopped by our farm today with some nice chairs for us, and it was her birthday. In her honor we started a tradition of planting a fruit tree in our garden any time someone stops by on their birthday. Her name and birthdate are on the permanent metal label swinging from the lowest branch of a new Black Mission fig.
    Mean Dovey? PoC? Iona? Any of you other Georgians, come on by for a glass of wine and a fruit tree planted in your honor at Tonic Permaculture in Tifton, GA, on your birthday! Best way to alert me is through my blog at http://www.smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com
    Cheers!

  239. rippedthunder January 24, 2011 at 9:39 pm #

    hello Tripp, I really think whet you are doing is sweet. I also have a nice organic gig going. I live in a semi-rural ares with a large urban area close by. I think if times get really tough my plot is screwed. What are your thoughts on this scenrio?

  240. messianicdruid January 24, 2011 at 9:42 pm #

    “Money of any kind is a means, not an end.”
    Agreed. Short term, preserve some purchasing power, long term rebuild a local economy.
    Tifton’s on the list. I’ll bring Osage Oranges.

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  241. poiuy January 24, 2011 at 9:48 pm #

    prices of commodities are going up, non-renewable energy is considered a commodity. People have been commodified by the global corporate system and politicians who are elected by people are increasingly being commodified as well. Mr Obama’s appointing of corpocrats is slyly concealing the reality that it is the other way. Corpocracy is monarchy disguised as democracy, a clever trick being played on the hoi polloi.

  242. trippticket January 24, 2011 at 9:49 pm #

    I understand Osage Oranges make one of the finest living fences available. And I would have to acquiesce to the idea of capital preservation in the near term! But I wouldn’t get caught in a position of thinking that gold will buy food when food gets hard to come by. I know you know that…

  243. ragtop January 24, 2011 at 9:50 pm #

    I take exception to your characterization. You do not know mwe well enough to accuse me of such things, although my buffoonery is legendary in some circles. Thanks for noticing.

  244. seb January 24, 2011 at 9:52 pm #

    i want the truth, michael.
    I am working on the psychic laboratory frame of reference,and I need some good reasons for being psychic, so, I am looking at the ability to see ahead in time. It is useful for me to know if an outside door is propped open, or else I take the key. These guesses can be made, but the feedback to the question could be the visualization of an image showing the door.
    After doing thousands of trials and you get good at it, you get more detailed, if altogether speculative images, and “voices (although hearing voices is wrong; what is heard is speech. Voice and speech are not interchangeable. A sign can have speech on it, a voice can be turned up or down)”, by, say, leaving off the long end of words you know, to provide a sounding board to hear the “echo” of your thought, where, “vacation” can stop with “vakay—“, and this small pause is all you sample.
    It makes many sounds by itself, up to three syllables and syntactically unambiguous. The newest monster truck at the Q last Saturday was “Maximum Destruction”, and I could have sworn that the way the driver was tapping the throttle, the car said its own name, from the run-run-run of a revved engine (these trucks have very responsive throttles), they can get, max-i-mum de-struc-tion. I started thinking I’ll never capture this, the wave happened in the stadium, I wished it to cease, it died out.
    I don’t know what we sacrifice if nobody believes in waves, nor can I specify exactly where the bad luck comes out when you have good luck. I know that a gauge particle is exchanged within a field, giving symmetry and energy a quantitative basis, and we don’t have quantitative ESP, maybe not even qualitative.
    Perhaps a nation of individuals produced a psychic wave which crested in the psychic derangement of Jared Loughner, Jared psychically drew that judge down to the site, the wave dissipated, the traces disappeared, and all fingers end up pointing in futile and oblivious directions, with a “tone down the rhetoric”, or, “this guy was unbalanced”. I mean, I know. Shit, I treated him worse than Julian Assange treats Bradley Manning. We are talking nonstop torture once they get full permission to come at him with ice picks for lobotomy.
    More importantly, I don’t think Dickie Feynman likes waves. Check out this passage from QED. All we have to do to justify it is to show that at zero understanding of ESP, we should take that which gives us the fastest run-through of understanding about the real world, not go off cowardly calling metaphors such as the mind real. Read your physics:
    It is all or nothing: if one photomultiplier goes off at a given moment, none of the others goes off at the same moment (except in the rare instance that two photons happened to leave the light source at the same time). There is no splitting of light into “half particles” that go to different places.
    I want to emphasize that light comes in this form—particles. It is very important to know that light behaves like particles, especially for those of you who have gone to school, where you were probably told something about light behaving like waves. I’m telling you the way it does behave—like particles.
    You might say that it’s just the photomultiplier that detects light as particles, but no, every instrument that has been designed to be sensitive enough to detect weak light has always ended up discovering the same thing: light is made of particles.
    That’s where the wave goes, it dies out like the remainder of its kind. The people stay alive. I for one am not happy to haul myself into a standing position when it comes, and certainly not twice. The hands—what do I do with my hands!? I can’t smoke!

