JHK’s Three-Act Play
Woe is unto the world. It doesn’t know whether to shit or go blind. The rule of law has been replaced by Murphy’s Law. The story in Greece gets more and more curious. One of the latest proposals is to ask holders of Greek bonds to go along with a voluntary rollover, meaning we will pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today, even though we already owe you for ten years of weekly hamburgers.
Odd how the financial innovation never ceases. This last great new idea: that bonds never really have to pay off, will do wonders for the bond market everywhere. People will clamor for bonds that come with no clear terms and probably no redemptions. Now, the buzz around the cosmic meme-sphere is saying fuggedabowt Greece, we’re gonna do the same thing with Portugal and its sillyass bonds. Enter China.
Europe is about to enjoy the greatest monetary Chinese fire drill ever staged. Wen Jiabao will wave a magic wand and the Euro will fly above mundane reality on dragon wings allowing everybody in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy to hold a senior management job at the motor vehicle bureau with retirement at 53. Then, with 80 percent of their former pay, they can open cafes where people still working at the motor vehicle bureau can spend the better part of each afternoon sipping Ouzo and arguing politics, finance, sports… or just enjoying the antics of the boorish German tourists.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs’s man in Europe, Mario Draghi, will take a seat in Jean Trichet’s big chair at the European Central Bank around November of this year. It was Goldman Sachs, apparently, that erected a giant credit default swap house of cards for Europe to live in happily-ever-after – except in the event of a default accident, in which case Goldman Sachs would receive all the money ever printed on God’s green Earth, plus commissions, premiums, penalty payouts, interest, and bonuses… and homeless Europe would then be welcome to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut – or make that a strawberry Bismarck! Personally, I don’t see how the various players can delay some sort of crisis until November. The European currency experiment is a bust and too many big banks are just plain insolvent. Can Wen Jiabao launch another flying dragon that seeds the European skies with counterparty payoffs that will rain down from Dublin to Athens and keep everybody happy?
Don’t get the idea that the USA can just occupy a grandstand seat and stuff its fat face with Cheez Doodles while the current act plays out in the center ring of the world financial circus. Plenty of intermingled American interests depend on how things work out over there, not the least of which is the fact that the International Monetary Fund is actually a proxy American bail-out operation. It worked just fine in the old days when its exertions focused on little urchin nations like Swaziland, but wait until the Tea Party hears that America runs twelve thousand cafes for European motor vehicle bureaucrats to while away the afternoons drinking Ouzo in. (At least maybe we can get them to drink Old Mr. Boston anisette liqueur instead.)
It does prompt one to think we might try something like that here. Would it not improve the national character generally if our citizens spent more time arguing politics in cafes than lying on the couch watching a TV figment named “Snooki” throw standing crotch-locks on every unemployed forklift driver in the mythical kingdom of New Jersey?
If I were Barack Obama, I’d think twice about presiding over this irresolvable muddle of engineered swindles, sinking prospects, booby-trapped budgets, and played-out lies for another term. Let Hillary step in and try to keep this leaky Flying Dutchman out of the drink. She’s looking more and more like Winston Churchill physically every day now, anyway. Maybe she is acquiring something like his stolid habits of mind, too. If I were President Obama, I’d just call it quits and sign on with the home team: Goldman Sachs. He can have Mario Draghi’s old job – chief of the international division. They’ll love him in all those peculiar little countries where people wear hats that look like rat-traps and flavor their beer with the cocoons of nectar-sipping moths. They’ll enjoy it when he forecloses on them, and maybe even ask for more. “Here, take our grandchildren’s baby teeth, too!” I wish him and his beautiful family well in their new life as distinguished private citizens-of-the-world. I just hope Michele Bachmann and her probable running mate, Jesus, don’t steal the next election. They’ll rip out the Obamas’ vegetable garden and put a Nascar track there so that all of Ms. Bachmann’s 27 children can have jobs selling miniature bibles in the parking lot. (“Prayed over by qualified preachers twenty-four hours a day!”)
By the by, many observers were amused by last week’s cute trick of releasing sixty million barrels of oil from the world’s strategic reserves at the rate of two million-a-day in an effort to pretend that the world doesn’t have a basic oil production problem. It is, of course, at the bottom of the world’s financial disarray, because if you can’t increase energy inputs that feed an industrial economy you don’t get growth and then the whole idea of compound interest falls apart because it is predicated on a perpetual increase in wealth. Hence, debt collapses in on itself. The world is caught up in an epochal contraction now, and it manifests in situations like the Greek emergency. But soon it will be a universal emergency.
The lesson, if I may be tendentious for moment, is that the human race is welcome at any time to begin living differently, at a smaller scale, much more locally, with fewer automatic machines doing all the work for us, and more time spent on useful and necessary activities than on television fantasies. Got a problem with oil? Don’t imagine that you’re going to run WalMart – or, for that matter, Goldman Sachs – on wheat-straw distillates. Something is in the air this week and it is making a lot of people very nervous. If you loaded up the old investment portfolio with shale gas stocks, I feel especially sorry for you.
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First!
First!
Okay, damn! Second!
Oh, come on… Obama won’t leave office until his “no banker left behind” program has ensured their profits forever.
This doomed juggernaut will probably chug along for another year, between the self-serving interests and the law of inertia that will desperately keep the U.S. Titanic afloat.
I’m glad I took the time to travel the entire USA by automobile a few years back and see all the sites over a 10,000 mile 6 week journey…
I’m sad that my dreams of traveling to see the world won’t ever materialize with the way things are going…
Oh well, Just enjoy digging in the dirt.
PUSH ON. DO GOOD. KEEP SMILING.
Can I read the Witch of Hebron first, or do you have to read World Made by Hand first?
Currently Reading “OFF THE GRID” by Nick Rosen.
That’s Bachmann– 2 n’s, the second one is for nitwit.
We are well and truly past the point of reversing this train wreck…now it’s time to circle the wagons and get our sh*t together.
Heal your body so it can deal with the coming changes. Calm your mind so you can think clearly and adapt.
Wandering Sage Wisdom
“If you loaded up the old investment portfolio with shale gas stocks, I feel especially sorry for you.”
A spot-on final comment there, JHK. According to an article in today’s NYT science section entitled
“Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush” the shale gas plays are being questioned for their profitability by the energy businesses themselves. Not that that is news to us mind you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26gas.html?hpw
Interestingly, China has just put in an order that will save Saab from shutting down as they were headed down the toilet: “Saab handed lifeline as carmaker wins order from Chinese company” http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/27/saab-lifeline-carmaker-chinese-order?INTCMP=SRCH
It seems China is now doing the old U.S. job of stepping in and saving foreign car makers. What’s the world coming to? As if we didn’t know…
“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”
-John Kenneth Galbraith
—————————————
One of these days (or not) Jimmy boy is going to realize this applies to all his other areas of “expertise” in forecasting as well.
Oh so profound James; too bad the corporate oligarchy and their ilk have made frank dissemination of a reality-based national narrative so taboo.
http://www.gwabert.com/
“at a smaller scale”. You just can’t bring yourself to say government at a smaller scale too, can you? Your writings are slowly coming around to sounding like a Tea Partier yourself. Ain’t life a bitch?
“Let Hillary step in and try to keep this leaky Flying Dutchman out of the drink. She’s looking more and more like Winston Churchill physically every day now, anyway.”
Except that Winston had cuter legs when he dressedup in his Order of the Garter outfit with the tight leggings and knee high socks! Also, not being impeded by Hillary’s Methodism Winston could get away with drinking a fifth a day, starting with a whiskey and soda upon waking at 11am sharp each morning. If Hillary is to put up with all this nonsense she’ll have to start emulating Winston’s drinking habits as well.
One of the latest proposals is to ask holders of Greek bonds to go along with a voluntary rollover, meaning we will pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today, even though we already owe you for ten years of weekly hamburgers.
==
It’s NOT about paying off debts. It’s about keeping you a slave to the debt system so you keep paying the interest on money/credit that’s created out of nothing with nothing to back it up except your stupidity and hard labor.
“If I were Barack Obama, I’d think twice about presiding over this irresolvable muddle of engineered swindles, sinking prospects, booby-trapped budgets, and played-out lies for another term. Let Hillary step in and try to keep this leaky Flying Dutchman out of the drink.”
He does not know what to do, unless his owners tell him what to do, James. And Hillary will be no different…
sandy, kulturcritic
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/obama%E2%80%99s-new-war-fueling-the-spectacle/
Sad, really, does ANYONE remember when the US used to be a lender nation? Now its the biggest debtor nation on Earth.
And will Obama ever find the balls to challenge the Repubs on the “Job killing tax hikes” mantra? The answer is probably ‘No’. What to the ultra rich do with thier tax cuts? Create jobs here? Ha-ha-ha!!! Perhaps in China, but what they really do is invest in hedge funds that will make them even richer. I don’t see why anyone is arguing to keep the Bush tax cuts when the fed debt is such an obvious problem. Oh, thats right, No Billionaire Left Behind. Well, its all going to blow up sometime.
Still glad I left the USA, even if we have to unplug all the electronics here during lightning storms. But the mangoes are practically free, the avocados are soo cheap, and the food is fresh, ripe and NOT full of preservatives or insecticides. And I get my coffee from the local fincas. Ummm, bueno!
Hasta luego, hope you have a liferaft.
Wait, there’s more! You left out the part about Fort Calhoun. And Jeff Master’s review of weather for 2010 on weather underground. Wow!!!
Hey simple; Just abolish money altogether … and everything else falls into place. Jack
Hillary should take up another of Winston’s habits – Cigars.
She just has to roll over and ask Billary for a fresh supply while humming “to all the girls Ive loved before” while screwing herself down into a blue pants suit…
Yeah, that ought to do the trick… OR maybe a long vacation with Huma and her family…
With regard to the actions of the IEA last week. It was done to discourage oil speculation as thus enforce some sort of back-door control of oil prices. But speculation is an essential part of any advanced economy.
Some two millennia BCE one Jusef Ben Jacob, acting as chancellor to the Pharoah of Egypt, adopted a strict program of grain storage during years of bumper-crop harvests. The common folk must have grumbled that prices were kept artificially high due to the withholding of grain from the market. But Ben Jacob was vindicated when harvests turned bad and the stored grain was released to the market.
Modern speculators provide much the same function, though in a more haphazard fashion. Obama and the IEA have interfered with the process of ‘price discovery’ by injecting oil into an already well supplied market – the reverse of what Ben Jacob did – and terribly short sighted.
If Ben Jusef were alive today he might be moved to comment, “look, the fools are eating their seed grain!”
Further signs of the approaching apocalypse:
Michael Jackson’s jacket from “Thriller” was auctioned off for $1.8 Million.
The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team has filed for bankruptcy protection.
Despite consumer spending at its lowest level in 20 months, the stock market opens higher.
Yes, we have well and truly fallen down the rabbit-hole. I wonder what we’ll find when we hit the bottom.
We all know there is a major reckoning coming as the consequences of peak-everything start to sink in. The Republicans have been accused of praying for the economy to tank in the short term, so they can ride the wave of dissatisfaction back into office. If so I sympathize, as I am DEFINITELY and UNAPOLOGETICALLY praying they are in office when the real shit hits the fan. The single most important thing that needs to happen is for Reaganism to be discredited, as that mistaken ideology is what makes today’s America the single greatest obstacle to dealing with our real problems as a species. Signed, A Canadian (and therefore not a Democrat)
Both books can be considered “stand alone” in that they each make sense if read by themselves, but it’s easier to follow the characters and the multi-level crisis if you read “The Witch of Hebron” after “World Made by Hand”. My opinion….
I see we’re hating Michelle Bachmann today and, as always, NASCAR. Jim, did someone once abduct you and force you to breathe in automobile fumes against your will? I’m not a NASCAR fan, but can handle it effectively by just not attending a race. I know it’s a waste of fuel, but it makes many people happy and you’re being quite the elitist by deciding that it’s okay for MegaButt Michelle Obama to waste much more fuel and the resulting emissions to ensure her entertainment and that of her friends and family and hangers-on. In addition, NASCAR fans support their habit with their own earnings, they’re not grifting it from the taxpayer.
When are you going to address the current ugliness occurring in our large cities? You have mentioned the unease and anger you’re sensing and many of us sense it, too, only I’d got a step further and term it “RAGE”. There’s so much fury in our country today and our national character is beginning to change beliefs and behaviors to deflect it. This is dangerous on so many levels. And, Surprise!!!!, the flash mobs don’t seem to be made up of NASCAR fans or stupid Southeners. Is that why they’re getting a pass from you?
Seems like China won the cold war…for now. What makes people believe that they actually have money? They don’t of course, and we’ll find that out before too long.
Aimlow Joe was here.
http://www.aimlow.com
So, if Greece is offering to pay everyone Tuesday for a hamburger today, does that make Greece Wimpy and everyone else Popeye and Olive Oyl? Greece hopes so, because if everyone else is Bluto, the answer might be no plus a knuckle sandwich, one that might break the hand of the rest of the world along with Wimpy’s mouth. Then again, in Greek, the character’s name isn’t Wimpy, it’s ?????? or Polnto. Now that I’ve typed that, any Greeks reading will get your reference. You can thank me later.
In addition to Greece, I figured that you would write about President Obama, along with the rest of the International Energy Agency, releasing oil from their reserves. If I had written a Karnak predicts post, both of those topics would have been in it, but I didn’t. However, I did write about that topic and predicted that you’d have something snarky to say about it, and I was right. Unfortunately, I buried the lede and made the title about falling gas prices in Detroit, when the story really was about Obama trying to stimulate the economy to help his re-election while at the same time kicking the oil companies and commodities speculators while the price goes down. So far, it’s working.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2011/06/gas-prices-drop-for-second-week-in.html
Speaking of Obama’s re-election, he’s not going to give up on it and let Hillary run instead. He’s taking a look at Snow White and the Seven+ Dwarves over on the Republican side and thinking he might just get lucky one more time. The best you could hope for is that Hillary and Joe Biden switch jobs. That rumor has been going around for more than a year, but I don’t think that will happen, either.
As for Bachmann, a friend of mine made a photoshop of her as Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest.” My reaction to that was to remark, “‘No wire hangers!’ indeed. They might be used for abortions if Representative Batshit is elected and gets her way.”
I see you ignored marriage equality being signed into law in New York this week. That was probably smart of you.
We should all become Greeks.
The American work ethic is overrated. I’m serious. We rush about to maintain our crappy suburban lifestyles in cars that cost too much. My Greek barber once ripped out his lawn and planted an orchard. It was the only work other than cutting hair that he ever did. When the suburban neighbors complained, he pretended he did not speak English and tore out more lawn. He told me, “Fuck the grass. Americans are crazy. I am Greek and I like to EAT.”
We Americans, on the other hand, work like Dilbert, disposable workers in service of a bunch of rich bastards who buy our elections to put more rich bastards in office.
What if we ALL became honorary Greeks?
“Would it not improve the national character generally if our citizens spent more time arguing politics in cafes”
Absolutely, Jim. Nowadays we just yell back at the TV or radio and get fat eating crappy food. I think we should be like the old Greek guys at the Starbucks near me. They sit around and yell at each other for hours, eat decent pastries, teasing the hot baristas, then all go home laughing, telling jokes with the guys they were just yelling at.
I was in Athens a few years back: same scene. It was not tourist season so I just hung out with Greeks and soon I was a slacker, too, buying rounds of coffee as they practiced their English and Spanish on me.
If we become less obsessed about working so dang hard, live modestly, stop making a fetish of our houses, cars, and electronic doo-dads, we might just hang out more, drink good coffee, and yell happily at each other.
Then we’ll all live to be crusty old Greek guys. This is my dream.
Don’t forget we also need to tear up most of the parking lots so old dudes can abuse each other over a game of Boule. I’m a pretty good player, btw, so you’ll be paying for the next round of coffees.
The Chinese might give us trouble when we become a nation of jovial but active and Stoic bums, instead of mean-spirited fat fundamentalist workaholics. No worries. We’ll nuke ’em with the weapons left over from our Imperial legacy or, better still, begin a campaign of subversion to turn THEM into Greeks too.
JK – I loved the essay. All the references to “Americana” consumption…… the good old days – back when savings account would result in more wealth than loss to inflation.
I can remember the S&L paying 8 percent – up to the point when the FDIC closed them up. Ah yes, the good old days – when the government at least acted like the “law” existed.
Which brings me to the questions surrounding the “situations” across the Financial Kingdoms that currently reign over world commerce and credit.
Is it possible to identify the people whose wealth is aligned with these financial atomic-bombs-bonds about to go off? If these Kings of Finance are holding other “instruments of finance” – such as CDOs or shares in specific Hedge Funds can we really know who wins or loses when when the more “simple instruments – known as bonds default?
And speaking of “law” and “language” – which country – or which Financial Kingdoms get to define “default”??
Where is the world now? In this labyrinth of deceit and deception among financial powers – who are the umpires that get to call a “spade a spade?”
How will the players in the grandstands know whether their tickets are winners? How will they know if the odds are computed correctly to pay out their race tickets?
I guess what I’m really asking is who’s managing the Casino? Or is this more like a Monopoly Game where the rules change depending which players threaten to quit or go home?
Excellent. Right to the spicy in-your-face the party IS over point.
The prez ought to read this – word for word – during the next state of the union address.
Jim,
Loved tuning into CFN and finding out that Bally’s Las Vegas has no resort fees! An ad for a casino in the capitol of unreality? On CFN?
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since they are marketing AT ME based on google searches done on this computer… (funny, I prefer my unreality in Atlantic City, you would think google would know this) and Jim isn’t picking the ads anymore.
Oh well, I guess their money is pixelated like everyone elses!
You could have saved yourself a bunch of typing by just saying “F**king ni66ers”. Sweet butterscotch Jeebus, this country has lost its mind.
Is it possible to identify the people whose wealth is aligned with these financial atomic-bombs-bonds about to go off? – Bud
Yes it is possible. When the inevitable non payment of interest or principal happens the owners of these bonds will have to do some rather painful write-offs. That’s assuming the accounting is done honestly.
But, as we know and as the enactment of Sarbanes Oxley demonstrated, accountants have worked long and hard to make lawyers look like paragons of moral rectitude and have by and large succeeded.
But regardless of the accounting games playing, the owners of these bonds forked over money to buy them. And, regardless of the technicalities of what constitutes “default”, these bond owners are not going to get repaid. They are SOL.
Nobody is managing the casino. A long time ago we succumbed to conservative/right wing idiocy that markets are self regulating. Even a luminary like Greenspan was against prosecution of fraud because, according to him, other market players would supposedly punish transgressors. Well maybe they would but not until the con men fuck off with the loot.
So regulatory bodies are window dressing and not much more. They do a few take-downs now and again but they are largely the preserve of sleepy-heads and clock watchers.
Don’t feel bad. Canada is the wild west of white collar crime. Why? Because so matter how bad your regulatory and enforcement regimes are they look like hives of investigative/prosecutorial zeal compared to ours. Everyday they exist our regulators re-define uselessness.
And Jeff Master’s review of weather
================
Pop, the apostrophe goes after the s, not before.
Uncle Ned brought up this whole issue yesterday, and referenced the same article! Uncle Ned might not weigh in often, but he’s never asleep at the switch!
“allowing everybody in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy to hold a senior management job at the motor vehicle bureau with retirement at 53.”
I know you’re exaggerating, but you don’t have to go to old Yurp to find this kind of nonsense. That’s exactly how it works in the State of New Jersey. It’s common for cops in Dirty Jersey to earn over $100K. They retire in their 40’s with $80K-$90K pensions and Cadillac health plans. The same day they retire many start work as some other government job. They collect a full pension and a full paycheck. If they last another 10 years at the new government job, they are entitled to a second pension. Gov Crisco closed the whole in the budget by cutting the guts out of social programs that help the state’s most vulnerable the same time he gave tax cut to the state’s millionaires.
Like I said, ol’ Yurp ain’t got nothing over the good ol’ US of ‘merica.
“Could anyone on the Republican side fuck things up worse than Obama has?” There’s a hierarchy to these things. Today’s Republicans are the prophets of loss of contact with reality, the Democrats merely their cowed acolytes. So in other words, yes, they could.
Also, apropos of JHK’s final remark:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26gas.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fnational%2Findex.jsonp
With regard to the actions of the IEA last week.
===============
Thank you Pedal for succinctly explaining why speculation is not the evil so many at this site think it is.
JHK writes: “It does prompt one to think we might try something like that here. Would it not improve the national character generally if our citizens spent more time arguing politics in cafes than lying on the couch watching a TV figment named “Snooki” throw standing crotch-locks on every unemployed forklift driver in the mythical kingdom of New Jersey?” I agree, though I have no idea who or what “Snooki” is. If our national pastime were chess (for example) instead of NASCAR and the NFL, etc., which is to say if we lost our national phobia concerning use of the intellect itself, we might be making better decisions as a nation. Here’s a forbidden thought: didn’t Karl Marx predict that captitalism would eventually collapse from its own inner contradictions? I wonder what such a collapse would look like. It’s not necessary to buy into Marx’s supposed solutions to accept the validity of his criticisms.
-Phut
IMO Obama had a clear chance to avoid calamity and he didn’t take it. There’s an old saying in finance: your first loss is your least loss. The more the PTB try to kick this mess down the road the bigger the loss will be in the end.
Why? Because they throw good money after bad, they let the behaviours that caused this disaster go on. It’s BAU on Wall Street. The old system of crony capitalism is still in place. And it’s not just Wall Street.
Stress tests? Bullshit. You still have mountains of financial garbage teetering on toothpicks of equity. What we had a couple years ago was just an appetizer.
But IMO to be fair you can’t just pin this on Obama. It’s been the doing of more than 30 years and successive administrations.
“The Republicans could NOT fuck things up as much. Nice try. Back to square one.”
I usually try to avoid the Dem/GOP debate, but this is the kind of delusional horseshit that prevents us from ever fixing anything. When Wall Street wanted to raise leverage limits to 30:1 and beyond, it wasn’t a Democrat who enabled them. Phil Gramm, who owns much of the blame for this mess, is not a Democrat (although he was aided and abetted by Democrats).
Your hyperpartisan blinders will likely cause you to go back and support the same criminals who put us in this mess. Your time would be better spent trying to help engineer a non-partisan return to By The People, For the People, but our window of opportunity may be already passed.
One of the things talked about most in this blog is Contraction and managing contraction. It seems obvious to me that EVERYTHING that is happening in this world is a process of avoiding managing Contraction (at all cost). One day somebody that everyone listens too will speak the words that “To manage Contraction” you are going to get less….”And starting Right Away”. Everybody will object to cutting what they get and will be fine with cutting what the guy next to them gets. No one WANTS to be the one…Hence Chaos.
What I’m rather concerned about is the Teapublican House of Representatives refusing to approve a budget and making the Inevitable Crash happen that much sooner (IOW, early September) than it otherwise would have. Oh well, there is a school of doomer thought that says an earlier collapse would be ultimately better than a later one. Maybe they’re right.
This past weekend, at a PGA tournament in Hartford, CT, one of the poorest cities per capita in N America, $6 million was paid out to the winner and top finishers in our annual Golf extravaganza.
How bad can things possibly be, then?
On the surface anyway, normal life carries on, reassuring everybody that, fundamentally, everything is OK. When reality asserts itself it will be quite a shock, I think!
-Marlin
Great comment Smokyjoe. Slackers unite!
Until they do the economy will remain in gridlock. – F
Precisely. Writing their losses off the books is just a recognition that this money will never come back. It’s gone. No hope. It could mean that in future (or maybe even right away) the banks won’t be able to pay their obligations. So be it. Get it over with and put them under.
I saw your comment about GM and Chrysler. I read somewhere that the world has production capacity for 90 million vehicles per year but a market for 60 million. Self explanatory. And GM and Chrysler have long long records of fucking up. Perfect candidates for the junk heap. Had they been allowed to go belly up it would have focused a lot of minds in the auto industry both management and union alike.
