Before retiring to a casket packed with clods of my native soil, I tuned in the Sunday night late news to find the political struggles of Araby banished from the screen. Charlie Sheen was all over the place, his defiant chin thrust forward as if auditioning for the role as our next president. I hope the execs at Fox News were paying attention, especially now that they've lost half their commentary squad to the toils of campaigning. Think of it: Charlie Sheen in the White House. With a pound of pharmaceutical-grade blow. More intellect in one seat than since the night Thomas Jefferson dined with his water spaniel, Hercules. No mouthy "advisors" cluttering up the West Wing (or disrupting the laser light show of Charlie's thoughts). And there is, of course, the memory of his dad, who a lot of prayerful Americans recall as a president, somewhere maybe between Clinton and Bush Two.
An Alzheimers fog creeps across this land, from sea to shining sea, as its intellectual class - theoretically the brains of this outfit - utterly fails to get a grip on what is transpiring in this world. The failure of leadership in America is comprehensive and deep. President Obama's top aide, Bill Daley, floated out the notion that we might draw down America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) so that the imprudent folk who traded-in clunkers for new Ford F110s and Cadillac Escalades won't feel any pain from four-dollar gasoline.
Harken, now - a reminder to the rest of you out there who do not have tubeworms boring tunnels through your brain-pans: there's a reason the petroleum reserve is called "strategic." We didn't stockpile that oil to pretend to be the world's "swing producer" for a month and a half, just to knock the price down twenty-seven cents a gallon so that soccer moms could feel more comfortable bidding for an Auslini Veneto crocodile leather handbag on The Shopping Channel. Strategic was meant to imply when something really really bad happens, like a national emergency, say, with military overtones.
The failure of the news media, trapped by the diminishing returns of technology, grows more epic every week. We've never had more media outlets in the history of this land, or been more poorly informed. Mental fossil George Will fired off a salvo last week against fixing the US railroads. He thinks it's just a sinister ploy to snatch the people's "individualism." Perhaps George hasn't noticed that other things are operating out there in the polity-space to turn the folks of this land into zombies. After all, they were long ago transformed from "citizens" into "consumers" - without a peep of complaint from anybody - so, having already surrendered their duties, obligations, and responsibilities to anything beyond their hunger for Cheez Doodles, they might now find themselves suddenly devoid of "individualism," staggering down the highways in mobs wherever a whiff of blood emanates from a strip mall?
I'd have to guess that the Maryland DOT ran a few lanes of the Beltway through George Will's head, perhaps so he could drag race with Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Senator Jim DeMint to see who can get America to drive off a cliff fastest. Oddly, the basic question that now thunders through North Africa and the Middle East has not been heard on the fruited plains of this-land-is-your-land - viz: who gave this cohort of morons the right to tell us what to do and think?
Which gets us to the true matter at hand: the matter that the world is suddenly exploding in an epic phase-change rearrangement of the political order, starting with the lands that own most of the world's exportable oil. In this vein, a message to readers of George Will and other old-line "thought-leaders" of America's commentary regime: If you think the action in the streets will be limited to these sandy outlands seven thousand miles away, then your last thoughts will not be comforting when the zombies you helped to create turn up slavering in your driveway.
By the way, this doesn't let President Obama off the hook. His consistent failure to tell the truth about the fragility of our situation, to make the case for getting our citizens out of their car-prisons, to promote modes of living that comport with reality - the president's apparent cluelessness in every dimension of this crisis is something that historians of the future will shake theirs heads over in wonder and nausea (if the notion of history even survives the oil age). And for the moment we'll put aside some other rather pressing matters such as the AWOL rule-of-law in our banking operations.
One historian, Michael Klare of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass, made the trenchant point last week that oil nations which undergo political upheaval invariably end up producing far less oil, permanently, no matter whether the political outcome is better or worse than before. So, notwithstanding the media fantasy in our land to the effect that America's founding fathers have been reincarnated in places like Egypt the past month, it is unlikely that there would be anything but an extreme downside effect on the world's oil supply, even if the successor to Hosni Mubarak (as yet unknown) turned up in a powdered wig and waistcoat, with the Bill of Rights magically translated into Arabic in his beneficent hand.
I was a young newspaper reporter during the 1973 OPEC oil "embargo" (so-called). Whatever else history records it as having consisted of - bluffing, hoarding, fear-mongering, market manipulation - a few things are inarguable. It arose suddenly out of a political conflict (the Yom Kippur War), and it disrupted life in the USA to a degree unknown since the Second World War - or for that matter until the present day, even counting the trauma of 9/11/01. My sense of things is that we are now entering an oil crisis much more severe and very likely permanent. If production is lost through political strife in Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Iran, Iraq, or even a lesser combination of them, it will crater the global economy and change how we do everything here. George Will may even find himself having to ride a bicycle down the freeway in his head.
_____________________________
Under the theory that life goes on until it doesn't:
I've recently finished writing a screenplay about the downfall of a too-big-to-fail bankster (and the redemption of three teen-agers). As they say in Hollywood: think American Beauty meets Wall Street. Accepting inquiries, which I will sort out and forward to my agent. Serious professionals only need apply. Email me at jhkunstler@mac.com.
First, like it matters.
Who is Charlie Sheen ? Seriously, I've never heard of him.
There is no more leadership in the country. We're in a "you're going to have to rely on yourself" in the future mode, though no one's explicitly come out and said it yet. Really, I doubt anyone ever will -- some things, you just can't say...like there's no way to correct the course of the nation.
Visit the Leibowitz Society at http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com for commentary and planning during our descent into a new Dark Age.
I remember the oil shock of 1973. It wiped out our public bus service for about a month, meaning I had to take a train to college. It was the start of the 3 day week and power blackouts in the evenings. Events in Libya could do the same, and I am sure the oil markets will get the jitters when the Saudi masses have their day of rage on Friday. Gasoline's now US$8 a gallon in Europe now - where do we give up and get down off the merry-go-round $12?
"...Charlie Sheen was all over the place, his defiant chin thrust forward as if auditioning for the role as our next president."
Scary thought...maybe Sheen should have starred in the movie "Idiocracy". Or maybe we're all starring in it now!
Please Help #WINNING
I'm trying my best to change the world by raising awareness and installing solar panels.
I know it is too little too late.
However,I think this ELECTRIC car will help. (Install a Solar array, charge your car, fuck oil) Yea yea, it takes oil to do everything, we eat it, 7 gallons to make a tire etc. etc... but gotta start somewhere...
PLEASE VOTE it takes 30 seconds.
https://www.drivenissanleaf.com/Win/Vote.aspx?b=Y272Y85WBYZG
Cheers,
Solar Guy.
The right's rage against rail is so stupid as to defy all common sense: some of the greediest capitalists in the history of this nation built that network. At least we do have rails for freight left. We'll rig up any sort of rolling stock we can, like the crumbling cars I recall that RENFE ran, in the late-Franco era in Spain, to move folks on the freight lines when Saudi Arabia finally goes tits-up.
Americans are a short-sighted and doomed folk. JHK asks,
"who gave this cohort of morons the right to tell us what to do and think?"
The electorate, Jim. The morons who waddle into the polling places and, with their chubby sausage fingers greased up from 99-cent sausage-biscuits, push buttons to elect other morons who then go on to enrich themselves while getting voters to vote against their own interests.
Obama, like the ghost of someone substantial from another age of good governance, has folded up like a paper fan before the right-wing lunkheads who, at least and to their credit, understand that less government may be needed at all levels because...
We are broke. Just not in the ways they think. It's our wills and intellect that are broken.
Say what you will about Glenn Beck, and I am hardly a fan, he is one of the only MSM commentators who has discussed Peak Oil. Beck believes we hit peak oil in 2006, so Jim you should give him his due on that, he even had a chapter on it in his book.
The notion that Obama is clueless is wrong, I think. He's simply trying to dodge the task that many before him (and many around him) are loathe to take on: telling the American people the truth. Certainly the first pol that dares to do this will be relegated to the wilderness; such is the depth of craveness and depravity to which the populace has sunk. When have you ever heard the phrase "Americans are going to have to use much, much less energy" uttered on the national stage?
Suggestion:
Google
"How to grow your own food"
Newfie, if you are still up on the rock, and know not of Charlie Sheen, then you need to stay oblivious to him because just even knowing who he is kills brain cells.
JHK likes to tell us about how we'll have to survive with less given Peak Oil. And, often in the same posts, bashes politicians who dare tell the truth regarding the something-for-nothing endless deficits our government likes to run. Nevermind the fact that if you were to tax 100% of the income of people in the top 1% of income brackets that it still wouldn't be enough to balance the budget. He wants to make sure his favorite left-wing constituencies are going to be the ones still getting money shoveled to them even as our econmy continues its decline. There is indeed a serious lack of intellectual leadership in this nation. No doubt about it.
Man, doesn't it seem sort of dream-like right now? I feel like part of a small cadre of people walking around with this crazy, dark knowledge, thinking as I look at others rushing around me: "You have no idea -- and wouldn't believe me if I told you."
Even stranger, sometimes even I feel disconnected from what I know is coming -- sort of turned off from reality for a little break once in awhile, as my wife and I plan a trip out west, or I listen to my kids talk about grad school (Ummmm, maybe you guys should learn large animal veterinary science?).
Man, I know you drive a four banger, but you are firein' on all 8 this week. I'll be yor cornpone demagogue: let us not forget the folks in Wisconsin,Indiana,and Ohio with their struggle against Koch money politicians. TAX THE RICH,
George Will has been consistently eloquent and consistently wrong for decades. On the other hand, Charlie Sheen evidences a more realistic assessment of the current pridicament.
Whenever I read Howard's weekly blog (which is hugely entertaining), I always get the sense that the US is virtually on the verge of revolution or civil war.
I mean is social cohesion truly on the edge over your side of the pond?
All the best!
JHK: The fact is that this is a national emergency; $4.00 per gallon gasoline literally takes food out of the mouths of the children of our poorest citizens. And it has military overtones; since President Obama and Secretary Clinton have declared that Khadafy must go, they can hardly stand by and allow Libya's King of Kings to defeat the rebellion against him. Some hour soon, the U.S. will have to intervene in the conflict, if only to the extent of establishing a no-fly zone by bombing the mortal shit out of Khadafy's air force and anti-aircraft defenses. Stay tuned, folks.
He's simply trying to dodge the task that many before him (and many around him) are loathe to take on: telling the American people the truth.
No kidding. He saw how well that worked out for th e last one who tried that, Carter.
"My sense of things is that we are now entering an oil crisis much more severe and very likely permanent."
Jim, you're an idiot. You've been saying pretty much the same thing every week for at least the last 6 years.
Crisis? What crisis? The price of gasoline went up 30 cents on the loss of Libya's 1.5 mbpd of exports. In 2008, gasoline hit $4.11 (60 cents away). How soon you forget. Since then, and until this winter, the price of oil has been remarkably stable at about $70 or $80. Your prediction was that it would be volatile.
When are you going to wake up and realize that your success rate on matters regarding oil is zero percent.
Now? Really? Now? ... or now? when are we entering this crisis, exactly?
And do you also realize that all the events this winter/spring in the Mideast are one giant Black Swan that you failed to predict?
But they won't change the situation with oil more than $50 or so in the near term. Because nothing is going to change politically anytime soon in Saudi Arabia and The Kingdom has at least 1 mbpd of swing capacity to make Libya and the SPR situation go away faster than Charlie Sheen can say,"Ninja, Please!"
I surmise my ignorance is due to the lack of a television. Thanks for not telling me who he is ! ;-)
JHK, we are the same age and have lived thru the shit ! The part I have trouble grasping is WHY ? Why can't anyone outside of people who have no position to do anything come up with a viable game plan ? All our lives we have been told we, the American people are the greatest. And yet not a single presidential administration since the Big Lie of '73 has been able to come up with an energy plan that cuts off the dependance on middle East oil ? Back in '73 when it happened I remember how during the summer of '74 most people stayed home. Gas had jumped from 45 cents to 80 cents and we thought it was the end of life as we knew it. Out of this event there were as many or more great ideas for droping off the dependancy of oil and conserving energy as we see today. Only the hippie/stoner, back to the earth types seemed to take it to heart and go with it. Things like solar furnaces, solar green houses attached to earth sheltered homes. organic gardening, growing what you need and bartering for what you couldn't produce your self and personal fitness to maintain that self reliant spirit. Lifestyle changes that all of a sudden are being reinvented and touted as new. We've already been there and done that ! IF there's oil down in the gulf why aren't we going for it. There are plenty of others who will and then sell it to us for a serious mark up.
Time looks like it's running out on Happy Motoring for most all except the very rich. Food prices have been keeping pace with raising fuel prices and both are no longer counted in the CPI. I guess if we cook the books it looks better. Just like Wall Street.
See you next week.
Funny. When shills for the plutocracy venture out of their mental gated community, the first thing they see is class war waged at their expense. Upstarts! They should sit quietly and blame a black person for all of this!
Most people don't want to hear how bad things are. Charlie Sheen's antics are much more enjoyable to watch (though I don't actually own a tv and have no idea what he has done).
Staying distracted is simply easier.
But things are not going to be okay if you don't get your act together.
Your body needs to be healthy and your mind needs to be clear.
http://wanderingsagewisdom.blogspot.com
Charlie Sheen is the wizard of Oz right now.
If little ole Libya can cause this wreckage imagine what a real oil producer country revolution could do. $5, $6, $7 dollars a gallon by labor day?
And look at the US flapping their wings in 2 un-winnable wars. Not a thing we can do about any of it.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Aimlow Joe was here.
http://www.aimlow.com
What did any of you expect? It goes in this order; Sell the notion of humans as Blank Slates then practice economic materialism as means of social control while enriching yourself with power or money and call it human progress.
Now you white liberals want to tell the Mexican immigrants that they have to go back to hoeing the corn and forget the F-150 with the "Double Deuces" wheels and tires.
Good luck with that.
FTR I live in the great state of Illinois and having traveled a bit on I-55 nothing quite like a Cadillac Escalade zipping by you at 85mph with an "Obama 08" bumper sticker headed to Springfield or Chicago says, "F*ck Off I got mine" any better.
george should keep his commentary limited to baseball
"The Kingdom has at least 1 mbpd of swing capacity to make Libya and the SPR situation go away"
You're sure of that are you ? Every time the Saudis say they are increasing production, the price of oil just keeps on going up. And they won't allow anyone to scrutinize their reserves data. Mmmm...
In the USA, railroads are PRIVATE. In most other countries of this soon-to-be-larger world, they are GOVERNMENT, i.e. "Public Transport". This is a big difference. Amtrak is a compromise and compromised it is...
The government doesn't care about the railroad and the railroad companies are quite profitable these days with FREIGHT service and they don't care or want to run passenger service. In fact, they are not particularly enthusiastic about Amtrak running on their rails, they just tolerate it, it occupies "bandwidth" they could better use for freight and higher freight revenues.
The world is running out of conventional easy to get oil so the price is going up and up. The MSM does not mention the words "peak oil" at all and places the whole blame on "speculators" and "political unrest in Middle East". Probably it is the speculators who actually get what is happening and thus are buying up oil futures with full expectation of prices going much higher in the future.
Yes, the bankers have yet to be punished. Their time will come...
The populace of the USA is being dumbed down with techno-gadgets. The more access to instant information they have, the more sheep-like they become. Zombies indeed...
Schools are being closed, teachers fired and contracts broken even as the Prez asks for more emphasis on education so our kids can "catch up" with most other countries of the industrialized world including India and China. Fat chance...
So many potholes to dodge these days including in the budget when it comes time to fill up the gas tank...
Flying cars and hotels on the moon in the future? Not likely. However, I seem to see a lot more donkeys and horses in the future and a whole lot less people...
We were once citizens, then consumers. NOW WE ARE 'RESOURCES'....
C-A-B-R-A-1-0-8-0
Pshaw, not to worry folks. I was talking with my neighbor the other day and he informed me that "THEY" know there is enough oil in the USA to last us for hundreds of years if those goddamn left wing bastards would just get out of the way and let the good folks at BP, Exxon, Shell, ..... drill for it.
I guess I best stop impeding them oil companies.
SNAFU
Re: Railroads
Maybe we can get Warren Buffett to talk more about their importance, especially since he's made a major investment in rail and doesn't have to worry about being reelected in 2012.
JHK, great column this week. Casket with clods of native soil. Ha. Maybe you should quit watching so much TV "news", it's all info-tainment scandal of the week, unless something bleeds.
The future for Cheeses Doodles is getting bleaker and bleaker, I heard somewhere on the radio today that 40% of the corn crop here in the US is now used to make ethanol for fuel. That number sounds high to me, but I've not been able to find anything that confirms or disproves it yet.
JHK is a Krugman apologist and Keynesian school boot-licker. Of course he didn't see this black swan event. After all, The Bernank said there's no inflation. If there's no inflation, then there can be no revolt over high food prices in countries like the mid-east.
Occasionally I get updates from the Midwest high-speed rail association. With the Tea party takeover in Congess and several governorships, the news is looking grimmer and grimmer, even with oil over $100 a barrel. From their dispatches:
****
The House bill eliminates the high-speed rail program, slashes Amtrak funding, and eliminates funding to expand transit. It even eliminates all un-obligated high-speed rail funds from the stimulus and the 2010 budget.
****
Today, Florida Governor Scott formally rejected $2.4 billion in federal funds to build the first phase of the Tampa–Orlando–Miami high-speed line.
It might not be a coincidence that this announcement was made before the state received formal bids from private consortia prepared to contribute resources to construction. The decision may be timed to influence the transportation funding debate underway in DC or perhaps Scott did not want to see evidence that the project was financially viable.
The governors of Wisconsin and Ohio also recently declined a total of $1.2 billion in federal funding for new passenger rail lines. They both criticized those projects as wasteful government spending but then, in the same breath, asked to direct those funds to highway projects.
There is an organized attack against trains in the U.S. These officials are killing rail projects to score easy political points, sacrificing tens of thousands of jobs and the long-term benefits rail provides.