  245. trippticket January 24, 2011 at 9:58 pm #

    “I think if times get really tough my plot is screwed. What are your thoughts on this scenrio?”
    There is a constant debate raging in my head: do I grow food discretely and act dumb? Or do I do my damndest to propogate the idea of self-reliance to anyone who will listen? My experience so far would validate the latter. The underground economy we are developing was really prompted by the actions of my wife and I. What was it Ghandi said? “First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Something like that? True on all accounts. And we’re finally entering the last phase with our circle.
    Could be suicide, but I think people are getting it, and will be hungry for whatever knowledge they can find soon. Slowly, one at a time. But every one who increases their self-reliance dilutes the burden you carry. Eventually we become the majority.
    Good on ya for all the hard work and wisdom of organic gardening. I heard a quote the other day that I liked. Can’t remember verbatim, but it was something about success in gardening comes when your enthusiasm outlasts the back pain.

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  246. Vlad Krandz January 24, 2011 at 10:10 pm #

    Look at how they treated poor Franklin Graham when he told the Truth about Islam – he’ll never walk with Presidents like his Father did. But in the sight of God he may be a better man though lacking his Father’s charisma in preaching.
    I don’t know that much about either one, but it must be hard to be close to our Elite and hold onto any integrity whatsoever. Maybe he did – it was a bit easier even a few decades ago.

  247. ragtop January 24, 2011 at 10:13 pm #

    It is the nature of the 21st century that the road to anywhere will be a circuitous journey. As for my generation, we deserve all the attention, good and bad, that we get. It’s like a python swallowing a pig. It a huge bulge that has to work it’s way through the system, but in the end, comes out like everything else.
    Don’t underestimate your ability to adapt. It will come in very handy in the coming years. My path has also been one of many twists and turns, many of which, very unpleasant. Every day is now a geat day and the negative stuff I hear from the fringes (right & left) really have no effect on me. Don’t get caught up in the side show. It’s a diversion from what is really important.
    I look forward to your comments on future writings from Mr. Kunstler. I am always interested in knowing the views of those who have recently been in the trenches.

  248. Headless January 24, 2011 at 10:35 pm #

    As a desperate atheist, I have prayed for al Qaeda to return with sufficient explosives and the necessary artifice to take out the Capitol Building when the greatest collection of criminals in the history of Man is gathered there. God willing–and existing–and cognizant of the scum He hath created.

  249. Shakazulu January 24, 2011 at 11:03 pm #

    “I’m curious what you all think about buying gold & silver”
    I’d buy cans of beans. By the truckload.
    That’s it isn’t it? Everyone is looking for answers or trying to supply some of their own (pimping a website). I’d diversify. I’d buy tuna along with the beans. Land is what a self sufficient man has always wanted. You can’t eat gold, but you can use land to plant a garden. All you will have to do is build a maginot line around it and you’ll be able to survive.

  250. asia January 24, 2011 at 11:05 pm #

    headless [or clueless]:
    Perhaps, just perhaps its the real govt of the US that brings in the ‘terrorists’.
    if thats right yr scenario probably wont happen.
    if its wrong yr scenario might happen.

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  251. The Mook January 24, 2011 at 11:06 pm #

    Out of blacks? We can send them some. What; Delivery refused?

  252. asia January 24, 2011 at 11:07 pm #

    oeo, asas,zsazsa, not yr mommy..
    a prize to whomever[?] can list all jim jims acro nimnims!

  253. Shakazulu January 24, 2011 at 11:08 pm #

    I like your thinking. Wish I had the same. Unfortunately I’m an hourly wage drone living in the city. Only 9 years to retirement. Panama looks better every single day.

  254. The Mook January 24, 2011 at 11:10 pm #

    Don’t try to smash it with a Chinese made can crusher, or you’ll have two pieces of trash. What a bunch of junk. Those Pampered Chef ones with the big, white, plastic handle work nice for opening the pet food cans down at my cabin.

  255. Shakazulu January 24, 2011 at 11:13 pm #

    The founder of Jimmy Johns is a rat because he’s moving? I’d say the Illinois state legislature are the real rats.

