Make No Mistake

myrtlemay March 28, 2011 at 9:46 am #

First!

Großdeutschland March 28, 2011 at 9:48 am #

It knows one big thing: that the future cannot be foretold, period, and that those who try to predict it are deluding themselves and the rest of us. In defense of that theory, Gardner dips into the science of unpredictability and the psychology of certainty. And he provides case studies of failed prophets — a kind of hedgehog highlight reel, in which the environmental scientist Paul Ehrlich, the historian Arnold Toynbee and the social critic James Howard Kunst¬ler come in for a particularly hard time.

-Kathryn Schulz
on FUTURE BABBLE
Why Expert Predictions Are Next to Worthless, and You Can Do Better
By Dan Gardner
NYT Book Review, March 27th
Future Babble

GoldSubject March 28, 2011 at 9:49 am #

If instead of listening to the chronically incorrect academics they paid a little attention to the heroes of truth — Celente, Keiser, Kunstler, Schiff — there might actually be some hope.
It is becoming increasingly clear that this is not an age of reasonableness, for want of a better word.
http://www.goldsubject.com/fiat-money-madness-gold-kinetic-theory-condensation-after-expansion/

k-dog March 28, 2011 at 9:53 am #

I voted for him in 2008, and I want to start a movement in whatever’s left of the Progressive core to get rid of him.

That’s great, we probably can’t stop his re-election but we can at least make a big stink trying.
I voted for him but was let down early by his failure to take any action on Guantanamo. My disillusionment went on from there. A black president who doesn’t give a shit about human rights. It’s mind boggling.

Norman Conquest March 28, 2011 at 9:55 am #

I don’t understand JHK’s faith in the Millennials, nor (for that matter) the Democratic Party or ANY party. But it does get old living on the edge of doom week after week.

Draupnir March 28, 2011 at 9:59 am #

Sorry, Mr. Kunstler, I believe we have gone past the point where a mere political movement will be of much use.

zen17 March 28, 2011 at 9:59 am #

Voting for president became irrelevant quite a while ago. Still, we had hope for Obama….what a disappointment….what a tool.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to get your own house in order now. Time is scarce. Get your body healthy and your mind clear.
http://wanderingsagewisdom.blogspot.com

dan allen March 28, 2011 at 10:01 am #

From above: “…the future cannot be foretold, period, and that those who try to predict it are deluding themselves and the rest of us.”
ha ha ha. I love the sparkling intellects who say this…and then proceed to predict the future 200+ years as a linear extrapolation of the past 50 years.
ha ha ha

k-dog March 28, 2011 at 10:03 am #

If enough people saw this video before January Obama would be a one term president and the Democrats would be forced to provide a better option.
Sub-headed “Barack Obama and the failure of capitalist democracy”, this film explores the historical role of the Democratic Party as the “graveyard of social movements”, the massive influence of corporate finance in elections, the absurd disparities of wealth in the United States, the continuity and escalation of neocon policies under Obama, the insufficiency of mere voting as a path to reform, and differing conceptions of democracy itself.
Lifting The Veil

Zoltar March 28, 2011 at 10:05 am #

Jim! Surely you can’t think there is still some way to salvage the Democratic Party? Or, for that matter, the two-party system. It’s broken, permanently. What’s worse, the charlatans who happen to call themselves Democrats have tainted the honorable word “progressive” for a generation or more, so that it is no longer useful as a rallying cry for a hypothetical opposition.
As for the shock of a bitterly disappointing black president, think about it: who are the women who break into The Club, Mother Teresa? Margaret Thatcher, Sarah Palin, and their ilk. Did you think they’d let a black man in who wasn’t one of their own?

endofworld March 28, 2011 at 10:07 am #

thanks Jim,with your excellent choice of words-time to take my meds-you ruined my day,month,year,etc.gold,silver,guns,food…..

Andrew MacDonald March 28, 2011 at 10:07 am #

Make no mistake, the future will belong to those who can build a local community with relatively low inputs right at home. Living frugally and local is where we’re going. Might as well be the first one on your block.
Really can we do this lightly and have fun in the process? Um yes! Some ideas at http://www.RadicalRelocalization.com

tictoc March 28, 2011 at 10:07 am #

I can’t believe Kunstler didn’t mention Japan in this column.

mow March 28, 2011 at 10:11 am #

the only person i have cast my vote for president during this century has been nader.
idiots.

myrtlemay March 28, 2011 at 10:13 am #

Some disagreement with JHK here:
“…complete surrender of Obama to the very characters who embodied the corruption that rotted our system from the heart outward….”
Obama didn’t “surrender”. He knew damn well that what he was selling in ’08 was a complete crock of lies, bundled by our CEOs and government whores.
“Being a decent, presentable fellow with a nice family is just not enough.”
Last time I checked, “decent” fellows don’t lie with a straight face and do a complete 180 from what the said they were going to do.
“I have a lot of hope for the millennials, the young people just coming up.”
Can’t share in this new “hope/change” thingy with the millenials. I’ve been around a lot of them. They give new meaning to the word “entitled”, as in, entitled to a college education (that will set them in the hole for the better part of their lives in an unforgiving, unpayable tuition debt). Sorry, but their social skills are on par with zero. This past Christmas I had the misfortune of trying to strike up a conversation with one of these millenials. She had the attention span of a gnat. Every time I spoke with her, she darted her eyes back and forth, from her ipad (OR WHATEVER TF they call them) and me. At first I thought to myself, “Gee, I must be an old wind-bag bore – (most likely true) – but I watched her with others, and she repeated the EXACT SAME BEHAVIOR. The millenials seem to believe that they can “express” themselves by writing and drawing things on their bodies using tattoos. Asking most of them to put together a sentence, either in writing or in conversation, that makes any coherent sense is damn near impossible. I also don’t see any realization that they have any idea just how badly they’ve been fudged by TPTB. I suppose they might just wake up to some sort of coherent behavior when they get the bill presented to them for all of these fine shenanigans our “decent fellow” and his puppeteers are running in the Middle East and Africa.

welles March 28, 2011 at 10:20 am #

….well way to phuqqing wake up kunstler, ’bout time you realized obama’s the worst hustler out there, you gotta be flatlining brainwise to believe anything that transparent mountebank utters.
YET still can’t give up the beloved party huh? what a dupe, i give you a few years til you finally realize what a sucker you’ve been, a real useful idiot, yeah go out & expend all your energy waving little flags for some democrat candidate to ‘change’ things once again.
talk about lack of intelligence among the ivy leaguers, jeezus jim
but good to see you’re wakin’ up piece by piece

Solar Guy March 28, 2011 at 10:26 am #

EARTH= POISON, VIOLENT http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg

lbendet March 28, 2011 at 10:27 am #

Griftopia by Matt Taibi also illustrates so well how the laws that were written in the 1930’s by Roosevelt to protect the world from commodoties speculation for staples that people need to live on, were systematically destroyed through private, secret letters to let certain entities operate without controls.
(16 letters in all by GS subsidiaries from the early 1990’s to 2008). The rest of the investors, and funds are not allowed these secret special privilages, so it’s an unlevel playing field to begin with.
Then we are told they are doing the work of god and make money by working hard….I’ve got some swampland to sell you too. I’ll call it a gorgeous natural setting for your McMansion.
JHK is always surprised to hear that it is academia that is behind much of the ideology that allows neoliberalism to flourish. They are the ones who fashion the Orwellian terminology to be the opposite of what they say it will be.–so very clever. Their defense is to be dismissive of the graft and what the decent way of operating would be as the alternative to their actions.
I personally don’t think that Obama or anyone else can do much about this at this point. It’s too far gone.

Jericho316 March 28, 2011 at 10:29 am #

I too voted for Obama thinking change was on the way. I want him out of office also but really what will that accomplish? This country (and the world for that matter) is controlled by the financial and power elites and all their little henchman like Obama, congress and senate dance to their music. Why bother to vote when you know that the same crap will continue. You really want to send a message to the politicians simply stop voting.
This country produces nothing anymore except toxic financial waste but the one thing we are good at is destroying and blowing stuff up in other countries.
Hopefully someday soon a big event will occur that will forever change the way this country operates and finally tears down the system that these elites have created.
Until then the cheese doodle eating, Nascar watching, cell phone texting, tattoo wearing, Wal-Mart shopping public that the majority of this country consists of will be content to ignore all that is happening around them.

RyeBeachBum March 28, 2011 at 10:30 am #

“Obama, it turns out, is the mistake.”
No shit Jim I could have told you that over two years ago.
Obama is the guy in “The Music Man” only less redeeming. He is a total fraud and he and Moochell have used the office to enrich himself. He is a total sell out. The liberal wing of the Democrat’s still support him because he has a great back story, they are blinded by their desire to have the first Black presidency be a success that they can not see Obama is a failure and a fraud.
For Example. How is it that George “Two Wars Bush” is bad but Barry “Three Wars Obama” is good?

Schwerpunkt March 28, 2011 at 10:31 am #

This was a wonderful entry, and great way to start a week where there is little hope, and a certain gumball with ears is about to take to the TeeVee and tell us, “make no mistake.”
As an ex-educator who worked in the wild mountains of upstate NY, I have known this next generation up close, and I have mixed news. The majority of them are cattle. Dumb cows created only for one reason. Meat. Then, there are a patchwork of creative rebels who neither have grand narratives that created the Baader-Meinhof problem, nor are addled with the same drug problems that challenged the Hippies. Nevertheless, these are perhaps the same few in number as among the Boomers and the Gen-Xers and who knows if they can reach some ground before the floor drops out from under us.
I think a Progressive rebellion against Obama is much needed. I must admit that I have not voted since the war started, after we marched in the streets here and throughout the world in the millions, and our “leaders” betrayed not only our citizens, but the people of the world and especially the people of Iraq. I will take the call and spread the news. We need not reach all the people, but encourage the right people and if nothing else signal to others that there are still thoughtful, civic minded, and moral people in the world.
My own rants at
http://schwerpunkter.wordpress.com/

ubs March 28, 2011 at 10:32 am #

The best way to describe the fundamental difference between conservative and liberal view of government is the tiger analogy. A liberal sees a tiger and thinks: What a strong animal. That beast should be able to pull a plough. The conservative looks at it and thinks: what a dangerous monster. Unless we restrain it, it will eat all the peasants. I believe the historical facts support the conservative view. Maybe now would be a good time for progressives to scale back there ambitions, because it is 5 minutes to 12, which is, as we all know, lunch time.

jammer March 28, 2011 at 10:34 am #

James,
It should come as no surprise that Obama is a bitch to Wall Street. Especially from you. In this country today, we have the best government money can buy. Just follow the money. Look at the campaign contributions to Oboma. I am talking the really BIG ones. It’s like a tea leaf. Indelible in its revelation of whom the servant will be pledging subservience to what masters. As far as the prez elections go, I suspect one will have to hold their nose and mark one for BHO. Who else will do? The green party has candidates whose positions typically resonate, but due to lack of media coverage and pathetic fund raising capacity, they never will make a dent. Also, just love the pinball analogy!

ozone March 28, 2011 at 10:34 am #

K-dog,
On “Lifting the Veil”.
How did you manage to download that?
Please advise; there are a lot of people that need to see it. (Wake-up call from the front desk at Hotel California.)

RyeBeachBum March 28, 2011 at 10:35 am #

Hey Jim let’s all take a shot of Wild Turkey every time Barry seyz “Make no mistake” tonight, I bet we all would get pretty snookered.

Buck Stud March 28, 2011 at 10:35 am #

If you hear a funny little noise in your car, just wait a little while and it won’t be funny anymore. Many have been hearing funny noises for a while now, including the sound of imbeciles whistling past the graveyard. And none of it will be funny–that’s a prediction!

Hugh Culliton March 28, 2011 at 10:36 am #

Chris Hedges is of the opinion that both the GOP & the Dems have been so fundamentally corrupted by Corperate America, that they need to be thrown out. I use to think he was being a little melodramatic, but these days…I don’t know. Obama has proven to be a Quisling. Politics in the entire nation, and at all levels is past sublime and headed to crazy. How can states enact legislation making it somewhat OK to kill abortion providers? How can legislation allowing college student to pack heat on campus even see the light of day, let alone be taken seriously! As well, the amount of damage being done to the common good through attacks on education, the sick, the poor, and the middle class, is staggering!
From the vantage point of being outside the USA looking in, the Christian fundamentalism spreading through the politial landscape is beginning to look a lot like the Islamic type. I’m also begining to understand what an Austrian might have felt as he looked at the political goings on next door in Germany circa 1930. I am rather concerned.

Steve Knox March 28, 2011 at 10:39 am #

Jim,
Always enjoy your Monday morning comments, but this one is outstanding. We need a new sheriff in town, but will he/she have the backing to really clean up the mess? If nothing else, Obama has shown how easy it is to get sucked into this vortex of corruption. As you have mentioned repeatedly, until trust is restored, nothing good will happen, and the only way for that trust to be restored is for the fraudsters and gangsters to be openly punished. They won’t because to do so would reach into high levels of government.
Good comment about MENA. We assume that a new government will be an improvement, looking more to the West. That is a big assumption. Oil could become much more expensive and less available in our future. The vice begins to tighten,

tootsie March 28, 2011 at 10:44 am #

“Granted, the age of labor unions may be over for a while, maybe forever (who knows?), and the age of government money hand-outs on the grand scale to everybody-and-his-uncle, too.”
Oh, fucking my. What a shame. No more unions and no more handouts. Trouble is when you eliminate these wonderful attributes you have no Democrat party. Thats all they’ve ever offered…thugs in suits taking from one group and redistributing to another. And Jimmie wishes to lament this sorry shell of a party? Be my fucking guest.

newworld March 28, 2011 at 10:46 am #

Today’s New Class uses government for its personal uses and enrichment, the nation state withers.
Now ask yourself good progs, what do those wealthy Democratic plutocrats want from the government and outside of some hobby horse liberal issue which puts them in the Political Correctness coalition how does it advance society?
What, after the USA gets done cruze misslin some backwater, they gonna get a gay bar while Soros gets the resources for his family and conspirators?
Never mind the right wing of the Trotsky/Ayn Rand alliance, they exist to serve the wealthy deadbeats.

davidreese March 28, 2011 at 10:47 am #

Jim,
I hate to criticize you, because you’re one of the few voices I trust.
But why in the world did you vote for Obama in the first place? Pick a third party. How about Nader?
Or opt out. Withhold your vote. Tell the Establishment to go to Hell. Vote for: None Of The Above. In the case of that last farce called an election, you can be proud of that vote.

kulturcritic March 28, 2011 at 10:48 am #

Human reason so delights in constructions, that it has several times built up a tower, and then razed it to examine the nature of the foundation. It is never too late to become wise; but if the change comes too late, there is always more difficulty in starting a reform. The question whether a science be possible, presupposes a doubt as to its actuality. But such a doubt offends the men whose whole possessions consist of this supposed jewel; hence he who raises the doubt must expect opposition from all sides.
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/science-religion-and-the-curriculum-of-the-west/

jammer March 28, 2011 at 10:49 am #

I would add “let me be clear” to be stifled as well…

k-dog March 28, 2011 at 10:50 am #

This is a link where it can be downloaded at Metanoia:
From there I changed the format from .mp4 to a .wmv file and then found a program online that allowed me to convert the .wmv file to burnable disk format so I could pass em out. (3 free conversions before you buy)
All this is too much information TMI but I’m putting it here because the spam software will block the post of a naked link.
http://metanoia-films.org/compilations.php

k-dog March 28, 2011 at 10:51 am #

My last post was supposed to be addressed to you.

wardoc March 28, 2011 at 10:53 am #

The delusion of a “two party” system is truly ubiquitous and amazing. IT is somewhat disquieting to see that even Kunstler has been fooled into believing in the scam of “dems vs repubs” when in reality they both are little more than vacuous shysters who vote in whatever direction they are paid by their corporate masters. They run this silly “us vs them” game to excite and distract the football crowd (who seem to have neurocognitive hardwiring focusing them on two opposing teams as THE model for all reality) to make the less educated (but always “schooled”) believe that the two parties have meaningful and significant differences. If one has any doubt about this scam, ask yourself why is it that both dems and repubs compulsively kiss the assess of the bankers and both groups essentially provide cover for their activities against the people. Both groups support wall st against main street, but both claim they support the latter. They do have, of course, minor cosmetic differences, that have to do with inane issues involving “morals,” etc., but when push comes to shove, both do the bidding of the banksters and corporate masters.
Shame !!!
An interesting side note; I’m reading, “When Money Dies,” an articulation of the events surrounding the Weimar hyperinflation. I was surprised to learn that during the 1921-23 period in Germany, over 400 politicians were assassinated. Wonder why?

dale March 28, 2011 at 10:57 am #

Obama is a perfect representative of the modern Democratic Party, an amalgamation of special interests, having no agenda other than self preservation and standing for absolutely nothing.
I have to laugh every time I see the pundits on television regurgitate their platitudes about how Obama started out with an agenda that was “too extreme” only to moderate it in the face of resistance from the “center”. What a joke. JHK is right to riff on this overly confident smooth operator, shilling for King Finance.
This may be the only time however, that I have found JHK too optimistic about the future. At least when it comes to the possibility of positive political change. Politically, and that means economically, the middle class in this country is finished. Every trend is only accelerating in the direction of further repression and concentration of economic power. I suspect Obama was the last chance to change the direction in which this country is headed. He has proven himself a Judas. The forces of plutocracy have won the day, week, month, year and decade. It’s like the Boston Celtics vs. Montana St. forgetaboutit!
Any change from here will have to take place on the streets and I wouldn’t be too optimistic about the outcome of that revolution. It’s more likely to lead to fascism than greater democracy. We had a great run, 200 years of being a light on the world, now it appears we are in the process of proving it was only an aberration.

daofirry2 March 28, 2011 at 10:59 am #

some of you might appreciate this. My great grandfather was a conductor on the old New Haven Railroad, (while one of my other great grandfathers was doing the beautiful, delicate wrought iron work on many of the old fences around Yale University, where the ancestors of the jerks screwing us all over today slept through their Latin classes, etc before inheriting their way up the ranks of the institutions that keep us all in one consensus trance, and keep the elite in their own consensus trance, similar to but distinct from our own)… anywho, this website is about the old railroads of New England. I imagine that we may go through a period in which common transportation resembles this, more than it does the current model.
http://www.nhrhta.org/

WestCoast March 28, 2011 at 11:00 am #

Most useful Google search term ever:
“Grow your own food”

Hancock1863 March 28, 2011 at 11:00 am #

Bravo, JHK!
You are getting there, even though in more than a few ways, you were among the first on a lot of things.
But overall, this week’s post of yours smacks to me of bargaining. It’s one long appeal or plea to the Great God of What Should Be.
For reference…The Stages of Grief:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model
But at this point, it simply can never be. Acceptance is best, I am very sorry to say.
What should be, at this point, can’t be, anymore than the current Reality TV Show over in Libya is anything more than just another geopolitical destabilization methodology cynically manipulating people’s hopes and dreams in order to secure access to diminishing global resources in the “Fertile Crescent” (not so fertile anymore, is it?) – by which I mean oil for the Transnational Corzis.
This Week’s Reality TV Episode – in Libya – has the added marketing virtue and appeal of using real bullets, billy-clubs and blood, not to mention the newfangled electronic “non-lethal” armory pioneered by the Twin Powers, the Corzi Nations of “America” and China.
Plus, it’s a feel-good story with defined good guys and bad guys, provided one does not question American Corzi Media Script and Storyline, or know any history.
I mean, the Mighty Coalition Air Strikes are helping Liberals and “al-Qaeda & pals” Islamists, two of the most hated groups of people in the former United States. Talk about post-ironic cognitively dissonant reality-disconnected Orwellian Doublethink!
No joke is funnier than real life: like when American Corzi Media recently made 310,000,000 subjects forget that Hosni Mubarak was our pal for 30 years and all those democracy-lovin’ LW Liberals and RW Uber-Religious Islamists who had been tortured by Hosni… were tortured paid for by ever-lovin’ American Tax Dollars and America-lovin’ CIA torture trainin’!
WHEEE! It’s fun to live in a nation so dumb and creepily unconscious! It’s like living in the novel “1984”, without having to be worried that I am going to get the Winston Smith Room 101 Treatment (A cage of hungry rats placed over my head) or even the Kinder and Gentler Bradley Manning American Corzi Treatment (psychosis-inducing endless solitary plus nude morning inspections and God knows what else). WHEEE!
Yep it’s all fun and games here on the Corzi Titanic. Until the Night of the Long Knives, anyway, or whatever the modern analog will be in 21st Century America.
Corzi is my own term, and refers to Right Wing Corporate Socialism of the 21st Century American Right, a direct descendant of the Right Wing National Socialism of the German Right in the from the mid 1920s until it’s defeat in 1945. Plus it’s “Uber Alles”, of course, like “Commie” China and Saudi-Bush Arabia.
CFNers:
Enjoy every day like you live in an era in which the Common People have it so good, that it’s like will almost certainly never be seen again in all of human nations and histories unwritten during whatever time the human species has left until extinction.
Each and every one of us posting here, no matter what nation we are from, are better fed, medicated, entertained, comforted with more chance of being truly bone-deep happy and content than any human beings who came before us and most likely all who come after us.
If we as a species are squandering this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, then let us not do so as indivdiauls. The cliched “Carpe Diem!” applies here in spades.

mila59 March 28, 2011 at 11:01 am #

Jim, interesting to read your comments about Obama and his term. I’m feeling the same fed-up-ness. But there is no Republican on earth who would be a better choice, I’m afraid. And I feel that Obama will be voted out in favor of some sort of crazy right-winger this time.
Thank you most sincerely for your mention of Joe Bageant’s passing. An incisive social commentator with a beautiful writing style. I’ll miss him dreadfully.
Mila

tootsie March 28, 2011 at 11:01 am #

This from Politico:
“From the moment he stepped into the public eye as the junior senator from Illinois, nothing much had changed in Barack Obama’s sartorial world until this year, when he suddenly gussied up his closet with a rack of new suits. For the most part, the president has shed his traditional center-cut suit coats in favor of jackets sporting two side vents, a sleeker look that originated on London’s Savile Row to cater to the riding set.”
Now you know why you feel as if you’ve been ridden hard and put away wet.

Smokyjoe March 28, 2011 at 11:02 am #

Jim, I tend to agree with you that our B-schools produce a lot of blinkered thinking:
“shameless academic mandarins caught on camera trying to weasel out of their greed-driven misdeeds”
On the other hand, last week I had lunch with a prominent academic economist. He shocked everyone at the table with his belief that our economic system, since long before the Crash, has been based on hallucinations and that the “recovery” is as fragile as a 100-year-old dowager with a bad cough.
He did not sleep the week after the Japan catastrophe. He also believes that it will only take one such event to lead to a new and deeper Crash, including an American default. It does not make the papers, he noted, that the Fed is quietly buying back Chinese-held US debt so keep America from collapsing. China has lost faith in the idea that American debt is worth a thing, he claimed. We just don’t know it yet.
He says to watch two indicators: the value of the dollar vs. a market-basket of other currencies, and the price of oil, to see where the nation is going.
And yes, he understands and accepts the premises of Peak Oil. Maybe we’ll get a new breed of economists in a future who understand scarcity and help others understand it. If we have universities.
Over lunch this guy stunned his listeners (but not me) by saying it’s over, essentially. His students don’t want to believe him when he tells them “the US will have to default on its debt. There is no way to repay it through either tax hikes or spending cuts. We are screwed.”
Those Millennials had best learn some 19th century skills and stop texting on their smart phones.
I’ll only disagree with you on one count: we may, in time, see Bernanke and his ilk less as cowards and shills and more as sad and doomed figures who knew the lumpenproletariat were not ready for the hard truth.
I think these financial kingpins in government will be recalled, in whatever histories we write in 200 years, as desperate men who tried to prop up a doomed system, based upon promises and emptiness, that took them down with it.

ozone March 28, 2011 at 11:02 am #

JHK sez,
“Poor Obama. On The global chessboard of fate, he’s the powerless king facing down ranks of dark knights and implacable bishops. All he can do is sidestep their onslaughts. Even the pawns are beginning to moil and roister in the background. He’ll be on TV tonight. Make no mistake.”
It says something in your favor that you can feel sympathetic towards this 2-dimensional cutout.
Perhaps I’ve had my outrage buttons pushed too many times, but I don’t have anything but contempt for a person who gets exactly what they asked for, then has the unmitigated gall to complain about it. (That’s just an act to mask culpability anyway.) There’s no doubt that he knew what he was getting into, and who he was climbing into bed with.
He’s not been “abandoned” or “betrayed” or “fallen into unforseen straights”. He was [and is] the sponsored front-man for the final looting, and all that’s happened is that he’s been “FOUND OUT”.
(Just as Gee Whiz Bush the Lesser was the front-man for Big Oil PLUS the banksters…)
This is why there’s a severe lack of confidence in the political process/charade in this country. Many are awakening to the fact that money buys the political/judicial system, which [in turn] wheels about to protect wealth. That ain’t fair, McGee, and always ends in tears (and much, much worse).
At least if the judicial system was independent (and tried to work for “the people’s” commonweal) we could be excused for pulling a fine trick of the Chinese, and HANG a few miscreant banksters. It might tend to be a disincentive to financial chicanery and fraud for massive profit. But you’ve gotta start at the TOP.
I have no illusions about ANY of that coming to pass, so I really have no idea how we’re going to organize politically (even in a small, localized way) after these fuckers crash and burn all that was/is. Big ^SHRUG^. We’ll have to see who might live to tell about it, and what their character will consist of…

Stephen_B March 28, 2011 at 11:04 am #

Obama, it turns out, is the mistake.
Was there ever any doubt?
Seriously, I’m not being a mere Monday quarterback. I’m just saying that some of us knew that both major candidates were gamed from the start.

jammer March 28, 2011 at 11:06 am #

James,
Here is a little nugget.
“Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and the principle of spending money to be paid by the posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” Thomas Jefferson

empirestatebuilding March 28, 2011 at 11:07 am #

The Men in that documentary have enough FU money to not worry about every paying their bills again. They think they are a different species. They think the “small people” are retarded and don’t count.
And the small people have been drinking the Kool Aid for so long that they think their puppet masters are right and just.
I don’t have any more hope for the millenials than I do for my own Gen Xer’s. Greed is a cross generational sickness. Perhaps if the money really dries up we will all wake up from our collective dream and enact some real change.
Aimlow Joe was here.
http://www.aimlow.com

Al Klein March 28, 2011 at 11:07 am #

Ask not what Wall Street can do for you, ask what you can do for Wall Street. Oh. I forgot. No need for you to ask anything. We’ll just take it from you! Silly me, thinking any of us had any input into the decision-making.

Prelapsarian Press March 28, 2011 at 11:12 am #

Well, uh, JHK, I know what a Pollyanna you are, and I’d hate to dampen your hopes for the millennials, but as someone who “teaches” them in colleges, I cannot discern that their brains are in any stage of what might be called “development.”
There’s a vast tsunami of stupid coming along to add to the American mix. I think you’re much closer to the mark when you talk about a population ripe for the abuses of a fascist-style autocrat. Just speak with absolute dead certainty and excited fervor about everything, and these kids will follow you mindlessly.

loveday March 28, 2011 at 11:13 am #

Hi Jim and all the gang,
Jim great posting today! I too can almost hear Obama saying “make no mistake” or another fav of mine “Let me be clear…”, these little phrases must be a signal to TPTB of his abject obedience to their rule. I mean he just soft shoes around the truth a little, right? Anyway it is a change of pace from GWB’s little slips of truth, ” Our enemies never stop thinking of ways to harm America and we don’t either.” Cheney was even more in your face about the truth, he just didn’t give a sh#t and would say so right out loud. Ah well good luck with the campaign to remove him from office!
I personally don’t think there is any need to launch such a campaign, hasn’t anyone noticed the government is almost entirely paralyzed and irrelevant, government shutdown anyone? I hear the Belgium gov collapsed a year ago and everyone was very pleased, especially since it wasn’t replaced. We should be so lucky.
I see that the Japanese are almost certainly facing an exctintion level event, at least for their nation. US government ineffectiveness is clearly visible when we see that the response to the nuclear catastrophe in Japan by the US government is starting a new war in the Middle East? WHAAAAAT?
I rest my case.
Have a great week all
loveday

NuYawkFrankie March 28, 2011 at 11:17 am #

Jim – I feel sorry for you, I really do.
You’re obviously a well-meaning, earnest, somewhat likeable & talented individual… who,unfortunately HASN’T GOT A CLUE!!!
Though you might well be an eductaed individual, you “street smarts” are shockingly lacking.
For a man in his 50s to emote over Obama – like a jilted schoolgirl – shows an abysmal lack of understanding & judgement – not to mention decorum!
Didnt anyone ever tell you the truth about the Easter Bunny? Well, same goes for your precious President, Dems ‘n Repubs…
Really! As if they’ve ever given a rats a$$ about the people! Its both ridiculously naive and laugable to think otherwise!
It’s a F-I-X-E-D G-A-M-E Jim – always has been.They’re in the pocket of the money-shysters – as even you allude to in ref. to Rubin, Summers etc.
Jim – it’s over! And it wasnt caused by your oh-so-precious global warming!
It’s over ’cause people like you never did realise – and still wont admit – that they were being conned, suckered all along!
Now there’s nothing left.
Unlike Joe Bageant, YOU just dont – or maybe won’t – see how the world really works.

lpat March 28, 2011 at 11:19 am #

Thanks for the news regarding Mr. B. We’ve lost another great soldier for truth.

Cash March 28, 2011 at 11:20 am #

“sunbelt know nothings”
Seems to me there’s an awful lot of “know nothings” and not just in the southern latitudes. The superior literati draw themselves to a great height and ask scornfully what’s wrong with Kansas but if they’re so damn smart why don’t they know a bullshitter when they see one?

PB March 28, 2011 at 11:25 am #

I don’t know why you are awestruck at Obama’s actions. Buckminster Fuller wouldn’t know why either:
“Nothing could be more pathetic than the role that has to be played by the President of the United States, whose power is approximately zero. Nevertheless, the news media and most over thirty-years-of-age USA citizens carry on as if the President has supreme power.”
Buckminster Fuller
We are firmly back to the “political capitalism” of the 1880s. Remember the Robber Barons? Was that democracy? Was it a democracy in Ancient Athens when the Oligarchs were in charge? The historians call it “the time of the Oligarchs” for a reason. It required a “restoration” by Pericles to restore the democracy. We don’t have a Pericles here anywhere do we?
It was a setup by SCOTUS rulings in the 1970s that have been steadily building as unions declined in relative ability to raise political money in relation to the PACs proliferating everywhere allowed by those 1970s rulings. We are now firmly back where we started, out of any democracy, with them squarely in charge just like they always thought they were entitled since Slavery and the Founding of the pseudo-Republic. They were so angry that Unions could out raise them for a few decades and balance this voting to give some share of national output to the majority of Americans. Citizen’s United put the nail in that coffin and there are probably more nails coming in cases teed up by the Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center with this partisan Roberts Court.
You do your readers a disservice by not boldly stating this. We need to get past any illusions about Obama or the Presidency so we can save ourselves. They’re teeing up their right-wing divide-and-rule stuff on FCC licenses too everyday to deflect from themselves and their crisis manufactured by their debt-money loan prerogative! All nicely protected by their PACs and Lobbyist tools while our property and livelihoods get pillaged down to nothing. Here’s another good quote for you:
“The truth is, they want you, you see, to be poor. If you don’t know the reason, I’ll tell you. It’s to train you to know who your tamer is. Then, whenever he gives you a whistle and sets you against an opponent of his, you jump out and tear them to pieces.”
Aristophanes: The Wasps circa 422BC

piltdownman March 28, 2011 at 11:25 am #

Holding Jim’s feet to the fire over why he voted for Obama is pointless. Many of us voted for him for no other reason than we were scared to death of a Bush “third term.” A vote for Nader was pointless. So too was a withheld vote…
That said, Obama has been an utter failure. He is the walking, talking exemplar of where we stand at this point in history; shallow, rootless and screaming downhill with no brakes. And as someone else noted, Gitmo is the perfect example of his weakness. Do you think Bush would have cared with some governor in a vacant grassland state cared about moving the prisoners there? Hell, no.
And yes, the political process has been absolutely co-opted by multinational corporations and large monied interests of all sorts. I worked in and around political campaigns for the better part of a decade and I saw it up-close. The pols do what they do to help feed the kitty each and every day. They have to “make their calls,” whoring for money — whether they like it or not. We could try to remove money from the equation (which I think would help…) but with the foxes (and FOX) guarding the hen house, it ain’t going to happen.
Finally, as to “these kids today,” they are, as we all were, greatly effected by their environment and upbringing. The problem, if there is on, doesn’t lie with them, but with the Boomer (and post-boomer) parents who have given them everything they’ve ever wanted and who have never told them, “No.” Most of the young people I work with (in their 20s) all have nice new cars, good clothes, laptops, etc, etc…. And they all have huge cell phone bills and pay for cable TV. They have nothing to strive for. I didn’t get a decent car for years; the money wasn’t there and I couldn’t just fall back on Mom and Dad when the rug was pulled out — nor would I have even considered such a thing. No, the kids may have their heads buried in their mobile devices and may be the first generation to develop severe C-spine problems at a young age — but I want to slap the parents, not them….

cjryan2006 March 28, 2011 at 11:26 am #

Jim,
I’m in. Let’s go….
Maybe start with a set of principles and see who’s on board.
Chris R.
http://thelocalizer.blogspot.com

Hancock1863 March 28, 2011 at 11:27 am #

You said:

Politics in the entire nation, and at all levels is past sublime and headed to crazy.
…
From the vantage point of being outside the USA looking in, the Christian fundamentalism spreading through the politial landscape is beginning to look a lot like the Islamic type. I’m also begining to understand what an Austrian might have felt as he looked at the political goings on next door in Germany circa 1930. I am rather concerned

Your instincts are quite correct my “Austrian Friend”. If you are a Canadian, then your words are about ten times more appropriate still, considering that the former USA (I still don’t quite know what to call my own country in it’s new form) is well on it’s way to pushing through the Anschluss on you in a plausibly deniable, direct-marketed fashion, that will render the Canadina People stupefied and helpless before it’s onslaught.
Have a look at the dark clouds on your horizon before the literal RW Storm, and I guarantee you the quiet assaults on Canadian institutions are not limited to this incursion but legion, once you start looking for them.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=Canada+radio+act+Fox+News&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=
Harper is your Canadian Sales Rep for American RW Corporate Socialist evil. It remains to be seen whether 21st American Corporate Socialism will in the end, outdo it’s German RW National Socialist predecessors from the 30s and 40s in evil and suffering visited on people who otherwise would not have suffered.
My money, in this case, is on American Excpetionalism. We WILL outdo the Nazis, before it’s all said and done. And will do it with an indefatigably friendly, “Mr. Rogers Wearing an SS Uniform” cheerfulness. You betcha.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers
Good luck, my Austrian Friend. You are going to need it. And you are correct to think America has gone insane. We have. On a national level, we are psychologically much the same as the Germans were in the 30s, make no mistake. And the “1940s” are still yet to come.

