The Presiding Evil

A corporation is a legal person under our current set of rules governing the country.  This must end.  They must be restrained and brought to heel.

They will do anything to maintain their position of wealth and privilege, do not expect that any movement against them will not engender a response. 

If we are to break out of the trouble we are in, we have to break the corporations.  They are nothing but a set of separate tribes, sometimes warring, sometimes cooperating, but always intent on making the world into a place where they get more than their fair share. 

By acting as a tribe, with their primary loyalties nothing more than the lining of their shareholders and managements pockets, they are free from anything resembling moral resonsibility to the rest of the country. 

Think about it.  Corporations have to hire paid liars named PR companies to burnish up their lies and make them look like model citizens.  They have to have a battery of lawyers on hand because they know that their actions will fuck people over and they will have to defend their actions in court.

They have bribed our representatives and placed their men at the highest levels of government to do their bidding. 

Lets not play games with tea parties bitching to a government that is owned and operated by these.  The government is currently serving its masters. 

The masters just aren't "We the people".

Just a question for your perusal

We rage on about the Fed and the congress and the supreme court and the president and all the other crap. 

We wonder about wall street and the plutocrats and the global economy.

I am really starting to wonder if our time is being wasted by thinking about this crap.  We have no effect on it, it is a game being played far above our heads, and it detracts from our concentration and thus the ability to make the changes in our own lives.

Not really certain about this.  Just a thought

Just a thanks

 Man:

I still have a job, as crappy as it seems sometimes.  The bills are getting paid(barely) and there is a small spot put aside.  There is food and kids and water and good books and music.

You have to remember that ingratitude is theft.  Things could be a lot worse, you had better go looking around for all your blessings and tender mercies that have been given you and be thankful.

J

No explanation required

Thermos Cookin'

Let me tell you about an experiment that I did today. When I started there was no reason to think that it wouldn't work. So I am writing this up as it goes, with the final report unknown at this point.

I have a 1-quart, stainless steel wide mouth thermos. I'll try this for the cooker.

The recipe is for rice and beans.

• 1/2 cup brown rice
• 1/2 cup pinto beans
• 1/4 cup TVP (bacon bits)
• 2 tsp bouillion
• 1 tsp garlic
• 1 tbsp taco powder
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/4 tsp sage
• 2 cups boiling water

Pre-tempered thermos by pouring in boiling water and waiting 5 minutes, then dumped everything in the thermos. Closed up tight and waited for eight hours.

Results? Well that didn't work. Crunchy beans and rice.

Phase II

OK....what I am thinking is that the beans have to be soaked first. Then the mess has to be brought to a boil and dumped into the tempered thermos. I am thinking that just dumping the cold ingredients and hot water together into the thermos at the same time just used a great deal of the heat energy to bring the temp of the ingredients up and the overall heat energy of the system down.

So now I think that I oughta establish the thermal characteristics of the thermos itself.

a) Temper thermos with room temp water for five minutes, then dump in 4 cups of boiling water, measure temperature and wait 8 hours, measure temperature again.  Water temp at beginning 200.  Water Temp at end =142

b) Temper thermos with boiling water for five minutes, then dump in 4 cups of boiling water, measure temperature and wait 8 hours, measure temperature again.  Water Temp at beginning 205. Water Temp at end = 162

Marketing Formulae

I guess that I have been writing less lately because I have been a touch depressed.  Oh, don't fret, it isn't the kind of depression that makes you want to go out and swallow the latest from big pharma, it is something else.

That there is nothing new under the sun is a given.  But what is being passed around as commentary in nearly every media is almost worthless.  The MSM is doing everything it can do to get things back to the go-go days.  The blogosphere is obsessed with either a.) bizarre (albeit amusing) fantasies about punishing the evil-doers, b.) a play-by-play of where we went wrong and how, if only people would have listened, we might have avoided the mistakes that we made, or c.) indulging in a mental replay of either the Postman or The Road.

In a way, all of the activities above are nearly worthless.  It might be good for a bitching session among close friends while at a bar, but it is not going to get us out of the pickle we are in.