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  256. ladelfina January 24, 2011 at 11:13 pm #

    “poor Franklin Graham” who gets over a million fucking dollars a year to cram religion down the throats of people desperate just to survive, who bears gifts of Chinese junk and religious tracts.
    Franklin Graham, who considers Catholic Haitians “non-Christians”, as evangelicals consider all Catholics: no better than pagans, rather, worse.
    Franklin Graham is a sick piece of work.
    http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/our-government-funded-mission-to-make-haiti-christian-your-tax-dollars-billy-grahams-son-monsanto-and-sarah-palin

  257. asoka January 24, 2011 at 11:14 pm #

    Dear Rev. Graham: Obama was not born a Muslim and neither is anyone else
    Posted on 08/22/2010 by Juan
    Evangelist (and hateful bigot) Franklin Graham said this weekend that President Obama was ‘born a Muslim’ because, he said, Islam is transmitted through the father just as Judaism is transmitted through the mother.
    Presumably it is this sort of thinking that has led an increasing number of Americans to believe, incorrectly, that Obama is a Muslim.
    Graham as usual is not only hateful but also plain wrong. The Talmudic rule that one is a Jew by virtue of having a Jewish mother has been responsible for imagining the Jewish people as a race as well as a religion. (They are not
    Vlad said: “Look at how they treated poor Franklin Graham when he told the Truth about Islam”
    ================
    Vlad, do you mean when evangelist (and hateful bigot) Franklin Graham said President Obama was ‘born a Muslim’ because Islam is transmitted through the father just as Judaism is transmitted through the mother?
    Graham as usual is not only hateful but also plain wrong. The Talmudic rule that one is a Jew by virtue of having a Jewish mother has been responsible for imagining the Jewish people as a race as well as a religion. (They are not actually a race, of course, and most Jewish women are descended from a Gentile ancestor).
    But Muslims are not a race even in the imagining, but rather a world-religion to which belong people of virtually every ethnic group in the world.
    Unlike in Judaism, one is not born a Muslim.
    Rather, children of Muslim parents who embrace Islam typically recite the confession of faith around puberty and undertake to fulfill the obligations of Islamic law at that time.
    Until that time, they are not mukallaf or obliged to perform the rituals of the religion.
    Franklin’s allegation would imply that children are Muslim by birth and have to fast the month of Ramadan when they are 5. It is ridiculous.

  258. The Mook January 24, 2011 at 11:14 pm #

    I don’t think those city dwellers will make it out here. Buffalo is the closest city and they would have to walk over one hundred miles and not have a clue where to “invade” first. Unless Apple is making an app for home invasion that is.

  259. Shakazulu January 24, 2011 at 11:16 pm #

    Corn-Pone Nazi Number One: Timmy McVeigh
    Corn-Pone Nazi Number Two: uhhh….McVeigh?

  260. Shakazulu January 24, 2011 at 11:18 pm #

    How about:
    1. Teach the precepts of the rule of law all 12 years in school to everyone.
    2. Get rid of the lawyers–all of them.

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  261. The Mook January 24, 2011 at 11:18 pm #

    Bread, milk, and beef will probably be more like $1500 new currency. Don’t you dare give up a $50 Buffalo for that. Anyone who has ever held, or listened to a silver dollar drop can tell if it is real. I have a few 2006 Buffalo $50 pieces in the safe deposit box, and believe me, you can tell that they are “real”.

  262. The Mook January 24, 2011 at 11:22 pm #

    Does tinktink know he is now does estrous? A few drops of tink’s on his ass and he’ll have half the bucks in the county trying to cornhole him.

  263. Shakazulu January 24, 2011 at 11:29 pm #

    ….” a legion of Jared Lee Loughners ” indeed! With a side of “Snookies” and Jay Cutlers.
    Do I detect a sore loser from the windy city? You forgot to mention Lady Gagas, although snookie gives her some respectability.

  264. Shakazulu January 24, 2011 at 11:36 pm #

    Do you think I give a rat’s rear end if wealthy folk, and that means just about everyone to me, never get their pension? AWWWW cry me a river.
    Kat, you’re right where Obama and the NWO want you to be. Soon there will be vacancies in Obama’s private army. You will be contacted by your local recruiter.

  265. The Mook January 24, 2011 at 11:36 pm #

    Tripp, Are you now, or in the future, going to be trying to raise capital for your operation? Dividends paid in jelly and mushrooms would be accepted! At least those who don’t have the physical desire to participate in your lifestyle, could participate by making a capital investment.

