JHK’s Three-Act Play
There’s something happenin’ here
What it is ain’t exactly clear….
— Buffalo Springfield
What it is ain’t exactly clear….
— Buffalo Springfield
One of main reasons behind the vast confusion now reigning in the USA, our failure to construct a coherent consensus about what is happening to us (or what to do about it), is our foolish obsession with econometrics — viewing the world solely through the “lens” of mathematical models. We think that just because we can measure things in numbers, we can make sense of them.
For decades we measured the health of our economy (and therefore of our society) by the number of “housing starts” recorded month-to-month. For decades, this translated into the number of suburban tract houses being built in the asteroid belts of our towns and cities. When housing starts were up, the simple-minded declared that things were good; when down, bad. What this view failed to consider was that all these suburban houses added up to a living arrangement with no future. That’s what we were so busy actually doing. Which is why I refer to this monumentally unwise investment as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.
Even this interpretation — severe as it is — does not encompass the sheer damage done by the act itself, on-the-ground and to our social and cultural relations. Suburbia destroyed the magnificent American landscape as effectively as it destroyed the social development of children, the worth of public space, the quality of civic life, and each person’s ability to really care about the place they called home.
It’s especially ironic that given our preoccupation with numbers, we have arrived at the point where numbers just can’t be comprehended anymore. This week, outstanding world derivatives were declared to have reached the 1 quadrillion mark. Commentators lately — e.g. NPR’s “Planet Money” broadcast — have struggled to explain to listeners exactly what a trillion is in images such as the number of dollar bills stacked up to the planet Venus or the number of seconds that add up to three ice ages plus two warmings. A quadrillion is just off the charts, out of this world, not really subject to reality-based interpretation. You might as well say “infinity.” We have flown up our own collective numeric bung-hole.
The number problems we face are now hopeless. America will never be able to cover its current outstanding debt. We’re effectively finished at all three levels: household, corporate, and government. Who, for instance, can really comprehend what to do about the number problems infesting Fannie Mae and the mortgages associated with her? There’s really only one way out of this predicament: to get ready for a much lower standard of living and much different daily living arrangements. We can’t wrap our minds around this, so the exercise du jour is to play games with numbers to persuade ourselves that we don’t have to face reality. We’re entertaining ourselves with shell games, musical chairs, Chinese fire drills, Ponzi schemes, and Polish blanket tricks (where, to make your blanket longer, you cut twelve inches off the top and sew it onto the bottom).
Now that Newsweek Magazine — along with the mendacious cretins at CNBC — have declared the “recession” officially over, it’s a sure thing that we are entering the zone of greatest danger. Some foul odor rides the late summer wind, as of a rough beast slouching toward the US Treasury. The stock markets have gathered in the critical mass of suckers needed to flush all remaining hope out of the system. The foreign holders of US promissory notes are sharpening their long knives in the humid darkness. The suburban householders are watching sharks swim in their driveways. The REIT executives are getting ready to gargle with Gillette blue blades. The Goldman Sachs bonus babies are trying to imagine the good life in Paraguay or the archepelego of Tristan da Cunha.
While extremely allergic to paranoid memes and conspiracy theories, I begin to wonder about the impressive volume of World Wide Web chatter about an upcoming bank holiday — meaning that the US government might find itself constrained to shut down the banking system for a period of time to deal with a rapidly developing emergency that might prompt the public to make a run on reserves. God knows, there are enough black swans crowding the skies these days to blot out the sun. I hesitate to suggest that readers who are able to should consider stealthily withdrawing a month’s worth of walking-around money from their accounts.
The week past, some so-called “conservative” political action groups (read: brownshirts pimped by corporate medical interests) trumped up a few incidents of civil unrest at “town meetings” around the country, ostensibly to counter health care reform ideas. The people behind these capers may be playing with dynamite. It’s one thing to yell at a congressman over “single payer” abstractions. It’ll be another thing when the dispossessed and repossessed Palin worshippers, Nascar morons, and Jesus Jokers haul the ordnance out of their closets and start tossing Molotov cocktails into the First National Bank of Chiggerville.
For decades we measured the health of our economy (and therefore of our society) by the number of “housing starts” recorded month-to-month. For decades, this translated into the number of suburban tract houses being built in the asteroid belts of our towns and cities. When housing starts were up, the simple-minded declared that things were good; when down, bad. What this view failed to consider was that all these suburban houses added up to a living arrangement with no future. That’s what we were so busy actually doing. Which is why I refer to this monumentally unwise investment as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.
Even this interpretation — severe as it is — does not encompass the sheer damage done by the act itself, on-the-ground and to our social and cultural relations. Suburbia destroyed the magnificent American landscape as effectively as it destroyed the social development of children, the worth of public space, the quality of civic life, and each person’s ability to really care about the place they called home.
It’s especially ironic that given our preoccupation with numbers, we have arrived at the point where numbers just can’t be comprehended anymore. This week, outstanding world derivatives were declared to have reached the 1 quadrillion mark. Commentators lately — e.g. NPR’s “Planet Money” broadcast — have struggled to explain to listeners exactly what a trillion is in images such as the number of dollar bills stacked up to the planet Venus or the number of seconds that add up to three ice ages plus two warmings. A quadrillion is just off the charts, out of this world, not really subject to reality-based interpretation. You might as well say “infinity.” We have flown up our own collective numeric bung-hole.
The number problems we face are now hopeless. America will never be able to cover its current outstanding debt. We’re effectively finished at all three levels: household, corporate, and government. Who, for instance, can really comprehend what to do about the number problems infesting Fannie Mae and the mortgages associated with her? There’s really only one way out of this predicament: to get ready for a much lower standard of living and much different daily living arrangements. We can’t wrap our minds around this, so the exercise du jour is to play games with numbers to persuade ourselves that we don’t have to face reality. We’re entertaining ourselves with shell games, musical chairs, Chinese fire drills, Ponzi schemes, and Polish blanket tricks (where, to make your blanket longer, you cut twelve inches off the top and sew it onto the bottom).
Now that Newsweek Magazine — along with the mendacious cretins at CNBC — have declared the “recession” officially over, it’s a sure thing that we are entering the zone of greatest danger. Some foul odor rides the late summer wind, as of a rough beast slouching toward the US Treasury. The stock markets have gathered in the critical mass of suckers needed to flush all remaining hope out of the system. The foreign holders of US promissory notes are sharpening their long knives in the humid darkness. The suburban householders are watching sharks swim in their driveways. The REIT executives are getting ready to gargle with Gillette blue blades. The Goldman Sachs bonus babies are trying to imagine the good life in Paraguay or the archepelego of Tristan da Cunha.
While extremely allergic to paranoid memes and conspiracy theories, I begin to wonder about the impressive volume of World Wide Web chatter about an upcoming bank holiday — meaning that the US government might find itself constrained to shut down the banking system for a period of time to deal with a rapidly developing emergency that might prompt the public to make a run on reserves. God knows, there are enough black swans crowding the skies these days to blot out the sun. I hesitate to suggest that readers who are able to should consider stealthily withdrawing a month’s worth of walking-around money from their accounts.
The week past, some so-called “conservative” political action groups (read: brownshirts pimped by corporate medical interests) trumped up a few incidents of civil unrest at “town meetings” around the country, ostensibly to counter health care reform ideas. The people behind these capers may be playing with dynamite. It’s one thing to yell at a congressman over “single payer” abstractions. It’ll be another thing when the dispossessed and repossessed Palin worshippers, Nascar morons, and Jesus Jokers haul the ordnance out of their closets and start tossing Molotov cocktails into the First National Bank of Chiggerville.
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Nancy Pelosi has been saying that the anger at the town meetings is canned. She said the same thing about the Tea Parties. What proof does the Left have that this is true? It is now known that illegal immigrants will be covered under Obama Care. Is this not reason eneough to yell and shake fists? It is high treason, nothing less. The Left has been playing with fire for decades-and now they want to accuse ordinary Americans of not being nice? The Republicans are no better-they support the invasion not for reasons of ideology or votes like the Democrats, but for the cheap labor their corporate sponsors desire. Ah yes Cheap Labor, that dark obseesion so dear to the Capitalist Soul. We obviously learned nothing from slavery-we’ve now imported in another hostile nation in additon to the Blacks we already had. There is nothing cheap about it-the Bill will be very high indeed, so high, that ultimately no one will be able to pay it, not even the White Peasants the ruling class hates so much.
“We obviously learned nothing from slavery-we’ve now imported in another hostile nation in additon to the Blacks we already had.”
Sir/Madam–you are a bigot–slavery was bad because it is fukken slavery–the might abusing the weak. Paranoia is believing outsiders are another hostile nation–while living in a nation of mostly immigrants. Hopefully you believe in an afterlife, and expect you to receive what you have given.
“While extremely allergic to paranoid memes and conspiracy theories”
“The week past, some so-called “conservative” political action groups (read: brownshirts pimped by corporate medical interests) trumped up a few incidents of civil unrest at “town meetings” around the country, ostensibly to counter health care reform ideas.”
You sir, are not very self aware.
As one of these so called “brownshirts”, I know of no one that has gone to one of these meetings as a call from some organized group. This is going on word of mouth by concerned citizens. Sure some people attend and ask silly questions, but some have very valid questions and have ligitimate concerns. So far the only true violence at one of these meetings, in St. Louis, was caused by “bussed in” SEIU (Union) goons beating up a black conservative protestor that was passing out Gadsden flags after a call by the union and White House to “Punch back twice as hard”. Talk about brownshirts.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. — Mahatma Gandhi
Psychological experiment. Seeing who actually tunes in on Saturday at 11:39am.
Good one.
-Johnny Rico
Mr Kuntstler, excellent post,
I burnt my toast under the grill reading it,
What you wrote, “It’s especially ironic that given our preoccupation with numbers, we have arrived at the point where numbers just can’t be comprehended anymore.”
This is so true.
JR,
Are you sure it is not Monday morning?
Some good metaphors this week, though very ominous and frightening in their tone.
Seems to be the new national obsession, this scaring of one another.
“Now that Newsweek Magazine — along with the mendacious cretins at CNBC — have declared the “recession” officially over, it’s a sure thing that we are entering the zone of greatest danger. Some foul odor rides the late summer wind, as of a rough beast slouching toward the US Treasury. The stock markets have gathered in the critical mass of suckers needed to flush all remaining hope out of the system. The foreign holders of US promissory notes are sharpening their long knives in the humid darkness. The suburban householders are watching sharks swim in their driveways. The REIT executives are getting ready to gargle with Gillette blue blades. The Goldman Sachs bonus babies are trying to imagine the good life in Paraguay or the archepelego of Tristan da Cunha.” -JHK
Brilliant! This is (IMO) the upshot of this superfluous “number-crunching” and temperature-taking of the American idiocracy. There IS ALWAYS a price to pay for false hopes and the blowing of smoke up collective assholes. (All for the bilking of said ass-holes/-wipes, I might add.)
If you don’t believe there’s gonna be some bigtime violence on the part of disenfranchised bible-thumpers (and ALL those pea-brains who think that god is “on their side”), and american-exceptionalists… you’ve got another think comin’ when it shows up on your doorstep.
This is the crux of the matter, friends and neighbors. When the ignoramuses (sp?) figure out that their beloved “lifestyle” actually IS negotiable, there will be blood… and the “wrong” blood, at that. The realists will most certainly be the first target, because the fantasy must be preserved at all costs. (Once again, cognitive dissonance cannot be acknowledged, as it will destroy the “sufferer”.)
I’m a-gettin’ ready; do not underestimate the power of the psychic sickness that infests this country; the evidence is EVERYWHERE…
The Fog of Numbers
Great title.
I’ll explain why you are losing readers and I am stealing them.
“is our foolish obsession with econometrics”
Not really.
I understand math and you don’t. I’m actually quite skilled at “Math”, as well as Greek and Latin.
“The week past, some so-called “conservative” political action groups (read: brownshirts pimped by corporate medical interests) trumped up a few incidents of civil unrest at “town meetings” around the country, ostensibly to counter health care reform ideas.”
I agree that the dynamite is on the table. However, I don’t understand why people think that the recent unrest is being undertaken by conservative brownshirts, “pimped by corporate medical interests.” I’m just not seeing that.
“Are you sure it is not Monday morning?”
-asoka
Dude, I’m not sure what year it is. If it weren’t for you and OEO and Keith Richards, I’d be fucked. No serious. I rely on you.
I shouldn’t, but I do.
P.S. Good ruminations on single-minded foolishness regarding resource allocation on the podcast this week. Realists would be well-advised to listen in, and really integrate a “generalist” attitude into their mindset. It’s time to take a sober look at the “forest” (and learn how to accept being part of it).
Good luck, all. Fortune favors the brave, but it also favors those who are willing to shed their misconceptions and false hopes…
Those who cling mindlessly to them?… You are threatening the very survival of our species. Wake up, grow up, or get the f— out of my way; I’ve been paying very close attention.
No.
For real.
If it doesn’t say.
Asoka
OEO
zsazsa
zzzzzzzz or Kunstler, I ain’t reading it.
Pure and simple. I don’t read douchebags. I only read quality.
Nothing lasts forever, the United States included. As Mr Kunstler suggests, the US is committing national suicide.
Not only is it committing economic suicide but it is also committing societal suicide by dividing itself into contending ethnic groups. You are not recognizing each other as fellow citizens and are corroding your collective self image. Take Ms Sotomayor. I’ve heard her defined by other people as “Hispanic”. Hispanic? Isn’t she American? And shouldn’t Ms Sotomayor define herself as “American”? It seems that even though she was born in the US, grew up in the US, was educated in the US, has worked all her life in the US, that she thinks of herself as something other than American.
We have the same problem north of the border. Ever since the British Empire gave up the ghost we can’t seem to find a national identity. We’ve mentally scrubbed ourselves of who and what we are: a North American, Anglo Saxon civilization. It’s practically against the law here to say that more than 80% of us speak English, were born in Canada, define ourselves as Christian, that we live under a regime of Parliamentary democracy, English common law, have a thousand year heritage of British and homegrown literature, art, and customs. In many ways like you guys. But somehow, in our minds, it’s all unclear. We’ve spent a lifetime not seeing what’s under our noses. Now it seems you guys are doing the same thing. Snap out of it.
BufaloRun said: “I don’t understand why people think that the recent unrest is being undertaken by conservative brownshirts, “pimped by corporate medical interests.” I’m just not seeing that.”
You have a profit making industry paying $1.4 million a day for lobbyists and people who will shout down any debate because the industry feels their profit is threatened.
Maybe this will help you see it:
http://tinyurl.com/l3s4hk
I’m waiting for the first serious violence from the proto-brownshirts disrupting the townhall meetings on health care. Crowds of angry old white people, many of whom are on Medicare (and too stupid to understand that Medicare IS a government run health program, just like the Veterans Administration).
We’re seeing the death throes of white supremacy. The election of a non-white to the White House, and now a Latino on the Supreme Court, is simply shattering the “whites rule” worldview of some people.
As for Obama, health care reform may soon be the least of his worries.
“This is the sign we [scholarly experts who track the growth of fascism] were waiting for — the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America’s conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country’s legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America’s streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won’t do their political or economic bidding.
This is the catalyzing moment at which honest-to-Hitler fascism begins. It’s also our very last chance to stop it.”
Whole post can be read here:
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2009/08/fascist-america-are-we-there-yet.html
“We think that just because we can measure things in numbers, we can make sense of them.”
–there are more things in heaven and
earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,
(fuckin’) horatio.
“For decades we measured the health of our economy (and therefore of our society) by the number of “housing starts” recorded month-to-month.”
–or the like: gdp, etc. “if you want a good deduction, consult a schizophrenic, but watch your premises.” analogously, be careful what you choose to measure.
“Suburbia destroyed the magnificent American landscape as effectively as it destroyed the social development of children, the worth of public space, the quality of civic life, and each person’s ability to really care about the place they called home.”
–well summarized; why was it so appealing? were these consequences easily predictable? every swingin’ dick on the flightline’s got a forebrane, after all.
“…NPR’s “Planet Money”…”
–the existence of this is a manifestation of a
catch-eh-22-like ‘strange bedfellows’ phenomenon that points to the inadequacy of current notions of “left” and “right” and “democrats” and “republicants” (sic. ref. blade runner; ref. “can’t as unable;” ref. “cant” as dogma).
“We have flown up our own collective numeric bung-hole.”
–this (along with ‘CF*** nation’)
is vulgar. it is also abstractly and at least semi-quantitatively ourobouric. the question becomes, as we must also ask of our own existence, “is it necessary? i’m just sayin’…
maybe it is.
“the exercise du jour is to play games with numbers to persuade ourselves that we don’t have to face reality.”
–the need for delusion (ie, perceiving what is not ‘objectively’ ‘there’) may be an inherent property of sapiens as instantiated. from energy impinging on receptive biological surfaces => ‘reality,’ to elaborate “economic” “bubbles” and indices, we do well to reflect on bill shakespeare’s point in item (1), above. typeset hamlet with every word in quotes and it’s a very different play. i mean, [name of god deleted].
“….declared the “recession” officially over, it’s a sure thing that we are entering the zone of greatest danger.”
–and yet…economic activity is simply the result of what people do when they get up in the morning, at all levels. a function of belief. here, jung/cummings provide(s) insight, along the lines that ‘the future of man(un)kind will be determined…by psychological properties of the species.’ this is to restate what has often been stated here from a slightly different “POV,” as they say. [WILFRED BRIMLEY OFF]
“I hesitate to suggest that readers who are able to should consider stealthily withdrawing a month’s worth of walking-around money from their accounts.”
–‘the bourne fantasies’ may be helpful in this regard–even now! does the lady protest too much? gertrude? hesitate? really? why?
–and when is it time to act? no one knows. and act how? these are the quandries, it seems. hamlet knew them. look what happened to him. so should i or should i NOT use the word “chiggerville” tonight in dinner conversation (see below)? how does this change if it’s more a ‘late lunch?’
“…Palin worshippers, Nascar morons, and Jesus Jokers haul the ordnance out of their closets and start tossing Molotov cocktails into the First National Bank of Chiggerville.”
–now *that’s* fuckin’ funny! as for the morons, i know what you mean, but i’ll bet one day you enjoy driving fast, if you get a chance. as tony soprany remarked one episode, “fuckin’ escalade!”
sincerely,
invasive species
Asoka,
Apropos to Kunstler’s new theme on “The Fog of Numbers” I want to wrap up yesterday’s conversation on the unemployment rate. (I’ll deal with your red herring issue of my so-called “immoral” employment with a defense contractor in due time.)
Go to the Op-ed page in today’s NY Times and read “Job Market Blues.” I’ll save you some time … here are the pertinent words re the 9.4% rate that brought joy to your heart:
“At 9.4%, the jobless rate for July was slightly lower than in June. But the decline doesn’t reflect an improving jobs picture. Rather, it is a result of a contraction in the size of the labor pool — 422,000 people dropped out of the work force altogether last month. This is the second biggest surge of dropouts since the start of the recession.”
Oops forgot again:
P.S. Rico delenda est
“I don’t read douchebags”
————————
Dear fellow commenters,
You (and I) have been relegated to insignificance by Jennie Rico, a Kim Jong il-like twerp replete with digital elevator shoes and a keyboard but no atom bomb. Jennie presumes to commandeer this blog along with 5 imagined friends (who are embarrassed and wish she’d just stop mentioning their names) and to piss on any and all opinions you may have. I take offense at this and have made it my mission to hound Jennie to the grave.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
“Sir/Madam–you are a bigot”
—————————
As ZZZ said to a commenter last week “You must be new around here.”
You’ve stepped into a cesspool here but stick with it and in no time the shock at the shit you read will wear off.
The recent media reports of the “quadrillion” value of the derivatives market is troubling indeed.
What is more troubling, is that (I believe I read it somewhere) that about 1/4 of this market is held by China, and denominated in US currency.
Perhaps the upside for the US as a nation is that it may be able to devalue its currency to effectively escape the majority of the debt owed to others in real terms. Albeit, the devaluation will significantly reduce the standard of living for the vast majority of Americans, particularly related to import goods (like energy).
Perhaps the long emergency won’t be so long after all. Let’s hope for a mild winter.
“Is this not reason eneough”
“that dark obseesion”
————————-
Another administrative aside before we move on to the important stuff ………
When the hell are you going to learn the spelling of words like enough and obsession, to name just two? It’s getting on my nerves. Try typing your comments in Word or what ever email service you use, run spell check, then copy and paste into the comment block.
“Albeit, the devaluation will significantly reduce the standard of living for the vast majority of Americans, particularly related to import goods (like energy).”
——————————-
Not to mention, wipe out the savings of all those who did the right thing: spending less than they earned over a lifetime.
P.S. Rico delenda est
Multiculturalism is nothing but a cognitive weapon to destroy the West. The minorities are not giving up their identities-why would one expect them to? They’re here as colonists. Only Whites are stupid eneough to open up their countries to people of other races and imcompatible cultures. We’re at war with Islam, so we bring in millions of Muslims. Make sense? Do you believe that the Chinese would ever open up thier country to Whites, Blacks, and Browns? No, it’s their’s and people accept that. We accept that China is for the Chinese, India for the Indians, Sub Saharan Africa for the Blacks, etc. But no “educated” Westerner is willing to give the White Race anything. The education was in reality a very profound program of indoctrination. Nothing else can explain the madness of what is going on and what people find acceptable. Look, even the English and the French of Canada couldn’t get along. Why do you imagine that Cultures far more differnent than those are going to be able to? Both the Hispanics and the Blacks have historical grudges against us. They don’t intend to forgive us, but rather milk us in perpetuity. Letting the Hispanics settle here is just as crazy as letting the North Africans settle in France. There’ll be settling alright-the settling of scores. The Arabs and Berbers have long memories and rape of conquered women is perfectly acceptable. Now if you go to a foreign country by the millions and you get the people there to subsidize your children-what is that but conquest? The Muslims are 5% of Denmark’s population but use 40% of the social services. The rate of rape in Norway and Sweden is just as high as New York City-at least in the cities with large Muslim populations.
Define bigot. Is it one who prefers his own people to other peoples? Then I’m guilty. And if you aren’t, then you’re a traitor. I understand Sonia Sotormayor far better than you ever will. We are the same: she prefers her people and I prefer mine. She might respect me as an opponent but you no one could respect-you and your kind are mutated fools. Well I’ll tell you what-your mutation doesn’t have survival value and those who have aren’t going to make it.
wow, jaego scorzne, just another pants-pissing right-winger
And you’re like the teenage boy who talks shit about a girl but really likes her.
