Please Watch this whole thing

Off for the rest of the year.

I'm running on empty for ideas, and it is Christmas and the holidays.

I'll be back on new years day with a critique of my last years predictions and a new set.

I'll be drinking with Claudius and, hopefully, Busted Knuckles.  I will try to get the ideas from these bacchanals down on notes so I can write something worth reading.

Have a Merry Christmas, filled with the love of Christ.  Have a Happy New Year, and try to keep you hopes and dreams realistic and intact.

This is taken directly from the Christian Science Monitor.  I checked the numbers and it appears to be good.

On the anniversary of the actual Boston tea party some 237 years ago – when pesky colonists dressed up as Indians and threw the King's tea into Boston Harbor – the modern invocation of that revolutionary spirit tossed another expensive package overboard Thursday: a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill.

After leading a Republican charge into the House in the Nov. 2 midterm elections, the anti-debt, anti-federalist tea party movement notched its first major legislative victory Thursday by standing up to big-spending Democrats and Republicans and forcing Republican leadership to revoke its support of a bill laden with $8.3 billion worth of legislative earmarks – lawmakers' pet projects known as pork-barrel spending.

So, let's see if I got this straight.  The August Personages better known as senators killed a bill to fund government because of their ungodly offense at a 8.3 billion dollar package of earmarking in a 1.1 trillion dollar budget?

Huh?

Do the math here folks.  8.3 billion is 0.7545455% of 1.1 trillion.

These folks are fucking clowns.   We are spending over 150 billion a year on wars that make no sense.  We have a demographic bombshell waiting at the door when the boomers get to old to work.  We have a train wreck of a health care system and a economic depression staring us in the face and these fuckwads preen and treat themselves as heroes because the saved 0.76% of the budget.

I am speechless.

What the hell do I write about?

I'm empty.

Hashing the same shit around doesn't appeal to me.  Haven't found anything new and amusing to talk about. 

Maybe later....sorry about the deficit in thoughts.

Just the way it is right now.

An Early Saturday Morning

Just got the eldest off to the high school where he will weigh in and then attend the punctuated boredom known as a wrestling tournament.

So I am sipping my coffee and considering what it is I will spew screed about this dark and stormy morn.

I can't talk much about prepping, I have been letting that slide lately, considering for a time whether such a thing is even a useful means of spending my time and money.  Oh, I am not saying that having a well-stocked pantry is a bad idea, but the strange idea of carrying an extended supply of foodstocks in the basement beyond what is already there may actually be counterproductive.

So what I have been thinking about is the nature of the society we live in.  A person who better illustrates my thoughts is James Burke.  I would spend some time watching the following clips.  It is the first episode of a series from the late seventies that really did start me thinking in the odd manner that you have been subjected to these last years.

Give these a watch, I'll be back later to talk about them.

Busy

Too damn many wrestling meets, wrestling tournaments, orchestra concerts, end of quarter school crap to write.

Sorry.

Life is getting in the way.

A Specious Argument

Consider this article for a moment.

I find it curious that an editor for a major newspaper would write something like this.  But then, the Christian Science Monitor is a tattered remnant of the intellectual powerhouse that existed in the seventies and eighties.  Where once it was the most thoughtful and sophisticated of any paper, it is now a happy colored "USA yesterday".  This article drives home the point.

What the article said is that the diplomatic world is a cynical and jaded mess.  Diplomats use each other and journalists like toilet paper, there is only the trust of thieves.  This being the case, us lowly proles must be kept in the dark about this, because somehow we are to unsophisticated to realize that the world is a strange place that is run by deceitful people.

Mr. Yemma gives us an example of a British diplomat (now there is a trustworthy sort).

“When I was a diplomat, I generally had no problem passing information back and forth with colleagues,” he says. “It was a secure system. You could speak freely.” Which requires trust. His job was to try to “build a picture of the world, the likely consequences of actions, and to understand all the perspectives.” You can’t do that if everything you know is automatically made public.

So what Mr Yemma and his diplomatic buddy want us to believe is that only the priesthood of the diplomats, grown out of the fertile soil of privilege of the upper classes and their tokens, are capable of understanding the whole truth.

What Mr Yemma is saying that the only the other priesthood, the journalistic-whores, are worthy of recieving this information and digesting it into the mindless pap that we proles so enjoy.

What Mr Yemma is saying is that truth is only appreciated by others.

The masses can wait for their orders.

Still there

This guy can really piss some folks off.

Nothing is as entertaining as watching someone poke big brother in the eye with a stick.

http://213.251.145.96/

Whither Europe

I am getting very interested in the dance in Europe.

It seems to me that the EU is showing some strain at the seams.  I always thought that piecing together a patchwork quilt was an iffy thing.  Whenever my Nona and her gang of old Italian harridans made a patchwork quilt, it ended up falling apart faster that the quilts made out of whole cloth.   This appears to be the case in Europe.

Old prejudices die hard.  The Germans and French have been fighting since the the days of East and West Franconia.  Lothloringia died fast.  There is a great five minute flick of the history of European borders that will give you an idea.

The Jackasses in Europe still get big wood thinking that they can re-constitute the Carolingian Empire.  But for some odd reason they seem to forget that Charlemagne was crowned in 800 and the treaty of Verdun happened in 843.

The Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957.  Looks like the "use by date" is getting close.

We all know this, but it is a nicely done synopsis

From Pen and Sword

$80 Billion Down the Plumbing

Intelligence is like statistics. Both can be manipulated to tell you anything you want to hear, and you seldom get the real story from either one. But there is one major difference between intelligence and statistics: we didn’t spend $80 billion on statistics last year.

Our government announced on Thursday that it has spent $80.1 billion on intelligence activities in the last 12 months. Over $53 billion of that was rendered into thin air by the CIA and other agencies that report to the director of national intelligence, and the Military Intelligence Program blew the remaining $27 billion chasing hot tips on which Muslim weddings to bomb next.