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  266. DFH Dave January 24, 2011 at 11:39 pm #

    ladelfina, I only meant the can opener business as a tongue-in-cheek stand in for any post-collapse attempt at entrepreneurialism… My concern is with the effect of widespread unrest on attempts to build and maintain the kind of self-sufficient local economies often prescribed as a potential solution to the collapse of the grid. There are currently over 7 billion people alive on our planet, and I fear that a billion or two might survive war, disease, and climate change long enough to overrun these new Jeffersonian communities. Respectfully, I’m guessing you’d disagree, since you put the term “grid collapses” in quotes, as if such an event isn’t possible?

  267. ElleBeMe January 24, 2011 at 11:44 pm #

    I just have one thing to add…for so much has already been said.
    Maybe some of you should pick up a copy of the Anti-American Manifesto by Ted Rall. You can buy it at the failing Borders bookstore, online or see if your local library has it (doubtful on that).
    I did and well….he makes some *REALLY* good points.
    Carry on….

  268. Qshtik January 24, 2011 at 11:50 pm #

    Thank you for your kind words and I am pleased to meet your aquaintance.
    =========
    I am a sort of king-maker around these parts in the sense that you’re nobody until Q has pointed out an insignificant error or two in your post. So, on your first day as a commenter at CFN, I declare you a “somebody.”
    The expression is I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Also, you left out the first c in acquaintance. Good luck in the future; I’ll be watching.

  269. Neil Kearns January 24, 2011 at 11:58 pm #

    San Diego report- doomer slanted analysis of that little vitamin D mill as of last week. My ex wife and I moved from there in 2006 to escape the fast crash we were expecting.
    Slightly crumbling infrastructure such as big cracks in concrete things, less updates to paint on buildings, and not so much remodels as historical but nowhere as bad as midwest with it’s falling chunks of bridges and collapsing roadside houses.
    Traffic at rush hour was very navigable, never saw that in 20 years that I used to reside there. Kinda scary in that these folks are now idle in their depreciated house.
    Beaches were lightly used, about normal for January but it was the kickest ass weather that week. Did not all these unemployed want to converge on the beach? what gives, depression? HDTV?
    Billboard ad- “Can’t talk now, phones tapped. Better meet me at the bar” “Stella Artois”
    Sign ads on telephone poles- “Cash for your Warhol”
    Keeping appearances up for sure, not many core vacant storefronts like in other Cali and Oregon cities. Many businesses scaling back, bitching about cashflow though. Outer exurb CRE going vacant in big way. No longer “available for lease”, but “for sale” seems to dominate the dusty windows.
    Food is very expensive, a meal is about double what it was in 2006 when I left. Oddly, coffee about the same.
    Tent cities bulging everywhere complete with cops in force patrolling at the fringes of downtown.
    Some enlightened downtown housing that includes trolley stop available, but not selling at all. (smartcorner)
    People are taking loans on their ‘cars’ to make downs on discounted ‘houses’ in the outer exurbs.
    that’s about it. Back in the fog now.

  270. Shakazulu January 25, 2011 at 12:28 am #

    My neighbors and I all have charts, radios, survival equipment and the means to harvest food from the ocean.
    Don’t forget to stock up on tartar sauce.

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  271. Shakazulu January 25, 2011 at 12:38 am #

    I was that kid. And now that I’ve grown up I realize my skepticism was well placed. When I learned to look at the facts and ignore the given explanations, I freed my mind.

  272. truthteller January 25, 2011 at 1:11 am #

    JJF,
    Thanks for sharing your story, and thank you for your service. I’m a Southener, and a fellow Gen-Xer. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying or wondering about who did this to us, Boomers or what have you . . . I think a big part of that is that we were all born into this huge unsustainable debacle, all of us who are currently alive, and we have all benefited and conversely, contributed, unknowingly or not, to the situation we currently face. Be thankful that you’ve had the farm experience in your lifetime, because there are people who have not had the benefit of that, and it will be useful to you and your family in the years to come, IMO. I’ve grown up in this whole shit-storm as well, and I’m thankful to my dirt-poor family back in Alabama that I’ve actually had the privilege of crapping in a real outhouse, drawing water from a well (no indoor plumbing at my grandparents house, back in my childhood), watching my grandaddy put in and tend a garden, watching my grandaddy split wood for the wood-burning stove that heated the house, watching my granny gut and pluck and scald a free-range chicken that my grandaddy blessed and beheaded of a Sunday so that we could have Sunday dinner, watching my grandmother chop a rattlesnake in half with a hoe when we gaggle of grandchildren hollered that “there’s a SNAKE, granny!” These are skills and experiences that will benefit you and yours when the day comes. I am grateful NOW for being as poor as I once was.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joNzRzZhR2Y&ob=av2el
    It may not seem like it now, but one day pretty soon you will be the “go-to” dude in your community, and you’re doing the right thing. Peace, and thanks again. Nice to meet you.

