JHK’s Three-Act Play
Before retiring to a casket packed with clods of my native soil, I tuned in the Sunday night late news to find the political struggles of Araby banished from the screen. Charlie Sheen was all over the place, his defiant chin thrust forward as if auditioning for the role as our next president. I hope the execs at Fox News were paying attention, especially now that they’ve lost half their commentary squad to the toils of campaigning. Think of it: Charlie Sheen in the White House. With a pound of pharmaceutical-grade blow. More intellect in one seat than since the night Thomas Jefferson dined with his water spaniel, Hercules. No mouthy “advisors” cluttering up the West Wing (or disrupting the laser light show of Charlie’s thoughts). And there is, of course, the memory of his dad, who a lot of prayerful Americans recall as a president, somewhere maybe between Clinton and Bush Two.
An Alzheimers fog creeps across this land, from sea to shining sea, as its intellectual class – theoretically the brains of this outfit – utterly fails to get a grip on what is transpiring in this world. The failure of leadership in America is comprehensive and deep. President Obama’s top aide, Bill Daley, floated out the notion that we might draw down America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) so that the imprudent folk who traded-in clunkers for new Ford F110s and Cadillac Escalades won’t feel any pain from four-dollar gasoline.
Harken, now – a reminder to the rest of you out there who do not have tubeworms boring tunnels through your brain-pans: there’s a reason the petroleum reserve is called “strategic.” We didn’t stockpile that oil to pretend to be the world’s “swing producer” for a month and a half, just to knock the price down twenty-seven cents a gallon so that soccer moms could feel more comfortable bidding for an Auslini Veneto crocodile leather handbag on The Shopping Channel. Strategic was meant to imply when something really really bad happens, like a national emergency, say, with military overtones.
The failure of the news media, trapped by the diminishing returns of technology, grows more epic every week. We’ve never had more media outlets in the history of this land, or been more poorly informed. Mental fossil George Will fired off a salvo last week against fixing the US railroads. He thinks it’s just a sinister ploy to snatch the people’s “individualism.” Perhaps George hasn’t noticed that other things are operating out there in the polity-space to turn the folks of this land into zombies. After all, they were long ago transformed from “citizens” into “consumers” – without a peep of complaint from anybody – so, having already surrendered their duties, obligations, and responsibilities to anything beyond their hunger for Cheez Doodles, they might now find themselves suddenly devoid of “individualism,” staggering down the highways in mobs wherever a whiff of blood emanates from a strip mall?
I’d have to guess that the Maryland DOT ran a few lanes of the Beltway through George Will’s head, perhaps so he could drag race with Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Senator Jim DeMint to see who can get America to drive off a cliff fastest. Oddly, the basic question that now thunders through North Africa and the Middle East has not been heard on the fruited plains of this-land-is-your-land – viz: who gave this cohort of morons the right to tell us what to do and think?
Which gets us to the true matter at hand: the matter that the world is suddenly exploding in an epic phase-change rearrangement of the political order, starting with the lands that own most of the world’s exportable oil. In this vein, a message to readers of George Will and other old-line “thought-leaders” of America’s commentary regime: If you think the action in the streets will be limited to these sandy outlands seven thousand miles away, then your last thoughts will not be comforting when the zombies you helped to create turn up slavering in your driveway.
By the way, this doesn’t let President Obama off the hook. His consistent failure to tell the truth about the fragility of our situation, to make the case for getting our citizens out of their car-prisons, to promote modes of living that comport with reality – the president’s apparent cluelessness in every dimension of this crisis is something that historians of the future will shake theirs heads over in wonder and nausea (if the notion of history even survives the oil age). And for the moment we’ll put aside some other rather pressing matters such as the AWOL rule-of-law in our banking operations.
One historian, Michael Klare of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass, made the trenchant point last week that oil nations which undergo political upheaval invariably end up producing far less oil, permanently, no matter whether the political outcome is better or worse than before. So, notwithstanding the media fantasy in our land to the effect that America’s founding fathers have been reincarnated in places like Egypt the past month, it is unlikely that there would be anything but an extreme downside effect on the world’s oil supply, even if the successor to Hosni Mubarak (as yet unknown) turned up in a powdered wig and waistcoat, with the Bill of Rights magically translated into Arabic in his beneficent hand.
I was a young newspaper reporter during the 1973 OPEC oil “embargo” (so-called). Whatever else history records it as having consisted of – bluffing, hoarding, fear-mongering, market manipulation – a few things are inarguable. It arose suddenly out of a political conflict (the Yom Kippur War), and it disrupted life in the USA to a degree unknown since the Second World War – or for that matter until the present day, even counting the trauma of 9/11/01. My sense of things is that we are now entering an oil crisis much more severe and very likely permanent. If production is lost through political strife in Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Iran, Iraq, or even a lesser combination of them, it will crater the global economy and change how we do everything here. George Will may even find himself having to ride a bicycle down the freeway in his head.
_____________________________
Under the theory that life goes on until it doesn’t:
I’ve recently finished writing a screenplay about the downfall of a too-big-to-fail bankster (and the redemption of three teen-agers). As they say in Hollywood: think American Beauty meets Wall Street. Accepting inquiries, which I will sort out and forward to my agent. Serious professionals only need apply. Email me at jhkunstler@mac.com.
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
New Paintings from the 2022 Season
Barrel Racers, Cambridge, NY
Just Out! The whole shootin’ match going back to 1987!
For autographed copies:
Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY
Also at: Amazon, Barnes & Nobel
The Jeff Greenaway series of novellas. These rollicking, short books depict the misadventures of an eleven-year-old boy growing up in New York City in the early 1960s
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:
Book 1: |
Book 2: |
Book 3: |
Book 4: |
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First, like it matters.
Who is Charlie Sheen ? Seriously, I’ve never heard of him.
There is no more leadership in the country. We’re in a “you’re going to have to rely on yourself” in the future mode, though no one’s explicitly come out and said it yet. Really, I doubt anyone ever will — some things, you just can’t say…like there’s no way to correct the course of the nation.
Visit the Leibowitz Society at http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com for commentary and planning during our descent into a new Dark Age.
I remember the oil shock of 1973. It wiped out our public bus service for about a month, meaning I had to take a train to college. It was the start of the 3 day week and power blackouts in the evenings. Events in Libya could do the same, and I am sure the oil markets will get the jitters when the Saudi masses have their day of rage on Friday. Gasoline’s now US$8 a gallon in Europe now – where do we give up and get down off the merry-go-round $12?
“…Charlie Sheen was all over the place, his defiant chin thrust forward as if auditioning for the role as our next president.”
Scary thought…maybe Sheen should have starred in the movie “Idiocracy”. Or maybe we’re all starring in it now!
Please Help #WINNING
I’m trying my best to change the world by raising awareness and installing solar panels.
I know it is too little too late.
However,I think this ELECTRIC car will help. (Install a Solar array, charge your car, fuck oil) Yea yea, it takes oil to do everything, we eat it, 7 gallons to make a tire etc. etc… but gotta start somewhere…
PLEASE VOTE it takes 30 seconds.
https://www.drivenissanleaf.com/Win/Vote.aspx?b=Y272Y85WBYZG
Cheers,
Solar Guy.
The right’s rage against rail is so stupid as to defy all common sense: some of the greediest capitalists in the history of this nation built that network. At least we do have rails for freight left. We’ll rig up any sort of rolling stock we can, like the crumbling cars I recall that RENFE ran, in the late-Franco era in Spain, to move folks on the freight lines when Saudi Arabia finally goes tits-up.
Americans are a short-sighted and doomed folk. JHK asks,
“who gave this cohort of morons the right to tell us what to do and think?”
The electorate, Jim. The morons who waddle into the polling places and, with their chubby sausage fingers greased up from 99-cent sausage-biscuits, push buttons to elect other morons who then go on to enrich themselves while getting voters to vote against their own interests.
Obama, like the ghost of someone substantial from another age of good governance, has folded up like a paper fan before the right-wing lunkheads who, at least and to their credit, understand that less government may be needed at all levels because…
We are broke. Just not in the ways they think. It’s our wills and intellect that are broken.
Say what you will about Glenn Beck, and I am hardly a fan, he is one of the only MSM commentators who has discussed Peak Oil. Beck believes we hit peak oil in 2006, so Jim you should give him his due on that, he even had a chapter on it in his book.
The notion that Obama is clueless is wrong, I think. He’s simply trying to dodge the task that many before him (and many around him) are loathe to take on: telling the American people the truth. Certainly the first pol that dares to do this will be relegated to the wilderness; such is the depth of craveness and depravity to which the populace has sunk. When have you ever heard the phrase “Americans are going to have to use much, much less energy” uttered on the national stage?
Suggestion:
Google
“How to grow your own food”
Newfie, if you are still up on the rock, and know not of Charlie Sheen, then you need to stay oblivious to him because just even knowing who he is kills brain cells.
JHK likes to tell us about how we’ll have to survive with less given Peak Oil. And, often in the same posts, bashes politicians who dare tell the truth regarding the something-for-nothing endless deficits our government likes to run. Nevermind the fact that if you were to tax 100% of the income of people in the top 1% of income brackets that it still wouldn’t be enough to balance the budget. He wants to make sure his favorite left-wing constituencies are going to be the ones still getting money shoveled to them even as our econmy continues its decline. There is indeed a serious lack of intellectual leadership in this nation. No doubt about it.
Man, doesn’t it seem sort of dream-like right now? I feel like part of a small cadre of people walking around with this crazy, dark knowledge, thinking as I look at others rushing around me: “You have no idea — and wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Even stranger, sometimes even I feel disconnected from what I know is coming — sort of turned off from reality for a little break once in awhile, as my wife and I plan a trip out west, or I listen to my kids talk about grad school (Ummmm, maybe you guys should learn large animal veterinary science?).
Man, I know you drive a four banger, but you are firein’ on all 8 this week. I’ll be yor cornpone demagogue: let us not forget the folks in Wisconsin,Indiana,and Ohio with their struggle against Koch money politicians. TAX THE RICH,
George Will has been consistently eloquent and consistently wrong for decades. On the other hand, Charlie Sheen evidences a more realistic assessment of the current pridicament.
Whenever I read Howard’s weekly blog (which is hugely entertaining), I always get the sense that the US is virtually on the verge of revolution or civil war.
I mean is social cohesion truly on the edge over your side of the pond?
All the best!
JHK: The fact is that this is a national emergency; $4.00 per gallon gasoline literally takes food out of the mouths of the children of our poorest citizens. And it has military overtones; since President Obama and Secretary Clinton have declared that Khadafy must go, they can hardly stand by and allow Libya’s King of Kings to defeat the rebellion against him. Some hour soon, the U.S. will have to intervene in the conflict, if only to the extent of establishing a no-fly zone by bombing the mortal shit out of Khadafy’s air force and anti-aircraft defenses. Stay tuned, folks.
He’s simply trying to dodge the task that many before him (and many around him) are loathe to take on: telling the American people the truth.
No kidding. He saw how well that worked out for th e last one who tried that, Carter.
“My sense of things is that we are now entering an oil crisis much more severe and very likely permanent.”
Jim, you’re an idiot. You’ve been saying pretty much the same thing every week for at least the last 6 years.
Crisis? What crisis? The price of gasoline went up 30 cents on the loss of Libya’s 1.5 mbpd of exports. In 2008, gasoline hit $4.11 (60 cents away). How soon you forget. Since then, and until this winter, the price of oil has been remarkably stable at about $70 or $80. Your prediction was that it would be volatile.
When are you going to wake up and realize that your success rate on matters regarding oil is zero percent.
Now? Really? Now? … or now? when are we entering this crisis, exactly?
And do you also realize that all the events this winter/spring in the Mideast are one giant Black Swan that you failed to predict?
But they won’t change the situation with oil more than $50 or so in the near term. Because nothing is going to change politically anytime soon in Saudi Arabia and The Kingdom has at least 1 mbpd of swing capacity to make Libya and the SPR situation go away faster than Charlie Sheen can say,”Ninja, Please!”
I surmise my ignorance is due to the lack of a television. Thanks for not telling me who he is ! 😉
JHK, we are the same age and have lived thru the shit ! The part I have trouble grasping is WHY ? Why can’t anyone outside of people who have no position to do anything come up with a viable game plan ? All our lives we have been told we, the American people are the greatest. And yet not a single presidential administration since the Big Lie of ’73 has been able to come up with an energy plan that cuts off the dependance on middle East oil ? Back in ’73 when it happened I remember how during the summer of ’74 most people stayed home. Gas had jumped from 45 cents to 80 cents and we thought it was the end of life as we knew it. Out of this event there were as many or more great ideas for droping off the dependancy of oil and conserving energy as we see today. Only the hippie/stoner, back to the earth types seemed to take it to heart and go with it. Things like solar furnaces, solar green houses attached to earth sheltered homes. organic gardening, growing what you need and bartering for what you couldn’t produce your self and personal fitness to maintain that self reliant spirit. Lifestyle changes that all of a sudden are being reinvented and touted as new. We’ve already been there and done that ! IF there’s oil down in the gulf why aren’t we going for it. There are plenty of others who will and then sell it to us for a serious mark up.
Time looks like it’s running out on Happy Motoring for most all except the very rich. Food prices have been keeping pace with raising fuel prices and both are no longer counted in the CPI. I guess if we cook the books it looks better. Just like Wall Street.
See you next week.
Funny. When shills for the plutocracy venture out of their mental gated community, the first thing they see is class war waged at their expense. Upstarts! They should sit quietly and blame a black person for all of this!
Most people don’t want to hear how bad things are. Charlie Sheen’s antics are much more enjoyable to watch (though I don’t actually own a tv and have no idea what he has done).
Staying distracted is simply easier.
But things are not going to be okay if you don’t get your act together.
Your body needs to be healthy and your mind needs to be clear.
http://wanderingsagewisdom.blogspot.com
Charlie Sheen is the wizard of Oz right now.
If little ole Libya can cause this wreckage imagine what a real oil producer country revolution could do. $5, $6, $7 dollars a gallon by labor day?
And look at the US flapping their wings in 2 un-winnable wars. Not a thing we can do about any of it.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Aimlow Joe was here.
http://www.aimlow.com
What did any of you expect? It goes in this order; Sell the notion of humans as Blank Slates then practice economic materialism as means of social control while enriching yourself with power or money and call it human progress.
Now you white liberals want to tell the Mexican immigrants that they have to go back to hoeing the corn and forget the F-150 with the “Double Deuces” wheels and tires.
Good luck with that.
FTR I live in the great state of Illinois and having traveled a bit on I-55 nothing quite like a Cadillac Escalade zipping by you at 85mph with an “Obama 08” bumper sticker headed to Springfield or Chicago says, “F*ck Off I got mine” any better.
george should keep his commentary limited to baseball
“The Kingdom has at least 1 mbpd of swing capacity to make Libya and the SPR situation go away”
You’re sure of that are you ? Every time the Saudis say they are increasing production, the price of oil just keeps on going up. And they won’t allow anyone to scrutinize their reserves data. Mmmm…
In the USA, railroads are PRIVATE. In most other countries of this soon-to-be-larger world, they are GOVERNMENT, i.e. “Public Transport”. This is a big difference. Amtrak is a compromise and compromised it is…
The government doesn’t care about the railroad and the railroad companies are quite profitable these days with FREIGHT service and they don’t care or want to run passenger service. In fact, they are not particularly enthusiastic about Amtrak running on their rails, they just tolerate it, it occupies “bandwidth” they could better use for freight and higher freight revenues.
The world is running out of conventional easy to get oil so the price is going up and up. The MSM does not mention the words “peak oil” at all and places the whole blame on “speculators” and “political unrest in Middle East”. Probably it is the speculators who actually get what is happening and thus are buying up oil futures with full expectation of prices going much higher in the future.
Yes, the bankers have yet to be punished. Their time will come…
The populace of the USA is being dumbed down with techno-gadgets. The more access to instant information they have, the more sheep-like they become. Zombies indeed…
Schools are being closed, teachers fired and contracts broken even as the Prez asks for more emphasis on education so our kids can “catch up” with most other countries of the industrialized world including India and China. Fat chance…
So many potholes to dodge these days including in the budget when it comes time to fill up the gas tank…
Flying cars and hotels on the moon in the future? Not likely. However, I seem to see a lot more donkeys and horses in the future and a whole lot less people…
We were once citizens, then consumers. NOW WE ARE ‘RESOURCES’….
C-A-B-R-A-1-0-8-0
Pshaw, not to worry folks. I was talking with my neighbor the other day and he informed me that “THEY” know there is enough oil in the USA to last us for hundreds of years if those goddamn left wing bastards would just get out of the way and let the good folks at BP, Exxon, Shell, ….. drill for it.
I guess I best stop impeding them oil companies.
SNAFU
Re: Railroads
Maybe we can get Warren Buffett to talk more about their importance, especially since he’s made a major investment in rail and doesn’t have to worry about being reelected in 2012.
JHK, great column this week. Casket with clods of native soil. Ha. Maybe you should quit watching so much TV “news”, it’s all info-tainment scandal of the week, unless something bleeds.
The future for Cheeses Doodles is getting bleaker and bleaker, I heard somewhere on the radio today that 40% of the corn crop here in the US is now used to make ethanol for fuel. That number sounds high to me, but I’ve not been able to find anything that confirms or disproves it yet.
JHK is a Krugman apologist and Keynesian school boot-licker. Of course he didn’t see this black swan event. After all, The Bernank said there’s no inflation. If there’s no inflation, then there can be no revolt over high food prices in countries like the mid-east.
Occasionally I get updates from the Midwest high-speed rail association. With the Tea party takeover in Congess and several governorships, the news is looking grimmer and grimmer, even with oil over $100 a barrel. From their dispatches:
****
The House bill eliminates the high-speed rail program, slashes Amtrak funding, and eliminates funding to expand transit. It even eliminates all un-obligated high-speed rail funds from the stimulus and the 2010 budget.
****
Today, Florida Governor Scott formally rejected $2.4 billion in federal funds to build the first phase of the Tampa–Orlando–Miami high-speed line.
It might not be a coincidence that this announcement was made before the state received formal bids from private consortia prepared to contribute resources to construction. The decision may be timed to influence the transportation funding debate underway in DC or perhaps Scott did not want to see evidence that the project was financially viable.
The governors of Wisconsin and Ohio also recently declined a total of $1.2 billion in federal funding for new passenger rail lines. They both criticized those projects as wasteful government spending but then, in the same breath, asked to direct those funds to highway projects.
There is an organized attack against trains in the U.S. These officials are killing rail projects to score easy political points, sacrificing tens of thousands of jobs and the long-term benefits rail provides.
But other leaders are showing they have vision. Illinois Governor Quinn reaffirmed his commitment to high-speed rail in his budget address today. He pointed out that Amtrak ridership continues to grow in Illinois and proposed increasing Amtrak funding by 42%. He stated that Illinois will continue to seek high-speed rail funding.
President Obama and Governor Quinn are striving to give the Midwest a fantastic opportunity to reinvent itself. We need your help to build support for their efforts.
“$4.00 per gallon gasoline literally takes food out of the mouths of the children of our poorest citizens.”
You should probably consult a dictionary about the word “literally” before you post more of this idiocy.
Should we send the 82nd Airborne Division to stop our poorest citizens from actually taking food out of their children’s mouths?
Or how about buying food for children in OUR country instead of invading Libya to takes sides in a civil war for a country with only 6 million people, 1.5 mbpd of oil exports and a lot of sand? Doesn’t that sound like a better approach?
Do you really know that little of economics and history? Or are you just generally a complete moron?
TragicHipster said: Nevermind the fact that if you were to tax 100% of the income of people in the top 1% of income brackets that it still wouldn’t be enough to balance the budget. He wants to make sure his favorite left-wing constituencies are going to be the ones still getting money shoveled to them even as our economy continues its decline.
Darn those left-wing constituencies and their death grip on the political process! /snark
Reality, of course, it a bit different. Union-busting is the latest national sport. 60 Minutes reported last night that we’re approaching the level of 25% of US children living in poverty.
Our budget/debt problem is fixable: return to sane taxation levels like those in the ’60s (when our economy was at its most vibrant) and cease spending $1T per year on the business of war.
You sure have read JHK’s comments with the wrong slant
JHK,
Knew you were going to talk about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, when I heard the news last night concerning Obama’s consideration of tapping into it. Just goes to show how little he understands about how the SPR is supposed to be used. It’s all abut the show. How effective he can be to stave off the bottoming out of our economy. Oh and that stock market too. Gotta keep that looking good or we’re toast! There’s no economy here. How much oil does he think he’s got and for how long will the charade go on that everything’s the same as it ever was?
We all know that the recession got its momentum with rising gas prices in 2008 and that the blinders must be placed on the people so they continue to think the recession is over and good times are back again. More trickster mortgages. More homelessness. More riches for the guys on top!
The Michael Klare article got my attention as well and I posted a reference to it on the blog yesterday. How many people on the internet took notice, I wonder. I keep thinking boy, are people in for a big surprise. You think the bubble popped in our faces in 2008, well wait until they see what’s coming.
New bubbles are a-blowin’ for the investor class while the low middle class has had the bottom fall away and they are crashing through the floor into abject poverty.
And talking about the abject failure of the media to make any sense of what’s happening. Last week a poll was taken about who is interested in the Royal wedding and it came back that the youth in this country is not into it and most other Americans are not interested. Does that matter? Not one bit. We will have that Royal wedding forced upon us whether we like it or not because the Brits are our allies and that’s the end of it.(—You know according to Huckabee, Obama doesn’t have the same feeling for the Brits as Americans.)
At the end of last weeks thread OLD6699 says,
“As I have often concluded, the worst thing about life is that it lasts too long”
You have posted some real BS but this has to be the most moronic thing you have ever said! When they handed out brains, did you hear trains? CHOO-CHOO!
I think it will soon become clear to the masses just how “screwed” we are. As it has been said, if the threat of a disruption of less than one % of our oil (Libya) can cause gas prices to shoot up 35 cents a gallon what happens when Saudi goes up in smoke?
When that happens the consumers of America won’t be able to scale back purchases of big macs and Ipods enough to off set the cost of 6 and 7 dollar gas.
but I can guarantee you their will be average Americans doing their damnedest to keep the gas tank full even if it means maxing out the credit card.
Why? because thats all they know to do…
for me when it gets to 4 bucks my old pickup will be parked and I will be riding my bicycle to work. If it rains then I’ll have my wife take me.
When it hits 5 bucks a gallon She will park her car and just stay home with the kids.
On the bright side, summer is on the way, at least we will have nice weather for the final act…
President Bartlett’s son.
We talk among ourselves. It is time to
yell, and not just at each other.
Wow! Way to f*n write man!
Been a while since I forwarded your blog on to triple digit numbers of friends… (I always forward it on to some friends – every week – but this week Jim – I sent it to everybody – last time I did that was with your blog following MJacksons media bereavement…)
You are hot and on a roll – so write another BOOK quick PLEASE!
a fan…
The elite of this country, including the likes of George Will, et. al., are only concerned to keep up the charade of manicured lawns and good profits, until the wall comes tumbling down.
The truth is Americans continue to walk around with their heads firmly stapled to their asses…
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/a-specter-is-haunting-america-2/
OR
http://www.amazon.com/Recovery-Ecstasy-Notebooks-Siberia/dp/1439227365
It is indeed strange to think about a close at hand emergancy, however, perhaps those of us who “see” are wrong. JHK is often bashed because his forcasts are “off” or things aren’t moving as fast as he may say, however, I am of the school of thought that it doesn’t matter to me if JHK has said a similar warning for six years and I still have my tacos delivered and happy motoring, “something” is going to happen and those few of us see and are willing to think about this. Not that I discuss this much, and have been banned by some about discussing “the change.” I’m planning my vacation too, but also, thinking about what may happen and what to do – and enjoying JHK as a focal point of discussion. I’ll be glad to be wrong about all this. However, I can’t be part of the Sheeple again.
http://schwerpunkter.wordpress.com/
Interesting to watch the price of Silver during all of this. Currently around $36.50/troy oz. Just last year in February it sold for $14.78.
Some may remember when Gold sold for $35.
Also interesting to watch the escalation in prices of a bag of groceries.
Worldwide inflation, thanks to all the Quantitative Easing. Big thanks goes to Ben Bernanke.
And for all of us, get used to it.
But, they say, there is little or no “official” inflation. Yeah, right. Maybe if you are one of the top 400.
I am surprised that gas is “only” at $3.60. And yet with it threatening to head up and up, one still sees people driving new big trucks and urban assault vehicles with paper plates on them. Maybe they are simply preparing for this “urban assault”?
Sadly, it’s become more than clear that NO president of the US, is anything more than just a puppet of the US War machine. At least going back 50 years.
Max Keiser talks about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89EIadJ1QeQ&feature=player_embedded
Great article Jim.
emilio’s bro, you must have heard of him!
To: Marlin554
————–
In all the hubub of last week, I didn’t register that you are a fan of the Mets.
Pardone moi whilst I double over with laughter…
Are you enjoying viewing the Phillies from below for lo these many years whilst our homegrown and now acquired JUGGERNAUT of bats and of perhaps the finest four aces since the ’68 Orioles and is poised to lay WASTE to the NL on the way to a likely Series run?
I am. :):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)
To any who are huffing and puffing in high dudgeon at the thought of talking about Baseball and Cheez Doodles while the world is burning with fever, so to speak… lighten up, Francis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrllCZw8jiM
Life is too short to get so tied up in anything, let alone “CFN-think”, to forego enjoying life’s small, simple pleasures…like sports.
Tho’ I will admit that the Super Bowls are becoming so grotesque that the increasingly excellent football is so overshadowed by ubermeschly corporo-patriotism and grotesquely obscene celebrity outright demigodly worship with a massive slathering of gooey and sticky napalm of the Military-Industrial-Media-Intelligence-Complex (MIMIC) is the game itself is becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy and I don’t care how good the football is.
Cheez Doodles will one day be passed around like eight-balls of coke and be TWICE as expensive.
Gen.Hancock1863
CFNation Post 6 & 7/8ths
Mid-Atlantic Chapter
this entire energy mess was the fault of Spiro Agnew
lmfao
Interesting. I was talking to one of my neighbors, in his early 60’s, who has a vacation home 500 miles from here and the conversation went like this (we’re both in education):
me: “I envision a time when more students get information via some type of tablet computer, rather than lugging around big textbooks.”
him: “What if they can’t be charged due to electrical supply disruptions.”
me: I think our electrical grid is fairly reliable for now. I’m much more concerned about gasoline supplies.
him: I read that Prudhoe Bay on the North of Alaska has massive amounts of oil that could take care of us.
me: How many billions of barrels of recoverable oil does it contain? (BP estimates 2B, I looked up later)
him: I don’t know (starting to look defensive).
me: This is the type of thinking from the likes of right wingers, bubbas and Sarah Palanites along the lines of “there is plenty of oil in the US and we just have to find it”.
him: You need to learn how to talk to people.
me: Huh! I do not.
him: (getting redder and angry) Just go home; you need to go home, go home!
So I left his presence. Can you guess what stage of the grieving/loss process this guy’s in?:
1. denial
2. anger
3. bargaining
4. depression/despair
5. acceptance.
and Martin is their dad, if you’re an older generation.
Ever consider Charlie Sheen as symptomatically embodying these times?
Readers here should recognize Charlie as a prototype of what is to come when zombie nation rises up.
Are you this weeks version of the flamer? The crisis is: unresponsive politics,union busting,lobbyists,9%unemployment,banksters on the loose,2 unwinnable/unfunded wars,economic stagnation,unaffordable healthcare,broke cities/states,school districts, and a population that is confused,demoralized and undereducated to the point of not being able to connect policy to outcomes, and let us not forget LOTS and LOTS of guns. This is just a start add rising energy/food and things could get interesting. I think you have confused crisis with Catastrophe and when that hits the tragic climax will begin to play out.
Very true, I can see the days of gas rationing coming soon. Which could force us, as a country, to use oil more efficiently and perhaps really work on developing those alternate energies but we don’t seem to act unless we are pushed to the edge of the cliff. At this point, I feel like we are ALL standing on that edge and its crumbling.
You’d think with the knowledge that fossil fuel will run out soon enough (although not today, the whole price surge is a result of speculators), that Big Oil would plan ahead for the days when alternative energy is the only thing available so they could get in on the ground floor but I don’t see them doing that. Its like they are going to suck out all the profit they can and then let civilization crash & burn. Their own grandchildren aren’t even enough to inspire them to look ahead.
The Tea Baggers are in a total state of denial (even sadder than tiresome old George Will). Baggers are against the High Speed rail and apparently even the use of freight trains. They claim the government’s plan for smart energy use is a COMMUNIST PLOT. Apparently the Tea Partiers are on the same stuff tiresome young Charlie Sheen is on — Other Reality. We already have the infrastructure for trains and trains can run on coal (which we actually have lots of). But when you use Other Reality none of that matters. Other Reality — sponsored by FOX News.
Spot on, montysanto, Smokyjoe, lbendet, and most especially Cabra1080.
Love that turn of phrase.
Cohort of morons is right. My sense of George Will and people like him is that while they think they are defending the American Way they are really just defending the benefits of their class. Some of them know it and some of them don’t. Will I believe, does not. In any case, individualism is something to worry about on a full stomach. If we wanted to fight for it, that should have been done when they started to ship our jobs overseas and when they started to bring in high tech workers from South Asia. Of course the rot of illegal immigration was already established, but that only hurt the poor so nobody cared – certainly not the “Liberals” whose criterion of social justice was based on not having White skin.
Don’t blame only liberals for illegal immigration. Look at our corporate masters who hire them & our gov’t, who is complicit.
George Will doesn’t know what a bike is for.
uhhh…sorry Charlie, but your stats don’t add up. Consider doing research beyond AM radio:
Let us consider, starting with the low-hanging fruit, where the money could be found to wipe out the deficits of all 50 states combined, which this year come to a projected $130 billion.
•The extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, enacted by a Democratic-controlled Congress in December with the approval of the Obama administration, pumps $700 billion over the next ten years into the pockets of the rich. Reclaiming two years of that tax windfall would eliminate all the state budget deficits combined.
•Total compensation at Wall Street banks and securities firms last year hit a record $135 billion, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, on all-time-high revenue of $417 billion. The recipients of the Wall Street bailout could bail out the states out of their own pockets.
•The 400 richest individuals in the United States dispose of a staggering $1.37 trillion in assets, an average of nearly $3.5 billion apiece. A levy of 10 percent on the resources of these billionaires would also erase the deficits of all 50 states.
•Combined profits for all American corporations rocketed upwards in 2010, hitting an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter. A tax of eight percent on those profits—the same percentage as the cut Walker seeks to impose on schoolteachers and park rangers—would eliminate all state deficits.
•US corporations are currently sitting on $2 trillion in cash, refusing to hire workers despite collecting tax cuts that are supposed to be incentives to do so. A levy of 10 percent on that idle cash would provide enough money to eliminate not only the deficits of the states, but the deficits of all cities and local governments too, as well as preserving the jobs of hundreds of thousands of public employees.
