This is going to piss some folks off

I have been coming to the conclusion that a great deal of our problems stem from the fact that we have becoming increasingly a Democracy and less and less a Representative Republic.

It is apparent to me that the founding fathers did not think much of the idea of establishing a full democracy to run the country. They appeared to spend quite a bit of effort in the idea of removing the governing bodies from the direct control of the populace. Worked for quite a while too.

Let's look at the original constitution.

• Executive branch elected by the electoral college, not the direct vote (Still in effect, much to Al Gore's chagrin).
• Senate appointed by the state legislatures, not the direct vote (Changed to direct election in 1913, which was also the same year that gave us the federal reserve bank).
• Supreme Court appointed by the President (not directly elected) and confirmed by the Senate (not directly elected).
• The House of Representatives was the only branch of government that was to be directly elected. This was also coupled with the shortest term.
• Even consider the concept of Initiatives. It is my firm belief that the concept would have caused the framers to shudder. There is no provision for direct initiatives in the Articles of Confederation, any of the original State Constitutions, or in the Constitution.
  

I would suspect that this was set up this way for a specific reason. Currently, we here in the US have this odd idea that all people are smart enough to know what is good for them. I don't know where we got this myth. Everyday life seems to go out of its way to disabuse us of this concept. We pay no attention to the constant lessons of our collective stupidity and cling resolutely to the myth that most folks are smart enough to pound sand.

Folk, don't get pissed at me here, I'm just asking you to think about it. The definition of average IQ is 100. That means that 50% of the population is <100. We give those folks the vote.

My feeling is that the framers of the constitution had this in mind when they wrote the thing.

Have a happy election day.

Part of Something

The past couple of days sitting on the porch and watching the world go by has got me to thinking about myths and societal goals.

We are pretty empty here. Somehow in the past thirty or so years, the myth in the US has somehow been reduced to living large in economic terms , a stagnant belief in American exceptionalism, and an strong conviction that "It can't possibly happen to us". In a way, preppers seem to know this.

Not that we are smarter, or better looking, or more spiritual. Instead, I think that we merely have sensed this lack of a common purpose that defines a working society and our gut instincts tell us that things are going to go tragically wrong. So prepping is a means for us to bridge the gap into where we are going next. In our prepping, we all realize that when things have gotten to where they are heading, we won't be back in the good old days of plenty, instead, we will be in a different place entirely.

While I was woolgathering on the back porch for the last couple of days, I tried to imagine the directions that we would move as a society. None of them looked all that tasty. None of them came to fruit in my lifetime as they all required a bunch of societal changes that wouldn't go down easy. All of them required the bulk of the American population to grow into being adults and that is not going to go over very well.

Prepping necessarily involves a focus on stuff. Dried beans, ammo, firestarters, fuel and the like are firmly in the "stuff" category. I would tell you all to keep plowing ahead on that facet of the project. You also need to start figuring out a new way of doing things and a new set of societal myths. Because we ain't going back.

Still Nothing

Just thinking. My thoughts seem to center on beer and sitting in the fall sunshine.

Maybe tomorrow

huh?

Just overwhelmed.

 

I'll think of something soon, give me a day or two

A non-commercial plug

I don't think that Microsoft will be able to survive in its current state of semi-monopoly.

They are also nasty enough pricks that they would have no compunctions whatsoever about holding your computer hostage while they shake you down for more money.

These guys here offer a great alternative.

Misplaced Trust?

I read Mike Shedlock's Global Economic Trends Analysis every day. It is a great read and informative as hell. I wish that I had the desire and time to become as well informed as he is. I strongly recommend that it is added to ones daily reads.

Now maybe my sarcasm meter is working poorly, but he wrote in a recent article that somehow Hank Paulson (The vermin, stinking banker scum that needs to be castrated with a dull spoon) DIDN'T actually set up the current load of alphabet soup funneling money into the fucking bankers pockets to make sure that his rich buddies got even richer by buying up the littler pigs.

Sorry Mish, I love ya baby, but you are wrong on this. It is my opinion that Paulson is a goddamn thief that is pouring as much money into the big banks pocket as he can before he is out of office.

It is my sincere hope that he will be raped in prison.

They both suck

OK...I realize that Obama and Biden are asses and will be bad for the country.

