JHK’s Three-Act Play
History, that coy dominatrix, loves to trick the credulous human race. In a moment when something we call “democracy” seems to be spreading through the dodgy precincts of the world like a contagion of virtue, the trend is actually going the other way in countries that have practiced it for a while.
That is certainly the case in Europe, especially Greece right now, where the mobs in Syntagma Square denounce their waffling parliament for agreeing to a bailout deal that will make Greece a step-child of Germany. The German voters are none too pleased with this, either, since their country is now on the hook to pay Greece’s bills. Ireland, Portugal, and Belgium are standing by for adoption next in Europe’s Home for Wayward Children. Spain and Italy may need to become wards of the Euro-state, too, but they are more like adults with drinking problems who are liable to wreck the whole household if invited in.
Anyway, the Greeks rallying in Athens’ central square lately are sick of politicians and parliaments, and there is a no small danger that they will soon rise up and dispense with theirs in the dumpster behind the Parthenon. A man in a uniform has a certain appeal in a situation like this. He is comfortable issuing orders in unfavorable situations, in fact, rather thrives on it. The Germans know all about this. Their “savior” back in the 20th century was a fellow in an ersatz military getup who virtually ran for office by denouncing “parliamentarism” and by the time his party occupied a fair portion of the seats in theirs, he burned the darn thing to the ground.
The Irish gaze longingly at little Iceland, out there in the North Atlantic now free of debt obligations from the simple act of raising the middle finger in the direction of the London banks. Ireland is sore tempted to do likewise, and the act would have an appealing historical symmetry to it. They may toss out their parliament to get to it. Staying sober is another matter. In Portugal, they are too busy having lunch, which is a very serious affair, they will assure you, and undertaken in spirit of absolute Iberian fatalism (that beefsteak died for you!). Oh, for the days of Salazar when lunch was decreed eighteen hours a day! Belgium, of course, will always be hopeless – Europe’s doormat. And what can you say about a people who slather mayonnaise on their French fries – apart from their amazing failure to discover the miracle of ketchup, despite being overrun by American GIs sixty-odd years ago – and speaking a language that nobody has ever written rock and roll song in.
Europe is held together with baling twine, masking tape, and spit. It’s been a fun half-century catering to harmless clownish tourists from Houston, with their “big boss” belt buckles and decoupaged wives. But lately the Chinese visitors look more like bargain-hunters at the preview of an estate auction, sizing up the merchandise, and even the waiters in the cafes know the score. The Grand Palace of Euroland is closing for business. Anybody who thinks that Germany is going to run some kind of halfway house for crackhead countries “in recovery” will be disappointed. The compressive contraction that grips the OECD like economic Lou Gehrig disease will be with us as far ahead as anyone can see.
For sure, there are features of European life that dispose many of its countries to face the long emergency on much better terms than the train wreck across the Atlantic. They know how to get by on much less oil – though the coming energy crisis will still be hard on them. They have excellent public transit already in place (yes, it depends on the energy situation). Their agriculture is scaled much more intelligently. Their cities, too, with some exceptions. But they have a long history of brawling amongst themselves and the recent half-century of peace and prosperity is already taking on the shimmer of a fading mirage. Europe is burning down financially from the outside in while the monster that was known as the global economy lies gasping on the rocky shore of Fukushima. The Euro and the weak political union that went with it, is toast. You can include the outsider England in all that, since their practical circumstances are no better than Spain’s or Italy’s – perhaps a little worse, even… poor tattered Old Blighty!
By the way, I hope you don’t think the homefolks here in the USA are all that deliriously happy with representative government either. These days, despite all Sarah Palin’s bluster about “freedom” and “our heritage,” elected officials are held in about equal esteem to herpes viruses. Congress and the senate are paralyzed by triviality and the President is too busy golfing to disturb the status quo – which is the status quo of a house on fire. We won’t have to wait much longer to find out how unexceptional America actually is.
It’s a darn shame, and I mean that literally, because this is exactly what the American public is so ashamed of, and why appeals to the repressed sense of shame based on hyper-patriotic bluster, are so successful. It allows folks to feel great about themselves while they sink into the ooze. It’s okay, we’re special. I stopped at a convenience store at the edge of the Adirondack Mountains on Saturday afternoon and a more frightening gaggle of disfigured mutts I have never seen before. Has everybody in upstate New York only just been released from prison? The tattoo craze is especially telling. It’s one thing to get some tattoos with the idea that you are artfully expressing something. It’s another thing to deploy them around your body parts as though you were slapping decals on a 1989 beater car. These mutts had tattoos on their necks, their boobs, the sides of their heads, their knuckles, their ankles. The idea, apparently, is to make yourself appear as frightening as possible – and I can tell you it is a very successful initiative. Can lady Gaga please write us a new national anthem: America the horror movie.
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
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:
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James – I guess Obama is smokin’ some good reefer these days now that the War on Drugs has been declared an international bust. The man himself was in Ohio this week telling folks about the rebirth of the American auto industry. He must think we are all fools. Is that what we need now (as if it were really true), a renewed auto industry? We just keep wanting to believe in the Dream and whatever our professional tinkerers tell us they can make. Enjoy this week’s offering. BTW, next week I will be enroute from Siberia to NYC so I won’t be able to post early. But you can always stop by the main gate for my next update.
http://wp.me/p1lJ1g-99
Stand with Wisconsin!
http://www.gwabert.com/
Good Morning Everyone – Monday mornings would just not be the same without our weekly wake up call from Jimmy. Mismanaging contraction is my mantra these days. Out with the old and in with the new. But there is so little vision out there about how the new could be essentially better than the old as long as we can unplug from our tecno-fantasy and reconnect with one another. Recreating community is our only real salvation but we are being kept so busy fighting over the crumbs of the fading culture that we rarely have or make the time to implement the local, low-energy and revitalizing option which seem to be just buried beneath the surface. Let get out the shovels and dig a little. And while we are at it through some seeds and a bit of compost into he holes and see what comes up.
I think most people just don’t care any more. Even Fox is using pictures of Tina Fey instead of Palin – and she works for Fox.
http://i.imgur.com/VkoYl.jpg
Likewise, the banksters are just going through the motions and they don’t care. The Greek riots show that *some* people care, just the ones that don’t matter.
It’s too late to fix America. We just keep sinking ever further into a morass of triviality and ignorance.
Riding Electric Bikes, Installing Solar Panels, and Dreaming of Surfing here.
Been teaching everyone to plant gardens even though I don’t know how. You should see some of the gardens our customers have. When does a gardener become a farmer?
And as for Tattoos, yes so many people are so gross. However, if you Tat your whole body right it can sorta look cool, and scary…
Cheers Clusterfuckers.
Enjoy the ride.
Hey, Kim Fahey here. Remember,the big tree house? Anyhow, go to court in three hours to see what the jury has to say about it. They’ve had the case since Friday. Did all your knee bracing ideas before they shut me down a year ago…Your so right about the tattoos. Even all the Sheriffs and Firemen have them. Some, quite tastefull! Yeah, right….Still read your column every Monday. Since I might be gone for SEVEN YEARS, try and catch up on ’em when I return. Hope all is well, keep putting out the truth my friend..Check out, ‘Save Phonehenge West’, on the Facebook deal. People have posted cool photo’s…
James, “Congress and the Senate” are the same thing. Go a little slower. 🙂
“American Exceptionalism” was simply what happened when English colonists were the first to develop and exploit resources that Native Americans hadn’t yet touched. I’ll leave out any moral discussion, but the point is, subsequent generations were just like the children of rich parents who didn’t do enough to raise their kids to be responsible. Any legacy has been squandered and America is about to be sent to the poorhouse, and the trip will be very rough.
Visit http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com to get involved with efforts to save our essential knowledge and learnings as we enter a new dark age.
The man himself was in Ohio this week telling folks about the rebirth of the American auto industry.
The one mention I heard of it on Detroit’s all-news radio station was during a traffic report about “a motorcade in Toledo.” The station never mentioned that it was the President’s, even though I’d read about it the day before.
Is that what we need now (as if it were really true), a renewed auto industry?
I live in Detroit, so I have a bias, but it was a smart move for him politically over the short-term. There will still be an auto industry next year, which means there will be people that will be grateful and vote for him because of it. What 2016 will bring will be someone else’s problem.
Speaking of Detroit, the place is figuring out what to do next and how to thrive in the middle of being the largest municipality aware that it is managing contraction (Chicago has been contracting over the past few decades and has 25% fewer people than at its peak, but it doesn’t seem to have any awareness that it’s been managing contraction). Last week, I posted about how growing food is becoming central to the future and identity of Detroit. This week, I found that art and culture might fill the number two spot in the future identity of Detroit. The resulting spectacle has attracted the attention of the adventurous in New York and London. I documented the reaction in Detroit as a travel destination? The New York Times, BBC, and Financial Times think so. Yes, Detroit, Ground Zero of the post-industrial future, is now a place for the cutting-edge tourist who wants to see art, agriculture, and grand ruins, exactly what one would expect in “A World Made by Hand.”
Of course, not all the news here is upbeat. For starters, The well-off neighborhoods are hiring paramilitary patrols to keep themselves safe, but that’s a topic for next time.
we dumbed down the whole society along with its norms of behavior to make people more “equal”. whose idea was that.
Well, JHK
I think it’s pretty obvious that something is operating this runaway train, a system of little disasters and collapses around the world__and it isn’t the people who elect their representatives. Something else is afoot and it’s become more evident with each passing day.
It’s all about the global seamless banking system which has already received $Trillions of US tax-payer dollars and will continue to receive more with each passing bubble and demise.
It’s the system you see and Obama has little to say about it. It’s all part of the WTO and IMF scheme at this point.
The US will be the same as everybody else, no better and worse–only because we didn’t plan for peak oil (as you point out).
If you follow Max Keiser, you will have noticed that the economist Michael Hudson has been advising countries like Iceland to just say no to the banksters who set them up for neo-feudalism, otherwise known as debt peopnage. We will all be there sooner or later, because that’s the global system we set-up.
There is a calculous of change and I’m afraid even our CEOs and oligarchy may be in for a big surprise. It will be interesting to see what happens if China decides to nationalize companies when we default on our T-bills.
Let’s see what the Tea-party folks who run Republican policy do about the debt ceiling…and as I said yesterday on this blog whether Obmama will blink first.
He could go down as the Democrat who smashed Roosevelt for good….
Hear! Hear! Kunstler about Europe, unhindered by rancor, unflustered by facts.
HURRAY FOR POLICE BRUTALITY!!!
MY COUNTRY RIGHT OR WRONG!!!!
AMERICA-LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!!!!
THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE WORM!!!!
RON PAUL/SARA PALIN-2012!!!!
SUSPEND THE CONSTITUTION AND DECLARE MARTIAL LAW!!!
SUSPEND MARTIAL LAW AND RESTORE THE CONSTITUTION!!!
FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES ARE NOT LAWFUL MONEY!!!
NOBODY KNOWS WHAT LAWFUL MONEY IS ANYWAY!!!
REPUDIATE THE NATIONAL DEBT!!!
REPUDIATE THE NATION!!!!
EXECUTE BY FIRING SQUAD THOST FOUND GUILTY OF SILENT DANCEING !!!
THOSE WHO DO NOT LEARN FROM HISTORY ARE THE SILENT MAJORITY!!!!
RE-ELECT SPIRO AGNEW!!!
THE SOUTH WILL RISE ONCE IN A WHILE!!!!
PASS THE MOUNTAIN DEW!!!!
HURRAY FOR GAY RIGHTS AND WAR!!!
EXECUTE ALL FOREIGN GOATHERDS!!!
JHK ROCKS!!!!
1111
Let’s see, what’s the last country to tell the bankers to go to hell and rebuild their shattered economy into a powerhouse?
Oh yeah, it was Nazi Germany. Their finance director
got hanged for it. Our finance directors get billion dollar bonuses for destroying our economy.
You can’t have it both ways.
Nazism and the German economic miracle
“From the Third Reich to the current regime of Gerhard Schroeder, Germany has shown remarkable ability to achieve economic prominence in the face of overwhelming odds – including those it imposed on itself through ultra-nationalism, militarism and racism”.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GE24Dj01.html
Neon Vincent – Of course, Chicago has been in the community vegetable garden business for quite some time, as I recall. I was in Hyde Park in ’76 and the gardens were all around.
Kunstler on Hitler and the Reichstag (German parliament and building housing it):
“…he burned the darn thing to the ground.”
A wild exaggeration and allegation. The building did not suffer structural damage during the fire for which a supposedly communist or socialist arsonist was arrested, convicted and executed. The Nazis managed to exploit the event to their advantage, which led to unproven suspicions that they themselves were the arsonists. [Allied bombing during WWII did cause structural damage on the building; it stood in ruins until after German re-unification. Restored and adorned with a modern cupola, it now serves as parliament building for the lower house of the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany.
I am starting a petition to create a national neck tattoo registry. If you are dumb and scary enough to get your head or neck tattooed, then you ought to be required to have an RFID chip implanted in your body so the rest of us can run like hell when you come around.
Aimlow Joe was here
http://www.aimlow.com
Pssstttt….
Here’s some hot investment advice.
Tattoo removal. Just think of a franchise in every strip mall?
The whole TAT thang is starting to sound a little grumpy, but is reflective of an underlying despair, IMHO. We let our hair grow and the punkers spiked it, goths in black and everyone is pierced. But the TATS are on one level heartbreaking, so many seem drifting and disconnected with anger. Do they see themselves as ” Mutts”? SOLAR GUY, check out our Fb page at SPRING BAY FARM to see if we qualify, this for a little love and light.. All best cfners, Noel.
The closer we get to the universal economic reset button the more shrill the voices become advising us both how good things are, as well as the contrarians who advise us how bad they are. Europe is in terrible shape and the best our leaders can offer is to hold out one days longer than the European Central Bank. We do that we are saved, they say.
On the subject of corn pone fascism it is as well to remember that Germany’s “Jewish Problem” pre-dated Nazism by several centuries. Wagner, the most notorious anti-Semite died long before Nazism appeared. The Final Solution was the solution chosen by the Nazis for a problem that had “plagued” Germany for years prior to 1942. We tend to view the Holocaust as a solution to a problem created by the Nazis. They were just ridingba national bandwagon whichnis why Germans never did ride up.
How that relatesnto home grown mutters in 20th century America I’m not sure, but writing as an immigrant I am nervous.
Yeah, the sky really is falling… but… The masses have no inkling of what is happening. The great majority of people are like deer standing on the tracks of the fast approaching peak oil train. Whoo! Whoo! But they can’t hear the warning whistle. And they don’t see the headlights either. So it’s hopeless. I would say Chris Hedges might be right in his Zero Point of Systemic Collapse.
For the very latest on jackboot thuggery:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
Funny how Obama came to Toledo last week to visit the Jeep plant and do his campaign cheerleading only a week after the mayor of Toledo got back from China trying to sell the marina district to Chinese investors. You can’t make this shit up!
Good column this week.
I don’t see the tat thing the same way you do, it’s probably not that much different than sporting long hair in 1971 (if you were a male) or an earring in 1981 (likewise).
Could you get two basic errors in your reporting corrected? Belgians, in the main, speak two languages: Flemish and French. I assume you refer to Flemish when you make the hyperbolic statement that Belgians speak “a language that nobody has ever written rock and roll song in,” which is a cute aside, but ignores the fact that 38% of Belgians speak French as a first language, and French is most certainly a language in which rock songs have been written. (“Ça Plane Pour Moi,” by Belgian musician Plastic Bertrand comes to mind.)
Also, even though this error is so common in the US that correcting it is truly futile, I still want to say that England does not equal Britain or the UK. England is one country within the UK. Why we Americans don’t just use the one-word term Britain (which is the term that English-speakers throughout the world use) instead of the inaccurate one-word term England to describe, well, Britain, is beyond my comprehension.
I know you make lots of grand, sweeping, and hyperbolic statements, but if you’re basic stuff is not rooted in accuracy, you lose your credibility, in my opinion.
Three years ago I cashed in and checked out to a European country (non Euro-zone). Best move I ever made. I no longer own a car simply because the beautiful city I live in has awesome public transportation. And train service to anywhere I would want to go.
The other day I was waiting for a tram that obviously wasn’t coming (it happens occasionally, car accidents, break downs, and the like). Being a less than patient person I just started walking, but I’ve noticed in the past that some people will stand there and wait all day. This struck me as a fitting analogy of America, a bunch of people waiting for a tram that isn’t coming. “Oh, but the government promised it is coming, and it has always come in the past, and it couldn’t possibly not come this time, we will just stay in place and believe – and wait”.
By the way, I can always spot Americans amongst the many tourists even before I hear them. They are by far the largest, and the loudest.
I’ll end with this link that says it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j6tJ6VG9AM
Lovely Jimmy boy. Talking about a German history of which you are quite confused. The burning of the building and the takeover and all that stuff which becomes american legend. And when you look at the americans who put ketchup on their fries it makes you want to cry or die. Except most are so fat they will die first. And somehow you think you can give the Europeans any lesson in economics? If you’ve ever been in a French or Germany factory or even analyzed some of there statistics you might note that they are significantly more productive on an hourly basis than americans are. No wonder they can sit in cafes, sipping Pernod, and enjoying the day. Yes problems abound, but no need to even cross the NY state line to find tons.
Just try to remember that as frustrating and depressing as the USA can be, there is incredibly worse out there.
Man, what have you got against tattoos? Fashion is fashion; no fashion is intrinsically more decadent except for from the perspective of a narrow-minded reactionary.
Nice week’s work for us, JHK!
Well, the Germans are (again!) becoming the dominant economic force in Europe. One does wonder what sorts of Global Elite planning and twists of historical fate might propel them into military/cultural dominance of Europe, once again.
Meanwhile, the Chinese seem to have perfected their lessons concerning American-Style Free Market Capitalism, but with an nice overlay of dictatorship. If the wheels stay on the clown car long enough, it appears that the Germans will eventually acquire all the marbles in Europe. The Chinese will accumulate all the remaining useful marbles from around the World – including many that now belong to the US of A.
What keeps the wheels attached to the clown car?
Relatively stable global climate
Sea levels that stay where they “belong”
US military hegemony
Create your own list
Good Luck
it is worse out there than here. i was in guatemala 3 weeks ago. the conditions there make the small run down american towns,that jhk deplores, look like heaven. there is no solution other than population control. letting as many as want to move here will only bring those same conditions here. for at least 30 years a sizable majority of americans have wanted to curtail immigration but the ptb have said no. everyone on this blog generally think that americans are stupid, but maybe it is our leader who are stupid.
wally world has a special on huggies – a free tat with every 3rd box purchased
James I have said this before and it is worth repeating:
History seeks to explain the rise and fall of empires and nations, memorializing those notable personalities and dramatic events that collectively comprise the delicate fabric of its carefully crafted narratives. America, in large measure, stands as benefactor and apotheosis in this arduous historical legacy. But the whole story – from its stunning beginnings in the ancient Near East nearly six-thousand years ago to our post-millennial American hegemony – the entire edifice rests upon a small cluster of hypotheses about the world and how it works; about the logic of scientific inquiry and historical narrative, about the nature of language and social discourse itself. These assumptions continue to shoulder our commonsense understanding of life in civil society today, including our own personal histories, while thwarting any recollection of what was lost with the emergence of history and the story of civilization.
The overarching vision, with its underlying assumptions and expectations, has peaked and crystalized itself in the now-taken-for-granted concept of ‘American exceptionalism’, our self-proclaimed political, economic, and moral superiority, and the apparent hegemony of our cultural values. It is these expectations and values that have been spread across the globe like wildfire, as we have pursued a policy of global dominance and cultural transformation or occupation. Some groups, nation-states and countries find these values desireable, others abhorrent. Some try to mold themselves to the vision enunciated by such expectations, while others arm themselves to the teeth to fight-off its insidious occupiers.
Having planted our flag at the forefront of western civilization and declared our own ‘manifest destiny,’ we Americans continue to believe that we have set the right example for mankind to follow, and that we are justified leading the rest of the human race to fulfill its proper role in our civilization. We set ourselves up long ago as protectors of moral virtue, cultural innovation, political power, economic progress, and human rights. And much of the western world has followed our lead in this myopic belief, unchallenged until very recently.
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/tinkerers-on-the-scaffolding-and-the-recovery-of-ecstasy/
To laughingasromewasburningdown,
Tattoos are essentially permanent. You can always get a haircut or remove an earring. I have to side with JHK here.
To JHK,
I just read both A World Made by Hand and The Witch of Hebron and enjoyed them both. I read Witch in one sitting. I don’t always agree with your column, but I appreciate your skill with the language.
The other day, as I waited for the streetcar en route to work, I saw a policeman cycle by, handlebars in one hand, cell phone in the other. He was texting. Giant tattoo exposed on his right calf. A few minutes later, on board the streetcar, I saw the same cop writing someone a parking ticket. I know, who cares, but somehow my heart sank.
Mark Mobius has been saying that another financial crisis is inevitable because nothing has changed since the last one. The total “value” of over the counter financial derivatives is ten times global GDP according to him.
IMO the majority of these derivatives have as much underlying economic reality as if you place a bet with your local bookie (Louie the Louse). Should the govt bail out Louie because he has to make good?
Why should it be legal for you to buy insurance against a bond default if you don’t even own the bond ie a credit default swap?
Govts have taken extraordinary measures to sustain the unsustainable to paraphrase Mr K. But I have a half baked idea. Why not take a really extra-ordinary measure like making a law, even an ex post facto law, legally invalidating derivatives contracts that caused so much trouble?
So companies like Goldmans will no longer be able to speculate in derivatives. If Goldmans has a bazillion in derivatives contracts on its balance sheet and other financial institutions are the counter-parties to Goldman’s bets these bets will disappear off their respective balance sheets.
Not all derivatives contracts will be illegal. If you are in a business where you need to buy oil in the future and you need to make a futures contract to nail down the price you can still do this in my scheme. But if all you are doing is speculating and you have no intention of either taking delivery of oil or delivering oil then such a contract will become illegal.
So if there is no underlying economic reality to a derivative contract and if you are just a smarty pants Wall Streeter in the business of speculating then forget it. You will have to find an honest way to make a living. Become a drug dealer. At least you are making something and selling something real.
@lil’lulu Your data is long out of date and from a second hand source. Have a look at this data and see what you make of it. http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=LEVEL. You may revise your view about how productive some countries (nay socialist countries) can be.
I thought the number was more like a billion in dire poverty.
They talk about the end of Europe and the end of the euro.
But, believe me, Europeans have never been so much alike.
When you touch the bottom you find out there are many just like you.
What would Europe need to be more stable?
Say good bye to Germany.
Let the Germans go back to their mark and let ALL the others stay with their Euro.
Everybody will be happy, including the Germans.
And no fear at all about the euro collapsing, as usual, Americans will come first.
“It’s one thing to get some tattoos with the idea that you are artfully expressing something. It’s another thing to deploy them around your body parts as though you were slapping decals on a 1989 beater car.”
Jim – I sure hope that when you travel you go incognito. Maybe wrap-around sunglasses and a fedora. If one of these “mutts” ever recognizes you, it’ll be all over.
Capitalism per se is the Sow that eats its own young. Capitalism must be guided by Goverment for the good of the People as is done in Japan and Germany. And that’s what they don’t want us to know – that it can work as witnessed in the economic miracle of Nazi Germany where the People told the International Bankers to get out.
That video was the best! JHK should watch it.
And her prayers were instantly answered!
I’m not an atheist anymore, after watching God respond to that woman’s pleas so quickly.
So, a distant relative is rebuilding a 69 Chevy Camaro in his garage, real ‘American Iron’, from a time, far back, when fuel was cheap and cars were fast. He listed his cars attributes: Jimmy small block engine, Holley carbs, dual exhaust, slicks, 4 on the floor tranny, supercharger, beefed up clutch, motor pushing 350 horses, a special candy paint job with a racing stripe. Yes, this dude has tatts, not too many, ‘Chevy’ on right forearm, ‘Camaro’ on right forearm, tastefully done. Talk about American Exceptionalism! Its really an impressive project, consuming not little time and capital. Hey, who gives a shit about arcane financial events in Europe, anyway? I asked him, Joe wouldn’t this money be better spent on something else, or even saved? Why are you doing this? His answer, “I like to burn rubber”.
How can you argue with logic like that?
-Marlin
Forget it Jim, Americans are too busy slicing and dicing one another, so as goes the lyrics of one of Rod Stewart’s songs, “The First Cut is the Deepest”.
Joe Bageant expresses it best in his two books Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War followed by Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir. On the book covers’ back flap read the reviews by Howard Zinn, Studs Terkel, Mark Crispin Miller, among others.
The most poignant point in my view is how “po white folk” have had their history instilled survival value of being “hard working, self sufficient” turned on its head by decades of neocon owned media propagandizing, transforming the virtue into a self-flagellation instrument.
That is to say, they blame themselves for their predicament of economic underclass that actually has been socially/culturally engineered by our nation’s ruling oligarchs.
Ironically, today’s self proclaimed Left (mostly the urban educated professional set still believing it has an upper birth on the ship of state not yet threatened by rising tsunami of cheap immigrant labor from Third World countries – well, not until just lately with the HB-1 green card holders) have reinforced the negative effect by embracing the justification for so called “immigration reform” (actually, an opening wider the flood gates to more Third World desperate masses who’d further scab jobs out from under the “po white folk” who’s desperate case does not have the PC cachet of other historically economically oppressed populations in America).
The banner phrase held high by the self anointed Left is, “illegal aliens are doing jobs that Americans won’t do”. Bullshit!, should be the obvious reply by anyone vaguely acquainted with American’s history of class war. I believe Joe voices it best.
The deepest pain / pleasure ever is often mostly the imagined pain / pleasure of others (family ties, what happens to “loved” ones, etc.), strange as you can’t touch what others feel or sense, it is a religion, you have to believe, it is a faith, a denotation, an indirection, a symbol, abstraction. And yet almost all we do is so strongly tied to others, their judgment, their assumed pain/pleasure that you are provoking (or you imagine provoked, and our own as reflected), in all senses and endeavors, that is why the debates, the communication, all of work – working for others, as others see and measure you and what you do just like you measure others, social interactions and transactions. Of course none of it is real, it is just strongly programmed in our mind to make believe that others are real, but you can unprogram this and be a simple robot like, and free from any measurements. And just force all you want, just your Free Will dominates all 100 %. Pretty hard, but not for modified minds. We “worship” others and their reactions to our communication, we are abstract – religious machines from the outset, automatically.
Others are so, so important, terrorists kill themselves for others, for an imaginary common world where we are all together (nothing further from the truth) and we waste man hours on end being all involved in debates and others, and so forth and so on. Nothing further from the truth, there is nothing, no one exists (and even if others exist, who cares ? why care ? why have this religion ? break all the rules, we are free), we are just a machine made up of independent parts that have been programmed to sense and communicate and assume others, strange but not so strange, animals use instincts. Anyways whatever, this must be deprogrammed real fast.
Anyways, more than a command language we have an assignment language, in the 1960s no one talked about innovation and competition as today, so all the talk is just subtly programming people and assigning how reality must be. All language ends up being a programming language, how societies are programmed.
Of course I want Rockets and Skyscrapers (they are all just artistic choices and preferences in the end as opposed to start ups and facebook) and China may be the ones really making these it seems, or at least I want more of these so as everyone gains in having a constructive acivity that adds up. But even my model is arbitrary, all models are just inventions, none is better than any others, so. All models are false and have zero value. I love to contradict myself.
Of course by criticizing other models and all it seems that I don’t want to be “measured” and judged, you are right, and I want to measure and judge all according to my model, but being that all models are wrong or inventions, I just want my Will Power to dominate.
So they null themselves, the fight of models zero themselves.
That link pretty much does say it all. Thanks for sharing it with us.
It isn’t the “Left” that is pushing the “doing the jobs Americans won’t do”.
It is the ruling class and the corporate media. This is because they want cheap labor.
You are repeating nonsense that you have been told, by the rightwing corporate media, no doubt.
Your latest screed: a nice summary of globollixation. Maybe strung together they form a narrative a bit like S. Pepy’s diary, which I have never read. At least Elizabeth Pepys appears to have had no visible tatoos on her upper body.
-Phut.
Marlin,
That’s hilarious! And it’s true – once upon a time American made machinery and tools were the envy of the world. Thanks for the laugh.
Well, this post is a yawner.
Maybe changing the words darn to dam, darn shame to fn pathetic, and ooze to shit, would sharpen it up a bit.
Naw, people in this country are too stupid to understand about the decline and fall – of everything – described in any fashion.
They were just ridingba national bandwagon whichnis why Germans never did ride up.
How that relatesnto home grown mutters in 20th century America I’m not sure…
==============
riding a
which is
relates to
Conch, the recently new term for this type of error is “fat finger.” In each of the three cases you struck either a b or an n when, obviously, wishing to strike the space bar.
No problem … we all make mistakes. But must we always click SUBMIT without first proofreading our comment?
-doing the jobs americans won’t do-
I would really like to know the origin of this phrase. I associate it with the BushII era when he and the big business Republicans were trying to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
It is hard for me to understand why any group that is associated with immigrant rights would use “We’re doing the jobs Americans won’t do…” as one of their talking points.
There is something horrible about the phrase.
The idea that there are some jobs so horrible and foul that they are beneath the dignity of ALL native born Americans – so that these jobs can ONLY be performed by a desperate and newly arrived immigrant.
This idea drips with class consciousness and evil.
Not to mention that the children and grandchildren of these immigrants “won’t do” those jobs either – so it is impossible to ever get off this treadmill of unsustainably high immigration – as population numbers in the United States continue to slowly crush ecosystems and peoples – out of sight, and around the Globe.
A bus driver in Spain was using two cell phones and driving with his knees. It’s all good. The passengers complained for some reason.
Recent political developments in Britain suggest we may see the UK breaking up long before the Euro does. In May the Scottish National Party won enough seats in the Scottish parliament to force a referendum on independence.
This will almost certainly happen, and the Scots will most likely vote for it, which will be interesting, what with (the remnants of) North Sea oil all being around Scotland…
The Euro, btw, is probably here to stay. It works for France and Germany, and it’s hard to imagine the rest actually wanting to go back to zloty, drachma, lira, etc.
Nations as diverse as Turkey and Serbia are clamouring to join the EU and the Euro. Even in xenophobic little England all but the most deranged, neo-facist political parties accept that leaving the EU would be economic suicide.
Interestingly, the very existence of the Euro undermines the power of the US dollar.
What’s with the title of today’s post? It is all about Europe but the title is “American Exceptionalism.” Don’t get it…
Yep, anywhere “I want” to go. Of course not necessarily everywhere you want to go. Still want to sign-up?
OK, maybe on the streets the Italians hold the medal for loudest, but in a restaurant Americans can’t be beat (especially in groups of four or more). And as far as largest though, there is absolutely positively no doubt who gets that gold… 🙂
The Elite, both so called Left and so called Right, hate the White Under Class. With the Right, it’s a traditional class thing. With the Left, it’s racism – even though the Leftists are overwhelming White themselves. Don’t ask me to explain it – I could but you wouldn’t believe me. We have to expand the definition of the word Racism to fit people who are prejudiced against people of their own race. The Jewish idea of the self hating Jew can help us here.
In any case, it not Right against Left anymore, but us against Them. The Them being the New World Order, the Illuminati or whatever you want to call them. Their local branches include the Council of Foreign Relations and The Skull and Bones – also known as The Order.
“Point taken. Now why the FUCK don’t you try…”
-lil’jimbo/tsa/ling/tooTsie/lil’infintiy, to Q-
Thanks for helping one of the CFN trolls identify himself this week, Q.
Note to thread – there is no reason to respond to this poster, since lil’lulu/lil’jimbo/etc. will respond with profanity and insult when ideas fail him – which happens frequently.
He will now demonstrate this “talent” in his response to me.
I attended a local festival last Friday night, the usual type with lots of rides for the kids and carnies pushing stupid games with no takers. The real shocker was the fact that you couldn’t tell the carnies from the crowd. Almost every person was covered in tattoos, obese and ugly as sin. The kids were as horrifying as the adults where all the boys were dressed up like gang-bangers and the girls looked like drug addicted whores. If that’s the future, then there isn’t much of one.
the left wants voters, the globalist want cheap labor. this is destroying the good thing we had going. it prevents us reaching a consensus on dealing with our problems.
Dang, dude. You OD on caffeine this morning?