•Hedge funds assets rose to $1.92 trillion in 2010, the highest ever, up from $1.18 trillion at the beginning of the year. Given a standard earnings formula of 2 percent of total assets plus 20 percent of the increase, hedge fund bosses stood to collect roughly $186 billion in personal income. An 80 percent tax on that income—less than the percentage rate on multimillionaires levied under the Eisenhower administration—would produce more than enough revenue to put all 50 states in the black. (It should be pointed out that the top hedge fund manager, John Paulson, had a personal net profit of more than $5 billion in 2010, while more than a dozen hedge fund bosses had personal incomes above $2 billion and many more took in over $1 billion).
Contrary to the claims of the politicians and the media, it is not difficult to find the money to close the state and local budget gaps, with enough left over to begin a massive social rebuilding program. Implementing just some of the above proposals would generate sufficient funds, for example, to provide jobs in the next two months for 5 million Americans.
Pretty infantile, no? He would have taken a poke at you, I bet, had you stayed in his face and if he was bigger than you. The RW Lie Machine has brought their Right-Wing Authoritarian Follower’s nature to the fore, whereas if our national discourse and political system were healthy, would not be as dangerous as the razor to our collective throats he and the millions of Hannidiots, Beckerheads, and Savage Weiners out there.
Our Kinder-and-Gentler-Brownshirt-in-Training cadre. Was he a big beefy guy? Will he make a good Economic Relocation Camp Guard? Can you see him jamming his billy club in Jimmy Carter’s stomach as the old man collapses gasping to the dusty exercise yard?
This what years of dumbing down the education system combined with massive mass behavioral psychological manipulation (even if it isn’t all a big coordinated CT but just a whole bunch of immoral Alpha assholes, men and women moving a bunch of product and stealing everything that isn’t nailed down) has resulted in.
The Perfect Consumer.
Which is just a gussied up way of saying The Perfect Feudal Slave. Dukedom without the mandatory bowing, Kingdom without the crown, scepter, and ermine.
Want to understand the phenomena better, so as to better understand what is happening so that when this train wreck gets closer to it’s Final Destination you will be a step ahead of everyone else?
Start with this:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
You won’t regret reading it.
Here’s the rub. Human “civilization” has been around for thousands of years, subsisting off of the land using whatever “solar” energy came trickling down into the plants, wind and streams. Industrial “civilization” has been around for only a couple of hundred years. In that mere 200 years we have burned through most of the “fossil” resources to build up huge, resource-intensive, mega industrial complex that people just a few centuries before could not have imagined.
This edifice was built on the premise of ever-greater inputs of energy and raw materials from a finite earth to keep an expanding economy growing on this same finite earth. When the fossil fuels, water and materials are used up then technology is “expected” provide an “app” to create more energy, materials, water and land mass for growing populations out of thin air. As they say, there’s an “app” for that. Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
What remains to be seen is how this zombie populace will react when the lights go out and the pumps run dry. That’s in the next chapter of the Long Emergency…
Keep up the good work Jim; you are a true seer.
You’re losing the Canada you love because someone is profiting from it. – Wage
Wage, re your reply to my comment last week, whose side am I on? I thought it was self evident from my comments. It’s not on the side of the financier/CEO kleptocracy. It’s on the side of the of the average joe and his wife and kids. And yes, someone is profiting from it. But there’s more to it than just a matter of money.
And I guess I’m culturally deficient, I didn’t recognize the song.
The left vs right thing up here isn’t totally artificial. You don’t understand the extent of the rot up here Wage. That’s fine, you don’t live here after all. But I’m immersed in it.
Let me give a quick example: If I were to assemble a couple hundred Americans, randomly drawn off the street and if I were to give them a list of names and places: Audie Murphy, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Vicksburg, Gettysburg – I would bet that you’d get a large proportion of people knowing who these guys were and what those place names are about.
If I were to do the same in Canada: Aubrey Cosens, Arthur Currie, Big Jim Stone, Passchendaele, Beaumont Hamel (a tip of the hat to the Newfies), the Scheldt, Kapyong – hardly anyone would recognize those people or places.
It’s as if we’ve scrubbed these things from our collective consciousness. This is just one example. We don’t know who we are or where we’ve been.
First: Relative to your question “viz: who gave this cohort of morons the right to tell us what to do and think?”
That depends on WHICH group of morons are you talking about? The Hosni Mubaraks and Mullahs of Iran and doddering 7th century kings of the house of Saud who are in charge of these countries? OR are we talking about the morons in the crowds, regardless of which country, who assaulted the now formerly liberal TV reporters and other correspondents (who were, in fact, the best friends and advocates of their cause)and who reported their crowds as being modern day Jeffersons and Kasimir Pulaskis mounted on camels, when in fact they are modernly educated 7th century people wanting to reinstate sharia law so that they can spend their Sunday afternoons NOT watching the NFL, but watching a good stoning or beheading for adultery (women ONLY being sentenced, of course) before giving their wives their weekly beating, whether they need it or not, and prior to chasing down a daughter for a good old-fashioned honor killing. Face it! The whole middle east is composed of barbarian people, and they are all, by and large, morons motivated by religion and emotion. Being a moron is an equal opportunity state of being, regardless of how much, or how little, money and political influence you have.
I think the future of passenger rail is in plain, old, conventional rail, not high speed given the latter’s astronomical price tag.
When the sheer impossibility of maintaining the intercity/interstate highways manifests itself in the coming decade, given our broke governments and hot mix asphalt and diesel prices that will go up 3 to 5 times the present, governments will be partnering with the likes of Warren Buffet and the other rail owners to get some bare-bones passenger rail, back on the tracks, literally.
Maybe bus operators, who will be enjoying increased ridership, but having to deal increasingly with broken pavement and closed and rerouted bridges, will jump into rail as well.
It won’t happen overnight, because, even with much diminished maintenance on the highways, it’s going to take some years for them to really start falling apart, but time is not on the interstate/car model’s side and fall apart they will.
This is something that the electric car crowd really just doesn’t get either. That is, the roads are still built with much oil, diesel, and in the case of concrete roads, natural gas. There will be rebellion at the various schemes to tax and provide revenue for road repair in light of the rapidly declining gas and diesel per gallon taxes. That is, electric car owners will want to plug in, unplug, and drive on roads sans taxes, and the roads, given much increased construction costs, and the lack of fuel taxes, just will never be what, up to now, they have been.
People will start pulling coaches from the tourist railroads to run on the remaining rails, one way or the other. There will be no $$$ for high speed rail.
Notice that we don’t even have to talk about air service at all anymore in these future travel discussions.
Are you saying the RWs run the education system?
As for this tax the rich schemes, they sound good, but let me ask what percentage are they paying now of all those billions they are skimming off the top?
As an Illinois resident I pay an estimated 25% of my income as taxes, not including sales tax which for the most part are discressionary expenditures.
And I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that the wealthy are Democratic party supporters of tax the middle class till they beg on their knees types. I don’t expect much from the Dems except they will move the AMT just past government high level hack wages so they won’t pay.
[blockquote]George Will may even find himself having to ride a bicycle down the freeway in his head.[/blockquote]Or better yet, perhaps George [i]could[/i]take the train down the freeway.
After reviewing a little history, especially that of America, the automobile and the “Interstate Highways Act,” – it dawns on me that most logical course of action is a complete reversal of infrastructure support for Interstate highways and another “unprecedented” Federal outlay for nation-wide passenger/truck rail service.
My tiny-minded perspective suggests a mix of developments which would build upon currently efficient rail corridors by expanding their capacity to carry passenger trains without disruption from freight operations.
In other areas feeder rail lines would use existing interstate highway right-of-ways to “patch” locations that have no existing rail corridors.
I’ve looked around America, and what I’ve seen shows that our Federal Highway Act effectively doomed efficient passenger transportation and much rail freight operations. Another Federal Railway Act could bring back efficiencies to passenger and light-freight operations.
Screw “high-speed” bullshit – what is needed is the outright abandonment of all but one or two nation-wide highways and a complete federal endorsement of all freight and passenger travel by rail. The truckers can still carry the goods the last 100 or 200 hundred miles.
To see an example of what the FHA did to a typical urban area’s rail operations take a look here.
http://notesting9.wordpress.com/
Howdy tragic, Per your clip: “Never mind the fact that if you were to tax 100% of the income of people in the top 1% of income brackets that it still wouldn’t be enough to balance the budget.”
How about we claw back all of the money the top 1% has squirreled away over the last 2-300 years and let them live on the same crumb size allotments they think are deserving for the rest of humanity. If that does not take care of the debts we tell the creditors to “step the fuck off”.
Perhaps this concept is occurring in the Mid-East eh?
SNAFU
Jimmy Carter had the guts to warn the American people that the country must break its addiction to fossil fuels. Furthermore, in the four short year’s of his presidency Carter was successful in reducing America’s import of foreign oil by 50%.
The Reagan administration’s first presidential act was to remove the solar panels that Carter had installed on the White House roof. The Reaganites argued that America was built on consumption,not the moral virtues of Carter’s conservation push.
The American people rewarded Carter with a re-election defeat and Reagan with an additional four years.
Tell ’em what they want to hear, not need to know.
To: ProgorCons and all the rest of CFN…everyone:
————————————
I exited stage left/center on Friday with a big ol’ smile on my face, and one that lasted all through this lovely spring weekend, even rainy yesterday.
How could I possibly imagine the most hilarious and enjoyable outcome was awaiting my return to CFN before dawn this morning, to catch up on the thread and read JHKs newest Monday morning laugh-fest?
You all saw it. Seven minutes after I left. SEVEN…MINUTES.
That’s all it took. Classic David Spade passive-aggresive wormy, cowardly, weasel. Classic RW Authoritarian Follower’s impotent projection. Classic and oh so precious. (claps hands and laughs)
And did you see that SnowflakeII and RI ACTUALLY WOUND UP ON THE SAME SIDE FOR A COUPLE POSTS? I can die now. I have seen everything and need to see no more in this world. Time to see if God really exists…………………. ;P
(pantomimes imaginary thumb and forefinger gun to temple)
And now… playing on CFN radio – call letters WLBTRD 108.7 FM is DJ Bluebelly HC Hammer and this song is a shout out to his little nails out there, you know who you are!
**********************************************
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qljzunen80k
**********************************************
Remember the posts he made to me when his rabidity was just starting to ratchet up where he said he thought I was watching every word scrolling by with my veins pounding or something, you remember? When in fact, there is demontsrable evidence now that SnowflakeII was describing himself is his diatribes.
Wonderful! Seven…fucking…minutes is all it took. I could not have asked for anything else better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2THs3oNooM
Living well and being happy are the best revenge, are they not, ProgressorConserve? I think I have made abundantly clear what I was talking about regarding baiting fools for entertainment purposes and I hope I have given you some thoughts about how to more swiftly resolve your RI issues that only degrade you and empower him, no matter how much you might not want that not to be true.
Gen.Hancock1863
CFNation Post 6 & 7/8ths
Mid-Atlantic Chapter
P.S. Holy crap! Did you get a load of that guy (or gal) NewWorld, last week and now again this week. Talk about a laughably textbook Hannidiot! Talk about a brainless parrot!
“Blank Slate Theory! Blank Slate Theory! Rrrraaaaawwwwkkk!”
The transparent mendacity of a toddler, whee! The Crying Wrestling Fan comes to CFN! Can you believe infantile weak-minded idiots like this have brought our beautiful old USA so low? I did all my raging and crying, now it’s time to laugh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvTNyKIGXiI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpjrPC6ngH0
(said in fast-taling lawyer end-of-commercial radio voice)
“This post does not imply any disrespect to NWA or to the legions of honest and honorable wrestling fans and crying wrestling fans, who at age 30 or later still enjoy wearing their Terry Funk Underoos while enjoying a fine night of the Hannity-Beck Double Hour of Power on Fox.”
Rabblechat,
Why wait until gas gets to be 4 bucks a gallon to ride your bike to work, etc? Isn’t $3 plus a gallon bad enough? I tried to walk as much as can be done where we live, but with no sidewalks and no side of the road, it is a taking your life in your hands. Still, the more folks see people like us actually doing something different in terms of lifestyle, the more the idea gains credibility and popularity.
Here’s a thought for everyone: folks spend lots of money to join area health clubs, but I never see them incorporating exercise and health into their daily lives. They don’t walk or cycle to work,and want the parking space closest to the door at the supermarket. The local fast food joint is a favorite hangout for the the local gym crowd!! What a hoot! Ha! Let’s see how long that lasts!
I try to bring up the conversation with co-workers, neighbors and friends about rising gas prices, PO and all, but they just shrug it off or dismiss the idea as kooky. It seems some folks have enough income to absorb the cost, at least for now. Must be nice.
Hi Newfie – are you really a Newfie? My father was born there when it was its own country, not part of Canada. I don’t know who Charlie Sheen is either, being one of those weird people who doesn’t watch TV, but I’m sure if you Googled him something would come up.
“Reality Optional Nation”
Perfect.
Although I should be inoculated against it by now, I’m consistently surprised at the heat of the deniers that come to this site and spray the place with their spittle of denial and explosive diarrhea of cherry-picked “facts” and bat-shit crazy political rectitude.
Maybe I’m finally getting it. It’s appearing to be all about fear and being irretrievably spoiled.
I guess if one can “refute” the future and present realities of which Mr. Kunstler writes so well and entertainingly, it simply won’t come about, and the status quo of toys and never-ending comfort will continue forever.
I’d like to tell these “folks” that they probably shouldn’t bet their kids’ lives on that, but it’s not going to get through the cocoon. No more bothering with that from this sector. (For which, they’ll likely think they’ve “won” somehow. Just watch.)
Rabblechat,
In my response to your post, I hit submit too soon. I didn’t mean it to end sounding like I was criticizing you, or to imply you could afford high gas prices!
It was a late night last night! I apologize for any implied nastiness!
Hannity is a Blank Slater, he is your “respectable conservative” opposition.
Wordism is dying. Magic thinking while fun is still magic thinking.
Its why I say, “The left is comprised of cults rigidly segregated.” Because if it were not segregated it would splinter into a million pieces that not even Sean Hannity could puff up into a juggernaut that his “opposition” to sells books.
You back to the Earth white liberals don’t even have the decency to ask the colored folk outside your coalition what they think, you “assume” they share your ideology. Last I noticed LaRaza and the NAACP existed to get more for their people, and more does not mean giving up the cars, the bling and the stupid pop culture you all deride.
Hating white people and displacing their children is evil and that is about the only thing the Left has in common, cuz its certainly not a love for organic farming (a demo whiter than the KKK)
Excellent, youse guys!
“…stages of grief…” yep
Got nothin’ to add! ;o)
Actually George Will’s observation is right on though the conclusion he draws from it is totally whacked.
Not too bad really even if that thought looks like it came from some of Charlie Sheen’s blow.
It is true that bombing down the freeway at 70 mph gives one a deluded sense of freedom and independence.
I don’t agree with George that having people believe something that’s not true is a good thing, apparently he does.
If we eliminated cars and TV maybe we might embrace the ideas of the men of:
. But that’s my delusion.
My TV-B-Gone is in the mail, I’m getting the kit.
Now if I can make a kit with a strong enough Electromagnetic Pulse to bring the freeways to a screeching standstill…….
I’d be doing my part to build RReality Mandatory Nation.
That would be a good thing but making an EMP pulse generator work off a nine volt battery is kind of hard.
“George Will doesn’t know what a bike is for.” -7MMM
Sure he does! A bike is for seat-sniffin’ after the female rider has dismounted.
(Heck, everybody know THAT. ;o)
Newfie, a while back someone said they’d never been to a McDonalds. Jackieblue says it was her but I seem to remember it was someone else. Was it you per chance? Seriously, you never heard of Charlie Sheen? If you’re not bullshitting then a tip of the hat to you. And if it was you that had never been to a McD’s then a second tip of the hat. And why don’t you own a TV? Just curious.
To: Wagelaborer
—————-
I was watching some good old Western movie faves with friends recently and had a momentary thought of you.
It occurred to me that I was watching one that reminded me of CFN, metaphorically-speaking. It’s sort of a tongue in cheek tip of the hat to the old Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns of the late 60s, but with a decidedly modern bent.
I don’t know if you enjoy Westerns; many Liberals and Lefties don’t. Their loss.
Anyway, the movie is called “The Quick and the Dead” and one of the protagonists is played by Sharon Stone, who plays a female gunslinger come to town to fight a gunfighting contest with a bunch of…er…um…louts for a $100,000 prize.
I don’t want to say anymore lest I spoil it for you, but that if you watch the movie know that I consider you to be the Sharon Stone of our little CFN town.
I guess that would make JHK the “John Herod” character – LOL – and if you decide to watch the movie know that your character, Sharon Stone, gives the “Vlad” Character, played by a barely-recognizable Kevin Conway, a poetic and very satisfying outcome.
Give it a try if you want. I think you would enjoy it, even if Westerns aren’t usually your thing for it’s not a typical Western at all.
Both funny and sad, very nuanced, with a sophisticated plot that doesn’t bore. And you may find the Sharon Stone/Kevin Conway denounment entertaining and even a bit cathartic.
Wage, I found that Pete Seeger song.
A few weeks ago, I flew from New England out to California, to visit family. I almost didn’t go, because I was so terrified about the state of the world. But, I reasoned that if TSHTF, at least I would be with my family… anyway, I was happy to have a clear enough sense of geography to be able to know where we were travelling over, on the plane, from Boston to Chicago, until it clouded up. (Ski resorts in Vermont, the whale-shaped Lake Oneida, the Great Lakes, Detroit, and a few other very distinct markers constituted a terrific cheat sheet). Jim, I waved, as we flew a bit to the south (I think) of your abode. I am absolutely confident that you will remember this, very clearly.
Anyway… I don’t want to make this too long, but while I was out there, we went on a tour of a Jelly Belly jellybean factory. Ohhhhhh, the essay you could write about that place! I think I spaced out on parts of the tour, mentally, because I was trying to imagine what you would say about it. At least, a few months or years ago, you would have written a great essay about it. Now, it seems that we all have far more pressing concerns… Seriously, the whole tour was about how they process thousands and thousands of tons of sugar into tens of millions of jellybeans. There were insane-looking enormous robots everywhere, doing most of the work… the tour guide cheerfully explained how the robots were gradually taking everyone’s jobs away. There were mosaics on the walls, of various American presidents, Elvis, James Dean, a bald eagle, etc etc etc, made entirely of jellybeans. Yes, Ronald Reagan had MANY mosaics devoted to him. I looked for a mosaic of that crying Native American man from the anti-pollution commercials of the 1970s, but I didn’t see one. In the lobby, they had a completely gratuitous machine with which small children could take their own pennies, from their own pockets, and make them worthless by crushing them, via a powerful (safe, but powerful) hand-operated set of levers and gears, so the pennies looked like a freight train had run over them, and them stamping their now-worthless pennies permanently with the logo of the jelly bean factory. Somehow, that machine was just so perfect, to cap off the tour… The line for the machine was enormous, as you can well imagine.
They gave out free samples at every stop on the tour. Even my nieces felt sick… I was on the verge of death. The adults in the line, me included, were making plenty of nervous diabetes jokes. We may have missed the inconvenient fact that there was very little that was funny, happening there.
Seemed worth mentioning.
“Let me give a quick example: If I were to assemble a couple hundred Americans, randomly drawn off the street and if I were to give them a list of names and places: Audie Murphy, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Vicksburg, Gettysburg – I would bet that you’d get a large proportion of people knowing who these guys were and what those place names are about.” -Cash
You’d be very much wrong, and I’d hope you didn’t put much on that bet.
Vlad,
Wonders never cease. I read your post and can’t believe it but we agree almost 100% right down the line. Except for your last sentence.
Hi Newfie – (my father was born on the Rock before it was part of Canada – I’ve always wondered if Newfoundland got screwed in that deal). Well I don’t know who Charlie Sheen is either, since I’m one of those weird people who never watches TV, but I suppose he is some character in the media. You could find out if you Google him, but maybe it’s better not to, because as a previous poster said, just knowing who he is might kill some of your brain cells.
Claw back from the rich and balance the budgets. Build a high speed rail network, manufacture it here, rehire the teachers, fire fighters and police officers. If its all about jobs then lets have more real jobs, not more speculators. Tell the PTB its not going to be every man for himself, its going to be one country for all.
But before this can happen we need one brave man to step forward and level with the American people about what’s been going on since the Corporate Coup d’Etat of 1963. To embrace the truth about our history will enable a moral cleansing and a clear eyed view of the dire energy future we now confront. Its time for America to grow up and put away the toys and delusions of childhood. Can you step up, Mr. Obama?
He hasn’t so far and now he has had enough time.
He has shown his stripes and they don’t include civil rights.
KATNIP KID, I get a kick out of your typification of your local gym crowd. Let me give you a chuckle in a similar vein. The gym I go to is connected to a local hospital, both organizationally and physically. Because of this there are powered doors for entry as well as regular doors. With relatively few exceptions, gym members press the buttons to open the powered doors rather than pull the manual doors to gain entry. Hilarious! Then too there are the great number of enormous, vulgar SUVs parked in the parking area. The per capita number of large SUVs is striking. I have wondered whether there is some arcane connection between having a monstrous SUV and going to a gym? I will say that this gym is fairly upscale. It is not part of a low-cost chain. Accordingly the membership has a greater percentage of the more affluent residents of the area. So what does that say about their mentality that they should be driving road behemoths? These are the people who drive the aspirations of the masses.
The future ain’t looking very promising.
Hogwash k-dog without whites as the stand in bogeyman the left collapses. The beehive for the Left’s fringe cults Kos can’t go a whole thread without one of the minders bashing whites (heads nod in agreement).
On a free forum the white haters are driven underground rather quickly, Vlad did that here in a few days but at a moderated site with cult minders it is a bashapalooza.
The joke called “anti-racism” is nothing but a codeword for anti-white. Without it the tofu eaters dreaming of clean safe public transportation have no commonality with the “oppressed” people of color who want stuff, ergo the Left falls apart.
To: EDPELL and the rest of CFN
——————————-
I’m going to look into this and come back with a molecular biologist’s opinion on it – it’s abit afield of my main areas of knowledge for me to say anything without more study, which will take time.
How long? No idea. Hang around if you want, Ed. I’ll still look into it and come to CFN and chat about it, regardless, some time.
Plus, since in all likelihood I’ll be looking at abstracts instead of the full peer-reviewed journal articles (damn those $$$-firewalls!), it may be that I still won’t have a GREAT knowledge of the process.
Any other CFN leftie, hippie, tiny-ponytail-wearin’, patchouli-smellin’ bio-types want to chime in, in a timelier fashion? Be my guest.
I don’t know which planet you’re living on, but every time I go to a news website I see something that proves that Jim has been right all along. All his predictions are going to come true. Stick around, the party’s not over yet. And I daresay those of us who have been paying attention to what he says are going to be a bit more prepared for a world made by hand than those who think it’s all bullshit.
Do you really know that little of economics and history? Or are you just generally a complete moron?
============
Could this possibly be Tootsie under, yet, another new name?
Divide and conquer. LOL.
i can’t wait for gasoline to cost ten dollars per gallon .
then i will be able to walk to the beer store without fear of being run over.
assholes !
Daughter an A/B student first year of college, no clue who MacArthur was. Well versed on MLK thru her black teacher in HS though.
DubiousFacts, could you elucidate on the Corporate Coup d’Etat of 1963? I was in high school in 1963, so I remember the time. I also remember my parents being told by a teacher at my high school regarding my graduation class, “after them the deluge.” The comment seemed both cryptic and quite ominous. That was in the mid-60’s. Obviously, something must have been clear to this teacher. Is it connected to your comment about 1963?
Hi Helen – I live on The Rock, but I’m not a native. I’m one of those weird people that does not own or watch a TV. A long time ago I decided TV programming was just that – mind numbing, brain cell destroying, mind crack – so I stayed away from it. Peak oil is going to be interesting here. Newfoundland produces oil but all of it is shipped to The Empire. All refined petroleum products are imported, some from Araby. And almost all of the food on The Rock comes by boat from the mainland. Any oil scarcity is going to translate into a crisis in this forgotten corner of the world. Hah! I don’t know who President Bartlett is either. Thank Dog for that.
I guess they figure they are compensating for being bloated energy and resource hogs by “working out”, ie: producing nothing and sending their personal energy into the same void that their tailpipes feed – the rapidly deteriorating Earth and its oceans and atmosphere.
No doubt it all helps them feel superior to the little people who actually work, as seen from the majesty of their high riding heated leather power seats. Too bad they don’t realize that their asses are going down with all the rest.
If you think everything Jim says is bullshit and all the people who don’t agree with you are morons and idiots, why don’t you just stop coming here? Are you actually the same person as tootsie and a few other people that have been posting here in the past? A little common politeness and civility will go a long way in the future we are facing. Why not start practicing it now?
Does this mean that the price of a hot dog, soda, peanuts, and popcorn at the ball park will soon be going up ?
I read George Will’s remarks regarding the revival of railroads, and I don’t perceive his comments as necessarily “anti rail”.
The High Speed rail plan as conceived by the Obama administration is nothing more than a costly boondogle that will build high speed where it is needed the least and where it cannot support itself.
As Kunstler himself has remarked on several occasions, our government will become increasingly ineffectual in the LE, and any system dependent upon government support is doomed. The “high speed” rail system is doomed from the inception, as it will supply HS service where there is little demand for any rail while neglecting important markets. Worse, it will be too expensive to justify itself and service will end up being infrequent and unreliable because the customer base will not be there to support it.
What we need is Rapid Rail, which is speeds of 100- 150MPH, such as what we had in the golden days of private railroads. It is better to run trains reliably and frequently at 80-110mph, a speed that is much more economical from the standpoint of both energy costs and the cost of building the roadbed and equipment, than it is to build a super expensive super=fast system that will require much more energy to run and will also require vastly more expensive infrastructure and equipment, and will only be able to run infrequently.
My belief is that private railroads such as Union Pacific and Burlington Northern will be happy to step into the gap and provide this service as once they did, IF, and only if, they are assured of a level playing field, which we do not have right now. At this time, railroads are operating in an excessively regulated environment, under regulations promulgated 60 years ago that were designed to destroy our railroads- and we are now tossing massive subsidies in the tens of billions in subsidies to the private air carriers, as well as subsidizing airports and air control.
Remove the subsidies to the railroads’ competition- automobiles and airplanes- and revamp rail regulation, and we will have railroads again.
Zen 17,
I agree wholeheartedly with your message, but you need to give proper attribution to the muddy water posting on your blog site. I know exactly where it came right down to the page number,and who exactly should be credited–BFK on LHC.
Yeah, I met the man in 79, gliding across the floor doing that last element. Stayed with him quite a long time, too.
Actually, Jonathan, saying stuff like “This is the type of thinking from the likes of right wingers, bubbas and Sarah Palanites” probably isn’t the best way to get your point across to your neighbour.
It’s better to explain things to people who don’t share your views, and if they haven’t a clue, that’s best of all. So, it’s the letters to the editor in newspapers and magazines, radio talk shows, any forum besides an Internet site populated by those who’ve already heard what you want to say. We are an eccentric voice of doom to most people. They will listen, entertained by the novelty.
We are not without remedies. The exercise of law. A constitutional convention to curtail the structure of spending, and the assumptions of big government. No more reelection campaigns paid by the profits of lobbyists. No more federally-mandated spending programs. An end to the litigation society. Tax plastic. Tax gas and coal, build nuclear power. Build trains.
Our doom approaches, let’s yell about it, decorum no longer matters.
Hi Jim and all the gang,
Reality really does appear to be optional in this country!! Watching Charlie Sheen be devoured by the media in a cannibalistic frenzy that would make a school of pirahnas look tame, was well sad and scary. What really struck me was how all the interviewers actually treated him as a sane guy and this was somehow accepted as valid journalism. When it was very apparent the guy is in some serious need of detox and psychiatric treatment. I guess all that fame and money drove him crazy. But we see that all the time with the young entertainers who brave the industry and are subsequently chewed up and spit out, if they are lucky alive, plenty don’t make it out alive.
As for Libya, at least Bob Gates injected some desparately needed reality onto the proposed no fly zone nonsense. The sec def’s red light on the project shows an awareness on some level of the gov’t that the US is in too deep and simply can’t take on one more war. Hopefully this awareness will continue to seep into the consciousness of the nation to force some real change, like slashing the pentagon budget by 50 to 75%. Wouldn’t that be nice, oh well a person’s got to have some nice daydreams in these “times that try men’s souls”.
I find myself thinking “I smell the seventies” every time I pass a freshly raised price on gas. In our neck of the woods gas is up this am to $3.69 a gallon, so yeeehaaa, break out the saddles and ponies cause we’re gonna need em!
loveday
Have a great week gang
Read thse 2 books: JFK and The Unspeakable, and Blood, Money and Power: How LBJ Killed JFK. To me this is highly convincing evidence that a rude conspiracy of Texas oil money and elements of the CIA/Defence Contractors complex planned the execution of an American President, thus turning history in their favor and against the interests of citizen idealism and world peace.
The subsequent coverup of the facts created a schizoid split in the consciousness of the American people, a frightened unwillingness to question authority, and led to the creation of the cowed class of consumer droids we see around us today.
Charlie’s Sheen has now turned sour and gray!
Anyway, oil is climbing in price. It really has nowhere else to go but up. Since the psychopathetic Libyan leader of autocratic insane dictators has unleashed his terror upon his people and the production of oil, which is the mainstay of his economy, his oil production and delivery systems are being “cratered”.
Obama continues to flap his tongue all around the inside of his mouth delivering a message with little substance. The Reichwing Chicken Hawks who were so “gun ho” to go into Iraq and Afghanistan cannot decide if a No Fly Zone should be enforced by the US military in order to protect the Libyan protesters. As was earlier reported, The US was going to send refurbished tanks to Gaddafi before the uprising took place. What were they thinking? Let’s reward the insane murderers. But, over the weekend we read that the US corporate elite love dictators. It’s good for business.
When will the Cheez Curl Crowd of Palin/Bachmann/Scott Walker eaters begin to realize they have been corralled into the new work-for-free labor program, while the elite charge them for working and living with a 17% revolving credit with compounding interest rates of 27% wake up and stampede the bad men?
Probably never. The Dumb American cannot compete with the guts and vigor of Libyan and Egyptian protesters, or even the Wisconsinite labor protesters. There are just too many Cheez Curls and Pepsi to consume while watching reruns of Mr. Ed and My Favorite Martian while permanently reclined in the Lazy Boy Recliner hoping to continue to receive their government checks.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
The biggest workout-freaks I know all seem to like huge F250 pickups or H2’s etc. I can only assume that whatever is motivating them to have bigger and bigger muscles also guides their thinking in terms of vehicle selection.
http://www.kitco.com/charts/livesilver.html
36 bucks an ounce? shit i hope the werewolves don’t come tonight. I am meltin’ all my bullets!
