JHK’s Three-Act Play
Taking in Charles Ferguson’s excellent documentary, Inside Job, about the dark doings of Wall Street in our time, I confess I was awestruck all over again at the complete surrender of Obama to the very characters who embodied the corruption that rotted our system from the heart outward. 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.
Most impressive of all in this brave film were the shameless academic mandarins caught on camera trying to weasel out of their greed-driven misdeeds – Glenn Hubbard, chair of the Columbia University Econ department, a perfectly programmed polished WASP (like out of a “Ken” doll box) on the outside, slithering corruption inside, who played a major role in removing all restraints on Wall Street, then served as a director on the boards of several predatory financial giants, including the biggest, Black Rock, and pretended not to remember if he got paid for it; Martin Feldstein of the Harvard Econ department, in-and-out of government like a rat in a cheese-box, who sat on the board of AIG in the months before it blew itself up on credit default swaps, and who saw nothing about the company’s operations that gave off a bad odor after it entered the most massive government receivership the world has ever seen; and most memorably Fred Mishkin, former Federal Reserve governor, now an academic rover, who wrote a cheerleading report for the Icelandic banking system about five minutes before it collapsed, then changed the report’s title from Financial Stability in Iceland to Financial Instability in Iceland, then denied it on camera in the face of obvious evidence, then forgot whether he got paid six-figures to write the glowing report, then dissolved on camera into a maundering puddle of indignity and humiliation.
How do these rogues survive the disclosure of their turpitudes? Is there no one at places like Harvard and Columbia who has any sense of shame or even an inkling of disappointment that they employ such odious hustlers? Apparently not. 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. 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. Being a decent, presentable fellow with a nice family is just not enough. Even his vaunted speech-making abilities have gotten on my nerves. 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.
Can’t any of us begin the reform of the Democratic Party, starting with resigning from being Wall Street’s bitch? 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. 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, such as climate change denial, and drill-drill-drill cretinism, and “creation science,” and all the pietistic hypocrisies of the Sunbelt know-nothings. A party willing to drag characters like Lloyd Blankfein into a court of law to answer straight-up fraud charges. A party willing to admit that if you can’t control both the terrain and the people’s behavior in Afghanistan, then there’s no excuse for prosecuting a war there.
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.
In the meantime, we can look forward to a year of spectacular unraveling. Our money system probably can’t survive the crack-up of revolving obligations that were ginned up so that bankers could cream off fortunes from every exchange of any sort of paper on the face of the earth. The European banks have nowhere to go anymore with Ireland and Portugal crapping out. Bond-holders are finally going to have to eat a lot of losses. Governments have fallen and more will go down – but, of course, more to the point is what governments will follow them in power? Probably more audacious ones, run by people who intend to act, perhaps even badly.
The Middle East and North Africa have the look of spinning into World War Three. The action just doesn’t seem like it’s going to simmer down anytime soon in a half-dozen nations that have started gunning down their own people – and there’s Iran sitting rather quietly on the sidelines, or so it appears for the moment, as the whole region rearranges itself to suit them better. Wait until Hezbollah starts lobbing missiles into Israel. You’ll see the big “tilt” sign light up the sky. Anyway you slice it there, America better get ready for a lot less imported oil. There’s really nothing we can do that will change that now, and drill-drill-drill will not come close to mitigating our losses, no matter how much Larry Kudlow wrings his hands.
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.
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.
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First!
-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
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/
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.
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.
Sorry, Mr. Kunstler, I believe we have gone past the point where a mere political movement will be of much use.
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
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
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
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?
thanks Jim,with your excellent choice of words-time to take my meds-you ruined my day,month,year,etc.gold,silver,guns,food…..
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
I can’t believe Kunstler didn’t mention Japan in this column.
the only person i have cast my vote for president during this century has been nader.
idiots.
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.
….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
EARTH= POISON, VIOLENT http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg
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.
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.
“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?
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/
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.
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!
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.)
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.
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!
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.
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,
“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.
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.
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.
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/
I would add “let me be clear” to be stifled as well…
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
My last post was supposed to be addressed to you.
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?
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.
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/
Most useful Google search term ever:
“Grow your own food”
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.
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
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.
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.
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…
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Thanks for the news regarding Mr. B. We’ve lost another great soldier for truth.
“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?
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
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….
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
You said:
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.
“…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…
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.
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.
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!
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….
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.
“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!
Thanks, k-dog; I’ll see what my shaky ‘puter skills might produce (aside from a pant-load of frustration). ;o)
“”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’?
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.
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
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.
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.
George S., I noticed the same thing. Well put.
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
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.
“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.
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
….That would be, “unforeseen straits”
(Before Q shows up for the bitch parade.)
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.
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.
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!
“Apparently when Obama promised change, he was talking about his mind.” Love it!
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.
“Hope is the greatest falsifier of the truth.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 !
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.
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.
but, having said what I just said… even doing nothing would be better than making things worse, which is what he has been doing.
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.
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.
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?
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
“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.
“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.
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.
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 !
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?
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.
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.)
“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!
“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.
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
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 ?
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
“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?
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!
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
” 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.
“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.
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.]
“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.
“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.
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.
Nice comments, Consultant. Both of them.
These in particular:
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:
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.
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.
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.
“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).
Only 270 shopping days till Christmas!
Oh Ron ‘Whats his Last Name’?
didnt the Media completely freeze him out?
EVEN WHEN HE WAS 3RD OR 4TH IN THE POLLS?
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.
Thanks, asia. LOL!
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.
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 …
Chocolate Watchband is a great band name.
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.
‘wiping out the human race’
No, we added 2 billion since then.
Ended in 1974? 1975?
it was a long range plan.
I am no fan of Bobby Sherman but the 1910 Fruit Gum Company is the bee’s knees!
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.
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.
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).
Did you do a scientific poll and talk to them, Vlad? I’m surprised you had the stomach for this given your known prejudices.
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.
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.
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!
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.
“Obama isn’t a bit different than Bush.”
Not a bit, huh? Riiiight.
If the Romans had built nuclear power plants we’d still be coping with their spent fuel rods.
Or would WE?
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.
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?
“How do you think I got this way dick weed?”
So you admit you have a problem then?
Westcoast, is it his sexual orientation that negates his arguments in your mind?
“It’s not pre-judgement or prejudice”
Ahahaha. Whatever.
“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.
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.
“It will definitely help your attitude.”
I’m thinking lobotomy…
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.
“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?
“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.
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?
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!”
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
“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.
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.
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.
Only 270 shopping days till Christmas!
best chuckle of the day so far…
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?
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
MM,
You could add Why Johnny can’t walk to school to your list…
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.
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…
Okay, so you’re a paleo-conservative. Fair enough.
S.O.N.O.F.A.B.I.T.C.H.!
sonofabitch.mnm
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.
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.
“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.
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.”
*yawn*
Uhh. Let me guess….don’t tell me.
Are you the 2011 reincarnation of TzaTza?
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.
Stop hitting on the young. What did you do to make the world a better place when you were young?
[Poltergeist voice]
She’s baaaaaa-ack.
But by the same token, placing false hope in the younger generation to fix everything is a fool’s game, wouldn’t you say?
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.
Stop hitting on the young. What are YOU doing to make the world a better place now at your age (whatever that might be)?
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?
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
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.
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.
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)?
How about shock therapy?
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
“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…
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!
Just in case Tootsie is female, you should have listed the following equation:
I.Q. Score = clitoris length in mm.
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.
“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.
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.
“Frankly, with all the fraud, misogyny, ageism, racism, and homophobia from the guy in the WH during his campaign”
Huh?
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.
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.
PS
Remember Nixon?
“Let me make this perfectly clear”
It’s all the same…
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…”
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?).
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
“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.
I didn’t hear “Make No Mistake”!
I imagine JHK’s TV is still intact.
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.
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
“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.
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.
YAY for Myrtle May !
It’s your lucky day !
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!
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.
Thanks, Jackie! From my point-of-view, every morning I wake up is a “lucky day” : D !
…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.
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.
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)
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 : ( !
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.
Yeah, go ahead and tempt me, then crush me.
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.
We’ll I’m sorry to hear about Joe, Deer hunting with Jesus was a really good book.
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…)
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.
Do you do homebirths? Ugh.
SJmo
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.
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.
Right on, dude! Turn on, tune in and drop out – or something like that.
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!
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
I know another story about a man from Nantucket…sorry – I just couldn’t hap it!
My sentiments exactly! Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you look like shit – especially women and drag queens in mascara!
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.
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.
~*~
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.
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.”
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.
You are so naughty. I love it!
Who wins Vlad’s Pissin’ Hizself In Public Award today? Vlad? tootsie? Am I missing anyone?
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.
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.
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
“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.
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.
“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?
You crazy, girl!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
“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.
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.
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!!!
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!
Yeah, just ask Mark Twin about made up names…
as to the rest of your post…??????
What is that symbol at the bottom?
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!
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..
Ok…Bushy started 2 wars, O only 1 [so far].
Didnt TARP help the Japanese Banks and Auto companies?
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
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.
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.
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.
‘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.
“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?
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.
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!
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.
More conventional types chant TGIF…here on CFN, Friday is only two days till Monday!
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/
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…
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.
AMR,
What a pleasure to read your post…hope you post more often, too. Thanks
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.
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.
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.
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?
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…
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
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.
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.
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 🙂
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.
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…
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”.
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.”
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.)
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*!!!
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*.
Sorry, gotta spam this – peace on earth, good will towards *men*…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGA8rCQXegM
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.
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.”
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
I liked this
http://dilbert.com/dyn_file/str_strip/117322/gif/strip.print/
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.
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
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…
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.
“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.
“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.
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.
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.
You said:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
“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.”
“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.
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.
No it wasn’t, but I never saw Marianne again.
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.
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.
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
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.
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…
I don’t think so, Marlin. Those people are generally anti-war across the board, no matter who is president.
try living a hunter/gather life and see if you still think it is better
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
“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.
“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.
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.
“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.
“Stop hitting on the young.”
But they’re so cute.
Something tells me you are not an engineer or a scientist.
“There are no resource scarcities”
I beg to differ…
“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?
Stlhdr said:
========
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.
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.
Come on, give some credit to George Carlin!
Should have read “use e-verify for their employees.”
Touche.
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.
Agreed.
Obama is “just like” or “as bad as Bush” is such a vacuous position.
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.
Tell me, asoka, is our children learning?
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
Beantown said:
==============
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.
MoneyMouth said:
=========
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Vlad said: “Slow motion genocide is still genocide…”
==========
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.
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
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/
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!
Love you, too, cupcake.
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.
So now you’ll telling me which movies I’ve seen. Methinks you have some boundary issues.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
erig said:
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.
“You are far more integrated into American Life than I am”
When was the last time you left the militia compound, anyways?
when did the war end? 74?
and turk:
Have you ever heard the term Cornucopian?
As judged by yr comments you are one.
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!
“As judged by yr comments you are one.”
Why?
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
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.
Please, asia, I beg you.
Let’s not start Cornucopian-bashing!
We are an endangered species on CFN!
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!
Ignore it and maybe itll die
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.
Immigration is a bogus issue.
No YOU are a ‘bogus issue’.
What you worry?
Things ill be alright, right?
“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.
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.
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?
Thanks Turk. As I have said, Communism doesn’t work and Fascism does. And that’s why the Powers hate it so much.
Not sure I agree with your interpretation of history there, bud. Whatev.
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.
And furthermore, you kids need to get off my lawn!
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.
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.”
Do you believe the Mahdi has arisen? And that He will punish America and the White Race as Mr Farhakahn blelieves?
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.
Fascist Germany was an economic miracle before destroyed by the Capitalist and Communist Internationalists.
Okay, Vlad, I’m going to stop replying to you now. Have a good one.
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”!”
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!”
Uhhh, somebody bleated?
Such melodrama!
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.
“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
Oh, it is a Nazi love fest up in here. How surprising!
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.
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.
CORRECTION
I do not want white people to suffer or be punished for all the incalculable evil they have done.
Wall Street helped.
http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/
But you guys knew that, I’m sure.
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.
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.
Shame on you for your ignorance and hatred of Whites!
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.
Your reading comprehension skills need some work.
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.
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
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.
“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)
I’ll work on my reading skills and you can work on your obsessive need to reply to every post.
LOL
Good one, SJmom!
“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.
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.
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.
“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”
“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).
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
Oh no you didn’t!
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!
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…
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.”
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.
“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*.
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.
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*.
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.
Immigration is a dog whistle and keeps us fighting among ourselves so as not to focus attention on real problems.
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.
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.
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…
Don’t worry, those *two* are producing mega-fertilizer – hehe!
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.
“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.
“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.
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!!!
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?
“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?
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.
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*.
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*.
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.
———-
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
My last comment was in reply to your post
Maybe someday Mr.Kunstler will realize that 911 was in inside job too.
Ixnei Ixnei go away
Spew yr bullshit there any day
There once was a girl named Ixnei
All this talk about IQ ! Want to negatively affect your childs cognitive development ? Don’t breastfeed at all.
Why would anyone [cept the power brokers]
want it to?
Peeps are basically selfish..
If you doubt me read ‘THE DARK SIDE OF MAN’
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.
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
‘Treason’ by Coulter
Or Google ‘Venona’
Truely you are a fool in a fools PARROT DISE!
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!
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.
Vote for Ron Paul.
End the Fed.
The only way to drain this swamp.
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
“”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)!
“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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
Tea shirt?
Oh sorry I promised not to reply to any more of Kraps’ posts. My bad.
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.
If we could only harness all the hot air in your posts, we’d have enough energy for a rocket to Mars.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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?)
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
A good website to look at when it comes to non-discretionary spending and the military is:
http://www.notmypriorities.org
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
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…
Wanted to say room for thousands of trillions of people, who are productive resources, working for the Man, the Man being collective action and effort for the common good…
And anyways population growth is rapidly decreasing worldwide, we won’t even reach a puny 15 billion.
And then resources depend upon behavior, what behavior patterns (therefore thought patterns) are chosen by a group of people to execute: if they are programmed in such a way that they need a trillion giant Cadillacs each to feel fulfilled and rewarded, then maybe, at least in the short run, there are some resource scarcities until we figure out a way to produce them for each person. If you just need a TV and no physical body at all because the content of the TV shows is sufficiently rewarding and fulfilling, then we can give that to thousands of trillions of people by making them live in giant underground skyscrapers with their brains extracted and chips connected directly to them playing the show. In that case there is no “resource scarcity”.
And anyways, there is always a time limit, if the state of being tied to the TV is to last only an hour after which you are turned off (die..), then it is an Infinite Resource System, if you need the trillion giant Cadillacs in a minute and they must last you a trillion years (because you live a trillion years) then it is a 100 % Resource Scarcity System, there are no resources at all.
E,
You are so right about the commodities inflation and our foreign policy is more like wag the dog. We screw with the prices of necessities and the people can’t survive.
Democrat-Republican who cares? This is what this country has become on both sides of the aisle. They play politics where it’s always ok when your man does it. You go crazy when the other team does the same thing.It’s played out over and over again–very tiresome.
We are in the ME for the long haul. Last night I thought to myself, how long will it be before we hear a (Democrat) say, “I was against boots on the ground before I was for it”
I highly recommend you read Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia. Blowout is the chapter that describes how this commodity craze took place. The Commodity Exchange Act Roosevelt instituted was meant to keep life necessities safe from speculation.
Of course you know that GS and subsidiaries chipped away at out protections. Taibbi describes 16 private letters that give only certain entities the ability under the law to screw with these prices. You know the folks that do God’s work. (I guess they mean: who shall live and who shall die)
INSUFFERABLE, good post about the hippies. I was a little young to have been part of any of that (counterculture movements) but you seem to have nailed them, dead balls. Looking back it seems like it was a case of, after winning WW11, due to cheap energy and easy living, whitey fraying and coming apart at the seams. Now we’re living with the consequences. Keep on Posting here, Insufferable. You have some interesting things to say.
Same goes for WEST COAST. Good job describing the stranded and isolated position many Americans find themselves in. And in a few words you describe what its like to use ‘Public Transportation’, in the US. I’ve noticed that many of those who are the most vociforous in encouraging public transit use (usually big govt. loudmouths) themselves ride around in Beamers and Mercedes, and, in CT anyway, have chauffers. Chris Dodd comes to mind.
Last week I had to go into Hartford for orientation for my new job. Being a responsible CFNer, worried about energy depletion and all that, I decided to do the responsible thing and take the bus. I’ll say two things. One, a 15-20 minute drive took 2 1/2 hours each way. Two, never again.
In New Haven this week, one of those over-educated white kids, the kind that wear wool caps in the summer, cultivate a 3rd world consciousness, sport dreadlocks, and read books about Ghandi and Malcolm X, was gunned down in a home invasion/robbery by some black gangsters who were short of money and wanted to get some. He was a musician and worked in a bike shop. Newspaper article stated he deliberately chose to live in a black neighborhood (all of New Haven) for political reasons, and that he begged for his life. To no avail.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
One more thing, E.
Before you throw out your TV, maybe you should watch Dylan Ratigan. He’s basically a conservative who is as disgusted with this system as you are.
He interviewed outgoing Tarp Inspector General, Neil Barofsky who is in the process of setting up 17 indictments of TARP fraud.
He cannot speak to the frauds before TARP was set up, that’s up to the DOJ, but the interview was good. Too bad he’s leaving–I wonder why?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#42327661
Did you get the job? I have been trying for 10 years to hook some clients in Hartford, Travellers and The Hartford, no such luck but still trying. Was the bus system that bad, really?
Just read another economics article, it says:
“the gap between the requirements of the workplace and the “skill sets” that our workforce has is growing, not declining”.
Has anybody ever heard anyone else ever challenge this ? Has anyone ever asked exactly what “skill sets” are necessary (just like the “innovation” and “more education” buzzword) for exactly which workplace? I am always astonished by the fact that everyone, virtually everyone accepts these sentences as a given, as laws of physics, I have never heard not even one economist or anyone for that matter ever cast even the slightest doubt on these absolute “laws of physics”, either from the left or right.
And there is a reason why: these words have been chosen BY DESIGN since they are so abstract, so impossible to define, such moving targets: anything can become a “needed skill set” today and tomorrow morning it is no longer needed (according to the quirky random whims of some employer just desiring them from out of the blue sky), any “innovation” can be defined as such today (like cell phones with cameras or even digital cameras, when what they are are just old fashioned cameras put in a new package) and tomorrow “no longer necessary”. Don’t even get me started on the more training or education crap. Anything you learned today or trained for today, even if it took you years can become obsolete and no longer needed in the blink of an eye because the “skill sets” needed have changed and “innovation” has hosed you once again.
The real problem is that people have no ability to doubt all these concepts, no ability to challenge them, they are a given, they have been brainwashed by all of this BS. The truth is, all of this talk is just a justification (especially in the victim’s mind) that it is his fault he can’t find a job. Not that the economic system is biased towards kicking out as many people as possible from jobs by using as many possible fake excuses as possible.
Or the excuses may be real, but because the corporations and the competitive nature of the economy, by design create ever changing standards, technologies, interactions, patterns of behaviors and “new needs” to filter out as many people as possible from labor. In short there is always a precise intentionality behind it, and a precise class warfare being waged by the rich against the poor, capital against labor.
“decided to do the responsible thing and take the bus. I’ll say two things. One, a 15-20 minute drive took 2 1/2 hours each way. Two, never again.”
This too is by design, there is a precise intentionality to make public transit horrible. Since what you use is the only kind of public transit you can imagine, America is completely brainwashed that it is either like this or it is cars. No one ever tries to even imagine a better system, no one even tries to think up a better system, no one ever challenges this either.
It would cost nothing at all to completely put BUSes across all of the USA (something like 50 billion dollars, peanuts compared to the hundred billions given to banks for free or quantitive easing, etc.). But no one wants it because BUSes are that crap I took yesterday.
Great 2 posts, OLD6699!
I couldn’t have said it better myself!
Tragic story about that kid.
“he begged for his life. To no avail.”
-marlin-
I’ve come to believe that ANY underclass of young people can turn thuggish – and lash out in fear and hate. Naturally, we have a frequent poster on CFN ready to cheer for, or at least excuse, this behavior – IF it occurs in the young black underclass.
“My point is NOTHING you can do can repay Blacks for the suffering and the terror sown by whites.”
-asoka-
==========================
As far as mass transit – yeah, I’m not seeing it as a solution for the US, if it ever was. It works in densely packed urban areas – maybe, if you come home to a walkable area with a couple of places to get food and necessities.
But most of the population does not live in places like that – hasn’t for years – and will never willingly go back.
Plus, the mass transit advocates keep ignoring the fact that small efficient personal cars use less fuel per passenger mile – than do trains and buses.
Even the most modern trains and buses are less efficient than small passenger cars – at getting people where they need to be and back again.
JonathanSS, food security, energy, etc. are problems we can solve with the help of education, including the education of immigrants. As someone once said: “Be not afraid!”
Education represents opportunity and facilitates the realization of our potential as human beings on this planet. Education also facilitates the solution of our three main serious global problems: overpopulation, environmental degradation, and nuclear proliferation.
Education has always been a priority in American history. Education is a common good, but also a personal value, as well as a constitutional mandate of USA government. Education promotes the general welfare of society (provides skills for productive work, reduces crime, etc.), so ways have always been found to educate children.
My experience is that immigrant parents may value education more than the so-called “citizens” of the USA. They understand the value of education. This has been true throughout all the waves of immigrants in our history and is true now.
It doesn’t matter if you are a citizen, a legal immigrant, or an “undocumented” immigrant. Educating everyone matters, for the general well-being of society.
When it comes to valuing education, most parents love their children, want the best for their children, and see the value of children being educated. Government (which is us: “of the people, by the people, for the people”) also recognizes the value of education. Private industry and our military recognize and invest in education.
As a result this public/private consensus about the value of education, a number of creative ways have always been found to educate our children: volunteer literacy programs in public libraries, homeschooling, charter schools, community colleges, private schools, tutoring programs, extension programs, media programs, distance education (internet-based courses), dual enrollment programs, an alphabet soup of public and private efforts related to education (ABE, ESL, Title III, LSTA, PTA, etc.) A myriad of ways to finance education have been, and will continue to be, found.
Because education is valued, it will be accomplished with or without public funding. Whether through private scholarships, through volunteer efforts, through barter, etc., ways will be found to make it happen for all future immigrants, just as it happened for previous waves of Greeks, Germans, Poles, Jews, Irish, etc. immigrants. It happened in spite of the nattering naybobs of negativism who said a century ago that the country was being ruined by those European immigrants. Now the same is being said of Asian, African, and Hispanic immigrants. There is room for everyone, contrary to what ProCon believes.
The United States has always become better through increased immigration, as history proves. I have provided quite a bit of evidence of the superiority of math and science education in other countries. We benefit from the entrepreneurial spirit and brain power immigrants bring, and the net-positive economic contribution immigration provides to the United States.
I hope the number of immigrants increases. I especially welcome those I call the M&Ms (™)… the Mexicans and the Muslims, because both of those cultures have so much that is positive to offer us, so much to enrich the multicultural tapestry that is American culture.
During my life I suspended my personal cultural conditioning and immersed myself in those cultures. I learned Spanish and attended Catholic mass. I traveled abroad and participated in Islamic religious practices, such as zikr. My efforts have provided rewards beyond all expectation.
When one is not negative, not afraid, and not defensive, then it becomes possible to embrace the unknown. By taking the time to learn about and share deeply with others from different cultures, one learns that immigrants are not threats. Indeed, one learns that immigrants are not even “other.” Then there is no desire to limit human freedom of movement, then the building of walls on borders stops. Fear dies, and love is born. We realize we are also immigrants and our ancestors were immigrants.
We are ALL simply human beings who have come to find ourselves on a journey together on this Planet Earth, sharing a brief moment in time.
Cars are more efficient than trains and buses? Where did you get that amazing fact, FOX NEWS?
$10/ gallon gas will change everyones mind about mass transportation. I live 3 miles up a dirt road in VT so I probably will not have a high speed rail stop near my house for some time.However a migration out of the suburbs is already under way.
In lieu of discussion: Must listen video
Gerald Celente : Gold Guns and Getaway Plans – Lew Rockwell 24 march 2011
Trends master Gerald Celente was interviewed by Lew Rockwell of the Mises Institute ; Gerald Celente : ..this is the beginning of the first great war of the 21st century all this talk about freedom and democracy really has to do with the bottom line , the bottom line is this , you have very high populations of young people that are highly educated and are holding university degrees in worthlessness and can’t get jobs and the corruption at the top is really a very simple analogy that when the money stops flowing down to the man in the street , blood starts flowing in the streets , far too few have much too much and far too many have much too little ….and that’s what this is about , it’s about educated people not having an opportunity , no jobs it’s about corruption in the top and that little rising food prices at all time highs….
ASoka, you probably don’t have enough fear in you to be considered Patriotic! True Patriots are afraid of every non white, non fat, non male, non hambrger munching, non Reality show watching, non moron.
Insufferable –
Blaming the “hippies” doesn’t cut it. They were an anomaly – a few million youngsters at most, and a few million more wanna’ be’s. And the true “hippies” were the spoiled and bored offspring of the upper crust of the “greatest generation.”
“Scratch a hippie and find a Porsche.”
-popular saying among people who actually had to work for a living in the ’60’s-
Of course, vilification of “hippies” does take us to several logical extremes:
1. Drug use was bad. Therefore we need a draconian drug policy that enriches law enforcement and narcoterrorists – while filling US prisons with nonviolent offenders.
2. Being for PEACE was bad. Therefore we need to glorify the US military to make up for it. This takes us to the point where anyone who speaks against war – and against the defense establishment – becomes ineligible for national leadership.
3. Tuning in, turning on, and dropping out was bad. This takes us to the point where the “back to the land” movement died – for all intents and purposes. What replaced the “hippies” was the glorification of Armani suits and “greed is good” of the ’80’s until the present.
Fewer hippies – more greed?
Less free love – more repression?
Would that have had a better end point for you, Insufferable?
Hippies lived off the “Fat of the LAnd” as the USA was VERY WEALTHY at the time.
“Greed is Good” is an inaccurate description of the actual process. The verb is not greed it is “Risk Taking” and it is good as it provides innovation and job creation. Everyone gets to decide where they are comfortable on the risk curve.
“Cars are more efficient than trains and buses?”
-nathan-
Yeah, it’s true, believe it or not. I keep posting the figures for relative efficiency of movement of passengers. I’ll repost some – but maybe you would learn more if you try to prove me wrong.
The number you have to look for is the amount of fuel burned to move one passenger one mile. From my research, this is best expressed as Passenger-Miles Per Gallon. (P-MPG)
Commuter rail gets about 30 P-PMG, which puts it on a par with a modern passenger car with one occupant.
But a modern diesel Rabbit, or equivalent, gets 50 miles per gallon. So with 4 occupants – this vehicle gets 200 P-MPG, proving it to be more efficient than any other mode of transportation – mass or otherwise.
===============
And Nathan – public transport has the problem of the “last mile.” If you’re 3 miles up a dirt road you know what I’m talking about.
Are you gonna:
1. Walk it?
2. Move to the big city?
3. Get an efficient car?
$10/gallon is probably a pretty good target.
Remember that EVERYTHING will go up based on this.
– including buses and trains –
Howdy Buck Stud, I really would like to get into this stuff, One of my friends is BIG time into it. I have been following the western model “I pic up hevey t’ings an’ I poot dem bac dawn”
Unfortunatly the guys would proably laugh at me if I went the eastern route. Screw them.
I do know the numbers and they are based on buses having an average of 9 occupants not being full. The average occupancy for a car in the USA is 1.3 not 4 so once you even things up the buses and trains are more efficient (if fully utilized) and can run on electricity derived from non fossil fuel sources
What is it that keeps trying to make itself known through the fog of bullshit, xenophobia, and the constant doggerel of propaganda?
“…Get one half of the underclass to kill and oppress the other half.”
Jeebus, a little focus and critical thinking is required; but I guess that’s just asking too much these days! I don’t have much hope any longer; I mean, how do you fight what you can’t/won’t even recognize???
Hippies; lawd-ha’mussy, I can barely think of a more harmless enemy of the ‘Murkin way o’ death.
(What the “hippies” did, was have themselves some low-energy fun. I think THAT’S what sticks in the puritanical assholes’ craws so much…)
VALUES?? Stand that one up so I can laugh at it too. Somebody’s been punk’d so bad, that they’ll be mouthing this tripe as their families starve to death (or they begin to help throw their neighbors into imprisonment, torture, and execution). Good luck with yer fuckin’ VALUES when it gets to life or death; not which burger joint one intends to motor to, in order to feed one’s comfy, over-indulged ass.
Take a few minutes and watch this video, the guy did a fantastic job, go full screen with sound. We really do live in a beautiful world!
http://vimeo.com/21419634
“Everything will go Up” Yes it will so people will have to leave the suburbs and return that land to LOCALVORE food production not McMansions, and be able to walk the last mile as we have done for 100,000 years (just not the last 70)
Good call. I have seen the lights here in VT and a
couple of times in Canada at the mouth of the St. Lawrence river (way NORTH)
Wow! Good catch, RT.
Ole’s first video production, eh? Nice job! (I think Nature helped a little on it.)
The word “awesome” applies to that video.
…Saw “the lights” once from near the shore of Lake Erie in W. NY when I was a kid. A humbling experience; respect and delight for and in Nature, instantly ingrained!
Nathan –
Are we gonna talk about P-MPG or are we gonna talk about walking.
I don’t know how you can avoid the average load of a bus being 9 people or so – except by running the routes MUCH less frequently.
-So maybe that does come down to a question of something like “freedom,” or maybe convenience – as the RW keeps hinting in their diatribes against public transport.
OTOH, if gas goes to 10 dollars/gallon – I can guarantee you that I will not go to town without having two or three neighbors in the car with me splitting costs and upping the P-MPG figure.
And we’ll be able to come home with enough groceries and “stuff” for a week packed into the trunk – try doing that week after week while taking the bus home.
=====================
Now – if you want to talk about walking –
OK, dude – let’s go local. That means NO trains, NO buses, NO long distance movement of foodstuffs.
That means I’ll be eating goat meat and turnip greens all winter, every winter – out where I live. Where will the rest of you be getting your food?
I think that’s the way we’re probably heading, too. And I think the bus vs train vs car thing is just a distraction prior to collapse.
Which is also why I think 660,000,000 people in the US is a really bad idea – and excessive immigration is not a distraction at all –
Unchecked, it’s doom, coming down the tracks –
-or riding a bus-
-or walking-
“…And we’ll be able to come home with enough groceries and “stuff” for a week packed into the trunk – try doing that week after week while taking the bus home.” -PoC
…And draggin’ a trailer too, I would imagine! Just look at the loads they carry in Asia and E. Europe. Tryin’ to make every calorie count…
Yeah, Nathan, I got a job at the newspaper. I walked in cold about a month ago and said I wanted a job. The security guy wasn’t too friendly and was about to show me the door when i mentioned I worked there years ago. He said wait a minute, made a phone call, and the HR lady came out. The jobs I had, years ago, in-house advertising and research in editorial, are all gone, but they offered me something else. Has benefits and everything, which I don’t really need because I get all that as a Fed. retiree. Personnel lady seemed happy because she said it saved her the trouble of placing an ad and reading resumes, interviewing people and all that. Sometimes I feel truly blessed.
Made 2 trips to State Cavalry depot for manure this morning. The woman in charge, an officer, slender, with a mane of blond hair, lithe, was riding around on a pony … be still my beating heart … the horsewoman cometh …
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
“No magic moment where we just wake up into chaos and start killing each other”
Nah, I don’t think there will be some Holy Shit moment where the masses rise up. I think the real revolutionaries have already revolted, given the status quo the finger, and are busy taking back the life that the ultra-high-energy petroleum economy and its attendants took from them.
On the other hand, if you don’t know that you’ve lost anything, I could see fighting to keep things moving in the same direction, even if you’re just a pawn in the game. These are “the masses” in my opinion, and I feel sorry for them. They’ll follow the leaders all the way to the grave. However swiftly that comes.
One more thing. Last nite Obama hosted a $31,000 per plate fundraiser on Wall Street. And this is the man who was supposed to SAVE YOU from Wall Street.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Ozzie and Harriet and Leave it to Beaver were way too sanitized but in my own experience not all that far off the mark. In Myrtlemay’s experience nobody lived like that. Maybe it depends on where you lived. I lived in a small town, Myrtlemay lived in a suburb. IMO the 1950’s and the early to mid 1960s were better than what we have now. I’ll take the white picket fence world of Ozzie and Harriet.
Back then dad had a job, mom stayed home and took care of us. Paradise? No, especially for mom being cooped up all the time. But now? Moms and dads are divorced, their jobs are unstable, they have to put up with wild-ass bosses, the kids have to cope with ever changing living arrangements with a rotating roster of live in “partners” with fucked up family situations of their own. So add to that an ever changing array of step siblings most of which are unhappy, disturbed and depressed. Family finances are a mess, the house never gets cleaned, nobody cooks, the kids eat prepackaged, over salted, pre-chewed shit, they’re overweight and coming down with type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
We wonder why the educational system is so screwed? Because of boomer parents is why. They just don’t pay attention being preoccupied with their own disasters. I’m acquainted with a couple of older teachers and both talked the same talk. Early in their careers in a class of thirty they used to have to cope with a couple of screwed up kids but now in a class of thirty they have to cope with a half dozen or more and it burns their time.
This is just an anecdote but in all my growing up years I never heard its like and I was acquainted with a lot of families and kids in my hometown: My boss’s wife was a special ed teacher where she “taught” the real hard cases. She had six kids in her class plus a cop plus a social worker (imagine that scenario). One of her students, a fourteen year old girl, came to class one day with her mother, who was supposedly an “actress”. The girl was teary eyed so my boss’s wife knew there would be a problem right off the bat. Turned out the mother wanted to know how to go about giving up the girl for adoption and needed advice. Imagine life for that girl.
“Where will the rest of you be getting your food?”
Mostly from my cow’s teats, from potatoes, winter squash, and mushrooms, and in the form of dried fruit and nuts, I’m guessing.