“You seem to have forgotten all about Fannie/Freddie.”
I see that you get your information mainly from Rush/Sean/Glenn. Get a clue:
Poor brown people did not crash the economy.
Do you really believe that banks are forced to do anything in this wreck of a country?
Hello Sweeties! Every time I read these lively discussions I find myself wondering what it would be like if everyone was sitting in a pub having these discussions over a pint. (Except the one poor dear in the group who needs medical attention. Please everyone, don’t encourage him.) It’s funny what happens when people become real individuals instead of a collection of assumptions.
Since today’s JHK post seems a cobbled together rehash of old thoughts phoned in for the day (I say that with affection, I mean gosh, he’s awfully prolific! He can’t be brilliant ALL the time) I thought it would be a good time to go a little deeper.
Think about content vs. structure. Content is ever changing. Structure is what lies beneath. E.g. Someone murders someone else = structure. The girlfriend’s affair, the unpaid debt, the impugned honor etc. etc. = content. Ultimately, the CONTENT of the event that triggered the murder isn’t really what triggered the murder. The STRUCTURE of the trigger is always that the murderer’s sense of self was threatened with annihilation.
Are you with me?
Now let’s look at everything we talk about here. Credit default schemes; passive consumption of media, concepts and cheetos; propaganda machines that convince ordinary working people that tax hikes for the rich will somehow hurt them; rapacious destruction of the earth; anger at “brown” people for making life hard for us “white” people; fear of gays becoming a normal part of life — if all of this is CONTENT, what is the STRUCTURE. What is the underlying truth of it all that seems not to change. What do you think? CAN the structure change?
I don’t see why anyone is arguing to keep the Bush tax cuts when the fed debt is such an obvious problem.>/i>
question #2: if annual tax revenues are 1.16 trillion (2007), where did the Federal Reserve get $14-23 trillion to hand to banks? WHY THE FUCK do we need TAXES at all if they can just PRINT 10-15 TIMES annual tax revenues and hand it to goldman sachs, citi bank et al???
Still glad I left the USA, even if we have to unplug all the electronics here during lightning storms. But the mangoes are practically free, the avocados are soo cheap, and the food is fresh, ripe and NOT full of preservatives or insecticides.
hahah, Dee, where are you, central america? it’s the same down here in brazil, you unplug when the lightning hits sometimes, very funny, same mangos, coffee, pick-from-the-tree, veeerrrry nice
peace bud
After all, precedent has been set. – F
Bingo. Up here we forked out billions for GM and Chrysler. There’s a long list of companies that would’ve like bail outs. So why GM and Chrysler? Why are these citizens favoured by govts over those? Can’t have this.
On a happier note I found this by accident when I was googling something else. Give a listen. It’s quick I promise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI_fB2kY9Os&NR=1
You like? More:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUYk0zdNi1s&feature=related
Funny JHK sympathizes with people who loaded up on shale gas stocks.
I own some shale gas stocks myself but reduced them the last couple weeks.
Why? Because they are finding so much of the goddam stuff that natural gas in North America may be dirt cheap for a very long time.
The reason shale gas stocks are doing poorly is the low prices. The low prices are because there is so damn much of the stuff.
This is the antithesis of peak oil (peak gas, in this case).
I just find it odd that Kunstler is highlighting the poor performance of shale gas stocks considering that the low prices are a consequence of natural gas being too abundant, hardly something that is consistent with Kunstler’s core beliefs.
I am convinced that the die off of the human race (aka the Long Emergency) will be postponed for a few decades on account of shale gas. The question for me is, are we going to expand our use of natural gas enough (as a replacement for oil in transportation and as a replacement for dirty coal in electric power generation) enough that gas will go up enough to be a profitable business?
In the long run, yes Peak Fossil Fuels are coming. But it is going to be delayed. And also keep in mind there hasn’t been much exploration for shale gas in other countries yet. There is liable to be a fair amount in places besides just North America.
I am a believer in Peak Oil. But I am also a believer that people shouldn’t be so in love with their theories that they aren’t willing to adjust them to changing facts. It seems to me Peak Oilers often tend to be totally dismissive of any facts that suggest additional supplies that could push out the disaster a bit further in the future.
I mean, it’s not that surprising. We are well on the way to using up the easy oil/gas and a lot of the large known alternative sources are horrendous economically and EROEI wise. But what’s so surprising about new development techniques causing us to obtain some decent sized additional supplies that are economically viable?
Investing in shale gas stocks is risky because the stuff may just be too darn abundant. That is why I found it odd that Kunstler mentioned the poor recent performance of those stocks.
Ben Bernanke’s problem is to figure out how to keep fractious politicians from allowing the house of cards to collapse too soon. All we have to do is to declare bankruptcy on Monday after everyone else folded on Friday. Extend and pretend will only come to an end when everyone else has collapsed or when a Black Swan event (an exploding Nebraska nucular power plant, perhaps flooded by the swollen Missouri River? War in the South China Sea? Israel collapsing? Who knows – it wouldn’t be a Black Swan if it were predictable) brings everything crashing.
The crash will be horrible, that’s why no one in charge wants to allow it to happen because all will be lost and those with most to lose will lose that too. If you have any delusions about how horrible it will be look to history to be your guide and you can prepare all you want (I have tried to of couse as I’m human) but you will regret these days of Phony War and faux abundance.
The underlying structure? People need to eat, they need clothes and shelter. And other things too, both needs and wants, both psychological and physical. And you have an Earth that will sometimes give what we want and need and sometimes won’t and societies of fellow humans that do likewise. That’s the basic structure IMO. Hard to change.
OC /USA…Lifeguards making 200k a year..
And lets not forget Mr Rizzo, who wants city to pay his legal bill…
‘City Manager, Robert Rizzo Caught Stealing $800000 per year from poor … Here is Rizzo with his million dollar home ……………….
Los Angeles County prosecutor accused Bell’s former city administrator, Robert Rizzo, of stealing more than $5 million from ‘
That’s right. If we taxpayers can backstop trillions created by the bankers to rescue the bonuses and stock values of banks then by god, we can backstop a few trillion more to guarantee the social security trust fund, medicare and to guarantee national health care to American citizens.
Read the McClatchy article that I posted, and tell us all how it is incorrect/inaccurate. We’ll wait…
Hey Spider/Old6699, regarding you scurrilous comments directed at some of the female Posters here, i.e. Alexandra & SJMom, why don’t you take the advice of others here and shut the f—k up!
You need your ass kicked, and I mean that figurativly.
Please go away.
-Marlin
Yes of course – there are “mutual funds” that are invested in these bonds. Right?
But my understanding of the situation is that many of the bond holding entities also hold CDOs and other instruments that “hedge” their investments in bonds against losses.
These “multi-position investment strategies – I believe – is what accounts for much of the business profits at JP Morgan and GS the last few years.
It is my understanding that much perceived “wealth” or financial interest is riding on the “definition of default.”
There is a momentous financial transaction about to transpire among members of the EU and the sovereigns of Greece. How this transaction is defined may in some part become the new paradigm, the new reality that either “kicks the can” down the road successfully or ultimately crashes the world financial order.
I think it worth discussing whether its possible to understand the positions of the players involved.
Quotes from Fabian:
– “He has trashed the economy,”
The economy was burning to the ground on the day Obama took office. Eight o’clock, day one, that’s what he was dealing with. Since then he has (a) enacted an inadequate fiscal stimulus that at least saved the U.S. economy from further shrinkage (not that it’ll really help in the long term) and (b) resolutely protected the interest of large financial players at the expense of just about everyone else. So, a mixed record.
– “deployed our troops into additional nations”
Too true.
– “extended the welfare state (Obamacare)”
Medical care is not a consumer good, and trying to treat it like one has made the privately-based American health care system both scandalously inefficient and a moral outrage. There is a desperate need both to contain relentlessly escalating costs and address the crying shame that millions of Americans lack medical insurance. Yet the one thing that Obama’s solution does *not* do is mess with the prerogatives of private insurers, pharmaceutical companies, or anyone else who is skimming profits off suffering and death in the USA. Instead it caters to them by requiring people to purchase for-profit insurance, and subsidizing the insurers. Wanna criticize someone for “extending the welfare state”? Talk to the Republican Congress who tried to buy off senior voters by passing the unfunded (i.e., paid for with borrowed money) Medicare drug benefit and the Republican president who signed it into law. Obama “extended the welfare state”, my ass.
– “ignored the rulings of Federal courts and injected Federal ownership into the private sector (GM, Chrysler).”
Declaration of interest: I am a contract employee of Chrysler and have personally benefitted from the bailouts, for which I am duly grateful. That said, the bailouts of GM and Chrysler were both initiated on Bush’s watch (Canada’s government followed along). No reference, but I distinctly recall Bush saying that with the economy tanking, allowing these two companies to go under “would not be a responsible action”. Really, how many of the things you criticize Obama for are just continuations of policies initated under Republicans?
There does not have to be a slam-dunk, dead certain crash…if responsible government institutions recognize, admit and react to the financial straights we find our nation currently embroiled. – F
There doesn’t have to be a dead certain crash. But the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.
There didn’t have to be a dot com bubble and crash, nor a telecom bubble and crash, nor a real estate bubble and crash, nor a derivatives bubble and crash. But one followed the other like night follows day and I would hazard that after all this we still didn’t fucking learn. Why do I think so? Because IMO the fuel for all these bubbles and crashes was artificially suppressed interest rates through excess liquidity.
Did central banks stop with the moeny spigots? Not on your life. Central banks are still on the same old kick, they didn’t learn one fucking thing. Up here Mark Carney, head of our central bank (and a Goldman alumnus I might add) is all wide eyed in wonderment about the housing bubble we have brewing and the calamity of household debt which exceeds US levels. This shit fer brains is supposed to be among the best and the brightest. Yet he didn’t know that ultra low rates would fuel excess borrowing, somehow he didn’t know that people respond to price signals.
‘I said it a million times, the solution is Free Salaries, Cheap Rents and huge public private projects ………..’
Saying something doesnt make it true!
Theres a disconnect between dictum and reality.
fabian said: “Obama does not have a single individual giving him advice that ever had to make a payroll.”
—————-
fabian, Obama’s chief of staff is Bill Daley, and Daley met a payroll when he worked as the Midwest chairman of JPMorgan Chase.
JPMorgan Chase employees do receive pay. They are not volunteers. Working at JPMorgan Chase does count as private sector business experience.
Yes, there are multi position investment strategies. Most of these are bets pure and simple. But they depend on counter parties making good.
Buy a bond and a credit default swap as isnurance? OK but the issuer of the CDS has to make good if the bond issuer goes belly up. AIG comes to mind.
The smarty pants will try to do their razzle dazzle routine with a lot of high falutin talk about “credit events”. Incantations for idiots IMO. Keeps the lawyers busy cooking up meaningless phrases designed to obscure reality.
So never mind all that. There’s only one thing that matters at the end of the day and that is cash. Are Greek bond holders going to get repaid? Yea or nay? Yea you say? OK when exactly would that be? And how much?
Definition of default? Here’s one: Greece doesn’t fucking pay on time or in full or doesn’t pay at all. This is the only one that matters.
Yes it’s worth understanding the positions of the players involved especially if you’re a shareholder, a bondholder or a depositor in one of the players. The ultimate question for you if you’re anyone of these is are YOU going to be paid if Greece doesn’t cough up? Will Greece take down one of the “players” and you with it? Are YOU going to wave your deposits/shares/bonds bye bye?
“There does not have to be a slam-dunk, dead certain crash…if responsible government institutions recognize, admit and react to the financial straights we find our nation currently embroiled.”
I’ll let Q handle the straights v. straits item, but the rest is my area. Waiting for top-down solutions to come from our leadership, whether Dem, Pub, or Paul, is foolish. We need bottom-up action starting with every household that fancies itself possessing half a brain. And we needed it yesterday. It surprises me that someone like you would hold out hope for big government to swoop in and pick up the pieces.
As someone who worked for the state of Florida for his whole professional career, all 4 years of it;), I can say that government reacts in dog years. What you can do in one requires seven for the bureaucrats. If we wait seven more years to respond we’re toast.
To change the world you must change yourself. I grow increasingly convinced that there is no other way.
Wow.
I don’t know if I’m qualified to comment on all this.
But I remember thinking at the end of the OJ Simpson trial that I must be living in some sort of nuthouse and that insanity must be a relative sort of thing. Its easy to think you are sane when standing in the middle of a group of people licking paint chips off a window sill.
One thing that should be clear though is that any amount of intellectualizing about why we must go through an economic contraction with all the pain that implies isn’t going to do any good and misses the point, whatever that point might be.
We are all caught beneath the wheels of history and about all we can do about it is to watch the machine grind us to pieces. The fear beneath the wings of all this for Americans is the fear of losing the loft perch of driving around in oversized cars, stuffing our faces and turning the AC down one more notch at the expense of some other person who has never seen an air conditioner.
This is more of a spiritual problem than an economic one. We have been allowed to live in that comfortable room with unlimited paint chips to lick but we will be discharged back into reality and I don’t think I will handle it very well.
Maybe Jesus should run on the Bachmann ticket. Like any VP he would have plenty of idle time and might be able to remind us that we have all been living in a gated community of lunatics, to remind us of some fundamental truths about the nature of greed, insecurity and the futility of trying to make sense of an insane world. Maybe that will make me feel better when Ms. Bachmann announces that the Treasury Bonds in my retirement account are just as valuable as Greek Bonds. So it goes. Maybe Paul Ryan would have him naled to a telephone pole to make him shut up before someone realizes the lie we are living. Would’t be the first time.
Messiah or no Messiah, we are about to see what reality looks like for someone living in central Mexico.
I could be worse.
“..NASCAR fans support their habit with their own earnings, they’re not grifting it from the taxpayer.”
“And, Surprise!!!!, the flash mobs don’t seem to be made up of NASCAR fans or stupid Southeners.”
I’m no NASCAR fan either, JulettaofOhio, but I am a Southener (barely) so I’ll just say: too-shay! 😉
Aimlow Joe wrote:
“What makes people believe that they actually have money? They don’t of course, and we’ll find that out before too long.”
A thumbs-up for you too, Joe.
“Read the McClatchy article that I posted, and tell us all how it is incorrect/inaccurate. We’ll wait…”
Also, the article I posted (from the archfiend NYT! Horrors!) about shale gas plays not quite working out the way they’re hyped.
“Medical care is not a consumer good, and trying to treat it like one has made the privately-based American health care system both scandalously inefficient and a moral outrage.”
The American sick-care system is scandalously inefficient because it is one long-ass food chain, when looked at from a metabolic viewpoint, as I am wont to do. Nothing will correct that except radical contraction and the hemorrhaging of middle men. Which is, fortunately, already underway in nearly every other global industry, and will hit the medical establishment hard before it’s all over.
I say fortunately not out of disrespect to my countrymen out of work (I’m coming up on 4 years since my last “real job”), but because if it continued we would all be dead from lack of ecosystem support within the century.
Fabian wrote: “That is why blaming capitalism is a fools errand. True capitalism allows for failure. A product or service must make it on its own merits.” etc., etc.. Like I said earlier, thoughts that blame capitalism itself (and its inherent contradictions like endless growth) are forbidden thoughts. We must not blame captitalism. That would be a fool’s errand.
-Phut
NASCAR is grifting from the taxpayers, $40 million out of your pocket and into NASCAR’s, with help from Congress. Among the many sweeteners included in the Tax Relief Act of 2010, signed by President Obama, was Sec. 738, allowing owners of “motorsports entertainment complexes” — like NASCAR tracks – to write off their costs over only a seven year period instead of the 15 to 39 years typically required by the tax code for depreciation of nonresidential property, providing the track hosts at least one event within three years of its opening.
Just for the record, the IRS objected to allowing this fast-track depreciation which essentially places NASCAR race tracks in the same tax category as amusement parks. But who is the IRS when it comes to tax breaks?
The provision is expected to net race track owners some $40 million and is on top of the tax incentives already offered by state and local governments to attract NASCAR into their area.
Yes, you are right.
Money now exists as debts.
Mortgages, credit cards etc.
They do not even have the cost of paper and ink.
Digital money is numbers written on a computer.
Once you had the Feudal king who paid you nothing for a 24 hour a day work.
Now the king is the one who owns the right computer, the one where numbers become magically money.
There is nothing anymore that has an objective value, even silver and gold are worth what is convenient for them to be worth.
And the value goes up and down depending on what is convenient.
You guys are arguing two sides of a debate that has no bearing in a contractionary world. I.E. waste of time. The insurance industry runs the widest profit margins of any industry out there – that’s a fact, Jack, 20%+, which I would consider scandalous, especially when foisted on people by Pelosi and her ilk – but it’s a Ponzi scheme based on perpetual growth that only exists in the minds of simpletons. Insurance schemes don’t function in a contractionary world.
Your time and capillary integrity would be better spent reshaping your local economy and learning how to grow your own medicine.
breaking news :
cars are being rolled over in athens
But there is an enormous difference between “capitalism” and “the free market.” The free market is basically a restatement of the laws of Nature, which always function. Capitalism is reverse socialism, a human construct based on greed and predation which is guaranteed to fail. And it is as we speak.
He also served on the board of Fannie Mae under Clinton. He is part of the problem.
————-
Clinton left a budget surplus after his eight years. I think Daley was part of the solution.
You think you’re not qualified to comment on all this? You mean all this talk about money? Can you add, subtract, multiply, divide? Yes you say? Then you’re qualified.
I believe in obeying the laws of nature. Neo-classical economics is not one of them.
-Phut
James, I think the whole “retiring at 53 is a bit of a furphy, apparently started by the NY Times according to this view:
“The figure of 53 years old as an average retirement age is being bandied about. So much, in fact, that it is being seen as fact. The figure actually originates from a lazy comment on the NY Times website.”
Furthermore, the article from which this statement comes, challenges a few other widely accepted stereotypes about the greeks. You can find it here:
http://owni.eu/2011/06/27/democracy-vs-mythology-the-battle-in-syntagma-square/
S.
Fabian’s quotes:
– “Private insurers must make a profit and ensure that there is enough money available amongst their pooling of insured to pay for procedures.”
Yes to the first, phooey to the second. Showing a profit is the one and only imperative that is never sacrificed. Denying coverage for procedures, on the other hand, is a way of life for private insurers, as has been documented ad nauseam (the anecdotes are, literally, nauseating). This is one reason why universal coverage is important: it increases efficiency (DECREASING costs, thank you) by making the pool of insured as large as possible.
– “The government never has and never will assume such a responsibility. They (govt.) merely promise a bunch of shit that they have no way of paying for.”
Your government, maybe. Here in Canada, universal health insurance is a reality I live every day. Wait times here may suck, but if I need care, I get it. No corporate bureaucrat or robotically sympathetic customer-service drone is standing by to explain why my policy doesn’t *really* cover that, sor-ree!
I anticipate you saying, But Canadians pay higher taxes! So? Everybody gets sick, everybody pays — that’s true under both systems. Only, under our single-payer system, the per-capita cost is a bit more than half what it costs in the U.S., with similar outcomes, and no bankruptcies! What exactly is the difference paying for on the U.S. side? Lots of unnecessary procedures (to protect against lawsuits), massive bureaucratic inefficiency by different insurers, huge overruns in pharmaceutical and other costs (because, contrary to free-market orthodoxy, pricing is brutally opaque and because Medicare is expressly forbidden to negotiate drug costs) — and, lest we forget, everyone’s profit margin.
To make a long story short, if someone tried to talk me into trading what I have for what you have, I’d never stop laughing.
“Ask yourself this question: Could anyone on the Republican side fuck things up worse than Obama has? I think not.”
I think so. In fact, I think everyone of the candidates on the Republican side can and probably would fuck things up worse than Obama has. Obama may be a disappointment, but he’s not a disaster. Bachmann, who working on replacing Palin as corn-pone fascist-in-chief, would be a disaster.
“This is more of a spiritual problem than an economic one.”
Well said, Doc. Americans could cut their energy use by 80% and not significantly impact their standard of living, just by making some strategic changes to the way they use energy and water, and the way they move around. I can say that with some certainty as my family of four now lives on 20% of the energy budget – sum total, not just power bill – that just my wife and I lived on 4 years ago. And we’re working on cutting that by 80% again, which takes a bit more research and invention, but is totally do-able.
Before we can have any sort of intelligent response to the situation we have to completely overhaul our relationship with energy. You know, buy it a drink, get to know it a little, before we expect it to cook our dinner and wash our dishes for us.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I already made you look like moron with the other article you posted and now you want to cite another one? Give it a rest.”
So you didn’t bother to read it? You forfeit.
Theres a disconnect between dictum and reality.
==================
Spider, the new 150 lb untattooed white weenie prisoner was made the new cellmate of Big Bubba who, before 24 hours had passed, dictum.
😉
I’m with you Smokie Joe! Let’s all become Greeks, (or Spaniards!) sitting around the cafe, arguing philosophical differences. When will America get tired of the Life In The Fast Lane and demand our right to take it easy for a change. Of course, it starts with the recognition that we’re monkeys with our hands in the cookie jar. We’re stuck until we can let go of some of the cookies. Do we really need houses THAT big? Can’t we take care of our cars and keep them till they’re paid off? Me and Uncle Ned and our little kidlet are proud denizens of the slow lane. Make our own soy milk; ride the bikes we bought almost 10 years ago; no cable T.V. etc. Tough year for the garden, but Uncle Ned won’t give up.
Nothing can change till the collective human consciousness WAKES UP to the reality of the NOTHING WE HAVE IS ENOUGH treadmill. Then maybe we can start to envision as future that is optimistic and not dystopian. A future that is simple, local, abundant, community based and accepting of the glorious ridiculousness that is the human animal. The purpose of life is to dig it. Be wowed by it. Love it! Love each other!
“What exactly is the difference paying for on the U.S. side?”
——————
Blue Shield CEO salary: $4.6 million last year.
Aetna of Connecticut CEO salary: $18,058,162
United Health Group CEO salary: $8,901,916.
In 2010, in the health insurance industry in the USA, some executive management teams earned as much as 10 percent or more of company revenues, while laying off substantial numbers of the work force.
Bet Canada doesn’t waste money on CEO salaries like that, or treat health care workers like that, either.
You forfeit.
=============
Just yesterday I was noting how the “I before E except after C …..” rule is not universally applicable and since then I have spotted several more names besides Seinfeld and now this word: forfeit.
Best thing about this whole thread was listening to that woman jam! NICE!
Again – it would be interesting to understand which Financial houses have interests that are aligned in a particular manner.
Which Hedge Funds have interests that match the Puppet Masters.
And finally – who gets to to define the ‘terms’ like default and re-profile and roll over.
Perhaps knowing which of the Federal Reserve players eat and drink together is more important than knowing the boundary of countries or members of various economic coalitions.
maybe not now, but later – this is how wars start.
Listen up, douchebag. Just about the only thing I ever talk about around here, either directly or indirectly, is reforming local economies to cut down on the amount of energy required to run any given system. Physics will do it for us if we don’t do it ourselves, so why not get moving?
I receive a small envelope of seeds in the mail for my garden, and those seeds are mostly heirloom, which means I need to order fewer of them next year, as the heirlooms are allowed to complete their life cycle and reseed themselves. Hybrids don’t reproduce themselves accurately so I do my best to avoid them. I don’t want to rely on big agribusiness corporations for my livelihood every year, as the system decays, much less support their bad habits. See where the trend is headed? Seeds are the only input into my business besides a very meager amount of kitchen twine to bundle greens and herbs together, and an equally meager amount of gas to get the produce to market. And we’re working on training our horse to pull a cart to market one of these days. Or a bicycle rickshaw.
My main focus is not on getting rich. It’s on providing the best produce around for my family and other people who choose to buy my offerings. I don’t buy candy bars, and I don’t give a shit whether you do or not. Your bad behavior is none of my concern. My only job is to provide an example, a model, of how to live on a lot less energy.