Eighty billion dollars is almost 10 times the size of Iran’s entire military budget ($9.2 billion). In 2009 the entire Department of Homeland Security budget was a piddling $51 billion. The proposed 2011 budget metes out the paltry sums of $43 billion for transportation, $38 billion for education, $18.39 billion for border and transportation security, $10 billion on energy, and $2.13 billion for higher education.

This is the first year the government has told us how much it spends on intelligence. How much we’ve spent on War on Ism intelligence before that will probably remain secret for national security purposes. We wouldn’t want our enemies to know how much money we’ve already spent to deceive ourselves.

Whatever we’ve spent on intelligence since 9/11/01, you can bet a pretty penny it was a pretty penny, and one that we might as well have tried to throw across one of the oceans we sit between. Signs of intelligence in our intelligence conglomerate are as rare as one of Monty Python’s clever sheep.

Let’s start with the 9/11 attack itself, a plot the spies from Mad magazine could have stopped in its tracks before the hijackers finished flight training. After a showing that pathetic, our intelligence structure should have been pared down to hard tissue with chain saws. Instead, we made an already bloated calf even fatter, creating even more parochial sub-ministries to withhold vital information for the sake of ensuring that some other sub-ministry didn’t take credit for discovering it.

Then we passed the PATRIOT Act and gave the people who failed to protect us extra-constitutional powers so they could listen in on our obscene phone conversations. We also created a budget for an Office of the Director of National Intelligence but didn’t give the director himself any meaningful budget authority over the people who supposedly answer to him, meaning that nobody really answers to him.

Then we got cooked intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Then we got cooked intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s non-connections with al-Qaeda and 9/11. Then we got bad intelligence on what the bad guys were or what they were up to or who they were even.

Since Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld first gave our spy programs the special sacrament behind the altar, we have used bad intelligence to demonize Iran and to bolster corrupt regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have used bad intelligence to assassinate “suspects” and to slaughter untold thousands of innocent civilians. In the pursuit of that bad intelligence we have shredded every law of armed conflict enacted by humanity. When we want to get some dirty deeds done that are too dirty for our official dirty workers to do, we hire mercenaries from outfits like Blackwater to do our dirty work for us. Our spy outfits would tell you all the important stuff they’ve found out that way, but then they’d… Well, they wouldn’t have to kill you, but they’d have to fly you off to some offshore rabbit hole and rough you up some. You’re not allergic to water or electricity or anything like that, are you?

Our dysfunctional intelligence behemoth has turned our already polluted information toxic. The lines between intelligence and news and punditry and tabloid sensationalism and propaganda – already gossamer thin prior to 9/11 – have gone the way of the pager. It may never be safe or sane to believe anything you read or hear regarding U.S. foreign policy again. In post-Orwellian America, the mainstream information providers are every bit as untrustworthy as their sources.

If you think all this illegal, immoral, and otherwise downright deplorable activity is justified because our intelligence services are protecting us, consider what they did this past year to justify their $80 billion price tag.

Last December we had the Panty Bomber, whose “weapon of mass destruction,” supposedly designed for him by a famous Yemeni bomb designer, didn’t even leave third-degree burns on his wee-wee. The kid never should have made it on to the airplane. His father made a report to two CIA officers at the U.S. embassy in Nigeria regarding his son’s “extreme religious views” the month prior to the incident. The kid’s old man is one of the richest men in Africa, former chairman of First Bank of Nigeria, and former Nigerian federal commissioner for economic development. You’d think the CIA bozos would have paid attention to him, but no, they blew him off like he was just another Yusuf Sixpack looking to collect his 15 minutes of fame.

On May 1 (“Mayday,” get it? 9/11 was already taken) we met the Times Square Screw-Up. His “weapons of mass destruction,” fashioned from firecrackers and supposedly crafted from a Pakistani design, failed to ignite as well. In the course of attempting to execute his “attack,” the Screw-Up managed to lock himself out of his bomb car, his getaway car, and his apartment. The kid had been on a U.S. government travel lookout since 1999, yet he not only managed to get into the U.S. and set up his Rube Goldberg car bomb caper unobserved, the Screw-Up darn near managed to escape back to the Middle East two days after he screwed up. U.S. agents snagged him up at JFK airport on an airplane headed to Dubai moments before it left the gate. The Screw-Up supposedly told the agents he’d been expecting them. It’s a wonder he didn’t say, “What took you so long?”

This past week we experienced the Rapture of the Airmail Bombing plot, and oh my God, if there’s a single substantiated syllable in that entire narrative, I have yet to encounter it in the New York Times. In a series of articles from 29, 30, and 31 October, our newspaper of tarnished record created enough cognitive dissonance to drive the Dalai Lama to a therapist’s couch.

We had President Obama telling us that two bombs found on airplanes underscored “the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism.” Mr. Obama said, “The American people should be confident that we will not waver in our resolve to defeat al-Qaeda.” But there’s some question not only as to whether al-Qaeda was behind the attempted airplane bombings, but as to whether any actual bombs were involved. The bomb they found in or around the plane in Dubai was similar to the package found in England, but maybe the package found in England wasn’t actually a bomb.

Maybe uber-evildoer Anwar al-Awlaki was involved, which might connect the Airmail Bombing to the Panty Bomber and the Screw-Up, but maybe not because maybe al-Awlaki had nothing to do with the Airmail Bombing nor with the Panty Bombing nor with the Screw-Up Bombing neither. Intelligence officials and government officials and generic officials say the Airmail Bomb deal has all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda plot but al-Qaeda might not be involved at all. Whoever mailed the bombs that might not be bombs was probably trying to target synagogues in Chicago unless they were trying to target passenger aircraft or unless they were trying to target cargo aircraft. Yemeni students studying English or computers or maybe both English andcomputers might have been behind the plot but maybe they weren’t.

