Kinda Bummed

First full week of Lenten abstinence of coffee and alcohol.  So far so good.

I'm really kinda bummed.  Seems that faulty wiring and a bad card may well be the reason for the neutrino results.  Damn.  Cold fusion all over again.

I think that the reason that I get my hopes up over things like this is that fundamental scientific research is our only long shot chance to turn the predicament where we currently reside into a problem.

Problems have solutions, Predicaments don't.

I have become somewhat a pariah of late.  Making note of things like peak oil and the probable decline of the American Empire really do irritate people.  

It seems that we are more and more controlled by a power structure that appears to bear the stamp of Alfredo Rocco and his thoughts.  People seem to forget that the regimes put together in this manner have pretty short shelf lives.

All of the issues that I discussed in the last paragraph spin out of the central thesis that there is no longer enough anything to go around.   Oil and the access to fossil fuel are what allows the political and social structures that we have developed to operate.  The American empire is the Ad Hoc system we have thrown together to keep thing running our way,  and corporatism is the defining political power constellation.

Something like cold fusion or access to the folded up Calabi-Yau dimensions that would allow the faster than c passage of light would give us the the chance to break out of the whirlpool kharybdis that is intent on sucking us down.

I will alway hope for a deus ex machina.

Initiations to Community

It's Sunday morning around 10:30.  I have put together three hampers of clothes and now I am in the LaundryWorld over on Fourth Plain and I have two big washers and one little washer loaded and running.  I have about a half hour to write.  The laundries that I have been frequenting are heavily tilted to single old men and young families. Right now this place is colonized by a man speaking at length into a cell phone while his wife glares at him for ignoring her and a older gentlemen who appears to be wishing fervently to be anywhere but here.

Since I am in the laundry, I think that this is a good time to talk about the realities of sharing.  We in the good old USA have made a fetish of independence.  We move our houses out to what used to be perfectly good farmland to have separate dwellings.  We load these dwellings with appliances to that we will never have the indignity of having to be around other folks with our tawdry little needs. 

The laundry room prevents you from what used to be a communal task, women cleaning clothes and taking a moment to do the work in between long dissertations about the shortcoming of the menfolk.  The big herking refrigerator is a storage so that one doesn't have to suffer the presence of others down at the market trying to figure out what looks fresh and good.

The TV/Cable combo have completely severed us from the theater, where sitting down in a place with others and spending a little time suspended in a mutual fantasy with others gave us a common experience.

We speak glowingly here in Doomerville of the pleasantries of the communities that we hope will spring up in the presence of shared hardship.  But I tell you what, it is going to be a tough row to hoe to bring the idea of communal work and shared hardship to a society where atomization, self-absorption, and the cult of Onan have been taken to their logical extremes.

I am trying, as much as possible, to break out of the home-as-fortress mentality.  For I cannot for a moment see how that mentality is healthy.  It will take me quite a bit of work, and I will probably backslide, but I feel that the effort is worth it. 

Differing Thoughts on Empires

Getting ready in the early AM.  Finally got a decent night's sleep.  Morning is when I usually get a touch of caffeine into my system, take my aspirin and other quack nostrums, and spend a moment to think.  This morning it is on the thoughts of empire

Dmitry Orlov has had a remarkable run comparing the fall of the US empire with the fall of the USSR.  The Archdruid wrote a recent post on the subject that has some merit.

I think that the sexy empires that we like to compare ourselves with are Rome and the British Empire.  We have fond places in our hearts for these two and even have the fasces  on the wall in the House of Representatives and the Senate to prove the point.

Dmitry made significant debating points by having us take an uncomfortable look at the none too seemly parallels between the US and the Soviet Union.  Made for excellent reading (he does write quite well), but while the parallels are there, it really doesn't seem to fit that well.

Nope.  I think that the empire that has some merit in referencing relative to our current straits is the Napoleonic Empire.   Military in nature, expansionary by principle, missionary in its zeal.

Now, there are going to be all kinds of people who will be aghast at this idea, and I will probably even be willing to concede the great majority of their debating points.  Nonetheless, I want to put the Napoleonic French model as a possible trajectory for it's American Cousine.  

Napoleon was a superb military commander with an excellent press corps.  Whenever he was against reasonably competent commanders, he managed to lose a fair amount of the time, but the press corps that he had subsumed made quick work burying the idea of his fallibility.  Egypt, the Peninsular War, Aspern-Essling, Leipzig, and the Invasion of Russia all showed the marks of a mortal.

What he did was operate an oversize military in a manner that used the resources of the states to provide for a core.   The seizure of power was done the old fashioned way, by sucking up to a revolutionary political force and then throwing a coup d'etat.
  
 Post-Napoleon France did not whither away, it stayed a major player.  You might even be able to argue that it remains a major player. 