Multi-national corporations only work because of anomalous amounts of cheap energy. I really don’t care what they do because they won’t be my concern for much longer. They really aren’t my concern now actually. See, what they’re doing is unsustainable, so why should I waste my time raging against the machine? Instead I just undermine them with my non-participation. It’s called free will and good old fashioned American boycott.
You going to curse me for taking responsibility for my own life, food, medicine, and energy use, instead of waiting for someone else to do it for me now, big guy?
tripp, do you think it would be reasonable for folks to plant tons of plants in their yards, then use the decomposing biomass to help power their homes? then they could use the soil ‘waste’ to replant and zingo!, the cycle would repeat
just popped into my head, thot (threw this typo in to annoy qshtik, tho’ i liked his last trocadilho) i’d air it…
greetings from 80% downsized as well & loving it, love the bus trips for a buck, the small gas stove that costs me $1 a month to cook on (lol true!), no in-house heat, though it got to 40 degrees this morning. just apply blankets and heat a sock filled with uncooked rice and throw it in the bed, it’ll become your best friend
am working on this idea (prolly been done):
1)shower-in-a-gallon-bucket
have shower water go up a heated tube, exit, then be recirculated up the tube, where it is
1)cleansed by charcoal etc
2)reheated (would require very little reheating as it wouldn’t have lost hardly any heat in 5-10 seconds)
total water usage: 1 gallon
whaddya think trippy? you da man.
peace folks
—————–
Beautifully stated, Tripp.
In 1971 I was drafted. Instead of going into the military, I refused. There was a popular saying then: “What if they gave a war, and nobody came.”
I, too, believe in non-participation, instead of rage against the machine. Rage and anger only eat away at your insides and don’t produce anything of value.
I had a button in the 70s that said: “Celebrate Life!” and, by working with natural abundance, permaculture does just that.
Hey Fabian- exactly what Republican organization do you work for? You are so obviously a minion in the legion of paid conservatrolls who fan out daily to infect the blogosphere with your rightwing bullshit.
If you’ve read Kunstler’s books and paid attention to what he’s written here, he’s made it quite clear that he’s afraid government will get bigger before it gets smaller. As for who he’s afraid will make it bigger, there is a reason why writes and talks about corn-pone fascists. Yes, he thinks the Right will make government bigger, not what passes for the Left in America. Chew on that thought for a moment.
Also, you should go back through the archives to read his essay “My Tea Party” posted on July 5, 2010. You’ll find it quite edifying.
We evolved on this planet, breathing its oxygen, drinking its water, eating its food.
Now we are caught in a bizarre reality, where profit means more than anything physical, and the land, water and air are being poisoned for profit. Where Japan is poisoned by radiation and Nebraska is coming in second, and all the TV can talk about is whether Michelle Bachmann has a chance in 17 months to have the voting machines programmed in her favor.
Meantime, we here on Clusterfuck Nation argue over whether it is possible to create more money, or whether it is only possible to create more money for bankers, but not for teachers and pensioners, and, of course, what effect creating or not creating more money will have on the election extravaganza coming up in 17 months.
Cash points out that all we humans need is food, water, shelter and enjoyment, but doesn’t take the obvious step of saying that we could provide all of these things for all people if we take the profit out of destroying the Earth and of providing food, shelter and water for all.
Why the hell shouldn’t we live like the Greeks are purported to live? Why shouldn’t we enjoy meals with friends and family? Why shouldn’t we take a break from working when we get old?
Why are Americans so hateful that we want everyone in the world to be as overworked and overtrinketed as we are? Why do we take such perverse pride in our oppressive work schedules? Why do women brag about how soon they return to work after pushing out their babies? (Or more likely, having them cut out).
We are some brainwashed people.
Hey, Aimlow Joe, I was wondering where you were when I started composing my comment. You were doing the same thing at the same time and just barely beat me. There’s something to be said about brevity.
You know who’s missing–The Leibowitz Society. I wonder why he hasn’t posted already. It isn’t a complete comment section without all three of us, Aimlow Joe, Leibowitz Society, and Crazy Eddie’s Motie News, here. At least Kulturcritic* showed up.
I’ll let Q handle the straights v. straits item, but the rest is my area.
============
OK, got it Tripp.
straights
-noun
two or more heterosexuals
straits
-noun
a narrow water passage between two larger bodies of water; note: spelled strates in the Urban Dictionary favored as a reference by some African Americans
😉
“You know you can just say no and NOT buy the candy bar.”
You know, I’d feel comfortable saying that my worldview is pretty well known around here, and I’m not sure I could come up with a more succinct statement of that worldview than this sentence. I got rid of the television, dumped the cell phone, the microwave, the mortgage, the car payment, the clothes dryer, the AC!! (in south Georgia), bought a used Camry with cash, and worked out a sweet deal on a house and plenty of land. And I have one small, family-held debt that I’m paying off slowly. My solar attic fan will be here tomorrow, then on to composting toilets, an old recycled tank painted black for a solar batch water heater (bye bye energy hogging water heater!), my great great great grandmother’s wood cookstove is sitting on the porch waiting to be installed this fall, alongside the soapstone version for heating, we’re trading in two upright refrigerators (yes two, we are market gardeners and mushroom growers after all) for a modified chest freezer with external thermostat to raise the temperature (should run on less than 150W), installing water catchment on the barn uphill from the garden to drip irrigate the market garden with (taking the heat off of the depleted aquifer underneath us and making a living in food production at the same time). We have a Tokay gecko in the house for bug control, a dog, that gets about 90% of his food from the garden and compost pile, to control livestock predators, and don’t expect anything from people like you except a ration of horseshit.
Just who exactly are you telling to avoid a little fucking candy bar, pissant? But the idea that capitalism is a predatory ideology, at least practiced outside of free market forces, is pretty widely held. I’m not talking about a little fucking candy bar, I’m talking about Pelosi’s top 10 campaign contributors in the 2010 cycle all being big pharma companies, just before a new “health”care system is passed that requires everyone to have insurance and buy drugs. Tell me again how that’s not predatory, fuckstick?
“And they will do this by cutting taxes and the budget? Makes a lot of sense.(Not)”
Don’t believe your own press clippings.
Ideas have power. That ain’t new age babble, it’s one of the fundamental truths of our universe. Look around. The chair your ass is in, the computer you write on, the shoes on your feet, the roads, the buildings, the structures of our society were all IDEAS. When enough people BELIEVE THESE IDEAS they are TRANSFORMED INTO REALITY. Trippticket is a man who is CHANGING THE WORLD because he changed his reality. The ideas behind the reality he is creating are ideas that could create a beautiful world. READ THIS MAN’S POSTS. Think about the world YOU create for YOURSELF. If it isn’t what you want, think about what you want, believe in that vision and start making it happen. Talk is cheap. How you live your life is everything. Dig it! Be grateful! Thank you Trippticket, and Soak, too. There may be monsters and trolls here at the Nation, but our hope for tomorrow is here too. Water the seeds!
“Why are Americans so hateful that we want everyone in the world to be as overworked and overtrinketed as we are? Why do we take such perverse pride in our oppressive work schedules? Why do women brag about how soon they return to work after pushing out their babies? (Or more likely, having them cut out).
We are some brainwashed people.”
See pissant. Nice comment. We CAN take more time to enjoy our meals, with family and friends, and to make sure the food is top notch by growing it ourselves, and that the land is in better shape when we are done with it. What we can’t have is all that AND a global structure. The two are mutually exclusive I’m afraid. Large government relies on biosphere-destroying energy regimes.
I was going to say that, unfortunately, you’ll have to pick one or the other. But fortunately, the good food with family is going to win out in the end, regardless of what you pick. Probably not for 7B of us, but…
Dude, the whole point of the article I linked to (and icurhuman2 linked it as well) is that analysts from inside the industry are saying the whole shale gas thing is overhyped. Quotes like “the economics just don’t work” and “Ponzi scheme” are pretty unmistakable. Do you know something that makes the Marcellus shale the one exception to the hype? If not, then how does this make me look stupid, exactly?
I’m not a capitalist, Fabio, I’m a free man in a free market. Big difference. Mostly scale.
“By the way, Nancy, you never gave a response when I proved your above nonsense to be, ah….NONSENSE. And that’s a fact, Jill.”
Sorry, you threw me when you said “I” and “proved” in the same sentence. All you do is bluster. I – blustered. See? That makes more sense to me!
According to a post that included a picture of yourself “in 1971” you had not yet been born.
———
That was a YouTube video link I posted with the words: “These are my sentiments.”
You made the leap that I was the brother in the video. The dude in the video is younger, but what he said is also what I say. He expressed my sentiments perfectly.
Understandable mistake, fabian.
So what is it that you do for a living Fabian? And who provides your health care?
“You sell things for a profit. That makes you a CAPITALIST. Live with it or start giving it away for free.”
Kind of depends on how you think about profit. My schedule of concerns goes:
1) Improve soil and ecosystem health on land under my care.
2) Feed my family the best food available.
3) Sell whatever excess I have in order to buy the things I’m not producing, like a little bit of electricity, or beer. Maybe one day, but not yet. Need to plant the hops first.
Not really much in there about profit. And I doubt very many corporations have a stewardship clause leading off their mission statement.
Although this dialogue is starting to make me question the wisdom in trading extra produce for electricity.
Welles, I think you should combine the two ideas. I know a guy in Oregon who runs a plastic coil through a large active compost heap to heat water for domestic use. Said the temperature peaks at about 150 degrees F, and when it falls to 90-ish, which he says takes about 2.5-3 months, he moves that compost into the garden and starts over. If you had a reliable supply of forest waste (you said you’re in Brazil, right?) you could become a Jean Pain disciple, and have hot water, heat, and all the fertility your garden could ever need, for free, from the waste stream. But I’d be leery about taking too much biomass out of the garden.
Sounds like you’re having a ton of fun, man.
“I mean it only costs around a billion dollars to bring a new drug to market and by federal edict, patents have limited life. They should do it for free. That would be fair.”
——————–
BigPharma relies on research done by scientists at public universities (government funded), and research done by scientists at NIH (government funded), in addition to research done at private companies.
BigPharma brings drugs to market that do damage to citizens, citizens who have paid for a good portion of the research with their tax dollars, and then BigPharma misuses or tries to invalidate research findings that show risks in the use of the drug they want to bring to market.
Then, after benefiting from public monies for research grants at universities and NIH, they want all the profits for themselves and charge exorbitant prices for pharmaceuticals.
Then a pissant comes along and tries to justify the prices by saying it “costs around a billion dollars to bring a new drug to market.”
Auntie River, when I first came in contact with these ideas I thought that I could actually co-create a new universe more to my liking. What I’ve discovered along the way is that I actually can, but not in the way I thought at first.
By choosing not to read the news I no longer live in a world where a rapist is hiding in every alley. And I’m not fooled anymore by the establishment’s “statistics” and “findings.” By choosing to include my medicine in my dinner, as flavoring, or as tea with breakfast, instead of buying and swallowing it, none of the Obamacare debate affects me. By choosing to live on so little money/energy that I don’t have to pay taxes, I don’t have to live with the blood of war on my hands, or the knowledge that my bad habits are the reason we must endure the ecological treason of fracking for natural gas.
By not having a television I don’t have a constant reminder that life is not what I perceive it to be; I’m not reminded that my problems are the “other party’s” fault. I know that I reap exactly what I sow. I have co-created my own universe. And it’s a nice place. Sounds like yours is too.
“You know if you only had shit to feed your family you would be feeding them “the best food available”. Just a thought.”
Good point. Poorly stated on my part.
“Like the one about “The insurance industry runs the widest profit margins of any industry out there – that’s a fact, Jack…”?”
Yeah, I got that one directly from a hot-shot industry insider trying to recruit me. Swiiing and a miss.
“Meet the universe,
Same as the old universe…”
Fabio, your universe will always be the same as the old one because your ideas are just as stagnant.
“I have a large deductible making my payments reasonable. I’ve never been denied a single procedure suggested by my physician.”
You haven’t been denied *yet*. Like every other American under 65, you’re white-knuckling it till you reach the magic birthday. What’s more, you’re deluded enough to think you’re getting a good deal.
“Go ahead and pay your high taxes. Sounds like you deserve them.”
I know PRECISELY what I’m getting for my money, and it’s a far better deal than you are. You think because you’re paying out of the insurance pocket instead of the tax pocket, you must be winning. But your money is going to all kinds of things other than health care, including Lear Jets for CEOs, and yet you are subject to all kinds of pitfalls and traps expressly designed to deny you what you *think* you’re paying for.
A friend of mine lived in Chicago for a while, and had a baby while she was there. Her husband’s employer provided medical coverage, so in the recovery room she was asked if she wanted a pedicure. No problem, they told her, it was paid for by her insurance. I was incredulous when she told me: a f—king PEDICURE? Couldn’t that money have paid for something useful? No, it was more important to provide perks and hopefully retain a customer than provide care and sustain a human life.
You and the pedicures are both examples of the insanity of Reaganism: hypnotized by market signals, you grow ever more detached from the underlying reality that sooner or later is going to bite you in the ass.
Sorry, I don’t understand the strange valley version of English you use. You’ll have to speak in grown-up I’m afraid.
I thought it was agreed two weeks ago to ignore “douchebag”. Guess not. Also, pertaining to Big Pharma you can never forget that they won’t develop or market cures whose patents have expired, not to mention dietary supplements which can’t be patented in any case. Moreover, they will act in concert with the so called health care industry to suppress such substances, even when such remedies are superior to what is currently being prescribed by their minions the medical doctors. One of the chemicals I’m thinking of is EDTA which was first synthesized in Germany during the mid ‘thirties and may be better at chelating arterial plaque and with fewer side effects than statin drugs, for instance.
“Something is in the air this week and it is making a lot of people very nervous.”
I am not sure what Reality you live in, but in the Real World Planet Earth I live in,very very VERY few people are nervous, let alone “very nervous”. Most are walking around living life under worse economic conditions, but that’s been happening since Reagan announced it was “morning in America” (actually he meant Nightfall in America but who would have voted for him then?)
We’ve been going downhill for 30 years. Like a huge pot of frogs slowly being brought to the boil.
Um, nowhere in that article does it say that expectations for shale gas are “NOT overhyped… Get it?” What it does say is things like “gushers”, “enormous potential”, “believed to be a record”, “even more prolific”, “dramatic increase in expected well production”, and so forth. It sounds very much like a rewritten press release. When I read breathless phraseology like the above, there’s a word that comes to mind. C’mon, you know it: four letters? Starts with H? Rhymes with “tripe”? As a rebuttal to the idea that shale gas is, shall we say, over-promoted, this strikes me as lacking.
If it’s a link war you want, I’ll see you and raise you:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7912
Ha-hah! Take that!
I’m so devastated that someone with the emotional development of a twelve year old disapproves of me. Or perhaps you actually are twelve years old?
“Sounds like the Cannuck is a bit jealous.”
1. You ignored the substance of my post to make a snide innuendo. That’s a poor substitute for an argument.
2. It’s not C-A-N-N-U-C-K, it’s C-A-N-U-C-K.
3. It’s not J-E-A-L-O-U-S, it’s I-N-C-R-E-D-U-L-O-U-S A-T P-E-O-P-L-E-‘-S S-T-U-P-I-D-I-T-Y.
Fabian Baby (you look marvelous),
It is not the Repubs or the Dems, or Snow White + Seven Dwarves, or the President, or his wife, or the welfare cheats, or the New Jersey Cop’s retirement.
Even though FOX and friends like to raise your blood pressure by presenting them as such.
Jim said it, I believe it: It is a world that is scaling down to match the reality that world energy production has reached the end of its production plateau and has begun the final phase slippery downward slope. This is much, much bigger than conservative talking points.
It is that “Woe is unto the world. It doesn’t know whether to shit or go blind.”
So, please save the welfare cheats, Repub, Demo, “state worker’s got it made” stories and think of something new(er).
How’s the pompadour hanging these days?
Ahh, that’s better! Of course, a title like “Canadian Health Care Continues Its Collapse” doesn’t reveal anything about the attitudes of the people who wrote the article, does it?
It’s getting late in the day, so I’ll limit myself to a couple of things that you pasted in, rather than follow up to reading the entire article. It’s interesting that the main items they talk about are basically about cost containment, since that is one of the three legs on which the Obama health care reform also stands. (The other two legs are: preventing insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions; and providing universal coverage. You’ll notice that none of the three is “expanding the welfare state”.)
Among these cost-control measures is “cutting generic drug prices and eliminating ‘incentive fees’ to generic drug manufacturers.” See, we can do that here, because we’re not providing corporate welfare. In the U.S., negotiating prices with drug manufacturers is the third rail: you just don’t interfere with the profits of your campaign donors, lest they become your opponent’s campaign donors.
The reason for these measures is simple: health care costs are rising. Why, the devil you say! No kidding. Nowhere did I say that Canadians have somehow solved the problem, as if by magic, of providing services in a world of limited resources. It’s nice to know, though, that we’re starting out with such a startling advantage over the private, for-profit system our American friends and neighbours [sic] enjoy.
Cheers!
Why are Americans so hateful that we want everyone in the world to be as overworked and overtrinketed as we are?
Wage we have our old puritan work ethic which isn’t translating into anything that works for us at this point. It’s now the law of diminishing returns as we are being reduced to the working poor as the elite are looking to flatten out salaries everywhere for maximum profits.
As for trinkets, well you gotta give the folks something.
Fareed Zakaria made some excellent points in the last few weeks while discussing our many challenges. He asserts that Americans don’t look around to the rest of the world to find solutions.
As we discuss health care and insurance in a paradigm that costs more than any other system in the world, we don’t bother to look at the other systems that seem to work more efficiently than ours.
It’s part of the we’re the best attitude that means the national mindset is in lock-down and already has all the answers. You, know, we’re always right—-Our loss!
Wow! 1,000 homes! For one year! And what about the other 114 million 824 thousand homes?
2010 estimate of number of homes: 114,825,428
SOURCE: U.S. Census
It’s funny how a capitalist apologist doesn’t even know what a capitalist is.
You are a farmer and a small businessman. You produce what you sell yourself.
That is no way is a capitalist.
A capitalist is someone who owns the means of production. He hires workers to operate the equipment, and sells what they produce for a profit.
If you were a landowner, and hired sharecroppers to work your land, while you took part of the produce, that would be closer to what a capitalist is.
Remember that Fabian is just notmommy with a movie star’s name.
Personally, I ignore him, although I still try to hold sympathy in my heart for his badly mothered, psychically deformed, acting-out inner child.
Thanks JHK for today’s following offerings, allowing me to get my usual post work Monday chortle!
*Europe is about to enjoy the greatest monetary Chinese fire drill ever staged.*
*Let Hillary step in and try to keep this leaky Flying Dutchman out of the drink.*
*If I were President Obama, I’d just call it quits and sign on with the home team: Goldman Sachs.*
Of all your future calls Jim, this last one is a defo given, some safe-seat non-exec’ banking gravy-train pay-off, for the ex Commander-in-Chief, it’s a no-brainer! As are some more of the following inconvenient truths no political leader operating and milking the current easy-street system in the OECDs will ever dare air:
(1) The Govts of the OECDs have depended upon their peoples borrowing more and ever more as their aged and decrepit mass manufacturing capabilities have been lost, and/or all activities that can be relocated outside a high-cost environment have been.
(2) It does not benefit the banks, insurance and pensions industry, and/or the Govts to admit that any young person that now saves for their old age is totally wasting their time.
(3) Most young people know that they have no ‘quality’ future and that many of the opportunities that their parents had will be forever denied them. Going into massive personal financial debt for a worthless degree that gets you no guarantee of a decent job… where is any sense in that?
(4) The real challenge for any Govt’ official over the coming years is to find new devious ways of hollowing out the historical wealth of past generations so that things can keep on going on for a wee while longer, anything goes to maintain the illusion of business as usual.
(5) Govt policies are never designed to work long-term, only for official term of office period, there only real requirement is to create the illusion of progress, which is where state approved media comes in – to sell and spin it so.
(6) Proposing a whole host of whizz-bang ultra-green technologies soon available to help save mankind from itself, will of course cost mega-money to put into real widespread action, however this money is simply no longer going to be available, to the ageing and evermore retiring over-populated and über-debt laden West.
(7) Few people are actually conscious or able to accept the fact that virtually all the major inventions ever made and/or the technical achievements advanced have all came about because of a side-affect of world wars, death, conflict and strife.
(8) The point at which western economies finally fail is when Asia, China and India force the price of energy ever upward, and competition for food, water and minerals hit limits to growth, dial in climate change, times the number of elderly people reaching the level where medical and social services of their home nations are overwhelmed, divided by the historic savings and wealth of said 1st world nations being totally spent, depleted and exhausted. Bingo tis hammer-time!
(9) Recycling the by-products of unnecessary consumption is usually as damaging to the environment as the initial consumption is.
(10) The current global economic depression and ongoing and never ending contraction due to the increasing decline of burnable fossil-fuels is probably the best thing that could have ever happened to the global eco environment.
Any questions?
DAME EXCEED 250
Damn, it’s so wrong, but, it’s so right.
Thank you, Wage. A long time ago I stopped trying to clarify the differences between capitalists, socialists, communists, and anarchists, but it is refreshing to read your words.
Capitalists=owners are those who don’t do the work and feel they deserve millions of dollars for “taking risks” and “creating jobs.” I say, bullshit!
Though it will never happen, I would like to see a capitalist system with both a minimum wage and a maximum wage, with a 1 to 10 ratio.
If the lowest paid employee makes $8 an hour, then the highest paid CEO/owner/capitalist cannot make more than $80 an hour.
Currently, the health industry CEO’s making $4 million (and more) a year are making $2,000 (and more) an hour.
“One of these days (or not) Jimmy boy is going to realize this applies to all his other areas of “expertise” in forecasting as well.”
And one of these days you’ll get your own blog (or not) and enter the arena instead of writing on bathroom stalls.
Every day I come closer to losing my job, thanks to “health care reform”.
What gets me is that the clueless republicans scream about socialism, while the clueless democrats strut about proclaiming universal health coverage!
It’s neither. It’s an insurance company-written bill which takes $500 billion away from “Medicare” (which means doctors and hospitals) and gives it to insurance companies!
That’s what “cost containment” is. Firing nurses. Cutting back on care. Closing hospitals.
They are planning a No Child Left Behind scenario for “health care”.
They will only pay hospitals in the top 80% of the test scores.
What will happen to the other 20%? Why, they will close.
Then, the next year, only 80% of those hospitals get paid.
The shitty health care system in the US just got WAY, WAY worse.
But like the rest of the economy, sheer inertia will keep it going for a while, long enough that cause and effect won’t be noticed.
Especially because Americans are so brainwashed that they believe that privatization and forced insurance company tributes are “socialism” (republicans) or a Great Leap Forward (democrats).
Like any country being IMF’d, they’re going after health, education and any public infrastructure they can.
While we sit around and argue about how this will affect some aspiring puppet’s chance to cash in big by selling themselves to corporate paymasters. Ooohh, I hope it’s one of the ones on my team!
Do any of those articles refer to the destruction of the water supply of millions of people?
Should the argument really be about whether it’s profitable or not, and not about whether destroying life-sustaining water for profit is moral or right?
“Still glad I left the USA, even if we have to unplug all the electronics here during lightning storms. But the mangoes are practically free, the avocados are soo cheap, and the food is fresh, ripe and NOT full of preservatives or insecticides. And I get my coffee from the local fincas. Ummm, bueno!
Hasta luego, hope you have a liferaft.”
So being a smug asshole is not enough, you still need validation you made the right move and feel needy to gloat about it on someone else’s blog?
Speaking of life rafts, I hope you have access to a first world hospital if you get sick.
Yeah, “taking risks”. Not so much anymore.
How about conning public officials into giving them tax breaks, land and infrastructure in return for “jobs”.
How about they gamble with savings and pensions and then extort public officials into covering their losses.