I have no problem if people want to brand themselves like NASCARs, but neck tats really do give the silent message, “Don’t hire me. I’m a criminal.”
Do you think farmers could fill all the seasonal positions with 100% US labor? They say they could not. Do you believe them?
Why did they use it – because it was true, at least for a time. Whites wouldn’t work in the hot kitchens and fields for those wages. Now they might though – and more all the time. Accordingly, they stopped using that phrase two years ago when the economy collapsed and we were losing half a million jobs per month.
The immigrants were able to survive on those wages by thrift of course and cramming in a dozen to a room. But that’s just at the begining. They learn how to connect up with social services and how to game the system. In recent years, many have jumped over the whole labor/poverty stage via the American Baby syndrome. And once here, they start bringing in their relatives.
Once amnestied or tied in with social services, the immigrants wont work those jobs either. So if allowed to, the Elite will continue to bring in new immigrants to exploit. And of course there is the Democratic Party’s political angle – more immigrants equals more votes. In any case, the decison has come down from on high to have 400 million people here by 2050 and create a White Minority. By hook or by crook they intend to do just that. There is no economic need for this at all and it’s an ecological nightmare. It is being done as part of the Illuminati’s plan to destroy the West – and ultimately rule the World.
“It is being done as part of the Illuminati’s plan to destroy the West – and ultimately rule the World.”
Don’t forget the part of the shape-shifting aliens from Zeta Reticuli in all this…
Except the Nazis got all kinds of help from international and domestic banks, including Wall Street, as well as German and foreign corporations.
http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/
Oh, well. So much for facts.
That video was awesome, yet horrifying at the same time.
Agree 100% with what you are saying. Inside Job – the documentary – shows just how these investment banks made money from both sides.. Such criminals, enabled by our government.
Sarcasm meter not working this Monday?
Everything today is fantastic from Jim’s marvelously depressing essay to some really superlative posts from the likes of cash & cavepainter, not to denigrate the others. It’s hard to improve or add so I’ll just blurt out some thoughts that erupted forth from my subconscious: [1] With the extreme hoodlum look sported by so many including full sleeve tattos etcetera ad nauseum ad infinitum it’s no goddamn wonder that every cheesy little job now comes with drug testing. After all, these people totally look the part of someone shifty who needs to be spied upon. So much for the rest of our civil liberties; [2] Never forget that there was an attempted fascist coup during the Roosevelt [Franklyn] administration which fortunately was foiled by Marine Gen. Smedly Butler. He turned them in to some federal agency like the secret service or the FBI; [3] Maybe if there is a coup de etat at some point in the future the successful faction will declare a new republic and repudiate the national debt especially if they feel confident that they could handily defeat China in a lightning strike; [4] If someone had foreknowledge of such plans they could intentionally wreck the economy first in order to benefit from that prior to moving on to the next thing after the coup.
And finally we need a national homesteading program and the government needs to stop pretending that what we now have is business as usual.
Yes the Left loves immigrants not for the cheap labor but because they provide the votes that get them elected. And of course because they will slowly destroy the West thru demographic transformation. As stupid as Communism is, at the level of tactics it never fails in its brilliance. Communists have nothing against Whites per se, they simply want them diminished in numbers in order to destroy Western Culture. Only White Conservatives could be so stupid as to not see a relationship between a Race and the Culture of that Race.
If these tactics work against Asians, they will be used against them once we are out of the way. All races and cultures must be amalgamated and destroyed in order to create the human ant hill global society that Communists dream of. Why anyone would want such a bland nothingness is beyond me.
“Do you think farmers could fill all the seasonal positions with 100% US labor? They say they could not. Do you believe them?”
-turkle-
Turkle, it’s not the farmers I don’t believe – It’s the Big Ag operators and the big corporate growers, and their National Chamber of Commerce allies.
If there were no easily exploited/recently immigrated/third world labor to pick crops for what seems to average out around $10/hour – then YEAH – most of it would get done for some more money.
(It’s happening in Georgia now, since they passed a mandatory E-verify law – Effective July 1st)
I think American Big Ag is more concerned with being competitive around the globe. They want to be sure American grapes will be competitive on price with Chilean grapes (or whatever the produce de jur is)
The only way American Ag can compete with world Ag is with cheap and exploitable immigrant labor – for a little while longer, at any rate.
Sounds like American software writing/American design work/American engineering – except these were outsourced.
You can’t outsource picking veggies – so they insourced cheap labor instead – same outcome, though.
Every year I take a look at the NBA Finals, just to see if I can spot anything I might like about basketball. This year it is startling to see all the tattoos – especially curious why someone with dark skin might mar themselves like that. America in the 21st century – noise, bad taste, pointlessness and absurd hubris.
Jim – I sure hope that when you travel you go incognito. Maybe wrap-around sunglasses and a fedora. If one of these “mutts” ever recognizes you, it’ll be all over.
===========
The odds that “one of these mutts” is even aware of Jim’s existence much less recognizing him is about as likely as them winning the next Mega Zillion Power Ball Lottery.
And the Communists didn’t get help from Wall Street? Sure they funded Germany a bit, there was money to be made after all. But clearly they wanted the Communists to triumph. But just in case Germany won or survived somehow, they wanted to have a hand in there as well.
It’s by funding both sides of every conflict that the International Bankers have come this far – as they did in the American Civil War. The hand that lends is stronger than the hand the recieves. Thus they have gotten stronger with every war for the last two hundred years.
So JHK is being critized by some posters for getting small details of European history wrong. To that I respond: at least he knows Europe HAS a history. For many Americans, knowledge of history is restricted to what happened within their own borders and nowhere else. Hell, many are only dimly aware the rest of the world even exists.
At our house, we have gotten hooked on old episodes of Family Feud, where the contestants demonstrate their utter lack of knowledge about just about everything on a daily basis. Asked for the best city in the world, the answers were New York and L.A. Forget London or Paris, or even Hong Kong, it was USA all the way. In another question about American states, several of the worthy players identified cities instead. Apparently they didn’t know a state was different than a city. Du’uh.
We make no apologies for spending our time on trivialites like this, it’s amusing and confirms our own Canadian superiority since we usually have the right answers more than the players do. Hey, we all have to get our jollies somehow and it’s better than American Idol or the latest weird and disgusting reality show: Freaky Eaters. JHK would love that, last night it was a very large woman who only ate french fries with melted cheese all over them. At least it was real cheddar cheese and not the powdered variety. Guess that makes her a gourmet by American standards.
I shouldn’t allow myself this degree of hubris though, your decline is coming just five minutes later to Canada. Certainly the tattoo crowd has already arrived. One wonders if you have to breed children before age 18 to get them, since most of them are pushing baby strollers with dirty, sad little kids strapped inside. Is it possible to be doomed from birth?
And what about Roosevelt setting up Pearl Harbor and laying the foundation for the Welfare State? Perhaps a coup was called for – it’s “rightness” would depend on who was doing it, why, and what their agenda was. The Founders gave us this right too.
YIKES !
I have Always felt out of place tho I was born and have lived my whole life in USA / California.
I am applying for a passport soon. Getting things in order. In case I want to make a break.
Good for you for getting out and getting to a more Realistic place.
Yes I can imagine many Americans being the Loudest and biggest for sure. Gross. Not all, just so many.
I am the one who has Never Ate a Mac Donalds’ or any other fast food hamburger ! So that’s something !
I’ve always experienced the American Way the way JHK describes it, been reading him since Home From Nowhere. One of my all time favorite writers / thinkers.
And I also am so tired of driving and the way most drive here. So rude and reckless and thoughtless and intentionally out to get you / me.
“So rude and reckless and thoughtless and intentionally out to get you / me.”
BTW, many other countries are far worse.
Oh Vlad, what would we do without you to explain everything to us? Racism against people of one’s own race? What have you been drinking? That’s plain old fashioned classism, nothing more. Hardly a new phenomenon, and hardly different just because it’s practised by alleged leftists.
Please, refrain from explaining anything else. Your silly conspiracy theories are pathetic.
If it’s Us against Them, please tell us if you are an Us or a Them. I’d hate to find myself on the same side as you.
“Please, refrain from explaining anything else.”
Seconded.
Great answer. Small farmers and contractors have to survive so they have to play the game as it is given to them. Alot of these guys would welcome a return to law and order I’m sure. The Turkels of the world always become free marketeers when it comes time for Goverment to do something that helps the Nation and not World Communism. He’s so slippery that he can’t even feel himself. So crooked that he doesn’t even recognize himself coming and going. He shifts his ground so fast that he himself doesn’t even realize he’s become Milton Friedman.
My tattoo story: A few years ago I had a 52 CarryAll {early model surburban – for you furiners}. I stuffed a straight-six and tranny out of a chevy wagon in it and rewired everything. Then I got 5 cans of paint and enlisted an eqaul number of seven-year-olds and told them I wanted this rig painted! We taped off the windows and wheels and they painted a camo-blend of earth-tones. I could park it in woods or desert and most people would walk right up on it before recognizing it as a vehicle.
When I put the ad up, the first fellow to appear was a long haired skinny fellow on a HD with color beginning at his knuckles and covering every square inch of visible skin. He asked me if he could put two hundred bucks down and bring me two hundred bucks a day till it was payed for. Everyday he appeared with a different vehicle and gave me two franklins. On the last day his girlfriend brought him and he drove away in the saloon-door carryall, waving goodbye. I told my boys it just seemed right – cause they were both painted just alike.
When I said YIKES I was referring to the NASCAR video.
forgot to mention that.
You aren’t on the same side with me. And you are against Whites in favor of non-Whites. You are part of the problem. You have bought ALL of the conditioning the Masters gave you at college – and now you resent it when someone tells you so. You prefer to fancy yourself someone educated. What a joke. You were conditioned and then trained to pass that on to others and to defend it as well.
Vlad you’re giving me a headache. Do you believe everything you see and hear on Fox News?
Here’s some reality for you, although it isn’t as exciting as your stupid New World Order theories. Immigrants come to North America to escape the miserable poverty at home. They don’t want to live twelve to a room anymore, they want decent jobs, decent lives and hope for their children. Just like us. Funny, that.
As for social services, thanks to so called “welfare reform” they hardly exist anymore, and certainly don’t provide the income or dignity that immigrants, or anyone else, is looking for to improve their lives. Of course, if you believe Fox News, it’s all one big gravy train, isn’t it?
Your beliefs are based on insecurity, jealousy and hatred. You need an underclass so you can feel better about yourself and have someone else to blame for the country’s problems. Try looking in the mirror to find the real perpetrator. People like you are living dinosaurs, interesting only for the sake of curiosity.
“You aren’t on the same side with me.”
It must be lonely over there on your side…
C’mon Jackie, stay here and tough it out with the rest of us. Don’t leave the USA.
Jackie, were you one of those sun drenched California blonds the Beach Boys used to sing about? Here on the East Coast that was just a dream for us. That’s how I have you pictured in my minds eye, JackieBlue
-Marlin
What were his tatoos? Biker? Religious? Mom? Maybe he was a Druid and you didn’t recognize him.
I have a dancing girl on my bicep and she dances when I flex. It’s very exciting.
Wow, talk about national Alzheimer’s disease; I’m amazed at how quickly is being erased national memory. Maybe erased is the wrong word, probably more like disappeared.
Anyway, try to find the book Fruit Fields in My Blood: Okie Migrants in the West, by Toby F. Sonneman. Read it; you’ll learn what most people my age actually experienced or witnessed. That is, even up until the late 1970s most itinerant farm labor in America (except in southern California and other border state) were still poor whites and blacks who’d decades earlier been systematically and intentionally pushed off family farms or out of share cropping and truck farming by rigged shipping rates, banking policies and pricing on farm product.
Sure, they’d gotten a screwing there, followed though by the screwing they got once they’d sought security by settling in manufacturing, only to see that subsequently blown out from under them by off-shoring, destruction of the unions and influx of foreign nationals from Third World nations to undercut those wages just as those same factors kept farm labor wages depressed in general, including the fruit fields.
Of course now though the Left, which has become as doctrinaire as the Right, is shouting that America is too much like tofu; too white, too lacking in texture (soft) and having no flavor of its own — needing to be spiced up with some other essence.
Yeah, its easy taking shots at an underclass already generations deep; all the sterotypes are well in place, obscured from the national memory as to how social engineering brought them about.
“Of course now though the Left, which has become as doctrinaire as the Right”
Perhaps this is the case in your Canadian political scene but not here in ‘Merica. The Left, as usual, is a circus composed of a big grab bag of different causes and interests, hardly able to agree on any old thing, except their hatred of Republicans.
You’re forgetting the basics of environmentalism -which you think you believe in no doubt. Resources are limited. I’m sure they are coming here because where they come from is a shit hole. The challenge is not to bring them here, it’s to keep them out. Or do you prefer them to White Americans? We both know the answer to that. What a traitor you are.
Pepy’s Diary – The Plague; The Great London Fire … The movie “Restoration” covers about the same period. Ditto the novel “Forever Amber.”
“Restoration” is really good. Robert Downey Jr. Glad to see that guy apparently has finally got his act together. Great actor.
Any-who. A young doctor is summoned to the court of Charles II. He’s sooo excited! He gets to be the King’s physician! No such luck. The King wants him to be the doctor to the royal spaniels. Oh, and provide cover so he can cavort about with married women. Worth a look.
Turkle the Free Marketeer! Turkle the little commie clown who just can’t think.
What the hell are you talking about?
I didn’t deny that white people were farmworkers, you twit.
I said that the lie that there were jobs that Americans won’t do is a corporate media lie, designed to support immigration. And that the ruling class supports immigration because they want cheap labor.
How could you possibly twist that?
My uncle in Oregon tried to talk my Dad into sending me there to pick strawberries when I was 10 years old. My Dad refused.
I grew up with Oakies.
I still know white farmworkers. A couple of weeks ago, one of them, a blue-eyed blond guy who is illiterate enough not to be able to sign his name, told me that TV news was lying to him about killing Osama Bin Laden.
Well. Here’s what I thought. You may be illiterate, but you’re not stupid.
You, on the other hand, are literate, but not enough to be able to comprehend what you read.
Vlad, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Colbert, “I don’t see colour”.
People are people, whatever shade of skin they have. And why do you want to keep immigrants, and not-Whites, out of the USA? Wasn’t there something in your Constitution about everybody being equal? And weren’t you all immigrants too? I’m sure any native North American (that’s redskins to you)would say you are immigrants and I have to agree.
It’s one world, baby, and we share it with everyone else. If the New World Order that you’re so scared of includes that principle, then bring it on. We’ll all be better off when we have melted down into some shade of brown and can’t use that excuse to hate each other anymore.
While I am a little put off by the culture of tattoos in America (what’s with the baby portrait tattoos and kids names tatted on necks with their birth dates?), I will say that law enforcement and or firefighters may have served in the military. Being a former Marine, I can tell you that in the Corps most young jarheads wanted to get the eagle/globe/anchor tattoo as soon as they were out of SOI (School of Infantry – 90’s). Amoung Marine infantry tats are pretty popular. I would guess, that this tradition was passed on to Marines from sailors, since it appears sailors were fond of tattoos.
================
I will pull this gem from my archive of (Kunstler) favorites when some future occasion calls for an anti-tattoo screed.
Simmer down, this is a discussion (I hope), not a brawl. I’ll own that I don’t always interpret others’ meaning, so sometimes require a restating.
Addressing the topic in general, some here don’t seem to realize that the words “sovereignty” and “citizen” are exclusionary by defintion. Especially so in the case of democratic process by which a “more perfect union” of people hope to direct their “common wealth” destiny through elected representation. That goes directy to threats “from within” and “from without”. Foreign nationals disregarding our immmigration laws is invasion — a forced redirecting of the national destiny intended by the drafting of those laws.
National sovereignty is under attack by global corporations, and not just with cheap immigrant labor.
Witness the attack on Libya, illegal under international law.
It is justified by “humanitarian intervention”, a new concept, invented by the US to justify its attack on Yugoslavia in the 90s, a country that was resisting neo-liberal reforms after the breakup of the USSR and the US attempt to corner the riches of those countries formerly denied to them.
Global corporations have no national loyalties and
obey no laws made by mere elected representatives. They are the biggest threat to humankind. Illegal immigration is only a symptom of the malady.
A memory from childhood indelibly etched in my memory-
My Mom told me in a normal voice that two of our neighboring families were Okies.
Then she lowered her voice (as if they could hear across the street) and told me that one of the families were “foot-washing Baptists, but we’re not prejudiced”.
Well, whatever foot-washing Baptists were, and no matter how liberal we were, I knew right there that there was something very wrong with that religion!
-on immigrants and the environment-
one word can make all the difference –
“The challenge is not to bring them here, it’s to keep them out. Or do you prefer them to White Americans?”
-vlad, crashing the thread into unthinking racism, again –
“The challenge is not to bring them here, it’s to keep them out. Or do you prefer them to African-
Americans?”
-vlad, with slight editing to make others think-
=============
black/black – brown/brown – white/white
week after freaking WEEK!
Vlad, if your goal is to make people harden up and fight against most everything you claim to stand for – you are doing a fine job.
Hello James I am an avid reader of your Monday morn musings. I love the way you describe these heavily tattooed, baggy, sullen folk that seem ever more prevalent. I live near Belleviile, On Ca. and every time I go there and walk the streets or take the bus I constantly encounter this phenomena! They seem to be very much a Canadian cultural aberration, trying to look even “badder ” than the Americans! Spiderwebs on the neck et all and a unhealthy skin and yellow nicotine stained teeth. On top of that an affectation of a scowl or mean look .I will steer clear of upstate NY but its worse here!!
And speaking of Europe, and Greece Please check out MaxKeiser.com today
and Michael Hudson
http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/06/replacing-economic-democracy-financial.html
The article in the current NY Review of Books by Marcia Angell titled “The Current Epidemic of Mental Illness” seems in my mind at least to be not unconnected with the contemporary tattooing craze. Now that is two comments in one day for me. I’ve reached my quota until next week.
-Phut.
“when we have melted down into some shade of brown and can’t use that excuse to hate each other anymore.”
-grouchyoldGirl-
When the above happens, Grouchy, we’ll have plenty of excuses to hate each other already operational.
Witness:
Shia/Sunni
Bloods/Crips
Crackers/White Trash
Town/Gown
There’s nothing wrong with miscegenation, necessarily, but it’s not going to be the end of hate and the beginning of love forevermore.
Sometimes, it does seem that the American left thinks that if we can just get ENOUGH different races and creeds into the US – that the Age of Aquarius will dawn again –
I see evidence building that the opposite is going to happen, instead.
Every year I take a look at the NBA Finals, just to see if I can spot anything I might like about basketball. This year it is startling to see all the tattoos …
=============
Not sure when the tatt thing really got rolling but by now it is near universal. It is inevitable though that in some future time (maybe soon) the idea of being a rebel will be expressed by NOT having even a single tattoo. I believe their are already one or two such players in the NBA … possibly even three.
It amazes me these athletes don’t see how sheep-like they actually are.
overpopulation is overpopulation no matter what the skin shade also. it just so happens is that those with dark skin are doing the most to contribute to over population in the united states at this time. my loathed lily white hands touch black skin every day and frankly it feels the same as white or brown skin. i just want a country for my kids and grandkids that is relatively safe, clean ,comfortable, and uncrowded . i dont blame them for wanting to come here or beautiful canada but do we want to turn our countries into shitholes like theirs. why is that so good and noble.
You put your finger right on what makes the tatoo fad such an indicator of increasing barbarity in American life.
It’s permanent. In my own hippie youth, we dyed our hair purple and walked around in sheer blouses with no bras, and painted fake flower tattoos on our hands, but we did all this with the idea that it would be very transient.
Someone once remarked that you could measure a person’s intelligence or the degree of advancement of a civilization by its time frames. The further the time horizon, the more advanced the mind… or society.The willingness of people in the 20-45 yr old bracket to deface their bodies permanently bespeaks an inability to project the future, which is the hallmark of an undeveloped mind and a primitive civilization. People who can’t project the future well enough to figure that they might one day want to work somewhere besides a car wash or fast food kitchen will not have the vision it takes to project the end results of our current choices, or conceive of a society that works on very different terms than the one we live in now.
LOL. Which is why I think Jim let’s Vlad stick around. To remind us there are people like him out there. Sigh. Our very own little Neo-Nazi.
Jimbo…I chuckle at your constantly bemoaning the “tattoo culture”, and then I read about football coach Jim Tressel’s firing at Ohio State in part as a result of some of his players trading football memorabilia fot tats. Ah, yes, student athletes indeed! If you’re so insecure that you’ve got to get your body pierced to stand out from the crowd, I feel sorry for you. A tattoo is nothing more than a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling.
Two things about your post are going to get you in trouble with the Global Village/America Can’t Be a Lifeboat crowd.
One is:
uncrowded – someone is going to tell you that New York has to reach the population density of New Dehli or Tokyo, otherwise Americans are “being selfish.”
Of course these people need to realize that without fossil fuel/fertilizer/technology – that the world INCLUDING the US, is already drastically overpopulated and likely heading for a global population crash.
second thing:
your use of the term “shitholes” – is going to make some people so angry that thinking flies out the window for them?
There is a magical belief that simply ENTERING INTO the US will turn an underprivileged, uneducated immigrant with no assets into an up-and-coming member of the Elite American Entrepreneurial Class.
This is a lie.
But, even if true, the last thing we need in the States are more members of the Overprivileged Elite American Entrepreneurial Class – burning through the rest of the Planet’s resources at an increasing rate.
I think I live in the third-most “inked” city in America.
Does that mean we will suffer more when it all goes down? I better get another tat to keep up the scare-factor.
If the founders gave right wing CABALs the right to stage a coup de etat then why is it that conspirators caught doing that can be tried for treason? On the other hand a widespread popular uprising which achieved critical mass as a revolution which eventually proved victorious would be different in that the victors get to make the rules.
The notion that FDR moved the pacific fleet to Pearl Harbor for the express purpose of setting them up for a Japanese air raid is absurd not to mention unprovable. Such a conspiracy would require that Roosevelt was conspiring with the Japanese themselves, which is so completely beyond the pale as to border on psychosis. This also ignores the reality that the navy was Roosevelt’s favorite department of the government, his having served as Ass’t Sec. of the Navy during WWI. He and Churchill, twice First Lord of the Admiralty in the UK used to refer to each other in cables as “former naval person”.
quote from a jimmy buffet song ‘permanent reminder of a temporary feeling’
When I was a sailor I once considered getting a tattoo of an anchor at a tattoo parlor in Newport, RI. When I realized how much the artist wanted for this simple tattoo, or $75 in 1980, I declined because I considered that to be an outrageous waste of good drinking money! After all, you’ve got to have your priorities straight.
you are right on both counts. i can change my usage from shitholes to hopeless quagmires. but i’m afraid changing peoples minds about what constitutes selfishness vs. common sense is a lot harder.
So the stock market is down again today, trouble in Europe continues and the american economy is in a free-fall…as one would predict, CNBC cuts in to the press conference on weinergate?
I live in a twin-city area with a combined population of 23,000. We have 6 Tattoo parlors. A group of “Christian” businessmen buy old buildings and when they re-sell them (usually to family members within the group) there is a ridder in the contract that the business cannot be a tattoo parlor or beer tavern.
The medical marijuana dispensary flew in under the radar, but only lasted a week or two before the sheriff’s raid. The indoor grow store seems to be doing a land office business.
No, the fleet was already there silly. He cut off their oil supply, and then ignored their rage – and the warning signs as their fleet approached Hawaii.
Jefferson said we have the right to abolish goverments that no longer serve us – just as they did. Of course the goverment in question isn’t going to just give in. Obviously we aren’t the men our Fore Fathers were. If they had been like us, there never would have been a revolution at all.
That’s the kind of Neo Puritan Idealism that’s killing us. It’s just untilateral surrender since the other races don’t feel that way at all. That’s obvious to anyone who has been around them – and listened and observed. You either live in an Ivory Tower or an all White Suburb.
The Mexicans strictly enforce their borders against other Central Americans. India has built a wall to keep out the Bengladeshis. Ask an East Asian how they see Blacks – it will be an education.
You’re right Prog – it’s bad for Black Americans too. The People know but their politicians follow the Democratic Lead. There already is low grade ethnic warfare between the two groups – with the Blacks getting the worst of it in general.
And the White/Black situation is going downhill rapidly. The influential Drudge Report is now reporting the daily Black attacks on Whites – all suppresed by the Mainstream Media. The new and growing trend is Black Flash mobs. The flash mob began as as bohemians just having fun. But Blacks picked up on the idea and use technology to organize this kind of terror.
Yes we have to harden up. And it starts in the mind. People who have never lived or worked with Blacks only know what the lying Media tells them. This puts them in danger.
“History, that coy dominatrix, loves to trick the credulous human race.” You’ve hit the target perfectly once again JHK. The price of gas is plummeting here in the Motor City as we speak and no one can figure out why. Was it the death of Bin Laden, a tanking world economy or have too many people had to decide between keeping the old beater on the road or feeding the family? Either way, I can’t believe the profusion of bicycles in the Motor City. Folks who not too long ago would have been driving Ford Escorts and Plymouth Reliants to the grocery store are now riding beat-up old bicyles that wouldn’t look out of place in India everywhere.
[blockquote]”In a moment when something we call “democracy” seems to be spreading through the dodgy precincts of the world like a contagion of virtue, the trend is actually going the other way in countries that have practiced it for a while.”[/blockquote]
I can never remember which tags work where.
I thought you didn’t read either my posts – or the responses to my posts. What a litte liar. You are really into the whole brittle purity trip. No doubt old ladies your own age think you are a good boy.
Well unfortunately “democracy” can be derailed pretty easily if their are no citizens, just herds of consumers.
I mean “there” are no citizens.
So far two things have been discovered by mankind, the wheel and “fire.” In the use of one – he’s used up most of the fuel for the other.
It might be connected somehow to guys wearing wife beater t shirts. It’s non newtonian, the physics of synchronicity.
I got mine – and I’m gonna wear it in my new ricksaw business. Wealthy Blacks like to see Whites dressing down with tats too. I may have to take the plunge and go under the needle. I will hate myself and break mirrors with my fist. A man must eat or he will have no reflection.
Has there ever existed a civilization that flourished on one given resource that successfully transitioned to another?
This is a lie. !!!!!!
And each ‘wave’ [hitting / sinking the US lifeboat] makes it harder for the last wave of migrants to
Keep their jobs [new migrants are use to working for cheaper]
Have a decent place to live
[migrants usually live in slums in oh, Mc Arthur park ..yes the MAP from Donna Summers song]
Get an education [ in public schools in poor areas that may already be full up…etcetcetc
Migrants impact on all of us…especially on those in the areas they live, logiaclly enough,
and on those who they compete for ‘cash’ and minimum wage jobs.
Grouchy ol Girl earned a new ‘handle’ [Ima Fool}.
Tattoo ‘artists’ can charge 1000s of dollars
for a work of art!
What can Americans learn from the rioting in the mid-east? Could any techniques used there have success here?
Do American policy makers study autocratic regimes to learn civil/martial law population control techniques?
‘As for social services, thanks to so called “welfare reform” they hardly exist anymore’
Gawd yr an idiot!
1 in 7 is on foodstamps and Ss ‘dont exist’!
Is America unique in its population’s apparent totally porcine and slovenly behaviors? Does any other population come close approximating the ignorance and complacency of the American electorate?
Do the Swiss watch “Dancing with the Stars?
“Tattoo ‘artists’ can charge 1000s of dollars
for a work of art!”
Good grief. I gotta tell my guy–$75 to get it and $40 to re-ink it 10 years later.
Maybe he’s a poser 🙂
‘I can always spot Americans amongst the many tourists even before I hear them. They are by far the largest, and the loudest’
Actually Belgians are the tallest, you may be meaning fattest, which might or might not be true.
What i have found is…’the loudest’
EASILY BLACKS, AMERICAN OR NOT!!!
Ive heard conversations from a city block away
their normal talking level is shouting or close to it.
French and Italians are smaller, which may account for lack of volume on their part.
Is what Wiener did so bad? It was just Twitter Sex. As man evolves, cyber life becomes more real than the physical. He may be a Cultural Revolutionary – marriages may stay physically chaste (at least as an ideal) but cybernetically promiscuous.
The U.S. pacific fleet had to be moved to Pearl Harbor from its regular base in San Diego. In terms of the silliness of my statement here I was stationed at Pearl Harbor for two years and am familiar with all the lore including having read the best selling books on the subject.
There is simply no way that Roosevelt could’ve conspired with the Japanese to have them attack Pearl Harbor. The attack was unexpected owing to its audacity. The Japanese fleet managed to cross the north pacific without being detected. The reason the Japanese navy was so good at that point was because it was originally trained by the British. The Japs had such high regard for British sailors that they dropped a wreath on the site where they sank the HMS Prince of Wales off of Singapore.
True, Roosevelt’s actions towards the Japanese were provocative, but considering what the Japs were doing in China there was no reason to make any attempt to appease them at that point. The Japs also attacked everyone else with colonies in the far east including the French, British, and Dutch.
The Japanese attack was so audacious that only a couple of visionaries foresaw it, General Billy Mitchell among them. Mitchell was court martialed because his views on air power were considered outlandish by old fashioned officers in both the army and the navy. Mitchell then was subsequently awarded the medal of honor once his theories were vindicated since he’d sacrified his career to advocate for increased awareness of air power.
Roosevelt and others expected the Japanese to attack elsewhere. To purposely expose the pacific fleet to such an attack would’ve been suicidal but fortunately the Japanese did not press their advantage and withdrew after the initial waves of attack.
Vlad, you may need to come with your own Warning Label.
Here’s what I said concerning your turning virtually every issue into a black/brown/white fear fight:
“Vlad, if your goal is to make people harden up and fight against most everything you claim to stand for – you are doing a fine job.”
-me, to Vlad-
Here’s how you responded:
“Yes we have to harden up. And it starts in the mind. People who have never lived or worked with Blacks only know what the lying Media tells them. This puts them in danger.”
-vlad, twisting my words beyond recognition-
Calm down, Vlad – you appear to be so obsessed by your own fear, that you are impeding honest dialog.
And I wouldn’t mind so much – except there are far bigger issues in the US and in the World, and you don’t have a right to singlehandedly drag the CFN thread off onto racism – yet again- on an otherwise productive Monday.
OMG, when will we see the end of the romanticized notion of “noble savage”? Within the current milieu of political banter there are strains of such romantic thinking, expressed as belief that America needs a redemption that can only be realized through absorbing unlimited numbers of people still dragging with them beliefs and understandings hardly removed from the Bronze Age. Darker skin, of course, has been accepted by such thinkers as index of degree of “noble savage”.
I guess this is the new “American Exceptionalism” — not that of which JHK addressed. Smacks too of condescension toward our darker members of the human family – which, important to note against backdrop of world affairs, show no less capacity for savagery in contesting one another than do…..uh, us white folks up here in the Northern Hemisphere.
What kind of tattoos do “you” have? Can reccomend anybody? My dancing girl needs a touch up. She’s begining to look naked and I’m embarrased to be seen with her.
I didn’t say He conspired with them, just that He maneuvered them into a corner so the would attack – and give Roosevelt and the nascent New World Order the entrance into the war that they so desperately desired. With every war they get stronger. Even orthodox historians confirm Roosevelt’s long term goal – even though he campaigned to keep us out of the war as Wilson had a generation before.
It was their 9/11. In WW1 there was the Lusitania – ostensibly a passenger ship but secretly loaded to the gills with armaments. The German Goverment caught wind of the plan and took out ads in American Newspapers warning Americans not to travel on the Lusitania. The Newspapers refused to run the ads and the ship sailed right into the wolf pack. The ship blew up like the 4th of Ju-ly according to witnesses. Recent excavations of the drowned ship confirm the German version against the Anglo liars.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. And Blacks being the darkest are the most noble of all. They have replaced Christ as the object to be worshiped by all faux Christians.
Fine, Vlad,
It looked like a bad underwear ad, but…
But why are these guys so utterly unprepared for the public exposure, as it were?
They lie themselves into a corner, ruining their credibility way more than the original act itself.
Did Wiener really think this was just between himself and the girl he sent the picture to?
Not very technical savvy if you ask me.—And much ado about nothing, but the fact that these guys keep thinking their actions will never see the light of day.
I guess the bread and circus will continue–As you know, there’s no other news of the day.
ah the end of empire is a sad thing to witness.
___________
On another note, I think Fareed Zacharia’s special last night on innovation was something to watch. Try and watch it if it’s on again or on streaming video.
