JHK’s Three-Act Play
The latest version of Pretend – going on a couple of weeks now – is the nation whistling past the graveyard of mortgage documentation fraud while skeletons dance around everything connected with the money system. Halloween came early this year. The USA is getting to look like one big Masque of the Red Death, so I suppose it’s convenient that our pop culture has been saturated with vampires, zombies, and werewolves for a decade, coincident with the self-cannibalizing of our economy. Something in the zeitgeist told us to get with the program of a twilight existence. We’re well-schooled now in the ways of the undead, operating under cover of darkness, going for the neck at every opportunity, even eating our young – if you consider the debt orgy, both private and public, as a way to party like it’s 1999 by consuming your children’s’ future.
The big banks leading the charge of the anthropophagi are making like it’s no big deal that notes representing money lent have become mysteriously dissociated from the mortgages that secure them. In the good old days, these things traveled in pairs, like boy-and-girl, Laurel and Hardy, a horse and carriage. It made for straight-forward property transfers, where Person A could be confident he was buying something free and clear from Person B. What a quaint concept, free and clear!
Nowadays, these documents can hardly be located at all – not such a surprise, really, since they were ground out like e-coli infested bratwursts in strip-mall boiler rooms run by former used car salesmen, and pawned off wholesale (literally) on banks who served them up sliced-and-diced, sloppy Joe style, on CDO buns to credulous pension funds, cretinous insurance company yobs, double-digit IQ college endowment managers, and other such nitwits bethinking themselves the reincarnation of Bernard Baruch, not to mention foreign sovereign nations who bought this smallpox-blanket-grade investment paper by the container-ship-load and, finally, the innovative geniuses at the very banks who engineered the stuff and got stuck with tons of it themselves when, as they say, the music stopped.
The Big Picture looks even worse when you figure in the mischief of so-called synthetic CDOs that represent the multiple securitizations of single underlying mortgages – God knows how many times each – which mean, curiously, that a lot of real estate is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, plus the Ponzi universe of credit default swap black holes just sitting out there waiting to suck whole civilizations into oblivion. Ollie to Stan: Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into….
But I stray a little from my point, which is the massive systematic monkeyshines involving legal documents relating to American real estate. The bankers say, just bring a “lost note” letter to the closing. “The dog ate it.” Signed, Mom. Like, that’s an okay substitute for the rule of law. Oh, and, by the way, the dog ate the title, too. Congress even tried to get in on the act last week with a bill that would have essentially negated the significance of notarization – that is, of witnessing and attesting to the veracity of documents – in order to mitigate the fiasco of robo-signing, which was endemic in places like the mortgage mills of Nevada and Florida where due diligence went AWOL and Burger King-quality employees just threw some contracts in the trash out of sheer boredom. “Oh, the dog also ate my signature….” President Obama vetoed the damn thing, which was passed in the US Senate unanimously by the human dung-beetles who work that manure pile. The dog ate your financial system.
This is hardly to say that the people who bought property based on those improperly processed and/or scam-a-lama-ding-dong mortgages deserve to avoid foreclosure and get to keep and live in million dollar houses they never could have really afforded to buy in an economy run by grown-ups. But they might, because there are an awful lot of hungry lawyers out there who will demand that the agents of foreclosing parties produce the relevant documents. And some of these foreclosing parties may not have the nerve to hand over forged instruments in a court proceeding once everyone is going over them with scanning electron microscopes looking to find one molecule out-of-order.
Bottom line is that we’ve reached the point where nobody in that particular racket can get away with much anymore. That string is played. The banks are toast. Not only won’t they be able to recover the collateral on a lot of loans, but the MBS related crap sitting in their own vaults goes to zero, not thirty cents on the dollar or some mark-to-fantasy number that has kept them in the zombie zone for two years, like cancer victims desperately eating apricot pits in hopes of a cure. And if the banks are toast then the Federal Reserve is toast, because the Fed has been acting as a dumpster for so much of the smallpox-blanket-grade securities off-loaded by the banks since TARP, with a balance sheet that must look like a suicide note, and if the Fed is toast then the dollar is toast because they are promissory notes issued by the Fed.
Anyway, the states themselves are temporarily shutting down foreclosures, and the upshot will be a paralyzed property sales industry. Who will want to buy property when there is any question about owning it free and clear? You can be sure the sickness will spread into commercial real estate, with its much shorter-term loans and its desperate rollover deadlines. Things begin to look a bit gruesome. But ’tis the season for it! The night of the Blood Beast comes Sunday, just in time for the All Souls Day open of the equity markets. That’s the day when the costumes come off and we stop pretending. That’s the day that the skeletons dance on the real estate destined to be our graves.
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I can’t sleep gotta read some doom!
First! Like being first in line at the soup kitchen, I guess…
“…like cancer victims desperately eating apricot pits in hopes of a cure.” My, my, Jim, you certainly have a way with words.
Well, the good news: those folks holding mortgages get to keep their homes for the down payments (if any)! The bad news: no credit, no savings and the money’s no good. Humm, maybe we should review the life and times of southerners after the Civil War. Property taxes? Time to break out those carpet bags, folks.
And coming soon to an oil dependent, importing nation near you, boobie prizes for all those folks way out in the Exurbs and distant Suburbs with a “free and clear” title to a home with no obvious means to get there and back.
How can you not like one of JHK’s Monday morning essays. Although, sometime I think the Long Emergency is taking too long! How about another title for today’s missive: The Lovely Bones?
Maybe the entire concept of private property is no longer relevant in the long emergency. Maybe it was the wrong rod to travel in any event. Remember what Rousseau said about the first person ever to put a fence around a piece of land and say to his fellow travellers, “this is mine”… JJ wondered how stupid of them to believe him; and what an error!!
And a Happy Halloween to you
How do we censor information in a country that proclaims freedom of speech in its first amendment?
Redacting, or course. The names of 30 members of our fine, upstanding lawmakers have been redacted in the SEC trial of felon, Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide fame.
This weekend on the news, the Angelo Mozilo SEC trial was covered. It seems that the friends of Mozilo lending program he ran for politicians will come to light.
The loans made to politicians such as Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Richard Holbrooke, and Donna Shalala we below market rate and clearing intent on helping Countrywide Mortgage get political favors.
He has agreed to pay a $ 67 Million settlement, but it is unclear whether the names of 30 other of our upstanding lawmakers will be revealed.
oooaaawwwhhh – Zombie for hello.
Anyway I am scanning the bargains on yaght sale sites. Yeah the old girl needs work, but for chump change – You are outa’ there! Figure out the rest while the mainland goes nuts. Samoa is nice this time of year.
Disclaimer – I have no money – I would buy a boat and bugout if
i could.
Jimbo! You are a miracle worker, making me laugh and weep at the same time. Kudos!
And by the way, I’m sure you noticed that Gremlin- In-Chief Tim Geithner told the G20 this past weekend that the US will continue to print Funny Money until the the world cries uncle or until the end of time, whichever comes first.
Our own funny money can be previewed at http://www.thenothingstore.com
All of this was driven by the allure of, as JHK says, “unearned riches.” Wouldn’t it be a natural question – especially from all the PhDs and MBAs in the “financial sector” – how can all this could work? How could this all be sustainable? Well, maybe they did ask that question, sotto voce, but they were told to keep quiet, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. And so they kept quiet, most of them, and lined up to collect the bonuses and the perks. It’s party time! Now it’s the morning after the night before, and they are waking up to find they burned the stairs as firewood the night before. All this would be perfectly acceptable, certainly in the realm of Karmic payback, except for one thing: those of us who didn’t buy into the party are connected to these greedy bastards. So I’m looking for ideas from CFN readers. How can we disconnect from these characters so that Mother Nature or Nemesis or whoever can properly dispose of them. They should reap the full measure of the consequences of their actions, i.e. corruption and theft.
CFN readers… My point is that the “perps” in this mess will certainly be looking to the productive populace, those who did not “dream the dream” with them, to “participate” in setting the system straight again. Presumably for a repeat of what got it here (G-d help us). Whatever we do to get the system back on a firm footing, we should attempt to keep these characters away from the controls. Can that be done?
Hellfire! Damnation! The End Of Civilization as we know it! Our future is toast!
And the markets just keep going up and up and up. Someplace, somewhere there is a happy billionaire.
Of course I start off each Monday reading this wonderful column. Why start off the week in a good mood?
Lurch
The plot thickens as the only deed worth any value is buried in an old dusty collectible monopoly board game.
What are you going to do, drive around with a half empty tank of gas looking for a deal?
Why not stay at home and order in a bucket of fried chicken parts, dress up like the Lone Ranger and carve out a GIANT pumpkin, that ought to put you in the Halloween world series spirit. Maybe the ghost of Michael Jackson will show up at your door looking for a THRILLER of a treat ! Now can someone explain to me why my robot butler keeps repeating, ” DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, DANGER! ”
Remember the good old days of ‘Vendor take back mortgage’ on listings? Maybe that’ll have to happen again. Maybe lots of things will have to happen without the mediation of corporations. Such as dinner.
Lynn
http://www.10in10diet.com/
For a small footprint and a small grocery bill
Excellent points on the robo-signing bank drones, but a quibble on one simile: someone is a victim if he or she chooses to buy into the victim mentality. All of us who are/were cancer PATIENTS are not cancer VICTIMS. Using the victim terminology only perpetuates the idea that one is a victim if one is diagnosed with cancer. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Al,
Can we keep these characters away from the controls? Good question. Since they are in both major political parties, it seems unlikely. Maybe this is why there have been no investigations, with people going off to jail. Everyone is a party to the crime.
There is so much rot in the system, and that needs to be cleansed before trust will be restored. As Jim says, it’s broken.
I wonder if all the hoopla is about lost paper or a way of dancing around the real problem – no jobs. A million dollar house or a 1500 square foot rambler in need of a new roof, both are unaffordable if there are no jobs to pay for them. If there were jobs all the funny paper would be rotting in the vaults. Would anybody be knowing or caring?
What’s so uncomfortable about the truth?
The only thing I can think of is pointing the finger at ‘villain’ removes the onus of recognizing the inevitable which involves fundamental changes in our living arrangements. That’s hard, finding villains is easy.
Any thoughts?
Whatever happens down the road with this mortgage fiasco, we the people will not come out on top. The creators of this mess will make rules that penalize us, not them. I’ have even read the suggestion that unpaid mortgages should be treated as income and taxed! I found that proposal to be delightful in light of the untaxed largesses passed around to the banksters which has miraculously become a profit and reason enough for bonuses all round.
No, we the homeowners who have lost our unearned income, who face the prospect of losing our jobs and our health insurance (such as it is) and pensions won’t catch any breaks on our way down. The destruction of the housing market will simply mean more “profits” and more bonuses for the creators of this mess and their political serfs while we are either thrown out into the streets or remain in possession of homes worth nothing more than garden sheds. And still, only the French have the guts to protest. Poor, spineless America. Keep going to Church. God will provide.
Why November 1st? In what way is that particular Monday different from, for example, today or, for that matter, from October 1st?
Who needs Peak Oil to bring things down? There will never be such a thing as Peak Greed.
JHK’s “anthropophagi” is such a nice hum-dinger of a locution. Thanks for that. And, yes, zombies are the monster-du-jour because they ARE the nation of overfed clowns run out of cheese doodles and reality TV.
And they want our BRAINS!
Get there and back from where? The slums? I’ve got wood heat, plenty of water, and a cellar full of canned goods. all I need to get is beer!
“A million dollar house or a 1500 square foot rambler in need of a new roof, both are unaffordable if there are no jobs to pay for them.”
I’d rather re-roof the 1500 footer (I helped redo my own a few years back, using 50-year 110mph shinges, as grunt-laborer to our roofer).
It will be also easier to heat with an outside wood-burning furnace later on. I’m surprised by how good the “bones” are in these older homes as compared the crap materials that go into newer builds.
Now if we can only find the community to keep the zombies at bay. As one of Max Brooks’ characters put it in World War Z, Americans live in neighborhoods where no one knows how to fix a broken window.
But we do all know how to break them.
Perhaps we can also get in on the new new deal by claiming that our millions are “lost notes.” anyone see a bag of thousand and one bills I left at the Burger King? I guess not. So, please except this hand written letter as full payment. Really, this is where we stand in this mess called Americapitalism.
http://schwerpunkter.wordpress.com/
Look around. Everywhere we are surrounded by the symbology of putrefaction: skulls, shanks, headless bodies, skeletons, double-sided axes, DEATH. Remember DEATH? That most-popular of tourist destinations? Don’t act surprised, Uncle Sam: it’s been happening for awhile!
I just left posts for Bustin J, Asia, and MessianicDruid at the terminus of last week’s discussion.
Yes, the damn zombies will be messin everything up.
Remember DEATH? That most-popular of tourist destinations? Don’t act surprised, Uncle Sam: it’s been happening for awhile!
One might ask what the population of the U.S. is at this point.
Is it 330 million plus?
Or only about 200 million?
The truly remarkable thing here is that the maggots have managed to completely screw-over the global economy even before it dies naturally of Peak Oil and Global Warming.
Now that is a rare gift.
Then again once a dozen or so zombies get hung from trees at 30 yard intervals down by the river you can leave the rambler door unlocked. Like in Canada.
Finished world made by hand and yesterday finished witch and Jim I’ve got to tell you those were some of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in a long time. Please… Continue the story!!
Beer? Way back when we were young I had a friend who was a newly minted law school grad, articling in one of those Bay Street sweatshop law firms, trying to scrape together cash to pay off school loans, living in a basement bachelor apartment. He was making home brew in that apartment.
Jim, the dung beetle is an industrious and hard-working creature that minds its own business and hurts nobody. You insult them by comparing them to members of the Senate.
The strip-mall mortgage mills were certainly grinding it out by the pound. And then there were the strip-mall legal firms working over-time to “review” tens of thousands of foreclosure documents sent to them by the banks. Most of these people spent less than one minute examining a given foreclosure document before signing it. No problem so far. Then the title insurance companies suspected a lot of these foreclosure documents could not provide a clear “chain of title” to the property being foreclosed, so they weren’t going to insure the title. Bingo! Everything ground to a halt as the whole fraudulent business reached it’s “shit has hit the fan” moment. Every state AG and thousands of attorneys are going to litigate on this pile of crap for decades. Jim is right. The courts are going to scrutinize these foreclosure cases with a microscope looking for problems. The could be the “stake in the heart” that kills the mortgage fraud vampire banks.
I used to be moe axelrod but I could no longer get on w/ that. Hello cfners, its good to be back to doomerville. Jim, have valued your insight since 2005, and have followed your advice without regret.
Jim has surpassed himself this time, introducing a record number of memorable phrases into the English language: “smallpox-blanket-grade investment paper”, and “the human dung-beetles who work that manure pile” stand out. That last phrase really nails it when it comes to describing the debauchery emanating from the halls of Congress.
It is sad that such pertinent commentary must be given away, while great writers must earn their living dishing up fiction. JHK’s fiction is in a class by itself because it is plausibly related to our future reality, but most is just a distraction from real-life problems the masses are avoiding.
For real-world uncensored health info so you can be one of the fittest who survives and thrives in the Long Emergency, see the latest at http://www.healthyplanetdiet.com
What really irks me is the Orwellian notion that all these folks with mortgages are “property owners,” and how they myopically say things like “my house” when, in reality, they don’t own anything. Methinks the racial and class diversity of all those crappy, two-story apartment arks on the Buford Highway (ATL) now inhabited mostly by Mexican immigrants (legal and otherwise) will increase as all the stoopid, get-something-for-nothing “homeowners” start renting. It looks like a good time for slumlords. And what to do with all those proposed commercial plots with all the PVC pipes sticking out of the ground? The local rag here, the Atlanta Journal Constipation, had the temerity to feature an article about how more folks are renting rather than buying. That might have been a good, socially responsible piece, but instead it featured a couple who were renting a 2.5 million McMansion for $12,000 a month! I don’t think those are your average people who need affordable housing. But why write an article about depressed, indebted, divorcing couples moving into a horrible, 1980s scummy apartment on the Buford Highway? Better to give dieting tips and great recipes for Halloween cookies. It’s all good…until it isn’t anymore.
Citizens United trumps all. The big money boys no longer have to worry about paper trails or misfeasance. After all, they bought the Supremes, they are buying the Congrees, and they’ll own the Executives next go-around. Every one of them should hang a plaque that says: “What, me worry?”
That whooshing sound is from all the skeptical glances being cast at anyone who thinks that real justice will be an outcome of forclosuregate. Hell, anything with “gate” in its moniker is a sure sign that the status quo will ultimately prevail.
The washed out saying about crazy is doing the same old thing and expecting a different result applies to the legal system. There, money wins. And, the only party with the money these days is the plaintiff banks.
First, the defendant borrowers have to actual defend a foreclosure suit. 99% of them don’t.
Second, for the 1% that do fight, the lawyers will bring out some ironic legal doctrine like “unclean hands” or “unjust enrichment” to bury the little guy. But, only if they have to. Most of the time, they’ll bury defendants in procedure and win on a technicality before the substantive issue even gets considered.
The states attorney general will swoop in, sweep up some number with a few zeros in it as a settlement (enough to sound impressive to the average joe, but not enough to make any difference to the banks or for said average joe), and schlep off to the next campaign fundraiser.
And, that fundraiser just might be for one of the judges that we “hope” will use that microscope on those foreclosure docs, since 39 states still elect their impartial judiciaries.
An excellent piece!!!
The Ponzi game continues with da Juice Man Bernanke hoping to liquify the Fed even more exchanging more of the Banksta Syndicate’s toxic mortgage debt for freshly available cash reserves. Then can use it as the new weapon of mass destruction by buying up the Great Unwashed’s delinquent tax bills and then attacking them with huge fees and costs, buying up foreign stocks and bonds and infrastructure, and businesses in order to acquire more interest and usury fees from them. All sanctioned by this current administration and legislative body.
The empty foreclosed homes will begin to pile up higher like the excrement resulting from Cash For Clunkers.
Bada Bing Bernanke uses the taxpayer as a toxic debt filtration plant while pumping out cleaner cash to the banking crime syndicate. Plutocracy at its best. It is an economic 69.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
Depressing post to match our times.
Woodrow Wilson said, “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
Ron Paul, the man you dismiss, actually accurately followed and forecasted the FED, trying to get it abolished. Being as Federal as Federal Express. Secretive, a consortium of 6ish banks, offering no jobs, just creating debt outta fiat currency, deflating the value of our dollar each and every time they print billions outta nothing.
Good your writing about the FED, we should be discussing it, what it does, what it means, and why Gheitner wants the IMF to now have a far larger role in our world.
Interesting to see France creating inconvenience but showing their sense of ‘solidarity’. At least 80% of the French get behind the strikers eventually, as these laws do impact almost everyone.
Interesting to see the Germans halve their military, cut their budget and impose austerity measures the people can live with, see the UK finally do something as their debt was worse then any other country other than our own, and well the Italians, bizarrely enough, they owe not a dime to the global banks, just to themselves…and they own their homes, 2, sometimes 3 and many live off the grid so no one can a knocking, not that anyone would, because other countries don’t throw their people out.
What is going on, this foreclosure crisis is crazy, why aren’t we americans marching, why I suppose because we simply can’t wrap it around our minds that our government does not work in our interest.
Either you fear your government, or they fear you, at least the French make sure their reality is based on the latter, no matter how irritating and inconvenient they make it for the populace.
I love Jon Stewart and his satire, but you know what, I really don’t think people should go and listen to him and laugh, they should be as mad as those wacky tea parties, and no, I abhor their racist, homophobic and religious elements, but I’m really beginning to respect their libertarian tendencies…
Rewind to Thomas Jefferson “If the American people ever allow private banks
to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by
deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will
deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up
homeless on… the continent their fathers conquered.”
“The states attorney general will swoop in, sweep up some number with a few zeros in it as a settlement (enough to sound impressive to the average joe, but not enough to make any difference to the banks or for said average joe), and schlep off to the next campaign fundraiser.” -wildjo
I think that will be about the extent of “justice” in the end. Notice how “punishment” is designated in $$ now? Guess that’s what happens when you commodify EVERY damn thing!
As JHK has “wondered” before: how will things go when trust is completely lost? That’s also my societal-question-of-the-age. TPTB obviously believe we have nowhere else to turn, other than their rotted and thoroughly corrupt system. They’re completely lacking in imagination. Have they never heard of the “underground economy”? Have they never heard of 4th generation guerrilla warfare? (This particular point must absolutely terrify the military; Halloweenie scenario for those guys, indeed.)
What happens when the destitute tumble to the “fact” that there is no “redress of grievances”?
Why pay taxes? Why vote? Why buy shit from people who wish to enslave you psychologically, economically, and [perhaps] physically?
When those questions become voiced out-loud, the truly dangerous shit starts, IMO.
Another good column by JHK. Paralysis of an national or global economic system is one of the root causes of a coming dark age, which means this real estate crisis should be watched very closely. Too bad no one in political office is capable of actually trying to sort this mess out instead of worrying about covering themselves during the election season.
JHK said: “President Obama vetoed the damn thing, which was passed in the US Senate unanimously by the human dung-beetles who work that manure pile.”
Unanimously passed by Congress by voice vote, just like the bankers wanted.
But not everyone has been bought off by the bankers.
“President Obama vetoed the damn thing…”
I am so glad the American voters had to wisdom to elect President Obama, who does not ask “how high?” when the banking industry says “Jump!”
Tripp, keep standing and fighting; you are one in a million. I stand fully with you, as I cannot seem to disagree with anything you have said so far. The only difference between us is, I am not wasting my time trying to talk sense into fantasy-driven sexist idiots on CFN 🙂
I think JHK is right, at this point the banks are a worthless pile of crap, their stocks are going to zero or they should be if the markets were rational which they’re not or if bank management were being honest which they’re not. He’s also right that borrowers cannot be allowed to live in houses they aren’t paying for.
I think, given the sheer breadth and depth of this disaster, you need a declaration of financial martial law and a nationalization of the banking industry.
The cost to the Federal Treasury? Zero. The banks are banko. They are half rotted corpses who are still standing because nobody’s pushed them down. What you need are millstones of regulation and oversight. Red Tape? Strangle them with it, the more the better. No one working for a bank should be able to take a crap without accounting for where/why/how.
IMO, like in wartime, you need to temporarily suspend the civil rights of those who have involvement in this. I wouldn’t be too fussy, just start throwing asses in jail and keep them there while this debacle is being straightened out. Put them on trial but take your time and do it right, there’s no rush.
What’s the point? To limit the damage and instill extreme fear and dread in the ranks of Wall Street gangsters/banksters.
Roust out the cockroaches in the C-suite and then fumigate a few levels down, keep them locked up and then install civil servants to run things. Hard to fathom that government workers could make a worse mess. Would a lot of the bankster/gangsters make a run for it? Maybe. This won’t be leakproof, get as many as you can.
So why not also throw in jail the borrowers that you suspect fraudulently misprepresented their income and assets? Because you can’t throw everyone in jail. They need to be evicted at some point and held accountable for what they’ve done. First things first.
What you need here is a lot of elbow grease, a lot of bodies looking for documents, recreating and properly documenting the ownership of these mortgages and then re-starting the foreclosure process. This will be a huge task and I would imagine this will take years to sort out.
There’s a fair number of unemployed college and university grads who could do this. They need to be trained and managed but after all this isn’t rocket science. Maybe at some point, if and when a semblance of sanity is restored, re-privatize the banking industry.
The absolute first thing to do is show Ben Bernanke the door. Do it now. Get someone with a modicum of wisdom, experience and common sense. DO NOT get another economist or Wall Street gangster anywhere near that job. An engineer maybe.
What you want to do also at some point is to systematically de-legitimize the field of economics. Make sure that institutions of higher learning disband and dissolve their economics departments. That academic zombie needs a stake driven through it once and for all. Kill the damned thing and make sure it stays dead.
Jim has hit this situation right between the running lights. We are at the stage where Dorothy and Toto and the other cast members need the Great Oz to step out from behind the curtain and go through the litany of real and pragmatic things that can be done versus the various belches of smoke and fire controlled by levers and buttons from within the Great Oz’s control booth.
We are down to the gut check of hooking up where we actually are with what we can actually hope to accomplish.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Long Emergency,
and keep a banana handy for the flying monkeys.
Cash,
The problem is that there has to be the political will to make fundamental and drastic changes to the system and that has to come before we’ve reaching the tipping point (when people are more worried about finding food for themselves than an abstract idea of money). I agree that most economics departments are worthless, maybe with the exception of the Austrian school.
http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com
“Why pay taxes? Why vote? Why buy shit from people who wish to enslave you psychologically, economically, and [perhaps] physically?
When those questions become voiced out-loud, the truly dangerous shit starts, IMO.”
You got it, OP. Everybody acts as if “they” control everything, and we must fight against our masters for freedom. Or acquiesce to their bidding. But “they” only control what you give them to control. When we stop listening to their rhetoric, pronounced as truth from all the organized media outlets, the cycle of influence is broken. When we stop buying their Chinese sweat-shop-produced garbage, we bankrupt their warchests. And when we grow our own food we stand apost with weapons mightier than anything in their arsenal.
When we do it together WE become the policy-makers.
Self-reliance is unpopular specifically because it is such a threat to government and corporate interests. That’s why I think it is the most revolutionary and powerful thing we can engage in.
Speaking of arsenal, you had to enjoy that 3-0 thrashing of 10-man city yesterday. Gooners back where they belong, challenging for the silverware.
“Self-reliance is unpopular specifically because it is such a threat to government and corporate interests. That’s why I think it is the most revolutionary and powerful thing we can engage in.” -Tripp
Oopsie! You just said that “out-loud”!
The truth surely is shocking… ;o)
(‘Course, I just responded by “saying” it AGAIN! Damn.)
Does JHK have as much disdain for the Premier League as he does for NASCAR? Is the former a good analog to the latter?
Watch the gap!
“The big money boys no longer have to worry about paper trails or misfeasance. After all, they bought the Supremes, they are buying the Congrees, and they’ll own the Executives next go-around.”
You think Obama is not owned by these guys? Who reappointed and rehired the Bush team? And why?
No, he’s one of them, hence his election. Best way to win an election? Own both candidates.
As bad as big money owning the means of lawmaking, is their ownership of almost all media.
Or is that “Mind the gap?”
Absolutely wonderful. I wonder why Man City didn’t start Adebayor?
What did you think of the Wayne Rooney comedy?
“Absolutely wonderful. I wonder why Man City didn’t start Adebayor?”
I think it is wonderful Tripp and Cash enjoy soccer. But could you two “cool it” with the off-topic comments? Or, better yet, exchange emails and discuss soccer all you like. Please, pretty please?
Greetings,
I think Jim is wrong in that this mortgage note problem will lead to bigger problems with the economy. Here is why:
No one was punished for the two (maybe 3) illegal wars that the Bush administration orchestrated. No one was punished for Katrina or the recent massive oil spill in the Gulf. No one has been punished for the current financial crisis including the guys at the SEC who downloaded violent gay porn instead of doing their jobs. The only people punished for anything anymore is the poor as they get to fill the prisons by the millions. How many millionaires sit on Death Row?
Nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to let this sucker go down over the mishandling of paper.
What will happen, in my opinion, is that the rule of law is about to go out the window. It will become painfully obvious to everyone when the banks (just like BOA) start taking homes again and do so with documents that everyone knows are fraudulent. When that happens, an “every man for himself” mentality will take hold and bigger and bigger portions of the economy will move underground further starving local, state and federal government of the money needed to pay off all those angry bond holders.
I’m seeing this happen already as I’m involved in manufacturing and all of my local supplier – without exception (everything from sheet metal to capacitors) are demanding cash for their services. Here in California, tax collected from business is down by 52% and I predict that it will only get worse.
Somehow someone will figure out a way for even more of this stuff to be dumped on the tax payer. I would not be surprised to see Uncle Sam take over the business of Insuring the titles.
All you guys with W2’s doing the 9 to 5 are screwed as everyone know where your money is.
Good luck with that.
Test to submit.
In the commentary from last week’s post, Tripp said something about the benefits of contraction and limits which really stuck with me.
When I started reading CFN I was extremely pessimistic and worried, but I made some important life changes because of it. However, in the process of planning for imminent doom, I found that my *preparation for doom* life was much richer than whatever it was I was doing before, which was scrapping along for money and recognition.
I’ve already made good progress in developing my underground economy and identifying a network of like-mined compatriots. Im not as pessimistic now because I have systematically divorced myself from the construct. I have zero debt and I am getting better on my garden front. I spend at least a half of everyday outside, being physical and being connected to other living things. And I have free time. There is no currency like it!
My point is we spend a lot of time on here being (rightfully) pissed about what has been lost. At the same time, we have a brilliant opportunity to gain back our souls and our spirit. Tripp called it “regaining our natural position in the world” as a species. Spock would say it is our “best first destiny”.
I know the superclass will never get the justice it deserves. I just can’t let it eat me alive anymore.
Tooling around downtown here in Gig Harbor,WA. I see customers in line at the ATM’s of Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and the other zombie banks responsible for the current economic mayhem. Why,I can’t fathom as the single most effective thing we can do to repay these M/Fs is to close out every account,take every red cent and put it into a credit union. Having money in accounts with these zombies is like Russian Roulette. BofA is operating on fumes and the checks deposited weekly by the folks they screwed the most. Let’s take that last chair leg away and use what little power we have left. BofA just did away with free checking. Do it!
