A scarlet tinge colors the Virginia creeper, the Canada geese grow restless out on the fairways, an ominous canapé fatigue spreads through the Hamptons, and cyclonic weather blobs march west across the Atlantic - you know that time of the year has arrived. Fall approaches on busy feet. The name itself suggests slippage. Though many government numbers lie, a dark reality still penetrates the fog of econometrics. Visions of tumbling indexes wither the spinal fluxes of nervous day traders praying to their little effigies of Jim Cramer that it's all just in their heads. Sometimes it seems as though the universe itself grows tired of suspense and yields to the zeitgeist. A cosmic groan fills the air from sea to shining sea as all eyes turn skyward. Was that the sound of the economy rolling over?
Peak pretending now joins peak oil, peak credit, peak rare earths, and all the other peaks visible to us humble valley dwellers. Pretending bought America two years of respite from the ravages of fraud and mismanagement, but now the true condition of this society reveals itself like the disfigured ghoul in the sewer lowering his mask. Further pretending is unnecessary now. We're even beyond the "modified limited hang-out" stance, as a long-ago presidential counselor once put his PR strategy in the face of crumbling public credulity. When nothing is believable, what's the point in even pretending?
Here are some truths which I believe to be self-evident: that the USA has been running on fumes since the beginning of the 21st century. That you can't get something for nothing, and attempts to do so always end in tears. That massive expenditures of energy produce equivalent globs of entropy - which you can translate to "bad ju-ju" or the tendency of whatever can go wrong to go wrong. That because we're unwilling to re-scale and reform the things we do, nature is about to do it for us. That America has transformed itself from a nation of earnest, muscular, upright citizens to a land of overfed barbarous morons ruled by grifters. That what has been economics is about to turn dangerously political.
The greatest loss of the last decade was not in 401-Ks or manufacturing jobs or foreclosed houses, but the rule of law. Without genuine rule of law, anything goes and nothing matters. As a consequence of that, finally, everything goes. The rule of law is what kept foreigners buying our debt all these years (the fumes we've been running on). They kept buying because they believed, when all was said and done, that Americans would enforce contracts and regulate behavior in the direction of fair dealing - not for its own sake but because it made things work better. But when the rule of law goes here, the rest of the world will notice its absence. They'll stop believing in our money and our future. They'll cash out and we'll wash out. Then, as human tribes are wont, they may just turn around and kick our ass because we're down.
The comprehensive failure of leadership deepens every week, as does the gulf between what people like Barack Obama and Mitch McConnell say and what is really happening on-the-ground in the arena of everyday life. Storyline: last week, Mr. Obama hailed the revival of the automobile industry with the debut of Chevrolet's new electric car, the Volt. Reality: at $41,000 retail, nobody outside lower Manhattan, Hollywood, or K Street will have enough money to buy one. Storyline: Mitch McConnell inveighs against a bill to require corporations to take responsibility on camera for their political advertisements; he says it will lead to job losses. Reality: the Senate Minority Leader is shilling for corporations that want to run massive, unlimited ad campaigns in support of corporate agendas - such as off-shoring jobs.
The failure of leadership extends through government to the news media to business to the universities to the courts. All authorities are suspect. All are dishonest and cowardly. When the attempt to enforce some basic rules of decency in banking ends up in legislation that runs two-thousand pages, the rule of law is dishonored. Anyway, adding that much unneeded complexity to a system that is already too excessively complex to function anymore must be an obviously bad move. The Glass-Steagall act was under forty pages. Why not just correct the mistake we made eleven years ago and vote it back into existence? Somebody must know where it is - in some back filing cabinet of the Library of Congress.
In times like these politics gets very crazy. The public forgets how misled and confused it is and develops vicious certainties that do not necessarily jibe with reality. The public becomes a mob and democracy turns into a kangaroo court, which is to say: a mockery of the rule of law. I suspect we'll see a correlation of turbulence in politics and markets as the weeks pound forward toward Halloween. By election day, democracy itself will be in disrepute and the streets will run with mad dogs. When this sucker goes down (to paraphrase a past president) it's going to be like a fire in a circus tent. Don't expect much from the clowns' bucket brigade. We'll be lucky if they don't toss gasoline into the grandstands.
I doubt I'm the only one who senses something in the air - and not just the impressive heat and humidity. Anyway, I'm going off for a few days' vacation this week to do no more than walk around in the salt air beside the ghost-filled ocean.
_______________
A sequel to my 2008 novel of post-oil America, World Made By Hand, will be published in September 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Press. Pre-order via AMAZON.
First!
Saying we are losing the rule of law is too simplistic. Culture precedes law. The motto of the University of Pennsylvania: "Leges sine moribus vanae." Which means "Laws without customs are in vane." Customs in this sense means ethics and/or morals. When we lose our way and turn our back on ethics and morals, the laws have no weight. They no longer represent the reverification of belief. Worse yet, they are selectively enforced. Does this sound familiar to us, oh CFN community?
Speaking of the rule of law. I woke up this morning to a story on WNYC that there were 20 shootings in New York City this weekend. I was wondering when we'd get back to the record numbers like back in the Crack days. Seems like we are on the way.
Paul Krugman's Editorial today is calling for higher taxes on the the richest 1%. They'd rather give their money to the Bill Gates Foundation. Krugman describes the problem of maintenance of society's infrastructure. We've built too much to maintain and so we can't and won't and the fall continues in slow motion.
Looks like the economy is off the rails again. No decent ideas in site to fix it. Extend the Bush Tax cuts is getting kicked around, again. Raise the retirement age is a popular meme. A cut in services that only works if there are jobs to retire from.
There are no gas lines and the lights are still on for the most part. The Federal Government is dropping dollars from helicopters to shore up public school budgets. Keep us fat and happy for as long as possible.
I am not looking forward to the rest of the year. I think after election day the gloves will come off and the Brotherhood of Darkness will show it's true colors.
Aimlow Joe was here.
http://www.aimlow.com
***I doubt I'm the only one who senses something in the air***
You are not alone, lots of people share your feeling.
How well Mr. Kunstler blows away the smoke and points us back to the fundamental failing. The contract about how we should treat each other is broken. We don’t make anything anymore, so wealth is accumulated through graft and extortion. This has irrevocably undermined our economic system. The jobs are gone, the money is gone, but the bills are still coming due. I’m keeping my eye on that circus tent flap. . . .
Hey, just so you know: there are plenty of people doing something more constructive with their lives than endlessly prognosticating about coming shitstorms. No matter how eloquently stated, what use is more fear and trepidation? Yes, the world (as you know it) is coming to an end. Isn't it time to get over it and move on to doing, or at least talking about something else a bit more positive and productive?
On a MUCH more positive note, I was just reading on the ABC news website that "they" have found a organism which, under the right circumstances, excretes propane. Even better, it's though that the "bug" can be coaxed into squirting out gasoline! And all it need to take in is air (and I guess sunlight). (Please imagine background music from Dire Straits, "Money for nuthin' and chicks for free".) Three cheers for the techno-triumphalists! You can bet your sweet bippy that the NASCAR devotees (JHK's favorite denizens) will breathe a big sigh of relief. Fuel crisis? No way. Science will bail us out!
Just ordered "Build Your Own Electric Vehicle" and "Convert It" 5 minutes ago...
And yes, I can feel something in the air, the water, and my soul... A Queasy feeling...
i just can't wait to see if elizabeth warren is picked or not to head the new consumer protection agency. as a member of the congressional tarp oversight panel, she wrote that the repeal of glass-steagall was a contributing factor to the financial crisis. if she gets passed over, i'll know that obama is another pimp for the banks. geitner is against her nomination. stay tuned...
I love your writing style Jim, a great Monday lift to be sure, delivering broad strokes of eloquence each week, across another tight canvass of topical news - ignored purposefully by the mainstream media me thinks!
But the masses (everywhere) really do not seem to care, or if/when they finally do twig... they will no doubt get tied-up in petty tribal/ religious ethnic group squabbles for sure. Richard Heinberg always warned that if we go down the route of ‘last man standing’ then suffer nations all we do...
Though at the moment China is definitely ahead on empire energy security stakes, especially with REE’s. Russia’s wheat export ban tells you trade wars are on...
However on a simple level life will always blossom on, so hold that thought as you enjoy a wonderful vacation... while watching those Gulls circling atop those sand dunes...
I myself am flying out to Phoenix Air Park from HRW end-o-the-month, though I doubt Scottsdale AZ will be suffering the worst vagaries of the downturn quite yet? I certainly hope not... lol
Here’s my (relevant) link for the week...
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/06/collapse
When the Greeks breakout of the €euro zone happens end of 2010...twill be the beginning of the end of financial unity in the EEC.
And here in the UK too with North Sea Oil long gone now, and with appalling demographics... 65m+ peeps crammed mainly into the south of one tiny island (too many on welfare, aged and healthcare needy now), its far from a rosy picture!
Our similarities with the US are those ticking-time-bomb public sector index-linked payouts - where is that ‘guaranteed’ money ever going to come from?
Like gleaming, magnetron, steel/glass fusion powered sci-fi EV car populated and mono rail equipped sky rise future city scapes...
Pure Hollywood fiction...
*sniggers*
A great post. Fine piece of writing! I loved the part about "Don't expect much from the clowns' bucket brigade..."
I agree and believe our stay of execution is about over, with reality about to asset itself once more.
When drought caused food shortages begin to trickle down to the unemployed and angry mobs, you will begin to see some affirmative action. Then, people will begin to ask why so much of our money was given to the Fat Cats, now that not much is left to look out for everyone else.
I believe it was Robert Ringer who said, "Hunger is a great motivator."
We are about to be brought, kicking and screaming, down to Reality. Appeals to reason haven't worked up until now.
Our over-extended, over-expensive military empire will either be used in a final fit of wag-the-dog desperation or (just maybe!) could be seen for the waste of capital that it is and scaled down.
Stock up your pantries. Buy some non-hybrid seeds to grow food. Lay up some trading stock for barter. Get in shape to walk or bike to where you need to go. Contact me about building a portable income that can support you in a safer locale.
http://www.healthyplanetdiet.com
I used to get that queasy feeling until I got myself more independent. From solar domestic hot water heaters to wood stoves to geothermal systems to root cellars, making yourself more resilient to the shocks that people like James predict is an empowering way to avoid distress. "Thriving During Challenging Times, The Energy, Food and Financial Independence Handbook" is a roadmap for personal shock resistance.
http://www.cammather.com/
The Judeo-Christian traditions, democracy and even capitalism provided a solid base for this emerging society in a less populated portion of the globe. Briefly, Stella, we were a contendah.*
It is sloth and greed which have now done us in.
There was also a blindness to what was sometimes obvious but the failure to see was caused by our focus on, yep - sloth and greed.
I, too, believe you can't get something for nothing. Hoping you can has been the motivating factor in causing the masses to bend over and take a hosing many times over the years.
As hosings go, this is a big one, but nothing has changed.
*Yes, I know my Brando film references are mixed.
Do you remember the drumbeat music in the film "Jumanji"? How it increased in tempo and volume as the die were rolled? All thinking people in the world can feel that throbbing beat now. The number of news stories telling of purported Taliban atrocities is increasing. The scene is being set for the performance to shortly come. The US government has nowhere to turn in economic matters. The US will grasp at the last and final straw to conceal the economic malaise - war. The US must right its economic ship of state by ceasing its obscene expenditure on its military, or choose the alternative, and make use of that mighty military. We all know what the choice will be, but only a few in high places know the date that the carnage will begin.
The large mosque that is at the heart of the dispute at the 911 site in NYC is very disturbing. If you lived in NYC during the 911 event you simply find it difficult to understand how the moslems have gotten this far. Daisy Kahn who is a graduate of Jericho Schools on Long Island is a hater of white america. She is a product of a system who constantly teaches its students to hate what america stands for. I know I happen to be a teacher there. I have sat in on classes where teachers in high school, tell the students how america destroys other countries. It feeds into the people who have hate agendas and want to destroy our way of life. If the moslems involved in this dispute truly had a peaceful agenda, they would have extended a hand to New Yorkers to ask how they could make the world here a little better. Ex. They might have used their money to rebuild what people in their community destroyed. Believe me New Yorkers would have made them build a mosque afterward without complaint. Instead, their "peace offering" is creating chaos and conflict. In turn they blame the dissenters of their ideas for creating the conflict. What a twist!
"That America has transformed itself from a nation of earnest, muscular, upright citizens to a land of overfed barbarous morons ruled by grifters."
Was it better in 1863? I just read The Devil's Own Work, an account of the NYC draft riots. With few exceptions locally, New York City was in the hands of incompetents and grifters, as the city nearly fell apart.
Well, they had Lincoln back then, and US Grant was about to step onto the scene to teach my fellow idiotic, states-rights fanatical Southerners the meaning of "total war."
Neither man was a grifter (Grant later surrounded himself with them, sadly), but both could be brutal. I just hope, if brutality is needed to retain something remotely like modernity as the easy oil vanishes and the easy credit never returns, our next crew of necessary brutes will have a long-term view of what's ahead.
That bitter but it's the only optimism I can muster as many friends and family members remain unemployed. Thank God for the Dole, or we might have former middle-class Americans, not slum-dwelling Irishmen of 1863, smashing and burning the edifices of wealth.
The powers to be fail to understand the old Way saying: "If you argue with realty you lose"
Yes there is a comedy of errors that has brought us to this point, the US has actually been here before, if different sense. The evil that the progressives have wrought is about to collapse the nation. I suspect the founding fathers have “stashed a raft” to help us through this. They always feared a strong central government, easily manipulated, in this case by the elites/progressives, to result in loss of our liberty. The raft they stashed was the States, the States are sovereign, I suspect we will see the rebellion manifest itself in the States, the States will break away, small business and cash only businesses may stop paying taxes, then local companies will stop…if they all stopped the Federal Government is over. It may likely happen this way, in conjunction with the collapse of the dollar. Larger companies will then stop paying taxes as no one else is. The Federal government will be brought to its knees; so do you throw the entire country in jail? No, you reform government quickly and effectively, when the people have faith they may start paying taxes again…this or some other form of State withdrawal will have to occur to keep folks safe and a viable nation. The States may establish their own currencies again and ignore DC. But Jim is right, our creditors may decide to take land to pay the debt, I suspect the northwest may become Chinese. Not a good scenario. Perhaps with enough new, scared, blood in November some of this can be corrected, but I fear that those that go to Washington to do good are soon corrupted and stay to do well for themselves. Few who have studies this have a good feeling about the probable outcome. Yes this is gloom and doom but remember, the Internet is like the Committees of Correspondence during the Revolutionary War, folks are studying and comparing notes, most of us do not want to be doom and gloom’ers, but we are also realists who understand economics, human nature, and greed. We see that the dark side often overpowers the good, and unless we are forever vigilante we have no chance. Jim is very astute at evaluating the situation; his observations are usually germane and accurate, unfortunately for the all of us.
*The Rooster et al*
A rooster, a roadster, a prankster and a bankster
All sat down for a meeting with a gangster
The rooster said “a harem”
The roadster yelled “more oil'
The prankster said “hell no"
And the bankster “fuck 'em royal”
The gangster hired the prankster
And soon they set the rules
Pay me now or pay me later
Either way you lose!
This was oh so jolly
This was oh so slick
The rooster ruled the coop
With his badge and black night stick
The eggs were all pure gold
The hens were all so stupid
They did what they were told
And voted for the cupid
They took the bankster's plastic
Crossed streets to big box stores
Everyday they'd lay their eggs
But soon were sleeping on dirt floors
The pranksters took their cut
Saying all would soon be good
When the hen's were lead to slaughter
They took solace in that they'd done all that they could
The prankster smiled
The rooster crowed
The roadster laid some rubber
The bankster took a pleasant stroll
Then ate a hearty supper
The gangster did what gangsters do
Laughing at the blood and fun
Life's a game, you're all such fools
Now my work is done
Chaz Valenza, "WordsWillNever.com":http://www.wordswillnever.com
"That because we're unwilling to re-scale and reform the things we do, nature is about to do it for us."
Boy, that really says it all for me. I think there is a core that is totally willing, maybe we just need to support each other? The lunatic fringe is starting to make the most sense and is even growing in the mainstream. The problem is, what to do about it?
Information is only as good as what action it provokes. I agree with the "too late" camp and don't harbor any delusion that there is a repair. I don't think many of us even want it repaired -- just kill it, and let's get on to reality. I mostly focus on the post era when all the heads have been removed from all the asses.
See you there, brothers and sisters.
Tommy
http://freedomguerrilla.com
Matt Simmons has passed away.
Hello JHK,
In the fifth paragraph you mention the Chevy Volt (Dolt) priced at $ 41,000. My prediction is after a few years trying to sell it unsuccessfully by producing it here in the US it will be sent overseas (high probability to China for production and exported back to the US at the same price $ 41,000). This vehicle will eventually assist in the economic failure again of GM and it will be picked up for chump change by a Chinese manufacturer.
Here is an interesting description of extend and pretend..
http://home.comcast.net/~lcmgroupe/2010/Article-Extend_Pretend-Manufacturing_a_Minsky_Melt-Up.htm
The Non-Existent Super-Power--- we may be the last to know it
Thanks for being one of the few honest brokers out there.
What the media won't tell you is beyond comprehension. I have been saying since the "W" years that when the media tells you that this country is run by the rule of law, you know thou protests too much. Why would they feel the need to say that? Could be that Medoff is the only one who went down. Everyone else has gotten richer.
The global monetary crash was a perfect moment to take things back to basics and rebuild real wealth. But all they chose to do was build a new bubble. Perhaps barriers to entry to protect American workers would have been the right move, but you know the chamber of commerce...oh and the tax breaks for those who take manufacturing out of the country couldn't possible be pushed back.
While aware citizens watch in horror at every twist and turn this country is taking, one can only imagine that actual planning and running a nation for its citizens is nowhere to be seen.
Instead of real fixes to the system that could have been turned-around by reinstating Glass Steagall or a medicare buy-in with some cost controls, we are getting congress-initiatives that pander too much to the lobbyists who are actually writing our laws. Our Supreme court thinks its free speech to allow unfettered funds into the political system, but don't want the backers of these funds revealed. How is that free speech, pray tell?
We all know that the privatized security complex was being built on tax-payer bucks (& backs) much to our loss, since there is no longer any standards on who get surveilled. Keep you eye out for "Frontline" this fall on Dana Priest this fall. Check out a recent interview with her on the Frontline site: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/interviews/priest.html
While our money is being flushed down the tubes, all they can think of is pushing back Social security till 70 and cutting medicare. There are those out there who have been dreaming of turning back Roosevelt and progressivism and now they think they have their opportunity. All at the expense of the fading middle class. Talking of democracy--you won't see any sign of it without a strong middle class.
Our stimulus money goes to Asia since we say we want to push "democracy". We don't even have it here so what are we really talking about. Could it be neoliberalism? (shock doctrine, perhaps?) This is all being done for the transnational leadership who don't see themselves as Americans anymore. They are denizens of the global market who may just happen to own a few homes here. They don't want to pay taxes to the nation-state and take no pride in educating the hoi-polloi, since the US doesn't matter anymore. Oh, but they should pay first world prices on third world wages.
This morning Morning Joe had a round table which included Jeffrey Sachs. They all agreed that the Afghan war was costing this country more than 4x the GDP of Afghanistan and there was no plan in place to use this money effectively. The oil to run the military I read least year costs $400.00 per barrel. Erin Burnett recently said that our troops are guarding Chinese rare earth metal miners. So why are we loosing blood and treasure?
They also felt that the stimulus package had no plan behind it and accounts for why it has been so ineffectual in getting private sector jobs. They say there is $1 trillion waiting on the sidelines for investments, but no one knows what's going to happen so spending is in irons---sort of like the stultified heat of the summer.
Hope you catch some relief at the shore---will be doing the same in a few weeks.
"The greatest loss of the last decade was not in 401-Ks or manufacturing jobs or foreclosed houses, but the rule of law."
Again, Kunstler has perceived a critical process in our ongoing collapse. Here is an "on the ground" example of the collapse of the rule of law in the health care arena.
I treat patients with work injuries to the brain and spinal cord (i.e. catastrophic injuries, not the worried well at all). Insurance companies and their lawyers have always, at least for the 20 years I've done this, been reluctant to payout funds for medical care, and our office has always had at least one person per doctor to appeal and argue with them. But now, the insurors and their sleezy lawyers are screwing over injured workers at a level that I never imagined. And, I'm hearing the same from every other doctor I know. They're cutting the patients off (i.e. refusing to reimburse) for medical care, prescriptions (some that are absolutely life sustaining and all necessary for a decent life, and can't safely be stopped), and for their disability payments (upon which these people depend for food, utilities, etc.). They/re even starting, for the first time in my career, to demand "peer review" (an insurance whore doctor reviews the case and says nothing is needed and is medically unnecessary) for things like MRIs and CTs on people who have suddenly become unable to ambulate, wherein imaging is standard of care.