No, what Napoleon was most capable of was the forging of a concordat between a radical revolutionary movement and a focused military.  The military will rarely lose in such venues 

I Love this guy

You know, there is nothing right about "Red Meat", but it really and truly makes me laugh on a regular basis.

Happy Sunday

By Any Other Name

It is Saturday morning, and I am doing everything in my power to avoid the laundry.  It won't be possible to do so much longer, but I will try.

I have been getting into a little bit of to and fro with posting with Joel over at "Of the Hands."  It has been focused around the near-certain eventuality that the amount of energy available for non-essential vanities is going to be reduced in the future.  This is referred to as poverty.

I guess that one of the main reasons that I have been giving so much feedback is that the words used are so emotionally loaded.  I think that the best way for folks who, like us, see the need for a much smaller footprint to proceed is take the judgmental and emotional content out of our writings and thoughts and rake the resulting language clean of the anger and loaded catchphrases.

The structure of American culture has to change.  I cannot think of a thinking soul that really believes that we can go back to the blissfully ignorant structure of American life in the oh-so-idealized 1950's.  The amount of energy available to us is decreasing and the options for obtaining more, or even maintaining the current level of supply, are rapidly being shown to be untenable.

We will have less.

But calling things poverty in the American system is a big mistake.  Poverty has such an astonishing emtional weight in our culture that calling a man poor is the societal equivalent of calling a man a nigger.  In our society, poor is something to be pitied and reviled.  We have made a cultural requirement of wealth and a shibboleth of fame coupled with grotesque levels of consumption. 

So while calling the hard work of peeling the necessary from the affluent a name like "poverty" might be a satisfying emotional exercise, it isn't going to help your fellow man in the hard readjustment that we will be making in the next twenty years.  Using words like "poverty" and "poor" merely allows the powers-that-be a way to manipulate the society to their own purposes.

There are a whole bunch of folks out there who recognize the need to change society.  To do so is a noble and fulfilling task.  But if the society that you wish to change is already mobilized against the words that you choose in the process of trying to find your way out of the maze.  Lifeboats are an act of desperation, frugality is an odd and underused term.  There has to be a better descriptor of the act of growing up and living within the means available, at peace with our fellow man. 

Demetrius Runs The Table

I am starting to feel around for a way to transfer to another part of the old salt mine.  The work is getting stale, and three years of being an afterthought are enough for anyone.  I will probably be an afterthought wherever I go, but it won't be so noticeable at first.  I am going to shoot for something here in Vancouver, Wa.  I am quite tired of paying Oregon Taxes.

Whenever someone writes something that I was trying to say better that I would be able to say it, I will just attempt to disguise my envy and applaud their efforts.

Demetrius over at "The Cynical Tendancy" wrote this today.  Please spend some time over at his place.  It is pleasant and the thoughts are quite well done.


Retreat from Abundance
By Demetrius

Another difficult week, why is everything so complicated?  The way that time evaporates when you first address what may have been once a simple thing is alarming, especially when time is now something to be treasured.

But it all seems to be a developing shambles.  The Greeks had a myth for it with Sisyphus (Wikipedia) which seems to be what the future looks like for them.  It means to have an endless uphill struggle with no respite.

What is not recognised because the idea is so unpopular is that having gone uphill for so long the West is heading downhill with gathering pace.  The Retreat From Abundance is under way compounded by the increasing gap between those that have and those that have not.

The question is what kind of retreat will it be?  Is it a retreat to The Lines Of Torres Vedras?  Is it a Retreat From Mons?  Or is it a Retreat From Moscow.  The diagram above is one of the first major statistical representations of figures in charts and vividly shows the collapse in the French Army fleeing Moscow and the Russian Winter.

In 1812 Napoleon marched an Army of half a million men against Russia, quite why I have never really understood.  The French often relied for supplies of food and forage etc. by living off the land they occupied.  This may have seemed economic but unluckily left large numbers of angry locals behind them.

The Russians gave ground and then more ground and even left Moscow to the French.  The consequence was that when winter came the French were not prepared and a scorched earth policy had left them badly short of supplies.  The Army that had invaded Russia was reduced to a few straggling thousands barely alive.

The Retreat From Mons was another matter in August and September 1914.  After encountering the full weight of a well equipped and larger German Army the British and French had to retreat to a more tenable defensive position and hope to hold the line and prevent either the loss of Paris or a breakthrough in the north.

It was touch and go and for the troops on the ground a desperate business compounded by all the difficulties of communication and decision.  “The biggest shambles since Mons” was a common way of describing foul ups and unholy messes for a long time.  But the British and French just about held on and managed to stop the German advance.

Much less known these days is the 1810 retreat to the Lines Of Torres Vedras in Portugal.  Wellington, having won at Talavera realised that he did not have enough troops or support to hold the French and retreated to prepared positions to sit out the winter, regroup and build up strength and supplies.