I don’t recall JHK ever mentioning the English Premier League. Personally I wouldn’t say that the EPL is analogous with NASCAR.
EPL clubs are some of the most valuable sports franchises on the planet. This year Forbes listed Manchester United of the EPL as the world’s most valuable at 1.8 billion USD with > 300 million fans worldwide, Arsenal was at no 8 valued at 1.2 billion. Real Madrid of the Spanish League was at no 6.
The EPL is reputedly the world’s most watched sports league with fan clubs all over the globe. I watch a game most Saturday mornings. You have fans in Malaysia on the streets singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” when Liverpool wins a match. The EPL is comprised of mostly foreign talent with English players a minority.
“What did you think of the Wayne Rooney comedy?”
God forbid we should talk about sports here. I get the impression that JHK was never big on sports of any kind, not just NASCAR. Though the latter is hardly a sport.
However, it’s not hard to draw some parallels between the goings on of the Premier League and what the BBC calls the “Global Economic Crisis.” Football around the world is in a sort of global crisis considering the debt carried by many teams, the geographic fluidity of certain “stars” (Bechham, etc), or even the ownership of certain teams like Liverpool, a team that is now owned by the people that own the Red Boston Red Sox.
That said, JHK does not do a good job of putting “our” (America’s) economic plight within the context of globalization. In fact, he tends to see that g-word as some kind of “idea” rather than a long-operating and ever expanding system of inter-mutual economies. It’s as if he argues that we should all become more “local” and self-sufficient in spite of the obvious interrelations we have on the global scale. And his disdain for technological solutions to anything is rank hypocrisy considering it’s technology that has made his programe possible in the first place (Intar-Webs, cars, airplanes, etc).
We may have our share of fatties and cheese doodle-eating, tattooed, TV-watching automatons, but what of the millions of Chinese and Indians that strive toward a consumerist “lifestyle?” Certainly that must count for something in our own economy. Does JHK advocate for a return to the Age of Steam, or would a nice Alternating Current high-speed rail system made by a consortium of technology experts be better? Just because we are confronting the limits of capitalism does not mean there are no technological solutions to some of our problems. Those solutions, especially for things like energy and transportation, need to be freed from the planned obsolescence/consumerist model. Better tools are not out to get us; it’s how we use them that makes the difference.
Rooney is the closest thing to an A-Rod England has (overpaid media star). He’ll retire in Florida, USA. At least he said he was sorry.
“I am so glad the American voters had to wisdom to elect President Obama, who does not ask “how high?” when the banking industry says “Jump!”
It was not done through wisdom, but it was done.
http://www.gods-kingdom-ministries.org/weblog/WebPosting.cfm?LogID=2325
Man was created to be free. He was given dominion over the earth but not over other men. Man has been led to freedom under God by Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Man often returns to bondage when other men gain power over him, not to prevent crime, but to force his “contributions”. This is often lawfully done by offering “benefits” in exchange for the right to choose Liberty. By coveting the so-called benefits of these benefactors we may be made merchandise, i.e. human resources, damning us to bondage under their authority.
Conchshooter wrote: “‘I’ have even read the suggestion that unpaid mortgages should be treated as income and taxed! I found that proposal to be delightful in light of the untaxed largesses passed around to the banksters which has miraculously become a profit and reason enough for bonuses all round.”
Well, it is true that forgiven debt is considered taxable income but that has been temporarily suspended thru 2012. http://www.sfbungalow.com/2010/05/24/no-more-state-tax-on-forgiven-debt-as-of-sb-401-approved-april-2010/
or:
http://www.themmteam.com/2010/04/california-stops-taxing-forgiven-debt/
This is a California law which follows federal law.
I guess everything will be fixed by the end of 2012.
DJCROW22 wrote: “Why,I can’t fathom as the single most effective thing we can do to repay these M/Fs is to close out every account,take every red cent and put it into a credit union. Having money in accounts with these zombies is like Russian Roulette. BofA is operating on fumes and the checks deposited weekly by the folks they screwed the most.”
Yes, it is so odd that people don’t close their bank accounts with these crooks. Yet even friends I know who follow the corruption still have their accounts at WFB, BOA and the rest. Churches, small business etc do too. What’s up with that?
I agree, there are parallels. Bad habits and bad ideas are like viruses that pass from brain to brain and the people that run the sporting world aren’t immune. You see a lot of the same symptoms ie bubbles in the valuation of franchises, lunatic sums being paid for the services of players like Ronaldo and, you’re right, massive over-indebtedness in clubs like Liverpool and Man U and the inevitable fallout that comes out of it.
In the end I think people will get back to basics because what do these guys do after all? Kick a ball around. Unlike the real estate and banking world I think the fallout will be contained because how many people get their employment in sports anyway? The hooligans are going to have find something else to do. Not a problem in the UK anymore but a problem in other places.
OK this just in. Ben Bernanke said that he and his compadres take violations of proper foreclosure procedures seriously.
Whew, I feel better.
Cash and Tancred, I missed the Rooney incident apparently. Got a link or a story?
I watch TV a total of 2 hours a week, a PCTV link of Arsenal’s match on the weekend, and occasionally a college football game at others’ houses. Keeps me sane. And despite the obvious parallels with the financial world (Merseyside, England must be crashing hard judging by their 2 teams’ success so far this season), I think sports carry a great parallel with the real world too. Perhaps they serve as release valves for competitive tension (see the novel “Ecotopia”), where the likelihood of mortal injury is significantly reduced.
But as to the parallels of NASCAR and Futbol, there really are none. For starters look at the equipment list. What do you need to play soccer? A ball and some sort of goal. I’ve seen third world kids make footballs out of balloons and duct tape that work fairly well, with a barndoorway as the goal. NASCAR, on the other hand, is about as resource-intense as it gets. Multi-million dollar cars racing around multi-million dollar tracks, serviced by multi-million dollar pit crews, all driven by an ocean-liner of cheap fossil fuel.
Perhaps the parallels of a league like the EPL are closer to that, and one could argue that racing will always be fun no matter how pedestrian the technology becomes (horses? foot races?). But soccer will always just require a ball.
It is called the beautiful game, and watched the world over, because of its accessibility.
Go Gooners!
Likewise, I’m also an avid disc golfer, and I think disc golf will overtake golf one day in popularity for the same reason that I put forth for soccer’s popularity. All you need is a frisbee and a target of some sort. Golf is vastly more resource intensive.
But when I tell my golfer dad this, he just laughs. (I think it’s because he thinks I mean that disc golf will become as big as golf, when I really mean that golf will become as small as disc golf!)
Networker and Mean Dovey, you guys make me blush. Of course I’ll do my best to keep up the good fight. And it sure does help to have bold women doing the same thing! Gracias, to you two from all of us.
If anybody would like a breath of fresh air, after JHK’s cheery rant, click here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/georgia-kelly/an-alternative-to-cutthro_b_759546.html
The very rich are doing fine again. The rest of us will be fighting for crumbs. The lucky duckies among us will become the sharecroppers, slaves, and peasants of the rich. As long as they are hiring gardeners and maids and such, the servants of the rich will have food in their bellies.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-18/luxury-goods-sales-may-reach-highest-level-globally-since-2007-bain-says.html
This is priceless. It just happened. I had to share 😀
The generation gap.
The young man from the cafe next door just dropped in my bookstore to see if I had a cribbage board. As he was bored. A monday morning on the main drag and they have had 5 customers. I did $2 yesterday. Open 9-6. But I digress…
I didn’t have a cribbage board but told him when I was bored I played a game of solitaire.
He responded that he had left his computer at home.
Mmm. I usually use a deck of cards. Ah, the generation gap!
Just a quick update from our little corner of the world, and then I’ll stop monopolizing the comments section.
Our family of 4 is now down to living on less than $15,000/year, and we are still chugging right along, developing Small Batch Garden as an urban self-reliance model. We’ve made an effort to define the parameters of this project a bit more concretely, and propose a 2-year, $20,000 retrofit of this forgotten property. That’s including the property. We are 7 months and nearly $12,000 in at this point. We’ve made the house liveable, though still not terribly pretty, and have 4 garden areas developing, plus a rotational small livestock paddock area well underway. My alfalfa and clover, rape and cereals are coming up nicely. Potatoes and sweet potatoes look to be our major calorie crops, with eggs, herbs, mushrooms, honey, and berries forming the majority of our food supply onsite.
Pest insect and plant issues are clearing up nicely as our ecological garden develops. While the goat wouldn’t eat our Vinca infestation, the meat chickens in the tractor did, and that is taken care of. Which also helped with the mosquitos.
We’re really starting to catch the creativity bug as our fiscal reality demands, discovering yet another mental improvement from our uncoupling with the formal economy, as Mean Dovey Cooledge alluded to up-thread.
Upcoming projects include cutting in the graywater system and composting toilet, building a bat house and top bar honeybee hive, and getting our meat rabbits, and associated vermicomposting system, into rotation.
Please, please, I want to hear more specifics about how you guys are preparing.
Tripp out.
Just when you think you’ve heard it all about CON-gress:
Congressional Staffers Gain From Trading in Stocks
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703431604575522434188603198.htm
I guess my question is where is the outrage? Who in their right mind thinks that the Tea Party will clean up that shit hole?
This whole freakin mess has got to collapse. I am amazed that they have kept the wheels on for the past 3 years, and especially after 2008. At some point the music will stop as Chuck Prince found out.
I sometimes feel we are heading for disaster. As a Social Studies Teacher in High School, I teach every year how Rome met its end. The following criteria is listed: Inflation (money became useless), enemies from without (no borders), indifference from within (who should we listen to democrats or republicans?) food shortages (tainted food supply) diseases (cancer, aids etc)
Sounds all too familiar. Rome only lasted 200 years. Its army didn’t care anymore (Iraq Afghanistan) Its people literally moved the capital to Turkey. The East lasted longer than the West. But in the end the West became immortal and never really died….why? ….because it became and IDEA. which we have incorporated into our world today. So the ideas of freedom and equality and justice was developed in Rome and when they forgot it… the tangible Rome died. America is losing its ideals and therefore will struggle to survive. Is it possible? At this time, I say no. We have lots of soul searching to do,…but too many people are stuck in their lives and bemone the state of affairs. Maybe if we had a really good and honest leader we would turn things around. See anybody on the horizon? I don’t.
Laughing my ass off here. Or maybe I just have a black sense of humor. My eyes are tearing from mirth as I type this. Nice work.
To Trippticket,
I would love to corresponde with you about power-down preparations, etc., but not on this forum since most readers here aren’t interested and things tend to come off sounding sorta braggadocious…
We are doing similar to what you describe, but with some emphasis on exploring the boundaries of ‘just how many families can we feed off of our 6+ acres?’ and how can we lead by example and instruction?
Is there a private way to get in contact directly?
–Greg
juan ‘i am not a racist’ Williams……….
[from FIRE ANDREA MITCHELL] :
I figured it would just blow over like it usually does whenever progressives make anti-semitic or racist statements. I was proven wrong then when CNN fired him. Now NPR has canned Juan Williams over his comments about being on an airplane and seeing Muslims in “Muslim garb.” I thought that would just blow over too. These progressive liberal hacks like Juan Williams want to be all politically correct over everything else, they deserve what they get when they slip up.
Of course NPR never seemed to have a problem with Williams when he made comments like Missouri only passed Prop C because “older White People” voted or claiming older “White” voters are afraid the country is changing. Nor did NPR ever seem to have a problem when Juan Williams called Sarah Palin “catnip for white male Republicans” or when Williams claimed that the “Don’t Tread on Me” flags are what was on Timothy McVeigh.
I have absolutely no sympathy for Williams. He is your typical progressive liberal PC hack. He had a slip up, and now it came back to bite him in the ass. Do I think he should be fired over comments like this? Absolutely not! But that’s the world we live in now, thanks to progressive liberal hacks like Juan Williams. Of course, there are many other media hacks like Williams who have said outrageous things at least as bad, if not worse than Williams, yet nothing happens to them. Even more ironic is that progressive liberal blog sites like Huffington Post and Think Progress are the ones who pressured NPR to fire him! Progressives eating their own? I’ll sit back and watch. Let me know too when NPR fires the dimwit that came up with the video “How to speak teabag.” Regardless if you agree with me or not, just remember, you tax dollars fund NPR. Maybe when the GOP takes over the House in less than two weeks, they will cut off all funding to NPR! (Naw, they wouldn’t have the guts).
1 in 7 in USA on foodstamps [so they renamed it in california]
in hawaii if you make 58,000 you can get ‘food aid’.
see: dollar collapse.com link to corruption of america!
and this gem from NEWSWEEK:
The State Department has issued a “travel alert” for Europe-underscoring the effect Muslim-bashing politicians have had on the terror threat on the continent.
by Christopher Dickey and Sami Yousafzai
The most popular film in France for the past three weeks has been Of Gods and Men. It’s based on the true story of seven French monks in Algeria who were kidnapped in 1996 by terrorists from the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and subsequently beheaded. Very little of the movie is devoted to the French brothers’ captivity, and none of it to their gruesome deaths.
THEN IN THE SAME ARTICLE:
Yet the anti-Islamic wave keeps growing. Recently Bernard Squarcini, head of France’s Central Directorate for Internal Intelligence, told the weekly Journal du Dimanche that the terrorist threat against France “has never been so high.” The country’s military commitments and hardline foreign policy are part of the explanation, but Squarcini also blamed efforts to stop women from wearing full-face veils in public………..[BLABLA]
The most conspicuous provocateur at present is Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. His anti-Islam, anti-immigrant Freedom Party is expected to have a pivotal role in the conservative coalition government still taking shape nearly four months after elections. Wilders first came to international attention in 2008 as producer of a film called Fitna, attacking Islam as a repressive ideology. “I think he hoped there would be riots, and nothing like that happened,” says Edwin Bakker of the Clingendael, Netherlands Institute of International Relations. The Netherlands may have stayed quiet, but rage is still rising in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Wali ur-Rehman, a Pakistani Taliban leader linked to the attempted May 1 Times Square bombing, has been watching Wilders’s rise in the Netherlands. “The path that the Dutch government is following is very dangerous,” Rehman told a TV interviewer this August, as drones circled overhead in Waziristan. “They will have to pay the price for putting a ban on Islamic values and ridiculing them.”
Earth to newsweek…its not fer nothing the ‘anti muslim fervor’ grows….read the first paragraph again
I PREFER: strip-mall MORGUE TO YOUR ‘strip-mall mortgage’!
“You think Obama is not owned by these guys?”
I can only judge by Obama’s actions. The bankers got the corporate Democrats and the corporate Republicans to push through a pro-bank bill on a voice vote. When it was sent to Obama, he vetoed the bill.
Action, not talk. Don’t listen to rumors about Obama being owned by banks. Look at his anti-bank action. Obama punched the banking industry in the nose with his veto.
And after he refused to go along with the pro-bank legislation, President Obama’s approval ratings jumped substantially, crossing the magic halfway threshold to 54 percent, up from 48 percent in late September, while the portion of respondents who disapprove of the president dropped to 40 percent, the lowest disapproval rating in a NEWSWEEK Poll since February 2010.
djcrow22 said
“the single most effective thing we can do to repay these M/Fs is to close out every account, take out every red cent and put it into a credit union.”
I did this six years ago. Unfortunately many of the credit unions are not much safer than the banks. Go to Bankrate.com to check out the banks/credit unions in your area. I found a small, local 5 star bank in my town. There aren’t many 5 star banks and only half of those will take small customers. But they are around. In fact all the 5 star banks I saw listed in California for regular customers are all small, local banks.
Check it out.
Jill
“and things tend to come off sounding sorta braggadocious…”
Is that what I sound like? Yikes.
Anyway, http://www.smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com is my blog, and my email address is down at the very bottom.
Thanks, Greg! Looking forward to seeing what you guys are up to.
‘Who in their right mind thinks that the Tea Party will clean up that shit hole’
are you trying to imply that the dems will?
“Why,I can’t fathom as the single most effective thing we can do to repay these M/Fs is to close out every account,take every red cent and put it into a credit union.”
Well said. Same with BP. Every time I see someone pumping gas at BP I just want to strangle them…
“And after he refused to go along with the pro-bank legislation, President Obama’s approval ratings jumped substantially, crossing the magic halfway threshold to 54 percent,”
And you don’t think this was, um, orchestrated at all?
Djcrow spun, “I see customers in line at the ATM’s of Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and the other zombie banks”
Yeah, I see that too. I have been amazed at the proliferation of bank outlets. Every other kind of store seems to have been with the “Going out of business”, but here we have banks opening branch after branch after branch.
Trip doesn’t “…see any evidence that we have gained control of Nature.”
Really? All technological progress is based on controlling nature or its consequences.
Perverse? This is the main thing about H. Sapiens which is characteristic. What is perverse about it?
As for your little doomstead, congrats. Family and root veggies, great. But the mass of humanity is urbanizing. You are ignoring that force.
As for extraterrestrial life? I believe that Sagan was probably right- civs go through keyhole events. And most fail. I don’t see us having a choice.
NASA is preparing to send up the first Android to the Space Station. We are on the cusp of eliminating many diseases by discovery of their genetic origin. Wes Jackson is breeding perennial crops. Algal biofuels are in the offing.
On the downside, trends continue: overpopulation, epidemic ecosystem destruction, a joke of a political system.
I see these two pools being the prime influences of our chances in the post-CF era.
If perversity is the only way out of the problems we face, so be it.
Your solution seems to be couched in a sort of old-fashioned grass-roots populist movement. I’m not sure those movements work anymore seeing how fractured the whole picture is. My bet is that major changes will be pushed on the majority by relatively tiny minorities who possess powerful technology. That seems to be way of the modern world, a small cadre being the tail that wags the dog. The dog is infested with fleas.
Tripp, banks and corporations are sitting on a ton of money and are beginning to invest in plant openings and commercial operations.
There is lots to be glad about and to celebrate because jobs are being created in the PRIVATE SECTOR, the environment is being protected, and the economy is recovering.
Want proof? Here is some recent news:
** Future generations of semi-trucks, school buses and large pickups will need to cut fuel consumption and emissions by 10 to 20 percent under first-ever fuel efficiency rules for trucks announced Monday by the Obama administration. This move will equal jobs created.
** The Obama administration is set to announce approval of a thousand-megawatt solar project on federal land in southern California, the largest in a series of solar projects given the go-ahead in recent weeks. These solar projects mean jobs will be created.
** GE plans to spend $432 million to establish four U.S.-based refrigeration design and manufacturing centers that will be the focus for its new energy efficient line of refrigerators and other appliances. General Electric Co. said Monday the move will create 500 new jobs and help preserve another 1,166 existing positions. GE said its investment is an effort to revitalize its appliance business and take advantage of increasing global competitiveness of U.S. factories.
** Mining, Milling, 570 jobs to be restored at Chino Mines. There will be openings for those who are skilled in operations and maintenance areas, such as heavy equipment operators, concentrator operators and filter plant operators. Heavy-duty truck mechanics, drill mechanics, oilers, industrial mechanics, industrial electricians and laborers also will be needed.
These are PRIVATE SECTOR jobs that can support families, not temporary government jobs, not flipping burgers at McDonalds jobs, not part-time or WalMart greeter jobs.
If you get outside the CFN vortex of doom ™, you will see there is actually reason for hope, there is actually a bright, sunny world out there. The recession is over and jobs in the PRIVATE SECTOR are being created with all the capital that has accumulated. And, at the same time, environmentally friendly alternative energy and conservation jobs are being created.
Green shoots. Win-win. It’s happening right now.
The Asshats have fouled their own nest. The rampant fraud that they engaged in to beat one another to the swag will screw us all!
Best be prepared: http://www.stungunstopepperspray.com/
MD, you keep using the word “dominion” in your posts. Are you part of the cult of Christian dominionism? It has millions of members and it has encroached our political, military and business sectors. Its goal is to dominate “seven mountains” of USA culture in order to unleash God’s kingdom on Earth and bring about the return of Jesus Christ. This is about homegrown extremism, not a foreign threat. You part of that, MD?
“the environment is being protected, and the economy is recovering”
These two things are polar opposites. Sorry you don’t get that.
For all those who continue to wonder aloud as to why the (fill in the blank) americans aren’t protesting or rioting — we have a little thing the congress passed called the Patriot Act. I’m not an enemy of the state. Nor is anyone else who might ponder protesting. But as long as the govt considers any “citizen” an enemy of the state they can and will be locked up, by law, very likely without an attorney or even charges brought against them. However, “locked up” is locked up. America has no leaders, ane a mass media/press willing to ignore any “movement” or “protest” to death. No one will know you’ve been protesting, arrested or disappeared. So you know-nothing posters golly whiz wondering why there are no protests here in the US, you need to get real. I personally give ol’ Jim another 5 years before anything he’s doomsdaying about actually comes to pass. So far nothing he’s predicted (for all intents and purposes) has come down the way he predicted/predicts it will come down. We’re in a holding pattern right now, politically and socially. TPTB are letting everyone have a nice holiday season first. Is anyone you personally know currently “up in arms” about the bail-out, or the congress having full retirement/pension/lifetime medical benefits better than you’ll ever have? Of course not. Were congress’ collective astoundingly generous benefit packages ever even brought up during the so-called health-care reform bullshit “debate”? of course not! October has been THE month through our history where a financial calamity has hit the fan, so there is still time yet. Only the 25th…
“Your solution seems to be couched in a sort of old-fashioned grass-roots populist movement.”
You called me a populist! My favorite pres, Andrew Jackson, was a populist. I’m not sure I’m worthy of such praise…
“But the mass of humanity is urbanizing. You are ignoring that force.”
Except for the teensy weensy little fact that my (micro)farm is in downtown Macon, GA, biking distance to anything.
Trip, you need to take the manifesto to the people.
I envision statutory overhaul whereby any civic development must be passed by a Permaculture Czar.
“There is lots to be glad about and to celebrate because jobs are being created in the PRIVATE SECTOR, the environment is being protected, and the economy is recovering.”
Damn! So it’s all good then? Why the fuck didn’t you tell us this shit before? Damn Asoka, sitting on the good news until today? Time to celebrate my friend. Let the good times roll! Asoka says the System Ain’t Broke! All right. Have a nice day. GE: My Savior! Just for future reference Li’l asoka the private sector are evil. A bunch of greedy psychopaths who’d sell you and your grandma for soap just to make one more buck. Stop watching Fux News already.
“My bet is that major changes will be pushed on the majority by relatively tiny minorities who possess powerful technology. That seems to be way of the modern world, a small cadre being the tail that wags the dog.”
Except that the new not-so-lumpenprole (I like that term, btw) will be like me: educated, fit, and fearless. The new super-peasant class.
Tripp, factories do not automatically equal pollution. In Germany they are making wallboard, mortar, and other construction materials — and from them, homes and offices — out of the residues of air pollution.
It is not contradictory to have an environmental ethic, and a strong economy. Germany is the proof.
Germans are ethically committed to protecting the earth. They also perceive the process of eliminating pollution as an opportunity to further strengthen their nation’s economy. Both can be and are being done simultaneously.
The USA examples I gave you were all of job creation, energy conservation, development of alternative (zero-emission) solar energy infrastructure, etc. and your only response is that I don’t “get it”?
We are not all as superior as you. We aren’t all scientists, ecologists, or microbiologists like you. But we don’t have to be to support Obama’s agenda to create jobs while developing alternatives that reduce environmental destruction.
I appreciate your homesteading example. I believe 100% in permaculture. I agree with you that as individuals we can make a difference without waiting for government assistance.
But I do not deny the government has a role to play, and from what I’ve seen of Obama’s administration, from the choice of Energy Secretary who is a scientist to the commitment to infrastructure development over the next decade to create permanent PRIVATE SECTOR green jobs, Obama is on our side in this struggle to save the planet.
I give Obama any credit for averting an even bigger economic collapse, even higher unemployment, and an even more polluted and barren environment. I am able to provide proof the recession has ended and PRIVATE SECTOR jobs are being created.
CORRECTION
I give Obama credit for averting an even bigger economic collapse, even higher unemployment, and an even more polluted and barren environment.
Think of how long the corrupt military dictatorship in Burma has been able to hang on without a shred of decency or concern for the general population- decades.
The true horror is that this ‘Latest version of pretend’, as JHK calls it, could go on and on for decades- now that is scary!
First off, congrats to JHK for another inspiring blend of economic news, cultural criticism and general hell raising.
Kudos to the early responders who somehow always manage to add a bit more seasoning to the stew.
All I can say, with an audible sigh, is that I’m so glad I moved to Costa Rica and started farming, well before Dubya took over the helm of the good ship of state.
Somewhere in middle America is an Indiana Jones sized warehouse stacked floor to ceiling with bankers boxes full of mortgage papers.
Someday, after the collapse we’ll make good use of these notes as toilet paper and makeshift insulation.
But seriously… as much as I’d love to watch the house of cards collapse, I just do not see it happening. Houses in my neck of the woods are still selling at bubble prices. People are still packing the malls on the weekends and the highways during the week.
I’m waiting for the end of the world. But I am all by myself.
Aimlow Joe was here.
http://www.aimlow.com
“Asshats”
I laugh out loud every time I hear or see someone use that.
This probably varies a lot depending on what part of the country you are in, but I am having the same experience. The movie theaters where I am (where they charge $10 for the movie, then sell $6.00 popcorn and $4.00 Pepsi) are full of people. What recession?
House prices have not come down. McMansions that sold for $250,000 five years ago are still selling for $250,000. What recession?
Yes, unemployment is up. When I entered the job force in 1967-1968 unemployment was 3.5% or 3.6% then it went up to 9.6% in 1983 (thank you, Ronnie Rayguns Reagan). Then it went back down. Now it is back up due to the effects of the Bush recession. This time employment may not go back down much below 8%. Whereas, 3% to 4% was the normal in the 60’s and 5% to 7% was the normal later, now the new normal may be 8% to 10% and people are still buying cars and houses and going to movies and buying $6.00 popcorn.
The economy is in no danger of collapse. House prices are stable in my area and haven’t moved up or down for over six months. Dmitry Orlov, James Howard Kunstler, and all the other doomers are wrong. Nothing gonna come crashing down. We just gonna have a new normal with 9% or higher unemployment. The unemployment of 3.5% of my youth is gone forever, but that does not signal doom.
“The economy is in no danger of collapse. House prices are stable in my area and haven’t moved up or down for over six months. Dmitry Orlov, James Howard Kunstler, and all the other doomers are wrong. Nothing gonna come crashing down. We just gonna have a new normal with 9% or higher unemployment. The unemployment of 3.5% of my youth is gone forever, but that does not signal doom.” -Asoka
Are you trying to convince me (or others) of that?
Mmmmmm………. didn’t work.
Two Friedman units away, Ozone? Three? Four? Eight?
Always just over the horizon, at least in the ten years I’ve been following the doomsters, since Y2K was going to be the great catastrophe, which JHK also predicted wrong.
“You part of that [cult], md?”
No. The longer I live the more enmity I develop for man-made religion, including yours. Instead of the guilt-by-association, {please} try looking at what I am saying without preconceptions. There are four parts to this:
http://www.gods-kingdom-ministries.org/weblog/WebPosting.cfm?LogID=2149
“House prices have not come down. McMansions that sold for $250,000 five years ago are still selling for $250,000. What recession?”
How ’bout inflation? What’s your dollar getting you these days? Here on planet Earth mine’s buying less than 2/3 of the groceries it bought 3 years ago.
If I’m making the same 50k a year I was 3 years ago, (and most of my professional friends who still have jobs are actually making less), and my money has less than 2/3 of the purchasing power it did then, am I:
A) richer
B) poorer
C) pissed off
If you said B AND C, you’re correct! (Fortunately for me I’ve found a place in my life where “they” don’t have that much influence on me anymore, so ‘C’ isn’t really a problem.)
But let me tell you something I know, Mr. Asoka sir, based on my experiences over the last 3 years of steadily declining income. Americans don’t lose their good job and shrivel up and disappear. There is so damn much fat in our system that we can play the game for years more.
First you spend your savings pretending that everything is normal, and hope to god that it will be soon. Then you pull your retirement money, pay the penalty, and keep pretending that everything is normal. Surely it will be any day now, and I’m young, I can make it up.
About this time you start thinking about ways to cut your costs of living. Downgrading your car, perhaps your house, dropping from high speed to dial-up, maybe you even decide that it’s time to cut the cable, and figure out how to watch TV on your computer. You start a small garden and get a few laying hens, plant a peach tree and a few blueberries. Maybe you’re even proud of these changes in your life. As you should be.
But you DO NOT drop out of society. You keep going to parties, the movies (even more now since you have so much free time), you drive to the mountains to a friend’s cabin for the weekend. It doesn’t cost anything extra really, except a tank of gas. Chump change. But when you get home you and your wife decide that it’s time to cut your dining out to twice a month instead of weekly. Maybe you start growing a bed of potatoes now in addition to the tomatoes, beans, and squash you’ve been dabbling with. You get rid of the second car payment, downgrade your insurance coverages, and get a book on herbal medicine. Since you’re a champion gardener now and everything;p
Unemployment money is still making ends meet, so you keep going to parties, movies, and the cabin for the weekend. Everything looks normal on the outside. You even find yourself questioning why so many people are still on the road when things are so bad, only to remember that, well, you’re on the road, and you make a quarter of what you were making 3 years ago. Why wouldn’t they be too?