How about they use the US military to loot and pillage people in other countries who happen to live on top of coveted minerals.
It’s capitalism’s horribly deformed mutant radioactive monster final self rampaging through the planet, destroying all it touches.
While the clueless people who think they have something to gain from the system sit around and cheer them on. Losers!
Ooohh, I hope it’s one of the ones on my team!
—————–
Some days I feel like abandoning the red flag, blue flag, and green flag teams and taking up the black and red flag. http://www.anarchism.net/symbol_bf.htm
Voluntary mutual cooperation.
(Though the one thing I really like about the green flag team: one of its core values is nonviolence.)
BLACK-AND-RED FLAG
We are trying something new in our household — two months ago we gave up AT&T Uverse television. Our monthly bill was usually $110. Now we pay just $30 for high speed internet. We came to the conclusion that we had hundreds of channels of crap we weren’t watching. My husband rigged some stuff in the attic so now we only get the local broadcast channels–ABC, NBC, PBS and CBS. We used to have a half dozen stupid remotes that I’d have to press in weirdly concocted order. So far, even my teenagers haven’t complained–and they are reading books instead.
No Snooki shows for this family. The only shows I miss are Steven Colbert and John Stewart.
Another cost-cutting item is my hair. I used to pay $160 for blonde highlights and a haircut. Now I’m going to a much cheaper salon within walking distance and it costs just half of what I used to pay. My hair looks just as nice, according to my husband.
“I thought it was agreed two weeks ago to ignore ‘douchebag’. Guess not.”
My bad. I’ve been lurking and enjoying JHK’s weekly commentary for a long time now, but today I decided to take the plunge and start commenting. Like a n00b, I went right ahead and fed the standard-issue, knowledge-in, garbage-out troll. Mea culpa.
Jimmy Drinkwater, your ignorance is showing.
Costa Rica has a better quality medical care system than the USA. Many North Americans travel to Costa Rica to get medical care. It’s called medical tourism.
Frankly, you are sounding smug, and you have nothing to be smug about in the USA when it comes to health care.
Costa Rica is the only country in the world where 100% of the private hospitals have earned JCI accreditation. USA can’t touch that!
Costa Rica is one of the top 5 medical tourism destinations in the world.
“Furthermore, you went on early about how including everyone on the system was a means for achieving cost containment. Obviously not.”
Obviously not? Medicare in the U.S. covers *everyone* above 65, and how does the cost per beneficiary look versus private insurance?
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/its-the-health-care-costs-stupid/
See for yourself: having an inclusive insurance pool helps enormously with containing costs. A universal system is even better. Measured as a percentage of GDP, Canada’s system is manifestly more cost-efficient than the U.S. system.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/medicare-sustainability/
As the linked graph shows, we were around par in 1970, but the disparity has been growing steadily in Canada’s favour ever since. 10% of GDP versus 16% of GDP sounds like a startling advantage to me. Indeed, the U.S. is even worse off than it appears, because your country has a higher GDP per capita than mine. In short, we would need gross mismanagement for quite a few years just to catch up with how badly you guys are doing. And yet…
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/canadian-health-care-in-perspective/
… the outcomes are similar. We’re getting a way, way better deal than you are.
“But for my money here is the most revealing quote:
“‘This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week,’ he fumed to the New York Times, ‘and in which humans can wait two to three years.’ ””
Yup. Wait times are a problem, no question about it. Would I give away universal coverage to get shorter wait times? Hell no.
SJMom, we did the same thing. No cable or satellite TV. And I missed The Daily Show also.
Then I discovered I could watch it (with a few days delay) via the internet at:
http://www.hulu.com/search?query=daily+show&st=0&fs=
They do give you 20 seconds of advertising, so have something to do those 20 seconds, or use the mute and meditate.
Enjoy!
“(7) Few people are actually conscious or able to accept the fact that virtually all the major inventions ever made and/or the technical achievements advanced have all came about because of a side-affect of world wars, death, conflict and strife.”
My worry is the opulent minority who *are* aware of this, and are liable take it into account as they plan the next stage of their awesome achievements…
Was there something in the post I replied to about CR or are just another smug asshole reaching for any comment that will validate your little colonialist wet dream of living large with ‘un buen billete’ bankrolled among the froggy little native brown people?
Having a maid-cook-gardener gives one ample time to gloat online on blogs like this I suppose, and among the other expats at the cafes similar to those in Greece that JHK writes about this week, lol.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. The fact is “ad hominem” attacks are pointless to proving one’s argument. And none of us have even met face to face so what’s the use in insulting those whose arguments you find disagreeable? Of course if someone persists in this behavior then it’s tempting to retaliate by calling them douchebag or whatever. Which leads me to suspect that they’re getting paid to sabotage the blog. Then you get others who claim lofty professional credentials but then don’t act like such or make outrageous demands on everyone else in terms of understanding their perhaps poorly written arguments. It does look like Spider has been blocked though.
I read the blog for a long time before starting to post. I post because I agree with the premise of the blog, which is that peak oil is a reality and there are no easy fixes. If someone disputes the basic premise of the blog then why do they bother contributing?
The fact is we can raft out the energy credit card for some time, by converting gasoline engines to run on compressed natural gas, or by getting plug in hybrids like the Volt to make a game out of how long you can keep a tank of gas in them, but of course such vehicles are only running on either coal or nuclear power. In the meantime there will continue to be massive economic disruptions caused by the interruption of the overarching growth paradigm upon which our financial system of compound interest operates. This is basic macroeconomics.
The real problem is the unfettered capitalism which grew out of the so called Reagan revolution. And as explained so well by WAGELABORER it is grotesque that health care is being operated for profit. Health care is a basic human right and not a consumer commodity. The underpinnings of health care as private enterprise are corrupt because the profit motivated physician is never going to tell anyone “no” because the customer is always right so long as he has deep pockets to mine. This is just as absurd as an ecucational system which has abandoned all notions of qualifying applicants according to intellectual capacity in terms of steering the unfit into something different for which they would be better suited. But that happens with decreasing regularity because no one wants to lose a paying customer, whether they are capable of benefitting from the instruction or not.
Someone who is continually banging on the capitalism drum is not showing all their cards. At this stage of the game it should practically be a tautology that those who are benefiting at the expense of others wish to keep the same old game going for another hand so they can continue to con the easy marks.
Yes, you were replying to DeeJones who lives in Costa Rica, laughingly suggesting he find a “first world hospital” when he gets sick!
Your ignorance is astounding.
In Costa Rican hospitals the mortality rate is under 1%, a very impressive statistic especially since most facilities in the US see a death rate of over 8%.
On a regular floor in a Costa Rican hospital the patient to nurse ratio is 4:1, in the US it is most often 6 or 7:1.
On an intensive care floor it is 1:1 or 2:1, same as in the US… but a hell of a lot cheaper.
I’m glad you decided to comment, Lorne.
By the way, the wait times in the US are also long.
My mom was told that she may have lung cancer, but she needed to see a pulmonologist. Closest appointment – 3 months.
One of my co-workers waited 6 months to see an orthopedic doctor, and they knew her from the ER!
If she hadn’t had insurance they wouldn’t have seen her at all. They demand $200 cash at the first appointment.
We refer many people with broken bones to the orthopods, who are supposed to see them for follow-up, but then they show back up at the ER and report that they didn’t have cash, so they weren’t seen.
And Americans will still tell you with a straight face that we have the best medical care in the world!
And as for waiting 2 years for a hip replacement – is it possible that someone was advised that they would someday need their hip replaced, but that such a surgery should wait until necessary?
Because that is what they would do here, also.
Except if you didn’t have the money. Then you’d never get it.
Well good then, since you seem versed in the blog gossip of who lives where, I was referring to the comment: “Hasta luego, hope you have a liferaft.”
As if CR or any CA sinkhole have the long term political stability or economic sustainability independent of US remittances to be called a life raft, lol.
No matter, I know the expat mentality, particularly the palm tree variety, waiting for the check to arrive.
Every day I come closer to losing my job, thanks to “health care reform”.
Yeah, Wage and my premium went up over $100.00 per month. I’m an outside contractor so I have to pay out the premium every month–100%.
That’s what happens when government and privatization go hand in hand. How could it be that the Democrat everyone thought could institute a single payer option could have gone so far off the rails?
Well because Hillary and Bill couldn’t get it done in the early ’90’s they thought they learned their lesson with the corporations. Guess all that’s left is guaranteed profits a la mandate. (more corporate communism.)
You are right about the eerie similarity to No Child Left Behind. It’s the same brave new government–now that it’s be corporatized.
Well just let Rahm Emmanuel make the deals behind closed doors with the private insurance industry and drug companies and this is what you get.–A real nightmare for the people.
I suppose this will further piss off the players but have to say this low rent bickering is real tedious.
Could we be Japan?
Fire and Floods threaten US Nuclear power plants, though they say that there are good reasons why this won’t be a disaster. It always starts out as not a disaster and here are the reasons why…let’s see how these develop.
Two nuclear power plants in Nebraska had to have backup generators run the plats due to flood water from the Missouri River.Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant and Cooper Nuclear Station.
Los Alamos needed to be evacuated due to the spreading wild fires.
Hmm still like nuclear energy?
I think many here would find this article by Stowe Boyd interesting…
“The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme:”
http://www.underpaidgenius.com/post/6948964696
The rule of law has been replaced by Murphy’s Law.
-JHK-
Ten simple words, suitable as a campaign slogan.
The right words, in the right order at the right time, could yet change the world.
Our host on this website, captures a problem – with the power of a unique phrase.
How unique?
“The rule of law has been replaced by Murphy’s Law,” – placed in quotation marks, and entered into Google – returns only 30 hits. And, EVERY SINGLE ONE of those hits goes directly or indirectly to the June 27, 2011 installment of the ClusterFuckNation blog by JHK, in some manner.
=================
On a more mundane note, there seem to be some growing problems with the software that operates this discussion thread. A lot of people are taking note of posts that are randomly blocked.
And there have been rumors of random screenname banishments. I can confirm those rumors.
After 52 weeks as progressorconserve, I now find myself forcefully reincarnated as progress,conserve.
Hope this works!
A.,
No questions! 5×5.
Thanks. :o)
How the fuck did this blog become F., the toy-republi-poodle’s personal pissing patch?
Jeebus, he’s pissed on all the baseboard and now he’s working on the furniture. Fer th’ luv a Mike, don’t give the ankle-bitin’ fucker anything but a couple of .22 shorts in the brain-pan; anything else just makes him yappier. (In a while, that’s what he’ll get anyway, once it’s found that he has absolutely no useful skills in the coming deprivations. What a fucking waste; probably so full of toxic shit, he won’t even make decent fertilizer…)
for what’s his name vlad.
not even close to 300.
1/2 that. fyi.
don’t ruin my cute rep you jerkoff.
i don’t lie.
🙂
It would appear that we have reached the theoretical limits of our theoretical financial system. The Fed is so concerned that they have ordered “Stress Tests”, i.e. theoretical models of theoretical situations. But, of course, this is just my theory. I have to get back to work designing computers that are used to design to computers.
“How’s that? You don’t even get fucking pedicures.”
Ok, I have to admit, that’s pretty effin’ funny!
But your grasp of how energy descent is going to go seems, at least to me, pretty naive. “We have to get our entitlement issues under control first”? Really? You don’t think the whole friggin’ system can just go down, 1% social welfare, 10% corporate welfare with a matching dose for farmers raising testy crops in an increasingly unpredictable climate? There’s a whole shit load of things that have to change, and change radically, (and oh, will they ever), but I don’t think any of it HAS to be done before things go any farther south.
If you mean we need to get a whole bunch of people off of welfare – farmers, corporations, banks, car companies, vets, poor folks, etc – to keep societal chaos at bay, I think you’re at least 30 years too late. But maybe, just maybe, if you keep screaming loud enough about how that tiny slice of the pie-eating public is bringing the system down, SOMEONE might believe you one day.
Take that back, there’s a full 20% of the United States that is as brain-washed into believing that as you are. I feel fortunate that they don’t tend to hang out here as often as you do.
ksmias vlad. all 300 lbs. of it.
Sorry, O3, I should’ve read your post first.
“Ten simple words, suitable as a campaign slogan.”
If it is to be, it is up to me.
the writings’ on the wall.
costa rica chica.
I’m turning japanese, I’m turning japanese i really think so.
went running thru my mind when i read this.
We should all plant food not lawns.
duh.
trees fruit trees veggies etc.
probably laws against it.
No matter, I know the expat mentality, particularly the palm tree variety, waiting for the check to arrive.
—————-
Oh, you know the expat mentality.
Did you know that Costa Rica has two ways you can get citizenship… either by having guaranteed private investment income or by having reimbursement of prepaid retirement funds, sometimes called social security.
Investigate a bit about iatrogenic disease in the USA and the rate of mortality as a result of doctor error. I will spare you the statistics and just say they are frightening and much worse than Costa Rica.
I hope you have a life raft and can make it to Costa Rica if you get sick.
“Speaking of life rafts, I hope you have access to a first world hospital if you get sick.” JimmyD
Shucks, Soak beat met to it with a great reply.
But, yes, doing the right thing for us does earn one the due of a little smugness, eh?
While your comment shows that you are pissed that you can’t enjoy what I have chosen to enjoy.
You could if you wanted to tho, don’t exclude leaving the sinking ship USSA on a liferaft of your own choosing.
And thanks Soaka!
Dee J
My bickering is not low rent. My bickering involves research and comes complete with hard numbers, factual data that are verifiable.
The American Exceptionalism expressed so smugly on this blog, with no data points to back it up… that pisses me off.
“The only shows I miss are Steven Colbert and John Stewart.” SJMom
There are streaming sites such as HULU where you can watch these shows if you want.
Still surprised you are spending SO much on your hair tho. In some countries that would be a good months salary.
DJ
Thanks for coming back. I wonder if JHK is having a bit of fun, or if it’s just random?
Plant that food, darlin’! We’re going to need it! (Although the 300 lb ass thing threw my fantasies off a bit…maybe you should just have kale and celery;)
No worries, man!
You [and nearly everyone else] are doing a good job of exposing the mouthings of shitty ideas as the useless dregs of crumbling ideologies that they are. ;o)
…All I hear is the far, distant yapping of a small and ugly doggie.
Yes both Vlad Krandz and Spider have disappeared. That does seem suspicious.
Anytime, Dee J.
Here is a link to iatrogenic disease, the third leading cause of death in the USA.
http://www.yourmedicaldetective.com/public/335.cfm
“Still surprised you are spending SO much on your hair tho.”
Two years ago, at my hint, my wife bought a $30 set of clippers for me to cut my hair with, and it’s done a fine job ever since. I let it go for about 2 months and then I shave it off. I have to oil and work the clippers a little bit sometimes to keep the blades moving, but it always comes around. Now I just need a t-shirt that says “YES, I cut my own hair”. Doesn’t seem to hurt farmers market sales either…
“We are trying something new in our household — two months ago we gave up AT&T Uverse television”
Good for you San Jose Mom! Mrs. Auntie River and I did the exact same thing last year. We bought a Mac mini computer and connected it to the TV (via USB port) as the monitor. We also use a presentation style mouse as our remote control. We like the “loop” by Hillcrest Labs. Combine this with the minimal Netflix subscription (about $10) and you’re good to go, since they have an astounding amount of unlimited streaming programing including movies, TV shows and great documentaries. There’s also a ton of free online content available via websites like PBS, Comedy Central, and the networks, as well as Hulu and Blinx. We save $800 to $1000 a year for better quality programming and more choices. So for everyone reading this – dump the cable box and switch to free online TV!
P.S. We also homeschool, and two or three nights a week we watch no TV at all, choosing instead to read, make things (baked goods, crafts, paintings etc.), or play board games. Good luck and God Bless out there in San Jose!
Damm , Soaka beat me to it again!
“As if CR or any CA sinkhole have the long term political stability or economic sustainability independent of US remittances to be called a life raft, lol.” Jimmy d
Costa Rica has one of the most stable governments in the whole of Central America. They abolished (!) the military in 1949 and instead spend the money on Social Security for each and every citizen of the country.
After one obtains permanent residency here (3-5 years), you can apply for citizenship if you want, and no problem with being a dual citizen with the US government either.
Life under the palm trees is not so bad! Just make sure its not a coconut palm!
DEE
Yes, MD! That is the only way. People who get all worked up about making others behave probably aren’t doing that much to help.
Out of 13 countries in a recent comparison, the United States ranks an average of 12th (second from the bottom) for 16 available health indicators.
More specifically, the ranking of the U.S. on several indicators was:
13th (last) for low-birth-weight percentages
13th for neonatal mortality and infant mortality overall
11th for post-neonatal mortality
13th for years of potential life lost (excluding external causes)
11th for life expectancy, at 1 year for females, 12th for males
10th for life expectancy, at 15 years for females, 12th for males
10th for life expectancy, at 40 years for females, 9th for males
7th for life expectancy, at 65 years for females, 7th for males
3rd for life expectancy, at 80 years for females, 3rd for males
The poor performance of the U.S. was recently confirmed by a World Health Organization study which used different data and ranked the United States as 15th among 25 industrialized countries.
‘The American Exceptionalism expressed so smugly on this blog, with no data points to back it up… that pisses me off.”
I see it was wrong to note you being simply smug, you’re apparently also a hypocrite now decrying “American Exceptionalism” (sic) as smug whilst being the very product of it’s largess that fosters privileged travel and forays of the neo-colonialist.
Enjoy your lifera…..err….lancha, lol, as Steve Goodman sings me out…………
~Banana Republic~
First you learn the native customs,
soon a word of Spanish or two.
You know that you cannot trust them,
’cause they know they can’t trust you.
Expatriated Americans, feelin’ so all alone,
telling themselves the same lies
that they told themselves back home.
KILLER COCONUTS & OTHER TROPICAL HAZARDS
Like, we don’t have enough to worry about?
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2405/are-150-people-killed-each-year-by-falling-coconuts
LOL
Good one, Wage.
Costa Rica has one of the most stable governments in the whole of Central America.
————–
Thanks, Dee, for reminding me that Costa Rica had the good sense to abolish its military in 1949 and invest in people.
Costa Rica has the reputation of being the Switzerland of Central America. Many consulate officials, diplomats, etc. retire to Costa Rica, from all over the globe. Costa Rica is one of many paradisical spots to live.
Some such spots exist in the USA, if you are rich. If I had the money I would have a nice little house near the beach in La Jolla and wait for my checks there.
But I do not have the income to live in California, so it is the southwest desert for me for now, until I can escape the USA for the Andes Mountains in the global south.
I thought it was agreed two weeks ago to ignore “douchebag”.
=============
I simply don’t understand this constant use of “douchebag” as some devastating put-down. Personally, I think of the douchebag as the “sliced bread” of feminine hygiene.
Right back at ya, Drinkwater
These changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes,
Nothing remains quite the same.
Through all of the islands and all of the highlands,
If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane
Is “scumbag” OK?
Good point, Q. I honestly have no problem with being inserted between a woman’s labia and letting go of my contents…I won’t use douchebag again. You have converted me.
Am I missing something? Steve Goodman? Aren’t we talking about Jimmy Buffet? Is Steve his writer or something?
My nephews spent a month in Costa Rica surfing. They had primitive/cheap accommodations in a tree house that was regularly visited by little monkeys. Their only brush with “death” was when an old lady pulled a knife on them. They simply ran in the other direction! They had a blast. The water is much warmer than Santa Cruz.
Yes, death is everywhere. Old lady with a knife? While I’m wearing my Speedos? I know I’m runnin’
“Steve Goodman? Aren’t we talking about Jimmy Buffet?”
Not in this case tripp.
Steve Goodman, singer, musician, songwriter; wrote ‘Banana Republic’ and many other songs that were covered by various performers….probably most notably ‘City of New Orleans’.
And now a bit of Humor…
Buffetts pic just popped up on yahoo…
Tips for the Little People:
including..
tip #5. Buy Cheap
The rich can afford to splurge, but that doesn’t mean they do.
John Paulson, a billionaire hedge fund manager, bought his Hamptons “dream house at a bargain basement price,”
according Zuckerman, author of the Paulson-based book, “The Greatest Trade Ever.” The story has it that Paulson eyed the home while it was in foreclosure. ….
..Finally, on a rain-soaked day, he purchased the home on the Southampton town hall steps. He was the only bidder……………
It is Buffet, both songs.
I suspect Jimmy Drinkwater might be an immigrant unfamiliar with American culture, so I did not want to draw attention to his error or cause any embarrassment if he is an immigrant.
Yr local Junior College may have tints cheap.
“Someone who is continually banging on the capitalism drum is not showing all their cards. At this stage of the game it should practically be a tautology that those who are benefiting at the expense of others wish to keep the same old game going for another hand so they can continue to con the easy marks.” -BHM
*************
Goddamnit, Lord, now listen up!….
Get that bright light out of my blinkered eyes, that “true-’nuff” shit hurts me bad!
“Yes both Vlad Krandz and Spider have disappeared. That does seem suspicious.”
-the resident submariner-
I concur, Marc. Although, based on my experience from just today – it’s pretty easy to get a new, and similar, screenname and jump right back into the fray.
Vlad, occasionally, has not posted until after Monday. And 8M/Old6969/Spider has always been sporadic – with lots of activity, followed by gaps, of at least a few hours.
I will (would?) actually (truly) miss Vlad, or any poster on this blog who writes from an unique perspective. I’ll miss Spider because of his uniqueness – although the long posts/double/triple posts were (are) going to have to go, eventually. And a little misogyny may be OK – but Spider was rapidly setting records for STUPID SCARY HATE directed toward individual females.
And I’ve got to say that Lil’Jimbo/TooTsie/Fabian is sounding slightly better without quite so many insults. I don’t believe he has fired a single “fucktard torpedo” (tm Cash) all day.
———————
Notes to new posters on CFN –
Why does this discussion of the personalities of the posters, matter?
This discussion blog is amazingly self-regulated, with recurrent posters who manage to establish some sorts of rules out of the anarchy that is the open internet.
Welcome in! – share your thoughts, by all means! –
But watch out for the digital hazards, the trolls, the fruitbats, and the jackasses.
P’C
Thanks for the laugh!
“Banana Republics” is the title of a 1976 Steve Goodman song, made famous by Jimmy Buffett, released in 1977 on the Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitude album.
I think that bright light in your eyes may be the interrogation lamp.
=============
My my, well aren’t you just the sensitive one?!
You can not be too careful on the anonymous internet. People do have feelings.
Wagelaborer,
I did not have the time to ask of you in last weeks exchange if you vote.
I was merely using the name bestowed by someone else but you must admit that he did answer to that name. Your take on that label is fascinating and I will consider making it my own.
Hmmmm, and from someone who writes:
“My bickering involves research and comes complete with hard numbers, factual data that are verifiable.”
We get:
“It is Buffet, both songs.
I suspect Jimmy Drinkwater might be an immigrant unfamiliar with American culture, so I did not want to draw attention to his error or cause any embarrassment if he is an immigrant.”
No worries on that, I see you capitulated with little side trip to google, lol.
But I do wonder how that “cause any embarrassment if he is an immigrant” mentality plays out for ya with the Ticos?
‘We are the world, we are the children……..la la la’ lol
“Thanks for coming back. I wonder if JHK is having a bit of fun, or if it’s just random?”
-tripp-
Tripp, I have no idea. Logically, I’ll say most of the “held for review” posts are random. But, I got into a real World-Class whizzing contest with the blog software last Sunday night – trying to get my post to Ms. TruthTeller, concerning hair color and male vanity, to post. I was going through my post line by line, almost word by word, excising things and reposting. This was after I had retyped the thing – from memory and using different words – TWICE.
I probably tried to post it in various permutations – perhaps 12 times over a 15 minute period. That would, logically, be enough to get me banned as a “spammer” by lots of blog algorithms, perhaps including JHK’s. So, to that extent, I deserve my own banning.
And I’m glad it was so easy to get back onto the thread. Forewarned is forearmed, though – for some of the rest of you.