McCain and Palin meet the same description to a T.

All we discussing here is which is the bigger plate of shit.

We are fucked either way.

So lets return to talking about prepping, cuz when any of these ninnies are in the white house, we will damn well need them.

Just a bit of a follow up

I still stand by my post from yesterday, even though folks whose opinion I respect have disagreed with my take home lesson.

No problemo.

But as a somewhat connected aside, I present this little nugget.

Dropping the Jar

It is my firm belief that the financial/commercial/political system currently in place in the United States of America is going to break. I also believe that the break will occur quite soon, most probably in the next eight years. I think that the election this year will decide how the remnants will be distributed.

I voted for the Libertarian candidates. I recognize that this is a vote thrown away and I am quite comfortable with that premise. But I feel that it will be for the best in the ensuing interregnum that BHO be the next President. Not that he stands for anything I believe in, but the shards of the system that he will leave lying around will be better distributed than the purposeful oligarchy that McCain would leave.

You see, it is my strong belief that the geezer and the bimbo are working for the rich pukes. That is their base. McCain has been in bed with the money since the Keating five and Sarah Palin is only there to distract joe six pack with erotic fantasies (VPILF anyone) while throwing bones to the religious right. This charade is being performed so that the plutocrats can structure the fall in a manner that will best allow them to imitate the oligarchs of post-soviet Russia.

Barak Hussein Obama will make sure that the system will be broken into lots of smaller pieces. These smaller pieces will be better distributed and make for a less fascistic post-fall North America.

A ballot

We do mail-in elections here. I don't really like them. So this morning I am staring at a ballot, drinking my coffee.

But it isn't the format that bothers me. It is the candidates. I won't even touch on the lose-lose nature of the presidential vote. Up here in Washington's third district, it seems that the ballot seems to emphasize mediocrity throughout. We have three ballot initiatives which are unusually silly. Our governor's race is between a corrupt democrat trying to fend off a challenge by the corrupt republican from whom she stole the election from last time. The HR race is between a incumbent democrat who has been there long enough to know better and a creepy republican who spends the bulk of the time in the bathroom, masturbating to the racy scenes in "Atlas Shrugged".

Even the local level elections are tinged heavily by the "less than adequate"

So, now I am thinking the heretical thought "why bother"?

Iron Sights

I agree strongly with Riverwalker about common guns. In my mind, 12-gauge, 7.62, 5.56, 30-30, 22 cal and 30.06 are the only guns really worth looking at.

Now there will be a lot of gun freaks out there who will rise up in righteous indignation at that statement. You are of course welcome to send me your comments and I will of course pay them the same respect and attention that I showered on my Aunt and Uncle (I still adore those two) the day that they came to tell us about the infinite possibilities available to us as AMWAY dealers.

But Riverwalker, I fail to see what good a scope does on a Marlin 30-30. The cold reality is those things are really only good inside of 100 yards. Scopes are expensive, break easily, and give you a false sense of being Davy Crockett. Iron sights are the way to go. You can even upgrade from the factory stuff if you want.

To me, scopes on a Marlin 30-30 is putting lipstick on a pig.

(yeah, I know, bad analogy...the 30-30 is a great gun)

If hard times come to get you

“Alright, let's go deeper. Uh, what kind of man are you? Well, you're weak, spineless, a man of temptations, but what tempts you? You're a portly fellow, a bit long in the waistband. So what's your pleasure? Is it the salty snacks you crave? No no no no no, yours is a sweet tooth. Oh you may stray, but you'll always return to your dark master, the cocoa bean.”

--Kramer guessing Costanza’s ATM password, "Bosco"

I went out buying stuff for the prep pile the other day. Got twenty-five pounds of navy beans, but then I went a bit farther. I also came home with five pounds of Hersheys cocoa powder. I am gonna divvy it into one pound bags with an oxygen scavenger in each bag.

Cuz brother, it the fewmets meet the turbine, you are going to need a little treat now and again to chase away the blues. Chocolate baked goodies do the job just dandy. Next I will be putting aside sugar and brown sugar too. Sweet stuff is good to sooth a weary soul.