Desertrat March 28, 2011 at 11:29 am #

“…the complete surrender of Obama to the very characters who embodied the corruption that rotted our system from the heart outward.”
Surrender? Nope. He was part and parcel from the git-go. I agree with myrtlemay’s comments.
People gave me a hard time in 2008 for saying that the Big O would be even worse than Bush or Clinton as to monetary policy and being part of the investment bank crowd.
When a guy with no executive experience, no real track record in life, holds himself up as leadership material, it should be obvious that he’s selling perception instead of reality. A dude who claims Alinsky, Davis and Rev. Wright as “mentors” isn’t worth listening to on any subject, much less considering as a real person for the presidency.
But, in modern America, perception outweighs reality. People work at believing BS; they’ll even believe in the viability of SUVs, big-box stores and unending deficits…

Funzel March 28, 2011 at 11:29 am #

I just have this feeling we are not very far away from seeing the ball headed guy removing the chain and lock off the 12 diameter wheel and start slowly turning sending Blankfein and a few other characters where they belong.I hope it will not come to that.

cinnabarhorse March 28, 2011 at 11:29 am #

Hi Jim, I wish I could represent the Millenials in saying we are the hope of the future, but like several others have pointed out above, the majority of my generation is so far entangled in techno-babble and self-congratulation that they could only understand resource depletion if their iPods stopped charging one day. Which may actually happen. That said, there is an enormous amount of energy in the Millenials. Having watched our predecessors in the 60s try and fail, we are cynical of movements and activism in general, but are also able to set cynicism aside and get things done when the summons come.
I am personally involved in a movement called “Transition Towns” that is doing as an aggregate exactly what many people on this forum and others have talked about: creating local, tightly knit communities of people who understand resource depletion, climate change, and the need for localism, and are making it happen on small scales all across the nation and the world. While many young people like myself are leading this movement, we are also committed to learning from our elders, because we realize that age is, in the big picture, just another factor that divides people and prevents them from uniting for a common cause.
Myrtlemay, I am sorry your encounters with my generation have been so disappointing and dispiriting. I promise, we are not all like that. Please, do not fault them for what they are. They are the products of a society that values one’s ability to consume above all. Our schools do not teach us to think critically or produce meaningful work. If we escape, it is because of outside factors, and not everyone is that lucky. But those of us who have escaped are not abandoning the rest. We are returning and bringing them out, one by one. If it feels like an Aldous Huxley novel, well, it is, because that is what our society has become.

PB March 28, 2011 at 11:30 am #

They want you to whip Obama and the Democrats. That is not the problem. The problem is the rules of the game under which both Parties’ Pols are slaves! We need court cases to fight for property damages for Plaintiffs and Class Actions directly implicating this campaign finance regime!

budizwiser March 28, 2011 at 11:30 am #

JK,
Inside “job.” No, its more than that.
Many of these people are maniacally greedy. They are beyond the constructs of morality or shame. It not just a job, its “life.”
As near as I can tell, as long as twenty-five per cent of the population, which constitutes about fifty per cent of the electorate, is satiated, the chance for any real cultural change is non-existent.
However, when the other seventy-five per cent of the US suffers some real deprivation for a few decades, I’d imagine some change.
Although I am curious as to seeing no mention of the latest activities in London….

myrtlemay March 28, 2011 at 11:31 am #

I reference to your remark re Obama:
“I mean he just soft shoes around the truth a little, right?”
I sort of look at him as a Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, doing a tap dance with little Shirley Temple (the Bankstahs), entertaining us, the great unwashed masses, while the rug is being pulled from our collective feet.
Not that anyone asked, but my personal favorite O’bamanisms include:
Now let me be clear…
In no way….
Make no mistake…
The United States cannot and will not…
This is not to say that…
We will continue to support our allies and friends in this endeavor until…
Too bad I’m too old for drinking games. Tomorrow I’d be in for quite the hangover.

ront March 28, 2011 at 11:31 am #

“I voted for him in 2008, and I want to start a movement in whatever’s left of the Progressive core to get rid of him.” -JHK
I’M IN! I hope Dennis K will give us one more chance.
“If I hear him say “make no mistake” one more time, someone will have to restrain me from kicking in the flat screen TV. Obama, it turns out, is the mistake.” -JHK
This is the new version of the GWB smirk.
“I have a lot of hope for the millennials, the young people just coming up. They’re going to get sick of living in an ethical vacuum and sick of political paralysis.” -JHK
….heard the news that German troops had entered Rumania on the same day, October 7th.
[Meher] Baba had an article prepared on the war. On October 11th, he came to the women’s quarters and had it read aloud. All thought it was wonderful, but one of them commented that science should not have been mentioned in it, whereupon Baba explained:

Science must arise, as it plays a great part in the present war. Science can be put to good use, and science can be put to bad use. Chloroform can be used for operations, for healing. But robbers also use it on their victims to steal things. In war, science is used for destruction. But destruction ultimately means renewal and improvement. What happened when they burned London during the Black Plague? They rebuilt it later, and it was better than before. So when the world is destroyed, a new and better world must spring up from the ashes. There will be chaos and destruction all over the universe; but after that, there will be no war for eight hundred years.
Therefore, isn’t all this present misery worth that long period of happiness? Those who die in this war will be reborn to enjoy the new world and peace. Now they want power and possessions and hate each other. How can it all end? In only one way! They must get sick of it all – sick of wanting, sick of hating, sick of fighting!
Suppose you like milk, and you drink and drink it so excessively that eventually you get sick of it. Then what do you do? You stop drinking milk. In the same way, hate, greed, anger, and so forth will reach such a height that everyone will be simply sick of it all. And then what will the alternative be? To stop hating and to love, to stop wanting and to give, to stop fighting and be at peace. The world of the future will be very marvelous!

ozone March 28, 2011 at 11:33 am #

Thanks, k-dog; I’ll see what my shaky ‘puter skills might produce (aside from a pant-load of frustration). ;o)

tootsie March 28, 2011 at 11:34 am #

“”Nothing could be more pathetic than the role that has to be played by the President of the United States, whose power is approximately zero. ”
Really? Call up Gadaffy-duck and ask him about Obama’s no-fly zone imposition. Call your family physician and ask him about Obamacare. Zero power? What chu smokin’?

My a$$ March 28, 2011 at 11:34 am #

This country is heading toward contraction and collapse with or without our input. Let it go. In the words of John Lennon, let it be.
Focus instead on your local situation. Grow and preserve food (yours or your neighbors’), build using local materials, develop friendships with neighbors, form community groups, strive toward local self-sufficiency and sustainable living while forging alliances with similar communities.
In short, do things that make a difference. You’ll start to feel good about yourself and your place in the community. Try it; you’ll like it.

Tom Stephens March 28, 2011 at 11:35 am #

One of Kunstler’s very best this morning, which is sayin’something! Joe Bageant, presente’!
EXCERPTS FROM JOE BAGEANT’S UNFORGETTABLE “CARPOOLING WITH ADOLF EICHMANN:”
One of the most unsettling things about this country is that the following people are considered perfectly sane by American standards: Dick Cheney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Deepak Chopra, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Pat Robertson, Grover Nordquist, and Michelle Malkin. See anybody in that list even remotely normal? Every one of them lives in an egomaniacal la-la-land of his or her imagination and manages to get paid to do it. Believe me when I say that just about any face you see on your television or in the newspaper is a nutjob. I used to interview such freaks for a living. Of course, given that American journalists and interviewers have become mindless suck-asses, I understand that I may have a credibility problem here. But onward!
“Adolf Eichmann was thoughtful, orderly, and unimaginative. He had a profound respect for system, for law and order. He was obedient, loyal, a faithful officer of a great state. He served his government very well. The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, and destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous.”
— Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable
Unfortunately, our national sanity is of the thoroughly dangerous sort — the Third Reich sort. Remember that even Adolf Eichmann was determined to be completely sane by a panel of medical experts. At least as sane as you and me and if you would like to be excluded from this comparison, you may be excused. Like the other good Nazis, ole Eich would have easily made a respected member of American society today, probably as a Republican judicial nominee. He would have fit quite well into a nation of Americans going about its daily business caring for and protecting the homeland’s security and profitability. Eichmann slept well at nights, the same as most of us, unaffected in appetite. He would have made a good carpooler, telling us all about the kids and grandkids as we commute the monotonous asphalt strips to and from our jobs, creating the paper work and the information product, the plastics and the commerce of the fatherland, that great sprawling circuit board one sees from airplanes. Like Eichmann, we are efficient, productive, and most terribly of all, untroubled by guilt. Oblivious as gravestones. Sane. …
When and if America is ever hauled before the tribunal it is so richly earning with every Iraqi child mangled and every soul it ships to Egypt to be tortured in unspeakable ways, out of sight of the world, what will be my excuse? Will it be: “I only generated the propaganda because I needed the health insurance that came with the job.” Will that be an acceptable answer before the world? Who among us is guilty and who is innocent? Is the person who makes the night goggles for the American sniper on a Baghdad rooftop guilty? Is the person who made Lynndie England’s CD player guilty, the one they played while leading those naked weeping men around on dog leashes and in hoods? What about American workers who make Kevlar vests? Are they saving lives, or are they enabling killers to do their work more safely? And this is to say nothing of the Americans who wipe the Doritos crumbs from their double chins, lean toward their televisions and cheer on the young “heroes.”
Many of us can remember during the Cold War when we all feared the “mad man with his finger on the nuclear button” scenario. Let us be honest here, Nixon’s face did not inspire confidence in such matters. Who would stop a mad president from hitting the button that opened the missile silos under North Dakota’s barley fields? Who would stop Nixon if he got on one of his benders and said, “Hell, Spiro, let’s toast the fuckers!” Saner heads of course. Precautions were in place, we assured ourselves (or tried to anyway). At the same time we accepted that there were perfectly good reasons for the existence of those tens of thousands of nuclear warheads. And in doing so we accepted as justifiable the potential radiation deaths of millions, perhaps billions. We willingly became engaged in the most ghastly game of global nuclear blackmail imaginable, one that continues even now, haunting us in North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and Israel. And somehow the American public’s acceptance of that provided our sane leaders today with logical reasons for firing depleted uranium shells in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, where the landscape will remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Here we are using nuclear weapons for the fourth time and nobody finds it one bit odd, much less frightening. Sort of nuclear weapons creep.
Some, however, find it as exciting as hell. The Pentagon and the administration hail depleted uranium shells and armor as a breakthrough in modern warfare. U.S. Representative Christopher Shays said that any health effects the Iraqis suffer from depleted uranium — kidney damage, lung cancer, mounting birth defects — “pale in comparison with the benefits of regime change in their country.” Well then! Fry my ass on a plutonium skillet! Bring on the bunker busters! Iraqi and Afghani mothers seem unimpressed with regime change, even as they weep over twisted, blind infants.
All this sanity is killing some of us. To my mind, it is killing the best of us. It drives the artist and the philosopher, dancer, the psychiatrist, the homosexual torch singer and the spiritualist dishwasher toward the cliff with its macabre locust drone. Most of the genuinely beautiful minds and souls I know are in the deepest sort of despair. Rather like the cabaret society of 1930s Berlin, you can hear the high whine of hysteria behind their drunken revelry, their bitter laughter in the face of such black folly. Some people I know do not even bother to get out of bed on weekends. I am serious. I am “seeing the best minds of my generation” etc. right before my eyes. And like that magnificent old faggot who saw the same vision years before we did, I often find myself sobbing on the steps of a madhouse called America. Meanwhile, I ask my doctor for Prozac, and he says: “Joe, the solution to every problem is not a drug.” That has not been my experience by any means. …”
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2005/05/carpooling_with.html

George S. March 28, 2011 at 11:44 am #

Jim – I don’t know about hanging your hopes on the millennials – they seem to be buying into the whole American circus just like every generation – don’t see much hope with them (or anyone else, really). The one thing they have embraced is each other – in a giant virtual circle-jerk with its narcissism and endless chatter.

Pepper Spray March 28, 2011 at 11:45 am #

NuYawkFrankie, you make a point, unfortunately it is rendered impotent by your childish personal attacks that would indicate you are an indoctrinated member of the left wing, who, in the face of an inarguable point resort to vitriolic pugilism.

Pepper Spray March 28, 2011 at 11:47 am #

George S., I noticed the same thing. Well put.

MarlinFive54 March 28, 2011 at 11:49 am #

No, Jim didn’t mention the nuclear story out of Japan this week, but it keeps getting worser and worser. At least it seems to be, if one can glean any truth or accuracy thru the fog of disinformation and obfuscation perpetrated by the Japanese Government. I fear the situation is far more dire than they will admit.
It’s like the AIDS epidemic in the 80’s & 90’s. On one hand it was the new Bubonic Plague, an apocalyptic disease wiping out the human race. On the other hand … go hug somebody with AIDS, its very hard to catch …
Have reactors melted down , or haven’t they? If they have, what are the consequences?
Enquiring minds want to know.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter

Robert Callaghan March 28, 2011 at 11:50 am #

Sad about Joe. Love that guy’s style. Love your style too. Guilty pleasure reading your potty mouth ramblings. Your books are fun too, albeit on the comic book level. I understand that you cannot sell books if you admit 9/11 was a false flag operation. Doesn’t matter because for some reason hacks are the best writers. Especially the foul mouthed phrasing. Your mid east politics are childish and I see a nasty man who lets his own words get the best of him. But what the hell, don’t we all. Lot’s of fun. Keep up the mediocrity and above average venom. Too bad you don’t have much new to say.

lpat March 28, 2011 at 11:52 am #

“I don’t understand JHK’s faith in the Millennials, nor (for that matter) the Democratic Party or ANY party. But it does get old living on the edge of doom week after week.”
Mr. K. is basically a decent guy who’s old enough to remember when the democratic party ALMOST stood for decency. He’s yet to stare unblinking into the black heart of the matter. Realizing fully how completely heartless and cynical the bastards are who run things is difficult for anyone with a spark of decency.
Yes. Chris Hedges, TruthDig, Monday mornings is closer to the truth politically. I’m afraid even he thinks, foolishly, we can create change w/o bloody mountains of martyrs.

San Jose Mom 51 March 28, 2011 at 11:56 am #

Apparently when Obama promised change, he was talking about his mind.
Here in the Bay Area, everyday we see the front-page headlines taken up by the purjury trial of Barry Bonds. Way back in 2003 he lied to a grand jury about steriod use. Frankly, I don’t give a damn.
Yet none of the banksters that Kunstler mentions have had any legal problems. Back when the supreme court ruled that corporations could give unlimited funds to campaigns, Obama gave a big speech about how he would have his people work to get this ruling overturned. Yeah, right.
SJmom

ozone March 28, 2011 at 11:58 am #

….That would be, “unforeseen straits”
(Before Q shows up for the bitch parade.)

Jimmy Drinkwater March 28, 2011 at 12:03 pm #

Thanks for the reminder on “Inside Job”, I’d forgotten about it.
BTW Jim, maybe you should be charging rent to some of the commentators here…..or should I say blog squatters, lol.

darksumomo March 28, 2011 at 12:07 pm #

I was just informed this morning about the death of Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting With Jesus and the soon-to-be published Rainbow Pie. Joe was a brave and funny soul and we will miss him very much.

Thanks for remembering Joe. I wrote about your interaction with him at a distance in a post at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News. As I wrote in comments here just over a year ago, “I think dialog between Joe and Jim would be a good thing. At the very worst, it would degenerate into an entertaining display of verbal pyrotechnics. At best, it would be a fruitful exchange of ideas between two people who are feeling different parts of the same elephant. Either way, I’d enjoy the result.” I’m glad it was the latter, even if it was too brief.

myrtlemay March 28, 2011 at 12:10 pm #

Your point is well taken. My greatest hope is that you and others like you grab your generation by the balls and make the impact you seem capable of. (prep, sorry, Q!)
And to be clear, my generation is the one that brought you:
nuclear warheads
pharmaceuticals in your water supply
Why Johnny Can’t Read
Dr. Spock aka, let little Johnny and Susie “assert” their wants/needs
Plastics
laugh tracks
Korea
Vietnam
Wanton environmental degradation
Giddy consumerism.
These are just some of the “gems” we’ve bestowed on you, along with an air of superiority that we were some how better than you. NOT! In many ways, we were much worse. The flagrant resource depletion that Jim rails about was kicked off by, you guessed it – MY GENERATION! Best of luck, in all sincerity, in trying to clean up our mess! You’re going to need it!

myrtlemay March 28, 2011 at 12:12 pm #

“Apparently when Obama promised change, he was talking about his mind.” Love it!

Unconventional Ideas March 28, 2011 at 12:14 pm #

Let me add my voice to this accurate observation. While there are a few young people as a percentage of the population who get it (hint: many of them are doing organic gardening), most don’t.
I’m talking the best and brightest here by the way. And I say this from the perspective of having worked with young people for decades and having raised two myself.

Evelyn Victor March 28, 2011 at 12:15 pm #

“Hope is the greatest falsifier of the truth.”

Robert Roth March 28, 2011 at 12:17 pm #

This is an extraordinarily eloquent and useful statement, even for you, Jim. I want to respond by mentioning some of the techniques that I think may yet prove useful, and some of the people engaged in them. Specifically, Progressive Democrats of America, a small but feisty organization, is working both in and outside the Democratic Party to achieve precisely the sort of changes you call for. You might check out their website before dismissing that thought.
Our situation might be hopeless, in the sense that, as I think Wendell Berry said recently, everything of value is threatened, and it seems unlikely the lives we now lead can be sustained in any easily recognizable form. There appears to be, as Chris Hedges says, just a thin line of defense between civil society and its disintegration. And you, Jim, have spoken innumerable times with great eloquence and insight of the challenges we face.
But rather than throwing in the towel just yet, I want to say that I think more is possible, and to mention some of the efforts of which you seem to be unaware. As Noam Chomsky frequently points out, we do still have enormous freedom to agitate, organize, protest and struggle for change. The ballot box isn’t useless, it just isn’t being used nearly enough. But we still have it. And for its use to be more effective, we need a great many more people who recognize our real problems and demand that our political structures and players address them. It is not yet demonstrably too late to organize a sufficient and sustained opposition to the evils of our time, and a multitude of forces for the common good. That is, by the way, what is so evil about the current attacks on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the safety net generally, such as it still is: The real animus behind these attacks is hostility to the idea of the common good, the notion that we should care about and for one another, the very idea that we have interests in common that we can and should address collectively, through government as well as other forms of social organization.
What I think we need is organizing: the development of common understandings and relationships of trust that will enable enough of us to act collectively, constructively, in coordination, to redeem the commons and serve the common good. Given that the airwaves are saturated with lies, the truth needs to be shared through other means: mind-to-mind, hand-to-hand, person-to-person, sometimes but not necessarily face-to-face and one-on-one. That’s what organizing ultimately is, and it can be accomplished in a variety of ways, including by the written as well as the spoken word. Whether this can save the situation in time remains to be seen.
In short, I don’t think it’s hopeless – it may be, but that’s just a hypothesis, like its opposite, at this point in our time – and there are things we can do to affect the outcome. Some of them may consist of protests like the one recently conducted by Dan Ellsberg and others, and routinely engaged in over the years by the War Resisters League and the Catholic Workers, to mention just two of my favorites. But others include conversation, speech-making, publication, and even use of the ballot, once organizing has produced a critical mass sufficient to put good people into office. Iraq Veterans Against the War is organizing by a variety of means, and as I wrote to them recently, theirs is some of the best organizing and most important work I’m aware of. Progressive Democrats of America and others are organizing to make more effective use of the ballot box. Even in Congress, there are some very good people: most members of the Progressive Caucus were reelected earlier this month, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky somehow got onto the Deficit Commission and has offered a compassionate and practical alternative to the deficit hawks’ attack on the safety net and the common good.

Joshua March 28, 2011 at 12:21 pm #

I also mourn the passing of Joe Bageant. Among his virtues as a prose stylist and truth teller, he correctly called Obama out before Obama was even nominated. One of his best pieces was “Pissing in the Liberal Punchbowl Again”(2006), which stated:
“Then it’s on to the main act, in which we watch Honey Boy Obama ‘pass’ in elite liberal society as a goddammed negro, for christ sake. Will wretched wonders never end?
“I don’t know a single black person who is as impressed with Obama as they are with Bill Clinton, and yes, most of them DO understand that Clinton fucked everybody who works for a living with his shell game called NAFTA. Not to mention the cruel farce of ‘workfare.’. . . B.O. just doesn’t fool American blacks into believing he sweats bullets every time a police car lights up behind him in the traffic. . . [L]et’s face it, he only has to pass with white urban liberals to be deemed the great mocha hope of urban liberal Americans who swear they have not an ounce of race consciousness.
“Aw shit. Now I’ve gone and pissed in the liberal punch bowl again, so I guess it’s no more fancy little water crackers with brie and truffle preserves for me at the next Democratic fundraiser. I’m too fat anyway.”
Rest in peace, Joe Bageant.

newworld March 28, 2011 at 12:21 pm #

The show will continue on long after all the predictions of doom fail to materialize.
Ask yourself, who exactly wants the American Dream to end? The illegal immigrant from Mexico who is welcomed as a savior, does he/she who wants to use energy not live in a Mexican slum want the AD to end? Haitian-American Peggy of RW video fame, her concerns were gas prices and car payments not Peak Oil does she want the AD to end?
Never mind Suzy Soccer Mom or anyone to the right of Rush, they want more.
So it will continue till Herb Stein’s dictum proves true, which will be long after your bunker is depleted of food.

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 12:24 pm #

Psychiatrists and Homosexual Torch Singers are the best of us – or are they in reality the pinnacle of the decadence? Come to the Cabaret Old Friend? No don’t go. And if you have to walk by it cross the street. Religion, real reigion complete with morality, is not the problem but part of the solution. Or is it just coincidence that the Power Structure wants Christianity banished from the Public Square? So much for fears of “Right Wing Fascism”. Is such a thing possible? Of course – it’s just not the problem here and now.

IS4U March 28, 2011 at 12:26 pm #

I appreciate your rant about the Democratic party, but I think you may be underestimating the resilience of both the global economy and Barack Obama’s leadership. You keep predicting a catastrophic “unraveling” in coming months, but again and again, these predictions don’t materialize.
We may well be in a more gradual and permanent ‘long slide.’ If so, I don’t see how candidate in 2012 that can unseat Obama. In his second term, I expect to see a lot more of the things you were hoping for in January of 2009.
Obama has a job I wouldn’t wish on a snake, but I find his by his “no drama, Obama” style reassuring.
After Nov. 2012 his getting reelected will longer be a priority. He can then tell Wall Street and the MIC to put it where the sun doesn’t shine – sideways! —- Start dismantling the empire, develop a sane energy policy, make shiny new passenger trains. install a single payer health care program, and educate students on how to prosper in a more sustainable future.
Maybe all this is unrealistic, but I’m wandering whether the doomsday pessimism is heart healthy.

Jack Waddington March 28, 2011 at 12:31 pm #

The Obama conundrum: to me, something happened to him when he went to see George W in the White House after winning the election. Not sure what, but I suspect he saw just how easily he could assassinated if he really did try to implement some of the things he campaigned on. I think Georgy Porgy also let him know that the very office runs you once you have that post. It looks so enticing before you get there and then the reality changes the minute you are inaugurated. On this blog its so easy to say what “should have.” Another reality hits when you in there.
As I see it, many things are changing so rapidly it’s hard to keep up. The middle east might offer us a great lesson in how we humans begin to run our lives. Political parties are not the way I see it. The trade union notion might offer an alternative if we could see it as co-operation and running companies and businesses from the bottom up and NOT competition, which seemingly is driving most of present day thoughts. But to hope that the US might offer a way forward to me is forlorn. It trapped itself into a constitution and got so entangled in the exceptionalist mind-set and can’t get out of the constitutional box. Maybe the young, the very young, might show us the way, or the middle east peoples just realize that government and that other concept ‘democracy’ is not the future. As an old intellectual anarchist, ‘whoever you vote for the government will get in’. Just a thought … to keep the ball rolling. Jack

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 12:31 pm #

Complete bullshit. Blacks don’t have some kind of mystical, magical knowledge that Whites don’t have. What they have is a passionate dedication to their own percieved good as a race. I admire this – we should stop trashing ourselves and start having loyalty to Whites again. Oh, and Blacks are massively in support of Obama as they were two years ago. Complete Liberal Bullshit to believe anything different.

bridges March 28, 2011 at 12:32 pm #

What amazes me at the moment is that after running down a mind numbing list of shady characters that midwifed what amounts to a corporate/finance-led coup d’etat, Jim’s sums it up thusly:
Obama, it turns out, is the mistake.
The only reason I supported Ron Paul during the election cycle was that he was the only candidate who addressed the economy at all. AT ALL. Nor did anyone in the media even bother to ask them serious questions. So, no, Obama is not the mistake here. He — and every other politician out there — are both the progeny and the goats of a thoroughly corrupted system.

greyghost05 March 28, 2011 at 12:34 pm #

Wow ! What a write up this week. JHK has maybe seen the light. No apology necessary, but the Birchers have been screaming about all these convienently overlooked factoids since the early 70’s. But of course these guys are all full of shit. It’s not happening. Can’t happen ! Wretched Conspirosey Freaks ! Whats scary is when someone like JHK starts sounding like Glen the bullshitter Beck. If he can see it then it must be close to the end. So maybe with a little weight on her bonez Lady Gaga can get the role as the fat lady singing ?
So now that you’ve joined the party, where does it go from here ? I see no real decisive talent for 2012 in either party. Not even “the Donald” can pull this off. Washington is stacked with rich grifters and the inJustice Dept is in on it all. The only GS dudes getting burned will be the ones in houskeeping who failed to shred everything.
I think we should sink an oil well anywhere we can and not export a drop. That will be the only way to cut our “dependence” on oil from the sand box and the sand fleas and goat bangers that rule it.
And while we’re at it lets get real about contingency planing for creating a sustainable future. Solar works,get in a black in winter and oh wow, it’s warm. Start retro fitting south facing walls. Grow your own, Be Prepared !

daofirry2 March 28, 2011 at 12:35 pm #

Jim, I agree with what you are saying about Obama, but just to make the point: in “Collapse,” there is a scene where Michael Ruppert almost starts shaking, as he has some sort of mid-interview epiphany about the fact that there is really NOTHING that the US president can do, to stave off catastrophe. It seems worth mentioning, after your essay this week.

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 12:38 pm #

Do we still have the ballot box? Ron Paul got far fewer votes in New Hampshire than was predicted. In certain small towns, he got none. And his supporters in those towns went to City Hall and asked, “Where’s my vote”? It was never solved and for some reason Ron Paul didn’t pursue it – which I regret. Together with Mr Kucinick (shamefully mocked as a queer little elf by the mainstream liberal media) he could have turned that tragic election to some good.

daofirry2 March 28, 2011 at 12:38 pm #

but, having said what I just said… even doing nothing would be better than making things worse, which is what he has been doing.

Dave March 28, 2011 at 12:45 pm #

The world is a darker place with the passing of Joe Bageant. Seeing the true nature of our predicament, Joe’s only answer was to find a way to make others more unfortunate lives easier to bear. Funny that sounds like the founder of America’s primary religion, Christianity. The irony is that our political leaders have no idea what Jesus said. Evangelicals are not Christian because Jesus was a socialist. Look it up.

BeantownBill March 28, 2011 at 12:45 pm #

Jim,
Excellent post as usual.
Being a lifelong cynic and skeptic, I first gave up on America in 1968 when Richard Nixon was campaigning and said he had a plan to end the Vietnam war. The pungent odor of bullshit penetrated everywhere. To my horror and dismay, the guy actually won the election. That’s when I knew the situation in America was hopeless.
I’ve rarely voted in national elections since then. The same bullshit smell wafted through my nose in 2008. I would never vote for McCain, I wanted to vote for Obama very much, but I just couldn’t do it. I’m not in the least surprised at what has happened since. Do you honestly think a nation that elected W could produce a viable set of candidates and straighten out the mess we’ve made?
I’m not as pessimistic as you regarding the future. At my age, my future isn’t that long, so I might as well hope for the best, while planning for the worst. A black swan event doesn’t have to be a calamity, it could be a wonderful occurance, too. I know, I know, magical thinking and all that, but what the hell, it doesn’t cost anything to hope.

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 12:46 pm #

Exactly. And no apology will be forthcoming from the Liberals either. They have been wrong for fifty years and radical right, Right. Too much damn pride and too much pleasure in their imagined superiority to ordinary Americans. And to much joy in called them “nuts”, “conspiracy freaks” and “tea baggers”. If the Elite can get away with all This, there is nothing, I repeat Nothing, strange about their putting someone foreign born into the White House. Why else has was his record sealed?

Prelapsarian Press March 28, 2011 at 12:49 pm #

The millennials don’t seem to be picking up much support here (except for one encouraging representative of the generation). Careful you don’t confuse not giving a shit about anything with skepticism and other recognizable forms of cognition.
A lot of these kids seem to be getting clued in to the fact that their economic futures are bleak, but are still a long way from developing any sort of political consciousness. That would require some notion of the general welfare, which is a conceptualiztion they aren’t even remotely capable of forming, so alien is it to the way they’ve been raised by this culture.
Slam poet Taylor Mali has a nice take on the “whatever” generation, especially the interrogative inflection of their voices that has nothing to do with inquisitiveness. He ends with the unfortunate suggestion that dolts speak out with conviction, but up to that point he is spot on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKyIw9fs8T4

Cash March 28, 2011 at 12:52 pm #

“Bond-holders are finally going to have to eat a lot of losses.”
I saw today on television a segment about owners of bonds issued by Irish banks maybe taking a haircut.

ozone March 28, 2011 at 12:59 pm #

“What I think we need is organizing: the development of common understandings and relationships of trust that will enable enough of us to act collectively, constructively, in coordination, to redeem the commons and serve the common good.” -RR
Okay then…
But it also behooves one to be very careful what one asks for.
“Trust” in the service of a false hope is ultimately, a soul-crusher. A BIG one. If a failure is delivered in this area [MOST of all], the [enter yer favorite] cause will be reviled, spurned, driven out, and orphaned. Beware; things must actually be achievable and have proven benefit from now on. Mistakes are no longer without huge consequence.

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 12:59 pm #

David Brooks “knew” that Obama would be a great President by the crease in his pants. And Christ Mathews by the tingle in his own leg! This is what passes for Mainstream Journalism. And we take these people seriously when they dismiss “the birthers”? No the opposite: if the Mainstream are all against something that should pique your interest in it. You should consider that it’s probably true – why else would the “Lady” be protesting too much? In any case, check it our for yourself.
Ditto for academia: for Generations, economists have condemened the use of the Tariff – but tariffs are exactly what we need. They have been used against us all this time – under a variety of different name of course.

greyghost05 March 28, 2011 at 1:00 pm #

An interesting side note; I’m reading, “When Money Dies,” an articulation of the events surrounding the Weimar hyperinflation. I was surprised to learn that during the 1921-23 period in Germany, over 400 politicians were assassinated. Wonder why?
And then on a day in 1935 Adolph Hitler proclaimed:”This year will go down in history. Fro the first time,a civilized nation has Full Gun Registration ! Our streets will be safer, Our Police more efficient and the world will follow our lead into the future !”
But it can’t happen here !

Chuzzle March 28, 2011 at 1:01 pm #

I look forward each Monday to hear your insights into the developing world and your way with words. It’s interesting to see you move away from Obama and begin to see him as he really is. I sincerely hope Democrats don’t elect someone who will force their ideas on the electorate – after all, what is the harm in someone believing in creationism? I happen to believe in evolution. I also am aware that on the very spot I am typing these words there was a mile thick glacier here about 12000 years ago. Should I believe that cavepeople caused it to melt by releasing CO2 from their fires?

Evelyn Victor March 28, 2011 at 1:04 pm #

As for putting hope in the millennials…
* * *
American kids, dumber than dirt
Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
I have this ongoing discussion with a longtime reader who also just so happens to be a longtime Oakland high school teacher, a wonderful guy who’s seen generations of teens come and generations go and who has a delightful poetic sensibility and quirky outlook on his life and his family and his beloved teaching career.
And he often writes to me in response to something I might’ve written about the youth of today, anything where I comment on the various nefarious factors shaping their minds and their perspectives and whether or not, say, EMFs and junk food and cell phones are melting their brains and what can be done and just how bad it might all be.
His response: It is not bad at all. It’s absolutely horrifying.
My friend often summarizes for me what he sees, firsthand, every day and every month, year in and year out, in his classroom. He speaks not merely of the sad decline in overall intellectual acumen among students over the years, not merely of the astonishing spread of lazy slackerhood, or the fact that cell phones and iPods and excess TV exposure are, absolutely and without reservation, short-circuiting the minds of the upcoming generations. Of this, he says, there is zero doubt.
Nor does he speak merely of the notion that kids these days are overprotected and wussified and don’t spend enough time outdoors and don’t get any real exercise and therefore can’t, say, identify basic plants, or handle a tool, or build, well, anything at all. Again, these things are a given. Widely reported, tragically ignored, nothing new.
No, my friend takes it all a full step — or rather, leap — further. It is not merely a sad slide. It is not just a general dumbing down. It is far uglier than that.
We are, as far as urban public education is concerned, essentially at rock bottom. We are now at a point where we are essentially churning out ignorant teens who are becoming ignorant adults and society as a whole will pay dearly, very soon, and if you think the hordes of easily terrified, mindless fundamentalist evangelical Christian lemmings have been bad for the soul of this country, just wait.
It’s gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years due to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking — and nearly hopeless — dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad.
Now, you may think he’s merely a curmudgeon, a tired old teacher who stopped caring long ago. Not true. Teaching is his life. He says he loves his students, loves education and learning and watching young minds awaken. Problem is, he is seeing much less of it. It’s a bit like the melting of the polar ice caps. Sure, there’s been alarmist data about it for years, but until you see it for yourself, the deep visceral dread doesn’t really hit home.
He cites studies, reports, hard data, from the appalling effects of television on child brain development (i.e.; any TV exposure before 6 years old and your kid’s basic cognitive wiring and spatial perceptions are pretty much scrambled for life), to the fact that, because of all the insidious mandatory testing teachers are now forced to incorporate into the curriculum, of the 182 school days in a year, there are 110 when such testing is going on somewhere at Oakland High. As one of his colleagues put it, “It’s like weighing a calf twice a day, but never feeding it.”
But most of all, he simply observes his students, year to year, noting all the obvious evidence of teens’ decreasing abilities when confronted with even the most basic intellectual tasks, from understanding simple history to working through moderately complex ideas to even (in a couple recent examples that particularly distressed him) being able to define the words “agriculture,” or even “democracy.” Not a single student could do it.
It gets worse. My friend cites the fact that, of the 6,000 high school students he estimates he’s taught over the span of his career, only a small fraction now make it to his grade with a functioning understanding of written English. They do not know how to form a sentence. They cannot write an intelligible paragraph. Recently, after giving an assignment that required drawing lines, he realized that not a single student actually knew how to use a ruler.
It is, in short, nothing less than a tidal wave of dumb, with once-passionate, increasingly exasperated teachers like my friend nearly powerless to stop it. The worst part: It’s not the kids’ fault. They’re merely the victims of a horribly failed educational system.
Then our discussion often turns to the meat of it, the bigger picture, the ugly and unavoidable truism about the lack of need among the government and the power elite in this nation to create a truly effective educational system, one that actually generates intelligent, thoughtful, articulate citizens.
Hell, why should they? After all, the dumber the populace, the easier it is to rule and control and launch unwinnable wars and pass laws telling them that sex is bad and TV is good and God knows all, so just pipe down and eat your Taco Bell Double-Supremo Burrito and be glad we don’t arrest you for posting dirty pictures on your cute little blog.
This is about when I try to offer counterevidence, a bit of optimism. For one thing, I’ve argued generational relativity in this space before, suggesting maybe kids are no scarier or dumber or more dangerous than they’ve ever been, and that maybe some of the problem is merely the same old awkward generation gap, with every current generation absolutely convinced the subsequent one is terrifically stupid and malicious and will be the end of society as a whole. Just the way it always seems.
I also point out how, despite all the evidence of total public-education meltdown, I keep being surprised, keep hearing from/about teens and youth movements and actions that impress the hell out of me. Damn kids made the Internet what it is today, fer chrissakes. Revolutionized media. Broke all the rules. Still are.
Hell, some of the best designers, writers, artists, poets, chefs, and so on that I meet are in their early to mid-20s. And the nation’s top universities are still managing, despite a factory-churning mentality, to crank out young minds of astonishing ability and acumen. How did these kids do it? How did they escape the horrible public school system? How did they avoid the great dumbing down of America? Did they never see a TV show until they hit puberty? Were they all born and raised elsewhere, in India and Asia and Russia? Did they all go to Waldorf or Montessori and eat whole-grain breads and play with firecrackers and take long walks in wild nature? Are these kids flukes? Exceptions? Just lucky?
My friend would say, well, yes, that’s precisely what most of them are. Lucky, wealthy, foreign-born, private-schooled … and increasingly rare. Most affluent parents in America — and many more who aren’t — now put their kids in private schools from day one, and the smart ones give their kids no TV and minimal junk food and no video games. (Of course, this in no way guarantees a smart, attuned kid, but compared to the odds of success in the public school system, it sure seems to help). This covers about, what, 3 percent of the populace?
As for the rest, well, the dystopian evidence seems overwhelming indeed, to the point where it might be no stretch at all to say the biggest threat facing America is perhaps not global warming, not perpetual warmongering, not garbage food or low-level radiation or way too much Lindsay Lohan, but a populace far too ignorant to know how to properly manage any of it, much less change it all for the better.
What, too fatalistic? Don’t worry. Soon enough, no one will know what the word even means.