Hey k-dog, I’ve got one of those TV B Gones. They’re great. I just have to be discreet when using it in public places so people don’t assault me when they find out why the TV just went off.
I pick-up heavy tings and I poot dem back down! Dat is wat I do!
Dude we are THERE.
You must know my husband.
Our House IS going up in value NOT.
It’s way under water, we owe twice as much, and pay half the mortgage while we rent the fucker out. It’s beautiful, we can’t live there cuz he is sick and no hospital in that town.
We’re KEEPING it. He is a bully.
no fun. taking me down with him.
Denial. Works for some.
It ain’t goin’ up in value, not in my lifetime, if ever.
You guys are living in your own worlds.
Of course this is just my opinion. But sometimes I get it right.
In the USA things are not ok. It’s not the peoples’ fault. It’s the guys at the top who took the money and ran.
I am a simple person but I get the gist of it.
Regarding high speed rail—all we really need are trains that go from point a to point b that allowed bicycles to be securely hooked up without having to be dismantled first, so we bikers can ride to our destinations. Let us just start with smart policy for our current rail system.
And, how about more car transporting rail, so we don’t have to drive from Pittsburgh to DC or NYC or Maine on the highway. We just ride with the car on the train and then remove the car once we arrive. This is done now from Virginia to Florida.
HSR is ridiculous when we cannot even support our economy currently. A HSR through the wine country of California, and the cost that would incur makes no sense. The train to nowhere for billions of dollars.
GM should have begun to build better engines and rail cars for the existing rail system instead of cars that will be sold in China.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
I remember the oil shortage of the 70’s.
And what I see is when it really happens here, it’s going to be much much more violent.
Because here where I live in general there is MUCH MORE VIOLENCE. Attitudes, and gangs.
People drive worse and more aggressive than ever.
WTF we live in a paradise as far as location goes, but for the most part, it sucks because of the rudeness of others, and so many godamn cars, and tailgaters. They will run you off the road as they look you in the eye. Really, for real.
Gangsters are robbing folks on West Cliff drive.
The Tourist Spot. In daylight and night.
Lovely. They are all over the neighborhood I live in. Creeps. Monsters. Losers.
It positivly kills me. My neighbors pay for the gym and go there all the time and then they hire someone to push a lawnmower around their yard and to shovel their snow. I say do it yourself you lazy SOB and get some exersize? doing sumthin’ productive. I go to ‘de gym. I pick -up heavy tings and I poot dem back down!
The bullying attitude of American foreign policy is unconsciously mirrored by many of its citizens. “Lets go kick some butt” shows up as mass shootings, road rage behaviors, steroid induced beefcake football players and right wing diarretic hate speechers. Its all about “America exceptionalism” but as things unravel that’s going to be a more difficult facade of manliness to maintain. Kind of like looking for introspection in Charlie Sheen.
The Charlie Sheen Machine.
And we thought Tom Cruise was a bad.
Sheeeit, Charlie is one scary guy.
Beyond Manic.
Maybe too much money did it to him.
Seems to me that he is trying to be like Hugh Hefner.
Funny you should metion robots:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07krugman.html
sheet O3, i got all those questions right on Jeopardy, If it was’t for Wilson I would be a gazillionaire by now!
If Lara’s not an older generation is Martin still there dad ?
haha.
Hi CASH,
I said I’ve never eaten a Macdonalds hamburger cuz I haven’t.
I have eatin’ fries and pies, way in the past tho.
Yep never ever had a burger there. Once I had a chicken thing at BKing.
other than that, I bar b que my own steaks and burgers.
That shit they call meat scares me.
The places are great for Pit Stops on Road Trips!
🙂
Hi Newfie – I totally agree with you about TV being mind-numbing swill. I especially hate the car commercials. I think they are a good part of the reason why people are still buying those monster SUVs. They like to show them tearing up beautiful roadless areas, but of course most people who buy them only use them to go to the grocery store. I do own a TV but it isn’t hooked up to anything that gets any TV signal, I just use it for watching videos like The End of Suburbia, documentaries I get from the library etc. I especially like travel videos because then I don’t actually have to use any gasoline to go somewhere…The Newfies did once upon a time know how to survive without much imported food at all. (As did everybody else in Canada and the US, actually.)They grew potatoes and other root crops (fish guts and seaweed make great fertilizer), they had big root cellars, ate a lot of fish and other seafood. They built pretty much everything they needed from local materials. I just read an excellent book entitled “Tilting” by Robert Mellin about an island off the coast of mainland Newfoundland where there are still vestiges of this former way of life. It might offer you some good ideas for a world made by hand on the Rock.
And I guess they’ll be bringing back that Newfie Bullet train one of these days.
Excellent Movie.
I agree with your assessment Laura. The problem is that ‘regular’ rail has no glam and therefore, it will be tough to get anyone (you know; the extremes of either political side) to defend OR fight against it. THAT is really what HRS is all about.
HSR is nothing but a throw away, in the 2012 budget process. It allows BHO to look magnanimous removing his ‘pet project’ in order to reduce a REDICULOUSLY bloated budget down to something that they other side can live with. Both sides get to claim victory and still nothing gets done for the people.
Rail is certainly a viable solution for short to intermediate (500-1000mi) distances. Sure it would require that we (and some of our employers) re-think travel and our ability to be in two places at once. My folks jut took Amtrak from Virginia to FL to visit family. They left at 5:15pm and arrived at around noon the next day, in Orlando. Slow, by air standards, but not nearly as stressful or hectic. I have taken Amtrak from Virginia to NY on several occasions and prefer it to driving.
Any other CFN leftie, hippie, tiny-ponytail-wearin‘, patchouli-smellin’ bio-types want to chime in, in a timelier fashion? Be my guest.
Since I almost qualify;
15,000 gallons of diesel full at 136,567 Btu/gal yields 2,048,505,000 Btu.
1 Btu equals 1055.056 joules. From which 2,048,505,000 * 1055.056 = 2,161,287,491,280.
So 15000 gallons of diesel produces 2,161,287,491,280 joules of energy.
Sunlight at high noon falling on a square meter produces about 1000 joules of energy in one second.
An acre has 4046.825 square meters so at noon on a clear day an acre can produce about 4,046,825 joules of energy in one second at 100% efficiency.
2,161,287,491,280 / 4,046,825 = 534,067 seconds
It is not high noon all the time and I could figure out average solar energy for a day but I’m going to be lazy and just double the number to account for 12 hours of darkness and leave it at that.
534,067 * 2 = 1,068,134 seconds. This works out to about 12 days.
Remembering that it is not always high noon probably pushes the number out to a month or so, maybe longer. I’m actually surprised that the number is somewhat realistic. I expected a much longer period of time.
So far I have resisted links — aimed at my reptilian neural circuits — on just about every website I’ve been too lately, about Charley Spleen. On the few TV shows I watch from the few stations I get there are constant repellent promos for his Sitcom. The show seems to be about a make believe moral universe where he bags a new babe every episode with his dimwit costars drolling. Now what I think I’ve picked up from osmosis from the geist of www is that he went on a drug filled rant breaking all manners and polite discourse, torpedoing his Sitcom show. In the funhouse mirror of popular America Reality the drug induced rant was a transgression, a morbidly curious accident on the side of the road. Actually, the transgression was the sitcom and the rants were his redemption(tho I haven’t listened to them) as they ridded us of that lameass sitcom. Now to tie it together, as JHK did somewhat, what we can use from Obama is a drug induced rant. His pathetic attempts at maintaining normalcy + decorum as if things will just be alright is not going torpedo this lameass sitcom that is America. Such a move would not be “strategic” as it would be too much for the childish level of public at large to comprehend. The strategy will be selective statistical data and ideational confusion that build a case for reelection, you can bet release of the reserve will be a part of that.
How long can the Saudi Kingdom continue to buy off its people from revolt? $2000.00 or more everytime there is a threat of revolution. I cant agree more with Jim and many others. We are about to hit deep and uncharted waters in collapse.
The elites are playing with fire. On the one hand they can afford 10 to 5 dollars a gallon gas and the middle class on down wont. I am not a fan but T Boone Pickens was quoted in the Dallas Morning News today that this continued political insablity will result in $300 to $200 for a barrel of oil. Obviously that is way past Heinberg’s Goldilock’s price for oil.
“Actually, the transgression was the sitcom and the rants were his redemption”
Interesting view, I must agree.
I agree that a new nationwide HSR is not needed and is unaffordable at present, but it does make sense for certain corridors. Beyond those areas there is a problem with medium speed passenger trains sharing the existing rails with freight, this is where much more doubletracking and better signalling would payoff at a fraction of the cost and environmental impact of new right-of-way.
And more provisions for bikes and scooters (presently banned, even ‘tho it makes total sense), and more auto transport railcars. For America to have an air and highway transportation system that is so clearly a hostage to mayhem overseas is a national security threat and suicidal behavior.
Big fucking’ deal. So you take all of the rich’s riches. And lets assume that as you say, all of the states deficits are put to rest. What does one do next year. Remember, you already took all of the rich’s money. The deficits that you fixed for this year will all start mounting again because you only put a band-aid on the cause for one-fucking-year.
State and national deficits have come about from over-promising circuses and cakes. Until entitlements are restructured we will have this fiasco hanging over our heads. Tax the rich? Be my guest..but it won’t solve our problems.
K-Dog, your assertion is based on 100% of solar, which it is not. Best I have seen to date rates about 30%. What are you using?
Don’t get me wrong, I am all in favor of solar as an alternative, not until efficiency of the panels and the storage methods are dramatically improved.
“How about we claw back all of the money the top 1% has squirreled away over the last 2-300 years…”
How about I show up at your front door and tell you to give me all the money you squirreled away? How bout that?
Carter told the truth, again and again. For his trouble, he was run out of office. Obama is just not making that mistake.
I’m also fairly sure it’s been quietly explained to him, away from cameras or recording devices, just how easy it would be for some secret service agent to NOT stop a bullet aimed at him or his family.
So… truth telling. Not much upside in it for Mr. Obama. Big downside.
I’d like to think though, that if Obama gets a second term and doesn’t have to worry about re-election, that there may be quite a bit of truth telling. The kind of things that most people don’t want to, or perhaps, can’t hear any longer.
But personally, I think he’ll do the safe thing, like always. I’ve seen no evidence of spine in him. He’ll probably take his package and disappear, much like Bush.
OK Newworld and Ozone listen to this;
Not long ago our Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin was speaking to soldiers at a Canuck forces base and he referred to the allied invasion of Norway, not once but twice.
Well. I saw it like this: once is a slip, twice a slap in the face. Why? Because this was coming from the leader of the party that dismantled our military and disdains our boys and girls in uniform. I could see in my mind’s eye liberal hipsters doing high fives wowed by the slyness of the insult.
Around the same time our Liberal Defence Minister Thomas McCallum referred to “Vichy” instead of “Vimy”. Now, Vimy Ridge is a place where Canada suffered 11,000 dead and wounded over the course of four days in 1917 dislodging the German Army. And Vichy is the name of the collaborationist WW2 French regime. McCallum said by way of excuse that he’s not up on his history. Um… sure. More laughter from the hipsters. Later he claimed to never have heard of Dieppe.
OK maybe these are all innocent mistakes. But the Liberal Party and its supporters aren’t shy about their adversarial relationship with English Canada and their scorn for its history and heritage.
The current Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff used to teach at Harvard. He wasn’t shy either about his disdain:
“But modern patriotism is always tinctured with irony, with the sense that we are no longer quite what we take ourselves to be. Who entirely and unreservedly thrills to the raising of a Union Jack? It is both the battle standard and a hooligan’s underpants and because it’s both, it’s claim on the heart is muddied. In the case of the Canadian flag, I cannot entirely forget that it is both my flag and a passing imitation of a beer label.”
So witty, so literate, so urbane. Passing imitation of a beer label? And this guy wants to be Prime Minister? Fuck me.
In another speech he derides Canada’s efforts at peacekeeping as inadequate and “bogus”. Inadequate maybe but “bogus”? Tell that to these guys and their families (an honour roll of dead Canucks going back to 1950):
http://members.shaw.ca/kcic1/peacekeepers.html
You know what’s more depressing? Two thirds of the folks here vote “left” ie Liberal or NDP (socialist) or Bloc (a separatist Quebec party) or Green and so are on board with the Martins and the McCallums and the Ignatieffs. Have been for a good four decades.
So I guess we can have a debate about which country is more culturally and economically decayed and who’s going down the crapper quicker.
At $AU 1.40 per litre our fuel here is already over US $5 per gallon!
I don’t really see why North Americans should be paying less.
And FWIW I rarely drive, preferring to cycle as much as I can because it only takes ~ 150Watts of my power, not 10K watts or more of fossil-fueled power, or to put it another way 66 of me on average to hurl a largely useless (but potentially lethal) payload around.
Ridiculous by any measure…
Like the last tree on Easter Island, no one is worrying too much about the end of oil. It will happen someday to someone else. Meanwhile there’s supposed to be a couple of trees up on the hill over the other side of the island.
RT said: “… doing sumthin’ productive…”
===============
RT, I agree we need to do something productive, because we only have four more days until the Days of Rage in Saudi Arabia, TSHTF, and the end of the American way of life based on petroleum.
Here is one idea of doing something productive: create a vertical keyhole garden:
http://bit.ly/hSfF1g
Thanks, RT for bringing the discussion back to our reality. I think permaculture is the key to reality.
(reality is not optional; even suicide may result in you being recycled. Suicide is a delusion and is not a way out of reality.)
PRD:
“Man, doesn’t it seem sort of dream-like right now?”
You said it, brother. I feel the EXACT same way as you, apparently. Not sure if there are many others.
Mila
That shit they call meat scares me. – Jackie
No kidding. A disc of grey paste fried in sludge.
You can smell a McD half a mile away with that suffocating grease and salt vapour billowing out. I shudder to think what the “chicken” is made of. Probably chicken fat, skin, guts, blood, glands and salt.
I remember a show I saw a long time ago where they had a meat inspector saying he would never ever take his family out for hamburgers. This was fear from the informed.
“Carter told the truth, again and again. For his trouble, he was run out of office. Obama is just not making that mistake.”
Carter was an inept douche. So too is Obama. And so what if he is run out of office for telling the truth. Big fucking deal. So he isn’t willing to speak truth to power so he can hang around for another four years and do what? Stage more Motown themed parties off of the WH back patio? Fuck him.
Who is Charlie Sheen? Is he Black? Is he a politician? I don’t have a TV.
Google cannot explain the meaning of the cultural reference JHK made today.
“I don’t really see why North Americans should be paying less.”
They aren’t. When you factor in the cost of troops in the ME they are paying as much if not more than the rest of the world.
“Who is Charlie Sheen? Is he Black? Is he a politician?”
Shut the fuck up. You know exactly who he is. Douche.
ian 807
I agree with you, the last time anything approaching truth was heard in the Washington beltway was when Jimmy Carter told America to put on a sweater in the winter(gasp). He was promptly crucified for that piece of practical advice. Obama sadly has reneged on every campaign promise he has made-“TO BE CLEAR”… he lied. Oh well, he probably couldn’t done much anyway.
regards
loveday
Schwerpunkt:
I love your blog.
Mila
Of course you don’t agree: according to Liberalism, Whites aren’t human and have no rights. Their only purpose to take blame and work off their “debt” until they die. And by definition, the debt can never be paid. Yet still we are supposed to try. You know you really should re-think this. I mean don’t you ever get tired of just hearing what you already believe?
OK Smartass, I’ll take that deal. You can leave me my house and my job (if any) and my first million dollars and take the rest to fix the infrastructure and give the schoolteachers and police back their jobs. But this applies to EVERYBODY, no cheating. How bout that, jerk.
He is an actor in his mid-forties, the son of Martin Sheen (an actor who was in the movie Apocalypse Now and on the tv show West Wing). Charlie also has an actor-brother Emilio Estevez. Sheen has been in a tv show “Two and a Half Men” apparently very popular — I’ve never seen it.
He has gone off the deep end with drugs, drink, women, etc., and is now very popular for his bizarre (CRAZY) life, interviews, comments, twitter feed, etc.
So how many of these Muslim Nations are we going to invade to support the Revolutions that we fomented? Saudi Arabia too? Tanks in Mecca? Iran too? Even though they have vowed to take the war right to the streets of America? All at the same time, right sport? I assume you support a ressuming the draft. And who will gain from the carnage? We’ll do the heavy lifting and reap the hatred, and the Muslim Brotherhood will be the gainers. Did we not set up a Muslim State in Kosovo? Do you think they are greatful?
Thank you, mila59.
I was living outside the USA for over a decade, and I don’t have a TV, so I’m not up on USA popular culture, though it appears I’m not missing much.
I appreciate your CONCISE-less-than-one-screen answer (k-dog approved!)
Speaking of dream-like, this was the lead story today around here.
http://www2.tricities.com/news/2011/mar/07/heavy-rains-send-portable-toilets-sailing-ar-887302/
Not to worry, they will get it all fixed up before the big race.
All this is fun, and I enjoy the chit chat. But, where are all of Pakistan’s nukes? Does anyone know? Maybe Bin Laden knows…. Anyway I can grow my garden and feed myself and friends without oil, but one hot nuke will really spoil my day.
“‘who gave this cohort of morons the right to tell us what to do and think?’
The electorate, Jim.”
You mean these morons?
“George Will…Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Senator Jim DeMint”
The only one of them an electorate gave a right to tell people what to do and think was DeMint, and that was only a majority of the voters in South Carolina. The rest were hired by media companies and have only a small but vocal minority of listeners, readers, and viewers supporting them. There may be plenty of blame to apportion to average people for failures of thought, but the lion’s share of the fault here goes to the rich people who employ “these morons.”
Crazy or not he got the best of the the hyper sensitive anti anti Semites. They condemned him for calling a Jewish guy by his real Jewish name cuz now people know the guy’s a Jew. I guess they don’t want people to know to know that Hollywood is run by Jews. Are they perhaps ashamed at all the garbage they pump out?
I go into McDonalds once in a “blue moon”. I am pretty health conscious so most of the offerings are not very appealing and some of it is downright sickening. But the chicken wraps seem alright. I grew up with TV when it was all the rage, broadcast in black and white, in the 50s and 60s. But drifted away from it when I went to University. Got into books and philosophy – Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm – anti establishment stuff. Now I have a laptop and a fast internet connection and I prefer to get information interactively. Something about being zombified and passive in front of the boob-tube as I am force fed information turns me off. I do have a projector and large screen and watch films – indie and documentaries and old Hollywood back when they knew how to make movies. I recommend The Story of Crude from ABC.
Cash said: “Not long ago our Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin was speaking to soldiers at a Canuck forces base and he referred to the allied invasion of Norway, not once but twice.”
=============================
But Cash, he was correct — April 1940 and May 1945! Don’t believe Canadians were involved in either operation but let’s not sweat the details.
Maple Leaf Up
Yeah but the speech was about the Normandy invasion.
Well, I believe I was addressing someone else. But your reply will do. And I agree. This is EVERYBODYS responsibility. Not just that of the rich. So how does that make me a jerk? Fucking jerk.
“Mental fossil George Will fired off a salvo last week against fixing the US railroads. He thinks it’s just a sinister ploy to snatch the people’s ‘individualism.'”
The George Will of 20-30 years ago might be appalled at the George Will of today. Back then, he considered himself an American Tory, a fan of a New World version of Churchill’s “One Nation Conservatism,” which would have been all in favor of fixing up the rail system. Now, he’s drunk the iced tea of the right-wing populism that passes for “conservative” (really authoritarian) politics. That brew seems to have diminished his intellect.
Besides, a conservative inveighing against trains in the year that the first installment of “Atlas Shrugged” premieres in theaters? Ayn Rand via her Mary Sue character Dagny Taggert would be appalled.
Like I said, fucktard asoka-herself already knew who Charlie Sheen is.
Mont, if you don’t mind my asking what country do you live in? I can’t remember whether you ever mentioned it. Does the “Montsegur” handle refer to where you live? Interesting choice of name given the Cathar association.
Two come to mind:
1. In Twilight in the Dessert, Matt Simons wrote that engineers have a pretty good idea of how fast a particular oil well can be pumped. Pump it too fast (for political reasons aka Saudi Arabia) and you end up leaving a lot of oil in the ground, never to be recovered. Short term myopia=Long Emergency.
2. Around the inner city here in Miami, we have much fallow land and many fallow people. The people are in a bind, they cannot jeopardize the government payments that provide them just enough to get by (but never to thrive), by working. What they need are ways to earn cash, but every kind of local law conspires against them. Grow a garden and sell the veggies? Sell mama’s pies? Set up a lawn mowing business? Day care at home? Chicken eggs business? Strictly prohibited or strictly prohibited without thousands of government licensing fees. More than anything to mitigate the coming Long Emergency we need to get local officials to do something that they almost never do: repeal laws. Specifically those laws designed to give a nice pretty, sterile suburban life that prevent the poor from working for themselves must go now. Because one day in the not so distant future many of us may find ourselves in that same situation as the currently fallow people.
Cash, check, just enjoying a moment when such a mistake becomes a correct statement by chance.
Cheers
Speaking of authoritarian politics, I think it’s time that “corn pone fascists” reappear in your essays. So far, their appearance and rise to power has been one of your better predictions. In particular, I’d like to read what you have to think about Scott Walker and his ilk.
Oh, and here’s an interesting coincidence. One of the most respected academic authorities on Fascism, Stanley Payne, is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I wonder what he thinks of the events playing out on his doorstep.
James you give Obama too much. His name will be remembered about as well as an average nobody in an average graveyard. If history survives the turmoil of the times to come an ineffectual president will be forgotten. Remember James you personally doubled the name recognition of Millard Fillmore.
That’s true enough.
Cash stated / asked: “Does the “Montsegur” handle refer to where you live? Interesting choice of name given the Cathar association.”
==================================
I live in Germany. The Cathars were interesting for me a while back and “Montsegur” is not a terribly overused internet handle (although popular enough). I have visited Montsegur; it is quite a beautiful region.
Cheers
I have so much trouble signing in on this site, and can never use “Reply” to any of the posts. Also, my comments seldom show up, possibly because I’m a right-leaning independent and even (the Horror!) a Tea Party fan. Not “tea bagger”, which is a moronic insult to an adult female who is incapable of such an act physically, and who finds it personally disgusting on top of that. The high speed rail controversy amazes me. Ohio has decided to return Obama’s “gift” as the plans were to run it from Cincinnati, through Columbus and on to Cleveland. A ticket would cost more than the current price of gasoline would entail, and the trip would take longer. This also leaves the rest of the state with no rail service. We live in the extreme northwest part of the state and my husband (age 69) drives 34 miles round trip per day to go to work (Yes, he’s still fully employed so we’re not sucking your take-home pay.) Expecting him to ride a bicycle to work during an Ohio winter and through some really rough parts of the large city in which he works is as ridiculous as expecting me to ride a bicycle to and from the nearest grocery store at my age and with advanced RA. Our small town was killed when the state decided to consolidate and took away the local schools, which led to the closure of the bank, gas station, grocery and hardware stores. We are an abandoned community as are so many in rural American. Guess what? Neither Bush nor Glenn Beck caused that! We can’t move closer to the “big city”, where we could both stroll to either work or the nearest grocery, while dodging bullets, because it would be impossible in Ohio’s current state of collapse to sell our very modest two-bedroom home and buy another. You can’t get a mortage at age 70.
Even I know who Charlie Sheen is and have read some about his multiple problems, usually reported by breathless gossip commentators. The question comes to mind….Why was Mel Gibson so vilified and Charlie Sheen basically receives a pass for much worse behavior? For the same reason that George Bush is tortured daily and Obama, a much worse and more clueless president, bathes in hero-worshipping rays of sunshine? I’ll put Rush Limbaugh’s intelligence up against that of Keith Olberman’s any day, and I’ll win. So far, most of the comments of the right are substantially civil. The left slings slurs and taunts of “Corn-pone Nazi” (What they hell does that mean?), tea bagger and NasCar Loving Idiot constantly, despite the phony entreaties of Obama for a “more civil” public discourse. If someone likes NasCar, how does that hurt you? Are they coming to your house at night and siphoning off your gas? If you aren’t hurt personally, then shut up about it. I’d much rather have a Southerner for a friend than Eric Holder or Obama, always willing to throw you under the bus if it’s convenient for him. To solve the public employee problem, haul your own trash, teach your own kids and clear your own driveway. We homeschooled our kids with fantastic results, but are paying over 4 thousand dollars a year in property taxes to finance the huge new school built to house the students siphoned off from the small towns. I’m not sure how a two hour bus ride to and from school and the loss of community support is supposed to be an improvement. Test scores are down, but teacher pay and taxes are up which thrills the left.
I wonder if the Obamanator might intervene in Libya ? He might calculate it will calm the markets and send the price of oil back down. Possible ?
Tigerdog said: “Anyway I can grow my garden and feed myself and friends without oil, but one hot nuke will really spoil my day.”
==================
Reality, or what you perceive to be reality, can change irrevocably in an instant. Today I am a Hindu (I’m still a Muslim atheist, too) and I want to share Shankara’s teaching on “reality” with this beautiful parable:
Or it could be the match that sends Saudi Arabia over the edge and the price of oil will go up in flames. But not to worry, that would be taking a stand. Not his style.
Newfie, relax.
There will be no USA land war in Libya.
Obama is too smart for that. Even Bush-appointed Secretary Gates is too smart for that.
@Helen Highwater –
Could you please stop polluting the airwaves with this kind of tripe?
I happen to be quite concerned with the oil situation in the world and the US, but I also feel the bullshit, doom fantasy/predictions JHK spews and the fact that they never come true are one of the biggest obstacles to developing any kind of sane approach to problem.
If I can read this column in MY time at work in two minutes every Monday morning and occasionally respond to the idiocy here with facts and logic – that is perfectly within my rights – and none of your fucking concern.
What? Did you just discover blogging yesterday? I can’t be here because I don’t say things that you like and fawn all over JHK like the rest of these pathetic sychophants?
tootsie is probably correct about asoka knowing damn well who Charlie Sheen is, but I’m pretty sure JHK just learned of him last week. Perfect timing. The pop-culture references to NASCAR [always mispelled Nascar] and zombies is getting a bit old. Lady Gaga already has enough mileage.
OK….I was listening to Am LateNite Radio and the host says ‘call in’.
The first callers a guy from Jersey whining about 5$ gas…HIS SOLUTION,INVADE THE COUNTRIES AND TAKE THE OIL!
And those of us who dont watch TV didnt know about Sheen till the media made him the latest Lindsay L.
‘I’d much rather have a Southerner for a friend than Eric Holder or Obama’
Hahahaha
Hows Ohio overall? Rustbelt? Detroit 2?
He was getting 1.8 million $ per show!
Proudly Many of us can say ‘What show, never saw it’.
Well, Cash, I don’t consider the military or its operations the basis of our civil society.
To me, English Common Law is much more important to the old US way, the way of laws, not men (now overthrown) than any particular battle of WW11. And by the way, our laws were based on English Common Law, not Judeo-Christian tradition, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out, but you seemed to forget in last week’s thread.
(” … [W]e know that the common law is that system of law which was introduced by the Saxons on their settlement in England, and altered from time to time by proper legislative authority from that time to the date of the Magna Charta [1215 CE], which terminates the period of the common law…and commences that of the statute law…. This settlement took place about the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century…. Here, then, was a space of about two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it…. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians, and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are able to find among them no such act of adoption, we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. …”
– Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814. From Andrew A. Lipscomb, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson , Vol. XIV, Washington, DC: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903, pp. 85-97. Quoted at the Ten Amendments Day site.)
Every year on the 4th of July, we Greens get together and read the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, plus a few selections from our founding father’s words.
Everyone else blows up shit and drinks beer.
Who is upholding the values you profess to cherish?
The military-industrial complex has done more to destroy our republic than anything except for the corporations gone wild.
Why would you hold them up for admiration?
A British friend in SanDiego said ‘More and more Indians in SD’.
Yes, the press says they are sneaking in thru Mexico.
There werent many here [LA] 10 years ago.
Now they are ‘the new mexicans’ YIKES.
till the media made him the latest Lindsay L.
==========
Lindsay who? Christ!
I can tell you about Bill McKibben or Chalmers Johnson, (though I missed that Chalmers had died, until I learned about it on CFN. Thanks, Wage!)
Charlie and Linsay seem to be an optional reality not part of my reality. I don’t even want to know about whoever Lindsay L. is.
Jim Kunstler this morning:
“An Alzheimers fog creeps across this land….”
LOL I note that one of the side effects of statins (anti-cholesterol drugs) is confusion “cognitive difficulty” and some memory problems. http://www.statinanswers.com/effects.htm
I can’t help but wonder, seeing as big pharma has every white anglosaxon male in the USA on these drugs, if we’re seeing a whole series of less than acute decisions slowly leading to the wrap up of the empire – sure seems like it, and it’d be so ironic that it just sounds right..
“I have so much trouble signing in on this site, and can never use “Reply” to any of the posts.” -JOO
Ah, one more thing to be grateful for today. ;o)
You’re preaching to the choir here, Katnip!
I am trying to manage 25 acres with hand tools. Can’t do it.
My husband has no interest in gardening or home repair.
He does, however, do to the gym to work out. And, yes, he drives!
This drives me insane! I have post-holes to dig if you want upper body strength.
I have stuff to haul if you want aerobics.
Why waste oil to do fake exercise when there is SO much work to be done?
(And here I sit on the internet instead of being outside working).
“Charlie and Linsay seem to be an optional reality not part of my reality. I don’t even want to know about whoever Lindsay L. is.”
What a fucking lying phony. “Wow, man…I don’t do the TV thing…never heard of them.”
Bullshit. Even if you don’t have a TV you can’t escape these assholes if you spend a mere 5 minutes a day on the fucking internet. Game up, asoka-yourself. Everyone knows you spend just slightly more than 5 minutes a day on the internet. (Fucking phony liar.)
I like you, Jonathan, but I do think that it would have been better if you had asked your neighbor how long the oil would last, after you asked him how much there was.
That way, he might have been inspired (as you were) to go look it up himself.
And it may have changed his mind.
That’s the point, right?
@ Juletta, I too have trouble with the sign in & replying, so don’t assume you’re being blocked because of your views. As for the name calling: spend 5 minutes reading the comments on Beck’s blog/Blaze. You see the exact same thing in reverse – calling libs/radicals/dems all sorts of rude & obnoxious names. The right does not have a monopoly on politeness.
“(And here I sit on the internet instead of being outside working).”
Well then shut up and get to work. Heaven knows we won’t miss you.
To get rail going in this country we can do the following;
1) 100% Federal Financing. No messing around with cost sharing. (see New Jersey/New York train tunnel; Chris Christie)
2) Eliminate ALL spending for; A) missions to the Moon & Mars, B) fusion research, C) car battery research and D)ethanol subsidies. I estimate these should save $15 billion/year.
And they will create many more jobs than continuing funding for these four wasteful programs.