Oh yeah, and my ducklings and goslings arrived this morning! The little blue runner ducklings are especially cute. They’re here to turn slugs and snails into eggs, and they’ll do it a lot more efficiently than chickens do. Add duck eggs to my winter menu. Wouldn’t mind some of that roasted goat either, if you’re cooking.
Pouring here, how ’bout up in the mountains?
Alexandra, Your post, snippet of which follows, “this means we’re collectively on target to fuck ourselves nicely toward total extinction – as we hit 9bn consumer crew members pre 2050…” made my heart sing.
Where were you when I needed support for my contention that the only chance humans and the remaining fauna on spaceship Earth rests with immediate and complete neutering (NOT VASECTOMY) of every human swinging a dick on the planet? IMMEDIATELY! To say my supporters were rarer than hens teeth would be an under statement.
Per your UK “And that’s magic folks!” the F/FB-111 drivers had a similar saying about their aircraft’s capabilities; FM (fucking magic).
SNAFU
Turkle, you sound like the voice of sweet reason on the immigration issue. Now can you please come north and talk sense to some of the assholes we have here?
We have one contingent, usually on the left but not always, that takes great pride in their scorn for the republic to the south. They perceive the desire to control the southern border as unpalatably “racist”. So one day one fellow took a bunch of then politely to task pointing out that the US has somewhere between 10 and 20 million hispanics in the country illegally. Given that we have roughly one tenth the population of the US how would you feel, the fellow asked, if we had 1 to 2 million hispanics HERE illegally. Stopped them in their tracks.
I can understand the impulse to go north. If I was an impoverished Mexican I’d make the trip myself. But you can’t sustain the inflow when our corporate masters are on a course of offshoring jobs to third world crapholes. Cannot be done.
Howdy Progressor, Per your contention: “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.”
Where did you come up with the 50 million figure for what is now the USA? I found estimates of 50 million for North and South America combined with roughly 30 million in South America and 2 million in today’s Canada leaving about 18 million for US.
SNAFU
Dear Mr Kunstler
I read your column every week, & I enjoy your style.I concur with your perspective & your tone most times, but in your column this week, you dropped a clanger, in terms of which you’re a “useful idiot” (http://bit.ly/hPVknn) for a very shady cause.
You speak derisively of “climate change denial”. Mr Kunstler, do you know, the climate has always been changing?
“Climate science” is unfalsifiable claptrap: please enjoy “Unfalsifiable Science – Proof Of Climate Change” (just a short article) – now you know… http://bit.ly/i94aJM
Dear Mr Kunstler
I read your column every week, & I enjoy your style.I concur with your perspective & your tone most times, but in your column this week, you dropped a clanger, in terms of which you’re a “useful idiot” (http://bit.ly/hPVknn) for a very shady cause.
You speak derisively of “climate change denial”. Mr Kunstler, do you know, the climate has always been changing?
“Climate science” is unfalsifiable claptrap: please enjoy “Unfalsifiable Science – Proof Of Climate Change” (just a short article) – now you know… http://bit.ly/i94aJM
Things caused by global warming:
Warmer Northern Hemisphere winters due to global warming
Colder Northern Hemisphere winters due to global warming
Global warming to slow down the Earth’s rotation
Global warming to speed up the Earth’s rotation
North Atlantic Ocean has become less salty
North Atlantic Ocean has become more salty
Avalanches may increase
Avalanches may decrease
Plants move uphill due to global warming
Plants move downhill due to global warming
Monsoons to become drier in India
Monsoons to become wetter in India
Plankton blooms
Plankton decline
Reindeer thrive
Reindeer decline
Less snow in Great Lakes
More snow in Great Lakes
Gulf stream slows down
Gulf stream shows “small increase in flow“
San Francisco more foggy
San Francisco less foggy
Less winter snow for Britain
More winter snow for Britain
Africa to get less rain
Africa to get more rain
Winds speed up [USA]
Winds slow down [USA]
Monsoons to become drier in India
Monsoons to become wetter in India
Bird migrations longer
Bird migrations shorter
Dear Asoka, and Myrtlemay: You both would have been unhappy in any circumstance. However, most people (including Blacks) were happier in the 1940-50 and early 60’s. They were even happier in the 1920’s and 1930’s. There were always the people who were unhappy, alcoholic, mean, and more or less fringe types. But today exists the true potential to destroy the world with nuclear energy, (war or disaster) Today lies depression in the majority due to self indulgence and drug addiction. Today most people have lost their way,many their livelihood and most importantly their dream/hope. You both seem to come from the minority fringe existence. So I am sorry for both of you to never have experienced how Good life once was. You missed alot. Mr. Asoka, I am assuming from your various attempts to tell everyone how bad the blacks had it in this country, that you are lying. You sound like a character in a movie plot, because you even experienced the Cross Burning white sheeted Klan on your front doorstep.(NOT) Before Civil Rights, black children knew their fathers, there was pride in the black household that enabled families to stick together. Today your community is descimated by drug use,economic handouts, rampant fatherless children, and crime. Blame it on others but your people have become the victims/victimizers of the times too. Stop blaming others you have NEVER had the opportunities today in the economic world. Now its really up to you guys to get your world in order.
Miss Myrtlemay: I know for a fact that the people you write about existed, they always have. However, today they pale in comparison to what the hippie utopia has brought upon this nation. Of course I personally don’t know you, but you describe a childhood filled with selfish people. You experienced it and it hurt you. So, You prove my point that selfish behaviour leads to unhappiness, ie. Baby Boomer selfishness par excellance leads to a destroyed nation) Are you happier today? Do you live in the Beverly Houswife world, the Kardashian World, the Reality TV show world, or do you live the Fox news/ MSNBC news world. I suppose you feel todays culture depicts the world in a more “realistic way” than the 7:00 news with Huntly and Brinkly, and the Ed Sullivan Show, Leave it to Beaver, Donna Reed etc. Wake up and smell the Roses,everyone is unhappy today, everyone is frightened and worried. They live in the “real” world so they have the need to drink and drug it up to escape. I would rather have escaped watching the world of make believe, than watch any show on TV today and nodding off on crack/cocaine.
Thanks for the site. Great Movies. That one is almost 2 hours long, it looks like. Will have to watch thruout the day.
JB-CAT haha just for fun.
I meant to say documentaries. Interesting Informative and thought provoking.
Thank you Cash, I also believe she wouldn’t be happy living in Buckingham Palace as the monarch during the time when they were waited on hand and foot and have the ability to chop off people’s heads.
Some comments about Vietnam and the Hippies.
The Vietnam War was obviously a defeat for the United States; paradoxically, for the U.S. military itself, it was not so much a defeat as a massive allocation of resources and a challenge to existing doctrines.
Defeat is defeat, but the war in Vietnam was not lost so much militarily as it was lost because of a loss of national will. In every major battle with U.S. forces, both the regular forces of the north Vietnamese (PAVN) and their guerrilla counterparts (VC) were defeated. The communist presence in the RVN could neither be generally defeated nor could it obtain victory over the regime in the south and its U.S. backers by military means. In the end, the communists proved to have the greatest willpower, and so they were able to achieve a military victory only after the U.S. had pulled out of Vietnam.
The Hippies were a very visible example of strong doubts which existed among the American public about the wisdom of the U.S. conduct of the war in Vietnam. It is important to remember that many in U.S. society shared doubts about the wisdom of war, and surprisingly, there were many in the military who shared those doubts.
But the Hippies, of all the segments of society to doubt the wisdom of the Vietnam War, represented a supposed collection of values that challenged everything that was uptight about America: long hair, loud music, loosened sexual mores, and drug use.
The Hippies stood on the cusp of a genuine social revolution in the U.S., but having briefly upended the military-industrial complex and scaring the Hell out of the establishment, they then committed a mortal political sin: They failed to follow through with their revolution.
Payback for this failure wasn’t immediate — the U.S. wandered through the 1970s in a sort of daze. Other players in the world assessed what they believed were the lessons of Vietnam and began to change the rules, two of the most well known examples of which were the oil crisis of 1973 and the hostage-taking by the Iranian Revolutionary Government in 1979.
But these acts were not the “payback” to the Hippies in particular and American society in general; real payback started in the 1980s when Reagan came to power. Behind all of the cheer-leading and shouting of Reagan finally attaining the presidency, the wealthy had declared war on the middle class and the culmination and (rotten) fruition of that assault are now apparent.
For its part, the U.S. military adapted to no longer having a draft to recruit manpower for the army, and also went to great lengths to formulate doctrine for management of both the media and national expectations during time of war. Having realized that the public could be fickle in their support of war, there has also been a huge push to reduce U.S. casualties and to develop the accuracy of weapons in order to avoid public revulsion like that which occurred in reaction to the bombing of Hanoi.
The management of national expectations is done to avoid the backlash that occurred as a result of the surprise caused by the Tet Offensive. The control and management of the media is likewise done to avoid having real-time depictions of current wars spinning out of Washington’s control.
Those are some of the real “lessons” and political outcomes of the U.S. military adventures of the 1960s and the reaction of American society to them. My take, perhaps mistaken, is that few Americans really grasp what happened back then and why what followed in the next decades were so driven by the events of those pivotal eight years from 1965 to 1973.
Cheers
I like your post.
We are a Narcissistic Nation.
It is getting worse and worse.
And that is before the ‘tip’.
What a waste of $$$. How many people could THAT feed.
This world is crazy.
“However, most people (including Blacks) were happier in the 1940-50 and early 60’s. They were even happier in the 1920’s and 1930’s.”
Pardon me…but how in hell you know this? Sounds like BS to me.
Yes there is no Stability, little to no structure, and too much selfishness, not enough empathy, or respect. Very few people know how to raise healthy children. IMO. The best thing a father can do for his children, is to Love Their Mother.
Children learn by osmosis.
Stupidest saying ever : do as I say not as I do.
I NOW know what my mother meant, but when younger It was like wtf?
I had a stay at home mother. I couldn’t even imagine coming home to an empty house after school when I was little. That was stability for me. She was a great cook. We never starved, we were not rich. My father worked fulltime.
Nowadays there is such little respect between husband and wife/mother and father that the family is just under too much stress.
That actress / mother is a naricissist. Poor little girl. Mommie Dearest.
I know 2 school teachers. I tell you what THAT is a challenging job. They definitely don’t get paid enough money or respect.
“In every major battle with U.S. forces, both the regular forces of the north Vietnamese (PAVN) and their guerrilla counterparts (VC) were defeated.”
B-u-l-l c-r-a-p.
Turkle, please. You may assert my comment is nonsense, but please provide your evidence for doing so. And please note I stated “major battle”, by which I exclude platoon-level ambushes and the like.
Cheers
For the women on the board :
I heard a saying yesterday :
I am an Angel with wings, clip them and I’ll have to use my broom !
That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout.
The burden of proof is on you to prove that every battle in an almost 10 year long conflict was won by one side, which is prima facie ridiculous, especially given the fact that we lost that war. I have heard this “fact” repeated many times but it simply sounds like US military propaganda, because it is. You have no way to prove it, AND you need to provide a definition of “won,” which would be difficult anyways. Does it mean the US inflicted more casualties when forces were roughly equal in a battle? Does it mean the US always held the battlefield afterwards? What do you even mean by “won”?
Also, the Vietnam war was mostly a conflict of small units of battalion size or lower. Perhaps major battles were mostly irrelevant in the end.
So if a US platoon got its ass kicked (which happened many times) that’s a lost battle in my mind.
Or perhaps we need to define our terms better. I don’t really like the exclusion you make because it discounts too many encounters that the US lost.
I guess you’re also forgetting when the North Vietnamese road into the south on tanks and won the war. So you have to concede that they won at least one battle (the last one).
Turkle, the facts are what they are.
Try re-reading my comments instead of fixating on one statement. I clearly state the U.S. lost the war in Vietnam.
You are correct that there were very many small unit “battles” in Vietnam. For your information: the infantry of both the U.S. and the Vietnamese were roughly equal in staying power, that is to say, in terms of motivation and leadership. Where the difference was made, and why so many of the military engagements were won by the U.S., is that the U.S. was able to bring much more firepower to bear. And that -is- significant, in terms of who wins a battle, when other factors, like morale and leadership, are roughly equivalent.
“Won” means the defeated side vacated the terrain upon which an engagement took place. You may rest assured I realize that control of terrain was not a key indicator of who was to ultimately win that war, but it is sufficient for the purpose of assessing which side was dominant in any given engagement.
“Perhaps major battles were mostly irrelevant in the end.” — I stated that, among many other comments — ‘defeat is defeat’.
Cheers
You’re absolutely correct. The victory of the north over the south was a conventional military victory. Again, though, you did not read my comments with much attention: I stated, this victory occurred “only after the U.S. had pulled out of Vietnam” — or, to be more specific, after the major combat units of the U.S. forces had pulled out of Vietnam.
More specifically, the ARVN (army of South Vietnam) was never a match for the PAVN. Their defeat in 1975 was practically a given.
Cheers
The US didn’t lose any battles, except when they did.
http://www.g2mil.com/lost_vietnam.htm
Uh, mont, the US most certainly did NOT tend to retain the territory that was taken during major battles. They vacated back to base and left the jungle to the VC. Is that victory? Hardly.
Good post though…you obviously know more about that era than myself. But your statement is nevertheless wrong (though oft-repeated).
mont, I suppose I keyed in on your one statement about the US not losing any battles, because it is a common fallacy, used by the US military to cover-up their losses. Any Vietnam ground vet will tell you that the VC were a formidable and skilled opponent, and the US most certainly did not win all their encounters with them. In fact, they were much better than our forces at the kind of hit-and-run and ambush fighting that dominated the war.
Thanks for your Canadian perspective. I’ve spent some 150 days in special ed classes and they are the most challenging.
People may want to believe that education is at it’s lowest ever in this country, but I believe we have always had the bell shape of achievement and that the top 20% work harder than the bottom 80%.
Interesting situation yesterday. Had a gang banger in class who kept using his cell phone. He has a big 408 (our local area code) tattooed down the side of his neck in big 1 inch tall numbers. When I asked him to put away the cell phone, he says “I got business”. He proceeds to rain a bunch of profanity at me. Total lack of respect for authority. He walks out of class and the last thing I know is that the local police are going after him after we called the main office. This school actually has a full time officer on duty.
mont,
I concede that I somewhat ignored the “major” part of your statement, but that’s an arguable modifier, isn’t it? What constitutes a major battle anyways, as opposed to a minor one? Vietnam didn’t have all that many major battles if you define this by division-level engagements (afaik). If you substituted “most” for “every”, I’d definitely agree with you though.
I think you’re right that the war was lost politically, but, then again, once they pulled out, it was better for the US anyways. There was then no more thousands of dying soliders or billions in military aid. It was a fairly pointless war to begin with so maybe pulling out constituted a kind of victory.
I think that’s part of the issue myself. The US defines victory (or did) as purely military. But it isn’t. You can win all or most of the military engagements and still lose the war if things go wrong politically either on the homefront or the battle front.
Or am I just being an overly semantic/pedantic prick like usual? 😉
Thank you for the link.
No, terrain was not retained. Because much of the war focused on influence upon the population, terrain played a role only insofar as it affected the deployment of troops and served as a temporary “objective” to concentrate the maneuver of soldiers. I certainly agree with you that none of this constitutes what Americans raised on the tales of World War II would call “victory”.
BTW, looking at the link you provided. You may wish to subject some of these examples to harder examination. A couple of examples:
Of the 20 mentioned, it looks like only eight or so even mention engagements of battalion size — and though I would have to do some research to be certain, there were literally hundreds of battalion-sized actions during the Vietnam War.
#18 is interesting in that involves an entire brigade, but it also makes clear that the U.S. had decided to withdraw on their own. One could also note that the withdrawal took place in apparently good order, as evidenced by the 75 KIA — a figure, I submit, would have been much higher had the withdrawal become a rout.
#3 — I’m hardly an expert on these actions, but this was part of an extended series of combats in the Valley of the Ia Drang. Pulling it out of context of the related operations seems to be cherry-picking on the part of the author of the web-page.
Cheers
Oh, yeah, mont…US won most of the battalion-level fights. I’ve no problem conceding this. I don’t like absolutist statements is all unless they can actually be proven. Thanks for the discussion. I actually learned a few things. I didn’t even really know that the US lost a few battles but I just assumed so and Senor Google helped me with some information. (good page right?)
Gotta run now.
Turkle, other than the occasional spirited post, I’m mostly just a tired old man who doesn’t need to win every internet “battle”.
“Most” works for me, the word doesn’t have to be “every”. My point was that the U.S. forces were not militarily defeated on the battlefields of Vietnam. They may have suffered an occasional reverse, but IMO the real reason behind the communist victory was their willpower to continue the fight until all external powers had pulled out of the war. And the U.S. pulled out because of things going on inside the U.S., that admittedly, were strongly influenced by the general flow of events of the war itself. Perhaps we can agree on this interpretation of history.
Cheers
Excellent post, Montsegur. Your description of the hippies is right on, and so is your take on the war, even though one could debate about battles. I know because I was there living through those times.
The 1960’s was a seminal time. JFK’s assassination and the Vietnam War defined that era. But both events were really backdrops to what was really going on. There was another war being fought – a war between the Eastern liberal establishment and the conservative westerners represented by Barry Goldwater, Governor Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
At first glance, it seems that the westerners won, but I think what happened was both sides eventually realized they wanted the same things: power and wealth at the expense of the general public. And so they merged. Today’s politics are really a dog and pony show and bread and circuses for the masses. Keep the masses occupied with the apparent war between Democrats and Republicans, and they won’t be aware they’re being raped.
That’s why I’m sort of amused at all the posts here describing who and what are dems and republicans, liberals and conservatives and teapartiers. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.
The ultra-rich and powerful see the inevitability of resource shortage and do what any reasonable person does to survive: Try to gather as much of everything as they can. But being very smart, I think they are also working towards perpetuating themselves, rather than going down in flames with the rest of us.
IMO, they believe that global consolidation in a time of shrinking resources is the best way they can continue living their lifestyle for a long time. That’s why we see America becoming just another country – because those that really set policy are pushing for globalization.
You use thinking, logic and reason. That’s too much for some of these mouth breathers. Their brains might explode. Their epithet:
“Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up”.
Bill, thanks for your comments (and thanks to Turkle as well; his comments allowed me to clarify some points as well as admit that one of my initial comments may have been too rigid)
I agree with you in that I think what is “driving” society now is more class-based than anything else. At one point, the Dems were more representative of the common people, but it is hard for me to believe that is the case anymore. I point the finger at Reagan for leading the charge in this direction, but Republicans were hardly the only ones to follow his lead.
Cheers
Dear Beantown and Mont: You are right on the perspectives you take. However, you can’t leave out the fact that this country is so destroyed by rampant drug use that is never seen as a problem by the govt. who in turn is controlled by the super rich classes you described. We virtually buy all the drugs from everywhere and manufacture what we can’t get for an addicts insatiable appetite. Don’t you think that was allowed to become part of the culture of America and quite possibly the entire western culture precisely because it played in the ultra rich groups ability to control the masses quite easily. Do you ever wonder why our country is being destroyed from within? I believe the drug culture that began in the 1960’s in earnest, was introduced and most probably encouraged to take root in the baby boom culture because they found those hippie drug crazed young generation the only threat to the ultra riches ability to control all. By addicting the best and brightest or the dumbest and violent of the biggest generation ever, allowed the parties to merge,and the globalization of everything with relative ease. With the rest of the country becoming more and more self involved, they could now control the media, the education system, government, and the rest of the world if possible with the least amount of rebellion.
My only thought now is that all is lost, at least for the forseeable future. I mean all we can do is see the reality of the present and realize our
powerlessness.
Asoka,
I never said the free market has never existed. That being said, I admit to having never read Marx except for snippets here and there. What I have read didn’t impress me much.
Sea World is bringing back Tilicum, the killer Killer Whale to live shows. He has claimed three lives I believe – I wonder if he got therapy since his last kill? Sea World explained its decison saying that live shows were an important form of enrichment for Tilicum. Obviously that’s what’s important, not any possible enrichment for themselves.
What does Tilicum get from this besides fish? Does anyone care what he feels? I do – I feel Tilicum is a hero and I support his killing of his oppressors. That they were “nice” people and didn’t deserve it is not the point – not from Tilicum’s perspective.
Tilicum,He has claimed three lives I believe –
Its 2 or 3…any trainer who would work with Tilly is foolish or worse.
In Honor of Big T consider the possibility of not eating Fish.
I hope this isn’t some metaphor related to one of your previous rants.
If it really is about animal rights, than I support what you say, up to a point. I don’t advocate killing of humans by other animals.
It would be beneficial if humans had more empathy in dealing with other species. No human knows what is going on in the mind of other species. See my post last week regarding speciesism.
For those of you scoffing at the term, speciesism, check out Peter Singer’s book, “Animal Liberation”. Than get back to CFN.
Asoka, I get the impression you’ve read it, right?
Yes, I read it in 1979.
Nathan said: “ASoka, you probably don’t have enough fear in you to be considered Patriotic! True Patriots are afraid of every non white, non fat, non male, non hambrger munching, non Reality show watching, non moron.”
=========
LOL! My draft board tried to scare me into going to Vietnam with the domino theory: if we don’t stop the communists in Vietnam, they’ll be on our doorstep before you know it, blah, blah, blah…
Now we are trading partners with the communists in Vietnam and communist party-controlled China.
I guess now we are supposed to be afraid of Al Qaeda or North Korea or Iran or “radical” Islamics or terrorists in general.
It’s hard to keep track of who I’m supposed to be afraid of, especially not having a television to “inform” me of who our current enemies are.
If patriotism means going off to war to kill people I don’t know, then I will never be patriotic in that sense.
Insufferable, with all due respect, I disagree with you to a certain extent.
I believe that drug usage is only one of several problems that contribute to our society’s ills, but I don’t think it is THAT big a problem.
Four assumptions:
1.By drugs I mean the illegal substances, not prescription and over the counter meds, except for opiates.
2. For the sake of argument, let’s say 10% of the US population is drug-addicted, not including the casual user.
3. 10% of the general population is exceptionally intelligent and productive and really help society.
4. Drug addicts are distributed across a wide range of economic and genetic demographics.
Then only 10% of 10% – 1% – of the US population is a serious waste of people resources in our country. This is hardly enough to bring America down. Even if I should double the figures in my assumptions, we’re still talking only 2%.
I had my drug days when I was young. I quit taking any drugs except alcohol in 1973, so I can say from my own experience that taking drugs didn’t ruin my life.
It is the illegality of drugs that causes most of the drug problem in this country. We tried prohibition in the 1920’s and it didn’t work; prohibition of drugs isn’t stopping drug usage today, either. The high cost of obtaining illegal drugs is what leads to individual and organized crime including a good deal of prostitution.
Where would the drug lords be if a gram of cocaine or an ounze of weed cost $1? Certainly not in the drug business. And how crowded would our prisons be?
I was being serious – of course I can make paralels to other aspects of reality. As Bilbo says, a road is a dangerous thing – and all things are roads.
Killer Whales are both Black and White but the colors are not mixed but rather kept separate and undefiled. A lesson?
Human beings are not animals – or at least not just animals. We can reflect upon ourselves as they cannot. Singer’s ideas that we are “just” animals is a clever way to take away human rights. Giving animals rights is a way to justify infanticice and eldercide.
Vlad, I have to agree with you on this one. We all think killer whales are neat and dolphins are funny, happy-go-lucky animals. So wrong!
Did you ever see the documentary, “The Cove”? It came out a little while ago. It’s about the Japanese slaughter of dolphins. It was horrific. I think I really hated humans for awhile after that.
One thing I got out of the film was that dolphins and killer whales hate to be in captivity, and human noise-making is physically excrutiating to them. Just being in captivity is torture to them.
I do feel badly about the trainers killed by the whale, but I guess it was justified homicide.
Rock and Roll also changed America and the West. As Plato said, you cannot introduce a new form of music without changing the cultrue. Therefore, he said, think carefully before you allow such a thing. Obviously rap should never have been distributed. It was a conscious decison by the Executives of the Music Industry to do this. It would have stayed small and local otherwise.
As for Rock, I can’t judge its cost/benefit ratio – for I too am infected. Traditionalists say that it make people more lustful and narcicistic. How could it not since it focused consciousness on the body in such a exagerated way?
Nice one, Bean (from 3:36)
It gets tiresome sometimes when people go off on the culture wars here. It’s of no great importance in the scheme of things, but people just want to go off on a rant. So there you go.
Your post is the way I see it too. Globalism was a way of consolidating wealth at the top, while getting all the natural resources possible. David Rockefeller said, Natural resources should be decoupled from their nation states.(neo imperialism.) I said a while back that I think of Milton Friedman as re-engineering Trotsky’s “Permanent Revolution” to bring money to a few globally.
Cheap labor’s the icing on the cake. The beauty part is that as time goes by, little by little people will expect less.
Ditto on the great post, Bean. I’m surprised you left LBJ off your list of Western elite. Many a suspicious eye has been cast upon him through the years. Your thoughts?
I like to play with sock puppets.
I don’t understand how you jumped to the conclusion that Singer’s ideas lead in any way to euthanasia. Some people take views derived from making logical leaps.
I compare it to gun control. We supposedly can’t have an adult conversation to limit assault weapons because the NRA concludes that “this will lead to the slippery slope of total gov’t confiscation of all your weapons. The NRA does a great job of using fear, just like to military, in order to influence the way we think and continue their existence. Asoka said it better than me.
This post is why I come to CFN. If I recall, you’re living in NorCal currently?
I’ve had a thought that JHK should make a point of visiting NorCal and the NorCal CFN branch could all meet there.
Mr. Kunstler,
I promise, we’re not all like the techno-triumphalists at Google. I think it was the “Google Heads” who said, “hey man, we like, got technology”. In total denial of TLE.
Quite right: the Elite are masters of incremental tyranny. We dare not give them another inch if we can help it. Registration is the first step towards confisction and by making animals people, they in effect make people into animals with diminshed rights. You see the problem? Only the Fascist has the cleverness borne of ruthlessness to match wits with these devils. We both have looked into the void – but they lose their humanity there whereas we come back fully armed with hard won wisdom. Did I say Ruthlessness? With ourselves first and foremost. We are at War – Always.
Did you know the gov’t is tracking your every word via the internet? You better live off the grid & maybe stage a fake death in order to stop this tracking. That way, you won’t have an active SS number that the man can use to register you in “The System”.
So Marlin, You have piqued my interest. Elaborate upon the vision of the Horse Goddess. Flowing blond hair appearing as a vision, as if Venus herself became of the flesh. My sexist male persona seeths to calm thy loins which your words have enlivened!
I think I just forgot (WTH, am I getting old or what). LBJ definitely was part of the western elite.
JFK and RFK, particularly Bobby, despised LBJ, but he was foisted on them in order to stand a chance to capture the south and the west in the 1960 election. Is it a coincidence that he was there in the right position when Kennedy was shot? I think TBTB wanted Nixon to win, and LBJ was their insurance policy in case he didn’t.
Everyone with a functioning brain knew Nixon had won the election, but the original Mayor Daley stole the election for Kennedy by commiting voting fraud in Chicago. Ah, well, the Republicans got even 40 years later in Florida with Bush.
BTW, years ago I read that Nixon was in Dallas on 11/22/63, but left before JFK rode in that fateful motorcade. Hmmm. I never learned whether or not this was true, but it seems that it would be easily verifiable.
Does anyone know?
Wow, busy afternoon on the thread –
Montsegur and Turkle – great discussion of the Viet Nam war. Mont, especially, your initial analysis about how lack of a draft and control of information from the battlefield has freed up our national leadership to use the military to fight without media or public oversight.
Great insights, Mont, and I’m thinking this is not ending all that well for US citizens knowing what their govt is really doing.
Our founding fathers – who wanted a citizen army and NO standing army at all – would be spinning in their graves like whirling dirvishes (sp?) if they could know what had happened to their Country.
=============
SNAFU – on population of native Americans –
“Where did you come up with the 50 million figure for what is now the USA? I found estimates of 50 million for North and South America combined with roughly 30 million in South America and 2 million in today’s Canada leaving about 18 million for US.” -snafu-
Nice clarification, SNAFU – I’ll use these more precise figures from now on. Energy descent is gonna be bad – really bad.
If I were an immigrant and could see the big picture, I believe I’d stay home with my family and work to make my home country better with regard to survival. It’s past time to roll up the welcome mat for the US, at any rate.
==============
BeanTown – I like your statements about drug use. I don’t know how anyone can look at US prison population numbers and try to make an argument that illegality of drugs is not taken with DEADLY SERIOUSNESS in these United States.
However, Bill, when you say –
“That’s why I’m sort of amused at all the posts here describing who and what are dems and republicans, liberals and conservatives and teapartiers. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.”
-BTB-
I take your point – but – I’m not sure I see an alternative. And there are differences. For example, if Obama gets a second term, then SCOTUS is gonna look different than it would if Ms. Palin and Mr. Beck take over.
I’m not saying better or worse, you understand.
But I’ll have to say – different.
Rebooting the American Dream – Tomm Hartman
from Ch 9 -“….cheap labor for big business. Think it’s an accident that right-wing union busting presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both pushed for amnesty for illegals so hard?”
Good looking review of a book that looks to be full of good ideas.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/review-thom-hartmanns-reb_b_842850.html
Dear JHK community of assholes:
Why lump together my entire generation (Millennial) and throw us out with the rest of the trash? What makes you so fucking special? Why didn’t you just abort your bastard fetus when you had the chance?
Maybe my education isn’t as “good” as yours. Maybe I can’t quote Homer. Maybe I can’t do math well. Maybe I write disconnected paragraphs with bad structure. Maybe I wasn’t lucky enough to grow up in a rich town with rich schools. But I do know something: You were all a bunch of ignorant fucks at some point in your lives.
For all your rants and bitching about the world gone sour, you all come off as a bunch of arrogant, self-righteous jerks who look at everyone as being inferior because they don’t think exactly like you.
Maybe I think like some of you.
I think oil sucks. I think government sucks. I think Lady Gaga sucks. I think my job sucks because I perpetuate American consumer “culture.” I think crotchety old goats who bitch about everything in blogs suck, too. Chew my ass hair. I’m a person, not a generational deformity.
Teach and inform the next generation as individuals, not as a mass problem that gets the “Fuck ’em, they’re lost anyway” attitude. Don’t throw us away because corporations fucked up everything.
I’m going to have sex with my girlfriend and play World of Warcraft because it makes me happy, not because my generation sucks more than all the others. If civilization ends tomorrow, I’ll find something that makes me happy. Maybe it will be farming.
Piece bitches.
Procon, you made an interesting point. I hadn’t considered the Supreme Court when I posted.
But, I think it still doesn’t make a difference in the long run. The true power brokers will still get their way. Many people assume that because the SC judges don’t run for office they are incorruptable; I doubt this is true. Whatever cases the SC hears are the end of a long process, and every case that tries to be heard before the court isn’t necessarily chosen. I wonder which cases are rejected and which are heard.
Those that set the country’s agenda also set the course of the SC. Look at the “corporations are people” ruling. It really is stupid; do you think big business wasn’t very happy with this illogical decision? It smelled kind of fishy to me. So therefore, whether the court is liberal or conservative ultimately makes little difference.
I see that you sure are pissed off tonight, but hey, not everyone here complains about your generation. For example, see my 3/28 sarcastic posting at 8:49 pm; I was trying to good-heartedly mock some of the generational crap.
I can’t say I have the same preferences as your generation, but so what? Try to understand that as people age, they tend to forget they were young, too. Older people can get very crotchety. They get a lot of aches and pains, don’t remember as well as they used to, and have had to live with the disappointments of the world a lot longer than you. It gets very wearing.
As for me, I don’t see a lot of differences between the generations with regard to important life issues, just differences in style. And I tend to relate to people as individuals, not generationally.
And by the way, true maturity begins when you wake up in the morning and realize you’re still breathing, and you feel grateful for that, knowing the universe has no obligation to keep you that way (breathing).
So don’t sweat the small stuff.
How did that happen ?!?!
200,000 new “private sector jobs” appeared out of nowhere, where “created” (in the USA) and the stock market went up. Wow! How the heck did that happen ? It must be the “market”, the automatic economy that just generates them through magic. I am wondering what “skill sets” those jobs required, there must be special secret passwords (or buzzwords?) that land those jobs. What “innovation” or “training” or “education” is associated with all those “new jobs”, aside from the fact that they all must be in some “innovative” sectors that I never even imagined existed. There must be a lot of new math and science jobs that all of a sudden are necessary and no one up to now ever noticed given the great need for math and science majors (this need has been present since 1950, every year since then it has always been emphasized, you would think that by now the need would have been satisfied) corporations always talk about, there must be a lot of new equations and engineering that must be done all of a sudden.
And I am sure that those very talented that landed the jobs were all ready “to hit the ground running” and have the right “personality” traits, two buzzwords that maybe mean you will be required to do the jobs of 10 people previously fired, and you have to be ready to always say yes and abide to the new boss at hand.
By the way, the “hit the ground running” myth is another interesting construction: those that do land the jobs probably have to work “hard” and many hours to compensate all of those previously fired, so they see a work environment where there is all of this huge amount of work to do, on the other hand you have millions of idle people at home watching TV. So the guy that works “sees reality for what it is, sees the real work environment”, and can say there really is all of this work “to do”, the idle guys can’t reply because they just watch TV and they are “wrong and don’t know what they are talking about”. Those that are idle are induced into feeling inadequate, not trained – educated – skill set savvy enough, compared to those working that are induced to feel superior by their ever greater advantage.
The less real work there is to do the more people are “required to hit the ground running” to cover up the reality of work disappearing. As soon as you get down to some real manipulation that must be done, like in manufacturing, like for example attaching the wheels to the new car on the production line, all the fluff and deceptions and make believe education and skill sets necessity disappear: you can actually see what is needed and you can actually debate how to perform it, but this is exactly what the dominating ideology wants to avoid. So all this service economy fluff, all this abstract incomprehensible innovation – productivity – skills, etc. are all set up to hide a basic power relationship, a basic hidden fight of one will power against another will power: the bosses – capitalists decide anything and everything, you obey and execute since you can’t even reply not even knowing how to reply.