In the past three months, at least 20% of my patients have had one or all of the above "cut offs" occur. Every MRI I've ordered in the past month has gone to peer review and almost always denied (one of 14 MRI prescriptions was approved, when the patient got her lawyer to threaten the insuror). The insurors typically say, "sue us." And sometimes those patients with ethical lawyers (many of them make a settlement and take the money and run, never to help the patient again, against state law) have to take the carriers back to court to enforce their settlements which mandate health care. That usually takes months and years.
Its over folks; the collapse is HERE!!! we don't see it clearly, because the collapse is happening in many small ways( e.g. the collapse of the rule of law such as above) in what seems like slow motion. Eventually we'll all be caught up in it at a level that affects us directly and then it hits the fan. The God of Chaos will show his face.
Peak pretending reached a new low when the government declared the oil spill over and done.
Hold on tight...This is going to get messy.
Same thing is happening here. You have 8 million people and 20 gunshots, we have 26,000 people and had 5 in one weekend!
ttp://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2009/09/living-outside-green-zone.html
Rule of law? When Bush and Cheney get off scot-free while Tim DeChristopher is still be prosecuted for interfering with an illegal auction of US wealth, rule of law is a FARCE!
While the US military kicks down doors and murders Afghan civilians, and Obama solemnly takes "accountability", only Bradley Manning is actually held accountable, although he killed no one.
This is a farce and a travesty!
Indeed, as another poster pointed out, Matt Simmons died Sunday of a heart attack.
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=news
http://www.kjonline.com/news/Energy-expert-Simmons-dies-in-North-Haven.html
I am confidently predicting all time highs in all indices by the end of the year. QEII will be the FED purchasing Treasuries to chase investors from the safe haven bond markets to riskier invesments in stocks and real estate. Forget deflation, there is no way we go the default route for the forseeable future. I think QEII has already begun and instead of dropping yields in the bond markets telegraphing double dip, it is the invisible hand of the FED buying, pretty much calling the bond market "bagholders".
We are an aging developed world and we don't care that we are making bagholders out of our children and grandchildren(if we are having any) as long as we get ours. Do we really think that the gigantic amounts of compound interest can be paid 2,5,10 or 20 years from now on these bonds with future productivity? We will either have to find 20 Ghawars or invent a perpetual motion machine otherwise it is either hyper deflation or hyper-inflation cuz we aint growing our way out.
Sorry about the bad linkhttp://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2009/09/living-outside-green-zone.html
JHK said: "That what has been economics is about to turn dangerously political."
How?
Cornpone nazis are as paralyzed as everyone else, and they have no workable solutions.
People finally realized the Tea Party was not grass roots; it was created by rich oil magnates wanting to stir up a distraction and defeat progressive measures like single payer universal health care. While succeeding in defeating health care reform, it could not sustain the Tea Party as grass roots anger farce.
Sarah Palin/Newt/etc. are the kiss of death for the Republicans, and while they fight out their internal power struggles don't expect any workable solutions from the Party of Hell No! ... the party responsible for the largest chunk of the budget deficit with their unpaid-for tax cuts for the rich (that were supposed to create jobs that trickled down on us), the party that created an economic depression.
Obama is unable to do much with every single piece of proposed legislation being filibustered by the Party of Hell No! often not even allowing legislation to come up for debate. So I don't blame him for playing basketball, since the whole governing thing is being stymied by the opposition.
So, when JHK says, "That what has been economics is about to turn dangerously political," just how is that supposed to happen?
The electorate seems apathetic and turned-off to politics. Hunger is not a motivator because we live in "the greatest, richest country in the world."
I don't see any kind of political movement happening. I don't see people willing to get up off the couch to stop watching FauxNews, except for trips to the bathroom.
How does pretend economics become anything other than pretend politics?
"The greatest loss of the last decade was not in 401-Ks or manufacturing jobs or foreclosed houses, but the rule of law. Without genuine rule of law, anything goes and nothing matters. As a consequence of that, finally, everything goes." -JHK
Yep, most don't seem to think about that aspect too much, but IMHO, it is THE biggest deal. Without a belief that the little guy might get some justice, what the hell is left?
Queasy? Not much any more; already purged. ;o)
(Lots of good comments this week BTW.)
Organized crime won. The rule of law recedes in memory. Mob bosses now masquerade as CEOs. Senators are openly bought. The Department of Justice is a charade, and Robert Kennedy and Eliot Ness are modern impossibilities. Reporters seek money and fame instead of truth. Schools turn out zombies, who know nothing of critical thinking, let alone history, or governance, or economics.
Worse, most people now work for one of the corporate mobs, and once you work for the mob you don't just leave. There's no way out. You're either all in or your dead. Republicans and Democrats, of course, are all in.
So chaos is coming. Our increasingly unworkable systems will fail inelegantly. Everything will change, but that is nothing new. That's just part of the rhythm of history. The question now is whether this is really it, or whether there is light on the other side. Is this the long emergency that begins an endless dark age, or the long emergence to a second renaissance? I hope for renaissance, but I'd bet on dark age.
Nicely done, Chaz!
Goldman Explains Why It Is "QE2 Or Bust" For Stocks Tomorrow
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/goldman-explains-why-it-qe2-or-bust-stocks-tomorrow
History is not over. The future is what we make it.
There is no reason that we cannot get together and build a decent, sustainable life for all of our people, while looking toward the future, and decreasing our birthrate, so that future generations will not have so many teeming masses to feed.
No reason except for the incredible effect that corporate media has upon our people, turning us against each other and telling us that the way we live now is the only possible way.
Will we get together and build a better society?
I certainly hope so, but even the commentors here make me despair sometimes.
Jim: I used to think your blog somewhat overstated the USA’s problems, but after a summer of paying closer attention to American news, I’m beginning to think you’re guilty of understatement. The GOP seems made up of cannibals, gorging themselves on the middle class (& the Democrats aren’t much better). The federal government has lost the trust of the governed, and then there’s Palin, Fox News, and the Tea Party. Will someone please explain to this simple Canadian WTF is up with the Tea Party? Near as I can figure, they’re all about destroying their own health care, amputating the common good from American society, destroying the Constitution (with an assist from the GOP), and kicking out anyone who isn’t white, Christian, or has ever read a book other than the bible. Don’t get me wrong, I profound respect to the USA and the moral foundation on which it was built, hell, half my family are Yanks. But watching as it crumbles is demoralizing. I have to tell you, your politics is really starting to scare the shit out of Canada.
Wage,
An illuminating and horrifying series that explains a goodly portion of how we got to this final crossroad...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12642.htm
Good luck.
It is only a queasy season for the 90% of the bottom income earners, but not necessarily for those top 10%ters.
The DOW is up over $42.00 today, and has a total of 10,694. Now that is the Virginia Creeper phenomena. The upper 10% are making capital gains trading stocks often riding the algorithmic electronic trading tidal waves occurring while they sleep.
The DOW can rise just on hot air with no real substance. It rises on HOPE.
Mitch da'bitch McConnell is serving his corporate elite masters. It is my guess the Volt will get a minimum charge in the marketplace. The sales will head toward China.
But remember, GM sells more in China than in the US. They can thank the US taxpayers for allowing the company to expand battery technology production in China taking jobs away from their bailout providers. So, keep shopping at Walmart.
We have an oligarch. Our form of government is a modified form of Russian Rule with the government serving the needs of the corporate oligarchs that pay the way of the government's top commanders in the legislature. And in return, the corporate oligarchs keep getting zero percent Fed Fund loans.
Don't expect any shit to hit the fan. I have begun to see that. Chronic deflation is here for a long time--Japanese style. The rich will continue to earn capital gains and nice salaries to buy stuff on the cheap, while the rest of Americans suffer, save and try to deleverage.
What is being spoken about from all sides is "now if this happens, or if that happens, look out!" Lots of conjecture gets one nowhere. I recently heard that "if one of the nations decides to go back on the gold standard, then look out, because there will be a scramble for the other nations to follow suit, and the price of gold will skyrocket." Another "what-if" short story being told.
What exists today is a drive into chronic deflation. The Golum of Government-Alan Greenspan, and the Alchemist of the Absurd--David Stockman, who both are proclaiming that the Bush tax cuts need to done away with, say the nation is heading, otherwise, into the Rabid Hole of Disaster. Well, we can thank the Golum and the Alchemist for their life of good works for that.
Yes, the best we can do right now is go and smell the salt in the air by the sea.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
I disagree with the Japanese style lost decade of deflation arguement. The dollar is the worlds reserve currency and the expansion of insane government debt cannot and will not be financed in a deflationary environment. The FED MUST create inflation or die, so they will. Obviously creating inflation against massive deflationary forces is no simple task that is why I am certain that they will need to overshoot causing massive inflation. I think they fear hyper-inflation and would like for the drums of deflation rumors to remain while oil and Agricultural commodities quietly climb higher.
The Mass CON sumer society has ended.
I just learned Matt Simmons died. Who's next? Michael Moore, Paul Volcker, William Black or one of a number of notable critics out there?
Scott, I believe the current strategy for Bada Bing Bernanke is to begin to mop up treasuries being sold off and hold them. This then allows the Fed to pay the interest to the treasury and not foreign bondholders outside the country. We then hold the bonds and pay the interest to ourselves.
A long period of downward spiraling deflation is too pollyannish, hyper-inflation hurts everyone the most.
The mass consumer is being replaced by massive numbers of low consumers in developing countries. Raising per capita consumption a little spread out over the billions in Asia will easily offset lower consumption in developed countries.
Historian and Roman Senator Tacitus said it best when he said "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government."
We now get laws that are 2000+ pages. How can anyone but a team of lawyers make any sense of these laws? Also, as of 2009 there were 67,506 pages just for the IRS. Next, I do not know the exact number but I thought there was something like an additional 144,000 pages of Federal Law beyond what the IRS has. Finally, add in the thousands of pages of State and Local Laws and it could be quite possible to be living in an area and be subject to as much as 250,000 pages of law.
What does this say about the US and our supposed "freedoms"?
Scott,
The Fed has been trying to create inflation with $2-3 trillion of monetized debt put into circulation over the last 2 or so years, and increasing the amount of cash placed in the hands of the few mega bankstas. It has failed tremendously. There is a huge amount of liquidity in the system, but with households and small businesses deleveraging by trying to pay down their debt, and saving (on the rise), inflationary tactics have failed.
Consumers, as a whole, are not spending. They no longer are the 70% of the GDP engine. The Fed is stuck, and freaking out. The consumer is afraid to spend. There is too much uncertainty. Business confidence is falling, too.
With the credit markets holding back, and lending to only a small segment with lots of collateral to lay down, the mega lenders are holding back their free money from the Fed. They don't believe they want to give up what they may need when they need to write down their shadow derivative debt.
Yes, of course, the Fed wants inflation, but it just is not going to happen with the current Fed, White House and CONgressional viewpoints.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
Scott,
The US would have to go from deflation to inflation (or stagflation) and then into hyper-inflation. A nation just doesn't instantly go into hyper-inflation from a long period of deflation.
Hugh, you are wise to keep an eye peeled south. We have had a couple of previews of how ugly Americans get when the social order crumbles. Things go bad fast. The 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles and hurricane Katrina in 1985 caused raw racial and socio-economic tensions to surface immediately. The cops in New Orleans were shooting unarmed citizens, who were also having at one another. In 92 the Rioters in LA were stomping people left and right. It's hard to say what would go down if the lights, heat, and water went out over a wide area for any length of time. I'd like to believe our better natures would prevail, but the evidence points to a more unsettling picture.
Q said late last week:
"As matters stand, anyone who takes the position they "couldn't care less" is effectively casting a vote FOR this mosque and will be watching its grand opening on TV 13 months and 4 days from today. Wake up guys, this is a travesty!"
Couple of items real quick. First, I don't have a TV or watch anyone else's very often, (occassionally soccer or college football), so the chance that I'll catch this "travesty" in primetime is pretty remote.
Second, I had more important things to discuss than this publicity stunt, that seems tailor-made for BOTH sides of the argument. It's religion. Not my thing. There's no convincing religious people of anything they aren't already convinced of. So I abstained from the discussion entirely.
Third, there really are far more important matters that need to be talked about than whether or not some stupid "house of worship" gets built in place of a different kind of house of whorship (misspelling retained on purpose).
This has precisely dick to do with our future, and I'd appreciate not being dragged into trivial matters that I made it my business to avoid. Thanks in advance, Q, for your public apology and future abstention from muck-raking on my behalf.
Asoka said: "Obama is unable to do much with every single piece of proposed legislation being filibustered by the Party of Hell No!"
Asoka, you are wrong, AGAIN. Obama has been able to work with Congress to get many bills passed. Just this year (2010) the following legislation has been enacted, making Obama more of an activist president than any in recent memory.
He promised change and he is delivering.
The Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 was signed into law by Obama on Thursday, July 22, 2010.
The Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2010 was signed by Obama on Thursday, July 22, 2010.
Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed by Obama on Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act was signed on Monday, May 17, 2010
The Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010 was signed on Friday, April 23, 2010
Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 was signed on Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed on Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act was signed on Thursday, March 18, 2010
Emergency Aid to American Survivors of the Haiti Earthquake Act was signed on Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The 2009 Tax Breaks for Haiti Donations
was signed on Friday, January 22, 2010
Asoka, these legislative victories for veterans, patients, the unemployed, earthquake victims, consumers, etc. indicate there is no paralysis in the Obama government.
People in a multi-cult society - not a Nation - cannot trust each other. Each group is out for their own. Professional Corporate Liars and Politicians obviously just make everything worse. But Neo-Marxism is no cure as it is based on deception and subterfuge. And Marxism is without respect for the folkways of the people. The Shining Path might well have set the Andes on fire - except they could not hide their basic contempt for the ways of the indigenous people.
Likewise, Marxists in America cannot hide their contempt for rural Whites. For the most part they don't event try - they prefer to build up hatred of them by any and all means as they pander to non-Whites.
Was it the Socialist Micheal Harrington who coined the phrase "the war of all against all"? Apt as ever. It's far to late for any reform now. Get some land, get into a tribe, and get ready to defend your very lives. Those who beat their swords into ploughshares will do the ploughing for those who don't. Watch an old movie called "The War Lord" for more info.
Religion has nothing to do with our future? Wrong! America is a deeply religous country. It will get more so as things get bad.
Seeing what Asoka posted, the legislation passed just this year, makes me question what JHK says today:
"All authorities are suspect. All are dishonest and cowardly."
Thanks for the link, Ozone.
Absolutely!!
How did "we" turn from a nation of thrifty, penny saved is a penny earned, lean hard workers to the spendthrift obese people we are now?
As I've pointed out before, I still remember the thrifty sayings handed down from my parents and grandparents. I remember my Dad cleaning paintbrushes and pulling out nails and straightening them. Bottles were reused, not recycled. When I was young, obesity was scarce. It was taken for granted that mothers would nurture their children.
But when the ruling class started its surge against us in the 70s and 80s, credit cards were sold to us by the bankers, swimming in profits, and looking for a way to leverage it, trinkets became cheap and most things became disposable,corn was subsidized and fed to animals on factory farms, and then (deep fried) to us, women were convinced that it was liberating to stay a wage slave throughout their reproductive years.
JHK and others on this blog tend to blame "us" for this sorry state of affairs.
But I say, "what do you mean, "us", kemo sabe?"
We are manipulated by the masters. Only a few can resist, and even those that do find ourselves falling for some of the bullshit. We are so surrounded in it that some sticks, without our noticing it.
We who do resist should not scorn our fellow workers. They are reacting as planned to the stimuli.
WageLaborer writes:
"...There is no reason that we cannot get together and build a decent, sustainable life for all of our people, while looking toward the future, and decreasing our birthrate, so that future generations will not have so many teeming masses to feed."
You must be young, to still confuse what can be done with what will be done.
The Romans, Mayans, Easter Islanders, civilizations of the middle east. All could have averted their fall. The Mayans and Easter Islanders could have stopped cutting their trees. The Romans could have pulled back and restricted their empire to that which they could afford to defend. Older civilizations in the middle east that discovered irrigation could have realized the salt coming to the surface would eventually destroy them and started to rotate fields and crops. We in the USA could easily start a major program of energy efficiency and conservation, while switching to multiple renewables.
Carter tried that last bit. He was an engineer, after all. Look where that go him. He was defeated by a hired shyster, grade-B actor with incipient Alzheimer's who promised that everyone could have everything forever.
If you think of society like a brain, you'll fail. Society isn't a brain, except perhaps, the most draconian of dictatorships. Society, particularly democracy, is like a bacteria colony, where each bacteria just reacts to its immediate environment. The whole concept of democratic capitalism is based on this behavior. But higher level reason? Predicting events and averting bad consequences? Only if it gets somebody elected, or makes someone money.
Sorry kid. That's the way it is - the way it's always been. It's too late to prevent the fall now. Just ride with it. Ride with it...
Thank you, Tripp, for pointing out that this mosque uproar is simply another decisive piece of nonsense designed to distract Americans.
I yield to no one in my dislike of religious nuts, Muslims as well as Christians as well as Jews, etc.
Therefore, I find it no more offensive to put up a mosque than I do a cathedral.
I actually went to the link that qsthick posted. Some Brit spewing hatred towards Muslims. He only said two things that I agree with, that Saudi Arabia is a bastion of backwardness, and that any religion that preaches hate is not worth calling a religion (but I count Christianity in that camp).
But... Number one, I don't accept the basic premise that they start from. I don't think that 9-11 was pulled off by 19 Muslims.
But for those who accept that, why are we still using oil?
In the 70s, when Saudi Arabia really did cut off the oil, the US reacted by LOWERING oil usage! Gas rationing, CAFE standards, speed limit lowering, wearing of sweaters, etc. Don't any of you official conspiracy believers wonder why, if we were attacked with Saudi oil money, the reaction was to give a tax credit to Hummer buyers?????
And to be told to go to Disney World?
Again, this shows the irrationality of people, that they can be told absurdities, and believe them.
I just learned Matt Simmons died. Who's next?
=================
Jesus H. Christ! Please don't tell me you think some evil powers that be arranged for Simmons to be rubbed out.
Saw "The Other Guys" last night, starring Will Ferrel and Mark Wahlberg. It was surprisingly funny -- though, naturally, pretty low-brow -- and actually attempted to educate the masses about the evils of Wall Street greed.
I was happy about that and I hope it's just the beginning of mainstream movies with populist themes. The animated end credits -- lasting about 5 minutes -- do a great job of laying out the 2008 financial collapse in ways the everyday guy can understand.
Wall Street surely wants to put a lid on movies like this -- perhaps that was what the proposed Box Office Futures contracts were all about.
Thanks for the advice, Vlad, but I do have land and I do live in a rural area.
The other day, I listened to my co-workers debate on the proper time to buy their offspring motorized vehicles.
One asked the other one how old her child was.
"Fourteen months" was the reply.
Well! She was shocked! Fourteen months?
Really, a child shouldn't have a four-wheeler until it was three, was her advice.
Gee, Vlad, why do I sometimes dislike people?
Our county library received a huge sum of money, so they revamped the main where all the political idiots are. Now they are closing the branches as a cost cutting measure. Brilliant huh?? Not. Just a small item that is rampant all thru the guvmint. Deficit? Bring ALL the troops home, stop ALL foreign aid, deport ALL illegal aliens,eliminate the CIa, DEA , NSA, IRS and about 30 dozen others, stop ALL retirement funds to senators and house menbers,stop ALL construction of new interstate 'improvements', repeal the patriot act, and a bunch of others. It may help. At every election, vote in ALL new people, do the same at the next election. Stop ALL subsidies of any sort, shitcan the USDA. Go back to states rights and let the people force them to straighten out. Stop paying ALL taxes to the fed. Get some balls, and DO something. "The Ugly American " is still out there, bring him home. As Butch said, stock up on some trade items, put your debt in order, grow a bigger garden, and get some common sense. Great column, keep them coming. Can't wait for the new book.
Lots of moaning that Kuntsler is too pessimistic and not "positive and productive" enough. Ok, a few suggestions for your consideration:
1. Jack up education standards, so that the dummies and unmotivated actually fail and go back to the end of the line - or better yet go into a trade program where they can actually learn to make something.
2. Churches start preaching about hellfire and damnation again - put the fear of the Lord in our modern barbarians - the wages of sin and all that stuff.
3. Mothers and fathers actually start living together again and take charge of their offspring; a little love and discipline go a long way toward responsible citizenship.
4. Neighbors know each other and start taking care of each other again.
5. We bring the military home from every yahoo country in the world - best way I know to support the troops.
6. Medicine becomes local and non-bureaucratic again. "Providers" live within their means and the giant sickcare factories go the way of the dinosaur.