But other leaders are showing they have vision. Illinois Governor Quinn reaffirmed his commitment to high-speed rail in his budget address today. He pointed out that Amtrak ridership continues to grow in Illinois and proposed increasing Amtrak funding by 42%. He stated that Illinois will continue to seek high-speed rail funding.
President Obama and Governor Quinn are striving to give the Midwest a fantastic opportunity to reinvent itself. We need your help to build support for their efforts.
"$4.00 per gallon gasoline literally takes food out of the mouths of the children of our poorest citizens."
You should probably consult a dictionary about the word "literally" before you post more of this idiocy.
Should we send the 82nd Airborne Division to stop our poorest citizens from actually taking food out of their children's mouths?
Or how about buying food for children in OUR country instead of invading Libya to takes sides in a civil war for a country with only 6 million people, 1.5 mbpd of oil exports and a lot of sand? Doesn't that sound like a better approach?
Do you really know that little of economics and history? Or are you just generally a complete moron?
TragicHipster said: Nevermind the fact that if you were to tax 100% of the income of people in the top 1% of income brackets that it still wouldn't be enough to balance the budget. He wants to make sure his favorite left-wing constituencies are going to be the ones still getting money shoveled to them even as our economy continues its decline.
Darn those left-wing constituencies and their death grip on the political process! /snark
Reality, of course, it a bit different. Union-busting is the latest national sport. 60 Minutes reported last night that we're approaching the level of 25% of US children living in poverty.
Our budget/debt problem is fixable: return to sane taxation levels like those in the '60s (when our economy was at its most vibrant) and cease spending $1T per year on the business of war.
You sure have read JHK's comments with the wrong slant
JHK,
Knew you were going to talk about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, when I heard the news last night concerning Obama's consideration of tapping into it. Just goes to show how little he understands about how the SPR is supposed to be used. It's all abut the show. How effective he can be to stave off the bottoming out of our economy. Oh and that stock market too. Gotta keep that looking good or we're toast! There's no economy here. How much oil does he think he's got and for how long will the charade go on that everything's the same as it ever was?
We all know that the recession got its momentum with rising gas prices in 2008 and that the blinders must be placed on the people so they continue to think the recession is over and good times are back again. More trickster mortgages. More homelessness. More riches for the guys on top!
The Michael Klare article got my attention as well and I posted a reference to it on the blog yesterday. How many people on the internet took notice, I wonder. I keep thinking boy, are people in for a big surprise. You think the bubble popped in our faces in 2008, well wait until they see what's coming.
New bubbles are a-blowin' for the investor class while the low middle class has had the bottom fall away and they are crashing through the floor into abject poverty.
And talking about the abject failure of the media to make any sense of what's happening. Last week a poll was taken about who is interested in the Royal wedding and it came back that the youth in this country is not into it and most other Americans are not interested. Does that matter? Not one bit. We will have that Royal wedding forced upon us whether we like it or not because the Brits are our allies and that's the end of it.(---You know according to Huckabee, Obama doesn't have the same feeling for the Brits as Americans.)
At the end of last weeks thread OLD6699 says,
"As I have often concluded, the worst thing about life is that it lasts too long"
You have posted some real BS but this has to be the most moronic thing you have ever said! When they handed out brains, did you hear trains? CHOO-CHOO!
I think it will soon become clear to the masses just how "screwed" we are. As it has been said, if the threat of a disruption of less than one % of our oil (Libya) can cause gas prices to shoot up 35 cents a gallon what happens when Saudi goes up in smoke?
When that happens the consumers of America won't be able to scale back purchases of big macs and Ipods enough to off set the cost of 6 and 7 dollar gas.
but I can guarantee you their will be average Americans doing their damnedest to keep the gas tank full even if it means maxing out the credit card.
Why? because thats all they know to do...
for me when it gets to 4 bucks my old pickup will be parked and I will be riding my bicycle to work. If it rains then I'll have my wife take me.
When it hits 5 bucks a gallon She will park her car and just stay home with the kids.
On the bright side, summer is on the way, at least we will have nice weather for the final act...
President Bartlett's son.
We talk among ourselves. It is time to
yell, and not just at each other.
Wow! Way to f*n write man!
Been a while since I forwarded your blog on to triple digit numbers of friends... (I always forward it on to some friends - every week - but this week Jim - I sent it to everybody - last time I did that was with your blog following MJacksons media bereavement...)
You are hot and on a roll - so write another BOOK quick PLEASE!
a fan...
The elite of this country, including the likes of George Will, et. al., are only concerned to keep up the charade of manicured lawns and good profits, until the wall comes tumbling down.
The truth is Americans continue to walk around with their heads firmly stapled to their asses...
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/a-specter-is-haunting-america-2/
OR
http://www.amazon.com/Recovery-Ecstasy-Notebooks-Siberia/dp/1439227365
It is indeed strange to think about a close at hand emergancy, however, perhaps those of us who "see" are wrong. JHK is often bashed because his forcasts are "off" or things aren't moving as fast as he may say, however, I am of the school of thought that it doesn't matter to me if JHK has said a similar warning for six years and I still have my tacos delivered and happy motoring, "something" is going to happen and those few of us see and are willing to think about this. Not that I discuss this much, and have been banned by some about discussing "the change." I'm planning my vacation too, but also, thinking about what may happen and what to do - and enjoying JHK as a focal point of discussion. I'll be glad to be wrong about all this. However, I can't be part of the Sheeple again.
http://schwerpunkter.wordpress.com/
Interesting to watch the price of Silver during all of this. Currently around $36.50/troy oz. Just last year in February it sold for $14.78.
Some may remember when Gold sold for $35.
Also interesting to watch the escalation in prices of a bag of groceries.
Worldwide inflation, thanks to all the Quantitative Easing. Big thanks goes to Ben Bernanke.
And for all of us, get used to it.
But, they say, there is little or no "official" inflation. Yeah, right. Maybe if you are one of the top 400.
I am surprised that gas is "only" at $3.60. And yet with it threatening to head up and up, one still sees people driving new big trucks and urban assault vehicles with paper plates on them. Maybe they are simply preparing for this "urban assault"?
Sadly, it's become more than clear that NO president of the US, is anything more than just a puppet of the US War machine. At least going back 50 years.
Max Keiser talks about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89EIadJ1QeQ&feature=player_embedded
Great article Jim.
emilio's bro, you must have heard of him!
To: Marlin554
--------------
In all the hubub of last week, I didn't register that you are a fan of the Mets.
Pardone moi whilst I double over with laughter...
Are you enjoying viewing the Phillies from below for lo these many years whilst our homegrown and now acquired JUGGERNAUT of bats and of perhaps the finest four aces since the '68 Orioles and is poised to lay WASTE to the NL on the way to a likely Series run?
I am. :):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)
To any who are huffing and puffing in high dudgeon at the thought of talking about Baseball and Cheez Doodles while the world is burning with fever, so to speak... lighten up, Francis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrllCZw8jiM
Life is too short to get so tied up in anything, let alone "CFN-think", to forego enjoying life's small, simple pleasures...like sports.
Tho' I will admit that the Super Bowls are becoming so grotesque that the increasingly excellent football is so overshadowed by ubermeschly corporo-patriotism and grotesquely obscene celebrity outright demigodly worship with a massive slathering of gooey and sticky napalm of the Military-Industrial-Media-Intelligence-Complex (MIMIC) is the game itself is becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy and I don't care how good the football is.
Cheez Doodles will one day be passed around like eight-balls of coke and be TWICE as expensive.
Gen.Hancock1863
CFNation Post 6 & 7/8ths
Mid-Atlantic Chapter
this entire energy mess was the fault of Spiro Agnew
lmfao
Interesting. I was talking to one of my neighbors, in his early 60's, who has a vacation home 500 miles from here and the conversation went like this (we're both in education):
me: "I envision a time when more students get information via some type of tablet computer, rather than lugging around big textbooks."
him: "What if they can't be charged due to electrical supply disruptions."
me: I think our electrical grid is fairly reliable for now. I'm much more concerned about gasoline supplies.
him: I read that Prudhoe Bay on the North of Alaska has massive amounts of oil that could take care of us.
me: How many billions of barrels of recoverable oil does it contain? (BP estimates 2B, I looked up later)
him: I don't know (starting to look defensive).
me: This is the type of thinking from the likes of right wingers, bubbas and Sarah Palanites along the lines of "there is plenty of oil in the US and we just have to find it".
him: You need to learn how to talk to people.
me: Huh! I do not.
him: (getting redder and angry) Just go home; you need to go home, go home!
So I left his presence. Can you guess what stage of the grieving/loss process this guy's in?:
1. denial
2. anger
3. bargaining
4. depression/despair
5. acceptance.
and Martin is their dad, if you're an older generation.
Ever consider Charlie Sheen as symptomatically embodying these times?
Readers here should recognize Charlie as a prototype of what is to come when zombie nation rises up.
Are you this weeks version of the flamer? The crisis is: unresponsive politics,union busting,lobbyists,9%unemployment,banksters on the loose,2 unwinnable/unfunded wars,economic stagnation,unaffordable healthcare,broke cities/states,school districts, and a population that is confused,demoralized and undereducated to the point of not being able to connect policy to outcomes, and let us not forget LOTS and LOTS of guns. This is just a start add rising energy/food and things could get interesting. I think you have confused crisis with Catastrophe and when that hits the tragic climax will begin to play out.
Very true, I can see the days of gas rationing coming soon. Which could force us, as a country, to use oil more efficiently and perhaps really work on developing those alternate energies but we don't seem to act unless we are pushed to the edge of the cliff. At this point, I feel like we are ALL standing on that edge and its crumbling.
You'd think with the knowledge that fossil fuel will run out soon enough (although not today, the whole price surge is a result of speculators), that Big Oil would plan ahead for the days when alternative energy is the only thing available so they could get in on the ground floor but I don't see them doing that. Its like they are going to suck out all the profit they can and then let civilization crash & burn. Their own grandchildren aren't even enough to inspire them to look ahead.
The Tea Baggers are in a total state of denial (even sadder than tiresome old George Will). Baggers are against the High Speed rail and apparently even the use of freight trains. They claim the government's plan for smart energy use is a COMMUNIST PLOT. Apparently the Tea Partiers are on the same stuff tiresome young Charlie Sheen is on -- Other Reality. We already have the infrastructure for trains and trains can run on coal (which we actually have lots of). But when you use Other Reality none of that matters. Other Reality -- sponsored by FOX News.
Spot on, montysanto, Smokyjoe, lbendet, and most especially Cabra1080.
Love that turn of phrase.
Cohort of morons is right. My sense of George Will and people like him is that while they think they are defending the American Way they are really just defending the benefits of their class. Some of them know it and some of them don't. Will I believe, does not. In any case, individualism is something to worry about on a full stomach. If we wanted to fight for it, that should have been done when they started to ship our jobs overseas and when they started to bring in high tech workers from South Asia. Of course the rot of illegal immigration was already established, but that only hurt the poor so nobody cared - certainly not the "Liberals" whose criterion of social justice was based on not having White skin.
Don't blame only liberals for illegal immigration. Look at our corporate masters who hire them & our gov't, who is complicit.
George Will doesn't know what a bike is for.
uhhh...sorry Charlie, but your stats don't add up. Consider doing research beyond AM radio:
Let us consider, starting with the low-hanging fruit, where the money could be found to wipe out the deficits of all 50 states combined, which this year come to a projected $130 billion.
•The extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, enacted by a Democratic-controlled Congress in December with the approval of the Obama administration, pumps $700 billion over the next ten years into the pockets of the rich. Reclaiming two years of that tax windfall would eliminate all the state budget deficits combined.
•Total compensation at Wall Street banks and securities firms last year hit a record $135 billion, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, on all-time-high revenue of $417 billion. The recipients of the Wall Street bailout could bail out the states out of their own pockets.
•The 400 richest individuals in the United States dispose of a staggering $1.37 trillion in assets, an average of nearly $3.5 billion apiece. A levy of 10 percent on the resources of these billionaires would also erase the deficits of all 50 states.
•Combined profits for all American corporations rocketed upwards in 2010, hitting an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter. A tax of eight percent on those profits—the same percentage as the cut Walker seeks to impose on schoolteachers and park rangers—would eliminate all state deficits.
•US corporations are currently sitting on $2 trillion in cash, refusing to hire workers despite collecting tax cuts that are supposed to be incentives to do so. A levy of 10 percent on that idle cash would provide enough money to eliminate not only the deficits of the states, but the deficits of all cities and local governments too, as well as preserving the jobs of hundreds of thousands of public employees.
•Hedge funds assets rose to $1.92 trillion in 2010, the highest ever, up from $1.18 trillion at the beginning of the year. Given a standard earnings formula of 2 percent of total assets plus 20 percent of the increase, hedge fund bosses stood to collect roughly $186 billion in personal income. An 80 percent tax on that income—less than the percentage rate on multimillionaires levied under the Eisenhower administration—would produce more than enough revenue to put all 50 states in the black. (It should be pointed out that the top hedge fund manager, John Paulson, had a personal net profit of more than $5 billion in 2010, while more than a dozen hedge fund bosses had personal incomes above $2 billion and many more took in over $1 billion).
Contrary to the claims of the politicians and the media, it is not difficult to find the money to close the state and local budget gaps, with enough left over to begin a massive social rebuilding program. Implementing just some of the above proposals would generate sufficient funds, for example, to provide jobs in the next two months for 5 million Americans.
Pretty infantile, no? He would have taken a poke at you, I bet, had you stayed in his face and if he was bigger than you. The RW Lie Machine has brought their Right-Wing Authoritarian Follower's nature to the fore, whereas if our national discourse and political system were healthy, would not be as dangerous as the razor to our collective throats he and the millions of Hannidiots, Beckerheads, and Savage Weiners out there.
Our Kinder-and-Gentler-Brownshirt-in-Training cadre. Was he a big beefy guy? Will he make a good Economic Relocation Camp Guard? Can you see him jamming his billy club in Jimmy Carter's stomach as the old man collapses gasping to the dusty exercise yard?
This what years of dumbing down the education system combined with massive mass behavioral psychological manipulation (even if it isn't all a big coordinated CT but just a whole bunch of immoral Alpha assholes, men and women moving a bunch of product and stealing everything that isn't nailed down) has resulted in.
The Perfect Consumer.
Which is just a gussied up way of saying The Perfect Feudal Slave. Dukedom without the mandatory bowing, Kingdom without the crown, scepter, and ermine.
Want to understand the phenomena better, so as to better understand what is happening so that when this train wreck gets closer to it's Final Destination you will be a step ahead of everyone else?
Start with this:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
You won't regret reading it.
Here's the rub. Human "civilization" has been around for thousands of years, subsisting off of the land using whatever "solar" energy came trickling down into the plants, wind and streams. Industrial "civilization" has been around for only a couple of hundred years. In that mere 200 years we have burned through most of the "fossil" resources to build up huge, resource-intensive, mega industrial complex that people just a few centuries before could not have imagined.
This edifice was built on the premise of ever-greater inputs of energy and raw materials from a finite earth to keep an expanding economy growing on this same finite earth. When the fossil fuels, water and materials are used up then technology is "expected" provide an "app" to create more energy, materials, water and land mass for growing populations out of thin air. As they say, there's an "app" for that. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?
What remains to be seen is how this zombie populace will react when the lights go out and the pumps run dry. That's in the next chapter of the Long Emergency...
Keep up the good work Jim; you are a true seer.
You're losing the Canada you love because someone is profiting from it. - Wage
Wage, re your reply to my comment last week, whose side am I on? I thought it was self evident from my comments. It's not on the side of the financier/CEO kleptocracy. It's on the side of the of the average joe and his wife and kids. And yes, someone is profiting from it. But there's more to it than just a matter of money.
And I guess I'm culturally deficient, I didn't recognize the song.
The left vs right thing up here isn't totally artificial. You don't understand the extent of the rot up here Wage. That's fine, you don't live here after all. But I'm immersed in it.
Let me give a quick example: If I were to assemble a couple hundred Americans, randomly drawn off the street and if I were to give them a list of names and places: Audie Murphy, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Vicksburg, Gettysburg - I would bet that you'd get a large proportion of people knowing who these guys were and what those place names are about.
If I were to do the same in Canada: Aubrey Cosens, Arthur Currie, Big Jim Stone, Passchendaele, Beaumont Hamel (a tip of the hat to the Newfies), the Scheldt, Kapyong - hardly anyone would recognize those people or places.
It's as if we've scrubbed these things from our collective consciousness. This is just one example. We don't know who we are or where we've been.
First: Relative to your question "viz: who gave this cohort of morons the right to tell us what to do and think?"
That depends on WHICH group of morons are you talking about? The Hosni Mubaraks and Mullahs of Iran and doddering 7th century kings of the house of Saud who are in charge of these countries? OR are we talking about the morons in the crowds, regardless of which country, who assaulted the now formerly liberal TV reporters and other correspondents (who were, in fact, the best friends and advocates of their cause)and who reported their crowds as being modern day Jeffersons and Kasimir Pulaskis mounted on camels, when in fact they are modernly educated 7th century people wanting to reinstate sharia law so that they can spend their Sunday afternoons NOT watching the NFL, but watching a good stoning or beheading for adultery (women ONLY being sentenced, of course) before giving their wives their weekly beating, whether they need it or not, and prior to chasing down a daughter for a good old-fashioned honor killing. Face it! The whole middle east is composed of barbarian people, and they are all, by and large, morons motivated by religion and emotion. Being a moron is an equal opportunity state of being, regardless of how much, or how little, money and political influence you have.
I think the future of passenger rail is in plain, old, conventional rail, not high speed given the latter's astronomical price tag.
When the sheer impossibility of maintaining the intercity/interstate highways manifests itself in the coming decade, given our broke governments and hot mix asphalt and diesel prices that will go up 3 to 5 times the present, governments will be partnering with the likes of Warren Buffet and the other rail owners to get some bare-bones passenger rail, back on the tracks, literally.