The Body of Truth

I am going to send this here piece of drivel to Dmitri Orlov and see what he thinks about it. I have a sneaking hunch it is just a rehash of his and other peoples existing body of work.

When you stand back and look at it, the USSR collapsed under the weight of the untruths that it had accumulated around itself for the brief seventy some odd years of its existence. The workers lied to the managers (we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us), the managers lied to the apparachniks, who lied to the leaders. There was a house of cards built and the aging, intellectually moribund leadership of the Soviet Union took the counterfeit idea of their status as a true power onto the world stage.

Then along came old Ronnie Reagan. Now don't get me wrong, I liked the guy quite a bit. I even penned a get well letter when he got shot and told him he was doing a fine job. But....lets face it here folks, Ronnie wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. What he was was a good poker player. When he recognized that the Rooskis were betting on a busted flush, he started raising. Star Wars, Nicaragua, the stingers to Obama Bin Laden and his ilk in Afghanistan, six-hundred ship navy, the list goes on.

The Russians folded.

Fast forward twenty years. Here in the USA we have rapidly built a similar edifice of lies. The ownership society, CDO's, CDS's, liar loans and livin' large. In a very real sense, the lies that we have told ourselves and structured our society around are probably even more pervasive than those told by the Soviets. To this day, I would like to find Francis Fukayama in a biker bar and give him the slapping around he so richly deserves.

So now we are at the endgame of our bluff. We are going to lose the bulk of the bets that we made, hoping that everyone else would drop out of the game. But we misjudged the game we are playing. We thought that we were playing poker, but perhaps all the while we were playing 21. You know, the game where you play against the house. At the end of the game you show your cards and you either win or lose.

I doubt if we will win when the cards are placed face up.

I Love These Guys

God I feel Cynical

War is an Extension of Policy by Other Means
Carl Philip Gottlieb von Clausewitz, (1780-1831)

I'm an old soldier. Done my time. Seen the elephant.

For the most part, I will support anything for the vets and active duty.

But I think that we have got to sit down as a civil society and come to the conclusion that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan just ain't working. Just like we did in the 1970's when we finally admitted to ourselves that Vietnam didn't work.

You see, I spent my four years cleaning up after the Vietnam mess. We had gutted the military in the mid seventies and the VOLAR was just a train wreck. Trying to field a fully functional ARTEP certified battalion was almost impossible. There was only enough Cat-1 troops around to field a soccer team. The military was thoroughly broke and those who actually came to play were spread thin and hidden well. When we tried to accomplish something overseas you had to hide it from the folks who spit on troops and called them baby-killers.

But I think that gives me a unique perspective about what has happened now. You see, I saw what happens when you try to use an Army with strange ROE and limited political goals. It is just about as bad as when you "slam the wall" against an opponent and break your Army. I think that we might be looking at something similar now. If we don't sit down and think things through, regardless of the plan we come up with, we might be looking at a period of time where we will have to spend years rebuilding our Army.

So, lets start thinking about what we want out of the theater.

I for one have no problem with kicking their ass and taking their oil. Good simple goal. It's got my vote. Hell for that matter, with weapons free, it is well within our capabilities. But that ain't gonna wash with around 50% of the country (fucking blue states). So if we did it, there would be no end of bitching and whining for the next decade. So sorry folks, that dog won't hunt.

So what about the idea of turning Iraq into a secular democracy with interests aligned with those of the United States. OK....when you are finished laughing, wave your hands around, I'll be out in the kitchen getting a beer.

Just so you know, I think that cutting and running from something like this is the worst possible outcome. The actions of a moral and physical coward.

So what is left? Here is my idea. OK...Saddam was a bastard, but we proved in the 70's and 80's that he could be bought and he could be made to do our bidding. You just had to pay him enough. He only went crazy when a fucking puke named Bush managed to run the first of the incompetent Bush administrations and let him get off his leash. We had to spank him (damn if that wasn't a pretty little war) and bring him back to heel.

So then Clinton kept up the no-fly zones and let good old Saddam oppress everyone in sight inside that shithole. Got everyone thoroughly pissed off at everyone in that rats nest. But the lid was on the pressure cooker and we pretended to ignore the "food for oil" mess and everyone was cool.