The take-away from all this is that in the last year $80 billion of your tax dollars went toward a self-preserving continuum that aggressively feeds you disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda designed to keep you confused and afraid and on board with a war against a phantom adversary that has no army or navy or air force and no budget to speak of at all.

The really sad part is that nothing you do at the polls today is going to cause the national disgrace that our intelligence structure has become to get fixed, or even make it less expensive.

Originally posted @ Antiwar.com.

Russell asked a question

Is it may imagination that a lot of the "waiting for the gloom-and-doom" blog writers seeming to be doing relatively poor economically?. I am curies if their is a casual linkage (in either direction) or just a reflection of general demographics. After all with a 20+% under-employment rate, there are bound to be a few in the crowd.

My guess is that there is a slight causal linkage. Those who are wildly successful within a system are probably the least likely to reject the system. And "gloom-and-doom" blog writers generally not show a great attachment to the current situation.

Russell posited this question in a recent post and I thought about it for long enough that I thought it would be worth a response.

A 20+ percent unemployment is enough to send most folks into the worry-wart mode.  Even if you are employed, you are worried about your job.  I hate to refer to the MSM for anything, and you can take this with a large grain of salt, but CBS News shows that more than 50% of folks are worried about losing jobs. That is my personal experience as well.  Lots of folks are worried.

The only folks who I know who seem to be content with the current situation are my wealthier friends. Lawyers and developers and FIRE types.  They seem to be doing well by things.

On the other side of the slate, I can't really think of anyone outside this arena who feels comfy.   The local government employees see the train a comin'.  My friend the cop is trying to get an early out and go to work part-time for the Fed, Schoolteachers are getting nervous with rejected bonds.  City Government is being cut by 14%.   My buddy just got laid off from his welding job.  My old co-workers just ran out of their 99th week.

I would posit that most gloom and doomers have a similar experience.  Doing well in todays world is a precarious thing.  If you think that you have it made, I would posit that it is an outcome of your profession and personal outlook.  The bankers, government types, insurance, lawyers and such have the system sewn up currently, and are pretty certain that they can ride the horse til' it drops.

The rest of us are seeing a world changing faster than we can comfortably adapt.  We ignored it for a while, as long as the cheap shit from China was coming in and folks were handing out money in exchange for our signatures on a piece of paper.  But those times are gone, and now we are getting down to the brass tacks of figuring out which way the world is heading.  We do this so that we won't get squashed in it's passage.

Search and Seizure

I hope to never get on another airplane.

I hate the idea.  As I have said before, when you have >500,000 frequent flyer miles, the idea of getting on a sheet metal tube awash with jet fuel holds no romance for me.  Yet when I hear the so-called horror stories about the TSA, the best that I can come up with a mildly indignant coupled with a comedy.

You see, I never saw air travel as anything but a big business affectation.  As a rich and spoiled society, we started seeing it as a God-given right to jet off anywhere (usually on a credit card) and be the ugly bourgeois boors for the rest of the world to abhor.

It has gotten downright funny lately.  The planes are huge, but the seats are vanishingly small.  There is way too good a chance that you will be stuck in a tiny aluminum seat next to a big fat fucker such as your truly.  The stewardess are either snippy gay males or bitter old harridans.

When you get to the airport, you were once treated as an inconvenience.  Now you are treated as a potentially dangerous inconvenience.    When you get off, you sprint to get out of the airport as quickly as possible.

And all of this is done for what reason?  Business trips are nearly universally unnecessary.  There is little or nothing that cannot be as well done with phone calls, faxes, or internet.  Vacations are an exercise in dick-matching with the neighbors.  Going somewhere to be in a place other than where you live to show off and forget for a little while how badly your life sucks where you are.   Maybe if we stop gadding about on airplanes flitting to the far side on nowhere, we will spend a little more effort making the place we live better.

So when the TSA feels up some titties or mishandles the odd set of testicles, I say go for it boyos.  The more folks that you convince to stay home, the better for me

I would cheerfully accept a world where the total flights available were 10% of the current total.  We would have less noise, less carbon dioxide injected in the stratosphere, and less net stupidity.  I would be able to see a blue sky again and lie on my back on a clear, bright-blue summer afternoon and watch stardust descend on the world.  

Persistence of Vision

Sometimes one gets locked into a way of thinking. Happens to a greater degree as one begins to age. By the time you are over the hill, your thoughts become ossified. Sometimes when I spend some time with a bottle of red wine, I examine my preconceptions.

Sometimes this is fruitful. Sometimes not. One thing I am certain about though, is that this exercise is the only certain way to allow you to navigate an uncertain world. We are constantly deluged by a wave of facts and opinions. It is becoming increasingly difficult to ascertain which is which. It is only through a ruthless and thoughtful culling of our thoughts and goals that we can find our way.

But it seems that this kind of behavior is getting to be increasingly rare. I am having greater difficulty do this essential function as I grow older and more intellectually ossified. I would posit that, as a culture, the collective ability to perform this critical self-evaluation is becoming vanishingly small. I think that this deficit is keyed to the fact that few, if any, of us has ever made a decision with serious consequences.

Oh, we will talk about how tough we have had it, but the truth of the matter is that the greater bulk of us have ever had anything but the good life. We complain bitterly about our lot in life, but the worst that has ever happened to any of us is that we had to take a job and a lifestyle lower on the bragging chain than what we would have preferred.

 There have been astonishingly few people in America starving to death, for the most part the homeless situation is under control. Crime is relatively low. But I think now the decisions are coming with greater and greater consequences. The worst part of the problem is that what appeared to be a good decision in the golden past may have devastating negative repercussions when the rules of the society change.

 There are a lot of folks out there with big, fancy houses and nice that will find that their decisions in an uncertain future may have serious negative consequences. Decisions made in during the reign of a previous world-view have lots and lots of freight attached to them. Many times, with a little work, the decisions can be made good. But it takes constant vigilance to do so, along with a healthy dose of self-examination

Jimmy, Jimmy Jimmy

Posted from the departure lounge, Sydney airport, en route to Perth.... 