Maybe bus operators, who will be enjoying increased ridership, but having to deal increasingly with broken pavement and closed and rerouted bridges, will jump into rail as well.
It won't happen overnight, because, even with much diminished maintenance on the highways, it's going to take some years for them to really start falling apart, but time is not on the interstate/car model's side and fall apart they will.
This is something that the electric car crowd really just doesn't get either. That is, the roads are still built with much oil, diesel, and in the case of concrete roads, natural gas. There will be rebellion at the various schemes to tax and provide revenue for road repair in light of the rapidly declining gas and diesel per gallon taxes. That is, electric car owners will want to plug in, unplug, and drive on roads sans taxes, and the roads, given much increased construction costs, and the lack of fuel taxes, just will never be what, up to now, they have been.
People will start pulling coaches from the tourist railroads to run on the remaining rails, one way or the other. There will be no $$$ for high speed rail.
Notice that we don't even have to talk about air service at all anymore in these future travel discussions.
Are you saying the RWs run the education system?
As for this tax the rich schemes, they sound good, but let me ask what percentage are they paying now of all those billions they are skimming off the top?
As an Illinois resident I pay an estimated 25% of my income as taxes, not including sales tax which for the most part are discressionary expenditures.
And I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that the wealthy are Democratic party supporters of tax the middle class till they beg on their knees types. I don't expect much from the Dems except they will move the AMT just past government high level hack wages so they won't pay.
[blockquote]George Will may even find himself having to ride a bicycle down the freeway in his head.[/blockquote]Or better yet, perhaps George [i]could[/i]take the train down the freeway.
After reviewing a little history, especially that of America, the automobile and the "Interstate Highways Act," - it dawns on me that most logical course of action is a complete reversal of infrastructure support for Interstate highways and another "unprecedented" Federal outlay for nation-wide passenger/truck rail service.
My tiny-minded perspective suggests a mix of developments which would build upon currently efficient rail corridors by expanding their capacity to carry passenger trains without disruption from freight operations.
In other areas feeder rail lines would use existing interstate highway right-of-ways to "patch" locations that have no existing rail corridors.
I've looked around America, and what I've seen shows that our Federal Highway Act effectively doomed efficient passenger transportation and much rail freight operations. Another Federal Railway Act could bring back efficiencies to passenger and light-freight operations.
Screw "high-speed" bullshit - what is needed is the outright abandonment of all but one or two nation-wide highways and a complete federal endorsement of all freight and passenger travel by rail. The truckers can still carry the goods the last 100 or 200 hundred miles.
To see an example of what the FHA did to a typical urban area's rail operations take a look here.
http://notesting9.wordpress.com/
Howdy tragic, Per your clip: "Never mind the fact that if you were to tax 100% of the income of people in the top 1% of income brackets that it still wouldn't be enough to balance the budget."
How about we claw back all of the money the top 1% has squirreled away over the last 2-300 years and let them live on the same crumb size allotments they think are deserving for the rest of humanity. If that does not take care of the debts we tell the creditors to "step the fuck off".
Perhaps this concept is occurring in the Mid-East eh?
SNAFU
Jimmy Carter had the guts to warn the American people that the country must break its addiction to fossil fuels. Furthermore, in the four short year's of his presidency Carter was successful in reducing America's import of foreign oil by 50%.
The Reagan administration's first presidential act was to remove the solar panels that Carter had installed on the White House roof. The Reaganites argued that America was built on consumption,not the moral virtues of Carter's conservation push.
The American people rewarded Carter with a re-election defeat and Reagan with an additional four years.
Tell 'em what they want to hear, not need to know.
To: ProgorCons and all the rest of CFN...everyone:
------------------------------------
I exited stage left/center on Friday with a big ol' smile on my face, and one that lasted all through this lovely spring weekend, even rainy yesterday.
How could I possibly imagine the most hilarious and enjoyable outcome was awaiting my return to CFN before dawn this morning, to catch up on the thread and read JHKs newest Monday morning laugh-fest?
You all saw it. Seven minutes after I left. SEVEN...MINUTES.
That's all it took. Classic David Spade passive-aggresive wormy, cowardly, weasel. Classic RW Authoritarian Follower's impotent projection. Classic and oh so precious. (claps hands and laughs)
And did you see that SnowflakeII and RI ACTUALLY WOUND UP ON THE SAME SIDE FOR A COUPLE POSTS? I can die now. I have seen everything and need to see no more in this world. Time to see if God really exists...................... ;P
(pantomimes imaginary thumb and forefinger gun to temple)
And now... playing on CFN radio - call letters WLBTRD 108.7 FM is DJ Bluebelly HC Hammer and this song is a shout out to his little nails out there, you know who you are!
**********************************************
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qljzunen80k
**********************************************
Remember the posts he made to me when his rabidity was just starting to ratchet up where he said he thought I was watching every word scrolling by with my veins pounding or something, you remember? When in fact, there is demontsrable evidence now that SnowflakeII was describing himself is his diatribes.
Wonderful! Seven...fucking...minutes is all it took. I could not have asked for anything else better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2THs3oNooM
Living well and being happy are the best revenge, are they not, ProgressorConserve? I think I have made abundantly clear what I was talking about regarding baiting fools for entertainment purposes and I hope I have given you some thoughts about how to more swiftly resolve your RI issues that only degrade you and empower him, no matter how much you might not want that not to be true.
Gen.Hancock1863
CFNation Post 6 & 7/8ths
Mid-Atlantic Chapter
P.S. Holy crap! Did you get a load of that guy (or gal) NewWorld, last week and now again this week. Talk about a laughably textbook Hannidiot! Talk about a brainless parrot!
"Blank Slate Theory! Blank Slate Theory! Rrrraaaaawwwwkkk!"
The transparent mendacity of a toddler, whee! The Crying Wrestling Fan comes to CFN! Can you believe infantile weak-minded idiots like this have brought our beautiful old USA so low? I did all my raging and crying, now it's time to laugh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvTNyKIGXiI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpjrPC6ngH0
(said in fast-taling lawyer end-of-commercial radio voice)
"This post does not imply any disrespect to NWA or to the legions of honest and honorable wrestling fans and crying wrestling fans, who at age 30 or later still enjoy wearing their Terry Funk Underoos while enjoying a fine night of the Hannity-Beck Double Hour of Power on Fox."
Rabblechat,
Why wait until gas gets to be 4 bucks a gallon to ride your bike to work, etc? Isn't $3 plus a gallon bad enough? I tried to walk as much as can be done where we live, but with no sidewalks and no side of the road, it is a taking your life in your hands. Still, the more folks see people like us actually doing something different in terms of lifestyle, the more the idea gains credibility and popularity.
Here's a thought for everyone: folks spend lots of money to join area health clubs, but I never see them incorporating exercise and health into their daily lives. They don't walk or cycle to work,and want the parking space closest to the door at the supermarket. The local fast food joint is a favorite hangout for the the local gym crowd!! What a hoot! Ha! Let's see how long that lasts!
I try to bring up the conversation with co-workers, neighbors and friends about rising gas prices, PO and all, but they just shrug it off or dismiss the idea as kooky. It seems some folks have enough income to absorb the cost, at least for now. Must be nice.
Hi Newfie - are you really a Newfie? My father was born there when it was its own country, not part of Canada. I don't know who Charlie Sheen is either, being one of those weird people who doesn't watch TV, but I'm sure if you Googled him something would come up.
"Reality Optional Nation"
Perfect.
Although I should be inoculated against it by now, I'm consistently surprised at the heat of the deniers that come to this site and spray the place with their spittle of denial and explosive diarrhea of cherry-picked "facts" and bat-shit crazy political rectitude.
Maybe I'm finally getting it. It's appearing to be all about fear and being irretrievably spoiled.
I guess if one can "refute" the future and present realities of which Mr. Kunstler writes so well and entertainingly, it simply won't come about, and the status quo of toys and never-ending comfort will continue forever.
I'd like to tell these "folks" that they probably shouldn't bet their kids' lives on that, but it's not going to get through the cocoon. No more bothering with that from this sector. (For which, they'll likely think they've "won" somehow. Just watch.)
Rabblechat,
In my response to your post, I hit submit too soon. I didn't mean it to end sounding like I was criticizing you, or to imply you could afford high gas prices!
It was a late night last night! I apologize for any implied nastiness!
Hannity is a Blank Slater, he is your "respectable conservative" opposition.
Wordism is dying. Magic thinking while fun is still magic thinking.
Its why I say, "The left is comprised of cults rigidly segregated." Because if it were not segregated it would splinter into a million pieces that not even Sean Hannity could puff up into a juggernaut that his "opposition" to sells books.
You back to the Earth white liberals don't even have the decency to ask the colored folk outside your coalition what they think, you "assume" they share your ideology. Last I noticed LaRaza and the NAACP existed to get more for their people, and more does not mean giving up the cars, the bling and the stupid pop culture you all deride.
Hating white people and displacing their children is evil and that is about the only thing the Left has in common, cuz its certainly not a love for organic farming (a demo whiter than the KKK)
Excellent, youse guys!
"...stages of grief..." yep
Got nothin' to add! ;o)
Actually George Will's observation is right on though the conclusion he draws from it is totally whacked.
Not too bad really even if that thought looks like it came from some of Charlie Sheen's blow.
It is true that bombing down the freeway at 70 mph gives one a deluded sense of freedom and independence.
I don't agree with George that having people believe something that's not true is a good thing, apparently he does.
If we eliminated cars and TV maybe we might embrace the ideas of the men of:
. But that's my delusion.My TV-B-Gone is in the mail, I'm getting the kit.
Now if I can make a kit with a strong enough Electromagnetic Pulse to bring the freeways to a screeching standstill.......
I'd be doing my part to build RReality Mandatory Nation.
That would be a good thing but making an EMP pulse generator work off a nine volt battery is kind of hard.
"George Will doesn't know what a bike is for." -7MMM
Sure he does! A bike is for seat-sniffin' after the female rider has dismounted.
(Heck, everybody know THAT. ;o)
Newfie, a while back someone said they'd never been to a McDonalds. Jackieblue says it was her but I seem to remember it was someone else. Was it you per chance? Seriously, you never heard of Charlie Sheen? If you're not bullshitting then a tip of the hat to you. And if it was you that had never been to a McD's then a second tip of the hat. And why don't you own a TV? Just curious.
To: Wagelaborer
----------------
I was watching some good old Western movie faves with friends recently and had a momentary thought of you.
It occurred to me that I was watching one that reminded me of CFN, metaphorically-speaking. It's sort of a tongue in cheek tip of the hat to the old Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns of the late 60s, but with a decidedly modern bent.
I don't know if you enjoy Westerns; many Liberals and Lefties don't. Their loss.
Anyway, the movie is called "The Quick and the Dead" and one of the protagonists is played by Sharon Stone, who plays a female gunslinger come to town to fight a gunfighting contest with a bunch of...er...um...louts for a $100,000 prize.
I don't want to say anymore lest I spoil it for you, but that if you watch the movie know that I consider you to be the Sharon Stone of our little CFN town.
I guess that would make JHK the "John Herod" character - LOL - and if you decide to watch the movie know that your character, Sharon Stone, gives the "Vlad" Character, played by a barely-recognizable Kevin Conway, a poetic and very satisfying outcome.
Give it a try if you want. I think you would enjoy it, even if Westerns aren't usually your thing for it's not a typical Western at all.
Both funny and sad, very nuanced, with a sophisticated plot that doesn't bore. And you may find the Sharon Stone/Kevin Conway denounment entertaining and even a bit cathartic.
Wage, I found that Pete Seeger song.
A few weeks ago, I flew from New England out to California, to visit family. I almost didn't go, because I was so terrified about the state of the world. But, I reasoned that if TSHTF, at least I would be with my family... anyway, I was happy to have a clear enough sense of geography to be able to know where we were travelling over, on the plane, from Boston to Chicago, until it clouded up. (Ski resorts in Vermont, the whale-shaped Lake Oneida, the Great Lakes, Detroit, and a few other very distinct markers constituted a terrific cheat sheet). Jim, I waved, as we flew a bit to the south (I think) of your abode. I am absolutely confident that you will remember this, very clearly.
Anyway... I don't want to make this too long, but while I was out there, we went on a tour of a Jelly Belly jellybean factory. Ohhhhhh, the essay you could write about that place! I think I spaced out on parts of the tour, mentally, because I was trying to imagine what you would say about it. At least, a few months or years ago, you would have written a great essay about it. Now, it seems that we all have far more pressing concerns... Seriously, the whole tour was about how they process thousands and thousands of tons of sugar into tens of millions of jellybeans. There were insane-looking enormous robots everywhere, doing most of the work... the tour guide cheerfully explained how the robots were gradually taking everyone's jobs away. There were mosaics on the walls, of various American presidents, Elvis, James Dean, a bald eagle, etc etc etc, made entirely of jellybeans. Yes, Ronald Reagan had MANY mosaics devoted to him. I looked for a mosaic of that crying Native American man from the anti-pollution commercials of the 1970s, but I didn't see one. In the lobby, they had a completely gratuitous machine with which small children could take their own pennies, from their own pockets, and make them worthless by crushing them, via a powerful (safe, but powerful) hand-operated set of levers and gears, so the pennies looked like a freight train had run over them, and them stamping their now-worthless pennies permanently with the logo of the jelly bean factory. Somehow, that machine was just so perfect, to cap off the tour... The line for the machine was enormous, as you can well imagine.
They gave out free samples at every stop on the tour. Even my nieces felt sick... I was on the verge of death. The adults in the line, me included, were making plenty of nervous diabetes jokes. We may have missed the inconvenient fact that there was very little that was funny, happening there.
Seemed worth mentioning.
"Let me give a quick example: If I were to assemble a couple hundred Americans, randomly drawn off the street and if I were to give them a list of names and places: Audie Murphy, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Vicksburg, Gettysburg - I would bet that you'd get a large proportion of people knowing who these guys were and what those place names are about." -Cash
You'd be very much wrong, and I'd hope you didn't put much on that bet.
Vlad,
Wonders never cease. I read your post and can't believe it but we agree almost 100% right down the line. Except for your last sentence.
Hi Newfie - (my father was born on the Rock before it was part of Canada - I've always wondered if Newfoundland got screwed in that deal). Well I don't know who Charlie Sheen is either, since I'm one of those weird people who never watches TV, but I suppose he is some character in the media. You could find out if you Google him, but maybe it's better not to, because as a previous poster said, just knowing who he is might kill some of your brain cells.
Claw back from the rich and balance the budgets. Build a high speed rail network, manufacture it here, rehire the teachers, fire fighters and police officers. If its all about jobs then lets have more real jobs, not more speculators. Tell the PTB its not going to be every man for himself, its going to be one country for all.
But before this can happen we need one brave man to step forward and level with the American people about what's been going on since the Corporate Coup d'Etat of 1963. To embrace the truth about our history will enable a moral cleansing and a clear eyed view of the dire energy future we now confront. Its time for America to grow up and put away the toys and delusions of childhood. Can you step up, Mr. Obama?
He hasn't so far and now he has had enough time.
He has shown his stripes and they don't include civil rights.
KATNIP KID, I get a kick out of your typification of your local gym crowd. Let me give you a chuckle in a similar vein. The gym I go to is connected to a local hospital, both organizationally and physically. Because of this there are powered doors for entry as well as regular doors. With relatively few exceptions, gym members press the buttons to open the powered doors rather than pull the manual doors to gain entry. Hilarious! Then too there are the great number of enormous, vulgar SUVs parked in the parking area. The per capita number of large SUVs is striking. I have wondered whether there is some arcane connection between having a monstrous SUV and going to a gym? I will say that this gym is fairly upscale. It is not part of a low-cost chain. Accordingly the membership has a greater percentage of the more affluent residents of the area. So what does that say about their mentality that they should be driving road behemoths? These are the people who drive the aspirations of the masses.
The future ain't looking very promising.
Hogwash k-dog without whites as the stand in bogeyman the left collapses. The beehive for the Left's fringe cults Kos can't go a whole thread without one of the minders bashing whites (heads nod in agreement).
On a free forum the white haters are driven underground rather quickly, Vlad did that here in a few days but at a moderated site with cult minders it is a bashapalooza.
The joke called "anti-racism" is nothing but a codeword for anti-white. Without it the tofu eaters dreaming of clean safe public transportation have no commonality with the "oppressed" people of color who want stuff, ergo the Left falls apart.
To: EDPELL and the rest of CFN
-------------------------------
I'm going to look into this and come back with a molecular biologist's opinion on it - it's abit afield of my main areas of knowledge for me to say anything without more study, which will take time.
How long? No idea. Hang around if you want, Ed. I'll still look into it and come to CFN and chat about it, regardless, some time.
Plus, since in all likelihood I'll be looking at abstracts instead of the full peer-reviewed journal articles (damn those $$$-firewalls!), it may be that I still won't have a GREAT knowledge of the process.
Any other CFN leftie, hippie, tiny-ponytail-wearin', patchouli-smellin' bio-types want to chime in, in a timelier fashion? Be my guest.
I don't know which planet you're living on, but every time I go to a news website I see something that proves that Jim has been right all along. All his predictions are going to come true. Stick around, the party's not over yet. And I daresay those of us who have been paying attention to what he says are going to be a bit more prepared for a world made by hand than those who think it's all bullshit.
Do you really know that little of economics and history? Or are you just generally a complete moron?
============
Could this possibly be Tootsie under, yet, another new name?
Divide and conquer. LOL.
i can't wait for gasoline to cost ten dollars per gallon .
then i will be able to walk to the beer store without fear of being run over.
assholes !
Daughter an A/B student first year of college, no clue who MacArthur was. Well versed on MLK thru her black teacher in HS though.
DubiousFacts, could you elucidate on the Corporate Coup d'Etat of 1963? I was in high school in 1963, so I remember the time. I also remember my parents being told by a teacher at my high school regarding my graduation class, "after them the deluge." The comment seemed both cryptic and quite ominous. That was in the mid-60's. Obviously, something must have been clear to this teacher. Is it connected to your comment about 1963?