Then the fuckhead in chief got elected. If there was something that he and Dick "the penguin" didn't fuck up, I can't think of it. So he removed the bastard (Saddam) who kept everyone in line and then everyone in that pissant country started killing each other.

So instead of sitting back with a bag of popcorn and a half-rack of Papst Blue Ribbon and enjoying a good killing. Fuckhead and the penguin figured they would "stabilize" the country and sell the oil rights to their Yale MBA buddies. Shit ain't been right since.

So lets find another Saddam and give him Carte Blanche. Set our folks up to train him and his army up good. Start rotating our troops out and even let him have the banged up military equipment that we have over there to hold up his end of the bargain. He gets to oppress the folks there and turn a tidy profit, bring the oil back on line and send us our cut of the stuff.

You see, it is my honest feeling that it is better to let someone else do our killing for us.

Prices might be going down

Looks like Mish Shedlock took a hard look at this one. I would tend to agree. It looks as though the big problem for the next little bit will be deflation, not inflation. If you have extra coin in the next 6-12 months, and the prices do go down (Remember might is one of those really big words), you may well want to polish off and top off the pantry.

I can't imagine that the deflation is a permanent fixture though. I am guessing that the deflation will run its course and then inflation will get here. So maybe what we have been seing is the front part of the hurricane passing over. We may be entering the eye now. Just remember after the eye passes you are back into the storm.

Keep your wits about you.

PS...Dorcas' Daddy, your coin is in an envelope and addressed now, providing that I get it into the mail today, it'll be there in a couple of days. Unless I senior moment and leave it in the car (this has been known to happen).

Bretton Woods is Dying

It has been going for a while. What we are seeing in the economy now is the equivalent of Cheynes-Stokes breathing.

This is going to be a short post. Just think about this folks. If the world goes off of the dollar standard, the economy just ain't gonna make it.

Read this too

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=news-000002973555

And write something about it

Please Read This

http://zenhuber.blogspot.com/2008/10/monday-preview-omar-deal-maker.html

My Sentiments Exactly

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/102775/the_fallacy_of_the_401(k)/

An opinion from an uncaring bastard

It's morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money.
W. C. Fields

I have been listening to the golf and craft's retirement crowd whine incessantly about how this recent downturn has destroyed their plans and may keep them from enjoying a full and rich retirement.

Fuck you.

Here is the deal folks. You got sold a title to the Brooklyn Bridge by a bunch of hucksters. They took most of your money and now they are doing everything in their power to extract the rest before the whole damn thing cracks up. They told you that you could reap more than you sowed and that you could take out more than you put in. Yeah...that has always worked.

You.Fucked.Up.

You.Trusted.a.Bunch.of.Crooks.

Your dream of retirement to golfing and pederasty was based on a Ponzi scheme. The numbers were always there staring us in the face. All you had to do was read and think. But Noooooo, you had to believe in the power of a perpetual motion machine peddled by slick ivy-league, well-tailored, manicured, and coiffed thieves who pocketed your cash and bought into the high life at the Hamptons and Vail. And the reason that they pocketed your cash is because you were a greedy fuck who bought their line of bullshit because you thought that you could be rich.

Now that the jig is up, and you have suddenly realized that you have been taken to the cleaners, you want me and the rest of the country to pull your chestnuts out of the fire. And Goddammit, you will probably succeed because the two parties had to dredge long and hard to come up with the quartet of idiots who we have to choose from.

Just think of this. How many times have you heard the phrase, "Whew, the government is taking over, now things will get better."

Not being content to fuck away your money on stupid Ponzi schemes, you now want to drag me down with you.

Bastards

Salt pork rocks

Found a store that is selling salt pork for $0.99 a pound.

Now, if you have any poor folk in your background, you will know that salt pork is the best flavor maker on the planet. If your preps include a lot of beans, you will be livin' large come the day if you can include this wonderful stuff in your preps.

The stuff that I got is shrink wrapped in one pound chunks. It freezes perfect. if you toss around twenty or so of these in your freezer, you have any number of beans/rice recipes available to you. A little bit of spices and you have food fit for any decent redneck anywhere.

Damn Fine Beans

If you don't already have one, get a decent cast iron dutch oven for this recipe.

2 to 3 quarts fresh spring or tap water.
2 lbs dried Great Northern, Navy, Pea, or other small favorite dried bean if available.