Hey, thanks, Hancock. I haven’t seen that movie, but I did like Westerns as a child. Because they had horses in them! But I don’t watch many movies.
I think I’d be diagnosed with ADHD nowadays. I don’t have the patience to sit through movies, although I can read for hours. Go figure.
I did see “Stagecoach” recently. My husband loves to watch old movies, so I sat with him and watched it.
You’re a fellow conspiracy theorist, right?
Here’s some obvious ones-
Jimmy Carter was NOT run from office by irate, oil-guzzling Americans. His speech on conserving oil was well received by Americans.
Ronald Reagan made a deal with the Iranians to keep the hostages until after the election, and the corporate media harped on the issue day after day after day. Which is how you keep American’s minds focused.
Carter didn’t lose by much. And I suppose he preferred demonization to assassination, the alternative way of getting rid of threats to the oil companies.
I know Charlie Sheen from the movie “Platoon” AND because he is a celebrity who speaks out for 9-11 truth.
Have you ever looked at the Yahoo top search list?
Truly, whenever I look at it, I’m like, WTF? Who are these people?
But last week, I started seeing Charlie Sheen’s name. What did he do, interview with Alex Jones again?
Then, I started hearing references to him all over the place. Hmmm. I asked my husband, who is more in tune with the culture, but he didn’t know.
I’m guessing that the press is on to get rid of Charlie Sheen, because of his truth speech.
And apparently, it’s very effective! Witness this blog!
I don’t know what they’re accusing him of, but I’m pretty sure that I know his real crime.
A thought crime.
Great story, Dao. Thanks.
“I don’t know what they’re accusing him of, but I’m pretty sure that I know his real crime.
A thought crime.”
This coming from someone who is constantly trying to get people she does not agree with banned from this site? Too freakin’ funny.
I’m an expert in electronics, it’s appropriate for me to have bought the kit version. I plan on modifying it to extend the range and will package it discretely.
I have taken a bicycle on Amtrak, Jerry. But I think they have a limit of two.
If ferries can carry cars across water, why can’t Amtrak carry cars for a ways? Good idea.
Kind of like the monster recreational vehicles you used to see, hauling cars for the destination travel.
Doobie-us… if you haven’t already I have two for your read list L. Fletcher Prouty’s book “JFK”
and “Family of Secrets” by Russ Baker.
For those bitching at JHK because the Dow isn’t at 4000, or whatever prediction he makes on this blog; cut the man some slack for god sakes…
Read his book (and perhaps JHK himself could review the title before blogging) it is the LONG Emergency…. L-O—N——G…. as in not sudden or maybe even noticeable. JHK said this much himself in his book, sometimes he gets itchy to see himself proven right in his blog… (HIS BLOG, he can say whatever he wants, you can read TMZ.com if you disagree w/him).
I personally feel that the reason the Dow isn’t at 4000 is because it is an artificial game being played on some big system of computers… not a crop that will fail if it doesn’t rain. The Dow is not at 4000 because Uncle Sam stepped in just three years ago and BAILED OUT WALL STREET!!! (remember…) and even if he didn’t the whole thing is rigged anyway…. it isn’t natural, and therefore not subject to natural laws like gravity and physics… as a matter of fact the game can be played well beyond the age of oil… there just won’t be room for the “middle class” in the casino, because there won’t be a middle class.
As for peak oil, the cornucopians out there understand the “bumpy plateau” part of the equation before poo-pooing it as some oil company conspiracy… there are PLEANTY of oil company conspiracies out there that are real…. give the world some time… it is going more on the timetable of JHK’s book, and less on the timetable of his blog.
This is a place for him (and us) to rant about the topic du jour…. and apparently for some of us that means name calling.
I am glad to see the name caller is so class-conscious… they have no class, and everyone is conscious of it.
@ wage,
Charlie has gone cuckoo for Cocopuffs!
Great analogy.
But shouldn’t it continue?
There’s supposed to be more trees on the other side of the island, but the dirty liberal environmentalists won’t let us cut them down.
Apparently that’s the meme, bico.
To: ProgorCons
—————
How is your wife doing? Better and better, I hope. Take all the time you need and come back when you are able.
This looney bin of CommiPinkuberFasciSocialiMonachiNaziMaoism will still be here.
The average city bus also needs to be modified to carry more than two bicycles at once. A mechanical device to lift them onto the roof could work. A dozen could then be carried at a time.
The way things are now there is two much chance of someone else using up the bike rack to make bus/bike commuting a reliable option.
In my minds eye I just worked it all out, too bad I need paid work right now.
And then, with the Magna Carta in 1215, they extended the rule of laws, not men.
As I pointed out to Myrtle last week, the Magna Carta was overthrown in 2006, here in the US.
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/military-commissions-act-2006
Isn’t that more important than the Battle of Gettysburg?
We now have kings, instead of presidents, who claim power never dreamed of by the kings of previous centuries, but who also claim the rights of indefinite detention, torture, and assassinations by imperial decree, once thought buried, but now unearthed again.
And the discussion is on what Charlie Sheen did over the weekend.
I’m watchin’ old movies. ground is still frozin’ and i still have more than a foot snow down. temp is about 32 F no sap flowin; I would start some pepper or tomato seeds but it is still a tad early. pretty much down time here in western MA.maybe i will go out and watch the snow melt {slowly)….
His best quote from last week, “Most of the time, and this includes naps, I’m an F-18” Freaking hilarious.
My sister went to college in Santa Barbara.
As I recall, the buses carried dozens of bicycles. I can’t remember how exactly.
But if they could do it in the 70s, they could do it now.
oh no… cut away! Build another statue to yourself….Your grandchildren don’t need anything because Jebus is coming to rapture y’all away!
(Ever hear of Easter Island… the place with statues and “no natives”?)
Sorry, don’t understand the F-18 reference.
Airplane?
That’s great. To bad the American way of life is still non negotiable.
I gotta say my like of Charlie Sheen went up about 50 bazillion points in the last week.
The reaction from the hoi polloi has been overwhelming. In real life, and on this board. A bunch of finger-waving no-nothing scolding moralizers.
You people are under the thrall of a condition I like to call waiting for Jesus.
Even if you’re not a “blank slate” card-carrying member of a church, somehow by cultural osmosis you are possessed of the conceit that somehow everyone should be trying to attain a Jesus-like level of personal excellence. Obama rode this reality all the way into the White House.
As long as you present yourself as some kind of saint, everyone will believe any bullshit you spew. Everyone else, fuck you- we don’t want to hear the truth unless it passes our short-cut to thinking: forget the locution: is the elocutioner a saint, like my very most favorite imaginary personal benchmark for integrity- Mr. Jesus Fucking Christ?
“If you ain’t Jesus Fucking Christ, you are a hypocrite, incapable of possessing any wisdom, any truth, any validity.”
Here’s the truth: Life ain’t fun, drugs are fun. Relationships suck, and hookers rock. Being poor and politically correct is for losers and making $1.2 million/episode is WINNING.
Ca$h said last week, “In any case IMO scientists should stay the fuck away from “why” and let the pole sitting mystics deal with it.”
I had to get back to this, to get my final word in. Cash believes those that know “How” (scientists) shouldn’t be those that dare to propose “why” (about the porpoise of life, Big WHY q’s, etc.). How fucking stupid is that? It seems to me that those that don’t know “How” have been claiming exclusive rights to the explanations of “why” and defending that right with swords dipped in bullshit for thousands of years. Oh yeah, legitimize that by claiming that such are “philosophers”- the very word means “Love of Wisdom”, and “Wisom” is defined as “accumulated knowledge or erudition or enlightenment”, eg., what Science “produces”.
What it breaks down to is “FALSE” philosophy vs. “TRUE” Philosophy. I’ll meet you on the field of battle, bitches. Its not a fair fight. Under the banner of the Theory of Evolution we’ll be rolling out several secret weapons this week: Polyploidization and Transposons, more evidence that God was never needed for all this beautiful speciation, nor is Genetic Inheritance the unknown black-box its soft-headed detractors claim. The theory of evolution is rolling on, regardless of whether you realize your body is squashed into a muddy tank-track far behind under a haze of mustard gas.
What Ca$H-monEY prefers to believe on Sunday and in his personal foxhole is his own prerogative. It just bears repeating that he is a childish bitch whose world-view is retrograde, who can’t handle reality, who can’t handle the future.
Special message for RippedThunder: smokeless tobacco causes mouth cancer.
Patrizia: Italy is not a scientific backwater. I am pleased to be the first to inform that God doesn’t exist and the structure and function of DNA has been elucidated.
PoC: You are trying so very very hard to be Jesus and you’re bi-winning: Congrats. You have the respect of the loser pool.
Its funny, there is always a nugget of clusterfuck theory in every major media bowel movement: this episode reveals that the bulk of America are a bunch of moralizing cunts who can’t act or think for themselves, scurrying to join the popular faction, whoever that might be. The biggest bloc behind this movement is the properly-coiffed suburban cadre who are all about “values”. The “tsk-tsk” contingent. The jealous, desperate fools hiding behind their fashion wardrobes and makeup, hoping no one finds out what grovelling, worthless pieces of shit they are.
Charlie offends the religion of the mainstream: the faux morality, the high-brow pseudo-ethical superiority, the secret societies and hierarchy of post-collegial corporate cults of demeanor, the plugged-in, vacant consumer whoredom of the permanent low-self esteem clique.
Someone comes along who took their money (winning!) and then said “Fuck you” to their bullshit lifestyle lies (marriage) will not get a pass- there must be a pantywaist backlash. A million bleating elephantine farts of derision tweeted, the kingdom defended for a day!
And I used to take the trolley in San Jose.
There were spaces for 2 bikes in every car.
I think it is an airplane, or maybe an automatic weapon? Anywho, he’s saying he’s hot shit….even when napping!
There is an unofficial ER diagnosis that applies-
“Too stupid to live”
OK,for the first time, my interest is piqued.
What was this interview from?
Hey Toots, Per your question: “How about I show up at your front door and tell you to give me all the money you squirreled away? How bout that?”
Come on over; unfortunately for you, you will not need a very large bag, probably a small pop corn sack will do as long as you empty out a little of the popped corn.
SNAFU
You know what’s even more depressing? Having a Conservative, right-wing, lying, hypocritical, fundamentalist Christian prime minister. This guy is destroying our democracy so fast that if we don’t get him out of office soon there will be nothing left of it. And if our electoral system weren’t as dysfunctional as the one the US has, he wouldn’t even BE prime minister, because the majority of Canadians voted for “anybody but Harper” and he got in anyway.
funny how four buck gasoline brings out the best in everyone
My goodness, tootsie, you are an angry little person. Have you ever thought about getting help?
Asoka is just one man.
What about the 340 million people in US/Canada who
thrive[?] on LL/CS news?
That tells me alot about the people of North America.
You know what’s even more depressing?
shows like ‘LITTLE MOSQUE ON THE PRAIRIE’.
Don’t know. Haven’t followed his comments 🙂
I’m curious why you think asking people to use a bit of common politeness and civility when responding to other peoples’ posts is “tripe”. Are you really as rude and nasty to other people in person as you are here, or do you just do it online where nobody knows who you are?
that’s one of the reasons I don’t watch TV!
They hate Charlie cuz they want to be Charlie – and they can’t. This is all just more evidence (as if more was needed) that we need a new Aristocracy. Once when I worked in a record store, a sad little guy bought a picture of John in bed with Yoko. He said “look at the expression of Lennon’s face – he looks like a devil”. Admiration, Jealousy, and Hatred all vied for supremacy in the little guy’s heart. A typical egalitarian/democrat who both worships and hates those above him. Years after when Lennon was gunned down, I remembered this sad fellow.
In a true system, people are taught to value their own place. They don’t hate those above them because they aren’t in competition with them anymore than the feet are in competition with the head. The modern mood of egalitarianism has lead to countless revolutions and much bloodshed. And for what? The low are still the low even if enthroned. Sooner or later blood, like water, finds its own level.
Truth be told, the New World Order is seeking to install a new version of this old system as well. But sans the White Race and Western Culture – they mean to set themselves up as Gods and don’t want any problems. Same reason that Alexander the Great turned against the Greeks and towards the young Persians – they would accept him as a God and the Greeks would not. But, but, but you sputter (not you Bustin) “what about democracy”? A tool nothing more. As the Turkish President said, Democracy is a Train and we can get off wherever we like. The NWO intends to get off at Medevial Manor complete with happy little darkies working in the fields. Well we intend to stop them. Remember friends, the slave is only noble when he rebels. I have just affirmed and denied the same thing – but not quite: the form of the argument is the same but the value of the variables is different – and that makes all the difference. Let He who has eyes to see, See.
No problem Katnip; I said 4 bucks is the limit for me because at that point nearly 20% of my take home pay would be going straight into my gas tank.
To be honest I cannot afford current gas prices but
Like you, my town has very few bike/walk friendly routes. Usable sidewalks are a thing of the past in the rust belt. Local government has enough trouble scraping up the money to keep pot holes filled, much less to worry about sidewalks…
I used to ride quite frequently but I have had a couple of near misses with distracted drivers.
My commute is about 10 miles each way. I would love to move closer but with todays market its a catch 22: Its a great time to buy a house but a horrible time to sell one. So I am where I am.
Awww Helen, I like Tootsie, (people say I have no taste,) but I think he’s/she’s swell!
I especially like it when he/she uses the word “fucktard” as an “insult” in replies… I wonder if he/she picked up that one from the platoon of Marines that gave his mother the clap, or the Army brigade that she gave the clap to!
plus the comments are usually so dense that light actually bends around them!
One thing is for sure, after reading tootsies comments I find myself in favor of abortion in cases of incest!
One thing… I want to know if toots can use the word “fuck” as a superlative, a modifier, a noun, and a verb in the same sentence….
I was in college when the 1970 oil shortage happened and I had a fiat 850 spyder. It was great. Today, you can’t even get a fiat here, and my small car (mercedes 350) just took a full tank of gas for $60.(it lasts over two weeks for me.) Most people don’t remember the 1970’s with odd and even fill up days and the fights and long lines. What a mess. that was during a time when people were not as spoiled as they are today, driving a gas guzzling mega truck/car. Could you imagine them fighting it out at the pumps? An entire generation might be lost…..no loss..
Its no coincidence that Sheen has become the poster boy for what our country is today. Cocky, intoxicated, stupid, self centered, rich (and spending every last penny) unemployed, and completely disconnected from the world as it goes down in flames. I think people should view his public fiasco as all of us, in one person. You can point directly to that visual image and say, “this is why we are in the mess we are today”. Its useless to change things now, because just as Sheen seem unable to see his plight,and do something about it to save himself and his family, we as a nation, are unable to rescue ourselves from our way of life and selfish ineptitute. TOO LATE. Even those who are able to lead decent lives are grouped into the majority of imbeciles that are destroying themselves and taking us with them.
You’re right, Jim, a frivolous and incredulous nation, lacking gravitas or substance, totally unprepared for the historical forces bearing down upon us.
I hope we as a people wise up pretty quick, or else we’re screwed.
Ozono … Roosterville? Does such a place really exist? Near Boston Corners? The one atlas I have here doesn’t show it. When it warms up I’ll have to ride up there and check it out for myself. Is there a sign on Rte. 8 that says Roosterville?
General Hancock … true, you got Cliff Lee back, but you lost Jason Worth. I think the Mets will be more competitive this season and give the Phils a good run for their money. Phils still the favorite for the NL East, though.
Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Your absolutely right! I’m a real smart aleck. Especially since this guy is a Vietnam vet on meds for mental issues. That “drill-baby-drill” mantra just really irritates me. Still no reason to rub people’s noses in the fact that “they can’t handle the truth”.
“Come on over; unfortunately for you, you will not need a very large bag, probably a small pop corn sack…”
Which explains why you are jealous of anyone who has had the wit and determination to put some money away. Thanks for the clarification.
F-18= fighter airplane, model 18 also f18A, F18B,F18C,D an E , M1A =best gun ever made, U2 = spy plane or rock band, take your pick. NSA, CIA, FBI ,NTSA, ICE i could go on for pages with acronyms, the US government has 50,000 people on the payroll to think of this SHI””””””T
“For now, I’m just going to hang out with these two smoking hotties and fly privately around the world. It might be lonely up here, but I sure like the view. -Charlie Sheen
I gotta say my like of Charlie Sheen went up about 50 bazillion points in the last week.”
And I suppose that is because you are a bigger piece of white trash than he.
Oh, your a self made man! Nice of you to take the blame.
Oh and “your” (you probably meant you’re but that is merely an assumption) a moron.
two weeks with a 350? you should have bought the deisel. I’ve got a ’75 280 d and it gets like 30 mpg around town. Gotta love that german enginering? My bike is a ’68/2 bimmer boxer. I think it uses as much fuel as the car! But it is more fun to drive!
Reality Optional?
Not for us Brits I’m afraid, if this kicks off, this coming Friday…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudis-mobilise-thousands-of-troops-to-quell-growing-revolt-2232928.html
The ’Hunayn Revolution’ and polite cough for affect – here’s EXACTLY why…
You see back in those heady satin-loon-pant and afghan coat clad 1970’s – pre the bounty of North Sea Oil – now long gone, burnt and busted… when we had that last brick-wall hitting moment of ‘supply’ collapse, you know that one that was like eeerghh Dudes, completely 100% non-negotiable…
Well, back then they were far few peeps living on this over-crowded little isle, and we had far fewer cars/trucks too in fact, and we had thousands of independent fuel Co petrol stations, dotted around the place… to go get petrol from.
(Then three decades of decadence and complacency later including those city boyz banksters being let orf the regulations-leash and we Brits went totally doo-dally mad)… loadsamoney was the MANTRA, and a housing bubble helped immensely!
So what’s the KEY difference since then, here right now in March 2011 you may ask?
Well I have to report to you US based folks, that over here in the UK now the bulk of our car fuel is now sold ONLY at (on edge of mass suburban cubicle estates) by the SUPERMARKETS – a clique mini oligarchic group of about 4 key players or so – (a prime example of energy-security clusterf#ck thinking). So this time around, when business as usual oil supplies collapse (as they will, sooner or later) mega-queues of vehicles will form-up for there limited quota of a few litres, creating impassable lines of traffic blocking… what?
You guessed it where the masses mainly live and try and feed themselves with food too… These same road arteries also carry (nightly) the dozens of trucks that bring the produce… oh deary me.
So let’s do the math on this together, less places to buy limited fuel = massive longer car queues in the critical key places people live/work on mass/commute and buy there food from.
(BINGO)
Don’t you just love the JIT implications…
Be seeing you…
PS: (But not if I’m on a NetJet to Norway this sat)….well you never quite know do you?
A quick scan of our news on this side of the pond shows no sign of trouble in Saudi Land. How respectable is the INDEPENDENT I know nothing about it?
Nice weeks work, JHK. I appreciate it, as always.
There is, indeed, a lot of stuff hanging out there in geopolitical space that could have a really negative impact on oil supply and quality of life around the world.
Here are my favorite lines from the week:
“…1973 OPEC oil “embargo” (so-called). Whatever else history records it as having consisted of – bluffing, hoarding, fear-mongering, market manipulation – a few things are inarguable. It arose suddenly out of a political conflict (the Yom Kippur War), and it disrupted life in the USA…”
-jhk-
Yeah, no shit, James Sherlock Kunstler! From there through the 1979 election we, as a Nation, had a chance to answer a wake up call. We almost did – we came so freakin’ close! But we’ve been going backwards since 1980 – and eventually it’s gonna cost us.
The world may skate through this episode – with no harm and things may be back to *normal* by summer. Or this may end in such a big disaster that we finally face the truth.
Which brings me to my absolute favorite JHKism for the week:
“…the theory that life goes on until it doesn’t..”
-jhk-
That’s a very good theory – from all angles.
===========
Personal stuff –
Hancock – HAHAHOHOHEHE!! Freakin’ hilarious!!
And thanks, she’s going to be fine, I think – although my household is deploying a large and varied array of analgesic pharmaceuticals, ’till yet. And yeah, that was some seriously personal and annoying impeding that RI was sending my way Sunday night.
Bustin – Thank you, more or less, for the backhanded complement you rendered. I will always contend that you, or anyone, who expresses THAT MUCH CERTAINTY is covering fear, dread, or something. Dig deep, me lad – and see what you find – consider the Big Maybe. – maybe?-
Thank you for this.
(I was also around during the oil shortages of the ’70s and got a broken headlight from a panicky lane-changer backing into me at a gas station, and had to get friendly with the schnook parking lot attendent so I could get $10 worth of gas on occasion–thank goodness for my miserly VW Squareback.)
I actually laughed when I heard about the possible reserve drawdown. Americans (the U.S. type) are without a doubt the most decadent people on the face of the earth–and that alone is justification for retribution we are about to receive. May we all be thankful.
Interesting stuff to ponder –
Gas went to $4.10/gallon in the spring of 2008 mostly because of speculation. At that time the sensible thing to do would have been to threaten to draw down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the US – to lower the speculative fever on oil.
Instead of doing a drawdown – Dear Leader BushII let them keep buying oil and filling the damn thing up.
===========
Now – facing potentially VERY serious supply shortages in the coming weeks or months – Dear Leader Obama wants to pump oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and draw DOWN our safety margin.
Why is it that US leadership seems to always make the least logical choice – in any given situation?
Decadent!! Decadent!! How dare you! our American way of life “WILL NOT BE COMPRMISED” “Blasphemy, I say Blasphemy!!”I sincerely apologise for my American brethren. I know, I know, Americans always apologize for their behavoir. You really have to admit we are quite the energy hogs!
Maybe he’s saying he snores?
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/oil-6/
Oops – forgot to include the link that backs my contention that the 2008 oil price spike was due to speculation.
Don’t know a thing about this website, fabius, but it looks a little interesting. And at least I did read the referenced webpage and it does confirm what I am saying to CFN.
BTW – #239 – looks like another good CNF week coming up!
@ K-Dog
How respectable is Robert Fisk?
Good question…. I’d say probably one of the finest ‘best’ informed journo’s on the globe when it comes to all things ME? And the indie was a breakaway from the Telegraph…
(So it’s a quality UK Broadsheet, still)
*A quick scan of our news on this side of the pond shows no sign of trouble in Saudi Land…*
NO SH#T… eh…?
But I know who Charlie Sheen is – he was great in Wall St, and Platoon in fact – and let’s move onto the bigger question… now shall we?
Do you send the private militias quietly in, or risk going full-blown WWIII with the shock-n-awe group hanging out around there already?
I think the Obama-messiah-man’s looking a tad strained on the current clips…
Is it gloves-off time and reveal your final hand to the Chinese/Japanese, muslims peeps et al… and the Russians too…
Or do we Angloists stick to the icky-bittsie diplomacy stuff…?
(A firm hand on the tiller either way is what’s needed)
this continued political insablity will result in $300 to $200 for a barrel of oil
==============
Interesting word: “in sa blit y”
Also interesting that you state a range of oil prices from high to low. I don’t think I have EVER seen a range stated any way except low to high. And it’s not like you just did it this one time. You also spoke of gas prices from $10 to $5. Where do you live? Where does one acquire this manner of expression? Or do you suffer from a new form of lexdisia?
So I was watching Democracy Now today. That’s where I get my news, and that’s why I knew not what Charlie Sheen did to upset folks.
Anyway, they had a clip of Hilary Clinton explaining how the US State Dept. has many employees whose job it is to go on websites (including Arab) and influence the debate.
Plus, Thom Hartman talked about going to a right wing think tank and all the young employees had wikipedia up on their screens, busily redoing the pages in a right wing fashion.
So when these right wingers come on here to clusterfuck and spout their free market stuff, are they being paid?
(Not Q, I think he’s a true believer). But the rest.
A firm hand on the tiller?? haha We have a ’57 ladder truck which has a tiller wheel on the back of the ladder. It is a hoot to drive. The young guys don’t seem to get it. turn left to go right! I love drivin’ the thing! Sum’ bitch is almost as old as me. It had a Hercules engine in it http://www.herculesengine.com/history.htm
the head cracked so they replaced it with a Cummins straight 6 deisel. The thing still runs strong today , after almost 55 years
OK, that’s funny, K-dog.
If the US media doesn’t report it, it couldn’t be important, could it?
Ha, ha.
Say, what’s going on with Charlie today?
Charlie Sheen has credits for over sixty movies. I have seen six of those and remember him from two: Platoon and Arrival. Even not watching TV, it is near impossible not to know who he is.
IMHO Charlie has (or had) more money than god and is way “eccentric”. The infotainment industry could accept eccentric as he made money for them. Speaking for 911 truth can still pass as eccentric and be downplayed. But it is NOT ALLOWED to be seen raising children with two concubines and the paid party girls.
Dear Jim please surf over to Denninger’s blog and scroll down till you come to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr’s One Minute speech.
Folks that is our government and that man is a verified specimen of the Left which is so worshipped around here.
The tofu left allied with the cargo cult left, ain’t nothin good comin of it either.
Hey Toots, My My you cut me to the quick with this jewel: “Which explains why you are jealous of anyone who has had the wit and determination to put some money away.”
Am I to presume you have the temerity to include yourself in the top 1% crowd of which I was speaking?
SNAFU
“So when these right wingers come on here to clusterfuck and spout their free market stuff, are they being paid?”
-wage-
Good question, wage, and not just for here. Without intending any disrespect to any of the regulars, or our host – I think this CFN comment thread is still small enough that we’re not getting a whole lot of that, if any.
For example, TooTsie would be my first choice to study as a paid shill – but he looks EXACTLY like hundreds of regular and irregular FOX News commenters. And there’s no point in paying them to spew that RW nonsense on FOX – that’s what they are all there “for to see.”
The idea of a RW think tank deliberately using staff to skew debate or Wikipedia entries is pretty chilling in its implications. But, that’s the way of the World we’ve found ourselves in.
Do you know of any LW organizations trying to skew things the other way – or at least edit for truth and track the patterns of the RW “editors?”
I may feel an urge to make a donation for common sense, here.
Update from Humboldt:
87 octane has been over $4.00/gallon for more than a week; it’s currently $4.06 at the cheapest stations and $4.10 at the most expensive ones. Bear River Pump ‘n’ Play, Renner Cardlock and Costco are usually twenty to thirty cents cheaper (I haven’t checked lately) but the former is practical only for those who live or do business in Fortuna or Loleta and the last two are members-only stations. The bottom line, in any event, is give or take at least $3.80 for the lucky.
Diesel is averaging about $4.26, and it takes a fair bit of diesel even to stock our grocery stores. Winco alone has often been running two trucks a night into Eureka, I don’t know from where, but I’d be surprised if they’re coming from any closer than Redding or Grants Pass; more likely, Portland, Sac or the Bay Area. I assume that Safeway stocks its Humboldt County stores from the Bay Area; it has a monstrous warehouse just north of Vacaville and I believe some others south of the Delta. We can count on a round trip of over 300 miles, but usually a lot more, for anything that we have to import from a railhead.
The old Northwestern Pacific line has been in the news this week because a rancher and Japanese instructor in SoHum is spearheading an effort to turn it into a rail trail. Most local politicians and journalists that I’m aware of are opposed to restoring rail service; in the words of Ryan Burns at the North Coast Journal, it’s “so Nineteenth Century.” The mayor of Arcata, who recently warned about peak oil someday forcing the rail line to be rebuilt, is a refreshing exception to this foolishness.
I don’t look forward to the political mess that will arise when the proposed Willits-to-King Salmon bike path needs to be reconverted to rail.
Traffic volumes seem to be as heavy as ever, and shlengtheners are still to be seen, although they seem just a bit less ubiquitous than before. There doesn’t seem to be a move to bus travel, partly because HTA sucks (especially its municipal services in Eureka and Arcata) and partly because there are a lot of lunatic happy motoring partisans around here (often the same people as the property-rights freaks, the SoHum contingent of whom are complaining about trespassers using the proposed rail trail).
Global Commodities Rigging
Today on Dylan Ratigan, they discussed the inflated food prices around the world and that the bottom billion are suffering around the world including here in the US.
One guest mentioned that the rising wheat prices effected mainly the ME, but rice, as staple of Asia has not been inflated. Because we are a global economy, although one guest claimed the US is flush with oil, we will still pay higher prices at the pumps.
I can’t imagine that anyone outside of the top elite actually like globalism. I mentioned last week that someone who works at American Express said they were importing Indian workers for US offices. Question, when they say there is more private hiring in the US and that the unemployment numbers are going down, (right) who is being hired? What statistics can we study to find this out?
There are so many workable parts to the crisis we are facing globally. For market manipulations at the expense of the well being of billions around the world check out :
“The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century” by Michel Chossudovsky
this is an a few paragraphs down from the beginning. Of course he is discussing the issues of the food crisis that has led to the ME uprisings.
excerpt from GLOBAL POVERTY, FOOD RIOTS, AND THE ECONOMIC CRISIS 2011
[Government and intergovernmental organizations are complicit in these developments. The state’s economic and financial policies are controlled by private corporate interests. Speculative trade is not the object of regulatory policies, and in fact the opposite holds true: the framework of speculative trade in the commodity exchanges is protected by the state. Moreover, the provision of food, water and fuel are no longer the object of governmental or intergovernmental regulation or intervention with a view to alleviating poverty or averting the outbreak of famines.
Largely obfuscated by official and media reports, both the “food crisis” and the “oil crisis” are the result of the speculative manipulation of market values by powerful economic actors. And because these powerful economic actors operate through a seemingly neutral and “invisible” market mechanism, the devastating social impacts of engineered hikes in the prices of food, fuel and water are casually dismissed as the result of supply and demand considerations.
We are not dealing with distinct and separate food, fuel and water “crises” but with a global process of economic and social restructuring. The dramatic price hikes of these three essential commodities are not haphazard. All three variables, including the prices of basic food staples, water for production and consumption and fuel, are the object of a process of deliberate and simultaneous market manipulation.]
“Roosterville? Does such a place really exist? Near Boston Corners? The one atlas I have here doesn’t show it. When it warms up I’ll have to ride up there and check it out for myself. Is there a sign on Rte. 8 that says Roosterville?” -Marlin554
lol Cock-a-doodle-doooo! (Really sounds more like: Er-e-er-e-errrrr!)
Google it, man! Hard to believe, but it be thar, yonder. roosterville, ma Just before New Boston and Sandisfield. There’s a sign on Rt.8 for Roosterville Rd., but that’s about it. I don’t think it ever thrived, because it’s located on some flats down by the W. Branch of the Farmington. Can you say, “unsafe”? I knew ya could. ;o)
That tactic seems to be working pretty well.
That post from Whatzit-from-ohio was a fine example of some messy RW spew. Another fine “informed” dolt from the land of many enchantments and teevee.
And then there’s this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/8359076/US-farmers-fear-the-return-of-the-Dust-Bowl.html
Looks like oil is not the only thing we’re quickly running out of.
BustinJ;
Are you a prof somewhere? You sound alot like some friends ’round heya who’ve spent their lives in academia?