This is the last line of a tirade against what we are in America.  Jim Kunstler makes many good points.  His stuff is well written.

Must be nice to be able to rise above the solutions you propose.

It's Thanksgiving Week

I am going to give thanks for all the good things I have.  Spending time here whinging about the way things are doesn't seem part and parcel to this goal.

See you on the 29th.  I'll try to have something worth reading then.

John

I'm spoiling them

My eldest is finally doing a sport.  He is trying on wrestling and doesn't hate it.  Good on him, if there is a sport that teaches mental and physical toughness, it is wrestling.

Last night it was a cold and rainy night here in the PNW.  I went and gave him a ride home. Walking home tired after a 2-hour wrestling practice would really suck.  One moron stated that I was spoiling my children,  giving the same tiresome and untrue story about walking both ways to school when "he was a kid".

I didn't tell him to fuck off.  Maybe I should have

Busy doing stuff

Be back tomorrow night

Zero Sum in Econolalaland

We have built a fairly impressive edifice on the idea of perpetual growth.  6.8 billion people being more or less fed in an adequate manner and alive and kicking to try again tomorrow.  You really do have to look at the effort expended and the results as kind of a miracle.

The miracle is, as such things usually are, based on faith.  We have always felt that there was enough of everything to do what we wished.  This simple faith allowed us to believe in a steady upward path, where the next year we would have more and would be better than the years behind us.  An entire industry/culture grew out of the perfectibility of the human race and our climb to the role of demigods.

But, suppose for a moment, that there are in fact constraints on the inputs supplied by the planet and the materials we use to fuel the material growth.  What if there are limits to the amount of oil in the ground?  What if after pulling down the Iron Range, we find that it is difficult to keep feeding the smelters?  What if the source of rare earth metals decides that it in their best interests to control the extraction and sale of the same in order to allow for growth later on?

Now, our old buddy Kondreitieff kinda thought that the world was a cyclical place.  There have been a bunch of graphs drawn using his ideas and for a long time, they pretty much matched reality.  Up through the great depression, it matched real world data just dandy.  Since then, it has been pretty suspect. 

What I am thinking happened is that the normal readjustments seen on the left side of the graft were successfully short circuited by going off the gold standard back in the 1930's, and then managing a short-term fix with Bretton-Woods and all of the other chicanery (Plaza Accords and other such rot).   Over all, it wasn't a bad run, but it would appear that the fixes are having to be applied fast and furious now.  Holding the edifice together appears to be quite problematic.  

You see, I would posit that economists and politicians forgot that economies and countries have long-term timelines.   The fixes that were put in place were simply overrides of well-established safety controls.  It did allow the machine to increase it's output, but it may have damaged the machine in the process.  

The system has all of the appearances of having this existential crisis.   The system has been allowed to grow out of its bounds.  The question seems to be for a lot of the world is how can we restart growth.  For most of us in the gloomy end of blogoland, the more cogent question is, how do we manage decline.

Obviously,this is not an article written in D.C.

When the Afghans see the truth of the matter better than we do, you realize just how doomed we are over there.  This is nothing but a way for the big brass to add to their chests and egos.

http://kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article39416

FORD O' KABUL RIVER
Rudyard Kipling

Kabul town's by Kabul river --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
There I lef' my mate for ever,
Wet an' drippin' by the ford.
    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
       Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    There's the river up and brimmin', an' there's 'arf a squadron swimmin'
       'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town's a blasted place --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
'Strewth I sha'n't forget 'is face
Wet an' drippin' by the ford!
    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
       Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    Keep the crossing-stakes beside you, an' they will surely guide you
       'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town is sun and dust --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
I'd ha' sooner drownded fust
'Stead of 'im beside the ford.
    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
       Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    You can 'ear the 'orses threshin', you can 'ear the men a-splashin',
       'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town was ours to take --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
I'd ha' left it for 'is sake --
'Im that left me by the ford.
    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
       Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    It's none so bloomin' dry there; ain't you never comin' nigh there,
       'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark?

Kabul town'll go to hell --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
'Fore I see him 'live an' well --
'Im the best beside the ford.
    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
       Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    Gawd 'elp 'em if they blunder, for their boots'll pull 'em under,
       By the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

Turn your 'orse from Kabul town --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
'Im an' 'arf my troop is down,
Down an' drownded by the ford.
    Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
       Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
    There's the river low an' fallin', but it ain't no use o' callin'
       'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

Veterans Day

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
—Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

— Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth

Getting up is hard to do

Managed to skate a four day weekend out of this week.  No one in my office had noticed that friday was available.  I only noticed when I asked my boss who was off so that I could figure out what extra I needed to do.  When she told me no one had asked for it, I went at it like a ferret goes after a baby chipmunk.

Gotta gut through today.  That really isn't that hard, just plow the field.  Work Steady, make sure all the furrows are straight.  Keep going.  Go home.

Gotta turn back entropy at the homestead.  Lots of stuff to do there.  Little maintenance things and the ongoing housework.

Gonna think about the precious metals thing that has been going on lately.  Silver at $28.00 having seen $29.00?  That bears some thought.  The Fed seems bound and determined that the world will conform to its models.  The idea of someone just casually spending 600 billion of money that doesn't exist is not one that gives a sentient being a warm fuzzy feeling.

The fact that they just keep tossing these big bales of cash on the fire is one that should give us all pause.  It is a clear and obvious warning that shit is heading south.  I don't pretend for a minute that I know exactly what is coming down the pike.  I could care less about the theories running around about the plutocracy and new world order and rich fuckers screwing the welfare queens.

Nope, it is just another sign that winter is coming.  Time to finish work and get the harvest in.

Looks like a cold year ahead.

Doomy Bloggers

You know guys (mayberry, busted, hermit, simba, handmaiden, meadowlark, russell, and all the other folks out there.  It might be that we are just 'arold.