  273. turkle January 25, 2011 at 1:22 am #

    RE: CFN comments section
    The only winning move is not to play.

  274. truthteller January 25, 2011 at 1:30 am #

    Hi Tripp,
    I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while now . . . thanks for your great posts and your great blog, I follow you, dude 🙂
    You actually inspired me to move from my old apartment here in DFW to a duplex with a small yard so that I can start getting back to my “green thumb” . . . I have always enjoyed growing things, and I’ve been a subscriber to Rodale’s Organic Gardening magazine for years (as was my deceased mother) but you are the start of some awesome shit, dude! I’m building a compost bin this weekend, BTW 🙂
    Oh, and I wanted to tell you, because I read it and I was only lurking then, but I’m so sorry to hear about your whoring 🙂 goat, who lost her life to dog attack. I was really sad to hear it. My grandpa used to have a few goats, and they were like pets to us kids . . . such sweet animals, really. Anyway, thanks for all your good advice and guidance, and know that you are helping people, your efforts are not wasted.

  275. truthteller January 25, 2011 at 1:47 am #

    Myrtlemay, who would you rather buy your grass from, your local biker or some drug company?
    Biker 🙂 The biker is HONEST. You have a face-to-face relationship with the biker . . . the biker will tell you . . . “Hey, I have some awesome shit here!” or the biker will tell you “hey, man . . . this is some kind of stanky-ol’ skunky shit, I can’t tell you anything other than it’ll get you baked if you smoke enough of it” . . . and that will be true :)~

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  276. LewisLucanBooks January 25, 2011 at 1:54 am #

    I think I told this story here, before. It’s 1967. My 18th b-day. My room mate and I had just moved into our new digs. $49 a month. (and gas and a pack of cigarettes cost the same … $.25. Of course, the minimum wage was $1.25. I’m going from memory, here.) The world was not 24/7. One had to actually plan more than 5 minutes into the future.
    It’s late. We’re tired and hungry. We have bread, mayo and cans of tuna fish. No can opener. A bit messy, but my boot and a screw driver worked just fine. 🙂

  277. turkle January 25, 2011 at 1:58 am #

    What is the point of this moronic crap fest?
    Every week is the same.
    Someone writes, “First post!”
    The next couple posts are about how, “This can’t go on much longer.” or “I’m amazed at how long this has lasted.”
    Then jimjim/zsazsa/OEO or whatever her account name is this week starts writing one line vignettes that, without fail, include the words “fucktard” and “moron.” By the time the morning is over, there will be a dozen or so of these posts splattered all over the comments section. One wonders, does jimjim have a job in the private sector that he constantly champions on here? If so, what kind of retarded chimp complains about other people being moronic and lazy and then proceeds to spend the morning at work flaming people on the internet?
    Then there is Vlad, who always pulls some random crap out of his smelly ass, maybe about blacks not being able to use the white man’s toilets.
    Then Qshtik corrects a single post’s grammar and acts like a self-satisfied twat about it. If that’s what makes you feel good and warm about yourself, correcting other people’s grammar on the internet, then you need to GET A LIFE.
    And now all this talk about buying gold and silver and hoarding beans under your bed. Oh, yeah, that’s a new one. Haven’t heard that before on here.
    This board seems like a place where too many losers in real life hang out to be “right” about something or to spread their vile ideas (looking at you Vladdie boy) that are not acceptable anywhere else on planet earth.
    I know I’ve contributed my allotment of internet spooge on here over the years, and now I’m bowing out for awhile. This blog has gotten FAR off track from discussing Peak Oil, Climate Change, etc.
    Someone let me know when you’ve solved all the world’s problems, and I’ll come back. But I’m not holding my breathe.

  278. Patrizia January 25, 2011 at 2:45 am #

    If it was so easy to solve the world´s problems…
    But talking is a very small beginning.
    Besides being able to express one´s thoughts, it is also very interesting to hear what others have to say.
    That is how we develop.
    Communication is not life, but is life the way it is.
    If we couldn´t talk or write we wouldn´t improve.
    I guess the Internet is one of the greatest things that happened in my life, and I am convinced I grew a lot since I can read and communicate whith so many people.
    You are wrong, it is not useless, on the contrary, there are too few blogs like this or better, too few people who bother to read.
    If the majority would just know what is going on around them, well the world would really be different…
    And regarding being negative and pessimistic…there are too many out there so optimistic about the future and look where they have brought us…a little bit of realism would do wonders.