Soak the beans overnight in the water in a separate glass or ceramic bowl. if you have boys in the 9-16 year old range, keep the water for cooking and your boys can entertain themselves to no end with the final results, if flatulence isn't your thing, dump the water and move on.

1 lb. salt pork chopped into ½ inch cubes

Sauté the salt pork in the dutch oven until it is nice and crispy and you get a nice crust on the bottom of the dutch oven. When you get the crispin's on the bottom of the dutch oven, take the oven off the burner, wait a minute and dump in:

¼ cup water mixed with ¼ cup dark rum

Then stir the bottom of the dutch oven to make sure all the good tastin' stuff is knocked loose. Then stir in the soaked beans (with all the water off of them and stir thoroughly.

In a separate bowl, mix up the following:

½ cups dried onion.
1-1/2 tablespoon salt
¼ cup apple cider vinegar.
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 Tablespoons garlic powder
1 x 6 oz can of tomato paste.
¼ cup maple syrup.
1 cup dark molasses.
¾ cup dark brown sugar.
2 bay leaves
2 Tablespoon dry mustard .
2 teaspoons pepper
¼ teaspoon crushed red chiles

When you get it all mixed, dump it on top of the beans and mix everything up thoroughly. You might need to add more water to bring the level of the fluid to about a half inch over the level of the beans. If you are using the soaking water to entertain, be careful, the stuff is dynamite. If you add water, make sure everything is mixed well in the pot before you put the top on. Make sure that the pot has at least an inch or two from the top, this stuff spatters.

Cook in a slow oven for 5-6 hours or until the beans are the way you like them.

One good thing

Dragon went and got me all paranoid about sunspots. That's OK my friend, I'm in the mood for a tad of paranoia so it suits me just fine.



But it looks as though the sunspots are returning to Capistrano, at least I hope so. We had 241 sunspot-free days this year, which is quite a number.

Nothing personal my friends, but shit is bad enough now, I don't really want to add a "little ice age" into the stew.

Counterintuitive

So take a look at this article:

Still think the global credit crunch is all about the TED spread and collateralized debt obligations? Think harder. Export-bound grain has started piling up in Canada as sellers have begun refusing to trust the credit lines and financial institutions linked to their foreign buyers.

The problem is that Canada's export cargoes don't get loaded until buyers can prove their ability to pay -- proof that has been increasingly hard to come by in the wake of bank defaults and shrinking credit markets worldwide. Unable to get credit lines, many buyers have left the grain market, generating big losses for Canadian shippers. Add to this the greater costs that shippers now shoulder because of delayed payments, and the picture starts looking pretty bleak.

And Canada isn't the only country suffering from the crunch. U.S. and South American shippers are taking even harder hits. Los Angeles and Long Beach -- home to two of the biggest ports in the United States -- have already seen a 9 percent drop in imports this year. Global shipping rates are down 74 percent from last May.

With 90 percent of the world's trade in goods going by ship, credit access is key to trade's survival. It's also key to investment in product development, which surely will fall as manufacturers face greater declines in profits. Moldy grain looks like small peanuts by comparison, but don't tell that to Canadian shippers. Grain is their country's biggest agricultural export.

So if that stuff isn't moving, that will mean we will may be looking at two different phenomenon soon. It will be a sort of "good news, bad news" thing. The good news is a possible drop in grain prices until this is straightened out, so maybe we can take advantage and stock up (remember big surpluses in supply means lower costs). The bad news is that the countries that we export to will become more unstable, leading to greater overall problems in the world's economy (which means that you had damn well better stock up).

Things are getting strange

Keep your eyes peeled for trouble.

You have got to be kidding

I feel that I have as good a set of credentials as anyone in the tinfoil hat crowd.  But lately I think that we have been getting a little carried away.  

Case in point.  NorthCom has now fielded a single brigade combat team.  

OK.   So the guvmint now has some troops here in CONUS.  Big deal.  Do you think that this unit is going to be able to do anything of note?  

Jeez Louise folks, we can't even manage pacify a pissant country like Iraq with 4+ combat divisions and more mercenaries than you can shake a stick at.   We are supposed to be afraid of a single 5,000 member group that is made up of good god-fearing rednecks like the rest of us?

