JHK’s Three-Act Play
All last week across the media landscape, in pod, blog, flat-screen, and crunkly old newsprint columns, fatuous professional observers complained that the Occupy Wall Street marchers “have no clear agenda” or “can’t articulate their positions.” What impertinent horseshit. I saw a statement on one OWSer’s sign that said it all:
$70,000 College Debt
$12,000 Medical Bills
I’m 22
Where’s My Bailout?
What part of that is unclear to interlocutors of what we called “the establishment” back in the day? That would be the day of the Vietnam War and the Aquarian Upsurge. One difference being that in 1968 we at least had some solidarity in the older generation coming from figures of gravity like Senators Robert Kennedy (bumped off), Eugene McCarthy, J. William Fullbright, George McGovern, Rev Martin Luther King (bumped off), and even one US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark. Today, the entire “establishment” is a clueless, hopeless blob of self-interested, craven opportunism. Even the arty fringe – the people who pretend to be an avant-garde – are nothing but narcissistic self-branding operations masquerading as culture leaders.
The worst offender this past week was the prating empty vessel Nicholas Kristoff at The New York Times who affected to offer the OWSers his own tidy agenda of nit-picky, arcane tax reforms (e.g “Close the ‘carried interest’ and ‘founders’ stock’ loopholes”) and limp-dick banking regulations (e.g. “[move] ahead with Basel III capital requirements”). David Plotz and his Gen X sidekicks at the Slate Political Podcast were equally mystified. I have some heartier suggestions: bring the full weight of the RICO act and the federal anti-fraud statutes down on Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, Brian Moynihan, Angelo Mozilo, and a host of other impudent schmekels still at large in their world of Escalade limos and Gulfstream vistas. Or, if that’s just too difficult, how about a handy lamppost and about 40 feet of stout nylon cord?
It is cosmically ironic, of course, that the same generation of Boomer-hippies that ran in the streets and marched through the maze of service roads around the Pentagon has become a new “establishment” more obtuse, feckless, greedy and mendacious than the one they battled with over 40 years ago. I guess they just don’t see that their time has come to get right with reality – or get shoved aside and trampled. The essence of the OWSer’s argument is pretty simple: they’ve got a raw deal; somebody dealt them a bad hand; someone ran their society into a ditch and not a goddammed one of the older generation will set in motion the machinery to correct the situation, or even acknowledge it.
At the apex of this new establishment is the Baby Boomer’s moral trophy president: Barack Obama, whose election made the Boomers feel good about themselves – while they preceded to loot the national treasury’s accumulated capital, and then reach forward a few generations to rob their legacy, too. I haven’t heard Nicholas Kristoff (or any of his colleagues at The New York Times) complain about Mr. Obama’s stupendous inattention to the crimes of Wall Street, or to the dereliction of his proconsuls in the SEC and the Department of Justice. I’d at least send somebody to hold a mirror under Eric Holder’s nostrils to see if he is actually alive.
For my money, the OWSers have plenty to yell about. Apart from the crimes and turpitudes of their elders, the younger generation hasn’t even been prepared for the massive change in reality that these times are heaving them into. If it was me out there, I’d conclude that I’d better make up the future on my own, with no help from my parents’ generation. In fact, that future is rushing toward all of us so cold, hard, and fresh even in this autumn season that it might splatter the banking establishment – and the global economy – like a bug on a windshield. The OWSers have a front row seat down there in lower Manhattan. The financial gangrene (thank you Zero Hedge) is not just seeping anymore, it’s blowing through the arteries of the money underworld like fracking fluid. The damage can’t be contained. Let the Arabs have spring. The OWSers of America own the fall. Rock on OWSers and don’t let the “pigs” (as we used to call them) get you down.
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Here are Karl Denninger’s list of demands: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=195248
Spread the word! America is waking up to the tyranny of banksterism!!!!
So James, who are the barbarians? Wall Street bankers, OWC demonstrators, the Koch Brothers, the system? Or is it something else we should be seeking out. Part of our solution to the coming collapse is a transformation in how we feel ourselves in the world, rediscovering the interlacing of our senses and the earthly sensuous. Enjoy this week’s offering. kulturCritic.
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/the-barbarian-within-a-feral-memory-trace/
It’s about time we got to the streets!
Eventually, people are going to realize that there is no way to sustain the debt-based economy and will simply start abandoning it in droves, concentrating mostly on personal survival as the collapse accelerates. There needs to be ideas and information stored for the time when they are needed, when people are ready to rebuild in a sound and meaningful way.
Visit the Leibowitz Society at http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com/2011/10/old-fashioned.html for information and discussion related to storing knowledge as part of generational survival.
Enjoy…
Private Roads, Rising Tolls, E-Z Pass and FasTrak — It’s a Waste of Money for an Asphalt Society We Need to Abandon ASAP
http://www.alternet.org/story/152261/private_roads%2C_rising_tolls%2C_e-z_pass_and_fastrak_–_it%27s_a_waste_of_money_for_an_asphalt_society_we_need_to_abandon_asap?akid=7650.61013.wOZmxT&rd=1&t=24
……….
Oh – and well said, as usual…. Education – higher education is and always has been something the “elite” have prided themselves of posessing. Now with all the riff-raff being removed from it we can yet again see the economic AND educational disparity between the people. Here’s to partying like its 1900 again…. :>(
The Weapon of Mass Destruction against banksterism is simple: liquidate your paper investments, pull some/all of your money out of their banks, and slow down the use of checks and credit cards as much as possible. Invest in yourself and your neighbors instead of Wall Street. With this weapon you can protest immediately and from any point on Earth while sending a clear message: We have no more confidence in banks and investment houses.
The irony is that the baby boomers of the 60s-70s wanted to bring the system down. It took them several decades, but they succeeded. They grew up to become banksters and Wall Street frauds. In this case, patience is not a virtue, but a vice.
A writer at takimag noted a sign being waved that read in part “all races” describing the participants. Translated: Spoiled white kids angling for “exciting” jobs with a NGO and the people of color being nowhere near this shindig except on the speaker’s platform giving their best Duce impersonatation while ranting against “white privilege.”
Sorry dudes and dudettes of Kos this group of white kids has about a .0001% chance of starting the “revolucion.”
But after Obama gets dumped by the fickle electorate then the full blown race baiting can begin on the left as they agitate the base of the “oppressed.” Now them is gonna be some exciting days.
Good post… I hope the protests continue to grow and spread to more cities. It’s no surprise that the corporate media wants to downplay OWS, considering how many Bank of America and other bank advertising dollars they collect. These banks want to charge $5 to use a debit card and 23% interest on a credit card but they hardly pay anything on savings accounts: http://aeinetwork.com/news362.html
Everybody is mad about something. No job. Overworked. Government pensions. Health insurance. Fracking. Rich get richer and keep exporting jobs. Don’t mess with Social Security or Medicare. Blatantly corrupt politicians. Or maybe you’re mad about several of these things. Everybody is stressed out.
It makes me tired but I try to keep focused on getting myself prepared. I try to imagine the positive side of getting rid of some of the crap, a zillion TV stations pushing crap on us, like the latest iphone. Who really needs all these gadgets and TV? Oh, I like music and will miss the radio and CD player, but I know several musicians and I can carry a tune, so we can make our own music.
Keep plugging along with the hope of a better day.
Brink back the guillotine!
Bring back the guillotine!
the rich get richer and the poor get drunk
Well this is just what the country needs. A little civil disobedience or social unrest. Just give the powers that be an execuse to try out some of those nifty laws hidden in the Healthcare Reform Act or down in the bowels of the Patroit Act. Maybe it will end up like the sceens in “Fritz the Cat” with the jets swooping down between the buildings dropping naphalm on the rioting masses.
There could even be enough social unrest that we may have to suspend the election and the Constitution after all. Just keep Barry & Co. inplace to usher in some Change We Can Freakout To.
Anybody take a look at who is leading the march ? Or where the money trail leads back to ? CommunistParty-USA or Democratic Socialist of Amerika ? Look at which of the talking heads on tv is spouting praise. We might even see Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewert and Keith Olberman catching some sound bites live from Wall Street.
Hey Jim…great post this AM… I have read your blog for several years and am in mostly, total agreement with what you have “blogged” out here in the bloggesphere…since wayyyy on back to 2005/6…when you tried to give all of us a heads up about the “paper machet`”…economy that was Wall Street and it’s shennanigans…ie. CDS’s…CDO’s…all that Wall-street gobbledygook talk that NO ONE knew what the H*%ll any of it was…of course…untill …as you so astutely predicted…the “wheels came off” the system in Fall of 08..
WElll now…here we are in Fall of 2011… what a difference 3 years make huh?! or do they really? The US..and now most of the Western world..is really in much worse shape than most of us can even dare to think. Now it only remains for the “rot” of what is left of our social/societal order..to come to a rudely abrupt change. Most people…will be dumbstruck…incapable of dealing with the “shit storm” that is just around the bend. I highly suggest a rapid course in personal survival/defense…and some extra lessons on agriculture and how to grow a good, sustainable “victory garden”…and keep it going year around( even building a small makeshift plastic covered “green house” for winter climes).. Things are going to get NASTY and …soon! Some small arms handling lessons might be a prudent thing to undertake as well…empty bellies of those “out in the cold”( as indeed many/most of us will be..) ..these folks will have the “veneer of civilized behavior” ..wear of rather quickly I would think! So..”to be Forewarned..is to be ForeArmed”… as the old saying goes. Good luck to us all…because I think Luck…along with some help from Divine Providence…is what we will all need to get thru the coming “days of change”.. Hasta la vista…from my own “land down under…” in Panama!… Que tengas un muy buen dia!!
The problem with sending Wall Street banksters to jail is that some of them may not have committed any actual crime – they simply took advantage of the weakened rules that allowed them to run amok and destroy the economy while profiting madly at everyone else’s expense. With their new wealth, the banksters bought more and more politicians and then they bought the Supreme Court too i.e., check out Clarence Thomas and his wife and see who’s paying them. The Citizens United decision (where corporations are now considered people and DON’T have to disclose who they are and how much they donated) and the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act (which separated the banks from the brokers to prevent speculation) made for the prefect opportunity to rape the world economy. Also culpable for the downturn were the idiots who bought McMansions with bubble loans. As everyone knows, income for the middle class has been flat for about 50 years. So why should you now be able to buy a $1 million dollar house in 2005 when you couldn’t afford that same house in 1970 and your income never increased?
So far all we’ve seen are fines being levied against the big banks. Fines that were maddeningly paid for by the public via the bailout. What we need to do is start clawing back the bonuses that were paid to these banksters. They don’t deserve millions of dollars in bonuses and stock when they’ve ruined their banks and the economy. Failure should not be rewarded. In an ideal world, each CEO would be held accountable. In the real world, we are told that this is CLASS WARFARE. That income redistribution is Socialism and that making the rich pay more in taxes will kill the job creators. What jobs have the CEOs created? Seems to me they have outsourced all the jobs to low earning, benefit free foreign countries and pocketed the difference. Then when their companies fails, the CEOs still have golden parachutes that keep them insulated from their own treachery. And the stockholders and retirees get screwed as the CEOs walk away whistling. FOX News keeps telling us that if you earn $250,000 a year you aren’t really rich and should get additional tax breaks but if a school teacher/policemen/firefighter earns $50,000 a year that’s Communism and we ought bust up those union commies. And what’s worse is Americans believe that. Common sense is in desperately short supply.
Starting next year, Milwaukee County Transit (our bus-system) will be undergoing service cuts in the range of 45%, which essentially means the termination of somewhat-reliable mass transit in Milwaukee County. Part of it is the fault of our Koch-puppet Governor Scott Walker who is cutting aid to MCTS, part of it is the fault of Milwaukee County for failing to provide MCTS with a more stable and reliable source of funding in an age where tax revenues are declining. Many people in the more remote parts of the state resent Milwaukee for being a relatively politically liberal big city. But I have a difficult time understanding how these likely supporters of Gov. Walker can think that economically kicking the state’s largest city in the gonads, will possibly do the rest of Wisconsin any favors.
I predict a mass exodus from Milwaukee County, because a lot of working people rely on the bus for transportation to and from work, and without a car or semi-reliable mass-transit, US big cities are not viable places to live, as JHK frequently says. And how can this not have economic knock-on effects on the economy of the Milwaukee metropolitan area? Anyway, I’m only relating this because the fact that the Collapse Faerie is doing her little demon-dance in my neighborhood now, makes me think that 2012 is going to be the year “shit gets real”.
If you have time, check out your local protest group…Boston has a whole “village” in the financial district…think they could use any and all donations to keep going…at least they’re trying to do SOMETHING which is more than those of us sitting at work reading blogs! I give them much credit for making the effort. ANY protest is better than none at all.
Mila
“Or, if that’s just too difficult, how about a handy lamppost and about 40 feet of stout nylon cord?”
Say, James, wonder if this will get you a little vist from the FBI, and a quiet discussion about inciting unrest? Be interesting to know.
It is amazing how the US MSM is totally downplaying this, and in any item that does mention it, the OWsers are denigrated.
Too bad, it may end with some version of Met’s “Bring back the guillotine!” When the PTB totally ignore everyone but them selves, sometimes it takes a few heads rolling down the street to snap them back to attention. By then its too late for the society that is in place then.
But hopefully, a better one will rise in its place – ok, probably not, people usually swing in extremes, so the US v 2.1 will probably be more like the one in the Handmaids Tale.
Oh well, I got out of the asylum, the view IS really interesting from the outside you know.
Carry on, Dee
nicely done Kuntsler. Wife and I spent some time with the OWS gang last week. We donated a few books to their ad hoc reading room–a cardboard box spectacular–and gave them as much love as we could. They are a fine and incredibly undefinable group. Go visit them while you can.
Another vote for “great post”! However, I’m a child of the sixties and don’t care for being lumped together with the people who’ve ruined this country.
I’m thrilled with the OWSers!!! So glad to see that quite a few people are not going to lie down and take it any more. (Please note that there was a Granny Brigade among the protestors.) Yet there are still far too many who believe in the system as it has been during the abnormal period of cheap oil, and as in the case of a friend of mine, are exhausting themselves trying to change the system from within. Politics are the problem, not the solution, and perpetual growth is delusional unto psychotic.
Please keep up the good work, Mr. Kunstler! Meanwhile, I’ll do what I can, and keep collecting those buckwheat recipes.
Jim, excellent post today.
As a boomer activist, I can say with some certainty that the vast majority of today’s boomer establishment WERE NOT marching on Washington or taking over the Chancellor’s office at their university.
These were the students who walked passed the picket lines looking the other way. They were in class and never responded to your calls for a student strike.
They were mainstream students who became today’s “leaders”. The heart of the Clusterfuck.
Right on Mila! One can also donate through AlterNet, on line, as I did last week.
SNAFU
The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department are injecting methadone money into the veins of the economy. They are the ones that ought to be protested. Wall Street is just following their lead.
Let’s see if these protesters keep the heat on when the weather gets cold.
Aimlow Joe was here
http://www.aimlow.com
Loved the post today JHK,
Happily the groundswell these young “Owsers” are causing is finally catching on. Of course the feckless media have to coin some terms and try to pre-digest the happening for all those who need to know what to think abut all this!
Oh, the dreaded social unrest that re-engineering the profits from the Industrial Revolution through modern manufacturing to the top .1% will cause.
That old balkanization does it every time, stealing from the people and their future. What happens when people awake from their artifical world when they can’t continue–their resources are running dry.
Today I was listening to C-Span and they had Thomas Evans, Pres.and CEO of Bankrate discussing the Durbin amendment and why the banks just have to charge you for the coming and going of your own money.
These guys are like quicksilver. Lawmakers try to hem in all the gouging on one front, only to get new gouging on another. You know those poor banks just have to make a living. Can’t fault them for that. Why, you should see the world from their eyes, then you’d understand why they have to ream you every which way they can. And after all these years of passing laws, why don’t the lawmakers get the picture that the banks will only find new ways to feed off their customers?
Why can’t they anticipate and close all the loopholes these bloodsuckers will find? Don’t they all h ave access to the same lawyers? Oh that’s right, part of the reason why they have to be so rich is that they can buy justice and stay many steps ahead of the legislature.
Our feckless media just can’t seem to get the picture that the middle class is truly getting strangled and that there will be no growth in the long emergency state we are in now.
Yesterday I tried to post about something JHK and some other writers and historians are saying. That we may see a military person perhaps in the form of Patreus or a proxy military guy like Chris Christie run for POTUS in the Republican arena.
I never would have thought about the Christie component here if I hadn’t seen him yesterday in the news riding with the military in a jeep. Then it all made sense….
Another fine article, Mr. K!
The newly coined “crunkly” is a good ‘un. (I see a combination of: crunchy and crinkly, with a yellowish tinge and a musty scent. ;o)
As for this bit:
“For my money, the OWSers have plenty to yell about. Apart from the crimes and turpitudes of their elders, the younger generation hasn’t even been prepared for the massive change in reality that these times are heaving them into. If it was me out there, I’d conclude that I’d better make up the future on my own, with no help from my parent’s generation.”
Yep, our generation has stolen and used up the precious capital for building a flexible and sensible future.
I’m surprised that a lot of “the kids” turn their faces away and shut down when we’re wanting to discuss what we’re trying to leave here for them.
(It ain’t much, but hell, we’re attempting to make a start towards the future with some survivability.)
Do you think it might be the physical labor that’s going to be involved that make the topic so abhorrent? Or the concept of no more “easy money”? Or no more opiate teevee and electronic toys? I’ve heard the comment: “Well, if it’s going to be like that, I wouldn’t want to live.” This is an area of despair to me, and I really do work hard at not despairing.
The psychology of previous investment has been well and truly “installed” in some, and indicates a severe lack of imagination. (With maybe more sinister implications).
Our so-called leaders have lost the consent of the governed. It is going to get much uglier. I am always reminded of a much earlier JHK comment about the real worry of citizens living in their cars with only their guns and ammo left.
Ditto on that ccm989, I wonder how well “Tony Boloney” is sleeping since he was outed. Must get garlic planted and am then thinking of a road trip to the big apple, show solidarity to the kids. JAIL THE BANKSTERS AND TAX THE RICH!
Navigation: Past the Point of No Return
http://www.Thesisa.org/
Brothers and sisters, let’s try to practice a little conservation in this revolution; let’s endeavor to use just one bullet to dispatch each Wall Street banker if you please. After we chase them all the way out to Montauk where they’ll be no NYPD thugs for them to cower behind!
To our final victory in Montauk!
¡Hasta siempre Comandante!
Sensational and spot on today, Jim. Or, as we said back in our time; righteous, brother!
The crowds haven’t brought their pitchforks to The Hamptons yet, but this is actually better; they went to the rotting solar plexus of the beast. I’m almost 60 and live hundreds of miles away, but I actually thought this weekend; “I’d like to join those people! Don’t know if it would do any good, but who knows! Voting for this schlub or that doesn’t seem to make any difference, so perhaps a bit of old-fashioned boots on the ground protesting might help.
What I really want to see is a group of people encircling one of those black, tinted Asscalades and demanding a hearing with whatever feckless prick is hidden inside.
Right on!
“If it was me out there, I’d conclude that I’d better make up the future on my own . . .”
http://members.shaw.ca/urbanismo/city/city.html
Me too!
Occupy movements are springing up all over the country! Find one in your neck of the woods at http://www.occupytogether.org. Or start one. Or support those in New York/Wall Street by donating money, food, supplies, etc. Or join us in Washington DC for the October2011 rally starting Oct. 6th & 7th. The time for solidarity is NOW. We are the 99%.
I’ve seen blame for “things” frequently attributed to the “Boomer” generation. Even Mr. K. alludes to that here & a few commentators have rightly pointed out the those of us who demonstrated against the Vietnam war and adopted “outsider” lifestyles, were NOT the ones who became bankers & corporatists! But even when I was 17, & down there in DC in ’71 with a few hundred thousand other enlightened souls, there were all those silent majority dweebs who grew up to vote for fools & take jobs that have put the US, & much of the world, in the bad way we now find it.
And one more thing about all this, it seems to me that moneyed interests (or those with big muscles/weapons), have always been calling the shots…. for thousands of years…. no different today…
Though occasionally – if history is any lesson – they do loose their heads!
you want change? try doing the only sensible thing, what the Nearings did in the 1930s, buy a piece of land and grow your own food.
While I support the OWSers and sympathize with their demands, I think they are making the same mistake the Tea Party people made, i.e. believing that we can all have what we were promised, what we feel entitled to. Hard times are coming and don’t expect the federal government to help you. They’d rather spend limited resources on creating a fascist police state at home and drone-bombing weddings in Pakistan.
Agendas have a way of sorting themselves out. One question wrt the OWSers though, what’s up with all that “jazz hands” or whatever it is?
We’ve been building transitional tech devices, such as human powered appliances and biochar kilns.
Here is our miniature plastic to oil refinery.
cheers clusterfuckers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIMXm8pLUhU
Post from/to Vlad late last week:
“Take a group of Germans, a group of Nigerians, a group of Chinese, and a group of Greeks and put them on idential islands and come back to generations later. Do you think that the islands will all have the same degree of prosperity and productivity?”
What you really mean is will all of the islands have MY notion of prosperity and productivity.
The other really silly part of this notion is, what kind of cultural, social, political, and food production toolbox do these various groups arrive with? Australia has been used as an example lots of times to illustrate Vlad’s point. Why, after 40,000 years of habitation, did the Aussie aborigines not develop agriculture and “civilization” when the European colonists were able to do it within a generation?
Answer: because they didn’t. Australian colonists didn’t develop agriculture and civilization on the Australian continent at all. They brought it with them. They brought wheat seeds, and potatoes, and sheep, and taxes, and representative government, which was itself a product of 10,000 years of agriculture engaged in somewhere else. It took a long, long time to get to the culture that the Aussie colonists brought with them. Had they been given the aboriginal package 40,000 years earlier, and the aborigines theirs, the roles would be almost precisely reversed.
Now, in terms of sustainability, the foragers win over the farmers hands-down every time. I can’t help but think that that one might be the most important distinction of them all…
I’m glad you’re devoting your column to Occupy Wall Street and the reaction to them. You actually seem hopeful about them. So do we in the Coffee Party. They’re our kinds of kids.
As for my take on them, I think they’re Anonymous vs. Scientology, The Sequel. I’ll have more to say about that on Crazy Eddie’s Motie News later today. Until then, enjoy the rest of last week’s postings, including an analysis of gas and oil prices in Michigan.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/
The slavery in America and the serfdom in Russia were abolished 5 years apart. It had to take 5 years of bloody revolution in America to come to the same result. Who knows what can happen in USA if the satiation is not resolved in a civil and peaceful manner. Instead of listening to the grievances of the 99% of the population the establishment tries to crash it with media blackout and police force. It never helped before, it will not help now. I’m not a protester, too old for that, and I know what danger it can bring. So there is my advice to the “establishment”: Stop fighting the change, listen to people, use common sense.
Jim, You’re reading my mind. How about justice for the banksters? They nailed 1000 in the 80’s S&L scams. I’d add Joe Cassano to the list–if we can have him extradited from the UK. Or, how about turning those drones around?
Too bad the OSW crowd is led my marxists and unions and IS NOT EVEN CLOSE TO a grass roots “student movement” as you attempt to try to make it. Completely agree about the Wall St. criminals being locked up, but the Dems are bed with them as much, if not more, than Repubs, so why not protest the White House? Oh yeah, because the unions own the White House!
Yes, I think the sit-in the camp-out the whatever it is has no real point. Few of the folks camping out have any real sense of the economy. I live in China now teaching at a university of 60,000 mostly very smart kids who all think they want to move to America. When i tell them to stay and make good things happen here they laugh.They all are very frugal, still bike to school and those who do own cars are out of control.
The point is, in New York city the protest folks are uncertain for their reason for being. When i return from China, I might get an airstream trailer and a pickup-truck and live in the parking lot at walmart. I think i would have wireless internet and cheap coffee and donuts.
We have made those of us who did school, got all the degrees and worked in fancy project companies
useless after 50. We got rifed, early retired and now, do sit-in’s like it was 1969 again. Oh well, maybe a new digital cam and a media career looks good…feelance of course.
EXACTLY!
Finally a column in which I could find anything to disagree with. I would like a add a little reminder though: There is a guy running for president, who is giving nightmares to the criminals on Wallstreet and in DC. His name is Ron Paul. If you would like to see what hedge fund con artists in handcuffs look like, I would recommend that you support this gentlemen.
Agreed!
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -[attributed to] JFK
This is a simple concept that the oligarch’s hubris always disregards, or openly sneers at, to their ultimate cost.
(I’ll always wonder who the true author of that perceptive line was, if not JFK. IOW, who wrote that FOR his speech?)
I was born in 1948. If that is what my
generation stands for, call me a traitor.
Earth first.
Give peace a chance.
You are what you eat.
Do your thing.
Fuckin A right! But do any of them own guns?
“they’ve got a raw deal; somebody dealt them a bad hand; someone ran their society into a ditch and not a goddammed one of the older generation will set in motion the machinery to correct the situation, or even acknowledge it.”
BS call, Jim. These kids do not have a coherent agenda.
That these kids are angry and have a target does not raise them above the level of the goons in the Tea Party.
They are Trustafarians, judging by what I see in mainstream media–and I may be way wrong on that. I give them credit for protesting, but they need to propose some real outcomes. Their Boomer parents at least had “stop the war” and “save the earth” and “equal rights now.” How about:
–prosecute the men who ran the financial system into a ditch, then jail those found guilty
–tax all Americans fairly, including those who make money from investments rather than income
–bring back jobs that make us proud to work
–end the buying and selling of politicians
–make corporations accountable and not treat them as “people”
–stop dithering in Washington.
They should occupy the Capitol, too.
“Fuckin A right! But do any of them own guns?”
That’s the other problem. We need more Yippies, not just Hippies. The Left has not had a fighting spirit since the 30s. It’s the scary-Right in the US that has all the weaponry.
I liked Ron Paul until I found that he disagreed with evolution. We need to call just folks what they are: barbarians unfit to govern an educated populace…too bad, too. The guy has wit and fresh ideas. But I’m not voting for any fundie. Period.
A timely post, James. I’ve been following the OWS insurrection with great interest. Last night I pulled out an old Doobie Brothers album, and looked at pictures of the kids finally challenging the destruction of everything, while I listened to “Takin’ It To The Streets”. Man, it took me back to a place and time where I felt that old adrenalin again. I was seriously considering making the trip to Freedom Plaza in DC on October 6 for the “Stop the Machine” rally when I first heard of it. In the intervening month I began telling myself “No, it’s crazy for a guy near 60 to get involved with this kind of action anymore”, or “I can’t take the time off work, and it probably won’t amount to much anyway”, etcetera, etcetera… Well fuck it, I’m going (or should I say, going back). Yippee!
Higher education used to be almost exclusively for the wealthy and upper middle class. It will return to that. Regarding education, all they are is books. Remember actual books, kids? Go to the library and read ’em. Why not learn a trade of some kind instead of going to college. The world still needs trades, and that is only going to get worse as PO progresses. Wood-fired kiln specialists, anyone? Blacksmithing 101? Being able to discuss Zen philosophy is really only so important, anyway.
If you must get that sheepskin, try attending your local community college for a couple of years, and/or live at home instead of living in the dorm. Try saving money by going without status symbols and such. I remember all the nonsense that went on in the dorms.I remember all the time and money wasted on nonsense. Ha! Time to grow up, kids, time to grow up. Your “Real World” just got very real, didn’t it?
I dont know History, But in the French Revolution how many peasants owned guns?
I went down to New York on Saturday to lend my support and march. It was energizing and cathartic to vent.
The protest isn’t against any one thing or couple of things in particular, it’s about the all the collective rot in our country today. That’s why it seems there’s no focus to the protest. There’s so much shit to scream about so their screaming about all of it!
BTW, the police, individually and out of the earshot of the “White Shirts”, will tell you they support the protest.
Not a very good example….the Tahitians who met Aborigines and saw their ‘Culture’ called them savages!
Did those young uns have to study 10 hours a day to pass the entrance exam?
Whats China really like?
‘Australian colonists didn’t develop agriculture and civilization on the Australian continent at all. They brought it with them.’
And the Blacks who somehow got from Africa to the land down under 70,000? years ago didnt bring
farming skills with them and for 70,000 years
did slash and burn [literally] on their land…
so what?
Hi all
Well when I first heard about the OWS protests I thought – It begins. Despite the desparate efforts of the mainstream media to blackout this story, word is getting out. And there is no ambiguity about what these people are protesting about. Actually they articulate the fact that they are being financially screwed very clearly and thay want it to stop. Pretty simple and clear. It is too bad the NY cops have not gotten the message that they too are being screwed by the finance system.