The French were left in territory to which a scorched earth policy had been applied and needing for forage widely across country to stay alive again running into trouble with the local population.  When Wellington moved out, his command of ground and ability to out march the French and critically the supply chain he created meant he could reclaim the Peninsula from the French.

So which are we in for in the coming year or two?

Virtues from necessity

Spent the day wallowing in self-pity.   Didn't want to be at work.  Getting sick of dominance displays, need a vacation.  But I did get through the day and, after getting ashes rubbed on my head, am feeling pretty sprightly.  The sun came out and I managed to get a short walk in which brightened my mood considerably

Found a new site that may well be of interest.  I am putting this onto my reads list,   overall good.  You ought to consider putting him on your reading list.

Bu there is this one series of articles that he wrote that just makes me pee my pants laughing.

I am struck by the idea that one needs to be told how to be poor.  Man, it is easy as falling off a log.  All you have to do is run out of money.  Things pretty much take their own path after that point.

Everyone in America today is looking at a reality where poor becomes the norm.  Oh, some folks will manage to slip through without much in the way of a lifestyle loss.  But I think that those kind of folks are going to be the exception not the rule.

No, this guy seems to think that he can peer into the wizened future and tell you how to be poor in such a manner that you will even manage to enjoy it.

Wow.

Having grown up on the poor side, from a family a short step away from being Italian peasants, poor is nothing new nor is it particularly attractive.  It is just the state of affairs where you sometimes currently reside.  You may be able to drift away from it, but it is always there in the background, patiently waiting for a chance to return to center stage.

Now, when you make a conscious choice to embrace poverty, there can be some spiritual and ethical rewards.  No one is going to deny this.  But it is the rare cat who chooses this route.  I can find no historical record of a society that has voluntarily chosen that route.

Even if the choice is made the life is hard.  But the poverty that is forced is a different ball of wax altogether.  The bulk of America is being forced into poverty, and that is going to be damned interesting.

Both voluntary and involuntary poverty consist of hard and grinding work.  Even living with folks in your same circumstances, the work and effort are endless and tiring.  The rewards and pleasures are few and scanty, and your life goes skating too close to line far too often.

The best that can be said is that some folks go poor with considerably more style than others.  Maybe that is the best you can really hope for.

Because in the end, there will be a whole bunch of folks who will wish fervently to take the route of Cypher.

A vacation complete with self righteousness

My ex explained to to me the good work that some of the flock at her local pretend-christian-american suburb church was doing.

A family takes a two week vacation to Thailand.  Does not speak a word of Thai,

Lands in Phuket and spends a little time "resting".  Goes upcountry and finds an unsuspecting little town minding its own business.  Family screeches in horror, "there are buddhist temples here".  Stands in front of said temples, "praying against the idols."

Then, the family "feels the call" to ride around on motorcycles until they find more good work.  They find a local orphanage run by a christian couple.  Spend the day talking to children in a christian orphanage talking about Jesus.  Remember this is upcountry and they don't speak Thai.

All the while, they have been taking pictures and movies.

They then come back to the good old USA and spend a Sunday morning talking about their "missionary" work.

Ignatius Loyola ROFLHAO

The beginning of the end of Moore's law

I am getting old.

We have been adhering to Moore's law for the past forty years and it has taken us some pretty remarkable places.  Knowledge is now more widespread than in any time during history.  Large swathes of the populations in the developed world have access to amounts of knowledge that would stagger the folks at the Library of Alexandria.

The fact that most of the information appears to be mindless and vapid facebook entries and pornography is beside the point

But the above article is the beginning of the end of that rocket ship expansion of computing power.  Truth is, maybe it is a good thing.

Intel giveth and Microsoft taketh away.  The too-rapid increase in computing power has allowed kludgey, crufty programs to sap away the abilities of the processors.  With an end to the endless increase in computing power, increases in speed and productivity will be batted firmly back into the software realm.  The fat laden crap that Microsoft and their ilk have been feeding us will have to be tightened up and made good.

It will also allow us to perhaps find a more balanced use of these beasts within our lives.  Currently, they are pretty new in the grand scheme of things.  I am a veritable dinosaur, having had an e-mail address back in the 80's (I doubt if it is still good, but I was quite pleased with janus@well.com), so the damn things really have only been around for about a generation.  No way we can have a decent handle on them at this point.

I kind of look forward to what they will become.  Perhaps something useful, that will allow us to see the shadows dancing on the side of the cave wall a little better.

No Whole Foods?

So, head on over to Financial Armageddon and read this post and accompanying comments (yes, I am there as well) as this post is a refinement and continuation of the thought there.

I am very conflicted about this post.  The earlier posted comments reflect my sense of irony (and I do so hope that Mr Panzer did intend this as ironic). But the irony reflects the real desire of a significant part of the population to maintain appearances and petty vanities in the face of the cruel reality of the foreseable future.