Joshua March 28, 2011 at 1:04 pm #

No writer was more loyal or sympathetic to working class whites than Joe Bageant. He was a native of Winchester, VA, and wrote a good deal about his people. He simply expanded his perspective after he left home, and after his frequent return visits.
Blacks don’t need magical, mystical skills–just growing up black in America teaches them a great deal about reading character. They may support Obama against the likes of Hillary or Edward, but that does not make them impressed with him. He sure hasn’t done much for them since his election.
(BTW, Philadelphia went for Hillary in the 2008 prelims, because her husband had given the city a bunch of money for development when it was trying to survive, and there were dues to be paid. That is not bullshit.)

mila59 March 28, 2011 at 1:08 pm #

“The one thing they have embraced is each other – in a giant virtual circle-jerk with its narcissism and endless chatter.”
Awesome comment, bro. You have a way with words!

lpat March 28, 2011 at 1:08 pm #

“You keep predicting a catastrophic ‘unraveling’ in coming months, but again and again, these predictions don’t materialize”
As Dylan said: “Last night the wind was whisperin’ somethin’—I was trying to make out what it was/I tell myself something’s comin’/But it never does.” From Love and Theft. Released Sept. 11, 2001.
I clicked on CNN just in time for the opening bell on Wall Street this morning. Cutiepie newsreader said they’d had their best week last week.
AOL headline reads “Radiation Spreads In Ocean Off Japan.” Japan. You remember. World’s 3rd largest economy; shredded. Possibly…possibly devolving into a slow-motion Chernobyl that will make Chernobyl look like an ice cream social. Possibly.
Wall Street has its best week of the year?
The bastards have to be dancing as fast as they can to keep Humpty Dumpty propped up and presentable.

jerry March 28, 2011 at 1:09 pm #

I, too, voted for Obama after looking at the hapless alterative: McCaint and Palinbot.
Obama was a fake and a liar. He became the Manchurian President following orders issued from the top offices of the financial corporate thieves, and the multi-national elites.
His answer was, “Yes sir!”
He has taken the country down the road of moral and ethical ill-repute and allowing the thieves, and carpetbagging advisors to go on in the fashion of Grover Norquist’s Project For A New American Century.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
http://moontownshippa.blogspot.com

greyghost05 March 28, 2011 at 1:09 pm #

To my knowledge all his records at every level of his life are sealed. How could such a charming fellow climb so high and not leave a trail of friends behind that knew him at every level ? Hmmmm, no witnesses to history in the making ? One would think that somewhere in some school there would be a group of fellow students who would remember him enough to come forward with the ledgend of Barry Soretto. Hmmmm,just makes ya wonder ?

jrheadrick1 March 28, 2011 at 1:13 pm #

Make no mistake, JHK, you nailed em’. I thought for a long time you were one of ’em. The road to the WH in 2012 led through Israel last week. Just what the fuck was that about??
Israel does run the USA. Thats what!
Best,
Joe Headrick

WestCoast March 28, 2011 at 1:21 pm #

Don’t judge America’s teenagers by what some hack homosexual writer in San Francisco attributes to a “friend” that teaches in the giant ghetto that is Oakland.
Every night there is a shooting there. The entire city is a corrupt mess with an ex mayor who was indicted for income tax fraud in the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building.
Funny thing is the mayor’s name is Ronald V. Dellums.
There are undoubtedly some bright kids in Oakland but to judge all of our youth based on this tranch is a farce.

Cavepainter March 28, 2011 at 1:23 pm #

Hey, you have access to the internet so take a look for yourself at http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1311, website for The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, where is reported the decline of corporate Income tax revenues since the 1950s.
Tell me, is anyone reading this as fed up as I with corporations pillaging the American tax payers by off shoring production while also operating in tax havens to avoid paying taxes on the profits gained from selling their products and services here?
How about closing the “revolving door” between their executive suites and the regulatory agencies, resulting in transformation of those agencies into virtual corporate hand-maidens instead of protectors of public interests, health and welfare from corporate excesses (pillaging)?
Are you ready for a second American revolution to these ends? Nationalize all corporate assets of corporations that operate in offshore tax heavens and hold as ransom until taxes are back-paid for duration time of the offshore operations — payments at corporate tax rates of the 1950s?
How about confiscation of all accumulated wealth of corporate executives who reigned during the same period, holding them in public service bondage until their corporation tax debt is corrected to the 1950s standard?
Well then, how about cease of use of US military and State Department as extensions of corporate global reign, with pull-back to within our borders and territorial waters all US military forces? Join that with – are you ready? – cessation of all “foreign aid” (inevitably corrupted with ulterior and special interests motives) except that aimed at family planning to stem further overpopulation.
Include as well – right? — disconnect completely government obligation to “rescue from harm” NGO aid operations or missions, religious or otherwise (they assume any attached risks).
Abolish “K” Street – right?– tear it down!
Finally, are you ready for this really big one that is the major fault line within the “liberal” camp? — Cease blaming the American citizenry for the corporate conspiracies perpetrated upon them through corporate pirating of national (so called) policies which for purely private interests and profit wrought great harm to people of other countries. This means; no more demand for surrender of our national sovereignty (unrestricted immigration) as symbolic act of contrition and penance.

greyghost05 March 28, 2011 at 1:24 pm #

He saw the light and knew the last thing he wanted to be was the next Dead President. Just do what you’re told and you’ll go down in history as the best almost black president in amerikan history.

Cash March 28, 2011 at 1:46 pm #

I saw what you’re describing in the 1970s when I was in university in Canada. One guy I became acquainted with literally could not spell and he could not string three words together in a coherent sentence. And this was at one of our best universities. My unspoken question to him was how the fuck did you get out of high school.
We’re now seeing a phenomenon up here of racial segregation in universities where serious hardworking Asians go to serious universities like University of Toronto and white kids who are just interested in hooking up and partying go to party schools like the University of Western Ontario.
When I was attending university I saw that Asian students from Hong Kong and Taiwan were light years ahead of us locally educated kids. What we were doing in first year in subjects like calculus was old stuff to them. They outmatched us by a wide margin in numeracy and literacy (in English no less, a second language to them). Even in the 1970s faculties like engineering at Canuck universities (where you need hard mathematical knowledge and skills) were full of Asians.
The rot started a long time ago. I read of one educator (cannot remember her name) who, in the 1950s, complained that education had no content (ie what is the capitol of Malaysia, what are the main exports of Malaysia) but rather consisted of mainly teaching reasoning skills ie process in other words. Her complaint was that process needs content to work on. The natural consequence is a tribe of kids that know nothing of the world around them.
One person I worked with (a young women reputedly very, very smart and university educated) asked me if Europe is a country. I was slack jawed in astonishment. She asked me because she had to go to Dublin to help open a new company office there. Then she asked if Ireland is part of the UK. She’s not out of the ordinary. In fact, she seems the norm. So the question is after all the billions we spend why is the result such crap?

ctemple March 28, 2011 at 1:49 pm #

I agree, Bageant was a good guy, I used to read him on the Counterpunch website. Together with Jim, the Counterpunch people are part of a handfull of liberals who amount to anything. Bageant used to write about ordinary people, the poor, guys who had been out of work for a long time, and who were just absolutely being used and spit out by the economic system. Most liberals spend their time worrying about dickheads who make $300,000 a years, live in converted lofts and who want to marry their boyfriend and call it ‘marriage’. Or the divine right to an abortion, that kind of shit.
Not Bageant, he worried about the people who needed worried about, the poor, rest in peace.

edpell March 28, 2011 at 1:51 pm #

The U.S. governments at all levels need to default on their debt. This is not doom. This is salvation. It is only doom to those who hold the bonds. 99% of Americans do not. So default. We will donate food to the poor billionaires that suffer.
You say well we will not be able to buy oil. I say we will barter oil for food. If they do not agree they will not be able to eat. As for not being able to buy plastic stuff from China, oh well, jobs for Americans.
The future looks bright default is unavoidable.

Nickelthrower March 28, 2011 at 1:54 pm #

Greetings,
I would have to disagree with Jim this week as I see no promise with regards to the Millennials. My daughter and her companions are from that generation and I doubt any of them could find the United States on a map.
The problem, as I see it, is that we no longer have regional common cultures. No, the only culture this upcoming generation knows is the one provided to them by the media conglomerates.
Funny, but my wife and I had this conversation last night as we struggle to communicate with those around us. We likened it to a modern Tower of Babble as there is little commonality amongst us with which to begin our conversation.
For example, my wife and I have a traditional liberal arts education. Our conversations are peppered with references to Homer, Plato, Gibbon, Voltaire, the Bible, etc. This shared knowledge gives us a frame of reference with which to begin our conversation.
That said, I find it difficult to communicate with someone that only has pop culture as a frame of reference. We can’t build a national consensus based on the actions of Charlie Sheen and Britney Spears.
The only predictable outcome is that the Millennials will turn into an insane mob once they figure out that they are entitled to nothing – nothing except the bill that is.

Consultant March 28, 2011 at 1:54 pm #

We have enough center left and to the left people to make purposeful, democratic change in this country. But most of those folks are sitting on their ASS!
The far left is a joke, and have been for a good while. Most of what they do is run their advocacy groups like a little tea club. If you’re not in their club, they really don’t want to engage with you. They are much like that sliver of the far right that uses conservatism as a ploy to get the stuff they want. The difference between the two is that right or wrong, the left wants stuff that mostly benefits or affects all of us, the far right wants stuff that mostly benefits THEM, but affects (usually negatively) all of us. The left is mostly about common gain, the far right, about a gain for a tiny sliver of the population.
But the far left, left and center left is being out played mostly because it’s led by a bunch of chickens**ts who are afraid to fight. The last 35 years or so it’s been all defense or surrender before they enter the field of battle. You can’t get anywhere with that strategy.
Most of the right wing folks have taken us down, and given the power, will continue to take us down a dark path that by comparison will make the Fukishima power plant look like a mild inconvenience.
These folks are old school vengeful, mostly racists, sexists and suspicious of rational thought. Community? To them, fuck community! What are you some kind of Communist?
The bulk of them resist modernity even while they embrace every technological convenience it has brought them. They believe that a common set of rules infringes on their rights. I guess that’s why many on the far right don’t believe in LAWS applied equally (the moral basis of our legal system, or what’s left of it). In short, they’re not very bright people and their moral position is extremely shaky). And this is what the smart far right folks take advantage of-what Bill Maher calls dumb people voting against their own interests.
Yes it’s a complicated world. Always has, always will be. But until some people who have ALL OF OUR INTERESTS IN MIND step forward and have the guts to talk down crazy bullshit, until then, a collapse into The Long Emergency is all but assured.
By the way, this is how failed states happen and why we see strong thugs like Khadafy, Mao, Stalin, etc. rise from the ruins.

tootsie March 28, 2011 at 2:02 pm #

“It looks so enticing before you get there and then the reality changes the minute you are inaugurated”
Sure it does, if you don’t have a pair. Look at Kasich of Ohio, Cristie of NJ, Cuomo of NY and Walker of Wisconsin. They all came into office pledging a return to sanity. They looked at the books and realized they had to make difficult cuts. They faced huge, braying coalitions of morons that insisted that reckless, dangerous spending continue and they all looked the mooks in the face and said, “Fuck you. My campaign was based on a path to solvency and I was elected on my beliefs and I’m sticking to the plan.”
Obama is a gutless, clueless, “community organizer.” So he got the “community” (US voters) to “organize” (vote) for him. End of story. Now we are stuck with the nit wit. He more than any President since Lincoln has the possibility of running this entire country right down a rabbit hole. Four years of this clown will prove disastrous. Eight years will result in the end of our republic as we know it.

malthus March 28, 2011 at 2:04 pm #

“But how about just a party of intelligence and courage? Wouldn’t that be enough to start with? A party capable of setting some limits and enforcing them. A party able to understand the signals that the future is sending us about resource scarcity. A party willing to engage and defeat stupidity.” Nice dream and I am not certain that there are very many that could fit into this party you write about. Good luck finding to many people that do not want to be like the Wall Street mutant crooks. That is how they are getting away with the heist. To many want to be just like them if given the chance and that is what the house of cards is built on. Hope for some subjective material wealth and power. The chance to get yours no matter what you have to do to get it. Pathetic but true.

tootsie March 28, 2011 at 2:06 pm #

“Being a lifelong cynic and skeptic, I first gave up on America in 1968 when Richard Nixon was campaigning and said he had a plan to end the Vietnam war.”
Why is that? He ended the fucking war, moron.

ozone March 28, 2011 at 2:09 pm #

Yes it’s a complicated world. Always has, always will be. But until some people who have ALL OF OUR INTERESTS IN MIND step forward and have the guts to talk down crazy bullshit, until then, a collapse into The Long Emergency is all but assured. -Consultant
Well how do you think that’s gonna turn out then?
Get prepared to do that “best interest” stuff on a much smaller scale. You’re going to end up being your own savior; don’t wait for one, because they usually appear in spiffy uniforms with lots of gleaming armaments. ;o)

jplotinus March 28, 2011 at 2:13 pm #

Opposition to re-election of President Obama is the right thing to do; but, it is not a personal matter. It is not even Obama, per se, as I see it.
Rather, the need is to bypass both the (D) party altogether and the (R) party altogether. For instance, even if, say, Kucinich were to run as the (D) and one or another of the Pauls were to run as the (R) presidential candidate, it would not matter.
It is the party mechanism that does us in by precluding political choice.
I understand there are those who differ with this conception, and so be it. Where I think we agree is that we cannot support Obama for re-election no matter what.

Consultant March 28, 2011 at 2:15 pm #

Malthus,
True. Very true.
We’ve become a gangster country with only remnants and twitches of Democracy left.
Black people (insert Obama comments here) have long known the real America. Now the rest of us are getting to see what this country has become.
The culture of today has always been a part of America, but today it is dominant. Never in our history has it been the dominant part of our culture.
That’s a nightmarish thought when you look at all the nukes we have and the others that are around the world.

truthteller March 28, 2011 at 2:21 pm #

Myrtle,
It’s not only the Millenial generation that’s engaging in this behavior. The last job I had before this one, I had a manager who is so addicted to her Blackberry that I think it’s given her a permanent case of ADHD. This lady is in the age range of 45-50. I once attended a social engagement with her at a very nice jazz club, and I had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed the music and atmosphere, as I intentionally left my cell phone in my vehicle to charge. She, however, had her BB with her, and spent most of the night answering e-mails and texting back and forth with people not in attendance. It was a shame because she missed some excellent music by not allowing herself to “be here now”. In meetings, she was never “fully” present, because she was always on the BB or her laptop, instead of paying attention to what was being said, and invariably it resulting in meetings running long because anything that was discussed had to be repeated at least one time for her benefit and that of other managers who engaged in the same behavior.
I can’t provide sources right now but I’ve seen articles in the past citing studies regarding the true nature of “multi-tasking” and how ultimately detrimental it is to achieving objectives. Louis CK was on Conan O’Brien once and talked about how ridiculous the whole thing can be, people getting upset because their electronic gadgets took longer than two seconds to return results . . . he said, “It’s going to SPACE, you idiot! Can you give it a second to get back from f#cking SPACE?” 🙂
Anyway, I understand your frustration, but it’s not only the Millenials . . . everyone sucking air with an iPhone or Blackberry is guilty of this these days, IMO, which is the reason I have adamantly refused to get one, to date, and will continue to refuse until I see real value in being 100% connected, all the time. That’s a double-edged sword, because you never get to “log off” from your job.

tootsie March 28, 2011 at 2:39 pm #

“This is not doom. This is salvation.”
You are a moron. The primary holders of U.S. debt are not billionaires. China is the largest holder, followed by Japan. Additionally, countless retirement funds of teachers, firefighters, etc. etc. etc. were snookered into buying government bonds for their “safety” factor.If the terms of issued bonds are not met, entire countries will shun the U.S.
Additionally, the entire infrastructure of the U.S. has been funded by issuing bonds. We are at a state where much of our current infrastructure is in a state of disrepair. That means we will need to issue new bonds to rebuild our crumbling roads, bridges and schools. Who the fuck is gonna pony up and buy bonds from defaulting government agencies you ignorant FUCKTARD?

Steve M. March 28, 2011 at 2:46 pm #

Hope in the Millenials? The same kids who made stars out of people like Robert Pattinson? The same kids whose musical heroes are Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and assorted heartthrobs named Justin? The same kids who probably can’t name the Vice President of the United States and can’t find Latvia on a map? Those kids? That’s an idea that’s going to take some getting used to!

loveday March 28, 2011 at 2:48 pm #

Myrtle May,
Drink up tonight, none of us is old enough to watch tonight’s obscene performance by the “Changer”. Might as well have a laugh when we can.
take care
loveday

tootsie March 28, 2011 at 2:53 pm #

” The same kids who probably can’t name the Vice President of the United States and can’t find Latvia on a map?”
You think the number of people who can’t name the VP or find Latvia is limited to kids? You’re shitting me.

ront March 28, 2011 at 2:57 pm #

“Jim – I don’t know about hanging your hopes on the millennials – they seem to be buying into the whole American circus just like every generation – don’t see much hope with them (or anyone else, really). The one thing they have embraced is each other – in a giant virtual circle-jerk with its narcissism and endless chatter.”
What I see in this “millennials” generation is greater tolerance and less desire to compete with their fellows in serious ways. Although your notions quoted above may be accurate, I believe, they are more superficial, and the two attributes I see are more at the heart of the matter and what is required to remedy our illness.

lbendet March 28, 2011 at 3:02 pm #

Chris Hedges: The Collapse of Globalization – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig
A wonderful 3-page post that covers the full gamut of commodity price hikes fueling world wide unrest, environmental devastation and the use of academia, think tanks and political power to destroy freedom and standard of living.
[The refusal by all of our liberal institutions, including the press, universities, labor and the Democratic Party, to challenge the utopian assumptions that the marketplace should determine human behavior permits corporations and investment firms to continue their assault, including speculating on commodities to drive up food prices. It permits coal, oil and natural gas corporations to stymie alternative energy and emit deadly levels of greenhouse gases. It permits agribusinesses to divert corn and soybeans to ethanol production and crush systems of local, sustainable agriculture. It permits the war industry to drain half of all state expenditures, generate trillions in deficits, and profit from conflicts in the Middle East we have no chance of winning. It permits corporations to evade the most basic controls and regulations to cement into place a global neo-feudalism…..The corporate state has nothing to offer the left or the right but fear. It uses fear—fear of secular humanism or fear of Christian fascists—to turn the population into passive accomplices. As long as we remain afraid nothing will change.]
[Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, two of the major architects for unregulated capitalism, should never have been taken seriously. But the wonders of corporate propaganda and corporate funding turned these fringe figures into revered prophets in our universities, think tanks, the press, legislative bodies, courts and corporate boardrooms. We still endure the cant of their discredited economic theories even as Wall Street sucks the U.S. Treasury dry and engages once again in the speculation that has to date evaporated some $40 trillion in global wealth. We are taught by all systems of information to chant the mantra that the market knows best.]

tootsie March 28, 2011 at 3:04 pm #

“The same kids whose musical heroes are Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and assorted heartthrobs named Justin”
And by-the-by lets bring up some other musical heroes from the past. Bobby Sherman. Leif Garret. Andy Gibb. The 1910 Fruit Gum Company. The Archies. The Brooklyn Bridge. The Chocolate Watchband. I could go on but I won’t. There is not now nor has there ever been any logic behind the tastes of the popular culture of the moment. If you happen to think the bands/individuals I listed are any more righteous than Britney or Lady or Pukie you are an idiot.

Smokyjoe March 28, 2011 at 3:11 pm #

“I think you’re much closer to the mark when you talk about a population ripe for the abuses of a fascist-style autocrat. Just speak with absolute dead certainty and excited fervor about everything, and these kids will follow you mindlessly.”
You must teach different Millennials than I do 🙂
Mine are nice kids who want to be fair to others but cannot do much independently without constant hand-holding and instruction. The upper-class ones, who are to be our “leaders,” are the most sheltered children ever: the Golden Youth of Suburbia.
I challenged a group of them with Max Brooks’ cautionary story from World War Z, about a cul-de-sac neighborhood where no one could even fix a broken window…let alone a zombie invasion. In that tale is an allegory about modern America.
One student collared me after class to say that he’d rebuilt a car engine, made furniture, and worked in a garden. I wanted to hire him.
But he’s not a typical Millennial. They are not stupid, but they do not exist much outside their hive of friends and transient experiences mediated by smart-phones and Postman’s “And Now This!” culture on YouRube..I mean Tube.
I see them less as pawns for a cornpone fascist wanna-be than as deers who will look up, just in time to glimpse the headlights. They all think technology will solve any and all problem.
That, friends, is a bipartisan American disease. Millennials all seem to have caught it.

dale March 28, 2011 at 3:14 pm #

Unfortunately Robert, it seems unlikely that an organization such as “Progressive Democrats” is likely to have a more positive than negative influence.
Consider how easily the progressivism of “Daily Kos” has been coopted to be little more than a voice of the status quo. You can’t “reform” what is hopelessly corrupt. Pretending that such efforts can bring fruit only puts a happy face on a situation that requires a more comprehensive and sweeping solution.
I say this after many years of being involved in Democratic campaigns and politics, which I have now abandoned. The whole system is rotten to the core. The bosses that run the party are completely disinterested in anything other than getting into power and augmenting their own influence, which will lead to a lucrative lobbying position after four years of “public service”.
Of course, this whole argument applies equally to the Republicans. However, one thing they have realized is, the people want you to actually “stand for” something. That, and wads of campaign advertising cash, is the source of their success. Expect that success to continue as the cash is going to increasingly favor their party in the future.

Hancock1863 March 28, 2011 at 3:24 pm #

Nice comments, Consultant. Both of them.
These in particular:

The far left is a joke, and have been for a good while. Most of what they do is run their advocacy groups like a little tea club. If you’re not in their club, they really don’t want to engage with you. They are much like that sliver of the far right that uses conservatism as a ploy to get the stuff they want. The difference between the two is that right or wrong, the left wants stuff that mostly benefits or affects all of us, the far right wants stuff that mostly benefits THEM, but affects (usually negatively) all of us. The left is mostly about common gain, the far right, about a gain for a tiny sliver of the population.
But the far left, left and center left is being out played mostly because it’s led by a bunch of chickens**ts who are afraid to fight. The last 35 years or so it’s been all defense or surrender before they enter the field of battle. You can’t get anywhere with that strategy.

Know what’s funny about that? You just described the 1932 Weimar Republic with that phrase as well as present day “America”.
Don’t believe me? Read “Defying Hitler” by Sebastian Haffner. Read “Diary of a Man in Despair” by Freidrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen. Read “The Nazi Seizure of Power” by William Sheridan Allen.
If you want to understand where the former USA has just come from and where we are going, so that when others are confused you see the ends, conferring an advantage to you, read these books.
Also, read “They Thought They Were Free” by Milton Mayer, which will further help you understand the varying reactions and denial of your neighbors in the coming years, however long and by what specific direction the 21st Century American version plays out. (only one thing is certain – it won’t wear swastikas and march boldly up the middle of the sreet in 21st century America, as the marketing would be all wrong)
And these comments of yours are also spot on and so very well said:

We’ve become a gangster country with only remnants and twitches of Democracy left.
Black people (insert Obama comments here) have long known the real America. Now the rest of us are getting to see what this country has become.
The culture of today has always been a part of America, but today it is dominant. Never in our history has it been the dominant part of our culture.
That’s a nightmarish thought when you look at all the nukes we have and the others that are around the world.

I have been saying to friends and people I know that, in the “new and improved” America, we are ALL N-words – it’s just that most don’t know it yet.
Just like Nazi Germany, those most loyal to the regime will get the last, worst most painful joke on them when they realize that the Nazis and their German Industrialist backers (or the Republicans and their American Corporatist backers, to use current examples) have used them like condoms.
And for anyone accusing me of playing the Left-Right Game, let us not forget that both the German Social Democrats on the Left and their similar (w)ussitude also helped give birth to Right-Wing Nazi Germany, but who bitches about their compliant, frightened, coward’s role in Hitler’s rise today? No one.
What will be Corzi (or should I say Corpzi) America’s battle of the Bulge, where we surge forwrd one last time? What will be our 1945 and what tipping point will precipitate it? Stay tuned.
For now, Corpzi America remains still in it’s “Heinrich Bruening” phase, it’s penultimate and final horrors still ahead of us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Br%C3%BCning
Aren’t we so country-healthful style, in America? Aren’t we so timeless and innocent?
If ProgorCons is reading this: Consultant just laid out from a fresh perspective my feelings about you Johnny Rebs, and why I think a straight line can be drawn from the Confederacy, slavery, the KKK post-bellum South with their KKK “News” right on up through Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Fox “News” and the rest of the Nazis, version 2.0 in the RW Lie Machine of today.
Every time I try to stick to just JHKs column and stop reading the blog discussion thread, new, fresh, smart commentary like Consultant’s pulls me back in.
Though, ProgorCons, it definitely seems like the RW Authoritarian Followers, Obamabots, Beckerheads, Hannidiots, and other purveyors of dishonest bullshittery and ignorance, don’t seem to drag the thread to the lowest depths until Day Two or Three of the discussion, making it perhaps a wise policy, if you are interested in reasoned discourse with smart, engaged, conscious people, to post early and then let the thread sink to the depths without you later in the week.
Hope you and yours are well, Johnny Reb.

lbendet March 28, 2011 at 3:25 pm #

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_collapse_of_globalization_20110328/
My apologies for leaving this out of the Chris Hedges article:
The last people who should be in charge of our food supply or our social and political life, not to mention the welfare of sick children, are corporate capitalists and Wall Street speculators.
But none of this is going to change until we turn our backs on the Democratic Party, denounce the orthodoxies peddled in our universities and in the press by corporate apologists and construct our opposition to the corporate state from the ground up.
It will not be easy. It will take time. And it will require us to accept the status of social and political pariahs, especially as the lunatic fringe of our political establishment steadily gains power.

Quieteyes March 28, 2011 at 3:26 pm #

I have a lot of hope for the millennials, the young people just coming up. They’re going to get sick of living in an ethical vacuum and sick of political paralysis.Their brains are going through the final stage of development where it arrives at the ability to make judgments. They are going to judge the Boomers and their X’er successors harshly and they’re going to remind us that Americans are capable of valiant action even without the trappings of jingoism and sports metaphors.

Really? Really?

You mean that my generation rejected this mongolian clusterfuck back in the 90’s but we’re the cause of it? Where the hell have you been?

Here’s a clue, Jim: Gen X hate’s Gen Y’s guts. Why? Because they will sell their mothers to make a buck. Gen Y will do anything to “have it good”, and if that means rolling you with a knife into a ditch, they’d do it before you can say “Double Mocha Grande”. You have no idea, none, how hard my generation has worked to “make ends meet”; if you really thing Gen X is greedy, then I suggest you stop doing your own colo-rectal exams.

Here’s a clue: YOUR generation left us with a clusterfuck to clean up, and Gen Y wants to start the part all over again.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 3:41 pm #

“I have a lot of hope for the millennials”
That’s weird. They seem like a clueless bunch of self-absorbed brats with their faces clued to iPhones, video games, and streaming television without commercials, expecting that the SUV-driving good times will continue indefinitely. What makes you think they have or will have any more clue than any other generation of dumb, fat Americans?
I actually have a lot of respect for many in the Baby Boomer generation, who have been trying to stop the runaway train since at least the mid-1960’s. But so much for that…it was a lost cause. At least they tried. Gen X seemed to more about apathy, self-absorption, and being “hip.”
Current events in the ME are actually quite encouraging. The autocrats and plutocrats in that region are getting the smackdown they’ve deserved for quite some time. The people are fed up there. When 50% or more of the population doesn’t like their government, they deserve to get a new one. I don’t see what’s so scary about it, any more so than these countries being run by unaccountable kleptocratic dictators. So I doubt WWIII is around the corner. This is more like what happened after the fall of the Soviet Union, when a bunch of European countries had democratic revolutions.
Iran might pull some shenanigans, but they are smart enough to know that they must remain in the shadows and not strike directly. Otherwise, they risk getting b*tch slapped by Uncle Sam’s mailed fist.
Like people are saying Iran might go all out and attack Israel (e.g. not through proxies as is their usual modus operandi). But I’m thinking not, because that would mean “Bye Bye Iran.” The mullahs there might be jihadists who want to implement a caliphate with sharia law, but they are ultimately not completely suicidal (at least I hope not).

asia March 28, 2011 at 3:42 pm #

Only 270 shopping days till Christmas!

asia March 28, 2011 at 3:44 pm #

Oh Ron ‘Whats his Last Name’?
didnt the Media completely freeze him out?
EVEN WHEN HE WAS 3RD OR 4TH IN THE POLLS?

turkle March 28, 2011 at 3:45 pm #

Reforming the “system” is a lost cause, in my opinion. There are too many parties with a vested interest in keeping the whole monstrosity lumbering along indefinitely until it collapses of its own weight and rot. It is far more productive and less discouraging to simply worry about yourself and how you will deal with things going forward in your own sphere of influence.
I guess one could call that cynical, but I just think it is being realistic.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 3:46 pm #

Thanks, asia. LOL!

Poet March 28, 2011 at 3:46 pm #

JHK sez: “And there’s Obama at the tippy-top of it serving like a department store mannequin with a Department of Justice that someone has hung a “gone fishin'” sign…”
***************
Have you seen the Zapruder film? The last President who acted like he was in charge of the government was JFK. The last Attorney Genral who really went after organized and white collar crime in a serious way was Robert Kennedy. Both got the bullets to the head by a “lone nut” assassin.
The system is so refined today that only the compromised or corruptable are even allowed to run for office in any serious way. Our handlers offer a simple and compelling bargain: play ball with us and we will make you and your descendants very wealthy and famous otherwise you die (or will wish you were dead). The checkbook or executioner’s bullets–which would you choose?
The only thing that will give pause to the thieves of Wall Street, banking, or in the Military Industrial and the Academia-Think Tank-Government Bureacracy Complexes is when a few of their prized boards get machine gunned to death along with their children and spouses. Not to worry though, because that will never happen; because most of the citizens of this country are incapable of even connecting the dots of their reality in order to see the picture they portray.

asia March 28, 2011 at 3:47 pm #

Oakland?
I posted on ‘A Land Unto Itself’ here, But long ago:
Hundreds mourn man who killed police officers – Apr 1, 2009 … Nearly 500 people gathered at an East Oakland church Tuesday to say goodbye to Lovelle Mixon, the 26-year-old parolee who was killed by …

turkle March 28, 2011 at 3:48 pm #

Chocolate Watchband is a great band name.

asia March 28, 2011 at 3:53 pm #

Remember what ‘we’ [Leonas Little People] have is a debt based system…shop on
I hear theres a credit card with an 80%
thats right…80% interest rate……wtf?
WILL DEBTORS PRISONS [PRIVITIZED OF COURSE]
be far behind?
I heard on Radio this AM that [sob] Texas is imprisoning fewer in their privitized prisons.

asia March 28, 2011 at 3:55 pm #

‘wiping out the human race’
No, we added 2 billion since then.

asia March 28, 2011 at 3:57 pm #

Ended in 1974? 1975?
it was a long range plan.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 4:00 pm #

I am no fan of Bobby Sherman but the 1910 Fruit Gum Company is the bee’s knees!

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 4:04 pm #

People loyal to Whites don’t laud Blacks like that. And the Blacks’ problem with Obama is that he is not Black enough. They want a Tribal Chief like Marion Bradley or Kwame Kilpatrick. And they want those big reparation checks in the mail now – they don’t give a shit that the country is broke. As Mr Kunstler said in The Long Emergency, they are going to be big trouble when the TSHTF.

Newfie March 28, 2011 at 4:06 pm #

Meanwhile, halfway around the world, half a dozen runaway reactors are oozing nuclear poisons into the air, the soil, the ocean, the water table, the food supply. In the nightmare scenario, Japan is wiped out. The worlds third largest economy collapses sending out an economic tsunami that wipes out the world economy. Holy glowing cow! Even if this runaway monster is wrestled under control it now seems unlikely that industrial society will power itself to the next level on nuclear energy. The impending demise of industrial civilization now appears all the more imminent.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 4:08 pm #

The Millenials could also be called the Suburban Generation. Suburbia being a giant cultural/economic/social bubble, I just don’t see them being rebellious enough or having enough grit to fight against the status quo. They basically live in a world of digital media, chain stores, strip malls, and 4 lane roads clogged with SUVs. Of course, many of us do, but it seems that previous generations have known at least a hint of something different. It seems to be all that the new generation really knows or understands.
Not that suburbia is a bad place. I quite like it myself compared with say, most American inner city areas. But as a functioning paradigm for society, originally based on cheap consumer goods, abundant jobs, and cheap/plentiful oil, the suburban model seems pretty doomed (see name of this blog).

turkle March 28, 2011 at 4:09 pm #

Did you do a scientific poll and talk to them, Vlad? I’m surprised you had the stomach for this given your known prejudices.

stlhdr March 28, 2011 at 4:10 pm #

Ah yes, the Zapruder film. Someone else mentioned that Obama seemed different after his winning visit to George in the WH. It’s easy to speculate about what happened. TPTB took Barry into the proverbial smoke filled back room and showed him a different film of that day in November, one never seen by the public, taken from, maybe, the grassy knoll. After the lights came up they handed him his new agenda and asked if there were any questions. There weren’t, of course.

fuzzywzhe March 28, 2011 at 4:13 pm #

I spy with my little eye, a group of people that didn’t bother to check Obama’s voting record in the Senate before he started running.
You know how “experts” are seemingly always wrong on economics? Political experts don’t tell you anything about who you are voting for.
Obama voted to fund the Iraq war every single time with the exception of during the primaries. He voted to renew the Patriot Act, and indeed has passed it again as president. He voted for the bailouts of our criminal banking sector.
At least some of you guys are willing to admit what a failure Obama is – it took Republicans a bit longer to do the same with Bush.
But just to underscore it, Obama isn’t a bit different than Bush.

ozone March 28, 2011 at 4:15 pm #

Chris Hedges has put into print the ultimate, taboo, thought-crime. Good for him; ’bout time.
From the same article:
“We must view the corporate capitalists who have seized control of our money, our food, our energy, our education, our press, our health care system and our governance as mortal enemies to be vanquished.” -Chris Hedges
Oopsie; let the games begin!