P’C
PS, Tripp, on a more important issue – have you figured out how deep your well is? And do you know the maximum flow rate you could pump – carried forward for days, months, or years.
It’s bothering me that you are sacrificing in the here and NOW – and that your family’s sacrifice might well enable your large acreage Watermelon Man neighbor to plant his unsustainable crop for several more years, doing far more long term damage to local ecosystems and local economies.
You know what I mean, man?
Just got around to translating your German post from last week. Too right. Now how are those ‘maters coming along? Still need to devote a few minutes to reading JHK’s Daily Grunt that you promoted too.
Yessiree, X,
It’s the Great Interrogatory o’ Da Lawd, and he be ax’in’ some mighty painful, burrrrrrnin’ questions of late!
Will my querulous answers be enough to purchase our deliverance from Da Deb’bil? Only time and glossy gobs of providentially provided pleasure-pills will tell…..
Stay tuned to Clusterfuck Planet Channel for further updates, and set your personal climate control to “chaotic”!
Soak,
I received a response from Joseph Burgess, Office of the Public Editor, The New York Times regarding the Dictionary Standard. He said:
“The Times uses the Webster’s New World College Dictionary, fourth edition. I hope this is the info you are looking for.”
He failed to say if this fact is contained in the Times usage reference we were discussing yesterday (forgot the name of it).
(Brought to you by James Howard Kunstler and [the ubiquitous] Google!)
Thanks, Q. for your diligence and your honesty.
I am sorry to hear of your problems with the software. As PC says, it seems to happen to lots of people, randomly, at various times. I had a long post for you but it would not post last week about the difference between Style and style. I also tried retyping it, shortening it… nothing worked and now I have lost it.
Regarding those carefully tented, early-planted, far-too-monstrous t’maters-
Yikes! The very earliest ‘maters I’ve ever seen in these parts. There’s some of the Brandywines that are just starting to “pinken” up. Might actually become a strategy, if’n we don’t get nuke-fallout screw’t before next season rolls around.
Of course, we have to keep in mind some of those howling storms that are becoming the new normal. Those could huff and puff and blow my little tomato house down. I do wire all the towers together, which provides more stability than one might think. Oh well, like you keep saying, I’ll just have to hope I get some things going that work before they become life or death issues. (Thanks for asking, tomato-wise.)
Ps. That article is gang-busters; one of the most cogent psychological arguments I’ve heard in many a long year. We’re probably NOT crazy! (……Well maybe not YOU, anyway. ;o)
Here goes again, or what I remember of it, in small posts and no paragraph breaks. Q, the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage does not provide any recommendations for so-called standard dictionaries. I checked it out. You must be jivin me. You busted, brother. I am hep to you. See, I got Style. The NYT has style. Let us plough through this. There is Style, and then there is style. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage will traffic in the second kind, but must reach its territory by way of homage to the first.
Style, with a capital S, achieves what a rule book never can. A source like The Urban Dictionary lights the page, draws readers, earns their delight, makes them gasp or weep and sometimes captures a place in memory. I am not jivin you Q.
Writerly style (even without the illicit capital S) is a set of tools and tricks, a tone of voice. Or rather it is the tone of many voices. At its best, edited with restraint, style is the ingredient that enables any single issue of The New York Times to supply the minimum daily requirement of crisis and struggle and triumph without homogenizing the insights and wit of scores of individual writers.
I haven’t a clue about my well to be honest. It’s a complete weak spot in our system. I’m hoping that our model will be so useful that it will convince enough people to do things differently that we can actually make an impact on the natural resources of the area. I’m hopeful that enough factors will place negative pressure on the wasteful brand of farming that the neighbor will go TU before his (and my) wells DU.
Wouldn’t that be funny, this old seasoned rancher and farmer coming to little ol’ upstart me to ask how we do it?
We’ll have a redundant water supply in place within the year.
If I’m not crazy I doubt you are! I’ll read it tomorrow. Nighty night all..
Hey man,
Gotta’ couple of questions for you:
1. When you say “Da Deb’bil” do you mean petroleum?
2. Are you fuckin’ for real?
Hugs & Kisses,
Brit Ekland
Just for the record, I had a nice post for Vlad about my immersion in the church last week that didn’t go through, and I didn’t have time to repost it. I’ll try to post it again if/when he shows up.
“…my immersion in the church last week that didn’t go through…”
Dude, you simply must tell.
Tripp,
Anthony Weiner’s last name is pronounced Wee-ner isn’t it? Or is it a long I as in wine? (Most of the time I watch TV muted.)
If the former, it violates both the I before E rule and also violates your rhyme “when two vowels go walking the second does the talking” unless that (only?) applies (my understanding from your post), to German names and Weiner is not German? For your rule to be useful then would require an extensive knowledge of German names.
I would have assumed Weiner was a German name but then I googled Schnitzel which lead to Wiener which I learned was “shortened from German Wiener Wurst Viennese sausage.”
There are so many important things to know in life but they don’t make it easy.
“1. When you say “Da Deb’bil” do you mean petroleum?” -X.
Hmmm, that would be far too conceptual fer me; but very cool however. I would be meaning the mythical [but much respected] Prince o’ Lies, that we all hear’d tell of!
“2. Are you fuckin’ for real?” -X.
Those that have seen me in my fleshly raiment say, “yes”, others who’ve only heard the scandalous rumors say, “no fuggin’ way!”
“Hugs & Kisses,
Brit Ekland” -X.
Thanks, Britt; you were always my most special favoritest of all! Sleep squishy. ;o)
OK, Tripp – I like acronyms, but you lost me here –
“I’m hopeful that enough factors will place negative pressure on the wasteful brand of farming that the neighbor will go TU before his (and my) wells DU.” -tripp-
I’ve got a strong hunch that the neighbor might well go TU – Toes Up – good guess?
As far as your well going DU, TrippT – you’ve completely lost me.
DU – Diminished Unusable ?
DU – Degraded Unreachable ?
DU – Dong Unicycle ?
==============
Ok, I’ll quit trying for humor – because, water is THE most serious subject in the drought prone reaches of Georgia. And your production farmer neighbors are pumping 10’s of thousands of gallons per/DAY out of YOUR aquifer – without doubt, and without penalty.
But, south Georgia aquifers recharge in a hurry. Less than 5 years without electricity and diesel pumps running 24/7 – and your aquifer in Tift County would be back close to Pleistocene levels, I’d wager.
===============
===============
This gets to an important philosophical question – for the whole CFN discussion thread – because many of us are lifelong “conservationists” of water/gas/electricity/resources – –
Is it not possible that our own well-intentioned “conservation decisions,” tend to – exacerbate and prolong – an inevitable “keyhole event” and collapse that is looming for the population of the US?
Anyone can respond to this –
It’s an open forum.
P’C
“As far as your well going DU, TrippT – you’ve completely lost me.” P,C
Just to barge (in a small way), I believe he’s going for:
TU- tits up
DU- dry up
(Just my guess.)
It was like reading an excerpt from the James Brown PCP Chronicles. I can see that correspondence with you is inevitable. However, we must both move on to the topic of Fresh Water.
=================
This appears to be one of those periodic communications to the readership from the Times Public Editor but it’s about style and doesn’t refute the Dictionary Standard. That’s why it’s OK in the right context to say “Whut up wif dat?”
P.S. It’s scores.
Thanks Ozone –
I was just about to say to Tripp that I had figured it out
TU – Toes Up (although Tits Up is a better image?)
DU – Dries Up
That Tripp is a subtly humorous old boy, isn’t he?
And you may barge in anytime, as far as I’m concerned, O3.
“Is it not possible that our own well-intentioned “conservation decisions,” tend to – exacerbate and prolong – an inevitable “keyhole event” and collapse that is looming for the population of the US?” -P,C
***************
Interesting question, but I’d have to go with a fairly firm [if totally “suppositional”] “no”, as there are too few of us to have much impact/footprint.
I went with a wood “gasification” furnace, because of our local resource, and a 360′ well (340′ with 20′ bottom void for possible silting) to have “reserve”, even though we were getting decent flow at 30′. That’s just how New Englander’s do stuff; pretend bad shit might happen… ’cause it usually does. ;o)
Thanks, Q. I cannot get the last paragraph to go through, so I cannot explain fully and finish the Style/style rant.
I will try one sentence at a time
The best of style, however, like The Urban Dictionary, relies upon the ears and eyesight of the ghetto.
Next sentence
In that setting, the sudden glimmer of an unusual word, a syncopation or a swerve in logic lets the reader know that here is something richer than an hourly bulletin, something richer than the New York Times or Websters.
Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent-VT, took to the floor for hour-and-a-half-long speech to call for people to contact the White House and demand corporations and the rich are hit as hard as social spending for the poor in a debt-reduction deal, which is being negotiated ahead of a vote to raise the debt ceiling.
“Tell the president not to yield one inch to Republican demands to destroy Medicare and end Medicaid while continuing tax breaks to the wealthy and the powerful,” Sanders said.
In The Ghetto, hit it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ox1Tore9nw
James I continued to really work on the garden,and how to enrich soil without oil inputs. I am exposed to many different folks because of my work, and past weekend I was excited to chat with Amish and Mennonite farmers and asked about all natural composting,well they respond they TOO use oil inputs to grow those big crops. Look around closely at your neighbors, work mates,and the various stories,the upcoming crisis will down all of us,and that will lead to non reality spokesman from right and left,man I want a time machine,imagine how to feed your family from your land, really try it, becareful of all those cozy all natural books,OH Zeus we need you.
I weigh 155.
VLAD STARTED A RUMOR.
I’m a pregnant, Jewish, African-American, woman who is confined to a wheelchair due to Lou Gehrig’s Disease. You nosey mofo’s do not get to know how much I weigh. Now what?
The silent depletion right now is in RARE
EARTH METALS. China, the world’s biggest
supplier, is allegedly going to give the
world about half its normal amount.
These metals (rhodium, titantium, etc.)
turn out to be VITAL in just the industries
where we fancy we have an edge i.e., high
tech and the “resurgent” auto industry (a
goofy but oft-used term but where does it
come from since Ford’s are now ranked 23rd).
If you’re out there Jimbo, I wonder if you
could comment on this rather quiet disaster.
E.
Reading the comments here and trying to make sense of them I can only come to the conclusion that Gaia’s recent efforts to wipe us little lice off her hide are all to the good.
All of you “I got mine fuck you” types take a good look at Texas and the Midwest right now. The drought is so hard in Texas that they can’t grow a blade of grass without massively depleting their one-shot groundwater resources. The rains and flooding are so bad in the upper midwest that they still can’t get into the fields to plant crops. Those people would STARVE without government help assuming they didn’t drown or die of thirst first.
All of us other folks who are depending on the government to save our butts have to get realistic. That cannot happen with a thirteen carrier, fuckteen atomic submarine US Navy, military bases all over hell and gone and wars promoted just to keep Lockheed and Halliburton CEO’s rich. Also no hip replacements or heart surgeries in 90+ year olds. Actually a whole shitload of what we call “health care” doesn’t do crap for anybody but pad doctor’s bills and pharmas profits.
Quit chasing the money and look at what’s happening on the ground. The money is bullshit. It’s monopoly money. We could toss all the bankers paper and computers in a big pile and get along just fine.
E.,
I’ve read a number of articles in the past about China holding on to their supply of rare metals and controlling how much they want to export. Well one would think who cold blame them, but here’s the kicker I wrote about last year.
Erin Burnett was on Morning Joe talking about finances, but she let slip that our armed forces in Afghanistan were guarding Chinese miners.—get that, Afghanistan.
We must have some bizarre deal going with the Chinese to fund our wars…I believe we’ve already lost.
JHK,
Getting back to Hillary Clinton for just a moment. I don’t know whether people have been following this but Hillary wants to leave her post as secretary of State and there is talk about her going to preside over the World Bank.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/09/clinton-world-bank-president_n_874484.html
I wish people would realize that Bill and Hillary are not you father’s democrats any more than that W. was you father’s Republican.
They are all globalists and neoliberals which means that the gutting of nations –that is getting them into debt and then privatizing their assets are what these people are all about.
Hillary is part of t he problem which was why I didn’t consider her for President. It seems no matter who you vote for, you’re going to get exactly what you have now.
You’ll be reassured to know that in the past few weeks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has used the ‘power and prestige’ of her office to persuade Italy to accept Lady Gaga into Rome for a massive planned Gay/Lesbian Pride celebration this summer. It seems some troglodytes at the Vatican were insulted by some of ‘Gaga’s more blasphemous videos, and wanted to keep her out. Screw them! We showed them who’s boss, and where our real national priorities lie.
Of course, the whole world is boiling up around us, as JHK points out each and every week, but who gives a shit about that when an opportunity presents itself to kiss up to the international ‘Gay and Lesbian Community’. Plus, it was a good opportunity to smack down the Vatican, which doesn’t come every day. As long as ‘Lady Gaga’ directs her rage against Christians all will be well
and she will remain in the good graces of the State Dept. and the Democratic Party. I think Lady Gaga is politically astute enough to know to keep her mouth shut about Islam, if she knows what’s good for her. There’s no money in that, and it might be bad for her health, anyway.
As far as I know Hillary is not working on getting Lady Gaga into Mecca or Medina, where she really could do some good. Just Rome for now. I would chalk this up as an international coup on Hillary’s part and puts her in the pantheon of previous Secretary of States like John Hay and Thomas Jefferson.
-Marlin
Great program last night on the Travel Channel about Buffalo, NY, centering on the Erie Canal which made Buffalo possible. I watched it because JHK, in TLE, talks about Erie Canal being important once again in an energy starved America, which was the conclusion of the show as well. The host visited these massive, massive structures form the industrial age, not long ago, which still exist in Buffalo but are all boarded up and sealed off now, a beautiful New York Central train station that went on acres and acres, huge grain elevators, steel mills, energy plants, inland ports, an outsized industrial infrastructure in use between 1870-1970, now abandoned.
-Marlin
Buffalo is still a grain port. The longest run in the great lakes fleet of bulk carriers is the grain run between Duluth-Superior and the grain silos on the waterfront in Buffalo, NY. The fleet which was still making that run in recent years was the Steinbrenner fleet which was/is crewed by the Seafarers International Union out of the hiring hall in Algonac, MI on the St. Clair River north of Detroit. So called lakers rarely or never enter Lake Ontario.
And unlike the various canal systems in Ohio, which were allowed to fall into disrepair after the 1914 storms which also sank a number of freighters on the great lakes, the New York State Barge Canal which connects Lake Erie with the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers is still fully operational. Post collapse it could fall into disrepair however.
Driving through Buffalo on my way up north to go canoeing in either the Adirondacks or else no. Ontario I’m always freaked out by the miles upon miles of boarded up public housing you see to the west of the new minor league ballpark. Buffalo also has a World War II cruiser on the waterfront as a museum ship & war memorial.
The Navy currently has eleven large attack carriers and 75 nuclear submarines. These figures are way down from what they were operating after Nixon downsized the fleet essentially retiring nearly all of the WWII construction in the early ‘seventies. After the Nixon reductions the navy had formerly operated 16 attack carriers and over 130 submarines whose number included then less than 10 diesel boats, which are no longer in the inventory since their submerged cruising speed and endurance are so limited compared to the nuke boats.
There is now talk of adding new diesel/electric submarines. Both the Germans and the Scandinavian consortium build prolonged submergence submarines which use Sterling engines. Although they can remain submerged without snorkeling for prolonged periods their hunting-killing role is limited by restricted flank speed while submerged. The Israelis supposedly operate a seaborne nuclear deterrent basing cruise missiles on such German types which they bought some time ago.
Yea verily the democrats are no longer new dealers nor have they been for some time. Both Slick Willie and our current President Jomama are reminiscent of nothing so much as liberal Republicans such as Nixon, Ford, and Big Bush. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to start swimming upstream defying all those on the presumably other side in the government who want to scap the last surviving remnants of the FDR-LBJ Great Society, so called.
They know which side their bread’s buttered on and it’s no longer big labor which is doing the buttering for them. Hence, no surviving labourite party in this country. Escapism is now the only solution. The only question is whether or not escaping to one’s rural retreat is sufficiently escapist. In the event we will probably discover that that is not sufficiently removed from the madding crowd to ensure one’s safety or continued survival.
Would one’s homestead be safe in the world depicted in the Mad Max movies? Of course not. Think Waterworld instead. Fish stocks should dramatically rebound after the demise of commercial diesel powered fishing. Then again, if we completely destroy the world ocean through acidification then we’re totally FUCKED and might as well be hapless landlubbers Clusterfuckians. We’ll be landlubbers hunted down by postapocalyptic bikers, but the bikers are going to be pedaling mountain bikes with perhaps a few electric mountain bikes thrown in for those who are talented enough mechanically to keep their own personal windmill generators running.
US House to meet in emergency session.
Ambassador to Greece has been recalled, embassy has been shuttered.
US Navy Seventh fleet heading to Mediterranean.
O’bama to address nation tonight – subject – to tell Greek government submit to “freedom fighters’ demands or else.” !!!!!
Film at eleven……
Of all the posters here, I like the one who is actually doing something and who serves as an inspiration to me…Trippticket.
You know how to go right to your favorite poster here don’t you? Click Control F in a Mac and type their name, hit “next” or “highlight all”–edit find in a pc–and there they are sequentially as you hit the return key.
Tripp, don’t forget that you can lay a 100′ black rubber garden hose on your roof and run an end into a shower–better get a “Y” shaped hose splitter to mix in cold water or you’ll get scalded. Automated mixers that can be set at a certain temperature can be used too–but that’s complicated…
Remember when Big Pharma refused to develop drugs to treat “our heroes” returning from Iraq with some sand fly bite induced disfiguring disease?
Not enough of them to make it profitable. So the V.A. developed their own drug for very little money and made it available to the affected fighting men at a cost of pennies a dose.
Bud, I see there’s rioting in Greece. I couldn’t confirm any of the rest of your post. Did you just make it up?
I do really like the part about Obama telling the Greek government to submit to the “freedom fighters.” Since that would undercut the interests of Obama’s friends at Goldman Sacs – I’m not seeing that as even a possibility.
At least there is good news on the nuclear emergency in Nebraska which I thought might have been discussed this week. But everything is now secure and safe according to authorities.
An 8-foot-tall, water-filled temporary berm protecting the plant collapsed early Sunday. Vendor workers were at the plant Monday to determine whether the 2,000 foot berm can be repaired.
Omaha Public Power District spokesman Jeff Hanson said pumps were handling the problem at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station and that “everything is secure and safe.” The plant, about 20 miles north of Omaha, has been closed for refueling since April.
Laughing As Los Alamos was burning down. At least that is taking my mind off the nervous spokesman talking about about that Nebraska nuke plant…
Something about how he kept answering every question the newsman asked with a “no floodwater is inside the building” sorta set of my spidey-sense.
BBHead Marc:
Have you ever cruised thru the Erie Canal?
Also, does the Navy operate any vessels on the Great Lakes?
I recently read a book about the War of 1812, in which the Great Lakes saw much Naval combat. Also, Sacketts Harbor, NY was the nations largest naval base at the time, if you can believe it.
Did you go to boot camp at Great Lakes, Orlando or San Diego?
-Marlin
More Good New… Breathing Room on Default
A top economic forecasting firm pushed back its estimated U.S. default date by about a week, estimating in an email to clients that the government can avoid going bust until Aug. 10.
“The Treasury’s cash balance following the June quarterly tax date is slightly stronger than we expected, which may buy the Treasury a few extra days in August,” wrote the economists at Wrightson ICAP. “Our point estimate of the likely drop-dead date has been pushed back from August 5 to August 10.”
“However,” they noted, “the confidence interval around that forecast continues to be a week or two in either direction.”
Sadly, this is the place where my principles fail me. I won’t drive unnecessarily, or use air conditioning, but I always vote, even though I believe that it is a waste of time and it only encourages them. I’ve even run for local office, if you want to know the sordid truth.
They aren’t “our” wars, lbendet.
They are the wars of the ruling class, which is now global, as you point out.
Wasnt’ it you that linked to the Atlantic article about how the ruling classes of the world are intertwined with each other, and have nothing to do with the people of their birth countries?
Remember that a lot of “Chinese” industry is actually transplanted American factories, now using cheaper labor. The same people profit from them.
They have no loyalty to us. For us to have loyalty to them is like having loyalty to the local football team because you live there.
They don’t have to live here anymore. They don’t have to sell here anymore. I saw a chart which shows the rise in non-US sales by major “US” corporations.
Just as the ruling class is international, so are the people able to consume. Consumers no longer just reside in the US, so they’re letting us go.
Surely you’re kidding.
The Greek people protesting austerity measures so that they may pay off the banking loans that their politicians procured will NEVER be called freedom fighters by our ruling class.
We have our own version in Wisconsin. They are ignored and teargassed as necessary.
“Freedom fighters” are CIA armed thugs who attack governments that the US (and international) ruling class won’t tolerate. Maybe they won’t join the international banking system, or maybe they want to sell their oil in Euros or dinars.
Maybe they won’t open their markets to cheap US corn or offer their people as cheap labor.
Whatever. The Greeks will be smashed, and so will the Americans.
No, either my conservation efforts have an effect, and postpone global warming or save a fish from a dried up river, or they have no effect and no one gets more because I took less.
In the meantime, I can live with my conscience.
“Is it not possible that our own well-intentioned “conservation decisions,” tend to – exacerbate and prolong – an inevitable “keyhole event” and collapse that is looming for the population of the US?”
I sure hope so! At least the prolonging part. Stretching Hubbert’s Curve out to the right as far as we can should be our chief goal. With petroleum in its descent phase already, I don’t believe that we are capable of a NET increase in biospheric destruction (short of nuclear means), so I don’t share your concern about exacerbating our demise. Again, I mean in a net planetary way; localized destruction can certainly increase for the unfortunate and passive.
I think that every person who goes from consumption to production, from commuting to working from home, every farmer who trades in rapacious cultivation of annual crops for soil building perennial production or conservation tillage, helps build a negative feedback loop on the cycle of destruction.
In 10 years, this 300 acres will be a haven of biodiversity, and a gene bank for repopulating the region with robust ecologies that humans will be an integrated, not combative, part of. Within that 10 years I believe that we will spawn many more “seedling” permaculture sites, and so forth and so on, until a critical mass is reached, and it becomes uncouth (and potentially immoral) to water a lawn, wash a car, flush a toilet, or use any more energy than necessary to accomplish a given task, at which time the remaining population is socially “forced” to adapt.
Actually the first few seedling permaculture sites are already forming in the minds, at least, of some new friends here. Not all will stay in Tift County, some are here for school and will go elsewhere when done, but that really makes no never-mind to the larger picture.
I like to visualize the pattern as a net, like a fishing net, where several nodes (permaculture sites or the like) form in a region, and then other people copy and adapt those models forming more nodes, which link up which each other economically and socially, forming the strands of the net, until it’s hard to escape the influence of the network. It’s a long, organic process, but I have a lot of faith in slow organic processes, and humans, by nature, tend to conserve their resources better and better as they dwindle, so I have hope that Hubbert’s Curve can be stretched way, way out on the downslope. Ever had a sack of weed, and you threw the contents around liberally when you had a lot, dropping a bit here or there, not caring, but when you got to the point that you could count how many bowls you had left you went into conservation mode, holding your toke longer each time and looking for the bit you dropped harder as you approach the end of the bag, cursing yourself for being so wasteful with the first half of the sack? Human nature.
But the opposite is just as likely. Catastrophe is on our doorstep and almost no one is doing anything about it. The eco-pious fret and wring their hands about this treshold or that limit being exceeded already, so what’s the point of trying to catch it? Not a very useful response to anything if you ask me, but popular nonetheless.
I’ve said on several occasions that our goal should be to stretch the collapse out to units of generations instead of running into an Olduvai Cliff, because I don’t think the catastrophic model favors the prepared much more than it does the desperate. I’m certainly not ready for a full-blown collapse.