So many people are so lost to the dream that they are incapable of seeing that their desired lifestyles (whole foods and cable) are behind us.  This post is a very real indictment of the people who will be most impacted by the problems ahead of us.  Note the above picture.  Googling the "whole foods produce aisle" came up with this one.  Note the perfect little frau and the the perfect little kinder selecting fresh and wholesome foods from the cornucopia.  A slice of pure heaven produces by the Madison Avenue dream factory.

The lifestyles of unlimited choice and relatively inconsequential costs that everyone seems to insist upon are no longer available to the masses.  A completely comfortable lifestyle can be easily achieved, yet it doesn't seem to be adequate for those who have seen been higher up on the consumption mountain.

Great veggies will soon revert to seasonal from the garden.  No problem there, just an adjustment in how you get them and Whole Foods will be sadly out of the loop.  I don't see a problem, but some folks seem to think that the sweat equity of access to foods is more appropriately left to lower-status Mexicans and corporations.

Consider also the response.

A civil engineer going back to school?  What the hell for?  Does she think that more education, with a large tab attached, probably paid for with student loans is going to pull her out of this?

This kind of stuff just isn't going to work anymore.  The folks will have to take less, the husbands will have to get a job, the kidlets will have to not be little proto-yuppies.

They'll do just fine.

They are just going to have to spend some time in the rain.

A Different View

So, I can't remember how I ended up on this picture, I think that Busted Knuckles had something to do with it somehow.  But the original article that I read, and the link that it sent me to, got me to thinking.  


There is also a doctored second photo as well.

All of this ties in with the theme that I have been developing of late.  The country is turning more and more into a pressure cooker.   Now, I am not squawking at these troops, they have the God given right to their own opinion and the equally God given right granted to a gaggle of E3's and E4's to jump to the wrong conclusions and not see the big picture.  Damn good kids probably.


What kind of bothers me is the comments between the blog author and a demi-troll in the comment section at the end of the pickyourbattles piece.  I have no doubt that both parties display points of view that reflect big swathes of the thought in the US military.   The point I am trying to make is that the military is going to be a player in the dénouement.


I would guess that there is quite a bit of steam being generated in mess halls of late.  We are demobilizing and getting troops back home.  We are also in the throes of one of the worst economic downturns in our nations history, so the amount of money going into the military and the troops will be decreasing.  We have generated a fairly separate military caste that will be getting screwed pretty soon. 


Now, something similar has happened in the past.  We went through the same thing at the end of Vietnam.  The cost of the Vietnam war and the ruthless vote buying of the Great Society led to a precipitous loss of revenues and power to the military complex.     


The difference this time is the way that the hoi polloi think of the military.  The end of Vietnam had a country that thought the troops were drugged-out baby killers and were not in any mood to brook any nonsense.  The Generals were cowed and disgraced.  The military pretty much slunk back to its bases and licked their wounds.


This war is really different.  All the troops are "heroes".  The Generals have ruthlessly exploited the docile media to paint this as a win and themselves as the current reincarnation of Scipio fucking Africanus.  The military is in a completely different space this time.


Things are going to get interesting.   I have no opinion right or wrong on this one.  Just sayin'

I am OK with this

Consider a moment this little tidbit.

I am personally sick of every halfwit who reads an article in the national enquirer and feels that they are now a practicing physician.  Doctors are by no means perfect, but the worst of them are better than the half educated morons that make up shit and then inflict it on their kids.

Look, vaccines aren't for the individual, they are pretty much a duty to the whole society.  If we, as a society, can take the steps to eradicate a plague from the books, then we should do it.  There will be a vanishingly small minority that will have a bad reaction.  A couple of people in a population of millions will die.  Can't be helped, but the chance should be taken.  In an over-populated world, if a epidemic is allowed to get traction, a lot more than "a couple" of people will die.

I can't see any value in getting the government to force them...nothing but bad stuff down that aisle thank you.  But these non-vaccine folks are just plain self-centered jerks who cannot see past the end of their own nose.

A Retraction

Russell spent some time commenting on an earlier blog.  I poo-poohed his comments and stuck to my guns about doing business with thieves.  That may have been a mistake and I think that it may well be time to serve up a big portion of crow for self-consumption.

Theft is theft.  The big boys have been doing it on a progressively greater scale for quite some time now.  I have a tendency of forgetting that the amounts that they steal from each other are significant in the same sense that the amounts that they steal from us are significant.

I think what tipped me over to the side of seeing this as problem was the sudden realization that MF global may have been one of the bigger turning points.  Where the big boys had been previously satisfied with a parasitic role of milking everyone for a small amount, MF Global was where they decided to go after big game and become a true predator.

Yes, it is all the same thing.  Pervasive petty thefts in a setting of "financial services" is one thing.  One has come to expect such a thing, it is the modern equivalent of the hated gabelle, irritating,  good for some displays of dissension, but it just becomes part of the landscape.  It is a wholesale operation where the weakness of the host can be masked.