Best not to speak ill of those Adirondack mutts, James, lest you risk alienating most of your readership.
Each progressive wave of immigrants further dilutes the remaining cultural capital of America. These people aren’t going to assimilate to the norms of a dying people who don’t have the commonsense to maintain their borders and their language. It’s like that old gag from Groucho Marx: I wouldn’t belong to any club that would have me as a member. That’s how the immigrants feel – minus the implied inferiority complex of course. Whites simply can’t grok how much these people love themselves. We’ve lost that completely. How do you expect Whites to survive hating themselves as they do? And how can such self haters assimilate anyone or even want to?
Answer: they can’t and they don’t – not the
Grouchy Old Girls anyway. Cash wants to of course, but my first point explains why that wont work. People don’t respect the kind of softness that we have extended to them. And the sheer numbers and rate make it impossible as well.
Old saying said different ways in European Literature: Whom the Gods wish to kill they first drive mad. That’s where we are. And I have been driven mad trying to wake up those who refuse to wake up.
Yeah the technology has run far ahead of both the social norms and the public’s understanding of its capability.
Also amusing: typically women have absolutely no interest in seeing this kind of thing. Heterosexual men project their own trip onto women. So much for the sophistication of some of our politicians.
“What were his tatoos?”
I really can’t remember. They seemed to be overlapping or even layered. Too many to sort out.
“I grew up with Oakies.”
IR1, we ain’t named after trees.
I think the public gets it. It’s politicians who are clueless. They keep flying into the fire, though.
Their protestations when caught are fodder for the news–man they just can’t stop themselves.
Pathetic!
Okay, I can go along with your clarification. For instance there is no doubt that FDR violated the neutrality act in spirit if not in letter with many of the actions he took in the Atlantic in which we were involved in an undeclared naval war against the Germans, sent the British 50 WWI mothball fleet destroyers, and even had an American naval aviator working with the British tracking the Bismark.
Your comments also see things in a sinister light but without making unbelievable assertions. The fact is there does exist an Anglo- American conspiracy. One of the prime movers in this conspiracy during its infancy was Cecil Rhodes, founder of the scholarships to Oxford and South African diamond tycoon who was instrumental in starting the Boer War at the end of the 19th century.
Last week it was Palin in leather. This week
a “coy dominatrix.” Jimmy, what gives?
I believe it was Newfie who had the best post last week.. Heil Titler
I am very concerned about the future. I will be spending the rest of my life there…
The best handle on the site… NECKFLAMES!
Five years in the Navy, Two in the Army, never got a Tattoo. My Dad didn’t have one either, after combat service in WW11 & Korea. Now every pissant and loser at the local Community College and fast food restaurant is covered up with them. Shaved heads, skin piercings, Ubangi earrings, Tattoos everywhere … you’re right, Jim, what a bunch of f—-g mutts!
-Marlin
Traveled through central New York over the Mem Holiday. While passing through the little hamlets and villages, I observed the most curious thing. While the settlement pattern was evidenced by good clustering of building types, the municipal offices were not there. Signs directed you to a ancillary road that took you out into the the cultivated fields somewhere. Bizarre! Why remove them from the center?
Marlin,
Try not to be so judgmental.
lately the Chinese visitors look more like bargain-hunters at the preview of an estate auction, sizing up the merchandise
How long will it take for JHK to read about the massive energy crisis hitting China?
I tweet about it all the time now @babystrangeloop
Boy, some things sure don’t change. Like CFN. Jim writes something, the first posts are like “Another great blah blah”, the next posts are “I hate you and the blog you write on!” Then Vlad crawls out of his cave and drags the whole thing further down into the mud & crap, closely followed by LuLu, or LaLa, or whatever they go by now.
Same goes for the USA. Got back to the new home a few weeks back from a visit up there, boy, its scary to see the denial & insanity up close. Almost everyone there lives in some kind of delusion. Its unbelievable.
To Jackie Blue & others thinking of getting out: JUST DO IT! to copy an ad slogan. But really, if you don’t do it soon, you may never be able to leave. Its getting pretty bad there. One almost thinks that the whole ‘Tat’ thing is an unconscious acknowledgment of the prison state you are living in. If you can recall, not all that long ago the only people that had massive Tats were those on the Outside of the culture: Ex-cons, gang members, bikers, etc. So perhaps all those ‘Tat-ed’ freaks that Jim is so scared of are really just stating out in the open for all to see that they realize they are living in a Coast to Coast open-air prison.
Or not, perhaps they are really just trend following idiots.
But as I said above to Jackie & others, if you can, get out now before its too late.
Down here there are so many mangoes falling from the trees they just lay there and rot, filling the air in some parts with the scent of fermenting mangoes, which some of the birds seem to like quite a lot. I can buy a bolsa of 4-5 nice big mangos for about $1.40.
So just Do It! while the Doing it is good, and leave the rusting scrap heap that was the USA to toads like Vlad.
Over & out, DJ 🙂
Try not to be so judgmental.
===============
Jammer,
Following are 10 guesses about Americans with tattoos for which I have absolutely no proof but I toss them out on the table as a starting point for discussion (maybe Asoka can locate data to confirm or refute):
1. Employed people (both men and women) with 2 or more visible tattoos on the face, neck, head, arms, hands, and/or legs earn 25% to 50% less on average than non-tattooed people.
2. Non-tattooed people have significantly higher levels of education.
3. Unemployment is much higher among tattooed people.
4. Percentage wise, far more tattooed people have served jail time than non-tattooed.
5. There are more illegitimate children born to tattooed women over 17 years old.
6. Alcohol and drug abuse is more prevalent among tattooed people.
7. IQs of tattooed people are 15 or more points lower than non-tattooed people.
8. There are no tattooed Nobel prize recipients.
9. There are no non-tattooed motorcycle mechanics in the US.
10. Tattooed people are far more likely to shoot pool than play golf.
The Traditional America of Norman Rockwell or the Liberal America that put a man on the Moon – both were White Americas. The Multi-Cultural, Multi-Racial paradise that you propose never existed and never can exist.
Why didn’t you move to Haiti or Jamaica? Because they are Black and full of violence and ignorance. You went to Latin America – where Whites are valued and the people on top value their European genes and culture.
Gaia is angry.
This is where my worries come from these days. I’m no longer concerned about making do without the formal economy. I’ve made it through another 102 degree day without air conditioning. Actually I worked right through it in the garden without even thinking about it. A cool shower and a pair of stout margaritas with a dynamite chili relleno, and 102 never happened. We have a Jersey cow who provides us with enough high quality calories that we could probably live without any other “income.” Our total bills were $161 this month, and heading south.
But it’s the stuff you don’t see coming, even after all the preparations, all the resilience planning, that can proper fuck you. While we were out toasting our foresight, a wicked front blew in led by an insane wind pattern. It was enough to make my wife and daughter and I notice over the din of soccer, chalupas, and business people trying to convince themselves that a gross increase in sales can only mean good things, to stand up and look out the window over our heads and see the road signs in the area twisting and tossing back and forth, with waves of dust blowing through town.
It was bad in town, but apparently worse at the farm. When we retrieved the baby from my grandparents’ house and arrived at Small Batch Garden, all the summer squash were laying sideways in their beds showing their flower buds and small fruits above the leaves. The new bed I had built today in the heat and mulched with a thick layer of hay was everywhere. Then I noticed the peppers. I was horrified. All but two of them were laying on their sides with no apparent hope of recovering. I rushed over to check, and sure enough they were snapped off clean at the ground. Was it a microburst? They were loaded with young fruits that would now never mature. I’ll salvage what I can in the morning, I thought. The ducks were completely freaked out, and let us in on their disapproval of the situation right away. Who knows if everyone else is in the right place and secure, let alone dry.
That was one benefit of the storm tonight. We did get some rain. Not sure how much, but the ground felt alive under my bare feet as I moved about checking for any further damage. The first time since February it felt like that. It was a comforting feeling. But the uncertainty in my stomach gave me away. How can we prepare for an unpredictable climate when even the basics of self-reliance are mostly beyond our knowledge base? I guess I know now that a stake and tie are worthy time expenditures for my peppers, and by extension the similar crops that didn’t get laid down, like eggplants, and perhaps even okra. That’s a lot of extra effort and materials, but in a life or death situation it would be a no-brainer.
Good thing I already have bamboo in place and growing, but I wasn’t using it, and what’s next? What will Nature throw at the prepared to derail their preparations next? It’s as if the demise of the masses is a foregone conclusion, and Gaia is just trying to finish off the ones who get it too, just for good measure.
Friends of CFN, it’s not enough to know how to grow food without fossil energy subsidies. We really need the wisdom of experience to make it through. If the crash is ten years out still, spend that time getting to know the ins and outs of food, fiber, and fuel production. Because at this point I can promise there will be new and deadly lessons to learn every year. At least that’s been my experience so far.
Just passing along what I’m seeing for those who care…
DJ, so good to see you here again and read your words.
Since you last wrote I have bought land in South America (in the remote Andean Mountains). Fertile soil, beautiful people (I’m fluent in Spanish) and perfect weather.
In my future back yard I have mangos, papaya, bananas, plantain, mandarin oranges, etc. etc. etc. etc. and the stuff grows year round because I’m near the equator and the temperature is in the 70’s year round (“clima templado” ellos dicen)
I’m saving up to make the move but it may take a couple of years to make the break.
Oh, fringe benefit, my new South American country (which I am not going to name) has universal single payer national health care. The third world can manage it, but the USA cannot.
Gracias por empujarme a salir de los EEUU. Poco a poco. Ya casi.
Saludos y felicitaciones,
Asoka
What they now call MacAuthur Park is really Westlake Park. A beautiful park, a jewel of Los Angeles.
There were immigrants there even when I was a kid.
I remember going to a Bulgarian(?) restaurant a couple of blocks away from Westlake Park.
It was a house, but they had set up the living room with tables to feed people.
Now that I think about it, it was probably illegal.
Yes it may not have been all bad in the begining. They wanted to promote Anglo Saxon culture as epitomized by Tennyson’s poem Locksley Hall. I don’t agree with pressing it on the whole world but at least such a thing was not monstrous in its conception. Now though they have joined forces with the Jews and are doing all they can to suppress Whites and White culture. I’m reminded of Jim Jones: he did great work in the begining. And even Sauron the Great was once beautiful.
Question to your expertise: Is there an equivalent to Cornelius A Lapide as a Commentatator on the Old Testament? He is usually thought to be the greatest Commentator on the New Testament – is there an equivalent Commmentator and Commentary on the Old? Or did the Catholic Church never delve so deeply into these waters?
Yeah, that’s the downside to farming.
Locusts, storms, drought, it all sucks.
4 years ago, we had a very warm January followed by a cold February, followed by a warm April.
Everything bloomed and budded. Everything sprouted.
Then we had a hard freeze in April. April!
Not one piece of fruit that year, and the wheat was a goner too.
With global warming, this could happen again, and next time there probably won’t be fruit shipped from Chile to make up for it.
Nothing can beat the knowledge born of experience. Remember in Diamond’s book: the experts told the New Guineans to plant in horizontal rows against erosion on the slope. But their way was better – the furious rain run off washed the expert’s seedlings away. There was alot of knowledge like that.
America has become a nation of self loathing, sub-literates, whose only goals are to make it home for Cheez Curls and a night of mindless television.
The US has become the fattest nation out of all the industrialized nations. They are fat, and self-hating. Their unconscious must realize that their lives are stuck in dead end ruts filled with road blocks.
Walmart has become the prison store, and the shoppers are the prisoners. Walmart has sold Americans out for cheap labor in China. They have shut the jobs down in America forcing the average America to take jobs at lower pay, if they can find work.
Many Americas don’t feel they are worthy enough to rise up and fight back like those in Greece, and elsewhere are doing; so instead, they get another tattoo.
http://moontownshippa.blogspot.com
Recently the Bulgarian Prime Minister in a TV interview urged people to grow potatoes. Interesting. What would happen if Obama tells this to the Americans? On the other hand the same PM is proud that currently a lot of highway build-up is underway.
And according to Wikileaks it is even more interesting – http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=128625 .
Well at least the Bulgarian debt is maybe 10 or 15 times lower than Greek. Yet live in Greece is much better, for now.
4 years ago, we had a very warm January followed by a cold February, followed by a warm April.
================
…We had no March that year.
“And what can you say about a people who slather mayonnaise on their French fries – apart from their amazing failure to discover the miracle of ketchup, despite being overrun by American GIs sixty-odd years ago – and speaking a language that nobody has ever written rock and roll song in.”
Having spent some time in this country I can honestly say that I understand their aversion to ketchup. The French-speaking half of course cater to culinary pretensions, so ketchup being the abomination of the American public is not even considered as an accoutrement to any food item, even the lowly frites. And you have never had mayonnaise as they possess: fresh from the farm and then roasted in the hot noonday sun. Quelle délicieux.
Word of the day: Decoupaged. Decoupage can turn any boring object into something fun!
“and speaking a language that nobody has ever written rock and roll song in.”
Believe me. Any song written and sung in Flemish would neither rock nor roll.
“and a more frightening gaggle of disfigured mutts I have never seen before.”
You’ve never seen the gathering at the annual State of the Union address?
“Has everybody in upstate New York only just been released from prison?”
Probably. So now there’s a few vacancies for the other throng alluded to above.
Asoka are you accepting donations to your emigration fund.
I decided to grow potatoes this year.
I planted quite a few, spending much time digging out land against the curve of the land, making swales to retain water.
Then we had 2 feet of rain in 10 days.
I tried digging drainage ditches from the potatoes, but the water didn’t want to drain.
One day I baled 8 buckets of water out of the potato patch, with a cup and bucket.
Now we’re having a drought.
“At least Elizabeth Pepys appears to have had no visible tatoos on her upper body.”
You got me thinking. I wonder if the Queen has a tattoo of the Union Jack where she sits?
“I am applying for a passport soon. Getting things in order. In case I want to make a break.”
Just got mine this week. Planning on going out of country next year to scout out possible Plan B.
Any song written and sung in Flemish would neither rock nor roll.
=============
Listen for yourself … not bad for a …
FLEMISH ROCK GROUP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csIriiIQMAU&feature=related
Sounds like Straight-Line Wind.
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints2/406/
Sorry about the peppers, but at least the cows o.k.. I think I had a little dust up with a micro-burst one time. I had a little patch of miniature corn. It was kind of an experiment. The stuff isn’t all that useful .. but I just wanted to see if I could grow it. It’s what I always head for at the local salad bar.
I was coming along quit nicely. 4 – 6 cute little cobs on each stock. We had some weather and I came home to find it squashed flat. As if someone had stepped on it. It was weird. Everything else was fine. I pounded in some of those metal fence posts, propped it all up and through a cord around it. Gave it a good water. Saved most of it.
Now, you DO have that storm cellar I keep asking about (and you keep ignoring that I ask about.) Did I mention I have occasional flashes of precognition?
Asoka are you accepting donations to your emigration fund.
————
You are so very kind to offer. Your people were also so kind to bring my ancestors here … so I feel like Whites have done quite enough already.
I will feel so much better if I pay my own way out of this plantation prison.
Okay there’s this new trend among the facially tattooed… the big gauge ear “piercing”… have you seen this? What they do is stretch out their ears to look like Mr Rumbold in “Are you being served?”
They don’t look scary anymore… they look pitiful… what says “I don’t expect to get job opportunities” better than a tattooed face and stretched out jug ears.
PLEASE NOTE:
FACEBOOK.COM HOT POTHOLES
“I wonder if the Queen has a tattoo of a Union Jack where she sits.”
Probably not. But that’s just wild speculation on my part 🙂 .
Several of the royal males have / had tattoos. Especially the one’s who served in the Royal Navy. Something discreet that doesn’t how when in dress uniform.
Believe me. Any song written and sung in Flemish would neither rock nor roll.
———–
I am a fairly educated person yet somehow I have remained all my 70 years unaware that there is a European country named Flem.
ITS RUINED NOW!!!
Too many Immigrants from the wrong places.
Gangs run it………….MS / 18th st
90% immigrants or anchor baby generation.
Protests when a dangerous drunken wetback is shot…
Commission: Officer Acted Properly In Fatal Shooting Near …
Mar 15, 2011 … A Los Angeles police officer acted within department policy when he shot and killed a Guatemalan immigrant near MacArthur Park, the city Police Commission ruled today, prompting angry responses from the man’s relatives and activists who claim deadly force was unwarranted.
ACTIVISTS, YEAH.
Jims bike ride pictures were great. we like to travel to the north east when we can. We don’t find the small towns nearly as depressing as jhk does. A great combination of scenery, history and civilization compared to the south or west. Southerns are likely to think people up north are not friendly. We have always found that it is just the opposite. Jhk is right about the change in society, the tats are just a manifestation of societal degradation.
Ditto on the tattoo thing. Only time I thought of getting one was after a long night of drinking and then I never got so drunk I couldn’t ask myself, “what will it look like when I’m sober?” In my growing up days, the only GUYS (and only guys) who had tattoos were ex-military, and then it was only a small service branch tattoo to show they had been there and done that. And most of them looked scary to me, as JHK mentioned.
But the law clearly says: “You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves: I am the LORD.”
I think the tattoo trend today is just another expression of the lawlessness that exists in society.
“FLEMISH ROCK GROUP”
Rock? Ah, well more like a cabaret version of Flock of Seagulls. But not bad, lol.
BTW. Good luck to you and DJ gettin outa here. If rich Israelis are buying up all the land they can in Patagonia, there must be something down there besides gauchos and llamas. Maybe llama meat is kosher?
Went to a birthday party at Dufferin Grove Park over the weekend, was for my friend’s kid. At one point, I walked over to a woman who was busy throwing one of our party’s soccer balls in the air, apparently trying to entertain some of her kids. Before I could say anything, she goes:
“Oh, is this ball yours?”
“No”, I say, “It belongs to one of the boys who’s about to go home.” And I say this with as nice a smile as I can muster for the enormous/ugly/tattooed woman.
“Well,” she says. “Looks like it’s game over for us.” Not a smile, not a thank you, nothing.
Then I look at her party, and it’s nothing but enormous and/or ugly tattooed women and their rather depressed looking kids. Had to be at least six adults and six kids, not one fucking ball, hot Sunday in the park. Plenty of tats, though.
To all US citizens departing for countries where the grass appears to be greener, I recommend you carefully research the laws about drawing Social Security checks, pensions, and taking IRA and 401K distributions. The financial implications can be onerous. I read something a year or two ago that made it sound like the US was in certain respects like a Roach Motel, where you can check in but you can’t check out.
Where I’m going there is not a single tattoo to be found anywhere. Just fresh air, water, and people who work the earth and love the earth. And I’ll be able to walk out and harvest the avocados for free.
Sounds like paradise.
Thanks for the warning, Q. I have already visited and even in third world countries you can take a bus to a city or provincial capital, and guess what you find: ATM machines that work with debit cards from USA banks.
So. all I have to do is have my social security check direct deposited into my USA bank account.
Whenever I need money (which won’t be often with such a low cost of living) I can withdraw local currency as easily as I withdraw dollars here.
Sure, there is an international transaction charge (though not too much), so I’ll only be withdrawing once a month. But it works like a breeze. Perks of economic globalism.
When America falls, the Latin American economies will be ruined. Gringos, even Black ones, may not be welcome.
When America falls you will have many problems, the immigration won´t be one anymore.
But if you want to start again in another land I guess it would be very difficult to find a place where Americans are welcome, especially without money…
Conozco a la gente en el pais donde voy.
Confio en la existencia y no sufro de la paranoia que plaga a Ud.
The Flemish want their own Country but they are outnumbered by the French speaking Walloons. Their Nationalist Party, Vlams Blok was outlawed to prevent any bid for succesion. They are good people – loathe the EU, and the petty culture of French Bureacracy that is essential to it.
Puzzling it out – I know the people of the country where I’m going. I’m confident of my life and don’t suffer from the paranoia that plagues you. That’s not very nice.
Speak English so when I insult you, it will be accurate. I don’t want to say anything bad that’s not true.
I think our future lives will look a whole lot like the Amish lives of today and maybe we’ll be a whole lot better off.
On a side note: the Amish (well at least my Amish farmer) produce(s) some really incredible food. Why? because they’ve spent years invested in the most valuable commodity of all: soil.
They may only educate their young to 8th grade, but I can tell you from reading an animal-share agreement written by them, they are not stupid hicks. (I doubt most college grads could have written it). The lack of TV, radio, and internet gives them a lot of time to continue to educate themselves.
Yo soy un introvertido en Inglés
Yo soy una persona extrovertida en español, una persona completamente diferente.
Ud. es racista. Piérdete.
“It’s a darn shame, and I mean that literally, because this is exactly what the American public is so ashamed of, and why appeals to the repressed sense of shame based on hyper-patriotic bluster, are so successful.”
A better and more succinct way of saying this is simply: The Face of Fascism.
This is where the foundation of fascism lays. And this is what we now have, a corporate-fascist state.
As for Europe, you will be very surprised how Europe rises quickly from what you perceive to be the abyss, into the King of the Western World. Watch for it, it’s coming quickly. While the USA continues to sink into the quicksand of it’s own making.
Sarah Palin is merely the epitome of what this country has become. It is, indeed, disgraceful and sad.
11. Tattooed people are far more likely to play golf than chess.
WOW! Palin was demoted from being Hitler to being just an elected official…a dull bureaucrat. WHat a difference a week makes. I generally like JHK and would not want him to go down that dark path of crazy leftists that see a Nazi in every nine year old holding up an anti-abortion placard.
I know JHK is far too proud to ever issue an apology…but I think this toning down is the closest he’ll ever get to one.
You can think yourself into problems and out of problems, you can’t think yourself into problems and you can’t think yourself out of problems, etc. Thought is the problem, thought creates all kinds of fake problems, you just have to exist, no action and reaction, no feeling, no nothing, and all of your problems are solved, and in fact I prefer NOTHING from anything else, nothing is my friend, I prefer nothing. NOTHING is the answer. Isn’t pyschoanalysis a method of trying “to think yourself out of problems” ? And the same way you think yourself into problems, just use the same path to think yourself out of problems (or any path will do, thought is just a path that thinks it is reaching targets and associates them to satisfaction, conclusions, feelings, whatever, but it is a process never reaching any (imaginary) target and never even starting or ending, just a process without any goal or any direction, a total failure and a clunker of a device: kill the device, KILL THOUGHT), after all just invert the direction, it is all just a sequence of symbols and meanings which are just denotations, abstractions, non existing. If thought creates the problem, then change thought. The structure of thought: modified minds will do away with thought, even though it seems so totalizing and the absolute reference system of all of our existence, but thought is just a one transistor circuit, a one bit universe: we need trillion bit universes and circuits.
Our mind creates problems because it creates targets, imaginary targets to reach, wants change, wants something different, but why want anything different ? Why assign something better or worse when reality is all the same, only how we are programmed creates the difference, but the program (how a configuration of Matter is associated to feelings, happiness or sadness, to achievement, to what others assign it as being and how they feel (although you can’t ever really know or touch what they feel, and they may all be fake robots anyways, go figure)) is a quirk, arbitrary, is meaningless and has no value, only our hardwired pain/pleasure circuits give meanings to things, but that circuit is just a design, just one of a trillion possible designs: change the design and you have changed everything and can potentially achieve everything.
Think yourself into a new problem, and think yourself out of a problem. I prefer NOTHING.
“Now, you DO have that storm cellar I keep asking about (and you keep ignoring that I ask about.) Did I mention I have occasional flashes of precognition?”
I don’t have one. Sorry I’ve ignored your question, but it just kept slipping through the cracks, and I’m probably a little embarrassed to be so ill-prepared on the matter. Not sure what we would do. There’s a low cypress strand about 30 vertical feet below the house elevation nearby, which is as good a topo break as you’ll find in south Georgia. We could hide out down there and probably get soaked with screaming children. If we saw a twister heading straight at the house in time to do so. I’m encouraged that the house is 90-ish years old and still in good shape, through all the tropical storms and sporadic tornadoes we get ’round here, but Mother Nature seems to be stepping up her extermination plans every year. A fair portion of my farming neighbors’ “topsoil” is lying around on our floor and furniture, and gumming up the keyboard I’m typing on. As if this sandy shit really has an effect on fertility. Without the fossil fuel subsidy they aren’t going to be growing much of anything in these fields.
But the upshot of that is that our regenerative methods are getting a lot of attention. The email interview I just did with the local paper is turning into a full-blown article in the annual special Agriculture insert that appears in several local papers here pretty soon. The reporter pushing this is warning us to get our media affairs in order before the coming storm of interest. Not sure my blog is front-line material in the religious south.
We’ll work on violent storm preparations. In the meantime I need to go stake my remaining veggies and get some new ones started…dammit.
Reading the first line of Spider’s lunacy above, which is about as much as I ever get through, I’m remembering a good quote I saw yesterday:
You can’t think yourself into a new way of living, but you can live yourself into a new way of thinking.
I like that a lot.
Thanks for reminding me of that Diamond story about the New Guineans. I had forgotten about that. You know, because it’s been a whole year since I read Guns, Germs, and Steel. Sheesh. If I could just remember everything I’ve already read I’d probably be in good shape!
I’m really trying to let the landscape be the textbook, but there is always so much cultural bias to overcome. That’s why I spend so much energy trying to get people to grow their own food, while there is still a cushion for failure. And I’m so glad when people share their experiences with me too. Like Wage’s March-less year. That’d put a kink in my garden schedule for sure.
“We could hide out down there and probably get soaked with screaming children.”
Ouch! This sentence could probably use a comma after ‘soaked’. Sort of an Eats, Shoots, and Leaves thing, isn’t it?
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=175489
Uh, ooh spelling correction. Guess were the error was game again!
In the first paragraph of this thread.
“I am a bit like those ex-christians that believed, all of their lives in a kind of religion, a kind of objective, external reality, rules and models of reality shared and believed by everyone, or most, or anyways some kind of objective truth, rules that we should abide to, an aggregation and serialization of results (just like in religions, be good and you will be rewarded, etc.), but then discover it was all a lie, a huge deception, there is nothing only crap in people, outside of people and everywhere, no god exists, no nothing, the world is totally meaningless, has nothing to say to us and we have nothing to say to it, there is nothing that has to be communicated to us, no metaphysical or spiritual truth, no beauty, no value, a total void, zero, empty, undefined, barren, boring, no need for any communication, you simply live, life is a bitch, eat drink and be merry and then you die, end of story.
Only in my case I kind of believed in the Economy, the system, it progresses, Capitalism goes forward, it is for the better good, it defeated Communism, etc. Nothing further from the truth, no religion has ever been more false than this one.
Economy only exists in terms of people interacting and mostly fighting, it is a constantly unstable system and will be unstable forever, there is no aggregate value being produced, no lasting result only power struggles, some win, some lose, always changing and never really producing lasting collective results. Except in the form of technical advancements that optimize many processes and imply less labor needed, no matter what, this is probably the only real collective aggregated value being produce. We are producing “the end of labor” and “the end of labor needed” more than anything else, and this is in fact the great deception of Economy, as all of the economists want you to believe that it has rules that favor “society” or that well run economies generate “wealth for everyone and jobs” etc. ”
on another note from:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/06/the-creeping-nausea-of-american-exceptionalism.html
Kunstler doesn’t like tatoos, but that is just a “statement”, someone wants to make a statement, wants to oppose something, but oppose especially a contrasting Will Power, another mind that is supposed to judge and be “critical” and contrast this. But the object generating the contrast is really not important, it is the fascination with the actual fact that Will Powers contrast that is interesting and always repeating, and the contrasting minds find interesting and obsessive and constantly intriguing: and the contrasting Will Powers will study and debate and analyze and all sorts of things over the object of the contrast, will be fascinated and studying this object, in this case the tatoos, forever, when the real fascination is only with the fact that contradictions exists, that we are always contradicting each other, and we are trying to study it away, we are trying to figure it out by studying the object of contention, when that is just a place holder, an excuse for that which really fascinates us forever and forces us to think and debate and contrast others: and namely that we are contradiction, fight, A against B, and this is Metaphysical in nature, cannot be thought away, cannot be analyzed away or studied or debated away, you can’t think yourself out of the rigid prison of a universe that is contradictory in nature, where the real principle of the universe is the principle of contradiction, everything is itself and not itself simultaneously and not…
You can’t think yourself out of problems no matter how hard you try. You can always think yourself out of any problem since all problems exist only within the reference system of thought itself (thought being a monolithic – totalizing slab). You can think yourself into all kinds of problems but you can’t think yourself out of any problems. You can’t think yourself into any problems, but you can think yourself out of all problems. How I love to contradict myself, now go on, contradict me, tell me I am wrong.
Uh, ooh, spelling error correction for “the spelling error correction” again (infinite recursion anyone ?).
Now, guess where the spelling error game was again, little Suzy and Ryan!
From:
http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=175489
Uh, ooh spelling correction. Guess where the error was game again!
In the first paragraph of this thread.
“I am a bit like those ex-christians that believed, all of their lives in a kind of religion, a kind of objective, external reality, rules and models of reality shared and believed by everyone, or most, or anyways some kind of objective truth, rules that we should abide to, an aggregation and serialization of results (just like in religions, be good and you will be rewarded, etc.), but then discover it was all a lie, a huge deception, there is nothing only crap in people, outside of people and everywhere, no god exists, no nothing, the world is totally meaningless, has nothing to say to us and we have nothing to say to it, there is nothing that has to be communicated to us, no metaphysical or spiritual truth, no beauty, no value, a total void, zero, empty, undefined, barren, boring, no need for any communication, you simply live, life is a bitch, eat drink and be merry and then you die, end of story.
Only in my case I kind of believed in the Economy, the system, it progresses, Capitalism goes forward, it is for the better good, it defeated Communism, etc. Nothing further from the truth, no religion has ever been more false than this one.
Economy only exists in terms of people interacting and mostly fighting, it is a constantly unstable system and will be unstable forever, there is no aggregate value being produced, no lasting result only power struggles, some win, some lose, always changing and never really producing lasting collective results. Except in the form of technical advancements that optimize many processes and imply less labor needed, no matter what, this is probably the only real collective aggregated value being produce. We are producing “the end of labor” and “the end of labor needed” more than anything else, and this is in fact the great deception of Economy, as all of the economists want you to believe that it has rules that favor “society” or that well run economies generate “wealth for everyone and jobs” etc. ”
on another note from:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/06/the-creeping-nausea-of-american-exceptionalism.html
Kunstler doesn’t like tatoos, but that is just a “statement”, someone wants to make a statement, wants to oppose something, but oppose especially a contrasting Will Power, another mind that is supposed to judge and be “critical” and contrast this. But the object generating the contrast is really not important, it is the fascination with the actual fact that Will Powers contrast that is interesting and always repeating, and the contrasting minds find interesting and obsessive and constantly intriguing: and the contrasting Will Powers will study and debate and analyze and all sorts of things over the object of the contrast, will be fascinated and studying this object, in this case the tatoos, forever, when the real fascination is only with the fact that contradictions exists, that we are always contradicting each other, and we are trying to study it away, we are trying to figure it out by studying the object of contention, when that is just a place holder, an excuse for that which really fascinates us forever and forces us to think and debate and contrast others: and namely that we are contradiction, fight, A against B, and this is Metaphysical in nature, cannot be thought away, cannot be analyzed away or studied or debated away, you can’t think yourself out of the rigid prison of a universe that is contradictory in nature, where the real principle of the universe is the principle of contradiction, everything is itself and not itself simultaneously and not…
You can’t think yourself out of problems no matter how hard you try. You can always think yourself out of any problem since all problems exist only within the reference system of thought itself (thought being a monolithic – totalizing slab). You can think yourself into all kinds of problems but you can’t think yourself out of any problems. You can’t think yourself into any problems, but you can think yourself out of all problems. How I love to contradict myself, now go on, contradict me, tell me I am wrong.
I can just see Soak sitting around with his old school headphones on, listening to his new Rosetta Stone CD.
Donde esta la biblioteca?
I feel a strong urge to cut and paste a Wikipedia article over at CFN;)
Try not to be so judgmental.
===============
Jammer,
Following are 10 guesses about Americans with tattoos for which I have absolutely no proof but I toss them out on the table as a starting point for discussion (maybe Asoka can locate data to confirm or refute):
1. Employed people (both men and women) with 2 or more visible tattoos on the face, neck, head, arms, hands, and/or legs earn 25% to 50% less on average than non-tattooed people.
