Another coat of paint

I have been having trouble writing about what is happening lately. I could comment on the obvious and self-serving lies coming out of the government and banksters (I guess this is a redundant phrase, as one seems to be the other), but this seems to have been pretty well clawed over by now.

I could talk about prepping, but that is a pretty solitary vice. Right now I am hitting the thrift store scene, stocking up on the mason jars that I find there. I also found a steal of a deal on mason jar lids at 99 cents a dozen.

There is some movement in my head about the fates of the car companies, but it is pretty well draft version now, no use inflicting it on y'all until I have my weak reasoning shored up as well as possible.

So, in a nutshell, my life is pretty much as normal. Pretty similar to watching paint dry.

I'm content.

Crap and Fade

CO2 is rising.  Yup.  Can't contest that one.

So we are going to attack industry to stop them from making more CO2.

At first it seems sensible.  But then you start thinking:  Isn't 70% of all oil used for cars? 

So what good is going after industry when it is the damn cars that are burning the bulk of the carbon.

Hmmmm

Methinks this is another bad idea getting ready to be implemented.

These Obamanites seem to have an uncanny knack for doing things incorrectly.

Why is it always the worst

I was checking up on the numbers coming out of Mexico.  Does't seem to be all that virulent a strain.  Apparently some folks have died, but nothing too far out of the norm.  I'll keep checking.

 

Y'all have to remember, the vaccines are developed every year with a "best guess" of the strains that may or may not be out the following year.  Quite a bit of the time they miss.  Such is life with a rapidly mutating virus like influenza.

 

I'm gonna keep watching, but right now it just looks like a moderately bad strain, not a TEOTWAWKI.

 

I for one am quite pleased, I hope that it keeps going this way, but I am taking no bets.

Finally stopped raining long enough for the boys and I to get a walk in to scout fishing holes for the summer. I am now content. So the rest of the day is going to be doin' stuff. As always, there is laundry, but I will probably use that as a springboard to organise the preps and to start jettisoning crap that I don't need or want.

News out of the world today is rather interesting. The Saudi's are finally starting to admit that they are having trouble maintaining production. Bit of a sticky wicket that. Though I am sure that Barry and Larry and Timmy will spin it as a "green shoot".

Looks to me that things are proceeding along nicely.

Got preps?

A Northwest Joke

What do you do after two days of rain?

Go back to work on Monday.

I don’t see the humor lately

Gravity Lessons

I guess that I have been writing less lately.  I was pondering why, and finally came up this this.  I don’t really care what happens in this stage of the fall.  In a sense, we are in the same position as our old friend Wiley Coyote.  We are off the cliff, we are falling.  Not a blessed thing that we can do about it.

So I am spending my time enjoying the trip.  When I look at this sad, hapless excuse for an administration I feel despondent (but they sure are a quite a bit better than Bushie).  They are exactly like Wiley when he is clawing at the air, trying desperately to make it back to the edge.  I don’t think that it will happen, Wiley never makes it back.

So, right now it is spring.  The bills are paid, the taxes are current.  I need to prep more, need to save more.  But none of those tasks are helped by my freaking out and getting obsessed with the antics of people who have fallen off the cliff and are trying to refute the lessons of gravity.

Spring Fever

Looks like the posting might be a bit spotty until I get over this.

Nut Job…No Nut Job

Us folks the tin-foil hat crowd are kind of difficult to pin down.  There are some folks who belong smack dab in the mainstream and who have arrived at the land of beans and ammo by a fairly circuitous route.  There are also some serious nutjobs out there who are concerned about things that I can only describe charitably as “unique” or “novel”.

So the DHS has started to get worried about the idea that nineteen returning vets have joined “right wing” organizations.  Wow nineteen!!  These guys may need our hats more than we do.  The aliens have obviously used mind control.

The trouble is that the DHS doesn’t say what organizations these folks have joined.  KKK, Dittoheads, the Republican Party…whatever?  I am thinking that perhaps it means the folks that come back and don’t immediately start paying their Democratic party dues.