Rico has a great excuse for what he does: he’s a kid. What’s your excuse?
THANKS QSHTIK
‘ I want to wrap up yesterday’s conversation on the unemployment rate.’:
I was thinking about the dows spectacular LEAP from its lastest bottom this winter to a 50% increase in a fe wmonths…with AIG going up 60%? in a f’in day!!!!
WHILE THE USA LOSES JOBS BY THE MILLIONS
as far as trillions and quadrillions go
ive said it before
‘ a trillion here n a trillion there and soon yr talking real money’
Q…any more info on REAL numbers of non workin in the USA?
It excites you doesn’t it? Gays always feel alientated from any traditional culture. It is completely natural for them to betray their own culture because of this. But there’s more to the story. When the gays colonized San Francisco, the Blacks didn’t like it and started preying on the Gays. Perhaps because they expected no help from the police, the Gays fought back. They began to travel in groups, carry weapons, and study marital arts. The Blacks soon learned better than to mess with them. To this day, Gays look down on Blacks and Blacks hate gays, at least Whtite Gays even more than they hate Whites in general. You can deny this, but you know exactly what I’m talking about. Gays love beautiful things and Blacks are the enemy of anything beautiful.
JIM:
‘America will never be able to cover its current outstanding debt’
COME ON JIM…WITH THE TATTOO PARLORS AND NOW A REMOVAL PARLOR GOIN PUBLIC WITH FRANCHISES
WHAT DEBT????
JS said: “…rape of conquered women is perfectly acceptable.”
I would disagree. Women should not be raped and there is no justification for rape in any circumstance.
The legal definition of rape most commonly used in the United States — ‘sexual intercourse by a male with a female not his wife without her consent’ — gives legal permission for men to rape their wives. I also disagree with marital rape.
FOG OF NUMBERS
In 2002, New York City reported 1,468 cases of rape while London reported 2,731 cases.
In comparison, in 2002 Delhi only had 383 reported cases this year.
There are grounds to believe that some police departments, in an attempt to minimize rape
in their jurisdiction and to continue downward crime trends that are politically mandated,
manipulate rape statistics to bolster their images. One way to do this is to remove cases
reported as “unfounded” when they are, in truth, “unsubstantiated.”
UH OH
Now wee are talking Race and Sexual orientation
My understanding of the facts is that
‘most gay bashings are done by blacks’
And yr generalizations about ‘gays’ dont ring true..sorry I live in a big city and they just dont ring true!
and i say you are full of it
also i think you meant MIGHTY not might
Just to be clear and just case Ashoka really believes what he just said: I do not believe in rape under any circumstances. It is a Muslim doctrine that conquered women are booty and can be raped. It also accepted in America that White Men can be raped in prison by Blacks. Such is the hatred against us and such is the degree to which we have accepted. Comedians joke about it all the time and people laugh. Sandra Bernhardt went too far even for Americans when she said that she wished Sarah Palin would go to New York so some of her Black Brothers could rape her. Rape against White Women is still not accepted-thank God. But White Men-hilarious.
The Morrocan Troops who fought with the Allies raped hundreds of thousands of Italians, both Men and Women. And the Russian Troops who entered Germany probably raped hundreds of thousands of German Women. They were ordered to do it. This was our ally “Uncle Joe” Stalin. We then helped the Russians rebuild their industies so they could supply North Korea and North Vietnam with weapons and munitions to fight us. We’ve been a Nation divided for decades now. If you want to understand the situation, don’t bother with college, watch reruns of the X Files.
Read it again-I didn’t say most Gay bashings are done by Blacks. I don’t know if that’s true or not. There was a big conflict decades ago in San Francisco between the two groups. And I think there is a general tension between the two groups. From what I’ve seen, Blacks think of Gays as women and expect them to act like it. A guy who is a bit effeminate but doesn’t want to go all the way, confuses Blacks. This attitude is not going to go over well with Gay Veteran types.
I worked in and around politics for quite a number of years. It was there that I learned about “astroturf marketing,” where a band of faux protesters or faux supporters are supplied with “hand drawn” signs and told where to show up and what to say. ON TV (which is really what this is about) it appears all too real. People see these folks and assume they bought art board and markers and slaved over their signs the night before at the kitchen table.
So, given that background, it seems very likely that these flash mobs could have been nothing more than organized marketing endeavors, given a boost by national and local GOP operatives…all of whom slink off into the background once the event is off and rolling. It’s quite possible that, even if you attend one of these events, you really wouldn’t know how it got started….
Of course, that’s not to say that real people don’t feel frustrated and angry and “aren’t going to take it anymore.” Like the student activists of the 60’s, they sense that they’ve lost control, are shut out of the process…and perhaps think this is their only way to be heard. Honestly, if they are “real,” I’m happy to see them. It’s about time someone got off their fat asses and screamed at some of these haircuts who we’ve elected, most of whom are either rich “self funded” egotists or clueless party patsies. And even if they are completely gamed by corporate interests, I’m still glad to see the politicians, on both sides, squirm a little. They’ve skated by on research-tested answers and PR bullshit for far too long. A little fear might have a way of focusing their attention.
Finally, I can’t agree more about bizarre it is/was to judge the health of our nation by the “how many new craptastic houses did we build last month! It belies all rational sense. I used to wonder; what happens next? Now I’ve got a ringside seat….
Very true indeed. It may turn out that your life savings won’t enough be enough to purchase a wheelbarrow to take your remaining dollars to buy a loaf of bread.
If you read
‘The Dark Side Of Man’…….. by ?
…..he makes the case that ‘war rape plunder’
are ingrained…biological and not just one sub religious or ethnic group….
…..he makes the case that ‘war rape plunder’
are ingrained…biological and not just one sub religious or ethnic group….
——————————
Asia, I haven’t an iota of doubt that this is so … and I don’t even need to read Dark Side.
Try reading Plutarch’s 12 Illustrious Lives. All 12 were into war perpetually and enslaving the losers was respected … you got the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for it. And again, these men were “illustrious.”
P.S. Rico delenda est.
are you saying its acorn causing the problem?
JHk clearly sees a time soon when the govt is too broke to pay for all this
just how soon he wont say
I lurked and saw Kip’s interesting comment on Hunky Dory, (making me wonder if this is my old grammar-school boyfriend Kip from Rhode Island). I was having similar thoughts last night–and I have already tested and proven true the theory that thought creates one’s reality and we can control our thoughts and thus (to some extent) our reality/environment. So my “adios” was to the doomer mentality as well as the comments crew. I think I shall remain an optimist.
But I have decided to contribute a few more parting shots. My gringo family has been in the USA since the 1600s, starting in Rhode Island Colony.
My father, like my favorite childhood radio hero, the Lone Ranger, had an Indian friend (an Ojibway from Canada) who sent us fish, once helped my parents paint our house, and received cash gifts from my Dad occasionally. He himself was a fishing guide; my Dad met him when he (the Ojibway) was 14. When I was four, we tried to find him in the Canadian woods, and I never forgot his house–you could see light between the siding boards. In Northern Canada, 40-below territory.
My mother once told me that she had two prejudices, but she had made an effort (successful) not to pass them along to her children. I suspect that one was against Italians, but can’t be sure. The other I do not know.
I have had black, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, & Native American friends myself and have learned much from them–about all kinds of things. (I sang in a Black Gospel choir in a Baptist church for five years–best musical experience of my life, and no one read music). That’s why getting to know them was interesting. My daughter-in-law is Chinese, my cousin married a Japanese, another cousin married a Chinese, and they adopted a Korean–so there are many Asians and Eurasians in our 400-years-in-North-America family, in my generation and the following generations. We had a great family reunion 2 years ago, for my (right-wing) career-Navy (Captain, ret.) uncle’s 90th birthday. His son and Taiwanese daughter-in-law met when he and her father were stationed in Lebanon, as I recall. This is military life.
When I was one of the first female cab drivers working the 4:30-pm-to-1:00-am shift in San Francisco, which I did for several years in the 70s, the black drivers taught me how to make good money and stay safe (and play dominoes!). The white drivers harassed me, reported me for bogus infractions, and generally did their best to make my life miserable. Guess who I liked better? And why?
Since then, I have gone back to the land, developed animal husbandry, building, & food-growing-and-preserving skills, and have returned (of necessity) to small-city living. I have had many different jobs in many different fields, in addition to cab driving.
I own my home and am debt free. I pay property & income taxes, and I am happy to have the services they pay for–with the exception of the military in Iraq and Afghanistan (but I don’t resent or blame the soldiers for being there!).
Much of my 60-year-old home’s beauty is the result of the work of a few Mexicans (some citizens, some legal, some illegal) who labored with great skill and devotion under my direction. I am hugely grateful to them. Before I met them, I didn’t find anyone who could do what I wanted done for a price I could afford. I do not resent their presence, fear them, or wish they were elsewhere. I wish they had driver’s licenses, health care, auto insurance and steady work. I have never known any people who worked harder or better.
Recently, though I am 65+ and on Social Security and Medicare, for which I am also grateful, I have still been working, have some cash, and was considering installing solar panels. My electric bill is so low that buying solar now is probably not cost effective. So I have been looking into plug-in electric cars, which I could charge with solar (or not–PG&E also offers a special low rate for car charging).
At first I thought a neighborhood electric vehicle (NEV)would work for me, and I would keep my 7-yr-old Camry for road trips to see my family. But the NEVs have governors that top them at 25 mph. That is not safe on roads with a 40- or 45-mph speed limit. I drove one and it felt awfully small on the road, amongst the SUVs and pickups, not to mention delivery trucks & buses.
I looked on EBay and saw some plug-in conversions of ordinary cars. Maybe that was a better idea? The more I investigated, the better it looked. Definitely a safer option. And there are shops springing up all over the country where American car guys are converting gas cars to plug-ins. Here is a new, local, small-scale, and eminently useful industry, and it’s HAPPENING. There are two such shops within 20 minutes of my house, one of which does only Priuses, making them plug-in hybrids that get 100 mpg or more.
Electric motoring may not be quite as “happy,” because of the range and speed limits of electric vehicles, but it is possible–for those with a few extra bucks, of course. Plug-in conversions are not cheap.
See below for more info, found on the EV Trading Post site. Great info in one well-written web page by a high-school teacher:
Thinking about converting a gen. 5 (’92-95) Honda Civic? My $23 “CivicWithACord” DVD (57 mins.) shows ins and outs you’ll encounter converting the sedan; the del Sol, or the hatchback. Each runs 144V/18 batteries. Primary focus on component/instrumentation/ battery placement and other considerations. For more info, http://HOME.BUDGET.NET/~BBATH/CIVICWITHACORD.HTML
To see what’s happening with electric cars in China, check out this site: http://WWW.ALIBABA.COM/ There must be over a hundred different companies making cheap little NEVs. The wave of the future.
“This is the sign we [scholarly experts who track the growth of fascism] were waiting for — the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America’s conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country’s legions of discontented far right thugs.
Of course, it’s OK for Lefty types to protest and raise a ruckus, right? Check out the protests at the RNC and World Economic Forum, complete with professional agitators and all kinds of clashes with the police. That’s not Fascism?–how convenient.
The fact is, Conservatives support gun-rights, Fascists support gun-control… liberals support gun-control.
Fascists support speech limits and speech control. These can be found here in America in Academia, which is quite liberal.
Fascists want the gov’t to favor one race over another; liberals support affirmative action and other programs where the gov’t explicitly and openly favors one race of people over another.
Mussolini said that Fascism was better referred to as corporatism, as a merger between the state and corporations— The recent advent of Government Motors, the royal screwing Chryslers SENIOR Bond Holders received at the hands of the gov’t and the continued looting of teh taxpayer by Big Finance AND now the Gov’ts attempts to take over teh healthcare industry certainly is more of a step TOWARDS corporatism than away from it.
No Asia, I never even mentioned Acorn, just SEIU which has been notified to attend these meetings in response to the protests. SEIU is very closely affiliated with Acorn though since it was the SEIU that organized Acorn to protest outside of the AIG execs houses, so maybe that is where you got that from.
The only violence so far has been initiated by the people from the SEIU, a union organization. I am sure many would have like to see a response from the protesters so they could point their fingers and say see, look at it turning into violence, but they did not take the bait.
Since the SEIU is partners with Acorn and Acorn is affiliated with President Obama, you can make a more reasonable connection to the SEIU as Obama’s brownshirts. No, I am not making that connection as I believe the violence was caused by a couple of union thugs pissed at a the thought of a black conservative, someone that can think for themselves and does not fall in line with the only acceptable left leaning position for blacks.
The thought that all of these protests nation wide are all organized somehow by the “right” or the “drug companies” is ludicrous. The only way you get an American off of their fat asses is to scare them or piss them off. The only way you get them to vote is to do the same. Most of these protesters are only loosely affiliated with the Republican party as voters, some are Independents, and “GASP” yes some Democrats who see where this country is headed and don’t like it. I think the writer of this article is pretty dead on except for buying into the fantasy that this is all organized by corporations or the Repub party. People are scared and pissed off.
If you have taken any time to read the founders writings then you would understand that the federal govt has grossly overstepped it’s mandate and that is one of the reasons we are pissed. I might add that we are pissed off at both the Republicans and Democrats. The federal government is expanding at such a rate that it cannot even be tracked anymore. Tyranny because some of us have protested the government?
Definition of Tyranny : oppressive power; especially : oppressive power exerted by government
Re blacks and beauty:
Take a look at African fabrics and architecture some day.
Take a look at classical African sculpture–the stuff that inspired Picasso, et al.
Do all this while you’re listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Winton Marsalis, Miles Davis, B.B. King, or a hundred-voice gospel choir.
Then watch the movie “Half Past Autumn, The Life and Works of Gordon Parks,” available on Netflix.
You’re a lucky man–you have all this discovery of beauty ahead of you!
Chiggerville ???????????????
is that where the tattoo convention is being held?
Tattoo Conventions List – 2009 and 2010 Tattoo Convention Events …Event: Roc City Tattoo Expo Location: ….. National Tattoo Association’s Convention – April, 2000
“…..he makes the case that ‘war rape plunder’
are ingrained…biological and not just one sub religious or ethnic group….”
Asia I am glad you make the case. I know staallions (horses) who defeat an older stallion who has a herd of mares will rape all the mares to cause miscarriage and impregnate them with their new sperm.
Dolphins do the same. And I suspect other species also.
Makes evolutionary sense. The new foal will be tolerated by the stallion much better than an older foal of the former chief. Works with trophy wives too. Their ex wives children get short shrift in many casess.
Q said: “All 12 were into war perpetually and enslaving the losers was respected”
We stopped enslaving people institutionally somewhere around the 19th century.
These things you speak of from the time of Plutarch: slavery, war, rape, plunder are not ingrained in human nature and can be eliminated from governmental apparatus, just as slavery was.
Multiculturalism has not been a planned destruction of western civilization but that’s going to be the result.
People can rant and rave all they want but it is inevitable. Yes, Jaego we are going to all be cafe au lait.
The one world is coming and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. Western civilization has had its day and is in disintegration. You may be furious, name call people who don’t agree with you but all that is useless.
The older you are and if you are awake, you can see it so clearly. H.P. Lovecraft saw it back in the 1920’s in New York City. He was a racist and saw that his way of life was doomed. He wrote unforgettably about it.
They will devalue the dollar. If you don’t have much one thing you can do is save metal money, pennies, dimes, etc. They won’t change them, and they are debased already, so they will hold the before valuation after the devaluation. Haven’t you wondered about the proliferation of those coin machines in supermarkets and elsewhere? You dump your coins in and get paper. And it takes a cut. But it also gets multitudes of coins. Ever think about why they suddenly popped up? It costs a lot of money to remake coins so they won’t. It only costs 1 cent to print a paper dollar. So what denomination are you going to print with that penny? A one dollar bill or are you going to get more bang for your buck by printing a $100 bill. They used to print much higher denominations, but no more.
Jaego the crudest of muslims are the ones who emigrate. Those who ware comfortable, well educated and secular usually do not unless the religious bigots force them out.
Christian fundamentalists are making it intolerable for the rest of us. How much worse to live in a middle eastern country ruled by religious fundamentalists.
As I have said before: Islam is the stupidest of religions. Ignorance and evil are siblings.
Two decades ago you would not have heard of solar towers, airfoils towing great ships, bio diesel, telecommuting, wind farms, or 50 miles per gallon.
CTHULHU remembers reading such stuff in “The Whole Earth Catalog”, circa 1972. Check your library for it, or ask an original hippie.
You say there are no more great oil fields, but we keep finding them.
Oh, yeah? Surely, you jest. That Brazilian field’s entire life-time production may contain 1/10 of one year’s consumption. Discovery of oil peaked in the sixties.
Another number that can’t be comprehended anymore is the number of times certain people turn to scapegoating to soothe that horrible, sinking feeling that they are stuck in a dysfunctional world.
If men don’t live up to Christianity, well it’s to be expected-Christ’s teachings are very high. But if men live up to Mohammad’s teaching, they will plunder and rape at will. The Koran is also a manual of war and terror. “Cut one throat and terrify thousands. Al Quaeda didn’t just come up with theis stuff on their own you know. There is a mind blowing dichotomy between the Sufis and the Koran. Yet they find inspiration there. And parts of the Koran are very beautiful. That dichotomy is incarnate in Mohammad himself. He was a mystic but he never ceased to be a violent, dangerous, and lustful man. Some Sufis have said that it’s all a misunderstanding and that Muhammad never taught the jihad. False. Before he died, he lead a raid right to the border of Byzantium, shades of things to come. Or that jihad really means the inner struggle. Well it means that too, but most Muslims focus on the external struggle. In any case, it has become the main connotation. Or jihad means fighting but just in self defence. This is disproved by history and the present day situation-Muslims are involved with more than half of the world’s onoing wars.
Some of the greatest Sufi Masters such as Ibn Arabi said the Love might lead beyond the Koran. Such men were rare. Most Sufis are orthodox believers in Shariah for dealing with this world and the next. Ibn Arabi and Rumi believed in the Shariah for this world, and perhaps God would lead beyond the Law Himself. Some of the PLO are Sufis. Al Quaeda are Wahabbis or as Rumi called them “donkeys with turbans” and “Sufi Killers”.
Some have speculated that Sufis existed before Islam-a fascinating and hopeful hypothesis. I would love to see Sufism disengage from this Huge Cult. But I’m not holding my breath.
Well there are tendencies in those directions, but not all men rape. And fewer will if there are social santions and penalties against it. Even in war, nation’s can do better or worse. The Morrocans behaved horribly, but no one says anything because they were fighting for “our” side. It’s one thing if a soldier breaks orders and rapes, but the Russians were ordered TO rape when they entered Germany. Big difference.
I’m not against all internationalism: the Geneva Convention is a good standard.
Go walk around any Black Neighborhood. See what they did to Detroit. My case is made. But yes, I over generalized. Black INDIVIDUALS are capable of art and appreciation, but the masses are not. Also even among those talented few, their aesthetic is different. Very few Blacks like Classical Music or love sunsets and snow capped mountains the way we do. Whereas many Whites can appreciate Black Music and Art, very few Blacks can appreciate us. A major point I come back to again and again. I personally like Louie Armstrong, African Drumming, Traditional Gospel, African Choral Singing, and some of the costumes they make in Carnival. Also some Haitian painters are great. But-none of this is worth our lives, prosperity, and culture. They are for themselves. We have to become like them-for oursleves, at least first.
Gospel is interesting in that I love it in a religious setting, but don’t care for it on stage. The setting is important somehow, so that’s why I said Traditional.
Interesting post Mr.K. I like the song lyric you use as a heading, but personally I prefer the sentiments of B. Dylan’s “Stuck in the Middle” lyric of “Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the rigt, here I am stuck in the middle with you.” In my opinion, that is the very essence of the clusterfuckedness of our situation.
The players on both sides are interested in protecting and promoting a set of values that only make sense to those who believe that the virtual reality worlds that they have created with their spreadsheet models resemble what is really happening.You are right to point to the absurd number of 1,400 trillion as an example of this bizarre effect of people mistaking computer models for reality.
I regret to read that you seem to be one of those that thinks that the protest at the town meetings regarding Healthcare Reform are artificial mobs. Even if they are, the key point to understand is that Universal Healthcare is a product that can only be supplied by a nation/state that has surplus value stored somewhere in its economic system. Most of us here in this forum would agree that that is not the state of our debt ridden society at this time. It is like giving a kidney transplant to someone whose heart is failing.
Obamacare is a revelation for some people. People who have heretofore been apolitical consumerist are for the first time seeing an action by the government that they can see a direct short term effect on their lives and they are acting out. Certainly the doctors,insurance and pharmaceutical interest see some sort of salvation resulting from this episode, but I believe that we will see the laws of unintended benefits/consequences result in some very dangereous trends because once people who are not use to acting out/ expressing rage&angst cross that pyschological wall there is no predicting how they will behave in the future. It is possible that this event could be a psychotic break for some of these poor souls that we are stuck in the middle with.
All the suckers have indeed been roped in, and are they ever being set up for a fall. There has never been so much insider selling of stocks as in the past couple of months- something even an amateur stock trader ought to know to take note of.
One encouraging sign: casino gambling is becoming unpopular. Casino revenues have dropped steeply in this downturn, against all expectations. The popular theory says that the desperate and delusional are more prone to gambling in rough times, but it appears that the American public is beginning to find the casino scene dispiriting and boring, and that people see through the racket and are now consciously rejecting the casino mentality that has dominated our country for the past 30 years. Thus, legalized gambling has accomplished what prohibition of gambling never could, which is to strip away whatever glamor still attached to that sordid scene and show it for what it is.
Too bad we don’t apply the lessons of prohibition to our drug laws. But if we did THAT, and called off the no-win war on drugs and decriminalized the sale and possession of street drugs, we’d knock the wind out of the only thriving business we have left- the importing and distribution of illegal street drugs.
Excellent post JHK:
They have sold the numbers game so well, thats all of us follow the stock number, housing number, profit number, it has no soul. Second, comments about the health care meetings, many, MANY corporate folks, and Glenn Beck and his gang have also bused in folks. Do any of you posters here,really believe we can come together, work hard, sweat, and solve the upcoming crisis? NO, look at how the right and left hammer each other, prepare yourself, family, and neighborhood, start a peak oil neighborhood watch type group.