Eventually the silver and gold you so thoughtfully stashed is used up, and you start haunting online forums about radical energy savings, urban homesteading, and even contemplate life without electricity…briefly.
Hopefully along the way you’ve had an epiphany about the way we do business in the developed world, but you DO NOT drop out of society.
Then one day, three years after you lost your “real” job, you look around to see that you are still sitting by the fireplace in your fairly comfortable living room, typing blog posts to strangers on a decent internet connection, and looking at a beautiful stained glass lamp on the table by the monitor.
By all accounts in this country, I’m broke, man. I live in a ramshackle little house in a ramshackle litte neighborhood, and drive a 16 year old car, our only car. But my bills are negligible, I own my little house outright, I get to spend loads of time with my children, and my gardens are still expanding, as is my knowledge of how to make it all run. I’m happy, healthier than ever, in love with my wife, trimming up, writing, and starting a business growing gourmet mushrooms and nursery stock. It’s all I have room for, but I love it, and it’s exciting to me.
But I still DO NOT drop out of society. I drive to Atlanta to see friends and buy the groceries I like, but perhaps I buy larger quantities and do it less frequently. We hardly ever go out to eat anymore, but we are both excellent cooks, and grow top-notch produce, so our minds and bodies continue to improve. And our knowledge of kitchen and garden just keeps expanding, and we keep on keeping on.
It doesn’t happen all at once, Soak. We are so spoiled in this country that even our poor are rich by world standards. Keeping up with the Joneses is a national sport, and it’s paid off well for the moneychangers. The same people who will do anything to make you believe that everything is fine, looking up even, and there’s no reason in the world to get guarded with your money now.
And thanks to their message, everyone in this country will spend everything they have keeping up appearances. If 9 out of 10 of my friends are working, I must be the problem…if the Dow is still solid, I must be the problem…if home values are holding tight, I must be the problem.
But you know what? I’m not the problem. Things are what they are, and WE decide how to react to novel conditions in our environment. WE decide the day when we withdraw our name from the competition and get on with something real. WE get to decide how in control of our lives we are. Not Obama, not Geithner, not Blankfein. Just us.
But you’re certainly not making any friends sitting around talking about how peachy keen everything really is, if we’d only just wake up and smell the genetically-engineered poppies placed oh so carefully by the witch.
The Zeitgeisters would love you, man, and I hear they’re great people…fun to chat with online.
Thanks, MD. I read it four times and each time I learned something new.
In my religion I have the strength and power of the lion, but the non-violent character of the lamb. I treat the Obama administration with respect and compassion, and they {CFN} have turned against me.
Mortgage paper fraud may eventually dissolve our economic and political system but won’t kill you directly. On the other hand, medical record nonsense will. Nurses spend a good part of each day charting. inputting medical data into the computer.
That nurses attend legal seminars to instruct them how to fill-out legally defensible records is a give-away. What matters is not real information but rather consistency. Odd outliers of information are potential legal problems. This leads to records being constantly and universally jiggered to appear consistent.
Charting is broken into different body systems, perhaps nine or ten. If all relevant data is within range all the nurse needs to do is to check the WNL (Within Normal Limits) box and move on to the next body system. This is the best way to chart quickly: further, there is no possible disparity with previously input info.
There are two problems here: first, normal limits are often fairly broad and can accommodate a range of values. What is often critical is trending data rather than any set number. The system easily ignores this. Second, marginal data is often ignored. For instance, if a temperature of 97 degrees is the lower limit of normal, then a reading of 96.9 is often ignored.
This is justified by the logic that if a further decline is noted, then the information will be recorded, next time. To record a single item of data outside WNL opens up multiple pages of detailed records for that body system that must be filled out. The overworked nurse hardly needs this time-wasting aggravation. But maybe next time, if the data is still outside limits.
The same problem limits the reporting of odd observations. There is the huge time cost in recording trivialities: any noted will open the multiple paged detailed form. And worse, since this hadn’t been reported previously, it is a potential anomaly and chink in the legal armor.
As nurses are fond of saying, if it wasn’t recorded it didn’t happen. The problem is that the records can and often do deviate dangerously from reality. Patients go days without seeing doctors and then are only seen a minute or two. A doctor seeing 30 to 50 patients a day must depend on integrity of data.
But recording accurate detailed information is, at least indirectly, punished. Nurses are supposed to be profit centers for hospitals, not profit sinks. Procedures done and materials used are billable. Patient health is an unremunerative abstraction.
Doctors may be concerned about patient’s health, but doctors are increasingly only specialists called in only for defined procedures. Most nurses work not for doctors but rather for hospitals and, therefore, insurance companies. You, as a patient, are there to maximize profits. In short, you’re food.
Nice post JHK, as usual. I like to consider the worst occasionally, then prepare for something different. Maybe that will work out this time, too.
Joe Bageant published today, also. It’s a good one.
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/10/algorithms.html#more
Don’t read it, Asoka. It would only make you think.
Thanks, ProCon. I read Joe Bageant regularly… however the “redneck” schtick is wearing thin. Rednecks don’t go galavanting from Mexico, to Washington, D.C. to Italy. Rednecks also don’t take psychoactive drugs with Timothy Leary. Joe Bageant is seeming more and more like a fake to me each time I read something new he writes.
IGNORE
Wow, that was very liberating.
I highly recommend it.
The question “When is the collapse?” is kind of disingenuous. The financial collapse has already happened, both here in the states and across the globe. The US government is trillions in debt and its states are billions in debt. The Fed had to inject a trillion dollars (give or take) into the financial system just to keep it hobbling along. The European Union is drowning in debt from the so-called PIGS group of countries.
The United States is surely in the midst of a political collapse, as all the crazies come out of the woodwork claiming to have the answers to all our problems.
Then there are the two wars that we are still engaged in for securing vital resources (oil in the case of Iraq, precious metals and opium in Afghanistan).
Sure, the supermarkets still have food on the shelves and most people still have jobs. We’ll see how long that lasts.
So, I dunno, I think the TSHTF a long time ago. Maybe you just personally have not been splattered with any.
And what’s with these endless posts from JHK about the housing crisis. It is so 2008-2009. What about some thoughts on the epic rise of the Tea Parties and the havoc/destruction they are sure to unleash when Joe the Tea Party Patriot goes to Washington?
For that matter, how about some thoughts on China’s halting of rare earth metals to Japan? China produces 95% of the rare earth metals in the world and has been decreasing the amount they export every year.
Your silly ideologies will not save you from overshoot people.
Maybe I just read too much Catton.
@messianicdruid
Religion is bunk.
Speaking of Catton, who here has read his brilliant book “Overshoot”? I’m rereading it, and now I think I’m beginning to understand why humanity is truly fucked.
What are you on about? Medical charting? Puh-lease.
“The economy is in no danger of collapse.”
It already fucking collapsed.
Trillions in government debt and the billions of dollars injected into the economy indicates this. The government is carrying the economy along because it has no legs of its own.
Financial Crisis.
Housing Crisis.
Have you been paying attention to the news the last few years, asoka?
Maybe from where you’re sitting, things look fine. Well, where I’m sitting it looks fine, too. But that doesn’t mean shit. As JHK wrote in TLE, asking when the collapse is coming is like saying “When is the America Civil War starting?” in 1863 because you live in Manitoba.
turkle said: “…the epic rise of the Tea Parties…”
turkle, there has been no epic rise except in a media created illusion paid for by oil millionaire Koch brothers. Of the 138 Tea Party chapters, every one of them is headed by someone who was Republican and not one of them, zero, zilch, zip, nada is headed by a former Democrat. And even the loose coalition of Tea Party chapters are not doing anything that could remotely be called “epic”
See the Washington Post article on the months long in-depth investigation of every Tea Party chapter to see how disorganized and unfocused the whole movement is. A paper tiger that has accomplished nothing. You done drunk the oil millionare’s Kool-Aid.
GAUGING THE SCOPE OF THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT IN AMERICA
http://wapo.st/clGUBN
Turkle said: “The financial collapse has already happened, both here in the states and across the globe. The US government is trillions in debt and its states are billions in debt. ”
Then the “financial collapse” is irrelevant and not worthy of discussion. Being in debt is not worthy of discussion. If this is financial collapse, then we have absolutely nothing to fear.
The system is working: students are studying, 95% in the USA received a tax cut from Obama, private sector employment has been in POSITIVE territory for nine months straight, everybody on social security is receiving their checks on time, other entitlements ditto, state governments are managing cutbacks in an orderly fashion with no violence, etc. Millions of USA citizens are making adjustments and the system is working fine without money, or rather working fine on worthless fiat paper money and has worked fine with fiat money now for several decades. Social safety networks are in place and have not collapsed. Rule of law ditto.
You make a mockery of the phrase “financial collapse”… most of the world would be envious of living in our “financial collapse”. You should try living in the third world sometime without potable water, without electricity, without phones and computers and internet providers and without a sewage system. Without the services of a functioning government, without police protection, at the mercy of paramilitary groups operating outside the law.
Your claim that “financial collapse” had already happened is laughable.
“I read it four times and each time I learned something new.”
The Holy Spirit will do that to you. You think you *know* something and BAM! But, what I meant was that there really were four parts {see 6/23/2010}:
http://www.gods-kingdom-ministries.org/weblog/WebCategory.cfm?CID=6
> It is not contradictory to have an environmental ethic, and a strong economy. Germany is the proof. Germans are ethically committed to protecting the earth.
==================================
This romantic image of Germany is about as wrong as it can be.
If the Germans are doing anything for the environment, it stems from one of two reasons:
– They have a denser population and have to manage some aspects of it more wisely; or,
– Someone is making money off of it.
The Green Party thought there was genuine interest in the environment among the Germans. They were wrong, which is why they had to adopt conventional politics to survive as a party.
The Germans used to be closely connected to their environment. They used to spend a lot of time walking the fields and forests of their country. Now they spend a lot of time walking around shopping well into the night, thanks to altered laws that allow shops and malls to stay open much later than they used to.
If the Germans were ethically committed to “protecting the earth”, they wouldn’t allow their logging firms to build logging roads straight through 2,000-year-old+ Celtic Squares (earthen walls) in the forests. That is nothing more than the triumph of economic greed.
It has changed a LOT in Germany in the last twenty years. And not for the better.
I think ol’ Kunstler got it exactly right this time, in his cynical sarcastic sort of way. This time the crash is not that far off. Before Witch of Hebron can hit the bestseller list, we will be out of options in the housing market. It will be utter bankruptcy or total bailout, with the latter option of course, as our rulers don’t want to pass up another opportunity to take more control of our lives and economic resources. See where greed and fraud has led us? Ah, it was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?
“Religion is bunk.”
When did you start paying attention?
http://www.jesusreligion.com/religion.html
shakazulu said: “Ah, it was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?”
It was splendid! It was a blast!
And now comes retrenchment and all the benefits that retrenchment will bestow upon us.
See Tripp’s and mean dovey colledge’s excellent posts up thread at:
trippticket October 25, 2010 10:25 PM
mean dovey cooledge | October 25, 2010 1:00 PM
which are evocative and descriptive and hopeful, for they both illustrate how our lives will improve in the retrenchment phase of energy descent.
In an earlier post you mentioned the price of McMansions where you live. Are you on the west coast? and where if I might ask? Just curious..
Tripp said:
Your whole post is one of the most moving and hopeful testimonies I have ever read on CFN.
Thank you for sharing both the ups and the downs of energy descent. As you say, we decide, not Obama … I couldn’t agree more.
Your excellent post provides the kind of practical information that makes it all so real, lighting the way for those trying to find their way, and illustrates how love and health and creativity are all intertwined in the adventure of energy descent.
Hi debt, I’d rather not say where I am, but around here is rural so you do get more land, and while there are listings like this for $1,000,000 (one million dollars):
4 Beds 4 Baths 4,500 Sq Ft 3.0 Acre Lot
I was talking about the new McMansions in new developments, the kind that are stapled together, and spring up overnight like mushrooms, and go for $250,000 like this:
3 Bed, 2 Bath 3,160 Sq Ft
(Both are taken from today’s local real estate listings)
asoka,
Polls are showing that Republicans have significant leads overall in generic polling and may gain majorities in the House and Senate. This is quite the turnaround from two years ago.
I know all about who funds these groups and the role of Fox News, etc. This doesn’t diminish the fact that the Tea Parties are poised to play a major role in our politics. You may call them whatever names you want but this is the national mood. It is the rise of the crazies that Jim talked about in TLE. People are in panic mode and they are turning to irrational political ideology offering simple solutions to their problems. If only we could return to strict Constitutionalism. All we need to do is abolish the Federal Reserve. You may think everything is hunky dory but to me it looks like people are losing their minds and many are turning to similarly crazy political figures for salvation.
As for “collapse,” well, it is just a word, isn’t it? And what exactly would it look like? Do you need to see barbarians at the gate to be convinced that TSHTF?
To me it all depends on where you’re sitting. But what else would you call the financial boondoggle that caused the Fed to inject $700 billion dollars into the banking system? Just a bump in the road? I liken it to the flat-lined patient that got hit with the defibrillator. The heart beat is back, but for how long? Hopefully, China and Saudi Arabia will continue to buy those US bonds…forever and ever.
Same with the states. They are only functioning right now because the federal government has funneled billions of dollars into their coffers, a temporary solution to their financial troubles. How long can it continue? With a tax revolt forming (arguably already here), how long do you think the federal and state governments can limp along in their current state?
The Fed just issued bonds with a negative rate for the first time in history.
I read that up to 25% of mortgaged residential properties may be underwater.
And we still have the largest prison population of any nation, per capita and in raw numbers.
If it ain’t collapse, it is certainly “interesting times” here in the USA.
And I agree with your comments about the Third World. Many poor countries are in such a state of disorder (Jamaica, Haiti, Congo, Columbia, parts of the ME, etc.) that I would not hesitate to say they are in collapse mode. Like I said, it all depends on your personal situation. If you’re okay, then you extend that to the rest of the world. But it ain’t necessarily so, chief.
If you take the long (ecological) view presented by Catton in “Overshoot”, we are well and truly fucked due to overpopulation and complete dependence on fossil fuels and “ghost acreage”. But that’s an entirely different discussion and an interesting one. The political and financial stuff I consider something of a side show to the main event, which is resource depletion and ecological collapse.
But, yes, grannie did get her SS check last month, so I guess everything is and will be fine. Carry on.
Sounds like a nice life but hardly indicative of “energy descent” in any meaningful way.
Nigeria anyone?
So you replace the falsities and backwardness of organized religion with your own personal system of mumbo jumbo where the entire enchilada is something you call “God.” Do I have that straight?
I am an atheist. I do not believe in higher powers, supernatural beings, or the sentience of the universe. M’k? The evidence does not support such irrational hogwash.
To me, religion, personal or organized, is part of the same big bag of mystical mind droppings that has us believe that we are special and outside of ecology. Human beings are animals with highly evolved brains. That’s it. We are basically monkeys with more developed cerebral cortices. We were not given the earth to have dominion over it by an all powerful sentient being. We do not have any kind of natural rights. That entire concept is a flawed one. It is a simple matter of overpopulation and a lack of recognition that we are quite able to do massive harm to the biosphere and the other creatures in it. So we continue to do so at an accelerating rate as population increases, like yeast producing so much alcohol that they eventually die.
But carry on with your neo-Druidism if it makes you feel better about yourself and your place in the world. It doesn’t really matter much to me what you believe. The world will proceed otherwise and prove you wrong, whether you recognize it or not.
turkle asks: “Do you need to see barbarians at the gate to be convinced that TSHTF?”
I guess the indicators I am looking for are the ones JHK has pointed to: 4,000 Dow, or pitchfork mobs storming the bankers’ houses in the Hamptons, or thousands of banks being shut down suddenly tomorrow (with the lines of panicked people wanting to withdraw funds causing even more chaos), or empty grocery shelves, or no gas available at gas pumps (with 8 hours waiting in line at any with remaining gas), etc.
None of these things is happening, so I conclude no TSHTF. Life goes on, and WalMart is still full.
As for flat-line patients… they can live quite a few more years. All you have to do is look at Cheney.
Yes, JHK, the kleptocracy is in full gear.
My local paper published a list of 415
people in my community college district
(which has two CCs) who earn more than
$100K.
It’s a “Hall of Shame” which actually gives
weight to Meg Whitman’s claim that we ought
not go after the teachers but rather the
BUREAUCRATS. Every dog has its day and Whitman
is dead right on this one.
The public sector has so much high-salaried
DEAD WEIGHT it’s a crime. A lot of the bozos
on this list of kleptocrats haven’t worked an
honest 8-hour day since Nixon claimed he wasn’t
a crook.
My experience in education is THE reason why
I’m not a Democrat. The Republicans, of course,
are venal pricks who don’t want to take any
money away from billionaires but the Democrats
in the public sector are every bit as cronyist
as their right-wing counterparts.
E.
[blockquote]
IGNORE
Wow, that was very liberating.
I highly recommend it.
[/blockquote]
hear-hear
In ’98 I did a database job for BASI (Bank of America Securities) in the unit that handled monitoring the securities of employees. Banks had been just allowed to get back into securities, but Glass Steagall had yet to be repealed, and the new trading provisions required that there be some sort of ‘firewall’ between bankers’ personal securities and the trades they were to execute. At least that’s my recollection of what was going on — I’m not a securities person, or a banker.
Anyhow, after three months of programming, BofA lost my work. They forgot to change the backup tapes (or something).
Based on what I learned there, and what I knew of the Great Depression laws regulating banks and trading houses, I decided to completely forgo stocks. I made money in the dot-com bust, and in the real-estate bust.
What baffles me is how nearly an entire country can be so credulous as to believe both the crap about ‘liberalization’ of markets, and fail to recognize the folly of suburbs (especially as an ‘investment’). That suggests both historical ignorance, and ignorance of the material facts of economic existence (i.e., what oil is, how much available energy there is, rates of use, etc.).
Kunstler’s hyperbolic prose is a pretty good account of the madness of this whole thing. One needs to step out of the pseudo-rational discourse that dominates the collective consciousness to get close to the truth. As Herbert Marcuse said of this society, ‘rational in its fiber…insane as a whole’. It is quite the show.
Greetings CFers! It’s a rainy morning here. Fascinating article, Jim! Comments are on par as well. While the shit continues to hit the fan (oh yes, it’s happening, big time), I sip my tea after smoking a bit of weed, and found that listening to Leslie Gore’s “It’s My Party” is a most excellent song to play while reading about all the shit that’s going on. Usually don’t get high in the morning, but WTF? I’m in my 80s. Anyway, big fan of Miss Gore, as I’ve previously posted. “You would cry too if it happened to you!” LOL!
Bageant does it again! Never read a word he wrote that I didn’t enjoy.
Just as a matter of perspective, I’m dropping a quote from the article here, to give some idea of the amount of energy we have to wean ourselves off of:
“But the truth is that each gallon of fossil fuel contains the energy of 40 man-hours. And that has played hell with the ecology of human work, thanks mostly to the money economy. For instance, a simple loaf of bread, starting with the fossil fuels used to grow the wheat, transport, mill, bake, create the packaging materials and packaging, advertise and distribute it, uses the energy of two men working for two weeks. Yet this waste and vast inefficiency is invisible to us because we see it only in terms of money, jobs and commerce. Cheap oil allowed industrial humans to increasingly live on environmental credit for over a century. Now the bill is due and no amount of money can pay it. The calorie, pure heat expenditure as energy, is the only currency in which Mother Nature trades. Period.”
The energy of 2 men working for 2 weeks! For one bloody loaf of bread! And this is the “efficiency” so highly touted by some of the progressivist faithful around here?
Yikes.
Ms. Myrtle, thanks for the belly laugh! Top drawer.
“and fail to recognize the folly of suburbs (especially as an ‘investment’). That suggests both historical ignorance, and ignorance of the material facts of economic existence”
While the suburbs are plagued with logistical hurdles concerning energy descent, the reason we’re there is very natural. A suburb, at least the outer-most one, is in ecological terms an “ecotone,” where the energetic commerce of the two (or more) intersecting ecosystems come together to create a very rich environment. In the human context, the suburbs offer access to both urban conveniences and culture, and the wilder outlying hinterlands. In essence, one could say that the folks who moved to the suburbs are arguably MORE in touch with their native condition than the hip urbanites, OR the rural landowners. And since most suburban properties are at least 1/2 an acre, and more often an acre, they possess the land resources to cover an immense amount of their personal needs in an energy descent context. What’s more, decisions required to achieve self-reliance can be made solely by the property owners (minus a few planning regulations and myopic HOAs), whereas walkable urban communities must come to some sort of consensus about what to do as a collective.
Which of course I wish them all the best with.
[blockquote]Cheap oil allowed industrial humans to increasingly live on environmental credit for over a century. Now the bill is due and no amount of money can pay it. The calorie, pure heat expenditure as energy, is the only currency in which Mother Nature trades. Period.”[blockquote]
This notion forms the basis for the existence of the CF Nation blog – yet business and politics dominate the discussions.
It would seem the two available reactions to this fact are either ignore it or ignore it.
A planted garden or solar power plant won’t begin to sustain the majority, nor will be protected from them.
[blockquote]Cheap oil allowed industrial humans to increasingly live on environmental credit for over a century. Now the bill is due and no amount of money can pay it. The calorie, pure heat expenditure as energy, is the only currency in which Mother Nature trades. Period.”[/blockquote]
This notion forms the basis for the existence of the CF Nation blog – yet business and politics dominate the discussions.
It would seem the two available reactions to this fact are either ignore it or ignore it.
A planted garden or solar power plant won’t begin to sustain the majority, nor will be protected from them.
So may I ask (you or others you know that you describe as not DROPPING OUT of society):
1) Exactly how much money as income do you get monthly (you can even make it up, but I want to have a feel of how these things work for you and others, the ratio of income to expenses, I know that you can effectively get by with little in the USA (1,000 dollars a month ? ), especially the south, but give me some numbers) ?
2) Exactly where does this income come from (do you have some homes rented ? have inherited a few 100,000 dollars from an old aunt, have disability at 1,000 dollars a month that lasts a lifetime ?)
3) Was your previous real job paying you 100,000 dollars a year, and you saved a lot, so that it can last you 20 years without work ? does your wife have 100,000 inherited, stashed away, etc ?
In other words one way or another, the numbers must add up. Let me know, I am interested… or maybe you got a 40 year loan on 300,000 dollars that you are paying with another loan, etc. hell, in 40 years you will be dead anyways, who cares.
We have been living on odd jobs and unemployment money for the last 3 years. No inheritance, and only $12,000 pulled from retirement at the very beginning. My wife’s mother let us live in her house in eastern Washington in exchange for repair work. (She was on the coast at the time, and has since moved into her refurbished house to retire and go to grad school.) But we had to pack up and move cross country to take advantage of that.
Our over-arching philosophy in all this is quite simple. “The numbers” are easy. Economic activity destroys the biosphere, and a federal reserve note is a unit of energy driving that economy, so the only real way to stop destroying the biosphere (aka our ability to continue living here) is to stop spending money. Because of our fear of Nature, we tend to believe there are other, less personally difficult, ways to accomplish this, but there aren’t. Economic activity is economic activity, regardless of the intent. Admittedly, some activities are less harmful than other activities, but compared to the background energy in which we evolved, with one seventh of the current human population I might add, even minor fossil fuel-reliant activity is exceptionally destructive.
So the only goal we have is to stop. To reduce and refuse. No loans, no salaries, no rents, no mortgage, no car payments, no groceries purchased from distant places, recycle everything including human wastes, close our ecosystem. Transition from being a net consumer to being a net producer. Producer of soil humus in my case, which accomplishes two goals – increased soil fertility/water storage, and carbon sequestered in a useful form from the atmosphere.
I believe that’s our only chance for survival. The people who make it through the population keyhole will be the most mentally prepared, not the most fiscally.
You’ll get a kick out of this. Last night in Toronto the progressive firmament was jolted off its moorings. Left Libs are walking around as shocked as if a hole opened up and bug eyed aliens from another dimension crawled out.
So what happened you may ask. A few days ago them thar rootin’-tootin’ goldarned-dadgummed cowboys in Calgary (that’s how the refined, wine sipping Toronto elite see them) elected a Harvard educated mayor. So what? He’s Muslim.
But hang on. Last night Toronto elected for mayor a white, fat, ranting, tax cuttin’, budget slashin’ (that’s how the Toronto intelligentsia see him – a complete bozo), respecter of taxpayer money (how the new mayor sees himself).
Well! Toronto Progressives are in a major huff. They don’t know what’s worse, that Calgary is one up on them in progressive respectability by electing a Muslim or that Torontonians didn’t listen to their betters and do what good and proper people should have done.
Liberals here were completely blindsided by Calgary and now the narrative among liberals here goes something like this: geez if they can have a Muslim, Harvard educated university prof for mayor why can’t we? Aren’t we progressive? Aren’t we intellectual? Aren’t we the centre of the hip, lefty universe? Aren’t Calgarians the Sarah Palin lovin’, republican wanna be, tea party, racist rednecks? What’s wrong with us? There must be some mistake. A glitch in the Matrix. Naheed the Pensive, Naheed the Nuanced, Naheed the Speaker in Complete Sentences, nay, Paragraphs, should be here and not there. Ranting Rob Ford should be there and not here. This is a nightmare. Wake us up.
Wait, the main alternative for mayor in Toronto is an experienced, capable political heavyweight, he is a gay man with a husband and an adopted black baby boy. Now you’d think this would be a progressive’s dream, Toronto would show itself to be a model of non discriminatory inclusiveness and in a certain time in history and had circumstances been a bit different it would have been so. But had he won (it wasn’t even close) it would have been to Left Libs a consolation prize at best. It looks like sexual orientation, in George Wills’ words, is about as relevant nowadays as whether or not you’re left handed. Not good enough. He’s not Muslim. Calgary has a Muslim. We want a Muslim.
On top of it all the mayor-elect, Ranting Rob Ford, is to all appearances a heterosexual with a female wife and two kids. To a progressive lefty this a cringer. It makes Toronto look like Leave it to Beaver-land.
Politics is a gas.
M, do you grow your own? I haven’t indulged in a very long time. I’m afraid to. The stuff I hear about the weed being grown nowadays! That it’s many times as potent as the mild herb back in the day, that it can push you over the edge. What to believe, who to trust?
Tripp:
re the Wayne Rooney situation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/oct/22/wayne-rooney-staying-manchester-united
“The evidence does not support such irrational hogwash.”
If you had said, “The evidence *I have considered, or that I am aware of, or that I am privy to, or that I am willing to accept* does not support such irrational hogwash”. Any kind of limiter which would show some cognizance of your inability to consider all the information available {to you} would lend credence to your position, as it stands at this point in time. Not to mention the evidence that has been actively hidden from you.
Is this {y}our fault/doing? Nope. Our minds can be changed in a moment with a single piece of new evidence. Have patience.
I live in a small flat with a tiny balcony, so growing it won’t work. I have a fairly diverse group of friends I get it from. I’m a pretty darn groovy chick imo! I share your concern about chemicals, pesticides, etc. But as my grandmother once said, “Getting old is no fun.” Didn’t know what she meant then. I do now. I prefer pot to pills from the doctor. I can’t have a cocktail when I take them (tried it once – not a good idea. Fell squarely on my ass.) I’m in fairly good shape, but aches and pains that come with age really get to you as you age. I prefer to chew on aspirin. There’s this guy in his late thirties in the flat above me. Sometimes we get together and smoke some weed and perhaps a glass of wine and share some chit chat. Anyhow, it works for me.
Grooviness doesn’t diminish with age.
I know, pills and alcohol don’t mix. I got sick a while back with a throat infection. The doc presribed 242s. I took one in the AM and went to work. At noon my boss wanted to go for lunch. I was feeling s bit better and so we went and had a steak sandwich and a glass of wine. The pill and the wine reacted and man oh man, I was sooooo pissed. I went back to my office, shut the door and put my head on my desk. Took about an hour to wear off. Never again.
I’m feeling the effects of age. Ain’t much fun. But I look at it like this: when we lived out west we used to go hiking in the Rockies. You climb up and up and you get tired but the view gets better and better. That’s how I look at aging. It’s like climbing a mountain. You get tired but the view…
“But the mass of humanity is urbanizing.”
I think we found the spokestool for the Hive. Give up, Tripp!
Forget about your “doomstead”, idyllic as it is, and insert yourself back into the matrix.
You know, Ted Turner, who is the largest private landowner in the USA, agrees with the UN that there should be urban “habitation zones” for all us (what was that, Tripp? “lumpenprole?”). Have you ever noticed what rich people do when they get their first real money? they buy farms. they buy ranches. and country homes. Real wealth is space and proximity to living things and uncorrupted landscapes. it is not a condo, a porsche an ipad and facebook.
and then, right on que, here comes the part in almost every CFN discussion where somebody, this time budwizer, says:
“A planted garden or solar power plant won’t begin to sustain the majority, nor will be protected from them.”
so what? do nothing? Im not responsible for the majority. Life is what is lived all these days in the meantime, Bud. So until the unprepared zombies come to take it all away from me I plan to continue on with my game plan. and if they take it away, they take it away. beats the hell out of living in town.