Hi Helen - I live on The Rock, but I'm not a native. I'm one of those weird people that does not own or watch a TV. A long time ago I decided TV programming was just that - mind numbing, brain cell destroying, mind crack - so I stayed away from it. Peak oil is going to be interesting here. Newfoundland produces oil but all of it is shipped to The Empire. All refined petroleum products are imported, some from Araby. And almost all of the food on The Rock comes by boat from the mainland. Any oil scarcity is going to translate into a crisis in this forgotten corner of the world. Hah! I don't know who President Bartlett is either. Thank Dog for that.
I guess they figure they are compensating for being bloated energy and resource hogs by "working out", ie: producing nothing and sending their personal energy into the same void that their tailpipes feed - the rapidly deteriorating Earth and its oceans and atmosphere.
No doubt it all helps them feel superior to the little people who actually work, as seen from the majesty of their high riding heated leather power seats. Too bad they don't realize that their asses are going down with all the rest.
If you think everything Jim says is bullshit and all the people who don't agree with you are morons and idiots, why don't you just stop coming here? Are you actually the same person as tootsie and a few other people that have been posting here in the past? A little common politeness and civility will go a long way in the future we are facing. Why not start practicing it now?
Does this mean that the price of a hot dog, soda, peanuts, and popcorn at the ball park will soon be going up ?
I read George Will's remarks regarding the revival of railroads, and I don't perceive his comments as necessarily "anti rail".
The High Speed rail plan as conceived by the Obama administration is nothing more than a costly boondogle that will build high speed where it is needed the least and where it cannot support itself.
As Kunstler himself has remarked on several occasions, our government will become increasingly ineffectual in the LE, and any system dependent upon government support is doomed. The "high speed" rail system is doomed from the inception, as it will supply HS service where there is little demand for any rail while neglecting important markets. Worse, it will be too expensive to justify itself and service will end up being infrequent and unreliable because the customer base will not be there to support it.
What we need is Rapid Rail, which is speeds of 100- 150MPH, such as what we had in the golden days of private railroads. It is better to run trains reliably and frequently at 80-110mph, a speed that is much more economical from the standpoint of both energy costs and the cost of building the roadbed and equipment, than it is to build a super expensive super=fast system that will require much more energy to run and will also require vastly more expensive infrastructure and equipment, and will only be able to run infrequently.
My belief is that private railroads such as Union Pacific and Burlington Northern will be happy to step into the gap and provide this service as once they did, IF, and only if, they are assured of a level playing field, which we do not have right now. At this time, railroads are operating in an excessively regulated environment, under regulations promulgated 60 years ago that were designed to destroy our railroads- and we are now tossing massive subsidies in the tens of billions in subsidies to the private air carriers, as well as subsidizing airports and air control.
Remove the subsidies to the railroads' competition- automobiles and airplanes- and revamp rail regulation, and we will have railroads again.
Zen 17,
I agree wholeheartedly with your message, but you need to give proper attribution to the muddy water posting on your blog site. I know exactly where it came right down to the page number,and who exactly should be credited--BFK on LHC.
Yeah, I met the man in 79, gliding across the floor doing that last element. Stayed with him quite a long time, too.
Actually, Jonathan, saying stuff like "This is the type of thinking from the likes of right wingers, bubbas and Sarah Palanites" probably isn't the best way to get your point across to your neighbour.
It's better to explain things to people who don't share your views, and if they haven't a clue, that's best of all. So, it's the letters to the editor in newspapers and magazines, radio talk shows, any forum besides an Internet site populated by those who've already heard what you want to say. We are an eccentric voice of doom to most people. They will listen, entertained by the novelty.
We are not without remedies. The exercise of law. A constitutional convention to curtail the structure of spending, and the assumptions of big government. No more reelection campaigns paid by the profits of lobbyists. No more federally-mandated spending programs. An end to the litigation society. Tax plastic. Tax gas and coal, build nuclear power. Build trains.
Our doom approaches, let's yell about it, decorum no longer matters.
Hi Jim and all the gang,
Reality really does appear to be optional in this country!! Watching Charlie Sheen be devoured by the media in a cannibalistic frenzy that would make a school of pirahnas look tame, was well sad and scary. What really struck me was how all the interviewers actually treated him as a sane guy and this was somehow accepted as valid journalism. When it was very apparent the guy is in some serious need of detox and psychiatric treatment. I guess all that fame and money drove him crazy. But we see that all the time with the young entertainers who brave the industry and are subsequently chewed up and spit out, if they are lucky alive, plenty don't make it out alive.
As for Libya, at least Bob Gates injected some desparately needed reality onto the proposed no fly zone nonsense. The sec def's red light on the project shows an awareness on some level of the gov't that the US is in too deep and simply can't take on one more war. Hopefully this awareness will continue to seep into the consciousness of the nation to force some real change, like slashing the pentagon budget by 50 to 75%. Wouldn't that be nice, oh well a person's got to have some nice daydreams in these "times that try men's souls".
I find myself thinking "I smell the seventies" every time I pass a freshly raised price on gas. In our neck of the woods gas is up this am to $3.69 a gallon, so yeeehaaa, break out the saddles and ponies cause we're gonna need em!
loveday
Have a great week gang
Read thse 2 books: JFK and The Unspeakable, and Blood, Money and Power: How LBJ Killed JFK. To me this is highly convincing evidence that a rude conspiracy of Texas oil money and elements of the CIA/Defence Contractors complex planned the execution of an American President, thus turning history in their favor and against the interests of citizen idealism and world peace.
The subsequent coverup of the facts created a schizoid split in the consciousness of the American people, a frightened unwillingness to question authority, and led to the creation of the cowed class of consumer droids we see around us today.
Charlie's Sheen has now turned sour and gray!
Anyway, oil is climbing in price. It really has nowhere else to go but up. Since the psychopathetic Libyan leader of autocratic insane dictators has unleashed his terror upon his people and the production of oil, which is the mainstay of his economy, his oil production and delivery systems are being "cratered".
Obama continues to flap his tongue all around the inside of his mouth delivering a message with little substance. The Reichwing Chicken Hawks who were so "gun ho" to go into Iraq and Afghanistan cannot decide if a No Fly Zone should be enforced by the US military in order to protect the Libyan protesters. As was earlier reported, The US was going to send refurbished tanks to Gaddafi before the uprising took place. What were they thinking? Let's reward the insane murderers. But, over the weekend we read that the US corporate elite love dictators. It's good for business.
When will the Cheez Curl Crowd of Palin/Bachmann/Scott Walker eaters begin to realize they have been corralled into the new work-for-free labor program, while the elite charge them for working and living with a 17% revolving credit with compounding interest rates of 27% wake up and stampede the bad men?
Probably never. The Dumb American cannot compete with the guts and vigor of Libyan and Egyptian protesters, or even the Wisconsinite labor protesters. There are just too many Cheez Curls and Pepsi to consume while watching reruns of Mr. Ed and My Favorite Martian while permanently reclined in the Lazy Boy Recliner hoping to continue to receive their government checks.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
The biggest workout-freaks I know all seem to like huge F250 pickups or H2's etc. I can only assume that whatever is motivating them to have bigger and bigger muscles also guides their thinking in terms of vehicle selection.
http://www.kitco.com/charts/livesilver.html
36 bucks an ounce? shit i hope the werewolves don't come tonight. I am meltin' all my bullets!
Hey k-dog, I've got one of those TV B Gones. They're great. I just have to be discreet when using it in public places so people don't assault me when they find out why the TV just went off.
I pick-up heavy tings and I poot dem back down! Dat is wat I do!
Dude we are THERE.
You must know my husband.
Our House IS going up in value NOT.
It's way under water, we owe twice as much, and pay half the mortgage while we rent the fucker out. It's beautiful, we can't live there cuz he is sick and no hospital in that town.
We're KEEPING it. He is a bully.
no fun. taking me down with him.
Denial. Works for some.
It ain't goin' up in value, not in my lifetime, if ever.
You guys are living in your own worlds.
Of course this is just my opinion. But sometimes I get it right.
In the USA things are not ok. It's not the peoples' fault. It's the guys at the top who took the money and ran.
I am a simple person but I get the gist of it.
Regarding high speed rail---all we really need are trains that go from point a to point b that allowed bicycles to be securely hooked up without having to be dismantled first, so we bikers can ride to our destinations. Let us just start with smart policy for our current rail system.
And, how about more car transporting rail, so we don't have to drive from Pittsburgh to DC or NYC or Maine on the highway. We just ride with the car on the train and then remove the car once we arrive. This is done now from Virginia to Florida.
HSR is ridiculous when we cannot even support our economy currently. A HSR through the wine country of California, and the cost that would incur makes no sense. The train to nowhere for billions of dollars.
GM should have begun to build better engines and rail cars for the existing rail system instead of cars that will be sold in China.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
I remember the oil shortage of the 70's.
And what I see is when it really happens here, it's going to be much much more violent.
Because here where I live in general there is MUCH MORE VIOLENCE. Attitudes, and gangs.
People drive worse and more aggressive than ever.
WTF we live in a paradise as far as location goes, but for the most part, it sucks because of the rudeness of others, and so many godamn cars, and tailgaters. They will run you off the road as they look you in the eye. Really, for real.
Gangsters are robbing folks on West Cliff drive.
The Tourist Spot. In daylight and night.
Lovely. They are all over the neighborhood I live in. Creeps. Monsters. Losers.
It positivly kills me. My neighbors pay for the gym and go there all the time and then they hire someone to push a lawnmower around their yard and to shovel their snow. I say do it yourself you lazy SOB and get some exersize? doing sumthin' productive. I go to 'de gym. I pick -up heavy tings and I poot dem back down!
The bullying attitude of American foreign policy is unconsciously mirrored by many of its citizens. "Lets go kick some butt" shows up as mass shootings, road rage behaviors, steroid induced beefcake football players and right wing diarretic hate speechers. Its all about "America exceptionalism" but as things unravel that's going to be a more difficult facade of manliness to maintain. Kind of like looking for introspection in Charlie Sheen.
The Charlie Sheen Machine.
And we thought Tom Cruise was a bad.
Sheeeit, Charlie is one scary guy.
Beyond Manic.
Maybe too much money did it to him.
Seems to me that he is trying to be like Hugh Hefner.
Funny you should metion robots:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07krugman.html
sheet O3, i got all those questions right on Jeopardy, If it was't for Wilson I would be a gazillionaire by now!
If Lara's not an older generation is Martin still there dad ?
haha.
Hi CASH,
I said I've never eaten a Macdonalds hamburger cuz I haven't.
I have eatin' fries and pies, way in the past tho.
Yep never ever had a burger there. Once I had a chicken thing at BKing.
other than that, I bar b que my own steaks and burgers.
That shit they call meat scares me.
The places are great for Pit Stops on Road Trips!
:)
Hi Newfie - I totally agree with you about TV being mind-numbing swill. I especially hate the car commercials. I think they are a good part of the reason why people are still buying those monster SUVs. They like to show them tearing up beautiful roadless areas, but of course most people who buy them only use them to go to the grocery store. I do own a TV but it isn't hooked up to anything that gets any TV signal, I just use it for watching videos like The End of Suburbia, documentaries I get from the library etc. I especially like travel videos because then I don't actually have to use any gasoline to go somewhere...The Newfies did once upon a time know how to survive without much imported food at all. (As did everybody else in Canada and the US, actually.)They grew potatoes and other root crops (fish guts and seaweed make great fertilizer), they had big root cellars, ate a lot of fish and other seafood. They built pretty much everything they needed from local materials. I just read an excellent book entitled "Tilting" by Robert Mellin about an island off the coast of mainland Newfoundland where there are still vestiges of this former way of life. It might offer you some good ideas for a world made by hand on the Rock.
And I guess they'll be bringing back that Newfie Bullet train one of these days.
Excellent Movie.
I agree with your assessment Laura. The problem is that 'regular' rail has no glam and therefore, it will be tough to get anyone (you know; the extremes of either political side) to defend OR fight against it. THAT is really what HRS is all about.
HSR is nothing but a throw away, in the 2012 budget process. It allows BHO to look magnanimous removing his 'pet project' in order to reduce a REDICULOUSLY bloated budget down to something that they other side can live with. Both sides get to claim victory and still nothing gets done for the people.
Rail is certainly a viable solution for short to intermediate (500-1000mi) distances. Sure it would require that we (and some of our employers) re-think travel and our ability to be in two places at once. My folks jut took Amtrak from Virginia to FL to visit family. They left at 5:15pm and arrived at around noon the next day, in Orlando. Slow, by air standards, but not nearly as stressful or hectic. I have taken Amtrak from Virginia to NY on several occasions and prefer it to driving.
Any other CFN leftie, hippie, tiny-ponytail-wearin', patchouli-smellin' bio-types want to chime in, in a timelier fashion? Be my guest.
Since I almost qualify;
15,000 gallons of diesel full at 136,567 Btu/gal yields 2,048,505,000 Btu.
1 Btu equals 1055.056 joules. From which 2,048,505,000 * 1055.056 = 2,161,287,491,280.
So 15000 gallons of diesel produces 2,161,287,491,280 joules of energy.
Sunlight at high noon falling on a square meter produces about 1000 joules of energy in one second.
An acre has 4046.825 square meters so at noon on a clear day an acre can produce about 4,046,825 joules of energy in one second at 100% efficiency.
2,161,287,491,280 / 4,046,825 = 534,067 seconds
It is not high noon all the time and I could figure out average solar energy for a day but I’m going to be lazy and just double the number to account for 12 hours of darkness and leave it at that.
534,067 * 2 = 1,068,134 seconds. This works out to about 12 days.
Remembering that it is not always high noon probably pushes the number out to a month or so, maybe longer. I’m actually surprised that the number is somewhat realistic. I expected a much longer period of time.
So far I have resisted links -- aimed at my reptilian neural circuits -- on just about every website I've been too lately, about Charley Spleen. On the few TV shows I watch from the few stations I get there are constant repellent promos for his Sitcom. The show seems to be about a make believe moral universe where he bags a new babe every episode with his dimwit costars drolling. Now what I think I've picked up from osmosis from the geist of www is that he went on a drug filled rant breaking all manners and polite discourse, torpedoing his Sitcom show. In the funhouse mirror of popular America Reality the drug induced rant was a transgression, a morbidly curious accident on the side of the road. Actually, the transgression was the sitcom and the rants were his redemption(tho I haven't listened to them) as they ridded us of that lameass sitcom. Now to tie it together, as JHK did somewhat, what we can use from Obama is a drug induced rant. His pathetic attempts at maintaining normalcy + decorum as if things will just be alright is not going torpedo this lameass sitcom that is America. Such a move would not be "strategic" as it would be too much for the childish level of public at large to comprehend. The strategy will be selective statistical data and ideational confusion that build a case for reelection, you can bet release of the reserve will be a part of that.
How long can the Saudi Kingdom continue to buy off its people from revolt? $2000.00 or more everytime there is a threat of revolution. I cant agree more with Jim and many others. We are about to hit deep and uncharted waters in collapse.
The elites are playing with fire. On the one hand they can afford 10 to 5 dollars a gallon gas and the middle class on down wont. I am not a fan but T Boone Pickens was quoted in the Dallas Morning News today that this continued political insablity will result in $300 to $200 for a barrel of oil. Obviously that is way past Heinberg's Goldilock's price for oil.
"Actually, the transgression was the sitcom and the rants were his redemption"
Interesting view, I must agree.
I agree that a new nationwide HSR is not needed and is unaffordable at present, but it does make sense for certain corridors. Beyond those areas there is a problem with medium speed passenger trains sharing the existing rails with freight, this is where much more doubletracking and better signalling would payoff at a fraction of the cost and environmental impact of new right-of-way.
And more provisions for bikes and scooters (presently banned, even 'tho it makes total sense), and more auto transport railcars. For America to have an air and highway transportation system that is so clearly a hostage to mayhem overseas is a national security threat and suicidal behavior.
Big fucking' deal. So you take all of the rich's riches. And lets assume that as you say, all of the states deficits are put to rest. What does one do next year. Remember, you already took all of the rich's money. The deficits that you fixed for this year will all start mounting again because you only put a band-aid on the cause for one-fucking-year.
State and national deficits have come about from over-promising circuses and cakes. Until entitlements are restructured we will have this fiasco hanging over our heads. Tax the rich? Be my guest..but it won't solve our problems.
K-Dog, your assertion is based on 100% of solar, which it is not. Best I have seen to date rates about 30%. What are you using?
Don't get me wrong, I am all in favor of solar as an alternative, not until efficiency of the panels and the storage methods are dramatically improved.
"How about we claw back all of the money the top 1% has squirreled away over the last 2-300 years..."
How about I show up at your front door and tell you to give me all the money you squirreled away? How bout that?
Carter told the truth, again and again. For his trouble, he was run out of office. Obama is just not making that mistake.
I'm also fairly sure it's been quietly explained to him, away from cameras or recording devices, just how easy it would be for some secret service agent to NOT stop a bullet aimed at him or his family.
So... truth telling. Not much upside in it for Mr. Obama. Big downside.
I'd like to think though, that if Obama gets a second term and doesn't have to worry about re-election, that there may be quite a bit of truth telling. The kind of things that most people don't want to, or perhaps, can't hear any longer.
But personally, I think he'll do the safe thing, like always. I've seen no evidence of spine in him. He'll probably take his package and disappear, much like Bush.
OK Newworld and Ozone listen to this;
Not long ago our Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin was speaking to soldiers at a Canuck forces base and he referred to the allied invasion of Norway, not once but twice.
Well. I saw it like this: once is a slip, twice a slap in the face. Why? Because this was coming from the leader of the party that dismantled our military and disdains our boys and girls in uniform. I could see in my mind's eye liberal hipsters doing high fives wowed by the slyness of the insult.
