A Distant Sound of Churning

Cabra1080 June 13, 2011 at 9:22 am #

First!

Leibowitz Society June 13, 2011 at 9:24 am #

People are still living in the past. They pretend that money is worth something, that there is an nation called America which will last forever, that things are too big to even contemplate the idea of failure. These are dead, worn-out ideas and people need to start looking at the future, now that the future is arriving.
Visit the Leibowitz Society at http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com for planning and thinking about where we’re going after the collapse and how to save our essential knowledge for when it comes time to rebuild.

Cabra1080 June 13, 2011 at 9:35 am #

It’s interesting how China and India are going full tilt building big national highways. I seems they think there is something like “growth” taking place. However, it looks they just got into the game just as the game is ending…

empirestatebuilding June 13, 2011 at 9:36 am #

You have reminded me of the game Jenga. It seems an apt analogy for the international banking system. One false move and the whole thing will come crashing down. Eventually all that is left is false moves.
My guess is that without QE3 we won’t have a stock marker much longer. It saddens me, because I liked the idea of money for nothing. I liked being distracted by pervert politicians and infanticide. I like Doritos and Gatorade. I like Bud Light and medical marijuana. I like doing 80 mph in the right lane. I like being as dumb as a bag of hammers. Thinking taxes my brain.
My conspiracy theory friend told me to look out for Planet X. It’s on its way and it won’t be good. He’s heading for the hills. I am heading to the beach with a case of beer. 2012 can’t come soon enough. If only it were that simple.
Aimlow Joe was here
http://www.aimlow.com

PRD June 13, 2011 at 9:36 am #

About halfway through this essay, I had to stop and Google “Caylee.” Who the hell is Caylee?? Oh. Sorry I asked.

messianicdruid June 13, 2011 at 9:42 am #

America will out-live the UNITED STATES.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFCLiij0CBA&feature=player_embedded

lsjogren June 13, 2011 at 9:43 am #

One of the best weekly rants by Kunstler I have read in some time.
The only one thing I would take issue with- there is no way out for the people of Greece.
The banking system is dysfunctional and a populist revolt would allow them to extricate themselves from that mess.
But their real economy is in utter shambles as well. Their economy is top-heavy with government civil servants, while the private sector needed to produce the taxes to fund government is virtually nonexistant.
The Greeks are doubly screwed. Screwed by the banks, and screwed by their own stupidity.
Their only choice now is what flavor of dismal future they prefer.
Of course, our situation in the US is not a whole lot better, although not quite as hopeless as that of Greece.

LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown June 13, 2011 at 9:46 am #

JHK, great column this week. I too had to do some googling. That Burj Dubai is something. Didn’t recognize “Caylee, I assume she’s is some dead little white girl from the Nancy Grace show… get out of my brain, Nancy Grace!
> The sad fact is we don’t want to go where history wants to take us: to a smaller human imprint on the planet, with all that implies.
That pretty much sums it all up right there. Thanks.

Barter4Booze June 13, 2011 at 9:46 am #

Thanks, Jim, for the reminder.
Best, I think, to choose poverty before poverty chooses you.
A distant churning, eh? I’m reminded of Mother’s wringer washing machine, which had a comforting ‘churning’ rhythm to it. Sometimes I’d hang out with Mom while she did the laundry. Churn-churn, churn-churn, churn-churn, went the washing machine. After awhile, she’s switch on the wringer, reach into the still-churning tub, and pull out an article of clothing, or, to extend the metaphor, a debt-wracked, Southern European country. Churn-churn — Greece; churn-churn Portugal; churn-churn Ireland. In 1964, Mom’s washing machine was just the thing for dealing with all our dirty laundry. After the wringer, all of the shirts were ready to hang-out on the clothesline — or should I be saying ‘strung-up’?
Thanks for the memory, Uncle Sam. And don’t let your fingers get too close to the wringer!

metuselah June 13, 2011 at 9:47 am #

“The sad fact is we don’t want to go where history wants to take us: to a smaller human imprint on the planet, with all that implies. This is true especially of the intellectual avant-garde, who can’t imagine a world without the joys of perpetual techno-narcissistic novelty, of levitating skyscraper cities with hanging gardens and flying cars, full of girls with green nail-polish in get-ups so fantastic mere mortals could never have dreamed them up, flaunting hand-held gadgets so miraculous that life itself seems besides the point. Oh, shimmering future!”
==
Sorry James, they planned a future quite different from that nonsense above. More like this one:
http://www.hawgleg.com/images/news/zardoz_cover_huge.jpg
Enjoy your hooker boots!

lsjogren June 13, 2011 at 9:48 am #

“My guess is that without QE3 we won’t have a stock marker much longer.”
More importantly, without QE3 we won’t have a bond market.
Ron Paul was talking the other day about 50% inflation.
I don’t see it. I see about 10% inflation per year. That is sufficient for the politicians to decimate the standard of living in the US sufficiently for us to reach a new equilibrium where we are living within our means at a level that will probably be considerably closer to a stone-age existence than to the fake prosperity induced by financial steroids whose fumes we are still able to run on, but not for much longer.

bubbleheadMarc June 13, 2011 at 9:49 am #

Way to nail the zeitgeist Jim. After all, isn’t the “totmom” trial nothing but capital punishment porn to distract us from the reality of an unspooling global economy in which hundreds upon hundreds of idled containerships are sitting anchored out off of the coast of Malaysia?
Once everything collapses, and it will, what’s next? Will we form a new republic here called The People’s Republic of America? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate grotesquerie after all the blood & treasure invested in the anti-communist crusade formerly known as the cold war? And now the equally futile replay of the crusades which has been going on ever since the Iranian hostage crisis of the Carter administration.
So we’re going back two global confrontations to revisit something we supposedly won in ’91 [the cold war, not the Gulf War] since our title is being confiscated and we’ve been called on the carpet to get the grim news that we lost that one after all, our trophy is being repoed, and we’re all moving into tent cities to await the next available vacancy in the public housing projects.

Zev Paiss June 13, 2011 at 9:50 am #

Morning Everyone,
For me the sound of churning is coming directly from the depths of my nervous stomach. Thank the G-D’s that I still have food to fill it and quite the rumbling.
The activity in China is called employment. Never mind that no one but future squatters will ever live in the ghost cities sprout up in various parts of the country. A friend of mine who does exquisite architectural drawings, told me of a development of 125 or so Chinese mansions (over 10,000 sq ft each) that had been completed, landscaped, servants at the waiting and not one of them occupied by an owner. Creepy isn’t it.
The concept of contraction is wildly absent since we have all been fed on a diet of growth since we were all in diapers. For many it simply does not register as an option. Those minds will fall hard when the reality becomes the nightly fare on FOX NEWS.
I will be selling tour packages for urban discovery tours inDetroit for all to see what out future holds. Please remember to bring work gloves and sunscreen. This will be a tour made by hand.
Have a great week all.
Zev in Colorado

lbendet June 13, 2011 at 10:00 am #

To Everything (Churn, Churn, Churn)
There is a season (Churn, Churn, Churn)…
There are no accidents here, JHK, only an ill-conceived game plan by the oligarchs who didn’t consider the calculus of change…
Our dear oligarchy doesn’t need to be defined through Nation state power anymore, they’re global and are now rich enough to hire their own private armies.
It’s all about destroying the environment we all have to depend on for sustenance. While we the people are stuck in nation state paradigm, which is falling off a cliff, unable to switch gears as we watch in horror.
These special few are creating disasters to glean the most money the world over, taking advantage of the 7 billion people who populate the earth.
How any wars can we, the bankrupt fight at once?
But what could possibly go wrong? And what are the unintended consequences, even for themselves. Can these people really be sure that all power in the world are in line with them?
In the meantime there’s no end to the revelations of the Weiner who has gone where many of the powerful continue to go, as the mores of society sink to new lows. The basis for Western civilization is disintegrating. The religious right can’t stop that from happening as they rewrite history and re-interpret Christ as the heavenly CEO. Filthy lucre is thy father.
D. Rockefeller:“… it would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government …”
– David Rockefeller in Baden-Baden, Germany 1991, thanking major media for keeping secret for decades the movement of the prophetic one world government.
The vision thing of these people is the total opposite of what we all recognize needs to be done. We aren’t hired-wired to be ants–we’re tribal and nationalistic–It will never work. Our own Vlad on CFN is the case in point.
ps. as soon as we moved from the gold standard to oil fiat currency the value of money became abstracted and ready for the global casino.

lbendet June 13, 2011 at 10:02 am #

Sorry for my typos, btw

wastelandmechanic June 13, 2011 at 10:05 am #

Who is Caylee?

Bob Wise June 13, 2011 at 10:05 am #

Nice column, Jim. But I know some kind of Rubicon has been crossed when I see “little Kaylee” mentioned in your blog. This case has been the mainstay of our local TV and radio news for three years or so; they have websites and RSS feeds set up for instant news on it. Considering all the hay they’ve made on the story, they should be paying royalties to the Anthony family. A lot of newsworthy events are going on in Florida, as counties and cities are starved of revenue, schools have their funding reduced or “privatized”, etc. But the media still builds their nightly news around this familiar story. Nothing will bring the child back- but we could recall our governor.

casual observer June 13, 2011 at 10:08 am #

PEAK OI
PEAK INDEBTEDNESS
PEAK STUPIDITY
MONEY FOR NOTHIN AND CHICKS FOR FREE!!!!

dplainview June 13, 2011 at 10:23 am #

Overlooked, it would seem, is the enormous housing/trailer boom/bubble that awaits us in the aftermath of the 2011 tornado and flood devastation.
The friendly folks of FIRE (Finance, Insurance & Real Estate)
will no doubt sponsor fantastic must-see television for the fall season to maintain distractions for the willfully inattentive.

bossier22 June 13, 2011 at 10:23 am #

no chicks are free. somehow you pay. ha. my wife and little daughter are working me down.

Newfie June 13, 2011 at 10:23 am #

PEAK STUPIDITY
Not in your lifetime. And probably never.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.” – Albert Einstein
And that’s the real underlying problem behind every other problem. So it’s hopeless. Fermi Paradox. QED.

Onthego June 13, 2011 at 10:23 am #

Speaking of rioting masses yearning to throw off the yokes of their bankers, there was an interesting poll the other day at Jack Cafferty’s site at CNN. The question referred to civil unrest here at home. The responses from around the country were pretty stark and very chilling (unless you have been paying real attention). About 30% of folks who still have 401K’s are now using them for ATMs to live on. When people have no discernable future, why would they continue to give their consent to be governed? Especially to the ruling class we have now? End of Empire indeed. As for the “Bread” part of “and Circuses,” just how long can the national attention span be diverted by Anthony Weiner’s cell phone when there is still no planting going on in the heartland thanks to the flooding? Can’t eat a cell phone photo, as many will be discover all too soon…

newworld June 13, 2011 at 10:33 am #

Oh’ how I could decry the bigotry directed at us stock car watchin types, but then I too had a vision of JHK a properly educated man out noodling for catfish with us Cracker-Americans, karma.

montysano June 13, 2011 at 10:33 am #

Another great post, JHK.
I just finished “The Witch of Hebron” this weekend. What a fantastic tale! If ever a book cried out to be made into a movie, this is it. Don’t miss it.

3rd Generation June 13, 2011 at 10:33 am #

As coincidence and luck-would-have-it, just watched Borat for the first time between NASCAR heat races and refilling the Big Gulp with straight Cola 38 grams of sugar, calories unknown. Still mourning the demise of the cheese doodle inventor.
Loved the Borat sequence when Borat bargains down his room, sets his price, spits on his hand and then offers it to the clerk for confirmation of an accepted offer. Also scooping up the bear shit with his hands was pretty American too.
Reminds me of America, and what it has become.
A lying, conniving grifter something-for-nothing shithole run by serially corrupt ugly dunces.
I’d tell you what I really think, but it’s early here in The West. Come back in an hour. . .

Galactic Effectuator June 13, 2011 at 10:34 am #

Mr. Kuntsler —
Why is it that in virtually ALL of your columns you take a mean-spirited swipe at southerners and the South, usually by mentioning Nascar in some snide way? Can’t you make your point without exposing such rabid hatred and prejudice against a whole people? Believe me, your part of the country is nothing to brag about. I’ve been there many times and seen the dirty, low-class, tattooed freaks hanging out in filthy little towns doing nothing but plot their next crime. I’ve also seen the beauty of upstate New York and think all of those unfortunate freaks would clean up their act if they just had the missing confidence in themselves one finds in the South among blacks, whites, browns and whatevers who live in our small towns, close to the earth, God and their guns.

budizwiser June 13, 2011 at 10:35 am #

JK – yes the natives are getting restless, the cows are in the corn and the rich people don’t quite know what to do.
There are of course, two social/global events happening at the same time. And its difficult if not impossible to unravel or deconstruct or analyze these events separate from each other.
On one hand, we have this massive “debt/wealth” arena created by the rich on the assumption that rest of us could some how work and pay them for the next 30 years and continue to be good little mortgage slaves.
On the other hand, you have the “un-realization” of the governments running the show that there simply isn’t any spare energy to be had for the mortgage slaves to use to build more boxes and buy more plastic crap to pay off the rich bastards.
So you have rich fuckers with unimaginable levels of greed pressuring the government fuckers with unrealistic attitudes toward economic growth dancing around their chairs – trying to pass this crap-fest on to yet another round of boobs.
But JK – is there yet the possibility for another fruit seller, another entire country filled with fruit-sellers to take a stand and make the ultimate sacrifice.
Here is a the kind of article you could be writing, and please – use more hyperbole and metaphor than this guy, we at CF Nation love that crap.
http://www.taipanpublishinggroup.com/tpg/taipan-daily/taipan-daily-061011.html?sub=TD&o=372892&s=375956&u=48412125&l=269005&g=183&r=Milo

Ozvaldo June 13, 2011 at 10:36 am #

“It’s not even a hall of mirrors. It’s a broke-down Winnebago with moldy upholstery and the propane line is leaking inside.”
LOL-best metaphor of the day! Sadly true, but we and Mr. Kunstler are going to be surprised how far that fucker will go. Years from now it’s still going to be limping along, with the rotten vinyl panels missing, doors dragging down the pothole filled road, feral smells from the varmints nested in the leaky sunroof cavity, poop and chemical smells from the door to the filty toilet flapping open and shut…

Galactic Effectuator June 13, 2011 at 10:46 am #

One more thing, Mr. Kuntsler —
You keep hawking your books and the whole ‘World Made By Hand’ ethos you’re certain is coming for those with enough wit and fortitude to survive? Just where do you suppose that is most likely to happen? I think it is most likely in the South where people are close to the earth. I never cease to be amazed by the Yankees who move down here (quite a few in my neighborhood, in my small town) who don’t know one end of shovel from the other and can’t even grow tomatoes! They’re all out walking little white toy dogs and looking down their noses at the indigenous population. But who will survive in the world you feel is certain to come? Not the retired banksters in the golf communities, you can bet on that.

Solar Guy June 13, 2011 at 11:01 am #

levitating skyscraper cities with hanging gardens and flying cars, full of girls with green nail-polish in get-ups so fantastic mere mortals could never have dreamed them up, flaunting hand-held gadgets so miraculous that life itself seems besides the point
Your quite the Poet JHK. Can I have your job please?… sure is hot up here on the roof… Any other bloggers and writers out there making a living?
You wouldn’t believe the amount of handholding it takes to sell a $30k or $40k solar system…
My latest pitch is about how “real” a solar panel is and will be for the next 30 years vs. a stack of digital hundred dollar bills in the stock market that don’t make electricity or hot water… some people really don’t like that kind of talk though, so you have to be careful how far the ‘you know what I really think is going on and why you need this’ vs. ‘here is your estimated payback of 9 years sir, what a great ROI, look at these NUMBERS..’

wardoc June 13, 2011 at 11:05 am #

Wrong, wrong, wrong !!!! That distant sound is the sound of Nascar getting revved up and the roaring of crowds at world wresting matches countrywide. Amerika’s back in a big way, you all better get with the program or you’ll be labelled “terrorists.”
We’ll have QE3 and 4 and 5, ad nauseum, and we’ll fight whomever we have to fight to get the last drop of oil to keep the cars running and the drive in fry shacks cooking and malls selling useless shit to people who have worthless paper to pay for it. The mass media will ramp up the message that fighting for Amerika is the grandest job for our massively unemployed youth, and they will go, en masse, to die for fry shacks and happy motoring, and the rest of us will muddle along pretending that life is as usual, as we are foced to adapt to the IMF’s mandate of global income synchronization (i.e. as we drop from an average of $40k per household to $4k). Our memories of past wealth will be altered by cognitive dissonance, and we’ll believe things have always been this way. This is the delusion that is Amerika; we do not have the testicular fortitude to riot in the streets and will not do so; if we did we’d be gunned down by Sheriff Bubba and his totalitarian retardates.
We’ll get one of several clowns in the whitehouse, very different from the ineffectual clown who’s there now, and the new one will make us feel really good about ourselves and things will be GREAT again…..
Welcome to hell.

Qshtik June 13, 2011 at 11:17 am #

Reply to Welles comment on last week’s thread.
you are SO indoctrinated & brinwashed.
It’s brain typo boy.
me and asoka will do the living for you
Asoka and I (I thought you said you taught languages for decades)
far from the maddening crowd.
I assume this is a reference to Thomas Hardy’s famous novel in which case the word is madding
no one need to register or document any vehicles in that country anymore, just drive
No car insurance either I guess, so when they crash into you you’re just basically fucked.
Boleeveeuh, wadduh conntree!

Smokyjoe June 13, 2011 at 11:17 am #

Well, Jimmy me lad, after the shite hits the fan we’ll be like dear olde Ireland in the 1840s.
But I’ll end on a + note: our “high speed” rail consortium locally has scaled back its targets and has actually laid track from some “faster” rail south of D.C.
We’ll have something to move us about when the oil infrastructure drips dry, if only the firms can finish the project before the house of cards tumbles in on itself.
I’d like my state not to join the rest of the South this time, when the guns come out and Jesus’ true followers take their vengeance on all the leftists and academics and Gays and Greens and black people. I’d like to be somewhere with a government strong enough to face down a mob of big-bellied anti-gub’mint loons the way they need to be faced down: a hail of gunfire.

HeadingOut June 13, 2011 at 11:25 am #

Those ignorant of the meaning of the words “conspiracy” and “theory” just sound
doubly ignorant when they put them together.

bossier22 June 13, 2011 at 11:34 am #

i saw that poll. it is seething and churning out there. in the sixties we had civil unrest with a good economy. in addition to social turmoil, we now have people hurting from the economy in large numbers. so we could easily see violence of the nonroutine kind. it will take a roosevelt type leader who not only cares about the people, but will also embrace a new direction. it would not have to be all doom and gloom back to the stone age. may be less complex but not so bad if handled right.

ccm989 June 13, 2011 at 11:39 am #

Another superior article by JHK. This is exactly what I fear will happen – the world economic system will crash and we (what’s left of the middle class and the working class) will all be very poor. The rich will continue to have money and power and hire private armies (like Blackwater or whatever its called now) to roam the streets and shoot down anyone they don’t like. Because there will be no government and no police and no justice, no one will be able to stop those private armies from cruelty and abuse. Absolute power, as we all know, corrupts absolutely. And the rich will not be kind to us. Between our greenback losing its status as the world’s most trusted currency and the ever growing national debt, we face more real danger from poverty than anything else (including the inevitable end of oil).
Getting out of the stock market is wise. Paying off your mortgage (if possible) is really good. Getting out of debt (in general) is always best. Get rid of expensive things you don’t need like Hummers and memberships at the local Country Club. Hummers need lots of gas and insurance and if you run out of money, you can’t pay for any of those. Sell the luxury car(s) now while there are still idiots out there willing to buy them. Unload the Country Club membership, cancel the cruise ship trip to Europe, make sure your children learn practical skills like how to make soap, how to kept warm, etc., batten down the hatches and prepare for the worse. If the Tea Party doesn’t let this country raise the debt ceiling and makes us default on our loan payments then the World Bank comes in. And their usurious interest rates will make slaves of us all (except the rich, of course). The USA will then turn into a quasi-feudal state and that’s not a good place to be. Especially if you’re young and/or female.

helen highwater June 13, 2011 at 11:41 am #

Where can I get the free chicks? I’ve just built a really nice little chicken coop.

MarlinFive54 June 13, 2011 at 11:45 am #

Greece, where Govt. employees can retire at age 35 with a nice pension and full benefits … who’d give that up without a fight? Not me!
-Marlin

Tancred June 13, 2011 at 11:48 am #

I disagree with much of JHK’s “vision” of a retrograde future where technology somehow reverts to some nonexistent golden age of crafts and communal sharing (or something like that). That said, I was still astounded by the commercials I saw over the weekend for some Cadillac car that has over 500 hp and reaches 190 mph. WTF? Why would anyone “need” that much power in their car? So much for the auto industry making an effort for more practical cars.
Curiously, the oldest transportation “system” ever known is the one we still use: roads and trails. These go to most anywhere one wants to go. It’s HOW we use them that’s most important. Let’s automate our transportation with pods and self-guiding vehicles. That way I can eat my cheese doodles and look at the scenery without worrying about a wreck.

ront June 13, 2011 at 11:57 am #

“The sad fact is we don’t want to go where history wants to take us: to a smaller human imprint on the planet, with all that implies. This is true especially of the intellectual avant-garde, who can’t imagine a world without the joys of perpetual techno-narcissistic novelty, of levitating skyscraper cities with hanging gardens and flying cars, full of girls with green nail-polish in get-ups so fantastic mere mortals could never have dreamed them up, flaunting hand-held gadgets so miraculous that life itself seems besides the point. Oh, shimmering future! Oh Ray Kurzweil and your nano-ladder to the worm-holes of forever!”
Last night I watched the first 20 or so minutes of an HBO presentation of a Lady Gaga “concert.” America can and will be sold anything by ingenious mass media salesmen: narcissism presented as humility, outrageous behavior defined as courage. The illusions of popularity, name and fame demand the attention of the masses for fear the sense of blasphemy by acknowledging your own taste and values.
I look forward to the days when enough of us are thoroughly fed up with selling each other delusions. This will require a radical change of heart, courage, heroism. This will begin our freeing ourselves from our fears, judgements, cynicism, and sense of separateness, and create space for compassion, empathy, and feelings and acts of brotherly/sisterly love. Imagine giving without thought of return and serving without thought of reward.

Jeff June 13, 2011 at 11:58 am #

No square to protest in, indeed.
(And no First Amendment protection in the pseudo-square “Shoppes” either.)
A thread worth pulling on further, as I hope you will do some time.

spider9629 June 13, 2011 at 12:09 pm #

If C is a variable that means how much you can live the same life and sensations of another, and that number is 1 since we sense 0 of others, what would happen if it became .4 or .7, an intermediate value ? and if extended to all people ? and all time ? and all objects ? Is the thought of other objects the attempt by Mass Energy to be another chunk of itself even being seperate from itself (experience itself, but denotated, an imagination of an experience ?) ? That is why denotations (religions, and all) are important ? Divided, Unity, at what point is an item the same or different from itself, at zero time and space ? No extension, invent it, different and the same, impossible, contradict, go on do it, and so forth and so on…
Anyways the older and more Impotent you get, the prettier the ladies, Wow, I saw a nice one.
This is the insanity I have to deal with.
MISUNDERSTAND EVERYTHING ALWAYS! GET IT ALL WRONG, YOU CAN DO IT, GO MAN GO, JUST DO IT.
First gear its allright, 2nd gear hold on tight, 3rd gear you’re out of sight!

God June 13, 2011 at 12:11 pm #

Got gold?

budizwiser June 13, 2011 at 12:13 pm #

I don’t think any of us are good at describing the future possibilities. I just don’t “see it.”
The influence that drives Congress has repeatedly resulted in such bizarre behaviors – bizarre laws, bizarre ideological positions – that I have come to realize the futility.
The overriding concerns of these powers that be is self interest. And we peons can’t possibly know what these people think about with regard to Peak Oil, the cost of living, the sharing of natural resources or anything else.
For now – as I stated earlier, all activities are based upon the concepts of defer, disguise and deny any realization of current reality.
Last year, I predicted that much of what might happen would be based on the worthless bonds maturing and forcing at least some sort discussion of reckoning.
Boy what a fool I was – these guys don’t even play by their own rules. As soon as the paper starts to smell, they just print new certificates.
C’mon think about it – what fucking asinine projects and decrees are in the making? Surly we can top bank bail outs, high-speed rail and health care laws no one reads nor understands.
If you’re old enough, and content enough,you can take it all in as interesting, if you’re under 30, plan on getting a gun and getting used tough weather.

jrheadrick1 June 13, 2011 at 12:14 pm #

Jim:
You are missing out completely. The Dinar revaluation will pay down all debt, worldwide. Stay tuned.
Joe
PS That is no replacement for the lousy job Americans did in raising third-rate offspring, however.

anotherplayaguy June 13, 2011 at 12:17 pm #

‘When you hear a politician utter the word “growth” note that he/she is speaking out of his/her ass.’
As opposed to other times?
As to free chickens: buy yourself a hen or two and a rooster. Down the line in a few years, there will be free chickens galore, many more than the first purchase. And they mostly feed themselves.

bailey June 13, 2011 at 12:21 pm #

Spain’s at 50% unemployment. Youth, with degrees are going down to Malta and begging for work.
Germany is doing alright, per always, but upset about bailing out another country.
Italy doesn’t owe any money to the global banks, which is kind of interesting and the majority of Italians own their own flat, maybe two and have their ‘crisis’ garden. Actually, they don’t call it crisis garden, it’s just what they do.
Holland is still wealthy but a couple of girls who hang out in the back of their store to smoke on the major shopping area in the center of town, live below our flat, in our little ‘tales of the city’ kinda courtyard. They tell me no one’s buying anything.
France, who knows, they tend to live unto themselves, with their little poison dwarf imposing more and more draconian laws onto the state.
Ireland? Well, they are doing so badly that the propaganda machine is suggesting that because they threw out the last government, only to find their current government is just as corrupt, beholden to the banking cartel, the propaganda machine has decided to brainwash the people into thinking its a good thing to be owned by the banks..they SHOULD be happy to pay off money to the banks, debt not owed by them, just “because”, well, what do you like to say, because “it’s all good”
Such is the state of Europe. Tho, no, not nearly as bad as the US for that debt cannot possibly be paid off in any way, and more importantly, the Chinese are very pissed off because the US has already started to default on their debt….
Such is the state of our globalized world.
Go local.

jrheadrick1 June 13, 2011 at 12:21 pm #

Further, I have divided the American people into two groups… the Warriors, and the Pussies.
The Star Spangled Banner is a fight song. It is for the Warriors.
Since Pussies will have none of that ‘defense stuff’, they will need to select a new anthem, coupled with a flag with the ‘peace’ symbol, which also happens to be the imprint left in flesh by a leach vermin bloodsucker. With a little artistic license, it can be made to look like a broken rubber.
Good luck with that one.
Joe

Cabra1080 June 13, 2011 at 12:24 pm #

All in all it’s just another brick in the Wal-mart…

welles June 13, 2011 at 12:27 pm #

ABSOLUTELY CORRECT – it is JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER who is delusional, history is more grandiose than this one-dimensional writer of atrociously bad, hackneyed books.
society is on the way UP, expanding. in the 1960s it was easy to predict the demise of the environment within 20 years, all reserves of coal, gold, zinc, oil, whatever, and scores of books emerged on the subject.
these books were based on linear, fallacious thinking. we’re still here, more prosperous than ever, long after the world-enders and end-of-prosperity folks’ predictions have elapsed with nary a whimper.
YES he is right that the US is in a slow contraction, but his dire predictions are insanely overblown. the populace will adapt, move forward (where do people get the idiot idea that we’ll be back in the 1800s or the stone age?) and make something non-linear (read: unexpected).
before you say ‘there’s another one who thinks technology will save us’, recall that the director of the patent office said it should be closed in 1899 or so, as ‘everything you could invent’ had been invented.
he was kunstler’s great-grandfather apparently. when the SHTF someone finds a solution, just like hackers find a way to break things. it’s in our nature.
plenty of room for improvement, folks, self-guided cars are almost on the roads, literally.
kunstler belongs in with the purveyors of doom in the 1960s, all of whom are laughingstocks.
…as will be all the 2012 world-enders, jeezus get a clue, plant some trees or flowers.
adiue to friends & inimigos

asia June 13, 2011 at 12:28 pm #

Anyone see the ‘Puff’ news piece at Yahoo about
500$ a lesson Golf coached for the little princes of China?
Gawd…..talk about resource mismanagement!

welles June 13, 2011 at 12:30 pm #

wake up, folks are tired of the lame warrior crewcut dykes and dipshits that make up today’s aint-got-a-job-so-i’ll-join-the-army military.
keep your wars to yourself.
peace to you still tho’

asia June 13, 2011 at 12:31 pm #

As Pat Buchanan has noted:
A CULTURE IS MORE THAN AN ECONOMY!

Phaedrus June 13, 2011 at 12:33 pm #

I must say – in general – “The Long Emergency” is eerily becoming true. A lot of people might even call it doomsday prophecy. The truth is that the reality is turning out to be even worse. So in a weird sort of way it actually is optimistic – just depends on your perspective. All things change. All things are in a constant state of motion (just depends on your perspective). We spend our whole lives trying to sustain a permanent and unchanging pleasure state. Avoiding the inherent uncertainty in your life will only bring you pain. Pain that can not be eased by the constant conditioning of a consumer culture that promises to make it all better with material consumption.

bubbleheadMarc June 13, 2011 at 12:38 pm #

“…a smaller human imprint on the planet..” EQUALS EPHEMERALIZATION or the design principal in naval architecture discovered by R. Buckminster Fuller while finishing off the degree he started at Harvard when he got an appointment to the naval academy during World War I after serving on active duty as a warrant officer commanding his own yacht which he’d donated to the war effort as an improvised sub chaser.
The geodesic dome personifies this principal because it covers the most space with the least outlay of building materials while also being incredible strong and resistant to wind pressure generated by storms.
We need to start abandoning our outmoded overbuilt houses which cost too much and blow down too easily. Voluntary adoption of various forms of poverty is preferable being more manageable to forced catastrophic poverty induced by outside forces beyond our control. In other words, it is better to be living in a do-it-yourself curiosity before the meltdown occurs as that may be the difference between being housed at all rather than being homeless and literally ending up in a tent on land you don’t have title to, which of course makes one vulnerable to eviction for illegal squatting.

Qshtik June 13, 2011 at 12:44 pm #

poop and chemical smells from the door to the filty toilet flapping open and shut…
==============
It’s filthy but I knew what you meant.

wagelaborer June 13, 2011 at 12:46 pm #

Someone usually complains that this is a peak oil blog and we have digressed.
So I give you a link to a man who debunks peak oil, with illustrations, Jesus, and more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bHZRSlhJxY

welles June 13, 2011 at 12:52 pm #

well gollee, you found a typo, give yourself a gold star for being the teacher’s pet.
you mite realize that folks take a bit of liberty with spelling/phraseology at times, no need for martinets here n’est pas?
even people who teach/speak several languages can make a typo, who’da thunk it?
one of my recent translations was from german into english & was a patent for (my translation follows):
THIN-WALLED SELF-SUPPORTING CUBOID VACUUM CONTAINERS FOR SORPTION MACHINES, ESPECIALLY ADSORPTION MACHINES
put that in your dorkpipe and smoke it.
if you need anything translated from german/icelandic/portuguese gimme a ring, i’ll give you a cfn discount & promise not a single typo will be delivered.
re bolivia, yes you can still buy insurance to cover yourself in all respects, next time try to think a bit b4 assuming.
for the twittercrowd who needs to know what i’m ‘doing right now’: just had a lunch of phenom beef, rice, brazilian squash, with beautiful men and women all about the place, cost $4. got to kiss two new womenfriends my honeybrown missus intro’d me to.
y’all come down now to brasil, you gonna have a good time

wagelaborer June 13, 2011 at 12:53 pm #

I am assuming that this baby is an unintended consequence of US war making.
We make these depleted uranium weapons right here in my community, and then the military drops them on people in other countries, like Iraq and Yugoslavia and Libya.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j599Ce1ky0&feature=player_embedded

LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown June 13, 2011 at 12:54 pm #

Pretty funny video. I am not sure I follow the logic of Jesus not coming back until we use all the oil, but it is hilarious. Thanks!

helen highwater June 13, 2011 at 12:54 pm #

Actually, Welles, some of the people you call “purveyors of doom” wrote a book in 1972 entitled The Limits to Growth. It was laughed at at the time, but all of their predictions about the consequences of population growth and resource depletion are coming true, worldwide, right now. They’re not laughingstocks anymore.

Neon Vincent June 13, 2011 at 1:01 pm #

You mentioned default, but I’m surprised you only did so in the context of Greece. After all, the U.S. is in danger of a technical default by August. Of course, bringing that up might have harmed your thesis that “default is something the strong declare on the weak when they lose patience.” We might find out that China thinks they’re strong and the U.S. is now weak, much to our surprise.
I brought up the possibility of a default happening over at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News in “Gas prices back above $4.00/gallon in metro Detroit.” The price has now fallen back below $4.00/gallon, but the damage has been done.
Speaking of default, one of the people who would be responsible, Representative Eddie Munster Paul Ryan, along with Wisconsin’s own corn pone Fascist Scott Walker, make cameos near the end of “Sustainability news from midwestern research universities for the week ending June 11, 2011.” Right after they enter and then exit the stage, there’s a bit of real estate news you all might find interesting–prices for agricultural land are rising, even though prices for housing, offices, and factories are still falling. Looks like the business as usual people might be catching on to the importance of farming in ‘A World Made by Hand.’
Finally, is this site optimized for Internet Explorer? I tried logging on while using Firefox–no go. The first time logging on using Internet Explorer–no problem! Considering the popularity of Firefox (it’s the single most popular browser accessing Crazy Eddie’s Motie News), I’m surprised by this.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/

welles June 13, 2011 at 1:15 pm #

i used to read the hal lindsey end of the world books and buy into the limits of growth et al, but all i see is the opposite.
yes i know oil is getting scarcer. so adapt. incorporate solar heating (yeah i know it takes oil to make the panels) millions of folks work from home, don’t need the oil/car paradigm. internet makes printing/mail delivery obsolete, ergo saves lots of oil. win-win all the way around
the Limits to Growth, if i’m not mistaken, had the world running out of tons of resources and drowning in pollution by the 1990s. has your area gotten cleaner? have cars gotten cleaner? are the rivers still on fire? is the air as dirty? is there no land to grow food, or is food more abundant?
i’ll go back to being a doomer when someone puts up stark evidence.
population in many european countries + japan is declining alarmingly fast. the fertility rate in africa is down markedly.
ergo, linear thinking doesn’t cut it, it’s not just a question of multiplying R x Z to arrive at the simplistic result that we’re going to reach the limit of growth or whatever other limit you want to substitute there.
i’m not per se for ‘growth’ with the waste it entails, we’re moving towards high-quality sustainability on a global basis, wherein we reuse resources just as we endlessly redrink the same water that jezis drank.
adieu

Malagodi June 13, 2011 at 1:19 pm #

Great post. But could you work on making it a little funnier?
Anyway, try this: China signs agreement with Cuba to drill for oil in the Gulf. (happened last week)
That’s going to sit really well with the NASCAR crowd. What we need is a dandy little war to secure the oil in our backyard and stimulate our economy. Perfect. Hillary took some top military advisors with her on her last trip to China. “To prevent misunderstandings.”

Phutatorius June 13, 2011 at 1:24 pm #

“When you hear a politician utter the word ‘growth’ note that he/she is speaking out of his/her ass.” That statement really sums it up. It’s high time for an economic paradigm shift. And on the subject of little flag stickers, John Prine wrote a pretty good song.
-Phut

Cash June 13, 2011 at 1:31 pm #

Not that the ratings agency business is worth a damn but a Chinese rating house said that the US is already in default through letting the US currency slide.
I would agree. Given all the money printing by the Fed a slide in the value of the US$ is what you’d expect. in 2002 the Cancuck buck was worth about 63 cents US. Now its worth about 1.02 US which is a huge devaluation in the greenback. If any Canuck bought US securities back then it would be a painful kick in the balls.

Neil Kearns June 13, 2011 at 1:43 pm #

Sorry, here’s a soundtrack by which to read this thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aLjup934Rk
Dead Flag Blues, by Godspeed

Cash June 13, 2011 at 1:44 pm #

Procon
Looks like Alabama signed into effect a really tough immigration law. They’re taking the bull by the horns because the Fed govt proved itself unwilling/incompetent at fulfilling its mandate to control the borders. What’s your view on it?

Omar Bongo June 13, 2011 at 1:46 pm #

“all of their predictions about the consequences of population growth and resource depletion are coming true, worldwide, right now”
——-
I will bet that Helen Highwater cannot name a single verifiable prediction that has come true.

Omar Bongo June 13, 2011 at 1:48 pm #

Populations grow. Wow! No shit. Really?
Reasources deplete. Wow! No shit. Really?

welles June 13, 2011 at 1:55 pm #

i was gonna challenge on the ‘all their predictions are coming true’ premise as well, so seconds there.
re populations always growing, they don’t. japan and russian+western europe are severely contracting (i’m sure vlad has the stats lol)….
no doubt the club of rome and its the Limits to Growth of 1972 did not factor declining population into any ‘equation’ they jimmy’d up.
salutations to you omar. i have an icelandic brother in law named omar….