7. Those who would be our leaders are strictly term-limited and required to actually live most of the year among those they would lead.
There are many other suggestions that you and I could come up with to improve our ehtics and morals, but surely these are "positive and productive" enough to get us started.
Just read Matt Simmons obituary, apparently he croaked in a hot tub on his back porch on Sunday afternoon. He was 67 and from looking at his photo was overweight with a very red complexion. Dude, you shoulda stayed out of the hot tub!!!
RIP Matt Simmons.
I met him many years ago, a true deep thinker.
We have another underlying problem. That of course in energy security. Mr. Kunstler has stated this himself.
So no matter how they rearrange the chairs it is to late.
The ability to address this problem probably passed us during the Clinton years so now the only real solution is to dig in and wait.
My family survived the holocaust I am sure we
will figure out a way to survive this.
RED
Simmons apparently drowned.
Such a shame! Despite his regrettable comments about nuking the bedrock on the Gulf seafloor, he sounded one of the best warning on Peak Oil there is: Twilight in the Desert.
It was a good counterpoint to industry shill Daniel Yergin's nonsense.
My thoughts and prayers go out to Simmons' family.
Wage, don't forget this is a doom-and-gloom site...things could become as awful as many people here believe...but despair is for those who already know the end of the story, beyond all possible doubt (and see if you recognize that paraphrased little nugget).
Oh I certainly sense a sea change is at hand. I remember in the mid 90's just before IBM began to tank, laying off over 100,000 employees. One day, everyone had a job, got a paycheck, had benefits, and the next day, they didn't. Unknown to many, while all appeared normal, consultants were telling management that 'the entitled employees' had to go. This is what is about to happen enmasse in America. The country will wake up one day soon, and find the lights are no longer on, metaphorically speaking. As someone answered, when asked 'how did you go bankrupt?' 'well, very slowly at first, but then very quickly at the end.' Hard to say how close to the end we are, but when it happens, everyone will be shocked. True shock and awe.
Peak pretending, eh? Did you coin that here and can I use it?
We have had pretending for quite a while. For instance, "sustainable mining" is an oxymoron that rolls off the tongues of miners and resource managers. The pretense is coming to a crescendo though.
Jimmy,
The Canada Geese I know are nothing if not practical, self-indulgent, stay-put types that will eat anything from cheese doodles to zucchini. It must be something truly remarkable if they have lately become restive. What holy hell hath the Hampton's hailed?
Anyway, this, just to let you of this: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it tends toward compost.
What America needs most is a new birth of groundedness. Good, old-fashioned, sweat-provoking, physical toil, if not tears, tears if not blood. There ain't no other cure.
Wage -- P.S. -- you make great sense.
Speaking of queasy,
I was saddened to hear of Matt Simmons untimely death at 67, not an old age by any means. Certainly a loss to those who follow peak oil and the many problems with the future of the oil industry.
I went to the oil drum looking for info on Simmons and found this curious article instead.
http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/6823#more
Thanks, Ian, but I'm not young.
I just see no point in giving up. We're not all the way there, yet, so there's still time to change.
I listened to a speech by a Unitarian who used to head Amnesty International, and he was the one who pointed out that history is never over, and that we are making it everyday.
Germany, a peaceful, prosperous country at the beginning of the 20th century, is now a (mostly) peaceful, prosperous country now. History wasn't over in 1900 and it isn't over now.
You should watch the link that Ozone gave.
There were people who fought against the Nazi rise to power. Mostly communists, socialists and trade unionists. They lost.
Then the Allies fought against Hitler and Germany and they lost.
But fascism didn't lose. Fascists in the US and the Vatican saved many through the ratline and put others right back in power.
The CIA, which was officially formed in 1947, but was unofficially already formed, helped make sure that fascist ideas were promulgated in the US. And so we are swimming in hatred.
I see it as my job to point out alternatives.
Damn, I couldn't figure it out, so I googled it, to no avail.
Another hint?
cars at 42,000$ , yes. and TATA has a car at
2,000$. guess who sells more?
Ozone i did read yr post yesterday. happy summer days to all.
LOTR -- I admit I'm a scifi/fantasy geek.
I, and the rednecks I hang with, were talking about that very scenario, where the rich try to escape from the poor, into some secluded enclave.
Here's what they don't think of, just like the commenters on that site.
Where will they get their food? Where will they get their gas? Who will repair their equipment? Who will provide the electricity?
They think of us as useless eaters, but it's actually the other way around.
When their stockpiles run out, they'll find out that someone is mining that coal, growing that food, refining that gas, building those compounds.
Whoops!
OK, I'll ask my husband. He's the sci fi geek in our family.
'Each group is out for their own'
a jewish woman told me she was 100% unable to get help from any jewish charities in LA.
'they only want to help immigrant jews'!!!!
and you say whites rush to their own self destruction as a race [ i agree with you on this]
and Q, ok I misused 'when' instead of ' if'?
Thank you, Tripp, for pointing out that this mosque uproar is simply another decisive piece of nonsense designed to distract Americans.
why is it divisive? [V]
I find it telling, chilling, symbolic!
let people have their ' uproar', it might be healthy.
and i belive its not [decisive] but devisive
What a superb writer you are, Jim. Nobody captures the American zeitgeist of the current moment like you. Your diagnosis is 100% correct. Only your timeline is off. This Halloween is not likely to be as apocalyptic as you predict, and this election cycle is much more likely to be another flaccid indicator of malaise and ennui than it is to be a turning point.
But, as the Gulf Oil Spill showed us all too clearly, our leadership is hell-bent and determined to avoid leading, now and forever. We can stop looking to them for either leadership or solutions to our problems, because they are simply not going to provide any. "Governing" does not seem to be part of their job description, which is raising money, performing favors and getting re-elected. Rinse and repeat. Anything beyond that is considered "outside the mainstream."
The U.S. government is losing its legitimacy just as surely as the Pakistani government, which, in the face of massive flooding last week, failed to deliver ANY relief to its people. Into this vacuum stepped the fundamentalist religious organizations, who organized immediately to feed and house people. The official Pakistani government, recipients of billions of dollars of American aid money, were unable or uninterested enough, to even make their presence felt. Again, these politicians are in the business of raising money. They can't be bothered with distractions like floods and hurricanes.
Barack Obama represents the end of politics in America. Sure, the spectacle will go on, but it'll be an empty display. We had our chance to deal with our problems rationally, and we blew it. Or, the guy we elected to do it for us blew it. Or simply wasn't up to the task. Or simply didn't consider it part of his job description.
So now, it's irrationality's turn. This is likely to be good for the sales of Jim's books, but bad for the rest of us.
Though the pleasure of reading Jim's chronicle of the long descent of Cheez Doodle America almost makes the whole thing worth it.
U.S. electricity blackouts skyrocketing
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/08/09/smart.grid/index.html?hpt=C1
Since when do you try to re-inflate a burst bubble? You create another one, with all the "money" we have been pumping into the black hole of propping up real estate debt we could be building infrastructure projects like modernizing our energy grids.
You said:
You should be scared. Because our politics are coming to you, with a few marketing tweeks thrown in as required by your demography, unique history and national myths, etc.
Harper and his boys are your Bush-Reagan, and in all likelihood, they are right now at this minute undermining the foundations of Canadian democracy and constitution in ways you won't notice until years, maybe decades, later, when the TRUE nature of those changes come home to roost.
Which will be just after it becomes too late to stop them or even slow them down, when even the "Opposition" is playing on the same team of Multinational Corporate Totalitarian Aristocratic Fuckers.
This is what our Multinational Corporate Totalitarian Aristocratic Fuckers did to us, and you won't be able to believe how quickly the old civilization of Canada breaks down and is replaced by the increasingly corporate authoritarian funhouse mirror. Or maybe Canadians demographics and psychology will require a slightly different approach. Either way the end result will be the same: skyrocketing inequality and breakdown of the rule of law, especially at the highest levels.
You have to know that a Free, Sane Canada will not be tolerated by whatever the hell tyranny the final form of what the old USA becomes gets closer to being an authoritarian reality.
Anyway, that's all for later on. For now enjoy your very early transitional stages, and may I say be especially careful of privatized electronic voting and corporatized media when they try to pry their way in.
And they will try...you can make book on it. Watch for their "Canadianized" marketing strategies selling you your own destruction.
Finally...what is the Tea Party about?
Ultimately the Tea Party is a coopted construct of the Corporate Elites their rank-and-file supposedly despise.
It's design is to channel popular anger at the coming hard times away from the Wealthy Elite who caused them by reconcentrating all the wealth at the top. (just as in Robber Baron 1890s or Medieval Europe)
How is this done? It's done as it is always done. By redirecting that anger towards The Usual Scapegoats. Gays, liberals, intellectuals, and minorities, though I think for the first time in a long time the Jews will be with the hunters and not the scapegoats.
Unless the Canadian People do a better job of handling the Aristocratic Elite when they come to steal everything from you, including the rule of law as they have done here, your own Canadian Tea Party or something very like it, is probably a decade or two from being reality.
Good luck up there. You're going to need it.
You're right, I meant divisive.
How is artificial uproar good for America?
We cycle constantly through uproars. I think that it distracts, so it is not helpful.
I agree with everything you said, Hancock, except for the Jew part.
I think that the old tried-and-true anti-semetism is being brought back, for those people who just don't pay enough attention to the new scapegoats, or who have a certain loyalty to the hatreds of their childhoods.
Part of the problem is that we are supposed to elect representatives, not leaders, and certainly not "commanders in chief".
They are supposed to represent us and legislate on our behalf.
We are not supposed to elect kings, who we then beseech to rule us wisely.
And it became a farce decades before Barack Obama was anointed.
JHK said:
This is a very frightening image you conjure up, Jim. But just what does it mean?
Democracy is already in disrepute and has been since the conservative activist Supreme Court ordered a stop to counting votes, allowing Bush to steal the presidency, even though Gore had 500,000 more popular votes.
Who are the "mad dogs" who will run in the streets? Policemen? Bankers? Xe employees?
I do appreciate a definite date for these things to happen. November 2010 is not that far away.
If you are attempting to scare, you are succeeding.
I am terrified by the rapidity and chaos and extreme death toll the image of a fire in a circus tent summons to mind.
Terrified. Paralyzed. Depressed.
But I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
Queasy, not so much. Queasy I associate with nausea, another metaphor you used, maybe it was in the last election cycle, or the one before that. These predictions are regular.
For over ten years now these predictions of TSHTF. But now, with the addition of rapidity and suddenness this is really getting to be frightening.
This fear must be releasing something into my bloodstream.
I may not be able to sleep well tonight because we are so close to a total collapse of our society, a total collapse of our infrastructure, a total collapse of our rule of law, and the mad dogs will run in the streets. Pure terror.
Wagelaborer wrote: "I see it as my job to point out alternatives."
I wasn't aware we lacked them. So, what, *specifically* do you propose and how do you propose to get people to DO anything? If you just plan to "raise awareness" of the issues, I think you're a few years too late. Many folks I know are acutely aware of the implications of debt deflation, a quadrillion dollars worth of derivatives exposure, resource depletion and the distinct possibility that in 15 years time, you may owe loyalty to the state you live in and the local warlord, not necessarily in that order.
The guy who works down the hall from me is well stocked with supplies and miniature shortwaves. My neighbor two doors down has a years supply of food socked away. Those who *can* prepare are preparing. The rest, like my other neighbor down the street, is barely getting by. Her idea of survival is "getting through next week." What do you suggest she do? What are her "alternatives?"
It's all true....the government is owned by the plutocracy, but the plutocracy cannot govern, so in essence we have no federal goverment...
The middle class, used to act as a buffer between the wealthy, and the poor.... now theres no buffer...do we see where this is going?
No control, no brakes, and no where to go but down...
Howdy Wage,
From your post this morning you said: "But... Number one, I don't accept the basic premise that they start from. I don't think that 9-11 was pulled off by 19 Muslims."
A week or two back you asked me about a quote that I had nothing to do with and you also asked me to provide my take on the twin towers collapse which I did provide. You never responded to my post therefore I assumed you found it not to your liking which I understand somewhat more clearly subsequent to your post this morning.
Where have you heard that these 19 humans pulled off the 911 operation without copious quantities of help in the form of money, intelligence, planning and training from many others in the osama bin laden group? Did this constitute a conspiracy? Yes. Did the conspiracy include members of the US Government? Highly unlikely. Did the conspiracy include member of the Israeli Government? Highly unlikely. What benefit would either the Israeli or the US Government gain from helping to bring down the towers?
Additionally you asked: "But for those who accept that, why are we still using oil?"
If you read my 911 analysis post it included a snippet that goes a long way toward explaining why we are still using oil. I believe I pointed out that oil contains roughly 12.5 time the energy of TNT per unit of mass/weight. i.e. It requires approximately 12.5 pounds of TNT to obtain as much energy as one pound of oil contains and it is it vastly more convenient to utilize. As pointed out in Wikipedia gasoline is about 10.25 times as energy rich as TNT (it is a lighter end of oil);but, if you include the weight of the oxygen, obtained from the atmosphere to oxidize the gasoline, the combined mass is only 2.25 times the energy of the TNT. On the other hand TNT is not provided by nature as is both oil and oxygen and in fact energy contained in oil is likely used in the processes of manufacturing TNT.
As an aside, I consider oil to be a renewable form of energy in that the biological masses of plankton which obtained their energy from the Sun combined with heat and pressure provided by the Earth are the most likely culprits in the creation of oil. Unfortunately for the smart apes who figured out how to utilize this realigned form of the Sun's energy the rate of creation is on the order of 100's to 1000's of millions of years and we are therefore consuming it at a a million to 10's of millions of times the rate of creation.
SNAFU
More confirmation of government ineptitude, more reason for queasiness... unless you are a libertarian or an anarchist who believes the best government is no government.
House Republicans are going forward with plans to introduce a resolution on Tuesday to prohibit the House of Representatives from assembling during the two-month period following the November elections.
The notion that the House should take a two-month, taxpayer-paid break invites obvious political ridicule. One aide deemed it the "Republican Winter Vacation Act."
If Reagan is right about the most dangerous nine words in the English language, then this is good news. But, if you believe there are some serious problems that need immediate attention, this might be bad news.
Gives me a kind of queasy feeling.
I'm sorry to see that my dream I posted came more or less true and Matt Simmons passed away (in the hot tub instead of on the gulf shore). There was a conflicting report apparently on how he died: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/matt-simmons-has-died-heart-attack
RIP
Jim likes his poetic flourishes, doesn't he?
But this is the Bumpy Plateau period and no one knows how long it will last. It may last a good bit longer than people thought possible, or it may collapse somday in a whoosh like the USSR.
It is difficult to know what of the many contradictory viewpoints you espouse that you actually subscribe to, but recently you mentioned how you thought TPTB have it all under and control and you thought TLE would get here in 43 years.
Assuming you truly believe both those things (at least until you post something which contradicts them) then I do agree that TPTB have shown an extraordinary ability to keep the icreasing number of juggling balls juggling and the rubes mesmerized, but your dismissive attitude also seems a contradiction.
What matter if it's coming in 5 years or 50, but that it's coming and both the mathematics and the ecology are brutal in the absence of some cornucopian technologists' wet dream (which is still possible, I suppose, if unlikely)?
As someone said above, what Jim does is capture the zeitgeist of the moment. The insanity of the moment when the metaphorical cetrifuge is spinning faster and more obviously wobbling.
I will agree his over-dire, over-immediate predictions do get tiresome after awhile.
At least until the Bumpy Plateau ends and TS actually does start to HFT with rapidity. But that may be as much as a century off. It may also be much sooner. Who knows for sure?
HC1863 said:
Thanks for admitting that we don't know what will happen. Which includes not knowing what discoveries or advances will take place in the next 47 years.
My number is 47 years. I have not changed it. And it is not that TLE will get here in 47 years, it is that the TLE, which I think began in 2005, will last for another 47 years.
My fear, my terror, comes from reading today that the collapse could happen tomorrow in less time than it takes for a circus tent to burn. In that case my techno-triumphalism fantasy is dead.
I am counting on 47 years of breathing space that will, in turn, allow for some discovery that will guarantee 4,000,000,000 years or more of energy sufficiency (or however long the sun lasts).
The brutality of the mathematics and the ecology are irrelevant if TSHTF tomorrow.
If we have 47 years and during that time we make a discovery that provides energy sufficiency, the math and the ecology will matter, but we would have some breathing room.
Be careful with "dismissive attitudes"
"Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway." --Robert Henri
Yes, you're right, Wage: it was a farce long before Obama. I guess Obama just brings it home for me in a way that no other politician has, because I really in him, against my better judgement. It seemed to me that it was still possible for someone to use the office of the presidency to shine a light on the corruption, thereby mobilizing the people, and then using that mandate to make real change. Unfortunately, Obama shies away from naming names and kicking ass, which, when you are dealing with criminals, is a fatal flaw. He seems to think he can bring "change" through small increments, an approach similar to putting out a fire by throwing on smaller pieces of wood.
So, Obama represents the end of politics just for me, and people like me, who were seduced into thinking that maybe democracy was salvageable, even at this late date.
Perhaps we can agree that we will never see the likes of an Obama again - that from now on we will be led by actors and front men who make no claim on a deeper understanding, but will appeal only to the populace's baser instincts.
I still think it's a damn shame.
Correction:
Note to self: Be careful with "dismissive attitudes"
I just assumed that people here have heard my alternatives before.
I don't believe in individual solutions, for us anymore than the ruling class.
I don't think that stockpiling beans and ammo will carry you through a long term economic collapse.
We have a society, that, for all its faults, provides us with plenty of food, (actually, too much food), hot and cold running water, and electricity,etc.
Why would anyone want to give that up to scratch out a living during the day, while taking turns posting guard at night?
I think that we need to get together as a society and decide what we need to live a decent life, in a sustainable way, and divide the work up among ourselves.
I think that it cannot involve massive amounts of fossil fuels, handy as they are, because we're running out.
Derivatives, stock options, etc., are gambling devices, and are not part of my alternative.
And to Hancock, I actually had my money buried in the back yard in the late 70s, because I didn't think that the banks would survive.
I was right and wrong. They collapsed, but the Feds stepped in and bandaged the situation.
I moved here 16 years ago, and started preparing for the inevitable collapse. I planted an orchard, (which feeds the birds nicely), got goats and chickens, and started a garden.
THAT'S how I more firmly came to believe that we need each other, and that there is no way I can live off my land, ammo or not.
And STILL they keep it going! I am amazed, but kind of happy, because I like a full belly and a place to sleep at night.
However, I know that the peoples of Iraq, Yugoslavia, the USSR, and so many others also liked these things, but when it collapsed, they lost them.
Some societies don't collapse in a horrible way.
Japan seems to be doing all right, even though they are a decade into a depression.
Holland, Spain and England lost their empires, and they didn't have massive die-offs.
We'll see how we Americans handle it.
"...from now on we will be led by actors and front men who make no claim on a deeper understanding, but will appeal only to the populace's baser instincts."
I thinks that's about the size of it. It is so effective.
Imagine a cocaine-snorting ivy league prep boy who puts on a cowboy hat and texan accent and says he's gonna "get 'er done!" ... that shit works just as effectively as "Yes, we can"
I'm wondering if the Republicans want to remove the American-born citizenship requirement to be president, thinking someday Arnold might run.
He'll be back!
Sorry I didn't comment last week, SNAFU, but I was really busy. Had company and all.
I did read your post, though.
Remember the Far Side cartoon where the professor fills the board with intricate equations, and then down in the lower right hand corner, it says-
"And then a miracle happens".
That's kind of how I felt about your explanation.
And I never argued that oil wasn't a marvelously compact, easily transported, bundle of energy.
This is a peak oil site, after all. I assume that everyone knows that we have done got that easy oil.
And that if we were really attacked by Saudi oil money that we would do what we DID BEFORE, in the 70s!
I didn't say anything wild or crazy, just that encouraging expanded use of oil at this time is insane.
And that it is unbelievable to me that TPTB would react the way they did if their story was true.
'Was it better in 1863'..i dunno but it was 6 billion people less to do evil!
many of us here feel the earth has overshot carrying capacity with regards to number of humans.
JHK said: "Though many government numbers lie, a dark reality still penetrates the fog of econometrics."
What I wonder is this: if government is capable of and willing to lie with their statistics, then how come they don't cook the statistics, say the July 2010 Bureau of Labor Statistics, to make it look as if jobs were added. It doesn't look good that we lost government jobs, though it was explained by Census workers being laid off.
I mean, if you can and will lie with statistics, why does the government publish statistics which reflect poorly on the administration, and even worse, published just before an election?