So, I am going to try my best to lean toward ideas that will get us moving out of the mess.  As much as I hate to say it, the hippie-dippies seem to be on the closest thing to a path moving forward.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I am not espousing liberal views, but rather pointing out that the folks that went back to the land in the commune movement and stayed there might well have been right all along.

So y'all are welcome to call my shit when I am just bitching to bitch.  I will try to be better at working on ways to let us get through.

Logarithmic

"the only reason we haven’t see thousand-percent inflation as a result of the vast manufacture of paper wealth in recent decades is that most of it has been used solely to buy even more newly manufactured paper wealth."

 From the Archdruid 

Seven in One Blow

Perhaps one should read the old fairy tale.  In a way, it is very appropriate; the tale of a master bullshitter and his rise to power.

Seven banks failed last night.

Go check out http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html to see the entire list.  106 down so far this year.

We have also poured a trillion or so into saving other banks.

Even after all that, the banksters just keep going and making sure that every bit of blood is taken out of the citizenry.

So, I would recommend looking really hard at what you have and what you need.  Deposits in institutions who's sole purpose appears to be to rape their customers does not seem like a good bet at this point.  Neither would certificates saying you own chunks of things that you have no control over.  Sometime I even question the wisdom of keeping too many portraits of dead presidents about.

Just a thought.

Ugh

Its Friday.

I'm pooped.

What I wrote yesterday for posting today was crap, thank God for delete functions.

Come back later (tomorrow).

Pumpkin from last year

• 3 cups white sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 8 eggs
• 3 cups frozen pumpkin
• 1 cup water
• 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
•   2teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon dried ginger
  
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Mix up all of the wet ingredients in a bowl, toss in the spices

Mix up all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Mix the two together

Bake in a cookie sheet as a single layer for around 30 minutes at 375.

Stainless Steel

This is good stuff folks. Is it perfect?...kinda depends on the application. But I am seriously considering getting my stock together for utensils for when my life gets waaay simpler (read here, kids leave home).

When you look around your life and your friends lives and their kitchens, how much of it is defined by having a bunch of shit around that your really don't use.  When the kids move out, I will be jettisoning a lot of crap.  A great deal of it will be kitchen crap.  What I am thinking about going down to is a big pot, a little pot, a big fry pan,4 sets of silverware, bowls, cups,  and plates.

As I am not interested in ever replacing them, might as well get them now in stainless steel. 

Porlock

Consider for a moment these two articles:

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/10/twilight-of-money.html

and

 http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/msm-reporting-as-propaganda-no-one-minds-our-new-financial-lords-and-masters-edition.html

You know, I am constantly in awe by how well these folks write.  I cannot thank them enough for their efforts and their generosity in sharing with us.

I am pointing these out as sterling examples of a theme I have harped on repeatedly in the past, the fact that we have taken on false dreams as the driver for our society.  We have dressed up the truth in a veil of illusion (माया) and then pronounced the veil to be the real truth.

Maya is a theme in the Indian religions, where philosophy tries to pierce the veil for a transcendent truth, we in the west are just now piercing the veil to find a more mundane truth:  that we have lived well beyond our means and that the piper is at the door, demanding payment.

But to look beyond this mundane, some folks are starting to see a more basic truth, that the lives we have made for ourselves can never be paid back.  The "debts" that we owe are paper myths.  Stocks are tulip bulbs.  Deriviatives are opium dreams.  We fear the accounting that will come because we want to think that our "share" of the dreams can be salvaged from "that person from Porlock".

The Pathos of Air Travel

We have devoted a large segment of our energies and creating a "tourism" industry.  To put it bluntly, this is the biggest crock of shit that western culture has come up with.

You see, what it turns out to be for the most part is the rich white folk (and lets be honest, the rich yellow folk) have an outlet for their surplus money.  So they put up overpriced hotels in odd places, replete with cabana boys, hookers, cheap booze and tourist traps.  You see, if you spend all your time going other places, you maybe won't notice all the pathetic compromises that have made to impoverish your life while fattening your bank account.

The other horn of the stupidity was the business traveller.  This is the scummy fucker who brought us globalism to fatten his own wallet.  Travelling was mostly done because they are such slimy bastards that they had to get well away from where they live in order to get anyone to do business with them.