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 4:16 pm #

Well let’s not forget that half of America’s kids are now low IQ Hispanics and Blacks – with more Hispanics all the time. I mean fourty million White abortions over the last fifty years can’t not have some effect. Check out an HBO Documentary on teaching at a Black Hight School, “Hard Times at Douglas High”. Absolute insanity – any White who bothers trying to teach kids like this is brain damadged. One seemingly gay guy was almost in tears saying how he spent hours trying to prepare something nice for them and they just destroyed the class in a matter of minutes.
Most of these kids have no business being in high school much less preparing for college. They should be out working in the fields or in factories as Booker T Washington said long ago. And their education should prepare them for this. As it is, it’s just a cross between baby sitting and a day prison. School is the ruin of a many a good potential laborer – and that goes for many a White kid too.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 4:21 pm #

“Obama isn’t a bit different than Bush.”
Not a bit, huh? Riiiight.

Evelyn Victor March 28, 2011 at 4:23 pm #

If the Romans had built nuclear power plants we’d still be coping with their spent fuel rods.
Or would WE?

turkle March 28, 2011 at 4:26 pm #

Um, Vladdie boy, if the world had followed the ideology of the “radical Right”, we’d probably be living (or not living) in a nuclear wasteland right now. These were the people who constantly talked about starting nuclear wars with Russia and China all the way up until the end of the Cold War. I’m glad cooler and saner heads prevailed.

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 4:26 pm #

I was around Blacks most of my life. How do you think I got this way dick weed? It’s not pre-judgement or prejudice but from experience. Also I listen to Blacks on their own media sometimes. Try it – you’ll be amazed. But leave your positive prejudices behind or else you wont be able to hear a thing. Suburbs, huh? Why am I not surprised?

turkle March 28, 2011 at 4:29 pm #

“How do you think I got this way dick weed?”
So you admit you have a problem then?

Evelyn Victor March 28, 2011 at 4:30 pm #

Westcoast, is it his sexual orientation that negates his arguments in your mind?

turkle March 28, 2011 at 4:31 pm #

“It’s not pre-judgement or prejudice”
Ahahaha. Whatever.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 4:38 pm #

“How do you think I got this way dick weed?”
I was thinking your mama dropped you on your head a few too many times when she was drunk.

Consultant March 28, 2011 at 4:44 pm #

Vlad,
“I was around Blacks most of my life. How do you think I got this way dick weed? It’s not pre-judgement or prejudice but from experience.”
This is what prison life will do to you.
You obviously haven’t been around a broader circle of black people.
Where are you from by the way? Get out of the basement. Smell what little clean air we have left. And quit hatin’. Volunteer to clean up a local park. It will definitely help your attitude. I think.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 4:45 pm #

“It will definitely help your attitude.”
I’m thinking lobotomy…

malthus March 28, 2011 at 4:56 pm #

And I voted for JFK. I never have voted sense at least with knowing what the particular politician stood for or what he said he was for and would do. I have always known things were not what they seemed to be or was told what they were. I have left the country 3 times and came back because of strong family ties but during all that time I still wonder where me and my generation were doing except concentrating on having fun and not realizing in any big way how far down the rabbit hole we were progressing. A little chip here a little chip there and wallah another universe, one with many dark characters and the rat race they were building all around me. Part of me still thinks that all will be fine but deep down I know we are really screwed. Actually there is no place to go and forget for very long.
we are constantly bombarded with feel good talk even though those that are talking that way are nothing but mutants marching out of business schools around the world planning and devising even more ways to enslave the masses or as some call the lumpen. Good luck to all that come here every Monday.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 5:00 pm #

“Part of me still thinks that all will be fine but deep down I know we are really screwed.”
In the long term, we’re all dead.
What me worry?

turkle March 28, 2011 at 5:02 pm #

“we are constantly bombarded with feel good talk”
Ya think? Most of the time when I watch cable tv news it seems to be all doom and gloom.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 5:06 pm #

I often wonder why so many white people seem to believe they are in a special position to judge negatively all other races/ethnicities/cultures on this planet, as they see fit. Is it some kind of superiority complex?

tucsonspur March 28, 2011 at 5:13 pm #

Wonderfully expressed Jim, so much so that I’m dissolving into a puddle of heartfelt admiration!
I stand proud as an independent who did not vote for Obama. Maybe I looked more deeply into the eyes of a shark.
I was thinking of starting a web site called “son of a bitch”, but I’m not good at those things.
If anybody wants to use it, feel free.
It stands for “Stop Obama now or face awfully big, intense, tragic consequences hereafter!”

Wallbanger March 28, 2011 at 5:35 pm #

What part of “just KEEP your Oath to the Constitution” doesn’t Obama understand??
Our military, law enforcement, and ELECTED OFFICIALS need to HONOR THEIR OATH TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION!!!
oathkeepers.org

Phaedrus March 28, 2011 at 5:38 pm #

“Summers, Rubin, Geithner, and a host of other revolving door grifters who did everything possible to set up the implosion of banking, defeat the rule of law in money matters, and ruin millions who wanted nothing more than something useful to do in this society for a living wage…This is a system with no mechanism of self-regulation left. And there’s Obama at the tippy-top of it serving like a department store mannequin with a Department of Justice that someone has hung a “gone fishin'” sign on.”
Well said.
Although, I still don’t think Obama is the enemy here. The more we target our anger at him the better off it is for the real criminals. There are powerful people, who stay out of the public light (for good reason), that created him and can thus destroy him. No conspiracy, just a way for the rich and powerful to stay rich and powerful.

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 5:43 pm #

Um Turkey, the Right I’m talking about didn’t want to get into WW1 or WW2 much less the Asian Wars. People like Eisnehower and Roosevelt were stooges of the early Military/Industrial Complex. The Globalists are into “managed conflict” and fight for their own puroposes not America’s. Thus they wouldn’t let General MacArthur fight to win. And thus they are now arming our supposed enemies in Libya.

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 5:48 pm #

So you think all cultures are equal? That New Guinea Cannibals are equal to us? Oh deep man, deep. Bet you got an A+ in Anthropology.
And that’s not a compliment.

jammer March 28, 2011 at 5:57 pm #

Only 270 shopping days till Christmas!
best chuckle of the day so far…

CaptSpaulding March 28, 2011 at 5:59 pm #

I voted for Obama as well, feeling at the time that anything was better than the idiot that came before, but I was wrong. I don’t feel any better about having the big “O” in there than I did “W”. The worst part of it is that there really is no third party out there. There is no one who hasn’t been corrupted by the corporations. Face it, anybody in a national position of importance has already been bought and paid for. Your choices then come down to deciding whether you’d rather be hung or shot. Depressing huh?

MarlinFive54 March 28, 2011 at 6:02 pm #

Local news reported today of elevated radiation levels in the drinking water in S. Mass. Could that shit have come all the way across the Pacific Ocean and across the American Continent already, f—ing up the drinking water in Mass.? Last spring it was the oil well blowout in the Gulf, this spring nuclear meltdown in Asia. What was it that Jim wrote about the diminishing returns of advanced technology in the contemporary world? Only problem is, that’s where everybody’s hope lies, in technology. Look where its gotten us.
Add radiation and spilt oil to crystal meth and oxycondin pervasive throughout the country, what do you have? A clusterfuck, that’s what!
Reading Douglas Leach’s, ‘Flintlock & Tomahawk’ about the King Phillip War, 1675-1676, in CT, Mass., and RI, Americas’ first race war, Algonquin Indian tribes against the English New England colonists. Even way back then a war of extermination using primitive weapons and all kinds of subterfuge. ‘Nothing changes under the sun’, sayeth Ecliastes. I was surprised to learn that the town just north of here, Simsbury, CT, was burned to the ground by Indians one day in October, 1675.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter

jammer March 28, 2011 at 6:02 pm #

MM,
You could add Why Johnny can’t walk to school to your list…

appalachia March 28, 2011 at 6:09 pm #

Have you only talked with one young person in the past year? The millenials are the ones who got Mr. Obama elected in the first place. They worked at a grass roots level to organize the rest of the population.
My son was a field organizer for the Obama campaign. He has worked since he was thirteen and received a scholarship to attend college alongside the millionaire’s children. My kid has supported himself since he was out of high school. You really need to stop pigeonholing people, myrtlemay.
As an organizer in North Carolina, he worked in a four-county area in “deliverance” country winning over many grouchy old folks like yerself.
Now of course, these kids are totally disillsioned with the “democratic process.” I appaud Kunstler’s positive post.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 6:11 pm #

What does the equality of cultures have to do with the tendency of every po-dunk hillbilly like yourself to judge others from on high?
Do tell…

turkle March 28, 2011 at 6:12 pm #

Okay, so you’re a paleo-conservative. Fair enough.

tucsonspur March 28, 2011 at 6:12 pm #

S.O.N.O.F.A.B.I.T.C.H.!
sonofabitch.mnm

edpell March 28, 2011 at 6:17 pm #

Gee… we will screw China works for me. I work for IBM which cancelled the pension. I have no pension gee teachers and firefighters will have no pension welcome to the new normal. As for repairs pay as we go from revenue or save over time from revenue for big projects.
As I say the inevitable default is a good thing.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 6:21 pm #

The Europeans did originate the Industrial Revolution, among many other technological achievements. But this paradigm (industrialism/consumerism) is currently responsible for destroying the planet’s ecosystems and biosphere. So is a more primitive culture worse?
In a way, humanity was better off as a hunter-gatherer species, because at least this is sustainable and our numbers were kept in check. Once agriculture kicked in, we really got onto the path of trashing the place. And you can see where we’re at now (fishes almost gone, global warming, giant island of plastic in the Pacific, epidemic levels of species extinction, desertification, etc.).
So if you say that Euro culture is the best because of its achievements, you’d also need to recognize its downside, which you don’t…because you’re not a reasonable person.
Better/worse is the way simple-minded people such as yourself look at it in order to make feel great about belonging to the “best” race/culture.

edpell March 28, 2011 at 6:21 pm #

“need to” ? It is quite clear they do not “need to” honor their oath there is no enforcement. They will face no negative impact on themselves so no they do not “need to” obey their oaths.
I wish they would but I will not be holding my breath.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 6:22 pm #

Vlad must be a hit at cocktail parties.
“Hey, here’s my friend the Impaler. Why don’t you tell my black friend here about the superiority of the white race, Vlad? I’m sure he’d love to hear about sending all of the blacks back to Africa. Now Ima go get some punch.”

turkle March 28, 2011 at 6:25 pm #

*yawn*

JonathanSS March 28, 2011 at 6:26 pm #

Moron. “F” word. S***ing me. F***tard

Uhh. Let me guess….don’t tell me.
Are you the 2011 reincarnation of TzaTza?

turkle March 28, 2011 at 6:26 pm #

Hey, app.
Personally I don’t feel Millenials are any better/worse than any other generation. But their influence is rather limited, because they aren’t in positions of power.

edpell March 28, 2011 at 6:27 pm #

Stop hitting on the young. What did you do to make the world a better place when you were young?

turkle March 28, 2011 at 6:28 pm #

[Poltergeist voice]
She’s baaaaaa-ack.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 6:29 pm #

But by the same token, placing false hope in the younger generation to fix everything is a fool’s game, wouldn’t you say?

sevenmmm March 28, 2011 at 6:29 pm #

Oil rebellion, radioactive rain, natgas refrac earthquakes, nimbys on windturbines, and then there is coal…
I predict the new national pastime will be rubbing hands together for warmth and having to sleep nights.

edpell March 28, 2011 at 6:31 pm #

Stop hitting on the young. What are YOU doing to make the world a better place now at your age (whatever that might be)?

edpell March 28, 2011 at 6:35 pm #

The rich will build out a new energy system based on wind, PV, oil from bacteria, and pumped hydro storage. They will do just fine. We worthless eaters will not do as well. Any of you have a plan to make it better for us peasants?

Jack Waddington March 28, 2011 at 6:37 pm #

Tootsie; Suggesting Obama is gutless and clueless, to me, says more about you, than Obama. I tried to make the point that it so easy to give us the “should haves” on a blog where for the most part we are sort of anonymous. The polarization of the American and western cultures isn’t going to solve anything. What might be considered intelligent debate I am not sure tells us much either, but I do get a sense that everyone is subliminally aware that things are not going to go back to the way it was. Those with crystal balls (or allegedly so) aren’t a great guide either, but I do feel that Western Civilization might have to do quite a bit of re-thinking. None of can really know where it is all leading, but as I see it, there hasn’t been many radical ideas. I mean really radical ideas. That’s why I suggested that political parties may be a thing of the past.
It all might look scary, but we just might have to go through some real scary moments. Jack

turkle March 28, 2011 at 6:40 pm #

Vlad, here’s what I can discern about your personal psychology w.r.t. to your belief system.
You identify a culture or race or combination thereof which is supposedly superior to all others, in every way. Then you identify yourself with that culture. By doing so, you bolster your own ego and self-esteem by placing yourself in a position of supposed superiority to others. In reality, you are not particularly successful, attractive, likeable, or accomplished (the usual sources of self-esteem), so this affords a way to shore up your shaky sense of self.
I wonder, if the white race is so clearly superior, why do you feel the need to repeat this idea week after week? As they say, I think you “doth protest too much.”
If you were actually secure in this belief, there’d be no reason to repeat it to yourself again and again.

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 6:40 pm #

So you support the Cannibalism (this is arguing at your level) that was widespread in Africa, Oceania, and South and Central America?
It’s true that we need to change – but let’s not laud the primitives as our moral superiors. Negative capability is not the same as moral superiority. You can’t have choice until you have the capacity in the first place. Typically primitives go crazy for any modern things they can get their hands on. And in their primitive way, they often ruined environments such as Easter Island or as the Indians hunted large mammals to extinction in North America.

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 6:46 pm #

I don’t say we’re superior to Asians just some of the of the other groups. And also, what does superior mean? Superior in all ways and in all environments, and for all purposes? In any case, it’s alot more complex than you’ve assumed in your “whites are the cancer of humanity” stance. I’m here to challenge that. And I’ve noticed that even you are begining to toss a bit in your sleepl. We are making progress.
Now back to our last lesson: what is your answer – Do the Chinese have the right to take over Africa (since the Blacks have no intrinsic right to their own land)?

JonathanSS March 28, 2011 at 6:49 pm #

I’m thinking lobotomy…

How about shock therapy?

jammer March 28, 2011 at 6:50 pm #

All this talk regarding the shortcomings of aptitude displayed by millennials, I would like to draw the attention of CFNers to the recent ( Mar. 14) Tea party rally in New Hampshire. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachman, was stroking those in attendance about their proud history and its part in the revolutionary war. “You are the state where the shots heard round the world took place. Lexington and Concord”. Oh joy o rapture. Uh that would be in uhem, Massachusetts cork brain. And this woman has presidential aspirations! Now I don’t know what demographic generation she qualifies for, but my vote is cretin.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 6:55 pm #

I don’t necessarily view less developed cultures as superior, but I do believe that our industrialized way of life shares some of the same basic fallacies and flaws, plus adds a whole additional set of them.
The main fallacy is that the earth is an unlimited source of resources for human consumption, and that when these run out in one area, it is always possible to migrate to another, more abundant area. This idea has carried through to the present day, where a whole cadre of American Know Nothings seem to think that all we need to do is “Drill Baby, Drill” in order to solve our energy problems.
Upon this basic fallacy, modern society adds the additional paradigms that economic progress is always good and that capitalism and markets are always “right,” regardless of their consequences to the environment.
Primitive people were less able to affect the environment of the earth. Each localized culture stood on its own, more or less.
In our world, the global village is quite able to trash the place with standard operating procedures. The ocean fisheries are 90% gone, due to overconsumption. At this rate, how long before the ocean is completely dead?
From our standpoint, it is technological progress and capitalism at work to pull so much food from the ocean. To the ocean’s ecosystems, it is a death sentence.
If you look at it from the standpoint of all the rest of the natural ecosystems and living things on this planet, humanity is a terribly destructive scourge.
So better/worse? Honestly, we’re all pretty bad, whether we like it or not. I’m just along for the ride.

BeantownBill March 28, 2011 at 7:01 pm #

Because, you fucking retard, he said he had a plan in 1968 and the war ended in 1974. Even you, with your IQ score equal to the length of your penis, could have ended that war sooner if you really had a plan. If you took the time to get your head out of your ass, you’d realize he was scamming the American public.
See everyone, I can sling it with the best of them when I feel like it!

MoneyMouth March 28, 2011 at 7:01 pm #

This is starting to smell like just another right-wing-hater rant-site.
I am still quite happy with Obama. Given the obstacles that the lunatic-right have thrown up, I think that he has performed remarkably well. I don’t judge him by my expectations; and I am ever-mindful of just how bad it would now be, had he not been at helm!

turkle March 28, 2011 at 7:02 pm #

your “whites are the cancer of humanity” stance
—
Can you quote me on that? Nyope, cuz I didn’t say it.
In a practical sense, rights have absolutely nothing to do with territorial acquisition. If a people can take and hold a piece of real estate, it is theirs, regardless of who complains about it. That’s just kinda the way it works. I have a cool little medieval atlas that shows all the territorial changes in Europe from 450 AD to about 1500. It is amazing how often the political boundaries changed. Sometimes all it took was 50 years to completely change the landscape of Europe. So fluid political boundaries are not something I’m particularly against. I think its only natural.
“And also, what does superior mean?”
I’m trying to get it through to you that I have no idea either what “superior” means when comparing different races/cultures. You are the one who follows this tiresome train of thought again and again. I think it is fairly meaningless to make these designations. It depends completely on your frame of reference and personal criteria.

Stilba March 28, 2011 at 7:03 pm #

Jim, I’d like to share your hope for the millennials, but it doesn’t seem realistic. Their most impressionable years are being spent with 24-hour video games and trashy cartoons. They may be the first generation to have no idea what an authentic adult looks like. As American utopia goes to hell, will they be able to get over their bitterness and feeling of loss?
I appreciate the argument that they’ll get sick and tired of living in an ethical vacuum and sick of political paralysis doesn’t convince me either. I use the same argument in regard to Russians all the time. I ask: How come the children of the Soviet Collapse haven’t made a better place of their country? America isn’t Russia, I know, but they had a chance to come out better than they started. Depression seems to be the defining characteristic of the young folks there today.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 7:04 pm #

“This is starting to smell like just another right-wing-hater rant-site.”
Oh, we got all shapes and colors here. It is the usual bag of American mixed nuts. Just wait until asoka shows up…

JulettaofOhio March 28, 2011 at 7:04 pm #

This has been a joyous day. You’re finally, actually, blaming Obama for some of his knothead actions, although I detect a tremendous amount of excuse-ifying such as he fell into bad company, he was tricked, etc., etc. Hell no, he wasn’t duped! He’s always been part of it or else you have to take back the baseless praise of his “innate brilliance”. Anyone supposedly that “brilliant” would have seen through the lies and cons of the banksters. That leaves the fact that he’s one of them. You still think he’s a “nice man”? On what evidence? And he has “a nice family”? Again, on what evidence? The girls may be no more troublesome than the worthless Bush twins, but Michelle, the greedy and rapacious MegaButt, is anything but a “nice” person. I didn’t vote for Obama or Hillary, although she is definitely the lesser of the two evils and would have had Bill to call on for advice and support. I voted for Chuck Baldwin, knowing he wouldn’t win, therefore letting me off the hook when America cratered, since he had no chance of winning. At least I don’t have Obama on my conscience!!! I also refuse to watch his speech, as I have too much else about which to be depressed, distressed and disgusted. I also regret the passing of Joe Bangean. I mourned by buying two copies each of his three books to give to friends. It’s just sad that he won’t be here to notice the small uptick in his book sales!

JonathanSS March 28, 2011 at 7:07 pm #

Just in case Tootsie is female, you should have listed the following equation:
I.Q. Score = clitoris length in mm.

Senneth March 28, 2011 at 7:15 pm #

I’ve been reading this site for a couple of years and have not commented before. Was a lifelong Democrat until 2008. Frankly, with all the fraud, misogyny, ageism, racism, and homophobia from the guy in the WH during his campaign, not to mention his past legislative record (think Maytag workers) and what he did to past opponents in electoral races (think Jack Ryan with fallout to former wife Jeri Ryan from ST Voyager fame) how could anyone who was a real progressive have voted for this guy?
I know many people here did. But he was never a real (in the FDR sense or JFK sense) Democrat. He lied constantly during his campaign. FISA, his uncle and Auschwitz, etc. etc. Did no one actually do any research on this man? Sigh.

politicky March 28, 2011 at 7:16 pm #

“They are going to judge the Boomers and their X’er successors harshly and they’re going to remind us that Americans are capable of valiant action even without the trappings of jingoism and sports metaphors.”
Hmmmmmm.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 7:16 pm #

Most Americans would not be happy with the bitter medicine that would be necessary to cure our various sicknesses for good.
Would your average American actually benefit if the federal government ran a balanced budget?
No, because most of the money is spent on benefits, kickbacks, and tax breaks for the middle class, not to mention fairly cushy upper-middle-class jobs.
Would it be good for most people if Wall Street was reigned in and many were prosecuted?
Probably it wouldn’t be, because it would most likely affect the markets negatively, and many people are invested in it.
Would it be good for the middle class if the military was drastically scaled back?
I doubt it, because many middle class people make their living off of the military-industrial complex (if you will), either directly or indirectly.
Would it be good if states/cities all balanced their budgets?
I doubt it, because many middle class people are employed by these entities or receive benefits from them and benefit from their services.
The current ways of doing things are there for a reason, not simply because the politicians benefit from it. We’re all in on the big con.
The massive levels of debt across the board (city/state/fed plus pension debts of corporations) should indicate that we are all living far beyond our means. Austerity (balanced budgets, big cuts, etc.), while a good talking point, would actually be a huge disaster for most people in this country.
I read a statistic that upwards of 1/4 of all income is now from government handouts. (I think it may have actually been more.)
So does America really want what it says it does? I’m not so sure.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 7:17 pm #

“Frankly, with all the fraud, misogyny, ageism, racism, and homophobia from the guy in the WH during his campaign”
Huh?

trippticket March 28, 2011 at 7:19 pm #

A day early this week, but the weather guides us to such things when we participate with it. This is a piece about scarcity and the flawed Western concept of weeds. Old Auntie M might enjoy it;) Or not. But some of you others for sure would.
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/2011/03/weeds-and-scarcity-model.html
Hope everyone is having a fine week.
Tripp out.

lbendet March 28, 2011 at 7:24 pm #

Talking ’bout generations
I think the issue people are bringing up is that you can’t judge a generation in one swath. There are enlightened and unenlightened people in all generations. The young people JHK is running into are probably those who sought him out to begin with as they see the edge of the waterfall and want to figure out a way to survive.
The boomers were activists and thought they got a lot done and then fell asleep at the wheel. By the time many woke up they had lost the momentum and new ideologies took the place of their own.
Albeit, some where part of it and others were putting their attentions elsewhere.

lbendet March 28, 2011 at 7:26 pm #

PS
Remember Nixon?
“Let me make this perfectly clear”
It’s all the same…

Headless March 28, 2011 at 7:27 pm #

Obama? I voted for him and cried for joy when he won: “Finally, we can get past the racism.”
Now? If someone assassinated him, I’d cry for joy. Let’s hope Lloyd Blankfein and a few others are standing near by…
“A black man that doesn’t believe in human rights…”
“Inconceivable!”
“I do not think that word means what you think it does…”

BeantownBill March 28, 2011 at 7:44 pm #

Could someone define the different generations for me? When I was a kid, it was the young and the old. Now, in the tradition of accelerating change, we have gen x, gen y, millenials, etc.
I thought it was complicated when there were the greatest generation and the baby boomers (btw, I am technically of neither generation, so where does that put me? In outer space?).

SNAFU March 28, 2011 at 7:49 pm #

Howdy Marlin, Per your inquiry: “Have reactors melted down , or haven’t they? If they have, what are the consequences?
Inquiring minds want to know.”
Recently I stumbled upon the Union of Concerned Scientists web site and was sufficiently impressed to join and PayPal them $ during my initial visit. If you want some “no shit” views, rein in your distaste for eggheads, check them out at:
http://www.ucsusa.org/
SNAFU

Belisarius March 28, 2011 at 8:03 pm #

“As you have mentioned repeatedly, until trust is restored, nothing good will happen, and the only way for that trust to be restored is for the fraudsters and gangsters to be openly punished. They won’t because to do so would reach into high levels of government”
While i agree mostly, i’d like to add that until you repeal the ability of corporations to contribute to politicial campaigns, corrupt politicians will be replaced with new corporate shills even if you manage to convict them all. And, since the politicians that would need to vote to change this represent the corporations, reform is a dead end.

lbendet March 28, 2011 at 8:07 pm #

I didn’t hear “Make No Mistake”!
I imagine JHK’s TV is still intact.

JonathanSS March 28, 2011 at 8:10 pm #

Since this seems to be Wack-O-Bama day, here’s an idea for when we get a RW (Real White or Right Wing?) leader in there:
You make over $250,000/year? You pay no Fed Income Tax. That should be an incentive for all those lazy bastards who aren’t being productive. Plus, all those high earners create all the jobs (or so I’ve been told), so the unemployment rate should drop below 5%.
You haven’t been paying Fed income tax because you’re below the poverty level? Screw you, we’re taking 50% of your earnings to make up for all those years you were getting a free ride. Don’t like it? Tough S**t. Work harder.
The rest of you lower, middle and upper income citizens? You’ll pay between 50% and 0%. The more you make, the less you pay. Don’t spend so much time looking at internet porn & maybe you too can aspire to the 0% level.
This could fit right into MB’s platform, the moral momma from MN.

loveday March 28, 2011 at 8:15 pm #

Jim
Pretty busy blog today, obviously you did something right.
I would like to say that I work pretty frequently with young 20’s and teens. Many, many of them have teeth that are rotting out of their head, how very sad for them and us. Obviously the elder generations have not done our job right, these kids have no dental insurance and so effectively no access to dental care. Is it any wonder they don’t really care about the future or taking an interest in the world at large. I would be pretty ticked too if I had to deal with the pain of rottting teeth on a daily basis. The millenials have been preyed upon just like the rest of us, give the kids a break. You may need a young person in your old age.
loveday

Buck Stud March 28, 2011 at 8:17 pm #

“Although, I still don’t think Obama is the enemy here. The more we target our anger at him the better off it is for the real criminals. There are powerful people, who stay out of the public light (for good reason), that created him and can thus destroy him. No conspiracy, just a way for the rich and powerful to stay rich and powerful.”
In other words, don’t blame the tool, but those swinging it?
And yet who picks and chooses the people to run the administration slots? And since you think Wall Street(“powerful people”) runs the show why did they push for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Maria Sotomayor?
Nah, this is simply the real Obama, like it or not.

femme March 28, 2011 at 8:18 pm #

Couldn’t agree more this disconnect from life in order to be connected. It is absurd. In my work as a midwife I see this often with couples as they birth the next generation. Typically he plays with said gadget be it the phone sending texts or totally disengaged by watching television on the little hand held gadget. They dont talk to each other, she stares at the wall or watches the clock. Making conversation is like extracting teeth. Often these are the same people who consent to unnecessary inductions of labour and then also have an epidural. Again they dont want to feel or be part of the process and at the end of the labour they want the baby bathed, want to stick some silicon in its mouth, feed it crap in a can and put the baby in a plastic box to sleep. As you birth so you live.

jackieblue2u March 28, 2011 at 8:22 pm #

YAY for Myrtle May !
It’s your lucky day !

myrtlemay March 28, 2011 at 8:23 pm #

Tripp,
I think I’ve made it pretty clear the value I place on weed in permaculture ;). Weed (just got TWO new batches this week) is about the only thing that got me through Obama’s little speech about why he decided to bypass Congress before carpet bombing a foreign country and its people. Nevertheless, I’m happy to see you gaining an interest in cultivating herbal tea. I sipped on that whilst listening to His Royal Highness explain why he can make sweeping decisions without the benefits of the Constitutional balance of powers so thoughtfully provided by the framers of the Constitution. We are sooooooooooo screwed! Anyhow, Tripp, let me know if you need some good quality female seeds : D!

WestCoast March 28, 2011 at 8:25 pm #

Replying to:
“Westcoast, is it his sexual orientation that negates his arguments in your mind?”
“Sexual orientation?” More like his chosen mindset.
No, it’s the usual San Francisco Chronicle political correctness with the choice of this guy as a hacktavist,
citing someone in Oakland who is myopic and is blind to, or pretending that certain tribal groups aren’t generally failures.
When something is obvious and people not only do not notice it, do not acknowledge it but actively promote the idea that it does not exist, then it needs to be called out.
I am talking of course about the breast beating and lamenting of why one group’s failures are applied to all groups of teenagers. i.e., “I have a friend who thinks that our youth are doomed”…based on his teaching in the ghetto.
Change the situation…
All Americans are drunkards based on the observations of a friend of mine who works in a liquor store on an Indian reservation.

myrtlemay March 28, 2011 at 8:26 pm #

Thanks, Jackie! From my point-of-view, every morning I wake up is a “lucky day” : D !

ozone March 28, 2011 at 8:27 pm #

…As well as can be expected (for the GD coooold that has been unleashed from the arctic, and which will likely continue into the foreseeable future)!
;o)
Check in on the blog, soon-ish, thanks.

femme March 28, 2011 at 8:32 pm #

It is not the lack of dental insurance that is the problem. In Australia we have free dental if you are ss recipient and yet the dental decay is rampant. It seems that no one taught these young people what a toothbrush is for and their diet consists of coke,chips and TV dinners. They eat no fresh food and do no exercise. They also dont know how to prepare meals.

ozone March 28, 2011 at 8:34 pm #

Er… is this a private fight, or can anyone join in?
“Most Americans would not be happy with the bitter medicine that would be necessary to cure our various sicknesses for good.” -Turk
N’ertheless, they shall receive it. Probably not with a “spoonful of sugar”, and likely in the form of a high colonic. This I guarantee. (Don’t take it to the bank; they can’t cover [with actual assets] anything you may “gift” them with.)
Good luck, you be rollin’ today! ;o)

myrtlemay March 28, 2011 at 8:34 pm #

Personally, I’d never put you in “outer space”, Bean. Perhaps a little cottage on the coast of Nantucket for a fun weekend! Oh, and bring the wife, too : ( !

BeantownBill March 28, 2011 at 8:49 pm #

I dunno, when I was a boy it was that damn rock ‘n’ roll that was ruinin’ our youth, what with them listenin’ on their goldarn portable transister radios, and them juvenile delinquents with their ducktails and long sideburns.
When I was a young man, those teenaged Commie hippy freaks with their sex & drugs & booze – Mary Jane and Cracklin’ Rosie and braless – were ruinin’ America. What a generation!
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

BeantownBill March 28, 2011 at 8:50 pm #

Yeah, go ahead and tempt me, then crush me.

JonathanSS March 28, 2011 at 8:51 pm #

…weed in permaculture ;). Weed (just got TWO new batches this week)

Roll a blunt for me. A fattie! Don’t bogart that joint.
I got some good sheeeit courtesy of my wife’s disability and the CA Medical Marijuana law. Is that the reason for my wacky posts today? You be the judge.
When I started reading here earlier today, I was getting depressed. I thought, I can either cry or laugh and I choose laughter. I think that is the intelligent Zen approach; try and control my negative emotions.

ped0503 March 28, 2011 at 8:53 pm #

We’ll I’m sorry to hear about Joe, Deer hunting with Jesus was a really good book.

ozone March 28, 2011 at 8:53 pm #

P-ahaha!
You’re killin’ me!
(I laughed out loud a couple times during the “educating-the-public” thing that Obama was attempting there; not sure just how I would have reacted if in a “cloud”.)
Yes, it’s vital that more weeds be allowed to grow everywhere. “What Gawd hath joined together (them weeds and that earth), let no man/woman put asunder, damnit!”
(See? I’m becoming much more “inclusive” as I saunter along through the woild…)

BeantownBill March 28, 2011 at 9:05 pm #

And that reminds me of a story about Nantucket. Many years ago an old friend of mine went on a singles cruise from Cape Cod to Nantucket. A storm suddenly came up and the boat was pitching back and forth. Everybody on board got seasick and soon all the passengers were leaning on the rails throwing up. The social event went something like this: Hi, my name’s Joe ( head over rail,barf, barf, barf); Hi, Joe, I’m Linda (head over rail, barf, barf. barf).
My friend had wanted me to go and I declined, lucky me. I still chuckle when I picture how that must have been. Reminds me of the vomit scene in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life movie. I thought it was brilliant.

San Jose Mom 51 March 28, 2011 at 9:05 pm #

Do you do homebirths? Ugh.
SJmo

TehBigPiktur March 28, 2011 at 9:07 pm #

I have the good fortune to work with quite a few bright young “millennials.” The ones I know are smart kids overall, and come from good engineering schools (even better than the one I went to) but they exhibit the same behaviour you describe – short attention span, little introspection, dependent on immediate gratification in the smallest things – from instant messaging, to expecting a quickie MBA to rocket them up the organization without learning anything about their chosen profession first. At least this crowd hasn’t adopted the curious new habits of tacky body art as self-expression. Most endearing and tragic of all, their view of the world is that the future will be simply an extrapolation of the last 50 years – complete with ever shrinking iPods and ever faster broadband.
I retain a high opinion of Obama – I think he’s doing the best he can with limited options. And the only viable alternatives in 2008 (Mental Fossil and Deer-Hunter Barbie) don’t bear thinking out. I think Obama knows quite well that he can’t prosecute the grifters in the banking system without bringing the whole tottering system down. There’s an enormous body of people that can’t contemplate anything beyond the status quo. Obama can’t admit to Peak Oil (or the half-dozen other peaks we’ll soon be feeling the pain from) without the that cohort calling for his head. Let’s remember, about 1/3 of the country still subscribe to the “birther” story of his origins, but gave the last guy a free pass for being an drunken, coke-using, half-assed fighter pilot. He cannot bring himself to use the “c-word” (conservation) even though it is one of few options of getting us through the coming age of energy scarcity. The last guy who suggested it up was tossed out of office.
Yet I am sorely disappointed that Obama cannot take a stand on any of the ethical outrages perpetrated by W and his ilk. Out of convenience, out of fear of losing all credibility with the other half; he has many reasons but none of them conscionable. I expected more moral courage from him.