LewisLucanBooks June 13, 2011 at 2:03 pm #

Great post, this week. Ah, yes. Caylee. A few months ago I had no idea who she was. The woman who delivers my newspaper … we used to have conversations about other things. I was introducing her to the concepts of peak oil, climate change and general economic collapse.
Now she runs in and out, as if her hair is on fire, as she MUST get home and catch the next act of the trial. It seems to be moving at the speed of a well organized Kabuki play. We don’t seem to have much to talk about anymore, as I am not interested.
Jim’s post was ominous, and the weather here is ominous. Halfway between Portland and Seattle. Summer does not come. It rained again last night and the forecast for the rest of the week is not for rain, but for gray and cloudy. The temperatures are in the 40s at night and 60s during the day.
We are in a river valley, so sometimes it feels muggy, and other times I’m still resorting to a sweater. But, I have a feeling that the weather will suddenly change, summer will arrive with a vengeance, and we will be whimpering for moisture and any bit of shade.

Belisarius June 13, 2011 at 2:03 pm #

“That said, I was still astounded by the commercials I saw over the weekend for some Cadillac car that has over 500 hp and reaches 190 mph. WTF? Why would anyone “need” that much power in their car? So much for the auto industry making an effort for more practical cars.”
Perhaps, when the lower 80% cannot afford to drive, the lower traffic will allow speed limits to be raised for the rich. I wonder if it comes in an armoured version?

Cash June 13, 2011 at 2:04 pm #

Larry Summers is calling for more stimulus. Some stimulus might work if your industrial base hadn’t decamped to China.
Summers is up to his nuts in degrees in economics from fancy universities. But economists have more than proved themselves and their profession utterly worthless. So can someone down there please tell him to stfu before he and his fellow practitioners do more damage?

LewisLucanBooks June 13, 2011 at 2:05 pm #

Domes. The damn things leak. Take one of these and call me in the morning 🙂
http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/

San Jose Mom 51 June 13, 2011 at 2:05 pm #

As yet, no one has gone broke under-estimating the taste of the American public.
I heard a dreadful song by Katy Perry….”Show me your Peacock.” (I had my teenage daughter in the car.) The lyrics were over-the-top raunchy….but I guess it kind of fit the mood of the week with all the hoopla about Rep. Weiner.
What would Beethoven think?
SJmom

helen highwater June 13, 2011 at 2:15 pm #

I guess you just aren’t reading the same news articles I’m reading every day, if you don’t see any signs of impending contraction and serious resource depletion worldwide. Not to mention the changing climate which is making farming more difficult and in some places impossible. I just can’t see how your little scenario of everybody making a living by sitting at home in front of their computer could ever work. Heat all our homes with solar? Not very likely in my climate unless I have about a gazillion dollars to completely retrofit my house. And I didn’t say all populations were growing. But world population certainly is. Nearly 7 billion of us now, 9 billion predicted by 2050. Anyhow, I’m out of here. Got better things to do than argue with people who already have their minds made up that everything is just going to be hunky-dory.

bubbleheadMarc June 13, 2011 at 2:16 pm #

How about if we split the difference and settle for a Quonset hut?

xhalor June 13, 2011 at 2:20 pm #

Have you ever noticed that when someone in the International Fraternity of Bankers and Government Wonks says the word “recovery” that they never reference the period of history that we’re supposed to be recovering to? 90’s, 80’s, 70’s? How tenaciously we cling to that word.

Vlad Krandz June 13, 2011 at 2:27 pm #

Who is Caylee Anthony? Only the sweetest little girl ever – brutally butchered by “Top Mom” Casey Anthony. Where have these people been living? Under a rock? This is the biggest trial since OJ. This is MacBeth but for real. History writ small.
To such have I been reduced; forbidden by a monster named “Prog” (I kid you not) from talking about ****. As Gurdjieff said, one who sups with the devil should use a long spoon. Our contract, written in blood, he burned up with one expelled breath. He had a good point – and he doesn’t think I can do it. I will and then he will owe me.
Anyway, enjoy the show if you can – all of it! The Revolution will be televised. Get a solar powered wide screen. Also get battery power via an exercise bike. You don’t want to miss anything. Also someday the Emergency Broadcast System (the buzzing drone) will finally Speak. I doubt it will be worth listening to, but who knows? It’s good to know what the Goverment says is the Truth – or what it wants you to do. If they say come in, it might time to head for the hills.

bubbleheadMarc June 13, 2011 at 2:30 pm #

You noticed that too did you? I’ve been ranting for ages now to anyone who will listen [briefly] that we’ve never gotten back to the level of the early ’70s an essertion which should be indisputable at this point. So in other words each time there is a recession a new group of people is permanently marginalized, then ultimately forgotten entirely and discarded to their fate, whatever that might be. Those have not descended to the rock bottom of the ladder for instance “living in a van down by the river” like Chris Farley’s character [correct name?] the motivational speaker on Saturday Night Live.

xhalor June 13, 2011 at 2:37 pm #

“living in a van down by the river”
That would be me.

bubbleheadMarc June 13, 2011 at 2:38 pm #

CORRECTION TO ABOVE: SPELLING ERROR CHANGE “ESSERTION” TO ASSERTION.
ADD PHRASE: COMMA INSTEAD OF PERIOD THEN: ARE PRESUMABLY EXPECTED TO FEEL FORTUNATE THAT THEY’RE NOT ENTIRELY WITHOUT SHELTER.

wagelaborer June 13, 2011 at 2:39 pm #

I had to google it too, Vlad.
So now I know who it is, but the article didn’t say that the trial was being televised.
Amazing!

bubbleheadMarc June 13, 2011 at 2:54 pm #

Or in keeping with the clapped out Winnebago motor home theme employed by Jim this week which was anticipated by the retired gypsies who have taken to living in the desert in their trailers to avoid property taxes.

Qshtik June 13, 2011 at 2:54 pm #

Surly we can top bank bail outs
surly
churlishly rude or bad-tempered: a surly waiter.
plan on getting a gun and getting used tough weather.
As opposed to new tough weather?

Neon Vincent June 13, 2011 at 3:05 pm #

I bought Canadian real estate with my ex-girlfriend back in 2001, when the exchange rate was very favorable. As the Canadian dollar rose and real estate values rose, I made a killing–on paper. In reality, I had to keep upping my payments, so it really impinged on my cash flow. Also, it wasn’t very liquid, as my now ex-girlfriend was living in the place. When we broke up, I realized I could never get my share of the paper profits out of it and walked away. Nice parting gift to my ex. I hope she didn’t lose it.
As for the Chinese complaining about the currency, that’s a stick that the people who are trying to force austerity on the U.S. might be reluctant to beat their opponents with. After all, it wouldn’t look good for the “patriotic, All-American” political party to be seen kowtowing to foreign masters.

lbendet June 13, 2011 at 3:14 pm #

Wage,
They say a picture speaks a thousand words and none can express what this video showed. It’s easy to say spent uranium and white phospherous, drone bombardment, but how many of us can face the effects?
How hellish is that?
_______
The unintended consequences were in my mind when I wrote my post this morning was more along the lines of economic realities coming back to bite the elite. It’s obvious to all who understand economics that the system we live in is off the rails and that something has to give. But what if you can get the elite of the world to agree that x=y and whatever they say is real?
The international community swept $1.4 quadrillion under the carpet and they say the economy is turning around. They’ve all agreed to the matrix, but at some point it may just benefit someone to say it’s over.
When that happens who loses?

MarlinFive54 June 13, 2011 at 3:29 pm #

What’s that you say, Jim, another cabinet appointment.
Hancock 1863, Secretary of State, CFNation!
A facile wordsmith and tough as nails.
So be it.
-Marlin
JackieBlue, pretty good post last nite … had to jump in the cold shower after reading it. Sorry about what happened to you at Berkeley. Reminds me of a few years back about my stepdaughter, very attractive but a little wild. We used to be worried sick about her all the time. Everything turned out OK so far, though.
-Marlin

asia June 13, 2011 at 3:31 pm #

OUR FIRST CFN TWEET!
HOW SWEET FOR YOU TO REMEMBER US.
HOW HIP

asia June 13, 2011 at 3:34 pm #

How much outdoor space do they need?
and why will they be free?
PLEASE LOOK AT THE VIDEO ON MEAT JHK HAS ON THIS SITE.

asia June 13, 2011 at 3:40 pm #

I went to a movie about SOY for Afghanistan..
with the guy who brought soy there..
i believe africans and muslims have 4 to 7 kids per litter.
‘population in many european countries + japan is declining alarmingly fast. the fertility rate in africa is down markedly. ‘
Japan…Oh Pleeze….100 million or 150 ..O pleeze.
WHICH EURO COUNTRIES HAVE DECLINING POPULATIONS??

LewisLucanBooks June 13, 2011 at 3:42 pm #

ONLY if it’s made of papercrete. 🙂

Vlad Krandz June 13, 2011 at 3:45 pm #

Goolsbee? Is he related to the Marsh’s of Innsmouth?

xhalor June 13, 2011 at 3:51 pm #

I was done until I read your post. Wow, I hope you’re still reading; there’s a couple of things you need to know. It took me like twenty years to get all of that military brainwashing out of my head. Also, you are committing one of the worst crimes you can commit. You have allowed yourself to become the bullet in someone else’s gun. Once you’re spent, you’re spent. Don’t delude yourself into believing that the Marines give a fuck about you.

Vlad Krandz June 13, 2011 at 3:55 pm #

See how far you are from the “People” – whom you claim to be love? They suck don’t they? You better force yourself to watch more popular Tv so you can relate to them where they are. It’s part of the job of an “educated cadre”.

MADMAX June 13, 2011 at 4:03 pm #

Jim K: Some years ago the Olympics were held in Greece in Athens; how much of the money spent for this contrived spectacle was borrowed? I’ll bet this had a lot to do with the current bankruptcy of Greece. What do you think, JHK? More bread and circuses for the masses.

bubbleheadMarc June 13, 2011 at 4:03 pm #

Speaking of paper I just picked up a paperback copy of the book you recommended “LAMB: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal” by Christopher Moore. Already I am wondering if Biff is from the lost years in Tibet, and not from that fly-specked asshole-of-the-World popularly known as the holy land. But I’ll find out, because this is one of my days off The Nasty, Short & Brutish Barbershop, so I will settle in down in the bunker and inhale it in one marathon session then report back with a mini-review for your edification.

mow June 13, 2011 at 4:12 pm #

stay tuned for another war between china and vietnam

Vlad Krandz June 13, 2011 at 4:14 pm #

Don’t forget to feel sorry for aborted babies too. They try to get away or even defend themselves in the womb – so they obviously know what’s going on and feel pain. It’s a Nightmare out there – everyplace in the Western World and elsewhere too. This is what they want to bring to Afghanistan and Islam.

BeantownBill June 13, 2011 at 4:17 pm #

I’ve been thinking about something Scott wrote here on Saturday or Sunday. He said he believes that technology consumes more energy than it creates, or something like that. I don’t know whether or not that is true, but it’s a profound statement.
If true, it means the more we advance the closer our civilization approaches collapse. If false, it means we should accelerate our technology to get more and more energy.
CFN isn’t just a peak oil site, it’s a site about sustainability. Many CFNers believe Scott and feel that since the masses won’t change their ways, we are fated to contraction, if not outright doom. This is one valid explanation for the Fermi paradox.
If fate has determined we will always live in a closed system, then CFN will most likely be proven correct. But if we are not so fated, the universe has an infinite amount of energy and resources, and all we have to do is tap into a miniscule amount of it to thrive.
Where I tend to disagree with Scott is that in the initial stages of a developing technology the energy input may be greater than the output, but as that technology matures, the opposite comes into play. If we focused our brainpower on getting off-Earth resources (yeah, I know it sounds like off-his-meds Spider), eventually we would have abundance as that technology becomes more efficient.
My philosophical basis (and things do start with a philosphy) is that life is the highest expression of the universe. I don’t claim to know life’s purpose, but it just seems illogical that life would develop through the vastness of space and time, enveloped in an infinite field of energy and resources, and not have access to them.

xhalor June 13, 2011 at 4:22 pm #

It seems illogical …to you

Workdove June 13, 2011 at 4:29 pm #

I don’t watch TV, so I had no idea who Caylee was. I must say some of the posters here must exist in an alternate reality from the one I inhabit. Denial to the extreme.
Peak oil is real, global warming is real, deforestation is real, extinction is real, declines in fisheries is real, pollution and radiation are real. Sooner or later the protective ‘fantasy’ bubble most people live in will pop and then the cold dictates of reality will set in.
What happens when CEO’s finally realise that growth is no longer possible? That it doesn’t matter who fills their shoes, their grow or die companies are doomed? Collapse has not been pretty so far. The Middle East North Africa revolutions of this spring are coming to a city near you soon!

progressorconserve June 13, 2011 at 4:32 pm #

“Get out of the stock market.”
-jhk-
I’ve been above ground for over half a century, now. I’ve been saving and investing for well over 30 years – with at least some limited success.
I read widely; and JHK is, by far, my favorite writer these days because of his weekly examination of the short term and long term “worst case” scenarios for humanity – over which humanity has some control.
And this discussion thread is about the best thing going in cyberspace – Long may it wave, or. something.
All of this is to explain how weird it was for me this morning when JHK ended his missive and commanded “GET OUT OF THE STOCK MARKET.” In seconds, I opened a new browser window to my investment account. I figuratively had my hand over the SELL button on the whole shebang for a moment. I considered converting it all into a medium sized pile of US nickles in my basement, that I could swim through like Scrooge McDuck in his gold coins. (for those of you who follow more vintage children’s cartoons)
JHK had commanded – and I suddenly wanted OUT of the 1’s and 0’s of cyberinvesting and wanted to be IN the real world “where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.”
So, thanks for this week’s work as always, James.
And thanks for giving me a little insight into how market panics might actually start.
You know, if you’re going to start giving investment advice like this, you probably need to give yourself a warning label – – “past performance is never a guarantee of future returns.”
-kinda scary-
Interesting points being raised by some posters so far this week, btw!

peakhaiku June 13, 2011 at 4:45 pm #

bumpersticker lied
that said kill your TV for
it was suicide

xhalor June 13, 2011 at 4:47 pm #

Let’s hope “they” can avoid the temptation of all that 401K money. I’ve already read about tapping into federal employees’ retirement accounts.
Mission creep?

progressorconserve June 13, 2011 at 4:47 pm #

Bill,
We talk a lot about the “keyhole event,” on CFN.
Most of us automatically assume that this will be some sort of “population” keyhole – a drastic crash in numbers, followed by (if the species survives) rebuilding to some much lower population number and lower level of energy use.
Your post is a novel, and more optimistic, view of things. Thanks.
And be sure to check out the end of last week’s thread, btw, after your last post.

turkle June 13, 2011 at 5:03 pm #

I think James is channeling H.P. Lovecraft this week.
“Slowly but inexorably crawling upon my consciousness and rising above every other impression, came a dizzying fear of the unknown; a fear all the greater because I could not analyse it, and seeming to concern a stealthily approaching menace; not death, but some nameless, unheard-of thing inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent.”

Pangolin June 13, 2011 at 5:06 pm #

There isn’t going to be a day we can point to and say, “This was the day it collapsed.” In China the Quing Dynasty was a corrupt piece of junk by 1850. It took another hundred years of rebellion, invasion, counter-invasion, counter-rebellion, and general freaking chaos before Mao re-united the country a hundred years later.
Then it was another 40 years before chinese people could aspire to anything more than basic, food, housing, clothing and medical care. Now China is possibly the most polluted and toxic-ridden country in the world due to the introduction of capitalism and corruption.
It isn’t going to happen. We’re going to rot like a compost pile that never gets turned. Anything that breaks the surface reveals an unholy stink so we’re just going to leave it alone.
We’re Mulch.

loveday June 13, 2011 at 5:06 pm #

Hi Jim and all the gang
Well, I have to say this weeks offering was a mixed bag. Yes we are going to see a long hot summer of simmering and boiling rage in the streets of the world. Even James Carville admits this on TV. Wow the enormity of this admission done in the so called mainstream media is stunning. So maybe the blinders are starting to come off of some of the so called elite. I feel Ireland or Greece will light the powder magazine in Europe, watch for plenty of fireworks there with blood on the streets.
Jim very disappointed that there hasn’t been a full essay devoted to the Fukushima disaster, last week a Japanese official admitted that the disaster is worse than a meltdown and that the main island of Japan may have to be permanently evacuated. Cesium levels are continuing to rise on the west coast of North America. There does not appear to be an end in sight to this catastrophe. The implications will be with the world for centuries!
As for the continuing NASCAR bashing well, just so you know I just attended Poconos 5 Hour Energy 500 last weekend. The people you meet there are teachers, carpenters, doctors, nurses, etc… Not dumb folks. Plenty of very smart people that can build anything, fix anything and are very willing to help their neighbors. Meet some Jim, make friends, if things continue to worsen economically you will need friends like that.
Take care all
loveday

bproman June 13, 2011 at 5:06 pm #

See you at the casino.

Belisarius June 13, 2011 at 5:09 pm #

“Get out of the stock market.” –JHK
He is likely correct.
Been “out” of the market for awhile. Sold all the “growth” stocks ~2005-6 and bought silver coins, SLV, and T-Bill funds. I was early, missed the top but did well. Didn’t jump back in for the QE cruise. Maybe it is time to sell the SLV, and the bond funds and buy bear (inverse) ETFs? I wonder if the brokers will survive to pay off if I’m right?

LewisLucanBooks June 13, 2011 at 5:17 pm #

Enjoy! Moore is nuts. He’s a hoot! (Mon.)

BeantownBill June 13, 2011 at 5:26 pm #

Yep, and my logic is as good or better than yours.

Doug June 13, 2011 at 5:30 pm #

I get the feeling that I am unusual if not quite unique in the world. There is no paragraph in this that makes sense, and hardly a sentence. To me this article is, to paraphrase Wolfgang Pauli, “Not even wrong”.
Really… what exactly does this mean:
“Anyway, let’s be clear that money has become a world unto itself now, a self-referential hall-of-mirrors that only sees itself and is increasingly confused by what it sees in that self.”
I have no idea what that means. Maybe only those with an IQ way in access of 140 will have the privilege of understanding this mans writing.
or this:
“The sad fact is we don’t want to go where history wants to take us:”
Really… history has wants? Next the author will tell us about the sex life, or TV viewing habits of history. I see writing like this as just another example of entertainment devoid of significance, and one of the many reasons that our culture is in its current situation.

progressorconserve June 13, 2011 at 5:35 pm #

“Looks like Alabama signed into effect a really tough immigration law…..What’s your view…”
-cash-
Cash, my view on these laws is more nuanced than you might think. And the bottom line is that the Arizona law is making its way to SCOTUS as we speak. If it is upheld, it is likely that the Georgia law will be upheld and that most of the Alabama law will be upheld.
If Arizona’s law is struck down, then they will try again and other states will continue to “triangulate” the SCOTUS ruling to do what they can to help their own legal citizens as best they are able.
=================
Cash, I will also add the observation that what seems like a large majority of the illegal Hispanic population in and around Atlanta is already gone. And that has to be mostly due to the collapse of the economy, more than the new GA law – which doesn’t go into effect until July 1.
I don’t know if all these folks went back home (which is what I think I would have done, if I were in their positions) – Or if they have gone to other states with different job markets and/or more liberal family welfare policies that encourage the “undocumented” to apply and accept welfare.
Anecdotally, trailer parks and lower end apartments that were bulging at the seams with the undocumented 3 years ago – are now back to (usually) just a few people per unit. And the large chicken processing plant that I pass regularly now has mostly native born whites and blacks working there again – I know for a fact that that particular processor went about 8 years where (truly) all the line workers were Hispanic – and almost all were illegal.
You know that I joined FAIR some time ago, now.
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer
And that I am researching to find an even better organization to present to CFN’ers interested in these issues.
I’ve got nothing at all against the illegal immigrants, as individuals. But in the face of “peak everything?” I think a moratorium on US immigration (legal and illegal) is the best thing to do right now.

Bustin J June 13, 2011 at 5:36 pm #

welles said, “the Limits to Growth, if i’m not mistaken, had the world running out of tons of resources and drowning in pollution by the 1990s.”
… if nothing was done, yes. Unfortunately, the warnings had a temporary effect of focusing on solving problems, once solved, were forgotten. Now the population IS too big, the crises ARE imminent, etc.
“has your area gotten cleaner?”
OSHA. EPA. These agencies were created and granted powers to enforce safety and environmental standards. Over time they were stripped of that power through budget draining or other dirty tricks- by conservatives who now howl about its ineffectiveness.
Thus, in the absence of standards and regulation, companies have continued, for decades, at an ever-accelerating pace, polluting the environment. As GDP has risen to its stratospheric heights, so too has the fires burning all over the world.
In your hemisphere, welles, the government is allowing clearing of buffer zones around beef-lot and plowed clearcuts in the amazon, reflecting the extreme hubris of the USDA’s conservative Ag management which resulted in soil erosion, toxic runoff, and unsustainable practices. NASA’s eye in the sky sees the rainforest burning, vivisected, blowing away.
Brazil seems unable or uninterested in the preservation of one of Earth’s major life-support systems. So while the music is blasting in your garage and you’re cooking up the Beef that takes up so many resources, celebrating the new life of a young child, just imagine: that kid has no future and neither do you, your buddies, or your fucking garden. Your little community will be eating each other within 20 years.
A community, which, by the way, is just a bunch of lazy illiterates living off the ‘fat of the land’ if I’m not mistaken.
Somewhere in there is a cultural message about the proper execution of life being one of consumption- and enjoyment, above all else. Pretty flat philosophy if you ask me. Be happy- be ignorant- ignore all warnings, doubt all Cassandras, revel in the sensations of a full belly, beer and weed.
To me this is a rather ignoble end for 80,000 years of human evolution. A party at the end of the world.
“have cars gotten cleaner?” EPA.
“are the rivers still on fire?” EPA.
“is the air as dirty?” EPA.
“is there no land to grow food, or is food more abundant?” Complex question. Food is abundant. 47 million people in the USA subject to food scarcity. Agriculture, America’s #1 export. Yet there is the biggest ever dead zone in the Gulf. toxic metals have been deposited in soil and fertilizer amendments to poison any future generations. Unhealthy food is epidemic.
As global warming continues to intensify we’ll see the biggest dust bowls ever recorded. Food prices will rise. Africa will starve to death.
Beantown says, “My philosophical basis (and things do start with a philosphy) is that life is the highest expression of the universe. I don’t claim to know life’s purpose, but it just seems illogical that life would develop through the vastness of space and time, enveloped in an infinite field of energy and resources, and not have access to them.”
Life is routinely destroyed by the universe.
Life’s complexity requires a large amount of energy to evolve- geochemical and solar energy, much of it. All life is designed in one way or another to borrow a little bit of energy from a process that is already heading downhill. Our fundamental reality is entropic in nature.
Our problem is that we are creating massive energy deficits within our system (nature). CO2, carbon dioxide, is a perfect example of this. Once a substance is burned, it releases its energy once, and is more or less permanently lowered to an inaccessible energy state where it cannot be made to produce again unless an larger amount of energy is used to raise the energy back up to where we can, again, knock it downhill.
Our Earth system is calibrated (or WAS calibrated) to allow a certain number of these reactions to occur, within a range, to which these molecules could be re-converted back into the system (via plants).
Specifically, the problem is the nature of CO2. It must be gathered (energy cost) focused (energy cost) and then transformed (energy cost).
The capacity isn’t there to restore order at the rate we are disordering it. There are laws of nature.
So, 50,000 people standing around drinking beer and watching NASCAR is in fact a gigantic chemical reaction- all downhill- all waste. Colossal. Bit by bit, cell by cell, the human flesh is withering under a constant barrage of Ultraviolet energy, sugar and alcohol and nicotine in the veins, liver, and capillaries. The chicken and grilled swine all the product of one-shot fossil fuel bonanza, all previously generating CO2.
Contemporary America is characterized by a wasting creature conspicuously absent of any coherent spiritual existence.
Pining for a technological solution is like crashing your car into a jersey barrier, flying through the window, while entranced by the belief that you’ll land in a big, fluffy pillow that was invented, manufactured, and delivered in the .03 seconds before impact.
The only rationale I can think of for a cavalier attitude toward climate change is a wholesale ignorance of how the laws of the universe work.
Understanding energy is a 4 credit college course. I’d suggest teaching children first, since adults seem impervious to instruction.
Spider illustrated the NASCAR-American zeitgeist, LAST WEEK: “we need more and more consumerism, we need more of everything, behind all of this are jobs, so more consumerism means more jobs…”
This is a fine distillation of the poison we’ve been spoon-fed by mass culture and the political machine.
Spider, unable to properly digest anything resembling facts, thinks this is the solution, not the problem. “KILL NATURE” he concludes.
When the Native Americans called the white man “Insane” this is exactly what he was talking about. We are a nation of exquisitely inverted idealism.

xhalor June 13, 2011 at 5:38 pm #

How much of a heads up do you expect to get in a boda fide panic. Did you get a courtesy email from your broker in 2008?

ctemple June 13, 2011 at 5:38 pm #

Jim definitly has a way with words, he’s become the unofficial writer for the 21st century depression, part Walter Winchell, part H.P Lovecraft, and part Cornell Woolrich.
p.s. Aimlow Joe was not here.
Haw

wagelaborer June 13, 2011 at 5:59 pm #

Yeah, I decided last month to “get out of the stock market”.
I called up my friendly 401K rep and told her I wanted my money.
My money. That’s what they keep telling me. Not like that nasty old Social Security, oh, no.
I have total control over my money.
Not. They wouldn’t give it to me. Unless I get fired, which is looking increasingly likely.

progressorconserve June 13, 2011 at 6:00 pm #

“Anyway, try this: China signs agreement with Cuba to drill for oil in the Gulf. (happened last week)”
-malagodi-
Our US “elites” may still be “Elite” for the time being – but this China/Cuba thing proves that they are NOT the least bit SMART.
Nature (and politics) abhor a vacuum. Did the US really think that Cuba would sit there forever – rebuilding their 1951 Chevys, after the collapse of the Chinese.
So to placate a few aging Cuban “freedom fighters” who happened to live and vote in Florida – that infernal swing state that gave us The Hanging Chads and W BushII –
They left Cuba wide open for the Chinese –
-short sighted morons-

BeantownBill June 13, 2011 at 6:01 pm #

You’re welcome. Could you be more specific about which posting you are referring to?

metuselah June 13, 2011 at 6:08 pm #

Forgive me, Bill, but my grasp of thermodynamics is extremely shallow, so I might have this all wrong. I thought that the reason the universe is expanding is because energy is always being degraded to a lower state. I.e. What we’re experiencing is inflation on a cosmic scale. (Yes, god is just another bankster fraudster). That means that a given “dollar energy” buys us less and less, and this will continue until the whole thing eventually (“dollar energy”, temperature) runs to absolute zero.

BeantownBill June 13, 2011 at 6:09 pm #

Regarding JHK’s posting this week, Ray Kurzweil will be on Bill Maher’s Real Time on HBO 10 pm this Friday. Regardless of what you may think of him, he’s interesting to watch.

progressorconserve June 13, 2011 at 6:13 pm #

I’ve got Chinese on the brain, apparently.
Which may make me have something in common with Cash. – inside joke.
Anyway: “Did the US really think that Cuba would sit there forever – rebuilding their 1951 Chevys, after the collapse of the Chinese.”
Obviously, I meant the collapse of the Russians and the USSR, NOT the Chinese, and the PDRC.
And I know Russians are from Russia, btw.

wagelaborer June 13, 2011 at 6:15 pm #

That is a very disturbing video. I try to imagine how hellish life is for the people of Iraq, and my imagination fails me.
I don’t think that the ruling class wants to give up the matrix. If the economy collapses, the bonuses stop.
Will the US and NATO be allowed to bomb Libya into submission, and set up an African base to further strip and rape Africa?
I don’t know. We live right here in the belly of the beast, and none of us do a damn thing about it.

xhalor June 13, 2011 at 6:15 pm #

The melding of biology and hard technology; inevitable. Always interesting to hear what Ray has to say about it.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100125122101.htm
Here we go…

progressorconserve June 13, 2011 at 6:17 pm #

I backed you up after your last post last week in a hot tempered manner @ 11:18. Interesting outcome. Check it out.

Eleuthero June 13, 2011 at 6:18 pm #

I just love the way the Republicans keep
coming out with economic rhetoric that is
the equivalent to rearranging the deck
chairs on the Titantic.
They keep talking about how fewer regulations
(gee, that worked out well for the BANKING
system now didn’t it?) and keeping the Bush
tax cuts (esp. for the rich … gee, hasn’t
“trickle down” worked out great!?) is a
formula for more “growth”.
What no Republican, not even Ron Paul, has EVER
addressed is this: What in the United States
REMAINS that can “grow”??? Oil is a sunset
industry and they know it which is why not one
new refinery has been built since 1973. Machine
tools are in retreat because the world is glutted
with everything from furniture (even GOODWILL
often turns down DONATED furniture) to
construction equipment (construction has 20%
unemployment).
Then there’s our “shining star” … the SOFTWARE
industry. What a joke. It’s a redux of 1999
again but the start-ups are hiring kid programmers
for $12/hour. All the good biz software has
already been built and tweaked twenty times over.
“Cloud” computing is the new buzzword and already
there have been catastrophic failures of this
software at companies that are its biggest
proponents … like VmWare. Trust me … as a
systems programmer in a world of programmers
who are a standard deviation less skilled than
1985 … cloud technology is WAAAAAAY too complex
for a bunch of mediocretins to cobble together
securely.
I expect Wackenhut to do well because I expect
our permanent economic depression to lead to
inexorable increases in frustration-based
crimes of all sorts in the coming years.
It might be good times for makers of psych
meds too because a LOT more people are going
to be going bonkers in the next decade. Loss
of affluence on the scale we’re going to witness
is unbearable to a people who’ve been used to
living like kings their whole lives.
In some ways it might be good for the national
soul to actually have less money to piss away.
Maybe we’ll rediscover things like … our
FRIENDS and/or the art of conversation. Well,
here’s hoping.
E.

wagelaborer June 13, 2011 at 6:19 pm #

How is it that fetuses can feel pain, but not newborn baby boys?
I find it strange that the same people who worry about pain in developing tissue can watch a newborn baby screaming in fear and pain while his penis is mutilated and announce that he feels nothing.

wagelaborer June 13, 2011 at 6:25 pm #

And don’t forget the depleted aquifers!
Yes, if you ignore mercury in the water, the near extinction of large fish, the loss of topsoil, Monsanto’s GMO nightmares, the murder of the last hunter gatherers, not to mention the murder of millions of people who happen to live on top of coveted resources, things are going just fine.
We’re getting our own name for a mass extinction event! Such an honor.
But I’m still alive, so the Earth must be OK.

xhalor June 13, 2011 at 6:26 pm #

One of the last (and I do mean last) jobs I had was hand stacking ice and snow choked pallets in a refrigerated Mal Wart distribution center in northern Indiana. Brutal. One payday I noticed I had a new 401K deduction. Didn’t sign anything, didn’t talk to anyone. Since I caught it right away, the amount involved is not important. I tried for awhile to get that money from Fidelity, but, eventually it became pointless. Just as well. Now that I’m living in a van down by the river I would just piss it away on tub of night crawlers and a six pack of Old Milwaukee.

postitnote June 13, 2011 at 6:28 pm #

More rude words for the so-called “conspiracy theorists,” even though you ARE ONE!

xhalor June 13, 2011 at 6:36 pm #

“I’m the slime oozing out of your TV set”
Frank Zappa

progressorconserve June 13, 2011 at 6:37 pm #

Galactic – there’s enough trouble in the World without you going to look for more.
“Why is it that in virtually ALL of your columns you take a mean-spirited swipe at southerners and the South, usually by mentioning Nascar in some snide way?”
-GE, to jhk-
NASCAR may have originated in the moonshine running South of folklore. And I grew up around the short tracks, drag strips, and dirt tracks of the real South where NASCAR originated.
But NASCAR today is no more Southern than their “Stock Cars” are STOCK. If anything, NASCAR today is a North American corporate bastard child.
Fun to watch, but NASCAR hasn’t been Southern – and hasn’t been worth the price of a ticket – in 20 years or more.

San Jose Mom 51 June 13, 2011 at 6:41 pm #

I did not get any calls prior to the 2008 crash. My husband likes our financial advisor. I think he’s stupid and only has his own best interests in mind. Back in 2006, I pitched a fit that we invest 20K into precious metal mutual funds. That’s the best investment we’ve made in a while, no thanks to the advisor.
In 2008, I pulled out of the stock market (at 10,000) with my 401K’s and now they’ve been sitting in a cash account making a pittance in interest. I just never feel moved to do anything with them. I get a lot of grief from my husband and the FA, but I stick to my guns. I really enjoy the fact that my money isn’t going to disappear. But the bulk of our assetts are in stocks and bonds, so if that goes down the tubes, I’m sure we’ll have to adjust to DRASTIC lifestyle changes.
Also, in 2009, I bought a hundred silver American Eagles at $18 and stuck them in the safety deposit box (with a lot of eye-rolling snarkyness from my husband). Now that the price has almost doubled, he wishes I had bought more.
I wish I could clean out my 401K without the tax huge penalties, buy coins and just feel safe and secure.
SJmom

Eleuthero June 13, 2011 at 6:41 pm #

I think the bankers and their political puppets
LOVE conspiracy theorists. They can get away
with their malfeasance in the plain light of
day because the “troofers” are busy trying to
find the second shooter in the Kennedy
Assassination, proving that 9/11 was the Reichstag
Fire, and proving that Obama is a Kenyan.
My point is NOT that the conspiracy theorists are
right or wrong about any given theory. My point
is that if they devoted half of that energy to
fighting felonious activities amongst our
governors and moneykeepers we’d be a helluva lot
better off than trying to rewrite history.
E.

Qshtik June 13, 2011 at 6:54 pm #

Jim’s advice to “get out of the stock market” may just be a perfect contrarian indicator like infamous Time Magazine covers of yore featuring a growling bear.
My own proprietary over-bought/over-sold oscillator (which I refer to as Range Ratio Indicator) is more over-sold now than it was on June 30th of last year.

asia June 13, 2011 at 7:01 pm #

My conspiracy theory..Divide n Conquer!

xhalor June 13, 2011 at 7:08 pm #

As soon as there were valuable commodities, there were markets. Even if it is just hawgs and dandelion greens. I’m not neccessarily concerned about currency (it comes and goes). But you guys are working the markets. A supremely valuable skill. Precious metals? Sucks for currency (think ridges on the edge of a US quarter dollar). If the guys with the guns find out you have gold (…food, water, teenage girls) in your possesion, they’re just gonna take it from you.
Property and Community. It’s worked for millenia. I know that your financial advisor has the best of intentions, but he or she probably didn’t get the courtesy email in 2008 either.

wagelaborer June 13, 2011 at 7:13 pm #

The thing is that they get away with their crimes because of the beliefs that Americans hold about their country. That we are all in this together, that the ruling class are just folks like us, and, by golly, if I win that lottery, I’ll be rich too.
If it is unthinkable that certain people in power would kill 3,000 people on 9-11, then it is certainly unthinkable that you would be allowed to lose your 401K, or that your bank deposits would be uninsured.
And the War on Terrorism is justified if you believe that those evil doers, the Muslims, are out to get you and your SUV, just out of sheer jealousy for your freedoms.
And wiretapping your phone, reading your emails, feeling you up at the airport, torturing prisoners… all of it – totally justified because of the evildoers.
That’s why I spend energy on such things – to combat the complacency of average Americans.

lbendet June 13, 2011 at 7:14 pm #

Divide and conquer has been a useful device for the elite for centuries. Works every time. And when people don’t understand how rhetoric is used against their interests it makes it all the more tragic. Why because people are going to be hurting, be exposed to toxins and will be living a much shorter life than their forebarers, that seems certain.
Interesting point. I came across an article which describes the scenario we are seeing in Rep Gov. states such as Michigan and Wisconsin which are looking more like small dictatorships if you figure they have come up with laws for emergency situations where they can over ride elections by replacing elected officials with their chosen ones. This article goes way beyond what I just described and worth checking out.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Death-Of-Democracy-St-by-Jillian-Barclay-110611-942.html

metuselah June 13, 2011 at 7:21 pm #

Jim is correct. The stock market is a “hall of mirrors” created and maintained by the banks. The banks own the stock market as they own the corporations that makeup the stock market. They use this “hall of mirrors” to scare people and manipulate them into accepting government policies that otherwise most people would not accept. Make no mistake, the banks also own the government, but without generating consent among people to be governed by the government, the banks could not manage control over this system.
Jim is correct in that I think he now understands that people are beginning to perceive this banking holographic matrix for what it is. When this perception reaches a “critical mass” among people, they will simple refuse to participate in the system and lend it any legitimacy. We are fast reaching this stage, but when exactly it will happen is anybody’s guess.

bubbleheadMarc June 13, 2011 at 7:58 pm #

Of special interest to the Clusterfuckians would be the revelation today that Casey Anthony, aka “tot-mom” got a tattoo on her left shoulder several days after the death of her 2 year old daughter which says in Italian script “La Bella Vida”. It would’ve been hoping for too much that she’d gotten “La Dolce Vita”, but the odds of her having ever heard of Frederico Fellini are about as slim as her chances of getting clemency at this point.