Friendly enough people … a little arrogant toward their intellectual inferiors (me), effete, iconoclastic, antagonistic toward their middle class neighbors and the wealthy, at the same time enjoying a pretty secure and comfortable life themselves. Altogether not bad sorts. When the shit hits the fan I don’t know how useful they’ll be, though. Solzhenietsen addresses the role of the intellectual in times of trouble in his ‘Gulag’ books.
Just wondering, that’s all.
Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
So Wage,
Last week I posted something about Cass Sunstein, one of Obama’s people suggesting a similar approach to controlling what people think, by posting on websites in order to counter “conspiracy theories”. This method is called cognitive infiltration.
I guess we’ve got it going on from both sides.
[Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).]
Wage,
NFS
I discovered this when I found some FACTUAL information being misrepresented on Wikipeadia last week. I signed up to fix the info and was soon in a battle to try and fix it. The information I’m talking about I won’t get into, that’s not the point. The info did however support a right wing point of view in its misrepresentation and even had a junk science citation to legitimize it.
The information I tried to change is still on Wikipeadia to mislead and hurt. I did not have the status to change it. I now use Google chrome to do ALL my web searches because it has an ad-on that allows me to block Wikipeadia permanently.
The Google Chrome extension is called Personal Blocklist.
If anyone wants to know the specifics of the information I tried to correct, ask. That would be appropriate in a separate post.
Vanpool, Hybrid Passenger Car, Motorcycles, Passenger Rail Amtrak,Rail (Heavy),Light Rail, Airplanes, Cars, Personal Truck, Buses
According to US govt figures (yeah, I know) the above is the list of passenger vehicles from most efficient to least efficient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation
Some of this seems counterintuitive, but there are assumptions and/or projections about passenger loads to consider. For example, passenger trains and buses spend a great deal of time running with very light passenger loads – since the driver/operator does not count.
Whereas, the driver of a passenger car/truck always counts. Which makes sense – if the driver doesn’t need to go, why even crank the thing up?
My overriding point – ALL of this stuff takes fuel to run. And it is going to take more that years, DECADES, to get Americans out of their cars.
And that exercise is counterproductive, anyway – since a hybrid passenger car is much more efficient than any train or any bus.
Chrome – “it has an ad-on that allows me to block Wikipeadia permanently.”
– kdog-
Yeah, I’m interested. This is scary stuff in it’s implications. I’ve never yet run into a Wikipedia page that was off in a *major sort of way,* you know, that changed something really important factually.
As useful as Wikipeadia can be sometimes I am not going to waste my time having to question and double check everything it serves up. My reaction may seem extreme to some but Wikipeadia is out my life, like FOX news. I refuse to watch it. I value my brain.
Yikes – Lbend, I know who Wage is going to think of first – without doubt – Little ol’ PoC.
“…controlling what people think, by posting on websites in order to counter “conspiracy theories””
-lbend-
This sort of looking for CFN moles and counteragents could get out of hand in a hurry!
Wage – I SWEAR
on a stack of Bibles – scratch that
on all that is Holy – d*mn, that won’t work
on a Old Farmers Almanac – will that work? 😉
That I’m just a skeptical Southern boy with no agenda and receiving no payments for disinformation. – or payments for information, for that matter.
This is weird stuff, too – I’ll freely admit.
TV free America… The Environmental Movement of the Mind
I’d like to see the Wikipedia page and the info in question, Kdog – if you would be so kind.
I can not begin to tell you how much I’d miss Wikipedia. But I’ve got an open mind – if something has to be flushed, I’ll flush it.
But it also makes me wonder if there is something internal to Wikipedia that could fix this problem.
They do keep asking for donations, after all.
I’m all ears, kdog. Hit us with what you’ve got.
Damn, k-dog, you are on a roll!
Last week you make the brilliant proposal that posts be limited to one screen, which I immediately adopted for my posts, with the fringe benefit of experiencing a concision high as a result.
Now, you are educating us how to block Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is full of errors (not to mention that the articles are anonymous, can be edited by anybody (even idiots like Asoka), and you have no idea who is contributing or what their agenda is).
Right on, k-dog! I am blocking Wikipedia, also.
Up here in Canada we are already paying $5.00 a gallon, and in some places more, for gas. And people are still buying SUVs, Hummers and some of the biggest pickup trucks I’ve ever seen. I guess they don’t see any problem with that.
Thoughts for the Day
CNN this morning reported this morning that Gaddafi was attacking his own people. Really? Did CNN expect a different reaction?
I believe Abe Lincoln used the same tactic after Rebels bombarded Ft Sumter in tha War of Northern Aggression. Very subliminal I thought; shouldn’t the report be that he fired on rebels, freedom fighters, or some appropriate descriptive adjective?
Why Drill Here Drill Now? Save some for the grandchildren. Don’t we own and occupy Iraq? Capacity pre-war was 2.8 Mb/day. If we decide not to share, that should quench our domestic thirst.
Look up drug test in Wikipeadia and you will find near the bottom.
Under the urban myth section.
From california NORML we get.
A huge difference, and this could certainly cause some people into not getting employed. Most people with any heart wouldn’t support any drug test that detects waste products of a drug over a period of time longer than it would take a person to complete rehab.
The most potent weapon in the government’s war on drugs is drug testing, so it is obviously important to some to misrepresent the facts.
Anybody who can’t refrain from cannabis use for a mere three weeks tops certainly has a problem. I agree. But that’s quite a difference from the true facts concerning detection times.
Who sponsored the junk science that is cited in Wikipeadia you ask?
The National Drug Court Institute.
Call me crazy but I’m thinking there might be a conflict of interest there.
And for those wondering. Is k-dog looking for a job? Yes I am. Can k-dog pass a drug test? Yes I can.
But somebody reading Wikipeadia and nothing else could get hurt and probably will.
gasoline is 4 bucks a gal. here in western ma, thats for the cheap crap.who cares?I have a four banger/stick, and soon i wil be drmy iving R60/2. i am really thinking of puin the Honda CL 160 on the road. can you say 100 mpg?
Alexandra,
Methinks Obama has lost his shine. Every speech he gives seems to me to be adding new dinge to the word lackluster. He says things, but actions don’t follow…so who cares.
My husband, who is 100X more optimistic than I will ever be, mentioned that he is completely disappointed with Obama.
Change of topic….do you know anyone attending the big wedding? I remember getting up at some ungodly time of night (4:00 a.m.?) when Chuck and Di got married. Back in those days I was putting husband #1 thru medical school….things were getting grim and I wished I were Princess Diana. Funny how things are not as they appear.
Cheerio,
Jen
JHK is a “cultural critic” and a “social commentator”, so watching CNN and network news shows is part of his job (I suppose), but I wish he’d turn the TV off. Last week he mentioned the Kardashians, this week Charlie Sheen. If you don’t watch TV these people hardly enter your consciousness. I’m beginning to think he’s getting overly aggravated and developing a touch of cognitive dissonance. Let’s hope not. Anyway, kill your TV, Everybody. You’ll be much more relaxed and clearheaded. An occasional DVD is fine. Stop drinking, eat healthy food, and read informative books. I’m not self-righteous, just do as I say.
Idiots like k-dog and Asoka can change Wikipeadia yes but we don’t have Editor status. Sitting in front of a screen at a right or left wing think tank all day and pounding away at Wikipeadia entries gives one Editor status.
As a long time weekly reader of this forum I seldom comment, but let me pass along some real world reminders about oil shortage.
In 1973, 74 I was early 20 something saw the result of the oil embargo, or whatever it really was.
-long lines at gas stations
-gas stations closed on Sundays was Gov’t
mandated.
-high prices, although cheap compared to today
-government plans to ration gas. Never did.
-Oh, God forbid I almost forget. Nascar races
shortened to save gas.
Now at that time it was a inconvenence no doubt, but also at that time stores were closed on Sundays. We didn’t have to shop 7 days a week. The population just wasn’t on the move like we are today.
This inconvenence last just a few short months and it was over.
If again we have oil interruption we will likely experience the above again and it could be a new way of life.
Now this would be a shock to go go go life style.
Do you think pump prices are higher than they were when oil was at this level last time? So did i and here is what i came up with when trying to figure out why. (All prices to nearest penny).
There are 44+ gallons of product derived from a typical oil barrel. So at $100 per barrel raw product cost averages $2.27 per gal. If one adds a compounding 10% ea for refinery cost and transport/storage, then add 5% current retail margin, the gas price equals $2.89 per gallon before tax. Add federal tax and cost is 3.07 before state (and maybe local) tax. After adding my state tax and checking my arithmetic there isa n unexplained .21 per gallon extra cost. I’m wondering who is raking off the extra?
But then i see the mistake. Our national project to burn food and starve the third world has gotten more expensive, and that 10% ethanol added to each gallon is now more costly than the gasoline it replaces(about $3.60 gal wholesale) which adds .13 per gallon to the base refinery cost and explains the higher total price. Now i’m so happy (not).
What happened around that time was that he shucked the old wife, and got himself a brand-spanking new right-wing populist, true-believer model. I was told this by the former employer of wife number two. His views have been strategically tailored ever since around objectives of domestic peace. Gives new meaning to the old charge against him of being a “house conservative,” which conservatives used to level for making his bones with the Wash Post by attacking Nixon during Watergate.
He is a man who knows what side his bread is buttered on.
We can save the world and peak oil is not necessarily the harbinger of doom. Find out more at:
http://boardofthebanned.net/blog/
Wow, what insight. We’re all quite impressed with your critique of a nuclear engineer who thought enough of the American people to think that they wouldn’t sell their souls to the Arabs so they could keep on driving to McDonalds. Surprise! I guess people like you really showed him, eh?
So, how you likin’ those oil prices now, eh “Tootsie?” And enlighten us all, what’s *your* degree in? Fashion? Ballet? Or maybe you never quite finished, or started college. Just maybe.
I’ve been lurking here for almost a year now. I read most of the comments during the week (70% to completely), and pretty much find anything I’d want to say, has already been stated.
As to my background, I spent the 90’s reducing my carbon footprint, walking, biking, or public transporting – thinking it would make a difference. Disillusionment set in, as I saw exponential breeding resulting in spoiled rotten brats, gifted sub-20MPG guzzlers at 16, who put at least 6K miles/year on their multiple ton tanks. This more than offset any effect I might have had, with my delusional intensions. The obvious hopelessness of the situation set in around ’98, but I never gave up on minimizing my *contribution*.
At any rate, it’s obvious that certain posters here are shills (TzaTza/EtcEtc). What isn’t so obvious is that this same shill has many sock puppets, that he uses to bolster himself. Take for example the TragicHipster/Großdeutschland connection. These two appear to have popped up once Tza finally got banned.
What I don’t understand, is why JHK/his WEB moderators don’t simply ban that jackasses’ IP address. Unless, of course, he’s using proxy services, or faking his IP header…
Just remember, there are over 1,000,000 six-figure-salaried-US-government-stalkers now, thanks to the Patriot Act and Homeland Security…
The comment by NewWorld at 11:53AM is a dagger in the heart of liberals and their respectable lapdogs; a hot knife thru a slab of butter. Like a world class brain surgeon liturally carving up liberals with “military precision”. NewWorld and VladKranz are generals in the burgeoning Pro-White armies, constantly rounding up you anti-whites into kessels; and as the pro-white/anti-white-genocide movement grows, the rings tighten, until eventually anti-whites (with their cults and industries) are vanquished “like a mosquito”.
High speed rail our future? More like hobos hopping freight trains!
Some survivors of the seventies even went so far as to only have one or no children because they were worried about this thing called overpopulation.
That gives new meaning to pissing in the wind. Well not exactly pissing……..
Absolutely – 0 children here. I’d never bring someone into this reality, knowing what I know. It disgusts me when the rabbits (rats) breed more than 2 children…
I feel sorry for the children/grandchildren – every one born in the US now essentially bears a debt of something > $300,000. Talk about selling your children/grandchildren into indentured servitude…
I’m guessing that the press is on to get rid of Charlie Sheen, because of his truth speech.
=============
Well you would be guessing wrong Wage. The press, not to mention the producers of Two and a Half Men, are about the least likely people in the world to want to get rid of Charlie Sheen.
Sheen is their cash cow. To say he is a cottage industry would be gross under-statement.
All you I-don’t-own-a-TV snobs out there are a bunch of assholes in my book. Too bad for you … you’ve been missing one of the most hilarious shows ever. Essentially it’s a somewhat cleaned-up version of Sheen’s actual life; he plays the ultimate lothario.
While I’m generally disgusted by celebrity watching it would be as hard to turn away from the Sheen smash-up as it would be a train wreck. I’ve been reading all the NYT articles and watching the many interviews he’s done.
As we all know by now, Sheen is notorious for having spent tens of thousands of dollars on prostitutes, escort services, etc. The cleverest line came when an interviewer asked Sheen “do you pay women for sex?” and he replied instantly and with a straight face, “No, I pay them to leave.”
“All you I-don’t-own-a-TV snobs out there are a bunch of assholes in my book.”
Assholes with lives.
It aint that bad, jeez. Don’t worry, artificial intelligence robots will solve all our problems or give us all a quick painless death…hahahah. I’m all for being more energy efficient and conservation, but you people wanting to “redistribute wealth” by taking it from many of the best and brightest and giving it to the worst and dumbest are Bat Crap Crazy!
The wikipedia thing is interesting, K. I appreciate you posting it up for us. There are a couple of disclaimers in the entry as stated “most people,” is one of them. So maybe that’s why it will be hard to get changed any further.
Maybe NORML can help the situation. I didn’t see an citation to NORML on the wikipedia page for “drug test.”
While I’m climbing on a soapbox – the whole situation as regards drug testing is asinine. And I had no idea that the excretion times for THC metabolites were as long as they are. My bottom line is that someone who gets high on Saturday night on grass should be able to do any job by Monday morning. The idea that businesses test marijuana use back so far into an individual’s history is – nothing but a violation of 1st amendment rights.
=============
And on population growth – yeah, the Zero Population Growth movement was a great idea – and it worked to a large extent in the US and Europe. Unfortunately, the rest of the World – and US Immigration Policy Makers – failed to get the word.
I’m confused. Is Paris Hilton one of the best & brightest, or one of the worst & dumbest?
The situation with railroads in the USA is that they are almost all main-line, and there is essentially no LCL (less-than-carload) freight. The branch lines that served small towns disappeared in the middle of the 20th century, or earlier. The RRs now are really best at transporting bulk cargo, like coal, chemicals, and some oil, from a major point of origin to a large city.
Also, rail in the US could not attract talent for management or operations. Who wants to work for a fossilized industry?
Passenger service in the US is a joke, by any first world standards.
It would take enormous resources to reconstruct a usable freight rail system in this country, i.e. one that could deliver goods to your local supermarket (or close-by, at any rate). Still, it would be cheaper than maintaining the idiotic interstate highway system (which we’re going to punt on anyway).
Speeking of Sheen, I saw Jeraldo Rivera call Sheen an anti-semite because Sheen called a hollywood producer by his real jewish name. Rivera actually gave said producers real jewish name before saying that Sheen was an anti-semite for giving the real jewish name. Then Rivera went on to say that Sheen got away with abusing women for more than a decade but that he’ll be blackballed instantly in Hollywood for the slightest percieved anti-semitism. In essence, Rivera said what that fellow white hispanic from CNN said (that Jews controll hollywood and the media) but Rivera covered himself by accusing Sheen of “anti-semitism” in the beginning.
Does one dingbat represent all of Western Civilization?
“Cannabis remains detectable in urine”
LOL, d00d – just eat a lot of H2O and Niacin for a day or two/./
a lot of rich dingbats, 2 & 3 generations beyond the best & brightest in their gene pool who made all that money.
oops, a lot of rich dingbats ARE 2-3 generations…
I’m not in that world, but it seems to me that the children of ‘old money’ typically rise to high achievement levels; afterall, genetics has alot to do with it. Besides, if I make it big, I want my children to enjoy the fruits of my labour (within reason of course).
By NewWorld:
“Hannity is a Blank Slater, he is your “respectable conservative” opposition.
Wordism is dying. Magic thinking while fun is still magic thinking.
Its why I say, “The left is comprised of cults rigidly segregated.” Because if it were not segregated it would splinter into a million pieces that not even Sean Hannity could puff up into a juggernaut that his “opposition” to sells books.
You back to the Earth white liberals don’t even have the decency to ask the colored folk outside your coalition what they think, you “assume” they share your ideology. Last I noticed LaRaza and the NAACP existed to get more for their people, and more does not mean giving up the cars, the bling and the stupid pop culture you all deride.
Hating white people and displacing their children is evil and that is about the only thing the Left has in common, cuz its certainly not a love for organic farming (a demo whiter than the KKK”
Africa for Africans, Asia for Asians, White Countries for Everybody
Annihilation by Assimilation
Every white country on earth is supposed to become multicultural and multiracial. EVERY white country is expected to end its own race and end its own culture. No one asks that of ANY non-white country.
The Netherlands is more crowded than Japan, Belgium is more crowded than Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve the RACE problem by bringing in millions of third-worlders and assimilating and intermarrying with them.
Everybody says the final solution to the RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to bring in the third world and assimilate with them.
Immigration, tolerance, and especially assimilation are being used against the white race.
All this immigration and intermarriage is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries.
Anti-white is called anti-racist, but it leads to the disappearance of one race and only one race, the white race.
It is genocide.
Nationalsalvation.net
Um, JHK takes one for team clusterfuck- he of course gets most of his information by following and synthesizing media, which includes t.v.
The disclaimers don’t excuse deception in my opinion. It gets more interesting though. Wikipeadia actually has a ‘drug policy’ and when I attempted to credit NORML with their information I was told that it was a “Special Interest Group” and not credible. Apparently the ‘The National Drug Court Institute’ is not.
Overpopulation is the driving force behind my objections to current immigration policies. Besides which immigrants in general tend to support the conservative status quo, as they are two busy trying to fit in too question the powers that be. Immigrants are a right wing dream and I am truly amazed that those who have left wing predilections frequently advocate open immigration policies.
Yes, JHK has to watch FOX so he can write about what the sheep are thinking. I’m happy I’m not in his position.
Go, ForceMultiplier!
No really. Go.
Damn straight, Jim!
All those years of supporting dictatorships in order to keep the oil flowing will come back to haunt us in the form of long lines at the pump.
George Will hates public surface transportation because he hates anything that doesn’t make a profit. There’s plenty of money to be made in what the Brits call the motor trade – i.e., car sales – and airlines have been using their dominance of intercity travel to make out like bandits – skimpy amenities and crowded cabins for a fast buck.
My will and intellect is not broken. What is this “we” shit anyhow?
Why not say “this country has an ethos of…” to take a collectivist way, or, “this country has many individuals who…”
To JHK-
I was obsessed with your blog when I was going through a serious phase of mental illness. I feel a lot better now, and read and often enjoy your blog, however, I have a different slant on your writings than before. Before, I got freaked out taking your predictions seriously.
It’s important and necessary work you are doing digging for the reality of the time we are in. It’s also important work to stay levelheaded. Remember, it is a LONG emergency.
Yes the show is Hilarious. Love his brother also.
“No mouthy “advisors” cluttering up the West Wing (or disrupting the laser light show of Charlie’s thoughts).”
At least Chuckie Estevez exhibits some evidence of the capacity for thought. Something not required of our current leader, who comes in off the golf course just long enough to read the nearest teleprompter shoved in front of his face. Nothing more has been required of this cheap suit for two years.
But I don’t blame him. It’s a great gig if you can get it. Duhmericans have been successfully trained to think only in narrow, politically-approved channels, or to keep their thoughts to themselves. In another few years guys like Charlie Sheen, who dare speak anything but newspeak in public, will be joining Solzhenitsyn at the Gulags.
Not that I’m for vatican trained assasin warlocks walking loose among the zombies.
I am currently taking prescription Niacin to lower cholesterol under a doctors order. Since the general public seems to think drug testing is fine perhaps the for profit drug testing industry can start testing for that and report that I have something to hide. Perhaps they can report that my cholesterol is too high and I should be passed over as a health risk. There is nothing to stop them in a society that has forgotten the fourth amendment. Medical science has progressed far enough that lots of information can be gleaned from someone’s pe pe.
It is very disturbing that they are thinking about drawing down the strategic reserve for this at this time. It’s like they know the world will end in 2012 anyway so WTF. Also our (FL) governor won’t let us have the train. So again is it like it doesn’t matter anymore?
Why, what have I said that you disagree with? My first post was humerously serious.
JHK wrote something about Globalism falling apart because it is too complicated and it just won’t work, I am having a hard time explaining this, but it was like things will be WILL HAVE TO BE, local, and alot of the rules and the way things are being done is going to change.
It would be worth going back and trying to find that date. Maybe 6 months ago. Maybe I will look for it, if I do, I will let you know. I liked it alot, it made alot of sense, to me anyway.
Todays writing is one of the best IMO.
Anybody see the ‘Prophets of Doom’ on the History Channel? I got the feeling some of the panel were a bit frightened of the Robot guy; like if robots much smarter than humans can solve all these energy and resources problems within the next hundred years, how will I convince people to contribute money to MY cause/industry? Also, the robot guy said the robots might decide we (humans) are inferior and useless and may very well vanquish us “like a mosquito”; apparantly, this race for more and more artificial intelligence can’t be stopped – just like the race for superior weaponry can’t be stopped. Not saying I believe it totally, but it was funny.
My heart is bleeding for you guys. Here Down Under we ALREADY paying the equivalent of US$6.83 / gallon (what a quaint unit of measurement that is!)
Some of that was in the show ‘Prophets of Doom’. I believe the Nazis envisioned a folkish lifestyle for Aryans; kind of like a gigantic omish continent, except not pacifist – naturally. Now just because the Nazis horribly misused their pro-Aryan movement, doesn’t mean that all their ideas were bad. Afterall, Christianity has been often horribly misused as well, but we don’t ban Crosses.
My mother and father worked in the meat dept. at Safeway, and said the same thing. Don’t eat the hamburger.
I remembered that.
One of the Real Jobs I had, was indoor horticulture. I love plants. One of the accounts was MacD’s. I would have to walk thru the kitchen all the way to the back to get the water, and then back thru to the eating area, I’d be sticky with grease just from that. It was Gross.
This isn’t food. I can’t believe how many people make it a lifestyle. I think for some it’s because they can get it without getting out of their cars.
Actually they are cutting down the Rainforest in Brazil so they can raise Mac D’s cows. Guess that works for a few years, then the land is no good.
I love Rainforests and this is a crying shame.
Few things piss me off more.
Rainforests take Thousands / Millions of years to evolve and to me the Redwood Forest is The most awesome irreplaceable place on Earth. They clearcut much of that also.
THE LAST RESORT BY DON HENLEY ON YOUTUBE
LOVE THE LYRICS. kind of a slow depressing song, but every word is true.
I do know who Charie Sheen is tho, and I watch TV, etc. Hey one of the guys on American Idol is from Santa Cruz, he’s in the top 10. My sister watches this. I am watching because he’s on it this time. I read books alot also, when I am not on CFN !
I saw a Tee Shirt that said American Idiot, with the same colors as the show. If they would have had a tank top for women I would have bought it.
I don’t like tee shirts on me.
A head of lettuce is 3.00 today.
And that isn’t organic, organic would be more.
Covered many topics here. All over the place, rambling.
Going to turn this off and give my brain a rest, and read a book.
You remind me of Fara Faucet in Cannonball Run, “I love trees”….hahah. I agree with what you said. Please tell me you’d give a prime Fara Faucet a run for her money. And reading is excercise for your brain, how do you rest your brain by reading?
WOW! That is a lot of comments. Anyway, here goes.
oh yes it’s kuntsler
not just another punter
won’t lead asunder
Much as I’d like to share in the wide-eyed
optimism of the altfuels believers, our
current trouble (i.e., all the oil being
in places that hate us) is magnified by
the absolute moratorium Obama put on
drilling because ONE company was criminally
negligent.
I hate to break it to the altfuels utopians
but ordinary power is like a quarter per
kilowatt hour but the nascent, not-quite-there-
yet altfuels are delivering at about ten to
one-hundred times this cost.
Obama is betting the farm on technologies that
are a GENERATION away while our very real current
problems won’t wait that long for a solution.
Indeed, the dark comedy is that there might be
a ten to fifteen year gap between the virtual
end of oil and a full-speed altfuels industry.
A darker comedy is that the altfuels industry
depends, lock/stock/barrel, on the existence
of the standard fossil fuels industry to make
all of its components, to mine the metal to
make its components, and to transport them to
the remote destinations (like unoccupied
deserts for solar) where they will supply
power.
It’s not that I don’t wish with all my heart
that altfuels were at full speed delivering
dirt cheap power. It’s just my observation
that we do not HAVE THE TIME between the
virtual end of oil and the time it takes for
a viable altfuels industry to take over.
E.
Read some of Kunstler’s posts from two years ago – about how Obama grew up poor and had to buy tube socks in quantity! He bought it ALL! The Hidden Hand has rested on Obama since his earliest days. They have been preparing his Advent for decades. His education was paid for and his record has been sealed.
I have yet to see you people struggle against yourselves. Yes we may be biocomputers but we have a unique ability to reprogram ourslves – if we but WILL it. But no one can do this for you. And if you don’t do it, you will be taken in again. Probably the next time they will use a woman – and the media will make a big deal about that and you all will go limp, convusle, drool, and wet yourselves in ecstasy.
“Obama is betting the farm on technologies that
are a GENERATION away while our very real current
problems won’t wait that long for a solution.”
I think you are confusing inaction with a master plan.
Totally agree that we cannot afford high-speed rail in the US. What we need is medium-speed rail, or even low-speed but reliable and frequent passenger and freight rail.
“I am currently taking prescription Niacin to lower cholesterol under a doctors order.”
As claims my brother-in-law. No flush crap, as if he really has a cholesterol problem…
I’m not talking that no flush/slow release crap. I’m talking 100-200mg every hour or two, the straight stuff. I’m hearing echoes of “7 storey mountains” right about now…
@ San Jose Mom 51
*Do you know anyone attending the big wedding?*
Yes Jen (my cousin will), she was at Charles & Camilla’s too. Though the ‘young ones’ have been told to play it down a tad, post the attack on the royals when the student riots kicked-orf, last year. The Dress will come via Alexander McQueen’s side-kick Sarah Burton…
And you know what they say?
Tis the ‘power’ behind the throne that really counts…
What for me will be more interesting, is to see whether Colin Firth sticks to his guns and turns down his imminent gong?
That’s what’s so predictable about u’man beans, the underlings so poo-pooh the upper-classes till they get a ‘real’ shot at it, then they just can’t help it (they lap it up), like flies on sh#t… and go whole-hog for it…
*sniggers*
Oh yes…. I love watchin selective TV, defo sassy/sexy/scot Niall Ferguson and his current ditty on C4 re: Empire & Globalisation… competition… competition… competition – why we beat China on round two… though they’re about to nail you/us… watch and see folks.
Next week Science…
And to borrow from stepford-wifelet advocate the ‘Vladmanator’ – a subject and presenter I can wet myself in ecstasy over…
Firstly Jim provides a product. He is a doomsayer and each week the unknowingly unenlightened salivate for their weekly dose of Kunstlerosity. Jim cannot suddenly switch gears and admit he’s being saying the same thing in as many clever ways as he can come up with for 6 years — without ever having been right — or really worrying whether his “predictions” will ever come true. Secondly anyone who truly believes that there are “elections” in the USA might as well join the “Tea Party” and switch to foxnews/MSM for their fix. Thirdly there won’t be any “revolution” here in the USA since the vast majority of our population don’t even realize our “democracy” went the way of the Studebaker decades ago. Fourthly the Lovers of Money running the USA aren’t about to give up their control. Fifthly those who hold the power keep the population of the USA’s collective head spinning with a barrage of “is it true or is it a lie?” whilst never forgetting that divide and conquer continues to work every time it is used: locally, nationally or world-wide. A little dose of reality to counter Jim’s one-size-fits-all ponderings for this week. Jim missed his true calling as the weekly astrology writer for US magazine. He does a damn fine job sounding specific when his proclamations are in fact quite vague. “…the ambiguity is over there in a box!”
PRD and Mila “Man, doesn’t it seem sort of dream-like right now? I feel like part of a small cadre of people walking around with this crazy, dark knowledge, thinking as I look at others rushing around me: “You have no idea — and wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
– you guys are not alone feeling that way, it’s surreal.
Ripthunder;
Suddenly, almost overnight, snow disappearing, melting fast. Only about 50% of property covered up now, and snow pack down to about 6″.
The question is, what about those snow piles, packed tight and hard as New Hampshire granite, 20 ft. tall! How long will it take for those things to melt off? I’m guessing sometime in early May.
Lots of flooding in these parts. In one of his books JHK talks about the environmental damage caused by countless square miles of pavement and concrete laid down since 1905, causing water to run off into culverts and sewer drains, preventing it from sinking into the earth and settling into aquifiers. That’s probably what’s happening here.
Ripthunder, about what date do you get out into your plots and begin working over that black earth with spade and hoe? I’m thinking the sooner the better, if for nothing else to restore my sanity after this winter of discontent and inactivity. Also, will be breaking out my 1944 Royal Enfield one lunger (long stroke single cylinder) pretty soon. 85mpg, and a real attention getter!
Crude price, 3/9/11 — $105.10 per barrel.
Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
–Morning
My point about Cass Sunstein that I posted last week was simply that both sides are doing the fact control, is all. What constitutes reality? what we read on Wikipedia?
__________________________
TO BOMB OR NOT TO BOMB (that is the big question)
Last night on CNN and MSNBC–the question being asked to all the talking heads is do we intervene and save lives in Libya.
Yes, even John Kerry, is weighing in on the side of military action. Establish a no-fly zone by bombing the air fields. Of course we know nothing’s ever as simple as it sounds. And we’ve already spent over a $Trillion on our other 3 fronts, Afgh, Pak, and Iraq.
Oh, let’s see now, we have no money for ss, medicare and medicaid, there are more homeless children (something like 14 million) in the US, but let’s do more war for the private contractors—there’s always more money for that.
As I was listening to the “dialogue”, I thought to myself, War is like a roach motel, once you go in you can’t get out!
JulettaofOhio, the key to having as much contentment as you can is to rise above the attitude of me/us against you/them. Otherwise, pain and hardship will lack your resistance to getting traded around and you can’t reach the fullness of your humanity.
I’m a bit late to this argument,
But I’d like to disabuse some folks from their held belief that it was Carter’s energy policies that cost him the election.
Not so. The clerics in Iran were the ones who basically called the 1980 election.
The Iran revolution could have picked Carter by releasing the hostages. yes, it really is just that simple.
Carter actually had some pretty decent popular support for his domestic policies, including his energy policy. True, the right-wing faithful hated it and all it stood for, in complete fairness, the Carter whitehouse was in fact playing footsie with all the big bad energy companies. This is extremely well documented in Ray Reese’s 1979 (before the election) book ‘The Sun Betrayed, A Report on the Corporate Seizure of U.S. Solar Energy Development’.