Around the same time our Liberal Defence Minister Thomas McCallum referred to "Vichy" instead of "Vimy". Now, Vimy Ridge is a place where Canada suffered 11,000 dead and wounded over the course of four days in 1917 dislodging the German Army. And Vichy is the name of the collaborationist WW2 French regime. McCallum said by way of excuse that he's not up on his history. Um... sure. More laughter from the hipsters. Later he claimed to never have heard of Dieppe.
OK maybe these are all innocent mistakes. But the Liberal Party and its supporters aren't shy about their adversarial relationship with English Canada and their scorn for its history and heritage.
The current Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff used to teach at Harvard. He wasn't shy either about his disdain:
"But modern patriotism is always tinctured with irony, with the sense that we are no longer quite what we take ourselves to be. Who entirely and unreservedly thrills to the raising of a Union Jack? It is both the battle standard and a hooligan's underpants and because it's both, it's claim on the heart is muddied. In the case of the Canadian flag, I cannot entirely forget that it is both my flag and a passing imitation of a beer label."
So witty, so literate, so urbane. Passing imitation of a beer label? And this guy wants to be Prime Minister? Fuck me.
In another speech he derides Canada's efforts at peacekeeping as inadequate and "bogus". Inadequate maybe but "bogus"? Tell that to these guys and their families (an honour roll of dead Canucks going back to 1950):
http://members.shaw.ca/kcic1/peacekeepers.html
You know what's more depressing? Two thirds of the folks here vote "left" ie Liberal or NDP (socialist) or Bloc (a separatist Quebec party) or Green and so are on board with the Martins and the McCallums and the Ignatieffs. Have been for a good four decades.
So I guess we can have a debate about which country is more culturally and economically decayed and who's going down the crapper quicker.
At $AU 1.40 per litre our fuel here is already over US $5 per gallon!
I don't really see why North Americans should be paying less.
And FWIW I rarely drive, preferring to cycle as much as I can because it only takes ~ 150Watts of my power, not 10K watts or more of fossil-fueled power, or to put it another way 66 of me on average to hurl a largely useless (but potentially lethal) payload around.
Ridiculous by any measure...
Like the last tree on Easter Island, no one is worrying too much about the end of oil. It will happen someday to someone else. Meanwhile there's supposed to be a couple of trees up on the hill over the other side of the island.
RT said: "... doing sumthin' productive..."
===============
RT, I agree we need to do something productive, because we only have four more days until the Days of Rage in Saudi Arabia, TSHTF, and the end of the American way of life based on petroleum.
Here is one idea of doing something productive: create a vertical keyhole garden:
http://bit.ly/hSfF1g
Thanks, RT for bringing the discussion back to our reality. I think permaculture is the key to reality.
(reality is not optional; even suicide may result in you being recycled. Suicide is a delusion and is not a way out of reality.)
PRD:
"Man, doesn't it seem sort of dream-like right now?"
You said it, brother. I feel the EXACT same way as you, apparently. Not sure if there are many others.
Mila
That shit they call meat scares me. - Jackie
No kidding. A disc of grey paste fried in sludge.
You can smell a McD half a mile away with that suffocating grease and salt vapour billowing out. I shudder to think what the "chicken" is made of. Probably chicken fat, skin, guts, blood, glands and salt.
I remember a show I saw a long time ago where they had a meat inspector saying he would never ever take his family out for hamburgers. This was fear from the informed.
"Carter told the truth, again and again. For his trouble, he was run out of office. Obama is just not making that mistake."
Carter was an inept douche. So too is Obama. And so what if he is run out of office for telling the truth. Big fucking deal. So he isn't willing to speak truth to power so he can hang around for another four years and do what? Stage more Motown themed parties off of the WH back patio? Fuck him.
Who is Charlie Sheen? Is he Black? Is he a politician? I don't have a TV.
Google cannot explain the meaning of the cultural reference JHK made today.
"I don't really see why North Americans should be paying less."
They aren't. When you factor in the cost of troops in the ME they are paying as much if not more than the rest of the world.
"Who is Charlie Sheen? Is he Black? Is he a politician?"
Shut the fuck up. You know exactly who he is. Douche.
ian 807
I agree with you, the last time anything approaching truth was heard in the Washington beltway was when Jimmy Carter told America to put on a sweater in the winter(gasp). He was promptly crucified for that piece of practical advice. Obama sadly has reneged on every campaign promise he has made-"TO BE CLEAR"... he lied. Oh well, he probably couldn't done much anyway.
regards
loveday
Schwerpunkt:
I love your blog.
Mila
Of course you don't agree: according to Liberalism, Whites aren't human and have no rights. Their only purpose to take blame and work off their "debt" until they die. And by definition, the debt can never be paid. Yet still we are supposed to try. You know you really should re-think this. I mean don't you ever get tired of just hearing what you already believe?
OK Smartass, I'll take that deal. You can leave me my house and my job (if any) and my first million dollars and take the rest to fix the infrastructure and give the schoolteachers and police back their jobs. But this applies to EVERYBODY, no cheating. How bout that, jerk.
He is an actor in his mid-forties, the son of Martin Sheen (an actor who was in the movie Apocalypse Now and on the tv show West Wing). Charlie also has an actor-brother Emilio Estevez. Sheen has been in a tv show "Two and a Half Men" apparently very popular -- I've never seen it.
He has gone off the deep end with drugs, drink, women, etc., and is now very popular for his bizarre (CRAZY) life, interviews, comments, twitter feed, etc.
So how many of these Muslim Nations are we going to invade to support the Revolutions that we fomented? Saudi Arabia too? Tanks in Mecca? Iran too? Even though they have vowed to take the war right to the streets of America? All at the same time, right sport? I assume you support a ressuming the draft. And who will gain from the carnage? We'll do the heavy lifting and reap the hatred, and the Muslim Brotherhood will be the gainers. Did we not set up a Muslim State in Kosovo? Do you think they are greatful?
Thank you, mila59.
I was living outside the USA for over a decade, and I don't have a TV, so I'm not up on USA popular culture, though it appears I'm not missing much.
I appreciate your CONCISE-less-than-one-screen answer (k-dog approved!)
Speaking of dream-like, this was the lead story today around here.
http://www2.tricities.com/news/2011/mar/07/heavy-rains-send-portable-toilets-sailing-ar-887302/
Not to worry, they will get it all fixed up before the big race.
All this is fun, and I enjoy the chit chat. But, where are all of Pakistan's nukes? Does anyone know? Maybe Bin Laden knows.... Anyway I can grow my garden and feed myself and friends without oil, but one hot nuke will really spoil my day.
"'who gave this cohort of morons the right to tell us what to do and think?'
The electorate, Jim."
You mean these morons?
"George Will...Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Senator Jim DeMint"
The only one of them an electorate gave a right to tell people what to do and think was DeMint, and that was only a majority of the voters in South Carolina. The rest were hired by media companies and have only a small but vocal minority of listeners, readers, and viewers supporting them. There may be plenty of blame to apportion to average people for failures of thought, but the lion's share of the fault here goes to the rich people who employ "these morons."
Crazy or not he got the best of the the hyper sensitive anti anti Semites. They condemned him for calling a Jewish guy by his real Jewish name cuz now people know the guy's a Jew. I guess they don't want people to know to know that Hollywood is run by Jews. Are they perhaps ashamed at all the garbage they pump out?
I go into McDonalds once in a "blue moon". I am pretty health conscious so most of the offerings are not very appealing and some of it is downright sickening. But the chicken wraps seem alright. I grew up with TV when it was all the rage, broadcast in black and white, in the 50s and 60s. But drifted away from it when I went to University. Got into books and philosophy - Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm - anti establishment stuff. Now I have a laptop and a fast internet connection and I prefer to get information interactively. Something about being zombified and passive in front of the boob-tube as I am force fed information turns me off. I do have a projector and large screen and watch films - indie and documentaries and old Hollywood back when they knew how to make movies. I recommend The Story of Crude from ABC.
Cash said: "Not long ago our Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin was speaking to soldiers at a Canuck forces base and he referred to the allied invasion of Norway, not once but twice."
=============================
But Cash, he was correct -- April 1940 and May 1945! Don't believe Canadians were involved in either operation but let's not sweat the details.
Maple Leaf Up
Yeah but the speech was about the Normandy invasion.
Well, I believe I was addressing someone else. But your reply will do. And I agree. This is EVERYBODYS responsibility. Not just that of the rich. So how does that make me a jerk? Fucking jerk.
"Mental fossil George Will fired off a salvo last week against fixing the US railroads. He thinks it's just a sinister ploy to snatch the people's 'individualism.'"
The George Will of 20-30 years ago might be appalled at the George Will of today. Back then, he considered himself an American Tory, a fan of a New World version of Churchill's "One Nation Conservatism," which would have been all in favor of fixing up the rail system. Now, he's drunk the iced tea of the right-wing populism that passes for "conservative" (really authoritarian) politics. That brew seems to have diminished his intellect.
Besides, a conservative inveighing against trains in the year that the first installment of "Atlas Shrugged" premieres in theaters? Ayn Rand via her Mary Sue character Dagny Taggert would be appalled.
Like I said, fucktard asoka-herself already knew who Charlie Sheen is.
Mont, if you don't mind my asking what country do you live in? I can't remember whether you ever mentioned it. Does the "Montsegur" handle refer to where you live? Interesting choice of name given the Cathar association.
Two come to mind:
1. In Twilight in the Dessert, Matt Simons wrote that engineers have a pretty good idea of how fast a particular oil well can be pumped. Pump it too fast (for political reasons aka Saudi Arabia) and you end up leaving a lot of oil in the ground, never to be recovered. Short term myopia=Long Emergency.
2. Around the inner city here in Miami, we have much fallow land and many fallow people. The people are in a bind, they cannot jeopardize the government payments that provide them just enough to get by (but never to thrive), by working. What they need are ways to earn cash, but every kind of local law conspires against them. Grow a garden and sell the veggies? Sell mama's pies? Set up a lawn mowing business? Day care at home? Chicken eggs business? Strictly prohibited or strictly prohibited without thousands of government licensing fees. More than anything to mitigate the coming Long Emergency we need to get local officials to do something that they almost never do: repeal laws. Specifically those laws designed to give a nice pretty, sterile suburban life that prevent the poor from working for themselves must go now. Because one day in the not so distant future many of us may find ourselves in that same situation as the currently fallow people.
Cash, check, just enjoying a moment when such a mistake becomes a correct statement by chance.
Cheers
Speaking of authoritarian politics, I think it's time that "corn pone fascists" reappear in your essays. So far, their appearance and rise to power has been one of your better predictions. In particular, I'd like to read what you have to think about Scott Walker and his ilk.
Oh, and here's an interesting coincidence. One of the most respected academic authorities on Fascism, Stanley Payne, is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I wonder what he thinks of the events playing out on his doorstep.
James you give Obama too much. His name will be remembered about as well as an average nobody in an average graveyard. If history survives the turmoil of the times to come an ineffectual president will be forgotten. Remember James you personally doubled the name recognition of Millard Fillmore.
That's true enough.
Cash stated / asked: "Does the "Montsegur" handle refer to where you live? Interesting choice of name given the Cathar association."
==================================
I live in Germany. The Cathars were interesting for me a while back and "Montsegur" is not a terribly overused internet handle (although popular enough). I have visited Montsegur; it is quite a beautiful region.
Cheers
I have so much trouble signing in on this site, and can never use "Reply" to any of the posts. Also, my comments seldom show up, possibly because I'm a right-leaning independent and even (the Horror!) a Tea Party fan. Not "tea bagger", which is a moronic insult to an adult female who is incapable of such an act physically, and who finds it personally disgusting on top of that. The high speed rail controversy amazes me. Ohio has decided to return Obama's "gift" as the plans were to run it from Cincinnati, through Columbus and on to Cleveland. A ticket would cost more than the current price of gasoline would entail, and the trip would take longer. This also leaves the rest of the state with no rail service. We live in the extreme northwest part of the state and my husband (age 69) drives 34 miles round trip per day to go to work (Yes, he's still fully employed so we're not sucking your take-home pay.) Expecting him to ride a bicycle to work during an Ohio winter and through some really rough parts of the large city in which he works is as ridiculous as expecting me to ride a bicycle to and from the nearest grocery store at my age and with advanced RA. Our small town was killed when the state decided to consolidate and took away the local schools, which led to the closure of the bank, gas station, grocery and hardware stores. We are an abandoned community as are so many in rural American. Guess what? Neither Bush nor Glenn Beck caused that! We can't move closer to the "big city", where we could both stroll to either work or the nearest grocery, while dodging bullets, because it would be impossible in Ohio's current state of collapse to sell our very modest two-bedroom home and buy another. You can't get a mortage at age 70.
Even I know who Charlie Sheen is and have read some about his multiple problems, usually reported by breathless gossip commentators. The question comes to mind....Why was Mel Gibson so vilified and Charlie Sheen basically receives a pass for much worse behavior? For the same reason that George Bush is tortured daily and Obama, a much worse and more clueless president, bathes in hero-worshipping rays of sunshine? I'll put Rush Limbaugh's intelligence up against that of Keith Olberman's any day, and I'll win. So far, most of the comments of the right are substantially civil. The left slings slurs and taunts of "Corn-pone Nazi" (What they hell does that mean?), tea bagger and NasCar Loving Idiot constantly, despite the phony entreaties of Obama for a "more civil" public discourse. If someone likes NasCar, how does that hurt you? Are they coming to your house at night and siphoning off your gas? If you aren't hurt personally, then shut up about it. I'd much rather have a Southerner for a friend than Eric Holder or Obama, always willing to throw you under the bus if it's convenient for him. To solve the public employee problem, haul your own trash, teach your own kids and clear your own driveway. We homeschooled our kids with fantastic results, but are paying over 4 thousand dollars a year in property taxes to finance the huge new school built to house the students siphoned off from the small towns. I'm not sure how a two hour bus ride to and from school and the loss of community support is supposed to be an improvement. Test scores are down, but teacher pay and taxes are up which thrills the left.
I wonder if the Obamanator might intervene in Libya ? He might calculate it will calm the markets and send the price of oil back down. Possible ?
Tigerdog said: "Anyway I can grow my garden and feed myself and friends without oil, but one hot nuke will really spoil my day."
==================
Reality, or what you perceive to be reality, can change irrevocably in an instant. Today I am a Hindu (I'm still a Muslim atheist, too) and I want to share Shankara's teaching on "reality" with this beautiful parable:
Or it could be the match that sends Saudi Arabia over the edge and the price of oil will go up in flames. But not to worry, that would be taking a stand. Not his style.
Newfie, relax.
There will be no USA land war in Libya.
Obama is too smart for that. Even Bush-appointed Secretary Gates is too smart for that.
@Helen Highwater -
Could you please stop polluting the airwaves with this kind of tripe?
I happen to be quite concerned with the oil situation in the world and the US, but I also feel the bullshit, doom fantasy/predictions JHK spews and the fact that they never come true are one of the biggest obstacles to developing any kind of sane approach to problem.
If I can read this column in MY time at work in two minutes every Monday morning and occasionally respond to the idiocy here with facts and logic - that is perfectly within my rights - and none of your fucking concern.
What? Did you just discover blogging yesterday? I can't be here because I don't say things that you like and fawn all over JHK like the rest of these pathetic sychophants?
tootsie is probably correct about asoka knowing damn well who Charlie Sheen is, but I'm pretty sure JHK just learned of him last week. Perfect timing. The pop-culture references to NASCAR [always mispelled Nascar] and zombies is getting a bit old. Lady Gaga already has enough mileage.
OK....I was listening to Am LateNite Radio and the host says 'call in'.
The first callers a guy from Jersey whining about 5$ gas...HIS SOLUTION,INVADE THE COUNTRIES AND TAKE THE OIL!
And those of us who dont watch TV didnt know about Sheen till the media made him the latest Lindsay L.
'I'd much rather have a Southerner for a friend than Eric Holder or Obama'
Hahahaha
Hows Ohio overall? Rustbelt? Detroit 2?
He was getting 1.8 million $ per show!
Proudly Many of us can say 'What show, never saw it'.
Well, Cash, I don't consider the military or its operations the basis of our civil society.
To me, English Common Law is much more important to the old US way, the way of laws, not men (now overthrown) than any particular battle of WW11. And by the way, our laws were based on English Common Law, not Judeo-Christian tradition, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out, but you seemed to forget in last week's thread.
(” … [W]e know that the common law is that system of law which was introduced by the Saxons on their settlement in England, and altered from time to time by proper legislative authority from that time to the date of the Magna Charta [1215 CE], which terminates the period of the common law…and commences that of the statute law…. This settlement took place about the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century…. Here, then, was a space of about two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it…. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians, and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are able to find among them no such act of adoption, we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. …”
– Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814. From Andrew A. Lipscomb, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson , Vol. XIV, Washington, DC: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903, pp. 85-97. Quoted at the Ten Amendments Day site.)
Every year on the 4th of July, we Greens get together and read the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, plus a few selections from our founding father's words.
Everyone else blows up shit and drinks beer.
Who is upholding the values you profess to cherish?
The military-industrial complex has done more to destroy our republic than anything except for the corporations gone wild.
Why would you hold them up for admiration?
A British friend in SanDiego said 'More and more Indians in SD'.
Yes, the press says they are sneaking in thru Mexico.
There werent many here [LA] 10 years ago.
Now they are 'the new mexicans' YIKES.
till the media made him the latest Lindsay L.
==========
Lindsay who? Christ!
I can tell you about Bill McKibben or Chalmers Johnson, (though I missed that Chalmers had died, until I learned about it on CFN. Thanks, Wage!)
Charlie and Linsay seem to be an optional reality not part of my reality. I don't even want to know about whoever Lindsay L. is.
Jim Kunstler this morning:
“An Alzheimers fog creeps across this land….”
LOL I note that one of the side effects of statins (anti-cholesterol drugs) is confusion "cognitive difficulty" and some memory problems. http://www.statinanswers.com/effects.htm
I can’t help but wonder, seeing as big pharma has every white anglosaxon male in the USA on these drugs, if we’re seeing a whole series of less than acute decisions slowly leading to the wrap up of the empire – sure seems like it, and it’d be so ironic that it just sounds right..