JonathanSS June 13, 2011 at 8:00 pm #

Maybe we’ll rediscover things like … our FRIENDS and/or the art of conversation.

What can be done if people I encounter want to engage in small talk & are critical and judgemental when I try to steer the conversation to more important matters? Do I have to continue listening to my neighbor whine about diesel prices while he has a big ass F250 diesel parked in his driveway?
BTW, the vast majority (diesel neighbor included) have no idea that it takes more barrels of crude to produce a given gallon of diesel than it does regular gas. Diesel contains more energy (+ 17%) than regular.
I would rather read a book or read things like you have written on the internet than listen to most people’s babble. Does that make me antisocial or just an introvert?

scott June 13, 2011 at 8:03 pm #

My expectation about the stock market has been that it would go down through the ending of QE2 then QE3 would be announced except it probably wont be called QE3. Then the market continues it’s relentless lower left to upper right trajectory until it’s time for QE4. Anybody care to speculate on the newest newspeak name for money printing? Anyway, hyperinflationary depression it is.

Bustin J June 13, 2011 at 8:16 pm #

On Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the Day of Prayer, the Day of Football, the Day of Nacho Cheese, the Holiest of Holy days, the Day of the Sun to the ancient people of the Nile River Delta, Vlad said, “Political Correctness teaches that the asshole is just as good as the vagina. No difference! Even though with one you need copious lubrication to avoid injury.”
I think we have to review your sources here. I am unable to find any resource on the web that claims that an asshole is as good as a vagina, outside Spider’s posts.

BeantownBill June 13, 2011 at 8:40 pm #

You’re sort of right, Mika. The universe did inflate an instant after the big bang (and so far observations have borne this out), and we see that today when we measure velocities of stars and galaxies. However, the true story is more complicated, and I apologize in advance if I confused you.
Galaxies are receding faster than theory says they ought to, unless an extra force is causing everything to accelerate away from everything else.
Gravity, which is an attractive force, ordinarily would have slowed down the rate of expansion resulting from inflation, but this extra force is repulsive and is stronger than gravity, so the net effect is that galaxies are traveling away from us faster and faster. Eventually, each galaxy will be so far away from any other galaxy that their light can never reach us. When this happens our night sky will be pitch black – we will never see the stars again. This force, the nature of which is a mystery, is called “dark energy”.
What you are talking about thermodynamically, is the heat death of the universe. Every star, every galaxy, every atom and every sub-atomic particle of which they are ultimately made, has a finite life span. Eventually they will all decay into nothingness and the universe will be empty.
Scientists used to think gravity would ultimately stop the expansion because it is attractive and would pull everything back into a point before it could decay into nothingness, and create a new big bang – which would inflate outwards and create new sub-atomic particles, until gravity brought everything together yet again, in an infinite cycle. This is called the big bang bang bang theory.
But, in reality, because dark energy propels everything away from everything else, all the matter and energy in the universe will dissipate because it never had the chance to shrink into a point and reignite.
Sorry, this is really a somewhat shaky description of the fate of the universe, but I don’t want to take up too much bandwidth here.

progressorconserve June 13, 2011 at 9:08 pm #

OK, Bill – I know this is a typo of sorts, but I just can’t resist poking you about it, because
“This is called the big bang bang bang theory.”
-btb-
– sounds so much like an old-timey Western movie.
I’ve been sitting here guffawing as I type this.
I may well be the only one who finds a thing like this to be funny, though.
Maybe you mean the Big Bang, Big Crunch Theory?
AKA, the theory of the Oscillating Universe.
No longer generally believed by most cosmologists, I understand, but still my favorite theory of creation of the Universe.
================

BeantownBill June 13, 2011 at 9:17 pm #

“Life is routinely destroyed by the universe.
Life’s complexity requires a large amount of energy to evolve- geochemical and solar energy, much of it. All life is designed in one way or another to borrow a little bit of energy from a process that is already heading downhill. Our fundamental reality is entropic in nature.”
Bustin, I do like how you think, and I agree, but I also disagree somewhat with what you say.
How do you know the universe routinely destroys life? Give me an example of the “routineliness”
other than your sample of one – life on Earth. I can envision a very stable world where evolution has taken a path of immortality rather than telomeric-unraveling like here. In such a world death would be rare, not routine.
And, yes, although entropy MAY win out, it will win in literally dozens of trillions of years, so I wouldn’t live my life as if entropy was breathing down my neck.
What I see is that the universe MAY be slowly winding down (through thermodynamic law), but during this process the universe, through its creation of life is evolving in complexity to the point where we really don’t know how things will ultimately turn out.
So why be negative?

metuselah June 13, 2011 at 9:19 pm #

all the matter and energy in the universe will dissipate
==
And then all motion, and therefore time as we understand it, will come to an end. So we’re back at my point. 🙂

metuselah June 13, 2011 at 9:25 pm #

So why be negative?
==
Because there is an end and because we can see it. 🙂

BeantownBill June 13, 2011 at 9:29 pm #

Procon, I’m sort of tired right now to look at the results from your 11:18 post, but I remember reading it last night – so thank you very much for backing me up. Maybe the result is that others agree, and also that the posts from then on seem more focused on what this site is really about?

BeantownBill June 13, 2011 at 9:42 pm #

What I stated to you is current theory in cosmology. But as time goes on, surely most physics will be modified by new observations and development of new theories.
Look at my recent comment to Bustin: the universe, as represented by life, is getting more complex. I’m implying that endings trillions of years in the future are not writ in stone; maybe Life will have some say in the outcome. And even if this is not so, an ending 50 or 100 trillion years in the future is so far out as to be meaningless to us mere mortals as currently constituted.

BeantownBill June 13, 2011 at 9:52 pm #

Really, Procon, astronomers do refer to this as the big bang x3 or 4, albeit in a lighthearted manner. You are right, this is more formally known as the oscillating universe theory, too.
This theory is definitely a “positive” theory, whereas the latest theory, as I described earlier, is pretty gloomy.
But my favorite creation theory is the steady state. Unfortunately, this has been totally discredited by modern science, although I think and hope it may come back someday in modified form. After all, Einstein dabbled with the cosmological constant and ultimately wrote it off, but now it’s been revived to explain the source of dark energy.

metuselah June 13, 2011 at 10:02 pm #

Mere mortals we are, and mere mortals we shall always remain.
In the mean time, back on earth, the banksters are busy killing us off any which way they can. Whether it be by way of arsenic fed to chickens, foods laced with cancer causing viruses, gm foods that cause sterility, poisoned water, depressing dehumanizing living environments, wars, systemic depredations and deprivations, gov mafia schools that breed ignorant idiots, and on and on.

rippedthunder June 13, 2011 at 10:11 pm #

I was cut and it hurt like hell! My boy was not cut but he still compains about it like it was some sort of mistake on me! f him. this country is run for profit! cutting foreskin pays off big-time!

gavin June 13, 2011 at 10:31 pm #

Good article. I like the Lovecraftian feel of it, something churning out there… anyway, It reminded me of a recent revelation I had. I was wondering why, after my time in the service, after learning a trade, and after getting an education, and even considering my complete lack of a criminal record, why I am still stuck in a job that pays barely $300 a week, often closer to $200? (And why are all the applications for employment I put in met only with crushing silence?) The reason that finally came to me, is that society does not value any of what I have done. The question that arose from that answer was of course, what then, at this point in America’s history, does society value? My inner cynic immediately spat out, “Nothing!” but that wasn’t right. A society that values nothing would not exist, and very plainly, society does exist, with all its multi-tiered rules and institutions. After a lot of thought, and the question, ‘what does society value?’ is koan-like in it’s baffling simplicity, I settled on an answer. Society values money and money alone. Not education, not hard work, not skill, nor any other Norman Rockwell stuff. Consider what this idea explains. Money attracts money. Only people with money get money. People with money get to do what they want (okay, mostly) But obviously, the rich get away with things that would put someone such as myself in jail, with no fancy hotel to stay in while I await trial. Well, that’s not SO bad, is it? Societies throughout history have always valued money, and those that had it have always lived better than those without. But the implications of money being the one thing valued by society are scary. For example, what happens when the whole money thing doesn’t work out, and it all grinds to a halt? Then we’ve taken out the one thing society values, and with no set of shared values at all, I posit that society will not exist (before coalescing around a different set of values, hopefully not ethnicity, caste, or viciousness). In a more immediate sense, given that money is freedom, and arguably life itself, I understand now why people will kill (and worse) for it. As money continues to “roar up” as Will Rogers said, I think we will see a lot more crimes of desperation, as people with nothing make one last grab at the trailing edge of the money as it apotheoses up to the sky.

trippticket June 13, 2011 at 11:20 pm #

Q, I’ve been thinking about this week waxing/waning thing, and I’m increasingly convinced that it’s simply a matter of perspective. You are considerably older than I am, inseparable from the growth paradigm, so you see a week as closing down, coming to an end. It’s your strident linearity of thought speaking. But for a 37 year old like me, with a brand new lease on a brand new life, each week seems to build into the next. Hence my perception of a week’s waxing instead of waning.
It’s not as if I don’t know that waning would be the more appropriate term in our culture; I just don’t actually experience it that way.

trippticket June 13, 2011 at 11:24 pm #

“I was cut and it hurt like hell! My boy was not cut but he still compains about it like it was some sort of mistake on me! f him. this country is run for profit! cutting foreskin pays off big-time!”
My son, Oliver, is uncut. We’ve had a few issues with that choice over the last year, his first year, but I still think it was a good decision. Genital mutilation isn’t really my thing. However dressed up in “science” it is. It’s still genital mutilation. The sort of thing we tend to frown on Islam about.

trippticket June 13, 2011 at 11:34 pm #

“My point is NOT that the conspiracy theorists are
right or wrong about any given theory. My point
is that if they devoted half of that energy to
fighting felonious activities amongst our
governors and moneykeepers we’d be a helluva lot
better off than trying to rewrite history.
E.”
Hear, hear!
Or if they used the same energy to just buckle down and get busy building a viable future, we might actually have one.

thomas99 June 13, 2011 at 11:53 pm #

My family became Minnesotans in 1977 and we’re still not accepted as citizens of this great state yet. We retain our eastern roots, and it shows. Good luck to Michelle Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty as they seek the presidency of a very critical nation. I have one word for the both of them: NAIVE. Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey could teach both of these a**holes about what it means to come out as as runner up, with dignity. Michelle would make a great running mate to Sarah Palin (it’s a no brainer} and as for TPaw…he doesn’t deserve the dignity of a response.

trippticket June 13, 2011 at 11:54 pm #

“Now that the price has almost doubled, he wishes I had bought more.”
Why? That just means that the US federal reserve note is worth half as much as it was two years ago. Which is great for “capital preservation,” I guess, good for you, so long as you cash that paper or metal in for actual wealth before the opportunity slips away.
I chatted briefly with John Michael Greer about this, and he agrees with me. Wealth in a contractionary world isn’t going to look anything like wealth in a growth world. Gold/silver may have been fringe in the growth world, but they are probably pointless on the downslope.
Surely there will be a brief window where you can make your foresight count, but I personally hate trying to time things out that tight, and I think it’s distracting your attention from what really matters in the long view. I just prefer to put whatever currency I have into permanent perennial systems, the kind that always represented wealth before paper was invented, or even gold refined – land, trees, fertility, livestock, equipment, passive comforts, community, weapons, etc.
My wife and I keep our farm and market money in a little metal Monopoly box. At first I didn’t think gold and silver belonged in there with the paper, but I definitely do now, since I’ve had a few years to think it through.
Just my .02 Do what makes you comfortable.

messianicdruid June 14, 2011 at 12:07 am #

“…part Walter Winchell, part H.P Lovecraft, and part Cornell Woolrich.”
The humour is definately Argus Hamilton.

trippticket June 14, 2011 at 12:11 am #

“”I’m the slime oozing out of your TV set”
Frank Zappa”
I’m a personal fan of this little nugget from Mr. Zappa:
Without deviation from the norm progress is not possible.
It has adorned my refrigerator for years now. The same refrigerator that’s about to get traded for a chest freezer version coupled with an external thermostat to raise the temp to about 38, drawing somewhere in the neighborhood of 125 watts, and residing in the laundry room to cut heat production in our south Georgia, air conditioning-free farmhouse.
That’s about 8% of the power an upright fridge uses. Once we get to 8% across the board, then, and only then, we will feel like a tiny solar array is practical and responsible.
Interesting fellow that Frank Zappa.

messianicdruid June 14, 2011 at 12:20 am #

The “felonious activities” are the conspiracies. How can you “fight” them if you can’t even get people to realize what is happening?

trippticket June 14, 2011 at 12:22 am #

“How is it that fetuses can feel pain, but not newborn baby boys?
I find it strange that the same people who worry about pain in developing tissue can watch a newborn baby screaming in fear and pain while his penis is mutilated and announce that he feels nothing.”
Ibid.
Just another major league disconnect for the most apoplectic among us.
I was at my great aunt’s and uncle’s in Jacksonville, FL, over the weekend, and my aunt was telling me about their small footprint just as I was watching the lawn sprinklers go off and the chemical spray company pull up to treat the grass.
We should be in the clear any day now.

trippticket June 14, 2011 at 12:26 am #

“What can be done if people I encounter want to engage in small talk & are critical and judgemental when I try to steer the conversation to more important matters?”
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -Krishnamurti

messianicdruid June 14, 2011 at 12:43 am #

“But the implications of money being the one thing valued by society are scary.”
“The love of money is the root of all evil.” We trade portions of our lives for “dollars”. The people who create “dollars” are thieves and liars. When they create more “dollars” it makes each of the existing dollars worth less. They are stealing your life. Quit using their money {quit measuring your life with their ruler}. Find some dependable people and produce something they need.

Vlad Krandz June 14, 2011 at 1:13 am #

The opposite of a great idea is usually also true – in a less universal sense. George Bernard Shaw said that lack of money is the root of evil. No contradiction, the love leads to the lack.

Vlad Krandz June 14, 2011 at 1:16 am #

Even the amoeba throws part of itself out in front to pull that rest of itself forward. You are that pseudo pod Trip. The Vanguard, to use Fascist language.

Vlad Krandz June 14, 2011 at 1:19 am #

How devilishly clever you are to deflect the conversation to this and away from abortion – my prior deflection. What about those Muslims and Africans who circumcise the whole clitoris? What the hell is up with that?

Buck Stud June 14, 2011 at 1:21 am #

Ibendet,
I didn’t see anything in that article about over riding elections, but perhaps I missed it my cursory scan. I did, however, see something about voter eligibility requirements. But I’m one who realizes that most of us need to present a valid ID in the most casual of day-by-day affairs, so what’s the big deal about a legitimate ID in order to vote?

Vlad Krandz June 14, 2011 at 1:24 am #

The point is Kether. The Hindus call it the bindu. Also called the Cosmic Egg – each Universe begins here and ends here when all the galaxies curve back upon themselves. Thus all things are conserved. The in breath is followed by the out breath and vice versa. Don’t wait for the Sleep of God – go back of your own accord.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 1:27 am #

Just read a business analysis concerning how American banks are on the hook for hundreds of billions due to Credit Default Swaps on European debt.
Of course this means that it is the US taxpayer who is really on the hook.
Privatize profits – make the public liable for losses. This sucker could go down.
I just had a post on pain in neonates held for review. It was a little bit off topic for a Monday, anyway. I’ll try later on.
Let’s see it this one goes.
SUBMIT?

rocco June 14, 2011 at 1:43 am #

YO to all, thanks JHK for an anohter look into this crazy world of the global economy. I was truly a frightened rabbit of the upcoming doom, fall, end,but then I found post rapture pet savers. A group of atheists formed a company that will go to your home if you believe you are to be raptured and take your pet and care for it until Satan comes for the non belivers. So if you think you will be left behind, then start a group in your area. I think $100 covers 10 years,and with that money buy more seeds, books, guns,or those shiny #10 cans, they stack nicely. The garden thing you are right JHK, it’s really harder and tougher than I thought, thats with no zombies or gun carring socialist medicine supporters trying to steal my food or life. May Zeus be with us all.

mlytle June 14, 2011 at 2:02 am #

I loved the comment about the flags. Here in Houston, the major interstate segments that pass through the more commercial segments of the metropolitan area sport ENORMOUS American Flags, as little as a quarter mile apart. The building complexes that host these star-spangled sails, are predictably, banks, auto dealers, and office buildings rented out to various oil companies.
I was wondering if the French or Italians do the same thing. Some how I doubt it, but I could be wrong.

Patrizia June 14, 2011 at 2:21 am #

We have an anecdote: once a farmer was crying because his donkey died “I was almost successful in inventing a new strategy to save money and so optimizing my projects.
He was almost used to starve, bur after three days he died.
Why did he have to die and ruin my plans?”
So are the people.
Why, if everything was going so well this crisis had to happen? We were almost used to never ending growth and this stupid crisis had to ruin everything?
The problem is not what happened, it is not realizing why.
Because if you do not understand your mistakes you are condemned to repeat them forever.

Eleuthero June 14, 2011 at 2:53 am #

And “getting busy building a viable future”
does NOT even have to involve ENORMOUS
current sacrifices. For example, if people
would cut their driving from 12,000 mi./year
just to, say, 8000 … it would make a HUGE
difference in the amount of time we could
buy to attempt breakthroughs in, say, solar.
If people stopped having closets with thirty
shirts and thirty pants when they keep only
using four or five shirts/pants routinely,
this would make a difference.
I think the reason that a lot of people are
cynical about the sustainability issue is
because they don’t PERSONALLY want to give
up their own piggishness. They want
sustainability to consist of the sacrifices
of everybody BUT themselves!!
They also don’t realize that when you stop
being piggish and allow the new lifestyle
time to work, you realize that you don’t
even miss things you think are “indispensible”
and usually find greater depth of meaning in
your life!
E.

Eleuthero June 14, 2011 at 2:59 am #

Wagelaborer said:
The thing is that they get away with their crimes because of the beliefs that Americans hold about their country. That we are all in this together, that the ruling class are just folks like us, and, by golly, if I win that lottery, I’ll be rich too.
***************************************************
Exactly. Everybody thinks they’re one good scam
away from untold riches while reality is that
they’re 99.9999% closer to eating out of garbage
cans. They don’t want to turn off the “scam
machine” the plutocracy has been using to rob us
because ordinary people want to keep the scam
machine alive just long enough so that THEY can
be part of that plutocracy.
It’s delusional to the point of resembling the
“magical thinking” that is one of the top three
symptoms … of SCHIZOPHRENIA.
E.

xhalor June 14, 2011 at 3:00 am #

C – (Definition) Aware of life & sensations of others (different points of observation)
0 – (Definition) Awareness of different points of observation
Needs clarificaton.
Mass Energy – undefined
Needs clarification
I’m not sure that I have the mathematics to describe your premise:
MISUNDERSTAND EVERYTHING ALWAYS! GET IT ALL WRONG, YOU CAN DO IT, GO MAN GO, JUST DO IT.
However, I think a working proof can be created from the premise:
CONTRADICT EVERYTHING ALWAYS!
I get around

Eleuthero June 14, 2011 at 3:12 am #

Jonathan said:
What can be done if people I encounter want to engage in small talk & are critical and judgemental when I try to steer the conversation to more important matters? Do I have to continue listening to my neighbor whine about diesel prices while he has a big ass F250 diesel parked in his driveway?
I would rather read a book or read things like you have written on the internet than listen to most people’s babble. Does that make me antisocial or just an introvert?
*************************************************
Jonathan, I used to be an extrovert until about
the age of 45. Then the dotcom boom hit and
formerly “deep” people started DEVOLVING into
creatures who had no interests but their gains
in the stock market and their worship of consumer
electronic gadgetry.
Eventually, after I’d had several THOUSAND more
conversations between age 45 and now (I am 59),
I started experiencing most socializing as an
isometric exercise i.e., there’s no movement and
it’s painful. 🙂 🙂 Cafe life around here
dissolved and what remains are these “laptop
villages” … you walk into a cafe and 12 of 15
people are riveted on their Imac or PC.
Watching people under 30 “converse” has actually
become psychically PAINFUL for me to watch. Why
do they have to SCREAM at each other? Why do
the laughs seem maniacally overdone and so loud?
Why does it appear that they just shout
interjections at each other rather than have a
real, tit-for-tat dialog?
Not that the over-40 crowd is much better for
reasons given in my first paragraph above. So,
if you feel a certain EMPTINESS exists in the
social sphere in 2011, I can only tell you that
you are far from alone in that observation.
It’s as if all the joy and depth of human
interaction has disappeared … IN ONE DECADE!!
Your imagination is NOT playing tricks on you.
E.

xhalor June 14, 2011 at 3:18 am #

What? Your juniors are being too loud? Having too much fun? WTF? Mummie & Daddie listen to The Clash. How ya gonna rebel?

Shakazulu June 14, 2011 at 3:19 am #

“Still mourning the demise of the cheese doodle inventor.”
Don’t worry. The recipe did not die with him.

Shakazulu June 14, 2011 at 3:23 am #

“The failure of leadership around the world is now complete. Nobody who needs to get it gets it.”
And anyone who does get it is scorned or shot.

xhalor June 14, 2011 at 3:27 am #

Now that’s a co-wink-a-dink. Wasn’t it Joe Strummer that said that the problem with power is that it is just a matter of time before some cunt with a shotgun comes ’round to blow your head off.

Shakazulu June 14, 2011 at 3:46 am #

“Larry Summers is calling for more stimulus.”
He’s still collecting a paycheck? Hadn’t heard anything from him in a while. Maybe he’s been busy following Weiner’s twitter account.
When I hear the word “stimulus” these days I think of Dr. Frankenstein shocking his creature into animation. Their monster of debt will be our destruction.

xhalor June 14, 2011 at 3:47 am #

Lest we forget the Grand Generational Memory Lapse, a refresher: The kids live in the world that they were given.

AMR June 14, 2011 at 3:58 am #

The LA Times published an article today about the Bonneville Power Administration ordering wind turbine operators attached to its grid to go offline for several hours a night on account of excess hydroelectric output. The kicker is that BPA has the technical ability to sell its excess hydroelectricity outside its balancing area but doesn’t want to do so due for financial reasons.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-na-adv-wind-energy-20110614,0,6841143.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fscience%2Fenvironment+%28L.A.+Times+-+Environment%29

xhalor June 14, 2011 at 4:08 am #

‘kinda like Enron shutting down the power in certain parts of LA. Living there now (again). Hope they don’t turn off the traffic lights like they did the last time that money & electricity was an issue. Man, I am trying like Hell to convince the CA family members that we MUST get back to the Great Lakes basin.

AMR June 14, 2011 at 4:45 am #

The appropriate thing to tell your neighbor with the F250 is that you don’t have any sympathy for him because it is his choice to drive around town in a truck that gets marginally better fuel economy than a bus. I probably wouldn’t have the balls to be that blunt, but it’s certainly warranted because people who try to augment their penises or pretend to be badass cowboys by driving high-rider crew cabs need to get their heads out of their asses.
Eleuthero is right about the rising tide of vacuous materialism in the US and its bad effects. A relative of mine was recently foreclosed upon after leveraging his mortgage to the hilt and spending the proceeds on motorcycles and high-end electronics. He’s now working severely curtailed hours, recently homeless and living at his third address in two years, having previously lived in the same house about 25 years. The rest of the family is bracing for him to seek additional handouts or a place to crash. As it happens, he lives in Eleuthero’s neck of the woods but has never had the money to keep up with the Joneses. If he hadn’t been so fucking materialistic he could have paid off his mortgage; instead, on the verge of standard retirement he’s a financial wreck, unable to pay off his credit card balances or afford decent housing in the area where he’s lived for most of his life. He has always been insecure and lonely, and he has compensated as he was taught by his parents, by buying superfluous crap on credit. Which is exactly how our nation’s very effective propagandists want us to compensate for our insecurities.
This relative of mine and your neighbor with the F250 sound like different facets of the same stone. Advertisers prey upon the insecure, the gullible, the impulsive, the lonely, the ignorant, the afraid. And through sheer repetition, unchallenged by countervailing social forces or support systems, they turn formerly independent-minded people into suitable prey. They profit from a rather Darwinian atmosphere of their own contrivance.

Sololeum June 14, 2011 at 4:51 am #

Amongst all the silly noises our pollies and money persons make there comes to attention a little sensible information. Gwen Bane cried out 20 years ago that the traditional horse / rotational agriculture of the Amish is far better than Monsantos No Till see http://eap.mcgill.ca/MagRack/JPR/JPR_13.htm
The real benefit is that someone with a modest amount of machinery and a lot of know how and some oxen / horses can conduct a state of the art farming on rented land.
This is important knowledge in the near future.
Cheers,

AMR June 14, 2011 at 4:54 am #

It’s like Enron in that the shortage has been contrived for financial reasons, but apparently unlike Enron in that the BPA isn’t involved in any obvious fraud. There are some bitter disputes as to why exactly the BPA is pushing the wind operators around, especially since salmon runs are involved, but as far as I can tell it’s basically a process-driven financial spat between two factions in a badly designed corporate and regulatory structure. Enron, on the other hand, wasn’t at all incompetent or put upon; it was a straightforward bunch of well-connected scum-of-the-earth crooks.

xhalor June 14, 2011 at 5:11 am #

Some time ago, I heard and read that folks from the Midwest had introduced Wall-Eyed Pike into the Salmon breeding lakes in CA. Well, after three poisonings, the Pikes were grimly hanging on. Probably the most aggressive fresh water fish EVER. In small lakes in the Northern Great Lakes basin, when the Pikes have killed all of the other fish, they begin canabalising themselves. Quite frankly, they taste like shit. I should investigate the Pike situation in CA. Anybody know anything about that?

AMR June 14, 2011 at 5:14 am #

For an indication of the wrench that these regulations can throw into the works, the wind farms that the BPA has ordered to go offline have a capacity of 3,500 MW. Total wind output managed by the California ISO has generally been between 600 and 2500 MW over the past week, usually towards the higher end; if I read the ISO’s legends correctly, this is solely output from turbines located in California, with output transmitted by the BPA accounted for in the general imports category. Peak daily demand in the ISO’s balancing area (more or less the state) has been at about 31,000 MW over the past week. Peak summer demand is somewhere around 36,000-38,000 MW. So depending on wind conditions and load, the BPA has the potential to take wind output in excess of 10% of California’s demand offline in order to satisfy regulatory requirements that have nothing to do with operational capabilities.

xhalor June 14, 2011 at 5:23 am #

“So depending on wind conditions and load,….”
Mother Nature is a bitch.

Eleuthero June 14, 2011 at 6:06 am #

xhalor said:
Lest we forget the Grand Generational Memory Lapse, a refresher: The kids live in the world that they were given.
***************************************************
That’s correct but lest YOU forget, at least
the Boomers, stuck with the Vietnam draft
lottery (I lived through two of ’em and got
lucky), the oil crisis of the 1970s (inflation
adjusted prices were worse THEN than NOW), and
the Carter era of 11% unemployment and 13%
inflation. Somehow, we still got stuff done
and we weren’t some goddamned garish and stupid
in public.
I agree with Mark Bauerlein, the guy who wrote
“The Dumbest Generation”, that these kids can’t
just lean on the “life sucks” excuse for the
banality of their communication, their TOTAL
(and I mean TOTAL) disinterest in reading,
their absolute lack of knowledge of US history
and civics … and their horrible general
knowledge base.
You see, I’m one of those old farts that still
believe in FREE WILL and I’m seeing Gen-Y use
that free will mostly to avoid commitment to
any activity that requires that you don’t have
a fainting ass.
The Boomers certainly have their problems but
they seem about as separated from their kids
intellectually and spiritually and in life
achievements as any generation in American
History. Do the Boomer parents get SOME
blame? OF course. Do they get a MAJORITY
of blame?? I don’t think so. Every generation
could resort to that but only these banal
shitheads ACTUALLY milk that tit ’til it’s dry
as the Sahara Desert.
E.

xhalor June 14, 2011 at 6:21 am #

I…had…no idea you were so emotional

MarlinFive54 June 14, 2011 at 7:09 am #

Gardens coming along nicely. Suddenly enough lettuce for a coupla salads per day, lunch and dinner.
Its astonishing, really, with good soil, hard work, cooperative weather, a good attitude and a willingness to learn, but without much initial expertise, how well things can turn out. Take my potato patch, for example. I purchased the plants at a local nursery and followed the verbal instructions given to me by the lady who sold them to me. I had never planted potatos before. Well, yesterday my neighbor was over, a Master Gardener, took a look see, and stated they looked pretty healthy! Its just serendipity I guess, the story of my life.
-Marlin
“LaCasa de la Dulce Tomatinos”

scott June 14, 2011 at 7:33 am #

That’s correct but lest YOU forget, at least
the Boomers, stuck with the Vietnam draft
lottery (I lived through two of ’em and got
lucky), the oil crisis of the 1970s (inflation
adjusted prices were worse THEN than NOW), and
the Carter era of 11% unemployment and 13%
inflation. Somehow, we still got stuff done
and we weren’t some goddamned garish and stupid
in public.

I disagree with inflation adjusted prices being worse THEN than NOW especially if you look at NOW in real time. The import price index just jumped 12.5% just as anyone with a clue would have expected to eventually happen with manufacturing being moved to Asia. Comparing unemployment rates is misleading as well because both inflation and unemployment are calculated using different methodologies now compared to then. If we use the same methodologies then unemployment and inflation is much worse now.
Our economy WAS failing THEN but we were able to extrapolate our failed economic model globally by moving manufacturing to China and denominating global crude oil sales in U.S. dollars. Boomers were able to benefit greatly from the shortsighted policies of globalization. Anyone with a clue in the 70’s would have expected globalization to be a shortsighted fix to an unsustainable infinite economic model that would leave future generations in far worse shape than had we made the right choices THEN.

ffkling June 14, 2011 at 7:43 am #

FYI it’s “enemigos” not “inimigos.” By the way, how does the fact that the world human population is expanding by 80,000,000 every year while during this same time period an estimated 22,000 animal and plant species are driven extinct, fit with your neat, utopian view of the future?

ffkling June 14, 2011 at 7:51 am #

Yeah, and thanks to President Carter’s energy policy American imports of foreign oil were reduced from 8,000,000 bpd to 3,000,000, which set the stage for a recovery. Not to mention he is the only president to have negotiated a true and lasting Middle East Peace Agreement-The Camp David Accord or that he was the last president not to have engaged the US in incessant warfare.

lbendet June 14, 2011 at 8:03 am #

Buck,
Those points you mentioned were not in the article, I was introducing a bit of recent history as a lead up into the article.
Thank you for reading it–I found it brought a few of the strains of the Republican Party together very cogently.
__________
Scott, liked your point:
“Anyone with a clue in the 70’s would have expected globalization to be a shortsighted fix to an unsustainable infinite economic model that would leave future generations in far worse shape than had we made the right choices THEN.”
You couldn’t have made a better point–boy what a disaster. Globalism with the theories of Milton Friedman “Free Market” disaster capitalism is the worst way to have implemented this.

welles June 14, 2011 at 8:12 am #

FYI, i live in brazil, it’s ‘inimigos’ down here, i.e. portuguese not spanish.
the number of inaccuracies about me is growing.
i’ve stated that i’m for sustainability, the reuse of resources…yet get castigated for revelling in the deforestation of the amazon…lol
i get blasted for planting a garden…which is the antithesis of habitat destruction…lol
i get blasted for sitting in front of a computer saving oil on transport….lol
i get blasted for having a little bbq shindig, and get roasted by the site’s PETA patrol…
you folks need to come on down & relax down here, jhk’s got your ire up.
the ones of you who’d like nothing more than to see wwiii & pestilence hit are just boobs. one day you might wake up & realize jeesis isn’t coming back, and your dr. evil prognostications aren’t going to come true.
do some good at least, plant a flower or two like me and trippticket, whom i greatly admire

xhalor June 14, 2011 at 8:12 am #

“which set the stage for a
recovery”
…aaah, there’s that word again

bubbleheadMarc June 14, 2011 at 8:18 am #

You got it! The fact is Americans worship money. I have done many of the things you talk about and although those activities may have been character building and most likely I am a better man for them and more useful to my family today because of my background the fact is that we are entirely results oriented and that we keep score with money.
There is no doubt in my mind that I would have been more in tune with the mainstream here in the Pig Empire if I’d simply vanished to Alaska several decades ago and stayed there panning for gold until I struck it rich. Even had I not struck it rich I would have been better aligned with the zeitgeist and opportunities would’ve come my way unbidden. And while we’re on the subject: there can be no greater waste of time in the American economy than teaching other people’s children. You will get absoltely no respect for such a foolish squandering of your own time. You are then literally the low serotonin chimpanzee who gets stuck doing the babysitting while the dominant apes are off leading the war party to kick the shit out of the neighboring band of chimps. This is the reductio ad absurdum of altruistic behavior unappreciated.

bubbleheadMarc June 14, 2011 at 8:35 am #

Lately I’ve been reading astronomy magazines and have noticed that there are dissenters to the prevailing orthodoxy in cosmology. In fact it kind of looks like nobody really knows what’s going on or went on. There is evidence for instance that Quasars are pretty exotic and that they are linked to the production of new galaxies. Others suspect that black holes don’t really exist, much less there being a black hole at the pivot point in the center of each galaxy which is eating everything in close proximity. There is a prevailing orthodoxy in cosmology at this point and professional scientists tend to be extremely timid about rocking the boat since their jobs depend on peer review and so few of them have any sort of freedom from universities or other large bureaucratic institutions. So the notion that we are progressing from a big bang towards an eventual state of universal entropy may not actually be warranted by the facts. It is also interesting to read up on string theory.

lbendet June 14, 2011 at 9:03 am #

Ah, The one-two punch of the global financial/military fronts.
Max Keiser has some links to Business Insider, another site I check out on a regular basis. This one’s about Libya. Yes, it seems that Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros and even Madoff had designs for Libya a few short years ago.
Now look at Libya! NATO (US) is pounding it with bombs, hopefully not with spent uranium. Both articles are from the Financial Times, but the one I found more interesting was the Madoff one gleaned from Wikileaks.
[Madoff tried to rip off Qaddafi’s government.
On January 20th(not sure what yr.), the U.S. Ambassador to Libya met with Mohamed Layas, the Head of the Libyan Investment Authority, and highlighted ways that U.S. businesses could thrive in Libya.
The following transmission is from a summary of the what happened during the meeting, sent from the Embassy Tripoli to an unknown destination.
Also interesting: What Qadaffi didn’t lose with Madoff, he lost with Lehman Brothers.
The transmission was recently sent from WikiLeaks to the Telegraph:
Layas denied press reports that the LIA [Libya’s sovereign wealth fund] had invested USD 100 million with the infamous Allen Stanford.
He said that he had personally written a letter to the “Financial Times” disputing [its] information, explaining that Stanford had approached the LIA in the middle of his crisis, offering a 7-8% share in his investment scheme, but Layas had refused.
Layas also mentioned having been previously approached by Bernard Madoff about an investment opportunity, “but we did not accept.”
On the contrary, LIA’s recent purchase of the Canadian Verenex oil company — after much controversy over the manner in which it was purchased and share price — was considered by Layas a “good deal.” LIA plans to operate Verenex jointly with the Libyan Investment and Development Corporation (LIDCO).

spider9629 June 14, 2011 at 9:11 am #

Nothing Further From the Truth
For all his smarts and cynicism, JHK is quite naive, as are most posters here and, nay, should I say most economists, politicians, etc. They kind of believe there is an objective “truth” out there in the economy. That the economy is some kind of machine that works according to rules and laws, that people operate accordingly, even if they “sometimes” mess up, and that “debts must be paid”, “work must be productive”, “what goes up must come down”, and so forth and so on. Nothing further from the truth (can’t imagine how many times I had to pronounce that sentence !, is it possible that only I, in the whole world, see how false, a lie, arbitrary everything is?!?!).
The economy doesn’t even exist in a sense, it is just an aggregation of numbers measuring aggregate output from factories, aggregate unemployment, all kinds of numbers of “things” put together, “as one chunk”, as if they were a single entity (and not made up of an ever changing unknown number of moving and changing parts that can be interpreted (nay, the interpretation is a pure invention by a long slide) and boiled in random, totally quirk, undefined, unknown, intractable “Free Wills” of people doing anything that comes to their puny and turdy minds), following logic and mathematics and inside some kind of clockwork machine. Nothing Further From the Truth.
The debts, the “counter-party obligations”, the “economic growth” and all else can be changed and deleted on a whim, can be restructured (that is redefined out of existence, or redefined from being a loss to a gain, from a “liability” to an “asset” in a jiffy, you name it, there is no limit to human imagination, inventiveness and fantasy) are just make believe entities from the outset, have never been real anyways, are just placeholders, a denotation, a symbol of some vague and never precisely defined, and definitely never really guaranteed beyond blind hope, human relationships, of how humans decided to interact, according to what vague rules and laws they feel are or should be operating.
So money as such doesn’t even exist, it is just a relationship between people, so it can be redefined into anything else, no matter what. And this is what is going to happen. No crash, no economy dying, no nothing, there will be some people who lose (always workers and poor that is for sure), but most people will just hang on forever, just like the economy will hang on forever, as it is just an invention.
The real basic processes sustaining the economy, the primary sectors and the secondary sectors (agriculture and manufacturing) will keep on churning out their goods anyways, maybe with some ups and downs, but the wealth that is generated automatically by a Technological Economy, will be generated anyways, and despite any of the theoretical fluff economy and inventions of the tertiary sectors (services, banks, finance, etc.). The system is getting richer day by day, even though all of you are so hooked into seeing all of these imaginary linearities operating, all of these simple causes and effects, without noticing the large picture: work being automated and technologically rendered obsolete, constant increase of wealth in the form of technological advancements, ever more products, ever more homes and cars and goods of all kinds being produced anyways, ever more information (as in the Information Economy), etc.
On China, I found that really cool that they just build and build, just like my idea of building Trillions of Skyscrapers, disrespecting any “economic logic”, outside of any “market economy” logic, they just DO IT, they just express all of the EXCESS CAPACITY the system generates and lets it all hang out, really cool! I hope they build trillions of ghost cities, I hope they finally HOSE NATURE the way that it should have been hosed long ago, good Commies the Chinese, go man go, do it, you can do it!
On the San Jose Mommy, I bet your teenage girly is a doll (I can only use my imagination, now what is left of an old crappy, Impotent, huge pile of crap like me, but that’s ok, life is a bitch : eat, drink and be merry, and then you die (that is the best possible religion to live by, by a long shot!, but I look at dirty pictures, go figure)). Did she find some modified brain – mind structure in her backyard ? Did it come from the SuperComputer that the Sun is ? Ask her, she may know.
I found this one, let her go out and play with this, she will jump up and down and run all around the backyard with little Nancy and Suzy and Ryan and Tommy, all having a ball, all having FUN, oh what FUN!!!
WJJ$JJ%J%J%JTHJHTT–PP====—-::MM—————
Wow, now that is a really new mind – universe entity! I can see a words to extension converter (as words are only relationships (logical and cause and effect systems) while Matter and what we see is extended and full of details, but we just see the fairy tale relationships, as the relationships and logic are all and totalizing, but they should be irrelevant as we should just experience the extensions of Mass Energy as in Existence against Function, our mind – thought completely obsessed with function, KILL FUNCTION, long live extensions and random details), an aggregator of time and past experiences into solid particle condenser (we need electrical schematics here with WILD SYMBOLS, symbols going crazy all on their own) an all to nothing particle constructor, and so on and so forth, as this is “The Insanity I Have to Deal With”.
Just do it, go man go, first gear, it’s allright! second gear hold on tight! third gear you’re out of sight!
Quo Vadis ? Baby…

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 9:36 am #

“the number of inaccuracies about me is growing.”
-wells-
Wells, I don’t mind saying that I enjoy hearing what is going on in Brazil (right?) very much.
Our BustinJ is a guy given to extremes – he comes up with some good stuff – but I have to apply a filter to it sometimes.
He’s spent several posts trying to beat all vestiges of Faith out of me by remote control.
And it seems that he’d like to beat all the joy out of you and/or out of Brazil by remote control, in a similar manner.
Of course I’ve got to strenuously disagree with you about population numbers, wells – which scare the hell out of me, sometimes. And just because Japan is in decline and the poor sad native born population of Western Europe is in decline – does not mean that 7 billion++ on Earth was a good idea.
Local knowledge questions:
1. What is the feeling down there about global environmental concerns AND about regional concerns – like the Amazon rain forest? Do people see a connection? Do the care?
2. What do those folks feel about emigration? Is the US really like a big magnet for all the SA peoples?
One more thing, wells – if you had just “shown up” and attempted to live where you live and how you live without your “brown honey” – do you think you would have been as accepted. I mean, she’s a local girl, right.
Don’t get me wrong – you’ve got a great life going on. And I would love to get me a “brown honey,” and move in across the street from you and enjoy hanging out, and doing all that cool stuff you describe.
Do you have any suggestions as to how I should go about talking my wife (of 31 years) into the whole idea??
Just asking.
Regards,
PoC

MarlinFive54 June 14, 2011 at 9:40 am #

Old6699/Spider;
Stay away from kids! You’re a f—-g nutcase, possibly dangerous.
-Marlin

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 9:52 am #

“There is a prevailing orthodoxy in cosmology at this point and professional scientists tend to be extremely timid…”
-the resident submariner-
Marc, it’s not just cosmology – it’s all branches of academia. And one can easily argue that it “doesn’t matter” in a field like cosmology – where it’s all theoretical, anyway. Although, the way human societies view their place in creation is important on some basic level.
Think about it, within the past 150 years – maybe starting with Darwin – mainline working scientists have gone from thinking that their Creator God was in charge of Everything – – – To today’s less doctrinaire Faith, or Agnosticism, or even to rigorous Doctrinaire Atheism.
And would that matter – except that science has dragged the rest of humanity along with it?
So that now, rudderless, humanity faces problems that are beyond it’s capability to solve.
DAMN, and I was so happy at the BEGINNING of this post. ;’)

MarlinFive54 June 14, 2011 at 10:00 am #

PoC;
After the Civil War about 20,000 former Confederates, many from Georgia, emigrated to Brazil. You probably already have relatives there and don’t even know it.
-Marlin

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 10:12 am #

Sounds like my ancestors should have gone with them, Marlin.
Maybe they did.
What if I’ve got a doppelganger down there right now? Wonder if he’s got a “brown honey?”
To much thought too early in the morning – maybe I better go pop open a “Honey Brown,” and go work on the PoC empire.