2. Non-tattooed people have significantly higher levels of education.
3. Unemployment is much higher among tattooed people.
4. Percentage wise, far more tattooed people have served jail time than non-tattooed.
5. There are more illegitimate children born to tattooed women over 17 years old.
6. Alcohol and drug abuse is more prevalent among tattooed people.
7. IQs of tattooed people are 15 or more points lower than non-tattooed people.
8. There are no tattooed Nobel prize recipients.
9. There are no non-tattooed motorcycle mechanics in the US.
10. Tattooed people are far more likely to shoot pool than play golf
Q,
I noticed your lack of scholarly references to your analysis. Maybe this relates to #2 or #7? You must be tattooed, yes? My daughter has a small literary quotation on the underside of her wrist. “I want I want”. Graduated Mount Holyoke College. Suma Cum Laude 2009. I would much rather shoot pool than play golf any day. Much cheaper. No tats on me.
“Then we had 2 feet of rain in 10 days.
I tried digging drainage ditches from the potatoes, but the water didn’t want to drain.
One day I baled 8 buckets of water out of the potato patch, with a cup and bucket.
Now we’re having a drought.”
See what I mean? Gaia is pissed! My potatoes were so bad this season that I probably got back fewer than I planted! I’m keeping my fingers crossed for plenty of sweet potatoes. And my spaghetti squash are tearing it up…
WageL, too bad about yer ‘Taters’. I planted potatoes, too, for the first time, with the help and encouragement of my Costa Rican Texas guests in May. So far, so good.
To all of you who are talking about emigrating out of the US for greener pastures; not necessary. We have our own (new) nation right here, a nation within a nation, called CFNation. We already have a President and a Cabinet, with more appointments to come, a community of like-minded, intelligent people, mostly liberal but some conservative, who care about the future and are concerned about the present. So stay here and become part of it.
It can’t be easy for an American to take up residence in a third-world, Spanish speaking country. Anybody here familiar with the communist author B. Traven, from Chicago, (The Death Ship) or Malcolm Lowry’s ‘Under the Volcano’. Both wrote pretty good accounts of what can happen to Yankees or Brits who take up residence in Latin America. Not all of it is good, as Hemingway also found out.
JackieB, was i right, were you one of those California Honey Blonds of our dreams? You never answered.
OzoneP, did you text me?
-Marlin
“Almost everyone there lives in some kind of delusion.”
Everyone here has at least one cherished delusion, or we wouldn’t still be here. Burn your delusions.
Well, headed out with my metal detector, to some long forgotten, 17th century toll stations along the Farmington River, see if I can find anything worthwhile.
Later, Marlin
All I know is what Wikipedia tells me, not having a copy of The Catholic Encyclopedia, and what they tell me is that Lapide commented on every book of scripture except for The Book of Job and the psalms.
Very ingenious list. I would also add:
THE HEAVILY TATTOOED ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE SITTING ON DEATH ROW WAITING TO BE PUT TO SLEEP LIKE DOGS.
THE HEAVILY TATTOOED ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE GOING TO NIGHT SCHOOL TO GET THEIR G.E.D.. [smarter people can get their GED simply by showing up to take the test w/o bothering to study!].
SAILORS WITH A ROOSTER TATOOED ON ONE FOOT AND A PIG ON THE OTHER ARE LESS LIKELY TO DROWN ACCORDING TO THE CHINESE.
SAILORS WITH A SINGLE SMALL TASTEFUL SANCTIMONIOUS TATTOO WITH THE ENSCRIPTION “THE SEA IS LIFE” ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE ANNOYING ASSHOLES WHO WASHED OUT OF THE SEAL TEAMS BEFORE ATTENDING SUBMARINE SCHOOL.[knew someone like that once who was a hopeless officer’s ass kissing lifer dog]
THE HEAVILY TATTOOED ARE MORE LIKELY TO APPEAR IN A QUENTIN TARANTINO MOVIE AS A DRESS EXTRA.
THE HEAVILY TATTOOED ARE MORE LIKELY TO DECORATE THE ENTIRE ASS END OF THEIR VEHICLES WITH BUMPER STICKERS PURCHASED AT HEADS SHOPS.
THE HEAVILY TATTOOED ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE ASKED BY POLICE DURING TRAFFIC STOPS “DO YOU MIND IF I SEARCH YOUR VEHICLE?”
ALSO:
THE HEAVILY TATTOOED ARE MORE LIKELY TO LIVE IN A SINGLE WIDE MOBILE HOME.
THE HEAVILY TATTOOED ARE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE FORGOTTEN ALL THOSE STRAY CANNABIS SEEDS STREWN AROUND ON THE FLOOR OF THEIR VEHICLE WHEN THEY RESPOND TO THE TRAFFIC COP’S REQUEST TO SEARCH THEIR VEHICLE BY FALSELY ASSERTING “THAT’S PERFECTLY OKAY OFFICER BECAUSE I AIN’T GOT NOTHIN’ TO HIDE.
THE HEAVILY TATTOOED ARE LESS LIKELY TO KNOW THAT THEY CAN DEMAND A SEARCH WARRANT AND REFUSE REQUESTS TO SEARCH THEIR VEHIICLE.
THE HEAVILY TATTOOED ARE MORE LIKELY TO GET BUSTED FOR POSSESSION OF POT.
WOMEN DRESSED AS NUNS NEVER GET BUSTED FOR POT, EVEN IF THEY REALLY AREN’T NUNS.
Correction to above:
SOMETIMES WOMEN DRESSED AS NUNS DO GET BUSTED FOR POT BUT ONLY IF IT’S HALLOWEEN AND THEY’RE MAKING OUT IN PUBLIC WITH A GUY DRESSED UP AS A PRIEST AND THE COP IS IRISH CATHOLIC.
BHMarc, What year in Sub School? i was there in 1976. Get this, one of the sailors in my class, from New Jersey, went on to become a Fleet Admiral. When I knew him he was an E-3. Incredible.
Also Joe Sestak, D Penn. House of Rep US Congress was my Division Officer on a DDG I was on. The Division (Nav) was Ensign Sestak, The Chief, a PO3, and me. He was a good guy, later went on to become and Admiral, too. He lost his race for US Senate on 08. In 2006 he invited me down for a visit to Washington.
-Marlin
Tripp said: “Donde esta la biblioteca? I feel a strong urge to cut and paste a Wikipedia article over at CFN;)”
———-
Good one, Tripp!
Actually I have been trying to help out Sarah Palin by changing Wikipedia articles on American history to conform with Palin’s version of events.
Somebody always changes them back to the historically accurate version.
Whatever happened to “Progress” ?
It used to be that people looked forward towards the future for better, improved, more possibilities, all kinds of possible improvements. And in fact the word “Scientist” was held in great respect, they were the high priests planning the future, bringing forth progress and a better future. Then, somewhere down the line, all kinds of reactionary Right Wing Thugs, Environmentalists who are so totally obsessed with that huge pile of crap they call “Nature” and so completely obsessed with that other boogie man called “overpopulation”, capitalists and puny small businesses – entrepreneurs, and just plain dumb folks, ignorant, craps, you name it simply decided TO KILL THE FUTURE. And plan for a new dark ages, nay, a new stone age as Kunstler’s World made by Hand (better known as Ape world of Man returning to Ape condition because he was a scaredy cat of the future, what total punks all of these people be!).
No more Rockets to Mars (we need trillions of these!), No more Skyscrapers (we need trillions of these! and remember to emphasize BIG numbers, to make a point, a make a statement, to make it clear that you are talking about BIG THINGS, change you can believe in BIG TIME), No more Cheap Rents and Free Salaries (we need trillions of these for thousands of trillions of people, all of them being Scientists and Technicians and Engineers, all of them with wildly Modified brains and Minds, and Mental Contraptions), No more Pride, Ambition, Goals, Collective Goals, Unity of Intent, MIND OVER MATTER, Super Consumption (to KILL AND DEMOLISH ALL AND EVERY POSSIBLE TRACE OF NATURE!) a kind of Super Nationalism, adoration and Worship for the Symbol and Symbols, (and of each of these we need trillions of these and as Intensity goes trillions of times more intense than the puny intensity of everyday life), etc.
On this website and so, so many others there is this huge constant thread of Overpopulation, we are “Too Many”, and all kinds of Racisms, We against them, etc. On overpopulation, there is nothing further from the truth, we can host thousands of trillions if the greens and tree huggers and environmentalists weren’t such selfish – egotistical slobs that want to hog it all up for themselves, not even noticing how selfish – egotistical and criminal they really are, all along thinking that they are right and correct and good, etc. What morons! the whole deal of overpopulation is a subtle device the rich and capitalists imposed to get a war going between poor people, to create resource “contention” when in fact there are no resource contentions, only rich and ruling class and capitalists that have set things up by design, that have planned this war between people from the outset, but everyone keeps on buying into overpopulation, there is not enough for everyone, etc.
And if people misbehave, they will be programmed accordingly, they will have some of their neural circuits changed (by computers, not by Man as Man is not reliable, too much of a slave to impulses and his Free Will and his never ending internal contradictions, unsatisfactions, confusions) and we must decompose that entity called Free Will in people so as people no longer contrast and fight each other. They become one unit, one monolithic block of Matter Saturating the Entire Universe with the “Power of Symbol Over Matter”, “Symbol Over the Laws of Physics”…
Now go little Ryan, go on little Betty, copy this all and bring it to your teacher, another A+ and GOLD star, go on San Jose Mommy, check it out, bring it to your Boss (or your husbands, or whoever supports you), you will get another raise, they will like it a lot, finally some direction in a world that has lost all possible directions.
And check out this Mental Contraption that fell from the Sun in Betty and Ryan’s backyard:
QII(//WII(//WOOO///////&&GJJJHKKK/////TTELLELLL=======
Whaow, what on earth is going on in there, honey bunch ? Wowo, that is really far out, I see all kinds of Mass to Thought converters, Aggregators to disaggregators, units to independence limit machines, wow, so much to discover and play around with. Betty and Ryan are going to have a ball today!
Quo Vadis ? baby …
Marlin said: “When I knew him he was an E-3. Incredible.”
————
Why is it incredible? If you keep your nose clean, and obey orders, you can live off the government teat all your life, and live very comfortably. Your friend is probably playing golf, on DoD golf courses, at taxpayer expense.
In 1996, the weekly television series America’s Defense Monitor noted that “Pentagon elites and high government officials [were still] tee-ing off at taxpayer expense” at some “234 golf courses maintained by the U.S. armed forces worldwide.”
The navy, the army, the marine corps, all have golf courses. Take the Eaglewood Golf Courses at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. In 2004, the Pentagon paid out more than $352,000 to George Golf Design to refurbish its two courses (known as “the Raptor” and “the Eagle”).
George Golf Design considerately worked on the courses one at a time, so that local duffers would not be left linkless. This was of critical importance since if both courses were out of commission, Virginia would have been left with only nine military golf facilities (navy, five; army,three; Marine Corps, one) with a total of fourteen courses.
Uh, ooh, spelling error again! Find where the error is game, go for it little Betty!!
Whatever happened to “Progress” ?
It used to be that people looked forward towards the future for better, improved, more possibilities, all kinds of possible improvements. And in fact the word “Scientist” was held in great respect, they were the high priests planning the future, bringing forth progress and a better future. Then, somewhere down the line, all kinds of reactionary Right Wing Thugs, Environmentalists who are so totally obsessed with that huge pile of crap they call “Nature” and so completely obsessed with that other boogie man called “overpopulation”, capitalists and puny small businesses – entrepreneurs, and just plain dumb folks, ignorant, craps, you name it simply decided [b]TO KILL THE FUTURE. [/b]And plan for a new dark ages, nay, a new stone age as Kunstler’s World made by Hand (better known as Ape world of Man returning to Ape condition because he was a scaredy cat of the future, what total punks all of these people be!).
No more Rockets to Mars (we need trillions of these!), No more Skyscrapers (we need trillions of these! and remember to emphasize BIG numbers, to make a point, to make a statement, to make it clear that you are talking about BIG THINGS, change you can believe in BIG TIME), No more Cheap Rents and Free Salaries (we need trillions of these for thousands of trillions of people, all of them being Scientists and Technicians and Engineers, all of them with wildly Modified brains and Minds, and Mental Contraptions), No more Pride, Ambition, Goals, Collective Goals, Unity of Intent, [b]MIND OVER MATTER,[/b] Super Consumption (to [b]KILL AND DEMOLISH ALL AND EVERY POSSIBLE TRACE OF NATURE![/b]) a kind of Super Nationalism, adoration and Worship for the Symbol and Symbols, (and of each of these we need trillions of these and as Intensity goes trillions of times more intense than the puny intensity of everyday life), etc.
On this website and so, so many others there is this huge constant thread of Overpopulation, we are “Too Many”, and all kinds of Racisms, We against them, etc. On overpopulation, there is nothing further from the truth, we can host thousands of trillions if the greens and tree huggers and environmentalists weren’t such selfish – egotistical slobs that want to hog it all up for themselves, not even noticing how selfish – egotistical and criminal they really are, all along thinking that they are right and correct and good, etc. What morons! the whole deal of overpopulation is a subtle device the rich and capitalists imposed to get a war going between poor people, to create resource “contention” when in fact there are no resource contentions, only rich and ruling class and capitalists that have set things up by design, that have planned this war between people from the outset, but everyone keeps on buying into overpopulation, there is not enough for everyone, etc.
And if people misbehave, they will be programmed accordingly, they will have some of their neural circuits changed (by computers, not by Man as Man is not reliable, too much of a slave to impulses and his Free Will and his never ending internal contradictions, unsatisfactions, confusions) and we must decompose that entity called Free Will in people so as people no longer contrast and fight each other. They become one unit, one monolithic block of Matter Saturating the Entire Universe with the [b]”Power of Symbol Over Matter”, “Symbol Over the Laws of Physics”…[/b]
Now go on little Ryan, go on little Betty, copy this all and bring it to your teacher, another A+ and GOLD star, go on San Jose Mommy, check it out, bring it to your Boss (or your husbands, or whoever supports you), you will get another raise, they will like it a lot, finally some direction in a world that has lost all possible directions.
And check out this Mental Contraption that fell from the Sun in Betty and Ryan’s backyard:
QII(//WII(//WOOO///////&&GJJJHKKK/////TTELLELLL=======
Whaow, what on earth is going on in there, honey bunch ? Wowo, that is really far out, I see all kinds of Mass to Thought converters, Aggregators to disaggregators, units to independence limit machines, wow, so much to discover and play around with. Betty and Ryan are going to have a ball today!
Quo Vadis ? baby …
Uh, ooh, Forgot the BOLDS, and added some while I am at it, where is Freud when you need him ?
Whatever happened to “Progress” ?
It used to be that people looked forward towards the future for better, improved, more possibilities, all kinds of possible improvements. And in fact the word “Scientist” was held in great respect, they were the high priests planning the future, bringing forth progress and a better future. Then, somewhere down the line, all kinds of reactionary Right Wing Thugs, Environmentalists who are so totally obsessed with that huge pile of crap they call “Nature” and so completely obsessed with that other boogie man called “overpopulation”, capitalists and puny small businesses – entrepreneurs, and just plain dumb folks, ignorant, craps, you name it simply decided TO KILL THE FUTURE. And plan for a new dark ages, nay, a new stone age as Kunstler’s World made by Hand (better known as Ape world of Man returning to Ape condition because he was a scaredy cat of the future, what total punks all of these people be!).
No more Rockets to Mars (we need trillions of these!), No more Skyscrapers (we need trillions of these! and remember to emphasize BIG numbers, to make a point, a make a statement, to make it clear that you are talking about BIG THINGS, change you can believe in BIG TIME), No more Cheap Rents and Free Salaries (we need trillions of these for thousands of trillions of people, all of them being Scientists and Technicians and Engineers, all of them with wildly Modified brains and Minds, and Mental Contraptions), No more Pride, Ambition, Goals, Collective Goals, Unity of Intent, MIND OVER MATTER, Super Consumption (to KILL AND DEMOLISH ALL AND EVERY POSSIBLE TRACE OF NATURE!) a kind of Super Nationalism, adoration and Worship for the Symbol and Symbols, (and of each of these we need trillions of these and as Intensity goes trillions of times more intense than the puny intensity of everyday life), etc.
On this website and so, so many others there is this huge constant thread of Overpopulation, we are “Too Many”, and all kinds of Racisms, We against them, etc. On overpopulation, there is nothing further from the truth, we can host thousands of trillions if the greens and tree huggers and environmentalists weren’t such selfish – egotistical slobs that want to hog it all up for themselves, not even noticing how selfish – egotistical and criminal they really are, all along thinking that they are right and correct and good, etc. What morons! the whole deal of overpopulation is a subtle device the rich and capitalists imposed to get a war going between poor people, to create resource “contention” when in fact there are no resource contentions, only rich and ruling class and capitalists that have set things up by design, that have planned this war between people from the outset, but everyone keeps on buying into overpopulation, there is not enough for everyone, etc.
And if people misbehave, they will be programmed accordingly, they will have some of their neural circuits changed (by computers, not by Man as Man is not reliable, too much of a slave to impulses and his Free Will and his never ending internal contradictions, unsatisfactions, confusions) and we must decompose that entity called Free Will in people so as people no longer contrast and fight each other. They become one unit, one monolithic block of Matter Saturating the Entire Universe with the “Power of Symbol Over Matter”, “Symbol Over the Laws of Physics”…
Now go little Ryan, go on little Betty, copy this all and bring it to your teacher, another A+ and GOLD star, go on San Jose Mommy, check it out, bring it to your Boss (or your husbands, or whoever supports you), you will get another raise, they will like it a lot, finally some direction in a world that has lost all possible directions.
And check out this Mental Contraption that fell from the Sun in Betty and Ryan’s backyard:
QII(//WII(//WOOO///////&&GJJJHKKK/////TTELLELLL=======
Whaow, what on earth is going on in there, honey bunch ? Wowo, that is really far out, I see all kinds of Mass to Thought converters, Aggregators to disaggregators, units to independence limit machines, wow, so much to discover and play around with. Betty and Ryan are going to have a ball today!
Quo Vadis ? baby …
“Just passing along what I’m seeing for those who care…”
You remind me of Francis, except you hear more of the creatures. God bless.
Asoka, to go from a Seaman to Fleet Admiral is pretty impressive, no?
-Marlin
Old/Spider6699 et al;
Dude, once again, WTF are you talking about?
-Marlin
“Or did the Catholic Church never delve so deeply into these waters?”
That boat don’t float.
I guess this BLOG’s name fits. So in 2011 we learn that people who sport tatoos are either self absorbed that need to be marked “special” beyond the identity their cranium’s can muster for self or so short of self esteem they copy their peers acts of idiocy.
The the mental midget who fashions himself a philosopher goes all racial this – racial that and make the whole boat stink.
Back to the comics, this ain’t happening.
“I think the tattoo trend today is just another expression of the lawlessness that exists in society.”
Bingo.
Uh ooh, another spelling error in the “spelling error correction”, another infinite recursion, why is everything an infinite recursion for me!?!
Go see if you can find it Betty, go man go, like a nice little girly, go for it!
Uh, ooh, Forgot the BOLDS, and added some while I am at it, where is Freud when you need him ?
Whatever happened to “Progress” ?
It used to be that people looked forward towards the future for better, improved, more possibilities, all kinds of possible improvements. And in fact the word “Scientist” was held in great respect, they were the high priests planning the future, bringing forth progress and a better future. Then, somewhere down the line, all kinds of reactionary Right Wing Thugs, Environmentalists who are so totally obsessed with that huge pile of crap they call “Nature” and so completely obsessed with that other boogie man called “overpopulation”, capitalists and puny small businesses – entrepreneurs, and just plain dumb folks, ignorant, craps, you name it simply decided TO KILL THE FUTURE. And plan for a new dark ages, nay, a new stone age as Kunstler’s World made by Hand (better known as Ape world of Man returning to Ape condition because he was a scaredy cat of the future, what total punks all of these people be!).
No more Rockets to Mars (we need trillions of these!), No more Skyscrapers (we need trillions of these! and remember to emphasize BIG numbers, to make a point, to make a statement, to make it clear that you are talking about BIG THINGS, change you can believe in BIG TIME), No more Cheap Rents and Free Salaries (we need trillions of these for thousands of trillions of people, all of them being Scientists and Technicians and Engineers, all of them with wildly Modified brains and Minds, and Mental Contraptions), No more Pride, Ambition, Goals, Collective Goals, Unity of Intent, MIND OVER MATTER, Super Consumption (to KILL AND DEMOLISH ALL AND EVERY POSSIBLE TRACE OF NATURE!) a kind of Super Nationalism, adoration and Worship for the Symbol and Symbols, (and of each of these we need trillions of these and as Intensity goes trillions of times more intense than the puny intensity of everyday life), etc.
On this website and so, so many others there is this huge constant thread of Overpopulation, we are “Too Many”, and all kinds of Racisms, We against them, etc. On overpopulation, there is nothing further from the truth, we can host thousands of trillions if the greens and tree huggers and environmentalists weren’t such selfish – egotistical slobs that want to hog it all up for themselves, not even noticing how selfish – egotistical and criminal they really are, all along thinking that they are right and correct and good, etc. What morons! the whole deal of overpopulation is a subtle device the rich and capitalists imposed to get a war going between poor people, to create resource “contention” when in fact there are no resource contentions, only rich and ruling class and capitalists that have set things up by design, that have planned this war between people from the outset, but everyone keeps on buying into overpopulation, there is not enough for everyone, etc.
And if people misbehave, they will be programmed accordingly, they will have some of their neural circuits changed (by computers, not by Man as Man is not reliable, too much of a slave to impulses and his Free Will and his never ending internal contradictions, unsatisfactions, confusions) and we must decompose that entity called Free Will in people so as people no longer contrast and fight each other. They become one unit, one monolithic block of Matter Saturating the Entire Universe with the “Power of Symbol Over Matter”, “Symbol Over the Laws of Physics”…
Now go little Ryan, go on little Betty, copy this all and bring it to your teacher, another A+ and GOLD star, go on San Jose Mommy, check it out, bring it to your Boss (or your husbands, or whoever supports you), you will get another raise, they will like it a lot, finally some direction in a world that has lost all possible directions.
And check out this Mental Contraption that fell from the Sun in Betty and Ryan’s backyard:
QII(//WII(//WOOO///////&&GJJJHKKK/////TTELLELLL=======
Whaow, what on earth is going on in there, honey bunch ? Wowo, that is really far out, I see all kinds of Mass to Thought converters, Aggregators to disaggregators, units to independence limit machines, wow, so much to discover and play around with. Betty and Ryan are going to have a ball today!
Quo Vadis ? baby …
Take the useful events
For your tall.
Red mouth.
To hell with power and hate and war.
The mouth of a pretty girl …
The weather in the highest soul
Put the tips of your fingers
on a baby man;
Teach him to be beautiful.
To hell with power and hate and war.
Tell God that we like
The rain, the snow, the flowers,
And trees, and all things gentle and clean
That have growth on the earth.
White winds
Golden fields.
To hell with power and hate and war.
-Kenneth Patchen
Instructions for Angels
-Marlin
That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. Thank you.
MD, that’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. Thank you for the compliment.
Marlin,
‘Tweren’t me texted you. (I don’t do da texting t’ing.) ;o) I’m a simple “phone call” kinda person.
Hey! What the fuck is up with the loooooong, loud, and ludicrous today!?
My klaxons [once again] are blatting out a warning: “Distractions; Bullshittery; Distractions; Pay no attention to that Kunstler behind the curtain; Leave blog; Nothing to see or read here; Run, Run, Run Away!”
I know it’s extreme, but why WOULDN’T those in thrall to the gummint propaganda machine concentrate a few [camo-clad] resources on destroying readership and considered commentary here (amongst the aware)? It would likely be a prime target in the program to dumb down the ‘Murkin “publick”, and keep us all hopelessly mired in ignorance (and thus, easily manipulated).
Don’t forget, we read Kunstler for entertaining takes on a decidedly grim reality. That’s how we can handle predicaments that can’t be “fixed”: we make a few dark jokes about it, and then move on to get busy with something that might actually build a bit of resilience. To those “in charge”, THAT is a dangerous thing, as it breeds independent thinking (and conversely, a lack of dependence on those who prey on the helpless… ummm, yer basic fascists).
Just as an aside, yer basic fascists are NOT illusory, that’s just what they’d have you think; they’re quite real and are throwing a small portion of their vast wealth into creating puppets and attendant brownshirts.
So much bullshittery (tm MM), so little time [for an empire in decline, racing for domination against the grinding wheels of collapse].
Its dark out, Jack
The stations out there don’t identify themselves
We’re in a raw-blind, like burned rats
Its running out
All around us
The footprints of the beast, on nobody has any notion of
The white and vacant eyes
Of something above there
Something that doesn’t know we exist
I smell heartbreak up there, Jack
A heartbreak at the center of things –
And in which we don’t figure at all.
-Kenneth Patchen
All the Roary Night
-Marlin
So to summarize: Worst drought in over 100 years causes water levels behind Three Gorges Dam to fall. Dam generators are a different elevations; as the water falls more get cut off. Hydropower production is cheap and completely domestic relative to coal and petroleum. The loss of hydropower therefore eliminates de-facto energy subsidies. Electric power producers have been regulated into becoming price takers but this loss of subsidies makes it impossible to continue producing. Minimal adjustments to the price of electricity are offset by coal shortages caused by crises in Australia, Mongolia, South Africa.
Meanwhile People’s Bank of China PBOC has been doing counter-QE2 cach injections and selling bond repurchases. Follow me on twitter to see this develop in realtime @babystrangeloop
So. all I have to do is have my social security check direct deposited into my USA bank account.
Whenever I need money … I can withdraw local currency as easily as I withdraw dollars here.
===============
WOW!! Clever idea. I’ll bet the IRS never thought of that. [sarcasm off]
We’ve been getting a preview of TLE with intermittent power outages today, and actually with some regularity since we’ve been here. Sorry for the double post.
Another provacative essay by Jim, last week’s essay had faint echoes of the “Book of Esther” from a torah studies viewpoint, this week is more reality based at least from an educated jew’s point of view of life at the place in society where the residents are not even on the bottom rung anymore.
Tatoos amongst whites IMO are mostly that of despair being displayed, whites have become Quee Queg from “Moby Dick”, too bad for them, I suggest they turn off the TV. If you spot a white person with tats and dreamcatcher paraphenalia you are looking at the lowest a white person can go before they might as well be reborn in a lower darker caste or a bug.
Non-whites do not need to read any further. Listen white people if you are feeling despair and you have the urge to ink up or buy a dreamcatcher from Chief Wannabe I suggest you turn off the TV and go fix something. Thank me later
– on the heartbreaks of agriculture-
Yeah, my mother’s dad bought an excellent piece of land in 1928. Not the most propitious year for land purchases in the deep South, btw.
He had one mule, one wife, one 12 year old daughter (my mom), one 14 year old son, and a 5 year old son. They had 50 acres planted in some corn, but mostly in cotton. Hardly any of us alive today can understand the work, sweat, and love that went into those fields. The corn was tasseling and the tiny cotton bolls were looking good.
Late one afternoon that week, a normal thundercloud came up in the distance. “Sounds like rain, we can sure use it.”
That’s the standard saying of farmers throughout the world, I believe, hoping for rain during dry weather.
But that cloud dropped enough hail on their fields to strip the bolls off the cotton and beat up the corn. They could tell by looking that they were not going to make a cotton crop that year. That meant that they were going to lose their new farm and all their year’s work.
– you talk about making the best of a bad situation –
My granddad put the kids to picking up hailstones from where they had gathered below the eves of the house. He mixed the hail with salt in an old galvanized bucket. They took some of their sweet fresh milk and cream, mixed it with sugar and some of my grandmother’s precious vanilla and poured it into glasses.
Ice cream was a rare treat in those days, in the rural South. My granddad said a Blessing over the ice cream, and they all celebrated that small joy together, before heading out to prop up and rescue what little remained of their crop.
Later that summer they had to back in with my great grandmother’s folks. They had no other options. You could always count on family in those days – sometimes that was about all you had to fall back on.
– a reading from the book of hard times –
It’s one world, baby, … GOG
No it ain’t. That’s a utopian view. The practical fact is that you can’t just cross borders without getting thrown in jail.
And weren’t you all immigrants too? – GOG
This question was directed at Vlad but it could be directed at anybody born on this continent. I don’t know about you GOG but I was born here and lived all my life here. I am not an immigrant. Canada is home and always has been. I have no memory of or loyalty to a foreign homeland or a foreign people.
Aboriginals have legitimate gripes but I can’t re-write history. I’m just as born here as they are. They are going to have to take the bull by the horns and better their own lot. The best we can do is to give them a hand up, to not impede them or screw them up worse.
I know they can do it because I’ve seen it done. My elementary school principal was an Indian. He was a fine fellow, a pillar of the community and his kids were part of the gang, always out with us playing baseball and street hockey. I’ve seen other examples also. My university roommate was 1/2 (or thereabouts) Cherokee by way of his American grandparents. He’s got a PHD in psychology and works as a clinical psychologist. It’s not always alcoholism and degradation for Aboriginals.
This will make Vlad cringe but I agree that racial inter-marriage/inter-breeding is a good thing. I think it’s good to give the human genome a good churn. Anyway human libido will do its thing. It always has. Vlad might as well curse the tides.
Given time the natural process of evolution will sort out the issue of skin colour based on the degree of solar radiation at different latitudes. As time passes the descendants of people in the northern latitudes will become lighter skinned or white regardless of their present day skin colour and the opposite for people further south. Again Vladdy, you might as well curse the tides.
I appreciate the cabinet appointment! So how do I get a CFN chapter assignment? Do you give them out? Do I get to list my cabinet position at the bottom of my posts, or is that considered bombastic, and to be kept at Post ID only?
Any chance I could reassign my position as Minister of Horticulture instead of Agriculture? Doesn’t sound as important to agrarian people, I know, but then, since agriculture depends on growth to operate, and its replacement-elect is something a lot more like horticulture, it’s really just the perception that needs to catch up.
To my mind, it’d be like I was an early Norse Christian and you wanted me to go by the title Minister of Paganism.
“Aboriginals have legitimate gripes but I can’t re-write history. I’m just as born here as they are. They are going to have to take the bull by the horns and better their own lot. The best we can do is to give them a hand up, to not impede them or screw them up worse.”
I wish more of us Canadians felt this way. Seems far too many are happy to let the aboriginals suffer, happy to see our elected governments dither away time, resources and responsibilities. We like to pat ourselves on the back here in Canada with our human rights posturing on the global scene, but our treatment of first nations people is gut-wrenchingly awful, shameful. And we wonder why things like Caledonia happen?
BrentMc:
Kunstler apparently got a bit wrong about Belgium. However, judging from your not refuting it, I gather that the mayonnaise thing is accurate.
Thus, Kunstler’s most damning indictment of the Belgians stands.
Regarding American exceptionalism:
Someone should write a treatise on the various forms of folly that originate in American exceptionalism:
1). The notion of the constitutional fundamentalists that if you simply adhere to the principles of our Constitution, you are immune from the laws of physics and nature.
2). The notion of the neocons that you can transplant Jeffersonian Democracy with some troops and cheeze doodles.
3). The notion of the progressives that you can allow unrestricted immigration without creating a Soylent Green style dystopia.
Interestingly, all major political factions in the US employ exceptionalism in order to prop up their ludicrous agendas.
Yeah and remember the stand off at Oka?
There’s atoning to be done but where to start? How do you re-set the clocks? It’s a hard thing to unravel a five hundred year old calamity.
And I think that while Harper was issuing apologies for the shitty treatment of native kids in those residential schools he might have gone further. But while saying “sorry” is a start how does it help a multitude of de-railed lives?
I really hate to paraphrase Reagan(?) here but I think that this is one place where govt really isn’t the solution, govt is the problem. It just helped to perpetuate and sustain an awful mess.
So what to do with these “First Nations”? This system we have isn’t working. I think that they have to get out into wider society and look after themselves. Make a new start. I think it’s the only way forward for them.
“I think that they have to get out into wider society and look after themselves. Make a new start. I think it’s the only way forward for them.”
I’m inclined to agree with you here, however many first nations councils, tribes, etc. seem to still want a degree of self-governance. I guess this would be a version of the reservation system, only better? I don’t really have a problem with that either, but having them so beholden to gov’t hand-outs is a lose-lose: they never really get off their feet as a community, and the rest of Canadians tend to resent them for their “privileges.” Of course, they often have unpotable drinking water…
Great story Prog. And maybe that is why your grandad was able to fabricate a moment of ice-cream in the midst of a catastrophe – your family had a safety net. But wow, talk about experiencing the hard reality of nature; I’m not sure a pink slip from the office could deliver such visceral impact.