Small

A small country has fewer people.
Though there are machines that can work ten to a hundred times faster than man, they are not needed.
The people take death seriously and do not travel far.
Though they have boats and carriages, no one uses them.
Though they have armor and weapons, no one displays them.
Men return to the knotting of rope in place of writing.
Their food is plain and good, their clothes fine but simple, their homes secure;
They are happy in their ways.
Though they live within sight of their neighbors,
And crowing cocks and barking dogs are heard across the way,
Yet they leave each other in peace while they grow old and die.

Lao Tse

Tao Te King #80 

I would really like to head up my buddy Locutius' place this week for a well deserved break from squeezing all the blood out of the turnips.  But I have a feeling that the turnips have more for me to do.   In a way, I am a living example of the changes to lifestyle that most of us will have to bringing on line in the next little while.  The big dogs like Kunstler and Greer and other such folks speak glowingly of "localization", this is what that noble sounding little phase means.

Localization is what you do when you don't have access to the coin or the easy debt that allows to to take off whenever you wish to go somewhere.  Localization means spending a couple of hours weatherstripping and fixing the door seal on your beat up old refrigerator.  Localization means that you have to keep the old car running longer than its shelf life so money goes into tires and maintenance.  Localization means that since vegetables are getting ungodly expensive, you have to go out and dig in the compost and manure for next years planting.

You know, what localization really means is that you live within your means.  Now as usual in the world, the means for folks are different.  Five years ago, my means were a lot better, I wasn't as constrained as I am now.  There are a lot of folks out there who are still living that.  But more and more of us are moving a couple of rungs down the ladder.  That means that we are becoming more local.

I think that one of the reasons that I get so impatient with the folks who spout the benefits of "localization" is that these big boys really aren't "localized".  They jump on planes to go speak with folks at meetings (Most of these which draw attendants from all over the world who flew to the conference).

They preach the local thing, but their frequent flyer miles would tell another story.  In my less than charitable moments, I wonder if us "just folks" here in flyover territory who are being forced against our wills, into the dreams that they themselves are unwilling to live, are anything but picturesque stage props for their ascent into sage/philosopher status

Hey survivalchick

I wanna read too....can I join the club?

Monetary Bullshit and Economic Madrasah's

Not paying attention to the political/economic world around you is akin to not looking both ways before you cross the street.  

But, like keeping your awareness about you while walking around, it doesn't give you the power to effect others, it just gives you sufficient warning to dodge the mess, it can't make the mess go away.

That being said, I am going to mock the fools at the Austrian/Friedman/dipshit school.  As an aside, and as the good quip for the day, I am here and now proposing that we change the nomenclature for economic theory.  Instead I propose that instead of schools, we begin referring to them as madrasah's.  It seems to fit better with the mystic, argumentative, and bullshit laden lack of reality known as economics.

"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output"

No laddies, inflation is when the prices of everything go up and the amount on money you make to buy them stays the same.  Inflation is caused by running out of the oil that we use for feedstock and having to compete for what is left with the rest of the world.  Inflation is caused by getting rid of our jobs to other countries then shipping the now-foreign products back here.  
Inflation is caused by wars and guns and butter and taking too much.

These idiotic ideologues who wan to masturbate with their charts and theories and too-glib explanations miss the one critical point.  Inflation is caused by the entire country living too large for too long and coming to expect everything as their own due.  

Inflation will go away, but everyone will have to take a lot less...and that is always a recipe for revolt.   

Long winded, but worth a watch

So now the Republicans

They're back.

Nothing will change.

No one will address the core issues of industrial decline, overpopulation, or kleptocracy. 

Not in the cards.  The kabuki theatre will continue for a while, waiting for a dramatic turn.  Attacks on the dollar will continue, the inflation rate will go up because that is the only thing left to do. 

There aren't any good answers left.  The piper is at the door with his hand out.

Where's Herbert Hoover?

The calorie is obsolete

Most of us tend to think of it as something to avoid.  The calories in that chocolate cake that you are eyeballing in the line at the cafeteria: the calories in that one-more slice of pizza lying in its box on the kitchen counter.

But you have to think harder about these pesky things (the first thing that you have to think about is that the calorie that you are so used to dealing with is actually a kilocalorie, but that is beside the point).   As you sit in your warm kitchen on a brisk fall day, you should begin to recognize the overarching importance of this sadly obsolete unit of measurement.

We sit in our warm homes and fret about our bank accounts, a phenomenon that is four or five degrees of separation from reality, perhaps we had better look at a more basic level in our lives.

Lets talk instead of joules.  Still the same kind of thing.  The reason that I want to  talk about this term instead of the archaic calorie is that you can start thinking about the basis of our personal survival and cultural well-being.  The number of joules (amount of energy) that we use to operate our overweening society is staggering.  The number of joules that we use to provide what we consider basic life is getting to be un-doable.   We have to seriously cut back on the amount of energy that we use.

Everybody talks about this, everybody has their little pipe dreams about how they can keep their toys and "lifestyle" and all the accouterments of the dying scheme.  But the way that things are running, with money running out and oil running out and the piper at the door demanding payment, the end point is that everyone will be doing with a lot less.

Hence the joule.  You are going to have a lot less of these available soon.  Better get used to that little nip of reality.  You had better have a serious plan for stretching your allotment (I won't say share, that implies something else entirely). 

I am not voting tomorrow

There is no office or ballot initiative where there is a good answer.  Damned if you do/damned if you don't is the order to the day.

Why Bother. 

Doesn't Your Sense of Irony Just Get Overwhelmed

Just 'cuz I like this guys style...a shameless plug

Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw Challenge

Pumpkin Pie Chocolate Chip Lazy Man Cookies

The used grocery store where I shop is getting thin in its inventory.  Probably makes sense.  I have been shopping there for ten years now, and the shelves are well stocked during the go-go times and get sparse during the times when things are heading south.