Does anyone have any proof of government lies using statistics? Or is it just one of those axiomatic CFNisms that government lies, government can't be trusted, government is out to get you and steal from you, government is not here to help, government is dysfunctional, etc.
as in all any any news cycles?
ruch limbo can stop yellin about ' how the gulf is ok and BP is ok?
we can see LL get out of jail?
How is artificial uproar good for America?
================
I went back over Asia's, Tripp's and your posts on the subject of the mosque and no one referred to the uproar as "artificial" until you did just now.
Certainly I don't think it's artificial and I don't think Asia or the dozen or so people who chimed in on the subject yesterday think it's artificial.
Asia can answer your question for himself but I think he already has. He said:
I find it telling, chilling, symbolic! let people have their ' uproar', it might be healthy
I interpret this to mean he thinks the mosque is a very bad idea and unless there is an uproar about it what is to stop it from becoming a reality?
Wage, you are using an old rhetorical trick - pulling out of nowhere an inappropriate adjective (artificial) and placing it before a noun (uproar) in an attempt to diminish other people's sincerity. Who are you to say that the uproar is not real?
I reject the leading tone of your question to Asia and propose it be rephrased as follows: Asia, why do you feel it is good for America that the proposed mosque/ community center be discussed passionately, both pro and con, by all interested parties?
BTW, I'll bet you didn't think the uproar over the Vietnam War "distracts," and "so it was not helpful."
"And it became a farce decades before Barack Obama was anointed."
More like centuries: 1 Samuel Chapter 8
'Does anyone have any proof of government lies using statistics'
Does anyone have any proof of your veracity?
that word so sacred to assoka...'government', often sacred to the athiest!
Qshtik said: "the dozen or so people who chimed in on the subject yesterday think it's artificial."
Please count me out oF this mosque discussion.
Yesterday I belatedly chimed in, and I said loud and clear: it is A TEMPEST IN A TEACUP meant to divide people and fuel hatred of Muslims. I didn't use the word artificial, but you get my drift.
This week I do not want to discuss it any more.
There are plenty of cars already out there with prices at or above that of the Chevy Volt, and people have bought them and continue to buy them.
Excuse me, q, I'm sure that your outrage is very real. I'm sure that you feel wronged, and insulted, and extremely put upon.
My only point is that I don't think that you would give a shit if not for the corporate media orchestrating the uproar.
And that next week, you will feel equally outraged at whatever tempest is presented for your tantrum making.
Again, I recommend Ozone's link, which shows how they manipulate our lower emotions to achieve their ends.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12642.htm
"Does anyone have any proof of government lies using statistics?"
What will you accept as proof?
@ Vlad Krandz:
"Was it the Socialist Micheal Harrington who coined the phrase 'the war of all against all'?"
No, it was actually Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), author of 'Leviathan'.
I have an idea. Let's declare that for 30 days everyone with US Dollars has to go to the bank and turn them in for U.S NEWCURRENCY. That's right. An exchange 1:1 but you have 30 days to do it and you have to do it in person. Bank accounts will be redone on a 1:1 basis as well as long as you bring your account number and identification. Afte 30 days, the dollar will be nothing. Paper. That's it. Not tradable for anything. Change can stay. Do you know how much money in foreign accounts would be washed away? In safe deposit boxes? In drug cartels?
Suddenly those who stole, robbed, cheated and everything else would see it evaporate. What fun.
>> Pretending bought America two years of respite from the ravages of fraud and mismanagement, but now the true condition of this society reveals itself like the disfigured ghoul in the sewer lowering his mask. Further pretending is unnecessary now.
I call this Oprahism. It's narcissism turned into ideology.
"Leges sine moribus vanae."
==
Morality is not a luxury, a pretty addition to life. Morality is life. The early greeks understood this, as did the early romans and the early israelites. Morality is reflected in culture. But when right and wrong cease to be relevant, when corruption is prevalent, society is dead. And the US has been dead for a long time now.
I have a suggestion to improve the rule of law. I am not a lawyer, and certianly this needs work. Please view it as a draft proposal, subject to revision.
A Proposed Constitutional Amendmendment:
1. No member of US Congress or Senate may vote on any bill or law before certifying in writing, under penalty of perjury, that they have read the measure fully and understand it completely. Any constituent citizen, or officer of any federal court, or member of the US House or US Senate may prefer charges under this section. Penalty for false certification shall be removal from the senate or congress without pension, a lifetime prohibition of return, and referral to the US attorney general for prosecution on perjury charges.
2. No bill may be introduced before either the US House or Senate that contains more than one subject. It shall be an affirmative defence requiring immediate dissmissal and repeal of the law, if any accused can show any law passed after adoption of this amendment has more than one subject.
3.No law (including its referents), passed after adoption of this amendment, may exceed the length of the US Constitution (as amended as of the date of passage of this amendment). Any law passed in violation of this section shall be null and void. Any US law found null and void under this section in one district shall be deemed null and void in all districts, regardless of any pending appeals.
4. No US law may be introduced, passed or enforced without a valid citation showing the constitutional authority under which said law operates. It shall be the duty of the US Supreme Court to validate or invalidate the constitutional authority citation of all US laws passed.
JHK said,
"Don't expect much from the clowns' bucket brigade. We'll be lucky if they don't toss gasoline into the grandstands."
It has been tough enough for me to deal with the reality of the collapse of our republic. But now I have to do so while being revisited by clown nightmares.
From my vantage point, what was most revealing about the mosque discussion is not one poster--Asoka, QSKITK, cathy, ProCon--discussed, condemned, supported, the proposed building based on visual considerations.
Imagine the sheer temerity and arrogance in condemning a visual work without actually assessing the visual specifics. I actually wonder if some of the posters even bothered to look at the proposed building.
Ossified belief systems and closed eyelids, god help the human race.
..how come they don't cook the statistics,..
==
asoka,
The biggest lie of all is not telling whole truth. This is basically what the US gov mafia does with its statistics. This is what the SIS-CIA-MSM-Saudi propaganda outlets do in their coverage of the Israeli conflict with Islamo-nazi imperialists. Same applies to the ground-zero triumphalist Cordoba mosque. Same regards the underground Reich and the anglo-american petrodollar fascist imperialists. You only get to see what they want you to see.
I'm wondering if anyone here has read Empire of Illusions by Chris Hedges. I found it to be very interesting, particularly Chap. 5, which addresses what's going on in this country. It reads like he was a member of this blog.
Summer here has been much cooler than normal. Unlike the rest of the US. I sense absolutely nothing around here in the air or anywhere else. If and I know this is a Big If - Mr. K hadn't been "sensing" something in the air, something about to break, something about to give...for how many years now? And absolutely nothing has happened? No shortages, no peak anything, nothing but the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. We're not politically motivated to change anything because the election process is a fraud. 100% corrupt. Does anyone truly believe deep down that their vote counts? That the two choices of either a Repube or a Democrap that we're given for everything are any different from each other? Do you notice how nothing ever changes whether a supposed Repubican or Democrap is "elected" to any office? There won't be any sudden change in anything, nor has there been...
I've seen the artist's rendition of the mosque, and frankly, it's lovely. Aesthetically, it doesn't fit within the financial centers' skyscraper surroundings. It (my opinion) doesn't belong there.
Asoka said: "What I wonder is this: if government is capable of and willing to lie with their statistics, then how come they don't cook the statistics, say the July 2010 Bureau of Labor Statistics..."
Good point, though I often feel lied to by government officials a lot, I've wondered about this. And, I must say, it still gives me faith that things are kind of functional.
Now, if only they would audit the Fed...
Anyway, Asoka, here's a little anecdote you might appreciate: Given the choice between a Quizno's chain restaurant today and my regular eating hole nearby -- a taco truck owned by hardworking Mexican immigrants -- I once again chose the taco truck. There are many reasons for this: the food is good and cheap, I get treated nicely and I like the idea of supporting an independent business.
But do I want to open the borders up anytime soon? Nope.
Am I a fast-food-chain lovin', global warming-denyin', sister-screwin' NASCAR fan -- or any of the number of stereotypes out there of someone against open borders? Nope.
This is one of the best ideas that I've seen posted by a reader on Jim's website, outstanding.I don't think it needs any revision.
Would never work. It's impractical for members of Congress to read every bill. That's why you must rely on your peers and advoate groups to vote on a bill.
Unfortunately, for our Congress, advocate groups are usually Wall Street firms and oil companies and the peers have sold out long ago.
'...be subject to as much as 250,000 pages of law." in a vain attempt to enforce Ten Commandments.
This is, among other things, a Peak Oil blog. So it surprises me that no one here has mentioned the passing of Matthew Simmons. May he rest in peace.
it surprises me that no one here has mentioned the passing of Matthew Simmons
=============
You're a day late and a dollar short ... it's been mentioned several times.
(answering from earlier today):
Inflation is not too much money chasing too few goods, it's too many employers chasing too few employees. For people to spend, they must first have (more than enough) money and a reason to feel secure in their life, and for too many people today one or both of these are lacking.
Aug. 3, 1981 (Twenty-nine years and seven days ago by the time you read this) was what destroyed this inflation cycle; Volker took the heat for this. Relative wages have been falling for most of us since then, and the oncoming deflation in houses and other precious items is the latest sign of this.
And the only thing that's preventing true deflation is the Minimum Wage. Watch that law get rewritten to meaninglessness if the Republicans take over (reason #49584 why I still vote Democratic).
The Tea Party is a bunch of people who see what's wrong, but instead of turning to each other ("UGH How Marxist!"), they turn to their "betters" (FoxNews, Limbaugh, Coulter, Amway's Dexter Yeager, The guy at the pulpit of their MegaChurch, Hayek and Palin). Since all these people are either bought and paid for by the Corporate Elite or are part of that elite, they turn around and wage war against "the undeserving poor" (Welfare recipients whose gangsta cousins buy them Cadillac Escalades, Union members, Public School Teachers and Mexicans who bring their women in so they can bear "anchor babies") all the while offering their throats to be cut because all they've known is their throat being cut for the sake of the rich.
Matthew Simmons has died.
http://www.suburbanempire.com
If you didn't like Ted Nugent maybe you'll like Joe Bageant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYaqEgyrh1M&feature=player_embedded
And as a final note (unlike most of the regulars here, I work most of my days): I plan to have my debts paid off by election day 2010. That way, if things go from bad to worse they won't have any personal reasons to enslave me.
That may make me dead meat (a la Communist China, where they enslaved those who gave cash and shot those with Gold), but unlike millions of others upside-down via house debts or stuck with massive student loans and nothing to even make payments with; I'll be squared away.
(I've given up on my nation, by the way. Since Reagan we've voted for everyone to give us everything AND to not pay for it.)
BTW...Madoff got caught and jailed because he ripped off the rich. All the others ripped off the rest of us, therefore they're rewarded.
The Republicans will never give in to deflation -- which is the solution that would make homes, for one, affordable again. That's not the Republicans' style. They are into lowering taxes and -- behind the cover of night -- cranking up the printing press and raising the national debt ceiling so we all can get what we want. That's when inflation comes.
But that party can't last forever.
Seventy years ago, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was warning the world of the need to engage Hitler. He urged Americans to get involved, predicting Japan would not attempt to fight both the British Empire and the United States at once. He criticized Neville Chamberlain's naive faith in the German dictator's promises.
Where is such a leader today? Can you name one prominent political leader of either party who will even say the words "peak oil?" Our President will not. Neither of the Clintons has ever raised the issue to my knowledge. Joe Biden's rail interests appear to stop at the end of the Northeast Corridor, as the administration is cutting back on high speed rail funding.
On the Republican side, Newt is actually babbling about abiotic oil. He has company at the liberal Huffington Post, which ran a positive column on the topic recently. Mitt Romney? Not a word. Frankly, Sarah Palin has spoken as much as anyone on that side of the aisle regarding the issues we face, even as liberals and the mainstream media mock her.
I do not fear our technical challenges; we will meet those with our engineering knowledge and talent. In the face of financial collapse, citizens will barter with one another if necessary. What I fear is the spiritual wasteland I see, a moral desert where neither the rule of law nor the compass of humanity are present and people chase suburban mirages and lottery-funded retirements.
Several people at this blog feel dicussion of the proposed mosque near Ground Zero is off-topic and to quote Tripp "has dick to do with our future." Judging by the comments that were posted, a lot of other people saw the mosque as a VERY legitimate topic.
There are certain individuals who are absolutely incensed when discussion wanders from "peak oil" (unless it is their post that has strayed) so I want to thank Asoka for pointing out that the title of this blog is Clusterfuck Nation, Comment on Current Events by the Author of "The Long Emergency" and doesn't even mention the word "oil."
I counted 14 different people that had made 46 comments related to the mosque plus another 14 by me. And all but 3 of my posts were direct replies to other people's comments. The most prolific commenter was Asoka who characterized the whole thing as a "tempest in a teacup" yet found he had enough to say to post 16 comments.
"What holy hell hath the Hampton's hailed?" -B4B
Ha! I dunno, but that sentence sure did tickle a giggle. ;o)
(I like your handle, BTW. Planning on stocking some potables m'self for future contingencies. Gotta get good/pricey stuff that I don't like though... for obvious reasons. A little at a time, and it won't hurt so much. D. Orlov says it was one of the most popular "luxury item" commodities. Weird, but there ya go.)
Dark Fired Tobacco said: "Can you name one prominent political leader of either party who will even say the words "peak oil?" Our President will not."
Obama's Peak Oil Speech
http://peakoil.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=58867&p=999682
Asoka said:
- "Who are the "mad dogs" who will run in the streets? Policemen? Bankers? Xe employees?
I do appreciate a definite date for these things to happen. November 2010 is not that far away.
If you are attempting to scare, you are succeeding.
I am terrified by the rapidity and chaos and extreme death toll the image of a fire in a circus tent summons to mind.
Terrified. Paralyzed. Depressed."
Jeez Asoka, get a grip! JHK is a writer and blogger not the Oracle at Delphi. Any prognositications are just guesses, unless of course I make them for you! So here you go:
-The "mad dogs" are whoever can no longer feed themselves by virtue of having lost a job, unemployment compensation, pension or Social Security, their life savings and who no longer have shelter, food or a future and to whom your right leg then looks like a possible meal. Police will not be "mad dogs"; they will be the onlookers who pretend not to notice while the mad dogs are cornering their next victim. Bankers are those who will be laughing, dining and consuming copious amounts of spirits in their Swiss chalets while this is going on - that is, when they are not counting the money they have "earned" charging you usurious interest and laundering drug money or selling toxic assets. Bankers will not be "mad dogs", but bingo you are right ex-employees will be.
-You want a definite date? Friday the 13th.
Don't be scared- take a Prozac (after all, it's just what corporate Big Pharma ordered!).
-If the imagery of a fire in a tent scares you, wait for the "Final Event", the upheaval preceding Chaos. That moment when the US government can no longer maintain order (it is sure to be particularly obvious when police can no longer be paid, or are paid with worthless dollars). Hmmm...if you were a cop, would you go to work knowing that your life is on the line for, literally...nothing? Would a cop try to stop a crime in progress when there are no end to crimes in progress, when lawlessness is everywhere and the law is disrespected? Ah yes, the interesting characters that will come out of the woodwork then...
But there is a solution for such an emergency and here is the recommended emergency procedure: Make yourself at ease and calm down. Take a seat and breathe deeply for a few minutes. Relax. Let those neck muscles go limp and lose tension. Do the same for the rest of your body, feel the calm serene feeling that is entering your consciousness. Feel it? There! Now, bend forward in your chair and stretch toward your feet. Bend as far forward as you can, and....kiss your ass goodbye!
I don't think that you would give a shit if not for the corporate media orchestrating the uproar.
=================
A favorite theme of persons on the far left, like yourself, is that it is always OTHERS who are dupes, never one's self. That your beliefs and your passions are pure while the rest of us are the Manchurian candidates of right-wing media.
How like you not to notice this flaw in your thinking.
SMALL SPACE AND SIMPLE LIVING RESOURCE LINKS
http://www.tinyhouseliving.com/2010/08/08/information-resource/small-space-simple-living-resources-2/
"...but bingo you are right ex-employees will be."
I was referring to Xe employees, not ex-employees.
After Katrina, New Orleans Police, who were receiving their paychecks, Shot Frequently and Asked Few Questions as the police turned into mad dogs and started shooting at and killing unarmed civilians.
http://www.propublica.org/nola
Xe Services are the ones who shot indiscriminately at civilians in Iraq, showed up in New Orleans and went to Haiti, looking to make a profit off natural disasters.
http://www.propublica.org/article/u.s.-private-security-firms-head-to-haiti-121
"there are plenty of people doing something more constructive with their lives than endlessly prognosticating about coming shitstorms"...
Here in Germany Volkswagen had a brilliant idea:
the New Beetle that runs with metan gas produced with human shit.
Now, that is really energy low cost.
On one hand it disposes of unwanted escrements and on the other is good energy fully Co2 neutral... I bet it will be a best seller.
JHK said: "Visions of tumbling indexes wither the spinal fluxes of nervous day traders..."
Which indexes are tumbling or in danger of tumbling?
For the week, the Dow Industrials ended up 1.79%, the S&P 500 Index added 1.82% and the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 1.50%.
Thanks, Patrizia, for this news item.
Every one of us produces some human shit each week, some more than others. Good to be able to put it to use for transportation.
More on the New VW Beetle that runs on poo:
Shit similar to this (new energy sources, but more spectacular, perhaps nuclear or perhaps solar), new shit yet to come, is why I will not make dire predictions about our energy future through simple extrapolations from current technologies.
http://news.discovery.com/tech/poo-powered-vw-beetle-runs-clean.html
Mister Visitor,
What you're talking about is WILLFUL
denial and I believe the American public
has become masterfully adept at it. We
need no "advertisements" such as your
post to induce more of it.
This is just a website. If you've been
around and read the posts of many such
as San Jose Mom, you'd see that many
people herein are growing gardens,
trying to reacquire a lost green thumb,
thinking about how to reconnect with
community and so on.
But this is a website so, of course, the
only thing that CAN happen here is TALK.
I happen to think that Jim's weekly missive
this week is one of his saddest yet most
eloquent. At least Jim has spent years
trying to inform, energize, and motivate.
He's not just "cursing the darkness". He's
been trying to light that "one candle" that
DOES curse the darkness!!
Yes, sometimes we all get a little too
apocryphal and armageddonish but I don't
believe that a "pep talk" is the answer
right now. Jim's "answer" was to go
to the beach and clear his head. That's
a much more direct way to be positive
about the world. We forget that the
NATURAL world IS the world and people
are mere visitors on it!! We need to
show that we're earning the right to
stay. Jim's thesis is that we're
getting an "F" in that right now and
I dare say that most here would agree.
E.
Finally some begruding comments from JHK directed at Obama's failures. But then we all know Obama is the clown holding the empty bucket while the tent burns. He'll jump in his little clown car and drive off as the whole thing collapses.
It's impractical for our elected representatives to know what they're voting on? Would it be practical for you to make sense before you type something?
A very sensible post, DFT. If I would
quibble with anything it is that our
"engineering knowledge and talent" will
overcome the challenges ahead.
I think the BP disaster (and the similar
but nearly unadvertised similar disaster
in China) and the recent discoveries that,
ouila (!), there are mini-leaks the world
over speak to the idea that our hubris
about our "engineering talent" is already
being humbled by Mother Nature.
And we're not talking about space flight
or curing cancer here. We're talking
about digging and plugging holes. I'm
a scientist myself and I'm amazed at the
hubris in, for example, software engineering.
The egos are one-upped by the challenges.
There's a wonderful out-of-print book from
1972 called "The Coming Dark Age" where the
author, Italian mathematician Roberto Vacca,
said that Western Civilization will be done
in by ... excessive trust in overly complex
technologies!! In nineteen-freaking-seventy-
two this man said this!!
Vacca is my personal "oracle". I think his
prophecies are coming to pass. Finally, I
grade the homeworks of recent would-be
"engineers". Our "engineering talent" ...
is waning faster than leaves on trees in
November.
E.
A few years back.... Dr. Bakhtiari died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack.... and we all know what he was passionate about don't we...
Then thislast weekend Matt Simmons.....(goes in much a similar fashion)....but then again he was ranting re BP and that’s not good for business is it?
Whom next Dr. Colin Campbell.....?
Richard Heinberg.... or our beloved JHK....or anyone else with alternate views and internet blog clout?
And over here a few years back another academic type Dr David Christopher Kelly, came to an end where the paramedics that found him up there on that lonesome wooded knoll.... felt compelled to issue an ENT statement that was never, ever to be seen again...
Well in a few years time the ugly truth will be out there for all to see.... and the freedom of info across the net.... is going to be over.... real soon too.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-aaron/google-verizon-pact-it-ge_b_676194.html
Me I love Orwell he was soooo on it!
"Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary."