Buck Stud June 14, 2011 at 10:25 am #

“there will be some people who lose (always workers and poor that is for sure), but most people will just hang on forever, just like the economy will hang on forever, as it is just an invention.”
You make some excellent points, Spider, but I don’t believe I ever read anyone who casually waves aside ‘human nature’ as easily as you do. Of course, I hesitate to mention this, because now you will post a novel on the need to develop trillions of new drugs that anesthetize the deleterious and retributive effects of ‘being fucked over’.
The other day I saw the two most beautiful little girls, maybe three years old. One minute they’re playing and laughing and the next fighting each other for a purse to carry around. Your solution: cut down the trees and obscure the mountains for the trillions of skyscrapers and never mind the hard realities of “Nature”. Just encapsulate the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy in a tiny little pill so “progress’ will be palatable.

MarlinFive54 June 14, 2011 at 10:41 am #

PoC;
Being part Portugese I actually do have cousins in Brazil. They emigrated there about the same time one of my grandfathers came here, in the 1880s. One cousin in CT is in contact with them, visited several years ago. Only thing he said about it, “If you value your life, stay out of the big cities”.
-Marlin

LewisLucanBooks June 14, 2011 at 11:30 am #

Those extra shirts and pants eventually end up at my local Visiting Nurses Thrift Store. (Great group. Supports Hospice.) Where I buy them at $3 per. 🙂

LewisLucanBooks June 14, 2011 at 11:34 am #

A man quietly browses in my bookstore for an hour or so. While here, his cell phone rings three times. Judging from what I can hear from my side of the conversation, The Wife wants to know where he is, what he’s doing….

MarlinFive54 June 14, 2011 at 11:36 am #

Hey PoC;
Your wife probably wouldn’t be too happy about taking a ‘Brown Honey’ into your home, here or Brazil. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know.
I think about what it must have been like when the Portugese beauties started showing up here in Yankeeland at the end of the 19th century. It must have seemed like Manna from heaven to them.
-Marlin

MarlinFive54 June 14, 2011 at 11:39 am #

You’d better stick to Honey Browns, not Brown Honeys, you’re got that right! A lot less trouble.
-Marlin

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 11:48 am #

Captain Spaulding, please report to the bridge.
We have a new screenname for the house troll.
“Hey fucktard, people….”
-lil’Nausea-
Do not attempt to engage this troll directly.
Please direct all future comments to
CaptainSpaulding
Troll Abatement Officer
CFN Member At Large
That is all.

LewisLucanBooks June 14, 2011 at 11:49 am #

I see the same thing in this small Pacific NW town. Generally, people from “outside” or “away” don’t do well here, unless they marry in. Preferably into the existing power structure.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 11:59 am #

Thanks for the advice Marlin.
“You’d better stick to Honey Browns, not Brown Honeys, you’ve got that right! A lot less trouble.”
-marlin-
And you may be right. But how are we going to fit in with the locals with Wells in Brazil without a brown honey.
How many locals would develop a long term friendship with us if all we had with us was a shipping container full (40,000 pounds?) of Honey Brown.
I wonder if they even would like Honey Brown down there, wells.
Silly question – everybody likes beer.

digbycookies June 14, 2011 at 12:12 pm #

Depending upon how hot the TSA guy feeling me up is, I tend to repeat the phrase, “Just looking at you makes me want to cream in my panties.” Really sets them back. Try it some time.

digbycookies June 14, 2011 at 12:24 pm #

On a related note, even though I’m not incontinent, before getting “patted down” at the airport, I drink an inordinate amount of beer, eat at least 5 or 6 chili cheese nachos, and a large green apple before donning my pair of “Depends”. Really seems to take the perverse pleasure off of the TSA guys when I let’r RIP before our “meating”. Again, try it sometime. Personal note: because leakage can occur, try wearing the polyester jogging pants before hand (pun intended). Cleans up well in the airport sink.

digbycookies June 14, 2011 at 12:33 pm #

ATTENTION K-MART SHOPPERS! Just an aside: Polyester jogging pants on sale this week only for $4.99/pair. Buy 2 and get the third pair FREE! Especially advantageous to all of you frequent flyers (see above musings).

metuselah June 14, 2011 at 12:56 pm #

The word is keter. A crown.
And I’m interested in that the metaphysical BS, because that’s what it is, BS. It leads nowhere except into idiocy and servitude.
You hear me, Vlad?! Stand upright! Be a thinking human being! Not some goddamn feeble-minded animal parroting and acting an agenda out to enslave.

Cash June 14, 2011 at 1:06 pm #

I’ll take a shot at answering.
Much of the financial world is embroiled in an inter-locking system of bets on financial products called derivatives.
I’ll give you an example of one consequence of this system of bets: the collapse of AIG.
You can buy insurance against default on a bond. It’s called a credit default swap. You can even buy insurance on a bond you don’t even own. This is pure speculation on the credit condition of the bond issuer and is called a “naked credit default swap”.
AIG used to sell these insurance policies on bonds. Maybe they still do. You pay the premium and they pay you the amount insured against loss if there’s a default ie let’s say the debtor goes belly up.
Never mind, like I said, that you don’t own the bond. It’s like you buying insurance on your neighbour’s car. You pay the premium and collect if your neighbour’s car gets schmucked.
So AIG sells bazillions in credit default swaps (insurance against bond default). And AIG got into terrible trouble when a whole bunch of bonds it insured started defaulting.
AIG owed folks ie major financial institutions, sacks of money. In a lot of cases these guys didn’t even own the bonds they had bought insurance policies for. I’ve read that 80% of the credit default swaps that AIG sold were to outfits that were pure speculators ie they didn’t even own the bonds they were buying insurance for.
So the US govt steps in, gives AIG bazillions of dollars so it can pay up bazillions to outfits that owned these credit default swaps ie insurance on bonds that in many cases and, some say, in most cases they didn’t even own.
So you may ask why the fuck can you buy insurance on bonds you don’t own? Excellent question. You many also ask why the fuck did the US govt in effect pay huge banks bazillions of dollars to make good on bonds they didn’t own? Another excellent question.
By self referential I think he means that this whole system is not grounded in common sense, it makes no economic sense whatsoever in the real world of actual production and consumption.
This system makes sense only within the confines of the rules that the players contrived, it only makes sense within the bubble that Wall Street created with the willing acquiescence of govts and regulators.
It looked to the players in this system that, holy cow, AIG will go belly up if the Feds don’t step in. It had liablities it had to pay. It was too big, it owed too much to too many big players. Too many of these big players in turn could get wiped out or severely hurt and default on their liabilities to other big players. So the thinking was that, with everyone reneging on paying, the whole system could come down.
But what is entirely sidestepped is the issue of why the fuck is it in any way legal for anyone to buy insurance on something they don’t even own?
And why the fuck should the taxpayer be on the hook for it? Why not legally invalidate the whole practice? Why didn’t everyone involved in this cloud cuckooland scheme get a chunk of their asses carved off in a bankruptcy and liquidation of AIG? Why was everyone paid off by the US taxpayer 100 cents on the dollar?
And credit default swaps are relatively small potatoes within the derivatives world. There are trillions and trillions in bets made in other derivative products like interest rate swaps.
And by “confused by what it sees” I think he means that a lot of the financial instruments ie derivatives are so complex and so divorced from the real world that nobody really understands them. And nobody has any real idea of what’s in their own balance sheet never mind what’s on the balance sheets of the counterparties to their bets.

digbycookies June 14, 2011 at 1:17 pm #

“The word is keter. A crown.” Another word is “febrile” – had to look it up – I’m kinda dumb. I briefly considered not looking it up – why mess with being stupid? And I STILL don’t know who little Kayla (Carla??) is…don’t watch the television much…sort of disturbs my “I don’t give a fuck” attitude. When I stumbled upon this website, I thought to myself, “Digby (I call myself that, even though it’s not my real, god-given name) what a humongous waste of time!” So I decided right then and their (4 u Quistimo!) to hang out on this thread while I wait for my unemployment cheques (4 u Cash) to run out. I figure with the MERS saga continuing as it is, it should take at least a year or more before the bank forecloses on my condo. Until then, my dental hygenist says my gums are just peachy, so maybe I can hold on to my choppers for a little while longer (you never know when you will bite into something hard out of the supermarket dumpster).

digbycookies June 14, 2011 at 1:25 pm #

Cash, you’re good! Great, succinct explanation. Took me a LOONNG time to figure out all that stuff, not that long ago, seriously (ouch, my brain!). But it still begs the question: How important is it to know who your rapist is, (or how he corn-holed you) if you know he’ll NEVER be prosecuted? (ouch, my butt!)

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 1:28 pm #

I just start talking about what I want to talk about.
On an Amtrak trip to California, my husband and I were seated with a person from San Francisco and a person from Michigan.
When we sat down, the SF man was telling the Michigan woman how much he bought his condo for, back in the day, and how much it was worth at the time.
omigod, I HATE listening to Californians talk about real estate!
So, I changed the subject. Eventually, it came out that he lived in the same building as George Schultz, and he told us some juicy gossip about George’s conspicuous consumption. Way more than just having a F150 in the driveway. Also, what an asshole Paul Wolfowitz is.
So, it turned out pretty interesting after all.

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 1:33 pm #

When I first started reading your question – what is valued in our society? I know! I know!
But, you’re right, it’s money.
When you point out that the rich get away with things that we would be put in jail for, I guess you meant rape and murder.
But what about selling things that they don’t even own? Naked short selling?
This boggles the mind!! How can they do this? How is this legal?
I’m pretty sure that if I tried to sell my neighbor’s car, I would be in trouble. And if I took out an insurance policy on him, and then burned down his house, I would be in trouble.
But in the FIRE industry, it’s all OK>

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 1:35 pm #

I agree with Maxine, the cartoon character.
I never water my lawn. I’m pretty sure that would make it grow, and then I’d have to mow it.

metuselah June 14, 2011 at 1:46 pm #

A good introduction to life in America:
The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families (Part one of a four-part series)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25080
What they don’t mention (not yet, at least) is where the gold came from. David Icke writes in Children of the Matrix, that the Rockefellers and Morgans were just “gofers” for the European Rothschilds. Should David Icke dig a little further he would find out that the Rothschilds were just “gofers” for the Vatican. That’s where the gold and silver originally came from. That’s the head of the NWO beast, which is really the old world order re-establishing itself.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 1:50 pm #

This is getting weird – breaking this thing up in pieces to try to post it –
Third try –
Wage – glad you’re on, and speaking of talking about what I want to talk about – wrote this last night – let’s see if I can it to post.
– on pain perception in infants-
Both my sons are cut, as am I. None of us remember the procedure. I understand the arguments against as well as those for it. I believe the preponderance of evidence favors the surgery for health reasons worldwide, as well as for social reasons in the US. But, with that said, the decision by parents to approve or not is intensely personal – and not something that I would ever intrude upon as a layperson. If I were in public health or pediatrics – it would be a different case.

ctemple June 14, 2011 at 1:56 pm #

I disagree, I don’t blame the kids of today, I blame this bunch of ‘greatest generation’ assholes. They inherited everything, a damn good country, resources, jobs, money, and in fifty years they managed to run it right into the toilet. And they’re the same as they always were, greedy self absorbed dumbasses, with a bottomless, ceaseless sense of entitlement. They’ve lived longer than anyone in human history, and we still have to work keeping them alive until they’re 114.
They can’t have an erection eight times a day when they’re 73, no problem, we have a drug to fix that.
Instead of worrying about the country they were given, what did they do, start one war after another. Or lets ship all the industry overseas so stock speculators can make some more money. Or the stupid ass ‘space race’. Or lets flood the country with non European immigrants, corporations who made more money than anyone ever had needed cheaper labor.
Brilliant
The only people who even come close to being as greedy and stupid as the ‘greatest generation’ are the baby boomers. The kids today are left with little, their Goddamn grandparents spent it all, or wasted it. And we still have to wait on them hand and foot.
Hey we had gay rights and pornography, that’s something isn’t it?

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 2:08 pm #

Ok, so apparently it was not the word circumcision that was blocked.
I used the term “neonatologist” several times and that’s flagged as a spelling error. ??
I can see why the more sensitive or paranoid among CFNation might get upset when this stuff starts happening.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 2:15 pm #

Now it’s turning into a whizzing contest between me and the blog software:
Maybe it’s that circ*word that’s the problem – let’s see:
When my oldest son, now 28, was born 6 weeks early, he had hyaline membrane disease or respiratory distress syndrome. They spent a couple of hours getting him stable under an oxygen hood after starting an IV in the stump of his umbilical cord (an umbilicus has no nerve endings.) They packaged him for transport to a NICU 30 miles away in Atlanta. I left before the ambulance in a fierce rainstorm and got to the hospital not long after the ambulance. It was a strange feeling to be in one of the right lanes of the Atlanta Perimeter when that ambulance blew past to the left carrying my newborn son – with me yelling at unaware drivers in front of it “get out of the damn way!” To say I was stressed would be putting it mildly.

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 2:19 pm #

I don’t know if there is anyone else in the world who thinks like you, spider.
But I’m guessing the number would be pretty small.
Personally, I think that you make many good points about capitalism. But your skyscrapers to Mars ideas make it likely that very few people would embrace your entire philosophy. The people pushing skyscrapers to Mars probably don’t agree with your analysis of capitalism.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 2:23 pm #

I’m beginning to wonder if the admin guy is tormenting me deliberately:
I had a (very) brief consult with the neonatal specialist at the side of my kids incubator where he (my son) lay, quiet and stable with perfect vital signs. The newborn expert forcefully recommended putting an IV elsewhere and removing the one in the umbilicus which would cease to function in “a period of time.” My instincts said not to do it yet, and intuitively I felt my kid would be going home in a couple of days – he looked like a big healthy giant, compared to the other babies in the NICU, some of whom had been there for weeks.
Better be safe than sorry, said the expert on prematurity.
Against my better judgment, I approved the new IV location, by myself. My wife was back at the original hospital – crying over the one Polaroid pic of the kid we had managed to take.

SNAFU June 14, 2011 at 2:24 pm #

Progressor your contention: “To today’s less doctrinaire Faith, or Agnosticism, or even to rigorous Doctrinaire Atheism.
And would that matter – except that science has dragged the rest of humanity along with it?
So that now, rudderless, humanity faces problems that are beyond it’s capability to solve”; has no logic to it.
Is it not true that one of the reasons the al-Qaeda attack upon the US was instigated by Osama bin Laden was his religious conviction that the presence of the infidel in Saudi Arabia (US) was an unspeakable affront to Muhammad and the religion of Islam?
Were not the persecution of those accused of heresy and violating cannon law by the catholic church during the inquisitions religiously instigated?
It is patently obvious that the the most valuable function of religion is to control the large numbers of peasants (little people to the ultra wealthy of today) through fear and titillation, the promise of a future salvation, if they keep their noses to the grindstone and their purses open to the clergy and the monarchy (ultra wealthy).
Rudderless humanity as a result of falling religiously convinced numbers; I think not.
SNAFU

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 2:24 pm #

You know, I thought of a variation on that. What if when we’re being mauled by TSA, we start moaning and groaning the way Meg Ryan did in “When Harry Met Sally”?
We’d probably get arrested, though. The police state doesn’t allow dissension.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 2:27 pm #

Too many *flagged* spelling errors – that’s my best guess so far – but that can’t be it – asia never would get a post to post. hehe
=============
Last installment?
“They put the new IV in my sons foot area, as I dimly recall. I don’t know if the pain of circumcision is bad for a neonate or not. But I do that that IV without a local hurt. How do I know that? Because one of the boy’s LUNGS COLLAPSED – he was crying so hard.
So then they had to put in a chest tube between his ribs – again without anesthesia – which I still find amazing to this day.
It took the better part of 2 weeks before he was released from the NICU back to the original hospital where he was born, to spend another two days. Early in those first two weeks were a couple of days that were uncomfortably close to touch and go for his survival. Looking back – I’m fairly well convinced that my giving in to a pushy neonatologist caused the cascade of errors that could have ended tragically. That doc – in my mind – acknowledged his error by avoiding the NICU whenever I was in that hospital visiting my son’s incubator. I wanted to have it out with him – but my wife talked me out of it.
Oh, and the circumthingycision? They did it the day before the kid was released from the hospital near our house. He cried for just a few minutes when they did the procedure.
And I just looked up that neonatal specialist on the internet. He is still in practice. He has subpar ratings from parents. I guess I should have chewed him out when I felt like doing it. It might have made him a better doctor in the long run.”

trippticket June 14, 2011 at 2:30 pm #

When asked why they take the time and trouble to live an organic lifestyle, [Trippticket] said, “We don’t see that there is any extra work involved in doing things this way. It’s a different way to do things, yes, but no more difficult than conventional methods. Growing our garden organically and ecologically requires some study time and design intensity upfront, but it actually gets easier every year after that because we are building fertility, biodiversity and microbial health into the soil.”
“Our garden will ultimately function like a natural ecosystem, with very little effort required from the gardener. It’s a matter of front-loading the solutions instead of patching the problems that a poorly designed system creates for itself. Insect infestations are not inevitable, they are merely the outcome of bad design. In that regard, the conventional system seems like the one that requires extra work to me.”
Read the full front page article here:
http://tiftongazette.com/local/x1478025491/Young-families-transform-Tifton-Farmer-s-Market
Cheers!

trippticket June 14, 2011 at 2:32 pm #

Sorry, that second paragraph should also be italicized, since it is part of the printed article.

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 2:33 pm #

I have 2 dogs who are brothers. They hang together all the time.
One minute they’re chasing each other around the yard, the next they’re snarling and fighting, then they’re curled up asleep with each other.
One of my goats delivered twins last month. They are so small that they can get through the fence. One minute they’re running, bouncing and climbing, the next they’re butting heads, the next they’re curled up asleep.
How many genes do we share with animals?

BeantownBill June 14, 2011 at 2:34 pm #

The universe has been in a state of entropy probably since the big bang, and is always increasing to the max, but I think I know what you mean.
Scientific theories are always subject to revision or outright rejection, that’s the nature of science. It’s true that no cosmologists really know what’s going on, but current theories about the birth, structure and fate of the universe accepted by the mainstream are based on precise observations. Many of the alternate theories can’t be proven or disproven because they require observations presently beyond our technology.
String theory is one of these. It is now just a conceptual, mathematical theory that can’t yet be tested. But it is very fascinating; I hope it proves out. For a more detailed description of string theory for the layman, I would recommend reading Brian Greene’s books. You can google him.

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 2:39 pm #

Oh, so now the blog administrator is on you!
Last night, I tried to post an oped article that I noticed while following a link that lbendet posted.
The blog administrator ate my link!
As for circumcision, it is indeed the parents decision.
In the old days, parents could kill their children if they were disobedient. The Bible said so.
If that were still true, there would be no Caylee circus on TV now.
I’m just saying. Hopefully, we become more humane as we go.

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 2:41 pm #

Yeah, what you said!

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 2:51 pm #

Whoa! That’s harsh!
Why would a neonatologist recommend removing an umbilical artery catheter? That’s crazy and cruel.
I’ve mentioned before that I used to work in a NICU, and we ALWAYS used UACs. You could infuse fluids, AND draw blood without pain.
As for putting in a chest tube without anesthesia, I think that I wrote about how they used to do surgery on newborns without anesthesia. You know, because babies don’t feel pain, and even if they did, they won’t remember it. Kind of your circumcision argument.
I called the child abuse hotline in San Francisco to complain that the UCSF hospital was performing open heart surgery on babies without anesthesia. The hotline operator DENIED it! She just didn’t think that was possible.
I said “Isn’t it your job to investigate?”
A few years later I read an article that said that new information said that babies could feel pain, and that doing surgery without anesthesia actually prolonged healing time, so that (at that time) half of the hospitals working on babies had switched to using anesthesia.
Like I said, hopefully we progress in our treatment of babies.

San Jose Mom 51 June 14, 2011 at 2:54 pm #

I feel for you progressorconserve. My son was born 5 weeks early and had big-time lung problems. Ten days in the NICU on a respirator. I brought him home with a heart monitor and wouldn’t let anyone near him that hadn’t scrubbed-in and swore on a Bible that they weren’t getting sick.
SJmom

trippticket June 14, 2011 at 2:54 pm #

“They also don’t realize that when you stop
being piggish and allow the new lifestyle
time to work, you realize that you don’t
even miss things you think are “indispensible”
and usually find greater depth of meaning in
your life!”
This statement is oh so true. We’re having a surprisingly easy time adapting to life without AC in arguably one of the hottest, muggiest climates in North America. Once you can manage a change like that, the rest starts to seem like cake. Not that dumping AC was our first big change, by far, but facing that challenge was inevitable given our trajectory. Though unthinkable 3 years ago.
Cellphones? Gone and good riddance. We still travel long distances in a 15 year old car with 200k on the odometer, and haven’t suffered a wink without a cellphone. Even when meeting strangers for big Craigslist purchases in distant cities. How much energy does the cell phone industry require to run?? Not a watt at my request.
TV? Is there a worse use of time known to man? See the problem with giving up this idea of “being informed” by all the various media outlets, including TV, is that you start to think for yourself. You start to observe the world around you, hone your critical thinking skills, and draw your own conclusions about the nature of human affairs. Maybe that scares the shit out of some people who think being informed is about watching 5 different news outlets and reading as many papers and online sources, who knows, but I can say that I have a much easier time seeing tidal flows and macro trends without all the minutia cluttering up the view.
I know you know all this, I’m just backing up your statement with some specifics. Keep the trend going, E. -TT

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 3:00 pm #

SNAFU – good to hear from you again, man. Have you been lurking this whole time? Or are you running HTML searches on my posts – just to help me improve my thinking?? 😉
I don’t disagree with the main thrust of your post.
We could quibble over this part, though.
“Rudderless humanity as a result of falling religiously convinced numbers; I think not.”
-SNAFU-
Regardless of WHY we’re rudderless, the fact is that we are. We’ve got the religion of American Free Market Capitalism spreading baby formula and high birth rates all over the globe in search of Sacred Profit.
We’ve got the religion of Political Correctness, or Secular Humanism, or something – saying that Everyone Everywhere shall have no limits on their reproduction – and that all of the planet’s multitudes should have free immigration rights to the United States.
It’s a mess, ain’t it, my friend.

digbycookies June 14, 2011 at 3:10 pm #

Jeez, you learn so much from this blog. Great comments today!
Wage – your anecdote about the Amtrac conversation got me thinking, “Why the hell don’t I ever meet anyone who hob nobs with the rich and famous?”
Well, then I read Mika’s (Methusulah’s?) comment about the 8 families in America. Linked up to the website he posted, and dang – wouldn’t you know it – I used to house sit about 25 years ago for one of the Rockefeller’s ancestors! Incredibly rich people – nice work if you can get it. They had this HUGE spread out on the Main Line. Did a little web research – they’re currently in a little BILLION dollar squabble with a relative over a family trust. Mind you, I had no freaking idea WHO the hell these people were back in the day – only that they were filthy, stinking, RICH.
And people say I waste my time.

Bustin J June 14, 2011 at 3:11 pm #

Bean wrote: “Bustin, I do like how you think, and I agree, but I also disagree somewhat with what you say.
How do you know the universe routinely destroys life? Give me an example of the “routineliness”
other than your sample of one – life on Earth.”
Is this a trick question? Since life has not been proven to exist outside Earth, I can’t provide an example. But the evidence that life could arise elsewhere is pretty good.
I, for one, suspect that alien life has arisen on countless planets, just like this one, since the beginning of the expansion of the Universe.
And I am equally sure that many species, and whole planets have been destroyed since then.
As a sample of One- Earth- it is very clear that cosmic, geological, chemical, and other nonliving processes destroy whole categories of life. Do we need another sample? I think not. As for extinction of life being routine, a glance at the physical record of life on Earth verifies that the vast majority of species that have ever lived, are now gone; Extinction science shows compellingly that extinction is the rule rather than the exception.
The imminent threat is not a gamma ray burst, supernova, or asteroid. It is us. (see below). The science is conservative- too conservative. Beyond 450ppm, the effects of climate change will probably be cataclysmic, if not before. Estimating a 1ppm increase year over year, we’ll reach that by 2075. And certainly, by then we’ll have zero ice sheets over the Arctic, and the permafrost will have melted releasing super-insulating methane. Meanwhile Antarctica will have calved off most of its ice sheets. So mean global temperature rises in 2075 are likely over 50 degrees Fahrenheit most places of the world. That progression is far too fast for the biosphere to handle. In these situations, according to our best evidence, mass extinctions occur. In order to turn back Earth’s geological clock to 25 million years ago, all higher life is going to die. Only fungi and bacteria can evolve (react to changes in their environment) that fast. Therefore the 22nd century will be dominated by these lifeforms.
Pretty horrific, eh? No one gets out alive- was it all worth it, humanity?
Human beings do not seem to have evolved a general concern for far-flung planned avoidance of danger. Humans didn’t evolve in the conditions we evolved in.
This is why the spectacle of NASCAR is so a propos. One can propose that it is a bunch of nascent professionals with “skills” to share. Good people. “Valuable” people, even, in terms of some commercial or industrial motif.
In reality, it is a bunch of simians lounging around, celebrating the mechanics of the destruction of their worlds. They believe they are celebrating the mechanics of their existence. They are. But they will not believe that the cause of one will turn into the cause of another. The psychology of self-destruction is fascinating, but not uncommon. Most human cultures have seemingly marched toward their ultimate demise with as much pageantry and gusto. No one in the Universe is going to remember Homo sapiens. They will have their own extinction crises on their own planet, having to face the keyhole evolutionary event for all species, how to overcome the limitations of the self. Even bacteria in a plate go extinct from their own waste products. As we apparently are. Can normal people rise up, and overthrow the machine that is killing the Earth (the machine being governments, corporations, economies of scale, ways of life, etc.)? Could a more difficult challenge ever be conceived?
The prize, for this race of evolved primates is simply the opportunity to get to the next epoch. Science fiction writers take this as their premise to imagining the future- it is implied that humans do not destroy themselves in that they go on to survive. They are typically presented as the best example of a kind of human- reflecting the basic rationale that, in order to survive, we are going to have to obviously be the best kind of people we can possibly be. But most people, apologies all, are in fact the worst kind of people.
Typical human beings accept mediocrity and failure as a mode of life. Quality of life is elevated above all in contemporary modern life, and it is a personal, selfish quantifier of quality. It is generally defined as contentment, pleasure, relaxation (as we are an imprisoned specie of cultural being, and compelled by social forces to work). On top of that add the transcendentalist religions which dominate the id with their sexual and euphoric hypnagogic imagery, and conditioning for apocalyptic thinking, predicated on programming to submit, disarm, and embrace powerlessness.
NASCAR is church, with the whooshing sounds of gas engines replicating the systolic and diastolic rhythms of the mother during pre-birth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_risk_from_global_warming

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 3:22 pm #

“Why would a neonatologist recommend removing an umbilical artery catheter? That’s crazy and cruel.”
Yeah, no joke, Wage. He was following his training.
Doctrine was to get a “permanent” IV started because the unbilical artery would eventually fail.
But he was also an arrogant prick, who failed to mention that ALL IV’s eventually fail unless moved or maintained.
I did learn one other thing from this adventure. And that is that parents, especially New Parents, should never be expected to make logical decisions concerning their newborns.
This was our first kid, but my wife and I were college graduates with some years in the real world and a couple of years of marriage under our belts. I’ve always favored the “nature” side of the nature/nurture debate – and my wife and I had had long discussions about how we would never use “heroic measures” so save the life of our kid if he had no hope of a genuinely “quality life.”
All of that went completely out the damn window when I first saw my little guy in that NICU incubator. I would have done anything, sold anything, killed anybody – to try to keep him alive.
Makes me feel for Terri Schivo’s (sp) parents. They never should have had to face any of that.
Some decisions should be made by the rational.
Parents can’t be expected to be rational when the “life” of their own child is the topic.

Bustin J June 14, 2011 at 3:23 pm #

Gavin saith, “why I am still stuck in a job that pays barely $300 a week, often closer to $200? (And why are all the applications for employment I put in met only with crushing silence?) The reason that finally came to me, is that society does not value any of what I have done. The question that arose from that answer was of course, what then, at this point in America’s history, does society value?”
Our society values the ability to make money. Money being the ability to afford “freedom”. The people most admired are the one that somehow squeeze millions of dollars out of the system. They are its avatars.
Now that corporations are citizens, I think it should be pointed out how much more obscene the basic power disparity has become.
A revolution will not happen because the system can simply “pay one-half of the working class to destroy the other half”. The skills you learned in the service (submit, obey orders, shoot to kill) are simply a natural extension of the planned society we have. You are guaranteed the salary of your dreams- or at least a living wage- if and when you are called up to defend the system and those that profit from it, from the rest of humanity.
Will you be able to refuse that official power and money when it comes your way? The alternative is brutal- you will have no way to eat, shelter yourself or your family, or make a living.
Society under capitalism is dog-eat-dog. The government was bought and sold a long time ago. We live under extreme tyranny and only the fat of the land has kept primordial forces at bay.
Now the fat has run thin.
Götterdämmerung is coming.

LewisLucanBooks June 14, 2011 at 3:24 pm #

Yup. Had the same problem (nothing new, happens all the time) late Sunday night. Nothing unusual about the post. Short, no naughty words. No Googling around while composing it. Tried all the usual stuff to get it to post. Copy, sign out, clear cookies and history, sign back in again, paste….no dice. Wash,rinse repeat but pasted it into a document. Zip.
I did send an e-mail to JHK (my first, it’s not like I spend my days bugging the guy) with the post attached. Told him if his IT people were curious, they could play around with it, and try and figure it out.
Maybe it’s like the old Groucho show. “Say (type) the magic word, and get fucked by the duck.” Mysteries of cyberspace.
Even weirder? Posts immediately before and after went through fine.

shecky June 14, 2011 at 3:31 pm #

Yesterday I transported a guy to the ER. He is/was 84. History of stroke and CHF. His lungs were full of goo, his BP 58 over shit. RR 36/min, SpO2 74% on room air, supine, which is how I got him when the fucking “doctor” who runs the local bone home turned him over to me. I hung a dopamine drip, bagged him, and hauled ass. Suction all the way. When I got to the ER his BP was 93/48. GCS 3/1/5. SpO2 79%. He bought a tube, stat.
The guy is probably a good guy. I have transported him before. Landed at Anzio. He has Medicare and our state Medicaid. You and I will be paying for his rehab. Bet he lives another 6 shitty months. Doubt he wants it. His wife died in my ambo 6 years ago, pulmonary embolism. Nice lady, brought me cookies once. Did not eat them, she had shit under her fingernails.
Any idea why Medicare is fucked?

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 3:35 pm #

One more thing – while I’m on health care.
God/Apollo forbid any of us ever encounter this situation – but a patient who is brain dead and a candidate for being an organ donor – will not (can not!) be allowed to “die” in front of family members keeping a vigil.
Therefore they will be removed to surgery before removal of life support.
Those of you in medicine probably know this, at least in an intellectual sort of way.
Most others have no idea at all.

BeantownBill June 14, 2011 at 3:36 pm #

Naked short selling is a nasty business. Short selling is an investment gambit in which you borrow shares of a stock you think will go down in value in the relatively near future
from a broker who holds these shares.
So you sell these borrowed shares to somebody else. At some point you have to give the shares back you borrowed to the original owner. In the meantime, the shares have gone down in value. But you don’t have the stock shares you borrowed, so you go out into the marketplace (via your broker, usually)and buy the same number of shares you borrowed. But since the stock value has gone down, you buy them back for less, the difference in buy and sell prices being your profit (or if the stock value went up, your loss).
All this is a legitimate stock play. But naked short selling really isn’t. In naked ss, you sell the shares to someone else, but you never borrowed them 1st. You just placed an order with your broker and the broker does a bookkeeping entry, but there’s no real shares involved. It’s kinda like how the government prints money any time it wants.
Here’s where that kind of transaction goes bad:
Let’s say you are a very rich and influential individual. Also say ABC Corp is listed in the NYSE; it has 100 outstanding shares for the whole company. You don’t think the company is going to do well in the future and its share value will go down. Since you’re very rich, you don’t want to make a small amount of money, so you naked short sell 1,000 shares (900 of which don’t exist). When you are proven correct, you make a profit on all 1000 shares, even though 90% don’t exist. I’m no expert, but I don’t think it’s legal to have more short sale shares outstanding than exist, is it?
But naked short selling can be even more nefarious. Let’s say you are the owner of a company competing with ABC. You wish them gone. So you spread the word that ABC is foundering, even though it’s not. Then you naked short sell ten million shares! The market sees a major increase in ABC short sales. The company must be doing badly, they’re are rumorts going on (started by you). Soon everyone is dumping the stock and it goes down sharply in value. You end up either letting the company go bankrupt or buy it for a song.
Naked short-selling can suck big time.