Boeing and Airbus have been doing land office business selling planes to service this travesty.  Planes that gobble precious natural resources and spew hydrocarbons and CO2 into the upper atmosphere where it can do the most harm.

Airlines are the beginning and end of the idiocy. serially creating pre-failed business plans in marathon planning sessions conducted in the executive bathroom.  Can anyone think of an airline (other than that odd bus company, southwest airlines) that has a viable business plan.

At the end of the day, the whole industry of getting lots of folks somewhere else in a plane was always collective idiocy.  I for one will not weep when it does finally die.

An Open Response to Publius

Publius:

I guess what I liked about it was its commentary on the attitudes of gold-heads.  As a group, the folks who are out there screaming "gold, gold, gold" are, for the most part, buttheads, and do fit the description in the link.

The folks out there buying gold and talking their book are actually speaking of the failure of the currency (which will be a horrendous event, coupled with massive pain and countless losses).  The big trouble I have with a lot of the folks who do this is their smug, self-satisfied, and thoughtless disregard of what their "wealth" will bring them.  To be "rich" in a sea of poverty and want is not the aspiration of a decent man.  

As for gold as the medium of exchange and a non-fiat based currency, that is a different story.  I think that we ought to be exploring how to move to a more stable currency system.   But before we go haring off chasing some purist notion of a "stable currency", we should look into the past for more guidance.  A straight gold standard brings with it a lot of issues as well as stability.  One should consider the words below.

An Ongoing Conversation

A couple of posts came up lately, one mine, one over at Mayberry's. In a way, the both of them kinda got me thinkin'. So I went and talked to my mom and Aunt's and uncles and the old folks back in the Italian rural ghetto I grew up in.

What I talked to them about was how folks ate. I didn't talk to a person who was less than 79 and I listened harder as the folks got older. What I talked to them about was their eating habits and how they used things like clothes.

They ate low on the food chain. Even I remembered that part. Gardens were big. Canning was a fact of life. Meat portions were small and you got one piece.  Potatoes and polenta was used as filler.  Green beans in a mason jar were a fact of life.  Sweets were simple like cakes and cookies and were used as bribes for children and when visitors came over.

But they remember having a good life.  That is the key to the whole banana.  Try stopping the fancy crap that you see on restaurants and TV cooking shows.  Try eating basics.  You will find that by stopping your pretensions and your striving and just eating simple good food you might start a process of simplification that will make you a better person.

A Moment in Time

Whether or not we are going through a generational event such as the depression or a mere downturn on the way to a glorious future should not make a difference to a prepper.

The reason that I came to this conclusion is that a lot of the folks out there that I read are acting like the world is gonna end this next week. I think that this is a silly thought, to be placed up there with UN taking over the US and free unlimited power from flying saucers.

You see guys, if the s does htf, all your preps are really going to do is allow you time to think and react.  They will not make you the new lord on the hill, dispensing justice and living large.  They will not allow you to fight off hordes of mutant zombie bikers.  They will just give you time to think.

The future is a dicey affair.  For all of my whining and dire forecasts, my crystal ball is as murky as the rest of them.  I like the old greek thoughts that we back into the future, that our sight is limited to the past.

Thanks to Dorcas Daddy for a great post

 Go over and read this at the original site


And what be goldbugs culpability? They resemble anarchists: strongly motivated to be on the vanguard for a variety reasons, but ultimately selfish and probably mistaken for apocalyptic systemic implosion remains a tail event. In this view , gold remains "a trade", and not an end to itself. More irksome, a bet on Gold may be "right", but it - betting as it does upon the acceleration of pus manufacture, feels (to me) somehow uncivic-minded - a wasteful employment of intellectual energy that might be set upon making what is systemically and socially un-well, better.

Exactly right. Put another way, if you are bullish on gold, you are bearish on America, civilization, and the fate of those around you who keep their money in the bank. It's not a hedge against inflation--it's a bet on the inevitability of failure.

In craps, the casino dice game, there are two main bets available to you. You can bet the "Pass" line, meaning that you are hoping the person rolling the dice wins. Or, you can bet "Don't Pass," betting that the shooter will lose.