Jim I am tired of people blaming the wrong folks for the finance mess, I think you are wrong to say or imply that anyone but the banksters are responsible, they and their bought and paid for pols( think that nasty, smarmy Paul Ryan) . Stop trying to blame middle class folks who have just been trying to get by for the last 30 years! Real wages have stayed flat since the 1970s so the middle working class has had to run faster just to stay in place. These OWS kids are very aware of this and know who is to blame. That’s why they are on Wall Street. By the way I think we are gonna see massive student loan defaults occurring, and why should these kids be burdened with $100,000 thousand dollar student loan debts for a degree that may or may not land them a job. Yup this is the beginning, the people are waking up and someone stole the coffee.
loveday
I liked this one, James. The condescension of the older “establishment” types toward OWS is nauseating. One quibble though. THIS IS NOT A GENERATIONAL CONFLICT. THIS IS A CLASS CONFLICT.
The fact that the principal operatives of the ruling economic elite are of our own age does not indict all baby boomers. Many of us are out here, longing for a way to get traction against “the man”, and cheering the younger men and women who show courage and initiative in doing so. Just a small quibble. Rock on.
“BTW, the police, individually and out of the earshot of the “White Shirts”, will tell you they support the protest.” -steve
I suspected as much. Being the enforcers/thugs for the moneyed class is a very sharp double-edged sword that cuts both ways. (To mix and mangle some metaphors.)
I also suspect that [collectively] they don’t appreciate D.I. Tony Bologna’s painting targets on all their backs.
A college degree doesn’t guarantee you a job, even in the best of times. This is usually stated somewhere in all those brochures that are sent out, or read on-line. They went to school knowing what the bill would be. So, why so upset? They didn’t have to go to college. What are the protesters actually doing to make the world what they want it to be? What are they actually doing about “the Man” or the “system” they don’t like?
I always got a chuckle out of college kids that eat beans imported from India, wore sweat shop made clothes and listened to Westernized versions of Third world music and then felt they were really doing something, really being alternative. I hope at least some college age folks really are doing something constructive, positive and non-violent to build a more sustainable,down-to-earth world.
To those saying the OWSers have no platform or
agenda:
The NYC General Assembly has come out with the following draft equivalent of the Declaration of Independence
I think it is quite clear…
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/02-1
OR
http://nycga.cc/2011/09/30/declaration-of-the-occupation-of-new-york-city/
============================================
Published on Sunday, October 2, 2011 by NYC General Assembly
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
by NYC General Assembly
This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011, with slight adjustments in wording on October 1, 2011:
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
….
…. more in original link
=========================================
It goes to cite a list of specific grievances similar to the Declaration of Independence…
What drives me crazy is that in order to donate funds to the Owsers, I have to use a credit card which then skims off a percentage for the banksters! So far I have gotten around that by buying requested items with cash and mailing the parcel. I also mailed a check to one of the places that claimed to have been donating food and I guess I just have to trust they used it as I requested. Any other ideas for not allowing a cut of my anti-bank donation to go to the banks, I’m interested.
Dang it, I’m a boomer and I’ve kept the faith! I have swum against this tide of greed my whole life and it appears I will have to be a freedom fighter in my old age. That may sound like a complaint but it’s not.
Let’s cut the crap about lynching, guillotines, etc. It pollutes the otherwise incisive commentary here.
Nylon rope is too stretchy for the purpose you suggest. Rope made of low-stretch Dacron would work better.
So, how long will it be before they finally see what Ernst & Young even see with Greece? How long will it be before they finally throw in the towel and let them default?
It is difficult to descriptively add to this blog. However, I will simply make the point this is logical behavior from people who have nothing to lose.
3 hots and a cot is better than hoping fallen apples hosts a bit of protein.
Thanks for posting the link to the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City. I read it and think it sums up how I feel about things pretty well.
Snapshot from 1968 — freshman orientation week at Duke. The entering class is gathered on the grass in the campus gardens for a consciousness raising session. The MC leads the assembled singing along to Simon & Garfunkel: “we’ve all gone to look for America.” The nation’s most idealistic generation poised to lead us into a bright new day, according to media reports of the time.
Off to the side, standing on a hill, arms folded, appearing to look down contemptuously on the proceedings, was a member of the entering class who would become a Master of the Universe. The name would be recognized by anyone who followed the 2008 collapse and watched him golden parachute away from the wreckage, courtesy of taxpayers.
One can imagine him thinking on that day in 1968 something like this: “You hippy dippies are pathetic. America is for being owned, not understood.” The future, of course, would belong to him. And it still does.
“”Today, the entire “establishment” is a clueless, hopeless blob of self-interested, craven opportunism.””
again…my biggest pet peeve is when people claim the establishment is ‘stupid’. they are doing what they do because they are idiots or make mistakes.
they know exactly what they are doing….and they can do whatever they wish because they have us by our balls. we wont fight back. we are a nation of pussies. when someone does stand up (like the dont tase me bro guy), we all point and laugh at the idiot.
we deserve what we will get……
“Not a very good example….the Tahitians who met Aborigines and saw their ‘Culture’ called them savages!”
That’s not exactly surprising. The Tahitians in your example were farmers. They would have carried with them many of the same cultural/operational “advantages” the Brits arrived with. But ultimately farming of any kind leads to the same end. Ecosystem breakdown and population collapse. A switch to actual sustainability is a lot more wholesale than most people can even fathom. Especially farmers.
I had the same reaction while reading Kristoff’s column about the Wall Street protests. What a clueless putz. I realize many of these FPOs don’t have a shortage of self-importance, but to think you’re going to “help out” with the agenda of a youthful uprising is beyond the pale. Worse that reading N.K. is watching him on video:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/10/02/opinion/100000001084589/advice-for-the-wall-street-protesters.html
Um, Nick: they are occupying Wall Street. Does that give you a clue?
I hear from attendees present that there is a great cross-section represented amoung the OWSters. The media shows us interviews with inarticulate followers and the odd leftist though.
I suspect this is to deflect sympathy when it is time for “shock and awe”.
The financial vampires now drink more blood than the host economy can replace. These protests indicate that economic collapse is not far off. When it collapses, lots of folk will be pissed. Might as well have places for them to hang out.
After they are well identified by the facial recognition computers, things will be scripted to “get out of hand” as practiced in “arab spring”. One plan is to restore order by using “Patriot Act” and similiar laws passed since 9/11 to round up the “subjects”. Can’t have “domestic terrorists” running around, after all! Another plan might follow the Tripoli model. Likely to be an interesting show, and more interesting if the script is revised as it proceeds.
But, per likely script, when the dust clears, those boys you invited to a necktie party, or their anointed sucessors are likely to still be running the theatre, and maybe even the Wall Street Casino, if it isn’t burned down.
Great post, JHK, but I do agree with Jeff9 that this is a class war, not a generational war.
Today, while preparing for my radio show, I tried to find Marx on “credit swindles”. Marx wrote a WHOLE lot on usury, banking and credit under capitalism. And he quoted Martin Luther, in 1540, on usury, which I thought was ever so relevant to today.
“Fifteen years ago I took pen in hand against usury when it had spread so alarmingly that I could scarcely hope for any improvement. Since then it has become so arrogant that it deigns not to be classed as vice, sin, or shame, but achieves praise as pure virtue and honour, as though it were performing a great favour and Christian service for the people. What will help deliver us now that shame has turned into honour and vice into virtue?” (Martin Luther, An die Pfarherrn wider den Wucher zu predigen, Wittenberg, 1540.)
It is true that we cannot continue destroying the Earth in the future the way that we have in the past. But that doesn’t mean that we have to go back to subsistence living, as if the progress of our ancestors must all be dumped. We can have sustainable living in a cooperative society, and live pretty well.
There is work to be done, and people needing work, but the usurers can’t profit from it, so it doesn’t get done.
This is ridiculous. On my radio show, I quoted FDR’s response to the money changers of his day-
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2010/07/plague-of-locusts.html
Heading out, using checks is still better than using credit cards where the merchant only gets .94 to .96 cents back on the dollar. Cash is of course the best.
Also, ATM cards…tens of billions of dollars is suckered out of the hands of citizens who use those instead of cash.
Our family has finally gotten smart. We do not give one penny to Wall Street anymore. Free checking account, no fee credit cards paid off every month,
no ATM cards ever used or even accepted from the bank…anyone can do this if they pay attention.
All the commentary about nylon rope and lamp posts calls to mind the “revolutions” of the 1960s and 70s, when mass movements towards political reform and social justice quickly degenerated into orgies of mass murder and revenge against “class enemies”.
Who in the OWS will get to decide who hangs and who goes free? Will things stop at a couple of lynchings, or will a more generalized frenzy ensue?
Remember that the terror, mass murder and establishment of dictatorship that follwed the French and Russian revolutions, followed mass uprisings by “the people” against “the rich”.
It would be wise to be just as wary of the OWSers as of the “Corn Pone Nazis”…..
“It is cosmically ironic, of course, that the same generation of Boomer-hippies that ran in the streets and marched through the maze of service roads around the Pentagon has become a new “establishment” more obtuse, feckless, greedy and mendacious than the one they battled with over 40 years ago.”
Yeah, it’s the same generation, but not the same people. Not all the same people, anyway. For every ten hippies/demonstrators of the 60s/70s, there were three or four (or thirty or forty) young Republicans and ROTC students. The latter are the ones who grew into the banksters. The rest of us watched bemused and then horrified from the sidelines.
It’s good to see something finally hitting the streets in zombieland.
And what I don’t understand is the police in all this. Has no one told them that those whose property they are protecting are the same as those who are trying to destroy their unions? I hope somebody is trying to talk to the police one on one and to explain this to them.
“We can have sustainable living in a cooperative society, and live pretty well.”
As long as your “cooperative society” doesn’t exceed a pretty non-existent economic scale, when compared to today’s ideal. I like you Wage, and I like a lot of what Marx had to say too, but you seem to fall into the predictable faction of middle aged liberals who think the whole general mishmash can keep on spinning if we can just find the right energy on which to run it. Ain’t happenin’. Of course, that could be hard to see in real time, as we slowly cruise down through alternative supply sources on our way to some very low energy future sustainability in a tribal garden/pastoral existence that rarely leaves its home territory.
All the rest is just a product of a culture that has been on an unavoidable trajectory to extinction since we started inadvertantly selecting favorable traits in wheat back in Jordan about 10,000 years ago.
Besides, I’m not at all comfortable with your ideas of “going back” to subsistence living, as if things were invariably short, ugly, and brutish on the other side. Forager cultures have far more leisure time than farmers have ever had; better teeth, and fewer degenerative diseases, including bureaucratic governments. I would guess horticulturalists would fall somewhere in between, both in terms of the arts and leisure, and in terms of political organization. I’m talking about moving to something better. Most people can’t see out of the corner we’ve been backed into, don’t possess any sort of roadmap to anything substantially different. Producing a road map back to the garden is what drives me, not revamping a system that is circling the drain.
Congrats on your radio show! Peace.
Jim, thanks for your wonderful words. Believe it or not, we (in our sleepy little burg of Boise, Idaho) are also organizing in solidarity with the OWS group. The demographic here has a 20-something skew, but a lot of us are old farts too (my wife and I are staring at 50) — which is good, since we’ve had an additional 20-plus years to perfect our skulduggery.
I agree that the elite in this country have been unaccountable to rest of the country for the last 50 years. Some on this blog, i get the feeling, think that anyone who has kind of done ok is a greedy son of a bitch.
By elite I mean CEO’s, career politicians, high up the chain bureaucrats, and entrenched academia. I don’t count those who have made a little money as a worker bee, electric contractor, or local business or professional person etc.
First off, the majority of boomers were NOT hippies protesting. The vast majority were straight assed young republicans who were as tight assed as their parents or more so. The real hippies and protesters have been developing green lifestyles, staying dropped out of our capitalistic rip off society and protesting in very small numbers whenever appropriate. Now that we’ve dispelled that illusion, welcome to the revolution.
Well, the first part of any revolution could involve a thoughtful discussion of just where and when and how much the “wheels have come off” the system and a consensual recognition that those in power and those “revolving forward” share the understanding in the need to reverse course and put the “wheels of the system” back to a more equitable and sustainable direction.
My own limited, dim little perspective suggests that this would involve a revocation and reform of recent legislation the allowed for all these aspects of “financial sector” abuses.
The other aspect would take to task the political parties and their abusive control of legislation and regulation favoring businesses that clearly run counter to the interests of the common welfare.
What needs to be done is to deconstruct the regulatory frame work that has brought fourth this loss of democracy as well as a dismantling of the political processes and parties that operate them in our current Congress.
We need a complete “control-alt-delete” of Congressional Seniority system as well as a roll back of financial regulations.
But I digress – the big picture, it feels good to hang a banker, but it is the colossal system that remains sick with the cancers of “self-interest” and party-based ideological fascism.
I hold Schurmer, Dodd, Frank, Clinton, Bush and Nixon more responsible than Dimon or Blankfein.
This mess started at least 40 years ago.
Over the weekend I saw, on TV, an official of the Euro plead that unless all the bailouts were enacted that European civilization would collapse and people would starve (as if that were his concern). Seems that line was used somewhere before, about three years ago. Perhaps our most important US export is our “expert” knowledge base that becomes the catechism of international MBAs.
Wage, that came off more hostile than I intended. Take my tongue with a big fat grain of salt, please.
“I hold Schurmer, Dodd, Frank, Clinton, Bush and Nixon more responsible than Dimon or Blankfein.
This mess started at least 40 years ago.”
Nice systems perspective. I enjoy seeing people respond instead of react. Although I very much approve of any demonstration against the status quo. Just wish people would take the necessary steps in their own lives to build a different model, instead of just bitching about the one they don’t like. That’s where organized protest becomes impotent, in my mind. Like they say, we must be the change we wish to see in the world.
Did you know that a crossbow can fire a flaming bolt over 1000 yards with almost no noise?
Obama, Bernacke, etc. have been using the 1930s as a guide for policy-making today. This has been a mistake, firstly because the timidity of federal government actions since 2008 makes Hoover look FDR-like in boldness (& has put the Fed in the impossible position of having to try fix things alone), and secondly because the 1930s was the wrong parallel to begin with.
As long as we keep supporting, through our daily activity, the economic structures that make the world what it is, the world, and the Blankfeins therein, will keep finding a way to supply us with what we demand.
Until it all falls down, that is. That collapse could have been circumvented, but the circumvention needed to begin even before Jimmy Carter suggested that it be begun.
The only way to stop a coal-fired power plant from being built is to stop giving them a reason to build it. Boycott is a far more powerful protest than marching or letter-writing. The current situation is no one’s fault more than our own. But all the same, please march on, good people!
Just when you get home, please also make the changes that actually undermine the power structure, too.
Vis a vis the more privileged boomers: they’ve never been held accountable before either, as of course they rode out the Vietnam debacle on their student deferments most of the way, until finally a few of them got drafted towards the end of the war when the lottery system was adopted.
On another tangent there was an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer this morning about how over 80% of recently trained non-profit executives from Case Western are comtemplating leaving town since even the nonprofits cannot afford to hire anyone anymore. Maybe these people should have learned how to chop down automobiles for spare parts instead, since that seems to be the only growth industry around here anymore.
Actually, Tripp, I’ve never claimed that the whole system can continue as it is with solar energy.
What’s more, I don’t even like the system we’re living under, and I certainly don’t want it to continue.
Some people are good at gardening, and I support them by buying local food as much as possible.
I, on the other hand, have been trying for 17 years to grow food, and failing miserably. I’m a pretty good nurse, though. I am comfortable with contributing to society as a nurse, and letting others with other skills do their thing.
I know that we can’t replace oil with wind or solar. I just think that we can have decent lives without using so much oil.
The US military, for instance, uses half of the oil now. I live under an airport, where student pilots joyride all day. People drive 70 miles one way to work. Lights are on day and night, while air conditioning makes places too cold for comfort in the summer.
I think that all of this can be changed, and we could still have a good society, if we went back to the classless way our foraging ancestors lived (as Marx pointed out).
7,000,000,000 people can’t all be foragers, however.
But I am opposed to capitalists wiping out the last foragers, in Brazil, India and Africa.
I don’t have a cell phone, because tribes in the Congo are being wiped out so that coltran can be mined.
more like 100 yards, and don’t count on too much accuracy.
“Also culpable for the downturn were the idiots who bought McMansions with bubble loans.”
Nonsense. The people who used poor judgement taking out loans beyond their means were foolish but not culpable. Those loans only came into effect after the banks stamped them “APPROVED”. Had the banks exercised due financial diligence those mortgages would have been denied and the crash averted. The banks and the banks alone are responsible.
“impudent schmekels”?? LOL That’s really rich, Jim.
And Indonesia.
Hello Clusterfuckers. Greetings from the Great White North, where I just checked Rabble.ca, one of our leading radical commie sites. They’ve been tracking the Occupy Wall Street activities closely, unlike our mainstream media, who are just waking up to the fact that something unusual is going on. They aren’t going to like it either.
So, with pride, I’m here to tell you that in Canada, right now there are nine locations planning events for Saturday, October 15th. There are two in British Columbia, the cities of Vancouver and the capital city Victoria. One in Alberta, in Edmonton, also the capital. One in Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon.
In Ontario, our most populous province, two, in Toronto, the provincial capital, and Ottawa, which is the capital city of Canada where that scoundrel, our Prime Minister Stephen Harper is located. One in Montreal, Quebec, and one each somewhere in the provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
We’ll see what the federal goons think of all that. Right now they are ramming through an Omnibus Bill in Ottawa that commits billions to building prisons we don’t need (except they’re planning to criminalize many more of us so they will be needed)and allows them to look in on the public’s internet habits without permission from anybody. Wiretapping our phones too, of course. Poor harmless marijuana smokers will be thrown in the clink along with crack addicts in a renewed War on Drugs that even the USA has given up.
If I disappear from this site a few months from now, think well of me. I’ll be in some women’s prison in solitary so I can’t poison the minds of others.
You’ve missed the point, though you hint at it in your comments re: Obama, Holder, et. al.
The OWSers should attack governments and government spending & corruption, and not merely their symptoms.
None of this corporate gluttony would have been possible without taxpayer-funded government bailouts, artificially-low central bank-set interest rates, horrendous government deficits (whether due to social program spending, military spending or whatever) and constant currency devluation/debasement and money-printing…
So much for our constitutionally protected right of “Free Assembly”. Knowing Bloomberg and the Boys In Blue, they are merely using this event to photograph, finger-print, and biometric collection (?) of future perps for the mass incarcerations that are in our future. Don’t you think the “authorities” have a plan too?
Those of you donating books: Please donate “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau to the OWSers. Thoreau is the real leader of this movement if any good will come of it. Place a thousand copies at the steps of WallStreet/Washington.
“As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.”
“Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to have this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?”
I agree – because Lloyd Blankfein is in the same demographic as the generation that tried to stop the Empire, revive true spirituality and gave this country just about everything good we have, that that somehow invalidates the entire generation? This is faulty logic.
I see no point, Jim, in fomenting inter-generational war. Boomers didnt come into real power and money until the 1990’s and by that time this country (and planet) was already in an inexorable trajectory toward self-destruction.
Some of the Boomers sought to serve and emulate the elites and some sought human liberation – political and spiritual – and most just tried to survive, just like any other generation.
My main criticism of you Peak Oil writers is that like most in this culture, you do not understand the higher spiritual dimensions of human existence and therefore do not understand that the 60’s were a Planatary Spiritual Renaissance Wave that unfortunately got dampened.
But it went underground and still lives on, helping transform the human collective consciousness in ways few have the spiritual abilities to understand. Along these lines, we could say that the main cause of human problems is spiritual amnesia and entrapment in the separative ego that, because it is cut off from the rest of the Cosmos by a wall of narcissism, is in fact existentially insane.
That’s right, humanity is sick on a mass scale and it started long, long before the Boomers came along. But a lot of Boomers tried to understand how humanity could break free from this prison and this sickness, this mass Emotional Plague, and we are in solidarity not only with OWS, but with EVERY freedom fighter, saint and mystic who strove to bring Light to this dark planet!
One more thing before I go. I trust by now JHK is hanging his head in shame for his suggestion that baby boomers are turncoats who switched from protest and dissent to become greedy oinking pigs at the trough of capitalism.
As many have already pointed out, some of us didn’t sell out. Also, even in the Hippie Heyday, there were still many more conforming little shits than there were us troublemakers. I remember them from high school with disdain. I already knew I was was different from them and wasn’t planning to follow that path.
Living in poverty for many years taught me the many fine skills I learned to conserve, recycle, be as self sufficient as possible, and reject the consumer driven lifestyle those A-holes in high school were pursuing. Be happy with much less, all that good stuff that will stand me in good stead for my remaining years, along with my modest nest egg from working.
As to the windbags on this site who somehow know the current crop of protesters are without focus and commitment, all I can say is they make it easy for the rest of us to identify them for the regressive wrong headed fools they are. Show me a know-it-all and I’ll show you a reactionary right wing dunce.
This is a ray of hope and I commend all of them.
James,
I waited all weekend to see you reaction to this movement. This movement needs to gain momentum. And while I admire the resolve to maintain peaceful protests I think the only way to strike fear in the hearts of the robber barons in their towers is some of your lamp post justice.
The one sentiment that I identify with and which I think can possibly sum this whole network of movements is one by David Graeber in a Guardian article a few days ago: “What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008.”
I was seriously disappointed in ’08 that the collapse didn’t spark the revolution we’ve needed or even just the conversations we have needed to have for so long.
I’m a disillusioned Gen Xer that has struggled to find my own path to the American Dream. And I can’t imagine what the twentysomethings out in the streets now feel about their future prospects.
When people have lost jobs, homes and have no positive future prospects…when high school graduates can’t afford to go to college and there are no jobs for them…when college graduates are shackled with enormous debt and have no job prospects, no way to support a family, no way to have a suitable place to live, no means to chase their dreams…when most everyone is living hand to mouth…that is the time for revolution.
We’re on the cusp of that moment for certain.
Chris
Great article this week. 40 foot nylon rope pretty much is probably going to be the solution. You gotta hand it to the WOsers. It’s a call long past due. The call seems to be taken up in other places in the country. What really pisses me off is all the “expats” that have fled the country just to save their sorry little asses after having participated in the over consumption and ruination by going along with what ever big business spoon fed them and then running out when their generation and the generations following needs them to finally stand up and assist in fixing this mess they had a hand in creating. Miserable little mice all of them. Self interested cowards all.
Great quote from unknown source:
IT IS NO MEASURE OF HEALTH TO BE WELL ADJUSTED TO A PROFOUNDLY SICK SOCIETY.
Love that one, hope you do too, Kitaj.
My favorite phrase: Impudent Schmekels, but it was a close contest: describing Kristoff as a “prating empty vessel”–Priceless.
I don’t think this listing goldfish of an economy will make it to 2012–do you?
My 401K (a herd of milkgoats and six horses, Halflinger/Arab crosses) is looking better and better. . . .
good luck, staying on the Road. I’ll be heading cross-country.
ps: my advice for the next few months–hoard your garbage, pack your bags, and be prepared.
Wow, great stuff today, especially that part about lamp posts and nylon cord.
Does death ride a pale horse?
Like I said, Wage, that came out more hostile than I meant it to. I totally agree with all that other stuff you point out. I’m just curious as to how large a political organization we’ll be able to maintain, or even really should maintain. My apologies. Crazy weekend with a lot of crazy folks.
I have an Image of a twenty-something male now tucked away behind bars for exercising his rights. He has massive student loans, credit card debt etc. Six years ago he was filled with enthusiasm about starting his life. Now he holds a nearly-impossible-to-play hand.
The debt will be defaulted. That’s capital the system had presupposed was there. Now it’s not(so, the economy shrinks.) But what happens to this guy? How does his life continue from here?
He could gather himself. He could become mentally ill. Either way, he’s been trapped on all sides. This is “the future.”
Again, we can not count on the “minds and hearts” of the revolutionaries to be the “voices of reason.”
(see my previous post)
We need a methodical approach, for starters, repal Dodd-Frank, and re-enact the Glass act.
Give current parties a chance to recreate themselves in their previous incarnations. (new banks) Demand the president convene a state of the union to tell the people who he would suggest moving forward in light of the current transgressions.
Demand that he notifies Congress that the “appearance” of self dealing will be grounds for emergency recall elections of each member of congress.
Solicit the Supreme Court to adopt and codify constitutionally approved methods for a president to act against outlaws in Congress.
If none of that works, start fucking people up.
These protests are just a sign of what is to come, not only here, but to the whole planet. When the Federal Reserve came into being in 1913, the banksters had their agenda.The light and the dark have been at odds for millenia. Humans are now at a turning point, in as far as how we exist in the universe.
I’m here to tell you that this timeline is succumbing to an inevitable end. There is no returning to a broken economic world system, a system of usery. It is time for the human spirit to break free of these bonds and begin to expereience true freedom. Freedom to explore the cosmos if one desires. There will be no more politics, money, or religions. One must look inside of ones self to find what’s really important. That is the LOVE and God which resides in all of you. Jesus was trying to tell you this over 2,000 years ago. Humans are now ready to experience what is truly important.
Humanity has destroyed the planet. It is too late to put a fix in. As the Earth has awakened to reclaim her destiny in the universe as a guiding light which will rebirth humanity as one beam of light to a new reality where greed and corruption no longer exist. So these protests are all good and well intentioned, but it is too late. This planet and its way of life is ending in one respect. Gaia is rebirthing herself and humanity as one entity, bringing in a new Golden Age, where time no longer exists. Where the human calender goes back to a natural inner consciousness of a non linear way of co-existing with the universe.
The only way to transcend this time to where humanity needs to be, is to first look inward, and become one with yourself, then the higher frequency which will coincide with the heart beat of Gaia,then a new beautiful world of understanding and wisdom will appear. It is human destiny to let the love of the human heart connect you with the rest of the cosmos.
Band together with like minded people, and connect with nature, for the ancient civilizations of long ago knew that alchemy was the secret of longevity, the Philosophers Stone. One with nature, one with oneself. Money and materilaism is a government fabrication. Gold and silver are not a preservation of wealth, it’s a preservation of one’s longevity, human immortality, one with nature, one with ones self, self-realization.
The purest water found on the planet in a little town called La Maña, Ecuador, has nano particles of gold and silver. It’s this water that the ancients used as a way of living for long periods of time.
We are no longer steering this ship, the source of all creation is at the helm now! Sit back and enjoy the ride. The real journey is about to begin!
All the LOVE!
Hey, no offense taken. I hope that you had fun at your wedding.
How large a political organization? Do you mean a repressive State? None. I agree with DrGeoJeff that the “authorities” are using the mass arrests as a way to collect biometric info on the protestors. Screw the Repressive State!
But some sort of collective meetings that help provide planning and organization for us all? I think that would be nice. I admire the Wall Street occupiers and their democratic decision-making assemblies.
As you know, I don’t believe that the Earth can support 7 billion people, and I think that people should be paid to voluntarily sterilize themselves. I think that it will be much easier to have a cooperative society when there are fewer people around.
It’s possible that the ruling class has a plan to lower the population also. But not voluntarily.
A lot of US tax money goes into biowarfare. You know, for self-defense. Like the way we’re defending ourselves from the Libyans right now.
“….ran in the streets and marched through the maze of service roads around the Pentagon has become a new “establishment” more obtuse, feckless, greedy and mendacious than the one they battled with over 40 years ago.”
The boomers always were greedy and narcissistic. Raised in a post war America, where the only direction seem to be up, by indulgent parents who, because of their own deprived upbringing, took the attitude that nothing was too good for their little snowflakes.
Even the “anti-war” movement was about “me” and not about injustice. The war was threatening to end their lives on easy street, dope and chicks, who because of newly available birth control pills were all too willing to open their legs. While the USA retained the draft after 1945, the majority of US troops in Vietnam volunteered for Vietnam duty up until 1967. Only after 1967 did the US military force troops to Vietnam whether they liked it or not. Only after 1967 did you see the big anti-war protests.
Exactly. The greed you see today in some Boomers who are members of the elite or who serve them are Boomers who emulated the way of life of the WW2 generation.
Jim, if you want a real example of what many Boomers stood for, go back and sample some of the greatest music ever made, the music between 1967 and 1975. Go back, especially, and listen to the Moody Blues album, “A Question of Balance”
It really blows my mind that here we are in 2011 and people still dont understand the Psychedelic revolution and what it meant. In 2011 we are still not mature enough in this culture to have an intelligent discussion about psychedelics/entheogens and on how they are a major factor in curing the human race of the disease of narcissistic egotism and the mass Emotional Plague.
One would think all the research on psychedelics and transpersonal psychology never happened.
Arab Spring, American Fall? Ouch
Let’s go with American Autumn.
Well said: “Today, the entire “establishment” is a clueless, hopeless blob of self-interested, craven opportunism.”
Willow, this listing goldfish of an economy will make it through 2012 and beyond. Shucking, jiving, hide the pea, and any other assortment of tricks will keep the obvious from being obvious (unless you stay tuned in to CFN).
Sealevel
Dude, let’s get one thing straight once and for all: Big Business and Big Government are a partnership AND BIG BUSINESS IS THE SENIOR PARTNER! Notice how Government Sachs infests Treasury and the Fed? Did you notice that it was mostly Banksters who crafted the Federal Reserve Act scam? Money rules.