Antagonist March 28, 2011 at 9:08 pm #

Re NObama’s “speech”: First of all, I noticed that he continued the Bush II tradition of wrapping himself in the warm blanket of military support at Ft Meade when delivering anything resembling a “controversial” message (i.e.; no new tax cuts or foreign wars to announce won), although that’s perhaps forgivable given his current status as our national “Apologist in Chief.”
Personally, I found his performance disgraceful from the git go, no matter how you sliced it. True to his pseudo-democratic “creed” (question, do democrats actually have a creed that they actually live up to – other than sucking the GOP’s d**k??), he started of on the defensive, and then became increasingly whiny, petulant, and bitchy thereafter. I honestly didn’t know whether to throw the whiny bitch a hanky or plead with someone – ANYONE! – to go on stage, bitch-slap the pissing bitch, and either put the sorry bastard out of his misery, or take up his case themselves.
Yes, I’m sad to say that I TOO voted for this sorry weasel piece of shit, and yes, I TOO, true to The Who’s prophetic warning way back when, hereby proclaim I won’t get fooled again. Will I? You better believe that this sorry-assed house n****r (and we’ve all REALLY got to get over that word, as it holds all sorts of connotations that legitimately NEED to be explored in 21st century PC America) has changed my view of race and politics forevermore.
Was that the strategy of the GOP all along? I have no doubt. Did it take the consummate house n****r to carry it out nonetheless? Asked and answered.

BeantownBill March 28, 2011 at 9:09 pm #

Right on, dude! Turn on, tune in and drop out – or something like that.

Carolinem March 28, 2011 at 9:11 pm #

From Down Under (where we are – mercifully – spared much of what passes for ‘news’ in the US), Obama sure has been a disappointment but the poor bastard inherited a totally poisoned chalice.
Are you saying that a Republican President would have done any better – or could do better next time around? The mind BOGGLES!

SNAFU March 28, 2011 at 9:12 pm #

Howdy GreyGhost, Per your comment: “I think we should sink an oil well anywhere we can and not export a drop. That will be the only way to cut our “dependence” on oil from the sand box and the sand fleas and goat bangers that rule it.”
The estimated maximum US production of all its’ wells is about 7.5 million barrels/day with an estimated 21 billion barrels in reserve or about 2800 days, if we could suck it out at the 7.5 million barrel/day rate to depletion which we cannot. By the way 2800 days is about 7.7 years. The US currently consumes about 19 million barrels/day which leaves us importing roughly 11.5 million barrels/day for those 7.7 years (if we do not increase our consumption rate) and then we can import all 19 million barrels/day. Sinking more wells is equivalent to putting more straws in a milkshake and allowing more folks to have at it. Same amount of milk shake just more “suckers”.
SNAFU

myrtlemay March 28, 2011 at 9:16 pm #

I know another story about a man from Nantucket…sorry – I just couldn’t hap it!

myrtlemay March 28, 2011 at 9:19 pm #

My sentiments exactly! Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you look like shit – especially women and drag queens in mascara!

TehBigPiktur March 28, 2011 at 9:23 pm #

I understand your point David but there’s no alternative. It’s the blasted two-party system that leaves us citizens with no options.
Opting out means you have no voice at all; and your silence goes unnoticed. A third party is a vote tossed away (and probably to the party you despise more.) Nader would have my vote, but that helped W divide and conquer in Florida. What we need is a “NO CONFIDENCE” vote…and if it wins 50% of the votes, every member of congress is deported to some deserted atoll where we conducted nuke testing in the 50s. I give them 5 days before they start eating each other.
I wonder how the English model would work here (not that it could get started any traction against the two incumbent parties here, short of a revolution or the aforementioned atoll solution.) Multiple parties, none of which can gather a true majority alone without forming a coalition, agreeing to compromise. I oversimplify a bit, but it seems better than two parties with a thin margin between them and no reason to compromise.
As always, thank you Jim for your wit and wisdom in current affairs.

Evelyn Victor March 28, 2011 at 9:23 pm #

Westcoast –
I agree that anecdotal evidence is not always the best.
How could there be doubt that what he described was the rare exception when all you have to do is read comments posted on any website inhabited by the young to form wildly different opinions?
Not that the kind of people who post comments on websites could be anything but another aberrant demographic.
I frequent one site in particular where there are probably no more than 200 aliases at best yet whenever the same site in alternative segments posts a poll, responses will be in the tens of thousands.
It always makes me think that anyone ANYONE who posts on a website with a made up name has a weirdness gene not yet singled out by the double-helix boys.
~*~

berger March 28, 2011 at 9:29 pm #

I guess I’ll start by saying I’m a Millennial, and I’m glad I found your blog, James.
I agree that Obama basically bent over and let Wall Street and big banks give him a political Eiffel Tower, leaving the American public cleaning up the fallen pubes, but can you blame the guy for slowing the great unraveling? Anyone agree? I’m sure there will be a few who don’t.
Feel free to correct my grammar, as my brain is just starting to develop the ability to judge good sentence structure.

TehBigPiktur March 28, 2011 at 9:36 pm #

Some good commentin’ this week. BeantownBill, daofirry2, well put.
“Do you honestly think a nation that elected W could produce a viable set of candidates and straighten out the mess we’ve made?”
“the fact that there is really NOTHING that the US president can do, to stave off catastrophe…even doing nothing would be better than making things worse, which is what he has been doing.”

Antagonist March 28, 2011 at 9:41 pm #

And the “alternative” to “no alternative” is to merely opt in?
BULLSHIT!
Admittedly, merely opting out isn’t MUCH of an option, but at least it’s a start. And it doesn’t cost you anything either.
Until you can legitimately do/vote for something YOU BELIEVE IN, how about this; DO NOTHING AT ALL.
Think about it.

BeantownBill March 28, 2011 at 9:59 pm #

You are so naughty. I love it!

lpat March 28, 2011 at 10:03 pm #

Who wins Vlad’s Pissin’ Hizself In Public Award today? Vlad? tootsie? Am I missing anyone?

myrtlemay March 28, 2011 at 10:04 pm #

Something new to chomp on, I think, is the effect the Japanese crisis will have on obtaining replacement parts for automobiles worldwide. Here in the U.S., we don’t manufacture all the parts that go into a vehicle. Japan supplies G.M., Chrysler, and Ford, in addition to their own name brands, with replacement parts built in their country. With many factories now idle, part of JHK’s energy descent scenario likely will be seen as dealerships scramble to find a water pump, fuel pump, transmission gears, etc. to repair autos in all parts of the world. Could the day dawn where the U.S. starts to manufacture its own needed machinery? Nah…that would mean paying a decent wage to some unemployed sap here, when really the unemployed should go hungry – lazy bastards.

progressorconserve March 28, 2011 at 10:18 pm #

Nice weeks work as usual, JHK. Judging from the thread traffic, you either hit some extra nerves – or the US body politic has more nerves exposed right now.
And way to stir up the generational conflict for us, Jim. The boomers vs the X’ers vs the Y’s vs the millennials vs whatever named native born generation comes next.
Some will say that America will be *rescued* by the astonishing population growth from immigration. That might be, if the immigrants always had that “yearning to breath free…” thing going. The first generation of immigrants might – but there is no hope for their children. They will be born into the free lunch culture of modern America and will just become more breeders and eaters in an overcrowded country on an overcrowded planet.
===============
On a lighter note, JHK, maybe Obama checks your blog – or maybe one of Obama’s speechwriters happened to check it for some good advice. Anyway, I don’t believe he said, “make no mistake,” one single time tonight. That was getting to be one seriously WORN OUT phrase.
So thanks for that anyway.
Way to help save the Union – and your own flat-screen TV – from destruction, maybe both at the same time.

rippedthunder March 28, 2011 at 10:30 pm #

Hey Marlin, nothing to do about your comment really, Lord Jeffrey Amherst was the inventor of biological warfare during the French-Indian War. Infected blankets! What foresight! We are so proud of him we have named a town and a University in his name here in western Mass. The Five college area! UMASS AMHERST, SMITH,AMHERST,MT. HOLYOKE,and HAMPSHIRE. some of the best and most expensive colleges in the nation. We are in debt to his foresight!
http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html

progressorconserve March 28, 2011 at 10:30 pm #

“Until you can legitimately do/vote for something YOU BELIEVE IN, how about this; DO NOTHING AT ALL”
-antagonist, to bigpicture-
The two party system has destroyed governance and replaced it with politics – at the national level, no doubt! And there may not be any recovery from this, prior to complete collapse.
But the solution is not to stop voting. Voting’s about all we’ve go left. And when normal thinking people – such as the readers of this blog! – stop voting, things will get worse.
The fewer total voters – the greater the power of the Lunatic Fringes, of both parties, to select our presidential candidates.
==============
And there are important local electoral issues “downticket” from the presidential contests.
Local issues are going to become more and more important, as TS encroaches upon TF.
So, vote.
Even if you write in DonaldDucktheLiberalIcon – for President, in 2012.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 10:33 pm #

Hey, Bad Kraps.
Again, I ask you. What makes you qualified to judge all other racial and cultural groups as inferior or superior to your own?
As far as I can tell, you are simply another frustrated, racist internet cockroach and certainly no exemplar of good behavior. You completely lack the traditional (Christian) virtues of Western civilization, including compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, humility, and wisdom.
You do have an abundance of hate, intolerance, and arrogance to share. In fact, your servings of these vices seems unlimited. So I’m not sure how you then argue that the white race is the best one. Certainly your “white” morals are quite lacking, by any standard I’ve ever encountered. If you want to try and argue about your own race’s superiority, you could try curtailing your own atrocious behavior.
Furthermore, the category of “white” is ridiculously broad and really far too general for making general conclusions. The Nazis, certainly by popular consensus one of the most pathological and evil cultures in all of human history, were lily white, or at least aimed for it. The Soviet Union, a fine place if you like gulags, was also another white society. Racially, Russians are mostly Slavs, but if we’re painting with a broad brush, they are white.
So go ahead and call Hispanics inferior. At least they never rounded up millions of Jews and gypsies and other “undesirables” and threw them into poison gas chambers.
I find the racial distinctions to be fairly irrelevant, myself. It is like worrying about the color of the locusts eating your crops. They’re all pretty much the same.
Now go ahead and make your usual bogus argument that the Holocaust is a hoax. I’d expect nothing less from a human turd such as yourself.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 10:36 pm #

“Do you do homebirths? Ugh.”
People have been birthing at their homes for like, all of human history. It is a natural process that often doesn’t require all the bells and whistles of the modern hospital setting.
What’s so gross/bad about it again?

turkle March 28, 2011 at 10:37 pm #

You crazy, girl!

rippedthunder March 28, 2011 at 10:41 pm #

Come on Myrtle, Nice play on, “FIRST”. Well played indeed! Did you sit there all Monday AM around 10 waiting to pounce? Here is the limerick for many people who have never really heard it.
There once was a man from Nantucket,
With a Dick so long he could suck it!
He said with a grin,
As it dripped off his chin,
If my ear were a cunt I could fuck it!

Antagonist March 28, 2011 at 10:42 pm #

Sorry ProCon,
Must disagree. The only solution for the current system is dissolution, and then (hopefully) absolution.
YES. We are INDEED at that point. And everyone but the ass-hats know it.
Everyone else is in denial.
For a time yet.
Their timer is short.

Vlad Krandz March 28, 2011 at 10:50 pm #

Oh right, as if you value traditional Christian virtues – or any at all! Now answer my question: do Black Africans have the right to their own Countries – or are you just another closet racist liberal hypocrite – who knows in his heart that Whites are the best.
The first virtue is self preservation. It is therefore not virtuous to let you Nation be overrun by aliens. Sorry, wrong again.

truthteller March 28, 2011 at 10:54 pm #

Although I have never birthed no babies, Femme (and have no plans to start now, at the ripe old age of 42 🙂 I understand what you’re saying. One of the most fundamental processes of life and nature, and people are so removed from it. Quite sad, if you think about it.
On a different note . . . RIP, Joe Bageant. I am very saddened by this event on a personal level. As a fellow child of the Deep South, his writing hit me at a very deep level, as he one of the few contemporary writers who I felt really understood the situation. I always meant to send him an e-mail and tell him what his work meant to me, and sadly I never had the chance to do that, so I hope you guys don’t mind if I drop Joe a brief note here . . .
Dear Joe,
Thank you for sharing your light with the world. It saddens me to see that your life has been cut tragically short, when you had so many more great stories and ideas to share with us all. I’ve never known any other writer who had such a deep understanding of the issues of intergenerational poverty and Southern culture on the skids that you have expressed in your works, and I’m not sure I ever will again in my lifetime. One of your final posts before you got ill, “America, Y UR Peeps B So Dum?” was one of the most entertaining blog posts I have ever had the pleasure of reading, and SO very on point! Just when I thought I couldn’t laugh at the ridiculousness of it any more, you came back with yet another, even more stellar paragraph or two. And you did all of this from the viewpoint of a true INSIDER, someone who’s actually sat at the bar in the local beer-joint and chatted drunkenly over a lukewarm vat of bad horse-piss with Bubba who runs the line down at the local widget line and is growin’ some sticky-icky in his back shed, not someone who sarcastically peers down their noses at the reality of the lives of a huge part of the American demographic and fails to understand the intergenerational issues involved. You mentioned in some of your writings that people would send you e-mail, people like yourself, people like me, who had somehow managed to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and cultural expectations to rise up, and dig their way out of said cycle, to become educated and take a shot at their own slice of the American dream. You mentioned how these people would share with you a certain sense of not belonging . . . not belonging any more to that culture from which they came, but not quite a part of the culture to which they aspired and which they worked so hard to assimilate into. I GOT THAT, man. I am definitely one of your “peeps”, my friend. I salute you for the morality and good conscience, the honesty with which you met the world, and I will dearly miss you. But I am glad that you are free of your pain, as well, and that you will not have to be burdened with the sorry situation which you were full aware of, the burden which falls on the shoulders of we who are left behind. Rest in peace, Joe. You were well loved.

Anthony Schiano March 28, 2011 at 10:55 pm #

All,
In the face of the long emergency, it should be clear to all of us that the time for post-partisan pragmatism is here. Focus on your very local, very near future.
http://www.MalthusUniversity.com

Shakazulu March 28, 2011 at 10:57 pm #

“And there’s Obama at the tippy-top of it serving like a department store mannequin with a Department of Justice that someone has hung a “gone fishin'” sign on.”
Never end a sentence with a preposition. But besides that, The Dept of Justice has bigger fish to fry: homegrown American terrorists. Just check out their website.
http://www.justice.gov/cjs/
And since the justice system is a revolving door (80% or higher recidivism rate based on my own experience working within the system) people with prior records walk your streets all the time. And this gal is an exemplar millennial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csu6q8868Us
These types of outbursts are becoming commonplace by the way. Welcome to the Brave New Dystopian World.

WestCoast March 28, 2011 at 11:08 pm #

If you really want to help your young ‘uns, give them some responsibilities. Our kids were told to get their own snacks at an early age, do dishes, retrieve clothes from the dryer etc.
Later the use of hand tools was taught to them along with chores like cleaning gutters or cleaning up after the chickens.
A psychological trick was used. “look at those boys across the street, do you think that they can do any of the things you are able to do?”
We have arrived a point in our society where you really can obtain images and video of anything you want–at least until AT&T imposes bandwidth caps–plenty of industrial process movies, steel mills, etc.
Don’t laugh, my boys can file and shape metal, use a sheetmetal brake, solder pipe and do light carpentry.
I fully intend for them to go to college and get liberal arts degrees and then specialize in something but I don’t expect that they will earn one cent directly from what they are going to study.
Some one should open a for profit trade school where you can learn how to use a lathe and milling machine. Those are the kind of skills that are going to be valuable. Don’t forget planting potatoes and growing things.

Antagonist March 28, 2011 at 11:09 pm #

ProCon,
The two party system has delivered us to where we are now.
REJECT IT! REJECT IT with all your LOVE AND ALL YOUR MIGHT!
REJECT IT AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT(!), BECAUSE IT DOES!
DO IT NOW, AND TELL ALL YOU KNOW LIKEWISE!!!

rippedthunder March 28, 2011 at 11:09 pm #

Okay, It’s poem/limerick time
There once was a girl from Manhatten,
She wore a blouse made of satin,
When the west wind would blow,
And the frost got below,
Her nipples became just like the rings,
Of the beautiful planet Saturn!

WestCoast March 28, 2011 at 11:12 pm #

Yeah, just ask Mark Twin about made up names…
as to the rest of your post…??????
What is that symbol at the bottom?

rippedthunder March 28, 2011 at 11:13 pm #

Okay now, everybody. Let’s all get together and make up a funny limerick, song, or share a joke. This place is gettin’ me down. I started . let’s go!

asia March 28, 2011 at 11:15 pm #

This is in response to yr post and the post above it:
TV…I was at the gym and saw a bit of WIPEOUT…sheesh theUSa is in amess if thats ‘entertainment’.
I went to college in NYC and worked for the postoffice for a few years way back…
Whites judge? and Blacks dont?
See my post today about Lovell Wallace,
raped an 8 yr old, killed 4 LEO in one day..
500 blacks fondly remembered him.
Look at the grim sleeper case…Blacks knew he was a criminal [not necesarily a killer, they didnt turn him into the cops ie ‘the enemy’ of blacks’ so he kept killing]
In any case if you and Vlad wanna snipe
at each other go right on..

asia March 28, 2011 at 11:18 pm #

Ok…Bushy started 2 wars, O only 1 [so far].

asia March 28, 2011 at 11:22 pm #

Didnt TARP help the Japanese Banks and Auto companies?

asia March 28, 2011 at 11:24 pm #

theres a boy in dublin
whos mind cant cease its troublin
after all his sweat and toil
now he sees
his math didnt add in peak oil

progressorconserve March 28, 2011 at 11:26 pm #

Hancock1863 –
Yeah, I concur. Consultant produced a couple of very thoughtful posts. I’ll be hoping he sticks around and keeps posting.
Especially this:
“The culture of today has always been a part of America, but today it is dominant. Never in our history has it been the dominant part of our culture.” -consultant-
That is different, and quite unfortunate as you say, consultant. Some would argue that capitalistic selfishness made the US great – but there was an “e pluribus unum” quality that held the excesses of our leadership in check – until about 1980.
Now, the problem is that political and business leadership has adopted that same maniacal selfish focus on “today.” It doesn’t look like a recipe for national success to me, either.
HC’63 – that’s where we are today as a nation, with throttles to the firewall and the landing gear handle ripped off.
If your right wing authoritarians end up with complete control, it won’t be because of a intelligent plan that stretched from the Old South to Rupert Murdock’s FOX News.
It will be, rather, because those are the types of personalities that are ALWAYS ending up in charge of things – north-south, east-west, muslim-christian, or Expansion-Collapse.
===============
On a personal note, HC – it’s funny, because I usually do the opposite of what you are suggesting. I normally like to watch the thread develop ideas for a while before contributing my .02. And I enjoy participating in most of the brawls on here, whether early or late in the week. Of course you know how much I hate to see ideas and dialog Impeded. But Impedance is about the worst thing that usually develops by week’s end, IMO.
And, thanks for asking –
We’re doing just fine, Billy Yank!
Hope you and yours are doing well, also.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 11:26 pm #

I didn’t know that this was all a big contest about which race is the “best.”
Vlad’s talking about virtues…ahahahaha. Good one there, Mr. “Go Back to Africa”. You also said the Holocaust was a big hoax perpetrated by the Joos, among other chestnuts. I would go back and dig up some more of your vitriol but I don’t feel like throwing up right now.
The point is not whether I have Christian values. It is whether YOU do, Vlad, or if you have any reasonable moral framework at all. You are claiming the moral/cultural high ground in the first place as a supposedly superior member of the white race, judging all other races and cultures from your perch. Again, what makes you feel so qualified? I hate to break it to you, but you are not so great.
“It is therefore not virtuous to let you Nation be overrun by aliens.”
I haven’t seen any aliens in me Nation lately, but if I see the bright lights and feel the probe, I’ll let you know.

AMR March 28, 2011 at 11:28 pm #

It may be a fool’s errand to try to refute the meme of JFK’s assassination as a coup d’etat that has been circulating on these threads, but I’ll try anyway.
JFK was a mob scion who had an appalling way of treating women whom he fancied. He was about as sexually unhinged and manipulative as Bill Clinton. It would have required terrible judgment on the part of his opponents to assassinate him and turn him into a popular martyr when they could have simply exposed him as the vicious tomcat that he was.
The press had a gentleman’s agreement with JFK not to disclose his philandering (much of which would have been an affront to those adulterers who actually cared for their paramours). The press also actively helped the Kennedy family popularize its Camelot propaganda. Go figure: the Kennedys are about par for the course for English-speaking royalty; after our nation’s bloody war to rid itself of entitled Hanoverians who ostentatiously professed Anglican piety, the press helped install a family of entitled Irishmen who ostentatiously professed Catholic piety. Meet the new boss, you know.
Politically, the Kennedys were largely a creation of the press, which cravenly helped them apply a patina of dignity, decency and class over their unwashed morals. It would not have been very hard to utterly discredit JFK and his entire family. Remember, Nixon narrowly lost the 1960 election on account of electoral fraud in Chicago and his being too prissy to man up and put on some makeup for the cameras. He allowed Kennedy to become the first true president of the television age. The Kennedy family’s allies in the press helped him, though, by covering for their gang of smooth crooks. It helped, too, that JFK was a charmer and Nixon came across as an openly cagey oddball.
The powerful, connected people who helped the Kennedys create their mystique would not have done so had they found the family’s political platform disagreeable. They would have thrown their weight behind someone else. And had they gotten buyer’s remorse about JFK, they wouldn’t have resorted to assassination; they would have simply started airing the dirty laundry. These were not the sort of people who assassinated their opponents. They knew that the pen was mightier than the sword because it was an instrument that they were much better able to wield, and one that didn’t produce nearly the backlash that resulted from violence.
JFK’s Secret Service detail tried to protect him, but he made it impossible by insisting on riding around in open motorcades at a time when there were credible death threats. The vanity and obsession with image that helped him win the presidency were his undoing as well.
This is yet another example of why the alleged “Kennedy curse” is bullshit. People who drive, fly, ski and expose themselves to snipers like the men in that family do do not have a long life expectancy.

asia March 28, 2011 at 11:28 pm #

‘So go ahead and call Hispanics inferior. At least they never rounded up millions of Jews and gypsies and other “undesirables” and threw them into poison gas chambers’
See ‘Apacalypto'[?] Mel Gibson.
They preferred to eat the heart while it was still beating.
They didnt drop bombs? They had no bombs to drop.

turkle March 28, 2011 at 11:30 pm #

“Now answer my question: do Black Africans have the right to their own Countries”
You ask this question every week but never seem to provide an answer. Can I use my lifeline on this one? I’m going to call tootsie.
“or are you just another closet racist liberal hypocrite who knows in his heart that Whites are the best.”
If I concede this brilliant, incisive, and devastating point you’ve just made about my true nature, will you at least STFU for awhile?

turkle March 28, 2011 at 11:32 pm #

Yeah, that was a good movie, actually. I thought it was pretty badass.
But those weren’t Hispanics, ya dingbat, which are a racial mixture of the American natives and the Spaniards.
Though I guess you’re like half correct.

rippedthunder March 28, 2011 at 11:36 pm #

Good one Asia, But I won’t be sendin’ ya the cord of wood grand prize till I get more submissions! CFN patrons shall be the judges!

turkle March 28, 2011 at 11:38 pm #

Hey, Vlad, what have done lately that compares to John Coltrane and Louis Armstrong? I’d rather listen to either one of those black guys fart than hear anything emanating from your filthy piehole.

Buck Stud March 28, 2011 at 11:50 pm #

More conventional types chant TGIF…here on CFN, Friday is only two days till Monday!

Good Guy March 28, 2011 at 11:54 pm #

JHK and readers: Joe Bageant passed away a few days ago. His writings and books (Deer Hunting with Jesus the most notable) were scathing and very accurate about contemporary America, often hilarious and very, very human. His fans will miss him terribly.
http://www.joebageant.com/

Good Guy March 28, 2011 at 11:58 pm #

and regarding above note, I see JHK already mentions Joe’s death. oh well I should.read before commenting…read before commenting… read before commenting…

rocco March 28, 2011 at 11:58 pm #

Joe was a brave and funny soul and we will miss him very much.
True, true, what a sad loss for us all. Good points today JHK. I am reading about the life of Thomas Jefferson, and the letters that he and John Adams sent back and forth. During Jefferon’s run for president Hamiliton, and Aaron Burr were pulling off the same kind of war bond scams, and having the working folks pay for it. Jefferson fought him and having seeing his ethics and morals Hamiliton decided not to back Burr”any man willing to sell anything for a price is dangerous” Hamiliton knew he could sleep peacefully at night with Jefferson in charge. The money class of that time was willing to destroy and sell out the young nation to its enemies for a profit. The newspapers of those days were owned by the money class, the first FOX NEWS,but unlike today the Christian Churchs also fought the greedy bastards,today the church is in bed with the agents of greed. Folks, read those histories and remember Jefferson and Adams thought that political parties and religious warfare were going to doom this country.

Buck Stud March 28, 2011 at 11:59 pm #

AMR,
What a pleasure to read your post…hope you post more often, too. Thanks

JonathanSS March 29, 2011 at 12:02 am #

291 comments by midnight; that has to be a one day record.
Whatever happened to the person who used to tally up the top posters by the number of posts they submitted? It would usually be submitted Sundays.

femme March 29, 2011 at 12:07 am #

No this is public health system where about 70 % birth. But dont think that the private sector is any better. Just a different type of stupid, blind faith in the medical management of birth and the money making cash cow that it has become. The local private hospital has a 6o% c/s rate. Homebirth is an uncommon choice and I have attended a few homebirths. Had one myself.

femme March 29, 2011 at 12:23 am #

Yeah it begins at birth and is the same with death it is removed from the sight of most away in old folks homes and in hospitals. So much to be learned about yourself in these situations. I had my homebirth at 41. Women who homebirth are more likely to be older, have university education and from higher socio-economic groups. Not sure if it is the same in US of A. Haven’t seen any homebirthers that dont know what a tooth brush is for.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 12:29 am #

I just got back from the supermarket where a friendly Indian guy cut me some lunch meat. He suggested the egg salad with potatoes but I declined. A rather gordo young man by the name of Jose rang up my purchases. A lovely young black girl bagged up the groceries. There was a real hot Chinese girl in the produce section, speaking of which, it is now time to go peruse some online dating profiles of various Asian girls. (Gotta admit, they are my fav.)
On Tuesday, my Hispanic maid comes over and cleans the place. She does a fucking awesome job.
I love America. Do you?

turkle March 29, 2011 at 12:43 am #

Cool post. You sound like a hip daddy.
“but I don’t expect that they will earn one cent directly from what they are going to study”
Why not get a college degree in something useful like mechanical engineering? Just sayin…

San Jose Mom 51 March 29, 2011 at 12:54 am #

Obviously birth is a fundamental human experience…a really painful experience. I found that I could be more “present” when the pain was diminished with an epidural (my children have large Scandinavian heads). Four or five pushes and voila! Great relief and happiness and I got to snuggle the baby immediately.
To each her own…
SJmom

Phaedrus March 29, 2011 at 1:04 am #

Buck
“In other words, don’t blame the tool, but those swinging it?
And yet who picks and chooses the people to run the administration slots? And since you think Wall Street(“powerful people”) runs the show why did they push for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Maria Sotomayor?
Nah, this is simply the real Obama, like it or not.”
I’m not defending Obama, but we know that if it wasn’t him it would the same garbage different euphemisms. Would things have been different with McCain? Hillary? Anyone who thinks kicking Obama out of office will change a thing is delusional. You can’t change that. You can only change yourself. Blaming Obama for our problems is like eating a whole bag of Cheetos, washing it down with a few Pabst Blue Ribbons, and then complaining that it gave us the runs.

popcine March 29, 2011 at 1:08 am #

These ideas come to me, and who can I tell?
It is when the alternative to my plan is seen
to be the interminable release of Plutonium
into our world, that anyone will listen.
Plutonium would become, for all human time
frames, a permanent fact. I imagine there will
be others more qualified than myself to
explain what this would mean, and I think they
will.
A nuclear bomb of a correct magnitude, and
positioned correctly above the ruins of the
power plant, would vaporize all its fuel rods,
and all other radioactive materials.
The temperature of an atomic bomb is like the
temperature of the Sun. There would be a
certain amount of radiation from the bomb
itself, but not as much as what it destroyed.
The winds would disperse this over the
Pacific, and the crisis would finally be over.
Who can I tell? Who will listen to these ideas
that come to me?
Well, I’m no scientist, I’m probably wrong.
I’m just making this up, you know.

truthteller March 29, 2011 at 1:28 am #

SJMom,
As I said, I ain’t and don’t plan to be birthin’ no babies, AT ALL, so I’ll leave it to you ladies who either HAVE or PLAN to be birthin’ some, as to the pain factor. Hey, if it were me, I’d likely be hollerin’ at Wage to bring me all the good drugs you can git, girlfriend! 🙂
Sorry, Femme, but I’m all about anethesia when it comes to stuff that feels like they’re yanking your uterus out from the inside 🙂 As a woman who has not and doesn’t plan to be giving birth, that’s their choice, not mine (but the guilty bastard with the iPhone SHOULD feel guilty enough that he puts down the iPhone and actually PARTICIPATES in the birth experience, unpleasant as it might be 🙂

Buck Stud March 29, 2011 at 1:30 am #

Phaedrus,
My point was not anti-Obama, apologies for the confusion. My point was if he is only a tool for the wealthy why that particular SC nomination? At any rate, I think Obama will be reelected if not in a landslide, at least by a fairly wide margain.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:47 am #

No that’s not accurate. A nuclear detonation has the potential for fallout. That’s why tests were eventually moved underground. People surrounding the test areas in the US have very high cancer rates. You might be making a bad problem worse.
And yes I know what I’m talking about…

old6699 March 29, 2011 at 3:18 am #

Make no mistake,
The real contradiction today is that while the Right Wing keeps on chanting the mantra of “new enterprises”, “new entrepreneurs” as the solution to so many people being unemployed worldwide, the economic system, through macro trends like large companies buying small ones and getting rid of all the redundant workers (which are always oh so many, since they weren’t even needed in the first place because of EXCESS CAPACITY), optimizations, automation, placing factories or call centers in India, and many other “solutions” (since why on earth do companies hire college graduates if not to find solutions that will save them money, which always, somewhere along the line will translate in some job getting axed), the possibility for new sectors and entrepreneurs is getting smaller and smaller.
How many possible new sectors can be invented today ? can you imagine all these new corporations, entities hiring so many people in completely new areas, in completely new businesses ? I really cannot, no matter how hard I try: there may be some, but they are so few and probably not at all labor intensive (really, only manufacturing is labor intensive and needs so many workers, but exactly manufacturing is the sector getting rid of the most workers) that I find it incredible that people still believe this “be your own boss” myth.
Let’s imagine some numbers: say all of a sudden 1,000 new sectors come out (they have to be really new, something no one ever thought about ( since all old and present sectors today are in optimization and automation mode meaning killing jobs as much as possible) something like what the PC and Internet was when they came out or at least “very” new) and each sector has room for 50 companies and each company needs 100 workers (for 8 hours a day, everyday for at least say 3 years, now that is a long shot if you ask me). Now that must be considered “globally”, “worldwide” because we live in the Internet age and “jet age” where everyplace is your backyard now.
So how many new and really needed jobs can this produce ? 5 million. Until they also start going into optimization and automation mode slowing killing all the new jobs they created. In a world that has maybe 100 million people (and many educated and some very educated) that need jobs.
So, how on earth can people still think this myth of entrepreneurship and “be your own boss” can even make a dent in what is needed today to keep millions busy so they don’t all start civil wars and world war III ?
The entrepreneur myth worked in a very specific time within a very specific technology in very specific circumstances: what worked in the past won’t work in the future. We need new ideas and models, and free salaries, cheap rents, hobby factories, huge public – private entities hiring millions for huge ambitious programs like Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers, High speed trains, etc. and many other new ideas, interactions, social models and behaviors, new patterns of behaviors.
In short, the economic model of society must be redesigned and re-engineered into something that gives something to everyone, not this present system of Slim and Gates hogging up all the money because they are the only ones “who worked hard” for their money while millions of other people worldwide are all crazy, lazy slobs without “the right skill sets”.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 3:51 am #

Bought to hit the hay…interesting post you made there.
“In a world that has maybe 100 million people (and many educated and some very educated) that need jobs.”
That number is actually far greater. Unemployment or under-employment is epidemic/endemic in the so-called “third world.”

turkle March 29, 2011 at 4:56 am #

Have you ever heard the term Cornucopian? Because you appear to be one.
The reason that the governments of the world can’t simply employ everyone by building/staffing megaprojects (believe me…they would if they could) is that resources (and expertise for that matter) are actually limited on this finite planet. For instance, high speed trains are limited by availability of metals and other complex machinery and similarly with skyscrapers. Rockets to Mars require copious amounts of jet fuel. etc. There is not an unlimited supply of raw materials and never has been.
I suggest you read “Overshoot” by William Catton if you’re actually seriously interested in the issue. Geodestinies by Youngquist is also very good. (Some other readers might have additional suggestions.)

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 5:27 am #

I love how Welles flames JHK for being a “useful 2-party idiot.” Isn’t he the Jack-@$$ who fled the US to South America/Brazil, because he owed ~$10K in back-taxes to the IRS? What a hypocritical chump he is, talking down the US, when he wasn’t even willing to put forth his “fair” share. He pontificates endlessly about how things are so organically righteous down there in the rainforest, apparently oblivious to the accelerated clearcut slash/burn (not to mention “accidental” fires), theft of native lands for oil/gas (fraking), riverbed silting/contamination, and general *gangster* abduction/murder…
You gotta love the guys/gals that drop in every Monday morning, only to post a link to their own blog/website, and then vanish until next Monday…
The top 0.025% (0.25%/1%?) own 90+++% of all assets, on their *balance sheet*. This means they “are” the banksters, who are guaranteed 5%-12%+ returns (what’s your credit card/etc interest?) on their assets/investment. In other words, these same 0.025% (0.25%/1%?) are the “earners” of 50% of all annual salaries, on their *income statements*.
Anyone want to take a look at their *cash flow*?!? Let’s even forget about all that bailout SH! LOL, privatized profits, socialized losses!!! AHAHA, are you *AWAKE* yet?!…
LOL @ Ozone and the judicial system. Citizens United. OMG, how *ORWELLIAN*!!!

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 6:04 am #

Porc – it’s not plutonium release – it’s radioactive cesium that is the problem. Oh, and iodine (LOL).
JHK nailed those tenured economists. I saw *NO ONE* call any of his accusations out. I only saw pathetic weiners flame him for wanting to try to do something @ *election time*.
I’m like most that replied – go 3rd party. I’ve voted Nader for decades… 2-4% just ain’t gunna cut it, against a 2-party *DIATRIBE*.