So, what you have to look here is at the subtext of the whole matter.  Us tin foil hatters be bad people in the eyes of the true believers that BHO has used to populate the government.  We don’t have the necessary suspension of disbelief required for “hope”.  We don’t really want to hold hands and sing kumbaya and visualize world peace.  We want to get to work and be left alone.  So when the newly minted vets come back and don’t want a thing to do with the folks in government, they must be considered a threat.

So, don’t be too surprised that the new PTB rag at you.  But don’t fret too much…very soon they will have much bigger fish to fry.

And…I am putting up this link again to allow you the most recent cutting edge research into our most prevalent characteristic

We Rotate Our Tyrants

We have a odd set of these critters nowadays. Used to be tyrants were kinda predictable, they beat the crap out of anyone who opposed them, taxed the piss out of anyone who remained, and generally lived a fairly interesting life as an unloved despot. But, they didn’t really care what the little folks thought, as long as they toed the line.

Now we have the happy face tyrants in charge. They are dead set on assuring that enough of the industrial sludge that is equated with “civilization” is showered on us plebs. They are working tirelessly to provide more stuff to us so we won’t take the time to notice that we aren’t particularly happy. The tyrants now are the Grey men, those soulless beings that accrue the subtle power of a small part of the state and use it to enforce obedience and to accomplish their own goals.

You see, right now readers of this guild are probably thinking that I speak of Obama. Not in the slightest. He is nothing in this world. A handsome man with polished sentences is not our enemy. But never doubt for a moment that he is a distraction. The tyrants which I speak of are Geithner and Summers and their ilk who are the bought and paid for hit-men of the corporations. They are creatures of the corporate monsters who are sucking the lifeblood from the country. But in order for their true masters to continue sucking the gravy, they have to make sure that we have enough spare change to buy our salad shooters and our flat screens.

But we are a fairly odd oppressed. Most or out countrymen are content to let the happy-face tyrants run the show. Eighty percent of the folks around you are still employed and the gas for the SUV is still reasonable. We are just now catching onto the concept that we might want to have a little bit salted away.

So right now we are sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think that it isn’t time to get all twisted and take off prematurely. Hell, maybe we can even figure a way around this mess. But still listen carefully to the folks who are out there screaming bloody murder. They are probably a lot closer to the truth than the well-coiffed corporate whores who read the news to you in the evening.

Go Outside

But listen to this first

A Saturday Wasted

Since I just paid my taxes, Mother Hubbard's cupboard is pretty bare.  So when I got the opportunity to work some OT, I grabbed it.  So it is a wasted Saturday, and right now it is a slow time that lies between the two periods of insanity.

 

I am going to try and find some heirloom dent corn seeds when I am done here. So I get to head over to Portland Nursery where all the snotty yuppies go to buy their seeds.  Bloody Butcher looks good, and with the plants being so tall, it will give the three sisters that I am planning a big old trellis to climb up

 

So that is the day today.  Nothing exciting.  Just muddling along.

 

Life is good

Please Read This One

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2009/04/escape-from-the-zombie-food-court.html

21 and counting

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly. ~Don Juan

I follow sunspots. Just a thing. I have no idea what the data means, but ever since Dragon got me started on these last year I have kept an eye on them….pretty regularly since October. I have been following the data over at Spaceweather.com.

At present, it is just an idle intellectual curiosity. The rules of causation and correlation still apply. The meaning of these extended absences aren’t clear. It is a mystery, and that in itself is very cool my friends.

We operate in a world where we have to know for certain. Where the data is cut and pasted and made to fit the ideas that we brought into the exercise. We have to be able to construct a scatter plot that shows how the linearity of the curve fit is >.99; that the statistical significance approaches unity.

I don’t think we have a clue of what is going on with this one. I think that there is a fair chance we never will.

That is a treasure that we should savor.

Give this a listen while you ponder.

Both of these Statements are True

1. Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat idiot.
2. Al Franken is is a mean-spirited little prick.

Yet look at the effect that these “performers” have on our day to day lives.