Yeah, they have a plan.
For over 2 years, cement trucks have been driving down my country road. At first, there were hundreds of them, going by every 15 minutes. Now, not so much.
What the hell are they building? If you go down the road, you see a building at the airport, with a sign that says “Air Force National Guard” coming.
But you see nothing else, and the trucks keep coming.
I totally sympathize with the Germans who protested that they knew nothing of the concentration camps. Why would they? If it’s not in your neighborhood, you don’t know what’s going on.
And this is in my neighborhood, and I don’t know what’s going on. One person told me that they were building a Red Cross disaster camp.
Really? Why would such a small population require such a thing? And what is is Red Cross disaster camp? Is that like a FEMA detention camp?
I am very suspicious of what is happening, but I have no way of knowing what it could be.
“IT IS NO MEASURE OF HEALTH TO BE WELL ADJUSTED TO A PROFOUNDLY SICK SOCIETY”
Probably J. Krishnamurti. Ronald Laing wrote a whole book on the subject entitled “The Politics of Experience.”
Warm regards.
When New Yorkers protested against the draft in 1863 the Navy bombarded them and nothing changed. The system is working for the owning class. Why do you think anything will change? There is 5000 gigatons of coal in Alaska. Get back to me when U.S. energy consumption downs by 20% from its peak.
I heard a few of these “owsers” complaining about unemployment in their age group, 25-35. So now more than a few have picked up the felony charge “assaulting a police officer” on the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday, its unlikely they’ll get hired by anybody ever.
–WSP7
I checked out your link. KD states “the 99% are against the banks robbing the nation “. Fair enough. He then asserts the following:
” We know that pulling the deficit spending and “supports” from under the banksters and housing will cause an economic contraction worse than the 1930s.”
Oh really? The 99% – “We” – are willing to live through “an economic contraction worse than the 1930s” because “We’re Americans”?
I’m sorry, but such an obviously flawed assertion spoiled what otherwise was a pretty good article.
” if we went back to the classless way our foraging ancestors lived (as Marx pointed out)”
Wage, when was such time? I think that it’s a part of human nature to stratify in various ways, be it ether economic, cultural, social, etc. Can’t remember the exact study which observed a large group of students who very quickly separated themselves into distinct groups based, perhaps, on personalities, looks etc. Classless society is a great idea, but given human nature it’s a Utopian dream.
Last week you said that it wasn’t the superior Teutonic genes that make Germans more successful than various other Europeans. Yes, probably not genes, but perhaps the culture/values. Here’s an example: German cities/towns in the Alsace-Lorraine region are tidy, clean, the old half-timbered homes centuries old are in perfect condition, lovingly repaired and restored, sidewalks are in perfect condition, etc. Take the train across the border to Strasbourg (France) and the difference is striking: the old buildings are in allowed to deteriorate, there’s trash everywhere, they can’t even paint the shutters and the structural exposed beams of the treasured 300-400 year old buildings they inherited. Strasbourg commerce is lively, but only (I think) because of the presence of European institutions which inject a lot of cash into the city. The German countryside is picture-postcard perfect, not ravaged by “development” like in the U.S. or other places in Europe. Germany invested in solar panels which are everywhere – villages, towns, cities, and we invested in wars in Iraq and Afganistan. Sigh… Most of German businesses are family-scale mom-and-pop shops (there are a few chains, but not many), vast majority of retail is locally owned.
There are good reasons why Germany is prosperous and its neighbors aren’t. Attitude, culture and values trump genes. Americans can learn a few things from the Germans, but probably too arrogant to do so.
That’s the Krishnamurti quote at the top of my blog!
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/
I also become very suspicious of those who invoke patriotism – ‘we’re Americans, we can weather a economic contraction worse than the 1930s’ – in the name of enduring a purposefully incited deflationary depression in order to ‘clear the books’ for a better future and to prevent an even worse collapse.
There are people, very well situated and wealthy, who would like nothing better than a collapse as bad as the 1930s – a deflationary depression – so they can, like vultures cleaning bones – acquire assets for pennies on the dollar.
Be wary – BE VERY WARY – of those obsessed with, and calling for economic collapse. Put another way: Follow the money.
Just another good use for hemp.
“Classless society is a great idea, but given human nature it’s a Utopian dream.”
Actually, the smaller the political organization the less stratified the culture. At the band level, which is admittedly smaller than anything we Eurasians have seen in many millenia, there is usually only one “big man,” who is just sort of appointed to speak for the group, based on strength of character, not hereditary title. But he helps with the day-to-day minutiae of life just like anybody else in the group. There is generally no other societal stratification whatsoever.
At the tribal level there is usually a chief, sometimes with a few sidekicks, but even here the title isn’t typically hereditary, and the chief is still a productive member of the society.
It’s not until you get to the chiefdom level of political organization that hereditary title and more than one layer of kleptocrats become the norm.
I would assume that any experiment performed with children from any of these organizational levels would organize along lines familiar to them. That is, children from state societies probably impose an unnatural social hierarchy on a group of orphans, and band level children would tend to see each other strictly as peers, except for perhaps that one charismatic individual they allow to speak for the group.
I think this stuff is fascinating, and I hope we get the chance to see some cultural rifts develop (already have actually, in pockets) in the United States. But I’m just tossing out the idea that perhaps it’s not as Utopian as one might initially think.
Smokyjoe: All the other guys, including Obama, have been bought and paid for by Wallstreet. The choice is pretty clear:if you want real change, support Ron Paul. Everybody else represents the status quo: endless wars, bail-outs for the ultra rich and more taxes for the middle class.
Of course you know I agree with you on population. Because of the way we’ve screwed the place up I’d be surprised if we don’t fall below pre-industrial population levels – say, half a billion – before we hit a sustainable valley floor. Could be catastrophic, could be gradual, who knows.
But then, if we were to wake up, as the special creatures we claim to be would be able to, there’s a ton of extra carbon available to turn into forests and gardens and pastures, perhaps lusher than anything the Earth has ever seen. But that would require a lot of consciousness. And it just doesn’t seem to be there anymore. I hope I’m wrong.
Let’s get one thing straight: the marketplace is horrendously overregulated.
Minimum wages, artificial cheap fiat money, subsidies to consumers, protectionism driving up costs, bankrupting social spending, bankrupting military spending, the FDIC joke, taxation, insurance requirements, high-cost socialized medicine and student loans, subsidized mortgages, deadbeat mortgage-holders, high house prices, 999-week subsidies to the unemployed, devalued fiat money, debased coinage…you name it, government is behind it.
I couldn’t care less about GS, BAC or the corporations: caveat emptor: you are not forced to use their services in any way. But the corruption, favouritism, bailouts and subsidies of government let them do what they have done.
But you ARE affected, daily, by the actions of governments. And that’s why your standard of living is falling.
The protestors are just lobbying governments for handouts – when they should be PROTESTING them.
I don’t think we want nylon cord. It stretches way too much. Dacron is much better, much stiffer. Plus, a nice braided dacron is far easier to twist into the requisite 12 or 13 loops. Then again, nylon is cheaper. Just saying…
Hey…BUDIZWISER… I just got back and was reading some comments…and I had to agree with you the most…Untill the entire legal/corporate/financial/political ..ball of wax…unholy tangled mess…is UN-tangled…and again…TRUE separation of power..TRUE identification of what is a “person-citizen”( hint: NOT a corporation..like Mitt Romney was crying over…so much last week)…Untill the Supreme Court acts/reacts and works for and within the designed framework of that greatest of all documents…the Constituion( they arnt supposed to write or even “interrpret law”)…only RULE on where or not said law or judicial ruling is infact…within the meaning and definitions set forth by our founding fathers..PERIOD! Untill some of these things that have become grievous malignant “out-growths” on the wonderful branches and roots of the tree of liberty and Democracy… Nothing…no way..no how..will change short of a sort of Populist uprising…forcing/dragging/ensuring that those who tried to “destroy the Dream” of our Republic…our Founding Fathers…NOTHING will change for the average Joe and his family. they will continue to be…modern versions of “serfs” or “indentured servants”( to the banks this time)..and not truly Free-men..as was envisioned and for which so many of prior generations of Americans fought for this country. Now that “blood spilled’ for the Dream…will be required perhaps again…as was said..by Jefferson himself…2 centuries ago: “Even the Tree of Freedom ..of Democracy itself…must at times.. be watered with the blood of tyrants…on occasion” I submit that indeed…”bank-sters=criminal-tyrants” of the now modern middle/working class of people. I guarantee you…take one out of every 10 “bank-sters”( read here the equivalent to “banking gangsters”)…take them out and summarily shoot..hang…fry…gass…that 10percent…and teh country will be awash in “good faith” banking and credit regulation again! It is always this way: Those who are savagely holding onto their perceived “power” over us peons…serfs…servants…will ONLY relinquish saidpower…at Knife/pitchfork/gun/sword point. History…HAS..and will continue to prove me right on this point.
Gee, thanks for disclosing the location of the long-sought “fountain of youth”! Now the capitalists will be in there in no time to bottle it and sell it at enormous prices to all the expatriot fun-hog yuppies who run their mountain bikes all over the world’s few pristine areas and leave their trash everywhere.
They have got to have a place to park all the black helicopters.
There have been many opinions expressed here and elsewhere alluding to varius conspiracies and schemes by the ruling elites and other groups to bring us to the current edge of the cliff. I have a simpler explanation — stupidity, myopia and ignorance of the people who rule us. A few weeks ago I spent a few days with a family friend who is a prominent economist, author of several textbooks and is now on a sabbatical from his Ivy League university working for a major international financial institution based in Switzerland. I was looking forward to hearing his views on the Euro predicament, end of cheap oil, the impending financial doom, etc. Well, it appears he believes that the world economy is merely having a minor hiccup. he believes there’s plenty of cheap energy (“we just have to find it”). I asked him where the future growth will come from, he said he had no idea where exactly it will come from, but he had no doubt there are plenty of growth opportunities. I kept pressing him, and he said just look at all the iPad/iPhone apps, this will be the next big wave. I pointed out to him that most of the Apps are free, and dont’ really address the basic human and planetary needs. He’s also a great fan of Genetically Modified foods, pesticides/herbicides, not the least aware of the ecological consequences and things like Roundup-resistant weeds, etc. Yet it’s guys like him who steer the world. Needless to say, I left very disappointed and more cynical than ever.
LOCALLY HERE, Little press coverage of the Wall Street Portestors,big news Kodak going down the drain, 6,000 jobs in trouble,WAIT,WAIT, Amanda Knox is free, Wolf, Nancy,CNN, MSNBC, FOX have special reports, wow, Italy is mean, darn it no more home pasta and fasgioli. WHY JHK no coverage for Micheal Jackson’s doctor or poor Amanda?? The banking, stock market crisis is over, Amanda will save America!!
Interesting comment on the Germans. But wasn’t most of the immigration to the US in the 19th century from Germany? Because they were treated worse than animals. I thought that Germans were the biggest group of immigrants to the US.
As Tripp pointed out, pre-agricultural society was classless and non-stratified.
We Euro-centric types tend to believe that everyone on the planet dropped that life 10,000 years ago, but, of course, 200 years ago, most of North and South America still lived like that, and there are still pockets of hunter-gatherers today, as I pointed out earlier.
It may be utopian to dream of such a society, but the alternative is what we have now- destruction of our ecosystem and miserable lives for most of humanity.
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
Well, yeah, that’s probably what the good Germans said to the ones who heard rumors, and wondered about them.
Like the Far Side cartoon, where one cow says “I just found out how they make hamburger!!”
And the other one says, “You leftists and your conspiracy theories! Get a grip on yourself, honey”.
Saw a good show the efforts of health workers amongst the Natives of New Guinea. In their native state, the Natives are subject to a plethora of vile diseases – leprousy is only one of the wasting diseases and then there are the various virals. Yes, they do better with those than we would but the wasters get them real bad. Guess Jared Diamond forgot to mention that – as does our own beloved Trip. Prog is the only one who ever has talked about tropical diseases – and the deep South is only semi-tropical. It only get worse the farther south you go.
Diamond did talk about that in regards to Africa – as a desperate attempt to explain why Blacks where still in the stone age despite everything. Let’s be clear: West and Central Africa are real bad, a White Man’s grave and hard on Blacks too. But much of East Africa is a high, temperate plateau with rich soil. And these conditions pertain on and off into South Africa. No excuses here. None at all.
Dagny Taggert knew better. These blighters mean to derail the railroad. They are organized by the likes of SEIU and funded by Soros.
“But wasn’t most of the immigration to the US in the 19th century from Germany? Because they were treated worse than animals.”
Not sure if most, but large numbers were. Treated worse than animals… not sure about that. There was a lot of conflict in pre-unified Germany in the late 1800’s, many left in order to avoid military service, others left for the promise of abundant farm land in the U.S., some sought an adventure, some were in an “out” group religiously, etc.
I agree with you and Tripp that there’s less stratification in small groups especially if they are homogeneous culturally, ethnically, economically. But the reality is that we don’t live in small homogeneous groups any longer, and a more pragmatic option (than to seek a classless society) is to find and pursue shared interests and values in the complex social landscape that we inhabit, there are no other pleasant alternatives.
Last few attempts at a classless societies were in Russia and China, and look at what happened, they’re now much more segregated along economic and various other lines than honest “bourgeoisie” societies.
“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.’
Cute 🙂
1% of the babyboomers became robber barons just like 1% of all generations before them. Your comment about entire generations shows a bit of a self centered attitude and refusal to take responsibility for your own participation in this mess. I will make the assumption that you are part of the 99% and just don’t know how to support the movement. Rather than point fingers at people who are in the same boat as yourself, try helping bail out the water and fixing the boat.
Is this a class war or a generational war? Probably both. As a cohort the Millennials are getting a very raw deal from the older generations in the forms of diminished job prospects, increased debt, and housing costs that continue to be held well above credible market rates as a matter of deliberate policy to appease those who already own property.
My overall reaction to the boomers is, holy shit, they screwed the pooch. The boomer relatives for whom I’m doing farm work this fall are in a parlous financial state, partly due to their insistence on maintaining living arrangements that force them to commute hundreds of miles a week even though they have ready alternatives. They moved to southern Oregon from the Bay Area and started their faux-country exurban lifestyle shortly after the Arab oil embargo. They should have known better, but the counterculture swath of their generation got caught up in “fat of the land” nonsense, which was just as deluded as the blunt cornucopianism of their right-wing peers.
Gen X is just as schizoid as the boomers. The Millennials, my generation (I’m 29), seem to be less schizoid but still too disoriented and atomized to really get their shit together. I’d like to be wrong, but I’m very concerned.
Coinage of the week award: “moral trophy president” — as they used to say to me in grade school, “Did you make that up all by yourself?”
I Googled the phrase and found no other usage, so, you must be the coiner.
It’s fun to use guillotines & tumbrels as literary devices, (or “necktie parties”), but you might want to pull back a bit. Execution by the state is nightmarish enough, but when it’s fuelled by angry mob sentiment it’s just not something to joke about.
And while I’m in full agreement with your sentiments, can you or anyone here point me to an article that lays out, schematically, how the banksters could actually be prosecuted? I’d like to see something written by, say, an experienced federal prosecutor.
And even if such prosecutions were ever to come to pass, where would they end? Should they not include all the legislators who voted for the deregulation that enabled the abuses to occur? Phil Gramm in a jumpsuit sounds good to me, but what about all the other Congress-critters who voted for Gramm-Leach-Bliley in ’99? And then there’s Bill Clinton himself, who signed off on the legislation.
Unfortunately, I fear that any modern-day Pecora Commission would end up hopelessly mired in implicating such a large number of persons and institutions that the whole project would simply become a charade.
Nevertheless, I would enjoy reading a well-thought out essay sketching how such a fantasy financial reckoning might happen. Even though there’s zero chance of it occurring, it could provide a road-map for other forms of accountability. And no, I’m not talking about guillotines or nooses. General social and political approbration would be a nice start.
Don’t use banks! Use a local credit union instead.
They are owned by their members, not by stockholders, and have all the normal banking services.
Academia no longer nurtures the Renaissance Man on the faculty, preferring narrowly focused specialists instead. Renaissance Men can still be found, but mostly by accident because that’s not where the PhD projects and grants lie.
Also, many of the academic institutions that I’m familiar with are corrupt and wasteful, the wealthier ones hopelessly so. My Alma Mater has become so crassly obsessed with financial development, constantly cold-calling broke young alumni, that I have basically become estranged from the institution as a whole. I still deeply respect many of its faculty and alumni, but not one shred the administration and its lackeys. (More at http://aliensinthefamily.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/tammany-hall/).
When I try to figure out what other social institutions are doing about our mess, I get very worried. Labor unions and small business have been eviscerated. Many American churches are either in the grip of frauds like Joel Osteen (thankfully the clergy are starting to denounce that swamp critter) or caught up in side issues like abortion (the more thought I give to it, the more peripheral it seems to the real moral issues of our day). Television remains an aggressive, barely treated metastasis in the body politic. TBN and CBN are in the same moral plane as TLC and HLN. That’s one institution whose vise-grip must be incrementally broken.
Hey buddy can you spare a derivative ?
There is another way to tax them. We buy tickets. We buy tunes. We buy phones. We pay for ad-laden TV. We pay interest. It’s really our choice.
I have been saying for months exactly what James said today. The old hippie, druggie, lets party crowd is WORSE than the group they were fighting against in the 1960’s. They are selfish, narcissistic and downright uncaring. They don’t care about you, me, or their own families. If you think these people protesting on Wall Street will have any impact, then you must believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and natural childbirth. Its a Joke!! Obama offered them a dream that never existed, but they used to believe in. Politicians are just that, politicians (born liars). Clinton, or Bush were no better. Remember they are all BABY BOOMERS. Boomers are loosing their jobs in record numbers, and I believe their time is really over. The Government now is filled with their narcisstic rehortic, and we will have to wait a generation or two to (maybe) get back to being a strong country, economically and politically. The movement against the “rich” is a joke. Its really against the inability for the middle class to move up instead of down, which is really where we are ALL going. My husband used to make much more money before (Clinton) started NAFTA. He cut back hiring, and production in his factory, and we have cut back since the late 90’s. Now the rest of the country is feeling the pinch and we just laugh. We have known what this downhill spiral is like for a long time now. The Govt. says the rich are stealing, but in reality the Govt. is encouraging them by allowing them to manufacture EVERYTHING in China or Mexico. The people in those countries only see us as cash cows. As far as the banks, the GOVT. allowed the regulation to be trashed and golly gee, they got greedy, like the manufacturers. THE PROTESTERS ARE IN THE WRONG PLACE…THEY SHOULD BE IN WASHINGTON, PROTESTING AGAINST OUR OWN GOVT. FOR ENCOURAGING THESE ” RICH” PEOPLE (like the Clintons, who stole everything they could get their hands on, literally). So folks the Washington crowd is the reason Wall Street and manufacturers are the way they are. Human nature is always out to survive and our taxes should be going into a Govt, who cares about its citizens. THE ENTIRE COUNTRY SHOULD STOP PAYING TAXES. See what happens then.They can’t arrest the entire country, can they?? You will definitely see CHANGE then.
You are right on the mark!
I’m going to risk posting a link. ‘Fatuous professional observers’ may claim no clear agenda but whenever 700 people get arrested I’d say there has to be an agenda somewhere.
http://www.adbusters.org/
This is worth watching, arrest by seine fishing net. Catching protesters with big orange nets like tuna.
Keep on rockin’ in the free world. There is something scary about this. Watch and learn.
Here you go.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/profile.html
Hundreds of bankers went to prison in the 80s, even with Reagan as president. Today, far down the fascist road, it seems as utopian to you as a cooperative society seems to Diogen.
(Of course, Neil Bush went scot free).
Did anyone here think that maybe, just maybe, these protestors are just trying to divert the media and country from the real issue. The next election. Do you see a correlation between Obama’s JOBS BILL, and the beginning of this crowd. They should be in Washington, instead they are on Wall Street. Their agenda is not being strongly advertised on our Govt. controlled media. Yet they are protesting against…..greed. Obama’s fake plea to vote for his JOBS bill will look as though it might be worth a try, so Obama hopes. What is in his jobs bill….who knows!! Therefore, have these protestors yell and demonstrate against the people who really don’t make laws, and are only the recipient of the Govt. laws that favor their practices. I say they are just there as Govt. employees hoping to guide the dumbed down public to side with Obama and vote for him again. (I will make a bet that ANY ONE of those protestors would change places with ANY ONE of the rich guys at the top, if offered the opportunity and wouldn’t get caught) I just don’t believe they are serious about their argument.
Yes, I agree with you.
Please do a little research about Ron Paul before you start promoting him for President. According to an AlterNet article by Adele Stan, “He’s the anti-Civil-Rights-Act Republican. He’s an anti-reproductive-rights Republican. He’s a gay-demonizing Republican. He’s an anti-public education Republican and an anti-Social Security Republican. He’s the John Birch Society’s favorite congressman. And he’s a booster of the Constitution Party, which has a Christian Reconstructionist platform. So, if you’re a member of the anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior citizen, anti-equality, anti-education, pro-communist-witch-hunt wing of the progressive movement, I can see how he’d be your guy.”
I am voting for him now. He is a dream come true.
YES!! And I am serious. Thanks for the run down on the one candidate who is not afraid to really tell you what he thinks. And I would have voted for him solely on his remark that he would get rid of the TSA, AND THE PATRIOT ACT.
But many of my progressive friends plan to vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, so that Obama will face an anti-war, pro-civil liberties (fill in your list) Republican candidate instead of a pro-war, anti-civil liberties (fill in your list) Republican candidate, such as Perry or Bachman.
I fully agree with them.
He is a man for our times. Hopefully we will be able to find enough like him to make a difference
Remember that Obama gave away more abortion rights than Bush did in 8 years.
Obama has been trying to get rid of Social Security and Medicare.
Obama has continued the wars and started new ones, including the illegal assault on Libya that continues with war crimes against civilians today.
His Education Secretary is all about for-profit schools.
Obama brags about assassinating two American citizens last week, without charges or trials.
He claims the divine right of kings, extending the Imperial Presidency farther than his predecessors.
How could Ron Paul be worse?
When I’m between living situations, I’ve found that there is almost nowhere for me to legally exist. I must either keep moving or find a way to pay taxes. Since a living wage (or even a poverty level wage) now appears to be beyond my grasp, I am left to wonder what society expects from me and the ever-expanding ranks of others like me. There is no plan for the replacement of the Work / Tax / Die model. Worse, there no longer seems to be a viable solution for keeping that model functioning for much longer. So we are faced with what? Hoping the attrition of middle aged citizens progresses much more quickly than the discontent of their offspring? The redistribution of land? There. I said it. If not those outcomes, then what? Forty acres and a mule isn’t sounding so bad now. Well, except for the mule part.
Dunno everything about Ron Paul…I assume he wants a pre 1910 style federal govt…
No federal income taxes?
No occupying 200? countries
No huge military
No FED
Little or no social services?
In any case the road were on is toward serfdom so
there may be no social services anyway.
Gee La Raza and SPL must hate him!
Lots of anger but no plans. The rich are organized and the worker are not. I think the rich will win. Even if it requires the rich to kill the surplus workers using their massive army and police forces.
Please recall that the 60s generation was not monolithically united behind one set of values and ideas. I recall very clearly that students were quite divided, and the conservative (we referred to them as “reactionary”) element was very prominent. I don’t think it’s fair to say it was the protesters who grew up to become the fraudsters of wall street. My guess is that a few of them went that way, but if you were to do a survey of political leanings held back in the 60s and 70s, you would find that most of the fraudsters were anti-hippy, pro-war, and basically just as sociopathic then as they are now.
Interesting, Diogen. He’s a true believer. Well, that’s probably how he got so far in his career.
I am not one of those that believes that there is a conspiracy to destroy our economy. I think that it is part of the structure of capitalism, as Marx pointed out so many years ago.
I do think that the ruling class is ready for the unrest of the 99%. They even have a phrase for it- the IMF riot. It is expected and they have the personnel to deal with it.
As Jay Gould said, “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half”.
That still applies.
When have the rich NOT won? Still stuck on the five thousand year plateau…
Anti soak, yes Ron Paul wants all the things you mention for the federal government. But state governments are free to have as much welfare, single payer health, universal college education access, etc. spending as they want.
Let’s get this straight. The Occupy Wall Street folks do not need to be reasonable. They DO NOT need to organize around a single, easily co-opted, demand. They DO NOT need a consistent message two days in a row. All that shit was the job of the U.S. Congress and 50 state legislatures.
They failed. They pocketed paychecks, fed us a line of bullshit year after year after year and failed.
Now we have millions of people out of work and more millions joining every spring as high school and college graduates join the workforce. Millions more have part time work that keeps them off the unemployment rolls but provides only the most meager and insecure subsistence income.
To make things so much more fucking wonderful we have the weather going absolutely batshit crazy in half of america destroying more jobs, more houses and businesses, more farms and more roads. But it’s NOT global warming according to the TV Nooz oh no.
Congress wants to bicker over whose dick goes into what hole. Congress wants to give people so rich they can wipe their ass with $100 dollar bills with about the same economic loss as we wipe with dollar store single-ply another fucking tax break in the hopes that if they bend over, lube and show a really good gape the rest of us will get a reacharound this time.
It would be the first time; I’ll tell you that.
So here’s the deal with OWS. It’s the last round of “let us all ask nicely the U.S. is going to get.” Next comes “let’s knife their car tires,” “let’s poison their dog,” and “let’s kidnap their kids.” These are urban kids and every one of them knows somebody who grew up in a third world war zone; they know the drill.
Don’t think it’s going to happen like that? Look at what Anonymous did to NYPD officer Anthony Bologna http://pastebin.com/nC4f5uca If you don’t think that made him shit his pants you don’t know any cops. They painted a big ass target on his back and said….whatever your grudge is he’s HERE. Ito won’t help him to move either as they’ll find that too. WTF do you think bored office drones do for entertainment?
Occupy Wall Street gets to be angry. They get to be difficult, confusing, unreasonable and fickle. They get to disperse entirely and show up elsewhere under a different banner. They get to be the stand-ins for every pissed off american who’s still getting screwed.
About fucking time.
You’re absolutely right.
Where’s Madame DeFarge knitting these days? Where is she in our hour of need? Free the New York 700! Storm the “Street”. Men and women with nothing to lose become the world’s most dangerous men and women.
Remember we were once a mobile society? Nobody’s selling houses anymore so nobody’s moving. They’re aging in place. The 18-30 crowd too. Why should they move out? They can ride this storm out in the nest.
Wait until you ignite the inner cities, now that’s going to be ugly. There’s a long cold winter coming and the first cool blasts of air are reminding people that $4/gallon oil just isn’t affordable to heat with.
The rules have changed.
Ok, Paul-tards here is a CLUE.
There were pitched battles in the streets of american cities between unions and corporate thugs that inspired Congress to enact all those labor laws and safety regulations that you’re trying to throw away. Things like weekends, 40-hour weeks, minimum wages and workplace safety laws.
So unless you’re working right now at the same wage your counterpart is earning in Cambodia with no weekends off, 10-12 hour days, no health care and no retirement including Social Security please STFU.
Unless you know what it’s like to get injured on the job and then get screwed because your Republican governor gutted workman’s compensation laws STFU.
Unless you’ve helped somebody who’s been aged out of his/her career and can’t get a response to 2000 resumes STFU.
Unless you’ve talked to somebody who went back to school and got the engineering or computer science degree only to find NOBODY hires entry level applicants over 40 STFU.
Actually. Pretty much STFU in general. I’m going to blow an artery the next time I see some Paul-tard in person from the mental strain of not kicking him in the balls I swear.
Love the passion in everyone’s response today. Check out Tarpely on World Crisis radio from Oct 1.
Very good commentary on the Wall St. demonstration.
Also Gerald Celente on the same subject from Sept 27th.
Sorry I can’t copy the links or I may not be able to post.
The cord you want is Spectra. It’s insanely strong and light with a 3.2 mm line being rated at over 1000 lbs. It’s slick so a travelling knot will slide down the suspension line. Most importantly it’s really easy to clean as most proteins and oils will slide right off of it. Works even better in horizontal applications; say, for hanging banners across a road right below eye level.
“3 hots and a cot is better than hoping fallen apples hosts a bit of protein.”
Until one of your “hots” and your “cot” gets taken away because you refuse to take a Loyalty Oath or you forgot to tithe this month. Wanna lose two hots? Keep it up.
aaahahaha…where were all these owsers when the money was easy and life was good? once again, mr kunstler misses the bigger picture. surprising to see this coming from a zero hedge reader.
Most likely shooting heroin & having unprotected sex. I’ll bet they even voted “Green”.
Heart felt. Every word. Your best to date.
Day 13, the afternoon march was engulfed in a torrential downpour, and scary thunder. It was most amazing!
I see pissant has got himself another proxy account. Be a good corporate minion and watch TV instead OK? This is presumably a conversation for adults.
Very nice weeks work, JHK. Other posters have taken you to task over the following phrase, so I’m going to compliment you.