Of course, nothing can really be done about it, in the end it is always a fight, a winner and a loser, all the fluff is just a way to let the loser accept that the winner deserves to win, is right, that “reality operates according to the model the winner has imposed and brainwashed everyone with”. And since there will always be an arbitrary fake model, no matter what, there will always be a winner and a loser.
But getting back to my first question, how can I really control that 200,000 jobs were “created”, how do I know that it is true ? Can I check the entire USA and the lives of 300 million people and see for myself ? No way jose’, you just have to accept the numbers as real. So reality is always a manufactured reality, manufactured according to who writes the numbers, numbers that are just invented (just like the unemployment numbers of JAPAN that have always been at 4%, but because they keep millions in offices even if they have nothing to do except to wait for the boss to go home at 10 at night, after which they can leave too, pure status relationships, pure power relationships, really cool, at least it is honest and not hypocritical like in the USA).
Probably the capitalists have to show that the system “creates jobs”, so they suggest their companies to start hiring again, no matter what, especially since the stock market must go up and the need for profit is a natural law of physics. So they hire anyways, just to hose them all, a little later.
A lot of work is created by just shuffling the cards, opening and closing offices and businesses, ever changing organizations, creating confusion, confusing procedures and standards, all kinds of oddball mechanisms, constant hire and fire of all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons, this alone shows how much “necessity” is no longer present in the economic system, it is an EXCESS CAPACITY, resource rich system that doesn’t even know what to do with its wealth.
Maybe the reason I am so obsessed with all of this is the very fact that reality is manufactured, is a make believe entity programmed in the minds of people according to some dominating program, is a pure invention, a pure construction with no necessity at all at its base. The meanings of items, the importance of some things vs others, how they are tied into emotional states, patterns of behaviors, interactions between people is a pure quirk invention, without any base or truth to it. So given the nature of how you can manufacture reality and brainwash people into believing it, you can make them them do anything and believe anything and behave in any way.
The dominating culture, through all kinds of communications, does an excellent job in programming people.
I could have believed that 200,000 REAL jobs were created if obama said we needed 10 Rockets to Mars, a new dense BUS system in the USA, and 10 new High Speed Trains…
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174702
Wanted to say:
“There must be a lot of new math and science jobs that all of a sudden are necessary and no one up to now ever noticed given the great need for math and science majors (this need has been present since 1950, every year since then it has always been emphasized, you would think that by now the need would have been satisfied) corporations always talk about, there must be a lot of new equations TO SOLVE and engineering that must be done all of a sudden.”
One example could be the new APPs being programmed for smartphones, IPADs, iphones, etc. So what exactly are the APPs ? They are small programs that give mobile people some services like finding the nearest restaurant, or some small games, or “push the red button” thingies.
The idea is that the programs are small as opposed to the many thousands of large complex programs produced in the last 20 years for PCs and Servers, and they are simpler, more service based, don’t need manuals etc. So I would phantom they will generate less “work” than the large old programs did, being that they are shorter and simpler.
But especially, it seems that most of these APPs are made through a system of “Free Work”. That’s right, you won’t get Free Salaries, but you will get to do Free Work. The guy writing the App at home tries to imagine a cool one, writes it and sends it to Apple or similar, if the APP is successful, he can get some money off of it, some guys are making a lot of money off of them.
But is this work or already a “hobby factory” ? And all of the Internet content generated by users, what is that ?
By the way, the “hit the ground running” myth is another interesting construction: those that do land the jobs probably have to work “hard” and many hours to compensate all of those previously fired, so they see a work environment where there is all of this huge amount of work to do, on the other hand you have millions of idle people at home watching TV. So the guy that works “sees reality for what it is, sees the real work environment”, and can say there really is all of this work “to do”, the idle guys can’t reply because they just watch TV and they are “wrong and don’t know what they are talking about”. Those that are idle are induced into feeling inadequate, not trained – educated – skill set savvy enough, compared to those working that are induced to feel superior by their ever greater advantage. The idle guys feel that they really “don’t deserve to work”, it is their “fault”, hence they do become lazy as in discouraged, hence a positive feedback loop. But this is exactly what is wanted by the corporations, discourage the weak as much as possible and encourage the strong, amplify inequality as much as possible.
Small cars are good, agreed, and some Japanese and European models they use there are even more efficient than the most efficient in the US.
But:
1) A new small car costs 10,000 dollars a used decent one 5,000.
2) You need to pay for insurance.
3) You occupy a room in your house by using the garage as a house for the car, this resource could be put back to use as living space.
4) Cars generate traffic jams, time to travel increases.
5) Cars occupy parking spaces in malls and office parks or whatever, other space that could be used for other things.
6) You have to drive instead of doing nothing and enjoying being a nice FreeLoader.
Anyways, buses are also a form of creating a feeling of community, security, see people are all the same, nice people just minding their own business and using a common transportation mode: but this flies in the face of the USA mentality of everyone against everyone, common good is always “communism”, etc.
So the reason there are no buses n the US is much deeper than just the MPG, the entire country has been designed to make mass transit virtually impossible, but if it was really desired by the majority of the people, the USA could pull it off fantastically and could create the best mass transit system in the world.
Now go on, and talk about blacks, mexicans, race, welfare queens, who is guilty of what, when and who, beat each other up, go on, that is constructive..
And I wanted to say just one thing: this weeks blog by JHK also demonstrates his need to “punish” those that are guilty, he attacks the individual and not the system and structure of the system, which would be much more fruitful in possibly changing things for the better. I could care less to punish the guilty, the system sucks from the outset, change the system.
LBendet said:
E,
You are so right about the commodities inflation and our foreign policy is more like wag the dog. We screw with the prices of necessities and the people can’t survive.
Democrat-Republican who cares? This is what this country has become on both sides of the aisle. They play politics where it’s always ok when your man does it. You go crazy when the other team does the same thing.It’s played out over and over again–very tiresome.
**************************************************
When the ex-Treasurer of the DNC, Andy Tobias,
gives me nonsense about how “great” Obama’s
speech was and how the Middle East is going
to be freer, you know that the two-party system
is absolutely gone. It’s history.
Obama’s speech, with all the usual trappings
about the “aspirations of the Libyan people”
(what, like EATING!?) sounded like it could
have come from Rumsfeld or Cheney or either
Bush. It was THAT nauseating. Like anyone
in our government even KNOWS what the
“aspirations” are of the Libyans (or Yemenis
or Tunisians) because they can’t even figure
out that OUR OWN MIDDLE CLASS IS RAPIDLY
BECOMING DEFUNCT.
Anyone who has checked in with an unemployed
middle-aged Engineer knows that the gig is up
for high-paying jobs in the USA (unless you’re
a financier for a TBTF financial outfit … wow,
that’s a productive industry [sic]). We’ve
ALREADY become a third world country but, of
course, you’ll never hear that on the MSM
because their corporate sponsor overlords
aren’t going to let them say anything of the
sort.
I never thought that the “free” market would
produce a mainstream media that’s about as
“informative” as Pravda circa 1965. Indeed,
Pravda had better news when it got off of
ideological/political matters.
E.
“How do these rogues survive the disclosure of their turpitudes?”
That IS the point.
They do survive because our society’s values have dramatically changed.
Justice is but a nice word, unless it concerns the people on the road.
Try to do the slightest crime and YOU will have to pay.
Their crimes are no crimes.
Being at that level means to have the license to do whatever you want.
It was like that in Medieval times.
It hasn’t changed much, and if it has it was in the worse.
There is a widespread acknowledging of the worthless of the law and the State.
There is nothing you can believe in anymore.
Obama was the hope, now is the despair.
It is clear that nothing can stop those greedy people.
Not even death.
Their successors are already preparing for the new era of the New World Order.
A new world where all ideals, believes, faiths are gone, where you are doomed to be a slave or die.
A world where 1% rules and 99% shut up.
Nice post, Patrizia. We are being groomed
to be “little people” … consumer androids.
Our small little lives are already steeped
in artificial complexities such that we have
to read a 50-page manual to “master” our
cellphone, our TV remote, or a fax machine.
Who has the mind space and the soul space to
be a real person instead of a commercially-
driven reactionary??
Francis Fukuyama is the ONLY writer that I
know of who deals with this problem of the
“last man” (in “The End of History and the
Last Man”). “Last” men have the souls of
ciphers and are too weak, characterologically,
and too tied up by their gizmos to even have
the CAPACITY for the smallest activism.
In Palo Alto, CA … cradle of HP and the
computer industry and 2/3 Democrat, people
will stand in line for 24 hours for Ipad 2
but you can’t get ten people to march at
City Hall about getting our troops out of
Iraq or putting Lloyd Blankfein in jail.
What if the world already ended and NOBODY
NOTICED?? Maybe it has always been so but
it has NEVER been so in an environment where
Thomas Malthus’ revenge will be enacted in
the very Clusterfuck that JHK speaks of.
E.
“Can’t any of us begin the reform of the Democratic Party, starting with resigning from being Wall Street’s bitch? 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. 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…”
Where do I sign up?
The Numbers Game
Old, your posts were excellent last night concerning “job Creation” 200,000 doesn’t begin to change things around in a country where well over 12 million jobs need to be created. Don’t forget that each year a new crop of graduating students enter the workforce.
The other day I heard that 38% of workers are dying to get out of their present job for a new job. Just goes to show how badly workers are treated.
I also question what these paltry job gains signify. Maybe they’re just making this stuff up.
Last year my business was doing a lot better than this year and the fact is that the job notices on the web and with headhunters is virtually non-existent.
Each job that is posted attracts perhaps thousands and I’m sure most applicants can perform well. Of course now they want you to jump through hoops even for outside contract jobs.
They give you these numbers–they have to be somewhat low, since people will know that they and others they know aren’t working—-but there’s always–whats the magic word? HOPE!–That’s what still keeps the folks in line.
E.,
We are indeed so living in the Orwellian reality. The Nobel peace prize went to Obama, a man waging 3 wars now with Pakistan as yet another front.–but we won’t talk about that one, will we?
I don’t know who runs the show, but I promise you it’s not the president. I’m always reminded of a “Twilight Zone” episode where a plain, but intelligent woman is told that she has to choose to look like one of 2 models of beauty. One is a pert blond prototype and one is a lovely brunette. She resists, but in the end inevitably has to make a choice.
I think of electoral politics in much the same way. If you chose Democrat, you would have to get the neoliberal Clintonistas back in control, if you chose Republicans you would have to get the Republican side of the neoliberal back in the saddle. The only differences are culture-war issues.–Nothing that will affect your life in any meaningful way.
You’re going to get CAFTA, NAFA and more jobs bleeding out to the BRIC countries either way. The march of Globalism must continue. War is Peace and as you said, We don’t have a clue who we are helping in Libya.
Webster Tarpley thinks it’s CIA who have a connection with Al Qaeda. He’s out there alright, but he does think out of the box.
Germany Superstar
I was reading that Germany is now the most productive and competitive economy amongst the developed economies. Wow, what happened here too ?!?! A few short years back it was considered a slow eurosclerotic economy with too much welfare and too little consumption. The truth is obviously completely different, Germany has been an economic powerhouse and top notch producer of everything and Science and Technology since at least the 1960s and will continue to be.
They were also comparing it to Ireland and Spain that were also considered economic superstars just 2 years ago and now have fallen in disgrace (or is that out of fashion?). Ireland based its economy on US companies bringing in software jobs and financial jobs and housing price inflation inducing them to build more and more houses just like Spain but without the software and financial stuff.
I could never understand the logic of housing price inflation: for the private citizen selling it may appear to be a gain, but on a macro level it is the stupidest thing that a society can do: everyone gains with low housing prices and according to the Right Wing bible of free market economics, low housing prices and rents do wonders for job flexibility, innovation, competition, social mobility (and all the other abstract words I doubt really mean anything), you name it. But the Right Wing thugs kind of just forget everything they always profess when it comes to housing prices and the natural law of physics that says “housing prices must always go up” (so as to filter out as many workers as possible). Just like at the macro level everyone thought that Hitler was the guy to follow, everyone thinks housing prices going up is “good”, but on a personal – single level everyone knows it is ridiculous.
Anyways, the fact that Spain and Ireland “built too many houses” is actually a sign that they really did all the right things, building more houses for a society means overcoming a basic resource scarcity and making that society wealthier and in fact from Lisbon to Moscow Europe in general probably has 20 million empty houses, they should be really rich by now. Oh, I forgot, housing prices is just a proxy for power relationships, for rich beating up poor as usual.
The truth is Germany may have some 3 million workers in manufacturing, some 2,000 very efficient corporations employing a thousand people with a strong eye towards a “collective effort” and serializing work, and some 10,000 small corporations employing 100 workers, also very efficient and serialized (another way of saying office politics and fluff BS is kept to a minimum, maybe…).
That is way more than enough for the world: the article goes on saying other European countries must become like Germany, but they forget to say they don’t have to, Germany provides for more than enough of what is needed, there is not enough room for other corporations at that level of efficiency, and in fact if demand increases, the Germany companies will just pump up production and all by hiring very few new workers.
I don’t think there is much room in the world for another Mercedes and BMW manufacturer, let alone in Spain, and even if there were, they would just subtract this manufacturing from the US or someplace else.
The Right Wing doesn’t seem to know how to add and subtract, according to them all countries should become as efficient as Germany, they don’t realize that the modern Technological Economy makes it in such a way such that it can’t work because it is not needed, one Germany is enough, another 3 Germanys and you can close all manufacturing in Brazil, the USA and JAPAN.
We need Free Salaries, Cheap Rents and huge ambitious public – private projects employing millions worldwide for Rockets to Mars, High Speed trains, etc.
Free energy:
http://dilbert.com/dyn_file/str_strip/117324/gif/strip.print/
Yeah, Ripthunder, I’m talking about the equestrian Goddess who heads up the CT Governers Horse Guard Reservation on W. Avon Road in Avon, CT. Like I said I see her galloping thru the fields on the back of a spirited pony making her rounds of the base, trailing a shock of blond hair, high black boots, tight breeches and a tight fitting military, cavalry type jacket. She greets you with the sweetest smile. But I’ve also seen her throw a bale of hay, and operate a tractor, and shoe a horse. Now that’s a woman! Kind of like Sarah Palin, eh.
All she had to do was strap on a Colt .45 six-shooter and I’d be gone completely!
————————————————-
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about in the CFNation, some professor at I think Harvard has written a book about the impending Zombie Apocalypse. I heard him interviewed on C2C, and then he turned up on C-Cpan Book TV. You can Google it, but all you need to know right now is that it takes one maybe two headshots to stop an advancing Zombie.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Procon said: “It’s past time to roll up the welcome mat for the US, at any rate.”
=========
TRANSLATION:
We done let in all the white folks we want (Irish, German, Czech, Poles, etc) … and we don’t want you Middle East, African, and Latino folks. All full up. Sorry. We got ours (cars, refrigerators, big houses, etc.) on this side of the border. You stay on your side of the border. Can’t hold no more without deteriorating our “quality of life” so fix your own damn countries … these are lies being told by racists disguised as scientists. What they are really saying is: we already mined your countries and left them destitute to get “ours,” tough shit sherlock. Stay away. Die.
If 50 million is the ideal USA population (another lie), then many CFNers wouldn’t be here. Somebody would have slammed the door in the face of their white ancestors long ago.
Alternative solutions: Education about voluntary energy descent and permaculture, free access to abortion, birth control for everyone and elimination of wasteful energy-hog institutions like the military.
Building walls, strengthening borders, increasing militarism, and shutting people out are not solutions. They are immoral.
“Sorry Jesus, you were born on the other side… fix your own damn country” : that is a position that has nothing to do with the supposed morality of a supposedly Christian nation.
These idealists who dream of stopping the inflow of immigrants are out of touch with reality.
Here is past reality: when the USA had 50 million it was impossible to stop the inflow of white immigrants (and would have been just as immoral to build walls then). Freedom of movement prevailed.
Here is present reality: with 330 million, it is just as impossible and just as immoral to build walls to try (unsuccessfully) to stop the inflow of black, brown, and yellow immigrants. Freedom of movement will prevail.
Supposedly we are broke. OK, then stop wasting financial resources on immoral “stop immigration” projects.
I see you’re on fire this morning. You have some good ideas, outside of the grandiose ideas (like Sun splitting), but could I be so bold as to ask you to slow down your thought processes while you write? Maybe set up an outline, so each post can focus on a key theme.
I forgot who said this:
“I would have written a lot less words, but I didn’t have the time”.
You linguists out there; was it Mark Twain?
Sheet, Marvin, I was just in Avon on Tuesday. I would have made a special detour for the likes of that Gal. I can always chat up a horse person. Whinnnnneeeee!!! Have you ever seen the Granby Oak? http://www.newhomesgranbyct.com/granby_oak.htm My son showed it to me the other day and all I can say it makes me feel small and meaningless.
“If I’d had more time, I’d have written a shorter letter.”
— Mark Twain
“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”
– Mark Twain
“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”
– Henry David Thoreau
http://www.salmonbrookhistorical.org/granby.htm
That’s right Asoka – it’s our country and we don’t want or need any more huddled, wretched masses – particularly dark skinned ones from alien, hostile cultures.
As far as our neighbors, good fences make good neighbors. It’s true on the local level; it’s true on the international level too.
Jim, at long last, I have read one of your essays. I have encountered some literature which may be of interest to you and your readers. The Atlantic Monthly just published a map and explanation: “The 12 States of America.” What may be cogent to you is how much “nowhere” has expanded. I commented on the comparison to Joel (“Edge City”) Garreau’s book from the 1980’s, “The Nine Nations of North America.” In that book he commented on “New England” being the land where better times have come by, so people are now making do with less. Hence, the ethos of self-sufficiency. Now, I see that the “state” of “Service Worker Centers” comprises much of norther New England, but also much of upstate NY, northern and western Pennsylvania, and into the Appalachian highlands. Also, I see it covers much of the norther Great Lakes region, and most shockingly and true to your thesis of “The Geography of Nowhere,” it is spreading is what was “The Foundry” in Joel Garreau’s book.
Second comment on the way life is going on in “Nowhere,” is that I have seen the documentary film, “King Corn” and have followed it up with reading the section on corn in Michael’s Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” Corn not as food but as an agricultural raw material. Getting off the corn food chain was one of the best things I have ever done. I’m hoping that Mr. Pollan exposes how much fraud is going on in the so-called “organic food” business. Please, support your local farmers; there are so few left now.
I took your words about immigration to heart yesterday. I had conversations with two young, teenage girls who recently emigrated from China. Even though they don’t have strong English skills, they got what I was saying:
“America is the great melting pot”.
“We welcome you to this country”.
“Don’t listen to the anti-immigration haters, who have forgotten this country’s history”.
I think I made a real difference in their lives, yesterday. You should have seen their beaming smiles.
Sea World says that their new pool will have floor that rises up and thus they will be able to save the next trainer that Tilicum tries to drown. But considering that compared to a human, Tilicum is like a cat next to a mouse in terms of size and strength, is the rising floor really much protection? I mean Tilicum enjoys drowning his trainers but he could just as easily dispatch them quickly with a bite or a flip of his mighty tail.
Free Tilicum!
Right on Jonathan!
Jen
And would China welcome millions of immigrants from an alien race and culture – to take their jobs? And during a time of perilous change, unemployment, and coming shortages of both fuel and food? And do you really believe on top of all this, that they would call their own people “racists” when they said no to all this? You don’t know much about the Chinese do you? And you expect to change the world with these blinders on and with this kind of hatred for you own People?
I agree with your comments about the Vietnam War. One example was the Tet Offensive: sources I’ve read said that the Offensive that started in Jan 1968 was a calamity in military terms for the communist forces especially the Viet Cong. I read in a couple places (sorry as usual can’t remember sources) that the Viet Cong were so badly mauled that after this it was the North Vietnamese Army that had to pick up the ball. I’ve also read that the battles for Hue and Khe Sanh were similarly a disaster for the communist forces.
But as you say, the real victory for the pro communist forces was won in the minds of Americans. I remember really clearly, night after night on US network news, correspondents and cameramen providing scenes of combat and helicopters ferrying stretchers. I really believe the old cliche that this war was fought in the living rooms of America. It seemed to go on and on and Americans just got sick of it. As LBJ said, once he lost Cronkite he knew he’d lost the American people.
I think the difference was that the communists were fired up by two clear causes, one was to get foreigners out of Vietnam and the other was the communist version of economic and social justice. And what were the South Vietnamese and Americans fighting for? Country Joe and the Fish said in that old song “and it’s one, two, three what are we fighting for, don’t ask me I don’t give a damn…”. An American soldier said with a sheepish smile something to the effect “I dunno, they tell us we’re fighting for somethin'”
Ibendet,
Personally I think you should always talk to your enemies. Even al Qaeda. There’s risk in doing that but I think it’s riskier not to.
I think what we’re seeing in this conflict is a continuation of a long, long struggle that started on Day 1 of Islam. Muslim countries no longer have the organizational, economic or technical ability to take on western countries in open combat. So what they’re doing is continuing the battle by other means ie fighters in plain clothes infiltrating and hitting civilian targets like the Twin Towers, the London underground, the Spanish train stations and that hotel in India. People in al Qaeda are the sharp end of that fighting stick.
I wouldn’t under-estimate Muslims. For most of the past 1400 years they’ve had us back on our heels, they took North Africa, the middle east and old bastions of western civilization like Turkey, Spain and Italy. They’ve taken a shot at France and Austria. Add to that wide swathes of Asia.
Plus they aren’t psychologically hobbled like us. IMO their aggression doesn’t stem from western imperialism, after all, they’re just as guilty of that sin as we are. Rather, IMO it comes from assumptions of religious and civilizational superiority. They have advantages we don’t have: confidence, self belief and belief in their cause.
Vladdie, you old racist, about this you’re right. The Chinese aren’t apparently impaired in their seeking national advantage by silly notions like “fair” and “unfair”.
For instance, they look at our idiot businessmen bringing them torrents of money, productive facilities and technology and they can’t believe their good fortune. All these stupid westerners bringing them all this stuff to steal. And steal they do. In their minds they are saying “thankyou you total fucking morons, we will rip you off and eat your asses.” As I said in other posts we, and especially the US, re-located the industrial half of the military/industrial complex and effectively put it under Chinese control.
So now the US is in dire financial straights? No shit, remember all the good paying jobs that once financed the Pentagon’s budget through the taxes that workers paid? Those jobs are now in China.
They are unembarrassed nationalists. They are inheritors of a very old civilization. They, unlike us, believe in themselves. Will China have open borders to immigration? Hah!
Cash, the communists certainly had an advantage in discipline and organization over the south, which was plagued by a series of corrupt regimes with mostly ineffective military forces.
Ho’s goal to unify Vietnam by force, if I understand Vietnamese history a bit, was the latest in a series of quests by various rulers to pull together various tribes in the region into one realm. The victory of the north (“Tonkin”) in 1975 made it seem as if it was always inevitable that Vietnam be one state, but historically the regions like the lowlands and the highlands tended to have different rulers.
My estimate is that Ho selected one period of Vietnamese history to justify his goal of unification, but perhaps I am wrong about this. It certainly is a well-worn tactic; one of the oddities of European power politics in eastern Europe just prior to the 2WW was Hitler and Stalin working hard to restore the boundaries of 1914, as if those boundaries had some magic quality of duration in history.
I don’t think any country likes long wars and the U.S. certainly meets that description.
It is kind of interesting to compare aspects of the Vietnam War and the war in Afghanistan today, seen below left (Vietnam) and right (Afghanistan).
Drafted Volunteer
Broad narrow
Little tight
ignored coached
very many less
“blind” “precision”
face to face robotic
heavy little
and so on.
Cheers
Wow, what an HTML mess. Should have read:
aspects of the Vietnam War and the war in Afghanistan today, seen below left (Vietnam) and right (Afghanistan).
Drafted..Army..Volunteer
Broad..segments of society in army..narrow
Little..control of media..tight
ignored..national expectations..coached
very many..scale of troop deployment..less
“blind”..nature of munitions..”precision”
face to face..nature of warfare..robotic
heavy..use of artillery..little
Yeah, there’s people like Charlie Rangel, an American congressman, who’ve advocated for equality of sacrifice ie the draft. I doubt it would happen in our lifetime but if there was compulsory service as opposed to a volunteer army I wonder how long the American presence in Iraq or Afghanistan would last.
Also, I read somewhere that despite the much more broadly based army (in sociological terms) in the Vietnam era, there was still a class divide. I read that there were two graduates of MIT that died in the Vietnam war as opposed to 15 dead from one Boston highschool from a working class neighbourhood ie non college grads.
“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. 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. ”
Read between the lines of that paragraph.
Aside from the fact that he wants to concentrate on single cases of people doing wrong, on punishing the individual, concentrate on random individual cases and never look at the real big picture. Like when the news only talks about Brtiney Spears or some random microscopic affair of no importance.
That paragraph shows the real reactionary, anti-labor, Right Wing Thug ideology of peak oil and JHKs resource scarcity myth: since resources are runnig out, there will be no more labor unions, expect to be paid less and less and have fewer and fewer rights as a worker. Expect decreasing expectations, etc. The capitalists love this theory, it sets people up psychologically to accept any amount of robbing from them possible since resources are running out and we have “overpopulation”.
This also plays in nicely into the trend of people loving simple cause and effect linearities, simple find the flaw and punish, especially punish people: you used to much gas, now you will be punished, there are too many people, now you deserve to suffer and be punished, etc. They can hardly wait for the millions of people that will starve to death worldwide because there will “no longer be oil”. But it is all false, it is all a deception, very hard to see trhough it all and connect the dots, but it is a huge sophisticated deception that sounds liberal and progressive and left wing but is extremely right wing, reactionary anti-labor and pro-capital.
All doom and gloom theories play nicely in the hands of the dominating class, the rich, the capitalists, by saying that something bad will happen it prepares everyone to expect less, to be punished, to lose something, even everything. Also the ideology of punish for the plesure you had, punish because the Technological Economy gave you more than you “deserved”, like TV, comfort, etc. it is all bad, it is all a sin, you shall be punished or nature will punish you, or the “collective choices, like driving cars and going to Walmart” will be punished.
Also the idea that no one ever says that the Technological Economy is set up to eliminate as much work as possible structurally, as an automatic macro trend implies a completely different ball game, a completely different set of political choices: since the economy will no longer produce the jobs “automatically”, but destroy them, then the powers that be, both governemnts and corporations will have to explicity create them. But no one will ever says this, they will always talk about competition, skill sets, productivity, etc. and keep on eliminating jobs or creating fake ones that will last only a short time until being eliminated again, just for show, just to make believe that companies are hiring.
nature of munitions..”precision”
These have been bombed by the USA: a Chinese embassy, clearly marked Red Cross food warehouses, Canadian soldiers, hotels, numerous wedding parties, places of worship, and any place they damn well please, killing hundreds of thousands of other civilians who are non-combatants.
[sarcasm on]I’m sure the families of the dead would be happy to know that “precision munitions” are being used against them and their relatives.
[sarcasm off]
MAKE NO MISTAKE, the U.S. military targets civilians as part of its strategic aims today just as it did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and across Korea and Vietnam, where millions died.
No hands out, when that is exactly what will be needed in the future of no work and millions of people needing to live.
We need Free Salaries JHK, get over it and stop protecting the rich that get trillions for free from the FED.
From:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/03/make-no-mistake.html
“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. 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. ”
Read between the lines of that paragraph.
Aside from the fact that he wants them to concentrate on single cases of people doing wrong, on punishing the individual, concentrate on random individual cases and never look at the real big picture. Like when the news only talks about Brtiney Spears or some random microscopic affair of no importance.
That paragraph shows the real reactionary, anti-labor, Right Wing Thug ideology of peak oil and JHKs resource scarcity myth: since resources are running out, there will be no more labor unions, expect to be paid less and less and have fewer and fewer rights as a worker. Expect decreasing expectations, etc. The capitalists love this theory, it sets people up psychologically to accept any amount of robbing from them possible since resources are running out and we have “overpopulation”.
This also plays in nicely into the trend of people loving simple cause and effect linearities, simple find the flaw and punish, especially punish people: you used too much gas, now you will be punished, there are too many people, now you deserve to suffer and be punished, etc. They can hardly wait for the millions of people that will starve to death worldwide because there will “no longer be oil”. But it is all false, it is all a deception, very hard to see through it all and connect the dots, but it is a huge sophisticated deception that sounds liberal and progressive and left wing but is extremely right wing, reactionary anti-labor and pro-capital.
All doom and gloom theories play nicely in the hands of the dominating class, the rich, the capitalists, by saying that something bad will happen it prepares everyone to expect less, to be punished, to lose something, even everything. Also the ideology of punish for the plesure you had, punish because the Technological Economy gave you more than you “deserved”, like TV, comfort, etc. it is all bad, it is all a sin, you shall be punished or nature will punish you, or the “collective choices, like driving cars and going to Walmart” will be punished.
Also the idea that no one ever says that the Technological Economy is set up to eliminate as much work as possible structurally, as an automatic macro trend implies a completely different ball game, a completely different set of political choices: since the economy will no longer produce the jobs “automatically”, but destroy them, then the powers that be, both governments and corporations will have to explicity create them. But no one will ever says this, they will always talk about competition, skill sets, productivity, etc. and keep on eliminating jobs or creating fake ones that will last only a short time until being eliminated again, just for show, just to make believe that companies are hiring.
No hands out, when that is exactly what will be needed in the future of no work and millions of people needing to live.
We need Free Salaries JHK, get over it and stop protecting the rich that get trillions for free from the FED.
STFU!
That’s one way to look at it. The other side says we’re exploiting cheap labor for our own materialistic ends. I’m not debating what is right/wrong or the best approach in a worldwide economy.
I’ve seen that Oak tree, Ripthunder. Pretty impressive.
How about the ‘Pinchot Sycamore’, a few miles south in Simsbury, right along the Farmington River near the old Pettibone Tavern and near the Civil War monuments? The largest tree in CT, names after Gifford Pinchot, a Simsbury native, an early environmentalist and Teddy Roosevelts head of the Forest Service. It’s one big mother of a tree, too.
On the green here in Farmington we have an Oak that was planted by T. Roosevelt at a memorial ceremony in 1903 for William McKinley, who was assassinated a few years earlier. Roosevelts sister lived on Main Street. That thing grew tall in 108 years.
Who wrote the poem about the mighty oak. Was it Longfellow? Whittier? You should know that one Ripthunder since you’re the CFN Poet Laureate.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Why ?
Old6699;
When will you commence paying me that ‘free salary’ you’re always talking about? I’ll give you my Pay Pal address. And I’ll be wanting steady raises, too, don’t forget that!
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
… our own materialistic ends – JonathanSS
That is another way to look at it. But when you look at the reality of it, who benefits? Is it the CEO of the company that just offshored? Is it the American or Canuck workers that are progressively losing in the race to offshore? I would argue that the word “ours” really means the CEO and maybe the shareholders of the firms that move production to China.
At least temporarily. This can’t and won’t go on. After all, the Chinese worker earning slave wages can’t afford to buy the product he makes, the N. American workers that are now unemployed or working at crap jobs for Walmart or fedex can’t afford to either. The supposedly prosperous city dwellers in China have a savings rate that is in orbit so they aren’t buying either. The only thing propping up this house of cards is funny money from the Fed. The Chinese leadership have recognized this is a recipe for disaster and so they’re talking about encouraging Chinese consumers to buy the output of Chinese factories. Or so I’ve heard.
Asoka … I stated that the munitions today are precision weapons. They are, compared to the weapons used in the Vietnam War.
How they are targeted is a different matter entirely, which is what I think your comments are really about.
Cheers
Cash, my understanding is that the system was strongly abused by the granting of draft deferments. These in large part went to university students, guaranteeing there would be a significant difference in which societal classes were granted deferments and which were not.
http://www.nndb.com/event/806/000140386/ is an interesting list of well known people who were granted deferments.
Cheers
GREAT NEW MOVIE
‘WHEN CHINA MET AFRICA’ By 2 brothers. Docu that shows Chinese influence peddling and IMMIGRATION to Zambia.
For Tibetans whats shown in film is THEIR PAST,
For Africans [and US?] ITS THE FUTURE.
Advice to JonSS….wake up..
read Brimelow…He spoke to Chinese embassy about their Immigration policies [quote, ‘the world is laughing at us’]
Personally I trust govt economic stats as far as I can throw them.
The other day I heard that 38% of workers are dying to get out of their present job for a new job. Just goes to show how badly workers are treated. – Lbendet
I think there’s a disconnect between economic and personal expectations/aspirations and the reality of the modern workplace. To Megacorp Inc a worker is just a piece of meat with eyes. They are there to be lied to and offshored or turfed asap. But for some reason we want to be treated with respect. Not happening. Doesn’t matter much where you go, it’s the same story. If you make too much money you might as well be walking around the office with your shorts hanging out.
There’s another disconnect. In my own work and life I’ve gotten to know or become acquainted with a lot of people from different parts of the world. And I’ve spent my post university working life in either offices or cubes which I came to regard as stress boxes and greywalled, soul destroying prisons. But from the perspective of someone from Pakistan or some other impoverished hellhole who came to Canada to work as an accountant in airconditioned comfort this grey walled, soul destroying prison is paradise.
There’s another disconnect about living conditions. We had next door neighbours in our apartment building that immigrated from Algeria. Hubby was bringing home 700 bucks a week. This maintained him, his wife, two school-aged boys and a newborn in a one bedroom apartment. The two boys bunked in the bedroom and the other three slept in the living room. Now, to you or me these living conditions would be unacceptably crowded. But Hubby thinks he’s won the lottery, they’re living in luxury. He said the wife buys fresh meat everyday from local halal foodstores, they put carpeting in and bought a new dinner table and chairs no money down and no payments for one entire year.
“fair” and “unfair”.
Theres action in sports….but
Is there any Affirmative Action in Pro Sports?
The Asians are pragmatic. They have to be!
A lot of famous names in that list.
This am I had [a very much unwanted interaction]
with an angry [Samoan?]…
Looks like hes one more Immigrant on the dole..
I passed himon the blvd..walking..and he threatened to kill me…
screaming ‘ dirty white man’.