MF Global showed that the big boys would be more than willing to pull down one of their own without even a trace of hesitation.

Now I am worried about what they would decide to do if us low lifes who have been milked for what we are worth are now found to be worthless.  Now that the big boys have thrown away any semblance of respect for the rule of law, what are the rules of the game?

Cross Posting

From Jesse's Cafe Americain

Please Read and pass this on

Chris Whalen: JPM and the Banks Have the MF Global Money And the Status Quo Is Protecting Them

"But please, to our friends in the Big Media, could we stop saying that we don't know the location of the missing $1.6 billion of client funds from MF Global? The money is safe and sound at JPM and other counterparties. As with Goldman Sachs et al and American International Group, the banks have been bailed out at the cost of somebody else. And the various agencies of the federal government are complicit in the fraud...

The effort by former New Jersey governor and MF Global CEO Jon Corzine to save his firm by stealing customer funds seems to warrant further discussion, yet instead we have silence...

So why is it that the Large Media have such trouble reporting this story? The fact seems to be that the political powers that be in Washington are protecting JPM CEO Jamie Dimon from a possible career ending kind of stumble with respect to MF Global."

Chris Whalen, Institutional Risk Analyst

Chris Whalen at The Institutional Risk Analyst lays out the entire MF Global scandal in a few plain words, taking the Wall Street demimonde to task in the process.

It is nice to see that someone who occasionally appears on the mainstream media can tell the truth on this. Usually one has to look for sources overseas, small cafes, and the occasional economic maverick to hear what really happened.

But in quiet whispers, the Street knows the truth, that the money was stolen, not once but twice.   And even these hard cases are shocked.  The first time by MF Global and from the very top, and then afterwards in the courts and the regulatory bodies that used the bankruptcy to take the funds from the customers and give them to the creditors.

And it does stink to high heaven. But the clean up men are giving the evidence a thorough scrubbing while justice waits, Chicago-style.

It has placed a chill on those trading in the US markets. Even they are frightened of such lawlessness. They can't help but wonder, who's next?   And how far will they go?

Please distribute this as widely as possible.

"Where is the lost customer money? At JP Morgan Chase and other banks, or course. See, "How JP Morgan and George Soros Ended Up with MF Global Customer Money", www.clearingandsettlement.com.

So why is it that the Large Media have such trouble reporting this story? The fact seems to be that the political powers that be in Washington are protecting JPM CEO Jamie Dimon from a possible career ending kind of stumble with respect to MF Global. By stuffing the commodity customers of the broker dealer via an equity bankruptcy resolution supervised dutifully by SIPIC, JPM and Soros apparently get to benefit at the expense of the commodity customers of MF Global. This situation stinks to high heaven and everyone on the Street we've spoken to about the matter knows it. As the article above notes:

"Rather than being treated as a bankruptcy of a commodities brokerage firm under sub-chapter IV of the Chapter 7 bankruptcy law, MF Global was treated as an equities firm (sub-chapter III) for the purposes of its bankruptcy, and this is why the MF Global customer money in so-called segregated accounts "disappeared".

The effort by former New Jersey governor and MF Global CEO Jon Corzine to save his firm by stealing customer funds seems to warrant further discussion, yet instead we have silence.

Here's a question: When is Corzine going to be indicted for securities fraud and other high crimes and misdemenors? The answer seemingly is that the Obama Justice Department is afraid to go there. Thus the fraud at MF Global continues and Washington does nothing to inconvenience the banksters as customer funds are expropriated.

But please, to our friends in the Big Media, could we stop saying that we don't know the location of the missing $1.6 billion of client funds from MF Global? The money is safe and sound at JPM and other counterparties. As with Goldman Sachs et al and American International Group, the banks have been bailed out at the cost of somebody else. And the various agencies of the federal government are complicit in the fraud."

Chris Whalen, The Institutional Risk Analyst

"But where says some is the king of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter...that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."

Thomas Paine, Common Sense


"And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that."

Lord Acton

Drei Groschen Oper - Die Moritat von Mackie Messer  English translation.

Solution Spaces

Getting out of bed some days is an absolute bear.  Old men need their eight hours of sleep and getting them gets to be harder and harder to do.

I think that one of the real issue that people have to come with is the human desire to set boundaries.  Stating that "here is the border of right and wrong, good and bad" seems to be the fundamental issue why we can't seem to get a grip on the issues facing us.

I think that folks are trying desperately to find a set of variables that will give them a linear equation moving in a defined direction.   They want a clear point on the solution line that will define the halfway point.  They want to subtract out the "statistical noise" to deliver them a straightish line that will tell them what to do.