I figure it like this. Having an old body means something is always breaking, not unlike a house. My apartment was “born” the same year I was. I bought the place fifteen years ago, but heck, with this “paper chase” going on in the mortgage industry, some guy named Vito might really hold title, break my legs and thow me the fuck out.
On a happier note, I just wrote the plumber a check for fixing a leaking toilet. Took two visits to fix. I was slightly pissed off and told the plumber (also a friend) about it.
Good for you for excercising! I’m trying to shed about 10 pounds, so I log a lot of time at the gym. For all ya youngins, take good care of your bodies. I have this feeling we all will need a great deal of stamina during this on-going clusterfuck.
Yay! I must agree, liberating indeed. His endless, mindless jabber is just a time suck anyway. Back to my real world – the one filled with pumpkins and wild turkeys and worms and falling leaves 🙂
For all ya youngins, take good care of your bodies. – M
I second that.
When you’re young you scoff at such stuff. But that clock ticks remorselessly. One day you wake up and you’re 50 and how the hell did 25 years get behind you and now you’re 25 pounds heavier. That’s one pound per year.
There’s a saying: se gioventu sapesse, se vecchiaia potesse. Translates something like if youth only knew, if the aged only could. It loses in the translation.
Speaking of calories, I remember reading somewhere the amount of calories required to produce enough of a food, that when eaten, would burn 1 calorie of energy in a person. The range of numbers was 60-125 calories to grow a given food for each calorie eaten. The range depended on the distance of the food source from the consumer, and the particular food stuff itself. Pretty inefficient, isn’t it?
But then I think that a good deal of life is pretty inefficient in burning energy. Life occurred on Earth with no plan; all that was needed were chemicals, the right conditions and time. Energy efficiency, I don’t think, was required. All of life exploits its environment. Engneering-wise, the design of the human body is inefficient.
The point I’m making is that humans probably are wired for burning energy wastefully, or more accurately, are wired not to be concerned how they burn it. This makes it depressingly difficult to get people to alter their built-in lack of concern and adjust their lifestyles accordingly.
Hello, darlin’! Nice to see you. It’s been…a…long…ti-ime since we’ve been…seein’ you.
And oh do we enjoy your visits.
I’ve got a whopper for you guys today. A new piece I just posted at my blog. Ms. Myrtle might really enjoy it in her, um, altered, yeah that’s it, altered frame of mind. So refresh the bong, pour yourself a tall glass of cool water (for the cotton mouth, obviously), and enjoy!
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/2010/10/slaves-to-family.html
ProCon: IGNORE
networker: Yay!
Asoka: Scroll past!
Wow, that was all very juvenile.
Rooney was headed for City? Damn they’ve got deep pockets, don’t they. Rooney and Tevez up front would be a handful for anyone. Much as I hate to say it, I’m glad he’s staying at United.
But on to players that really matter, who do you love at the Emirates? I must say that I really enjoy watching Arshavin and Rosicky both play that orchestrating midfield role. Silky smooth they are. Almost a shame to waste their talents by not starting both of them. But who to bench instead? Oh, and I’d also like to see more of Theo Walcott.
Adam at Blackpool and Gerard at L’pool would round out my god-like midfield.
Tripp,
It’s always nice to see your studly self on your web page. Nice garden. Keep er goin!
It’s nice to have trillionaire owners like Man City.
I like Fabregas. IMO there’s few like him. Been compared to the likes of Messi. I agree, I think that Walcott is maturing and should be on the field more. Either use him or lose him because he’s going to get restless.
What do you think of Modric? I think he’s the cat’s ass. Be nice to see him at Arsenal.
“The point I’m making is that humans probably are wired for burning energy wastefully, or more accurately, are wired not to be concerned how they burn it.”
And when there were half a billion of us hunting and gathering that might have been OK! But any serious discussion of humans being intelligent should begin with a sober realization of our energetic limitations. IMO.
“What do you think of Modric? I think he’s the cat’s ass. Be nice to see him at Arsenal.”
Funny, I was just thinking about Modric. I think he’d be a good fit at Arsenal. And I completely agree about Fabregas. Top 5 in the world perhaps. Just enjoy watching the other 2 work.
how do the superrich ‘get away with it’…..?
In India some pashas built a billion dollar ‘house’ for himself and his family
[6 peeps total]
this in a country that has HALF of all malnourished preschoolers on the planet.
its in Mumbai and has ‘views of the ocean and the slums’
JHK,,,,,,,,,LET IT WIN AN EYESORE AWARD FROM YOU..
the ‘house / skyscraper’ is so ugly..
built on principles of ‘vastu’ [indian funshui].
Cash, thanks for the canadian update. i hear that most immigrants [read muslims] head straight for toronto and the word there is grow grow grow
[burbs that is]
also the newspaper notes ‘indias top 10 billionaires DONT fund charity’. their money is there for 60 million dollar weddings and such.
have you seen how FAT rizzo is? [bell cali, indicted mayor, he of the 1.5 million a year for 7 months work]
and the same goes for the gov. of new jersey.
they sure do feed at the govt trough!
If divine play is good, perhaps being juvenile while doing it is even better!
Scrolling is not nearly as fun as IGNORING, in the appropriate circumstances.
I do believe all three are playfully divine, in these circumstances.
And I am starting to develop an intense interest in Modric, Arsenal, and futbol!
How about an analysis of the energy use of the World Cup next week, JHK?
ProCon, we can turn this into a soccer forum if you want. I am happy to start making posts on soccer, especially the Black African players.
It looks like Tottenham is going to sign South Africa’s central defender, Bongani Khumalo. Kid looks like he has potential… if he gets a work visa… so he can earn his 1.5 million pounds.
You know, I really wonder just how its all going to come down in the USA. I mean, the Gov’t bailed out the banksters ponzi scheme, and is now running it, and at the same time bailing itself out by printing money with which to buy its own bonds. Just how can this all work out?
The only outcome I see is super inflation, where the dollar becomes like the old Italian lira, it will cost you $100k for a Coke.
The Snake is Eating its Own Tail.
Oh well, I’m already getting used to it here, where I walk around with tens of thousands of Colones in my pocket every day (about $40) to buy my groceries for the week.
But it sure is beautiful here in CR.
Dee
Trip reported, “Except that the new not-so-lumpenprole (I like that term, btw) will be like me: educated, fit, and fearless. The new super-peasant class.”
To be honest, I have no idea what that is.
When the peasant class hears the word “super” is usually means the asshole they pay the rent to. The proverbial “one-half the working class” hired to kill the other half. Super-peasants were certainly not the “fucking peasants” Lennon was referring to in “Working class hero”… or were they?
My best advice is to not identify with the peasant class. They are well and truly fucked.
I know what you mean, though. There you are, in the 21st century, with more basic knowledge of things than the vast majority of people who ever lived. You feel accomplished and proud of your comprehensive knowledge of things. You feel the steadiness of self-sufficiency. You own the things you see every day and covet them.
Its about as good as a human life gets.
Why would you risk all that to go drive a stake into the heart of Darth Vader during our very own Götterdämmerung?
They’re coming for you in squads of 12-24 in Stryker assault vehicles with recoilless rifles. Good luck.
Actually I plan to never understand why anyone cares about soccer.
90 minutes (?) of continuous indistinguishable play. Score will remain zero – zero.
Then one team clears the field, save one player.
That one player kicks a goal against one other player. Inexplicable pandemonium occurs.
Why didn’t they just play that one player against the one goalie for the whole 90 minutes?
I’m actually interested in JHK using the World Cup as a symbol and metaphor for why the Globe is certainly facing an ecosystem collapse.
CDO’s and all the rest are paper problems. Our banksters will fix them with more paper.
Soccer is a samba dance, only more interesting! But I’ll grant you, the “World Cup” is completely staged and boring.
Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Republic, feared inflation. “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered….” [fear of inflation in the 1700’s].
Inflation has been feared every decade since the founding of the Republic. Little men let fear of inflation drive them to buy gold.
1951: “he [Greenspan] does not act decisively enough to pull the economy out of the recession because of his fear of inflation.
1961: “restraining inflationary credit expansion [in 1961] in order to foster sustainable economic growth and expanding employment opportunities”
1981: Is fear of inflation [in 1981] likely to choke early retirement?
1991: The economy experienced the `triple-dip’ during 1991-1993. In 1995 bond yields rose, indicating some heightened fear of inflation. [in 1995]
2001: The price of gold has increased roughly 60 percent since its low in April 2001. In 2001 there was fear of dollar depreciation. Gold represents a safe haven investment, and the fear of inflation [in 2001] drove investors into gold.
Here we are in 2010, over 200 years of fear after the founding of the Republic, still allowing ourselves to be manipulated by “fear of inflation” due to printing paper money? I don’t think so. Not me anyway.
I refuse to live in fear. I refuse to buy gold or guns or ammo.
Good for you, Mika! I don’t fear inflation either…especially since it’s DEFLATION that is staring us right in the face.
Sure we have a weak dollar, but that dollar got weak due to weak DEMAND. The dollar has become a barometer for the quality of demand.
Let me explain…
Inflation-adjusted wages have remained stagnant since 1975. The reasons for this are numerous and complicated, but I believe the main culprit has been the gutting of our manufacturing base and all the good-paying jobs that went with them.
As a result of this stagnancy of wages and our desire to keep our standard of living, we took out debt…and LOTS of it.
So this debt and the constand supply of credit provided a cushion for us to keep from feeling the REAL economy. When the credit dried up a couple years ago, the real economy of 1975 was revealed. Our buying power has been reduced to the same level it was back in 1975.
Anyway, to make a short story long, the revenue and income that was associated with the manufacturing base is now nonexistent and we’re left with large deficits and empty promises about the rest of the world “catching up” to our standard of living before this happened. But it happened. The twin deficits are causing the fall of the dollar.
We will eventually end up in the economically-bipolar situation of a weak dollar AND weak demand, with weak demand actually causing the weak dollar. Deflation causing a spinoff of inflation that cannot be sustained. So THAT is why, in my opinion, we have nothing to fear from inflation.
The real problem is demand. Bottom line.
well look who will be released back into upper pakicanukistan, a guy who played with binladens kids!
Omar Ahmed Khadr (in Arabic ??? ???? ???) (born in Toronto September 19, 1986) is a Canadian who, in October 2010, was charged and convicted of murder and supporting terrorism in Afghanistan. His admission of guilt was part of a plea agreement with prosecutors at the U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay.[1][2][3][4] He was captured on July 27, 2002 by American forces at the age of 15 following a four-hour firefight in the village of Ayub Kheyl, Afghanistan.[5] He has spent seven years in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps accused of war crimes and providing support to terrorism after throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier.[6]
He is the youngest prisoner held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp by the United States and has been frequently referred to as a child soldier.[7][8] The only Western citizen remaining in Guantanamo, Khadr is unique in that Canada has refused to seek extradition or repatriation despite the urgings of Amnesty International, UNICEF, the Canadian Bar Association and other prominent organisations.[9][10][11][12] In 2009, it was revealed that the Canadian government had spent over $1.3 million to ensure Khadr remained in Guantanamo.[13][14]
A 2009 review determined that the Canadian Cabinet had failed Khadr, by refusing to acknowledge his juvenile status or his repeated claims of being abused.[15][16] In April 2009, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms made it obligatory for the government to immediately demand Khadr’s return. After a hearing before the Court of Appeals produced the same result, the government announced they would argue their case before the Supreme Court of Canada.[17][18] In January 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that Khadr’s constitutional rights had clearly been violated, but it stopped short of ordering the government to seek his return to Canada.[19]
Khadr was the only person charged under the 2006 Military Commissions Act who did not boycott the Guantanamo proceedings.[20] Canadian authorities also determined that Khadr had little knowledge of his father’s alleged activities, since “he was out playing or simply
I’m totally with you on the soccer thingy. I simply don’t get it. I am sorry. Funny, it was the one sport I was actually good at in school! Football and ACC are my sports of choice. But quite respectfully, you and Asocka are getting into a major pissing match. I normally look forward to reading your posts. What gives?
BTW, if anyone fucking cares, I despise baseball as well.
The sad state of our economy is due to the following cascading factors:
1. Outsourcing our manufacturing jobs
2. High unemployment
3. High consumer debt caused by overconsumption
4. War costs
5. Unscrupulous and greedy bankers
6. An outmoded, disfunctional political system
7. Unscrupulous, greedy and corrupt politicians
8. No prosecution of the above’s crimes
9. A greedy, lazy, selfish entitled population
10. Deflation as a result of all the above
Aww, I love baseball, or what baseball was 50 or 60 years ago.
Hello,
Nickelthrower is right. Here’s his post again:
“I think Jim is wrong in that this mortgage note problem will lead to bigger problems with the economy. Here is why:
No one was punished for the two (maybe 3) illegal wars that the Bush administration orchestrated. No one was punished for Katrina or the recent massive oil spill in the Gulf. No one has been punished for the current financial crisis including the guys at the SEC who downloaded violent gay porn instead of doing their jobs. The only people punished for anything anymore is the poor as they get to fill the prisons by the millions. How many millionaires sit on Death Row?
Nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to let this sucker go down over the mishandling of paper.
What will happen, in my opinion, is that the rule of law is about to go out the window. It will become painfully obvious to everyone when the banks (just like BOA) start taking homes again and do so with documents that everyone knows are fraudulent. When that happens, an “every man for himself” mentality will take hold and bigger and bigger portions of the economy will move underground further starving local, state and federal government of the money needed to pay off all those angry bond holders.
I’m seeing this happen already as I’m involved in manufacturing and all of my local supplier – without exception (everything from sheet metal to capacitors) are demanding cash for their services. Here in California, tax collected from business is down by 52% and I predict that it will only get worse.
Somehow someone will figure out a way for even more of this stuff to be dumped on the tax payer. I would not be surprised to see Uncle Sam take over the business of Insuring the titles.
All you guys with W2’s doing the 9 to 5 are screwed as everyone know where your money is.”
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
The Soviet Union had no rule of law for most of the last century. You were either Communist Party connected or you were on your own. The population eked? out an existence and NOTHING
CHANGED.
That is what is happening here in the USA. You
are either connected or you are on your own.
When will the middle class – who is paying for all
this – and will pay heavily in the future – going
to wake up? The very rich thumb their noses at you, they are connected. The poor thumb their noses at you – they are connected. The poor are
paid for their vote. They are paid government employees – paid for their vote. They get checks. They get free medical. The prison population thumbs their noses at the middle class.
They are “paid” (fed, watered, housed, medically
attended to, can take college courses in prison, free dental, AC, TV)
At your expense. Ditto the guards, lawyers, judges. The US gov’t is the largest business in the world. Crime is good business for them. Another reason to bleed the middle class. To bleed
the productive members of society.
Democrat and Republican arguments keep the middle
class in check. The whole purpose of DEM – REP
conflict is to keep the US middle class divided.
That is why the Oligarchs purposely keep Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, Anne Coulter and their “liberal”
counterparts on the Airwaves. The Oligarchs understand Divide and Conquer. The middle class
has not figured it out yet.
Figure it out, create a real Middle Class Party – or watch your standard of living deteriorate. Watch more of your jobs go overseas. Watch your children not be able to find work. I don’t care whether you’re queer, Muslim, white, black, yellow, fem lib, macho male, WASP, Catholic or Protestant, fat or skinny – it doesn’t matter. If you have to work to pay your bills then you’d better get political and get Middle Class.
Why do you think, after all these years and all the politician’s speeches about illegal immigration – NOTHING has HAPPENED. Simple. All the industries that employ the illegals are paying the politicians that YOU voted for to keep it the way it is. If they make the illegals legal then they have to pay them more. But has any politician told you that? No? Do you begin to see how much you have been lied to? Do you begin to see who OWNS the media that never told you that either?
Oh, about Obama vetoing the Mortgage Bill that the Senate passed. Get Real. Do you live in La
La Land? An election is coming up. That’s the only reason for him doing that. After the election the banks will do whatever they want.
His veto means nothing. Remember the TARP and
The Middle East Wars – both opposed by the public. Obama had no problem with the TARP and,
despite campaigning to bring the troops home –
he has increased the wars. Obama is Connected.
Review this quote from FDR:
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
That is why you heard all the garbage lately about the “mission” in IRAQ is accomplished, the
US troops have ceased “combat operations” etc…
An “election” is coming up. After the election – the headlines will change.
Quit being manipulated. Go down to the voting booth next month and vote your bastard out. TOTAL RECALL. The opponent, REP or DEM, can’t be any worse. Change them all, now….
Myrtlemay said: “But quite respectfully, you and Asocka are getting into a major pissing match. I normally look forward to reading your posts. What gives? ”
I would like to know what gives also, Myrtlemay. I’m just being my usual sweet self and bam: “IGNORE” says ProCon.
Then I try to placate him by offering to discuss soccer and he admits he has no interest in soccer, he was just trying to irritate me. I am baffled, which is not unusual, being in my seventh decade, but Rodney King’s words run through my mind: “Can’t we all just get along?”
The US is worse than the Soviet Union/Russia. At least in the Soviet Union they were honest about their lying, and EVERYBODY knew it’s all lies and propaganda. In the US, the population is completely clueless about the government mafia and their propaganda priests.
I am baffled, which is not unusual, being in my seventh decade,..
==
Is this counting in lying subversive jihadi faggot cockroach years? ‘Cause I don’t believe for second that you’re a day over 30.
“My best advice is to not identify with the peasant class. They are well and truly fucked.”
Good advice perhaps, and duly noted. I don’t suppose in the end it really matters what we call ourselves, so long as we’re getting the job done.
There are 2 things I want to share with you, and I hope you are interested. If not, screw it, and scroll on.
First, when you get to a place like where we (my wife and I) are mentally, you feel extraordinarily wealthy, regardless of cultural bias, because you’ve become intimate with the wealth of old. Fertility, knowledge, stored seeds, partnerships with ecological succession, etc, (did you read my blog post today?).
So when “the bad guys” come, there will be nothing to steal. Our wealth no longer exists as light-weight, concentrated, portable materialistic goods. There is no gold, nor do we want there to be. Instead, what you’ll find will be tied down securely in our soil humus, fruit trees, tanks of irrigation water, livestock, infrastructure, seed storage, preserved food, etc. It is heavy and dispersed, often firmly rooted in place. Not the kind of thing you just drag down the street.
Now, if you’re the US military, and eager to piss off your new “friends,” you steamroll their olive and citrus groves. This is an intolerable crime in my opinion. As a horticulturalist, the idea that someone would destroy my fruit trees is pitch black in tone. But it happens. I’m not a fool.
Secondly, from an ecologist’s point of view, I truly believe that energetic contraction in the human ecosystem will select for novel traits that are adaptive to that energetic reality. The well-established fact that this or that was successful during our growth phase will be meaningless under different selection forces. In examples taken from nature, as well as human history, an ecological community behaves in radically different ways in a compressionary phase than it does in an expansionary one. Novel selection criteria will expose stalwart strategies that might have worked for centuries of growth, but that are now maladaptive for a changing environment.
And with the hive-mind connectivity we are privvy to these days, successful adaptations should proliferate in relatively short order. I think that’s why permaculture is growing so rapidly today. Because it embodies a contractionary mindframe, it’s literally adaptive to market realities, and it bestows real power upon its practitioners. Power that doesn’t depend on econometric forces.
When you remove paper/digital currency, the only thing left will be adaptive ideas. Even the amount of land we hold at that point won’t matter. The size of our bank account will matter even less. Our agrarian religions will most likely vaporize. And as the smoke clears, the people who understand how contraction works will embody a new kind of currency. Killing them would represent a net loss to all concerned. If nothing else, your tone towards me has changed considerably over the past week. To me that’s at least initial evidence that what I’m saying is true.
Now, again, I’m no fool. I understand that what may be true from a larger historical perspective may be anything but in the interim. The next half century or so is likely to be extremely rocky and dangerous. But I’m a biologist. I think in terms of species, not individuals. And although I want nothing more than for my family to make it back to the garden, the garden in a more robust sense, I also understand that the odds are stacked against us. I suppose that’s why I’m making such a nuisance of myself, spreading the meme that I (or, perhaps less selfishly, permaculture) hold at least a few ideas worthy of protecting.
Anyway, I’ve certainly enjoyed this dialogue, and hope that it evolves into something larger.
Tripp
These 10 things are proximate causes. What’s the ultimate cause?
You have some very compelling thoughts, Bustin .
Tripp,
You are a bright young man, and I enjoyed this post of yours. You seem to be in a very good place, and I hope you can stay there for a long time. BUT,
You said, “So when “the bad guys” come, there will be nothing to steal.”
Making the local news in my area is the story of a murdered New Hampshire woman. She lived in the woods in a small, rural town of 2,500. Four teenagers broke into her home and hacked her to death with machetes, and hacked her 11 year old daughter, who survived. The 1st boy is on trial now; I think the motive was robbery. I saw the victems’ modest home from the outside on the tv news. It looked obvious to me that there would be nothing much of value inside. Yet she was attacked and killed.
I visited your website today and saw the pictures of your home and yard(?). At first glance, your house looked like the New Hampshire woman’s.
When TSHTF, if it ever does, very, very bad people will be ransacking other persons’ homes; it will make no difference whether or not you have materially valuable things. I know you are no fool, but I hope that you have taken precautions to defend yourself and your family. Tell me you have.
“Is this counting in lying subversive jihadi faggot cockroach years? ‘Cause I don’t believe for second that you’re a day over 30.”
Mika, I must admit I busted out laughing when I read that 🙂
Does JHK have as much disdain for the Premier League as he does for NASCAR?
Should we add Gridiron, AFL, Fake Cricket (known as Twenty20), Rugby League, and the Grand Prix to the list?
Joke: try pronouncing Grand Prix the way it is spelt … 🙂 [hopefully that gag will still work with American accents and meanings]
I believe that the ultimate cause is the flaws in our genetic make-up. Our cortex has evolved faster and/or greater than our social and ethical development.
“You have some very compelling thoughts, Bustin.”
Indeed; and his thoughts came out over most of last week in a long honest dialog with Tripp, who also shares some compelling thoughts.
Now, Myrtle, in all honesty, I’m not trying to have a pissing contest with A. Others on here are willing to work hard on that. I am not.
I’ve just developed a visceral dislike for the way A presents himself on here and the way he impedes dialog. I’m doing my best to ignore him, but my best doesn’t seem good enough just yet.
Right now it’s a little like someone trying to ignore the fact that he just stabbed himself in the eye with a pencil – ten repetitive times in one afternoon of CFN dialog.
I’m starting to visualize A as that Jack Nicholson character on “The Shining.” He spent the the whole winter typing,
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
Except A will be typing (paraphrased),
“My posts are well written and often brilliant.”
“My posts are well written and often brilliant.”
===============
There has already been some good dialog on CFN this week.
This is NOT a part of that.
However, I am working on my ignoring skills and hope for gradual and measurable improvement. I reserve the right to demonstrate this with 6 selected capital letters in an occasional response.
300 million fans worldwide –cash
Any sport can have fans to the hundreds-of-millions, but it’s still a bogan sport. AFL earns good money but people still hate it, and I’m sure JHK feels the same about NASCAR.
Why buy shit from people who wish to enslave you psychologically, economically, and [perhaps] physically? — ozone
That’s why I don’t buy locked cellphones.
Yeah, I see that too. I have been amazed at the proliferation of bank outlets. Every other kind of store seems to have been with the “Going out of business”, but here we have banks opening branch after branch after branch.
I dunno about the USA, but in Australia that’s only because they’re reopening branches they closed in their cost cutting 5-10 years ago.
There’s also the matter of small banks being sold to large banks. The only thing is that they’re not rebranding the assets (examples: you still see St George and BankWest branches, even though they’re now owned by Westpac and Commonwealth).
The other thing to float … perhaps people don’t go to credit unions because of their limitations: for example there isn’t a single credit union that has a branch in both Melbourne and Brisbane. I guess with internet banking and ATMs you could get by, but for more complex problems when you’re at the wrong end of the country, that could be a real issue.
I guess building societies are somewhere in the middle.
all of my local supplier – without exception (everything from sheet metal to capacitors) are demanding cash for their services. Here in California, tax collected from business is down by 52%
That’s only because the tax system is mis-engineered. That’s another pile of horse shit the US has to fix.
Ever wonder why Australia, New Zealand, the EU, and a myriad of other countries have opted for a GST or VAT instead? Those taxes are very hard to circumvent, and both Australia and New Zealand had revenues beyond forecasts because of either cash businesses paying GST on their supplies, or cash businesses being forced into the system by their B2B customers (who need proper Tax Invoices to claim input tax rebates).
The other thing to note is that it’s very broad-based: you pay GST on legal advice and car parking (I don’t think that happens in the US), for example.
New Zealand just increased its GST to 15% (was 10% then 12.5%) and reduced income tax from 39% to 33% (maximum). That’s one country that’s finally giving the 9-5 workers a break!
Just to act as a “counterweight” to some,
like Asoka, who appear to be Democrats …
look at CALIFORNIA. California’s businesses
aren’t making money and are leaving in droves
because of the taxes.
And who what are those taxes paying for??
Nurses, firemen, and policemen unions where
an AVERAGE beat cop or R.N. gets $130K-$180K
salaries and only need to work twenty years
to get that salary for LIFE. The teachers
unions aren’t much better.
Indeed, the people who STAY in these unions
tend to be the most bovine people who say
“yes, massa” to every little bureaucratic
whipmaster. The creative, the innovative,
and the rigorous are perceived as THREATS
in these union environments.
I submit that anyone who has worked in education
for the last few decades can’t possibly remain
a Democrat once they’ve been inundated with
“diversity training”, the union reps, the
political correctness, and a fear that creates
an utter LACK of discourse among the cows.
Only the “crazies” like me rock the boat.
The idea that the left wing promotes open
discourse is a lie of Orwellian proportions.
To MessianicDruid … John Taylor Gatto is
correct. Public schooling, as currently
constituted, must go along with state and
Federal Departments of Education.
E.
Har! 😀
Take that, Bill! Says our cortex is too developed for our social skills. Bah!
“deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on… the continent their fathers conquered.”
That is the crux of the problem Bailey… When you are the recipient of stolen booty from your great great grand father’s conquest, then you can expect the same treatment in return… We have seen the enemy… IT IS US!!
You reap what you and your forefathers sow!
“They’re coming for you in squads of 12-24 in Stryker assault vehicles with recoilless rifles. Good luck.”
Ha. More techno-triumphalism They (whoever “they” are) will probably be as effective as the futuristic police in the Woody Allen movie “Sleeper” who keep accidentally blowing up their own vehicle.
I bet our corprotocracy approved leaders, are not sorry worried about this current CDO/CDS mortgage unraveling malarkey Jim…?
As the Obamaman, Putin, Cameron and the Royal Saudis all and any other multi-millionaire heads-o-state that I’ve left out, are to be found once more palm-greasing it amongst the G20 photo ops – knowing only too well – post the failure of the soon to come QE2.0 keeping the sheeple off the streets as they collectively twig ‘what’s going down’… with some of the feistier OECD ones already regularly rioting, is going to be the mainstream-media challenge of 2011 to keep it all nicely watered down…
(Nothing to see here folks, now move along, chow down on another plate of saturated fat nachós and have a nice branded cold chemical castrating beer)
But if civil disobedience does flare more, you can safely bet that those that control the Govt sponsored heavy-stick militias will make it fully felt that ‘resistance is futile’ and I believe as soon as 2012 and defo no later than 2015 – when the next round of serious oil depletions ‘to business as usual’ kicks in…
And be in no doubt CFK’ers that the military tech packing controllers will be the very last chain of command, oil burning group to finally fail, as we collectively go for the ‘last man standing’ play-offs…
And to all you local home ‘suburban farmer’ permokuturalists and tippee-organic-sandal dwelling liberalist hug-a-hoodie types, whom currently sleep soundly thinking no worries, bring this overdue apocalypse on…
(I say take a wee look at this article)
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/10/drug-wars-in-mexico-201010?printable=true¤tPage=all
Vanity Fair’s illuminating piece on ‘Amexica – War along the Borderline’ its enough to make you cough and splutter on your warm Broccoli/Stilton soup of a morn with indignation – as right here, right now in the 21st century – tis clear that if/when the ‘narco gangs’ take over, they’ll fully rejoice and strut in there metering out of Hieronymus Bosch style atrocities! So your quiet seasonally ordered garden of Eden organic animal husbandry idylls only a few miles away from long dead city lights might not be as smarter move as you’d imagined?
These snippets I particularly liked….
Muñoz thinks back to the way it used to be: “The narcos in the old days had been to school. They knew that to be kingpins they had to provide light, hospitals, and schools. That way, they could keep a low profile, win respect, and protect themselves. These new people just want luxury, power, and more power, until they either get arrested or killed. They reflect a society without values. I don’t even think they are against our society. I think they’re products of it. People without culture or values in a society without culture or values. A society that has gone from Frank Sinatra to that 50 Cent man I see on television.