I think Obama gets it. In his speech yesterday, President Obama outlined his plan to secure our energy future by developing and securing America’s energy resources, bringing energy costs down for consumers, and innovating our way to a clean energy future.
Obama is increasing domestic energy production.
Last year, American oil production reached its highest level since 2003. But Obama knows we can’t just drill our way out of this crisis, so he is pushing reducing our dependence on oil by increasing fuel efficiency and increasing our production of natural gas and biofuels.
Obama wants to reduce demand for oil.
Transportation is responsible for 70 percent of our petroleum consumption, so one of the quickest and easiest ways to reduce our dependence on foreign oil is to make transportation more efficient. That’s why, in April of last year, the Obama Administration established a groundbreaking national fuel efficiency standard for cars and trucks that will save us 1.8 billion barrels of oil and save consumers thousands of dollars. We’re also making investments in electric vehicles and the advanced batteries that power them to ensure that high-quality, fuel-efficient cars and trucks are built right here in America.
Obama wants to increase production of clean energy.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama set a goal that by 2035, 80 percent of our electricity should come from clean energy sources including renewables like wind and solar, nuclear energy, efficient natural gas, and clean coal.
The concepts are straightforward and indicate that Obama gets it.
Why, why, that’s absurd . . . that must be globalization!
What a ludicrous set-up. I strolled through a local orchard the other evening. Apples that fallen the previous autumn and never harvested were rotting slowly in the slowly warming days of the spring. But there’s plenty of apples from New Zealand and other exotic locales in the stores here. Hello?
A popular type of store in the Germany is called the “Euro store” where most items cost 1 Euro each. Just about all of these products are made in China. One has to wonder about the costs involved, starting with labor conditions in the country of origin and including the crazy amounts of energy used to ship these products all over the world.
Cheers
Asoka;
Are you a paid shill for Obama?
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
I just finished sending emails to President Obama and senators Boxer and Feinstein asking them to end US involvement in Libya.
Writing to them beats b&tching about the situation.
Jen
For POC, and the rest of the efficient transport debate:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/03/too-much-energy.html
Trains make every other form of fossil-fuel-powered travel their bitch.
I had a laugh today. Obama gets religion about oil dependency on foreign sources. Except Mexico and Canada. So much for the environmental depredations of the oilsands.
But there’s something else. Enbridge wants to build an oil pipeline to the west coast. And China (which invested 100 million in Enbridge) is watching and hoping and I’ll bet more than watching and hoping but twisting arms. So I’ll bet that finally got Obama’s attention.
So. You want to turn up your nose to dirty oil? You want to “thicken” the border? Passports the order of the day?
OK well, the US isn’t the only game in town and oil pipelines are old technology. One way or another that oil will get produced and if the US is too squeamish… But screw all that, the US needs that oil. So my question is what are they prepared to do to get it? Americans don’t hold all the cards.
One other thing, and I doubt anyone in the US has noticed being embroiled in places that don’t matter shit like Iraq and Afghanistan. But according to a couple different accounts, our own intelligence agency providing one, China infested this place with its intelligence and security people. My interpretation? They want that oil! And they mean to get it. Are the sleepyheads at Langley onto this? I doubt it.
On an anonymous forum you don’t know who’s who. You can claim to be a sexagenarian black man but who’s to say you aren’t a cute, privileged, SUV driving surfer girl?
If we’re so evil, why do they all want to come here? And if they’re so wonderful, why don’t we want to go there? And if they’re so smart, why don’t they generate their own jobs and build their own industry? Is it possible that we really are superior in some ways? And they want to come here and take what is our’s?
If everyplace is the same with no real barriers, why is south of Rio Grande such a shit hole? So squalid and primitive? Could that be why the natives want to come here? And then claim all the infrastructure and development as their own? If it was their’s, why did they never develop the land just south over the river? The land is the same – the difference must be in the quality of the people and culture. In any case, it’s pretty disingenuous on their part. I mean if they come here, they should admit some lack in their own country that drove them to leave. But instead they laud themselves to the skies – and in the process will recreate the exact circumstances that they were trying to escape from. Mexicans can only create Mexico.
And there are botchups besides and no matter how good the technology is it still fails. There was a situation a while back where US navy ships were on joint exercises with the Turkish navy. US SAM missiles got launched by accident and they hit the bridge of a Turk destroyer killing the bridge crew. And in Afghanistan several Canuck infantrymen got killed by a US warplane. Shit happens.
Different civilizations are at different levels at different times in history. I doubt that anyone would have predicted the British Empire from the perspective of festering pre Norman London. Compare fleahole illiterate post Roman Europe to the glories of Islamic civilization.
So, despite the brilliant record of civilizational achievement of their Spanish and Indian forebears Mexico, as you say, is a craphole. Why? Who knows, human affairs never go in a straight line. Two hundred years from now the US could be the same.
And now I’ve ranted far more than my share for one day. Signing off.
Good one Asoka, I told the the armies joke to some of the dolts at work and they stared at me like ” Men who stare
stare at Goats” clueless. Movie , not so good! quote = priceless..
More anti-white nonsense from you, why only white countries? If an Asian or African or god help us had to live by your tender proscriptions you crazy anti-whites would be screaming genodice.
asoka you may be the smartest person in the world, but for my money you are the biggest fool on this blog. what if there was only one race, quality of life would still be an issue. even just thirty years ago America was a much more pleasant place to live and move around in. i think of the places i used to enjoy going that are now mad houses of people and/or development. on my texas hurricane coast i can tell a huge difference in population just since katrina and rita in 05. maybe i am getting old but being in a large crowd annoys me even if it is an all white one.
the only thing you find moral is american failure and destruction.
Old Aunty M, you really ought to read Greer’s piece today as well…see link to POC above.
Talks about the optimum always being below the maximum, and how too much energy per capita is damaging. It’s precisely my take on life, but he says it better than I can.
“And what were the South Vietnamese and Americans fighting for? Country Joe and the Fish said in that old song “and it’s one, two, three what are we fighting for, don’t ask me I don’t give a damn…”. An American soldier said with a sheepish smile something to the effect “I dunno, they tell us we’re fighting for somethin'” -Cash
The difference between sound-byte political mouthings of “hearts and minds” and reality for the American jungle-humper? Here ya go:
“We were there to save those people,
and keep democracy from harm;
But we learned to save each other,
and to hell with Vietnam.”
“When the politicians do their own killin’,
Then killin’ will truly become a sin;
Maybe then I’ll awake from this haunted dream,
of blood and adrenaline.”
(‘Bout says it for me.)
Do not become distracted by minutia; the past is prologue…
Marlin said: “Asoka; Are you a paid shill for Obama?
========
Marlin, what… you mean you don’t get paid by the John Birchers?
🙂
SanJoseMom51, thank you!
I don’t know if it will be diluting the message, but my letter is going to say Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
There should be a law that anyone who votes for war has to have all their eligible family members required to serve on the front lines, instead of sending other people’s kids to die.
Nuclear power plants voted for by politicians should also be built in the backyards of those politicians’ homes… they must believe the plants are safe, so no problem.
This tree will take your breath away. when lit at night it is a wonder of the world! We are nothing. minor bits of protoplasm, existing for mere decades, amongst the giants!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinchot_Sycamore
I can lie under this giant for hours enthralled by the vastness of the thing.
“They give you these [job] numbers–they have to be somewhat low, since people will know that they and others they know aren’t working—-but there’s always–whats the magic word? HOPE!–That’s what still keeps the folks in line.” LBendet
It does, at that! Keeping the serfs “in line” is such an irksome bore; can we not delegate it to some useful idiot? I’ve got it; how ’bout that President guy; you know, ol’ what’ziz’name who we spent all that cash installing? Humph, doesn’t “return on investment” mean anything anymore?
(From faaaar away and above…)
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!”
Good idea, A!
Guess we could just make it “common law”; you know, ostracized and driven out of the community if found reneging on their [supposed] convictions by not living “in” them. (No need to write it down as encoded law; walking the walk will do just fine. ;o)
Love your rhymes–very funny. I guess you gotta laugh at the absurdity of that’s coming down.
____________________________
Suddenly insider trading isn’t a crime! Wonder how Martha Stewart feels about this. I’m sure she won’t say anything–you never know what more can happen to you.
I’m referring of course to Citigroup suggesting some takover targets to David Sokol, who was supposed to take the Retiring Warren Buffet’s place at Berkshire Hathaway. It seem Citibank told Sokol that there were a number of take over targets for Berkshire Hathaway including Lubrizol. Sokol then buys 96,000 shares of the company and then suggests to Warren Buffet to acquire the company.
He has now resigned, but the analysts say he did nothing wrong—it only looks wrong…
Why did Martha Stewart go to jail? She lied–Oh.
all very technical, you see…
Hey, I resisted the urge to post all throughout the day until now. Ain’t you all proud of me?
I’ve decided that I agree with all of your opinions, from asoka’s “open the doors and let them all in” stance to Vlad’s idea about “sending the darkies back to Africa.”
And why not? These are all just opinions, which are of no consequence at all. (Radiohead anyone?)
Do any of you even act on any of this nonsense? Vlad, why don’t you go work for INS? I think you’d have a good time there deporting illegal brown people back to their countries of origin.
I guess this all that makes me some kind of of a nihilist. And I’m okay with that, too. Fuck it. Accepting two completely contradictory opinions at the same time is such fun. It seems to really piss people off, too, which is always good for a laugh.
Pardon me if I’m wrong, but oftentimes I think asoka is just fucking with you all. He reads some opinion like “Dey is too many Mexicuns in this country tekin er jobs” and constructs the exact opposite argument just to raise hackles.
Or maybe he believes all the shit he writes. I dunno.
Sometimes I take sides just to argue with other people for entertainment purposes. Does that make me a bad person?
You are getting old, and bitter, too. Sorry about that. It isn’t really the way to go. Too bad you don’t have control over who moves where and how many babies they produce or who immigrates into this country. Wouldn’t life be easier that way if you had complete control over everything everyone does?
But you know, by comparison to other countries on this planet, America has a very low population density. There are plenty of places without too many people, if you like Wyoming or the Dakotas and so forth, or even just the rural Midwest and what-not. Or you could go live on the militia compound with Vlad and prepare for the coming race war. Whatever works for ya.
Good luck!
Turkle said: “Sometimes I take sides just to argue with other people for entertainment purposes. Does that make me a bad person?”
===========
No, of course not. You are a good person… and I can prove it, with cited statistics and peer-reviewed sources!
🙂
Turkle said: “Wouldn’t life be easier that way if you had complete control over everything everyone does?”
===========
Umm, no. It would me more of a hassle to have to be responsible for what everybody does, more of a hassle to have to build walls to stop them from moving about.
I like life just as it is… with no control, with no free will, with no power to change anything, yet welcoming everything and full of gratitude for being showered with blessings every day!
Come on man. Get ANGRY! They’re tekkin our jobs! SAY IT! Rap music is ruining America. Not only that, but too many people are doing things of which I don’t approve!
Tripp –
I had never read any Greer or Archdruid before, so thank you for posting that link. I have added it to my bookmarks and keep an eye on it for a while – good stuff!
And I’ve got nothing at all against trains. I have fond memories of taking the “Nancy Hanks,” which ran out of Savannah and though Macon to Atlanta – to visit my grandparents.
Trains are best at moving high passenger loads into and through densely packed urban areas. Trains do much less well with low passenger loads, from a fuel efficiency standpoint.
Trains, like most everything else of importance to feeding Americans, have one big problem. They still need fuel to move. That’s where the P-MPG efficiency arguments come into play – and these arguments are going to leave efficient passenger cars in the equation – as long as there is fuel to move anything, IMHO.
===============
Greer does make one error, which is very common among those who push passenger rail. He said:
“…a locomotive can pull a ton of goods or passengers for not much less than a thousand miles on one gallon of diesel.”
First, before getting to the error – he rounds up, WAY UP – to get 1000 ton miles per gallon.
The actual figure should be 436 ton miles per gallon.
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/can_a_freight_train_really_move_a.html
But his very common error is to assume that humans on a rail car will behave like freight on a rail car. In other words, to get a figure of 436 ton miles/gallon for moving humans, the humans would have to pack themselves into the rail car, lie flat, and assume the highest possible density for rail shipping purposes.
And, the human rail “cargo” would have to agree not do move around, stretch, use a dining car, walk to a rest room or anything – for the entire duration of the rail trip.
Plus they would have to agree to walk from the rail terminal to wherever they were going without burning fuel for a taxi, bus, or whatever.
===============
Even shipping freight – trains are better, but not as much as people think.
For example – a semi loaded with 40 tons of freight, and averaging 5 MPG –
is actually achieving a ton miles per gallon figure of 200.
Only slightly worse than 1/2 as efficient as the 436 figure of the freight train. And somebody still has to get the freight out of the rail terminal and to wherever it is going.
===============
SNAFU, I know you’re checking the math.
All the comparison tables I find for trains/planes/cars/etc are in Joules.
That is to level the MPG numbers between gas, diesel, ethanol, or whatever – I know.
But it makes easy comparisons difficult.
Turkle, I understand your anger. Anger is one of the necessary stages of grief at our country dying. You have an infantile wish it could be different. BUT IT IS WHAT IT IS.
Finally you will come to the stage of radical acceptance of what is, radical acceptance of our inability to change anything, radical acceptance that a Black man is president and immigration is going gangbusters.
Until you reach that last stage of acceptance you are going to suffer. So make it a dance: enjoy your denial, enjoy your anger, enjoy your bargaining (though not collective bargaining!) and you can dance to the last stage.
Many don’t get there until they are on their death bed, but even then they manage to accept reality and die in peace.
Also Tripp –
I placed an order for 6 species of mushroom spores today – 100 hardwood plugs per species.
I ordered them from a very nice and efficient couple who grow mushrooms on a small commercial scale in Florida. The guy actually MAKES his own plugs – that’s what I’ll be receiving late next week. So, I’ll have a busy 1/2 day or so drilling 600 holes and plugging a few logs.
============
Personal to Turkle – yeah, some of us do lots of things with what we learn on this website. You sound pretty disgusted right now. Don’t be – yours is a good voice. And I can tell you’re thinking when you post. That thing on immigration was so sensible. I use ideas and discussion like I see on CFN when I talk to and/or write my legislators. Free will rules!
=============
I’m also planning to try growing potatoes for the first time, since I helped my granddad plant them almost 50 years ago. Probably wouldn’t have done that either, except for this website. Lot’s of calories in a potato, with or without TS being close to TF. Think I’ll try peanuts, too.
You got all those spud eyes in the ground yet, Wage?
Probably a little early yet, even for here.
Frost tomorrow night, they are saying.
Jonathan and SJ Mom –
I’ll be the first to admit that Vlad comes up with some hate filled, impractical, and racist ideas. But Jonathan, his response to you concerning the REAL behavior of the REAL mainland Chinese was absolutely on the money, IMO.
But don’t take my word for it, consider also the words of Cash:
“Vladdie, you old racist, about this you’re right. The Chinese aren’t apparently impaired in their seeking national advantage by silly notions like “fair” and “unfair”.”
-cash-
And I hope I am remembering accurately when I remind you that Cash has a Asian wife. I believe she may even be Chinese, right Cash?
Jonathan – Vlad is challenging your basic world view. That’s why it hurts to consider that you may need to rethink some of your approaches to life. That’s why you reacted with an angry “STFU,” back to Vlad over this, I suspect.
——————-
asoka’s a bright guy, Jonathan. And you want to agree with him because some/most of the time he presents himself as a “thinking liberal,” just like you, JSS.
But asoka is not a liberal – wanting all to be happy regardless of the color of their skins.
Oh no, far from it.
Asoka is a racist.
I would suggest that you treat him with the same respect that you would offer to any other racist from this point forward.
I will.
Ya know ,I tried the mushroom plug thing. I must have done it wrong. I pick the wild varieties all the time. I have some sweet chicken and hen of the woods spots. but when I do the log plugs they don’t seem to take? go figure. Try to find my spots and you will have to bring me to Guantanomo!
I won’t jack your sites, bro. I know how mycophiles can be about that stuff. This is my first year for shiitakes, so no counterpoint to offer yet. But I do grow oyster mushrooms sucessfully on pasteurized wheat straw in drilled out 5 gallon buckets. Love the regular dose of oysters in the diet, and keeping my finger crossed for the shiitake. At some point this year I’m going to set up a few mushroom totems with larger diameter logs I cut, to be productive architectural pieces in my garden.
Today is the last day of March and JHK’s prediction that Saudi Arabia would start to “blow up” did not come true.
I was so happy to have a concrete date, a measurable outcome, and an opportunity to demonstrate once again that all this talk of doom and gloom and shit hitting the fan and economic collapse is just fantasy porn, a lust for violence and social disorder because lots of people are bored or angry and want CHANGE in the form of chaos. And they use the “laws of physics” to justify their paranoia and their rants. Grow up, people.
Good for you on the mushroom tip, sir! Let me know how it all goes. 100 plugs is about enough to do two smallish logs or one big one. I’ll be finishing up the last of my first 3000 shiitake plugs this weekend at the Spring Folk Life Festival here in Tifton at the Agrirama.
And I’m going to have to just respectfully disagree about the train efficiency versus cars, buses, etc. Don’t have time to verify my refutation at this point.
Night, John boy.
Listen, I tell a story about being nice to several legal immigrants, & VK has to respond with another rant. Can’t he give it a rest?
I’m not disputing his assertions about China, as I worked for 10 years for a US company that had production operations in mainland China.
I’ve always been a’ skeered of wild mushrooms, RT.
If I could find somebody who knew what they were doing down here I’d like to try gathering and eating a few.
I’d also like to hunt up a few of the Amanita (magic) species – just for old times sake, you know.
Georgia is one of the few states in the union where it is illegal to possess even SPORES of amanita.
Go figure that?
I should have a pretty sweet spot for growing edible species. In a creek bottom, at the base of mountains and National Forest, 100% shaded, naturally humid – you get the idea.
I know I’ll have trouble with squirrels – not sure how I’ll handle that just yet. I hope it’s within range of my well-known “large outside dog” and that he will keep the deer and the bears off of them.
The guy shipping my plugs assured me, “They will grow – You’ll grow something, from what you describe.”
I’m pretty pumped right now about it. I may post up his link for the thread – – – let me get my shipment first, though.
ProCon said: “asoka’s a bright guy”
Umm, no I’m not. I am a product of a public state-supported educational system and I’m pretty average.
ProCon said: “But asoka is not a liberal”
Ding, ding, ding… you got that right! I am a radical pacifist, a thorn in the side of the liberal establishment.
Lame-stream media. We live with it day-by-day, but today I had to *heave* more than once…
Dylan and T Boone Pickins – what can I say! The only person who will benefit from his new “clean green” pyramid scheme is him, as usual – to the tune of $billions$ – while everyone else realizes about NIL. You’ll not see him apologizing for his $billions$ in oil profits, nor will he be returning it back to *the environment* he destroyed.
Ed talkin’ some crazy smack, that our current economic problems are because we haven’t realized how to take advantage of this incredible technological revolution (whee – ipads/iphones and “killer” chat-apps). Of course, neglecting to mention it’s *all* really been about (and the result of) slave labor (and theft of said-same slave assets) in Asia and India.
Fox was no better – some jackass there was pontificating at a “local” *town hall* about how immigration was simply an SS ponzi-scheme.
I have to admit, Anderson had an interesting story about 4 reporters (3 US, 1 UK – 1 female US) who were abducted recently in Libya, for a week. Physical/sexual abuse, and direct threats of death/execution. If true, seems a pretty stupid move by Libya. Why not simply abduct them, dump them outside the border, and threaten them with “consequences” if they return (the reason I’m skeptical)…
I’ve had it with arguing racist BS (i.e. immigration) here. I know I wasn’t very clear about “external costs” previously – let me explain that, via econ 101. Every last bit of profits these elites/corporations claim now (outside of the bankster speculation manipulation/fed printing press), are simply composed of that “external cost.” There is no measure of environmental damage (or renew-ability) in the cost-profit analysis of businesses today. *THUS*, exponential “external costs” that continues to deplete/destroy all assets on the planet today, in order to line the pockets of the elite few.
Addendum – sound like spewing ocean water (e.g. salt) on the reactors in Japan was a *VERY* bad idea. Apparently, this has accelerated corrosion of every last intact steam pipe/fuel rod coating. Oh, and all that water is *flowing* out…
“I was so happy to have a concrete date, a measurable outcome, and an opportunity to demonstrate once again that all this talk of doom and gloom and shit hitting the fan and economic collapse is just fantasy”
You’re like the *beached whale* that flipper-flops. Or, should I say (flip-meister) McCain, or Gingrich?
Maybe that’s what it takes, to keep you from “suicide”, being so righteous and delusional *at the same time* – but that’s not a word in my vocabulary!
I’d saw off my arm and eat piss for *127 hours*?!…
“Ixnei Ixnei go away
Spew yr bullshit there any day
There once was a girl named Ixnei”
That total nonsense above explains why I’ve ignored/scrolled past all your posts for months. If you’re going to flame me, you need to provide a (logical) reason/discourse.
“Babble, babble fish be gone,
fish are babbling every day,
Babble fish are female” makes no sense at all…
“I think Obama gets it”
Obama is the total expected pawn of the 2-party-owned fascist corporatocracy.
Gitmo? 3(5) wars now? You are FSCK’n deluded, my *brutha*.
The reason no one talks about the real macro trends of Science and Technology eliminating labor automatically, structurally is because it implies a very specific solution, the only possible solution and namely free salaries to all, cheap rents, or less bluntly huge public – private projects. By finally exposing the truth about the effects of Science and Technology on all productive endeavors there would be no more deceptions, no more room to hide the fact that no jobs will be created anymore by more small businesses, new skill sets needed by “innovation”, more competition etc.
But the economists, politicians, you name it, try to hide this truth and this fact as much as possible to avoid exposing the only possible solution there is to the present worldwide needs of millions of unemployed and without homes or in sacrificed living conditions.
By the way, these myths the capitalists chant about all the time are exactly the same as the “grow your own food myth”: it is just another way to say “be your own boss” and is just another way to emphasize the small business myth the capitalist love to brainwash everyone with: this is done purposely to atomize people, to break down as much as possible any collective effort, any labor processes that add up, THAT ACCUMULATE INTO SOMETHING GREATER THAN THE PARTS, that are serialized. Divide all the small slobs and then crush them.
This blog also shows how right wing the posters here are: they are all concentrated on overpopulation, too many people (if anything there are too many people who think that “there are too many people”). They think that by saying this they are saying something really interesting, some great discovery, some great truth that nobody else could imagine. By saying there are too many people, they are essentially saying, hate on others, there is not enough room for others, fight a war, kill them, get rid of them, I want to grow my own food and protect myself with my rifle against all those “other” slobs.
It also feeds into a justification to express as much violence and hate against others as possible because now you found the “logical connection”. But then who exactly is to decide who is too much ? For me, the people who think that there are too many people are the first ones that we should get rid of. Even because it is false, there is no over population, it is just a right wing brainwashing device to make people hate on others.
The other favorite of these posters is racism of all kinds, blacks vs whites, mexicans vs who knows who, who is bad who is good, and so on (but this is mostly USA centered). The subtext here also is, hate on others, kill them, fight them, war. Another favorite is protect the environment, even here the subtext is kill people and protect nature. Nothing more idiotic, because either you are fighting nature or you are fighting people, it has always been this way, but the greens and environmentalists want to fight people, get rid of them, there are “too many”, but nature must be protected. Kill people, protect nature.
And this blog and posters somehow are “liberal”, “left wing”. Wow, the truth is there is no longer any left, as in “progressive”, as in wanting progress. We only have 3 kinds of right wings: the real right wing in the US (which at this point is the most left, bush did give hand outs to people, the most left thing you could do today), the left of obama which is a hidden right wing, and the worst left which is this green, peak oil, overpopulation, resource scarcity left that essentially wants everyone to hate on everyone, and is therefore the most right wing.
Why do rich countries – societies kill themselves ? Think Germany during the 1930s was becoming an economic powerhouse, if they discharged all of their excess capacity, thanks to the application of Science and Technology to the production process, towards enriching themselves instead of going crazy and starting WW II, they could have become extremely rich even with that more primitive technology (after all, that primitive technology, tanks, planes, etc nearly wiped out half of Europe). They could have already reached the USA standard of living of 1965 by 1945 if they concentrated on building houses, cars, skyscrapers, train lines, all those things that benefit the collectivity.
After all the real reason why societies become rich is not because of the Free Market or Capitalism, it is because Science and Technology applied to the production process (along with its capability to harness energy also through oil) allows an unprecedented amount of wealth to be generated automatically, allows wealth to be generated and given to everyone with much less effort compared to 200 years ago. The market economy and competition helped the process by making the economy flexible and creating incentives to optimize and produce more efficiently, but I would say the ratio is 80 % Science and Technology, 20 % Competition.
Also JAPAN and Germany from 1945 to 1975 had spectacular growth anyways, again with that more primitive technology and they didn’t need all the flexibility, competition, start ups, entreprenuers and “be your own bosses” and small businesses that the present economic theory thinks is so important: it is not at all, it is all just an excuse to not share the wealth with the lower classes.
Again, why do rich countries – societies kill themselves ?
It reminds me of the rich guy who has everything he wants but is bored and starts “fighting himself”, starts self destructing instead of constructing. The USA (and partially the EU and JAPAN) is in this phase, self destructing, everyone against everyone, full of hating on others, because they are blacks, asians, too many people, resource scarcities, you name it. There is no collective goal, no collective pride, something that South Korea has for example. They are “proud” of themselves, each subgroup in the USA hates any other subgroup within itself. If South Korea was as large as the USA with 300 million people, they would have gone to Mars and back again 100 times, and would have been wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, thanks to their emphasis on collective effort, labor that is serialized, that accumulates and that doesn’t dissipate in puny fights.
“Knowing who is who: Think Tanks”
Absolutely *independents*, to be sure – except for their *FUNDING*.
LOL, that reminds me of a Police song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUwd737mioM
OMG @ 6969 – skyscrapers on Mercury!!! LOL, that guy is totally *INSANE*.
Where to start with this drivel you are constantly posting here?
You live in an insane fantasy world. Right now many billions of people on this globe live with food scarcity. The price of food has been rising rapidly lately. Several years ago this was dubbed the Food Crisis. This is not because of some vast conspiracy by those in power to keep people atomized. It is because humans are bumping up against the resource limits of the earth, including amount of arable land with which to produce crops to feed people.
Fossil fuels are responsible for the vast amount of food calories that we consume.
Please read this to understand why.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html
Fossil fuels are extracted, not produced. They are a non-renewable resource that will someday be used up. What happens to the global food supply when this happens? (exercise left up to reader)
With the current population…
90% of ocean fish stocks are gone compared to what was there 100 years ago (or so) and if we follow our current trajectory the ocean will eventually be a vast dead zone covered in islands of plastic and garbage.
Fresh water is becoming more and more scarce throughout the globe.
Farmlands are rapidly losing their topsoil and turning into desert.
Climate change is upon us and will only get worse, as there is a lag effect.
These are just a few issues caused by the number of people currently inhabiting the globe and how they use its resources.
Then there is the fact that using vast amounts of energy always changes the global environment usually for the worst. Climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels. Look at what is happening in Japan right now with nuclear energy. Think about the vast amounts of energy it would require to implement your pie-in-the-sky mega-projects.
You are a classic cornucopian, i.e. someone who believes, without reason, that the earth has unlimited resources that will last forever. You seem to think that all we need is ingenuity and a bit of collective effort to overcome the basic laws of physics.
Not everything is possible simply because one wills it. Life is not a sci fi movie like Star Trek, and you can’t make something from nothing.
There is NO basis for what you believe aside from a single website containing your own posts, that you continually regurgitate here in an endless feedback loop.
Many people on this blog and elsewhere on the internet actually understand these problems and their severity, whereas you have Jimminy Cricket syndrome.
And it is patently false to say those concerned with the number of people on this planet are just hating. They are stating facts and are concerned about the future of the species.
Please see for reference these books (for starters).
Geodestinies by Youngquist
Overshoot by Catton
Limits to Growth studies
Ingenuity Gap by Homer-Dixon
Where is the documentation for your arguments? Name my one respectable science or engineer that thinks it will be possible to double or triple human population on this planet without severe, catastrophic consequences in the long term. And your silly pet website does NOT count.
Every other species goes through a pattern of overshoot and collapse when it uses resources and breeds as humans do currently. What makes you think we’re so special? We are basically animals. There is nothing to prevent this from happening to us, and it may even be more likely because we are so effective at extracting resources from our environment and using them up.
Do you even read the responses to your rambling posts? You seem like a closed system to me, never admitting any facts that dispute your asinine conclusion that it will be possible to house and feed trillions of humans on this planet indefinitely. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you’re completely wrong.
Right Wing Thug, you are WRONG on all accounts:
1) “Right now many billions of people on this globe live with food scarcity. The price of food has been rising rapidly lately. ”
FALSE. This is provoked by capitalists, speculation, you name it. There is a huge amount of food available, just look at how much is thrown away daily in the USA and EU. Thee is a huge amount of possible “arable land”, look at Siberia, and then with high tech, we can do everything and miracles. We can genetically engineer plants and cows to produce multiple times but the environmentalists are against this since their resource scarcity myth would fall apart.
2) “Fossil fuels are extracted, not produced. They are a non-renewable resource that will someday be used up.”
FALSE. It is only carbon chemistry, just some carbon molecules, there are many ways to produce a similar fuel, like ethanol, biomass, and I could go on and on.
3) “90% of ocean fish stocks are gone compared to what was there 100 years ago ”
FALSE. There is an almost infinite amount of fish and anyways, you can grow them in vast pools, it can be done.
4) “Fresh water is becoming more and more scarce throughout the globe.”
FALSE. Use ocean water and water is always recycling through the system, it will never run out.
5) “Climate change is upon us”
Who cares, it won’t change much and we can re-engineer our living arrangements accordingly.
6) “Look at what is happening in Japan right now with nuclear energy.”
Nothing, that problem will be gone in a few weeks, just like the oil spill no one remembers that happened last year in the gulf of mexico.
The earth has unlimited resources that will last forever because our species has MIND OVER MATTER, is an infinitely programmable machine that can be programmed to do anything, that can construct any kinds, no matter how incredible (our present behavioral and social systems and social interactions are 100 % arbitrary constructions of mind over matter in case you didn’t notice, there is zero necessity in all that we do) of social systems with any kinds of behaviors, patterns of thought, patterns of emotional narratives tied to thoughts, memories, languages and interactions and manipulations – jests, living arrangements, you name it.
And then there is the Solar System to mine, the Technological Singularity modified brains – minds, Virtual Reality, and I can go on and on. Read all the scientific papers of the last 50 years in all sectors to see how much is possible.
And keep on gifting all the money to the rich by saying we are “too many people”, we have “overpopulation”. Nothing further from the truth, population growth has been rapidly decreasing worldwide in the last decades and will continue to do so. People don’t, can’t, don’t even know how (look at JAPAN’S youth that doesn’t even know how to interact between man and woman, and this inability to even interact is growing all over the world!) to reproduce anymore. And worldwide population won’t even reach a puny 15 billion in a world that can host thousands of trillions of people in giant Skyscrapers, and Underground “Groundscrapers” having 1,000s of floors.
Now, respectfully, as tootsie would say, blow me and sue me.
Indeed Turkle, said Oldie-troll-one-Kenobi has infected this site now for the last few weeks, with his ever more verbose, one-trick-pony musings… like a rapidly expanding bacteria!!
And I made the unfortunate mistake myself of visiting, his personal flagellation site grandiosely termed ‘I love philosophy dot com’ (yawn) a lot of which seems repeatedly focused on commenting re the Kunstler posters here?
*sniggers*
Which suggests to me that 66of99’ers mental illness is linked heavily to an acute form of hubris…?? (So I hope a ban will be shortly forthcoming accordingly)
Or perhaps I’m wrong?
And the more narrow-minded loony tune posters here, (there’s more than just one sadly) are simply think-tank shills (of whatever hue & colour) paid for to infiltrate the CFN’posting option to infect it with a mind-numbing level of boring repetitiveness – so as to devalue the real quality of what’s being thought through here.
Less = more
We need a CFN website moderator/webmaster to keep postings to a minim set word limit – and flip off the fruit-bats PDQ.
Old,
Whoa, If you can say Germany was an economic powerhouse between WWI and WWII, I suggest you take a re-looksie at the history books!
Also I watched part of the Dylan Ratigan live stream last night and of course they will never take the point of view of JHK. In their scenario there’s always hope that this enterprise will continue along.
Re: T. Boone Pickens: You need to understand that unless someone can make big money, nobody’s going to move any technology ahead. This system is all about the money.
We know that fracking is a huge environmental problem and water is being polluted, but of course from what I saw, it was not addressed. Those questions could have come later in the panel, but from what I heard everything was rosy for Nat Gas and wind power.
I give Ratigan some credit for trying to address issues that nobody else is doing.
In the meantime priority problem # Three hundred trillion, the escape of the Egyption Cobra has been solved. Mother Nature took care of it, thank you very much. Let’s see what humanity can do with all the rest of our challenges. So far, I’m not very impressed.
@ lbendet
*In their scenario there’s always hope that this enterprise will continue along.*
This is due to a state of mind process best described as: Normalcy Bias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
It’s a key factor for why when faced with a sudden disaster scenario, take the Fukushima nuclear incident, and post tidal wave tsunami reaction (or lack of) in Japan – more people die than is necessary…
And Old6699 is a total dweeb when it comes to understanding the financial reality that the US ‘currently’ faces…
42m Americans already get free money – in the shape of Food Stamps – that’s a staggering 17% of your population right now, and its growing, every single month on month?
Why?
Because your Govt is hell bent on destroying debasing your currency, while increasing trade killing corp’ rate taxation, but mainly by printing trillions of increasingly valueless paper $dollars… to keep the while stinking cadaver of your economy afloat.
That’s what ‘free’ money has bought you guys as the world’s currency reserve for the last 50 years or so, but its reign supreme is now over…. much like us Brits found out in the 1970s the game is up… we had a longer run though 200 years or so, before the others woke-up.