I think that we ought to keep things in perspective here folks.  This is most likely not a big deal and I doubt if the troops in the 3rd would allow themselves to be used to repress anything here in the States.

Keep you powder dry and worry about the important shit.

_end_

Dancing with who brung you

At some point, you have to realize that you are in the thick of it and that it is time to start using your preps.

It may be that the point is here. The next couple of days will tell the tale. I am going to start acting as though the stuff has hit the fan. Daily top offs for fuels. Improved awareness of my surroundings. Stops by the food stores to keep track of price increases and to keep food supplies topped off.

Building security is also an issue. Gotta make sure that the doors stay locked and deadbolted. The back door gets barricaded.

If the world turns around, it will be an excellent drill.

I sure hope that this is only a dry run.

Optimists

Gold and silver are for optimists. I'm diversifying into canned goods.

Though I do feel that complete portfolio diversification should include whiskey and ammo.

Keep your eyes open folks.

Things also go up

Now don't be surprised if things start looking better for a bit. The powers that be are trying hard to lash things together during this storm. They might be successful, partially successful, or temporarily successful.

Look carefully though. There are times when storms clear. There are also "sucker holes". Keep a close eye on things.

Waking up at 4:00 every morning is kicking my butt. Sorry about the sparsity of the posts this week.

Publish Post

things are getting wierd

Mostly I have been thanking the Lord that I have a job. I also thank him for friends and family.

Things are getting a touch skittish out there. I don't know if there will be blood in the streets anytime soon, but it appears that the veil of illusion appears to be lifting over our financial sector. Unfortunately, this look behind the veil reveals something considerably less than pretty.

Wow. Keep prepping. Keep the car filled up and the pantry well stocked. Money in the bank may not be all that good an idea, I am mixed on this one. A little gold, a little silver is never a bad idea.

Reduce your spending ruthlessly.

Take care out there.

Pollyana

One of the things that have been irking me more and more of late is the tendency of the Kumbaya camp to disparage anything that is not viewed as positive.

More than one I have seen people shouted down because they "didn't have anything positive to add to the conversation". It seems that, in order to have a place at the table, one has to be working hard and diligent at solving the problem in the Kumbaya way, and that saying anything negative is to be put down fully and ruthlessly.

The trouble with this point of view is that sometimes a piece of shit is just a piece of shit. The path we are taking is all wrong. The wishes of the individual are just grist for the mill.

These kind of folk may well be looking over the precipice soon. All of their "positive mental attitude" will lead them to naught when they go over the edge. Sometimes survival is just being able to take a punch and keep on coming. I wonder how their positive mental attitude will serve them when the punch lands.

I really think

I don't think that it is a good idea to leave you money in banks.

Do what you want folks, but be very careful.....

It's not all or nothing sometimes

Mayberry and Hilljack both brought in cautionary tales concerning the use of bleach as a water purification scheme.  Sorry folks, but as chemistry is my professional metier, gotta set you straight on this one.

In a nutshell, the bleach loses around 20% of it's active ingredient (hypochlorite ions) every year.  If you leave it out in the noontime sun, you will accellerate this process, so don't leave it out in the sun.  

From the Chlorox company please read the following

When bleach and water are mixed together to create a cleaning or disinfecting solution, the solution is only good for 24 hours. The temperature of the water does not affect the cleaning or disinfecting abilities of the solution. After the 24 hours, the solution begins to lose needed disinfecting properties. Therefore, it is recommended that for disinfecting purposes, the solution is made fresh daily.

Our bottles do not have an expiration date, however, they do have a production date. Once you understand how to read the production date, you can decipher the shelf life of the bottle. Please look below for a chart explaining our production codes.

CODE	PLANT	YEAR	DATE
MD21002	MD2	1= 2001	002nd day of year
A90288	A9	0= 2000	288th day of year

We recommend storing our bleach at room temperatures. It can be stored for about 6 months at temperatures between 50 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. After this time, bleach will be begin to degrade at a rate of 20% each year until totally degraded to salt and water. Storing at temperatures much higher than 70 degrees Fahrenheit could cause the bleach to lose its effectiveness and degrade more rapidly. However, if you require 6% sodium hypochlorite, you should change your supply every 3 months. 