And…
“The difference is this,” he says. “In what I would call normal times, I kill you and make you disappear. Now they are shouting it, turning it into a kind of grotesque carousel around their territory. In normal conditions, the torture and killing is private. Now it is a public execution using extreme violence, and this is significant, I think.”
And where do most of the wholesale crates of weapons come from to make this all plug-n-play possible down there in Mexico? Well Houston Texas silly… and where is the money laundered back through the system… well those nice smiling friends of commerce banksters types like Wells Fargo lol.
Talking of which, this is another good wheeze to tell you just how vampirically squid like those Wall St city boyz at Goldman’s & JP Morgan et al are like when it comes to sucking out and tentacle teasing out that filthy lucre….
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/222206?RS_show_page=0
Sovereign Wealth Funds – taking us right back to the workhouse poor like status of the late 19th century – and what’s key is for those G20 heads-o-state to remain totally laissez-faire with the rules of any form of market regulation…
History as always tells you exactly what you need to know about where we are right now. And as they say in Russia: “Marx was wrong in everything he said about communism, but he was right in everything he wrote about capitalism.”
So sleep tight America, and let your master’s lull you once more onto sweet dreams with Plasma screen flickering delights such as, Celebrative Dance Off Shenanigans, Get Me In/Out of the Jungle/Beach/Island outta here, X factornation, America’s next top Module/you’ve got 15 mins of dubious tittle-tattle-talent… and even better news too… Hefner’s Bunny Club’s coming back over here to Blighty, England, London… soon as next year!
Those nice 1950’s beauty cattle herd feminist values are right back on track with us again, all very ‘back to the future’ once more eh playmates?
*sniggers*
Be seeing you….
You should try growing a small garden sometime, Alexandra. It really isn’t that hard.
You know, occasionally someone stops by my front-yard garden to ask for a few peppers, or a handful of flowers to give to their sweetie, but no one has ever threatened to take my hard work away from me. Maybe that will change in the Mad Max future you guys “foresee,” but until then we’re going to keep turning this industrial wasteland into a lush garden for the benefit of all.
I’m not hiding anything here. I garden in the front yard for a reason. I want people to know where to go when they get ready to join reality.
I don’t understand the utter defeat some of you guys live with every day of your lives. Grab a pair and get busy. Or stand aside and let the serious people work. What’s the point in being an impediment?
Actually, the Jack Nicholson character in The Shining was typing “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” And the quote you cited is “The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog.” It’s a pangram, a sentence containing all the letters of the alphabet.
and you can’t wait for it, can you?
underneath the contempt that you display with your choice words for farmers – is envy.
youve missed the point. until tony montana arrives at my rancharita? i intend to live. fully and joyfully. if fear were dollars this page would have the richest commenters on the net.
After giving the matter some serious reflection, I do believe you are correct, BINNEBROOK.
However, I believe the essential symbolism of my choice of repetitive sentence examples remains unaltered.
Thank you for your observation!
Thanks PoC — I’m a full-time proofreader/editor/copy editor, and capable of boring my friends to stupefaction. Forgive me if what I said was too critical.
I don’t understand the utter defeat some of you guys live with every day of your lives. Grab a pair and get busy. Or stand aside and let the serious people work.
right on trippy, raht own baby!! cfn’ers if ya’d just shuttup a bit more and plant sum stuff ya’d be well on yer way ta not needin’ the bankz etceterah.
lots of power in not needing anyone. tune in [to growing shyte], turn on [to cuttin’ power bill by 40%] and drop out [cuz you don’t need ’em hardly anymore]
get yer kicks here on jkh’s site [phenom&n&l reading this week btw, my laudations to kunstler] but do something real like da trippster sez
otherwise get the fuck outta the way & let the adults get done whut needs gettin’ done
It sounds like you’re describing the World Cup and I agree a lot of the games are drag.
But IMO the games in the various national leagues are different. 0-0 draws do sometimes happen but not that often and the games don’t end in shoot outs.
To each his own. If you don’t “get” soccer you don’t get it. To me, NFL games are stupefying, they put me to sleep in 5 minutes flat.
Oh dear?
Twould seem my dittie today caused some personal genuflections here amongst the regular CFK’nationers today…
*You should try growing a small garden sometime*
I have many times in the past, and will do so soon enough as and when, I’ve settled on foreign northern clime energy gas/oil rich under populated shores – and as someone so rightly once said…. always think in terms of “Location, location…. location!”
*and you can’t wait for it, can you?*
What for Hahaha-amerikah getting its just deserts?
No… (I never wish ills on anybody), but being an utter realist I do insist on at least one strong cup of real coffee every morning, so wake-up and smell the aromatic over-shoot actualities I most certainly do.
As to envy?
No my dears an original sin – and I have to fess-up to a cosseted childhood of ingrained catholic type pleasure–delaying sensibilities – he/she whom laughs last?
You see over the energy rich years I have developed fully honed horse breeding/riding and offshore sailing skills -the new boat will be finished/delivered come 2011 in fact. I’ll be in Germany for at least a month come the summer to project manage the final delivery.
(Yippee…)
So just like Uncle Dmitry, a life at sea is a workable reality for me, while the land-lubbers slug it out/carve it up. Animal, vegetable and mineral….lol
So feel not pity for me,(no really don’t… I’m truly not worth it!!) Just another smug have-it-all, saw it coming over-achiever, INTJ sad mudder-f#cker 1950’s style meat and two veg loving uber-boomer woman with fast-fading ovaries type… And I’m a real feisty bitch on that first round the buoy ready about, fast tack run – tis in my nature you see!
Finally…
*occasionally someone stops by my front-yard garden to ask for a few peppers, or a handful of flowers*
As there have been more than 28,000 Mexican drug related killings since 2006… (makes the farrago out there in Afghanistan look somewhat tame by comparison)
And, inexorably, the violence is spreading northward, into the USA – whose appetite for drugs is largely responsible for the present day tragedy, August 2010 saw the very worst numbers for mass killings in fact, including over 40 women – so perhaps cultivating Hashish is a better thought than pretty flowers… eh?
(Just doin ma bit… spreading the germs and seeds of ideas out there)
And never shoot a messenger. Charity, charity… where’s the charity here shipmates?
Be seeing you…
“As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.
There will be growth in the Spring.”
CG.
During your average NFL game, what with commercials, timeouts, huddles, etc, there is only about 11 minutes when the ball is actually in play. Out of maybe a 3 hour television slot! At the same time I tried watching the world cup four years ago. It seemed that most of the players focus and energy went into trying to fake that they had been tripped so as to get a penalty. I found that utterly stupefying as well. On the other hand when I’ve watched women’s soccer they actually played the game with style, integrity, and focus. That was worth watching.
Debt always responds to cash, didn’t you know?
thank you for your beautiful, spot-on illustration of the america that you say has it coming:
“i got mine, bitches, and i am sailing off with all my big money while ya’ll can suffer amexico’s just desserts! wheeeeeeeeeee”
of course envy to you could only mean $. I was talking about Tripp’s sunny disposition and spirit of cooperation.
oh and thanks for the big ideas and seeds. nobody here ever heard of the kleptocracy, poisoned big-ag food, and global elite hijinks. we’re just sitting over here watching dancing with the stars in our hoodies and sandals.
ive got 37,000 acres of wilderness in my backyard. when amexico arrives i have options. when the pirates sail up along side you, whats your plan? equestrian jujitsu?
MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY this is sailing vessel alexandra. my last known position was “na na na na NA na”
“I like to watch”
CG
Little men let fear of inflation drive them to buy gold. – Asoka
What you do with your own money is your business.
But there are probably people reading your posts that weren’t around in the 1970s/1980s. So tell me Asoka, why didn’t you give an account of the inflation of that period of time?
Now maybe such grubby matters as taking care of your kids and paying your mortgage don’t matter to you but I can assure you that it matters to a great many others.
Mismanagement of the money supply does bad things. Do you remember the mortgage rates of the early 1980s? Remember those 20% rates? I sure as hell do. Do you think they were unrelated to the inflation of the times? What happened then? Or is it like another poster said, that you’re not a day over 30 so you have no clue? Do you think that everyobdy’s wages went up with inflation? I can assure that many people’s wages did not. Inflation in basic food prices like rice and corn a couple years ago was fun too wasn’t it especially in poorer countries. Eating once a day instead of twice a day does wonders for the waistline.
How about the 1920s inflation in Germany? That ended well didn’t it?
Do you think that inflation only manifests itself in the consumer price index? What about asset bubbles like in the NASDAQ, the DOW and in real estate prices. How many people had their finances totally fucked up because of asset bubbles and busts? Not funny if you’re old. Not everyone has robust good health and can work into their 70s.
You don’t have a chrystal ball. You don’t know how long this tide of cheap foreign imports will keep US inflation rates down.
Other posters think that deflation is the bigger concern. Fine, a lot of people share that opinion. I don’t.
So don’t buy gold. But don’t spew this nonsense that fear of inflation is just a figment of our imagination and just the concern of small men.
I like to shoot… mainly with Purdys, Holland-n-Hollands, Remingtons, HK MP5s or RPGs
(whatevers easily laid to hand)
I used to shoot for my all girls school you know, many years back. (I was even selected for Bisley once or twice), though I hate to brag, lol!
And I still have no need of reading glasses – some might say I’m still eagle-eyed at a whipper-snapping early fifties – toh-hoo-bo-hoo.
CK black one-piece clad gurls-n-guns atop sleek 50ft teak decks… eh? Tis sounding all a tad Bret Easton Ellis…
Tally-ho
And I do so like the smell of burning Pirate of an evening… would one get fries to go with that?
A bit over-the-top are we? Be careful you don’t stagger overboard. Have another brandy. Eh, wot?
Inflation vs Deflation
I cut my investing teeth back in the ’80’s and got a couple of them knocked loose. So I have a “bias” that argues in favor of inflation reappearing.
And we talk a lot on here about the (IMO mythical) PTB. But monetary PTB really do exist and none of them have anything to gain from deflation.
And most of these PTB are trying hard to get a *little* inflation started. Hell, Bernake and the gang will even admit as much, even though they are speaking “Fedspeak.”
So, inflation’s coming without a doubt. There will be some sort of “recovery?,” then world oil prices will go above $100 and probably keep going.
Prices of Chinese gewgaws may deflate for a while after that for currency reasons. But stuff that’s important and uses lots of oil, like – oh, maybe FOOD – will be going up more and more.
And our middle class and lower class will again be scratching their heads and wondering where the rest of the money went.
I do believe I just made a monetary argument in favor of growing your own – –
Cash asked: “Do you remember the mortgage rates of the early 1980s? Remember those 20% rates?”
Yes, I do. I had a mortgage of 17%. And now rates are down to below 4%. So, what is your point? Interest rates go up and then they go down. Is that something to fear? Is that a reason to buy gold? I think not. But put your money wherever you want. I refuse to live a fear-based life centered around money.
Speaking of the early 80’s, A, you just prompted me to take a little mental journey of my own.
I dreamed growing up of being the next Joshua Slocum – except with a slightly bigger boat and a sex partner on board. 😉
And I kept up with the dream, learned some nautical and diving skills to go with it. But then the need to have a greater than 50% chance of returning safely to home caused my hypothetical boat costs to rapidly run away from my actual ability to pay – and keep running!
So be careful out there. I think it was the divided Pax Americana/Pax USSR that made world cruising “safe?” for the average individual. And those days are over for good in most of the world.
I had the privilege of being on a ship that transited the Panama Canal about a year ago. In the east quarantine anchorage area there must have been 50 boats waiting for transit papers, etc. Only one – ONE – of those boats was US flagged. And it was a $750K ocean catamaran that “looked” brand new, if you get my drift.
Personally, I would have sailed that thing around the States for a few months to give it that “beaten up” look before heading out like this guy did.
But he should be way beyond Tahiti by now – – in the dream.
Good Luck! I’d apply to crew with you if I could just get that note from my wife. 😉
‘Hieronymus Bosch style atrocities’
well, yes….and of the almost 700 posts last week how many were about ‘the bigger picture’?
there are 2 regular posters who regularly point this type of s##t out to people [me,vlad]…
offset by asoka, others like progressiveconserve who ‘try to laugh it off’.
Here in California, tax collected from business is down by 52%
…since when? last year? as a total or as relative to population? like people who are 52% poorer and hence cant buy?
sorry libs but i had to share this:
Is Michelle Obama trying to help “stimulate” India’s economy? As Obama and his wife pop off to India to get as far away from the election that will destroy not only his party, but his presidency as well, it seems Mrs. America hater will be popping off to see India’s “commercial sex workers” in Kamathipura….
US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle will be extremely busy in Mumbai, upon landing on November 6 for a two day India visit. As the world’s most powerful man and his wife zip around the city visiting the 26/11 memorial on Marine Drive, the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mani Bhawan and other locations in south Mumbai, the security obviously will be water-tight .
Adding to the Obamas’ busy schedule is Michelle’s likely visit to Kamathipura, where she will meet commercial sex workers on the invitation of an NGO.
“Hieronymus Bosch style atrocities” spilling across the Mexican/US border – that IS what Alexandra is talking about in her post.
If you’re lumping me with Asoka on border security then you’re not paying attention or I’m not communicating clearly worth a damn!
a high powered friend met with a MerrilLynch exec…exec says 10% yearly inflation will start in 2 years[presumably from trillion dollar stimulus and govt seemingly endless spending].
Speaking of Govt its good to know Gibbs says ‘public was never in danger’ ah the reassurances!:
A naturalized citizen born in Pakistan was arrested Wednesday and charged with trying to help people posing as al-Qaida operatives planning to bomb subway stations around the nation’s capital, the FBI said.
The FBI said the public was never in danger because its agents were aware of the man’s activities before the alleged planning took place and monitored him throughout.
Farooque Ahmed, 34, had been indicted under seal Tuesday in Alexandria, Va., and the indictment was released Wednesday. He was charged with attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, collecting information to assist in planning a terrorist attack on a transit facility, and attempting to provide material support to carry out multiple bombings to cause mass casualties at Washington-area subway stations. Ahmed lives in Ashburn, Va., outside Washington.
Federal investigators said that, starting in April, Ahmed met several times with people he believed were al-Qaida operatives. During one of those meetings, investigators said, he agreed to watch and photograph a hotel in Washington and a subway station in Arlington, Va. He also was accused of participating in surveillance, recording video of a subway station in Arlington on four different occasions, and agreeing to get security information about two stations.
According to the indictment:
_Ahmed took video of four northern Virginia subway stations – Arlington Cemetery, Courthouse, Pentagon City and Crystal City, which is near the Pentagon, and monitored the security at a hotel in the District of Columbia. In a series of meetings at hotels in northern Virginia, Ahmed provided these videos to someone he believed was part of a terrorist organization and also said he wanted to donate $10,000 help the overseas fight and collect donations in a way that would not raise red flags.
_In a Sept. 28 meeting in a Herndon, Va. hotel, Ahmed also suggested that terror operatives use rolling suitcases to blow up the subway instead of backpacks. During that same meeting Ahmed said he wanted to kill as many military personnel as possible and suggested an additional attack on a Crystal City subway station.
The indictment alleges he also gave diagrams of the Arlington subway stations to a person he thought was part of al-Qaida and gave suggestions about where to put explosives on trains to kill the most people in simultaneous attacks planned for 2011.
At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama was aware of the investigation before Ahmed was arrested. Gibbs also offered assurances that the public was never in danger.
didnt you w/i the last 2 or 3 weeks snipe something about i was ‘ always warning about muslims’?
see my post above as to why i might be lookin at the bigger pic!
“They’re coming for you in squads of 12-24 in Stryker assault vehicles with recoilless rifles. Good luck.”
Ha. More techno-triumphalism They (whoever “they” are) will probably be as effective as the futuristic police in the Woody Allen movie “Sleeper” who keep accidentally blowing up their own vehicle.”
“They” are the kids who have spent their entire lives in simulated combat, then actual combat, and are attached to a military command and control structure that will likely survive most socio-politcal disasters, including the dissolving of a central government, financial or ecological collapse, and war, civil or otherwise.
Think you’ve got the wrong guy.
Last time I mentioned muslims was when I said the 1st amendment makes it impossible for a US citizen to argue against a mosque except on local zoning grounds.
And that islam may well take over the world religious demographic – ’cause it’s a lot like the Calvinist Christianity of my forebears
But I’m all about border security that really makes us secure. And I think controlling US population growth is the best long term security there is.
Once again I hear the immortal Stevie Wonder in the back of my mind cautioning everyone that “when you believe in things you don’t understand then you suffer.” Card-carrying Tea Party’ers should remember those words the next time they decry government entitlement programs that benefit others while guarding their Medicare, Social Security and Unemployment benefits at gunpoint. No doubt God is laughing herself silly at the antics of mere mortals who deluded themselves into thinking they were Gods because they could inflict untold misery upon millions with their avarice, greed and stupidity.
CFN might be interested to know that Steve Forbes has announced an end to the fossil-fuel energy crisis as a result of China’s Cnoc buying into Chesapeake Energy to do horizontal drilling (and fracking) for “literally trillions of dollars’ worth of shale oil and gas” which “can now be economically extracted.”
We are talking the equivalent of 500,000 barrels of oil a day in the Texas Chesapeake fields and who knows how much gas in Pennsylvania and upstate New York.
Forbes claims the drilling takes place thousands of feet below the water table, so don’t worry about fracking poisoning our water.
So, according to Steve Forbes, we can all relax about the energy thing. It’s covered.
SOURCE: Forbes, November 8, 2010, p.13.
Alexandra, what? Where’s the charity? Charity is something you extend before you should expect it in return. Or didn’t your generation get that memo? I wouldn’t think that starting a dialogue by calling someone a, what was it, a “local home ‘suburban farmer’ permokuturalists and tippee-organic-sandal dwelling liberalist hug-a-hoodie types, whom currently sleep soundly thinking no worries” would be considered by many as diplomatic, or even respectable English for that matter. Of course I’m sure it was freakin’ hilarious to you when you wrote it, all hopped up on goof-balls before lunch today.
And so the high seas are where you will seek refuge as civilization comes unglued? Thought about this long and hard have you? Well, I’m sure international maritime laws should hold as the regulating governments slowly go bankrupt. (As if they hold today.) But how exactly does sailing mix with an equestrian existence?
I’m confused.
You’re not too bright, are you?
Tripp said: “But how exactly does sailing mix with an equestrian existence?”
Tripp, sailing is a horse of a different color! 🙂
Seriously, (just for a second), getting fresh fruits and veggies has always been a problem for those at sea. Or has that problem been solved now?
neckflames, I don’t come close to bright. I am dumber than a doorknob. Congratulations on your powers of perception!
Thanks for the verification.
“You’re not too bright, are you?”
I THINK that was sarcasm, the bit about the energy problem being taken care of.
But you never know with ol’ Asoka.
Tripp said: “I THINK that was sarcasm, the bit about the energy problem being taken care of.”
I think some Neckflames is confusing the messenger with the message, and I thought I was pretty clear about that the message was from Steve Forbes, not from me. I was just reporting what Forbes said in the recent Forbes Magazine.
But Neckflames does have a point. The longer I live the more I realize how little I know. It is exciting in my old age to return to a state of innocence and wonder, bereft of knowledge suppositions. I mean, what is knowledge anyway but the consensual best guess of a community of experts. Scientific knowledge is tentative and is always changing as new data are discovered. Then there are those times when the nature of the data change and a paradigm shift occurs, a “scientific revolution” a la Kuhn. But, basically, Neckflames is correct that I am not too bright, and that is OK with me. I am perfectly content to be just the way God made me.
CORRECTION
I think Neckflames is confusing the messenger with the message … But, basically, Neckflames is correct that I am not too bright, and that is OK with me. I am perfectly content to be just the way God made me.
OK, if I have nothing to worry about from In-flation, why don’t you De-flationistas out there explain to us what will result from that.
But really, I just don’t see that happening. Not with literally TRILLIONS of US Bogus Bucks sloshing around out there, just waiting to flow into the e-con.
Unless the US gov’t decides to declare them, and all US Gov debts null and void, as in
Ha Ha, we ain’t gonna pay all yous guys that bought our nice lil’ bonds & such back. No, not never.
What do you think would happen then?
And Alexandria, put the brandy bottle down and stay below decks till you sober up, ok? Or your sailing career is likely to be cut a bit short.
Dee
“the bit about the energy problem being taken care of”
Here’s a paradigm shift for you. “The problem” and “energy” (energy above and beyond the planet’s background energy anyway) are one and the same. When that one fits inside our heads it’ll start a wildfire.
Alexandra and Tripp
There are so many parallels between ocean sailing and permaculture – you just have to open your minds and see them.
Both sailing and permaculture involve some sort of huge expenditure and a leap of faith upfront. They are both activities that are outside the mainstream, though in different ways.
Then, when the payoff starts, ocean sailing and permaculture offer something like the ultimate freedom – free time – as well as free food.
The food payoff from permaculture is obvious. The food payoff from sailing takes some work, too, but it’s there. Drag a couple of lures at cruising sailboat speeds for 24 hours and you WILL catch something. And the phytoplankton and zooplankton that divide on either side of your hull in 24 hours would feed your family for a month, IF properly purified and concentrated.
So relax – you guys have more in common than you may imagine.
Then, one cold windy winter night, remember this:
It’s far better to be on land wishing you were on a boat – than it is to be on a boat wishing you were on land.
ProCon said: “ocean sailing and permaculture offer something like the ultimate freedom – free time – as well as free food.”
Given the choice between a month of salads from Tripp’s garden, or a month of mercury-laden fish from our poisoned oceans, I would take the salads.
The real terror being perpetuated upon the world by religion fundamentalist is compliance with religious injunctions to have as many children as possible. No, there are no nightly TV news spots featuring helicoptor views of large, smoking craters with burning buildings, cars and bodies strewn about, but the eventual devestation will be more horrific.
But EVERY hegemonic civilization on earth
has gotten there by conquering, KulturCritic.
Europe’s countries have all died, gotten
reborn, died again (under new names, of
course). Should they give it back to
the preceding conqueror?
I think Kunstler is one of the few minds
in the world right now who realizes that
historical questions about whose land
belongs to whom are RELIC QUESTIONS …
they are moot. They are moot because
most governments are broke and you may
find a regression throughout the world,
as the 21st century progresses, to the
old city states like Carthage.
It won’t be long before the US, Japan,
and most other countries with substantial
populations break into pieces for financial
and logistical reasons. History hasn’t
ended … though it may look like it has
within the next decade.
E.
The “inflation-deflation” debate has a short
term answer and a long term answer. In the
short term, with capacity utilization at
64% (and worldwide capacity glut) and bankrupt
citizens and governments there is absolutely
no fertile ground for inflation.
The problem with Fed monetization is that it
evades the question of WHO gets the extra
printed money. It sure as hell isn’t the
private citizen or even businesses. It
goes to BANKERS in the form of newly-printed
Treasury bills, notes, and bonds. In other
words, it goes to the dumbest stewards of
capital since the Dutch Tulip Mania.
Eventually, as years roll on and economic
cycles come and go and technologies come
and go, that money lands somewhere in the
“real” economy and then inflation cannot
be stopped. However, since when have
bankers cared for the LONG TERM?? Not
since Glass-Steagall was repealed under
Clinton. Bankers are now just like any
other speculator i.e., their attention span
lasts for ONE QUARTER.
Of course, having an economy run by such
greedy dullards can’t have a happy ending.
These people also stifle innovation which
is why venture funding is drying up in the
USA. Ever know anybody who worked a tech
job for a fucking bank? They make the
old fogies at Northrop-Grumman and other
old-guard defense contractors look like
the height of modern. I never thought
I’d live to see the day when government
technology started to look pretty good
compared to many other private sectors
(banks and hospitals being foremost).
E.
Steve Forbes thinks he’s tech savvy but
under-aquifer shale oil is a pig in a
poke. So, 500,000 barrels a day, eh?
I suppose Mr. Forbes thinks that drilling
through rock to get to other rocks costs
no energy. And once you get shale above
the ground (which is no mean feat), then
you have to heat the hell out of it to
get KEROGEN, not OIL. Then you need a
lot of expenditure to retool refineries
(which are old and breaking) to refine
kerogen into oil.
I wish Steve Forbes and his pocked face and
his bow tie would take a one-way flight to
Outer Mongolia.
E.
Before the collapse of a major Fortune 500 company a few years ago, rumors began to spread internally that matters were looking dire, and that massive layoffs might occur, all this in a company deemed so rock solid that no one could believe it. Employees began to ‘blog’ on an internal subscription list, and soon, some defacto leaders of the blog emerged, who took the thousands of comments, especially those that offered specific suggestions, categorized them, and took these to executive management. Meanwhile, unbeknown to employees, external consultants were telling management that ‘all those entitlements’ associated with employment needed to go, and too, so did the older employee base that was too used to those entitlements. While the employees doing the blogging and intellectualizing, trying earnestly, or so they thought, to help, the company moved forward with its plans, and soon, there was a lockdown—no employee transfers, no more employee conferences with management at executive levels, and when employees saw certain key executives take early retirement. Next came massive layoffs, and so the world changed in that company’s context.
Right now, Americans are busy intellectualizing over all that has happened, maybe going back to 1999, when Clinton signed the repeal of Glass-Steagal, or maybe before that when Reagan and his guys began to vilify ‘labor’ in America. And, we hear on ‘talk wireless’ so much about what the Constitution means, that government and Congress don’t follow it, etc., and we hear from people who believe if we all came back to god, that everything would change. Fact is, this denial phase, this intellectualizing will have to run its course before Americans grasp what has happened and how it will affect them long term.
For now, none of the intellectualizing, blogging, and talk wireless conversations have crystalized into unified action plans to change things. The Tea Party is supported by rich, right wing business people. There is no grass roots movement that is real.
The 60’s civil rights movement, or the protests to get out of Vietnam, or the Women’s suffrage movement had no blogs, no talk wireless, no MSNBC, no Fox News, and of course the run up to 1776 had only private meetings, some pamphlets, but mainly it was people doing something. And yet, people actually took action and moved things forward. Today, we see no such thing. I think we will see a couple of generations pass before Americans actually take action, looking back on us as just watchers and commentators as if at a football game, or watching it on TV. I don’t know why we’re so passive now. But, we are.
Einstein said, ‘nothing happens unless something moves.’ We’re not moving. We’re only talking–so far.
“The real terror being perpetuated upon the world by religion fundamentalist is compliance with religious injunctions to have as many children as possible.”
I agree that agrarian religions that promote “going forth and multiplying” comprise one of the 3 legs of the biosphere-destroying stool that civilizations rests so precariously upon. The other 2 are the vicious import-export cycles of industrial agriculture and flushing toilets.
You can’t just harvest the soil’s fertility and flush it down the drain forever. The alternative is not culturally appealing, I know, but that matters not one iota. It is a requirement for any kind of future.
One of the better known permaculturalists in the US has reworked that biblical directive as his signature:
“Go forth and mulch apply.”
“They” are the kids who have spent their entire lives in simulated combat, then actual combat, and are attached to a military command and control structure that will likely survive most socio-politcal disasters, including the dissolving of a central government, financial or ecological collapse, and war, civil or otherwise.”
…and they are headed for Tripp’s garden to steal some turnips from his veggie patch.
“Einstein said, ‘nothing happens unless something moves.’ We’re not moving. We’re only talking–so far.”
I have the utmost respect for Einstein, but in this case, in the modern first world, he couldn’t be more wrong. Motion is the developed world’s problem. Everything is in a constant state of transit. Our economies rely on things moving all the time, every second, consuming energy and natural capital to produce “wealth.”
As energy descent takes hold in the minds of our people, they will find that slowing down is one of the most difficult things they will ever engage in. Oh sure, we talk about retirement, and how we’re ready to rest, but it’s horseshit. When we’re old we may do less physical activity, but that just means we rely even more heavily on powered assistance. It doesn’t mean we’re actually doing less.
Throughout this 3 year unplugging process my family has been engaged in, the biggest mindfuck has been the realization that the future depends on us being still. The biosphere would enjoy nothing more than for us to just sit on the couch and stare out the window.
Now good luck trying to convince people (or yourself for that matter) of that one !
“…and they are headed for Tripp’s garden to steal some turnips from his veggie patch.”
Should I get a Wii dueling game?
To finish my comment to Antimatter, there are people, loads of them, on the planet doing precisely what needs to be done to right the ship.
It’s just not the big flashy action! that everyone can see…quite the opposite, in fact.
That’s a paradigm shift.
My wife came up with a label for the virtual warriors of the upcoming generation that I thought was funny:
Playstationaries
I find it amusing how you tend to get to my same conclusions without knowing why: I have been writing it and explaining it many times, no one understands it.
1) We have massive excess productive capacity in all possible endeavors worldwide, therefore work is essentially no longer needed.
2) We live in automatic economies where most work is performed by machines and large organizations with the help of technology and sheer numbers, given the global nature of economy.
3) The amount of wealth present today, as the possibility to give everything anybody on earth wants and/or needs is virtually infinite: just look at how many empty homes are sitting idle in the USA and Spain just to name one.
4) Therefore society must simply decide to give out free salaries to everyone, work is an option that is not even needed in most cases. And free or cheap rents to pay in high quality and large luxurious homes, look at all the empty McMansions.