The big stores are a reflection of what the economy/society is thinking.  In the Martha Stewart salad days of the last ten years, the big store would buy crap so that they could fool the unwashed masses into thinking that they could buy “living large”.  Lots of extra crap on the shelves, lots of odd yuppie food to spice up the palate.   Lots of this stuff didn't sell,  so off to the liquidator stores where I could buy good eats at a fraction of the cost.
Now the big stores are looking hard at their inventory and their stocking practices. Have you noticed the decrease in stuff on the shelf lately, have you noticed the rise in prices. The inventory is getting squeezed and the liquidator stores are having trouble getting their stuff.

The only good deal this week was pumpkin.

Ingredients

Mix together

• 1 can (16 oz) canned pumpkin
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup molasses
• 2 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3 egg

Mix in a separate bowl

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons ginger
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon allspice
• ½ teaspoon cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix the two bowls together, then add

• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Spread the mess out onto a big cookies sheet and bake at 350(F) for around 35-40 minutes

Sadism

As you are well aware, I follow football.  Love the game.

This latest push to reduce injury by suspending/fining players who lead with their head has my complete and utter approval.

Look, the game is violent.  Got that.

But a 250 pound player running at full speed who drills his helmet into a receivers back is not "hitting hard" , he is a fucking sadist who is trying to hurt someone.  Injuring the other sides player to knock them out of a game is the act of a barbarian who is too jacked up on his own machismo to recognize that there is a difference between playing hard and trying consciously to injure.

I played for years.  I have had experience at every level.  I know for a fact that there are sadists in locker rooms.  Lots of them.  But to let them run the game, trying to tell us that their sadism is the nature of the game is an insult to the process.

Yes, there will be injuries.  Yes the game is violent.  But the conscious action of a sadist to injure another player through his contempt for safety cannot be tolerated.  The goal of the game is to tackle the other player, not to cripple him. 

If you perform an action that has a reasonable chance of permanently damaging another human, then you should not be allowed to take that action.  If you do take it, you should be punished.  If you continue to take it, you should be banned from the game.

The poor folks opium

I live in an area that can best be defined as "mixed".  The gentrifiers came through during the go-go real estate boom and try to force the white trash and minorities out, but the market crashed before they were able to finish the job and now there are clearly identifiable subcultures within a ten minute walking radius.

I have come to the conclusion from my observations in this mixed bag is that the cell phone and internet connections are the clearest indicators of poverty.   When I talk with A (poor dude, out working on his car) the cell phone goes off and he claws at his pocket like a junkie going after a fix.  The immediate conversation that he was having with a human being is unceremoniously trashed.  This behavior also seems to be widely practiced by his peers in the neighborhood.

The gentry take a different approach.  They are much more likely to mute their phones and ignore it if they are in a conversation.  Not always but the greater bulk of the time.  My favorite is a business type who's phone rings with the the "Money" tune from Pink Floyd when it is a business call.  He will always look you square in the eye, says "business",  tells you he is going to take the call and walks away.  He ignores the regular ring.

The other thing that shocks me is the amount of money that the poor folk spend on their phones.  The unemployed erstwhile mechanic had an iPhone.  The businessman had a beat up old razr.

I am thinking that the primary reason behind this differing way of approaching these odd appliances is simple.  The po' folk cling the phones and cherish them because whoever calls has to be in a better place than the suckage that they call a life.  The gentry knowS that whoever callS is probably not going to make their life better, they can safely ignore it.

Been Pondering On This One For A Bit

OK....let us consider this passage from Mr Cohen over at Decline of the Empire.

What are we supposed to think when the government releases statistics that fly in the face of every other non-government indicator we have? Should we conclude that the "official story" is merely propaganda? That the government methodology is flawed? Assuming no one is actually changing the numbers before the public sees them, we might surmise that the "flaws" in the analysis are driven by a hidden, unconscious bias in the methodology which puts a positive slant on the results.

These are deep mysteries, but the "official story" stands because it is the sanctioned view of our economic reality. People like me or Mish, who question those numbers, can be safely dismissed as wacko bloggers. The point of contention is September retail sales from the Census Bureau—

OK, now for the hard part, taking out ones preconceptions and analyzing them in the light of day.

Since the eighties, when that fucking fraud Ronald Reagan sold us the idea that anything government was bad, we have developed a mindset of immediate distrust of anything government.  Now, to a certain degree, this is a healthy skepticism that should be nurtured.

But consider the phrase "every other non-government indicator".  Now what the fuck does that mean.  Dry scholastic tomes from the ivory tower?  They sure as hell don't have any credibility from where I sit.  Business and corporate projections?  Yeah, I certainly trust those bastards.

So what we are left in is that we are swimming in a sea where all references are suspect.  Where any reduction of the data set to produce a decent sized solution space is suspect in a fundamental way, because the reductions are done per the requirements of power elites that have no desire to see that my needs have any forum or are considered.

I would recommend that one starts considering the economic projections coming out of the whores and charlatans that populate the government bureaucracies, K Street, corporate boardrooms, and Universities the same way you consider a sportwriter.  An interesting read, but in fact, having nothing to do with the game.

Monophysites

I am getting sick of the morons in the economic blogosphere ranting about Keynesian this and Austrian that and how the other side doesn't understand that their side had the hand stamped imprimatur of god clearly marked on its product.

After a while, it becomes like the ridiculous arguments the early Christians about the physical nature of Christ.  The Monophysites said that Christ only had one nature, the divine.  The Chalcedonian position was that Christ had two natures, both human and divine.

At the end of the day, it was morons, talking loudly about things that they really couldn't understand, trying to prove to other morons that they were more wronger than the original moron.  At the end of the day, no one could say for sure, so we managed to come to the less confronatational "who knows" followed by the "God will sort it out for us later" reality.

Economics is increasingly becoming a pissing match that cannot be won.  The reason for this is that most folk see the things that they own and the money that they have as the touchstones of their lives.  Economics must be important because the physical items that it allows us to accumulate have become the most important thing in our lives.