“It is cosmically ironic, of course, that the same generation of Boomer-hippies that ran in the streets and marched through the maze of service roads around the Pentagon has become a new “establishment” more obtuse, feckless, greedy and mendacious” -JHK-
Posters are correct in stating that the Boomers and the hippies are not a monolith. And up until the election of Reagan – the power of ideas of the “age of aquarius?” was coming so goddamn close to a better day in the US – that it wasn’t even funny.
But it was not to be.
And historians (probably Chinese, if there are any) who manage to survive and look back on the collapse of the US will need look no farther than the intergenerational conflict between that father and son duo – BushI and BushII.
Decadence and arrogance and Ivy League Entitlement to be sure – but overlaid with a tense and personal one-upsmanship. You write that across the few thousand men that control most of the real wealth in this country – and you will really have a story.
No wonder we’ve been screwed into the ground.
=============
Also, kudos for your creativity again this week, JHK. I had not seen or heard the term “OWSers” until this weeks blog. And referring to Pres. Obama as “the Baby Boomer’s moral trophy president…”
WOW! Out of the park over the centerfield fence!
This is the same account I’ve had for some time. The sign said “You must be this high to converse with the adults”. I’m definitely “this high”.
“….various conspiracies and schemes by the ruling elites and other groups to bring us to the current edge of the cliff. I have a simpler explanation — stupidity, myopia and ignorance of the people who rule us.”
-diogen-
Absolutely SPOT ON! EXCELLENT! ANALYSIS, Diogen!!
And it’s good to read you, again.
Vote Ron Paul so that “….Obama will face an anti-war, pro-civil liberties (fill in your list) Republican candidate instead of a pro-war, anti-civil liberties (fill in your list) Republican candidate, such as Perry or Bachman.
I fully agree with them.”
-wage-
You have my attention, Wage. And that’s probably the way I will vote, too.
BTW – I left a couple of ideas for you at the end of last week’s CFN thread.
Howdy WSP7, That assaulting a PO charge is BS. It is not a felony in most states. Many people get charged with this by the Police. Many people put up a struggle when being arrested for a non-violent,victimless crime. Do you really think the state of New York will give felony convictions to these demonstrators? Not gonna happen. Maybe if we can cart them all off to the detention camps down the road from Wage’s house than we could finally get rid of these Gotdam rabble rousers and get this country on an even keel to GROWTH and PROSPERITY, HAHAHAHA!! At least they have some stones. I would give them a job in a minute.
Hey James!
(With a tip of the hat to progress2conserve)
“…more obtuse, feckless, greedy and mendacious” -JHK-”
Meet the new boss.
Same as the old boss.
Ok , Now your on the watch list with me!
“The cord you want is Spectra. It’s insanely strong and light with a 3.2 mm line being rated at over 1000 lbs. It’s slick so a travelling knot will slide down the suspension line. Most importantly it’s really easy to clean as most proteins and oils will slide right off of it.”
I can’t decide whether I’m aroused or mortified.
Hooy boy! “there is no way to sustain the debt-based economy”. Its worse than that, there’s no way to sustain the existing human population! Then you contend “when people are ready to rebuild in a sound and meaningful way”. Build with what? There are damn few places remaining in the world where ratio of resources to population will allow for rebuilding anything! Then there’s the question of will those few remaining areas curb their own population growth to stay sustainable?
Unfortunate for America we’re still infected with those quaint, 19th century romantic notions of “noble savage”, then indulged by the European aristocracy. You know, ala Paul Gauguin. Yeah, sure, the social problems of developed nations can be purified away by simply allowing unlimited influx of under educated people from overpopulated 3rd world nations bearing beliefs that make no accommodation to 21st century objective reality.
In the words of T. Roosevelt;
Bully.
Does anyone know,How Long is a Chinaman?
“finally get rid of these Gotdam rabble rousers and get this country on an even keel to GROWTH and PROSPERITY, HAHAHAHA!!”
There was a loud clap of thunder & lightning in LA when I read this. I swear.
And the sign said,
“Long-haired freaky people
Need not apply.”
So I tucked my hair up under my hat
And I went in to ask him why.
He said, “You look like a fine upstandin’ young man.
I think you’ll do.”
So I took off my hat and said, “Imagine that.
huh , me workin’ for you.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gklM1AiZX0s
“Now we have millions of people out of work and more millions joining every spring as high school and college graduates join the workforce. Millions more have part time work that keeps them off the unemployment rolls but provides only the most meager and insecure subsistence income.”
-pangolin-
True enough, Pang. And we have outsourced most of the actual work that actually produces actual jobs.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/outsourced-forever-220000476.html
And, CRAZILY, we continue to allow over one million LEGAL immigrants into the US every year, along with an imprecise, though large, number of illegal immigrants.
All of them are looking – or soon will be, as they age – for work. And many of them will rely on the finite resources of AFDC for an unknown/infinite period of time.
Collectively, we in the US are FREAKIN’ INSANE!!
-at least for now-
That which is unsustainable –
won’t be.
I remember that. Still works for me. Personally, it was more like two inch long lime green spikes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlAfhArvnuw
Yeah, and here’s the funny part. Our Congress continues to sit on it’s hands while the chairs on the Titanic are arranged and rearranged. The tax base is going down (gee, I don’t know why, do you think it could be a lack of…jobs?)
Oh, and then there’s the fact that a heck of a lot of us are getting old(ER). That would include you. Our bodies are prone to illness, breakage, and disease as we age. Sorry. That’s just the way it is. And it’s going to be awfully expensive to pay for granny’s triple heart by-pass surgery after she’s been smoking a pack and a half of Camel Lights for the past forty years.
So now we are beginning to see in the Republican debates the chanting of “Let him die!” Okay, maybe. I mean, a person’s lifestyle choices (smoking, drinking (god forbid!), and eating more than your fair share of Cheeze Doodles might make you a less than desirable choice to provide health care to. Lord knows we Americans are world famous for our “svelte” bodies…to coin a phrase 🙂 So what’s the answer? I’ll be damned if I know. Tough choices are going to have to be made and very soon. Batten down the hatches, LADDY! We’re going DOWN!
Not a bad idea. We might be able to get a movement together. My first thought is that a strong message needs to be sent to Congress. My second thought is, I don’t necessarily like or agree with Mr. Paul, and his more obnoxious son, but there are many of us who like the very ideas (anti-war, etc.) that you mentioned. Lord, let’s hope that he doesn’t turn out to be another hair-brained idiot, ducking out at the last inning. P.S. For reasons of which you might already be aware, I applaud his plea to end the “War on Drugs”.
“…LADDY! We’re going DOWN!”
Goin’ down.
Hard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UIptI2rcjg
James, you are so right!!!
We are seeing, what I have termed the American Autumn Revolution. This could be a growing Black Swan event looming over our election cycle.
What is required is a Democratic Challenger to come forward to make Obama honest and speak truth to lies. And just maybe, win the nomination away from Obama.
These Occupy Wall Street and the other Occupy…groups must be supported by all of us.
They are making a stand against the Wall Street Employment Prohibition efforts, which ships jobs overseas, forces wages down and declares that entitlements are the “alcohol” that makes workers non-compliant to their corporate elite Wall Street bosses. “Take a lesson from those Chinese dirt farmer workers, who have come to the cities to take OUR orders.”
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS, …. will you take my cheese doodles. You can quote me.
Look – when you’re dealing with a bunch of fucking cock roaches – you don’t exactly “win” by blowing up your own fucking house.
We have to play by the “rules” – – reverse course for whatever distance possible – and then throw the mother-fuckers over board when we know the ship will stay afloat.
Sure – I’d rather use rifles -but this ain’t like shooting at dumb-fucking animals – these bastards can fuck you up. (or hire others to)
Reform first -then satisfy grievances when an a somewhat honest system reset is achieved.
“FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS, …. will you take my cheese doodles. You can quote me.”
And I will. And while we’re advising a “hands-off” policy, I’ll kindly ask that everyone take their hands off my scotch and soda(S). You’ll only get the libation from me…from cold…dead…hands. LOL!
Occupy Wall Street plans a demo and march this Wed, endorsed by teachers, nurses and others who work hard and have seen their future transferred to corporate accounts, hedge funds and 2 undeclared deficit funded wars. Pallets of $100 dollar bills missing in Baghdad, that was the small change.
If you can, come support in demonstration or stand in front of your local branch of banking crime, or your Walmart. It’s all the same.
Some folks wrote last week that OWS would die before the Yankees take the World Series again :-), well, I hope it hibernates soon and begins its next take over in the summer of 2012. These kids know the score, and there is no bailout on the horizon and pizza donations will only take you so far. As the groan of Greece and world financial collapse seems imminent it makes sense to at least try to be on the right side.
God bless everyone and protect the freedom fighters of OWS.
Deacon John
Instead of a “black swan”, I’m getting more of a sense of a gaggle of geese who relentlessly shit and fart on my yard. Okay, a black swan I can either hire someone to shoot the hell out of the sky, or lay out some poison for it to eat, inside of some, say, breadcrumb mixture.
As for the gaggle of Congressmen in our fair city, I’d suggest nothing short of terrorism to spark some fire under their collective asses, to stop the raping and pillaging of this country. ANYTHING to shape them back into at least attempting to represent the interests of the average working American. Okay, I guess I’m on the “Watch List” now.
“I can’t decide whether I’m aroused or mortified.”
…sigh
Get outside.
Damn! The most important thing. My dumbass.
OWSers. OI!
Don’t forget what you’re talking about on a public forum on a publicly-switched network. From a long time telecom pro…
Governor Christie is talking with his wife Alice, and his friend Ed Norton and his wife Trixie in trying to decide whether or not to run for President.
“Governor Christie is talking with his wife Alice, and his friend Ed Norton and his wife Trixie in trying to decide whether or not to run for President.”
Oh pretty please. Please let the Republican nominee for president be a hugely corpulent and arrogent white guy from Jersey. It would be like running Garfield the cat for president. The comic strips would draw themselves.
Fat Cat runs for presidency……
@ barkingdog48
“We have made those of us who did school, got all the degrees and worked in fancy project companies
useless after 50.”
This struck home.
Jill in Berkeley
And the sign said “Peak Oil Only Or The Blog Goes To Hell”.
Don’t you remember holding that sign up, just last week, Ripped?
And BTW, I’ll be glad if you don’t remember.
So I just read that the dude who killed two Pakistanis – the U.S. paid 2.3 million to the families victims for his release – has just been charged with second degree assault for allegedly getting physical with another motorist over an Einstein Bagel parking space.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
families of the victims*
This shit is so over the top it may revive Dick Tracy.
To a large extent this portrayal is valid however, there have been a few people like me in their 50’s, give or take a decade…And my sign said, “Industrial Society is Destroying the World” so there are many messages.
Here’s my video from Sept. 24 – we took over Broadway and then 5th Avenue. It was absolutely amazing and wonderful to reclaim the streets – until the NYPD dragged a woman on the ground by her hair and peppersprayed the girls in front of me.
Anyone who remembers the protests in the 60’s will get a vicarious thrill – and maybe come join us!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD5z4x5tH1o
Very good article JHK! Across the sea George Osbourne (David Camerons money collecter) gave a speech to his sheeple that was supposed to inspire and build confidence in another failed government. He firstly blamed the previous government for the problems and then the bankers, and proceeded to shuffle the tax system like well worn pack of cards. He then bleated on about the dreadful time the world was in for. Not a mention of growth or employment – not even a hint of a solution in hand. Yes, the pig haters have become the pigs themselves, but they have gone too far – there is nothing left for anyone. Question: what use is a big pile of money when you can’t buy anything with it. What use is a big pile of gold when you have to pay for it with money?
“I mean, a person’s lifestyle choices (smoking, drinking (god forbid!), and eating more than your fair share of Cheeze Doodles might make you a less than desirable choice to provide health care to.”
How could people with the best education on the planet and every other possible modern technological advantage succumb to such temptation? I remember this. Do you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqdTBDkUEEQ
I’m gettin’ on my bike to go get some beer. Got some typing to do. Wanna come?
“…the fact that a heck of a lot of us are getting old(ER). That would include you.”
Moi?
Oh man, you brought up the worst “ER” of all. Now I don’t feel good. Wrap up in a blanket and sleep. Sheesh
“The Millennials, my generation (I’m 29), seem to be less schizoid but still too disoriented and atomized to really get their shit together. I’d like to be wrong, but I’m very concerned.”
You guys are fucked. Please try not to kill too many people my age.
“If it was me out there, I’d conclude that I’d better make up the future on my own, with no help from my parent’s generation”. JHK
Except for Phil Garlington perhaps, the author of the now out of print “Rancho Costa Nada”, which I cannot recommend too highly. My paperback copy cost $36 but was worth every penny. Fortunately, it is available on kindle electronically. This book is the saga of an unemployed journalist’s foray into the desert of southern California offroad near the Chocolate Mountains where he bought ten acres at auction for just $400 odd dollars, then built a rude sleeping hogan, used sealed garbage cans as anaerobic turd composters, and obtained all of his electric power from two batteries bolted down to the floor of his crappy little Chevy Geo, recharged by the vehicle’s alternator. Includes excellent rants from a neighbor called the crazed veteran or something similar, I cannot recall exactly right now. Rated one of the top ten survivalist books of all time by a website which pops up if you simply type in “Rancho Costa Nada”. Anaerobic composting is composting done in a sealed container accelerated by the addition of sulphur to the sewage and mulch, which doesn’t require mechanical stirring, and is therefore simpler and less demanding a process. His neighbors are pretty demented and reading about them is worth the price of the book as well.
And Suddenly You Awake
Since Supply side economics were codified into the system, the emphasis in the Nation state began to shift to the global paradigm which insured unending growth, so they thought. The leadership turned from Sovereign state Keynesianism to Free trade Milton Friedman’s Chicago School of Business with no trade barriers and think tanks began to pop up as the authorities on the subject of economics.
The Sherman anti-trust laws were abandoned, companies started going in the direction of TBTF. Company take-overs and layoffs began. The banks raised their interest rates on charge cards and exacted more fees while savings account interest rates plummeted. Yes and that meant savers couldn’t make money on their money in safe FDIC backed accounts. In the meantime the health care costs sky-rocked with no wage and price controls and the mantra of de-regulation was heard everywhere and enacted.
So throughout the years we saw on shows like “60 minutes”, how some poor bastard lost his home due to prolonged illness etc. These were all canaries in the coal mine that people failed to notice.
With all these insults the majority of people could afford to be gouged, but in 2008 everything changed and we all saw the guys behind the curtain. What we are witnessing today is stealing out in the open with no apologies. This is the way international finance is conducted. We begin to see that there is not much difference between these bad actors and Myer Lansky’s Murder inc.
To our horror, we see each president in a long line since the 1970’s enact each step of a very bad global economic system and war for profit and wonder “How did we get here?”
“Fat Cat runs for Presidency.” More like Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers movies. Looks like the money men who can’t get enthusiastic about Romney are finding Christie “dead sexy.”
Yes, Neon
When the NYC billionaires and Karl Rove hand picks a guy with promises of big money— as a voter I would run in the opposite direction!
Gotta love the choices we get.
“”I can’t decide whether I’m aroused or mortified.”
…sigh
Get outside.”
If I spend any more time outside I’ll go feral. And my wife’s not quite ready for that. She’s been a pretty good sport about all this permaculture business so far, but she’s not ready for me to go completely feral…
Why don’t you just pass the dutchie to the left-hand side, amigo? Nothing like a little mental vacation while you’re transplanting leeks.
Jim,
It does not do a person of your sagacity credit to engage in simplistic generational warfare. Your argument that this is all the fault of boomers is patently ridiculous. Let us return to class warfare, if we want to make more sense, as there are plenty of Gen X, Y, and whatever humpin’ over those flat panels in the big banking offices. (Disclosure: I’m at the rump end of the Beat generation, but we usually get lumped in with Boomers.)
If you look closely, it will be apparent that the really (and last) affluent generation will turn out to have been the so-called Great Generation, the WW II generation, who had actual unions, loads of government programs, brand new roads and shiny new suburban houses, and pensions and Social Security payments that actually allowed for a nice retirement. Who do you think built Florida and Sun City, etc.?
Naturally all of this pertained to those who were middle class (including blue collar middle class) and white, but that was a rather large cohort back in the day.
Boomers, based on actual quality of life, adjusted purchasing power, and relative economic security, are less well off than their parents, particularly as you look at the significantly larger portion of their salaries that go to mortgage payments, transportation, and the like. (See Elizabeth Warren’s very informative book “The Two-Income Trap.”) And just ask the average Boomer a few years from now how they ripped off America, when the “adjustments” to their Social Security and the stolen equity in the homes/piggy banks they now can’t unload reduce them to food stamp card holders (if the food stamp program even continues).
Every generation has its class of thieves, and just because the current crop is top-heavy with Boomers doesn’t mean a thing, except, perhaps, that each new crop of apples tends to fall close to the tree. Blankfein, Dimon, et al, were never a part of the 60s protest movement, and you shouldn’t even imply that they are some “representative” hippie sell-outs. (Prelapsarian Press got that nailed in his wonderful vignette.) It’s hardly the case that every Boomer followed in the footsteps of Abby Hoffman, far from it. Many kept the faith, in whatever way the post-Nixon economic realities allowed (which is when the national economic slide actually began). Frankly, my belief is that, far from embracing Chicago-school capitalism, most counter-culture Boomers went into a deep depression from which they’ve never recovered, drowning their disappointment in cheap Merlot.
It would be much more productive if we looked at the facts on the ground and simply went after the known miscreants rather than fomenting some collective punishment on a generation that has been tricked and cheated — in no small part owing to its own human failings, as with any generation — as badly as any other. Our overlords could have dropped the penny at any time in the past, but it’s only now that they chose to line up at the payout window and cash in their chips. (And your continual ranting that the financial elite are going down in the financial chaos is equally ridiculous. They have knowingly created this scam, and have provisioned themselves quite nicely for its aftermath. Regrettable as it is, I just don’t see any lamp posts in their future. Still, I’m hoping that the law of unintended consequences will bite them in the ass!)
This turns out to suck for the younger generations, who, because so many of them lack gainful employment, have both the motive and the time to protest. The Boomers are too buy hanging on by their fingernails to whatever measure of income they can muster … although even at that, there are more than a few Boomers in the protest mix.
And let us not delude ourselves for a moment that, had the merry-go-round been kept turning for a while longer, these young folks wouldn’t be happily spending their grandchildren’s inheritance same as the Boomers are accused of doing. They are Americans, after all. Remember the dot-com silliness, with all those newly-minted college grads and dropouts wilding through the indigenous cultures of places like San Francisco, wrecking an already fragile social structure, buying up half-a-million dollar fixer-uppers? Hey, it’s just “found” money! I certainly remember it, as they made sure I could never again live in the city of my birth, given that I was not a silicon (or any other kind of) millionaire. Their attitude then was fuck you, old-timer, I need the space for a rave, and it would be again. Bitter? Nah. Now I’m surrounded by young farmers with their heads on straight, and a real community that looks like it might actually weather the coming shit storm. The Tao twists and turns, but it knows where it’s going.
So yes, the younger generations are getting screwed (as will all of us before this is done), and all success to the revolution (and all that). But let’s also get a little perspective. Even the struggling in America, including those in the streets, are better off (for now) than they might otherwise be were it not for America really screwing the poor all around the world in our name. Yeah, payback is a bitch. So while we rightfully call for Blankfein’s head, we also need to clean up our act all around, at every level.
Let’s get this narrative right, Jim. It’s more complex than your entertaining stories.
ALL of the corporate candidates are screwing the American worker, and have been for 30 years, a smooth downslide through Democrats and Republicans.
Ron Paul at least stands for individual rights and an non-interventionalist policy.
I certainly am not advocating that anyone vote for him in the general election.
If people want to participate in the farcial meaningless ritual of voting, they should vote for the likely Green Party candidate, Jill Stein.
But in the primaries, I still believe that they should vote for Ron Paul.
Hmmm? I’m confused. You speak of thievery. Banker thievery. Does not the thievery enacted upon us from all levels of government not rile you just a bit?
I can assure you it is a much larger amount than the bankers have made off with. Furthermore, the bankers could not have accomplished what they did without the full faith and participation of our lovely federal government. The government bailed the banks out. Legally, no less. Yet the halfwit protestors want to target Wall Street. Genius, pure genius.
Hmm, Prog, not to be rude, but your stance on 9-11 reminds me of some high school jock, taunting the nerds, smug in his certainly that the in-group supports him. Even if he’s wrong.
Yeah, you have the majority of clueless Americans agreeing with you. BFD, in my opinion. Some peer group!
As it happens, the Green Party does support a new investigation. This is not really that radical, considering that the authors of the official story have written a book partially disassociating themselves from the process, pointing out that they were lied to and information was withheld from them. Not to mention that they never even mentioned Building 7, or explained how fire and gravity could throw 1/4″ bits of human parts onto the tops of skyscrapers hundreds of yards away from the crimescene.
Anyway, the Green Party takes a lot of controversial stances, such as calling for a Tobin tax, like the maligned Kristoff.
We all pay 7% or 8% sales tax on most of what we buy, yet Wall Street speculators make hundreds of purchases a day, and don’t pay a damn cent on any of them.
Why?
The bankers own the government, as my Senator, Dick Durbin, pointed out.
They use it to protect their thievery, and to help them loot the public.
However, they loot the public without the help of the government, also.
The protestors are targeting the right place.
My area of the country went from 3 prisons in 1980 to 14 prisons in 2000, including one so notorious for its brutality that Amnesty International condemned it.
We have proven brutal thugs, willing and able to work for the ruling class.
I’m sure that there are many other areas of the country with equal talent, and they no doubt are getting their own Red Cross shelters.
And as our friend Bob Dylan said in “Talking New York Blues”:
Now a very great man once said
That some people rob you with a fountain pen
It didn’t take too long to find out
Just what he was talkin’ about
A lot of people don’t have much food on their table
But they got a lot of forks and knives
And they gotta cut something.
“The bankers own the government, as my Senator, Dick Durbin, pointed out.”
Your Senator is a MORON. And we have him to personally thank for the newly enacted fees on debit cards that his legislation brought to bear. Then the idiot goes live and tries to create a bank run on Bank of America for doing exactly what the great Senator (little) Dick Durbin gave them the power to do. But don’t worry, Dickie will bring forth more brilliant legislation to undo what he did. Honest. He’ll make it all better.
I repeat, the banks could not do what they do with out the express approval of our legislators. If the banks “own the government” it is because those in the government have chosen to be owned.
The idiotic protestors doth protest too much and for the wrong cause leveled at the wrong “crooks”.
Well said DOG…but “So while we rightfully call for Blankfein’s head” seems like an easy scapegoat when he was only doing his job afforded to him by the loose policies of the politicians in D.C….that’s where all the hollow protesters should be….NAFTA and the repealing of the GLASS/STEAGALL act was all created to help perpetuate this cluster turd by the Clinton administration….then Dodd/Frank really esculated the greed of homes for all with a breath to a all new plateau….D.C. is where the $$$’s are…….follow the $$$’s
“However, they loot the public without the help of the government, also.”
Not true. Banks are subjected to more regulations (not that they shouldn’t be) than about any business save pharmaceuticals. If they are “looting” outside the boundary’s of the law its off to the hoosegow.
“..or explained how fire and gravity could throw 1/4″ bits of human parts onto the tops of skyscrapers hundreds of yards away from the crimescene.”
I’m guessing that when a plane traveling at close to 500 miles an hour, hits a building full of people you may find a few parts of those people…elsewhere. Try not to be such an imbecile.
Great post, City Dog, but remember that while the Greatest Generation had it pretty sweet as adults, they were screwed as kids. Ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clothed, then they grew up and got drafted for a very brutal war. (At least the men did).
Baby boomers, on the other hand, mostly had pretty sweet childhoods. Then we grew up and moved into poverty. At least I did, until the medical-industrial complex went through its boom, and some of it trickled down to me.
That’s over now. Obama is transferring Medicare funds to the insurance industry, and that is trickling down WAY faster than it did the other way.
It looks like the fucktard is back. Bummer.
“Then we grew up and moved into poverty.”
Try moving out.
I recently heard some government spokesman for India proclaim that India is “rich in human capital”. And know what? We here in America have allowed outselves to be framed exclusively in such terms — no longer as citizens. Yeah, we’re supposed to fixate our minds, education, economy and lives exclusively on “competing in the global market”. What th’ f__k!!! America had better pull itself together for the collapse that this website is supposed to be all about.
Com’mon, let’s get real; quit the deamy bullshit of saving the world, shore up our boarders against the mounting pressure of environmentally forced mass migrations and hunker down. It’s too damn late to fritter away our last chance of national survival cavilling about what was wrong with the past. That’s right, too much like the country/western lyrics “somebody done somebody wrong song”.
“Hmm, Prog, not to be rude, but your stance on 9-11 reminds me of some high school jock, taunting the nerds, smug in his certainly that the in-group supports him. Even if he’s wrong.” -wage-
That’s an interesting analogy, Wage.
I’d say that the worst of the 9/11 conspiracy theories are more like – – a group in the school accusing the principal of killing the elementary kids, roasting them, and serving them in the lunchroom on toast.
But I’m not sure that I was clear in my points to you at the end of last weeks thread. My question is – – if 9/11 Truth forms a prominent part of your political belief system, and you interject it into a lot of your political discourse –
are you alienating people who might otherwise be your allies?
From my perspective – if the worst of the 9/11 conspiracies could be proven as TRUE – then I’m done, we’re all done. And there is no hope of any sort to be found for the US of A, ever again.
No point in even trying – after that.
=============
On a lighter note, Wage – you are certainly correct that LilJimTooTsie, aka the fucktard, is back. His newest incarnation is WeeWeedup.
I recognize him by the signature invective:
“Try not to be such an imbecile.” -we eWe ed up-
He will now prove this theory correct by aiming a nasty insult in my direction.
It will soon be time for another IP ban – if the pointless insults continue.
These OWSers have an excellent chance of breaking through to the downwardly mobile middle class, including professionals and managers, and maybe even rank and file tea partiers, by emphasizing one single word: JOBS. Stop off-shoring them, repatriate them, use stimulus to create them.
But I just know that the OWSers are going to blow it, by veering off into a hodgepodge of fashionable or idiosyncratic causes, such as race and gender politics, demands for open borders, third world liberation solidarity, veganism, Troy Davis, etc.
A most thoughtful comment, CD.
The only thing I might take [some] issue with is the abrogation of responsibility of us [specifically, tail-end] Boomers. I think that might be a matter of guilt by what we DIDN’T do/pursue while we had the momentum. I’m not quite sure of it, but we may have missed a “further” opportunity to throw ourselves across the gears of this infernal machine. (Gawd knows plenty enough Vietnamese did it, in point of bloody fact; helped across the Great Divide by good american boys who hadn’t a clue, and followed thereto in a flood of tears and waste.)
As a [horrid] lib’rul construction worker, I went ’bout muh bid’ness having a couple beers, a roof, music-foolin’, transport and food, building McShithouse razed-raunches.
I could have done more to actively put a stop to the rot. The evidence before my own eyes told me exactly what was goin’ down. I was just trying to get by without begging anybody for anything. Thus was my youth spent. Deep down, I know that trying to fight the business-as-usual paradigm of the day would have likely ended/crushed/crippled my life, but I’ll always wonder, “what if?”.
Small (and personal) nit to pick out of your cogent comment, though.
“…(where corporations are now considered people and DON’T have to disclose who they are and how much they donated)…”
They should not be considered “people” until Texas executes one of them.
“again…my biggest pet peeve is when people claim the establishment is ‘stupid’. they are doing what they do because they are idiots or make mistakes.”
http://www.hypertiger.blogspot.com
some lite reading for the evening…
” Shadow of the Hammer ”
Hey Y’all. The protest Occupy DC has been organized for months. Long before the OWS captured your attention. Starts Thursday October 6th at Freedom Plaza.
Italians “save face” – Knox still found guilty of obstruction (testimony conveyed during tortuous 30+ hour interrogation with physical beatings [video?]), and also sentenced to pay 20K+ Euros to compensate “public employees” (prosecutors/judges/courtrooms/etc). The actual rapist/murderer Rudy Guede, who reduced his sentence from 30 to 16 years by implicating the roommate/boyfriend, did what any guilty felon would have done, and suffered no consequences whatsoever. 3-4 years ago, I don’t recall the MSM mentioning *ANYTHING* about the primary rapist/murderer – they certainly had a major bias against Knox/boyfriend (Italy & MSM quid pro quo/collusion?)
Banks charging 25-30% credit card interest rates, and $5/mo debit card rates (fuck ’em back by using checks with poor penmanship). Bernie’s usury discussion squelched from CNBC this morning – Heli-Ben squirmed on CSPAN, while stating it was totally satisfactory that banks merely *inform* their clients as to what extent they will be raped. Why on earth does the Federal Reserve loan at 0% to these same banks, so that they can get a free 3% interest by loaning it to the US Govt? Why doesn’t the US Govt. print its own money, and cut out this piece-of-shit, worthless bankster middleman (providing no service *WHATSOEVER*)? Did we (the US) bail out Greece yet – Heli-Ben claimed no QE3 coming anytime soon (Zzz…).