5) The movement that modern economy is based on is essentially virtual movements, the movement of information and less and less on the movement of physical items, but this is hugely automated with the Internet, Cell phones, etc.
6) Therefore indeed, people should just not do anything but instead of staring outside a window, THEY SHOULD WATCH TV ALL DAY LONG AND SLEEP MORE AND MORE HOURS (24 hours of just sleeping would be perfect) .
7) Economy does not exist, only temporary rules and relationships between people and groups of people define how they behave and act and interact in a given interval of time while those rules have a large enough consensus: but the rules will always change, man is an infinite programmable machine that can associate any input to any output, any sequence of manipulations and information transformations to any other sequence, any input to any emotion – feeling – reaction – thought (and pain/pleasure, anger, fighting, etc.), to any event, etc.
8) Therefore, given the huge excess productive capacity available worldwide, it must be discharged with huge SOLAR SIZED PROJECTS, TO KEEP BILLIONS OF PEOPLE OCCUPIED AND WORKING AND NOT KILLING AND FIGHTING EACH OTHER LIKE LITTLE KINDERGARDEN BABIES, HENCE, TRILLIONS OF SKYSCRAPERS ON THE MOON, MARS, VENUS, TRILLIONS OF HUGE OCEAN LINES IN THE SUN, ON JUPITER AND SATURN, TRILLIONS OF SUBMARINES AND JET PLANES, HUGE MILE LONG JET PLANES ALL ACROSS JUPITER AND SATURN, AND IN THE SUN, HUGE PARTICLE ACCELERATORS, 100 KM LONG, ETC. TRILLIONS OF SKYSCRAPERS THAT ARE HIGH 100 KM, ETC. HUGE POPULATION EXPLOSION TO COLONIZE SOLAR SYSTEM AND GALAXY, TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITIES MANIPULATING BRAINS, CREATING NEW NEURAL CIRCUITS IN BRAINS, NEW SENSE ORGANS – EMOTIONAL CIRCUTIS – SUPER VIRTUAL REALITIES, CHIPS IN BRAINS, WILD CHEMICALS IN BRAINS, ALL KINDS OF WACKY EXPERIMENTS, ETC
9) Most posters here believe in the Resource Scarcity Myth, well there has never been more resources available today to do anything possible and give everything to everyone, there is no population explosion (we might reach at most 10 – 15 billion in 50 years, which is nothing at all, a grain of sand compared to how many huge skyscrapers we could build to host trillions of families), all this resource scarcity myth serves to keep the poor in place and not share the wealth that is out there waiting to be used by everyone. The entire “science” of economics just reinforces this crappy ideology, justifying all possible ways to not distribute wealth and let a small minority hog it all up for themselves. There are 100 trillion dollars in banks that don’t know what to do, that is how the subprime mess got started, too much wealth, too much money, no way to distribute it, and the myth of profit which is a completely man made invention with no real physical necessity.
What is my point? I just made my point. I thought it was pretty clear so I’m not going to make it again. And anyway my point wasn’t addressed to you so much as others that weren’t around during times of high inflation.
I forgot to add:
TRILLIONS OF ZEPPELINS INSIDE AND ACROSS JUPITER AND SATURN
correction:
7) Economy does not exist, only temporary rules and relationships between people and groups of people define how they behave and act and interact in a given interval of time while those rules have a large enough consensus: but the rules will always change, man is an infinitely programmable machine that can associate any input to any output, any sequence of manipulations and information transformations to any other sequence, any input to any emotion – feeling – reaction – thought (and pain/pleasure, anger, fighting, etc.), to any event, etc.
Wow, you’re right, it’s amazing how closely that mirrors my philosophy…
This business about Omar Khadr is really interesting. The Khadr family is royally loathed here in Canada by most everyone aside from the usual lefties of course.
Mother Khadr proclaimed that they are an “Al-Quaeda family” so any argument about Khadr being deserving of consideration for being a child soldier pressed into service by traitor/nutcase parents cuts very little ice (aside from the usual lefties of course). People here want Khadr kept locked up and as far away as possible.
The federal govt here wants nothing to do with him, refuse to listen to court rulings about how they failed him and how they’re legally obliged to do this or that for him. I suspect the feds want to make an example of him for other parents that want to send their sons to fight for the glorious cause. I think they want to make the point that their sons might not die in a blaze of glory for Allah but rather spend their lives rotting in a military prison in the middle of nowhere and can expect zero help from these quarters.
So I think this plea deal was not good news to the feds and, if I were a betting man, I would bet that if and when Khadr makes an application to serve his sentence in Canada and thereby earn faster parole, that the feds will stymie the application and put up every bureaucratic obstruction known to man to keep him away as long as possible. Of course if the Liberals win the next election it may be different but I think not materially. Khadr was caught during the previous Liberal administration and you hardly heard a squeak from them back then.
The other thing is how much do you trust official inflation stats? There are those that say the feds have every motivation to screw with the numbers to understate inflation and that they cooked up the statistical trickery to do it. The most laughably obvious trick is core vs non core inflation. Yes food and fuel prices are volatile but it seems to me they are more volatile on the way up than on the way down. Have you noticed that bread costs about 3 bucks a loaf?
This core vs non core stuff sounds to me like bullshit corporate financial reporting ie EBITDA. Who the fuck came up with that? How did this nonsense ever get any traction? So does this mean that assets don’t wear out and have to be replaced? Anyway my point is that bullshitting is the order of the day and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it even in inflation stats.
Some of you more realistic types might appreciate David Holmgren’s thoughts on the future in this video interview. (Hint: it has nothing to do with trillions of skyscrapers on Venus.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfM2bhijj_c&feature=related
In my current situation, I particularly connected with his idea of not only an inevitable ruralization of the urban population, but of “ruralizing the cities themselves” as well. We see that happening in a major way in Detroit, MI, as we speak, and Macon, GA, where I live, is ripe for such a transition too.
Well, here’s a concrete example of the Long Emergency unfolding before our eyes:
Apparently, the state of Indiana has slashed it’s budget for social services so much, that social services agencies are forced to tell families that their adult kids will no longer recieve money from teh state, and that to drop them off at homeless shelters. For real!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_disabled_homeless_shelters
Great, even MORE crazies roaming the streets.
Good question:
“The other thing is how much do you trust official inflation stats?”
And since our US govt. seems incapable of acting in *its* own best interest, the WHO ELSE BENEFITS from deflation – short or long term?
Deflation favors paper assets over real assets.
Deflation favors loaned money over borrowed money.
Correct?
So I’m projecting deflation for an indeterminate period of time followed by a “surprising” whipsaw move to inflation.
Looks like only the banksters will benefit.
Since they’ve got most of the money already they are entitled to have the rest of it?
Only problem with this logic is that currency is international and the Chinese and sovereign wealth funds have their own interests to protect.
Our banksters are lucky they’ve to the US taxpayer standing by to bail them out again. 😉
==============
and asia, sorry we can’t talk muslims and border security 24/7. If we as a nation could get to the bottom of currency manipulation i think we’d find the same reverence for free market capitalism that gives us open borders for the cheap labor big businesses “need” to “survive”
=========
Then what would we have?
Tripp to 8M:
“Wow, you’re right, it’s amazing how closely that mirrors my philosophy..”
I’ve mentioned how difficult it is to translate satire and sarcasm onto the open internet.
But, daaa-yuumn, even I caught the sarcasm in that one!
Seriously, though, I was reading Joe Bageant’s piece for the week and at one point he was talking about how “full employment” is not even an obtainable or desirable goal.
And I’m reading along and I think – Wow, Bageant sounds like 8M about some of this.
And Tripp, you say something about how it’s best for the ecosystem if you and your family simply spend more time sitting on the sofa. And I’m thinking – Wow, Tripp sounds like 8M about some of this.
Now as far as the skyscrapers to the Moon and everything, I’m willing to spot 8M the idea that some of his satire and hyperbole is not translating terribly well on the open internet.
Either that or he’s completely crackers. I’m not seeing a whole lot of middle ground between these two positions! 😉
Tripp said: “The biosphere would enjoy nothing more than for us to just sit on the couch and stare out the window.”
I support this idea (staring OUT the window) 100% … or sitting watching the carrots grow in the garden … or sitting on the front porch and watching the world go by. I just wouldn’t want someone to think sitting and watching TV is the same idea, ’cause the dumbification from watching the boob tube is kind of what got us into this mess. I’m also questioning (like Hancock and Qshtik have done) the value of sitting and blogging, [sarcasm on] especially when my brilliance is sometimes not appreciated.[sarcasm off]
I didn’t realize that some of the bloggers here must have substance abuse problems.Yesterday, Alexandra, today eightm.
Eightm, you have these ideas, but you don’t know how to get from point A to point B. Work IS needed today. It has to do with value. Right now there is a cost to production, so who pays it? You cannot just print money at will with no consequences; it has to be earned. I grant you, in the future, what we call work, ie, a job, mostly will not be necessary. That won’t happen until we can get the cost of production down to almost zero. And that won’t happen until we develop molecular assemblers, and that won’t happen until we make advances in nanotechnology. Be patient, zero or near-zero production costs may come about someday after we come out of our crises that surely will occur.
Also, if you want to be taken seriously on this blog, you need to rein in your love of large numbers and mis-scientific ideas. I’ve posted before in response to them. That’s why I suspect you are on something. You have not rebutted anyone’s criticism, nor have you explained how to accomplish your ideas.
Anti, Good post. I agree about the degree of passivity. We make the mistake of thinking that saying is the same as doing. We greatly admire bullshit artists, we think their ability to make things happen is equal to their ability to talk. Eventually reality runs you over.
I went through something like that Fortune 500 company. The company I worked for was in terrible financial shape. It was a real estate developer that kept making the same mistakes, with management and employees steadfastly refusing to believe that money does not grow on trees, that house prices and commercial real estate really do have places to go other than “up”.
Anyway, what happened was as inexorable as the tides. There was recognition in the company that we were in deep, deep, shit and as you said it was talk, talk, talk. Intellectualizing as you say. Management, true to form, tried to reshape the discussion (yes, our shares were selling for 12 cents apiece but there are two sides to the trade after all) until reality overran the sunny optimism and the talk and the intellectualizing.
At some point our creditors and bankers had finally had enough, rumours started to leak out that it was over. The place was absolutely buzzing. Management resorted to threats to stop the talk, we were told to keep our traps shut, put our heads down and work. Yes, they said, we were in trouble but our affairs were complex and if anything happened it would take a long time. To many die hard company loyalists it was “business as usual”. Sure it was.
The end didn’t take a long time, it came fast and when it came the guy that made the threats told me the rumours were true (and he didn’t even blush). The company had been petitioned into bankruptcy, the trustee in bankruptcy came in, we were all turfed in a matter of days, and the final end took only weeks. That company was vapourized like a moth in a bonfire.
So what’s the moral of the story? I think that you have to trust your own intuition, your own common sense, do not trust your “betters”. People in a group sometimes have got the collective IQ of a slug so do what you have to do to protect yourself.
I don’t believe land ownership issues are moot. I’m not sure of your definition of “relic issues”, but humans have fought over land since time immemorial, and that isn’t going to stop. Countries may devolve into city-states, but land boundaries still have to be set and honored. It doesn’t seem realistic, given humans’ propensity for power and control, that these boundaries will in fact be honored without continual monitoring and occasional strife.
“Either that or he’s completely crackers. I’m not seeing a whole lot of middle ground between these two positions!”
I suggest a 3rd alternative: He’s a science fiction reading and/or computer gaming teenager or college student.
“I support this idea (staring OUT the window) 100% … or sitting watching the carrots grow in the garden … or sitting on the front porch and watching the world go by.”
Yes! Quietly observing the activity in the garden is nothing like sleeping and watching tv all day while robots build mile long space cruisers for surfing the sun with “free energy.” Nothing at all.
In the immortal words of Jack Johnson, “turn on the boob tube, I’m in the mood to obey.”
NO THANK YOU!
“I suggest a 3rd alternative: He’s a science fiction reading and/or computer gaming teenager or college student.”
The one I’m Wii dueling with?
Deflation favors paper assets over real assets.
Deflation favors loaned money over borrowed money.
Correct? – P
Absolutely.
The thing is that Bernanke has been talking deflation for a long time, US monetary policy has been tailored to fend off this deflation but where is it? Are we arguing that the Fed’s policy was successful in fending off deflation? If so were these resultant successive asset bubbles and busts worth it?
Maybe you’re right, that deflation is in the future but personally I’m more worried about all those trillions sloshing around ie inflation. The talk was that at some point the Fed would suck back all this liquidity but then I heard talk that the Fed really didn’t think it was possible to do this.
I’m open to the deflation argument but the only deflation I’m seeing is because of low cost Asian imports. Asian wages are a small fraction of North American wages and I can’t see what US or Canadian monetary policy can do about this. Those manufacturing industries are as gone as can be.
A few days before the final election results are announced, Meg Whitman has just a 6 percent chance of winning in California, down from 10 percent yesterday.
So much for conventional wisdom that money can buy elections, even if your opponent is an elderly recycled candidate once known as “governor moonbeam”
I guess spending over $100 million of your own money in a campaign doesn’t buy as much as it used to.
I feel sorry for Ms. Whitman and for the prodigious and wreck-less waste of over 100 million dollars of her own money for nought.
Don’t trust Republicans with money. Look what they did from 2000 to 2008. They destroyed the country and we may not be able to salvage it. They don’t know how to invest for the common good. Look at Whitman: Why would she spend over 100 million dollars on advertisement to get into a position that only pays $212,179 per year?
Jerry Brown has a history of being frugal and fiscally responsible, in both his personal and political life (until he married into money).
Trip’s philosophy is succinctly summed up:
“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”
-H. Thoreau
It could also be visualized:
“In the world I see – you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway. ”
-T. Durden
Trip sled, “Secondly, from an ecologist’s point of view, I truly believe that energetic contraction in the human ecosystem will select for novel traits that are adaptive to that energetic reality. “
Are you stating that belief from an ecologist’s point of view? I think you are stating that from a believer’s point of view. Specifically of the school Maximum Optimisticum.
Because Evolution is entirely accidental. For example, pick any unfortunate who, although clearly superior, dies as a result of arbitrary reasons having nothing to do with specific fitness in any particular area. Were X number of species “less fit” simply because they were not designed to survive an Asteroid strike or supervolcanic eruption?
This harkens back to what I suggested before, namely, that if we want to play the “who’s fittest” game, single-celled organisms are the clear and overwhelming winner. The random physical results of universal entropic chaos tends to destroy quality as much as it allows it to evolve. On the cosmic balance the difference is nil.
Inherently, there are issues of quality in terms of the human race. There are in fact higher quality people and they are outnumbered and outbred by lower quality of people, because quality of people is something evolutionary biology achieves by accident.
To take human advancement through natural evolution as an article of faith is a mistake. There is some evidence that genetic diversity has decreased in human beings. In nature, certainly. The best way to destroy natural genetic capital is to wipe out species. Our trajectories in all this globally point to one thing- absolute elimination of higher life forms on Earth, and arguably, because of our genetics and biology.
How about a 5 foot, 100 lb. human being with green skin that photosynthesizes, can eat grass and wood, does not get cancer and has the limb generating capacity of a starfish, with a genius IQ, who has photographic memory, native mathematic ability, ambidexterity, can talk to plants and animals, runs a 3 minute mile, can survive hypothermic suspended states, and has an immune system which destroys cancer and repairs oxidative and genetic damage as it happens. Oh, and does not age.
This creature would never evolve without genetic engineering. Yet, it is arguably more fit.
The emergence of introduced and engineered diversity is essential if this network of biodiversity is to be rebuilt and the planet is to survive.
Trip, as a parent, you have already created your replacement. In the future, it will be possible to upgrade such replacements. Parents everywhere bend over backward to correct the genetic defects of their offspring with fillings, braces, therapies, etc. Its that innate genetic drive which will open the door to what comes next. So in that sense it is all the product of “natural” evolution, I suppose.
BeantownBill says to 8M:
“Eightm, you have these ideas, but you don’t know how to get from point A to point B. Work IS needed today. It has to do with value. Right now there is a cost to production, so who pays it? You cannot just print money at will with no consequences…”
I don’t know, Bean, maybe 2MX4 is just wearing me down – or maybe some of his stuff might make sense.
Consider the end of the Great Depression. WWII gets the credit, especially from the political right.
Well, what was WWII. It was a 4 year orgy of building shit, giving it away (lend-lease) and destroying it while moving millions of men around the planet while blowing up the enemy’s shit.
Now, notice I’m not arguing necessity here ’cause it did have to be done. What I’m asking is where did the money come from to do it. What is productive about a deficit-financed Herculean effort that produces only destruction and waste?
Would the economics have been different if we had never left the States – piled up all that shit – and blown it up over here?
Or collected all those assets used in the production of the destroyed items – and given them to 8M’s and my grandparents to destroy or use as they all saw fit?
Same money, same spending, same destruction – I’ve got to argue we’d get the same results, that being the end of the Depression.
I’ll also argue that we’ve already got the “free salaries,” except we call them welfare, AFDC, and/or extended unemployment.
But then I’ll argue almost anything!
Procon,
I’m not well-versed in economic history, but it seems to me we began giving away money during the depression, eg, the TVA and other make-work projects. Lend-lease began in 1939 or 1940, I think, before we entered the war. Germany was very pissed at us because we weren’t at war with them, yet we were aiding their enemy.
Could it be you are confusing “productive” with “production”? Productive means something like “being usefully active”, while production is the result of labor. Certainly war materiel is the result of being productive, even if it is soon destroyed.
The war’s expenditures were not paid for out of thin air. Ultimately, American citizens paid for it out of income from future growth. I would argue that’s how we’ve been doing business since the Great Depression. We’ve been getting ourselves into debt by overspending for a long time based on the idea that our economy would always grow (recessions only lasted a few years, then growth resumed) and our incomes would always go up. Today we have reached the limit of our growth (not our productive capacity) and the piper has arrived to be paid what he is owed.
As far as welfare,AFDC, extended unemployment and other entitlement programs are concerned, they are not free salaries, they are entitlements. These entitlement payments are made by the government from money we earned and paid in taxes. For the average American, we had to work in our jobs through May each year to pay those taxes. The feds and states are simply redistributing assets from those that have to those that don’t have.
This is what has happened with all the bank bailouts. The federal government created bonds and sold them to the federal reserve, and the money from the sales went to the banks. A bond is a loan that has to be paid back with interest. So who pays back the loans and who pays the interest?
We do, out of our own wealth, which theoretically comes from our labor or investments, a portion of which we pay in taxes to the various governments (local, state and federal). Or the government pays for the principal and interest of the bonds by selling new bonds to cover the old ones (rolling over the debt). But rolling them over is not linear, but either geometric or exponential because the interest payments are added to the balance. When refinancing approaches exponential, the whole structure breaks down. We are getting close to that point now.
Knowing all this should infuriate all American citizens. The fact that the masses haven’t taken yet to the streets bespeaks to the sorry state of our citizenry. 235 years ago, the citizenry was infuriated, and did take to the streets, shouting no taxation without representation.
That’s a good counterpoint argument, BeanTown.
I’m more at the point of trying to be provocative, but there is a point of resonance – not necessarily truth – but resonance, in 8M’s arguments for free salaries.
Where does *money* come from, anyway? I mean, I know the theories, but when referring to what we call our “consumer based” economy, the theories are divorced from reality.
A lot (35%?) of the economic activity in the US does not produce a tangible good or a useful service, IMO. We can’t have a traditional inventory based recession anymore, because we don’t make many useful things.
We’ve got a huge overhang of new “strip mall” type retail space in North Georgia where I am. Often the only tenant at these places in Far Out Bumhook, GA will be a nail salon or a tanning booth. And I may not consider these to be *productive* services – but if someone uses his “free” extended unemployment money for a tan, the free money becomes tangible in the real economy.
============
Finally, you state, “The fact that the masses haven’t taken yet to the streets bespeaks to the sorry state of our citizenry. 235 years ago, the citizenry was infuriated, and did take to the streets, shouting no taxation without representation”
=============
Well, maybe, but what would they shout? Cut my taxes some more! Explain the bailouts! We want bread, circuses, and free cable TV?!
I think our citizenry is too well fed, too well entertained, too generally content, and perhaps too old – to become infuriated over economics.
And these issues are so complicated and multifaceted that they are likely to produce confusion, not fury, in the citizens.
We’ve even managed to make the citizenry of CF Nation fall silent on a Thursday night – with our economic discussions. 😉
Gee..wonder what woppi goldberg id think of that!
do you ever read fireandreamitchell.com?
the sites too hateful for me but does have some gems!
as in:
But remember, claiming Muslims are either killing Americas, planning to attack Americans, or even did 9/11 is RACIST!
According to Fox News Farooque Ahmed of Ashburn, Virginia, was arrested today by the FBI and charged with providing material support to terrorists and collecting information for a terrorist attack.
The name Farooque Ahmed doesn’t sound Christian. It doesn’t sound Jewish. It doesn’t sound Hindu either. It is also reported that Ahmed repeatedly met with individuals that he thought were affiliated with Al Qaeda to discuss “jihad.”
i believe farooky is 25, american born..but i could have him mixed up with other young muslim males who have citizenship etcetc
1 in 7 is on foodstamps [or whatever they are calling them now]
if everyine had them and used them wouldnt the price of food go up?
re: “free salaries,” except we call them welfare, AFDC, and/or extended unemployment.
or govt jobs etc
“There are in fact higher quality people and they are outnumbered and outbred by lower quality of people, because quality of people is something evolutionary biology achieves by accident.”
Your metric of quality pertains to the flesh. Other’s pertains to the spirit. Who will decide?
Dude you nailed it. Summed it up nicely.
Yes but let me finish my doodles first !
I paid cash, never lived beyond’s. my means, until I got married to someone who lives on credit, (big mistake), living beyond your means.
I cannot stand it.
I just think we as a whole need to get back to cash.
But I probably don’t understand the big picture.
Who couldn’t SEE that the whole thing was out of control ? I COULD. So many didn’t and still DON’T.
DENIAL. Gonna have a Rude Awakening soon. People seem to be so ‘wound up’ now, running around in their cars, to nowhere. STRESSED OUT. And I live in a Beautiful Tourist Area, but the locals cannot relax. They can’t even pay the taxes on their properties.
This is criminal. It just seems so wrong that they will lose their down pymt. and whatever else, then someone else comes in and cleans up, get same house for nothin’. Makes me sick actually.
Where is our conscience as a nation? In general.
Yes times are changing and it’s for the better in some ways, but it ain’t gonna be easy for most. Including Me.
I have lots of thoughts. Thanks for sharing yours, everyone on here.
I’ve loved JHK’s writings since 1985. Home From Nowhere.
Bill,
I think I’m talking apples and you’re talking
oranges. “Land ownership” as an issue is all
about PRIVATE PROPERTY and for the most part
I think a man’s home is his castle.
What I was talking about was literally the
sustainability of countries themselves. Many
will fall in the future without a shot being
fired a la the “Velvet Divorce” which separated
Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and
Slovakia.
E.
True the beast will come for some in the present time but the beast came for some a long long time ago, and the beast won’t come for many for a long long time yet. But send not to know for whom the beast come, for it comes for thee.
With apologies to John Donne
. . . .)\
…..’ `–` ‘..
. / .. ^ ^ .. \
. \ . \/\/\/ . /
….’———‘
..
@ Trippticket….
Sailing I will be doing professionally from next year on, out of Norway – I’ll leave the UK for good as of next year. Things equestrian I’ll do for a hobby so only when back on terra-firma
No need for confusion CFKN’ers… *sniggers*
@ Asoka, re-supplying boats of quality at secure gun guarded harbours such as Puerto Calero will remain no problem ma dear, no really it won’t! I dare say donkeys/mules could carry freight down to the berthed yachts a many, and sail ships do hold real clues to future operations.
@ Dee….I’m tee-total ma dear don’t do booze or drugs, never have, not even when I was a sprightly snazzy sexy major at art college… such hedonistic days!
I get my kicks in other ways, and you need great, prime-time physicality for that, but I do still play a lot of tennis…
And my sailing career’s been doing fine since the early eighties so I dare say I will tinker along nicely for a wee while longer thank you…
(That’s the problem about making wrong arrogant personal assumptions… eh?) But enough of petty b#tching with narrow-minded land-lubbers…
Time now for a quick real coffee and then off to the gym, winding winch handles takes muscle – though the new rig main will be self-furling – short-hand deep blue cruising…
What a sh#tty miserable existence it will surely be, as opposed to grubbing around some crumbling infrastructure cityscape, full of dull, grey sickly ill nourished people…. silly me….
Toodle-pip
Flip Side of Globalism (redux)
One of the points I make about globalism is that the people who have embraced this ideology want foreign interests to develop our infrastructure as privatized business as opposed to the tax payer base (in other words our commons). As usual our media obfuscates this, but it is a large part of how neoliberalism and globalism work in tandem.
Although, I’m describing Germany’s outsourcing jobs here for BMW in this post, the same concept can be utilized for roads and tolls as well. (google Nasco Corridor for a little taste of what I’m describing)
Outsourcing can be done in the opposite direction. Case in point Germany is expanding a BMW plant here in the USA. People will be hired–wow isn’t that fantastic.
“600 more workers by the end of the year for its US plant in South Carolina, bringing the total staff to 7,600 workers as it ramps up US output. They also invested 250 million dollars to develop its headquarters in New Jersey and create two new regional distribution centers.”
Only problem is they will be paid half of what the Germans make. $15.00 per hr. That outta be sufficient to pay the bills and mortgages.
So isn’t that special we are Germany’s cheap labor force.
Indeed:
“So isn’t that special we are Germany’s cheap labor force.”
Guess we better cut taxes on the rich some more so they can trickle down on the US of A and buy a new BMW every year instead of every other year.
NOBODY believes marginal Federal income taxes were 90% under Eisenhower – a time of prosperity.
Tax rates and the US have been going downhill since then.
Tax policy is another one of those things that’s so divorced from reality that it edges into national insanity.
We’ve got the right wing goobers shouting that the “death tax” is immoral at $5 million dollars.
This from people who mostly (sadly) have little hope of accumulating an inheritance of 5 million pennies.
(That’s $50,000.00 – for the math impaired)
Everybody ought to watch a little Fox from time to time.
Hannity repeats two positions incessantly and urges them on the TEA party:
1. Be in favor of lower taxes
2. Be in favor of a strong national defense
Seems simple. It is. These two positions can NEVER be satisfied. They are essentially infinite demands – taxes will never be LOW enough and our military will never be STRONG enough.
I’m about sick of the whole game. Let the right retain those tax cuts on their precious rich. We may as well let the national debt go beyond belief and let everyone just wallow around in it for a couple of decades.
This will lead to hyperinflation and $10.00 gas as surely as night follows day.
But we’re on an unsustainable track and there is more than one possible resolution – in the mists of the future.
Sure is gonna screw up my social security and medicare though. *I’ll have to join the TEA party to stop that from happening!!* 😉
Prog made some interesting points about folks here in the good old USA living beyond their means. I think the Long Emergency is really starting to sting some people in the ass in a major league way. People (I don’t leave myself out) often confuse “wants” and “needs”.
Look, take it or leave it, here’s some advice from an old girl. If it doesn’t apply or you don’t want to hear it, scroll away. Lose weight. Start walking, lifting weights, whatever it takes to get your ass up and off the couch. Stop crying. Learn how to use what you have in new, productive ways. Remember grandma’s mending basket? Before turning that old shirt into a rag, try sewing up and patching it.
Stop eating that processed crap they sell in boxes at the grocery store and start buying from your local farmer’s market. Hey, nobody said life was going to always be entertaining and not redundant, boring, etc. Make solid, sensible choices when ever you choose to part with a buck.
We are in for a major shit storm, my friends. I can smell it, and believe me, it freaking reeks. Do what you can to start making life work today. Tomorrow is promissed to nobody.
Sorry for the spelling mistakes. I’m trying to cut down on my coffee consumption (prices are going up, and although I cherish my old Mirromatic percolator, I’ll do just fine with two cups of coffee instead of four…ouch…withdrawal symptoms.
Hallelujah. I just knew, that sooner or later, you’d write something I’d agree with.
You’re right about money not buying elections.
An example: In the early 1990s we had a nation-wide referendum on constitutional reforms wrt to Quebec’s place and powers in confederation. The entire Canadian establishment was in favour of the reforms and urged a yes vote. Years of effort had been dedicated by the political, academic and business elite to getting a constitutional accord. A great deal of effort and money was expended to twist our minds to get a yes vote.
To no avail. On the night of the referendum it was no. Turnouts at the polls were huge. The Canadian electorate shitcanned the deal.
I was opposed to the deal and voted no. I had made a list of reasons to vote no, showed it to others and vociferously argued my case. There were many others like me who in their own way undermined elite consensus and told our betters to get stuffed.
A former head of the Canuck Supreme Court, Bud Estey, said on the night of the referendum when it was obvious the reforms were dead, that the Canadian people had the correct take on the whole thing and came to a good decision. A great night for democracy. Hurray for people power.
It’s not the marginal tax rate that’s important; it is a red herring to take the focus off what’s really happening – that the rich have enough tax breaks to not pay very much in taxes.