For a while "chaos theory" came into fashion in the science community.  Strange attractors and Mandlebrot sets were all the rage for a bit.  I notice that their use and their press has lessened precipitously since the time that most scientists figured out they really didn't understand them and the results that they delivered really didn't give fund-able conclusions.

We move through a multi-dimensional ( I am thinking that N is approximately 15) solution space, with boundary conditions that fluctuate rapidly.  Such equations do not usually lend themselves well to linear solutions.

We are winging it.  In truth, we always have been winging it.  Been winging it since we got together in groups greater than fifty.  When folks like Hammurabi and Salon starting laying down rules for play, things have gotten even more ad libitum.

So I am thinking that maybe we should figure this out and admit we don't really know what the hell we are doing.  Out political leaders are even more constrained by their Olympian view.  The number of data points and the number of variables is beyond a structures ability to cope.

We are going to keep extemporizing and hoping.  It is called the human condition

Positive Signs

Over at Mishland, where economics are the religion and anything that interferes with personal profits is a crime.  A big hullaballo is being made over the fact that we are using less oil and gasoline.

Consider the following three graphs

Man..thank you Baby Jesus.

It would appear to me that in the last couple of years, we have been curbing our stupid, stupid running around and getting a grip on the amount of money that we are putting into those idiot ideas called automobiles.

Mish is a little freaked because:

Rather, the huge dropoff in gasoline and petroleum usage in the US, coupled with falling shipping rates, a drop in Japanese Exports Three Consecutive Months, and a European Recession poised to get much worse, makes a strong case that a collapse in global trade is underway.

Dude, the collapse train left the station four years ago.  Are you really all that surprised because the train is now starting to pick up steam?

Then Chuck Smith over at "Of Two Minds" came out with this little histrionic nugget:

If we stipulate that vehicles and fuel consumption are essential proxies for the U.S. economy, then we can expect a steep decline in economic activity to register in other metrics within the next few months.

Jesus Christ, can you guys give me a break.  Running around like a brain dead chicken in your car is "an essential proxy for the US economy"?  My god, what are you..worried that your GM stock and your BP stock aren't gonna get you a vacation this year?

Folks, the car culture has to come to an end.  These charts just might mean that people are finally looking at their energy use and seeing the shallowness that it brings.

These charts lend me some hope.  Maybe, kicking and screaming and struggling against the injustice of it all, we are beginning to do what needs to get done.   We have hacked off around 12% of our energy use.  A very good start.  If we can drop our gasoline use by around 35% on top of this and manage to maintain our productive (read here: NON-AUTOMOTIVE) use of energy in ramped-up production to compensate for those damn container ships from China, maybe we will be on to something.

NKVD, Statsi, and other such organs

Not everyone gets memos like this.  But one should expect that a group with bearing the name of a man who espoused interfaith dialog, and lived a life of voluntary poverty and charity would piss someone somewhere off.

And a lot of folks are giving up their usual "I'm shocked" routine, replete with righteous indignation.  I am not so sure.

Disagreeing with government policy has always pissed the government off.  J. Edgar and his merry band were up to their elbows in surveillance of groups that didn't toe the company line.  Beria was ruthless and more into the violent part of suppression.  Statsi infiltrated everything and had files on everyone.

We are on the path to a much more authoritarian government.  I don't like, but there it sits.  But the actual path is looking pretty set, so why is everyone feigning surprise and claiming innocence lost?

Yes it pisses me off, but that is not what I am trying to say here.

What I am trying to say is, that if the FBI is expending resources on things like this, they are beginning to lose it.  We are in a beginnings of a catabolic collapse here in the USA.  The long term is not looking good, and there are movements around in the public and private which are the seeds of a major change in the American Experiment.

The authority of the executive branch is being balkanized in a serious way.  DHS and the FBI retain their own power base, DoD is an empire within itself.  DHHS has its own low level power.  Memo's like this just underscore the lengths that the petty bureaucrats will go to to blow their own horn and advance their own agenda.  People want to blame the President for what happens, but I am reasonably sure that BHO with a couple of drinks in him would bitch long and hard about the straitjacket that he has to operate out of with respect to these power bases.

The overall process continues.  Be careful, try to look beyond the headlines and the initial rush of emotion.  Sometimes a little bit of thought will show weaknesses, not strengths.

Empires

In a rare moment of dissent with the archdruid, I offer the following.

Consider the following quote from his most recent posting.

The path ahead leads straight into a theme that most Americans don’t want to discuss at all, and that they and the rest of the world’s population desperately need to discuss: the political, economic, ecological, and military implications of the twilight of America’s global empire.

Now, I agree that we are looking at a decline in relative American power over the next years.  Much can be done (and it would appear, is being done) in Washington DC to exacerbate this trend, but, if you take the issue out of a one way street approach and analyze it in a manner that takes in all possibilities, I would posit that the empire isn't going anywhere and will remain temporarily stronger.