Deflation? Euro down to 1.3. Pound down to 1.5. 10-year bond down to 1.8%. Dow down to 10.5k. Gold down to 1600. Silver down to 29. Copper down to 3!~! I suspect most of the commodity fluctuations downward are due to ETFs, derivatives, and plain old (short/)long gambling volumes. Yet, all the stuff people buy at the big box stores/grocery stores/gas stations, and monthly utilities, are going through the roof (definitely not included in “core CPI” – too much variability, so they claim)! Liquor’s still looking like a great investment!
“The rich get richer, the poor get the picture.”
I’ve lately started to wonder about the legitimacy of the NY WTC, particularly concerning the *business* they performed there, over the past couple decades. I did find it curious how TPTB got a head’s up not to be in their offices, that particular *day*. Why is it, there are now so many psycho “terrorists” willing to kill innocents, yet had they simply watched the movie documentary “Inside Job,” they’d have around a dozen legitimate targets (even before 911, there was the obvious Enron debacle, and Bush’s “Kenny-Boy”)…
Social funding (education/police/fire/transit/infrastructure) will always be cut first – not salaries for Govt. employees, nor their benefits, nor their layoffs. They will continue to get 100% benes, 5% annual raises, and 2-5% new hires (growth industry – LOL!).
Will the SCOTUS soon decide that individuals are LLP (limited liability persons, ala LLC’s)? I think *NOT*. Good luck on your home refinance, from 8-12%+ subprime ARMS (that had the first 1-2 years’ payments principal-free!) to the 4-5% rate you *CAN’T* get now, due to your -$40-200k underwater mortgages. Oh, and good luck with that bankruptcy, if you have student loans…
Martha Stewart’s brokerage firm investor? Does anyone really believe that multi millionaire Martha had any clue what her broker was doing with a piddly $40k? She must have hired a couple of moronic lawyers for defense… Did her broker suffer any consequences (you know that asshole was siphoning/leveraging her money to line his own pockets)?
Wesley Snipe’s tax accountants? Did “they” in any way suffer *accountability* for his lack of tax payments?
Gettin’ “Hot”? (under the collar?) http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/story/2011-09-15/hot-summer-record/50419070/1
Got your custom apps for that *smart* phone? I remember as a kid, I absolutely loved the idea of the Star Trek communicator, and also a video phone. I received a pair of walkie talkies when I was about 10, for Xmas at my grandparent’s house (right across the street from the Milwaukee, WI airport). I actually talked with a pilot, before being scared *offline* (wonder what would happen now). Today, and for the past 20 years, I’ve absolutely dreaded the idea of cell phone/pager “leaches,” and will never own one. And no way in hell would I ever configure my computer with a camera, for video conferencing (I actually disable wifi in my router, and on my computer motherboard)…
As to 403, that is *NOT* the typical way one bans an IP (it’s a kludge). And auto-IP bans, without a human admin to at least verify it, is abysmal administration. Most times, the login account will get a warning, then next a 2 hour ban on the account, then next 1-2 days, then next 1-2 weeks, then permanent account ban. Finally, if an admin sees a recurrent IP address abusing multiple login accounts in this manner, the IP is banned…
[couldn’t poast all at once – I guess we all got a short attention span now – who *READS*?]
Leashes – not leaches – hahaha!!!
Hey, CFNers. Long time no see.
What would be your response as the Titantic sunk?
The ones in steerage panic. There aren’t enough life boats or jackets. They can’t even get out of the lower deck, as the gates are shut.
The upper crust keeps sipping their champagne and waiting patiently. There are plenty of lifeboats for them. Some are even launched half full.
Some on board think the ship hasn’t been hit yet and carry on dancing and gambling or whatever it is they do for entertainment. This ship is unsinkable, they said!
The crew tries to keep order, dammit, but it is a lost cause. Chaos ensues.
A few know that the ship is going down but figure “screw it” and have another cocktail. Might as well live it up until the end.
And the band plays on.
See, ya’ll, it doesn’t matter how many people are strung up from lampposts, alright? The entire world system is rigged so that money and monetary growth is basically the only important criteria for any and all actions and decisions. That’s what “finance” has become, the epicenter of control for all the resources and people on this planet, at least the ones connected to modern society. The ones who aren’t connected to this system, such as most Africans, simply don’t count. Until this system changes, probably quite drastically, it won’t matter how many Blankfein’s or Bernanke’s are sent to Gitmo for their sins. There will be 10 more Italian-suited GS alum ready to take their place in a millisecond.
Me, I find it liberating to consider the whole system irrevocably broken. I’m only trying to save my own skin. I know it is selfish, but I consider it foolish to march in the streets for a cause that is lost and was a long time ago. The hour is later than most think.
Been reading the Economist. The Euro is even MORE screwed than the dollar. Best put your money in Beanie Babies or some other tangible asset. Anyone got a few pounds of beans they can spare?
The Devil Went Down to Georgia
He was looking for a soul to steal
He was in a bind
He was way behind
He was willing to make a deal.
(I do believe JHK owes you a fiddle made of gold for that post.)
They can’t find jobs, like so many, because there is no energy to create the jobs. Too many people chasing after a shrinking resource. China is winning. It is the beginning of the world made by hand.
I know how you feel. If I don’t keep my mouth shut same would happen to me.
In my lifetime I have seen this world become more and more like a prison system.
I remember when I lived in the Mountains in the 70’s, lots of folks smoked pot, and no one bothered them. NOW ? shit major fucking crime.
The young mostly punk cops, with guns, scare me quite frankly. Power tripping idiots. who know next to nothing.
Times are changing for the worse when it comes to this topic.
We all know that alcohol and nicotine and speed, are much much worse.
I don’t even smoke pot anymore, but I could see the B.S. even before I ever did.
It does help pain. that’s for sure.
Cigarettes and Alcohol are THE GATEWAY DRUGS. actually and SUGAR.
I am rambling.
Liked your post.
I am not around that much anymore.
but every now and then I pop in.
I hope you stay out of jail.
“They can’t find jobs, like so many, because there is no energy to create the jobs. Too many people chasing after a shrinking resource. China is winning. It is the beginning of the world made by hand.”
The crazy thing is, there would be plenty of jobs for everyone if 1) the information brokers would fess up to what’s actually going on, and 2) people got a whole lot more realistic about what a job entails, and how much it pays.
If there were enough jobs for nearly everyone in a global market, where a powerful oligopoly supplied the whole world with this good or that service, there should be plenty of jobs once everything works at a local scale again. But it requires people thinking along those lines, and being willing to work for a far more meager paycheck, and precious few seem to be doing that.
@ Time Traveler . . . I love your wonderful optimism . . . the unfortunate truth is that Jesus or not, the human race is on course to check out just like the dinosaurs did . . . there’s nothing other than our large brains that make us special as a species, and in about 1 million years, we’ll be busy replenishing the carbon deposits of this planet, and that’s all we’ll be doing, while other species of animals come forth and evolve into a new place on this planet. This will happen until our planet becomes incapable of supporting life and our sun goes supernova.
I would encourage all to enjoy what you have, NOW, and find meaning for your lives, NOW, because in the final analysis, that’s all you really have . . . now. Hope this helps.
I just wrote a nice follow-up comment to my previous one, but for whatever reason it got held by the adminitard. Last time I tried to repost a message in pieces I got banned for the day, so I won’t bother. But this is getting really annoying, Jim. Lots of good people have lots of good things to say around here, and aren’t being allowed to. Qshtik has emailed me twice in 24 hours complaining about being “403’d”, and Asoka did as well a few days ago. Jesus, man, you of all people.
Thanks….today someone told me that they
[can I believe this] went to Australia and it was 142 degrees…!!!????
China has a GOLD Vending machine!!!!
Yeah, well-
http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=257895734254744&set=a.175614512482867.44452.100001029582745&type=1&theater
MD,
“Shadow of the Hammer”. Youch, the ILLUSION is a killer (literally)!
Big-time chilling.
Thanks for the link.
One half of the bottom class hired to kill and oppress the other… brrrrr. And we have the gall to ask, “what for?”. That is our crime.
Internal Checkpoints.
One half of the bottom class hired to…
Relaaaax, we’ll always have a job for you here at Internal S’kure’dy.
Road trip in police-state Texico with Alex Jones.
(You may think him a crank, but he didn’t build this checkpoint almost 100 miles INSIDE the border just to shoot a crappy home vid.) We’ll see if the post goes through. Yes, it’s either wonky software, or somebody doesn’t want us talking to each other and spreading info around. I dunno.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lethJ2IMiE&feature=player_embedded
Look guys,
It’s software that was supposed to curtail troll activity, but as it isn’t intelligent it’s catching more than it should.
Things should get better.
So you get a big chill – “Brrrrr” LOL! – from MD’s link and I, a huge laugh. I especially love the preponderance of ellipsis marks that enable “Hyper-Tiger” to pause and channel the divine prophecy that oozes from her keyboard strokes.
I’m not discounting the big picture, or the general trend, but stepping too far back into the misty smufato of a distanced perspective leaves only the contrived, grandiose, theatrical, and deluded as the match lighting a lantern in the fog. And isn’t their another sort of clarity beyond the forlorn despair over a flawed society, where our own thoughts and outlook provides a more substantial and immediate outcome?
Perhaps I’m suggesting that eventually we all die anyway, even those ‘evil hammer wielding monsters on the top’. So why not make something beautiful in the meantime. Your “overlords” might even drop their hammer and reach for their wallet…allowing you…a moment of respite and positive reflection.
To reply further – you kind of illustrated the point that I made last week. You don’t want to believe that our ruling overlords are capable of such vicious acts, so you prefer to believe that the laws of physics can be suspended for one day.
Welcome to the rest of the world. When grieving parents in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya (only the most recent) hold the mangled bodies of their children and ask “Why? Why did America come to our country and drop bombs on our house? We never did anything to hurt you?”
What do you say? You want to believe that the US doesn’t spend billions on weapons of mass destruction, that we don’t research new and improved ways to kill people, to blow up infrastructure, to cause shock and awe, to kill with chemicals and bioweapons. We only invade in self defense, and only occupy for the good of the natives.
What do you say? That Americans are good and kind people, forced to kill your children because you are evil and you want to destroy the American way of life, with its freedoms and prosperity and supermarkets and all. That dead child you cry over in your arms was going to grow up and become a terrorist, our rulers know it, and so its death and the million others are justified and righteous.
Americans commit atrocities because they believe absurdities, and one of the absurdities they believe is that we are ruled by benevolent people.
And the twisted lengths some go to to keep that belief!
Hey, last night a drunk ran into a tree at 100 mph. We didn’t get him though, because, of course, when the human body hits an object at such a high rate of speed, it simply explodes into a million tiny pieces. I feel sorry for the paramedics, though, forced to climb the neighboring trees, to search for the bits of human body that was blown into the treetops. And all the while breathing the sawdust from the exploded tree. Because you know that when all that energy hits a tree, it explodes. They’re just hollow tubes, you know, ferrying nutrients from the roots to the leaves. It’s a wonder any of them stand for as long as they do. I may be a Green, but I’m not a tree hugger. You never know how much pressure will make those things blow!
I don’t spend all my time talking about 9-11 truth, as you should know from reading my posts. This all started with the 10 year Anniversary Imperialism Extravangaza, the Giant Sale of continued invasions, occupations and Homeland Repression.
It aggravates me.
Good post, Wage,
If war didn’t make money for all those privatized contractors and Monsanto etc. that feed off the taxpayer money at way more cost than govt. would, well then you wouldn’t have this Orwellian doublespeak.
You know the drill by heart: War is peace…..
Yep, war is peace, black is white, Obama is a socialist.
I’ve heard it all.
“Perhaps I’m suggesting that eventually we all die anyway, even those ‘evil hammer wielding monsters on the top’. So why not make something beautiful in the meantime. Your “overlords” might even drop their hammer and reach for their wallet…allowing you…a moment of respite and positive reflection.” -Buck
Yessir, I do keep the “mortality” thing in mind, that’s why I’m attempting to leave something for the next passers-through and have a laugh or two while I’m at it. I mean, what else can I do anyway?
Massa, please, if I shuck and jive for you, may I have a bowl of gruel?
We all die anyway, so enjoy your gruel, while they eat caviar. It’s all good.
Enough food and free housing and medical care is totalitarism. Indebtedness to the IMF is freedom.
The future for Libya.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26686
So Wage wants to eat caviar,too – I believe they term that envy. At any rate, so much for the ascetic pretense, Ms Dark Eyes.
As for shucking and jiving, the Doo-Dah Man might do you some good 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYJOgxmq9qs
Ya I’d give those kids a job too Ripthunder, but last regular job i applied for (Shipyard in Jacksonville) I was finger printed, lie detected, drug tested, cross examines, FBI background checked, state police checked, military records examined, given a physical, eye test, sobriety test, stress test, proficiency test (for diesel) etc…
And i still didn’t get hired!!!
WSP7
Actually, no, Buck Stud. They are mining the sturgeons in the former USSR, and obtaining caviar at an unsustainable rate for profit.
That is wrong.
I want everyone to live in a sustainable way, remember?
I should have said, we eat Monsanto GMO gruel, while they kill off the last of the sturgeons for their caviar.
It’s all good.
And here’s one for you, Mr. Cheerful-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ
Helen,
actually he is neither of those things. He is pro-liberty. Obviously a lot of people rely on the government to obtain material benefits and special privileges at the expense of their fellow citizens, and those people would loose if the government is downsized. Over at “the burning platform” we call these people the “free shit army”. I hope you are not one of those people.
LoL Wage…exactly right, too.
We should all strive to attain that state of utter serenity and acceptance as the sword is about to pierce the heart. The totality on attaining “Here and Now immersion, as opposed to projecting, fears, fantasies and delusions onto the future.
But I’m sure you’ll counter with even an ostrich can meditate with its head in the sand, or something to that effect.
I was selected, detected, inspected, finally rejected, then felt dejected.
Incidentally, all those rich people everybody hates, I work on their boats here in SFlorida. If you hammer them down I won’t have a job for long. Poor people can’t afford nice boats. Most of the people I work for are from up north. Most of them, almost all, are good folk. It seems like the ones that are most well off, who can afford a yacht and a house here, are the public sector retirees with fat pensions from the NYPD, State of Penn., Mass board of Ed. etc. Those suckers got it made!!!
Well, I’ve never heard that before, but, yeah, what you said.
I understand caviar was served in the Kremlin to all the comrades on a daily basis. Nobody else got any, tho.
–WSP7
Did you know that 20% of Americans think that they’re in the top 1% of the country?
Yep, they’re in the 99%, but they think they’re in the 1%.
Public sector retirees are not in the 1%, WSP7.
And 30% of the bottom 40% think that they are part of the “haves”, instead of the “have-nots”.
Yet if the US had 100 people, and a GDP of $100, the bottom 40 people would share 20 cents. Yep, 1/2 cent apiece.
And yet 30% of those think that they’re “haves”.
Amazing. I guess basic math is as difficult as basic physics, when wishful thinking is involved.
Of course it’s not genes – nothing is genetic. If you say anything is genetic, you can’t be accepted by your fellow Liberals anymore. And this you fear, just any tribesman fear being expelled from his tribe, just like Mr Kunstler fears the disapproval of his Democratic Peers.
You are making a false distinction between Genetics and Culture. Many traits are built in and come with the Hardware. Attitudes and Culture are greatly influenced by these traits.
Raise Blacks with German families and then put them on an island with infrastructure intact. In two generations or less it would look like a shanty town anyplace in the Black world. Raise Germans with Black Families and the opposite would happen. The unique traits of the genotype would begin to express in the absence of overwhelming numbers of Blacks.
I understand that Reagan had a baby sacrified in front of him everyday before his prayers. Nancy got to pick it out.
Q is right: you have a hard time being hard. And this leads a culture down the primrose path to destruction. A scenario: a Southern White wants to fly the Stars and Bars. His Black neighbors object. Which is more important, his rights or their feelings? There is a right answer here. Blacks only care about rights when it comes to their own.
I keep trying to get a job at the Post Office, and they don’t hire me but they keep asking me to take drug tests, ahead of time. I took three of them this year, two of them were for the same location. I never took hard drugs. And I had to pay for an abstract of my driving record.
I don’t know what’s going on.
You’re just adding to their database.
I believe your stats, Wage.
But its a good life down here. And some of these Yankee retirees live pretty large.
–WSP7
I think if the protestors really want to do something, they should demand that the stock market be shut permanently, not just punish a few of the worst of the banker type crooks. Because you’re leaving a fraudulent and totally bankrupt system intact that way. These douches aren’t creating anything of any value, if they were, there would be jobs.
All they do is play games with money, or just have the federal reserve create billions in credit and throw that into the system, anyway, in my judgment, the whole system of the stock and bond markets together with major banks is completely corrupt and broke.
It needs reformed completely, the Dow Jones doesn’t represent industrial output in the U.S. like it did in the 1920’s, it represents multi national corporations that have bled the middle classes of this country white.
They seem to be inherently corrupt and I think this obsession with the stock market is one of the major things wrong. Shut it down completely and replace it.
Christie, New Jersey’s own Ralph Cramden, might just try to enter the race. The problem is that his state’s unemployment rate is around 10%. Not to say that having a blubber boy loud mouth running wouldn’t be worth at least the price of admission to the 2012 race. BTW, for all you property owners in New Jersey, the state’s got one of the highest tax rates in the country. Not a big selling point to the millions of Americans who are “underwater” on their mortgages. And trust me on this, that will be discussed.
Christie is all about union busting, which should make him a shoo in for big business. And after all, who is it that chooses our Commander in Chief? Surely not the electorate. Even I picked up on that one during the “W” fiasco in Florida some years back.
You’re looking in the wrong place, honey (assuming you’re not kidding). The government is looking to put a hatchet job on all of the services provided. You don’t mention what you consider “hard drugs”, but back in the ’70s, marijuana wasn’t considered a hard drug. By the time I started smoking weed (1990s), it was. And some employers started to drug test for it. My own unsolicited advice to you, not knowing your age, would be to try to get a job at a local farm market, hauling veggies and stocking shelves (met a women (45-55 years, by my guess). No drug test required! (I’m willing to bet!) Sustainable? You betcha!
“Why don’t you just pass the dutchie to the left-hand side, amigo? Nothing like a little mental vacation while you’re transplanting leeks.”
Or mining for copper.
Well, that’s the thing. There is so much wealth in this country that even people of relatively small amounts (relative to the .01%, of course) can live very nice lives.
Compared to the starving people of Somalia, every American is doing well.
And we can’t even imagine the kind of lives that the .01% live. It’s not part of our ken.
As Matt Tahibbi points out, we can see the retired fireman sitting by the pool with his public pension (or in your case, servicing his boats), but we don’t see Jamie Dimon at WalMart, paying for his groceries with food stamps, so the anger Americans feel is directed towards the bottom, not the top.
“Let’s get this narrative right, Jim. It’s more complex than your entertaining stories.”
Which is also why I started a flowchart for your post. I say that most “modern” problems are actually LESS complex than the bombardment of modern media portrays. What says “Fuck the future” better than drilling for oil in a national park.
Oh, hey, just to deepen the mystery and discombob the combobulation, there’s this… ;o)
http://209.217.209.33/~esnet/downloads/ES_Ilargi_2_LoFi.mp3
Who the hell is this guy?! Gaia worshippers want to know.
“Nothing says, “Fuck the future” better than drilling for oil in a National Park.” -X
lol!
Great bicycle sticker… but where to schtik it?
(A placard hung from the back of the seat?)
I s’pose you could paste it on the bumper of the wood-gas burnin’ moto though.
(We will try and remember that a fam’bly needs 10 acres of woods to keep themselves in heat and cooking in the chilly climes. Tough to “hew” to.)
I’m gonna brand it on to my mule. Got the iron in my hand right now. Stand back mofos…
Damn, he went positively “Democratic”!
Ha!
You’ll hear from the Teamsters ’bout this!
(Ooooooo, bad one; stinker; lead balloon.)
Every so often I think to go visit gregpalast.com to check out his latest posts and it never disappoints.
His new headliner has a video as well. It’s called Uber-Vultures: The Billionaires who would pick our president.
He goes through his rogues gallery incl.
Ken Langone, Koch Bros.,Paul Singer.
Palast quotes Koch Brother executive who didn’t know he was being taped why the brothers Koch wanted to buy the White House and [Koch told him, “I want my fair share, and that’s all of it.”
Putting Bush in the White House was worth his weight in gold to these gents—more, in fact. And now, the Kochs, Singer and Langone have teamed to pick a candidate they pray can take back their real estate at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.]
Here ya go, X.
Though to be truly subversive, you’ve got to get somebody else to pay for it. Now yer talkin’! ;o)
http://www.zazzle.com/create
Thanks, LB.
Gone, gone, gone…
Hey! Do you live in my town?
http://dailyegyptian.com/2011/07/06/cut_070711_feature_bg/
Calling Koch Bros. HQ now…
Apparently, the guy was leaving WalMart.
So folks arent angry at Soros and his agenda?
The Open Society?
The video link somewhere above goes to Alex Jones on youtube..he talks about the Buffet/ Narco terrorist connection…wealth making strange bedfellows.
Or read ‘Operation Swordfish’.
What does the lowest 1% create? trouble? crime?
I guess the lowest 10% does that.
A year or a few back I read that
IF YOU ADDED UP THE PROFIT / LOSS OF THE DOW COMPANIES OVERALL THEY WERE WAY DEEP IN THE RED.
Evenin’ Wage. I will be a retired fireman soon after 33 years on the job. As soon as I get out of this damn tree lookin’ for DNA samples! ;o) I won’t be by the pool though, I will be still humpin’ along with the daily grind. A few years back we had a kid hit by a car while riding his bike. Nobody could find the bike. It was about 30 feet up in the air, stuck in a tree, go figure.
Hey Ozone, good link about the checkpoints. I got stopped at one in upstate NY two years back, probably about 100 miles from the Quebec border. My son and I had to prove who we were with ID’s. Up there it was a temporary roadblock which could be moved anytime. When you are on the super-slab you can’t avoid it. The roadblock in Tejas seems especially stupid as it looks like a permanant installation which could easily be avoided.
Hi Stud Buck, I hope you have done a good job of scrapin’ off the velvet this year. The rut starts soon. If your lucky perhaps you may finally get yourself a doe this season.
Congratulations, RT. What are you going to be doing with yourself? Still work?
But was the bike in 1/2″ pieces?
Cars are killers, for sure. I think that’s why you don’t see a lot of kids outside playing anymore.
“… a handy lamppost and about 40 feet of stout nylon cord” REALLY?!
Mr. Kunstler, I have read your books and followed your blog for several years, and have very much enjoyed your lively commentary. Today however, I found your observation, above, to be in extraordinarily poor taste. I’d like to believe that you are not in the same league as Rick Perry and his ilk.
“Qshtik has emailed me twice in 24 hours complaining about being “403’d”, and Asoka did as well a few days ago.”
Bwahahaha! Yo tripp! You had me get out my tape measure, and I came in at 6′ 1.25″ (I swear, I used to be 6′ 2″ – but then, my Dad shrunk from 6′ to 5′ 10″ at 68 years). My younger bro’s 6′ 4″, so *NYAH*! It is funny walking around in the mob scenes of strip malls/big box stores/grocery stores/etc, and towering above pretty much everyone. Every once in a while, I run into an even bigger monster, but rarely (maybe 1 in 300 or so)…
I see you’ve become the beekeeper, ex post facto! I have to rely on the native animals here (squirrels, birds) for manure, as I’m still stuck in the situation of legally not being able to raise any livestock (no chickens, no rabbits). Oh, and “ooo” – hot *mama*!!! (droolz)
Not too sure about that Aussie temp – I could see how atmospheric thinning (TM), combined with a desert island in the middle of the ocean, might contribute to a few instances of real 124-132’F days in that island’s desert center…
Oh, and cigarettes and alcohol are my only drugs now (gateway to hell/death? I s’pose). I go through about a pouch of Drum tobacco consistently every 3 weeks ($11), and depending on the day, around 1/4 to 1/3 of a fifth of the good stuff (vodka/whiskey/tequila) – been juicing a lot of lemons/limes, and using 100% fruit juice for the drinks.
I keep putting off the lemonade cleanse – did it once, almost 2 years ago, for 2.5 weeks. Worth trying at least once – it will really put you in your place, and let you know if you are an addict (epic fail), or in control (com-ple-tion)…
I just recently saw something very much the same in Boulder, CO. Bitin’ fly capital of North America.
Strangely, on this blog we seem to have abandoned contemporary solutions and are re-examining the traditional.
I tried to ignore it for as long as I could, but, once Ozone commented, I lost my inhibitions.
“Your ‘overlords’ might even drop their hammer and reach for their wallet…allowing you…a moment of respite and positive reflection.”
That is the lovliest …most lovely…
(where is that lecherous semantics expert Q?)
…description of “trickle down” that I’ve ever heard.
“(I swear, I used to be 6′ 2″ – but then, my Dad shrunk from 6′ to 5′ 10″ at 68 years).”
Oh, well, piss on your wrist. Despite what y’all might think of me, I made it up to an all-time high of 5’9″ and now I’m shrinking?
We represent
The Lollipop Guild
The Lollipop Guild
The Lollipop Guild
“They seem to be inherently corrupt and I think this obsession with the stock market is one of the major things wrong. Shut it down completely and replace it.”
Replace it with what? If there is a surplus, there is a market. Sadly, I must agree with your overall premise. I will focus on the local. If American stock markets were legitimate, the phrase “naked short selling” would’nt exist.
“it will really put you in your place, and let you know if you are an addict (epic fail), or in control (com-ple-tion)…”
My favorite contradiction:
I’m in control of my addiction.
The other day I posted here that Dylan Ratigan has set up a web page petition at getmoneyout.com
If you want to help get an amendment through to stop the money from destroying the democratic process and get the people’s voice back in the game, please go sign your name to this important idea which we hope can get some legs.
Thanks
I’ll risk a link for LB, even tho’ she’s probably seen it already. ;o)
The use of the “crowd megaphone” is kinda corny, but low-tech fer shure. Second half is political auction talk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28PSnCwCMp4&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL3FA61F9C35A46C9D
Ain’t that weird?
I posted that link a’fore I saw your comment.
Strange co-wink-a-dink…
Yes….use the Dylan Ratigan “getthemoneyout.com” in a twisted new way to help us 99%er’s out…..since “O” has run the debt to close to 15 trillion now from 10 trillion in 2.5 years with repayment out of the question….why not just double the debt to 30 trillion (crank the printing presses up full) and mail all 300 million 99%er’s $50k each…….problem solved…:-0
I’m no apologist for Obama, but the debt was well above $10T by the time he took office ($10.7T) and the 2009 budget had already been passed with a $400+B deficit.
Speaking of money – does helicopter Ben remember the good old days?
http://db.tt/BBOSjsgf
The picture is from 1940
This one is from 1950s
http://db.tt/M0L9SMio
I’m always on the lookout for books about energy and energy depletion, the main theme of this site. So at a bookstore up in Homestead I picked up the recently published “Powering the Future”, by Physicist Robert Laughlin. (Same name, wondering if he’s related to me?) Laughlin won a Nobel Prize for his work in quantum physics. Its basically about how the world might work 200 years from now.
200 years? Laughlin claims there is enough proven oil reserves right now to last “10 generations”. He also dismisses the idea of global warming.
2 quotes:
… the final demise of carbon burning is so far away, perhaps 10 generations, that its quite irrelevant to the energy problems of today”.
… one cannot find much actual global warming in present day weather observations.”
The book is full-up with many crazy schemes for the creation of energy in the far future, when all of us, even the “Owsers” will be gone.
But what interests me, here is a Nobel Prize Winning Physicist saying that, for the next 250 years, there’s enough oil to keep stuff going. Same thing Yergin is saying. are they all mere shills for ‘Big Oil’?
–WSP7
confusionism…. “but the debt was well above $10T by the time he took office ($10.7T)”….if .7 trillion is “well above”…. what is 14.8 trillion?…….just saying in 2.5 years compared to 10.7 trillion in 233 years of history
Question about Steve Jobs. How did he pick up that nasty case of Hepatitis, ruining his liver? Did floating around in the Ganges, amidst the floating dead bodies and filth, looking for God, have anything to do with it? He was a smart guy, but he should have settled for a simple Christian Baptism ceremony.
–WSP7
I believe SJ had a liver transplant long ago…
Hep can be had from many sources..and there are a few varieties. [a,b, and C ?]
Against the Institution: A Warning for ‘Occupy Wall Street’ by Andrew Gavin Marshall:
“The true struggle is not left versus right, democrat versus republican, liberal versus conservative, or libertarian versus socialist. The true struggle is that of people against the institution: the State, the banks, the central banking system, the corporation, the international financial institutions, the military, the political parties, the mainstream media, philanthropic foundations, think tanks, university, education, psychiatry, the legal system, the church, et. al.