How do you do it with a PC?
“A top economic forecasting firm pushed back its estimated U.S. default date by about a week, estimating in an email to clients that the government can avoid going bust until Aug. 10.”
Is this being covered in the MSM at all? This seems like THE story of the decade to me.
If everybody is cut off of welfare, and the government no longer pays people to work, then the monetary system contracts, and no one buys your mushrooms.
Plus, there will be a lot of starving desperate people around.
We can have a monetary system without running it through bankers and debt. We can have a decent society without nuclear submarines and endless war.
But just cutting everyone off of their stipends will not create that decent society.
That’s very kind of you, WestCoast! And thanks for the down-teching tips. Useful stuff for sure.
I’m looking at how fast Fabian responds to everyone’s posts. It’s hard to believe that one guy is able to troll that many posters and to provide such succinct quote snippets from articles on topics ranging from Canadian health care to shale oil. I think that he is a “hired troll”. He might even have a small team helping him or posting under his name. He is seeding the forum with foul, abusive language in the hopes that you will tune out. It would be a reasonable guess that he is being paid, ultimately, by some group of oil interests. I have a relative who does normal PR work, placing stories as news, but she also runs blog farms in the 1,000s for the same large corporations. The best thing that we could all do is stop responding to him, even in passing.
Thanks for the tech tip re: how to find a favorite poster. Love learning neat tricks for me Mac!
That’s exactly what Uncle Ned was saying yesterday. He pressed F man to fess up to the truth, which of course, he didn’t. Ignore the knuckle dragger and maybe he’ll go away. Well, maybe not, since it is his JOB.
Wage, it’s not me cutting everyone off. The moneychangers are doing that. And I don’t really care if I get paid for mushrooms in greenbacks or sixpacks to be honest.
I’m doing everything I can to keep people from starving, believe me. I agree that the government could help in some big ways, but that isn’t their MO. Their MO is corporate profit, which doesn’t take too kindly to permaculture. So it’s my opinion that either we do it ourselves, or we starve to death, which might not be completely off the planning charts for an elite class facing resource depletion. Left or right, the government is not in our corner. You seem to have a lot of faith in top-down solutions that I absolutely do not share. Not that I don’t appreciate your efforts.
“What is the absolute height of insanity is to pretend that there is no problem. Introducing Obamacare, when the country was already bankrupt was INSANE. Increasing the usage of government limousines by 73% in the first 2 years of big O’s admin. is INSANE.”
Gotta agree to a point, when looked at from any honest perspective it IS insane. Our owners are not honest of course, and these insanities are distractions to keep the heat off of them.
There does not have to be a slam-dunk, dead certain crash…if responsible government institutions recognize, admit and react to the financial straights we find our nation currently embroiled.”
“Dead men walking” will extend the walk, if they can. After siphoning $14 trillion in financial blood from (the corpse?) of the USA economy, through its Fed front, the banking cartel is still insolvent. Recognizing reality means these banks are toast. Since they control both the red and blue politicians, the media, and most elections, the realists will be ingnored at best, or offed if necessary.
Since the government is also bankrupt, a crash is inevitable, (it is simply not to possible to pay off the debt) but expect more delay until a way is found to save our owners banks. Then, if they get their way, a crash happens that leaves them owning everything real, and the survivors in feudal support roles.
I’m in. I’ll stop reading “his” posts.
So my daughter has been listening to this They Might Be Giants song for kids called “Kids Go!” Pretty catchy tune actually, especially for TMBG fans.
But the words to this verse stuck in my head:
“So if you’re hearing my voice,
then there isn’t any choice,
you should already be jumping
like a jack-in-the-box,
So GO!!”
It’s a song about getting kids off the couch and moving, dancing, whatever, but to my energy descent-addled mind the above words sound like a plea to first world children to get busy doing something different. They are obviously much more subtle than I am, but “if you’re hearing my voice” that means you have access to the internet or a CD player, i.e. you are a citizen of the industrial world, and shit is about to get messy. So, hopefully your parents are on it already, but if not “you should already be jumping like a jack-in-the-box,” so GO!! (Move like a monkey…move like a jumping bean.)
Can’t get it out of my head actually…dang kids wanting to hear it over and over and…
Mohammed El-Erian of PIMCO says that the Fed has been buying 70% of the bonds issued by the US Treasury. What does that tell you? It tells me that the theoretical limits of the theoretical financial system have long been exceeded.
The world didn’t collapse you say? Just wait. People talk about US govt default. What pray tell do they think quantitative easing is? The Fed creating money out of thin air and pumping this “new cash” into the economy on this scale is default with a capital D. Or fraud with a capital F. Akin to borrowing ie 5 lbs of gold coin and repaying with 5 lbs of copper coin.
It’s a con game on a monumental scale with everyone, especially the shysters in the financial system, pretending it ain’t so. But it is so.
What makes me laugh are these “best and brightest” on Wall Street working day and night to steal what the Fed is working day and night, at the command of Wall Street, to make more and more worthless. It’s an amazing thing to watch. Best and brightest my ass. Cretins. They spent a fortune on Ivy League degrees to get stupid. STOOPID.
Howdy Wage, Per your query: “How do you do it with a PC?”
A previous CFN poster, I remember not who, pointed out that if using Firefox simply open Edit at the top left of your page and then open Find and type in the word one is searching for. I believe that internet explorer utilizes a similar technique.
SNAFU
Thank you. Apparently, I use neither.
My son, also my tech support, set up my computer and it doesn’t seem to have an “edit” button.
But thank you for the info.
Wonder how she’d do with something like snortin whiskey drinkin cocaine or boom boom out go the lights. Give her five years and watch out.
On a P.C. to find your favorite poster or any word,
“Edit”, then “Find on this page”.
Internet Explorer…of course you could upgrade to
Firefox and use their free add on, Add Block Plus, so that you’d have more control and never see another ad again…
Tripp, yes the full kabuki dance is being covered in MSM. Our leaders are laser focused on this, waiting to see who will blink first. I am positive they will come up with a deal by the end of July and there will be no default.
OTOH, a default could be the trigger for a massive economic collapse and devaluation of the dollar.
OTOH, Argentina defaulted on $100 billion of foreign debt 10 years ago and Argentina still exists. So default is not a death sentence, but would accelerate the energy descent, a mini-wake up call.
Max Keiser points out that Americans are destroying their own infrastructure, the way they do when they attack another country.
But it’s individual Americans. I pointed out before that I thought it was horrible when the USSR was destroyed, and the people were reduced to scavenging their own infrastructure, like electric lines, for scrap metal, and that now people here were stealing air conditioners for the copper.
Prog said that people were stealing transformers in Georgia.
According to Max Keiser, a lot of people are stealing transformers, and a train was derailed last week because someone stole the track for scrap metal.
After 9-11, even though I thought that the plan to widen my street would be scrapped, because of the oil money and all, the plan went ahead.
For some reason (sarcasm, now that they’ve put in the housing development, I see why they did it) they put in a sewer system along the soybean fields. Lately I noticed that the manhole covers were missing. This is very dangerous for people walking along the street, which more and more are doing, now that the economy is collapsing.
I’m guessing they’re selling them for scrap.
This is pathetic.
I have emailed my son. I think I have Ubuntu?
There doesn’t seem to be an edit button.
I totally agree with you that the government is in bed with their corporate masters, and that we need to produce locally.
I just feel that it’s a waste to give up all the talent and brains and ability that there is in this country while we devolve into a feudal system of each for themselves.
One of my Facebook friends in Chicago posted the following, about a woman he saw on the street. A victim of the bankers, but also of passerbys.
“I was going to the store one day and there was this woman sitting on the street curb crying and talking incoherently with all of her belongings scattered along the street. She was evicted from her condo because she could no longer afford her home because she was laid off.
While she sat lost & talking to herself people where going thu her things and walking away with whatever they liked…right in front of her suffering.
It was the ugliest form of inhumanity I have ever seen in America in my whole life. I shot the video and then got pissed and confronted to people who where going thu her things and asked “are these yours…? ( knowing they where not. ) and of coarse they where honest enough to say “NO” Then I said, well what the FU@& are you doing..? Well they walked away but not before taking a few things.
I did not shoot the lady in the video out of Respect for a already suffering human being. I asked the lady if she was going to be ok..and she said that her brother was trying to find someone to come get her things but she did not know where she would take them. Needless to say… the next day some of the things were gone or stolen and I never seen here again. 🙁
This is the REALITY in AMERICA today. Now imagine if this was you disabled & on a wheelchair in her situation. THIS IS HAPPENING IN AMERICA ( OMG!!! )
Wage, pressing the control key and the F key simultaneously should bring up the find box. On a Mac it would be the command key and the F key simultaneously.
Here is a link to Ubuntu keyboard shortcuts
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KeyboardShortcuts#Finding keyboard shortcuts
That particular incident involved stealing copper “busbars” from substations. Which, around here involves cutting your way into a chain link fence with barbed wire on the top. And walking into an enclosure that is usually stepping down transmission voltage of 115,000 volts to the “lower” distribution voltage of 24,400 volts.
Only idiots will go in there without training AND the immediate knowledge of what’s hot and what’s not – because you sure can’t tell just by looking.
There was a death that hit the news a couple of years ago – I can’t find the link, though. But then TPTB got this bill passed, and some of the thefts from utilities, etc, slowed down.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/att-goes-after-copper-wire-thieves
==============
I was watching trucks southbound on I-16 going to Savannah, GA, a few weeks ago. There is a LOT of scrap metal heading to that port. I’m assuming that a good bit of it is heading into shipping containers to go overseas.
And one can argue that the “scrap scavengers” are cleaning up some of the US – for free. But they are also stealing a lot of stuff.
My brother in law just has his outside “pad mounted” AC condenser stolen at his lake house. Thieves got an estimated $15 for what they stole. It cost him $3000 to have the unit replaced. Then he paid extra to have a metal cage installed over the unit – bolted into newly poured concrete in some manner. I haven’t seen it, yet.
And he got his AC guy to bypass the outside “power disconnect,” so that the AC unit is always electrically “hot.” I asked, “Man, aren’t you worried about getting sued if somebody gets electrocuted, there?”
“No,” he says, “I don’t care. Plus this is Georgia – no jury is going to give an award to somebody stealing stuff who gets hurt.”
“I guess I’ll just have to be sure to kill the power inside the house if I have any work done on the AC outside.”
Democracy Now spent many minutes today on one of the auditioning puppets.
Then they had a brief segment talking about nuclear reactors. Japan doesn’t matter, Nebraska doesn’t matter, Obama insists on funneling billions of dollars to nuclear construction companies.
Then the expert talked about Obama’s support for new nuclear weapons. Apparently, he’s funneling big bucks to weapons manufacturers, also.
Amy Goodman asked how he could justify the expense, with the deficit and all.
The expert said that he didn’t have to justify it. No one was paying attention. No media was covering it.
So the current puppet is giving billions to further destroy our ecosystem and provide the military with the means to destroy more lives.
And even Amy Goodman is more preoccupied with the upcoming puppet replacement ceremony.
Unbelievable.
Scrap dealers continue to be part of the problem – they can be “fences” for thieves.
Somebody stole 175+ bronze flower pots from a cemetery. That disappeared – probably shredded or melted and shipped to China.
At my wife’s last school they finally had to WELD DOWN the manhole covers – first because kids were rolling them into the woods when the place was closed – although by now they’d be stealing them.
What scrap dealer would accept a truck load of perfectly functional manhole covers as SCRAP – asking no questions – and contributing to quickly getting them shipped out of the state and then out of the country.
Jackasses.
Whoa! It worked! Thank you, soak.
LSDJogger said, “I am convinced that the die off of the human race (aka the Long Emergency) will be postponed for a few decades on account of shale gas. The question for me is, are we going to expand our use of natural gas enough (as a replacement for oil in transportation and as a replacement for dirty coal in electric power generation) enough that gas will go up enough to be a profitable business?”
Its insane, the casual way you state this. Like any investor in the industries which are destroying the world, you profit from destruction, form human suffering, and no ethical dilemma pierces your awareness. You have perfected your life in your niche, like a worm having found the buried fecal matter it will reproduce in. You are a parasite.
I think I have Ubuntu?
=============
I had Ubuntu once. Makes syphilis look like the sniffles. Got it from this black chick down in the prah-jecs. No wonder she was only charging five bucks.
😉
Taking advantage of the dry southwest heat, with over 100 degree temperatures, I got a used evaporative cooler and I’m in climate controlled heaven.
Much cheaper than air conditioning, uses less energy, humidifies the dry southwest air. I am happy.
http://www.alternative-heating-info.com/swamp_cooler_vs_air_conditioner.html
What really struck me as strange is you have to leave a window open somewhere in the house… but it works nonetheless, cooling 10 to 20 degrees.
That’s what I thought at first, Prog.
How could they sell them? It’s obvious what they are.
But I guess there are dishonest scrap metal dealers, also.
The title of the Max Keiser segment was Scrap Metal Dealers are the New Pawn Shops.
Kind of inaccurate. Don’t most people hope to reclaim their pawned items when they have the money?
I always patronize the small local market at the town square. My thought is that my dollars will keep them open, and they buy from local farmers, which keeps them in business.
I found out that they have been operating at a loss for a couple of years. If I lose my job, I will be able to spend less there, and the community may lose an important resource.
Most people shop at WalMart. I am assuming that WalMart will close when oil gets pricier.
I want there to be an alternative.
The owners of the store are committed to the town. They also operate a coffee shop/vegetarian restaurant, a day care center, and a local garden. They host community movies and gatherings.
They are Muslims, by the way. Sufis.
Pangy said, “Reading the comments here and trying to make sense of them I can only come to the conclusion that Gaia’s recent efforts to wipe us little lice off her hide are all to the good.
All of you “I got mine fuck you” types take a good look at Texas and the Midwest right now. The drought is so hard in Texas that they can’t grow a blade of grass without massively depleting their one-shot groundwater resources.”
The zombie hordes are simplistic in their strategy:
1. Cluster together with the herd. Ancient instinct: protection in numbers.
2. Adopt the habits and thought-ways of the herd: Ancient instinct: protection in numbers, join the clan.
3. When the shit hits the fan, flee. Ancient instinct: there is always someplace else, a greener pasture, to run to after this one is depleted/ruined.
The paleolithic mind is alive and well. Trust me- people are running ancient programs informed by their genetics. Human beings aren’t calibrated to deal with really massive problems. Our government is unfortunately calibrated to allow gangs of tribal-minded and selfish people to simply go about ruining everything. They will succeed.
And there will come a day when they will all pile into their trucks, or trains, or even on foot, and make a great exodus from the wasted and polluted places they now live.
Unfortunately for their stupid asses, there will be nowhere to go; the consequences of their civilization will be everywhere. They will die from poisoned wells, thirst, exposure, starvation, and disease.
This will all happen after an intercessory period where they participate in the machinations of their evil natures. They will participate in the poisoning of the air and the water. They will destroy whatever is in reach with thier upside-down value system. It will begin in their personal relationships, their inanimate objects of affection, their social relationships, the infrastructure of everyday life.
Their teeth will decay, their bones will become brittle, their hair will fall out, their liver will deteriorate, they will become fat, and lazy, and sluggish in their thinking.
When the time comes to flee they will have little strength, and others of their kind will cut strips of flesh from their red and distended limbs as they lie roasting on the pavement under the brutal and unforgiving sun.
It’s funny that the same people who wouldn’t give money to people hurt while stealing air conditioners are all about “supporting our troops” while they are invading other people’s homes.
Double standard, I guess.
Double standard, I guess.
————-
I’d say it’s a frickin’ quadruple moral bypass!
Dr. Holiday said, “One thing that should be clear though is that any amount of intellectualizing about why we must go through an economic contraction with all the pain that implies isn’t going to do any good and misses the point, whatever that point might be.”
You almost arrived at the point. The point is that making money, “succeeding”, competing, executing our social programming as behaviors and attitudes, et al., are the set of upside-down behaviors that ultimately will leave you a hollowed-out shell of a human being, or a very fulfilled psychopath equivalent to any of the lever-pulling Nazi executioners at Auschwitz.
“We are all caught beneath the wheels of history and about all we can do about it is to watch the machine grind us to pieces. The fear beneath the wings of all this for Americans is the fear of losing the loft perch of driving around in oversized cars, stuffing our faces and turning the AC down one more notch at the expense of some other person who has never seen an air conditioner.”
The question is, will the younger generation be amenable to the defeatist / destructionist agenda? Many young people will adopt the attitude of apathy and defeat and commence with the legal and sanctioned forms of self-destruction. They will drink and consume mindlessly. If there is a war, they will go lustily and consummate their emptiness, and annihilate themselves.
We are only borrowing this planet for a while- it is our responsibility to take care of it- which means defend it against those that would destroy it.
If it is true that CEOs should be forced to drink the water in rivers their company pollutes, it is also true that that company’s shareholders should also drink that water.
If you think investing in natural gas companies is value-free, that your mouse-clicks on E*trade are ethically transparent, understand that you are a thief- a thief of the future, in some way, to some degree, also an earth rapist, a polluter, a poisoner, a murderer, even. Your hands are bloody with the cancerous bodies of babies and mothers, and no just God would allow you a gratuitous retirement.
“THIS IS HAPPENING IN AMERICA ( OMG!!! )”
As we speak the Federal Reserve and its cronies are doing the same thing to every single Earthling. It might not affect the people at the bottom quite as severely, but women in Mozambique will no longer be able to support 5 children without industrial world philanthropy, I can pretty much promise you that.
It must be particularly hard for people in the medical fields, but we have got to start letting some people go. We can’t keep every fattie, every diabetic, every kid with Down Syndrome, alive to dilute the gene pool forever. That was a brief reality during the cheap energy bonanza, just like holding the Mississippi back with energetically expensive levies, but it just isn’t how Nature works. You know good and well that Nature is ruthless in sorting out successful traits from unsuccessful ones, and we’ve gotten in her way for too long. Viewed from above you can see how this policy has put our species in even greater peril.
If it were my kid I’d want to save them too, but at some point we just won’t be able to anymore.
Back to the hot garden to try to secure a spot for my children in a world with a whole lot fewer humans…
Don’t we all feel safer now!
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/nation/tsa-stands-by-pat-down-of-elderly-woman-and-removal-of-her-diaper
Click on the YouTube link in t middle of the article. Funny but so true.
If you think investing in natural gas companies is value-free, that your mouse-clicks on E*trade are ethically transparent, understand that you are a thief- a thief of the future, in some way, to some degree, also an earth rapist, a polluter, a poisoner, a murderer, even. Your hands are bloody with the cancerous bodies of babies and mothers, and no just God would allow you a gratuitous retirement.
==
The banality of evil..
They are Muslims, by the way. Sufis.
==
We are all earthlings, as Mr. T points out. 🙂
Yeah, frisking 90 year old women with cancer, while luggage is loaded without screening.
In the meantime, thieves are derailing trains for scrap metal, while passengers are frisked.
I feel so safe!
Yeah, that was for the right wing Christian haters among us.
But they’re people too.
OMIGOD!
Q is on Facebook.
http://www.happyplace.com/3645/the-best-obnoxious-responses-to-misspellings-on-facebook
communities where juries will “…..give money to people hurt while stealing air conditioners are all about “supporting our troops””
-wage-
I’m actually pretty happy to live in an area where a jury is less likely to give a cash award to a thief hurt on my property while stealing my property.
There are a lot of people on this globe who would never reward a criminal for theft.
There are plenty of people (probably most) who will support troops, and police officers, and even TSA agents – when their own safety is directly threatened.
———–
Are there people who have been brainwashed to say, “Support the troops,” and thereby shut down all debate. Sure there are – but that’s another question, altogether.
They are Muslims, by the way. Sufis.
————-
Sufis make my head spin!
Seriously, lovely people. I have danced and whirled with them, and also done zikr with Muslims.
Of course Rush/Glenn/etc. would say I am dancing with “people who want to kill us” …
Some of the dances I have shared with them are to die for. You get so drunk on the divine that Rumi’s poetry begins dance in your head (if you have read Rumi).
When I look at Israel and how Americanized it has become, as an Israeli I get very angry. Very angry! The American corporate cultural genocide practiced on the world is one of the reasons for my deep hate of the US. Your genocidal corporate pirates need to be stopped. And you need to get your asses organized and stop them. Because I’m not sure how much longer we in the rest of the world can restrain ourselves from lashing out when we see you on our streets with your willfully constructed blinders. I think the day is not far off when American tourists will be spontaneously lynched wherever in the world they may visit. I’m very serious. You just can’t imagine the level of hate that your corporate pirates are creating.
I don’t think you got my point, Prog.
Home invasion is a crime, I agree.
What the US military is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Libya is invading other people’s homes. And killing them. And taking their stuff.
Seriously, you don’t see that?
Why the shock?
Is homelessness new?
A friend of mine [old and black] was moving.
He got Mexican day laborers to help him move…
they robbed him blind.
Another day he had a yard sale….Mexicans in cars show up, by the half dozen. Some distract while the others steal.
A ‘meth head’ on a bicycle grabbed the old guys 400$ cell phone and rode off fast….ya cant even have a yard sale!
I’m truly impressed that the credit dog and pony show has lasted as long as it has. It couldn’t be done without the complicity of bondholders (could it?). I wonder when they’re finally gonna freak out. Average Americans are kept in the dark about their financial future, and worse, kept in the dark about resource depletion. Too many people, not enough topsoil. Plenty of broken down dwellings. Hmmm, makes me want to go copper “mining”.
I’m in the process of reading Vandana Shiva’s book “Monocultures of the Mind,” about how industrial world, but particularly American, values and notions of wealth have marginalized most of the variety, crops, and culture in the rest of the world’s societies. She paints a particularly unsavory picture about how the “improved” food and tree crops promoted by American corporations are actually less productive than native food and fuel crops. Not to mention that most people view the forest in a radically different way than American profiteers. A forest, to most of the world’s people, is the well-spring of food, fiber, fuel, fodder, and fertilizer. And most of that fertilizer comes from the crown biomass of various leafy trees that are frowned upon by American timber speculators as a waste of space.
It seems to be a completely different relationship, not only to the forest, but to the planet in general, than promoted by “scientific” American researchers and business leaders. And it mirrors my take on the world a lot more closely. I’m thankful for people like Dr. Shiva, who are not afraid to stand up against the biggest bullies ever known to man and say, we’re not going to take this lying down, no matter how many of you there are.
I wish there were more I could do than simply power-down and blog about it. I’m working on it.
“Too many people, not enough topsoil.”
It doesn’t get any more concise than that.
Obviously, I disagree with you, Tripp.
We have the knowledge, the equipment and the drugs to save people. But we don’t have the “money”?
We have money to bail out the banks and bomb other people’s children, but not to save our own?
Actually, just ask Prog about it. I think he said something about how he thought that he could let his baby die if there was something wrong with it, right up until he saw his baby. (Sorry if I got it wrong, prog).
Should that baby have died to save money needed for more important things?
I’ve never cruised the Erie Canal but one of my sister’s boyfriends used it to get his sailboat back to Cleveland from Rhode Island after sailing down to New York then turning right at the Hudson River. I once slept in a fleabag motel next to the Erie Canal though.
By treaty with Canada no warships can be kept in the Great Lakes but Coast Guard cutters are okay and we have a cutter here in Cleveland called the Neah Bay.
I was the yeoman of my bootcamp company at Orlando, which no longer exists since Great Lakes is the only one left. Our recruit master-at-arms was a former NFL and CFL player called Cecil Bowens, from the U of Kentucky. He died several years ago. That was January & February of ’78. My dad talked me out of enlisting in early ’73. I should have ignored his advice and gone ahead and enlisted when I was 18.