The political culture of the US is a poorly staged bunch of self-absorbed performers with no direction or accountability.

They do not require obedience.  They certainly don’t deserve our respect

They need to be shown the door.

He Had Us Pegged

An American

By Rudyard Kipling

Born 1865

---

The American Spirit speaks:
"If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, my Avatar."
Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.
The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve.
His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.
Calm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown,
Or panic-blinded stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;
Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,
He dubs his dreary brethren Kings.
His hands are black with blood -- his heart
Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.
But, through the shift of mood and mood,
Mine ancient humour saves him whole --
The cynic devil in his blood
That bids him mock his hurrying soul;
That bids him flout the Law he makes,
That bids him make the Law he flouts,
Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes
The drumming guns that -- have no doubts;
That checks him foolish -- hot and fond,
That chuckles through his deepest ire,
That gilds the slough of his despond
But dims the goal of his desire;
Inopportune, shrill-accented,
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him, careless 'mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.
How shall he clear himself, how reach
Your bar or weighed defence prefer?
A brother hedged with alien speech
And lacking all interpreter.
Which knowledge vexes him a space;
But while Reproof around him rings,
He turns a keen untroubled face
Home, to the instant need of things.
Enslaved, illogical, elate,
He greets th' embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
Or match with Destiny for beers.
Lo, imperturbable he rules,
Unkempt, disreputable, vast --
And, in the teeth of all the schools,
I -- I shall save him at the last!

Proscriptions

When the second triumvirate took over Rome after the death of Caesar, there was a need for a bunch of money to pay the troops and run the empire.  So they issued proscriptions.  They ordered the death of a couple of thousand of the richest folks in Rome and took all their money.  Poof, budget problems gone.

Consider now Goldman Sachs, Citibank and the likes.  Consider the greedy bastards who got us here.

The old days don’t look all that bad.

Observe and Report

I am not certain that it is yet time to go out into the open in a widespread effort to change the government. This doesn’t mean that such a measure will not be necessary in the future, but I don’t think that now is yet the time.

I think we are in scouting mode right now. In standard military usage, scouts don't really like to use their weapons all that much if they are on reconnaissance missions. In an ideal mission, no one sees them, but they see and assess the threat coming the way of the main force. They figure out the nature of the opfor and the whereabouts of the same.

In a sense, we are in the very beginning of the process. This will be the organization stage for any future decisions to be made. As such, announcing ones intentions and loudly screaming for the fall of the elites who have every intention of savagely repressing any such movement will draw agents provocateurs, informants, and snitches like flies.

I realize that his political views are anathema in this crowd, but perhaps a good use of folks time will be to read and ponder the military works of Mao Tze-Tung.

Joyous Easter

?

The Barak and Nancy show ran up a 192.27 billion deficit  in March.  For the first six months of the fiscal year (remember, the feds go from October to October), the piper has run up a bill of 956.8 billion.  Lets be conservative and assume that they will not go up faster, but just keep at the same level of spending.  192.27 times 6 is 1.153 trillion.  When you add this with what we have run up thus far, you are looking at around 2.1 trillion in the hole for this year.  Wow.

Now every politician says that he won’t raise taxes.

Every person I know can’t afford more taxes.

There are a whole buttload of folks and businesses out there who aren’t paying taxes because they aren’t making any money

Tax revenues are going down

We are in the hole for 2 trillion this year.

Am I missing something?

Hmmmmm

A poor use of math

If your experiment requires statistics, you should have designed a better experiment

Lord Kelvin 

We here in the US have a funny relationship with math.  It is not so much a discipline to be studied and understood, but rather a fetish to be waved about to prove a point.   At the governmental level, math is especially suspect.  The constant dinking around with the unemployment numbers to put a happy face on so the little folk won’t panic is especially repugnant.  But then again, the folks in power require the acquiescence of the proles to keep their power and perks.  It is in their best interests to doctor the data.

Medicine is also very funny.  We worship our white-coated doctors, but these guys play the funniest games with data.  They have to, their rather expensive lifestyles depend on the the slimmest of data.  Have you ever taken a pencil and paper and went over the warnings and results data of the those little pills you put into your body?  Interesting use of your time.  The gains from the “new and improved” are very marginal and the side-effects greater and greater with every improvement.