That is the reason for the decline of our culture.  We have become a nation of consumers and rentiers income is the dream of all.  Freemen are passé.

Juan, Juan, Juan

I haven't listened to the news for years now.  Buncha crap.

But when I did, I had a little ritual, first BBC, then NPR, then Fox News, kinda let it all stew around in my head then tried to make a decision based on what each of them were trying hard not to say.  Took a bit of thought, but it was always worth it.

Juan Williams was a slimey little puke then, toeing the company line for decent amount of coin.  I guess that I was surprised when he got a job at Fox a couple years back.  But being the liberal lapdog (I guess the best comparison would be the little weasel David Brook's role as the "nice" conservative over at NPR)

So, now Little Juanie has been fired for saying that some folks make him nervous.  Now, NPR can't have anyone raining on its Kumbaya parade, so off he goes.  Rupert Murdoch, on the other hand, just had the biggest erection he has had in the past two years at the prospect of a hispanic saying odd things about Muslims.

Juanie also just got a nice fat raise from Fox.

Gee, I wonder if they planned this in advance?

Just so you know whats going on

The reality behind the dry medical phrase "productive cough" is where my life has been for two days now.

I am not amused

Reposted From the Onery Bastard

Without Comments and as a complete home run

Thanks Busted

Jesus fucking Christ am I glad I don't own a television anymore.

Every where I look , all I see are stupid people who should be wearing size seventeen shoes and have round red noses.
Fucking clowns running for elected office that can't even spell, Elected Office.

On one hand, we have this silly little dolt named Christine O'Donnell who's claim to fame is that she is not a witch.

If this was the Gong Show she would be out on her little ass looking to find bus fair.

She claims she has that douchebag Hannity "in her back pocket" so she can do battle with the fuck wads in her own party, has no fucking clue what the first amendment is about and steals money from the  donations for her campaign to pay for pizza deliveries. I have to agree with my buddy Gordon on this one.

Then we have the ,Oh , So Lovable Meg Whitman, who has so far spent over a Hundred and Fifty Million Dollars, of her own personal money, to run for the position of Governer of Kalifornia.
.
 That pays what, 200 grand a year? Just a guess.
Some return on your investment there honey.
That poor undocumented maid she was paying 23 bucks an hour should have went on strike for better wages

Something stinks like a barge full of dead cat fish there.

Then we have little Miss Carly Fiorino, who has raised 5.9 MILLION dollars, to run against Senator Barbara Boxer, again, in Kalifornia, for a job that pays $110,00 dollars a year, plus 138.00 dollars a day PER DIEM FOR EVERY DAY THEY ARE IN SESSION.

Now explain to me how 5 million goes into a hundred grand.  OK, 6 million into a hundred and twenty five grand, my math ain't so good.

Either way, you should get my point.

The GOP and the Dumbocrats are both spending millions of fucking dollars for a job that pays one tenth of what they are spending on advertising to win.

What are we missing here folks?

Lobbyists.
Contracts, kick backs. That's what

Pay as you play.

California has one of the top ten largest economies in the entire fucking world.

Top Ten.

A hundred grand won't even get you a cheap seat in that economy.
That shit is just gravy.

Remember, Meg has ALREADY spent a hundred and fifty mother fucking MILLION dollars of her OWN money, trying to buy this election.

Ya wonder why us peons don't see the need to vote for any of these people?

Some are bat shit fucking crazy, I need not go any farther down this vein, others are so outright fucking power hungry and greedy, they are spending more than fifteen years worth of potential wages in one election season, just to get their hands on the levers of power.
Those levers must be some powerful mother fuckers is all I can say.
Might I add, none of the above give a rat fucking shit about you.
It's all about the power and they would kick you in the ribs if you had the audacity to fall over from starvation right in front of them while on their way to a corporate  fund raiser.

Better yet, they would have some hired goon do it for them. hey, those shoes are expensive, don't ya know.

Think about it, 5.9 million fucking dollars in advertising to get a job that pays a hundred grand a year.

Like I said, barge load of dead cat fish, something stinks to high heaven.
That's our political process these days.

Might Be the Theme Song

I have always liked the Supremes.  Great tunes.

I think that I will head over to the Cash and Carry and buy some meat and flour.  The freezer is getting a bit thin and the flour bin is getting empty.  I have a sneaking hunch that prices will be going up soon, so making hay while the sun shines might be a good idea.

I think that we are just hanging on.  The speed of a society is perceptible, but it moves slowly.  The frauds and self-deceptions on which we builded our lives and dreams are starting to come apart now.  The fraying of the fabric is becoming obvious.  Oh, the garment will hold together for a bit, but it is an old set of jeans that have been repaired a couple of times already.

I kind of think that we will be able to patch it up one more time.  But maybe not.

What we are running into now is the point in the garments life where a serious hole is going to rip out any day now.  Since we know we are going to have to fix it anyway, we are slacking a bit, trying to get one last use or two before we get busy patching it.

A lot of folks will see this as when the garment rips, the garment must be thrown away and we will go shopping naked until we find a new garment.  Sorry lads and lasses, doesn't work like that.

I guess that I am personalizing this garment analogy from my own experience.  My jeans always wear out in the crotch first.  So when are start seeing the strain lines, I know I am going to have to bring out the sewing machine soon, but usually I wait until they tear out and then go for it.

I just alway figure that if the seams in the jeans are looking rocky, I make sure that "going commando" is not done.  I always make sure that I have underwear on so that only mild embarrassment occurs.

Hence the trip to the cash and carry

Why I don't eat out

Other than the fact that I am a cheapskate. and prying money out of my wallet usually requires the jaws of life.

Oh, I will head down to Muchas Gracias and eat one of their burritos, God, are they great.  I will even head in and eat at the Jerusalem Cafe downtown.  The middle eastern food there is good beyond words. Local food shops usually gives you food.  Not corporate-blessed calorie units

This is what America Eats.