China, Russia, Japan, France and some of the ME playas are moving steadily toward dumping the $dollar as the defacto reserve currency – tis game over when they do, and they are accelerating it’s unloading now, softly softly into better value hedging assets.
As this continues, so your ‘free’ subsidies on all you import oil in particular are dying directly as a result… oh dear eh?
Which is why if you live/work in the US, and your current salary is fixed – the things needed to live/thrive – are really getting very much more expensive this year, perhaps the less sleepy that post here might have noticed this?
As this change of new world order increases, one of two things will happen: (a) the old imperial order will get a new global currency as proposed by the IMF…
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c2215510-5bc4-11e0-b8e7-00144feab49a.html
Or (b) the rest of the world will view you Yanks and us Brits as no longer necessary and deserving of our past subsidies and let us spectacularly crash/collapse…
To assume our special relationship Govts are really clueless re the fundamentals – you gotta be kidding right folks?
“Are you felling lucky punks?”
Never has a line been more on cue…
Like your post, Alexandra
It’s clear that this cannot continue. We are due for another bubble popping and Obama has already promised to do another TARP just in case you didn’t know. I guess that’s how you keep the globe walking in lock-step with you.
We are the IMF and the WTO, so when they go after us it will be disaster capitalism at work. Well, you know everything must go privatized incl. ss, so you can bet that will be stolen too. The public commons will be sold for pennies and someone will make big money on it. The other side of globalism is when our infrastructure and roadways are run by companies from other countries. By then we will know we are now third world.
Both GB and the US embraced global neoliberalism and that’s why they will fail.
Both countries will be sitting at the table of former great empires. The world will move on.
Good Day Prog, You can’t go wrong with the “Chicken of the Woods” BRIGHT Orange and grows on trees ( Not the ground) http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_FYNfPbsUod8/TJeyICAHaMI/AAAAAAAAAKM/hD9G-uzp5GY/s1600/Chicken+of+the+Woods.jpg
Get them while new and moist and before the bugs. You can spot them a mile away and they really do cook up and taste like boneless chicken!
“Both GB and the US embraced global neoliberalism and that’s why they will fail.
Both countries will be sitting at the table of former great empires. The world will move on.”
-LBendet
I’m HOPING that “the world will move on” and forget us debt-ridden peons in the FUSA (former usa). For us to have to withdraw from the geo-political chess game and concentrate on contraction in a serious and necessary way, would be the best of all possible scenarios.
As “the punk”, I’m not feeling that lucky though, and don’t want to invest a lot of mental gymnastics in false hopes.
I think there’ll be a death-throe thrashing that will be marvelous to behold (and not in a “good way”). Alexandra refers to “normalcy bias” and JHK has coined it “the psychology of previous investment”. To my mind, there’s only a subtle difference, and we’ll see desperate manifestations of these mindsets soon. (The financial fixings alone are a pointed symptom of ensuing collapse.)
Finally, I’d have to agree to a LOT of purposeful distraction going on right on this site! It’s puzzling that anyone might think that to be important, in that we’re just a bunch of little insects, but I s’pose even little insects can tell their friends what’s going on… then ya gots a pest problem! ;o) The fear factor for TPTB seems to be increasing. Another symptom. (Obama recycling GWBush-speak, hoping we’ve forgotten the shape of THAT rhetoric, is a prime example.)
Hey, I guess we ARE fscked! lol
Though tis April fools day… so tongue in cheek speak, should be fully presumed my dear…
This clip from 2009 pre the Neue Labour shafting at the UK elections, Theresa May is now a cabinet office in fact – shows what happens when someone of some cerebral note challenges neoliberalist policy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QM1aFNZWvU
Enjoy!
Turkle;
One thing I concluded months ago;
Old6699 is here to bust yer balls, that’s the only reason. He doesn’t believe in all the shit he posts I’m certain gets a good laugh when he sees our reaction to it. Call it what you want, hyperbole, camp, grand guignol, attempt at humor; what it adds up to is bullshit and you are better off scrolling past rapidly. You could say he’s taking up valuable internet space, but hey, there is plenty of space to be had.
Did anybody notice, despite one disaster after another, the DOW is up again today and in fact just finished its best 1st quarter in 15 years. Some knowledgeable poster here (Ibendet, Orionoir) have explained why this is so, but I still find it astonishing.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Kewl, RT.
I’ll look for it; thanks for the link. Lots of fungi round hyar, but I’ve been too chicken-shit to munch any of it [so far].
Mebbe the log-innoculation fail was due to the log still having its’ anti-fungal properties. Tripp had said it takes 6 months or so for these to dissipate in a cut log. (?)
Heynow! How ya liking our April Fools’ weather-prank? It’s Christmas all over again! ;o)
That’s right my wife is Chinese. And, as you know, when you marry someone you marry the whole damn family. Plus this city is full of Chinese immigrants and I’ve worked with and gotten to know many. So I suppose that after decades of association/immersion I have more than a nodding acquaintance.
As I’ve said in other posts a lot of liberals are hell bent on casting the US (and the west in general) in the worst possible light. They are convinced to the core of their being that we, and especially Americans, are the worst. Boy, have I got news for them.
I think this liberal attitude springs from ignorance and malice and ego (you have to be blind to miss the preening self regard). Ego I have enough of myself and I understand it. Ignorance IMO is not a passive state. It is a deliberate state of unawareness, a scornful disdain for (and rigid closed mindedness) to new ideas, new knowledge, new opinions and an unwillingness to learn and change. And believe me, after a lifetime of dealing with illiterate/semi-literate immigrant family and associates from a very backward old country I also have more than a nodding acquaintance with ignorance.
Cultures differ. Cultures are not static, they change over time and sometimes quickly. But people are people ie the sum of human nature, human abilities and aptitudes are the same in different places and races and cultures. Liberals who keep telling us (and each other) that they’re so smart, so educated, so literate and so informed, ought to know these things. But maybe they don’t.
From my own experience I have to conclude that liberals, who are so adept at shouting others down, have no advantage whatsoever over others in terms of education, world knowledge, historical knowledge, scientific knowledge, cultural knowledge, literacy, numeracy. They merely draw up themselves up to a great height and pretend they do. So why are liberals like this, why the towering superiority? Who knows, maybe its part of liberal culture, a modus operandi that took root and flourished.
I’ve theorized in other posts as to where the malice comes from. I think liberals themselves should answer for this as it is known best to them.
Last nite I tunes in MSNBC, Chris Mathews, Laurence ODonnell, Rachel Maddow etc.
Having witnessed them hammer Pres. Bush the past 8 years about Iraq and Afghanistan, it is humorous to see them twist themselves up like pretzels when justifying Obamas action in Libya.
The really are shills, no doubt about it.
And how about Diane Sawyers interview with the Messiah 2 nites ago. Do you think Diane knows what a Syncophant is? She actually compared him to Lincoln, right to his face, and then asked about his NCAA picks.
This media has lost any credibility that it had left. Some of these people (still) have their heads stuck so far up Obamas ass they won’t see the light of day for at least the next decade.
I gotta say its beyond sweet. To quote TRoosevelt, it is D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S!
I can only take looking at Rachel Maddow for so long before I have to switch over to Fox to gaze at their stunning newbabes.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Your unlimited resources are based on a world producing more and more, when it is universally known that nothing is created or destroyed, but everything transforms…
That is, if the balance of the world is destroyed, it will always try to go back to the beginning.
I make a simple example.
I do not remember when and where, but in Africa they tried the experiment to let the elephant species that was doomed to extinguish, to live undisturbed and protected in a National Park.
After a few years the elephants began dying for lack of food.
Since they reproduced too much there was not anymore grass or vegetable to feed all.
That would certainly happen if human species grew too much.
There would be such an unbalance in the world that nature would find the way to bring the number to normality.
We have to understand that everything has its purpose in this world, even flies, not last being the food for another species, and everything must be balanced.
As for technology applied to food production, it is known that we mostly eat garbage and that is also one of the reasons we get easily illnesses like cancer.
We eat too much and not the right thing.
The exasperation of technology will do to man more harm than good.
why do you think the country is dying. with a black prez and immigration going like gangbusters, i would think this would be considered a hopeful time in your world. fruedian slip maybe.
You know Marlin I gave up on looking for hypocracy long time ago, they simply do not care. The dog and pony show you watched is to keep the one part of the left that might care about war in the “coalition”, the urban effite white liberal. The rest of the Dem party could care less about Libya, they have low IQs and are easily led, like Asoka.
As for the Right they are step and fetchits for empire.
sorry if i sound bitter. my personal situation has never been better. and for the times we live in i am unbelievably thankful. i’ve worked hard and been lucky and i know it may not be that way tomorrow. i do sense a general decline in conditions in the country. i think there are a number of reasons for this. over population/uncontrolled immigration is just one part of the complex situation we find ourselves in. the ptb have always controlled what happens but in the past they had a more american outlook. now the elite consider themselves global citizens and this has effected conditions in this country adversely. worship of diversity is getting us know. the third world laughs in our face at our selfdestructive policies. i guess thats bitter to you but it just common sense to me.
The left is comprised of cults rigidly segregated.
White liberals the only kind of liberals wouldn’t dream of asking the Chinese or any other non-white what they think. Those kinds of questions are never asked, ever. They are proud of their provincialism.
Even the author of this blog is proud of his invincible ignorance, he says, writes and that is it. I mean really, how large is the climate change cult beyond white libs living off the trust fund? Cannot ask those questions, better to live in invincible ignorance of liberal provincialism.
i meant to say; worship of diversity is getting us nowhere. sorry i was talking and typing.
Allow me to interrupt your right-left hate-fest.
A bit more interesting is Max Keiser with Nicole Foss discussing the future of nuclear energy & for more of your listening pleasure on the same site is an interview with Dmitry Orlov.
Hey Marlin, I agree with ya there!Why do you think they call it “FOX” news? GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!
Alexandra,
Thanks for bringing “Normalcy Bias” to my attention. Fascinating topic! You rock.
Jen
I’ve theorized in other posts as to where the malice comes from. I think liberals themselves should answer for this as it is known best to them. -Cash
Common tactic. Accuse the “other side” of behaving exactly the way “your side” already does.
I call, “bunk”. (and distraction…)
“This media has lost any credibility that it had left.” -Marlin
Consider that a “good” thing. The sooner reality takes hold, the better we’ll be able to deal with it.
Yes BAAAAD to the bone !
you very bad person for having fun.
I like what you say about Doing something instead of just talking about it on here. Like Vlad getting a job with INS. etc.
I learned I might be a nihilist. Have to wiki that one.
Straw man.
“The earth has unlimited resources that will last forever”
Need I even read the rest of your drivel? I think not…
False equivalency; distraction; bunk.
“in a world that can host thousands of trillions of people in giant Skyscrapers”
Did you actually run the math on that one?
Bunk; straw men; narrow perspective.
I know that CASH has a lucky wife. He is a good guy, and Intelligent also.
He knows he is lucky also. Smart man.
yeah you DO marry the whole family, it is true.
you divorce the whole family also ! in my case.
🙂
“There is an almost infinite amount of fish”
There are an almost infinite number of passenger pidgeons.
Oh, wait…
“liberals, who are so adept at shouting others down”
Have you even been paying attention the last 30 years? This is the specialty of the right wing and always has been. Think of O’reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, and on and on. They love to shout down people who don’t agree with them. Liberals have only recently gotten in on it, mostly just to keep up. And liberals, from my experience, try to argue with facts and logic, but if you’ve been clued in to the zeitgeist, this isn’t such a popular way to persuade people these days.
And liberals DO know more than right wingers. It was proven by a poll taken recently that showed those who claimed to be liberal were better informed across the board. There was a correlation between lack of knowledge and viewing Fox News to stay informed. I’ll try to dig that up if you wish.
Many right wingers are Jesus freaks, which is a prima facie illogical, wrong viewpoint that cannot be argued using facts or educated positions. It is “faith based” (e.g. complete BS). Then there are the creationists, the global warming deniers, etc., all firmly nestled in the fat bossom of the right.
Nice try though.
Everyone of those blondes of Fox is fake as far as I can see. An apt symbol of our culture – and of Fox (Koch) itself.
From another angle, as this Nordic phenotype dissapears, it becomes ever more valuable – yes even like Gold. Emily Dickinson used to call her blonde sister, “avalanche of sun”. Of course this is a small tragedy compared to the coming dissapearance of the entire White Race. But it should be considered a harbinger of what is coming unless we awaken.
I guess you haven’t been paying attention. Cults are the specialty of the right wing, faith based, Jesus freak, Bible thumping, creationist, intelligent design crowd.
The climate change cult? LMAO.
You = M-O-R-O-N.
Oh, here we go…another internet specialist on the foibles and contradictions of the liberal left. I haven’t seen that before.
*yawn*
It is a scientific fact, proven by extensive polling, that Democrats are better informed than Republicans.
Is this at all surprising? It shouldn’t be.
It is scientific fact, proven by extensive testing, that Whites are smarter than Blacks.
Is this at all surprising? It shouldn’t be.
Yes ignorance is a verb; a state of actively ignoring important things to protect the egotists self image and/or status.
In honor of the 60’s, check out this Marshall McLuan clip. He was talking about globalism before just about anyone in the popular sphere. He knew that it was going to be a horrible chaos of suffering. But that was ignored because it wasn’t “on message”. People mentally edited him to hear what they wanted to hear about peace and love and shit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvATW2nfYZg&feature=fvwrel
The Nation State is what protects us from all this. The skin is our borders and illegal immigrants should be seen as pathogens in the body politic.
Vlad…. you leave out the important defining paragraphs as always…
‘Intelligence quotient (IQ) tests performed in the USA have consistently demonstrated a significant degree of variation between different racial groups, with the average score of the African American population being lower- and that of the Asian American population being higher – than that of the White American population.
At the same time, there is considerable overlap between these group scores, and members of each racial group can be found at all points on the IQ spectrum.’
So now what?
Oh dear… yous simply be’s another one-trick-pony toolset troll’ster….
Not so, it is all very real:
1) Right Wing wants Free Market, Inequality, Risk Taking, Competition, Hose the poor and weak, rising house prices. No free lunch, you have to “fight for it”, you have to “deserve it”, you have to “make a living”, you are always assumed to be “a lazy slob who wants a free ride”. But this is no longer applicable with present day technology killing ever more jobs automatically.
2) Left wing wants Free Salaries, Cheap Rents, Equality, Collective Efforts for the common good. The free salaries are necessary because the present Technological Economy is way too rich to not give everything everyone needs for free. A Real left wing is for Technological and Scientific progress, Mind over Matter, Space colonization, changing the neural circuits of minds, Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers on the SUN, The imagination of man as the ruling political power.
2 completely different views of the world and values.
Today there is no longer any left wing, they are all different forms of Right Wing..
Alexandra, will you kindly answer me, miss pretty, will you give in ? I really need some peace of mind… can I hit on you then ? let me win at least once …
Anyways, back to the serious stuff, I really believe all I write, it is no joke, the joke is on all of you. Think carefully, you have all ben set up and taken for a ride.
In 1970, neil Young usd to sing “look at mother nature on the run in the 1970”. it has always been on the run, people need to live and manipulate the environment.
Check out:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174721
and
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174704
And many others.
There are many more threads, but you have your homework cut out for you for this weekend. Study it all very well, JHK will test you all monday morning.
Well, we’ll differ on this then. What we have on this side of the border w.r.t. to liberalism and conservatism differs from the US side so maybe my view is coloured by this. Just one example: what conservatism doesn’t have up here is the overt religiosity, the conservative homelands up here are the least religious regions of the country.
I will say this, the Right Wing Lie Machine (as Hancock calls it) as manifested by Rush, Coulter and the whole gang of braying jackasses has its reflection up here on the Left. Here it’s the hysterical, shrieking lib/left, it’s the lib/left that did and still does politics with a baseball bat and then gets all uppity when the other side of the spectrum starts responding in kind.
When I crap on conservatism I don’t point the finger enough and call it what it is. Mea culpa. When I rant about the thievery, lies and bullshit from the investment industry and the depredations of the managerial class or the idiocies of globalism I fail to mouth the word “conservatism”. Mea fucking culpa.
As I said in other posts what we have on both sides of the border is left/right tribalism one characteristic of which is adherence to absurd ideologies. You demonstrate your loyalty and your liberal or conservative bona fides by repeating in public the core idiocies of your tribe. How extreme can it get? Look at Germany in the 1930s. The most educated country in Europe got into its head that Jews needed to be exterminated. So as not to shit unduly on Germany, I believe my old uncle from Czechoslovakia, who lived through those times, who said that there were more Nazis outside of Germany than inside of Germany.
Alexandra, will you kindly answer me, miss pretty, will you give in ? I really need some peace of mind… can I hit on you then ? let me win at least once …
Anyways, back to the serious stuff, I really believe all I write, it is no joke, the joke is on all of you. Think carefully, you have all been set up and taken for a ride by resource scarcity and overpopulation myth.
It is so very easy to believe in all of that crap because it seems so linear, so logical, so simple: but there lies the deception, the current Tecnological Economy is very non-linear, with huge amplifications of production and economies of scale, that completely break down all the ideas of resource scarcity and cause and effect you experience in your everyday life, directly manipulating items with your hands and body.
In 1970, neil Young used to sing “look at mother nature on the run in the 1970”. it has always been on the run, people need to live and manipulate the environment.
2) Left wing wants Free Salaries, Cheap Rents, Equality, Collective Efforts for the common good. The free salaries are necessary because the present Technological Economy is way too rich to not give everything everyone needs for free. A Real left wing is for Technological and Scientific progress, Mind over Matter, Space colonization, changing the neural circuits of minds, Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers on the SUN, The imagination of man as the ruling political power.
Thank you Jackie, it’s nice to be appreciated. I think you’re great also, you have really keen insights ie “The best thing a father can do for his children, is to Love Their Mother”. I’ve never thought of that but you’re dead right. And you mentioned the D word. I hope it goes well for you.
Yes.
An area of 1 million square kilometers in the US, 100 floor skyscrapers completely covering it, is equivalent to 1 trillion homes of 100 square meters, so 4 trillion people can live there. No extrapolate to 1,000 floors and all of the US and you get 400 trillion people, extrapolated to the entire earth and you get thousands of trillions, and in the Solar System there is no limit.
So, there, you can now be happy that overpopulation is a lie and myth.
Hoist by his own retard!
Actually while Obama was ‘sold’ as Black hes 50% white and 40% arab and 10% african heritage, according to the media.
Makes no difference to me but the marketing aspect is interesting.
YOU NOTICED.
YOU WERENT SUPPOSE TO.
The population increased by 50%.
200M to 300M while world population increased by ?
This is over 40 years.
Oldie,dear chap… what am I supposed to give into – myopic stilted thinking? For someone whom doesn’t get the very basics re limits to growth?
And/or am I whimperingly meant to defer to a superior paternal view that feminine value is only possible when interwoven with how sexy a chick looks, as in “Am I pretty, pretty?” But enuff of fantasy postings… eh?
(Back to systems for managing mass public control)
Politicians are rarely ideological, never have been – as they’re in it for the POWER – though a level of pragmatism and spin are required in equal measure. We’re in the age of political cross-dressing… so left looks right, right looks left – as it tries to contort itself into business-n-growth back as usual trough strong leadership circa Capitalism 4.0.
In part it explains why Gaddafi’s inner sanctum are figuring the luxury lifeboat lifestyle exit strategy with the UK/Euro/NATO people right now. So as we can get the key 2mbpd of sweet crude back on line PDQ. Oil trading now at $117pb makes it compellingly important to so so. The Saudi relief spring, well it ain’t happening folks… when the markets get the true sense of that, say hello to $165 or higher…
On that score nothing has changed since the days of Rome’s decline… where the charade continued as long as the average Italian Joe had ‘faith’ in the system and had easy access to food, booze, employment, copulation opportunities and coliseum based sporting distractions.
I see very little difference on that basis to what’s going on in the USA & UK right
now with the mass populace swallowing down the austerity measures.
If you haven’t figured the TRUE STORY by now, how in the West democratic governments have no alternative but to destroy their societies… then you and the countless other unemployed males are of absolutely no use to me.
Be seeing you…
(and to all the other CFN’ers have a wonderful weekend y’all)
I accepted your evidence of grief at your PERCEPTION that the country is dying.
Of course, truth is the USA is not dying; the USA is vibrant.
As Marlin noted the DOW is up. The unemployment rate is down to 8.8% with stronger small business hiring, month after month after month of strong private sector employment increases.
hypocrisy spelling google
WHERE Q WHEN WE NEED HIM.?
I did listen to much of it [for those interested its 2.3 minutes long].
Yes UK is in a depression.
“my personal situation has never been better. and for the times we live in i am unbelievably thankful.”
=========
Great to hear. It will only get better. There will be four more years of Obama followed by eight years of Hilary.
‘I wouldn’t underestimate Muslims..[yr too smart to].
India gave them Pakistan and Bangaladesh…
Muslims have killed 50,000? in their effort to take Kashmir.
you advocate censorship.
Obama lives up to all his promises!
Tom Hastings
http://hastingsnonviolence.blogspot.com/2011/04/obama-lives-up-to-all-his-promises.html
Hi O3, Speaking of April fools day. I just came back from a little ride around town. What I do is a put a super neodymium magnet in a Dunkin’ Donuts cup and stick it to the roof of the ol’ Tacoma. People, point,shout, flash there lights ands even run up to the truck. My son and I laugh our asses off. I even had a cop working a road job stop me, I knew the guy, He was totally punked.
How does the group feel about Cowboy Poetry? Can it survive without federal funding? Harry Reid was dismayed that this indigenous cultural enterprise might die if it wasn’t watered with the largesse of Unk Sam. But if so, how vital and indigenous could it be to begin with? Cutting off the funding will be the test of its authenticity. Continuing to water it and things like it will only leave us broke and create broke back monstrousities like Piss Christ. Defund the NEA and Planned Parenthood and free Tilicum. Real Art comes from the free unconscious. Artists need to eat? Of course – let them get private patrons a la the Renaissance if they can’t wash dishes to support themselves.
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!”
Brilliant…at least we see eye to eye for once.
Happy April Fools Day!
add to that:
as the nation goes up in smoke
a third war for sure
can we afford 4
lets ask kissinger
that old bore
obamas nobel prize
is a sight for sore eyes
ask him no questions
hell still tell ya lies
You agree then – that Whites are smarter than Blacks? I’ve always admitted that East Asians were a bit smarter than Whites. All on average of course. Thus you world view of equality is invalidated – yet you want to pretend that nothing has changed. Everything changes – starting with Affirmative Action. We’re not to blame for the failure of these dark skinned ones. Whoever said that they could succeed here? Not the Founding Fathers.
East Asians are a bit smarter on average than Whites. Whites are MUCH smarter than Blacks on average. Average White IQ is 100. Average Black IQ is 70. Average African American IQ is 85 – because of their White blood. Average East Asian IQ is about 105 or so.
Come on..its april fools..
as someone once noted:
8M’S BACK, THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD!
She’s a typical liberal “free thinker” – shut everyone else up and then have a ego stroke circle jerk with the rest of the “thinkers”.
the left is smarter than the right, stormtrooper..
go back to stormfront dammit!
You frisky devil you…
Dont you know a sense of humor is not allowed here!
how i miss dunks. in its no bs service and products, it put the evil empire of star bucks to shame. don’t care for the rocket fuel – too *bitter* (?*xenu*!) with a cup of dunks’ gentle stimulation in hand, one is ready for anything.
‘educated’
Uh….while I like and respect you, having gone thru college and having dropped out during the post grad stuff…
education may just be a form of indoctrination.
So Scientology, new age crap, est/forum are rightwing……
naaa…google ‘RICK ROSS CULT’
go there and read for awhile.
Hiya, asia.
Those are not right-wing but they’re not necessarily left wing, either. They’re just wacky. And everyone knows it.
Whereas the right wing cult of Christianity has billions of members, and you will be called nasty names and be told you’re going to hell if you question it.
I wasn’t saying all self-identified left wingers and/or liberals are better informed or more intelligent than every person on the right. I hope you didn’t read my post that way. I was speaking more of general tendencies.
Can’t argue with that fact. 😉
Vlad said: “Whites are MUCH smarter than Blacks on average. Average White IQ is 100. Average Black IQ is 70.”
===========
You repeat these statistics frequently. I have never seen you cite a source for them. Did you make them up? Did you read them on AmRen?
What kind of IQ test was used to determine these scores? Who was the population tested? What was the n?
Who developed the test? Might it be that cultural bias is at work here, if the scores you use are even accurate?
The right seems more savy than the left in some ways. The powerful right wingers aren’t afraid of making things up to further their cause in true Machivellian style. For instance, I think many of the top-level right wing politicians aren’t actually Christian. They just consider it a useful ploy for fooling the idiots (think Newt Gingrich). Similarily, on scientific topics like climate change, I’m guessing many of them know or suspect it to be true but deny it at the bidding of their corporate overlords.
I’m not sure why racial superiority always seems to boil down to comparison of Gauassian distributions of IQ in Vlad’s mind. Many different subsets of humanity have different IQs than each other. I’m not sure why this means that said group should then be looked down upon. Shall we compare IQs between blonde females and brown-haired men? If the blonde women score a lot lower on average, should they be sent back to Scandinavia? Even if racial IQ differences are real, the conclusions you decide to draw from this say more about your own racial biases than the difference itself. One could just as easily make the argument that racial groups with lower IQs on average need more intense schooling to make up the gap. Saying that instead these groups need to be ostracized or discriminated against is a non sequitur, really.
I meant “gaussian”. Man I wish this site had an edit button for posts. In fact, the blogging software here seems stuck at the tech level of around 2003.
I am really impressed with Obama’s re-election committee. Barack Hussein Obama should easily be re-elected thanks to Newt, T-Paw, Mitt, Mike, Sarah, Michelle, Jon, Rick, and Chris.
Nice one.
So you think they’re all really left-wing moles?
Thats hilarious.
Proof that “entertainment” doesn’t have to be expensive.
I don’t know about you, asia, but I like my doctor and my lawyer to be heavily indoctrinated with education and same for the engineers that build the bridges, elevators, cars, and buildings that I use. Maybe it is just me, but “home schooling” doesn’t seem the appropriate way to learn how to do open heart surgery or design a skyscraper that won’t fall down in a stiff breeze.
Old6969 is a fucking idiot and should be banned.
A news item from higher education….
Rutgers University paid “Snooki” (Jersey Shore nitwit) to come and speak at the university for $32,000. Her words to remember: “Study hard but party harder.”
For the commmencement address they are paying Toni Morrison (Nobel/Pulitzer price winner),
$30,000 — less than Snooki.
Oy vey! (No, I am not making this up, and it’s not an April Fools joke.)
Jen
He wants you love you ninny. He spells love, R-E-L-I-E-F. I think you two would make a great couple. But regardless of how it turns out, have his love childe. It’s your duty, the least you could do.
Millenials: Kunstler is misplacing hope here.
The millenials are children. If the “last, best” hope is taking all the problems of the world which adults cannot solve and dumping it on them, we are misplacing faith in something. Namely, faith in the ability and maturity of young people without wisdom or experience.
The process of socialization is a disempowering and dehumanizing process.
I say repeatedly on this forum that child abuse is the premier social problem of our age. The millennials are carrying that burden, plus the onerous yoke society is shifting to their shoulders. To expect some nascent creativity, nobility, honor, wisdom, without the necessary nourishment, by what example or training?
To think that Children are the ultimate “natural resource” is insane. We’ve spent their inheritance. Lets not kid ourselves- these kids are going into the most competitive labor market since the great depression… while swimming in a toxic environment of endocrine disruption and disinformation.
He is you son – the ultimate product of scientific materialism. Rationality carried too far become irrational, even a form of mental illness. Some schizophrenic children try to keep themselves plugged in with an extension cord. They consider machines better than people and they want to be one or imagine that they already are.
What the f”’ is a “Snooki” and why does the name rhyme with Kooki, the points probably moot, but it sounds like a fruit,Is it some sort of plum, since the name is quite dumb. If I sat thru her speach I would Pucky!
There’s nothing rational about thinking that “thousands of trillions” of people can live on this planet.
Just feel blessed that you don’t know.
“I say repeatedly on this forum that child abuse is the premier social problem of our age.”
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by this, but the Goths sold their children into slavery to the Romans for dog meat. So comparatively, we’re probably okay. Kids nowadays are a little more pampered, with their cells phones, iPods, video games, and youth soccer leagues.
Or were you implying something more abstract?
===========
Wisdom and experience are highly overrated. The “best and the brightest” and the “greatest generation” created the military-industrial-corporate complex that has bankrupted the country.
I have faith in the millenials to do a better job because they are not encumbered by “wisdom and experience” … they know their survival is on the line.
Rationality has its bounds. It knows when to say when, in terms of drawing conclusions. That’s why scientists are happy saying “We don’t know.” instead of “God did it.”
On the other hand, mysticism, faith, and other irrational systems of thought are simply out there flapping.
People are getting tired of Blacks – they’re pompous and overrated. At least with Snooks what you see is what you get. If Morrison wasn’t Black, would anyone care? Why care what Blacks think – they have nothing to say to us. They’re out for themselves – what’s the mystery? They have nothing to say to us except, “Racist” and “Gimme”.
And kids nowadays get to be serenaded daily by song lyrics like this:
Had a talk with a Nurse [RN] who also has 2 masters…we both agree that Healthcares goin down the tubes.
She blames the Filipino Nurses and the Indian docs!
I think yr indoctrinated into thinking that Healthcares provided in Hospitals.
Nurses say hospitals kill people.
acupuncture, yes. meds no.
thats my opinion, you dont have to agree.
“I think yr indoctrinated into thinking that Healthcares provided in Hospitals.”
Uh…okay…where do you go for your surgeries? The auto mechanic?
Speak for yourself, white man.
Nookie Cookie Snooki / Toni….
The schools in NJ, as is Snooki?
Snookis riche and famous…..JERSEY Shore.
Shes promoting the garden state!!! dig it baby.
Toni…I dont read her.do you?
Either way the school is wasting money.
“She blames the Filipino Nurses and the Indian docs!”
==========
Racist
‘ Blacks – they’re pompous and overrated’
If yr talking Black celebs…AND WHITE CELEBS ARENT?
Name a white Celeb that isnt ‘Pompous and Over rated’.
Did you know the Governators [strongly] rumored to have been a male hooker to men when he was younger?
Yes, in schools some Science is taught.
Dont know or care how much formal education you have…
Me I went to Uni….anthro, psych, education ,
counseling, soc classes = leftist bullshit.
Watch and think CFN peeps…
These clips were made some 3 years back…so he was wrong on Poland/Georgia, but the message is on target for me regarding Obama…i.e. the project is one of destroying the middle-classes (nicely on track), extreme austerity measures (nicely on track) and savage reductions in the standard of living (also nicely on track)…and right on re: North Korea, they were at the UK parliament by invite this last week….lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MouUJNG8f2k&
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-KJCMWcoms&
And Asoka you sure sound like a ‘paid’ for Trilateral Commission/CFR/Transatlantic Economic Council lackey to me?
All kowtowing to the puppet master extraordinairé Zbigniew Brzezinski
So learning about other cultures, how the mind/psyche works, and how to teach people is BS?
Geez, talk about close-minded.
I find all of that stuff pretty fascinating, but it depends on what you’re into, I guess. Even more interesting are the cutting edge hard sciences like astronomy and astrophysics.
I care about the level of formal education of my doctor or lawyer. I’d hope you care if your doctor went to medical school before you decide it is okay for him to remove your appendix or whatever. And you probably want a lawyer who went to law school to defend you in the murder trial, also.
Education actually isn’t overrated at all.
And the march of Globalism goes on….
Greg Palast once again com
You gotta hear that Obama is giving $4billion of US taxpayer monies to the Tokyo Electric to build nuc power plants in Tex.!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBew_4h84-0&feature=player_embedded
Tarpley? Meh. 9/11 Synthetic Terror is a pretty crappy book.
Thats just it Big T…
MOST SURGERIES ARE UNNECESSARY!
Folks are brainwashed into ‘all this stuff’.
there recently was a Dr Mohammed who did a 15? hour Liposuction on a woman..for 150K…
SHE DIED DURING THE PROCEDURE.
Read ‘The China Study’, John Robbins, even Andy weil.
The China Study (book) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThey criticize “low carb” diets (such as the Atkins diet), which include …. Dr. Wilfred Niels Arnold of the University of Kansas Medical Center, reviewing the book in Leonardo, praised its straightforwardness
I agree that “Hope and Change” was nothing but a campaign slogan, but the video is conspiratorial crap.
A global showdown with Russia and China? Nonsense.
To clarify, its not what was taught [facts]..
the creeps with the advanced degrees used class time to do ‘Leftspeak’.
Read: T. Sowell ‘Economic facts and fallacies’ and similar.
‘New Thought Police’ Bruce.
The classrooom becomes a stage for PC.
Well, yeah, plastic surgery is unnecessary. That’s why it is called “elective.” I don’t disagree with you there.
But if I get appendicitis, I’d want it removed before it bursts and not by someone who learned doctoring from the Time-Life Home Surgery series.
You are so predictable!
Thats her opinion and shes entitled to it.
Another nurse told me:
The Filipino Nurses Association has ruined the profession, filipinos are so unprofessional and lie so much.
One nurse confirmed what the other had said to me years ago.
And both nurses say they were fired from various jobs for ‘outshining the filipinos who [this is a quote]
COULDNT EVEN INSERT A FEEDING TUBE YET WERE LICENSED..and would do whatever it took to get ‘the good ones’ fired.
What’s your ideal society, asia? You want unlimited free markets like good old Milton Friedman, so that the corporate overlords can grow fat and rich at everyone else’s expense? Do you think socialism is the “road to serfdom” and that the ideal society practices Social Darwinism? Shall we have another Great Depression so the billionaries can get even richer? Maybe the minimum wage should be abolished and child labor laws repealed. Let’s go back to 1893. Things were so much better then, right?
Or could you perhaps concede that modern societies need some socialist infrastructure in order to function effectively? At least, I don’t see any countries out there in which I’d like to live that don’t have some degree of socialist governance. The best ones that I can think of actually have a lot of it. This is what most people want because the alternative means ceding power to unaccountable, amoral corporations.