Or consider the data from the weather research dudes.  Graphs are totted out showing catastrophe, but when you go in and hash at the raw data by yourself, the results become much more difficult to assess.  Data is “derived” from secondary epiphenomenon.  Estimates are enshrined as hard data.  Strings of numbers from a mathematical model are preferred over hard data collection.  But funding comes from this current model, and woe betide a heretic.

Right now, I am going over the sunspot number data.  This is also strange, when they are needed by the models of the space scientists they are conjured up with the tiniest of pixel sludge.  Now that it looks like there may be funding in the idea of a minimum, what was called a sunspot a couple of months ago is now a “proto sunspot”.  Strange things. 

So our world is rapidly becoming an abstraction, with the data being massaged behind closed doors in order to present us with clues leading to where others wish us to be.  Maybe it is time for all of us to start looking at the raw data and thus looking at problems directly instead of through a lens provided by others.

A Supersaturated Solution

Anyone who has has the joy of a high school chemistry class always seems to carry a couple of mental pictures with them the rest of their lives, the changing of colors of an indicator in a titration, the crisp colors of a borax bead.  But the one that sticks the most with me is the sudden explosive growth of crystals in a supersaturated solution when the seed crystal is dropped.  It is the truest of magics, this demonstration of the character of physical law.

I think that is what we are all waiting for now.  We are living in a supersaturated solution.  We have a whole bunch of bodies in the world, well past the carrying capacity of the planet.  We have used oil to provide the energy to raise the temp quite high.  We have also used toxic finances and the incredibly rapid flows of capital and resources to stir the solution and keep it from crystallizing out.  This puppy is getting ready to go.

What will be the seed crystal?  I am thinking that the current attacks that we are seeing on the infrastructure of the US are really interesting.  Consider for a moment what would happen if the internet were to shut down and the delivery of energy in the US were to be compromised. 

What will be the seed?

Give it up

 

You know guys, the money is gone, the barn door is still wide open.  The crooks are in charge, and we are all responsible in one way or another.  As the pretty picture sez’  It’s over, let it go.

So he is my latest idea.  Lets all stop voting for the federal positions.  No votes for Pres, Senator, or Congressmen.  Vote for all of your state and local elections.  Work hard at your state and local level.   Start to build something instead of whining of spilt milk.

Here is a statement from my local head of elections.

If there is a race or contest appearing on your ballot on which you do not wish to cast a vote this does not void your ballot.  A voter is not required to cast a vote on each contest on their ballot.  Even if one or more contests is skipped all votes cast by the voter will still be counted.

I think that Andrei Sakharov once suggested that the way to deal with politicians is to ignore them.  I say that this is the way to go.  Don’t pay any attention to the corrupt and venal politicians at the federal level.  Ignore them.   Make your attention focus closer to home where it can do some good.

Ignore them.

(BTW:  If anyone knows of the “Sakharov”?? quote that I am so desperately trying to find…..little help here?)

Three Tater Breakfast

I am always on the lookout for folks whose actions agree with mine, but who come from a different angle.  Allows me to examine my actions more rigorously and also allows a quick wallow in the swamp of moral superiority, which I always find refreshing. 

Anyway, I have been poking around the “slow food” movement recently.  I like what they say, cut your costs, live closer in on the food chain, cook good stuff for yourself.  These cats are groovy man.  But then you start reading their stuff.  Crap, a swing and a miss. Just the same kind of self-righteous crap that you get from every other movement.

What is one of the most telling things to me personally is the idea that what you consume is a mark of your personal virtue.  In this world, it would appear that a organic, macrobiotic child molester is somewhat superior to a Whopper munchin’ saint.  What a load of crap.  What you put down your gullet is personal preference, nothing more and nothing less.  A cheeto is not really any more virtuous than a steamed potato, it is merely a matter of how you choose to utilize your vanishingly small portion of the worlds resources.