Our society has made a couple of choices over the past century.  We generated a couple of French-style mass levies to fight a couple of big wars.  This grew an arms complex second to none.  It also generated large residual populations of arms trained veterans who were not going to go back to the farm after they saw Paree.  The wealth of the post WWII period and the poorly thought out overall strategy in Vietnam produced the Westmoreland doctrine with its tacit understanding with the then-upwardly mobile middle classes that their precious sons would no longer be required to bleed out on foreign shores.

But these doctrines are now coming to fruit.  We have developed a military technology and capability as frightening to a potential foe as can be imagined.  We have developed a class of soldiers (just for giggles, look into who is in the military and establish what they came out of, I would propose that we are rapidly developing a true Kshatriya class here in the US).   While they have started out as an appendage of the political branch of government, true warrior castes are not usually content to be dogs.

We are living in a world where access to raw materials and  wealth will become increasingly more competitive.   The competition will not be in terms of price points or the invisible hand of the market, but rather, who is in physical control of the resource.  Physical control of the resource is what is going to be the limiting factor soon.

Just remember that our most reliable method, and to honest, the most time tested of any method of obtaining control of something is to march in with a military force and take it.  When push starts coming to shove, those who push and shove rise in relative status.  For the past thirty or so years, the free -market types have had their little fling.  They have attempted to use arbitrage sneaky business deals to buy access to resources not properly ours.

But the business deals that are held so sacrosanct right now are pretty slender reeds.  Rest assured that they will bend in the wind.  They will also break at any serious pushback from the opposite side of the equation.  When petty little business arrangements start drying up, you can rest assured that the arms complex and the new warrior caste will see to it that the resources and power that now comforts them will continue.

I truly expect that the military will begin to rise in the near future.  I think that the shallow and short-sighted in Washington and New York will try to disband them and leave them in the cold in order to save costs and funnel the savings into business coffers.  It won't work.  Just ask the folks back in 17th century England who tried to disband the New Model Army.  Cromwell was the end of that process, and he was nothing but good at what he did.

I don't really regret it having to come to this.  It will be a phase in the overall process.  The military junta that will achieve control will fail, they all do.  But it will allow the system to right itself and allow for a renewal.

I will try

I hafta get better at responding to comments.

I read them all.  It is just that I am lazy.  I take the comments and use them to sweep my brain for material for another post, so I have a tendency of thinking that I have responded when really I haven't.

Well shit, another social Faux Pas by the fat kid.

I will try folks....I don't think that you realize how important these comments are to me.

But I did mention the lazy part didn't I?

You Like me...You really like me

I am Honored....

Russell over at Reflexiones Finales gave me a gift.....

I am quite pleased and hope that you take some time to head over to his place.

Here are the rules of the game:

The rules as such:

1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
2. Link back to the blogger who gave you the award
3. Pick our five favorite blogs with less than 200 followers, and leave a comment on their blog to let them know they have received the award.
4. Hope that the five blogs chosen will keep spreading the love and pass it.

So here are my votes:

1. This one is kinda cheating, but I have to give John Michael Greer a huge thumbs up for his efforts over at Stars Reach.  This is his fiction side blog and I cannot tell you how eagerly I await the next installment.  (134 Followers)
2. Being of fallen borderer stock, I really appreciate the musings of Demetrius over at The Cynical Tendency.  Hearing the pains of our relatives on the British Isles is an important part of my day.(41 Followers).
3. Muddome over at All You Need is Mud lives the life I wish I had to courage to try. (35 Followers)
4. Oldfool is an absolute must.  I am especially drawn to his drawing and description of a very nice lifestyle. (95 Followers)
5. And how could one possibly forget the inchaote rantings of The Onery Bastard.  I will praise him even though he ignored my invitation to come over and drink during super bowl. (118 Followers) 

Thank you all for being a part of my life.

Location, Location, Location

Folks who have been up in the rarified atmosphere of lower middle class have a spot of bother thinking that they might have to live down in the upper lower class.

The neighborhood I live in is a bit "mixed".  My youngest's middle school basketball team consisted of four blacks, three Mexicans, two Asians, a Russian, and a couple of gingers.   Great kids.  I hung out with all the families during games, except the ginger parents who kinda clung to the edges, not wanting to be contaminated with minority cooties.

Ours is the bad neighborhood.  The ex-mother in law is constantly harrping about the drugs and violence in our neighborhood.  Funny that, I have been living here for nine years now and haven't seen either.  Oh I am fairly certain that there are folks in the neighborhood who smoke dope and maybe there is a cook shack here, but in my walks, I certainly can't see it.

Everybody minds their own business.  Everyone says hi during my walks if I see them.

Just Barely > 200%

Got some folks coming over for super bowl.  Making green chicken chili, baked beans, sausages, hot dogs, chips, mexican dips, nachos and other such health food.  Can't say as I care too much about who wins.  I do think that Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, et al do have some 18-1 memories to expunge. 