Well Abbey you’re wrong: the whole world is not going to go cafe au lait, just White Countries because that’s the plan. East Asians have great racial pride and they have NO intentions of letting themselves be over run by inferior dark skinned people. On the contrary, they are expanding. China now has 700,000 people in Africa, and in some places the Red Army is on the ground. No onc can criticize them, they’re advisors there at the African Goverments’ request. And also only Whites can be racists so what is there to say. In some places, the Chinese are begining to buy land. If the Africans don’t wake up, they’ll lose their Continent. Because the Chinese are like machines, unlike us they wont dither, brutality one day, Christianity the next. They have no interest in the Blacks, they don’t care for them and don’t employ unless the dictator insists. They will displace them if they get the chance. If the World System falls, I predict a massive invasion of Chinese Colonists into Africa. Only fear of the West holds them back at all. And as you know if you know the Chinese, they love fairness of skin. They have zero interest or respect for Blacks. And they love themselves. They are going to live. We don’t love ourselves and we are going to die.
And yet you chastise me for saying bad words! Well genocide is serious business. And the people responsible for selling us out, both here and in Europe, should pay. I don’t get your supine resignation to fate. That’s kismet, it’s never been a Western Ideal. We fight against all odds-and sometimes win. As you say, we are doomed if trends continue, but trends aren’t going to continue, the genocidal elites have not, perhaps, factored in the Collapse. This is our chance to break free and live. And if we fail, well the fire still burns in the Eastern side of the West. As long as Men like Vladimir Putin live, Whites have a chance.
The Japanese btw, are utterly amazed at the choices we have made. A Goverment Minister once said publicly that America has chosen suicide by bringing in inferior third world people.
You think it all by chance? Consider France: if they had voted for the glorious Jean Le Pen, things would already be changing. But stupidly, they voted for Sarkozy who had stolen Le Pen’s fire with tough talk. His tune changed once he got in. He began saying that Arabic was the laguage of science and the future. Then a couple of months ago, he said that the French must breed with the Arabs in order for France to flourish. What’s next, tax incentives for mixed race families? I’m not kidding at all. It’s coming. He’s pushing the miscegenation envelope. But it didn’t have to be, the French could have chosen a healthy nationalism (fascism) with Le Pen. Italy under Berlusconi already has. France for the French. Italy for the Italians. And America for the Americans. That’s all Fascism has ever meant.
Sure, the Global Elite would love to import 100 million Blacks into China, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon. So first they break the West, and then they go to work on the East. And of course, keep working on Islam. Things don’t just happen, people make them happen or allow them to happen. Allowing something to happen is a choice and a subtle action. They allowed the Mexicans to come over the border by the million. It didn’t “just happen”.
Robert Kennedy pointed out the obscenity of the GDP decades ago. He pointed out that divorces, car crashes and war all contribute to a healthy GDP, and the things that really matter in life don’t.
They killed him.
Yeah, we’re seeing the Brownshirts turned loose now, but they still have the military and the SS trained up.
For a more hopeful look at what is possible, read David Korten’s “The Great Turning”.
We can provide a decent living for all in a sustainable manner, but not if we insist on having a leech-like profit taking uberclass sucking the wealth from the producers and the Earth.
Good morning WORTHY fellow participants in the commentary at this CFN blog,
I say YOU ARE WORTHY but there is a pathetically insecure pantywaste by the name of Jennie Rico who says you are a “douchebag.” Anything you have to say about the state of the world will not be read by Jennie because YOU are not a made man. YOU have not paid your dues. YOU have not done your time. YOU cannot state and credibly support an opinion. YOU are not a member of the ratpack. YOU do not stroll insouciantly with the entourage. YOU, in short, are a “douchebag.”
Jennie, as teenagers are wont to do, speaks in a lingo intended only for the ears of the girls in the clique while demeaning and excluding YOU. She turns up her nose and sniggers at YOU.
I assume you find this offensive, as I do. And that is why I have made it my mission to ridicule Jennie till she leaves or grows up.
And so I repeat:
Rico delenda est.
“And the people responsible for selling us out, both here and in Europe, should pay”
———————————
Jaego, let me pay you a dubious compliment. You are the most prolific commenter at this blog and, right or wrong, you have laid out the most thorough rationale for your fascist beliefs.
But I have been reading about George Sodini, the lonely loser who shot up a gym in PA, slaughtering and injuring several women. One article reviewed the litany of similar events in the recent past. They have a common thread … a loner’s development over time of a seething hatred for some group within society. The acquisition of weapons and ammo. Revelations on the internet of bad intentions. The article raises the question: at what point is there a responsibility for persons aware of this building hatred to come forward to security authorities and raise a warning flag.
Now, here at CFN, we find YOU speaking of weapons and “precious lead.” We read the remark above that “people responsible for selling us out, both here and in Europe, should pay.”
My question: are you merely a fascist blowhard exercising his First Ammendment rights or are you, in the words of the article, “an imminent menace?”
P.S. Rico delenda est.
To the author of the comment about ‘Obamacare will include illegal immigrants’: Good one, pal! Since viruses and bacteria are aware of immigration status, citizenship, etc., it is well known that they will NOT jump from an ‘illegal alien’ to a ‘good red-blooded American citizen’!
And how old are you again, did you say 68? Yet you act no better than Rico. Shame.
I believe the people who have delivered Europe into Muslim hands should be tried for treason and if found guilty, imprisoned for long terms or life.
I believe the people who have sucked America dry should be tried, and if found guilty, imprisoned for long terms.
I believe in the Constitutional Right to bear arms. And that the people have a right to abolish a Goverment that no longer serves their interests. That’s by Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence I believe. Hopefully the Long Emergency will destroy this Goverment-as in Mr Kunstler’s novel, “A World Made by Hand”. I don’t want to hurt anyone or get shot or go to prison. We want to be left alone.
Your turn. What do you believe? Anything? For example, the other day you mentioned the War in Iraq. Do you think it was a good idea? Do you think we should extend the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
What a silly statement. Look do you want to pay for illegal immigrants? As for the bugs: they do so jump; illegals are bringing all kinds of diseases over the border: TB, Leprousy, Chagas, and yes Swine Flu. Back when we were a country, we used to check would be immigrants for diseases. But now, not only do we not care, but we just opened up our borders to people with AIDS. We’ll take’em all and treat them. That’s not too expensive, is it? And once the guys are feeling a bit better, they can start spreading the joy around. A Black Specialty both here and in Britain.
Soylent Green is people!
Jaego,
Do you remember this,
It is called ‘The
New Collossus by Emma Lazerus, it used to be how we Europeans saw America.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless,tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Good, I’m glad to hear you speak of trials rather than death. I’ll cancel that voicemail I left with the FBI.
As to all your questions, the truthful answer is: I DON’T KNOW. (How many people have the guts to say “I don’t know.”)
But regardless, as I’ve stated so often, the best road for ME (not necessarily for you or anyone else) is to take the world as I find it and adjust to it accordingly.
P.S. Rico delende est.
I can guarantee you UU, such sentiments make Jaego want to puke.
P.S. Rico delende est.
I hope they do make him puke.
“you act no better than Rico”
—————————–
You know in your heart that is not true. I may use all my powers of sarcasm and ridicule to debunk the absurd but I would defend to the death everyone’s right to express their opinion (strike “to the death.”)
P.S. Rico delenda est.
“Soylent Green is people!”
—————————-
Soylent Green came to my mind recently and when the time is right I’ll expound on why but right now my purpose in replying is purely administrative. I’m 68 and “technically challenged” (aren’t most oldsters?) Somehow you have managed to bold face “Soylent Green is people!” and in your next post you were able to italicize the Lazerus poem. I cannot figure out for the life of me how to do this. Can you tell me?
P.S. Rico delenda est.
“As for the bugs: they do so jump”
——————————–
Jaego, every so often you fail to notice a spoof comment. Sammy has spoken with sarcasm. You and Sammy are on the same page as to the issue of immigration and diseases. You are preaching and Sammy is the choir and vice versa.
Sometimes you have a Borat-like charm.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
It’s easy enough qshtik,
you use things called HTML tags. I can’t show you them in a comment as they don’t show up
They a (B) to start Bold and a (/B) to finish. Except it is not the smooth round brackets you use but the pointy ‘greater than’ and ‘less than’ signs.
For italics use (i) to start the italics and (/i) to finish them again using the greater and less than signs.
If that is confusing google a website for simple HTML composition, it will explain it batter than I can for sure.
Thanks, I’ll give it a shot the next time I reqire emphesis on some words.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
Make that “require emphasis.”
P.S. Rico delenda est.
A note to all commenters:
Today, as every Sunday, I read the On Language essay in the magazine section of the NY Times. It has prompted me to coin a new word: AsokaFail.
In time I will come up with a concise definition of this word that takes into account Strunk and White’s admonitions re brevity. But for the moment the following will serve as a draft:
AsokaFail is an unsatisfactory result of attempting to support or refute an opinion by drawing on “facts and figures” from the internet via mastery of search engine technology when no connection is made to the writer’s own life experience. The result is as unsatisfying as a glass of alcohol-free white zinfandel with dinner.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
I HOPE YR POLITICAL FACTS ARE BETTER
DYLAN????????????????
Stuck in the Middle – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”Stuck in the Middle With You” is a song by Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty and performed by their band Stealers Wheel
Good word QSHTIK,
There are so many boring people who just cut and paste reams of information from other websites and clog up comments sections of popular blogs like this one.
Some people seem to want to give the impression that they know everything about everything.
even JK wonders if the ‘powers that be’ have a plan to cull 7 billion down to the number the CFR
openly approves of!
“Q…any more info on REAL numbers of non workin in the USA?”
—————————-
Asia, Who knows what’s REAL anymore but I found it interesting that somebody’s measurement of average hours worked per week (by those fortunate enough to still be employed) is down to 33 … its lowest level in ages. One wonder’s if the 9.4% unemployment rate needs to be adjusted by the shortfall from the standard 40 hour workweek. If so (and assuming the BLS has not already done so) unemployment might be calculated as:
(40/33)x 9.4% = 11.4%
P.S. Rico delenda est.
yeah….are you a wet back that doesnt wanna learn eeenggleesh?
THANKS!
there is a ‘U6’ record kept by govt
as those out of work 6 months or more..
guess thats when people ‘give up’ after 6 months
or go back to school
or join army
or end in jail
Do you think Emma Lazarus was working for the Soylent Green Corporation? Just trying to get as many bodies over here as possible so as to turn them into Soy Products?
Seriously, the juxtapositon of your two posts is bizarre. The first one answers the sencond: we’re full. I admit it’s a good protest poem. It has nothing to do with the Statue of Liberty, which was a gift from France in honor of our victory in the American Revolution. In fact, too many people, from to many different places is a great way to lose our Liberty. Because to deal with them all-teach them English, house them, feed them, etc-the Goverment inevitable grows bigger and bigger.
What do you mean you don’t know? Don’t you have any informed opinions? Take a stand-it’s an existential act. You have analytical abilities, but you need values in order to have a position. Is that the problem? Here’s an easy one-an underhand throw-will more people be good for America-considering we have a depression, failing infrastructure, failing dollar, peak oil, etc? To use a metaphor from the Buddha, don’t be just a herdsman of other men’s cows, get a herd of your own.
I grant you that it’s good to be able to say, “I don’t know”, but humility can mask real problems sometimes.
Jaego,
Your population density is quite low compared to Western Europe or parts of Asia, so you are not full. As a nation you are just greedy and wasteful. (Apologies to the many millions of Americans who are not greedy and wasteful).
Brown shirts? Yes, and their name is ACORN, HCAN, SEIU, and the other Community Organizers. This is a battle for America and I cant descide which side JHK is on.
The slavery I see is congress giving away my money and the money of my kids and grandkids to wall street and the dizens of the Hamptons.
Health Care reform is just another way to fleece millions of people from their money, a bit more economical than before, but a fleecing none the less. Have you seen Zeke Emanuals chart on who gets health care. ZE is Rahm Emanuals brother, a “bioethisist” and the Health care policy advisor to BHO. The chart shows who will get priority for health care. From 20 to 45 people get priority and will get the majority of care. After 55 you can forget about it as the chart drops off like a cliff. After 75 the line disappears.
When BHO and his cronies say “we need to spread the wealth around” they mean your wealth. They are the ones Orwell was talking about when he said “Some animals are more equal than others.” Mark Rudd and the rest of the SDS bunch are in charge of this country.
Nice point Laura. Legalizing does take the glamor out. I remember when I used to accompany my father into the state liquor store in Pennsylvania (they were all state stores in that state and it was highly taxed so people used to go to Jersey because the stores were private and cheaper). I am not complaining about the higher price because of taxes on it but the point I want to make is that the state stores had board or dusty metal shelves, brown paper bags, and were just dingy places. No glamor at all. Icky.
Now the liquor stores in PA are glamourous. I don’t know if they are still state run or not.
In China in 1992 the Peoples’ Stores were plain shelving and lots of cheap products for reminbi. They had dollar stores for the yuan and they were classier and more expensive.
In one fell swoop we could take the glamour out of consumerism by plaining it down. (Great pun eh?)
Same with prostitution.
I used to be a therapist in an addiction agency and lots of probation drug dealers were forced to come to therapy. They were really interesting to work with. Their stories were exciting. They flew to Miami to get some or deliver. They had lots of pretty women around. They drove fast expensive cars. They rode in limos and stayed in expensive hotels or motels. The fast lifestyle and that was the carrot. They liked the lifestyle of the rich and famous. And added to that was the high end game of cops and robbers.
UU wrote “As a nation you are just greedy and wasteful.”
Testify! I’ve got something like 4 dozen coworkers who drive to work (solo) in trucks weighing more than 6,000 lbs. Some of the trucks are above 8,000 lbs. And they all say they like bigger vehicles better. Huh. Well, if you ever need to know why the US, at 5% of the world’s population, uses 25% of its energy, there’s the answer.
Abbeysbooks, you’ll notice that just legalizing something takes the zing out of it for many people, especially youngsters.
Part of it is kicking sand in the face of Authority, that is, of people who are clearly trying to control you, for good ends or bad. And usually bad.
Now that it’s obvious that our authorities WANT us to drink and gamble our way into poverty, and the people who do these things are so pathetic, the zing is gone.
Abbeysbooks wrote: “In one fell swoop we could take the glamour out of consumerism by plaining it down.”
If ever there was an industry that deserves to be Sovietized into drab uniformity and non-materialism, it’s Wall Street finance & banking.
To those wanting to get to some truth about unemployment numbers, I tried to post stuff earlier but it got caught in the spam trap. Let me do the links one at a time:
Employment status of the civilian population by gender and age:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
The Shadowstats version of unemployment numbers:
http://www.shadowstats.com/charts_republish#emp
Upcoming spike in unemployment benefits exhaustion rate:
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/08/unemployment-15-million-workers-will.html
from UK Telegraph:
Europe to be 205 muslims by 2050
Naaaa….maybe 80% Muslims by then:
On a hope and a prayer: lack of debate over influx of Muslims, some experts claim :
REUTERS
Last year, five per cent of the total population of the 27 EU countries was Muslim. But rising levels of immigration from Muslim countries and low birth rates among Europe’s indigenous population mean that, by 2050, the figure will be 20 per cent, according to forecasts.
Data gathered from various sources indicate that Britain, Spain and Holland will have an even higher proportion of Muslims in a shorter amount of time.
Muslim Europe: the demographic time bomb
Migrant figures ‘higher than claimed’
Letters to the TelegraphThe UK, which currently has 20 million fewer people than Germany, is also projected to be the EU’s most populous country by 2060, with 77 million people.
The findings have led to allegations that policy-makers are failing to confront the widespread challenges of the “demographic time bomb”.
Experts say that there has been a lack of debate on how the population changes will affect areas of life from education and housing to foreign policy and pensions.
Although some polls have pointed to a lack of radicalisation in the Muslim community, little attention is being given to the integration of migrants, it is claimed, with fears of social unrest in years to come.
Jaego I have carefully studied Toynbee and can find no flaws. Western civilization is in the stage of disintegration. It has left the stage of rout and rally. Different citizens of an empire do different things with their lives during the stage of disintegration. But changing the slide is not possible. Yes there will be pockets. But that is all. The Sufis know all about this. Somehow you have them mixed in with Islam. They predated all religions that we know of and have always had difficulties with Islamic rule. Sharia is not a Sufi thing at all. Read the Tales of Nasrudin. Or Indries Shah the great Afghan Sufi of the 20th century. Or Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, (or his father Inayat Khan whose writings are the most spiritual and profound that I have ever read, and then of course the incomparable Krishnamurti who cannot be labeled at all), who formed a community in Lebanon PA. I did a workshop with him once when he was in his 90’s. His vibrations were so spiritual that you could breathe him in, and so after it was over I went home and changed my present path to a different and more spiritual one. And I immediately moved from where I was living as I could feel the pollution, physical and mental. It was a concrete thing to me after being around his aura.
Once a culture is interwoven changing any one thing becomes almost impossible because so many other things are affected negatively. This is the reason Malaysia kicked Singapore out in the mid 1960’s. The Chinese were financially successful and breeding so that the Malaysians were going to become minority citizens in their own country (as white Americans will be). And Singapore had to reinvent a country for itself. It is composed of Indian, Malaysians, British, Chinese and the metro stops are called out in four languages. All children must master two languages, one being English, the official language. It has become the Switzerland of East Asia since the mid 60’s. And what have we been doing since the mid 60’s?
The Chinese intermarry but it is usually the lower classes who do and some of the highly educated who meet in university and graduate school and in the more professional professions.
I must have been thinking of you last night because I dreamed about inbreeding, Lovecraft’s hatred of it, and upon awakening came up with lots of feelings why racial hatred exists and especially for “half-breeds”.
I think it goes back to a horror of primitive mating rituals, and casual coupling breeding of say seamen offshore and military in foreign ports leaving their seed indiscriminately. Coming from a good family has a lot to do with that attitude as secure, financially solvent, and educated people in families have a horror of free love and breeding rather than the proprieties of family merging, formalities, weddings and exchange of wealth and property that goes with the union.
My father used to say to me, “You don’t marry a person, you marry their family.” I have lived long enough to know he is right on that score. When I came to the Ozarks every man with a 6th grade education tried to bullshit and impress me. They all came from dysfunctional families and lots of baggage. They had a sticker on their forehead saying STAY AWAY.
JAEGO,
I could be wrong bu t I thought that part, if not all of ‘The New Collossus’ by Emma Lazerus is engraved on the base of The Statue of Liberty.
You know how these whacky liberal New Yorkers are.
Jaego about deliving Europe into the hands of the Muslims (and drug dealers)you are in good company with Houellebecq, the most outrageous and critically acclaimed writer in france today along with Bernard-Henri Levy. Please read Platform by him at least. It is fiction but brutally true.
As for your fascism I go with BHL when he says that the world is headidng toward a one world government. We are steering between Scylla and Charybdis (sp?)one rock being fascism and the other totalitarianism. Both dangerous, stultifying, and utterly damaging to human freedom. At present we live in a window of freedom, and that’s all.
In all futuristic novels there often are outsider groups who exist as in World Made By Hand as long as they are allowed to do so.
Illegal immigrants will go to emergency rooms or being afraid to do so will die, will contaminate the rest of society so I guess they might as well be included in universal health. After all the British gave Elizabeth Taylor over a million in medical treatment when she fell ill there on a movie location.
But I do know Canada, Australia, New Zealand make it difficult to legally immigrate there without marketable skills that will not take jobs from the locals.
I like the feelding of your selection. and it was written in a time that was different. It is romantic and hopeful. and we wanted more people, a lot more. Now we don’t. Why? Because we are more civilized, more economically secure, and do not want more competition than we already have from other people.
There really is no legal place for disabused people to run to on this planet that is safe for them.
The Bible promotes breeding and increasing the tribe. Written in a time where that was necessary. When Israel saw that the Palestinians were going to breed them into a minority, this endless war began. In the beginning 1967 because they were the victims of a surprise attack. Victorious in 6 days the aggressors realized they had made a mistake that would have no end of retribution attached to it.
To do the numbers statistically one must move into an analysis of variance model with either nested or non-nested variables. I am sure the stats people out there can do it but they know then that no one could understand it.
Then there are the graphs. Plot on a graph that is on a piece of elastic paper. Stetch it longwise and the ups and downs look quite significant. Stretch it horizontally and the ups and downs smooth out to about nothing. Statisticians know this and plot the way they want you to believe. It’s like the button soom in and zoom out on a map. the distances change radically. Same with dots for numbers on a graph.
As for numbers. Once of the reasons for the low low interest rates thatr caused the housing bubble were, get ready to keep increases in social security artificially lowered when everyone knew inflation was coming back. The CPI index was kept artificailly low by selecting what was going to be included in the index. anything that was jumping up was eliminated. So in this way old folks have their social security stolen from them but they don’t know it because they are math illiterate. All they know is that their checks don’t buy as much as they used to, but since they used to get less money in their checks than they do today, they are easily duped and confused. Less money 5 years ago and more money now but I can not buy as much as I could 5 years ago. Get it? They don’t have to reform and redo social security, they already did it.
The phenomenon of negative suggestibility. Understanding this when working with schizophrenics is the doorway to cure. Remember Bateson’s the schizophrenigenic mother? she calls the child to her and her arms are held out wide to welcome and her body is tilted back away from and refecting. To which stimuli of this paradox does the child respond? I’m only beating you because I love you! And so it goes as Vonnegut would say.
Now if they don’t want to say anything to you you say, “That’s wonderful. I can have a very restful session with you if you don’t want to tell me anything. We can just sit here together and be quiet.
A little late you can ask, “Is this silence comfortable?
Or what is the quality of this silence?
You get the idea. You double bind them as it was done to them in childhood only you are doing it in language.
Or: The patient says, You are doing anything to solve my problems! You don’t tell me what to do to solve my problems!
You: If I tell you what to do, will you do it?
Then: How can I be sure you will?
They want you to tell them what to do so then they can tell you why it won’t work.
” I assume you find this offensive, as I do. And that is why I have made it my mission to ridicule Jennie till she leaves or grows up.”