"If there was hope, it must lie in the Proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, 85% of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated."
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."
"…to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife…"
Keep one eye over your shoulder Jim.... as you wander down that wind-swept shoreline....
Alrighty! For those who see at least one Muslim terr'ist in every woodpile, here's a Big Picture of something REALLY scary...
(And it's based on BLS numbers, no less!)
Nothin' to worry about here; move along; it's all good! (tm -JHK)
http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html
Re: Simmons untimely death:
It came as quite a shock after the press he got so recently. He was a regular on Darryl Ratigan these last couple of months, so he got more exposure on the mainstream media than usual.
Although I agree that things are Orwellian, I have to comment that I don't think foul play was afoot here. My pet theory is that this country allows for freedom of opinion, but not a clear cut consensus of what is true. That's why we get such wild opinions out of the far right and nobody seems to demonstrably refute anything they say.
There's a lot to be said about keeping in shape and Simmons did not look like he was healthy. In fact he looked bloated and I have no idea whether he had heart disease in the past. All I know is someone in my building died at 63 because of his out of control weight and subsequent heart attack.
We just celebrated my mother's 90th birthday this weekend and she was an avid tennis player since she was a kid and was always a role model for me to find an activity I love to do and stick with it. There are no guarantees for longevity, but trust me staying in shape is a quality of life issue.
I believe that heart disease is the story behind Simmon's passing.--I don't worry about people who have blogs. It really doesn't amount to much in the scheme of things and don't forget about net neutrality. If the corportists really want to control content, they can since they use congress as a proxy for their own agendas.
"Inflation is not too much money chasing too few goods, it's too many employers chasing too few employees. For people to spend, they must first have (more than enough) money and a reason to feel secure in their life, and for too many people today one or both of these are lacking."
My problem with most deflationist arguements is their myopic focus on U.S. data. U.S. consumption is going to continue to slide. Wages have recently been raised in China and per capita consumption will continue to go up in developing countries keeping pressure on major commodities particularly oil, agricultural commodities, beef, pork, chicken, etc. The U.S. consumer has been abandoned for greener pastures by the big corporations and you can see that from bottom line and topline numbers from earnings reports.
Yes, this Blog is all about oil. It is oil and other forms of cheaply obtainable energy that made this world possible. And along with this "oil world" - an all-encompassing interdependence in quality-of -life that started with mass electric lighting and a Ford in every garage.
And now, as we realize there are finite limits of the resources that are responsible for our quality of life, we also realize our interdependence and our limited ability to control our collective destiny.
This Blog is about understanding and realizing our disparate sense of responsibility and how self-interest and stupidity and ignorance are prevailing with respect to many social and governmental policies toward energy consumption and preservation.
And true to its name, most of posts here warrant the moniker of Clusterfuck.
Taking a cue from Jerry, or Freud, what we need here is a massive world-wide ad campaign to make single user passenger vehicles unappealing and downright distasteful. We need a massive public relations effort to make discretionary automobile use to look childish and idiotic.
In other words, we need to find way to balance or "push back" against the all-consuming mass media blitz that promotes consumerism and consumption as an end to itself.
What we need in this Blog is ability to focus on issues and ideas that could convince those who control the markets and governments to step away from their self-interests and re-acquaint themselves with the notion of altruism.
If we don't do it now, the realities associated with dwindling energy stocks will do it later. Right now, my own perspective suggests we are indeed beginning to "eat the seed corn." This doesn't bode well for future harvests.
While the themes are familiar, Jim's writing this week is nearly poetic. Too bad the subject matter is anything but...
In the NYTimes today, Bob Herbert joins Jim in suggesting that, perhaps by fall, "something is going to give." Herbert points to the unemployment numbers as the tipping point, but it's all one meta-problem, as we know.
While I'm no fan of rampant prognostication, I find it compelling when someone as mainstream as Herbert is willing to go out on a limb.
maybe someone already posted this from george carlin, but have a look...
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=159216125164&ref=mf
I envision the “fire in a circus tent ” or proverbial chaotic fire drill to reading a post from “asia”: torture while it lasts, and about as substantial as a piece of cotton-candy.
Biased Observer said: "Police will not be "mad dogs"; they will be the onlookers who pretend not to notice while the mad dogs are cornering their next victim."
POLICE GONE WILD LIKE MAD DOGS IN THE STREETS
http://www.kvia.com/news/24559907/detail.html
You said:
What are you? Some kind of communist fascist socialist Marxist anarchist atheistic Commie?
That was sarcasm, natch, but I have learned to mark my sarcasms carefully on the internet because often people, including myself, have zero sense of humor on internet message boards. Nothing personal.
At any rate, such would be an impossibility. A literal impossibility. Too much profit would be lost by too many Aristos. The short-term agony would outweigh the long-term benefits (even if those benefits include species survival) of such a campaign in the minds of most, including ALL our Aristocratic "leaders", no matter what party. Finally, such PR actions would raise awareness and consciousness among the Rubes, and that's the LAST thing our Leaders want. Unconscious people are easily led. People with no knowledge of history are easily decieved and manipulated. You are asking the Aristocracy to behave against their own interests that have always depended on a docile, unconscious populace. Only recently did they need us to have a bare minimum of learning so we could run their machines. That period is almost over, which explains the rapid rise of anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism.
That's why every action taken by our Corporate-Political Leadership will be to keep the Plebes docile, obedient and mesmerized while the Titantic sinks. To keep the bullshit Reality Show going as long as possible not just so the Aristocratic Grifters have enough time to metaphorically get on the last train out of town, but simply because it's how we hominid homo greedicus' are hardwired by evolution to respond.
It's as natural a human reaction as it was for what happened on the Titanic, and all of human history replays that story over and over and over again. It's almost as old as the story of authoritarian howls drowning out reason in the service of the Aristocracy.
Which brings me back to the Big Question. If Capitalism is "man exploiting man", but Communism is the reverse, and pretty much EVERY system human beings devise to live under starts or winds up as a relative handful of wealthy strongmen abusing the bottom 90% with the help of the self-interested 10% and a portion of the desperate bottom 90%, then perhaps the problem lies not with the systems we devise that all wind up the same in the end, but with something deeper.
Maybe "The fault, dear Cassius, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves."
Alexandra, thanks for the Orwell writing.
Not to step on the explicating toes of Qshtik,or diminish your larger point, but the below sentence from Orwell is very interesting:
“All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary."
I wonder if this brilliant piece of writing could have occurred without Mondrian and Picasso informing their contemporaries. I doubt it, but still, what a wonderful example of influence as opposed to copying.
"Visions of tumbling indexes wither the spinal fluxes of nervous day traders..."
Note Asoka, he said "visions" as in an image of something coming in the future.
Which indexes are tumbling or in danger of tumbling?
How about:
Employment
Prices (deflation)
Bond interest rates (no lending or borrowing)
Consumer confidence
Dow down 118 as we speak
Every one of us produces some human shit each week
================
Almost true. The rest of us produce human shit while you produce bullshit ;o)
Ugh, I knew it would be a waste of time to reopen dialog with you.
You often say that you are large and contain multitudes. According to what I read, you supposedly are an aging African-American who marched with Dr. King, yet entirely sanguine about TPTB having everything under complete control.
You are supposedly an individual who has downscaled his life and footprint comparable to trippticket and others, yet you subscribe to what you correctly self-describe as a "techno-triumphalist fantasy".
You might be large and contain multitudes, but enough contradictory multitudes and people start to think you are full of bullshit.
When I began reading this blog and comment more than a year ago, I respected you and believed you were an honest contributor. Too many contradictory multitudes later and I wouldn't even read your posts at all except that you are very good at internet research and some of your contradictory stances, even if they are dishonest on your part, are still worth reading.
Hell, maybe Q is right and you are a pimple-faced college kid having fun with Philosophy 101, as eightm likely is. It doesn't matter. Even if you are who you say you are, you have a few too many "contradictory multitudes" to be taken at face value.
Sorry I bothered you.
GENeco says that 70 households' worth of human waste is enough to power the vehicle for a year or 10,000 miles
=====================
70 households' worth of human waste .. over what time period? I guess they mean a year. So, let's say there are 3 people per household. 3x70=210 people. The shit from 210 people will power one car for a year. And what does it take to process all that shit into usable fuel?
Sounds like this is an idea that needs a lot of work.
Gentle Ben may be a wee fella but he has a sheriffs badge and broad shoulders in the bond markets. I expect to see "bond market", "concern" and "bubble" in the same paragraph.
To James Crow re my posting of last week on deflation
Am I seriously serious? You bet I am.
So you think the people on Wall Street know what they're doing? What the idiots on Wall Street are doing is to to get the Fed to debase the money that they on Wall Street are trying to steal. They scream at the Fed for low interest rates. They scream for more liquidity. More, in other words, of what created this mess. More of the policies that dilute the value of what they are trying to heist. Not very bright.
By and large the nimnodes at the Fed (Greenspan and Bernanke and company) have been so very compliant. They've been good errand boys for the jocks on Wall Street (once a highschool dork always a highschool dork). They've used different justifications for Fed policies, none of which ever stood up to 10 seconds worth of common sensical scrutiny. They burble on and on about deflation. What deflation?
Have Fed policies helped Wall Street Banksters? No: what has in fact happened is that stock markets have gone NOWHERE in ten years. The Dow has crossed the 10,000 level on its way up and down at least 20 times in that span of time. The NASDAQ is DOWN 50% from its peak in 2000. Many of your largest, most storied financial institutions are dead dogs, having loaded up on garbage paper assets that they created, their carcasses abandoned and left to rot or picked up for next to nothing by marginally more healthy competitors, the fortunes of their executives and traders who were paid in company stock reduced to joke levels.
Bond yields are laughable. In my opinion this is the next bubble to blow. But remember, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
And most importantly, the industrial base of your military/industrial complex is now in China under Chinese control. Wall Street was the cheer leader and active participant in this. Just think, they said, of your profits and stock price by paying slave wages in a shithole with no labour laws or environmental regulation.
Does anyone seriously think that the US can stand up to Chinese armed might when American industry (the economic underpinning of the US military) is sitting on Chinese soil?
So now the Chinese nomenklatura must be rubbing their eyes in disbelief. All these absurd, stupid white people bringing them all this money, all these production facilities, all this technology, all this intellectual property for them to steal.
You think Wall Street is all controlling and brilliant? They've paid off the whores in Washington. They can do arithmetic really fast in their heads. They are hideous psychopaths. They are excellent liars. People mistake their impatience, abrasiveness and ruthlessness for intelligence.
But now the Chinese have all the cards. Wall Streeters are so very intelligent? Intelligent people DO NOT give the Butchers of Beijing, their competitors and military adversaries the life blood of their own economy, upon which their own security, both financial and military, upon which their own wealth and well being depend.
Do you think that Wall Streeters benefit by turning the United States of America into a militarily impotent Argentine style economic and financial shambles? Wall Street crapped in its own bed and pissed in its own sink.
As for me, I retired young by NOT playing the Wall Street game. I saw their idiocy, fraud and lies for what they were decades ago.
and the recent discoveries that,
ouila (!), there are mini-leaks the world
over
=================
Perhaps you meant voila?
Budizwiser said:
Budizwiser, with all due respect, your perspective is limited. Our "energy stocks" are not "dwindling."
There is a new generation of biofuels derived from wood, agricultural and forestry residues, and certain grasses is being developed. It is expected to be more energy efficient and to generate less greenhouse gases than current generation biofuels (i.e. made from agricultural crops), without competing with food supply. If sustainably managed, large forested areas could serve as a source for these second-generation biofuels. No single source, not oil, not biofuels, comprises our "energy stocks."
Nuclear, solar, second-generation biofuels, wind, tidal, geothermal, etc. are all renewable and sustainable sources of energy, actual or potential: WE DO NOT HAVE "DWINDLING ENERGY STOCKS"
If you want to discuss energy you have to stop being so myopic. Energy is not exclusively oil.
And Clusterfuck Nation is not a blog about oil, and certainly not about "dwindling energy stocks" because energy is all around us, and plentiful.
If you count humanure conversion to methane, energy is also inside us.
Bravo, Cash! Nice rant. One related question from me though: what happens to the Chinese economy when America stops buying their shit? I mean, I don't buy anything from China, and surely there are lots more behind me. Millions of people on their way to a new living arrangement, who might just figure out along the way (as you have, and Dovey has, and...) that they've had their country stolen and sold out from under them, and that the only way to undermine this planet- and state-destroying system is to stop participating in it.
Thanks for the morning battery charge!
All the talk and focus on the stock markets is out of perspective when you consider that bond markets dwarf all other markets combined by orders of magnitude. Do you really think there is someplace to hide from what we are facing? The bond markets are still telegraphing doublings of global wealth in years to come.
Gentle Ben is being forced to deflate the bond bubble and when he does, where is all that "money" going to go? There will not be an orderly exit from the "safety" of bonds.
A few years back.... Dr. Bakhtiari died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack
===============
Yes Alexandra, it's as obvious as the nose on your face ... TPTB have a list of oil loudmouths with opinions harmful to their interests and they're knocking them off one by one. People gotta be blind not to see this. Groan.
Hancock, you obviously have me figured out.
And you have come to the conclusion, over and over again, that I am full of bullshit.
My advice to you is Nancy Reagan's: JUST SAY NO!
Don't waste your time reading my "contradictory" posts... if foolish consistency is your form of OCD.
If only life were logical, then people like you could be happy.
China is already the worlds leading car consumer and that trend will not reverse. That "who's gonna buy their shit" has always been a bogus arguement.
And thank YOU, Wage, for bearing the standard of reason about this mosque thing. If I have to attack this one, I have to attack them all, and there ain't that many of me. Sorry, Q, but I still have a long list of more important things to think about. (Atlhough, come to think of it, I didn't see that apology yet. Maybe I missed it. I'll go back and look again;)
Oh, and Jim, by the way, nice f'in' piece this week. Poetry.
Thanks for the math calculations. If math were the determiner of energy supply, we would all be walking today.
No one ever made the claim that methane produced from shit had to power the entire commercial and private ground fleet. Broaden your mind a little. Solutions will by synergistic and multi-sourced. Every little bit helps. Stop being an energy scrooge, a pessimist, and a drag on society.
He was a regular on Darryl Ratigan
=====================
It's Dylan
Undeveloped and under developed countries are the new focus of big business. The U.S. marketplace is saturated. The reasons behind this are many. One, folks are tapped out, unemployed. Two, an increasing amount of folks are waking up to the fact that they've been hoodwinked (nothing like finding out that the "bargain" price of the $250K crackerbox you bought during the housing boom is now worth less than $150K). Three, the young people (those under 30) are paralyzed by student debt, and cannot afford loan repayments. Four, members of what's left of the middle class are beginning to finally understand that buying a new Honda or Toyota every 2-4 years isn't contributing to the U.S. economy or making them look keen - it's just making their declining wages that much harder to live on.
OK, I can concede that. But it doesn't matter - the laws of physics will not be reversed for the Chinese any more than they will be for us. I'm afraid your argument doesn't even make a dent in the reality of GLOBAL energy descent and compressive deflationary contraction. This isn't just America because America is now everywhere. In econometric terms anyway.
Farm note: We picked up two turkeys and two guineas early this morning! Since it's so late in the piece I had to get standard white turkeys so they'd be ready by T'giving. I'll do better with a heritage breed next season.
You said:
There is certainly something to what you say. We all have our own spectrum of weaknesses and strengths, though. One thing that seems to be a near-universal human characteristic is our ability to see others' weaknesses much more clearly than we see our own.
Opinions are like assholes, goes the old saying, everyone has them. I have always found it intersting that, in the intellectual realm, proof of superiority is not demonstrable, as it is in physical endeavors. If I stand up and boast that I can hit home runs all day off Stephen Strasburg or bench press more weight than Lee Haney, there's an easy test to see if I am a visionary or a loud-mouthed braggart.
But Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage and the rest of their ilk can portray themselves as smarter and more common sensical than thousands of Constitutional Law Scholars, and there is no possible demonstrable test except popularity, which is notoriously unreliable as a measurement of reality.
Authoritarianism in the USA stems from the RW. Historically it always has since the Alien and Sedition Acts, going way through McCarthyism, the Palmer Raids and even to the Civil War, where RW Confederate bleating about their "rights" and "freedoms" while holding millions of human beings in chattel slavery, was as disconnected from common sense as Glenn Beck is today.
LW Authoritarianism would be just as bad, just as unjust, and just as concentrating of power in the hands of the rich and strong over the poor and meek. But LW Authoritarianism is not a danger here, because like David Horowitz, who used to be a Communist but switched to RW Authoritarianism when he saw which way the wind was blowing, most Authoritarians, along with most of the wealth and power, are concentrating under the banner of the RW currently.
To circle back, my initial point being that people are individuals and have their own sets of weaknesses and strengths. Some people's weakness are strengths in others. Yes, that's a bit cliched, but your comment to wagelaborer seems to beg for a restating of this simple truth.
Having said that, conservative-authoritarian followers and liberal-libertarians usually have different weaknesses and strengths.
An authority-questioning, skeptical liberal-libertarian is less likely to be duped by authoritarian propaganda from either side, while being more likely to be robbed by someone they were trying to help because of unskeptical naivete coming from their weak point.
Conversely, an authority-worshipping, unskeptical conservative or authoritarian is less likely to be robbed by someone they were trying to help because of their sophisticated suspicion of The Other, but more likely to duped by authoritarian propaganda, especially when it comes from their "betters" because of unskeptical naivete coming from their weak point.
These are clumsy, oversimplified, overgeneralized examples, but I hope you get my drift. It doesn't make one kind of person superior to another. It just makes them different.
If one looks at the history of liberalism, usually an ideology that invited oppression, injustice or even death in most places and times throughout history (unless you believe, as so many "conservatives" do today, the laughable ahistorical idea that Hitler and Stalin WERE Liberals... instead of despising and murdering them as they actually did) you might consider that, just as you have your individual strengths so do we.
In this case I'd argue, the Liberal characteristic of skepticism towards authority gives us, in this area alone, an advantage in seeing through the bullshit that people who's natural inclination is to obey and worship authority don't have.
Mind you, I am glad the 1st Minnesota at Gettysburg wasn't full of authority-questioning Liberals, or the Union would have been lost and the Nazi-Confederate-"Bush Aristocracy" Alliance would have conquered the world, in all likelihood.
So, for all of that talk, where does that leave us? Just as an authority-questioning Liberal should recognize that occasionally unquestioning obedience is beneficial in certain few situations, perhaps it would behoove you to understand that Liberal strengths can perceive things that maybe you cannot.
Which leads us back to the founding of the USA, based on the ideas of open disagreement and compromise between factions, steering a moderate path, being the among the finest if not the finest method ever devised for human beings to live together and thrive together, for all it's faults, flaws, and atrocities performed by the flawed humans who made it up, who make up every society.
It's a pity that the usual combination of Aristocrats and Authoritarian Followers is burning it down, metaphorically speaking, in order to possess the ashes. Old story there. The oldest.
Going after peak-oil theorists may follow the pattern established right after 9/11, when the Cheney paramilitary shadow government assassination teams went after microbiologists.
In the four-month period from Nov. 12, 2001 through Feb. 11, 2002 seven world-class microbiologists in different parts of the world were reported dead.
Six died of "unnatural" causes, while the cause of the seventh's death is questionable.
Also on Nov. 12, 2001 DynCorp, a major government contractor for data processing, military operations and intelligence work, was awarded a $322 million contract to develop, produce and store vaccines for the Department of Defense.
DynCorp and Hadron, both defense contractors connected to classified research programs on communicable diseases, have also been linked to a software program known as PROMIS, which may have helped identify and target the victims.
In the six weeks prior to Nov. 12, 2001 two additional foreign microbiologists were reported dead. Some believe there were as many as five more microbiologists killed during the period, bringing the total as high as 14.
· On Nov. 12, Benito Que, 52, was found comatose in the street near the laboratory where he worked at the University of Miami Medical School. He died on Dec. 6.
· On Nov. 16, Don C. Wiley, 57, vanished, and his abandoned rental car was found on the Hernando de Soto Bridge outside Memphis, Tenn. His body was found on Dec. 20.
· On Nov. 23, Vladimir Pasechnik, 64, was found dead in Wiltshire, England, not far from his home.
· On Dec. 10, Robert Schwartz, 57, was found murdered in his rural home in Loudoun County, Va.
· On Dec, 11, Set Van Nguyen, 44, was found dead in the airlock entrance to a walk-in refrigerator in the laboratory where he worked in Victoria State, Australia.
· On Feb. 8, Vladimir Korshunov, 56, was found dead on a Moscow street.
· And on Feb. 11, Ian Langford, 40, was found dead in his home in Norwich, England.
Stop being an energy scrooge, a pessimist, and a drag on society.