Hey Jim, good post. You wrote: “I stopped at a convenience store at the edge of the Adirondack Mountains on Saturday afternoon and a more frightening gaggle of disfigured mutts I have never seen before.”
This seems to be happening everywhere now. I ride (cycling) a lot in WI, and was just there over the weekend. We stop at a lot of gas stations / mini marts, and you’ll see the same type of folks. But, also very fat, smokers, tats, dirty clothes. Plus, a lot of these poor bastards, buy their food at these crappy stores, if you can call it real food.
Another thing I noticed, they like to leave the cars running, while they’re in the store. WTF?
Sorry, this country is fucked!
I think I have to agree with Max Keiser, when he says Americans are stupid, most anyway.
Race horses are largely descended from Arabian Horses. But those horses are very small and to improve size and THEREFORE speed, they very carefully bred them with larger European horses – always trying to keep the Arabian genes for speed paramount. Your idea of willy nilly mixing is just a recipe for dysgenics or disaster – like putting an Arabian with an old nag. Miscegenation is good? For who? For what? Good for the Goverment? Yes, because they don’t want a high level citizenry to call them to account.
Because we aren’t animals, we can say no to our instincts. This pays dividends in our lives. Saying no to sex with people from the Tropics means that our descendants will tend to be smart and prosperous. And they will rule the descendants of those who could not say no to this forbiden pleasure. All of Latin America and Brazil bears witness to my words.
Just because you are an out breeder doesn’t mean you have argue for it. Are you trying to justify it after all these years? You married a person of a high IQ race. If you had children, the forgoing would not apply, but there would be other social problems – alienation, lack of cohesion. Society can bear a few people who did as you did, but not too many. I’m fine with some mixing in port cities or border cities. But everywhere? And to make that the official ideology? Such heterogenity is the death of any culture.
“This will make Vlad cringe but I agree that racial inter-marriage/inter-breeding is a good thing.”
Your time frame and goals {or lack thereof} will bite you in the ass. One generation – hybrid vigor – two generations – perhaps sterility – perhaps worse.
Of course this depends also on how pure of stock you start with. Then you have to consider multiple offspring. The firstborn might be a fine specimen of flesh, after that things go different.
Telegony has its limits.
When you start talking about humans, like I am now, you must consider cultural contributions of both parents which will probably produce confusion and chaos. This is the prize of assimulationists since confused people are easier to manage with fear, loneliness and threats of hunger.
Hello to all the smart folks here. Not sure if this is the right forum for such a question; there seems to be a lot of “let me prove just how much more intelligent I am than you” going on, but I’d really like to learn what some of the advice for escaping this increasingly ridiculous country are. Where to move? How to make oneself economically viable in a land not dependent on the American dollar, etc. I know these are broad questions, but a simple starting point I think.
Thanks
I remember reading a diary of an early North Dakota resident.
They worked all summer and had fields of wheat ready to harvest, when a thunderstorm came and destroyed the entire crop.
Some of my potatoes drowned, but some survived.
The corn field next door was flooded, but it looks like most of it survived. I don’t know what the yields will be.
Weirdly, there is about a 20 acre field down the street that no one has planted yet.
Something fishy is going on here. Last year, they suddenly started building houses on a soybean field and didn’t even bother harvesting it, just bulldozed it.
Eventually they put up a sign, bragging the the Illinois Housing Development and President Barack Obama were responsible. For the travesty.
Now they have open house signs and balloons up, but I don’t see a lot of people clamoring to live there.
They are out in a field, with no trees, no awnings over the south windows and half of them have air conditioners on the south side of the house.
Who the hell approved those plans?
Official Field Memorandum
CFNation HQ
06/07/2011
Dept of Agriculture hereby changed to Dept of
Horticulture.
Minister of Horticulture, Trippticket, Georgia, USA, CFNation.
Signed,
Marlin, Chief of Staff
Tripp talks about genetic resistance to some diseases, smallpox, for instance.
National Geographic had an article once about alcohol, and how almost every culture had some form of it.
But, apparently, the North American aborigines didn’t.
We are told that they traded their land for beads, but I read a fascinating book about the history of the US, as seen through the production of rum. (Which, by the way, for the Navy guys here, mentioned how the right of grog for the British Navy came about).
Anyway, beads soon lost their appeal for the Native Americans, and not much else appealed to them, self-sufficient as they were.
But alcohol! They stripped the streams of beaver for bottles of rum.
This upset the sober elders among them, but appeals to white traders on moral grounds didn’t get very far.
Go figure.
I’m just wondering why alcohol seems to wreak such havoc on native communities to this day.
Maybe they need to interbreed with stock that have been drinking for centuries.
“The notion of the constitutional fundamentalists that if you simply adhere to the principles of our Constitution, you are immune from the laws of physics and nature.”
I wouldn’t stop there. Immunity from any higher Law isn’t even claimed, much less expected. The principles of the Constitution build upon the principles of {all} higher Law which is why the founders made explicit notice that this Constitution would only work {perform – ie: actually serve as protection for} a moral people.
Lose the morality and adherence to higher Law and you lose the protections of a Republic, a nation of Laws.
Glad I came back this morning. On the subject of Canada’s aboriginal population, it’s obvious that Cash and TorontoBound have put some thought into the whole issue. So have I. We’ve got a reserve just twenty miles north of town and the kids from there came to town for school so we all hung out together.
Many years later in my working life I had native clients fighting denials of disability pensions and learned from them that the kids I went to school with were also going really North for hunting trips with their fathers and grandfathers. They were learning the art of trapping along with their hunting skills. I had a client who was teaching his ten year old son religious rituals in a special place on their tiny piece of reserve land.
So even as they were well integrated into the mainstream they treasured and practised some of their ancient rituals, keeping their culture alive. And they have every right to do that, just as much as the Scots who next weekend in our town will have their annual Highland Games with grown men in skirts heaving giant twenty foot logs into the air.
The answer to the question of native rights, land claims and redress of past injustices lies beyond my knowledge. For the natives living in our North, without drinking water and proper accommodation for many years, we can’t afford to just let Nature take its course, or to let governments keep dicking them around.
I still say it’s all one world, and who cares what part of the world a person came from? When you steer clear of thoughtless generalizations about whole groups of people and treat each person you encounter with respect, the world becomes much less frightening and we can all move forward without mindless hatred.
I’m not exactly sure what you’re trying to argue. Native Americans are somehow predisposed genetically to ruining their heritage and lives due to alcohol? Interesting, but where can I find the evidence?
That gulch sounds promising. I feel better. Hope it’s not too far from the house.
There was a picture from the Alabama tornados where 2 feet of soil and turf had been stripped right out of the path of the tornado. Unvbeleivable 🙂 power.
I hope some people will pay attention to your media splash. Some of the old foogies will bad mouth you to the high heavens, and then quietly slip by to see how things are going.
Is there a consensus about how soon economic collapse will shut down this country. Is it going to happen within a year, or, will it take another 10, 20, or thirty years. How to predict such a thing?
I hear that “think, live, live think” quote a lot from my AA buddies. Don’t know if it’s from *THE* Big Book, or not. There’s also a large body of oral wisdom that floats around those tables.
The little simple sayings and aphorisms drive you crazy. Usually, because they are so simple assed, but true.
Re: Screaming children. LOL. Reminded me of the movies “Jurassic Park” and the newer “War of the Worlds.” Screaming kids through the whole damn thing. After awhile, I’m thinking to myself “Feed ’em to the dinosaurs!” “Throw them to the aliens!”
But then, I’m childless, myself, which probably colors my outlook.
Farmer John stopped by the other day. I got my CSA box from him last year. Not this year. 1.) I don’t have the money 2.) They didn’t spend a dime in my store. A 90 cent Louis L’Amour would have made all the difference in the world.
Any-who. Farmer John announced that his wife is pregnant, again. I think it’s their 5th. 6th? I couldn’t resist tweaking him, a bit. “Now, John, you’re a farmer. You DO know where those things come from, don’t you?” I thought they’d stop, once he got his boy. Maybe they’re some of those Full Quiver folks. Delicacy prevents one from enquiring too closely.
a great and true post.
The United States is in debt to the tune of nearly a half-million dollars per citizen. Now that’s not per worker or income earner – that is per citizen – including the unemployed.
Just that fact alone suggests that certain default (or hyperinflation) is on the horizon. Just how in Sam hill can average Joe (and each of his children) pay off $500K of debt and still eat? Oh yes, let’s not forget to throw 15 percent unemployment into the equation. I don’t see any way around it but default. Doesn’t look rosy, that’s for sure.
On a brighter note, recently got an unplanned test run of how our solar system will assist us during the phase of peak oil when the electricity grid goes down intermittently and then for good. We had six days without electricity over a large portion of North Alabama due to tornados (another Long Emergency issue). We were the only residence with lights – inside and out – in a large swath of total darkness. I think our friends and neighbors who we invited hang out in our home during this crisis came to appreciate solar power and alternative energy “in a new light” when the carbon-hungry power grid went belly up.
There is more about this at http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/06/solar_energy_helps_brings_madi.html.
Some of our neighbors got generators then they had to drive 50 miles and wait in lines to get gasoline to feed them. Almost all gas stations in the area were without power and hence could not pump gas. Our solar system just kept on supplying quiet, carbon free and noise free power as it has been doing for several years now. No hassles.
I think having a small system with a couple of photovoltaic panels and storage batteries for 24-7 power is a good thing to have, along with other emergency supplies. Maybe better to get setup now, before the great default event happens.
CABRA1080
I have no way of knowing, but I threw it out there for speculation.
Qtip………
What are the laws with regards to expats and Social[in]security?
It amazes me so few can pretend to control so much. When I look at a globe and pretend I want to move, it seems each country is at odds with the globalist system. A very, bloody world war or a planet-size police state are equally to be rejected. Make your stand right where you are, there’s no where else to go.
My friend has solar power, and when our electricity was out after our hurricane, he let the kids recharge their cellphones.
My across the street neighbor ran a generator to power a security light!
Are you kidding? The only light on for miles. I wouldn’t think that would make them less secure.
They were advertising that they had a generator, which I think is easier to steal than a solar panel.
Tattoos 2:
Blacks dont need Tatts!
Cover story from La Times…
Tattoo Arrest: Gang Member With Tattoo of Murder Scene Gets 65 Years
Gang Member With Tattoo of Murder Scene Gets 65 Years ….. There are thousands more behind him to take his place at …
Anthony Garcia, Dumbest Killer Ever, Got Murder Scene Tattooed on
Anthony Garcia, Dumbest Killer Ever, was a run-of-the-mill hood when LA deputies arrested him for a ….www.truecrimereport.com/2011/…/anthony_garcia
Oh, many years ago I saw a study or theory that the farther a population was, in time and space from the invention of alcohol, the less resistance there is to it’s affects and addictive qualities.
So alcohol was invented somewhere in the Middle East, umpity thousand years B.C. (or Before Common Era, BCE, if you want to get all politically correct about it 🙂 . I suppose there’s maybe some natural selection involved. Fucked up teens who off themselves while carrying a full load without issue, do not pass on any genetic predisposition to digest alcohol in a less efficient manner.
It’s that time of the year again, in our little rural county. There’s always a car load (or two) of teens, wiped out on some country road after graduation ceremonies. As sure as the seasons change. Can’t say there’s any noticeable improvement in the local gene pool.
Any-who. That study (or theory) of time and distance and alcohol is out there somewhere. I’m just too lazy to track it down.
The United States is in debt to the tune of nearly a half-million dollars per citizen.
Does euro ville have the same amount of debt?
=============
Google “alcohol abuse among native Americans” and you will find innumerable articles. Here is one link for starters:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k36036222n1v1653/
Any-who. Farmer John announced that his wife is pregnant, again. I think it’s their 5th. 6th..
Why do you care how many he has?
Its not yr concern.
Sounds like ‘Everyone has to be like me’.
Gotcha. I see how the correlation might be drawn, yet it mimics a throwback position to eugenic science that has thankfully been discarded by most intelligent people today. From my own enquiry, it seems there is no basis for the genetic predetermination belief. A predisposition to alcohol use, perhaps, as it is shown that many mammals purposely ingest flora to self-intoxicate, yet to further suggest that some races are uniquely disposed to severe substance abuse is unfounded.
Some will argue that socioeconomic factors are far more determinative of a proclivity toward substance abuse. It seems credible to think that Native Americans increasingly turned to more severe usage of alcohol as whites came to dominate the landscape and change the natural economy they were use to.
Spidey might like this:
“This theory of depletable willpower has its detractors, and, as in most academic topics studied across disciplinary fields, one finds plenty of disputes over the details. But this model of self-control is now one of the most prominent theories of willpower in social psychology, at the core of what E. Tory Higgins of Columbia University described in 2009 as “an explosion of scientific interest” in the topic over the last decade. Some skeptics correctly emphasize the vital role of motivation, and some emphasize instead that “attention” is limited. But the core of the breakthrough is that resolving conflicts among choices is expensive at a cognitive level and can be unpleasant. It causes mental fatigue.
Nowhere is this revelation more important than in our efforts to understand poverty. Taking this model of willpower into the real world, psychologists and economists have been exploring one particular source of stress on the mind: finances. The level at which the poor have to exert financial self-control, they have suggested, is far lower than the level at which the well-off have to do so. Purchasing decisions that the wealthy can base entirely on preference, like buying dinner, require rigorous tradeoff calculations for the poor. As Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir formulated the point in a recent talk, for the poor, “almost everything they do requires tradeoff thinking. It’s distracting, it’s depleting … and it leads to error.” The poor have to make financial tradeoff decisions, as Shafir put it, “on anything above a muffin.”
Last December, Princeton economist Dean Spears published a series of experiments that each revealed how “poverty appears to have made economic decision-making more consuming of cognitive control for poorer people than for richer people.” In one experiment, poor participants in India performed far less well on a self-control task after simply having to first decide whether to purchase body soap. As Spears found, “Choosing first was depleting only for the poorer participants.” Again, if you have enough money, deciding whether to buy the soap only requires considering whether you want it, not what you might have to give up to get it. Many of the tradeoff decisions that the poor have to make every day are onerous and depressing: whether to pay rent or buy food; to buy medicine or winter clothes; to pay for school materials or loan money to a relative. These choices are weighty, and just thinking about them seems to exact a mental cost.”
and you guys wonder why poor people appear flustered…
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/06/136996087/new-republic-let-them-eat-cake-or-dont-bother-baking
Have you seen the new Nissan ad campaign? “What if everything ran on gas?” It’s rather ironic. Because, duh, everything DOES run on gas.
Well, the world WOULD be a better place if everyone were more like me. Rather, than say, you. 🙂
Francis was a Catholic. Give up your hatred. I don’t blame you for hating the Vatican Two Church however. They worship Blacks not Christ.
Not exactly sure of LLB’s general disposition on things, but the comments you took issue with seem relatively innocuous.
Besides, how many children people have these days has an immediate proximal impact on others and a definite impact on the human population generally.
It is a concern, but agreeably one LLB has no power to control. It should be left to individual families to determine how many children they produce, but poor decisions needn’t be tolerated.
Relax, I don’t think dude was suggesting, “Everyone has to be like me.”
Some breeds don’t go well together. Even though Lapps are proto-Causcasians, when mixed with Whites, things don’t fit too well. The heart will be too small for the frame or the jaw too small for the face. Eskimos and Asians mix better with Whites than they do.
Liberalism at its worse. Lucan is a hater. Big time. He covers it up by his down home style and an absurd internet courtlineness – like saying things like “Miss Jackie”. For all his reading, he has never questioned his basic premises.
Well, since I advocated interbreeding to dilute the effects, (mostly to aggravate Vlad,lol), I don’t think that you could see my comment as an eugenic viewpoint.
Well, thanks for providing a link to an abstract, but a quick glance revealed that the study doesn’t hold much water.
It should be pretty easy to reason that alcohol as a foreign substance had pretty dramatic effects on the physiology of Indians, but again, there isn’t much basis for the “genetic predetermination” claim.
Drinking animal milk use to be fatal to humans, but over time, people became tolerant.
By the way, if everything is an addiction, then, nothing is.
Qtip………
What are the laws with regards to expats and Social[in]security?
===========
I don’t know. It’s been too long since I read that article. Things like giving up US citizenship or having dual citizenship come into play.
As my smart-ass daughter would say:
GOOOOOOOO GULLLLLLL IT !!!
No, I didn’t think you were out-rightly espousing a eugenic viewpoint, as some of the oddly articulate but nonetheless crazy racists who patronize this blog do. But the initial comment might induce speculation in that direction — an inadvertent throwback position inferred in your comment.
Anthropological biologist Robert Sapolski has produced some strong science debunking genetic determinism.
Cheers
Northern European stock are more tolerant of cow’s milk than Asians.
I’m pretty sure that it’s genetic.
You can’t possibly think that interbreeding humans leads to sterility in the second generation!
We wouldn’t have 7 billion people on this planet if that were true.
I know that you’re more into faith than reason, but it doesn’t take that much thinking to know that the second generation of mixed marriages are not sterile.
Well, maybe, but you’re missing the point. genetic comprisals are not static.
Also, no single racial designation epitomizes the best or most optimal form of human physiology to date, as that premise works against evolutionary adaptation. In other words, nature favors no single form of life.
Double post:
Well, maybe, but you’re missing the point. genetic comprisals are not static.
Also, no single racial designation epitomizes the best or most optimal form of human physiology to date, as that premise works against evolutionary adaptation. In other words, nature favors no single form of life, thus way of life.
Will the country shut down completely? I doubt it.
For millions of people, though, life is already different.
30,000,000 people have lost their jobs. Millions have lost their houses. People are going to food banks who never had to before. Tripp is growing his own food.
And that’s just the economic refugees.
What about the refugees from floods and fires? Hurricanes and tornadoes?
Economic collapse most likely will not hit everyone, especially the 1% at the top. They should be fine.
Although, Bear Stearns employees are probably not all better off now.
I am aware there are only 2 countries that require
Citizens who have permanently left their countries to still pay taxes[US and Phillipines].[Or so Im told]
I thought you might have info on if Citizens abroad can ‘still get their checks’.
+1
asia asked: “What are the laws with regards to expats and Social[in]security?”
————————
asia, if you are a full time resident abroad for a full calendar year, or live there for 330 days out of any consecutive 12-month period, you can exclude up to $91,500 of earned income from U.S. Income Taxation for 2010. If you are married, and both of you earn income and reside abroad, you can also exclude up to another $91,500 of your spouse income from taxation.
I never earned $91,500 in any of the 45 years I worked. Qshtik knows my social security income is $12,000 a year, so paying taxes is not necessary.
Qshtik is just trying to scare people who are thinking of leaving the USA.
‘Relax, I don’t think dude was suggesting, “Everyone has to be like me’
You ‘Relax’! I dont want yr advice.
and :
‘ how many children people have these days has an immediate proximal impact on others and a definite impact on the human population generally.
‘It is a concern, but poor decisions needn’t be tolerated.’
The poor decision was opening the flood gate in 1965.
‘human population generally’..I dont care about the general population, only that of the USA,
and regardless of how many children citizens have
the only reason the population here increases is due to..
1…immigration
2…anchor babies
3…refugees
Well, if the dollar collapses and the economy shuts down,then how will the 1% be any more secure than anyone else?
If there are people who have prepared for such a collapse by growing gardens, storing weapons and tools, then how will those few be any more safe from organized marauders than those who haven’t?
I guess what I’m really trying to figure is what degree of collapse is likely, when it’ll happen, and how the brightest will survive it. No clear cut answers I guess.
asia, the USA only has tax treaties with 60 countries. The country I am going to, country X, does not have a tax treaty, which means I must pay tax on income in the same way and at the same rates shown in the instructions for the applicable U.S. tax return.
For Asoka and Mrs. Asoka, with a $12,000 annual income, that means no tax will ever be due. We can actually save half our income, because we can live very well on $6,000 a year in country X.
there isn’t much basis for the “genetic predetermination” claim.
=================
No need to get all testy about it Rock. You asked a question and I did some leg-work for you. I take it you don’t like the idea that something might have a genetic basis. To believe so might lend credibility to some of Vlad’s claims.
When I was a kid my maternal grandfather lived with us in his later years. I would come home from school, take one look at him and know instantly he was loaded … droopy face muscles, rheumy eyes, some telltale tics and twitches. I’d go over to a place in the kitchen where a trash can was nestled in a corner formed by the refrigerator and a wall and there, supposedly hidden, would be a half empty (full?) quart bottle of beer in a paper bag. Grandad couldn’t hold alcohol to save his ass. To my knowledge he had neither Indian nor Irish blood in him (wink wink) … so who knows why he was so alcoholically challenged? Around 1950 Grandad made a perfect Y shaped slingshot for me that hangs from a hook in my man cave to this day. I’m staring at it right now.
“I’m really trying to figure is what degree of collapse is likely, when it’ll happen, and how the brightest will survive it.”
—————
I thought the collapse was going to happen today.
I am now officially revising my prediction:
The collapse will be massive, it will occur at 2:00 p.m. next Tuesday, and no one gets out alive.
I get it now. You’re one of those Right VS Left folks. Good luck with that never-ending, philosophical back and forth. Incidentally, the only borders you should be concerned with are the ones enclosing your perceptions. Save this final crumb, as it is the last you’ll receive from me.
Hay Flad, I have just one word for you:
FUCKYOU!
There, that feels much better…
Asoka, hope you can get out sooner than later, things in the EEUU are going down hill fast.
Espero que les puede pasar por sobre su camino a través de CR, mis amigo.
‘To all US citizens departing for countries where the grass appears to be greener, I recommend you carefully research the laws about drawing Social Security checks, pensions, and taking IRA and 401K distributions. The financial implications can be onerous. Q-
What is your point? Are you a government shill trying to scare us? So we still have a certain amount of US income, and we bring it down here, its not even enough to pay taxes on dummie. We done cashed out and brought all our other assets with us, and yes, had to pay some tax on it, but it was worth it as we won’t be pay any more US taxes. There is nothing illegal about living abroad and getting Soc Sec or any other type of US derived income. So stop the scare tactics.
For Jackie et al, feel free to do your own research and find the place that feels best, then take some time to check it out, like live there for a few months at the very least. Not just a two week vacation. If it don’t feel right, move on. But don’t just move someplace you have never even visited, much less spent some real time living there.
DJ 🙂
I guess I shouldn’t treat it as prophecy. Your gest wasn’t lost. I was taken aback, though, by all of the varying insights on this site. Much more knowledgeable folks than I seem to be able to speak so precisely about all the issues facing us, yet the goal posts are constantly moved.
“I know that you’re more into faith than reason, but it doesn’t take that much thinking to know that the second generation of mixed marriages are not sterile.”
That is why I identified when I switched from discussing interbreeding to discussing intermarriage.
Spidey will like this:
“This theory of depletable willpower has its detractors, and, as in most academic topics studied across disciplinary fields, one finds plenty of disputes over the details. But this model of self-control is now one of the most prominent theories of willpower in social psychology, at the core of what E. Tory Higgins of Columbia University described in 2009 as “an explosion of scientific interest” in the topic over the last decade. Some skeptics correctly emphasize the vital role of motivation, and some emphasize instead that “attention” is limited. But the core of the breakthrough is that resolving conflicts among choices is expensive at a cognitive level and can be unpleasant. It causes mental fatigue.
Nowhere is this revelation more important than in our efforts to understand poverty. Taking this model of willpower into the real world, psychologists and economists have been exploring one particular source of stress on the mind: finances. The level at which the poor have to exert financial self-control, they have suggested, is far lower than the level at which the well-off have to do so. Purchasing decisions that the wealthy can base entirely on preference, like buying dinner, require rigorous tradeoff calculations for the poor. As Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir formulated the point in a recent talk, for the poor, “almost everything they do requires tradeoff thinking. It’s distracting, it’s depleting … and it leads to error.” The poor have to make financial tradeoff decisions, as Shafir put it, “on anything above a muffin.”
Last December, Princeton economist Dean Spears published a series of experiments that each revealed how “poverty appears to have made economic decision-making more consuming of cognitive control for poorer people than for richer people.” In one experiment, poor participants in India performed far less well on a self-control task after simply having to first decide whether to purchase body soap. As Spears found, “Choosing first was depleting only for the poorer participants.” Again, if you have enough money, deciding whether to buy the soap only requires considering whether you want it, not what you might have to give up to get it. Many of the tradeoff decisions that the poor have to make every day are onerous and depressing: whether to pay rent or buy food; to buy medicine or winter clothes; to pay for school materials or loan money to a relative. These choices are weighty, and just thinking about them seems to exact a mental cost.”
“The first shall be last and the last shall be first” is now scientifically justified.
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/06/136996087/new-republic-let-them-eat-cake-or-dont-bother-baking
Well, a great-grandfather of mine used to take the pledge every year…but not until after St Patrick’s day!
The dollar will collapse, but I don’t know when.
But there will still be an economy, even if it’s just bartering.
Will intelligent people be the ones to survive?
Who knows? My theory is that intelligent people have been persecuted for the last 2,000 years, at least, and have been less likely to survive.
The only thing that we can do, in my opinion, is what Tripp is doing, trying to build a sustainable piece of ground on which you can scratch out an existence. And hope that marauders or tornadoes don’t take it all.
Don’t you worry about that 1%. They’ve already got their plans, and it appears that some of them are doing the Asoka scheme, getting the hell out of the US.
http://nauinfo.blogspot.com/2008/07/bush-and-moonies-make-huge-land-grabs.html
No testiness involved. No need to editorialize, either.
Not too familiar with Vlad’s claims, so why you’re invoking him/her is unclear. Perhaps you’re seeking an ally. But all claims aside, only the evidence matters, and said evidence suggests that genes are not strong determinants for behavior. Susceptibility, OK, but environment conduces to aberrant behavior far more reliably than genetic disposition.
Having elder relatives who’ve struggled with addiction also, I learned that willpower fades with age and stopping becomes increasingly difficult, yet their affliction never seemed inexplicable.
Oh, and using Google as one’s go-to research tool is rather silly for an old guy.
that must be it . it has to be someone else’s fault.
Exactly. I’ve been following JHK’s predictions since Y2K (a failed predication). The goal posts have been moving regularly for 12 years now.
We’ve had all the metaphors you can think of (Nausea is actually a recycled metaphor) and still no TSHTF, still no massive bank failures, still no hyperinflation, still nobody storming the Hamptons with pitchforks, still no 4,000 DOW, still no abandoned cars littering the landscape for lack of gasoline, still no breakdown of the box store distribution system, still no empty grocery store shelves, still no bands of marauding gangs (scary black and brown-skinned gangsters with tattoos), still none of the things that are discussed endlessly on this blog under the rubric of: “we are so fucked!”
Peak oil means we are at the peak of production.
It took a century to get here. With demand destruction we’ve been stable for a few years.
The Long Emergency will be a 47 year slide down the other side of the production peak, what Tripp refers to as “energy descent”. Relax and enjoy the ride.
I am going to move to country X, where I can live like a king for $6,000 a year, with lots of fertile soil, rain, fresh tropical fruits, and zero heating and zero cooling degree days: 75 degrees every day. 65 degrees every night, 365 days a year. Nothing but a wool blanket needed to sleep cozy, snug as a bug in a rug.
Environment means much more than “someone else.” Dingle-berry.
A letter from out here – Small rural county half-way between Portland and Seattle.
Interesting article on the front page, today. The monthly county real estate report. The median home price last May was $164,950. In April of this year, it was $139,900. This May it was $124,950.
Our letter’s to the editor are always worth a look. Today some guy is urging employers not to hire Pro-Choice people. He refers to himself as a “second generation abortion survivor.” That’s a new one in the annals of victim-hood, for me. Apparently, his “evil grandmother” tried to off-load Ma, and it didn’t take. What’s that old saw about retro-active abortions?
CFN, Post 5, Western Cascadian Division
The Long Emergency will come to different people, at different times in different places. It’s all going to be a crap shot with a lot of luck involved. Like, life.
You might want to check out Michael Greer’s websites. The address the issues your concerned about. They are also moderated, so there’s not as much dross to wade through.
http://www.thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com
http://www.greenwizards.org
So, stay loose, keep your eye on the ball, your shoulder to the wheel, etc.. Be adaptable.Travel light.
No one gets out alive. But what with the perfect storm of peak oil, climate change and economic collapse, the expiration dates are getting closer.
The other big question that gets kicked around a lot on the different boards is what occupation / skills should I be shooting for to get me through the Long Emergency, fat and happy.
No definitive answer to that question, either. But lots of speculation and possibilities.
What is your point? Are you a government shill trying to scare us?
===========
No Dee, I am just a person with a financial background who takes interest in such things … like a bird watcher watches birds.
Too bad I have no way to lay my hands on the particular article I spoke of. I believe it was in one of the Agora Financial publications such as Whiskey and Gunpowder, The Daily Reckoning, etc that arrive daily in my inbox.
The article was way more detailed than I conveyed here and it goes almost without saying that for people who leave “without a pot to piss in” as it were, such as yourself and Mr and Mrs Asoka, you have little to be concerned with. Although, there were some eye opening ramifications if a person later decided to return to the US.
Many of the tradeoff decisions that the poor have to make every day are onerous and depressing: whether to pay rent or buy food; to buy medicine or winter clothes; to pay for school materials or loan money to a relative. These choices are weighty, and just thinking about them seems to exact a mental cost.”
Exactly. Viewed in this light, one might see how first nations people, who overwhelmingly live below the poverty line, might be predisposed to having a drink. And if you can’t afford a case of beer or bottle of Jack, you’re gonna try to dampen them blues with whatever you can afford (ie mouthwash, shoe polish, etc.), something potent to knock back the pain. I’m not an authority on this, but having lived in native communities in the past, and seen this stuff up close, you begin to have an enormous amount of sympathy.
Hey Jim
Late again this week. Pretty good discussion about Greece, yes it is going to be very interesting to see what happens there. This latest “bailout” also includes actual governance by the financial entities giving the bailout( ECB & IMF ) so this is a much more serious intrusion into the government of Greece than has been attempted before by these crooks. The people there know the score and I think this will be the final straw, I believe civil war is imminenet in Greece. After all those people have already been enduring “austerity” for 2 years( 16% unemployment) and now they are told “We want more” by the thieves at ECB and IMF. Well they know they have nothing to lose, starve to death or fight. MMMMM what would you do?
Make no mistake the Irish also know the score, note the widely circulated picture of a protester in Ireland holding a sign saying “International MotherFuckers”. So I look to Ireland having big troubles soon too.
By the way in case all of you missed it, the Chinese have sold 97% of their short term US debt. So I doubt they give a rat’s ass what happens here now, they will just find new markets to sell their super cheap shit too.
As for tattoos, give the kids a break, they have been sold a bill of goods and on some level they know it. By the way alot of the tatto ink is from China and has been documented to be infected with Hep C from workers testing the ink at the plant by dipping a needle into the bottle and then poking the ink into their own skin, repeatedly using the same needle. So yes alot of tats are kinda gross, but no reason to get a hate on for people who have them.
take care gang
loveday
They tell us that affordable housing is “bad”.
I disagree.
I mentioned before that my grandma had 13 abortions. It never occurred to me that maybe my Mom was a botched one.
So, as a possible 2nd generation abortion survivor, let me just say that I believe that abortion should be free, and widely available on demand.
And that people should be paid handsomely for voluntary sterilization.
Not too familiar with Vlad’s claims, so why you’re invoking him/her is unclear
All I can say to that remark is “You must be new around here.”
Oh, and using Google as one’s go-to research tool is rather silly for an old guy.
Why so?
If you know of a better research tool I’m all ears.
I see, you’re one of the first I’ve come across that have described a 47-year long slide. That’s sort of what my instincts were telling me, but I have little more than instincts to go on so I came here to see what folks much more articulate about these issues have to say. I guess my main question would be if there’s been enough “demand destruction” to prolong the decline? My perception is that demand is only increasing despite high prices, correct?
I like your idea of heading to country X, but unfortunately I’ve burdened myself with too much student loan debt to just up and leave. Not sure what transplanting to another country would involve, so any insights are welcome.