LewisLucanBooks June 14, 2011 at 3:40 pm #

Here’s the bottom line: We will never know why “the blog ate our homework.” It has absolutely nothing to do with who posts or what they post. It is a random, sporadic event.

Bustin J June 14, 2011 at 3:47 pm #

welles says, “you folks need to come on down & relax down here, jhk’s got your ire up.”
I can’t take my eyes off the satellite pictures that are telling me that your little slice of heaven is going to turn into an inferno. So sorry to ruin your chickenshit lifestyle. Maybe you should unplug the damn internets.
BHM says,

And while we’re on the subject: there can be no greater waste of time in the American economy than teaching other people’s children. You will get absoltely no respect for such a foolish squandering of your own time. You are then literally the low serotonin chimpanzee who gets stuck doing the babysitting while the dominant apes are off leading the war party to kick the shit out of the neighboring band of chimps.

Goddamn brutal synopsis, Marc. Bravo.
Spider rants: “I hope they build trillions of ghost cities, I hope they finally HOSE NATURE the way that it should have been hosed long ago…”
Don’t fall out of your wheelchair cheering on the end of the world, Spider. If you could just restrain yourself from the spittle-flecked diatribe style of communication you endorse, a suit, tie, your value system, and a resume should get you hired for a corporate position that pays enough to have a merry-go-round of immigrant prostitutes drain your member, ad nauseum, in a smog-filled metropolis of your choice in Eastern China.
PoC says, “mainline working scientists have gone from thinking that their Creator God was in charge of Everything – – – To today’s less doctrinaire Faith, or Agnosticism, or even to rigorous Doctrinaire Atheism. And would that matter – except that science has dragged the rest of humanity along with it? So that now, rudderless, humanity faces problems that are beyond it’s capability to solve.”
Thats funny. There is a giant hole in the bottom of your bag o’ thoughts, PoC, and that is that athiesm has a doctrine.
Your thesis could well be restated, accurately, as technology. But that would put your analysis in with such luminaries of the field as Ted Kaszynski. And then what would your blubbering Christian soul do? You’d have no pretend organization to hang the world’s problems on.
Under your (properly) reframed thesis, Steve Jobs is the Antichrist, and every new little gizmo he produces is a demonic object. Fair enough? Ford motor company built the car- a technology that science merely described, and a fool drove it. Where is the original sin??
Fabian squirts: “” Not to mention the changing climate which is making farming more difficult…”
Try and get a fucking grip. The regions that are farmed and have been farmed constantly change. Many have claimed that global warming will add to the total acreage of available, arable land.”
Tell the USDA the NRDC, the FDA, the EPA, millions of farmers, to get a grip, douchebag. Arable land is locked up, we are exceeding capacity, the climate is worsening. There is no sunny side up. People that believe GW will result in more fruit and sunnier weather are imbecilic.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 3:47 pm #

“Any idea why Medicare is fucked?”
-shecky-
Part of the answer that could have “unf*cked” Medicare – should have been those “death panels” the Republicans went apeshitcrazy over.
Politicians really will twist logic into the shape of a pretzel to try to stay in power.
==============
BustinJ – your analysis may just be correct – 50 degree temp rise and all that.
But, DaaaYuum, Bustin – you’re a pessimist.
How do you even manage to get out of bed in the morning?

MarlinFive54 June 14, 2011 at 3:49 pm #

Dow is up 165 last time I checked. Must be based on the strong economy, robust employment numbers, cheap oil, and generally favorable geo-political news out there. I can’t think of any other reason.
-Marlin

Bustin J June 14, 2011 at 3:50 pm #

Fabian blew: “WE need MORE GOVERNMENT and most importantly MORE GOVERNMENT REGULATION. Who the hell else but government could give us 2000 pages of Obamacare, which will most likely be found to be unconstitutional?”
Regardless of the fact that you think a government check to balance the power between corporations and the people would not work (either overreaching or underreaching), and, given the current climate to limit government regulation, by what mechanism will corporate power by regulated to provide
A) avoidance of global warming and its effects
B) relative prosperity and happiness increases
Answer: there is no mechanism, because we all work for the corporations, in competition with each other.
Yay!

digbycookies June 14, 2011 at 3:58 pm #

Remember the old Ivory soap commercial (that it’s 98 and 99/100% pure?) I just reverse that and apply it to life: It’s 98 and 99/100% bullshit. Just try to savor the remaining 1 and 1/100%.

digbycookies June 14, 2011 at 4:01 pm #

“Naked short-selling…” Now there’s a thought that kinda turns me on.

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 4:12 pm #

Even before Henry Ford started producing the automobile, Engels recognized the error of destroying nature-
In 1876, Marx’s collaborator, Frederich Engels, offered a prophetic caveat: “Let us not . . . flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquest over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us. . . . At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature–but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst. . . .”

Bustin J June 14, 2011 at 4:13 pm #

$ said, “So you may ask why the fuck can you buy insurance on bonds you don’t own? Excellent question. You many also ask why the fuck did the US govt in effect pay huge banks bazillions of dollars to make good on bonds they didn’t own?”
Quick answer: CONSERVATIVES CAUSED THE FINANCIAL CRISIS BY PURSUING THEIR MANDATE TO DESTROY THE GOVERNMENT BY DIMINISHING ITS POWER TO REGULATE MARKETS.
The “government that governs least, governs best” remember? Nevermind that government is the only instrument people have to check the power of corporations, who only look out for corporate interests.
Any conservatives on this blog want to spar? I’ll beat you with your own ideology.
As Fabian said, “Having the government regulate our toilets, shower heads, our light bulbs, needing haz mat status to be a house painter, forcing us to buy a service (Obama care), forcing mileage requirements for fleet averages (resulting in cars that no one wants or buys)….all these measures have improved life in the USA.”
To be sure, Fabian is advancing a position, which is horseshit: that regulation doesn’t improve life in the USA. Lets take a magic carpet ride back in time and restore financial regulation: going forward, none of the CDO and financial boondoogles would have been possible. Without regulation of shower heades and toilets, LA county would be flat broke, paying to truck in water so that people could be free to ‘waste’ it. The air would be choking on smog because the car companies would never on their own install catalytic converters. A regulated oil industry wouldn’t have fucked up a blowout diverter. And on and on and on… practically no contemporary disaster that has occured couldn’t have been prevented by regulation, in any sector.
Those that argue that government can’t do anything right are not only wrong, they are fucking blind. government regulation should be a debate between people, citizens, in the interest of the country’s quality of life. This discourse is hijacked by special interests and corporations and those negotiations are held behind closed doors.

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 4:14 pm #

I’m betting he doesn’t live another 6 months.
And AIG will cover my bet.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 4:29 pm #

“And AIG will cover my bet.”
-wage-
Funny story, but true:
A relative of mine passed away from cancer at a fairly young age. Her husband was a life insurance agent. They had been divorced for many years and both had remarried. The first husband had a number of life insurance policies he had written on my relative – payable to himself – that he had kept in force all the years since the divorce.
Those policies paid off like a slot machine for him, and he kept the money.
Kinda creepy – yet perfectly legal.

LewisLucanBooks June 14, 2011 at 4:31 pm #

Here’s an interesting essay from Wendell Berry, circa 1988. “The Work of Local Culture.” It starts off with a little story of how soil is built and ends with how communities are built. It’s pretty long. Settle in for awhile.
http://www.schumachersociety.org/publications/essay_work_of_local.html

Qshtik June 14, 2011 at 4:33 pm #

In Tripp’s 2:30 PM comment he linked us to a very nice article in the Tifton Gazette that describes the permaculture and natural products venture that Tripp and his wife Jessica have embarked on. The 4th from the last paragraph provides the following brief backstory to their saga:
The Tibbetts created an urban permaculture model in a disadvantaged neighborhood in Macon last year. Just after Christmas, they moved back to Tifton to help convert the 300-acre Corrie family farm (formerly the Rigdon farm) from conventional annual row crops to perennial organic production.
It is noteworthy that when Tracey Coley Ingram, the article’s author, originally submitted the piece for review by the editor the above quoted paragraph began as follows:
The Tibbetts created an urban permaculture model in a disadvantaged neighborhood in Macon last year but, as Mr Tibbett described it, “when I saw a local ‘disadvantaged’ woman blithely hoist her skirt and, with her butt plainly visible, squat and defecate copiously in the middle of the sidewalk right in front of God and everybody, then stand up, drop her skirt and continue on her way, I said to myself ‘that’s the last straw’ I gotta get me and my family outta this hellhole.” So, just after Christmas… etc etc
Needless to say, the young Tifton Gazette writer, Ms Ingram, was promptly schooled in the nuances of political correctness by the editor.
😉

Bustin J June 14, 2011 at 4:39 pm #

Poc, “BustinJ – your analysis may just be correct – 50 degree temp rise and all that.
But, DaaaYuum, Bustin – you’re a pessimist.
How do you even manage to get out of bed in the morning?”
I believe the terms “optimist” and “pessimist” have no value. What is the opposite of “realist”? In art, it is “abstraction”. Maybe that is the true axis along which perception lies.
I believe in a reality outside our opinion, a classical philosophic assumption. According to this standard, views are accurate or inaccurate. More real- or more abstract, that is the measure.
Optimism and Pessimism are both species of ignorance. They are emotional states brought on by confusion. They both imply a fundamental uncertainty- is it worse or better than I think it is? And worse- it implies helplessness: I cannot know if one or the other estimation is correct. It implies hubris in that it is the result of a decision to act as if an emotional stance toward a problem is the same thing as addressing a problem. What this kind of hubris destroys is creativity, the ability to change reality, in neglect of its practice.
People say I am a pessimist in order to preserve their own position- which is no position, but an emotional state- they attempt to re-frame my statements and arguments as opinion, not facts. But this is all so obvious, in fact, you’re an expert in this pattern of behavior, as are most Americans. It is ingrained in this culture that, to simply act “as if” is “good as gold”, just “fake it till you make it”… etc.
Its interesting to see a culture of salesmen run up against a culture of scientists. The scientists aren’t selling a sugar-coated product when they “produce” their findings. Their findings are a “drag” but they aren’t “Dragging” western culture into the sewer- the capitalists are- of which a salesman is a specie. The scientists will simply measure this decline and give a blow-by-blow.
The Optimist and the Pessimist wander the same maze, bumping into each other. How do they get up in the morning? Who cares? I wake up every day knowing that, with knowledge, comes responsibility. That responsibility might suggest why so many avoid knowledge.

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 4:44 pm #

I’ve heard of corporations keeping life insurance on their employees. What would be the incentive to create a healthy work environment in that case?
I wonder if your cousin had some carcinogen slipped to her before the divorce.
Back to the circumcision thing. You claim that an IV to the foot hurt your baby son more than having part of his penis cut off?
Were you there for the cutting? Or did the nice doctor just assure you that he only cried for a minute?
Although, sometimes in the NICU, babies would abruptly fall asleep during a painful procedure. I don’t know if it was some kind of coping mechanism.
And as for removing the UAC immediately, they certainly didn’t consider that proper protocol where I worked.

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 4:52 pm #

What is the opposite of a realist?
Watching Obama speak, and seeing snippets of the Republican debate last night, I can confidently say, a politician.
Jobs, jobs, jobs. Growth, growth, growth.
Yes, we can.

bubbleheadMarc June 14, 2011 at 4:56 pm #

“rudderless, humanity faces problems that are beyond its capability to solve.”
Progressorconserve
I liked your post since it contains the one essential ingredient to be considered genuine or a liberal dose of negativity! I’ve gotten to the point where the chirpy and the upbeat drives me around the bend because to me it’s always phony. And I’m not even on antidepressants.
These matters are odd. Never forget that both Darwin and Nietzche originally were bound for the ministry. Nietzche as a boy was called “the little pastor.” So I’d say that you’re free to believe what you want. At any rate the materialistic conception of the universe contained within “scientism” doesn’t hold water and will not prevail in the long run.
Also, you don’t know for a fact that we cannot solve our problems. The solution[s] could be well in hand already but for some perverse reason it’s being withheld until a more opportune moment.
It’s been thirty years since I lived on a submarine. Both boats I was aboard have now been scrapped. If I had to do it over I wouldn’t. If a high school kid asks me about the advisability of enlisting I tell them “don’t”. Then again that experience did help form my worldview. As in “don’t believe what you’re being told.” My favorite book about academic life is “The Cliffwalk”. Can’t recall the author. He was a professor at Colgate who got his pink-slip and became a carpenter. Probably so he could write about it since he’s an MFA in creative writing.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 5:04 pm #

Pretty good points bustin
I’ll contend that “nothing but fungi and bacteria alive on Earth by 2075” (paraphrased) is about the most pessimistic assessment I’ve ever heard ANYWHERE, however. And it’s based on assumptions on your part that there are ZERO feedback mechanisms – as yet unknown to science – that may mitigate global warming.
“they attempt to re-frame my statements and arguments as opinion, not facts. But this is all so obvious, in fact, you’re an expert in this pattern of behavior,…” bustinj
I wouldn’t say I’m an expert, but yeah – I indulge in my share of optimism to keep myself from – giving up, lying down, and dying.
Wish I could give you a better reason to argue with me – can’t find one right now.
Maybe ya’ got me too depressed!

Qshtik June 14, 2011 at 5:08 pm #

I can’t think of any other reason.
================
I provided a plausible reason yesterday. All those negatives you mentioned had been priced in and the market was “oversold.” Just when it seems things could not be worse is when there is no one left to sell and the bulls take over.

Hieronymo June 14, 2011 at 5:12 pm #

Little Caylee lives on in the hair follicles
of rodents, the feathers of carrion-eating birds
and the chitin of beetles. Economies are in
trouble not because fossil fuels cannot be had
cheaply, but because the Eco-statists have
declared them taboo.

asia June 14, 2011 at 5:20 pm #

I have a Theme Park to sell you……..
See Yahoo ‘ABANDONED JAPANESE THEME PARK’
Candidate for an eyesore of the month.
The statue of Gulliver is a hoot. all 100? feet.

Qshtik June 14, 2011 at 5:20 pm #

Both boats I was aboard have now been scrapped.
===============
Bub, I was in the Air Farce not the Navy but it has always been my understanding that large vessels used on (under?) oceans are called “ships” while vessels used on lakes are called “boats.” What’s the real scoop?

asia June 14, 2011 at 5:23 pm #

Speaking of Sh*t***,
I saw an old white man do the same in Soviet Monica
and no he didnt look homeless.
Macon got nothin on El Lay!

asia June 14, 2011 at 5:25 pm #

WE are not ‘an economy’ and [say like a prayer]
‘Growth’ [gasp sigh] is not the answer…
may you live on in the skin cells of worms.

asia June 14, 2011 at 5:27 pm #

It all depends..if it makes someone feel rich, fine!
If someone buys for X
sells for 100x X
AND MOVES TO A CHEAPER AREA
It was a good deal…
if they sell and then rebuy in the same area what have they gained?
You might point this out to the ‘realty millionaires’.

bubbleheadMarc June 14, 2011 at 5:50 pm #

I thought it was called The Chair Force since airmen go into battle seated in airplanes. At any rate, I would recommend the Air Force over the navy to the few customers who ask who are unemployed and thinking of enlisting.
Submarines are always referred to as “boats” by submariners. The senior enlisted man on a sub is always called the COB, or chief of the boat. Otherwise a boat is considered to be any vessel small enough to be hoisted aboard a ship, such as a lifeboat or the captain’s gig.
Since there are thousand footers hauling iron ore on the Great Lakes and they can handle a full load of 75,000 tons when running between the southern shore of the Upper Peninsula and the steel mills in Indiana Harbor on Lake Michigan nobody calls them boats except in the generic sense of their being “ore boats”, or iron ore bulk freighters.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 5:58 pm #

OH Freak – the blog nanny is after me again!
“Back to the circumcision thing. You claim that an IV to the foot hurt your baby son more than having part of his penis cut off?”
-wage-
Maybe, because I’ve never heard of a collapsed lung being correlated with a circumcision. I suspect that there are more nerve endings in the foot than in the foreskin. There may be more nerves in the foot than in the head of the penis, even.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 5:59 pm #

Evidence:
Lots of guys have deliberately pierced penises.
I’ve never heard of a deliberately pierced foot.
Anyway, the amount of pain caused by the procedure is a side issue. There are multiple ways to reduce that pain – even to the point that it is tolerated by an adult male, with a lot more tissue being cut.
I definitely do not like to see the issue of so-called “female circumcision” linked to removal of the male foreskin in routine male circumcision.
The female equivalent would be removal of the clitoral hood and that is NOT what the term “female circumcision,” is used in reference to.
Removal of the foreskin leaves a functional penis and an intact sexual response and ability to orgasm.
Removal of the clitoris greatly diminishes female sexual response, and generally eliminates any possibility of orgasm – according to my limited knowledge.
Female “circumcision” is illegal in the US – I hope it stays that way.
Male circumcision is legal in the US, and strictly the choice of the parents – I hope that stays that way, also.
Haven’t you and I had almost this exact same battle once before, wage. Maybe we need some new material. 😉
Looks like bustin and “fabio” could be heading for a nice little grapple, though. Get ready for some “fucktard torpedoes,” bustin. (tm Cash)

wagelaborer June 14, 2011 at 6:14 pm #

No, this is a variation on our previous battle.
And you didn’t answer me. Did you actually watch your newborn being cut?

ctemple June 14, 2011 at 6:48 pm #

I’ve learned a lot on here from the name callers, this weird combination of viciousness mixed with sarcasm, phony sophistication, and pretenses of learning. And my favorite is the word fucktard, I never really knew that you could combine the fuck and retarded. And of course it reminds of me of high school and people who were so low that weren’t even human in my view and should have been eating out of a trough.

BeantownBill June 14, 2011 at 7:04 pm #

Stupid people don’t really bother me. They can’t help being who they are. It’s the mediocre that bug me. We ought to always try to transcend ourselves, to push back against our self-limiting boundaries and enter new territory. Unfortunately, in our society, mediocrity is rewarded, and there’s little incentive to make the effort to surpass ourselves.
In the Bell curve of humanity, the stupid occupy a small area, and the mediocre exist in the bulk of the curve. But there’s an opposite segment that contains the brilliant, the insightful, the noble, the courageous and the lovers of truth and beauty. The latter represent the best of mankind and make its continued existence desirable.
Because the mediocre rule, we find ourselves at the crossroads where survival is questionable. I hope the few at the right of the Bell curve can get us through what we will be experiencing in the future. If I didn’t believe they could do it, I’m not sure I’d be willing to go on – or at least sober.

AMR June 14, 2011 at 7:07 pm #

This is another situation that can be illustrated by people behaving badly in Silicon Valley.
I lived in Palo Alto until I was ten years old, in 1992, when my parents and I moved to Pennsylvania. We still have many close friends on the Peninsula and visit at least annually.
A few years after we moved back east, the cultural vibe in Palo Alto became almost unrecognizable. The nerds, first-wave techies, gentleman-scholars, assorted Stanford hangers-on and the entire middling sort seemed to be disappearing from the fabric of the community in the midst of a rampage by the nouveaux riches. Very pleasantly landscaped ranch houses on fifth-acre lots were razed to bare dirt and replaced with overwrought pseudo-Spanish Revival monstrosities that looked like high-volume Taco Bell franchises. Low-key but good restaurants were replaced by insufferably pretentious ones. The dull-normal sector of the economy started being priced out of the commercial real estate market.
By 2000, Hollister and Los Banos were important bedroom communities for Palo Alto’s middle class workforce and poorer families were living in storage units in San Jose. Meanwhile, one of the owners of a new Taco Bell down the street from our old house was commuting to Emeryville; he and his wife, like many couples, believed the hype about Palo Alto having the best elementary schools on earth and would accept only the best for their precious future children. Some parents in the Walter Hays Elementary catchment area had snits when their children were transferred to the supposedly inferior Duveneck School to ease overcrowding. Having attended Walter Hays at a time when the curriculum was permeated by political correctness and self-esteem platitudes, and having had my own educational progress held back by official curriculum standards, I was appalled. These people were raving about schools where they had no idea what was actually being taught.
So I can’t blame you for being disgusted with what has happened to the culture of Silicon Valley. To the extent that it’s a distillation of the broader American culture, it’s bad news, indeed. People who are in a pissing contest with the Joneses tend to shirk civic activities that they might otherwise engage in, substitute blather for concrete action and become marks for frauds that assuage their guilt, particularly carbon offsets. It’s nigh impossible to reestablish modesty, personal action and reality-based thinking in such a shallow environment. Even returning that crowd to the sorry baselines that pass for reality-based engagement in most of flyover country would be a tall order.

scott June 14, 2011 at 7:13 pm #

“What are the social implications of economic collapse?”
http://www.sovereignman.com/

neckflames June 14, 2011 at 8:27 pm #

If the price of silver or gold doubles like it has for SJmom it doesn’t correlate with a federal reserve note being now worth only half of what it was. Are your expenditures twice what they were in 2009? Neither are mine.
The true value of gold or silver has for some time been seriously undervalued. At present I believe gold and silver are still undervalued but are much closer to where they should be nowadays.
When paper currency collapses something will still be needed as a store of value. It won’t just be a barter economy. I wonder why you think gold and silver will be useless as things unravel and simplify. Let me know you thoughts..
N.

popcine June 14, 2011 at 8:28 pm #

I think this paragraph by Jesse, of Jesse’s Cafe Americain, is so well put that I must tell somebody about it. I don’t do Facebook or Twitter, and I don’t want to start, so I’ll just lay down the quote right here:
The big TBTF and their funds are batting the US financial markets (and the public) around like their favorite chew toy. Failure to reform the financial system is Obama’s single greatest fault, overshadowing even his military adventurism perhaps. I do not think he is ‘bad,’ but merely weak, lacking in character, and not rising to his call to greatness. A very modern man. He could have stood out well since he is surrounded by amoral puppets and stooges, some in his own house but particularly in the opposition. But he has a fatal attraction of trying to please everyone, and therefore no one, lacking principle and conviction, and therefore remarkable leadership.

bubbleheadMarc June 14, 2011 at 8:29 pm #

Which reminds me of one of my favorite phrases: “A fate worse than sobriety.”

Buck Stud June 14, 2011 at 8:30 pm #

Why do the “mediocre” have any more choice regarding their station in life as opposed to the “stupid”? And whose to say that some of the mediocre are not borderline stupid, but due to their own noble efforts raised themselves up a bit? Or the over achieving mediocre achieving smart status.
And who designed this society that has the mediocre on the hampster wheel hour after hour, day after day just in order to survive and feed their familiy, much less bring about societal change? The same intellects that you believe hold the key to salvation? And let’s not forget there’s no small amount of issues out there capable of dividing the middle against each other. For instance, slashing homespun jobs, and social safety nets via one political party to unabated voter registration for any ol’world Joe via the other party. We live in a reactionary society with most of the mediocre consumed with simply surviving.
It’s easy to proclaim Niagra Falls directly ahead and assert that people should quit going along with the flow. From the high-brow tome of your post it even sounds like you paddled sideways and landed on the promentory shore of privalaged vision.
So what are you doing in the new territory?

Buck Stud June 14, 2011 at 8:32 pm #

Great, I triggered a Q alert.

SNAFU June 14, 2011 at 8:43 pm #

Howdy Progressor, Per your musings: “Regardless of WHY we’re rudderless, the fact is that we are. We’ve got the religion of American Free Market Capitalism spreading baby formula and high birth rates all over the globe in search of Sacred Profit.””It’s a mess, ain’t it, my friend?”
Yup, mull this over:
I was reminded by recent articles on google news and PBR that this year is considered the 50th anniversary of Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaevs’ experiments, begun in 1959, to genetically create a more docile version of the Russian Arctic Fox for the Russian/Soviet fur industry. To accomplish this he used the simple methodology of breeding only foxes which were the most convivial with human handlers. Amazingly within roughly 35 generations or less domestication of the foxes into the fox equivalent of dogs was unintentionally accomplished. Belyaev did not realize that the outcome would be foxes which behave as and looked like dogs and today are sold not for fur but as companion pets. It is estimated that the conversion of wolves to dogs was accomplished similarly over a much longer generational time span by way of human/pre-human selection of the most convivial wolf pups.
Differences between adult wolves and adult dogs such as breeding frequency (wild wolves and foxes breed but once a year and in wolf packs only the alpha pair normally breed; dogs, from wolf or fox breed whenever their last litter is weened). Dogs play throughout their lives wolves and foxes for about the first year of their lives. Dogs prefer human companionship to that of other dogs. These traits and others have led biologists to conclude that breeding for conviviality traits affects the brain chemistry to effectively constrain dogs into a mental state of perpetual adolescence.
Rereading the articles about this experiment and the results led me to muse: is there another animal as prevalent on the Earth which exhibits in adulthood as many mental characteristics of adolescence as dogs? How about homo sapiens, man, humans, us? What if similar decisions about mate conviviality by early man and pre-man based simply on survival instincts slowly removed the more aggressive humans from the gene pool and created the human equivalent of dogs. Can you think of any other animal whose breeding habits have brought about a greater species die off sans the natural assistance of meteorite strikes, ice ages or super volcanism….? We are hell bent on deforestation, desertification, flooding, and roasting mother Earth to satisfy our juvenile desires of consumption, avarice, sexual gratification, play…. To my mind the ubiquitousness of religious mumbo jumbo with accompanying pomp and ceremony is prima facie evidence of the juvenile mental state of humans worldwide whom are now incapable of becoming mentally adult humans.
SNAFU

neckflames June 14, 2011 at 8:59 pm #

Your financial advisor is a salesman. Repeat several times. Now get your husband to repeat that, oh, how about 50 times for starters.
N.

jammer June 14, 2011 at 9:09 pm #

Growth for growths sake is the ideology of a cancer cell…

BeantownBill June 14, 2011 at 9:19 pm #

Stupid people don’t have as many options available to them as mediocre people, which is why they find it much more difficult to advance. BTW, stupid people aren’t just the intellectually challenged; they include the willfully blind and the congenitally bad decision-makers.
Mediocre people don’t strive to surpass themselves. Many a stupid person can transform themselves into something greater, intellectually-challenged or not. Being dumb is not the same as being stupid.
The point is to challenge oneself and go beyond, despite the obstacles. Yes, it IS easy for me to just proclaim, “don’t go with the flow”, but for me, it’s better than saying nothing and watching the whole ball of wax melt away. Besides, I came into this world at a great disadvantage, but I overcame my own obstacles. If I can, I believe others can, too.
What am I doing in this new territory? I didn’t get there paddling sideways, I got there paddling furiously against the current.

jammer June 14, 2011 at 9:20 pm #

SNAFU said…. “We are hell bent on deforestation, desertification, flooding, and roasting mother Earth to satisfy our juvenile desires of consumption, avarice, sexual gratification” Help here. What do the above advebs have to do with sexual gritifacation?

Qshtik June 14, 2011 at 9:23 pm #

Great, I triggered a Q alert.
=============
tone
😉

SNAFU June 14, 2011 at 9:27 pm #

Howdy BHM,
COB eh? Submarines are boats, interesting. I was under the impression that the SS in SSBM was the mnemonic for Submersible Ship as in Submersible Ship Ballistic Missile.
What is the ranking Chief on an Aircraft Carrier called the COC? A Destroyer the COD? Another COC on a Ballistic Missile Cruiser? ……
I spent a few months as a civilian engineer at Mare Island Shipyard, CA in the early 70’s.
SNAFU

Qshtik June 14, 2011 at 9:27 pm #

sexual gritifacation
===========
This occurs when a girl gets sand in her peep while on vacation.

BeantownBill June 14, 2011 at 9:30 pm #

Snaf, very interesting theory you got. Except we didn’t breed out aggressiveness, I think. If we’ve really done that, I’d have hated to live in the era when humans were that much more aggressive than they are now.
But you latched onto something. That we are juvenile is certain.

jammer June 14, 2011 at 9:32 pm #

Q,
You are sooo quick!

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 9:40 pm #

“Help here. What do the above advebs have to do with sexual gritifacation?”
-jammer, to snafu-
OK, to save Q the trouble – Sexual “gritifacation” – what is that?
“Sex on the Beach” is a great drink, BTW – Although the actual act itself can lead to “gritifacation”, among unskilled practitioners. Sounds painful, anyway, whatever it is.
But seriously folks –
I’m guessing that SNAFU is making the point that sexual gratification leads to babies.
Leaving sex and baby making linked through lack of education and birth control options led to our present debacle of overpopulation.
If every can of baby formula had come with a free box of condoms and a stick that women could use to force their men to wear them – we would all be in better shape.
Keeping sex and babies linked of course, is one of the Important Functions of World Religions.
But it was not until the Regan Republicans linked politics to the Moral Majority and sex – that birth control aid to other countries really was cut.
SNAFU, I’ve been working on a response to your original post. This may be the best I can do for now. You make some pretty good points.
I could say that it isn’t religion that’s the problem – it is the perversion of religion as a means of social control that’s the problem.
But I’ll admit that’s a pretty circular argument.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 10:04 pm #

“No, this is a variation on our previous battle.”
-wage-
OK, then it’s OK, womanfrien’.
Let’s battle on.
No, I did not watch my son being circumcised. I guess I could have, but you know how docs and hospitals are – they weren’t much better back in the early ’80’s.
I found some bris ceremony videos on YouTube. Those Mohels make it look so easy – using drops of wine as an anesthetic, as far as I know.
I found this video, too. You’ll have to have a youtube account to watch it. Note to non-medical CFN staff – Don’t watch it if you’re not used to watching surgeries.
In my mind the Mohels and/or modern pain management negate the “pain” argument against circumcision.
But I did learn something. I had no idea a foreskin was so large and firmly attached. So you’ve taught me something and got me thinking a little bit more, wage.
If I have another kid – maybe I won’t get him circumcised. Especially since I’ll likely be living in a cave with some remnant of humanity before circumstances lead me to having another kid.
And, in that case, I probably wouldn’t have a sharp enough rock to perform the surgery.

progressorconserve June 14, 2011 at 10:24 pm #

Oops –
Forgot the video
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dra5t0OsmWf0%26NR%3D1

CaptSpaulding June 14, 2011 at 10:25 pm #

For those who believe that regulations just hinder capitalism, I always like to recommend moving to Somalia. There are none of those pesky regulations and laws around to stop an entrepreneur from making an honest (or otherwise) living. Maybe you could take Asswipe (I mean Ahss we pay), with you and see how far he gets with that mouth of his.

CaptSpaulding June 14, 2011 at 11:02 pm #

Ha Ha, You are easily provoked and respond to conditioning quickly. Ahh Pavlov, what a guy. It’s sorta unfair to pick on someone with absolutely no self control, but it’s so much fun to see you froth. And how is Mrs. Asswipe, and all the little Asswipes? How did you manage to get close enough to impregnate Mrs. Asswipe anyway? I’ll bet you fucked her through the door. Well, it’s been fun, but It’s time to practice music. I’ll be back periodically to ring a bell for you to froth at. Enjoy your pitiful life. Tee Hee.

trippticket June 14, 2011 at 11:02 pm #

lmao…

JonathanSS June 14, 2011 at 11:02 pm #

I’m sorry, but that was in response to my neighbor, with the Ford F250 4×4 diesel. We live in suburbia and the owner is 70 & retired. The couple trailer their horse about once a year. For the one time a year they need towing capacity, they could rent a truck.
The respondents premise is correct; most people buy more car than they need. They buy a sledgehammer when 98% of the time their hanging pictures and hammering in nails. Auto marketing is about image, prestige, ego gratification, comfort, luxury, performance & style. With gas over $4.00, more ads have shifted towards economy, however.
I don’t have a problem with people buying what they want and can afford, but don’t cry to me about the costs to drive and maintain the thing.

JonathanSS June 14, 2011 at 11:06 pm #

Sorry, I read this too late. This seems like 8M/old69, and a slew of other screen names that have gotten banned over the years.

JonathanSS June 14, 2011 at 11:15 pm #

forcing mileage requirements for fleet averages (resulting in cars that no one wants or buys)

Just watch. It will be the group complaining about CAFE standards that will be bitching the most when they’re sitting in a gas line (“dammit, gov’t doesn’t work!” & “why can’t they do something?”)
Perfect Hummer bumper sticker:
Oil Sheiks Love Me!

trippticket June 14, 2011 at 11:17 pm #

“Economies are in trouble not because fossil fuels cannot be had cheaply, but because the Eco-statists have declared them taboo.”
Wake up, man. Dems like stacks of gold coins just as much as you do. The people who really think industrial humans should do things in a way that even approaches radically different number about two dozen total. It doesn’t help to blame your problems on “other.”

bubbleheadMarc June 14, 2011 at 11:30 pm #

Technically BUSHIPS probably does classify submarines as ships, because of course they ARE ships. Submariners sometimes do refer to them as ships, and increasingly so in recent decades as they’ve gotten larger. But casually submariners call them “boats”.
Mare Island Naval Shipyard is where the USS Guitarro sank at the dock purely owing to human error so I hope that you weren’t around to get blamed for that one. I was in the yard in Kittery, ME and detested every minute of it.
Other commands in the navy designate the top enlisted guy as “Command Master Chief”. This is not the highest enlisted can rise since there’s a variety of ways for them to become regular officers.

bubbleheadMarc June 14, 2011 at 11:53 pm #

I also just noticed & read your comments on the devolution of the wolf into the dog and the new domesticated foxes in Russia, compared also with the speculative self domestication of humans over time perhaps breeding in features of perpectual adolescence. To me this is very interesting and your coments are well made.
I do recall reading about the change in human breeding practices when our ancestors left the farm, stopped marrying the girl next door largely oblivious to looks in many cases, then started valuing looks in the prospective mate more and more first in the urban, then ultimately the suburban dating environment in which much larger pools of young people were available for social contacts. As people have tended to become ever more frivolous under these conditions of modernity the effects on society seem incontestably undesirable. Or were our hayseed ancestors every bit as cretinous as we’re turning out to be?

Mike Moskos June 15, 2011 at 12:20 am #

Chris Martenson (echoing Kunstler) puts it succinctly as:
“The next 20 years are going to be completely unlike the last 20 years.”
If you haven’t watched his Crash Course presentation (or stopped watching after a few chapters), do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing.

helen highwater June 15, 2011 at 12:55 am #

I agree that “Jimmy” was the only president to say that Americans would have to reduce energy use. But don’t forget about the “Carter Doctrine” (State of the Union Address 1980) in which he said that the US would use military force if necessary to ensure a reliable supply of oil from the Persian Gulf area.

helen highwater June 15, 2011 at 12:57 am #

Glad to hear your garden is doing well. You bought potato plants? Never heard of that before. Usually I just plant a piece of potato with an “eye” or two in it and presto, potato plant.

helen highwater June 15, 2011 at 12:58 am #

L’il Jimbo, is that you?

asia June 15, 2011 at 1:15 am #

‘If every can of baby formula had come with a free box of condoms and a stick that women could use to force their men to wear them – we would all be in better shape.’
Is this a Racist comment?
White folks have been having Replacement level families for 2 generations (40 years).