The odds on a "Pass" bet are 1.414% against you. The odds are 1.402% on the "Don't Pass."

Mathematically-minded players occasionally bet "Don't Pass," due to the slightly lower house edge, but in a real casino, you will quickly be shunned, taunted, bad vibed, and possibly get punched in the face.

Getting punched is a low probability event, but not low enough to justify (to me) the .012% edge you gain by betting "Don't Pass." Also, it's like a 95% chance everyone else you are gambling with will think you are an asshole.

Gold is the same deal. Even if you are right, you are an asshole---and the slim protection you get probably doesn't overcome the negative expectation that someone will punch you in the face.

Why I Personally Like Silver

You should have a stash of stuff.  It isn't going to save your life, you will probably spend it sometime, but by maintaining it, you will keep at least a portion of your mindset focused toward the idea that things might not go the way you wish.

Things are getting twitchy out there.  Despite the latest news that economists are coming out en masse and declaring without a doubt that the recession is over,  one might want to have stuff squirreled away in the off-chance that they are wrong (yet again).

Twenty dollar bills are a nice thing to have around.  People trade you good stuff for these.  I would recommend that you keep some about.

The "smart folks" say that gold is the bomb.  Boy, what a store of value, the stuff will be usable when you need something.   I question this.  Look, gold is the stuff of nations and kings and folk who like the stratosphere.  If TSHTF, the stuff will be just too damn valuable.  Consider this for an object lesson.  

Like it or not folks, you have to make a decision soon about how to line your squirrel stash.  If you feel that you have enough pull to run with the big dogs, then go out and load up on gold bars.  But if you do that make sure that you have enough on hand to pay your lawyers and private security people.

Silver has always been the store of value for us low-lifes.  A silver dollar is a couple of weeks of beans and rice or a quarter tank of gas.  There are other possibilities, but think also about fungibility.  Ingots of metals won't be easily traded.  Whiskey has a nasty habit of vanishing when your friends come over to visit.  Food is too damn bulky if movement is at a premium.

So ponder it, maybe I have forgotten something.

Money as Distilled Fear

 
In a real sense, the issues that we face as a country are directly related to our clinging to those things that most damage our very souls.  We have created a medical system that ignores the need and obligation of our personal deaths.  We have a natural lifespan that we are ignoring, replacing the vitality of a healthy life for the long and tortured senescence of a life artificially prolonged by modern "medicine".  We are mistakenly choosing length of life over quality.

Our economic woes as a people are rooted in the incessant need for more, when we choose to count our luxuries as necessities and constant growth and increasing wealth as an inalienable right.  But by increasing our personal wealth and focusing on our personal comfort in the now, we are paupering the future and damaging the planet.

There is a necessary urgency about temporal things which is a duty to yourself and your kin, but it is critical that you not carry this too far.  There is scarcely any sin against which the bible more warns us, than the disturbing, distracting, and self-centered clinging to the things of this life.

Sufficient unto the day.

A mature society keeps the comforts of this life in perspective, The will of the creator places bitterness or sweetness in our lives.  For us to structure our lives and our society around the false idols of security and luxury is the mark of small souls, cowering in fear because they may somehow have less than their desires in the imagined future and thus lead a life of not enough.

We must reconcile ourselves to our place in the world and our place in the society that nurtures us.  We can no longer strive for the material "more" that has poisoned our souls and makes us live in fear for its potential loss.

Thank You Nancy Stetson

Nancy Stetson would be proud. When I was taking her classes in international politics, she would wax poetic about the bloody Thirty-years War and I would sit in my alcohol sodden, sullen pout and say to myself "yeah, yeah, lets get onto to modern warfare".

Now as I have gotten a little bit of experience under my belt, I am beginning to see this conflict for what it was; the crucible of our society. Nearly everything that is happening today is becoming more and more in focus as you look through the lens that is this period of time.

The modern phrase is Balkanization. The modern equivalent to the papacy is the corporate state and the faith in free trade. The west is France. China is Spain, and the rest of the world is Germany.

The whole thing should be interesting, things are falling apart. Granted it is slow motion, but rust never sleeps.