If you don’t like government interferring with your life, why don’t you move someplace like Botswana or Somalia? I hear that the taxes are low and that the people are very “conservative.”
I just don’t understand what people like you are ultimately arguing for or what you think you want in a society. You make all these short, veiled posts about how you don’t like liberals and leftists and a whole rainbow of other races. And you express distain for the modern liberal arts education.
But I fail to see what alternatives you’re arguing for, aside from just being reflexively against certain aspects of modern society. You can’t turn back the clock. This isn’t 1950 or 1895, and, heck, I wouldn’t want it to be. Thinking that “life was better then” is a pretty sad and f*cked up way to live your life. You need to give up all hope of a “better past,” because even if it was better, there is no going back.
And as far as psychology/therapy, you seem like you could use some (no offense…there is absolutely nothing wrong with mental healthcare).
Obama also hasn’t sent NATO and US troops into Pakistan, like Tarpley says he would. There have been some drone strikes, but I don’t see Obama trying to split it into 3 countries.
And many fighters in Afghanistan are coming across the Pakistani border. So it makes sense to hit them along the border, that is, if the Afghanistan War makes much sense (which I don’t think it does…not in favor myself).
“Obama doesn’t even know where Pakistan is.”
Sorry, but this Tarpley guy is a freaking loon. Obama is perfectly well informed. Sometimes what he says has a kernel of truth (his Bush book is good) but in this interview, he’s simply out there flapping.
The way I see Obama is that he is actually more of a domestic policy wonk than someone who is primarily concerned with international affairs. Bush could have cared less about domestic affairs, being a mole for the international oil companies. Clinton seemed fairly balanced.
Obama was left with gigantic bags of crap from Bush in both areas, including massive yearly fiscal deficits domestically (after Clinton’s surpluses were torpedoed by Bush) and two foreign wars. It seems to me that in Obama’s ideal world, the US would not have been involved in either Iraq and Afghanistna at all or at least would have pulled out by now. But he’s stuck with the real politick of dealing with these two conflicts.
Obama’s going to attack Sudan and Burma? Me no think so….
Good comments to Asia, Turkle
I’m afraid a lot of people mouthing these words have no idea how destructive the policies of neoliberalism is and how, breaking with classical economics has led to the dissolution of the middle class here.
Without barriers to entry the jobs will fly out of here. Now the corporations are demanding lowering taxes as they hang job creation over Obama’s head. It’s blackmail and they did the same with Bush in 2008. They basically told Bush if he didn’t bail them out they would “Hooverize” him.
There are plenty of people describing that the loss of income to the middle class has been at a rate of 25% —the same rate of the top 2% has gained during the same time period.
That’s what bailouts to the global corps and banks with middle class tax payer money will do.
They should have let the risk takers fail, but they’re holding on to this distorted system for dear life.
Nothing like an awful status quo to hold onto, eh?
Oh, and don’t get me started with the no regulations folks!!! Just look at Japan Electric and General Electric, BP! Derivatives, Madoff. How many times do you need to see this play out?
—Do you get the frequency, (Govt.Bashers)?
Don’t knock the Time-Life series, Turkle. Having taken many of their courses, I’m now able to offer brain surgery for only $29.95, and if you order it now, for the same price I’ll throw in one open heart surgery of your choice free.
I try to keep an open mind. Just because most people here don’t seem to like globalism doesn’t mean it’s bad. But, for the life of me, I can’t think of any good reason for us to have it, and many reasons why we shouldn’t.
What we’re seeing now is forced globalism. Those Who Make Policy are deliberately pushing it on us at our expense.
I always thought we would end up a one-world society. But my thinking was that it would be “natural globalism”, as the world evolved into it on its own – by taking the best from each culture and being free to discard what wasn’t.
Since America used to offer the best choices, it would continue on its way, with it being involved in the betterment of the rest of the world. My own personal experience taught me that it’s ultimately easier to try to lift someone up to my level than it is to let them bring me down to theirs.
Unfortunately, Those Who Make Policy are obsessed with accumulating money and power, even at the cost of bringing down our way of life.
Before I leave, just want to share Zero Hedge: Chris Martenson Exclusive: New Photos Of Fukushima Reactors
[This is the first photo of the damaged reactor site at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility made available to the public in over a week. That means you, our readers, are the first public eyes anywhere to see this photo.]
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/chris-martenson-exclusive-new-photos-fukushima-reactors
Yes Marlin, Obama and NATO’s limited multibillion bombardment of Libyan military bases and air defense systems is just so equivalent to George Bush’s endless multitrillion dollar ‘liberation’ of Iraq.
Yes I’ve heard that was common with body builders of that timea and place. Our Society is corrupted from top to bottom and getting worse. And it didn’t hold him back, did it? Why not? Obviously many in the press don’t hold it against him. Imagine if Mark Rubio was so discovered!
Can’t remember which one, but one of the Princesses of England danced with a Kenyan who was a high level Mau Mau member – which means he had participated in cannibalism. Such a thing would have never happened in the 19th Century when the White Man knew his own worth. Once the barriers of race and nation are lower, a nation’s days are numbered.
“Our Society is corrupted from top to bottom and getting worse.”
Why don’t you move someplace else then if it is so bad here? We’d all love to see you go.
I agree. When I heard about the UN as a boy I thought it fine idea: a forum for the Nations to discuss issues of mutual interest. But it is far more than that. The Radical Right – like John Birch, saw the danger before anyone else. For Liberals to admit this would kill them, so they never will. Nor will they ever apologize about slandering Joe McCarthy. Nor about Whitaker Chambers. Communism infiltrated our Elite – the exact opposite of the way it is “supposed” to work. And what the question no one wants to ask: who funded Communism? John Birch knows.
Oh, Vlad is a John Bircher and Joe McCarthy lover. HUGE fucking surprise there.
“Nor will they ever apologize about slandering Joe McCarthy.”
McCarthy is a discredited human turd who slandered many innocent people…kind of like someone on this blog. I’m not surprised you like him.
No you’re leaving. Go to Nigeria and become a slave as a reparation for what Whites have done – if you care as much as you pretend to.
Nope, I’m staying right here. I like my country in all its diversity. You appear not to care for it so much, judging by your hateful rants. That’s why I suggested you go elsewhere and find someplace more suitable. Perhaps you can start your own nation of Vladistan where you will have complete control over the borders, which seems to be a reoccurring obsession with you.
Vlad, you seem all jammed up. I think you need to meet some chicks.
Here’s what you should put in your online dating profile.
Favorite Color: white
Favorite Hobby: wearing sheets and burning crosses
Favorite Books: anything by Hitler
Favorite Foods: white bread, mayonnaise
Favorite Topic of Discussion: the coming race war
Favorite Quote: “Go back to Africa!”
It is a big internet out there, and I’m certain there’s someone for you.
Good luck.
Liberalism is Hate – and it hates those who expose it – as Evil always does. Our current politics bear this out. Liberals want people silenced or thrown off this site. Governor Walker gets death threats and no one cares but the peaceful Tea Party is slandered as haters. You are sick Turk. Please get the help you need so desperately. Just because there are millions just as sick shouldn’t dissuade you or make you feel Ok. You’re not.
You seem mad. Are you mad?
“Liberals want people silenced or thrown off this site.”
Yeah, I think Obama is going to make that part of his 2012 campaign platform: Throw Vlad off of CFN!
Vladistan! I like the sound of that. You can be a steet sweeper or shoe shine boy -something useful like that. No Non-Whites allowed. Polygamy will be encouraged. We must begin to repopulate with high level White People. Why else are the Lumbees so prosperous and other Indians not? They interbred with high level Nordic Colonists from England – possibly the lost colony of Roanoake.
“Liberalism is Hate”
Then why aren’t you a Liberal? If it is all about the Evil and the Hate, then you should feel right at home.
Vlad, sometimes I wonder if all your posts here are just one epic troll.
How many Black friends do you have? .43? Mexicans? .32? Turk you are ridiculous. Liberalism is a White Cult that hates other Whites and eulogizes other races publicly and theoretically while avoiding them in person.
Dear Mr Kunstler, Could you please show Mr. Vlad to the virtual door- and then change the locks? You banned him from this blog once before, and i’m sure that I speak for many when I say that its time to ban him once again…and again…and again. Eventually he might slink away to the Stormfront website to be with his own kind.
“Wisdom and experience are highly overrated. The “best and the brightest” and the “greatest generation” created the military-industrial-corporate complex that has bankrupted the country.
I have faith in the millenials to do a better job because they are not encumbered by “wisdom and experience” … they know their survival is on the line.”
They didn’t create the military-industrial complex, they simply oversaw the pinnacle of a 6000 year old trendline. Horse-riding steppe peoples of western Asia melted with sedentary farming cultures of eastern Europe to create a military-economic-industrial package of unparalleled (horse)power. That culture went on to conquer the world based on their good geographic fortune, all the while assuming that they were somehow inherently better than the people they were conquering. There was no malice on their part; it was simply what anyone would have done in the same situation.
But they have left their children in a pickle because all they’ve ever known is growth. And growth is now over. Finding our way in a contractionary world will be the biggest task ever faced by the children of that culture, and they should expect very little help from the older generations, because, for the most part, our forebears simply can’t grasp what is happening. And even if they “get it” academically, they very rarely feel it.
I hope we are still as much a part of the natural world as you suggest we are. That our senses can still inform us of the magnitude of what is going down, and that we have the gumption to act accordingly. The models are developing, but it’s a big stretch from here to there.
On a related note, my wife and I were received really well by the local NRCS agents this morning, and I feel confident that our project will receive some federal funding next spring.
I can go to bed happy about that tonight.
Ned, just ignore Vlad when he’s on his period. And Turkle, you should know better.
i think anyones personal situation is more a matter of luck, randomness or timing with a little effort thrown in. it can obviously change on a dime and has almost nothing to do with who is prez. none have been appreciably different in 20 years. btw i dont think the country is dying either. i just dont think adding more poor people helps when we are not taking care of the ones we have already. as far as diversity is concerned, you can get too much of a good thing. jack daniels comes to mind. the example of south korea used above shows how a homogeneous society can pull together. we are so diverse all we can do is muddle along until we cant.
liberals are smarter. they are always telling you how smart they are. kind of like americans saying they are the greatest country in the world. we should say it less and prove it more.
I totally agree. About that and about 6699.
Someday I hope to read some of your thoughts about the nature of consciousness. As I understand it Neils Bohr asserted nothing exists until it is observed i.e. an electron is only a probability until observed. Currently I am reading “Hidden Reality”. I hope it gets into that subject but in any case I will have questions for you.
To me it seems an attempt to explain consciousness is for all practical purposes like explaining what you would call the paranormal.
I have forwarded several of your essays to friends.
Asoka, I find it hard to believe you can remain so rigid and continue pimping for Obama in light the revelations of his true colors. Mistreatment of Bradley, jumping ugly with whistle blowers, installing the wolves in the hen house, this latest sham in the desert.
“Libya has dislodged from the headlines a nuclear catastrophe in Japan, on top of a seismic one, that’s one of the epic dramas of the past half-century and what’s doubly weird is that the actual fighting in Libya is a series of tiny skirmishes. The muscle-bound adjectives and nouns used to describe the military engagements – if they even deserve that word – in press reports remind me of a Chihuahua trying to mount a Newfoundland. Ambition far outstrips reality, which is in this case is a nervous rabble motley insurgents – maybe 1,500 or so at most, posing for television crews and then fleeing back down the road to the next village (“strategic stronghold”) at the first whiff of trouble.
By my count, the mighty armies contending along the highway west of Benghazi would melt into the bleachers at a college baseball game. News stories suggest mobile warfare on the scale of the epic dramas of the Kursk salient in World War Two. But most of the action revolves around one tank. I’ve seen it in hundreds of video feeds. Like the tooth passed from witch to witch in Greek myththis tank performs many functions and to judge from the graffiti on its turret, it’s always the same vehicle. Maybe that’s why there’s endless bickering about whether the U.N. resolution covers the supply of arms and heavy equipment. The war’s PR men want to freshen up the visuals.”
Overpopulation Debunked
There is no overpopulation on earth. Population growth is rapidly declining, and will decline ever more because:
1) Man and Woman are atomized entities today, too conflictual (don’t know the effect of feminism, anyways), they are all so specific and different (as that is a value), so specific that finding the magic key between them is becoming impossible, also for so many other reasons, mass communications, oddball models of perfection impossible to achieve, porn, the desire to betray just for boredom, etc.
2) A man or woman has to first “fall in love” with the reciprocal: now that is already a long shot, not happening so much anymore, is out of fashion or out of the heads of people. Then the reciprocal has to fall in love with that specific person, and that is an even longer shot, usually a man likes a pretty woman he can’t get or vice versa. And then the affair, if it kicks in, has to last some time a few months, a few years, and has to try to overcome all kinds of conflicts, fights, imaginary differences, challenges of the two against each other on an infinite number of issues, etc.
3) They have to have sex, and that is another even longer shot, considering the man has to be “COCK-SURE”, not impotent or weak or whatever, the woman, not frigid or whatever, the sex has to “be good” according to other models that are impossible to achieve, etc. etc.
4) They have to be able to “conceive” a child, and it seems like that is getting harder for both man and woman, all kinds of complications.
5) Once born, raising the child is another long shot, by that time, a second child is rarely dsired or possible.
Now, aside from all the economic uncertainty and difficulties young couples have to face, the more educated the lady the more conflictual the relationships and the girls, especially in develping countries, the ones that still have some population growth, are getting educated faster and more than boys. You can see where that is going. And even if they manage to pull off 2 kids, that is just barely below replacement level. So there, there is no and won’t be any overpopulation.
Another thing I always hear is people saying kids are lazy, workers are lazy, this group of people is uncapable of doing this and so on, very easy to criticize and take down people, but all of this is not true, it is just an easy linearity in the minds of most people that have a deep desire to hate, find fault, and beat up others. If you give young people an even small spritual reward in saying they are doing a good job (especially in developing countries), most will do even more and better, but we are all hell bent in the west at breaking up everything and getting everyone against everyone else.
Another thing is how people concentrate so much on the wrong doings of politicians, on their corruption, I mean, who cares, it has always been like that and always will be, concentrate on the laws and ideas that you want to promote.
And the only laws and ideas that must be promoted today is Free Salaries to most, and public- private projects that will give pride to a nation, that will employ all people in ambitious projects like Rockets to Mars. Instead of always putting down everyone, atomizing, we need proud – ambitious project that young people can dedicate themselves to.
The market and economy will no longer generate enough jobs, they have to be explicity created, and those that don’t work have to get a free salary.
Overpopulation explained…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation
Why not dig into the detail Oldie-one before you espouse another post of verbiage*
*Carrying capacity and the coming asian hyper-cities need to be understood well me thinks, so as to get a sense of the true dilemma…
In fact Obama does get it, this is what he said when he was on the campaign trail in Oregon
“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Adding… “That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen. If India and China’s carbon footprint gets as big as ours, we’re gone.” (AFP)
And Michelle’s on message too with… “Before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls – our souls are broken in this nation. If we
can’t see ourselves in one another, we will never make those sacrifices. We need a different leadership because our souls are broken. We need to be inspired, to make the sacrifices that are needed to push us to a different place. The change Barack is talking about is hard, so don’t get too excited because Barack is going to demand that you too be different.”
Indeed you will US based CFN’ers, indeed you will…
Just proves what a happily long married couple that look right, talk right can achieve together, eh 6699?
Now must dash a sailing boat and crew awaits.
Toodle-pip
PS: @ lbendet, great links ma dear thanks for those…
yes the dow is up, i guess i’ve been remarking on that for a while. but it’s, hmm, 600, 700 points off its recent high? still, that’s hardly a correction.
and, gosh, marlin, thanks for including me in the same parentheses as lbendet! i am not worthy.
no, really, i am not, umm, worthy. remember my fearless prediction that oil would quickly retreat back into the low $90s? was i ever wrong. darn good thing i don’t put my money where my mouth is, i’d be holding cardboard sign at the end of an exit ramp, will bivariate for food.
okay, back to the grindstone. cheers, o.
———-
ps… don’t you think alexandra’s a financial heavyweight? my money’s on her.
Oh, it’s the old missing laptop trick again…
Haven’t we heard this story before?
Our favorite overlord, BP has lost a laptop with sensitive identity information on all claimants getting some of that $400 million in claims against the company over the Golf oil spill last year.
Question I keep asking when I hear about these breaches of security are why is one person allowed to move around with sensitive data in the first place? This information should never leave a central company server and of course should be continually backed up.
Any transnational who has respect for the material concerning identities of victims would not allow this to be done on a laptop to begin with.
from article:
[The employee lost the laptop on March 1 during “routine business travel,” said Thomas, who declined to elaborate on the circumstances.
“If it was stolen, we think it was a crime of opportunity, but it was initially lost,” Thomas said.
BP is offering to pay for claimants to have their credit monitored by Equifax, an Atlanta-based credit bureau.
Asked why nearly a month elapsed before BP notified residents about the missing laptop, Thomas said, “We were doing our due diligence and investigating.”
Read more: http://www.greenwichtime.com/business/article/Missing-BP-laptop-had-personal-data-of-claimants-1313268.php#ixzz1IMgX3RC7%5D
Alexandra, It’s my pleasure to lead readers of this blog to pertinent sites.
Orionoir. Don’t blame yourself for not being able to predict the manipulations on stocks and commodities.
You’ve got to be one of the Lords of the Universe for that–and none of us here are.
If it were a straightforward market, maybe one could make sense of it, but it’s not based on supply and demand anymore.
Wardoc,
your post as usual was interesting. I too found When Money Dies interesting, not to be confused with The Death of Money that was the out of print best seller in the City of London- but available on line as a free download.
I was interested to read about who felt the pinch when the hyperinflation took off. The worst affectd in the initial stages were the retired professional classes who relied upon pensions that became worthless, forcing the sale of grand pianos and anything else that had barter value in order to buy bread. The working class did not suffer as badly until quite late because their pay kept in line with inflation from week to week, for an impressive length of time.
Most chilling for me was the account of the visit to a farm. It had recently been looted by marauding mobs who had trashed anything that they couldn’t carry. They found a dairy cow still alive but with her udder slit, presumably to obtain milk. They had to put her out of her misery. The fact that these people had been through a world war, and knew the meaning of privation and self control, makes it all the more shocking. One can not help but wonder how the me now generation would respond to the same hardship, unprepared physically, educationally, morally or psychologically.
Here in the UK we have reached the tipping point. In real terms the standard of living fell for the first time since about 1980. The decline will be an exponential function and however one joins up the dots a baby born today will see a world without oil, even by the most optimistic estimates.
Cupid Stunt MD(Cantab)
That was a great clip. People in this country should re-listen to and re-read this guy.
A little bit more about public sector employees and their unions (of which I was one) Our local newspaper today had an article and a list of the dozens and dozens of State of Connecticut retirees, all politically connected, with PENSIONS, not pay but PENSIONS, of $200,000 per year or more. When you get down to $100,000 per year the number gets into the thousands. There is some kind of legal scam these govt. employees can pull during their final ‘high three’ years on the job to manipulate the pension formula and jack up their annuities to astronomical heights. Most of these fuc–rs are former dem. state legislators who were then given sinecures after they left office or lost an election. I would say nice work if you can get it, but these grifter aren’t working; they’re sitting on their asses at the Florida Keys collecting a big check on the backs, gratis, of non union, non govt. workers from Bridgeport to Putnam. So CFNers, before you truck off to Madison, WI or Columbus, Ohio to carry a sign, sing Joe Hill, and storm the ramparts for organized labor like you’re in the CIO in Detroit in 1938, check out the parasites living large off the backs of the rest of us, landscapers, machinists, carpenters not on the Govt. teat, not in govt. unions, but pony up and pay for everything.
In the same vein, yesterday heard that the Presidents of Fanny Mea and Freddy Mac, Govt. Mortgage giants, which have been bailed out in the past 3 years by the Fed to the tune of $350 BBBillion, have been given large raises. Yet they still bleed money. Must be for a job well done. Like Hemingway said, ‘Somebodys blowin somebody’.
Also, incredibly, in Investors Business Daily, they report that Credit Default Swaps, which nearly brought down the western world in 2008, are making a comeback! Incredible, but true!
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
We can’t be looking to the government to solve these problems because they have created the problem.
The only solution is to limit the size and scope of government and get as many rules as possible off the books.
The only way to restore decency to our country is to allow the smallest groups make decisions as locally as possible.
Whenever a group decides to make a decision, they could ask “what is the smallest group of people needed to make this decision?”
So, rather than a Federal Bank, a Regional bank is always better, and a community bank even better, and a bank at your street corner is the best.
Freedom is about choice. We should be able to choose where we want to live and who we interact with. If one state has too many rules, we should be able to easily move to another state.
However, when a rule becomes a national law (like “everyone must have health care or pay a fine”) then there is nowhere to escape that rule, and our freedom is lost.
Alexandra and Lbendet
Great posts.
The world will move on. – L
You bet the world will move on. It always does. The clock keeps ticking and days and years pass relentlessly.
Sure as we’re sitting here everything we know will either be ploughed away by glaciers or be completely forgotten under tree covered mounds.
I agree, there is an aspect of indoctrination. Our college campuses up here are bastions of intolerance. You either cleave to left/lib politically correct pieties or you keep your trap shut.
Competition and Productivity in the public sector
I was reading they want to layoff teachers too if they don’t perform. Now, aside from the fact that in education, performance is hard to measure, and exactly what education is “needed” or necessary to what future “labor market”, that is as usual as vague and impossible to define as it comes (intentionally, so you can always go back and say, oh, you got it all wrong, you should have studied this and that that became important overnight, and now you have to ga back to training or college for the new skill, hopefully paying for it all with some new debt), the real reason for all of this and union busting etc. is to introduce “productivity” and “competition” in the public sector also. What they really mean is they want to introduce more conflict points, more status challenges amongst people, fights betwen teachers and principles, more fights, more anxiety, more insecurity, more pain in general, more worrying if you taught the right stuff, if your donkey class can pull off the donkey test “demonstrating performance”, etc.
It seems to me that what is so desired and so wanted with all of this performance and competition and productivity myth, is to create as many conflict points in society as possible, as much insercurity as possible, as much “you have to deserve it” as possible, so people can constantly fight their status challenge, compare each other, conflict over everything. Constant competition is a constant measuring of items between each other, so they are defined by the measurement, so in essence the fight, the conflict, the challenge, the competition is the definition of all, is the reason to live even because it becomes what occupies your mind for all the hours you are awake.
But the truth is, we need more competition and productivity like a hole in the head. The system is and can very easily become hugely more efficient by very small changes if it is really desired. Granted that would imply kicking out of work a few million public workers tomorrow morning so they it isn’t done, but it is constantly suggested and implied. We already live in a system that generates huge wealth for free, that is constantly optimizing and automating and you name it productivity and competition in all productive endeavors automatically, by itself and no one can do nothing about it. No matter how small the amount of work being done worldwide today is serialized and accumulative, by the every essence of the economies of scale, information technology, internet, and many other interactions, every accumulation and serialization oflabor, as in more scientific and technolgical knowledge adds up and kills more and more future jobs.
So the real fight is between induced conflict points and challenges and competition in terms of people fighting each other and the effects of productivity and competition in terms of free wealth. Who will win. The free wealth will win because it is real, concrete, not some make believe fairy tale based on imagined superiority of some teachers against others and they being hosed by some arbitrary judgement. Anyone can judge anyone else according to anything and assign them better or worse, but this is the point, the Right Wing Thug ideology wants to create more judgement points, as many as possible in as many situations as possible so as to increase internal, personal conflicts as much as possible. These conflicts are not needed and serve to interdict, limit and decrease the wealth of the system, serve to cut down the free wealth the system generates. Maybe this is the real tug of war, between a huge amount of free wealth generated by technology and the need to kill that wealth with a huge amount of conflicts (both in the name of productivity and competition, go figure).
It reminds me of the myth of always needing new science and math graduates since 1950, they should have met the need by now, oh, I forgot, after 40 years old you are no longer capable of science and math (obviously all the experience is worth nothing, we have “innovation” that will make them all obsolete) that is why they are laid off from the private corporations.
We need Free Salaries, get over it. There is no way possible that real – productive labor will be available for millions of people in the future with a constant increase of wealth by the application of Technology and Science to all productive endeavors. This wealth will trickle through society anyways, there is no way of stopping it anyways, there is so much available, like all the food that people throw out everyday in the US and EU. It is funny how everyone tinks free salaries is some kind of insanity and sin, while almost everyone today who doesn’t work in agriculture or manufacturing is getting a free salary anyways, even though they don’t notice it, they work in optional sectors, sectors that have no real necessity at their base. Of course the organizations and capitalists and bosses of said fake work make it as stressful as possible, make it as hard as possible (so as to simulate “hard work”) exactly to cover up the fact that it is mostly fake work, just like financial companies and lawyers, hours on end, mostly fighting other people. Oh, i forgot, work is a proxy for power relationships.
Another mistake JHK and this blog makes is to confuse OIL with Technology. It is mostly technology that harnishes energy from oil, not some metaphysical property of oil which is just carbon chemistry, some carbon atoms that can be made in so many other ways. So OIL MAY RUN OUT, BUT TECHNOLOGY CAN’T RUN OUT, IT IS ALWAYS ADVANCING NO MATTER WHAT, AND CAN BE APPLIED IN SO MANY WAYS, IT IS JUST LIKE MONEY THAT CAN’T RUN OUT BECAUSE IT IS SIMPLY A PROXY FOR RELATIONSHIPS AND INTERACTIONS BETWEEN PEOPLE AND THESE CAN NEVER RUN OUT, SO NEW ENERGY IN TERMS OF NEW TECHNOLOGY CAN’T RUN OUT AND IS INFINITE, at least until man kills himself as you all wish he does through infinite conflict points, judgement points, competition in terms of fighting each other, etc.
Then Wars are the most non hypocritical thing there is, just fight and get rid of all of the fluff and excuses, fight and may the strongest man win.
There is virtually no relationship anymore between competition and productivity with the genreal economic well being of a society, this connection is make beleive and is false, is used to give the dominating class ever more power and advantages over the dominated class.
From:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/03/make-no-mistake.html
Competition and Productivity in the public sector
I was reading they want to layoff teachers too if they don’t perform. Now, aside from the fact that in education, performance is hard to measure, and exactly what education is “needed” or necessary to what future “labor market”, that is as usual as vague and impossible to define as it comes (intentionally, so you can always go back and say, oh, you got it all wrong, you should have studied this and that that became important overnight, and now you have to ga back to training or college for the new skill, hopefully paying for it all with some new debt), the real reason for all of this and union busting etc. is to introduce “productivity” and “competition” in the public sector also. What they really mean is they want to introduce more conflict points, more status challenges amongst people, fights between teachers and principles, more fights, more anxiety, more insecurity, more pain in general, more worrying if you taught the right stuff, if your donkey class can pull off the donkey test “demonstrating performance”, etc.
It seems to me that what is so desired and so wanted with all of this performance and competition and productivity myth, is to create as many conflict points in society as possible, as much insercurity as possible, as much “you have to deserve it” as possible, so people can constantly fight their status challenge, compare each other, conflict over everything. Constant competition is a constant measuring of items between each other, so they are defined by the measurement, so in essence the fight, the conflict, the challenge, the competition is the definition of all, is the reason to live even because it becomes what occupies your mind for all the hours you are awake.
But the truth is, we need more competition and productivity like a hole in the head. The system is and can very easily become hugely more efficient by very small changes if it is really desired. Granted that would imply kicking out of work a few million public workers tomorrow morning so it isn’t done, but it is constantly suggested and implied. We already live in a system that generates huge wealth for free, that is constantly optimizing and automating and you name it productivity and competition in all productive endeavors automatically, by itself and no one can do nothing about it. No matter how small the amount of work being done worldwide today is serialized and accumulative, by the every essence of the economies of scale, information technology, internet, and many other interactions, every accumulation and serialization of labor, as in more scientific and technological knowledge adds up and kills more and more future jobs.
So the real fight is between induced conflict points and challenges and competition in terms of people fighting each other and the effects of productivity and competition in terms of free wealth. Who will win. The free wealth will win because it is real, concrete, not some make believe fairy tale based on imagined superiority of some teachers against others and they being hosed by some arbitrary judgement. Anyone can judge anyone else according to anything and assign them better or worse, but this is the point, the Right Wing Thug ideology wants to create more judgement points, as many as possible in as many situations as possible so as to increase internal, personal conflicts as much as possible. These conflicts are not needed and serve to interdict, limit and decrease the wealth of the system, serve to cut down the free wealth the system generates. Maybe this is the real tug of war, between a huge amount of free wealth generated by technology and the need to kill that wealth with a huge amount of conflicts (both in the name of productivity and competition, go figure).
It reminds me of the myth of always needing new science and math graduates since 1950, they should have met the need by now, oh, I forgot, after 40 years old you are no longer capable of science and math (obviously all the experience is worth nothing, we have “innovation” that will make them all obsolete) that is why they are laid off from the private corporations.
We need Free Salaries, get over it. There is no way possible that real – productive labor will be available for millions of people in the future with a constant increase of wealth by the application of Technology and Science to all productive endeavors. This wealth will trickle through society anyways, there is no way of stopping it anyways, there is so much available, like all the food that people throw out everyday in the US and EU. It is funny how everyone thinks free salaries is some kind of insanity and sin, while almost everyone today who doesn’t work in agriculture or manufacturing is getting a free salary anyways, even though they don’t notice it, they work in optional sectors, sectors that have no real necessity at their base. Of course the organizations and capitalists and bosses of said fake work make it as stressful as possible, make it as hard as possible (so as to simulate “hard work”) exactly to cover up the fact that it is mostly fake work, just like financial companies and lawyers, hours on end, mostly fighting other people. Oh, I forgot, work is a proxy for power relationships.
Another mistake JHK and this blog makes is to confuse OIL with Technology. It is mostly technology that harnishes energy from oil, not some metaphysical property of oil which is just carbon chemistry, some carbon atoms that can be made in so many other ways. So OIL MAY RUN OUT, BUT TECHNOLOGY CAN’T RUN OUT, IT IS ALWAYS ADVANCING NO MATTER WHAT, AND CAN BE APPLIED IN SO MANY WAYS, IT IS JUST LIKE MONEY THAT CAN’T RUN OUT BECAUSE IT IS SIMPLY A PROXY FOR RELATIONSHIPS AND INTERACTIONS BETWEEN PEOPLE AND THESE CAN NEVER RUN OUT, SO NEW ENERGY IN TERMS OF NEW TECHNOLOGY CAN’T RUN OUT AND IS INFINITE, at least until man kills himself as you all wish he does through infinite conflict points, judgement points, competition in terms of fighting each other, etc.
The Wars are the most non hypocritical thing there is, just fight and get rid of all of the fluff and excuses, fight and may the strongest man win.
There is virtually no relationship anymore between competition and productivity with the general economic well being of a society, this connection is make believe and is false, is used to give the dominating class ever more power and advantages over the dominated class.
These are beautiful words:” freedom”, “choice” etc.
But the Regional bank, swallows the little bank around the corner, and then in turn gets swallowed by a huge banking conglomerate, which is “too big to fall”. So where is your choice?
And about “everyone must have health care or pay a fine”.
What choice do you have now?
I know a family, very decent hard working people, they did manage to give their child a good education, buy and pay off their condo. Then one day wife’s job was outsourced. They lost health coverage. They could not afford COBRA, and at the age 56 the wife could not find anything better than $7.35 per hour part-time job in K-Mart. Without any health coverage, of course. Shortly after that she found out that she has a treatable illness, because the medication was too expensive, they sold the condo, bought a mobile home, and spent the money on treatment. It had helped for as long as they had the money. After the money run out she stopped treatment. The illness came back. They sold their mobile home, live rent free in a basement of a relative of theirs, and about to spend their last penny. She needs a surgery and can’t afford it. The husband tries to find a job, but he is in his late 60’s and much younger people are unemployed.
You fight tooth and nail against health coverage for all. You just wish you don’t have to make the choice they are forced to make.
Yeah a friend sent it to me. Apparently McLuan was a person who clearly distinguished what he thought was going to happen from what he thought should happen. The former was his job. Then alot of people just assumed he thought all things technological were good – but not only did he never say that, he said quite the opposite. But he didn’t preach repentance – that wasn’t his job. He was just a commentator. In his personal life he was a devout Catholic.
Hey, check this article out about why an Ice Age is inevitable. I remember you were interested before. What a great way to humble those arrogant America hating Canucks – make them refugees fleeing the Fimbul Winter. But don’t worry – half of America will have to go south too. Is this why the American Elite seem to be shifting Southwards to Latin America? Bringing the criminals in here, so as to improve Mexico thereby?
http://www.helium.com/items/2125333-prepare-for-new-ice-age-now-says-top-paleoclimatologist
An Ice Age would be a fine thing: our Civilization is utterly toxic and needs to die. And the Ecosystem could sure use a hundred thousand year break from us. As a species, we are profoundly flawed. We can’t get much farther as we are now. And since we have rejected Eugenics, the only way to improve is via Natural Selection and Mutation. And a new Ice Age will insure the learning curve will be steep indeed. No guarantees of course, but it is possible that a higher kind of man might emerge out of the frozen wasteland of the coming aeon.
Why Ned, why? Are some of shots hitting a little too close to home? I just hold up the mirror – don’t hate me if you don’t like what you see. Oh and just in case you care: Free Speech is the backbone of real Liberalism. You don’t believe in it and you aren’t a real Liberal – just a liberal/communist.
Alexandra said:
Alexandra, the Trilateral and CFR don’t pay me nearly as well as the Bilderbergers, the Masons, and the Illuminati.
Announcement to CFN:
I will be gone for an indeterminate time …
(there, I have just made several people happy!)
… to work on another adobe brick construction project.
I have been reading and enjoying all of your comments.
Thanks for all your kind words.
I love all of you, even those who scroll past and those who disagree with me like: Vlad, Lewis, Cash, Hancock, Q, and many more. There is nothing that can prevent my heart from loving all of you.
Good luck!
Everywhere I go I hear Spanish.
No shit.