Shakazulu June 15, 2011 at 2:45 am #

Chris Martenson (echoing Kunstler) puts it succinctly as:
“The next 20 years are going to be completely unlike the last 20 years.”
NK. Succinct is right. Of all the videos I’ve watched, blogs I’ve read, and news I’ve heard that one statement has stuck with me. And my best guess is that we’ll begin seeing the “unlikeness” within the next 5. Maybe another nuked city in 2015 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Hiroshima or Nagasaki?

spider9629 June 15, 2011 at 4:12 am #

Language as a Deceiving Abstraction
Gavin saith, “why I am still stuck in a job that pays barely $300 a week, often closer to $200? (And why are all the applications for employment I put in met only with crushing silence?) The reason that finally came to me, is that society does not value any of what I have done. The question that arose from that answer was of course, what then, at this point in America’s history, does society value?”
There is no “society” that is valuing anything: it is another aggregator symbol, the word “society”, what on earth does it mean ? where is it ? who is it ? etc. If you think “hard enough” you will see how this word and concept is just as vague, undefined, and invisible as just about 99 % of all of our words and concepts, as language is an abstractor, is a machine that abstracts and stereotypes (simplifies to the greatest degree) any number of distinct, often unrelated, often not even clearly bound or defined sets of entities, actions and reactions, causes and effects (imagined ?), human feelings and emotions as related to other humans and what they do, or our memory, or our story and patterns projected in time (from past to future?), and so on.
Society, can you touch it ? can you feel it ? the typical response of religious people when trying to convince you to believe in the invisible, do you love your children ? can you touch “love” or feel it ? and so on: but I finally figured this one out, what they really are getting at is that this concept and word and like many other concepts and words are Information Relationships, are imagined, sometimes real, sometimes fake, mostly in between and hard to verify and define and measure feelings that situations, other people, their judgments (as you imagined them) provoke, their importance, their meanings, how important they become.
But why substitute an abstractor symbol such as “Society” with another abstractor symbol such as “Information Relationship”, isn’t that circular reasoning, isn’t that what all language and thought is really all about ? An algortihm that doesn’t go anywhere, that just keeps on cycling forever through an ever changing new sequence of symbols that each time, thinks that “it is on to something”, that is “has advanced”, that “this time it’s different”, this time “I finally got it right”.
Nothing Futher From the Truth, it will never be right, it is wrong from the outset, it is doomed from the outset to be always wrong, as our mind and thought and language itself is always wrong no matter what.
What does “society” value and why aren’t you making “more money” ? no answer at all, pure luck, pure chance, the absolute random – quirk way the forces around you are engaged, the power relationships that are keeping you in a corner (but remember if you get out of the corner, someone else will take your place and ask the same question), there is nothing that society values as society doesn’t exist, each person values different things, each person invents a different thing, judges according to nothing at all but what he perceives as “valuable” (which has no reliablity whatsoever).
On a more fun note, I like the big NASCAR enignes, we need more of them, we need 800 horsepower, we need noise and violent metal in our world, we need to show Matter who is the BOSS, we will produce a trillion NASCAR cadillacs all over the place, we need to get nature on the run, big time, we need to crack nature’s head open with a baseball bat, go man go, just do it. And we need to crack a lot of other heads open also, like god’s, like Mass – Energy’s, like The Laws of Physics’s, all of these heads must be cracked open with a baseball bat, go for it little Lucy, wow she is running around wild laughing and screaming, having a ball, the new generation will knock this world into order, they are being programmed correctly for the final showdown, MIND AGAINST MATTER, SYMBOL AGAINST MASS ENERGY, the final war, the Laws of Physics are on a run, they are running like crazy, they finally got the message on who the BOSS is!
This is the real final rapture, the sign of the Beast, the War, the Fight, Logical Contradiction finally allowed to let it all hang out, go for it little Suzy and Ryan, they are having oh so much FUN, jumping up and down, laughing, screaming and running around the backyard, while Mommy cooks in the kitchen, we are having so much FUN, it is so nice to play around like this: soon Mommy will call us in for dinner, what a fine day today!
ON the sensations to thought ratio S/T, I guess playing Football (the American one, for all of you Eurosclerotic and Latin American Latinos types) increases this variable to a higher number, less thought and more sensations as in physical activity, the flow of thought to touch or feeling and energy, interesting take. Maybe Rugby too …
Hey, San Jose Mommy, did your teenage girly, that is a doll, find the new mental contraption – universe perceived item in the backyard ? Shame on you for not answering, that is not good manners, your girly probably is more educated than you on this: if asked a question it is good manners to answer correctly. And say Sir at the end of the answer….
Are you going to ask me over for dinner tonight ? I can talk about some Metaphysics…

spider9629 June 15, 2011 at 4:23 am #

Uh Oh, spelling errors again, guess where the errors are game again! Go for it little Tommy, he is running like a lighting bolt to get those errors fast! By the way, this is also blog – hog time again, go figure !
From:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/06/a-distant-sound-of-churning-1.html
Language as a Deceiving Abstraction
Gavin saith, “why I am still stuck in a job that pays barely $300 a week, often closer to $200? (And why are all the applications for employment I put in met only with crushing silence?) The reason that finally came to me, is that society does not value any of what I have done. The question that arose from that answer was of course, what then, at this point in America’s history, does society value?”
There is no “society” that is valuing anything: it is another aggregator symbol, the word “society”, what on earth does it mean ? where is it ? who is it ? etc. If you think “hard enough” you will see how this word and concept is just as vague, undefined, and invisible as just about 99 % of all of our words and concepts, as language is an abstractor, is a machine that abstracts and stereotypes (simplifies to the greatest degree) any number of distinct, often unrelated, often not even clearly bound or defined sets of entities, actions and reactions, causes and effects (imagined ?), human feelings and emotions as related to other humans and what they do, or our memory, or our story and patterns projected in time (from past to future?), and so on.
Society, can you touch it ? can you feel it ? the typical response of religious people when trying to convince you to believe in the invisible, do you love your children ? can you touch “love” or feel it ? and so on: but I finally figured this one out, what they really are getting at is that this concept and word and like many other concepts and words are Information Relationships, are imagined, sometimes real, sometimes fake, mostly in between and hard to verify and define and measure feelings that situations, other people, their judgments (as you imagined them) provoke, their importance, their meanings, how important they become.
But why substitute an abstractor symbol such as “Society” with another abstractor symbol such as “Information Relationship”, isn’t that circular reasoning, isn’t that what all language and thought is really all about ? An algorithm that doesn’t go anywhere, that just keeps on cycling forever through an ever changing new sequence of symbols that each time, thinks that “it is on to something”, that is “has advanced”, that “this time it’s different”, this time “I finally got it right”.
Nothing Further From the Truth, it will never be right, it is wrong from the outset, it is doomed from the outset to be always wrong, as our mind and thought and language itself is always wrong no matter what.
What does “society” value and why aren’t you making “more money” ? no answer at all, pure luck, pure chance, the absolute random – quirk way the forces around you are engaged, the power relationships that are keeping you in a corner (but remember if you get out of the corner, someone else will take your place and ask the same question), there is nothing that society values as society doesn’t exist, each person values different things, each person invents a different thing, judges according to nothing at all but what he perceives as “valuable” (which has no reliability whatsoever).
On a more fun note, I like the big NASCAR engines, we need more of them, we need 800 horsepower, we need noise and violent metal in our world, we need to show Matter who is the BOSS, we will produce a trillion NASCAR Cadillacs all over the place, we need to get nature on the run, big time, we need to crack nature’s head open with a baseball bat, go man go, just do it. And we need to crack a lot of other heads open also, like god’s, like Mass – Energy’s, like The Laws of Physics’s, all of these heads must be cracked open with a baseball bat, go for it little Lucy, wow she is running around wild laughing and screaming, having a ball, the new generation will knock this world into order, they are being programmed correctly for the final showdown, MIND AGAINST MATTER, SYMBOL AGAINST MASS ENERGY, the final war, the Laws of Physics are on a run, they are running like crazy, they finally got the message on who the BOSS is!
This is the real final rapture, the sign of the Beast, the War, the Fight, Logical Contradiction finally allowed to let it all hang out, go for it little Suzy and Ryan, they are having oh so much FUN, jumping up and down, laughing, screaming and running around the backyard, while Mommy cooks in the kitchen, we are having so much FUN, it is so nice to play around like this: soon Mommy will call us in for dinner, what a fine day today!
ON the sensations to thought ratio S/T, I guess playing Football (the American one, for all of you Eurosclerotic and Latin American Latinos types) increases this variable to a higher number, less thought and more sensations as in physical activity, the flow of thought to touch or feeling and energy, interesting take. Maybe Rugby too …
Hey, San Jose Mommy, did your teenage girly, that is a doll, find the new mental contraption – universe perceived item in the backyard ? Shame on you for not answering, that is not good manners, your girly probably is more educated than you on this: if asked a question it is good manners to answer correctly. And say Sir at the end of the answer….
Are you going to ask me over for dinner tonight ? I can talk about some Metaphysics…

MarlinFive54 June 15, 2011 at 7:29 am #

Old6699/spider;
Like I said yesterday, you’re a f—-g wierdo; Stay away from kids! Don’t even reference them in your posts, like you have SJMoms’ daughter.
Ibendet, a new book out this week, I forget the name of it, by NYT business editor, interviewed on Book TV, blames financial meltdown in 2007 squarely on FannyMae and FreddyMac and their enablers in Congress who ran flak for them, namely Chris Dodd and especially Barney Frank, who, get this, was sleeping with the dude, Herb Moses, overseeing FannyMae. Also some dude named Johnson, who was big in all these Lib causes and Orgs. (Like the Kennedy Center) was paying himself like $100 million. It was a huge slush fund for Libs. Why didn’t Matt Taibbi mention any of this?
Everybody on a site like this probably hates Larry the Cable Guy. He was on the TV in our breakroom last night. Pretty funny stuff, riding around the country visiting people like moonshiners, rodeo riders, and boar hunters. He seems to be saying we have a country out here separate from Wall Street and Washington, with our own traditions and interests, in a way showing Wall street and Washinton the middle finger.
-Marlin

welles June 15, 2011 at 7:40 am #

brazilians are getting very conscious about the environment, there are commercials reminding people to use as little water as possible, reminding folks of deforestation, and reforestation efforts galore, turning denuded forest back into at least ‘treed’ land quickly, as things grow fast in this heat.
if i’d come down here by my lonesome it’d have been the same warm welcome, these folks are very loving and open, don’t believe the nonsense about ‘run for your life in the city’ etc.
sure there are issues, but baltimore has issues too, so does any area, be it in the US or here.
that old thing called human nature….
most americans here in southern brazil would be thought to be brazilians, as it’s very european-mixed here and you’d fit right in imagewise.
re convincing your wife, hell, just book a one-weeker, preferably staying with a local family (i know those types of stays exist nowadays) to get to know them, i almost guarantee you’ll cry with ‘saudades’ when you have to leave your newfound family. nothing like human warmth.
for the self-annointed metacritics: yes there are problems here, yes there’s violence, yes there’s fill-in-the-blank, but look in the mirror before you sidle up with your barbs.
adieu friends & inimigos
ps my honey’s more cinnamon girl than brown honey lol

lbendet June 15, 2011 at 8:13 am #

Marlin,
Re: Matt Taibbi’s account of what happened in 2008, I would venture to say that everybody who researches a complicated system would focus on where their research and contacts take them. There isn’t anyone out there who doesn’t have a bias and I applaud you for keeping up with the literature that comes out on this subject–but there are in fact many to blame–and our system is on the road to the destruction of Capitalism itself, buy going down the road of extremism.
Here’s what I say about this. There are many focal points in this debacle, many moveable parts, if you will.
Fannie and Freddie played their part, along with the democrats you mentioned.
Bush pushed the idea of “The Ownership Society” where he exhorted that all should be able to own homes.
In this debt=Moneatry gain for the banks, neoliberal system, selling mortages to those who could afford them was a trick to get people into debt, so the Friedman models of austerity and privatization can be induced.
Since all these mortgages were being minced into financial sausages around the world, just imagine the the little guy who is being told by bank reps to lie about their salaries on the forms, to be the little engine that could.(bring down the world economy)
There are all kinds of reasons why the growth paradigm doesn’t work, and according to those who discuss the Bilderberg meetings, they needed to put a halt to international growth in order to decrease demand for resources. (maybe).
A good article to read, is one from Marketwatch, by Paul Farrell, Ayn Rand’s ‘Death of the Soul of Capitalism’Commentary: Self-destructive narcissists are sabotaging Adam Smith’s ideal.
I think many on this site would like this article. It describes the inculcation of this extremist cult into our national culture of greed and the crash and burn tactic by this distorted cult as the destruction of our political system and economic system.
Marlin, I do hope you read it. You seem to go back and forth on what you believe and favor the right-wing interpretation of things, maybe you’ll understand why you shouldn’t be so quick to embrace it and remember, both parties are part of the same sickness that is our present system. (nobody gets out alive)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ayn-rands-death-of-the-soul-of-capitalism-2011-06-14?pagenumber=1

lbendet June 15, 2011 at 8:29 am #

Correction: Who COULDN’T afford them(mortgages)

bubbleheadMarc June 15, 2011 at 8:50 am #

Your comments on the growth paradigm no longer working remind me in an oblique sense of Joel Klein’s lame article in The Atlantic this month about how he was largely frustrated in his Michelle Rhee type attempts to restructure the New York city public schools. I find his article lame because like many people who know a lot about a particular subject, namely why public education is messed up, in the final analysis he can’t see the forest for the trees. In other words, he bandies about statistics about an imaginary self induced permanent recession in which people are presumably underemployed based upon their theoretical potential to have qualified for better jobs, jobs which Klein imagines would be their proper due had they simply completed the training for entry to those jobs. It never seems to occur to him that we’ve had truckdrivers with master’s degrees ever since the GI Bill started sending virtually everyone to college way back in the late forties. And then of course draft avoidance in the ‘sixties only compounded this absurdity. Presumably he hasn’t heard of the multitudes of unemployed Ph.D physicists towards the end of the cold war either. Apparently none of them took the education credits to get jobs teaching high school physics which is why it does’t occur to him that the universe doesn’t magically assign a better job to everyone who becomes over-educated.
And then he never even alludes to indiscipline preventing kids from learning anything. He does mention that some teachers in the rubber room holding situation were suspended [with pay] for physical abuse of students. It never occurs to him to wonder why a big city school teacher might become physically abusive towards a student. Could it be because that student assaulted the teacher? Could in fact that “child” be a 17 year old football player who is twice the size of the female teacher he assaulted? We won’t find out from Klein because he’s not interested in expanding on that one.
The only thing we really learn from Klein is that the teacher pension system is underfunded and hence, promises of a good pension to all the teachers are fraudulent, since the pension fund has been underperforming for a long time, which in hindsight should come as no surprise at this point to all of us cynical Clusterfuckians hereabouts.
So all we all need is to take out student loans and get more degrees then we’ll all automatically get the jobs for which we’ve trained! Klein goes on at length about competing in the global economy. With hundreds of idled containerships anchored off of the coast of Malaysia one might ask “what global economy?”
The same issue has another article entitled “The Tragedy of Sarah Palin”, by Joshua Green. Green claims that Palin was in reality a decent consensus building governor who increased the taxation level on the oil industry there in Alaska which enabled that state to be one of the most solvent today in spite of the financial melt-down afflicting most levels of government nearly everywhere. He says that she’s a tragic figure because she went on from this constructive approach in her own state to become a massively divisive figure on the national political stage.

MarlinFive54 June 15, 2011 at 8:54 am #

Nice post, Ibendet.
I count on you to keep me grounded here in CFN, on economic matters. Also, your frequent posts keep me interested in the events on Wall Street. Much appreciated!
I’m probably instinctively a ‘right winger’, once described as blue collar reactionary. I don’t know why. Many in my family are this way, too. It might go back to where I grew up, when all my neighbors in our milltown were enlisting in the Army and Marine Corps for Viet Nam, and on the other side of town, the upper middle class side, the local elites, they were protesting this or that all the time, running the country down. I resented it. Even now on Memorial Day you can see the divide, all the local vets, me included, all from the milltown village, involved in the ceremonies. The other sons of bitches are nowhere to be seen.
-Marlin
-Marlin

metuselah June 15, 2011 at 9:05 am #

Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you’ve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
And everybody knows that it’s now or never
Everybody knows that it’s me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you’ve done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows
And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it’s moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows
And everybody knows that you’re in trouble
Everybody knows what you’ve been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it’s coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows
http://youtu.be/9F8QM3tjkTE

lbendet June 15, 2011 at 9:07 am #

Marlin,
I guess there is really a divide on how people express their patriotism or what they imagine are their dreams for their country.
We all have our points of view and bear the scars of history. Thus, if in the 60’s you saw this country as love it or leave it, you might see criticism of our involvement in Viet Nam to be unpatriotic.
But in lieu of the lies that even McNamara admitted to as our reason to fight Viet Nam, is it really anti-American to ask for the truth and pull out of a war going nowhere?
Well we all have our styles, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care about this country, we only wish we could break with the path we are on.
Right now the only people who I see as unpatriotic are those who would sell their country out for big bucks in the global economic arena, at the expense of what benefits all Americans.

bubbleheadMarc June 15, 2011 at 9:11 am #

ONE OF THE MISSING TREES IN THE NEW YORK CITY EDUCATIONAL FOREST: One of my merchant marine shipmates was a native New Yorker who graduated from the maritime trades program formerly conducted aboard a maritime administration Liberty ship from WWII. To get a look at that program refer to “Men, Ships and the Sea” published by the National Geographic Society in the early ’60s. I also knew another New Yorker in the merchant marine who had a buddy who taught that program. So far as I can determine that trades apprenticeship program no longer exists. Why is that you might wonder. The answer is simple: compared to what we had in the ’50s the merchant marine today has declined by perhaps 90% not only owing to the expected automation in cargo handling systems but also as a result of massive offshoring of jobs to so called flag of convenience merchant ship registries. Who does this job now? Filipinos of course. They are good seamen, have been going to sea for centuries starting out in the Spanish merchant fleet, and today are the largest seafaring nationality. Plus they work cheap. No more trades program for the high school kids in New York. Were they even given a chance to “compete” in the global seaborne shipping system? Of course not. Nobody wants to hire American seamen because they are several times more likely to sue steamship companies. So it is that all this vacuous prattle about global competitiveness falls on the deaf ears of unemployed industrial workers who know better. And guess what? The college trained officers who attended the New York State [SUNY] Maritime College at Fort Schyler across the bay from the US Merchant Marine Academy at King’s Point are just as unemployed today as the deck hands who serve under them. Unless they want to go on active duty using their reserve commissions in an economically unproductive job bombing some third world shithole for the greater glory of the military industrial complex.

lbendet June 15, 2011 at 9:11 am #

Sorry Bubbleheadmarc,
I could just be dense this morning, but I don’t understand how my post this morning reminded you of anything you mentioned in your post. I was listening to someone discussing the Bilderberg meeting and agenda yesterday and brought up the idea of limited resources for world population. Don’t know if anything about these meetings or agendas are true that’s why I said (maybe).

lbendet June 15, 2011 at 9:46 am #

Thanks, M
Love Leonard Cohen–nothing like quoting from the best.

metuselah June 15, 2011 at 10:33 am #

You might want to read this:
Tao Jonesing: Explaining My Thesis Re: Locke and Jefferson
http://taojonesing.blogspot.com/2011/06/explaining-my-thesis-re-locke-and.html
It has nothing to do with narcissism, and everything to do with clinging to a failed model. A failed model, that has failed again and again and again, but is always being resurrected by the same parasitic class. This is because with all their volumes of supposed psychological understanding of human nature, the reality of the matter is, they have completely failed to understand human nature.

Cash June 15, 2011 at 10:56 am #

Are you being sarcastic again?

lbendet June 15, 2011 at 10:57 am #

Thanks for that, M.
Will read—The article was discussing in particular the Ayn Rand cult, and the culture of greed, that has captured the thinking of our culture, but I recognize the system as a whole is going through a bigger process than Rand.
I agree with you on the larger picture.

metuselah June 15, 2011 at 11:27 am #

You’re welcome.

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 11:37 am #

“‘If every can of baby formula had come with a free box of condoms and a stick that women could use to force their men to wear them – we would all be in better shape.'”
-asia, quoting PoC-
“Is this a Racist comment?”
-asia-
Asia, I don’t see how anyone, even the worst black or brown racist on earth could turn this into a racist comment.
My comment would upset the Pope and Muhammad, however – and some of the religious fruitbats on the Christian right in the US, as well.
“White folks have been having Replacement level families for 2 generations (40 years).”
-asia-
Is this a racist comment, asia? That I’m not quite sure about. It’s a pure statement of fact – considering the planet at large, however.
If, instead of “white folks”, you substituted – “folks with access to education and effective birth control” – then it’s a lot harder to argue that the statement is racist.
Plus, making that change in your statement, helps show a way forward from today’s disaster of overpopulation.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 11:44 am #

And yet, any national public figure MUST pretend that the answer to our economic problems is more education.
And student loan debt has now surpassed credit card debt in this country.
In The Emperor’s New Clothes, all it took for truth to prevail is for a little child to speak it! In America, the child would be shushed, or tasered, or thrown into Guantanamo. Or more likely, just ignored, while the lies continue to gush forth on every form of media there is.
I watched excerpts of the Republican debate. Ron Paul was a breath of fresh air. The others felt it necessary to ritually genuflect to our “heroes” in the military, and pretend that the US attack on targets in the Middle East and Central Asia and Northern Africa were to protect us.
There are Things That Must Be Said and Things That Must Not Be Said, and you rarely see anyone break any of those rules.
And Marlin pretends that no one mentions the black people who took down our entire banking system with their pernicious, subversive buying of houses that they couldn’t afford when the adjustable rates kicked in.
That, of course, is another lie. Black people were indeed blamed for the entire meltdown of the financial system, just like pregnant black teenagers are held responsible for the entire breakdown of American capitalism.

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 11:47 am #

Great poem to post, M, fits right into the dialog this week. Also the taojonesing link is an interesting perspective.
How the Milton Friedman/Ayn Rand philosophy came to dominate political thought in the US is a mystery – because not all of our national leaders were greedy short-sighted bastards, until 1980 or so, at least.
How Milton’s work was sold to working class guys like fabian is a powerful demonstration of the power of marketing. AKA brainwashing.
BTW, Metuselah, was Mika banned? If so, I’m glad you reincarnated yourself after the “death?” of Mika. Shows CFN how easy it is to make an honest resurrection after being banned one time.
Thanks!

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 11:48 am #

Yeah, I didn’t think you watched, because you told me that he only cried briefly, unlike with the IV in his foot.
That didn’t really ring true. That may be what the doctor told you, but, let me tell you, he lied.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 11:51 am #

You know what, Spider?
You don’t have to repost everytime you make a spelling error.
Even Qstick doesn’t care.

Cash June 15, 2011 at 11:51 am #

How important is it? Most people don’t know they’re being raped. A large minority of people don’t even know what their take home pay is.
Neckflames has the idea. Your financial advisor has his own interest at heart, not yours.
I think that a lot of people have been intensively indoctrinated (brainwashed) into this financial culture of ours. Others are convinced that money matters are something for “experts”, that the world of finance is far beyond them, even something as mundane and simple as household finances.
The thing to remember is that the financial industries are out to rob you blind. I’ve ranted on too many other occasions on this site that it’s so hard to make any sense out of what you’re being told by these financial advisors because what these guys say doesn’t make any sense.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 11:54 am #

No, I wasn’t being sarcastic. Are you being paranoid again?
It’s just that I had just posted a brief mention of naked short selling, before I read your longer and more comprehensive rant on financial shenanigans. So I was glad that you did it, and was giving you your props.

Cash June 15, 2011 at 12:01 pm #

What do you mean “again”?

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 12:02 pm #

I know that you have been introduced to the ideas of Ellen Brown, but have you ever heard of Steve Zarlenga?
Although I don’t believe that capitalism can be reformed, I do believe that our monetary system can be.
We need to change our entire system of money, before the entire thing collapses and leads to war with China – which is where I think that they are leading us.
This website is about monetary reform. Scroll down to find specific articles about history and prescriptions.
Note that Dennis Kucinich and the Green Party are on board with monetary reform. The Green Party also supports the Tobin Tax, which is a tax on Wall Street speculation.
I call it a “sin tax”. They tax the hell out of alcohol and cigarettes, but gambling with people’s pension funds is a much bigger sin, in my opinion.
http://www.monetary.org/

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 12:02 pm #

Speaking of the Pope.
Can you imagine how immeasurably better off Mexico and Latin America would be if the Pope had a “vision” this Saturday, concerning birth control.
Because the Pope and the Cardinals and the Blue Jays could all communicate this vision by email to every Catholic priest in the world for broadcast on Sunday morning.
“EVERYONE USE BIRTH CONTROL – THE POPE HAS SPOKEN!”
Now, does anyone know where I can find the Pope’s unlisted phone number?

mika. June 15, 2011 at 12:02 pm #

Thanks, PC. mika is alive and well, just using a different web browser with a different PC. And btw, still pissed off at how many Americans refuse to look at the truth, refuse to look for the truth, and are so nonchalant when it comes to what their government is going in their name. The parallels to Nazi Europe are striking.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 12:08 pm #

Perhaps I misspoke.
I thought that you had been paranoid before, but I can’t really remember when.

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 12:09 pm #

That may be what the doctor told you, but, let me tell you, he lied.” -wage-
Maybe, Wage – I have no idea what the standards of practice were in the ’80’s for pain management for circumcision.
Did you watch that video I linked?
Surgery’s surgery, but there wasn’t much crying at all in it.
And how DO those Mohels make it look so easy in those Jewish circumcision videos on youtube?
Even the worst ones called “botched circumcision” last just a few minutes – and the crying seems pretty minimal. I’ve caused a LOT worse crying myself in infants – over a splinter or a diaper change.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 12:11 pm #

Also, you may be intrigued that the University of Chicago in the 30s had progressive economists!
Steve Zerlenga quotes them extensively.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 12:14 pm #

Perhaps you don’t realize that the Mexican birth rate has fallen greatly in the last few years, and is almost as low as the US now.
http://jonjayray.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/mexican-birthrate-falling-rapidly/

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 12:17 pm #

No, I don’t have a youtube account.
Plus, I’ve seen WAY more circumcisions than I would ever care to see.
I don’t want to watch anymore.

lbendet June 15, 2011 at 12:19 pm #

Thanks, Wage
I copied the link into my bookmarks. It’s great to hear some common sense being discussed–it will be a major uphill fight, but one well worth it.

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 12:36 pm #

The culture wars of the ’60’s continue to torment us yet. You wrote the shortest and most accurate summation of feelings that I believe I’ve ever seen. It’s worth reading twice, CFN.
“I’m probably instinctively a ‘right winger’, once described as blue collar reactionary. I don’t know why. Many in my family are this way, too. It might go back to where I grew up, when all my neighbors in our milltown were enlisting in the Army and Marine Corps for Viet Nam, and on the other side of town, the upper middle class side, the local elites, they were protesting this or that all the time, running the country down. I resented it. Even now on Memorial Day you can see the divide, all the local vets, me included, all from the milltown village, involved in the ceremonies. The other sons of bitches are nowhere to be seen.”
-marlin-
Marlin, I strongly identify with your points and your “side.” I also identify with the points of the “other side.” Drives me crazy, sometimes.
And I hate to be the one to tell you, but for the most part those “other sons of bitches” slipped into the woodwork of jobs in government service or corporate America. And most of them totally reversed their politics to become “conservative” corporate types who now vote the interest of their economic class.
The mystery (to me) is how the American working class has been marketed to the point that they will vote against their economic interest – because of “social issues” – like abortion or gay marriage.
Marketed, EVEN, to the point that “Protect the Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich” can cause working class Republicans to get out and vote.
Amazing.
Somehow, both our “sides” have managed to screw up a once great country.
You got any suggestions for moving forward, man?

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 12:52 pm #

OK, Wage, truce over circumcision,then? At least for now? I will encourage you to watch a Jewish circumcision on youtube to give us your nurse’s perspective. You don’t need an account to watch any of these. And the only thing disturbing to me were some of the comments.
It looks mighty easy the way they do it. And it’s a loong way from any synagogue to an American style surgical suite.
===========
Back to the immigration wars, then!!
“Not taken into account is the higher birthrate of Mexicans who migrate to the United States, who I think are at around 3.1 children per woman. Could mass migration to the U.S. disguise continued high birth rates in Mexico?”
-a poster on the link you furnished, with whom I would agree-
Also, Wage, how do you suppose the Mexican govt. has achieved this – especially considering the opposition of the Catholic church in an overwhelmingly Catholic country.
Is there a lesson for the US in dealing with our RW “sex is only for making babies” contingent?
And is it true that birth control is furnished by the government and readily available to all Mexican women, regardless of income. Another poster on that link made this statement.

MarlinFive54 June 15, 2011 at 12:58 pm #

PoC;
I don’t really have any ideas about moving forward, PoC, except that I’m trying to get enough money together right now to ‘move’ to the Florida Keys before the cold weather sets in again in New England. I hope to visit with my CFN friends in Georgia on my way down south.
WageL, I don’t ever remember blaming ‘black people’ for the financial meltdown in 2007-2008. If I did say that somewhere I was clearly wrong.
-Marlin

LewisLucanBooks June 15, 2011 at 1:04 pm #

“…many moveable parts…”
I just finished Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America” (2009). She had a chapter as to how the mega churches pushing the prosperity gospel contributed to the housing meltdown. “God wants you to have that house!” If the mortgage company fudged your income and overlooked your bad credit rating, it was God moving in your life. Of course, this played into the Government pushing home ownership.
And, there were people in the mortgage industry who could see the mortgage bubble blowing up and had a skeptical take on the whole process. They were pretty much accused of negativity and thrown under the bus.
Still on the hold list for Taibbi’s book. I move steadily down the hold list, and a copy hasn’t popped up at the thrift stores, yet. So, after I read Taibbi’s book (the contents of which I am pretty familiar with, via the Rolling Stone) then what? And, I read Naomi Klein’s book, “Shock Doctrine.” And, I grasp the concepts.
New Zealand was hit with another two earthquakes that pretty much brought down whatever was left standing from the last one. There was hardly a ripple across the Internet. Maybe, because nobody died in this one. Recovery efforts just about back to square one.

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 1:06 pm #

I have logged a lot of hours in the Florida Keys, marlin. Fantastic place to visit, ’till yet. You thinking of a permanent move?
I’d be delighted to meet you somewhere, as you make your way south. Keep me informed of your travel plans.

Cash June 15, 2011 at 1:08 pm #

My paranoia increases with age.
When I was a young feller I had a vague feeling of unease, a notion that the world was an unfriendly place, that there were unseen people out to get me.
Not that these people had it in for me personally but rather that they were like Hancock’s Alien Space Lizards, creatures with no conscience, who watched me unblinking, amoral people that would mercilessly use me, if I didn’t watch out, for their own ends, people that would run me over and wreck me.
But now it’s no longer a vague feeling or a “notion”. Now I’m certain of it and now I know that those unseen conspirators muttering behind the curtains were actually in front of me all the time, hiding in plain sight, in fact, on TV and in public making speeches and giving interviews.
Are/were they acting for others lurking out of sight on vast estates, in opulent mansions? Maybe. In fact probably.
Hannah Arendt talked about the banality of evil in relation to Adolf Eichmann. I have a better idea of the notion having seen and spoken to corporate bureaucrats carrying out their mandates as senior execs. Some of them were as gray and colourless as the 1950s era organization man. They looked to me to be ordinary fellows endowed with some unusual personal characteristics that suited them to high corporate office.
But some, especially in the last 20 years, were hard eyed men with slicked back hair, manicured nails and hugely expensive threads. They looked nasty and I think they cultivated the image.
Were they murderers? I don’t think so. Their evil was more mundane than that. Over time and in word and deed they “normalized” ways of thinking and behaving that, for the sake of their own benefit, greatly corroded our society and economy and led us to the degraded financial and environmental state we find ourselves in. Some, with some vestiges of conscience, must have justified what they did on the basis of ideological “rightness”, that this was the land of free enterprise, that they did what the “market” dictated.
But, I think I’m crapping too much on business types. The conspiracy is just as much implicit as it is explicit and involves more than just moneymen. Look to university campuses, the judiciary and civil service. This is a many headed beast that wants to eat us. This hydra is just as busy sapping us culturally and psychologically as it is economically.

welles June 15, 2011 at 1:09 pm #

to find out if your ‘financial advisor’ is a dope like 95% are is simple, just ask the following question:
Did you foresee the greatest financial meltdown of all time and position your clients to profit from it, or did your funds get clobbered?

if his funds got clobbered, don’t use him. just another barking porpoise trained to say what he was told by the financial ‘advisor’ industry, HAHA what a joke
then point him/her to bob moriarty, the daily reckoning, peter schiff, max keiser, ron paul et al, the guys who were on the record years prior to the catastrophe as saying what would — and did — occur in housing, stocks etc
naturally, these are the folks who are ridiculed, what do you expect from your ‘edutainment’ system?
USA…what…a…joke

AMR June 15, 2011 at 1:14 pm #

Nice try, but I can tell the difference between people who use their trucks to do chores and those who are just projecting an image. I’ve spent a fair amount of time around farmers, honest-to-God rednecks and the like, and they’re not the ones driving jacked-up crew cabs with pristine paint jobs. People who actually use their trucks to haul large or heavy loads usually have old beaters, and not necessarily big ones, either. Rangers are pretty popular as work trucks, for instance.
Bigger trucks are needed for some jobs, e.g. hauling large animals, but that’s not why most people buy them. The more ostentatious the truck, the truer this is. I’d be surprised if even ten percent of the late-model crew cabs and other oversize trucks on the roads in Humboldt County are driven by genuine ranchers or dairy farmers. Most of them are driven by rich or indebted white trash who are trying too hard to be cowboys. (I know better than to conflate rednecks and white trash, so forget about making me out to be some sort of classist bigot.) They’re what some people in my grandmother’s generation call drugstore cowboys. Real cattlemen don’t cover their trucks with “cowboy up” regalia. It’s more subtle than that: stickers from 4H clubs, ranchers’ associations, seed companies, the Bush Farm and Ranch Team, etc. The poseurs get the tone and details all wrong.
I have enough of an ear to the ground in flyover country to recognize over-the-top phonies. If you can’t recognize them, I guess the joke’s on you, as well as on the poseurs themselves.
FYI, unleashing a fucktard volley on me was a troll fail. Some games are best played with children.

LewisLucanBooks June 15, 2011 at 1:21 pm #

Protecting tax cuts for the rich. Barbara Ehrenreich had some thoughts on that, too, in her book “Bright-sided.” A large chunk of the American population thinks that someday they’re going to be filthy rich. It’s that old can-do, Horatio Alger, hard work and wishful thinking, excuse me, “visioning” will get you whatever you desire.
A case in point would be all the hoop-la over inheritance taxes. Very few people sat down for a few minutes to discover how much they would have to inherit to have the tax kick in. To discover what a small percentage of Americans this would effect. Or to quietly consider their particular situation and if they would EVER have to worry about the tax.
I’m surprised that Dave Ramsey is so popular. After all, he’s soooo negative. He tells people things like “Ed McMahon is not going to visit your house,” (with that Publisher’s Clearing House Check) and “Playing the lottery is not a retirement plan.” Wow. What a negative thinking guy!
Social issues like gay rights and abortion are just smoke and mirrors. Wedge issues. Distractions from what is really going on. “Look here, not there!” Every stage magician knows the value of diverting attention.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 1:30 pm #

Oh for Pete’s sakes, Prog, you’re being punked.
Marlin doesn’t have some vague, inchoate right wing inclination caused by exposure to dirty hippies while he bravely fought commies for the good ol’ USA.
Jeez. He has a deeply held, fully coherent extreme right wing philosophy, complete with expressing joy at his projected upcoming liberal vs reactionary gunfight.
Oh, yeah, Marlin, I’m talking about you. And you damn well know that talking about Fannie Mae is code for those black people who wanted houses that they didn’t deserve.
And, prog, you should know that those war protesters did not grow up to run the country. From Dick Cheney, who had better things to do, to George Bush, who deserted the National Guard, to Lawrence Summer and Hank Paulson and the rest of the neocons, you can’t see a former hippie among them.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 1:39 pm #

Again, I agree with you.

Cash June 15, 2011 at 1:41 pm #

Most people are barking porpoises. They have to be.
I spent a long time in the real estate management and development industry. In the early 1990s the company I worked for went bankrupt. The mistakes were exactly the ones made ten years before that, which at the time, nearly sunk the company.
Back then if you tried to tell it like it is, that house prices were outpacing family incomes, that there was no way that house prices could maintain the rate of increase, that the prices for raw land were way too high and couldn’t be recovered, you were derided as a “pessimist”. You didn’t belong. Go hide in your cave.
Never mind common sense, forget facts. Common sense and facts were for sissies, not for the smiling striding optimist that the industry required you to be. Same thing in the financial industry.

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 1:43 pm #

“Oh for Pete’s sakes, Prog, you’re being punked.”
-wage, concerning marlin-
Maybe, Wage, but I don’t think so. I know too many men like marlin, out here in the real world. The fact that he’ll lay it out here on CFN for all the world to see – says a lot for him and his willingness to examine his beliefs.
Something we can all benefit from, btw.
=============
And I didn’t say the “former hippies” went into National Leadership – I said they went into American Corporate and Government service AND changed their politics to match their economic class.
Although, sometimes I wonder. Take BushII, a frogkilling, hard drinking, coke snorting rebel; if there ever was one. Slightly different environment and he’d have been putting daisies in rifle barrels. hahohe
One problem the baby boom generation has had is that all the “real leaders” did crazy sh*t when they were in their 20’s – so every time they run for something above local dog catcher their nerdy neo-con/neo-lib opponents (like Cheney) blackmail them into totally withdrawing from politics.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 1:49 pm #

The financial meltdown is only tangentially related to mortgages.
The bubble was not just increasing housing prices, it was the financial speculation on those mortgages, which grew to heights that no one seems to be able to calculate, but which is far, far above the value of those mortgages.
Earlier I was talking about certain memes that the talking heads must recite, like the veneration of education and war.
Housing prices are now in that category. For some reason, it is accepted newspeak now to talk about how horrible it is that housing prices are falling.
Why? How is it in any way bad that housing prices are becoming more affordable? Except to speculators and flippers and real estate salesmen and bankers? Who are excoriated at the same time that it is assumed that we need to get back to letting them inflate another bubble.
The cognitive dissonance is maddening.

AMR June 15, 2011 at 1:52 pm #

Thanks for putting in a good word for me and calling bullshit on that red herring about real workers doing real work with real trucks. It’s good to have some backup in putting the kibosh on rabidly ideological trollfests.