Hey, douche-lips, you already made the same declaration two minutes ago. No one cares. Here’s some advice. Ask Jennie for a signed photo, rent a room, and have at it. Let your boyfriend know were you are renting said room just in case you end up hanging yourself.
“It’ll be another thing when the dispossessed and repossessed Palin worshippers, Nascar morons, and Jesus Jokers haul the ordnance out of their closets and start tossing Molotov cocktails into the First National Bank of Chiggerville.”
Holy shit JImmie, I’ve been to your town. You live in fucking Chiggerville. Be careful at the bank.
Yes indeed, there is a great deal of “fog” that permeates the nation’s psyche.
In addition to the foggy statistics that offer impossibly unmanageable outcomes for those peoples on the debit sides of these global balance sheets; there are equally confounding statistics accumulating regarding the nation’s love or hate relationship to health care/insurance reform.
What is going on here? Do polls and town hall meeting confrontations really measure the nation’s views regarding public or private health care systems? Isn’t all this theater at most?
How is it that these “everyday people” can mobilize to address a particular issue but remain mute at the likes of the government’s failure with respect to the entities such as Enron, Haliburton and Goldman Sachs?
This is absolutely brilliant plot, no doubt hatched by the very richest amongst us. Such a magnificent “mainstream news” distraction, conducted on the cheap, using the very people who stand to lose the most.
Jim Kunstler, witness the “happenings” of the last few weeks, and never again, never will you purport that those at the top don’t “get it,” or are somehow stupid.
There’s something going on here alright. And those controlling these “scenes” are merely practicing for even more Orwellian mischief for the future.
I already see the seeds of fascism on the right, but see no patriots coming to the rescue of the republic. Common sense, like the soundness of the dollar is gone forever.
Meanwhile, Paulson writes his “alibi” as memoirs and sends manuscripts around to other “banksters” to get all their stories to match. Write a piece about that……it hasn’t spurred any “shout downs” at any town hall yet. No one’s made an effigy of Paulson.
“The New York Times on Saturday reported records of two dozen conversations between Paulson and Goldman chief executive Lloyd Blankfein the same week last September that rival bank Lehman Brothers collapsed and insurer American International Group — closely connected to Goldman — was rescued with public funds,” reported by Washington Post.
Squish dik sez:
“I may use all my powers of sarcasm and ridicule to debunk the absurd…”
You know I thought you were using “all your powers” but I wasn’t certain until your admission. In the words of the immortal Scotty,
“Captain, we (you) need MORE power.”
To Asoka,
I want to return to your unkind remark of last week. You called my 26 years of employment with a “defense contractor” immoral and blood soaked and my pension like sucking at the govt teat.
You were frustrated at my blowing away your precious unemployment “improvement” number so you lashed out with a red herring.
I don’t know any details of your life since you refuse to reveal them (just like Scorzne) … not even your gender. People assume you’re male but I sometimes sense a female mindset … not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I don’t fear people knowing something about MY life especially since it serves to validate my opinions. That said, here’s the backstory:
As I was leaving for work on my wife’s birthday (Oct 7th) in 1978 my wife saw me off at the door of the house we had just bought in June, holding our year old 2nd son, with our 2 yr 9 mo old first son at her side. I told her I was very anxious and worried because my boss had called and left a message for me to drop by his office before proceeding to mine (in another town) and something just didn’t seem right. Wife says “you’re a worry wart … everything’s fine … and don’t forget, today’s my birthday.” My boss inform’s me I’m being “let go” but I can continue to occupy my office, receive pay, etc to the end of the year while I train my replacement, and search for a new job. I had worked at this place 13.5 years. The US was in the midst of its second “mid-east oil crisis” (the first was in ’73). Unemployment was rampant. The news hit me “like a wrecking ball from outer space” (a Norman Mailer line and so perfectly apt). I proceeded to my office, did NOT call my wife, and spent the day reflecting that I had become a burnout, the company noticed it, and my boss had spotted a roach in the ashtray of my company car which I’m sure didn’t help.
On the way home I purchased a birthday gift for my wife and had it wrapped. I came through the front door with it and my wife smiled broadly saying slowly “and you were sooo worried.” I told her what happened and she burst into tears.
Some how I landed a job in fairly short order and started in the internal audit dept of Macy’s at Herald Sq, NYC on 2-5-79. Retail sucks and the boss was a raving lunatic who would come back from a 3-martini lunch and literally scream purple-faced for all the world to hear at an underling “I HATE YOU !!” I walked dazed each evening to the Port Authority building to catch my bus home. As I waited in an endless line in a sea of people I thought “if I have to do this the rest of my life I’ll kill myself.” At the end of May the boss took a business trip and phoned back to a 22 year old rooky auditor, 16 years my junior, instructing him to call me into his office and tell me “Don says your services are no longer required.” As I walked away from Macy’s with my pink slip and possessions I vowed never to look at that building again and, in fact, never to set foot in NYC again. And for a decade I didn’t … until my psyche had sufficiently healed.
……….. continued in next post ………
Yo Jim,
“The week past, some so-called “conservative” political action groups (read: brownshirts pimped by corporate medical interests) trumped up a few incidents of civil unrest…”
Heh, the ‘trumped up”…”incidents” wouldn’t be a result of conspiring (as in conspiracy) would they?
I agree with you on the unlikelihood that these were spontaneous demonstrations. The threat of universal ‘single payer’ type health care is not going to create the tipping point for this kind of reaction from the lumpin’ proletariat. Food shortages (such as in no Cheeze Doodles or beer at Safeway) riots might however.
None the less, a clear description of the dilemma:
“It should be obvious that the single-payer plan is nothing but Medicare or Medicaid – for everyone, and that it will be accompanied by the same kinds of catastrophic failure as those alleged remedies for the destructive consequences of still earlier government intervention in medical care. At whichever level of government it is applied, the single-payer plan will mean that government officials decide what medical care is available and to which categories of citizens.
Just as under the Clinton plan (GT note: read Obama plan), the individual citizen will be deprived of the vital right to act to save his life by buying the best medical care he can obtain from willing providers.
The logic of the situation implies that the citizen will be deprived of this right not only with respect to the taxes he is forced to pay to support the plan, but with respect even to funds he is prepared to pay over and above his taxes, for the purpose of obtaining medical care. This is because the government’s purpose in enacting the plan is to contain costs. As a result, the government cannot allow the competition of a quasi-free segment of the market, fueled by today’s collectivization of medical costs, to go on driving up medical costs. Thus, as in Canada, it will be driven to prohibit the existence of any quasi-free segment of the market. People will have to take the medical care it decides they can have, period.” George Reisman
“Now that Newsweek Magazine — along with the mendacious cretins at CNBC — have declared the “recession” officially over, it’s a sure thing that we are entering the zone of greatest danger.”
If indeed the ‘remission’ is over, we are indeed entering the zone of greatest danger when the economic cancer will continue its onslaught, hollowing out the body of US economy until nothing is left to sustain the functioning systems.
“There’s something going on here alright. And those controlling these “scenes” are merely practicing for even more Orwellian mischief for the future.
I already see the seeds of fascism on the right, but see no patriots coming to the rescue of the republic. Common sense, like the soundness of the dollar is gone forever.”
Yep, here is comes, you are not a Patriot unless you side with Socialism. A Patriot no longer defends the constitution and, like our founders, believes in limited federal government. Someone like that is now considered a radical.
by Ceo4aday ~ “A similar progressive fascist movement began to take root following an economic crisis in Germany in the last century and culminated with the appointment of a Head of State who rallied his true believers with theatrical presentations as the state reached deep into the lives of its citizens molding their values, limiting their choices and transforming their society for the good of the state.”
We must now change our ways, do without, abandon our ideals, follow the new progressive fascist movement, or be called un-American.
To Asoka
…… continued from prior post ……
The whole process began AGAIN. The economy was in even worse shape now. I sent hundreds of resumes. I took interviews in remote places at sleazy companies with high weeds growing near the entrance … just for the practice. One memorable interview was with a headhunter who sat me down, read my paperwork, looked up and said “WHO THE FUCK IS GOING TO PAY ME $6000 TO FIND YOU!?!?”
I wasn’t broke but unemployment ran out. I took a temp accounting job for $5 an hour in the main offices of a supermarket chain that had lost most of their records in a fire and needed help reconstructing them. There were two other temps in identical straights as me … even our ages. We commiserated and shot pool once in awhile.
I learned of a place with a name like “Plasma Recovery Inc” or some such … a subset of the blood buying business. I began to go there the maximum allowable times (twice per week?? I forget). The first was memorable: in the office the entire procedure was explained by a nurse (it made me queasy) and I signed papers that relieved them of liability if anything went wrong. The procedure was: I got on a bed, they wheeled up a tree with blood bags and tubes hanging from it, inserted an IV needle extracted a bag of blood, and took it away while I laid there for 15 mins. They spun the cells out and kept the juice. Then they came back with the cells in a solution and dripped them back into my arm. I laid there till I felt OK enough to get up, have a cup of orange juice, collect my check ($15 – $25 ??) and leave.
When I entered the collection room there were 15 beds lining the walls on either side, everyone with a client in it and hanging blood bags. Every head turned when a new person entered the room to see who else was desperate enough to suffer such humiliation. I laid down, the nurse with the IV approached and I fainted. Every time I went to this place my wife begged me not to go to “blood suckers” as she called it.
My wife became pregnant with our third child.
I began working (i.e. conversing) with an employment agency but after an initial upbeat conversation with my smiling contact rep I never heard back until late Sept 1979. I got a call from a woman at the agency who said she was my NEW rep. I said “what happened to the other guy?” “Oh, he was let go. Anyway, I’ve got some outfit in north Jersey looking for a Pricing Analyst. They make gyroscopes and some other stuff for the govt. Its about a 40 mile drive one way from your home, do you want to take the interview?”
So what do you imagine I said? “Uhh, no … I have moral scruples about defense contractors.”
I started work Oct 15th and over the next 26+ years never once screwed a detonator into the nose of a nuclear device. And oh yeah, I didn’t make as much money as I used to and no longer had a company car and had to lay out thousands to buy one so I took a second job as a “night auditor” in a hotel … midnight to 8AM Fri and Sat nights. Between the two jobs I worked 365 days a year for two straight years during 1980-81.
Asoka, next time you blithely discuss the “improvement” in unemployment figures and the immorality of my line of employment remember this true story.
yeah, imagine paying taxes for government services, to be rendered to the citizen regardless of income or status. oh no! socialism! evil!
WTF do you think the police and fire depts. do?
Yes, the Statue of Liberty. Very nice. But not a reason>/b> for mass immigration, just a thought-less knee-jerk PC reaction. The same as a Maoist parroting the Little Red Book, or a nazi saying “I read in ‘Mein Kampf’…” or any business man saying ‘the market is always right’.
At least I give reasons to be against illegal mass immigration, which can be summed up as: it does not make this country a better place for people or other living creatures.
Why was Caesar Chavez against illegals?
Why is Thomm Hartmann against illegals?
Over what issue did the Sierra Club almost fracture?
How much water does the west and midwest have?
How many people can live in the USA without importing resources from other places?
Why hasn’t the incomes of the bottom 1/5 increased since 1970?
Why does big business support illegals?
Why do people think illegal mass migration will not result in greater ethnic strife?
Anyone who has followed JHK yearly predictions over the last 3 years and still doubts his amazing insights and foresight is beyond help…if you read his predictions closely you will be take his advice about the current situation and get your cash out of the bank immediately…the beginning of the final meltdown is clearly only a few days or weeks away…I continue to be amazed at how few people among JHK disciples are expressing their knowledge that ALL the alarm bells are ringing and the time for lifeboats is NOW!! Bless you JHK…keep us posted daily if necessary…you are the only hope to save us from from a fate that will make “the living envious of the dead” (quote from Kruschev in the new book “JFK and the Unspeakable- by Douglas)…garyg/nola
@ Qschtik
For some there is no sh. sh. shame, only ideology. And of course a nice plumb juicy government teat to su. su. suckle from. Suckle from.
@ Cthulhu
“Tf do you think the police and fire depts. do?” Besides enjoying go. gol. gold-plated retirements (many with eligibility at 50 years of age) and benefits while consuming significant portions of tax revenue while driving some municipalities (e.g. Vallejo & Oakland, CA, N. Miami Beach, FL) to the edge of, if not into, bankruptcy? Oh, you must be talking about the running into burning buildings and getting shot at st-st-stuff. Stuff.
“Hey, douche-lips”
———————–
What happened to MORON and FUCKTARD?
Finally … something fresh, as I suggested.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
Abbey, you make 3 excellent points:
Re para 1: When I did the calc of 11.4% it was nothing more than a ball park to show that the layman has no real concept behind numbers he reads.
Re para 2: When I mentioned last week that there would be some hard times for some people but over the longer term it would be just a blip on the screen … I had your graph image in mind. i.e. the further the line moves to the right with time the less the amplitude of the squiggles appear. Even the Great Depression does not look like the end of the world on a Dow chart from 1900 to now.
Re para 3: Not only does the BLS fool with the CPI but all indices are frequently adjusted including complete re-doing of bench mark starting data that might go back a decade or two. I won’t go as far as to say it’s Orwell’s 1984 but, who knows, it could be.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
To poster Qshtik:
If you want to be a writer, why not do so, BUT NOT on the JHK blog? Your massive ego to think I or anyone else gives 2 shits about you/r story (I couldn’t care less, frankly)is inspiring, but alas IRRELEVANT TO YHIS BLOG. Why not submit future short stories to Readers Digest and give the blog a break? Thank You, You’re Welcome.
“Captain, we (you) need MORE power.”
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Wow!
Clever
Great Pop culture reference
You really got me back with that one.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
3rd Gen, Why would you bother reading something specifically addressed to Asoka who knows what I’m talking about. I’ll be glad to send private correspondence to an email address if one is provided but since that will not be happening I’ll use the means that are available. Feel free to scroll past my comments in the future.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
“How nice of you to advise us that “These things you speak of from the time of Plutarch: slavery, war, rape, plunder are not ingrained in human nature” when anyone with eyes can see it everywhere and always around us.
At least this isn’t an instance of AsokaFail … you did not search-Jockey some “facts” to support your statement.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
GaryG/Nola said: “the beginning of the final meltdown is clearly only a few days or weeks away”
GaryG/Nola, your words scare me. Now I am afraid.
The meltdown may be Tuesday. Should I withdraw all bank funds tomorrow before whole economic house of cards collapses?
So, JHK is right.
Will emergency action be necessary to save my property? Are we facing a complete societal breakdown which may happen Tuesday? Should I buy more ammo and guns to defend myself from the illegal hordes and the non-white criminals.
Do not “misunderstimate” this crisis created by Bush’s 7.7 TRILLION deficit spending and Obama’s continuation of Bush’s foreign wars.
Will no health care public option mean another doubling of my private medical premiums, bankruptcy, foreclosure on my house, homelessness? Will it mean more crime, more unemployed?
Are we doomed? Is there no hope. Should I withdraw my money from the bank tomorrow before “they” take it all from me (the puppet masters)?
Is the Illuminati behind this? The Jews? The Council on Foreign Relations? The Bilderberger Group? Skull and Bones?
Or am I suffering from DSM-IV-TR Paranoid Personality Disorder: “A pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent.”
Maybe it won’t happen on Tuesday.
Have a nice day.
There was a funny line somewhere, way back:
“I said PERHAPS and that’s FINAL”
What is unclear about “I don’t know and that’s FINAL?”
P.S. Rico delenda est.
“you already made the same declaration two minutes ago. No one cares”
—————————
The other senators told Cato the Elder the same thing which translated from the latin meant “shut the fuck up already, we could give two shits.”
Cato pressed on and eventually Carthage was destroyed and salt was poured on their fields.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
Q said: “when anyone with eyes can see it everywhere and always around us. ”
What you see with your eyes everyday and everywhere all around you are acts of kindness, voluntary business transactions based on trust, and the love of parents for their children, teachers who are dedicated to educating students.
What you are probably referring to is what you are presented with through corporate programming on TV news, which are the aberrations, exceptions to the universal and predominant acts love, cooperation, and trust among billions of persons that make it possible for societies to continue functioning.
Tomorrow as you go about your business, look to see how many people smile and maintain civil relations. Compare that number to the number of people you see plundering, murdering, and raping. Let me know what the ratio is.
The violent aberrations do not prove anything about human nature. The billions of acts of kindness are more representative.
You’ve lived an interesting life and have read some good books. And you have alot of self confidence in this. And I hate to disagree with such a well bred Lady-and such a polite one. And my Elder too. But you are wrong about many things. The blinders of Liberalism have done their work well, not to mention its little sister, Feminism.
You are simply wrong about the Sufis. They consider themselves Muslims. A few avant guarde Masters have come to the West-and allowed Westerners not to convert. All well and good, but it doesn’t change the overwheliming reality-which I reiterate, I’m not happy about either. But I know that to go Sufi is to open the door to Islam and its horrors. And this I will never do.
I took an inititation a few years ago, but no earthly master was to be seen. It was as if a voice was whispering in my mind, “Do Something, we are in Danger.” I call it the Voice of Odin, the Egregor of the White Race-as Jehovah is the Egregor of the Jews. I do not believe in Him in any objective way, but he is more than a symbol. Yet not the Ultimate Reality either. He is the Spirit of the White Race. And we are in danger, as you know; you just don’t care which amazes me. Are we not an incredible people, both brilliant and beautiful? We have characteristics no other people have-a capacity for objectivity and self examination I have not found elsewhere. With us is the hope of all Humanity, not with these others who lack these traits or only have them to a lesser degree. If Western Civilization no longer serves us, then let it die, but not us, not our precious genes. Are we flawed? Of course, we are a work in progress. But how dare anyone demand that we become extinct. We have not only the right but the duty to resist all such actions against us. And we cannot exist without our own Lands.
If we mix with other peoples, we will no longer have the gifts that Evolution has bestowed on us. If you breed a German Shepherd with a Grey Hound, do you get a super dog that has all the good qualities of both breeds? No, you get a mutt who likely has neither set of good qualities in a pure form. On a smaller scale: Darwin found that each Galapagos Island had its own breed of Finch-although they were almost identical to each other. Certainly one species, just different “races”. But each breed carried twigs in a slightly differnt way; it was a behavioral difference more than a physical one. Yet when bred together, the offspring had trouble building nests because the resultant behavior did not allow for the graceful carrying of twigs. Each of old ways was fine, but the mixed behavior was a mess. I find this an apt metaphor for mixing cultures-and more than a metaphor because it is a genetic reality as well. Usually one culture just wipes out another. Occasionally, the victor and vanquished will influence each other over time, alot of time. But this process cannot be predicted and certainly not hurried. It is organic-a world away from hideous programs of multiculturalism and forced mixing. If we mixed with the Chinese say, what would that give to the world? It would be the end of us, but not the end of the Chinese-they have their own Homeland which is secure. And the offspring would be highly intelligent and handsome no doubt, but it would lack the incredible creativity of the White Race and also perhaps, the good traits of the Chinese such as endurance, visual thinking, and control of emotions.
Yes the Statue was defaced by that poem which had nothing to do with the Statue. It shows the great influence of the Jews even early in the 20th century. They have always been the leaders in the open borders campaign. Why? The weaker the Founding Race becomes, the stronger they become. Emma Lazarus was an agitator against the Czar in Russian. When she immigrated here, she agitated against the US Goverment. She saw no differnece. It was just Us and Them. Jew vs Goy.
Again, many of White Politicians and Businesmen have joined this plot to overthrow Western Civilization. There is plenty of blame to go around.
JAEGO,
I thought you were probably an utter moron, but you have far exceeded my expectations.
“They had a sticker on their forehead saying STAY AWAY.”
The majority of people, no matter what their skin color may be, have that sticker on their forehead.
If you have good vision, you can also see the sign they are carrying that shows their IQ.
This ignorance of the constitution is exactly what I mean. Police and Fire Departments are local and not federal; although, the feds are getting into that also. Those powers not enumerated by the constitution are to be left to the states. The founding fathers foretold what would happen if central government tried to provide everything. The prediction was Tyranny. Our constitution is an attempt to balance us between Tyranny and Anarchy. Up until the 30’s SCOTUS deemed confiscating from one group to give to another as unconstitutional. You can see where we are headed now that the spigots have opened and the people know where the free money is.
The best government is local government. You may think it is fine that the fed is large enough to give you everything you want, just remember. it is then big enough to take everything you have.
You may vote for Tyranny, I will fight for freedom.
Hey, It’s the Economy!
Our economists see green shoots, a beginning of the new housing market recovery and that the stock market is up! This temporary good news euphoria allows the wall street crooks to further raid the United States treasury to pay off their bad investments – gambling debt derivatives now at quadrillion!
There are lots of black swans circling to blame the next downturn in our economy that will be summoned by the White House appointed vultures of formerly Goldman Sachs executives. We need Eagles to challenge these “bone pickers” with a clear vision of the future for the United Stated to unite the American people that there is no free lunch and includes no cash for clunkers but only hard work and labor to rebuild our nation. We need to abolish the Federal Reserve, focus on the many new and promising technologies that will build a 21st century national infrastructure to create wealth over debt. We need to reward work and penalize the blood suckers of our economy that have created this fog of numbers. We can begin with an audit of the Federal Reserve with prosecutions to follow.
A couple of days ago I wrote my sister Barbara that I wondered if Jim Kunstler, who clearly forecast the current economic meltdown back in early 2007, immersed himself almost to the drowning point in economic data as I do each week, or whether he is simply psychic — can see the reality without doing any number crunching.
His blog today (August 10) clarifies things for me quite a bit.
But maybe instead of psychic visionary, we just have an ordinary guy with a lot of common sense, of the type you see in a bright 5 year old kid.
Bob Nelson
silverdoctor
A couple of days ago I wrote my sister Barbara that I wondered if Jim Kunstler, who clearly forecast the current economic meltdown back in early 2007, immersed himself almost to the drowning point in data as I do each week, or whether he is simply psychic — can see the reality without doing any number crunching.
His blog today clarifies things for me quite a bit.
But maybe instead of psychic visionary, we just have an ordinary guy with a lot of common sense, of the type you see in a bright 5 year old kid.
Bob
-JHK
I reckon the second greatest misallocation is the movement of gobs of money from the rich and sensible, to the dumb and farflung – in the form of housing loans.