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 6:08 am #

Sorry, gotta spam this – peace on earth, good will towards *men*…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGA8rCQXegM

old6699 March 29, 2011 at 6:57 am #

The attacks are on:
1) TV, the old attack again against TV, this attack is more than 50 years old, TV is actually good for kids, good for people in general, it is the most social media available (as opposed to video games) it is like always being in company with people so very good for development, it keeps everyone company, their mind occupied (so they don’t start beating up each other, etc.) .
2) Public schools. Very obvious attack, destroy the “public schools” where people that are not rich send their kids and emphasize how much smarter, better the rich kids going to private schools are. This too is old and has been going on for decades, give everyone the worse possible “public” education so that you have fewer and fewer really good (by the waY, always the rich or asians) students that will go to good colleges and be successful.
3) Normal slobs as compared to Asians and Indians. Always the punish pleasure principle going on here in JHK’s blog. This too has been going on for some time, they study “so hard”, so many “hours”, they are so good “in math”, and so on. The Technological Economy needs more math like a hole in the head, there are way more than enough worldwide ( i phantom you can get a dime a dozen just amongst the Libyan young revolutionaries). This is just another form of the “sacrifice”, the “hard work” ideology, “suffer and you will be rewarded” ideology (that probably comes from that crappy christian religion, but is probably engrained in all human psyche because they have always lived in resource scarcity systems).
If anything what is needed is more “creativity”, more originality (at least according to the Right Wing thugs talking on behalf of the corporate needs, but I doubt much of this too), and you get this mostly with a lot of diversity, a lot of diverse experiences and readings and even a lot of partying: the exact opposite of what the Asians and Indians do, in fact they manufacture Memories, the USA manufactures software and Microprocessors, and so on.
Anyways, the rants against the kids and education and so on is really old and well known. No matter what, it will never be up to some imagined model of perfection, some imagined model of success. The Russians and Europeans have always had very good education for many decades (much better than the US) but they didn’t develop most of the technology the world uses today as that was done in the US.

Evelyn Victor March 29, 2011 at 7:23 am #

POPCINE –
Quoting the answer given when someone else posed the same question elsewhere…
“Nukes do not turn everyting they touch into brilliant light that shines away into space. They make everything very hot, break things up a lot, and throw them into the atmosphere.
The fireball from a 10 or 20 kiloton weapon is maybe a hundred meters across, so the entire site wouldn’t even be enclosed within the fireball.
The temperatures inside the fireball would be something like a couple million degrees. That temperature does not just make atoms disappear. It only pisses them off. When you say “vaporize”, that’s not the same as “hurl out of existence.”
A nuclear weapon detonation would indeed vaporize a large amount of the nuclear fuel at the site. It would reduce it to atoms or very small particles and hurl it high into the stratosphere, where it really might indeed circle the globe, slowly raining out. A single 10 kt weapon would end up having more radiation damage effects than the entire human nuclear arsenal.
No offence — really — but this would be the worst idea in the long history of bad ideas.”

welles March 29, 2011 at 7:32 am #

What a hypocritical chump he is, talking down the US, when he wasn’t even willing to put forth his “fair” share.
Amigo, get a grip on reality. Many of us who used to live in the US long ago paid their “fair” share in taxes, myself included. Many subsequently decided not to continue to be financially raped, end of story.
There’s no point in playing the game if it’s eternally rigged.
As far as pontificating about how good things are in Brazil…go back and reread, you’ll find ample citings such as “no country’s perfect, this one included”. But in family values, cohesiveness of society, healthy food et al there are plenty of places that outdo the US.
Folks’d do well to broaden their borders.
If you feel good paying your “fair” share, remember that the “fair” part only increases and never, ever shrinks. How is that fair?
At what point does taking care of your family take priority over paying what some faceless burearcrat decides you owe?
Re JHK, he most definitely is addicted to his political party, and has blinders on with regard to obama, though this week he finally lifted up one and took a peek at reality.
peace to you

Dilbert March 29, 2011 at 7:32 am #

I liked this
http://dilbert.com/dyn_file/str_strip/117322/gif/strip.print/

old6699 March 29, 2011 at 7:44 am #

There are no resource scarcities, we can build any material atom by atom with modified particle accelerators, nanotechnology, bacteria that generate gasoline, use the temperature differential between underground and surface as in geothermal energy, mine the solar system, you name it we can do it.
Most of the math, science and equations that had to be solved have been solved, we don’t need more science and tech majors, we need a different social system.
I also phantom a pet project like Hobby Factories where people from 10 to 100 years old can help manufacture Rockets, Cadillacs, and Nuclear generators, for fun, as a hobby with any time shift they like from half an hour to 14 hours, so they don’t get bored by watching too much TV.
Imagine grandpa coming home and saying he put the spark plugs in the new cadillac or the 10 year old girl saying she helped to attach some pipes to the next Rocket to Mars. This way they could all learn how the production processes work, instead of keeping it all hidden from everyone as it is today.
Another pet project would be to put in place a huge BUS transportation system along with JHKs pet project of more chu chu trains. But you need the very complete and dense BUS system first if the trains are of any use.

welles March 29, 2011 at 7:59 am #

BTW, here in Brazil they’re bringing in giant new buses that take up to 250 passengers, see here for a picture:
The bus is 92 feet long and runs on oil produced from soybeans, and has braille markings listing stops on the arms on seats reserved for handicapped folks, and glowing luminescent indicators to allow hearing deficient folks to know when the doors will open or shut.
shalom

Alexandra March 29, 2011 at 8:08 am #

Good morning team CFN’ers from a grey-misty and wet south-west UK…
And thanks for the hat-tip Mr K re: ‘Inside Job’, though I doubt its any-more revelatory than knowing BP is helped shed-loads by our Govt’s here, no matter the political hue and MI6 apparently. Which no matter what is why we now do business with bad people, if it keeps the petrol pumps clicking.
This is why we’re so in the thick of it currently, with beating-up on Libya big time, as the current turmoil/insurrection there is harming BP’s interests – and that simply can’t be allowed to continue for our UK stability. What with light extra sweet virgin-crude being particularly key for us here in the Euro-zone!
Which explains too more or less why your incumbent mixed-race friendly face ‘bitch’ in Washington came so quickly on-board re: the Gulf flame-out last year, as BP’s nicely off the hook now in the Gulf, much like it was post the Exxon Valdez mess in Alaska.
And Tony Hayward was rewarded by being given an uber-slot to work with those nice Russians at TNK-BP – though it never fails to amaze me how sh#t continually rises to the top – no matter how much the disgraceful behaviour, with those then oft bounced finally in their twilight years into senior govt sponsored safe-seat retirement shelter.
But I guess the insatiable greed re: black gold overrides the need for ‘any’ moral corporate and political responsibility and longer-term clean genetic pool code, key food chain governance? Else, why do the policy actions prove that time and time again, sort-term business as usual strategy is the only play amongst 1st world imperialist ruled nations?
(AND GO FUKUSHIMA THE CONESEQUENCES)
Moving on…
The demarcations of the ‘generations’, many of the ‘X’ers I come into contact with here in the UK are seething with quiet anger, pissed-orf too as they’ll never be major league freehold property owners aka there parents generation (i.e. Boomer’s) whom are on the benefits already of index-linked pensions, ditto the ‘Y’ers whom are more easily bought off with fast-flickery screen gadgets and cartoon gaming distractions.
As for the millennial’s – gee’s the odds are so heavily stacked against them – pretty horrific me thinks. Though the best-of-bunch are heads-down doing as told, going mega debt into degree level education, but in a country where the quality a plenty post-grad jobs are decades gone, where is the sense in that?
(The smarter ones have started rioting accordingly, I suspect the parents will eventually join in too when the façade of business as usual is long-gone, the boulevard of broken-dreams fully on view)
Many white-trash type Millennial’s I witness are also wobbling around already packed full of saturated fats, having been nurtured to minimal term short-life obesity by a 24/7 mainstream diet of convenience TV meals, and sweetie-snacks due to Mummies total kitchen absence, no dining table or knife & fork required.
And to prove how seriously f#cked we are as a ‘future’ right-stuff TLE focused nation, tune in any weekday to this prime-time ITV2 show ‘The only way is Essex’ to see why I need no further impetus to quit Britain PDQ for my long-term later year care…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsVO1hsrOnI
*sniggers*
Though the ‘Social Network’ as a movie demonstrates that no matter yer birth date, those ruthlessly intelligent and gifted enough, can still cut a swathe through the cr#p and deliver a killer app, bringing fame, fortune and reward a plenty.
(These be the 1 in a 1,000000 types only)
But as to the Goldman’s current valuation… ?? No my dears, that too remains a complete slight-of-hand fiction.
Be seeing you…

progressorconserve March 29, 2011 at 8:15 am #

OK, Old69 – but you’re going to have to take the first test ride on that rocket, man!
“10 year old girl saying she helped to attach some pipes to the next Rocket to Mars.”
-old69-
===============
Fact is, there was a lifestyle that kept everyone busy – and no one was ever bored for long. It was the hunter/gatherer model. That gave way to the subsistence agriculture model. This was replaced by the industrial agriculture model, and the present day gloomily dawned.
Old69, why don’t you give some thought to the innate human desire to be outdoors, around plants and animals – and add those thoughts to your plans for the future.

trippticket March 29, 2011 at 8:44 am #

“Weed (just got TWO new batches this week) is about the only thing that got me through Obama’s little speech about why he decided to bypass Congress before carpet bombing a foreign country and its people.”
You know what else gets you through a speech like that? Ignoring it for the worthless, desperate end game approach that it is. Not that there’s anything wrong with using a doobie to ease that particular pain;) Pass that dutchie, my dear. To the left-hand side. I’m afraid that anyone still pulling for a top-down solution is wasting their time. The only way to stop the destruction is to stop underwriting it by attending to business as usual.
I’ve recently wondered if Jevon’s Paradox doesn’t apply on the macro scale, where any energy NOT spent by people like us would just be consumed by people who don’t care or don’t understand the situation, making that savings disappear. Which probably happens, and is the reason I celebrate actual energy descent the way I do. Because it is the only way we’ll change our practices. When we’re forced to.

trippticket March 29, 2011 at 8:49 am #

“The only way to stop the destruction is to stop underwriting it by attending to business as usual.”
This wasn’t as clear as I had hoped. I mean that attending to business as usual just underwrites the destruction. We have to undermine destructive systems by not participating, not driving a world-destroying economy, not paying taxes, not blindly consuming, and thereby remove our implied approval of what “they” are doing.

Prelapsarian Press March 29, 2011 at 8:52 am #

Morford claims to be straight, btw. It’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t cash in on the cachet of being gay in SF, if he could.
I can confirm his friend’s experience from teaching in more upmarket demographics. I taught at one university where the average SAT score is now about 1320. These kids would jump through the hoops they thought necessary to make grades, and most of them would probably not qualify as functional illiterates. But getting them to think at all, to take any pains with their written work, or to write a semi-intelligent and thoughtful sentence was absolutely beyond the pale. The budding Amerian “elites” give no reason whatsoever for encouragement about the future.

lbendet March 29, 2011 at 10:01 am #

Knowing who is who: Think Tanks
As so many policies in this country are driven by Think Tanks who have replaced government as policy makers, I thought I’d compile a list yesterday. In context of this weeks blog by JHK, It’s important to note that the neoliberal policies by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of business has been codified into both part platforms for intituting the environment by which we have established the laissez-faire “Free market” globalism which is destroying this country.
This morning I felt that there must be something in the air, as I watched the Washington Journal on C-Span, someone called in an challenged the speaker James Carafano, American scholar on national security and international studies at the Heritage Foundation. He Demanded that C-Span identify the think tank that the speaker represented.
Clearly the public has a right to know what agendas the speaker is pushing. The Heritage foundation is a very right-wing think tank who features Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh on its face-page.
Imagine the Orwellian audacity of the speaker to claim that Heritage Foundation was not affiliated with any party and that he was a independent! –So, Don’t believe your lying eyes. Even when exposed, Carafano refused to acknowledge the truth. Very sad and disconcerting for us all.
Right Wing Think Tanks: Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Hoover Institution, Manhattan Institute, Lexington Institute,Project for the New American Century,Center for Security Policy, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Center for Immigration Studies,Claremont Institute, Hudson Institute, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch and Claude R. Lambe charitable foundations, the Phillip M. McKenna Foundation, the JM Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Henry Salvatori Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. In 1994, they controlled more than $1.1 billion in assets; from 1992-94, they awarded $300 million in grants, and targeted $210 million to support a wide array of projects and institutions.
Centerist Think Tanks: Progressive Policy Institute but that’s a DLC thing, American Consumer Institute, Aspen Institute,Atlantic Council of the United States, Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Center for Advanced Defense Studies, Center for Global Development, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Committee for Economic Development, Constitution Project, Council on Foreign Relations, The Group of 30, Henry L. Stimson Center, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, International Center for Research on Women, New America Foundation, Pew Research Center, RAND Corporation, Resources for the Future, Streit Council for a Union of Democracies, Urban Institute, Woodrow Wilson, Seattle Fire Fighters Kitsap County Carpool and Policy Institute International Center for Scholars
Left wing think tanks
Center for American Progress, Center for Defense Information, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Center for Progressive Reform, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Century Foundation, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Economic Policy Institute, Institute for Policy Studies, Progressive Policy Institute, Public Citizen, Roosevelt Institution
FYI: The Brookings Institute was the Think Tank that came up with the policy that Obama adopted when deciding to do the no-Fly Plus in Libya what was determined to potentially be a blood bath.

Hancock1863 March 29, 2011 at 10:13 am #

You said:

That is different, and quite unfortunate as you say, consultant. Some would argue that capitalistic selfishness made the US great – but there was an “e pluribus unum” quality that held the excesses of our leadership in check – until about 1980.
Now, the problem is that political and business leadership has adopted that same maniacal selfish focus on “today.” It doesn’t look like a recipe for national success to me, either.
HC’63 – that’s where we are today as a nation, with throttles to the firewall and the landing gear handle ripped off.

Succinctly and well said. I might guess (yes, a GUESS, not an ironclad belief or anything) that 1980 would seem to coincide with when our Intelligence Community (i.e. Bush Family CIA Caporegime & their RW Industrialist/Corporatist Uber Alles) saw the writing on the wall that LW Authoritarian Soviet Communism was doomed and it was only a matter of time.
As opposed to when they let us Plebes know, which was when the money had all been made off the fear, the brown people yearning to be free had been taught that it was all Soviet Communism, this idea that they should get any portion of what the Transnationals, ahem, ex-propriated for the good of all (guffaw!) and the bricks by then were tumbling from the Berlin Wall.
In the end, it seems to me the Final Slide
(read: the aristocracy acknowledging the Titanic is sinking and loot everything you can and stuff it into the lifeboats!)
began not just with their finally believing climate and environmental science
(this is why they teach us Plebes to disbelieve those sciences, so the scoundrels get a head start toting their loot to the lifeboats, then hiring one-half of the poor to control and kill if necessary the other half),
but with the end of Soviet Communism, which, horrific, wrong and tyrannical as it was, it was an alternative that deeply frightened Capitalists, as their bunch of Alphas would be brought down and replaced by another bunch of Commie Alphas to run things – we Plebes never mattered at all – it was all just the usual pecker-jousting among Alpha Aristocrats, same as the last 8000 years.
You also said, ProgorCons:

If your right wing authoritarians end up with complete control, it won’t be because of a intelligent plan that stretched from the Old South to Rupert Murdock’s FOX News.
It will be, rather, because those are the types of personalities that are ALWAYS ending up in charge of things – north-south, east-west, muslim-christian, or Expansion-Collapse.

I have been arguing the second paragraph pretty much since I started posting here. It’s my primary thesis, I believe, even above authoritarianism. So…yep.
As to the first paragraph, lets just ask why does it have to be either/or? It doesn’t have to be an intelligent plan spanning millenia, though it wouldn’t surprise me if it was. But within the vast expanse of human history, there most certainly have been plans, plots and conspiracies by the 0.1% Aristocracy with the intent to defraud, oppress, rob, or otherwise use us Plebes as intelligent cattle in time of peace and intelligent wolves in time of war.
Almost without relent, but we pretend it stops at our shores, like a magic wand changing all human nature to fairy dust.
Benzair Bhutto: murdered by a cooperative team of killers.
Anwar Sadat: murdered by a cooperative team of killers.
JFK, RFK, MLK: murdered by crazy lone gunmen acting completely and uncooperatively alone.
Yitzhak Rabin: murdered by crazy lone gunman acting completely and uncooperatively alone.
Just on the face of it, common sense should tell us that human nature among the 0.1% Aristocracy doesn’t magically change after 8000 years and in every other nation even today EXCEPT OURS (and our uber alles).
That does not compute, and there’s your intelligent plans. Not spanning a thousand years, but spanning decades using familial and social connections as a cover? Plenty of real stuff out there to research, no need to resort to unproven conspiracy theories.
All one has to do is rid ourselves of the absurd notion that it all is different…here in the former USA (and Israel), like nowhere else in human history, even today.
Because it isn’t..sadly.

Joshua March 29, 2011 at 10:16 am #

Joe Bageant was not lauding blacks, but observing that a white man raised poor white from Hope, Arkansas probably has more in common with them than a black man privately schooled from Hawaii.
You are good at pushing people’s buttons. I will not respond to your provocative pokes again.

Hancock1863 March 29, 2011 at 10:29 am #

May I say I am not surpised at the C-SPIN exchange you mention. I also presume, from my now vast experience in understanding and predicting the actions of totalitarian media, that the C-SPIN “moderator” uttered not a peep of correction, at most ran the customary false equivalence exercise, but would never utter a comment more in line with what such mendacity warrants,
“C’mon, fella, don’t insult our intelligence by saying that. Go look at your foundation’s web home page and say that with a straight face. You sound like Baghdad Bob.”
Because that is the kind of sneering contempt that such transparent lies deserve when they try to enter our National Dialogue, regardless of who says it, Left or Right. If the former United States were a healthy, free and functioning democratic-prepublic with an informed and critically-thinking populace, that is.
But it isn’t. Quite the opposite. Which is why I can tell you for 100% certain that is what happened and the moderator said nothing to correct the obvious 100% falsehood by a RW propagandist hiding behind a lie.
Please feel free to confirm, lbendet. Not that I need to hear confirmation, totalitarianism is so very predictable.
This is why I’d rather watch old tapes of 1970s Isvestia broadcasts or scratchy old recordings of Nazi Radio, circa 1938, than watch or listen to any part of the former USA’s laughably, transparently mendacious RW Lie Machine, which now encomapsses virtually the entire American Corporate Media from corrupt end to corrupt end.
It’s time to laugh, here on the Titanic. Most definitely time to laugh. George Carlin was right, and he was right to make a living laughing at it.

messianicdruid March 29, 2011 at 10:32 am #

Yes. Joshua – it’s not racism, it’s classism. We have more in common with common people, poor people, who have had to make do with nothing, working for minwage, living without electricity or perhaps water, because the bills are past due and they have cut of service to your “home” which you rent {for now}. hen you move into a tent down by the river and are carrying everything you own on your back – you find the people around you may not look the same but they feel the same about the world around them and know who is not sharing their experience.

Großdeutschland March 29, 2011 at 10:49 am #

“I can sling it with the best of them when I feel like it!”
Actually, no, you can’t. Your dates are wrong. Nixon wasn’t even President until 1969. Combat troops plummeted very rapidly from over 500,000 before he was President to none BEFORE 1974. Nice try.

bossier22 March 29, 2011 at 11:00 am #

there are as many low iq’s and dogmatic brains on the left as there are on the right. especially those who have always voted in their own best interest while sitting on their ass collecting a govt check for generations. the mistake the center left makes is insulting those who might be persuaded to vote a different way. it is hard to side with someone who looks down their nose at you even when you have common interests.

MarlinFive54 March 29, 2011 at 11:06 am #

Ripthunder,
That’s some damn fine poetry, Son.
You’ve joined the ranks of your Mass. comrade poets Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell.
Meet me at the Kennedy Center for your award; CFN Poet Laureate.
BTBill; Dude, you had me LoL! One question, on that 3 hour singles
cruise, was your friends name Gilligan?
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter

MarlinFive54 March 29, 2011 at 11:24 am #

One more question. Did the UN kick Libya off the their Human Rights Council yet? Or did they put them in charge?
I’ll have to Google that.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter

newworld March 29, 2011 at 11:39 am #

You know vlad I think we should stick to flaying them for their anti-white pathologies instead of the IQ and Crime stats routine. Honestly do you think we can change these college grads religous belief in the Blank Slate Theory? Not a chance IMO.
Lets be honest most people just go with the flow and when they are faced with a vicous cult minder like a turkle they choose the path of least resistance and mumble the correct words that the little psychopath wants to hear.
Jim Jones’ cult was not destroyed by facts but by the simple appeal of would you like to go home away from this nutter, and that is what we offer today. Then let the turkle’s and the other cult minders off themselves.

MarlinFive54 March 29, 2011 at 11:45 am #

Myrtlemay;
This would be a good time for another one of your short stories, this one about Obama as US military commander and war chief. Perhaps the setting could be in the ‘situation room’ in the White House. Kind of what Gore Vidal did with Lincoln and the Civil War, but only in a few paragraphs.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter

Cash March 29, 2011 at 11:48 am #

“it is hard to side with someone who looks down their nose at you even when you have common interests.” – Bossier22
Amen.
“the mistake the center left makes is insulting those who might be persuaded to vote a different way”
Another round of applause. The canuck version of centre-left made that exact same mistake. Not enough that their own policies alienated the western part of the country. They followed it up with years and years of insults to the very people they screwed calling them uneducated racists, rednecks, extremists and now “teapartiers” and severely pissing them off. Now Liberals wonder why the word “liberal” is electoral poison out there.
So imagine the surprise of oh so intellectually superior Torontonians when Calgary, that Conservative/Reform bastion of supposed racist redneckery, elected a Harvard educated brown skinned Muslim as mayor (Naheed Nenshi) and Toronto just elected as mayor a fat, red faced, ranting, right-wing businessman who looks like a walking, talking aneurysm (Rob Ford). “We should’ve had Naheed” they whine. “Blow me”, I say.
People on the centre left think they’re so damned smart. They think they’re soooo educated and informed (how do I know? they tell us ALL the time), they sneer at rural people and westerners. But I’ve been watching for decades and I’ve yet to see any evidence of this supposed superiority. You think you’re so much better? So, as Charlie says, “Bring it.”

upstater March 29, 2011 at 11:50 am #

“Poor Obama. On The global chessboard of fate, he’s the powerless king facing down ranks of dark knights and implacable bishops.”
Were you not following the news in November 2008, when Obama appointed Rham as chief of staff and Hillary at State? Or posed with Robert Rubin? Or appointed Larry Summers and pretty-boy Tim?
Alex Cockburn said something like “This IS Obama”, when he appointed William Daley to replace Rhambo.
The guy was and is and will remain a corporatist.
The problem with “change” in the US is there is no cohesive mass movement or ideology capable of uniting the beleagured public into mass action or even voting for that matter.
The whole thing will collapsed and we’ll end up with something that looks like a born-again version of fascism. We’re 90% of the way there already.

BeantownBill March 29, 2011 at 11:57 am #

No, you are wrong. Nixon increased the massive bombing of North Vietnam and extended it to neighboring countries and US military casualties and expenditures continued into the ’70’s. I was talking about ending the war, not the troop count. Some ending-the-war plan.
And Nixon first revealed he had a plan to end the war in 1968 when he was running for president, not while he was the president. As soon as he took office in January, 1969, no mention of any special plan was made.
Ever see those iconic pictures and videos of people trying to hop onto the last helicoptors on the roof of the US embassy in Saigon? We had made up our mind to leave and we upped and left. We could have done that in 1969 if that was the plan, not wait until 1974. Nixon scammed the American people into voting for him, not unlike our current president.

BeantownBill March 29, 2011 at 12:03 pm #

No it wasn’t, but I never saw Marianne again.

lbendet March 29, 2011 at 12:31 pm #

Hancock,
You re so right about that. C-Span let him get away with claiming he was not affiliated with the right, but he didn’t convince the caller or anyone else!
All you need to know is that Hannity and Limbaugh and that’s your answer.

bossier22 March 29, 2011 at 12:53 pm #

judgemental attitudes are not restricted to caucasians. it is only bad when it is whites are expressing an opinion. if other race/ ethnicities speak judgementally, then in todays orwellian world they have a historic right to.

MarlinFive54 March 29, 2011 at 12:56 pm #

Anybody know where Code Pink, Democracy Now, Cindy Sheehan and all the other lefty groups that hammered President Bush so hard and made so much noise about Iraq, 2004-2008 are?
Here’s where; twisting themselves up like pretzels to justify the Messiah’s adventurous foray into Libya. Actually i think Obama is handling the situation pretty well. That makes it all the sweeter.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter

newworld March 29, 2011 at 1:00 pm #

Ol’ K’Daffy used to sprinkle his dogmatic speeches to his black African underlings with anti-white bromides, he is getting what he deserves. I only wish they did it harder and the rebels vicous thugs in their own right pay back the regime’s supporters in the classic Arab way.

Patrizia March 29, 2011 at 1:30 pm #

They say the Obama´s presidential campaign was the best.
I am not a marketing guru, but I think I would have been able to do the same.
You ask what the people want and then you promise it, with a nice smile and a convincing tone.
Also Hitler had a large consensus.
He promised what people wanted (but he fulfilled his promises).
Before him the economy was a disaster, with him everybody had a job, even the people in jail.
That was the time in which ALL Germany´s autobans were built.
And when he went to war, most of the Germans agreed.
He was a master in rethotic and most Germans (except jewish) loved him.
As for Obama, people wanted change and he promised change.
The problem was that it was not the change they wanted.
What a strange country USA has become.
It is a sin to show a naked breast, but is not a sin to steal and cheat.
It is a sin not to pay the taxes, but it is not a sin to steal the State´s money.
Mr. Kunstler, you always said that nothing is free or comes for free.
You are wrong.
The only ones who make money are the ones who gamble in Wall Street.
Working is for the stupids.
The smart ones bid, on everything.
Las Vegas is losing customers, it is more profitable to bid against the default of the states you caused.
You can make millions and billions in seconds.
In Las Vegas it is not so easy.
Justice works for the ones who have money, big money.
They are above the law.
All the others have to behave.
But I think we deserve it.
We are too stupid to still believe in law and order.
We haven´t realized that the world has changed.
That life´s rules have changed too.
Once the intelligent was the Nobel prize winner, the scientist, the big inventor.
Now the intelligent is the one that knows better how to cheat and steal.
As for the Nobel prize, that too has become a farce.
As we say in Italy: son of the times…

turkle March 29, 2011 at 1:31 pm #

I don’t think so, Marlin. Those people are generally anti-war across the board, no matter who is president.

bossier22 March 29, 2011 at 1:34 pm #

try living a hunter/gather life and see if you still think it is better

turkle March 29, 2011 at 1:38 pm #

Why won’t someone think of the poor oppressed white people whose mouths are sewn shut by the threads of the multiculti oppressors?
As far as I can tell, there are plenty of people on the internet who feel qualified to criticize and judge harshly every other race and culture that isn’t their own. And I haven’t seen anyone taken to the Ministry of Information for doing it, either, at least not in America. On certain sites (such as this one) and on many talk radio programs, it seems to be a favorite passtime to make sweeping generalizations about minority groups.
So go ahead and judge everyone else if it makes you feel good about yourself. Have a white man’s online pity party with your friend Vlad. The Thought Police will not come calling.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 1:41 pm #

It was better for the planet. For humans, it was rather nasty, brutish, and short (as the saying goes). Civilization is all about the comforts, is it not?

turkle March 29, 2011 at 1:42 pm #

Well, that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it? What is good and comfortable for humanity may not be so great for all the other living things on the planet.

ozone March 29, 2011 at 1:43 pm #

Youse folks are feeding my inherent paranoia, but it’s got a most reasonable buzz to it. I look at who gets the gelt AND what they spend it on.
Think tanks are an excellent investment, being that they have a cache of overarching “knowledge” and “political realism”. The banality of ORGANIZED evil deception and obfuscation.
This is why the racist banter is so laughable; it’s the very blatant example of “employing one half of the underclass to kill and oppress the other half”. It’s dimwitted and reptilian in the extreme, and serves only the Overlords. They’ve been exploited [with a very heavy hand], and don’t even realize it! Talk about your impediment to changing the paradigm; they foolishly believe they can escape the furnace that heats the boiler of rapacious capitalism by being the handmaidens of psychopaths. It’s pretty gobsmacking, but I suppose it feeds their fantasies of being dukes and counts (and having their pick of the vestal virgins) if they can’t be kings.
Suicidal idiocy.
Know your enemies; racists are just dispensable roadblocks on the road that leads to them.

newworld March 29, 2011 at 1:45 pm #

At colleges they most certainly will, vicous anti-whites like yourself will see to the censorship. So what the Blank Slate Theory is bunk and some people’s IQ is going to be lower due to heriditary reasons, that happens and stop blaming whites.
Just stop it with the anti-white pathology, its all we are asking.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 1:47 pm #

“So what the Blank Slate Theory is bunk and some people’s IQ is going to be lower due to heriditary reasons, that happens and stop blaming whites.”
That’s one hell of a sentence.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 1:49 pm #

“some people’s IQ is going to be lower due to heriditary reasons”
I’m sorry that you were shortchanged in that department. I bet you make up for it with your fine character.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 1:54 pm #

I don’t have to censor my thoughts for anyone, and certainly not for a grammar-challenged internet nobody. I’m all for 100% free speech. Interestingly enough, you want to police my thoughts just like you claim others would do to you for expressing your white man’s burden.
Also, it is fun to make fun of people like you, who claim mental superiority over entire racial groups and then can’t construct a basic coherent sentence in their native language. What can I say, I’m easily amused by other’s hypocrisy.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:02 pm #

“Bet you got an A+ in Anthropology. And that’s not a compliment.”
Yeah, why learn anything about other people or cultures when you already know everything a priori? Good point.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:04 pm #

“Stop hitting on the young.”
But they’re so cute.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:09 pm #

Something tells me you are not an engineer or a scientist.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:11 pm #

“There are no resource scarcities”
I beg to differ…

progressorconserve March 29, 2011 at 2:20 pm #

“There are no resource scarcities”
-old-
“I beg to differ..”
-turkle-
So, Turkle, what is your opinion about securing the US borders and severely restricting legal immigration.
And how does one advocate for either of those two sensible and/or sustainable positions without being labeled racist, or worse?

asoka March 29, 2011 at 2:38 pm #

Stlhdr said:

TPTB took Barry into the proverbial smoke filled back room and showed him a different film of that day in November, one never seen by the public, taken from, maybe, the grassy knoll. After the lights came up they handed him his new agenda and asked if there were any questions. There weren’t, of course.

========
Somebody please explain why “TPTB” had such urgency about women’s rights that they had their puppet Obama make his first act be to sign the Lily Leadbetter executive order for fair wages for women in the workplace. Then TPTB decided their puppet Obama should pick a superior Latina and a superior Jewess to serve life-time appointments on the Supreme Court. Are women running the show? Are TPTB women?
Why were TPTB so intent on health care reform that they had their puppet Obama push through the Affordable Care Act to cover more people than ever with health care? Don’t TPTB know the effects that will have on private insurers and pharmaceutical companies in the long run?
Why did TPTB allow Obama to push through increases in funding for health care for veterans? Are veterans running TPTB?
Why did TPTB allow their puppet Obama to bring unemployment back down into single digit territory? Don’t TPTB know that high unemployment benefits the ruling class?
Then TPTB had their puppet Obama work behind the scenes feverishly until DADT was eliminated from the military, enshrining gay rights in the heart of the USA military. Are gays running the show?
Then TPTB endorsed multilateralism (with a short-term USA engagement) over unilateralism (benefiting USA arms suppliers for years and years) in Libya? Are liberals running the show?
Are TPTB really running the show? Either TPTB are liberals with strange and inconsistent priorities, or their puppet Obama is out of control. His decisions are not following a ruling elite agenda.
TPTB better do something quickly… TPTB will have even less control over their puppet Obama in his second term. Obama is liable to escalate his own personal pro-women, pro-gay, pro-veterans, pro-workers, pro-multilateralism, pro-multiculturalism agenda. Obama is dangerous.
Now I understand why so many of you are so scared and so angry. NOT.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:39 pm #

Well, prog, my feeling is that practically speaking it is difficult to completely control a border of over a thousand miles between two free countries, without turning it into something like the Berlin Wall. I watched a Nat Geo special called “Border Wars,” which was quite informative. My impression is that there actually are a large amount of resources and agents being deployed on the Mexican border to stop illegal crossings.
But that’s the “hard on the outside, soft on the inside” approach. The only thing that would really work well is mandating all employers used something e-verify for their employers, but many consider that too intrusive.
Also, I kinda think that if two non-citizens have a child here, the kid shouldn’t automatically be a citizen. But that’s going to require Constitutional changes.
I also think it would be good to put a division or two of the Army down there. It is kind of wild at the moment, with all the armed drug dealers bringing their loads across. Isn’t border security one of the primary purposes of a military? But, alas, they are engaged elsewhere.
“And how does one advocate for either of those two sensible and/or sustainable positions without being labeled racist, or worse?”
You can do it quite easily, actually. Arguing about borders and immigration does not imply that Mexicans are inferior life forms.
On the other hand, if you want to know how to be a racist, see posts by Vlad from above.
Sensible…perhaps. Sustainable…no. Almost nothing humanity currently does is sustainable, and certainly not our oil-dependent way of living. I saw a story today arguing that oil would be gone in 50 years. I’m not sure why you feel America is some special lifeboat. It isn’t.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:40 pm #

Come on, give some credit to George Carlin!

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:40 pm #

Should have read “use e-verify for their employees.”

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:42 pm #

Touche.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 2:46 pm #

fuzzythinkingwzhe said: “But just to underscore it, Obama isn’t a bit different than Bush.
====================
Really? I must have missed when Obama said we would get Gaddafi “dead or alive,” that we’ll smoke him out his cave, that he can run but he can’t hide, that we would “stay the course” FOR YEARS and go it alone cause we don’t need no stinking permission from no goddamn useless United Nations.
I don’t recall Bush ever handing over operational control to international forces. Bush dressed up in military gear on the deck of a USA aircraft carrier with a banner saying “mission accomplished” … followed by years more American deaths on the front lines.
Bush destroyed the USA economy and left it ruptured, hemorrhaging 700,000 jobs per month… while handing out billions of dollars in bailouts (the bailouts are Bush’s baby even though they were approved by McCain and Obama at the time). Bush enlarged government (think Homeland Security, TSA, etc.) and engaged in illegal activities like torture.
Obama has cut government jobs and expanded private sector employment for nineteen consecutive months …. and Obama banned torture by executive order.
Bush referred to the USA waging a “crusade” against radical Islam. I don’t recall Obama using such loaded and provocative language.
Just to underscore it, Bush had trouble speaking English. Obama is able to communicate effectively without mangling the English language … spontaneously, at live press conferences …. without a teleprompter.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:50 pm #

Agreed.
Obama is “just like” or “as bad as Bush” is such a vacuous position.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:53 pm #

It seems to me that if you take the position that Obama is exactly the same as Bush, you don’t really understand either president very well.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 2:54 pm #

Tell me, asoka, is our children learning?

Ericg March 29, 2011 at 3:00 pm #

LBENDET,
Obviously you haven’t read Hayek or you would understand that the “Free Market” we have today in no way resembles what he had in mind. What is passed off today as “Capitalism” is not true capitalism. This is Keynes Capitalism

asoka March 29, 2011 at 3:04 pm #

Beantown said:

Because, you fucking retard, he said he had a plan in 1968 and the war ended in 1974. Even you, with your IQ score equal to the length of your penis, could have ended that war sooner if you really had a plan. If you took the time to get your head out of your ass, you’d realize he was scamming the American public.