"I have so much trouble signing in on this site, and can never use "Reply" to any of the posts." -JOO
Ah, one more thing to be grateful for today. ;o)
You're preaching to the choir here, Katnip!
I am trying to manage 25 acres with hand tools. Can't do it.
My husband has no interest in gardening or home repair.
He does, however, do to the gym to work out. And, yes, he drives!
This drives me insane! I have post-holes to dig if you want upper body strength.
I have stuff to haul if you want aerobics.
Why waste oil to do fake exercise when there is SO much work to be done?
(And here I sit on the internet instead of being outside working).
"Charlie and Linsay seem to be an optional reality not part of my reality. I don't even want to know about whoever Lindsay L. is."
What a fucking lying phony. "Wow, man...I don't do the TV thing...never heard of them."
Bullshit. Even if you don't have a TV you can't escape these assholes if you spend a mere 5 minutes a day on the fucking internet. Game up, asoka-yourself. Everyone knows you spend just slightly more than 5 minutes a day on the internet. (Fucking phony liar.)
I like you, Jonathan, but I do think that it would have been better if you had asked your neighbor how long the oil would last, after you asked him how much there was.
That way, he might have been inspired (as you were) to go look it up himself.
And it may have changed his mind.
That's the point, right?
@ Juletta, I too have trouble with the sign in & replying, so don't assume you're being blocked because of your views. As for the name calling: spend 5 minutes reading the comments on Beck's blog/Blaze. You see the exact same thing in reverse - calling libs/radicals/dems all sorts of rude & obnoxious names. The right does not have a monopoly on politeness.
"(And here I sit on the internet instead of being outside working)."
Well then shut up and get to work. Heaven knows we won't miss you.
To get rail going in this country we can do the following;
1) 100% Federal Financing. No messing around with cost sharing. (see New Jersey/New York train tunnel; Chris Christie)
2) Eliminate ALL spending for; A) missions to the Moon & Mars, B) fusion research, C) car battery research and D)ethanol subsidies. I estimate these should save $15 billion/year.
And they will create many more jobs than continuing funding for these four wasteful programs.
Hey, thanks, Hancock. I haven't seen that movie, but I did like Westerns as a child. Because they had horses in them! But I don't watch many movies.
I think I'd be diagnosed with ADHD nowadays. I don't have the patience to sit through movies, although I can read for hours. Go figure.
I did see "Stagecoach" recently. My husband loves to watch old movies, so I sat with him and watched it.
You're a fellow conspiracy theorist, right?
Here's some obvious ones-
Jimmy Carter was NOT run from office by irate, oil-guzzling Americans. His speech on conserving oil was well received by Americans.
Ronald Reagan made a deal with the Iranians to keep the hostages until after the election, and the corporate media harped on the issue day after day after day. Which is how you keep American's minds focused.
Carter didn't lose by much. And I suppose he preferred demonization to assassination, the alternative way of getting rid of threats to the oil companies.
I know Charlie Sheen from the movie "Platoon" AND because he is a celebrity who speaks out for 9-11 truth.
Have you ever looked at the Yahoo top search list?
Truly, whenever I look at it, I'm like, WTF? Who are these people?
But last week, I started seeing Charlie Sheen's name. What did he do, interview with Alex Jones again?
Then, I started hearing references to him all over the place. Hmmm. I asked my husband, who is more in tune with the culture, but he didn't know.
I'm guessing that the press is on to get rid of Charlie Sheen, because of his truth speech.
And apparently, it's very effective! Witness this blog!
I don't know what they're accusing him of, but I'm pretty sure that I know his real crime.
A thought crime.
Great story, Dao. Thanks.
"I don't know what they're accusing him of, but I'm pretty sure that I know his real crime.
A thought crime."
This coming from someone who is constantly trying to get people she does not agree with banned from this site? Too freakin' funny.
I'm an expert in electronics, it's appropriate for me to have bought the kit version. I plan on modifying it to extend the range and will package it discretely.
I have taken a bicycle on Amtrak, Jerry. But I think they have a limit of two.
If ferries can carry cars across water, why can't Amtrak carry cars for a ways? Good idea.
Kind of like the monster recreational vehicles you used to see, hauling cars for the destination travel.
Doobie-us... if you haven't already I have two for your read list L. Fletcher Prouty's book "JFK"
and "Family of Secrets" by Russ Baker.
For those bitching at JHK because the Dow isn't at 4000, or whatever prediction he makes on this blog; cut the man some slack for god sakes...
Read his book (and perhaps JHK himself could review the title before blogging) it is the LONG Emergency.... L-O---N------G.... as in not sudden or maybe even noticeable. JHK said this much himself in his book, sometimes he gets itchy to see himself proven right in his blog... (HIS BLOG, he can say whatever he wants, you can read TMZ.com if you disagree w/him).
I personally feel that the reason the Dow isn't at 4000 is because it is an artificial game being played on some big system of computers... not a crop that will fail if it doesn't rain. The Dow is not at 4000 because Uncle Sam stepped in just three years ago and BAILED OUT WALL STREET!!! (remember...) and even if he didn't the whole thing is rigged anyway.... it isn't natural, and therefore not subject to natural laws like gravity and physics... as a matter of fact the game can be played well beyond the age of oil... there just won't be room for the "middle class" in the casino, because there won't be a middle class.
As for peak oil, the cornucopians out there understand the "bumpy plateau" part of the equation before poo-pooing it as some oil company conspiracy... there are PLEANTY of oil company conspiracies out there that are real.... give the world some time... it is going more on the timetable of JHK's book, and less on the timetable of his blog.
This is a place for him (and us) to rant about the topic du jour.... and apparently for some of us that means name calling.
I am glad to see the name caller is so class-conscious... they have no class, and everyone is conscious of it.
@ wage,
Charlie has gone cuckoo for Cocopuffs!
Great analogy.
But shouldn't it continue?
There's supposed to be more trees on the other side of the island, but the dirty liberal environmentalists won't let us cut them down.
Apparently that's the meme, bico.
To: ProgorCons
---------------
How is your wife doing? Better and better, I hope. Take all the time you need and come back when you are able.
This looney bin of CommiPinkuberFasciSocialiMonachiNaziMaoism will still be here.
The average city bus also needs to be modified to carry more than two bicycles at once. A mechanical device to lift them onto the roof could work. A dozen could then be carried at a time.
The way things are now there is two much chance of someone else using up the bike rack to make bus/bike commuting a reliable option.
In my minds eye I just worked it all out, too bad I need paid work right now.
And then, with the Magna Carta in 1215, they extended the rule of laws, not men.
As I pointed out to Myrtle last week, the Magna Carta was overthrown in 2006, here in the US.
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/military-commissions-act-2006
Isn't that more important than the Battle of Gettysburg?
We now have kings, instead of presidents, who claim power never dreamed of by the kings of previous centuries, but who also claim the rights of indefinite detention, torture, and assassinations by imperial decree, once thought buried, but now unearthed again.
And the discussion is on what Charlie Sheen did over the weekend.
I'm watchin' old movies. ground is still frozin' and i still have more than a foot snow down. temp is about 32 F no sap flowin; I would start some pepper or tomato seeds but it is still a tad early. pretty much down time here in western MA.maybe i will go out and watch the snow melt {slowly)....
His best quote from last week, "Most of the time, and this includes naps, I'm an F-18" Freaking hilarious.
My sister went to college in Santa Barbara.
As I recall, the buses carried dozens of bicycles. I can't remember how exactly.
But if they could do it in the 70s, they could do it now.
oh no... cut away! Build another statue to yourself....Your grandchildren don't need anything because Jebus is coming to rapture y'all away!
(Ever hear of Easter Island... the place with statues and "no natives"?)
Sorry, don't understand the F-18 reference.
Airplane?
That's great. To bad the American way of life is still non negotiable.
I gotta say my like of Charlie Sheen went up about 50 bazillion points in the last week.
The reaction from the hoi polloi has been overwhelming. In real life, and on this board. A bunch of finger-waving no-nothing scolding moralizers.
You people are under the thrall of a condition I like to call waiting for Jesus.
Even if you're not a "blank slate" card-carrying member of a church, somehow by cultural osmosis you are possessed of the conceit that somehow everyone should be trying to attain a Jesus-like level of personal excellence. Obama rode this reality all the way into the White House.
As long as you present yourself as some kind of saint, everyone will believe any bullshit you spew. Everyone else, fuck you- we don't want to hear the truth unless it passes our short-cut to thinking: forget the locution: is the elocutioner a saint, like my very most favorite imaginary personal benchmark for integrity- Mr. Jesus Fucking Christ?
"If you ain't Jesus Fucking Christ, you are a hypocrite, incapable of possessing any wisdom, any truth, any validity."
Here's the truth: Life ain't fun, drugs are fun. Relationships suck, and hookers rock. Being poor and politically correct is for losers and making $1.2 million/episode is WINNING.
Ca$h said last week, "In any case IMO scientists should stay the fuck away from "why" and let the pole sitting mystics deal with it."
I had to get back to this, to get my final word in. Cash believes those that know "How" (scientists) shouldn't be those that dare to propose "why" (about the porpoise of life, Big WHY q's, etc.). How fucking stupid is that? It seems to me that those that don't know "How" have been claiming exclusive rights to the explanations of "why" and defending that right with swords dipped in bullshit for thousands of years. Oh yeah, legitimize that by claiming that such are "philosophers"- the very word means "Love of Wisdom", and "Wisom" is defined as "accumulated knowledge or erudition or enlightenment", eg., what Science "produces".
What it breaks down to is "FALSE" philosophy vs. "TRUE" Philosophy. I'll meet you on the field of battle, bitches. Its not a fair fight. Under the banner of the Theory of Evolution we'll be rolling out several secret weapons this week: Polyploidization and Transposons, more evidence that God was never needed for all this beautiful speciation, nor is Genetic Inheritance the unknown black-box its soft-headed detractors claim. The theory of evolution is rolling on, regardless of whether you realize your body is squashed into a muddy tank-track far behind under a haze of mustard gas.
What Ca$H-monEY prefers to believe on Sunday and in his personal foxhole is his own prerogative. It just bears repeating that he is a childish bitch whose world-view is retrograde, who can't handle reality, who can't handle the future.
Special message for RippedThunder: smokeless tobacco causes mouth cancer.
Patrizia: Italy is not a scientific backwater. I am pleased to be the first to inform that God doesn't exist and the structure and function of DNA has been elucidated.
PoC: You are trying so very very hard to be Jesus and you're bi-winning: Congrats. You have the respect of the loser pool.
Its funny, there is always a nugget of clusterfuck theory in every major media bowel movement: this episode reveals that the bulk of America are a bunch of moralizing cunts who can't act or think for themselves, scurrying to join the popular faction, whoever that might be. The biggest bloc behind this movement is the properly-coiffed suburban cadre who are all about "values". The "tsk-tsk" contingent. The jealous, desperate fools hiding behind their fashion wardrobes and makeup, hoping no one finds out what grovelling, worthless pieces of shit they are.
Charlie offends the religion of the mainstream: the faux morality, the high-brow pseudo-ethical superiority, the secret societies and hierarchy of post-collegial corporate cults of demeanor, the plugged-in, vacant consumer whoredom of the permanent low-self esteem clique.
Someone comes along who took their money (winning!) and then said "Fuck you" to their bullshit lifestyle lies (marriage) will not get a pass- there must be a pantywaist backlash. A million bleating elephantine farts of derision tweeted, the kingdom defended for a day!
And I used to take the trolley in San Jose.
There were spaces for 2 bikes in every car.
I think it is an airplane, or maybe an automatic weapon? Anywho, he's saying he's hot shit....even when napping!
There is an unofficial ER diagnosis that applies-
"Too stupid to live"
OK,for the first time, my interest is piqued.
What was this interview from?
Hey Toots, Per your question: "How about I show up at your front door and tell you to give me all the money you squirreled away? How bout that?"
Come on over; unfortunately for you, you will not need a very large bag, probably a small pop corn sack will do as long as you empty out a little of the popped corn.
SNAFU
You know what's even more depressing? Having a Conservative, right-wing, lying, hypocritical, fundamentalist Christian prime minister. This guy is destroying our democracy so fast that if we don't get him out of office soon there will be nothing left of it. And if our electoral system weren't as dysfunctional as the one the US has, he wouldn't even BE prime minister, because the majority of Canadians voted for "anybody but Harper" and he got in anyway.
funny how four buck gasoline brings out the best in everyone
My goodness, tootsie, you are an angry little person. Have you ever thought about getting help?
Asoka is just one man.
What about the 340 million people in US/Canada who
thrive[?] on LL/CS news?
That tells me alot about the people of North America.
You know what's even more depressing?
shows like 'LITTLE MOSQUE ON THE PRAIRIE'.
Don't know. Haven't followed his comments :)
I'm curious why you think asking people to use a bit of common politeness and civility when responding to other peoples' posts is "tripe". Are you really as rude and nasty to other people in person as you are here, or do you just do it online where nobody knows who you are?
that's one of the reasons I don't watch TV!
They hate Charlie cuz they want to be Charlie - and they can't. This is all just more evidence (as if more was needed) that we need a new Aristocracy. Once when I worked in a record store, a sad little guy bought a picture of John in bed with Yoko. He said "look at the expression of Lennon's face - he looks like a devil". Admiration, Jealousy, and Hatred all vied for supremacy in the little guy's heart. A typical egalitarian/democrat who both worships and hates those above him. Years after when Lennon was gunned down, I remembered this sad fellow.
In a true system, people are taught to value their own place. They don't hate those above them because they aren't in competition with them anymore than the feet are in competition with the head. The modern mood of egalitarianism has lead to countless revolutions and much bloodshed. And for what? The low are still the low even if enthroned. Sooner or later blood, like water, finds its own level.
Truth be told, the New World Order is seeking to install a new version of this old system as well. But sans the White Race and Western Culture - they mean to set themselves up as Gods and don't want any problems. Same reason that Alexander the Great turned against the Greeks and towards the young Persians - they would accept him as a God and the Greeks would not. But, but, but you sputter (not you Bustin) "what about democracy"? A tool nothing more. As the Turkish President said, Democracy is a Train and we can get off wherever we like. The NWO intends to get off at Medevial Manor complete with happy little darkies working in the fields. Well we intend to stop them. Remember friends, the slave is only noble when he rebels. I have just affirmed and denied the same thing - but not quite: the form of the argument is the same but the value of the variables is different - and that makes all the difference. Let He who has eyes to see, See.
No problem Katnip; I said 4 bucks is the limit for me because at that point nearly 20% of my take home pay would be going straight into my gas tank.
To be honest I cannot afford current gas prices but
Like you, my town has very few bike/walk friendly routes. Usable sidewalks are a thing of the past in the rust belt. Local government has enough trouble scraping up the money to keep pot holes filled, much less to worry about sidewalks...
I used to ride quite frequently but I have had a couple of near misses with distracted drivers.
My commute is about 10 miles each way. I would love to move closer but with todays market its a catch 22: Its a great time to buy a house but a horrible time to sell one. So I am where I am.
Awww Helen, I like Tootsie, (people say I have no taste,) but I think he's/she's swell!
I especially like it when he/she uses the word "fucktard" as an "insult" in replies... I wonder if he/she picked up that one from the platoon of Marines that gave his mother the clap, or the Army brigade that she gave the clap to!
plus the comments are usually so dense that light actually bends around them!
One thing is for sure, after reading tootsies comments I find myself in favor of abortion in cases of incest!
One thing... I want to know if toots can use the word "fuck" as a superlative, a modifier, a noun, and a verb in the same sentence....
I was in college when the 1970 oil shortage happened and I had a fiat 850 spyder. It was great. Today, you can't even get a fiat here, and my small car (mercedes 350) just took a full tank of gas for $60.(it lasts over two weeks for me.) Most people don't remember the 1970's with odd and even fill up days and the fights and long lines. What a mess. that was during a time when people were not as spoiled as they are today, driving a gas guzzling mega truck/car. Could you imagine them fighting it out at the pumps? An entire generation might be lost.....no loss..
Its no coincidence that Sheen has become the poster boy for what our country is today. Cocky, intoxicated, stupid, self centered, rich (and spending every last penny) unemployed, and completely disconnected from the world as it goes down in flames. I think people should view his public fiasco as all of us, in one person. You can point directly to that visual image and say, "this is why we are in the mess we are today". Its useless to change things now, because just as Sheen seem unable to see his plight,and do something about it to save himself and his family, we as a nation, are unable to rescue ourselves from our way of life and selfish ineptitute. TOO LATE. Even those who are able to lead decent lives are grouped into the majority of imbeciles that are destroying themselves and taking us with them.
You're right, Jim, a frivolous and incredulous nation, lacking gravitas or substance, totally unprepared for the historical forces bearing down upon us.
I hope we as a people wise up pretty quick, or else we're screwed.
Ozono ... Roosterville? Does such a place really exist? Near Boston Corners? The one atlas I have here doesn't show it. When it warms up I'll have to ride up there and check it out for myself. Is there a sign on Rte. 8 that says Roosterville?
General Hancock ... true, you got Cliff Lee back, but you lost Jason Worth. I think the Mets will be more competitive this season and give the Phils a good run for their money. Phils still the favorite for the NL East, though.
Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Your absolutely right! I'm a real smart aleck. Especially since this guy is a Vietnam vet on meds for mental issues. That "drill-baby-drill" mantra just really irritates me. Still no reason to rub people's noses in the fact that "they can't handle the truth".
"Come on over; unfortunately for you, you will not need a very large bag, probably a small pop corn sack..."
Which explains why you are jealous of anyone who has had the wit and determination to put some money away. Thanks for the clarification.
F-18= fighter airplane, model 18 also f18A, F18B,F18C,D an E , M1A =best gun ever made, U2 = spy plane or rock band, take your pick. NSA, CIA, FBI ,NTSA, ICE i could go on for pages with acronyms, the US government has 50,000 people on the payroll to think of this SHI""""""T
"For now, I'm just going to hang out with these two smoking hotties and fly privately around the world. It might be lonely up here, but I sure like the view. -Charlie Sheen
I gotta say my like of Charlie Sheen went up about 50 bazillion points in the last week."