The transfer of power from one institution to another does not solve the crisis of our ‘institutional society,’ whereby a few have come to dominate so much, to concentrate so much power at the expense of everyone else having so little. True liberation will result only from opposition to ‘the institution’ as an entity. Placating power from one institution to another renders resistance ineffective. The power structures must be discredited, and power must be distributed to the people, through voluntary associations, communal groupings, and people-powered (and people-funded!) initiatives.”
more:
http://cryptogon.com/?p=25313
Dylan Ratigan is dealing with the issue of money in the political system and in all aspects of law-making in this country that pushes special interest agendas of banking and corporate monopoly that is distorting the market. He did go to talk to the Owsers, but he has a different point. He is a conservative, but this is an issue for everyone regardless of party ideology or affiliations.
__________________________________________
About Jobs. He did not have hepititus, he had Pancreatic cancer which spread to his liver. He didn’t invite death by swimming in the Ganges, or whatever you are trying to imply.
I came up with some specific goals for the Wall Street protesters:
1.
All TARP money, and or other bailouts shall be paid back, in full, with interest, and the money put into a fund for people who have been foreclosed on, and the unemployed and homeless. This fund will be paid for and set up irregardless if money has already been paid back.
2.
Any bank or company executive who took government money and gave out bonuses, or any employee who took bonuses, shall resign immediately. And, will never be allowed to work in the investment business again.
3.
Bank and investment executives who broke insider trading and other securities laws will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
4.
Corporate and individual tax rates be put where they were in the 1970’s.
5.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will end immediately. Military operations in Pakistan and Libya will end immediately. All troops and government employees will leave as soon as possible.
5.
The Patriot Act will be rescinded.
6.
Gitmo will closed.
7.
Government sponsored assassinations will end immediately.
You did not just type “irregardless”. Please don’t ever do that again.
what it it all boils down to is petty jealousy….people are materialistic and want what others have….eventually the few will have it all and the remaining meek 99% shall inherit the earth……..it is written…
Howdy Bud, You claim “This one is from 1950s
http://db.tt/M0L9SMio“
I think not as directly beneath the photo the ad states “Free School Bus to Public and Parochial School 1940 and 1941”.
SNAFU
And weirder, as I’m reading this, Thom Hartman is interviewing Dylan Ratigan.
XHalor,
I love when it trickles down to me. I love it because I get to walk out to my workshop in the morning while others are fighting traffic. I can take a break when I want, quit when I want, take a week off here or there if I want. Of course, I have to meet deadlines and produce excellent work. I also have to meet with clients, and go through the design,decision making process. But that sure beats dealing with some politically correct institutional bureaucrat who lives to wave the finger of moral authority in the faces of her subordinates.( I’ll write about an experience I had a few years ago tonight or tomorrow.)
It’s a lonely life, but the quiet isolation is sublime. The downside: the worry about future commissions/sales. Still, it doesn’t take much to keep one person going but you have to beat the bushes from time to time.
Ripped,
Buck Stud don’t need female problems this fall – I had too much of that last summer 🙂
I only want to comment on the idea of carbon to burn for another 250 years, then I’ll leave the rest for someone else.
There probably IS enough carbon to burn for another 250 years. Doesn’t matter though. The only thing that matters is the peaking event, whether it’s a geological or economic peaking. Farming cultures have been in a growth pattern for what, 10,000 years now? And in earnest for the last 500, with particular emphasis on the last 70. Any of those numbers is plenty of time to get accustomed to tidal currents in a society, but I think it’s safe to say that most of us feel that growth is just inherent in our world. Despite being completely against the laws of physics, the ones that actually count, almost everyone in the industrial world can’t even fathom permanent contraction. And we’ve built an economy that only runs correctly at the peak of our energy game.
But when the supply of the densest energy source we’ve ever used, that we know of, peaks, that marks the end of the growth era. Doesn’t matter one iota how much coal is out there still to be had, or how much gas, or that half of the oil is left (the low-hanging fruit is gone), and it wouldn’t even matter if the whole world was already outfitted with wind and solar. They ALL represent a lower EROI than oil gave us, and that means that the contractionary phase has begun. (Unless we master some sort of truly free energy, and let’s all keep our fingers crossed that that doesn’t happen, because it will spell the end of our species if it does. The biosphere can’t take another 1857-style revelation.)
If the contractionary phase is underway, then our entire way of being will change. Without growth banks don’t function. Insurance doesn’t function. Public schools and government don’t function. Hell, agriculture doesn’t function without growth. Our agriculture rapes the land and always requires MORE inputs every year. Without growth and expansion the age of agriculture is over. Peak oil simply represents the end of growth, nothing more.
Enter horticulture. I believe that will be the next phase of human existence, for a smaller number of humans than we loaded up on Earth with exploitative agriculture. Unfortunately, the feedback mechanisms on overpopulation and topsoil degradation, especially with fossil fuel based inputs compensating for fertility loss, is slow and easily overlooked. But as it arrives, whew boy!, it could be ugly.
I think people like your Nobel physicist fall victim to a lack of systems perspective. Freshwater and topsoil limitations are even more important than energy limits, and they are stressed to the max already. More growth would probably finish us all off. The only hope we have in my opinion is a radical return to Nature-based, regenerative food production systems, like permaculture, and a hard-core collective finger crossing that we can glide back to reality in some sort of controlled descent. My strongest desire is that we can stretch the contraction out to units of generations instead of suffering a catastrophic collapse.
But the only important thing is the peaking event.
Just my .02
The implication is ‘religious irrational ism’
I hope the OW’s can grow and prosper like the derivatives markets.
Hard to say just what the PTB game plan is. I would assume they want to marginalize them by making them seem like some kind of radical “pie-in-the-sky” idealists. The MSM has been making this the theme of the protests. They have been relentless in their continuing “what?” coverage.
Why is it so hard for a mainstream journalist to tell the truth?
Occupy Wall Street is about fully corrupted Federal Government rigging a financial system which is in bed with a the corrupted central banks around the world as well as our own fully corrupted Federal Reserve membership.
For right now -all we can hope to do is “turn the clock back” on the regulatory frameworks, including the governance of the federal reserve until we can find enough honest men to formulate honest regulations and manage honest regulatory agencies.
In additional we need members of the executive branch of the government to ask for emergency oversight powers from the judicial branch to “reset” the power of the current political parties and their lobbying systems.
Again, we need to realize that most of the people in power are corrupt, but they must remain in power as they are the only link back to normalcy.
Eventually enough honest people will be running enough un-rigged, fairly regulated markets to bring the worst to justice.
Again, we need to realize that most of the people in power are corrupt
==
The corruption is systemic to the whole American nation. Corruption is part of the American way of life. And this has been so, not for just a few years, not for just a few decades, but for centuries. The United States claims a population over 300 million people, and yet only a few thousand can find it in themselves to protest the system. That is absolutely disgraceful.
The Kids are Alright
Today I finally got my opportunity to go down to the Wall St. demo. My first conversation was with a guy in my age group, (boomer who was bummered out for no good reason. He was complaining that the demonstrators had no singe message. He claimed that if I went up to any given demonstrator they would have no articulate arguments and had no idea what was going on
—-Au Contraire!!
After him, I had a great ongoing conversation with two guys who graduated college two years ago. The more vocal of the two said he graduated with a degree in Communications from the Univ. of Pennsylvania. A pretty good college if you ask me.
Well, the best job he’s had in two years is as a bartender. Yes, he brought up Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine.
These people know they can’t compete with those with no student loans and cheap housing around the world.
When I mentioned the comments the first guy made he said, but there are so many problems we face, there is no one single one that stands out more than the others.
I believe as more people are finding themselves hurting in this ongoing debacle there will be more people gravitating to this way of expression, especially if they can’t find work. It has a distinctly local feel to it and I think that’s how things will eventually get sorted out. Globalism isn’t working. Local interests will prevail.
Let us hope…
I’ve got two recommendations for gaining a firm grasp of our current situation, and how to accomplish the important work of our new future:
The Archdruid Report (Greer is just unbelievable!)
And Acres USA magazine. The voice of eco-agriculture.
For me, the insights from these two sources are simply unparalleled.
“Again, we need to realize that most of the people in power are corrupt, but they must remain in power as they are the only link back to normalcy.
Eventually enough honest people will be running enough un-rigged, fairly regulated markets to bring the worst to justice.” -Bud
Your ideas have merit, but keeping the same foxes in charge of the hen house isn’t going to change their way of doing bid’ness.
The REAL markets will be those that are “underground”. They’re thriving [and growing] now, and need no regulation. Fair’s fair and fraud is fraud; that’s all one needs to know about trade.
“If the contractionary phase is underway, then our entire way of being will change. Without growth banks don’t function. Insurance doesn’t function. Public schools and government don’t function. Hell, agriculture doesn’t function without growth. Our agriculture rapes the land and always requires MORE inputs every year. Without growth and expansion the age of agriculture is over. Peak oil simply represents the end of growth, nothing more.” -Tripp
Thanks for that, and the web tips.
Without the ILLUSION of FUTURE growth, credit doesn’t function. Buh-bye banks.
Great podcast today!
What the fuck are you talking about? This is why I always give up writing anything on here. People spend time writing something they think has some merit, and some nimrod picks out one word they don’t like. And points it out.
“The sign said “You must be this high to converse with the adults”. I’m definitely “this high”.”
LOL, ex post facto (lattice of coincidence?)! You 5’9″ shrinker (how low have you shrunk – LOL)!
rippedthunder poasted:
“assaulting a PO charge is BS. It is not a felony in most states. Many people get charged with this by the Police. Many people put up a struggle when being arrested for a non-violent,victimless crime.”
Like me, over a decade ago, it will likely start with a misdemeanor charge of “resisting arrest,” which gets reduced via plea-bargain, to “harassment” (half of the max monetary/incarceration limits). This charge is beatable in court, if you have lots of time and $5k+ (above and beyond the $1-1.5k retainer/basic consulting fees) to burn on lawyers…
I decided to bite the bullet, and do 20 hours community service, 6 months probation, and pay a *mere* $360 fine (to be honest, I’d rather have a conviction for “resisting arrest” than for “harassment”, but it was the difference between getting a class B misdemeanor, and avoiding a class A misdemeanor).
If you really need a job in the next 7 or so years (and a misdemeanor-free record), best to pay the ($1-1.5K and another) $5k+, and suffer through the months of anxiety leading up to the trial, and suffer the next few days’ worth of a jury trial. No guarantees, of course (anxiety!)…
“What the fuck are you talking about? This is why I always give up writing anything on here. People spend time writing something they think has some merit, and some nimrod picks out one word they don’t like. And points it out.”
Bwahahaha!!! And it wasn’t even Qtip – how *IRONIC*.
trippticket poasted:
“Without growth banks don’t function. Insurance doesn’t function. Public schools and government don’t function.”
*INVESTMENT* banks don’t function. Financial banks (non-existent now – except for local credit unions) can function just fine under no growth/contraction, with 8-12x leveraging.
Public schools would also do fine under contraction, except that they are under the regulatory/monetary control of the state govt cronies (who will continue giving themselves 100% benefits, 5% raises, and 2-5% new hires)…
“Does anyone know,How Long is a Chinaman?”
LOL!!! 4″? Or 5’2″? That one busted my gut, haha!
I saw someone on MSM claiming Obama should still be smoking, as he’s strung up too tight. I suggest he should start *rolling his own*. Could you imagine him pulling out a pouch of decent Virginian tobacco, rolling up a nice cigarette spliff from rice papers, while he continued to discuss issues? I think he is nothing more than a bend-over-backwards, corporate ass-kisser. He promised no more GITMO, and no more wars, in his lead up to the presidential elections. Why would anyone believe *ANYONE ELSE* will keep their promises, once elected? As *someone* poasted on here, they are merely politicians==liars (always have been/always will be).
What global warming? As I’ve already stated, I will be back here, on an annual basis (while possible), to remind you all that over the next 7-8 years, every year will be even hotter than the prior all-time record. And, the next 8 years beyond that, will simply be wobbling slightly above/below the latest peak (ramp down to solar minimum – that’s 16 more years of ever hot/stormy weather).
Stormy weather … raining all the *TIME*…
So – is this website software working, at anything approaching “normality?”
I’ve been on the road for a couple of days. Hammered out a quick response to wage and vlad this morning – on the wifi at the motel.
It was “held for review.” WTF!
No links, no bad words, no nothing!
As I may have mentioned – WTF!
Let’s see if this will post.
I’ll be back someday. Under some screenname.
And some IP address.
Seriously, JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER, you need to have somebody take a look at the way your blog software is behaving.
“The REAL markets will be those that are “underground”. They’re thriving [and growing] now, and need no regulation. Fair’s fair and fraud is fraud; that’s all one needs to know about trade.”
Just got off the phone with a farmers market friend who is suddenly on-board with our idea of an off-grid, unregulated, underground market through the winter, while the farmers market is “officially” closed until April. Plenty of us sell items that are either not season-dependent, or are enhanced by cooler winter weather (like my mushrooms – ate the first of the post-hades season tonight actually! Yum!!). My brother in Atlanta sells his charcuterie at a very well organized underground market, where the patrons sign an indemnity waver upon entry to the marketplace. Thousands of them line up for every event, which is announced just the night before via email.
The good people of Earth are proceeding with good business, regardless of what TPTB have to say about it. Long live the real free market!
“And, CRAZILY, we continue to allow over one million LEGAL immigrants into the US every year, along with an imprecise, though large, number of illegal immigrants.”
Hasn’t emigration from the US trumped both those totals, for almost 3 years?
I noticed you had nothing to say about those “internal checkpoints” – I s’pose you enjoy those *enormously*…
OK, how come each time I see Seth MacFarlane, I think of Bobby from The Brady Bunch?
Ahh, this one goes out to my heartless wonder, Tricky-Dicky-Dick Cheney:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1HOE3FIQ7w
“Hasn’t emigration from the US trumped both those totals, for almost 3 years?”
-ixnomor-
No, I have seen no evidence of this – quite the contrary, in fact. US population continues to increase due to immigration.
Can you cite any evidence to counter this??
============================
“I noticed you had nothing to say about those “internal checkpoints” – I s’pose you enjoy those *enormously*” ixnomore
I have no idea what you are talking about, IX.
Please elaborate.
Q is out of commission due to the 403 ban thingy. Not sure when he’ll be allowed back on. This is getting silly. Of course, if a regular from this list were to cry “big brother interference!” they would be easy to label as a wingnut conspiracy theorist…
Probably not that, but who could say for sure?
“Did anyone here think that maybe, just maybe, these protestors are just trying to divert the media and country from the real issue. The next election.”
This one really rubbed me the wrong way. Let’s get the facts straight here, once and for all:
19 times out of 20, the US candidate who collects the most monetary contributions, *WINS* their election.
What exactly does that mean? Let me put it another way – 95% of elections are bought, by *MONEY* alone – your vote is completely irrelevant. Wait until Koch, et al, are willing to contribute $2-5+ billion to the Repubnicant candidate – you get the point yet?!…
‘Sif the next *lesser of two evils* “president elect” is going to do anything different, than the prior 5 dipshits have done (corporate shills). Insufferable, you are a moron, an imbecile, and an all-around idiot (k00k/shill/disinformant/skeptibunker), proposing that these protestors are simply trying to keep the “election status quo” hidden, behind the guise of protest against the MAN…
I remember the PC age, and it wasn’t the Apple2. It was the Radio Shack Trash-80, and then the Commodore-64. The Apple2 was merely a blip, and the Mac was a total farce, supported only by the Xerox mouse device. Hell, I remember playing a flight sim on the commodore, where the challenge was getting to NYC. And once you got there, there was only one thing that me and my friends would attempt. Ayup, you guessed it, flying into the WTC towers. And that was in 1983.
I remember around 2000, I had purchased an iRiver mp3 CD player. I designed a solid state mp3 player in my head at that time, as the obvious issue with CD players since the early 80’s was that they skipped (excessive buffer circuitry), sucked huge amounts of power, and failed due to mechanical moving parts. My design incorporated upgrade paths, unlike the iPod – replaceable battery, replaceable flash memory cards, and possibly upgradeable processors.
What we have now is the legacy of Jobs – a wasteland/landfill of throw-away Apple devices. I wonder if Steve ever bothered to consider just how much pollution his non-upgradeable “path to technology” produced. Everyone is heralding this jackass all week long, yet his legacy is simply millions of tons of toxic garbage, likely sent to China for disposal. I see *NOTHING* to cheer about here, whatsoever. I’ve not yet heard of any lives saved (‘sif that’s a positive indicator) by an iPod, iPad, or iPhone, that a simple call to 911 on hard lines couldn’t have just as easily solved…
Trippy, he no like-y me no more-y!
Q-y, he’s to old to proxy!
My angst-y, my anger has the best of me!
And now, I am finally caught up-y (on all poasts this week)!!!
“likely sent to China for disposal.”
CORRECTION:
likely sent *BACK* to China for disposal.
“Seth MacFarlane”
I understand he *miraculously* dodged the flight 11 bullet on 911. WoWzers – hope he doesn’t owe someone (tit-for-tat) for that…
Since Q is not around, concerning my post: How Long is a Chinaman? It is a statement, not a question. Old joke ’round these parts! He owns the laundry down the street. hahahahaha
Tripp, Tripp, Tripp, can I use the top of your head to run a level line for my latest project ;o) ? I am building some beds in the back and will need an even keel for referance. Hard frost predicted tonight. Peppers and green tomatoes up the yazoo!
We are very late for our first frost, I don’t think we will get it tonight. The basil will tell me first thing. If not we will really beat the historical record. The next few days are going to be much warmer. I have never seen it this warm for this late in the season.
“…if a regular from this list were to cry “big brother interference!” they would be easy to label as a wingnut conspiracy theorist…
Probably not that, but who could say for sure?”
-tripp-
That though has occurred to me too, tripp.
I doubt it, but as you say, who could say for sure?
IMO – there would be so many ways that a genuinely evil US government could disrupt, distract, and obfuscate – that there would be no reason at all to do the really big things, like destroy two buildings in a suicide attack.
===================
On another note – what if JHK and his webmaster really are just trying to do the right thing and make the stupid software work – and what if the get so PO’ed at all the bitching that they just take the whole comment thread down.
Anybody have an idea where we could all meet up, next?
what if JHK and his webmaster really are just trying to do the right thing and make the stupid software work….
I went to hear JHK debate last evening and he’s aware of the problem and will take care of it. Sorry to say it won’t be today, but it will be dealt with.
_______
JHK-James Russell Debate:[BMW Guggenheim Lab is Confronting Comfort. In New York, Berlin, and Asia, the BMW Guggenheim Lab will explore how urban environments can be made more responsive to people’s needs, how people can feel at ease in an urban environment, and how to find a balance between notions of modern comfort and the urgent need for environmental and social responsibility.]
__________________________
A debate with James Russell, Wall Street Journal Architecture Critic and JHK (who needs no further introduction)discussed their predictions on how cities will adapt to the challenges of the future:
Renaissance or Long Emergency?
As usual, JHK amused by adding an image of the Hindenburg and the Titanic in one shot. Very simply put his speaking style and images were more engaging than his counterpart in the debate, who was little tepid and academic in his style.
JHK talked about the New Urbanists who are rethinking towns and cities to the scale they were built in the past. Big issue is that there won’t be enough capital to invest in the technologies that could have been possible.
This country has squandered what riches it had in so many bad enterprises including saving the TBTF banks.
Russell showed a different green-new materials approach to building and used a structure at Yale as an example. (Using trees from their own forest–gee wouldn’t that be nice if we all had one of our own)
Both speakers understood the problems we face, I think that Russell feels a bit closer to those who are trying to figure out how to innovate around issues that they see looming in the future, including a non-growth economy, but I think though some will most likely get some green technology built it will be spotty at best.
I discussed with Russell after the debate that there are some very powerful wealthy people who will get in the way of innovation on any kind of large scale, as they have made their bed (& fortune) with fossil fuels and want that enterprise to continue as long as possible.
(Own the politicians own the world)
Isn’t that why nothing of substance in the way of alternative energy has taken place in this country in 40 years?
My guess is that there will be some variations between the two visions, but they will not be evenly realized throughout the country. I do see a much more local-oriented life style as oil becomes too expensive for most people and they will find a way of cooperating among themselves.
Most excellent, RT!
I guess from our experiences with truly crappy soils [for vegetables; trees LOVE it] we’ll be trading timber and firewood for your store-able vittles. As you’re in the river valley, you’ve probably got at least some rich, silty loam in which to raise up a surplus.
We gots trees! ;o) (So far; if the climate goes to shit, we’re all done anyhoo.) Little in the way of surplus veggies after the canning is complete.
The ‘maters do okay, even with the early blight getting at ’em, but our peppers just do not produce. Lots of foliage, but little fruit (and late, at that). Our friends (about 5 miles up the road) grow peppers by the bushel, but he’s been amending that soil with cow poo for about 20 years.
Any suggestions?
(Your squarsh advice worked like gangbusters; borers had already been and gone, and we were overrun with squarshes!)
“I discussed with Russell after the debate that there are some very powerful wealthy people who will get in the way of innovation on any kind of large scale, as they have made their bed (& fortune) with fossil fuels and want that enterprise to continue as long as possible.
(Own the politicians own the world)
Isn’t that why nothing of substance in the way of alternative energy has taken place in this country in 40 years?” -LB
That would be my suspicion.
And as JHK sez, the “psychology of previous investment” is insidious and pervasive. He must have used that phrase somewhere in the context of the discussion.
As to the software, it must be somewhat “buggy” at the moment, and I would think that to be purposeful. I even have trouble scrolling and highlighting others’ comments. That’s disconcerting as it doesn’t happen with other websites.
““I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these [OWS] protests are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration,” he said.”
So quoth Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and contender for the Prez’dinsy.
Some commenter on this site has been receiving the RW talking-points-memos and reading them back to us. Are they on Herman’s mailing list?
(I just love that name “Cain”; it’s sooo…. so TRUSTWORTHY sounding. Benevolent too!)
LBENDET, OZONE, IX, BHM, RIPPED, and CALLING ALL CFNers! Please, you MUST, absolutely MUST read the link below! To all the Teabaggers and Fox News watching drones (Juletta of Ohio, I’m thinking of you among others), dare to
read the plans your “Republican” (they are no more Republicans than the Nazis were actually Socialists) Masters have in store for you!
http://www.box.net/shared/9if6v2hr9h
Especially CASH – pay close attention to the many mentions of Canada and how their claws are already into you, gradually altering the structure of Canadian society to a Plutonomy.
Plutonomy. Bet you all never heard the word before. It’s globally known among the Aristiocracy for years now, as is revealed in the link.
Pay special attention to the verbal summaries scattered throughout. They tell the true story far more than the impersonal graphs and give a window into the true soul-less nature of our monstrous Aristocratic Masters.
This last post was much longer, but got held up and then I got 403’d.
So, I will have to post it in pieces. Or try to anyway.
At least I got the link posted, and that’s the important thing.
PLEASE read it, download it, save it, then spread it.
Now, the next part of my post:
I just found this on the web. After reading it and picking my jaw up off the floor at just how much like the 1930s German Indutrialists our current American Corporatists are, the first place I thought to post it was here. Hurry, please, download and read it for it probably won’t be there long.
I guarantee you will not regret it.
http://www.box.net/shared/9if6v2hr9h
Read it and tell me you don’t see things more clearly afterward, ProgorCons?
It no longer matters what the level of conspiracy is. Even in the extraordinarily unlikely event that it is all just some amazing coincidence or universal psychological imperative that coincidentally drove all those Royals and Uber-Aristos all got the same idea at the same time while sunning themselves harmlessly at Bilderberg vacations, the coming darkness that will soon blanket the world will not be different for all of us in either case.
CFNers! Read for yourselves, the merciless ice-cold brutal reality of the 21st Century American RW Corporate Socialist in al. Not a whole lot different that the original version, RW National Socialism. How easily and glibly they sweep over the suffering of billions of us with a handful of sentences.
Anyone ever read the Wannsee Protocol? It reads the in the same tones and cadences, just as the old Nazi propaganda from Weimar reads in almost the same tones, psycholinguistics, and cadences as Fox “News”, just swap out “Germany” for “America” and “Jew” for “Liberal” and the transformation is obvious. Hell, you don’t even have to do anything to the word Democrats, because the Nazis hated the Democrats, too!
Nothing ever changes, you see? The Nazis dismissed the Wannsee Protocol as Liberal Jewish propaganda, and I expect our American RW to behave similarly.
Anyway, please everyone read and check out this link. Download it and spread it around to others. It truly is a veritable Mein Kampf for the coming age.
You run into similar check points in Mexico. Only they are looking for a little bribe. I saw it two years in a row on dove hunting trips below the border. That has been a while back. I imagine they’re just trying not to get shot now.
The Texas check points have been there forever, they use to check ag products in the pre-nafta days. If they really wanted to deal with drugs and immigration the army would be down there in force instead of fucking around in Afghanistan.And as Wage says, prosecuting a few employers who hire them.
Tea Party & Owsers, very similar, no?
Except tea party events seem more orderly, no arrests, etc!!! And nobody camps out overnight, as far as I Know.
Ibendet, good first hand, CFN report. Nice job!
–WSP7
JHK, would you please have your tech guy fix your damned filtering software. You are killing conversation here.
I’m not spamming. I’ve got one legitimate informational link, and it has been such an incredible pain in the ass to even get 2/3rds of that post posted.
By the bye, you would do well to read that link yourself, it’s Citibank’s report on the new Plutonomy.
Please FIX your filtering software.
“*INVESTMENT* banks don’t function. Financial banks (non-existent now – except for local credit unions) can function just fine under no growth/contraction, with 8-12x leveraging.”
I don’t dislike you, Ix. But a question: how do you pay the salaries of the good people at the credit union, small as they may be comparatively, when there is no growth accruing on the money they hold? You’re right that banks usually hold one and loan ten, but a premise doesn’t get more growth-centered than that, in my opinion. “Natural” as that idea might seem.
The real question to me is whether we can maintain a currency system at all without growth, much less the banking industry. Banks are gone; they just haven’t finished cleaning out the tills yet. If you still have money in a bank I think you’re living on borrowed time.
Theres the Media riff that
‘More Mexicans are returning home with the great ‘recession’.
That may be true…but the population here increases..Immigrants have huge families…
THE DAMAGE HAS BEEN DONE.
US takes in Millions a year..as does UK.
Canada. Australia.
Uh NO..what does it say?
I have read some of your recent posts with great interest. You seem to have a wide range of views, yet sometimes you sink back into Fox News’ nonsensical lies without knowing it.
Could you really say this without being aware of what’s behind it and what it’s all about?
The TeaBaggers more orderly?
Some Teabaggers brought guns to Town Hall meetings. Many were extraordinarily aggressive and bullying, shouting down and occasionally shoving others and more.
I hate to keep bringing up the Nazis, but they are so perfectly illustrative in that they are the last nation in which RW “National/Corporate Socialist” power rose in a nation of ours or Germany’s size and strength.
If you’d do the research, you’ll find that shortly after taking power, Hitler and the Nazis actually ordered the police to ALWAYS take the Nazis side in any street dispute or scuffle over Liberals, Communists, and Leftists.
Did they obey? Of course they did. That’s what cops do, no matter who is in charge. But Hitler’s edict only codified what was already largely in practice most of the time anyway.
Look it up. Start with the book of the eyewitness account, “Defying Hitler” by Sebastian Haffner, although these ironclad facts including Hitler’s early police edicts, should be available anywhere except Stormfront and other hardcore RW sites who have a vested interest in suppressing the history of the German extreme RW for their own gain.
Anyhoo… it’s all about the usual double-standard for Power’s Henchpersons (in this case on the RW mostly) versus those who oppose the dominant power, in this case the Wall Street-Governmental fusion of 21st Century American RW Coporate Socialism.
I wonder, if you could be transported back to Weimar 1931, would you say the same things you said above? Would you cite as proof of Nazis law-abiding orderliness the evidence that they weren’t getting arrested, while Liberals, Commies and Lefties were being arrested in droves?
Having read some of your recent comments, I’d like to think you wouldn’t fall for such obvious bullshit. I feel compelled to point out that you didn’t see through the almost identical transparent lie in the here and now, though. Sorry.
Think about it. Close your eyes and do a Thought Experiment. What if an OWSER was walking around with a gun strapped to his hip in the protest, like at least one Teabagger did at a Town Hall meeting a year or so ago, and remained unmolested by Law Enforcement?
What if said OWSER was being as law-abiding as the Teabaggers in not waving it around or menacing anyone with it?
Can you really believe he would be unmolested like the Teabaggers were? Can you really?
How about if some OWSERS got close enough to spit on some Wall Streeters or even a Republican (Corporate Socialist) Congressmen like Democrat Eldridge Cleaver got menaced during the passage of the Health Care Bill, shouted at from close distance and spit on?
No arrests, of course. No consequences at all for that RW “hero”, of course.