So yesterday, it started out with homemade breakfast of sautéed pancetta with sliced up potatoes with rosemary, salt, and pepper.  Pretty good stuff.  But after reading the preachy, self righteous crap of some of the slow food devotees, for lunch I got in the car, went over to McDonalds and bought a couple of Big Mac’s (2 for $3.00) and consumed them with vigor.  They were as I remembered them, not bad.  I couldn’t imagine doing it regularly though.

What I am trying to say here is that stuff like your food and your tastes in clothes and what you want out of a car are ephemera.  Keep them that way.  If you want them, recognize them for what they are, a vanity.  Keep them or don’t as it suits you.  Get rid of them if you need and don’t look back.  The biggest lesson to remember is that none of these things brings virtue.  Sneering at someone for what they eat is as vulgar as sneering at someone for the color of their skin.

I just thought that I would post these for your perusal

The Automatic Earth is one of my favorite sites.  Ilargi and Stoneleigh are exceptional in their cogency and the sustained quality of their thoughts and observations.  Bravo.

Here is a list that they published yesterday.   I would beg you all to think of your answers to the questions here.  Then go spend some serious time thinking about what exactly it is that can be done.

1. Do you believe we've seen the last bank bail-out?
2. Do you believe home prices will start rising again soon?
3. Do you believe that we will see a reversal in job losses, that anytime in the foreseeable future more jobs will be created than lost?
4. Do you believe your pension plan will make up for its 2008 losses before 2012?
5. Do you believe your municipality and state will get their finances under control by 2010?
6. Do you believe your municipality and state will be able to avoid bankruptcy?
7. Do you believe your employer will be able to avoid bankruptcy?
8. Do you believe your children will be better off than you are?
9. Do you believe your children will be better off than your parents were?
10. Do you believe global trade will recover to its 2005-6 highs?
11. Do you think it should, given how much consists of trinkets
12. Do you believe we will have enough energy to burn when the time comes to rebuild?
13. Do you believe alternative energy forms will be able to replace fossil fuels in the recovery, if and when it comes?
14. Do you believe banks that have trillions in gambling losses have a right to your money to keep them standing?
15. Do you believe it's a good idea to have employees from broke(n) banks enter government in order to make decisions on their fate?
16. Do you feel confident about your future?
17. Do you feel confident about the future of your children?

I am not trying to be funny here, but what is happening currently in America.  I think that we should shut our mouths for a bit, turn our brains on for a bit, and come up with a better plan.  I don’t know what it is yet, but it has to be better than what we are doing now

Jackie and Michelle

Ceux qui n'ont pas connu l'Ancien Régime ne pourront jamais savoir ce qu'était la douceur de vivre

I absolutely love the mainstream media.  I would probably love them more if I were still smoking pot. 

Oh, lets not kid ourselves for even a moment, as reporters of what is happening in the worlds of finance and government, they suck beyond belief.  But as fashion reporters, they are FANTASTIC. 

I am on the edge of my seat waiting for the latest on Michelle Obama’s wardrobe.  Her fashion sense is the talk of the G20.  Carla Bruni pales in comparison.  She is a shining symbol of all that is good and right with the world.  Now granted the woman was a fairly high powered woman in her own right, she had a good job as a hospital administrator in Chicago, it would appear that she was pulling down around 120K.  Of course she became much more valuable when BHO became a Senator.  For that she got a healthy raise up to the mid 300K range.  But I am certain that the two events were in no way related.

So now she gets trotted out as the new Jackie O (or is that K?).  She looks great in clothes, has a great smile, is raising two really cute kids.  My gosh, she can even pull off photo ops wearing a black short skirt and black leather boots while digging in the new White House garden.  She is something positive for our media to bring to our attention in order to take our minds off of the bad things like regulatory capture, fraud, and a hopelessly corrupt government.  We should be grateful for her.

Is that a fiddle I hear in this smoky room?

Yves St Laurent Medicine

You know, whenever I hear some flack on the media begin to spout about how we have the “best medical care in the world”.  I usually turn off my ears, because what is coming is an infomercial about how the new technology will save folks.