I’ve been thinking and talking about this since mid-2006. The worst part of this loan stupidity is that some banks were handing out 106% loans in Australia (or as I’ve recently discovered 120% in the US). [That is to say 106% or 120% of the value of the property].
This means a few things, but the main point is that having that amount of money available in the real-estate market was bound to inflate real estate prices.
And, in Australia, the stupidity continues. In today’s (Mon) Herald Sun, there were two articles next to each other:
1. Confidence boosts mortgage numbers
2. (Mortgage stress takes its toll)
The second article was saying that 25% (one quarter) of all households in Cardinia Shire (outer suburban/outer space council area in Melbourne, Australia) were relying on charity – the charities are saying it’s mostly people who work!
I just find it ironic. Green shoots amongst all the brown weeds?
Nick.
squish dik sez:
” My wife became pregnant with our third child.”
So your wife is as big an idiot as you? There’s a huge surprise.
Qshtik replied to COMMENT FROM ZZZZZZ | AUGUST 10, 2009 12:28 AM | REPLY
“Captain, we (you) need MORE power.”
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Wow!
Clever
Great Pop culture reference
You really got me back with that one.
Not really. I only had to reach up my ass just slightly beyond your head to retrieve that cultural artifact. You should not be so easily impressed.
asoka-the-producers sez:
“Will no health care public option mean another doubling of my private medical premiums, bankruptcy, foreclosure on my house, homelessness? Will it mean more crime, more unemployed?”
1. You do not possess private medical premiums
2. You do not make mortgage payments
3. You are a FUCKTARD.
asoka -the-producers sez:
“Tomorrow as you go about your business, look to see how many people smile and maintain civil relations. Compare that number to the number of people you see plundering, murdering, and raping. ”
Ah, I think that plundering, murdering and raping are usually done behind closed doors or under the cover of darkness. I’m not certain why… just that they are.
While I remember – short letter of mine published in the mX (a free commuter paper in Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane), Fri 31-July-2009.
OBAMA BLAST: No Fool (mX, Tue), I agree. Barack Obama also needs to grow some balls and jail the criminal fraudsters who ran the US economy into the ground. – Nick
Elaboration.
1.
“No Fool’s” letter was about the way the media portrays Obama as a hero, they worship the ground he walks on, he represents change; but he’s just the same as the rest.
2.
I don’t entirely agree with “No Fool”, but submission is by SMS (160-character limit, less 13 overhead), and therefore you have to be simplistic at times.
3.
The use of pseudonyms is very common.
Nick.
Hi Jim–
The genius of so many of your rants (including this one)is that they function like a mirror and people see exactly what they want to see when they read them. The range of responses so far certainly proves this to be true.
Harry Truman once said, when asked why he “gave
’em hell” on the campaign trail,”I don’t give ’em hell, I just tell them the truth and they think it’s hell”.
Keep telling the truth Jim–especially the admonitions that we have got to start lowering our standard of living, learn subsistence agriculture (or even gardening for a start), and demand and insist on the prosecution to the full extent of the law those crooks who have been and continue to swindle us.
Maybe eventually some more of the ugly step-sisters who frequent your forum will start to see their own ugliness (instead of the ugliness of others) when they gaze into the mirror of your postings.
“What proof does the Left have that this is true?”
COJONES GAZER, of all people, demands proof! That’s rich.
Here’s some evidence:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/09/freedomworks-aggressive/
Dark, even for you, Jim.
Pretty well sums up my thinking lately, though.
The rich are heading for the exits, looting the joint before it collapses.
I suggest that discreetly heading for the exit before the mob catches on would be wise. Wish I had some loot…
You might also consider that paper dollars might not continue to be useful.
Why not just cancel ALL debts,without exception, and start over? I know…”too simple.” A worldwide collapse, followed by a nice war or three, is the better, well reasoned response of our mature, statesman-like world leaders.
wow. there are way too many gasbags commenting on this post – some of you folks need to pull your heads out of your asses and get a real job…
as to JHK’s commentary, nice job as usual, several good points to ponder for the next week, until we repeat the process. Holy shit, a bank holiday? Gee, who would have thought THAT might be possible?
Two observations, though – when the SEIU goons start showing up to provide a “presence” at town hall meetings, things are starting to look a lot like Munich in 1933. Unfortunately, and contrary to the workdview of the progressives out there, it isn’t the Bush/Cheney/evil Republican cabal that’s placing the call to load the buses down at the union hall. I can’t wait to see how the apologists in the media skew their reports of the first town hall meeting fatalities when some unwitting Joe Sixpack pisses off someone backstage and gets his facial features rearranged out in the parking lot, courtesy of the steel-toed plastic surgeons of the service employees union. I’m sure it will be initally attributed to the “unruly protestors” in the meeting, unitl the YouTube videos prove otherwise…
Secondly, it won’t be the First National Bank of Chiggerville that goes up, JHK. It’ll be a carry-out store in Detroit, or a pizza joint in Chicago, maybe a grocery store in D.C. The usual dolts that you Eastern elites peg as the troublemakers in society aren’t going to be the first to pull the trigger or light the fuse. While there are millions of lowbrow yahoos out there in the hinterlands, the majority of them at least have had the experience of working for a living, and paying for things via their own sweat and effort, regardless of the fact that they’re shopping at Wal-mart and going home to a double-wide.
No, it’s going to be the urban bottom-rung dwellers, who have never had to account for themselves, who have a Glock and a box of rounds and no boundaries on their compulsive need to be given things by others (preferably government, but whoever happens to be at the business end of their 9mm if necessary). When these folks realize that the jig is up, they, like water, will seek their own level, and start taking what they want. After that starts, and the social shitstorm phase begins to ramp up, the NASCAR drones will begin squeezing off rounds, but it will be to ward off the predators below, not to foment a revolt against the predators above.
Ultimately, the Goldman Sachs bastards and Wall Street vultures will get theirs, but once they realize that their ride is ending, they’ll die from self-inflicted injuries, not angry mobs bent on revenge.
I love Kunstler’s writing, although I think it is inflammatory to refer to critics of the establishment “health care reform” proposals as “brownshirts”.
After all, if you filter out all the noise, the resistance to these “reforms” is largely driven by a concern about out of control government deficits, something Kunslter recognizes as one of the cornerstones of our societal march toward economic oblivion.
Republican protesters are brownshirts, Democratic protesters are righteous, passionate participants. Republicans wear swastikas, Democrats are well dressed with suits and ties.
Our pastime blaming W is O-fucking-ver…despite what some juvenile delinquents writing in this blog say, Obama is now the landlord and his band of Merry Men plotting the destruction of freedom are now spreading over the land like so much sewage sludge from Hoboken. Is it my imagination but do a helluva lot of Americans want to trade freedom for the imagined dream state of alleged security? OK, Dems, now that we have blacks, Hispanics, and others strategically placed in our political hierarchy, is that necessarily wonderful or merely window dressing? When in the past have we ever heard, other than sci-fi movies, about various age groups being the desirable species for our country? When and where have we had serious probing like Obama’s cretinoids looking to enforce speech constraints? Sure, understandably, we can have legitimate discourse on banning guns and ammo, but banning free speech?
There are folks who don’t realize that whomever controls health policy and treatment controls people’s lives, people’s fucking lives, not cans of cat food. Are you all OK with this, are you willing to let Barry and his gang forcibly control your lives?
Just imagine when Obama the Magnificent digs into school systems. If you want the “other side”, read John Taylor Gatto on the school situation.
Help me, please. Reassure me by saying Obama is good, wonderful, and he wouldn’t do anything to hurt anybody.
Republicans are brownshirts, Dems are noble…right!
2 things:
I wish some of the people who post MANY times would stop. Post once, maybe ONE follow up. It’s good blog manners. If you can’t get your point across in 1 or 2 posts, you don’t really have anything to say or you don’t know how to say it. Get over it. You’re not clever, you’re not a good writer. Start your own blog and there you can rant all you want.
How quickly people forget the epic damage caused by Bush/Cheney and their minions. If we do all the right things going forward, it will take a decade or more to undo just the things done by those two fools. For those who helped put those pukes in office, please keep that in mind as you foam at the mouth about how bad things are today, and how much worse they are going to get.
Have a good day.
Poet:
There indeed are some people, both on the left and right, who see what they want to see in Kunstler’s writing.
The thing I admire most about Kunstler is his independence. He recogizes the delusional world views of both right wingers and progressives.
If there is a word that’s opposite to “lapdog”, that’s Kunstler.
Jim,
You are one of many Americans who got a huge boner about the fact that the dick attached to the 44th president is a tad bigger and browner than its 43 predecessors. Are you willing to admit yet that you were duped by the propaganda for the off-white shyster from Chicago whose advisors hail from Chicago Business School and Harvard Business School? Are you willing to admit yet that you were duped into believing that obama represents change?
Suburbs=greatest misallocation. Perhaps. However, let’s consider this: during most of human history, the primary source of inequality in every society was land ownership or lack of it. Both rural and urban poor had no land, and as a result were at the mercy of those who had land. In the American landscape today, most suburbanites and rural dwellers would have an opportunity to convert their lawns into food-producing land, growing anywhere from half to all the fruits and vegetables they consume. In fact, those sub- and ex-urbanites with homes on 1 or more acres, can grow commodities as well. Granted, it won’t be easy for people unskilled in agriculture, with no real farming tools to do that, but humans are immensely talented in surviving in the face of dire threats. So, could it be that the suburban spread in the age of the peak oil could be a good thing for the American democracy and the rights of man (and woman :)?
“is our foolish obsession with econometrics — viewing the world solely through the “lens” of mathematical models. We think that just because we can measure things in numbers, we can make sense of them.
”
when was the last time you saw obama and the news media use graphs of long-term trends, of the terseness, quality and meaning like those on http://suddendebt.blogspot.com/, to make their cases? (especially in this day and age of smart boards.) “fog of numbers” is right, but in regards to our nation’s ignorance of basic arithmetic, to say nothing of probabilty and statisitics.
i think “purple haze” is a better description of our sorry state.
the idea that you’re ever going to get any kind of substantive social change without spilling blood is just silly. might as well get used to it.
“So, could it be that the suburban spread in the age of the peak oil could be a good thing for the American democracy and the rights of man (and woman :)?”
Hell no. If Jim sez the burbs are the greatest misallocation then, by golly, they are. But here is something rather curious. Roughly 150 million people live in the suburbs. If you took those people and jammed them into our cities what the hell would you envision those cities to look like? To my eyes many cities appear rather broken and run-down. How would pouring more people into the incorporated zones of cities make this a better world? How would resources be so much better allocated in these larger enclaves?
It’s not health care or the recession that’s threatening this country, it’s civil war and nothing less. The right wing, having lost control of congress and the White House by fair means will now resort to any means however foul to regain power. Behind their obstructionist tactics, the town hall mobs, and birther insanity is a clear call to insurrection, sedition, and all-out violence after which they will pick up the pieces. And Jim’s “Nascar morons”? They’ll go right on supporting the very same right-wing cabal that’s robbed them blind and ruined their future while leading them by the nose into an internecine blood bath more terrible than the Iraq holocaust they planned and carried out under our noses.
“The suburban householders are watching sharks swim in their driveways.” – JHK
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Jim,(?) you need to stop smoking that AK47 before writing your column, gonzo journalism lives!
“Polish blanket tricks” Are you trying to be offensive to Poles, or are you just that daft?
Why not just say N***er Rig”?
“1Why not just say N***er Rig”?”
PC says “Afro Engineering”.
What a bunch of PC sensitive little snowflakes on this comment section.
Perhaps T. Kaczynski was right. Not only able to see the folly of the techno/financial system future, but to have the balls to do something to try to avoid it! I wonder if the GS/Wall st./banker bunch has any trouble sleeping as of late? Although, I tend to agree that when TSHTF, most of the finger pointing (or probably worse) will be in the wrong direction. One can also imagine the modern day response from the Gov/BAU side if anything were to “start”. The war on (what ever perceived threat of the week special) will be immediate & intimidating, as virtually all law enforcement has already been militarized. We have all been taught the history of the American Revolution & the heroic “patriots” that made it happen. In todays world, such a gathering of like minds is already labled TERRORIST. Never to be seen again?
While W and his wrecking crew made a mess of things, let’s not get the notion that everything Obama does is sheer perfection. If solving problems means losing freedoms we hold dear, is that OK with Obama supporters? Obama has to be held to a high standard, and that is not being done right now thanks to the vast majority he enjoys. W was justifiably insulted, jeered, and crucified by press and others, but Obama deserves same should his ideas prove nutty. From what I see happening, the choice is not between the crap of W vs. the perfection of Obama. Remember, all felt Greenspan was perfect for a long time in his office, but such has been proven folly. Karl Rove is NO worse than Kapo Emmanuel. There’s lots of things to sort out now, and that takes time, but Obama wants things passed before adequate time is spent in evaluation. How’s that for great bench science?
I am not blissfully optimistic for the future, mine or the country’s. Ding dong, W is gone. But, Obama is certainly not the Holy Redeemer, either.
Really, I mean Really???
Hey those “NASCAR Morons” are mostly blue collar democrats so they could be called “Democrat Morons”.
You have fallen prey to the right wing/left wing – republican/democrat standoff that these people want you to fall for. They know Americans are competitive. They just won’t let any other party compete because that might spoil things.
Do some reading. Study the Constitution. Read the founding fathers writings. Study history. You might just become enlightened for a change.
Oh wait, I get it. NASCAR means hillbilly, which means stupid, which means couldn’t be Democrat. How enlightened you must be.
O-man can be pictured as a little poodle wearing a leash with the end of the leash in the hands of the Big Money Boyz.
I think efforts are already underway to prevent bank runs. This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVolCCZKmiE) from the “street” makes a credible case that banks are already limiting withdrawals to a few thousand dollars at a time.
Personally, I keep less than half my cash in the banks. The rest is under my mattress. Just kidding. It’s actually in a metal toolbox – no joke.
Dave – Erstwhile Urban Wanderer
Amen to all that. Katrina and the Los Angeles riot are the paradigm of the near future. Blacks don’t do well with crisis, they will riot and burn and shoot at people trying to help them. But there will be acts of heroism too: the White Men who stood their ground and defended their towns and neighborhoods against Black Marauders. And in Los Angeles, the Korean Businessmen who held of the maddened minorities with guns, giving as good as they got. Needless to say the Police will be on the wrong side, at least at first. As in New Orleans, they will go house to house tring to take guns away from citizens just when they are needed most. America began with guns in the hands of pioneers and it will end the same way. The alternatives are far worse: tyranny and concentration camps-already being prepared.
It will be like Noah’s Ark again, each unto his or her own kind. Like unto like. Don’t do the Long Emergency in the cities; don’t it near Blacks and Hispanics. Get with the Bubbas. If you’re nice and can let go all that PC hatred, maybe they’ll even help you out. Maybe. They know exactly how much Liberals hate them. And they return the favor. The Left destroyed this Country and alot of people aren’t very happy about that.
“The right wing, having lost control of congress and the White House by fair means will now resort to any means however foul to regain power.”
Please. Jimmie wants to equate NASCAR with the right, hence Republicans? And you are buying into this? What a fucking joke. I thought the Repugs were the party of the elite, the moneyed class, etc. etc. They are hanging out at NASCAR events? It was the right wing that loosed the police during the Chicago police riots in 68. The right wing burned down the inner cities during the civil rights movement?
If you align yourself with the left and are afraid of what the hordes will do in the future, fear your fellow Dimotwats. The “right” will be hiding behind their 401-K’s in the basement of their Summer home.
Qshtik et al,
This concept, that earning money and putting it away for later, is somehow the noblest calling of industrial society should be abandoned I think. There was a time when paper money represented something – let’s say it was a direct correlate of gold or silver. But since about 1968 the US federal reserve note has represented only what Wikipedia calls “the perceived strength of the US economy.” Therefore people who stash federal reserve notes themselves in a box for later are the biggest suckers of all, and deserve to go the way of paper money. We should stop admiring these people at our earliest convenience.
Now, that’s not to say that making more than you need is in and of itself a bad thing. But that money should be turned into some form of natural capital – say, fertile land, tools, education, livestock, books, or a low-energy home. It is this very act of investing in and profiting from an economy that has fervently traded natural capital for paper money and ledger balances that is bringing down the ship. And those who read this blog regularly, or are familiar with Richard Heinberg, or the Oil Drum, or permaculture, etc, and haven’t been furiously trading in their (ultimately) worthless fiat currency for natural capital, are the ones we should be laughing at the hardest…
Paper money always returns to its inherent value: zero. -Voltaire
I have always been ready to get on board with the idea that the economy is crashing, because I have no problem with internet conspiracy theories. JHK says “today” that he is allergic to them, and to paranoid memes. Unfortunately, JHK is the best writer on this spot and his gambit is to use metaphors, which is to say that something is something else to give it that little literary treatment for purposes of illustration. It is great fun, but is arguing not whether to believe an assertion, but asking how far a person’s belief goes. It is like asking how much a person will pay for something and not stating the price.
It is unfortunate that JHK is the best writer here, because I would like to win the argument once in a while, and I can’t do it. The premises used in an argument are often taken as true, and argued against given that that is true. There is a name for that. It is wrong. When you take in metaphors, proving they are not true is not even winning. The author is saying that you know what he means.
Allegories and aphorisms I have yet to look up. I am not going to like it.
“Some foul odor rides the late summer wind, as of a rough beast slouching toward the U.S Treasury.” I thought that was a simile, because “as of” seemed like “like”. Now I don’t think so. There’s no odor, no beast. Commercial-grade entertainers always refer to odors and scatology in the morning to help the listeners do their toilet.
The quote by Buffalo Springfield places the song in the earlier phase of people I guarantee you do not want to listen to since they were on drugs. Somewhere along in there their ilk announced a plan to levitate the Pentagon. In the new, improved phase the group became CSN, and then CSNY. The Buffalo and the Springfield were a rifle, the best I can figure, and a Buffalo Bill, and a cool rawhide leather jacket with fringes, which Steven Stills wore. JHK chooses it since possibly Buffalo is in New York, and he is in Saratoga Springs, New York, and the group itself was American, and all this blog has to do is stay on track.
I don’t say JHK is wrong. He just slips into a thing coming from a long line of writers. I just do not think there is any “we” in this country. In spite of industrialization, my trade continues to be labor, and the machinations of the elite have always been to profit from the labor of others. Those others for their part have struggled for a decent life in spite of this exploitation, but the denial of this sharing has consistently relied upon a characterization of the workers as lazy, shiftless, dumb brutes who do not deserve wealth. We would have been the working poor forever anyway. JHK perpetuates this myth by calling us NASCAR fans.
If you can generalize, fine. But, I notice that I live a particular life, not a general one. It is true that JHK warned well ahead of time that the housing bubble was going to burst, and I was just unable to do anything about it. I had to work too far away to deal with selling my condo and realizing a profit. I also got sucked in by the desire to pay down my principle to avoid the interest payments. I actually have two fine children. These you might not want to uproot, so I did not do that. I sure do not get any thanks from my daughter, and I have to tell myself that people like her and JHK just don’t understand.
JHK is analogous to an air traffic controller guiding an airplane down to the runway. You want to hit the runway; not too long, not too short. I always apply a factor. It is not like he says. I don’t think the ATC even guides it.
To summarize, the danger is to the elite, and the long knives are not real knives. The danger to the people is the elite in the best of times. That was the meaning of the song quoted by JHK, and the next two lines are, “There’s a man with a gun over there, tellin me I got to beware.” You know we did not believe in guns, right?
I am interested in science, and I hate the hype as well. I figured that I would do what has never been done. My hypothesis is that books never tell you anything that will do you any good. No single book has any of it, much less all of it. I decided that as long as international trade in narcotics could generate much more income than legal commerce, that no legitimate economy really exists. I decided to tell what I know about manufacturing methamphetamine since the ACLU shot down a bill attempting to chill speech on this very subject. I am at the six-month mark.
http://sbillinghurst.wordpress.com
How to Make Methamphetamine
The Republican Party is essentially composed of three elements; traditional fiscal conservatives, so-called country club republicans and the Christian right.
Traditional fiscal conservatives – These people have very little reason to still be republicans based on the behavior of their party in the previous eight years and the disturbing fact that the democrats have shown themselves to be better at balancing budgets then they have. Here the Republicans are held hostage by answering every economic question with one response “tax cut!”, a policy any responsible person can see is both false and unsustainable.
Country Club Republicans – still holding strong, but the numbers are so small it can hardly can be considered a factor, other than their considerable ability to have influence far beyond their numbers based on economic impact.
Christian Right – This movement, based largely on the grievances of the working class, is IMO, largely a reaction to the democrats decision to abandon working class needs in favor of drifting into alignment with suburbanites and traditional minority interests. Democrats have so completely compromised themselves and failed this key demographic group, that these people now feels free to vote their prejudices rather than their economic interests. Why not? The democrats will abandon them after every election.
The dynamics are that the CC Republicans and their vast money machine are so adept at blowing the dog whistle of grievance politics that this class of CR voters is incapable of seeing how seriously they are being manipulated. Case in point, at these crazy town hall meetings, so many of the people who are against medical care reform don’t even realize they are beneficiaries of previous reform in the form of Medicare etc. They are often virtually unschooled in the actual facts of any proposal, just following the grievance issues enumerated for them by the likes of Limbaugh and Beck.
Whichever side you are on, and I don’t care to argue the specifics with anyone, this kind of thing is poison to a society which must rely on an informed public to function. Unfortunately, I see no change in sight, in fact, things will likely only get worse as the political system demonstrates its incapability to deal with real change and real problems.
” …the US federal reserve note has represented only what Wikipedia calls “the perceived strength of the US economy.”
I got news for you. Last week the price of gold was X. This week it will be (+ or -) X. The difference between this weeks price of gold (or lead, silver, coffee. cocoa, Pepsi or Samoyeds) and last weeks price is the “perceived” value. Perception has always and will always play a key role in both currency and commodity evaluations.
I must congratuate you on your attempt to demonize your opponent while totally ignoring their actual concerns on healthcare (may I point out that the actual physical violence has come from those who favor nationalized health care?).
Let’s see, just a few issues…..
Congressional Budget Office program cost analysis (no decrease in costs!!!).
Constitutional authority for such a program (10th amendment-it is a STATE responsibility)
The fact that most major federal government programs (Social Security and Medicare) are going broke. We don’t need new entitlements.
Countries with socialized medicine are also having major troubles with their program costs and are rationing care (see British Columbia for a recent example).