Carter had done a masterful job of accommodating the energy industry and calling for energy austerity at the same time. It was his foreign policies that got him in hot water. Had the chickens not come home to roost at that time, we would have had another 4 years of Carter, and who knows what today would have looked like.
Hey Progessor,
Per our agreement to disagree how about this video as a place to start.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFsmmMTMCHU
Let me know your observations and feelings after you have viewed it.
SNAFU
Just a suggestion — since we are definitely being hit with super high gas prices and our howls of protest will be ignored anyway, why not adapt to the situation? Turn off your SUV and get a moped. Mopeds get about 100 to 120 miles per galleon. Obviously this won’t work if you need to drive a bunch of children to “soccer” practice or want to pick up furniture, but it would work if you were just driving locally.
In Bermuda, everyone drives mopeds. Its less expensive than a car and creates less pollution too. Please note these little machines are dangerous though. Hit some gravel and you might lose control and smash up. In Bermuda, honeymooners who drove around on mopeds sometimes would get killed. The police called them “Brides in a Box”. Gets you where you want to go faster than a regular bike.
Probably the next time they will use a woman – and the media will make a big deal about that and you all will go limp, convusle, drool, and wet yourselves in ecstasy.
===========
Vlad, your imagery gets better every day.
P.S. It’s convulse
See, that’s the thing. If you had a real democracy, one person wouldn’t be able to undo it.
We in the US “elect” puppets every four years, who do the bidding of the 1%, and we call it “democracy”.
It isn’t. We have no control over our lives, they enact policies that 90% of the people oppose, they flout the laws of the land, while locking up millions of us, the entire thing is an oligarchy.
But the illusion persists, and most people will tell you that we live in a democracy and that we have freedom, because they choose to believe the propaganda instead of their own lying eyes.
I don’t think that left wing think tanks have the money, prog.
Besides, they still believe in Enlightment values and spend their time putting out reasoned, fact-filled rebuttals to right wing lies.
I would think that this is too small, but did you ever see “Farenheit 911”, and the tiny peace group eating cookies that were infiltrated by a cop?
Really? They were such a threat?
Anyway, I think that tootsie is just a deranged individual who likes to come here and hang with the intelligent people.
I try to hold on to my sympathy for him, because I believe in the blank slate theory (not totally), and I think that he was seriously abused by his mommy, and he is lashing out at everyone else from some deep pain.
I had more in mind the ones that drop in on Monday and spew a little bullshit around, and then leave.
” There will be no war in Africa ”
– Charles Foster Kane
Yes, I remember that.
I found it rather interesting that Clinton could speak so openly about funding government propaganda.
It makes you wonder if the Sunstein thing was a trial balloon, to see how much opposition would be raised.
Oh, and I made a joke earlier about US corporate media being trivial (Clinton WAS right about that), and asking about Charlie Sheen.
My husband signed online last night and the top story was that Sheen had been fired.
Hmmm.
I don’t think that his support for 9-11 truth is insignificant. I think that it’s intolerable.
I don’t know about the porn stars raising his kids. Is that the charge?
But if they start telling the rich not to sleep around or take drugs in order to keep their kids, there’ll be a lot of rich kids in foster care.
Interesting.
So what was the info?
And why wouldn’t they let you change it?
I thought that wikipedia was open, and that’s why the right wing could fund propagandists.
I didn’t really think of you, prog.
Someone on here some months ago direly warned us that no one was as they seemed. (Cue the scary music).
I disregarded that. I prefer not to live in suspicion.
I know that I’m exactly who I say I am. I believe that you are too. I believe in Tripp, and lbendent and Cash SFmom and jackie and ripped and even marlin.
And most everyone else.
I even think that asoka is who he says he is, multitudes.
A lot of track is still around, usused but there.
It didn’t all get turned into trails.
My son lived in Chicago for awhile, and you could see the tracks in the street.
As the asphalt crumbles, the tracks will remain.
As I have said in previous posts, the Interstate highway right-of-ways could be re-purposed as really nice rail beds for a new generation of medium speed electric railways! The government won’t have the resources to continue to maintain this soon-to-be-fossilized Eisenhower Interstate Highway System based on infinite oil supplies to run the cars, trucks and provide the trillions of square feet of asphalt that has to be applied regularly. Hey, have you seen all the new potholes recently? Hummm.
The private rail companies can continue with their frieght lines while the government implements medium speed electric passenger transport to replace the obsolete interstate highway system.
So while there is still some semblance of a modern industrial complex capable of manufacturing the rails, engines and other components I would think the thing to consider is replace at least some of the lanes of the interstate with rail beds and get a national electric rail system going, running in part on “renewable” energy sources. Just a thought!!!!!
You’re right, Forcemultiplier.
Children of the rich do frequently rise to the top.
Look at George W.
In a rational society, anyone that stupid would never have made anything of himself.
But he was given 3 corporations, which he ran into bankruptcy.
And then a whole country.
Immigration absolutely benefits the ruling class, K.
That’s why the corporate media supports it.
That’s why Reagan legalized so many immigrants.
And it’s not just cheap labor. They allow every right wing dictator who is overthrown to move to Miami. And they let in all the people who take up arms against their own people in the service of US capital.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2007/12/effect-of-post-war-immigration-on.html
“The inability to confront simple truths about human nature and the natural world leaves the elites unable to articulate new social, economic and political paradigms. They look only for ways to perpetuate a dying system. Thomas Friedman and the array of other propagandists for globalization make as much sense as Charlie Sheen.” -Chris Hedges
Po’ Charlie! (Well, Chris is a bit Puritanical, even if he’s deadly accurate about our current situations.)
It’s important to see the purveyors of “conventional wisdom” (such as George Will, T. Friedman, Kraphammer, Beck, etc.) for what they really are, and what business they’re really in. Namely, narcissistic chasers of unearned adoration, who are in a constant state of pander, attempting to be “relevant” above all else. Finger to a wind that brings the scent of money; easy money; money that dolts gladly part with to hear their dearly-held false narratives reflected back upon them.
Magnification (and codification) of ignorance and stupidity is inherently dangerous.
The status quo IS the furtherance of ignorance and stupidity; how do YOU want to play the current hand? Even into the short-term future; your life is about to depend on it. The elites have done a splendid job of divide and conquer, promulgation of class warfare [that somehow misses a certain class], and the spreading of purposefully malignant lies in the service of profit.
The Earth has become Easter Island, which side are you on? A sustainable [radically different] paradigm, or a suicidal cornucopian continuum?
If it doesn’t look all that dire to you, better look again. (Hell, just look at the weather.) Things will never change [enough] by making compromises with the elite. This is the present road of the “moderates”, who tend to be shit-scared conservatives and firmly entrenched Right Wingers. This is their definition; this is their paradigm; this is their doom. I do not intend to meekly be ground beneath the heel of abject dumbfuckery and the vicious, seamless mediocrity of fascism. Propaganda and information overload will not lull me back to the slumber of the over-stuffed. Go ahead, throw your money and your happy-talk bloviation and your finger-pointing hate-speak around. It’s now all part and parcel of the gargantuan waste that is this pretend “culture”. I ain’t buyin’.
One more thing, I say “medium speed” rail because the time has long passed to implement high speed rail which is super expensive for a country this size. With the huge deficits and considering the high cost to build rail routes and infrastructure from scratch I think repurposing some lanes of the Interstate System may be the only viable option. Or else, just keep keeping on until it is no longer possible to do even this and be stuck in a 13th century funk…
Windmills, hydro and solar panels along the electric rail line would augment the power requirements which are modest compared to running a huge fleet of trucks and cars. Passenger trains could hum along at 70 or 80 MPH, about the speed cars go now. We could retain at least some of our mobility as the oil and coal age winds down. Again, just a thought.
Pardon, that should read: “conventional wisdom[S]”, as there are many stripes of the basic bullshittery (tm MyrtleMay).
I watched the movie “Crude” recently, and would recommend it to anyone who still drives. The real price of gas is not what we pay at the pump.
Also, don’t miss Michael Moore’s great speech in Madison, Wisconsin, HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgNuSEZ8CDwE:
Good idea!
It’s mighty late (in resource terms), so somebody better goose the process RIGHT NOW! (As in: yesterday.)
Wage,
What’s so infuriating is the double standards on both sides of the aisle. If a Republican does it, the left raises an issue, but when a Democrat does it, they say nothing.
That’s why the Neoliberal Clinton was the one to do away with Glass Stegall and the one way trade with China. He also did “welfare reform”.
The Neoliberal Kissinger had Nixon break down the barrier with China in the ’70’s for the free trade.
The big issue is that the lobbyists for the transnationals want the unfair trade imbalance because that gives them the greatest differential. Of course, no jobs are being created here, but nobody wants to address that honestly because the system is rigged by both parties under this Milton Friedman model they all endorse.
The Republicans want to do away with the EPA and taxes because they don’t want anything getting in the way of the top .5%. They pretend they are stimulating business when in fact it’s working to the opposite effect.
The Democrats want you to get more degrees from college to an environment where there are no jobs to get.
Tied into your next comment about the media, of course they want to talk about Sheen, the royal wedding and how great the stock market is. That way everything seems normal and we can all feel better.
Question I have is at what point do these people become victims of their own greed (ie cancer etc.)
” There will be no war in Africa ”
– Charles Foster Kane
Unless it be of the internecine variety. ;o)
-“Ro-zzz-buuuuud”
Wagelabor;
Nah, I’ve never intentionally misrepresented myself here. For me that would be counterproductive as I hope to meet up with some of these smart people in person later on in the year. The only thing, my little farm (El Toro Farms. My wife is a Spaniard) is really only a dilletante operation, about an acre. I don’t even have a tractor. I thank Jim’s books for getting me into this about 5 years ago. I do everything by hand. I’m still learning.
Also, I’ve found myself in some political disagreements here, which I regret. The truth is I could give a shit less about politics and consider it a waste of time.
Ripthunder;
You say, “M1A, best gun ever made.”
That’s an interesting assertion, Ripthunder, and one hard to dispute.
George Patton said the same thing.
Myself, I’m partial to lever action rifles.
Take the Winchester 1894, .30-.30 … time tested, hard hitting, light weight, accurate out to 150 yards, trim, great looks with that perfect fusion between form and function, historic … 10 million made between 1894-2006, one of the most successful and longest lasting products in history.
Fun to shoot. And because its been around so long it doesn’t freak out law enforcement types, like, say, AK’s and AR’s do.
What’s not to like?
Next month bring your M1A down here. We’ll go to Blue Trail and have a shoot off, like Jimmy Stewart and Dan Duyrea in ‘Winchester 1873’, one of the best movies ever made.
M1A against a Winchester 1894 at the 100 yard range. (which is all they have there beside the 50 and 25 yard ranges)
One more thing, Ripthunder. Do you know anything about those 200,000 silver and gold coins, a British army payroll, that was lost somewhere along (current) rte. 10 in N. Granby, CT in 1780? Is it just a legend, or is there something to it? I want to search for that sonofabitch when the snow melts.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
“TV free America… The Environmental Movement of the Mind”
I am all for the EMM, but achieving it through the elimination of a machine seems weak and not lasting. How about through discernment and not taking our ego-centered outlooks so seriously, whether while watching TV, reading, or in conversation. Or while choosing to change the program, periodical, book, etc.
Talk about “changing the program,” isn’t that really the chore at hand?
The clerics in Iran made a deal with William Casey, head of Reagan’s campaign team, to keep the hostages until after the election.
Casey was rewarded by being made the head of the CIA, but unfortunately had a “stroke” and surgery the day before he was to testify in front of Congress about what he knew about the Iran-Contra deals, which, sadly, made him incapable of speech.
Oliver North, the criminal who ran the drugs for guns ring, was rewarded with deals to spew his crap on right wing radio.
The hostages wouldn’t have made any more difference to the election than any of the hostages in the following years (do you know about the 2 young people being held for over a year now in Iran?), if if hadn’t been for the corporate media, and its “It’s Day 180 of the Iran Hostage Crisis”, day after day.
It’s takes a right wing village to raise American bloodlust.
Ha, ha. I’m watching Free Speech TV as I sit here, and there is some Arab Muslim woman on, explaining that Allah wants her to be divorced, cause that’s what makes her happy.
Last week I pointed out that Christians are quite convinced that God wants them to do pretty much exactly what they themselves want to do.
I find it pretty funny that Muslims do the same thing.
Saudi Arabia bans protest rallies
It’s old news now and was reported in the UK’s Independent by Alexandra here yesterday. The Status Quo has little to worry about, the protests were small and the Saudi Government is responding with overwhelming force.
The interesting thing is when I do a Google search (in Google chrome watching as the Wikipedia entries quickly blink out with delight) not a single domestic reference to the Saudi troubles pops up.
Rupert Murdock must have put out a memo, he does that you know. I wish we could see one.
Land of the free home of the brave.
NOT
Damn right. Now I’m watching Amy Goodman report that Obama signed an executive order to indefinitely detain prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and resume the military trials.
This is the same guy who took advantage of the anger at Bush’s destruction of habeas corpus (those who noticed, that is) to campaign on a “close Guantanamo” platform.
I’ll scream, you’ll scream, Glen Greenwald will scream, but most Democrats won’t.
I have talked to Democrats who TO THIS DAY, want to give Obama a pass, a chance, maybe another term, then he’ll finally do the right thing.
Bwwww
I guess Chris Hedges takes one for the team, also, and watches Fox.
No wonder he always sounds so depressed!
But when Chris Hedges joins in the pile-up, isn’t it obvious that there was a full-court press on to get Charlie Sheen?
Come on!
Wage,
I’m pondering the difference between christian prayer and children writing letters to Santa Clause myself now. I’ll let you know when I figure out what the difference is, both seem quite self centered.
You might enjoy ‘Letters from the Earth’ by Mark Twain. I’m halfway through it now. As JHK said:
History never repeats itself but it rhymes.
And it’s rhymin like church bells on a Sunday morning right now.
Did you know that today is the hundredth anniversary of International Women’s Day?
And that it was proposed by the Socialist Party of America?
Lettuce does the same thing up here. In winter the price shoots up to 3 bucks a head and then plummets in the spring/summer to around a buck.
The McD thing is perplexing. We have the same phenom up here. People take their kids there to eat dinner two or three times a week and wonder why their twelve year old weighs 250 lbs and why
they go through puberty at the age of 8.
They say it’s convenient. Maybe. But when you tally up the time you spend going to and from and waiting in line I’m not sure it’s a time saver.
Do you watch the food channel? They had a bunch of shows where they had that chef Jamie Oliver going to school kitchens in the UK and the US and trying to get them to stop feeding the kids crap and trying to get them to feed them decent grub. Really really hard to do. The school staff didn’t want to listen. Testa dura as the Italians say. The kids are the size of small farm animals. The parents the size of small houses. But people get into a dietary rut and they don’t want to change.
Thanks Wage. I never doubted you for a second either.
Yes Guantanamo,
The lame excuse that’s been put out is that the poor boy can’t figure out how to fly the detainees to the mainland because he signed a bill from congress that specifically forbids him from spending money for that purpose.
Apparently being the commander in chief of the armed forces is a strictly ceremonial title conferring no actual power or he could simply issue orders that it be done. No need to spend money on plane tickets then.
I must have skipped my high school civics class the day they explained executive power because I sure got it wrong.
Might we all at CFN chip in and charter a flight to fly the detainees here so they could get due process? I’m thinking Virgin Atlantic Airways would be an appropriate choice.
The military action in Libya should be called Operation Invade Libya (OIL). When US invaded Iraq it was initially called Operation Iraqi Liberation until they realized the acronym would not be helpful propaganda. It was changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Neckflames
how about Operation Independent Libya.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inQiIkz7J5Y
“Ayatollah” to the tune of “My Sharona” by the Knack.
Everybody ought to take a listen back to a happier, more united, and more honest day in American history.
===============
Wage, I bailed out on Obama over the passage of the insurance company bill forever to be known as “Obamacare.” I wish he’d decline to run in ’12.
But where am I supposed to go after bailing out?
Can’t get a green on the ballot in GA, even.
================
Also, Wage, do you get notifications when someone posts to your blog comment section? And that’s a nice entry you did concerning the RW politics of many immigrant groups.
=================
Marlin – sorry you don’t like politics, man. To me it should the the essence of purposeful action for a better society.
I mean, really, what else is there for that purpose???
Plus it’s a lot more generally enjoyable to joust over politics than over weapon types. I like ’em all, when employed properly
– that’s weapons – not politics.
You can say what you like about Harper. About his “fundamentalism” though, you’re right, he is Christian but I think he’s more on the evangelical side than fundamentalist. Either way though I don’t think it counts for beans in how he governs. Other people say that he’s a libertarian and that squares with how I see him.
Hypocritical absolutely. Destroyng our democracy for sure. But IMO what we see now is a continuation of what came before. The iron clad party discipline is nothing new. If anything Chretien was just as bad and Mulroney too.
I want parliamentarians to be that: parliamentarians and not potted plants. I want them to speak freely and vote the way they see things not because the party leader wields a whip and will boot them from caucus.
What really freaked me out was how the sale of Potash Corp nearly got approved if not for Brad Wall raising hell. Should never have come down to the eleventh hour. We’ll see how they do with the sale of TMX to the London Stock Exchange.
Even better, k-dog!
Wage, many on CFN have said, “Follow the money”
When you compare Christianity and Islam, women come out much better in Islam with regard to money and inheritance. For the first 1800 years of Christianity women were basically denied the right to inherit property.
Islam was a reform movement which gave women greater rights in marriage, divorce and inheritance. For example, in 622 the Constitution of Medina gave Muslim women inheritance rights. From the Quran:
.
Muslim mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters received inheritance rights (thanks to Prophet Muhammad!) twelve hundred years before Europe (Sweden in 1845)and America (New York in 1848 with the Married Women’s Property Act) recognized that these rights even existed for women..
THE EVOLUTION OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN INHERITANCE
http://works.bepress.com/kristine_knaplund/2/
I am now, and have always been, against any kind of violence or discrimination against women, whether it be in Christian, Judaic, or Islamic societies.
Happy International Women’s Day!
I celebrated it every year, when I lived outside the USA. I did not realize it started here. I thought it originated with Russian women.
Three more days until TSHTF in Saudi Arabia with the DAY OF RAGE and, as JHK says, Saudi Arabia “starts to blow up”
Hey Marlin, I am partial to the M1A, also known as the M-14, General Patton was talkin’ about the M-1 Garand, “the greatest battle implement ever devised” designed and manufactured right up the road a stretch in Springfield. They have a great museum there if you have never been. They made some of the greatest rifles ever designed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Armory.
I just drove back from Avon on 10/202 and the Farmington is flooding like crazy, most of the roads east off of 10 were closed. I still have over a foot of snow in the yard. I just talked to a tenant of mine who was in Vermont. They got hammered this last storm. The CT. river is gonna really go crazy if we get a huge melt. As far as the garden goes, I don’t know, I might start some peppers and tomatoes soon.
We started May Day as Labor Day, also.
Then the rest of the world followed suit, and our ruling class changed it to September.
Oh, I knew that, but forgot. Sorry.
Still, though, to directly conflate your own desires with God’s will for you.
That is still kind of funny, I think.
I hope King Abdullah’s 86 year old ass makes it through the week. Can you imagine him kicking it on the DAY OF RAGE. That alone could give us five bucks a gallon.
Happy International Women’s Day!
Also, Obama opened off-shore drilling that had been banned since George H.W.
And he increased the number of Predator drone attacks killing people in Pakistan, and drove 2,000,000 civilians from their homes.
And, he started funding death squads in Indonesia, which had been banned for 12 years (all the way through George W).
That one baffled me, because I still believed that part of the Obama myth.
If he lived in Indonesia during the time when 500,000 Indonesians were murdered, wouldn’t he be against sending them money?
Duh. What was I thinking?
What exactly WAS he doing in Indonesia during that time. Well, he was a child, in a school. A school where the Indonesian ruling class sent their kids. So he was hanging with the beneficiaries of the murders. What were his mom and step-dad doing?
According to Wayne Madsen, his step-dad, who had been attending a kind of School of the Americas in Hawaii, was sent back to Indonesia to help out in the purges.
And his mom worked for the Ford Foundation.
We’ve been punked.
insnuffler said, “…Sheen has become the poster boy for what our country is today. Cocky, intoxicated, stupid, self centered, rich (and spending every last penny) unemployed, and completely disconnected from the world as it goes down in flames…”
I think you haven’t done your homework: Sheen does not represent middle America, but is its polar opposite. The man has a successful career, a cherished children, and two porn stars to take care of them. He is taking on the ancient rites of polygamy and publicly disavowing marriage. What middle America pursues is the opposite. Single-parent households and prudish, sexless prediabetic alcoholics. Number one trait: telling everyone else what moral standards to live by. If this country were filled with Charlie Sheens, we would have been rioting in the street and stringing bankers up by their necks on lightpoles. We would be making positive changes to increase the peace instead of tearing at each others’ flesh like a bunch of weasels.
“I think people should view his public fiasco as all of us, in one person. You can point directly to that visual image and say, “this is why we are in the mess we are today”.”
That is exactly the kind of convenient, middle America scapegoating that reigns today. Find the convenient whipping boy, and characterize him as the problem. Tsk, tsk.
“Its useless to change things now, because just as Sheen seem unable to see his plight,and do something about it to save himself and his family, we as a nation, are unable to rescue ourselves from our way of life and selfish ineptitute. ”
Sheen becomes a giant straw man to take on Middle America’s bullshit: Sheen’s “plight” would certainly be a surprise to him.
I would venture to offer that America’s inability to rescue itself has a lot to do with the fact that it invested itself in a bullshit system. Whats that quote: “Its hard to get someone to acknowledge something if his paycheck depends on him not acknowledging it.”
Well, middle America takes that paycheck every two weeks. Every time you accept the price of using gas and fill that tank you are voting with your actions. The system is well constructed to produce this cycle. They beat you over the head with “Work hard-play hard”. They discourage independent thought. And then they invite you judge people’s lifestyles on TV lest your ego become too threadbare from the daily grind, let alone your intellect be confounded by the realpolitik.
Hey, f*kwed, f*ktard, dipsht, moron, there are 10 million of the richest families worldwide that have more than 100 trillion dollars stashed away in banks, hedges, you name it, and 100 million poor slob workers worldwide that are unemployed, underemployed, paid slave wage salaries, you name it. So guess what ? since the name of the game is FIGHT, STICK EM, STICK EM, FIGHT (as the capitalist, free market ideology loves to emphasize so much) those 100 million slobs are going to kick the asses of those 10 million families, get back all the money that has been and is continually being robbed, outright robbed from these poor slobs by keeping them idle, by crushing them with unemployment, by sticking it to them in all ways, and has been for decades, because they are not “competitive” or have the right “skill set”, and taking away their health kare (in the US at least). Money doesn’t even exist and so can’t run out since it is simply a social relationship, don’t believe in the debts myth, the future entitlements myth, etc. there will always be everything available to everyone if the right wing slobs and friends don’t hog it all up as usual. Now, blow me.
I will never stop to repeat:
1) The present day Technological Economy no longer needs much real productive labor, it has been automated, optimized, you name it. This has been done intentionally to keep out of work and a salary as many people as possible worldwide (and notice I say worldwide, because even if there is some city in Germany that has full employment, it is because there are 100 cities in the US, Brazil, India or wherever(Libya) that have no employment, get it ?) and hog up as much profit as possible. In essence a huge worldwide theft of the grandest and deepest degree ever.
2) For this reason, we need a free basic salary worldwide, and free basic health care, and cheap rents. The economic system is so rich that it could easily give these basic unalienable rights, human rights in the most real and fullest sense ever, to everyone.
3) There is no resource scarcity, these are right wing myths, we can do everything with all kinds of technologies, social organizations, you name it. We also have a huge potential labor pool that is being kept idle,just hobby factories where people could come in and do a 1 or 2 or 3 hour shift building rockets, trains, BUSES, skyscrapers, you name it would produce even more wealth beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
My spiritual Father compares himself to an F-18:
OK, I meant to include a link with my comment about Obama getting away with funding Indonesian death squads.
Must be nostalgia for the days when he was a little boy, living in luxury, surrounded by death.
http://revolutionaryfrontlines.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/democracy-now-us-ties-to-special-death-squads-in-indonesia/
I liked that one Bustin.
Wage, based on things I’ve read (can’t remember sources, gettin’ old, what can I say) the judeo christian tradition had a big influence on our legal and social traditions. But I understand what you’re saying about British Common Law, that a long time passed before the Brits were christianized.
What’s being forgotten here is the average joe that did the fighting and suffering. So when I bemoan the fact that history is being forgotten, what we’re forgetting is the average guy who never knew where he was going or why. Audie Murphy and Aubrey Cosens were just average boys.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Cosens
The military industrial complex is as evil and corrosive as you say. But Canada was formed (in other peoples’ opinions and mine too) on the battlefield ie especially Vimy Ridge in 1917. Before that time Canucks saw themselves as Brits and were treated as Brits by the Brits themselves.
But at Vimy the Canuck Army fought together as a unit for the first time and managed to accomplish what the Brit and French armies had pissed away torrents of lives attempting and failing to do. And after Vimy Canucks saw themselves as Canucks. Hell of a way to form a country in people’s minds but that’s human nature.
If you forget or ignore history, you repeat history. What we’ve done in Canada is to deliberately suppress our history. Why? Because it suited malicious ideological agendas, because Quebec was dead against participating either in WW1 or WW2. IMO, tragic and stupid and gutless on the part of English Canada who somehow lost their balls in facing French Quebec. I’m paraphrasing someone but Canada is now a country that dares not speak its name.
Vimy Ridge hasn’t been forgotten by everyone (a short vid of someone’s visit to the Vimy memorial in France)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDJMIWHh00g
One other thing, let’s not forget that our (US/Brit/Canuck) military industrial complex didn’t control the Nazis (or the German military industrial complex) nor what Stalin was up to, nor the Japanese. They weren’t taking orders from American or Brit industrialists or New York bankers. They had their own agendas.
For a lot of Americans (I’m not pointing the finger at you) it comes as a really hard thing to swallow but other countries had/have their own elites with their own agendas, bases of political support, resources, sources of financing. European powers are much older than the US and were active in the world while the USA was just a small collection of dirt bag farms near the east coast. European powers didn’t go to war because they were told to by Americans.
the difference between christian prayer and children writing letters to Santa Clause”
-kdog-
I thought I’d tell you the difference was that Santa had a website: http://santaclaus.com/
But then I discovered god (God?) also had a website:
http://www.god.com/ (notice the cross, apparently God is an evangelical Christian, according to the owners of His (his?) website.)
-laugh, you all-
And, SNAFU – I’ll get back to you on that this evening, hopefully. Cool video, BTW, did you watch the whole thing?
Great background music, also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0eXvwmxPds
“This Is Just a Simulation”
-jd madson-
ARM said, ” Most local politicians and journalists that I’m aware of are opposed to restoring rail service; in the words of Ryan Burns at the North Coast Journal, it’s “so Nineteenth Century.” ”
You bet it is. The nineteenth century, except without the stink and dysentery.
Me? I’m going backward in time. Ditched my car, haven’t drove in years now. Spurned facebook, refused to upgrade with new computers.
Stole internet at home until the connection evaporated. No MP3 player for me, I love the RADIO.
Critical thing: ditching the Cellphone: frees up an additional $600/yr., now I am completely decoupled from “decent” society.
Vernon is right: burning natural gas to generate electricity is a waste. Next step back to the 19th century: gaslight.
All this walking, biking, bus-and-train riding has made me realize that personal vehicles are just bigger versions of the ol’ powered wheelchair. “Assisted mobility devices”.
“The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker”, this familiar nursery-rhyme phrase still (yes, even in this so called “technologically advanced age”) expresses the reality of life for most Americans in doing the day-to-day commerce of transacting household business and needs. That’s right, the simple fact is that the vast majority of really necessary work in societies comprises crafts, trades and various service sector occupations, not those of a “high tech” nature. No escaping it; even if everyone had a PhD in an academic specialty over 60% of work necessary for the maintenance of society would remain of the same order and character as what was occupationally practiced a hundred years ago. The percentage of slaves to owners or that of serfs to lordships is good illustration of how irrevocably dependent upon such “labor” societies are and by proportionate ratio. A more poignant illustration is in noting how America’s middle class draws closer to a condition of enslavement or serfdom under roll-back by the owners and corporations of the unionization gains of early 20th century America.
The refrain of entrepreneurial adventurism and technological innovation as the preeminent drivers of societal health is a deceit for justifying a latter day order of oligarchic overlords. As with lordships of the past the single value of “underling” is measured exclusively in terms of economic contribution to the lord’s wealth. Those of us who’ve actually spent time in the work-a-day world of hourly wages or monthly salary (remember, that’s most of us) know that economics is the least of our contribution to the overall health and wellbeing of society. “Citizen” says it all, whereas statement of profession or occupation is only parcel — and in most cases the least parcel.
Its sadly funny how Americans have allowed themselves to be so philosophically distanced from the mindset of the unionization movements and social redemption movement of the last century. Americans today bring to mind the “shift change” sequence from the Fritz Lang movie of 1927, Metropolis. Even current pop music has similar mechanical sound of the sound trac.
wagelaborer:” We’ve been punked.”
Don’t know much about Obama’s past although of course there’s lots of conspiracy theories that he was working in intelligence etc.
I would say, whoever is allowed to get to the point of winning an election is going to “Serve at the pleasure of the founding families” as David Mamet would say.
Wage said: “And his mom worked for the Ford Foundation. We’ve been punked.”
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Wage, don’t you be dissin’ Obama’s mama on International Women’s Day … LOL!
Let’s celebrate Ann Dunham, who did get a PhD in anthropology and was interested in craftsmanship, weaving and the role of women in cottage industries.
Dunham did her research on things like women’s work on the island of Java and blacksmithing in Indonesia.
Dunham may have “worked for” Ford Foundation, but she was all about addressing the problem of poverty in rural villages. She, Obama’s mama, created microcredit programs while working as a consultant for USAID and she consulted with the Asian Development Bank in Pakistan. Towards the latter part of her life, she worked with Bank Rakyat Indonesia, where she helped apply her research to the largest microfinance program in the world.
Wage, I’d say Ford Foundation and USAID got punked by Ann Dunham! And women of the world are better for it.
Happy International Women’s Day!
I don’t think that his support for 9-11 truth is insignificant.
==============
Wage, here’s the thing about certain people on this blog, but especially you.
Despite your (and my) atheism, if God came forth out of the heavens and said in unmistakable terms heard and understood by every living being that “9/11 was perpetrated by 19 over-the-top Muslim fundamentalists, NOT the US government” I believe you would be terribly disappointed. Your raison d’etre would be destroyed. You are married to the idea that there are innumerable terrible powerful forces from among your own people who are arrayed against you.
Thanks, prog.
Yes, I get notified by email about comments.
I don’t think that electoral politics are going to change this country.
It doesn’t matter who you vote for, they’re both crooks.
And the voting machines are fixed, anyway.