I can’t tell you folks how much this repulses me.  Because what we are seeing is not medicine for the benefit of society, but rather, another bubble being propagated.  You see folks, what we are seeing is not the responsible medicine of a doctor telling someone to lose weight, eat more healthy, exercise more, get your vaccines.  Instead, what we are getting in progressively more expensive medicines, with greater side effects, dealing only with “financially rewarding syndromes”, affordable by fewer and fewer people.  The main beneficiaries of this bubble will be big pharma and the ever-underachieving “biotechnology” sector. 

What we care also seeing is the progressive death of the portion of the medical establishment which allows the less-than-rich a better life. Vaccines factories are getting weeded out, there are many fewer out there providing more expensive service.  Simple antibiotics are becoming useless due to the overuse in feeding cattle and poultry.  The proven and effective old line medicines that have gone generic are banished to the nether regions of India for manufacture and are under constant attack by big pharma.

What is even funnier is the way that the middle classes and the rich look at doctors.  Having the “right” doctor and the “right” hospital is a bauble to be displayed in cocktail hour conversation.  Having “heroically” been treated for a disease is the mark of courage nowadays. 

So we have generated a medical system worthy of our national psyche.  Where the blessed rich are offered every benefit and the wretched poor are left to the tender mercies of Prof. Darwin.   What saddens me beyond all belief is that the “Christian Right” are the most vociferous defender of this free-market apostasy.  A socialized medical system is anathema to the right and most readers of this blog.

I can only imagine the tears of St. Luke.

Finally

I am cheering for this woman:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/05/useconomy-regulators

I pray that she will be able to stop the looting of the Summers/Geithner abortion.  I ain’t holding my breath, but I am most certainly rooting for her.

You go girl.

Carry on

Yeah, things are crappy right now, but most of it is out of my reach.  I can’t fix the world, I can only work on my little portion of it.  So today is a talk about gardening.  I plan on getting right to it as soon as I finish my walk to the library and back.

Peas are a great first crop for the year.  They are cold resistant and you can get them in way earlier than just about any other crop.  If you make sure to soak them well and add a little inoculant to the soaking water, you will be contributing nitrogen to your soil for the next crop in the rotation.  You have to love the nitrogen fixing that these little buggers do you you.  I am going to follow on with the tomatoes.

Spent a small fortune on tomato seed this year.  $2.95 for the heirloom blacks and $3.10 for the purple calabash.  But, I am going to use these as a base for my future seed stock and even try my hand at some hybridization to make my own stock.  If nothing else, it will be a great science project for the boys. 

Mostly, working in the garden gives me a sense that I am a part of things in a bigger picture.  I sure as hell is better than whining about the antics of the Wall Street Thieves and the Washington Based flunkies.  That story is old.  I am certain than the peasants in Picardy did exactly the same whining about the Dukes and Kings and financiers of l'Ancien Régime.

So, I’m ignoring the world for the day, except for a small, south-facing strip 4’ x 30’.  I would recommend strongly that y’all do the same.

PS:  Found a great new site for gardening, Daughter of the Soil.  She puts out some pretty music too, check her out.

Blue Magoo

Well, the week off with the boys did not work out the way that I had it planned.  I had envisioned three or four days of going outside, hiking a bit, working in the garden, just all kinds of good stuff.

What I got was four solid days of 38-42 degree blustery rain.  Now, for those of you who don’t come from this end of the clear cut, that spells depression up here.  There is nothing that soaks through to the bone faster than cold rain.

So, we hung out and read a bunch, played some computer games (I am pleased to announce that I now find World of Warcraft boring and am letting my subscription expire).  I did a bit of cleaning and tossing of crap, just rested and refitted. 

Read a bit about the state of the world.  This is an interesting time, things are quiet, but mostly I hear a fuse burning.  I have no idea what size bomb it is, I have no idea how long the fuse it.  Just a fuse burning.

another

http://paulgrignon.netfirms.com/MoneyasDebt/The_Un-payability_of_Interest.html

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