Hell, can you actually believe that the OWSERS would even be ALLOWED to get within close-range shouting or spittng distance of one of the Masters of the Universe, economic or political?
It’s the sad truth that authoritarian tyranny is being driven by the Right in the here and now, just as it was in 1930s and 40s Germany.
If were were in 1920s-1980s Russia or China, the truth would be that the Authoritarian Tyranny was coming from the Left.
That would be the hard truth and any Lefty would have to take it. If that’s the case, then so should you, at least if you wanted to be honest about it in the here and now.
What passes for the current mainstream American Left is almost a total reincarnation of the German Social Democrats, the Liberals who yielded to RW bullying, intimidation, and serial lying by the same cowardly complicity displayed today by America’s “Mainstream Left”. (which is actually to the Right of both Eisenhower and Nixon on many many issues)
My point is, sure the Liberal German Social Democrats had a hand in allowing the Nazis to come to power. But few blame them today for Germany’s actions 1933-1945, do they? No history puts blame where blame belongs, the RW National Socialists who drove the actions, not the Left-Wing cowards who quivered, complied and let it happen.
(I’d love to leave you some history links backing up what I said, but then my post will get held – it should be easy enough to find it yourself with a couple mouse clicks, though)
Of course, the issue today is no longer really Left vs. Right but Masters & Henchpersons vs. Virtual Powerless Slaves, so maybe I am as much to fault by responding to you in that Left-Right vane as you are for buying the idea (at least, you bought it’s ideological second-cousin) that the Nazis were more orderly and law-abiding than Liberals, Lefties, Social Democrats, Commies, and Jews simply because the German cops arrested more of the latter groups than the former group, aligned with Corporate and Political Authoritarian Power.
It wasn’t so then, and it’s not so now. Read “Defying Hitler”. Another good one is “The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1922-1945” by William Sheridan Allen.
There are more, but those two should give you a good start.
You will be astonished at how similar, minus the overt racism and violence, the current American RW is to the German RW of the 1930s, I think.
🙂
Sounds like things are going well at your place, RT! And I agree that basil is the best frost indicator around.
Nice reply for O3 that got sucked into oblivion. Sorry, O3.
Are you using mychorrizal fungi in your garden?
Wups, made a little grammatical error that changed the meaning of one of my sentences.
I originally typed:
Wait! What squash advice? My squash plants are doing really well, now that the bugs are gone, but I’m not getting squash.
That’s pretty interesting, lbendet.
You ran into some guy that parroted the corporate media line, even though he was surrounded by people with signs and opinions about the corporate dominance over our lives.
I’ve been watching Free Speech TV, and they seem to have no problem finding articulate people who can explain what they want.
In my little town, 47 people showed up to the first Occupy meeting, and they are going to come to the usual peace vigil tomorrow. They had no problem tying in the money spent on the war machine to the lack of spending on public needs at home.
There are usually around 20 people at the peace vigil, so our ranks will really swell tomorrow.
Oh, and Naomi Klein was in New York, interviewed on FSTV, and she spoke very articulately about the twin bullshit stories we are told – that there is a shortage of money (how could there be, when it is created on computers? and there has been $13 trillion created for the bankers?) and that there are no shortages in the natural world, like oil, water, topsoil, and minerals. The natural world is the source of all wealth, both true wealth, and phoney banker wealth. And there are limits to the bounty of the Earth.
Tell it, Naomi!
What is this “proxy” you speak of? How do you do it?
Since I can’t seem to write anything useful here without it getting sucked into the gaping abyss, I thought I’d try to add a helpful note, in a more reliable format, to Ozone’s query about building topsoil upthread.
This one is important. I hope anybody who takes the future seriously will read it.
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/2011/10/fungi-in-landscape.html
Cheers!
Tripp
OK – I just got 403’d.
I had to reboot the computer and unplug the DSL router to get (I guess) a new IP address to get back on.
I’ve got a response to Wage and RT that keeps getting blocked. I’ve got a response to Vlad – same thing.
Knowing my OCD nature – I’m going to keep screwing around and get my P2C screenname banned.
So I’m quitting until tonight.
Hancock – I’m going to work up a response to you, too. That was an interesting link.
touché Trippy, to hell with officialdom and their licensing requirements, just organise locally, exchange money w/no taxation.
peace peaceniks
Let me clarify my previous statement because it sounded really arrogant. This article is important not because I wrote it but because I am simply relaying some very important information about a subject I think is most pressing in our future. Probably more important than peak oil.
Hi Wage, yahoo! no frost last night here in the CT. river valley. As far as the squash tip goes, in these parts we get squash borers in june -early july. It is a moth larvae. some people go through the trouble of cutting them out of the stems. I don’t have the time. I do an early planting which the borers kill but then I wait a while and outsmart the little bastards after they have done their life cycle routine. I am still getting squash and that is something up here in New England.
Ahhh. Brilliant!
The truth of the matter is that just like in Nazi Germany and Nazi America, both the Left and Right are in fact political sock-puppets. Put on show by the same operators. The same operators that made Hitler, also made Stalin. The same operators that made Bush, made Obama. And on and on. A contrived Hegelian dialectic.
Yet, despite of the obvious charade and indisputable facts regards the money trail, there are people that still buy the Left Right government mafia propaganda narrative and the contrived Left Right theater. There is no difference between the Left and the Right. What there is, is a government mafia, controlled by a shadow elite that dictates the theater to be played by their hired Left and Right sock-puppets.
I tried to link to Naomi Klein in the Nation, amplifying on her remarks, but it was held for review.
By the time the review is done, it will be irrelevant.
So, lbendet, and anyone who wants to know what Naomi Klein said, google it, I guess.
Thanks, Wage,
My friend who I ran into at the wall Street demos yesterday was going to join me at the JHK debate, but when he told me NK was going to be speaking, I told him to stay down there and give me a report.
He said it was great. Anyway I did go to her web page and copied her speech. It’s now in my simple text library for all time…ha.
It’s a real treat – I’ve spent much of today browsing through Fox News and links supplied off of Drudge, Breitbart etc…….
Yes – the Clusterfuck is real, its pervasive and in its enormity and complexity – seemingly hopeless.
Ah- where to start, sure the Fed Reserve has usurped the powers of government for its self-interested self-dealing members. And yet the United States needs to maintain a central bank.
Certainly the SEC is feckless, perverted or subverted, depending on your perspective, yet we need some measure of order as the our systems fail.
I’ve never stated this as fact – but in these latest days – it seems as though it is our major political parties that have subverted the government. It is clear the ideology or group think of party affiliation has been promoted over and above any allegiance to country. This perversion has destroyed the intended “check and balances” of our branches of Federal Government.
These are indeed exciting times. The few times any honesty is forthcoming, such as the musings of Ron Paul, James Kunstler or Elizabeth Warren, they are reviled and marginalized as “nutty radicals.”
Mr Obama – I’m still waiting for your “Dear Wallstreet – no more business as usual speech” where is it?
Hancock,
Good to see you’re back. I downloaded the citibank pdf on Plutonomy. If you saw Michael Moore’s film “Capitalism: A Love Story. You’ll know just how disgusting these people are at Citibank and what their thinking is.
Don’t forget to sign the petition by Ratigan
getmoneyout!
Nothing will come of this. Nothing at all.
Well, now I’m watching Link TV. Greg Palast is talking about the massive Jublilee movement, and how the IMF agreed to cancel the debts of some third countries, like Zambia and Peru, with massive concerts by Sting and the like, and how speculators swooped in and bought up that debt and are forcing the poor countries to pay it, with more interest than before. US courts uphold such things. It’s all legal.
It reminds me of how US farmers were thrown off their land in the 80s, by Paul Volcker’s 18% interest rates, and the US Agriculture Dept pushing “Get big, or get out” policies.
FarmAid concerts didn’t do any good there, either. The 1% are unfazed by concerts.
And, by the way, now there are not just cement trucks going down my street, but electricity trucks, and covered dump trucks.
The political parties are a distraction, a way of using the natural tribal instincts of human animals against their economic and political interests.
The now continual election “season” is a way of channeling dissatifaction with the system into rooting for a party and putting all energies into one particular day.
It’s no different than NFL season, with its passions and personality dissections and scandals and pre-games.
It’s just that the NFL season culminates in SuperBowl Sunday, and the election system culminates in Election Day.
The US government is not controlled by the parties, it’s controlled by the corporations and the banks and Wall Street.
Wage,
Yes the sports and politics have always been linked psychically in this country. Can’t help but hum Mrs. Robinson when I think about it.
Looking at your posts I’m reminded of the discussions my sister and I have about where this is all going. There’s an endless litany of issues all connected and all slip-sliding away.
Re the University of Pennsylvania grad with the degree in Communications: It tells you what a nasty scam college has become, that no one, not a guidance counselor or dean or teacher or any other mentor-adult, ever told this kid that a degree like that is not a ticket to a good job and has never been except at the top of a boom. At least in olden times the liberal arts grad did not emerge from school with a lifetime load of debt that cannot be discharged and that a couple of missed or late payments can cause to double or triple in the space of a year. Now, the desperate college aspirant is snookered into taking on $40K, $70K, or more in debt to obtain a degree in a field where there is no demand.
Only in really flush periods do degrees in things like communication or literature or English or history win you a job. I know, I majored in stuff like this, and have met dozens of people with advanced degrees clear up to the PhD level who are working for the post office, the local police dept or transit agency, or, more often, a bookstore or Starbucks. Some of these people are over the age of 60 and are still paying for college loans.
-Note to CFN readers. I’m in a bad mood. This blog thread keeps eating my posts and banning me.
Plus, I have a suspicion that everyone is through posting and reading for the week, because of various and sundry well-documented software problems.
=================================================
From Vlad:
“Q is right: you have a hard time being hard. And this leads a culture down the primrose path to destruction. A scenario: a Southern White wants to fly the Stars and Bars. His Black neighbors object. Which is more important, his rights or their feelings? There is a right answer here. Blacks only care about rights when it comes to their own.”
-vlad-
I don’t know about that, Vald. Apparently you mistake politeness in written communication for something called “softness-?”.
Only two things are worth being “hard.” One is a man’s family.* So, if you want to come visiting unannounced, and especially after dark – you might want to give me a heads-up CFN post, or else a phone call. Because otherwise you might very well leave my property feet-first.
And as regards the “Stars and Bars” – you have no idea WHATSOEVER, what the Hell you are talking about.
http://americancivilwar.com/south/conflag/southflg.html
The Stars and Bars was the original flag of the Confederacy. It was part of the flag of Georgia until 1956. What most people call the “Stars and Bars” was, in truth, the Confederate Battle Flag, also known as the Southern Cross – based upon St. Andrew’s Cross, which dates back to 13th century Scotland.
Georgia had the Southern Cross as part of the State flag until 2001 – when the State flag was changed to incorporate the Confederate Stars and Bars.
So – Every government installation in Georgia flies the Stars and Bars, by law, as part of the official flag of the State of Georgia.
No one is objecting to that.
*The other thing is one’s Country. This is more problematic – for us as US citizens – right now.
Nevertheless, one’s country deserves allegiance – almost** always.
**What do you do when it doesn’t???
“What really pisses me off is all the “expats” that have fled the country just to save their sorry little asses after having participated in the over consumption and ruination by going along with what ever big business spoon fed them and then running out when their generation and the generations following needs them to finally stand up and assist in fixing this mess they had a hand in creating. Miserable little mice all of them. Self interested cowards all.”
Nice try, but you just sound jealous.
In the real world you would find that most expats are not at all how you think.
There are the first wave of leftist that left the Asylum back in the 80’s & 90’s when Ronnie & Georgie the 1st started turning the US into a facsist state.
In the 90’s you have a few right-wingers that were afraid that Prez Bill was going to turn the US into the USSR, but all he really wanted was a BJ.
Then in the early 2k’s you had the lefties that finally just gave up the fight, and basically said to hell with it all.
And if you think we are all rich, ha, most of us are here for a much simpler, less expensive lifestyle.
So again, you just sound jealous that you couldn’t get your shit together and find your own lifeboat out of the Insane Asylum USA.
Meanwhile, while you probably think that you will end up in some Mad Mad future, we can enjoy fresh coffee grown right around us, and everything TRip is working for, without the fear of the local ‘Hoodies ripping us off.
Good luck as someones hood ornament buddy.
Dee
What can be said anymore succinctly?
Will anyone know which laws count when it matters the most?
How long is a Chinaman?
“Old joke ’round these parts! He owns the laundry down the street. hahahahaha”
No, the old joke was about dropping silverware, and naming their children.
As to “how long” – it’s either height, or penis length. You skirt the *TRUTH*.
“What is this “proxy” you speak of? How do you do it?”
Try “options” in your browser, and *FIND* an IP address you’d like to use (google proxy servers/ports) – it’s *THAT* simple. Best to set-*ALL* to use this new IP, temporarily…
Be sure to set it back, after you proxy (to poast on this sh!t site). Who knows, maybe you’ll be *UNBANNED* eventually…
I should poast my tale here, of how I got 403 on this shitty server. BUT I WON’T. It’s pointless.
OK I know I didn’t respond to your reply (P2C), what do you want me to answer? Have you read the entire week’s worth? If not, where did *I* fail?
I’m missing out, or *SUM-tin*…
Then in the early 2k’s you had the lefties that finally just gave up the fight, and basically said to hell with it all.
And if you think we are all rich, ha, most of us are here for a much simpler, less expensive lifestyle.
soooo glad i got out of the insane asylum the USA became….
“it’s a madhouse! a madhouse!”
peace peaceniks
ps much simpler, less expensive lifestyle…and loving it
suffer until you wake up
Now, the desperate college aspirant is snookered into taking on $40K, $70K, or more in debt to obtain a degree in a field where there is no demand.
no one is “snookered” into taking on onerous debt to study some useless bullshyte. they simply show their stupidity by choosing something with no foundation for economic success.
most collegians shouldn’t go to college in the 1st place b4 they’ve suffered a few years so they can get their head screwed on straight…
peace peaceniks
Perhaps the truth is, you are all just “les miserables” . . . if you were one of the rich fucks with a REAL plan, I’m sure you wouldn’t be on this site, pissing and moaning . . . you’d be somewhere else, with a fucking plan. You’re here, pissing and moaning, because most of you (with a few exceptions) are as fucked as everyone else. So the TRUTH is, you just like to listen to the sound of your old coot asses pissing and moaning 🙂
Hey, there’s a reason I picked the moniker “TruthTeller” :)~~ Everyone wants to live forever . . . no one here, apparently, finds value in living while they have a life, so they want to co-sign on JHK’s miserable bullshit 🙂
Fine. I’m posting this final post, and I’m sure no one will be sad to see me go, but give that final truth some thought. What the fuck are any of you doing about any of it, besides bitch, piss and moan? Tripp has some of the only real ideas I’ve seen. Wage and Prog talk of planting ‘taters and such. But otherwise, it looks like if I continue to hang with you peeps, not only is it DOOM, but it’s depression and misery every week when I read this endless bullshit. Life’s too short. If I have to die, I think I’d rather die with some cheerful fucks around me, dammit. :)~~~ Peace out, TT
Bye, Bye TT
This site was not meant to be an escapist happy place. There are some like Tripp who really are breaking ground in more ways than one, but we all come from different environments and get different things out of this blog site, so if it’s not for you than by all means, move on, my friend.
Here is where many of us share our perceptions and knowledge of peak finance, peak politics and peak resources. I guess it’s not for the faint of heart.
Thanks, Tripp.
We had a “better” garden this year, although the copious rainfall kept things too cool and wet. (Multiple plantings to get things to take; not enough sun to get the necessary warmth that seeds like to germinate.)
BUT, once going, the beds were quite prolific. The difference was that I had only scratched the surface to poke in seeds and put in seedlings. I had first added another couple inches of composted manure to the top, but did NOT turn the soil over (as is traditional). What must be understood is that I dug into the [so-called] soil about 4-6 inches to get enough stones out to make root vegetables viable when I put a raised bed over the top of these areas. The resultant 12″ I’ve pretty much “left alone”, only adding more on top as it settles. Carrots went crazy; huge and sweet, the parsnips’ success will be evaluated in springtime when we harvest. The burrowing beetle grubs will just have to be dealt with when they emerge.
Hancock,
Telling memo!
Copied to “offline” before it disappears.
Interesting the recommended “investments”!
Good post, Hancock,
No more checks and balances, Ma….
Did you know that JPMorgan Chase, [one of the giant banks that Occupy Wall Street is protesting against, gave $4.6 million to the NYPD to fund new laptops in patrol cars and security monitoring software.]
Well, isn’t that special. The banking system has to fund the public sector since the tax base can’t and what does that mean for blind justice and conflict of interest?
Hmm, the timing couldn’t be better.
– on les miserables –
Did you know that Southern troops were great fans of that piece of literature during the latter stages of the war. And that some of them began to refer to themselves as “Lee’s Miserables” to honor both their privation and their military commander.
I’m going to miss you, TruthTeller, and your Southern and female take on things around the CFN webspace – which generally trends in the opposite directions.
Personally, I come here for the pessimism and to take a look at the worst possible of human caused problems and disasters. I rarely leave disappointed.
And I enjoy (most of) the debates – which have given me a sounding board on some thoughts and ideas that I haven’t considered in years and years.
So come back when you can, TT.
We won’t hold you to your pledge to stay away.
How could we, anyway?
Warm regards,
P2C
I wish I was better at carrots. It’s one of those crops that always seems like an afterthought to me, though I know I could sell them pretty fast, and I enjoy eating them, too! What’s my problem? More carrots, TT!
I’m glad you had a good year. Very satisfying, ain’t it? I did well in some areas, and not so well in others. Added some new herbs, lost a couple of old favorites to the drought. Got meat rabbits going strong now, and the most solid egg production ever. But it’s all still somewhat to largely reliant on a functional industrial system. That’s next for us – breaking the ties that our so-called slow food still has to the larger system, like layer pellet and mail-order seeds.
And why I always encourage people to get busy on local food systems ASAP, while they still have time to fail without starving. I know you personally are already on it, though;)
Hey Owsers, Jobless Ivy League Grads, No Future People, and that guy I saw on Route 1 with a “Will work for food sign”, here’s some free advice: for you Owsers get the hell out of New York because New York is no place to go looking for trouble. Usually in New York trouble will find you … gold is still trading over $1500 per oz … get yerself a grubstake, a pick & shovel, a pan, and go prospecting … in California, the klondike, Montana, Arizona, Colorado … be a man, stake a claim … maybe you’ll strike it rich, who knows? Those Argonauts in 1849 didn’t find it all, not by a longshot. It sure the hell beats getting your head kicked in on the filthy streets of lower Manhattan. If anybody asks what you are doing tell them you are a f—-g prospector, what of it? Even here in the Keys it is not unusual for the lucky treasure hunter to pick up a gold dubloon or two off the beaches in a single day.
We need to go back to the Earth for our sustenance. Wall Street, Washington, they’re already dead, only they don’t yet realize it. What’s the use in putting yourself in harms way protesting against them. Find your own way.
–WSP7
Hear hear!! The old way of life is dead! Get on with something, anything, different! Damn, I’m with WSP and Truthteller, I’m tired of all the analysis, all the finger-pointing, and all the partisan rhetoric. I understand your pain, I do, I’ve been “unemployed” for 4 bloody years now, but I’ve never been healthier, nor happier, nor more positive about my place in the universe.
Yes, they fucked you. They sure did. But instead of continuing to buy what little of their stuff you can afford, how ’bout giving them the finger instead? There are other ways. Most of human history took place before money was even invented…
Snap out of it, people.
Newsflash: Todays NYTimes….Bronx farm survives
despite thefts.
What got to me is the Spanish names of the folk
On page 1….
What do you mean by this:
[and its TOO not TO]
But it’s all still somewhat to largely reliant on a functional industrial system.
Gov Moonbeam passed the nitemarish DREAM ACT today.
And some are land rich and cash poor..you are blessed to be among them.
would a truck load of sand help the carrots?
hey Tripp, I have tried to grow carrots around here for years. I am in the valley and have some spots of heavy loam ;0) and some spots of shit gravel, thanks to the Laurentide Ice Sheet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentide_ice_sheet
“But it’s all still somewhat to largely reliant on a functional industrial system.”
That’s a range: somewhat to largely, as in sort of to mostly. I.E. I could probably raise my rabbits without rabbit chow, but it would be tough to keep the number of chickens I have without layer pellet.
Confusing apparently. Sorry.
“would a truck load of sand help the carrots?”
Apparently, although we’re not lacking for sand down our way. The only house I ever purchased the way they want you to was in the sandhills in north Florida. That sand was a lot worse, couldn’t hold nutrients any which way, but we got plenty of sand in south Georgia, all the same.
Do you know about the Bretz Floods in the northwestern US? Mammoth floods, caused by a giant ice dam between mountain and glacier, 2000′ high, in western Montana/northern Idaho? that created Lake Missoula, and broke (repeatedly) during the last ice age.
Supposedly it released its contents, equivalent to half of Lake Michigan?, in under two weeks. Maybe 50 times, as the glacier advanced and retreated. Muddy, icy, water walls almost 1500′ high, screaming across the scablands at 100 mph, wiping out everything in their path that wasn’t on top of a higher mountain. Almost solely responsible for the landscape of Washington state west to the Cascades. Giant boulders called “erratics” floated in on ice bergs that melted and dumped their payload in random places, where no rock of that type can be found for hundreds of miles. Giant gravel beds deposited by floodwaters have been bought since then as farm land and later abandoned as hopelessly infertile.
The geologist who hypothesized this mechanism to describe the strange landscape patterns of eastern and central Washington was basically labelled a heretic by the anti-catastrophist (tiny drops of rain, tiny grains of sand) crowd in the geological ivory towers of his day.
Satellite imagery has since verified, and vindicated, his theory. Amazing stuff. I can understand why people make up doomsday flood stories, based on what they see around them. But I’m glad I’m not trying to grow carrots in glacial till!
I get it, your dependence on the Petrol world thats
outside yr door….cars, gas, chicken feed.
Money, banks, electricity from outside.
Oh it rained 7 inches in Florida…im like what??
This woman she needs her own show on the Bravo Network: The Joan Kors Koffee Klatch. Just Joan sitting around bubbler,1 the coffee, chain smoking the Lucky Strikes, discussing whatever happens to be in her mind at that moment with whatever guest happens to drop by. The Manolo would definitely watch that.
Second,ugg kids classic short, allow the Manolo to congratulate the crazy Vincent for designing what was the superior outfit of the evening. Even the better, Vincent angry,1 out to be the mensch, the person who knew if,1 it was appropriate to apologize and was not abashed,1 to tell someone so. Yes, he is wound three turns too bound,1, but he is not the bad person.
And actuality,1 the Manolo he is risking abundant,1 scorn and acrimony,1 from the recovering-addict-American community, but what can he do, there are those humans,1 who would simply be better company benumbed,1.
There are few things that test the true ability of the artist,1 than having to dress the woman who is not the angular,1 jailbait,1 with the protruding hip basic,1 and the stick legs. Just ask Alison from the last week’s challenge.
Ayyyyyyyy! Such fun!
First, allow the Manolo to say, adieu, candied,1 Barbie Prince Bob. Yes, aggregate,1 you made looked as if it was something you had just,1 purchased down at the Ross Dress for Less, but you were still the nice guy and you had the big gym-made biceps.
Speaking of the bad being,1, the Manolo cannot help but anticipate,1 that the Jeffrey must accept,1 been the much more affable,carote croccanti,1 person as the junkie. Indeed, slumped against the wall in the heroin amazement,1 would be infinately above,1 to the rude, affronted,1, advancing,1, petulant child he is abstaining,1.
The Manolo anticipation,1 that the outfits produced by Michael and Uli were absolutely,1 good, and that the Kayne did much better than the board,1 gave him acclaim,1 for. Laura’s accouterments,1 made the Manolo think of something,1 the executive secretary of the assertive,1 age would wear to the office, absolutely,1 not something,1 to be beat,1 on the cruise. As for the Jeffrey’s and Angela’s…ayyyyyyyy! Only in the mind of the Angela could the shaky-shaky fringe = Audrey Hepburn.
Finally, the Manolo loves, loves, loves the Joan Kors.
For the past several months the Manolo has considered the Blogging the Project Runway to be the individual,1 a lot of,1 important resource on the internets for the Project Runway television show, absolutely,1, it is far more important and informative than the abounding,1 with fluff and nonsense website of the Bravo. (The Manolo alone,1 goes to the Bravo website,1 to apprehend,1 the Tim Gunn’s podcasts.)
Manolo says, this episode of the Project Runway, it had it all: the anger, the tears, the ladies of the certain admeasurement,1, the Micheal Kors and the mother of the Michael Kors in the Mommy-and-Me outfits!
P.S. The cool,1 absurd,1 Laura K. of the super fantastic Blogging the Project Runway,UGG Sundance II Boots, reminds the Manolo that this latest challenge, like at atomic,1 two of the antecedent,1 challenges, was aboriginal,1 appropriate,1 and discussed by the actual,1 canny readers of the Blogging the Project Runway, continued,ugg casuals,1 afore,1 the producers anytime,1 “thought” of them.
The Jeffrey he does have the accord,1 of the Manolo, as he is undoubtedly tormented in means,1 we cannot know, but this it is not the alibi,1 for getting,1 calumniating,1 to someone’s astronomic,1.
As for the blow,1 of this adventure,1, the Manolo loved the mothers, this was the wonderful, stupdenous abstraction,1 from the producers. Here, the Manolo thought, was the chance for these aspiring designers to dress the absolute,1, accustomed,1 woman in all of her glory. Brilliant!
If you love the Project Runway you should be reading the Blogging the Project Runway.
Owsers II
Yesterday I went down to see what was going on with the protesters. On Thurs. I had some interesting conversations, but because I ran into an old friend, I ended up spending more catch-up time with him and less on the demonstrators, so on Sat. I grabbed a subway and spoke with more people.
I met a guy who was an organizer dressed as if he had come down from one of the banks and took off his jacket to join the protesters. He says he expects to be there into the winter.
I met various women who told me they were farmers and had some books on permaculture. Of course I told them about Tripp. So in answer to some of the bloggers here, there were people attending who wanted to share their success at farming and moving into a local paradigm.
What was most surprising was that I bumped into a woman who was my boss at Time Inc. (upper management). She’s an editor who lives in Woods Hole, Ma. I was impressed with a handout she was distributing describing the way money is used in elections.
In the meantime there were people gathering in my backyard, Wash. Square Park where Bill McKibben was speaking. Oh to be in two places at once!
Wow! So much for the lack of an agenda! Bill McKibben – that would be hard to pass up.
Wonderful news about the lady farmers promoting permaculture, and a strange thing to think about my name being mentioned on the streets of NYC! I truly believe that permaculture is a (the?) viable option for a contractionary future, whatever flag it flies under. David Holmgren himself says that what people call it is a secondary matter, but since it’s based on the principles nature employs to solve her problems, it will most likely permeate an energy descent future. He views permaculture as the energy descent phase of human history – stable low-energy existence for most of human pre-history; followed by the growth culture that is just ending; followed by permaculture/energy descent for the next 300-400-ish years (a time of constant and sometimes radical adaptation for a culture learning to live on less energy every generation); followed by a sustainable, low-energy, ostensibly much lower-population, culture of the future.
Telling I think, and so cool!, that you were discussing permaculture in the streets as the whole mess comes to a head! Thanks for your reports. -Tripp
The pleasure is mine!
I respect what you’re doing and anyway I can spread the word, I will. Some of these people were from Vermont and upstate NY, so they were camping out in the square for a few days to share their own stories.
The larger society is obtuse and not getting what’s happening.
McKibben summed things up pretty well at Washington Squ park when describing how the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline approval process has been undermined by allowing the company itself to do it’s own analysis of the dangers to the environment.
Of course they gave it their stamp of approval countering what most scientists think.
This is part and parcel of the whole governing process of this country where lobbyists get to write the laws to suit their needs.
you can find the video under treehugger.com
Again so sorry I can’t post the website exactly.
If I were to attempt to answer Truthteller’s charge that the regulars here are mired in doom and self-defeat, I would say that at least most of these guys understand the gravity of the situation, however negative (and in some cases backward) their responses can sometimes be to it, and that seems to be precious hard to come by these days in the general population. This list embodies a fraternity of perspectives that seems unafraid to discuss the heavy and controversial matters that are shaping our future right now, however difficult they may be to face.
Doom and self-defeat are understandable responses to the magnitude of the multiple challenges we face, though they lead nowhere productive, and should be discarded for a more hopeful response as soon as can be managed. I don’t have much patience for the veteran doomsters around here, nor for the techno-cornucopians who believe that just the right amount of sunshine and rainbow-sprinkles will see us through.
For my part, I’m here to present the alternative response that permaculture offers to people who understand the seriousness of the situation.
Keystone XL tar sands pipeline approval process has been undermined by allowing the company itself to do it’s own analysis of the dangers…
Correction. They were allowed to hire a company of their choice to do the analysis.
Different, but somehow the same.