I believe now that the secret to the navy is to pick a really sleazy rating with as much shore duty as possible such as: yeoman; culinary specialist [formerly mess management]; ship’s serviceman; or even boatswain’s mate. After all, BMs used to get that really gravy duty runnning the harbor tugs before they were outsourced. That trick sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The problem with the Quartermaster rating other than no reenlistment bonuses is that it’s 75% sea duty and you’ve got to put up with the officers too much. Also, being the chart plotter for sea & anchor detail is high pressure and you’ve got the navigator breathing down your neck for that one. I got stuck with a real scumbag chief QM at my last submarine who kept telling me I was the “LPO” as a brand new QM2 because he didn’t feel like doing his own job. Since we were going into the shipyard for a major overhaul and nuclear refueling I refused to requalify and turned myself in for alcohol rehab! Then I flunked alcohol rehab and turned myself in to the clinic every month for alcoholic relapse thereafter until I managed to get a medical discharge 6 mos. early. My attitude was “let him do all the work with no help except from the idiot seaman apprentice and third class.” Instead of teaching the new SA his rate this obese asshole had him tending lobster pots strung around the work barge so he could eat radioactive lobster! This guy was so fat he only owned one work set of khakis that fit and would pay other chiefs to let him take their duty whenever an inspection came up so that he wouldn’t have to buy a new set of dress blues. As soon as I got out I took my transcript of sea service to the coast guard and got a merchant mariner’s document, but didn’t use that until ’89.
I got an honorable discharge because I had had high marks throughout most of my enlistment leading up to the appointment to OCS at Newport. But then once you’ve dropped out of OCS you’re labeled an attitude case and they’re reluctant then to even let you reenlist. That was fine with me. If a kid in the barbershop asks me about the military I tell them to join either the air force or the coasties if anything. The ones who want to join the marines can’t be helped so I merely ask them if they’ve ever read the book “Jarhead”. I would rather be the asshole who says “I told you so” than be the asshole who told them “cool” only to meet them later on a disability pension laid up at the VA hospital. I was nearly electrocuted on the fast attack. Had to be taken to the clinic and sedated on valium after getting an EKG.
I think I have Ubuntu? — Wage
=============
I had Ubuntu once. Makes syphilis look like the sniffles. Got it from this black chick down in the prah-jecs. No wonder she was only charging five bucks. — Q
😉
=============================
Ya know what ticks me off? I write something that totally cracks me up like the above^ and what do I get as a response? Nada, Zippo, Squat!
If anyone has not found his site, Chris Martenson has one of the finest, IMHO, if you have not seen it and have a few hours to kill on a rainy day watch his crash course videos. also read the what should I do blog series. the links are at the bottom of this page.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/wood-gasification-intriguing-emergency-fuel-source/58332
What about me? I linked to a website that you would love, and I get nada, zippo, squat, in return!
http://www.happyplace.com/3645/the-best-obnoxious-responses-to-misspellings-on-facebook
I wish there were more I could do than simply power-down and blog about it. I’m working on it.
==
The best thing to do is to engage people, help them become more aware. This is what Vandana Shiva is doing, going to speak to people at TEDtalks, this is what Alex Jones and his InfoWars program/website in the US is doing, this is what Alan Watt with his CuttingThroughTheMatrix program/website in Canada is doing.
Americans need to be confronted for their willful ignorance, it’s that simple.
Hey Q, That wuz probably my Gramma u talkin’ ’bout. Fie dolla? I heard she was givin’ it away for nada!
I linked to a website that you would love, and I get nada, zippo, squat, in return!
==================
I went through the entire link and loved it … especially a commenter named Alyssa.
I was worried that I was actually in there somewhere with my real name showing. My kids got me set up on FB a couple of years ago but I never got into the whole scene. At some point I stopped replying out of a general concern for security.
We can’t afford that other stuff either, Wage. And the people who make it a priority are obviously sick puppies. What it boils down to for me is that, before the Industrial Revolution, there were never more than 1 billion humans on Earth. So roughly 6 out of 7 of us are completely supported by fossil fuels, and cannot be provided for by the diffuse background energies of planet Earth. Not only that, but almost every one of the 7 billion people alive today uses more energy than anyone did 200 years ago. And not only that, but our ecological life support systems are entirely compromised compared to pre-industrial ecologies. Oh, and wait, not only that, but next to nobody, not even you or me, knows much of anything about eating and medicating themselves without the fossil fuel subsidy.
If you want to keep everyone alive you better pray for more oil. Which ultimately means that everyone will die in a toxic waste dump that used to resemble a forested green and blue planet. That road leads to guaranteed ruin.
And I completely disagree with the idea that saving everyone is a self-evidently good idea. When I think about 13 out of 14 humans vanishing from Earth over the next century, however gently or catastrophically, all those petroleum-derived “advances” don’t seem quite so wonderful. What’s worse, there’s a good chance that some pretty monstrous character traits, unleashed into the gene pool by those “advances,” will make it through the keyhole successfully, and be amplified by a much smaller human population.
It comes back to my mantra: if it isn’t sustainable it’s an inferior system. No matter how comfortable it is, or how warm and fuzzy it makes us feel. Sorry it has to be that way. I know you want to save everyone.
“… because I’m not sure we in the rest of the world can restrain ourselves from lashing out when we see you on our streets …” -Metusulah.
We were thinking of taking a trip to Spain and France this fall; maybe we’ll just stay home … sit on the front porch with my Winchester and Ruger Blackhawk, drinking Pabst longnecks, waiting for the apocalypse.
-Marlin
Ah, yes, Alyssa, your doppelganger.
What about the one that corrected the tattoo with the wrong death date?
That fits with the theme of this blog.
You should go. It would be a good learning experience for you. Leave your dumbass US corporate paraphernalia behind.
You should go ahead and fly to Spain. Fly in to Malaga and get a room in Torremolinos. You won’t be disappointed. Just don’t take the ferry to Morocco like everybody used to. Other cool places in Spain are Cartagena and Palma de Mallorca. I woud avoid Barcelona as it has a large population of homeless junkies who camp out in the alleys. Also people get pickpocketed and even stabbed there. It might be a good idea to avoid France so you’re not traveling constantly.
Americans need to be confronted for their willful ignorance, it’s that simple.
=============
But we LOVE willful ignorance. It’s so nice to slouch back in a soft chair tuned into some pablum TV show with barely a brain synapse firing in our heads and then to answer the doorbell in a stained and worn out T-shirt that says “Property of Rahway Prison” on it, beat to shit shorts and flip-flops and give the Pizza delivery nerd a pathetic tip.
This is the life man but you don’t seem to get it. Mexicans are wading the Rio Grande for a shot at living a life of willful ignorance and sugary soft drinks.
Our culture has been absorbed the world over. Some guy in a hut in Outer Mongolia is wearing New Balance sneakers and watching Seinfeld re-runs as we speak.
Really Mika, what’s not to like?
——————-
Alex Jones is a talker. Vandana Shiva is a doer. To mention them both in the same sentence is ludicrous. Alex Jones has a loud mouth, but what kind of intellect is behind it?
Vandana Shiva has written more than 20 books and over 500 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. She is a physicist and received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, in 1978 with the doctoral dissertation “Hidden variables and locality in quantum theory.”
Vandana Shiva has also put her life on the line in environmental direct action campaigns. She has won dozens of awards in recognition of her contributions to world peace and sustainable agriculture.
What has Alex Jones done? He is described as a “veteran broadcaster” with a “unique perspective” (about the Globalists’ master plan for world domination). He seems to think increasing decibels of his voice makes his message more forceful. He is a “prolific” film maker… of conspiracy films.
So, he has a loud paranoid voice, a radio show, and uses a megaphone to boot. But did he graduate from high school? Has he done anything constructive or positive? Or is his main contribution yelling through a megaphone and a radio microphone?
I did find this about Alex Jones:
Alex Jones is an uneducated Republican politician with a loud mouth. His appeal is emotional and has the effect of immobilizing people. I mean, how do you counter secret, unnamed Globalists with a master plan for world domination?
Dr. Vandana Shiva offers a positive, constructive, non-paranoid approach which is based on facts, a rational approach. She has a scientific mind, offers real solutions, local solutions, and helps people put them into practice. She does not need conspiracy theories.
Their names should not be uttered in the same sentence.
I’ve noticed that we don’t have money for Medicare, but somehow can afford three wars, or we have to cut back on state pensions, just can’t afford it, but can afford to afford to ‘bail out’ these corrupt banks. And Greece is not going under, they’re too important to fail, it might hurt the stock market and stuff. This is creeping me out, I’m really starting to agree with the leftists on this.
Really Mika, what’s not to like?
==
I’m guessing, Q, this is another one of your bad attempt at humor and that it’s a rhetorical question. Though I don’t see the smiley to confirm this. 😀
“You’ll be reassured to know that in the past few weeks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has used the ‘power and prestige’ of her office to persuade Italy to accept Lady Gaga into Rome for a massive planned Gay/Lesbian Pride celebration this summer.”
Finally! Someone willing to talk about the news no one else is brave enough to broach! I read – from the same source I’m sure – that liberal government funded scientists are altering monkey brains to make them super smart…soon they will TAKE OVER THE WORLD! Oh, and HIllary didn’t REALLY kill Vince Foster, she turned him into a ZOMBIE!
Maybe she could get one of them Hannah Montana wigs that all the women on Fox Network have.
Alex Jones is an uneducated Republican politician with a loud mouth. His appeal is emotional and has the effect of immobilizing people. I mean, how do you counter secret, unnamed Globalists with a master plan for world domination?
==
They’re not that secret, and they’re not unnamed, at least not at the managerial level.
And Alex Jones is not a Republican, he’s a Libertarian. He does a good job tuning people into understanding the shadow government and the world around them, as reflected by his growing audience.
Max Keiser is another name to look up. Max is based in Europe.
When you fly to Spain wear a t-shirt with a large Canadian flag on it.
“Two years ago, at my hint, my wife bought a $30 set of clippers for me to cut my hair with, and it’s done a fine job ever since.”
I’ve been cutting my own hair for 15 years now – just had to get new clippers ($19 with 12 different attachments, even feathered ones), as the old ‘pair’ were simply worn out (used for my dog’s paws/legs, as well as my pubes). I always used the 1/2″ setting, and did it all by myself. The worst part is the final leveling of the neck area – pretty difficult solo, but after a while it’s a no-brainer. The new clippers came with a 3/4″ setting – I love it! Takes a bit longer to cut (my hair is fine, so numerous run-overs), but managed to finish up in about 20 minutes. If I had a “significant-other,” it would take 10 minutes tops.
So WTF – why are you feeding Tza-Tza (fabian)? As to his argument, which you never satisfactorily answered, I’ll provide the basic 200-level business accounting answer/solution. You claimed health insurance companies had the highest profit margins, and FSCK-tard came back with a list of the most profitable companies. Profit margin is a percentage – the % of net profit to revenue. Net profit is just that – total profit (after taxes), a monetary sum.
Please, DON’T FEED THE TROLL.
they’re not unnamed, at least not at the managerial level
=========
Let me guess. They are on the Board of Directors of CFR? Right? But how do we know which ones?
BBHMarc;
Actually my wife is Spanish and we had a place there, in San Sebastian, until a few years ago. We sold it just in time, before their economy collapsed. I never really had any trouble in Spain or France, a few comments here or there, I never took any shit from any of them, most of ’em back right down.
-Marlin
“Actually, just ask Prog about it. I think he said something about how he thought that he could let his baby die if there was something wrong with it, right up until he saw his baby. (Sorry if I got it wrong, prog).”
-wage, to Tripp-
Wage, you got the quote right, but you left off the last sentences, which were the most important parts.
There are, sadly, many children born today who are able to get out of the labor/delivery room only because of heroic medical measures. Many of them live on for months, or for sad, tragic years – because of other heroic measures.
I’m more with Tripp on this one – what we have today in medicine looks like, “Life at all Costs, regardless of costs.” This approach is morally wrong, anyway – and more so, as resources begin to decline.
My point that you picked up on was that parents should not have to make the decision to not initiate (or to discontinue) heroic medical measures. And I referenced Terry Shiavo (sp) – her parents should not have had to make the decisions to DC (discontinue) nutrition. Someone more objective than her parents (or her husband for that matter) should have made that decision – years earlier.
And I think that Tripp’s larger point is that energy descent will eventually make these decisions against heroic measures – for society, doctors, and parents – whether we want this to happen – or not.
Your self administered haircuts sound interesting. Keep in mind also that if you need a quick replacement set of clippers you can get the Wahl Peanut outliner with a set of attachments at Sally’s Beauty Products and then that set, in spite of being so small, is perfectly adequate to give yourself a butch or even a multilevel clipper cut which is tapered from longer on top to shorter on the sides & bottom. About $50.
Asoka, Vandana Shiva, who the hell is that?
-Marlin
But how do we know which ones?
==
All of them.
“Nowadays we just yell back at the TV”
How about it! No matter whether I tune in to CNN, MSNBC, FOX (Ayup, sometimes), or even BBC, I find myself throwing my loafers at the tube, while shouting out valid arguments against their white-washed horseshit. Ahh, but venting is a good thing – better to let it out – than hold it all in, for the inevitable *explosion*…
U got Ubuntu from a Ubangi?
Good thing she wasn’t an Amazon — someone would have had to put you up to it.
We had no problems with the locals in the western Mediterranean countries. We used to fight EACH OTHER when we were on the beach then sometimes we’d thrown in jail. Others were good at escaping from the police. We were continually drunk of course. We got to Rota, Malaga, Cartagena, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Toulon, Nice, Villefranche, Livorno, Gaeta, and Naples. During two years of this there might have been one Italian waiter who was rude to us, and even he wasn’t really that bad, but just trying to show us that he was union and couldn’t be fired.
Farmland is pretty cheap in the south of Spain to all accounts.
one of your bad attempt at humor
===========
attempts
And last but not least, we used to go to Marseilles and while there we’d hang out at this dive on the west side of the Vieux Port and get drunk with the French Foreign Legion while feeding the jukebox so we could watch the lesbians dance with each other. There’s lots of old hotels on the harbor as well.
BBHMarc, sounds like you had a pretty good time. You said you regretted enlisting, but how would you have visited those places you mentioned without the Navy?
-Marlin
Favorite French jukebox song circa early ’90s: “Mon Mec a Moi” by Patricia Kaas. She’s the one who was in the Jeremy Irons movie about the jewel thief. Her songs are on the web.
She is someone who talks on public radio with a British accent telling of India, farmer suicides,
deaths from pesticides.
AND TO THE NATIONALISTS OUT THERE..
epartment of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano rebuffed accusations from Republican senators today that the Obama administration is attempting to bypass Congress to secretly allow young illegal immigrants to stay in the country.
Republican Sen. Grassley asked Napolitano if Obama was attempting to implement “mass amnesty” administratively, by staying deportations for certain classes of illegal immigrants.
“There is no mass amnesty here,” Napolitano said.
Napolitano testified before the Senate Judiciary committee to push for the passage of the Dream Act,
a 10-year-old bill that would allow young people who were brought into the country by their parents as children to become citizens if they join the military or go to college. The bill passed the House but died in the Senate last December.
THATS OUR JANET!!!!
as well as my pubes
==========
More than we wanted to know Ix.
I visited all the cooler places in the merchant marine, not the navy. The only liberty port I ever got in the navy was Chinhae, the ROK navy base in the far south. The Med is far cooler meaning culturally cooler not colder. Not to put down Korea. The people in Korea were quite friendly to us. I don’t regret enlisting in the navy so much as I wish I’d done it sooner and also not volunteered for sub duty. Then again who cares that was thirty four to thirty years ago. You probably got much better liberty ports being in surface craft.
attempts
==
Har! Debatable. Attempt could also be used in the plural sense: “Their continued attempt at swindling the public, time and time again.. ”
Though I admit it was a typo, and I meant to type ‘attempts’.
“you can get the Wahl Peanut outliner”
Yeah, I got the Wahl Style Pro haircutting kit (They were $25, not $19). My prior clippers were Wahl Homepro, and they lasted a good 13 years.
I meant to say tapered, instead of feathered (same difference?) My hair is so fine that it all falls flat on my head, even at 1/2″ length, so the tapering wouldn’t help me (but for coarse hair, I can see how it’s make a huge difference).
Oh, and my last week’s last-minute poast to you, when I said “you” all make me sick, I meant the mil-ind-complex in general, not you in specific. But you seemed to have figured that out. 10 weeks without surfacing? That has to drive one semi-crazy (especially if they dive back down for another 10 weeks). Those days I worked for the IBM federal systems division are not proud days for me – I’m actually quite disgusted by them (blinders were definitely *on*, I was a clueless 18-20 year old)…
Ha! Marlin, I highly doubt you’re unaware of her. ;o) (I DO believe you’re being “instigator guy”
again.)
But, just in case, this should satisfy your curiosity (should it prove genuine, take the time to watch the video in its’ entirety).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOfM7QD7-kk
…A highly practical woman of immense intellect. (Short version.)
Howdy Soak/Asoka per your comment: “What really struck me as strange is you have to leave a window open somewhere in the house… but it works nonetheless, cooling 10 to 20 degrees.”
I find it incredulous that you the CFN king of googling could not ferret out an explanation of why the window must be left open. Let me elucidate.
The swamp cooler functions in a manner nearly identical to the cooling mechanism we homo sapiens utilize, evaporation of water. In your house size unit water is consistently dripped onto the material around the sides and large quantities of dry air are drawn in from outside the house through the wet (the swamp cooler I had in CA back in the 70’s used a mat of shredded wood that I believe was called excelsior) wherein the water is vaporized and the heat required to do such is removed from the hot air thus cooling it. The reason you must leave the window open is because hot dry air is constantly drawn in from without and with no escape hatch the airflow would fall precipitously thus precluding the cooling of your abode. The reason air condition systems don’t require open windows is because they recirculate the air within the home. Since the air flowing through the swamp cooler is now heavy with moisture attempting to recirculate such would quickly reduce efficiency significantly as the saturated air would be incapable of retaining any additional humidity and cooling would all but cease. 🙂
SNAFU
Not Really, BBHMarc. I was in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and the SAtlantic the whole time, on 3 different vessels. We spent most of the time at sea, not too much liberty. At Gitmo a lot.
Ozone you’re on to me.
-Marlin
the well-spring of food, fiber, fuel, fodder, and fertilizer.
===========
I presume these are called The Five Fs. In my late teens my buds and I subscribed to The Four Fs: find ’em, feel ’em, fuck ’em, forget ’em.
Tripp where were your children born ? It is difficult to get experience with homebirth if 99% of women birth in the health care factory. You have a daughter where will she give birth ? Don’t believe the lie that women needs drugs to give birth. I am resigning my j.o.b. at the factory tomorrow, I’m going to homeschooling my children. Dont feel sorry for me it is going to be a challenge for sure. The food forest coming along nicely, but can’t stand giving so much of my time to the system that continues to f.uck us over any longer.
“We showed them who’s boss, and where our real national priorities lie.”
Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity {law-less-ness}. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and whither like the green herb. Trust in YHWH, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
I suspect the Bachmann “John Wayne Gacy” faux-pas was intentional, as it has given her literally 10’s of $millions$ in free advertisement. Had she not failed on identifying John Wayne’s hometown, this story would have never made MSM news (thus, no 10’s of $millions$ in coverage).
Let’s be clear – she, as Sarah Palin, are appealing to the inbred, white racist homophobes, who’d like to get her (Sarah) alone in a private hotel room…
So sad, DEVOLUTION, indeed. I hope she continues preaching her NO MORE SOCIALISM/ENTITLEMENTS, as she continues to collect her “quarter of a $MILLION$” in Govt. subsidies.
OMFG, we all have *PUBES* – oh *NOES*!!!
No, I don’t recall feeling insulted. Besides, I don’t indentify with the military. I was a civilian mariner twice as long as I was in the navy and merchant seaman laugh at the navy from how much they chatter on the radio at sea to how clean their “work” uniforms usually are, to how overcrewed their ships are. Then they go out to the middle of the ocean and cruise around in circles going nowhere. Merchant ships travel from port to port and on some voyages you could travel entirely around the world including airline connections to get there then fly home when relieved. Merchant seamen also make fun of cruise ships and call passengers “cargo that complains.”
I forgot to answer your question: missile submarines have two crews, known as the blue crew and the gold crew. So you only go on patrol twice a year. Patrols used to be 3 months living aboard the ship including a ten week patrol after sea trials. Today the Ohio class boomers take longer patrols of about 90 days, but they’re more hotel-like than the old Polaris submarines. The Polaris boats were 398′ to 425′ long, but the newer Ohio class boats are 560′ long. Fast attacks are smaller and deploy for longer periods as well but do make port calls for liberty and resupply.
If Spider showed up here today I was going to have Electro, The Crime Master and Mysterio go after him.
By the way, that Betty that he babbled about, that wasn’t Betty Brant was it?
Sincerely,
J Jonah Jameson
I find it incredulous that you the CFN king of googling …
==============
I covered this ground at length months ago Snaf. Only you can be incredulous. An unthinking it cannot be incredulous.
It was incredible and therefore you were incredulous.
Ozone you’re on to me. -M.
Ah… good then, I’ll keep it quiet. ;o)
Sumpthin’ in July at F.P. Collinsville. Backatcha soon-like.
“Ohio class … Polaris”
I remember the big subs we were doing designs for were the “trident” class ones. Are those the same two you ‘reefer’ to?
“U got Ubuntu from a Ubangi?”
LOL, you actually replied that to Q, and he didn’t correct you yet (‘an’ Ubangi)?
Heh – Q, I used to follow this joke thread on a billiards forum, and I think I recall your name posited there. It was great fun; I read year’s worth of jokes and image/youtube poasts there…
PoC – I’m sorry about your bannage, and I almost feel *guilty* (hope we’ll all be here tomorrow). It’s prolly a patience thang, and you repost-flooded…
lol
C’mon man,
That was a fur piece tamer than your STD joke!
(…And yes, I did get a chuckle from it; my puritanical streak died an ugly [but well-deserved] death looooooong ago.) ;o)
Keep on.
Ps. Fun site that Wage linked there too.
Been following the Trippticket/wage thread, very interesting. Wage, I’m with you, a woman after my own heart. I’ve enjoyed “getting to know” you both, and Asoka.
One thing I feel that is lacking in the conversations I’m hearing: the envisioning of any kind of win/win scenario for the future. Human beings are capable of staggering leaps of creative ingenuity. It IS possible for all the humans on the planet to live meaningful lives in which their basic needs are fulfilled. But it has to start with changing the various paradigms, both right and left, that share a common belief that humans will never evolve to a state of higher consciousness. The ONLY hope for the future is that evolution. If you need proof that it is possible you have to look honestly at the history of human consciousness to see how much it has evolved already. Did you know that we are living in the least violent era of all of human history? And not by a little. By a wide wide margin. People as a whole are more compassionate than every before. We have to start with our own minds and our own hearts. It’s SO important to “be peace” as Thic Nhat Han said. We should be a voice for the voiceless, and point to injustice and cruelty everywhere. But it’s equally important to point to the beauty, kindness and cooperation everywhere. How can the world become a better place if we don’t believe that it’s possible?
Marlin, I want to apologize for my snarky reply earlier. I do think this post is ridiculous, but as all of our mother’s must have said at least once, “if you can’t say something nice…”
I’ll step in for Q – “a Ubangi” is correct. Although the word starts with a vowel the sound of that vowel is a hard “Y” which would make the article “an” incorrect.
you actually replied that to Q, and he didn’t correct you yet (‘an’ Ubangi)?
============
According to Dictionary.com the primary pronunciation of Ubangi is yoo-bang-gee in which case “a yoo-bang-gee” is correct. The secondary pronunciation is oo-bahng in which case “an oo-bahng” would be correct.
The decision on whether a or an is correct is NOT based on the first letter of the word following a or an being a vowel but rather whether the first letter is pronounced as a vowel. Thus the difference between yoo and oo.
I see Auntie beat me to the punch and did it in far fewer words.
Tripp where were your children born ? When birth moved into the sick care factories it became unsustainable it is a fucking joke do you really believe that so many women need caesarean sections no there is more money in it for everyone at the factory. Dont believe the lie that women have to have drugs. I know it is crap.