Rush to pass ANY bill without time to debate and discuss.
Massive increase in federal power.
Congresscritters refuse to sign up for option they want to force on American public.
85% of the public has health insurance.
Too bad you don’t take the time or effort to actually deal with the pro/con arguments…..makes your blog a hysterical waste of time.
How widely held is the mindset “we need a king to save our asses”? Many people looked to Obama to fix our troubles after those leaders before him failed, some miserably.
But…it’s bassackwards: how can a government, funded by taxes that were once a small percentage of GDP, have the resources to save our collective asses? Wasn’t democracy, at its basic construct, to provide administration of public programs, agreed on by its citizens, with scopes not practical to do at the local level? How did it devolve into a religious mindset of being “our saviour”?
I do not want sell my soul to any church telling me “this is the way, walk ye in it.” The same goes for my government.
Dreamer! The right wing will do anything to regain power! Oh, yes, they are capable of everything and anything while the pure, sweet, honest, child loving Democrats would never, ever stoop to RETAIN their power….Figaro, do you really think your statement is accurate? The big bad Republicans are all bad but your Obama assbiting friends are the salt of the earth, right? Take a ticket and go to the back of the bus. You can’t throw the fast ball anymore so you resort to this knuckler?? Tomorrow, as a tribute to your attitude and ideas, I’ll make sure to wear my brown shirt with the swastika emblem. Make you feel better? You watched with some glee while Dickhead Carville made his typically Democratic comment about throwing a hundred dollar bill into the trailer park and seeing what pops up, right? You loved Piglosi’s comment about “teadrinkers coming to her town meeting in Colorado in SWASTIKAS”!! Dems admit they didn’t even read the text of the health bill but somehow, they are still experts on it?? Figaro, what scam are you trying to pull here amongst grownups?
Your allusion to the cretins at CNBC is right on !!
I can no longer stand to hear them talk; Green shoots, recession is over, growth is back, the dollar is back, we’re in a rally, yada yada yada, ad nauseum !!! They’re nothing more than cheerleaders for the banksters, i.e coporate prostitutes.
I’ve started turning off the sound so I can simply watch the ticker and the market indices without having to listen to the idiot talking heads.
I wonder how many people actually believe what these talking heads are saying. That percentage would surely be a contrary sentiment indicator.
Wardoc
If it will help you, Figaro, to show I really care, I turned in a couple guys who said Obama wasn’t perfect. Yeah, we were talking on Saturday at our coffee group and one, not realizing I was a double agent, spewed forth some nasty stuff about Obama. He said Obama was a narcissist, a blowhard, arrogant, racist, and, well, I couldn’t take it any longer. I went to our neighborhood organizer and spilled the beans. Rest assured, Figaro, those dadgum rightwingers ain’t gonna get away with the truth if I have my way. After all, Obama is pure as the driven…..dust storm, and he would never, ever stretch the truth one bit. Democrats are scholarly, modest, likeable, you’d love to take ’em out to lunch, know what I mean? Thank you for telling us all about those Republican NASCAR types. Jeeeesh! I think you’re right, Figaro. Next time around, Richard Petty is runnin’ with Sara Palin for the Republican Presidential ticket. The King and his Court….They’d probably nominate Bristol Palin as new Secretary of State, huh Figaro? Probably Junior as House Majority Leader… we need to listen to you, Figaro. You have aced your exam once again. Wish we could thank you enough.
“how can a government, funded by taxes that were once a small percentage of GDP, have the resources to save our collective asses?”
———————————–
Since you’ve mentioned GDP and since the theme this week is The Fog of Numbers, I recommend you read a teriffic piece titled “G.D.P R.I.P” in the OP-ED section of today’s NY Times.
It makes clear how useless certain measures of our economy are. It lays out some ideas how to “stop focusing on economic activity and start tracking well-being.”
P.S. Rico delenda est.
A quadrillion is a daunting, difficult number all right. We can either throw up our hands at it and sit in docile confusion, or make some effort at breaking it down in more easily understood pieces and thereby arrive at some understanding of it.
In rough numbers, but accurate as to order of magnitude, that quadrillion represents $3.3 million dollars for each of the three hundred million people in the U.S. (About twice as much as the average American would earn working in 40 years — hell, call it a lifetime.)
Another way to look at it: it’s about 20 times the value of the goods and services (conventionally measured) produced by the entire world in a year.
That gives us some notion of scale in some degree more meaningful than simply “fucking big”.
But scale of what? What significance does the value of derivatives outstanding have, whatever the amount? Is it necessarily bad, wrong (choose your own adjective) that its value is large relative to this or that measure? Unless you accept the basic notion that these things should exist at all (which I don’t necessarily do – an opinion I’d hazard to guess is shared by at least a substantial fraction on this board) why even bother to talk about the numbers? A hundred dollars worth of outstanding derivatives would be too much if we don’t think they should exist at all.
But accepting, if only for purposes of argument, the basic premise that there’s some defensible reason for derivatives to exist, I don’t see why it’s necessarily troubling that their total outstanding value is large in relative terms.
Here’s why: think about the nature of what these things are. Take for one simplified example a single derivative instrument that “securitizes” the cash flow of 10 mortgages. In other words, you and 9 of your neighbors buy houses, and the mortgages on them are bundled together in a derivative, by virtue of which the financial institution which buys the derivative, obtains the right to receive the value of your collective mortgage payments for the lifetimes of the loan. Say the sum total payments due under all 10 mortgages is $6million dollars.
That $6million dollars, even at the outset, may well be much more than the combined net worths and annual incomes of you and your nine neighbors. But this (again, if you accept that derivatives are legitimate and useful under any circumstances) is not the problem. If all 10 of your neighbors stay employed, and keep paying your mortgages, and the values of your homes stays the same or increases, no problem!
The problem is when you and/or your neighbors a) lose jobs and/or b) the values of your homes (and therefore, your equity in them) decline. In other words, the issue is not that the value of outstanding derivatives worldwide is a multiple of the value of world wide production of goods and services, it’s that the multiple has gotten too high. In still other words, the folks who were sold those derivatives bought themselves a shit sandwich (no news flash there) because the right to be paid they were buying was ultimately premised upon people continuing to be employed at a certain level and house values not plummeting.
They vastly underestimated the risks of those things happening and therefore vastly overpaid for their derivatives, to the detriment of the world financial system and everyone in a position to be buffeted by disruptions in it.
The REAL problem here, in my estimation, is not just the result caused by derivatives (catastrophic collapse) but their goal – – efficient allocation of capital. Nearly by definition, efficient systems are unstable. Precautions, safeguards, redundancies – – these are all inefficient. Bringing this overlong posting back to JHK’s original theme, econometrics – – models are by definition simplified representations of the world. (If they were not simpler than the world, they would be of no use.) Some of the omitted elements of reality would be trivial, even were they to occur. But some are left out though non-trivial, because they are deemed unlikely. Unfortunately, they are unlikely only when viewed in isolation. That is, it is only unlikely that any one such event will happen. But the likelihood that SOME non-trivial unlikely event, from a huge number of unlikely events, is very high indeed.
We need to get more comfortable with the idea that not all inefficiencies are bad. If you’re going to breathe the air in your house, for example, you don’t want it insulated to the maximum possible efficiency. Some air-flow would be useful for breathing. The same logic dictates that we not, in the name of efficiency, over-rely on any single food crop, energy-source, anti-biotic, the list is long — as is the length of time we’ve ignored it at our peril.
Yeah, Obama doesn’t realize that the big armed banking boys got him around the the groin real tight. No more bonuses! Yeah, that lasted real well, didn’t it Obama lovers? Obama hasn’t realized that he can’t compete with greenbacks. He can give ’em out, but he can’t dictate when/if they ever come back to the banks. Bankers are mischief makers, realize that first and foremost. The ludicrous profits they made came at the expense of our way of life, not just our economy. Put more Harvard frat boys into key positions, obviously they are impartial geniuses, right ? Money was made by the ton using bizarre financial derivatives but you will never, ever see Obama going after the bankers. No, he will chase the Lynddie England’s of the world. He’s not into going after the torturers at Gitmo, but Eric Holder is??? Wait a minute, Obama nominated Holder and holds sway over him and yet Holder is playing the Gitmo Game now? For being only 47 years old, Obama has accumulated a lot of slime in that time. Oh, well, at least we have a wise Latina on duty now. Justice is supposed to be blind yet justices are political appointees?
Two words…..TERM LIMITS. Why are WE not pursuing this right now? 22nd Amendment means two terms for the President, but not the supporting court jesters? The system makes it hard because we peons can only vote for who is nominated and we don’t control that, money does…we are screwed,it’s time to get unscrewed….let’s get ‘er done.
“We can provide a decent living for all in a sustainable manner, but not if we insist on having a leech-like profit taking uberclass sucking the wealth from the producers and the Earth.”
Workers of the world, DISPERSE!!
OEO said: “plundering, murdering and raping are usually done behind closed doors”
I have it on good authority, from Qshtik, that:
“anyone with eyes can see it everywhere and always around us.”
EVERYWHERE
ALWAYS AROUND US
Not behind closed doors. EVERYWHERE
Not under cover of darkness. ALWAYS AROUND US
Check your local police department. You will see that the number of rapes and murders today should roughly equal the population of the district where you live… because it is our human nature to do mean nasty things EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME, ALL AROUND US, according to Qshtik.
so in this case maybe its our friend JHK who is scape goating!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
About 50 ago, in my years as an impressionable youth, the ROTC Sgt handed me a copy of James A. Van Fleet’s logistics doctrine. Titled: “Rail Transport And The Winning Of Wars”. Now available from the Association Of American Railroads (202-639-2100)librarian, this compendium of circa 1950’s transport thinking is more about avoiding war…
Van Fleet’s warnings seemed directed at me, explaining folly of relying on imported oil. Van Fleet cautioned against plowing under the great system of US railway mileage and local branchlines. Also mentioned in the book was inherent ability of the railways’ “Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform” to effectively expedite clean-up and rebuild after a natural disaster, or homeland attack.
For some time, beginning at the first Gulf War, and with intensity after 911DAY, it seems incumbent on America to replicate the mid twentieth century transport model, with trunk tailway serving all Cities & towns of any size, with branch lines servicing agriculture and manufacturing. All Cities muist have rail service into the downtown, with victuals and necessities of life delivered by night, and the same rails used for passengers and commute in the working hours.
Legacy examples of the methodology were all across the USA. Best known, the Pacific Electric Railway in the L.A. Basin is subject of several books, with maps and pictures and description of operating methodology. Rahm Emanuel would be more at home looking at chronicles of the Roarin’ Elgin, and the Chicago, South Shore & South Bend. JHK, the Saratoga & Schuylerville, branching over to Mechanicville might be of interest…
Mechanicville. How American! How much so, reminiscient of the USA a lending not a borrowing nation, making & fixing our own stuff, and Energy Independent.
Hand wringers, you can shake your own hands now, thank you. Others, certainly it is no great chore to learn the legacy railway territory nearby. Go to the web page- spv.co.uk -for the US Rail Map Atlas of your locale. Or the library, see Thompson Bros City & County Maps. Historical Societies or RR Clubs, the info is there. The point of initial de minmus railway rehab is to cover our now sorry fannys if & when the trucks can’t keep going.
Attack, storm, financial collapse, fuel allocation/rationing. All of Jim’s usual suspects are lurking nearby. Electro Magnetic pulse might shut down the highways and all other transport. Railways are most readily protected against such attacks and would be first back on duty. Some better off, consider using some of the hoarded wealth as branchline rehab deed money. Real estate near a rail line station or loading facility? Gold could be called back by a desperate Federal Government. Happened before.
Anothe rsource for learning your local railway info, see a copy of the “Official Guide of the Railways”, circa WWII will work. Look in the back for your city or nearest Town. Or County Seat. Most had some sort of railway connection. With a name, you can find a map. The important thing is, get started on thi, with your children, or students, or relaqtives and friends. Say you are now a railroad fan, leave out the doomer stuff. No more doom, now you are doing something to stay connected to food distribution.
Learning the legacy rail footprint, figure out where best modern day locations for local interface terminal, victuals/perishables facility, etc. Make notes.
At a County & State level, think about an important highway junction that coincidentally locates near an abandoned or operating rail line. Best, a dormant branch line or site of former train yard where branch merged with main. This is a place to think about locating reconstituted Army/Guard Railway Operating And Maintenance Battalion. Military rail unit does hands on rail rehab, until turnkey, moves on down the list. Agricultural corridor, manufacturing/closed military bases are high priority for railway rehab role of Logistics Units.
As the dormant corridors come back to sufficient operating standards, private contractors can bid for operating position. Corridor ground stays in public domain, if that helps shield new operator from tax overhead. Tax profits, not plant & equipment. The idea of inventory tax was a gimmick to keep trucks rolling on cheap fuel.
See peakoil.net; articles 374 and 1037 for policy points on generic railway rehab. See Christopher C. Swan’s “ELECTRIC WATER” for updated compendium of earlier renewable powered rail SYSTEMS.
Funniest thing I’ve seen in awhile, and this blog could use it……
http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/all/
Obama increased or OKed increase in military spending..I hear 4% increase
Is he part of yr vast right wing conspiracy?
I heard Alex Jones On Am radio last night..lately im getting more facts on AMN than on Public radio!
Its much easier to point yr finger at ‘ whitey’
“I’ve started turning off the sound so I can simply watch the ticker”
—————————
I do the same thing but mainly because I can’t stand to hear them talk over one another in order to drown out the other guy’s opinion … kinda like what goes on at this blog … and why I always add the P.S. below.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
Which did ya find funny?
i got thru 3 or 4..none of which I found funny…humors personal
i got this email today
this i find funny
esp since web yday told me of a guy who won a million in the lottery…2 big wins in a few months for the guy…
HERE GOES:
AUGUSTA”
Add sender to ContactsTo: undisclosed-recipients
My name is Mrs.Augusta Sies a dying woman who has decided to donate my life entitlement to you for humanity services.
My deposited Fund valued US$4.5 Million is in a bank here in Europe.
Please contact my attorney at once to indicate your interest. I will like you to call him Tel/fax+34-911 849 982 and send him email
(Caaldchamber@aol.com) my attorney will treat you with absolute confidentiality and sincerity.
Abogado Name: Alexis David.
Best regards,
Mrs.Augusta Hermina Sies.
THATS FUNNY
How long and how much were you into Prabupad?
Population of california has almost doubled in 30 years
Prisons here are at 200% capacity
the dreaded ACLU or acl jew as some call them had a recent lawsuit over ‘s egregation’ in prison
IF THOSE ACLU LAWYERS WERE IN PRISON ESP STATE PRISONS THEYD BE BEGGIN FOR SEGREGATION
California just had a huge race riot in a prison
and tax payers will be footing the bill..
there are times when segregation is necessary
again for those who doubt read
‘the dark side of Man’..all of it!
QUADRILLION
“This week, outstanding world derivatives were declared to have reached the 1 quadrillion mark.”
For all of bloated rhetoric that is being penned here over this, one of Mr. Kunstler’ finest columns, the only bit in it that should have been worthy of further discussion.
How many of these legacy watchers and beneficiaries of bubbles understand how “under water” that makes everything, short of the next (impossible to create) bubble?
If you are going to collect gold, it might be wise to also collect steel, lead and copper.
Worried about the national debt? Here’s some comic relief (and a chilling preview of the day after tomorrow.)
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/u_s_government_stages_fake_coup?utm_source=a-section
I have it on good authority, from Qshtik, that:
“anyone with eyes can see it everywhere and always around us.”
——————————-
I should just keep my mouth shut and just let reasonable people judge the validity of my statement.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
“The difference between this weeks price ….. and last weeks price is the “perceived” value.”
—————————-
Almost universally true but there are exceptions.
For example, an engineered “short squeeze” where the shorts are forced by impending financial ruin to call their brokers and scream BUY AT ANY PRICE, NOW!!
What they wind up paying has no relation to their’s or anyone else’s underlying perceived value.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
BAAAAA
1 in 3 in australia is an immigrant
canada is slowly turning muslim…remember muslims have 7 children per mother
The pirpose of the debt is to cause the collapse that brings more power to the Dynasty families that control the CFR etcetcetc
Obama doesnt care about ‘ debt’ cept to double or triple it
and JAGO…
Jaego Scorzne …
a jew pays for this blog!!!!
In this case I think ole JAGO is right !!!!!
“Paper money always returns to its inherent value: zero. -Voltaire”
—————————
We’re on the same page Tripp. I never said the diff between what you earn and what you spend should be hoarded in reserve notes in a box. But 300M people can’t all invest in “fertile land and livestock.” Personally, I have a modest amount of gold and silver and the rest I am constantly trying to figure what to do with before a potential hyper-inflation strikes.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
Cap and Trade ????
as long as theres oil under 100$ a barrel ‘ they’ will make,run and profit from
THE NEXT BUBBLE
Oil over 100$ and ‘ it gets harder and harder to do’
Like running the pyramid schemes that further impovershed [?] Albania …once the albanians got tapped out there was no one left to finance the pyramid !!!
……….. continued in next post ………
where?
Are you
tattoed
white
democrat?
” …where the shorts are forced by impending financial ruin…”
Blah, blah, blah. The shorts “perceived” that the price of gold would fall. Their perception was wrong. End of story.
Is the Illuminati behind this?
The Council on Foreign Relations?
The Bilderberger Group?
Skull and Bones
Well who goes to a CFR or SnB meeting?
Kissinger? bush ? clinton?
“If you want to be a writer ………. alas IRRELEVANT TO YHIS BLOG.”
—————————-
I am a writer*. I wrote this piece years ago during another period of high inflation and it was published in a local newspaper. I modified it somewhat for presentation here to settle a pissing contest last week about Asoka’s smiley-face acceptance of misleading Govt unemployment data.
You’ll probably find that any post I make will reference my own life experience. If that constitutes a huge ego and that bothers you, skip over my stuff.
*Though nothing to do with the current debate here, I’ve been published in the NY Times, Wall St Journal, Newark Star Ledger, New York magazine and others.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
Correction: make that “period of high unemployment”.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
“Magnetic pulse might shut down the highways and all other transport.”
Will that also shut down the internet and this blog?
When will this happen? In a few days?
Who will do it? The Illuminati? The puppet masters? The Masons? The Bilderberger Group? The Jews? The Liberals? Obama?
Who will be the scape goat?
“where?”
—————
Comment block 12, 3rd comment down.
Warning: its very personal, it was addressed to Asoka and is not appropriate for this blog per 3rd Generation.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
“What you see with your eyes everyday and everywhere all around you are acts of kindness, ….. etc”
—————————-
Unquestionably, I see that too … but where a reasonable man sees a glass half empty you see the same glass 95% full.
I have an Indian guru friend I met at a wedding. Every day he sends an upbeat email containing a pearl of widom to a long list of people. One cannot help but love this guy. By comparison you’re a doomer. I don’t have the heart to tell him I’m an agnostic and don’t believe in the afterlife.
BTW, his message today was “The road to learning by precept is long but by example short and effective.” — Seneca … exactly the point I’ve been trying to make to you. My translation: it’s hard to learn something from a dowload of facts and figures but easy if you connect them to the example of your own life.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
Let us not forget to pay homage to the plunge protection team, a little known clandestine arm of government–‘Federal Reserve’ united Über alles with the U.S. Treasury, that quietly, and off the radar, plies their trade providing life-support to the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar by suppressing the price of gold, and by feeding ‘off-book’ newly printed dollars to foreign banks so that they can buy USA bonds to keep the value of the dollar up. Also, reports abound that the government, via Goldman Sacks and JP Morgan, exercise “ladder bidding.” This is when companies engage in rigged biding against themselves to cause the price of stocks to continually increase. More and more people are becoming aware of these activities, and as a result, the government (central ministry) is losing control of the “great-juggling-act,” i.e., their financial legerdemain, also know as artifice and fraud.
And of course the little gem, the ‘official’ improved unemployment statistic: 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent. Hard to figure out how that happened when the ‘official’ jobs loss was well over 200,000. Perhaps this can be done with the calculus….
Clifford of Sonora, California
The “Health Care Reform” bill is not about providing health care to Americans. It is about forcing those 47,000,000 Americans who don’t pay tribute to the health insurance companies to start to do so, under penalty of fines, to start with.
It is amazing to me that the single payer advocates, (the majority of Americans) can so easily be side-tracked into supporting a bill which will force, for the first time in our history, all Americans to pay into a private industry.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2009/08/pretending.html
You’ve got to admire the ability of the ruling class to play us like dupes and puppets.
“an utter moron”
—————–
I have as much of a problem with Jaego as any one here at this blog but I would never call him a moron. That would be patently false. I’ve been fighting a lonely battle here against calling smart people morons because they have different beliefs.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
Qshtik said: “My translation: it’s hard to learn something from a dowload of facts and figures but easy if you connect them to the example of your own life.”
Which is exactly why I asked you to open your eyes and look at what is going on around you. How many people go into a 7-11 convenience store, pay money, have a civil transaction, and then leave?
How many go into a 7-11 store, murder the clerk, and then leave?
Which makes the news? The one murder or the millions of peaceful, trusting, civil and friendly transactions?
Why do you want to make statements about human nature based on the exception (and even then distorting the case to say murder is EVERYWHERE, ALL AROUND YOU), when the overwhelming evidence is that people are decent?
Every day innumerable business transactions, innumerable parent-child interactions, innumerable employee co-worker team interactions, etc. happen with joy and smiling.
But you evidently prefer to focus on the miniscule minority and try to paint that as 95%.
I specifically did not ask you to “believe” anything. I asked you to simply open your eyes and observe. Look out at the street scene, if you are in a city. Are people walking, crossing the street, etc.? Or are they plundering, raping, and murdering each other? What do you see with your own eyes?
If I were a religious man, which I’m not (fallen away catholic but went to a Jesuit college) I could find innumerable biblical quotes that are almost universally accepted as truths, even by non-christians that support the notion of an underlying sinful nature: original sin, there will always be wars and rumors of wars, etc. And who said “no one knows what lurks in the hearts of men?”
Sure, most of what goes on all day in our lives is quite civil but why do you suppose every home’s doors are outfitted with locks, banks have vaults and security guards, women don’t walk in the dark to their parked cars without a friend, and you watch like a hawk over your children that they don’t encounter bad people.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
Qshtik asked: “why do you suppose every home’s doors are outfitted with locks”
Why do you assume that houses must have doors or doors with locks that must be locked?