Now, I cribbed the following from the chlorox site.  It is the classic use of chlorox to purify water:

In an emergency, think of this (one gallon of Regular Clorox Bleach) as 3,800 gallons of drinking water.

When the tap water stops flowing, Regular Clorox Bleach isn't just a laundry-aid, it's a lifesaver. Use it to purify water, and you'll have something to drink.

It's the same in any natural disaster. As the shock wears off and the days wear on, the biggest demand is for drinking water. Time after time, relief crews hand out free Clorox Bleach with simple instructions: use it to kill bacteria in your water and you'll have purified water to drink. Here's how: (Store these directions with your emergency bottle of Clorox Bleach.) 

First let water stand until particles settle. Pour the clear water into an uncontaminated container and add Regular Clorox Bleach per the chart.* Mix well. Wait 30 min. Water should have a slight bleach odor. If not, repeat dose.  Wait 15 min. Sniff again. Keep an eyedropper taped to your emergency bottle of Clorox Bleach, since purifying small amounts of water requires only a few drops. See chart* suggestions for storage bottle replacement.

Don't pour purified water into contaminated containers. To sanitize water jugs first, see instructions** at right.

Without water and electricity, even everyday tasks are tough. In lieu of steaming hot water, sanitize dishes with a little Clorox Bleach. Just follow the directions below to keep dishes clean.

Whether you use Clorox Bleach in an emergency or for everyday chores, it's always an environmentally sound choice. After its work is done, Clorox Bleach breaks down to little more than salt and water, which is good news anytime. 

*Ratio of Clorox Bleach to Water for Purification

2 drops of Regular Clorox Bleach per quart of water

8 drops of Regular Clorox Bleach per gallon of water

1/2 teaspoon Regular Clorox Bleach per five gallons of water

If water is cloudy, double the recommended dosages of Clorox Bleach.

(Only use Regular Clorox Bleach (not Fresh Scent or Lemon Fresh). To insure that Clorox Bleach is at its full strength, replace your storage bottle every three months.) 

**(Clorox Bleach Sanitizing Solution) 

Mix 1 tablespoon Regular Clorox Bleach with one gallon of water. Always wash and rinse items first, then let each item soak in Clorox Bleach Sanitizing Solution for 2 minutes. Drain and air dry.

So, folks are out there saying to themselves:  We can't use that, that stuff is crap, it goes bad after six months.  Wrong.

The truth of the matter is, you just need to have enough hypochlorite ions hanging about in you water to kill the nasty critters.  As the Clorox gets older, you just have to use a bit more.

So, in essence, after six months, the chlorox only has 90% of it's full-strength hypochlorite ions available to you.  

SO:

If the chlorox was made six months or less from the date you are using it, go ahead and use it as shown.  8 drops per gallon of water.

Now after six months, the stuff has between 80% and 90% of the hypochlorite remaining.  so I would say you have to guess on the conservative side and figure 80%.

so to treat a gallon of water, instead of 8 drops per gallon you will have to fudge a bit

8 drops divided by 0.8 = 10 drops of clorox

between 12 months and 18 months

8 drops divided by 0.7 = 12 drops of clorox

between 12 months and 18 months

8 drops divided by 0.6 = 14 drops of clorox

Now, some folks will worry that the Clorox will break down into something that will turn your children into mutant biker zombies (Remember, it is rap music that does that)....don't sweat it, it just breaks down into salt and water.

So, it appears to me that you just have to adjust the dose for older chlorox.  You don't toss it, that would be wasteful.  Just remember the kinetics of the stuff.  

And get a bunch of Britta filters to take care of the taste

Another Possible Option

Hmm:

Another option to offline posting is scribefire.  It appears that you can use this offline and it seems to give you all the capabilities that you can think off for your blogging pleasure.

On another note.  Take a look that this.  If this is real, this will be a real interesting possiblilty

Testing the system

OK:  This post is going to go through the my trying to reduce my bill to the phone company.

Since one of the things that we are going to have to do is ruthlessly cut our expenses and get rid of the fripperies that we currently consider necessities, it is important to look at our "communication needs".  Right now I am shelling out around $140.00 a month on DSL, cell, and traditional phone service.  Needless to say, There is around $100.00 a month that can be shaved from that total. 