I couldn’t agree more, Grouchy Girl. Who cares where someone came from? Unfortunately, I also have to agree with the more hard-lined posts here that immigration is less a human rights issue, and more a political and monetary one. I can’t help but get infuriated at so-called liberal ideology that opens the doors to doctors, engineers from the developing world, only so that they can drive cabs and clean white peoples’ homes. Nothing wrong with either of those lines of work, of course, but it’s the hypocrisy of the establishment as they spoon-feed us this stuff. Rich white people hiring nannies to raise their kids, only to wonder why their country is overrun with immigrants, and why their kids are such assholes.
Qshtik said: “Although, there were some eye opening ramifications if a person later decided to return to the US.”
————–
Such as? Mrs. Asoka and I are leaving our USA mansion cared for by our extensive waitstaff. We will place our vehicles and yachts in storage. If at any time we choose to return, there should be no problem (except for the usual problem of finding good help, if we choose to expand our staff) [sarcasm off]
Re-read some of JHK’s recent missives. Why would anyone want to return to a hell hole full of ignorant fat tattooed people who are brainwashed into acceptance of the “American exceptionalism” myth to the point they are willing to die for it?
I have already lived outside the USA for 12 years, so I know there are many better places to live. Places that are cheaper, with top notch medical care, with better climate, and with people whose priorities are dance, music, and sharing instead of the USA “I got mine, slam the borders shut” xenophobia.
Phobia, and petty bitterness, as in the lie: “we had a good country, until THEY arrived.” We are they. A lot of what I read on CFN was published in newspaper letters to the editor a hundred years ago about “them” (Italians), “them” (Poles), “them” (Irish), etc. Same prejudice. Same lame arguments, now augmented with appeals to “population biology”
Phobia is the problem, as in not recognizing that American fear of the OTHER (or what the other might do to “your” precious ecosystem).
Phobia as in a complete lack of the traditional USA southern hospitality: “come on in, we are all in this together, let’s work cooperatively. There’s always room for newcomers.”
That’s sort of what my instincts were telling me, but I have little more than instincts to go on
————
My 47-year figure is based on an average of estimates I have come across from reading peer-reviewed scientific studies, industry & trade reports & and reports from governmental bodies. I did not rely at all on my instincts.
Which is not to say we are going to coast along with the status quo for 47 years. We are on a downward slide and may be in for a very bumpy ride. We will need to keep our wits about us to adapt to energy descent.
47 years is the blink of an eye in geologic time.
Not sure what transplanting to another country would involve, so any insights are welcome.
———
Here is my suggestion. If you have student debt and have a degree to show for it, and if you are a native English speaker, get a teaching credential and go to an international schools job fair. They usually hire people for two-year contracts.
Interview for jobs in countries where you think you might want to live. By living and working for two years in that country you will have a more realistic idea of whether you really want to become an ex-pat there.
I don’t know where you are located, but here is a list of international job recruitment fairs:
http://www.tieonline.com/preview5.cfm
The ones in Iowa and Toronto are supposed to be especially good. Best of luck to you, rocket77.
I wonder how many fat, tattooed, poor whites your new homeland would be willing to take in, you know, for the healthcare etc. Seeing as how they might want to apply for refugee status at some point in the near future.
Sorry, that link was very old, though they probably hold fairs in those places every year. Here is a fresh link:
http://theinternationaleducator.com/2011/05/31/types-of-teaching-positions/
Thanks for the clarification. It was clear that you have a good knowledge base and this is what I’m sloppily attempting to tease out. Not quite sure of the right questions to ask. Didn’t mean to suggest the 47-year figure was a poorly formed instinct.
But has demand destruction been that effective to extend the “Long Emergency” over the relatively short 47-year period. Again, poor instinct leads me to guess haphazardly that 20-years is even generous.
Your MiMa should have had a cameo in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
How many millionaires do you think Canada will allow to immigrate to Toronto?
In a country, say like Peru, where an average monthly salary is US$200 to US$300 for a car mechanic or carpenter or baker or etc etc. fat white north americans with guaranteed incomes of US$1000 or more in pensions are welcomed as if they were millionaires. Their governments are not stupid. They like dollars.
Last I heard Costa Rica, with a lower income and higher lifestyle, would give you citizenship if you had US$1000 monthly guaranteed income through social security/pension.
the convenience store
curbside view wondering if
the eagle will soar
The strangest people in the Country come from the Midwest. Beneath the hyper-normalacy there is the pioneer craziness which meets the Germanic nuttiness. And the suffering is still in the collective psyche – some can scarcely smile because their great grandma was killed by Indians. Things like that are scars that get passed down. Some of the Old Yankees in Maine are like this too. 13 abortions is some kind of reaction to this suffering. Or was she just too conventional to be seen buying birth control in the local drug store? Much rather have a dangerous operation?
Yes, it is a negative feed-back loop. The more difficult it becomes to extract quality petroleum, the less supply. The less supply, the higher the price. The higher the price, the lower the demand.
The libertarians/Ayn Rand people tell me there is an “invisible hand” involved. It all works out. Nobody can know the particulars in advance. And at any moment an act of war could cause spikes and destroy demand. There are many variables to consider.
Focus on paying off your debt and living within your means for now. We cannot control the geopolitics of oil.
Great suggestions! The phrasing and delivery I guess I needed to help the light begin to flicker.
I did earn a degree and briefly considered an ESL program in China, but I’ve heard that the pay wouldn’t allow me to meet the SL debt obligation, let alone subsistence needs. Again, very ignorant to the details of such a move.
As an aside, I have a friend who unfortunately decided to buy another higher-ed credential via an online Masters program. Considering the additional $30k price tag and further years of self-enslavement, I’ve shied away from returning to school, but I guess I’ll need to for the teaching certification. My friend won’t likely find employment sufficient to ever pay off his debts in his lifetime. Not my cup of tea.
The form for haiku is 5-7-5 and Japanese haiku should have a kigo, or season word.
“How many millionaires do you think Canada will allow to immigrate to Toronto?”
The Canadian gov’t doesn’t have a policy to dictate where new immigrants settle. Many feel there ought to be such a policy in place, in order to curb urban congestion in places like Toronto, where there are roughly 90,000 new residents every year. Of course, if you even suggest a conversation is needed to deal with such a phenom, you are automatically labelled racist, right wing, etc.
It all sounds lovely: move to the tropics and live like a king. Unless you’re poor, with no pension, then they don’t want you. Meanwhile, open them floodgates back home to everyone from everywhere, with a good dash of “southern hospitality”?
Hell, I’m white, my wife is white, my kid is white. My wife is an immigrant, I’m the grandson of an immigrant. Got no problem with immigrants. Point is, who gets to decide who gets in? If you want to have that conversation, you’re a bigot, xenophobe. WTF? Plenty of non-whites in Toronto voted for a right-wing mayor who was willing to tackle the issue. I don’t particularly care for the fella, but there are PLENTY of non-whites in my city who have no time for lefty whites and their hypocrisy.
Jammies said, “Following are 10 guesses about Americans with tattoos….”
“3. Unemployment is much higher among tattooed people.”
Perhaps. Whats down? Manufacturing, construction, etc. Okay, maybe. But then how many office clones have a butt butterfly? Debatable.
“7. IQs of tattooed people are 15 or more points lower than non-tattooed people.”
An easy enough study to do if one were so inclined.
“8. There are no tattooed Nobel prize recipients.”
False- Elie Weisel:
there are PLENTY of non-whites in my city who have no time for lefty whites and their hypocrisy.
—————-
Sounds like you are in just the right place.
Boy, you’re quite the conversationalist. Way to go, thanks for not addressing a single thing, moneybags, other than saving your own white ass.
Thanks, MD!
You’ve revealed your fine spiritual roots.
Save yourself; god is callin’ you home…
Yet another scroll-by; sad self aggrandizement evidences itself.
(Oh, BTW, you are Gawd, so don’t worry about afterlife perks, eh? Nice hearing it from the source tho’.)
No testiness involved.
=============
No Rock, testiness is very much involved. My antennae are old but very sensitive.
My guess is there was a lush or two in your immediate family and you hate the thought that you might be similarly disposed. But if you can rule out genetics as the cause and chalk it up to a failure of will, maybe you’re home free.
But who knows? Maybe I’m all wet.
“When you start talking about humans, like I am now, you must consider cultural contributions of both parents which will probably produce confusion and chaos. This is the prize of assimulationists since confused people are easier to manage with fear, loneliness and threats of hunger.”
…And, yes, there ya go; but I don’t need yer god-voice to tell me that. Confusion is your bread ‘n’ butter; what you’re selling is pure crap-ology. Next “leader” please; let’s vote, a la
‘Murkin’ Idle [-ness].
(I really think you’re applying for the position of “God’s-only-true-voice”, but please feel free to disabuse me of that notion. Thanks.)
thanks for not addressing a single thing, moneybags
————-
I’m not in the mood to fight. So sue me.
Alrighty then!
Shutting the hell up now; but anyhoo, thanks much for the weird, dark, poetry Marlin!
I gotta say, that twanged the magic twanger, in nearly every respect.
-Props ‘n’ gone………………………….
other than saving your own white ass.
————-
Last time I looked it wasn’t white. LOL!
I am reviewing the book, “Requiem for a Species”. A good survey of the literature.
Still horrifying. Unbelievable that this is going down on our watch and that the international community is completely frozen in place watching this thing come down on us.
Capitalism is terminal, unless it can orient its way out of this dead end. A capitalism, driven by the imperatives of conventional political economy is just going to destroy the world as we know it. Global extinction seems imminent.
The world’s governments and their corporate handlers got together and decided the richest 25% of people on the planet can play with their technology for the next few decades, at the expense of the entire planet.
They call it the 2-degree limit. It is an euphemistic label: they might as well say that they have decided to limit CO2 generation and warming, along with concurrent economic growth, only after the coral reefs are destroyed.
Its stunning, bizarre, tragic, and stupid.
Capitalism believes, at its heart, that everything must be reducible to valuation on its terms.
The sell off of the United States has begun: fifty square miles in Idaho by China. We may all be speaking Mandarin in fifty years.
I was at submarine school in ’78 during the summer. I was old because I’d first been eligible to enlist in early ’72 but got talked into attending college at my dad’s alma mater. I enlisted because my only offer for OCS was the marines. I tried marine OCS summer of ’76 at Quantico and dropped out the last week because I couldn’t get into the air wing.
My boot camp drill instructor talked me into volunteering for subs, which I did at Quartermaster “A” school also in Orlando. I made 2nd class and got out after being on two subs. I know more people from the merchant marine because I did the merchants for eight years. One officer I knew in the merchants during the Gulf War ran for office in Louisiana but didn’t get elected. He has a candidates web site and his name is Commander Rob Lansden, USNR [merchant marine reserve]. He went to King’s Point.
I met one guy at sub school who was hanging out in the transient barracks getting processed out of the navy early because of all stunts he won the manipulator’s gold medal by getting an appointment to King’s Point, which is the only service academy with no minimum obligated service. In other words, all they’re expected to do is to join one of the merchant marine officer’s unions. If there are no jobs available they can simply become yacht bums. But they are in the merchant marine naval reserve whose only requirement is that they send in their discharges from any merchant vessels they’ve worked on.
Like the Anthony Quinn movie “Requiem for a Heavy Weight”. Humanity is drunken palooka but just can’t get out of the game – doesn’t know what else to do with itself. Finally we will be forced out – and like Quinn, get into the next cloest thing, Pro Wrestling or in other words, being a Clown.
The UN has totally failed us I take it. Inevitable. Mandela preached classic Communism while a revolutionary/terrorist. But once victory was attained, he denied ever saying such things. Communism is just one tendril of the Elite. The UN is another. Gaia Worship and Global Warming is another – under the control of Bilderberger Maurice Strong.
Be useful…
JHK wrote: “Their “savior” back in the 20th century was a fellow in an ersatz military getup who virtually ran for office by denouncing “parliamentarism” and by the time his party occupied a fair portion of the seats in theirs, he burned the darn thing to the ground.”
“Do not think that I come to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34-9).
“Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth; fire, sword, war.” (Thomas 16, non-canonical).
Vlad,
The sell-off America hasn’t just begun, you’ve just begun to notice.
I’ve been railing about this since I started blogging here.
On 4/23 I wrote:The US is but a colony..
where I described a chapter in Griftopia, The outsourced highway.
[So Morgan Stanley started working with Sovereign Wealth funds and our politicians in desperate need of money started pushing the idea of 75-yr. leases of the commons to these funds. As usual, it wasn’t transparent who was buying our infrastructure at low cost, but it seems it was Abu Dhabi and other not so friendly Arab states, made hugely wealthy by our dependence on oil.
Mayor Daley pushed this on the state legislature and they sold the rights to their parking meters to one such deal. Then afterwards they found out that they could not close streets for fairs or holidays because they would have to pay prohibitive prices to do so. When they figured out what that would cost over 75 years they discovered they under sold by billions. I guess Morgan Stanley cleaned up ok?]
On 10/15/10 I wrote: Well, guess who’s coming to Texas….[China’s energy giant is buying a $multibillion stake in 6000,000 acres of South Texas with ambitions to further expansion here in the US. The full investments will come to around 22 billion for the Chinese to learn how to some of their own hard to get gas deposits. Analysts think there will be less resistance to these investments as China can provide the money for for more development to cash-strapped American companies.]
Checkout the NASCO Corridor.BTW, Guilian client, Cintra is playing a big role in the infrastructure.
[As WND has previously reported, the $180 billion needed to build the 4,000-mile TTC network planned for construction over the next 50 years will be financed by Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A., a foreign investment consortium based in Spain. Cintra will own the leasing and operating rights on TTC highways for 50 years after their completion.]
http://www.nascocorridor.com/
Say goodnight, US (Gracie).
The conservative idea is to privatize everything, even defense, because, you know, government is bad.
This has been going on for a while. Indiana’s governor Mitch Daniels, sold Indiana highways to a foreign company who turned them into toll road moneymakers. Here is the link: http://www.alltolled.com/
Daniels sold the Indiana roads for short term cash back in 2006.
Yep,
Everything must be a profit center–they hate taxes which is pooled money at a cheaper rate than if you bought each service a la carte–it’s really gonna get expensive to live here!
Wait till you see those medical bill–ouch!
If only it weren’t so cold in Vermont. 10 months of cold frozen ground winter and 2 months of mud season.
Are you dumb?
I said very clearly that genetic predisposition is valid, though not static. It’s genetic PREDETERMINATION toward aberrant behavior that is flatly unsubstantiated.
Also, I stated directly that I have elder relatives who’ve struggled with addiction — who doesn’t? So you can try to give yourself credit for “guessing” about what I told you outright.
Let me dumb it down further for ya. My father and grandfather have/had big noses and brown eyes. My mother and grandmother have/had small noses blue eyes/green eyes; grandma had curly brown hair, whereas my mother’s is blonde. As a result, I came to have a large nose, hazel eyes, and semi curly hair. A roll of the dice produced these genetic traits. In other words, I was predisposed to a certain set of bio-chemical and physical attributes based on lineage. Ya trackin’, Mcfly?
Considering all of their histories, I have a predisposition to ailments such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and heart-disease. Is it given that I’ll succumb to these maladies? Evidence suggests no provided preventative lifestyle choices and behaviors. What do lifestyle behaviors pertain to? Favorable or dis-favorable reactions to environment.
What’s more, addictive behavior are separate from physiological disease, and if everything is an addiction, then, nothing is. Go ‘head and Google yourself with the copious amounts of pseudo-intellectual and bogus social-scientific research lurking about the web.
It’s hard not to be constantly amazed by the mouth-breathers sucking up all the oxygen ’round here. Your antennae are pointed in the wrong direction, bub. Feel free to reply, but I’ve wasted about as much time with you as an afternoon shit requires. It’s time to flush.
Why are Blacks white on their hands and feet? Is this a sign that they were once White?
I had heard about some of that…I guess just the idea of buying not infra stucture but whole areas takes it to a new level. Why Idaho? Poor but rich in resources. So why can’t we capitalize on it? Something has gone very, very wrong…
“8. There are no tattooed Nobel prize recipients.”
False- Elie Weisel:
While at Auschwitz, his inmate number, “A-7713″, was tattooed onto his left arm.
-bustinj, to jammer-
Nice catch, bustin. Perhaps jammer should have said, ” there are no Nobel prize recipients with large Tramp Stamp tattoos on their derrieres.”
Anyone care to research that one?
“I said very clearly that genetic predisposition is valid, though not static. It’s genetic PREDETERMINATION toward aberrant behavior that is flatly unsubstantiated.”
-rockett-
Over large time scales and large populations – genetic predisposition and genetic predetermination are going to have the same effect.
What is your degree field, if I may inquire.
“Over large time scales and large populations – genetic predisposition and genetic predetermination are going to have the same effect.”
-progressorconserve-
Please offer an example.
Eminence and evidence are different things, sir. Credentialism is the fascination of those bound to orthodoxy and authority. What does it matter my degree field?
“Economic collapse most likely will not hit everyone, especially the 1% at the top. They should be fine.”
-wage, to rockett-
I concur, Wage, although environmental, as opposed to “economic” collapse – may affect 100% of the population equally and unfortunately.
Rockett, before you take too much advice from asoka, you might want to hear what he has to say about an optimum number for the US population.
660,000,000, isn’t it, A?
And Sharia Law for females on US soil is OK?
And la reconquista?
(maybe that’s why he’s making plans to leave?)
Feel free to reply, but I’ve wasted about as much time with you as an afternoon shit requires. It’s time to flush.
============
So I was right, testiness was very much involved. Good insult though. We needed some fresh material around here. We’re all totally jaded with Tootsie’s shtick.
But let’s go way back to where this discussion started. WageLaborer said: “I’m just wondering why alcohol seems to wreak such havoc on native communities to this day.” Neither she (Wage) nor I ever used the word “predetermined” by genetics. In fact I was rather careful to use the word “predisposed” as a somewhat less harsh and less emphatic of various possibilities. But you were spoiling for a fight from post one.
Further, the link I provided (which I chose entirely at random and only briefly scanned) I believe made a point that the ultimate cause for native Americans’ inability to hold their liquor was by no means a settled issue. But you were bound and determined to pretend otherwise and take offense.
Calm down cowboy and maybe we can have some intelligent conversations in the future.
P.S. When you spoke of an “elder relative” with an alcohol issue that could have been a non-blood relative for all I knew (like infamous Aunt Tilly, your father’s older brother’s wife). When I spoke of “a lush or two in your immediate family” I was insinuating a blood relative like parent or grandparent.
Please offer an example.
-rockett-
Rabbits, bald eagles, bacteria, humans
All biological populations will respond to their genetics over large time scales.
You are overly fixated on the ability of humans to alter their environments. Yes, humans have this ability – but over a long enough time scale and large enough population, this is also mediated by the underlying genetics.
I ask about your credentials to confirm a hunch AND to give you an opportunity to establish a reputation for seriousness on CFN.
>
On the positive note about it, Wage, at least for we ladies “of a certain age”, there will come a time when the extra 10-20 lbs that many if not most of us gain over time due to aging and natural female hormonal fluctuations (in spite of healthy diet and exercise habits) will come to be considered an attractive quality in a woman again, as opposed to the current trend of “toothpick with a haid” being the beauty standard for women of all ages 🙂 I can think of quite a few ladies who are gonna wish they had eaten that bowl of Blue Bell while they had the chance 🙂 Toasted locust and shit sandwiches are not quite as delicious, I would imagine 🙂
I’m trying to hear God’s Voice in what you are saying to me, but you will have to slow down.
You’ve got that right, TT!
“”toothpick with a haid”
and the corollary condition, “Boobs on a stick.”
Speaking of human evolution and mate selection – I’m pretty certain that the current wave of “cosmetic surgeries” is having a negative impact in these areas.
Is the “big store bought boobs” and “skinny hips” an American fixation?
Or has it spread worldwide?
==========
More seriously, I read a study recently that suggested that widespread use of hormonal birth control in females is upsetting the selection process as well – perhaps for women as well as men.
We’re conducting a vast experiment in real time on real subjects – using 7,000,000,000+++ – generally uninformed and unwilling – participants.
Ok, time for a correction. jammer was not the author of the 10 observations of tattooed people. It was Q. I was REPLYING TO HIM. I admit the confusion was due to my clumsiness of the constructed reply. jammer
Bustin and Snowflake, you are not following the thread closely enough. It was I, not Jammer, who speculated that “8. There are no tattooed Nobel prize recipients.” I don’t think you can count the involuntary tattooing of the Jews like EW in the death camps.
Further, although a total lack of tatts on Nobel Prize winners is quite possible and would make for an interesting study if the data were available, it was just a little Q-humor. Just like my other silly but possible assertion – that there are no non-tattooed motorcycle mechanics in the US, which no one picked up on.
Offer an example. To which you replied:
[[Rabbits, bald eagles, bacteria, humans
All biological populations will respond to their genetics over large time scales.
You are overly fixated on the ability of humans to alter their environments. Yes, humans have this ability – but over a long enough time scale and large enough population, this is also mediated by the underlying genetics.]]
Is this the type of circular reasoning blatherskite that’ll, “give you (me) an opportunity to establish a reputation for seriousness on CFN.”
You can’t be serious, dude. I’m not quite sure how you’ve retained, let alone, established such a reputation for yourself considering. You’ve certainly confirmed my hunch about you, anyhow.
Look, if you don’t wish to explain the brain-fart remark with which you interjected yourself unto a separate discussion, fine. just say so.
I’m certainly open to your viewpoint, but please have the goddamn common courtesy to light a match after you’ve loosed the intellectual gas from between your ears in a crowded blog-room. Otherwise, clarify your claim absent the fallacious reasoning you offered above.
>
As a nurse, Wage, you’re probably already familiar with this too . . . Many people of Asian genetic background also have a chemical reaction to ingestion of ethanol which cause a marked “flush” reaction when they drink, due to the lack of a certain enzyme used to metabolize ethanol . . . taking that a degree further, if it is as has been theorized that Native Americans came across the land bridge where the Bering Strait now exists, from Asia into North America and parts south, then it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say that Native Americans have some genetic tendencies in their bloodlines to be extremely sensitive to the effects of ethanol. Thus the extremely high rate of alcohol abuse/dependence that seems to be a reality for many Native American tribes, once it was finally introduced into their cultures. Interesting to see the research on that if it’s been done.
>
Right on! I believe that people who want children, should have them, and stop forcing their moral choices on others who may not have the means or the inclination to follow in their footsteps. I believe that Michelle Duggar, Octomom, and every other one of these women who espouse turning themselves into a brood mare, has more than made up for the other women out there who opted to have smaller families, or even no children at all, as a valid moral and economic choice. If you had a set of married couples who opted to only have two children (replacement only) for themselves, it would take 9 couples to make up for Michelle Duggar, plus one couple with one child. It would take 7 couples to make up for Octomom (14 kids in total, 8 births at once and then the 6 kids she already had) . . . etc. and so on.
The abortion debate in this country is fucked to shreds, man. Let’s not even talk about the women who take prescriptions to pharmacists for legally-prescribed birth control, and have the pharmacist tell them to fuck off on religious grounds, or the legions of women who want and ask, repeatedly, for a tubal ligation only to be patronized by their health care providers, especially in “red” states.
Read my original response to you, posted @ 9:38.
Then read it again.
You are misunderstanding my points –
either deliberately or accidentally.
And if you have anything intelligent to offer,
you won’t hide behind insults.
By God I think we’ve got us a higher order of Tootsie. Check out this insult:
Shades of a post-dump Owen Wilson leaning out the bathroom door and asking for matches.
Please stick around RocketScientist, I’m starting to enjoy your style.
{As an aside, I have a friend who unfortunately decided to buy another higher-ed credential via an online Masters program. Considering the additional $30k price tag and further years of self-enslavement, I’ve shied away from returning to school, but I guess I’ll need to for the teaching certification. My friend won’t likely find employment sufficient to ever pay off his debts in his lifetime. Not my cup of tea.}}
Dude? $30K for an online degree? My advice would be to your friend to run like hell . . . I don’t think a lot of people understand this, but the online degrees have ZERO cred in the job market. He’d be better off getting a “bricks and mortar” grad degree from even a less prestigious institution, than from an online program. Employers look at online degrees about like they do the toy from a box of Cracker Jack, and that’s no shit. For $30K, your friend could get a masters that would make much more of a difference in his prospects if only he/she is willing to do the face time, even if it’s an evening program. And if you decide to get some additional creds for the teaching certification, try to find a program that may offer some online classes, but also has a f2f component at some level . . . say take an online class plus a campus-based class, that way you can say that your program is campus-based. Not sure why the discrimination is so strong against online, because I think it’s a valuable tool, but jobs and cred-wise? Not so much.
Plus I learned a new word that I have never ever heard before:
blath·er·skite? ?/?blæð?r?ska?t/ Show Spelled
[blath-er-skahyt] Show IPA
–noun
1. a person given to voluble, empty talk.
2. nonsense; blather.
{And Sharia Law for females on US soil is OK?}
HELL to the NAW! I don’t know about the ladies in the rest of the US, but the Southern ladies damn sure won’t stand for it! 🙂 And that’s Southern ladies of ANY color or religious persuasion (except perhaps Islamic, and I even know a few of those who ain’t fixin’ to be wearing a burqua any time soon 🙂
I rode through Belgium in 2000. Played one show (The Kingpins European tour 2000) in Belgium in a quiet suburb of Antwerp. Don’t mind at all the mayonnaise on the fries. It works. Maynnaise is just oil and egg after all. It can still be Made by Hand. Y’can add Red Hot sauce or worcestershire sauce.
Sorry for the tangent, just wanted to comment directly to the Europeclusterfuck that’s being focussed on this week. I’fe been to the “continent” twice now and honestly love it. Being german/Irish I was surprised at my chagrin at how boring I found Germany but Switzerland, Spain/Basque and Denmark rocked! Ditto south of France.
{More seriously, I read a study recently that suggested that widespread use of hormonal birth control in females is upsetting the selection process as well – perhaps for women as well as men.
We’re conducting a vast experiment in real time on real subjects – using 7,000,000,000+++ – generally uninformed and unwilling – participants.}
I think you’re totally right, Prog. As in all ways that we as a species have been messing with Ma Nature for a long, long time . . . our selections of birth control (and whether to even use it or not) are definitely impacting the world. And if you think about it, it’s just another one of those fucked situations where we don’t, as a species, have all the information up front. Look at China (and most recently, India) . . . the one-child policy led to a whole bunch of misogyny, and now there’s going to be a generation of Chinese boys who have no wimmin-folk to mate with, because of the cultural tendency towards having a male heir. They’ve aborted/orphaned a whole generation of female children. What seemed to be a good idea at the macro level, turns out kind of sucked at the micro level. Same thing is happening in India right now, now that the technology is available to do gender selection of fetuses in the womb. Here in the US (and this is going to sound BAD and Vlad-esque, sorry in advance 🙂 we have the women with with education and resources to make choices, consciously choosing NOT to reproduce at the level that the less-well-educated and -resourced are doing . . . so naturally, over time, one can’t help but notice that something is bound to get fucked ten ways to Sunday, if that trend continues. Especially if the trend continues in the segment who is brainwashed by TV, immediate gratification, and simplistic pleasures as opposed to the life of the mind. Unfortunately, although I am a fellow Southerner, I know that my peeps play a large part in that “dumbing down” process (although I really wish Kunstler would be more gentlemanly and Bageant-like in his criticisms than as dickish as he can be 🙂
Ultimately, I think George Carlin had the right idea . . . the planet’s gonna be FINE . . .it’s the PEOPLE who are FUCKED! 🙂 Pack your bags, folks, we’re going away . . . 🙂
Truth, thanks for the comment. The tag suits you well, so far as I can tell.
My friend made the mistake of not completing any pre-grad internships and networking to broaden his employment prospects post-graduation. As a result, none of the interviews he gave for employment mildly relevant to his area of study were considered. He was obliged to take a job as a warehouse technician, which wasn’t enough to cover anything. Once the grace-period for starting repayment of his student loans expired, he made the hasty decision to go back to school — online. Having a poor GPA prevented him from attending a more favorable brick-and-mortar institution, which is not to say that I believe brick-and-mortar colleges are much better.
Privatized online colleges will enroll anyone with a pulse, sad to say, similar to traditional colleges, and all they offer in turn is gimmicky “accreditation” necessary for collecting government subsidy. To boot, he made what I now consider to be a near fatal mistake of studying psychology — a bogus field of study undeserving of the science designation. That aside, what he’ll end up acquiring is possibly greater than $90k in debt and a Cracker Jack credential. I’ve tried to show him exactly what you’ve described to no avail. I wish him luck, still.
I, luckily, don’t find myself in the same boat, yet appreciate the experience and advice of some folks here. Thanks again.
A bunch of you are going to REALLY enjoy this, LBendIt in particular, I think.
This is a serious economic analysis by a serious economic researcher. Parts of it – like the advisability of Greece and Ireland doing what Iceland did with its debt – could have been written by our own JHK.
http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/john_mauldins_outside_the_box/archive/2011/06/06/the-stark-choice-for-europe.aspx
We’re not all crazy just because we’re on CFN.
Others are waking up, too.
Here’s a short excerpt:
“Buyers borrow credit to appropriate “the commons” in the same way they bid for commercial real estate. The winner is whoever raises the largest buyout loan – by pledging the most revenue to pay the bank as interest. So the financial sector ends up with the revenue hitherto paid to governments as taxes or user fees. This is euphemized as a free market.”
660,000,000, isn’t it, A?
And Sharia Law for females on US soil is OK?
And la reconquista?
———
Freedom of Movement … Check
Freedom of Religion … Check
Right of Repossesion … Check
I am a true American, not a xenophobic American.
Quran [2:256] : There is no compulsion in religion.
Prog, I remain open to your “points” but there are none to be found.
That predisposition and predetermination conduce to the same long-term effect is not clarified by writing:
“Rabbits, bald eagles, bacteria, humans
All biological populations will respond to their genetics over large time scales.”
Such a retort is an insult in itself. I reserve the right to respond in kind.
I actually work at a non-accredited Career Institute based here in Montreal. A lot of our students are from the southern stats, GA, AL, MS, AR, LA, etc… We offer about 60 different “career diploma” programs in a variety of fields including such close to obsolete ones as Medical billing specialist, Drafting with AutoCAD, Astrology/Parapsychology and Beauty care. Personally, The whole “accreditation thing is starting to become a joke if you think about it. Although I can’t say this to my “students” I would urge them to spend their relatively low educational bills on organic seeds and good hand tools.
PEOPLE PAY FOR SUCH STUFF?
IN THE USA J.C.’S ARE CHEAP! AND ACCREDITED!
‘Will intelligent people be the ones to survive?’
NO, THE SURVIVORS WILL BE THE ONES WHO SURVIVE!
I’m listening to BioTerrorism Info on
Coast 2 Coast now.
“You are overly fixated on the ability of humans to alter their environments.”
Another editorial comment to something that was never written — at least by me.
Genes do not determine behavior, which is my earlier premise. Although genetic predetermination is a long standing assertion, invoking a bit of the pseudo-scientific eugenic research pioneered in the late 18th century, recent anthropological studies debunk this belief. Data gathered by one Robert Sapolsky is a good starting point for those wishing to refute actual evidence, as opposed to a loose reliance on 18th century opinion. Caution: Googling his name to verify his authority or credentials is different to examining evidence and devising further experimentation to refute the data. The latter of which is just the way good science is done, requiring time and intellectual rigor many aren’t willing to expend. So be it.
Succinctly, substances ingested by different races agreeably cause adverse neuro-physiological effects that can only be seen post introduction to cultures not before exposed to such factors. There are any number of anthropological texts delineating this thought. And for the sake of argument, I’ll point to studies of Polynesian islanders which show how imported dietary influences contributed to rises in health problems, and later, aberrant social behavior. Put simply, change the environment, change the person, irregardless of people-prompted environmental change.
Lastly, you can make the leap that, somehow, I’ve “fixated on the ability of humans to alter their environment,” which is to oddly claim that I’ve argued human beings can consistently deny genetic disposition without consequence. That is your straw man, and a false position I’ve never taken. To argue outside of the position I’ve actually offered is to leave the original topic thus ending the conversation.
‘Nobel Prize winners dont want ink’
………Maybe they are sissies? Real men get Tatts!
I Google and couldn’t get any info on this!
How many Black Women get tatts?
Evenin’ Jackoflava. Thanks for writing. I agree with the idea that accreditation is fast becoming a joke, but it’s been a long time requisite of institutions seeking the permission to collect financial aide dollars. Accreditation was reduced to an empty symbol for distinguishing strong academic programs from supposedly poor ones.