It’s all a farce, a Potemkin village, a steering wheel in the back carseat.
All of it set up to make you feel that you make a difference.
Ha!
That’s not my website.
And Charlie Sheen is okay by me.
Hey, God.
Do you have a blog?
And who planted the explosives in the towers?
Hope you don’t mind if I butt in on this.
Imagine yourself as an impoverished tenant farmer with a wife and kids and your smallest is malnourished and extremely sick and there’s no money for a doctor or food and you face the prospect of watching the little fella die. And then he dies.
Here’s another mind experiment: imagine that you’re a tenant farmer and there’s two foreign armies duking it out on your turf and one of them just stole your livestock and your entire food supply. Now also imagine that you’ve just been evicted by some soldiers from your farmhouse and there’s shells dropping everywhere and bullets galore. So you dig a trench and reinforce it with some planks and you and your family huddle in that trench literally shitting your pants in terror. So if you don’t get blown to shit by artillery or bullets you have a pretty good chance of starving to death.
So is praying like writing letters to Santa Claus?
BTW this was real life for my parents.
Snarlin Marlin says, “Solzhenietsen addresses the role of the intellectual in times of trouble in his ‘Gulag’ books.”
I’m an F-18, bro…
Moral equivocation: It is a sort of offensive proposition. Applied universally it becomes problematic. Pol Pot slaughtered millions; how can we judge him when his soul is split between good and evil?
If only he was born rich in New Jersey, he might be less evil. Likewise, Martin Luther King would have commanded mass slaughter in Cambodia had he only been born in Phomn Pen.
Sure, buddy. Sohlzy is only well-known because Americans like a good soviet-oppressor gulag/prison yarn. I find his philosophy kind of retarded, at least in this passage.
There were a lot of people getting loaded onto cattle cars in the last century that would have stood a better chance fighting back instead of identifying with their oppressors.
OK, Asoka, I don’t know much about Obama’s background. I am doing other stuff, and don’t have time to research.
However, the Ford Foundation has frequently been used as a CIA front, as I’m sure you know. And I didn’t know about the Pakistan connection. That makes Obama’s attacks on Pakistani civilians just as bad as his attacks on Indonesians.
And you are a frequent cheerleader for policies of Obama and the Ds.
So I am disregarding your assertions that Ann Dunham was a good person, doing good work.
“schools are being closed”
Hey, three plus wars are expensive, 700 foreign bases are expensive, and 20 trillion dollars of transaction guarantees (so the stupid rich lose no money) are expensive.
We have to sacrifice to kill for the rich and to make up for their stupidity.
Or we could just ignore the rich, have peace and keep our money.
hello Bustin, I really think you are stretchin’ it to compare MLK to Pol Pot, Old PP was a born killer. Just sayin’
Cash wrote: “What’s being forgotten here is the average joe that did the fighting and suffering.”
======================================
The problem for many, Cash, is that they find themselves trying to square a circle when they compare the courageous behavior of an individual like Aubrey Cosens with the behavior of a group like Calley’s platoon at My Lai.
Cheers
That’s DEAR God, Wage.
No blog as I’m too busy; as well words cannot convey my essence.
Obviously jet fuel cannot pulverize a steel skyscraper into dust. I am amazed, and that’s really saying something, that people still believe that.
Things are really heating up in the Middle East so I must run. Will discuss the explosives issue next time.
AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMM….
Well, see, Cash, you didn’t read my link. The US did too support the Nazis, before and after (and some of them, during) WWll.
From my blog-
“Remember that the propaganda is that the Nazis were “appeased” until they attacked Poland. This is not true. They were not appeased. They were supported by top industrialists and financiers in the US and England. Hitler was attacking the communists and that was alright with the top boys in America and England, including George Bush’s grandfather, Prescott, whose ties to a German bank continued well past the time that America entered WW11.
The Nazis didn’t really lose the war. Hitler may have, but his anti-communist backers remained and were put back in power by the US. And now they have consolidated their power here in the US, and the descendants of those Nazi, Cuban, Vietnamese, and the smaller influx of various dictators, CIA collaborators and death squad members let into this country after WW11 are supporting them.”
And I didn’t get your point about your peasant parents.
Are you saying that God got them out of that pit? Because they prayed?
Howdy Progressor, Per your inquiry: Yes; I laughed at your god site joke as well.
SNAFU
OldEight,
I notice the latest and greatest phrase in your repertoire is you name it. For example, this sentence from your latest post:
It has surpassed Simple Buses and Trillions of Skyscrapers.
What’s the story?
Thanks for the info, God.
Hope Q is paying attention.
Wagelaborer stated: “Remember that the propaganda is that the Nazis were “appeased” until they attacked Poland. This is not true. They were not appeased.”
==========================
Wagelaborer, your statements in this case are making some valid points but getting others wrong. Yes, some powerful individuals in the U.S. supported the rise of the Nazis in Germany. Your statement about there being no appeasement is too clever though; there was appeasement as the term is generally understood in relation to the international politics of the 1930s — the appeasement being the unwillingness of other European powers (the USSR included, by the way) to confront Hitler over the territorial enlargement of Germany, particularly at the expense of Czechoslovakia.
One wonders how Hitler’s anti-communist credentials were seen after he and Stalin divided eastern Europe into spheres of influence.
The Nazis most certainly lost the war. The big corporate operators in Germany may have picked up the pieces and kept making money after 1945, but if nothing else, the industries dedicated to destruction of selected groups of humanity that had been organized by Hitler’s Germany were out of business. It is important to recall just how big the Nazis were on all of the racial BS; being forced to abandon that murderous agenda was a defeat for them.
The story of the use of Nazi operatives by the CIA after the war, the collusion of the Vatican in arranging escapes for war criminals, etc., was a disgusting artifact of the conflict and show just how low countries can sink when they operate with the mentality that “the ends justify the means”. The U.S. had practically zero understanding of the Soviet Union and allowed itself to fall into a cycle of fear and loathing that led in some cases to highly questionable decisions and policies regarding the Nazi war criminals.
Cheers
Yes Alex, every woman knows the Man who is her Master.
Bravo for standing up for the Rights of Aristocrats against the “littel people”. Aristocracies are only thrown down in order to set up new Aristocracies – often worse. The new one in the offing is the most devilishly clever in history – using the rights and plights of the littel people as a moral argument for mayhem and revenge. We DO need a new Aristocracy, but not the New World Order Thugs.
So much written about the Littles and how good they and how they know what’s best for the world. Bullshit. The littles don’t know shit -not even what’s good for themselves as a class. And often not even what’s good for themselves personally.
Prince Harry should organize a Coup and take the Throne. William is to much of the Burgher type to do what needs must be done – which is obviously to throw the Muzzies out. As Morrisey said, a rush and a push and the land will be our’s.
I concede your point about the nazis being forced to abandon their extermination plans. That was a defeat.
But you admit that the US saved a lot of them, imported a lot of them, put them back into positions of power, and allowed their corporate backers to resume operations.
That was my main point.
By the way, I don’t think that the manufactured fear of the USSR justifies the multiple crimes of the US since 1945.
Especially because that particular excuse was removed 20 years ago, and US war crimes continue.
At some point, don’t you just have to admit that it was all bullshit?
Michelle high fived Obama at the Arizona Memorial for a great speech. Such deep and devout people.
Now you must admit that the Jews dominate media and they use their power ruthlessly. The Communists have always protected them but what have they done to deserve any special protection? That is Sheen’s real sin, that he spoke the sacred word Jew. It’s time for you to rethink your position on this Ethnic Lobby and its role in our public life and foreign policy.
The Public is a Woman even as your Hitler said.
Wagelaborer asked: “At some point, don’t you just have to admit that it was all bullshit?”
================================
Personally, for me, it was not. Particular actions of the Allied forces ensured the survival of my mother and her parents.
As a point of clarification, my comments about the fear of Soviets driving U.S. policy were about the period until about 1950 or thereabouts.
Cheers
Elthro Tull said, “Obama is betting the farm on technologies that are a GENERATION away while our very real current problems won’t wait that long for a solution.Indeed, the dark comedy is that there might be a ten to fifteen year gap between the virtual end of oil and a full-speed altfuels industry.”
When you face the fact that the costs associated with climate change are projected to eat the entire world’s economic growth within that generation, I’d say that altfuels are a good deal. Oil and gas are treasures of geologic energy and the expenditure daily to carry people around is a frivolous waste of resources. All the oil and gas companies are fraudulent, criminal enterprises, don’t kid yourself. They get tons of money in subsidies.
Its high time humanity put the brakes on growth and burning the world’s energy supplies. Tax ’em all, enforce quotas and bans meant to limit their power.
Humanity’s real predilection is the fact that economic growth and resource use AKA the extractive economy is incompatible with ecological sustainability. Its GAME OVER for us if we continue to exploit. We’re destroying the future by demanding natural resources be converted to cars and iPads.
I say TAX EM ALL and stop subsidizing the major offenders.
Cash inquired: “So is praying like writing letters to Santa Claus?”
No. Back in 1954 the us postal service instituted a program to collect letters sent to santa and respond to them. A child has a reasonably good chance of receiving a response to his/her letter to santa, provided they can determine her/his address; unfortunately, no chance for a response to a prayer.
Ah ha, the plot sickens [sic] again. Could it be that your religious fervor stems from your conviction that you and your family were spared whilst trapped in a firefight cross fire by the miracle of prayer, rather than by chance?
SNAFU
vlad predicts: “Probably the next time they will use a woman – ”
I will bet money on Hillary being the next prez.
The Nazis proved to be useful scapegoats for the atrocities of many others. The Russians blamed the Nazis for the massacre of Polish Officers in the Katyn Forest – and they were believed for many years until the Truth prevailed. Likewise, the Holocaust Story gave justification in the minds of many for the persecution of the Palestinian People by Israel. Likewise the Allies wiped their bloody hands – Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Keelhaul Project, Eisenhower’s Death Camps, the starvation of the Germans population after the war, the ethnic cleansing of the Baltic Germans, etc with the bloody rag of the Holocaust.
Note: apparently there were some massacres in the East. The Nazis suffered heavily from the Partisans, both Jewish and Slavic. They would retaliate by killing civilians. They had been greeted as Liberators in many parts of Eastern Europe suffering under the Communist Tyranny. But they treated the people poorly even apart from the pogroms. Hitler’s Dream of a German East may have cost the West its future. Many who could have been his friend became his enemy.
BustinJ;
Good Solzhsenitsyn quote.
Wasn’t he a Nobel Prize winner … back in’73.
That was an interesting quote because Celine says much the same thing in “Journey to the End of the Night”, the great novel of the 20th century, remember, talking about Leon Robinson in Africa when he finds out how Robinson is taking care of his orphaned niece back in France. That’s a great scene in world lit., one of the greatest.
I’m not snarling. I’m not mad at anybody.
RThunder, thanx for responding!
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Turned AM Radio on last nite. Station was talkin Sheen. So I turned to the next station, OOPS, talkin Sheen there as well.
Cousin died in Nam. He was a handsome Norwegian bloodline Marine. We were fighting Communism!
Yeah right. Now we import goods from Vietnam made by slave labor.
And we import Vietnamese as well.
Welcome to hell.
The politicians you describe are Globalist Swine to be sure. But why condemn the Quebecois of previous generations who had the good sense to opt out of Anglo-American War Mongering? Wars destroy Civilizations past a certain point – in many ways: psychological, finacial, genetic, etc. We have not recovered from those wars, Cash. And it doesn’t look now like we ever will have a chance to. Imagine if America had had the good sense to stay out of WW1 – it would have remained a local fight won by Central Europe. England would have withdrawn and things would have gone back to normal. Austro-Hungary would have fallen apart at some point but Russia may have been saved from Communism.
Wage said: “So I am disregarding your assertions that Ann Dunham was a good person, doing good work.”
============
While most women were doing other things in the 60’s, Ann Dunham was getting a PhD that she used to help poor women in rural villages in the third world. I’m not going to criticize her because she got support from the Ford Foundation or USAID.
Just as you think I am duped by TPTB, you are more of an ideologue than I thought.
I guess I’m more a pragmatist/utilitarian: greatest good for the greatest number (no matter where the funds come from)
BTW, I was complementing you, Wage, in my last post. Just so there is no misunderstanding:
IDEOLOGUE
an individual whose political opinions are carefully thought out and relatively consistent with one another. Ideologues are often described as having a comprehensive world view.
You also have a wealth of insider information about the Truth Movement and other conspiracies.
I am mostly ignorant of what TPTB are really doing. Ignorance is bliss.
CORRECTION
BTW, I was complimenting you, Wage
Cash said: “What’s being forgotten here is the average joe that did the fighting and suffering.”
============
Are you forgetting that the guys on the other side are also “average joes”? Those other average joes should not be killed, either.
What does it say about average joes (on both sides of the battlefield) that they are so easily duped into becoming stupid cannon fodder for greedy war profiteers and morally-challenged politicians?
asia said: “We were fighting Communism!
Yeah right. Now we import goods from Vietnam made by slave labor.”
===================
asia, Donald Trump put new windows into his buildings. He imported the windows from Communist-Party-controlled China, made by Chinese slave labor.
Trump did not buy made-in-USA windows. Too expensive, apparently, though he has the money. Donald Trump is not a patriot.
Marlin, can you disassemble, clean, and reassemble your rifle in the dark? It is a good skill to have.
Put on a blindfold and practice until it becomes automatic.
BustinJ said: “I will bet money on Hillary being the next prez.”
============
Won’t she be too old in 2016?
Too many people hate both Clintons and the Clintons have too much baggage.
I bet she will never become president.
hello Marln, no thanks needed,I’m always willin’ ta share. My ole man was a WWII vet, even reupped? in ’50 for the forgotten war, Korea, those bastards went through frozen hell. I assume you all have seen Mash! The Chinese took a bigger lickin’ than us. I would think they are pretty damn bitter. I hope they give us a break in the coming oil wars, although that is highly unlikely!
Vlad said: “Michelle high fived Obama at the Arizona Memorial for a great speech. Such deep and devout people. ”
==========
Meow.
Did you also criticize their fist-bump?
Many people cannot stand to see them both in love and happy, with a model family and an organic garden in the front yard. They are normal people… and in this insane culture that makes them subject to criticism.
I can, do I get a stuffed bear? I can also load, lubricate , and probably put a round through your thick-ass head. all in the dark. training per the US gub-mint at your expense!
The Chinese will give us a break. Specifically, they will have their revenge… and leave us broken. Not that we don’t deserve it for all the violence we have visited upon the Chinese, at home and abroad.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” —JFK
“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government. ” —MLK
God have mercy on our souls.
RT said: “I can also load, lubricate , and probably put a round through your thick-ass head. all in the dark.”
============
With or without a night vision scope?
bustinj j, i bet no part of society you decoupled from misses you.
Really Vlad…?
Well as its stil Int’ wimmins Day, in the US, I’ll retort with a borrowed quote: “I have an idea that the phrase ‘weaker sex’ was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm…”
And as you like to ooze macho-jockness, you might enjoy this a short message from M!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkp4t5NYzVM
As to Prince Harry Hewitt Wales, the ultimate revenge of the House of Spencer – via a gal borne of Sandringham… lol
Nope, William is already preferred by the Brit masses to replace the Queen, if she were to hand on the heavy mantle of colonial moralleadership – tis simple, Camilla’s not liked by the lower-orders at all… which is frankly laughable…
But the ultimate blasphemy, betrayal would of course have been to have produced a new bloodline living connection to the princely Windsor boyz with lets say a half-brother via the House of al-Fayed…
But the ‘accident’ in gay Paris put paid to that one, fortunately. Ironic that she’d been staying at the Villa Windsor – Bois de Boulogne.
However I can see the benefit of dating a guy that has easy access to an AS365N2…
BTW I lurved this, when it came out a few years back…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40VliFceMfg&
Night yall, as I still have to figure out whether to go once more for Navtex – which is pretty useless but cheap – or go whole hog for Intellian VSAT… in which case I can play on here till the sats fall outta the skies, no matter how blue-water I be…
Toodle-pip…
I’m not at all blaming the Quebecois. I agree with their wanting to stay out of WW1. But the Anglo Canucks saw it differently. They thought of themselves as Brits, at first at least. Vimy changed that.
I blame Anglo Canucks for deliberately obliterating what happened. Cannot be justified IMO. For what it’s worth, I agree with a lot of your analysis. WW1 was a war of European powers pure and simple and it had catastrophic consequences which we’re still feeling.
Brilliant. Thank you! Laugh a minute. What a good time this was!
I can’t wait to see George Will riding his bike on that freeway that runs through his head!
SNAFU I keep hearing about the crisis of education in the US. Are you and Bustin both American? Seems that you two are the poster boys for that crisis. Here’s some advice, work on your reading comprehension. Also learn some critical thinking skills. Never mind, just work on basic reading skills.
No. What I was saying is that praying when you are in an extreme situation is not like writing letters to Santa Claus. I don’t pray but when I thought that my wife might die on me (cancer) I began to understand the impulse. You know: desperation.
I don’t think the fear wasn’t manufactured.
I worked with a Ukrainian woman most of whose family was murdered by Stalin in the 1930s during the genocide. Millions of Ukrainians were killed during that time.
Are there any East Germans out there with stories about the warm and loving embrace of the Stasi?
I worked with a Chinese fellow that lived through the Cultural Revolution. He told me that when he was a school boy, he and his schoolmates would all be taken to watch people being shot at a playing field. Can you picture that?
Correction:I don’t think the fear was manufactured
sorry Asoka, no night vision scope needed. I would just listen for your wide assed heavy mouthed inhalations!We all know your type are deep breathers!
jackie2nbvu said, “One of the accounts was MacD’s. I would have to walk thru the kitchen all the way to the back to get the water, and then back thru to the eating area, I’d be sticky with grease just from that. It was Gross.”
I once saw some measurements for aerosolized grease. Basically these are small fat particles that are generated by grills and fryers and they are present in the air around fast food restaurants, especially. Once you start getting a good concentration of them, like in an urban area, it really starts to add up. Kind of the saturated fat that makes the smog stick together.
asocks says, “Won’t she be too old in 2016?
Too many people hate both Clintons and the Clintons have too much baggage.”
First factor is that she is a woman, women are ascendant. Second factor is that baggage tends to evaporate after decades. Third, she’ll be just getting done running foreign diplomacy, and Wikileaks proves that it isn’t a moron outfit. She’ll have substantial diplomatic cred. Fourth, second major campaign means more skillz to win. Fifth, she was too close last time to not try again. Sixth, Obama is going to be an easier target as sitting duck in chief. Seventh, she can take the harsh tack toward Repubs, which Obama seems constitutionally unable to do. Eight, feminism always piggybacks on civil rights gains. Nine, America is sick of chief executives who golf.
me , not so much, i can make a 30 minute SCBA last close to twenty minutes. the tanks are way overated. they used to be 2200 psi aluminum now they are 4500 psi, carbon fiber. My first captain taught me that. air is life!and I am over 220 lbs. breath slow and deep ,savor every breadth! go through about 3 or 4 tanks and then we can talk, PUSSIE!
RThunder;
Same with my old man, WW11, then off to Korea in 1951. He said Korea was worse. More brutal. Of course that’s where he lost his leg and got that plate in his head.
I’d say we as a nation had more balls back then — look at our fathers–but I talk to young vets when I go to the VA clinic in Winsted. Some had been deployed 2, 3 times. They’re still in their 20’s. They got balls, too.
Last week Martin Hayes said we (the US) was going to lose. It wasn’t clear what he meant, but I don’t see us losing anything anytime soon.
How about you?
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Belisarius
I am not a fan of ethanol (you can check back to previous posts, a long time ago).
Even Gore recently admitted that it is a bad idea.
http://www.agweek.com/event/article/id/17853/
But consider this. When my grand folks immigrated in the late 1800’s, fully 1/3 of their annual harvest, was used to feed the draft animals. So to say we are burning food, we may be. But we are currently eating oil.
Our local weather guy just told us to get outside by 19:24hrs and see the space shuttle return. Enjoying the cold crisp winter, our family and a few neighbors went outside and after 10 minutes we saw it zoom by( either that a plane or a UFO) but as a man about to hit 50 and grew up with Star Trek, it was a sad moment. The end of the space age and the exploration of space, back to the days of the darken orthodoxy rule. Where our leaders worry about Harry Potter, evolution, consenting gay adults getting married, swearing,and Halloween. Then followed by those evil health care unions where wiping your butt and lifting, washing, healing, and saving your life for $8 to 10 an hour is too much, or crawling around in the dark with full gear, carring a tool through smoke, heat and other dangers to save your life for around $14 an hour is too much. Being one for pay and the other for volunteer I experieced both. The church members carry their bible while saying business and banks need a break from those evil people that heal you, save you, and protect you. I going to Zeus!!
JHK :another great read!!
K dog said:
I think you are confusing inaction with a master plan.
**************************************************
Point taken. In fact, the total volume of
Federal monies (you know, those so-called
“shovel-ready” projects) devoted to altfuels
and transportation infrastructure improvement
can best be described as “token”.
You and I will never know what the “master plan”
really is but it’s amazing how little action has
backed up a mountain of rhetoric. Meanwhile,
we’ve got a veritable Saudi Arabia up in North
Dakota and it isn’t being developed.
With Obama, you have to look at what he DOES
(rehire Gates as Defense Sec’y, rehire Bernanke,
hire a JPM guy as Chief of Staff, fill his
cabinet with Wall St. scum) and not what he
SAYS. He’s a classic empty suit.
E.
TRAINS BOATS AND PLANES ERR skip the planes. I see to many posts here that the rail system is the solution t6o all our problems NOT. We spent billions producing the most advanced transport System in the world called the Interstate Highway system or to most of you all those 4-6 lane roads starting with I and followed by a number like I-95?
The system works for us and China only can wish they had one like ours instead of donkey kart timber trails as soon as you leave the main city
With some clever thinking and mass reeducation this roadway can be converted in stages to run rail trains or rubber tired trains or some form of mover that transports people from all existing exists to the jobs they need and back. The same system serves rural America and can be just as useful in a post oil economy. Time to get the thinkers in one big room and put them to productive work.
Can’t wait to read your theories, Lord. Make sure you detail the following:
1. Your background, education and experience in architecture, engineering and/or physics.
2. The questions you asked the original architect of the Towers.
3. The blast forces in Newtons and how they blew heat shielding off the metal skeleton.
4. The temperature the jet fuel burned at and the melting temp. of the steel structure.
5. The forces on the lower floors as the structure collapsed due to gravity.
6. Include in lab simulation, computer modeling & other experiments you conducted during your research in order to confirm your findings.
Regards
Wow! Your musings got me. While watching the ACC tournament with a neighbor this past weekend, Charlie Sheen came up in the conversation during half time. Personally, I only know who he is because I used to be a fan of his father, Martin Sheen. Anyway, I’m guessing, Bustin J, that you are somewhere in your mid to late thirties, because Sheen is around 40, I think. My neighbor is 38 and he thinks Charlie Sheen “rocks” because of the way he has flipped the bird to the entertainment establishment in Hollywood. I have to admit, I never really thought of it that way. You and others have commented on how Sheen is putting a mirror up to society (as well as his own nose, lol) and saying, “F.U. I’m Charlie Sheen and I don’t have to play with you guys anymore.” To which I say: “Okay, alright by me.” I forced myself (w/ hubby) to watch the 2 1/2 Men last night sitcom (first time) and have to admit it’s the biggest pile of doo doo I’ve ever seen on television (and that’s saying a lot!) But be that as it may, it’s HIS life, and he’s got the money to call the studio execs in Hollywood “clowns” if that’s what he wants to do.
My only lament to my neighbor who is like-minded with you, is that I saw Judy Garland self-destruct before my very eyes on a television program she had back in the ’60s. She died at the grand old age of 47, I think. Living fast and hard is one thing, and many a gifted star burned bright, fast, and died early. Maybe it’s a function of being extremely talented. I don’t know. But whatever “it” is that makes stars burn out before their prime, good ole Charlie just doesn’t seem to have the stuff, imo, of course. Given enough money, anyone can pre-empt their life with an excessive lifestyle.
As more evidence that the Obama Administration
is an ersatz “liberal” administration with as
many frauds as Reagan’s Cabinet, take the example
of Michele Rhee … one of the “Teach for America”
nutjobs. Turns out she falsified her resume and
did not accomplish what she claimed to have
accomplished in Baltimore, including
falsifications of test scores.
As another example, in an attempt to mollify
Republicans, Obama is suggesting a very large
cut to funds for the SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
which, among other things, provides loans for
fledgling businesses. Is this guy a Remocrat or
a Depublican?
Seriously. Who in hell is this guy?? And, of
course, the LAST freaking thing he’s going to
do is increase the marginal tax rates on his
rich Wall St. backers. If this guy is a
Democrat, I’m Barbara Walters.
E.
CHEMTRAILS
Living in the sunshine state we have noticed the almost nonstop spraying of chemtrails this year. Jim can you dedicate some of your research time on getting our gov to tell us why7 they are spraying us with chemicals and blood born pathogens,Barium and other harmful substances. Before you brush me off as a KOOK this is no longer a theory and has been proven. Why then do our wonder boys and girls in Washington so silent on this issue. LOOK UP IN THE SKY PEOPLE!
Its not just happening in the USA its all over the western world including Europe. Just google “SKY PICTURES” and look for the long white streaks in the sky. Its not contrails for those that think it is.
The Public is a Woman even as your Hitler said.
===================
No idea what this means but it sounds pithy.
My Hitler?
So the Interstate Highway system is the
answer, eh? Uh … right. It’ll be such
a great use of money to fix it up just in
time for $10/gallon gasoline when these
highways will never need any more maintenance
because hardly anyone will travel.
Rail has the highest EFFICIENCY OF FUEL USE
of any mode of ordinary transportation. I
think you should change your handle if you’re
going to make posts that aren’t exactly works
of genius.
E.
Too late … I do brush you off as a kook. 🙂
They’re also watching you and your wife have
sex from spy satellites at the L-5 points.
E.
I LOVE both you and k-dog’s acronyms! PERFECT! INSPIRED! BRAVO!
Wage, PLEASE don’t try to tell RI ANYTHING he doesn’t wish to hear or believe. It’s like yelling into the Grand Canyon – all you get is your own voice shouting back at you, FILLED with massive distortions! I decided a while ago that I’m simply not gonna play RI’s little games. Personally, I think you’d have better luck beating candy from a 300 ton pinata than deciphering the horse xhit from RI. My opinion, of course.
{They’re also watching you and your wife have
sex from spy satellites at the L-5 points.}
——
everyone knows that the government watches us have sex through our televisions. think not? think again!
tv sets have grown bigger at the same rate as the budget for the united states department of homeland security — coincidence, you say? what about the cbs eye? the nbc peacock? or the addams family-style eyeball peering out from the ‘o’ in fox news?
word to the wise: don’t embarrass yourself with anticlimactic climaxes, nor with radical islamic positions you may have seen in a library book once. keep it wholesome, but don’t lose sight of the narrative arc. and, just in case dick cheney is listening through the radio, try to keep the gastric noises to a minimum.
“Rail has the highest EFFICIENCY OF FUEL USE
of any mode of ordinary transportation”
-E-
E, I’d like to directly challenge you on these figures. Rail and conventional cars are pretty much neck-and-neck on passenger-miles per gallon, according to the figures I keep finding and posting.
You sound like an urban dweller. I don’t deny that rail has its advantages as transportation for densely packed urban areas.
But we’ve got this huge overhang of investment in suburban infrastructure that’s not going to go away just because the passenger rail advocates will it to go away.
Plus – adopting urban living will be a decades long process for the US – if it ever happens.
Back to you,
PoC
Are you forgetting that the guys on the other side are also “average joes”? Those other average joes should not be killed, either.
===========
Patton (Geo C Scott) said you don’t win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
” Too many people hate both Clintons and the Clintons have too much baggage.
I bet she will never become president.”
You have seen the catalog of her crimes as the first lady of Arkansas?
http://prorev.com/connex.htm
God have mercy on our souls.
============
Metaphorically speaking.
“everyone knows that the government watches us have sex through our televisions. think not? think again!” -orion-
OMG, orion, that thought takes me way, way back.
My mom worked when I was a little kid. We didn’t have a baby sitter, day care, or a ‘nanny.’
We had a maid. She was the coolest colored (aka black) lady. She had kids my age who were my friends – it was one of those mutual and sustainable black/white relationships that were common, necessary, and sustainable in the rural and small town south – now, sadly, mostly gone.
Anywho – the only way this woman could get me out of my pj’s in the morning was to wait for the first “kiddie show” to come on at 8:00 a.m. – and then tell me that all the little kids on the TV could see me in my pajamas. “They will see you and laugh at you for not being dressed, little PoC,” she would say to me every morning.
Seriously, I haven’t worn a pair of pajamas for almost 50 years, now. I’ll sleep nude, when it’s just my wife and me in the house – in boxers otherwise.
Anything’s better than being caught in those pajamas!
A great speaker like Louis Farakahn, Obama, or Hitler seduce their passive audience like a man might seduce a woman. It is the opposite of what the Founders believed in – an informed and non-passive citizenry as opposed to passive consumers with the mouths open in wonderment like baby chicks waiting to be fed.
I see streaks over LA, day after day.
Except on some holidays!
Orion said:
everyone knows that the government watches us have sex through our televisions. think not? think again!
****************************************************
And who gives a damn??? And who can do anything
about it?? And who REALLY knows? Fucking ME!!!
That’s who.
What did I do at SRI in the 1980s?
Surveillance satellites. Go ahead. Make my
day.
E.
Meow y’self!
Those 2 are shameless media whores and used the slaughter of people to further [or try to] their own agenda.
Pity obama didnt ask for another ‘let us not rush to judgement’ moment.
If women earn as much as men, then what would be their motivation to marry men? Remember, money is what attracts women in general. One of the main reason for the income difference is that women take time off to have children – or even give up their careers for years at a time. So not only should the difference not be erased – it should be increased. More women should take more time off or give up the job all together. That is the sign of a healthy society. Equality means sameness – no polarity, no passion. Death in other words. One of the secrets of Islamic Strength is to exaggerate the gender differences. This creates power – both psychological and demographic. Our one size fits all approach cannot compete with them.
,savor every breadth!
breadth?
–noun
1. the measure of the second largest dimension of a plane or solid figure; width.
Obama had no feeling of sadness for the slain. It was just a performance – all about him in other words. She’s his enabler, judge, and competitor in the Ego Games.
Did anyone else notice last week JHK’s mention of a “kick-ass” screenplay he wrote? I sure did and what really grabbed my attention was the bodacious proclamation. Before TLE arrives, there’s fame and fortune to be had along with some self-congratulatory pats-on-the-ass. I can dig it; I’m doing some kick-ass work myself these days.
And apparently some of our fellow posters are too,witnessed by the plethora of web-links posted immediately following Kunstler’s new weekly posting first thing Monday morning…piggybacking motherfuckers 🙂
So SNAFU –
I’m approaching this discussion of atheism vs theism with you like I would approach the first contact in a wrestling match. In other words, if I make the wrong opening move you’re gonna slam me to the mat.