“Wall Street Occupy movement trying to destroy jobs, says Michael Bloomberg”
This takes the cake!! Yep, lets blame the victims.
Oh, god, George Orwell would be laughing so hard he’d be puking & pooping his pants at the same time.
Dee
Lbendet –
Thanks so much for your “report from the front lines” regarding the OWSers. And, wow, Bill McKibben and a manager from Time – maybe the depth of interest is even greater than I have been thinking.
I pulled up the youtube version of McKibben’s speech – pretty interesting. Here’s one of the things a reviewer said that he said:
“As for President Obama himself, McKibben speculates that the person in office must be a stunt double, based on how many campaigns promised on the environment, energy, and climate have been unfulfilled.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13S5uqPLJUk&feature=player_embedded
Since no electronic speech amplification is allowed for the OWSers??, McKibben has a group standing with him and repeating his words – word for word.
It makes me wonder if this was the technique used for all political (etc) speeches – prior to the age of electronics and radio.
The thing that people don’t really seem to get about the big tar sands project is that the EROI is pathetic compared to the elephant fields of pressurized near-surface light sweet crude upon which we’ve designed our economy. Doesn’t matter at’all how much recoverable fuel exists in those tar sand deposits. The economy as we know it will not function on such pathetic energy returns. It will have to change fundamentally. It will have to reorganize around local supply chains that don’t cost so much energy to operate. And so, despite the supposed windfall, we cruise on into energy descent and all that that implies. Nes pas?
Now, understand that I am no where near New York.
In fact I’m 80 miles above Atlanta. So my view of “news” comes from the MSM and the internet.
And I’m left with a feeling that the TEA Partiers were organized by deeper pockets pulling the strings. And I’m left seeing that the Republican are trying desperately to absorb the TEA’s into the mainstream corporate Republicanism.
Why mention this now? Because the same thing will likely be happening to the OSWERS. And they need to be aware of it, proactively.
Lbend has me assuming that at least one or two new CFN readers will be from the OWS group.
=========================
Which brings me to what is, IMO, the most important issue facing the OWSERS, and the world at large – that being the rate of increase of the population of the United States.
I have looked at several lists of OWSER goals –
JOBS and higher pay
REDUCED MILITARY INTERVENTIONS
REDUCED atmospheric CARBON INPUTS
etc, etc, etc
But, ALL of these laudable and basic goals DECREASE in likelihood of being attained – as US population increases.
YET – it looks as though the UBERLIBERAL goal of open borders and unlimited US immigration – may become part of the cry of the OWSERS.
If so – there is an inherent illogic in the OWSER movement – that will cause them to marginalize themselves – and cause them, in the final analysis, to be of no help to the greater World at large.
I hate to see that happen.
Thanks again for what you are doing Lbendet.
INDEED! As JHK says there will not be the capital to invest in this.
_______________
progress2conserve: Yes it was good seeing that former Time Exec. who is now an editor in Woods Hole Ma. She was always a free spirit, might I inform you.
Also thank you for adding the Obama part of McKibben’s speech. It was pretty funny. He wants to play back for O what he said on the campaign trail in 2008.
Sadly the Reps, are what I call the three R’s,
Ravanchist, Revisionists and regressive! Wait till you see how expensive live will be when we privatize everything. Costs will go up 4X what you see now that government provides. You like medical costs? Watch all costs skyrocket, watch your wages go down at the same time.
This article at Dollar Collapse is worth a look:
I bolded some of the most discouraging statistics… ~ Ilene
Courtesy of Michael Snyder of Economic Collapse
The Top 100 Statistics About The Collapse Of The Economy That Every American Voter Should Know
The U.S. economy is dying and most American voters have no idea why.
Unfortunately, the mainstream media and most of our politicians are not telling the truth about the collapse of the economy.
This generation was handed the keys to the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen, and we have completely wrecked it.
Decades of incredibly foolish decisions have left us drowning in an ocean of corruption, greed and bad debt.
Nice on-the scene report Ibendet (unOfficial CFN Wall Street Correspondent). Good job!
Washington Square Park? The same park Henry James wrote about 100 years ago?
Hancock 1863, I posted about 20 words looking for similarities between Tea Party and Owsers. You responded with 2000 words. One similarity is that both movements seem to oppose the massive bailouts of the last 4 years. One observation: a week doesn’t seem to pass when I read about yet another Obama $35,000 fundraising dinner ON WALL STREET. Is this guy playing both sides of the fence or what?
In the Investors Business Daily (IBN) this weekend, interesting, contrasting, editorials hammering George Soros, a sinister character who they say is bankrolling the Owsers, And the Koch brothers, who they claim are champions of liberty and free enterprise.
I must say, the protesters shutting down the Air & Space museum in Washington yesterday causes me to think that the Owser movement might be something more than a protest against “corporate greed”.
But what the hell do I know, I’m a diesel mechanic who barely graduated from Cracker HS outside Orlando? Not an erudite, effete, homo NYU wordsmith writing for ‘The New Yorker”.
WSP7
Very astute analysis, Prog. No matter what side of the immigration issue one resides on, the call for open borders by the OWSERS pits them against the sentiments of a majority of Americans. And not only that, it unwittingly puts them on the side of the corporations they are protesting against and who tend to welcome cheap labor and increasing customer base with open arms. As you mentioned, it’s illogical. After all, why the cry for open borders and the influx of cheap labor that inevitably follows when one of your street complaints is a lack of economic justice?
Evidently, WPS, you’ve been doing quite a bit of reading since your high school days. I mean come on, “effete” and “erudite” are not words that are bandied about in a mechanic’s workshop 🙂
“Very astute analysis, Prog.”
Thanks, Buck. Makes me wonder if our CFN associate, asoka., is down there with the OWSERS and working on doctrine.
Despite the many flaws of the RW in the US, they tend to have a sharp focus on a couple of things – like a strong military and lower taxes.
I wish the left could pick just one or two issues and agree on them.
Of course I wish this CFN blog software would work correctly. I just had a thoughty post to WSP blocked and got myself 403’d again.
When that gibberish about Blogging the Runways posted just fine.
Weird.
Hey Buck just because I turn a wrench doesn’t mean I’m totally stupid. Actually to qualify for some of my CG licenses I had to take some courses at MIT. Just like those legendary PHds in Philosophy working at Starbucks, discussing Hegelian dialectics while pouring out your cup of joe.
–WSP7
“…like those legendary PHds in Philosophy working at Starbucks, discussing Hegelian dialectics…”
-WSP-
That’s pretty funny, WideSpread. So you are servicing the yachts of the uberrich?
I worked on pool construction for the uberrich in Atlanta, back in the early ’80’s. Some nice guys; some jackasses – some lucky; some ruthless – but mostly the uberrich are just like the rest of us, except they have more money.
I’d take issue with TruthTeller about one thing – when she says that the rich have a plan for collapse. I don’t think they do – at least not for the sort of collapse that we consider to be likely on CFN. Pools and yachts just mean that you have money to waste – not that you have the intelligence to spend that money in ways that might really benefit yourself OR society, if and when that Metaphorical Sh*t really does HTF.
– on the Plutonomy –
Hancock, you make some good points. Especially, the thought of an OWSER carrying a weapon to a rally – like the TEA Baggers do/did. And the way that RW national politicians call the OWSERS a “MOB!” You’re right, and again, good pointS.
But regarding the link on the Plutonomy from Citibank. The link dates to 2006. And basically the link says that investors should orient their strategy toward stocks that do well when the rich prosper. In other words – Sell WallMart (WMT) and buy Coach (COH) – sort of advice.
Which was not bad investment advice in ’06 – that still holds fairly true today.
The link also says “there have been other Plutonomies through history – and they don’t last forever…” (rough paraphrase, I’m afraid that I’ll get 403’d if I look up the link right now)
In other words – even our UberRich in the US need to realize that their reign won’t last forever.
==============
It was really good to see you back on CFN, Hancock. The software is acting bizarre right now. Maybe next week will be better. Or maybe bad software really is part of a RW Authoritarian Plot.
P2C
I’ve always been partial to the term “effete cork-sniffer” myself.
You pretty much nail it, P2C!
Except, probably like owners of pools, not all people who own boats are ‘uber rich’. Some people like boats and sacrifice other things to have one. Its a pleasant way of life. I enjoy messing around with boats on the water, especially here.
–WSP7
If open borders become a facet of the OWS plan, we’ll know that their message has been co-opted by someone who probably has a job and/or plenty of money. Right or left, hard to tell them apart these days if you ask me, but bringing in more competition for fewer jobs wouldn’t be first on any unemployed jake’s list of demands, I’m pretty sure. This is kind of a stretch, don’t you think, Prog?
Soros and his ‘Open Society’?
Tripp,
That cuts right to the quick of the matter.
Those of us that have a slight inkling of how things “work” [or don’t] and have a weather-eye on where it [usually] leads would do well to heed this jaguar’s paw-print in the twilit mud.
I’ve always been partial to the term “effete cork-sniffer” myself. -Tripp
lol
I tend to frequent establishments where the query is, “Would you care to sniff the cap?”. (As in, industrial twist-off.)
SHEISSE!
The one day this weekend I have an ironclad obligation, Marlin comes within 2 FUCKING MILES of my place! Grrrr; now that’s a frustration that turns my crank, Frank. Makes me wanna spit; especially with the unbelievably glorious temporal weather that is so rare here.
We must plan and use the existing technology while we have use of it to connect, exchange ideas, and have some big laughs!
(Sorry, I’m just pissed that the stars were out of alignment yesterday. It stings.)
Marlin,
…And just take a little guess at where I was on a beautiful Saturday in Fall…
That’s right, playing a private party on HUCKLEBERRY HILL, about 12 minutes from YOUR HOUSE!
Geeeeeez! (I’ll be in touch; this shit will not stand.)
“One observation: a week doesn’t seem to pass when I read about yet another Obama $35,000 fundraising dinner ON WALL STREET. Is this guy playing both sides of the fence or what?” -WSP
Ha!
I believe you already have the answer to that. (Strictly rhetorical, m’dear. ;o)
Vizer to Prez:
“That’s correct; tell the lumpenproles any-fucking-thing that they want to hear about how you’re gonna take care of them (and pay their cable bill, while you’re at it), but when we say, “Deliver!”, you would do well to ask, “What, when and how much?”. (‘Why’ is not an option.) To fail in this is to ensure no further contributions from those who matter most. We hope this directive is to our mutual benefit. If not… well we can always find ourselves another ‘representative of democracy’ without to much aggravation. ”
(But, you knew that.)
TOO much
(I know Q. is watching, if not presently chiding.)
Holy Crap!
Finally, a useful advertized link. Who could have conceived of such a thing? Pun’kins, anyone?
http://agrariannation.blogspot.com/
Enough outta me; see yez next week….
Concur, WSP –
What set me off – and lead to a blocked post for some reason – was a huge yacht that I saw on the Intercoastal Waterway in Savannah on Thursday. Brand new; with a uberrich or corporate owner. One guy on board, probably a professional skipper “yacht relocator.” He was on plane at twenty knots or so and going hell for leather southbound to Florida – burning an enormous amount of diesel as he went.
The boat was documented in New York – I wondered if Lbend knew the owners. He’s heading your way now, WSP. Those diesels will probably need an oil change and filters when he gets there.
You do have a dream job for boat lovers – and in a genuine dream place. We used to go to the Keys every year or so – sometimes pulling a boat – back when gas was less than a buck a gallon – and I’d never thought through all the ramifications of peak oil.
“If open borders become a facet of the OWS plan, we’ll know that their message has been co-opted…”
-tripp-
Concur, Tripp. The OSW movement seems to be evolving as we speak. I wish them well – but don’t hold out a lot of hope. I’d actually like to take the average of the best TEA party ideas and the best OWS ideas.
I’m afraid both groups are being co-opted beyond recognition, though.
I’m probably through for the week, too. I noticed that “agrarian nation” thing myself, O3. When I tried to link to it – I got blocked and 403’d.
Weird.
JAMES HOWARD KNUSTLER
FIX THIS WEBSITE!
PLEASE.
These are important times for thinking people to be in communication.
The boat was documented in New York – I wondered if Lbend knew the owners.
Ha, in my dreams–
Couple of comments:
1) Since the OWSers don’t speak with one voice, don’t think they’re all into immigration.
2) Don’t think all rich are cut from the same cloth or are the playas.
They can be victims of this system as much as anyone. In fact this syphoning of wealth could be going up the food chain.
“They can be victims of this system as much as anyone. In fact this syphoning of wealth could be going up the food chain.”
I like to imagine western capitalism as a game of No-limit Texas Hold ‘Em. The world-class players aren’t winning by luck of the draw, and ultimately the purse becomes much bigger by allowing more people into the game along the way. In the end, however, it’s always the same: One table of sharks left holding towers of checks.
I also like to imagine that all the early departures are already at the beach, roasting a pig, pitching the football around, and smoking a doobie to some Jimmy Buffett, without a care in the world for the sharks.
“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”
Chinese Proverb.
Thought this might be fitting for some of us.
Cool site about some BIG FLOODS!! Maybe you have perused it already. Anyway, just sayin’ !
http://hugefloods.com/
We are lucky in this neck of the woods. We live on top of Lake Hitchcock. We have water like crazy.
http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/hitchcock.html
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Constellation of the world’s most complete ranking ~ ~ must be stolen, too quasi! !
most beautiful: 1 scales 2 bottles 3 Twin
most active: 1 Aries 2 bottles 3 shooter
best husband: Taurus
favorite cleaning: 1 virgin 2 . scales 3. Capricorn
best Father: Leo
most greedy: 1 Taurus 2 scales 3. Cancer
best judge: Libra
the most fun: 1 bottle 2 . Aries 3 shooter
best businessmen: Aries
most lazy: 1 scales 2 Taurus 3 Cancer
best salesman: Gemini
most arrogant: 1 Lion 2 Aries 3 Scorpio
Best Cleaner: Virgo
Best Chef: Taurus,Moncler Daunenjacke, Libra
best scientists: Aquarius
best athletes: Sagittarius
most likely jealous: 1. Taurus 2 Scorpio 3 4 Virgo Sagittarius 5 Aries
desire the most easy to implement: 1 Aquarius 2 Aries 3 Pisces 4 Leo 5 Gemini
history the whole constellation rankings (2)
best combination:
1. Libra + Leo 2. Taurus + Cancer 3. Twin + bottle
Aquarius – Pisces
fear no spiritual freedom – real pressure
Aries fear – fear losing someone, fear of failure, fear of boredom
Taurus – are most afraid of change, fear of hunger
Gemini – fear falling behind, no fear of other people have their own
Cancer – fear no sense of security
Leo – Virgo
fear loss of face – fear making mistakes, fear of criticism
Libra – the most fear of loneliness, fear not friends
Scorpio – afraid someone betrayed him, not afraid of authority
Sagittarius – fear loss of freedom of movement, fear of being exhorted
Capricorn – are most afraid of money, fear and embarrassment fear no place to hang
face the most popular boys and girls
1. Libra: Your beauty and mature behavior are able to attract the opposite sex
2. Pisces: You may distribute the helpless feeling, others will not help to want to protect your
3. Sagittarius: They think you get along well, so you popular with the boys welcome
4. Aquarius: You will dress very, fast response, and thus by their The love
5. Gemini: funny conversation and hearty image is popular because you
6. Virgo: You can move the pure temperament is the boy’s heart
7. Taurus: You steady moderate personality is very popular, is the lack of points feminine
8. Cancer: love like a baby make you popular, but you do not know how the wind blows
9. Aries: Your lack of feminine energy is too abundant the boy you back away
10. Leo: so proud of you boys stay away, afraid you will be riding in the head
11. Scorpio: You exude mystery, let the boys think you are hard to close 12. Capricorn: You cold and go its own way, so that they feel will be good to you, you show contempt
Aries: the first impulse, regret doing things first, Huoqi Da first, bold first, Ganaiganhen first.
Taurus: stable first, check the first section, the first love of money, the first reliable, hard-working first.
Gemini: gossip first, the first intelligent, crazy first, humor first,bottes ugg classic, then more than the first.
Cancer: thoughtful first, eat first, the first love of family, filial piety, first, sentimental first.
Leo: self-confidence first, love is the first to face first, the first taste, grace first.
Virgo: carefully first, pick the first shave, first love clean, fuss first, jealous first.
Libra: beauty first, hesitant first, lazy first, eloquent first, just the first.
Scorpio: love is the first, first pretending to be cool, attractive first, first cold, rational first.
Sagittarius: fun first, confused first, cute first, the courage to try first, with no subtlety first.
Capricorn: the first serious, calm first, the first patient, the first serious, conservative first.
Aquarius: first curious, eager to learn first, creative first, the first alternative, the first miracle.
Pisces: the first soft-hearted, sensitive, first, paranoia first, first love to dream, Huth chaos first.
up woman: Twin
at least a strong woman: Cancer
most will be amusing: Libra
most will be opportunistic: Gemini
most will not opportunistic: goat
most do not magnanimous: goat
most magnanimous: striker
most people will not discuss favor: Lions will discuss the most people favor
: Pisces
most afford to lose: Libra & Leo
The most emotional: Cancer
most knowledgeable: Virgin & bottle
most rational: bottle
most lovestruck: Cancer
favorite ran out: striker
favorite at home: Cancer the least principle: Twin
the hardest to understand: bottle
most do not mind: Cancer
most no secret: The Lion
most easily understood: The Lion & Aries
most mysterious. most people do not believe: the most cautious Scorpio
: Virgin
most objective: the most subjective scales
: Lion
favorite stimulation: Sagittarius & Aries & Gemini
the most peace-loving : Taurus & Cancer & Sagittarius
most likely shy: Taurus & Cancer & Scorpio
most like to be alone: ??the most demanding water bottle
: Pisces
angry worst: Scorpio ()
most likely to face Man: Gemini
most’m different: Aquarius
dullest: Taurus
fastest response: Twin
most indecisive: the least attention to scales
Discipline: Archer & bottle
least considerate: Twin
fell the most radical: Scorpio
most will climb Relations: Gemini
least momentum eye: Pisces
most not guilty: Libra
most impulsive: Aries & Aries & Leo
largest male chauvinism: Scorpio & Aries
most trusted: goat
best memory: Pisces
most will not unpopular: Libra & Sagittarius
most fair: Libra
most nostalgic: Pisces
the most contradictory: Twin
the most important character: Gemini
often the most serious: most do not like Taurus
friends: the most patient
Scorpio: Taurus
most impatient: Sagittarius & Leo
favorite friends: Sagittarius & Libra
handed the easiest bad friends: the best shooter
will be talking on the phone: Libra
most gentle: the most considerate
Taurus: Cancer
most will not see his face: striker
most sense of obligation: Scorpio & Leo
most lazy: bottle The most eloquent: Libra & Aquarius
can not stand to be criticized: goat
most likely feel satisfied: Cancer
the most stubborn: Taurus
most orderly: Taurus
most likely when the dark horse : water bottles will be crammed most
: Gemini & Sagittarius
afraid to waste: Taurus
fear most nauseating: goat
most motivated: goat
the most daring: Aries
the most important appearance: strong body scales
up: Aries & Taurus
most petite women: Taurus
most will whim: Gemini & Sagittarius & Aquarius
most important spiritual dimension: water bottle
the least attention to the spiritual level: the best shooter
want to protect: most likely have to collect the lion
addiction: Aquarius & Gemini
most confident: the most afraid of the lion
lens: Aries the most humane: Cancer
least romantic: most goat
Worship tendencies: most scales
its own way: bottle
most Pachao: Scorpio
most in need of self-space: water bottle The most time will be delayed: bottle
least serious: Twin
favorite trouble: Cancer & goat
most do not worry: Aries & Sagittarius
up guy: Sagittarius the most beautiful: bottle
most Gu: Cancer
the most eccentric taste: the most calm water bottle
disaster: a disaster in the bottle
least cool: Lion & Aries
most vulnerable crime : Sagittarius & Aries
most feminine: Aquarius & Taurus
m
ost masculine: Aries
most committed to something outside of school textbooks: bottle
most important self-esteem: The Lion, the most
Snooze: bottle
most will be cranky: Pisces
favorite fantasy: Aquarius & Pisces
most likely to chat: bottle
favorite hard: most do not like hard goat
: striker
most likely to international marriage: up married in the Twin
: Gemini & Pisces
the best of luck: Twin
will spend the most: the most narcissistic scales
: Lion & scales
favorite of nature: water bottles
most likely body language: Gemini
favorite black: up to night owls
Scorpio: Pisces
most often as a face: Pisces
most frank: Lion
most non-gender concept: the bottle will tap
most secret: the most charismatic Scorpio
: Scorpio
most people think it is eccentric: bottle
favorite money: Taurus The most despise money: bottle
soul to the most specific: Cancer
most do not know ways of the world: the best shooter
reciprocity: if at least
Taurus: Scorpio constellation classification
~ Entertainment ~
******************************************** *******
First Constellation:
Scorpio (foresight, hidden, crafty, bold and ambitious, strong will, insight, strong, real 12 stars the highest!)
Capricorn (hard-working, good time, ambitious, humiliation, perseverance, indomitable will, after the constellation of Scorpio’s excellent!)
Aquarius (weird thought, the very people energy and, unusually calm, unique and eccentric, elusive. an extremely attractive alien constellations)
second sign:
Leo (with leadership, courage, dare dare, the disadvantage is arrogant, do not listen to persuade)
Libra (elegant and gentlemanly, handsome, many friends, but this star non-assertive, well enjoy)
Taurus (stable, practical, artistic cells than human honest. But the star mostly miser, and his hard work for money)
Gemini (Jen, quick thinking, reflecting the swift pace, communicative ability. But the star said, more mistakes, two minds, not qualitative) Sagittarius (Zhixing Zi, interpersonal skills rated the highest in 12 stars, many friends, like the unfettered freedom of life, nothing but patience for this star, to do things halfway. and helping them, not practical, dishonesty)
Third Constellation:
Aries (the stars are mostly impulsive person, no brain, naive, aggressive.)
Cancer (this star only know my mother, children, love. freak. male crab is also true good for nothing)
Virgo (analities king, nervous, preoccupied, over the top, not gregarious. more unpleasant constellation)
Pisces (a living in a dream among the 12 constellations in the constellation of the most vulnerable , not assertive, mercy. alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, while the 12 constellations of stars in the crime rate is also the first)
[Postscript]
romance a Pisces will be drunk; Taurus will hold Cancer will call first complained bitterly
; Leo will go to the beach hair
Sagittarius will look over all the film; Virgo will retreat for three days
Capricorn will seriously examine and reflect; Aries will go to KTV Libra will roar
suffered all the food; Scorpio lover will find the next book their tickets abroad
Gemini will relax; Aquarius will be feeling crazy Shopping
[EQ]
virgin born of anxiety Taurus is fixated
can control their emotions
bottle very cold, do not speak of private feelings
Cancer changing mood as the sea tides
scales occasionally angry, very reluctant to take orders Pisces can not stand people
in long-term pain of isolation
striker will not be indulging in any negative emotions
bad mood all the lions will hide their emotions will
Capricorn and seek to be the most reluctant to be critical
twin shackles of dull monotony
Scorpio can not stand love and clear, do not share their feelings with others and feel
Aries for unreasonable things and protest, often to tame appearance to hide his anger
[test]
love love is like a lion’s beef noodle bowl ¤ cargo true love is like the real
Taurus is nice and warm sweater Useful
Cancer love is like eating a delicious cake to eat
want to love like a bottle of Sun Yat-sen as a revolution of love then a
scales like a lot of people like to eat chocolate but could eat a lot of
Capricorn’s love is like bread in your hand you get is a
Pisces love is sacrifice and dedication of so remember to cherish the love of a virgin Oh
inclusive as washing your shortcomings Wash your stain
Aries love is like a fire in winter be careful not to allow the fire to put out a
twin love is like a burst of wind, very comfortable, but never touched
Scorpio Love is like eating spicy hot pot eating some diarrhea
fun but love is like riding shooter war-like stimulation is not immediately killed by arrows shot during
[romance]
bottle Block said the good feeling of wrong early morning
Cancer said scattered hearts felt the sting! I thin he may be ah
Sagittarius say this blew up? Xiang Demei I want to seek justice
Scorpio that you dare? Otherwise, give you a chance to wait and see
Taurus is really unconscionable that I would never lose good accounts first calculate
Gemini said it is true? If it is not a joke had to figure it
Aries said what’s great Splendor in the Grass really do not know what
Libra has eyes that appear to leave on good do not revel in fact obsessed with haunting Leo said here had no hope elsewhere, self-esteem smile masked sad
Capricorn secretly miss that some even do not know what to say but it will make him regret archery
Pisces Advisory Council said it was even end? I have wrong? Wait for another one day
Virgo said bolt from the blue, cloud cover day, should be subjected to hateful Tiandaleipi
[angry]
Taurus is too lazy to eat a big meal
Scorpio He is lazy monsters reasons
Sagittarius is not unpleasant tone to prepare this sack
Leo is his thirty-seven twenty-one tube directly to his mouth to talk about accounts like
Cancer is best to be a dream he is flat
Pisces is hiding a romantic and tragic, suffering write love poems
Aquarius is swallow whatever the outcome, but also cynicism I mess with some
Libra is close to his flattery, then he knocked on his meal
Capricorn secretly curse is afraid to stir up trouble like something will happen quickly put a brave face
Gemini is an enemy to get rid of the joint secondary Revenge on the main enemy of the absolute
Virgo is a good memory does not get mad years later when the guard until he did not want to take money to drop
Aries is the person to take, but still spend more able to pick up the vent
tokens [Grand]
Scorpio: serene expression, the Pentium
there Kazuma Pisces in his heart: There have long been feeling, and silently accepted, leaving endless aftertaste
shooter Block: Women for a male hand on his shoulders, male on a woman very close, if not exclusive
Capricorn: still have not action, so let others worried the cold sweat, and finally said the
Gemini: I am sincere, the action goes as happy as dug treasure
Leo: Can not find home plate and first base are there even archery, enjoy each other after so
Mu Sheep Block: kiss face, the slightest warmth well up, hurry to the next step to
Aquarius: as a joke and a little formal, a knowing smile to know what I mean
Taurus: very natural However, first base and second base line so clear,’ll see how
Libra: attempt to care for, they meet the time available, the action to follow to
Virgo: small hands do not intend to catch the line , blush run, it would temporarily maintain t
he status quo
Cancer: get closer and closer,Moncler Online Shop, staring eyes so short after it all
[when]
Scorpio unrequited love in my heart that colic I am not willing! I still have to try
Aquarius is one that I really love! No results,Moncler Jacken Outlet, the fault is not that a bit I think …
Capricorn, and a little do not want to, you can unrequited love,bottes ugg, you can not love each
Gemini said good, not I did not taste that I do not want to fall into unrequited love
Libra that I have indicated, have been paid, I know where the problem, the Advisory Council on how to do that
Virgo thoughts, appreciation, love, I have been very hard, How
Sagittarius can say that I love! Do not accept? It does not matter, this does not mean the failure of
Taurus I said I really compare anyone? After calmly think about, well, do not want to say a
Pisces awake, even dreams are like the two of us in the end there is no fate
Cancer that can not afford to cut, and chaotic, if it is really not never want to put the yearning heart
Leo buried in whatever way that I deserve? Even archery! I think I should still point to appreciate the opportunity
Aries I say, try again, if more did not respond … hum! Do not know what personality
[hide]
pure Virgo is actually a good color
practical Capricorn is very romantic
generous Libra basically petty
tame Pisces is also very cold painted side
personalized Aquarius does not pushy
careful and meticulous gift of Scorpio will be moved
seemingly candid Leo actually pay attention to each person secretly
seemingly indifferent Gemini will be no hiding place in tears
adventurous Sagittarius do not like the order of life seemingly careless destruction
Aries actually enjoy housework
; timid Cancer in fact give up all the spirit of adventure
honest Taurus will lie and do not feel guilty
[headache]
find the direction to create a Aries
can not work to stay at home
Virgo Aquarius actually told not to trouble, not cranky … powder is difficult to
naturally curious Gemini, boring face all day like something
Leo learning point talent, but do not know the school even archery stuff
care of the Taurus full of money, seeing friends, borrow money without desire for emotional return
Cancer, was hit by ungrateful people
love of freedom, travel Sagittarius, is staying in school, to stay look
about seeing Capricorn reached the goal, has chosen to appear hindered
fear Libra friends misunderstood, one day is really misunderstood by friends
good imagination of Pisces, are required to memorize some things back a loved one
dare hide for Scorpio, which may suffer, the
under the [intelligence], then rain
Capricorn love you, regret the choice of my life
Gemini love Valentine’s Day next year, you also said you do not want to stop
Pisces is my most beautiful and romantic encounter
Leo said that no one can replace you in my heart position
Sagittarius say you are my only life, the ultimate lover
Libra say you are my life, attachment, love you forever
Virgo said you know my heart, I look eager you Scorpio Love
say you are my fatal attraction, love you love addicted
Taurus that without you, my world will not work, end the brink
Aries said, I sent you by express to you my
Aquarius said
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