A scientist by the name of Paul Lutus describes how traditional academia would collapse should institutions revert to teaching students to use ideas instead of creating mindless fact-collectors. In other words, if students began challenging institutional authority — autodidacts would eliminate the livelihood of authoritarians, otherwise known as college professors. Consumer Angst is the title of his article, if I remember correctly.
Your showing your value as a mentor when you mention your desire to tell students to forget paying to play “the game” to instead learn to use tools and grow food. Your offering invaluable advice for sure.
Cheers.
Sorry, the article is titled How We Confuse Symbols And Things, just under Consumer Angst.
Q must be scratching his head now.
Wow, you almost gave me a boner. The last time I almost got a boner was more than 10 years ago, thanks a lot bitch. Now go on, tell me that I am Impotent, let me crush myself, make fun of me, like all ladies, it is implied, they crush and make fun of it and exploit the fact that I am Impotent, and in all sectors and endeavors, psychological, etc. the prettier and younger the lady the more I would like to punch them in the face, it is a constant provocation, the fact that they exist, etc. a total failure, go on, rub it in, go on, I will torture myself ever more, ever more contrasting Will Powers.
At least they could lie, make believe, pretend: I don’t know why telling the truth or not lying or being honest is such a value, we need lies and deceptions more than anything else, I always lie, everything I said and ever said is a total 100 % lie, and even the opposite of what I ever said is a total 100% lie. Everything should be a total lie, we are always lied to anyways and deceived, lie ever more, make believe, pretend, at least make me fool myself: oh, no they have to be honest, instead of just giving in and making believe, what crap. And then the very essence of life is that it is a lie, Matter lying to Itself and pretending to be alive, go figure.
Anyways, I can’t even keep on staying alive, every heartbeat is a miracle and gift, I can’t even even be sure I can continue to exist, I am weak, maybe I should get some “Health Kare” if it didn’t suck so much in the USA. Anyways all of life is a constant extreme struggle just to keep on living, life is an extreme instability, is a bad invention and a bad design. The transition from death to life and living must be made with new devices, not with this way too fragile and crappy and badly designed machine that Man is. And by using a new design, you can create a much better experience, a better lie and make believe world, since all of life is a lie and make believe world that just uses pain to make believe that it is real. But the new devices will do away with pain and create “Constant Winning Machines”.
But we are in the most extreme paradise ever, every moment of life is an absolute miracle because you are not in infinite pain, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be infinite pain, god or the laws of physics were good this time around (a godless universe would be even more terrifying), we should be in Constant Infinite Pain, Total Metaphysical Insecurity, but everything is an absolute miracle, beyond anything you can ever hope for (I wrote something about this in the ilovephilosophy website, look it up slut and study it). Aside from the fact that everything is an absolute INFINITE miracle because it simply exists, beyond anything you can conceive, we live in constant total absolute infinite and extreme miracles constantly.
Maybe nature just creates causes and effects, just invents them by association, it connects two independent events just for the fun of it, repeats the connection and decides to make it become a cause and effect. And then maybe hoses it again after repeating the pattern a number of times, who knows.
Money as a Weapon
The entire structure of Capitalism is based on the accumulation of Money by those actors that can get a profit from their enterprises. Since the Technological Economy can generate such huge economies of scale, also brought to you by that maybe one time free gift of free energy of oil (but I am not so sure if it is really oil or technology or a mix of both, this is a technical question, maybe some good technicians here can tell how much of this free gift is tech and how much oil) it generates Free Wealth by the boatloads by automating and optimizing agriculture, factories, all kinds of technological applications to the production process making it easier and cheaper to produce all kinds of goods and especially getting rid of the need for labor by the boatloads, it generates a huge amount of accumulated cash in banks worldwide, a huge amount of money that is constantly increasing.
Now this money itself must generate more money in terms of “return”, in terms of “more profits”, in terms of “return on investment”. Why is this ? For no reason at all, just because, just for the fun of it, just because people who have the money in banks expect to get ever more free wealth (as if the free wealth they already got is not enough, but that is never enough). So how can they get even more ?
By lending the money with interest to other people, but especially poor, weak and easily influenced, brainwashed people. And people with salaries that aren’t high enough to just go out and buy most of the things they need or want (the capitalists also like to confuse needs and wants a lot).
They create a never ending impulse of desires in the working class, the poor, you must “buy a new house” (and the game of always increasing the price of real estate nicely fits in, as in more and higher debts, and the ever increasing price of real estate worldwide reflects the ever increasing amount of profit money available and being constantly generated) as that is the “American Dream” (actually the worldwide dream today), you must buy the new car, you must do this and that, etc. Of course these desires are based on the fact that people are set up for unsatisfaction naturally, life is instablity, unsatisfaction, you always want something else, something more, you are constantly creating targets in your mind, you must win, etc. But by creating these desires, the system forces people to get loans and ever more loans for desires that potentially can never end. And the capitalists are all too glad to give people these loans, ever more, so that eventually they can crush them, they can hose them, and that is what they do. So desires, loans, consumption, repeat the cycles, etc. Like a poker player that is being taken for a ride, they let you win, but in the end they will hose you.
And that is how huge debts are created, subprime loans, huge public debts in Greece and entire countries, etc. There is also a factor that public debts are created because there is no way so many millions of people can be employed in “productive jobs” since there is no need for any more jobs, so governments just have to hire them and support them even if they do nothing at all, debts like this are created in Europe, JAPAN and even the USA, anyways.
But the money is there, huge amounts of money is available because the system generates enough wealth to support millions on essentially free salaries anyways.
But now that everyone is in debts, now that entire nations are under the thumbs of the capitalists and rich, they can crush them and torture them and take away as much money from them as possible, with the excuse that they “have debts to pay back”. So this is how money is used as a weapon to beat up people, as a baseball bat to clobber people.
And this is the essential contradiction of a Technological Economy governed by capitalism: it generates huge amounts of free wealth, it could support everyone on free salaries more or less, but the free wealth is used to crush the weak, to beat them up. And they do this by explaining it and justifying it as a “natural order of things”; as the “economy is a science”, is the “way it is supposed to be”, all of the economists buy into this make believe fairy tale Macro Economic Model, as if it were a law of physics, and everyone is brainwashed that this is the only possible way an economy can work, after all “Communism Failed”, etc.
Wow, look at what I found in my backyard this morning little Betty and Cindy:
WKKKRJ&/&(RRJJR&(/(TJTJTJJ&(&(/(JKTJTJJT
Go for it little girls, figure it out, it came for that Huge Supercomputer that the Sun is, always generating new brain – mind – universe perceived structures.
Now go on, little Betty and Cindy, draw a new block diagram of a new brain and mind structure, wow, that block diagram is a trillion pages long, so many incredible new symbols in there, so many new equations and wires and connections, wow, that is doing really interesting things. A new brain that is experiencing a new universe all brought to you by little Betty and Cindy, so many different relationships, memory structures tied into photons tied into sentimental generators, a never ending array and list of incredible new connections, wild symbols, intricate designs and pictures and on and on forever, for a trillion pages.
From Slut:
“In my own hippie youth, we dyed our hair purple and walked around in sheer blouses with no bras, and painted fake flower tattoos on our hands, but we did all this with the idea that it would be very transient”
I answer:
Wow, you almost gave me a boner. The last time I almost got a boner was more than 10 years ago, thanks a lot bitch. Now go on, tell me that I am Impotent, let me crush myself, make fun of me, like all ladies, it is implied, they crush and make fun of it and exploit the fact that I am Impotent, and in all sectors and endeavors, psychological, etc. the prettier and younger the lady the more I would like to punch them in the face, it is a constant provocation, the fact that they exist, etc. a total failure, go on, rub it in, go on, I will torture myself ever more, ever more contrasting Will Powers.
At least they could lie, make believe, pretend: I don’t know why telling the truth or not lying or being honest is such a value, we need lies and deceptions more than anything else, I always lie, everything I said and ever said is a total 100 % lie, and even the opposite of what I ever said is a total 100% lie. Everything should be a total lie, we are always lied to anyways and deceived, lie ever more, make believe, pretend, at least make me fool myself: oh, no they have to be honest, instead of just giving in and making believe, what crap. And then the very essence of life is that it is a lie, Matter lying to Itself and pretending to be alive, go figure.
Anyways, I can’t even keep on staying alive, every heartbeat is a miracle and gift, I can’t even even be sure I can continue to exist, I am weak, maybe I should get some “Health Kare” if it didn’t suck so much in the USA. Anyways all of life is a constant extreme struggle just to keep on living, life is an extreme instability, is a bad invention and a bad design. The transition from death to life and living must be made with new devices, not with this way too fragile and crappy and badly designed machine that Man is. And by using a new design, you can create a much better experience, a better lie and make believe world, since all of life is a lie and make believe world that just uses pain to make believe that it is real. But the new devices will do away with pain and create “Constant Winning Machines”.
But we are in the most extreme paradise ever, every moment of life is an absolute miracle because you are not in infinite pain, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be infinite pain, god or the laws of physics were good this time around (a godless universe would be even more terrifying), we should be in Constant Infinite Pain, Total Metaphysical Insecurity, but everything is an absolute miracle, beyond anything you can ever hope for (I wrote something about this in the ilovephilosophy website, look it up slut and study it). Aside from the fact that everything is an absolute INFINITE miracle because it simply exists, beyond anything you can conceive, we live in constant total absolute infinite and extreme miracles constantly.
Maybe nature just creates causes and effects, just invents them by association, it connects two independent events just for the fun of it, repeats the connection and decides to make it become a cause and effect. And then maybe hoses it again after repeating the pattern a number of times, who knows.
Money as a Weapon
The entire structure of Capitalism is based on the accumulation of Money by those actors that can get a profit from their enterprises. Since the Technological Economy can generate such huge economies of scale, also brought to you by that maybe one time free gift of free energy of oil (but I am not so sure if it is really oil or technology or a mix of both, this is a technical question, maybe some good technicians here can tell how much of this free gift is tech and how much oil) it generates Free Wealth by the boatloads by automating and optimizing agriculture, factories, all kinds of technological applications to the production process making it easier and cheaper to produce all kinds of goods and especially getting rid of the need for labor by the boatloads, it generates a huge amount of accumulated cash in banks worldwide, a huge amount of money that is constantly increasing.
Now this money itself must generate more money in terms of “return”, in terms of “more profits”, in terms of “return on investment”. Why is this ? For no reason at all, just because, just for the fun of it, just because people who have the money in banks expect to get ever more free wealth (as if the free wealth they already got is not enough, but that is never enough). So how can they get even more ?
By lending the money with interest to other people, but especially poor, weak and easily influenced, brainwashed people. And people with salaries that aren’t high enough to just go out and buy most of the things they need or want (the capitalists also like to confuse needs and wants a lot).
They create a never ending impulse of desires in the working class, the poor, you must “buy a new house” (and the game of always increasing the price of real estate nicely fits in, as in more and higher debts, and the ever increasing price of real estate worldwide reflects the ever increasing amount of profit money available and being constantly generated) as that is the “American Dream” (actually the worldwide dream today), you must buy the new car, you must do this and that, etc. Of course these desires are based on the fact that people are set up for unsatisfaction naturally, life is instablity, unsatisfaction, you always want something else, something more, you are constantly creating targets in your mind, you must win, etc. But by creating these desires, the system forces people to get loans and ever more loans for desires that potentially can never end. And the capitalists are all too glad to give people these loans, ever more, so that eventually they can crush them, they can hose them, and that is what they do. So desires, loans, consumption, repeat the cycles, etc. Like a poker player that is being taken for a ride, they let you win, but in the end they will hose you.
And that is how huge debts are created, subprime loans, huge public debts in Greece and entire countries, etc. There is also a factor that public debts are created because there is no way so many millions of people can be employed in “productive jobs” since there is no need for any more jobs, so governments just have to hire them and support them even if they do nothing at all, debts like this are created in Europe, JAPAN and even the USA, anyways.
But the money is there, huge amounts of money is available because the system generates enough wealth to support millions on essentially free salaries anyways.
But now that everyone is in debts, now that entire nations are under the thumbs of the capitalists and rich, they can crush them and torture them and take away as much money from them as possible, with the excuse that they “have debts to pay back”. So this is how money is used as a weapon to beat up people, as a baseball bat to clobber people.
And this is the essential contradiction of a Technological Economy governed by capitalism: it generates huge amounts of free wealth, it could support everyone on free salaries more or less, but the free wealth is used to crush the weak, to beat them up. And they do this by explaining it and justifying it as a “natural order of things”; as the “economy is a science”, is the “way it is supposed to be”, all of the economists buy into this make believe fairy tale Macro Economic Model, as if it were a law of physics, and everyone is brainwashed that this is the only possible way an economy can work, after all “Communism Failed”, etc.
Wow, look at what I found in my backyard this morning little Betty and Cindy:
WKKKRJ&/&(RRJJR&(/(TJTJTJJ&(&(/(JKTJTJJT
Go for it little girls, figure it out, it came for that Huge Supercomputer that the Sun is, always generating new brain – mind – universe perceived structures.
Now go on, little Betty and Cindy, draw a new block diagram of a new brain and mind structure, wow, that block diagram is a trillion pages long, so many incredible new symbols in there, so many new equations and wires and connections, wow, that is doing really interesting things. A new brain that is experiencing a new universe all brought to you by little Betty and Cindy, so many different relationships, memory structures tied into photons tied into sentimental generators, a never ending array and list of incredible new connections, wild symbols, intricate designs and pictures and on and on forever, for a trillion pages.
Re: Carnies–like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqIlRA4ocj4&feature=related
Well, Jimbo, after your screed about Europe’s
doom, I’m glad you got around to “The Land of
Stupid” … which is the US of A. I never
thought I’d live to see something like the
“tattoo craze” of which you speak because
it’s a po’ white trash craze which bespeaks
of a hatred of any kind of refinement or, God
forbid, intellect.
That’s where we are right now. Europe may be
in bad shape and I’m sure it is but, frankly,
they still have a vocal minority that listens
to Bach and funds orchestras which play real
music instead of the “bitch slappin'” crap
that dominates the airwaves of the nouveau
channels.
Try finding a bar in America that’s billed as
a dance place which does NOT feature hip-hop,
rap, and other faux “music” which is often
followed by stabbings, shootings, and the like.
When the US of A goes down, it isn’t going to
be with that soupcon of civility that Europe
at least pretends to value. It’s going to be
hand-to-hand combat over here. Even the educated
like to pose as stupid because it’s the new
SEXY.
I don’t agree with you, Jimbo. I think the
“surprise” is that the US of A goes down
faster and harder than Europe … for all its
PIIGS and warts. I agree with Axel Merk that
the rot is more visible and more honestly
exposed that in America. America is like a
beautiful house that’s eaten inside-out by
termites and ready to fall.
Our country doesn’t even pretend that it goes
for anything but “the big game”, bad TV, and
text messaging. Europe’s sophistication might
be fake but if you’re going to fake, fake the
right stuff.
E.
“There is also a factor that public debts are created because there is no way so many millions of people can be employed in “productive jobs” since there is no need for any more jobs, so governments just have to hire them and support them even if they do nothing at all, debts like this are created in Europe, JAPAN and even the USA, anyways.”
And this is a very important point: since you really can’t provide, find or invent enough real productive labor for millions worldwide since it is not needed structurally (and make no mistake, no nation can provide all the millions of jobs of real productive labor needed, no matter how much they grow or how advanced they are) you are forced to create them, you have to simply support people, very often through the government, or through a lot of indirections, but it always ends up being mostly government (or defense or health care, etc.), sometimes privates, sometimes banks, whatever. This is another of those huge deceptions that they never tell you: the system must give out free salaries anyways (albeit hidden) as it can’t provide enough real jobs as those jobs are not needed, people are “excess capacity”.
So what are you going to do ? fire them all ? there is a limit to how many you can fire without an economy collapsing. So the governments and others support people, but then there is this constant background hum, oh, you are “not productive”, you are not “innovative”, you are not “performing”, or whatever, a constant hum, as if it is understood that the workers are always “robbing the money” (like it is not the other way around, corporations and rich and capitalists have been looting trillions upon trillions for decades).
And then the various economic think tanks (FED, World Bank, IMF, you name it) all turn around and create the great guilt game, too many debts, cut costs, the economies are not competitive enough, they are not productive enough, all the European nations should hose and fire their all so “bloated” public sector, etc. The think tanks know that there is no alternative but to keep such large public sectors since there is no real possibility that the “invisible hand” and the market can really create an equivalent number of jobs since the private sector needs those workers like a hole in the head (and in fact the private sectors are doing and will do everything to get rid of as many workers as possible from their corporations to increase profits, cut costs, optimize and innovate their processes) but they (think tanks and all the economists) turn around and say, shame on you keeping all those worthless “freeloaders”, you got to pay back the debts, etc.
As if they are afraid to tell people the truth because they think people couldn’t wrap their heads around it psychologically and would become all “lazy” and not do anything anymore since now they know that labor is no longer needed. But the truth is, most people worldwide need to be idle like a hole in the head, would love to work and even more work, most people want activity, meanings, etc.
Therefore for this we need Hobby Factories where they can come in for an hour or even 12 hours if they want and help build houses, cars, boats, Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers, you name it. And Cheap Rents and Free Salaries and a total BUS system across all of the world (especially the USA that totally lacks mass transit (which could even be somewhat privately managed, no problem with that)) and all of those things I already told you.
“When Me and Mrs. Asoka leave the USA for country X”, Asoka.
“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness”. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
Asoka, you’re not going anywhere, just yanking our chain again! If you did leave, which you won’t, for some latin american shithole, no doubt in time your family would have to send a character like Marlow up the River looking for you, a mysterious Kurtz, where ..
“Going up the river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and big trees were kings” …
You would be found in some besieged jungle craphole, wracked by disease, besieged by howling savages, sinking into madness, the jungle closing in, desperate to return to civilization, to the USA.
I used to see expatriates all over the place, in N Africa and South America, hippies who fled from America for one reason or another, trapped where they were, desperate to get out. “Could you help me”.
“THE HORROR, THE HORROR”.
-Marlin
Chief of Staff,
CFNation
It looks like play write David Mamet has come over to our side, the right side.
Yesterday along the bottomlands of the Farmington River, with my metal detector, found several Indian Head pennies, but also a large brass disc, turned out to be a Campaign token for Henry Harrison in the 1840 presidential election. Says “The Peoples Choice in 1840” and a whole bunch of other stuff, an intersesting piece of American history.
-Marlin
Vlad,
If you read “The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” by Naomi Klein, you’ll get a good picture of what this global system is. Also Alvin Tofflers, “The Third Wave” and “Megatrends”, read by Clinton and Gore btw.
This system is about destroying the public domain globally and making big money for a few kleptocrats. Catherin Austin Fitts says that the collapses will be small and localized as the feeding frenzy for real value is in the world will go from one country to the next. It’s all abut getting into debt and then having to pay the IMF and the WTO off. Iceland said NO! (thanks to Michael Hudson)
What they don’t tell you is that $22Trillion was the real expenditure for International TARP. That’s why you will have to give up SS and Medicare. Who know what will be raided for value next. We are poised to do the same again for the next bubble.
This is what global monetarism is all about. Each country is fair game for shaking out all the value that belonged communally to the people of a sovereign state. David Rockefeller once sad:” Resources should be decoupled from the nation state.”
Even Fareed Zakaria, a globalist in his own right is going around sounding the alarm that we are failing. If you don’t want taxes, you’re basically saying you don’t want a functioning nation. Just look at this country from Roosevelt on and you’ll understand how important a good government is in building infrastructure, creating a good climate for business and employment, research and development. They do what private businesses are not designed to do!
But when a government is run by those who don’t believe in government and are run by lobbyists instead, well this is what you get…its going to get a lot worse, trust me on that.
In the meantime the voters will be bouncing between 2 parties that do not serve their interests.
BTW, it’s too bad about Weiner, he was one of the few who stands up to the Republican lite president.
_______________
Thanks ProgCon. I copied Mauldon’s article. It’s a good one.
“As if they are afraid to tell people the truth because they think people couldn’t wrap their heads around it psychologically and would become all “lazy” and not do anything anymore since now they know that labor is no longer needed. But the truth is, most people worldwide need to be idle like a hole in the head, would love to work and even more work, most people want activity, meanings, etc.”
People would like to work but not fight. But the system is set up, in part by design and part structurally to make people fight more than work, simply because in most environments the only way to occupy time not needed at work (since technology and advances have eliminated the need for the “8 hour a day job” for years now, it should have been two hours by now!) is to create conflicts and fights (therefore producing nothing (but nothing really needs to be produced anyways) but time passed, “time wasted” (wasted for what ? another strange problem)) or (as the confusion between a command language and an assignment language)* in order to create work you have to create conflicts, fights, conflicting decisions, confusion, etc.
People would like work, activity, meanings but not fights, and so much work today has evaporated into fights, contrasts, challenges, work against other people and not for the task – an objective task at hand – where there is common ground, as in “if you are not fighting matter you are fighting people”. But this is also by design, the powers that be want to brainwash everyone that they are “lazy” and don’t want to “work” when most people don’t want to “have to fight constantly against other people”; don’t want the “conflicts”. But the corporations, the system, the brainwashing and so many other subtle items create a lot of conflicts and little real work, a lot of fights and little real production.
Another result of EXCESS CAPACITY and Free Wealth generated but hidden behind masks, like jobs consisting mostly of conflicts, hire and fire, constant changes, you name it.
But the very fact that there is so much work not producing nothing, so many “bloated” sectors like public workers, health care, defense, etc. and especially so many debts is a real reflection of the wealth that is generated freely, like the debts: that is extra money hanging around and was borrowed out, but the extra money was generated by EXCESS CAPACITY in the first place, and no one ever asks themselves if maybe all of those trillions of dollars of extra money in banks couldn’t have been used for something better. And no one even knows how much there is, 100 trillion or 500 trillion ?
*
– a “command language” is when natural language is used to subtly tell you what you have to do without you noticing it like “cut costs”, “the public sector is bloated”;
– an “assignment language” is when natural language is used to subtly tell you what reality is “the economy is growing”, “unemployment is down”, “productivity is increasing”.
Most of these concepts are so vague, so general, so fluffy that it is hard to really pinpoint down what they are talking about, but this is also by design, no one even knows what it all means, let alone challenges any of it.
Sorry–One more point that Zakaria states.
It is clear, now that US corporations have never done better as the rest of us are failing. It’s important to note that the argument for lowering taxes on these entities will not create more jobs here and at the same time, it is important to keep in mind that we are all stuck here as citizenry, where these corporations are global and can take advantage of cheap labor the world over.
Also 60 Minutes repeated a show about the super computers used in the stock market by those who are making a killing on penny margins in nanoseconds. They said that it had nothing to do with company performance but just the margins of the anticipation of the rise and fall of stock values. –Another distorto contorto I’d say.
“there is a limit to how many you can fire without an economy collapsing”
Yes firing people doesn´t help at all the economy and even less helps to pay the debts.
If you fire x and y they won´t go anymore to restaurants, drycleaners, movies and so on.
The won´t be able to consume and the ones who live on consumers will lose their job too.
less jobs less taxes, less taxes more debts.
On the other hand borrowing money to create false jobs doesn´t help either.
There must be a balance between state jobs and private jobs.
To reduce the debts what about stopping the wars?
What about bringing home the troups, saving on rockets, weapons and so on?
What about jobs to produce what is imported from China?
What about doing what a State should do?
You do not need to give free houses or free anything, the moment people can have a job, make a living, paying the taxes and being happy…
But not to worry little Betty and Ryan, little Cindy, we will overcome this old fashioned and expired generation, let them go back to their Planet of the Apes: we will go forward, we will Split the Sun and gain so much energy, nay, Split the Stars, split black holes, we will create trillions of skyscrapers from the core of Mars, from the core of the Sun to alpha Centauri, go for it, little girl, you can do it, go man go.
Split all of the Stars man, go man, go!
leave your San Jose Mommy and Laura and all those old fashioned ladies to grow that crap in their gardens, I will take you far away.
“You do not need to give free houses or free anything, the moment people can have a job, make a living, paying the taxes and being happy…”
Patrizia just doesn’t get it: A TECHNOLOGICAL ECONOMY PRODUCES WAY MORE THAN ENOUGH WITH VERY LITTLE NEED FOR LABOR INPUT. END OF STORY.
Do you get it now ? Do you understand ? The entire worldwide economy could operate with probably a few million workers, working seriously, efficiently and with rational, well thought out work processes, robots and software, etc. But people can’t wrap their heads around the idea that “they are not needed” for the “economy”, they are EXCESS CAPACITY. Therefore we need Rockets to Mars, Trillions of Skyscrapers, and Hobby Factories hiring millions to work as if it were a hobby and fun, which it should be.
What is it with the ladies on this Blog ?!?!
An Infinite Recursion of web links anyone ?
From:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/06/the-creeping-nausea-of-american-exceptionalism.html
But not to worry little Betty and Ryan, little Cindy, we will overcome this old fashioned and expired generation, let them go back to their Planet of the Apes: we will go forward, we will Split the Sun and gain so much energy, nay, Split the Stars, split black holes, we will create trillions of skyscrapers from the core of Mars, from the core of the Sun to alpha Centauri, go for it, little girl, you can do it, go man go. They are jumping up and down, having so much fun, go for it !
Split all of the Stars man, go man, go!
leave your San Jose Mommy and Laura and all those old fashioned ladies to grow that crap in their gardens, I will take you far away.
Pat says:
“You do not need to give free houses or free anything, the moment people can have a job, make a living, paying the taxes and being happy…”
I answer:
Patrizia just doesn’t get it: A TECHNOLOGICAL ECONOMY PRODUCES WAY MORE THAN ENOUGH WITH VERY LITTLE NEED FOR LABOR INPUT. END OF STORY.
Do you get it now ? Do you understand ? The entire worldwide economy could operate with probably a few million workers, working seriously, efficiently and with rational, well thought out work processes, robots and software, etc. But people can’t wrap their heads around the idea that “they are not needed” for the “economy”, they are EXCESS CAPACITY. Therefore we need Rockets to Mars, Trillions of Skyscrapers, and Hobby Factories hiring millions to work as if it were a hobby and fun, which it should be.
What is it with the ladies on this Blog ?!?!
An Infinite Recursion of cross websites anyone ?
Check this out, honey, that will clear up everything:
http://brainmeta.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22324&st=150
Must listen to Max Keiser, specifically Selling Kidney for IPad.
They are discussing banking meeting where the wages of the US worker needs to meet parity with the rest of the world. As I’ve always said it’s all about a dollar a decade.
Yes, blame the peasants. They have taken the value out of our productivity and siphoned out to the banks.
Just listen to this…
a perfect analysis!
Well, yes. If people want kids, that’s their business, but, you are so right, there are those who make it very difficult for women to control their fertility.
There is a doctor here in town who refused to give my co-worker a tubal after her first baby, because she was too young. Seven years later, she had another accidental pregnancy, just as she got the first one into school.
She kept insisting that she wanted a tubal, but he refused to let her sign until after the birth, just in case it died. (She wanted the tubal no matter what).
Then, after the baby was born, and it was another boy, he told her that she would need a girl. Eventually, he did the surgery.
When I told another co-worker this story, she told me that she had the same doctor, and she also wanted a tubal.
He said OK, but she would be put on the surgery schedule after everyone else that day, and she couldn’t eat until the surgery. She hadn’t eaten since the day before, because she was in labor, and they wouldn’t let her.
She held off until noon, and then was so hungry that she cancelled the surgery. She still hasn’t had her tubal.
Weirdly enough, though, this same doctor came through for us in the ER.
For years we have given rape victims the morning-after pill as part of the treatment.
Then we got new doctors who decided that the morning-after pill was against their religion, and they wouldn’t give it.
This caused an uproar!
So the anti-tubal doctor said that if we got a rape victim and the ER doctor was an asshole (my words, not his), he would prescribe the pill.
If technology allows people to work few hours instead of five days a week, I am happy!
I do not think the right solution is having a few who work and the others who do not do anything…
“It isn’t the “Left” that is pushing the “doing the jobs Americans won’t do”.
It is the ruling class and the corporate media. This is because they want cheap labor.
You are repeating nonsense that you have been told, by the rightwing corporate media, no doubt.”
WAGELABORER is either an idiot or a liar:
DNC Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “We have 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country that are part of the backbone of this economy…blah blah blah”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUqJO6sk7AA
Face it…the tattooed lumprenpoles, of which Jimbo is so fond, are card carrying democrats.
Put simply, change the environment, change the person, irregardless of people-prompted environmental change.
==============
Umm, uh, OK, if you say so.
By the way, it’s regardless.
Have you ever heard of a scientist by the name of Jacque Fresco?
He’s one of the earliest pioneers of an idea like this, where menial labor duties are largely left to automation. Human engineers would simply work to monitor and update the technology through constant innovation. The larger idea is that society could eliminate the need for subsistence wage laborers, in fact, monetary exchange altogether. His idea is that because we (the planet) already possesses the material resources to provide for human wants and needs, there’s no reason why people should incur debt to attain certain essentials.
The idea isn’t to eliminate jobs for people and replace them with robots just so a corporation can increase profit but rather to free people to conduct pure scientific research in order to constantly improve themselves and their surroundings. Using what he calls a systems management approach to assessing and utilizing the Earth’s natural resources. He describes how most people would become generalists, possessing a requisite level of basic engineering skill to maintain their homes and then using the scientific method to contribute to further invention. People could be “lazy” and do nothing but leisurely research, or, volunteer their ideas for the improvement and refinement of technology put in place to run the systems that produce things people need.
It’s called the Venus Project, if you’re curious
Of course this Bitch is the enemy!
wiki:
April 5, 2011, Vice President Joe Biden announced that she was President Barack Obama’s choice to succeed Tim Kaine as the 52nd Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Wasserman Schultz voted on September 29, 2008 for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008[16] and on October 3, 2008 for the revised version of that act.[17]
She is an active member of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Planned Parenthood and Hadassah.
As expected, Wasserman Schultz won, taking 70.2% to Hostetter’s 29.8%. However, Hostetter had only spent about $30,000 to get 30% of the vote
eutsch, gave up his Congressional seat to make an unsuccessful run for the Senate seat of fellow Democrat Bob Graham. Wasserman Schultz was unopposed in the Democratic primary election held to fill Deutsch’s seat.
Her Republican opponent was Margaret Hostetter, a realtor who had never held public office. The 20th is so heavily Democratic that Hostetter faced nearly impossible odds in November. However, she gained notability for her attacks on Wasserman Schultz.
For example, Hostetter’s campaign site criticized Wasserman Schultz for protesting an American flag photograph with a Christian cross on it that was on display in the workstation of a secretary in a government building.
I’m from a state, as Mr. Rooney is, that includes and represents the districts that include real victims. I represent a very large — one of the largest gay populations in the United States of America. One of the largest Jewish populations in the United States of America.
My region — our region has a very large African-American population. It really is belittling of the respect that we should have for these groups to suggest that members of the armed services have somehow systematically been the victims of hate crimes.[ (compared to Wasserman Schultz’s $1.2 million). When Wasserman Schultz was sworn in on January 4, 200
Jewish American Heritage Month
Wasserman Schultz and Senator Arlen Specter were the driving forces behind the resolution that declared every May “Jewish American Heritage Month.”
What’s your point?
That’s about the only thing you’re capable of assessing — type errors. Go ‘head and pat yourself on the back.
Democrats are not “Left”.
They are one half of the corporate party, the other half being the Republicans.
Both parties cater to the ruling class.
This is why Reagan legalized millions of immigrants, and both Democrats and Republicans favor immigration.
Marlin said: “besieged jungle craphole, wracked by disease, besieged by howling savages, sinking into madness, the jungle closing in, desperate to return to civilization, to the USA.”
How apropos of this week’s topic: American Exceptionalism.
Marlin said: “THE HORROR, THE HORROR”.
Americans believe that the United States is the best place on earth to live. Contemplating leaving can only result in HORROR.
Thanks, Marlin, for the confirmation of USA conditioning. Your image of Latin American as a besieged jungle crap hole does not jive with reality:
http://studenttravel.about.com/od/bogotaphotos/ig/Bogota-Photos–Bogota-Colombi/Monserrate.htm
Oh, the horror, the horror!
American Exceptionalism.
What an interesting play on words. People can be classified as Liberal Elitists or Conservative Exceptionalists. Seems like the same symbolism with different terms.