And I suppose that is because you are a bigger piece of white trash than he.
Oh, your a self made man! Nice of you to take the blame.
Oh and "your" (you probably meant you're but that is merely an assumption) a moron.
two weeks with a 350? you should have bought the deisel. I've got a '75 280 d and it gets like 30 mpg around town. Gotta love that german enginering? My bike is a '68/2 bimmer boxer. I think it uses as much fuel as the car! But it is more fun to drive!
Reality Optional?
Not for us Brits I'm afraid, if this kicks off, this coming Friday...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudis-mobilise-thousands-of-troops-to-quell-growing-revolt-2232928.html
The ’Hunayn Revolution’ and polite cough for affect – here’s EXACTLY why...
You see back in those heady satin-loon-pant and afghan coat clad 1970’s - pre the bounty of North Sea Oil – now long gone, burnt and busted... when we had that last brick-wall hitting moment of ‘supply’ collapse, you know that one that was like eeerghh Dudes, completely 100% non-negotiable...
Well, back then they were far few peeps living on this over-crowded little isle, and we had far fewer cars/trucks too in fact, and we had thousands of independent fuel Co petrol stations, dotted around the place... to go get petrol from.
(Then three decades of decadence and complacency later including those city boyz banksters being let orf the regulations-leash and we Brits went totally doo-dally mad)... loadsamoney was the MANTRA, and a housing bubble helped immensely!
So what’s the KEY difference since then, here right now in March 2011 you may ask?
Well I have to report to you US based folks, that over here in the UK now the bulk of our car fuel is now sold ONLY at (on edge of mass suburban cubicle estates) by the SUPERMARKETS - a clique mini oligarchic group of about 4 key players or so - (a prime example of energy-security clusterf#ck thinking). So this time around, when business as usual oil supplies collapse (as they will, sooner or later) mega-queues of vehicles will form-up for there limited quota of a few litres, creating impassable lines of traffic blocking... what?
You guessed it where the masses mainly live and try and feed themselves with food too... These same road arteries also carry (nightly) the dozens of trucks that bring the produce... oh deary me.
So let’s do the math on this together, less places to buy limited fuel = massive longer car queues in the critical key places people live/work on mass/commute and buy there food from.
(BINGO)
Don’t you just love the JIT implications...
Be seeing you...
PS: (But not if I’m on a NetJet to Norway this sat)....well you never quite know do you?
A quick scan of our news on this side of the pond shows no sign of trouble in Saudi Land. How respectable is the INDEPENDENT I know nothing about it?
Nice weeks work, JHK. I appreciate it, as always.
There is, indeed, a lot of stuff hanging out there in geopolitical space that could have a really negative impact on oil supply and quality of life around the world.
Here are my favorite lines from the week:
"...1973 OPEC oil "embargo" (so-called). Whatever else history records it as having consisted of - bluffing, hoarding, fear-mongering, market manipulation - a few things are inarguable. It arose suddenly out of a political conflict (the Yom Kippur War), and it disrupted life in the USA..."
-jhk-
Yeah, no shit, James Sherlock Kunstler! From there through the 1979 election we, as a Nation, had a chance to answer a wake up call. We almost did - we came so freakin' close! But we've been going backwards since 1980 - and eventually it's gonna cost us.
The world may skate through this episode - with no harm and things may be back to *normal* by summer. Or this may end in such a big disaster that we finally face the truth.
Which brings me to my absolute favorite JHKism for the week:
"...the theory that life goes on until it doesn't.."
-jhk-
That's a very good theory - from all angles.
===========
Personal stuff -
Hancock - HAHAHOHOHEHE!! Freakin' hilarious!!
And thanks, she's going to be fine, I think - although my household is deploying a large and varied array of analgesic pharmaceuticals, 'till yet. And yeah, that was some seriously personal and annoying impeding that RI was sending my way Sunday night.
Bustin - Thank you, more or less, for the backhanded complement you rendered. I will always contend that you, or anyone, who expresses THAT MUCH CERTAINTY is covering fear, dread, or something. Dig deep, me lad - and see what you find - consider the Big Maybe. - maybe?-
Thank you for this.
(I was also around during the oil shortages of the '70s and got a broken headlight from a panicky lane-changer backing into me at a gas station, and had to get friendly with the schnook parking lot attendent so I could get $10 worth of gas on occasion--thank goodness for my miserly VW Squareback.)
I actually laughed when I heard about the possible reserve drawdown. Americans (the U.S. type) are without a doubt the most decadent people on the face of the earth--and that alone is justification for retribution we are about to receive. May we all be thankful.
Interesting stuff to ponder -
Gas went to $4.10/gallon in the spring of 2008 mostly because of speculation. At that time the sensible thing to do would have been to threaten to draw down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the US - to lower the speculative fever on oil.
Instead of doing a drawdown - Dear Leader BushII let them keep buying oil and filling the damn thing up.
===========
Now - facing potentially VERY serious supply shortages in the coming weeks or months - Dear Leader Obama wants to pump oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and draw DOWN our safety margin.
Why is it that US leadership seems to always make the least logical choice - in any given situation?
Decadent!! Decadent!! How dare you! our American way of life "WILL NOT BE COMPRMISED" "Blasphemy, I say Blasphemy!!"I sincerely apologise for my American brethren. I know, I know, Americans always apologize for their behavoir. You really have to admit we are quite the energy hogs!
Maybe he's saying he snores?
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/oil-6/
Oops - forgot to include the link that backs my contention that the 2008 oil price spike was due to speculation.
Don't know a thing about this website, fabius, but it looks a little interesting. And at least I did read the referenced webpage and it does confirm what I am saying to CFN.
BTW - #239 - looks like another good CNF week coming up!
@ K-Dog
How respectable is Robert Fisk?
Good question.... I’d say probably one of the finest ‘best’ informed journo’s on the globe when it comes to all things ME? And the indie was a breakaway from the Telegraph...
(So it's a quality UK Broadsheet, still)
*A quick scan of our news on this side of the pond shows no sign of trouble in Saudi Land...*
NO SH#T... eh...?
But I know who Charlie Sheen is - he was great in Wall St, and Platoon in fact - and let’s move onto the bigger question... now shall we?
Do you send the private militias quietly in, or risk going full-blown WWIII with the shock-n-awe group hanging out around there already?
I think the Obama-messiah-man’s looking a tad strained on the current clips...
Is it gloves-off time and reveal your final hand to the Chinese/Japanese, muslims peeps et al... and the Russians too...
Or do we Angloists stick to the icky-bittsie diplomacy stuff...?
(A firm hand on the tiller either way is what's needed)
this continued political insablity will result in $300 to $200 for a barrel of oil
==============
Interesting word: "in sa blit y"
Also interesting that you state a range of oil prices from high to low. I don't think I have EVER seen a range stated any way except low to high. And it's not like you just did it this one time. You also spoke of gas prices from $10 to $5. Where do you live? Where does one acquire this manner of expression? Or do you suffer from a new form of lexdisia?
So I was watching Democracy Now today. That's where I get my news, and that's why I knew not what Charlie Sheen did to upset folks.
Anyway, they had a clip of Hilary Clinton explaining how the US State Dept. has many employees whose job it is to go on websites (including Arab) and influence the debate.
Plus, Thom Hartman talked about going to a right wing think tank and all the young employees had wikipedia up on their screens, busily redoing the pages in a right wing fashion.
So when these right wingers come on here to clusterfuck and spout their free market stuff, are they being paid?
(Not Q, I think he's a true believer). But the rest.
A firm hand on the tiller?? haha We have a '57 ladder truck which has a tiller wheel on the back of the ladder. It is a hoot to drive. The young guys don't seem to get it. turn left to go right! I love drivin' the thing! Sum' bitch is almost as old as me. It had a Hercules engine in it http://www.herculesengine.com/history.htm
the head cracked so they replaced it with a Cummins straight 6 deisel. The thing still runs strong today , after almost 55 years
OK, that's funny, K-dog.
If the US media doesn't report it, it couldn't be important, could it?
Ha, ha.
Say, what's going on with Charlie today?
Charlie Sheen has credits for over sixty movies. I have seen six of those and remember him from two: Platoon and Arrival. Even not watching TV, it is near impossible not to know who he is.
IMHO Charlie has (or had) more money than god and is way "eccentric". The infotainment industry could accept eccentric as he made money for them. Speaking for 911 truth can still pass as eccentric and be downplayed. But it is NOT ALLOWED to be seen raising children with two concubines and the paid party girls.
Dear Jim please surf over to Denninger's blog and scroll down till you come to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr's One Minute speech.
Folks that is our government and that man is a verified specimen of the Left which is so worshipped around here.
The tofu left allied with the cargo cult left, ain't nothin good comin of it either.
Hey Toots, My My you cut me to the quick with this jewel: "Which explains why you are jealous of anyone who has had the wit and determination to put some money away."
Am I to presume you have the temerity to include yourself in the top 1% crowd of which I was speaking?
SNAFU
"So when these right wingers come on here to clusterfuck and spout their free market stuff, are they being paid?"
-wage-
Good question, wage, and not just for here. Without intending any disrespect to any of the regulars, or our host - I think this CFN comment thread is still small enough that we're not getting a whole lot of that, if any.
For example, TooTsie would be my first choice to study as a paid shill - but he looks EXACTLY like hundreds of regular and irregular FOX News commenters. And there's no point in paying them to spew that RW nonsense on FOX - that's what they are all there "for to see."
The idea of a RW think tank deliberately using staff to skew debate or Wikipedia entries is pretty chilling in its implications. But, that's the way of the World we've found ourselves in.
Do you know of any LW organizations trying to skew things the other way - or at least edit for truth and track the patterns of the RW "editors?"
I may feel an urge to make a donation for common sense, here.
Update from Humboldt:
87 octane has been over $4.00/gallon for more than a week; it's currently $4.06 at the cheapest stations and $4.10 at the most expensive ones. Bear River Pump 'n' Play, Renner Cardlock and Costco are usually twenty to thirty cents cheaper (I haven't checked lately) but the former is practical only for those who live or do business in Fortuna or Loleta and the last two are members-only stations. The bottom line, in any event, is give or take at least $3.80 for the lucky.
Diesel is averaging about $4.26, and it takes a fair bit of diesel even to stock our grocery stores. Winco alone has often been running two trucks a night into Eureka, I don't know from where, but I'd be surprised if they're coming from any closer than Redding or Grants Pass; more likely, Portland, Sac or the Bay Area. I assume that Safeway stocks its Humboldt County stores from the Bay Area; it has a monstrous warehouse just north of Vacaville and I believe some others south of the Delta. We can count on a round trip of over 300 miles, but usually a lot more, for anything that we have to import from a railhead.
The old Northwestern Pacific line has been in the news this week because a rancher and Japanese instructor in SoHum is spearheading an effort to turn it into a rail trail. Most local politicians and journalists that I'm aware of are opposed to restoring rail service; in the words of Ryan Burns at the North Coast Journal, it's "so Nineteenth Century." The mayor of Arcata, who recently warned about peak oil someday forcing the rail line to be rebuilt, is a refreshing exception to this foolishness.
I don't look forward to the political mess that will arise when the proposed Willits-to-King Salmon bike path needs to be reconverted to rail.
Traffic volumes seem to be as heavy as ever, and shlengtheners are still to be seen, although they seem just a bit less ubiquitous than before. There doesn't seem to be a move to bus travel, partly because HTA sucks (especially its municipal services in Eureka and Arcata) and partly because there are a lot of lunatic happy motoring partisans around here (often the same people as the property-rights freaks, the SoHum contingent of whom are complaining about trespassers using the proposed rail trail).
Global Commodities Rigging
Today on Dylan Ratigan, they discussed the inflated food prices around the world and that the bottom billion are suffering around the world including here in the US.
One guest mentioned that the rising wheat prices effected mainly the ME, but rice, as staple of Asia has not been inflated. Because we are a global economy, although one guest claimed the US is flush with oil, we will still pay higher prices at the pumps.
I can't imagine that anyone outside of the top elite actually like globalism. I mentioned last week that someone who works at American Express said they were importing Indian workers for US offices. Question, when they say there is more private hiring in the US and that the unemployment numbers are going down, (right) who is being hired? What statistics can we study to find this out?
There are so many workable parts to the crisis we are facing globally. For market manipulations at the expense of the well being of billions around the world check out :
"The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century" by Michel Chossudovsky
this is an a few paragraphs down from the beginning. Of course he is discussing the issues of the food crisis that has led to the ME uprisings.
excerpt from GLOBAL POVERTY, FOOD RIOTS, AND THE ECONOMIC CRISIS 2011
[Government and intergovernmental organizations are complicit in these developments. The state’s economic and financial policies are controlled by private corporate interests. Speculative trade is not the object of regulatory policies, and in fact the opposite holds true: the framework of speculative trade in the commodity exchanges is protected by the state. Moreover, the provision of food, water and fuel are no longer the object of governmental or intergovernmental regulation or intervention with a view to alleviating poverty or averting the outbreak of famines.
Largely obfuscated by official and media reports, both the “food crisis” and the “oil crisis” are the result of the speculative manipulation of market values by powerful economic actors. And because these powerful economic actors operate through a seemingly neutral and “invisible” market mechanism, the devastating social impacts of engineered hikes in the prices of food, fuel and water are casually dismissed as the result of supply and demand considerations.
We are not dealing with distinct and separate food, fuel and water “crises” but with a global process of economic and social restructuring. The dramatic price hikes of these three essential commodities are not haphazard. All three variables, including the prices of basic food staples, water for production and consumption and fuel, are the object of a process of deliberate and simultaneous market manipulation.]
"Roosterville? Does such a place really exist? Near Boston Corners? The one atlas I have here doesn't show it. When it warms up I'll have to ride up there and check it out for myself. Is there a sign on Rte. 8 that says Roosterville?" -Marlin554
lol Cock-a-doodle-doooo! (Really sounds more like: Er-e-er-e-errrrr!)
Google it, man! Hard to believe, but it be thar, yonder. roosterville, ma Just before New Boston and Sandisfield. There's a sign on Rt.8 for Roosterville Rd., but that's about it. I don't think it ever thrived, because it's located on some flats down by the W. Branch of the Farmington. Can you say, "unsafe"? I knew ya could. ;o)
That tactic seems to be working pretty well.
That post from Whatzit-from-ohio was a fine example of some messy RW spew. Another fine "informed" dolt from the land of many enchantments and teevee.
And then there's this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/8359076/US-farmers-fear-the-return-of-the-Dust-Bowl.html
Looks like oil is not the only thing we're quickly running out of.
BustinJ;
Are you a prof somewhere? You sound alot like some friends 'round heya who've spent their lives in academia?
Friendly enough people ... a little arrogant toward their intellectual inferiors (me), effete, iconoclastic, antagonistic toward their middle class neighbors and the wealthy, at the same time enjoying a pretty secure and comfortable life themselves. Altogether not bad sorts. When the shit hits the fan I don't know how useful they'll be, though. Solzhenietsen addresses the role of the intellectual in times of trouble in his 'Gulag' books.
Just wondering, that's all.
Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
So Wage,
Last week I posted something about Cass Sunstein, one of Obama's people suggesting a similar approach to controlling what people think, by posting on websites in order to counter "conspiracy theories". This method is called cognitive infiltration.
I guess we've got it going on from both sides.
[Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups." He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).]
Wage,
NFS
I discovered this when I found some FACTUAL information being misrepresented on Wikipeadia last week. I signed up to fix the info and was soon in a battle to try and fix it. The information I'm talking about I won't get into, that's not the point. The info did however support a right wing point of view in its misrepresentation and even had a junk science citation to legitimize it.
The information I tried to change is still on Wikipeadia to mislead and hurt. I did not have the status to change it. I now use Google chrome to do ALL my web searches because it has an ad-on that allows me to block Wikipeadia permanently.
The Google Chrome extension is called Personal Blocklist.
If anyone wants to know the specifics of the information I tried to correct, ask. That would be appropriate in a separate post.
Vanpool, Hybrid Passenger Car, Motorcycles, Passenger Rail Amtrak,Rail (Heavy),Light Rail, Airplanes, Cars, Personal Truck, Buses
According to US govt figures (yeah, I know) the above is the list of passenger vehicles from most efficient to least efficient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation
Some of this seems counterintuitive, but there are assumptions and/or projections about passenger loads to consider. For example, passenger trains and buses spend a great deal of time running with very light passenger loads - since the driver/operator does not count.
Whereas, the driver of a passenger car/truck always counts. Which makes sense - if the driver doesn't need to go, why even crank the thing up?
My overriding point - ALL of this stuff takes fuel to run. And it is going to take more that years, DECADES, to get Americans out of their cars.
And that exercise is counterproductive, anyway - since a hybrid passenger car is much more efficient than any train or any bus.
Chrome - "it has an ad-on that allows me to block Wikipeadia permanently."
- kdog-
Yeah, I'm interested. This is scary stuff in it's implications. I've never yet run into a Wikipedia page that was off in a *major sort of way,* you know, that changed something really important factually.
As useful as Wikipeadia can be sometimes I am not going to waste my time having to question and double check everything it serves up. My reaction may seem extreme to some but Wikipeadia is out my life, like FOX news. I refuse to watch it. I value my brain.
Yikes - Lbend, I know who Wage is going to think of first - without doubt - Little ol' PoC.
"...controlling what people think, by posting on websites in order to counter "conspiracy theories""
-lbend-
This sort of looking for CFN moles and counteragents could get out of hand in a hurry!
Wage - I SWEAR
on a stack of Bibles - scratch that
on all that is Holy - d*mn, that won't work
on a Old Farmers Almanac - will that work? ;-)
That I'm just a skeptical Southern boy with no agenda and receiving no payments for disinformation. - or payments for information, for that matter.
This is weird stuff, too - I'll freely admit.