Bad analogy, maybe, but this would be a lot more fun in person. There is humor, joie de vivre, spirituality, – whatever you want to call it – that is visible in me in person that I can just NOT FREAKIN’ MAKE TRANSLATE into print.
So, I can’t be converted to pure atheism, in spite of logic or Faith – although I’m giving it another serious look right now, for about the 3rd time in my life. I know what the final result will be, though – I’ll return to my default setting of relaxed agnostic Christianity, yet again.
And I’ve been studying atheism through history, and just recently finished the book, “Losing My Religion.” Atheism really does have a strong positive correlation with prosperity. Which means that energy use in the US and Europe have fostered atheism – which means it may decline with peak everything.
Cash, Snafu, Bustin, Ozone, Ripped, Wage, and others – I think we’re all experiencing some “cross talk” where we are confusing one another’s ideas in our posts regarding religion and/or the lack thereof.
I don’t have a solution, except that I’ll try to be more careful and targeted with my posts. And, man, would this ever be fun in person!!
Regards y’all,
PoC
Please list.
I did read ‘HELL TO PAY’ but in books like that there are so many players, so many names.
My fav was the Larouche published book with the info on drugs thru arkansas.
RT said: “I would just listen for your wide assed heavy mouthed inhalations!We all know your type are deep breathers!”
=========
RT, have you ever put a bullet into the head of deep breather? How many of “my type” have you killed?
I did look at chart…
My theory is the red chinese were grooming him [$$$$$]from early on!
You really are a clown, sandwiching President Obama right smack in between Farrakhan and Hitler.
Cash I’m treading on thin ice mocking prayer.
I’m going to stop though I’m sure plenty of prayers have been said in the last few days for the downfall of Colonel Gaddafi, low low gas prices and a continuation of the non-negotiable American way of life.
Regarding the scenarios you presented I will comment. Divinity has nothing to do with man’s inhumanity to man. Men cause war and poverty.
I’m sorry your parents suffered as they did but god by whatever name he/she is called did not cause their suffering, men did. Expecting divine intervention to solve mans problems is irresponsible.
Regarding hiding under wooden planks while bombs are being dropped I’ll say whatever it takes to get one through the day is fine by me.
I don’t mean to offend, but there are a lot of selfish people deluding themselves into believing that the big dog is on their side. This causes much suffering.
I was in a hospital waiting room today and a TV was on CNN. Fortunately sound was off and subtitles were on. Seems we have to save the Libyan people from the Libyan people and the ‘WAR ROOM’ is in full swing. No doubt god is on our side. Maybe Wolf Blixer said exactly that, maybe he didn’t. I don’t know, the sound was off.
The whole country was feeling sadness. What they needed was a leader to put it into perspective and that is what they got. Worth a high five because it was so well done.
No Pajama’s! yikes. I guess I won’t be sleepin’ tonight! As Marlon Brando said “The Horror!”
Not many but you are on my short list!
okay Breath, sorry!
“Last week Martin Hayes said we (the US) was going to lose. It wasn’t clear what he meant, but I don’t see us losing anything anytime soon.”
==========
Anytime you spend ten years occupying a country, and the enemy continues to get stronger, you have lost. All that remains is to withdraw the troops.
Al-Qaeda-Taliban alliance stronger than ever, says US army chief
Afghan Taliban getting stronger, Pentagon says
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/29/world/la-fg-0429-us-afghan-20100429
OUCH!
RT, do you have both a long list and a short list? How many are on each?
Guilty as charged an american; however, I attended school back in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s before social promotions became the norm.
Perhaps you might point out which pearls of wisdom you meted out that I glossed over.
SNAFU
Just my opinion, natrually, but why anyone is waiting for permission from the media to take trains or whatever is a continuing mystery. I regard Geo Will’s statement as a sign that a new pragmatism, the wisdom of citizens not merely consumers, is already arising and PTB realize this. No seriously. Most people I know, in a law firm, are already making quiet, pragmatic changes such as relying on trains. Stop expecting PTB to make the first move, it ain’t gonna happen. YOU be the change. YOU plant a garden, join a co-op, buy American, protest unfair taxation, whatever…stop the bitching, put away the violent, paranoid fantasizing and for cryin out loud GET ON WITH It
PorC said:
E, I’d like to directly challenge you on these figures. Rail and conventional cars are pretty much neck-and-neck on passenger-miles per gallon, according to the figures I keep finding and posting.
****************************************************
Not per payload!!! I want to see these alleged
“figures” you refer to. I’m referring to miles
per gallon PER UNIT HAULED. Ain’t no freaking
way that cars compete on that metric. I say
“ball’s more in your court than mine”.
I challenge your challenge. 🙂 You load a
large SUV with nine people and the miles per
gallon drops PRECIPITOUSLY (around 25%). You
look at, especially, freight rail, where the
payload is likely to be heavier than the weight
of the car itself.
Finally, I want you to show me a ROAD where the
friction is minimized as much as it is in the
rail system. They all have big ruts, holes,
and so forth. Rail ties have surface variations
that are far smaller than the surface variations
in roads. Indeed, if they were as BAD as roads,
we wouldn’t have ANY rail system at all.
E.
I think those of us who Pray in these kinds of situations do it partly to calm ourselves. And to hope for the best in case the worst happens, and in case there is a hereafter.
my .02 on this.
OMG that is so True. I can see cars as assisted living devices. Good for you losing all that stuff. I pay way too much for cell phone, I am on call caregiver so need one for now anyway. Costs 80.00 month. no land line. It all adds up. Cars and Insurance, oh yeah and GAS. Cars are a pain in more ways than one.
I got whiplash now for a year, constant headaches, was rear ended, things change in a split second.
It’s all too much we are on overload. Things going too fast.
Obama is on good terms with Farakahn I believe. And he has never disavowed the racial hatred preached by Reverend Wright. People like you elected a Black Communist Racist. Congratualtions dupe. Why is racial pride alright for Blacks but not for Whites? And by the same token, if you going to be against hate, you have to be against all of it – not just by Whites.
I agree with you, more to it than simple narcissism. Your .02 is worth .25 at least and probably more than that.
I’m withdrawing my suggestion that the Guantanamo prisoners be flown to the mainland on Virgin Atlantic Airlines. The plane would mysteriously crash. The prisoners would be in paradise with plenty of virgins apiece that’s for sure, but living is still better than dying.
I just watched Gitmo: The New Rules of War
It’s a dated flick now, the prisoners no doubt have even more to tell. More than Obama could deal with that’s for sure.
The full article if you want it.
Netflix Rocks
Hey, stick, dipstic, dipweed, and you can guess the rest, the story is since you have nothing to say about my ideas, since you have no way to counter them, you attack these petty parts of it. Actually no one has ever challenged even a little part of what I say because it is so over their heads and so true it is almost blinding:
No one can challenge the real effect technology, science and innovation are having on all productive endeavors namely rendering labor more and more unnecessary and not needed;
no one can challenge the fact that money is simply a make believe invention, a place holder, not a fixed amount that “runs out”, but a denotation of social relationships, of simply relationships between people and groups of people, hence it can’t run out, is in fact infinite;
no one can challenge the fact that living in large skyscrapers where you have offices or laboratories or wherever the “work” will be performed in the future on one floor (I actually think there will no longer really be much of any work in the future, but even work is simply a social relationship just like money so can be infinite and can’t run out so to say, but anyways…), homes on another floor and stores or whatever on another floor would render all modes of transportation not even needed anymore (hence the resource scarcity myth completely breaks down, you don’t even need oil);
no one can challenge the fact that without a very articulate and dense BUS system throughout the USA, any passenger train system is totally worthless, etc;
no one can challenge the fact that a home is just a box you use to live in, home ownership is not a metaphysical law of physics, is not the only possible way to organize living arrangements, and cheap rents would go a long way on increasing the standard of living of most people;
no one can ever challenge the fact that free basic health care with the option that anyone can buy any private parts they want, as they are “Free Markets” (free as in you can choose and not free as in the US, I can deny you health because you don’t work) and as is practiced in JAPAN, South Korea, Germany, Canada, etc. is a much smarter system then the american cluskterfuck private pig hog up all system, etc.
I could go on and on, but you get what I am saying…
i agree with frank zappas ancient quote regarding people who act up like charlie .
“they are assholes in motion”
No, old6699, I don’t know what the hell you are saying. Millions of skyscrapers, colonizing the galaxy, free salaries for all … my only conclusion is that you’re simply bullshitting us, or else you’re a red herring just trying to f–k things up on this site. That’s your right. Have at it! There’s a lot of bullshit strewn around here, (amongst some pretty insightful stuff) but yours is the worst.
Charlie Sheen has his own self produced show on You Tube now, a freak show if you will, part of the larger American Freak Show that we witness, incredulously, every single day. Maybe you can get a spot on it elaborating your crank theories. it would fit right in.
Asoka, you ask me if I could strip down my rifle in the dark and reassemble it. I detected a hint of sarcasm in your post but I’ll take it as a straight question and give you a straight answer.
These old (and new) lever guns that I’m so fond of are not modular, that is they do not come apart so easily. They are not really made to take apart, in the field or on the bench, by an unschooled person. For one thing, you need special tools. Another thing is there are many small parts, springs, screw and pins, that are easily lost. Lever rifles made in Connecticut, in the 19th and 20th centuries, Marlins, Winchesters, Whitneys, Savages, were never adopted by any of the worlds militaries, loosely speaking; they were strictly for sporting (hunting and target shooting) purposes. That’s one of the reasons Iloike them so much.
Last nite BBC had a segment, “How can we break America’s love affair with guns”? It was the familiar gun control bullshit we’ve heard so many time before, ad nauseum. I have a better question, “How can we get BBC to mind their own goddamn business?”
The other night I saw a clip that showed bearded and robed Muslims in the public square in the heart of London, shouting thru bullhorns how they will bring down England, impose Shariah law, plant minarets atop Westminster Abbey etc.. They were haranging passersby, waving foriegn flags,taking breaks to face east, prostrate, every so often. I’m wondering, is BBC worried about that?
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Marlin,
I tend to concur with you on the Muslim situation in London. It’s a bad situation and it’s going to get worse. Maybe if we look at foreign countries we can figure out what has happened in our own.
The racists among the CFN can say what they want to, but the Muslim clerics and their followers are quite intelligent in the way the exploit *weakness.*
The first 3 hijacked planes on 9/11 exploited an amazing gap in Western thought as manifested in FAA security procedures.
“Agree with hijackers – get the plane on the ground.” – Until the morning of 9/11, this had been generally successful for 40 years, but that spirit of cooperation was exploited by 15 suicidal hijackers on three planes and it ended in a disaster that continues to torment us to this day.
No one seems to have properly acknowledged that the freedom and intelligence of American citizens crashed that 4th plane before further damage could be done. In a logical world those men on that plane would have been celebrated with the “Trained and Armed Civilians on Airliners Act” or some such equivalent.
Whoa – that rant took off in an unexpected direction. Let me try to drag back to Muslims in the UK in the next post.
PoC;
Damn, you’re a clear thinker!
You remind me of my neighbor, a (Jewish) scientist and a lib democrat, but honest, accurate and frank about everything. I respect his take on things, and yours.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Freedom to protest and make a nuisance of yourself in the streets is an American/Western tradition. Freedom of religion is an American/Western tradition.
The Muslims in the UK, and to some extent, some of them in the US are combining those two, separate, traditions to create and then exploit another area of *weakness* in Western culture.
The airline security problem, exposed on 9/11, had a couple of easy work-arounds that the Bush administration and the FAA generally failed to acknowledge or implement. And we’ve been harassing little old ladies, getting on US airliners – ever since.
I don’t see an easy work-around for this one though, in an area that involves freedom of religion and freedom to protest. Those two freedoms are so BASIC to who we are as a people.
Marlin, you missed the big dust up last summer over the “Ground Zero Mosque.” What’s the status of that thing? I will still contend that only the New Yorkers have a right to try to stop it, using local tools, under the US Constitution.
But it’s still a symbol of a problem we may need to begin to examine as a Nation.
Is it already too late for the Brits?
“So, I can’t be converted to pure atheism, in spite of logic or Faith – although I’m giving it another serious look right now, for about the 3rd time in my life. I know what the final result will be, though – I’ll return to my default setting of relaxed agnostic Christianity, yet again.” -PoC
==============
Hooo-old on thar, Muskie!
I don’t see anybody trying to “convert” you to anything. That’s just weird. Seems to me the proselytizing is strictly on the part of the “mystics” here. Cut it out, or I’ll have to bring that “piece of paper” that Gee Dubya wiped his ass with down on you! ;o) (It appears we have the right of protection FROM religion, ya know. Now, just why would that be codified by those guys in the wigs? Hmmmmm…)
Believe in Space Ghost (coast to coast) all you want, but howzabout you trying out your theory of the “religion spot” in the brain developing organically and all on its’ lonesome.
I’ll bet your Great Religions would wither away without constant rote-reinforcement from the mouthpieces for gawd.
Your theory needs testing. You be one of the first non-proselytizers to CFN, and we’ll see what spiritual hallucinations/manifestations pop up, shall we? ;o)
Yours, in unbearable lightness,
-me
Ps. k-dawgs post just beneath yours mirrors a lot of my thinking on the matter. I’ll hush about the subject now.
“Not per payload!!! I want to see these alleged
“figures” you refer to. I’m referring to miles
per gallon PER UNIT HAULED.”
-E-
E, you seem to be talking about ton-miles, where railroads have a hands down advantage. I’m talking about passenger-miles per gallon, where advantages go to other modes of transport.
I posted US govt. figures culled from Wikipedia up the thread. These are, in descending order of efficiency for moving passengers:
vanpool – most efficient
hybrid car
motorcycle
Amtrak rail
Light and heavy passenger rail
Commuter Rail
Aircraft
Standard Passenger cars
Passenger trucks
Transit buses – leas efficient.
=============
IMO, the conversation should be in passenger-miles/gallon (PMPG).
http://www.railway-technical.com/US-fuel-paper.shtml
Link above shows PMPG as 41 for 1960 era passenger trains, which were the last data point available in this analysis.
Link also shows some of the technical reasons why PMPG figures are deucedly hard to pin down.
SNAFU – you interested, here?
Just keep in mind that a 50MPG diesel Rabbit with 4 passengers gets 200 PMPG.
A loaded Boeing 747 gets 91 PMPG.
Commuter rail gets about 30 PMPG.
@Wagelaborer;
Fascinating. I did not know this, and yeah, sure enough, it checks out.
Thanks very much for your pointing this out. This rabbit hole goes all the way down. Apparently, even Bush did face time in Paris over this, not just (heh, just) Casey and company in Madrid.
That said, (and again, thanks) I don’t think this actually rebuts my initial point, that it wasn’t Carter’s ‘paying both sides against the middle’ energy policies that cost him the reelection, it was the Iran thing.
I thought that Hilary would be the chosen one in 2008, because of her (and Bill’s) years of service to TPTB.
I was wrong. There is no honor among thieves.
They went with the black guy.
And I’ve got to admit it was a brilliant choice.
Vlad,
If you want to get on your racial soapbox once again–some people only have one story to to tell–go ahead, but don’t use my retort as your match fuse. If you’ll go back and have a peek, you’ll see I was specifically responding to how you grouped President Obama with some rather infamous and controversial speakers. Why not Reagan, or some other famous and competent speaker? No, you grasp for Hitler and Farrakhan, and then when called out, take shelter under some utterly obsessive ‘racial hatred’ umbrella.For the sake of clarity, please read more carefully in the future.
And by the way, I don’t happen to believe President Obama is all that great of a speaker. IMO, he seems to be tracing the outer contour of MLK’s speaking style a bit too rigidly. And where is the loud, booming voice to publicly denounce the criminality of Wall Street, for example? No, like most politicians his saves his best for the campaign stump speech. Very typical and very American.
Yeah, my sister-in-law is Ukrainian.
She had her mother visiting her once, while we were visiting.
She told me the story of her mother, one of 13 children, whose father favored the boys, and didn’t educate the girls. So her mother and her older sister headed over to Poland, where they started a restaurant. And then Hitler invaded.
The next day, I met her mother. I’m not tall, but she came up to my chin.
The first thing she said was, “I love America”. Then she told us that she escaped Russia under Stalin, because of the oppression and all.
Really?
Apparently there’s a private version and a public version, at least in that family.
I’d take the stories with a grain of salt, Cash.
OK, Ozone –
“Your theory needs testing. You be one of the first non-proselytizers to CFN, and we’ll see what spiritual hallucinations/manifestations pop up, shall we? ;o)”
-O3-
Funny stuff, indeed, I’m hoping that we are in agreement on that, at least! haha!
Seeing as how +/- 85% of humanity professes some sort of religious faith, your theory is going to be hard to test.
I don’t understand the “CERTAINTY* expressed by the hard-edged atheists – perhaps as personified by BustinJ. To me that certainty looks like a desire to win converts – to one thing or another.
I know that one can believe every single aspect of Evolutionary Theory – and still have room in one’s head for faith (Faith?) or at least for agnosticism. Bustin seems to disagree. That’s what lead the discussion thread off into religion vs. atheism last week. Religion MUST learn to tolerate science – and vice versa. And for right now –
“That’s all I have to say about that”
-forrest gump-
My mom used to hate birds, because her mom would say “A little bird told me”, when she was busted for wrong-doing.
And then when my grandma got Alzheimer’s, she thought that the men on the TV were flirting with her.
It made TV watching more fun, I’m sure.
I don’t think that Obama is a great speaker, either.
My husband calls it the William Shatner style of speech, halting and slow.
But we are told that he is a great speaker! And handsome!
Just like we are told that everyone loved Reagan!
And so, dutifully, everyone pretends that he is a great speaker.
And the children can scream all they want about the naked Emperor.
In real life, no one listens.
“And then when my grandma got Alzheimer’s, she thought that the men on the TV were flirting with her.”
-wage-
Should I ever be so unfortunate as to contract Alzheimer’s – I’ve always told my kids, my primary doc, my wife, and anyone else who will listen – that all it will take to keep me compliant and relatively *happy?* will be access to Xanax.
But your story about your grandma makes me want to add access to some porn or something – in addition to my pre-arranged Xanax.
Now that’s a joke – well, maybe a joke! hah
“I know that one can believe every single aspect of Evolutionary Theory – and still have room in one’s head for faith (Faith?) or at least for agnosticism. Bustin seems to disagree. That’s what lead the discussion thread off into religion vs. atheism last week. Religion MUST learn to tolerate science – and vice versa. And for right now –
“That’s all I have to say about that”
-forrest gump- ”
=================
Ahhhh, okay. I wondered how that came to be a bone of contention, even though I don’t agree with compulsory “must-ness” of that particular bone.
Thanks for clarifying.
-“shri-ump”-
You ever notice how the “libs” stop playing the race card against whites once they are called upon it, and then try and tell us how they are supposedly color blind and never ever touch the race card?
I think if we were given free access to Kos, within a week we could have those passive/aggressive sociopaths whipped.
“Anti-racism” is a codeword for anti-white.
I totally agree, Hillwalker.
I actually made that same point in an earlier thread.
But, we are told that Carter was hated for saying we should conserve energy, so everyone dutifully parrots it.
Even though, in the 70s, I’m pretty sure that most people knew about conserving energy.
The Depression survivors were mostly alive then, and I know that I’m not the only one who was told to shut the door, do you think we need to pay to heat the outside?
As I said when I brought this up before, my best friend was only allowed to open the refrigerator once during dinner, so she had to know everything she needed to get. Or go without.
I thought that that rule was excessive, but her dad wanted to save energy! And not in a green way. In a money way.
“But your story about your grandma makes me want to add access to some porn or something – in addition to my pre-arranged Xanax.” -PoC [responding to Wage]
=============
LOL
“Damnit, draw the blinds, Grampy’s at it again!!
(Throw in some herb and you’ve really got something goin’ there. …If we can still figure out how to fire up a match, that is! “Damnit, Grampy’s near burnt the place down again! ;o)
Well, I guess I am an ideologue.
The first time I realized it was many years ago, in nursing school.
I went to a mental hospital for part of my training.
The nurse orienting us made mention of how they used to shock people who were depressed.
(lbendet asked me last week if I read “Shock Therapy”. I did, and the first chapter is actually about the horrors of shock therapy).
I spoke up and said that shock therapy sounded pretty barbaric to me.
Well. She went ballistic! Started screaming about the damn liberals like me who stopped such a great treatment.
I didn’t even know that there was such a history. I didn’t know I was taking a “liberal” position. I thought that I was just taking a humane position.
But that’s when I realized that I’m a natural born liberal. I don’t believe in torture, or murder, not matter what the rationalization.
It’s definitely my world view.
“The Depression survivors were mostly alive then, and I know that I’m not the only one who was told to shut the door, do you think we need to pay to heat the outside?” -Wage
============
The version I heard was: “Shut that door; you’re letting all the bought air out!”
Looks like real, live Civil War going down in Libya today, with airstrikes, artillery and infantry attacks.
We know who Khaddafi is, but does anybody know who the rebels are? I find it rather humorous that many of the people who’ve complained about Iraq all these years are eager to get involved in Libya.
Two nights ago on AM radio I heard Farrahkan discussing his ‘good friend’, Khaddafi.
Anybody remember back in 1991, Jesse Jackson haranguing President Clinton to send US Forces into Somalia ‘To feed the People?” Then came the debacle portrayed so well in the film ‘Black Hawk Down”.
Where are all those weapons coming from? Its hard to determine from the news video whether they are Chinese or Russian. The fighter aircraft are definitely Russian.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
I don’t believe that you prefer to live in ignorance.
Here is a video giving a history of the genocide in Indonesia in 1965, when Obama and his step-daddy and mom arrived.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14517.htm
Maybe you think that teaching basket-weaving makes up for the atrocities. I don’t.
Vlad, you said something so worthwhile that K-dog complemented you on it – all except the last sentence. You responded to kdog with nothing like appreciation. Rather, you attacked k the dog for daring to question even ONE SINGLE SENTENCE of your thoughts.
Here they are again:
“Cohort of morons is right. My sense of George Will and people like him is that while they think they are defending the American Way they are really just defending the benefits of their class. Some of them know it and some of them don’t. Will I believe, does not. In any case, individualism is something to worry about on a full stomach. If we wanted to fight for it, that should have been done when they started to ship our jobs overseas and when they started to bring in high tech workers from South Asia. Of course the rot of illegal immigration was already established, but that only hurt the poor so nobody cared – certainly not the “Liberals”…”
-vlad-
Vlad, we could quibble over “Liberals,” but since you put it in quotes, there’s no need. The essential truth of you post stands correct. Social class is the 800 pound gorilla of American life that no one will address. Class and race get all bollixed up together – to create most of the disastrous outcomes of public policy in the US.
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But, then you add this one last sentence:
“”…liberals, whose criterion of social justice was based on not having White skin.”
That’s all it took to negate your message in the eyes of almost all the readers on CFN.
That’s all it took to lead you to attack KDog.
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You admit, Vlad, that questions of race “torment” you. (I think is was the word, “torment,” that you chose.) Are you familiar with Shakespeare’s Henry IV?
There is a line between honor, duty, and obsession that must be respected. Obsession – will never accomplish a desired goal.
“I find it rather humorous that many of the people who’ve complained about Iraq all these years are eager to get involved in Libya.” -M55
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I get kind of a nervous cackle out of that too.
Do you suppose any type of blowing-shit-up “help” would be offered if there wasn’t any black goo under that blasted wilderness? Oh, how I wonder. ;o)
Hey! Here, for our edification, is a short guide on how it all works…
http://www.rall.com/rallblog/comics/2011-03-09.jpg
Wagelaborer;
Do you remember the film, I think it was called, “A Year of Living Dangerously”? Is that the time period in Indonesia you’re talking about? It was Australian, made about the same time as “Breaker Morant”, and Gallipolli. One of Mel Gibson’s first movies.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
And while talk over the color of peoples skin obscures important issues at CFN Brent crude climbs to $115.08 a barrel and U.S. climbs to $105.20 as oil storage tanks burn in Libya.
Ted Rall, LoL. Good stuff, Ozone, good stuff!
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
People against Iraq “…are eager to get involved in Libya..”
-marlin-
These people – Obama, Hillary, McCain, Rush, Hannity – are all out on a limb and triangulating like crazy.
Don’t you think that almost ALL this posturing is either for internal US political purposes – or else is directed toward the UN – to get some UN cover for US action?
Also interesting how easy it is to name a RW “pundit” who impacts the National debate. Very difficult to name a LW “pundit,” of similar power – at least from where I sit.
Well, prog, why do we need to haul so many people so far?
Old6699 is right. If we live next to where we work, and if we can shop there also, then we don’t need to travel so much.
Right here in my little town, you can see the “progress” of US building.
In the center of town, although the mayor has spent a lot of effort knocking most of them down, there are still buildings from the late 1800s and early 1900s. They have storefronts on the bottom and apartments on top.
Some preservation society has placed old pictures around the Town Square, and you can see the bustling life of the old town. Those were hotels and livery stables, and drug stores. The train stopped in town square in those days.
There used to be hundreds of trains going through daily.
Around the center of town are the 50s suburbs, ranch houses with big lots, still within walking distance of the town center.
Then there are the McMansions, with the giant lawns, too far out of town to easily walk.
This was zoning and government support for road-building, still going on, with Obama’s “shovel-ready” plans.
It can be reversed easily.
Just stop the subsidies and raise the gas prices.
People will make their own decisions, and, remarkably, they will involve moving closer to work and building downtown on all those vacant lots.
“Just stop the subsidies and raise the gas prices.”
-wage-
100% concur, Wage. And the way to raise gas prices is with a tax on fuel that starts off low and then slowly increments.
Proceeds of the tax go to research and applications that are rigorously PROVEN to lead to sustainability.
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Glad we could come to such an important agreement before lunch, Wage.
Now, you call Obama and I’ll call Boehner-
We’ll have this problem solved by dinner time!
I never saw it, Marlin. Could be the time frame, though. Although there were massacres in Indonesia in 1975 and 1999, also.
And who was against the Iraq invasion but for attacking Libya?
Certainly not me. I don’t believe in killing people in order to save them.
If you mean Obama and Clinton, you’re wrong.
Obama gave one speech against attacking Iraq, and surfed it into the White House.
Clinton voted to give Bush the power to invade.
So why is it considered a US right to tell Quaddafi what to do?
Why is it considered a US right to attack other countries, whether for “human rights” (bullshit, especially from a country now torturing Bradley Manning) or oil?
Cash, come on. You think that the US is a weakling. Then why does everyone assume that the US has the right to intervene in other countries business?
MarlinFive54 stated: “I’d say we as a nation had more balls back then — look at our fathers–but I talk to young vets when I go to the VA clinic in Winsted. Some had been deployed 2, 3 times. They’re still in their 20’s. They got balls, too.”
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Marlin, my take is that it is not a question of individual courage. Given a good cause and an obvious threat, I have no doubt that Americans would willingly fight.
Korea was fought with a drafted army, although there was a fair number of volunteers between 1950 and 1953 as well. The big change since then is that the policy makers have become shy of casualties — to an extraordinary extent for a country openly operating as a world power.
Thus, even though the military is well trained, the unwillingness to take many casualties means that operations in Afghanistan will either go on for a very long time (doubtful) or end in either stalemate or defeat. The attitude to casualties also drives initiatives like using robots to bomb (well, fire missiles) at suspected targets.
I’m not aware of historical examples of other great powers that were so sensitive to casualties*. I suspect, based on my reading of history, that this situation will not last much longer. America will either have to accept more casualty-intensive wars or largely give up its role as a great power in the world.
The $64K question here is, why is a world power with a volunteer-based military force so sensitive to taking casualties? My guess is that the policy makers are still wary of Vietnam-scale public protest, but I admittedly have not done any deep thinking on this topic.
* – Great Britain was casualty-averse during the campaign in NW Europe during 1944-45, but I’ll spare everyone a lengthy discussion of that here.
Cheers
we are told that Carter was hated for saying we should conserve energy
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Sure, there was the cardigan sweater fireside chat, there was the John Wayne/Rambo smash-up in the desert failed rescue mission, but those things and others all begin to gel so that insignificant shit begins to grate. For me it was the Jawjuh accent.
I’ve always been sensitive to accents. I’m constantly screaming mockingly at the TV when, for example, that southern senator on the finance committee (can’t think of his name) who talks out of one side of his mouth (another huge peeve of mine) is being interviewed on CNBC.
Or Rick Santelli with his Chicago accent (heeyappy birthday to you, heeyappy birthday to you). And don’t even get me started on the NY Jewish accent, like Gary Kaminsky (CNBC) with the word “mawkit” or Mayor Bloomberg’s nasal lisp. Oh God, my skin crawls (not literally but you know what I mean).
I can’t even stand to hear my own Jersey accent when I’m played back on the phone.
Wagelaborer said: “Then why does everyone assume that the US has the right to intervene in other countries business?”
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Hi Wagelaborer. Something I find odd is how even European powers seem to wait for the US to handle things militarily, or at least take the lead, even when bad things are happening on their own continent (thinking of the Balkan wars in the 1990s). I believe your use of “everyone” meant (perhaps) “U.S. citizens”, but it seems to include many other westerners as well.
Cheers
Just thought of it … Senator Shelby … drives me bat shit.
I’m with ya on this one. Alzheimers is not an option, know what I mean. I’ve worked with Alzheimer patients, they go on and on and on, and it is rediculously criminally expensive to stay in a hospital, and it is a crime what they pay the people doing the work.
We put animals down, why not people. I say this out of experience and compassion. 7k a month. Insurance doesn’t pay. Quality of life Zero. Wrecks families. Extremely difficult on everyone, except, but even sometimes the patient. A nightmare.
Thank God for XANAX.
Quality of life for Alzheimers’ patients, that are really really gone is zero. And it cost a fortune.
I hope this doesn’t sound cold.
Also:
In Oregon they have the right to die law.
Something to think about.
Jackieblue2u stated: “In Oregon they have the right to die law.”
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I’ve always found the interference of the law and the state in an individual’s choice of when to die oppressive. While I can imagine situations in which a “right to die” law could be abused, society as a whole needs to get off the trip about telling people they have to hold out to the bitter end, no matter how miserable it may be.
Cheers
There’s a big difference between the individual right to commit suicide, and euthanasia by the State.
I agree that people should have the right to end their lives, but not others. Especially not for monetary reasons.
You’d probably not really like the results.
Do you suppose any type of blowing-shit-up “help” would be offered if there wasn’t any black goo under that blasted wilderness?
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Yeah, like whats-iz-name said on a YouTube about Iraq: would anybody give two shits if their main export was broccoli?!
BTW O3 re “shri-ump” mentioned in an earlier post, have you ever noticed Texans pronouncing it as “srimp?” I spent 5 mos in Wichita Falls, TX while in the Air “Farce” … near drove me crazy … “srimp” that is.