=============
You need to be less of a childlike wild-eyed optimist. For example, your report on the shit-fueled Bug might have very reasonably pointed out that this technology was a long long way from economic viability but, no, you don't like presenting facts that in any way diminish your main thrust.
Are realists "a drag on society?"
Laws of physics? I expect that wealth should continue to transfer from debtor nations to creditor nations. Wealth will continue to flow from the unproductive to the productive even if the overall pie is smaller.
The idea that wealth should continue to flow from creditor nations to debtor nations through price deflation and wage arbitrage is being reversed and will continue to reverse. The creditor nation demographics are such that small increases in per capita income equal huge demands on global supplies. The U.S. is now facing the other side of the coin of wage arbitrage while that same coin causes price inflation in food and energy.
Burning our future topsoil for energy seems a lot like eating our seed corn.
By the way, while we all sit around speculating about what horrible future awaits us-
Pakistan is experiencing killer floods, while Russians are dying from heat, drought and wildfires.
It's possible that the consequences of burning fossil fuels will kill us before we actually run out.
when the Cheney paramilitary shadow government assassination teams went after microbiologists.
===============
I really shouldn't be smirking and chuckling over all these deaths in the microbiologist community ... I'm sure their families miss them dearly. But tell me again .. what is the supposed rationale for Chaney to have all these scientists rubbed out?
Can I just interject one topic in the midst of all this that is completely off-track?
Addictions! If you have them, are you steadily walking away from them? I bartended for a decade before I went to college, and in that time I went through some pretty bad habits (at least in Nancy Reagan's mind). But systematically, my wife and I have dumped our bad habits over the years since we married, and are now working on the last one, alcohol. Lots of common pharmaceuticals out there count in this category too. If your supply chain was interupted, would you flip your lid when you couldn't get a smoke? Would your hands shake if your Xanax bottle was empty?
As a friend of everyone here, I really urge you all to think about a world without the drugs, whatever their legal status, you depend on, and devise a contingency plan (cessation, herbal options you can grow in your garden, whatever). In my (rather extensive) experience, cigarettes are the very hardest. Then alcohol. (All the enslaving legal stuff, go figure.) Cocaine is a pussy drug. If you're addicted to cocaine, you need to stop being a little bitch and hang it up soon. I'm just sayin'.
Back to the ol' "foolish consistency" dodge, eh? My OCD? I think you have me confused with someone else.
You need to work on some new material. And it is just "material" to a guy like you, isn't it? Just more strategy and tactics.
I like your internet research skills, and I will continue to read your dishonest contradictory posts because of it. Hell, I even occasionally read Vlad's noxious misleading facist lie-fest posts, so I can surely read yours if I want to.
And there's not a thing you can do to stop me.
I just have to remember to resist the impulse to respond to you. I have to remember not to expect anything other than fancy rhetorical footwork and a glib tongue in reply. I have to always remember that you are full of bullshit and either lying about your identity or being as congnitively dissonant and compartmentalized a person as I have ever run into. The equal of Vlad in every respect.
Bye now. I know how you enjoy the last word and so you shall have it.
We will never run out! It isn't about running out! It is about telegraphing huge amounts of debt towards infinite supplies when clearly they are finite. The bond markets are telegraphing doublings and triplings in global supplies in years to come. Talk about the low yields in bond markets? What about compound interest? Those that don't understand compound interest pay it while those that do collect it.
I believe that a terminal decline in the global energy base has begun and moves toward alternatives will only diminsh the base further but I do not believe we will ever run out. We have just begun exploiting oil in the oceans and that is 75% of the Earth. there is lots of oil bubbling and gurgling up in the oceans but we will never extract it at rates necessary to offset terminal decline. The environmental impact will be to obvious in due time.
Nice post, Biased!
But police don't stop crimes now.
I remember being verbally abused and physically intimidated by a large, hostile mental patient, while one of my city's finest men in blue sat not 20 yards away, ignoring him.
After the situation was defused, (by me), I went out and asked why he hadn't come to my defense.
He replied, "That's what you have security guards for". (!)
Hey Tripp, what happens to the Chinese economy when we stop buying their shit? They're screwed.
Tripp old man, this dog of a business model where capitalists and the managerial class that shines their shoes offshore industry to China is a dog that don't hunt, it don't even bark.
There is no semblance of logic or reason behind it. I mean, for Christ's sake, they create mass unemployment in the US (and here in Canada for that matter) and a class of slave wage earners in China. So who do these offshored industries sell to? The slaves in China or the unemployed in the US? The only way it works temporarily is if the US goes into debt to buy the products. But, as we've seen, sooner or later you hit the debt wall and the whole stinking mess falls apart, which is what you have now.
Bernanke is busy running the Fed printing presses to try and forestall catastrophe. Won't work, he's just laying the groundwork for the next one. Meanwhile him and his gang of geniuses (and other people besides) ponder deflation. Look at what bond markets are doing. A lot of people are betting on it. They've been talking about it for ten years. So where is it?
Asset price deflation? Funny about that. When asset prices were going through the roof nobody was talking about asset price inflation. Asymmetric thinking wouldn't you say?
Funny how some people only think the U.S. is capable of extend and pretend. The Chinese have been preparing for extend and pretend for a long time by securing resources while their dollars were worth something.
Calm down, pilgrim. I'm pretty sure that Cows was being sarcastic!
But look what happened when Henry Paulson showed up at Congress with a three page demand for cash, with a provision that no questions be asked.
Most everyone read it! And there was an uproar!
So they came back with a longer version, and passed it.
The Patriot Act, on the other hand, was 50,000 pages long, and passed handily in Oct, 2001, especially after top Democratic Senators were targeted with a biological warfare weapon.
By the time anyone read it, it was law, and, like the Enabling Act passed in Germany after the Reichstag Fire, the freedoms it took away have never been returned.
Although Obama made Constitutional Lawyer noises against the Patriot Act, when he got into the Senate, he voted to extend it.
OK, I've digressed. How unusual.
There is a lot of doomers here http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/mb/FAZ
and they all believe in deflation -- suckers.
I'm willing to entertain any alternative ideas, Asoka, but the murders and "suicides" of the microbiologists are not the same as an overweight, over middle aged guy having a heart attack in a hot tub in summer. And I don't think that the ruling class cares about anyone pointing out that oil is almost gone.
Dung happens!
What you said, Cash!
I disregard those who say that the US ruling class is deliberately destroying the economy of this country. Come on, people! Conspiracy theories have to make sense!
It's greed, pure greed, like you said. And they don't need to be able to do math in their heads.
They have computer programs that do it for them, running constantly, making money off of minute differences in prices.
And people who nickel and dime their way to profits, by charging for every tiny thing they can, no matter how petty, wouldn't write off the profits still to be wrung out of 300 million consumers in the US.
Get to know your turkeys, and I bet you won't eat them.
Contrary to many people's opinions, turkeys are smart and charming.
I had a pair of heritage turkeys, but a great horned owl got one of them, and now I only have Cleo, who follows me like a dog, and hangs out with me on the porch, me swatting flies, and her eating them.
Eat her? It would be like eating Dax, my dog.
You said:
No one can know the future, but I strongly suspect that if humanity goes extinct, it is going to be a long and drawn-out process. Losing the first six billion might occur in a much shorter time-frame than for that last billion to drop to zero, if indeed that will happen at all.
We are adaptive, intelligent critters, we homo greedicus', but more importantly, our generational time scale is so small compared to our species' time scale, which is tiny in comparison to the environmental-geologic time scale.
In the absence of a ecological, cornucopian or techno-triumphalist solution (and I mean a real solution, not one that simply pushes back environmental and Malthusian imperatives another generation or two), some very VERY bad times are coming.
Homo greedicus is unable to overcome our animal nature in the slightest, even if it means death for the whole species.
You do know that TPTB are even now preparing to drill under the thinning Arctic Ice Cap made possible by Global Warming, which will lead to more Global Warming which will disappear more ice which will make possible more drilling...
Hell, even BP is now talking about having another go at that high-pressure methane-oil under Macondo.
Just another example of the monkey-stupid which very likely will lead to our species' extinction, but probably not until after we have either "run out" of fossile fuels or lost the technical ability to get at the "hard to reach" oil (the easy to reach stuff has long ago been slurped dry).
But no one really knows. JHK's been predicting total catastrophe for years now, and it steadfastly has refused to come. But I really think humanity has thousands of years left before we exit stage right.
Most of them are going to be VERY bad years to be a human, I think, and will probably make Medieval Europe look like a beacon of Liberty and reason.
Most humans born 150 years ago are to be pitied, so it shall be for most humans born 150 years hence.
I hope I am wrong, there is just precious little evidence or reason to believe it.
There is certainly something to what you say.
===============
After reading your first sentence (above) the rest of your post was a hard slog. What I still come away with is the idea that conservatives are more easily duped. This is universal and unalterable liberal dogma.
I am reduced to simply declaring that you will never find a greater skeptic than me. I am not being led by the nose by ANYBODY. You and Wage should look carefully in the mirror at your own selves.
Cash asks:
Have you had the good fortune to spend any length of time in Argentina, Cash?
I have been to Argentina and it is possible to live life very pleasantly there. Shambles is a harsh word to use to describe a society that has "downsized" its expectations (something the famed Argentinian pride needed), but is nowhere near third-world conditions.
Wall Streeters may not benefit from it, but the goal of "turning the United States of America into a militarily impotent" is laudable. Less power, less imperialism, less pissing off of other countries who can strike back.
The military-industrial complex has wasted trillions of dollars, while simultaneously positioning the United States in a position for, and inviting, more blowback attacks like 9/11.
The next revenge attacks for Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, for Fallujah war crimes, for all the doors kicked in at 2:00 a.m. in far-away cities... the next blowback attacks may be nuclear. A lose-lose proposition.
"Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent." --Rev. Martin Luther King, 4 April 1967
Your statement that there will not be an orderly exit from bonds is the understatement of the decade.
Re China and who's gonna buy their shit: I don't think this is a bogus issue. The US soaks up huge amounts of Chinese exports. What I've read is that China right now has one billion people currently enjoying African standards of living out in the countryside. For these people a sweatshop in the city looks like a good deal.
Re the Chinese middle class What I've read is that their incomes are low compared to North America and their consumption depends on having a supply of goods and services created by low wage workers. What happens to the middle class standard of living when low wage workers demand some of the good life for themselves?
This is a massive problem for the Chinese government. No matter how powerful they think they are they are fleas compared to one billion aggressive, hungry, pissed off peasants.
I really enjoy your posts, Hancock, but must take issue with your communist vs capitalist dichotomy.
Number one, most of human history has not been that of oppression. Oppression came with agriculture and "civilization", and the development of class society.
Hunter gatherer tribes, the last of which still exist, (but are being wiped out by multi-national corporations as we type), don't have police, prisons, militaries, or some gorging while others starve.
At the beginning of the 1800s, there was no class society where I now live. There were hunter gatherer tribes, and some trappers.
Am I really supposed to believe that the extreme wealth and waste I see around me now is permanent and immutable? Why?
Number two, this either/or dichotomy, like the democrat/republican dichotomy, implies that there are only two ways to organize society!
Really? That seems quite limited to me. I think that we can do better than authoritarian central planning, and destruction of our ecosystem, whether by a central government or by private corporations.
more blowback attacks like 9/11.
=================
What may reasonably be termed "blowback" - like beauty - is in the eye of the beholder.
My problem with "who is gonna buy their shit" is that it is often used to support the sustainability of the status quo. Yes the Chinese have problems but internal demand is rising and will continue to rise. Developed countries will never be able to compete with workers from developing nations so they wont. Per capita consumption is "built in" in the U.S. where it is not so much in developing countries. It will be easir to raise per capita consumption in developing countries than in developed ones. The path of least resistance toward the goal of global growth will be through increasing per capita consumption in developing countries and decreasing it in developed ones.
A guy on tv just said markets are going to tank and we will still get massive inflation while enduring a double dip recession. Ahhhh the best of both worlds, who woulda thunk it!
Trippticket said: "As a friend of everyone here, I really urge you all to think about a world without the drugs, whatever their legal status, you depend on..."
Tripp, I am proud to consider you a friend.
I want to extend what you said just a bit. Many in our society are now addicted to another legal substance: food (especially if it is packaged in plastic, cans, or comes through a drive-up window)
I have worked on my addiction to food by adopting a lifestyle of one meal a day. Fasting 19 hours a day frees up lots of time to write valuable and informative posts to CFN.
Anyone interested can find more information on the Fast-5 lifestyle at:
http://www.fast-5.com/content/summary
There is also a free PDF book you can download with references to the peer-reviewed scientific literature behind the Fast-5 lifestyle.
I figure only needing one meal a day might come in handy during the Long Emergency, after TSHTF, before TWMBH, or whenever that might finally happen.
But I'm enjoying fasting TODAY!
(and every day for 19 hours a day)
AAAAAMen!
Asoka said: "My advice to you..."
Hancock replied: "And there's not a thing you can do to stop me."
Brother Hancock, when someone offers you advice that is not the same as commanding you to do something.
Let me restate this clearly: you are free to read or not to read my posts. I don't want you to think I am an authoritarian trying to manipulate you because I know your position on authoritarianism (and I agree with it)
However, if you choose to respond (and again you have complete freedom in that regard), then I may or may not choose to respond.
I do enjoy your posts and read all of them.
You crack me up, asoka. Please keep up your informative and valuable posts.
I believe that our food intake will fall, also.
My response is to eat well now, while I can!
As for alcohol, I remember a Mother Earth News article a while back that started something like this-
Have you ever gazed out at your property, enjoying the lush growth, and thought to yourself, "I wonder if I could make alcohol out of that?"
The answer was - yes. You can make alcohol out of many things, as you, I believe, point out when talking about burning it in vehicles.
Why waste it on vehicles?
I have worked on my addiction to food by adopting a lifestyle of one meal a day. Fasting 19 hours a day
============
??You fast 19 hours a day after which you have one gargantuan meal lasting 5 hours??
I fast 22.5 hours a day but not continuous. I eat 3 squares plus tea plus snacks and maybe a small snifter of brandy around 11PM with a total eating time of about 1.5 hrs. I'm 6' tall and weigh 206 lbs. I'd like to weigh about 185 but I spend so much time sitting on my ass in front of a laptop trying to keep your bullshit in check that I don't get enough exercise.
Wage asks: "Why waste it on vehicles?"
Wage, if I were king, I would ban private vehicles altogether. JHK is right about the destructive effects of devotion to a happy motoring culture.
I also recognize that fossil fuel in the form of petroleum is a finite resource.
Therefore, if we can get methane from renewable and sustainable practices (forest wastes, algae, etc.) which do not disturb topsoil and which also contribute less to global warming, I prefer we not use the harmful petroleum-based products.
I think calorie reduction during TLE, TSHTF, WMBH, will be a good thing and actually reduce the level of morbidity in our society.
Less power, less imperialism.
If the United States were an empire my country (Canada) would not exist.
Why do I think so? We are sitting on the world's richest land mass, we are sparsely populated, apathetic, internally divided, militarily impotent like New World Indians were five hundred years ago. Easy pickings.
We have huge, wide open spaces, fertile land, oodles of fresh water, gargantuan energy and mineral resources. Irresistible to an imperial power looking for huge territory, huge resources and an easy conquest.
Taking Canada would be like being on vacation. The biggest hazard would be slipping on the ice. That and the artery clogging poutine (fried potatoes covered in gravy and cheese curds).
Canada exists at the suffrance of the people of that great republic to the south of us (our liberal intelligentsia boots them in the slats at every chance). If the US were an empire we would not be here.
Another thing Asoka: commenters on this website doubt that you're black. I'll take your word for it, that you've suffered a great deal of shit at the hands of whitey.
Having said that the clock keeps ticking, the US is not the same place as it was 50 years ago. I'm not going to minimize the harm that black society suffered after 400 hundred years of slavery and brutalization. But times have changed.
There are Quebec separatists who cannot get over the domination by English speaking Montrealers in the early decades of the last century. I say to the separatists that the Westmount Rhodesians are gone. French speakers have run Quebec for two generations, they ran Canada for about the same length of time. Still they're bitter. Waste of time and mental energy. The battle of the Plains of Abraham was 250 years ago. Hard to rewrite history.
As far as Argentina goes, I've never been there but I have a family member from there who moved to Canada. From him I gather that Argentina is a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there.
Mika said: "Asoka, the biggest lie of all is not telling whole truth."
Mika, then we are all liars, because nobody has the whole truth, and we shouldn't be so quick to cast the first stone against the government.
Qshtik said: "What may reasonably be termed "blowback" - like beauty - is in the eye of the beholder."
ABC News interviewed Bin Laden in 1998 and he clearly stated why he was declaring war on the United States, and it was definitely blowback for United States putting troops on what you do not recognize as holy but Bin Laden called "Holy Land" in Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden issued several warnings to the United States and was mostly ignored. Probably laughed at by people like you. What could people hiding in caves do to the world's greatest military power?
Then, after the 9/11 attack Bush quietly withdrew US troops from the "Holy Land" in Saudi Arabia. (just a coincidence of course)
Ignore the concept of blowback at your own peril.
Cash said: "Taking Canada would be like being on vacation."
LOL! Reminds me of Rumsfeld and company saying Iraq would be a cakewalk... oh, and the war would pay for itself!
"Taking Canada would be like being on vacation"
You have to be kidding, for two reasons:
1) Canada has been a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization since its foundation. If the USA attacked Canada they would have to take on all the NATO nations.
2) Who wants to even think about messing with the RCMP? :)
Tripp, I have to say that I like a bottle of wine once in a while. When we were young we used to go to the abandoned quarries in my hometown and we could drink and smoke weed and nobody would bother us. Ah youth!
I haven't smoked weed since I was young but I have fond memories of hanging out, passing around the pipe and then dining on burgers or pizza as if it was food of the gods. A friend of mine used to bring a type of hard candy, that had a multiplicity of taste sensations. Amazing stuff. Once I was at a friend's house and we were smoking on his back deck when his mother unexpectedly showed up. She said "Are you guys smoking up"? No point denying it, my bud said "yeah Ma." She said "Can I have some?" So we had a joint with his mother. It was a gas.
Ping pong was great under the influence. It seemed like the ball moved through the air like it was moving through molasses. And Jethro Tull's Songs from the Wood sounded amazing especially that tune Cap in Hand. The guitar was awesome. And Hendrix! Wow.
Now I'm a supposedly respectable bean counter. I wouldn't do it anymore. I hear that the shit that grow ops are producing has toxic levels of THC. In the old days you could get mellow but I hear that the new stuff makes you nuts.
Tobacco and alcohol aren't so hard to quit. I've done it hundreds of times. (w/ apologies to Mark Twain)
There was a long span of time before NATO when the US could have invaded and even Great Britain at the height of its imperial power would have had a great deal of difficulty overcoming its lack of interest.
NATO? Would Italy or Holland give a shit? It's true that the UK has nukes but if the US wanted to concoct and excuse to invade us ie we're a terrorist breeding ground (don't laugh, it's as credible as Iraq having WMDs) there's no way that the UK would intervene militarily. They don't have the capacity even if they wanted to. The US Navy would blow them out of the water if they tried.
And just between us girls, if it were up to me I would disband the RCMP. They are utterly fucked up and dysfunctional. If you want to make a case disappear, never again to be seen in your lifetime, call the RCMP.
There was a case not long ago where a German arm's dealer met with a former Prime Minister, handed him bags of cash amounting to several hundred thousand dollars, which the PM hid in a safety deposit box in a US bank and then failed for several years to declare it for tax. The RCMP could not get to the bottom of it. To this day people suspect that the payment was a bribe for a government contract to buy airplanes. There have been years of investigations, Royal Commissions, millions spent but there have been no charges. I'm telling you if this had been a US politician with the FBI and an attack dog prosecutor like Fitzgerald or Morgenthau, there would have been bushels of indictments and subpoenas fired out. They would have got their man.
Wage said: "But police don't stop crimes now."
Wage, in response to JHK saying that the mad dogs would run in the streets I thought maybe he was referring to the police, since in my personal experience the police have been the mad dogs in the streets.
During the early years of labor union organizing, police violence was frequently used against protesting workers, like in the Haymarket Square attack on peaceful protesters. They even have a term for it: "police riot."
Mad dog police in the streets is what happened at the 1968 Democratic National Convention with their billy clubs and tear gas. The attacks were unprovoked and were later described as a police riot by the Walker Report to the US National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence.
Maybe some folks aren't concerned about the police being the mad dogs JHK refers to, but I sure am.
The Boomers, by their pernicious social engineering and their embrace of puerile sensation, venality, and narcissism in its most destructive forms, have annihilated everything they touched. I would not believe it possible if the evidence were not so clear. Of all American generations, from the heights of the New Deal and wartime work ethic to the lows of Civil War sectionalism, this one has the most to answer for. I curse all of them, and all of you who belong to this monstrous horde.