The cell phone will probably go first.  I am beginning to think that the world was a better place before these damn things anyway.  So that is the first $60.00 is shaved off the top of the costs.  The other way to go is purge the land line and go to a cell-only system.  There is not as much money to be saved, $55.00 vs $60.00, so this is almost a push.  While my distaste for cell phones is noted, they are mobile and have real advantages.  This will take some thinking.

After that, the DSL is is the next potential target.  I am more ambivalent getting rid of this, for obvious reasons. It is $22.00 a month, but if I get rid of it, that means that dial-up is the wave of the future in my house.  I will get rid of one or the other of the phones, but I think that the high-speed will stay on for a bit, but be a target to be re-examined each month.

If I do flush the high-speed, I don't want to tie up the land-line, so, in order to read my current system of blogs and write this screed, I will need to have a means of writing off-line and posting, and have a means of rapidly collecting the blogs I read. 

The easiest means of posting is just doing e-mails to your blogger account.  If you go to the e-mail tab under the setting menu in your dashboard, you can set up the system to allow you to post using you e-mail system.  This is offline heaven for posting.

Reading is also pretty easy, offline readers are abundant.  Since I am a Linux user, I get Liferea free and it goes out and get stuff from Mayberry, Dragon, and Yves and a slew of others out there.  I can read them offline and at leisure.  I am going to gou out and look for widows programs that do the same thing for my windows partition.

So that is it.  Mostly a post saying that you don't have to give up all that much should you decide to downgrade your phone system.  There are viable workarounds.  Since I am doing this post via the e-mail system as a test, it might not look the same, so as much as anything,

"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters of your area in voluntary cooperation with the Federal, State and local authorities have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency,  the Attention Signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news or instructions. This station Degringolade serves the world-wide web area. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System."

Is this a great country or what?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/sarahpalin/3127313/Sarah-Palin-porn-film-made-by-Larry-Flynt.html

I am stunned

Man, I can't think of a way to express my amazement.

You shouldn't be reading this my friends, you should be prepping.

My list today

1. Bleach x 3 gallons
2. lots of matches....make sure that I seal them up so that they are water proof
   
3. Fill up the LP tanks
4. Finish splitting kindling
5. Make some laundry soap
6. Buy TVP and bag it up and vacuum seal it with O2 scavengers

Take care....keep your wits about you.

PS. You might want to read this

-end-

Perhaps I am missing something here

OK...lets see if I have this right.

The congress is attempting to pass a bill that will hand $700,000,000,000 to Wall Street in exchange for pieces of paper that do not mean anything to anyone.

In order to pass the bill that allows them to give away all this money, they are also including tax cuts in the bill.

This seems an odd way to do business

An odd form of preparation

That I enjoy writing is self-evident. The pleasures of having people read what I write is an acceptable form of narcissism that only leaves me with vestigial guilt (please remember that I am Catholic, as such, I can feel guilty about anything).

But my publisher is the internet and Google. How these will fare in hard times has yet to be established. I would tend to think that it will be a bit before they begin to be more costly and difficult to access. I am not saying that they will be censored, I really don't think that will be the case, but the cost of accessing the internet may well begin to be beyond peoples means.

So I am making a map of my optional access points to the internet should I find it difficult to maintain my spiffy sheen DSL connection. These will serve me in good stead to keep my writing jones up and running.

The other thing to look at is your computer. I always use a laptop, right now I am using a nice little Compaq that I picked up for $400. 2 gigs of ram, 160 gb hard drive, dual core pentium. A great little machine. I also was able to put my old axe (IBM thinkpad (Pentium 3 with 384 mb ram and 11 gb hard drive) into a vacuum sealed plastic bag with a couple of oxygen scavengers as an emergency backup.

I also have Linux running on both of them. Windows and Microsoft are too dialed into the current paradigm to ever be truly trusted. I have a strong feeling that the model of Linux will survive hard times much better than the model of unlimited greed as exemplified by monkey-boy Ballmer.

So, as part and parcel of your preps. I would take a bit of time and think about your access to the knowledge base of the web and how you propose to keep it going. It might not be as important as your beans and bullets, but it is worthy of your attention.