  279. Bustin J January 25, 2011 at 2:45 am #

    Jared Loughner believed one thing above all: there is no future.

  280. truthteller January 25, 2011 at 3:29 am #

    What is the point of this moronic crap fest?
    Turkle,
    I have in fact asked myself the same question. What is the point? I think perhaps you’re going through the “Les Miserables” stage 🙂 There really IS no point, if you want to be real about it. It’s all the same fucking day, man! (to quote Janis Joplin, on the train 🙂
    I will say I like your posts, and think you’re a bright, intelligent person. I’ve only recently come out of lurkdom myself, and I’d hate to see a bright person such as yourself leave, with only Vlad to provide filler 🙂 You ask valid questions, however . . . WTF? Why should any sane person (even a bright one) stay around and read this doomer bullshit, if there is no one here to provide even a gnat’s ass of hope? Why?
    Should Vlad lead the way? Or perhaps our esteemed BustinJ, who has recently decreed “no hope, none whatsoever . . . put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye” :)~ (stoopid prick . . . utterly useless, far as I’m concerned :)~~~
    So what do you guys have planned FOR THE FUTURE? I personally have no children, by conscious choice. But what of your CHILDREN? SURELY those of you with children give more of a shit. Let’s have a topic of hope for them.
    Regards, TT

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  281. End The Bubbles January 25, 2011 at 4:00 am #

    —Let’s just hope that the mental torture inflicted on them doesn’t turn them into a legion of Jared Lee Loughners. —-
    Oh, that would be getting off lightly. It will be much worse….

  282. Funzel January 25, 2011 at 4:43 am #

    civil rights,homosexual marriage??
    look around,ever see two male gorillas humping each other?
    No?apparently they got more sense than you mentally disturbed creatures.Now get back into the closet and do your thing,the people are really not interested in your mental problems.

  283. katnip kid January 25, 2011 at 4:56 am #

    Nope, sorry to disappoint you, Shak, I won’t be marching in O’s army, or anyone else’s, either. I’ve got their numbers.
    However, don’t think those of us on the outside looking in care too much about those who have more, have always had more and who NEVER cared or who seem so spoiled.Wow, that attitude really shocks people? Really? Gotta remember, in the future, there’s going to be more of us have-nots than those that have, doesn’t matter if the haves are blue collar, white collar, no collar, whatever.Do you really think we care if folks we see as spoiled don’t get all they planned on getting? Welcome to the future. Ain’t life a bitch. Deal with it.
    Where is their garden? Or, were they too busy back packing in Bali, or jetting off to Cancun or mall shopping? Understand?
    Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t wish for bad or misfortune on anyone. Life is a bitch enough. But, if you can’t have it all,or if your pension evaporates,well, tough cookies, some of us never had it so good.And there is going to be LOTS more of us have-nots than those that have. Why should we care if you don’t get your pension? Some of us could never plan on that. Do you care aobut us?Lots of folks will have even less. So quit complaining and start tearing up the yard for a garden.

  284. rbpexman January 25, 2011 at 7:36 am #

    Much of what I see here is the same as what I see elsewhere regarding political discussions. Many of you here are held captive by the conventional “right vs. left vs. right” mentality….you know….that bullshit that keeps you divided and the major political parties loving you?
    Both parties and both philosophies suck.
    Free your mind and your ass will follow.

  285. The Walking Dead! January 25, 2011 at 7:38 am #

    A FUCKING CANADIAN! Dog I’m still laughing!

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  286. lbendet January 25, 2011 at 7:50 am #

    Turkel,
    I’ve always enjoyed your posts and would be sorry to not have the benefit of your ideas. In the last month we seem to have lost E. and Hancock again as well. It seems that everyone just went a little haywire.
    What I don’t understand is why you bother to debate certain people that seem to be poisoning the well. What does constant race related issues have to do with a blog addressing peak oil and finance. I just skip over the noise makers and don’t get involved.
    There has been someone on this blog who has gone after me and I just ignore his posts. So what, so he insulted me, big deal.
    This is virtual communication, not personal. It has it’s place, but don’t get embroiled in conversations you don’t want to have.
    That’s all I have to say…

  287. MarlinFive54 January 25, 2011 at 7:53 am #

    The really big news is that OPRAH HAS A SISTER!!! The networks are all over it. And, oh ya, the ROYAL WEDDING coming up in April. It’s going to be FAB and everyone who is anyone will be there, just like Obamas lavish dinner for the Chinese dictator.
    There are a few other things going on, too, like an airport bombing in Moscow (35 dead), gathering riots in Cairo, and the certain upcoming genocide in The Sudan. But why bring up such unpleasantries when everyone is having such a good time!
    As for me, I can’t wait to see dresses Michelle Obama and Nancy Pelosi will be wearing tonight at the big speech in Washington.