I Ching Cast

Yes:  I am an odd duck.  I always cast an 古文經 hexagram before doing anything that I feel might have excessive consequences.  I have always found it to be a useful tool for focusing my mind and it seems to provide good results more often than bad ones

I still detest China, but their culture has a lot more to offer us than ours has to offer them.

Here are the results:

The question was:

Silver or Food for preps?   

7
7
7
6
6   
8

2.   否    P'i / Standstill [Stagnation]



        above  CH'IEN  THE CREATIVE, HEAVEN
        below  K'UN  THE RECEPTIVE, EARTH

This hexagram is the opposite of the preceding one. Heaven is above, drawing farther and farther away, while the earth below sinks farther into the depths. The creative powers are not in relation. It is a time of standstill and decline. This hexagram is linked with the seventh month (August-September), when the year has passed its zenith and autumnal decay is setting in.

    THE JUDGMENT

    STANDSTILL. Evil people do not further
    The perseverance of the superior man.
    The great departs; the small approaches.

Heaven and earth are out of communion and all things are benumbed. What is above has no relation to what is below, and on earth confusion and disorder prevail. The dark power is within, the light power is without.  Weakness is within, harshness without. Within are the inferior, and  without are the superior. The way of inferior people is in ascent; the way of superior people is one the decline. But the superior people do not allow themselves to be turned from their principles. If the possibility of exerting influence is closed to them, they nevertheless remain faithful to their principles and withdraw into seclusion.

    THE IMAGE
   
    Heaven and earth do not unite:
    The image of STANDSTILL.
    Thus the superior man falls back upon his inner worth
    In order to escape the difficulties.
    He does not permit himself to be honored with revenue.

When, owing to the influence of inferior men, mutual mistrust prevails in public life, fruitful activity is rendered impossible, because the fundaments are wrong. Therefore the superior man knows what he must do under such circumstances; he does not allow himself to be tempted by dazzling offers to take part in public activities. This would only expose him to danger, since he cannot assent to the meanness of the others. He therefore hides his worth and withdraws into seclusion.

    THE LINES

    °Six in the second place means:
    They bear and endure;
    This means good fortune for inferior people.
    The standstill serves to help the great man to attain success.

Inferior people are ready to flatter their superiors in a servile way. They would also endure the superior man if he would put an end to their confusion. This is fortunate for them. But the great man calmly bears the consequences of the standstill. He does not mingle with the crowd of the inferior; that is not his place. By his willingness to suffer personally he insures the success of his fundamental principles.
       
    Six in the third place means:
    They bear shame.

Inferior people who have risen to power illegitimately do not feel equal to the responsibility they have taken upon themselves. In their hearts they begin to be ashamed, although at first they do not show it outwardly. This marks a turn for the better.

The Color of Money

I think that what is happening is that the lens that we view the world through have become cracked of late.  The Weltanschauung that has served us for the last fifty years is breaking apart and we are trying desperately to paste it together so that we can finish off our lives in the luxury that we have become accustomed to.

You see, what is breaking apart is the idea that the methods of kings and empires should be used to maintain a sumptious lifestyle for a kumbaya mentality. This provision is being sustained with the country turning its back on the methods of  those who arrange for our gluttony, sloth, and and avarice.  I guess the lenses that we are trying to glue together are bifocals.

We have developed a country rife with a central contradiction;  in the past fifty years a partnership of the mercantilist corporations and the military have provided exceedingly well for a people who scorn the methods and philosophies of those who implement the largesse. Now the well is running dry, imperial overstretch is well into it's second decade and the guns and butter equation is looking pretty threadbare at this point.

So what we are facing now is the beginning of the resolution of the contradictions that we have created in our society.  If we are to accept a kumbaya lifestyle, we will have to accept a radically simpler lifestyle with serious constraints on the freedom of the individual.  Simply put, a McMansion with a filled two car garage and world peace cannot be reconciled.

If we choose to continue our current lifestyle, we will have to become a warrior nation.  We will have to lose our distaste for kicking peoples ass and taking what we wish.  

Just going to see how this goes

I have taken myself out of exile as an experiment.

Let's see how it goes.

I will probably only do one post a week now.  Probably on Sunday.

I hope the loonies don't return

John