If you want a cheaper and more sustainable system then move birth back to the community and support women there. Birth is as safe as life gets it is all down hill from there. This is what is comming folks so why not learn about it now rather than later.
I am resigning from my J.O.B. at the factory tomorrow I can not stand spending so much of my time and energy supporting a system that fucks the women over so much.
Hey Tripp that mother in Mosembique probable knows as much about birth control and the luxury of what that means as you know about the safety of homebirth and what women need to give birth. Most of all they need privacy not access to drugs.
I am enbarking on a new phase of my life I will be homeschooling my children as of next term. It is going to be a huge challenge I am sure but it sure beats what we are doing now with shift work. I will have more time to devout to the permaculture system that we are establishing and getting more involved with my local community.
Merde, will I never learn?
SNAFU
That was a fur piece tamer than your STD joke!
============
I’m 70. My memory chips are fading. Remind me again … what was my “STD” joke??
The female reproductive tract is a self cleansing system. Douches must be something you Americans are still doing the rest of the world gave up these ideas that womens bodies are dirty and need to be sanitised with hsopital grade disinfectant and nice smelly stuff. Feminine hygiene my ass your just asking for trouble if you do this shit to your body.
Thus, you *ARE* that Q-tab guy from the billiard forums – LOL!!!
I before E – what a FSCKING crock. Keep that shitty illogical language *ALIVE* – morons. Don’t pay any mind to material, but rather to *literal*.
My point? Haha, indeed. You’ve boiled away all solid carbon, along with the atmosphere, and you’ve replaced it with carcinogenic hydrocarbons/heavy metals. You’ve toxified every last remaining source of fresh surface/aquifer water, and they’re already depleted 50%+++
Keep breathing, while you can (I know, I’m down 3 fifths – so *SUE* me).
“I’ve been cutting my own hair for 15 years now – just had to get new clippers ($19 with 12 different attachments, even feathered ones)”
Reminds me of the movie Dodgeball. Ever see that? It was a lot better than it sounds.
“Perfectly quaffed, and lethal!”
I take it you don’t use the feathering attachment. I like mine better when I trim it tight around the edges, but don’t always get to it, like now.
I must’ve missed the post from Fabio that you referenced. I tend to tune people out when I’ve had enough. Just took waaay too long in this case. I already promised upthread not to throw him any more bones. What a ‘tard…
What about shale oil ? The buzz is Israel has more oil than Saudi Arabia. Comments anyone ?
The reason you must leave the window open is because hot dry air is constantly drawn in from without and with no escape hatch the airflow would fall precipitously thus precluding the cooling of your abode.
————
Thanks, SNAFU. I did read the explanation. But I still don’t understand it. You say:
Hot air is outside, but what is coming into the house is cool moist air (wonderful, cool, moist air!), not hot air. So having the windows open lets out the cool, moist air.
I thought the reason was probably more that indoor humidity increases and windows must be open to prevent it from raining indoors!
All I really care is that it works, even if I don’t understand exactly how. I know it’s not rocket science, but the laws of physics are not my forte.
Hello Sweeties! I’m sure many of you think i’m drifting through a candy colored hippy land strewing flowers as I go, but everything I say about believing in the possibilities of a better, more humane and compassionate future is based on hard cold fact. When I said we’re living in the least violent era in the history of humanity, which should give us all hope for the direction we CAN move toward, check this out.
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html
If any of you haven’t checked out TED, you should. You won’t agree with everyone, but there’s stuff out there to blow your mind. Let me know what you think!
“Perfectly quaffed, and lethal!”
I dunno, “Something About Mary.” Ben Stiller always rubs me the wrong way. Wasn’t fond either, of his Smithsonian thang.
Regardless, I’m not gunna start flaming Jews – you know, many (Vlad?) here would jump on that band-wagon.
I’m just sick and tired of those who want to keep the dead ‘alive’. As in, anyone remember Beowulf? I read that crap – it was *ENGLISH*. Barely comprehensible. Are they (Q) gunna start correcting English based on that tripe?
There are real issues we face, yet they slam us in the face with irrelevance. I got trolled, I get it. I should limit my drinking from 3 fifths to 1-2. Real issues must preside, I got side-swiped, and bit the troll-bait.
Cesium is starting to rain down on the west coast of the US; the Texas panhandle just set all-time temperature records by 5 degrees (not even July/August), and the fires/floods are raging.
Do we get get baited/switched, or do we look into the eye of the storm, and hold our ground? Most will be anesthetized, and do nothing, as *USUAL*.
Yes, the Ohio class submarine fires the trident missile with the exception of the few which have been recently overhauled to fire cruise missiles such as the tomahawk in massive quantities. The ballistic missile firing boats are classed “SSBN” while the cruise missile firing boats are classified “SSGN”.
The first nuclear powered SSGN was the USS Halibut which had to surface to fire the early Regulus cruise missile. The Halibut was also the submarine which discovered the location on the bottom of the north Pacific of the Soviet Golf class submarine which is suspected by some in the naval cognoscenti of having been hijacked by a KGB Spetznaz team to attempt to start a nuclear war between the US and Red China in 1968 by imitating the operational limitations of the lone Chinese Golf class boat which had to surface in order to fire one of its three nuclear armed ballistic missiles. Some writers believe that the captain of the submarine sacrificed himself and his crew when he refused to alert the hijackers to the failsafe mechanisms in the warheads, so that when the launch was attempted, the missile blew up and destroyed the submarine, sending it to the bottom, where Howard Hughe’s SS Glomar Explorer reportedly successfully retreived the entire submarine from the bottom, providing conclusive proof that a launch against the US naval station at Pearl Harbor had been attempted.
According to the legend then, the Soviet fleet command, being ignorant of the hijacking plot, supposedly sanctioned by Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB, jumped to the mistaken conclusion that the submarine was lost owing to being intentionally rammed by an American submarine, since a damaged US submarine limped into port shortly thereafter. So it is that some beieve that the Russians then torpedoed and sank the USS Scorpion in the south Atlantic near the Azores as a premeditated act of revenge. At least two books have been published to this effect. The only title I recall right now is “Red Star Rogue”. These books are inconsistent because one claims that it was a submarine that torpedoed the Scorpion while the other claims that it was a Soviet naval helicopter armed with torpedoes. Supposedly both sides agreed to keep these incidents secret.
Also, it has been claimed that Henry Kissinger took top secret information to the Chinese pertaining to these matters in order to give them a reason to play ball with the Americans against the Soviets. All I know is that the instructors at submarine school in Groton, CT told us that the Russians had torpedoed the Scorpion. So people who thought that 1968 was the year from hell might not even know the half of it. The official navy version as propounded by Dr. Craven, a navy scientist, is that the Scorpion was lost due to a torpedo battery malfunction which caused the torpedo to light off inside of the torpedo room and to detonate from the inside, evidence of which is the fact that the forward hatch was blown open, although the position of that hatch could be explained by the hydraulic ram effect you’d get as the boat struck the bottom bow first. People I’ve discussed this with in subvets tend to endorse the official navy version.
You know what, Qshtik, I for one am far more interested in hearing what someone has to say than I am in your picky little anal comments about spelling and grammatical errors.
“Dont believe the lie that women have to have drugs. I know it is crap.”
———–
My wife is very special. Her experiences of childbirth (before I met her) were not only drug-free, she reports having had an orgasmic experience of pleasure from giving birth, with both children.
So I don’t believe drugs are necessary. I don’t believe hospitals are necessary. I don’t believe cutting is necessary. I don’t believe pain is necessary.
But, then, as I say, I have a very special wife… she was a yoga teacher and practiced in pranayama. (you may not believe in woo-woo, but it worked) She adhered to a prophylactic regime. She is an extraordinary and ineffable woman.
Damn, d00d, that is more than I wanted to know – and had it *gone off*, I’d have been 3 months old, and never been the wiser…
Let me tell you now, about radiation hardened semiconductors!!! Silicon on sapphire – Eeek! As in, gamma ray upset experiments! Planes that flew 100,000+ feet high, with the memory in *FARADAY* cages. How did those guys go 2 days to the moon, and 2 days back, and not suffer *INTOLERABLE* radiation damage (see moon phases)…
You’ve cut back from $160 to $80 to get blond highlights put in your hair? Wow, you’re really getting back to the simple life aren’t you.
There’s some really weird ‘shit’ out there…
“If water can be found there, then so can life, he said, adding that aliens would most likely resemble humans with two arms, two legs and a head.
“They may have different colour skin, but even we have that,” he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jun/27/alien-encounters-twenty-years-russian-astronomer
I for one am far more interested in hearing what someone has to say than I am in your picky little anal comments about spelling and grammatical errors.
===========
Yes Helen, I completely understand … and that seems to be the general consensus. However, I’m faced with a dilemma which I’ve explained numerous times. I’m OCD as regards spelling, grammar, usage, etc. (ya know, like step on a crack, break your mother’s back) and if I were to say nothing I would never get another good night’s sleep and would eventually wind up in the loony bin where I might find myself rooming with Spider. I know it would be lame for me to tell you to “just scroll on by” but really, what other solution is there? Certainly, leaving CFN is out of the question since I am addicted like everyone else here.
I know this isn’t likely to assuage your annoyance but be advise that I’ve carefully read over your comment a couple of times and I’m fairly certain it’s error free.
😉
I don’t think Muslims are Sufis. I know a man from Iran who had to leave and he said it was because he was a Sufi in a Muslim country.
I musta missed some good stuff, just got back on and you’re talking about douching.
omg what happened ?
smoke another one !
you whirling dirvish you.
🙂
I tried but couldn’t listen to the whole thing, but what I was thinking was that there were so fewer people.
I wonder what it means relatively speaking ?
maybe he covered that, I just can’t sit thru it now.
There are so many people now and high tech things that so much more damage can be done to so many more at once.
Great webpage, thanks. when I feel like thinking and I do sometimes I bookmarked it.
I liked the guys curly hair.
Jimbo…I don’t know for sure, but I do believe you are an alcoholic. Party on my man.
but be advise
===========
advised
Note: the letter D key came off my laptop awhile ago and I sometimes mess up and in a case like this the spell checker doesn’t pick up the error.
I figured Helen H. would be interested to know this.
😉
Helen, Islam is not monolithic… there are all types of Muslims. There are Muslim societies where women are equal to men and Muslim societies where women are not considered equal to men. Sufis are Muslims, just a mystical wing of Islam.
Likewise, Christianity is not monolithic… there are all types of Christians. There are Christian sects where women are not considered equal to men and Christian sects where women are considered equal to men.
My sister-in-law is Baptist and she assures me the Bible says it is the men who are the head of the household and she must obey my brother.
Quakers would be one example of the mystical wing of Christianity. There were persecuted in England, fled to the “New England” and they were persecuted by the Puritans and hanged in New England, also. Someone might say they are not Christians because they were persecuted by Christians, but Quakers are Christians.
Sufis have been persecuted by Muslims, but they are Muslims. At least the Sufis I have been with chant, “La ilaha ilAllah” (There is no deity except God) and that made me think they are Muslim. They got me drunk on the divine, also.
Disney has on their Disney Channel an educational video to teach kids about “Internet safety”. It starts off: “Now remember boys and girls: never ever put anything on the Internet because you can never get it off, and it’ll be there forever!”
Well, I don’t think you’re drifting through candy colored hippy land. Although it sounds fun.
I think you’re absolutely right, and our only hope is to look to the light side, not the dark side.
Most people are decent and kind. It’s just that our society rewards sociopaths, so we think that is human nature.
I think that we can build a better society without tossing the frail and sick aside.
Um. I have given birth three times. I did not find it an orgasmic experience.
Actually, it was quite painful. As I heard it explained by a wise old woman – “Did you ever try to shit a watermelon?”
Sorry to be so crude, but, dude!
How do you push an entire new human out of your body without feeling some pain?
Wagelaborer said: “How do you push an entire new human without feeling some pain?”
San Jose Mom replies: “With the help of an epidural! One of the greatest medical procedures ever invented. I worship anesthesiologists!
Yes, Helen, I really do try. But I have to say, “Eat, drink and have lots of good hair days for tommorow the sh@t will hit the fan.”
All,
I suspect JHK uses NASCAR and Cheez Doodles and tattoos as regular references to cultural death of the USA because they are examples of excess consumerism run rampant.
If the private motor vehicle epitomises a lot of what went wrong with western society following WW2, which is a central tenet of JHK lore, then NASCAR (and all motorsport) is the ultimate expression of that waste. At least private motor vehicles originally performed a useful function – that of (seemingly at the time) low emission transport. The alternative was a pair of horses hitched to a carriage producing manure and methane 24 x 7.
But motorsport substitutes the function of transport with that of meaningless entertainment to bored citizens. When 80% of the world’s population is worried about where their next clean drink of water is going to come from, any culture that has so much it can waste billions of dollars and billions of person-hours on staving off boredom has too much by far.
James does select similar examples of rampant excess from other sub cultures within the US, but perhaps not often enough from the yankee stable for some of you readers?
How about these few for starters. Any culture where people try to justify cosmetic procedures such as “anal bleaching” is doomed to collapse. Any culture that looks first to a lawsuit for dispute resolution is doomed to collapse. Any culture where it is possible to go shopping for luxury items in the middle of the night is doomed. Any culture that can conceive of, let alone own or use, such a thing as a jetski or wakeboard is doomed. Any culture that builds AC dependant houses in deserts is doomed. Any culture with words like “bling” and “bling finger” is doomed. Any culture where TV gameshows are produced and aired is doomed.
Any culture that produces any kind of themepark is doomed.
Americans are certainly not alone in these orgiastic pastimes. But they are the biggest partakers of them per capita on the planet and also the fattest people in the world (only just ahead of Australians these days I am told)
America has promising groundswells of people turning their backs on these cultures or largely resistant to them for some time now. They include
the Mennonites (including Amish subsets), the Puritans, the Biblical Agrarians, the Permaculturists and the Hippies. There’s even a thriving hunter gatherer sub culture which is amazing. And let’s not forget the old folks we still have around. Many of them secretly know they are part of something rotten and greedy, but lack the energy to do anything about it.
It is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but Australians laugh at Americans and use them to feel better about ourselves. “At least we’re not as fat and krass and ignorant as *them*.” we tell ourselves as we look eagerly to the US for the next cultural signal.
sorry, sub culture reference
Satisfaction- Russian edition.
Notice the motor log, world made by hand indeed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39UxUY2RgSs&NR=1
Once again Kuntsler you piss me off. What is it w/ you and female politians? Why do you bash every one of them? Their all just a joke to you right? Well, I think you’re a joke. Women should be running this country, we couldn’t possibly fuck it up any more than all you men have. I think you’re very insecure and that you secretly don’t like women… we’re not nearly as smart as you right? Are you gay or did your mommy not treat you right when you were a kid? What your problem is I’m not sure, but the crap you write every week is very telling.. you’re so far above all the hot dog eating cheese doodle popping uneducated morons it just makes you crazy doesn’t it? It must be tough being you. I think you are out of touch w/ reality big time and for you to say that Michelle Bachman would put a nascar track at the white house shows what an asshole you really are. Add this to your growing list of hate mail jerk!
Funny, I was thinking the same thing myself 🙂
Can’t you think of something better to do w/ your time than read his stupid books?
Nice thinking Nathan…
*Any culture that builds AC dependant houses in deserts is doomed*
I’d probably add in, any culture that spends $20.2bn on AC for warfare in deserts has money to burn…
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning
Moving on…
One aspect of Mr Ks style I greatly applaud, is his subtly in handling the weekly titling of this here very blog…
Suspended Agitation…??
And with a wave of a wand some of the more prolific dweeb like moronic posters at this site are this week… gone… puff!
(That’s magic)
*sniggers*
When you have privacy are relaxed and confident in your body’s ability to birth. With thoughts of pushing out a watermelon going through your mind I doubt that was happening. Thats why Yoga is such a great preparation for birth as it involves the preparation of the mind as well as the ability to relax tighten and stretch muscles. Many other practices encourage women to stay fit by exercising muscles but it is mostly tightening muscles so many women who prepare in this way have very tight muscles but have not practised relaxing those muscles. An orgasmic birth might not have been your reality wage but for some women with the right environment (internal and externa)it is possible.
I have been reading “Childbirth in the age of plastics” and hadn’t really though about it too much I knew it was wasteful to use so much disposable crap, but what happens when we can’t use plastics anymore ? The IV line the epidural catheter, the urinary catheter, disposable plastic syringes, all the disposable plastic dressing trays just to name a few.
Anaesthiologists are not gods and do not deserve anyones worship. There was a case in the media very recently here in Australia where a first time mother had an epidural and the anaesthiologist injected chlorhexadine instead of the epidural fluid that mother nearly died. Months later she is paralysed from the waist down and the prognosis for her is unknown. She may never walk again. She doesn’t have enough strenght to pick up her baby either. Fuck ups are rare but tragic if it is you. The hospital has accepted the blame and provided them with a house. The were both new citizens and neither of them speaks English. They have no relatives in the country either.
“My sister-in-law is Baptist and she assures me the Bible says it is the men who are the head of the household and she must obey my brother.”
As long as your brother is obeying God this works fine. Someone has been given authority, and thus responsibility, for the decisions and actions made on behalf of the family. Faith in one another is part of faith in God. Being the “head” of a home doesn’t mean you are worshipped, just appreciated. Being the “help-meet” does not mean you are un-equal. There is another scripture that says, “submit your selves one to another”. I think it finds expression in “if momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”. As we saw in last week’s missive, “Man Down” it often gets rather screwed up, and certainly not something God would appove of. When authority is misappropriated, everyone suffers.
Well it looks like Greece is having their ‘austerity vote’ today, and its going to pass.
Europeans;
The days of retiring from a do-nothing Govt. job at age 35, then sitting on you asses in some outdoor cafe, drinking port wine for the rest of your lives, sneering at the United States, are over.
Here’s another shocker. For the past 65 years we’ve been picking up the tab for your defense and military budgets. We cannot afford it any longer. Worried about a resurgent Russia? Tough shit! Time to take care of yourselves! We’re tired of you sonsabitches.
Hey Ozone, thanx for the heads up! Keep me posted. I’ll show up a little early, help carry in equipment. My wife wants to go, too.
Old 97’s in Greenfield on July 17. Check them out on YouTube, Ozone, you’ll be impressed.
-Marlin
A really great article I want to suggest for your reading pleasure is from Jim Willie from the Golden Jackass. I wish he had titled it something he said later on in the piece.
“THE BLACK SWAN HAS BECOME THE NATIONAL BIRD!!”
as opposed to
“Black Swans From New Normal”(his actual title)
What I love about this writing is the distorto-contorto of our world economy, thanks to those who have swept the $1.4 quadrillion junk under the rug. After 2008 we are moving in an ever bizarre terrain for globalism.
You know what I’ve saqid before if everyone says X=Y, why then you can keep doing the fraud at everyone’s expense.
Like JHK’s long emergency–we have entered into a period of financial Long Emergency.
It’s truly a must-read.
http://rolandsanjuan.blogspot.com/2011/06/black-swans-from-new-normal.html
“the Euro will fly above mundane reality on dragon wings allowing everybody in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy to hold a senior management job at the motor vehicle bureau with retirement at 53. Then, with 80 percent of their former pay, they can open cafes where people still working at the motor vehicle bureau can spend the better part of each afternoon sipping Ouzo and arguing politics, finance, sports… or just enjoying the antics of the boorish German tourists.”.
Pure 24 carat gold Kunstler. Laugh out loud funny. This is why I come here.
Even if these authors are correct, which has certainly not been established beyond all doubt, there wouldn’t have been a nuclear war between the US and China because the identity of the Russian submarine in question was known all along to be Russian, and not Chinese, so the presumed plot by Andropov would have failed, owing to the sophistication of our SOSUS network of undersea hydrophone sensors. Nevertheless, the warheads on those missiles were one megaton in yield, so it would’ve been an exceptionally shitty day for the residents of western Honolulu. The simplest explanation is that endorsed by Dr. Craven, which is that the battery on the electric torpedo failed owing to the thinness of a membrane which was known to fail when subjected to too much vibration. Also, it is hard to believe that the KGB had no knowledge of the failsafe mechanisms on their own warheads, which ironically were provided by the Americans to the Soviets. Still, this story cannot be entirely disregarded and the cold war was definitely far more dangerous than is usually appreciated and not just during the Cuban missile crisis.
“I dunno, “Something About Mary.” Ben Stiller always rubs me the wrong way. Wasn’t fond either, of his Smithsonian thang.”
They use that discomfort with Ben Stiller so damn well in this movie! I can’t stand the guy, but I loved Dodgeball. And everyone I’ve loaned it to has said the same thing. Not encouraging you to watch a movie instead of doing something productive, just mentioning that it’s funny.
Sufis are Muslims but not all Muslims are sufis. The sufis are Islamic mystics similar to Christian monks. The Islamicists don’t approve of the sufis because the sufis are too tolerant and open minded. The most famous sufis are the whirling dervishes.
I’ve always found it curious that the non-participants in a culture of excess come from what would be considered the extreme right and extreme left.
I have to wonder if that perception isn’t just part of a centrist conspiracy mindset, that the two extremes are really a lot more normal, in the long view anyway, than everyone else, and just marginalized by popular consumptive culture with derogatory labels like ‘hippie’ and ‘right wing nutjob’.
Thanks to our resident tech-savvy folks, I was able to look it up; pretty amazing! :o)
Here’s that “sexually transmitted disease” joke:
I think I have Ubuntu? -wage
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I had Ubuntu once. Makes syphilis look like the sniffles. Got it from this black chick down in the prah-jecs. No wonder she was only charging five bucks.
😉 -Q
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I would posit that a comment on “pube-shaving” is tamer than that joke (funny though it is). Wouldn’t you say so as well?
(Don’t worry, I’d never try to reference a comment from another week. I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night!)
“Once again Kuntsler you piss me off. What is it w/ you and female politians? Why do you bash every one of them?” -DR23
Mmmm, I think it’s more a bashing of rank idiots and proven fools who aspire to “lead”, and those who support them (being of the same level of intellectual curiosity).
Rise of the corn-pone nazis, anyone?
-End of Message-
Howdy Soak, per your comment: “I thought the reason was probably more that indoor humidity increases and windows must be open to prevent it from raining indoors!”
Without an open window the mass flow of air would drop to nearly zero when the pressure differential within your home equals the pressure head that the fan on your swamp cooler can maintain. Just as the flow of water from a faucet is zero when it is placed into the closed valve position and increases when the valve is opened.
The air flow generated by a squirrel cage/centrifugal fan also requires an open valve (in this case the window) and the cooling effect is created by the evaporation of the water. The phase change of liquid water to gaseous water requires heat which is supplied by the air flowing through your swamp cooler thereby cooling it before it flows into your home.
Try cooling your house with all windows and doors closed. You will likely have some leakage which will allow some air flow but likely significantly reduced.
SNAFU
Interesting thoughts from you and Nathan.
Here’s another from Robert Jensen:
“I believe that to be fully alive today is to live with anguish, not for one’s own condition in the world but for the condition of a broken world. My anguish flows not from the realization that it is getting harder for people to live the American Dream, but from the recognition that the American Dream has made it harder to hold together the living world.”
Personally, I’m prepared for that singular disturbance of the mind. Unfortunate, I know, but it be what it be, and Iy’am what Iy’am.
I picture you as perfectly quaffed and lethal, SJ Mom.
My mom always takes care of her hair, and always wears lipstick. She’s thrifty though, and uses the same lipstick on her cheeks as rouge.
She’s old now, but she always bore a striking resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor. Even last week, Asoka linked to an Eddie Fisher video for some reason, and there was a picture of Elizabeth Taylor in it, and for a second I thought – Mom! Why are you in this video?
Anyway, no one would ever guess the radical thoughts under that perfect exterior.
Although, I think that Elizabeth Taylor was pretty liberal herself.