TV free America… The Environmental Movement of the Mind
I'd like to see the Wikipedia page and the info in question, Kdog - if you would be so kind.
I can not begin to tell you how much I'd miss Wikipedia. But I've got an open mind - if something has to be flushed, I'll flush it.
But it also makes me wonder if there is something internal to Wikipedia that could fix this problem.
They do keep asking for donations, after all.
I'm all ears, kdog. Hit us with what you've got.
Damn, k-dog, you are on a roll!
Last week you make the brilliant proposal that posts be limited to one screen, which I immediately adopted for my posts, with the fringe benefit of experiencing a concision high as a result.
Now, you are educating us how to block Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is full of errors (not to mention that the articles are anonymous, can be edited by anybody (even idiots like Asoka), and you have no idea who is contributing or what their agenda is).
Right on, k-dog! I am blocking Wikipedia, also.
Up here in Canada we are already paying $5.00 a gallon, and in some places more, for gas. And people are still buying SUVs, Hummers and some of the biggest pickup trucks I've ever seen. I guess they don't see any problem with that.
Thoughts for the Day
CNN this morning reported this morning that Gaddafi was attacking his own people. Really? Did CNN expect a different reaction?
I believe Abe Lincoln used the same tactic after Rebels bombarded Ft Sumter in tha War of Northern Aggression. Very subliminal I thought; shouldn't the report be that he fired on rebels, freedom fighters, or some appropriate descriptive adjective?
Why Drill Here Drill Now? Save some for the grandchildren. Don't we own and occupy Iraq? Capacity pre-war was 2.8 Mb/day. If we decide not to share, that should quench our domestic thirst.
Look up drug test in Wikipeadia and you will find near the bottom.
Under the urban myth section.
From california NORML we get.
A huge difference, and this could certainly cause some people into not getting employed. Most people with any heart wouldn't support any drug test that detects waste products of a drug over a period of time longer than it would take a person to complete rehab.
The most potent weapon in the government's war on drugs is drug testing, so it is obviously important to some to misrepresent the facts.
Anybody who can't refrain from cannabis use for a mere three weeks tops certainly has a problem. I agree. But that's quite a difference from the true facts concerning detection times.
Who sponsored the junk science that is cited in Wikipeadia you ask?
The National Drug Court Institute.
Call me crazy but I'm thinking there might be a conflict of interest there.
And for those wondering. Is k-dog looking for a job? Yes I am. Can k-dog pass a drug test? Yes I can.
But somebody reading Wikipeadia and nothing else could get hurt and probably will.
gasoline is 4 bucks a gal. here in western ma, thats for the cheap crap.who cares?I have a four banger/stick, and soon i wil be drmy iving R60/2. i am really thinking of puin the Honda CL 160 on the road. can you say 100 mpg?
Alexandra,
Methinks Obama has lost his shine. Every speech he gives seems to me to be adding new dinge to the word lackluster. He says things, but actions don't follow...so who cares.
My husband, who is 100X more optimistic than I will ever be, mentioned that he is completely disappointed with Obama.
Change of topic....do you know anyone attending the big wedding? I remember getting up at some ungodly time of night (4:00 a.m.?) when Chuck and Di got married. Back in those days I was putting husband #1 thru medical school....things were getting grim and I wished I were Princess Diana. Funny how things are not as they appear.
Cheerio,
Jen
JHK is a "cultural critic" and a "social commentator", so watching CNN and network news shows is part of his job (I suppose), but I wish he'd turn the TV off. Last week he mentioned the Kardashians, this week Charlie Sheen. If you don't watch TV these people hardly enter your consciousness. I'm beginning to think he's getting overly aggravated and developing a touch of cognitive dissonance. Let's hope not. Anyway, kill your TV, Everybody. You'll be much more relaxed and clearheaded. An occasional DVD is fine. Stop drinking, eat healthy food, and read informative books. I'm not self-righteous, just do as I say.
Idiots like k-dog and Asoka can change Wikipeadia yes but we don't have Editor status. Sitting in front of a screen at a right or left wing think tank all day and pounding away at Wikipeadia entries gives one Editor status.
As a long time weekly reader of this forum I seldom comment, but let me pass along some real world reminders about oil shortage.
In 1973, 74 I was early 20 something saw the result of the oil embargo, or whatever it really was.
-long lines at gas stations
-gas stations closed on Sundays was Gov't
mandated.
-high prices, although cheap compared to today
-government plans to ration gas. Never did.
-Oh, God forbid I almost forget. Nascar races
shortened to save gas.
Now at that time it was a inconvenence no doubt, but also at that time stores were closed on Sundays. We didn't have to shop 7 days a week. The population just wasn't on the move like we are today.
This inconvenence last just a few short months and it was over.
If again we have oil interruption we will likely experience the above again and it could be a new way of life.
Now this would be a shock to go go go life style.
Do you think pump prices are higher than they were when oil was at this level last time? So did i and here is what i came up with when trying to figure out why. (All prices to nearest penny).
There are 44+ gallons of product derived from a typical oil barrel. So at $100 per barrel raw product cost averages $2.27 per gal. If one adds a compounding 10% ea for refinery cost and transport/storage, then add 5% current retail margin, the gas price equals $2.89 per gallon before tax. Add federal tax and cost is 3.07 before state (and maybe local) tax. After adding my state tax and checking my arithmetic there isa n unexplained .21 per gallon extra cost. I'm wondering who is raking off the extra?
But then i see the mistake. Our national project to burn food and starve the third world has gotten more expensive, and that 10% ethanol added to each gallon is now more costly than the gasoline it replaces(about $3.60 gal wholesale) which adds .13 per gallon to the base refinery cost and explains the higher total price. Now i'm so happy (not).
What happened around that time was that he shucked the old wife, and got himself a brand-spanking new right-wing populist, true-believer model. I was told this by the former employer of wife number two. His views have been strategically tailored ever since around objectives of domestic peace. Gives new meaning to the old charge against him of being a "house conservative," which conservatives used to level for making his bones with the Wash Post by attacking Nixon during Watergate.
He is a man who knows what side his bread is buttered on.
We can save the world and peak oil is not necessarily the harbinger of doom. Find out more at:
http://boardofthebanned.net/blog/
Wow, what insight. We're all quite impressed with your critique of a nuclear engineer who thought enough of the American people to think that they wouldn't sell their souls to the Arabs so they could keep on driving to McDonalds. Surprise! I guess people like you really showed him, eh?
So, how you likin' those oil prices now, eh "Tootsie?" And enlighten us all, what's *your* degree in? Fashion? Ballet? Or maybe you never quite finished, or started college. Just maybe.
I've been lurking here for almost a year now. I read most of the comments during the week (70% to completely), and pretty much find anything I'd want to say, has already been stated.
As to my background, I spent the 90's reducing my carbon footprint, walking, biking, or public transporting - thinking it would make a difference. Disillusionment set in, as I saw exponential breeding resulting in spoiled rotten brats, gifted sub-20MPG guzzlers at 16, who put at least 6K miles/year on their multiple ton tanks. This more than offset any effect I might have had, with my delusional intensions. The obvious hopelessness of the situation set in around '98, but I never gave up on minimizing my *contribution*.
At any rate, it's obvious that certain posters here are shills (TzaTza/EtcEtc). What isn't so obvious is that this same shill has many sock puppets, that he uses to bolster himself. Take for example the TragicHipster/Großdeutschland connection. These two appear to have popped up once Tza finally got banned.
What I don't understand, is why JHK/his WEB moderators don't simply ban that jackasses' IP address. Unless, of course, he's using proxy services, or faking his IP header...
Just remember, there are over 1,000,000 six-figure-salaried-US-government-stalkers now, thanks to the Patriot Act and Homeland Security...
The comment by NewWorld at 11:53AM is a dagger in the heart of liberals and their respectable lapdogs; a hot knife thru a slab of butter. Like a world class brain surgeon liturally carving up liberals with "military precision". NewWorld and VladKranz are generals in the burgeoning Pro-White armies, constantly rounding up you anti-whites into kessels; and as the pro-white/anti-white-genocide movement grows, the rings tighten, until eventually anti-whites (with their cults and industries) are vanquished "like a mosquito".
High speed rail our future? More like hobos hopping freight trains!
Some survivors of the seventies even went so far as to only have one or no children because they were worried about this thing called overpopulation.
That gives new meaning to pissing in the wind. Well not exactly pissing........
Absolutely - 0 children here. I'd never bring someone into this reality, knowing what I know. It disgusts me when the rabbits (rats) breed more than 2 children...
I feel sorry for the children/grandchildren - every one born in the US now essentially bears a debt of something > $300,000. Talk about selling your children/grandchildren into indentured servitude...
I'm guessing that the press is on to get rid of Charlie Sheen, because of his truth speech.
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Well you would be guessing wrong Wage. The press, not to mention the producers of Two and a Half Men, are about the least likely people in the world to want to get rid of Charlie Sheen.
Sheen is their cash cow. To say he is a cottage industry would be gross under-statement.
All you I-don't-own-a-TV snobs out there are a bunch of assholes in my book. Too bad for you ... you've been missing one of the most hilarious shows ever. Essentially it's a somewhat cleaned-up version of Sheen's actual life; he plays the ultimate lothario.
While I'm generally disgusted by celebrity watching it would be as hard to turn away from the Sheen smash-up as it would be a train wreck. I've been reading all the NYT articles and watching the many interviews he's done.
As we all know by now, Sheen is notorious for having spent tens of thousands of dollars on prostitutes, escort services, etc. The cleverest line came when an interviewer asked Sheen "do you pay women for sex?" and he replied instantly and with a straight face, "No, I pay them to leave."
"All you I-don't-own-a-TV snobs out there are a bunch of assholes in my book."
Assholes with lives.
It aint that bad, jeez. Don't worry, artificial intelligence robots will solve all our problems or give us all a quick painless death...hahahah. I'm all for being more energy efficient and conservation, but you people wanting to "redistribute wealth" by taking it from many of the best and brightest and giving it to the worst and dumbest are Bat Crap Crazy!
The wikipedia thing is interesting, K. I appreciate you posting it up for us. There are a couple of disclaimers in the entry as stated "most people," is one of them. So maybe that's why it will be hard to get changed any further.
Maybe NORML can help the situation. I didn't see an citation to NORML on the wikipedia page for "drug test."
While I'm climbing on a soapbox - the whole situation as regards drug testing is asinine. And I had no idea that the excretion times for THC metabolites were as long as they are. My bottom line is that someone who gets high on Saturday night on grass should be able to do any job by Monday morning. The idea that businesses test marijuana use back so far into an individual's history is - nothing but a violation of 1st amendment rights.
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And on population growth - yeah, the Zero Population Growth movement was a great idea - and it worked to a large extent in the US and Europe. Unfortunately, the rest of the World - and US Immigration Policy Makers - failed to get the word.
I'm confused. Is Paris Hilton one of the best & brightest, or one of the worst & dumbest?
The situation with railroads in the USA is that they are almost all main-line, and there is essentially no LCL (less-than-carload) freight. The branch lines that served small towns disappeared in the middle of the 20th century, or earlier. The RRs now are really best at transporting bulk cargo, like coal, chemicals, and some oil, from a major point of origin to a large city.
Also, rail in the US could not attract talent for management or operations. Who wants to work for a fossilized industry?
Passenger service in the US is a joke, by any first world standards.
It would take enormous resources to reconstruct a usable freight rail system in this country, i.e. one that could deliver goods to your local supermarket (or close-by, at any rate). Still, it would be cheaper than maintaining the idiotic interstate highway system (which we're going to punt on anyway).
Speeking of Sheen, I saw Jeraldo Rivera call Sheen an anti-semite because Sheen called a hollywood producer by his real jewish name. Rivera actually gave said producers real jewish name before saying that Sheen was an anti-semite for giving the real jewish name. Then Rivera went on to say that Sheen got away with abusing women for more than a decade but that he'll be blackballed instantly in Hollywood for the slightest percieved anti-semitism. In essence, Rivera said what that fellow white hispanic from CNN said (that Jews controll hollywood and the media) but Rivera covered himself by accusing Sheen of "anti-semitism" in the beginning.
Does one dingbat represent all of Western Civilization?
"Cannabis remains detectable in urine"
LOL, d00d - just eat a lot of H2O and Niacin for a day or two/./
a lot of rich dingbats, 2 & 3 generations beyond the best & brightest in their gene pool who made all that money.
oops, a lot of rich dingbats ARE 2-3 generations...
I'm not in that world, but it seems to me that the children of 'old money' typically rise to high achievement levels; afterall, genetics has alot to do with it. Besides, if I make it big, I want my children to enjoy the fruits of my labour (within reason of course).
By NewWorld:
"Hannity is a Blank Slater, he is your "respectable conservative" opposition.
Wordism is dying. Magic thinking while fun is still magic thinking.
Its why I say, "The left is comprised of cults rigidly segregated." Because if it were not segregated it would splinter into a million pieces that not even Sean Hannity could puff up into a juggernaut that his "opposition" to sells books.
You back to the Earth white liberals don't even have the decency to ask the colored folk outside your coalition what they think, you "assume" they share your ideology. Last I noticed LaRaza and the NAACP existed to get more for their people, and more does not mean giving up the cars, the bling and the stupid pop culture you all deride.
Hating white people and displacing their children is evil and that is about the only thing the Left has in common, cuz its certainly not a love for organic farming (a demo whiter than the KKK"
Africa for Africans, Asia for Asians, White Countries for Everybody
Annihilation by Assimilation
Every white country on earth is supposed to become multicultural and multiracial. EVERY white country is expected to end its own race and end its own culture. No one asks that of ANY non-white country.
The Netherlands is more crowded than Japan, Belgium is more crowded than Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve the RACE problem by bringing in millions of third-worlders and assimilating and intermarrying with them.
Everybody says the final solution to the RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to bring in the third world and assimilate with them.
Immigration, tolerance, and especially assimilation are being used against the white race.
All this immigration and intermarriage is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries.
Anti-white is called anti-racist, but it leads to the disappearance of one race and only one race, the white race.
It is genocide.
Nationalsalvation.net
Um, JHK takes one for team clusterfuck- he of course gets most of his information by following and synthesizing media, which includes t.v.
The disclaimers don't excuse deception in my opinion. It gets more interesting though. Wikipeadia actually has a 'drug policy' and when I attempted to credit NORML with their information I was told that it was a "Special Interest Group" and not credible. Apparently the 'The National Drug Court Institute' is not.
Overpopulation is the driving force behind my objections to current immigration policies. Besides which immigrants in general tend to support the conservative status quo, as they are two busy trying to fit in too question the powers that be. Immigrants are a right wing dream and I am truly amazed that those who have left wing predilections frequently advocate open immigration policies.
Yes, JHK has to watch FOX so he can write about what the sheep are thinking. I'm happy I'm not in his position.
Go, ForceMultiplier!
No really. Go.
Damn straight, Jim!
All those years of supporting dictatorships in order to keep the oil flowing will come back to haunt us in the form of long lines at the pump.
George Will hates public surface transportation because he hates anything that doesn't make a profit. There's plenty of money to be made in what the Brits call the motor trade - i.e., car sales - and airlines have been using their dominance of intercity travel to make out like bandits - skimpy amenities and crowded cabins for a fast buck.
My will and intellect is not broken. What is this "we" shit anyhow?
Why not say "this country has an ethos of..." to take a collectivist way, or, "this country has many individuals who..."
To JHK-
I was obsessed with your blog when I was going through a serious phase of mental illness. I feel a lot better now, and read and often enjoy your blog, however, I have a different slant on your writings than before. Before, I got freaked out taking your predictions seriously.
It's important and necessary work you are doing digging for the reality of the time we are in. It's also important work to stay levelheaded. Remember, it is a LONG emergency.
Yes the show is Hilarious. Love his brother also.
"No mouthy "advisors" cluttering up the West Wing (or disrupting the laser light show of Charlie's thoughts)."
At least Chuckie Estevez exhibits some evidence of the capacity for thought. Something not required of our current leader, who comes in off the golf course just long enough to read the nearest teleprompter shoved in front of his face. Nothing more has been required of this cheap suit for two years.
But I don't blame him. It's a great gig if you can get it. Duhmericans have been successfully trained to think only in narrow, politically-approved channels, or to keep their thoughts to themselves. In another few years guys like Charlie Sheen, who dare speak anything but newspeak in public, will be joining Solzhenitsyn at the Gulags.
Not that I'm for vatican trained assasin warlocks walking loose among the zombies.
I am currently taking prescription Niacin to lower cholesterol under a doctors order. Since the general public seems to think drug testing is fine perhaps the for profit drug testing industry can start testing for that and report that I have something to hide. Perhaps they can report that my cholesterol is too high and I should be passed over as a health risk. There is nothing to stop them in a society that has forgotten the fourth amendment. Medical science has progressed far enough that lots of information can be gleaned from someone's pe pe.
It is very disturbing that they are thinking about drawing down the strategic reserve for this at this time. It's like they know the world will end in 2012 anyway so WTF. Also our (FL) governor won't let us have the train. So again is it like it doesn't matter anymore?
Why, what have I said that you disagree with? My first post was humerously serious.
JHK wrote something about Globalism falling apart because it is too complicated and it just won't work, I am having a hard time explaining this, but it was like things will be WILL HAVE TO BE, local, and alot of the rules and the way things are being done is going to change.
It would be worth going back and trying to find that date. Maybe 6 months ago. Maybe I will look for it, if I do, I will let you know. I liked it alot, it made alot of sense, to me anyway.
Todays writing is one of the best IMO.
Anybody see the 'Prophets of Doom' on the History Channel? I got the feeling some of the panel were a bit frightened of the Robot guy; like if robots much smarter than humans can solve all these energy and resources problems within the next hundred years, how will I convince people to contribute money to MY cause/industry? Also, the robot guy said the robots might decide we (humans) are inferior and useless and may very well vanquish us "like a mosquito"; apparantly, this race for more and more artificial intelligence can't be stopped - just like the race for superior weaponry can't be stopped. Not saying I believe it totally, but it was funny.