-drl
what happened at the 1968 Democratic National Convention
================
...was just a dust-up ... an artificial uproar.
Here we go again,did I hear "High Speed Rail"?
It's like buying a tuxedo for a local Dumpster Dude.
Oh, peak oil (and natural gas) is going to be a real problem particularly for the U.S but also the rest of the so called western world. It's already starting to be now since we are at the peak. The following document includes a good summary of U.S policy regarding energy security and if one reads the comments by Henry Kissinger at the end one could have seen where things were going back in 1975. Apparently Kissinger had frequently visited the White House during the Bush administration.
Oil Fields as Military Objectives : A Feasibility Study -> link to full document
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015078699306;page=root;view=image;size=100;seq=1;num=i
A more modern report on the issue from the Council on Foreign Relations : National Security Consequences of U.S Oil Dependency (2006), Independent task Force Report No. 58, Chairs John Deutch and James R. Schlesinger
www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/EnergyTFR.pdf
Comment: The above CFR report is incorrect on the issue of biomass. Biomass will never substitute for a significant amount of oil use, one just needs to be roughly familiar with biomass availability and the difficulty of using it on a large scale to know this. To this day (Aug 2010) shale oil is still not being produced on anything but the very smallest scale.
Also see Energy Future : Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School (1979), by David Yergin and Robert B. Stobaugh, which has a very thorough index and reference list on the issue of U.S energy . http://www.archive.org/details/energyfuturerepo00stob
Then there's the U.S Joint Forces Command's Joint Operating Environment 2010 report, which expects an oil energy crunch in 2015 (pages 28 and 29) and resulting possible long-term worldwide recession despite their oil production graphs (taken from another report)showing otherwise.
www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf
I thought this was kind of interesting too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0oMfHmMIVU&feature=related
When I saw the cops whip out the fire hoses on the demonstrators in Birmingham on televison, I truely thought, WTF! Turning hoses and dogs on kids! When my boyfriend and I went to the March on Washington, I was terrified. But the police there were really nice. I remember there was this little black girl, lost and crying. One of the white cops consoled her and hoisted her onto his shoulder. She found her folks within a few minutes, as I recall. Hot friggin day, that August! Got sunburned AND callouses. Police, though, very, very nice.
On page 1 of the NYT Book Review section this past Sunday begins a review of two books by Hans Keilson, born in 1909 (and still kickin'). The review's first paragraph contains this:
...I'll say this as quickly and clearly as possible: "The Death of the Adversary" and "Comedy in a Minor Key" are masterpieces, and Hans Keilson is a genius.
A particular paragraph in the review caught my eye. It began as follows:
"With seeming effortlessness, Keilson performs the difficult trick of showing how a single psyche can embrace many contradictory thoughts, and how naturally extreme intelligence and sensitivity can coexist with obtuseness, denial and self deception."
Needless to say, I thought of Asoka.
Asocka,
The riot that broke during the Democratic convention in '68 was a result of taunting and tension. The police, while not itching for a fight, were expecting trouble. The protestors were generally peaceful people and didn't get hit with billy clubs. A couple of knee jerk reactions (by the police) were interpreted by the protestors as brute force. Things quickly went out of control when the cops decided to man handle some of the smart_sses, and soon all heck broke loose. But do not fear the police. They are here to help you.
jensv said:
Never? Never is a long time.
And don't tell the Brazilians about "difficulty of using it on a large scale"... they have an organization of 60,000 companies using biomass today. Europe also has biomass projects in 12 countries.
The "food versus fuel" controversy is overblown. In Brazil, of the 55 million ha of land area devoted to primary food crops, only 4.1 million ha (7.5 per cent) was used for sugarcane, which represents only 0.6 per cent of the total area registered for economic use (or 0.3 per cent of Brazil’s total area).
Of this, only 1.7 million ha was used for ethanol production, so competition between food and crops is not significant. Furthermore, crop rotation in sugarcane areas has led to an increase in certain food crops.
Even oil man George W. Bush said in 2006 that the goal for the USA is that biofuels and biomass could replace 25% of our gasoline and diesel use by 2025.
25% is a significant amount.
There is no one silver bullet. But there are lots of little silver bullets that each make up a small percentage and pretty soon, by adding up solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, tidal, geothermal, biomass, etc. you're on your way to 100% renewables.
The writing is on the wall. We cannot continue to depend upon non-renewable sources of energy.
Nice post this week, JHK. You continue to find new and vivid metaphors for us to enjoy.
The US is at the circus and the tent is on fire. The clowns (this works on so many levels) are throwing gasoline on the flames.
We are all doomed if we calmly wait to exit the tent.
Well, I've got my pocketknife out and I'm ripping and tearing at the fabric behind the bleachers. I intend to get as many people out as I can.
I am here on this website to rant and rave and look for ideas.
Thanks for your help!
"the difficult trick of showing how a single psyche can embrace many contradictory thoughts, and how naturally extreme intelligence and sensitivity"
Yes, it is difficult, especially in the face of constant provocation.
But at least the viewer was appreciative ... instead of diagnosing schizophrenia or cognitive dissonance or some such chimera.
Not so simple. Land and wealth ownership and competition for resources and jobs and non-awareness of the energy issue makes it difficult to focus an effort on alternative energy production. Another problem is that solar and wind aren't and weren't cost competitive with existing fossil fuels. They will be very soon, but then fossil fuels production will be in decline just as Chinese demand rises and demand rises for oil to build the infrastructure to replace oil.
It's really a failure of the free market - the free market allows people to use oil for any purpose and doesn't require any planning on the part of the consumer. There's no rule saying if you use this oil you must use it to construct alternative energy production, infrastructure and vehicles. It just goes up in the air.
Typical of your M.O., you ended the quote from my post just before the all-important words "can coexist with obtuseness, denial and self deception."
"But do not fear the police. They are here to help you."
I want to believe you, I really do. But then I see a black man who is not resisting, who is handcuffed and on his stomach, and I watch a cop pull out a gun and shoot the handcuffed man in the back, and a small doubt enters ... shooting an unarmed and restrained man in the back just don't sit right with me.
Myrtlemay, have you ever been pulled over and had your dignity assaulted because you were driving while Black? It is not a friendly experience.
But I learned from Henry Louis Gates that you got to keep your cool or they turn into mad dogs.
Hold on there, cowboy! You're talking up some real trash, mister. I've known some of these boomers and they happen to be a whole lot more savy than my generation. Where do you get off dismissing an entire generation of people with one fell swoop? In case you don't remember, or weren't around then, the boomers stood up for an unpopular war when (almost)everybody else was walking around with their thumbs up their _sses! I would love to see a revival of the hippi war protestors to shoot down the crap that's been floating around in the media about Afghanistan. And as far as "social engineering" goes, I started work out of grad school during the Eisenhower administration. I was "socially engineered" into a secretarial pool, working for some slobs that didn't even finish high school!
Typical of your M.O. to complain because things are not just exactly and precisely the way you think they should be.
I'm somewhat familiar with Brazil's ethanol use, it was 3.6 million hectares used for ethanol production and the rest went to electricity production, much of which is used to process the ethanol.
Brazil and the U.S are different animals, Brazil's sugarcane crop receives about 600 mm a year of rain which an amount far higher than pretty much anywhere in the U.S. Ethanol production in the U.S has an ERoEI much worse than that of sugarcane in Brazil.
Cash, maybe it takes an outsider Canuck to really point out our problems in the States.
A couple of people linked to your post already, but it's well worth anyone reading again. Here's an excerpt:
************************************************
So now the Chinese nomenklatura must be rubbing their eyes in disbelief. All these absurd, stupid white people bringing them all this money, all these production facilities, all this technology, all this intellectual property for them to steal.
You think Wall Street is all controlling and brilliant? They've paid off the whores in Washington. They can do arithmetic really fast in their heads.
************************************************
That sums it up. We've got TPTB and our Elites, just like any other country, but due to pure American Free Market Capitalism, they never think beyond this next quarter's *profit!*
The US remains a vast country, with incredible expertise and knowledge. But We the People, in concert with our elites, are slowly frittering away the last of the best of it.
On a related note:
DR Lunsford, you are correct that the "boomers" are the most selfish generation ever to walk the Earth, but not all of them are so selfish. In the main it's the early boomers who have screwed us over. Like the ever triangulating Bill Clinton...and the Decider W...and Newt Gingrich...take a look at this:
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/08/10/whos_giving_to_newt_gingrich/index.html
Oil, gas, and coal fund Gingrich. And PV doesn't have enough money to fund a counterweight.
We're screwed in the short term...maybe in the medium term, maybe forever, BUT WE'RE OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS!
You said:
First off, apologies for the length of my posts. Brevity is not my strong suit, obviously. I favor clarity over brevity...which probably explains why I work with test tubes and not people (well, not very many).
You are correct that I have, perhaps mistakenly, conflated conservatism with authoritarianism. That's because authoritarianism is concentrating under the banner of the Right currently in the USA. If this country actually WAS going hardcore socialist-communist, I probably would be equating it with the Left in much the same way.
Here's a question of history for you: Why were the Liberals in the old USSR considered Right Wing? Look it up, if you doubt me. Start with checking out "The Union of Right Forces" Party.
Here's another: What do Pol Pot, Pinochet, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Bin Laden, and Dick Cheney all have in common, in spite of their vast philosophical and religious differences all over the Left-Right spectrum? They ALL despised Liberals.
Pol Pot even killed everyone who wore glasses, which certainly is a juvenile way of picking out Liberals, but as history shows, authoritarians on both sides succeed through essentially juvenile schoolyard bully means, accessing the Reptile Brain/R-complex. (Google that, too, if you've never heard of it)
When you understand why that is so, and why the liberals and intellectuals always get it in the neck among the first no matter WHICH authoritarian philosophy takes over, you may get closer to understanding why liberals feel that yes, in this particular area of being duped by authoritarianism, we have a historic track record that lends credence to that assertion.
Hitler murdered the Liberals long before he got started on the Jews. Why would that be?
Does it make us better than everyone else? HELL NO! It just a strength, and everyone has them. Find a person's weakness, and anyone can be duped, I don't care who.
You may be led by the nose but not in the way you think, because the sciences of psychological manipulation are many times more advanced these days than they were in your youth. And the thing about such manipulations is that they prey on the subconscious, where all our defenses are weak or nonexistant.
Do I think I am immune from such manipulation? HELL NO! But I try to stay aware and fight it every day, even when it comes from "my side", and that is the best I can do. It is more than most people do in a society that by any objective measure is simply saturated with marketing and psychological manipulation permeating nearly every facet of life.
Do I feel like that gives me an edge? Just as surely as pumping iron every day used to give me an edge over most people in the strength department.
I do look in the mirror, every day. Not only do I realize that I could be wrong, I ferverently hope that I am wrong because the conclusions logic and reading of history have brought me to are damned unpleasant.
But I have to see evidence. Compelling evidence before I question those beliefs. And believe me, the current crop of lunatics who now speak for the modern "conservative" (really, authoritarian) movement and the crazy demonstrably unfactual shit they spew, combined with their amazing success once they abandoned reason and played to WIN at any cost, only confirms my observations and conclusions about humanity.
Would that it were not so.
I would appreciate it if you would read the link I have posted below. It was written by Karl Jaspers, a German psychiatrist who, back in the 20s, was among the first to figure out that Hitler and his boys were madmen and ruthless authoritarian murderers.
He was pooh-poohed by conventional wisdom at the time, too.
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/jaspers02.htm
LOL! Good rant!
I am of the baby boomer generation. We ain't done yet! 60 is the new 40, and we just gettin' started.
They say the "Greatest Generation" defeated Hitler (and left millions enslaved under communism), but the so-called Greatest Generation came home and DID NOT stand up to racism, sexism, homophobia, intolerant moralism, and general Organization Man uptightness.
It was the baby boomers who won those wars.
And our achievement is all the greater because unlike World War II, we were not obligated to fight; we had it good, but we choose to fight those battles.
When thinking about what generation has shown Greatness don't look to those who were forced to make decisions; look to us Boomers who, by the decisions we chose to make, changed society.
Do you think only great acts of sacrifice and suffering are the ones that have value? The heroism of our Boomer generation was a heroism of daily life, of changing institutions and compelling society to live up to its ideals. Yes, we were idealistic, but we made democracy work for the betterment of all.
We stood up and challenged the Greatest Generation values: they opposed interracial marriage, they objected to working mothers, they supported discrimination against gays, they believed that husbands belong at work and wives belong at home, and they insisted on the old rule that young people should be taught to follow their elders, not think for themselves.
And the country is marching, slowly, toward Baby Boomer norms and Baby Boomer values. We institutionalized anti-establishment values, so much so that you are exhibiting our behavior by ranting against what is now the Boomer establishment!
The core boomer values of tolerance, equality and individual choice are prevailing.
America is never going to return to the '50s, when conformity, strict morality and hierarchy -- not to mention racism, sexism and homophobia -- played a far greater role than they do now.
Get on the right side of history, D R Lunsford! The Greatest Generation conservatives dying out, the "cosmopolitan" boomer outlook is dominant and will only become more so.
What we did, that the Greatest Generation did not do, was to expand our minds. We did it through a variety of methods (different strokes for different folks): drugs, rebellion, music, excess leisure time, hedonism, higher education, whatever worked. And our collective change of consciousness changed everything.
Cash,
I enjoyed your recollections. My first introduction to ‘Colombian Gold’ came from a youth-league baseball coach. I’ll never forget it, the ground was moving like a hula-hoop and my mom was very curious about my red eyes.
Aside from that, my baseball coach --Romolla was his name, a swashbuckling Italian who drove a convertible and donned button down shirts to expose a chest with dangling gold chains--was a fine example of manners and courtesy. He taught by example, such as the time he suddenly left practice to help the lady unloading her groceries from across the practice field. Needless to say, he did not return to practice that day.
A few years later I ran into Romolla. He was collecting the cover fee for the strip-club he owned. He asked me how the baseball was going.
Hancock,
Except for our *teeny* disagreement concerning the Aristocratic Elite, I find myself in agreement with almost everything you say.
This website has a bias to the left. (And yeah, I tend to agree that reality has a leftward bias.) I think Q would like to be a spokesperson for the honest *thinking* and non authoritarian "conservative." (They do exist, Hancock.)
There is a bias in our brains. Say, JIMMY CARTER.
When I think of Carter I think of the US Navy trained nuclear engineer who put solar panels on the roof and had a HYDROGEN FUELED CAR in his parade.
The RW thinks of the "killer rabbit" and the first Pres. to pass out while jogging....when they think of Carter.
Say...RONALD REGAN. The LW thinks of the man who tore the solar panels off of the roof....a trained actor whose wife and others fed his lines...when they think of Reagan.
(And, BTW, to be sure to tie into JHK's post for the week, history is showing that Reagan was the Pres. who set the present day's gloomy events on business, finance, and energy into motion.)
The RW hears, "Mr. G., TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!"...when they think of Reagan. The President who gave us 20 years of unparalleled prosperity.
And both groups saw the same news, heard the same dialog, and were subject to the same psychological manipulation.
Any suggestions how we move this forward?
I could not disagree with you more.
The Boomers are the parents of Gen
X and Gen Y who have GIVEN UP READING
(read "The Dumbest Generation" by
Mark Bauerlein). I'm a Boomer, too,
and I think the sexual revolution
was horrid. And the natural progression
of that horrid mentality is to be seen
in our young where "hooking up" (having
nearly anonymous one-night stands) is
tres chic.
The Boomers might be more "sophisticated"
about certain things but they don't have
a quarter of the backbone of "The Greatest
Generation". Also, Boomers are born LIARS.
They're the ones who claim to be very
ethnically egalitarian but they aren't
moving to ghettos or barrios and they
don't invite "people of color" over to
dinner. They're just terrific POSERS.
Your hero, Mr. Obama, is a late Boomer
but he's a perfect example of the inherent
fraudulence of their natures. He's a
Centrist Corporate Democrat who masquerades
as a "power to the people" kind of guy.
That was obvious the moment he chose the
likes of Summers and Geithner into his
economic team.
The whole result of the "stimulus" is a
huge SOCIALIZATION OF LOSSES and the
PRIVATIZATION OF GAINS. If you cannot
see that clearly, Asoka, well then you
just don't wanna look.
E.
You said:
Yeah, they do exist. And I will give Q that he is very likely one of the few remaining true thinking conservatives left (not that he gives a damn what I think, nor should he), even though I tore into him when I first started posting here becuase he regurgitated some false RW propaganda.
You asked if I have any suggestions going foward? I wish I did. But as John Adams said about one of the other Founding Fathers (I forget who - I may have even read that quote here), "He knows everything about how to tear down a country, but nothing about how to build one up."
Some people's strong suit is observation and spotting problems, others strong suit is figuring out how to fix those problems once the observers have uncovered and exposed them.
Unfortunately, from where I am sitting, most of this second group of people are sucked into Cable TV Conventional Wisdom and the lucrative Reality Show, which renders them unable to or only with great difficulty to peer outisde the narrowing band of "conventional wisdom" imposed by the Corporate Media.
So we are left with a bunch of "weirdos" who keep being right about stuff time after time (Bush is lying about WMDs, torture will return to Iraq, corporate power is becoming more powerful by far than any other, and on and on) but who don't have the skills and strengths to figure out what to do about it, let alone lead others in a movement.
And the ones who might, like Obama or even Dick Cheney (if he'd devoted his life to something other than money, power and follwing the RW Authoritarian Playbook, he is so driven he might have been a great force for liberty and decency, not tyranny and darkness), are coopted into the Reality Show System, deriving all their wealth, power and identity from it, thus they can't help the rest of us Peasant Slobs in a meaningful way beyond nonsensical "conventional wisdom" without losing all they worked to become, if not all they have.
Either that, or due to human evolutionary design there IS nothing we can do except go extinct and hope the Earth's next intelligent species, if there is one, can do better.
I sure do hope God exists, because if She (I love saying that - it so pisses off the patriarchal authoritarians!) doesn't, then all religion is just another scam to keep the Rubes docile and obedient while serving the Aristocracy and eating shit.
"Just keep quiet, be meek and obey. After you die, there will be complete justice. All those Rich Bad People will get their just desserts and you will receive your just reward for being good, meek and obedient."
As I get older, I can't help envisioning with my mind's eye every King, Aristocrat and Priest/Rabbi/Mullah standing by a Peasant's funeral wake, high-fiving each other and laughing, "Sucker!"
Regarding Obama, now THAT'S an example of both clarity and brevity that I am envious of. I believe the same thing, but would probably need ten paragraphs to say it as well as you said it in one.
I would caution that every generation, like every race, has it's share of assholes, saints, do-gooders, posers, and every other kind of person. Separating ourselves on the basis of generation is as counter-productive as seperating ourselves on race, when the REAL separation is along class lines, wealth and power.
Plus, it plays right into the hands of the Aristiocratic Elite, who fear more than anything a unified populace finally noticing who caused all this, instead of under them, obeying and squabbling like the infants they think we are.
I know we don't see eye to eye on everything, but I do admire your brevity and clarity.
What a load of blather. Look around you - go to any rust belt city and find the wrecked streets of old Victorian houses, by the tens of square miles. You hedonistic slobs took the wires that connected this country to reality and you ripped them out with all possible force. When that was accomplished you started working on the old institutions such as libraries and prisons, emptying the former of books and filling the latter with illiterates. Then you destroyed the military to the extent that we can't defeat armies that wear pajamas into battle. You grounded the space exploration initiative and you gutted the mental hospitals to save the money you stole by cutting the taxes of the idle venal while ordinary folks can't make ends meet. Well I could obviously go on all night but you get the point, don't you? You all make me want to vomit.
-drl
I also enjoy your posts Wagelaborer, and if we have to agree to disagree on a few things, then so be it for we agree on much more than we disagree.
Having said that, you said:
Just a couple points. I don't know that hunter/gatherer tribes are quite as much like Rousseau's "noble savages" as you seem to be intimating.
Technology and energy supply magnify human dreams and nightmares both. I find it hard to believe that there was no venality or screwing over the "littlest guy" among hunter/gatherers. Perhaps the lack of the wealth concentration was more a factor that, until agriculture, there was little wealth to concentrate.
Also, I am guessing that during times of food scarcity, people starved, too. Basically, it may be a matter of the larger scope that increased energy usage, agricultural production and technology allow than the idea that hunter/gatherers were so much more noble than the rest of us because of the system they lived under.
And since we cannot truly know what happened before recorded history (hell, we can't even be sure the recorded histories are telling the whole story), recorded human history is all we have to work with.