Coffeeshops. Hotels. Airports. Convention Centers. Bathrooms. Malls. Buses. Trains. The Street.
The free newspaper sticking to my foot is in Spanish.
Spanish TV. Spanish Subtitles. Press 2 for Spanish.
Spanish on T-shirts. Spanish on Calligraphic vinyl transfer graphics on the side of cars. Spanish in the bathroom stall graffiti.
Hispanics with babies. Round ones, tall ones. Spanish flies. Huge Mexican familias.
I attempt to communicate with the English-as-second language crowd. Huh? What?
Shifty eyes. Avoidance. No common ground. No communication. No communion of shared experience. Suspicion. Illegality. Cash payments. Save havens. Illicit networks. Safe houses. Being Extra careful. Fraud. Tax evasion.
Pink outfits for the girls, tiaras, ballerina dresses. Skull and Crossbones oversize T-shirts for the boys. Bringing everyone together to go to Catholic mass and then, afterward, to the food court to load up on cheap, fattening food. Obesity.
Work. Slavery. Indentured. Under the table. No benefits. Injury. Illness. Emergency room visits. No social security number. Pack them in. Put them to work.
Hot sun. Carcinogenic radiation. Back-breaking labor. Sprayed with dirt and grass seeds. Broken bones. Severed fingers. A six pack of beer and a cheap apartment. Wake up and run for your life.
Cold and wet. Polyurethane. Polyvinyl chloride. Phthalates. Benzene. Dioxins. Pesticides. HFCS. Cheap calories. Dodge the man. Visit the offender.
Wiretaps. Bank transfers. Safe in a parking lot. Pull the hat low. Don’t look too scared. Smoke a joint behind the fence. Take a dump in a paper cup and throw the urine bottle. Cut the lights. Dump the rest of the trash at the edge of a public park after dark. Watch for lights. Hide in the bushes.
Good white people. Bad white people. Federal agents. State agents. People behind the counter. Get robbed, fear the police. Prey. Form gangs. Arm yourself. Black market firepower.
Freeways, highways, but mostly byways. Squatting in a van with 5 other people. Bottled water, coagulated snot. Overland by bicycle.
Dirt paths, sleeping in bushes. Same clothes. Thrift stores. Waiting for the bus. Arrival, departure. Destitution. Spare change, a shopping cart, a mental illness. No money.
Praise Jesus. Bless the Virgin Mary. Worn out knees hitting the pavement. Eyes skyward. groping for food. Genuflection. Communion. A Church bench, a sanctuary, a rumor of work, of food. A hot shower, a shave.
The American dream.
Meanwhile, Mexico:
Cadillac Escalade. 5 guys with Uzis. Cops smile and wave. Military barracks everywhere. No jobs for young men. Land littered with trash. Anyone smart leaving, moving, on the take. Government nonexistent.
Hospitals crowding with sickness and obesity. Water quality declining. A sick dog vomits on the sidewalk. Trash blows across the scene. Military convoys rumble through the streets at nightfall. Shopowners pull metal shutters tight. Random gunfire.
Children wandering in the desert. Scorpions and snakes. The merciless sun beats down. The fishermen are bringing home nothing to their families. The farmers toil all day. Ride a donkey to the market. Beauty pageants. Best white dresses. Proud fathers. Coming of age. Coming back to a cinder-block shack. Rain pounding on sheet metal.
American Ex-pats. Starbucks. Walmart. iPhones. iPads. A factory opens. A factory closes. Disruption. Migration. Climate change. Toll booths for tourists. Bribes for Cops. Flies swarm meat on display. An old Mestizo woman pounds corn. Same as it always was.
There is a sense, in Mexico, that nothing will EVER change. The People with will or means will travel to el norte. A better life, there. Here? Nothing but chaos and degradation.
The inner city smells. The vastness and chaos of the grey sprawl. Inside, illegal immigrants, from Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador. Here, they hide. Beaten and raped by police. Killed by the military. Constant fear. Robbed on trains. Running for their lives.
Amoco, BP, Exxon, the American government, the state-oil monopoly. Cantarell, subsidy, extreme stratification. Monopolies, Mafias, Organized crime, gangs, coke and counterfeit goods heading north and south.
Its 100 degrees in the rainforest, and the refugees huddle in thatch-roofed huts, confident that the Mexican government troops would kill them all if given a chance.
Mexico is a f^#$king sh!tole, and its largely the fault of the US/Mexican government official policies. Immigration, unchecked, has sent millions of people out of Mexico that should have stayed to invest in their country.
Now, like a controlled intersection, Mexico is a place that no one cares about.
The particular policies of the USA that have made this situation: immigration. Globalization. The “War on Drugs”. The Council of Americas. Military interventionism. Support for the oligarchic polity of Mexico. And on, and on.
Who is responsible? The do-nothings and go-alongs that comprise the American electorate. The fake scamsters and graft conspiracies that steal public airwaves and impose capitalistic visions upon a credulous and childlike populace, medicated, mentally abused, and insane. Blow-dried vanity, The nonchalance of no consequence.
The frog-in-boiling-pot paradigm. It wasn’t noticeable as the numbers climbed. Now, the temperature exceeds perceptional thresholds. The trend is obvious but unremarkable. Threshold now reached- the trend is perilous. A two-speed transmission driving public consciousness. Dead- or alive.
“50 milliones hispanicos en el E.U. por una Censa 2010”
People knew what was happening and yet did nothing.
It is as if we, by virtue of inaction, decided, THIS is what we wanted. Our Left-Right, Obama/Clinton/Reagan/Bush kleptocracy, pulled all the levers for this situation. How many times were we told, “Immigration is GOOD.” Lets not take action now- we have all this TIME to debate and jaw over the issue…
Corporations.
Corporations stood to gain everything by immigration, ecology be damned. Culture be damned. Any sensible request by Americans on population control: ignored. Systematically. Elections controlled. Media controlled. Messages suppressed. Politicians corrupted. This is a total war against the American people, against their rights, against their laws, and against their constitution.
I sat at a conference and watched an Indian present the schematics for municipal wastewater treatment in Dehli.
He was apologetic, almost ashamed of the fact that, although they can get fresh water to only 60-70% of the inhabitants, they can only collect 30% in sewerage to waste treatment.
Old6969, are you listening?
Slums are expanding faster than public services can develop. This is a city that, by 2010 is expected to house 24 million people. Currently it “only” has somewhere around 11 million.
So, currently, it has 3.3 million people getting water from surface wells. 7.7 million discharge their wastewater and sewage to surfaces and waterways. The combination is disastrous. People dig wells, which allow contamination of groundwater. Contaminated groundwater requires expensive treatment. Economic and viable sources of water become scarce. Water shortages and rationing kick in. Growth rates of increases in quality of life indexes go flat.
India. An object lesson in Clusterfuckage. An object lesson in overpopulation.
Immigration should be the wedge issue of next elections. The wedge must be driven between the people and the Powers the Be: the Republicans and the Democrats both. They are, in fact, enemies of the constitution. They are shielded only by the rubric of democracy, long since disappeared from these shores: that their mandate is sacrosanct, implied and justified by the outcome of illegal, contrived, and illegitimate elections.
I’ve come to believe that no theory is more axiomatic than the frog/pot theory in terms of human perception. It explains everything, including:
1. Why the f*$k am I so fat?
2. Why do I feel like I am dying?
3. What limits this sense that one can “get ahead”?
4. Why isn’t anyone doing anything about:
-overpopulation
-climate change
-military adventures
-budget overruns
-financial irregulation
-executive compensation
-immigration law
-Obama’s mediocrity
-Our children’s future
-My out of shape body
-the leaking ceiling
etc….
What we will see is any plan or scheme that ignores, denigrates, or attempts to bluff this phenomena, will face a situation like the one in Dehli, where the problems created by population pressure outrace attempts to mitigate it.
It is always going to be seductively easier to do nothing now and let it slide.
Wow Bustin, You get the poet of the week award!!
Just got in –enjoyed a beautiful day in NY, but this post of yours makes checking out CFN when I get in well worth the effort.
——
I think Old is living on a different planet with different laws of physics. Nice imagination, though.
Thanks ‘bendit.
In other news, the Fukushima debacle is proving once and for all that politics, corporations, the man in the street, or even children (millennials) have no plan of action and no theory that connects the dots or completes the unit circle.
Recently a news item (http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/30/spent.nuclear.fuel/index.html) showed once again that important, even critical implications to posterity and the non-voting future, of our civilization, are simply rescheduled to be completed “at a later date, To be determined” ad infinitum as a de facto working policy- if not planned in advance. These are problems with no solution in sight because these externalities are “designed in” to the balance sheet.
What this country expects of millennials, in terms of 63,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, is outrageous. Never mind the chemical and biological weapon stores. These future debt-writing cretins are hoping and praying, spending their days in their air-conditioned offices playing with their executive desk toy sets having gambled that no one would ever demand they solve the problems they have created.
Great posts Bustin….
I too am amazed at the poor planning and ineffective safeguards were in place at Fukushima.
I look at nuclear power plants far differently than I did a month ago. My mom has a placard in her kitchen that reads, “Assumption is the mother of all foul-ups.” No kidding.
I read that Tokyo Electric is looking for “jumpers” to go into Fukushima and try to fix the problem. The pay when you come down to it, is $5,000 an hour.
Jen
BustinJ;
One hell of a post. I’d like to comment on it more later. (when I have the time) For now, though, the thought that too bad writing like that couldn’t be distributed to a larger audience than exists here on CFN. Maybe Atlantic? Harpers?
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
I personally think it’s too late and we are destined for a second Civil War or to else to be a Third World Nation. But in case I’m wrong, here’s where to start fighting back politically:
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer
That is not enough. Needs to be more like 100k + cuz you are gonna die a wicked horrible death. at least you could give the money to family or a worthy cause.
Fucking morons. Sorry about the language but this is serious shit.
I am reading from the bottom up.
thats the best post ever on this blog, including blog hero jhk.
Unbelievable. Can’t afford the insurance or the fine. wtf ?
is this the law now, or when will it start ?
thanks in advance.
Orwellian, indeed, LB!! The disinformation
campaign continues unabated in the MSM. First,
Obama’s Libya speech made it seem like we had
basically defeated Ghaddafi and all that was
left for the NATO forces was a kind of mop-up
operation.
The real truth?? Ghaddafi’s forces were left
80% intact after coordinated French and American
bombing and they’re not recapturing some of the
towns they lost just last week. Libya isn’t
even a real country … it’s several hundred
tribes, most of whom hate each other, and whose
only “aspiration” is to be able to afford dinner
and maybe have some sort of job. ECB, Fed, and
BoJ monetary inflation, IMHO, are responsible
for the FOOD INFLATION which I believe is creating
these riots.
The other bit of disinformation was the JOBS
REPORT. What a crock of horse hockey!! The
fine print on Bloomberg is that the vast
percentage of those new jobs were LOW-PAYING
jobs. They were NOT engineering jobs or
manufacturing jobs. Indeed, out of the 220,000
job total, less than 15% were in manufacturing.
Finally, what lies ahead for the real estate
market in the second half of this year is truly
horrendous. What then?? QE3??? QE2 has created
a massive wave of MALINVESTMENT … web start-ups
paying adults $12/hour (I’m really not kidding).
QE2 has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that
Krugman doesn’t know his ass from first base.
Just as Joe Stiglitz predicted (among many others)
we have commodity overshoot, malinvestment, and
only marginal benefits to the common man. The
rich are seeing their annual conpensation go
from linear ascent to hyperbolic ascent. The
aged are seeing Medicare costs rise and no COLA
on Social Security checks. Even the college
educated young are seeing opening engineering
salaries go from $100K in Y2K to $55K in 2011.
When you look at the numbers behind the numbers
it makes Obama look like the ultimate Manchurian
President.
E.
The other night, I saw an interesting show that tried to explain why there was a major die-off in Egypt ~4,000 years ago, that lasted for ~200 years.
The whole time, I’m screaming at my TV, that it was due to exponential overpopulation and clearcutting/burning up every last carbon source.
The show spend a great deal of time showing how hieroglyphs suggested a drought, the Nile running red with blood, and starving people eating their children. Multiple satellite-identified excavation sites showed a die-off at that same time ~4,000 years ago, where all the pottery was a certain dynasty, then *poof* nothing. Further data showed multiple locations all around the ME/NA had a sediment layer at that same time ~4,000 years ago, which was ~200 years thick, and consisted of nothing but blown sand/dolomite. They claimed it was the result of “climate change”, which modified the ocean conveyor belt, and lead to no more Nile flooding for ~200 years.
The clincher – this guy comes on and talks about how *all* of NA used to be a tropical rainforest ~6,000 years ago, but turned into desert due to “human interaction” (I’ve heard the same was true for the ME). I wonder how many *billion* ~4,000-year-old corpses could be found, if they excavated that behemoth Saharan desert…
It’s becoming more and more obvious that we’ll never learn from our history/mistakes.
“Vlad said: “Whites are MUCH smarter than Blacks on average. Average White IQ is 100. Average Black IQ is 70.”
You repeat these statistics frequently. I have never seen you cite a source for them.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
I find it quite distasteful myself, but the facts are (according to that book/study):
Asians average 120 IQ
Arabs/Indians average 110 IQ
Caucasians average 100 IQ
Blacks are down around 80-90 IQ…
Very racist – but I have to say, I worked with many Asians, Arabs and Indians, and they are *WAY* smarter than most Caucasians. I’d definitely recruit them over the white-bred morons here in the US. What does this say about the (retarded) *mentally impaired* – protected class?!?
I sound like Vlad. This is a very sad day, for me. :~(
“The unemployment rate is down to 8.8%”
You want to tell me how many of these *supposed* *new* jobs are minimum wage, part time, no benefits? Because:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Is not breaking it out that way…
“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.”
You’re not racist, are U? That SH! above is about as insane and rambling as 6969’s exponential pyramid scheme.
Your spew exemplifies why I continue to scroll past every last post of yours (only saw it due to my name search). I can already imagine what you have to say about *community organizers*…
Unfortunately, you’re getting bitch-slapped left and right *NOW* that you’re the *minority*. I seriously want to see you don your white cap and go anywhere outside your (soon to be seized) white-bread compound.
Another interesting item to read re: abrupt climate change —
http://www.scribd.com/doc/51769627/pentagon-climatechange
Cheers
“I read that Tokyo Electric is looking for “jumpers” to go into Fukushima and try to fix the problem. The pay when you come down to it, is $5,000 an hour.”
I think they have to spray something like tons of Pb-F6 onto it, and hope it stays liquid. Unfortunately, I think that’s not liquid, but gaseous, at atmospheric pressure/temps (info lacking LOL!)…
How about that salt corrosion… OMG!!! They used ocean water to douse it?!? I’m *DUMBFOUNDED*. It’s liek they had no idea about (nuclear) chemistry, *WHATSOEVER*.
“These are problems with no solution in sight because these externalities are “designed in” to the balance sheet.”
Don’t you mean, they are “designed out”, by *definition*, given cost-profit analysis? Externalities *NEVER* come into play – the very reason for all our problems. Not a single balance sheet is going to show external costs.
I got trolled!!!
I’ve just found-out where Asoka’s new projects based:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/20113308530388366.html#
And I’ll be amazed if another insanely fervent Obama ‘fan’ doesn’t start spreading the word of the messiah-man’s gospel once more in another week or two, right here again on CFN.
This after all is the way ‘today’s politics are geared to work both in the UK & USA, helps make those ‘employment’ figures look and feel all nice-n-rosy-cosy… services, services… our growth based futures secure if we focus on non-productive public/private service sectors…
Infiltration as a viable tactic’s a proven oldie, in the UK – green movement groups have been infiltrated by undercover police officers for years – so as to make arrests more productive and fruitful… oft on the way to key events.
So for maximum personal safety – just keep over and over repeating to yourselves in yer heads this key thought, WE LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY, WE LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY, WE LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY…
But for those that have reached the Beale like ‘I’m mad as hell stage’, perhaps its time to take real action (like in Wisconsin) and start seeking out large communal squares, with trees aka where natures present, to gather and promote a powerful communal non-party aligned voice and start acting like true grit Americans. But (a) don’t expect any mainstream media coverage…
And (b) this will be key, if you’re then met with the iron fist of police, military marshal law style brutality, then at least you’ll be finally fully clued-up as to the real state of your precious hand on left breast union…
Now some news for Vlad, the Sun’s finally kicking up a gear mate, so I wouldn’t dig out those snow-shoes just yet. Being brown might be of some benefit too, so get out into the daylight more…eh? And don’t forget the SP50…
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/pickoftheweek/Comp_2yr_sm.mov
If this is the start of the next big one (cycle wise) then in the next few years we could be looking at mega solar flare action, which will bring with it a whole roster of IT/Sat challenges…
And as to Libya… this tells it in ring-of-truth fashion for me:
http://www.zcommunications.org/noam-chomsky-on-libya-and-the-unfolding-crises-by-noam-chomsky
With the UN already badly tarnished, thanks to mixed messages regarding the MENA Muslim community, well as we’ve just seen in Afghanistan, there reaction to Anglo Imperialism acts of badly thought out indiscretion are oft harsh and end with outbursts of beheadings…
(BTW Vlad, is Terry Jones a relative of yours, seems to defo have the right skin tone and level of IQ to suggest he is?)
And finally Bustin, a superlative piece of beautifully crafted creative writing… a benchmark to be attained by others we hope?
Tchuss…
E.
Obmama may be a Manchurian candidate, but then, haven’t all of them been just that? I always wonder at what point they find out that they are not representing the people, but special interests only? Is it before they get elected or after they’ve been “briefed”!
——-
Corporations are more capable than Govt.
Just a little comment about the theory that govts can’t do anything and only the corporations know best. When all is said and done and disasters spin ever more perilously out of control, it’s the governments that then have to play the adult and step in.
That’s right, the Japanese govt. I read the other day is going to have to nationalize Tepco:
[..government may temporarily nationalize Tepco, which is confronting tens of billions of dollars in compensation to residents, fishermen and farmers who have been dislocated by the radiation disaster.
A government takeover would ensure the company could meet those obligations, analysts say. The complex operation to stabilize Fukushima’s six damaged and leaking reactors could drag on for weeks. This weekend, trace plutonium turned up on the site, raising more alarm. Tepco is the largest utility in Asia and provides power to a third of Japan’s population.]
About our jobs, actually they were pretty honest at least on MSNBC about the jobs being low-paying and not really filling the need for millions of out of work citizens. It’s all about making things look pretty enough to run Obama again. But don’t think those crazy right-wingers have any ideas to grow employment either.
Now for something completely different.
A high school friend of mine posted this on FB. It’s a copy of a letter written to Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsek concerning Monsato’s “Roundup Ready GMO crops.
Oh, the unintended consequences of screwing with nature. A new unknown pathogen has developed due to these crops which is causing miscarriage in cows and destroying soybean and corn crops:
http://farmandranchfreedom.org/gmo-miscarriages
One more thing…Sorry about the misspelling of Obama!
And we’ll miss you Alexandra!
Great distillation of: “Wha-happen’?”
(…and yes, I’ve been to a LOT of 3rd world clusterfucks, so I know whereof you speak.)
One of these days (and right soon IMHO), we’ll see a wall at the end of that road (dubbed: Hubris) down which we keep kicking the poor ol’ can. Ooo… I b’lieve I’m seeing it appearing out of the mists on the near horizon. I’m certain we’ll find the one small doorway in that wall that stretches endlessly to left and right at the end of our road. There will be a warm breeze wafting from the doorway, and the scent of flowers, and the sound of myriad birds. As we approach, the door will slam shut, followed by the sound of locks being turned and bolts being thrown.
That’s when we’ll see the large and mildewed sign nailed to that door. I think the sign will say (in 27 languages): “The Future. Entry to humans denied; you can’t fix stupid.”
(I sure don’t think it’ll say: “Welcome stupid humans; your poisonous technology fixed everything!”)
What do YOU think that sign will say?
It truly is horrifying.
When you think that the “solution” for storing spent fuel rods was: “Ummm, we’ll just stack ’em in a pool that has to be cooled constantly… and nothing will ever go wrong! In the meantime, we’ll pretend to pursue something… ummm… more permanent; yeah.”
Ya can’t trust the bastards whose only concern is profit.
“…And finally Bustin, a superlative piece of beautifully crafted creative writing… a benchmark to be attained by others we hope?” -Alexandra
Ha! You’ve got to be kidding me; I can barely get together a coherent paragraph! That’s okay though, we should all aspire to “doing better”, I s’pose.
Have fun, and Anchors Aweigh, Me Hearties!!
I always enjoyed your writing and looking past the content and into the formal structure your latest post has the feel of the Temptations “Ball of Confusion.” But that’s just me and either way, great writing.
Delving into the content and I am reminded of a conversation I had with a master plumber recently. In the last six months he has had twelve American born and bred “apprentices” up and quit on him. Apparently the problem stems from not much initial on-the-job plumbing training and a whole lot of back-breaking manual labor–think digging with a shovel. In other words, some dues need to get paid before the finer points of plumbing are imparted. But that’s not really it either: plumbing really is hard dirty work, even digging holes.
So why can’t he keep a “native” around to learn a potentially lucrative and honorable trade?
Why all the calls for banning certain posters recently? Is there a purification impulse on the march, a moral call to arms to make CLUSTERFUCK NATION more palatable and easy to digest for tepid and feeble stomachs?
Why not just pretend to scroll past a poster or five and then when accidentally catching a whiff or their posts take the time to write about how worthy of ignoring they are?
The logic of CFN–I love it!
Greetings,
Maybe it’s time to ditch democracy — such as it is. Democracy does not seem to be able to solve problems requiring sacrifice and decisive action.
The Spartans won against Athens.
Alexander The Great wasn”t a democrat.
Julius Caesar wasn’t either.
So far as I know Napoleon was not particularly democratic.
Plato is against it too.
Democracy and voting isn’t a principle practiced in science.
Democracy in our time only seems to cater to the
insatiable stomach of elites and mob alike.
“Shifty eyes. Avoidance. No common ground. No communication. No communion of shared experience. Suspicion. Illegality. Cash payments. Save havens. Illicit networks. Safe houses. Being Extra careful. Fraud. Tax evasion.”
I undersand. My little model of reality I have in the controlled environment of my own mind breaks down completely when compared to the reality on the streets where you have millions of people behaving in every way you wouldn’t imagine, making all kinds of mistakes and bad choices, behaving in everyway to contradict any model or pattern, even just to contradict your models and pattern for the fun of it. Or maybe there really are all kinds of resource scarcities on the ground and I am fooling myself in thinking it not so. OK, criticism accepted. I could be wrong on everything, no problem, But when I say free salaries it is a scandle, when the dominating fairy tale economic model repeats forever competition, skill sets, productivity and on and on, everyone accepts it, no one ever challenges it or even notices how ridiculous that global – macro model of reality is itself.
The abstraction is the enemy not the puny corruption of the liberal politicians, the macro model of economy that is passed as necessary conditions all the choices that are then made. For example, in the name of competition and productivity the right wing finds some local inequality or some local inefficiency to fight. The fight seems right, like the fireman getting a 100,000 dollars pensions, but in the process they subtly change the general laws and hose an entire class of workers, everyone agrees, it seems like the right thing to do, but they are waging and winning a full out class war by taking away more and more from the weaker classes. The local inequality may have been manufactured on purpose or may have emerged according to some past power relationship, but change just that local inequality, not all the laws, like killing collective bargaining and unions.
Words are really important, if instead of using the word “competition” they used the word of what it really means, “fight”, maybe people would start doubting that it is all for the good. Same with “productivity”, instead of saying more productivity, they said what it really means, and namely, make 1 worker do the job of as many as possible and fire all the others, maybe people would start doubting it. We need more “fights” and more people “fired” like a hole in the head.
Also the present right wing ideology wants ever more status challenges – conflict/confrontation points – judgement points and assignments of winners and losers in all possible situations, as much as possible. Everyday is judgement day, every little boss or power entity wants the freedom to punish and fire anyone else, they want to be able to express themselves, to judge, to exercise power, punish and hurt others as much as possible. But I could even accept this, ok, competition, winners and losers, inequality is ok, the winner is marter, luckier, works harder, whatever, play the game. But at least stop beating up the loser. Stop insisting that the loser has to keep on fighting a game he will never win by telling him “change your skill set”, compete with this and that, try to open your own business, etc. They want the loser to keep on fighting a losing war forever, they want the pleasure to see the loser constantly beat himself up and put constant effort in trying to win the game.
So then they believe in “equality”, in the sense that everyone must be a top notch winner ? All winners ? No way jose, it is just a cruel system of rubbing in the winner and loser mentality. Like when they say that Spain has to become like Germany, is it reasonable to expect Spain to create 2 car companies that can compete head on with BMW and Mercedes ? Clearly impossible (even for the US), but then they turn around and say, there are hundreds of new sectors where you can invent and compete and win the competition, the be your own boss game. Again, is this reasonable, and for how many people does it work ? It works for the best, but leave all the other losers alone, don’t keep on beating them up.
But other countries aside from the US don’t operate like this, they say, ok, play the game, if you lose, get lost. In the US you have to keep on fighting forever.
It reminds me of the engineer who worked (“hard”) in a company for years, did all the right things, and then one day, SURPIRSE he is laid off. The real subtext of this is all that you did was useless, was irrelevant, you finally woke up and realized that the only thing that counts is the power relationship, who can crush who, who is the winner and who is the loser. And the engineer remains bewildered on … pure cruelty, an idiotic system that operates mostly in the USA with their myth of competition, productivity, efficiency, etc.
Agreed, you can’t solve all the problems of everyone in all places and for all time. And especially, what one person sees as a solution the other sees as the problem, so equality is the solution for me, inequality and fights and “incentives” is the solution for the right wing.
I keep on thinking about these issues, I am like a crashed computer progam that has entered a flawed infinite loop. But what makes the communication important ?
The abstractions are the enemy, not the puny local situations. And everything is abstractions essentially, we are an abstraction driven machine, we communicate because we think there is another mind on the other side that feels and thinks. Why is this important, can we ever touch it ? Will we ever know ? It is an abstraction, denotation, we will never know, I may be just an Aritficial Intellligence machine responding, some secret experiment in a laboratory responding, would you know ? Would it change something, does it matter if the target of your communication is real or fake, if you can define these concepts anyways ?
Democracy subverted is an ugly sight indeed, but it’s not the problem of real democracy, it’s the problem of a system that no longer is democracy/or democracy so subverted that it no longer functions in an effective way.
I will never give into the idea that Democracy doesn’t work, but it’s not working here anymore. We need to recognize and address that.
Information is key.
Great Post–you’re absolutely correct.
I agree. Maybe too many people. Really.
I live in an area that has several micro climates and different ‘feelings’ and politics, all within a 20 mile range.
But when I think of the US it ‘feels’ like homogenous or something. Like JHK sees it. Like we are all supposed to think and be ‘alike.’ ( I DO have a hard time explaining things ). I am trying.
Also too many criminals at the top greedy end of things.
I don’t know anymore.
But it seems like it really is falling apart. or maybe it’s me. or more likely both.
It scares me to live in CA where I was born and have been my whole life. It is becoming more and more violent. Gangs and disrespect. And the people drive like well really bad. rude. in a hurry all the time. and aggressive. They will run you right off the road and some would laugh while doing it.
Sounds like riding a bicycle in many rural (and some suburban) areas in the U.S.
Families, for many reasons, are broken in the U.S. It is not surprising to see the emergence of so many gangs. They become a violent, surrogate family for their members.
At least on the surface, America looks remarkably uniform. Probably the effect of commercial and residential development, every town has at least one set of, uh, “golden” arches, and so forth.
I think you would find the violence in many urban settings out of CA as well. The countryside is reasonably quiet but there can be issues with violence there as well.
Cheers
Oh, yeah. That’s a story I’ve heard before (4/3/ 10:51 am).
After I was gone from home, my folks took care of a little fellow who’s parents both worked. They lived across the road. They pretty much raised him. Well, he’s an adult now, with kids of his own.
He runs a pretty successful machine shop down in Vancouver, WA. Small operation. Three guys and him. For a few years he kept trying to hire the local white boys. It was a constant round of monday flu, late to work, bailing early, jail time, etc.. And, not doing much work when they were there.
So, he hired a Mexican. And, another. And another. On time, every day. All worked hard. One of the fellows showed such promise and initiative that he paid for some advanced training for the guy.
It’s a story I hear again and again. Self entitled white boys who would rather live off their girl friends and stay at home and play with the latest electronic toy. Party out with their buddies. Sweeping generalization? (As one of my teachers used to say.) Yeah, but you see and hear so much of this.
I know the answer but I ain’t tellin’ !
just kidding.
I hear you and I think there is a definite lack of empathy in our country.
And a definite lack of true caring. Everyone needs a little help now and then. Some more than others.
It is a strange world and place we live in.
Life isn’t fair. It is harder for some than others.
Hey one of my favorite singers Don Henley of The Eagles said ‘kick ’em when the’re up kick ’em when the’re down.’ talking about that being what people do to each other. not saying to DO that. just that that is how it is. sick as it is.
IT’S A SAD WORLD. by R.E.M. youtube.
Oh yeah, and when you said “like another hole in the head” i thought, You of all don’t need any more of those ! haha. (only cuz of what others’ say about you). hell i don’t anyone know who doesn’t have holes in their heads. some have more than others.
i like it that you speak your mind. and you obviously care and are a thinker. that’s a good thing.
i don’t read all the posts but there are some really rude posters. that kinda bothers me but it is all entertaining. and thought provoking.
Teachers. Reminds me. I had a old fellow in the store (bookstore) yesterday who was a teacher. He asked how it was going (business) and I told him not all that well and that I’d probably close it out toward the end of summer. He wondered if it was the economy or that people just didn’t read much, anymore.
I told him it was a little of both. I don’t know what grade level he taught. I had a feeling it was Junior or Senior High. He observed that kids don’t read much anymore.
He told me that he has these little brass bookmark clips and if he “catches” a student reading, they are rewarded with one. It was just so … pathetic. Sad. But maybe a little gesture will make a difference.
I don’t get many kids in my store. Usually, they’re here under duress and I’m not interested in subjecting them to be somewhere they don’t want to be. They moan about the lack of selection as compared to, say, a Barnes & Noble. They want the latest “Whimpy Kid” book. Now, I’ve always been of the opinion that I really don’t care what they read, as long as they read. It’s a habit that may expand.
And, every once in awhile, I get the youngster who wonders if I have anything illustrated by Edward Gorey (!) or who is plowing through everything ever written by Jules Verne(!). But, they are rare. And for the most part, odd little ducks.
I think Corporations could and probably should do more, and that they are more powerful. Have way more money. But that it falls on the govt. to clean up the damage that the corporations do.
And also natural disasters. This thing in Japan is a combination of both. Natural disaster, AND serious errors at the Nuclear Plant.
But even when a Corporation is totally at fault the Govt. (the taxpayers) take the hit.
hey I got that right.
That’s what I see.
That’s what I thought !
Hey I want to be First on Monday.
Can everyone wait for me to get up and remember to do this !
Thanks in advance.
I think some of the guys are hilarious the way they talk about eachother. I think it was Tripp not sure who said about Vlad, ‘just ignore him when he’s on his period’.
cracked me up. I might have the posters wrong, but think I got ’em right.
Well in a perfect world people would fall in love, or at least like eachother to have sex, and create a baby.
But it’s being done all the time without either of those two things happening. People who don’t even know eachother, get drunk, or not, have sex, make babies. Forget about eachother. Especially in other countries. Not to mention rape of women in some countries. Makes me sick.
So that theory doesn’t pan out.
How much Free Salary would I get ? and where the heck is it ?
I think their ARE too many people. I think there is overpopulation.
Mont and Jackie,
I think there’s another aspect to gang life which comes out of the basic psychology of young men. Many have a powerful need to belong, to band together, to be a part of something bigger than them. Mont, you mention surrogate family and that’s one facet of it. I think you see it manifested to some extent in team sports, you also see it in young guys joining the military, or in the Muslim world by joining a jihadist group or al Qaeda.
A young man wants status, the good regard of his peers. Some want it so badly as to sacrifice their own lives ie in wartime, suicide bombings, WW2 kamikazi attacks, suicide bayonet charges.
So maybe in the absence of another alternative a young guy falls in with a street gang. The young fella sees other benefits. Instead of taking shit from a boss in a workshop or office out on the street the gangbanger sees himself as a shotcaller. He carries a gun, he intimidates, he instills fear, gets respect from his peers and adversaries, he gets chicks, money. Maybe to a lot of young guys it beats the day to day slugging and drudgery of a regular job even if it costs him his life.
Lewis I think the anti intellectualism you’re describing is to some extent a cultural value. In some cultures intellectuals are valued. In ours if a kid reads he’s laughed at as a “nerd”. In the culture I grew up in schoolwork and reading was seen as girl stuff. A boy was supposed to be physically restless and energetic and unable to sit still in school or with a book. If a young guy was seen as bookish or got high marks in school he was deficient in the manhood department and found himself the object of derision and the despair of his parents. The Chinese see it differently. I risk overgeneralizing but if you’re interested in a Chinese chick you better show up with some academic/business/professional credentials. Losers, slackers not wanted. Blue collar workers don’t cut the mustard. Drunks/druggies/tormented artistes keep walking.
A complete lie, Xenu. Neither the Wiki Link you posted as an alleged authority nor “The Bell Curve” say anything about Asians having IQ’s of 120 or Indians and Arabs IQ’s of 110. How do people like you live with yourselves?
For the record, Indians and Arabs average IQ’s of 85-90. India has a huge population with alot of ancient ethnic diversity -White genes included. So yes, it does produce some very smart people. That doesn’t change the average. Can you keep these two ideas in your head at the same time? They don’t contradict I assure you.
This is Mr Kunstler’s site and he can do what he wants about banning but IMO the best cure for bad ideas is sunlight and the fresh open air of free and unfettered debate. If somebody is annoying just scroll past.
There’s some truth to that Luke. A large poll done several years ago showed a similar trend – Mexicans don’t find manual labor beneath them but many young Whites do. And worst of all were the Blacks. Now apply the same principle – in generalization there is much truth. Don’t hold back out of positive pre-judgement or liberal prejudice. Be fair.