Neat-o!
jungle crap hole does not jive with reality:
==============
You wrote jive just to annoy me didn’t you?
You mentioned having lived abroad for 12 years. I assume this was not continuous since previously you’ve said you lived in at least two places, Canada and South America. Why did you return to the US from these places? During those 12 years outside the US I assume you had to work. Did you continue paying into US Social Security? (You did say that you paid into SS for 45 years.) What about the taxes of the country you were living in?
When you move to SA are you intending to seek citizenship?
Does Mrs Asoka speak Spanish too?
Don’t worry, Asoka will be livin’ it up, all king-like and shit, with bars on his windows to keep the locals out, and when he jet-sets to other climes, he’ll have to pay some other locals to watch over his castle. Of course, they might steal his stuff, too, so he’ll have to bribe the local constabulary to really keep it all nailed down. Unless he’s just chillin’ in a grass hut on the beach, smokin’ home-grown and drinking rum until the money runs out. Oh, and watch out for bilharzia!
Q, so many questions, so little time!
During those 12 years outside the US I assume you had to work. YES I DID WORK.
Did you continue paying into US Social Security?
NO I DID NOT PAY INTO SOCIAL SECURITY THOSE YEARS.
(You did say that you paid into SS for 45 years.)
I SAID I WORKED FOR 45 YEARS, BUT 12 OF THOSE YEARS I DID NOT PAY INTO SOCIAL SECURITY
What about the taxes of the country you were living in? I DID NOT EARN ENOUGH TO HAVE TO PAY TAXES
When you move to SA are you intending to seek citizenship? NO
Does Mrs Asoka speak Spanish too? YES
Don’t worry, Asoka will be livin’ it up, all king-like and shit
———-
You got that right.
Can’t you be happy that I will be happy, livin’ the life of Riley? Does it bother you that escape from North America is possible?
Let me put it this way. I married an Asian girl with a high IQ from a talented family with a lot of high IQs.
Like any other civilization or population the Chinese have had a lot of ups and downs. Based on personal experience (I’m up to my neck in Chinese) I would say their intellectual capacity is no different than us white folks. You say they are a high IQ race. Maybe you haven’t properly read up on the multitude of idiocies they’ve committed. Have you noticed that China has a billion people that are dirt poor? Not a work of genius that. Neither was the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution.
I’m not justifying my marrying my wife to you or anybody else. Why should I? You are severely misguided Vlad in your views on this thing called “race”. You have some really deep misconceptions about innate human abilities that you think go hand in hand with skin colour or geographic/ethnic/cultural roots. You talk about “scientific” studies. Guys like Rushton that have been laughed at by others in the scientific community. So why should I believe him?
Thanks Vlad but I’ll trust the evidence of my own eyes. You would say that people from different parts of the world differ in terms of their height, skin colour, eye colour etc so why not their intelligence? There’s no reason to rule it out on scientific grounds, right? Maybe if they can differ in these physical features they can differ in intellectual capacities and character. Right? The problem Vlad is that they don’t. I can’t be bullshitted by “scientific” studies. People have agendas Vladdy, ideological, political or otherwise. I’m a numbers guy and I know how numbers can be fucked with until they say what you want them to say.
Trust me Vlad the human mind, regardless of race, is a highly elastic and adaptable thing. You put way, way too much stock in appearances and on this concept of “race”. There were people in these parts that would’ve put me and my parents and relatives in a race or racial category separate from that of the predominant northern Europeans that settled here. We look different, we tend to be shorter and darker. The racialists’ motive Vlad would have been to put us down, to keep us “in our place”, to keep us inferior socially and economically.
The thing is Vlad, right from the get-go me and my N. American born relatives at our respective schools started to outclass most kids of Northern European stock both academically and athletically. So what would the racialists say then? That we of this Mediterranean “race” are “equal” after all? Or, horror of horrors, superior? Wouldn’t help with their agenda of social/personal aggrandizement would it? Best to shut up I think. This racial inferiority/superiority stuff has zero basis in fact.
jungle crap hole does not jive with reality:
==============
Q: You wrote jive just to annoy me didn’t you?
No, one of the legitimate meanings of the word jive is being used appropriately in the above sentence.
JIVE
v) to be consistent with, match up.
Q, I never intentionally try to annoy you.
Whew,
It seems the language fairy has attached himself to you today, Asoka. Your use of jargon referencing the swing era of rhythm and dance to describe another remark as being out of “swing” with reality annoyed the lonely creature. But I wonder if it is because that word was widely used by an ethnic group whose unique vernacular angers him. Sad
it’s all a matter of personal preference about where you live. it’s what you think is best and most fun for you. when i was in guatemala, i met a college age young man who grew up in detroit. he was not born in the u.s. he returned to guatemala to try and return legally to the u.s. in his heart he is an american and wants to be here. i met lots of nice people in guatemala but living there would not be for me. different strokes for different folks. it’s not always about who is number one.
“Have you noticed that China has a billion people that are dirt poor?”
————-
OK, guys this myth has been repeated now several times without any evidence being submitted. I would like to see some evidence of ONE BILLION “dirt poor” (that is not an objective or exact definition of poverty), including the year.
SOURCE: http://www.indexmundi.com/china/population_below_poverty_line.html
One billion? There is a big difference between 21.5 million (or 57 million including “low income”) and one billion.
Of course, I’m happy for you. What was irking me, I suppose, was the fact that, given your somewhat privileged position as an emigre to a country that accepts you on condition of your financial situation, how do you justifiably criticize those in NA who want to have some control over their borders? My heart says that we’re all one and that the world is one, but the facts seem to suggest otherwise, as Cash pointed out yesterday.
Are your new hosts xenophobic because they only want immigrants with a certain amount of money? Am I xenophobic because I’d like to have a say as to who gets into “my” country?
Am I xenophobic because I’d like to have a say as to who gets into “my” country?
———–
Without knowing you it would be hard to say. Some of the comments on this blog do indicate some people who favor controlling immigration do so for racist or xenophobic reasons. There is fear that letting more people in will “ruin” the country, or blame that the country’s current situation is due to having too many immigrants (legal or illegal).
It just all seems selfish, like an “I got mine now let’s shut the doors” attitude.
But I take your point that I cannot justifiably criticize North Americans who want to control their borders.
Why should I even care? Whether or not they “want” control, they don’t have control… and will never have control. People will move where they want to move. Thanks for the response.
OK, this is very frustrating. Today that damn blog administrator won’t let me post links.
First I tried to post one for spider. No go.
Then I tried twice to post on for you. I was told that it would be posted when the administrator checked it out, but I don’t believe that.
Anyway, try web of debt. com.
Ellen Brown, like Michael Hudson, does not go along with the dominant Milton Friedman way of dealing with the economy.
i would bet that what constitutes poor to westerners vs chinese is different perceptions of reality. i read a figure that uses 200 million as the number of chinese living above western standards of what constitutes poverty. but i bet a lot more chinese are are seeing improvement in their lives in recent years.
“Are your new hosts xenophobic because they only want immigrants with a certain amount of money?”
–torontobound–
Perhaps, but you’d have to interact with the indigenous folks directly to know their feelings about Americans generally, or, you, directly. Ethnocentricity is a pretty easy thing to overcome if you can communicate past the “outsider” dichotomy and share ideas with fellows.
“Am I xenophobic because I’d like to have a say as to who gets into “my” country?”
–torontobound–
Yup, it’s not “your” country. Ownership is just a concept used to cultivate a culture of consumers. guess it worked on ya. You just won the lottery (or maybe not) and ended up here. The only borders to patrol are in your mind. Nationalism is akin to patriotism is akin to racism is akin to prejudice. These are interrelated concepts and you can’t be one without being a bit of the others. You can’t use rhetoric to spin your way out of this.
Let’s try this one.
Speaking of debt – a SWAT team kicked in a man’s door, trying to collect on a student loan.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/08/983241/-SWAT-Team-Breaks-Into-Home,-Hancuffs-and-Detains-Man-s-Student-Loan-Default
OK, this is really bad.
I just tried to post a link to a news report on a SWAT team kicking down a man’s door, trying to collect on a student loan.
Try googling Daily Kos SWAT team.
We’ve been talking about education and debt and student loans, so I thought that people would be interested.
Bad blog administrator!
Debtors prisons are a scary thought.
Re: The video: Dude! Seriously! Way too man corn dogs and elephant ears!
Tattoos are soooo last week, last year. Wimpy, even. Branding and scarification are the next new thing. Actually, not so new. Noticed the trend three or so years ago.
Let’s get tribal! 🙂
After jettisoning the under 55 from the SS program, the next target will be expats. As in, Ex-Patriot. Ya leave the Mother Ship, you must be punished! They’ll be a pretty easy target.
I put “quotation marks” around “my” country as a subtle acknowledgment of the fact that nationalism is a bit of a dead horse, or ought to be.
Again, the plain fact is that I live in a country where I pay taxes, which in itself constitutes a form of ownership, as does citizenship, expressed in official terms by voting. When I vote for a Prime Minister, that person becomes my Prime Minister in my country.
Got it?
Furthermore, my feelings about voting and the results it produces are that it is largely a game with no wining results for the common man. I don’t believe in it much, but there it is.
Bet you voted for Obama, praised yourself for your open-mindedness, seeing above the rhetoric.
Oh yes. I get it. Within the paradigm you’ve framed your thinking, you’re dead… on. No one can help you discard the ideologies to which you adhere. That’s a personal process requiring first-hand experience. The less experience a person acquires over time the more captive to their beliefs they’ll become.
Oh, and you think your vote really counts? George Carlin had something to say about that. I love Netflix.
But your new country has control, don’t they? They decide who gets in and who doesn’t, or the government does, maybe not the “indigenous fellows” Mr. Rocket speaks of.
But, in the case of the US and Canada, maybe you’re right, maybe we have no control anymore. This is the land of milk and honey, or used to be, and millions want to be here, fucked though it is.
Off shoring and the library racket …
A couple of years ago, our building head returned from the yearly ALA (American Library Association) conference all excited. She had seen a presentation on reference services. What with computers and cheap telephone communication, reference services could be located anywhere in the world! 24/7! She didn’t seem to get that I was horrified that vast swaths of our US reference librarians would disappear to be replaced by underpaid folks overseas. Wonder how many of them will be ex-pat retired librarians?
OCLC is an organization that has pretty much cornered the library cataloging business. I’ve never been to impressed with OCLCs cataloging. They have a 95% accuracy rate! Sorry, not good enough. But then, I worked a couple of summer’s with probably the two best cataloguers “back in the day.”
But, my point in bringing up OCLC is I meet someone who had been one of their administrative people for 5 years. She told me they were developing a cataloging pilot program, in a Middle Eastern country. Dubai? Qatar? I forget which one.
They were off-shoreing to avoid “high” wages and benefits. Even though many of their US employees are minimum wage, part time folks with no benefits. She was uncomfortable enough with the way things were going to bail and become a lowly little community librarian.
So, the next time you go to your local library, with a reference question, you might be directed to a phone or a computer terminal. The person on the other end may speak or type in an odd manner. 🙂 When you find a book about Australian youth culture in the middle of soap making, you’ll know why.
Not a voter, sir. I learned quite early that that idea is a runaway train and a sham, running it’s own course regardless of what a consensus of voters want to believe.
“Bet you voted for Obama, praised yourself for your open-mindedness, seeing above the rhetoric.”
There ya go again, cementing your viewpoints on the one side VS the other symbolism of a well-trained consumer.
JIVE
v) to be consistent with, match up.
===============
Wrong Asoka. Neither Dictionary.com, Random House, Webster’s nor Oxford give “to be consistent with, match up” as the definition of jive. But all four use similar words – be in accord, agree – to define jibe.
You fucked up Asoka.
Dude, you obviously are not reading very closely. I said, I don’t believe in it much, and yes, Carlin was bang fucking on. He also went on to become a political commentator on MSNBC toward the end of his life, commenting on politics in the US. Open your bloody eyes and ears, and fuck you regarding my personal processes!
You’re not a consumer? What do you do, drink your own piss?
So you don’t believe in it much, yet you still do it. Sort of like jerking-off when an erection is impossible.
Yes, unfortunately I learned these things after I’d become somewhat indoctrinated, but luckily I never lost my childhood sense of skepticism. Ever since, it’s been a process of dissengagement, of acquiring the needed experience to transcend the old reality. having to whore oneself to the system happened to be a hand-me-down most of us have to wear. the point is learning to make your own instead of buy your own whenever possible. And drinking piss works in an emergency — a possible necessity when braving the wild. You should try it sometime.
Good luck in 2012. #smirk#
Q, you are wrong and your white dictionaries don’t impress me. I use the urban dictionary:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jive
Scroll down to definition number 5.
You fucked up, Q.
And by not voting….you gonna change the way things operate? Whether you do or don’t, things are still gonna be fucked up. Once every so often, people come along who are worth voting for. No, I didn’t vote in the most recent federal election here in Canada. Simply trying to illustrate a concept of citizenship, which, in my view outclasses the “consumer” tag you’re so willing to slap on anyone who disagrees with you and your One Big Happy Family nonsense.
Who are the US?
Who are the THEM?
Do you know? Are you too busy jerking off to care, just enjoying your Netflix? While you’re busy with that techno bullshit (ain’t gonna save you, pal, in fact it only makes life worse), I’m gonna go fix something with the stuff I bought, with the money I earned working at a job, acting like a consumer. Ass.
Asoka, luv ya man, but why they gotta be white dictionaries, yo?
Cue all the disgruntled language fairies. Flutter and spit, darlings.
Anyway, dictionaries, regardless of color, don’t PRESCRIBE how words are used; they DESCRIBE, so quibbling how different folks use them is a lost cause.
Q, you have no other arguments to make, so you toil in triviality? Neat-o!
Dude, don’t envy me because I’ve regained potency.
You were smoked long before I ever pointed it out.
C’mon man, just who do you think the lexicographers for Random House and Oxford are? They ain’t from the ‘hood, if you know what I mean.
Scroll down to definition number 5.
============
Oh, I understand now. You prefer using a dictionary whose first and second entries for the word jive are as follows:
1.
Like a whole other language in the 70’s-80’s. Here is a memorable quote from Airplane.
Randy : Can I get you something?
Second Jive Dude : ‘S’mofo butter layin’ me to da’ BONE! Jackin’ me up… tight me!
Randy : I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
First Jive Dude : Cutty say ‘e can’t HANG!
Jive Lady : Oh stewardess! I speak jive.
Randy : Oh, good.
Jive Lady : He said that he’s in great pain and he wants to know if you can help him.
Randy : All right. Would you tell him to just relax and I’ll be back as soon as I can with some medicine?
Jive Lady : Jus’ hang loose, blood. She gonna catch ya up on da’ rebound on da’ med side.
Second Jive Dude : What it is, big mama? My mama no raise no dummies. I dug her rap!
Jive Lady : Cut me some slack, Jack! Chump don’ want no help, chump don’t GET da’ help!
First Jive Dude : Say ‘e can’t hang, say seven up!
Jive Lady : Jive dude don’t got no brains anyhow! Hmmph!
by Not Zane Sep 14, 2004 share this
2.
Colorful form of speaking. Sometimes hard to follow.
1> Shit man, that honky mus’ be messin’ my old lady… Got to be runnin’ cold upside down his head. Ya know?
2> Hey home, I can dig it. You know he ain’t gonna lay no mo’ big rap up on you man.
1> I say hey sky, s’other s’ay I wan say? Pray to J I get the same ol’ same ol’.
2> Eh. Yo know yourself a pro slick, gray matter live performas down now take TCB’in man.
1> Hey, you know what they say… See a broad, to get that booty, yak ’em, leg ‘er down ‘n smack ’em yak ’em.
2> Cold got to be! You know? Sheeiiiiiiiit.
by MoonKnight Jan 5, 2003 share this
And BTW, entry #5 definition resulted from black folk mistaking jive for jibe.
I’m guessing the Urban Dictionary would define wif as an alternative for the word wit as in “wus up wif dat.”
If you can’t take the hot patois, get the hell out of the lexicographical kitchen.
You fucked up Q.
Nah, I hear you, signorino. There exist the puritanical “keepers of the language” who claim dominion over what types of language officially merit entry into the lexicography — and they’re mostly white folk. But I was speaking past the authoritarian view of how language is or ought to be used — the stupid, trivial pursuit Q challenged you about.
So when I wrote that dictionaries really only describe rather than prescribe how language is used by people, I was poking fun at the establishment, so to speak.
In fact, I think history shows that people develop and change language despite the illusion of authority. I think grammarians and the like arrived after languages developed, anyhow, so they had to design rules for how they were going to commonly assess and study them. Kind of like how science doesn’t prescribe to humans how the universe works like science were a God. Science helps humans describe how nature works, and sometimes we read the descriptions incorrectly, which helps us refine the language. So in essence the lexicon of science necessarily changes, because the methods requires it to function. Conversely, human languages change constantly, but asshole gatekeepers think their saying something when they nitpick. Oh, well.
Be easy on me, sir. You’re one of the only three I respect hear — here — wink — on this cite — sight — site.
Damn, the spelling errors.
Cue the language fairies!
Does it bother you that escape from North America is possible?
=====================
Another instance of Asoka “containing multitudes.” A week ago his sentiments were precisely the opposite.
From the Urban Dictionary:
“jive-ass: The rhythmic body language of the ebonically inclined…Jive-ass can also be used to describe any mannerism or behavior indicative of eubonics culture.”
Followed the link, “Buy jive-ass mugs, t-shirts and magnets.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/products.php?term=jive-ass&defid=750114
Looks pretty White, to me. 🙂
but asshole gatekeepers think their saying something when they nitpick. Oh, well.
==============
Interesting … this (the author of the above) is the same person who less than 24 hours ago made a huge stink about the nuance of meaning between predisposed and predetermined.
That makes a ton of sense. You’ve still not expressed anything worth noting. You think you’re free? In your head? Good for you! Now, drink some more piss. I’m going to stick to the water that I pay for.
Foolish hobgoblin that I am (thank you, Mr. Emerson), I have always been consistent in calling for porous borders (effectively the elimination of borders since they are imaginary lines, fictions created by bureaucrats that are not visible on the globe) which means I want free movement of people both ways, out of and into the legal fictions called nation states.
Sounds awesome. I’d vote for that.
You fucked up Q.
==============
I just want to make sure what you’re saying. When you say “You fucked up Q” do you mean that I fucked up or have you slipped into Ebonics without signaling that you had done so and actually mean “You’re fucked up Q” ??
I’m sure you recognize it is one thing to “fuck up” and a whole different thing to “be fucked up.”
Look, dingle-berry. You’re in way over your head. You initially nitpicked about why Asoka used the word Jive, which only gave away your idiotic racial grievance with the word.
I used the words predetermination and predisposition for precision to denote two different concepts — concepts which baffled you immensely.
Now yesterday I wasted the time it would’ve taken for an afternoon shit to respond to your vacuous post and left you behind with a flush — or so I thought. But it seems that this morning I returned to find a remnant of a turd (you) bobbing and rolling about the blog-bowl. Having nothing better to discuss, you tried to capitalize on a minor oversight. Fearing any genuine discourse, you spent your day today trying save face with your cohort by quibbling over silliness.
Since you’ve outed yourself as merely a nuisance turd who just can’t be flushed, I suppose I’ll have to return several times and keep pissing on you until you dissolve enough to join the other volume of wastewater with whom you enjoy commonality. I’ll start drinking coffee, you just keep floating –deal?
Just know that I pissed upstream to the supply from which you draw. Glug, glug, glug.
If it’s genuine discourse you desire, i’m up for it, rather than slinging arrows. I’m all ears if you have something enlightening to say. So far, you’ve only reinforced sides, teams, us vs them, as much as anyone else.
Bossy said, “i would bet that what constitutes poor to westerners vs chinese is different perceptions of reality.”
I have been monitoring Chinese social memes and message forums. A popular, common thread among them is an absolute hatred for poverty. They came from it, and know viscerally what it is like to be poor. Their parents, schools, and society beat any idealism out of them. The social shift now is the new affluence and its corrosive effect on those values.
burning near Alpine, Arizona is now 389000 acres and 0% contained.
This is a preview of Global Warming. It starts with drought and temperature rise, creating acres of kindling. Then, a lightning strike or cigarette sparks an inferno. The fire is driven by extreme winds. Ultimately, this is fate of the entire Earth, from the equator to the mid-latitudes.
But who is kidding whom? It is not as if, with feedbacks, global warming is going to stop halfway between this equilibria and the Miocene conditions of 25 million years ago. We are going full stop to an arid, lifeless desert planet without human beings, let alone land mammals.
I was at a major scientific conference a few months ago. There are no solutions anywhere. The only solution is to reverse global commerce, full-stop. This generation is voting for nothing less than the sacrifice of life on Earth for the sake of their burger & shake, today. Specifically, the first world- as much as the breeding masses in the 3rd world have certainly decimated their chances at ecological balance, it is the energetic activity of the first world which is producing the most Carbon dioxide.
AQsoka, says, “http://studenttravel.about.com/od/bogotaphotos/ig/Bogota-Photos–Bogota-Colombi/Monserrate.htm”
Unfortunately, GW effects are going to hit hardest, fastest, and soonest right here. The plants cannot migrate fast enough- they will all die. Precipitation will decline and take care of the rest. These people can flee up the mountains to find cooler conditions- but it is a trap- snowmelt reservoirs disappear- and once at the peaks, valleys become uncrossable.
I imagine a possible recourse could be full-scale war against the northern hemispheres. I can’t say it wouldn’t be justified at this point. We are pointing the gun at these people and saying literally that we will not negotiate our way of life. Since they cannot initiate a shooting war, an economic embargo might be an option. Problem is most of their gov’s are hopelessly in the pocket of corporate citizens who fully discount the future and nature.
Messy Drood referenced NPR article, I quote from article:
“But the core of the breakthrough is that resolving conflicts among choices is expensive at a cognitive level and can be unpleasant. It causes mental fatigue.”
This article is a breakthrough understanding of the human psyche.
Or at least my own psyche.
The problem is options. All the mental fatigue comes from deciding to pursue something. The act of decision creates relief. You experience all of the worry and anxiety before the decision to, say, sell all your belongings and fossil-fuel vehicles. Afterwords, it is bliss. All of the energy that is consumed in worrying whether or not it is the right choice, or most profitable, detracts from the quality of life improvement of those decisions.
The most content people are the ones that are laser-focused on their careers or life path. Creative dalliance and philosophic musing is a product of affluence.
Asoka Bro, where you 2 movin 2?
Earlier this week [s/he,] commented that
s/he would ‘never comment on my posts or throw me another crumb’.
Today s/he commented on my post!
[I am He]
You’re not up for anything. That is to say you’re sadly not capable. I merely used the same manner and tone to address things you wrote to other people who tried to dig into the nuance of things their interested in.
You didn’t like the reflection in the mirror when held toward your face, and you shrieked, fussed and farted like a baby.
Now you’re trying to save face and asking me to use a tone different than yours and jerk your flaccid member for you — in order to enlighten you? !%$#@!, PLEASE!
How boot, you just sit on the sidelines of life, vote for that once-in-a-lifetime candidate, exercise your citizenship by deciding which national brand makes the lifestyle products you’d like to buy, and leave me be.
Had already forgotten who you were. Burned the tag into memory this time. Won’t respond to the empy posts again. Thanks for the reminder.
So just put the throughbred in with the old nag and hope for the best, right? Well I say Hell No. We can’t let people like you hijack our culture and the thousands of years of evolution that lead to it.
You never felt comfortable with your people. Never attracted to the women or the women to you. I deeply sympathize – seriously. But you want to be the norm – which cannot be. You are an exception. It reminds me of a woman I worked with. She was straight but pretty masculine. She was dismissive of feminine women. She wanted not only acceptance (which she deserved of course) but to be the norm and the feminine women to be the outsiders, the ones with a problem. That’s an inversion based on pain and conflict. It can only lead to greater pain and conflict if such a plea is accepted. It cannot be. The norms are based on the greatest happiness or the greatest number – real happiness not career woman stuff and nonsense.
I apologize if I’m getting too personal. I don’t desire to offend you. I just feel very strongly about all this. Society cannot be a polygot Tower of Genetic Babel. As I said, there should be places, even whole countries, for people who see things your way. But the whole West? Not if we have anything to say about it. As to how “your” countries will work out – depends on the people doing the mixing. Asians and Whites might be able to make it work – as long as the Asians are not in the majority. If they are, their intense racism will make it all fall apart. The numbers must be even or even better – a small White majority.
PFFFT! Save face? Please. You assume WAY too much about people, myself included.
You really think you’re so damn free in this life, don’t you?
Flaccid member? You’re the one who brought in all this dick talk, not me, so you obviously have a fixation there.
Sidelines of life? Interesting. I guess you’re going to lead us all into 2012 with your freedom to pursue scientific thought, because, well, robots will be doing all the physical work. Uh, and how do the robots operate, genius?
Leave you be? With unlimited pleasure, my piss-gurgling, end-of-the-world visionary. Here’s to your freedom, your technology jerk-offs, and your vapid postings. Keep flushing that fucking toilet, ass-water.
Finally.
asia, I guess you missed my previous post in which I specified I am going to country X, a South American country with universal medical care, near the equator (there are five such countries that qualify) in the Andean mountains where it is 75 every day, 65 every night, 365 days a year. No heating costs. No cooling costs.
I bought land that already has mandarin oranges, avocado, plantain, bananas, papayas, and other things growing on it. Just pura vida (to borrow a Costa Rican phrase.
I will have internet access via cell phone network (where I’m going is a bit remote, so there are no land line telephones, no cable, no DSL). But I’ll still be able to read CFN every Monday and follow all your comments. And I will be only 30 minutes by bus from a city with internet cafes, medical clinics, shopping mall, and hospital.
Fearing any genuine discourse, you spent your day today trying save face with your cohort by quibbling over silliness.
=================
trying to save face
What YOU don’t understand shit-for-brains is that I’ve been quibbling over “silly shit” like this for years. It’s my shtick. It’s got nothing to do with saving face and my correction of jive has nothing to do with race. I’ve corrected people’s misuse of jive numerous times in the past just like I have then and than, except and accept, etc and I intend to keep doing it so get used to it.
You should hang around the blog for awhile and get acquainted with people’s personalities before jumping to conclusions about their motivations. (Even though you’ve only been here a couple of days, however, we’ve already got you pegged as an asshole.)
Yesterday I praised you for bringing in some fresh material in the way of insult but now I take it back. You have made the cardinal error of using the same insult – dingle-berry – twice in a short period of time. Maybe try jack-wagon next time.
I am also quickly tiring of your showy facade of intelligence.
And drop the black vernacular when talking to Asoka. It sounds pathetic.
Damn, you still there? PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss………
Till next time, bobber
At this point there can be no doubt that Asoka is moving to Costa Rica and Vlad is moving to Belize so that he can rule the country kind of like Tarzan ruled the apes.
All the sensitive people have my permission to heap abuse on me if they so wish.
Keep going E, you’re a writer among scribblers.
Just a thought about tattoos.
I’m not the only citizen of USA who does not own a tattoo. Only from lack of interest.
The invention of the electro-mechanical needle in the late 19th century devalued the status of skin art. It became more affordable to the masses, whereas in antiquity it was an invaluable sign of social status. It was not just painful to endure, it was very expensive.
Skin art had a social eclipse that lasted perhaps not 100 years. Reserved exclusively for men — merchant marines, Navy, Army or working-class folk who desired and obtained catharsis by allowing graffiti to adorn their skin.
In the mid-1980s there was a revival of skin art, mostly achieved through returning to ancient practice.
Unfortunately ancient practice ain’t cheap. So yes, your pet peeve with tacky flames flowing up the neck out of the tee-shirt on men & women is understandable.
I also have followed your distaste for short pants. Well, son, things are warming up here in the Northeast. Not everyone wants to show off their knobby knees. That is why hemlines for men go way below the knee. I don’t think this is any way an indication of neotenic or atavistic digression by working-class Americans. Excuse me, I meant unemployed Americans.
I am not in any way a fashonista, nor am I employed, or represent the rag trade.
best regards,
kaje
I think Waaserman Schultz is cute, of course I also liked Wynonna Rider and Tori Spelling!
but asshole gatekeepers think their saying something
==============
they’re
Damn, that coffee’s runnin str8 through me. (another offerring for the language fairy and his typo fetish).
And yer still there, little deuce?
PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
“burning near Alpine, Arizona is now 389000 acres and 0% contained.
This is a preview of Global Warming. It starts with drought and temperature rise, creating acres of kindling. Then, a lightning strike or cigarette sparks an inferno. The fire is driven by extreme winds. Ultimately, this is fate of the entire Earth, from the equator to the mid-latitudes.”
Hate to differ, since i LOVE the image of people drowning in their own shit (thanks P-Funk.) Global Warming may or may not be a factor. The big player here is the insistence by Smokey and his maudlin pals on putting out all the little fires that should have thinned the forests up north, thus increasing the fuel load to supernatural levels. Fuck with Mother Nature, get your ass buttered, believe it or not. Now that the doghair pines are thinned I might buy me a few acres up yonder- good water table, lots of game, 4 season climate. Still too many Mormons but they do make good neighbors… believe me, they got food, guns and gold. Hot daughters too…
Oh, and Asoka- it is jibe, not jive. We speakee English here. Q is right, again. He is still an anal-retentive asshole, but he is right. Sucks, don’t it?
the nuance of things their interested in.
=================
they’re
Do I need to explain the possessive?
Hate to break it to you Asoka, but I visited your private retreat in S.A. recently, and Archer Daniels Midland has just cleared the whole god-damned area of mango trees. Of course, Monsanto didn’t help, planting thousands of acres of “seeds”, not to mention irrigating it all with the sewage water of nearby barrios. The sound of gunfire from the drug overlords’ semi-automatics in the middle of the night is enough to make anyone crap their beds. Happy trails, though!
what we need is a plant that will yield bullets as a viable crop, fertilized by bullshit, watered by blood. Tripp, are you on this?
Shoot yeah, man. Sounds right up my alley!
While we are waiting though, here’s a small sampling of bullets, blood, and bullshit. Or what might turn into such things if we don’t make some of the mental shifts I talk about in this piece:
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/2011/06/addition-by-substraction.html
A bit late this week, but hopefully worth the wait.
Tripp Ticket
Minister of Horticulture
CFNation
Happy trails, though!
————-
Thanks for the good wishes!
A lot of people here think if the USA goes down, so does South America (the people who say there is no place to hide). Not so.
In the USA 2008 crash, the global south stayed strong and South America is still growing at 5% because it was not brought down by the USA crash.
ADM recognizes where the growth is happening and is investing in the global south, but mostly in things like wheat milling, premix manufacturing, soybean crushing, and corn and cocoa processing. They are not messing with the mangoes, much less my mangoes.
porous borders
==========
No Asoka, my sensitive antennae are detecting bullshit. Your intent in mentioning “escape” from North America had nothing to do with borders. It had to do with denigration.
But it’s all no nevermind … tomorrow you’ll be telling us how swimmingly things are going under Obama.
You are large…
The floating language fairy ain’t nuthen if not resilient. Incidentally, you’ve made mistakes of your own in previous posts, but you already knew that you lacked the intellectual honest to correct yourself.
Ummm, coffee good.
PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
I know you’ll spot them. I gots faith in ya!
You are close to the Truth – just one more big step to make and you are Home. You must realize that World Communism was a project of the self same Elite Bankers. It was and is a complete fraud. Beyond that, it’s an unbelievably bad idea. People are unequal and cannot be made equal without doing violence to them or to the social fabric. I’m not even talking about the different races here – just within a given race there is an incredible diversity of talents and IQ’s. No equality at all. It’s a useful abstraction in Mathematics and Law. Equal rights are one thing – equal outcomes quite another.
As Mark Twain said, I’d love to go on vacation if I didn’t have to bring that fellow Mark Twain with me.
my sensitive antennae are detecting bullshit … tomorrow you’ll be telling us how swimmingly things are going under Obama
————-
Bullshit is the kabuki theater Obama, Gates, and Betrayus are playing in Afghanistan. Withdrawing only 30,000 troops is bullshit. Killing people with drone strikes is bullshit.
I have stopped singing Obama’s praises. I have woken up and smelled the mangoes.
god damn them all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIwzRkjn86w&feature=related
I have stopped singing Obama’s praises.
=============
I am taping a little note to the edge of my laptop screen that reads “6/8/11, 6:22PM, Asoka drops Obama like a hot potato” so I can throw it back in your face when you do a 180 around this time next week.