==============
LOL! Beantown, you are an excellent communicator because you are using language tootsie can understand.
However, both you are Tootsie are missing who really “ended the war” and it wasn’t Nixon.
“We” didn’t “end the war” … we got our asses whooped and we were driven out… right up to the last minute frantic helicopters taking people off the rooftops of the embassy… because the Vietnamese won the Vietnam war.
The USA lost the war against communism in Vietnam. The Vietnamese nationalists won the war. Vietnam is a communist country today. Dominos did not fall. The world did not end. We now trade with them.
The whole fucking war was a waste of money and lives (we are still paying the price in veterans’ benefits for fucked-up veterans).
Those died in Vietnam died in vain.
All those Americans who allowed themselves to become imperialist cannon fodder, all those Americans who died in Vietnam, died in vain. There was nothing heroic or honorable about going thousands of miles around the globe with the express purpose of murdering people.
The Americans I respect and honor are those who refused to go to Vietnam I honor those who went to prison instead, those who refused to go to Vietnam and went to Canada instead, and those, like me, who were conscientious objectors, refused to go to Vietnam and did two years of alternative service in a hospital instead.
Like Whitman, I honor myself, I celebrate myself. And that has nothing to do with pop psychologizing about boomer narcissism bullshit.
To those war veterans who did not refuse, to those who did not seek options so as not to go, to those who participated in the slaughter of over two million human beings in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, I will never say “thank you for your service.” Their participation in a highly mechanized killing spree, killing people they had never met or talked to, is a disgrace to the very meaning of the word “service.”
You don’t save villages by destroying them. You don’t serve anybody by killing people who were never a threat to the security of the USA.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 3:12 pm #

MoneyMouth said:

I am still quite happy with Obama. Given the obstacles that the lunatic-right have thrown up, I think that he has performed remarkably well.

=========
Moneymouth, thank you for your courage in saying this.
Day one of the Obama presidency the hate began.
Rush Limbaugh said: “I want him to fail” … and I am convinced there is a healthy dose of racism in the vitriol (though of course few will admit openly to being racist).
You make an excellent point about how much good Obama has done with zero cooperation from the GOP.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 3:14 pm #

Answer the question A hole – Do Black Africans have the right to their own Nations? Or are you just another racist stooge of the Global Slave Masters – the same people who are denying White Europeans their right to have Homelands and their own Identity? Slow motion genocide is still genocide, stupid.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 3:15 pm #

turkle replied to comment from
MoneyMouth said: “This is starting to smell like just another right-wing-hater rant-site.”
Turkle said: Oh, we got all shapes and colors here. It is the usual bag of American mixed nuts. Just wait until asoka shows up…
=============
LOL!
I, too, am saddened by the loss of Joe Bageant.
May Allah’s blessings be upon Mr. Bageant.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 3:16 pm #

The problem I have with the free marketeers is that they don’t seem to have much awareness of history. Governmental structures and the production of essential resources such as crops have been completely intertwined, not primarily based on free market principles.
For instance, the first city-states of civilization were essentially communist arrangements where farmers delivered their goods to the central temple. Throughout the Middle Ages, peasants were protected by their lords and gave most of their crops to them. Economic activity centered around the castle, a proto-governmental structure.
Then I think of arrangements like the Romans distributing imported bread to the citizens. The concept and practice of trade was also driven by early governmental structures, which would trade with other governments for necessary/desired resources.
It was only with the rise of the burgher class during the Reinaissance and the formation of early banking institutions that capitalism independent of governments was possible.
So to pretend that a separation between economic acitivities and the government is ideal flies in the face of most social arrangements throughout human history. People are not naturally inclined to be their own self-contained, “profit making” economic institutions.
Even today, all advanced governments are highly involved and intertwined with the economies of their countries.

Buck Stud March 29, 2011 at 3:17 pm #

Wow…that’s one of the more powerful posts I’ve ever read here on CFN. And I find myself largely agreeing, but at the same time I have a hard time faulting the boy barely out of high-school for doing what they thought was the honorable and brave thing to do at the time. You’re better than that Asoka; you can access the omni-directional vantage point and we all know it.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 3:17 pm #

You didn’t see the movie just like you don’t “see” the tens of millions of illegals in this country – pathetic.
The Mexican Goverment distributes a handbook to help illegals cross the border. You are good at being wrong about just about everything.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 3:22 pm #

Vlad said: “Slow motion genocide is still genocide…”
==========

I’m not sure if you are referring to “genocide” as a result of innate white stupidity here, or if you are referring to unstoppable miscegenation, but you are correct.
As a percentage of world inhabitants, the white population will plummet to a single digit (9.76%) by 2060 from a high-water mark of 27.98% in 1950. http://bit.ly/g4qPC0

It is an inevitable development. No one can stop the disappearance of caucasians.
BTW, Vlad, it is not polite to reply to a poster and to call him or her stupid.

welles March 29, 2011 at 3:24 pm #

We have to undermine destructive systems by not participating, not driving a world-destroying economy, not paying taxes, not blindly consuming, and thereby remove our implied approval of what “they” are doing.
So invigorating to see trippy “gets” it.
one of the few….*tip of the hat*
trippy, i’m on your left next time you’re passing it

nakedempire March 29, 2011 at 3:24 pm #

Every problem in the world now can be traced back to crooks on wall street from inflation to unrest in the middle east………..break up the big banks now…..
http://nakedempire2.blogspot.com/

asoka March 29, 2011 at 3:25 pm #

rippedthunder said:
Okay now, everybody. Let’s all get together and make up a funny limerick, song, or share a joke. This place is gettin’ me down. I started . let’s go!
===========
OK, here is a joke:
What do dictators do with their armies?
They put them in their sleevies!

turkle March 29, 2011 at 3:25 pm #

Love you, too, cupcake.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 3:27 pm #

It is kind of ironic, Vlad. I live in a state with a lot of illegal immigrants (Cali), whereas you live in one without so many (Idaho). Yet you’re the one who gets all hot and bothered about it.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 3:29 pm #

So now you’ll telling me which movies I’ve seen. Methinks you have some boundary issues.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 3:30 pm #

No “illegals” here, Vlad, just people nonviolently taking back the land that was forcibly and violently taken from them. ¡Viva La Reconquista!
The USA Homeland Security also has published something to help people crossing the borders.
http://www.dhs.gov/files/crossingborders/travelers.shtm

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 3:30 pm #

Nah, sounds like he was making a living off his own people by writing about them for people like you. Compasionate Condescension so you could feel good about looking down on them since one of their own did too.
Many Blacks hate Whites. Those that don’t largely support those that do. In any case, they all want as much as they can of what the White Man has. We are so all over the board now that we can’t even comprehend what a unified people are – and the power that they wield. The Mexicans are even more united – and far more organized.
We are competitors. It started long ago when the Planters encouaged the Blacks to feel superior to the poor Whites. It got worse when the poor Whites fought for the South to defend their homeland – even though they had no slaves. It expanded when Blacks came north into the cities and started taking White jobs by undercutting their wages or during strikes. It will get worse: as Society crumbles the competetors will become out and out enemies. Be wise and don’t be near them when the TSHTF.

newworld March 29, 2011 at 3:31 pm #

Tell us about the Blank Slate Theory in which you believe in sir? I think it is bunk sold to kids for too high a price.
Yes it is true millions of children in this country are below average in intelligence and heriditary reasons are a large portion of this divergence, and it is true that many if not most of these children have brown or black skin. This is not some white conspiracy no matter how many times you anti-whites tell us it is, it is as natural as Evolution.
Like I asked, just drop the anti-white hate mongering. A black child is never educated by discriminating against a white child, never, ever.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 3:32 pm #

Careful, Turkle, or Vlad will be inviting you to go alone with him to the wasteland to “feast on game” … whatever the hell that means.

progressorconserve March 29, 2011 at 3:32 pm #

Good response on borders and immigration. I agree with most every point you made except:
“You can do it quite easily, actually. Arguing about borders and immigration does not imply that Mexicans are inferior life forms.
-turkle-
Would that this were so. I have been called a racist on this forum – for advocating secure borders and restricted legal immigration.
Liberal orthodoxy – exemplified by the California Green Party and the Sierra Club – advocate for nearly unrestricted ILLEGAL immigration. And these are two organizations that should put the environment first. I expect La Raza (The Race!!) to advocate for illegals – not the Sierra Club.
“On the other hand, if you want to know how to be a racist, see posts by Vlad from above.”
-turkle-
Funny thing is, Turk, nobody talks about this border stuff much except the *racists?* right now. I learned about the nearly 1,000,000 LEGAL immigrants/year from Vlad – on this forum. The only national level politician who will address any of this is Pat Buchanan.
I read between the lines of your post and you make it sound like the border is an insoluble problem – immigration is an insoluble problem, and we all may as well enjoy being doomed. I think that is the lie we’ve been sold – from the Right because they want the cheap docile labor, and from the Left because – – – – mainly because of what Cash said – Immigrant Rights are part of the LW PC orthodoxy and they just stamp their little left feet and refuse to discuss the issue in a substantive manner.
============================
Finally – Turkle, people keep saying this to me on here whenever I bring up population control:
“I’m not sure why you feel America is some special lifeboat. It isn’t.”
-turk-
First, what’s wrong with a lifeboat?
Second, the US WOULD have been a lifeboat at some *unknown* number of souls on board.
But now, with 312,000,000 and climbing inexorably – the US is no longer a lifeboat.
We are a swirling, planetary ecosystem destroying vortex of doom. The more inhabitants in the US, the more devastating our effects.
I keep bringing up this topic in various ways. I’m trying to figure out WHY the progressive and environmentally aware Left Wing of this country is not discussing the implications of US population growth in a proactive manner.

newworld March 29, 2011 at 3:37 pm #

At least you are an honest genocidal minded hate monger. Something to be said for honesty so keep it up and tell all them nice white ladies what you pray for everyday.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 3:37 pm #

And the people who intend to make Whites minorites in their own Lands aren’t racist? Will you try thinking for a change? And yes, those people are both Republicans and Democrates, “Left” and “Right” (none of these four terms is very helpful anymore in explaining anything).
Take a fresh look. The question is whether the people’s of the world have a right to self determination. All Peoples – including White People. Or do you support the Global Slave Masters?

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 3:42 pm #

Thank you Prog for stepping up to the plate. Please continue. You are far more integrated into American Life than I am and can have a far greater impact on this issue than I could ever hope to.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 3:45 pm #

Your Hero, Asoka is an out and out racist. What does that make you? But don’t worry, you’re not alone. White Americans have supported alien fascisms for generations now. Feel better?

messianicdruid March 29, 2011 at 3:47 pm #

“We’re 90% of the way there already.”
I take it that this is an estimate of people defaulting {mostly} into their own subjugation, which would mean that 10% of us are not cooperating. The first American Revolution was achieved with half this much participation.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 3:51 pm #

No swearing Asoka – be a nice boy. I was thinking of the Walking Dude in Stephen King’s “The Stand”.
Richard Leakey used to run down and Antelope and kill them with his bare hands. This is the power of a healthy human body. Your heritage as a racist predator. If you’re a racist, you might as well be a specieist too. And just admit you’re a predator – in the good sense. You’ll be so much happier when you transcend this passive aggression which is your current forte.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 3:52 pm #

I’m trying to figure out WHY the progressive and environmentally aware Left Wing of this country is not discussing the implications of US population growth in a proactive manner.
=========
Because it is not a national problem. It is a global problem. Global population needs to be reduced (while respecting human rights).
Immigration is a bogus issue. Restricting people from crossing an imaginary line does NOT reduce global population.
There are no national borders. We live on a globe speeding through space. We should have the right to move about on the globe freely. At least I believe in that freedom.
Look at this and tell me where the nationals borders are:
http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/ve/2429/globe_east_540.jpg
Nations are artificial inventions. Nations are big prisons. You don’t realize you are in a prison until you try to enter or leave one and you have to get permission to cross an imaginary line.

lbendet March 29, 2011 at 4:05 pm #

I beg to differ. This my not be the free market Hyack had in mind, but this isn’t Keynesian either. Although there are still vestiges of Keynes, soon to disappear. The commons are being privatized as we speak.
On Morning Joe, new Democratic governor Dannel Malloy spoke about corporate investment in public schools. They talked about govt and corporations in the public domain.
Although this model of supply-side economics is indeed very controlled to benefit the richest, so they never lose when they take risks, it is no longer Keynsian.
Let’s just say its a bastardization of both systems to bad ends.
Either way we’re going to keep bailing out those who take great risks with our money. It’s not going to end well for any of us.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 4:08 pm #

Vlad, I sense your fear. And your anger. And your passion to save the soon to be extinct white race. You are already a minority population in the world, and I have repeatedly, over the years here on CFN, tried to reassure you that no one wants to hurt you. We have experience with racial discrimination, with racial hatred, with racism period. And the last thing we want to do is repeat that experience as a reverse-racism against whites. Once you have experienced the humiliation of Jim Crow, you don’t wish that on anyone. As my friend Jesse says, you are somebody, Vlad.
You have probably noticed we have a Black president now, and he has done more for whites than he has for Blacks. Having been a community organizer, having seen poverty and racism at close range, Obama knows the enemy is poverty and ignorance, not the white race.
As a minority you will be protected. We will set up affirmative action programs and job training programs for you. We will help you get subsidized housing, foodstamps, and welfare, if you need them. We will protect you. We will help you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 4:09 pm #

Good analogy, let me extend it. Ever play chess? If so, you know the power of the pawn. Who would win an otherwise evenly matched game if one side had to play without pawns? Just so, how is America going to compete against China and Russia now that it has made war against its own White Underclass? Without White Pawns, it has not a chance. As Machiavelli said long ago, you can buy mercenaries, but you can’t buy loyalty. When things get really bad, the mercs will run. The Chinese Pawns are formidable in loyalty, endurance, and numbers. In terms of Fairness, who is going to stop them from taking Africa? Perhaps fairness is a luxury….
Is Daley worse than Rahmbo? The Corporatists compete with the Big Statists – but either they are both on the same side ultimately like professional wrestlers backstage or the war will be like the War of the Roses – a war of Imperial Dynasties. Whoever wins, we lose.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 4:13 pm #

No they wouldn’t help Whites – Whites in South Africa are being persecuted, starved, and killed. African Chiefs don’t even help their own people en masse, never mind another people. It’s all just tribal and clan cronyism over there and now increasingly over here.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 4:20 pm #

erig said:

Obviously you haven’t read Hayek or you would understand that the “Free Market” we have today in no way resembles what he had in mind. What is passed off today as “Capitalism” is not true capitalism.

ericg, obviously you have not read Marx or you would know that true communism has never existed on earth.
The fascists could say the same thing of fascism: it has never existed… as they define “true fascism”
This in the inherent problem with globalizing macroeconomic theories: they are all bogus, because we live in a localized economy tangentially related to the macroeconomy.
To say free markets have never existed is about as meaningful as saying unicorns have never existed.
If you want to stake your economic philosophy on a unicorn-like philosophy, fine. But don’t insult Lbendet. She lives in the real world.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 4:21 pm #

“You are far more integrated into American Life than I am”
When was the last time you left the militia compound, anyways?

asia March 29, 2011 at 4:22 pm #

when did the war end? 74?
and turk:
Have you ever heard the term Cornucopian?
As judged by yr comments you are one.

asia March 29, 2011 at 4:23 pm #

as dale has called me..
easy to call names of strangers on the web.
maybe in his sparring with Z over Acorn he learned that!

turkle March 29, 2011 at 4:23 pm #

“As judged by yr comments you are one.”
Why?

Buck Stud March 29, 2011 at 4:24 pm #

Wrong again Vlad–I don’t subscribe to hero worship. But I sure marvel at this nearly eighty year-old Chinese man at minute 1:49–it’s pure magnificence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9deW2aZlww&feature=related

turkle March 29, 2011 at 4:25 pm #

I’m more or less a Doomer, and anyone who has read a good number of my posts would know this.
So I don’t understand what you mean by calling me a Cornucopian. I’m really the opposite.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 4:25 pm #

Please, asia, I beg you.
Let’s not start Cornucopian-bashing!
We are an endangered species on CFN!

turkle March 29, 2011 at 4:28 pm #

It must be really enjoyable and fulfilling to view life as a battle between white people and everyone else on the planet.
Meanwhile, I’m content to wallow in the multicultural hell along with all the inferior races.
Cheers!

asia March 29, 2011 at 4:31 pm #

Ignore it and maybe itll die

asoka March 29, 2011 at 4:31 pm #

Vlad, poverty knows no color.
http://johnedwinmason.typepad.com/john_edwin_mason_photogra/2010/07/the-color-of-poverty.html
Blacks are helping poor whites in South Africa.
You are promoting fear and hate because of your racism. That is not the way to peaceful coexistence.

asia March 29, 2011 at 4:33 pm #

Immigration is a bogus issue.
No YOU are a ‘bogus issue’.

asia March 29, 2011 at 4:34 pm #

What you worry?
Things ill be alright, right?

turkle March 29, 2011 at 4:37 pm #

“true communism has never existed on earth”
Do you think it ever could? AFAIK, communist theory posits that the government disappears in favor of a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” But how that actually happens or what it means seems a bit murky to me. Does it just magically happen?
What communism actually produced was totalitarian dictators (autocracies). The ideology was almost incidental to this arrangement and more of an excuse for state power. Stalinist Russia was more of a gigantic cult of personality (see North Korea) than any manifestation of true communist ideals. Stalin more or less just made things up as he went along, depending on what ethnic group he wanted to deport that week.
People also seem to get pretty confused as to the differences between communism and socialism. For instance, Germany (a non-Communist country) was one of the first to provide a social safety net in the late 1800’s. Socialism was more a parallel development to communism, and it doesn’t have the same philosophical or even practical underpinnings.
As for fascism, it pretty much realized itself w.r.t. to the philosophy/ideology of it (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy), in at least a few cases, unless I’m missing something.

insufferable March 29, 2011 at 4:48 pm #

Folks, the main reason we are in a quandry is because my generation THE BABY BOOMERS, hippie shit, wanted everything to change. They were “unhappy” with the way the generations before them ran the show. The Ozzie and Harriets have been replaced with The Kardashians. The Father Knows Best has been replaced with Two and a Half Men. What world would you rather live in? My vote was always with Ozzie. We all got what the majority of us at that time were crying for. The Government from Hell, the family from Hell, the Ecomomy from Hell, and your next door neighbor from Hell. So Baby Boomers how does it feel to get rid of everything handed to you when you were young and watch it go down the F****king tubes now. Even Kunstler had the audacity to write about JUST US Americans who voted for shit and got it.He was the idiot who believed the fairy tale of the Baby Boomer utopia. Japan and its unbelievable meltdown and the consequences of radiation in his homegrown vegetable garden was never mentioned. Do I sound angry….you bet I am. I never wanted the world this way from the beginning. I liked a world without drugs, sex with a partner who actually married you and stuck with you through thick and thin, a world that had your stores within WALKING distance. No insurance, because the Doctors actually visited you AT HOME. OMG imagine that!!!! So be careful with all your complaining and finger pointing toward the greedy wall street garbage,.. hippie shit…..welcome to the world the way you wanted it. If you all want to see the destroyers of this nation….just look in the mirror.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 5:13 pm #

Great rant – and basically true. The Hippies were the most self indulgent people in history. After they got tried of playing in the Woodstock mud, they put on suits and starting working for toys like Jerry Rubin argued for. The more serious stayed in school, became Professors, and worked to turn America into a Communist State. Bill Ayers did this – after he was given amnesty for his terrorism. Would a Patriot have been given such amnesty?

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 5:15 pm #

Thanks Turk. As I have said, Communism doesn’t work and Fascism does. And that’s why the Powers hate it so much.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 5:21 pm #

Not sure I agree with your interpretation of history there, bud. Whatev.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 5:22 pm #

So tell me which fascist states are still around and kicking these days, Vlad. Both the ones I mentioned went down in flames by the end of WWII.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 5:30 pm #

And furthermore, you kids need to get off my lawn!

lbendet March 29, 2011 at 5:32 pm #

Thanks asoka
_________________________
Insufferable.
You’ve gone off on a rant over social issues and seem to not understand that this country changed over in the ’80’s to a grafted global economic system. Although there were baby boomers and younger working in this paradigm, it came out of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Business.
Don’t get confused with the social issues and the economic issues. This is going to be a mess, but what people do in their personal lives has nothing to do with what’s going on now.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 5:39 pm #

Did you see Sixty Mintues this week? You agree with Tom Poor Bear – you think you have the right to the money earned by the productive citizens. You are a Poor Bear too. As one Farmer scratched in his post after Black Squatters had gained the legal right to displace him, “You Bastards will be poor forever.”

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 5:50 pm #

Do you believe the Mahdi has arisen? And that He will punish America and the White Race as Mr Farhakahn blelieves?

insufferable March 29, 2011 at 5:50 pm #

Vlad, thanks my point exactly. The social agenda of the Hippi group are now in “CHARGE”. The thinking went into dumbing down and ruining our educational system, from kindergarten to post graduate work. Maybe it was supposed to be this way. It was so big, so unstoppable. It was the tsunami of its time, in a metaphoric way. I knew it would really get bad when the Boomer generation hit the presidency. It started in earnest with Clinton, and hasn’t stopped. It only getting darker and I truly don’t see anything changing until my generation is completely dead and gone. Then maybe if the world is still populated there will come a leader who will rise to the occasion, and hopefully he will have a heart that can convince people to believe in goodness again. But we are now in this world….done for.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 6:14 pm #

Fascist Germany was an economic miracle before destroyed by the Capitalist and Communist Internationalists.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 6:15 pm #

Okay, Vlad, I’m going to stop replying to you now. Have a good one.

ozone March 29, 2011 at 6:22 pm #

RT,
Sure!
…and to expand upon a theme; we’ll call this one:
“Who Ya Gonna Serve?”
There was an asthmatic named Vlad,
Whose choice of Masters was bad;
He exclaimed with a wheeze,
As he rose to his knees,
“I’ve not only been punk’d; I’ve been “had”!”

ozone March 29, 2011 at 6:36 pm #

RT,
Here’s for the warring halves of the whole that is the lumpenprole…
Let’s dub this:
“Idle Chit-chat Overheard at the Bohemian Grove”
Said the “Masters”, after smoking fine dope,
“We’ve infected the masses with “hope”;
Our dominion’s assured,
We’ve bamboozled the herd,
And the rest can go piss up a rope!”

ozone March 29, 2011 at 6:38 pm #

Uhhh, somebody bleated?

asoka March 29, 2011 at 7:16 pm #

Such melodrama!

It only getting darker and I truly don’t see anything changing until my generation is completely dead and gone. Then maybe if the world is still populated there will come a leader who will rise to the occasion, and hopefully he will have a heart that can convince people to believe in goodness again. But we are now in this world….done for.

I actually find this faux tragic. White folk get a taste of things going bad and they can’t cope with no longer being privileged.
I assume your great-grandparents were not slaves, that your family has not been threatened with death for looking or saying or doing something that the slave owners didn’t like, that your early life did not consist of continual discrimination in the area of voting, education, and employment.
You probably never went to public places only to find they had separate facilities of inferior quality reserved just for you. You probably never had people dressed in white sheets burn a cross in front of your house, never had your church firebombed, never came to a new town and saw a sign that applied to you which said: “Nigger, don’t let the sun set on you” and your ancestral families were probably not ripped apart and separated and enslaved and raped and whipped and murdered for any minor action that tended toward freedom and integrity, both of which were continually stomped on and suffocated making your life into a hell.
I accuse you of melodrama. You know nothing of what it is like to live in a state of terror in America. I do not believe things have been so bad in your life of white privilege. But now we have an economy that perhaps touches you and the whole world is coming to an end. All that awaits you is darkness and death. Get some professional help, dude.

WestCoast March 29, 2011 at 7:23 pm #

“Fascist Germany was an economic miracle before destroyed by the Capitalist and Communist Internationalists. ”
Considering that it took over a trillion marks to buy one dollar and ten years later they had rearmed and almost defeated Great Britain, the Soviet Union etc., they were doing something right in the economic sphere:
Here’s an interesting history of the Nazi economy written by the Chinese Communists of all people:
“PART 10: Nazism and the German economic miracle
From the Third Reich to the current regime of Gerhard Schroeder, Germany has shown remarkable ability to achieve economic prominence in the face of overwhelming odds – including those it imposed on itself through ultra-nationalism, militarism and racism.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GE24Dj01.html

turkle March 29, 2011 at 7:26 pm #

Oh, it is a Nazi love fest up in here. How surprising!

asoka March 29, 2011 at 7:26 pm #

Vlad, I believe in the possibility of universal salvation, whites included. I do not want revenge. I do not want white people to suffer or be punished for all the incaculable evil they have done. I want the cycle of hate to be broken.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 7:27 pm #

But Turk, you never anwered my question about whether Black Africans have the right to self determination! Is it because if you said yes then by extension, Whites would have to be granted the same right? What a small, twisted character you are. Truly Evil can only prosper in the darkness. Thus you seek to remain in ignorance – and us too. Sorry Turk, I intend to shine the Light of Truth on you and your sorry little tribe of miscreants.
If you really loved Blacks, you would have no problem anwering in the affirmative. But you don’t Really – your REAL interest is degrading Whites and using Blacks as a battering ram against White, Western Civilization.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 7:27 pm #

CORRECTION
I do not want white people to suffer or be punished for all the incalculable evil they have done.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 7:28 pm #

Wall Street helped.
http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/
But you guys knew that, I’m sure.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 7:30 pm #

And how did they do it? They did what what we don’t have the guts or the commonsense to do: throw the Internationalists out. They knew what we can’t seem to hold in our minds: that both Capitalism and Communism are funded by the same group – at the highest level. Obviously most Capitalists and Communists don’t know this.

WestCoast March 29, 2011 at 7:31 pm #

Asoka,
My great great grandparents were indentured servants.
I was continually discriminated against because I was White when I tried joining the Longshoreman’s Union, the San Francisco Police Department and the fire Department. “Those positions are reserved for minorities…great score though”, as a kid got pummeled every time I set foot on a bus and was robbed once a week…funny thing is it never was by a White criminal.
Many people live in a state of terror in America. They are trapped in declining neighborhoods, cannot use mass transit and are destined to a life of fast food jobs if they get that far.
We are responsible for our own actions and reactions. We make of ourself what we are able to and have the will to do. The intellectual shackles of slavery are cheerfully donned every morning in ghettos all over America as people go about their daily activities feeling sorry for them self and never doing anything productive.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 7:31 pm #

Shame on you for your ignorance and hatred of Whites!

CaptSpaulding March 29, 2011 at 7:32 pm #

Well, PoC, you’ve hit the nail on the head particularly with regard to immigration. Any time you argue against it, the other side starts name calling because you don’t agree with them. I don’t think we should allow millions of people into this country regardless of what their ethnic background is. It would be just as bad an idea to allow 10 million Norwegians to come here as it would be Mexicans. When are people gonna realize that the world is filling up with people? It’s the same idea with this as it is with peak oil. Sooner or later you’re gonna run out of oil, and sooner or later there will be too many people. There was some truth to the movie Soylent Green. Of course to Turkle, if you disagree with that, you’re just a race baiter. I expect him to respond to this because scrolling down the comments, it looks like he’s replied to every post there was. You’ve got too much free time Turkle.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 7:39 pm #

Your reading comprehension skills need some work.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 7:43 pm #

WestCoast said: “The intellectual shackles of slavery are cheerfully donned every morning in ghettos all over America as people go about their daily activities feeling sorry for them self and never doing anything productive.”
===========
Your post reminds me of a song by the great Bob Marley that says: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds!”
Thanks for your reply.

San Jose Mom 51 March 29, 2011 at 7:46 pm #

California marijuana farmers are worried that radiation from Japan might affect their crops. Or maybe for some reason they are being a bit paranoid?
SJmom

ozone March 29, 2011 at 7:52 pm #

RT,
I guess if we’re not totally focused on blackie and whitey, there ain’t nuthin’ to discuss.
See ya in the funny papers!
Later.
Oh, and to all you gobshite, cracker, blowhards; good job, mission accomplished, you’ve acquired CFN’s comment section by simple default! Enjoy playing with yourselves.

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 7:52 pm #

“This wasn’t as clear as I had hoped.”
It was very clear – disconnect, or continue to be a pawn fueling the destruction.
“We have to undermine destructive systems by not participating, not driving a world-destroying economy, not paying taxes, not blindly consuming, and thereby remove our implied approval of what “they” are doing.”
I totally agree, except for the “not paying taxes” part. You don’t pay property taxes, you loose your home/lot. Maybe it takes a few years, but if you don’t pay property taxes, you *WILL* be evicted, with force.
There are ways to disconnect, to earn a very meager salary, that doesn’t get taxed at the state/federal level. I completely agree with you – but it sometimes feels counter-productive!!! I could be putting so much *GREEN* paper/digital bits on the table, AHAHAHA!!! (Don’t ask about the multiple $millions$ I turned away from, in ’98)

CaptSpaulding March 29, 2011 at 7:53 pm #

I’ll work on my reading skills and you can work on your obsessive need to reply to every post.

ozone March 29, 2011 at 7:54 pm #

LOL
Good one, SJmom!

turkle March 29, 2011 at 7:55 pm #

“There was some truth to the movie Soylent Green. Of course to Turkle, if you disagree with that, you’re just a race baiter.”
I’m just confused, because I agree that Soylent Green is made of people. And I don’t think you’re a race baiter just because you like Charlton Heston movies.

turkle March 29, 2011 at 7:56 pm #

Have I exceeded my posting quota, Spaulding? I wasn’t aware that there was one or that you were in charge of enforcing it. Good to know.

myrtlemay March 29, 2011 at 8:00 pm #

The America you describe didn’t exist in the 1950’s. It never really did exist. What you refer to is white-washed (literally) television programs. Nobody lived like that. Repeat: Nobody lived like that. Contrary to what you see in these old reruns, women did not wear full dresses with pearls, heels, and stockings while doing housework. Many of our men were so over worked and underpaid that they spent over 50 hours a week in an office or in a factory. When they got home, the first thing they wanted was a drink. You can probably guess where that headed.
Housework in the fifties was a breeze compared to what my mother had to put up with 25 years before me. Parked in a suburban tract house, with nobody to talk to except children and other bored housewives just like myself wasn’t what I’d envisoned for myself when I graduated from Bryn Mawr. Those of us wives in the suburbs (an explosion of them in the post war period) often didn’t have a car, so we couldn’t just walk places. When I finally got a car in 1962, it was because I was pregnant and my husband worked so much, he was afraid he wouldn’t be home to drive me to the hospital. It was a 2nd hand, 1957 Desoto. Constantly broke down. Then I’d get yelled out, as if the car breaking was my fault.
I was lucky. I loved my husband. He was very kind and generous to me. Not so for some of the neighborhood wives. Some of their hubbys got drunk and slapped the little women around a bit. And then there was always the fun when the other husbands would hit on me (their wives were my neighbors and friends!) I could go on, but won’t. Just please be aware, for lots of us, blacks, women, even the “dreaded white men” were all under an enormous amount of stress to conform to entirely impossible expectations. The l960s helped free ALL of us from different kinds of prejudice and forced social conformity – including white men.

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 8:02 pm #

“I do not want white people to suffer or be punished for all the incalculable evil they have done.”
I’m totally white-bred, and I *TOTALLY* want *WHITEY* to bear the punishments they deserve, for their actions. Enough of the Obama, “we’re not looking to the past, but to the future” BS. If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you repeat them.
Redemption Song
“Have no fear for Atomic Energy – cause none of ‘dem can stoppa da time”

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 8:07 pm #

“Oh, it is a Nazi love fest up in here. How surprising!”
The very reason I scroll past Vlad/WestC/Buck/newW/etc. Their drivel is so contrived, and they have little to no logic to back their assertions – it’s all *mysticism-based* (to them, of course).

JonathanSS March 29, 2011 at 8:12 pm #

We should have the right to move about on the globe freely.

I enjoy reading your perspectives. I believe in freedom, also. What I am trying understand is the following:
1. Countries have laws that restrict entry and length of stay to non-citizens. Shouldn’t the US enforce existing laws or else change them? (can we please not focus this issue around race?)
2. Schools have resource limits. Educating non-English speakers takes additional resources compared to native English speakers. I don’t want to restrict non-native speakers rights, so how do we integrate them into the educational system given our resources? I relate it to “The Lifeboat Theory” (although, of course, it is not life or death).
Thanks

turkle March 29, 2011 at 8:21 pm #

Oh no you didn’t!

myrtlemay March 29, 2011 at 8:26 pm #

On politics in the l950’s, we had crazy people like McCarthy hurling Communist allegations at an appallingly large number of completely innocent people. Some of their careers were destroyed before this nonsense came to an end (l954, if I recall).
I liked Ike, but voted for Adlai Stevenson. There was more of a sense of cooperation among nations back then (we won WWII), but the same old brutal colony mentality held sway with us and many of our “friends”. When Belgum lost the Congo, that crap unravelled pretty fast.
There were jobs for young people then – even if you didn’t complete high school. But a high school diploma would definitely give you a shot at the middle class, no REALLY! This is why I pity the political landscape we have now. The greed was there in the fifties, but it just wasn’t so viral, rampant, and most of all – wasn’t ignored!

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 8:31 pm #

I’m only going to say this once, and then I let it drop. I’ve been suspicious that myrtle was an asoka sock-puppet for months – I mean, really – an 83+ yr old grandma that is in touch with reality, while smoking da ganga…

asoka March 29, 2011 at 8:31 pm #

JonathanSS, the underlying assumption of many of the posts on immigration to CFN is that more people equals less resources. The data do not support that assumption.
Economically, immigrants provide essential services, from entrepreneurial tech businesses to manual labor. Immigrants founded one in four engineering and technology companies launched in the United States between 1995 and 2005, and many technology companies report that they would like to see current immigration restrictions eased, as they have difficulty finding sufficient highly-skilled workers in the U.S.
On the other end of the pay scale, immigrants fill many low-paying jobs, from farm labor to service industries such as cleaning. If these same jobs were held by non-immigrants — who are used to much higher hourly wages — the costs of basic goods and services would skyrocket.
Beyond the positive impact that immigrants have on the U.S. labor force lies the familiar argument that immigrants are a drain on governmental resources. But state and federal data paints a different picture. Texas reported in 2006 that undocumented immigrants generate more taxes and other revenue than the state spends on them. And a national survey found that approximately two-thirds of immigrant workers had Social Security and other income taxes withheld from their paychecks, yet few filed a tax return or used public services such as food stamps, unemployment, or Supplemental Security Income. In other words, they’re putting money into the U.S. Treasury, but not taking it out.
The data on cultural assimilation is positive, as well. Today, no one questions the great cultural contributions from Italians or Jews, two of the top immigrant groups of a century ago. Yet today’s immigrants are actually learning English faster than their predecessors 100 years ago — for example, Spanish is the primary language of only 7 percent of second-generation Latinos immigrants today.
Since colonial times, the U.S. has debated the question of how much immigration is ideal. And over that time, every group of newcomers has faced skepticism over their cultural and economic contributions. Fortunately today, we can replace fear and doubt with solid statistical data about the impact immigration has on the country. And the data clearly shows that immigration is a net positive for the U.S., the “Nation of Immigrants.”

CaptSpaulding March 29, 2011 at 8:34 pm #

There’s no quota here. I was simply observing that you post here a lot, and reply to my comments almost immediatly, suggesting to me that you don’t have a life. I’ll usually get on here about once a day, skim some people, read the ones who actually have something to say, then go off & play my guitar. Which I have been tuning as I peruse your predictable comments. Gotta go now, band practice. Please reply immediatly though, & I’ll read it tomorrow & laugh.