  288. zaxxon January 25, 2011 at 8:10 am #

    James…
    I spent over 50-years paying my taxes and pursuing the ‘American Dream.” It was always in reach – but not quite yet.
    Now in my eighth decade, I no longer live in the land of my birth. Why? I can’t afford to live there anymore.
    This comment is not an exercise in self-pity, but rather a warning to the young.Protect the Constitution; because without it, our nation is doomed to an unwinding of our sacred heritage, and a scary version of fascism, American style.
    ZZZZZZ

  289. MarlinFive54 January 25, 2011 at 8:41 am #

    Zaxxon you sound like a Patriot. Did you serve in WWII, Korea?
    I was looking at photographs of my Dad’s unit taken in the Rhineland in Mar. 1945 (793 Combat Military Police Battalion). They look like young wolves. No neck tattoos, no nose rings, no purple hair.
    Just learned more about Oprah and her new found sister on ABC. Turns out, the mom, Oprahs mom, had 4 kids by four different dudes. She wasn’t married to any of them. Buy hey, what the hell, girls just wanna have fun. Today’s show: Lesbians married to gay men.
    Just another episode in the freak show that characterizes American Life, my friends.

  290. asoka January 25, 2011 at 8:43 am #

    Turkle said: “This blog has gotten FAR off track from discussing Peak Oil, Climate Change, etc.”
    ==============
    Turkle, thanks for bringing us back on track.
    One of the questions to answer about the world’s oil supply is whether the historical development of petroleum formation has been biogenic and non-biogenic.
    If you go with the “abiotic” oil formation theory then the concept of “peak oil” is destroyed, i.e. with abiotic oil formation the notion that world oil production is destined to reach a maximum, that will be followed by an irreversible decline, doesn’t make any sense.
    I suspect that peak oil is first and foremost a matter of production flows. Consequently, the mechanism of oil formation does not strongly affect depletion. If you could prove to me the extreme — and unlikely — hypothesis of abiotic petroleum formation, then I would gladly eliminate “peak oil” from my vocabulary.
    As a CFN optimist (there aren’t many of us among the doomsters) I would like to address the whole “peak oil” thing in a more optimistic way.
    So here goes: the end of the oil age will come long before the world physically runs out of oil.
    If you think that is not a realistic assessment, please provide evidence to the contrary, and then we will be discussing peak oil on this blog.
    My source of evidence includes academic, industry, and government sources. BP, Shell, the IEA, etc. all recognize that we have reached the end of “easy oil” but we do not have a proven physical shortage of oil reserves. (Yes, even Shell is aware of “peak oil” and thinks it will come in 2015).
    But other studies conclude that oil production will be around 115 million barrels a day in 2030 with no evidence of a peak in supply before 2030.
    The expectation is that oil’s share of global demand will fall from 34% now to 30% in 2030 according to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook (2009).
    If we are anywhere over 100 million barrels a day in 2030, then we will be over current production levels, which means we have not hit peak oil yet.
    Consider also that the world is very busy reducing its reliance on hydrocarbons and the share of zero-carbon fuels is rapidly increasing.
    I understand your weariness with the moronic insults on this blog, and your desire to return to a discussion of peak oil, but instead of focusing on “peak oil” we should be focusing on global energy security from a multitude of sources that are complementing and will replace oil as the primary fuel.
    We also cannot isolate “peak oil” from other factors like population (world population, which has nothing to do with “illegal” immigration in national settings), per capita income, economic structure (communism will win out as the People’s Republic of China becomes the world’s biggest superpower), and fuel mix.
    Thanks again for bring CFN back to the topic of peak oil. I am questioning whether peak oil has happened globally. Even if it has, we will have decades of dwindling oil supply on the downside while alternatives are sought. Thorium reactors, anyone? http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html

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  291. lbendet January 25, 2011 at 9:04 am #

    Good post–much more to the point of this blog. I thought you might want to check out a long-term international consortium for fusion. It’s a great site and it is kept up-to-date on what’s being tested and where. Iter is in the process of being built in the south of France, but there is some off-site testing.
    http://www.iter.org/default.aspx

  292. asoka January 25, 2011 at 9:19 am #

    lbendet, while I wish the fusion folks all the luck they will need, the fusion promise is in the future.
    The thorium reactor is a proven technology which successfully produced power for four years in the 60’s before being cut because one thing thorium does not do is provide byproduct for nuclear weapons.
    The use of thorium-based fuel cycles has been studied for about 40 years, but on a much smaller scale than uranium or uranium/plutonium cycles. Basic research and development has been conducted in Germany, India, Japan, Russia, the UK and the USA. Test reactor irradiation of thorium fuel to high burn-ups has also been conducted and several test reactors have either been partially or completely loaded with thorium-based fuel.
    I hope fusion can be implemented on a large scale. I know thorium can because it has a decades long track record. More on thorium’s research and development history here:
    http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html

  293. Cash January 25, 2011 at 9:47 am #

    …there’s more to life than just race. – Vlad
    Vladdie old bean, there’s hope for you yet.