Eleuthero June 15, 2011 at 1:52 pm #

Fabian wrote:
I don’t give a good crap how many shirts someone has in their closet and can’t even begin to fathom why you should. You want only four or five have at it. But if all had your predetermined number, there would be a hell of a lot of more unemployed people in the shirt/pants business.
***************************************************
Bah!! You’re another of these “Cornucopians”
who think that it’s nobody ELSE’S business how
big a pig I am. That’s absolute irrationality.
The whole point is that we’re heading into an
era of 9 billion people with scarcity on all
sides … including crops, energy, and metals.
Your idea confuses freedom with license and
“liberty” as the “freedom” to be a bad citizen.
Fie on you, sir!!!
E.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 1:54 pm #

You got that right, AMR!
If someone has a shiny crew cab with a four foot bed, which is covered with a hood, then they have a gas-guzzling passenger vehicle, in my opinion.
And what’s with the 6 foot beds, now standard?
If you need a truck, I think that you need an 8 foot bed.

Eleuthero June 15, 2011 at 2:00 pm #

Your arguments sound right out of the
Ayn Rand playbook that all “commerce”
is good. Economic activity for the
sake of economic activity.
It has landed us in a country where the
biggest industry is involved in the trading
back-and-forth of worthless financial “chits”
whether they be options, stocks, etc..
You’re another one of these “extrapolators”
that feels that if I’m in favor of SOME
regulation I must be in favor of regulating
what kind of tile you can have in your bathroom.
Go back to school and learn how to debate. If
I say that I believe sectors X and Y should be
re-regulated it doesn’t mean I want A through
Z regulated. I most assuredly do not.
Guys like you see government as the prime source
of evil. Capitalist malfeasance is the CAUSE of
more government. The more crooked behavior, the
more government arises … and rightly so. Even
libertarians are for police services.
You’re not very good at reading nuanced posts
because you put words in people’s mouths that
they never said. Rather intellectually light
weight if you ask me.
E.

JonathanSS June 15, 2011 at 2:07 pm #

We have to stick together. This troll, FNA lingling, tzatza, tootsie, etc., will probably be banned by the time you read this.
Everybody talks about reducing oil imports but most Americans don’t want to make the sacrifices necessary. Many try to ridicule conservation/environmental talk as an infringement on freedom.

Eleuthero June 15, 2011 at 2:10 pm #

Ctemple wrote:I disagree, I don’t blame the kids of today, I blame this bunch of ‘greatest generation’ assholes. They inherited everything, a damn good country, resources, jobs, money, and in fifty years they managed to run it right into the toilet. And they’re the same as they always were, greedy self absorbed dumbasses, with a bottomless, ceaseless sense of entitlement. They’ve lived longer than anyone in human history, and we still have to work keeping them alive until they’re 114.
**************************************************
My Dad is 80 and part of that generation. They
inherited SQUAT. They “inherited” firstly the
Great Depression. The economy never really
recovered until 1949. Then they inherited WWII.
They didn’t get rich on stocks and they didn’t
feel “entitled” to anything but the sweat of
their brow.
The Boomers were a step DOWN from the Greatest
Generation, the X-ers are a step down from the
Boomers, and the Y-ers are a step down from the
X-ers. Generation X is a generation with the
Boomers sense of entitlement but with the spirit
of a HUCKSTER … they want their SCAMS to produce
wealth. At least the Boomers did a lot of wealth
creation. Gen-Y feels entitled to the whole
enchilada because they’re ego is five thousand
times bigger than their accomplishments.
I don’t think history vindicates your view that
the WWII generation are the bloodsuckers. They
donated blood and labor and they’re entitled to
be PAID OFF for at least doing SOMETHING. Now,
it’s three generations later and I don’t see
Gen-Y making any meaningful contributions to
culture, science, engineering, citizenship, or
decorum. They don’t vote, they don’t read,
and they’re public behavioral displays are like
a giant **PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!!** sign.
E.

Eleuthero June 15, 2011 at 2:19 pm #

I fully support your “low footprint” lifestyle
message, Tripp. Some of the knee-jerk Repubs
on this site probably see that as making you
damned near a Commie.
To me, this has NOTHING to do with political
affiliation. Low consumption is actually a
DATA-DRIVEN lifestyle that simply says: “I
see the population growing and raw materials
evaporating. Therefore, the sane thing to do
IN ORDER TO BE A GOOD CITIZEN, is to buy what
you need and don’t waste”.
That’s not the “Communist Manifesto”. It’s just
sober thinking. I don’t begrudge people their
cellphones but, I have to concede, it doesn’t
appear to have juiced up the social environment
since they became ubiquitous. I’ve had one only
since I’m 56 and it’s a nuisance as much as a
help. Cable TV … got rid of it. It’s a
“simulation” of “edutainment” but not the reality
of it.
E.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 2:22 pm #

We used to call it “Live Simply so that others may Simply Live”.
We hippies have been doing it for years.

AMR June 15, 2011 at 2:25 pm #

True, our propagandists and demagogues are encouraging cognitive dissonance about the housing market, at least on the part of people who haven’t yet bought into the market. There’s another problem, though. It’s very risky for politicians to question the conventional wisdom and be honest about housing because voter turnout correlates positively with age and property ownership. The people who actually vote are angry that they’re underwater on their mortgages or that they took a haircut during a speculative bubble that they weren’t expecting to pop.
That is to say that pretty much the whole bunch is aggrieved, even though only some of them suffered genuine financial hardship as a result of housing investments. They figure that they bought tickets on the gravy train and they’re riding it, by God, even if politicians’ heads have to roll to keep it running. They’re not afraid to kill any Cassandras who piss on their parade and scapegoat hapless or principled politicians who don’t adequately shill for the fraud from which they insist on benefiting.
Housing has been one of the main fronts of the generational war since at least 1978, when California voters passed Prop 13, beggaring their descendants in order to grandfather their own property tax rates. The level of popular complicity and participation in the national real estate fraud is stupefying. Self-dealing shysters in the real estate industry and political hucksters have corrupted a critical mass of the electorate. It’s something of a national FML, and if the younger generations try to fix the mess, the blowback may get pretty nasty.

MarlinFive54 June 15, 2011 at 2:25 pm #

Geesh, Wage, and I thought we were friends!
PoC, I’ll keep my place up here, would like to go to Keys Jan.-May.
Gotta get out of these winters.
-Marlin

Qshtik June 15, 2011 at 2:41 pm #

Oh for Pete’s sakes, Prog, you’re being punked.
=============
It’s sake, Wage.
Just like it’s internet, not internets, interwebs or intertubes. There’s only one.
“Pete’s” is possessive and what he possesses is a singular “sake.”
Now, I have heard it said and have even said it myself (which grieves me no end) “Oh for Pete sakes” but that is wrong as hell too.
Now that we’ve got that squared away please carry on with your endless left-wing disquisitions.

Qshtik June 15, 2011 at 2:42 pm #

Prior comment intended for Wage.

wagelaborer June 15, 2011 at 3:01 pm #

Well, how many people are we talking about here?
People who haven’t bought a house yet benefit from lower housing prices.
People who bought before the bubble are fine.
People who bought during the bubble may be “underwater”, but as long as they can pay the mortgage, they will be alright.
People who bought houses expecting to flip them can just lose the money. That’s what they get.
Proposition 13 was passed during the California housing bubble, when houses were skyrocketing in price, while incomes remained the same. Kind of like the 00s in the rest of the country.
People who bought houses in the 40s for $5,000 and were living on pensions were forced out of their houses when the counties announced that their houses were now worth $75,000 and their taxes were going up.
Why are all the important services, like schools, fire and parks, for instance, funded by property taxes anyway? While our federal income taxes go to the war machine and banking bailouts?
I am told that in Switzerland, there are no property taxes. Once you own your house, the government can’t take it.
That makes sense to me.

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 3:36 pm #

Back to talking permaculture –
TrippTicket said something recently to the effect that “a permaculture garden is different from a regular garden – you can just feel it…” (rough paraphrase)
Do you think the difference could be the amount of “life” audible and visible in the two respective places, Tripp?
I am nowhere near doing permaculture, yet – but I’ve heard enough to be intrigued and to try some experiments. And I’m working on more serious organic gardening, for the first time ever, this year.
And, man, do I have “LIFE” in my garden. Grasshoppers almost the size of hummingbirds. Which works out OK, because the cat spends more time eating big grasshoppers than he does chasing birds. I just hope he doesn’t run into one big enough to hurt him.
And aphids – I had enough aphids on some sugar snap beans that their shed exoskeletons turned the leaves white. Last year, I would have blasted them with Sevin dust. This year, I sprinkled curry powder on them. (I have absolutely no idea why I chose curry powder – just seemed like a good idea.) Now I’ve got fewer aphids. I don’t know where they all went, but I am seeing quite a few ladybugs.
And Japanese beetles – I have killed, no exaggeration, 200 of these things by crushing them between my fingers. It’s the worst sort of hand to hand combat – me against them.
I finally gave up and called in an air strike – except I didn’t nape’ the bastards, I Sevin’ed them – on one stand of grape vines. All quiet there, 100’s of Japanese beetle men, women, and children gone in a quick antiseptic surgical-type strike. Yeah – the Air Force is the best branch of the service for staying above the fray too,, Marc.
But on another stand of grapevines in a different area – I see this intimidating looking black beetle with a orange fringe – and the beetle is actually CHEWING OFF THE HEAD of a Japanese beetle.
An ally! I don’t know where that beetle came from, but I’ll take all the help I can get.
Plus, I’m out of Sevin.

digbycookies June 15, 2011 at 3:47 pm #

Had to chuckle a bit when I heard on the news that the “disappointing” economic numbers from May had a lot to do with the Midwest floods and the slow down in manufacturing due to the incident in Fukishima (parts for autos aren’t being turned out due to the “temporary” factory shut downs). Just learned today that microscopic, hot particles still being released into the air are lodging inside people’s lungs within a 240 mile radius of the reactors.
Those particles can be cancerous if the body is unable to successfully fight them off. Aparently these particles like to lodge themselves into soft tissues.
Getting back to the shut down auto factories, the air filters inside of the Japanese cars are also attractive to these hot particles. You may want to rethink your next Honda purchase or at least wear a lead suit if you plan on changing your own air filter. (or advise your mechanic, accordingly)

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 3:51 pm #

Someone early this week or late last week mentioned how often people these days leave their cars idling when they go in the store, or whatever.
And a couple of posters went with the usual CFN explanation of laziness, cultural decline, and Cheeze Doodles – as an explanation.
And there may be some validity to that, but here are a couple of other ideas.
1. Cars are so big – and AC units are sized for efficient cooling “on the road” so it may take longer to cool the passenger compartment than it used to – eh, maybe? Who knows.
This one’s better:
2. Because of hotter ignition systems and fuel injection, cars idle a whole lot better than they used to. 1980’s and back, if you left a car idling for more than 10 minutes the plugs would start to foul. If you did that very often, you’d be buying a tune-up.
That’s no longer true. I think modern cars will idle for hours with no harm to the car.
Those who think better and better technology will save humanity – can ponder all this.

Qshtik June 15, 2011 at 3:57 pm #

Oh for fuck’s sake.
============
So you see Wage, we’ve got:
Heaven’s sake
Christ’s sake
Pete’s sake
and now fuck’s sake
“Sake” is always singular.

digbycookies June 15, 2011 at 3:59 pm #

Meanwhile in Greece, thousands of citizens are protesting in a central square in Athens. Tear gas is being used on them, yet still the Greeks don’t back down. It’s nice to see people with some gonads fight back after taking it up the ass so long. I wonder if Americans will ever collectively grow a pair and fight back against this horse manure.

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 4:05 pm #

OK, then –
Explain “sakes alive.”
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/sakes

welles June 15, 2011 at 4:09 pm #

cash, the difference is you could literally have made tens of millions by going short, and saved six generations from having to work.
the level of financial illiteracy in the US is so bad that folks don’t even KNOW you can make money when the market goes down.
that knowledge should be the STARTING point when investing….you can make money if the market goes UP OR DOWN.
…as elementary as breathing in and out.
Secondly, you could also ask your financial ‘advisor’ about gold.
gold is ONLY in a picture-perfect 10+ year bull market yet is poopoohed by ‘advisors’, the VAST majority of which aren’t qualified to be assshiners, financial or otherwise.
i worked for 15 years in mutual funds, i used to go baaack and fooorrrth with the company bigwigs via email….”why don’t you let investors know they can make money when the market goes down?”
“ah, we need to be positive” was the reply.
401k’s are about the WORST way to ‘invest’, except for the free employer match, which is the nobrainer part.
financial industry is ONLY ‘concerned’ for you as far as your commissions go…
adieu friends & óvinir

Qshtik June 15, 2011 at 4:10 pm #

“Sake” is always singular.
=============
I take it back. I just remembered the exclamation “sakes alive.”

LewisLucanBooks June 15, 2011 at 4:22 pm #

idling cars – Or, they’re beaters and if you turn them off, you can’t get them started again. Over the course of my life, that is the reason for many idling cars.
Most recent example: the woman who delivers my newspaper. If she shuts off her car, it might not start again. Then she has to call her son, to get a jump while all the old folks on her route (who apparently live ONLY for the newspaper) call her boss and complain that they didn’t get their paper. She’s waiting for her next paycheck to see if a mechanic can run down the problem.
While we’re on the idle topic (and, isn’t it an idle topic) I’ve never had much experience with diesel engines. Many times, some old cowboy will pull to the curb in the front of my store (different cowboys, different trucks. All different weather and temperature) and sit there for a good long time with the motor idling, before shutting it down. Repeat when they leave. Get in the truck, fire it up, and let it idle for a good long time before leaving the curb. The damn things are loud and they stink.

Qshtik June 15, 2011 at 4:25 pm #

It’s nice to see people with some gonads fight back after taking it up the ass so long.
==============
Dig, how can you possibly say these people have been “taking it up the ass?” “Greece” is the result of big socialist government. That is what happens eventually. The chickens come home to roost. Suddenly they discover they can’t take a lucrative retirement as soon as they finish grammar school. OK, I exaggerate a little.

Bustin J June 15, 2011 at 4:27 pm #

“People that believe GW will result in more fruit and sunnier weather are imbecilic.”
Fabian cried, “Hardly, fucktard. They can easily point to regions
GW assholes, think there is something unique going on. There is not.”
Take a look at the global mean CO2 concentration plotted over several million years and then explain what is routine about the spike since the 1900s. There is nothing routine about this spike, and there is nothing routine about changing weather patterns, and nothing routine about the increasingly severe threats to the global food production machine. This is a crisis of the absolute first order.
Before I became a GW asshole, I was a lowly dirt farmer. You simply don’t know how things really work.
In your alternative reality, weather is just something that changes, and whose effects are innocuous. That smacks to me of someone who doesn’t earn a living by the weather, or at least one whose living is buffered by subsidy or some insurance against the effects of said weather.
The climate is nothing but a gigantic system, that can be (and is) being analyzed by powerful machines and talented people, and when they say the temperature’s going to rise, only a fool would disbelieve it.
Fabian’s little ditty:
“The weather always has and PROBABLY always will change. “But its happening during MY lifetime” the little GW babies cry. Tuff fucking titty. Live with it. Or fucking don’t. Your ancestors did. Are that big of a pussy?”
The nearest apocalyptic event, close to what a GW scenario predicts, would be survivable if we modern humans had the kinds of skillset and traits our “anscestors” had who lived through those kind of keyholes. Here is the skillset:
1. An ability to tunnel underground
2. Immunity to parasitic worms
3. A taste for insects and raw roots
4. A lower basal metabolic rate
5. Fur
Gee, I don’t think any modern humans have or are likely to obtain this essential skillset allowing people (even remotely) like us to continue living through this bottleneck. Perhaps we should, like, stop Global Warming? I know, its heretical. Its insane. Its also noble, wise, equitable, all the highest reflections of human culture.
The lowest, basest, stupidest response humanity could have is to ignore, not adapt, not react, not deintensify the economy, to ignore ecological primacy, and so on… the level of thought that comes out of Economic Think Tanks and proffered by people who sleep, eat, and shit hot dogs all day in glass towers.
I don’t think the wrong approach to climate change will forever survive as an option within the community of intelligent actors on a global scale. Sooner or later there will be economic or physical levers to force first-worlders to ecological modes of behavior. There may be a shooting war over the environment, directly. Before then there will be shooting wars, about the environment, indirectly.

bubbleheadMarc June 15, 2011 at 4:32 pm #

The connection is that when the former chancellor of the NY city public schools invokes the prepare the kiddies for winning at globalization meme HE is invoking the lame growth paradigm which you claim is now outmoded, as of course it is. In reality there is not going to be any growth, globalization is in hospice care at this point, and we can all stop getting as overeducated as possible while borrowing more money to do so. These things are all connected and when people prattle on about more education, more this, more that it reveals that they’re totally unaware of the new reality of contraction and are still fighting the last war, which was globalization.

Bustin J June 15, 2011 at 4:35 pm #

Wage quoted the philosopher Fred Engels: “Let us not . . . flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquest over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us. . . . At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature–but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst. . . .” (1876)
Its interesting, there was no farmer that wasn’t an Organic farmer before early 20th century, and there was a kind of humility that rose from the pages of books in those days.
Today, we take for granted things like food and energy, fuel, and electricity.
I think a good way to stop climate change / GW disaster would be to limit markets, corporations, resource extraction, economies, and so forth. We do this every day in many ways we would see as common sense. What is required is a broadening of common sense, and a lowering of expectations, and an unflinching look at the kinds of sacrifices that need to be made, by which people, and specify a rationale for each and every article of self-restraint.

bubbleheadMarc June 15, 2011 at 4:48 pm #

Yeah, it’s definitely pretty much everything you know is a lie. Kind of like blaming the production line workers for the failure of the American automotive industry when they clearly didn’t design the pieces of shit they were asked to bolt together.
To me the absurdity of the “education” obsession can be traced back to the unpleasant reality that business doesn’t want to have to pay to do any inhouse training so they put that off on the educational system. In reality it is the job of the educational system to make people teachable, not to actually teach them their ultimate occupation. It is the responsibility of the employer to train their own hirelings to their own requirements, but only the military still operates like that. Which of course is why so many blue collar workers have been economically shanghaied into the armed forces.
In point of fact the powers that be don’t really want us to be well educated in any sort of liberal sense because that would only make us oppose their mendacious bullshit more effectively.

Qshtik June 15, 2011 at 4:50 pm #

Which is a fuckup on your part. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t give a shit but you take so much time pointing out the mistakes of others that I couldn’t resist. Having said that, why not quit being the spelling/grammer-fucking-nanny, for a period of…let’s say…forever. Why? Because you constantly prove yourself to be something quite short of perfect. As such, you should STFU, once and for all, regarding the mistakes of others.

=============
Tootsie, I’ll bet you proofread the above paragraph 5 times just to make sure you didn’t fuck up. Well, you fucked up anyway. It’s grammar. But anyway, I really appreciate the effort you put into it. Tee hee hee

digbycookies June 15, 2011 at 5:14 pm #

Placing aside for the moment the Greek welfare state, the fact is that the Greek government lied to the EU about how financially solvent they were in order to get into the EU. As you put it, the chickens come home to roost. But the Greek people are being forced to pay egregious amounts of bailout money to the ECB, kind of like a bottomless pit. It was the leaders of Greece who did the lying, and now the populace is being forced into austerity measures.
Now, I won’t disagree with you that retirement at 45 is more than a bit silly or a god-given right. But the fact of the matter is that it was the government leaders who put Greece in the spot they are now.
When “W”, and then later Obama pulled the “Too big to fail” crap, I was and continue to be outraged. Jesus, I remember fighting with my old man when Chrysler got bailed out in l980. His argument was the same – basically that letting Chrysler go bankrupt would destroy competition in the U.S. car industry. Toyota was more than happy to step up to the plate, as well as Honda and a few others. If America is really about competition, then making crappy cars SHOULD put you out of business.
IMO, America got a much needed bitch slap in the ’70s. Behemoth cars that broke down – a lot! Jesus, you’d have thought that the “Big Three” would have learned their lessons back in the late 1950s, when “winners” like the Edsel rolled off the assembly line. Big cars, rotten gas mileage. They got their asses kicked by Renault, Volkswagen, Toyota, etc. Consequently, in 1960, Detroit got its act together and again started to make cars that people wanted (compacts like the Falcon, Chevy II, and Corvair, okay, scratch that last one!:)
I still think all businesses should be allowed to fail. We tend to learn things when we fail. Things like what happens when you build crappy cars no one wants to buy. In business, if you build a product that nobody wants, guess what happens? Customers stop showing up at your door. Yet we still have this feeling that government is “Big Daddy”, and whenever bad decisions (or criminal ones) are made, “Big Daddy” will just whip out the old check book and make everything alright again. Sorry, but not on my dime! And this, more than anything else, is why the Greeks are so pissed off.
I don’t think they’re going to have to worry too much about retiring at 45 anymore. In order to retire you first have to have a job – and there ain’t none.

progressorconserve June 15, 2011 at 6:04 pm #

Yeah, idling beater cars –
My wife’s last school was in what is euphemistically known as “an area of lowering demographics.” I dropped by to see her one day at lunch and I’m cutting up with the secretary when I see a self-contained battery jump box on the floor.
“What’s that for – in case the teachers run down and can’t get started around here,” I ask.
“No”, she sadly explains, “Several times a week we’ll have parent’s cars out in the parking lot that won’t start after they shut them off. If we don’t get the custodian or somebody to jump start them, they’ll stay here the rest of the day waiting on someone to come get them.”

lbendet June 15, 2011 at 6:23 pm #

OK, I get what you’re saying.
There is the illusion that we are gearing up for something that will require something far more sophisticated and advanced than producing real things. You’ve got to go back to school to earn a degree and borrow money from the banks and pay the big money to the universities. It’s a post industrial economy now and we’ll all be innovators. Of course.
I’ve said before you innovate where things are being produced. I also believe it’s another debt peonage-maker for the banks. Don’t forget that they changed the bannkruptsy laws around 2005. You need to take out loans to become an engineer, but the engineers in India don’t have the big debts and require less pay, so who do you think is getting hired?
This meme that you describe is just a way of staving off people freaking out when they can’t find work.
I mentioned 2 weeks ago that I met an industrial designer/engineer where I was working on a project. He said he had an engineering degree from Columbia U., but had to go to Stanford as he could not find work. Three years after that he’s working. Glad he could wait!

asia June 15, 2011 at 6:28 pm #

Now theres controversy over an ad…
‘Hahn received an endorsement Monday from former President Bill Clinton, who cast Hahn as the answer to “right-wing extremism.”‘
Hahaha…Clinton chastises ‘extremism’

asia June 15, 2011 at 6:32 pm #

Greece, where 1 in 3? works for the government?

digbycookies June 15, 2011 at 6:35 pm #

I just can’t do the math. How can a young person fresh out of college expect to have a middle class lifestyle if they have $50k in student debt (non-dischargable). Even an engineering degree would require a near six figure income if one expects to purchase a moderately priced home ($150K). Add in a wife and a kid or two, and you’re looking at some real debt. I just don’t see the housing market coming out too well in the next 20 or 30 years. Prices are going to have to come down – drastically.

asia June 15, 2011 at 6:38 pm #

Joel Klein and Joel Stein write for Newsweek, etc..
Need I say more?
Stein wrote a piece mocking Tancredo and his
‘xenophobia’.

trippticket June 15, 2011 at 7:02 pm #

I can tell you that the issue of water supply is warming up down here in Dixie with this drought on (and it isn’t nearly the first drought here in the last decade). I’m seeing mature trees shriveling up, and hearing rumors of wells in the area going dry. My rancher neighbor is doing his damndest to pump his share and the shares of about 50 other people just to make sure the stupid fucking watermelons get to market. Could we not adapt to life without $3 supermarket watermelons?
Meanwhile loads of local folks are still working hard to keep their worthless, resource-guzzling lawns green and plush through the long months of bone dry suffocation. I spent my professional career as a watershed biologist in the water management supply division of a big water management district in Florida, so I have some sense of water issues at very least. When we started talking about desalination a decade ago in east central Florida, we thought that would be enough to get people thinking about some of the dumb ways they use water, and perhaps effect some realistic changes in wasteful patterns of use. Nada. Eeew, desal, that sounds cool.
Never mind the saltwater intrusions into the coastal aquifers, or the need to establish minimum flows and levels on the state’s waterways. We may be the only country in history forced by lobbyists to keep water dirt cheap until the very last drop is gone. Tell me how that constitutes a free market. If the markets were free, water would be prohibitively expensive for all but the most important tasks. And we would all have graywater systems, and roof catchment, composting toilets, 1/2 cup toothbrushings, and 5 gallon showers once a week. We would get 3 or 4 uses out of every molecule before carefully returning it to the soil at night for filtration on its way back to the aquifer.
None of these things are being done in any way approaching a critical mass. The paucity of folks even aware that there is a life-threatening issue en route to a theater near them is mind-blowing. This isn’t a debate about whether 1.6 gallons of water is enough to get the job done after your morning joe, this is about regional survival. And too many people are asleep at the wheel.
Fuck global warming. It will never really matter because we’ll all be pushing up shriveled daisies in group dehydration therapy long before GW is ever a real issue. The next county to the east of us, on the same bloody aquifer, is openly courting water-intensive industry, a new coal plant in particular, to boost its local economy, at the same time the town south of us is losing contact with the aquifer below it altogether! Are we absolutely fucking insane????
I think the main point of my little rant here is that I’m goddam tired of seeing the debate about GW, and peak oil, and who’s political fault all of this is. There are more dire issues at hand than we can shake a stick at, and all I see is blame and hand-wringing. (Not from you so much as your opposition). If we’re not completely suicidal we better, every damn one of us, get really busy cutting our impacts in every way we can manage. I don’t understand why everyone thinks that assigning blame, and denying dire issues, is going to solve anything.
It’s 100 degrees here in south Georgia right now as the blistering sun drops down over the parched fields with no sign of the hoped-for thunderstorm. Sometimes I think they just predict them to keep everyone’s spirits up. Well my spirits are down today, not just because of the never-ending drought that chokes our breath and the life support system I’m trying desperately to establish in the backyard, but because I see so many people, who are supposedly so well-informed about the problems we face, sitting around denying, obfuscating, and blaming every damn person they can find to blame but themselves.
Hey assholes! Turn the television off, go outside, and try to help us out of this mess. Or do us all a favor and just knock your lousy self in the head with a shovel so there’s one less mouth, and one less asshole, to poison the planet. But for god’s sake, please stop talking about how this politician or that statesman is going to do anything different than his or her predecessor. This is a lot more desperate than you think.

digbycookies June 15, 2011 at 7:30 pm #

What’s particulaly insane is the high amounts of water needed for fracking. Our community experienced such a severe drought just a few years ago there was actual serious talk about EVACUATING the county! Lo and behold, just yesterday I see a business watering the front lawn with its sprinkling system on for three hours starting at high noon.

bubbleheadMarc June 15, 2011 at 7:53 pm #

Based upon my eight years in heavy industry I’ve observed that it is not the fault of the workers if they are improperly deployed by management or if their particular division is overstaffed. And they are definitely not to blame for crappy design work coming down from engineering.
The wage demands of industrial workers are seen as being “crippling” primarily in light of the current mania for offshoring production with the expectation that such products obtained therein are to be reimported to the company of origin’s home country duty free from low wage countries where labor can more easily be exploited. If duty were still being charged on such products they would no longer be competitive and the wages paid in the home country would not seem ruinously expensive.
In point of fact the overhwelming majority of workers hired today are expected to have gotten their ratings or initial trades experience somewhere else as should be evident when “only experienced need apply”. Brief periods of orientation for new hires are not tantamount to apprenticeships in which the company itself actually trained its own workers such as the military still does.
In the merchant fleet no ordinary seamen are hired as full time deck seamen anymore. On most freighters the only real untrained ordinary seaman is the food handler who washes the dishes. The rest of the crew was eligible for hire only because either they earned their ratings in the navy or else they attended a state nautical academy at their own expense. The company typically does little or no training other than mandatory coast guard lifeboat drills or poison gas antidote training if the vessel is sailing to a combat zone to deliver ammunition to the army. Some training programs are provided by the union paid through subsidies from the maritime administration.
You can vent and rail or whatever you wish but I’m not convinced that you know what you’re talking about.

xhalor June 15, 2011 at 7:55 pm #

hey. You wanna hear some guys that can sing? I mean…really sing? I’m talkin’ warm up the amps, turn on the mics,
grab your guitars and drumsticks and walk out on stage? Oh, and by the way, you have NO technology to hide behind
and ALL of your mistakes WILL be amplified. Please notice the On-Cue Screeching. Marketing In Action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfHpcixeXDY&NR=1
Dennis – RIP
Carl – RIP
Brian – WTF? You’re still alive?
Mike & Bruce – get a fuckin’ job
Al – beats workin’
Glen Campbell (not in video) – Ain’t it about time for another good DWI shot? C’mon Glen! Don’t be such a nudge!
That didn’t get it? Fine!
Go here then why ‘doncha? ….swarthy heathens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUcS_FTY9C4&playnext=1&list=PL312E32F7832659A9
hmm…you see what them drugs will do to ya now, boy.
I just loves American Music. All of it.
That means you, Sousa.
Don’t you run from me.
Louis Armstrong would kick my ass if he knew that I was doin’ this.
Respectfully Yours,
Leonard Feather

bubbleheadMarc June 15, 2011 at 8:06 pm #

My reference was “oblique” or indirect as I said so I was also stretching to fit in the stuff about the NY city schools. The comments from the former chancellor struck me as being a bunch of cheerleading for the naive faith that the bubble economy can be kept going forever.
Also, in spite of what Fabian believes, many or even most of the people paying good money they don’t really have to get advance schooling are going to find themselves back at square one at some later date being rejected for hire because they lack experience and of course schooling is not experience. Nobody wants to be the company that hired you first because then you’re gonig to be more likely to jump to the highest bidder once you are experienced, and that’s if you’re not so flaky that you quit the first time your supervisor manages to piss you off. Unless the schooling actually produces a trades or professional license where there is no doubt whatever that you could be fitted in to an appropriate slot chances are you’re going to be out of luck if someone needs to get creative or gutsy in order to hire you.
The real skill that might benefit more people would be the ability to homestead and adapt successfully to greatly reduced circumstances. Because you guessed it, our circumstances are being greatly reduced even as we sit here typing out our thoughts, which in my case at least are admittedly more bullshit some times than anything I could actually prove.

ctemple June 15, 2011 at 8:58 pm #

I have pretty good hopes that a fair amount of this country can be saved, despite the best efforts of left wing idiots to turn it into a third world gabage dump.

asia June 15, 2011 at 9:11 pm #

Hope..you sound like Barak Hussein!

trippticket June 15, 2011 at 9:14 pm #

That is absolute insanity, and should constitute a criminal offense. To show how far we have to go, I was at lunch yesterday with the rest of the team that’s doing the landscape for the zero energy model home here in our little town, and I mentioned that watering a lawn is immoral and paramount to reckless endangerment of your friends and neighbors. Don’t think I made any friends with that statement. Just a table full of blank stares. How could you utter such dour ideas!! Never mind, I thought we were here to build an educational model for the future…

lbendet June 15, 2011 at 9:34 pm #

Trip,
When I first discovered the website for the Post Carbon Institute a few years ago they had a number of videos Richard Heinberg put together which you could watch that covered various aspects of what we are facing as the carbon based energy declines.
The one that stood out for me was a woman, I believe biologist who talked about how we just can’t discern the danger that we could be facing in abstract terms.
That might explain why you got blank stares when you made your comment about watering lawns. Those people don’t know what you are getting even though they are working on this project with you.

bubbleheadMarc June 15, 2011 at 10:03 pm #

Good for you. Fact is grass lawns were the norm in England but aren’t native to many or most areas in the USA which is why they need so much coddling in terms of irrigation and chemical applications, all of which run into Lake Erie, at least here, then contribute to massive algae blooms in the shallow western basin of the lake, since the temperature goes up to 72 degrees F in the late summer.

SNAFU June 15, 2011 at 10:35 pm #

Howdy BHM, Per your comment: “Mare Island Naval Shipyard is where the USS Guitarro sank at the dock purely owing to human error so I hope that you weren’t around to get blamed for that one. I was in the yard in Kittery, ME and detested every minute of it.”
Yup she sunk almost directly abeam to the building I worked in. I was given the blow by blow as to the goings on shortly after I hired on. Seems the Nuc boys were flushing the reactors and the Nav boys were aligning the INS and never the twain should speak to each other. As the Nuc boys pumped the demineralized water on and off the Nav boys kept leveling the Sub by venting the ballast tanks thus lowering her deeper and deeper into the water until water started pouring through the hatches which were unable to be closed because of the cabling strung though them. No deaths aboard ship however; as the investigation played out a couple of civilian management types did off themselves; so I was told.
Interesting that you found shipyard duty detestable as did I. I had resigned my commission as a Mustang USAF CPTN (Navy equivalent to a LT) although; the USAF did/does not use the Mustang terminology as they did/do in the Navy. In 74 the economy was somewhat in the shitter, similarly to now, so I could not be too picky about my employment opportunities. However; within about a month I asked my immediate supervisor (he had been working there for 25+ years) how the hell he stood it and told him it was the worst job I had ever had and that included a stint in Viet Nam. I started in July 74 quit in Jan 75, started grad school in Feb 75.
SNAFU

SNAFU June 15, 2011 at 11:02 pm #

Howdy Progressor, Correct you are: “But seriously folks – I’m guessing that SNAFU is making the point that sexual gratification leads to babies.”
I think your Similac and Trojan pack should probably have included “heat” rather than a stick. 🙂
Additionally I was intimating that we and perhaps the Bonobo have sex more frequently than nearly all other wild animals thereby far and away increasing the likelihood that we will have many offspring. Unfortunately the prevalence of too many human offspring surviving childhood is adversely affecting the Earth with far too many of we human cockroaches consuming it.
SNAFU

SNAFU June 15, 2011 at 11:11 pm #

Howdy BB, “Snaf, very interesting theory you got. Except we didn’t breed out aggressiveness, I think. If we’ve really done that, I’d have hated to live in the era when humans were that much more aggressive than they are now.”
If the bible is a collection of stories by the local yokels of the time would you not find them pretty damn aggressive? How about Europe a 1000 years ago, Amurica 500, 300, 100 years ago?
SNAFU

Eleuthero June 16, 2011 at 5:11 am #

Fabian said:
Can’t do it can you, fucktard?
**************************************************
Since “fucktard” is your label for everyone,
I’m going to start the movement called “DO
NOT RESPOND TO FABIAN”. You’re childish
and, yes, your arguments put words in people’s
mouth such as your obnoxious screed where you
claimed that I want to sick the “shirt police”
on people.
People like you that are so full of extremely
venomous hatred where you fancy you’re some
sort of Nietzschean Ubermenschen and those
who disagree with you are “fucktards” or
“ass hats”, you should get the full Amish
treatment … SHUNNING.
So go ahead and throw turds in your little
sandbox. Trolls like you would never survive
for a week on a moderated bulletin board and
you only demonstrate that the “democracy” of
the Internet proves that de Tocqueville was
right i.e., democracy results in a lowering
to the common denominator. It fails because
its constituents aren’t at the right level.
Until you demonstrate the ability to act above
the level of a grade school kid all puffed up
because he can say a cuss word at someone without
consequences, I shall say nary ONE word to you.
You aren’t worth a nanosecond of anyone’s time.
E.

bubbleheadMarc June 16, 2011 at 8:02 am #

SNAFU is a cool name. Another acronym I like is FUBAR. I got an appoitment to OCS but took one look at the setup there at Newport, RI and dropped immediately to return to the fleet & finish my enlistment. My second sub went into Portsmouth naval shipyard in Kittery and once in drydock the crew had virtually nothing to do so everyone started going nuts drinking and getting high.
This one asshole would smoke pot in the guard shack atop the drydock basin then would take the magazine out of his .45 1911 automatic and stick it in his mouth and simulate blowing his head off. This was somewhat disturbing as someone in our squadron HAD actually blown the top of his head off while standing topside deck watch next to the tender in New London, CT.. This same imbecile would point his sidearm at the roving sentry pretending to shoot you! Needless to say pissed off people starting complaining to naval intelligence about this sort of crap and pretty soon one morning at quarters for muster an air force bus pulled up with the air police and their drug sniffing German Shepherds who walked amongst the ranks sniffing everone’s dungarees including both chiefs and officers, everyone at parade rest on the pier next to our two barges floating in the Piscataqua River. Once inspected you were dismissed immediately so the navops people were congregating in the electronics shack on the barge to listen to a Grateful Dead tape [Busted Down on Bourbon Street] and laugh heartlesslyh at the mental midgets who were “carrying” on base on duty without a care in the world. They got nine guys who were all transferred to surface craft.
I hated that sub so much that I refused to requalify submarines and put in a chit declaring that I was no longer a volunteer for sub duty. My chit was ignored so after I got a navy doctor to write “remove from submarines” in my medical file I did lodge a formal complaint to the civilian agents at NCIS that this was being ignored by the captain. We had other irritants there as well such as some pinhead who was making obscene phone calls to the lifer’s wives when they were on duty and the wives were presumably home alone. Since I was an attitude case for having refused a commission they finally just let me go a few months early.
When I got home my sister was dating a neighbor who went to Annapolis and he told me “you should’ve become an officer”. My reaction was something like “stick it up your ass skimmer-puke!” This same guy and I both tried shipping on the lakes at the same time then. The funniest thing was that he flunked the Able Seaman exam on his first attempt. Hilarious. Of course I only passed with the minimum score even if I speed read the test and finished a half hour ahead of anyone else.
Portsmouth is where Jack Nicholson takes his prisoner in the hysterically funny tragicomic “The Last Detail”. In the novel the movie was based upon Nicholson’s character was far more intelligent but also emotionally disturbed and then ended up dead, beaten to death by the shore patrol himself after ditching his weapon in a mailbox and going on a drinking bender with the other brig-chaser, the black gunner’s mate Mulhall. I think these guys were disturbed from being in Vietnam. The funniest scene in the movie was when they partied with a bunch of hippies and were sitting there in a crash pad smoking doobies in their dress blue crackerjacks fitting right in with the civilian scumbags circa 1972. This reminded me of how during the Vietnam era the only servicemen you’d see at rock concerts in uniform were sailors, usually with their beehive hairdo dates partying with the hippies. If they’d been soldiers people wouldn’ve been spitting on them but then of course probably getting their asses kicked as well.

progressorconserve June 16, 2011 at 8:31 am #

You tell good stories, Marc. Keep it up, would you?
I’m a few years younger than you and I’ve been wondering my whole life – “What the hell happened?”
All that drug use and then the overreaction to all that drug use by the government – is part of the answer.
I do want to ask in reference to:
“If they’d been soldiers people wouldn’ve been spitting on them but then of course probably getting their asses kicked as well.” -bhm-
Maybe it’s ’cause I was in the South, but I never heard of a solder in uniform being spit on or seriously disrespected – except on TV or Life Magazine. I’ve always had a notion that this was a media creation or archetype, of sorts – –
Of course Jane Fonda in her stupidest act ever – in that AA battery in Hanoi – added to it, along with lots of other individual acts. But the key word is individual, here.
So today it’s become almost impossible to challenge anything our military does – or is commanded to do – without some nitwit yelling,”You don’t support the troops!!”
So, what do you think?

progressorconserve June 16, 2011 at 8:56 am #

consider human aggression in “….Europe a 1000 years ago, Amurica 500, 300, 100 years ago?”
-snafu-
SNAFU, I’ll agree with you that humans have likely become less individually aggressive over a long time scale. I could argue that we make up for that by collective aggression – WWI, WWII, etc.
But then I look at Vancouver BC last night – and think that individual aggression is still with us as well. All we need is for food or water to run short, or the power to go out –
Or for “our” team to lose the Stanley Cup –

trippticket June 16, 2011 at 9:24 am #

I’m already all in on that one, E. What a vile realationship to the world!