But if you eat at one of the corporate bullshit chains, I really don't care which one, you are putting shit into your body that no self-respecting organism would have anything to do with.  Now, don't get me wrong, I will do this occasionally, but I almost feel the need to go to confession and pony up some tithe to wash myself of sins afterward.

My youngest always describes his desire to go to Taco Bell as a craving for cheap, fatty goodness.  I try as hard as I can to dissuade him.  I am begining to realize that this is a ploy to get me to panic and offer to take him to Muchas Gracias as an option.

I'm on to you punk.

Sorry about the delay

Bacon/Potato/Cheddar Cheese Soup
Serves 3-4


Phase One

• Three Potatoes
• Two Carrots
• Two Stalks of Celery

Chop these up into approximately 1 inch chunks.  Stick them into a pot (3 quart) of cold water with 1 tablespoon of salt and bring it to a boil, take it off the heat and let it cool down for a bit

Phase Two

• About 1/4 pound of bacon, chopped up
• One large onion
• 2/3 cup of flour

Fry up the bacon till the bits are nice and crispy (for this part I would use the pot you will be making the soup in, in my case it is a 3.5 liter pot).  Pull the bits out and set them aside. Fry the onion till it is translucent.  Pull out the onion and put it in the bowl with the bacon. Keep the bacon grease and add the flour to it a bit at a time and stir the flour in to make a roux.  Cook the roux, stirring constantly, until it turns a shade of brown you find appealing, then take it off the heat (but leave the burner on).

Phase Three

• 1-1/2 cups of powdered milk
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 3/4 teaspoon pepper (I prefer white for this one)
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Drain the vegetables from phase one, make sure that you reserve the boiling water in a bowl (remember it is pretty hot).  Stir in the oregano, cayenne, pepper, garlic and powdered milk into the water from the boiled vegetables and mix it thoroughly.  Stir the vegetable water/milk mix into the roux (on the hot burner) and stir the mixture up.  Dump in the bacon, onions, and partially cooked potatoes, carrots, and celery.

Phase Four

• 1/3 pound of grated cheddar cheese

Cook this on a low heat (medium low or 2-3 on an electric range) for about five minutes minutes or until the vegetables are the right texture for you.   Add the cheese to the soup about 3-4 minutes before you serve.  It will melt in pretty easily

This is killer with garlic bread..

Great with

Trouble at the mill

You know, when I sit down and examine it rationally, I come to the conclusion that I have no clue whatsoever about what is going on in the world.  

It has always been a damned odd place.  It seems that things haven't changed all that much and it is still a damned odd place.  I think that one of my biggest faults is trying to make sense of it.  It may be a fools errand to even attempt to do so.

I made a couple attempts at surfing once.  I was sore for a week and my Hawaiian friend Mapu was gasping for breath with laughter at my early attempts.  But I did learn one thing, that when you are playing around with something bigger than yourself, there isn't a lot to understand.  It can squash you like a bug and you had better be getting out of its way, or just learn to get along with it.

A big wave seems to building up.  But anybody who has spent any time near an ocean will probably tell you that a whole bunch of the time what you think will be a big wave just washes your ankles when it finally gets to where you are.  I think that this idea applies here too.  

So, I will keep you posted, tomorrow will be the recipe for Bacon/potato/cheddar cheese soup.  

Maybe a decent idea for a post will come between now and Friday. 

Fuck the bondholders

Another of my pet peeves.  Bonds are sacred.  These fine people (ha) bought these bonds to fund their retirements of golf and pederasty.  They need their money...blah...blah....blah.

First things first, when you buy a bond you are loaning an entity money.  It is a business decision, just like when Louie does it down at the docks.  But, here is the kicker, when Louie lends money, he has the good sense to hire Guido the legbreaker to ensure prompt repayment.

Idiot individuals who buy bonds are loaning money to the big boys.  The big boys have the morals of an alley cat.  So, in toto, if you buy a bond from a corporation you are lending money to the most rapacious group of people in our society.  If you lend money to the government, outside of a war bond, you are loaning money to an extremely eccentric uncle with a poor prior history.

So, we can safely say that any individual that holds bonds is less than sharp, and, while not deserving a schooling, shouldn't feel an immense set of moral outrage.

But the main holders of bonds are corporations and other countries.  Well fuck them, haircuts for all.

Tribes

I have had an interesting set of comments on my observation that the Tea Party meetings are racist.

Mayberry (a daily read) and Russell (same) took exception.  Since these folks have my ear, I sat down and thought about it for a bit.  Unfortunately, I can't quite bring myself to looking at things their way in light of my personal experience.

I will freely allow that the Tea Party has no official racist doctrine anywhere around.  I can even live with the idea of shipping back illegals and their children to the country of origin (though we would first have to implement some changes in the laws, and there will necessarily be some legal ambiguity about the children born in the USA prior to the changes). Ex post facto is not a legal idea to be toyed with.

But there is a difference between the pubic platform of a movement and the tenor and hopes of the people within it.  The leaders of the Tea Party might be smart enough not to mention any racist doctrine, but a lot of the rank and file folks that I have met are not hampered by any such nicety.   As I stated earlier, I have never been to a public meeting where Spic, nigger, and other such words have been bandied about freely.  This was not the case in the Tea Party meetings that I attended.   While the Confederate Battle flag may have an marginally appropriate (emphasis on marginal) subtext in the South, the same flag being displayed on pickups in Washington State really has only one meaning.

I grew up a non-Mormon in rural northern Utah, the scorn and petty spite against Mexicans, Italians, Polacks, and Catholics was palpable, as there were almost no blacks, this wasn't really an issue.  I learned to fight often and well (the Mormon boys in Northern Utah tended to go after you in packs).

The experience of going to a Tea Party meeting was eerily similar to the constant racism and self-righteousness that characterized my happy youth in crackerville.

Now you guys at least know where I am coming from.