  294. orionoir January 25, 2011 at 10:12 am #

    {That’s where the wave goes, it dies out like the remainder of its kind. The people stay alive. I for one am not happy to haul myself into a standing position when it comes, and certainly not twice. The hands—what do I do with my hands!? I can’t smoke!}
    ———-
    s, i don’t know if i’ve ever encountered someone who thinks as you do, and, heck, i’ve been around. otoh, some of what you write is acute, blindingly lucid… phrases and ideas for wh i make immediate effort my memory to etch; otoh, a close read of more than one paragraph gives me migraines.
    what i know and love of science is its metaphors; beyond that, i don’t understand the math, i haven’t done the reading, and i’m too lazy to do any original thinking. i wonder if perhaps some of your mastery is as mine, eg, metaphorical.
    in high school they taught us of light’s dual nature, wave and particle. was not this the classic muddle: if (outer) space is a vacuum, eg, absolute nothingness, how do light waves travel? the fix was to assume an “ether,” some magical substance transiting all manner of vibration.
    once again, i’m just a guy nursing a scotch down the end of the bar, not even full of sound & fury. still, i’ve read “high energy physics for dummies,” i’ve hung with a chick now working at cern’s large hardon accelerator; i know a little, and baby i can guess the rest.
    more high school physics: a wave approaching shallow water increases in amplitude. thus, when The Wave transits an arena, short people precipitate high-frequency ripples opposite the flow of the principal wave. inevitably, standing waves occur as the secondary wave falls in and out of sync with its parent.
    if we understood crowd behavior there would be no financial markets. however, the concept of “quantum entanglement” offers rich theoretical avenues.
    my experience with esp is maddeningly opaque, as if by nature. many many times i’ve wanted special knowledge and done my darnedest to perceive it, but if anything the results are worse than mere chance. still, we all have had a prophetic dream or two, no? i had impossible knowledge of my grandfather’s death, even though i was not particularly close to him. when my coach died i tried for months to sense his presence, to no avail. as they say: he’s not with god, he’s fucking dead.
    still, at the risk of blowing this comment away, let me see if i can find a link to an interesting psychology experiment, which is peer-reviewed, replicated, etc. these guys are the ones who borrowed the ‘quantum entanglement’ phrase from particle physics; if nothing else, you gotta love em for that.
    interesting blog
    ———
    http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2010/02/quantum-biology-now-quantum-psychology.html
    well, i don’t stb finding the experiment i was thinking about, but !jumpin jehosaphat! there is a ton of interesting google results for “quantum entanglement psychology,” including some web site wh seems to be a clearinghouse for exotic mushrooms. now i’ve a serious hankering for some good shiitake…

  295. Cash January 25, 2011 at 10:13 am #

    I think you told part of it a while back but not the part about the can of tuna and the screw driver. Great story. Ah youth.
    You talked about prices. The first time I shopped for groceries was the first time I paid attention to prices. I paid $8 for a bag of groceries. And on the way home I kept thinking holy shit, eight bucks, eight bucks, I’m going to go broke, how the fuck did I blow eight bucks.

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  296. Qshtik January 25, 2011 at 10:15 am #

    Someone let me know when you’ve solved all the world’s problems, and I’ll come back. But I’m not holding my breathe.
    ==========
    Oh God, no!! Shane come back Shane. (BTW it’s breath. Go to Dictionary.com)

  297. newworld January 25, 2011 at 10:25 am #

    Cash, No there is not, what you spouted was silly kiddy ideology crammed into your head by Mommy Professor and his/her little cult of terrorizers (they will call you bad names or threaten you).
    As if any Africans, Asians or Israeli Jews want to be physically replaced.

  298. Cash January 25, 2011 at 10:30 am #

    Tripp, do you brew your own grog?

  299. Cash January 25, 2011 at 10:35 am #

    Newworld what are you talking about, you’ve lost me.

  300. mow January 25, 2011 at 10:52 am #

    fusion power is a pipe dream.
    stop watching those star trek reruns.

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