In the 1950’s the top marginal tax rate was 90%, as you stated, but do you really believe the very wealthy were giving up 90% of their annual earnings? No, they had so many tax deductions they ended up keeping most of their income.
I don’t care what the marginal rate is as long as I can deduct enough expenses to minimize my tax debt. Think about this: there’s talk about ending the mortgage interest deduction. I’m not sure this applies to real estate held as an investment, which wealthy people might own. Even if investment property mortgage interest is included, real estate is presently considered such a bad investment that the smart money stays away from it and wouldn’t be effected that much. As a last resort, depreciation times could be decreased drastically, thus allowing for more tax breaks.
Tax rates are for the masses, it doesn’t make too much difference to the wealthy.
Myrtlemay,
Your comment:
“We are in for a major shit storm, my friends. I can smell it, and believe me, it freaking reeks. Do what you can to start making life work today. Tomorrow is promised to nobody.”
I like it, thats good. I think it is a sentence worthy of JHK himself.
🙂
Oh, so your not a drunken SOB, just a pompous ass.
Well, have fun anyway… watch out for that Jolly Roger, I hear he’s got quite the prick 😉
So nobody really answered my question re deflation in a clear and concise manner.
Sure, we may be going thru a ‘slight’ deflationary spot right now with the housing bust (and wages), but at some point IN-flation will return, if it hasn’t already. Just look at the prices in the grocery store right now (at least last time I was in the states), everything seems SO much more expensive than it was a year ago.
And people STILL are driving huge, gas-hogs!!
Dee in CR
Oh, one other thing, perhaps the Fed is taking the cash that is used to buy its own bonds and just burning it.
Just a thought…
Dee
To messianicdruid – who exactly do you think gave “man” dominion over the earth? NOBODY! I don’t know where people get the crazy idea that the Earth was put here for “man” to dominate. That idea is what has gotten us into the mess we are in today, and whoever thought it up was a nutcase. Oh, it was God who gave man dominion over the earth? Sorry, folks, God is just another concept designed to take our freedom away. And the Bible is just another storybook written by a bunch of men who want to control our lives. Don’t believe a word of it.
“And the Bible is just another storybook written by a bunch of men who want to control our lives.”
The Bible is an X-rated “storybook” … with extreme violence, sexual perversion, rape, murder, and a pissed-off deity who practices genocide.
Children should not be let near that book.
Cash, this is indeed a rare day.
Sorry about that Mika. I meant the above to be for Asoka.
Bill BeanTown, you say,
“I don’t care what the marginal rate is as long as I can deduct enough expenses to minimize my tax debt.”
And that’s true enough. Except FOX and the right somehow have the mass of voters focused on marginal rates and the “death tax.”
Somehow – in a country that’s supposed to be relying on self-employed entrepreneurial types to save us – everyone ignores Social Security withholding, which clips almost 13% ONLY off the lower and middle class portion of incomes.
I’ve got one *rich* friend that I still hang out with occasionally. Get a couple of beers in him and he will say regarding his *rich* friends, “After you get to a certain point, you will have enough income and enough money – after that point, money is just a way of keeping score for most of these guys.”
Now I’ll admit that that’s a goofy system – but it truly is the system we’ve got.
People just need to look at the game board and admit that it’s rigged so most of the marbles roll downhill toward the people who already have most of the marbles.
Maybe it has always been so – except from WWII until the ’70’s in the States – the rare exception that proves the rule??
Interesting that in 1980 RR and his gang dropped any pretense of income tax fairness between the extremely wealthy and the rest of the country.
Is it coincidence that that is when our decline really got rolling??
I get so tired of these right wing morons always quacking about tax cuts. Tax cuts, tax cuts, quack, quack, quack.
Just for once I’d like to hear one, just one of them, talk about what they think different levels of govt ought to do, how much it ought to cost, how it ought to be financed (user fees, sales tax, income tax, what income tax rates ought to be etc) and just sound like they have more than two working brain cells. Is this too much to ask?
You know, just to have one right winger sound intelligent, wise, as if they’d thought long and deep about such things would be such a monumental treat.
Some of the right wingers up north here sound just as imbecilic.
Is it coincidence that that is when our decline really got rolling?? – P
No it ain’t. You look at impoverished pestilential 3rd world countries and you see highly skewed distribution of income, the way the US is headed. Canada too but we’re always a few years behind you guys.
Well, it looks as though my earlier comment (no, I was not high) about the shit storm acomin is about to hit. Re: the recent “discovery” of bomb material located aimed for US. Expect major patting down at the airports, terminals, et. al. How about some interigating, ala Nazi Germany at the terminals. Expect delays…etc. I smell something brewing. Could be our boys are fixin for another war. Or should I say, “WAR”? Fucking pisses me off, this shit.
Sorry, spelling fuck up. “interrogate” . Sister Anna Maria would be so pissed off at me right now…if the mean bitch hadn’t already been dead for thirty years.
8M noted, “4) Therefore society must simply decide to give out free salaries to everyone, work is an option that is not even needed in most cases. And free or cheap rents to pay in high quality and large luxurious homes, look at all the empty McMansions.”
I recognize that fact.
America is filled with people hogging all the work. For example, one person’s 40 hour workweek in all its quality-of-life destroying character, is two well-adjusted people’s part-time jobs at 20 hours a week.
Instead of two rested, focused people working in tandem with its inherent error-correcting aspect of cooperation, getting plenty of rest and free time, which leads to further quality of life increases, we have one overoworked, unhealthy person and one unemployed, unhappy person.
This is how you end up with an economy where half work their asses off and half not at all, where work conditions never improve, quality of life issues proliferate, and civic life and culture deteriorates.
Instead of Megacorp. having 30,000 employees working a 30 hour week and society benefiting from their free time, they have 20,000 employees working 40 hour weeks, and society and individuals suffer.
You are spot – on!
8M is channeling an economist I read in the 1960s: Robert Theobald. In his book, THE GUARANTEED INCOME: NEXT ECONOMIC EVOLUTION? (published by Doubleday before the World Wide Web existed)
Theobald argued for a universal guaranteed income to liberate people from the degrading, market-dictated jobs and allow for a renaissance of self-fulfillment in creative work. Of course, Theobald was treated with condescension by his peers, much like 8M is treated on CFN, and had to fight to be taken seriously.
Youz all,
I want to direct you to Alan Watt’s Cutting Through The Matrix podcasts, available on iTunes or the web site(s). Excellent stuff on the NWO!
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
ah, another jewbu!
‘Alan Watt’..i find hima bore and overrated1
someone who knew him said he was an alcoholic as well!
What is a jewbu? Alan Watts has his place and helped many synthesize Eastern and Western thought, or religion, if you will. And he had a delightful sense of humor. About himself he frequently said, “I am not immoderately infatuated with the sound of my own voice.” And he did love wine, women, and song. And prodigious tobacco smoking which killed him at the age of 53, I believe.
I don’t think anyone really knows how things will play out in the economic sphere as we are all in uncharted waters, to say the least. I’ve been reading some good commentary on 321gold.com. But I personally don’t know which way things will go. Could be deflation for some asset classes like real estate while food and commodities go through the roof. We’ll all find out soon enough I’m sure!
Costa Rica… It’s on my list of places to visit.
Hasta la vista…
I’ll grant you that about the Old Testament. The New Testament is coming from a higher level of consciousness though, don’t you think?
The New Testament: Jesus and the gang are walking along and Jesus curses a fig tree because it doesn’t have any fruit!
All this time the Christians have been anti-gay because of a New Testament typographical error.
Jesus was anti-figs, not anti-fags!
JEWishBUdist
there are also HIN-JEWS
Just in case anybody’s actually paying attention (doubtful), let me note that Kunstler said, on July 26, 2010, “But these dog days of summer nobody will be paying attention, even as the markets themselves roll over and puke, as I rather imagine they will between now and Halloween, if not next week.”
On the day he wrote that, the S&P500 stood at 1,115. Today (i.e., Halloween weekend 2010), it closed at 1,183.
In other words, UP 6.1% since Kunstler wrote his (latest, yawn) doomsday prediction.
I enjoy Kunstler’s writing, and I generally agree with his long-term prognosis, but he’s a completely worthless idiot when it comes to making short-term predictions.
I don’t know how anyone can take Kunstler’s economic prognostications seriously. I’ll note he also predicted (as he does, yawn, every year) that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would end 2010 at 4,000 (so far he’s only off by, oh, about 7,000, give or take a couple of hundred, but why break with tradition, eh?).
And let’s not forget Kunstler’s stellar 1999 prediction that Y2K was going to bring on a global economic meltdown.
I guess we’re all allowed the occasional mistake. Like those morons who published the “Dow 36,000” book back in 1999.
What irks me is that Kunstler gives a bad name to the rest of us Peak Oilers who have a more rational view that the serious shit ain’t gonna really hit the fan for another 10 years or so. (In case readers here haven’t noticed, there’s currently a GLUT of cheap natural gas in the U.S., and plenty of coal as far as the eye can see.)
I wish Kunstler would ease off of his perpetual doomsday predictions and quit making the rational Peak Oil community the butt of doomsday jokes. He’s turning us into the Boys Who Cried Wolf, while we’re busy trying to make something of the time we still have left ..
P.S. Nice, though, that he’s still able to jet around the country lecturing people about how they will soon not be able to jet around the country …
Meow!
Think of it this way: the plane was going anyway and JHK being on it increased the fuel efficiency of the plane … as calculated by gallons per passenger.
THE COLLAPSE OF AMERICA
According to studies conducted separately by Columbia University and the World Health Organization, the United States has, in only ten years, gone from the 24th to the 49th in the world rankings of life expectancy.
SOURCE: THE COLLAPSE OF AMERICA
http://bit.ly/dsGLgz
US Marine: I will Fight American Civilians
One marine warns those calling for an uprising to stop and think. The Marine writes in ‘An Article I wish I would never have to write-To those calling for a civil war, this Marine wants you to stop, and think’…. There are no second chances, no time for regrets, and no do-overs. This is not Call of Duty.
Now I ‘d like to disperse a myth here – many of you think that US military would not fight civilians. I can’t speak for all, but in my case – the moment you declare civil war, you’re no longer civilians. The moment you attack the constitution, you’re now enemies of that constitution. And I swore to defend and support and if necessary give my life for that Constitution and utilize every tool, technique, and weapon at my disposal to do so. And trust me, I’m not alone.
I hope some of you heed my words and cool the rhetoric and focus on achieving your goals diplomatically instead of physically. It would never want to receive a frag order to Maryland, or North Dakota, or Texas, but it is an order I will follow no matter how much it pains me to do so…..
Source: Newsvine
Americans are obviously well armed. So far none of those arms have stopped Americans from losing most of their freedoms as well as their dignity.
But it may be that people in this country will turn violent against the power structure. Or that government provocateurs, posing as protesters, will start shooting. If so, it will be a sad day for America.
We can have change peacefully. We have the examples of Gandhi and Dr. King. They showed us that a mass of organized peaceful people can transform society.
So put away your guns.
Remember the other side has bigger guns. Instead be willing to organize for justice in a peaceful manner. More will be accomplished and it will contribute to a pattern of peaceful change that has already been established by others, like Gandhi and Dr. King.
For the record: Alan Watts is about as Anglo-Saxon as it gets. He was ordained as an Anglican priest, did that for a while, but left that gig as he became increasingly interested in, yes, Buddhism and Hinduism. Definitely not Jewish. Might as well describe Thurston Howell III and his wife “Lovey” from ‘Gilligan’s Island’ as being Jewish. Oy vey!
This ought to be of special interest to
ProgressOrConserve and LBendet … Lakshman
Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research
Institute came out today and said “The
data now confirm there will NOT be a
double-dip recession. However, since
there won’t be any growth in jobs, it will
still feel like a recession”.
What a bunch of double-speak!!! If people
are not put back to work and if pay in many
fields (especially TECH) is falling, how
does one call this a “recovery”? Also,
why don’t these guys tell the full truth
i.e., that GDP “growth” is always year-over-
year so their projection of 1.8% growth is
versus a near-depression level baseline.
Finally, I think Achuthan’s usually sober-
minded ECRI team has not factored in the
idea that if a MULTI-NATIONAL increases
sales OVERSEAS, this “growth” is counted
as US growth though there is no sign of
it in the US. It seems that even the
allegedly infallible agencies have odd
metrics.
As a postscriptum, I read with some amazement
about those “great” new jobs in the BMW plant
for $15/hour. If underemployment and hourly
wages were factored honestly into our labor
stats, I think the adjusted gross unemployment
rate in the US would, quite literally, be
around 30%. I can’t tell you, without boring
you to death, about all the techies I know
PERSONALLY who, after extended periods of
unemployment, were forced to take programming
jobs for $14/hour. These people were making
$100,000 in 1999.
Disraeli was right about “lies, damned lies,
and statistics”.
E.
Asoka said:
I am baffled, which is not unusual, being in my seventh decade,..
Mika replied:
Is this counting in lying subversive jihadi faggot cockroach years? ‘Cause I don’t believe for second that you’re a day over 30.
***************************************************
Mika … you’ve gotten right to the nub of the
matter. The bombastic, head-fucking quality of
Asoka’s style seems right out of the narcissistic
playbook for Gen-Y or late Gen-X. If this guy
is over 60 then he’s the most immature old person
I’ve ever met in my life.
Frankly, you were being generous with the
estimate of 30. I was going to guess 24
or thereabouts. I don’t even reply to the
fucker but I enjoy ripping him. I have that
right just as he mightily enjoys being an
Islamic Buddhist. 🙂
Say, did Mohammed also fuck Siddhartha’s wife
and then bugger his young children?? Islam is
a VIRUS. Mohammed was a murderous pedophile.
How a “religion” can be based upon such a man
is quite beyond belief.
E.
Giant Metal slabs so as to build thousands of trillions of 1,000 km high skyscrapers on the SUN and in the SUN. Trillions of some of these skyscrapers can be huge minds, with modified neural circuits, imagine what experiences MATTER could unergo in such structures, new sense organs, emotion circuits, super virtual realities, super giant artificial BRAINS and lives, etc.
So what am I smoking DJ ?
You guys are stuck in a puny past of people fighting each other over breadcrumbs and over who is the lazy slob, etc.
We live in a sea of free will, only our free will and what we or I or the single deciding entity decides what reality is counts. There is no external reality, only free will and who assigns, decides and constructs total reality counts, history is much more significant than physics, free will is the elementary particle not electrons. Only truths exist, as they are assigned, made up, only the truth exists, everything is true.
Yes, E. you put it so well!
We are experiencing some Orwellian double speak when they throw the (anemic) stats out to the masses. We should all be thrilled that the recession is over. The jobless recovery ought to work real well for GDP.
Clearly we are under some kind of deliberate dissolution of the middle class and the apparatus is the msm. From the Chamber of Commerce which is far worse than I ever imagined to the IMF, the middle class globally is under attack and the rich have never made a greater profit. The racketeers continue to operate the levers of power in the US and I’m afraid we are too divided to do anything about it.
Speaking of which our mid-term elections Bad Theater: If only Dan Aykroyd would play Leonard Pinth-Garnell for this one.
The last few days the discussion has been that Tea Partiers have hired “goons” to act as security. Some of these people are formerly of the military and private contractors and are not well versed in civilian law. So bring out the Brown shirts, cause this is the real first sign of the “corn Pone” Nazis as JHK calls it.
Women have been the target for physical force twice by these “security” forces and reporters have been handcuffed for asking questions the politician doesn’t want to answer.
The new meme by the right is that they don’t want to talk to the “lame stream” media and they’re getting away with not having any real policy on any topic. They just walk in lock step saying they hate government—that’s why they want to get elected so badly.(must be like the gold rush in Wash)
Their logic boggles the mind, but the answers they give are just downright creepy.
Sharron Angle came up with a beaut the other day when asked about what she thought of the two wars we’re in. Her response was: “The two wars we’re in are the wars we’re in.”–She must be taking poetry classes from Donald Rumsfeld.
That wasn’t very good, was it?
Re the new terror plot from Yemen
When I heard the account of packages from Yemen containing explosive being mailed to US synagogues and when I heard that Saudi intelligence had tipped off the US about this I had a good chuckle. I didn’t believe a word of it. Supposedly an Al Qaeda operation. I’ll bet this whole thing was set up by Saudi intelligence. I’ll bet the Saudis are sitting in their palaces laughing into their beards.
Why? Maybe to win brownie points with the US. See what good allies we are, see how good our intelligence operation is. Maybe it’s a distraction to keep the FBI, CIA and their cohorts busy while the bad guys are busy with other stuff.
The uncovering of this thing just looked too perfect, the idea of sending synagogues packages from Yemen of all places just sounds laughable. The US supposedly has military and intelligence people in Yemen investigating this thing. I’ll bet the Yemenis are having trouble keeping a straight face.
Cash said: “The uncovering of this thing just looked too perfect…”
Here is my take: Some people believe the following:
1) The President of the United States is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
2) Commander Obama has been more aggressive than Bush in taking the war to the Islamic extremists.
3) The Islamic extremists want to attack the United States.
4) One should be loyal to the Commander-in-Chief when your country is at war.
Given the above beliefs, the convenient uncovering of supposed Al Qaeda threats just a few days before the election might sway some votes of people who believe it’s best not to switch horses in the middle of the stream {war with Al Qaeda}.
Giant Metal slabs so as to build thousands of trillions of 1,000 km high skyscrapers on the SUN and in the SUN. Trillions of some of these skyscrapers can be huge minds, with modified neural circuits, imagine what experiences MATTER could undergo in such structures, new sense organs, emotion circuits, super virtual realities, super giant artificial BRAINS and lives, etc.
So what am I smoking DJ ?
You guys are stuck in a puny past of people fighting each other over breadcrumbs and over who is the lazy slob, etc.
We live in a sea of free will, only our free will and what we or I or the single deciding entity decides what reality is counts. There is no external reality, only free will and who assigns, decides and constructs total reality counts, history is much more significant than physics, free will is the elementary particle not electrons. Only truths exist, as they are assigned, made up, only the truth exists, everything is true.
“We live in a sea of free will, only our free will and what we or I or the single deciding entity decides what reality is counts.”
You’re absolutely right, what we do is our choice to a larger extent than most people realize, or are even comfortable with, but I just think your vision of the future blows.
It’s not that I don’t get what you’re saying. Using ever larger numbers and ever more fantastic scenarios isn’t required to get your ideas across. It’s just that some of us understand what a load of shite it is. I couldn’t paint a more depressing picture of the future than the one you describe.
We are a biological part of this planet. It is our mother. You can’t just pave it over with towers and space ports and expect its life support systems to carry on looking after your well-being.
You always advocate building “trillions of towers” on Venus, but the atmosphere of Venus is deadly poisonous, and weighs about 1325 lbs/sq in, compared to Earth’s 14.7. You wouldn’t last more than a few seconds on the way down to the suface.
And do we really have to hear this rubbish about living on the sun? Are you serious? What are you going to do, pop a piece of Orbit into your dirty mouth and mentally generate a bubble of minty freshness around you and your gear? And where would you be headed exactly in your minty-fresh solar bubble? The new state-of-the-art Orbit solar-powered chewing gum factory? What’s the point? I wouldn’t waste any more time with this insanity. You’re obviously capable of thinking; use it for something constructive.
Are you the lead singer of Owl City by any chance? He seems just as pompous and out of touch with reality as you are from what I’ve seen.
Your dream universe is not real. Out here in reality we have Natural Law to contend with. But as a reward, cooperating with natural law will bring physical, spiritual, and psychological benefits that your future could never dream of. You’ve so lost touch with the magic of Gaia that you feel compelled to invent your own kind of magic. Not that you’re unique. I could say the same thing about a lot of Aquarian New Age types, with their unbounded mental expansion.
It just sounds inferior to me from where I sit. That simple. It’s just a new multiplier of the same old worn-out expansionary paradigm. And seems to me our anxiety level goes up every time our population and technological level do. Not a trend I’m interested in maintaining.
So come on, man. We get it. It just sucks.
‘he’s the most immature old person
I’ve ever met in my life’
did you MEET him or read his posts and ‘feel’ you met him?
islam….see..amazon:’they must be stopped’
‘Economic Cycle Research’= corporate double speak institute
welcome to the ‘jobless’ recovery.
‘”The two wars we’re in are the wars we’re in.”–She must be taking poetry classes from Donald Rumsfeld’
and was there in the 20th century or this one a democratic prez who got u.s. troops out of all foreign countries, closed all foreign military bases and had u.s. troops guard our borders?
“Boys Who Cried Wolf” is an accurate summation of the doomsday scenarios outlined here and in much of Peak Oil writings. Doomsday predictions make for interesting reading, but will cause the population majority to discount the urgency of the situation (just like many do about climate change). I look at Peak Oil as more of a jagged plateau rather than a Mt. Everest peak. We may have only ten years to change our transportation energy mix. But, we went through the 1970’s oil shocks and now, over 30 years later, little has changed. It’s going to take a combination of pricing volatility and spot shortages to wake up the average American. Even so, feel good politicians (eg. “Sister Sarah”) have come on the scene to tell people what they want to hear. Many politicians in my age range of 50, remember well RR’s “It’s morning in America” mantra and what happened to Carter’s “wear a sweater” urgings.
Howdy Progressor,
Your contention “Interesting that in 1980 RR and his gang dropped any pretense of income tax fairness between the extremely wealthy and the rest of the country.
Is it coincidence that that is when our decline really got rolling??” has been mine as well since Reagan, one of the worst presidents the the US has had to endure, was the governor of CA when I lived there from Oct 68 through June 78.
One of my favorite stories of what an ass he was was a photo run on the front page of the Sacramento Bee of Reagan throwing an apple core out of governor’s limo. I tried to find it using goggle but failed, perhaps Asoka could help me out here. At any rate the crux of the story is that any normal human would have said ” yup you caught me violating the anti litter law here is my $50, $100 whatever the fine was at the time check. Not our boy Reagan, no sirree, he put out a press release stating that he was NOT littering he was merely adding humus to the soil. Interestingly I never heard tell of any amendments to the anti litter law which made it legal for the rest of the Californians to toss their garbage, not their trash, out onto the roadsides to add humus to the soil.
SNAFU
I really can’t wait for the QE2 to take place. It will only be after it has been proven to be a total failure that the realization will sink in that the core problem with the economy is weak demand.
We will not be able to inflate our way out of this.
Bernanke THINKS that QE2 will kill the value of the dollar, resulting in a boost in commodities and the stock market, creating the perception that the economy is in recovery. Then the US has the nerve to call CHINA a currency manipulator? LOL!
But when a falling dollar won’t even deliver the kind of inflation that would normally occur, Bernanke and the establishment will be astounded.
I will be astounded that they’ll be astounded.
The elitism of Bernanke and the boys will shine through
“Not our boy Reagan, no sirree, he put out a press release stating that he was NOT littering he was merely adding humus to the soil.”
I’m not exactly what one would call a Reagan promoter, not by a mile, but I think the road shoulder is exactly where an apple core belongs. Throwing biomass in the garbage can represents a relic barbarian mental construct in the philosophy of a 20th century American who ought to know better. Are we really this far out of touch with the natural world?
I would have fought that charge until I won.
SNAFU, here is the photo of Reagan after he was confronted with the limo littering charge:
http://bit.ly/cQY968
He doesn’t seem repentant.
Given the above beliefs, the convenient uncovering of supposed Al Qaeda threats just a few days before the election might sway some votes of people who believe it’s best not to switch horses in the middle of the stream {war with Al Qaeda}. – asoka
That’s the spirit. So this is a plot cooked up with Saudi and Yemeni cooperation to make Obama look good? To get Democrat votes next week? Grubby stuff. Sounds good. You’re more cynical than I am. So if this is the case (nothing would surprise me) what do you figure it cost to get the Saudis and Yemenis to go in on this?
Cash said: “So if this is the case (nothing would surprise me) what do you figure it cost to get the Saudis and Yemenis to go in on this? ”
Cash, they may be paying Obama. You have to remember that Obama is a Muslim, probably Wahhabi, and may actually be a secret agent working for the Saudis and/or Yemenis. Have you forgotten that Obama is evil, the anti-Christ? Get with the program, Cash. We are all so fucked, with a socialist, Wahhabi, Al Qaeda operative in the White House. Oh, and even worse, did you notice he is Black?
Say 8m, its not just what you are smokin’, its what your mixing it with: Your anti-psycho meds, booze, LSD, speed, and perhaps all of the above at once.
So to say that what you write (as you watch the wall writhe in techno-color paisley) is a bit outlandish is really quite the understatement.
But at least you are not a serial killer, eh? Oh, come on, please say your not….
Dee :0
A secret agent. Better still. They may be paying Obama? OK so you’re talking about Saudi subversion of US politics. Brilliant. And maybe not so far fetched. Saudis are nothing if not rich and, after all, what talks louder than money?
So tell me who has more influence on US policy making, Wall Street or the Persian gulf oil princes?
But don’t you think the subversion would be a tetch more discreet, like financing foundations and institutes that retired US politicians can go work for? You can’t have the Saudi ambassador delivering suitcases full of cash to the White House or doing wire transfers to Obama’s or his missus’ bank account at least while he’s still president. Maybe an offshore bank account in a dependable sheikhdom?
The anti-christ. Hmmm. Didn’t Nostradamus say one of the anti christs would be called Napo-le-Roi (Napoleon), the next would be called Hister (Hitler) and the third Mabus. So who is Mabus? Obama? Is that a good enough fit?
Nostradamus Century 2, Quatrain 62
Mabus will soon die, then will come
A horrible undoing of people and animals,
At once one will see vengeance,
One hundred powers, thirst, famine, when the comet will pass.
Spooky!
BTW, this “terrorist threat” is making some amusing cocktail party conversation. Last night got together with some old pals at the local pizza joint. Swilled some beers with folks who clearly question the timing of this latest piece of theatre. Life, ain’t it grand? Beautiful Fall weather, free theatre. Let’s dance!
In my last post I forgot to turn on and off the sarcasm indicators.
Cash said: “You can’t have the Saudi ambassador delivering suitcases full of cash to the White House or doing wire transfers to Obama”
[sarcasm on] Cash, the Saudis are already delivering the money, but it would be too obvious to send money to the White House, so they send it to the USA Chamber of Commerce, where it is laundered and sent to the USA political campaigns. Obama, and the whole USA Supreme Court is in on this, although for public consumption they must carry on with their kabuki theater performance. Don’t you read the news? [sarcasm off]
Why has the US fallen to 49th in life expectancy?
I believe in the interconnectedness of things.
Perhaps the reason is connected to the reason the US was not at the table for the international biodiversity conference.
http://www.cbd.int/cop10/
It would follow that, if a nation did not prioritize biodiversity, they also do not prioritize quality of life issues like health or welfare. Duh.
OK so im listening to KCRW and theyre talking
x yugoslavia and how the sauds have put almost a billion into it, one mosques 30,000,000$..
all in hopes of finding the next generation of terrorists…
this in a place where unemployments almost 50%!
never underestimate em…
do i feel ‘safer’ under one administration then another? NO!
cash is king [sorry couldnt resist the pun]
would obama rig things? hes a chicago politician!
US fallen to 49th in life expectancy
lets not get to cosmic about this…
how about:
obesity?
1/2 all food dollars now spent away from home
G.M.O.’s
pesticide use way up [see..gmo’s]
children in front of the screen
povertys up
o..and all those mexicans asoka ‘welcomes here’…
they have trouble gettin in the military..even the second generation…way obese
mikas the jew bu..not alan
IS THERE NO JUSTICE IN KUNSTLERS LITTLE CLUBHOUSE?
DEAR SEB LONG BANISHED AND YET GREYSTONES ‘ AUNTIE M’ STILL HERE
and advice to JonathanSS ‘nothings changed ‘ since the 70’s…
well if doubling of the human populations ‘a mere nothing’!
[gawd what a fool]
i was listening to catherine austin fitts on AM the other nite..
she said she was at a conference and someone asked jim rogers [soros] about ‘peak oil’
he says ‘ peak everything’ [ as in 7 billion people]
‘peak everything’
Aye! Now thar be the forest, mateys!
Good catch.
mikas the jew bu..not alan
==
Heheh.
Btw, Allan Watt is not Allan Watts. Reading comprehension is so overrated. 🙂
So is correct spelling. LOL!
Tiz be: Alan Watt! From:
http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com
Say, did Mohammed also fuck Siddhartha’s wife
and then bugger his young children?? Islam is
a VIRUS. Mohammed was a murderous pedophile.
How a “religion” can be based upon such a man
is quite beyond belief.
==
I’d liken it to a bad STD. One that you get from your parents. Now that’s totally fscked.
Asia,
Alan Watt is a joo boi from Scotland, Ontario. Same place I’m from, btw.
“And seems to me our anxiety level goes up every time our population and technological level do.”
So are you saying there is a cause and effect between population and technological level, and anxiety?
You also said “population AND (caps mine for emphasis) technological level”. Do you mean the “and” to be both-together-occur and anxiety levels go up, or that either one happens and our anxiety level goes up? Sorry, maybe I’m being inarticulate.
To paraphrase whoever said “there is no there, there” (Dorothy Parker?, it just slips my mind), there is no “on” on the sun, since the sun is a ball of plasma and gas and has no solid surface for anything to be “on”.