I have traveled all over India. Once in Kashmir I was staying with a Muslim family. The guest room windows were just openings to the outside (no glass, no screen, no bars, just open) and the house did not have any doors (nothing to install a lock in) and I expressed my Western concern about theft because I sometimes left my camera unattended in the guest room. I was informed by my host not to worry because in their culture people do not steal. Nothing happended to my camera though it was in plain sight on the bed.
At the other end of the spectrum, I have been in whole neighborhoods in Canada with million dollar homes that have doors with locks that the owners never lock. No need because there is no fear of theft.
Sometimes we tend to generalize from our own local culture and think the rest of the world must be like that.
In sum, Plutarch was soooo wrong…
Oh not too much, I like the Kirtans not the chanting and little dolls. I crashed at a Temple once for a few weeks when I was out of money. I’ve grown to appreciate Prabhupad more now though. He was on to all this stuff way back when. He used to talk about how they create money out of nothing after they’ve spent too much. He said America would fall. His disciples said, but Prabhupad look how strong we are. Prabhupad said, “just wait”. He knew about the necessity of the gold standard and the importance of grain. Before anyone as far as I know, he talked about the waste of time and energy involved in long commuting-human energy as well.
Spiritually, I had a hard time because he was so hard. But I realize now that this is a hard world and one has to be hard outwardly at least. Inwardly he may not have been like that at all. The hardness may have been a conscious front or it may have been his humor-fiery type. I know now that alot of yogis show off their bliss or fake it completely. No one could ever accuse Prabhupad on that score. He also had a very salty tongue at times. One time when he was walking with disciples, he saw a young lady walking a Great Dane. He said, “You know why she has that don’t you”?
Why? Because we are brainwashed to believe that everyone is out to get us. Fear is a great motivator and fear of terrorism is only the newest variation on a theme.
I like to point out to my friends who spend all day fearing for their child’s safety from scary predators that if a stranger mutilates or kills their child, it will most likely be with a car.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2008/02/kidnapping-and-enslaving-your-children.html
This makes them scream, but it’s true.
I agree with Asoka. Most people are nice and decent. Most of our interactions with others are polite. Why deny it?
There is big money now in bullets. After the crash, they might be used as money as cigarettes are in prison. Btw, I never said lead was “sacred”, I said “precious”. Big difference. Do you think that lead and lead mines might be a good investment now? Lemme know, ok? Together we could make a lot of money in these final days before the Apocalypse.
It was Blacks vs Hispanics. Don’t tell Ashoka, but the two groups don’t like each other, not at the street level. The big Sixties thing about all the virtous non Whites uniting against the White Cancer of Humanity is a croc. Yes, the have worked togther succesfully in Goverment to oust Whitey. But once ousted, they’ll turn on each other. And here’s an inside tip-the Blacks don’t stand a chance. The Hispanics are a much more organized people. No room for Blacks in Atzlan!
Ultima ratio: Congress repudiates the currency.
wall st journal last week:
Shapiro [ah a jewish name jago]
Wont ban naked shorts
Also i was listening to KPFK…reich from clitons cabinet/ now at berkeley was saying
Barney Frank is going to clean this mess up…
IM NOT KIDDING HE SAID THAT
ONE OF THE FOXES WOULD SAFE GUARD THE HENHOUSE
Jeff!
Thank you for your insightful commentary (on page 18). Very helpful for imagining those ridiculous sums. I did not find the posting overly long (comparatively) and thought you quite succinct for all you were attempting to illuminate.
As an offshoot, I think it’s “safe” [ha; never] to say that political affiliations/loyalties are damn close to moot points now. Only the respect for the basics of trade will remain in the end.
Three ways to do your dealin’: Fair trade; fraud; outright theft. Guess which gets you welcomed, and which gets you a shallow grave [eventually]? Same goes for “countries”; same goes for “racial tribes”; same goes for “political parties”; same goes for “religious organizations”.
Time to pull the blinders off and unplug the cable tv, “folks” (see, I can be as down-home as that there W fella).
Thanks again, Jeff
“When Mexico devalued the Peso”
long ago Mexico devalued the Peso..that pushed millions below the poverty line…
i assume the same will happen here soon….
any insights? anyone know history better than I do?
I never said lead was “sacred”
—————————–
I don’t recall saying that you had used the word “sacred.” There’s something wrong with this system so when I try clicking on the comment I supposedly made that you were replying to, it takes me back to the 10th comment within block number 20 where I was replying to Trippticket.
But anyway, when you first wrote (and I’ll paraphrase) that you were into the three precious metals: gold, silver and lead … I thought that was a very cool line that I’d tuck away for future use in my repertoir. Of course you did not mean that lead apart from its roll in ammo had great properties as a monetary store of value. And so I’ll treat your question about lead and lead mine investments with the lack of seriousness you intended.
I know less than nothing about ammo but my sense is that the other elements of a bullet (brass casing?? gunpowder) would be more valuable than the lead.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
hey, i like cnbc. i can imagine them running you (if they haven’t already.) yes, they’re mindless and foolish in a cable kind of way, but they fall into moderately deep quandaries every so often when they veer too far off-script. plus ya gotta love the babes…
as for the united states collapsing in a great big hurry, i wonder if history (History) confirms this scenario… ie, the british empire took at least half a century to fall, and it still has not bombed itself back to the stone age. i think it’s a bit self-important for us to see the world ending in our time… our grandchildren’s lives, perhaps, but not ours.
Excellent posting, Jim!
Too bad the thread is marred by so many entries filled with racist and other nonsense talk. What a waste. Difficult to have a civil and productive conversation in that atmosphere. A turn-off, more than anything else.
To the folks who keep ending their posts with ‘Rico delenda est’:
if ‘Rico’ is a man’s name, the correct phrasing is not ‘Rico delenda est’, but ‘Rico delendus est’. Latin is gender sensitive!
I can not undestand how the market rockets up when there is no good news, it is extremely alarming. As far as violents goes, I fear the radical left as much as the right. There are anarcho-communist groups waiting to pounce and destabilize an already unstable situation. The riots at the G8 in London and Boss-knappings in France prove that. Furthermore, all the big names like Stalin, Hitler(National SOCIALIST), Mussolini, Castro, Mao, are all left wing revolutionaries. Besides Franco in Spain who had the whole Catholic thing going, making him kind of right-wing, where is an historical example of a right-wing revolution? Oliver Cromwell comes to mind, but that is grasping.
“I have traveled all over India.”
—————————–
Wherever you have a high degree of “order” it is cultural not genetic. Probably hinduism is the reason that doors don’t need to be locked in some places in India. You were lucky in Kashmir what with the tension between India and Pakistan. There is a perpetual state of violence or saber-rattling which settles down for awhile then resumes. I’m sure you know this. Both sides possess nuclear weapons so that’s a little scary.
In the US we have a highly developed “fabric of society” that for the most part keeps people in line: police, courts, churches, charities, universities, Elks, Masons, Boy Scouts corporations, institutions … but even so my house was broken into once and I live in a nice “bedroom comunity” next to a major university. The neighbor across the street was broken into twice. I’ve also had possessions stolen from my suitcase by hotel room staff.
Stop me before I go on too long and piss off 3rd Gen … my first second-job as a night auditor was in a motel. Within a month I had enough material to write a book with the stuff that went on there. Drug deals, flashers in raincoats, bank robbers holed-up in a room that the state police raided. An overdosed woman found in a room. That was a lower-end Howard Johnson. I moved on to a Ramada in, 8 stories high. A little higher end. Prostitutes worked out of the bar. We had a security guard who periodically patrolled around the bldg and parking lot. He’d come back in and say, Kinny (not my real name), too bad yer stuck behahnd that cowner … you wouldn buhleev the shit that’s goin on alt side. Oh, and I forgot something about the HoJo. When I came on duty one night at midnight the two counter clerks I relieved were on the floor in the backroom blowing one another. Two weeks after I left the HoJo my replacement was robbed at gunpoint, made to lie on the floor and shot in the back (he lived … I visited him in the hospital). His son took over for him and the very next weekend the same robbers came and robbed him (he was NOT shot). There’s a thin veneer over our society so all this stuff is not visible.
Even with all this I STILL believe Jaego’s never-fired weapons will be sold by executors on Craigslist.
I’m glad things are so much better in India and that ritzy neighborhood in Canada.
Not sure how Singapore does it but you don’t dare drop a piece of gum on the subway platform.
P.S. Rico delenda est.
“plus ya gotta love the babes…”
—————————-
When Michelle Caruso Cabrerra is on and showing cleveage I have no idea what’s going on with the Dow … cause they’re REAL and they’re SPECTACULAR!
P.S. Rico delendus est.
‘Rico delendus est’
———————
Thanks for the tip. The change is in.
P.S. Rico delendus est.
I’m partial to Maria Bartoromo!
“I’m partial to Maria Bartoromo!”
——————————-
Greatest set of lips in broadcast journalism! Plus smart as a whip and a great interviewer.
P.S. Rico delendus est.
Wagelaborer: “You’ve got to admire the ability of the ruling class to play us like dupes and puppets.”
Yup. The bread and circuses (is that the right plural form?) are still in good supply. It’s harder to pull off when things get scarce.
Slightly off topic, but I’m reminded of something I learned from a Southeast Asian history class I once took. Basically, according to the instructor, there were two archetypes of societies (at least for purposes of this particular class discussion) and each one could be distinguished by the archaeological traces that were or weren’t left behind after the society ceased to exist.
The first kind were agricultural societies which built monuments to create a center of society (because otherwise farmers have little need to organize beyond a local level.) The second kind were commercial/trading societies, which did not build monuments (because people will show up where the money is without needing a temple or statue to encourage them.)
Many people have heard of Angkor Wat, it was an agricultural society. Not as many have heard of Srivijaya, it was a trading hub and not many ruins were left to be found (location was roughly across the Malacca Straits from where Singapore is today. It lasted longer than the United States has been around.)
Mount Rushmore would be an example of a agricultural society’s construction, and will most likely be around in 500 years. What will be left of Wall Street’s firms at that time?
Pardon my ramble, I just felt like sharing.
Sorry about the double post, I’m still figuring out this interface (just when I’d gotten used to TypeKey’s “special” behavior… sigh.)
As an agnostic, you have a “don’t know” mind about God. So shouldn’t you have a “don’t know” mind towards life after death? The two usually go together: God is Spirit and we are spirits, drops in the ocean so to speak.
Such peace and trust was standard in all White Countries-and perhaps in other monoracial communities as well. If the people are all one blood, they’re really extended family. I’ve heard that you could lose your wallet on the subway in Tokoyo and there is a 95% chance that someone will return it. One Love. We are Family. Blood will tell.
I’m not sure Blacks can get this good, but I’m sure they could do better than they do in the modern West. The lack of family and traditional structure is incredibly destructive to Black Consciousness giving rise to gang culture and travesties such as rap music. It doesn’t eliminate the problem to put in positvie lyrics-the beat is one that encourages maximum agressiveness.
Fake culture like Kwanzaa created by the FBI informer Ron Karenga, can’t do the trick either. There must be a return to Tradition, be it Christian, Islamic, or Traditional African. Afer America splits, Blacks will get the deep South. This is better than reparations! But then there no more excuses will be possible, you all will have to make it on your own.
The entymology of the word Lord is ‘hlaf weard’.
Literally meaning ‘bread guard’.
So yeah, gold & grain…
Asia,
‘The New Colossus’ by Emma Lazerus is inscribed on a brass plaque inside the base of the statue of liberty.
Asia,
Yes I am tattooed, since I live in Ireland I am not a democrat. I am a socialist and vote for the Irish Labour Party.
QSHTIK
You wrote,
“I have as much of a problem with Jaego as any one here at this blog but I would never call him a moron. That would be patently false. I’ve been fighting a lonely battle here against calling smart people morons because they have different beliefs.”
To quote Forrest Gump, “Stupid is what stupid does”
squished dik sez:
” I’ve been fighting a lonely battle here…”
No shit. Morons tend to travel in packs of one.
WARREN, Mich. — General Motors Corp. said Tuesday its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car should get 230 miles per gallon of gasoline in city driving, more than four times the mileage of the current champion, the Toyota Prius.
The Volt is powered by an electric motor and a battery pack with a 40-mile range. After that, a small internal combustion engine kicks in to generate electricity for a total range of 300 miles. The battery pack can be recharged from a standard home outlet.
GM came up with the 230-mile figure in early tests using draft guidelines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for calculating the mileage of extended range electric vehicles, said Tony Posawatz, GM’s vehicle line director for the Volt.
If the figure is confirmed by the EPA, which does the tests for the mileage posted on new car door stickers, the Volt would be the first car to exceed triple-digit gas mileage, Posawatz said.
GM has produced about 30 Volts so far and is making 10 a week, CEO Fritz Henderson said during a presentation of the vehicle at the company’s technical center in the Detroit suburb of Warren.
Henderson said charging the volt will cost about 40 cents a day.
“The EPA labels can and will be a game changer for us,” he said.
Most automakers are working similar plug-in designs, but GM could be the leader with the Volt, which is due in showrooms late in 2010.
Is the Illuminati behind this?
The Council on Foreign Relations?
The Bilderberger Group?
Skull and Bones
Well who goes to a CFR or SnB meeting?
Kissinger? bush ? clinton?
———————————-
Is there someone talking to me in my head?
Are people meeting together always evil?
Is phrasing everything in a question somehow sinister?
This Chevrolet Volt sounds promising. Hope it gets to market fast if it is that good.
First, Oracle tells us that Hitler and Mussolini are left-wing revolutionaries! Secondly, he grants that Franco is sort of right-wing (on account of his relation to the Catholic Church, as if that were a reliable criterion for being on the right). Thirdly, having self-servingly and against all historical evidence decided that Hitler and Mussolini are left revolutionaries, he concludes that there are no right revolutions (save one in England, perhaps).
Goodness, where did that person learn history? Truly frightening.
I would recommend readings, but anyone who is that willing to distort the givens of reality is probably beyond “freedom and dignity,” as old Skinner used to say.
Denial and bad faith are alive and well in this thread.
Love the post but couldn’t disagree more with the conservative brownshirt theory. Granted there may have been a few out there but don’t forget the true conservative movement (not Bush’s neocon big-spending liberty crushing crap) of Ron Paul and his followers is gaining ground. Ron Paul supporters and those of libertarian principles are known for being outspoken and well-informed on the issues. When it comes to Obamacare, they understand, and rightfully so, that it is nothing but a vote-grabbing, wealth-transferring and inflationary socialist program that does nothing for ones’ health….except to drive up their blood-pressure. These are most likely the people that have been causing a ruckus at the town-hall meetings.
I have to hand it to Obama’s PR campaign and the main-stream media. They played the enthusiasm of the dissenters quite well. Even you, Mr. Kunstler, fell for their wily tactics.
“Stupid is what stupid does”
————————–
Touche!
P.S. Rico delendus est.
Jaego, I should have written “I have serious doubts about the existence of an after life.” I like to keep an open mind in case I get run over by a truck then wake up and say “Holy shit, do you believe this? there IS an afterlife!!”
In any case, I have constructed what to ME is an internally consistent and operating philosophy of life centered on the words I DON’T KNOW.
P.S. Rico delendus est.
Stone,just wait until they load up the history books with “Facts”about the three Kennedy Murders,Waco,Oklahoma Bombing,the moon landing,Iraq,Afghanistan,swine flu and countless other misdeeds committed and engineered by that human garbage in Washington,New York and Tel Aviv.
What about the ‘ great swine flu panic’ of 2009
Media says folks are LINING UP to get their innoculations !!!!
Lemming like i guess..hahahahahahahahahahah
Qshtik,
I understand what you mean about so many people not all being able, or inclined, to buy fertile land and livestock. I was simply suggesting that astute observers of what is going down might drift that direction in the interest of self-preservation. Traditionally, the wealth of nations was judged by their forests and soils, two things that don’t appear overnight. If we are indeed returning to a pre-industrial way of life, and I believe that we are, then the answer to what to invest in, beyond a little walking money in precious metals, seems obvious to me.
All the gold in the world won’t buy the last fir tree or tomato in town.
‘I have traveled all over India. Once in Kashmir I was staying with a Muslim family.’
Weird….werent the muslims given pakistan 50 years ago?
ever since they have been doing their genocide in Kashmir as a land grab
what part of canada do you now live in?
asia asks: “what part of canada do you now live in?”
The best part! not too far from Victoria BC
“Blah, Blah, Blah ………….. End of Story.”
—————————–
ZZZ, you blow off my comment with great authority. How do you come by your knowledge of the markets? Are you a financial professional (maybe a trader in the commodity pits?) or perhaps the markets are a hobby of which you’re a long time student? What are your credentials? I have this gut feel that I know a hundred times more … but I could be wrong.
Never mind … I wouldn’t be expecting a legit answer anyway.
P.S. Rico delendus est.
Asoka,
Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner in economics, said yesterday in his NY Times OP-ED column the the 9.4% unemployment figure was “probably a statistical fluke.”
However, to warm your heart, he ALSO said Great Depression II had been avoided by the action of BIG GOVERNMENT and that what we need is even MORE BIG GOVERNMENT. Classic Krugman.
P.S. Rico delendus est.
Great Asoka
cept for a few things..
JHK and many others see a..uhh…collapse !!!!!!!
Takes $ and lots of it to buy and maintain a car
and raods and bridges
Thinks QT
Theres a great article at dollarcollapse.com by mish/ m shedlock on krugman
which Jesuit college did you go to?
my bros went to a J Hi school in nyc
they ..the jesuits had the boys swimming nude in the pool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
from dollarcollapse.com
excerpt from long article
Easy To Praise Keynesian Clowns When You Are One
Krugman has high praise for Bernanke. The reason should be clear but it probably isn’t. The reason Krugman likes Bernanke is that Bernanke is willing to throw money at problems just as Krugman would do.
It’s easy to praise Keynesian clowns when you are one yourself.
Bernanke (in misguided praise of himself), and Krugman (in misguided praise of a fellow fool), both think Bernanke saved the day.
I think they did nothing of the kind. However, the debate cannot be proven no matter what happens from here on out.
Perhaps Armageddon was not coming no matter what silly measures were taken by Bernanke. Indeed I claim that Bernanke’s measures will drag this mess on for another decade, just as happened in Japan
@TT you are on it dude, the more you can throw a good fence around the better, and the higher the fence the better. Gates with guards {if need be}. You don’t have ta have big bucks either. You can buy a little house and 2 or 3 acres for under 7 or 8Gs, in some places. With the trees on it to make the fence out of. If you are endowed with coin of the realm you may purchase wire fence, which will get you started quickly, since you are going to add large rocks and then spiney plants that will grow thirty feet tall {with support}. Go ahead and splurge on some soaker hose, for a few cents a foot, to water this fortress of solitude. With the storms around here lately, you can pick up telephone posts {if you get there first} to cut up and use for corner posts. With a couple bags of concrete mix, you can set that sucker so it won’t be budged for a hundred years at least. If “money” was not an issue, you could buy a few of those shipping containers that are stacking up out there in californicate and make a fence out of them. Hell, you could stack ’em around your place {staggered with all the doors facing inside} put some dirt around the corners and plant fruits trees on the inside and spiney osage orange trees around the outside. You could make a nice walkway around the top and use five gallon buckets for vegtable containers.
If you had about 15 to twenty acres you could rent the containers out on weekends and have a flea market, or call it a rendevous if you want to. Local folks would come and sell their stuff and you charge what the market will bear for storage and tables and signs and refreshments etc. You can do as much {or as little} as you want or hire somer intelligent {teachable} kid to help out, People are going to need alternate forms of “money” so get creative. Make you up a thousand “FAIR” dollars and put your name and picture on them. If you are fair and honest. It’s worth something to you and to people you do business with. Make em one ounce, 90% or better silver, or gold or copper or palladium or platimun {or what ever you got} make it {and mark it} accurately, and bam! Money…
20% is a fair percentage on a lot of stuff, but use your own good judgement. Get your self a tenton press and make people coins with their picture on it! Or thier dog, or whatever it is they sell.
Just be thinking and land on your feet. You already know there are bumps ahead. Why are you giving up so much {christian} liberty for so little {socialist} security. Even if you manage some way to keep receiving those peices of paper in the mailbox, they aren’t going to be accepted. Californicate won’t even take their own IOUs.
If you would start eating only clean stuff that you catch, cut and/or creamate, and you got the exercise from doing it, you would be more healthy. Buy an old used scythe and cut some grass or hay or oats or something with it. You will slim up. Keep it sharp. Every time you take a break use that little rat tail-file on it.
Pretty soon the Fog of Numbers will lift. They are artificial frauds {sorry for the redundancy}. Get rid of all the symbols. Letters only, from now on. Learn to use letters for numbers. 500 60 90 20 5 90 100 60 6 200 8 5 500 60 90 30 4 9 100 70 5 90 5. You can stay busy…
Um, OK, Messi. Sounds great. Always appreciate a little dose of crazy.
Um, OK, Messi. Sounds great. Appreciate the little dose of crazy.
🙂
“which Jesuit college did you go to?”
—————————-
St. Joe’s in Philly. It was a college then but a University now. One got a solid grounding there in Philosophy, Logic, Ethics and Basketball. Luckily we didn’t have a swimming pool;-)
P.S. Rico delendus est.
squish-dik sez:
“ZZZ, you blow off my comment with great authority.”
Hey MORON.
My original comment was a response to someone who stated that dollars were merely perceived valuations. I stated that the same holds true for commodities. Gold is worth a perceived amount at a given point in time.
You then chime in that I am almost right but cite the instance where a short player will order gold be bought at any price as if this action excludes a perceived value. It does not. The person that bet gold would go down in value perceived it would be of a lesser value. That person (in your example) had a false perception. They were wrong. Now shut the fuck up.
‘ One got a solid grounding there’
Apparently the latin class wasn’t too solid.
Ok, you doubt all things, but don’t forget to doubt doubt as well. That can be the doorway to faith for some…Also since you have a Jesuit background, try the great Jesuit koan-figure out what the meaning of is is. The reward may be greater than a mere Monica Lewinski.