A Mexican Caveat: often it’s the second generation that becomes the Monsters. And a large number of young Mexicans are on welfare – wont work or can’t find it. They turn to crime as the crime stats show – as does a nodding relationship with the news and reality of life.
We were never supposed to be a “Democracy”. The Founding Fathers hated it – they wanted a Goverment of Laws, not men. A Republic in other words. Yes that includes some democracy to be sure – but only for the qualified. They would be aghast at letting every idiot and his brother vote. After all, the Founders were in the classical tradition which quite reasonably teaches that democracy in itself is just mob rule. We see that playing out more and more. No one can do what’s right or else they wont get elected.
Consent of the governed is important surely. And some old New England towns have kept the direct meeting hall Democracy from their beginings. But even there, there is hierarchy. My old Professor lived in one such town – about 13,000 people. Out of all that, only a couple of hundred people participated regularly. So even if you don’t exclude people, they will exclude themselves. The principle of Elitism stands. The question is not one of Elitism or no Elitism, but rather of having a good Elite. The current Anglo-American Elite will go down as the worst in Western History for the complete betrayal of their own People.
And of course, “the mob” is almost always controlled or at least manipulated by a secret Elite who in time will come forward to save the day. If not, then the struggle by the mob for survival will result in a new Elite coming forward from among their own ranks. Thus, the Principle of Elitism stands. How could it not when people differ so markedly in IQ, ability, and willingness to serve? And yes, by Birth. We mustn’t forget the Goddess Fortune.
In a sense I can’t blame them – flipping burgers at McDonalds is no job for a man. The Mafia guys felt the same – ordinary people were dopes, sheep waiting to be fleeced by their employerers, the goverment and why not them too? Our Society will justify itself when it returns to the dignity of the small farm and tradesman – for as many people who are capable of it. Being an Employee is just being a part time slave in many cases. A few love what they do, and a few of those even get paid well for it. That doesn’t justify the psychological pain of the many.
Vlad, you are a well-known racist on this blog, so I don’t like to agree with you, but I do as far as this post of yours is concerned (how’s that for a left-hand compliment?). Right is right. Perhaps I am prejudiced myself as far as intelligence is concerned – but not because of groupings such as race. I’m prejudiced this way because I’ve always thought that many people shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Not because of an IQ number, but because of being stupid in the lack of understanding the world around them.
Any ‘Drive By Trucker’ fans out there in CFNation?
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
To end the CFN week on a sad note, Marlin Firearms Company closed its N. Haven plant friday after 141 years in Connecticut. The firm was founded in 1870 by John Mahlon Marlin, a native of Cheshire, CT, and was for 100 years located on Willow Street in New Haven. Around 1970 they moved to their new plant in N. Haven.
Winchester, established in 1860 also in New Haven, closed for good in 2006. So with Marlin gone too this ends 150 years of manufacturing the best guns in the world, the classic lever action repeater.
Remington, the new owner of the Marlin Trademark, will continue to mfg. some Marlin models, but in Kentucky and N. Carolina.
Marlin asks, rhetorically, ‘now that Winchester and Marlin are defunct, what’s made in New Haven now?”
Marlin answers, rhetorically, “crystal meth and tattoos”.
And that’s about the size of it.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
I’ve read through all the posts since my last one on Thursday. You folks have been busy. Lots of very good posts, too!
I’ve got to reply to a few without linking, ’cause I’m short of time.
First, BustinJ –
FANTASTIC post about overpopulation and immigration. And your post was doubly good – triply good – because you stand out on this blog as generally, a very logical thinker. And because you have a generally liberal approach to education, science, Atheism – when you detach from the “liberal herd” – it has more meaning.
Big business and the Chamber of Commerce are responsible for our immigration rates. They get moral cover from the Green/Sierra Club/liberal elites. That moral cover has to stop, soon – or we pass a tipping point.
We may already be past that tipping point – where the US population gets so large that it has to crash.
Call me a screaming optimist. I think we have 5 years left to stop the immigration and have some hope of a soft landing. If I’m wrong – we’re already done for. And I’m going to go down fighting for my Country and my species to the bitter end.
That’s why this blog has so much potential. *Peak everything* makes the immigration conversation necessary.
The open nature of this forum means that the white racists (probably Vlad) and the brown racists (definitely Asoka) have to contend with each other and the rest of us.
As Cash just said – the best disinfectant for bad ideas is fresh air. (paraphrased)
Olde6699-
I don’t know why people keep “hatin’ on you,” on CFN. IMO, most of your posts are a little bit long and repetitive. And you do seem to set records for double posting.
But, you put work and thought into some of your posts.
And you don’t mind changing your mind and/or letting your ideas evolve when you are challenged. These are noble characteristics – that the world could use in its human populations.
And you are right – the Germans have figured out some things about production and efficiency that the Spanish, Greek, or whomever will NEVER be able to compete with.
Just be aware, olde69, that some of your ideas are already being tested. AFDC and welfare are “free salaries” to some extent. And many of the planet’s largest cities could easily be considered to be “trial versions” of your densely packed 100 story skyscrapers – just horizontal, not vertical.
Keep posting and don’t get banned, old.
Just post shorter posts, why don’t you?
And try not to double post.
Ixnei –
You said something, around Wednesday or Thursday, that I wanted to respond to – that you “get sick and tired of talking about race and immigration all the time on CFN.” rough paraphrase
I wanted to ask why you considered the two topics to be linked. They are most definitely, two completely different things that we in the US are linking to our peril!
But, ixnei, you seem to have changed your mind. Or else you are trying to be a parody of someone. It almost looked like, in one of your last posts, that you were trying to out-Vlad, Vlad.
So what gives?
Hey Vlad-Uncle Ned here again. I called for your banishment from CFN, because I was frustrated by what appeared to be the relentless transformation of Clusterfuck Nation into Vlad Krandz Nation- all race war, all the time. I think of CFN as a forum for discussing peak oil, resource depletion,and the plundering of American wealth by the Wall Street Griftopians. It had nothing to do with wanting to suppress your point of view. You are obviously an intelligent, thoughtful man. I enjoy your posts when you’re not “on your period” (as Tripp puts it). I just wish there weren’t so many of them. And when you do post, I wish they weren’t so relentlessly racist.
White boys won’t work
White men won’t work
Native born whites and blacks won’t work
This has been said at least 10 different ways this week. And there’s some truth to it.
We have an admitted anti-intellectual bias in this country. Which makes it amazing that we also have a bias against honest labor, as well.
Population pressures, education levels, the global goddamn economy, broken trade unions – the list goes on – have put some of the final nails in the coffin of the ability of the US middle class to stay middle class by honest physical labor.
So we’ve allowed 50 million immigrants to enter in the past DECADE, but we haven’t fixed the problem.
I’ll guarantee that the children and/or grandchildren of all those immigrants will be just as disdainful of honest labor – as are the native born whites and blacks today.
What are we going to do with a country of 400,000,000 people who don’t want to work?
I know – more immigration!
Yeah – this is bound to work out really well in the long run – NOT.
Well how does one decide who gets to vote? Take the Army: they used to have a test for general mental ability (commonsense) – it was kind of a rough and ready IQ test. Maybe Marlin or someone can give us the name. No longer btw – standards have been relaxed to allow more minorities in.
The Founding Fathers demanded that someone owne property in order to vote – so that eliminated the impoverished who might want some kind of revolution. Also presumeably they would have some kind of education too – most people who had money could read. New England certainly had a very high literacy rate. Now of course, this system might leave alot of good people out….I’d have three levels of citizenship. The first, local and for everyone, the second, state and by testing of knowledge and an ability to write an essay defending a point of view, and the third, federa – based on service – either the military or something domestic – like bearing lots of White Children.
I think you’re a racist too – all normal people prefer their own people to others but only Whites get slammed for it. That is all that racist means in theory. The hate comes when one’s people are being oppressed. In any case, Racist has come to mean White and only White. And anti-racist has therefore come to mean Anti-White. That is the logic of our destruction – why to be a “good’ person you have to be against your own race. Pretty good trick, huh? Bernays would be very proud of his sons.
Race is right up there with Energy, Food, and Water as an important issue. In our Bible, “The Long Emergency”, Mr Kunstler himself says there are going to be race problems during the TLE. He specifically says Blacks are going to be a problem – and that their BS is not going to be tolerated. Face it: they’ve been treated with kid gloves for generations now – even when they burned down their own neighborhoods. Well not for very much longer.
I have mentioned this fact many times -even quoting chapter and verse. I would again but I don’t know where my copy is. It’s about two and a half pages almost at the end of the book. No one ever responds to this – never. It’s real but it’s outside the Liberal Worldview so it falls off the face of the Flat Earth.
You are well read, Vlad.
‘Cause I’m thinking “who the hell is Bernays?”
http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1999Q2/bernays.html
PR manipulation is a big part of our problem, I will agree. (I’m talking about ALL the souls who come under the spell of media and PR here, NOT just the white souls.
As American Style Free Market Capitalism goes more and more global – PR manipulation will become a bigger part of everyone’s problem.
But I never had a name to put with it, before.
YUM brands – including Kentucky Fried Chicken – is up 50% on the year. Bernays style PR must work in China, too.
Suddenly, I have a fierce urge for fried chicken for supper – go figure!
I think some sort of competency test should be the main qualifier for voting rights. Maybe a civics section – after all, if someone votes, they ought to know how their government works, maybe a basic life skills test – if a citizen votes, it would be nice if they know enough about life to make decisions that affect others. You know, basic arithmetic tests, knowledge of English, ability to communicate their thoughts, etc.
The whole point is, I’d like a knowledgeable voter base able to make informed decisions. They don’t have to agree with me, but I don’t want to feel they don’t know what the hell they’re doing, like the way it is now.
What’s this about the second generation? Not true with my experience. My next-door neighbor is latino, a college grad. and basically super-mom. She does more as a parent volunteer than anyone I know.
The neighbor 12 houses down…latino. Totally great soccer mom (with accompanying huge SUV). Her daughter is the same as my son–a senior. She’s going to a good college to accomplish great things.
On Saturday, the high school had its annual art show. (My daughter had 5 paintings displayed!) I have been part of the whole planning/executing process for several years. The two latino moms on the committee take their assignments and run…and then come back and ask for more jobs.
Definately go-getters.
SJmom
You illustrate the weakness of purely anecdotal evidence. These women aren’t the norm. I know it’s hard to believe but there’s a whole world out there that’s outside your daily experience. You have to look for it – until you do, your viewpoint will be based on merely personal, circumstancial facts.
Think of the Requirement to buy a woman a diamond ring – how outrageous. Thank Bernays. No rational disucussion will disuade the weaker vessels about this – they enjoy their programming. It suits them.
In the science fiction of Larry Niven, the Kzinti race of intelligent Lions has only one fully conscious gender. The Females are only semi. Sometimes that seems a desirable scenario – no wait, that’s what we already have. The vessels only SEEM to be rational.
Hi Marlin, sorry to hear about the demise of Marlin Firearms. Was this a sudden thing or did everybody see it coming? I just got a Cabela’s flyer and they have a Henry lever action on sale. It is only a .22 cal and is probably made in the PRC as far as I know. Maybe ,Maybe not. I don’t have a clue. I do know S&W are still made down the road in Springfield, Ma. So at least we can still make sumthin’ in this once proud country of ours.
White boys do work!! Today we cut wood, split wood, stacked wood,repeat, repeat, repeat. It gets cold up here in New England. I like it warm in the house. I have never paid for wood. People give it away! Maybe when the SHTF it will change . Right now I can get all I want for free labor. My friends go to the gym. I cut wood instead!
Writing in from peckerwood flyover country I can tell that you have no trouble finding people to mow your yard for good prices, paint a house, or do roofing. This horseshit that these are jobs Americans ‘won’t do’ is just that. I don’t know what kind of yuppie dunbfucks you people run into/ are, and I don’t want to know. We ran this country for close to 200 hundred years without Mexican stoop labor. I know this won’t do any good, this blog being what it is, but I’ll say it once and quit.
Caleb Temple
Think of the Requirement to buy a woman a diamond ring – how outrageous.
-krandz-
Yeah, concur – diamond rings are a pretty goofy idea to “bind up?” an engagement contract. Mainly because diamonds aren’t usually found in the US, except for one spot in Arkansas – Crater of Diamonds State Park.
But, I suspect that the male giving a valuable gift to the female prior to “contracted mating??,” AKA marriage, goes back to way before the caveman Ugh and his lovely wife Ughette.
I don’t know if it’s genetics or reincarnation, but I feel very closely connected to my caveman ancestors, sometimes.
So, unable to find a mastodon to give her – I tried to give my future wife a side of prime beef as an engagement gift.
She was pleased and enjoyed the beef.
But she still held out for a diamond ring, too.
And she got it. And I’ve never really regretted giving it.
Or, maybe, having a diamond is a sort of SHTF insurance for a couple. You can always swap it for an egg or bacon, or something.
============
My point, if I have one – is that Mr. Barnays and his PR can do some amazing manipulations of desires. But some version of the desire has to be inside the person(s) in the first place.
As a random example, no amount of PR and marketing can make me want to go roll repeatedly in poison ivy.
Understand, RT – I enjoy felling trees, bucking trees, splitting wood and all of that, too. My sons, now both in their mid and late 20’s enjoy it too.
They enjoy it because I modeled it for them. And whenever we worked with firewood when they were little kids – and they started to get tired or bored – I could tell them stories about when I was cutting wood with my dad or my granddad. Stories like that would get them energized, or at least keep them working in OK spirits.
My boys, God willing, will probably always prefer an afternoon cutting wood and stacking wood with their old man to an afternoon at the gym.
===========
Work has to be modeled and enjoyed at a fairly early age. We have raised a whole bunch of kids in this country in the past 30? years who just don’t have a frame of reference on physical labor – or being outdoors – or much of any sort of skills other than sitting in the HVAC, scarffing down pizza bites, and playing video games.
============
I’ll absolutely guarantee that most of the children of immigrants won’t have any frame of reference on actual physical work – just like most all kids born in the US today.
============
Math – Percentages?
I’ll wager that 90% of native born males under age 30 wouldn’t be able to swing the business end of a chain saw for a half hour without tearing something up or getting someone hurt.
I’ll wager that 95% of males OR females under 30 would not be able to turn a live chicken into an edible meal in less than 6 hours.
That’s just a couple of ways to define “useful” work.
Y’all have put me in a reflective mood, with all this talking about work and everything –
My dad, for new readers, came up HARD in the depression in southern Georgia, USA. Born in 1912, he joined the Army at age 16 – mostly because of lack of opportunity (and sometimes food) in the area where he grew up.
He, and one of his brothers, actually bought a tract of land, some years later, for their father, mother and younger siblings – so the family could quit sharecropping around south Georgia and settle down somewhere.
But I’m digressing – My dad got a job with Georgia Power in the mid 1930’s, back when jobs were hard to find and it helped to have an uncle with connections.
I know he loved that Company. But I think he hated having to do dangerous work for 40 years on a schedule that he usually could not control.
Georgia Power was an IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) company. So all of the training and advancement was based on seniority and an apprenticeship system. There were four basic layers in the hierarchy – laborer, helper, apprentice, and lineman. Beyond that, you had to leave the union and enter “management.”
My dad did a slow 25 year crawl up the apprenticeship system. When I was a little kid, I can remember that he would “bid” on a job that would move him up the ladder to more money, more training, and more responsibility. If he got the “bid” that meant that he had to move – and take his family with him – to some new location in the state.
Long story short (yeah, SURE) things finally broke my dad’s way, a little bit, in the mid to late ’60’s. He got into management, and then he got himself a nice lake lot on a Georgia Power lake in middle Georgia. He had a Jim Walter’s Home contractor rough in a 20X40 foot shell of a cabin on that lot.
He did the electrical, plumbing, insulation, drywall, ceilings, and everything else – on that little cabin. I helped, from age 8 – until he passed away when I was age 29.
Because he learned his trade in an apprenticeship system, my dad was always teaching. I became an OK electrician, plumber, and carpenter, just by helping him work.
He wanted me to have a “better” life for myself. He married a schoolteacher and the two of them always pushed “book learning” on me. They sacrificed so I could go to college and “make something of myself,” in my mom’s words.
But I’ll always have a good set of skills – whenever needed – as an “apprentice” electrician, plumber, or carpenter. And I’ll always have good memories of learning skills – hands-on – from a master craftsman who spent his life in the real world – learning his trades.
In reaction to a Florida preacher exercising his First Amendment right of free speech by burning paper pulp (the Koran in this instance) a bunch of people in foreign nations having 11th Century mind-set react by killing people. Reaction from politicos in our nation’s capitol was predictable: statements to the effect that somehow the acts are equivalent. Oh, I see, PC demands that we “temper” our behavior to comport with the ignorance of the 11th Century.
I say fuck’em! Yeah, I’ve heard the pitch that the Reverend’s action endangers the safety and lives of Americans in those retarded countries. Well hell, that’s easy: pull back all official or military involvement in those countries — including foreign aid. As for US civilians, corporations or NGOs who choose to “adventure travel”, proselytize or do business to such places; leave them to whatever “luck of the draw” outcome (risk upon them in choosing).
Essentially, leave foreign nations to whatever fate they choose no matter how primitive from our viewpoint, but don’t dare ask that we shift our viewpoint or surrender Bill of Rights privileges to appease them.
I hear ya. I just wish they would stick to killing one another. The gangs here are Surenos and Nortenos. And they kill white kids. For no reason. 6 gangsters killed 1 white kid. That’s the kind of thing that makes no sense whatsoever to me. I have some Latino friends and even tho they are latino AND Christians’ ! I love them and they enlighten me as to how the gangs work, how they view eachother, like were they born in the US or Mexico, that matters. Stuff like that.
I can see wanting to belong to a group, and yeah it beating working at MacDonalds, shit I might join a gang before I did that ! But I wouldn’t eat the *food*.
But meth is a major destructive drug. And gangs and meth go hand in hand.
A few of them recently have started knocking down little old ladies in parking lots and taking their purses. And tourists’ wallets. It’s a different world now and I am trying to adjust to it.
Fear runs their lives, and they spread fear.
We lived a charmed life here in this county for a long time. Times are changing. Alot more violence and crime and robberies. Hard times.
I live in a nice complex with a pool. Very nice like a retreat. But Gangs are very close by. I really hope they don’t get in here. They already do actually break into the cars at night sometimes, But the manager manages to keep them out, from renting so far.
Take Care 🙂
I’m very reluctant to respond to you, but it’s your lucky day (and NO, I will not respond to Vlad any more)…
You seem to keep suggesting that I’m being sarcastic/paradoxical. Nope, I stand by what I spew – I may be wrong on some of my points, but I will “take a pie in the face”, if deserved.
“You said … that you “get sick and tired of talking about race and immigration all the time on CFN.” … I wanted to ask why you considered the two topics to be linked”
You and all the other “racists,” afraid of (OTHER) immigrants stealing your jobs/assets(land), seem to think you’re the privileged “class”, and they are simply a festering disease, trying to infect your *safe haven*. Everything about the US for the past 200 years has been immigration. The US was founded on immigration, and that’s the very reason the US is what it *is*, today. Every last one of us (save the American Indians, “freeloading” on their reservations) immigrated here.
Your hypocrisy stinks, and your self-righteousness makes me sick – you remind me of the supposed “native american” gang of English immigrants, in the “Gangs of New York” movie (reality?). “I get my piece of the pie, those *SCUMBAGS* don’t deserve theirs”…
Get it? I thought *NOT*.
I guess the thinking is that America is a big banquet table of oily chickens and steaks with a limited number of seats at the table, and once those chairs are filled, it is time to not let anyone else into the banquet hall, either to sit with the rest or paw around the ground for table scraps. This is the basic human territorial instinct at work along with primitive accumulation. You stay out of my berry patch, cuz I was here first and I got a lot of nuts stored away that you can’t have. It all makes perfect sense. Humans are animals and, it seems, particularly territorial ones.
Vlad, the women-hating, proto-fascist, McCarthy-ite, race-baiting terror strikes again.
Tell me, when was the last time you even talked to a woman, much less saw one without any clothes on?
“Why all the calls for banning certain posters recently?”
I’m *totally* satisfied that it appears “tootsie” (“llama-llama”, and his plethora of sock-puppets) have apparently/finally been IP-banned. That jack-@$$ was spamming NOTHING but *fsck-tard* flammage every 3rd post or so, along with his “grobdeutschland” puppet. I’ve got NO qualms with that bannage, *WHATSOEVER*.
“Why not just pretend to scroll past a poster or five and then when accidentally catching a whiff or their posts take the time to write about how worthy of ignoring they are?”
That’s what I’ve been doing, after my initial post a few weeks back about “tootsie”. Spammers need to be eliminated – @$$-holes simply need to be pointed out, and IGNORED.
If you no likee the diamond, then don’t get married to a woman who wants one, not you’re in any danger of swooning any women in the future.
“Nope, I’m staying right here.”
You’re an Asoka sock-puppet, right?
I’m LOL’ing now, but I have to say, you do seem to SEE what’s *actually* going on. Props!
Several people on here have severe boundary issues (one whose name rhymes with Bad), in that they want everyone on the planet to conform to their narrow, arbitrary worldview.
Sorry, but the other 6.999999999 billion people are going to do their own thing with or without your consent, in the usual chaotic, muddling way of humanity throughout all history. Best get used to it or be destined for a life of bitterness and unhappiness (think you’re already there Vlad), as you sit on the sidelines yelling at no one in particular.
In other words, get used to being ignored, because no one fucking cares what you think. There is how you’ve decided it should be and how the world actually works. I’m so fucking sorry if these two things completely differ, but the whining about different races/cultures/creeds/ideas is getting old. Other people are different from you, and it frightens you. We get it. Now move the fuck on.
Thank you for your attention to this public service announcement, and I’ll see all you CFNers on Monday’s post.
Er, no, me and asoka is two separate entities in real life. Our opinions do sometimes intersect. I also like asoka because he doesn’t take this shit too seriously.
Bill Hicks and George Carlin said that voting is designed to give the people an illusion of choice.
That said, your idea about testing people before they can execute their basic civic rights in a democracy is completely fucking stupid.
Have a nice evening.
I’m guessing, there’s a very nice (PHAT!) PHD (Nobel prize?) for anyone who wants to show how the clearcutting of NA, and incessant burning of CO2 sources (e.g. wood), resulted in the desertification of NA, and modified the ocean currents, 6k to 4k years ago…
How difficult could that be – 6 months to 2 years *TOPS* research. *EVEN* if it’s not in your *FIELD OF EXPERTISE*.
I mean, clearcutting, resulting in no more *wildlife*, no more *cooling*, no more *rainforest rain*, etc et al. How much more evidence would ONE need – LOL!!!
I so feel for Charlie, and his failed “tour”. I know, he totally deserves his spanking – he delved too deep, and came out a total douche, sychophant, and wannabee *philosopher*…
It’s unfortunate he went over the *deep end*, given he was totally on top of it, only a couple years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zfVmPl1J3A
He discredited himself, and that *movement*… I was always curious about the *STAND DOWN* orders on 911…
Right Left dichotomy: it is mostly an “artistic” choice, an “existential” preference, an answer to boredom, the choice is essentially a choice of what religion you want to embrace, as both are essentially symbols, abstractions and man is an abstraction driven machine simply navigating pain/pleasure circuits and associating these pain pleasures very loosely with some abstractions, mostly man made pain/pleasure and assignments of abstractions that will generate said pain/pleasure (ex. laid off because you worked less than 12 hours a day which is the norm in our office, etc.):
1) Right wing wants “Risk Taking” as an emotional roller coaster, as a way to get high, as a way to play an imaginary slot machine all day long, are you winning, are you losing, what is your status, who did you defeat today, etc. An answer to boredom, doesn’t want stability, wants constant change, constant challenges, we do need people like this to start the “startups” that will hire a few hundred here and there, they have their use. They want “incentives”, they don’t find the incentives in what they do, but in what they win, in how much they gain compared to another, the other person is always present as a comparison point, as in constant competition, competition is the constantly measuring and interacting of items between themselves so as to constantly define them, modify their behavior, the measurement is the definition of the item.
2) Left wing wants stability, the incentive is in the simplicity in a sense, they are more geared towards collective efforts, towards large scale efforts, this is what most people really desire, we need these kinds.
Both religions think that everybody should be either one way or another, nothing further from the truth, we need both, but most people are simply naturally left wing, don’t want constant instability, risk taking, emotional narrative and roller coaster all day long, don’t get bored that easily that they need that constant high.
Now, given that a healthy economic system can use both, but the ratio is mostly 10 to 1 (or something like that), 10 stability seeking people, 1 person looking for risk taking and opening his own business. So given millions of people, it is absurd to think they can all be playing an imaginary slot machine of risk taking and incentives based on how much they gain compared to another game: it simply can’t work, there are simply not enough possibilities or opportunities for this in the real world.
A healthy economic system uses a mix of both, it can use the risk taking start up to generate new sectors, but if this doesn’t cut it, the government should start new public projects, it is that simple. There is no “one size fits all”, but the dominating economic model which is completely and totally biased towards the right wing thinks that one size fits all, either you are a risk taking, startup, your own boss and small business or you deserve to drop dead because you are not contributing to productivity or competition. This is totally false.
But the present economic model wants to pretend that everyone must be right ring, risk taking, incentive based living. This is false, also because competition in most sectors has been achieved, is saturated, you can’t really get much more competition out of most sectors, it is a diminishing return proposition, so maybe at this point the dominating mostly right wing economic model wants to propose simply slugging it out, fighting each other, war.
We have millions of now educated and connected unemployed young people in the Middle East and North Africa and also in Latin America, what are we going to do with them ? make them all go crazy and slug it out, make them start revolutions and wars ? No, we need huge large scale projects to employ millions of these, the governments worldwide must start as many as possible. Is it better to spend money on the tomahawks blowing things up in Libya or getting all those young men building apartment houses ? Is that so hard to understand ? Why do people not see this ? Is it so hard to understand that they need HOUSES and JOBs ? I never once heard anyone ever mention this in all the wars that are fought in Irak, Afghanistan and now Libya.
Another thing I was thinking is the serialized and accumulating labor processes, where the labor of many adds up into something greater than the parts. If you look at natural evolution it did just that completely by blind chance, it started out with some carbon molecules and ended up creating a thinking man, which is itself a huge accumulated and serialized effort product. A man is made up of a thousand trillion molecules all executing chemical reactions and interactions in perfect equilibrium to produce thinking minds, Mind over Matter. It is strange how an ensemble of millions of people cannot produce something greater than the parts, or has great difficulty in doing so, maybe we are still at the very beginning of the turbulent initial phase, just like natural evolution started out randomly with some carbon molecules bumping into each other.
Maybe when humanity reaches a population of thousands of trillions, just like the number of molecules in a man, and an advance enough technology it will undergo a phase transition and know how to serialize and accumulate all labor processes to create a higher level mind, a single MIND composed of thousands of trillions of other minds.
OMG, 6969 – why you always gotta go with a *WALL OF POAST*? Here’s to your *skyscrapers on Mercury*…
I’m cooking up a *10* year old frozen chicken – anyone *hungry*?
I was thinking that I should fry it, as that works “wonders” – but I’m going to go *soup mode* (crock pot).
(hands raised)…
LBendet said:
Obmama may be a Manchurian candidate, but then, haven’t all of them been just that? I always wonder at what point they find out that they are not representing the people, but special interests only? Is it before they get elected or after they’ve been “briefed”!
***************************************************
Actually, I disagree with this assertion … the
Republicans OPENLY declare their opposition to
“entitlements”, OPENLY declare their support for
the Patriot Act, and OPENLY criticize public
schooling (which they benefitted HUGELY from while
getting their law degrees).
This doesn’t mean I *like* Republicans. It’s just
that they’re actually pretty honest, as a whole,
about their stances. The rift between Obama’s
rhetoric and what he actually DOES is the widest
I’ve ever seen in my life.
He’s carrying on the Bush Middle East doctrine
with only tweak-around-the-edges changes, contrary
to his campaign promises. He’s more tied to Wall
St. scum than any modern President I’ve seen.
The Bushes were about Aerospace/Defense/Energy
company alliances. The recent actions in Libya
are straight out of the Bush playbook.
All politicians are “Manchurian” to some degree
but this guy is, IMHO, the worst I’ve seen in my
lifetime. To top it all off, he is supporting a
DECREASE in loans to businesses from the Small
Business Administration. This is a Democrat??
Pshaw!!!!
E.
OK E.,
You convinced me. My sister noticed even during the campaign that Obama failed to fight back on some very simple refutes he could have made to Hillary and she wondered why.
I had already read about what Tarpley had to say about him, so none of this has come as a shock to me. That said, I couldn’t be more frustrated.
I think my complaint about the Republicans is that they say all these things openly, but what they’re not saying is that this is no longer a nation state economy and that they can’t create jobs when there is cheap labor elsewhere and that they could impose barriers to entry but they won’t because they are following the no the regulations, no taxes and small government Milton Friedman cant in favor or transnationals + lots of tallk against illegal immigration, but no real steps to stop it if corporations want them.
Their real message is:If you’re not rich, your going down!
Maybe we should start a betting pool, or just a list of suggestions for JHK’s Monday morning opus.
Apparently, Obama announced his presidential aspirations for 2010 sometime this morning. That seems early. Wonder why he did that. His campaign headquarters is in Chicago. That, I can understand.
I know what the FOX boys will be yammering about tonight, anyway. $1 Billion – Obama plans to raise.
So, if JHK includes the ’12 Obamadacy – that means he’s hammering out his post for the week early in the morning – like, right about now.
Have at it, James!
===============
While waiting on JHK’s Monday morning dose of gloom and doom, I thought I might see what noted permaculturalist Toby Hemenway has to say in his essay “Apocalypse, Not”:
http://www.patternliteracy.com/articles/apocalypse_not
Perhaps you might find it as enjoyable as I have…
“suggestions for JHK’s Monday morning opus”
Don’t make predictions that never come true – for starters.
Don’t write about salad-shooters, NASCAR, and cheez-kurls.
It’s Cheez Doodles, and don’t forget Lloyd Blankfein’s gold-plated cappuccino machine.
Q, this ones 4 u….
‘Gee the NYTimes is for open borders, so what else is new?’
Thatnks for the link….
How about this outrageous canard..after 4?amnesties of 10? 50? million wetbacks…..
‘Who condemn “illegals” but refuse to let anyone become legal.’
One Hundred Years of Multitude
By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Published: March 25, 2011
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CloseLinkedinDiggMixxMySpacePermalink One hundred years ago, during the last great American conniption over immigration, the United States government went to unheard-of effort and expense to peer deep into the bubbling melting pot to find out, as this paper put it, “just what is being melted.”
A commission led by Senator William Dillingham, a Republican of Vermont, spent four years and $1 million on the project. Hundreds of researchers crisscrossed the country bearing notebooks and the latest scientific doctrines about race, psychology and anatomy.
They studied immigrants in mining and manufacturing, in prisons and on farms, in charity wards, hospitals and brothels. They drew maps and compared skulls. By 1911, they published the findings in 41 volumes, including a “Dictionary of Races or Peoples,” cataloging the world not by country but by racial pedigree, Abyssinians to Zyrians.
Forty-one volumes, all of it garbage.
The Dillingham Commission is remembered today, if it is remembered at all, as a relic of the age of eugenics, the idea that humanity can be improved through careful breeding, that inferior races muddy the gene pool. In this case, it was the swelling multitudes from southern and eastern Europe — Italians, Russians, Jews, others — who kept America’s Anglo-Saxons up at night.
I pored over the brittle pages of the report recently at the New York Public Library (they are available online). It was a cold plunge back to a time before white people existed — as a generic category, that is. Europeans were a motley lot then. Caucasians could be Aryan, Semitic or Euskaric; Aryans could be Teutonic, Celtic, Slavonic, Iranic or something else. And that was before you got down to Ruthenians and Russians, Dalmatians and Greeks, French and Italians. Subdivisions had subdivisions. And race and physiognomy controlled intelligence and character.
“Ruthenians are still more broadheaded than the Great Russians,” we learn. “This is taken to indicate a greater Tartar (Mongolian) admixture than is found among the latter, probably as does also the smaller nose, more scanty beard, and somewhat darker complexion.” Bohemians “are the most nearly like Western Europeans of all the Slavs.” “Their weight of brain is said to be greater than that of any other people in Europe.”
See if you can identify these types:
A) “cool, deliberate, patient, practical,” “capable of great progress in the political and social organization of modern civilization.”
B) “excitable, impulsive, highly imaginative,” but “having little adaptability to highly organized society.”
C) possessing a “sound, reliable temperament, rugged build and a dense, weather-resistant wiry coat.”
A) is a northern Italian. B) is a southern Italian. C) is a giant schnauzer, according to the American Kennel Club. I threw that in, just for comparison.
The commission had many recommendations: bar the Japanese; set country quotas; enact literacy tests; impose stiff fees to keep out the poor.
These poison seeds bore fruit by the early 1920s, with literacy tests, new restrictions on Asians and permanent quotas by country, all to preserve the Anglo-Saxon national identity that was thought to have existed before 1910.
It’s hard not to feel some gratitude when reading the Dillingham reports. Whatever else our government does wrong, at least it no longer says of Africans: “They are alike in inhabiting hot countries and in belonging to the lowest division of mankind from an evolutionary standpoint.”
But other passages prompt the chill of recognition. Dillingham’s spirit lives on today in Congress and the states, in lawmakers who rail against immigrants as a class of criminals, an invading army spreading disease and social ruin.
Who brandish unlawful status as proof of immigrants’ moral deficiency rather than the bankruptcy of our laws. Who condemn “illegals” but refuse to let anyone become legal. And who forget what generations of assimilation and intermarriage have shown: that today’s scary aliens invariably have American grandchildren who know little and care less about the old country.
It’s no longer acceptable to mention race, but fretting about newcomers’ education, poverty and assimilability is an effective substitute. After 100 years, we’re a better country, but still frightened by old shadows.
sorry, test
end of test
myrtlemay replied to comment from Ixnei | March 30, 2011 7:41 PM | Reply
I like to play with sock puppets.
Last *POAST*?