I guess you will continue to make inherently good ideas look ridiculous.
“It would follow that, if a nation did not prioritize biodiversity, they also do not prioritize quality of life issues like health or welfare.”
Our resident “big picture” guru thinks you’re being too cosmic. I think that’s funny. Quality of life and biodiversity are directly proportional. Our country cares about neither. That’s why I believe that anxiety (just as an example we can all relate to) increases as population and technology increase, because biodiversity declines, almost by definition, in the process of obtaining the resources required to expand. We’ve been eliminating our prey species one-by-one ever since the Great Leap Forward. And fossil fuels have sped up that rate of decline enormously.
Well said.
And of course loads of species that would never be our prey, and never did anything to deserve our destruction.
Again, I’m reminded of Richard Heinberg when he asks if all the animals on Earth had an equal vote, would humans get voted off the planet?
We’d vote ourselves out? I don’t think so.
And won’t you tell me, over and over again my friends, how you don’t believe we’re on the Eve of Destruction? (Barry McGuire – those of you under forty?)
Way to take my comment out of context, as well as change what I meant (nothing has changed?) when I said “little has changed”. It was related to how we use petrol in our transportation mix. Not population levels or even our increased oil imports.
BeantownBill said: “since the sun is a ball of plasma and gas and has no solid surface ”
Does the earth have a solid surface? This is a trick question… think quantum physics before you answer.
Is reality a material entity endowed with objective existence? Is “matter” on Earth solid?
In the light of new physical findings, matter has lost both its solidity and permanence. The fusion of mass and energy proposed in the special theory of relativity removed the essential distinction between a material body and its surrounding space by showing that the mass of a group of particles depends not only on the sum of its components but also on the energy of the binding between them.
Quantum mechanics challenged the solidity of matter by renouncing the very idea of the subatomic particle as a minute equivalent of other particles in physics.
Bohr’s model of the atom as a minuscule planetary system was the last attempt to interpret the nature of particles in terms of familiar mechanistic concepts. Further development of quantum mechanics showed the futility of such endeavors, for the subatomic reality displayed properties incompatible with classical mechanics.
The indeterminacy principle of Heisenberg also implied the loss of solidity in the subatomic realm. The principle negated the solidity of matter by precluding our direct experience of a subatomic particle. To observe such a particle would mean to find simultaneously the momentum and position of the particle and that, according to quantum mechanics, we cannot do because such a conjunction of momentum and position does not exist in nature.
The phenomenon of quantum tunneling also completely eliminates the concept of solidity.
With quantum tunneling, it’s possible for one “particle” to pass directly through another without either of them being affected by it. Solidity, then, can no longer be held as an objective fact about matter. Without solidity, there’s no foundation on which to build reality and reality becomes understandable only as perception of solidity.
Werner Heisenberg sums up the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics in this way:
Heisenberg and Bohr, among others, took quantum mechanics as meaning that the reality we live in and which science studies is fully dependent on perception.
To summarize, solidity depends on perception of particles, not particles themselves.
In other words, there is no there there, on Earth or on Venus or on the Sun. Perhaps it is equally plausible to construct trillions of skyscrapers thousands of miles high in any place you perceive solidity exists.
Perhaps they are all in your perceiving mind anyway, including the ones on the Earth’s supposedly “solid surface” …
“We’d vote ourselves out? I don’t think so.”
Mika, why don’t you go back and actually read what I was saying this time.
I tell you what. Why don’t all you space cadets keep rolling with your theoretical quantum fascination, while the rest of us get busy setting our house back in order.
It’s really interesting conjecture, I’ll agree. I love The Rabbit Hole series on YouTube particularly. But it isn’t helping us recreate a lush green, pulsing, thriving biosphere. Our lack of physical, mental, and spiritual health is tied up in that lack of action. So by all means, let’s keep dreaming our way back to life. Surely it’ll come trotting down the path right about the same time the free energy does…
>>To paraphrase whoever said “there is no there, there” (Dorothy Parker?, it just slips my mind)
Mika, why don’t you go back and actually read what I was saying this time.
==
I did. We’ve decimated every other animal species into practical extinction. We’re all that’s left. Name me one other animal species that even comes close to our numbers. There isn’t one. Name me one other animal species whose numbers can be counted in the millions, let alone in the billions. You can’t. It doesn’t exist. And if you combine all the other animal species together, their number in total will only equal a fraction of our population. The sad truth is, we’re way past the point in history where your statement could make logical sense.
In looking over some comments about our latest terrorist plot, I am surprised that anyone thinks it helps Obama.
The conventional wisdom is that the Republicans are better at war and protecting the country, even though as someone pointed out to me yesterday it was really the Democrats who have waged war in the 20th century.
Thanks to the Cheney and company every time we have an election the color code goes up a notch. (red alert). The masses will salivate and vote Republican.
I had a history teacher in high school who warned us that the people will vote for a benign (let’s hope benign) despot to protect us.
At the time, I couldn’t imagine that the American people would be so easily manipulated—silly me!
I dread the outcome of these elections.
The Democrats did a lousy job communicating anything of substance they did, since they can’t rationalize selling out to the power elite, but the Republicans are masters of that and make no bones about who their masters are.
They even blocked subpoena powers for the disaster investigative commission on the BP oil spill.–Oh and don’t get me started on the Clash of the Titans act between BP and Haliburton this week over the faulty cement used on the Macondo well.
If anyone thinks voting Tea Party or Republican will change anything for the better, think again.
(at least the Demos feel too guilty to even try to win this election)
8m may be a space cadet, but his premise, stripped down to its bare essentials, is that we must expand our civilization; I happen to agree with that. I know that’s anathema to you, but we have a difference in philosophy here. There is no right or wrong, and there’s no reason why 2 opposing views cannot be put forward in this blog. I can feel your frustration with those you think don’t see the light; I feel the same way.
I replied to 8m’s last post because I don’t want people to think technophiles are all wacky. Asoka led this thread down another path; discussions of quantum mechanics, I think, aren’t necessary here. Tell me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the posters on this blog trying to deal with what you call a keyhole event?
Thank you.
Rats.
Nope. Even in India, where this species is revered, the human population outnumbers rats. Though, I don’t begrudge you in the least, being confused about some from our own specie belonging to that specie. 🙂
I’m glad I’ve already gotten some good work done this morning, otherwise I couldn’t justify the time for this response.
You’re joking, right? I have more ants in my yard than there are people in the state of Georgia. There are over a quarter of a million described species of beetles. And I assure you that if there weren’t billions (trillions? brazilians?) of some of those species, like Japanese beetles or cotton boll weevils, there wouldn’t be multi-billion dollar industries dedicated to controlling them.
What about earthworms? Every atom on the surface of the Earth has passed through the gut of a worm. I probably have worm numbers in the millions on my quarter acre. But only 4 humans. And maybe your alektorophobia is acting up again, but there are more chickens than people on Earth.
For the sake of your pride I wish there was a delete option for previously submitted posts…
You’re joking, right? I have more ants in my yard than there are people in the state of Georgia.
==
Ants are not classified as an animal specie.
Jane Jacobson also repeated this comment throughout her speaking engagements during her long, elegant life. I’m smiling at ya, Miss Jacobson. Thanks for being here…giving voice. You are one of the people who started my love affair with JHK.
I beg to differ, as noone has actually counted this population, or if so, not accurately.
You gotta admit tho that either 8m has a problem with the little glass pipe, or perhaps the Great Big Bong.
Either that or he’s just screwing with us.
I kinda am of the opinion (from knowing the type) that he’s a little schizo, and goes off his meds and/or self medicates.
As for ants, you wouldn’t believe them here in CR, it would drive a Jainist nuts, every time I walk out the door, I must step on hundreds of the little buggers every day. Can’t help it, they are everywhere.
But I am just assisting them on the upward path of evolution. Perhaps they will return one day as 8m’s room mate at the State Inst 🙂
Dee
That may be true. But you’re forgetting that snakes too are revered in India, and they keep the rat population in check.
First of all it’s “species,” with an ‘s’ at the end, in both the singular and plural. Let’s get that right to start with. Next, there is a very widely accepted taxonomic system here on planet Earth. Anyone who knows anything about science uses it.
At the kingdom level, ants would go in which of the following categories?
A) Archaea
B) Bacteria
C) Protista
D) Plantae
E) Fungi
F) Animalia
Let’s see, they’re not bacteria, or the more ancient prokaryotic Archaea, nor are they protists like Hydras and Amoebae, or plants like tomatoes and oak trees, or Fungi like mushrooms and molds. No, they are animals. So are sponges and tunicates that glue themselves to the sea floor, and shrimp, and crabs, and limpets, and barnacles, all of which outnumber us.
You don’t get to make the rules of life up all over again to suit you. Sorry.
Could we get back to the original question, please? If all the other life forms, that have every right to be here too, had a voice we could all recognize, would we humans get voted off the planet? And the resounding chorus would ring out “yes!” Our votes wouldn’t even register.
Jesus Christ what a pointless detour.
Every time I start thinking humans might have a chance, someone on this list shows me how very far we have to go. We need an understanding of the rest of Nature if we’re going to have a shot. That’s why it’s worth addressing this nonsense.
You’re moving the goal posts. But that’s ok. I think I made my point regards where we stand vis-à-vis other animals. 😀
No, I think you meant “corn-holed” event. At any rate, boyfriend is off at church and that must mean that mommy has some bong hits set aside for an anniversary (13th, if anyone freaking cares. I do have to whip his ass sometimes when he goes over the top. He’ll turn 54 this January. Fucking men…they can be so tiresome. Yeah, I know. I’m a fucking bitch, too. Cheers!
I don’t think he’s screwing with us, I think he’s serious.
Animals and Animalia are not the same thing.
Animal
Definition
noun, plural: animals
A living organism belonging to Kingdom Animalia that possess several characteristics that set them apart from other living things, such as:
(1) being eukaryotic (i.e. the cell contains a membrane-bound nucleus) and usually multicellular (unlike bacteria and most protists, an animal is composed of several cells performing specific functions) (
2) being heterotrophic (unlike plants and algae that are autotrophic, an animal depends on another organism for sustenance) and generally digesting food in an internal chamber (such as a digestive tract)
(3) lacking cell wall (unlike plants, algae and some fungi that possess cell walls)
(4) being generally motile, that is being able to move voluntarily
(5) embryos passing through a blastula stage
(6) possessing specialized sensory organs for recognizing and responding to stimuli in the environment
http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Animal
Say, 8m, hope I didn’t freak you out with the comment above about an ant becoming your room mate at the State Inst.
I mean, I just hope you don’t start hallucinating trillions of million-mile high metallic ants dancing around on the sun causing sun spots or something. Hope it doesn’t set you back or nutin’.
Dee 🙂
You remind me of someone I met in a bar in Cleveland in the ’60’s. Being a bitch isn’t the worst trait one can have.
“Being a bitch isn’t the worst trait one can have. ”
Indeed it is not. In fact, in some cases it helps. Cheers again!
“I beg to differ, as noone has actually counted this population, or if so, not accurately.”
No, you’re absolutely right, Bill. There are more rats than humans, there are more mice than humans, there are more birds than humans, there are more fish than humans. All of which are macro-animals, not even insects that Mika thinks don’t really count.
This is a totally asinine thing to be spending time on.
Hmm,.. Could I be confusing animals and mammals. I think so. Bill, you should have caught this! 😀
Oh…my…god…
“You’re moving the goal posts. But that’s ok. I think I made my point”
Indeed you did, sir. I think we all got it.
True.
I asked this once before, but got no replies. Does aeroponics (or hydroponics) have potential to resolve a lot of our coming food problems? I’ve been reading that a number of businesses are looking into this. Or is aeroponics like fusion – a great idea that’s technically and financially beyond us for the forseeable future?
I think we all got it.
==
Good. I’m glad we could resolve the confusion. 😀
Interesting discussion re insects being classified as animals:
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/680170
(Looks like I might be right after all)
“Or is aeroponics like fusion – a great idea that’s technically and financially beyond us for the forseeable future?”
Surely we could do it. Figuring out how to do something is our strong suit. But plugged into an energetics equation that factors in real cradle-to-grave costs, can it outperform soil-based food systems?
Here’s my simple answer, and I know you’re probably tired of hearing it, but if it could, I think Nature would have evolved it already. Now granted, there are some aerial plants and fungi out there, like the bromeliads, the orchids, Spanish moss, mistletoe, etc, but none of them have any real impact on macro food systems. They support ants and mites, things like that. So the model in Nature is there for aeroponics, and hydroponics too, but in my scientific opinion, I doubt it’ll ever have any real place in our economy.
“I’ve been reading that a number of businesses are looking into this.”
My immediate knee-jerk reaction to a statement like this is, then it probably has very little to do with energy descent. Businesses are understandably looking for new business ideas, and some of them may do well in smaller markets, or over shorter periods of history, but in the end, I think we’re heading toward simpler strategies, and more contact with living soil, not less. Because they are truly the lower energy options. Nature is capable of taking back a lot of the load we’ve taken on ourselves for the sake of more economy and more people. She can do the fertilizing and pest control for us, but she needs access to her entire arsenal of weapons. And that means contact with the soil.
To me, removing plants from the soil requires more energy, more equipment, and more import of nutrients/export of wastes. In Nature, the cycle is closed and self-sustaining. I personally don’t think “more” is where we’re headed. Not if energy gets less affordable every year. And for our own sake, let’s hope it does.
I know you disagree with that, but I see powering down as our only chance.
Till Donnie’s dancing with me, I’ve got no reason to smile. 🙁
With all the talk of indeterminacy and things not being solid and all that I was worried I would fall through my chair then through the floor and then…never mind. I read somewhere that a positron (positively charged electron) is really a negatively charged electron moving backwards in time.
Asoka is making me weak in the knees with his newfound astuteness about Saudi subversion of American politics.
I know a physicist who said that when talk starts up about things going backwards in time it’s usually because the math is fucked.
“To me, removing plants from the soil requires more energy, more equipment, and more import of nutrients/export of wastes. In Nature, the cycle is closed and self-sustaining. I personally don’t think “more” is where we’re headed. Not if energy gets less affordable every year. And for our own sake, let’s hope it does.” Tripp
Actually, hydroponics IS a viable option: There is in the Petalua, Ca area a company that grows hydro lettuce for sale in the supermarkets. I do know some that grow hydro tomatoes, so perhaps lots of other things can be grown sans soil.
But on the other hand, there are the nutrients that have to be added to the water, the water circulation system, etc. Lighting, since the above is an indoor operation.
Perhaps others can add info….
Dee
“But on the other hand, there are the nutrients that have to be added to the water, the water circulation system, etc. Lighting, since the above is an indoor operation.”
Again, this is really my point. Is it competitive in an energetics equation against soil-based culture? And the answer is almost certainly no. Is there even a net energy gain from it? If not, it will wither right beside fossil fuel agriculture.
A LOT more people will be engaged in growing food, fiber, and fuel in the future. That’s how we reverse the unsustainable energy trends of mechanization and aggregation. With more people power, not more technology.
How many of us could use more to do anyway? See the trend evolving? I predict food will go from being 9% of the first world’s household budget to something more like 90% in my lifetime (in 3 years of active participation with the trend, our food budget is over 50% of our household budget already, so no, I’m not exaggerating). All the rest of our activity is just oil. Oil makes the disease, makes the pharmaceutical corporation, makes the pills, makes the need for hospice and nursing homes, and makes the fancy funeral. After oil we get to be just humans again.
It’ll surprise people how good that feels.
Howdy Asoka,
Very apropos photo indicative of TPTB attitudes toward the rest of us.
One would think that a photo of Herr Reagan, in the act of disposing of his apple core by flinging it out the window of the CA state limo, would be stored in a gaggle of electronic 0’s and 1’s somewhere in the great electronic cloud bank of the internet.
SNAFU
Its all relative, trip. Dirt is still dirt. The bent-over postures of farming would push any number of nascent cubicle dwellers over the cliff into full-blown scoliosis.
As for hydroponics, I am studying the issue. If we assume the food-strapped future, with larger populations, the last thing we want is a back-to-the-land movement.
Trip, you seem to believe that a baptism in dirt will be enough of a religious experience to get the modern city man or woman to realize their shallow and baseless existence. I doubt it. The practice of farming looks suspiciously like peasanthood.
Predictably, the jobs created by a new post-oil farming empire will be of the hoe-pushing kind. If 8m’s technological juggernaut continues and a free-market still exists, robo-harvesting destroys the viability of human labor- again.
I reiterate we don’t want humanity’s urban population to leave the cities they are confined in. The rural wastewater infrastructure is not engineered to handle all the shampoo residues.
On the other hand, if we send the 15 million wetbacks currently damaging the economy back to Mexico where they can begin the project of rebuilding that shithole, we can provide some number of jobs to long neglected and underserved domestic population of desperately poor and unemployable people. Admittedly, some urbanites do in fact need to be rescued from the spiritual vacuum of the cities. Octomom’s 15 kids should be almost ready help pay off their social debt. Perhaps they should be confined to the 6 acres they will have to tend in rotation for the next two decades.
Now, back to hydroponics. The advantages of it over traditional Ag. for the purposes of food production are various:
1. Water use. Water is cycled and recycled.
2. Fertilization. In modern Ag, the environment must be totally raped to tilt favor toward planted crops. Most fertilization nutrients end up being used by microorganisms or other weed species, or washed off. Therefore, farmers overapply anticipating waste. Since hydroponics is a “closed” system, no nutrients end up taken by plants other than what is cultivated. That means less fertilizer must be created.
3. Transport. Transport amounts to a large proportion of modern food production. Putting food production inside cities takes advantage of these losses in distribution and infrastructure already in place.
4. Footprint. Ag. is largely two-dimensionally situated on the landscape. Hydro can be 3-dimensional. The possibility of building up means less sprawl.
5. Production: hydro can achieve better yields while avoiding the problems of the open-system: infection, invasion, etc.
6. Soil: Since hydro is a soilless system, no net loss of soil occurs, as happens in Ag.
7. Pollution: Since hydro is performed indoors or within a closed system, pesticide, fertilizer, or genetic pollution is controlled and maintained without exposing the outside environment.
8. Energy: Hydro, depending on design, may require little in the way of supplemental energy, or a lot. It depends on the system. Economics will determine whether running lights and fans and timers and pumps will beat filling a tractor with diesel, propane, fumigants, and fertilizers.
I think Hydro is very viable for the near future as it seems to be unfolding. If we end up with a large disbursement of people from cities, we will have major problems. To me, major problems are the continued conversion of natural systems to human-designed ones. Those millions of people will be nothing but mobs. Imagine the contents of the world’s shopping malls unleashed on the landscape. Let the forest-clearing and swamp-draining commence!
North America, thanks to all these new immigrants, is on track to have a population the size of India (800 million) by 2100. Take a gander at India sometime to get a sense of what millions of sandaled feet, stomping the scenery, and digging canals does to nature. With the northward expansion of desertification and all out cluster-fuckation of the world’s environment by 2050, by 2100, well, it’ll probably look like a baked pile of sand from coast to coast. I imagine hundreds of millions of American survivors trying to shoehorn themselves into Canada and Alaska by then. Pushed, of course, by hundreds of millions of Latinos fleeing the killer heat waves from the equator to the tropic of Cancer.
By then, all of our brainy figuring will be a fleeting memory. Our ancestors (if we have any) will be eating the most bizarre shit, because, after just a few years of drought, famine, mass migration, and ecosystem destruction, there will simply be nothing to eat except the most marginal fare.
Unless of course, some cadre of very smart people figures out away to eliminate the mass of people making life on Earth unlivable. I commend these people and urge them to commence with any such plans as soon as possible. That I may die as a result of such action is acceptable. Release the viruses, plagues, and shit-storms, please. Let the chips fall where they may.
might 8M be SEB or even JHK as a polemicist? a spoof on us here? we so smart, seeing the future yet not seeing that 8M is just asoka [or someone] putting us on?
that he never meant the human race to build trillions of buildings!!!
that even the o so smart qtip was fooled and thought 8M was [gasp]a ‘nut at greystone’!
‘Tell me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the posters on this blog trying to deal with what you call a keyhole event’
and -ahem- how do ‘we’ do that when 99% of the species wants MORE
Howdy Trip,
You contend “I would have fought that charge until I won.” in reference to a littering charge for throwing an apple core.
I have no problem with you, me, anyone tossing our left over meals onto the highway medians; however I do have a problem with laws which you, me and probably 99% of the average citizens of the U. S. are forced to endure but the “special” 1% or so say “fuck it, those laws are for the peons not for us to obey”.
Are you interested in performing an experiment and putting your money where your mouth is? Why not openly throw left over food, humus, items onto the medians in plain view of your local gendarmes and encourage your friends and neighbors to follow suit.
What thinks you would be the outcome of such an experiment; repeal of anti littering laws specifically for foods stuffs or arrest and/or fines/incarceration for you and your accomplices?
SNAFU
Well, I don’t think there will be a number of “techno-stepping-stones” as some imagine. If there ain’t no profit/supine pleasure in it, it ain’t pursued; that’s all there is left to the group-think (and collective lack of imagination) of ‘Murka.
Regarding hydroponics, Tripp says:
“Again, this is really my point. Is it competitive in an energetics equation against soil-based culture? And the answer is almost certainly no. Is there even a net energy gain from it? If not, it will wither right beside fossil fuel agriculture.
A LOT more people will be engaged in growing food, fiber, and fuel in the future. That’s how we reverse the unsustainable energy trends of mechanization and aggregation. With more people power, not more technology.”
Those “LOT more people” will be the REMAINDERS. Everyone will be in reality mode: food is life; grow or die. (More people growing food than today, but many less people as an aggregate.)
I do see why Tripp is trying to impart some basics to those who would rather dream about things that are non-existent. It’s a warning with practical signposts.
The great convulsion is going to catch a large portion of the population flat-footed. I’m not looking forward to that day, but I will say this: IT COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED. Only… greedy fools made sure the dreams continued and the money kept a’rollin’ in. Black hole dreams of man-made heaven via the destruction of the very thing that supports all life. The irony is astounding and appalling.
If you’re one of those that believe expansion and “growth” are the answer, you’re definitely part of the problem. (And that would turn out to be a little extinction problem. Who knew that the forbidden word “contraction”, and all it involves would be the only survival option?)
LOL! And Mika trying to change what he meant, from animals to mammals, at this point in the argument is digging up the goal posts and moving them to a different town. Mika got his ass whupped by Tripp. Period.
Cash said: “I know a physicist who said that when talk starts up about things going backwards in time it’s usually because the math is fucked”
Cash, math is all in your head anyway consisting of nonsensical concepts like “points” that have no width, no breadth, no length, etc. (sacrebleu! a zero-dimensional mathematical object!) but supposedly are VERY important, used by mathematicians all the time. You can make lines out of points (lines are supposedly one dimensional, with zero width). See what I mean?
Mathematicians can make up anything in their heads, like the square root of a negative one (-1), which has no existence whatsoever, except in their heads. Mathematicians are not dealing with reality, only with theorems, proofs, and concepts in their heads… which may or may not have anything to do with reality.
BeanTownBill said: “discussions of quantum mechanics, I think, aren’t necessary here.”
Yeah, it’s best to ignore scientific findings when they contradict your dogma. Best to ignore quantum physics because it makes mincemeat our of classical Newtonian mechanics. Like the Church says, it’s best to stick with what you know to be true!
The dogma of CFN is a belief in the classical laws of physics that are not to be messed with. Like MC Hammer says: “Can’t touch this!”
http://bit.ly/cnqWFk
SOURCE:
MC Hammer and the CFN “we are so fucked!” dogmatists
CORRECTION
Best to ignore quantum physics because it makes mincemeat OUT of classical Newtonian mechanics.
You are smart. I sense that you’re young (er). Please work hard to find a solution to this terrible nighmere. btw, thanks.
Tripp said: “I tell you what. Why don’t all you space cadets keep rolling with your theoretical quantum fascination…”
Hmmm… the “space cadets” I cited were these:
Albert Einstein (theory of relativity)
Niels Bohr (Bohr model)
Werner Heisenberg (uncertainty principle)
I could have easily thrown in other physicists, but thought I’d stick with the foundational “space cadets”
Sister would so kick my ass over my spelling! Justin, baby, please do what you can to resolve this NIGHTMERE!
……………””Q” where the fuck are you when I need you?………Come back to the pen and put us into our places! (weep, shudder, etc…..)
Mika got his ass whupped by Tripp. Period.
==
I’m no taxonomy expert, but I still think that insects should not qualify as animals. And I’m not alone in that opinion. Apparently, the classification we use dates back to 1700’s, and many people think it needs to be revised.
Cash said, “Spooky!”
Hope it’s not too late for more spooky…
Century 8 Quatrain 28
Les simulachres d’or & argent enflez,
Qu’apres le rapt au lac furent gettez
Au descouuert estaincts tous & troublez.
Au marbre escripz prescript intergetez.
The imitations of gold and silver will become inflated,
Which after the rape [or robbery] are thrown into the fire,
After discovering all is exhausted and dissipated by the debt,
All scripts and bonds are wiped out.
I cannot vouch for the translation.
What does discussion of quantum mechanics have to do with resolving our society’s problems? I’m sure that applied physics could save us, but unless you can state specific examples of quantum mechanical solutions, you’re wasting most of the bloggers’ times. You sound like 8m. I’d be glad to have a conversation with you about quantum mechanics, but this isn’t the proper forum.
By the way, you have an incomplete knowledge of the subject, based on what I have read in your posts. For your information, classical Newtonian physics is not wrong,it is the quotidian universe’s special case of quantum mechanics. QM best describes the sub-microscopic universe of particle physics where Newtonian physics doesn’t describe very well what happens at that level. This is akin to Special Relativity, where Newtonian physics accurately describes the slow velocity (compared to the speed of light) universe, but SR is needed for description of the fast-velocity universe.
To further my discussion, mathematics is a valid method to help describe our world. For instance, square roots are just a concept without a physical reality,but appear in equations that help us understand many phenomena in the physical sciences. You don’t go walking in a field, look down and say, “Look, I just found a polka dot square root lying in the grass.” Square roots of negative numbers are useful, too. They are called imaginary numbers, but actually have applications in the real world. It’s been many years since I’ve studied them, but I seem to remember that complex variables (a combination of real numbers and imaginary ones) can describe some aspects of fluid dynamics.
Tripp, I’m sorry to have to go into these kinds of discussions, but when someone starts talking about a subject they really don’t understand, I feel I have to comment.
Youz got good schools in Beantown. Is that a university town?
“I’m no taxonomy expert, but I still think that insects should not qualify as animals. And I’m not alone in that opinion. Apparently, the classification we use dates back to 1700’s, and many people think it needs to be revised.”
Forget Asoka’s comment; it was unnecessary.
You’re right in that recent genetics work suggests that the taxonomic system needs to be overhauled. Taxonomy is about evolutionary relationships, and those are easier to understand empirically with complete genomes laid out before us. One of the more interesting new relationships, to me, was the discovery that we animals are much more closely related to fungi than to plants. Thus the Super-kingdom Opisthokonta was coined to include both. Makes sense. Plants are producers, and both animals and fungi are consumers, of one type or another. Pretty major difference. Probably worth the new taxon.
The new taxonomy would actually ADD species to our lineage, not subtract. It would remove more of the thinking that we are special and distinct, and lump us together with an even wider range of life forms.
The only people I can think of who might be interested in separating humans from other animals like ants would be the creationists. Man MUST be distinct because of his possession of a soul and eternal life. I doubt there’s any other real discussion of splitting humans and ants into separate kingdoms. Not by credible scientists. Ants are our first cousins compared to most of life on Earth. We are so incredibly similar.
Besides, even if we step down two whole taxa, through the Phylum Chordata, sub-phylum Vertebrata, to the Class Mammalia, thus leaving out not only those pesky arthropods, but fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds too, I could still win this debate. Doing it with “animals” was too easy.
I hope this dialogue wasn’t too embarrassing.
Tripp
“Tripp, I’m sorry to have to go into these kinds of discussions, but when someone starts talking about a subject they really don’t understand, I feel I have to comment.”
No complaints here. Asoka is often a pop-up expert on any subject being considered. I’ve had to lay it on him too.
If you were talking about me, it doesn’t bother me that I’m a practical person. QM is an interesting field, but I don’t think it’s our answer. I think it’s just fun.
I hope this dialogue wasn’t too embarrassing.
==
Not at all. Why would it be embarrassing?
The term ‘animals’, in both in the Hebrew language (hayot) and the Russian language (zjivotniye), does not include insects. These are two languages that I’m intimately familiar with. And I’m still not so sure that even in the English language the term ‘animals’ should include insects. As far as I know, scientists still can’t find the link between insects and the rest of the animalia kingdom. Insects were grouped in that group, mainly out of ignorance. You say that DNA can solve this, but we’re a long way before we really understand what DNA can really tell us.
As far as creation vs evolution, I’m in neither camp and in both camps. And as you already know, the whole subject of biology/farming is really of little interest to me. 🙂
THANK YOU..I LIKE IT
comments about the arsenal football team in this blog makes it more entertaining and kind of funny hehe.
term arsenal used in this blog is referring to the weapons.
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