Have you read “Love in the Ruins” by Walter Percy? A great Catholic novel with a realistic approach to race. As the genius protaganist says to the Black Revolutionary, What about Liberia? What about Haiti? You haven’t done such a great job with them. After the Black Revolutionaries let him go, he tells him good luck with what they’re trying to do (America is spliting up). The Black says, we don’t need luck. The genius says, yes you do.
asia said: “Bernanke is willing to throw money at problems just as Krugman would do.”
For eight years we tried deregulation and cutting taxes on the rich (the ones who supposedly provide employment) and that didn’t work, so maybe it is time to throw money at the problems.
“You then chime in that I am almost right”
—————————-
I chimed in to say, in effect, that you are right except when your wrong.
P.S. Rico delendus est.
“Apparently the latin class wasn’t too solid.”
—————————–
Never took Latin at St. Joes … I was an accounting major. I DID take Latin in 8th grade but the only thing I remember is how to conjugate the verb “to be.”
P.S. Rico delendus est.
‘The Japanese btw, are utterly amazed at the choices we have made. A Goverment Minister once said publicly that America has chosen suicide by bringing in inferior third world people’
Can you name a name?
also wheres yr post about black/ brown hatred?
and are you aware of black on black homicide rates?
‘throw money at the problems’
and $ is a piece of paper….the Chinese dont seem too eager to buy our bonds
Asoka…any words on that?
Having read TLE and some of the posts here
Asoka..you are the only one here..far as i can tell..who believes in ‘ tax and spend democrats’
And you dont live in a once mostly black part of LA
Mexican gangsters were told to ‘ kill as many niggers as you can’
ethnic cleansing……Mexican Mafia style
Blacks are now the victims of ethnic cleansing
Mr KuNTstler
is that a typo
from a ‘right wing’ site
What a shock, Chris Dodd gets off scott free from the Countrywide ethics probe
And Kent Conrad too. From Market Watch:
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., was cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee from a year-long investigation about whether mortgages he obtained from Countrywide Financial violated the Senate’s rules on gifts. “While the committee finds no substantial credible evidence as required by committee rules that your Countrywide mortgage violated Senate ethics rules, the committee does believe that you should have exercised more vigilance in your dealings with Countrywide in order to avoid the appearance that you were receiving preferential treatment based
“…do you believe this? there IS an afterlife!!”
Hey, I say, Whatever it takes.
“so maybe it is time to throw money at the problems.”
how about just passing it out to all the poor people. Carve up all the land setting idle and give em all 3 acres apeice, more if they got a family and more if it poor soil and needs work to grow stuff. The wealth is in the land and tools and a dose of GUMPtion. Crazy is as crazy does…
“Hey MORON ……. Now shut the fuck up.”
——————————–
Whut we’ve got heeuh is…failyer to cuhmunicate (Strother Martin/Cool Hand Luke).
There’s so much wrong with your communication I hardly know where to begin.
1. Initially you were responding to a statement made by another commenter but you did it the lazy way, you didn’t click the word REPLY so there was no path back for an outsider like me to go and read that other persons full comment. (Go to comment block 18, 2nd comment down.) The sentence excerpt you entered read ” …the US federal reserve note has represented only what Wikipedia calls “the perceived strength of the US economy.” Note, it didn’t say anything about the perceived VALUE of gold.
2. Your next paragraph begins with “I got news for you.” Very confrontational, in-your-face and rude and not likely to lead to an understanding with the guy you were supposedly correcting. You do this all the time at this blog so we all know your true motivation for being here is NOT to inform but to demean. Suggestion: take a Dale Carnegie course on How to Win Friends and Influence People.
3. Then you said “The difference between this weeks price of gold ….. and last weeks price is the “perceived” value.” First, you switched from the other guys “perceived strength” to something different, “perceived value.” But disregarding that for the moment lets fill in some fictional numbers. Say this week’s price of gold is $850 and last week’s price is $900. The difference is $50 which by your definition is the “perceived value.” I say “perceived value of WHAT?” And is it positive or negative. Which number gets subtracted from which?
4. Then you say “Perception has always and will always play a key role in both currency and commodity evaluations” to which I would say “DUH” except that I’m trying to remain civil. In any event it is extremely general and one can’t connect it to either “perceived strength” or to “perceived value.” “Perception is a noun and “perceived” (both of them) is an adjective.
5. I think what you may have been aiming to say is that a person may have a perception that gold will be selling at $1500 six months from now and since the current price is only $850 its’s a screeming buy. So he buys.
6. Then let’s say the day after he buys at $850 China announces it has begun a program to sell their entire holdings of gold. The price plunges to $750 with in 30 seconds of the announcement. The guy can barely type the sell order into his on-line E-Trade account fast enough. He has NO PERCEIVED VALUE in mind as to where the price might fall that hour, that day or that year. All he “PERCEIVES” is that the price will fall. So he can’t take a chance entering a “limit” order but instead enters a “market” order.
7. Ten minutes later the SEC announces that the report of China dumping gold is a fraud and the price moves violently upward. The guy just lost a small fortune but he’s too shell shocked to re-buy gold and he has no firm idea of a “PERCEIVED VALUE” for any point in time in the future because it is not yet certain which news reports are the truth.
These are the kinds of exceptions to your statement about “PERCEIVED VALUES” that I was referring to.
I could say “take that shit-for-brains” or (like the baby in the commercial) “Read the rules Shankapotomus” but I won’t.
P.S. Rico delendus est.
Hey Jaego,
Remember this?
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless,tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
GOOD NEWS: OBAMA SAVED US FROM ANOTHER GREAT DEPRESSION
From the Wall Street Journal:
After months of uncertainty, economists are finally seeing a break in the clouds. Forecasts were revised upward for every period, with 27 economists saying the recession had ended and 11 seeing a trough this month or next. Gross domestic product in the third quarter is now expected to show 2.4% growth at a seasonally adjusted annual rate amid signs of life in the manufacturing sector, partly spurred by inventory adjustments and strong demand for the “cash for clunkers” car-rebate program.
A better-than-expected employment report for July, where employers cut 247,000 jobs and the jobless rate fell for the first time in 15 months, suggests the worst is over. The unemployment rate is still expected to rise to 9.9% by December, but economists forecast that the economy will shed far fewer jobs over the next 12 months than they had forecast last month.
Yes Blacks are extremely dangerous to each other as well as to other groups. It’s no wonder that the Mexicans want them out-the Mexicans are a people who feel they have a destiny. Blacks are no part of that destiny. We used to be a people, with our own Country, and felt we had a destiny. We gave all this up for alot ideological nonsense. But the Blacks have no change aginst the Mexicans. The leaders of the Mexican Mafia work in offices and wear suits. I read about one of their leaders in jail studying Clausewitz. They’re playing a smart game. I look for them to attain partial independance, but still be part of America so they can continue to suck our wealth and social services.
I don’t have the man’s name at my finger tips but he was a minister in the Japanese goverment about a decade ago.
Emma Lazarus was an immigrant. How did she ever get eneough influence have her poem inscribed on the Statue Of Liberty? Emmigrate to Russia and ask to have your poem inscribed on the Tomb of Lenin. See how far you get. You’ll probably be deported immediately. No, something stinks about the whole thing. She actually hated America as did many Jews. You see we started limiting immigration. We weren’t willing to take every Jew who wanted to come here. That could not be allowed. Who were we to say no to the Chosen?
Mea Culpa-she was born in New York. But she was a radical Zionist ever since her teens. She was against assimilation and wrote furiously against Jews who were adapting too much to American Life-so having her poem on the Statue of Liberty is still bullshit. She went to Europe and was recieved by Zionists everywhere. She preached the migration to Palestine and died in her early thirties. Actually corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson who recognized her genius early on.
Charles Nuckolls, member of the Utah Valley Commons (a cohousing ecovillage,) is now in India, studying an ecovillage near the south Indian city of Visakhapatnam.
In the rest of India, it’s pretty much business as usual. The first Tata Nano arrived here last week, much trumpeted by the government, which promises all the middle class should be able to have a car. The “middle class” in India, by the way, more than exceeds the entire population of the United States.
Meanwhile, the newspapers — The Hindu, the Deccan Chronicle, the Express — rant and rave against the logic of carbon caps and emissions reductions. After all, they say, India emits far less on a per capita basis than any industrialized country. India’s population now exceeds one billion. “Per capita” doesn’t matter much with that kind of number.
But the ecovillage, ah, there’s a different story. They grow a lot of their own food; they forbid plastics; they discourage (apparently succcssfuly) consumption for its own sake.
And they all get together every evening — all 500 of them — for group yoga.
When Mr. Kunstler undertakes his tour of worldwide ecovillages — beginning, I hope, with the Ecovillage at Ithaca not far from his “cave” — I hope he will consider a jaunt to India as well. There are lessons to be learned here, too.
Charles W. Nuckolls
Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India
Back in the day, there was an amusing satirical program on CBC named ‘the Great Eastern’. One of the occasionally recurring topics was the “Economology” group, which managed to savage economists and scientologists to good effect. Similar in their veiled attempt at portraying themselves as ‘a science’, they are useful to their proponents only as a ‘faith-based’ interpretation of the world, even as it topples around them. Pity they’ve been taken so seriously.
from a very good article about dismantling the Empire:
“Colonel Douglas MacGregor, U.S. Army (retired), an adviser to the Center for Defense Information in Washington, summarizes our hopeless project in South Asia this way: “Nothing we do will compel 125 million Muslims in Pakistan to make common cause with a United States in league with the two states that are unambiguously anti-Muslim: Israel and India.”
http://www.countercurrents.org/johnson300709.htm
“I chimed in to say, in effect, that you are right except when your wrong.”
Correct. Small problem. I wasn’t wrong. You are a moron. What could be worse? A MORON with verbal diarrhea. You are that as well.
“These are the kinds of exceptions to your statement about “PERCEIVED VALUES””
Hey fuck-lips,
The exceptions that you want to place on perceived value are always at play. There are as many “perceptions” regarding value as there are traders. Each decides, after exhaustive research, or a hunch, that they have a bead on the value of a specific commodity. They then place their bet.
You are an imbecilic moron of mind-numbingly, unlimited proportions. (Rather dense as well.)
This from the Chicago Observor. Seems Jimmie isn’t the only one with some Buffalo Springfield in his collection:
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/theres-something-happening-here,51313
There’s Something Happening Here
“There’s something happening here…”
It began with the tea parties. People of all ages joined in huge protests against the massive spending approved in Washington. They gathered by the thousands in cities and towns from coast to coast to speak out against the huge stimulus plan. Yet, for months not much was covered by the mainstream media and President Barack Obama told the press that he didn’t know anything about the tea parties.
“What it is ain’t exactly clear…”
Forty years ago Buffalo Springfield sang about the protests against the Viet Nam war and the mainstream media covered the protests on front pages, covers of magazines and on the nightly news. In fact, the late CBS anchor Walter Cronkite devoted an entire newscast to the protests and gave the protestors their full voice in demands to end that war. It wasn’t long after that President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek another term of office.
But this time everything is turned around. The protestors aren’t being heard on Capitol Hill. In fact, the US House ignored the people’s demands to put a hold on spending and, instead, proceeded to pass the so-called “Cap and Trade” bill, which, if approved by the Senate would raise rates you pay on everything from the gas you put in your car to the lights you use in your home, to the power you use to heat or cool your home, to the energy you use to cook your meals. And then they turned to nationalized health care.
“What a field-day for the heat. A thousand people in the street. Singing songs and carrying signs. Mostly say, hooray for our side.”
The numbers of protestors grew. They showed up at Senators’ and Congressmen’s offices and town hall meetings to speak their minds.
In the war years, President Richard Nixon called the protestors “bums”. This time, President Barack Obama has told them to shut up. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called the protestors “un-American”. And, when the media finally began covering the protests, organized union opposition curiously arrived to shout the protestors down and, in some cases, attack them. You can tell who these thugs are. They carry professionally printed signs with union bugs. The protestors carry home made cardboard signs.
“There’s battle lines being drawn. Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong…”
Washington’s attacks on the protesting people have, in the words of Admiral Yamamoto, awakened a sleeping giant – Middle America. Average Americans have watched as companies closed, unemployment grew, and once-busy stores turned into boarded-up empty spaces. They’ve seen their retirement accounts evaporate. And, in the midst of this, as President Obama told the nation that they would have to make some sacrifices, they’ve watched this President plan to take his family to a multi million dollar estate on Cape Cod for the summer. They’ve watched Congressional members travel to far away places to snorkel under the ruse that they’re investigating climate change. They’ve watched the House attempt to tuck into a defense budget 500 million dollars for eight luxury jets for their own use. And they’ve noticed that, while they’re being told to accept a public option health plan, the President, members of Congress and all federal employees will continue to enjoy a health care plan that gives them private insurance top of the line coverage all paid for by them, the American taxpayers.
“Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep…”
Public option has been tried and failed in Canada and England. It has amounted to rationed care, long waits to see a Doctor and denial of services to those considered less likely to live as long as others. England cannot get rid of its public healthcare now because bureaucrats running its public health system are now the third largest block of employees in the world.
The protestors know this. They also know that the numbers being given on those without insurance are wildly inflated as 40 million. Take out the 10 to 20 million illegal aliens, remove the 8 to 10 million who can afford insurance but choose not to get it, and the number shrinks considerably. It would be cheaper for the government to simply pay to cover those who can’t afford insurance than to spend 17% of the nation’s economy to rip up the best health care system in the world. People may not like their insurance, but they prefer it to Obamacare. They’d rather see reform of the health system by allowing Insurance companies to compete nationally, across state lines. For instance, an insurance company in Wisconsin might offer lower rates, but someone living in Illinois can’t get it under current laws. Open up free trade lines and watch healthy competition take place. It’s better to have coverage where you can argue over a claim, than coverage where the government tells you what your coverage is and you have no where to take your argument. Many in Middle America are asking, is this push for Obamacare about health or is it all about power and turning America into socialism?
The leadership in Washington appears to have been purposely deaf to Middle America’s voice and its power at the polls. Playing games with the census won’t be enough to stop the votes to oust them if they don’t begin to listen to the people. Their numbers are growing, not through the SEIU and ACORN paid organizing of Obamacare storm troopers – Obama’s praetorian guard — but through word on the street among everyday people and over their kitchen tables. Friends are telling friends and those friends are showing up, no matter that Washington leaders are calling them a mob. They’re growing in numbers and showing up with their children in tow, pushing baby buggies, or in their walkers and carrying oxygen. Their message is clear. They want Washington to stop the spending spree, read bills before they pass them, and give them some tax relief. It’s time for Washington to begin to listen.
“We better stop, hey what’s that sound. Everybody look what’s going down.”
Oooooooooops!!!
At the town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., Obama said, “We have the AARP onboard because they know this is a good deal for our seniors.” He added, “AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare.”
But Tom Nelson, AARP’s chief operating officer, said, “Indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”
Dear Dr. Pangloss,
Candide would like to know if you read the piece titled “G.D.P R.I.P” suggested by Qshtik and the statement from your colleague, Dr. Krugman about the 9.4% “improvement” figure being a “statistical fluke?” He also asked if you realized that the more economists that align themselves on one side of an issue the more likely it is that they will be wrong. Also he wants to know if you realize that the “Clunkers” program is a zero sum game in which future sales will be less because they have been pulled into the present where they would not otherwise have occured.
Q has delegated me to ask you these questions because, as he puts it, he has “grown weary of trying to talk sense” into you.
P.S. Rico delendus est.
P.S. Rico delendus est.
“Each decides, after exhaustive research, or a hunch, that they have a bead on the value of a specific commodity. They then place their bet.”
——————————-
I can only reiterate … ocassionaly events occur in the market where traders have NO “bead on the value of a specific commodity” (and “place their bet” anyway) but rather only a paniced certainty that the direction is down (or up). That’s why I say your universal statement is untrue. There ARE exceptions.
P.S. Rico/Zzz delendus est.
A poll showed that about 10% of elderly Dutch patients were afraid their doctors were going to kill them. In the traditional Hippocratic Oath, both abortion and euthanasia were prohbited, but the oaths have been reworded. How typically modern. Never have the courage to admit you’re doing something different, but instead covertly change things and maintain a fake continuity.
“I can only reiterate … ocassionaly events occur in the market where traders have NO “bead on the value of a specific commodity…”
Are you suggesting that “shit happens”? And because “shit happens” other shit happens? If so that is a particularly brilliant insight. (What a fucking dunce.)
“all federal employees will continue to enjoy a health care plan that gives them …… top of the line coverage”
——————————–
The above statement is a myth. My son is a mid-level civilian government employee and his health coverage sucks.
Aside from that I agree with the thrust of this post. Governments, without the rigors of the profit motive, are inherently inefficient.
P.S. Rico/Zzz delendus est.
“shit happens”
———————–
I am suggesting that you made a universal statement that did not take into account the possibility of “shit happening.” The new buzz word for shit is “a black swan event.”
But we’re getting off track … in my previous example either +$50 or -$50 is not the “perceived value” of anything. It was simply the difference between two numbers. Your definition of “perceived value” was imprecise causing one to calculate a nonsense answer. You seem to have a real problem with someone pointing out that you’re not perfect. If you were to tell me that I misspelled certain words in my prior posts I would readily admit it.
“If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.” — Francois de La Rochefoucauld.
I’m done with this subject and I’m moving on.
P.S. Rico/Zzz delendus est.
This is a test:
This is a test
This is a test
P.S. Rico/Zzz delendus est.
Counter spin:
Palin worshippers,
Obama flunkies who put ‘ hope’ stickers on their suv’s
Nascar morons,
Black ‘ friends of nascar’
Jesus Jokers
RAHMBO, and his Bro seem to be calling the shouts in the White House….I hear a rumor they and their dad are Zionists
also Obama…according to infowars.com
had in the usa a ‘spanish only’ press
conference to say he d push thru immigration
‘reform’ for the 20? million criminals who have broken into the usa !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jim,
I’ve read some of your books and many of these weekly posts over the last couple years. I’ve lamented the disaster of suburbia my whole life and your viewpoint has always resonated. I’m writing though because I sense that you are losing focus.
You have become a prognosticator without a cause, leaping from suburbia to oil to climate to food to housing to finance with eyes wide and finger pointed at the bogeyman that you’re sure is waiting in the proverbial closet ready to leap out and get us. Disaster is always just around the corner. By your analysis (get feeling) we are perpetually “weeks” or “months” or “just before the end of the year” on the imminent precipice of disaster. Don’t you get tired of being wrong?
Peak Oil has not occurred as predicted. Neither has Global Warming. Nor the end of our Democracy by the Financial Crisis. Nor are housing starts in the Suburbs come to an end.
While it’s strangely inspiring that a person can build an entire career on complaining with no substantive basis, it is also sadly disturbing. Many people are prone to being drawn in by it, apparently paralyzed like deer in the headlights, unable to apply rational analysis to the charges that you level at the modern American world order. I have to hope that there isn’t some broader failure of human cognition at play, and that, like me, such people listen because they trust that the speaker has something real to say, and, like me, stop listening when they recognize that there is nothing behind the vapor.
“elderly Dutch patients were afraid their doctors were going to kill them”
————————-
Odd that you would be the one with scruples about deviating from the original Hippocratic Oath. Fascists have had a bad record in that regard.
Anyway, a couple of days ago someone mentioned Soylant Green and I replied that I had some related thoughts I’d write about at some point. Your concern and the elderly Dutch patients concerns are the perfect lead in.
I think the biggest problem in the world today, and the source of current health care debate and future economic disasters is that we live to long. Life expectancy in Japan is so long that there will be only two working age adults for every oldster that they have to support in the not distant future. The US has a much lower life expectancy so we are only 58th (I think) in the rankings. Some people are appalled that we’re not number one. I’m not one of them.
I wish there were some infallable machine that could calculate when quality of life had reached zero and further support would be withdrawn.
My mother expired in a Florida nursing home that reeked of urine. She weighed 65 lbs and was curled up in a fetal position, her mind completely gone with Alzheimer’s. It’s a gruesome thing to see … and for what purpose?
Those elderly Dutch are a sign of our future.
P.S. Rico/Zzz delendus est.
The local bird cage liner had a banner headline the other day touting the Canadian government’s border investment strategy. In bold letters, The Windsor Star proclaimed “Feds tout 15,000 New Jobs for Windsor area for border infrastructure.” King Harper’s minions waxed poetic about the grand new highways and a spanking new bridge connecting Windsor with Detroit. Any comments?
Well george, they need something positive to say, so that’s what they ran with. It’s like asoka touting new USA jobs and you check and find a lot of them are unemployment office staffing. Ya, unemployment benefit distribution, and I guess welfare social work, are growing by leaps and bounds.
OTOH, we probably should fix the roads while we still have the means to do so. Even if we go back to horses, sturdy bridges will be useful. How about some better dike systems in southern cities?
“But we’re getting off track … in my previous example either +$50 or -$50 is not the “perceived value” of anything. ”
What an idiot. They are plus and minus 50 from a midpoint. Insert whatever number you wish as the midpoint. Then insert your head up your stupid ass. Repeat cycle. Bake till done. Bone appetite.
“My mother expired in a Florida nursing home that reeked of urine.”
Why am I not surprised that you would let your mother, your fucking mother, linger in a nursing home, reeking of urine? The very first rule in choosing a nursing home is the smell test. You sir, are an amateur in all regards. (And an obviously shitty son as well.)
CUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
we live to long
YES BUDDA NOTED LIFE IS DESIRE
If you meant TOO long…speak for yrself!!!!
And anyone whos moms weighs 65 pounds should be ashamed of themself not the ‘old age home’
Neither has Global Warming.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SAYS WHO….Certainly Forbes magazine and the wall St Journal say its a myth
From what i hear on radio the ice is melting faster then experts predicted and the NY times had a page 1 piece on ‘ us may be de stabilized by climate change’
MAY….I say will
USA is already being destabilized by its ‘open borders’
so..historical one
HOW DID IT GET PUT THERE…the poem?
Does the john birch society say anything about..
theyve made a few all too true statements about the UN / CFR
OK..so theres huge middle classs in india….
people that make 5000$ us a year
having traveled in asia and india
do they have toilet paper?
the roads there are scary and i dont scare easily
and theres the asian brown cloud…visible from outer space
and they have the most imbalanced by gender ratio society in the world
worse than korea and china
SO DEFINE MIDDLE CLASS
Europe is sinking..in more ways then one
How do ‘ europeans’ see america?
and who gave you permission to speak for them?
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