$19,090.00 is the poverty level for a family of three in the United States in the year of our lord 2012.  So sayeth the US Department of Health and Human Services.  None can question this wisdom.  God Save the enlightened ones in Washington DC.

I am going to try not naming blogs whenever I read something that I disagree with.....Oh well, so much for that.

One of my pet peeves is that folks in bloggoland are spending a great deal of the their time bitching about how we have to leave our lifestyles behind.  How the world is running on less and less and how we need to make due with less.  OK  I agree.

Then folks go and start bitching about how anything less than 200% of the official poverty level is an insult to anyone and anything and that, at this level (200%), they and their offspring will be cast into outer darkness, residing there with Fuller brush salesmen and podiatrists.

OK, everyone agrees that getting from point A, the current wasteful and excessive state of affairs, to state B, the future is going to take a bunch of cutting.  Most folks will be living in what, in today's parlance, is poverty.  But it isn't.  Guys, real poverty is not having anything to eat or anyplace to sleep.  19,090 in the US of A is pretty damn low on the totem pole of life, but it is just barely doable.

200% of that level is just fine thank you....that says a beater car, a small rental house, and lots and lots of home cooking.  Vacations are camping in the national forest, days out are hiking and beating around town.  Kids will get to college, they will just have to work along with the parents wanting them to go.  They won't go to Harvard on that amount of coin, but there are degrees to be had.  They will have to work, same as us, but was there ever any doubt?  Hell some of them, the ones with brains and drive will probably get into the second estate after all.

Look, we are going to be poorer.  So what?  Do you really think that the lifestyles we have now are non-negotiable?  They most certainly are.  We are going to be downsizing a lot of things soon.  Government statistics don't change anything.  No one believes them anyway.  But the society will change itself to adapt to new reality.  Some of the rich will be richer.  Some of the rich will be poorer.

We have to get over the idea that winners and losers in society aren't natural.  We do have to keep it from getting out of hand.  Implying that a family making less than $38,180 are losers and will be left behind is just silliness.

Long Days

Sorry about being a bit short on postings lately.   Been working OT and I am a little on the tired side.   I am off this weekend and will take the time to clean the house and get ready for the Super Bowl.

Having trouble getting into the swing of prepping lately.  Mostly it is because I am starting to wonder if I am prepping for the right thing.

Most survivalist types which folks mistakes for preppers are planning for some sore to libertarian (read here..nihilist) auto de fe which will leave them in their well-armed and well-stocked freeholds, lording over the auto da fé, sneering at the uninformed.

You are all fully aware of what I think will happen to these poor sad sacks.  Should this scenario occur, when some truly nasty, truly weapons trained types with a modicum of organization hear tell of a stockpile in the woods defended by some "patriots", they will descend on the goodies with real organization and real tactics and the goodies will very rapidly change ownership.  They will probably appreciate the fine equipment and food available at the post-apocalyptic fast food market in the woods.

Nope, the prep in our lifetimes will be a ossification of the social structures we are currently a part of.  The middle class (read here: bourgeoisie) and the financial elite (read here: noble) are in the process of solidifying their hold.  The masses are to be put into an awkward form of debt peonage which will fund the lifestyles of the elite.  The middle class will work for the elite, gathering the rents, but will decrease in size due to the low-value added of such endeavors.

I cannot see this trend changing for the rest of my lifetime (which, granted is not that long...I figure that at best, I have around 10-11 years).  So what I have to do for prepping is to set my kids up in a manner that they can best ride the wave coming at them.

So, my savings won't be....work til I die with money going to education and training in useful things that will allow the future to continue the great game we call history.   

Now we are all terrorists

Privacy is a clue

http://info.publicintelligence.net/FBI-SuspiciousActivity/Internet_Cafe.pdf

Kinda Dumb Smart People

By the time I post this, the references will be kind of dated.  Such is life, I started the outline during my week off and didn't want to spend too much time on it.

So, read this piece here.

Now, Krugman is a smart guy.  One of those folks out there who make sense a lot of the time.  His views may piss off some of the rabid, but they are usually reasoned and worthy of your time and thought.  Here he is saying is that what we need to do is just spend a ton more money.  I will even allow that it appeared to work fairly damn well in the period 1940-1960.

The long term consequences of his central thesis (just spend money) are hidden by the convenient fact that we had free rein over the industrial world (which we had conveniently left as a monopoly thanks to the US Army Air Corps) and the Marshall Plan, which allowed us to keep our factories running at full tilt, rebuilding the rubble that Mssrs. Lemay and Doolittle so politely left us.

He also stubbornly refuses to note the serious problems that the country went through re-integrating the troops.  Please note below the unemployment rate in the years following the demobilization.  (Thanks to the folks over at Calculated Risk).  Please note that the current recession is around 1/2 the depth of the bad boy following WWII.