SNAFU June 16, 2011 at 9:32 am #

Howdy Progressor, “I could argue that we make up for that by collective aggression – WWI, WWII, etc.”
Perhaps war is just a more exotic game for we children to play. One wherein the ultimate bets are laid down and collected upon.
SNAFU

MarlinFive54 June 16, 2011 at 9:35 am #

I concur with PoC, BBHMarc, pretty good sea stories there, better than most.
You must have paid a lot more attention to those around you and the Navy itself than I did. I just remember everyone having a pretty good time cruising around the Carib., SAtlantic and Gulf of Mexico, no suicides, no fights or people getting thrown overboard, not much drug abuse. I thought the Officers, specially Ensigns & JGs, pretty cool guys, intelligent and very competent. I guess I was lucky as to the ships I was on.
Wage, I need to drive to Illinois and give you a big kiss, allay some of those hard feelings you have against me.
-Marlin

MarlinFive54 June 16, 2011 at 9:37 am #

Oh yeah, BBHMarc, I was a QM3. What was your rate?
-Marlin

welles June 16, 2011 at 9:50 am #

haha trippy, you and me are on the same w~length, i’ve been railing about the lawn-watering ignoramuses for many moons, gotta be THE dummist & wastefool activity.
that and bagging and hauling leaves by truck, hahah, NEVER have i seen such nonsensicality. leaves should be left/chopped/pulverized in situ to build up/enrich the soil.
i think few things epitomyze the stupidity of americans more than the exec you see in his yard on the weekend going after daisies with a hand trowel et al, gotta make sure his golf-course yard is perfect doncha know. fucking maddening. LEAVE THE FUCKING YARD GROW NATURALLY & STOP POISONING EVERYONE’S FUCKING WATER WITH PESTICIDES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
/rant off

lbendet June 16, 2011 at 10:07 am #

So, speaking of violence:
Let’s see, we have rioting in Greece. You can check out Max Keiser’s site to see him looking out on Syntagma Square from his hotel window and newer videos of social unrest appearing today.
And what happened in Canada is alarming over hockey. I understand there were stabbings as well as rioting—and that’s over hockey, you guys. What happens when people start feeling real pain?
Which brings me to my point. We keep saying people are too complacent and are not getting angry enough here. That’s because they’re still comfortable.
Read “Lord of the Flies” again…My dad once said to me that civilization is a thin veneer in our consciousness. What would unleash our animal spirits? (and I don’t mean in the economics speculation sort of way.) How much pain and frustration over a system that is no longer trusted by the populous would it take to get people angry enough to take to the streets.
Here’s the point, when people have much there’s no desire to rock the boat. We have been in relative comfort for decades and now we’re losing ground and it could excelerate–so what happens then?
I think it’s obvious that over the last 10,0000 years we have not evolved into a new more enlightened creature, we have certainly socially and politically evolved, but that looks like it’s sliding backwards, thanks to those who are playing the zero sum game with us.
At this point in time, we are witnessing devolution in our national make-up in every area, so don’t bet on our being somehow less violent–you ain’t seen nothing yet.
“When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose…”(Dylan,Like a Rolling Stone)

bubbleheadMarc June 16, 2011 at 10:39 am #

At time of discharge also QM3. Small world. I made QM2 then was appointed midshipman but decided to not participate at Newport and reverted to QM2 then right before I got out I got captain’s mast for punching someone and went back to third class. If I’d been in surface craft like you I probably wouldn’ve kept reenlisting after brief periods outside like so many do, but there was no way I was willing to reenlist for sub duty. Nuclear submarines are just too boring because they’re always submerged, often for ten weeks at a time. I like the junior officers and even the senior officers on my first boat the Ethan Allen class SSBN. The Sturgeon class SSN on the east coast was a disaster. Probably would’ve been better if we’d been deployed on a Med. run or something. Never went on ice ops up north. Went to the far east on one occasion to Chinhae, South Korea.

MarlinFive54 June 16, 2011 at 10:40 am #

Ibendet, actually crime is down, including violent crime.
I think you can attribute events in Vancouver last nite simply to teed off hockey fans, all beered up!
Isn’t even NYC pretty safe, compared, to say, the late 1970’s?
I’ve been seeing many, many stories and articles in the past several weeks about the world oil situation and peak oil, in WSJ and Financial Times (American Edition), saying what JHK and Matt Simmons were saying 5 years ago. The other night on Fox Business the former CEO of Shell claimed SArabia is maxxed out, way past peak, and expect $5 per gallon gasoline PLUS shortages by end of summer. Won’t that be a shock to everybody who doesn’t pay attention!
-Marlin

bubbleheadMarc June 16, 2011 at 10:41 am #

CORRECTION TO ABOVE: change wouldn’ve to “would’ve”

spider9629 June 16, 2011 at 10:43 am #

Kill Meaning
From:
http://www.brainmeta.com/
“This is what BrainMeta seeks to communicate to others, so that they may open their eyes to this fact, so that they may go on to create something more than what is, and to instill the world with new and greater meaning.”
Right on, the exact opposite of what I want! We must create something less than “what is”, something much less, if “what is” is zero, we must create minus 10, or minus infinity, and so on. We must instill the world with older and lesser meanings, much less meanings, same story, less than zero, minus infinity. We must kill every possible meaning, kill every possible deepness of the world, even death, even nothing at all is way too much, is infinitely too much, we must have ever more emptiness, an ever increasing void, nothing at all, even nothing and absolute static death is infinity compared to what should be!
We must always want the opposite of what we want, we must deny and kill our free will always, if you are going in direction A, go immediately in the opposite direction, contradict yourself, but to do this you need a minimum of time to perceive the target and direction, but as soon as you perceive it, kill it and deny it, then you go back and forth, towards the limit of an infinite frequency, and in fact gamma rays are will powers constantly denying themselves. It is so easy to just always do the opposite of what you want, always want the opposite of what you want, go on, contradict yourself bluntly, you can do it, actually don’t do it (funny how everything is so easy with words and thoughts and concepts, they are so light weight, just like our mind and consciousness and judgments and thought, and the connection of this to feelings and emotions, is so light and invisible they almost don’t exist, so light that you can make it do anything, even contradict itself wildly, it is all ok, it all makes sense, what doesn’t make any sense at all is our mind, Man, the brain structure! Rocks on Mars are infinitely smarter, deeper and much better designed).
Existence against (or opposed or “in contrast to” or “measured against” ?) Function, or Being against Doing, Potential Energy against Kinetic Energy, Static against Movement, and the connections to will powers, why ? Which is which, at what point is Being transformed into Movement ? at what point, what ratio is there between static entities as particles and their need to move and interact ? And if you mix them and confuse them, and if you can’t distinguish anymore, if you simply assign static as equal to dynamic (is that the difference between the (supposed ?) laid back environment of Latin America or Southern Europe and North America (or Northern Europe), in the North the need to do, a function, in the South just enjoy the Sun, Beach and Be ?).
Anyways San Jose Mommy did your girl (who must be HOT), crack open those heads ? Did she crack open the head(s ?) of Nature ? What did she find, a bunch of Iron worms ? And did she crack open the head of the “Laws of Physics”, and those other heads “God”‘s head, and “Mass – Energy”‘s head, and “Matter”‘s head, and so on ? Did she find weird mental contraptions inside each one ? did she decide to mix them up and create “a new creation” a new head with all of that trash inside, who knows what on earth that new head is constructing and creating, a wild mix, who knows what incredible metaphysical interdictions and inhibitions it is creating! And there are trillions of new heads and other heads to crack open and modify, modified minds and brains, modified words, modified concepts, how about cracking open “Thought”‘s head, and “Logic”‘s head and “Free Will”‘s head and “Language”‘s head (or heart or eye or arm or transistor or wire, or any other delimitation composing the entity) or “Number”‘s head or “Mathematic”‘s head or even “Metaphysics”‘s head ? and mixing them and connecting them all, all kinds of combinations and mixtures, all kinds of insanity, the wildest, every concept, thought has a heads that needs cracking open, etc.
Communication as the need to measure something against something else, a sequence of symbols that must reply another sequence of symbols, so as to define and measure and create a reference to them reciprocally.
Like how all of science and all of our existence, as we know it, completely disappears to the vanishing point and becomes something completely different as soon as you let go of that static reference system that is the way our present organization of our mind brain is structured: by changing it into something else, you get rid of the ground state of measurement of reality, and you start measuring reality against something else, which is no longer related to in any way with what we knew, or all of our science and patterns discovered using the mind as a stable observing and measuring entity. The end of science (and reality and our universe) starts with the end of the way our mind is organized, and this corresponds to a new big bang, the trip into a new universe, since with a new brain mind structure and design, you enter a completely new universe that is even realer, infinitely realer than anything we can ever perceive with this old fashioned and expired clunker of a mind brain natural evolution (or that turd that god or the laws of physics or Mass Energy is) gave us. Stick wild symbols and chemicals in the brain – mind, change it in all possible ways, make it go wild, shove trillions of electrical signals (as confusing as possible) through it’s neural circuits, shove the mind brain in the engine of your car, make it become the gasoline of the engine (or the pistons, etc., and any other of the most wild contraptions you can imagine and connections you can possible make, just put the words and concepts randomly together and make the brain – mind be that) make it find a new world, an Instant Singularity!
Be as wrong as possible, make all possible mistakes, misunderstand everything always, be infinitely wrong (easy, since there are an infinite number of wrong answers and wrong paths (even generating pain, that prison guard that doesn’t allow us to explore, be we will overcome that prison guard of pain) and only one right one, but hose the right one), kill the concept of right and wrong / good and bad. Now I know why Nietzsche went crazy…
Anyways, watch more TV, it is the best thing you can possibly do, real automatic for the people, ever more TV, TV forever, 24 hours and a trillion years of TV, you are finally free.

MarlinFive54 June 16, 2011 at 10:51 am #

Spider, you are a f—-g lunatic!
BBHMarc, I know you stated you have regrets about enlisting, should’ve panned for gold etc., as for me, I feel I owe the Navy a debt of gratitude, got me out of town, broadened my horizons, got to got to college and grad school on GI Bill, 1st thing Federal employer wanted to see when I applied for jobs was my DD214. There are men around here, my age, who’ve never left the area. I probably would’ve been one of them.
-Marlin

progressorconserve June 16, 2011 at 10:55 am #

Don’t be too hard on that guy with the field of watermelons, Tripp.
I don’t know how much a field of watermelons costs for diesel, seed, fertilizer, herbicide, and labor – but it’s not a small amount. And that’s all “sunk cost” that he’s going to eat if anything at all goes wrong with his field.
And if he can bring in a good crop of watermelons the right number of days before July 4th – he might just do OK, this year.
Understand, that doesn’t mean that it’s a smart or sustainable thing for him to be doing next year – or next decade. That’s where you come in, Tripp – trying to find and then show, a better way.
Back to the drought down there. I feel for you, man. We drove down through Macon and Dublin last weekend. Things started to look really dry about Macon. Below Dublin it looks like they aren’t going to make any row crops without irrigation – to my eye, at least.
Sorry to hear that water table is dropping. South Georgia aquifers are better than N. Georgia, so that’s alarming to hear.
Goes back to my thing about most of Georgia only being fit for pine trees and cows – without irrigation, at least available on standby. And cows take a fair amount of well water themselves, unless you’ve got a good pond or creek.
And I’ve never put pine trees in the ground that I didn’t sweat out the first two hot dry summers, at least.
============
JD Farmer – and any of you other production agriculture people – anything to add, here?
And do they really grow those huge fields of corn out in the midwest and up into Canada, without having irrigation available.
That sort of regular rainfall – right on schedule when you need it – seems too amazing to believe, down here where I grew up.

bubbleheadMarc June 16, 2011 at 10:55 am #

I’ve done a lot of reading about the Vietnam era and agree that many of these supposed incidents were apocryphal to nonexistent in for instance, airports. On the other hand I don’t think soldiers in uniform would’ve been well received at a rock concert and probably would’ve gotten a little heckling. Sailors were generally not considered as threatening and tended to get a free pass on the Vietnam animosity to the army thing. After all, nobody was getting drafted into the navy, at least not then.
I also agree that much of the current social repression stems from the war on drugs, which of course isn’t really a war, or the DEA would be summarily executing dope smugglers and those unmanned predator drones would be blowing up coke labs in Columbia instead of hapless goat herders in Pakistan.
I also find it annoying how since 9/11/2001 everybody is now a “hero”. I always thought that a hero was the guy on the pack of Player’s Canuck & Limey cigarettes. If Pat Tillman miraculously came back to life he’d have to become a hermit so embarrassed by all the attention he’d be. While he was in the army he was visiting Noam Chomsky and commiserating over how fucked up the invasion of Iraq was. I’ve never been able to comprehend why Bush didn’t just flatten Kandahar then declare a victory like his dad. Maybe the air force doesn’t have enough B-52s to flatten cities anymore without resorting to nukes. In retrospect it probably would’ve been totally irresponsible to nuke Kandahar. The neighboring countries wouldn’t have been happy about the fallout. Instead they got tons of depleted uranium artillery and tank shells. Six of one or half a dozen of the other?

bossier22 June 16, 2011 at 11:05 am #

wells and tripp, i thought i was a lazy ass for not watering. thanks, i feel like real environmental good guy now.

progressorconserve June 16, 2011 at 11:07 am #

-on violence-
LBend – I’ll concur nearly 100% with your post, although Marlin wrote a nice set of counterpoints.
I think the Vancouver thing is *”something?”* more than beered up fans, but I have no idea what or how. For me personally, on the list of things that would make me throw rocks and start fires – Sports falls off the bottom of the list.
I’m not an official student of crowd psychology – but I’ve been in a few crowds in my time, and I’ve seen fear, or anger – ripple out across a crowd like magic, under the right conditions.
I think it might only take 100 or so people, in a crowd of 1000 – to make that crowd take an ugly turn.
I’m not saying Vancouver was deliberate, by any means. But I’m certain that many of the riots and violence through history started with planning by a small group of instigators.
Just something to think about –

progressorconserve June 16, 2011 at 11:17 am #

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” -Janis Joplin-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYFhWV8–io
I’ll always think we in the States came close to really turning the corner to a better future for the planet in the ’60’s and early ’70’s – and somehow screwed it up.
And that the election of RR in 1980 finished it off for good.
Damn, what might have been.

bossier22 June 16, 2011 at 11:24 am #

i was shocked at the vancouver incident. so uncanadian. what difference does it make who wins a sporting event. your life the same either way. so are the players lives.

Cash June 16, 2011 at 11:29 am #

I watched markets for years when we had little money. By the time we had money I had concluded that the securities markets were totally corrupt and I wanted nothing to do with them.
“ah, we need to be positive” was exactly the mindset in the real estate industry even when house sales plummetted and house prices steadily ratcheted down.
People were/are given a box to think inside of. And the average joe, being mentally lazy, usually just goes along to get along so he thinks inside the box he’s given. I assume it’s pretty much the same in the mutual fund business.
If you insisted on reasoning for yourself you needed an Orwellian “double-think” mind-set. It wouldn’t take Einstein to think things through. But, if you did, at work you’d need to function inside this wacky, irrational world at odds with common sense reality. The people in this world would rather bankrupt the company than examine their assumptions about how things work.
As Digbycookies said about student debt and household income: how does the math work? Great question. The real estate industry has never been good with answering such things. It’s full of positive, sunshiney people and looking at such stuff would spoil their mood. They want to be “up” but such dreary discussions make them bored and they would sigh and they would feel grey and dull and they would start thinking about razor blades. Can’t have that.
Facts are stubborn things and facts like household debt, mortgage debt and take home pay are pretty “hard” facts. Regardless of how “positive” you are these facts are merciless. You have only so much money and if you don’t pay what you owe VISA will send out hitmen and your lovely mortgage service company will foreclose.

bubbleheadMarc June 16, 2011 at 11:36 am #

One last comment on Vietnam era social animosity and military uniforms. You would never have seen a soldier or an airman at a rock concert in uniform because they never wore their uniforms off post once they’d graduated from basic. Sailors remained more of a subculture and even after bootcamp were not permitted to have civilian clothes aboard ship until they made E-5. This changed under Admiral Zumwalt who first discontinued the ban on civies aboard ship then later went so far as to abolish the crackerjacks uniform which was not issued to boots again until 1983 when beards we once again banned.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 11:36 am #

PC, you were an evil empire already 100 years prior Ronald Reagan. In fact, you were an evil racist genocidal empire already with the first steps of the white man on the Americas.

trippticket June 16, 2011 at 11:50 am #

“wells and tripp, i thought i was a lazy ass for not watering. thanks, i feel like real environmental good guy now.”
Depends on what you’re not watering!
If we’re talking turf grass, then yes, you are my hero! But even in dry conditions, when the sprinkler is going every day, local food production is less water intensive than centralized production and distribution systems. So don’t feel bad about sprinkling a garden that replaces industrial food. Your far shorter food chain is exponentially more efficient than the long version. Don’t even need to run the numbers. A one stage food chain will always require less energy and water than a four stage one, even if your methods are less than admirable. Just the nature of metabolic efficiencies.

bossier22 June 16, 2011 at 12:00 pm #

i did have a good garden for the last three years. this year not so good because of the drought. i did water it but not enough. my well is 400 ft. i have too try something different next year. only my peppers have have produced decent this year.

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 12:01 pm #

Ah, Tripp, I feel your pain.
It is absolutely horrible how people waste water, the basis of life on this planet.
In California, they grow alfalfa and rice in the desert with diverted water.’
It is a crime.
I hope that it rains soon.

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 12:08 pm #

The same with doctors.
My Syrian co-worker, who is a doctor, told me that 1/3 of US doctors are imported, because then the other countries pay for the education.
He went to medical school in France. He said that the cost was MUCH lower than medical school in the US.

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 12:11 pm #

In Canada, they use massive amounts of fresh water to destroy the land to get the tar sands.
Native Americans downstream are dying from cancers.

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 12:16 pm #

The weird thing is that so many people are engaging tootsie in his latest incarnation.
Usually, within a couple of posts, people figure out who the fucktard is, and quit responding to him.
But numerous people have responded to him, now that he calls himself Fabian.
Why? What’s in a name?
It reminds me of those surveys in which people apply for jobs by the name Latisha or Mary, and count the responses.
Is Fabian that cool of a name?

spider9629 June 16, 2011 at 12:18 pm #

There are infinite resources as water and energy, get over it, we need to manipulate reality infinitely.
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175557
We need less and less meaning, we need to reach the most meaningless life, zero point, and on and on. Invert everything, if a sequence of tasks brings a target, make it go upside down, make the target create the sequence, and why does a sequence of tasks condense into a static target ? And what if targets were the dynamic part ? (strange, the whole concept of work is based on targets, but aren’t all the targets already reached, just redefine it, in our mind, all labor has been achieved…), if a symbol means an experience, go upside down, make the experience mean the symbol, you get the idea, go on and on, make the distance between letters in a word completely change what the word means, and on and on.

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 12:20 pm #

Yeah, there was a guy who posted a reward for anyone who could actually prove that any soldier got spit on.
Right wing propaganda, now accepted national myth.
And you need to look up the Fuck the Army Tour documentary.
It’s hard to believe that the Army let Jane Fonda and the rest do that tour, but they did, and there were THOUSANDS of cheering soldiers at the concerts.
That’s the real reason they quit the draft. The draftees rebelled.
I never knew a Vietnam vet who was for the war. They all hated it.
That’s all down the memory hole now.

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 12:23 pm #

Don’t bother driving to Illinois, Marlin.
I would be mad at you for wasting gas.
I’m the one who won’t drive or fly, remember? I think that it’s immoral.
That’s why I take Amtrak.

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 12:26 pm #

When I first moved to Illinois, I refused to water my garden, being a good California girl and not wanting to waste community water.
I thought that those damn plants should quit waiting for handouts and get busy putting their roots down!
Now I realize that you have to water the plants if you want a harvest.
The learning curve is long!

ront June 16, 2011 at 12:28 pm #

“Maybe it’s ’cause I was in the South, but I never heard of a solder in uniform being spit on or seriously disrespected – except on TV or Life Magazine. I’ve always had a notion that this was a media creation or archetype, of sorts – -”
I recommend David Sirota’s latest book, “Back to Our Future” in which he says exactly that. It was a “Republican” backed creation presented through the media. He said there exists no footage of what was thought to be a pervasive act. It may well have been that the spitters were not anti-war demonstrators but war mongers disappointed by the outcome.

welles June 16, 2011 at 1:04 pm #

….ditto for the ‘native’ americans who butchered each other. you know, the racist red men.
bone up on human history, people kill each other, injuns not excluded, except for the ones that didn’t do much killing and were wiped out by the ones that did.
i’m sure each sub-group of evel wyte men can find where their ancestors were trampled upon, disemboweled, exterminated.
get beyond your pc ‘thinking’ and do some good. you just use it to feel empowered anyway, you need the fuel of hatred.
most of us are for peace and harmony these days.
surface-wise i’d be considered cawcasian, and married into a family with mulattos and niggers, if you wanna put it that way, plus they have indian in ’em. no one gives a shyte and we have a rip roarin’ good time joking about it sumtymes.
i’ll bet if i took a dna test they’d find lotsa colorations insida me, and you too.
peace to my friends & inimigos

Buck Stud June 16, 2011 at 1:20 pm #

I do believe it’s time for many of us to admit that we have been taken for a very devious multiple personality ride. The peculiar idiosyncrasies would reveal themselves from time to time – the not so-subtle anti-Semitism, the spiritual esoterica, the self-acknowledged racism. No, these two were not twin opposites from two different coins; they were a pair of fools gold nuggets leafed in the same alley prank den and typing from the same keyboard. And when Vlad lamented that it was time to move on because Asoka was “banned” could the charade have ever been more obvious. We’ve been had, Clusterfuck Nation…and Osho is probably smiling.

bubbleheadMarc June 16, 2011 at 1:21 pm #

I have no problem with the way you’re describing the situation now. For example I was offered a job with Maersk when I was still shipping out. Maersk, a Danish shipping company, reflags its vessels from Danish to American to get DoD contracts and also to take advantage of the cheaper American seafarers. The international economy is complicated. And of course not all unions are very worthwhile. The American Federation of Teachers for one is a fucking joke. All they care about is pay; nothing ever got done about psych. referrals on the crazy kids being ignored by the administration, etcetera ad nauseum.
What I don’t like is a tax code which encourages companies to move their plants overseas while neglecting to levy tariffs on imports.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 1:31 pm #

….ditto for the ‘native’ americans who butchered each other. you know, the racist red men.
==
No, local tribal skirmishes is not the same as cold-blooded premeditated racist genocidal imperialist war and conquest.
As to my hatred of you fscks, you better believe it. I can’t stand the sight of you reptiles. And that sentiment will soon pretty much be shared by the rest of the world. Your days on this planet are numbered. Mark my words.

bubbleheadMarc June 16, 2011 at 1:35 pm #

I also read a debunking book once which specifically addressed whether or not soldiers & airmen were being spit on when they landed in the United States in Oakland and San Francisco and the verdict of the writer was that this never happened THERE. On the other hand there are conflicting accounts, so I don’t think it’s that simple. I DO know of so called “hippies” who were beaten up by sailors merely for saying “make love not war” to the sailors, who as usual then, were stuck wearing their uniforms off base which many of them no doubt disliked. I know that while I was stationed at Pearl Harbor many sailors would rudely reply to Japanese tourists asking where the USS Arizona was “right where you fucking left it assholes.” These incidents were doubtless true but I don’t think the sailors in question really cared about the Arizona. I think they just enjoyed being assholes. Kind of like brutally frank people are definitely more interested in being brutal than in being frank. My sense of the issue is that such incidents DID occur but not with any regularity and most definitely not at airports the way some thought. At any rate we used to get shit from Canadians just for being Americans, forget the military part, because we were canoeists at a youth camp, not deserters. One shopkeeper in No. Ontario rebuked us for being draft dodgers and we all laughed because we were only sixteen years old! Although that shopkeeper was right about one thing. Remarking on our New York bank issued travellers checks he said that the Chinese would end up owning everything one day. Smart guy.

bubbleheadMarc June 16, 2011 at 1:41 pm #

Agreed on every point. Like someone else said we’re all given our little mental boxes and only the rare eccentric ventures outside of that box. Almost everyone gets along by going along. I think we’d be better off with a one chamber congress and a prime minister drawn from the majority party or majority coalition. At least then someone would be in charge. Things might start changing as more people get the hint that the jig is up, as it were.

digbycookies June 16, 2011 at 1:50 pm #

And is it not mysterious that Myrtle May and Alexandra BOTH disappeared at the same time? Hmmmmmm? Coincidence? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 1:53 pm #

Everybody’s days on this planet are numbered.
==
Agreed. Thanks to the reptiles’ genocidal imperialist machinations. But that gig is coming to an end. People are learning the truth and it wont be long before the blue-eyed reptiles will be hunted down. And not even the frozen deserts of the high arctic is going to save them this time around.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 2:03 pm #

Skirmishes? They raped, scalped, tortured and took slaves amongst their own.
==
I see you have the same difficulty with language as Welles. If you can’t differentiate between cold-blooded premeditated racist genocidal imperialist war & conquest and the rest, then it’s your cognitive problem, not mine.

Cash June 16, 2011 at 2:04 pm #

i’ll bet if i took a dna test they’d find lotsa colorations insida me, and you too. – welles
That’s what I used to tell Vlad, that this precious “white race” is a genetic hodge podge from migrants/invaders/desperadoes washing up on the shores from Asia, Africa, Anatolia, the Middle East. This has gone all all through history and pre history. Still happening. There’s nothing new under the sun.
I’ll bet there’s a good chance that one of us has that evil old cockroach Genghis Khan or maybe even Attila the Hun in the woodpile.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 2:12 pm #

Get rid of the fucking reptiles. Your days will still be numbered.
==
No. The scale of the problem will be much different. As will the set of the problems. Right now the scale of the problem is global. Without the reptiles, the scale of problems is reduced to national and tribal. That’s a big difference. It allows for a whole different balance of power.

Cash June 16, 2011 at 2:13 pm #

“cold-blooded premeditated racist genocidal imperialist war & conquest” – Mika
That description would fit more than one group of people. Not just blue eyed devils. I would also look at the spread of Islam and the empire of Ghenghis Khan and horrors inflicted by Attila and his tribes and then also the Magyars. These folks weren’t blue eyes devils. They were Asiatics/Africans. And if Biblical accounts are anything to go by your own forebears don’t exactly have clean hands. And maybe also look at the behaviour of the Japanese in the 20th century. Not blue eyed devils either.

Cash June 16, 2011 at 2:22 pm #

I’d be amazed if Alexandra and Myrtle were really one and the same. Myrtle sounded to me as American as apple pie. I think Alexandra said she’s Brit. At least that’s the vibe I got.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 2:27 pm #

When one tribe plans to attack another, it is premeditated.
==
When neighboring tribes fight each other it is in reaction to a local conflict. And it is settled locally through a local balance of power.
There is a big HUGE difference between that and the war of extermination waged on the Americas by the European imperialists. It was not a reaction to a local conflict, it was plain racist imperialist genocide.

bubbleheadMarc June 16, 2011 at 2:30 pm #

There’s a book for sale by ER Hamilton Booksellers entitled “CANNIBALISM, HEADHUNTING AND HUMAN SACRIFICE IN NORTH AMERICA: A History Forgotten” by Geo. F. Feldman. Describes pre-Columbian indian’s barbaric practices towards other indians who were their enemies.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 2:32 pm #

I would also look at the spread of Islam and the empire of Ghenghis Khan and horrors inflicted by Attila and his tribes and then also the Magyars
==
Attila and Islam were a REACTION to Roman imperialism. And in my view, were quite justified. I don’t know enough about Genghis Khan to comment either way.

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 2:33 pm #

It’s kind of interesting that conspiracy theorists, like me, accepted that Asoka was banned, while those who blindly accept government theories are skeptical of the claimed banning.

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 2:35 pm #

As it turns out, plants cannot simply grow roots long enough to reach a water table many feet below them.
They are unable to flourish without help from a community which supplies water.
Much like humans flourish better with help from the community.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 2:35 pm #

You can’t be this stupid. (OK, maybe you can.) Every person, who ever lived and probably will ever live has a limited number of days that they live on this earth.
==
Pfff, c’mon. We were talking in the group collective, and now you want to play this stupid game of gotcha.

MarlinFive54 June 16, 2011 at 2:45 pm #

Vlad & Asoka one and the same? … I think you nailed it Buck Stud! Just to be sure any cryptologists here who could look at the writing style i.e. syntax, word usage, sentence structure etc and prove it true? What a hoax!
What happened to Orionoir?
-Marlin

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 2:49 pm #

The complexions of the powerful merely change. It will still boil down to the powerful lording it over the weak. Same as it ever was.
==
Perhaps. But again you’re missing my point. It’s the scale that changes. And when you change the scale, in many ways you change the problem.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 2:51 pm #

You need to read more carefully.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 2:59 pm #

Fab, it’s not all that difficult to understand. There’s a difference between you without any provocation kicking me in the balls and me as a REACTION to that smashing your head in. Most people understand the difference and my justification, and I think so can you.

trippticket June 16, 2011 at 3:03 pm #

“Now I realize that you have to water the plants if you want a harvest.”
Yeah, nothing quite like water to make plants grow! 😉 But I understand, having lived out west I had the same problem. Now that I understand more about food chains and metabolic inefficiencies I realize that my water use is nothing compared to that of the industrial system.
Do you hear that little mosquito buzzing around the room, pretending to be a tough guy from the safety of his wee little desk, writing from his Dora the Explorer notebook? Is there anything more pathetic than a foul-mouthed little troll with a Napoleon complex and complete anonymity? Shoo shoo, little skeeter! SHOO!!
Or put as much information out to the public as I have and let me come pay you a visit. On my blog you can find out my email address, the town I live in, and if you link to my farm blog you can see exactly when I’ll be at the farmers market and what I’ll be selling! You do the same, little mosquito, and I’ll come “buy something from you.”

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 3:15 pm #

You’re wrong.
Even with nuclear weapons, there’s a limit as to how long these weapons can be maintained. There’s also a limit on the resources needed to maintain these weapons in any significant amount. Small players cannot maintain these weapons indefinitely, not without huge collective outside help.
And then there’s also the consequences to a small player in using such weapons. The collective balance of power is completely different from that of few large players monopolizing global power. As I said earlier, the problem set is much much different.

Bustin J June 16, 2011 at 3:16 pm #

Fabian blew: “I’ve read through the writings of quite a few scientists that have no idea how we could ‘like, stop Global Warming’…”
Its been commonly referred to on this site: the solution is contraction of economies and lifestyles.
“”I think a good way to stop climate change / GW disaster would be to limit markets, corporations, resource extraction, economies, and so forth.”
Great plan for massive starvation. Go for it.”
Massive starvation is a product of the global economy, secondarily, local population pressure. I am an expert in global Ag issues, try me.
My presecription is for 3rd world countries to say “Fuck you” to the WTO, default on their debts, form a bloc to oppose 1st world nations, and start consolidating their moral and utilitarian position against the financial hegemony that is about to drop a Carbon Dioxide Bomb on their life-support systems.
My prescription for Joe Six-pack is form their own bloc against global capitalists and start tooling for war with the East Asian axis. And go on a fucking diet.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 3:22 pm #

You are quite dense. Everyone, has a justification. But of course yours is the really, really really really just, justification.
==
No, it is you who is quite dense. We don’t live in a moral vacuum. We never did, we never will.

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 3:33 pm #

Well. The blog administrator ate my homework, again.
This time I even emailed JHK, in protest.
But I will try again. I think that most people here would like this. He starts out channeling JHK and ends up channeling Bustin.
http://vimeo.com/22377038

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 3:38 pm #

Well, OK then.
That one worked. Anyway, it’s one of my Facebook friends who I don’t actually know in real life.
And he is in Georgia. Tripp and Prog, heads up.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 3:39 pm #

No, we don’t. That’s where you and the imperialists with all their volumes of knowledge on supposed human nature have it wrong. That is why their system always fails. Because their system is fundamentally morally bankrupt. And not even the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever devised can change that.

wagelaborer June 16, 2011 at 3:40 pm #

Paranoid, again?

Bustin J June 16, 2011 at 3:44 pm #

Ctemple said, “I have pretty good hopes that a fair amount of this country can be saved, despite the best efforts of left wing idiots to turn it into a third world gabage dump.”
This left-right wing bifurcation of the electorate and the body politic is keeping America from evolving. Isn’t it clear that each side is being led by its hot-button issues to get them to elect the politicans who will advance their anti-people/pro-business/pro-corporate capitalist schemes?
Obama/Bush- same core military/foreign/economic policy, different hot-button politics.
I’ve strained to advance what I see, hear, and feel: it is not the people, en masse or individually that is retarded, but it is the system of participation that is retarding us, and retarding the process.
We need a nonpartisan movement in solidarity on issues like campaign finance reform, voting reform, and keep moving toward more technological democracy and transparency. AAARRG

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 3:46 pm #

They don’t need foreign capital. They can create “capital” locally. And they can trade without the behemoth corporations or the US dollar as intermediary. In fact, many are learning that it is to their extereme advantage to do exactly that.

metuselah June 16, 2011 at 4:22 pm #

Not enough to escape 3rd world status
==
Their 3rd world status is a consequence of anglo-american imperialism and the corruption of their political elites by the anglo-american imperialists with all the devastation that that entails.

trippticket June 16, 2011 at 5:44 pm #

Man, I feel so chastised. No, wait, there it goes, never mind. Good people will continue doing good things, regardless of anything the impediments have to say about it.
Still waiting for that location so we can settle this, wee mosquito. I’ll put my produce up against yours all day long and twice on Sunday – taste, uniqueness, Brix score, vitamin and mineral density, or the net change in soil quality post-harvest. Your choice.

asia June 16, 2011 at 6:20 pm #

Do plants make Minerals or draw them form the soil?

LewisLucanBooks June 16, 2011 at 6:56 pm #

Wow, Wage. Thanks for the link. The poetry and images distill down so much into 19 short minutes.
I couldn’t help but think “This is the way we live today.” And yet, so much of it I found alien. Not part of my life. I think not having a tv for years, contributes to that.

trippticket June 16, 2011 at 6:57 pm #

Both! It’s a little esoteric, but some of the most successful gardeners I know believe that plants, in conjunction with healthy fungal symbionts and microbial populations, engage in biological transformations, alchemy basically, transforming one mineral into another. Of course this only happens in a robust, organic, biodiverse, minimal disturbance type system, and of course anyone who doesn’t engage in that sort of work will deny this claim to no end. Makes no never mind to me. I know enough about what’s going on in my soil to place myself firmly in the C. Louis Kervran camp. Healthy plants are full of surprises, and taking proper care of the soil will turn up minerals in your produce that seem to come out of nowhere.
Interestingly, despite all the bluster, no one has ever taken me up on this invitation, when the loser has to pay for the test…wee mosquito won’t either.

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