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 8:42 pm #

“You probably never went to public places only to find they had separate facilities of inferior quality reserved just for you.”
LOL @ asoka – always reminding us of the inhumanity, all-the-while not willing to punish *US* for our wrong-doings.
d00d, either let it go, or try to find condolence/retribution. You can’t have it *BOTH WAYS*.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 8:44 pm #

You’re right – McCarthy was wrong: Communism was far more widespread than he had any idea. He thought the American People would protect him – but you let the Communist Media destroy him. Your generation blew it – big time.

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 8:47 pm #

asoka nailed it long ago – immigration is a false flag.
It’s all about carrying weight. These immigrants were already born. Population explosion at the planetary realm means there are too many. Whether they go here or there is of no *importance*.
PS – asoka, get your *database* of info ready!!! time to *master-debate*.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 8:49 pm #

There is a difference between remembering/forgiving and remembering/punishing.
I think remembering is useful so as to minimize the possibility of a repeat performance. So I will continue to bring it up, because many people have little idea of the terror of life under Jim Crow for those terrorized.
On the other hand, punishing would create resentment (maybe even desire for revenge) and only perpetuates the wrongs committed. My mama always said two wrongs don’t make a right.
I have have learned that I can have it my way, just like Burger King says.
Thanks for playing.

asoka March 29, 2011 at 8:51 pm #

Immigration is a dog whistle and keeps us fighting among ourselves so as not to focus attention on real problems.

Vlad Krandz March 29, 2011 at 8:52 pm #

Since you believe in collective guilt – why not let the retribution start with you? Some ideas: advertise to be become a slave of Blacks; walk around in Black neighborhood with a tea shirt saying “hit me I’m White”; go over to Africa and become a slave; or an Indian Reservation; since Blacks think Whites invented AIDS to get rid of them – give yourself AIDS; give all of your spare money to Blacks; whip yourself to you bleed every morning. Etc. Remember you’re White. You’re guilty. And you have to pay.

trippticket March 29, 2011 at 8:53 pm #

As Tuesday is my normal posting day, I’m reposting my blog link to this week’s article, “Weeds and the Scarcity Model,” in case anyone missed the link yesterday and wants to check it out.
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/
Excuse me now, ladies and gentlemen. Please continue with your most excellent discourse.
Tripp out.

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 9:01 pm #

Spectator Nation – even for those *in the know*.
What will we do? What *CAN* we do? I think JHK alluded to that, concerning millenium gagdet-geeks and voting. Unfortunately, that’s about it.
It has become very sad, as we watch *them* burn/destroy every last remaining *ASSET*. And pollute what remains…

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 9:03 pm #

Don’t worry, those *two* are producing mega-fertilizer – hehe!

asoka March 29, 2011 at 9:04 pm #

Vlad said: “Remember you’re White. You’re guilty. And you have to pay.”
========
You could do all those masochistic things you are promoting and the debt would still not be paid. How can you repay the lives of four little Black girls who died one Sunday morning in church from a bomb planted by whites? I’ll stop there so as not to repeat the litany.
My point is NOTHING you can do can repay Blacks for the suffering and the terror sown by whites.
Nice try, but you are correct in your assertion of guilt. You especially, as you continue to preach segregation based on race and you continue to spread false information.

progressorconserve March 29, 2011 at 9:16 pm #

“Population explosion at the planetary realm means there are too many. Whether they go here or there is of no *importance*.”
-ixnei-
Can’t tell if you’re trying to be sarcastic or not, ixnei. I’ll be hoping you are, given the fact that immigrants to the US gobble planetary resources at at least double the rate they did prior to immigration.
But, assuming you are not being sarcastic – exactly how large should the population of the US be allowed to become.
And, remembering this is a peak oil website – how many mouths do you think the land area of the US will support without using fossil fuel inputs for fertilizer, farm machinery, or ag related transportation.
There were 50,000,000 aboriginal inhabitants living here without fossil fuel or birth control prior to Columbus. Use that idea as a starting point.

trippticket March 29, 2011 at 9:38 pm #

“Whether they go here or there is of no *importance*.”
Until we are back to living local lives again. Then how many people there are here and there will make all the difference in “the world.” You’re absolutely right to think about the population problem as a global systems overload, but right only temporarily, as globalization is wholly underwritten by cheap energy. As energy becomes less affordable (regarless of price), globalization in any meaningful sense will break down, and what you’ll be left with is a smaller and smaller resource region to use and help steward. How many mouths and assholes are present in your foodshed, how useful, and how entitled they are, will become most important.
But again, if you know me you know that I don’t think the answer is top-down regulation, but rather a personal choice as to where to hang your hat for the long haul. States’ rights are already starting to trump federal law in many places, just look at the decriminalization of marijuana on the west coast. Soon county or voting districts’ rights will overrule those of the states as well. Eventually we can expect relatively tiny and far more efficient government entities.
For me the factors informing the decision of where to call home are many, but certainly include a long growing season, healthy aquifer, ample rainfall, rapid forest regeneration, family, and a sparse regional population – big enough to maintain some commerce and culture, but well within the 350k required to perpetuate crowd diseases.
But the answer to the immigration question is beyond my scope.

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 9:41 pm #

PoC, always a kinda sore-spot. There is this thing, called “external costs”. You seem to thrive on that. I used to scroll past your posts, as you gave me that Vlad-feel.
Whether those abandoned consume at some rate you deem appropriate or not, they were *ALWAYS* there. You play the immigration card like an Arizonian. Keep playing that card, you’ll have a mega-right-wing lozer for president!!! AHAHA elections!!!

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 9:50 pm #

I saw this movie recently, “Where the Heart Is.”
It pretty much summed up what we are facing today. For some reason, the widow’s husband owed $3k to the bank, in the *dustbowl* – EX POST FACTO. How could it be, any other way?
Slaves to the Banksters. Same old, *SAME OLD*. They will destroy anything and *everything*. Do you really think that they *THINK*?
We watch, we prepare, and we see the hoards invade. Are *YOU* willing to *SHOOT* them?

trippticket March 29, 2011 at 10:00 pm #

“We watch, we prepare, and we see the hoards invade. Are *YOU* willing to *SHOOT* them?”
I shot and killed my neighbor’s dog for killing my goat. Does that count? I have the 12 guage at the ready, but I’d rather try teaching people to feed themselves first. Best to build a tribe, eh?

progressorconserve March 29, 2011 at 10:14 pm #

You are going to have to define those “external costs,” upon which I thrive – in the context you are using the term, ix.
And would you answer the question regarding your opinion of the maximum sustainable population of the US?
My state is going to go for a right wing loser regardless of your or my feelings about the ability of a growing US population to command and usurp the World’s resources. So that’s a moot point.

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 10:21 pm #

I’m sorry for you, if you still live in those racist states that suppress the black vote by making 70% of their black males *ineligible* felons (war on drugs).
We’re already 6x+++ over sustainability, on this *orb*. You want a quote for a certain continent?
You eat external costs like they’re *NOTHING*.
It will soon catch up to *you*.

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 10:25 pm #

I’ve killed a mammal once, and I never want to have to do that again. I admire you, to be able to raise “pet” rabbits, only to slaughter them. I wish I had that ***
I could kill/field dress a chicken, or a salmon. But beyond that, it becomes very *difficult*.

progressorconserve March 29, 2011 at 10:28 pm #

You eat external costs like they’re *NOTHING*.
It will soon catch up to *you*.
-ixnei-
I have no idea what you are talking about.
———-

tucsonspur March 29, 2011 at 10:29 pm #

Zing! went the strings of my heart! Thanks for last week’s kind words.
You’re right, an extremely tough debt to repay. At the same time, I’m sure you realize that many, many, whites supported and sympathized with blacks, particularly against the atrocities. At the same time, I realize that the deaths of three white civil rights workers in Mississippi pales in comparison, practically fades to zero, in the light of centuries of black casualties.
It’s always a struggle for power and rights, and whites currently have the power and the numbers. I ask you, if Hispanics or blacks held the power and the numbers, and saw whites advancing rapidly, while the whites shouted “racist” at every perceived slight, what would they do?

Nathan March 29, 2011 at 10:37 pm #

Won’t the USA become more like Mexico City or India before we become Rome 432A.D.?Everyone (almost) will just get poorer and less educated. No magic moment where we just wake up into chaos and start killing each other it will take along time and we will just be ever more impoverished starting in 2000.

Nathan March 29, 2011 at 10:41 pm #

Silly rabbit “whites” do not exist as you present it. 400 Individuals in the USA have more assets than the combined assets of 150 million other USA citizens. If you aren’t one of these 400 you are their bitch, get used to it brother.

femme March 29, 2011 at 10:49 pm #

Birth isn’t always a rotten painful experience. It is harder for some than others agree. The negative effects of epidurals put me off though. A joke I heard about choosing a mate look for a tall skinny guy with a small pointy head, easier birthing that type. It’s great that you were able to have an epidural but do you think about what is going to happen in the future we will have to go back to bitting a stick. Thats when the skilled midwife who has more to strategies on offer than, have an epidural, will be called for. Did you have the option of a water birth ? The pain of childbirth does have a purpose. The stretch receptors in the vagina when stretched to the max a the baby is born triggers the release of oxytocin (the highest levels in your life). However if the receptors are numbed by anaesthetic then you dont experience this huge surge in oxytocin.

JonathanSS March 29, 2011 at 10:50 pm #

Good comments, thanks! I can’t disagree. One question wasn’t addressed:
From a public school standpoint, schools are paid on a per student basis which factors in attendance. If it costs more money to have ESL (English as a second language) classes, but the state doesn’t pay the school more, isn’t that a net loss?

femme March 29, 2011 at 10:53 pm #

My last comment was in reply to your post

dwaters March 29, 2011 at 10:57 pm #

Maybe someday Mr.Kunstler will realize that 911 was in inside job too.

asia March 29, 2011 at 10:59 pm #

Ixnei Ixnei go away
Spew yr bullshit there any day
There once was a girl named Ixnei

femme March 29, 2011 at 10:59 pm #

All this talk about IQ ! Want to negatively affect your childs cognitive development ? Don’t breastfeed at all.

asia March 29, 2011 at 11:01 pm #

Why would anyone [cept the power brokers]
want it to?
Peeps are basically selfish..
If you doubt me read ‘THE DARK SIDE OF MAN’

progressorconserve March 29, 2011 at 11:03 pm #

Good comments, thanks! I can’t disagree. One question wasn’t addressed:
-jonathan- to asoka
Another question that wasn’t addressed is what all 660,000,000 of us are supposed to do for food – when the fossil fuels run out and the imports stop.

asia March 29, 2011 at 11:06 pm #

BOTHERED ABOUT IT?
The fact that you are not shows yr level of deracination [and i dont mean ‘white race].
you and ixney should talk

asia March 29, 2011 at 11:07 pm #

‘Treason’ by Coulter
Or Google ‘Venona’
Truely you are a fool in a fools PARROT DISE!

tucsonspur March 29, 2011 at 11:10 pm #

Nathan,
I’m aware of those mind blowing numbers, the insane disproportion.
All I meant to say was, that by and large, whites have the numbers to pass legislation favorable to them, for example.
Now, put your nose to the grindstone and go out and make a buck!

daofirry2 March 29, 2011 at 11:12 pm #

years ago, I saw what was probably the most powerful, documentary-style film about nuclear war ever made. It’s called “Threads,” and it was done in the UK, by Barry Hines for the BBC, in the mid 80s. It is apparently on Youtube now, (illegally, I imagine), in 10 minutes segments. There is a moment, at 3:10 in this segment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9rh4CDj9SI&NR=1
when the female lead character suddenly realizes that the nuclear war that everyone has been dreading is REALLY ABOUT TO HAPPEN. Her facial expression shows the way I feel now, everytime I glance at a news website these days. I have done some things to prepare myself, and my family, but no one could ever do enough.
Had to share.

ubs March 29, 2011 at 11:16 pm #

Vote for Ron Paul.
End the Fed.
The only way to drain this swamp.

San Jose Mom 51 March 29, 2011 at 11:24 pm #

Options were limited (water birth) back when I was having babies in the 1990’s. I had quick recoveries…after my second baby, I took my firstborn for a bicycle ride six days later.
One of my greatest accomplishments was getting my firstborn to latch on after spending his first 10 days of life in an NICU because his lungs weren’t mature. Nursed him until he was 1.
SJmom

Ixnei March 29, 2011 at 11:25 pm #

“”You eat external costs like they’re *NOTHING*.
It will soon catch up to *you*.”
I have no idea what you are talking about.”
*EXACTLY*. That’s the point. You have no clue about those *external costs*, or what they’ve lead us into…
I’m sure things will come to *fruition*, soon – for U (and me, of course)!

Buck Stud March 29, 2011 at 11:44 pm #

“The very reason I scroll past Vlad/WestC/Buck/newW/etc. Their drivel is so contrived, and they have little to no logic to back their assertions – it’s all *mysticism-based* (to them, of course).”
You’ve been scrolling too fast then. Or you need to learn how to comprehend the written word–I have never been in the ‘Vlad Camp’ as you assert.And notice this is directed straight at you, unlike your oblique sideswipe. At any rate, I’m not sure I want to write you off as a passive-aggressive creep just yet, but your posts are far from promising.

turkle March 30, 2011 at 2:57 am #

“suggesting to me that you don’t have a life”
Dude, you got my number. All I do everyday is sit in my mom’s basement drinking Mountain Dew, waiting for Vlad to respond to my posts.

turkle March 30, 2011 at 3:00 am #

I think Ixnei will fit right in here with all the other passive-aggressive creeps.
In fact, I like that a lot, Passive Aggressive Creeps. It would make a good band name or amateur dodge ball team name or something.

turkle March 30, 2011 at 3:04 am #

Well, asia my dear, there are a lot of things I could be bothered about in life. I choose my battles and illegal immigration isn’t one of them. Frankly, I really don’t care too much about it. And I like burritos. You can rant and rave all you want about it. I won’t stop you.
In fact, I’m trying to care less about most political topics as time progresses. Who wants to waste their life fretting about things that they have little to no control over? Not me.

turkle March 30, 2011 at 3:13 am #

Damn, Spaulding, thine witty barbs doth sting. Can’t a guy just be hella bored watching code compile and post to CFN all day without getting called a loser with no life?
You’ve been laughing at me, not with me, which makes me oh so sad, as I desperately seek your approval. Tomorrow, I’ll only reply to every other post. Then will you at least grant me half a life?
And you don’t need to convince me of your coolness by bragging about your band and guitar playing. I already know you are mega-cool, because CFN is the epicenter of all that is hip on the internet.

turkle March 30, 2011 at 3:16 am #

Tea shirt?

turkle March 30, 2011 at 3:17 am #

Oh sorry I promised not to reply to any more of Kraps’ posts. My bad.

old6699 March 30, 2011 at 3:20 am #

Collective Effort
How much labor – work – activity is serialized, is additive, adds up to something, adds up to more than its single parts today ? Not much, and in fact there is a very precise, but hidden as usual, invisible, intentionality to create a lot of work that doesn’t add up to anything, but in many cases subtracts down from what is already present. For example, wars in general subtract down from what is present by breaking things up and in fact the US spends billions upon billions in a kind of collective effort that on one side adds up to a power relationship and statement of status, but on another side breaks up material constructions.
Why is this so ? Why is there such a great aversion and brainwashing today for anything that can possible add up to something more, for anything that creates “common wealth” and more for the “common good” ? To atomize and divide people from each other, to create a psychological and social environment where people are constantly in conflict with each other, instead of building things together, instead of building a better world for the “common good”.
If work or everyday activity was not geared to useless conflicts, to fights essentially, to much ado about nothing we could create a huge amount of wealth for everyone.
Some examples of work that doesn’t add up to anything can be millions of lawyers, and eventually billions to regulate all kinds of conflicts based on all kinds of ever increasing complex laws, thousands of new imagined (and therefore invented as in a self fulfilling prophesy) sicknesses and therefore drugs that subtract down from an already fragile person and conflicting and conflicted minds and social patterns of behavior. Like if you are not fighting others you end up fighting yourself, or maybe you end up fighting both yourself and others in a never ending infinite recursion. What else ? Maybe millions of psychologists trying to fix up broken minds and brains, breaking them up even more and therefore needing even more drugs, psychologists, new sicknesses, and psychologists themselves needing other psychologists (and lawyers themselves needing lawyers) creating millions of “new jobs”, millions of “new, advanced, service economy jobs”, that are oh so needed, and oh so useful.
But if you stop one minute to really think: a company or entity or economic unit that has for example 100 workers, each working 8 hours a day for something that adds up, for something where each effort is adding up and helping to construct something larger, with all the know how and technology available, how much could really be produced ? A mind boggling amount of wealth and well being for everyone.
Imagine 8 hours of work of just 1 person in that company that is really used completely for a precise sequence of actions, physical and information manipulations that are actually really constructing, that are precise and efficient (just like building a Skyscraper or in manufacturing processes, or in SPACE PROGRAMS) instead of wasting it on fluff, office politics, fighting each other and oneself and everything. Now multiply it by 100 workers, each really working, as in adding up, as in serializing effort, as in a collective effort that is building something larger than the parts.
In fact, manufacturing is a kind of collective action but there is a tendency to consider it as some kind of bad activity, something not worthy, something that must be hidden as opposed to wall street hustlers, doctors making millions, house flipping, financial “services” and “products” (nothing more idiotic on earth, financial products as if they are an entity and not one giant mega ripoff of everyone against everyone).
Science and Technology are in a sense serialized activities, add up to something, although the way that people want to apply it becomes a theater of huge never ending conflicts (also thanks to the crappy cumbersome “democratic process” where everyone wants to express their opinion always against everyone else in a never ending fight that just dissipates effort and energy), atom energy yes or no, global warming yes or no, etc.
Now imagine a society with millions of workers all (but even a very small percentage, even maybe just 10% would already create a mind boggling amount of free wealth in the end) putting effort into serialized, collective actions, where things add up.
But the present economic system along with all of its ideology and brainwashing has created and wants to create a completely atomized, divided society of everyone against everyone, millions of useless jobs that just add to the conflicts, that create ever more useless jobs (like all the office idiots responding to blackberries and creating useless meetings, etc.) instead of large, ambitious public – private projects that add up to the wealth of everyone.
Facebook is a good example: get millions of people to waste their time on so many single events, on so many short sentences and thoughts (the shorter the better, long – complex thoughts tend to add up to something, are serialized) on all activity that doesn’t add up to anything.
That is why I insist on large scale projects that add up, Skyscrapers, Rockets to Mars, High Speed Trains, BUSes, but the amount of brainwashing most of the world has undergone against anything that serializes and adds up effort is way too great for any possible hope that any of these projects ever take off, especially in the USA.
Obama, should have said “By the end of this decade, by the year 2020 we will put a Man on Mars, we meaning only the effort of the USA, and we will create all the companies and entities (public and private, as in private capitalist corporations that can make profits on it too) that are needed to do this, to advance civilization”.
He didn’t say this, he said, we need “more entrepreneurs” and “small businesses”, we need more “innovation” and “education” (never explaining what on earth these abstract words mean, and they mean nothing, it is an excuse to not propose anything at all but fluff), more “flexibility” (which means hire and fire, always changing jobs and kinds of jobs so any possible serialization of effort, effort that adds up, is killed from the outset), etc.
This is the battle ground: serialized – collective effort that adds up, or an atomized, divided society of lawyers, doctors, hustlers, etc. that subtract down.

turkle March 30, 2011 at 3:33 am #

If we could only harness all the hot air in your posts, we’d have enough energy for a rocket to Mars.

wmt477 March 30, 2011 at 3:58 am #

Thanks James for this week’s posting. The comments this week
are so far very good reading too.
From Survival blog I read this about Homeland Security training that makes one ponder where we are all heading:
http://www.survivalblog.com/2011/03/beware_of_homeland_security_tr.html
I live near Winchester, Virginia and will visit this weekend Joe B’s
favorite bar: The Royal Tavern, a truly deplorable dive in a poor part of town that Joe loved.

John66 March 30, 2011 at 4:02 am #

How about if the bright minds down at Facebook or Google work in conjunction with the government to come up with a website in which an ordinary American citizen could log in with his voter registration number (or SSN) and put THEIR percentages of priority on each budget and revenue item? Iterative results could then show as pie charts for both expenditure and revenue pies and the citizen could not leave the session without their ideal budget being balanced.
Such a “budget convention” (like a constitutional convention) could last for about thirty days, giving every citizen the chance to put in their pies. Assistance would be provided for those who need help in understanding, but the program should be set up in a way that would allow the citizen to need only her budget priorities in mind and the ability to key in the numbers when prompted.
The end results of this online budget convention would then be subjected to a national yes or no vote (traditional paper vote) as the people’s budget proposal. Laugh all you want at this, but it could very well prove to be the last great hope of civilization. When our politicians are incapable of doing their jobs, then the physics of democracy demands that the people they represent step up and clarify exactly what they want.
Admittedly, the masses are asses and over half of Americans probably couldn’t find the United States on a map, but that has to change and it will change when the results of which affect their very lives. A cat never litters in its bed for a reason and if it takes a hundred years for the people to figure out that the choices they’re making are the right or wrong choices, then it’ll be worth it.
I would put in 0% for defense but I’m sure some war hawk out there would put in 50%. Thankfully, all Americans are not war hawks.
For those without Internet access or a computer, we could make these sessions available at public places like schools or post offices or wherever they would typically vote. There just seems to be this large disconnect between the people and what the people who represent the people are doing and such a convention would leave no room for doubt because they would be required to submit BALANCED pies with NO deficits.
Of course, there could be a cushion fund set aside for emergency expenses, such as natural disasters and humanitarian needs.

John66 March 30, 2011 at 4:04 am #

How about if the bright minds down at Facebook or Google work in conjunction with the government to come up with a website in which an ordinary American citizen could log in with his voter registration number (or SSN) and put THEIR percentages of priority on each budget and revenue item? Iterative results could then show as pie charts for both expenditure and revenue pies and the citizen could not leave the session without their ideal budget being balanced.
Such a “budget convention” (like a constitutional convention) could last for about thirty days, giving every citizen the chance to put in their pies. Assistance would be provided for those who need help in understanding, but the program should be set up in a way that would allow the citizen to need only her budget priorities in mind and the ability to key in the numbers when prompted.
The end results of this online budget convention would then be subjected to a national yes or no vote (traditional paper vote) as the people’s budget proposal. Laugh all you want at this, but it could very well prove to be the last great hope of civilization. When our politicians are incapable of doing their jobs, then the physics of democracy demands that the people they represent step up and clarify exactly what they want.
Admittedly, the masses are asses and over half of Americans probably couldn’t find the United States on a map, but that has to change and it will change when the results of which affect their very lives. A cat never litters in its bed for a reason and if it takes a hundred years for the people to figure out that the choices they’re making are the right or wrong choices, then it’ll be worth it.
I would put in 0% for defense but I’m sure some war hawk out there would put in 50%. Thankfully, all Americans are not war hawks.
For those without Internet access or a computer, we could make these sessions available at public places like schools or post offices or wherever they would typically vote. There just seems to be this large disconnect between the people and what the people who represent the people are doing and such a convention would leave no room for doubt because they would be required to submit BALANCED pies with NO deficits.
Of course, there could be a cushion fund set aside for emergency expenses, such as natural disasters and humanitarian needs.

turkle March 30, 2011 at 4:18 am #

I too wish the US federal government was a lot more tech savvy. Hell, why do I even need to file a goddam tax return? Send the info electronically and automatically to them and then send me the receipt. That’s what the UK has started doing.
I’m not sure that budgets without deficits works at the moment. The yearly budget shortfall is $1.5 trillion (maybe even more). To give you some idea of the scale of this, the entire discretionary budget of the US gov, not counting military, is only around $500 billion. So you could eliminate all non-military expenditures (not entitlements though) and would still have a cool trillion left to cut, cut, cut.
I know it isn’t a popular position, but it seems to me that some groups are not paying enough in taxes. The upper 1% (or so), rolling in money for the last couple decades, could certainly pay more (and have in the past) and probably should. Contrary to the right wing dogma, people still continue to work even if much of their income falls in a 90% tax bracket, as existed in the 1950’s.
I’m also not really keen on all the multitudinous tax breaks that seem to be given to, well, everyone, like the mortgage interest deduction, corporate tax breaks where international mega-corporations pay close to $0 in taxes, etc. The tax system seems like it needs major reform and simplification.
That said, there need to be better systems in place so that the government doesn’t simply spend more when it gets more in taxes, always running deficits. Balanced budgets are a great idea in theory. Unfortunately, we are so far along this path of insolvency that I’m doubtful it will be solved anytime soon, maybe never aside from an eventual default.
Also, the national security state is just out of control. Just the military alone is 6 or 700 billion in baseline expenditures and more like topping one trillion when all is said and done. Then start adding in all the spy and law enforcement agencies. You’re talking some real money.
Bush tax cuts and Medicare Part D are a gigantic crock, too.

turkle March 30, 2011 at 4:31 am #

On another note, I’ve had a bit of experience with direct democracy, living in California where there is a proposition system. Anyone can put one of these together if they get enough signatures, and people can vote on things like bond measures for parks or anything under the sun, really.
Problem is, the system doesn’t work, because (as you so elegantly put it) the masses are asses. At least, their choices don’t necessarily make any consistent sense. What people tend to do is vote themselves most of the goodies (high speed rail, etc.), all the while chopping up the tax base (Prop 13 which caps property taxes in a somewhat perverse fashion).
But having relatively low taxes and high government expenditures on entitlements and other things does not work in the long run. If people want all the government-provided perks, someone (everyone) has got to pay for them somehow.
It is all part of this “something for nothing” attitude that JHK often mentions. Many Americans really want a socialist state to take care of them (whether they admit it or not) plus provide jobs and initiate mega-projects, but they don’t want to pay for any of it or at least aren’t realistic about how much taxation this really requires (judging by European countries and Canada…about 50% of people’s income).
Certainly there are some in the Tea Party movement who claim otherwise, that they want to slash government to the bone, including entitlements and the whole nine yards. But it is interesting how many of them are on some kind of government dole, whether that be disability, unemployment insurance, medicare, or what-have-you.
There was a recent NYT article which stated that 1/4 or more (it might have even been 1/3) of Americans receive their primary income from the government. In this context, it is extremely naive to believe that a “minimal” government is actually what most Americans want. What they actually do says otherwise.
The lack of insight among the populace on matters like these is quite astonishing sometimes. But I’m not sure it has ever been much different (read some H.L. Mencken).

Eleuthero March 30, 2011 at 4:44 am #

Huzzah, JHK. This recent skirmish in
Libya has some Dems, including Obama,
sounding like PNAC Neocons. All this
bullshit about “the aspirations of the
Libyan people”.
We don’t know SHIT about the philosophical
leanings of the rebels in Libya or Bahrain
or Yemen or Tunisia or Syria. I think these
riots are FOOD RIOTS caused by the coordinated
monetary overstimulation of the ECB, Fed, and
BoJ. Despotism is an INVARIANT in the Middle
East so why are they all rioting *NOW*?????
I had an email argument with Andrew Tobias,
ex-treasurer of the DNC who gave me this same
nonsense that our new imperialism in the ME
will benefit the US. Indeed, in Yemen, there’s
substantial evidence that those rebels are very
anti-US.
Well, I’ve got an appointment to take my Comcast
cable away. I’m so sick of the Biz channels
sugar coating everything and Ed Schulz saying
that Obama’s speech “hit it out of the park”
that I’m ready to throw the whole device out
of my fourth floor window.
And I couldn’t agree more, Jim, with one of
your main theses … what in the hell IS a
Democrat these days and how to we distinguish
them from Republicans??
E.

Evelyn Victor March 30, 2011 at 4:48 am #

Turkle, while I was pondering if it would be polite to say the same thing you took the words right out of my mouth (or should I say formed the pixels for me right on my own screen?)

Eleuthero March 30, 2011 at 5:02 am #

Consequences of QE2:
1. Fuel inflation
2. Food inflation, especially in the third
world like the Middle East
3. Malinvestment. Palo Alto’s office vacancy
rate is TWO percent and it’s the same rubbish as
1999 … web start-ups. When you just THROW
money into a corrupt system, you get manufactured
“necessity” and an absence of utility.
Yet Krugman, allegedly a fan of the “little guy”,
watches all this and says that QE2 was TOO SMALL.
No wonder they call economics the “Dismal Science”
… it’s earned that sobriquet.
E.

old6699 March 30, 2011 at 5:35 am #

From:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GE24Dj01.html
The Power of Collective Action:
“The Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, at a time when its economy was in total collapse, with ruinous war-reparation obligations and zero prospects for foreign investment or credit. Yet through an independent monetary policy of sovereign credit and a full-employment public-works program, the Third Reich was able to turn a bankrupt Germany, stripped of overseas colonies it could exploit, into the strongest economy in Europe within four years, even before armament spending began. ”
“What Germany had in 1933 was full sovereignty through which the Third Reich was able to adopt policies of economic nationalism to full effectiveness.”
“The United States as the dominant victor of World War II was determined to perpetuate its hegemony by suppressing national planning everywhere to prevent the emergence of economic nationalism and socialism.”
“The economic power of full employment
From the very outset of his rule, Hitler, whose main short-term goal was the economic revival of Germany with the help of German nationalist bankers and industrialists, won popular support of the nation. Hitler adopted an aggressive full-employment campaign. Between January 1933 and July 1935 the number of employed Germans rose by a half, from 11.7 million to 16.9 million. More than 5 million new jobs paying living wages were created. Unemployment was banished from the German economy and the entire nation was productively engaged in reconstruction. Inflation was brought under control by wage freeze and price control. Besides this, taking into account the lessons learned during 1914-18, Hitler aimed at creating an economy that would be independent from foreign capital and supply, and be well protected from another blockade and economic war. For Germans, all of the above was proof that Hitler was the one who had not only brought Germany out of economic depression but would take it directly to prosperity with new pride. German popular trust in the Fuehrer rose dramatically. ”
SO IMAGINE WHAT COULD BE DONE TODAY, WITH ALL THE TECHNOLOGY, SCIENCE, KNOW HOW, AUTOMATION AND ROBOTS OF TODAY, AND MILLIONS MORE PEOPLE (Collective efforts of South Korea + USA + EU + Brazil added together, etc.) , ETC. A MIND BOGGLING AMOUNT OF WEALTH FOR ALL BY A LONG SHOT.

And you all whine about overpopulation and resource scarcities. Never has there been a greater lie told and implanted in the minds of millions.
Instead we have all these puny USA and EU ideologies of “grow your own food”, “peak oil”, “small businesses”, “entrepreneurs”, “be your own puny boss” ideas creating weaker and weaker, conflicted, and all against all societies that will be completely overrun by those who know how to use collective effort.

old6699 March 30, 2011 at 5:38 am #

I am so totally right on all of this it is not even funny!
Check out:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174693
“Society HAS become atomized, but it is important to remember that this is BY DESIGN. It is crucial for the current system of control of the Human species that people should be discouraged as much as possible from interacting directly with each other in any meaningful way.
People who spend time together not only find ways to work together and share resources without the need of money, but they also start to formulate some dangerous ideas about how maybe that sort of thing could work on a wider scale. This is something that our financial overlords want to discourage as much as possible.
Again, psychological disorders are now more common and widespread than ever as a result of people’s deep seated anxiety about their own tenuous position in society given that it is so dependent on being financially independent. In our world, if you don’t have money, you don’t have anything and you don’t matter.”

old6699 March 30, 2011 at 6:07 am #

I can concede 1 thing to the Right : There is the possibility that instead of mind boggling wealth, a nation as large as the USA or Brazil or China(?!?) adapting a Nazi Hitler style of full employment and collective effort could turn into a mind boggling Fascist State hell bent on conquering the world and triggering WW III.
But then maybe the reason the powers that be (invisibly) need to atomize society is to eliminate the very real threat of a country getting way to powerful and rich beyond any control, also thanks to the power of Science and Technology and the sheer number of workers available today so as to become another WW II Germany, but this time on steroids.
So the real reasons are for “pacifism”, ok, I’ll take it all back, grow your own food and cut the electric line everyone.

John66 March 30, 2011 at 6:28 am #

What I had in mind was something along the order of designing a program that would not allow the citizen to walk away from the voting session without having chosen from WHERE they get the money.
I’m visualizing something like this. The program would say something like “Now, that you’ve chosen 2 trillion dollars in expenditures, please tell us from where you will, then they will be given something like the following:
below $10,000
$10,000 to $40,000
$40,000 to $100,000
$100,000 to $250,000
$250,000 and up
They would then assign percentages to each bracket and if the end result doesn’t add up to zero, the vote doesn’t count.
Indeed, the masses are asses, but that simply has to change, Turkle… The public must get smarter and if this takes 100 years for people to understand that they’re making the wrong choices, then so be it..it will be worth it. A cat doesn’t litter in its bed for a reason.

John66 March 30, 2011 at 6:31 am #

A good website to look at when it comes to non-discretionary spending and the military is:
http://www.notmypriorities.org

Alexandra March 30, 2011 at 6:48 am #

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, y’all…
But things are a wee bit different now here in 2011 than since say the 1930s, for those souls bereft of a more classical style education. Which would mean you don’t get the theory of the Malthusian Trap. Which is as follows:
More technological breakthroughs = new innovation = short-term gains for all = more shopping & fucking = new children + more mouths to feed = newfound resources ÷ amongst an ever greater number of people.
Final result = living standards at a subsistence level… Until guess what?
Peak everything, and resource over-shoot.
So Old6699er mate where are these future new resources, (food, minerals, and fresh water) to be found amongst Gaia current ever depleting resources?
As you’re such a ‘visionary’ futurist perhaps like Star Trek you think that come 2050 we’ll just simply magic them endlessly out of mini wall based replicator, presumably?
Its seems to me to coin a Yankie phrase you really don’t get the math…
*sniggers*
It took 123 years for the world to go from 1 bn folk to 2bn billion which was done in as we hit the 1930’s…
And because still we can ‘currently’ wring about 90mbpd of black gold outta the ground today – this means we’re collectively on target to fuck ourselves nicely toward total extinction – as we hit 9bn consumer crew members pre 2050…
That’s if (and it’s a big one) the climate changes and oil wars haven’t triggered the desperately required uber-cull process by then…
And if it was at all possible (and I highly doubt it) 9bn peeps means would mean we would have to produce more food over the coming 40 years than we’ve produced EVER in the past 10,000 years combined…
(Now to coin a popularist UK phrase…)
“And that’s magic folks!”
So I wonder why Hedge-funds, China and all the smart rich families et al are living on or snapping-up farms and agricultural resources,right here – right now?
For some further informed comment look here…
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html

old6699 March 30, 2011 at 7:01 am #

I have written it in many posts here and on ilovephilosophy, check out the links: we have a very large number of ways to generate energy, we have all the room in the world for people, skyscrapers, and even hundreds of floors underground (thousands of trillions), genetic produced food, and on and on for hundreds of pages: actually all the pages of all the scientific papers published in the last 50 years. And then we have the possibility to re-engineer our mind – brain, chip in brains, virtual reality: get real, there is no resource scarcity.
Now, for the serious stuff: did you read my last few posts last week ? Are you giving in then ? I could really use some peace of mind…

old6699 March 30, 2011 at 7:03 am

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