Sure, we could probably do better than authoritarian central planning. That isn't the problem. It's that the wealthy and sociopathic are so driven to get what they want, so unencumbered by conscience, and so weasel cunning that they rise to the top no matter what system is imposed and remake it in their image, or so history teaches us.
The either/or dichotomy IS oversimplified (my posts are long enough without adding more qualifications!) but consider it more of a surrogate substitute for "all systems".
You and I might loathe authoritarian central planning, by government, corporations, or anyone else, but history also shows that's where the MONEY and POWER are. Thus, the portion of the wealthy and ambitious who are also sociopathic (and I expect the percentage rises the higher one climbs the rungs of power) will always be attracted to it like moths to the flame.
They will always be scheming and dreaming of how to get theirs, unearned wealth, comfort, slaves virtual or actual, and above all, unchecked POWER.
To me, that's the problem, more than any other. Not the systems we devise but how best to keep the sociopaths from taking control, abusing everyone else and stealing everything that isn't nailed down.
I remain convinced that, thus far, the system of checks and balances envisioned by the Founding Fathers plus the Bill of Rights is the best way to do it.
We can never get rid of the 5-10% of sociopaths who will always be with us. We just have to make it very very hard for them to do what they usually do.
Whatever our other faults and flaws, the old USA kept the sociopaths from taking over the whole shebang for nearly 200 years. The beginning of the end, I speculate happened with the bloody coup of 11/23/63. The middle of the end happened with the bloodless coup on 12/12/2000 followed by the "Reichstag Fire" on 9/11/2001.
The rest has all been waiting for the other shoes to drop.
I wonder if you can believe that I was a former neighbor of Mr. Gates (in the early 1990s). My husband and I moved to Cambridge back in 1961. You may be interested to know that one of the many friends we had in those days included Mrs. Mary Parkman Peabody, a beautiful elderly woman who exuded all the charm, grace, and class you could ever imagine. Mary's son, Chub, was none other than the GOVERNOR of our fair state. During the summer of 1964, Mary, along with Essy Burgess, Flo Rowe( and some others I didn't know personally) were asked by our church leader, Bob Hayling, to go to Florida (I think it was St. Petersburg), to protest segregation at a lunch counter...got the idea from Woolworths, I suppose. Anyway, these elderly,high tone broads caught the attention of the whole country. Dr. MLK, Jr. got involved, when TSHTF! By the end of the whole ordeal, the Civil Rights Act was passed! And who says the 1960s were only about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. To hear young people tell it, you'd think they invented sex. Note to young people: Just how the _ell do you think you got here? Do you think your elders were just playing Canasta? If we were, we enjoyed the daylights out of it.
Mr. Lunsford,
I don't necessarily disagree with you about the boomers. As a generation, we suck. I am sure there some good ones (including me, of course) but I can't think of a single good boomer in National Political life. That's hyperbole, CFN, I'm not really asking that they all be pointed out and discussed.
I think the only reason our resident impediment defends the boomers is because he likes to stir up posters with side issues.
I will ask, though, D. R. that you consider your own birthdate. Anyone turning 65 (born 1945) this year is an OFFICIAL BOOMER. Most people fail to consider this.
If you turn 80 this year (born 1930) I will say two things. One is that while you are not technically a boomer, you were probably shielded from some of the real hard times of the depression by your parents. The other thing I will say is that you are getting pretty old.
If you turn 80 this year that means you hit your teen years in WWII and came of age in the postwar boom.
I've actually got quite a bone to pick with individuals born 1930 to 1950. As a group, you people stole my toys when I was little, you wore out all the new desks and schoolbooks before I could get to them, you bought and traded houses that always (until recently) went up in value. Your stock investments went up for 20 years and you retired on great pensions that are now going the way of the Dodo bird.
Now you are sailing off into the sunset leaving the tail end of the boomers and the X and Y'ers scratching their heads and wondering where the good times have gone.
I will say no more about boomers, if I can avoid it. I don't know who got us into this, but it is a worse use of bandwidth than that infernal Islamic Community Center we were tormenting last week.
(Which looks ugly and out of place to me, VisionCube)
Grad school....then a secretary. I too was a secretary while I put myself through college. (Transfered from BYU to SJSU after I found BYU's political views intolerable.)
I worked at HP Labs in Palo Alto. Dave Packard & Bill Hewlett kept their original offices on Page Mill Drive, even though corporate moved down the street. I was secretary to one of the lab directors, and my cubicle was just yards away from Bill and Dave's.
Given the situation with the resignation of Mark Hurd, I can tell you that Bill and Dave are rolling in their graves regarding his behavior and lack of integrity.
I recall walking down the hallowed halls of HP labs and Dave was walking toward the lobby with Admiral Rickover. (Old buddy from his days of being secretary of defence.) I was a sweet, young thing, back in the day, with really long blonde hair and high heels. Rickover pulled my ponytail and shamelessly flirted with me, saying, "Are all the secretaries models around here?" I looked at Packard and he said with his eyes, "I'm so sorry, you shouldn't be subjected to his nonsense."
Oy vey.
P.S. I always did my boss's travel expense reports, buy he always checked them carefully and signed off that they were accurate.
Yes, those were the days. LOL, divorced my first husband in 1962 after catching him in bed with his secretary! Hubby number 2 I left with his bottle of whiskey. He spent more time with it than with me! Men, heels, all!
NO COLLAPSE JUST YET.
It always takes longer for a system to collapse, than we think it will, because many people are doing all they can to keep it functioning.
Well done, PorC. Indeed, Senor Asoka
is our "resident impediment" and I
damned near soiled myself laughing at
the moniker. Asoka, I believe, is at
bottom a good guy but he gets way too
much impish delight at "stirring up
the animal spirits" over issues that
are "side issues" as you say.
I also heartily agree with you that
the generation born between around
1930-1940 may be THE most spoiled
generation in history. They were
too young to remember the worst of
the Depression. To young to be
drafted into WWII. Too old to be
in Vietnam. But just right to
participate in the upside of America's
world domination after 1950.
The "Greatest Generation", the moniker
given to the WWII fighters, were born
around 1920-1925 ... a BIG ten years
difference. They fought WWII, they
felt the Great Depression immensely.
They lived through TWENTY years of
deflation through 1949 when rents
finally started going up.
Sometimes a HALF of a generation of
time is all the difference it takes
to be a member of a besieged generation
versus a very, very privileged one!!
E.
U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know: Laurence Kotlikoff
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/u-s-is-bankrupt-and-we-don-t-even-know-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html
Too many Asocka's out there saying we can grow our way out if we just make the necessary political adjustments.
Reagan Insider: 'GOP Destroyed U.S. Economy'
"How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy." Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse."
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/110297/reagan-insider-gop-destroyed-us-economy
My apologies PoC if my irreverant comments on religion offended you. My feelings are strong on this matter, though I still consider myself an agnostic because the only thing I am certain of is that I don't know.
I wasn't being facetious when I said I hoped there was a God rather than none, because as many of we in the bottom 99% have probably said many times in the past 2000 years, I would gladly do my time in Hell for my relatively minor sins, if it meant Cheney, Hitler, Pol Pot, Pinochet and all the rest of History's Murderous Aristocrats would suffer torments proportional to the number of people they made suffer and/or die when they otherwise would not have in their quest for the idols of power and wealth.
Your assessment of the landscape is quite compelling, D R Lunsford. I also note that you sign your comments with your name, not some affected pseudonym. That alone says a whole lot. Suffice it to say that most people nowadays are not earnest. The plain fact is - as you point out - we have allowed our societal capital to be desecrated and squandered by people who cannot build what they criticize, denigrate and destroy.
"There is a new generation of biofuels derived from wood, agricultural and forestry residues, and certain grasses is being developed. It is expected to be more energy efficient and to generate less greenhouse gases than current generation biofuels (i.e. made from agricultural crops), without competing with food supply. If sustainably managed, large forested areas could serve as a source for these second-generation biofuels."
Oh. My. God. (if there is one).
Seriously, add up all the imported fertilizer, diesel, rubber for tires needed for the trucks to haul in the residues to the plants, WATER!, pesticides, subsidies, and seriously tell me that bio-fuels are "sustainable".
"David Pimental, a leading Cornell University agricultural expert, has calculated that powering the average U.S. automobile for one year on ethanol (blended with gasoline) derived from corn would require 11 acres of farmland, the same space needed to grow a year's supply of food for seven people. Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion into ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make one gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTUS. Thus, 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in it. Every time you make one gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs.
An acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol. But planting, growing and harvesting that much corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $347 per acre, according to Pimentel’s analysis. Thus, even before corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock costs $1.05 per gallon of ethanol."
Read more here.
http://healthandenergy.com/ethanol.htm
Hancock,
You said, "My apologies PoC if my irreverant comments on religion offended you."
No, no, no, my good man; absolutely no apologies are necessary. If we could have the luxury of ever talking in person you would know instantly that is impossible to offend me by tastefully irreverent religious comments.
In person, the tone of my voice and facial expressions would communicate my own "default" Christ-based agnosticism. On these threads, and in print...apparently that doesn't come across very well.
Remember I said that this thread would be less repetitive if we had a FAQ section and photo icons for each recurrent poster....you know, Vlad on the compound with many adoring Aryan offspring...for example. (That's humor, Vlad, roll with it.)
Well, my icon with respect to religion would be me holding the VERY THIN Thomas Jefferson Bible in one hand with a large question mark over my head...while looking sadly at a list of All the Atrocities caused by All the World's Religions.
It's a stupid photo icon, but you get the idea.
Now, let me ask a question, hopefully without offending. Because I agree with you that November 22, 1963 was, perhaps, THE most tragic date for American history.
And I think if you add in April 12, 1861 and September 1, 2001 you have a Trilogy of Tragedy, that leads ineluctably to the present gloomy situation in which we find ourselves.
But you do not really think it is all a conspiratorial manipulation by our "power elites," do you?
in lieu of
"Peak pretending now joins peak oil, peak credit, peak rare earths, and all the other peaks visible to us humble valley dwellers. Pretending bought America two years of respite from the ravages of fraud and mismanagement, but now the true condition of this society reveals itself like the disfigured ghoul in the sewer lowering his mask."
check this out:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-horrific-derivatives-bubble-that-could-one-day-destroy-the-entire-world-financial-system
Well stated regarding ethanol from corn, JD. And we all know where this foolishness came from, of course.
It was lobbyists for ConAgra, ADM, and corporate farms who provided the main push AND the lubricant of money to the whores in Congress....that gave us corn based ethanol.
It goes to my thesis that we don't need conspiracy to explain current events, only the various elements of American Free Market Capitalism, each acting in its own selfish best interest, driving us rudderless into the future.
With the result that nothing happens in Congress that does not benefit a major contingent of lobbyists...witness Health Care.
Meanwhile, one acre of PV panels on a southern Georgia pecan farm provide the energy equivalent in KW of 8,000 gallons of gasoline.
http://www.ajc.com/business/pecan-farm-to-double-541110.html
But there are NO high-priced lobbyists pushing for this. And Georgia Power is actively spending money through their lobbyists to prevent smaller PV operators from doing solar projects and selling electricity to the utility.
And I'm a long term investor in Georgia Power...but at least I can SEE THE PROBLEM.
Taleb Says Government Bonds to Collapse, Avoid Stocks
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-11/taleb-says-government-bonds-to-collapse-avoid-stocks.html
Does anybody know what is going on in the bond markets? Looks like war in the currency markets, the Chinese buying up YEN to prevent FED from recycling Treasuries.
This one usually trades like a snail with fairly minimal volatility. Look at what happened after FED meeting, historic volatility.
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=TBT+Interactive#chart1:symbol=tbt;range=5d;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
That was my point, Asoka.
What you call forest waste or agricultural waste, Mother Earth calls future topsoil.
A couple of weeks ago, I linked to an article quoting Marx talking about the importance of returning waste to the soil, and also the waste of human waste involved in dumping it into the Thames river.
I would have thought that you, of all people, would have read the link! (Meaning that you seem to read voraciously).
A Bubble Is Building In US Government Bonds
http://jimrogers-investments.blogspot.com/2010/08/bubble-is-building-in-us-government.html
His ex-partner George Soros made a billion dollars in a single day shorting the Pound Sterling. There are huge currency arbitrages happening right now, wish I was smart enough to play them.
Ummm, Cash, have you ever heard of the War of 1812?
The US now has different relations with different countries in the world.
While it feels free to bomb and assassinate citizens of powerless countries, it holds to a certain "honor among thieves" in some countries, like the European members of NATO, or the mostly white countries of the British Commonwealth.
Not to say that the US didn't interfere in Australia to overthrow Prime Minister Whitlam in 1975, or that when Japan elected a leftist Prime Minister who started making noises about US bases in Japan (now 65 years after the war), that suddenly the Congress became very concerned with Toyota brake problems. Until Japan backed off, and now you hear nothing about brakes.
There are other ways to influence governments besides actually invading.
Read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" by John Perkins to see some of the ways it is done.
In any case, the US has access to Canadian forests, oil, wheat and water without invading.
And, by the way, we have people here who can't get over losing The War Between the States, almost 150 years ago.
Yeah, don't like to hear about wars we lost like Viet Nam and the Civil War.
I do not view the Civil War a 'the war against slavery", I view it as the war against localization and the war for debt slavery, federalization and centralization of power in Washington. Prior to the civil war there were many viable local currencies throughout the U.S. and not just in the South. The Civil War ended local currencies and handed power over to the Federal government.
You said:
Nope, you're not offending. Ironically, my feelings on this are much the same as my feelings on the existance of God. The only thing I am absolutely SURE about is that I don't know for sure.
However, since the stolen election of 2000 and all the rest of it, it seems to me that the naked hand of power is showing itself more obviously than usual, lately.
Many can argue about that, though it's all speculation. It may be we can see it because of the vast information sharing qualities of the Internet that, amid the sea of bullshit out here, the truth or close to it resides like a needle in a haystack. It may be that that TPTB are moving faster because TLE and dieoff/keyhole are now getting close and they have to cement their position in preparation for it. It could also be that it's not the dieoff/keyhole, but now that that Aristocratic Crony Capitalism is the unchallenged Master of the World, the brief relaxation of controls over the Peasantry and them plying us with geewgaws, gadgets and a tiny piece of the oil-fueled "good life", is going to be reversed because it's not necessary anymore to treat us any differently than we were treated for 7940 of the last 8000 years.
It could be that, it could be something else. Hell, it could be an "unhappy coincidence" based on simple shortsighted, yet uncoordinated, greed, exactly as you say, but as I have said before, the WHY of it all stops mattering since the result is exactly the same as if their WAS a Grand Conspiracy.
Having said that, do I suspect something is going on behind the curtain? Yes. Criminal conspiracies are tried and convicted every day in the courts. Add to that the fact that conspiracies and assassinations have been part and parcel of the Power Elite's machinations for all of history and now SUDDENLY we expect that it stopped?
Watergate actually WAS a Grand Conspiracy who's investigation to get to the bottom of it was cut of very prematurely, almost certainly before all the ciminals involved were uncovered. What am I then to make of the coincidence (and perhaps that's all it is) that the political landscape of the nation currently looks like it was dreamt of by the Watergate Conspirators?
Do I think the Kennedy Assassination was a Conspiracy? So do as many as 3/4s of the American People and the 1978 House Subcommittee on Assassinations, so on that I certainly am not alone on that one.
History tells us to follow the power and the money. If the Kennedys don't die, Nixon doesn't get elected. If Nixon doesn't get elected, Reagan doesn't get elected.
And since these vast feudal authoritarian changes to our economy and society, most of which can be seen clearly in graphs as having gradually begun in 1980, yes, I connect the dots and speculate that maybe what has been going on for 7940 of 8000 years of history has actually been going on the whole time.
Ever heard of Maj. General Smedley Butler and the Business Plot of 1934? Take 20 minutes to listen to this and understand that we Peasants know very little of what is actually going on behind the Reality Show Dumbshow, and that was true even during FDR's "Golden Age of the Common Man", now long over and probably not coming back because there's no Cheap Oil left.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml
But in the end, did it matter whether the Reichstag Fire was set by the Nazis or by a Dutch Communist? Nope. Does it matter whether Kennedy, Kennedy, King, and Rabin were assassinated by the customary convenient "lone gunman" who always seems to coincdientally serve the needs of the Aristocratic Elite, or a Bush-CIA conspiracy? Nope.
Does it matter whether 9/11 was performed by the laughable official conspiracy theory that 19 guys with boxcutters and no help from an intelligence infrastructure or a Bush-Mossad False Flag Op? On the same day that the USA's air defenses were running no less than four simulations INVOLVING HIJACKED AIRPLANES, one of them actually simulating a hijacked airplane crashing into the Pentagon? And then a couple days later the "lead terrorist's" passport drifts down out of the inferno untouched? Nope.
Ever heard of Operation Northwoods? If not, you should read about it and understand that maybe not all "conspiracy theories" are so farfetched, considering here was a Vast Crminal Conspiracy calmly planned at the highest levels of government.
If JFK hadn't told them no, it may have become a reality. Perhaps like the 2001 "Operation North Tower" became. But you can bet THAT one won't be declassified. Why? Becuase it was carried out, unlike Northwoods.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/11_20_01_op_nwoods.html
www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf
(the original declassified document)
Tell me that, once you know about Gen Smedley Butler and the Business Plot, and about Operation Northwoods, that you can look at all this stuff which continues to benefit the same small group of neolibs and neocons at the expense of everyone else the same way you did before?
what was most revealing about the mosque discussion is not one poster--Asoka, QSKITK, cathy, ProCon--discussed, condemned, supported, the proposed building based on visual considerations
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Cube, I've been meaning to get back to you about this comment. I don't want you to think I'm just some clod who never gives a thought to aesthetics. I am a function over form guy but both do count. In this instance, however, both form and function are irrelevant. The question is: is this yet another slap in the face of the great satan by Islam. I found the British guy's 6 min video VERY convincing.
This is probably a lame analogy but if I have a 10 year old in the local school and I learn that his new homeroom teacher is a recently released pedophile I'm not the least bit interested in the guy's academic qualifications to teach.
There is a difference between petty jealousies, infighting and backbiting that we all know about, and the massive oppression and murder that comes about from wealth concentration, as we know it today.
I agree that the problem is wealth concentration, enabled first by agriculture, and then by mechanization controlled by a few.
We do know some things that happened before recorded history, because, as I pointed out, there are still people living as they did before some of us started recording history.
I happened to have an interest in this, because when I started having children, I wanted to raise them differently than the often brutal, and truly commoditified way that Americans of the late 20th century do.
I read a lot of books on child rearing practices, and some of them referenced tribal ways.
It seems that you are right, and some tribes were downright nasty, and some were pretty idyllic. (Although anyone who's been to junior high school, or works for a living knows about nasty backbiters).
I think that Jane Goodall pointed out that some chimps were loving mothers and some were child abusers, and their offspring reflected that.
Apparently, the easier it was to live off the land, the more egalitarian the society.
Like Tahiti. Man, I wish I had lived there back in the day!
I do agree with you that the problem is setting up a system that has checks and balances to prevent the greedy from prospering.
We don't have that here anymore.
I would go back farther than the coup of 1963.
The Civil War enabled corporations, which had been struggling to prevail over counter-balancing popular forces, to gain in riches and power. They took the money and power and ran with it, consolidating both, with a brief setback with the Progressives, until the 30s, when popular forces made them give up some concessions.
After the coup of 1963, they slowly crawled their way back, gaining momentum in the 80s, and now reign supreme over all of us and most of the planet.
We could live like the people of Tahiti, with our productive forces, in my opinion.
We WASTE so much energy, human and fossil fuel, that I believe that we could cut back to a sustainable way of living, and still live damn well.
But, of course, we also have to cut back on baby production. But in this country, face it, people are as disposable as diapers. Millions of our American kids are born with absolutely no hope for a decent future. Their parents take no interest in raising them to be thinking human beings. No problem. We just imprison them, or entice them into the military, or use them to work lousy jobs.
"Peak pretending."
Absolute perfection Mr. K.
I see it all around me. From joe/jane sixpack to the president. It's a good part of why we're in this economic mess.
Off topic, but I'll play:
I'm a late boomer so I spent the early 60s learning to walk, talk and use a potty :) Got my 3 Rs during the second half of the decade. So...I missed out on the sex, drugs and rock & roll. Thank God! In the 70s & 80s I finished school, got married, had a child and was a stay-at-home mom...
Not sure why DR hates me and don't really care;)
Ok. Now.....
PoC, tripp, etc...I would love it if some of you could get this train wreck back on the tracks. Talk to us about your garden, chickens, latest projects...ANYTHING real, down-to-earth and meaningful. PLEASE. And what happened to Mean Dovey? I miss her posts. Sigh.....
So what did you think about the aesthetics of the WTC buildings that blew to pieces on 9-11?
How did you like the way they looked?
A very interesting post, A